BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 859: BiggerNews: Fed Announces Rate Cuts, Jobs Grow, and Boomers Buy Up Housing
Episode Date: December 18, 2023The Federal Reserve finally announced the end of rate hikes. It’s a day real estate investors have been eagerly awaiting. With lower mortgage rates on the horizon in 2024, buyers could gain more con...trol of the housing market, and the seller standoff may finally break. What does this mean for the economy, and are we finally out of recession territory? On this BiggerNews episode, we’re breaking it all down! Joining David and Rob are James Dainard and Kathy Fettke from the On the Market podcast. Today, all four housing market experts bring a breaking headline to dive into. From the Fed’s proposed plan for 2024 mortgage rates to the new jobs report that shows optimistic signs for the economy, there is a LOT happening before the new year rolls around. But that’s not all we’ll touch on. A new bill targeting corporate landlords has been proposed, limiting the amount of hold hedge funds have on the housing market. But could this bill target ALL real estate investors, not just the Wall Street buyers? Finally, how the baby boomers bought the housing market and how their remarkable wealth has allowed them to make all-cash home purchases while the other generations sit on the sidelines. In This Episode We Cover: The Fed’s proposed 2024 rate cuts and effects on mortgage rates Recession fears and whether or not we’ll be able to achieve a “soft landing” The new jobs report and the impact of a “cooling” labor market on employees and employers Corporate landlords and the dangerous side effects of a new bill that is targeting hedge fund buyers The baby boomer housing market shopping spree and why they’re taking advantage as rates stay high And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area Be a Guest on the BiggerPockets Podcast Ask David Your Question David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Rob's YouTube Weather Underground How to Make a 120% Return by Buying “Negative” Cash Flow Real Estate Hear James and Kathy on the “On the Market” Podcast Articles from Today’s Show: Fed Rate Cuts Jobs Report Wall Street Landlord Bill Baby Boomers Book Mentioned in the Show: Pillars of Wealth by David Greene Connect with James: James' BiggerPockets Profile James' Instagram Connect with Kathy: Kathy's BiggerPockets Profile Kathy's Instagram Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-859 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 859.
What's going on, everyone, is David Green,
your host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.
Join today by my friends Rob Avasolo, James Dainard, and Kathy Fetke.
That's right.
We have a special show for you today.
We're bringing you a bigger new show.
We're changing it up today.
We couldn't do this without our two friends from our Bigger Pocket sister podcast on the market podcast to help us out today.
So welcome, Kathy and James.
How are you guys doing today?
Great.
So happy to be here with you guys.
I am always happy to hang out with you guys on the big show.
Yeah.
Well, happy to have you.
In today's show, we're going to be bringing you four recent news articles discussing things that are impacting the housing market and the economy at large.
We're going to be talking about the potential Fed interest rate cuts of 2024, the November jobs report, new legislation to take hedge funds out of the real estate game and the impact of baby boomers on the housing market.
This is a common show format that are friends from On the Market do, so please go check out their podcast after you're done listening to this one.
All right. Let's get into this. Kathy. Let's start with you. What have you got?
Oh, man. Big, big news. Big news. And perfect, since we're doing bigger news.
This article is from Business Insider. This is from a week or two ago. It was before the Fed met for the FOMC meeting.
And the topic is the Fed will likely cut interest rates four times next year as the economy remains resilient.
So if you understand the Fed, this is a confusing headline. First of all, it's wrong because just a
week later, when the Fed met and they, at the FOMC meeting, to decide if they would raise rates or not
raise rates or what they were going to do next year in the years following, they did, as you know,
pause, so we didn't get another rate hike. But what they did say is they'll probably
reduce rates three times next year in 2024 by a quarter percent. So they came out saying three,
the market was thinking four. There have been articles saying they think it's going to be six.
