Ben Mallah On The 2024 Housing Bubble, Getting Rich, & Going Broke

you may not become a big shot you may not have a half a billion dollars worth of real estate to worry about like I do but everybody needs to be in real estate in some aspect of their life everybody times are not good in real estate that's just a fact but once it starts bleeding that's when it starts gushing you know my life's going to be over I already used up uh at least 75% of my life you know the real scary part is a lot of your friends start getting seriously ill and they start passing away and that scares you because um you know you're going to be one of them have you noticed any benefits of cigarette smoking like nicotine being in your system because there are some studies that show nicotine increases mental acuity it increases energy levels Focus Etc or is it just negative it's highly addictive that's number one you know that that that's that's just a known fact listen I've been smoking for I'm embarrassed to say 45 years my lungs are clear I had everything checked I don't know effects I know people that don't smoke get lung cancer figure that out you know it's it's crazy I got a poor manager and she's dying right now throat cancer and she didn't smoke do they know what caused throat cancer cancer is a weird thing you know but um I can tell you this um I enjoy it somehow call it like an addiction maybe it's the addiction that makes think I'm enjoying it but in the morning I can't get rocking and roll and without coffee and a cigarette or two it's just something that I'm not ready to give up you know I don't know maybe it's just the addictive addictive uh being addicted to nicotine I don't know but it has a lot of bad things I know you know that that that you know that it does to you um like you know maybe shortness of breath things like that but I think you know overweight does too but um the point is it's part of my lifestyle it may not work for you and that's fine you know but you know I don't what does it what does it feel like though to smoke a cigarette it gives you some sort of high but not like a weird high like the drugs you do um you know it gives you some kind of uh I don't know if you could live without it it's probably a lot better for you to live without it but I grew up on it and um seems like you're cutting back though right like I've noticed you're losing weight and you're smoking less right definitely cut back go getting old you know you start thinking about oh you know my life's going to be over I already used up uh at least 75% of my life I'm you know so I'm not going to be here there going to be a lot of years you're going to be here and I'm not you know you start thinking about that when you start approaching I'm 58 I just turned 58 you start approaching that 60 Mark you start thinking and you know the real scary part is a lot of your friends start getting seriously ill and they start passing away and that scares the idea because um you know you're going to be one of them yeah have you had an instance have you had an instance that really changed your mindset like I said you know I've been seeing a lot of friends having health issues and um it's really got me thinking you know no none of us are going to be here forever we all know that I mean you know best case scenario you're going to drop Deb between 70 and 100 okay so can I prolong that and then who wants to be old and all broken down and you know a bunch of stuff from you what kind of quality of life is that so you know when you start becoming hitting that 60 Mark you really start thinking about the quality of your life and the longevity of your life I mean it's just it's life you know we're all only going to be here for a little while you know and then after you're gone let's face it you're gone yeah I mean even the most famous people in the world they're gone all right you know you have some memories of you and things like that and depending on how famous you were Michael Jackson people remember him forever was presly things like that but you're dead all right it's over this might sound more bit are you afraid of death yes everyone's afraid of death I don't care who you are so how does how does that affect your decisions today I mean I've been thinking about what's going to happen to my family um you know and people close to me if I'm not around all right so I'm I'm really thinking to others I mean yeah I mean I think about myself of course on a daily basis while I'm here but I'm think holy you know all right yeah my wife's probably going to find some young guy and have a great life but with all the money she's going to n but I mean I start thinking about you know protecting everyone when I'm not here you know kids wives friends everybody like that so it's part of life it's part of Being Human you know we're only on this planet for you know a certain amount of time so do everything you can while you're here and enjoy it and try to protect the people that are going to be here after you so for those watching who are not familiar with you and your story could you give us a a highlevel overview of who you are why people should listen to you what you do just something for a few minutes you know my story is started from nothing less than nothing I mean you know and had no opportunity no chance I was in the Army you know I went in the Army because I had to because you know growing up in New York City was very tough and uh the Army was my exit out of New York away from surrounded by a criminal uh atmosphere which was really bad back in the 19 late 70s and 80s and I went in the Army you know that got me out of New York it got me in a you know an organized control atmosphere gave me discipline gave me organizational organizational skills um it showed me you know the real you know how how the world works okay working with people getting things done accomplishing your missions uh and it really helped me and saved my life because if I didn't go in the army I guarantee I'd be dead maybe if I was lucky rotting away in some jail okay because that was just the place I was born into you're a product of your environment I mean it's very hard to fight your environment when you're surrounded by it you know I spent about five years in the Army and then while I was in my last year of the army um I started I lived in an apartment building where pretty much everybody was in the military you know they lived there in and you know off the base so I got an opportunity to help the manager out it was an old lady and I picked up garbage every single morning I'd get up just like we did in the Army and police the area you know what that means police the area means look for papers garbage whatever's not natural get rid of it so anyway I policed the whole building clean the place up and I'd get $50 a month off my rent my rent was $500 a month I got I only had to pay 450 to me that believe it or not 50 bucks back in we're talking 1986 86 887 it meant something okay basically that's how I got got my start I did a little real estate in leasing while I was in Germany I was stationed in Germany and there was not enough housing for all the soldiers so the soldiers had to go out and what they called the economy where the Germans lived and secure uh you know place to live for them or the families and then the Army would pay you x amount of dollars towards a housing allowance so what I did was I hooked up with a guy that I used to find a place off base and I hooked up with the guy and then I would bring him soldiers that needed a place to rent so he'd have the the German uh Apartments I had the soldiers and every time I brought him a soldier back back then I think he gave me like 150 bucks which was a lot of money back then especially in Germany the German Mark was like 4 to one or something like that so anyway you I've been a hustler my whole life growing up in New York you learn how to hustle because I mean that's all you can do I mean you know um and I did it at a very young age so I was already into hustling I did some hustling in Germany um then I got to the states and then like I said I started picking up garbage around the building and I started really understanding real estate you know it's not very difficult and I try to explain that to people real estate is very simple all right you're providing either a person a place to live a business to operate in and they pay your rent okay it's a very simple uh Arrangement that you have um so basically I liked it you know people would move out I'd help them get the apartments ready um we get things fixed when they break you're basically maintaining the property and then they pay your rent and you constantly got to keep the place full you know so you can get the most money coming in one thing I learned about real estate always focus on getting as much money coming in and as little money going out okay because it's all about the bottom line and I try to just tell people and help people listen