KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Navigating the Turbulent April 2025 Real Estate Market

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Morning Primer is your weekday boost from Mindset & Motivation Monday—quick, focused, and made for agents by KGCI Real Estate On Air. Give yourself a daily mindset reset for the daily direction you need to show up sharp and ready to win.Start your morning ahead of the market and ahead of your competition every day with KGCI Real Estate On Air. Summary:This episode provides a critical analysis of the April 2025 real estate landscape, focusing on the key challenges and opportunities for agents. Listeners will gain an understanding of the current market dynamics, including the impact of persistent inflation on buyer and seller behavior. The discussion also delves into the latest real estate fraud schemes that agents need to be aware of to protect their clients and their business. This is an essential briefing for any real estate professional looking to stay ahead in a complex and rapidly evolving market. Ready for more? Subscribe now and tap into our Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android, where you’ll find our complete archive and 24/7 stream of proven real estate business-building strategies and tactics.

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Universe Media. Network. Welcome, welcome to this month in real estate investing, where we separate the noise from the news. I'm your host, James Brown, and I show people how they can make safe, secure returns through our pre-vetted passive investments. Feel free to download our e-book, the astute investor, the top 10 mistakes investors make, and how to avoid them. Or join our private investor club so you can get exclusive. opportunity alerts that we don't advertise those to the general public just go to accelerate mycapital.com in this episode we'll be breaking down a variety of real

estate investing news items including Trump tariffs threaten housing costs FISBO sellers face mixed results and US homesit longest in six years don't forget if you're watching live on YouTube you could share your thoughts and questions during the show and we'll get those and we can answer them. So let's start the show. All right, our guests today are, in no particular order, Atticus LeBlanc from Pad Splitt, Nathan Miller from Rent Tech Direct and DeMarcus Mabry from Rocket Flipping Academy.

In that order, why don't you guys introduce yourselves? Tell us about your background in investing, and we'll go from there. So, Atacus. Thanks, James. Yeah, appreciate the opportunity to be here. So my name is Atticus Leblon, the founder and CEO of Pad Split. I've been a real estate investor for the past 20 years, realistically, and an entrepreneur pretty much on my own the entire time since. I've founded Pad Splits seven years ago, actually eight years ago now.

I'm getting old. We're a two-sided marketplace that provides access to private rooms in shared homes for the 50% of people who can't afford the rent. With fully furnished rooms, all utilities included, Wi-Fi laundry. we provide access to telemedicine and report income to our rent payments of credit bureaus. And then on the other side of that marketplace, we have hosts who rent those rooms because they can double their income over traditional long-term single-family rentals or multiple-endant rentals. And we kind of try to handle everything in between. Nice. Awesome. Nathan.

Yeah, thanks for the invite. Happy to be here. Let's see. My investing experience started about 25 years ago when I bought my first property. I've been doing it ever since, buying properties, turning them all into rentals, only in that time sold one property. The rest I've kept. And so, yeah, about 25 years of that.

And then 18 years ago, I started Rent Tech Direct. I kind of found the necessity back then when I was managing these rentals myself. It's hard work to manage rentals yourself. and 18 years ago, the software didn't exist for someone like me with a handful of rentals. So I created Rentek Direct with landlords like myself in mind. We quickly found a need to move into the property management market as well. So today we service about 75% of our customer base as property managers. The other 25% still landlords.

Great. De Marcus. DeMarcus, can you hear us? Hey guys, I'm DeMarcus. Thank you for, yes, yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yep, it was just a little delayed there. Okay, can you hear me? Yep, go for it.

Okay, great, thanks for having me, guys. I've been investing in real estate for the last six years. I started with wholesale real estate. estate. I grew coming out of that. I'm based in the Atlanta market. I have done deals in several different states, including Kansas City, Greater Area, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and of course, Georgia. For the last couple of years, I've been coaching investors on how to close their first wholesale deal, how to break through in real estate to turn wholesaling into an actual business and not just deal for deal. Like I see many wholesalers, what they do, you know, it's deal for deal or transactional.

how to turn it into a natural business. So that's what I'm doing now. And Rocket Fippling Academy is the name of my community. Awesome. Glad to have you guys on here. Let's dive into the news from Seattle Times. Spring wakes up the Seattle area housing market. So they had actual double digit increases.

They say since last year. So it is going crazy over there. Are any of you guys familiar with that market? Not me. I'm not familiar with it, but I mean, yeah, it's median home prices and $1 million. You're starting to see that more across other, you know, areas, not just the super tech areas, like in California and Seattle, but it's just making it really hard for the first-time home buyer. You know, it's really not affordable. And also, I think, you know, that prices are really high, but I think buyers are little cautious, even in markets like that.

You even look at San Francisco, Seattle, of course, counties across California, I think buyers are still preparing for like a more balanced market. And, you know, they're sitting in the market a little longer, even at those higher prices. So I think buyers are just not as greedy as they once were a few years ago. Yeah, I'd say buyers are still adjusting to the current mortgage rates, too. So it's, I think we're getting there. People are starting to adjust to it, but 7%, you know, ish still feels kind of expensive when we were 3% just a few years ago. So I think that's, that's slowing the market. It's making putting buyers a little bit more timid because of that.

But like DeMarcus said, you know, prices up there, a million dollars for a house. You know, who can afford that these days? And, you know, seeing actually just met. It's a startup up in the Seattle area, and they're called Level Up. And they were doing like the pad split kind of idea, like co-living, but for purchases, where you can have, they actually custom build a house where there's four separate owners to that house, and there's some common area and then some private area for each of the owners. But it gives people like a condominium sort of atmosphere slash co-living atmosphere.

a much lower entry price. So I thought that was kind of a cool idea. I would find it hard to co-live with someone if I own something, but I think it's a necessity that's happening in the market these days due to prices. Yeah, well, necessity. You nailed it. There's a company called Frolick that does something very similar, Nathan. And I mean, I think a lot of these markets are similar. I'm really not familiar with Seattle. One of the reasons why I started Pats Split as a marketplace as opposed to a large fund, which would have been more in my background, was all of these markets just have unique idiosyncrasies. And the thesis from our perspective is that the people who are closest to those problems and close to those markets are the best equipped to

solve them. And in every market, though, the similarity is you just have these supply constraints and not sure exactly why we're seeing increased demand in Seattle. But yeah, it's all just a question of that supply demand balance or lack their own. Yeah, I would argue it's because they have an amazing football team up there. I doubt it. I doubt it. I've actually got a buddy. He moved out there.

I think he was there for two years or something. He's got a good job out there. Like a good job paying over six figures. And he's like, I can't buy house out here. You have to get married and have a dual income or something to really make that more realistic. I'm not sure there's ways around it. But I mean, talking about co-living ownership models, like what we see for co-living is just the reason it's become such a

friend. And I think the same reason you're seeing these co-ownership models is because it's a necessity. So if you're making 100, 150 grand and you can't afford a house, but you feel like you're at a stage of life where you want to own something, there really is just no other way to make it happen. And it's going to be both an economic necessity as well. It's just the way that people are going to live and it seems like a big sacrifice to those of us who didn't have to go through it. But, yeah, I mean, I came up in a different world about my first house when I was 23 with maybe a 580, 600 credits for 100% financing. And my mortgage payment was $700 a month.

So it's just a different world now than what it was. And I think we have to adapt to these new paradigms where costs are just way out of control. all relative to what we've seen historically. Yeah, I can totally relate to that, Atticus. My first purchase was $43,000. It was a condominium, and that was affordable to me at the time, just barely. And I'm talking to one of my employees right now who wants to buy his first house. And even, you know, we're in Southern Oregon here, which isn't nearly as high as Seattle.

But he's looking at $350,000 for a starter home. That's nearly impossible. Yeah. Well, to give you guys some, some millennial background, I bought my first house at 29, 29, which was a few years ago, 32 now for 380. So, yeah, I would have loved to, you know, buy my first house for $43,000 or something like that. It's tough, you know, all you can do is, you know, if you're a dual income family, you know, put yourself in the best position to really get ahead of the game because if you're in the middle,

you're just not going to find something that you really, really like. You either really ahead or you're really behind. So, yeah, you have to put yourself in the best position. You know, Vegas median price is $4.85. Antonio put in the chat there. Here in Denver, you know, we're around six. So, and we think that's high. But then you look at us, Seattle, you're like, oh, crap.

Yeah, right, right, right. Never thought about it. My parents bought their house. Well, in the late 60s, you know, 25 grand. I never thought $250,000 in my mind was like a quarter million dollars for a house. You can't even get one for that. You got to buy a condo, right? It's crazy.

