KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Build Wealth in a Down Market: Leaders Anticipate, Losers React

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Summary:This episode is a powerful masterclass on building wealth in a changing or down real estate market. The hosts provide a a crucial mindset shift, arguing that while average agents react to market changes, true leaders anticipate them and find opportunities for growth. The discussion is highly tactical, offering a blueprint for identifying investment opportunities, preparing your finances, and leveraging market fear to your advantage. It's a must-listen for any agent who wants to use a market shift not as a setback, but as a slingshot for their business and personal wealth.

Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be Uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor Chris Craddock and Jeff Safright. here we go. Welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate Podcast. I'm your host Chris Craddick and I am super excited to share with you today. Some of my takeaways from last week being with Tony Robbins. Man, the man is the goat and I want to share why. I've listened to Tony Robbins for years and I really love a lot of the stuff he shares, but there was a difference when I was in person. But before we get into that, I just want to remind you.

everybody why we do this podcast. We do this podcast because we want to help everybody be excellent at their craft and take that and build wealth. And the definition of wealth I have is when your money works harder than you work. And that's the biggest problem with real estate agents. Real estate agents don't buy their own product. They don't invest in themselves. They don't find MRR, right? What is MRR? MRR is what all of my wealthiest friends talk about, which is the most important piece of their portfolio, man, say that 10 times fast, important piece of your portfolio, but it is, it really is the most important piece of your portfolio. Boom, nailed it. But with it, it's monthly recurring revenue. That is what

that is, is MRR. And what it, what that means is when money comes in when you're not working. So think about Netflix. The reason Netflix was valued so high for so many years and now I know it's lost some of its value. So go ahead and send your trolley comments. I'll take it. I'll take it. But the reason why Netflix was valued so high is because it had automatic revenue, automatic income. It was literally just every single month you paid, whether you're watching it or not, you didn't have to think about it. It's on auto deposit. We just, the house that we're moving into, I just set up our Verizon account and to get Fios over there. And because we're getting camera set up and we need to just get all that stuff done here.

And one of the things they do is $10 off if you auto pay. Why is that? Because it's worth way more than $10 to them to have people auto pay, not chase them down, make it automatic. So that's why MRR is so powerful in wealth building. All right. So with that said, I am going to pull out my notes. All right.

So the first thing we need to understand is this. Leaders anticipate losers react. leaders anticipate losers react what do i mean by this i think there's a couple different pieces of this so one the market right now what is going on in the market are we able to see what's coming and anticipate are we able to see the patterns are we able to look at the economic indicators are we able to understand what the future holds and listen i understand we don't have a crystal ball if we did we'd all be in a beach in tahiti right now but do we have a good basis to make informed economic decisions. And so if we don't, then we're just guessing. And when we're guessing,

it means that we're being ignorant. And when there's ignorance, there's fear. Right. And so we don't want to have fear. We want to make informed decisions. So the question that we need to ask ourselves is how do we anticipate here? Anticipation, what we're seeing is we're in officially in a recession. We have seen the stock market has lost a third of its value. Cryptocurrency has lost two thirds of its value. Real estate is losing some value. But we're still just, we're digressing back to values. We're still above, but digressing back to values of last year, 2021. And so we have to ask ourselves, where is the best place to put our money? Is it also, is it in the bank? If you put $10,000 in cash in the bank, what is it worth?

It's still worth like $10,000 plus your like half a percent interest. But because of inflation, it's worth so much less. So what do we know? need to ask ourselves. If the real estate market is going down, let's say it's going down a little bit, right? And it's not following suit with the stock market or anything else. It's still going down some. What should we do with our money? Where should we put it? We've only got a couple places to put it. Here's how I would say anticipation works. Anticipation is saying, all right, let's look at, and we use this phrase in negotiating, but I also think we should use this phrase in pretty much every area of our life. It's called bat an negotiating. What's your

best alternative to a negotiated agreement? Batna. And so I think we need to ask that same question in our investing, right? What's our bat now? What's our best alternative to doing whatever it is that I'm going to do now? So I don't know what that phrase stands for bat that I'm sorry. That was cheesy. My kids would kill me for that joke. But with that said, what is our alternative to doing what we're doing right now. And here's why I believe that real estate is still the best place to put our money. And honestly, I'm just about to go under contract for another house. I'm going to flip one and I'm going to hold one as a rental property, another one as a rental property. And the reason why I'm doing that is because as a rental, when you own real estate as a rental, you can renegotiate everything.

So if we're going to anticipate, what do we need to anticipate? So right now, the interest rates are going to up and they're probably going to continue to go up because we have to combat inflation and inflation is going to be bad for a little while. And honestly, here's the other side. Whenever this thing with Ukraine and Russia cools down, which it will, it has to at some point. Maybe it'll go on for forever. Some of the stuff we were dealing with in the Middle East. But at some point, it's probably going to have to cool down because of the sanctions on the Russian people. Like, something is going to have to change. And so when that happens, the fuel lines will open back up, all these other things that are increasing the prices of everything around us.

