Transcript
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On this week's episode of the Insider, rob will update us on some significant decisions made by the Hanford City Council, plus a check on the very busy fall calendar.
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Then Thomas Curtis stops by to talk about the local real estate market and I'll be back with highlights and scores from Week 1 of the high school football season.
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This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, august 26th.
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Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Hanford Insider.
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I'm your host, rob Bentley.
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Thanks for listening.
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For those of you who are new to the show, the Hanford Insider is a weekly podcast that releases every Monday.
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I cover a little bit of everything from Hanford news, a community calendar, and my son, eric, who works in sports, gives us a rundown of high school sports each week during the school year.
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I try to keep things light and positive in such a negative world.
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I hope you enjoy the format.
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I'm always looking for more human interest stories.
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A little bit later in the show I'll let you know how you can get involved In community news, if you haven't heard yet.
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The Downtown Traffic and Pedestrian Improvement Project has been paused After failing to pass an agreement with the project manager.
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The project is on hold and the city will have to look at additional options to complete the project.
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Stay tuned for updates.
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The filing period has closed for the November 5th elections and we now know who will be vying to be on the Hanford City Council.
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Nancy Howes, co-owner of Renewable Solar, and Judy Scott, a retired correction officer, are vying to fill the seat representing District C that was vacated by Diane Sharp in April.
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Things are going to get interesting in District B.
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If you recall, kaleesh Morrow resigned in May and the council appointed former council member Martin Devine to complete the vacated term.
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He'll be in the race to stay on the council.
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He'll be challenged by Alfred Benavidez and Kemba Reagan.
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Voters in Hanford will also vote on nine local measures, several state measures, multiple local and state candidates and federal officials, including the president, in the November election, and federal officials, including the president, in the November election.
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Make sure you're registered.
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In a few weeks we'll have Kings County Register voters Lupe Villa back on the show to give us a rundown on the election timeline.
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The city held a webinar last Wednesday evening and about 30 of us attended the Zoom.
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City Manager Mario Cervantes, police Chief Stephanie Huddleston and Communications Manager Brian Johnson led a discussion regarding Measure H, the tax revenue measure, on the November 5th ballot.
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There were some really good questions.
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You should check out the other activities that are having to educate the public.
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They include an in-person meeting on September 12th and another virtual meeting on October 7th.
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Follow the City's social media accounts or check the city website for a complete list of educational events.
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Next week I'll have three members of the Revenue Measure Committee on the show to share their experiences from being on the committee.
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Here are some things coming up on our community calendar.
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At this week's Thursday Night Marketplace it's Vendor Appreciation Night with music by Exodus, which plays Latin and R&B.
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The Kings Players are presenting Outward Bound.
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Evening performances on Fridays and Saturdays begin at 7 pm.
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There are also select matinee performances.
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Visit kingsplayersorg for tickets and information performances.
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Visit kingsplayersorg for tickets and information.
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Part 2 of Kings County's Asian Experiences opens on Friday September 6th at the Carnegie Museum of Kings County.
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Part 2 showcases local Asian communities in the years following World War II.
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Specific displays focus on the histories, cultures and traditions of Japanese, chinese, filipino and Hmong in the area.
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For more information, visit carnegiemuseumofkingscountyorg.
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Women with Visions Unlimited will be presenting their all-white party on Saturday, september 7th at the King's Arts Center.
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Tickets are $50 in advance and $60 at the door.
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If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together.
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Send your information to hanfordinsider at gmailcom.
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Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete recently and purchase another one.
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And it could not have been done better by anyone other than my good friend Thomas Curtis, and he is with me here this afternoon and Thomas, welcome to the show.
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Rob, I'm honored to be here.
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Man, love you like a brother, and honored to be able to get to work with you and Lois.
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And yeah, amazing Thomas, you were originally not from this area.
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What brought you to this area and tell us a little bit about your schooling and maybe what led you to the area of real estate?
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Yeah, absolutely, rob.
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Thanks for asking.
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My father was in the military for about 24 years and we moved to Lemoore in 2000,.
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Right before, you know, right after that dot-com bust, everyone thought the internet was going to go under.
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I thought the clocks weren't going to reset.