everybody needs to be in real estate in some aspect of their life everybody okay because it's a necessity everybody needs a place to live everybody needs a place to work okay it real estate is part of life okay um we all can't live in a tent like you used to before you make G you know and everybody should definitely try to establish something you may not become a big shot you may not have a half a billion dollars worth of real estate to worry about like I do but it needs to play some sort of role in your life and the more you put into it the more you will make but before we go into that you probably can't go anywhere without hearing the term Ai and that's because it's probably the most important computer technology ever we use it here on the iced coffee hour behind the scenes like a a lot with all these great things considered the real problem with AI is that you need a lot of speed and processing power so how can you compete without the cost getting completely out of hand well it's time to upgrade to the next generation of 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switch there where like okay this is something I can make money in versus this is something I am competitively extremely good at and I can actually build a fortune we did it for me was when I met the owner of the building that was you know I was living in getting 50 bucks bu off my rep I met the owner the owner was a great guy smart guy but he wasn't will to work that hard I mean I'm sorry he was a great guy we ended up becoming Partners the point was is that I saw how he was living he was living good and I liked real estate because I just felt like it's something that I felt you know how you like stuff or you don't really care for it you know my father always told me just become a garbage man okay you be outdoors all day you get good benefits you get a pension you know that was the extent of you know my father you know expectations for me were that was his advice anyway the point was I saw this guy driving Ferraris I saw this guy driving Mercedes I saw this guy living in fancy houses I saw this guy traveling around the world and what happened was I started making him more money because I looked at real estate and thought of ways to make him more money and when you start and when you can find someone like I tell people when you're starting out find somebody that's making money all right and be their support because if you start helping him make more money you become Irreplaceable and I became Irreplaceable to him okay actually the Army wanted me to reinlist for another four years and they were going to give me some bonus and this and that and I told him hey I got to go I'm going to Career he said no no no you're not going nowhere I'm going to pay you more than the Army and we're going to we're going to do stuff together we're going to grow and you're going to be a multi-millionaire and a lot of that of course came true you know but I did a lot of it on my own besides what I do with him yeah but how did he get a Ferrari and get the travel and all that stuff he if he wasn't a hard worker did he like inherit all the real estate some people work hard some people work smart he was a smart worker he he he knew a lot about Banking and um I think he also you know he his family you know gave him some money to work with and um let's face it real estate is not brain science okay I never went one day to high school I mean real estate is a very simple business okay it can get complex as you go down the road and you grow but the basics of real estate is simple okay and everything is based on math everything's based on what is what is the value of it all right and is there a demand for your supply everything in the world is supply and demand I don't care what you want to sell in Life or what you have for offer somebody a service it's all about Supply supply and demand all right you want to have a supply of what's in demand okay and in real estate you got to make sure you never buy something you don't want to have a supply of what's not in demand like look at office space right now office bait's getting crushed why because we've evolved we're into technology uh Co taught us a lot about you know you could work remotely big companies are shrinking down what space they had or they're just totally giving it up I mean you know the office sector luckily I'm not in is taking a major beating right now okay so you want to always focus on supply and demand guys tell me all the time oh I can build a storage place and storage business is a great business but you don't want to buy it where people don't need it You' be sitting around a bunch of empty storage yeah you know what does your portfolio look like today today we're sitting on a very large portfolio of what I like to call necessity real estate or essential real estate I like retail but I like retail that the internet can't hurt Amazon can't hurt I like you know food I like you know necessity services like hair nails food you know good strong restaurants dentist medical uh things that people can't go online and accomplish okay that's the type of retail I like I try to stay away from the big um retail is like department stores I had opportunities to buy shopping malls and I didn't do it because I was afraid of them um but I like this stuff like you know who's doing really well believe it who made it through all the storms is the discount um type of department stores okay we own we own Ross we own TJ Maxx we own Burlington's we own those types because the discount stuff it's not like you can't go online and really get a lot of discount stuff you can go online and buy whatever you want but if you're looking for the discounted stuff you got to go to the store and do it because you never know what they're getting in and people like to try stuff on so you know we stick to the necessity type retail yeah we're also in the hotel business okay hotels are all based on location we just sold a hotel in Fort Lauderdale I think we ended up selling for only 28 million I thought it was going to be worth 35 but what happened the hotel was a corporate Hotel it was literally in a Corporate Park you know with office building surrounding it those Office Buildings are empty now okay and you can't just imagine you know easily create business in a situation like that you know so I felt that you know the place still needed a lot more money put into it to accomplish um what the franchise wanted us to do there was probably still at least three to4 million that need to be pumped into the place to bring it up to you know the franchise standards it just didn't and it was too far from my home my kids were out there running it I just said you know what we got to sell this asset I don't see the the light at the end of the tunnel yeah how much was it making it was doing okay but it wasn't doing what it could have done or should have done when I bought it when I bought it the offices were full okay and then covid came and destroyed everything so you know but there was other local investors that felt that they could do some marketing and um they could improve the business there and I wish them the best of luck and I'm sure they'll be you know they'll be successful I mean they bought it at a good price and it was a great hotel but you know you got to you got you got to choose which assets you're really want to put your heart stolen money into okay and when you think this this this hotel is not going to take you uh to the end of the the pot of gold at the end uh that quickly at least you got to move on and find a deal at will so we kind of got out of Fort Lauderdale now we're still sitting with about a half a dozen hotels in my area where I'm close to and I can you know we also have Benz hotels.com if you're coming to the Tampa Bay area we have a place for you to stay okay on all different types Ben's Hotel so it's all the hotels you own if you go to Ben hotels.com it'll show you every hotel I have it'll show you the ones by the Tampa Airport it'll show you the ones that are along to Gulf of Mexico by The Beach it'll show you the ones in high traffic tourist areas whatever our portfolio hotels is they're at Benz hotels.com and I try to always buy in the affordable you know I try to have affordable hotels okay I'm not doing four or five star hotels all right because it's just not our for yeah okay and it's a great for the people that are doing it but we like to we're across the street from the beach so you go where I live you've been in my town you go on the sand and you could spend $500 a night for a room or you could go across the street right across the street and stay in my hotel for less than half maybe only 200 yeah you know we give people an affordable product you know so there's a need for all different types of you know clients and we try to fill the need of the people that you know looking for a break you know they don't have that kind of big money to go out and spend on a vacation