← The David Greene Show
The David Greene Show
Seeing Greene-Scam Alerts, Smart Investments and the Smoky Mountains | Episode 44
00:59:11
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- [00:01]
David Green
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 the David Green show and I'm David Green, real estate broker, loan broker, real estate investor, property manager, and more. Today's show is seeing Green style. We're going to take questions from you, our listener base, and I'm going to answer them from my perspective and hopefully share some wisdom, some insight and some encouragement to everybody listening. Thank you guys for being here. I really appreciate you. I was looking the other day and there is a lot of real estate podcasts out there. Now, I don't think any of them are really all that great. There's a couple individual content creators that are good, but overall there's not a lot of amazing content, but there is a lot you could pick from. So I sincerely appreciate you being here with me today and I'm going to do my best to make this fun, entertaining, insightful and knowledgeable. If you'd like to be featured on the show, and let's be frank, we don't have a show. If not for you guys, go to davidgreen24.com ask and submit your question if you have tried to do this in the past. We found out that we ran out of room in the app, so it was rejecting people's questions, but we fixed that. I'm back in the studio recording, we're looking at videos, we're deleting them in their space again. So go ahead and get on in there. Also, if you happen to be a real estate agent or, you know, a real estate agent, good news on this podcast channel. We are going to be releasing another show every single week in addition to the David Green show on Mortgage Monday called Real Talk Realtors. We're going to interview successful Realtors, unsuccessful Realtors, new Realtors, old realtors, and everybody in between. And we're going to talk about the challenges in the industry, what people are doing that works, the knowledge that you're not getting from your broker, and more. If you're someone who's considered getting into real estate, you're trying to figure out if you Want to be a loan officer? If you want to be a real estate agent, let me give you a heads up on some of the challenges that are going on in that world. The trend in the last five to 10 years has been discount brokerages. Brokerages pop up and they offer you low commissions, low splits or stock options in their company in exchange to get you to go work there. They've all sort of been chasing after the same agents to grow their companies. And their value is we are the cheapest or we have the most perks. Well, that's not bad. Nobody wants to spend more money than they have to on their broker. It has come at the expense of the education. Your broker used to be your mentor. You would go work there, they would teach you the ropes, show you the game, make you into a good agent, and then when you sold more houses, you would negotiate a better split or maybe they would help you build a team or give you some leads. That model has kind of gone away. It's turned into a bunch of mercenaries out there. So if you're in the game and you feel like there's a lack of education, don't think that you're alone. This is what everybody is feeling. It's very hard to learn the ins and outs of being an agent. And as most people know, most real estate agents are more interested in marketing themselves than they are in sharing their knowledge. So I'm hoping that this new show fills in the gap for real estate agents who are needing an education. And if you just love real estate and you want to hear about what goes on behind the curtains of that world, you are welcome to join us. Also, if you would like to sponsor the David Green show in the future, we are now opening things up and we are taking show sponsors. So send me a DM on Instagram @DavidGreen24 or head over to DavidGreen24.com where there's a chat option and you can get ahold of me directly right through there. All right, all right, all right. Let's take a look at what we got going on today. Our first question comes from Reuben G. In California and he wants to know about accessing funds for an investment property.
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Reuben G.
Hi, David. My name is Reuben and I'm out of San Luis Obispo County, California. Thank you for taking my question. My question is in regards to accessing funds for down payment money towards a purchase of another investment property. I currently have one investment property and I've used my 401k funds in the form of loans to avoid Taxes and penalties in the past and it seemed to work out fine. To purchase real estate, I want to acquire another property here in California and I need at least about a hundred thousand towards a down payment which is like 20% of 500,000. I thought about taking out 50,000 in the form of a loan and then just taking out another 50 in the form of a withdrawal. I don't even know if that's the right term. But essentially I would take a hit, a tax hit and a penalty hit on the additional 50,000. Thinking in my mind that, well, maybe real estate appreciation will make up for that the long run here in California. What are your thoughts on that? Any recommendations or other suggestions on accessing those funds? Thank you.
- [04:52]
David Green
Reuben. This is a really good question and let me make sure I understand it correctly. You bought your last property by taking money out of your 401k and now you're looking at doing the same thing. You're considering taking 50k out of your retirement fund, which will have penalties and 50k out of a bank account. I think that's what you meant by withdrawal, which will not have penalties, which will give you 100k to invest. Here's what I like about it. You'll buy more real estate and like you said, over the long run, yes, you will get more equity than you lost taking the money out. That is true. Here's what I don't like about it. I can't predict the future. Nobody can predict the future. Nobody ever knows. And if you guys haven't noticed, when you're cruising through YouTube looking for real estate videos, it's very common to see the video thumbnail with all the fire going on in the back background because everything's going to burn down. We get so excited at the thought of real estate being dirt cheap again. We also get afraid of the thought of the real estate we already own becoming dirt cheap. And it's a very scary time. I don't think we're likely to see a massive, massive crash. The last time we saw that was 2010 and that was unique because basically there had been a lot of adjustable rate mortgages that were going out that all ended up resetting more or less around the same time. I do think we could see that dynamic in the commercial space. You will see a lot of people unable to refinance their properties, balloon notes coming due, cap rates have got, have expanded and so it's very difficult to refinance and nobody can sell for what they owe. So you will start to see foreclosures coming in the commercial space. But that doesn't mean the properties will be dirt cheap. And that's because most people don't buy commercial properties going on Zillow to see what's for sale. They buy commercial properties through word of mouth. Rich people. No, rich people. Real estate brokers spend their life developing relationships with property owners that want to buy more property and that own property. So you rarely ever see when it comes for sale, these deals all take place behind closed doors. Company A, that owns a 20 unit strip mall in Oklahoma City is going to have to sell. And they go to a broker who finds company B that owns a whole bunch of units of property in Dallas, Texas that wants to grow their portfolio. And the property management company that is managing the property now can take over and it can still manage it for the new company. So it's very easy to acquire new commercial property when you have experience and when you can raise money. What that means is you don't see a whole lot of properties hitting the market at the same time commercially, even though they could be going into foreclosure. Residential is different. You do see properties all hit the