KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Is NAR Worth the Investment? Real Estate Pros Break It Down

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

SummaryIn the wake of major industry changes, the question of whether a membership in the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is a worthwhile investment is more critical than ever. This episode brings together real estate professionals to break down the true value of being a Realtor, from the prestige of the brand and advocacy efforts to the practical costs and new obligations. Get a clear, balanced perspective on the pros and cons to help you make an informed decision for your career in today's evolving market.Bullet Point TakeawaysThe Value of the REALTOR® Brand & Ethics: Understand the prestige and credibility that comes with the REALTOR® title. Members agree to a strict Code of Ethics, which can differentiate you in the marketplace and build client trust. NAR also provides exclusive marketing assets and consumer education campaigns that promote the value of working with a professional.Advocacy, Resources, and Networking: Discover how a significant portion of your dues is invested in advocacy efforts at the local, state, and national levels to protect property rights and promote homeownership. Membership also grants you access to exclusive market data, research reports, educational opportunities, and a network of professionals that can be vital for your business growth.The Impact of the NAR Settlement: The recent settlement brings about major industry shifts that directly affect the value of NAR. Learn about the new rule prohibiting compensation offers on the MLS and the mandate for written buyer agreements before showing homes. These changes are reshaping how agents do business and will require you to clearly articulate your value to clients.Cost vs. Benefit: The main consideration for agents is the financial investment. Membership requires paying annual dues at the national, state, and local levels, which can amount to hundreds of dollars. The episode discusses how these costs should be weighed against the tangible benefits and exclusive perks, such as access to legal hotlines and special discounts on business tools and services.MLS Access & Competitive Advantage: In many markets, being a Realtor is still the primary pathway to getting MLS access, which is a critical tool for running a real estate business. The episode explores how this, combined with other member benefits like access to the Realtors Property Resource (RPR) database, can still provide a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing industry.Topics:NAR Worth the InvestmentReal Estate Pros NARNational Association of RealtorsNAR Settlement ImpactRealtor Benefits and CostsCall-to-ActionReady to get the full breakdown on NAR? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and get the insights you need to decide if membership is worth the investment for you!

You're listening to the John Kitchens podcast experience. This is your host, John Kitchens. Get ready to gain clarity, build confidence, and uncover the framework to become the CEO of your real estate business. Your journey to seven figures. Success starts now. What is happening, everybody, man. Thank you guys.

Tuning in to another episode of One Big Fire. We've got the boys in the house. We have been bringing other fires, other guests in. And now it's just the three of us. We get to chop it up, which is always fun. I always look forward to to this time jumping in with you guys. And, you know, I love the new format, really just being able to hit hot topics, diving in, kind of a little rapid fire style.

And today is definitely no different. And, you know, Al, I want to kick us off a little bit what cousin and I were talking about before we came online. You know, I had, you know, one of our longtime friends, clients, rock stars, true honey badger, Cindy Featherstone Shields down in Tyler, Texas. She hit me up about, we were on a call. call maybe two months ago. And she hit me with the question. She was like, do you know what NAR does for us? Do you know what NAR does? And of course, you know, my default is because, you know,

I just I really don't pay attention to what NAR does. I get the gist, you know, hey, we pay our money times 1.5 million realtors. How much money do they have? They're over lobbying. And she goes, listen. She goes, real estate as we know, it would not be the same if it wasn't for NAR, right? what are they the second second largest behind chamber of commerce or something like that and then being able to go and lobby and fight for us and it's not what they bring to the table it's what they allow to not change and she started rifling off she said you can go to the website you can see everything they're lobbying for she goes you know 1031 exchange would be gone she goes the push she goes real estate agents would be would be employees would not be 1099

contractors just like she just starts rifling all this stuff else. All right. Banks would be in real estate already. So that's, yeah, massive, right? So as we were talking, I had her on expert mentors last week. She kind of really broke it down. She had to speak on it. So, of course, she did the deep work, and she went in and really uncovered and pulled all the nuggets and really understood. And she had actual conversations with important people within, you know, that ecosystem.

And I saw one of Ricky Caruth's post. might have been from the weekend or a little bit earlier, and he was hitting on the same point. And it just reminded me of the conversations that we've had, but also what Leo was sharing in Cleveland. He's mentioned it on many other talks, and it's like, you know, it's the whole thing, right? You're not just problem, you're just not aware, right?