especially a family you know yeah so that's our little thing what what are you finding with Airbnb is there's a lot of controvery with Airbnb whether that be taking off the market driving up the housing uh but you are competing almost with hotels so you're a competitor to Airbnb what are your thoughts on that there's a certain Market of people that like Airbnb unfortunately I I do a lot of Consulting and a lot of people have been calling me lately unfortunately saying hey they bought airbnbs and their rights to rent them were taken away by the local local municipalities I mean they're ruined they overpaid for the property it's not worth they buy so they're buying these properties I thought a lot of the airbnbs are just subleasing they lease from the landlord and then put it on Airbnb and Profit the difference but to buy an Airbnb is stupid bought condos a lot of people own houses and now listen you're running an Airbnb you're running a little mini mini Hotel you know and it all depends you know are you running it is your host running it you know there's still a lot of work to be done the money you're making on Airbnb you're earning if you're the one to renting them out and coordinating with the guests and getting the cleaning done and getting the repairs done you know if if not there's a cost in paying somebody listen everything can work if you buy something right you got to buy it at the right price you buy things at the right price and you you should always be successful so you know but Airbnb I think it had its big boom it's still going to always be around and it it took a lot of money out of the hotel business that's a fact okay but I think it's gone down and you got to be very careful in investing in them so what do you tell people if they bought a property for Airbnb they're losing a ton of money they can't rent it out anymore and they can't cash flow it by renting it on a normal lease what do you tell them what's your advice I mean everybody body's got a different situation the first thing I would say listen can you get out of it at a break even can you sell that property maybe there's been some appreciation in that particular housing market in that area what's the property worth if you put it on the market tomorrow how much did you pay for it okay and if you are going to take a loss what is that loss compared to the loss you're going to have sitting on it for another year not making any money you know you got to look at every factor of the whole equation and then maybe you have some gain somewhere else we can offset some losses listen I just sold a whole bunch of stock and I was very unhappy about it because it's the end of the year and my account and said listen in 2023 even though things were bad you made some money okay you sold some properties you got some major gains here you need to take some losses so I had to sit down and I just said okay well the only place I didn't get any losses at is sell off some of the stock that's been beating down 20 and 30% I could always buy it back after 31 days you know that you know that you could sell something like let's say I sold a whatever M mutual fund the other day I sold it I think it was about 20% down which I think is a great time to buy now but I'm already in it I sold it I took the loss so now I get all the loss I had all right let's say it was a million bucks if i s if it was a million dollars when I bought it and I got a $200,000 loss on it now I could sell it I take the $200,000 loss to offset $200,000 worth gains and then if I really think it's it's a you know it's going to come back and I can buy it back 31 days later and here I am in the same boat with the $200,000 uh loss that I took and $200,000 on a capital gain is pretty much $40,000 in taxes that I would had to pay the government I mean these are the things you got to think about everybody's got their own Investments their own situation you got to do what's logical everything's based on logic in my brain but before we go into that Guys these cameras they were like $4,000 a piece the lenses were like 2 Grand these cables the audio recording devices the microphones everything adds up and this whole setup is incredibly expensive and it makes my pockets and my brain hurts so badly but the thing is you don't have to start like that like when we first started the podcast you could look back at our first episodes horrible it was awful but if you want to get started with content creation our sponsor streamyard is there to help and make it as easy as possible streamyard is a live streaming software that allows you to create highquality content with just the click of a button I know you guys listen to this podcast every single Sunday and a lot of you guys want to create a podcast for yourself if that's you I strongly recommend you guys do it and if you do I strongly recommend you guys try streamyard they also allow you to stream to multiple social media platforms all at the same time to maximize your Outreach from Facebook to Instagram to uh Link Link LinkedIn we got everything guys we're doing LinkedIn we got we got LinkedIn that's and the best part from all of this when you use our link it's absolutely free they offer a free package it means it cost you absolutely nothing to get started with our link Down Below in the description so if you guys want to get started creating highquality content at the cost of virtually nothing try out streamyard with the link Down Below in the description thank you so much streamyard for supporting this podcast and back to the show do you try to live off of income that certain things can generate or do you ever borrow against that because what I heard that I like like years AO go that explained how wealthy people avoid paying taxes is like in stocks they just continually invest in that and then you can borrow against the stock portfolios then you just end up paying whatever interest fees that you borrow you can borrow against anything you can borrow against any asset you have that has some sort of value to it I mean typically what I did we created my wealth was pretty much based on the 1031 you know deferred tax exchange that the IRS laws have okay every time I I had a property I improved it and I went and I increased the value in it I would refinance it I would either refinance it because that's a non-t taxable event okay pull my money out of it and still cash flow the ultimate goal to me has always been in real estate is you buy something you improve it okay now it's worth more money then you get your money back so now I have nothing invested in my property but I still cash flow what kind of return is that infinite so now here I am I'm sitting with all these properties that I refinanced I got all my money back so I can deploy in other deals or whatever spend it and I'm still cash flowing and that's great I own businesses real estate without any money invested or if you sell it because you have to look at is it the right thing to do and once you refinance and you pull your money out all right I'm sitting here with this property and it's giving me a good cash flow but everything is timing when the market goes up there might be even more value in it and then again also when you refinance the property the most you're going to get is 80% of the value there's still 20% of the value is still sitting there so now I might decide all right I want to move I want to raise cash I want to do some bigger deals I might sell it but if I sell it I've always 1031 into the next deal for over 30 years I've been doing that I never touch the money from a sale the money gets reinvested Ed into the next deal and that kind of forced me to grow but then don't you have some like crazy tax burdens of like let's say 30 years eventually or something like that where down the line it could get sold what happens is your basis gets stepped up gets decreased every time you the the taxes you defer are counted against your basis so yes if I sell that deposit you were talking about for 20 something million tomorrow my basis is probably only about eight so then if I don't 1031 I will have to recapture $12 million worth of gain which would be million $25 million tax bill and at my age I might be prepared to do that luckily I haven't done it yet I haven't paid that that tax bill because luckily I have sons that work with me so I keep exchanging with their help in the other deals now of course it's like the mafia you don't get out there you die when you die your wife gets stepped up bases there are some trust that I believe that also can get that benefit but I'm working on looking into that right now but the limit to that isn't that like $24 million on the Step Up in basis through inheritance yeah yeah I don't think it's any anywhere close to that is is it is it different if if you give a property to your wife at passing does everything get stepped up or is it up to the believe your wife and only your wife can inherit everything you have with