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Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate, the show where we cover how to build wealth in real estate with no fluff, no BS and no sales pitches. I'm David Green and I've been doing this for over 10 years. I've seen the ups, the downs, and everything in between. This is the show where we pull back the curtain and show it to you, too. So if you want to build wealth through real estate or you just love learning about it, you found your home. What's going on, everyone? Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate. This is Mortgage Monday. I'm David Green. He's Chris Ambassador. We're the one brokerage and we've got an interesting economic update for all of you news and mortgage nerds. Christian, why don't you go ahead and release the news since you were the one that's been following this trend.
B
Yeah, well, we'll call it sorta. QE is back. For those who follow the show, you're probably familiar with the term quantitative easing, which is basically the Fed buying American bonds, right? It's us purchasing our own debt, essentially. I guess you can't say our own because the Fed is an independent third body, I am sure. But it's, it's basically in a roundabout manner, the government creating an artificial demand for its bonds. This is done typically to stimulate the economy. It's done to lower interest rates. It's done to imagine you owned a real estate brokerage. This is the way that it was explained to me when I was new in the industry. Imagine you owned a real estate brokerage, all the listeners here, and there were no buyers for the houses on the market and you had a bunch of listings. So you said, hey, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go buy 10 of them. I'm going to go actually buy 10 of my listings and then I'm going to go to all of my buyers and I'm going to say, hey, look, the houses are flying off the market. That's basically what they do. They create an artificial demand by what they're calling now. And it's slightly different than quantitative easing, but they're calling it reserve. What's their, their term?
A
They came out management services.
B
Is it Reserve, management purchases, RMPs. And I think they learned the lesson that everybody kind of has a negative connotation with the term quantitative easing. This is basically managing purchases with their reserve funds, which sounds an awful lot like qe. But we're going to get into it today what the differences are, how it impacts you and most importantly, where the Market's headed.
A
There we go. I. I noticed that whenever something sneaky is happening, they change the name of a thing that we already know. So socialism sounds scary. Universal basic income. Oh, that didn't sound so bad. We're all going to get a bunch of money, right? Just a way of repackaging it. The last time the Fed did this, it was because we were in apparently, like a financial crisis. This was 2010. The banks were going to fail. There would be no money to lend to anybody. We had to do something. So the Fed basically said, look, we gotta pump a bunch of money into the economy, but there's no one that wants to buy bonds right now. Let's buy our own bonds. So we'll just make up bonds. We'll buy them ourselves. And this, in essence, pushes money into the system that wasn't there before. And that would be considered scary because that leads to inflation, which I talked about on the Bigger Pockets Pocket podcast ad nauseam. I talk about the David Green show all the time. We talk about it here on Mortgage Monday. The more money that you put out into the world, the less that money is worth. And when you combine that with people that aren't rushing into the labor market to do jobs now, you have too much supply and not enough, or I guess the opposite would be true. There's not enough demand for people to go do work. So nobody's doing work. So everything becomes expensive. And that's why everything in our world is expensive. It looks like the government's getting ready to do another round of pushing money into the economy, but they don't really want to tell us that, or they don't want to call it something that would be scary. So Business Insider here breaks the story with Jerome Powell himself. Not a very flattering picturing of him with his mouth closed like that. The Fed just made an A decision was made. The most important part of the Fed's last policy meeting is something that may have been overshadowed by the eagerly awaited rate cut. So they're kind saying that they snuck this in there by packaging it with the news, hey, we're cutting rates.
B
Yay.
A
We all celebrate lower rates. And then they don't say, we're going to do more stimulus. So if you don't understand anything about economics and you don't care, consider the fact that the country needs to take a nap, we need to go to rest, we need a recession, and everybody has to come back willing to work. Instead, we're about to shoot the country up with a whole bunch of cocaine. The Central bank's decision to start reserve management purchases, a mouthful that essentially boils down to the Fed expanding its balance sheet by purchasing short term US Treasuries is a big deal for markets. Changes to the Fed's balance sheet often fly under the radar for many investors, who primarily trade based on rate cuts and expectations for the path of monetary policy. The central bank's bond purchase programs have historically been an important tool for both influencing interest rates as well as providing liquidity to markets. The announcement of a new bond buying initiative was likely one of the most important details of last week's Fed meeting. According to Stephen Blitz, a managing director and chief US Economist at TS Lombard. The Fed cut and said that's all folks until the data roll in. But that was no surprise and far less important than the signaling from the return of balance sheet purchases, which frankly, I didn't hear anyone talk about after that Fed meeting. If you wouldn't have brought this up, I wouldn't have even known it was going on, which is kind of crazy. It's kind of like, hey everybody, just so you know, we're going to be dropping off a bunch of water in the water tower because we think we might need some more. Oh, and by the way, there's a huge tidal wave coming, but everyone just talked about the water tower. I don't know how this didn't get brought up. Maybe because they called it reserve management purchases, but trust me, if this you guys are hearing about this for the first time, you're going to be hearing about it much more when it hits the cable news cycle. This is a graph showing the weekly average of reserve balances with Fed reserve banks in millions of dollars. So in 2021, you see that they spiked how much they were buying. 2022 went super high. This was all what they did to kind of stimulate the economy in the middle of the COVID issue. By 2023, it looks like they had gotten rid of a lot of what they were holding in reserves and we are at a very low rate, which makes them think, ooh, we can do more of this. Christian, I don't know if you've ever talked about it, but outside of this and tinkering with interest rates, are you familiar with anything else that the Fed does to try to balance the whole unemployment and inflation debate debacle?