There's an awareness issue of the analogy we like to use, right? A fish doesn't know anything above water, right? it just knows everything below. And until you've experienced real estate and how real estate is done outside of the United States and Canada, you have no clue. And Jay, you always laugh. You're like, come to Puerto Rico and get you some, right?

So I just don't think people understand, you know, we're the envy of the world when it comes to real estate. And so explain a little bit of like, if that was to go away, It's awful. So here in Puerto Rico, they have MLSs that's not required to be a part of an MLS. And there's no, like just in this neighborhood that I'm in, there's no signs on properties. You have to basically, you got to go back and live in the early 2000s and think about going to, you know, when you used to go to homes.com and there would be a listing that would be there.

And then there would be the same listing listed again at a different price. and then you see you see it multiple places. That's what happens here. So you go to the classifieds of Puerto Rico. You're going to see the same property listed. Some of it will be the same. Some of it will be another agent list that would have put it on there. Might have been expired.

Might have been from five years ago. You know, I have no idea what's actually for sale, what's not for sale. There's no getting a feel of what's going on in the marketplace. What is the active inventory? Where is it price? How do you compare to it? What is the sole data? How do you get access to that?

and actually get a gauge for what's actually selling. It's very difficult to navigate as a buyer. And so when people come in here, you know, they, you know, they look at properties, you know, and an agent's hip pocketing all of the ones that they know about, right? But they don't tell the, like the lady that I lived in the house and she had it for sale for $13 million. And nobody showed that property one time the whole time I lived there. I lived there a little over a year. And it was on the market the entire time.

And, you know, the seller called me. she's like, what should I do? I was like, fire that agent. You should fire her tomorrow. Like, she's not done anything. She hasn't shown the property. It's not listed anywhere. You can't find it online. It's not on Zello. It's not on the any of the sites here in Puerto Rico. It is nobody even knows this house for sale except for you and her. And so, you know, that was, you know, that was my advice. But, you know, that house is still sitting there today. It's still sitting not sold. And there's, you know, nobody even knows it's for sale. I don't think anybody would know unless they talk to one agent, the one agent that I know that knows about it. and they don't work together.

They don't tell each other about these listings. So you have to literally have five to 10 agents in order to, and think about the new laws that are in place, right? So, you know, with the new laws in place, like my philosophy was if you're going to buy in Puerto Rico, you've got to have five agents at least minimum because you're not going to ever find out about all the inventory. And that's how you have to,

you have to be very, you have to really want to know about what's going on and what's available and work really hard as a buyer to try to find out what is available. if you're if you don't have you know clear cooperation in an MLS where that stuff has to be all listed in any given time it would be a disaster it would be a disaster for the housing market it would be a disaster for buyer home buyers and home sellers it would be a disaster for real estate agents it's absolutely the last thing we want to see happen out you know kind of brings to this this one topic right survey that was done 55% of agency MLS value dropping after NAR settlement and you know good headline right

a little catchy headline, that survey was conducted prior to August 17th, right? So you look at that, but what are your take on that and not seeing the value and the value of NAR, the value of the MLS, kind of all the things that are in place? Kind of what's your take on that? Well, I mean, if we finish the sentence, yes, it says that more than half, you know, 55% believe their MLS will be much or less, somewhat less valuable. without the offer of compensation. And that's,

so they're putting so much weight behind the offer of compensation because that's what they've been used to for the last 30 years plus whatever it's been. And so, you know, when you think about, when you list a property, there's been an exclusive agency or exclusive right to sell.

And I hope I'm getting that terminology right. Exclusive agency is when a seller can go and hire you and say, hey, Jay, I'm going to just sign an exclusive agency with you, but I could sell it. If I find the buyer, if you find it, you go right ahead, whatever, or or hiring multiple agents to list the same house. That's been, people have been able to do that for years, but nobody does it. So think about the market kind of takes care of it. If the market said that was the best way to go, then we wouldn't, I guess we wouldn't need

the MLS and it would just be a bunch of cowboys out there trying to, you know, hey, I got this. They open up their coat and they got all these properties over here and what would you like maybe one of these. But that doesn't serve the consumer. And everything, you know, when you talk about an advanced in technology, when you talk about any kind of an advance in figuring something out as far as innovation, it always should be serving. The reason it works so well is because it serves the consumer. It puts people on an even playing field of, and I hate using the word fairness, but fairness. like think about Puerto Rico. If you have like one home and that that consumer, the seller,

has this person looking for a buyer, it's got that person looking for a buyer. And the MLS, there's no control over anything. And it goes under contract with Billy over here. And this guy over here is still trying to sell it. And he writes a contract and signs one. And nobody's talking to each other. That's the type of Wild Wild West that opens up litigation problems and everything like that.

