Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time time, time, luck and load.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
So Michael Verie Show is on the air. Angelo writes.
The USA Women's Flag football team won their first game
yesterday by beating Canada in Changdu, China. One of the
(00:31):
star players is Ashley Clam k l A M. She's
also been instrumental in getting this new sport publicized and
is originally from Orangefield Slash. Beaumont thought you might be
interested in checking this out. Had any corn dogs lately?
Was that over the corn dogs? Or? Go check her out?
Oh she's cute, She's real, real cute. She's Sophie Cunningham cute.
(00:54):
Now can she sing? USA Women's Flag Football team? How
does that work? Look? Sorry, I missed your flag. I'm
down already, dude, stop tackling me. Oh no, sweetie, you're
(01:16):
not down. I think I missed your flag. Let me
let me make sure I get your flag so you
don't score a touch down. We wouldn't want that, your
cute little self. Howard Frampton, Peter's brother, writes, Lena had
allgo is a wanna be mister Smith. He's got a
pretty good point here. I think in her own mind,
(01:38):
Lena had algo thinks she's just like mister Smith. Remember
the movie Mister Smith goes to Washington and special kind
of person gets elected, in this case, an uncorrupted person.
He's a little nervous like her. He gives a movie speech,
and she doesn't give a movie speech, but in her mind.
He invites children into the chamber to persuade representatives to
(01:59):
do the right thing. Okay, there's something to be said
for that. There's something to be said for that. We're
gonna do probably ten bonus episodes for this weekend, and
I'm not even kidding you because I have so much
content here. Next up is from Hook, the radio name
(02:19):
for those of you who remember the Stevens in Pruitt show.
Oh girlos here too, everybody's here. Our payroll is gonna
be high this month. What's Obert on Stevens and Prewitt?
So yeah, so if you remember, there's something going wrong
in there. Our chief engineer is in Ruins studio. This
(02:40):
is not a good sign, and his hands are on
his hip. Oh okay, is this a live radio issue? Okay,
don't bother me too many? Is that true? Oh okay,
you're confusing me. So our chief engineer brought to my attention.
(03:01):
I don't know if y'all followed this Canadian wildfire issue. Well,
the wildfires in Canada are belching so much smoke, so dangerous.
I don't know if they have it under control yet.
Because this was from a couple of days ago. Nova
Scotia has implemented restrictions on travel and activities in wooded areas.
(03:25):
These restrictions, effective August fifth, prohibit activities like hiking, camping, fishing,
and the use of vehicles in the woods. And they
also restrict access to trails. They said, you cannot go
out and hike, you cannot walk on the trails. Wait
(03:46):
what yeah, can't walk on the trails. You you'll burn
the whole country down. No, this is like locking everything
up at CBS because a handful of pepeople are are thieves. Thieves. No,
we're not pretty. And then when they were challenged on
it and became the laughing stock of the world, they
(04:08):
decided it was to keep the people safe. So first
it was y'all going to burn the forest down. Then
it was no, no, no, it's for your own safety.
You might hurt your ankle. Liberals love lockdowns. Never forget
that they love them because remember, it's always been about control.
COVID wasn't about a virus. It's about control. You know,
(04:30):
there's a mosquito born virus in China right now, and
it's not passed the way say coronavirus was by coughing
on someone or sticking your tongue down their throat or
you know, some other orifice, and it's not any it's
(04:51):
a mosquito. Mosquito bites me, mosquito bites you. You got it.
And so in China, if you go to the hospital
with this condition, they lock you in. Well, the only
reason to go to the hospital is to tell them
you're ready to go home, like the minute you end
up in the hospital, like, you know what, this was
a dumb idea, how soon can I go home? Dot? Oh? Well,
(05:14):
in the USA today, the good thing is they're like,
you've already been here for five minutes, what are you doing,
You've overstayed. You're welcome. They want you out of there.
But in China, once they get you in there, they
lock the door, not even joking people being locked into
their room in China, which of course means that people
don't go for treatment because you don't want to get
locked in. The restrictions apply to both provincial crown land
(05:39):
and private land. The original stated goal was to prevent
wildfires and protect communities. The restrictions will remain in effact
until the end of the wildlife season or until conditions improve.