So the market has been too excited about the Fed pausing and saying that they're going to maybe cut
rates next year. So the market kind of got ahead of itself. And by that, I mean the bond market,
at the stock market, really thinking maybe there's going to be a recession in 2024, and then
there's going to dump rates back to where they were. According to what we heard last week,
it's just not the case. Maybe by 2025, 2026, we'll get down to, I don't know, a Fed fund rate
of two, two and a half percent. Right now it's twice that, or more than twice that at five and a
quarter to five and a half percent. Again, for, I mean, maybe maybe a few years ago people didn't really know
what the Federal Reserve is. Everybody knows today. Everybody's so affected by it. But people have been
second-guessing the Fed for a couple of years now and have been pretty wrong. They were wrong about how
quickly the Fed would raise rates. And I think now wrong about how quickly they might lower them.
I think they're going to do what they said and kind of hold steady. And I think James is going to
explain that when he talks about the jobs report in a minute. But what do you guys' thoughts on this?
I think that by the end of the episode today, they'll change it to cutting it to two times instead of four.
So you never know. You never know. They're always kind of switching back and forth. But I mean, hey, I'll take any cuts at this point.
You know, it is a concern over three weeks. I feel like they just like emotionally messing with us.
Because, you know, the article is what, two, two and a half weeks ago were up to six rate cuts. Then it's four. Now we're at three.
And at this point right now, you just kind of have to really, you need to pay attention to what they're saying, but you really want to look at what's actually going on around you.
You know, like when they were saying inflation wasn't that bad, but we could all feel it and then it skyrocketed.
Or when, you know, at the beginning of the rate increases, I think he said he was going to increase it to a federal funds rate of no higher than three and a half to four.
And then it shot right past there.
And so I take what they say with the grain of salt.
as I'm looking at deals going forward into the market, I'm just trying to be more pessimistic.
And then if they do cut rates, it's all upside from there.
One of the issues that I have with a lot of these articles is they'll say what Kathy just reported.
And then you look deeper and you realize the Fed never said that.
This was some projection from the Universal Bank of Switzerland or Barclays or something like that.
And they're like, well, based on what we think that the Fed meant when they said this thing that was also somewhat esoteric and hard to understand.
We predict six rate cuts to happen.
I mean, Kathy, what are your thoughts on how sometimes it feels like we're getting fed news just to have news?
No, I mean, that's exactly.
The Federal Reserve is a banking system, basically, quasi-government agency.
But you've got all these Fed presidents who get together and vote on where they're going to take the economy.
When they raise rates, their intention is to slow it down.
When they reduce rates, their intention is to basically, you know, fire up the economy.
So people, everybody, the world listens to everything that Jerome Powell says or any of the Fed presidents when they go around to speak and they're speaking a lot.
And it's like this interpretation game.
Like, what did they mean by that?
What did that word mean?
Are they bullish?
Are they dovish?
And there's a lot of guessing going on.
And I think that's where people have just kind of been wrong.
Like they are saying what they're going to do.
And they've been pretty clear about that.
that, I mean, yes, they've been wrong.
They were super wrong about inflation.
They thought and continued, you know, they thought that if you print lots of money
and expand the money supply and make rates zero percent and easy to get money,
that that wouldn't create inflation.
I think anybody here and anybody listening would say, no, that probably would create
inflation, and it did.
So they have definitely been wrong.
And I think they realized it, panicked, freaked out, raised rates quickly because
they have a dual mandate. They've got to keep inflation low and their targets 2%, but they also
have to create job growth. And that's kind of hard to do both because if you have too strong a job
growth, that can create inflation. If you don't have job growth, that can create deflation. So they're
walking this, you know, fine line and this tightrope. Shockingly, you guys, shockingly, it's looking
like they might achieve a soft landing. Like they've been flying this plane through a storm,
and they may just get it right because I think they're just as surprised to anybody at how robust
the job market has been. It just won't slow down. And that's what's caused so much confusion
is there was an expectation that when you hike rates from zero to five percent and throw the market
a curveball, that the result would be fewer jobs. So I would say that kind of leads us to James
in your article, what in the world's going on? What's going on with the job market that has
had the Fed raise rates and now pause.
So the November jobs report, and I always feel a little bit weird when a report on this,
because secretly I know that the Fed is looking to cool down an economy to get us back to
normal rates and get us more into a normal setting.