So the MLS value, in my opinion, I mean, since, you know, Mike, Jay, when you guys wrote the CHBA and the CHSA certifications and trainings, and we coached our entire team from the by side specifically, because we've always been able to articulate our value to a listing, it's the by side that everyone struggled with. But ever since 2011, this is all we've known. We never went into assuming that we had to take the compensation that was in the MLS. And we still value the MLS for the obvious. reasons. You know, Jay, you brought it up, but it's a great analogy. This was maybe a year ago.

I can't remember, but I've always used the same analogy. It's like, we're in one of the best businesses in the world. When you think about it, when you open up your MLS and click the button, and you see thousands of listings in DFW, where thousands of listings in Northeast Ohio, and you didn't have to buy one of those things. A car dealer has to take a huge line of credit out to buy hundreds and hundreds of cars to fill up their lot so they can sell them. They can't go over down the street and sell what's on, you know, the, the Buick guy, you know, the Kia guy can go over and sell the Buick down the street. They can only sell what's on their lot. As agents, we can sell them all. And that's because of the MLS. Yeah. And I mean, that kind of goes into a

different thing. Like, MLS is still very regional. It's very, it's a regional typical, but it's starting to grow out. Like in Cleveland, it started as like just the Cleveland MLS. Then they had another one over here for Sundusky. Then I had another one over here. And now, it's starting to stretch out statewide. Do you guys see it retracting? Do you see it growing into more of a net, like one national MLS? Or do you see it staying like more localized, regionalized, or state? Because I don't see any reduced value in the MLS whatsoever.

That's just my take. Yeah. I don't see any, I mean, yeah, I would implore any, any, you know, and here's this, you know, the sad thing is, is, you know, a lot of this, you know, the articles that are coming out where they interviewed agents and whatnot. Like they're interviewing the same 500,000 agents that didn't sell shit last year too. Right? So they're all involved with that.

But the people that actually do this for a living that are actually in this business and understand how it works, probably all think a lot the same for the most part. But clearly not. There's some people that don't because I've seen some arguments in some of the articles that we have listed that we were going to talk about today where they're debating whether it is. And it just depends. I think, you know, I heard Gary Keller say this probably 10 or 15 years ago.

He said, if you have 30% inventory of the listings and a market, marketplace, you could create your own MLS and probably survive. And that would be kind of the tipping point where you could, you could control that and, and you would probably still win. But for everyone else, if you don't have the majority of the listings in a marketplace and the MLS, and you're not in the MLS, it's, you're going to absolutely struggle. It's going to be an absolute dumpster fire for sure. Did you guys in Lawton, when you guys were growing the brokerage in the team,

did you have any outlying brokerages that just no not joining nar not going to put my listings on the mLS we're going to list things exclusively and they're not co-broken with them did you we had one here we have one one here no one we had one just hanging in there now i was licensed in 98 i think you were uh 97 in the 97 yeah so like they just hung on for probably i would say longer than i expected M. Schill, that was the name of it, M. Schill company. And like, whenever they list something, we'd all like, oh, maybe the Cobra. Nope, never Cobra. They're so far out of business.

It's archaic. You can hang on as long as you want to these old ways of thinking. But when technology starts to move you forward, it's extremely hard to fight the stream going backwards. The stream's just coming down too strong. And so, yeah, man, I mean, I think it's a lot of times, and this is me being very nice. It's just uneducated who don't listen to podcasts like this,

who don't stick their nose in beyond. You know, they read some bullshit post on Facebook and they believe everything that, you know, some of these people put up and they don't do, they don't think for themselves and do their own research is where I think that a lot of this is coming from. I'm always blown away at

the people that actually take surveys. Like, think about it. I don't have time to sit down and take a survey. Like, I don't. I have the best of intention. I'll give you my feedback. I just don't have the time to sit down and take a survey. So that should be an indicator of who is taking these surveys. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. So let me ask you out. So kind of in there with the transition, you know, Inman dropped an update just a couple days ago saying, you know, majority of sellers know they aren't on the hope for buyer commission, just kind of running the poll. And yet all the agents that I have the opportunity to work with across the

country, all of their sellers are like, yeah, we get it. We still want to offer a compensation because we don't want to exclude, you know, not being, you know, open to the masses because what do we fundamentally always come back to? Compensation drives behavior. And it's like, well, don't ask, listen, small town America, this is what Cindy told me to, right? Cindy's in Tyler, Texas as like big, but small town feel, everybody knows everybody type of feel. This is the same thing that would happen in Lawton, right? You know, what? what 300 people licensed in a lot in Oklahoma, actually 28 people sell.

