A Look Behind the Headlines

Tariffs, stock market volatility, mortgage interest rates are just some of the stories grabbing headlines.  We take a look at what is driving these issues and how they may impact the housing market and what it means for buyers and sellers.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to the Remax real Estate Insights Show
where you get real talk by real agents. Walk to
you by Remas of Southeastern Michigan. Welcome to our Remax
real Estate Insights podcast. We're here to share with you
news and tips about all things in real estate in
a way that's easy to understand, maybe fun to listen to,
and helps you make the best decisions. My name is

(00:22):
Janete Schneider. I'm the president of Remax of Southeastern Michigan,
and I'm also your host on this podcast Journey Today.
We have got a packed episode for you. We're diving
into some of the big stories, the headlines that you've
been seeing recently about tariffs, market shifts, what they mean
for buyers and sellers. Also, let's face it, the stock market,

(00:43):
employment trends, housing affordability. There is no shortage of things
for us to talk about today, So get settled in
and we're going to get our conversation started. And joining
me is a perennial favorite guest, Paul Mruck with Remax Classic.
Welcome Paul, to have you here.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Beautiful here, isn't it nice? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I know?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Eastern market walking with streets here, It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
And it was sunny today, so that was good.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
No wind blowing there, two degrees blows there.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yea yeah, and they're doing that. So this year I'm
doing something new. So before we get into all the headlines,
because this is we're going to kind of dive into
I think what people are seeing and hearing in headlines.
But before we do this year, I'm asking every guest,
how did you get into real estate? Just so that
people kind of get a background for what land.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Did you hear talk about left field here? Yeah, you did.
I was going to be a psychiatrist. I went to school.
I went to medical school to be a psychiatrist and
one year and then I decided that wasn't right for me.
I don't want to hear people's problems all day.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
So you picked real estate. That was you, that was
your big place.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I didn't want to hear people's problems all day bring
me down. And then I realized, you know, it was
really fun. I love houses. I love the relationship with people.
I love the connection right and everyone has a different
way of doing business. Mine is a relationship oriented. I
want to hear what is best, what's most important to you,
And then in terms of a house right and what's
most important to as a person. We tailored that to

(02:04):
finding the right area, right location, right house, and that's
how I kind of connected the dots together. But it
is funny, I'd never really been asked that before. Even
my wife didn't even ask me how real estate?

Speaker 1 (02:14):
How did your land here?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
I really wanted to now. I was looking at being
an FBI profiler. That would be cool, that would be good.
Until I went to a jail and saw an inmate
and asked him why, And then I realized that.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Wasn't really where you want to spend your time mentally,
and every other boy.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
The rabbit hole you go down in that air So anyway,
so real estate's a different rabbit hole, and it's one
I love it because you see the best of people.
You see great things. At the end of the day closing,
everyone's happy, everyone's excited. You see people who are doing
great things. And I get a lot of value in
my life helping people do great things, and an evly
it helps me do great well.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
I mean, and I know, I mean, I see some
of the posts you do on social you know, and
it's at all age spectrums. You know, you can be
the first time buyer. It can be the seventy year
old widow.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
I mean that you're helping, you know, find her new
place and everything in between. And I know it feeds
you and it shows.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
It motivates me. I still am as motivated as I
am right now as I was when I was twenty
five years old when I started this business.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
That's not and then everybody can't say that I love
heads off.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I'm out with people and I go, gosh, you really
love what you do. I go every day, even if
I'm having a tough month in sales or a tough
situation with the sale. I look at it as a challenge.
How do I how do I solve this? And the
challenge is is I got to figure out a way.
I'm up at night okay, walking around okay. How can
I get this together? How can I get this? How
can I break through that? And it's to me, it's motivating.

(03:38):
I love what I do from that perspective, I also
hate to lose, so I'm really really competitive competitive. So
that's where we talked about right before I walked in here.
I work out every day, and you know, when I
work out, I don't want anybody passing me on the bike. Man,
I almost said something bad. I don't want people. I
don't want people lifting more than me. I don't want
people working out harder than me. Is something that I'm

(04:00):
born with. I'm incredibly competitive. But even if I'm playing golf,
I'm not playing to beat you. I'm playing to beat
the golf course. How can I? I have never beat
the golf course, but it certainly is an thing I'm
trying to do. And that kind of leads me to
why every day is so so different and so beautiful,
and it's a challenge. And I look at this challenge

(04:21):
every day as how can I? How can I win?

Speaker 1 (04:24):
And when and when you're winning, you're winning for your clients,
and that you know then it's kind of the full
the first full circle model is.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
And I love this. I love this format. We can
talk about things we didn't even plan to talk about.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Here. I plan, but you just as necessary plan on
that question.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
It's great love. I love this business. It just leads
to so many good things. I can walk up, my
kids laugh at me, we can go anywhere, Oh hey, Paul,
what's going on? Client work, friend work, And I just
think it's a great, great thing to do. You leave
people with a great feeling inside and it is a relationship.
Want into business that you have an emotional relationship with

(04:58):
real estate is a very emotional.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Oh yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
If you can connect on that level and get people
where they got to be and you did all you
could do to help and they know that mm hm,
it builds lasting relationships. I mean, you do get into
it with people.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Well and it becomes part of that you know, we
really are part of the community in the in the
in the micro and the macro sense. So today, what
we're going to do is we're going to kind of
dive behind some of the more prevalent headlines that we're
hearing right now, and I'm going to say, let's start
with what I'm calling the word of the year tariff.

(05:32):
Yeah it may not by December, maybe this won't be
the word of the year, but for right now, in
March when we're recording this, it's pretty much the word
of the day. So let's talk about tariff. I mean,
there's a lot of you know, you can be for
or against from a political perspective, but let's talk about
what the impact it could be for the housing market.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
No matter what we talk about today, and I don't
want to make it political, it's going to be political.
You're going to hear that word that people, Oh my god, Trump,
You're gonna hear. It's gonna happens. And it's not meant
to steer emotion. But this, this whole news cycle doesn't
happen if November what seventh doesn't happen. So he'd been

(06:11):
saying all along, Hey, listen, when I get elected, we're
going to have some things. We've got to turn our
economy around from a private sector from a public sector
economy where you're getting all these jobs to public people. Right,
we've got to turn that around to a private sector job.
What do you got to do? You better build some more.
You better you have all these empty spaces that we've

(06:32):
lost ninety thousand manufacturing companies over the few years to China, Indonesia, Vietnam. Right,
all that has been taken out. So what happens is
you get these these jobs that are gone and then
they teariff us the north of the NAFTO. It is
supposed to be a free trade agreement. Well, now Mexico

(06:53):
tariffs our products. Canada chariffs our products, and all he
wants to do is say, listen, let's make an even
playing field. So if if you don't do it to us,
we won't do it too. But you're doing it to us,
so we're gonna have to do it to you. He
just says it in a much more direct and controversial way. Yeah,
so the messaging of it is interesting. I find the