Well, hey, let's jump to the next article from the street. Trump Tariff Showdown. could have huge impact on housing market. This might take up the rest of our time, James. It's real, man. It's affecting everything. So the president of the National Association of Home Builders, Jim Tobin predicted prices could rise from $9,200 to $25,000 just in this year.

so it's a thing what is that 9200 to 25,000 what is that what's that from that was a prediction from Jim Tobin from the Association of Home Builders okay just all right well I feel like we're in a bit of a unique position right here I mean right now today we're building our own house we're also building a spec house us. So we're in the middle of construction of two separate properties right now. And we just finished one last year also. And tariffs are a big deal. Everyone's talking about them. You go to the building supply store. They're talking about them because they just don't know what the price is going to be next week. But we've ran with some stuff. There's a siding product we wanted to

use, which is produced. It's like the concrete fiber siding. It's produced actually right here in city in Oregon, but it's painted in Canada, and then it shipped back down. And so it crosses the border into Canada. And of course, they reciprocally dinged us with a tariff. And then it comes back and it gets hit again on these products. So that's one particular building product that, you know, it's going to be up to 50% more in cost. And, you know, that's kind of unique. You go in both directions, but lumber, you know, all of our lumber comes from Canada right now, too, the bulk of it, because it's difficult to cut lumber in the U.S. So that's, you know, that's the core of most houses these days. I think it's going to have a huge impact. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm having back this

morning from working on a little homestead farm that we just purchased and have been exploring, hey, how do we actually mill lumber closer to site? Because we've got a bunch of hardwoods and there's some local area mills around there. But the reality is like, I mean, all this is probably going to change on Monday. And if not on Monday, maybe Tuesday. And then it'll change back to something else in a day or two. So I mean, I have no idea.

I feel like a ping pong ball at this point. and it's just easier to try to roll with the punches wherever they happen to be. And one of the benefits to being in the affordable housing segment from my perspective is whether the market's good or bad, whether building costs are high or low, there's always pretty consistent demand for affordable housing, which is the one thing that allows me some comfort in just putting this concern off to the side. But I don't think there's any doubt that we have more turmoil ahead of us rather than behind us. Yeah, I think you nailed it.

I mean, the unpredictability of it is probably the biggest factor, you know, because you're right. You know, Monday it's going to change and Tuesday it's going to change. And they might all be gone, you know, in six months. We just don't know that that unpredictability, I think, takes builders out of the market because they're like, you know, if they're going to build a spec, They're not going to risk going over, you know, what they're going to be able to sell it for. So I think they're just going to sit back and wait it out, which is going to cause fewer houses to be built until this chaos slows down, which is going to put a further strain on the market.

Yeah, something we should probably all be investing in these 3D printed homes. We don't have to rely on lumber. They just go on site, build them, right? They still have roofs. They still have roots, James. that's true and they and they still have copper wire uh and uh yeah i mean all sorts of imported uh imported goods that go into those as well so oh yeah it's yeah i'm i'm i'm less i'm less convinced but uh but i think more broadly to nathan's point even if you're three do building a home if you don't know what

it's going to sell for you're getting at a really hard time uh budgeting uh budgeting uh budgeting on the front end. So, yeah. And yeah, I think from, go ahead. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I think from builders like all the way down to just your everyday flippers, I've had several conversations with a lot of the major, I'd say, players in the house grouping space in Atlanta recently, people that are in my buyers list that buy from

us wholesale properties frequently, they're like, they're there, they don't know what to do. They don't know what to expect. they don't know what type of cost this is going to mean for them in the future they already have houses sitting on the market that they can't sell right so this is a big thing and i think i don't know if it's the administration's intent or not but it's going to force whether it be builders or just flippers to look domestically um just with the supply chain vulnerability you want to call it or just uncertainty why not look locally it's not going to be cheap and it's not going to be easy but you might have to start considering something local i don't know at what's scale depending on what you're doing. But if the vulnerability, I guess, continues, then it's going to, you know, you're going to have to look elsewhere for something you can count on, whether it be high or low. At least you know you can count on it. I think that's the whole point of tariffs is to get consumers to look locally. And I think it's a valid point. I mean, they work. To that extent, tariffs are probably great for the local economy. It hurts in the

interim, you know, while we're dealing with this price fluctuation, but in the long term, you know, the idea is it helps the economy and not an economist to know how valid that is, or if this particular path the country's on today is going to get us there. But I think that's what, you know, that's what this administration wants to do, get things manufactured and built locally. I think the caution I have there is, you know, I see when, when a retailer when a company has the opportunity to raise the price they do and if this product from china you know that used to be 50 bucks is now 90 dollars well the u.s built company who maybe made it for 70 before um and it was uncompetitive at 70 because you get it for 50 now they're

like well we can get 90 for it now so i have a feeling that's going to raise u.s manufacturer goods as well that's a great it's a great point Nathan yeah i mean i remember um yeah before before before I became an entrepreneur 20 years ago. I was in the in the gas business and working for a regional gas convenience store chain and I remember kind of the pricing strategy was oh well and they were buying on the open market so when prices would go up they were always matching like right in line by the minute oil prices would go up fuel prices would go up and a lot of it was just expectation not necessarily that their supply costs had actually changed but then all of a sudden when when oil and prices dropped, and they could buy much cheaper, that decline was much, much slower,

and that's really where they made all their money. And, yeah, I mean, I was looking at, I was looking at one of these, like, Chinese-made robotic drone things recently, and I looked maybe two months ago, and then again, yesterday, and it was three times the price that it was three months ago. What's actually changed in between then? Because all of these existing products are already in the United States. Like nothing, nothing is actually changed with regard to the cost of that product. But whether it's replacement costs or whether it's just, okay, well, now there is fear in the marketplace and anticipation that things are going to cost more.

Therefore, I'm going to increase the price and not at all surprised to see a lot of that happen now. And hopefully some of that we get a little more consistent. where there's more transparency in the market, but not so much at the moment. We saw the same thing during COVID, right? Like toilet paper as an example. When there's an opportunity to jack those prices up, they will.

And if they can keep them up, they will. Otherwise, the market settles out and then they get to come down. Yeah, I mean, even the lady who has chickens down the street has increased trade, even though I'm pretty sure her supply costs have not gone up. Right. And so I put in the comments, there's an American car company backed by Jeff Bezos, Bezos, people say it in different ways, with cars at 20 grand. So I don't know if they're all made totally domestically. Like, you know, like Toyota is an example. They build a lot of them in Mexico and then finish them off here as examples. But 20 grand, they'll sell a lot of those suckers. It's a great price for a car. Right? Yeah, if it's a, you know, good car.

I think a big misconception on tariffs also is what is the tariff imposed on? You know, everyone relates the price of products to their retail price. And, you know, if a lamp that you're buying to, you know, put in your bedroom costs 50 bucks, and tariffs are 100 percent, they assume it's going to cost 100 bucks now. And the retailers might be playing on that. But realistically, the wholesale price products coming out of China is 10 to 20% of what the retail price is. And so the tariff is on that 10 to 20%, not the $50. So I think the math that's happening in everyone's head right now is a little inflated,

causing a little more panic than what the reality is in some of these places. Primarily China, it's different when you talk about lumber coming from Canada. you know it's a wholesale rate you know going to be 60 to 70% of what it retails for so a bit big difference there yeah well hey let's jump to the next article from MPA MAG broker used fake real estate listings to defraud investors out of three million dollars this guy Stanislav Steve Santa Cove is a former real estate broker in Chicago. I guess he convinced these investors to deposit earnest money into what he

claimed was a secure escrow account. And it wasn't. It was his own personal checking account, which is a big, big no-no. It's crazy. Yeah. And then he just used that money on his crazy lifestyle. So he's paying the cost. I guess he, you know, one of his victims was an elderly guy that had to delay his retirement because of that. Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate. I don't think it's surprised to anybody in the audience that there are crooks out there of all shapes and sizes. But, yeah, I don't know what to comment here other than, you know, not necessarily news that there's some scoundrel trying to separate people from their money. and put it in his pocket.

But yeah, it's unfortunate all around and glad they could at least figure out who it was and hopefully return some of the money back to those investors. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's key. Yeah, I think... Go ahead, Marcus. Oh, sorry.

Yeah, I think it's spot on. It's just every month you hear about a scammer story like this in real estate. And I always think, like, the energy to put together this elaborate, team, right, where he stole roughly $3 million in earnest money and he had these fake listings together. It's like that same genius can be put to use to probably make more legal dollars. So it's just people's decision making sometimes just surprises me. But, you know, it's up to the consumer to do the proper due diligence. It seems like in this case, he probably used a lot of his credibility. So he didn't have to explain much, I'm guessing, to these consumers to get their money.

But a shame overall, but, you know, it's just people can put this type of genius to work in ways that are win-wins for everybody, not scamming, you know. Yeah, you know, I'm just glad they caught him. I feel like so many of these fall under the radar and the person never gets caught. They take millions of dollars. No one's willing to investigate it because it's, you know, maybe across state lines or the local PD doesn't care. It's not big enough for the FBI to investigate. We don't deal with a lot of home sale fraud, but we deal with tons of rental listing fraud. And I am blown away by the number of people out there that are trying to scam people out of, you know, like you need to rent this property right now from me.