And every time this job reports comes out, like today in November, the New York Times
reported the U.S. job continues to be robust.
And what the article talks about is the unemployment rate dropped from 3.9 to 3.9 to 3.4.
So there's less people unemployed, and the employers added 199,000 jobs, which was higher than expected.
Last month, in October, they added 169,000 jobs.
And so what the articles is really referencing is we've added more jobs than last month,
and it looks like it's improving.
But the one thing about this article is I'm not really buying the headline.
You know, U.S. job growth continues to be robust.
Like it's coming right back.
The one really interesting stat is manufacturing.
There's a lot of strikes going on.
That was 30,000 jobs of the 199.
And so really it was on pace with September and October.
And this is still down from 262,000 jobs that were added in September.
And so, you know, it is showing that it is cooling down, which is what we're really looking for is to get into a more normal market.
As we know as employers, the cost of labor is incredibly high.
And it's hard to hire people.
It's hard to run your business.
It creates more inflation.
The more you have to hire people and the more you have to pay them, the more you have to charge.
As investors, the more cost of labor that goes into our new constructions are flipped.
That means pricing has to go up for it to make sense.
And we really do need this labor market to cool down.
And it's something that I really pay a.
attention to because no matter what's going on in those articles that they're predicting six cuts,
four cuts, three cuts, whatever it is, we know the logic is we have to cool things down. And it's something
I pay attention to every month because we want to see that trend coming down. And I feel like sometimes
when it gets reported, they kind of jump around a lot. Like, oh, it's coming back or it's slipping down.
The really good sign is the average monthly gains over the past 12 months were 312,000. So we are making
impact and slowing down the job market. And that's what we need to see to get some of these rate
release and to get the Fed to kind of back off their aggressive plan. I always read articles like
this and I'm always like, where are all these new jobs coming from? And what happened to all
the old jobs? At some point, like, do you just, can you infinitely like create new jobs?
Are there always, and then it's like, it seems like the big problem right now is filling those
jobs as well. Like everyone that I talk to in the labor force, uh, in fast food.
Honestly, the people I get hit the hardest are contractors for me can never find good workers.
And I wonder if that's just if that's mostly a result of the fact that nobody post-pandemic
really wants to get paid the same rates that they were before.
So it's always interesting kind of taking the roller coaster here and reading these reports
quarter to quarter because it always seems like there's always something that's like,
I don't know, getting a little kind of like there's always a new story as to what the problem is with the job market.
So right now, kind of seems like hiring people at the rates that we were hiring people at 2022
is not currently working for the majority of Americans.
What do you guys think about the information?
Do we think that this is going to trigger the Fed to make any changes in their policy?
I think they just, you know, stated what they're going to do.
And they, you know, had seen that report.
And they paused.
And, you know, they paused in December and didn't raise rates.
And they said they're actually going to reduce three times next year.
So I think they've already responded.
from what I read from the report, it sounds like a lot of those jobs were in health care, and a lot of those jobs were new government jobs.
So that's actually not too surprising, considering that our current administration is, you know, there's deficit spending right now.
And so what we're seeing is baby boomers are aging, and it kind of makes sense.
It's a huge, huge generation, and they're going to need health care.
So this is kind of expected.
That's why a lot of people have been investing in, you know, doctor's offices, so forth.
And it's health, I like to invest in cities that have a lot of hospitals nearby or, you know,
having Airbnbs near hospitals because, remember, this is a huge generation, getting older,
wanting to live forever, and they're going to want more health care.
Yeah, now, as long as the labor market is staying strong, that's good news for those that already
own real estate because the value of your property is less likely to decrease. And even more
importantly, your tenants are more likely to be able to pay those rent payments. A lot of the time,
we just assume that rent will be coming in whenever we buy a property. But in times of economic
problems or even depressions, people don't pay their rents. And you still got to make that payment
to the bank. So as long as the labor market is going strong and the economy is doing well, we are more
likely to see tenants making payments, which is a good sign for the near future. Now, so far we've
heard about the macro economy. We talked about the labor market and potential Fed rate cuts in
quarter two of 2024. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.