You don't want to be the one that that doesn't like play nice and really collaborate within the community, right? Build the age in the community. And this is what Cindy was saying too. She's like, our community and our connections, our conversations. She goes, we've gotten stronger since this.

And in that, yeah, they don't mind. Like, hey, yeah, we're, you know, the seller's willing to compensate X on this, right? So do you see that as, you know, but still kind of the status quo, we've got to work around it. Or do you see kind of in the future, man, sellers are probably going to move away from this.

They're not going to be offering it. It's just going to be, you know, kind of buyer, you take care of yourself, seller, we're taking care. Do you see kind of the trend or how do you see this kind of playing out down the road? I don't see it changing. If any, it's going the opposite direction. Here's why. When I say opposite direction,

I mean, if anything, it's going to continue going to the point where the agents, the good smart listing agents are going to be having the conversation to prepare to pay a concession or whatever they want to call it toward a buyer's agent here's why buyers consumers all in right now there's two there's three three factors okay i call them the three eyes i actually just did a reel on this it'll be launching today as a matter of fact so you have three three factors here you have um you have the appreciation of homes okay and and that would be in So you have inflation.

The cost of goods, the cost of homes have just kept going up. The second eyes interest rates, those have doubled over the last five years. And the third is, shoot, what is the third? The third is, darn it, I lost my three eyes. Damn, three eyes. It was inflation, interest rates. Oh, in income, wages are not keeping up with the rise of the cost of inflation. Okay.

So you have a recipe for those three things that are happening right now. What that means is that in credit card debt's going up, it's been going up for the last 12 months. Number one, people have less savings in their bank account, which means even buyers have less savings. They're taking more credit and they have less disposable cash. They don't have the money to pay a buyer's agent.

And we all know they need a buyer's agent representing their best interest or they're going to end up making bad decisions. So if anything, this is forcing, it to stay in a conversation with a seller that they're going to have to anticipate, you know, paying some of that or all of it. And it doesn't stop the buyer's agent for taking the responsibility of learning the skill of having that conversation with their buyer.

So I don't see anything changing with it. If not, it's actually going to be increasing the need for that money coming from the seller because they have equity right now. Most sellers have a shitload of equity. They didn't have that in 0809. It disappeared. It was like it went away completely. Right now, yes, we're selling it, what, a million less houses or whatever from, you know,

last year, two years ago. But they still have equity. Sellers still have equity. And the equity is actually still growing. So they have the, the cash is there. It's not in the buyer's bank account. That's my take. Because so just, you know, another inman article was, you know, strong economy may prop up home prices and mortgage rates.

And to Alice point. where you're right there is like that doesn't feel like a strong economy. I mean, you know, like let's be, let's what it is what it is, right? And, you know, I mean, the interest rates on credit cards are going up, up, up, and then people living off of credit. I think you're starting to see some refy to pull money to be able to just bridge the gap to be able to survive to live. And you just, I mean, let's talk about real human behavior, right? Like really what's happening out there. And so, like, I mean, what's your take on, you know, is it a strong economy? What's going to happen? You know, we're going to still see home prices? Like, what are, what are you? There's, there's been a number of

articles I've seen recently, too, just showing that the percentage of home price reductions is overall, as your overall percentage of homes that are listed actively right now has gone up. I can't remember the number. I want to say 25% was what I saw. And that was up significantly from what it had been this time last year. So, you know, I think that, you know, obviously there's, there's certain price points that aren't moving. I think, you know, when it, when it comes to the commission deal, you know, the people that are, they're going to be smarter, the ones that are, the dumb agents are the ones that are going to, they're going to end up doing it for less. You know, I saw, I saw a TikTok where a guy, you know, this was an investor and he's like,

