CO-HOST | Make Money by Understanding What’s Really Driving the Housing Market

Summary

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Travis Makes Money — Episode Summary

Episode: CO-HOST | Make Money by Understanding What’s Really Driving the Housing Market

Host: Travis Chappell (w/ producer Eric)
Date: February 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Travis and producer Eric react and respond to a new video by finance YouTuber Graham Stephan, discussing former President Trump's executive order to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes. The conversation explores how such a policy might impact housing prices and affordability, untangles common misconceptions about investors’ roles in the market, and highlights deeper, structural issues making homes less attainable. Practical solutions and nuanced perspectives dominate the back half of the episode, offering both macro and micro views on improving home affordability.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s Proposed Ban on Institutional Home Buying (00:36–04:55)

• Policy Summary: Trump’s executive order aims to ban large investment entities from buying single-family homes to “restore the American dream.” Graham Stephan outlines this and explains it's not targeting individual landlords, but rather corporate investors managing hundreds or thousands of properties.
• Intent: Reduce competition for individual buyers and drive down prices.
• Hosts’ Reaction:
  • Travis: Supports idea in principle but is skeptical about real-world effects.
  • Eric: Jokes about governmental overreach and points out flaws in previous similar attempts.

Quote — Graham Stephan [02:00]:
“As unpopular as that is to say, this could actually wind up increasing home prices. It could reduce supply even further, which would hurt the people it was intended to protect.”

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2. Effectiveness & Precedents for Investor Bans (04:55–12:21)

• Failed Past Legislation: Graham details several unsuccessful attempts to restrict or penalize institutional buyers (e.g., END Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act, Stop Wall Street Landlords Act).
• Legal & Logistical Hurdles:
  • Banning an entire investor class would bring legal challenges and create loopholes (e.g., shell LLCs).
  • Enforcement and tracing ownership structures are huge obstacles.
• Real-World Results: Cities and countries that implemented bans (Atlanta, Canada, Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand) saw almost no improvement in affordability—sometimes things got worse.
• Host Analysis: Travis underscores the core problem is still a basic supply shortage, not just investor competition.

Quote — Graham Stephan [08:54]:
“Congress could face severe legal challenges trying to ban an entire investor class from owning properties... and enforcing it on top of all that is nearly impossible.”

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3. Debunking Myths: Who Really Owns America’s Homes? (12:21–17:49)

• Social Media Misconceptions: Viral posts claim investors dominate the market, overpaying for homes. Graham corrects this, using data:
  • Most homes are owned by individuals or “mom and pop” landlords (owning <9 properties).
  • Large corporations (“mega investors”) control only a small slice—2.8% of single-family rentals in 2021.
  • Private equity ownership is even lower: 1.6% of all rental homes.
• Narrative vs Reality: Wall Street-buyer scapegoating distracts from bigger structural issues.

Quote — Graham Stephan [16:10]:
“The impact that Wall Street has on buying properties is pretty much a rounding error. It is negligible. It makes almost no difference.”

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4. What’s Really Driving Home Prices? (16:36–21:15)

• Perfect Storm of Challenges:
  • Locked-in sellers with low-rate mortgages
  • Restrictive local zoning and permitting
  • Excessive regulation and high building costs
  • Government mortgage subsidies and persistent ‘American dream’ homeownership expectations
• Interest Rates’ Role: Historically low rates locked in millions of homeowners, reducing market movement and supply.

Quote — Graham Stephan [16:57]:
“It’s a combination of artificially low interest rates, restrictive zoning, overregulation, sky high consumer debt, artificial mortgage backstops, and a culture nearly obsessed with homeownership.”

• Host Commentary: Travis notes how low mortgage rates have frozen movement:
  Travis [20:39]:
  “That's how we are with this house. I'm never going to sell this place like it's not going to be circulated back into the supply.”

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5. Potential Solutions Beyond Bans (22:22–25:05)

Graham's practical policy recommendations to improve affordability and inventory:

1. Streamline building permits and zoning.
2. Reduce excessive regulatory fees (e.g., high-cost permits).
3. Raise capital gains exclusions to incentivize sellers.
4. Allow “mortgage porting” so owners can transfer their low-rate mortgage to a new home.
5. Increase the cap for mortgage interest deductions.
6. Support modular housing and reduce parking requirements.
7. Offer tax incentives for builders bringing new inventory to high-demand areas.

