inventory shortage
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Home prices continued rising at a restrained pace nationwide, both monthly and annually, but regional breakouts indicate some trouble spots, according to May’s Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index report.
For the second consecutive month, values rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.7% compared to the month before, while on a year-over-year basis, they were up by 2.8%.
“U.S. house prices increased moderately in May, continuing the trend of the last few months,” said Nataliya Polkovnichenko, supervisory economist in FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics, in a press release. “However, house prices in some regions of the country remained below the levels seen one year ago.”
In the Pacific region, prices declined 1.7% from a year ago, although when compared with April, they were 1.7% higher. That was the largest month-to-month growth among the nine regions.
Meanwhile, the Mountain states reported a 2.7% value drop compared with May 2022, although they rose 0.3% over April.
The only region where prices fell in May from April was the New England states, down 0.5%.
The FHFA uses seasonally adjusted purchase data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Prices rose 1.9% annually for the second quarter, Fannie Mae reported on July 17.
Meanwhile, the CoreLogic S&P Case-Shiller Index for May was down 0.5% compared with May 2022, the second month where nationwide prices were down versus the prior year. But month-to-month, the index was 1.2% higher unadjusted for seasonality; adjusted the gain was 0.7%.
The 20-city composite index was down 1.7% annually in May but up by 1.5% compared with April.
“While the annual decline reflects price drops that occurred in 2022, recent above-average price gains indicate an inflection ahead,” said Selma Hepp, CoreLogic’s chief economist.
“While home sales activity still continues to tell a tale of two markets: one of the West, which is constrained by a lack of existing inventory, and the other of the Southeast and South, where the availability of new homes for sale is creating sales opportunities; home prices are not necessarily following the trend anymore,” she said.
CoreLogic’s own Home Price Index rose 1.4% annually and 0.9% month-to-month in May. It is predicting 4.5% growth in prices through May 2024.
On an unadjusted basis, prices rose in all 20 markets, but there are regional differences, said Craig Lazzara, managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices.
This month’s league table shows the Revenge of the Rust Belt, as Chicago (+4.6%), Cleveland (+3.9%), and New York (+3.5%) were the top performers,” Lazzara said in a press release. “If this seems like an unusual occurrence to you, it seems that way to me too. It’s been five years to the month since a cold-weather city held the top spot (and that was Seattle, which isn’t all that cold).”
The worst performers were Seattle, down 11.3% and San Francisco, down 11%.
The rise in mortgage rates in early July, with Freddie Mac’s survey coming within 4 basis points of 7% for the 30-year fixed, is likely to plateau any gains in home prices going forward, the CoreLogic S&P Case-Shiller release said. But that will be countered by the inventory shortage.
“Heating of competition among buyers is also reflected in an increasing share of home selling over the asking price again, 39%, compared to an average of 25% pre-pandemic,” Hepp said. “As a result, the median price premium (ratio of sale price to list price) is back to positive, at 1%, after declining since last September.”
Source: nationalmortgagenews.com
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- Moody’s strategists say high mortgage rates will weigh on the housing market for years to come.
- They see central banks keeping monetary policy tight this year, and think mortgage rates will stay stubbornly high even after easing begins.
- They says prospective homebuyers and homeowners looking to refinance will feel the most pressure.
Apache is functioning normally
Even though we’re deep into April, the typical spring home buying season doesn’t seem to be in full swing.
It usually picks up in March, but has yet to really take off nationwide, though some cities like Baltimore, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Philadelphia have enjoyed an uptick in activity.
A new report from Redfin revealed that despite new listings getting a 9.2% boost last month, overall housing inventory actually slipped 0.7%, the first year-over-year drop since December 2013.
That means it’s tougher for buyers to find homes, with increased competition driving up prices and making it difficult to get an offer accepted. Bidding wars are now the norm and that trend doesn’t appear to be abating.
Sellers are once again in the driver’s seat because fewer listings equate to more offers, which also boosts the prices of what little is out there.
What About Listing Quality?
Aside from the inventory shortage, the quality of homes for sale is also questionable. Redfin noted that nearly 70% of homes on the market were “stale,” that is, older than 30 days.
This means there’s a good chance said homes are overpriced, in need of repairs, or have some other issue that is preventing a speedy sale.
Now it’s not uncommon for stale listings to make up the lion’s share of total inventory, but these homes are starting to get scooped up alongside fresh listings, instead of resulting in the typical price reduction.
And in some cities, fresh listings are actually gaining on old inventory because there is so little on the market and buyers are becoming increasingly desperate.
In other words, even the old stuff no one wanted to touch is finally being unloaded to willing buyers who previously would have looked elsewhere.
Take a look at once hard-hit Modesto, CA where home prices surged during the boom and then nosedived during the bust.
Last month, it had only 29 fresh listings – meanwhile, its stale listings were also rock bottom, giving prospective buyers were little to nibble on.
A Fresher Market Means Inventory Is Low
Of the 50 markets Redfin analyzed, about 30% of unsold homes were considered “fresh,” or less than a month old, as of the end of March, compared to just 24% three years ago.
The idea here is that inventory is so low that buyers are purchasing the older stuff and boosting the fresh share.
But because the fresh share is also historically low, inventory can’t keep up with demand, which means higher home prices, a double whammy for buyers.
Not only can they not get their hands on quality homes, they’ll have to pay more for the stuff that normally wouldn’t sell straight away.
And because new properties are instantly hot commodities, buyers are resorting to the older listings that they would normally become “inventory blind” to in order to avoid a bidding war or exceeding their budget.
The only real solution is to build more new properties because many existing sellers are still trapped in their homes, either because they remain underwater or are simply unable to move up to bigger and better homes.
The upside is that sellers can continue to list for a premium. It might even be a good time to sell that haunted house.
Read more: Should I rent or buy a home?
Source: thetruthaboutmortgage.com
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The lack of existing homes for sale on the market is driving a resurgence of home-price growth and supporting increases in new home construction, according to Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research (ESR) group.
“The extent of the ongoing lack of inventory has exceeded our prior expectation,” the ESR group said in its July commentary. “This ongoing lack of inventory, in part due to mortgage lock-in effects, has driven significantly stronger home price appreciation over the first half of 2023 than we had previously anticipated.”
Fannie Mae forecasts home-price growth for 2023 and 2024 will be positive 3.9% and negative 0.7% on a Q4/Q4 basis respectively, up from negative 1.2% and negative 2.2% in its previous quarterly update.
With an ongoing tight supply of existing homes for sale on the market, the ESR group expects overall home sales in 2023 to remain near the lowest annual level since 2009.
“We began discussing our expectations of a supply shortage in late 2014, and it remains front and center in the housing market in 2023,” Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae, said in a statement.
“The supply of existing homes is near the 2009 crisis low, and it’s showing no signs of easing. This puts the onus on homebuilders and can be seen in the construction data,” Duncan added.
While the U.S. single-family homebuilding fell 7% in June, permits for future construction rose to a 12-month high as a severe inventory shortage supports new construction. Housing starts surged 18.5% in May to a pace of 997,000 units, the highest level in a year.
Homebuilders continue to use mortgage rate buydowns to help drive sales, and with many construction input prices — including that of lumber, which is lower than a year ago — builders continue to have ample margin to offer incentives, Fannie Mae pointed out.
The ESR group in return upgraded its single-family housing starts forecast to 896,000 units for 2023 and to 890,000 units for 2024, up from 824,000 and 845,000, respectively.
The combination of an upward revision to the home price outlook and greater expected home construction has also led to a slight upgrade in Fannie Mae’s forecast of 2023 mortgage originations.
Fannie Mae anticipates total single-family originations to be $1.62 trillion in 2023, up from last month’s prediction of $1.59 trillion, while maintaining its forecast for 2024 single-family originations at $1.9 trillion.