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Honestly, we moved here and, yeah, we moved from Oceanside, california, which is down South.
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I could walk to the beach in 30 minutes.
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And then we moved to beautiful town of Lemoore where I took a shower and you didn't smell worse getting out than you went in and you know, and you came over here and it was 115 degrees every summer and it was just a definitely different environment.
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But my father, yeah, retiring here is what brought us here.
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As far as real estate, the story behind that, I was going to college and my family was going through some really hard times.
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My dad had a, you know, adjustment leaving the military, you know which you can imagine, right, 24 years in the military and then trying to find something after, and it didn't work out.
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So our family was going through some hard times.
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We were losing our house.
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It was the middle of all the craziness.
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I was working four jobs to help pay the mortgage for a couple of years and there was one night I got in a car accident.
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Yeah, I got in a car accident because I fell asleep driving because I was working too much, hit a tree at about 60, 65 miles an hour and yeah, I'm still here, still kicking.
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What happened after that?
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My mom, you know, had a kind of like a breakdown right, she had a breakdown after a car accident we losing everything and she was having a really hard time and I went into her room and she had her head in between her legs, just sobbing, just in her closet, just sobbing, and it just broke my heart.
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I ran to my room, I just started bawling and after that day I said I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to do something to change my family tree.
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And going to school, at that point I met a teacher, a local teacher, monty Payton.
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He was a business teacher.
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I originally wanted to go to school to be a PE teacher and do some kinesiology and ended up going into business business and Monty Payton was a big proponent in that and taught me a bunch of stuff.
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And I got turned on to Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad, poor Dad and he said real estate was one of the things that made a lot of people wealthy.
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So I said, hey, I'm going to jump on that, I guess.
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And it's always had a draw.
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And I'm in real estate, thank God over 10 years in business now.
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So it was cool.
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But in the very beginning I couldn't even afford the dues to the MLS.
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It was a couple grand or something like that.
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And I had a friend who actually paid my dues for me, so I was able to join her team and shout out to Jamie Tulak, thank you, jamie.
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And she paid my dues and off to the races we went.
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So the real estate family.
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There's a whole network.
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I've learned all of this kind of crash course in it.
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There's a real good network of agents and the way that you work together and you you know connection, the interconnection between all of the agencies and all the lending firms and everything, and we could probably do a whole show on that.
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I'm sure let's get to some specifics here about real estate in the Hanford and Lamora area.
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Let's start with the new rules that just came down, because that seems to be a hot topic about how agent commission fees are collected.
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Can you just give us in the nutshell kind of the new policies and how that will affect homebuyers?
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Yeah, absolutely, and this is just how we run our business and our interpretation and what we're executing here at Keller Williams and on our team.
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But really, the big thing, I would just want to let everyone know that there's going to be a lot that's going to stay the same.
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The techniques and how things are getting executed have changed a little bit and, at the end of the day, buyers are still going to buy and sellers are still going to need to sell.
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We're co-mingling.
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Real estate commissions have always been negotiable.
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They've never been set right, so they've always been negotiable.
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So they had a big lawsuit.
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They say it was fixed at 6%, which is not true, but they got the lawsuit.
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They ended up suing and then we had a couple big brokerages settle and so what we have today, as of the 17th of August here in California, nationwide now they have completely decoupled right.
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It's a weird word.
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Pretty much that means just split the buyers and sellers, buyers and listing agents commission.
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So as a seller, now we just listed a house last week as a selling agent, we negotiate our commissions with the listing, the sellers, but we do not have the buyer's commission on there, which we normally would.
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So that's the big change.
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There's no commission on there for the buyers.
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We recommend 100% that sellers use compensation to compensate buyers' agents coming in, because what ends up happening is, if you don't offer compensation as a seller to a buyer, you're not going to get the cream of the crop.
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Right now, 90% of people use buyer's agents, and part of the things you were talking about earlier of getting pre-qualified, making sure you're with a good lender, making sure you guide the buyers through a process that is a lot of work, so the buyer's agent does deserve to be compensated also is a lot of work, so the buyer's agent does deserve to be compensated also.
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So listing side sellers are paying the listing agent's commission.
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It's negotiated.
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There's no more buyer's commission on that paperwork.