(07:13):
messaging being a little off. He could have done tax
breaks first then tariffs to kind of mitigate the disruption
of everything. But when I think he has done it,
remember four years ago, he was eight years ago, he
was elected. He started this stuff later in his turn right, right,
COVID happens and didn't get checked it out. Yeah, instead
of being nineteen jillion in debt, we're thirty six jollion

(07:36):
in debt with two trillion dollars coming in a negative
spending every single year. You can't it's unsustainable, no, I mean.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
And it gets to the point that you hear all
of these numbers, right, and unless you've been directly impacted
in some direct way of the manufacturing job that left,
it's like it's just a lot of numbers. And yeah,
that's a lot, and we probably really should do something
about it. But but like on a family budget, you
can't run year after year after year in a deficit
and expect to come out over.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Given more tariffs and how it affects things. But I
look at this as who is our agent right now?
We had a choice between one party and our party.
He is our agent and I am an agent. I
can really relate to how this is. If I have
to be a jerk to get things done, then I
have to be a jerk to get things done. There

(08:22):
is no way to easily say, hey, Canada, the one
hundred percent tariff we have on cheese that's got to
go away. Well why why does it have to go away?
We've been doing it for so long. Yeah, it has
to go back to being zero. We have to compete
with your goods our goods. So this is why an
agent working for you is a big deal. He is
our agent, and I think he is if he needs

(08:43):
to be that guy, he certainly can be that guy.
And he has also one of the nicest guys in
the world too. But the focus is his negative rhetoric
and how he has to do things, and it's gonna hurt.
It hurts the stock market, it hurts the real estate market.
It's uncertain. Jobs are going change left and right. I
have a great story that actually impacts what's going on

(09:05):
right now, but the media won't report it. And that's
a whole nother o topic. A really good friend of
mine's the CEO of a hospital. Won't name the name,
but he said thirty two percent of his production of
his products are done in China. Well, he saw what
was going on. He goes, well, we better get these
guys out of here. Six percent of his products are
now built in China, he says to me. I go,

(09:25):
what's going on with the tariff stuff? He goes, everybody, everyone,
every business is leaving China. And I'm like, wait a minute,
no one's reporting that. He goes, I'm telling you, our
production is down twenty eight percent, thirty two to six.
So it's what, twenty six percent of our production has
gone to Vietnam or Indonesia. There's no tariffs there, so
I taken their businesses putting out of there. I go, well,

(09:47):
how much is that? He goes, Paul, I bet you
eighty percent of the companies that are directly are taking
their business elsewhere. And I go how about the US.
He goes, well, it's still labor costs are still high
here and so on. But ultimately, I think what Trump
wants to do is take all these manufacturing plants, put
them back to where they should be. For example, you
want to build a car, why not have all the

(10:08):
park plants centered around where the car is built? Right?
You have all these logistic issues.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Right, I mean you're sending stuff you from country to country.
Something gets made here, something gets made. They are ships
here to get put together in a different place.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
In order to be the big bad bear, you have
to be able to talk about it and you have
to also back it up. So what he's doing he's
preparing the United States for a manufacturing boom. This is
why he's saying, look out, we're gonna win like we'd
never won before. It's because all these manufacturing jobs will
be a without tariffs or be built here. So we're
already seeing more jobs in the Auto Star auto motive business.

(10:42):
And he goes nine thousand, which I don't want nine
thousand and huge economy. Hey it's nine thousand, but it's
a step, it's a it's a beginning of what I
think is going to be a wave of either these
people get in line or Trump said, we got plenty
of labor here.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well, I mean, and the interesting thing, and I think,
which you know you said, is you as an agent
representing clients, you know, sometimes you have to pay a
little hard ball, whether it's with another agent, with we,
you know, whether it's a the lender you know, whoever it.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Is, or you're sorry, or your own people or listen, guys,
you wanted five hundred, We're going to get four ninety. Yeah,
well I wanted five hundred. Yep, market's not there for this.
Trump's saying, the market isn't there. We're getting killed on
these tradeers. You've been saying it for eight years before
you got president. When he's president, you lost a presidency

(11:30):
in now saying the exact same thing. I've got to
get this together. And you look at the economy thirties.
It takes so much more money to buy a house
today because there were thirty six trillion dollars in debt.
And I think it's a really big factor and why
inflation is the way it is, and why these tariffs
have to happen. This change is going to happen now.

(11:50):
The stock market is so it fluctuates so much. It's
up five hundred, down, one thousand, up five hundred. I
don't even look at it anymore.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
I've tried to train myself, and this week has been
a little tough because it's been a rough week.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
But yeah, friends of mine pulled money out. I can't
do I can't take the swings. Well, look at look
at the bigcoin stuff. Look at the coins. They're all
over the place. So there is uncertainty, like you can't believe.
But I think I believe based on his rhetoric and
what he I think he has a plan of action.
He pulls Elon in to wipe out some things again,
taking the public sector and making it private. When you

(12:25):
take when you have money going into the public sector,
those jobs seem like their career jobs. And look at
some of the things that they found. I mean, it's
unbelievable the amount of corruption. Let's say you can save
a tillion dollars, Well, it's better than cutting Medicare and medicaid.
He can save a chillion of waste, cutting employees. You
we can run things more efficiently. So how you how

(12:46):
you cut a business's you come in, you overcut, then
you see how it runs a skeleton career and you
bring people back in to run the business. This is
what he's doing in every corporation's been bought out. Sorry,
I want every company goes through this, and I think
this is what has to happen first, and then in
the next few months it gets better quickly.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Well, what I was going to say is I think
it's you know, we're seeing to some degree, probably more
transparency and how the sausage is made, right because like
you said, companies go through this. Like you said, sometimes
you have to be kind of a little or heavy handed.
I mean, and I say that, and you're doing in
an applight way, but sometimes with your clients and a
lot of these things happen, you know, very very small.
The world doesn't see it. He's more of a media

(13:30):
he likes the media. He likes to be in front
of a camera. And so you know, we're hearing and
we're seeing things, you know, and I think you know
from his perspective, you know, he does have a vision.
He is sharing what he's going to do. Just we're
seeing a little bit more of how the sausage is made,
and that is creating uncertainty in a lot of ways.
We're seeing the stock market react. You know, we're seeing
all these things back to terrorists because I think there's
a short term in a long term, and I think

(13:51):
you've kind of laid out the long term. You know,
if this gets worked out, if we get some reciprocity,
if we have a more fair playing field, some of
what's going to up in short term. We do know
that a lot of lumber comes from Canada, a lot
of drywall comes from Mexico, a lot of appliances to
putting homes come from China. And so do you see
there being any ripples, any little things coming short term?