Now that we've spoken about the economy, let's discuss the housing market.
David, I believe you have the first article here.
Yes, I do.
And I was kind of happy to hear about this.
So basically, there is new legislation right now being proposed to take Wall Street out of the housing market, which I am not mad about.
So basically the legislation is saying that they don't want corporations to be buying properties anymore because they recognize that they're taking a lot of the housing inventory off of the market where normal people who want to live in a house will live.
And this is being proposed by Democrats, which makes sense because they're looking at.
out for the little guy here and their thoughts are the housing is expensive because there is too much
demand and not enough supply. Why is there not enough supply? Because these big hedge funds are buying all
the property. So if we can stop that, it would force more inventory back onto the market, which would
theoretically make prices go down and hopefully rents go down and we could make housing more affordable.
Now, the proposed legislation says that these hedge funds would have 10 years to liquidate their holdings.
And if they don't, they'll have significant fines and taxes levied on them. And they want to take those taxes,
and put them towards low-down payments for people that can't afford homes.
But what I didn't like about the article was that it didn't define exactly what hedge funds were.
They're calling it like a hedge fund act, but really it says corporations, which you or I
or other bigger pocket listeners could all be considered corporations if that's how we file the taxes.
So my concern was that this could move into a slippery slope where they say everybody can have
one house and one house only or something like that or you can only own it in an LLC.
you can't own it in an S corp or a C corp or maybe LLCs would still be considered corporations under this
legislation. So now everybody owns a house in their own name, which of course opens people up to lawsuits.
The bill is not expected to pass. There's a split Congress basically right now. They don't think that
they'll get enough votes to get this thing to pass. But the fact that it is being brought up could signal
potential relief for real estate investors who are tired of competing with huge hedge funds that can raise money
cheaper than a normal person can and can play the long game. Hedge funds can buy a property and lose
money on it for 20 or 30 years because they've got so much of it, whereas the normal person who's
just trying to get ahead really can't take that kind of a loss. So actually, they didn't specifically
define it from like a dollar amount or like a company amount in terms of how many employees they have,
but they did say that it was corporations, partnerships, or real estate investment funds that
manage funds pulled from investors. So it sounds like to me it's any reet or any kind of
506C fund or anything in that wheelhouse, which if that's the case, seems a little bit alarming
that I think it kind of seemed by the end of the article that one of the quotes was along the
lines that this is sort of like the first time that they're putting it out there and they're trying
to make a statement to hopefully make a little bit of progress towards it. But one of the things
that I found very interesting about this entire thing is that they want people who own more than
75 family homes to pay an annual fee of $10,000 per home that would go towards a fund that
would assist with down payment assistance and everything like that. But I'm just like $10,000 per
home that's like I feel like it clearly wasn't written by real estate investors because like
single family homes usually don't make nearly any of that amount in like in a year.
Oh my gosh. You know, my thoughts on this is first of all, you know, hedge funds, Wall Street.
they own such a tiny percentage of single-family rentals.
It's like three to five percent.
The 95 percent of people who own single-family rentals are mom and pops, people who listen to the show, people who are just trying to create a future for themselves and have a retirement plan and not be dependent on the government for, you know, for their old age.
that they'll be able to take care of themselves.
So I get frustrated when I hear this.
Now, I don't think this legislation would attack those mom and pops.
But I do.
I will, full disclosure, I'm a fund manager.
We have a single family rental fund.
This would potentially affect me.
And I'm not really giving my opinion based on that.
I just think it's misinformation is the best way to say.