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The buyer's agent now has to sit down with their buyer and say, hey, here's my value proposition, this is why I'm worth X amount of percent.
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And they sign a buyer broker agreement and then they're off.
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Showing the house is no different than if you were to go to an attorney and saying, hey, represent me, all right.
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Ok, this is what I charge as a retainer, these are my fees.
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So very same thing, but as buyers.
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What ends up happening is the buyer's agent then negotiates the commission to the seller, so they still write the offer and they will likely still submit hey, mr Seller, mrs Seller, this is my offer and I know there's no compensation on the MLS anymore, but here's my request, so it could be a percentage.
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And then there's a negotiation from there.
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So buyers and sellers split.
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Buyers agents negotiate their own commission.
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Now.
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That's quite a change.
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But again, in a lot of ways it's not.
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If people do their job right, you probably won't even notice it, as we talked about earlier.
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Let's get on to some fun topics here.
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There are a ton of new housing developments in Hanford we think of 12th, and Hume, we think of 13th and Centennial and Lemoore.
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There's some out by Lemoore College.
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They're at 198 and Bush.
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So what's drawing?
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What have you seen?
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That's drawing people to our community and purchasing these homes.
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Some of the big things really, the culture here.
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When I moved from Oceanside to here I was shell shocked of of everything, because night and day culture change there was and the area obviously, uh, and what I've seen with that now is this area is, I feel like we're in a bubble, like Kings County, central Valley we are.
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I feel like we're in a bubble, like we are just different and I feel like specifically our area here in Hanford and Kings County there is a good draw for family.
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We don't have a ton of crime, right, and I think a big draw is the price point.
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And I think a big draw is the price point, our price point, our average sales price right now is approximately around 370 here in Kings County and I mean I travel a lot and I mean people are every time they hear California they're like oh, 700,000 must be your and like we live in a different part of California.
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So I see that as a big draw.
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Obviously, the military base has a big, a big draw and I really do believe affordability and the culture of the area and the growth.
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You know, the things that the cities are doing and different organizations are doing to make the environment more fun is drawing people from even Visalia and Fresno.
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We've seen a lot of people.
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Even a lot of people are coming from out of the area.
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It's hard to dial in deep, but there's about 40% 30 to 40% of our people on a monthly basis in our MLS multiple listing service that are from out of the area, right, so almost 30, 40% of the people moving here are not from Kings County or their agents aren't from Kings County.
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So they're coming here and they're finding that this is really, actually a really good place to live.
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I know that you were into flipping houses and doing well on that and that was all the rage on HGTV and everything.
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Do you see many houses being flipped in, maybe the downtown, central district or other parts of Hanford that people are finding maybe a fixer upper that they can live in?
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people who are buying, including us who are buying houses now are our model and what we're and how we run our numbers has changed a little bit with, you know, the market and everything like that we have.
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We're about 40 something days on the market, so we do see a lot.
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I have a buddy who bought 10 houses last month um to flip or turn into a rental.
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I see downtown.
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I don't see a ton like down down downtown.
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I do see businesses coming in, but I do see a lot of the older houses you know spread down a little bit wider.
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In Hanford A lot of the older houses are getting bought because really, the way that we run our numbers and how it makes sense for us I mean I don't know if I can talk numbers on here, but we bought a flip in Kingsburg and it took us about eight months to sell it and I spent 90 grand renovating and made $3,000.
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Right, yeah, that's good learning experience.
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So as you go into markets like this, when you're maybe an investor and you're uneasy, you're like, hey, what does the next six months look like?
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Because we think and sick, because it takes about six months or so to buy, renovate and all that.
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I love older houses, I love older properties.
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Those take obviously a lot longer because you have a lot to do.
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I felt like last year most of the houses I bought were, I feel like, between 1920 and 1940, I'm like man, can I get a newer house?
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But those older houses need a lot of work and not a lot of people are willing to go in and do a foundation electrical, plumbing, hvac, I mean literally everything roof, window not a lot of people are willing to do that.
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Yeah, things have to come up to code, I would imagine from 2024.
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Yeah, they have to come up to code.
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So that's a big change too.
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Now in the flipping game, if you do flip a house, you have to turn in the contractor that you use.