B
Reserve management's with banks. So how much banks have to have on top of what they lend? Right as we we kind of started long time ago basing our economy, excuse me, on a fractional reserve banking, which Means the bank doesn't have to have all the money. That's why bank runs exist. If everybody went to the bank and got their money, it's not there. Right. Right now there's a trust in the system that allows us to operate with that still in place. But that's a reason why you see some of these banks fail after capital calls and market shifts and all that. It's because they don't have it. Right. When Silicon Valley bank collapsed, they literally didn't have it. It wasn't there. Right. And that's because they're able to lend a lot more than they have based on our fractional banking reserve program. That's, that's one. The banks or the Federal Reserve can increase or decrease the amount of reserves the banks have to have on hand.
A
Which effectively basically takes money out of the circulation. Right. Reduces the amount of currency use this.
B
That's exactly right. But really that Quantitative easing or RMPs. Right. Quantitative tightening on the. I don't know what they'll call the acronym for quantitative tiding Now.
A
Yeah, that's what, that's a good point. Because it's reserve management sales.
B
Yeah.
A
So RMS or no opposite of purchases returns.
B
Yeah. So who knows? They'll find another way to call everything because there's red flags and investors don't like certain trigger words. But yeah, really, I mean the Feds kind of locked, you know, I mean they, they have their tools and their levers that they can pull and the, the speed or angle at which they pull them can have a lot of, a lot of downstream effects. But those, those are definitely, at least if not two of, of the biggest ones, two of the most powerful ones for sure.
A
The Fed will buy about 40 billion of treasuries a month before tapering off in the spring. I remember when I first heard about this, the idea of buying $40 billion of Treasuries, which is kind of the functional equivalent of pushing $40 billion of money into the economy, that wasn't there was mind blowing to me. And now we just drop it like, oh, it's only forty, not a hundred billion. It's just this is how much in a decade we've destroyed the value of the dollar. And that's one of the reasons we talk about owning real estate is so important because the real estate will hold its value much more than the money just sitting around in the bank. Bank will. It's slightly different than the Fed's quantitative easing program. Slightly different, which is aimed explicitly at stimulating economic activity. The latest purchase program, meanwhile is meant to ensure stability in financial markets. So we're using the phrase stimulating for quantitative easing and stable for reserve management purchases. I don't see. I don't know if there's a difference here. I didn't catch it.
B
Taking some liberty with those words. I'll put it back. Taking a little bit of liberty property here.
A
It's like we're not doing this to get you high. We're doing this to keep you safe while you're driving in the middle of the night in your semi.
B
Truckers. 40 billion in the left hand, not the right hand.
A
Yeah, yeah, there you go. It's still freaking cocaine, man. Does the same thing. There are a few reasons the move is important for markets and investors. Funding relief. Low bank reserves can add to short term funding pressures in the financial system. The Fed's RMP program is therefore a technical function of the central bank rather than any update to any aspect of monetary policy. Still, it has implications for markets. It became easier for banks, brokers and other market participants to borrow short term funds last week. The secured overnight financing rate dropped from 3.9 last Wednesday to 3.67 by the end of the week. Christian, it sounds like what they're saying is the more money they push out there, the lower the rate is to borrow money because it's easier to do. Is that what they're trying to say?
B
Yeah. So my understanding of this and RMPs are fairly newly noticed by me. So if there's any super RMP experts out there, you may have to, to excuse me while I'm kind of familiarizing myself with this. But my, my overall understand between the two is quantitative easing is buying long term debt. RMPs are mainly forcing capital into the short term debt market, mainly into T bills. So they have a much larger impact on the rate at which your bank can get money and not necessarily you. Which I think is very interesting. I think if I had to be, if I had to guess here, I think what they're trying to do is say if we can have banks get access to lower money by us purchasing the overnight T bills and drop per day borrowing rates, we hope that the banks will lend that money out at cheaper rates. Right now a big problem is the banks cannot free up their capital the same way they can when there is a large buyer demand in the bond market. I'm using a lot of words. So to, to, to, to explain this little clearly, the banks need money to lend. It's one of the core concepts of the velocity of money going through an economic system. You need the transfer of wealth to happen for purchases, for acquisitions, for mergers, for real estate investors, for people buying cars. Everything and everything comes from banks. If the banks have lent all their money and they're not required to keep reserves because the Fed has dropped it, that means they have no reserves to tap into when people need it. So now what the Fed is saying is, hey, we'll allow you borrow to borrow in real time from us. 40 billion a month with a B. I know that sounds like with all the numbers you throw out and trillions of debt and all this, like 40 billion a month is a hell of a lot of money.