market at the same time. And though I'm not positive that we're going to see everybody's house go up for sale and no one buy it, that is a possibility in specific areas of California. And the reason is the expense. Expenses associated with owning California real estate have continued to go up when the wages for the workers are not going up. When's the last time you or anyone you know got a raise? Companies really can't give raises because most of the time their businesses are not growing. Meanwhile, the expenses on those companies continue to go up because of inflation. Now, inflation is something that I have talked about for years on the BiggerPockets podcast. And on this podcast I was way more worried about inflation than most people were. And this is why. It's like carbon monoxide. You don't realize it's killing you until you lose consciousness. You have to sound the alarm when something like this is going on. So, Reuben, you're talking about buying in California. As long as the area that we are talking about has a very strong economic base and we don't think that there's going to be foreclosures, I would say, hey, you can consider this plan. I don't love it at this time in the economic cycle. I just don't. Five years ago, I probably been like, yeah, man, you need to get in the game. You need to get your money out. You need to put it in the market, you need to put it in a growing market, you need to put it in a stable market, and you need to let it do its thing. There's not a lot of stability or growth in many of the California cities right now. Some there are, but not all. And I don't know that it will stay that way forever. The tides do shift and things do turn. The fires in Southern California have revealed one of the big problems with California, which is insane regulation. I have several properties that I bought there that neighbors complained about. The city walked in and shut me down over nothing type stuff. We're talking about things that were changed in the house 50 or 60 years ago that the previous owners didn't get a permit for. And after I bought the houses, they came in and told me that I had to make the changes, and they shut the power off to the homes until I did. It's been two years plus going through this horrible rigmarole of trying to get them to approve my plans and let me do the work. And all of the city or the planning or the zoning or the fire, all the different apartments fighting with each other, and everybody takes months and months of time before they get to it. It's a big, ugly mess. Now, if you get stuck in a mess like that, or if people decide they don't want to deal with that mess anymore and they want to get out of California, you may have a property that is costing you money, hard time getting tenants, tenants that can't pay their rent, and you're stuck. Now, if you had 100 grand in the bank that you didn't need, the risk that I'm describing is mitigated. But if this is your retirement, if this is money that you're planning on having when you get older, ask yourself if it might be a little bit of greed that is pulling you into wanting to take money out of that and pay penalties to put it into real estate. At this stage, from what you're describing, I would much rather see that you take 50 grand, not a hundred grand. So you only take from your savings and you put it in one of the markets where people are moving to. For years, I used to use the Midwest as this analogy of where you don't want to invest because it was people chasing cash flow and investing in areas that had no growth. Many of these were Midwest cities, and a lot of people lost their shirts going to buy there, and then they couldn't get out from the properties. But a lot of cities in the Midwest are actually seeing growth today. People are leaving California, they're leaving Florida, they're leaving these states that were really popular, even Texas. And they're moving to the Midwest where gas is cheaper, food is cheaper, jobs are more stable, and housing overall is a lot less money. And they're looking for that just release of the burden of inflation that's eating people up. The Midwest is kind of becoming the trendy place to move now. Again, not everything's the same. Don't go buy in some city you don't know about just because it's in the Midwest. The Midwest is a big area and there's different places to pay attention to. But I would definitely look into, if I was you, an area that wasn't California, unless the part of California that you're living in is seeing growth and a lot of people moving in still. And I'd probably leave the 401k alone if I was going to get into that. I'd wait until after we had some kind of a market crash. Prices are coming down and it feels like we've hit the bottom and people start buying again. At that point, I'd be okay with you taking the money, putting into real estate to ride the elevator to the top. All right, our next question comes from Miglay Taylor out of Idaho Falls, Idaho. Miglay says, hi, David. I love your show and your infinite knowledge. Wow. Infinite knowledge. This makes me sound like a villain in a Marvel movie. I guess with my bald head, I probably would fit that. Like, if I had, like a Fu Manchu mustache or something. I wanted to ask if you've ever had tenants report that someone came to the door asking if a house is still for rent because they saw it on Facebook Marketplace. My current tenants have consistently complaining about people coming to my rental house, stating that they saw it listed for rent on Facebook. I have never posted this rental on Facebook Marketplace. However, it has been listed on Zillow and Furnish Finder. I would like to hear your thoughts on how to handle scammers who steal listings and photos. Have you dealt with similar situations? Also, please invite Rob onto your show. I would love to hear you two together again. Oh, I miss old Robbie, too. And Brandon, for that matter. All right, folks, here's how this scam works. I've been a victim of it myself. And really, when I say I've been a victim or Miglay's been a victim, we're not the real victims. The victim is the person who's trying to rent the property. Here's what it looks like. You put your property up for rent on Zillow or Furnish Finder or wherever it was that Miglay mentioned that her property is. People see that, the scammers see that and they go open a listing with all your pictures on Facebook Marketplace and they pretend like they are the one who is opening it up for rent. Now, if the property has a lockbox that you can use to go see it, this is easier. But even if it doesn't have a lockbox, they can get people into the house by going and knocking on the door. Or they will call you and they will pretend to be the person who wants to see the home and they'll say, hey, I want to come see your home at 3:00 on Saturday. You'll say, great, here's the lockbox code. You can get in with that. But they set up another listing on Facebook Marketplace with your pictures and your description. The person sees it on Facebook Marketplace and reaches out to the scammer who pretends to be you. They say, you can see it at 3:00 on Saturday. Here's the code. Pretending to be the owner, the person goes and looks at the house and they say, this looks great, we'll take it. They offer them some kind of a discount to get them to jump on it right away. The person sends over their deposit and their first month rent and they move into it. They've moved into your house and they don't have a lease with you. They have a fictitious lease that they sign with a person pretending to be you who then takes the listing off of Facebook Marketplace and disappears. You find a tenant who goes to get into your own house and finds it's occupied by people who actually pay to get in there and boom, you've been scammed. Now, like I said, it's not as much of a scam on the landlord. It is because you have to deal with the person living there who doesn't have a right to be there. They don't actually have a legal lease because the person that they signed the lease with didn't have the authority to rent the house out. They're not the owner. But it is still a headache for you. But it's worse for the tenants. They spent all their money that they were supposed to spend to get a real property on