And just think about that. When fuel goes up, cost of shipping goes up, cost of everything goes up. So the interesting thing is, and that is part of the inflated dollar, the other pieces that our government just decided to spend a lot of stuff and printed a lot of cash, not realizing, okay, let's give a $1,400 stimulus check to people, but then somebody has to pay for it. And so now we're paying for it in taxes. And it's not actually raising our taxes.

the tax was they just printed the money and then it then the tax is inflation right so that was a government-induced tax on us and please understand i'm not getting political here although i am both trump and biden both made that that terrible decision so you can blame both parties for that i'm not saying one side or the other is the right side on this um but when the prices of everything are going up real estate if you lock into a 30-year fixed loan you know you are locked in on your payments. The other piece is this. Let's say you're in on a, like the rate I'm getting right now, five and a half percent, right, on my investment property. And if you're in on a five and a half percent investment property, you look at it and you're like, okay, five and a half percent,

what does that mean? It's less than the price of inflation. And so if inflation is going up faster than that, which we're seeing between 79% inflation, and although I think the real number is closer to 15%, because the dollar store is the $1.25 store, then your prices on real estate, rents will go up, but you're locked in, right? The only thing that goes up for you is your cost of insurance and your cost of taxes. Those will go up. And you think about it, right? The cost of housing in the 70s was $22,000 for a house nationwide. And now it's 400, I think it's like 422. 2000 was what our nationwide average cost per for properties are. Right. Like the prices are going to go up as we we see inflated dollars happen. So when you buy real estate, inflation actually helps us, right?

It helps us a lot because we're locked in, but the price goes up. And so we say, aren't the prices going down? Over time, there has never been a point in history where over time, prices have gone down. It's not timing the market. It's time in the market. So that's the really important thing to understand. The next piece is this. Again, we're talking about anticipation here. The next piece is this. If anytime, historically, let's look at patterns, historically, historically, anytime our government was working to get out of a recession, what they did was they lowered taxes and they raised or and they lowered interest rates. They incentivized people to do things that are going to create income for our country,

jobs, for people, all the different pieces. And so lower interest. rates and lower taxes do that. What does that mean? It means that if we get in right now to a property that is the prices are being suppressed because of the interest rates being higher, what happens with that is once they lower interest rates, we'll be able to renegotiate the price we have on the house because we'll be able to, it's called refinancing. All refinancing is renegotiating your property. Here's the other reason why real estate is a different asset, right? It's just in a class of its own, right? You can, you can rent out real estate by the room or by the house. If you rent it out by the room, it's more, it requires more work, right? There's sweat equity, but you can rent it out

for a whole lot more so you can actually make more money on the same investment. Here's the other piece. You could put in, you could put additions on real estate. You could rent out a basement and rent out the upstairs separately. You could change it and do a short term rental. You can renegotiate by by refinancing the rate. All of these things make real estate an asset that's just so different. The other piece of this as well is as you have forced pay down, as somebody else pays for your investment for you, right, whether it's cash flowing or whether it's like break even and somebody else is just paying it down, you will end up having equity. And when you have equity, you can go to the bank and take money out and refinance that money. You take it out and that's a non-taxable

event. So let me explain to you about the most recent purchase I made about a month and a half ago. So I bought a house for just under $60,000. And I put in, I don't know, like 40 grand into it. So I'm into it for just under 100 grand is what I'm into it for. I'm able to refine it appraised for $215,000. I refinanced the property. And they're giving me because it's a little further out of my area. They're giving me less money. So they're only giving me a 65% loan to value. So they're giving me, I think it's $136,000 back. So I paid into it $100,000. I'm getting $136,000 back. So I'm getting more money back than what I put into it. But the great thing is, if I were to flip that house, that $36,000 or however much money I would have made on the property, if I flipped it, that's all

taxable income. But because of the fact that it's non-taxable when you take a loan on an asset, real estate. It's a non-taxable event. And therefore, I get that $36,000 tax-free. As long there's some caveats to it, you got to use, anyway, bottom line is there's some caveats. But I get that money tax-free. So those are just little things that we can understand in why real estate is, it really is the dope. The greatest of all time when it comes to investment. The other pieces, you just keep it, you set it and forget it. And that is it. So with that said, anticipate, anticipate. What does the future hold? And if you, I asked my buddy when I was at the Tony Robbins conference,

the guy that I was staying with, I asked him, I was like, if it was 2011 again and you knew what you knew now, but you had no money, what would you do? And he was like, Chris, I would borrow. And I was like, and you didn't know who would win games so you couldn't bet on sports bets or anything like that or lottery bets, mega millions, any of that stuff. I was like, what would you do? And he was like, I would leverage everything I had and I would buy as money. as much real estate as I possibly could buy because I know what it is. And then I asked this question.