man, this, yeah, this new change has been great for us. We got an offer on a property. We were totally prepared to pay the 3%. They came in at 1.5%. So we saw blood in the water. We counted them back at 1%. And so, you know, there's going to be some people that, you know, that negotiate that away, but the agent that's the weak negotiating agent that's going to lose. It's not going to be the consumer. You're not, you know, the consumer is not going to pay the commission. That's just going to be, that's going to be a small, small percentage of the time that that's going to be the case. So yeah, I don't see that being the, you know, that being, you know, a tremendous change, not with the current landscape of the economy and, and how, how unaffordable

housing is. This is also a good plug for why you should. should be buying multi-family right now because housing affordability doesn't seem like it's going to get dramatically. All the forecast for interest rates are to be, you know, at best, maybe six, you know, six, six a quarter, maybe five point nine percent throughout next year a little bit lower. That'll probably get a few more home sales in place. We're on, we're still on pace right now to have the slowest year in home sales since 1995. They've just recently updated some of those reports or some of those estimates to be a little bit higher than than four million this year. was pacing for 3.9 last month.

So, like, that's, that is a huge deal. Like, that is so many less homes that are selling. And, you know, we still, you know, we still don't have enough inventory. But until rates come down, you're just not going to see a lot more action in the marketplace. I don't think. And you're talking about house affordability. And, man, it's wild. Like, I was walking through a D.R. Horton project where they had come in and finished a build

out of a community. and the houses were selling for more and smaller than what was actually built in there. And we can say what we want. Like, D.R. Horn ain't your custom home builder quality product. And you got that product, that small for that amount of money. And it's like, are you kidding me? Like, I'm just like, I'm just like, blown away. And, you know, that's, you know, that's what they're kind of forecasting is builders are

building small. I mean, they've got to because of the material. But, you know, I remember always, you know, Kurtzinger would always say, man, he's like, listen, bro, it all about the dirt. It all about the cost of the dirt. He said, you know, when I can buy dirt real cheap, then I can build a little bit bigger, better product. He said, the reason y'all in Texas, they got to go up is because that dirt costs so much. And, and so just, just really a good reminder. But, you know, what do you think about that with the builders and building small, the townhomes. I mean, there's a town home. You know, I bought, Mike bought two of them.

I bought one. A townhouse has gone up 100 grand in value in Frisco. Pretty good size, you know, product 22, 2,400 square foot townhouses. And just outside of Newman Village, do they sell like hotcakes? There's the only thing on the market that's 600,000. And, you know, it's just, it's more affordable and it's brand new. So, you know, that is one of the articles that we, that we had kind of talked about that we had pulled up, that builders are moving to building, you know, that smaller product that they can get, you know, that they can move within the marketplace. You can't go, you know, build a house on a on a big lot in the neighborhood and sell it cheaper.

You know, the cost of construction is still super high. So, so that is something I at least I can say, I've seen that in first. It would be true. So that would be my take on that. Al, anything that you're seeing, you know, I mean, I love getting the comparisons, right? Being able to see, you know, kind of the DFW frisco market. That's like its own country, right? And then you look at, you know, where you can kind of, you know, back in northeast, right?

You look at Cleveland. You look at Pittsburgh. You look at Sinci. You know, you look at these other markets. I mean, where are you seeing kind of where builders and land value and kind of the direction that these, these builders are taking it? Well, I mean, you know, it's different. there was a rumor out and I don't think that it was true that institutional investors Wall Street were buying up like something crazy like 30 to 45 percent of the listings and I just cannot believe

that. I don't I think that that's a BS statistic, but I believe that it is forcing, I mean, it's forcing the problem that we're seeing here, less inventory because they're hanging on to them and just the dream of home ownership is shrinking. It's not growing right now because of that very thing. In my opinion, kind of saying to what Jay was saying is that remember 08-09, no one in their right mind would build a spec home brand new. They'd be like, oh, let's just see if someone were to come along and buy it.

You know, and you had mentioned a stat that they were, you know, the number of home sales was going to be shrinking to a level that we haven't seen since 95. that's incredible to me to think that that, you know, and I'm not saying it's not true, but honestly, like, I don't know what to believe with some of these stats anymore. That's an incredibly low number. And my question is why?

What's happening? Well, number one, we're running on a land. You can't build homes without the dirt. And even, like, Cleveland's a good, you know, area to use an example of. Everything builds out from a metro. It goes outward. Where does it go? It goes into farms.