the scammer. So I don't know that you can avoid this happening other than you figure out a way to make it hard to access the property. When this happened to me, it just sort of went away on its own because the property ended up being filled and it wasn't vacant anymore. I don't know of anyone else who's figured out a way to deal with this differently. I just know that it happens a lot. There is a contingency of people in our country that will work harder to not have to work and if they just put that work into a legit job, they would be doing fine. But they just love the idea of easy money and scamming people and it really bothers me. I wish that our law enforcement would go after people like that harder. Unfortunately, we're not in a political climate where people look at law enforcement like heroes that are going after criminals. We tend to demonize them. And so what we get is a bunch of bold criminals who do stuff like this. So I'm sorry that you're going through it, Miguel. Maybe you could put a sign in the yard that says this house is not vacant or something like that. So when people drive by, they might see before they walk up the door to look at the tenants. Or at least put something on the door that says, if you're here to see this house, it is not vacant. It is currently occupied by a tenant. Do not bother them. At least that would stop the people from knocking on the door. Sorry that you're dealing with that though. Even out there in Idaho Falls, Idaho, apparently the cringe has spread. All right, that was a property management nightmare. And speaking of what to do to make yourself sleep better with property management assistance, I'm going to tell you guys about today's show sponsor, Turbo Tenant. Turbo Tenant is a property management software designed to help property managers streamline the rental process by providing tools for listing properties, screening tenants, collecting rent online, and managing leases. It helps my company simplify administrative tasks, saves us a ton of time, and reduces the complexity of managing our rental properties. My team uses Turbo Tenant on all of my long term rentals and they love it. So we reached out to Turbo Tenant and they were gracious and said we'd love to sponsor the show. So if you're looking for some software to help you manage your properties, I recommend starting with Turbo Tenant. All right, our next video question comes from CW Moneymaker and this is a what would you rather question. CW says would you rather own a single family home with two ADUs on the same parcel or two single family homes? I am in the process of creating these new lots and I want your advice on which is better for cash flow now, future appreciation and long term growth. I am a developer home builder and I bought this specific property to create additional lots. All right, so CW Moneymaker is trying to figure out if it would be better to build a single family home with two ADUs on the same parcel, or it looks like one lot with two single family homes. I'm going to go towards the two single family homes as opposed to a single family home with two ADUs. And here's why. ADUs are a great way to increase your revenue for less than building a new house when you have high rental demand in an area. These crush it in areas like San Diego, Miami, areas where people really, really, really need to find a place to live and they cannot afford the high rents. If you're trying to do this in Kansas City, Missouri, or somewhere in South Dakota with not a lot of high rental demand, you might just find that no one wants anything to do with your adu. In fact, this was a little weird to me because I recently moved to Oklahoma and I was used to every kind of a property having high rental demand. So every time I looked at a house, I was like, ooh, I can turn that into an adu. And everyone out here said, no one's going to rent that. Like, they want to find a big house with a garage for their car and several bedrooms and a couple bathrooms and parking space. Like, the tenants out here are picky. They don't have to just pick whatever house is available. And though I knew this cognitively that not everywhere has high rental demand, it was different emotionally experiencing it, because the way that I was looking at real estate wasn't going to work in this environment. So I would ask, before you build, what is the demand for in your area? Is it crazy high rental demand? In which case the two ADUs might make sense. If not, you're much better off to build two houses because they're easier to rent. You also have the possibility that if you need cash in the future, you could split the parcel in two, have two individual homes and sell them each, or sell one and keep one. That flexibility is going to allow you to keep your portfolio for a longer period of time. And wealth in real estate comes from owning it for a long period of time. Great question there, cw. Thank you for that. All right, and our last question from today comes from Garrett. Dion Garrett submitted his deal for me to look at and analyze, and we're going to be doing that together so y'all can get a feel for what real estate looks like in different markets. Garrett says, I recently purchased a duplex in Westbrook, Maine. This is in Southern Maine. Each unit is a two bed, one bath and are identical. Westbrook is the next town over from Portland, Maine. And this property specifically is right on that line. Portland is a very desirable place to live right now in the northeast. I put 10% down on the property using Fannie Mae's new owner occupied multifamily conventional loan. And I plan to live in my unit for a year and then repeat this process with a property that has a larger unit. I completely renovated both units myself. I'm a licensed electrician and have lots of carpentry experience. I will completely self manage after moving out, including maintenance, lawn care, etc. The units are on a separate electrical meters and the heat is electric. The only utility that I will pay after moving out is sewer. All right, here's the numbers. Garrett put $45,000 down as a down payment, so he probably paid about 450 because he said he put 10% down. The renovations were $20,000. The ARV is 525, so he paid 450. He put another 20 into it, so he's all in for 470. He has an ARV of 525, which gives him about $55,000 of equity. Not too shabby. The mortgage plus the tax and the insurance and everything else is 31.27. And the total rents after he moves out. And he turns this into a basically, this is the sneaky rental tactic, which is the next book that I'm working on right now will be $4,300. The sewer bill is $30 a month. So let's actually add that into the mortgage, the tax and the insurance here. All right, let's start with the cash flow, because we've already seen that Garrett has $55,000 of equity. We've got 3,127 in expenses, plus $30 for the sewer. So 31 57amonth. And let's subtract that from 4,300, which is $1,143. If we take 1143 and we multiply them times 12, that's $13,716 a year. If we take that 13,716 and we divide it by how much money he put into it, which was 45,000 for the down payment and $20,000 for the renovations. We get a cash on cash return of 21.1% when Mr. Dayon moves out of the property. That's not terrible. I actually really like this. And here is another reason why. It's the sneaky rental tactic. So what Garrett did was he put 10% down on a duplex because Fannie Mae now doesn't make you put down 20% on multifamily if you're buying it as a primary residence. And this is something we can help you with at the one brokerage. We do this all the time. In fact, Garrett, if you didn't use us, I'll forgive you. But only this once. Please make sure you go to davidgreen24.com and click the chat button and ask me. Put in touch with one of the one brokerage officers and I'll get you. Put in touch with someone that will help you on your loan. So he puts a low down payment and then does the work himself, which is only 20 grand. So he's all in for 65,000 to add $55,000 of equity to his property and have approximately a 21% cash on cash return when he moves out of the property. This is a very good financial decision and this is something that is within grasp for a lot of people putting 10% down on a property instead of 20 