Stronger pace of economic growth
“Substantial revisions to first quarter data alongside ongoing resilience in the labor market and new home construction now point to the first half of 2023 having experienced a stronger pace of economic growth than we had previously expected,” the ESR group pointed out.
Inflation continued to decelerate on an annual basis with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) dropping to 3% in June, down from 4% in May.
Labor market indicators are painting a mixed picture to conclude that sufficient softening has occurred. Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 209,000 in June, while the April and May reports were revised downward by a combined 110,000 jobs.
Fannie Mae noted that the underlying tightness in the labor market is not consistent with inflation settling at a 2% target.
“Therefore, despite improvement in recent inflation measures, we expect Fed policy to remain tight until it is clear that the labor market has softened sufficiently,” according to the report.
While Fannie Mae’s macroeconomic forecast is little changed from last month — including a call for a modest recession beginning in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of next year — it has upgraded its real gross domestic product (GDP) growth outlook to 1.1% from 0.1% on a Q4/Q4 basis.
Source: housingwire.com
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Housing demand collapsed in 2022, and the homebuilders’ confidence survey looked like a waterfall collapse similar to during COVID-19 and the great financial crisis. However, something changed toward the end of 2022, and the homebuilders are now singing Party Rock Anthem as their confidence levels have increased along with their stock prices.
As we can see in the chart below, the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) data, which surveys homebuilders, is above 50 again. This means homebuilders are feeling confident enough to issue more housing permits, as we have seen growth in single-family permits the last few months.
The housing market, in general, turned on Nov. 9, 2022. (I go over that more in detail on this episode of the HousingWire Daily podcast.) However, even though the housing dynamics changed, existing home sales aren’t enjoying the growth in sales like the new home sales sector.
On Wednesday we got the housing starts data, and the builders are starting to push growth in single-family permits. Last year, people were talking about a second housing bubble crash, saying the builders had too many backlog orders to issue new permits. What a difference a year makes!
From Census: Building Permits: Privately‐owned housing units authorized by building permits in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,440,000. This is 3.7 percent below the revised May rate of 1,496,000 and 15.3 percent below the June 2022 rate of 1,701,000. Single‐family authorizations in June were at a rate of 922,000; this is 2.2 percent above the revised May figure of 902,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 467,000 in June.
The builders are making money, not building homes to address the housing inventory shortage. They’re selling homes at the highest profit possible, which makes sense — it’s their business. Last year, we had the biggest one-year collapse in housing sales, but it didn’t create much active listing growth. Even today, we are near multi-decade lows.
From NAR data:
- 2007 total active listings: 4 million
- 2023 total active listings: 1.08 million, down year over year too.
Our demographics for home buying are better in the years 2020-2024 than in the previous decade; sadly we didn’t have enough product for them.
So the builders went to work making deals — they’re very efficient sellers. When they need to, they will cut prices and provide lower mortgage rates than what existing homebuyers are getting to move their product. They have done that as new home sales are up 20% year over year, while existing home sales are down 20% year over.
How? Their profit margins are still above pre-pandemic levels, so they have margin to spare, and not every home they sell gets this treatment either. Now you can see why their stocks have done so well. For example, I always reference Toll Brothers‘ stock price since the significant Nov. 9 date.
In this environment, homebuilders have an advantage they didn’t have before, as total active listings were too high, giving people more choices from 2007-2019. Now the builders have pushed down the monthly supply to 6.7 months, almost back to pre-COVID-19 levels, as the chart below shows.
This is why the homebuilders have been so happy lately and why their stocks have done so well. You can add this to the list of things that don’t happen during a housing bubble crash. Last year was a crazy year, and I understand why the usual housing bubble crash people went all in; I mean, it’s year 12 of the housing bubble 2.0 crash!
However, some other people who don’t usually fall for the crash premise joined the party, and as I have stressed for many years, using 2008 housing economic models simply doesn’t work this time. (See my debate last year with a stock trader on this subject here.)
Part of the problem I have seen over the last decade is that everyone is too focused on existing home prices crashing and not the economics of housing. Remember, economics done right should be boring and you always want to be the detective, not the troll.
Source: housingwire.com
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It is no secret that housing inventory is low. As of June 2, there were 433,104 single family homes on the market nationwide, according to data from Altos Research.
And while this situation is certainly far from ideal, according to a report published Thursday by the National Association of Realtors and Realtor.com, even with the existing level of homes available for sale, the housing affordability and inventory shortage issues wouldn’t be so severe if there were enough homes for buyers at all income levels.
In April 2023, data from NAR and Realtor.com showed there were roughly 1.1 million homes listed for sale. Of those 1.1 million properties, 25% had a price lower than $256,000, which is the maximum price of a home that households earning the national median income of $75,000 can afford.
Over half (51%) of U.S. households earn $75,000 or less, meaning that in a balanced market, 51% of the homes for sale would be affordable to buyers in this income bracket.
Based on the report, the housing market needs an additional 319,460 listings priced under $256,000 in order for the market to be balanced. In other words, the U.S. needs to add at least two homes that are affordable for middle-income buyers (up to $256,000) for every home that is listed above $680,000.
As income levels increase, however, the disparity decreases between current inventory and the inventory needed for a balanced market. For example, buyers earning $250,000 can currently afford to buy 85% of listings compared to 93% in a balanced market.
This situation has only gotten worse over the past five years. In April 2018, there were about 810,000 listings that middle-income buyers were able to afford, just 150,000 listings shy of a balanced market.
El Paso, Texas; Boise City, Idaho; Spokane, Washington; Cape Coral, Florida; and Lakeland, Florida round out the top five metropolitan areas with the larges supply shortage of homes with a price lower than $260,000. In El Paso, buyers earning $75,000 can afford to buy 16% of listing, when in a balanced market they should be able to buy 66% of listings. In Boise City, they can afford just 2% of listings when a balanced market calls for them to be able to afford 50% of listings.
On the other side of the spectrum, in the Youngstown, Ohio-Pennsylvania market, buyers earning $75,000 can afford to buy 72% of listings, when a balanced market calls for this cohort to be able to afford 66% of listings.
Akron, Ohio (where 61% of listings are affordable and 58% are needed for balance); Toledo, Ohio (where 61% of listings are affordable and 60% are needed for balance); Cleveland, Ohio (where 59% of listings are affordable and 58% are needed for balance); and Syracuse, New York (where 54% of listings are affordable and 55% are needed for balance) round out the top five.
When parsed by race and ethnic groups, NAR and Realtor.com found that Black Americans are the group that is furthest away from equilibrium out of any cohort. Two-thirds of Black Americans earn $75,000 or less, and these buyers can only afford 22% of homes for sale.
Meanwhile, 48% of white Americans fall into the same income bracket, and they can also afford to buy 22% of listings. This means that Black Americans would need 20% more listings with a value of up to $256,000 than white Americans in order to be at equilibrium.
By comparison, Hispanic Americans need roughly 11% more homes listed for sale than what white Americans need to reach equilibrium. When broken out by metro area, McAllen and El Paso in Texas; Oxnard and Riverside in California; and Tucson, Arizona are the areas with the smallest housing affordability and availability inequalities among white and Black households earning less than $75,000. The report attributes this to these areas being expensive for all racial/ethnic groups
Source: housingwire.com
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Nearly one-third of distressed property purchasers expect home prices to decline in their local market this year, this sentiment almost doubling from last year, an Auction.com survey found.
Most of the respondents are likely to observe those falling prices as an opportunity, with 87% declaring they will maintain the same level of or increase purchase activity in 2023; this was up one percentage point from the year-ago survey.
“Local community developers buying at a distressed property auction are on the frontlines of the housing market and provide a reliable barometer for emerging real estate trends,” said Jason Allnutt, Auction.com CEO, in a press release. “They are telling us 2023 will bring further home price declines in many areas but also increased opportunities to convert distressed properties into affordable housing supply as prices adjust to a new market-driven equilibrium.”