Just, you know, give me a deposit. I'll hold it for you. And then, of course, they disappear and they're not connected to the property at all. And, you know, technology today makes it really easy for these scammers to get in front of a lot of people. people. And the last I read or the last I heard, it was like $33 million, I think last year that was stolen, scammed. This is just what's reported, which I bet's a small fraction of it. But that's what was stolen from renters who were just trying to get into a place. And these renters, you know, most renters, they barely have that deposit money. Most of them don't. And when they do, you know, they've scrounged together. They borrowed just to get, you know, a couple of

maybe $3,000 for their deposit in their first month's rent, and then someone takes it from them. And then, you know, now they're just out of luck. They can't even get a house. It's an awful situation. Yeah, I mean, I've even seen pettier and worse in some cases than that, Nathan, recently. I mean, a lot of these folks who are in other countries that are never going to get caught are posting fake listings with their phone number and try to just get. application fees, 60 bucks or 100 bucks. But you need to pay before you can meet the person to see

the property. And they're on traditional listing sites, but it's just like playing whack-a-mole to find these folks. And as you probably know, too, I mean, good luck getting a human being at any of these large listing aggregator sites or God forbid Craigslist or Facebook marketplace to do anything about these scammers. And so to your earlier point, I mean, I'm just glad to know that someone was held accountable, because the overwhelming majority of cases that I see, if you create a police report, it's just kind of like, okay, thanks. See you later. Yeah, especially when it's a $35 application fee or $50 application fee. That goes right at the very bottom of the pile. But to your point, I think what a lot of these scammers are doing, besides that application fee, they're using

it for data collection for identity theft. Just think about what happens when you go up and you fill out a rental application. They ask for everything, right? It's your name, your birthday, your parents' names, your contacts, your social security number, your last three addresses. This is critical information and they're using that to then perpetuate their next fraud, which they, you know, in our world, they'll use that stolen identity to try to set up an account at Zillow to put up more fake rental listings to get even more. And I think that's a huge. I wish there was a PSA that could get out to every single

prospective renter out there to vet who you're given your information to. Make sure it's a legitimate source. Look at that URL. Make sure that's a local company that you trust and you've confirmed that's really their website. Because too many people fall for it. It's too easy to fall for. Maybe there's a business opportunity there to create a.

I was going to say it seems like there's an opportunity for something. Yeah. I don't have time for that, but somebody run with it. All right, let's jump to our next news item from United States real estate investor docked downfall, potential co-living collapse of America's shared housing revolution. Ooh. Clickbait. Right. We'll leave this for Atticus.

Right. Yeah. I'll let you share the story, James. I probably know too much about this particular case, but... Yeah, we should definitely dive in. I mean, I took some notes. I highlight some notes, but... Yeah, so Doc Living went down.

Actually, Atticus, why don't you jump in? Because there's a lot to this. If you're, I know you're closer to it than I am. So, so, so basically the, in St. Petersburg, Florida, there was a company called docked living that was managing several co-living properties. They had gotten building permits as single family construction, but ran into issues with some neighbors, neighbors complained. fire marshal got involved and unfortunately the the manager of Doc Living tried to represent himself and his clients in federal court in order to prevent the fire marshal from getting people to move out and was unsuccessful in doing so had he been represented by

Compton Council, I'm not sure that things would have happened the same way. It is unfortunate for those owners, certainly. And the accurate part of this article, I think, is that, yeah, I mean, Doc Living has maybe collapses too strong a word. A lot of these homes are still there. They're still housing people. They've since come into compliance by reducing the number of people. But the bigger story here that is not at all in this particular article is the fact that, and I've seen this actually in our history a couple years ago as well, it's like some of these fire marshals just go off on a rampage and just get wrapped around the axle on some of these issues that relative to the human cost of the

those actions. I think there's a huge disconnect there. One, for instance, is like a major point of confusion around fire code generally is like fire code doesn't define family at all in any case that I've seen. And so they're often relying on a local definition of family to create their own somewhat arbitrary idea of how many unrelated people are allowed to live together in their definition of single family versus rooming house right or lodging house and lodging house or rooming house requiring sprinklers commercial sprinklers and commercial like egress signs and stuff like that which are not at all common in any sort of residential like single family residential setting but it still kind of comes down to some of this definition of family

I'd say from a philosophical perspective, what really nags at me is I looked at St. Pete specifically as soon as we got news that Doc Living was having issues there, and we pulled the public records. And fire marshals are, like, their job is health and safety of the general public, right? That's why they're there. And every action that a fire marshal takes will be taken. even in their own heads of, okay, I am protecting public safety. Public safety is my domain and I will do whatever it is that is necessary to protect public safety. Well, in St. Petersburg in 2023, you had 400, you were 482 times more likely to die from homelessness

than you were from a home fire death, 482 times. Oh, wow. Based on actual statistics. And so why, if it is your sole duty to protect and preserve public safety, would you have any risk of making someone homeless versus exposing them to like a theoretical home fire death? And it's like you just, I mean, anybody can compare that, right? Would you, would you rather be on the streets or would you rather be. be in a single family home that was permitted as a single family home. And those two things, I think, are really the major issue here or the major story is that what is actually the role

of a fire marshal if you're forcing people into homelessness or even risking them for homelessness versus in a house that is fully permitted and approved as a residential dwelling. unit. And like, oh, by the way, that exact same house, I think some of them had seven or eight people. Well, but if those seven or eight people had been related, this is an absolutely non-issue. Right. Non-issue whatsoever. And that's the story that I think we should all be talking about, not just as real estate investors, but as residents of the United States is that's crazy. And I mean, my own personal, experience. I did a ride along with, I knew the old fire chief here in Atlanta pretty well, and did a ride along one day with the busiest station in the city of Atlanta. We had 11 calls that we responded to in the big, in the big old fire truck with four brawny dudes and little old me like sitting in this truck. And of those calls, not a single one, so we had 11 calls, I think, over three or four hours. Not a single one was for a fire. It was all.

for generally because they were first responders generally people who were homeless and in distress of some kind and like that should be a tell of of what the actual problem is and what we need to solve versus risking people being put out on the streets again that's so interesting like you that big picture is yeah it's probably data i mean like look at your own city wherever you happen to be and how many people have died in residential fire deaths and how many people have died while homeless. But yes, it's not close in any city that I've ever looked at. I would have to say the stats are probably pretty similar here.

But I imagine, you know, the fire marshal or the guy making these decisions, probably his scope, at least what he's seen, his scope is like pretty focused on buildings. And I bet you, you know, if you were to ask him that same question, he's like, homeless, that's not my job. There's a whole state, you know, organization that deals with that. My job is building, so I'll let them do that.

I imagine that's, that's, you know, what you'd get out of them. There needs to be a better universal coordination, you know, probably at a state level or at least a city level that, you know, they need have some shared priorities in order to accomplish that. But I don't know much about the situation or the affluence level of that area, but what I do understand what precipitated it was just neighbors complaining. They, you know, probably some, you know, neighbor who had a nice peaceful neighborhood, and now there's, you know, eight people living in a house where there used to only be three. They're probably upset with the traffic, upset with the noise, or at least the perceived traffic and perceived noise.

And so I understand, like, a lot of it started with just people complaining. And it was the, you know, the fire marshal there, he was placating these complaints and trying to address the complaints, which was. easier to do than to deal with, you know, actually properly deal with the situation. That's what I read, not knowing much about it. It's like, do you want to solve the problem or do you want to check the box? Right, right. I wish we had more problems all or not. Yeah, no, I, I, uh, yeah, no, I, yeah, right, like solve the problem the right way

so that it benefits, you know, everyone possible. We don't want to be kicking people out on the street. I think there's, like Atticus mentioned, both of you guys mentioned, this opportunity regulation-wise to make sure the investors and the companies are on the same page with the city, the fire marshal, so that when a neighbor does complain, if a neighbor complains, like they're already in compliance, these regulations are clear cut and there's nothing really to do. But then, like Nathan mentioned, it's just on a community level, I think there should be, and Atticus, maybe you can help me here, but there should be some sort of community engagement so that. that neighbors understand what's happening and they understand the benefit for the people living in the house. Otherwise, they might be homeless, for example, so that they're not, like, complaining, right? And I think if the community gets on the same page, fire marshal gets less calls, less pressure for them to react and then, you know, quote unquote, kick people out. Yeah, I have, I have been more optimistic on that particular strategy.