Quote — Graham Stephan [22:53]:
"These things—streamlining permits, reducing fees—will make a massive difference in the housing market to unlock lower priced inventory and encourage people to trade up."

• Hosts’ Reaction: Both Travis and Eric agree several of Graham’s suggestions would have real positive impact, especially over arbitrary bans.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Eric lampooning industry personalities (19:18):
  “This would be like if Grant Cardone made this video. I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. A house is an asset for asses.”

• Graham’s “scapegoat” analogy (16:36):
  “Wall street buying homes. This entire narrative is purely a scapegoat to a much bigger issue that takes your eyes off of what's really going on. And that is what I like to call the perfect storm of BS.”

• Policy realism (25:05):

  • Eric: “Graham always starts cooking. It takes him a while but...”

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Key Timestamps

• 00:36: Introduction of the Trump executive order topic
• 01:22–02:57: Graham clarifies the policy’s targets and potential side effects
• 04:55–12:21: Overview of past failed legislative attempts and real-world case studies
• 13:33–17:49: Breaking down myths about investor ownership percentages
• 16:36–21:15: What’s really driving unaffordable housing
• 22:22–25:05: Graham’s 7-point policy plan to improve housing market outcomes
• 27:00+ : Recap, reflections, and closing banter

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Tone & Language

• The episode is practical, direct, and sometimes playfully irreverent, especially in the hosts’ banter and industry impressions.
• Both Travis and Eric consistently emphasize realistic, data-driven approaches, encouraging listeners to look deeper than headlines.

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For Listeners

This episode demystifies the real drivers behind America’s housing woes, steering listeners away from easy answers and advocating for common-sense reform. Whether you’re buying, renting, or investing, the episode’s blend of humor and hard facts arms you with a clear-eyed perspective—and actionable suggestions for how to advocate for meaningful change in your community.

Transcript

[Travis]

You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's a mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, we're talking a little bit more about the housing market. My producer, Eric. What's up?

[Eric]

Well, it's going to be, it's going to be here, Travis. Now I don't.

[Travis]

It's going to be talking to Eric instead of Eric's version of.

[Eric]

You start twitching. And then it's remarkably.

[Travis]

It's Eric Trump.

[Eric]

Yeah. So anyway, I have a clip of Graham 7. We were talking recently about the housing market and Trump signed an executive order, as he does about banning investors, banning investors from buying homes. Investors, which I think, you know, that's a good thing.

[Travis]

I agree.

[Eric]

You know, even a broken clock, as they say, we write twice a day. Anyway, so Graham Stephan did a video. We're blind reacting to some of this. We're gonna watch the whole thing. 15 minutes. Goodness, Graham, I mean, how much time do you think we got in a day? Yeah, we're gonna watch a little bit, but I'm curious to see what he has to say. That almost sounded like Graham. I almost got a Graham impression. I'm curious, I'm curious to know, you know, whatever. Anyway, I'm gonna hit play and let's just, let's, let's vibe it out a little bit.

[Graham Stephan]

All right, here we go, guys. It's Graham here. So not expect to make an emergency video like this.

[Eric]

We didn't expect to react to it,

[Graham Stephan]

to talk about what just happened. As of yesterday afternoon, Trump tweeted that he's moving to ban institutional investors from buying single family homes in an effort to bring down home prices. And even though this seems like a move in the right direction, I hate to say it, but there is a lot being left out that we have to talk about. After all, once you dig into the details, this could actually wind up increasing home prices. It could reduce supply even further, which would.

[Eric]

Which maybe when Trump was saying about driving up the value of homes, maybe Trump's aware of all that. Maybe, you know, but let's let Graham cook a little bit.

[Graham Stephan]

It hurt the people it was intended to protect, as unpopular as that is to say. That's why we gotta talk about exactly who this is going to affect. The impact that it's going to have throughout the entire housing market and what this means for you, whether you're a buyer, a renter, or a seller. Because like it or not, this is going to directly apply to almost everybody watching in ways that most people don't even realize. Although, before we start, if you appreciate the breaking news videos like this, it would mean the world to me if you banned the like button and subscribed. If you haven't done that already.

[Eric]

Bam. He said banned.

[Travis]

Ban the like.

[Eric]

Banned.

[Travis]

Ban the like button.

[Eric]

Banned.

[Graham Stephan]

It would mean the world to me if you banned the like button and subscribed.

[Eric]

Banned.

[Travis]

Hmm.