or 25% down on a property. I'm a big fan, especially in today's market of using owner occupied financing to get yourself into the real estate and just dealing with the inconvenience of having to do some work and move. That's how people are making real estate work. The buy it, set it and forget it method of just scaling rapidly is not working for most people in today's market. All right folks, and let's take a look at what the property looks like. He said it was a two bedroom, one bathroom, that he did the work himself. Looks like new laminate flooring, new paint, looks like a new vanity in the bathroom here. As you can see, this deal came out pretty good. All right folks, if you have a deal that you want to look at, just head to davidgreen24.com ask. Submit your deals over there and congrats to Garrett on finding a deal in today's tough market. All right, moving into the next segment of our show, this is the comment section where we get into comments from my social media, the YouTube videos that we put out and everywhere that you are engaging in the real talk real estate community. But a friendly reminder before we get there, my new book, better than cash flow, the 10 ways you make money in real estate has been available on Kindle. It is now going to be available in paperback. So if you would like to get the new book Better than Cash Flow and you like to read a real book and have it in your hands, you can buy it on Amazon. Now pick One up. Read it. Let me know your comments on what you think about combining 10 different ways that you can make money in real estate into one deal to turn base hits into home runs. All right, our first comment comes from Aberrant Art, who says, I want to see David Green's reaction when a Tesla bot can change a tire. I think this is funny. This comes from a Mortgage Monday video that I did where we talked about the future of the economy and how blue collar work is probably going to be safer than white collar work. In fact, this is an issue that I have with a lot of people that work in the space where you get somebody that likes to work from home. They like to do something that uses their mind, like bookkeeping. And they don't want to be a part of a team. They don't want to participate in helping other people. They only want to do that one thing that they like. Well, when AI comes in and figures out how to do that job for them, they're not needed anymore. And it's a scary place to be. So my advice to everybody here is to get way more flexible with the value that you provide to the marketplace, to your employer, to the community. Because if your identity is wrapped up in a very specific vocation, you may find that that goes away. Now, I had recommended, hey, people need to learn the trades. And so Aberrant Art is basically making a dig at me here, saying, hey, they're making robots that can do blue collar work as well. And that may be problematic. And, hey, he could be right. I mean, I don't know that we're going to have blue collar jobs forever, but I think that they'll be here longer than some of the white collar ones from Seeing Green Episode 41. Hello. Romy says, nice shirt. Is that new? I like Real Talk real estate, but David Green, 24 is not horrible. That might be the nicest thing that anyone has said to me in a long time. David Green is not horrible. I was wearing a shirt. It's actually one of my favorite shirts. Funny story. There's no way that hello, Romy knows this, okay? But I bought a shirt when I was in the Smoky Mountains working on my cabins in Tennessee at the Grunt Style Outlet. And it's the one that I wore in the last episode. It says be immortal on the chest. It has the American flag on one side and the this will defend on the other side. Grunt Style is probably my favorite clothing manufacturer right now. Their clothes are super comfortable. They're not a sponsor of the show, but hey, if you know, anyone there, let them know, because they should be. I wear their stuff all the time. And I get this shirt that says, be immortal. Because I do believe that we can have eternal life if we make the right choices and we tie ourselves to the eternal power that can offer eternal life. I like to kind of sneak that stuff in to some of the clothes that I'm wearing. Well, it was also cool colors. It was a black shirt with blue writing and a little, like, little flash of yellow. I then couldn't find it. It was basically when I drove from California to Oklahoma, I couldn't find where that shirt was. I took it off when I was eating something in the car I didn't want to spill on myself. Then I lost the shirt. So I went and I ordered another one. And then after I ordered it online, I thought, you know what? It was a bit of a schmedium. It was a little too small for me. Why don't I get one that's extra large instead of large? So then I ordered another one. So now I have the same shirt in two sizes, depending on how often I'm hitting the gym or how often I'm hitting the buffet. I then find the one that I thought that I had lost in the backseat. It had slipped down onto the floor of the car. So I now have three of the same shirt. And in order to get a good return on my investment, I'm probably going to have to wear that same shirt every other episode of the David Green Show. Joey Wharton says, I just had to comment on the ridiculous cost of labor. We just built our house, got a quote for 500 square feet of tile for $33,000. That was labor only. And they asked to quote the job. They saw my hubby working outside on the siding. My friend referred a tile guy who did it for $4,000. It's crazy what some of these contractors charge. So we had talked on a previous episode about the cost of labor going up so high. And I don't know exactly why that's happening, but I had proposed a couple things that I thought it might be related to. It could be related to less people want to do manual labor. So what that means is the people that are doing it now charge exorbitant amounts of money, and you feel like you have no choice. In this case, somebody quoting $33,000 when they found someone else to do it for $4,000 is likely the case of them looking for people that are ignorant and don't know what things cost. Like, they're driving down the road, they see somebody putting siding on a house and they stop by to say, do you want us to do any work? You would typically think this is someone who really wants work and they're going to give you a good price. They then quote something insanely high, knowing that even if you come back and say, I'll pay you half of that at 16,000, the half of the number that you negotiated is still four times what they found someone else to do the job for. So they're knowing if you come back and you hassle with us or you haggle with us, we're still going to make a ton of money. And they're just preying on people that don't know what things cost. This is one of the reasons why I said we need more people doing that kind of work. We don't want a tiny amount of people that are all doing the blue collar jobs because then you get ripped off. You want a lot of people all doing that work so that they are competing with each other to give you a fair price and do good work. And the ones with the best reputation make their way to the top. Unfortunately, we can't have that system because the current generation of young men that want to go out there and work all want to be Internet influencers or they want to be college educated. They want something that seems to have more status in our society than actually provide value. So my recommendation would be if you're listening to this and you're in your young 20s, even your mid-20s or your young 30s, seriously consider if you're good with your hands learning how to do construction in houses because you can work for yourself, you can build your own own business, you can control your destiny and you can actually build a business that is something that is going to be very difficult for AI to take over in the future. All right, and to wrap up the comment section on my last Instagram post where I shared that this podcast is going to be adding another show to the feed, Real Talk Realtors. Felicia Rexford, the first guest of the new podcast, said, nine fire emojis and always adding value in all caps. And if you guys