A
That's 40,000 millions.
B
Yeah, it's a lot of money, right? What the Fed is saying is that, hey, we've been. When you guys hear the Fed balancing its assets, the. The Fed has, has a. Think of it as like a net worth, right. Of everywhere that the Fed has put money. The Fed doesn't really put money anywhere. They create it. I digress. But it's still the Fed's money, right? They've been reducing that, which in competition of what we're saying. What the Fed's been doing since COVID is they have been a seller, not a buyer. That's quantitative tightening, right? They have been offloading assets under management. That's the reason why rates went high. Okay? That means there is a surplus of sellers because the Fed is not stimulating the market. Okay? Historically, what this means, especially if there's not an equal amount of buyers on the other side and as most of you know who listen to the show or who just have turned on a TV in the last six months, the rest of the world's not like super happy with this, right? With tariffs and everything that has happened. We're working with Venezuela right now and all this stuff going on. So a lot of our normal routine bond purchasers, Japan, China, the uk, all these people, they're not buyers in the same way they have been in the past. So not only do we have a decrease of purchasers of long term bonds, we also have an increase in sellers because the Feds have been offloading that the Fed have been very clear over the last two to three years that they are not intending on switching to being a buyer until we reach our 2% inflation target. Well, they did it this month and we're not at 2%, which I think is so interesting and it blows my mind that nobody talked about this. The Fed basically went against everything they've said the last three years, that inflation is transitory and we Remain a strict restrictive, you know, monetary policy until we reach our target inflation of 2%. I can like quote Jerome Powell at this point, right?
A
And Jenny also like, can you believe that they got away with saying inflation is transitory? I forgot how ridiculous that was.
B
They were saying that for like the better part of a year and a half until they cracked, said, hey, eggs are getting expensive. Time to stop BSing.
A
Right.
B
But to stay on point, guys, just so you get what we're saying here, the Fed now is saying, hey, we're not going to buy bonds anymore which are typically longer term. That's more of what has an impact to mortgages. They're saying we're going to buy the quick stuff, pump money into the banks and in my interpretation, hope the banks do the right thing with it, which I don't trust.
A
Yeah, right.
B
I don't know. Last time I saw a bank do the right thing with money, Chase just built like their six billion dollar headquarters. You see that thing in New York, I think it was, or wherever it was. But regardless, I digress. It is a different approach with a similar tactic which we have seen what quantitative easing leads to, especially in times of high inflation. It leads to higher inflation, which theoretically, if this works the way they anticipate it, should bring rates down. It should. This was a surprise. So this was something that was not intended. They are planning on doing it at least through April. So that's 40 billion times what, five months. It's $200 billion. And I don't know if they'd get to April and just say, hey, enough cocaine for me. They'll probably say, more cocaine. Right. And if that's the case, we get into the wild, wonderful spiral downwards until we're back up at 8% inflation. So we'll see is my official's take. I have not heard them refer to this RMP the way they have. I think they are desperately trying to dance around quantitative easing to ease market concerns. But we'll see.
A
Yeah, there's a little bit more here to get into. Michael Burry, he's the guy that called the last crash, weighed in on this a little bit and he said he believed that the Fed has to provide liquidity. That support at all is a worrying sign. I would add that if the US banking system can't function without 3 trillion in reserves slash life support, that is not a sign of strength but a sign of fragility. Burry wrote in a post on X Wednesday morning. So I'd say US banks are getting weaker way too fast. Others view is as a necessary function of the central banks as it seeks to ensure market stability. Moderate balance sheet expansion will be necessary to accommodate the increased demand for reserves that accompanies ongoing economic growth. Okay, so Glenn made his twist on this around saying there's so much growth that we need more money to be able to put out for all of the amazing plants and buildings and jobs that are being created and money that is being spent. That was interesting. The start of RMPS marks the first time the Fed has meaningfully expanded its balance sheet since it ended its QE program in 2022. That was like three years ago, man. Like that's insane.
B
I. I heard an article about easing was created in 2008 like this.
A
It ran from 08 to 2022. That's a long time.
B
And at that time we, we 7x our monetary supply. If you look. I don't know if you guys have ever looked at the graph. Look at our money supply. Like all of the money in circulation from like 1990.
A
Like the M2 money supply.
B
Yeah, like literally 1990 to 2008. And it's like a little tiny up and then 2008 till now. It's like it goes like off the chart. Yeah, it's concerning. It's.