[Eric]

It sounds like you said the song says banned.

[Travis]

It does sound like he said bam.

[Eric]

But maybe he means bam.

[Travis]

Well, maybe he was trying to go on the subject.

[Graham Stephan]

Mean the world to me if you ban the like button and subscribe, if you haven't done that already, it seriously helps out the entire channel tremendously.

[Eric]

Let's listen that one more time in

[Graham Stephan]

slow motion for doing that. As promised, here's a picture of a giraffe. So thanks so much. And also, big thank you to Gemini for sponsoring this video. But more on that later. All right, so in terms of what was just said, here's exactly what Trump tweeted word for word. For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American dream. It was the reward for working hard and doing the right thing. But now, because of record high inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans. It's for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single family homes. And I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations. I will discuss the topic, including further housing and affordability proposals and more at my speech in Davos in two weeks. Now, before we go into the realistic implications this is about to have on the entire housing market, it's important to clarify that institutional investors are not your typical mom and pop landlord who saved up for a few years to buy a triplex, or someone who put a property in an LLC for privacy reasons. Instead, institutional investors generally refer to large private equity funds that pool investor money together, buy up housing and bulk hire a management company company and then send out distribution checks every month or every quarter. Of course, in terms of how many homes it takes to be considered an institutional investor really depends on who you ask. Some say it takes more than 100 homes, others say it takes more than a thousand homes. But regardless, if these institutions were banned from buying single family houses, the big question becomes how much would housing prices go down and how will it work? Well, even though Trump is soon going to be giving out exact clarification, but believe it or not, initiatives like this have been tried consistently in the past and have failed. For example, the END Hedge Fund Control of American Homes act was introduced in 2023. That would have forced large corporate landlords to divest their single family holdings over 10 years and prohibit further acquisitions. This effectively would have applied to any pooled investment fund that more than 50%.

[Travis]

I was curious how he was going to say that. It, it's going to, it might potentially increase inventory. That would, that would like divesting all of your stuff. If they had to divest all of the investments that they have, then yeah, what he's saying is absolutely correct. Like the supply is going again. We talked about this on last episode. It's, it's not a matter of institutional investors are buying the houses and there's none left for anybody. It's a matter of we're just in an inventory storage nationwide. So as long as there's an inventory shortage, it's going to, the prices are continue to, are going to continue to stay high just because it's supply, demand, economics.

[Eric]

Well, and that's the thing too is like, I'm curious with like how many of those homes are held up as short term rental properties? Because it's got to be a huge swath of like this, like, of all this inventories. Like it's got to be a lot of it. But there's, there has to be a lot that are like short term rentals or some, I mean airbnbs I've seen. There's also like areas where like they're just holding them at super high rates, you know, like, and they're just sitting empty like so you gotta wonder how much of that is. Is that versus like. Because like it is one thing to have like a lot of rentals available, but also like there's a lot of areas like there's not even a lot of rentals, right? Like, or it's rentals like totally unrealistic asking prices that. You know what I mean?

[Travis]

Yeah, yeah, pretty.

[Graham Stephan]

And if they didn't comply, they would face very heavy fines and taxes until eventually they did. In fact, the fines were said to be.

[Travis]

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[Graham Stephan]

Terms and conditions apply as high as $50,000 a home, but it never passed. In addition to that, we had another

[Eric]

initiative, but also, I don't like when they say some of the stuff doesn't work because like, I think also then you could go like, well, who was lobbying who? You know what I mean like that's kind of the issue with all these things is like you go in a circle where it's like this thing that they try to pass on these very hyper wealthy crazy investors didn't work and it's like, yeah, because they put a lot of money into it. Exactly.

[Graham Stephan]

But anyway, that also failed. Known as the Stop Wall street landlords Act of 2022. With this, instead of just outright banning home ownership, this aimed to deny certain tax benefits and federally backed loans to large investors with over 100 million in housing assets. A similar initiative was also tried and failed in Minnesota that would ban corporations from turning single family homes into rentals. But in each of those cases, not a single one gained enough popularity to pass. Why? Well, it turns out there's a few reasons. First, Congress could face severe legal challenges trying to ban an entire investor class from owning properties. Sure, they could argue that they're preventing housing market distortions and trying to improve affordability, but it's not without a legal fight. Second, even if they did ban institutional investors from buying single family homes, it would need to be strict enough to prevent the circumvention of a company just creating shell organizations, putting the properties under those LLCs and buying just enough not to trigger the limit. Of course, Congress could pass the Corporate Transparency act so that the same beneficial owners are pulled together as one. But again, it takes a lot of time, money and resources to trace the ownership of what's probably going to be dozens of anonymous LLCs. And then enforcing it on top of all of that is going to be nearly impossible. And third, as unpopular as this is to say, measures like this have actually been tried in the past and have completely backfired. Like take a look at what they did to housing prices. As of today. Institutional bans and rental have been implemented in several areas, with the first being Atlanta, Georgia. In 2022, they passed a bill that limited built to rent communities where a corporation buys up a plot of land, builds dozens hundreds of single family homes and then sells them to a large pop.