(14:14):
You know, compared to our we're going to go the
wrong term.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Obviously, there's going to be a major hookup short term
because of the uncertainty. And Canada still has this lumber
sitting there. So let's say you have a product on
the market and it doesn't go away. It's inventory. H
you gotta get that you're carrying. You got to get
rid of it at some point. I guess the broader
point is we've lost four trillion dollars in market cap

(14:37):
in the stock market in the last month. Four jillion.
Holy cow, think about Canada and China and the people
who are at Mexico. We can handle four chillion because
it's going up and down. Right, this paper money. They
have product. We're the biggest user of product. At some
point they've got to get rid of it. And so
how long do they want to have the pain of

(14:59):
inventory sitting on their shelves. Either they cut back production,
which that's back employees. Right, you see what we're doing. Now,
we're going to Portland, We're going to We're going to
all those places where you find lumber. He cut trees down, guys, Hey,
drummore oil. You're already seeing inflation come down. And I
think you're going to end up seeing either one of
two things happen. It happens immediately or it happens in

(15:20):
a few months. But it's going to happen. They're going
to play ball, because why would.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
You if it's some point you have to sell, You
have to sell your product.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, Canada's not building any houses either, I mean, can
Canada build a house in Canada? Takes you a year
to get to get the stuff through.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Well, let's talk about building houses because I mean we
could talk new construction because your materials going to that.
But we were talking just very briefly before we got
on air. This is kind of be you know, it's
gotten out of the headlines relatively quickly. We had the
fires in La lots of home devastation there. That story
was on the heels of the devastation in the Carolinas
with the hurricane and what happened there. We've got a

(15:56):
lot of people in this country that have to rebuild,
you know, you needs the supplies. We already have a
housing shortage, so having multiple people you know, displaced, you know,
from natural disasters is not helpful. And then we have
the insurance industry. Insurance rates are going up. I haven't
really seen it in our neck of the woods, but
we're certainly hearing that there are people that can't afford

(16:17):
insurance down their homes. I mean, kind of talk to
us about some of that and what you see going.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
In fact, a really good friend of mine is owns
an insurance company, So I'm talking to her. I'm like, hey,
what the hell, why, why why aren't you Why are
you insuring people now? I think in La specifically, it's
because they didn't take care of their forests, and it's
like a tinder box. Once the magic goes into the
tinder box, it's going to go and you have no water,

(16:42):
you have no electricity, and you have mudslides afterwards. I mean,
it's a mess.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
It's a mess if you.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Don't take care of you. So I thought that was
the main reason, and she said to me, no, you know,
people are building houses and areas are not meant to
be houses. You can't build houses on the ocean and
have you know, have a hurricane come in and not
have flood. It's so all these things. It's the it's
the mass migration of buying and putting places where it

(17:06):
shouldn't be or they weren't before, and a lack of
care policy in La County for example, or in California
where you can't take the underbrush out of the forest.
All that sitting there is dry tinder, and when it
goes up every it seems like every year or two,
there's this huge, massive billions of dollars of waste. So

(17:27):
the funny thing, not funny thing, this is actually really sad.
All the savings that California did with all their hybrid
cars and all the all the stuff they do right,
no smoking, and stuff was gone in a matter of
a week. So all the carbon footprint stuff. When you
have a forest fire like that or a wildfire like that,
all that combustion or all that toxins goes right up

(17:50):
into the air and ruins the air for all of
us to Canada had the same thing last year. We
were in a Hazyeah. That's what happens. So if you
don't take care of your forest so they can ensure,
insurance companies pulled out. We're not going to ensure this.
We're going to lose because we know, we know it's
a loss of questions of time when it's not a
question of if it's Yeah. So the same thing happens

(18:10):
in Florida, So Michigan hasn't hit it yet because you know,
we're a little bit more protected. You don't have I
guess if you had a house on a bluff and
Grant and Grand Rend Haven and that blufflets eroding away, well,
then the insurance companies that listen, I can see what's common. Yeah,
we're gonna pull out of this insurance. It's going to
cost us too much money. And that is the problem.
So it's building in places where you shouldn't be building
and then obviously not taking care of the wildlife.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Do you think that that. I mean, migration historically has
been from colder climates to warmer climates, are from climates
that are heavier, from places that are heavier tax to
less taxing. You know, we've kind of saw some of
that movement during COVID and stuff like that. Do you
think the Midwest is going to become popular because we
don't have I mean, we have we have weather, yeah,
but we don't have some of the issues like you're
you're saying.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
And I think we have things that the South and
the West don't have. How about auto jobs? How about
an economy that's going to start. This is all the
stuff is happening to build Pennsylvania steel, to build cars
in Michigan or at least Indiana. So you're going to
see all of these these these states have people come
to them because they want jobs. You can't you can't

(19:13):
build a car in California. Didn't must just leave California
to go to Texas for that And a.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Lot of people I mean, I mean again, a lot
of people have. The tax policy has moved.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, So if you have a fair tax policy, which
we're going we have here, people are gonna come. I
really do think that Michigan will be a heck of
a place to live because you have you have the
fresh water, you have the golf courses, you have four seasons,
you have everything here, and you're gonna have a lot
of jobs. What's funny is the EV jobs. Remember Ford
is gonna put five million dollars in the EV's in

(19:43):
the spike. You can't see my hand here, but it
was gonna go like this, right, don't more like this
Because there's only so many EV cars you can have.
They're not going to be popular. If it gets two
percent of the market or three percent of the market,
that'd be amazing. But I get twenty percent of the market,
it's you can't. You have the infrastructure to handle that.
So you're gonna see gas cars and built here in

(20:05):
America as people start saying, Wow, I really want somebody
built in America. I want to support the US. The
have US deal being made here is huge because those
are seventy eighty ninety thousand dollars a year manufacturing jobs
that the middle class has been gut about is gonna be.
It's gonna have And where do they go if they
if they want to come back to the Midwest, They're

(20:26):
gonna want to have children, They're gonna want to go
to schools, They're gonna want to buy houses, are gonna
have I think an explosion happening here throughout the Midwest
and specifically in our area. Well a big mostly what
Ford and GM are located right here. Chrysler is kind
of located here. But I mean, that's that's what's gonna happen.
And I think it's going to be sooner rare than
later when people start seeing this is gonna this is

(20:48):
going on. Ford brought all these bright young people into
do the EVS. Now they're going to bring in people
to build these these trucks. Everyone wants f one fifty
for one hundred grand. That blows me away, and it
is amazing.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
I mean, driving in any parking lodder down the Expressway,
I mean I don't have a truck, but boy, I
feel like I'm always I'm always parking in between two
of them because like when I'm trying to pull out,
it's like I'm always doing it slow because I have
two big trucks next to me. So they are very
very popular. We kind of touched on it, but I
just want to go back slightly to stock market because
it has been you know, it's been took a beating

(21:21):
this week because, like you said, I think you've used
the word uncertainty. There's been some uncertainty. There's been a
little chaos. When that happens, people tend to like stay put.
They tend to not do a thing. Do you sense
that what's going on the stock market is going to
impact our market, the spring, the housing market or not?