I said, so if we're learning from Tony and we can look at patterns and we can look at the future, what we know is that real estate's going to go up over time. Why wouldn't you just do that now? And we're both like, I don't know. So anyway, that's it. Leaders anticipate losers react. And if you can have these conversations with people, I think it changes the whole game. here was the other thing that I thought was really interesting and this was about like our mental state he said there were studies done on monkeys and as much as I don't want to be called a monkey I kind of act like one sometimes here's the deal they gave a monkey an apple right and the monkey was super excited like all my kids act like that and then they gave another monkey two apples and the monkey

was almost exactly as excited maybe a little bit more but then the crazy thing was they took one of the apples away from the monkey. And so the one monkey with the one apple was super excited, super happy. He got his apple. He's eaten away. Whatever. The other monkey was throwing a tantrum, throwing a fish because he only had one apple, right? When he had two and now he only has one. What does that mean? I think all of us are, if you're in real estate, you went from a place where we were riding a big wave. It was easy. If you were boogie boarded, it was easy to catch that wave and make some money. The difference is it's going to be a little bit harder. We're going to have to convince people, no, like sitting on the fence is not where you want to be. You've got to convince people

how to move. So you're going to have to level up your game at a much, much higher level than you've ever had to do it in the last couple of years. And, you know, houses no longer get like 43 offers overnight. It just doesn't happen anymore. So now we're going to have to actually sell properties. We're going to have to do a good job. Marketing. We're just going to have to up our game by a lot. And so when stuff like that happens, we have a couple different ways that we can react. The first way is we can be like the monkey that got our apple taken away, but we still have an apple. I'm telling you what, we still have an apple. And we can be happy about it or we can be pissed off. Oh, it's hard. Yeah, of course it's hard. If it's easy,

everybody would do it. It's never easy, but it's definitely going to be harder than it has been. so instead of wishing it was easier wish you were better i've heard that phrase so many times and it's so powerful so that's one and then number two is this i love this there was a girl from czechoslovakia that shared at this conference and it was an expe conference i'm not going to be pitching exp don't worry although yeah you should talk to me about getting into business together on that front but she was talking about the revsher opportunity right and like calling people about it so let's just Take that aside for all you that are not EXP people and just think listings and buyers or whatnot. Like making those phone calls for listings and buyers.

And she said, I think about growing up in Czechoslovakia. They came to the States with $100 because that's all my parents had. And she was on scholarship as a track athlete. And she was like, man, I think about making my phone calls and nobody wants to make their phone calls. And she said, why? Because she's afraid people are going to be mean to them. She people are not going to be nice. And she was like, man, if you go to Czechoslovakia, where people like, all they have in the world is $100, and you say to them, hey, you can make a couple hundred thousand dollars.

You can make a million dollars by just making a couple phone calls. But most of the time on the phone calls, people are going to be really mean to you. But you could make a million dollars if you just make your phone calls. She was like, everybody would be like, wait, I didn't make a million dollars, but people would be very, mean to me or I could live here with $100. That's all I have to my name. And the whole idea was just like Tony put it where it's about our perspective. Like the idea that people are mean to us so we don't make our phone calls. Jeez, like think about that. Like just think about that. I really have big goals for my life. But I'm not going to make my phone calls. I'm not going to do the work because I'm

afraid somebody isn't going to be nice to me on the phone. What are they going to say? Or I'm afraid I won't know what to say. So I'm going to do nothing. And I'm going to do nothing. And and settle for the life that I'm living right now. That to me was just a super powerful question. Man, why don't we make our phone calls? Because we're afraid. And that goes back to the phrase, the phrase I just love, right?

Where there's ignorance, there's fear. We get fearful of what might happen because we don't know what they're going to say. We don't know what we might say. We don't know how it could go. Or maybe we're like, what if? And if we say what if, that's ignorance. What if they say this?

I don't know. it's that idea of not knowing. So those are some of the things there. Now I'm going to share one thing. This actually did not come from Tony. And I've got a lot more from Tony. I want to share. This actually came from that same friend that I was talking with. He was, he's been doing a lot of study from this rabbi, Daniel Lapham. And the whole idea behind this, and I know some people come from diverse backgrounds, but I want to share it just from my background. I'm a Christian guy and I come from faith. And so this rabbi was talking about the Old Testament. And one of the things that John asked me, he said, this is one of the things the rabbi said. And so I'm just thinking about it. I'm not telling you that this is definitely it. But I think that there's something here. One of the things the rabbi said is when you look at the Old Testament that Jewish people, even today, have disproportionate success when it comes to wealth. So why is that? And his point is, because there's a guidebook in the Old Testament. And then the second question was, what was the opposite of wealth to the people?