It goes into the areas that used to be rural and now they're considered suburbs. And they'll buy 100 acres, 200 acre farm, whatever, and they'll put a plan development in. And I mean, that in itself, it doesn't scale, like it's not an infinite scaling thing. It has to stop at some point. You know, you can only go so far out from a metro where now you're away from the amenities of, you know, whether it's Dallas, whether it's, you know, any of these places. Florida is probably not a good example of that because it's landlocked on three sides. But you know what I mean? Like in a normal like a Dallas, you know, a Cleveland, Charlotte, you know, where you have a metro and then it just starts building out this way.

I don't know, man. I think that the I buyers, there is a huge, that's a factor here. They're buying inventory up. I don't know at what rate. I don't know if I believe any of the stats, but it's a thing. We know it's a thing. and so that didn't exist 10 years ago when we were coming up. We didn't have the eye buyers in there coming in and paying people full asking price

for a home. It just goes to show that I believe that we have to own our own red dirt, our own real estate and do not sell it. Andrew Gadoche is a perfect example. I don't think he sold one property since he started investing the year after he graduated college. He just hangs on to it. And that would be the advice I would give anyone listening to this podcast is that

If you're not buying, start buying now. It's not too late. And then you got to hang on to it. This is, we're talking legacy. Put it into which loss, get your stuff set up correctly, and start building your own empire for your family's legacy. Because it's not going to get easier to buy homes. We can see this.

It's only going to get harder and harder. They're running out of land. Man, you know, you and I, Al, we're in Detroit for build. Kurt Shewills build in, in Detroit. a couple months back. And it was one of the best, best presentations from stage that I've ever seen. And you and I sitting there and kind of elbowing each other the whole time,

Mark Z probably delivered the most important message for any real estate agent to ever, to ever hear. And I remember I leaned over to you and I said, my only belief that if you're in real estate and you're building a team, you're building a team for this reason and this reason. only. Otherwise, you just need to sell real estate on your own because you're going to make more money than trying to grow and build a team. But now, if you grow and build a team to help dig up more opportunities that you find to be able to invest in is the way to go. And, you know,

you guys have not caught that conversation with Mark Z. I would message Kurt Shewell today and say, Kurt, talk to me about what Mark was talking about on stage. Can I get my hands on on that replay. And I'm actually going to have Kurt on before the end of the year to talk about just that specific thing on the investment side and the team structure and the team dynamic of even where he has, you know, Mark's focus, Mark Z's focus, the entire team there and what they're doing. And so, you know, you guys have mentioned it several times, invest, invest, utilize it.

And that was one of the beautiful things. I think we just did shit out of necessity, to be honest. honest with you a lot in Oklahoma. But one of the beautiful things that we really uncovered is that, you know, your real estate business is, is a goal mine to finding opportunities to be able to unlock and invest. I think there's two investments. I think one actually is real estate and I think the other is other businesses. And I think, you know, you look at what do we know that is not going to be completely disrupted by AI immediately. I think you look at, you know, depending upon market specific, you look at what trades are very valuable. And especially if you have a team,

and this is why my belief of a team, because your team can uncover, find more opportunities. And if you're feeding these trades, there's no reason why you shouldn't own a piece of the trade. I'm not saying you own it 100%. And you don't have to be 50-50. You can own 30, 40% of these other businesses, to me is one investment opportunity that the teams need to be able to provide. And then the other is real estate. And I know you guys are like so hardcore focused on this big time. I would love for you to kind of share your thoughts, you know, why, it's like what you said, Al, but but really the direction.

I mean, you guys are in the know. I mean, you're, you're, you're connected. You're in the Cardone circle. I mean, you're learning. You're seeing the truth. Not, you know, some pie in the sky, but no, this is the direction. This is really what's happening. and this is the real opportunity.

Yeah, man, I mean, I can definitely speak to my, you know, my experience, you know, I bought real estate where I was at because I knew what a deal was. And that was, you know, that was basically, you know, to me, if I knew what a deal was, I'm in real estate. That's why I bought, you know, 29 rental properties. But the truth is, I probably wouldn't invest. You know, when you look at multifamily and like what we're doing in a multifamily now, when you do the research on the location and you look and I mean all the data is there you go go look at Dallas you know Dallas as a metro and look at the the jobs the job diversity you know the migration patterns you know that economy is booming because there's more people moving there there's more jobs and you know when I first moved to Frisco I didn't move there but when I first started our company me and Mike in 2005 the the tollway ended at 121.