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You need their information, you need the permits, so as you flip, that even in our industry the game's changing on that also.
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So the topic of Airbnbs and rentals in Hanford and people you know for those of you listening, go ahead and go to Airbnb and look how many rentals there are, how many units there are in Hanford for rent, and it was kind of a unique exploration for my wife and I as we were looking at what the transition time might've been between selling a house and moving into a new one.
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But tell us a little bit about the Airbnb market in Hanford, lemoyne, great question Rob.
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So Rob mentions that because, not knowing the timeframe, I talked to him and his wife just letting them know that, hey, we have a few Airbnbs in town and with that, if stuff did not work out how we'd like to, that is an option to jump in there for a short period of time while the new construction house was getting built.
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We have about five in town, three, yeah, a few in Hanford, some in L'Amour and every time I tell people that they're like what Airbnbs in Hanford and L'ore, like who the heck rents these things?
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And we've had everything from, you know, nurses to people visiting military families, to, yeah, up and down, like, yeah, the surf ranch We've had, yeah, we've had people at the surf ranch.
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Actually, one of our Airbnbs is named Jerry's House, near the surf ranch, you know.
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So that's our neighbor's house and we Airbnb that thing goes out all the time.
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But what I've seen I mean you have random people renting and what I do like about it is more the midterm to long-term rentals, like we've been doing it for about three or four years now uh, airbnbs.
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So what I've seen is we rent uh, we have a few of them right now that are, uh, we have an insurance, somebody with an insurance claim.
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They had a plumbing blow up in their house and they're probably going to be six, eight months.
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In one of our Airbnbs and similar, we had a Fireburn one.
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We have a beekeeper that stays three or four months every year.
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For the past three years We've had them stay in one of our Airbnbs.
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So, yeah, doctors, we've had stay.
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That lady who came and sang the one that's from Hanford, that was on American Idol, danny Stacey, yeah, danny Stacey.
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Danny Stacey stayed in one of our Airbnbs.
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Her mother and her did, because it was right around the corner from the Fox Theater here in town.
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So I love that one.
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It was right near KFC, walking distance to downtown and all the fun stuff.
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So, yeah, it's a fun topic.
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Those are always.
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That's a really fun topic, because people don't believe you when you say, hey, kings County Airbnb's, that will never work.
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We're making money, you know, and it's and it's fun.
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It's a lot of work, though yeah, I think where I've seen it too is if you read the reviews on some of these, you really kind of get to see what people are renting these for.
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You have maybe like a family reunion or a party or something like that and they need some extra space.
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That's a great opportunity for them to be able to do that rather than staying at a hotel Not that our hotels in Hanford are nice, but it's a great place to just kind of spread out and relax.
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Yeah, when you have a private, I think we had one last week they had a party at Jerry's Surf Ranch Airbnb and he I mean, yeah, there was a bunch of people over there and 30 plus people and it was just bigger space than you know, than they had, and it was a family.
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You know older, you know family.
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They're just celebrating and it was awesome, it was fun, we got the, we got to look at them and they were just having a great time.
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So it is a different alternative, you know, than than a hotel hotel, but in Hanford and Kings County they have some great, great hotels.
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Let's wrap this up with your crystal ball.
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I want you to put on your thinking cap and you tend to be someone who needs to look ahead and forecast kind of what is down the pipe.
00:20:53.351 --> 00:21:06.186
As far as real estate in the area and in our discussions we've talked about national elections can play a big part in but what do you foresee in your Thomas Curtis cap there?
00:21:06.186 --> 00:21:09.059
What do you foresee happening in the next couple of years?
00:21:09.560 --> 00:21:12.448
Oh man, that is a loaded question there, rob.
00:21:12.448 --> 00:21:13.496
There's a lot.
00:21:13.496 --> 00:21:19.179
What I want to kind of lay a foundation is a big picture and then I'll bring it small.
00:21:19.179 --> 00:21:35.210
Nationwide, after the big bust of 08, and all that per decade, the United States has built about 20 million houses give or take a year around there, right, and that decade after 2008,.
00:21:35.210 --> 00:21:36.310
I felt like they just stopped.
00:21:36.310 --> 00:21:39.712
I think they ended up building around 6 million that decade.