Canada is so out of control. Canada is not a
free nation any long. It's really sad, it's really tragic.
(06:00):
But our very own David Obert had this to contribute. Yes, right, Hi,
this is Smoky, the Canadian Bear. I'm here to remind
you it only takes a careless moment with a match
or a cigarette, an unattended fire, campfires, charcoal, grill waste,
(06:20):
and fireworks. You see.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I just don't start forest fires, people do. Canada has
over ten million square kilometers of wilderness and over forty
one million people. Right now, four one hundred and seventy
out of control fires burn across Canada. So now only
(06:45):
you can prevent forest fires by not going in the
woods at all. And as a matter of fact, you
could save yourself over twenty five thousand dollars if you
just don't step one single foot in the wood. I'm
not really.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Asking please prevent forest fires. Stay out of the woods.
Global warming is the issue. Carbon is the issue. You
were the carbon. Get euthanized, Save the planets, go carbon neutral, euthanize,
(07:22):
Save Canadian wilkerness, Oh Canada.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
The whole Smokey the Bear, that was a good ad campaign.
Remember John Candy and National Lampoon. The Bark's globed. That's
a great scene. Smoky the Bear was good. Yogi Bear
and Boobo hey boo boo. That was a good quality
right there. You think about it. One day there was
no Yoga Bear, and the next day there was think
(07:53):
about that from mine, you know. I read an article
on Yoga Bear and yes he was named for Yogi Bearra.
That was yes, it was as it was. That's truth.
They were Yogi Barra fans when he was a Yank,
when he was a Yankees catcher. Yogi Barra is a
life well lived, that guy right there. That I remember.
One day I'm in an Astros game. It's like, oh,
I kind of just like Yogi Barra. Oh it says
(08:15):
Bara on the Yogi Barra is still a lot. He
coaches for the Astros. This is crazy.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Anything else, no, okay, Michael Berry, thank you guys.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I hope everyone has a really awesome rest today, different
girl living night at the whole of the financial newsletters I.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Read in the Sunshine.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Has been talking of late about something I have observed anecdotally,
and that is that homes are languishing on the market.
This is a buyer's market. They're right. The difference between
the number of US home sellers and buyers has rarely
(08:57):
been larger. The number of home sellers rose to one
point nine to four million in April, the most since
March of twenty twenty. So we've got a lot of
homes on the market at one time, the most in
(09:18):
five years. Now. Summertime is the busiest time to buy
and sell homes because homes. One of the prime drivers
is kids being out of school so mom can get
them moved and settled in for the new school year
and then they don't have to change schools in the
middle of the year. That's important. So summer is always,
(09:39):
if you look at a chart, going to be a
higher number of homes on the market than say February
or October. That's to be expected. However, this many more sellers,
one point ninety four million homes on the marketnumber of
(10:00):
home buyers declined to one point four five, the lowest
since April of twenty twenty two. Factors at play that
speak very poorly of your options. If you're a seller, YEA.
Generally speaking, your home may be gray. You might price
it right, you might price it low, you might be
in a hot neighborhood, good school district, whatever else. But
(10:22):
all things being equal, celeris parabus. As the economists would say,
we got more homes on the market than we have
in five years, and fewer home buyers than we have
in five years. Well, those two are not necessarily unrelated.
If you don't have home buyers, you got sellers who
don't have a transaction of closing waiting. As a result,
the difference between US home sellers and buyers hit four
(10:45):
hundred and ninety thousand dollars, the most since twenty thirteen.
That data, if memory serves, is compiled by redfins, the
largest number of the largest disparity between houses for sale
and home buyers since twenty thirteen. But here's what this
(11:06):
newsletter doesn't note. Maybe they don't know it. I'm obsessed
with real estate. You know why it goes back to
twenty thirteen, because that's when Red Finn started studying it.
This might go back fifty years, that's just when it started.
It's like when you see that somebody has X number
of three pointers and he's a great three point shooter. Yeah,
(11:27):
but but Hablichek didn't get that option. Marivich didn't get
that option. Marrivich average four point sorry, forty four point
I remember forty four point two points per game in
college with no three point line. Yeah, and he was white, yes, yeah,
they you know, he was on JV's dad was a coach,
(11:47):
and when he was on JV, they would go, I
don't know, JV. What do they call it? Freshman team?