want to see what fire and all caps looks like personified, you definitely don't want to miss the episode with Felicia. I think if you are a female Realtor, you are going to love it. If you are a male Realtor, you're going to realize I need to step up my game. And if you're an overall person who knows that you have value to bring into the world and you often feel like you don't know how to do that. You might walk away with tears as Felicia shares her story, her perspective, and the value that she brings to the world by helping her clients. It was an awesome episode. You guys will fall in love with Felicia. And today's real news report is sponsored by Hospitable. Hospitable is the property management software that I use to manage my short term rentals. We use it because it helps us automate guest communications booking management and has a pricing optimization function across multiple booking sites. It really does a great job streamlining our operations and allows us to manage our properties more efficiently and most of all, improve our guest experiences. In short, Hospitable lets me take bookings that come from Airbnb, vrbo, Direct bookings and more and put them all into one app or website where we can manage them all together so I don't have to worry about double bookings happening on the same day that came from different online travel agencies. I can also book direct through Hospitable and save the money that you normally pay to Airbnb or vrbo. If guests reach out to me, like if one of you wants to stay in one of the cabins or properties that we manage across the country or you want to stay in one of mine, you can reach out to me through davidgreen24.com Send me a message via the chat. I can get you in touch with my team. You can see the properties that we manage and we can book you direct and give you a pretty good discount because we don't have to pay the online travel agencies to book the properties. So if you're somebody who's watching this and you go, hey, I want to support David. I'd like to stay at one of his properties and I want to know what the heck is going on out there in the Smoky Mountains or in South Florida or in Maui, wherever it happens to be. We can give you some recommendations of where to stay, where to eat and what to do and you can save some money on the booking and then if you come back again, we can save you even more. If you're a repeat guest, you can follow many of the properties that we manage on Instagram @ctcgetaways. You can also message us through that app and I'll get you connected to somebody. But it's Hospitable. That makes all this possible, that we can offer the discounts to people that book direct and I can still advertise on the online travel agencies without worrying about anything getting lost in communication. My team uses the hospitable app to monitor incoming questions, guest reservations, and even put together automated messages that make it look like we're communicating with the guest when the software is doing that for us. It's been a game changer and has allowed me, with a handful of people, to manage a lot of other properties and still give people a great experience. Highly recommend you check this company out. All right, let's get to the news. First article says it's looking more like a buyer's Market for U S House Hunters. What, pray tell, are they talking about, folks? The balance of power in the U S housing market is continuing to shift to buyers, with sellers adjusting prices amid a sustained uptick in inventory, particularly in the west and the South. Now, before we keep reading, let me ask you folks, which were the markets that were the hottest for the last five to eight years? Was it not the west and the south that was getting all of the attention? The share of homes on the market with price reductions grew to 16.8% in February, up from 14.6% last February, according to report that realtor.com released Thursday. Analyzing the top 50 US metro areas is the total number of homes on the market grew 27.1% compared to last February, picking up pace from last month and marking the 16th consecutive month of annual increases. That jump brought inventory to its highest point since 2021, but it still remained more than 20% below pre pandemic levels. New listings also ticked upward to 5%, which was slower than last month's bump of 10%. These trends are driven by housing markets in the west and the south, the two regions that saw the greatest increases in both active and new listings, as well as the most price reduct. The Midwest and Northeast saw smaller shifts in the same direction, inventory and price reductions, but new listings decreased in both regions. So if you don't like listening to a bunch of data and words and you feel it overwhelmed you, let me sum it up for you. I'll give you the old tldr. The regions that were the hottest are slowing down, and the regions that were not as hot are just slowing down a little bit. You're seeing more houses hitting the market than we used to have, and they're sitting there longer, which is leading to more price reductions, which means that it's a better time to buy here. The problem, and I've been talking about this for so long, buyers tend to be scared to make moves when they're the only ones doing it. They tend to go into a market as a group and come out of a market as a group. So all these people that have been saying I'm waiting for a deal, I'm waiting for a deal, I'm waiting for a deal, they usually don't want to move in and buy the deal unless they see everyone else doing it. But when everyone else is doing it, there's no deal because they're snatching up the properties. So if you're somebody that's been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the right moment, moment, the market has softened. I don't know if it's going to soften more, but I can tell you it has softened and you can get really good deals compared to what you were getting before. Send me a message through Instagram or davidgreen24.com or if you have my email, email me directly. I'll get you in touch with getting pre approved to get a loan and we can do what we can to help you to buy real estate. Also, keep an eye out because this might be a situation where it continues to digress and more homes hit the market and more price reductions happen and we do go into a tailsp spin of plummeting prices. All right, the next piece of News says this U.S. retirement spot is just as affordable as Mexico and Portugal. Moving abroad for retirement garners a lot of hype, and sure, there's plenty to love about expanding your horizons in your golden years by moving to a new country. However, there are plenty of other fantastic spots to consider right in the US Especially if the cost of living is a determining factor of where you live out your retirement. The US News and Worldly Report recently shared its analysis of more than 150 of the largest metro areas in the nation to determine which presents itself as the best and most affordable option for retirees. So if you're listening to this and you are approaching retirement age, there might be some value here. According to the publication's methodology, it factored in data on housing, happiness and desirability of a destination, taxes for retirees and the job market for retirees who aren't quite ready to give up work just yet, as well as access to health care. After looking at all the data, it named Youngstown, Ohio, the most affordable spot. Oh, Youngstown. The city also ranked highly in its overall 2024 best places to Retire ranking. Youngstown is located within about an hour's drive of both Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and it also marks the midpoint between New York City and Chicago. Retirees might enjoy a stroll through Mill Creek park, which has two golf courses that provide discount rates to seniors and a Cinderella Iron Link Ridge. Coming in second place is Hickory, North Carolina, a spot with more than 100 miles of shoreline for retirees to explore on foot or by boat, along with easy access to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Not to mention the fact that Hickory's median home price is just 219, $950 and the median rent is $743 a month. So Hickory, North Carolina looks to be affordable. If you guys have never heard the