00:21:39.712 --> 00:21:45.086
Well, population hasn't really slowed down since since then.
00:21:45.086 --> 00:21:51.588
So we took a 10 plus million unit count hit that decade.
00:21:51.588 --> 00:21:54.376
Well, people were still being born, people still.
00:21:54.376 --> 00:21:56.996
You know all of that and we, it still took us.
00:21:56.996 --> 00:22:05.021
You know, now we're a decade and a half almost later, and even this last decade I think they were still, you know, around give or take 15 million.
00:22:05.021 --> 00:22:07.083
So that's still a shortfall around 5 million.
00:22:07.083 --> 00:22:19.732
So when you're looking at it, we're still roughly an estimate of about 20 million houses short of what we would normally have been Right, and what I'm getting at is population growth and inventory.
00:22:20.394 --> 00:22:34.708
Right, inventory is still at an all-time low, even for our area Before COVID we were, it was on Kings County we had about 250 to 300 houses at any time here in Kings County for sale.
00:22:34.708 --> 00:22:41.217
Now, kings County for sale.
00:22:41.217 --> 00:22:44.007
Now we're hovering, you know, around the low one hundreds to 150 houses for sale.
00:22:44.007 --> 00:22:44.808
So population is a is a big thing.
00:22:44.808 --> 00:22:48.480
I want to, I want to, I want to drill in population and and and, uh, the lack of houses.
00:22:48.480 --> 00:22:49.662
That is a big thing.
00:22:49.662 --> 00:23:01.377
The second one is is uh, um, there is, there's probably 90% of people in the U SS who have an interest rate under like 5%, you know, if they have a mortgage.
00:23:01.377 --> 00:23:10.115
I think 45 to 50% of people who have a mortgage in the United States are free and clear, you know.
00:23:10.115 --> 00:23:17.152
But the people who have a mortgage in the United States, a huge amount of them, are under 4 or 5%, all right, so those are just putting that information so you guys can see that out there.
00:23:17.152 --> 00:23:18.575
A huge amount of them are under 4% or 5%.
00:23:18.575 --> 00:23:22.185
So just putting that information so you guys can see that out there.
00:23:23.517 --> 00:23:35.028
With the election coming up, to tell you the truth, my thought pattern is this is the United States has foregone a path already.
00:23:35.028 --> 00:23:40.124
They have set a path and it doesn't matter who is in an election.
00:23:40.124 --> 00:23:46.548
It might speed up that path or might slow down, depending what side is on there, us in our business.
00:23:46.548 --> 00:23:52.191
I see where the path is going and people are still going to have to buy houses.
00:23:52.191 --> 00:23:53.457
They're still going to have to sell.
00:23:53.457 --> 00:23:54.660
They still have life events.
00:23:54.660 --> 00:24:16.645
I know people, you know I say the people who normally are who are going to have to move in this era of life are, you know, either going to have a life event or one of the four D's right Death, disease, divorce, disaster or some kind of life event that's going to make you have a 2% mortgage to sell and buy another house.
00:24:16.645 --> 00:24:18.008
So there's different life events.
00:24:18.008 --> 00:24:23.944
So, from what I see, what's going to go on, my opinion is inventory is still low.
00:24:24.346 --> 00:24:29.742
The world is changing a lot and I don't see things getting any cheaper.
00:24:29.742 --> 00:24:33.016
The real estate world we've been in a recession for years already.
00:24:33.016 --> 00:24:35.061
We've been in a recession for years.
00:24:35.061 --> 00:24:39.714
So the economy outside of real estate hasn't right.
00:24:39.714 --> 00:24:42.463
So if we do come into a recession, which numbers are looking like?
00:24:42.503 --> 00:24:45.381
We are even our financial as a nation.
00:24:45.381 --> 00:24:48.332
Our financial stuff is changing.
00:24:48.332 --> 00:24:52.431
It's going to take a few years still for that to implement, but I just don't the way we're going.
00:24:52.431 --> 00:25:03.343
I mean, if you imagine we've been a nation for almost 250 years, 240-ish of those years, it took us to amass almost $10 trillion in debt.
00:25:03.343 --> 00:25:08.767
From 2000 to in the last four years, we've amassed triple that.