[Eric]

I hate these cookie cutter like cheapy little builds.

[Travis]

Vegas is the worst for that. I got like cookie cutters. Stucco.

[Eric]

Well, well these ones like where it's

[Travis]

like it like the prefab that looks better than Vegas.

[Eric]

No, this is worse. These are all over South Carolina. You should see like when you drive through it, it feels like you're on a movie set. It's like it's so cheap looking like weird paneling. It's horrible. They look nice from a distance, but.

[Graham Stephan]

And then sells them to a large corporation who proceeds to rent them out. But since then, home prices in Atlanta have still gone up and rents have remained unchanged. Canada also tried following a similar method, banning foreign investors and corporations from buying up single family homes. In the end, this did nothing to improve home affordability because foreign buyers only made up 2 to 6% of the entire market and critics were saying this was just a virtue signal with virtually no impact on affordability. In fact, it wound up stalling development so much that Canada has considered reversing it entirely. In the Netherlands, this was also tried, but it was found to restrict supply spike prices and believe it or not, new homeowners tended to be richer than the renters that they were replacing. The same also applies to Denmark and New Zealand, who tried to limit homeownership. In both of those cases, it made no difference to home prices and by 2023, the government tried to re attract foreign capital. Look, I know a lot of people don't like when I say this, but objectively these policies are purely just a popular political talking point rather than an effective way of lowering home prices. So in terms of what's actually going on, why home prices are so high, and what could really be done about it, here's what you came for.

[Travis]

Although before we go, I actually am more curious to hear what he says next.

[Graham Stephan]

Important to remember that out last year and have risen.

[Eric]

Goodness Graham.

[Graham Stephan]

And now get that cheddar Trump could actually lower home price and whether or not Trump could actually lower home prices by blocking institutional investors. Here's the uncomfortable truth about banning Wall Street I've said this before, but the entire Wall street buying homes narrative really seems to have started from this Twitter thread here which made the claim that BlackRock is buying every single family home they can, paying 20 to 50% above asking price and outbidding normal home buyers. However, when you actually go and investigate these unsourced claims, as it turns out, the question was a purpose built rental community created by Dr. Horton. By the time this project was listed for sale it had already been fully rented out and it was being sold as an entire.

[Travis]

You also can't just pay whatever you want to pay to get a house. This also appraise yeah like you you can go to a house and offer 100k over the price on the market, but if the comps don't support that and the appraiser comes by and says no, you can't sell it for that much, so houses can't be selling for 50% above market value that's what they said on Twitter.

[Graham Stephan]

Travis, your package of 124 homes that were never meant to be available to individual buyers to begin with. But you know what? Okay, fine, that's just one example. What about all the others? Well, in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, there was a headline that investors buy nearly one in four homes, most in all cash deals. Again, by the sound of it, this seems like an absurd number that's absolutely to blame for. Except this number is actually lower than what we saw in 2004, 5 and 11, when investors purchased nearly one in three homes for sale. Even the term investor is extremely broad and it's easily misunderstood. For example, you going and buying your first rental property is categorized the exact same as a conglomerate closing on a thousand home subdivision. So let's break it down even further. Of the 26% of homes that get sold to investors, half are mom and pop landlords who own less than nine properties, and only 11% of that half are mega corporations. This means throughout the entire real estate market, 75% of the people that you compete with are other owner users, 12% are mom and pop landlords, and less than 2.8% are mega corporations that own more than a thousand units. CoreLogic also found that in 2021, less than 3% of homes were sold to large investors. And in almost all of those cases, the large investors were funded by everyday people putting their money in pensions, 401ks and retirement plans. To give you even more context on this, Americans for Financial Reform also found that by mid-2022, private equity firms only accounted for 3.6% of all apartments and 1.6% of all rental homes. That's it. And rental home companies own even less than that.