in the past to Marcus, I mean, as I look back historically, I mean, my own personal experience in working with neighbors and sitting in a lot of living rooms, but also just in the history of humankind, we've been pretty effective at separating themselves for a long time, and I don't necessarily see that changing anytime soon where I don't want those people living in my neighborhood like that's i mean it's nimbism 101 right and and you're always you're always going to run into it um and i've i've watched it play out personally um to some degree like there's real constitutional conflict here too though right i mean uh residents related or unrelated like they have the same rights under the u.s constitution and right now they're being

treated differently. And so there is absolutely a constitutional case to be had there, in my opinion. Now, I was only named after an attorney, but we've argued a lot of these types of cases before and one on very similar grounds. So, yeah, I mean, I really wish that you would only see complaints around substantive issues, like if the grass isn't cut or if there are cars parked on the lawn or blocking your driving like those are all real issues that should be addressed but if it's well that person makes less money yeah and so therefore i don't want them living in my neighborhood that's not really substantive and uh i don't i don't foresee a change in human behavior in that regard unfortunately but uh but yeah i mean should i got a kind of a right yeah i think neighbors will complain

whether it's yeah go ahead oh well yeah I was just gonna say I think neighbors will complain like you're saying Atticus to whether it's two people or eight people you know the lawn is jacked up and there's people walking it out human behavior is gonna trump everything I guess so yeah back to you James yeah and kind of along those lines so one thing that we do when we're looking for a property we want something that's got plenty of parking because that's usually the biggest complaint so and then if it doesn't like one of the houses we've got here in Denver you know we ask that the people that were kind of late later coming into

the house to park around the corner you know set up some rules just so it's not just becoming a problem and then you know we we have landscaping taken care of the the members don't have to take care of that so it doesn't become the eyesore it's like the nice property on the block so those are kind of those are the things that we do to head off these problems where the nimbies start complaining yeah i mean listen i mean you you nail it there james i mean people who are good operators very rarely have any any issues whatsoever um it can happen but it's extremely rare but across the board good bad indifferent operators what we've seen so we're the largest

co-living operator in the U.S., we have almost 20,000 units, but pretty consistently, we have never seen more than 2% of inventory that has had any sort of code enforcement issue, like citation or warning or anything like that. So would you have, would you take a 98% bet that you're going to have a successful deal? Like, of all of the things that we do that carry a lot of risk in real estate investing, 98% is pretty solid. That's good. I should probably like kind of give a backstory

on how Atticus and I met. So I'm in Denver. Pad split came and spoke at our cash flow club, kind of gave all of our investors an idea of like what Pad Split was all about and why they identified Denver as their next market. the two big reasons affordability is terrible here and along those lines you know homeless problem so kind of going back to the fire marshal that situation we've got a problem

and so the the tide's shifting for co-living like atticus you guys have met with government officials here right like they just changed the rule the law about how many unrelated people live in a home. And that's pretty common in other places that it's for. Good news is, yeah, you shouldn't have any regulatory issues in Colorado. Yeah. The governor last summer for anybody who doesn't know signed a bill that prevents any local jurisdiction from using blood relationship or family status as an occupancy requirement.

so it has to be based on on health and safety and what that effectively means is that anywhere in Colorado you're good to go from a co-living strategy yeah it's a beautiful thing and it's like the opposite of where short-term rentals have gone you know yeah like Denver I used to rent out a room in my home I was super host but it had to be my own personal residence you know and that so was pretty locked down, it still is, and getting worse, as most of you guys know, in other markets as well. So it's co-living's going the other way. So maybe some small markets, there's some things popping up. But I mean, Atticus, you see it nationwide, right? The trend, the trend line is definitely pushing the other direction, which is why I, I don't think the article is

really fair in terms of its prognostications. The momentum has been pushing pretty solidly the other way. We've seen Arkansas introduce a bill doing the same thing as Colorado. Texas recently, actually, they just had a bill past the state Senate. It was either 30 or 35 to 1 that would allow, or would prevent cities from using blood relationship as an occupancy criteria. And I think it's in the house right now. So if anybody's listening from Texas, like go call your state representative and lobby them to get that bill passed. But yeah, you're seeing it more and more, both at the city and state level.

Yeah. Was it Washington and Oregon? Yeah, both Washington and Oregon. Same thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You want a solution in Seattle. There you go.

Sure. Again, almost problem in Seattle. I mean, if you've been there, tent, tent cities and affordability is a problem. So we're providing that solution. I think a lot of states, cities especially, but states in general are recognizing the need for low income and workforce housing. And this co-living is an alternative, a very good alternative to. building more low-income housing because that's become unaffordable to do as well with all the requirements that get put into low-income housing and how much it actually costs to build those

you know it's so much more economical to take a smaller property and split it up and you know make it more dense rather than putting a giant apartment building you know in one of these locations probably good for the cities too you know I'm good for these nimbies that you know They'd rather have, I think, one house, that was eight people in it, rather than that be tore down and, you know, a 60-unit apartment building, but in the same spot. Good point. We should ask them. We should give them that alternative. Right.

Yeah. Right. Pick your poison. You bet. Yeah, even in Oregon, I mean, Oregon's very much trying to figure out their housing issue here. And they've gone as far as besides what. Atticus is just saying there with the co-living stuff is that any single family lot you can build a duplex on it doesn't matter what the city or the county says there is nothing that can prevent someone from building a fourplex on a single family property in Oregon now so they're really pushing density and communities don't get any say anymore in that interesting I know like here in Denver ADUs are you know they've really relaxed their laws on that but the whole fourplex thing that's another step yeah i think yeah co-living i think it's just

something that has to work you know at the point where we are with the economy affordability like it has to work good for atticus but we they have to figure it out you know what i mean because it's going to cause a huge problem homelessness i mean god knows what can happen so it's something that has to work which is good for i think companies that are still involved like pad split And once it gets figured out, once it gets smoother, once it becomes more normal, I think, at the community level, it would be great. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was talking to somebody about this yesterday that, like, good news is business is great, demands very high. But if we had enough housing, then, then, like, it wouldn't be nearly as strong as it is.

And so it's a catch-22. I feel a little bit guilty because, like, business has been great for a long time with all of the, the, the, the tariff stuff and just the lack of new housing supply. I continue to think that business will be strong into the future, only because I don't have any faith that cities, states, or the federal government are going to, quote, unquote, solve this in any meaningful way, which is sad. But, but yeah, we do what we can. Yeah.

I think there's a paradigm shift that just has to change in the U.S. too. It's, we're at a point in time where housing prices, it's not going to get cheaper to build houses. It's just not going to happen as much as everyone wants it. As many bills get passed that try to make it happen, those usually just make it more expensive. So there's a paradigm shift that just like has to eventually change here where more people are living in a property. It happens in most other countries around the world. You know, big families live together. You know, you'll get, you know, a density that's probably four times the average of what.

it is here in the U.S. I think we're just like, you know, we're going to have to embrace it and just deal with it. It's just, it's something that has to happen. Sounds like. Yeah, I mean, I love that point, Nathan. I mean, for for the audience, like, it's not even necessarily the way that things are in other countries, but we used to, we used to be like that here. I mean, it used to be a thing here. You go back to if you take the, all the residential square footage in the United States in 1950, divided by the entire.

population. You came up with a per capita allocation of housing of 298 square feet per person. Okay. Well, today that number is like 800 square feet per person. Wow. Wow. Like people think, oh, we have this supply shortage. Well, it's not really true. It's just that we've been way less efficient in the way that we use space. And of course, now you have people who are aging in place, boomers, who have these large homes with multiple bedrooms, all the kids have moved out long since, and you have the highest portion of the population now that are singles living alone. And meanwhile, you've got, what is it, 32 million empty available bedrooms, even after accounting for home offices and storage compared to quote-unquote

shortage of seven million affordable units like that math's pretty easy y'all uh yeah but we we've got to get more efficient yeah we'll take a break here in a second i just want to point out like they're like denver we're building tons of apartments it's it hasn't stopped uh but a studio apartment here in denver is about fourteen hundred and fifty bucks a single bedroom, apartments, 1650, but somebody can get a co-living room for 8, 850. That's significant. And that's the only option people have a lot of times based on what they make in their whatever job they have or jobs they're having to like, do, you know, otherwise they're homeless.

I mean, I deal with that on a daily basis. People just right on the verge and we're providing that value. absolutely it's a beautiful thing so anyway let's take a break to learn from one of our sponsors are you worried about where your money is headed in today's unpredictable market at accelerated capital their investors tell them that safety and security are their highest priorities they want to wake up every day knowing their hard-earned money is working hard for them in the best interest of their investors accelerated capital carefully vets every opportunity knowing that most of their investors want to avoid risky strategies and stick with more boring but proven

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or click schedule a call to book a short capital accelerator call today. To get started, visit Accelerated Capital at Accelerate My Capital.com. That's Accelerate My Capital.com. Accelerated Capital. Accelerate your wealth with alternative investments. All right. Back to the news from CNN. They tried to sell their homes without a real estate agent. Here's how it went. So there's a story about a couple different people. One gal in Michigan sold her house in seven days and saved herself 30,900 in commissions. So she did say, I've got a lot to comment on this because I'm a licensed agent. But, um, she said she did get a lot of calls like 20 a day a lot of them the reality is a lot of them will be from other real estate agents trying to convert them to list with them but she was

getting a bunch of scams which I hadn't heard much about as we talked about before there's a lot of people trying to scam people out of money so you know one of the risks when you're trying to represent yourself. You're not a professional. You don't have insurance to cover yourself and you don't know the gotchas, you know, where, you know, you might be selling to a buyer that is represented by a professional that is a professional in negotiating. So I'm going to dive into this a little bit. But, You're negotiating against a professional. And when you look at the numbers of what for sale by owners actually get,

so here, let me read the stat from National Association of Realtors. So the typical FISBO for sale by owner property sold for $380,000 last year, that's whatever their median was compared to $435,000. So that's a difference of $55,000. These for sale by owners are trying to save themselves money. I totally get that. But when you think about maybe you're paying a listing agent 3%, on that purchase price, that's $13,000.

