KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Why Looser Lending and 50-Year Mortgages Won’t Fix Housing Affordability

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

Summary:In this episode, the hosts critique recent shifts in the housing market, specifically Fannie Mae’s removal of minimum credit requirements and proposed 50-year mortgages. They argue these "Band-Aid" solutions mirror the lead-up to the 2008 crisis and suggest that increasing inventory through builder tax credits is a more sustainable path to affordability. Agents will also learn the "131 Method" for team empowerment—identifying one problem, three solutions, and one recommendation—to streamline operations and buy back their time.

Welcome to the Financial Freedom Mastermind Group podcast. Here we're all about breaking free from the 40 to 50-year work ride and accelerating our journey towards financial freedom. Join us every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern as we explore different types of investments that can fast track your path to financial independence. We serve as a hub for connecting with fellow members during our sessions so you can share successes, ask questions, and keep the momentum going. Good evening, everyone. This is Niki, Atulah, a host of the Akabahom Financial Freedom Mastermind Group. And I actually have my son joining me today. He was a little bit fussy earlier, so I put him in this little carrier. And he likes it when I walk. So if he is conked out right now, but we're going to go ahead and kick this thing off. And this is going to be another open session before next week when we actually have a next week's going to be a guest coming back on, which is the first one in a while. And we plan to bring on a lot more guests here in the future. And so I have some notes. of a few questions that were asked to me throughout the week. And I'm just going to dive into a few of those to kind of kick off our call. So one of the questions I got asked is, is the seller able to cancel an agreement, right? Say a buyer and a seller going to contract for a property.

Is that seller able to just walk out of the agreement and cancel it? And the answer is yes. And in Georgia, there's not a crazy amount of recourse that can happen. Both parties have to agree to go and buy that house. And both parties have to follow through with that. And yes, you do have an agreement on the buyer's side. but if the seller just decides they don't want to sell it, unless you're going to go out and get a lawyer and legally go after somebody,

there's not a whole lot that you can do, right? And so, yes, a seller can back out of a deal. That's why throughout the process, you want to try to make it as amicable as possible, even if you're getting a steel of a deal, it's one of those where the more of a relationship you can build with that seller, the better so that you keep that goodwill toward the end and you can make that deal happen.

The other question I got asked is, what do you think about Fannie Mae rolling back their minimum credit requirement. And so for those that don't know, Fannie Mae recently rolled out. And so for those that don't know, Fannie Mae recently reduced their minimum credit rating from 620 to non-existent. Now they're going to look at it on a case-by-case basis. And it may sound like, oh, man, if I was just on the fringe, I can now go get a loan. But this is what led to the 2008 housing crisis. There wasn't any minimum credit requirement back then. It was really if you had a pulse, so you can get a loan. I'm not saying we're going right to that, but when you start loosening and

saying, hey, there's not going to be a minimum credit requirement, now you're starting to walk a tight line, right? Now that it's up to the bank's discretion to kind of choose who they want to lend to, or if like, hey, we believe this person has funds and income and things of that nature, we're going to lend to them. And if there's not that standard, it can lead to some issues down the road. Now, I believe that one of the reasons they might have done this is, one, to stimulate the housing market, but two, to potentially counteract the fact that now student loans can count against you on your credit to where if you didn't start paying your student loans back when they kicked up earlier this year, your credit got dinged and now it can affect you in ways of buying houses.

But a 620 is not a crazy hard score to obtain, right, for getting like an FHA type of financing loan and things that nature. And it gets a little squirrely when you start to reduce those requirements. So please be safe out there. Make sure that you're more than qualified for the whole. homes that you're buying. And if you're working with us, we're going to make sure that the investment makes sense, regardless of the home or how you're going to get it. Another piece that somebody brought up was the 50-year mortgage. And so earlier this week, Trump actually rolled out that he's been having discussions to potentially release a 50-year mortgage. Now, I personally am not a huge fan of this.

When I look at 50 versus 30, a 50-year mortgage on a median house of about 400K versus a 30-year mortgage is going to save you roughly $200 per month, right? Now, that, may help somebody qualify for that house who couldn't previously, but to add another 20 years of paying interest onto that property is absolutely insane to me. The way a 30-year mortgage is made up, it's already in favor of the bank. The first 15 years is heavily, heavily, heavily toward the interest. It's only on the back 15 that you actually start paying down most of the principle of that loan. And so I'd be very careful with a 50-year mortgage versus a 30-year mortgage, and I would lean more towards sticking with the 30.

If you can't qualify for the home with the 30-year mortgage, going to a 50 is not going to help you. If anything, you want to try to pay that house off a little bit sooner. Now, what I think from an investor standpoint and from people that already own the properties, I think that them introducing a potential 50-year mortgage is going to allow us to take our equity a little upfront, kind of like what happened during the pandemic. I think it's going to go up a little quicker. But again, it's a slippery slope similar to Fannie Mae doing away with the minimum credit

requirement. And I would not go down that slope, similar to how I talked to a couple of people during the pandemic when people were taking out PPP loans, when they didn't have a business and didn't need it. I would not do it. And so with that in mind, Desmond, AJ, how you guys? How are you guys? How are you doing? Super good. Oh, wow. I have a crazy background going on. I did not intentionally put that on. So you got, you got the, what, Northern Lights, right? Actually, actually, I like it. I might actually keep it. I didn't intentionally put that on, but I'm going to rock with it today. It is kind of cool. Hey, come on now. I just got wallpaper in my background. No, that's a dope wallpaper. You're not showing off your painted wall this time?