The report is based on a March survey of nearly 450 distressed property purchasers that used the platform to make a buy at a foreclosure or real estate owned auction in the past four years.
The survey found that 32% of respondents expect prices in their local market to decline; this compared with 17% in the 2022 report.
Various indicators of home values find that growth continues to slow. In the first quarter, home prices grew on an annual basis by 4.3%, well down from 8.4% in the fourth quarter and nearly 19% below one year prior, the recently released Federal Home Finance Agency Home Price Index found.
However, looking at the quarter-to-quarter change, the 0.5% increase for the first quarter topped the 0.3% rise for the fourth quarter of last year.
CoreLogic data for March found home prices declined in 10 Western states, leading to the smallest nationwide annual increase in almost a decade, at just 3.1%.
But even with the increased negative view, 42% of this year’s survey said their local market was overvalued with a possible price correction likely, down from 55% in 2022.
While over three-quarters of buyers described themselves as community developers or individual investors — 77% versus 84% in 2022 — a growing share are owner-occupants. In this year’s survey, 15% of the purchasers did so with the intent of living in the property, compared with 8% in the 2022 report.
Current housing market conditions with the inventory shortage is one of the factors behind the increase in people buying these homes but a change in Federal Housing Administration policy also helped to drive the change, said Daren Blomquist, vice president, market economics at Auction.com.
The lack of homes to buy and rising interest rates, are leading consumers to look outside of the box and consider participating in foreclosure auctions.
But it is a buyer-beware situation, with both obstacles and additional risk. “Namely, most auctions require buyers to pay in cash, and many do not allow buyers to inspect the interior of the property before purchase,” Blomquist said.
Then a year ago, the FHA made a change to its Claims Without Conveyance of Title program giving potential owner-occupants and nonprofits a 30-day first look advantage to bid on properties.
“Thanks to this policy change, Auction.com started holding these first-look auctions in August of 2022, and we’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of owner-occupant buyers taking advantage of that first look period,” Blomquist said. “The number of first look buyers on Auction.com increased sevenfold between Q2 2022 and Q3 2022, and we have had as many first-look buyers in the first half of 2023 that we had for all of 2022.”
Over nine in 10 of the first look buyers from those auctions were owner-occupants, he said.
Institutional investors made up 4% of the purchasers and the remainder was classified as other, including non-profits and real estate brokers.
Still among buyers, while fix-and-flip is the primary purpose, more are adopting the renovate and hold in order to rent strategy, largely because of their expectations of declining home prices, Blomquist added.
Approximately half the respondents plan on reselling the property, down from 61% in last year’s survey, while those willing to hold grew to 39% from 32%.
One possible explanation is that a significant number of those surveyed, 38%, expect rents in their local market to increase by more than 5%. On the other hand, just 16% looked for rents to decline. That is what makes renovate and rent a safer investment strategy for them, Blomquist said.
Making money is the leading motivation for those investing in these properties, cited by 80% of the respondents as one of their top three reasons.
Creating generational wealth was second at 68%, followed by improving neighborhoods at 47%. Tied for fourth on the list were expanding homeownership and providing affordable housing, each at 38%.
Source: nationalmortgagenews.com
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Hey everybody, welcome back to the FlipNerd Show! Today, we are going to talk to my buddy, Brent Moreno, a real estate investor who has become an expert on A.I. (artificial intelligence)! AI is seemingly taking over the world; is it going to make us all irrelevant or better business owners? That is what we are going to talk about today: what is going on in AI and what impact will it have on real estate investors? It’s a pretty exciting and timely topic; let’s jump right in!
Mike: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the show. Uh, today we’re gonna talk with my buddy Brent Moreno, who really has become, uh, is a real estate investor, but has become an expert on AI and, um, we’re gonna be talking about how AI is gonna make us all irrelevant or better business owners. One of those two things are probably gonna happen here.
Mike: It can be pretty exciting, pretty timely to talk about what’s going on in AI. Welcome to Real Estate Investing Secrets. We’re all looking for freedom and the opportunity to live better, more fulfilling lives. But most of us, were trained our entire lives to work for someone else to chase their dreams. How can we use real estate investing as a vehicle to achieve financial freedom?
Mike: My life is dedicated to answering your real estate investing questions and helping you build an investing business that allows you to change your life. And the world around you, and to enable you to turn your dreams of financial freedom into a reality. My name is Mike Hambright from FlipNerd.com, and your questions get answered here on the Real Estate Investing Secrets show.
Mike: Brent, welcome to the show, buddy.
Brent: I appreciate you having me, Mike.
Mike: Yeah, I, I’m excited. I’m scared. I don’t know what’s gonna happen here, but. Uh, I know AI’s taken over the world. I’ve got a lot of friends that are, are all in on it. I’m probably a little bit behind the eight ball and excited to talk to you today.
Mike: You’re, you’re the master and gonna get us all up to
Brent: speed. I guess one thing that I wanna say to people who feel like they’re behind the eight ball on it, you’re, you’re not, especially even if you just logged in to just chat g p t and even used it one time, you’d be surprised for somebody like me who’s like in it every single day.
Brent: I come across people every day. I was like, what? Never heard of it. Nope. Never used it. I’m like, how? I mean, it reached a hundred million users in two months. However, have you never heard this? Yeah. Um, so you’re not behind the eight ball. Matter of fact, I’d, I’d say you’re still early. If you have any interest in ai, uh, to jump in right now and start using it, uh, even if you’re, you know, solo or you’re run a big corporation.
Brent: One thing I tell a lot of business owners, cause I talk to a lot of business owners, not just in real estate, is that you know, every single body in your company, you should just make it a mandate that they use chat g p T for at least 30 minutes. Hmm, just use it and direction. What we’re
Mike: gonna do today is, is go through every area of your company, marketing, acquisitions, dispo, staffing your business, things like that, and just talk about.
Mike: What you can use AI for and maybe what’s coming, right? And so for those of you that are using it now, some of this will be a little bit of a refresher. Uh, but um, you know, despite how popular AI has become, there’s not a lot of people talking about it, uh, yet on podcasts and how, how to use it in real estate other than writing copy.
Mike: But it’s so much more than that. I think Brent’s gonna tell us today of. Uh, what it can really do, uh, for us. So, so let’s just talk, uh, generally, I mean, how, how disruptive before we kind of dive into departments, how disruptive is this? Is this gonna be for our industry, you
Brent: think? Brett, I think, I mean, it’s gonna be disruptive.
Brent: I don’t think it’s gonna necessarily change the fundamentals of investing, right? That’s not, that’s, that’s not going to change. But as far as the staff. The, the people, the time. I mean, it’s disruptive in every industry when it comes to that aspect. I mean, I think Goldman Sachs has recently reported that two thirds of all jobs could be automated in the next five years.
Brent: So, uh, the problem isn’t necessarily, you know, uh, Is it gonna help me buy real estate is like, is there going to be real estate left to buy if this thing takes over? Right. I mean, I’m not, I’m not a doomsday guy type scenario. I definitely believe that if we get this right, we can have a lot of serious positives.
Brent: Um, but as far as like as a real estate investor goes like, You just need to be thinking of ways, not only just for copywriting, but looking for tools on a daily basis that can help you, uh, increase your productivity. Cuz anything that can increase your productivity, even by margins of 10% is, is pretty huge and it’s significant.
Brent: Yeah. Yeah.
Mike: And a lot of us have, uh, you know, over the years have pivoted more to using virtual assistance and stuff like that. And it could be that you, you, you even continue the transition of needing less, um, general kind of administrative assistance overall,
Brent: right? Yeah. So the, the first, the first wave of people, I believe, are gonna be your customer service.