[Eric]

I just, I feel like he should disclose at the beginning of this how many homes he owns. Yeah, because I'm also watching this. He's like, guys, this is a really bad idea. I mean, we don't want to do this, you know.

[Travis]

Yeah, I was just going to say that it's, it's sort of what my point was before too, is to say that like, I still am, I'm still overall a fan of doing that because of the precedent that it could potentially set for like future institutional investors in investors. Like right now it's two and a half or three percent. But if housing continues to outpace people's ability to afford it, and the only people who can afford it are mega institutional investors sometimes broken a ton of money, then they're probably just Going to keep increasing their budget to buy houses while people are decreasing their budget to buy houses. Like it's probably something that's good to get ahead of for the next 100 years of homeownership, if that makes sense.

[Graham Stephan]

Of all housing. This means the impact that Wall street has on buying properties is pretty much a rounding error. It is negligible. It makes almost no difference.

[Eric]

I was confused. I was like, we're, we're. I was like, we're 10 minutes into his video, but we've only been recording for 14. But then I just remembered I skipped that big old ad in the middle. I was like. I was like, how. How is time working? I don't understand it. We. We started the video and an hour.

[Graham Stephan]

That's why I think Wall street buying homes. This entire narrative is purely a scapegoat to a much bigger issue that takes your eyes off of what's really going on. And that is what I like to call the perfect storm of bs. Again, I'm going to repe myself here.

[Eric]

But the real reason, you know, he's getting serious. He said BS prices are so unaffordable

[Graham Stephan]

is due to a combination of artificially low interest rates leading to locked in sellers who don't want to move, restrictive zoning that makes it impossible to add more housing under the market over regulation to the point where no one wants to build unless they could be guaranteed they're going to make a profit. Sky high consumer debt that keeps people bogged down, the government artificially backstopping mortgages while they incentivize lending, and a surplus of demand from everyday home buyers who are conditioned to believe that buying a house is the American dream. That's it. If you want anyone to blame for these issues, it's probably your local city council, state legislatures, a little bit of the federal government, and whoever's in charge of the permitting process. I can't believe I'm defending them. But private Equity owns just 1.6% of all single family rental homes. The other 98.4% is owned by everyday people trying to make a living. That's why Wall street has such an insignificant.

[Eric]

How many does Ryan Pineda own? Ryan buys all the houses in Vegas. How many are his? We've got to stop Brian Bonita. I am declaring right back on.

[Graham Stephan]

Okay, the entire market, they're really doing just about anything else will have a bigger effect than banning them. Look, the reality is, if this were to pass, I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen. Rental prices are going to go up because there's less rental inventory. Home prices might also begin to go up because there's less incentive.

[Eric]

How? I don't see how he's jumping to that. How's there less rental inventory? Yeah. I don't understand driving the prices up again. Unless.

[Travis]

Unless they're forced to divest and sell off all the properties that they hold.

[Eric]

But then. But then the house is still going to a person.

[Travis]

A person that would theoretically buy it and live in it, not rent it out.

[Eric]

Yeah, but.

[Travis]

So rentals would.

[Eric]

Let me hear that sentence again. I don't. I don't feel like I'm tracking with the point there.

[Graham Stephan]

Rental prices are going to go up because there's less rental inventory.

[Travis]

Oh.

[Eric]

Like, if. So. So he's saying if people are buying it to own. But also then. But. But then that's not a bad thing because that means that less need to rent because they couldn't afford to own. Affording to own. I don't know if I'm.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Eric]

How many houses do you own? That's what I want to know. I do think he should have said that. This is like one of those videos you have to be like.

[Travis]

To be fair, I do own.

[Eric]

This would be like if Grant Cardone made this video. I'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. A house is a. An asset for asses.

[Graham Stephan]

Travis might also begin to go up

[Eric]

because I'm crushing the impressions today. Honestly.

[Travis]

She's so good.

[Eric]

That was honestly, like, if you close your eyes, that's Grant Cardone.

[Travis]

Totally. Yeah.

[Eric]

100. The house is a asset for asses. Boy, get on over here. Get yourself. Get yourself an asset.

[Travis]

I thought Grant was in the room just now.

[Eric]

And I am Elena Cardone, and I'm also here and I approve this message. They're just too, hey, get a house.