Not this time, not this time. Back at the desk. Back at the desk. Come on now. And I want to kick it back to you guys. Have you heard about the Fannie Mae relieving that minimum credit requirement of 620? And then also have you heard about the 50-year mortgage potential getting rolled out? And what are your thoughts?

I'll let you go ahead first, Desmond. Yeah, for sure. I have not heard about the credit requirement being removed or lower. That's definitely a new one. And that's interesting. And it makes sense, right? with people struggling to buy homes now and just where the market's at. And, you know, they're being a 30-year low on home purchases.

I definitely think that makes sense. And I could see them rolling out other, you know, rule changes to allow more folks to qualify. So that one I think makes sense. I'm curious to see how it shakes out and curious to see if that's going to be, you know, whether a blessing or a curse. So we'll see. But I think it makes sense at least just with how tough it is right now to buy a home for a lot of folks. Now with the 50-year mortgage, I have heard about that.

And originally, I had thought that that would dramatically lower the payment. But it doesn't seem that that's going to be the case. I heard, I think it was either on the market or maybe somewhere on bigger pockets, with a $400,000 home purchase, it's only going to reduce your payment around $200. So the extra interest that you're taking on for that much longer span just doesn't seem worth it. That seems to be sort of the general consensus. I heard you talking about it earlier, Ney. So that one I don't think it's going to move too many folks to take action.

I think like you were saying earlier, right? If you're not qualifying at 30, then stretching it out to 50 probably isn't the best idea. So I'm curious to see how many people will actually take advantage of that if that is rolled out. AJ, what are your thoughts? Yeah, just to piggyback, like you mentioned, Desmond, so it will only lower your monthly payment, I think, and, you know, it depends on the mortgage or the home that you're buying. but in your example, you said $200. But in the long run, the life of the mortgage, that could balloon to, you know, about six figures in interest, right?

So I think people really have to pay attention to that. Overall, I'm not sure if this will pan out well or bad, but I think I do have some concern. And the reason why I have concern is, yes, we do have an affordability crisis. A lot of people are really trying to get into their first-time homes, essentially, and just purchase a home and, you know, move their family. family in. But this kind of sounds a little bit similar to the 2008 mortgage crisis. And I don't know. I feel like I just have concern. And this isn't to say that I think this is going to be a repeat, but it's just a lot of similar things going on, you know, handing out loans to potentially subpring

borrowers and also just kind of lowering the hurdle a bit. Again, I do understand it from the aspect of trying to help everyday home seekers who are trying to get into their first home. But like I said, I just have a little bit of concern just a bit, just lowering that hurdle, lowering the credit limits and, you know, offering mortgages or loans that are up to 50 years. I mean, that's kind of insane. Yes, it's going to affect your monthly payment and, you know, make it smaller, but I'm not sure if it will do good things in the long term. So it's definitely something I'm going to just contain to keep an eye on, but it's really tough to say until things actually pan out, in my opinion. And one of the things that you brought up is, you know, 2008 vibes. And, and I'm

wasn't getting those vibes until November 16th, which is when the Fannie Mae officially said, hey, we're doing away with that 620 minimum. And we're going to look at it more holistically. And when you start doing that, that is what led to 08. Right. Back then, there wasn't that minimum. It was more up to the bank. And banks are incentivized, especially with loans to close the loans. That's how bankers get paid. That's how, you know, the doors, you know, keep rolling. And so it's not like there's going to be an issue right now, but it could be lining up the dominoes for, you know, five to ten years from now. And I think that these quote unquote proposed solutions are really short-term band-aids that are just going to kick the can down the road and make it even

worse. Almost like, hey, instead of allowing us to go through a recession, right, let's just pump it up even more. It's like you need to, you got to have some slow times. The past two years from a transaction volume standpoint, and I'm a realtor saying this, right? The past two years have been the slowest in the industry for the past 30 years. But I'm good with that because I understand like, hey, it goes in cycles and there's going to be more boom years to come in a few years. But if you do something like this, you're almost pulling some of that forward. And it makes that drop even more dangerous when it does fall out because maybe people will be good for this year because they were used to, okay, qualifying. But if the bank has a number to hit or they're

going to go under, are they going to floods the number and say, oh, you got a 550? But, you know, I trust you. Let's go ahead and do it. I get nervous on that. Yeah, yeah. It's just, echoes a little bit like the 08, oh nine financial crisis with the housing market because what was the issue, right? And like I previously mentioned, it was offering loans to subprime borrowers, offering adjustable mortgage rates. So after three years or so, three to five years, then they would be stuck with the interest rate that would jump up and skyrocket. And then all of a sudden, they have these high monthly mortgage payments that these people can't afford. So like I said, I just have some concern. And I don't know, I really just want to keep an eye out on this one.