ancient nearest cultures. And the opposite of wealth, I would have said poverty. That's what most people says. Rabbi Lapham would say, no, it was wickedness. And I'm like, oh, wow, that's something I need to think about. And because you think of Mother Teresa, some of these other folks that are the just amazing people, but they also lived in poverty. But the whole idea was that if you act in a way that's wise, the reward is going to be wealth. And obviously, there's some stuff to unpack there, but I thought that was just a really interesting thing to think through, like the marketplace rewards wisdom and rewards value, right? And so I hate the idea of saying, hey, if you're not wealthy, then you're not wise or you're not valuable. That's not what I want to say. But I do want to

at least explore this a little bit and just say, okay, let's just assume for a second. Let's just spend disbelief for just one second and say, okay, maybe that's true. Then what is, what is that require of us? Again, as a Christian guy, there's a verse that says to much is given, much is demanded. I do believe that I've been given a whole heck of a lot. And it is not just because I know that all the stuff going on politically, white male, all of the other stuff that I have a disproportionate advantage. And that may be true. I'm not going to get into that or argue that I've been given a lot. But here's my argument. I don't care who you are or where you stand in life.

There are other people that would love to trade places with you. There are people like think of the most poverty-stricken third world people. They would love to trade places with you, which if we unpack that, we realize that you've been given a lot. You could have grown up in a slum in a third world country where you don't have medical care. You don't have anything. but you've been given a lot and you have this opportunity here in real estate and all we've got to do is make our calls, do our job, and it puts us in a place where we can have a disproportionate advantage over so many people all over the world that don't have the opportunities that you have.

So I just want to push with this to much is given, much is demanded. And I don't know your state right now, but I do know this, no matter how rough you think you have it, no matter how hard you think it may be, you've been given a lot and you have the ability to transcend where you are today tenfold, a hundredfold. I don't think you even understand how much you can unlock in your business, in your life, if you were to just take the gifts that you've been given and run with them. And you know what? People are going to be mean. People are going to say bad things about you. Your friends now, when you decide that you are no longer going to stay in the same wealth pocket that you're in today, your friends that you are friends

with now are going to say, who do you think you are? They're not going to understand you what, oh, you think that you deserve to be the guy with a yacht. You deserve to be the girl with your own private jet. I don't know what your dreams are. Like I'm just, I'm speaking big dreams, like a private jet, a yacht, like all of the other stuff. When people start saying that to you, that means you're thinking in the right place. But then what that also means is we need to find people in our life, that we look at them and say, man, I really want to be like them when I grow up. I want to have what they have. And that doesn't just mean materially. Please understand. When I say, I want to have what they have, I mean, their relationships. I mean, their friendships,

the way they interact with their spouse, the way they interact with their kids. Like, yeah, and financially. And in their business, man, look at their business. When somebody has a bigger business than you, I'll tell you what. They understand things that you. don't understand. And this is the last thing I'm going to say before we finish this. We can throw shade at people. Like there's a number of people that have bigger businesses than me. And there are times where I'm like, oh, I've got this going. They don't. Just being vulnerable for a second. I like, I'll make myself feel better on that. But then when I get down and dirty with myself and I just realize, no, you know what? Yeah, maybe I do have some

blessings and some stuff that they don't have. That's fine. But I can't throw shade at them and just say, they got that by working all the time. They got that by being, like, that's just not fair. You need to honor them for what they did and say, how can I be better? Because you can be. And that's the whole thing. Don't believe the lie that you're where you have to stay. You can be better. Understand that. Believe that. Know that. You've been given a lot. You have the opportunity to do a lot. Now it's time to get up and do it. So anyway, I hope, I hope this was helpful from an information, but also from a motivational perspective, because obviously we can be motivated. You can motivate an idiot and you just got a motivated idiot. So I think it's important for us to grow

and have knowledge and wisdom and insight. But I think it's also important for us to be motivated so that we don't just collect knowledge as a hobby and we don't just run around like an idiot, not knowing what to do. You've got to pair those together. And that's where super incredible things happen. So anyway, this has been great being here with you today. If I can serve anybody here, please reach out to me. I really want to be available. So feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at Crowd Rock. Please give us an honest review wherever you're listening to this on the podcast. And honestly, the other thing, again, I'm not pitching this all the time, but I do want to start letting people know. I know that anybody out there, I can help you put one to four more deals

every single month in your pipeline. And so that's what we're doing with the XP. If you want to talk about partnering together and see if I can just what I can do to help you put one to four more deals pending every single month. That's what I want to do. I want to partner people and help them be super successful. So if I can do that for you, please reach out. And until then, go live uncommon. Kid butt, take names. See ya. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date with the latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff, and other uncommon real estate industry leaders. If you love, love this podcast, please write us a review. And to fast track your real estate career, go to

Chris Craddock.com.