[Graham Stephan]

10x houses in bulk. And nothing is going to be done to improve home affordability. Even though on paper it's getting a lot of praise. Like, it's funny. I read through every single reply on Twitter. People love this plan and almost no one was against it. The few people that were got completely ratioed, but the math is unchanged. This does nothing to improve home affordability. Even though that's not popular to say. And I'm not going to lie to you just because that's what people want to hear. Like, imagine what would happen if they just came out and admitted that low interest rates boosted home prices to a point that became unaffordable for people who didn't already have a down payment. Low mortgage rates locked in people who now cannot afford to move. And because we're not incentivizing more building, there's just not a lot of inventory to go around. And that's why home prices are elevated. If they did that and they just said the truth.

[Travis]

That's interesting point too, about the, the interest rates piece, because we look at the. If you're around the age of 30, the normal interest rate for a home that you're thinking is like sub 4%, which is wildly low and in the history of the country has never happened. So that is, that is an interesting point to bring up to say like that because they were incentivizing homeownership through the low interest rates. Now they've created an economy where people don't want to let go of the house that they have. I mean, that's how we are with this house. Like, I'm never going to sell this place. Like, it's, it's not going to be circulated back into the supply.

[Eric]

I need you to sell this house so you can free up housing.

[Travis]

Yeah. Not that that's ever going to have an impact, but when you measure that across tens of millions of people or millions of people, obviously has an impact on total inventory. So I believe most people historically move every five years or so.

[Eric]

You know what?

[Travis]

That probably will go down when interest rates are more than double what they were, because it's not, it's not difficult to double two. You know, I'm saying, like, to double if your interest rate's 6.2, to double that, we got to go to 12%. That's a big jump. To go 2.2 to 4.4 is still double, but 4.4 is still crazy low. You know what I'm saying?

[Eric]

So, like, because historically it's like around 10, right. It's something crazy like that.

[Travis]

Like, yeah, it used to be.

[Eric]

Look at like the average over time, it's been like around 10%, something like that.

[Travis]

Yeah. I don't know what it would be over the last hundred, 150 years, but like the 80s, it was like 14%.

[Eric]

You know what they need to do that would solve all this? The Mormon Church. That's got billions of dollars. They should just buy everyone that's a Mormon a home.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And everybody else, too.

[Travis]

That'll solve it. Them and Harvard just need to let go of their endowments in terms of

[Graham Stephan]

what we could actually do about this to really make a difference and improve home affordability. Here is my take. First, we got to streamline permits, improve zoning, and reduce the red tape. There should be any confusion from one inspector to another. There doesn't need to be dozens of departments where none of them communicate with one another. And if they just made the permitting process easier, more people would want to build. Second, we also have to reduce the successive fees. It shouldn't have to cost $11,000 to reinstall a toilet permit.

[Travis]

True that.

[Graham Stephan]

These things.

[Eric]

He's cooking. I told you. It takes him a while, but Graham always starts cooking.

[Travis]

He starts cooking.

[Graham Stephan]

Sometimes you make one mistake on the permit application.

[Eric]

What's his step stool budget when he's doing renovations? Do you think it shouldn't cost me $75 to buy a ladder for my single story homes?

[Graham Stephan]

Deny it.

[Eric]

I am so sorry.

[Graham Stephan]

I'm so sorry to the very end of the line where you have to start the process over again and wait another few months. This just results in a lot of people doing work without permits. And that's not good for anybody's tiny home.

[Eric]

Imagine walking a single family home, he's carrying a ladder on his shoulder.

[Graham Stephan]

We should really increase the capital gains exclusion to $1 million for married couples filing jointly and then increase it every single year to cpi. This would incentivize more sellers to finally let go of their home. And this would be the inflation adjusted amount anyway from the $500,000amount that was enacted back in the late 1990s. Four, we should really allow mortgage porting. This way you could take your existing mortgage with you to the next home as long as you're trading up. And that would unlock a lot of lower priced inventory. Five, we should really allow people to write off the first one and a half million dollars of their mortgage interest up from the current $750,000. Again, this would prompt a lot of people to want to move up, unlocking a lot of lower priced inventory in the starter home range. 6. I also think modular housing needs to make a comeback. I just think we have to come to the realization that land is going to be expensive in the areas most people want to live. And modular housing without parking requirements solves a lot of problems. Like just take a look at Austin, Texas. They got rid of the parking requirements and now their housing has fallen by 20% because they have so much available. And finally, seven, we have to give more tax incentives to builders. Look, the city will never and cannot build their own houses. So give builders a tax abatement if they bring in jobs, resources and housing to areas that desperately need it. All of this will make a massive difference in the entire housing market to Unlock lower priced inventory and encourage people to trade up. So for anyone who's watching this, who actually has the power to make this happen, please take these into consideration. And if you're watching this, you want to comment to let me know your thoughts, Please do.