Absolutely. Desmond, you look like you're in deep thought. You got anything? I'm just thinking and to your point of there do have to be some low times. I think that it is true, right? The market goes in cycles, but I do wonder, aren't there any actions that the government should be taken to try to address the affordability crisis right now? I do think that it does make sense, at least them thinking about making change to help people out to buy homes. And I'm curious, you guys have thoughts on if those aren't the right changes, through your mortgages, reducing the credit qualifications, which I agree that probably is not the right move, especially to allow just anyone to qualify. What are some potential solutions? Yeah, like, what is the right move? Exactly. What is the right move, right? Like, do we just let it be low and just kind of

see how it shakes out and hope that at some point the market does pick back up? Or are there other incentives or options, maybe tax credits, or better, to help people buy these homes? Because I kind of see it as a stagnating point to where, you know, people can't buy homes. It's hard to build affordable homes with all the restrictions. But then those restrictions for building homes are in place to make sure the home is safe and make sure all the boxes are checked. So to me, it seems like there almost has to be changed at some point. And then where is that change made? I think we saw them, you know, a couple of years back reducing the conventional loan requirements around, you know, up to foreign units. I think that was another kind of step in the direction of, yeah,

helping people afford more homes. I think that helped out, at least in my particular case. I was, you know, I don't care if it helps my situation. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. I won't say it allowed me to step into another foreign unit on a conventional loan. I was very, you know, grateful for that change. So I'm just curious to hear you guys of, are there some changes you do think, you know, that are better to be made that would help out? crisis that we're in. I have a thought on this. So as opposed to lowering the hurdle, lowering the minimum requirement for credit score, increasing mortgages to 15-year mortgages,

what was one thing after the 2008 financial housing crisis that essentially stopped or actually declined? And it's a still issue. It's an issue today, right? It's an inventory issue. So I really think that if we, you know, put the government steps in and puts taxpayers' dollars towards more development, building more into different cities, then we address that inventory issue, right, which I think will have a positive effect on the housing crisis or affordability issue that we have going on right now. So that's the problem nowadays, right? Like if you go out, inventory is still low. And that's still due to the ramifications of that housing market crash back in 08. Builders did not build it is nearly as much as they did at that time. And then when, you know, all these homes

flooded the market, that caused that huge domino effect. And everybody said, oh, we're just going to stop building. So in my opinion, I think that may be a good course of action is just to add more inventory to the market. And then, you know, see where the buyers go. Give people more options to get into homes as opposed to, like I mentioned, trying to lower the hurdle, offering these mortgages that I just don't necessarily agree with. I don't think I would ever get a 50-year mortgage. But, those are my thoughts. I don't know. What do you think, Ney? If, if I had the power to be, right, I'd be leaning more toward what you said, which is incentivizing the builders with tax credits, right? And I wouldn't be doing tears on the stuff that we need to, to build these houses that makes it

more expensive. It makes more people want to sit on the sideline. And you mentioned 08. Like, what we did after 08 to get out of that a bit was Obama introduced like a, I think it was $7,500 tax credit for first-time homebuyer. So you essentially put down your down payment of 3.5%. maybe you got your closing cost covered by the seller, and then you got that money back at the end of the year. Same thing we did for the electric vehicle market. That's the reason it took off for a couple years, right, is because there was a tax credit. And so in my mind, I think you do a little bit of both. You give tax credit to the developers, and then also to the people sitting on the sidelines, you give some form of credit that can help them if they're going to be a personal home buyer,

right? Because you don't want all the investors scoop it in because I would. Like, if there's something out there, I'm going to scoop in and take everything. But you want for personal homebuyers to get some type of credit similar to what they're doing now for children, right? One of the main reasons I had Abraham was because that, I mess with you. No, no, but there's a $5,000 credit. We're going to strike that one from the recording. There's a $5,000 credit that they're giving for children that are born this year, right? And so that's kind of cool.

I'm going to take advantage of it. But yeah, I would lean more toward that. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think, you know, issuing tax credits and helping to incentivize people not only to buy homes and build homes is the right approach as compared to lowering the restrictions both on the home buyer side and on the builder side because you want to make sure the buyers are qualified. You also want to make sure the builders are building, you know, solid, safe homes. And I would be scared if they started to loosen the restrictions around building, right? and then we end up in another crisis where homes are just falling off of cliffs because they weren't framed up correctly. So I do think it makes sense to take some of that taxpaying dollars, some of those taxpaying dollars and put it towards the housing market.

But then that also begs the question of, well, then how do we take care of that debt? You know, how does that play into the, you know, trillion dollar debt that our country's in in terms of, you know, national debt. And I think that kind of ties into a larger conversation, but I do think that makes sense because, yeah, lowering restrictions on either side just seems like it'll cost trouble in the long run. Yeah, it's like, you know, we lowered the minimum credit score. We already know that that did not work in the 08 housing crisis. We're introducing 50-year mortgages. I don't have a good feeling about that. It's like, how about we try something that we haven't tried since the housing market crash, which is actually build more homes, add more inventory to the market, which, which is,

will soften the blow and theoretically should bring home prices down. If there's more inventory, it's just a simple economics one-on-one, supply and demand. High supply, lower, you know, just the inverse scenario, basically. You know, we have more supply prices should decline. And then if we have, you know, a situation like where right now where the supply is pretty tight, well, that's why a lot of homes right now are at the prices that there are today. Agreed. 100% agreed.