stepped up bases but we need to verify if that's the case everyone should make sure they marry younger everyone and then you just don't then you just don't pay the that's genus I mean I'm working on it gets complicated when you're starting to plan your death it gets very complicated you need really good advice from really good trust attorneys I feel like that that wouldn't be the case because then if you want to give a property to someone else you just marry that person before dying to and have a trust have everything stepped up and then they could sell without paying tax and then distribute the money that seems like too easy of us they can only distribute the money to a point too I think right now you can you can um you're allowed to I believe it's still like 11 point something million that you can uh gift yes life time is 11 something million okay so me and my wife can give together right now 24 million if we wanted to um but you know like I said I'm not an expert in trust and things like that I'm I'm actually looking for people to consult with on that but I mean let me tell you the worst case in the world is this all right if I look at my whole portfolio if I got a half a billion bucks in in real estate let's say I ow a bank half of that I owe them 250 million and let's say the rest of the other 250 million I got to give basically 20% of that that's 50 million I'm still up for 200 million I think I'll be doing okay why don't why don't you just do that and just spend the rest of your life definitely definitely thinking about that now you know but then I'm also have to consider you know what's best for not only me but what's best for all the kids I got and the people that are important in my life yeah but 200 goes a long way 200 million right now will get you if you're sticking in taxfree immunity bonds it's going to get you roughly about 10 plus million a year taxfree tax free that's really almost like you know my bracket 37% you know you know we're talking if here in California was almost double you know so I mean you know everybody's got their own life and you have to plan you have to plan your life and you have to make you know certain moves that are logical and make the most sense for your life so right now I'm trying to figure it out that's why I'm here today Jack's going to tell me exactly what to do is that and then I'm going to do the opposite is is that where you're at uh like about $500 million in assets $250 million in liabilities I believe so it's right about there but then last time we had you on the podcast we discussed that you did a lot of deals with variable rates when rates really low because like you said this is your words not mine that you're being a little bit greedy trying to get like the best possible discounted rate so to save a little bit of money but it ended up when rates went up you had that float rate or variable rate and you basically when I used to owe about a couple hundred million I could have paid an extra point and fixed my rate that extra point would have cost me $2 million a year right oh okay yeah instead now I'm paying and an extra three points at least so now I'm paying extra six million a year when I could have got away with paying two million back then now how long did I get away without paying that two million probably a couple of years I don't know I have to look it up a few years I mean listen no one in their right mind in the 30 years I've been in real estate would ever dream that rates would go up so high so quick never has ever been seen before okay but right now we're sitting back where rates were're at in 2007 I believe right before the crash and what does that mean we may not have a major crash but we're definitely going to have a major correction and there's going to be opportunity all right yes I'm well protected Capital wise uh where I can I can handle you know the stress that we we're paying out all this extra money in interest payments luckily we're strong capitalized and we can handle it plus we're doing all kinds of different things to adjust but a lot of people can't and a lot of the people that can't a lot of the people that pulled together because nobody wants to make Capital calls nobody wants to come out of their pocket and start buying down debt and throwing more money into a deal that's why you know it gets tricky when you're involved in a group so you know there's going to be some very very bad things I believe happening with bankruptcies with foreclosures uh in the next year coming in a matter of a couple of months I think you're going to start hearing about it uh I don't think the banks really want you to know right now all the loans that aren't performing I thought a lot of these loans have escalation Clauses essentially so it can't just go from 3% to eight it'll go from three to let's say four and a half and then after that it'll go five and a half but over long period of time documents okay you know it depends on loan documents but typically in my experience we're not talking residential the guy goes out he fixed his rate at two or 3% for his house he's great he's good he's golden for 30 years 20 years whatever his loan is but in the commercial World commercial loans don't go out that far you can do some government stuff and some agency loans that may go out 10 15 years typically people in the most people in the commercial business Banks loan money on Commercial assets for three five 7 and 10 okay so the guy that went out uh three years ago and got a loan basically an adjustable loan like I did it was doing great even if he fixed his rate three years are up he's open to the current market okay he's subed to current market and when he goes out to have that property appraise now because of the today's interest rate he's not going to praise for the same value okay because the numbers aren't going to make sense with the interest rate being double and triple so the value of the properties have come down listen we were just talking about it you used to have to pay four you used to get a four cap on a Starbucks okay I'm seeing if for 6 six and a half now okay everything adjusts accordingly cap rates are going up it's just it's logical you know if you're only collecting x amount of dollars a month you can only you know and you got to pay the bank x amount of dollars you're only left with this much return so the property is only value based on a return so who's buying right now 1031 buyers unless you know I only see the only deal I really see going on right now is people that sold their properties took the gain you know because they they had a lot of equity in their property and a lot of upside and they want to get out or they want to you know trade out I mean let's face it you know real estate's not forever you know I mean yeah it can be generational you know but typically people buy properties they own them for a while and eventually they sell them I mean you know so sooner or later somebody's going to want to sell and you're going to want to get the hand in the cash you don't want to retire a lot of people pass away it's part of life um you know a lot of Partnerships dissolve a lot of them have uh a specific amount of time that the partnership has to sell um you know so there's always going to be deals to be made always and the deals are coming so I'm telling everybody to stash your cash because when the deals start coming you want to be up there in line first in line with your money ready to go line up your financing and listen interest rates are double so what does that mean to really make the numbers work you're going to have to put up more money you're going to have to borrow less money for the bank if I go out right now and buy down half my debt if I go to the bank tomorrow and say okay here's 100 million bucks I'm buying down all these properties by half my cash flow will go back to what it used to be because I'm only borrowing you know half the money at a double rate but then again I got to come up with that cash which is probably sitting earning 5% right now so you know like I said everybody's got their own portfolio you got to sit down and you got to look at every single scenario there is and figure out what makes the most sense because if it makes sense it makes money but when is this going to happen because I honestly thought this was going to happen way sooner no and we're not seeing anything at least here in Vegas Camp rates are going up so property values are coming down slightly but it's barely anything and it's to the point where I'm questioning myself thinking Am I Wrong is this ever going to happen it's going to happen has to happen it's logic that that has to happen the problem is is that the sellers including myself don't want to swallow the fact that their property is not worth what they thought it was and it's simple math the Lowe's that I own you know what Lowe's is right it's it's a like a Home Depot I own Home Depot too those properties I can't get what I