Because the freshman couldn't play on varsity. People would go
to watch him play the freshman game. The gym would
fill up, and when the game was over that the
actual college team was coming in the seniors and everybody
leave because they were there to see pee. All right,
So we've got more homes on the market than we've
(12:09):
ever seen and fewer buyers. We got a big problem.
Thirty three point seven percent more sellers than buyers in
the US. Thirty three point seven Hold that number in
your head. Okay, well, you need you need a yardstick.
You need some scale perspective. How high is thirty three
point seven percent? A year ago it was six point
(12:33):
five percent? Yeah, so do you know what this means? Right,
you're smart. We talk about this whole time Economics one
oh one. What happens again when supply increases but demand
remains the same. A deg sorry increase in supply, a
(12:57):
glut in the market, and demand remains the same. Well,
if there are more places I can buy this product,
there's not a monopoly of sellers or a seller, and
everybody has it, the price goes down, So you start
seeing the price go down. That would presume, or that
(13:19):
would be the case if inventory went up, supply went
up but demand remained static. However, demand has decreased. Uh oh,
now we're going to start seeing some real price cuts.
You know where I'm seeing it? In Galveston. I monitor
the Bay properties and in town. There's a lot of
(13:40):
markets I look at, but Galveston is one of my
look at it often. And you're seeing homes that are
dropping their home value five or ten percent in one
fell swoop. You see a lot of homes that are
sitting on the market for a year or more. In fact,
I'm watching properties that they're taking off the market two
(14:02):
weeks and putting it back because they don't want you
to see the dom days on market as you know,
being four hundred and seventy eight, because then people start thinking,
maybe it's haunted, maybe nobody wants it, maybe it's a
great deal. The best deals I've ever gotten on real estate.
Never buy a house to day it gets listed. That's
(14:24):
an impulse purchase. That person has overvalued their home, and
that is the day they are the most confident in
its value. You let that thing language for a year
and a half and people start going, you know, maybe
my home's not so great, Your home is fine, Your
price is too high. Price moves homes period. End of story.
(14:44):
Price drives everything, Price drives everything. People don't understand that
price drives everything. Price is not scientific. Price is not
divined using a measuring device that the Germans make or
precision instrumentation. A property is worth what a willing and
(15:05):
able buyer will pay you for it. Most people never
learned that lesson in life. That house over that's overpriced.
What does it mean it's overpriced that you can't afford it? Okay, well,
it's overpriced for you. Oh, they won't eight hundred thousand
dollars for it. That house overpriced. It went under contract
(15:27):
this morning. That's too much. The buyer gets to decide
what he's willing to pay. It's overpriced relative to what.
What you mean to say is, it's overpriced relative to
what you'll pay. People go into a restaurant. A restaurant
too high, they're overpriced. What is the objective price for
a stake in that restaurant? But what source do you
(15:51):
use for what that price should be? You know, I'll
go with bonanza eight dollars day. Okay, well you eate
eight dollars stay And that guy might say that steak
is underpriced. No, it's good price. Well, what you mean
to say is, as a sole actor in the market,
that price is more than I would spend. That's fine,
(16:11):
you're not the entirety of the marketplace. But the price
is not established by your opinion. The price is established
by one willing buyer who is able to close and
does if that and they were just established by always
amazed at science and scientists experiments, things they can do
(16:37):
in a lab. Now, I don't know if you saw
this story. Ramon uh. In Louisiana, scientists have attempted to
cross crab and cheetah. From what I gather, it went
sideways fast. That's a good one. Let me do that
one again. I'm just amazed by science and technology and
(17:01):
innovation and you know the things they can do in
a lab. Now it's incredible. You know, Verger Mendel kind
of stuff, you know, And now with AI they're saying
it's I don't know if you saw this story. In Louisiana,
scientists have attempted to cross crab and cheetah. From what
I gather, it went sideways fast. And how did that
(17:27):
one again? That was that's good? I got better the
second time. I mean even I was waiting for the payoff.
Anise Porker has sold her soul to Rodney Ellis. Wait
till you read what she has done. Okay, So we
got prices coming down, and there is certainly, you know,
the thing that is hovering over all of this. If
(17:47):
you some people panic that you don't have to panic.