I know I kind of took over the call with those first two. I was asked that earlier this week, and I was like, hey, this is my take. But what do you guys got top of mind? What's going on? Right after this, I know me and Desmond are about to go play pickleball, so I'm about to kick his butt for the second week in a row. Hey, Desmond, have you played pickleball before? Yeah.

I sure have, yeah. And don't let AJ confuse me. I kicked his butt the first time. That was the first time. See, AJ didn't even tell me that was the first time. I thought this was the first time. See? See, that's how they do you.

Yeah. But there's a court right down the street from my. house. They built a pickleball court in this park down the street in college park. So we're going to go play on that today. It has some lights so we can play in the dark. I'm hoping that the home court advantage will help. We were over on AJ's side of town last time. So I don't want to say that that had an effect on my game, but I was still a little off. So we'll see. We'll see. Bring your A game. Listen, there ain't no excuses. And let me ask you this. So they built it as a pickupball court or is it pickle ball slash tennis court? It's pickle ball slash tennis. It used to be just a tennis court. Yeah,

It used to be just tennis and then kind of old and busted up. So then it proved it. It looks basically brand new. But I want to get into tennis as well. I know you guys, you know, play some time on that. But I'm gassed after even a pickleball game. So I got to get my cardio up first before the tennis comes to play. Tennis is a whole other ballpark.

But I'm down to play pickleball tennis. Count me in. That's awesome. We should try to switch it up. I know you and I need. We typically play tennis. We'll start to do pickleball. And then Des will start to play more tennis.

Just have some variety right there. He's just trying to stack the cards in his favor, man. That's exactly what's going on with you. Right. See, and me, you are going to play pickleball. So we can get our skills up there too. Don't worry. That's fair.

Listen, anytime, any place. No, but no. So one of the other things that I'm working through, I know that you guys work with a lot of different vendors and contractors and things that nature, I work and I'm trying to build up the team, right, whether it be the real estate team, the sorts and rental team and others.

And there's a method that I've been using that's been highly effective and awesome called the 131 method. And have we talked about this before? Or do you guys know what that is? We haven't talked about it. I don't think we've talked about it on the podcast or at least personally, but I've been pouring into that Dan Martel podcast that he shared to me. Man, he is amazing.

I started from number one and I've been working my way up to the AI stuff. The initial episodes are more just around business and entrepreneurship. So I am familiar with that because I've been listening to that podcast nonstop. That man is amazing. And I can tell you have because, yeah, so let me ask you this. Even before we jump into the 131, what did you think of that episode? And is there some nuggets that you can take from that for the future of what you're trying to do? So, funny enough, I actually haven't even listened to the episode you shared yet.

And I planned to, but I wanted to start from the beginning because I just read the description. I think I might have listened to just a few minutes of what you had shared. But I just realized like, yo, this podcast is full of gold in general, not just regarding AI businesses, but businesses in general. And at the end of the day, I mean, I have. a degree in, you know, engineering. So all the business stuff, I've just been kind of faking it until I make it in terms of, you know, the short-term rental stuff and the real estate stuff I've got going on. But so I'm really trying to just hone up my skills in general around business and then start to niche down as in regards to AI. And then on the flip side, trying to improve my skills.

I was just working with chat, GBC earlier to get a plan together of how to improve my skills of AI engineering in general. So I'm kind of taking a, you know, stacked approach. But I will get there. Don't worry. Definitely. Hey, come on. No. Honestly, I love this because you're doing it. This is what I did when I first heard the Bigger Pockets podcast in 2015. I just went fully in and, you know, fast forwarded it now. It's like, okay, this is like a whole thing. And so circling back, the one, and really quick, AJ, you know Dan Martel, the buyback your time guy? I haven't. No. Man, there's a book called buy back your time. It's incredible. I'm going to run it down right. And essentially what it's saying is if you, if you look at how much you should be getting paid per hour, right? If you break down like,

hey, my business, if I'm running this and then also W2 and things that nature, you shouldn't be doing work that's less than that. And so, for example, if you owned a bunch of Airbnb, say eight in a row and you had that every Saturday, you were going to go do laundry for all of these, right? And you were cleaning them, right? It may make sense to offshoot that to somebody else, right? I'm not pointing any fingers, but somebody in the squad. I don't know why. But similar to that. And he even takes it further. So like, I don't cut my lawn, right? We have a lawn person. I don't do the deep cleans of my own house, right? We bring in a cleaner for that because I can spend more time doing other things that bring more dollars, starting more businesses, et cetera. But one of the concepts that he teaches,

but I heard it from somebody else first, but he teaches as well, is the one three one method. And it's a way to empower your team. Once you guys start building teams, because I know you are, you empower your team that way. And so the one stands for what is the one problem that they're trying to solve. So one of the things I do on a daily basis with my team, and they will get annoyed with this, especially when they forget that I'm going to send this to them, is they'll call me and be like, oh, need, this is going on. What should we do? I'm like, okay, what's the one problem?