A
Christian and I have hosted retreats where we show people this. They'll literally won't believe us. It seems when you see how much money we created that wasn't there before, like this can't be real. Like it's a movie or something like that. That it physically couldn't be possible. But when you see how much money we've made, you wonder how prices have only gone up 7x. It should be 70x or something. Insane. When you see how much money that we've made and this is why inflation is not going to stop. It will continually creeping up because there's so much money out there and so much debt out there that sellers can continually increase the prices of goods and you will have to pay it. There's nothing you can do to stop this. I just think it's funny that says it's the first time the Fed has meaningfully expanded its balance sheet. And it makes it sound like in 50 years or something, it's like this is the first time somebody has used cocaine in three weeks. Like it's a big deal or something. That's nuts to me. The 25 basis point cut is mostly in line with expectations. This is referring to what the Fed did announce at the last meeting. We did a show on this. But the start of treasury purchasing at 40 billion is what drove the market reaction. Analyst at JP Morgan wrote in a note following the Fed meeting pointing to the move up in stocks. All right, so my understanding of this would be if the Fed announced and smart people caught this, even though the news cycle didn't put it out there, that the Fed is going to be putting $40 billion into the economy, you would go buy stocks right then knowing that the prices of them are likely going to go up with inflation. Is that not what we're hearing here?
B
Yeah. Really? It means you buy anything. I mean, it, it means there's more money in the market. It's like when everybody, when everybody got their stimulus checks, right? You think like whenever, whatever it was a thousand, fifteen hundred bucks, two thousand bucks, whatever. They did them during COVID right. When everybody got that. It doesn't sound like it's like a needle mover when you talk like a thousand bucks a person, but it's a thousand person times like, you know, a lot of persons of the economy got it. So like 200 million people, right? It's a lot of money. And where'd that money go? It went into used cars, it went into businesses, it went into credit cards, it went into stocks. It went like, that's where it went. Which is why you saw that, that blip, right? This is talking about 40 billion. It's a lot of money, right?
A
Yeah.
B
I just keep laughing to myself because it's like, David's so right. We throw around these numbers now, like, oh, only 40 billion. Like that is like a ludicrous amount of money. Right. I mean, that is a market mover. Right. And that's why we saw. And it's funny, a lot of people will look at the Fed announcement and they'll see the 25 basis point cut. And then like markets go crazy and they're like, oh, yeah. David and Christian say they always trend on new news. Not what they did, but like they trended on what they did. No, they trended because the Fed said, We're printing 40 billion a month. That's why the market moved. Everybody expected 25 basis cut. They, they moved it because free money's coming.
A
Yeah. Now the way that it was reported, though, is like Trump's economy is cooking. The stock market's doing amazing. Like, we're, we're heading forward. And I don't know that that Trump had anything to do with that. He could have. But the thing here, before people jump on the never Trumpers or the always Trumpers wherever you fall, this was Not Trump's doing. This was Jerome Powell's doing. And it has become very clear. Well, I say Jerome Powell, really? All of the Fed open market.
B
Yeah.
A
They decided on this board. Yeah. But Trump has been frustrated that he can't get PAL to do what he wants. He might not want this. He might be thinking this will cause inflation and this will make me look bad because you guys will blame tariffs for this. There could be a political opposition that wanted this to happen, or it might be what the FOMC thinks. Nope, this is what we need. It's very difficult to know what the motivations are. What we can assume is we're about to see significantly more inflation. This has already been witnessed by the stock market going up. Everybody on the news is talking about it. All these companies are doing great, which is weird because I don't think the economy is crushing it. Where stocks should be going up. I don't think companies are seeing bigger profits than ever. I think that they're laying people off. I think that we're actually in a rough economy. So my warning to everyone would be, even if stocks are doing good, you may be seeing companies laying human beings off. If you're buying into the wrong markets, you might be seeing that your tenants aren't able to pay their rent. You may still be seeing foreclosures, even as all this money is being printed, because it might not get into the hands of the people that are actually buying it. So pay attention to which market you're getting into. Pay attention to if you're buying into a market with a healthy economy or if you're buying into a market that is kind of artificially propped up, because this kind of stuff is like, take a perfume that can mask a very smelly person. Eventually that smell is going to overwhelm the perfume. Morgan Stanley echoed that, noting that while the fed has emphasized RMPs are not QE, the results of added liquidity, liquidity is ultimately similar. More importantly, these purchases provide additional liquidity for markets. And in combination with rate cuts that also suggest the Fed is likely less worried about missing its inflation target. Bank of America said that the QE like impact. Is this, like, QE adjacent. Can we use that phrase?
B
I just think it's so funny. They say they're not the similar, but it's QE like, like, yeah, it's not similar. If it's like, like, what are we doing here, guys? What are we doing?
A
Exchange.
B
The same article says they're not the same, but they're like, you can't have both Right.
A
The impact on markets could result in bond yields at the longer end of the duration curve coming down as well. In bank of America's baseline scenario, which includes the fed making around $380billion worth of Reserve Management purchases in 2026, that's a little bit more than if you multiply 40 times 12. Strategists expect the 10 year treasury yield to decline by 20 to 30 basis points. So if you're buying Treasuries, you can expect to get a lower return, which ultimately means that the American government can borrow money at lower interest rates, which is better for the national debt. That's bullish for two reasons. Lower bond yields in general encourage investors to stick with equities for better returns. But a lower 10 year yield specifically means potentially easier borrowing conditions for consumers, consumers and businesses. The Fed's RMP program will increase general market liquidity. Bank of America strategist wrote of the bond market in a separate note last week. With the Fed action, the market is on better footing and the large calendar to end the year should be bought. All right, Christian, what do you think we should expect with this news of 40 billion a month going?