Interest rates are going to drop. Interest rates are going
to drop. And JP Morgan Chase is predicting four interest
rate drops. And Jamie Diamond, he's one of the guys
that makes the call and tells them to drop it,
whether they admit it or not. So now I don't
(18:08):
know if he's trying to price in going along on.
I don't know what. You got to realize that anything
related to these dark folks Blackstone, JP, Morgan, Chase, the
CIA that whatever they tell you, your natural reaction is
what they wanted you to have. So you can't trust
(18:31):
your gut because nothing they do is straightforward. Whatever information
they release is to get you to react to that
the way you would naturally do because you don't realize
what they're up to, and then based on your reaction,
they've already bet that that's what's going to happen and
there is something in it for them. So you have
(18:53):
to play the long game and be contrarian and say, now,
why are they predicting this? What are they doing? Well,
it could be as simple as they're trying to generate
some economic activity because their loan what they can't they
don't have any loans, and they need to lend money.
(19:14):
That's what that's the business they're in, that's how they
make money. And they recognize that we're getting toward the
end of the summer, and you've got to gin up
some activity because if you drop the interest rates in October,
you don't get an immediate bump. People can't buy in October.
They can't buy that fast. Now they will, they will,
(19:35):
they will close for the end of the year. Because
if you like Stay of Texas, you want your homeowners exemption,
you've got to be in the home on January first,
so you'll see you'll see action heat up in October
and endto November thirty day clothes, let's say, you'll see
folks starting to get real, real busy. I use a
(19:59):
woman Na Dana Pendleton Duncan at Alamo Title and I
get my my you know, she'll give me updates on
what she's seeing and she's a pretty volume player in
the business. She's the best I've dealt with. I've dealt
with title agents for since nineteen ninety five, so last
(20:23):
thirty years, and she's the best I've ever seen. They're oh,
they're all cute. Her being cute has nothing if you
want to get the deal to Yes, she's cute, but
they're all cute. That's the reason they're title agent girls.
And she's been a title agent girl for a long time,
not asians agent agent, But what I want is somebody
(20:44):
that comes to me, brings the documents, make sure everything
is done, gets my deal funded on time, and can
give me inside market information. And her husband, Clint, is
a big time developer, so you know, you get to
see I can see the commercial and residential side from
a lot of what he's doing, what his buddies are doing.
I got distracted, so let me tell you what's going
on locally. Houston Association of Realtors HAR does a monthly
(21:09):
housing update. Here is their headline for this month. Houston
home prices ease in July as supply hits record high. Well,
HAR wants to encourage the churn. It's what they do.
Realtors want prices to go up because then sellers will
(21:29):
capture the equity they have in their home prices go down.
You know, people think you always want the stock market
to go up and you always want the home values
to go up. That's not true. When home values continue
to go up at an absurd rate, which they did
after COVID, it is irrational behavior. But irrational behavior when
(21:50):
it's undertaken by a lot of people, it camouflages that
it's irrational. It starts to look ra because everybody's doing it.
Like you told your kid, well, if everybody jumped off
the cliff, would you follow them like a living No.
So we had irrational behavior during and after COVID, and
(22:13):
then the bill comes due. Somebody's got to wear the hickey.
So you take a house that would have traded at
three hundred thousand dollars, and then COVID comes along, and
in that same house, let's say it's it's you know,
just outside of town. People start going, well, I don't
need to live in the citymore. If I don't have
to drive to work, I'll live. I'll live out there.
(22:33):
And so you started seeing republic Grand Ranch. You start
seeing places going crazy, and they did. Republican Grand Ranch
is going crazy. And the reason is, if I don't
have to live near where I work, then I don't
want to be exposed. I don't want to live amongst
the Democrats, driving around, creeping their head all the way back,
winded down curb feelers, loud music, and a pistol in
(22:54):
the seat in case he decides he wants to shoot
somebody for cutting them off or him cutting them off
of them honking. So people don't want to live amongst that,
crappy schools, high taxes, busted roads, high crime, and people go,
I would rather get out of town, and so they do.
And a lot of people move at a moment like that.
(23:17):
And now with technology you had for a couple of
years there people didn't go into the office that's coming
back now there, you know, more and more places are
requiring you to go back in the office. So now
people look at things differently. But a lot of people
retired and got out of town or they went semi retired,
and they've got the technology. All these people that are consulting.