paid for them because I bought them at low cap rate it's just not going to happen now am I willing to take a loss no I'm not willing to take a loss so everybody's like in a limbo right now everybody that owns commercial property is you got to wait for the bleeding to start and it and it takes a little while for the bleeding to start okay but once it starts bleeding that's when it starts gushing let's just say what happens in a scenario where where you think there's going to be blood in the streets but let's just assume by June of 2024 the FED says we're lowering interest rates we're taking them down you know 50 basis points 75 basis points whatever it is interest rates start coming down then by 2025 all of a sudden we're at three and a half% isn't that going to save the market so maybe there's a chance that nothing much is going to happen only the really distressed sellers are going to sell but they're going to be outliers you know none of us have a crystal ball but for my experience real estate's always been a cycle okay it's always been a cycle and you just have to know when the time is right because you'll see it okay if you go on 10x right now a year ago there was nothing on 10x nothing barely nothing crap now you're starting to see serious assets all over the country 10x is booming with auctions hotels they're dying why because people don't have the money anymore to spend okay hotels are getting crushed right now if you're not in a hot spot where you can keep those rooms filled I could buy hotels really cheap right now but there's a reason why because then I bring it into money and the cost of employment has gone up and uh you know so you know you're going to start seeing some blood I believe and I'm not you know I'm not out with crystal ball I think we got to wait to see this year end I think when 24 comes and then we also got a lot of politics have a lot to do with it okay I think with the current Administration we just really not going in the right direction and we're not going to go in the right direction and get lower interest rates until we see a change in government now what do you what do you think the current president is doing about a lot of this that that's bad for the real estate market I'm not an e economic expert but all I could say is before he was president I think the economy and the world was in a lot better place I mean I'm just telling you from my life experience interest rates were low there was some sort of Peace in the world I think we're in a lot better shape okay and that's that's basically my life experience uh I think that the Democrats just don't understand uh or they don't like taking any they're trying to they're not Risk Takers okay and I don't know the level of risk we were approaching when when we had low interest rates I'm sure there's some sort of story behind it that it could hurt us down the road but BAS basically all I could say is I was living good and now I'm 5 million bucks a year in the ho now how much of that though is Trump lowered taxes gave businesses a whole bunch of deductions and he really pressured the FED to lower interest rates so how much of the economy was really just there's more money flowing into the economy business owners were making a lot more money and taxes were lower so do you think maybe that's more of like a shortterm sort of deal where if we lowered taxes 10% now I think we'd have a similar benefit I don't know how we were getting hurt were we raising the deficit is that the problem is that what you know all the good times we're bringing we're raising the deficit I mean I heard on on the news the other day that we only collect I think two trillion dollar a year in taxes but it takes how much to run the country I think it was five or six no I think it was like five or six but they collect four I think there was a$2 to three trillion dollar a year deficit and that's just being added to the national debt with rates as high as they are now I think now the national debt is costing more than defense so it's it now I think it's a game of chicken of how long could that continue before eventually they got to lower rates or they got to come out of pocket a ton of money well I know one thing it's a known fact that mortgages at are an all-time low right people aren't buying homes right now and I think that's the that's like the foundation of people's lives being able to work and and and buy a home for your family and have some quality of life I think is very very important and it's almost really much impossible for an average middle class person now to go out and buy a property to live in so you know I don't know I I don't think it's good and then the banks aren't making any money let's face it the banks aren't making any money right now the banks are paying you 5 a half% in money market account right they got to pay out a lot of money and then nobody's getting loans at seven so the bank is just sitting there basically it's going to hurt the banks if they don't lower the interest rates and people don't stop borrowing money we saw what happened in Silicon Valley not too long ago okay it's going to get ugly I think that you know I kind of track the foreclosures and uh I also track uh non-performing loans and um it's growing it's growing dramatically right now and the banks don't want nobody to know because if word gets out they they're not collecting on the loans they had then the banks not the banks only worth what the loans are the bank's value is the amount of loans that they have that's their assets and if they're not making money on those assets those assets fall down in value so the bank ain't worth as much as the bank used to be worth and the stock goes down and then we saw what happened in Silicon Valley they went belly up we saw a lot of banks go I don't you're too young to remember but how many banks went Belly Up in the crash what about not Banks look at all the look what happened to the all the big uh stock Brokers that went Belly Up Leman Brothers yeah they were around for a hundred years and you know and they were upside down yeah mainly because of Leverage so if you think it's going to get worse why not preemptively start selling more aggressively now I have to determine if it makes sense to take the losses I have to start looking at my gains and looking at what the benefit is to take losses or is it more beneficial to me to just buy down my debt you know it's an equation everything's an equation you said that you're going to do it like this huge internal audit with this like quote unquote really smart guy that's in New York right now analyzing all of your Holdings seeing which ones are going to be good which ones aren't going to be good are you literally just doing exactly what you just mentioned to Graham where it's like you are assessing how much it costs on a month-to-month basis how much are you making on a month-to-month basis and then what is the opportunity cost of holding it versus selling it and you're doing that with every single property every single asset I have every single one how many are there 25 okay they're all different levels you know we have some deals as small as you know maybe a couple of million we have deals that you know maybe are worth 40 million you know it depends on the asset and then um you know certain assets like the hotels are tricky because with the hotel income you have to look at hotels annually because Hotel income is a roll it's like a roller coaster you got your Seasons so now here we are we're right now in in a slow season right before the holidays is always the slowest season in Florida we probably have hotels that are barely breaking even but when the good times come they're going to make a lot of money so you have to look at it on an annual basis some properties I could just strictly look at on a monthly basis like if it's a triple net triple Nets are easy to look at you got the same money coming in you have very little of anything coming out because it's triple net or if it's a double double net you have very little going out those are pretty simple to determine you know but you know everybody's got their own situation so for the average listener right now it's 1835 year 18 to 35 year old man uh let's just say they're working like a standard W2 job what would your piece of advice be for them if they're just trying to save up and buy a house right now you need to number one get yourself on a budget okay now is the time to be smart and not waste any money if you don't need it don't buy it don't use it and save your money Now's the Time to stash your cash because that's going to get you some strength you also you know if you I mean I always promote young people that don't have a lot of money if they if if if it fits their life they should seriously think about getting a real estate license because if you get your real estate license even if you don't use it okay or maybe use it once in a while I mean real estate's great you know you can