Blue Ridge Mountains, they're gorgeous. They're very similar to the Smoky Mountains. I've got property there as well, and I actually have a property that we are listing that is up for sale. If you guys are looking to buy a property out there, it's in a gated community, really big lot, gorgeous area, deer walk through the front of it all the time. Two cabins on one lot for more income. I really like Blue Ridge. I've visited there several times and if you like, kind of live in the Atlanta area, this is where you would go vacation if you wanted to visit the mountain mountains. So there you go, folks. Might be worth considering investing in old Youngstown, Ohio or Hickory, North Carolina, because it looks pretty dang affordable and you may get more people moving there. Although I don't know how many retirees are going to be looking to rent a house, I would imagine the majority of them are probably going to go buy something, but not necessarily. All right, and moving on to our last article. Are you ready to buy a new home? The hurry to beat Trump policies that could change the housing market. Market. Ooh, we got to talk about housing buying and Trump all in the same article. This is a recipe for virality in the market for a newly constructed house. You might want to hurry soon. New homes are likely to cost more and take longer to build. And the reason is that the Trump administration's initiatives on tariffs and immigration. While the President has professed his intention to bring down housing costs, placing tariffs on the country's largest trade partners could do the opposite. Tariffs could raise the price of a new house by as much as $22,000, according to an estimate from CoreLogic. Furthermore, immigrants make up about 23% of the construction force per the Urban Institute, with an estimated half of them documented. Any mass deportation effort would only exacerbate the current shortage of construction workers. The tariffs are on pause, but the national association of Home Builders is still advocating for an exemption for building materials should the tariffs be reinstituted. Our lobby team has met non stop with almost any member of Congress that they can find. To get our message across, these Canadian and Mexican tariffs are going to have a direct and painful impact on the price to build a house. How much of an impact that is anyone's guess. The nahbs, the national association of Home Builders, chief economist Robert Dietz cites numbers from members, says prices could go up by as much as ten grand. John Burns Research and Consulting, says the tariffs, if fully enforced as proposed, would add 10 to the median price model. That's because roughly 70% of the lumber in a typical house comes from Canada. Mexico is the largest provider of gypsum for drywall, and many household appliances, like refrigerators and ranges, come from international trade. While homebuilding is inherently domestic, builders rely on components produced abroad. Imposing additional tariffs on these imports will lead to higher material costs, which will ultimately be passed on to home buyers in the form of increased housing prices. And although tariffs are on hold, some builders have begun raising their prices in anticipation that Trump will ultimately drop the hamper. Builders have few options. They can eat the rising cost to a point, but beyond that, they must either pass them on to their buyers or build smaller houses with fewer amenities. As for immigration, the administration has already begun rounding up undocumented immigrants, and any massive deportation effort will further hinder an industry that's already some 250,000 workers shy builders. Labor costs already are going up, and if it becomes even more difficult to find workers, they'll have to pay higher wages or lose out to competitors who will. The new home market is already woefully underbuilt when compared to population growth. And the housing shortage is estimated at 3.7 million units, which has helped push prices and rents to record levels. All right, folks, here's what the article out of the Miami Herald is saying. Trump has made frequent comments that he is going to put tariffs on other countries, namely, and specifically right now, Canada and Mexico. When you add a tariff to another country, you make it more expensive to bring their stuff in the country. So if you put a 25% tariff on lumber, theoretically, lumber would cost 25 more percent to buy, which would make the house more expensive to build. There's two components to building a house. We talked about them earlier. It's the labor and it's the materials. So materials could go up from tariffs and labor could go up if we remove the undocumented immigrants from the labor pool, which, presumably, according to this article, make up a big chunk of the people that are actually doing the work. So they're sounding the alarm and saying hey, you better buy a house now because it's getting more expensive in the future. Should we panic? I'm about to piss off a whole bunch of people that are listening and also make a whole bunch of people really happy for me because that's what happens when you bring politics into podcasts. So I'm sorry, it's not my intention, but. But it's probably going to happen. Let me try to, like, smooth it in there as much as I can. My understanding of what is going on with these tariffs is that in most cases, Canada is already charging us 25% to send stuff to their country, which makes it harder for Americans to sell the things we make here in Canada, in Mexico, in Russia, in China, anywhere else. If it's harder to do something, people stop doing it. I think most people can recognize that this is a fact. If your spouse makes it harder to love them, you usually stop doing it. You ever seen someone in a relationship who puts a bunch of hoops in place that they want you to jump through because somebody hurt them in the past? Yeah. Most people don't just jump through those hoops forever. They just give up and they stop trying. It doesn't help us to make things more difficult for other people. So the American workforce, through the companies that sell products, have made less and less, less goods to send to other countries because they have had tariffs put on them and we have performed more and more services. We have moved into developing technologies in America that other countries use because they're not getting tariffed as harshly. Trump has said, I don't want to go in there and put tariffs on all these people to make it more expensive to use their stuff. I want equality. If you're going to tariff me 25, I'm going to tariff you 25%. And that's what the Miami Herald leaves out of this article. And that's what much of the news that you hear about this leaves out. It sounds terrible that we're talking about putting tariffs on people until you hear that they've been putting them on us for a long time and we've just been taking it. Now, I'm not giving my opinion right now on what we should do. I'm not a shoulder. I don't want to should all over you guys. I am helping you see the full story so you can make up your own mind what to expect. I've said it before, I'll say it again. It does not benefit us to get wrapped up in what we think should happen happen. You can only look at what is happening and make moves and make decisions based on that information, that's going to be in your best interest. So if we do put tariffs on people, it is true that materials could go up in value. It is also true that if we put tariffs on, let's say, Canada, so lumber becomes more expensive, that they go, okay, okay, hang on a minute here. We're going to drop our tariffs on you guys because we don't want you to put tariffs on us because we need the Americans to buy all of our war wood. What that means is that not only does wood not become more expensive, but the things that American companies make and we sell in Canada become easier to sell. That gives people in America the opportunity to work and produce more and sell them to someone else. See, this actually increases productivity, which, when you boil it down, wealth is the result of a lot of productivity. You have to have productiveness to create wealth in the first place. While the article talks about housing prices could go up, up, this economic