(23:37):
I mean a lot of people just didn't need to
come in and interact with other people, and now they don't.
So now you had more buyers. So supply didn't change,
but demand increased. So what happens, our price goes up
at that moment, So you ended up driving up home
prices overnight to unsustainable levels. There just weren't enough people
(23:58):
who would qualify for loans at that eight. Couple that
with interest, you had high inflation, and so they were
trying to jigger the numbers to bring the inflation down.
So what they do They shot the interest rate up
because they pulled money out of the the economy. Right,
Raising the interest rates is the equivalent of pulling cash
(24:20):
out of the economy. Well, now there's no cash for anybody.
Nobody can get a loan. You want to get a loan,
you pay a high interest rate. I'm sitting on a
two point two point two I think interest rate on
my house. I'd love to pay my house off. How
can I? How can I? I can get better than
that on a savings account. I can part my money
to bank and get better. Now on a saving I don't.
But it's crazy. Well, then those interest rates go up.
(24:42):
Now people don't want to buy. So that's also and
that's about to change. I think we're gonna heat this
this real estate market up the next couple of months.
This is the Michael Berry show, No child right. Let
me give it to Houston numbers real quick from Houston
Association and Realtors. On July twenty twenty five, single family
(25:06):
home sales increased nine point two percent year over year.
Houston is in many ways bucking the national trends. A
total of eighty three hundred homes were sold compared to
seventy six hundred last year, when Hurricane Barrel temporarily halted
market activity for several days. July marked the largest year
(25:28):
over year decline in home prices since twenty twenty three.
The median price was down three point one percent to
three hundred thirty nine thousand. The average price median means
half above, half below. You remember that median price was
down three point one percent to three hundred thirty nine thousand.
The average price was four hundred and thirty four thousand,
(25:49):
which is one point three percent, sorry, one point nine
percent below last year's level. Active listings reached an all
time high in July. Look, if you live in a neighborhood,
a master planned community, especially where there's not a lot
of difference between the homes, you know you got the
same builder, and it's a production builder. You know when
(26:12):
those builders builds a bunch of them. You know that
if five people on your street put their homes on
the market and they're all at about three hundred and
thirty five thousand, you're sol it's not good. You're going
to have to drop the price. Price drives sales, That's
just it. There's no other way around it, and you're
(26:32):
gonna have to drop the price to such an extent
that you catch somebody's attention. It's going to have to
be a real incentive. You're going to lose that equity
that you know two years ago you believed you had achieved.
That equity is vapor it's gone if nobody will pay
you what you think you owe for it. Well, here's
the problem in a short term window of such volatility.
(26:56):
Let's say somebody bought a house in twenty one twenty two.
Let's take Galveston. A lot of people during COVID bought
places down on the Bay, Pirates Cove where Jimmy Pappas lives,
or some of these other places. But those prices, there
was a huge run up on those prices. So you
(27:17):
had houses that would have been in twenty fifteen five
hundred thousand, then the natural inflation to twenty nineteen, they
might have been six fifty seven hundred. Now all of
a sudden, you had people, you had private equity guys
(27:38):
here in town that were saying, you know, their wife
was saying, honey, the kids aren't going to school, and
we got all this time, and I need something to
do with them. Let's buy a house in Galveston where
they're not moving there, just buying the second house. And
here's the worst one. We'll airbnb it when we're not there, Okay,
so everybody. So now you had a glut of homes
(27:58):
that were airbnb'd and you had all these buyers coming down. Well,
what happens when fifteen buyers come down and want that
same property on Musket Lane. Well, now you start driving
the prices up. It's like an auction, right, the marketplace
is an auction. So once more people are buying, Plus
(28:19):
you had stock market gains, so you got a lot
of people that are rich on paper that weren't yesterday.