Right? And it stops the whole thing. And then they got to really think about it. Like, oh, I didn't think about it. I just wanted to relay the information to you. Because if you don't stop and ask them that, then it's putting a crutch out there that they're always going to come back to you to try to solve any type of problem.

And so one is asking them to clearly define the one problem. There could be 15 things, but what's the one problem you're trying to solve right now? The three is what are three solutions that you have thought of? Because more than likely, if they sit down to think about, hey, how could I solve this issue? They're going to come up with a solution that will actually work. And then the last one is which solution did they recommend? I literally just did this with a team member, maybe an hour before this call on something that was going on with a contractor, and they came up with the whole solution. It took less than five minutes. And they were like,

Oh, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I agree. We should do that. 90% of the time, if you empower your team to do this, they will come up with the solution. And then over time, it teaches people to critically think through solutions before they come and bring a problem. And it's something that I try to embody as well, even when I'm working with clients and things that nature, I try not to bring a problem unless I've already thought through a couple solutions that are viable that we can talk about and go from there. Yeah, I love it. And speaking on that further, I love just his framework around it. and he wants to empower his team, right? So in addition to the at your time book, AJ,

the Dan Martel Method podcast, he's delivering it, you know, verbally, and he's got talks on there and whatnot. So he talks about not getting into a cycle of what he calls tell check next, where you tell someone what to do, you check they got it done, and then you move on to the next thing.

And opposite of that, actually empowering, be able to solve the problems that they're bringing to you, right? And then eventually they're, they get the point, right? You tell them one through one enough. They know you're going to, you're going to say that, bring you a problem. So they're already thinking to the issues. They're already thinking of how they can get to the actual outcome without just relying on you to solve it for them. And I love how he talks about it. It's like, hey, you know, this is your job. So if you bring me the problem without any solutions or any way to solve this, I'm basically doing your job. So

really empowering people to do their, not do their job, but really have the tools and have the mindset around being able to figure those things out on their own. So yeah, I love his framework around it. I'm definitely going to check that out. I'm going to challenge you guys too. So say we don't have just one problem. Say we got like three problems. Say we have a water heater, an AC unit, and I don't know, an Airbnb guest trash the place. Then what do we do? Listen, we still boil it down to one problem and one problem at a time. So, okay, water heater, what's the problem? Water heater's not working. What are three potential solutions? Well, we can call our plumber. I can go out there and take a look or we can send a handyman. Which do you recommend? I recommend we call our plumber. Okay, that makes perfect

sense, right? And you just, it's a revolving door. You just keep going back. So even if we have multiple problems, we want to break them down one by one and then come up with different solutions for each of them. Yeah, because the key and Desmond, I think, would agree on this is simplification. When you break it down to the, because everything can look complex. But you guys have heard me preach this. let's just take it one step at a time. If you look at the whole house buying process, there's a lot going on. You're telling me I got to go get an inspection, get an appraisal. We've got to figure out all this loan docs, all this stuff.

And then we got to make sure the numbers work. It's like, hey, let's just focus on one thing at a time. And when you do that one thing, you get to the next and the next and the next. So same time of deal. Yeah, and going off of that, he's talked about that in the podcast as well, where there typically are not just one problem. There are multiple problems going on in any given time. But being able to pick the one that we need to,

solve right now, right? So when you bring up HVAC or yeah, HVag, you know, water heater, the lights might be out. What do we need to figure out today so that we can move on to the next problem and sequence it in a way that makes sense? I think as a leader of a team, it's your job to help out with that prioritization. Okay. What problem, you know, if you're, say, one team member brings you three problems asking them, hey, what problem do we need to figure out right now so that we can logically move on to the next one? So I think prioritization really helps out with that. And the cool thing about doing this is over time, you start to see, like, it just gets ingrained in your folks. And now you can achieve so much more because the person

who's boots on the ground and closest to the issue can now solve it. Right. If it's me, you got to bring me up the speed. I need to know the whole background and all this stuff. But if you have all that background, you probably can create a solution. And so one example I'll give over this before, you know, kind of moving on is on Sunday, you know I live in a duplex. We ran up the back. On Sunday, there was a booking.com guest. And they overstated. they're welcome, right? It was like 1130 or 12. They were supposed to have been out and the cleaners are supposed to be inside.

And I didn't know any of this because I was coming back to church until we pulled up. And I saw like, you know, our cleaner here. I was like, oh, what's going on? They're like, hey, the person's still here. Da-da-da-da-da. I'm like, oh, do you need help? She's like, nah, already talked to your operations manager. She's already working through it.