It's such a tiny percentage of single family rental.
out there and there's a need for them. Not everybody can can buy a home right now. It's 45% more expensive
to own a home than to rent one right now. I think it depends on where you are, but there's a lot of
people who say, yeah, I just want to rent right now. I'm not going to pay more for the same house,
right? So why is it such a terrible thing that, you know, to provide housing for people? So I don't like
this. But I do think there's a different way to go about it. And man, if I could just talk to a
legislator or come up with some way. Like, I do get frustrated when my friends are trying to buy
their first home and they get outbid by a hedge fund. I always think priorities should go to the
homeowner somehow. I know California tried to pass something like this where, you know, for a 30-day
period, it had to be a homeowner who buys it, not a fund. Something like that at the acquisition side,
I saw my friends get bid out, bid out, bid out. They could not compete with an all-cash hedge fund offer,
you know so or maybe you know like some other countries they charge more higher taxes for investors so
there might be another way to go about it but yeah it just it needs to be thought through a little bit
better part of the way that it was framed was they brought up micro environments like little ecosystems
where hedge funds went in there and bought a ton of the properties like they mentioned that one neighborhood
in east charlotte in 2021 and 22 over half of the homes were bought by hedge funds right so when you hear that
you're like, we have to do something to stop this right now.
It's going to be terrible.
But if you've been paying attention, these funds typically buying areas with very strong
price to rent ratios, they're usually lower income housing where they're going to get some
form of cash flow for what they're doing there.
My concern was like, I wouldn't be personally upset if we stopped BlackRock for buying more
properties.
I don't like them going in and swooping it all up, right?
I don't want that to become a slippery slope where it turns into nobody can own more than
two homes or something like that because then you're just going to.
to have a lot of houses sitting vacant or they sell for dirt cheap prices like to someone who doesn't
know how to manage it and the houses all fall into disrepair the values come down the property taxes
come down neighborhoods fall apart you do need somebody owning the homes that are going to take care
of them yeah i don't buy this article as much i feel like this is an election season
kind of you know we're going into the next election season which is typically going to you know
improve some things in the economy hopefully help us with some rates but it's kind of a finger-pointing
thing right now there's very low inventory people can't get housing cost of money's high and i do feel like
it's kind of a scapegoat to start pointing their fingers at the hedge fund saying well we're going to stop this
so it will bring more inventory to the market but like kathy said they own three percent of the houses
that is not going to move the needle that much and i feel like it's just more of a finger pointing thing
and for even us as investors we you know there was a large hedge fund that bought what three or four
thousand homes in the Pacific Northwest. And I remember them coming into the market. And we feel like
we're very active investors. And we were concerned for a minute. And then we looked at what they were
buying. And from an investor standpoint, we wanted nothing to do with what they are buying.
We're like, you're buying at what return, what rate, what product. It was not in most of our buy boxes.
But the sad thing about the hedge funds is they're really competing against the first time
homebuyers, not the other investors. You know, that FHA, 3.5 percent down.
buyer that's looking for a nice four-bedder three-bath house in a community. That's what they're
going after. So as far as an investor goes, I don't think they really moved the needle much for us.
It doesn't, if anything, we just sold them a lot of houses and it was a great revenue center
for us. But, you know, them being a little bit restricting in certain areas, I do feel like that
is a good idea because I have heard in the background in seeing some smaller hedge funds
kind of control pricing in neighborhoods to increase their asset values.
And they buy higher and higher in certain neighborhoods just to increase their portfolio values.
And so some restrictions would be good because we don't want the market getting artificially
moved around because when these hedge funds come in in waves, they can move, move, move the needle.
And it can really affect the small people, not the big guys.
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Now Rob, you've got the last article of the day. Why don't you go ahead and bring the boom?
That's right. Okay. So this article is called Baby Boomers are winning the housing market again with all
cash purchases. Basically, the oldens are buying. All right, that is the too long didn't read. The
the older generation, they've got lots of equity, lots of wealth that they've built up over
the year. And it was actually a pretty staggering number. I felt I was really surprised to read that
the baby boomer generation have about a $75 trillion nest egg, $75 trillion with the T. That is a lot
of freaking money. And so during the pandemic, they actually helped stimulate the economy quite a bit
with their spending. And now, as we move into 2023, 2024, a lot of them are going from spending a lot
to actually buying houses. And they are actually buying houses really at an alarming rate in all
cash. They are basically the biggest cash buyer of all the other demographics. And one of the reasons that
they kind of pointed to were some of the more obvious reasons, like because they're older,
they've had more time to build wealth through their 401ks. They've had more time to own their
homes. And because they have owned their homes for so much longer than pretty much the rest of
the population. They've built a ton of equity that they've been able to use to get into new
properties. But one of the things that I wanted to point out about this in this specific article was
the reason that they're kind of succeeding right now is they are able to avoid all of the
high interest mortgage rates right now and they're buying cash. And overall, 34.1% of U.S.