And their wife they can look like a stud to
their wife. Their kids are happy. Oh we're going to
live in Galveston part of the time. Now, Oh this
is very exciting. So here we go, and that's what
would happen. Well, that drove the prices up. And if
you were a cash buyer and you could afford to
(28:39):
write this house off, that's fine. But there were a
lot of people that really it was a reach. They
extended themselves so they got a zero down loan or
a ten percent loan, They got very low down payment loan,
So now you got people that spent five hundred thousand
to a million and a half on a back at home,
(29:00):
and they never had a second home before. So now
they've got this big mortgage because they really had no
business buying this house. But it was COVID. The kids
were getting on their nerves. This was exciting. This would
make us feel good. We felt bad about everything. All
the news was down. We're going to have an exciting
thing in our lives. We're gonna be spending time in Galveston.
Here's our post on Facebook, Instagram. Look at us. We're happy. Great, Yes,
(29:22):
that's awesome. It's wonderful. However, now you owe on that
million dollar house, you owe a million bucks. So now
a couple of years later, you've you've paid, you've you've
made thirty six forty eight payments, and on the million
dollar loan you took on the one point one million
dollar house, you still owe nine sixty five. So now
(29:46):
you go. You know what, honey, that was fun. I'm
glad we did it. I don't regret it, but I
think we should sell that house. I think we should
sell that House's let's let's let's kind of cut back
a little let's let's get on a budget here. The
kids will been going off to college before you. Okay,
she says, fine, Well that guy can't sell that house
for less than nine sixty five what he still owes
(30:07):
on it. He didn't want to take a loss. Nobody
wants to go to the closing table on a sell
and write a check to somebody to take their house away.
And if you know, if his mortgage on that's I
don't know, eight grand, seven thousand, eight thousand a month,
and he's got to write a check to somebody who
who offers nine to ten. I got to offer you
(30:29):
six months of mortgage payments for you to just take
the damn thing off my hands. Well, nobody wants to
do that. I'll just continue to pay it off monthly
till somebody pays us. Nine to sixty five was not
nine sixty five. You got six percent in real estate commissions,
you got a title company closing costs, you got prepaid taxes,
(30:49):
so you got all that hitting you. Oh my goodness,
well this is not good. I mean, I guess the
good news is you didn't make anything on it, so
you don't don't have a capital gain on this one.
So now you've got people who are trying to get
a million dollars for their house, and really they need
(31:09):
to get one point one by the time you pay
fees and everything else. But now you've got people trying
to get one point one for their house that they
paid one point one for, but they have no equity,
so they can't sell it for one point one. They
can't recoup all those costs. And you can scale this
down or up. This is also true of the person
who buys a two hundred thousand dollars house or the
three hundred thousand dollars or the four hundred. In fact,
(31:30):
it's more true for them because for those people, they
don't have the cash. They didn't. If you paid cash
for a million dollar house and it's time to sell
it and you've got, you know, twelve million in your
retirement account, you may say, you know what, I put
down one point two. I want to get that cash back.
I want to put it in pallunteer stock or in
video or whatever else. We're not using it. The kids
(31:52):
are off to college. It went well, but we don't
need it anymore. You can sell your one point two
for one, take a loss of two hundred thousand and
an active trader has done that before. That's not going
to be the end of the world. But for a family,
they got all that money locked up in it. So
now you've got people sitting on a property that they
can't sell for the price they need and they just
(32:13):
sit there intransigent. Their realtor, Jana Gmava is saying, you
got drop the price. This isn't true for Rick Doak,
who does the country properties Chapel Hill and Belleville, because
those communities are still booming. But for people doing inside
the Loop and inside the Beltway, that is exactly what's happening.
That is happening to at oh I got to close
(32:34):
with this. Anise Porker, bless her heart, she has kissed
Rodney Ellis's ass. She says, kudos to my county Commissioner
Rodney Ellis for engaging constituents about up about looming Trump
cuts that will hurt Harris County families at his budget
town hall. Commissioner Ellis is a thoughtful, strategic, and bold leader.
We're lucky to have him on our side. Dear God,
(32:57):
you know what that reminds me off?
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Do you really want to apologize? Are you sure? Yes,
absolutely very well, if you want to apologize, I will accept. Huh,
thank you, mister Jackson, Thank you, Brian. Get a picture
of mister marsh apologizing. Ready to go, sir, kiss it? Huh, apologize?
Speaker 5 (33:19):
Kiss it? You want me to kiss your that's right. Apologize.
Oh okay, I'll see her apologize.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
I hope his ass is the only thing she has
to kissed. His endorsement