Brent: Uh, backend type representatives in your company that handle lead intake, that handle, uh, you know, questions, things of that nature. Your, your, uh, cold callers even. Uh, I saw Google Duplex back in 2018 get revealed, and I think I just watched, I don’t know, it might have been 2020 when I watched a great hack, but I put all this together and it was like, well, if Facebook and all these other companies have thousands of data points on somebody and.
Brent: An AI voice assistant can call and use that information that it has on people, then it will know how to sell you better than even, you know, how to sell yourself. Right, right. So that’s kind of where my brain started pivoting. I was like, man, eventually, like call centers are done, like call centers, uh, lead intake VAs, stuff like that.
Brent: They’re, you know, they’re pretty much done. Yeah. Um, fast forward to G P T three, which I started using when it came out for Jasper and a couple other. Platform was back in 2021 and I remember it was like only like three videos on YouTube about G P T three, and I was just amazed by all three of ’em like, man, this is, this is insane.
Brent: Backtrack even farther. There was a Humans Need Not Apply video. I think that’s, that came out like nine years ago and it freaked me out. Um, so I’ve been thinking about these problems for a really long time and, and honestly I kind of forgot about ’em until Tay PT was released and I was like, oh, okay, I can build on top of this.
Brent: This is, this is groundbreaking, this is different, this is new. And I think we we’re seeing that with, you know, the, the amount of people who are embracing it. Moving forward and the things that have, have kind of happened since then. Yeah. Uh, it’s incredible to watch and there’s been a, like I was telling you earlier, there’s so many things that are going on that even for somebody like myself who spends hours a day going through Twitter threads and Reddit threads and everything else, finding kind of new and what’s happening, going through research papers, it’s, it’s hard to keep up with, even from my side because the amount of.
Brent: Uh, research that’s going into this now is, is incredible and there’s a turning point of what, when that happened, uh, used to in machine learning and deep learning, you know, you had your, you know, you had vision, computer vision, you had all these other aspects of machine learning that had their own kind of unique interest intricacies that, you know, certain teams were working on this side, some certain teams were working on.
Brent: This is what happens when you had the G P T aspect of it, everything became language. And when, I mean everything becomes language. Literally everything is a language. Mm-hmm. Uh, I was watching something the other day where they literally can take wifi signals from your house and take that signal and turn it into an image.
Brent: Uh, so they can show you like who, how many people are in the house, what position they’re in, all that stuff. It’s. It’s insane what’s happening. They’re taking F M R I data, right? It’s a brain scan and they’re taking that data and showing people images, and then they’re t training it on a model that will actually recreate that image of what they saw or turn it into a text.
Brent: So it’s basically reading their thoughts. Wow. Yeah. Insane. Yeah.
Mike: So, uh, let’s, uh, let’s dive into different departments in, in a traditional real estate investor’s business, right? Yeah. So let’s kind of talk about marketing first. So, and I run an agency as well, so hopefully you’re not gonna put us out of business here, Brett Brent.
Mike: But, uh, let’s talk a little bit about how, um, you know, how it might impact how real estate investors market. There’s some obvious stuff, probably like writing copy, like everybody. That’s probably where a lot of people are using chat G P T right now or AI kind of start there like let me help it, have it write email sequences and stuff like that.
Mike: But I know it’s way more so talk about where, where we’re at and where we’re
Brent: going. I do want to add something to copy as well. Um, I’ve, I’ve seen people, you know, people charge money to write these beautiful listings and stuff for people, right. I’ve seen those people that have been, you know, we all wanna believe we’re special snowflakes and that we can’t be replaced.
Brent: And that, you know, no, nothing can do it better than I can do it. It’s just not true. Uh, yeah. I’ve seen a lot of people on, on that side of the fence where they talk about, well, it, you know, it’s nowhere near as good. It’s nowhere this, it’s like, well, it’s. Nine times outta 10. It’s simply about prompting, right?
Brent: If you can ask really good questions and you can describe something extremely well, uh, in a prompt, then you’ll get better responses. But if you’re just lazy and you’re like, Hey, write me a listing for this. It’s not going to p know the beds and baths. It’s not gonna know what your goal is. Like. You have to give it all that and give it a goal, uh, for it to actually write really good copy that doesn’t.
Brent: I can spot it from a mile away when somebody just does a lazy, uh, edit and just throws it in there or lazy prompt and just throws it in there and they just paste the output, uh, that’s easy to spot. And I think a lot more people will become aware of that. So that’s copy. Now you own agency, right? So you know all about ad A and b testing.
Brent: Well, what’s what’s happening in with, with the advancements of AI is that. You’ll have a to Z to 10 billion testing that can happen all at one time simultaneously. So you can basically pick your winners and losers a lot faster and make decisions for you without having to go and compile that information.
Brent: Uh, not only just go and test that all, but create all of those tests all at one time. Right. So you could launch, you could launch like landing pages or
Mike: direct mail
or
Brent: any of those things. Landing pages, direct mail, uh uh, Facebook ads, PPC ads, any of that stuff. Uh, there’s already people that are working on this where essentially you just, you know, input your goal, input what your company is.
Brent: And essentially it’ll create all the marketing copy, create everything, import it right into Google, import it right into Facebook, and have everything done for you, and it’ll test and run automatically for you. Uh, over time picking on picking the best winners, what’s working, what’s not working. Yeah. Wow.
Brent: So significantly saving you a lot more in time, energy, and cost, and not necessarily requiring you to hire a PPC manager or a Facebook ads manager or something like that. Yeah.
Mike: And how will, uh, how do you think the ad platforms, let’s just say like Facebook for example, Google, how will they, um, transform to accepting that to, to, to where there’s not as potentially as much manual management of ad campaigns and stuff like that.
Mike: Like how can it iterate and make, uh, campaign changes on the back end? Like, man, from a campaign management
Brent: standpoint, You talking about from, uh, like if you’re inside a Facebook ad manager right?
Mike: In, in, in the ad managers or you’re in, uh, the Google ad platform.
Brent: I mean, I think eventually what will happen is they’re they’re gonna implement their own systems that will do all that for you.
Brent: Yeah. Or will probably end up acquiring one of these companies that are doing it. That’s, that’s essentially the, the, the way they typically go. Um, But yeah, currently, I mean, I, I wouldn’t really know how to answer that question. Um, but they will,
Mike: they will, uh, evolve to be able to interact with the perfect, the perfect advertising campaign.
Mike: And it just did it for you while you were sleeping, correct?
Brent: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, um, and it’s really interesting to think about, well, what does PPC look like once Google puts in, uh, their chatbot in their search bar? Right? Yeah. Cause having on that
Mike: right now, entrepreneurs expect to be able to compete on something, right?
Mike: If everything’s optimized. How is there, how is there more than one company that does everything in America? You know,
Brent: that’s, that’s where we, that’s where we come into regulation, and that’s, that’s where I think that, you know, as, as a whole, as our co you know, not to get too political, but [00:12:00] that’s been the biggest problem in our country in general for the longest time, uh, not just in our politics, but in our corporations.
Brent: We have these, uh, monopolies, duopolies, all these things. Right? Right. But I, this is, this is where I get really into the weeds of things. And I know it’s just gonna necessarily about real estate. But if, if something doesn’t happen quickly and we don’t fundamentally change as a society, we’re in for a rude awakening.
Brent: Um, or if we don’t regulate this to death, And then at that point, like who chooses, who regulates what and how do we trust other countries to regulate it? I mean, it’s a, it’s a big problem, and that’s why you see. Meetings at the White House, and you see, uh, the European countries are, are getting together and trying to figure out what, you know, what the future looks like.
Brent: And it’s my goal to kind of hopefully have a seat at one of those tables one day.
Mike: Yeah. That’s awesome. Um, so let’s, let’s move on and talk a little bit about, uh, acquisitions, right? Uh, the acquisition side of, of our business. And so o obviously there’ll be some ai, some ability to analyze deals, crunch numbers, evaluate things, right?