have a real estate license you got you have a real estate license not anymore well they took it away yeah gave it up in California I mean but when you were younger you had a real estate license if you wanted to buy a property for yourself you automatically you're representing yourself 3% is your commission well now there's that big class action lawsuit though oh see that yeah it won I know a bit of a side tangent here but a group of people got together and said that it was um uh price fixing price fixing fixing why can't I say that price fixing from the National Association of Realtors that the seller was now obligated to pay a fixed commission to a buyer's agent to be able to list on the MLS and they won and it was a billion multi-billion dollar lawsuit I don't understand I mean you have a listing agreement you agree to pay x amount uh percent when you list your property and of course it gets it can can be negotiated by the time you do the deal but if the agent sells the property for less money he gets less commission if he sells for more prop money he gets more commission I mean I don't understand where the conflict is the seller has to pay the buyer's commission and for the for the for agents to remain competitive and and show the house they're they're looking at at the commission and they're saying well this property pays me 3% and this property over here they're paying 1% I'm not going to show that property I'm going to show the 3% that's been going on forever there are agents out there that they'll go after the ones that are selling you know they won't take a discount commission except these days the agents are starving starving I got Brokers that are willing to just throw in a whole commission practically accept a small fee just to get the deal done okay typically you used to pay a broker and Commercial maybe two or three% I've closed deals recently for a quarter of a point a half a point what price point deals you know so he's happy to get something to come into his team just to keep the money flowing plus he knew if he didn't reduce his commission I couldn't do the deal I need when I do a deal the first thing I tell the agent when we get somebody that makes us an offer I want to see my net sheet always ask don't be afraid to tell the asent show me my net show me the purchase the sales price show me the commissions show me the closing cost the title insurance the dock stamps show me what my Net's going to be okay and then if you can't get to the number you want that's where you start negotiating you start saying well I'll tell you what in order for me to do this deal this is what I do on a daily basis in order for me to do this deal you go back to this to the buyer and you say listen you need to pick up the docs transfer stack trans they call them doc stamps transfer tax or you need to pick up the title costs or maybe we'll split it or you need to you know lower your commission down but I tell them right off the bat this is the net number I have to get to now it's your job as an agent to figure out how to get me to that net otherwise I'm not a seller so people are working a lot harder now because something's better than nothing you know yeah but I understand the whole lawsuit you're talking about but um typically you know it pays to be a real estate agent if you if you're starting out because you still can get a commission as the buyer okay typically houses a listed with a five to six% commission the buyer gets half the seller gets half so if you qualify for an FHA mortgage it's three and a half% down if you're a real estate agent and you 3% commission you only got to put a half% down am I right y there you go that's how you get in the door without putting a lot of money down we were talking before about mortality and how you said like you know once you Eclipse you know when you're nearing 60 years old or when you Eclipse think about it's natural how you just naturally start thinking about things I want to know maybe why why continue pushing for wealth why continue pushing for all of these things when there are others other things in life maybe that you could be missing out on such as physical health which you said you been losing weight you know and going out and traveling and experiencing life in other ways rather than just continually building a business that's already extremely successful why keep pushing I mean you know because you got to keep moving on in a different chapter in in the book of life you know right now I got to determine listen I don't I'm not I'm not the type of person that wants to work you know until the day I drop dead it's not me I I want to see what it's like to retire maybe enjoy my life I got a nice big boat sitting in the water waiting for me you know know but I also have to think about and protect listen I wouldn't be here today with all this wealth if it wasn't for all my kids and people that have helped me okay so I have to come up with a plan that's going to enable me to live out the rest of my life comfortably and also protect the people that helped me get where I'm at today mainly my children and make sure they have enough uh wealth so they can keep growing if they choose or be protected you got to protect the people that took care of you that's that's a fact life but that is a lot of protection I think for a lot of people even giving a million dollars to their kids would be like hey they're they're set you know most of my kids are already multi-millionaires but you know they're hungry and they're you know I mean I look at I I think back you know my my oldest son is 38 I believe he's 20 or 39 he's like 19 years younger than me um I think back back and I remember when I was his age you know I pretty much had what he has now okay and he has an extreme hunger and desire to go to the level that I'm at and he has every right to okay and so does all my kids um you know they all have the the right they've earned the right to grow their wealth in their life as much as they want just like I did they learned from me so so you know I have to just make sure that they're set up to be able to do that and if they have a problem call me I'll be on my boat so what's your what's your plan with that it to be able to set them up in positions where they can take their advantages that they have and pursue the lives that they want how will you adjust your own life to be able to set them up for that I mean the ideal situation for me I think is take the best assets I got which they are Partners in some assets take the best assets I got that are really long-term assets assets that you should probably think about keeping for the long term and incorporating them as partners so if I'm gone nothing changes basically their Partners uh and that's the end of that they you know they keep keep getting the same income they've been getting and then my share will be distributed accordingly you know between wives and my wife I say wives are it's just it's just something you're not telling us there only one room now only one wife believe me yeah uh and um you know it'll all work out I'm seeking out the best legal advice I can get and trying to get the plan going because you know I am afraid I'm getting older now and I need to have a plan in place I can walk out this door right now and drop dinner on your doorstep you got insurance I do we renewed our policy we have like what they call a master policy that covers all our properties insurance is doubled in Florida you know making us pay for the h you know what's crazy so you know what's crazy we can put this in here you know what's crazy is that I was shopping around for insurance insurances lately because I really want to consolidate everything right right now I have like five different policies with different carriers it was a nightmare to coordinate so I'm bundling everything together and three insurance companies said they would no longer insure California properties they're done they say nope we hit our quota we we're not taking on anymore and these are companies that like four years ago no problem they're not insuring California they basically said you have to stick with what you have because you're not getting anything else and I called in my my existing insurance carrier and said no uh you're you're you're grandfathered in but we're not taking on any new polies why do they not want California they say it's unprofitable and it's too expensive to ensure they're losing money on M on californ because wildfires uh property damage crime uh houses are costing so much money to rebuild construction cost are through the roof pering Z capital of the world yes there's so much risk for insurance companies in specifically California Florida I believe is just a lot of natural disasters California is just like political reasons zoning there's there's so much trouble with that they they want a policy it's wild and and lawsuits are getting ridiculous now it's getting way out it's crazy how do you think