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Maybe horrible? Maybe here's why. Here's why. The issue is.
It's messaging. We talked about that before, and it's creating
some sort of idea. Hey listen, guys, this is what's coming.
And they saw it come because because these things are
happening so fast, you have these wild reactions. Right typically
when you have the stocks get crushed, interest rates go down, right,

(21:58):
they won't go down. They have been very stubborn. Yeah. Well,
and they're like, hey, listen, we think it could go.
The market can come right back up again in a week.
And what Trump did with the tariffs with the car companies,
he delayed them. Hey, I made a mistake with all
these news cycle things. They're gonna be mistakes going in
real time and you're going to make them and he
corrects them. So the stock market will settle, but there's

(22:20):
going to be a shift. Like everything else, you shift
from one week unlike unlike a year. One week you're
shifting to the stability like Parcter and Gamble. The next
week you're shifting to Nvidia or it's just there's this
huge tech to the security. I think ultimately in a
month or two, I think companies will start the market
will start to figure it out because these people will

(22:41):
come to the table. I mean Colombia came to the table,
makes all the dogs. The tariff is the story.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
When these things get settled out and almost like houses,
once these things are taking care of, the market is
going to go crazy because they're going to see the
US companies begin to flourish even more so.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
We talked a little bit about interest rates, and right
now they're at about six point seven.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
Six and a half.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
I love to be six. I love them to get
the five so I could resign, but I don't think
that's going to happen this year.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
When they do. Now, the Fed said last year we're
going to cut four times. They cut once or twice. Right,
they are four times this year. If they cut and
the market the market is anticipating that cut, then I
think the stock market will react, go up, rates will
come down. And look when this happens, look out, prices
are going to spike again. It's already to buy a

(23:35):
house and farming. To buy a house in Noba, for example,
it's five hundred thousand, that's the average medium price, and
farmit Dehills is three fifty. I mean, these prices for
the average person are really hard to afford. At seven
percent interest rate, they're easier to four to five. Whatever
hit that, I think somebody will probably job owned the
Fed to come down. Our agent, I call them our agents.

(23:56):
We'll try and work on our behalf to get these
to get the Fed to react that way, if you
have more jobs, lower interest rates, I mean, the economy
is just going to go gangbusters.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
So let's talk. I put out a monthly housing report
and February's numbers weren't fantastic. I mean it was twelve
percent down, you know over the previous year, and last
February was down like ten percent over the year before.
I mean, so this is kind of now. I mean
part of that seasonality. February is not necessarily our biggest
month for home sales. It never has been, never likely
will be. So seasonality is certainly, you know, a piece

(24:26):
to it. We had some weather that wasn't favorable. But
as you're sitting here now, you know we're getting in
close to middle of March. Are you seeing any spring uptick?
Are you getting more people reaching out about potentially selling
or kind of how are you seeing things?

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Goes back to the uncertainty part of it. You know,
when you had four chillion in the market a month ago,
people more app to say, Hey, I've got a hundred
thousand dollars more, I buy a million dollar house. January
was the lowest record sales a month of all time.
February wasn't much better, And so there is a lack
of people who want to move. You can call it
a housing recession from age standpoint of people who can move.

(25:00):
You're caught up with two things. I'm caught with I
was caught with a two point seven five percent interest rate.
I'm not I'm not selling that. Nobody wants to sell that, right,
and you got to look at that. Okay, I'm gonna move,
I have a house in Livonia, or a house in Redford,
or a house and Warren and I want to move
to a nice a nicer area. Where you got to
pay double for the house, and you gotta pay double

(25:22):
for the interest rate, it makes it very difficult for
people to afford this. That's why when you see an
influx of jobs coming in at seventy eighty ninety thousand dollars,
your jobs are great jobs. They're gonna start impacting the Redford,
the Westland. You're gonna start filling in these positions. But
people who bought them over the years have been investors.

(25:43):
So you probably have fifteen to twenty percent of the
homes in these areas are rental properties. I'm not gonna
get rid of it. I have fourteen rental properties. I
don't want to get rid of any of those because
they're working for it. They're working really well. So if
people begin to want to leave those rentals to go
buy a house, you could have a you can see,
or a or a vacuum per se of people looking

(26:03):
to rent. So they're therefore you could see I think
you will see ultimately rents go down and values go up.
Housing values go up because it's gonna be few renters
people want to buy, and it's it's about having the job. Right.
If you have a secure job and a manufacturing plant
or any anywhere for that matter, you will want to
own something. You want to own a car, you want

(26:24):
to own a house. And that's been the American dream.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, it has before.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
I mean I love that I know I have a
place to live. If my family has roots there, my
children grew up there, right, that's home. And when we
talk about Remax, it has a new brand. Home is
a feeling right right, and it is. It couldn't have
been better said. The feeling of being successful has having
a good job, having a family, having a house, having

(26:50):
all those things kind of go together. When you're renting,
it seems so temporary. It seems like you're just throwing
your money away in a way.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Is I mean you're helping somebody else build their wealth.
I mean you're putting a roof over your head. So
you're definitely you're checking a box for you for life
that you that you that you need no doubt about it.
But I mean the kind of the old saying is,
but you're you're helping somebody else build their wealth versus
you building your own. Now I started out in an
apartment too. I mean that they're you know, there's a
reason for it. It's it's a good step and you know,
and different people have different things in life. But I

(27:22):
think that you know, proof is in proof is in statistics,
and statistics will say that you have more wealth if
you own real estate.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
That's just a fact, it is, I think. But the
other thing too, is you have equity, you have a
you know, as prices keep going up, you're going to
have equity, You're going to have tax right off. You're
going to have the pride of ownership. You can go
ahead and paint your house the color you want, or
you can change the carpeting to what you want. In
an apartment or in a rental property, it's hard to
do that. You got to talk to the landlord. It's

(27:50):
not your it's not yours. And so there's something to
be said about having your own property. And that's kind
of one of the reasons why I got into the
business was that feeling you get when you are you
get there. I never, I'll never. I still pull up
to this day, I pull up at my house and
I sit there for a second, and I smile and going, wow,
this is this is, this is how I grew up.