Mike: It’s o as you know, That stuff’s not hard at all. It all comes down to how good are the inputs in the first place. Right. But talk about how the acquisition side of the business might get impacted.
Brent: Yeah. So I mean, I think 80% of your acquisition process can be automated, uh, because again, it’s a lot of the same questions that you need answers to.
Brent: Um, the, it’s the deal structuring. That’s gonna be a little tricky, especially for somebody like me who kind of thrived in the creative side of things. Yeah. Um, so, you know, there’s so many different ways to structure a deal and there’s, you know, AI can’t understand the fact that, oh, well I’m trading, I’m giving them a boat or giving them this, or whatever, you know, for, for all that stuff.
Brent: But, um, I think what you’re gonna see is when it comes to acquisitions, is that your forms, your chat on your website and your SMS. And phone intake can all be automated and be undetectable, whether or not if it’s an AI doing it or if it’s a human doing it, we’re already pretty close to that right now. As a matter of fact, I’m working with a company to build voice assistance for real estate investors.
Brent: Um, And they’ve already offloaded 75% of the Golden Nugget Casino hotels, uh, of their, uh, reservations to ai, uh, voice assistance. So it’s, it’s working, uh, and it’s going to happen to where eventually, like VAs are kind of, their days are cold callers, VAs lead intakes. That, that those things are gonna be automated, so, which is great.
Brent: For a business owner. Right. Uh, not so great. If you’re an employee and you’re, you know, a customer service employee or lead intake or acquisitions manager, uh, at a company. I’m not saying it’s gonna happen, you know, tomorrow, but it’s gonna, I think within the next 12 months, you’ll see, uh, a massive shift in what you’ll need as an, as a company when it comes to employees.
Mike: Yeah. And there’s probably some there, there’s some delay. I would assume like a lot of folks that we buy houses from tend to be a little bit older. Right. Mm-hmm. Um, and they’re probably more likely to wanna sit across the table and look somebody in the eye. Right? I mean, they’re, there’s just, just like, just like, and I, I believe this, and I, I support people that do all these things inside of my mastermind and other things.
Mike: There’s people that buy virtually over the phone across lots of markets. Mm-hmm. And there’s people that go meet with them at the kitchen table. And the kitchen table folks still outperform virtual just because of that personal touch. And so, yeah, there, there is some. Balance between what is possible and what’s realistically implementable, I
Brent: guess, too.
Brent: Right? Yeah. I mean, I, I, I’m, I’m a firm believer of the, the kitchen table. I mean, there’s nothing wrong at all of people doing virtually. I, I’m just, in my mind if, if the parameters are the same, we can spend the same amount of money on the same house and I can meet ’em in person at their, at their kitchen table and talk to ’em.
Brent: Yeah. I’m gonna win.
Mike: Uh, yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, I believe that too. So my point is, is like even though, you know, grandma could get on on there and fill out a form to analyze her house and probably get a bunch of virtual automated offers, right? Mm-hmm. There’s the, the, the folks that can still build that relationship, human to human are still gonna have a leg up for, certainly for the foreseeable future, I would assume.
Brent: I think it’s gonna become even more important. Yeah. Um, as more and more things become automated things, I mean, you’re already starting to see a, a. Big breakdown in trust, um, because it’s hard to tell what’s real anymore, and it’s gonna become even harder. Once these, once these get more powerful, especially when it comes to video, uh, we’ve already seen it with audio.
Brent: It can, with it, you got three seconds of someone’s voice, you can automatically recreate that voice, uh, which is scary because they’re already using it for scams. People saying that, oh, they got their daughter’s voice and they’re calling their parents and like, Hey, I forgot my social security number. I need it.
Brent: I’m applying for this job, or whatever. And boom, there you go. You got your social hacking right there. Yeah. Wow. That’s crazy. So you need to create a password, like a phrase for people. Uh, that’s gonna be a reality whenever you’re talking to someone to be sure that you’re talking to the right person. Yeah.
Brent: They need to know your, they need to know your passcode.
Mike: Wow. So, so on the acquisition side, you know, it’s more around lead intake, possibly analyzing properties, uh, automating some of those things. But the, yeah. You’re seeing relationship stuff is still gonna be winning out for a while.
Brent: Yeah. So, and you’re seeing like even, uh, I think deal machine just launched, uh, last week.
Brent: They launched like up their alma. I believe it’s what it’s called. And it’s basically if you were a brand new wholesaler just getting into this business or a brand new investor, just getting into it like that looks pretty, I haven’t gotten the chance to use it yet, but it looks pretty good because it’s given you like helpful tips on like how to analyze the property and it’s giving you all the information.
Brent: Now that’s assuming that it has all the information it needs. It might be a little bit harder if you’re in like a non-disclosure state like Mississippi, uh, but it’ll tell you like, this property last sold for this should be your max allowable offer. Uh, all these things. So it’s, it’s. Basically doing a lot of the research and study for you to help you make better decisions.
Brent: And right now, I think that’s the most effective use case of AI is to basically speed up your learning curve and help you make better decisions. Uh, getting, you know, financial analysts are also done, they’re on the chopping block.
Mike: Hmm. Yeah. How, how, so let’s move into dispo on the dispo side, like typically people have had a leg up over, it’s kind of like data, right?
Mike: Like, I know who is buying, I know who’s paying cash. I. It’s been really archaic. Like, can you get access to your mls? Is it a disclosure state or not? Can I find out what they paid in Texas? You can’t, if it’s a cash buy, you know, if it’s not on the mls. And so how do you think, um, so this is probably an area where it’s more about, um, aggregation of data than it is AI necessarily.
Mike: It’s just, yeah, like talk about a little bit about how dispo dispositions of properties might be impacted.
Brent: I, I mean, it’s obviously gonna become much easier and more automated. Um, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wasted time on the phone with a buyer who’s got a million questions about a house when I’ve sent ’em literally everything they could possibly want.
Brent: I mean, I got to the point where I just started every house that we were gonna wholesale. I never knew if I was gonna wholesale, if I put it under. My philosophy was if I put it under a contract, I’m buying it. Unless there’s something I find that’s, you know, scary, scary, wrong with it. So I always. I always put it under contract and I paid for an inspection.
Brent: Now that might be a $300 expense, but I did took it as a cost of doing business. And if I found something on that inspection report, well then I can always go back to the homeowner and be like, Hey, look, I, I didn’t know this was, this was a thing. Clearly this is an issue that we’re gonna have to fix.
Brent: That’s a lot more than what we originally discussed. Right. You know, and they’ll work with you usually nine times outta 10 on, on renegotiating. So you’ll be in a better shape. But, You know, as far as dispositions go, it’s, it’s gonna be just simply push a button and you’ll have, be able to have hundreds of conversations with everyone on your list, uh, automatically without ever having to actually talk to them.
Brent: Uh, and then just getting, uh, when someone gets through the funnel essentially, uh, here’s a contract, boom, and here’s it back.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Cuz at the end of the day, like, and there have been some people that have, this was an ai, but just certainly during Covid, they would go in and they would take, um, you know, 3d, uh, pictures and videos and people could kind of be there without being there, right?
Mike: Yeah. And so if you have that married together with answers to every question you could possibly have, then you don’t, I guess you don’t need a human salesperson necessarily that’s selling it, right?
Brent: No. Yeah, because my, my thought philosophy is if I send you everything you could possibly need and you’re a real buyer, then I should never really even have to talk to you.
Brent: Right? Like, yeah, yeah. Like, I, I’d be happy to talk to you, but like, if you’re a real buyer and you got an inspection report and you’ve got all the photos, you’ve got everything you could possibly need, you know, the numbers. What do you need me for? Like, this is, this is your decision to make. Yeah,
Mike: yeah, yeah.