And now it goes to 380. That was dirt roads before. Okay. Now, the PGA golf, you know, is there a Universal's building there? Like, it's gone crazy nuts. Like, if you would have bought at the end of where the trolley tracks, which they had a 20-year plan that goes all the way to Pottsboro, Texas, which is Lake Texoma, if you bought any land out that way,

any time in the last 20 years, you killed it. Because now that tollways, now the tollway is out. It's about a mile pass, and they're building it. Yeah, they're out there by the farms out there where you slip. it's it's you know now gunter is is pretty low price but it's going up in value like if you buy in those if you buy residential real estate in areas like that you're going to do fine but if you don't if you don't understand the economics of your marketplace like in law and fort sill 40% of the jobs are military related or contractor related so you get a president that comes in and cuts spending

in in that area what happens to your rents your delinquencies your your vacancy rates when i couldn't see that across 29 properties i didn't have it all under one roof where was scalable and I can see how those things were impacting, but it was ultimately impacting my investments. And so, you know, you would just look at that and you say, I'm not buying multifamily in this marketplace, period. Like, that's just one of the things that you look at. And so, you know, I think that that's what I've just learned a tremendous amount and, and grateful for, you know, being able to be in the room with people like Grant Cardone is teaching this stuff, that, you know, you look at the job diversity in the marketplace. You look at multiple factors of whether that's a good place to invest.

And ideally you're in an irreplaceable location. And you know, you're buying things that are cash flowing day one. You buy a rental property and the way that multifamily is valued versus residential is different. I could even if I did do rent bumps on all my individual residential houses, which I did not. But if I had done that, even if I'd done that, it doesn't equate to an actual value that's higher for that individual property because

it's going to sell based upon what other comps sell for. Whereas multifamily, you have the opportunity to double your employees. investment every seven to 10 years because it's based on net operating income. So it's run it's run like an valued like a business. So it's completely different. So, you know, where I never would have invested in Fort Worth or in Dallas and in multifamily, because I wouldn't want to run and manage an apartment complex. Now you can get into syndicated deals where you can disinvest your money in the best places across the country where you know that the how you can predict all the factors that determine whether rents are going to go up or not is a good

investment or not. And you do that on the front end before you start looking at apartments. So I think that's, you know, you know, as far as invested in real estate, you know, you always want to be where the growth is and, you know, see where the puck is headed. But in multifamily, you know, the opportunity for you to double the value on that property and exit and 1031 into something else is a lot easier and more scalable than buying 29 properties and trying to do the same thing. And that was my biggest takeaway. Once that that clicked and I was like, that's why that shit didn't work. There was a chapter and enriched that poor dad, they did not tell me that.

And so, yeah, so that's, I think that's why we've gotten excited about multifamily. Plus, housing affordability. Let's look at what's going on in the marketplace right now. You think there's going to be more people renting or less people renting right now, probably more. So, you know, it's not affordable to go by. So what, what, especially in Texas, border state. Right.

I mean, nobody's got a choice at this point, right? Right. Right. You took the words out of my mouth and you stole my dang line. not we don't skate to the puck we skate to where the puck is going and and it made me start to think to myself of like looking back in my last 26 year career and and who you choose to be around what kind of conversations are happening at your office meeting now look even the expe office meetings i'm at every single one here i'm on the aAC whatever so i'm in there and there's really

good value especially now because you know everyone has to know what the how to operate correctly here without getting into hot water. But what kind of conversations? Are they these kinds of conversations? Are your leadership talking to you about where the puck is going, where it's going to be in six months, 12 months, or where it's at right now? Because if you're looking at where it's at right now, you're already behind the ball. And, you know, what you had said about buying land, like you started making me think of

CHBA, CHSA. It's, you, you can't fake being in. I mean, you can attempt. We always say fake it to you make it. It's probably in the red book somewhere, a real estate term that was created somewhere fake it until you make it. But the truth is it comes out. That's that that's that inconvenient thing about the truth is that it's going to show its head.

And so you're either an expert or you're not. You can either have a high level conversation with an intelligent person about an investment and know how to calculate an ROI and know how to talk to them. you know, we're talking about people that have a higher income and wealth, right? Those are the clients that you want. And can you have a conversation about what this property can do for them with their tax situation and depreciation? You know, and education. And I'll be honest, I was buying rentals too.