policy could lead to more people having jobs, more people wanting to buy houses, and more of the goods that we import from other countries being made right here where they aren't as expensive because they don't have the tariff. So I don't know how it's going to work out. And I'm not saying how it should work out. I'm saying this is something to keep an eye on when you're looking at the situation and you're being told by people to be really afraid because everything's going to become more expensive. All right, that's some pretty good stuff about what's going on in the news. News, it can be tough and it can be exciting, but it's definitely not a boring time in the political spectrum right now in our country. Our last segment of the show, this is the Quick Hitters. This is where we share comments that came in through social media, emails, YouTube videos or more that were funny, insightful or profound from @FLSS. Super guy. @ the end of the day, it's the responsibility of the homeowner to make sure it gets paid. Take responsibility, people. This was in response to a Mortgage Monday video that we did did where we shared that there was a lender that wasn't paying the insurance through the impound account that the borrower was paying. And when the borrower needed to make a claim, there was no insurance on their home to be able to make it. And another quick hit from Andre Texera Property. Regarding my gains made while I was working in the Smoky Mountains, I demand to see Greens Progress? Well, I wasn't in the gym at all in the Smokies. In fact, I fell apart a little bit because I was gone for weeks at a time, not eating great food food. And I didn't have time to get to a gym. Since I've been back home in Oklahoma, I've been working out every day, sometimes twice a day, and I am starting to see a little bit of progress come in creeping in here. So I can't show you any gains that I made in the Smoky Mountains on my body, but I can show you some gains that came to the portfolio. You can see some of those at CTC Getaways on Instagram to see some of the cabins that we worked at. And I'll also share some pictures with y'all here. All right, folks, if you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts, you won't be able to see the pictures in this portion. If you're listening on Spotify, there is an option where you can watch a video and if you're watching on YouTube, you'll definitely be able to see. So if your curiosity gets the best of you and you want to check it out, make sure you subscribe to the David green show on YouTube where you can get video confirmation of the work that we did at the cabins. I think it's pretty cool. You might actually get a kick out of it. It's going to make you want to visit them. I promise. Once you see this, you'll also be able to track the gains that I am or am not making in the gym and you can either send me encouragement or a pick it up over there. Green, we need to see some more action in the comments on YouTube. All right, so this first cabin I'm going to share with everybody here is a cabin that I bought a couple years ago in a 1031. When I bought it as a 1031, I had to close on it because it was part of a bigger package and if I didn't close, the whole 1031 would get messed up. The cabin has a huge pool inside another structure on the same property that was going to be the money maker. Unfortunately, the pool started leaking and we knew that it was an issue in escrow, but I still had to close on it. I was really hoping I could fix the pool. I wasn't able to. It's going to cost a lot of money to get the pool up and running and I haven't been able to do that. So I'm basically running a two bedroom cabin on a big lot With a creek that goes through it without the component that was going to make it cash flow, which was that pool. So it's going to be losing money. But I'm trying to mitigate how much money it is losing because I won't be able to sell it for nearly what I paid for it. With this pool issue, it's going to have to get fixed, which means I got to free up some equity from some other properties to be able to fix up that pool. But I did have a really big backyard. Now, the yard's cool because it has a creek going through it. So here's what we did to improve it on a budget. We added some horseshoe pits and some sand. We then built a very large, gorgeous fire pit area that is a showstopper when you're looking at the pictures. So I can show you. These are just some iPhone pictures. These aren't the professional optional ones you can see here. We took some landscaping timbers. We made ourselves the outline of it. Then we added some four by fours and put those in oak barrels and then poured concrete in there to make them stand. We hung cafe lights from those four by fours around the entire fire pit and then ran it to the structure where the pool is supposed to be inside the property. And then we added some six by sixes where we put in a hanging swing near the fire pit that's in the middle. This here is another view that shows it from a different angle. Basically, we're standing where the horseshoe pits would be. These pictures were taken in the fall, so you don't see all the greenery in the trees. It's kind of ugly because they're all dead. But this is going to look really good in the spring, in the summer. And right here is part of where the creek actually runs through the property. This is a picture of what it looks like at night time when the lights are going. And I put a sensor on the light so that they turn off when there is sunlight and they only turn on when there's dark. Darkness saves me on my electrical bill. That's the fire pit in the middle there. I believe it was 36 inches. And I added some Adirondack chairs that go around the fire pit. And then to finish it off, this is my favorite part, Black rubber mulch. That in the right picture, really makes that area pop. These pictures were all taken with smartphones when we were on the property. We finished it up at night when the sun had gone down. All right. We have another property in a community called Shag bark in the Smoky Mountains. And it's at the very, very top of a hill. Gorgeous views. It's an a frame cabin, and it had a big backyard. But that backyard wasn't really being used for anything useful. Just a huge open space with grass and nothing. So I did a very similar thing having a fire pit built in that area that looks like this. So we instead of making the landscaping timbers into a square in this one, we sort of did like a pentagon shape. We added the oak barrels like I did on the other one. But instead of putting them inside the fire pit, we put them outside the fire pit in this case, because we didn't make it quite as big. It's still really big. You have the 1, 2, 3, 4 Adirondack chairs, plus the swinging bench seat like before, that all had to be stained. And then we ran the cafe lights from this one, and we connected them to the covered deck where the hot tub is, which is right over here. So now you have a backyard yard space where it sort of connects the hot tub with the views and the chairs here. Another view, this is from the deck where the hot tub is looking down at the space from above. So these actually make a pretty good impression on the online travel agencies when you're advertising the property to try to get more bookings. A little different light filter here. You can see this was just a big backyard space. That was nothing. I'm still thinking about what I want to do with this other area. I may put a swing set in. I may put a tetherball. I may put another horseshoe pit type of a situation. Definitely. We have some cornhole boards that we could put out to get more pictures taken. You know, that's a good point. If you know anybody that is willing to help me out and come take some pictures in the Smoky Mountains in exchange for a free stay, I need some more pictures taken on several cabins out there. And I'd love it if you'd reach out and put me in touch with them. Them. Okay. Moving on. From the exterior photos, I can show you the gains in some of the cabins made on the interior. This is a cabin that is actually in the same community as the one that we just looked at. It's also in Shagbark. 