Mike: And this is a little bit of a side note here, but what, what do you think the impact of AI is gonna be on kind of the, uh, Just the realtor, uh, structure in America. I mean, I think right now, even for the past like 10 years, people are pretty much finding the houses they wanna look at and just using the realtor as the key holder, the gate, the gatekeeper, I guess, to get in and outta properties.
Brent: But yeah, to go in and look at it. Right. Um, look, I mean, we’ve, we’ve all gotta adapt and overcome. I’m actually a licensed realtor myself. Um, it’s. I think you, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve seen, did you see the Zillow plugin launch? Uh, I mentioned it the other day. No, but, uh, so they’re, so chat GBTs getting plugins, and this kind of really changes everything because it gives it access to the internet, gives it, basically any business can build a plugin.
Brent: Uh, but they, they can, uh, ship out to anybody that wants to use it. So Zillow is basically going, Hey, All gotta do is go in and I can literally ask it any question. Like, I’m looking for a three bed, two bath that fits, you know, this objective, this goal, whatever. Do you have anything in this area? And it will literally start finding everything and spitting ’em all.
Brent: Right, right out to you, right inside of chat, C p t. Hmm. Uh, so think about that as, as an investor wise, right? Uh, if I, if I’m setting parameters that say, you know, I’m looking for. These types of properties and these neighborhoods that fit this description that were recently canceled or, or are pin, uh, pined but canceled or didn’t go through or whatever, I can get all that information sent to me just with a simple question so I get to treat it.
Brent: So as far as realtors go, it’s like, look, you know, I’m not gonna downplay the, the, the good realtors because the really good ones are worth their weight and gold. Uh, but if you’re playing in that kind of part-time mediocrity, I’m just kind of doing this to hopefully get a listing here and there. It, I mean, it’s really not worth it.
Brent: Uh, but I don’t know. I mean, it’s all gonna come down to regulation. I think with that. NA r has a lot of impact on that, but they’re facing their own, uh, litigation, so who knows? Yeah.
Mike: And I think back to what we talked about, acquisitions, I mean, that relationship is still valuable, right? For the people that do, for the people that do a good job.
Mike: I, I don’t, you know, I’m not here to, to bash, uh, realtors, but like you said, there’s a lot, there’s, there’s some good ones and there’s a lot that, that aren’t great. And I think the average, uh, Agent and especially even before the inventory shortage. I mean, I think the average agent in America lists like two houses a year.
Mike: I mean, it’s a real small, it’s like a couple friend and family type things. It is typical, right. And so, right. Uh, and those are the ones that are probably the necessary evil. Like, Hey, my buddy’s a agent so I’ll let him show us access. But you don’t really need it cuz you can see everything you wanna see online anyway.
Mike: Right. Yeah. Interesting. Yep. So let’s, let’s get into, uh, staffing. We talked about this a little bit already, a lot of administrative type things that can be, you know, easily outsourced, uh, overseas right now. Just general staffing and maybe even talk about, not even, um, like general administrative, but just.
Mike: Job search for highly qualified people. Like we, we, we’ve been searching for some, you know, some high-end developers and stuff like that. And it, it’s a cumbersome process, right? To find those people and interview tons of people. And maybe just talk about like, how AI is gonna, uh, maybe change the game there for, for businesses that are staffing up.
Brent: Yeah, just, I just looked at, uh, I didn’t really go too deep into ’em, but I shared it on my newsletter earlier. Uh, there’s already several companies that are working on, like HR that are basically powered through ai. Holly, I think Meet Holly, right? It’s either Holly or Meet Holly ai, um, is one of those companies, and they’re basically using AI to, to help you with your hr.
Brent: Um, I mean, obviously I have the same struggles you have. I mean, you’re working on building, uh, platforms and things of that nature. The reality is though, and this is the day that I’m waiting on because I’m, I’m actively learning how to code now I’m learning about machine learning now. Cause I believe this is our, this is my internet moment.
Brent: Right. Um, real estate’s cool, but it is, it’s not the internet. Right. Um, and what I’m finding is, is that the future is, this is the future. If you can describe it, you can create it. Mm-hmm. Uh, and that goes for anything. If you can, if you can describe the app that you want to build, you can build it without having to ever hire a developer to build it.
Brent: Uh, and it’s all gonna come down the same, back to prompting. The better you are at describing things, the better it will work. There’s already several projects that are working on that. Um, and we can get into like auto, like a agents, right? Uh, that’s kind of been in the hot topic recently is what they call auto, G P T or baby agi.
Brent: These are people who are open source building, uh, what they call auto agents. And essentially you give it a goal and it starts creating tasks based around that goal. So it just spawns all these agents and it goes out to the internet. It researches, it, pulls what it thinks it needs, and it just starts building.
Brent: The problem is, is that like it’s still a little buggy, it’s early. Uh, the second thing is, is like there’s only so much memory it has and it could also, you know, Feed up a ton of your money cuz you’re having to plug in your API for open api, open AI into that platform. So it can just as every time it’s running, it’s just running, running, running, running, running, running into it, figure till it feels like it’s, it’s met its goal.
Brent: So again, back to describing exactly what you want really well. Mm-hmm. But it’s doing all these tasks for you. I mean, I built an entire, um, like essentially press release, um, Ideas for, uh, uh, presentation spreadsheet. It built all the presentations out other than the video, it just gave me all the text, but it was building all the, doing market research, doing all these things for me in the background simply because I asked it like they gave it one goal and it starts doing it.
Brent: So anybody wants to go and like play with those tools. Uh, all you need is open api, open ai, API key, which you can get on open ai. Go to, uh, search God mode AI or baby agi, one of those, you’ll find a platform that somebody built on top of their code and you just plug your a a P I key in there and it’ll literally just go to town, uh, and watch it work.
Brent: And it literally will show you like, what it, what’s it thinking about? Okay, this is the next task, here’s how I accomplish the next task. And it’s just running. And then it goes to the next task and completes until it, until it’s done. Wow. I’ve seen it. I mean the people. So one of the coolest things that I’m seeing right now is this kid who has absolutely no idea how to code at all.
Brent: And he is building what he is dubbing like Jar, G p T. So he is teaching these auto agents how to open blender, open Unreal engine, uh, and create, uh, basically create a, uh, Pixar movie. Basically you just put in a book and it’ll, it’ll animate the entire thing and turn it into a Pixar movie. Um, and I think that’s kind of the, again, back to, if you can describe it, you could build it.
Brent: Yeah.
Mike: Wow. Interesting times, man. So what, what else are we, what, what do we not talk about today that you, you see impacting the real estate
Brent: investor side? I don’t know. I mean, both. I’m like you, right? I’m extremely excited about the future, but I’m also extremely terrified. I, I, I don’t think we’re at the point where we have to worry about some kind of sky nett type situation just yet, although that is, that is still on the table as much as, as funny as it sounds, it is still very much on the table.
Brent: Um, but what I am more worried about is the impact on jobs because, We talked about, great, it’s great for a [00:29:00] business owner that I can replace, you know, half of my staff or you know, even 30% of my staff. Well, what happens when that’s 30% of the global economy, right? Are we buying real estate then? Like, who has money?
Brent: Yeah. Uh, that’s, that’s kind of my biggest fear. Uh, there’ll be this period cuz
Mike: you know, we, we buy houses for people that are in distress. Not that we wish. That distress on
Brent: any, any one, right? Yeah. There’ll be, there’ll be this period that there will be a lot of, uh,
Mike: it’s easier hope to buy. People won’t transition from owners to renters probably.
Mike: Right. So if you’re buying hold, there’ll be some opportunities there, but eventually, you know, how do people pay the rent?
Brent: Right? Right. Yeah. That’s kind of the, the big problem here. And I, and that’s why I’m a firm believer and proponent of, uh, a ubi. I don’t have all the answers, but I do believe that’s an, that’s an issue and that’s why I’m working towards creating a more fair and equitable internet, um, because I believe our.