(28:11):
How I grew up a welfare free kid from Detroit,
didn't have a whole lot of anything, had no direction,
none of that stuff. To pull up into a house
that we have and go, U, this as ours. This
is where our children are, My wife is, this is
my this is my oasis out in the world of
real estate, and that is where all the stuff is crazy, right,
But when I go home, that's where it is. I'm

(28:33):
telling it. It is how I feel. And I when
I see a person, younger women now are buying more
houses than men are, and I see this all the time,
and I will sit together and I'll look at her
and I'll go, isn't this awesome? And she's like, And
you can tell that. The sense of accomplishment, the sense
of hey, I did this. You fought a bunch of buyers, right,

(28:55):
you got the house, you did the mortgage, you saved
for years, You've worked your butt off years to get here,
and you got here. When I'm at the closing table
with that is one of my favorite feelings I have.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
And it's so funny that you mentioned that because March
is Women's History Month, and so I mean this was
not something else. Yeah, yes, yes, of course, so it's
Women's History Month. I mean, and that is an interesting
fact that not a lot of people know that they're
a second to married couples. Single women are the biggest
home buying sector, you know, in the market.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
That's sort often do a whole other topic here, because
I think that women today are the men in the sixties.
If you think about it. They have the education, they're
much more educated than men are, and they're buying houses
at greater numbers than men are. They have their own
way right in their twenties and thirties. We're not going
to talk about the forties yet, but if you women
today in their twenties and thirties are are what men

(29:47):
were there. They're working hard on their careers. They're kicking it,
they're killing it, and I have a lot of respect
for that. Women have really changed the marketplace. It all
came back when the taxation policy said, okay, how can
we make more money, Well, would be great instead of
having the women at home taking care of the family
is and so we'll put them on the workforce and
we'll kill it. That way, we'll grip more revenue and

(30:08):
our jobs explode. And that's exactly what's happened. Women are
the new.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Men, and it's and I know, if you're just doing
some statistics on this, you know that nineteen eighty one
was the first year that single women bought more homes
than single men and it's never stopped since then.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
That the Brown effect?

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Is that what that must I must have been to
do a little research on the on the why on that.
So you talked a little bit more about affordability, then
we'll move on. So affordability, like you said, you know,
home values keep going up in price. You know, interest
rates are are are I think going to be pretty
pretty sticky in the sixes, you know this year, I don't,
I mean they'll they'll again, there'll be some volatility, they'll
move up and down, but I don't think they're going

(30:43):
to move dramatically this year. Insurance we talked a little bit,
you know about the cost of insurance and it's the
season of everybody getting their tax assessment and.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
How can we get this to go down? The good
luck on that?

Speaker 1 (30:58):
So I mean it is is that something that you're
having a conversation with with any of your clients, or
do clients even know to ask about that when they're
looking at a home.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
I think that the sense of accomplishment is number one,
providing a value for themselves or their family, or a
want move. I do a lot, you know, I live
in Nova a lot of want moves. Hey I want
to I want this school system, or I want this lifestyle,
or I want to be in this specific neighborhood. That's
really first. Then it's like, oh my gosh, you know

(31:26):
now that I can afford this, how can I continue
to afford it? Because I know I'm going to get
reassessed on taxes and I've had a few phone calls. Yeah,
this last few weeks, Hey, my taxes went up. And
the thing is when you buy a house, the house
gets reassessed, and taxes have gone over the last few years.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
It just has.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Right, they assessed in twenty nine and ten. You have
if you bought a house ten years ago and your
taxes are up a third, Well, that's because they were
reassessed from their cap The housers are capped at five
percent year. Right, you can't go higher than that for
an assessment. They usually don't even go that high, but
when they're bought, say by a You've house sold at
five hundred thousand a few years ago, now it's eight

(32:04):
hundred thousands. Right, we have a thirty percent increase there already,
and then the tax were assessed it, So you're going
to have that reassessed. It's going to hit. It definitely
hurts something to be aware of.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
I mean, and it is interesting because I moved last year,
we bought last year, and I got our tax assessment.
I mean, the interesting thing was is I mean, I
knew it was coming. I kind of know the industry obviously,
but I was laughing on the way to the house,
so I didn't cry. And when I walked it, when
I walked to my husband's like, why are you laughing,
I go, oh, I'm going to be scheduling a meeting
because our house had just sold the year prior, so

(32:35):
there wasn't this big There was not this big gap.
I mean, like a lot of people get caught. Somebody's
lived in the house ten years, fifteen years, and now
there is this kind of you know, readjustment, you know
period like oh, nay, nay, this house sold in twenty two.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
I have no problem. You know, we do this all
the time. We send comparables, right, and to our point earlier,
there are fewer comparables to send because there's fewer houses
there are being right right. The whole idea of houses
increasing in value so much is because there's a lack
of there's many, there's many buyers for a lack of inventory.
Prices back up even though rates have increased. But these
tax assessments won't go down anytime soon. Oh no, there's

(33:08):
I think there was seven I heard a few days
ago there's seven million. This is not I think this
is there are seven million people who want to buy
a house that there isn't a house for, meaning are
are we're short seven million houses. Even though we've had
all the flux of people coming into the country, out
of the country, all that, all that drama, we're still

(33:28):
seven million houses short. So we're people they're crammed in
apartment complexes. There's there's no vacant houses there.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Well, you're not walking past the house where you know,
like you know, I used to I used to nickname
them the boo radley houses, like from Tagila, mocking where
there's there's no house there. You know that nobody's now
that nobody's not taking care of her living in or
anything like that nowadays. Interestingly enough, I mean when I
look at national stats from housing market perspective, I'm starting
to hear in some markets, you know, houses are sitting

(33:56):
eighty or ninety days, you know, and things of that. Now,
this isn't an arnaka the Florida Yeah, yeah, Florida taxes,
you know, places like that. And I'm like, boy, you know,
and I every month over month over month when I'm
pulling the housing report data, I'm like, that is not
what Metro Detroy is saying.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
And it's a it's a skew It's a skewed result
because if you look at Florida, for example, they have
many people owning many houses there. I may live in
Michigan if I have two houses, I don't, but I
may have houses in Florida even I'll live in Michigan
and I rent them out. Well, when Disney goes woke, right,
when you have huge taxes on you, like insurance taxes,

(34:31):
like all the costs have gone up to have a
house there is it expensive? It could be one thousand
a month for your hurricane insurance or property insurance, then
you get the property taxes. We were looking because everyone
looks at everyone looks at houses. Right, cool, Look at
this house in Florida. By the time I got to
the house payment, it was three thousand dollars. Wow, of

(34:54):
just stuff we didn't hurricane insurance taxes. You know, I
like to play golf a little bit. You have, but
it just it becomes unaffordable. And if the rental market
isn't quite there anymore, meaning there's few people, they're.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
The demand for it, like there was, Yeah, coming out
of COVID when everybody was looking enough, I'm gonna have
to live outside.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Let's go to a warm climate.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
You know.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
This whole this whole work from home thing also doesn't
help that either, right, if you're I mean look at
look at Washington, I mean Washington, DC area. They have
one of the highest markets right now for houses. To
your point about having house in the market for sixty
ninety days, there's two there's that. Obviously in California, there's
a lack of housing. Eight burned down a couple hundred thouars,
like fifty thousand houses burned down, So you have a