So they're trying to save $13,000, but they're missing out on $55,000. That's a big gap, you know. So just a little perspective from my side. you know as an agent and you know i've known agents that have actually hired other agents to list their own properties like maybe it's in an area they don't know or they just don't want the risk and spend the time so they they understand the value of it themselves so anyway that's my soapbox anybody else want to jump in yeah i think uh dealing with the scam

I'd be curious, what is that scam play where they're trying to scam the seller? I can see scamming the buyer, right? But scamming the seller. I'm sure it's out there. My mind doesn't go there, so I'm not thinking about it. They mentioned crypto, so I don't know if they're, that's a good question. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is, you know, I'll pay you, your house is $400,000.

and I'll pay you $500,000, you give me $100,000 back. That was my cars. When you list a car on Craigslist, you get 100 of those things. So maybe it's something like that. But I think I can relate back to our industry where, you know, we have roughly 300 people sign up for our platform a month. And we vet all 300 of those. And we look at the data behind those signups and everything in it.

And we can spot the fraud just like that because we do it day in and day out. And, you know, roughly 20% of them, you know, there's the it's just scammers trying to sign up to you know do naughty things and i think that repetition that our staff has and identifying that is similar to the repetition a realtor might have and identifying the fraud on behalf of the seller so i think having a professional there to identify and weed that out so you don't risk losing money or the huge inconvenience of dealing with them kind of seems worth it and it also sounds like according to those numbers you just gave us, James, the money pays for the realtor plus sum as well.

Yeah. Yeah. I've heard some of those stats, but I hadn't actually done the math to go, oh, you're saving 13, but you're losing 55. That's a no-brainer. And those are NAR stats, not something I just came up with, you know. I think the other thing, you know, when you're going from escrow, there's a, there's a, a lot of things that unless you're in the business and you do this all the time, you don't understand, oh, there's all these disclosures, the seller's property disclosure, lead-based paint, source of water, all those kinds of things that you have to provide sign and provide to the buyer. There's timing. I mean, we have a calendar with times and deadlines that you

have to hit. If you miss something, that buyer could be like, oh I'm out at the drop of a hat one little missed thing they can be like oh you're out of contract and oh shoot now you got to start over so it's those kinds of things that I think a lot of people that do this just they just don't understand all those risks so go ahead to Marcus yeah James I yeah I agree like this story is uh she I'm not going to say she got lucky but it's super market specific like her being that successful i think is not the norm uh i do think if it's i'm not an agent i know you are my wife is as well like if property owners are going to feel this resistance from nar whether it be from the news or their personal experience with

realtors if that's going to keep growing like there might be an opportunity for in the future like more of a a la carte services from realtor right instead of saying work with me work with me for 6% or nothing, it could be like, hey, I want to do this, I want to do this, but I need your help with negotiation contracts and the closing with the title attorney or title company. So I know most of the world just don't want to hear that, but it could be something that's an opportunity versus people that are just going to go out there and sell it on their own or try it to. So it could be some opportunity coming down in the future. Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah, it mentioned in the article, you know, well, one person that had a bad experience but their title companies will help you directly so that that is an all-a-cart thing i actually just the timing's crazy i just built a whole fisbo website for locally for where i am where i do offer things a la carte they can go in they can purchase professional photography um a pre-inspection especially like if it's a you know older house they might want to get an inspection ahead of time just to see, you know, what kind of gotchas are going to come up when the buyer has their inspection. You don't want to have a big surprise on your hands. They can order transaction coordination, use my transaction coordinator, which can help them stay on track.

So, yeah, I'm providing that service to folks that want to do it on their own, but maybe need a little help along the way so yeah uh james i'm kind of curious if you can speak speak to this is uh i hear all the time mostly from you know from contractors building spec homes a good example is you know they spend six months to build this home uh their time and sweat and it goes into it and they might profit 25 grand on on it in the end but they're using a realtor to list it who uh you know they put a sign out front they put it online they field a dozen calls and they're making 30 35 grand for their two weeks worth of work so there's a perception out there at least what i'm hearing that why does the realtor deserve you know why does that realtor team the three percent split on

either side deserve 30 000 when the contractor spent six months putting this all together so i i think now with that you know in our lawsuit and all that uh coming out it's more upon on realtors to show their value to folks like this contractor. So anyways, tear that apart if you want because I'm curious from your perspective. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah, yeah. Providing evidence of our value is always a constant challenge, right? Because, you know, everybody thinks, oh, you're just sticking a sign in the yard and sticking it on the MLS.

Like, there's so much more to that, you know. you know we've we've got to go through continuing education every year ethics fair housing stuff that's the other kind of thing like when you're when you're listing a property if you put the wrong thing in there like great for kids like oh shoot that's a fair housing violation because you're you're singling out single people right those kind of details that could really get in trouble. You're not really aware of that. And that's why, you know, we spend the time in the background before we've ever even

started the job, you know. So that's an example of the kinds of things that having somebody in your corner that that knows all of that stuff is really important. And then back to the negotiation, I'm certified as a negotiation expert. Not every realtor goes through that training, but, you know, know, if I'm up against another realtor or somebody that's trying to sell on their own, they're at a huge disadvantage because they haven't been trained and really understand all the subtleties. So I think that's the that that's the top.

I think is good. Go ahead, DeMarcus. Sorry, Nathan. Yeah, the biggest thing I think the difference is like just what people, Fisbill is trying to sell on their own versus with the realtor. Just like simple market analysis when it comes down to pricing, like, She got really lucky with this story, I think, for how fast she sold it. But a lot of them just sit on the market because this homeowner thinks that their property is worth $6.50 when just any normal investor or agent can look and see the comps are like $5.80.

You know, and there's no way it should be listed at $6.50. So the education part you're talking about, James, along with just like understanding like this property isn't going to sell at this price. Let me help you. Let me bring my value to the table so we can get this thing so faster, you know. Yeah, totally. yeah i'm also trained in pricing strategy too and there's there's differences of opinions yeah in pricing strategy amongst realtors you know i usually go the opposite way of most most start high and just going for the moon and then they end up dropping the price over time to come down

and that but then you're at a disadvantage i mean people are like why did you drop price yeah Like the blood's in the water where maybe you should start lower and create a bidding war and let the market tell you how much somebody is willing to pay. That's how I approach it. I'm just seeing a homeowner do that. Yeah, it's a conversation I have that I have to like kind of lead people into understanding the thinking behind it, the psychology, right? So, yeah, because they're used to re-enters.

going oh yeah we can list your house for 650 you know they're saying yes when they're they're actually hurting that client you know so it's unfortunate but yes everybody they promise the world and then how does that work out they probably that that client probably didn't get what they could have gotten they don't realize that you know and and then it makes that realtor look bad like yeah it's not good business i don't think Yeah, I think that stat you gave earlier, James. That stat you gave earlier, the average, you know, nationwide, I assume, the realtor or an agent listing the property sells the property for on average,

50,000 more. That, I mean, that right there, it's the most compelling factor of all for a seller. Yeah. Well, hey, let's jump to our next news item from National Mortgage Professional, So FBI Boston warns of growing title fraud. I guess there's scammers forging documents. One thing I see coming up is targeting vacant land and lean-free properties too.

So they call it a quit-claim deed fraud. So I see that a lot of times or hear about it. The other thing, this is one way I haven't figured out. I have people reach out to me as a realtor. They say, hey, I'm looking for a home. I'm moving from some other state. And I start asking questions. Like, oh, what are you looking for?

What price point? And it's kind of, it's been this kind of similar story. Oh, we're looking in the two, three million dollar range where, you know, that, raises an eyebrow like whoa really um and there's usually a story where it's like oh it's single parent with an ailing ailing parent the grandparent um and then one or two kids i've had this like three or four times and i'll go along with it thinking oh it's maybe somebody real but then i start doing due diligence to try to verify it's a real person and they waste so much time And then all of a sudden, it just kind of fizzles out.

I don't know what the angle is, but anyway. Yeah. What are you guys seeing? Yeah, I think this is a, it's a scary thing. I've seen in Atlanta here locally this happened where I go to look at a house. I'm thinking it's going to be the owner, the guy I've been talking to. The guy doesn't want to show up in person, can barely keep him on the phone. and then I get out to the property

and it was a lady and she says her mom passed away a year ago she's been there and this guy that I've been talking to has been trying to steal the house like I'm not the first I wasn't the first investor to go out there and try to buy the house

and that's when I first learned about like you know quit claim D fraud she was saying that you know she had a lawyer the lady did and I actually spoke with the lawyer the lawyer explained to me what was happening that the guy had been speaking to was trying to steal the house from this lady through an apparent, I guess, quick claim fraud. Quick claim be fraud. So it's a scary thing. It's just something you don't think about too much,

but it's people are actually taking houses this way. And it's very scary for homeowners, absentee owners, landlords, and everybody in your life. So something you have to keep an eye out for because people would just do anything, it seems, you know. There's big money. Yeah. more more more scammers and especially I mean to Marcus here in Atlanta as you know like the hustle is real here whether it is the rental fraud like application fraud title fraud the what's the what's the movement around like sovereign citizens just like walking in and saying oh no I own this house now because you you have no claim to it I mean we've dealt with lots of junk like that as well. I mean, listen, there are no surprise again. I mean, whether we're talking about the real estate agent running away with $3 million bucks or these title fraud guys or the same thing in Kansas City for tax fraud.