we can reform that or do you think it won't the problem is is that the insurance companies settle too quick you know legal fees go through the roof it's a mess you know and a lot of it is a fraud has a lot to do with it you know but the courts are just too generous you know I mean listen if somebody has a legitimate claim I believe they should be paid okay but it's gone nuts it's gone totally crazy now I think we just settled the claim for a slip and fall for half a million dollars and I I honestly because the concrete when I bought it was already painted in a walkway area and we didn't know we didn't you there's nothing wrong with that and somebody it was raining and a person slipped and fall and they got half a million dollars the insurance company just didn't want to fight it and it was much damage to the person I mean it's just totally crazy what a legal system's going with from their perspective it's pay half a million now limit the loss or spend half a million fighting the thing over years and then let's just say they win and you're right then it's can I collect half a million dollars from the person who slipped and fell no so what am I going to do just just pay it now versus spend years of this insurance companies make more money than anybody I mean all the Hurricanes that we had the damage we had in Florida yeah paying out on all line of that so what do they do they just went and doubled all our rates so now they're going to recapture all the money that they spent in the hurricane insurance is a good business you should think be G Going Insurance business I mean it's tough right now it is very hard to be in real estate with the cost of insurance and the rates being where they're at it's not a good time to just say I want to be in real estate you got to find a deal and when you find that deal you got to L all the out of it I mean Now's the Time to look look all right do your homework look for a deal but lowball it okay because times are not good in real estate that's just a fact it's a fact and rents are staying steady right now but they're way they're way expensive rents are way out of the whack right now but because nobody's buying homes that creates a lot more renters and keeps a lot more renters in the market so multif family is staying wrong except if you're an adjustable rate yeah but as far as your your income goes multif family is very strong because people aren't buying houses listen I have no crystal ball like I said I cannot understand why the homebuilders that's when you know the sh hit the fan keep watching the news keep watching the home builder stocks I can't imagine how these guys cuz all these homes that they go on they develop a thousand unit you know they doing that they're doing that down the street when they started they started years ago with the planning on that their budget everything was years ago when times were great now the same person they thought how much in the house is going for down down here the new developments uh in the new one that they're building I think they start at 17 17 and that's yeah 17 now if somebody goes out let's say they do have the 20% down because that's like a jumbo loan right yeah all right so 17 is340 ,000 down these people still got to borrow about a million four when they first plan on selling these homes to people you know where they got to carry a loan for a million four the rates with three okay what's that about 40 Grand a year now it's double that people don't qualify they don't qualify they're not going to be able to sell the homes well here's what I'm finding in terms of the rental market for housing it seems like a lot of sellers who don't want to sell because they locked in that 3% mortgage they're putting their home up on the market market for rent and because their cost is so low and because they've got a such a low basis they don't need to rent it for that much so I'm finding rents at least here in Vegas are really coming down same with uh Los Angeles a lot of protection the only protection it's either keep the house and wait for better of times to come and rent it out to pay my mortgage pay my taxes pay my insurance that's how a lot of people got through 2008 all the successful people I saw said I'm not going to sell on this down Market I'm just going to rent it out and ride this out and those people came out so far ahead right they didn't have to sell they didn't sell who's buying your properties now is it true that black rock is going through these these big institutional investors are buying up all the houses what's your experience I believe it's the opposite from what I'm seeing is all the big shots like Black Rock to BU up all those homes they're now selling them they're getting out because they don't cash flow I mean to my knowledge all the big shots are selling right now I just tied up two deals uh well hopefully tomorrow I'll be on a conference call and I I'll get the deal finalized I just bought two apartment building some very very large company um you know and uh I believe I'm buying them really right I'm buying them for probably I believe 30% less than what they would have received six months or a year ago so how much are you paying for them I can't tell you there still people out there I didn't sign a contract yet but I believe I'm buying it for 30% less than what the market would have paid the reason why I'm getting him in a discount because there is no Market what I'm buying and I always had the advantage I can compete with Wall Street when I say Wall Street I mean the REITs and the Big Shot black stones and black rocks and all these big shots I can compete with them because of terms I don't have anybody to answer to I can come in with the strongest terms you ever seen I could I could sign a contract and say okay give me three days for due diligence where everybody else has boards to answer to and all these layers of approval they have to go through and all this I got the money okay and I could go I can tell my sons listen go out there and inspect that property they'll walk every single apartment they'll go through every income and expense item and in three days we can knock it out I can go hard with a million bucks that's the only that's the The Edge I have by being you know no one to answer to and have my own company um so I'm starting to see the deals coming trust me all the deals there was these all these beautiful complexes around my neighborhood in Tampa Bay area that were up for sale all right and they were all you know they like 180 a door 200 a unit the rents are only like 1,600 a month, 1700 a month the numbers didn't make sense none of them sold none of them there was like 10 of them all these big fancy complexes with 10 100 200 units in them they're not getting they they couldn't sell now the sellers got to go back and rethink well we missed the market just like I missed the market on that house now what do we do do we keep the property or do we discount it lower the price and get the hell out you know it depends it depends on the ownership structure of the property are they partners is their debt coming due soon uh you know loans come due balloon payments come due you know it all depends on what kind of loan you have but now with the new insurances uh rates going through the roof people are taking loss they they're bailing and then you know also the taxes are actually what I'm finding I'm learning more about taxes property taxes is like right now the new tax bills came out right they call trim notices they come out and they tell you what your taxes are probably going to be and they due in January you do get a discount if you pay them in November or December you know and then January and then then you get charged late fees if we pay them in February or March oh no they do by March they good for January to March anyway long story short the counties are basing the values on last year that's dangerous last year because you pay taxes in the rear okay when I pay my tax bill my tax bills are millions of dollars okay when I pay my tax bill that I get a discount paying in fact this month I have till the end of the month but those tax bills have all been jacked up based on what they their praise value they did back in January so now here I am I'm not making that kind of probably aren worth that but my tax bills are G up a lot so I got taxes against me I got insurance against me I got high interest rates against me it's all the pieces that fall into the puzzle of disaster do you like it seems like you kind of like the stress about it though there's there's an aspect where you see it as a bit of a challenge cuz that for me done with it but you know I don't know likees all I know is I can't sit back and cry about it and I have to think about what can I do that's logical that makes sense to improve the position I'm in now or deal with the stuff that's happening to me you know wherever it is's a problem you have to come up with a solution in life I don't care