home purchases in September were made in cash. That's up about 5% from 2014. And among young boomers,
58 to 67, the number making all-cash home purchases in 2023 is 32%. And among older boomers,
that stat actually changes to 51% up from about 32%. So a lot of them seem to be coming out of
the woodwork, I guess, buying in all-cash. But it's kind of making this a little bit more
competitive for millennials and for people wanting to break into the market because they're
basically competing against these all-cash offers that most of the time when you hear about
this in the articles and stuff like that. You hear that these all cash offers are coming from like
these hedge funds and everything like that. But at this current time in the economy, these all cash offers
are seemingly coming from mostly baby boomers. Yeah. And we've seen this a lot in the last 60 days
in the Pacific Northwest. And it's actually very interesting what's going on right now. And I think
there's a lot more cash on single family houses because, A, baby boomers are transitioning out.
But I also think multifamily investors are transitioning out and getting away.
from multifamily and buying single family.
And they're buying new construction single family is what I'm seeing quite a bit.
And I think the reason being is what we've seen in a lot of these metro cities is the new
construction product dipped, like townhomes, tight development product, that came down the quickest
with the interest rate.
You know, we saw a 15, 20% shock on some of that product to where some of the stuff is
almost at replacement costs.
You know, they're being sold for 450.
to $500 a foot, and it costs $380 to build it.
And so there's more value there.
And what we haven't seen the inventory loosen up as much in the multifamily space.
So what I feel like's happening right now, we've seen five, 10, 1331 exchanges on our townhome sites in the last 60 days.
Some investors are buying two to three at a time inside these sites because they're buying, they have better value than the multifamily.
Their insurance costs are lower because they're built to newer code.
So they don't have to get that same insurance premium.
is an older multifamily.
And it's really good for the short-term and the mid-term rental space versus multifamily, too.
So you can artificially improve your income through short-term rentals.
And I feel like this is going to be the trend for new construction going forward because
people are just reloading their money in.
They're getting better value.
They're getting better tenants.
They have better income.
And that's why we're seeing the surge in cash purchases.
Because outside of that and our normal single-family property, four-bed three,
bath, 20 years old, 30 years old, that is still going to a finance person. But the newer product's
actually trading a little bit more in cash. So I'm going to be the voice of the boomer. I'm a cusp.
I'm a Gen X boomer, sort of in between there somewhere. And I will say for all you young people
listening and hating on the boomers for having such enormous wealth, I just want you to fast
forward 30 years to when you're going to be old. And hopefully in 30 years, you've done really well.
You've worked hard, you've invested, you've saved your money, and now you can buy investment properties with cash.
So just think of it from that perspective.
Boomers, many of them had to work their way up, and they've done it for many years, and here they are.
You know, they bought low, and many are sitting on a ridiculous amount of equity.
My point is just that it is astounding how much wealth the baby boomers have.
They've gone through, you know, think of the last 30 years.
been recessions. There's been massive recessions. Many of them got wiped out. And it was just maybe
10, 15 years ago that the headlines were baby boomers aren't going to be able to retire. So a lot of
this really just happened over the last 15 years with the market, you know, going up like crazy,
both the stock market and the housing market. So like I said, with the way that the government loves money,
and both parties, I'm not picking on a party, all governments love money. And now they can print,
they've gotten used to printing. I don't think this is the end of inflation. So get in, know that in 20, 30 years,
you're going to be in the same position. That's my thoughts on it. Okay, let me ask a question here,
a follow-up question for the group, because y'all might have the answer to this more than I do. But,
you know, I always tell people that back in the day, housing prices were less, and it's all
relative to the inflation that you've faced kind of as you've, you know, as we've gone through the ages or whatever.
However, I think that the main argument and why millennials are typically mad is that wages have now
increased. They've not stayed abreast with inflation and with the cost of rising housing prices and
everything like that. So buying back in the day was not easier, just a little bit more obtainable
with the kind of like the average daily rate or average daily wage, if you will.