It's like scammers abound regardless of industry. Like, yeah, that is, that is a box we can check. Yep. Only they could quantify. Oh, go ahead. I was saying if they could just quantify the economic loss based on all these scammers, then maybe as a country, maybe, you know, the something in the, at the federal level could put more pressure on eliminating them. Because, I mean, it has to be in the billions, if not trillions of dollars in economic loss.

Yeah. Well, it says in the article from 2019 to 2023. It costs victims over 1.3 billion that's in that time period, with 61.5 million lost in New England alone. That's crazy. It's up there. And I think like how the system, the system makes it pretty easy to do this. I'm sure I've read about this in our local paper as well happening in our county. And, you know, I think about what it takes.

Usually the title company takes care of all this, but you don't have to have a title company do it. you can fill out the paper the quick claim deed you can find a notary i mean notaries are really really easy to find and anyone can be a notary pretty much so you know you get your notary friend uh you know to endorse something to go down and file that paperwork and suddenly the ownership changes and yeah it was it was it maybe isn't going to ultimately give the person ownership because hopefully you know they figure it out but it's sure going to make a huge hassle for the actual owner to fix all that and i don't think they find out until they try to sell the property which might be years years down the road yeah it's suggested i was going to say i think

there yeah i think there are some title monitoring services but like nathan said you don't find out until you're like six months from wanting to sell the house or sell a lot or whatever it is so is there you guys can help me out are there any services apps or something like that that'll monitor more accurately what's going on with the title and the property. Do you guys know anything like that? Or is that something I should create and mute this? I don't know. It hasn't be something, right?

I'm not aware, but that is a great idea. Now, I was going to bring up, you know, blockchain. That's going to change our world. Like all title is going to go through blockchain at some point, just when that gets all. figured out but which will be a benefit i don't think there's a way maybe there's a way to hack it you know turn it to benefit a scammer but at least monitoring that's a huge step because right now it's just so disjointed every time you sell probably

you got a rerun title if it's just there from the start of blockchain tracking that to to the end of time, I think that's going to smooth out a lot of these bumps and potentials to scam. Yeah, that could be a good solution. I do know my credit monitoring tells me when I buy a new property and it shows up with my name on a property deed. I get notified when my name is added to a deed, but I don't sell properties ever. So I don't know if it goes away when I sell the property if I get that notice because that

sounds like in this particular case the value would be if your name is removed from a deed why are you hoarding properties come on yeah i was you say that's that's that sounds like no man you're yeah don't have that's my thing the housing disorders 100% of mine and uh yeah keep them keep them filled and don't sell them done you bet you i don't live in all of them they're they're all i'm trying to help you're yeah you're a housing provider, right? I love it. That's my motto, buy, I never sell. But in real estate especially, people ask me all the time, you know, it's like, well, you know, in three years, what if the price drops, you know, because, you know, the housing market, you know, has its ups and downs. And that's

totally possible. It's going to happen here. It's happening, you know, in Florida right now. But if you, if you think of a longer term, you know, I tell people, don't ever buy a property if you're going to sell in less than 10 years just just factor you're going to own that for 10 hopefully longer and you're not going to lose money it's just not going to happen yeah i mean particularly if it's throwing off cash every time right what is what does it matter what someone else says it's worth if it's throwing off cash for for you to live your lifestyle like not relevant yeah yeah like i bought a house in 2006 right before the crash well uh would have been a disaster if i sold it but i said stayed in it until it was worth a lot

more, you know, just stick with it. Yeah. Antonio put LifeLock for deed fraud. I don't know. Somebody beat me to it. If there's, that's part of it or he's just suggesting maybe LifeLock

has part of that built in, but maybe you can comment. Well, let's jump to the next article from KX-A-N-Austin News. Oh, Antonio says it doesn't exist. Austin real estate investor, Nate Paul, sentenced in bank fraud case. Another fraud case.

We got plenty each month. I guess he was a once celebrated investor in the area. And he actually avoided prison time after pleading guilty to a single account. So just a little background. Don't we have enough bad news already? Can we focus on the good news, man? I know, I know. You've got to rewrite some of these headlines, brother.

I'll blame Antonio. Oh, man. Oh, man. It drives me crazy in that case. He gets four months' house arrest, you know, millions of dollars, $172 million at stake in the taken. And he gets four months' house arrest because he had the political connections and probably money. But it just, you know, some of these fraud cases,

if we ever want to see it go away, these guys are going to have to go to jail for a long time in order for the word to get out that, like, you can't commit this kind of fraud in the U.S. Yeah. Yeah, he was buddies with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Yeah, he was connected. He was connected. Makes sense. Yeah.

I kind of dug into it a little bit more. I was like, what happened there? And even the judge was like, ah, like, this is paining, it pained him to, have this be the outcome you wanted to really make him I don't know much about yeah I don't know much about this guy or this case in particular but it's just like you would think just morally like your reputation is everything you know he's not going to be able to come back and rebuild because of this case but there might be so many other people like him that he might actually remount. That's the messed up part, along with the short, short sentence. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, in the article, so get this. He had 12 counts against him, I think. He was seeking a $48 million loan, and then he used a counterfeit document to make it appear to the lender that he had over $18 million in his bank account. The bank account only had $13,000. That's a big, lie. You just loop the three and then add it's creative financing. It's creative financing.

To your point, DeMarcus, yeah, I mean, he could have just kept it at 13 million and just put a dot with 3 zeros and then he wouldn't have been lying,

right? He just happened to add 3.0. Right, right, right. It's crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. He was also mixing funds too so it's supposed to be in one account but he was pulling it out and put it into other business accounts other LLCs or something and you know we see that getting people in trouble too

not supposed to mix funds like that oh he also claimed 100% ownership in a company called silicon hills campus as part of a 64 million dollar loan he's made, but he only held 9%, not 100%. So, I mean, they had a lot to get him on. Yeah. Well, let's go the next one from United States real estate investor. Florida's housing market is falling apart. Builders slash prices as demand crumbles.

A little bit different story than Seattle, right? So it's KB. Holmes led the panic, cutting prices up to $30,000. in cities like Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville? Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen it as much. We have a bunch of hosts in Florida. The harder thing in Florida is just insurance. Right. I mean, between the increase in insurance for just like the condo collapse and aging infrastructure

of some of those condominiums combined. with risk from hurricane damage. That's the biggest driver of some of these issues that we've seen in Florida. Yeah, I mean, is it a housing collapse in Florida? I haven't seen evidence of that just yet. I mean, I think if that were true, you'd see a lot more people buying in Florida. It's still just as popular as ever. Yeah, I think to that point.

I would argue it's not a housing collapse. I would say it's a very natural change. Florida, in the last five years, they're up 75%, but the rest of the country is up 60. So they're already 15% above the rest of the country. I feel like if they're dropped 10, they're not even where they need to be right now. It's certainly just a minor correction

and probably not a buying opportunity as probably some folks are suggesting. I need the thumbs up emoji on this screen, James. Yeah, like Antonio is saying, it's like, yeah, like Antonio was saying, you guys are saying, I think it was like more normal from what I understand just Florida. It's just their migration patterns, right? It's just people flock there. When people move, there's so much inventory.

These houses are sitting on the market like this article talks about with KB homes and now they're having this last prices. So I think it's more normal for Florida is what I'm getting rather than like a extreme crisis outside of their. insurance calls H.O.A.Bs, all that type of stuff, like, uh, like, like Justin's saying. Yep. Yeah. Florida, Vegas, like where Antonio is, you know, those, those markets tend to ride up and down more than like a Denver's more, a little bit more stable. Or like Midwest, you know, those are, just chug along pretty flat. Yeah. Definitely. Florida's always been that way from what I recall. It's, uh, you know, it's really hot. And then, and then, and then, it dies off.

But today, I have to think people are thinking about, you know, the weather and hurricanes. And I haven't read a single article about hurricanes getting weaker or fewer. It sounds like there's more and more and more. And Florida's kind of like a bullseye for those right now. So I, you know, I understand. I've got family that's an insurance. And, you know, insurance is totally based on risk. And if, you know, the houses are getting wiped out from a hurricane or a wildfire

or a flood, price is going to go up like it has in Florida. It's like four times or something. It's ridiculous. Yeah, something else I was thinking. Like in the article, it said 172,000 homes are sitting on the market. Well, it doesn't say what the normal is to give you a basis. So it's like, wow, that sounds like a lot. And I think, I don't know if you guys follow the guy.

I think it's Reventure. he hammers on on the Florida market all the time but I don't know what his motivation is or I mean he's kind of a data guy but you can kind of pull some of these numbers

out of context and all of a sudden it just sounds like you know the sky's falling so I don't know it would be a good time for investors you know exactly yep there's always opportunity when things shift, right?