(35:37):
lack of housing still, and these issues don't help. So
what ultimately happened is the market will correct. In Florida,
we have a three or five percent appreciation.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
For a year.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
You know, Florida had ten to twenty percent, dropping five percent.
That volatility like the stock market right now. I don't
like that volatility. It makes me have heart failure. I
just don't like to see, Oh, my house worth a
million dollars, Well, now it's worth eight What the hell happened? Yeah,
all of a sudden, that would that And that's also
real money.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Me.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
When you pay a payment and you pay off your hose,
and you paid a million dollars and now it's worth
eight hundred thousand, you get mad at yourself. I made
a huge error here. I could have put it in
a money market. I could have put it in the CD,
I could have put it in the SMP. I could
have made eight four eight ten percent year over year.
Now I've lost two hundred grand I lost twenty percent
of my value.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
I didn't even do it anything.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, So people are becoming as we get as our
nation ages, right, baboom, we're aging. We're much more aware
of that. You know, sixties a new forty I would
assume right, right, you have any knowledge of that, But
thirty is a new twenty, right, and forty is a
new Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
We keep we keep moving. I'm moving the goalpost on
there a little bit.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
A lot of us are healthier, by the way, too,
those of us who go to the gym and work out.
You know, we could see that.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
And I think in that's in part why I mean,
in addition to the low interest rates that are hard
to walk from, I think that you also have, like
you said, we have a lot more people aging in
place because you know, ages but a number, But we
have healthier people at ages sixty seventy eighty than historically
we have seen. They can still walk up and down
the stairs. They still want to own their own home.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Even though much of our country is unhealthy from eating
horrible food, right, the people who are healthy. As you
get older, you become more aware. Hey listen, maybe a
salad instead of it's a better choice.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, So as we get as we're aging. So looking
at the villages in Florida, for example, there's the whole
five square miles of party lifestyle there. And I think
people ultimately that's the that's the value. That is the
thing I think people want to stay alive for that,
and that is something that I know we're just talking
about a few minutes ago, very important to us anyway
to have that. Yeah, it is amanable.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
And I take a look at both my mother and
my mother in law now widows, you know, both of them,
and you know, my mom lives in her own home
and my mother in law is in her own condo,
and that whole you know, I want to stay you know, independent.
I want to be on my own, you know, I
know that drives you know, a lot of the thinking.
I think at that age, if they're able to one
other headline, this is going to be a little bit

(37:59):
of a of a pivot away from kind of the
typical real estate headlines that we talk about. It was
more of a it was a national, but I think
it has a little bit of a spin on a
local headline. With what Rocket had announced this week with
buying redfin, I mean, I'm just going to throw it
out there because it is. It is some interesting news,
and it may not have gotten on everybody's radar, but
I think to me it's the signal of some choices

(38:22):
that consumers are going to be making down the road.
Just curious if you had any thoughts about that A lot.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Actually, it's it's a harbinger of what's to come. I
think consolidation. You have all these companies out there hiring
and having thousands of realtors. I think there was nine
thousand realtors in our sphere a few years ago. Now
it's seven thousand realtors. So you're seeing real estate people
leave the market. They can't make a living. There's right
houses to sell. And you have Zillow, you have Redfin,

(38:48):
you have Realtor dot Com, you have all these tech
these and then you have Rocket Mortgage. Who gets involved
in that? How can I make it a one stop shop?
And all I'm doing is trading my stock one point
seven billion of stock. I'm trading that for it to
absorb a company where I can have people contact me
for everything. I have my own title company, I have
my own mortgage company. I have my own real estate company.
I think you're going to see this as a wave

(39:10):
of things to come, because being independent. You know, a
couple of years ago, I sold one hundred and forty
four houses. The average agent will sell what seven? Yeah, yeah,
And give you some perspective. And now I'm selling fifty
or sixty houses. Not crying broke here, but just giving
you an example of the market shift that's happened, which.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Is why I like to your point, people had gotten
out because there's huwer houses to sell. The professionals like
yourself are going to capture more business when that happens.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah, and I think that's going to happen with this.
I think this is a Harvard. I think another company
could do this too. They Zillo is not exactly the
best company in the world either. There I would not
be surprised if a major bank bought them, you know chases.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Oh, I don't disagree. And I think you said, like
this is a Harbord, Jeremy. We've got this chess board,
you know of people looking for these moves and whether
they're getting it for the tech anology that some of
these platforms offer, the stickiness that they have with consumers
to come to their site and try to sell them,
Like you said, one stop other you know, other experience.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
And those things black black Rock has done. Black Rock
is a major holder of the S and P five hundred.
They're buying the Panama Canal, I mean literally, and what
they do a couple of years ago they bought houses
and they were buying I think it was a third
of houses bought in specific location to the south especially
or bought by these companies because they want to hold them.

(40:32):
They want they know the rental market and so at
some point, who knows. I think black Rocks a pretty
sharp company. They're going to want to hold that forever
and have that income sending with these banks, these big banks.
I mean, I say chases, it's one I go to
and it's a huge company. But why wouldn't they want
to do it? I know in fact they've got they
kind of gotten out of mortgages a little bit, haven't

(40:53):
they now that I think about it, Yeah, this is
why I don't do a lot of prep work.

Speaker 1 (40:57):
This is the result not but no, But I think
it is interesting and I think to your point is
this could be the first of other other ventures that
we see coming more of a.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Real estate situation, right and real estate companies. How many
real estate companies are out there right now that are
that are thriving. You have companies that have gone away
from brick and mortar to in the XP right example,
I have gone to a home based thing. There's no
exo based, no support. Yeah, and you have a remax
with I'm a huge fan of They have buildings, they
have support, they have real people. Yeah, well they have

(41:27):
people working there. I think that is going to that's
going to be hard to get rid of, because ultimately,
you want to shake someone's hand virtually. It's hard to
do a virtual job at this because there's an emotional thing.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
And that's exactly where I was going to go with
this because as I've tried to digest this a little bit,
you know, and I think it is kind of the
you always say call center slash big box. I mean
you could look at it one or the other way.
I mean, you know versus the independent shop on main Street.
You know, when when it comes to your real estate
needs and it's like you know, call centers tend to
have quotas, they tend to have high turnover. Is this

(42:00):
is the type of person you want to put the
most important investment that you're going to make as a
consumer in those types of hands? Or do you want
somebody like Paul Rock that's sitting here that closes, you know,
fifty to sixty to one hundred homes a year, knows
the local market like the back of his hand, and
like you said, I can sit down, I can talk
to you face to face. I think consumers are going
to have a choice.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, I think. You know, thirty four years of doing
this is one thing as well. You have a lot
of people who are new at this. And listen the
way things are going now. It's the call centers. It's
the young kids getting involved with the call centers and
just calling people all day long. And hey, listen, I
went out and knocked on doors for the first year
of my life. Winter Spring didn't care. My jaws were
frozen talking to people. But that's how I started.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
That's how you built your business in You start.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
By connecting and it just depends. So if you have
rental property as well, people get call those people all
the time because at some point the rental property market,
well it's a headache. Things go wrong with your house,
you fix them right. Well, have three or four houses
and something's always going wrong. You hire people, go out.
People will who are not built that way to be
a landlord will begin to move those and this is