Brent: Data, our personal data should be private property and treated as such, and we’re more than willing to give access to it. We’ve shown that, uh, but we should also be getting paid for it. So that can create like a, my goal is to create a U B I without taxation legislation or any government involvement. So explain that a
Mike: little bit.
Mike: Uh, basically where people can earn money from sharing their own data. Right when the average wouldn’t, the average, and, and I hate to sound like negative with the average kind of low income person, would basically just say, just take it All right. I mean, just the same person that’s like, you know, yeah.
Mike: Donating plasma right now, because that’s all they can do. Right. It’s just take, take whatever you want, just pay
Brent: me. Yeah. They’re pretty much art, right? So my goal is to make it to where you can select. Whatever you want to share. Some people like you and I are myself, whatever may feel like I don’t wanna share that kind of data.
Brent: Yeah. There will be a lot of people who say, just take it all. Guess what? They are taking it at all already. All right. Uh, Googles the metas, all them are taking it all already. Uh, and they’re doing it with your permission through a terms of service agreement, but they’re not giving you any, anything of [00:31:00] real value, uh, for doing that.
Brent: So my goal is to make a fair exchange, right? I’ll get you, give me permission to use your data. And every time your data is accessed, you get a piece of that, uh, that action. Now, we’re not talking about life-changing sums of money, but it’s better than nothing and it’s better than what we’re currently getting.
Brent: Yeah.
Mike: Interesting stuff. So what can people do? Uh, this is, this is gonna a little bit of a loaded question, but what can they do to prepare for this? And, and this is the same thing people should have been doing all along, is focus on skills that are transferrable to other things and having a skillset that’s, you know, if you were, if you were basically a, a buggy driver like a long time ago, like your days were numbered, right?
Mike: So what can people do to kind of prepare for this, do you think?
Brent: I mean, honestly, you need to do as much research as humanly possible yourself and, and come up with your own conclusions. My conclusion is that, um, we have to rethink how society works currently. Everything from our education systems to our political systems, everything, uh, finance, all that.
Brent: We have to rethink a lot if we’re going to truly. Evolve into a species that, that wants to, uh, inhabit this earth for, for a long period of time. And that’s simply the reason I say all that. And again, I’m not a dor. I just know that people will find this very hard to believe when I say that. Like, look, this thing is, this is serious.
Brent: It’s, this is not the horse and buggy situation. Right? Right. You know, there you could say it does. You know, well, you know, we have cars and there’s more jobs that were created from that. There’s all these issues. There’s the problem is, is I’ve not heard one researcher say, well, this is the exact same. This is the jobs that’s going to create.
Brent: No one can pinpoint that, and no one ever really has been able to pinpoint that until it happens. But what Agi I really is, is, uh, uh, Artificial intelligence that’s more, that’s, that’s [00:33:00] more useful than a human. I mean, it’s already smarter. Chatt is already smarter than, than humanity, than any, any single human because it’s so, it’s so versed on so many different things, and it will hallucinate from time to time.
Brent: But I think the biggest problem is like, what do we do when humans need not apply? Right. What does that look like as a, as a society when we don’t have jobs? When we can’t have jobs, and then the jobs that we do have, like what do we do? What does life look like when work is not the centerpiece of your life?
Brent: Yeah. And it’s a fun and interesting question, but it’s also a very challenging when the answer cause it, it, it pokes holes in everything that we know as, as our society. Yep. Yep. Uh, I look forward to the day when none of us have to work, like, I feel like I’ve done the last 20 years of my life. I feel like I’ve done everything to not work because I’ve always went after things that I enjoy doing.
Brent: Ever since I graduated high school, I moved to Chicago, went to go work for a record label. Like [00:34:00] I always figured out a way to travel, do the things I love, to make money and make a living. Um, so I’m one of the, the few people that have never really had like the, that corporate job that they hated or, you know, had to go work, uh, you know, shitty manual labor jobs out in the field somewhere.
Brent: Even though I’ve done those, I grew up on a farm. Um, I, well, I, I’ve just, I just want to know like, what do we all do? Like, what are we all right, what are, what are we gonna do? Like, what is money? Yeah. Interesting stuff. I know I’m over here, like, probably just rambling and ranting. No, it’s,
Mike: it’s like, it’s, it’s hard because it’s hard to banter cuz you don’t know.
Mike: Like, it’s not like, well here’s what I think’s gonna happen. I have no idea. You know?
Brent: Um, I mean, I, I think there will be a, within the next five years, half the half the, uh, Population on this country, on this planet will have to be reskilled or up trained to something different. Uh, transportation jobs. Are pretty much done, automation’s taken care of.
Brent: A lot of the, I mean, they have already automated the, the crap out of everything, but when you get more general purpose robots that are meshing with the ai, which is happening at the same rate of speed that we’re seeing on other things, you got, that’s what people don’t realize is that now that everything has become a language, everything is working in a singularity towards one goal.
Brent: Right? Uh, and it’s moving at an exponential rate that we have never seen in any kind of industry, any kind of technology, anything. Um, so that’s why you saw like the, you know, the, the, the leaders of AI saying like, Hey, we need to pause for like six months. Uh, and I wasn’t even a big proponent of the pause.
Brent: I’m not a proponent of the pause of research. Uh, I’m a proponent of pausing of public deployment until we can figure out, hey, what’s, what’s going on? Because there’s things that they don’t even understand themselves. They don’t understand why it’s learned languages that it was never taught. It just learned on its own.
Brent: Yeah. And no one can explain why that happened. So like, maybe we should like really figure out what, what we’re unleashed into the public first and what the repercussions could be before we just do this massive employ deployment. Because what happened is Google’s been doing AI for a long time, right? Uh, they’ve had, I mean, they bought Deep Mind years ago.
Brent: They were part of the Alpha Go that, uh, beat the best chess players in the world. They’ve been a part of it for a long time, but they weren’t releasing anything to the public, which again, There’s a, you know, damned if you do, damned if you don’t type thing. It’s like when, when you release something like that and when you keep it private.
Brent: Um, open AI came out, released chat G P t and caught Google on their heels and now they’ve been trying to race to catch up ever since. But what happens is when you create that race, everyone gets in on the race and no one’s really concerned about the casualties that happen along the way. As long as I beat, as long as I beat them.
Brent: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Mike: Well, Brent, I know you share a lot of, uh, information online about this, uh, uh, on your, I dunno if you refer to it as a blog, but where, tell us where people can go, kind of follow along with your learnings and your, uh, and my takes. Your takes,
Brent: takes on everything. Yeah. So I, uh, sent my daily newsletter called Ideations.
Brent: That’s a I d e a t i o n S. Dot com. Um, that’s where every single day I’m, I’m taking Twitter threads, right at threads, uh, newsletters that I’m reading, research papers that I’m reading, and I’m just breaking ’em down in kind of like two paragraph common, you know, common sense. Here’s what’s happening, here’s the impacts, here’s what’s, you know, what’s what this means.
Brent: Sharing, you know, five to six cool tools that I’ve come across every single day and usually throw in a video. And then occasionally some instructions on like, here’s, here’s a cool prompt that you can use it. Here’s how I used it. Um, things like that. So I do that, like I said, three to five times a week I write that newsletter and it’s a lot of fun.
Brent: And right now we have about, I think six or 7,000 subscribers on that. So we have a 50% open rate. So it’s working, it’s, it’s doing something and it’s free to join. Uh, there is an option to pay monthly, but that’s just this show support. And I do a, a monthly call with the premium subscribers, so, It’s, it’s $5 a month.
Brent: It’s pretty cheap. Yeah.
Mike: Yeah. Awesome. Well, we’ll add, uh, we’ll add the link down, although for those of you that heard it but didn’t write it down for how to get the ideation. So, Brent, hey, thanks for, uh, sharing your knowledge with
Brent: us today. I’m hoping that it opened the eyes to some bigger issues, and I know this, this is all about real estate and I look, I love real estate and I, I’m a firm believer that it’s the easiest and quickest way to become truly wealthy.