B
These articles just never cease to amaze me. Where they always end with this is only good news. Well, you heard that, like, they're on track for end of year. This is exciting. This should lead to added liquidity. This means money is cheaper. This means money is worthless. Like, that's what. That's what this means. $40 billion is appearing out of nowhere and it's purchasing things that nobody wants. So if I told you guys I'm gonna go buy every Ford Pinto, I'm gonna go buy every single one in the market. Like, that's money being created. That is lowering the value of the money in your bank account to go buy something that nobody wants. And that's what we're experiencing right now with our bond market. Is there a. Is there's a supreme lack of interested buyers? So this is the government and by proxy, the Fed saying, okay, we'll. We'll be the buyers.
A
So the question everyone wants to know, did you get a haircut before today's show because you knew it would become very expensive with this new RMP program.
B
You know, it's funny, I was reading this article and I was so like, this is blowing my mind that I just ripped it all out.
A
That's what I did. I'm like, look, man, it's too expensive to get these things. I'm shaving my head and I've saved quite A bit of money.
B
That's fair. That's fair. Yeah.
A
You're looking very good. I'll just say that you made me jealous that I don't have hair, but it would make sense that you got a haircut now because you know it's going to be more expensive.
B
I'm pretty sure I can't run as fast as you though. I got a little bit of wind resistance here.
A
That's the only thing going in the pool. It helps me also slice right through the water. No skull cap like a mortgage walrus. So this is probably good for real estate values. If we're going to be having more inflation, it's bad for savers, it's bad for the cost of everyday living stuff. Let's talk about what else they could do. What about, you think this might lead to like a K shaped economy a little bit more where the richer people that own assets are seeing their net worth increase, increase and the people that don't are just making it harder, harder to make ends meet?
B
I mean, unfortunately, yeah, because the, the standard, the standard guidance that's given to, I would say the middle class and below is like, don't buy assets, save money. Right? That's, that's what everybody believes. You stack the, stack the zeros in your bank account. Right. What people don't anticipate is a dollar is not a dollar. I mean it's, it's, it's not going to be that next year, it's not going to be that the year after. It's not going to be that in 20, 30 or 40 years. Right. And my, my kind of ultimate concern backing up from this and kind of looking at it from a macro scale is the people who are contributing to retirement and don't have assets to fall back on. There's a reason why I'm so passionate about what we do. I think we're saving people's last 30 years of their life. I am firmly under the belief that if you're throwing your 3 to 6% in a 401k and you're depending on Social Security to be there, 2,000 bucks, you may say, oh, you know, I'm gonna have $1.5 million in my 401k in 30 years and I'm gonna make, you know, 4,500 bucks a month in my distributions today, that sounds okay, 4,500 bucks in 30 years is going to be like 60 cents, you know, like it's not gonna be anything. And that's, it's just concerning for me because I Think of people like, you know, I'm passionate about this because I think of somebody like my mom, right. W2 work her whole life, slaved away, did what she was supposed to do. And after I got in this industry, like I started getting real estate and her net worth, like skyrocketed. But like, if she never did that and she didn't have that advice, like, I, I don't think my mom would have been able to retire until she's 80. Like being fully transparent and we live in California. It's expensive area of living. I get it. But unless she wanted to pick up and, you know, move to the Midwest and be away from family, like, it wouldn't been an option. She literally wouldn't be able to afford it. And she started saving in the 90s and in the 80s. Right. Like, it's just not, it's crazy to me that like, these are the decisions being made and there are those who prep and those who plan to combat inflation. And unfortunately, I do believe kind of the K shape's going to get more and more severe where there's going to be those who don't. And there's going to reach a breaking point where I, I think after a while, like, it, it's, there's not going to be able to be a reverse of it. I mean, you're not gonna be able to, to flip gears, right. Without like a supreme lifestyle change. Right. And I don't mean to be like a doomsday or I, by any means. I just. That's why this stuff matters. Right. It's literally, this is the last 40 to 30 to 40 years of people's lives that we're talking about. That is just being decided, hey, 40 billion a month, no big deal. We'll do it till April. April's gonna come and America likes its crack. They're gonna say, hey, let's extend it to October. Let's see how another six months goes. And before we know it, like we did in Covid, we've been printing money for three years and we're like, whoa, eggs are 20 bucks a cart. Let's, let's slow it. Let's slow it down. And then everybody will struggle again for five years and we'll just be on this never ending whirlwind instead of just actually creating a healthy environment without these huge swings because banks are allowed to have no reserves. It's funny, if you underwrite somebody buying a house, like, you have to have reserves.
A
You have to have down payments.
B
Yeah, you have to have a down payment. You have to have a credit score, you have to have a good payment history. Like if a bank was a client, they wouldn't be able to get a mortgage.
A
Can you imagine? Just I'm struggling making ends meet. This month I'm just gonna go make a note, buy it myself, take the money that I spent on my note and just use that to pay the mortgage. And now I just owe debt to future me that I can choose to repay whenever I want. Nobody would value money anymore. That's the problem with what's happening with this.