[Eric]

Well, Graham, I'll take it into consideration.

[Graham Stephan]

Overall.

[Travis]

Overall, dense with information. I thought that was. I thought that was a good take on it.

[Eric]

Graham might. I think you should keep up this YouTube thing.

[Travis]

I think he might be going somewhere.

[Eric]

He might be going somewhere.

[Graham Stephan]

Somewhere. Yeah.

[Travis]

What's he sitting at? 5.1 million subscribers.

[Eric]

I mean, before you know, you'll get. You'll get a good amount of subs.

[Graham Stephan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eric]

That's crazy. Holy moly.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Eric]

How many views does he have total? I remember seeing his stuff back. I mean, when did he start. I mean, I feel like I started seeing his stuff. Like I frankly, 2016.

[Travis]

I didn't see any of his stuff until they launched the podcast.

[Eric]

Look at his views. Holy smokes. One billion views.

[Travis]

One million in real estate and finance.

[Eric]

Billions and billions. But yeah, that's a. I want the listeners to know. Look, I can say that exactly. Okay, you ready? Ready? I'm gonna sound just like Trump. You ready? Here it is. Billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions.

[Graham Stephan]

Tremendous, tremendous, tremendous, tremendous amount. Tremendous amount of money. Tremendous amount of money. Tremendous amount of money.

[Eric]

That was a good impression, huh?

[Travis]

That was.

[Eric]

That sounded just like. I don't know how I got my voice to do that.

[Travis]

That's crazy.

[Eric]

Anyway, well, Travis, I'm not Dame or Trump.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Close out this episode.

[Travis]

I would love to hear from everybody else who's listening to this, like, any of the ideas that you guys have floating around.

[Eric]

And this would be a good roundtable with a couple real estate guys.

[Travis]

Yeah, it would be really interesting because

[Eric]

there's like a developer and there's a couple.

[Travis]

There's like. I've heard a lot of different potential solutions. There's a couple on there that, that Graham brought up that I didn't think about. That are still really valuable things. And overall, overall, we do want to make housing more affordable for people. I am less convinced now in terms of what it does for your personal net worth and wealth building if you have the discipline to leave your money in the markets. The unfortunate thing about your money being in the markets, like just being in a trading account versus having it in a home, is that if it's in your home, it's much more difficult to access that that money. So you kind of just write it off as money already spent and that's what helps you to be able to build wealth. It's sort of like a forced financial discipline lever that you can pull to buy the home that you live in. But assuming that you could leave it in the markets and not touch it, you could have the argument that building wealth has nothing to do with owning a home and that it's actually just owning a piece of something. In this case would be companies that are highly valuable. But I am more convinced, though, that people would generally take more agency and ownership of their local community when there's homeownership. If you just. If you own a piece of the land in the place that you live, you just tend to care more about things that are happening and you tend to want to do good things for the community and you tend to want to give back a little bit more. You have just. There's just a psychological concept that is powerful in owning the place that you live in and respect where you live more, I think.

[Eric]

So if you respect your community so much, why do you have your dumpy looking basketball hoop sitting out on the curb? You need to roll that up to the. To the house.

[Travis]

It's not a dumpy basketball hoop.

[Eric]

It's dumpy and it's an eyesore. And the entire neighborhood agrees.

[Travis]

We did get a notice from our HOA to pull up the basketball hoop that we got our son for Christmas, which was really annoying, which is what Eric is referring to right now. But it is not a dumpy basketball hoop. It's a nice one. I made sure I bought a nice one, so. Mainly because I like to play on it. But yeah, anyway, yeah, I'd be curious to hear what everybody else is thinking about this because it is something that's really important and something that feels really valuable and helpful to the average American. And yeah, with Graham on the idea that like this, although I liked the news, I. I do think that it's probably not going to do much in terms of what housing prices actually are. So curious to hear what you guys are thinking. Remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems with money in the bank. So let's up there here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you next time. Peace.