You know, I don't remember it ever being easy. You know, and I'm born and raised in California,
so it's always been expensive. But even when my dad bought his house for $99,000 in the most
expensive neighborhood in California in Atherton, that was considered very unaffordable.
So it's not the baby boomer problem. It's just that they're old. And what the problem is,
is this addiction to money creation, which in the 70s, you know, was really frowned upon.
Whenever the government printed money, it was headline news and like, oh, they better stop.
Now it's just become normal. And because it's become normal, we're going to see more inflation.
and you can blame the people who bought things that inflate,
or you can just be one of them.
Because I assure you, in 20 years, you'll be in the same position.
It's always been hard.
I don't actually think anyone is mad at boomers.
I think people are mad at the attitude of like,
hey, yeah, you can do it too.
But now this generation, especially millennials,
like one of the things that this article made note of
is that the reason boomers are pretty much ahead
and they're less way down by debt,
like you were talking about, Kathy.
they've had more time to build up their wealth and they don't have the burden of debt like student loans.
And that is a big problem that millennials have right now. That is one of the biggest groups that have
student loans. And I think that seems to be the big point of resentment for millennials is they pay a lot of money in student loans, thus they can't afford houses.
And I don't know. There's maybe some like they've got to find, they got to play the victim a little bit.
But I don't know if it's always apples to apples. Yeah, I think there's some encouragement that comes out of this article because like Kathy said, when you're the boomer of
whatever that's going to be called at the point where when millennials, isn't that a funny idea
that we're going to be referring to millennials. We will be boomers. Yeah. Yeah, we'll be boomers in about
20 years. That's exactly right. But like when you give yourself 30 years of your asset growing and
inflation diminishing the currency and you becoming wealthy and building skills and working and saving
money and all the things that boomers have done, you too will be the person who's in the position to
be able to buy houses with cash. So let's focus on that and making moves today that will put us in
the position so that you don't have boomer regret. You don't want to be the boomer who's at the high
school reunion party who has nothing to say for their time because they never bought assets and
they found excuses not to take action. So Rob, you have something? Listen, all I know, all I know is that
if Al Bundy could be a shoe salesman and support a family of three, then I should be able to today in
2023 as well. That is true. I've said this before. In the 70s, my dad sat us down and said,
I'm very concerned. This is the last time that it will be possible for one person to work and
support a family. And it was because of the money printing. It's like when you expand the money
supply without expanding the goods, that creates inflation. So the more that we ask for things for free
from the government, the more inflation we get in the bigger the problem. So it's really important
that people will be educated and understand what the real issue is. It's not the people who rode the
inflation wave and made money. It's how that is happening and how can we stop that. How can we stop the
spending? Your dad sounds like a smart man. That's kind of crazy. They saw the writing on the wall in the
70s. Yeah. I opened the book Pillars of wealth talking about how we think that we're sitting on some
stairs. And if we choose not to work hard and save that we just don't go up. But you're actually
standing on an escalator that's going down. That's what inflation does. And if you're not making progress,
you're actually falling behind. You're becoming more poor by making less money while everything else
becomes more expensive, which is why we're so glad that you're here with us now,
keeping abreast of what's going on on the news, the current trends, and what you can do to get
ahead financially and build your wealth, specifically through real estate, so that you can be
running up that down escalator and getting stronger and further ahead while everybody else falls
behind. Thanks so much, everybody, for joining me today. And bringing your insight and knowledge
into these articles and interpreting them for our audience. Really appreciate all of you.
If you would like more information on any of the host from today's show, you can do so by
finding it in the show notes.
And let me know in the comments below.
What was your dream job when you were first thinking about being a grown-up and working?
And what do you think that my shoe size is?
We're going to use Rob's Al Bundy reference here and see if you were going to sell me shoes.
What size would you bring?
This is David Green for Rob Peggy.
Abas Solo, signing off.
Love in the marriage.
Love in the marriage.
Mounted dead and dint and boom.
Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.
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