B
It's scary and there's nothing really we can do to change the Fed's tactics. But we can prepare and we can be informed and we can make micro good decisions.
A
You know, you mentioned California becoming a more expensive place to live and I think a lot of people hear that and they go, well that's what you get, dummy. You want to live in California? Commie Fornia, I don't want to hear you complain. Here's what they don't understand. And I've tried to explain this to people that will make comments like leave your politics in California, keep that stuff over there. The native Californians are not the ones that are voting in the things that are being voted in. It is people moving here from outside of California that want free things that have dominated the voting polls. And the politicians have learned if you want to win, you have to cater to those people.
B
Sure.
A
Okay. I've tried to explain. When California does run out of money and it's run into the ground, those people don't just die. They don't just be like, well, let's be poor and let's work our way out of this. They move to where the money is. Then your state politicians will also cater with the exact same policies that California did that drove it into the ground. And you will have the same problem in a new place. This, I bring this up as an example of how the housing market works. As the cost of living just becomes almost impossible to deal with in California, people leave because it's really expensive. They sell their house in Los Angeles, they sell in San Diego, they sell in San Francisco and they go move to Columbus, Ohio, they go move to Dallas, Texas, they go move to Orlando, Florida or Tampa, Florida, they go move to Nashville, Tennessee. The last five years, eight years, we've seen this. Well, Christian, what have you seen happen to the price of real estate in those areas?
B
They've gone up.
A
Gone. It's gone up. Right. So what happened is. What's that?
B
What hasn't though? Is usually the average wage earner.
A
That's it. It makes that area less affordable. So you had California was expensive and then like middle of the country was cheap. What has happened as this, this inflation has created all these problems is we've seen the difference shortening. California is no longer so expensive and everywhere else is cheaper. It's all kind of meeting in the middle and it's more expensive than it was. As California goes, the rest of the country is going to go. You're going to see people leaving California and moving into these areas that we used to think were cheap and then that's going to become less affordable. So if you're a long distance real estate investor, if you're trying to beat the market, if you're trying to beat inflation, waiting to buy can only work if you actually see foreclosures and prices go down. If we don't see that waiting to buy will not work, you may find yourself priced out of the market and wishing that you had bought when you could have. And we don't know exactly how this is going to play out. We're not pressuring anyone to buy. We're not pressuring anyone not to buy. We're talking about what inflation does and it's, we've already seen it happen. Right. Everything. Like look at what Boise, Idaho costs to live versus what it did before.
B
Yeah.
A
Arizona when I was buying there, you could buy a three bedroom, two bathroom place for $117,000, probably 3,5400 for that same house, maybe more. And it's only going to get worse as we're talking about this. But you made a great point, Christian. Inflation affects the cost of goods, services and assets, not wages. Wages are determined by demand and that is not something that the Fed can do a whole lot about. Any thoughts on just what people can do to try to find a way to make more money?
B
I mean today, today it's, it's, it's, it's a unique challenge because obviously you can have 100 side hustles. Right. Everybody's trying to be a YouTube star, an influencer and right on the side and there's varying levels of success you can have. But I mean, I think we're gonna get more and more. I, I'd like to believe we're gonna kind of have a, an ownership kind of rebirth where like, you know, I hear so many people now telling their kids like go to a trade school, get a blue collar job because there's no plumbers, there's no electricians, you know, the average Age of electrician, I think in America is like 58 years old. Like they're all going to be gone in 10 years. They're not like dead. I mean, they're going to be retired. Right? Like all the electricians are going to retire, guys, like all of them. Right. So, I mean, when you start thinking in that way, it's like, oh, what if we're making less money and our money's valueless and we have nobody to fix our houses? Like now you're starting to talk about like economic like devastation issues, right? Is the government going to have to subsidize the electrician industry? You know, like where, where does it end? Right. I mean, we can just print money out of everything, but that just makes the core problems harder. I, I think we kind of need like a rebirth in the country of like, people need to work hard again, man. I don't know. And it's easy. I don't want to just sound like. I remember Kim Kardashian, I think, said that you're broke because you don't work hard enough. I don't mean to come off like that. I'm just saying I do think a, a huge portion in my state is leading the surge in this for sure. There's too many people that want free stuff. There's too many people that don't want to work for it. I mean, you just hear about the stuff in Minnesota. I'm not going to get into race and everything with it, but there's a huge fraud scheme happening in Minnesota where.
A
Yeah, a certain become normalized over there to rip off the government and live off.