(43:05):
where the market will fill out. Right, You'll end up
having some sales with a large corporation. You have some
sales with people who are owning rental properties. Not quite
like Florida that happened all at the same time because
of those issued talked about. But I do think that
here locally, you're going to see some people say, Okay,
I've tapped out. I'm now sixty or seventy years old,

(43:25):
I'm tired of managing. I'm ready to liquidate or consolidate
my portfolio. Yeah, and pack it up. That's who I mean.
Who's working with people now. It's hard to go from
a one hundred thousand dollars house to a five hundred
thousand dollar house. It's almost impossible to do that because
of the high interest rates and they had and the
cost of housing today. So you're seeing things done, smaller increments,

(43:46):
fewer people doing things. But when and a lot of
people are moving now who are retiring, They're going from
their for bedroom colonial to a single family ranch. And
that's what we're seeing coming up to your earlier point.
Where's the market coming from. That'll be the market that
over the next So if you have a single family
ranch home.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Oh, you're sitting pretty yeah, how you are sitting?

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Your house is Almost every house is in demand, but
that style in particular is extremely, extremely sought.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
After, a kind of minding. She's in Comrace Township and
she's going to sell her ranch house and I'm like, ooh,
you know, she bought it for four it'll go for
five easily, if not five point fifty. Yeah, because there's
just fewer of those those available. Yeah, beautiful house too,
and so anyway, that'll be what happens.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
So kind of bringing this all home, you know, so
to speak, and pun intended, I guess bringing it home.
We as we're entering kind of the spring market, typically
the time of the year where business ramps up a
little bit, things of that nature. What general advice do
you have for either people actively in the market buying
or thinking about getting in the market buying. What would
be your advice to that pool?

Speaker 2 (44:47):
Don't be patient? You can't afford it. You know, if
you don't buy now and you want to buy in
three months from now, you're going to pay possibly three
four percent more now, oh three or four percent? Is
that a big deal on a four hundred thousand dollars house.
It's twelve brand, it's real money. Yeah. So if you
the longer you wait, the worse it gets and you know,

(45:09):
we had people I talked to three or four years ago.
I'm waiting for the rates come back down again.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
How's that working for you?

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah, now you're up twenty percent in the market. Your
the houses are up twenty percent, and you're still waiting
for something that was never going to happen. It's not
going to happen you. I would rather you buy something
for four and when the rates go down in a
year or two or five, whenever they go down again,
that house is worth five. I'd rather you had that
one hundred thousand dollars of equity built into your investment now,
then wait out something that.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
May never It may never happen. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
Variable, and as you get older, the risk management becomes
more difficult. So you're paying rent as opposed to paying
a house payment where you have appreciation, reduction of value,
reduction of mortgage right and tax right off right ends
up being like seven eight percent a year over a
year if you look at it that way.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
If you look at it that way, so okay. So
to buyers, don't be patient, don't think you can time
the market. That's another way people looking at it. I mean,
it's it's really hard to do because you realize something
has happened once it's in the rear view mirror. For
the most part, let's go to the other side of
the equations sellers. If you've got somebody out there thinking
of selling their house this year, what advice do you
have to them?

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Whenever you're ready. I'm timing the market again. It's challenging. Oh,
if I wait six months, I'll get more money. You may,
you probably will, But do you really want to make
a payment for six months without whenever you're really ready
to sell. February is an amazing month to sell houses
in because nothing else is for sALS buyers out there.

(46:37):
March is an amazing month to sell houses in because
there's not enough inventory, tons of buyers. As you get
to May, June, July, get more little more inventory out.
It's also easier to pull up a moving truck to
your house and than it.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Is somebody who moved February fourth last year. I can
attest to that.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
It's cold moving. And you know, obviously, if you have
the money to afford a mover, it's still is a
it's it's it's tough to move. It's a lot of
work involved and I doing sing it every day. It's
coordinating movers, it's unpacking packing. It's a lot, but it's
worth it in the end when you are moving from
a rental to a house, or from a house you

(47:13):
love to the next step where you have to be
like people who move in now really kind of have
to move. Yeah it's time the stairs are hair on
my knees, or I'm moving my job changed, or I'm
moving out of the state. Those are people who are
looking to do something now.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
Well, I mean, and I think it is something that
I heard at at a convention. I was just at
the Remix convention earlier. The way it was good, it
was we had a lot of really interesting yeah every year,
and it was really interesting because they had a variety
of speakers. We had one of the co founders of
open Ai, co founder of Netflix. I mean, so there
was some interesting speakers with you know, coming from different

(47:48):
industries with very different perspectives on things. But one of
the underlying themes was it's still humans, it's still houses,
you know, I mean, And that's what it came back
to me. We can talk tariffs, we can talk stock volatility,
you can talk all I mean, and obviously those are
components that impact consumer confidence and thinking and everything else.
But at the end of the day, and that's kind

(48:08):
of where you were just at. At the end of
the day, it's what happens in your life. Am I
getting married? Is my family growing? Is there a job change?
You know? You know, unfortunately there are deaths that occur,
and now you know, now you've got a spouse you know,
potentially left or you know, or a family to sell
a house in a state. I mean, you've got life
continues to happen behind the headlines.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
When the rates start going up. I never really kind
of panicked in this and doing this. I've seen everything.
I've seen two thousand and nine where you know, houses
were down fifty percent, but when the rates went up,
it made me sad. Actually, I'm like, wow, my business
is really going to change. And I hear people say
my business is changing, you know what, Get on board.

(48:50):
Life changes. Things happen you don't plan on happening, but
they just do. Your company moved, your company has grown,
your your family has has grown. Now your family's gone.
I'm experiencing firsthand this year. My daughter's gonna go to
Grand Valley and my son will be at Michigan State
and we'll be called dsters.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
And I don't want to get emotional here because I
don't embarrass myself on this, but you know I've had
tears over this. You know my wife. I feel bad
for my wife. She's stuck with me at home all
the time now with nobody to buffer.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
She's got no distraction.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Good lord, I mean, but this is what happens. So
people don't need a four bedroom colonial three thousands whatever
that right, They just don't need it anymore because your
your children grow, as our union has, as country ages.
This is common and so this is why the ranch
is important. This is why I have a job, because
things change and it's it's tough on me. I'm not

(49:49):
going to lie to you specifically, but I think I
look at that and I look at if this older
lady is selling her house. I look at that older
lady is how what would what would their son and
daughter want for their mom? What I want from my mom? Right,
So I want to make sure that I look at
that person as a human being who has a family,

(50:10):
They have people who love them. How do we help
them get from A to B? And sometimes I tell
people it's not the right time for you to move.
You don't need to do this yet. You need to
just wait it out a little bit longer. But ultimately
it comes back to if they really do want to
move or they have to move, that's when they're ready
to move. So long, isn't it long answer to your question?