Brent: Um, As, as far as like, you know, not having to work for a living, um, I just want people to understand that, you know, while I may seem like things, I’m talking about things that are 10 years off, I’m not talking about things that are 10 years off. I’m talking about things that are a year out that are gonna have severe impacts on everything.
Brent: While it’s all, it’s great to think about how can this benefit me? Well, I think we all need to be discussing how can this benefit everyone? Yeah. And what that world looks like moving forward. But at the same time, yes, be using it in your businesses. Learn how to, how to, uh, automate a lot of your processes.
Brent: Take advantage of it because if you’re not, you’re gonna be one of those that’s left in the dirt. Yeah. Yeah.
Mike: Awesome. Well, good stuff. Exciting and scary at the same time. A little mixture of both, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, thanks for, I’m optimistic. Look at the end of the drive. It’s always been, I mean, I’ve been in the real estate investing industry for 15 years and it’s always been a race to who can be a better operator, who can be more efficient.
Mike: Right, who can do all these things and, and, and that race is just, uh, is certainly picking up speed, right? And so, right. You need to kind of evolve or you’re gonna die. But, uh, hopefully, you know, some bad things that could happen don’t happen in the process. I
Brent: guess. Let’s hope not. I’m very optimistic that we’ll get it right.
Brent: Um, it’s just my goal is to create awareness on, on what the problems are. Yeah. [00:40:00] Um, and then moving past that again, it’s just very simple. Like learn to be using. Like, you should be using chat g p t every single day for something, for at least spend 30 minutes every single day. Um, and I ask it questions, treat it like it’s, treat it like it’s your mentor.
Brent: Uh, I, look, I used to sell courses and mentorships and things like that. Like I, it’s really not a, it’s really not necessary anymore. There’s nothing, there’s a lot of money that could be paid for like real guidance, right? I got real mentors that’s worth their weighting gold and they’re definitely worth the money.
Brent: But if it’s a course, like unless it’s on something brand new that. Uh, chat. G B T wouldn’t have access to which it’s coming anyways cause they’re have integrating the web plugin. Um, there’s really no need because I’ve literally learned everything I could possibly want to learn about how to build a, a social media company, what the presentation should look like, what the press release should read, like what the video of the commercials, all these things.
Brent: I just asked the questions for the longest time. I just had all these roadblocks of, uh, you know, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to do that. Uh, talk to it like it’s. The expert at everything you could possibly think of and ask it the right questions. And I promise you, you’ll be amazed at what you can learn and how fast you can learn it.
Mike: Yeah. Uh, and use that opportunity to improve your skills so that this is less of an issue for you, right? Correct. Yeah. Awesome, Brent. Hey, thanks so much for sharing your time with us today. Thanks, Mike. Everybody. Hope you got some good value from today. Uh, don’t be scared. Uh, there’s lots of opportunity here if you use, these are just like, there’s lots of tools out there that in the wrong hands can be used against you, and in the right hands can, can be, uh, used for good, right?
Mike: So I think that’s the key here. Still plenty of opportunities in the real estate investing industry that’s not going anywhere. Just do the right thing for people. Serve people. Uh, and make some money along the way. So thanks for listening to today Show. Have a great day. See you on the next show. There are three ways I can help you start or grow your real estate investing business if you’re a new investor in just getting started, the Flip Nerd Investor Coaching program is the most effective program in America.
Mike: I’ve been coaching and mentoring new real estate investors for 10 years. And my students have literally purchased thousands and thousands of properties. Many of them started with little to no experience at all. Our program is a Paint by Numbers program where we tell you exactly what to do week by week to make sure that you don’t get distracted on your way to results.
Mike: We show you how to build a real business, not just create another job for yourself. New memberships are limited. You can learn more and apply. Or schedule a call with me and my team at lipner.com/coaching. If you’re an experienced investor doing a minimum of 10 deals a year, up to 500 deals a year or more, or have a multi-million dollar real estate portfolio already, you should check out our powerful Investor Fuel Real Estate investor Mastermind.
Mike: Over a hundred of the nation’s leading real estate investors are members, and it’s not uncommon for our members. To two to five x their business just from getting around other members At Investor Fuel. At Investor Fuel, each of us are business advisors to one another’s businesses, but we don’t stop at business.
Mike: We focus heavily on becoming better people and living fuller lives. If you’re looking. For fuel for your business or fuel for your life, please check out Investorfuel.com. Applications and interviews are required as most investors are not a fit for our community. Please learn [email protected] if you’re not ready for coaching or masterminds, but eager to start learning more about investing, please join our private Facebook group by visiting FlipNerd.com/facebook. New members get access to free training from us right [email protected] and it’s a community to safely ask your questions, a great place to get started, simply go to FlipNerd.com/facebook to request your access today.
Source: flipnerd.com
Apache is functioning normally
The numbers: Sales of previously-owned homes in the U.S. fell 3.4% in April for the second month in a row, as buyers continue to deal with low levels of home listings and see-sawing mortgage rates.
Sales of existing homes in the U.S. fell to an annual rate of 4.28 million in April, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.
That’s the number of homes that would be sold over an entire year if sales took place at the same rate in every month as it did in April. The numbers are seasonally adjusted.
“The median price for an existing home fell by 1.7% from last April to $388,800 this year. The drop is the largest since January 2012, when home prices fell 2%. ”
The drop in sales wasn’t as bad as what economists on Wall Street had expected. They forecast existing-home sales to total 4.26 million in April.
But compared with April 2022, home sales were down 23.2%.
Key details: The median price for an existing home fell by 1.7% from last April to $388,800 this year. The drop is the largest since January 2012, when home prices fell 2%.
Home prices peaked in May 2021, where they grew 25.2% annually.
The number of homes on the market rose by 7.2% in April to 1.04 million units. But the number of fresh listings is still down from a year ago, the NAR said.
Homes listed for sale remained on the market for 22 days on average, down from 29 days in March.
Sales of existing homes fell in all regions, with the sharpest drop in the West.
All-cash buyers made up 28% of sales. The share of individual investors or second-home buyers was 17%. About 29% of homes were sold to first-time home buyers.
Big picture: Despite home sales dipping in April, most of the housing data is indicating that the U.S. housing market is in broad recovery.
But a combination of issues are making it a slow one, from a lack of new home listings to see-sawing mortgage rates.
Many homeowners are reluctant to sell for two reasons: They may be reluctant to give up an ultra-low mortgage rate secured during the pandemic for a much higher one, and they also don’t want to deal with competition
Homebuilders are responding to the inventory crunch by bumping up construction of new homes. Housing starts, which refer to when a builder starts constructing a home, rose in April. Rates, on the other hand, are volatile: The 30-year mortgage rose to the highest level in two months to 6.57% as of May 12, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday. It was 6.48% the previous week.
Given the underlying issues on supply and rates, sentiment among U.S. consumers regarding the housing market has worsened: The number of people who think it’s a bad time to buy a home has hit a 45-year high.
What the realtors said: “The housing market – at least home sales – is still struggling to recover,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, said.
Aside from higher rates, “there’s just simply not enough inventory,” he noted.
Yun also said that the NAR was sharing the idea of addressing the capital gains tax with members of Congress as a way to encourage more homeowners to sell their homes to ease the inventory shortage.
What are they saying? “The very strong underwriting standards during the last housing expansion along with solid labor market conditions will reduce the risk of defaults and forced selling going forward,” Thomas Simons, U.S. economist at Jefferies, wrote in a note.
“The housing sector is already in a recession, but we don’t expect consumption to contract significantly until a cycle of mass layoffs begins, likely during Q3,” he added.
Market reaction: Stocks were up in early trading on Thursday. The yield on the 10-year note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
3.683%
rose above 3.6%.
Source: marketwatch.com