B
They've been defrauding the government for like five years now. And like it's like hundreds of millions of dollars that have been sent outside of the country to a group that shouldn't have gotten it right. And it's becoming so normal that this is, this is available and like, these are programs that are made with good intentions. It's like helping kids with autism, helping homeless people, homeless veterans, you know, like, those are like core, like integrity driven things. But you have some bad apples that come in and they take advantage unless there's controls built in. I, I don't know what the answer is, but I know for every individual, you know, everything that you can do to get your assets into something a little bit more inflation resistant, not going to be subject to your dollar being worth Nothing in 10, 15, 20, 30 years. I think the decision that, you know, people between 20 and 50 years old today make today impact, like literally your Capability of retiring. And, like, I cannot be more serious when I say this. I think it's so important, and nobody's talking about it, that, like, have you considered you won't be able to retire? Like, if I'm just asking our listeners directly, like, have you considered, like, you're planning 55, 60 years old, retirement age? Like, what if you can't? Like, what if your body gives out and you can't work till you're 75 or 80 or 90? Like, you know the beaches that you're dreaming of? Like, I don't know that it irks me so much. And I, I, I think we need, like, a reawakening in America of just, here's the core concepts, you know, what the country was built off of. You work hard, you play hard, you know, you grow your wealth, you take care of your family, and you don't look for a handout. You don't look about what could be given to me. There's programs for people who need it, but there's restrictions on who can get it right. And we just don't print money to solve every problem. Like, sometimes we need a recession. Like, healthy economies go through it. And I don't mean to make this a monologue. I'm just saying I, if I can do even my small part of changing 100 people's opinions or 500 or a thousand people's opinions at a time, we just need more of it. I, I just. We have such a lack of accountability and ownership in our country. It's, it's devastating to see what happens as a result of that, where $40 billion is just winded, you know, trash in the wind. At this point, it's insane to me. It should not have gotten to this point.
A
Well, we're doing our part at the one brokerage to do exactly that. And we encourage hard work, we provide mentorship, we provide training. We get rave reviews from the people that come over and usually say, I never got anything like this. Where was this my whole life? We are trying to create the atmosphere that we're talking about, the country needs. We can't affect politics. The President, the Fed don't come talk to us about what to do. But in our own little world, we have been successful because of exactly what you said. Our guys work hard, they're grinding, they're serving, they're learning, they're providing what people need. We are passionate about having a mortgage company that does not rip people off. We can get a fair wage, they can get a fair deal. We can beat our competition and we just do it with skill. So if you're listening and you're considering a transition into mortgages, we're here for you. If you're already working in it and you'd like to revitalize your career, we're here for you. And if you're already crushing it, but you just want to crush it even better and get your life back, we have very strong support systems. We're here for you. What advice do you have for someone that's considering making the move either into mortgages or into a new brokerage?
B
Mentorship. First, second and third. If you have, you know, I've had varying levels of it throughout my career. David's been, you know, a mentor of sorts to me as well. I think, you know, I'd be much slower in my, my, my growth without, you know, having met someone like David. I think it's everything. I, I think, you know, with our, with our guys, you know, we host every week, you know, we host the training. Come ask your questions, get better, refine your skills, have a conversation with smart people, surround yourself, right? It's something that I didn't do much in my early years. I wish I did, but a lot of people come into the industry and like, oh, what's the max split? Is there company that charges no cap and like, what are we doing? Deal with that. When you're a 15 year industry veteran, right, and you're trying to maximize your commission and you know everything, but you don't know anything yet, like, that's so much more important, right? That's like going and being a car mechanic and saying, I only want to work on Lamborghinis.
A
Like, okay, learn how to change the oil, learn how to fill up a tire before you're worried about that.
B
Exactly right? Oh, but I'm only going to work on Lamborghinis. But like learn how to change a tire first, you know, like work on the Civic first. Like, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with civics, right? But that's what a lot of people try to do. And I think it's, it sort of.
A
Reflects though, what we were saying earlier. The overall expectations, entitlement and work ethic, not taking shots in anyone specific. But what made America wealthy was everyone was working, everyone was improving things. We built stuff, we made stuff, we bought stuff. In America, the tax money was reinvested back into the country. It made the buildings good, the roads good, the parks good, the technology good. We led the, the world in so many things because everyone here worked Whereas many people in struggling countries. Let me put another way. You will not find a third world country where everybody is busting their butt and working as hard as they can. Their work ethics are bad. Their the wealth of the nation isn't growing and doesn't stay within the nation. It leaves the borders. If you want to see your life improve, like Christian just said, you gotta have that attitude. If you struggle with it, that's okay. We have an environment that makes it easy to get in shape. You're going to be going to the gym with a bunch of people that work out hard, that are going to encourage you to work out hard. And guess what? When you work out really hard and you work really hard at work, it doesn't stay sucky forever. It gets easy. You get conditioned to it. Christian puts in long days and he has a good mood. I put in long days and I'm positive and I like giving back. It does not wear me out that I have to work. It actually would more concern me if I didn't have any work to do. As long as there's problems that need to be solved, people that need to be served and value that I can bring, I'm a much happier guy than if I just sat around playing World of Warcraft all day waiting for something to happen. So I really appreciate, Christian, what you were just saying, because it's the truth and sometimes we can't pull ourselves out of it on our own. Sometimes we need a group to belong to, we need a program to get on. We need to be around other people that are inspiring and we're doing our darndest to do that. Just for an example, if you guys would like free sales training, every Monday we put on Real Talk training sponsored by this podcast where any real estate, mortgage officer, property manager, anyone in sales at all of real estate can show up and get free training where they ask questions, get content out of the books, get behind the scenes information. We meet with our independent guys every single week and our in house guys every single week, giving them training. We also have a mastermind. Like we are constantly, constantly helping people to be better at what they do. And we're making this content for you guys for free so you understand what's coming. 40 billion a month is nothing to shake a stick at. We're gonna see another run of inflation. We want you to be ready. So Christian, thank you for sharing today. Everything you did. If people want to reach out to you, they want to talk about a mortgage, they want to get connected with somebody. Where can they Go.