Let's take a break to learn about one of our other sponsors. Are you looking to elevate your business through exceptional content? Universe Media Publishing is your gateway to success. We understand that in the world of business, content is king, but not just any content. Your business deserves content that captivates, convinces, and converts your audience into clients. At Universe Media Publishing, we specialize in crafting SEO-rich web content, persuasive copyright, writing and marketing copy that resonates with your audience. We don't just write, we engage, we connect, and we deliver results. Imagine your brand's voice amplified, your message crystal

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Average is 47 days, according to Redfin. I think that's their national stats. Of course, every market's a little bit different. so yeah i mean it seems to me like kind of circling back to the first story we read on just tariff i have to imagine there's just a lot of people feeling uncertainty right now and wondering which way things are going to go uh maybe holding off on some of these large purchases um but i mean supply is still super tight nathan i don't know if you know offhand what how many months we are of supply but we've been a

we've been in low supply range for a long time yeah i looked up denver's average days are 58 right now median are 33 so it's up there i've got a couple listings right now uh we priced right and and got under contract pretty darn quick um and it's a fully remodeled home too that makes a big difference and in a in that kind of starter home price point so that makes a big difference too yeah we've just an incredibly historic run of pricing here so longest period in six years again is all is all relative we were talking about buying houses for 25,000 yeah I mean I started buying significantly in 08 to 2012 it's a different it's a different world and hard to believe we're going to get back to

anything close to that yeah and i think the article you know if you if you take last five years if you erase 2021 and 2022 from that equation that was a total anomaly you know based on exceptional circumstances if you erase just those two years from our last five years the article would be rewritten to say inventory is exactly the same as it's been for the last 10 years and it wouldn't be nearly as exciting but what the reality is is we're just back to normal and sure it's a shock because a few years ago things were selling like that but we're just back to normal which is probably a good thing for for the industry yeah yeah i think it's a buyer caution is high like Nathan is saying, it's just, we're back to normal. But like James, like you said,

it's up to agents to price strategically, you know, don't over promise, you know, and have your house sit on the market for 20, 30 days before you make a cut. Now the days on market is super high, you know, be transparent with sellers about the sellers fell in love. Sellers that have been planning to sell. I think fell in love with the market in 21 and 22, and now they might be ready to sell, but it's not the same, you know. So just education goes a long way there too yeah and i and i think it all trickles back to interest rates again you know back a few years ago interest rates were so low and uh your four hundred thousand dollar home you know would cost you seven hundred dollars a month that was that was your payment on that 400 000 home it's a thousand

a month more now today's interest rates so it's you know not as many people can afford as many homes and with home prices as high as they are um it just it squeezes that and it creates pressure on the market and it just slows the sales process. I'm actually surprised it's not worse than it is than I feel like the shock in the interest rates going up back up to around seven-ish. I would expect it to be a bigger shock than it is right now. Yeah. Yes, when the rates went up, it's like, yeah, no one wants to pay more.

Problem is, like, some people just can't pay more, right? it's when you're in that affordable first-time home buyer it just prices people out completely it's not a choice anymore which is unfortunate that's do you guys think we can see rates at five and a half by end of year or in the fives or do you think it's going to be you know where it is now six and a half seven or more i mean i don't think so i i think it's not going to fluctuate more than a half a point in by the end of the year but who knows those people who make those decisions they're so far over my head do they do their own thing that i wouldn't trust my uh my guess on that but i would say no yeah depends on who you're talking to there's a lot of factors

but like i was listening to michael zuber do you guys follow him one randall at a time love to get him on the show but he uh he he was talking to somebody else that knows even more about how this all works and they're thinking it's going to go up quite a bit more um we're in for i don't think i don't think anybody knows what's going on certainly certainly not me right yeah we'll see there's things factors like the bond market and that i can't speak to that stuff but yeah we're not that we can change anything, right? So just prepare for whatever direction it goes, adjust. Yeah, I think it boils back to it's never a bad time to buy.

You're better off buying today, generally speaking, in real estate. If you're interested in it and you want to get into real estate, you want to buy, whether it's your first house or another investment property, just do it. You know, because next year it's not going to be any better and you're going to be a year behind. and if rates drop, you know, in a year, great, refinance, get the, get the lower rate, you know. But just get in. I can think this much your time's not getting any less valuable. And all these things compound.

So, yeah, I mean, and there are other ways to do deals, too, that are not reliant on whatever mortgage rates happen to be. Yeah, like, we're always beating this drum. buyers are like, oh, I'm going to wait for the rates to go down. Well, don't hold your breath. You know, they might be going up. And if you're waiting and they do go down, guess how many other buyers, especially in that like first time home buyer market come out of the woodwork and guess what? It's, you know, making offers over asking.

And so the price is just, it's that teeter, totter rates are low. you're going to have high prices so get in now leverage that that time like you're saying atticus yeah buy when you can afford it because now is as good a time as any as naked sand like it's going to be another problem in the next three or four years if you wait so if you can afford it responsibly yeah definitely buy now yeah cool uh from hoodline bloomington city council to host public hearing on proposed co-living zoning amendments. It's not much of an article. They're trying to define what co-living is.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like we talked about this a lot. It's just, it's becoming a trend. I think there are a lot of, particularly now with federal funding dried up, a lot of cities are recognizing that this has to be a thing because there's just way less money that they have to be able to solve formal housing issues. And as a result, you're seeing more trends across every city and state to at least evaluate what the possibilities are, if not

remove some of the regulatory barriers that exist today. But yeah, I know we covered this a lot in the story about docs as well. Yeah. Yeah, one point I'd like to make too is, like, they're having this meeting to kind of create some definition. that's actually a good thing when you think about it. So take a look at like short-term rentals. In areas where there weren't any rules,

the operators were at risk of new rules being piled on them after the fact, after they're up and running, and then they're like, oh, no, these rules are going, you know, against what we're doing. And then they're in trouble where it's almost better to go into an area where there is a set of rules, where they've already thought this stuff through on the governmental side

and put those guidelines in place so you're not like wondering what's going to happen. Totally agree. If you can design your business to fit pre-existing rules, if the county, the city, the state, whatever, has already thought it through and defined what your business is based on, you have a predictable outcome instead of like you were just saying,

you know, if they change the rules after the fact, that can be problematic. I don't know if this, you know, Bloomington, if it's a predetermined outcome, sometimes, you know, a city, they, you know, they want to get rid of something. They either want to promote it or they want to get rid of it. So who knows what that meeting's about. It might be about how they define co-living into, you know, non-existence, you know, for that area. Or maybe they're trying to do what you said and define it so it's possible.

I think the latter being like that's what we hope every, city does, define it, make it predictable, turn it into a business model. And that actually publicizes the possibility a little bit too. If there's a zoning or a type of residence that is defined as co-living, it makes it that much more of a legitimate type of situation. So it seems like it's good for the co-living industry. Yep. I try to stay optimistic. But I have heard of, let's say I looked up those Shawnee, Kansas and Palm Springs

they've both passed local ordinances that more or less prevented. I don't know, I've never been to Palm Springs. It's on my list, but I don't know how big it is, but I think I read they limited co-living to a maximum of 30 in the entire city. So

once there's 30, whoever goes for a permit to do a co-living residential unit number 31, they're just on a waiting list until one of them drops off and turns back in. So that seems like kind of an excessive, but other cities banned it outright. So I'm sure you've got more feedback on that atticus. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I know that there's a group called the Pacific Legal Foundation that is actively challenging the Shawnee ruling or the Shawnee ordinance in federal court. So, yeah, hold the phone, I think is the short answer. is the short answer. We'll see. All right, let's go to our next article from United States Real Estate Investor. Kansas City Realtor caught in $800,000 COVID relief and IRS tax scam bombshell.

Sorry, guys. More scams. Just real quick. So it's a Kansas City realtor giving us a bad name. Michelle O'Connor. Let's see, dodged 500,000 in taxes over more than a decade while simultaneously securing 300,000 in COVID relief funds through 34 fraudulent loan applications using fake businesses and diverting 115,000 into cryptocurrency. So this wasn't a one-off. She's stacking the deck against yourself.

Wow. She faces 25 years in prison. I hope she gets it. It needs to happen. And I'm not surprised at all to hear this either. You know, we applied for nothing during COVID. We did great through COVID, kept all of our employees, just the nature of our business, survived it really well. And yet, somehow our business applied for three separate COVID relief loans.