She's got it. Okay, cool. And like, I didn't even know any of this stuff was going on, right? Whereas when we first started, I would have been the first one in the loop. Hey, this is what's going on? Can you go back or should we do this? now after doing that enough times, they're just solving. And as long as it fits within a certain threshold,

it's not going to be like, hey, $2,000, I need to know about that. Then yeah, we're good. That's likely because you have a lot of solid systems in place. And this is something that I preach often to my wife because we partner and we handle. We manage, we're our own property managers, right? But the more and more we have our systems in place, the less we have to think about when a problem does arise, we just go straight to the system.

Oh, this is what happens. It's kind of just like, if this, then you do that. And it takes the thinking process out of running, you know, any business, but with us the short-term rentals, a lot of different things going on. The cleaning piece, managing the guests, handling guest communication. But having solid systems in place is definitely something that is just going to accelerate your growth in the business and your comfortability. I don't want to continue to expand my business and then also continue to expand my issues, right?

If I expand my systems, then that will be able to handle all of my issues in a way that is just more efficient for the business to run. So I think what you're speaking of is just the testament of your system and process as being well kept and in place. Yeah, and it goes into, you know, SOPs of a business, right? I've even started to have to write down my own SOPs because sometimes I'll forget, especially when it comes to, you know, maintenance issues with age back or whatever it might be. There are certain steps that you can kind of do on your own to try to diagnose

or at least check things out before you call your contractor. And I'll have to write those things down because there are so many moving parts, you know, in a business and especially, you know, when it comes to short-term rentals or managing real estate to where I even have to remind myself of what my own procedures are because I might forget or, you know, it's just good to have that stuff down. And you have a standard way of handling things that you already know works and has worked in the past.

Yeah. So I'm definitely a big proponent of systems. and practices for sure. When it's out, write it out. And literally, it'll start to give you back time, right? Because one of the new hires that just made was an executive assistant. That's literally just keyed to me to help across the board. And I've been able to give her so much stuff that I originally thought,

hey, I have to be the one to do this. So that's been amazing. And then when you look at just over time, what AJ just said is true. Like anything that you can write down, whether you can record a video or put like just an SLP together, it's now something that you can pass. ass off and now you have the freedom that you earned and one to get all along, which is kind of cool. Yeah, definitely. And I can tell you've been plugging into the Dan Martel book because that's one of the things he also talks about in the podcast that that really should be, or is oftentimes

the first e-hire that will kind of unlock buying back some of your time and really letting them take over the calendar, take over the inbox. I don't think I'm at that point yet, but it's definitely something that I'm keeping in the back of my mind of, okay, what are, some of the tasks that I could delegate to an assistant. And, Ney, I would ask you, do you wish you would have hired them first?

Because I know you have some other team members in your business. So kind of how do you fit them in now with the operations manager and the other members that you have on your team? Is that something you wish you kind of would have had sooner? Man, that's a hard one to answer only because, like, you're right,

we built it out kind of weird. And I read that book a while ago and I looked at it and I still didn't take an action on that piece. you know what, like, I just need this person for this and this person for that. But now I'm seeing some of the benefits, right, of being able to just, even, even, for example, I have a VA that does all the invoices right now, right, that's aside from the bookkeeping VA because we invoice a lot of different owners for a million maintenance things or buying this stuff and whatnot. And it's starting to become a lot. And now I'm able to move that just to the executive assistant and eliminate

some cost from that standpoint. And this is a person that can now help keep me on guard. And so, yeah, I would say it could be one of the earlier hires, right? In the business that I'm in, one of the things that really helped me was the transaction coordinator, right? My guy, Michael, he has been incredible. That guy, like, I wish I had hired him day one when I moved into real estate. But I think anybody, even what you're doing, right? I think that you can hire an executive assistant and train them to even help with some of the answering of the messages, maybe during the day, and become you. And then you can figure it out for overnight. Yeah. And I will say one thing that has helped immensely is hospitable rolling out AI.

full into the messaging because now I really am just trying to train up that AI to be me and it does a great job. Sometimes I'll go back and look at the messages that respond. I'm like, wow, that was better said than what I would have. So yeah, I think that's been a huge unlock. And just in general, man, I'm really curious to see how that's going to continue to come into products. I see turbotax or, you know, not even turbotects, sorry, QuickBooks has introduced AI into the system to help out with reconciliation and whatnot. Haven't been able to play with that much at all, but I'm very curious to see how that could potentially take over the role of a bookkeeper

because I realized I was not doing my books correctly for the first year or two. There was no reconciliation. There was no matching bank statements. I was just like, oh, what's here? This must be right. And then I get to the end. I'm like, this doesn't make sense. So now actually understanding that I'm like, man, this is so much more work than I thought

it was going to be. And now in this age of AI, I'm really, I go back and forth every day, honestly, of, okay, do I reach out to Mary again and try to have him salvage my books from this year and then going into the next year? Because they're not where I need them to be and want them to be, especially when it comes to the reconciliation. Like the categorization is one thing. The reconciliation is a whole different beast. So really trying to understand where can AI be plugged into where it makes sense, but then also where do I still need that human to kind of be doing the day-to-day and tedious tasks. So still something I'm trying to get right and figure out. And I'm hoping to have, you know, more information on that as I start to dig more into, you know,

just learning more about AI and doing research and implementation onto what's possible and what makes sense right now with the current tech. Because I mean, this stuff is evolving so rapidly. Like Gemini III just came out from Google. There seems to be a, new AI update almost every day. So I think this stuff is really going to start to be real, right, and be implementable in a business. And I'm really trying to understand what are the ways that can be plugged in. And it's, it's absolutely crazy, right? Like just how quickly, because it's really only been, what? It was 2023 when they released chat GPT, right? Something like that. And now it's taken off to this level. And like I'm using a new app. I don't know if it's new.