B
Yeah, best way to get me directly is on Instagram @the1 broker is my handle. You can DM me on there. Otherwise, if you just want to find out more about what we do here at The1 Brokerage career opportunities or just looking to get in touch. The1brokerage.com is our website. You can go in there little apply now button top right. That'll get you in touch with the team member as soon as possible.
A
There you go. You can get a hold of me directly@davidgreen24.com Go to the website, hit the chat button. Boom. Instant portal right to my phone. People do this every day, all day long and I get them connected with whatever they need. If you want to be a guest on one of the podcasts, you can also get a hold of me there. Tell me a little bit about what your expertise is, what you like to share. We would love to have you on the show. You can also go to david green24.com Ask where you can submit your question be featured on the David Green Show. We really appreciate you guys. We know how tough it is. That's why we're here for you. Sticking with everyone now, make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel David Green Show. Christian, I go live occasionally on there. You don't want to miss it. We may do one about this news right now because I don't know why no one is talking about it should be all over the place but it's not. And let us know in the comments what you think about Christian's haircut. If you like today's show, consider giving Price Labs a shout out. They sponsored it. Price Labs is software that you can use to manage your short term rentals to make sure that you're not leaving any money on the table. At Coast To Coast Getaways we use this to maximize revenue for our clients as well as for myself and make sure that we're not missing bookings because we are overpriced. If you don't have a tool like this, promise you guys you're leaving money on the table and we don't want to see you do that. So go check out Price Labs and say you heard them on a real talk Real Estate. Christian, appreciate you being here. I hope you have a great holidays and you enjoy it. And all of you listening to this, I hope you had a great holidays as well. We'll see you guys next week on Mortgage Monday.
Episode: Mortgage Monday | The Stimulus No One’s Talking About | Episode 110
Host: David Greene
Guest: Christian Ambassador
Date: January 19, 2026
This episode dives deep into the Federal Reserve's newly announced "Reserve Management Purchases" (RMPs)—a stimulus mechanism akin to quantitative easing (QE) but rebranded and largely flying under the radar. David and Christian break down what RMPs mean for the economy, inflation, real estate, and everyday Americans, exposing the similarities and subtle differences to previous Fed strategies while offering practical advice to listeners navigating these economic shifts.
“Whenever something sneaky is happening, they change the name of a thing that we already know.” — David [02:19]
“The Fed basically went against everything they've said the last three years.” — Christian [13:30]
“Quantitative easing is buying long-term debt. RMPs are mainly forcing capital into the short-term debt market, mainly into T-bills.” — Christian [10:28]
“This kind of stuff is like perfume that can mask a very smelly person. Eventually that smell will overwhelm the perfume.” — David [22:58]
“If you're throwing your 3 to 6% in a 401k and depending on Social Security, 4,500 bucks in 30 years is going to be like 60 cents... I think the K-shape's going to get more and more severe.” — Christian [27:04]
On the Name Game and Transparency:
“We're not doing this to get you high. We're doing this to keep you safe while you're driving in the middle of the night in your semi… it's still freaking cocaine, man. Does the same thing.”
— David [09:38]
On the Market Not Catching the Change:
“If you wouldn’t have brought this up, I wouldn’t have known it was going on, which is kind of crazy.”
— David [05:35]
On Inflation and Asset Prices:
“That's one of the reasons we talk about owning real estate is so important, because the real estate will hold its value much more than the money just sitting around in the bank.”
— David [08:30]
On Banking and Risk:
“If a bank was a client, they wouldn't be able to get a mortgage.”
— Christian [30:26]
On the Impact to Savers:
“$40 billion is appearing out of nowhere... That is lowering the value of the money in your bank account.”
— Christian [25:03]
Advice for Listeners:
“You gotta have that attitude. If you struggle with it, that's okay. We have an environment that makes it easy to get in shape. You're going to be going to the gym with a bunch of people that work out hard...”
— David [41:06]
This episode provides an unvarnished, accessible breakdown of how the latest Fed intervention—Reserve Management Purchases—will likely boost inflation, benefit asset holders, and challenge wage earners and savers. David and Christian urge listeners to focus on acquiring inflation-resistant assets, work harder and smarter, seek mentorship, and prepare for a future where resilience and adaptability will be essential.
Connect with the hosts:
Note: This summary omits sponsorships, promotions, and non-content sections to provide focused value for real estate professionals and anyone interested in economic shifts impacting wealth-building strategies.