And I got the paperwork from the state, said, you know, we're finalizing your loan, distributing, hundreds of thousands of dollars and so and it wouldn't it would have happened it would have just gone through had I not called and said hey we never applied for any loan um but they just didn't have the controls in place I think to stop them and it didn't they weren't requesting enough information they weren't doing their fraud checks to make sure that someone wasn't applying in our name so I can only imagine you know we you know we respond to stuff really really quick we're always on the lookout for that kind of stuff but I bet just it it fell through like this lady you know she she got a few businesses uh you know got

covered really funds for other businesses that you know got stuck in that scam that's a that's a bummer i hope she gets some prison time yeah it just keeps that i mean she fabricated deductions a lot of business owners kind of push the line on that uh false bankruptcy filings and misuse of non-profit structures it just you know it's a big bulleted list it says in here you know like as a warning yeah i think there was a go ahead oh yeah i think there was a lot of opportunity for abuse when it came to the the covid relief opportunity for abuse and it looks like this lady just did works uh as far as abusing COVID relief funds with a nonprofit so some people just yeah just take full

advantage of being a criminal and hopefully she gets you know what she deserves so that other people won't you know take this money there really needs to go to people who need it so hopefully she gets I guess better justice than our Austin guy did so we'll see what happens with her maybe she'll have time to write a book the playbook on how to scam or not scam man she just brought out all the tools I'm really pleased to hear that whoever's prosecuting and investigating these is looking back you know because this was years ago this all happened they're looking back and finding the fraud now I mean granted they let it slip through and you know at

the time because they were in a hurry to get that money out but I'm really glad to hear that they're going backwards and looking back and catching some of the Yeah. Yeah, one of these articles, I forget how many documents they were going through, you know, they'd gone back years. It's like it was a full-time job to just unwind all that stuff. So I was going to say, too, in the article it said, you know, warning, just vet your partners and the deals and stuff. You know, we've, we've had, we've raised money through syndication, a couple syndications by apartment complexes. And part of our process was running background checks on all of us that were in the partnership, you know. Because I've heard stories of people not doing that thinking,

you know, somebody's legit. But those records revealed something later. So we did that up front. So we knew that we were in partnership. because we were all in this deal bringing investors a lot of them like in my case personal friends you know i knew where where my ethics lie but not knowing these other people as intimately it was good to do do that due diligence so i felt comfortable that was in partnership with legit people so that's really wise that's uh that's like it's almost like uh

I hear about, you know, all these business partnerships that they don't think things through in advance. They, when a problem occurs, they're thinking about it later, you know, and, and so it's always wise to have, you know, your business pre-up, you know, designed. But I think it's equally wise to what's the history of, of your partners, you know, have they committed fraud in their past? Because it certainly make me second guess working with someone. Yeah. Yeah. It's our SEC attorney who was the one that was like, hey, got to do this. I remember getting the email, like, what is this?

Oh, I've never had a background check. Like, I know I'm clean, but it was like, oh, this is good. It shows a well-organized, you know, person, you know, putting this together if they're doing that. You know, they're checking all these important boxes. It would make me a lot more comfortable on a deal, knowing that whoever's in charge of it is actually performing those steps. Yeah, yeah. Let's go to the next.

Do you have something else, DeMarcus? He's got a delay. I was going to say, I agree. Yeah, it's got to be thorough. I was just saying I agree. You guys should be thorough. It's good that you guys did that. And you can never trust too much nowadays,

even when they seem legit and sound legit. So being as thorough as possible as the best move. Yeah, trust but verify. All right, from Benzinga. via yahoo finance biggest deal of the year so far in new york city real estate developer naftali group agrees to pay 800 million for manhattan tower it's a luxury apartment tower in manhattan so so it's interesting i did the math on this i was like oh 800 million well what did they get for that it's 208 units which seems like that's a big number but

divide that 800 million. That's 3.8 million per unit. And then it was saying, I guess some of them are rented out. So there's two bedrooms starting at 16,500 a month. And three bedrooms are like 23,500 a month. So these are some mind-boggling numbers. Can I just Airbnb one of them for a weekend? That's all I want.

Yeah, that's crazy, huh? Oh man. Yeah, that's out of our range. There's no $800 million deals happening in Southern Oregon right now. No. Yeah, and they thought they got a good deal because at least the sellers were thinking $1 billion. So they got saved some money. What?

Oh, man. Yeah, it's got like good views of Central Market and stuff. I bet that is probably a pretty good deal. deal i hear about apartments in you know new york selling for tens of millions of dollars so i don't know what the quality of these is compared to some of the others but uh real estate is just out of this world over there yeah as long as it's a 100% non-recourse loan i'm in yeah good point all right let's uh jump into our last article or fun news item. Anthropic just analyzed 700,000 clod conversations and found

its AI has a moral code of its own. So they aligned with their helpful, honest, harmless framework, I guess. So, but it said the study uncovered rare but concerning deviations such expressions of dominance often linked to jail break attempts. I don't know if they're talking about people like prompting trying to ask Claude how to break out of jail. No, I was jumping in. Yeah, I think I think they're probably trying to get the AI to do things that it is designed not to do.

But yeah, I mean, listen, I'm certainly a Claude fanboy. through and through so uh i thought this was this was pretty interesting and i mean on our on our team uh it is interesting seeing the a i learn over time uh our head of marketing asked uh i don't if it was gpt or claude but to write something in atticus leblan's voice and like it described my voice pretty well actually uh that's cool and uh yeah it was it was interesting to see i was like oh gosh i mean i guess uh even if i get hit by a bus tomorrow at least my my voice can carry on through all these various ai agents yeah go go record your five minutes or whatever in uh my or hey gen and then we'll have you and your face forever yeah exactly

now we just have to figure out that whole consciousness uh passing passing my consciousness on and and we'll be good to go yeah yeah i think it's i think it's good news uh sounds like clod's going to be the last uh one to become sky net or the last to be assimilated by sky net if it has these this moral code but uh i think uh i think the ai providers uh you know each model is uh they have to differentiate themselves now because there's a lot yeah you know every major company has an a i i model out now and uh so which is the best to use and uh you know some are great for coding, some are great for writing. And I think people are going to have to start making decisions, and one of the decisions is going to be based on, you know, based on this, what's the moral

code? What is the, you know, what's the design of the AI producing and is it positive? And a lot of people, I mean, assumably everybody wants that. And so if that is at the forefront and the center of its language, then that's a good selling point. yeah I use chat GPT every day all day sometimes man I've had a bunch of tech issues and I just have it it's my tech support like I won't even go direct to the tech support for whatever problem I'm I've got some service is this is the point where I come clean and say that Atticus is actually off in a different place and I'm actually his AI is that oh man I had no idea.

It's advanced so much in the last year. It's amazing. Oh, yeah. I can't believe how quickly I've come to rely on it. And then I've been thinking like, oh, let me use a chat TPT, but some people are using Claude and Grok. And I'm like, I don't know how much it's actually learning me and my voice like, Atticus, you were talking about.

But I'm like, oh, should I jump now into something else if it's better? and have it start training its algorithm on me now because especially some of the stuff I use like maybe coming up with scripts I want it in my voice right so I want it to learn that so I don't know interesting interesting position to be in now yeah in general experience and go ahead to Marcus oh sorry yeah I think the transcript in the article was good

Like, we use it so much in our business, and I know you guys do as all. So it's just like the more transparent these providers are, I think the more buying they'll get from the public. And I think the company that's the most transparent will win this race. So it was good to see, you know, with Atticus, I'm not Atticus, what the model does and does it do. But even the bad stuff, I think it's important for them to be transparent so that people understand it more. Just because we use it so much in our company, but there's some people that still don't believe. believe in AI. They never use chat, GBT, that sort of stuff. So just transparency, I think is good. And we'll spread the power for AI because we use it every day for almost everything.

I think DeMarcus hit the nail on the head there. That is going to be the winning AI model. The company that wins is going to be the most transparent because I think the only thing that is going to hold back the future of AI is people's fear of it. And so if there's nothing to be fearful of. If they're fully transparent on how this works, that's going to reduce that fear and that's going to be the winner. So good for them. Anything to add? Okay. Well, that covers the news portion of our show for this month. I'd like to thank our sponsors, United States Real Estate Investor Advertising, Accelerated Capital at Accelerate MyCapital.com.

Join our private investor club there. Universe Media Publishing at UniverseMedia Publishing.com. And of course, thanks to our guests, Atticus LaBal, from PadSplit, Nathan Miller, from Rent Tech Direct, and DeMarcus Mabry, from Rocket Flipping Academy. Why don't you guys let people know how they can connect with you? We'll start with Atticus. Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best way to find me.

I have not yet developed my AI agents to take on all of the day-to-day of Instagram and X, et cetera. So, yeah, LinkedIn is usually the best place to find me. But if you're interested in PadSplit or becoming a property owner hosts who wants to double your income, just go to padsplit.com slash hosts. fantastic nason uh yeah you can uh you can also find me on lincoln just uh search for nathan miller sort of a common name so put rentec direct after it it'll definitely come up uh if you want to learn a little about me or our company uh it's uh rentech direct dot com it's interesting we talked so much about co-living uh because uh there's a lot of co-living operators that use rentech direct

uh so it works really good for that um as well as the rest of the rents industry. So that's it. Thanks. Very good. DeMarcus. Thanks. You can find me link in YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram at DeMarcus Mayberry, just like it's spelled here. If you're looking to close your first wholesale deal, learn more about off-market bill estate, learn more about creative finance. I post a lot of material about that. So feel free at me or whatever. platform active markets may agree shoot me at the end that's our conversation I'm always open to chatting and helping investors throughout their journey awesome thanks guys

again I'm your host James Brown feel free to connect with me by going to excuse me link tree forward slash partner with James Brown and if you want help on your investing journey you're starting out or want to look more kind of my specialties are rent-to-own and co-living and syndications by an apartment buildings feel free to go to my website James Brown realestate.com forward slash coaching also a huge thanks to our founder and producer behind the scenes Antonio Holman with United States real estate investor follow and subscribe to this month in real estate investing at this month in real estateinvesting.com or go to your favorite podcast app.

And if you run across any interesting news, events, or have suggestions for expert guests like we had today, feel free to share them by emailing Antonio at United States Real Estateinvestor.com. And remember, when one door closes, another door opens to financial freedom. Thanks, guys. You know,