(50:30):
But when you're ready to move?

Speaker 1 (50:32):
But when you're ready I mean, because I mean because people.
I mean, in a lot of times, these aren't decisions
that are made quickly, you know, unless there's like an
outside force forcing like job you know, job change, Yeah,
that would be one. But for many people is they
start thinking about it, we kind of start looking, you know,
dipping our toe, you know, toe in there.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
So clients for a year or two, I was just
just a conversation here, conversation there, and patience, you know,
I'm sure relatives here this show you have to be
patient because it's not about what your needs are. It's
about what your client needs are, and you've got to
that's that's the base. You revolve around that, and you
evolve around that, and then when when they're ready, that's

(51:11):
when the beautiful things happened. I was talking to a
Clientma yesterday and she she's so ready to move right
and she can't find her house. And I said to her,
and this is a hard thing to hear. You have
to be a buyer and right now you're just looking.
You're not a buyer yet because you haven't sold your house.
So this is months ago. So she foind talked to
her yesterday. That was so yes, I go, hey, Paul,

(51:34):
I get it. You know the March market's coming this,
you know this here April May June. You have to
have faith that you're when your house sells, you build
some time in to add as a buffer to get
you to the next house, because she can't afford both
at this time. So she's ready. And to that point,
if you're a buyer who doesn't have anything to sell
and you can buy right now, that's who you're competing with.

(51:57):
So it is a faith thing. You have to put
it out there, put.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
It out there and just trust the trust the process.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Sometimes as a poker table, at some point your chips
have got to go and you can't just sit there
and get out. You have to go for it.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, you have to. Yeah, you have to be And
like you said, it is interesting how you said it.
You're not a buyer, you're a looker. You're enjoying the process.
You're enjoying looking at all these homes, but you're not
committed at this.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
At some point you're going to see something, Wow, this
is really beautiful.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Great, you can't take action, Yeah, because you didn't take
the steps now. Yeah, you fell in love with something
you can't have now because you're not ready.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Think about it. And in life that's the same way.
I mean, you meet a person, or you meet something,
or you have something you want, but you're not ready
to do something yet. Life is about timing. Life is
about preparation, being ready for the opportunity, opportunity, and taking
advantage of when the opportunity comes. It is if you
think about it in that way, so real quick, this
is I think this is interesting. You go to bed

(52:49):
at night and you write down all the things you
want to accomplish the next day, and you're ready to
handle whatever you think it's going to happen the next day. Well,
things are going to come out of left field, right field.
You gotta be ready for it. That's what opportunity is.
It's things you didn't prepare for that land in your lap.
So a house, if you're prepared for it and you
have the ability to do it, then you're gonna take act.

(53:10):
And then it's fun that moment that leading up to it.
You know, in poker, it's hours of waiting for seconds
of terror, right right in this real estate it's days, months,
years of waiting, and when that thing happens, the right
situation pops up, like dating, right anything, getting the first car,

(53:35):
When that house happens, that's fun and you and you
know it.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
And I think it's kind of interesting you're saying you'll
kind of get ready to be prepared so that when
your opportunity presents itself, you're ready to take action. And
I would say, you know, for those listening to talk
to a real estate agent, talk to a real estate
professional professional, somebody that knows the local market that you're
looking to buy in, somebody like Paul Mark that we're
talking with today. Speak to a lender, you know, talk

(54:00):
to a local lender, share your information, let them talk
about the programs that they have available for you, which
may be some first time buyer things, you know, maybe
it's not, but just talk about what your options are
so that you're as prepared as possible. You know what
you can afford, you're you're able to pull the trigger
when you see it. You've got an agent working with
you for you, you know, right up alongside. You get

(54:22):
that team, you know, ready to go so that you
can take advantage.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
And the market is coming to us in every way.
I am incredibly positive about what's going to happen is
next four to six months. The economy, jobs, all this
tear of stuff, interest rates, they're all gonna they're all
all these dominoes are going to fall into our favor
and look out. I really do think it's going to

(54:47):
be so good. It's going to be great, and that's
where our economy is going to be going to now.
The uncertainty right now is that they'll terror call me
for the storm is happening now right and afterwards, the
chance to live out what you really are, what your
dreams are, is really upon us. I really do think
jobs are coming back here exponentially.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Well, and it'll be interesting, and we'll have you back.
You're a frequent guest, so we'll have to see how
this spring and summer market goes and bring you in
and then we'll see if you're crystal balling of all
of this sort.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
I'll see you guys next year. No, honestly, I believe it.
I believe this is going to happen, and I think
it will again. The real estate market will be very
challenging to get into because the prices are going to
be high, but they're going to be higher if you
don't do it now.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
Absolutely so for those that are listening that may say, hey,
I think I need to talk to Paul. I've got
some you know, I've got some thoughts about buying, our
thoughts about selling, or you know, stuff like that. Where's
a good place people can reach you?

Speaker 2 (55:41):
My phone, it's going off right now. Two four eight
seven six zero five zero zero eight. Paul mr uk
at gmail is my email address, and you know, just
to have a conversation. HANM thinking about doing this? What
do you think we should do? Or hey, my house
is almost ready, I don't want to I don't know
if I should put money into it now or that.

(56:03):
I'm telling you those are huge things. An agent can
save you or cost you tens of thousands of dollars.
You know, new carpet, new paint is really simple to do.
It's not hard, right, it changes the value anyway. Nope,
I'm with you, with you to know nothing. I bought
a bunch of houses, right I bought a house last year.
I completely renovated. I have people that can do anything,

(56:25):
and nothing scares me anymore. To this point, nothing could,
nothing should scare you. As a buyer or seller. All
you have to do is call it an agent you
know or trust, or call me. I'm happy to help
out with this, but there is nothing we can't handle
to get you top dollar as long as you have
a little bit of resources available to do that. We
have all the people painters. One thing we didn't touch on.

(56:48):
People who do trades. Electricians and some plumbers and painters.
They're dying for work right now. They the electricians are
really busy, but the painters, they're just sitting around. I'm
going I have no business right now. Everyone's kind of afraid.
They are waiting to work.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
And I'll tell you what, jump on that. If you've
got some home projects that you want to do, because
that's not always the case for quite a while, you
couldn't hardly get them out to your house, you know. Yeah,
So I mean, realistically, if you've got a couple things
to knock off your list strike while the iron's hot
on that. Yep. Well, Paul, thank you so much for
being in here today listen. Wonderful to have you, and
to our listeners, thank you for joining us. It's always

(57:24):
great to have you along, whether you're a loyal listener
or maybe a little bit new to checking on our podcast.
We're glad that you joined us. We will be back
with another episode and look forward to chatting with you soon.
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