It seems new called granola for like note taking, an in person meeting. or meeting with contractors. And my goodness, the summaries that it gives after an hour conversation of walking through a house is incredible to where you can put together a contract. You know exactly what was done. You didn't have to take a note. And so, yeah, it is getting really good. It's low-key, a little bit scary. And that's why I'm happy to be in some of the investments that we're in and building our own businesses. Because I don't know, man, like the bookkeeping jobs, all the stuff that you could do on a computer and not necessarily with your hands over time are going to start to disappear with this AI, or at least change rapidly.

Definitely. Definitely. They're coming for us. Me and you, dad, they're, you know, engineers. So he just called us out. We got to get, we got to get some skills together, man, build some businesses. Getting scary out here. 100%.

And it's really why I'm taking a bigger step back, right, on just my career as a whole. Because, I mean, the capabilities of AI when it comes to software engineering, they are scary, especially as a software engineer, like you look at what, you know, cursor and windsurf and these new AI tools around coding, what they can do. It's, I can understand why companies would start to eliminate junior roles and even the more mid-level roles because that AI can serve, you know, in that capacity. And it's only getting better every day. So I'm kind of taking my fun employment, as I call it, to, you know, take a step back to really

understand, okay, what's the strategy here and how can I continue to, you know, level up my skills and not get left behind. And I was, I was kind of feeling that way on my previous team where we were doing nothing related to AI. And I would, you know, go on LinkedIn or just look in the news and see all these AI advancements coming out. And I realize, I mean, in really in all businesses now, not just software engineering. If you're not ramping up on AI in some way, you are slowly starting to get left behind. Even personally, my mom, she's using chat. GBT every day now. I put her on that. And she's like, oh, my God, this is, this is insane. I mean, she's drafting up, you know, whole documents to send her tenants and whatnot. So, yeah, I think it's really going to affect almost every business. And no matter which one you're in, if you're not using it, you're losing it, you're losing in a way. Come on now. And to shift gears a little bit, I got to come back to a question that we asked you around this time last year, Desmond. And AJ, I'm going to ask you to you too. What are you doing from a goal setting standpoint? Are you writing down to, stuff heading into 2026? Are you using the tools we have, the chatGBTs of the world, to come up with

some goals that you can write down? What does that look like heading into 26 guys? Yeah. So for me, I am happy to say finally, I am actually writing down goals and have slowed down and have taken some time to actually put things on paper. And now really everything I do has to be related to a plan. So I have a whole kind of, I got a bookmark in Google right now, plans bookmark with a bunch of different spreadsheets regarding, you know, career plan, you know, life plan. So, you know, self-improvement, you know, other aspects of my life that I really am trying to lay this stuff out and be the CEO of my own life. I forgot where I heard that, but really try to, you know, not so strictly run my life as a business, but really try to have some type of plan and be able to track that. So I've come up with this. kind of system of my own that I'm using. It's the three piece. And it's basically priorities, planning, and then progress. Right. So I try to start from there. What are the priorities? How can I plan that out? And then how can I track that progress? So yeah, I've gotten really serious about that. And, man, I took some time and wrote out a whole life plan. I evaluated where I was at in certain

categories. How do I want to approve those? So that's something I'm getting really serious about to have gotten serious about. And at first, I was just running. I was just, you know, trying to run as fast as possible and do as many things as possible. But now I have definitely slowed down and trying to, you know, really get things down on paper and checking in with those goals and priorities to make sure that they make sense and are adapting to, you know, how life is going. Come on now. And before we kick to AJ, thank you for clarifying what the PPP said for.

I thought you were talking about the loan. No. No. You know? I'm like, hey, don't put on this podcast. Yeah. My strategy, the PPPO on, man. AJ, what about you, man?

What are you doing? No, yes. For prepared. For sure, for sure. And this is a great topic. I often, I think we all benefit from not just speaking about, you know, what we want to accomplish, but actually writing it down. And I've actually been able to do this for the past couple of years, me and my wife.

So we do almost everything together. We goal set together. We plan together. So that's just how we operate our marriage. I think that's extremely important. So we've been doing this for the past couple of years. This year has been. incredibly busy. But that's a good thing. We've been busy, honestly, hitting a lot of our goals.

And now that I sit back and, you know, think about it, we actually missed. So just to take a step back, we set up a yearly or end of year meeting to just address all of our goals. So we'll likely have one coming up in about a month or so. And then we kind of plan out how we're tracking our progress and we meet up every quarter. So for 2024, I think we met the first two quarters. And so far, at that point in time, we were doing really well. We were hitting off a lot of our goals, checking things off. And then we got into the purchase of our duplex. So, you know, things kind of went haywire.