4,300 square foot cabin. It's got two huge driveways, two kitchens, two stoves. It's like the two of everything. Two covered decks that each have their own view. It's a pretty incredible property. And I just basically spent a little bit of money to spruce it up. So we have A poker table that's kind of in the corner here. And just a whole lot of wood. You'll notice when you're looking at cabins that you get way too much just wood interior. It looks like somebody vomited brown all over. And it can be a bit much. So I like to break that up with some decor. So I added the American flag right here. I actually have. I put them in after this picture was taken. Two candle holders on either side. And then a little bit of decor for the poker area. This one doesn't have great lighting because it was nighttime when I was doing it. But I added this sign right here. And I moved this sign to the other side of the tv. So this is in that same game room. The poker table would be off to the left. I added a foosball table that I was able to get for 50 bucks and some plants that I found on sale at Hobby Lobby for half off right underneath the entertainment center. That's not the best view, but it looks way better once we added these things to that space. That was kind of plain. This is what it looks like from another angle. So these would be the chairs that you'd sit in to watch the tv. This is a bathroom right here. This is one of the entrances to the deck. And I added the Live Laugh leave sign as an homage to how much I hate Live Laugh Love. I feel like we definitely have too much of that in the world. And then the game room sign and an arcade in the corner over here. To round that little space out. This is the whole corner where that Live Laugh leaf sign is. We put a floating shelf. This was like $20, a $5 little plant, and a $5 sign that says, stay a while. And then this was something that was pretty cool that I found online. It was about $70. And it's like a hanging chess board. So you have chess pieces on this board that I hung. And then you move them vertically instead of horizontally. And you can set up chairs right here and have people that are playing chess in this space. That before, there was nothing to show in the pictures for what that looked like. This is a close up of what that arcade looks like in the corner. It's got like thousands of games on one machine. That's one of my favorite cabins. I really like staying in that one when I'm visiting. Here's the pool table in that same area. When you come first, come down the stairs. I added that moonshine sign. I put up some bar decor around the bar right here. And then we have an arcade system that is also in the space. So when you're waiting for your turn to shoot pool, you can either be sitting at the bar or you can be playing the arcade. This is a close up of that space. Looks a little bit better. All right, this is the game room in the last cabin. We'll go over where we made some games. As you can see, it's not a terrible looking game room. It's got these white acoustic tiles on the ceilings that are not appealing at all. It's got this really old furniture underneath the tv. It's got some like camo looking chairs and some old furniture and an old rug. It does have a cool little bar seating area like a pub table and an American flag that I like. But it has a no smoking sign. It's got got this clock, it's got an old looking pool table. And then there's not a whole lot other than that, other than one air hockey table in the game room. The other part of the property that I thought needed some pretty massive improvements is this loft. It basically is just this open space with a lot of carpet, three beds next to each other, an old piece of furniture and a tv. And that's it, that's the whole space. So this is where the kids sleep. But it's not super visually appealing to look at this with the old bedspread and all of the brown and nothing fun. So I, this is one of the things I did to fix up that loft. I added this little space right here next to the last bed where I made it like a kids play area to make it more appealing. I bought all these like really big stuffed animals and I put up some wall art here. Here's another angle. So you've got one teepee type bed, one tent type bed, all the animals in between, a new rug to tie, tie it together and then pictures on this wall as well as pictures on the wall above it just to make it a more fun space and more appealing for kids. And this is what that space looked like. I know it's kind of small. It's hard to see here. From the professional photography that was taken, you can tell there's new bed spreads put on all of the beds and the area looks a little bit nicer. I also took the loft of that space and I improved that. Not expensive at all. As you can see. I bought a red leather couch on Facebook Marketplace. Pretty cheap. Cheap. Two gamer chairs that I got on sale on Black Friday. I added a TV to this wall right here and bought a $110 arcade system where you can play thousands of different arcade games. So I added some color and a blue rug to this space to now give the kids something to do if they don't want to play with the stuffed animals and the dolls. And I turned it into an area for the kids to sleep and the kids to play without having to spend that much money at all. Now, coming up to that game room, you'll see some of the improvements that we made over there. This is what it looks like now. So we replaced those acoustic ceiling tiles with these black PVC type props to Nicole Tucker for proposing this idea. She was crucial with that. And then I added some LED lights that can change colors that go around the perimeter here. We also put it in a foosball table in addition to the air hockey table and the billers table that were there. And then on the other side, you could tell that there's an arcade system and a poker table that kind of give you a little bit of everything. I mean, the only thing really missing from this one is like a shuffleboard table. And then we have the movie area that was also improved to show a little bit better. You can see like the. The ceiling in this is night and day better. This is a really big tv. When they use that wide angle lens, you can't really see that good. But I put in a new couch in addition to the black leather couches that were there and pushed it into the corner a little bit more so you have a place to watch the game or watch a movie while other people are kind of hanging out loud, launching in the game room. And this is one last angle of what that loft looks like. I think this is probably the best picture that you can see of the improvements of how much better it looks. You have the sweet dreams and the let's adventure decor on the walls as well as the colors that are popping. So that shows you guys some of the gains that were made. When I was in the Smoky Mountains. If you're looking to see my body, sorry to disappoint, but if you're looking to see the cabins and you want to make some money in real estate, you probably enjoyed that. If you have a cabin and you would like me to manage it, my team is taking on cabins specifically in the Smoky Mountains right now that we can manage for you. If you don't want to worry about that or if you want to see increased revenue, you can message us on Instagram @CTC getaways or you can reach out to me on the website and let me know and we'll look into that for you. All right everybody, that is our show for today. Thank you for being a faithful listener to the David Green Show. You can follow us and subscribe on YouTube or Apple or Spotify. And remember, I need submissions to make future Seeing Green episodes. Head to davidgreen24.com ask and submit your question there. And lastly, if you would like to see more stuff like improvements that were made on cabins, more stuff like construction if you want to see before and after videos, if you want more guest interviews, tell me in the YouTube comments what you'd like to see on the show and I will do a good job job of bringing that together for you so we can all learn, grow and journey on this path together. Make sure you check out Hospitable and Turbo Tenant and get your copy of Better Than cash flow, the 10 ways you make money in real estate available now on Amazon. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next week.