Not as many as you were, you know, when I first got started. But I didn't have anybody teaching me the right way. You know what I mean? I was just kind of doing some math on a napkin, buying this single family home, buying this double, you know, and they were scattered all over Cleveland. Same thing. And what I want people that are listening to this podcast to rewind and relisten to is what Jay just said is the difference with multifamily apartment building, a commercial

multifamily apartment building with more than five units versus five single family homes. Five single family homes are not looked at, the bank's not going to look at that as a business. whereas with a multifamily apartment building, it's looked at, it's valued as a business with a net operating income, expenses, and all the things that come with that. So, you know, it's really just an education thing. Mark Z stood up in Detroit and he schooled that room. That room was that their heads were spinning like, you know,

it's like the first time I met Mike Reese. And after that hour long conversation, I felt stupid. I'm like, hey, I need to learn. something right now, right? Like, that was the, you know, Mark Z pulled a Mike Reese on the whole room and, and it was good. I mean, he's seven to a hundred. What's that? Seven million net worth to a hundred million net worth. You gave the whole strategy. Play by play, here it is. Get yourself around people that are having different conversations than the ones that you're seeing on Facebook and the bullshit ones that are happening, these real estate groups that are

just, you know, in there. I don't know what these. people are doing but they ain't making any money i can tell you that get into the right rooms we actually have the room that you need to be in it's in dallas on november 9th and 10th i'm taking my two sons 18 years old and 20 years old i'm getting them started early because you know damn well they ain't listening to to me now you know because old man don't know he's talking about i'm going to get him in front of uncle g and they're going to listen to uncle g and all the the experts the real experts on how to invest the correct way. Not this Carlton Sheets bullshit at 1.30 in the morning

when you're trying to go to sleep and you can't sleep and you're trying to buy the get rich package for 1995 a month. No, I'm talking real numbers. Being able to calculate an ROI. Know what a good deal is and what a good deal. And by the way, I'm still learning. I can't

consider myself an underwriting expert on any of this stuff. I'm in learner mode on it. That's why I'm going to conferences and learn. But get in the right rooms. Jay, we'll post a link somewhere in the comments, but what is, I think I, what is it? ConnectCon. There's a couple different links, but mine's ConnectCon.

Yeah, ConnectCon. Yeah, ConnectCon, Frisco. Yeah, any of those will get you there. Yeah, Grant Cardone's going to be speaking. We've had the privilege of being in the room with him a few times the last year and half, and man, he's teaching the game. He is teaching the game. And it's funny, you know, you think you're kind of an expert in this business.

and you've been doing it forever. And I guarantee you, like, your eyes are going to open up and you're going to be like, holy smokes, I did not get that and rich dad for that. I miss something. I mean, I'm going to go back and read it again because I'm pretty sure that it wasn't covered. But yeah, yeah, and it's an incredible opportunity.

You know, absolutely get your tickets. Don't miss it. It's good. Love it, guys. Absolute fire as always. And, man, Yeah, get plugged in. And, you know, we're here for you guys.

If you have any questions, you want to dive a little bit deeper. You guys are going to get that link posted out, ConnectConn, Texas. I'll throw it up there. So anything that we guys can do for you, don't hesitate to reach out. You know, I always look for the, you know, the ones that are going that extra mile and engaging and asking questions. I don't know. I think just kind of bias because that's how we were, right?

And, you know, just always inquisitive, always asking questions. not afraid to ask questions. And you really see who's really obsessed, right? Not interested, beyond committed and truly obsessed. And I think that's, you know, the market is right for those that are obsessed right now. Speaking of obsessed, speaking of committed, somebody's got a big race coming up here in just a couple of days here. Are you days away or a couple of week away? November the second.

So we're. No, no second. Yeah. All right, man. Going for you another 100 mile. You're doing the Tampa 100. Tampa 100, baby. Tampa 100. And what are I going to be?

I'm going to be somewhere in the Keys at that point. I will be praying for you. Thank you for you, cheering you on. I was hoping that you were going to be doing the Keys 100 again because I was in May. Yeah, yeah, cool. But we're praying for you, brother. Appreciate your, you showing up and leading with commitment and showing people what true sacrifice and commitment is and that mental toughness.

That's what we need. We need leaders like that. We need you to treat your business that way. Like you're preparing for a 100 mile race like our boy JK47 over here. So good luck, brother. Cool. Appreciate you guys. We'll see you guys next time.

See you. Thanks for tuning in. If today's episode inspired you, follow for more conversations like this and gain valuable insights from the leading experts in the industry. If you want to dive a little bit deeper, check out johncitchens. dot coach to find the ways that we can work together. Once again, this is your host, John Kitchens. Keep making it happen.