We were just doing a lot of research into properties and trying to figure out where we wanted to buy. And, you know, you guys know all about just the chaos of trying to acquire another property. So we did end up missing our third quarterly meeting. But honestly, I think we're doing really well. I'm going to actually look at our progress and our goals tracking spreadsheet that we have after this meeting because you guys just brought to my attention. We've been so busy, but honestly, I feel like we've just been thriving and hitting a lot of our goals in 2024. So I'm really proud of that.

And then we're just going to continue and repeat the process. I'm just meet up in about a month, outline all of the goals that we want to hit for the upcoming year, address any pitfalls, see, you know, any areas that we can improve. And, you know, we don't want to make it extremely over a complicated process. Just, you know, the most important thing is just to write it down and also track it. So I know, Desmond, you mentioned that. Just how are you tracking your progress towards your goals? But it really starts with writing it down first. So that's where we're at right now.

We're just going to continue to do that and just try to improve upon anything we can. Come on now. I love it. And I'm in a similar boat, right? Every year we put together the goals. And then me and my wife have a financial meeting where we look at the goals. But then we also look at like, hey, because we set a net worth goal in there too, which kind of kills two birds with one stone, like eliminating debt.

and also increasing the assets that you have and the cash that you have on hand. And so one of the things that I like to do is actually print out the goals, right? And I try to keep it to one page and I'll put it on top of my laptop station, right, so I can see it. I don't actually read it every day, right? I probably should, but I read it like once a week. And just having your mind be on that, it just opens you up to more opportunities and things that nature. For example, one of the goals that we had this year with our son on the way was to play more defense. Right?

Last year, we went after it. bought some properties, took a couple over subject two, just did a whole bunch of stuff, right? And this year was like, hey, how do we just stabilize all the properties? Whether it's, hey, we're going to move this one over to a long term, this one's going to go, you know, turn into a short term, this one's going to whatever, right? And so we were able to accomplish that and we accomplished that during the first half of the year. And then the second half has been, okay, let's stack, stack, stack, stack, so that next year we can get after again.

And so it's been pretty incredible. But it's all because you sit down, you write it down, and you have a focus that you don't lose sight of what you're trying to do for that year. Definitely. We played a lot of offense in 2024, but I definitely think at this point we want to stabilize in 2025. I think we'll start playing a bit more defense. And, you know, I've been thinking a lot about it, you know, how we protect

our properties, how we, you know, the insurance piece, umbrella policies, making sure we just have that protection. So it's a good point for sure. Come on now. Guys, anything else top of mine? One more thing. Big shout out to Amstra and also other, just every short-term rental hosts in the city. We had a big win this past week.

we fought at the Atlanta City Council. I actually made the news, so that was pretty cool. But we did fight back against the ordinance in District 7 in Atlanta. Howard Shook, Councilmember Howard Shook, he proposed an ordinance that would ban all short-term rentals in District 7. And although I don't have any properties in District 7, it was extremely important for myself and really any short-term rental host. Like, if you own a short-term rental in Atlanta, you should be fighting and supporting the

Amstra prerogatives and goals, right? because like I mentioned when I was there and I spoke to the city council, it almost becomes like a domino effect. If they can ban it in one district or one part of the city, they'll just kind of continue to approve those across the city and not even think about it. I want to hear data as to why you guys want to ban these short-term rentals and it doesn't even sound like these guys that are really putting too much thought process in it. So I proposed to the council, I said, hey, look, as opposed to just doing a blanket ban across the city, How about we work together to come up with a solution that works for all parties involved, right? And I think, in my opinion, we should come up with a system that will punish some of the bad actors in the short-term rental community while supporting the good ones and allowing us to thrive and operate our business. So huge win for the city.

And I'm just looking out for the next legislation. If they, you know, try to write one up, I'll definitely be there on the front lines and fighting for all hosts, right, to operate in the city. Come on now. And AJ, I meant to shout you out, but thank you for going out there. I remember seeing the video on your story. Well done on articulating that to the council. Because they don't know, right? They're just like, oh, I think this is a hot button topic. Let's go ahead and try to get this thing banned. But you're spot on. If it happens one spot, it can spread very quickly. And so thank you for fighting that battle on our behalf and on the behalf of the city. That is a major winner. Absolutely. It was a very slim margin, but we got the boats. It was a seven, six in our favor. And I can't remember if they had to. get to just eight votes or if it's just majority. But, and either way, they did not get to eight votes in favor of it. And we also got the majority of the votes that did not want to prove the ordinance. So we won all the way around and win is the win. And I'm happy for it. Come on. And I'm going to try and do my part and go find these councilmen and go get them in Airbnb.

So that way they're incentivized to keep this thing. There you go. Guys, I appreciate you joining. I am going to ask who wins this pickleball match because I'm highly interested now. I want to see if Desmond actually... He ain't even got to ask, man. He ain't got to ask. I hope you guys have a good time, and I'll catch you a little later. I'll start out. See you on the court, AJ.

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