what it is you know whether it's a any problem you got in life you got to come up with a solution it's just like you know if you can't get along with somebody you know what the solution is get the hell away from them simple i' I've been trying is right here you won't go away change a lot change your number I like I like that theme that's a theme that we've been seeing like over and over again I feel like on the podcast which is like it doesn't matter who fault it is but it's only your responsibility to improve the situation that you're in that's it you know it's like all these countries aren't getting along leave each other alone you stay in your space and stay in my space and fine you can't get along then just leave us alone I do it all the time with people you know if I can't get along with somebody or I feel like they're detrimental in my life I just don't deal with them how often does that happen do you cut somebody off I cut people off whenever it's necessary and it could be family members could be anybody life is too short to have any kind of what we call in the hood is drama save the drama for your mama because she's the only one that's going to put up with it but what sort of thing would would make you cut someone off like that I mean if they're doing something that's going to hurt me or anybody in my my world you know I got to leave you alone listen you know honestly I don't even have any hard feelings but I've noticed in my life my life stays peaceful because I don't associate or deal with anybody who disturbs the peace okay that's the way I live but how do you set the emotions and the ego aside and base all of your decision- making strictly off of what is practical and logical how do you do that because a lot of people people are ran by their emotions right and like by other people saying no you should stick with this person you should keep this person in your life this is what Society is saying I give people chances you know people screw up I've screwed up okay we all screw up all right but then you have to look at the severity of the screw up I mean if somebody keeps screwing up you know listen I got no time to go backwards I got to move up okay this elevator only goes up I'm not going down so you got to you you got to you got to stay away from negative people your life you got to stay away from people that don't have the same interest and desires that you have uh you know and and you know listen I don't care how rich somebody is I'm very very my closest friends in the world don't have nowhere near the money I got okay it doesn't matter money when it comes to interacting with other humans you either get along with somebody and you you live in in in peace together or you don't and if you come across people who are negative or you know could cause you issues because you know Association you get a lot of trouble just by being associated with the wrong people you know I mean it's a fact you want to keep you gotta look at your whole world and keep all the bad stuff out of your world focus on the positive and focus on getting ahead focus on your family you know you think you learned some of that with your experiences in the mob which was what you alluded to earlier in the mob they fired me you know they did me a favor you know they that you they fired you I was young and they wanted me to go out and do collections the whole story about they wanted me to go collect from a guy who was a dead beat and then they wanted me to hurt the guy I'm not a violent person I mean yeah I'll defend myself but you know I can't just go out there and and and you know and be that type of person to hurt people you know because they they know just like you know they borrowed his money and then he didn't pay him well how's Hur him going to help he's sure hell going be able to pay you hurt him that I feel like is that sending a message though they wanted me to send a message that's all it is it's not like to get the money back I feel like oh yeah he got hurt and is firing someone too nice for the mob say it again isn't firing too nice for the mob I feel like if the mob had a problem with well they didn't really let me in it was like a test it was a test and I test you're not ready for this type I ended up getting the money I got the money you keep it no I would be I the money I don't know was like 16 17 I mean no I mean I got him his money that he wanted me to collect but I did it in such a crazy logical sensible way that they couldn't relate to that cuz all they knew is you owe me money you don't pay me I'm going to hurt you well maybe there's another way of getting the money maybe we can look into the whole picture I don't you remember the story I took the guy's car and I fixed it up and I sold it and I got the money and we all should live happily ever after and it was a logical intelligent thing to do but they didn't think that way you know they like they they they they Thrive off of the intimidation and the fear and I don't want to be part of that that's how they keep their power though isn't it of of a bit of that intimidation dark world and I don't want to be part of it how active are they today I don't know I don't want to know I don't think they're nowhere near as active as they were when back in the day the government is really you know I think takes a really close look at it especially with technology these days you can't really hide anything you can't hide money you can't even hide your conversations anymore if they they really want to hear you so you know I think it's gone down but you know they're still around but they're they're not out there like they used to be you don't see them hanging out and each other in the streets like they used to be you know and uh they're all trying to keep a a cover because they see when you expose yourself you're exposing yourself to the the criminal justice system they're going to come after you so why would you expose yourself you don't like God eat all that bragging I mean you're a bragging listen you never want to mess with the government they have unlimited resources to come after you unlimited and they take it personal too you know because it's a career you know so I don't want no part of anything that's criminal I try not to if I even think somebody's criminal uh with the exception of Jack that's a real low different level um it's more like Petty I don't want nothing to do anything that's that's any kind of criminal activity I don't want no problems with nothing I just want to do what I'm doing leave me alone and you know you think some of that mob mentality that you were like a product of when you were younger is still bleeding through to who you are today I know how to deal with it but I'm not like a bully but I'm sure you learned some life lessons and stuff like that you learn how to try to get along with everybody whether you're a bum on the street or you're a big shot everybody's a human being okay and I try to relate to everybody on their level okay you know so we have that connection you know if you walk around like I'm better than everybody then you know what the hell how's that going to be productive you know I mean you know not in a big picture I rather people like to deal with me and if I have a problem with somebody I'm going to sit down and try to work out their problem because you know there's two sides to every story sometimes you got to put yourself in the other person's shoes I've had people you know say things to me that they felt were unfair that they were treated by me unfairly well I'll tell you what you got your side I got my side all you got to do in life with another human being is find a Common Grounds where you're both satisfied and typically money solves that problem you know the only problem we have in this world today is you know religion how how does money solve the problem how when have you used money money is what makes everybody money is what what what your life is all controlled by money I mean honestly you need money to survive you need money to do everything in life you can't live without money okay you need money to eat you need money to live you need money controls but how can you use money to solve a personal matter like argument between two people what are you talking about you ever heard of divorce do people couples do it all the time yeah but it doesn't solve the relationship money doesn't there's no more relationship the money you give somebody some money and you separate the relationship and you move on and live your own life the way you want right okay it makes him feel it makes him feel better like if if he feels like you got something that deal you need just get kicked in the curb you know if I say to you listen I don't want to deal with you no more okay but we have had some history together or you do have some sort of you feel you have some sort of Rights or something like that all right here's some money have a nice life you go your way I go mine we all live happily ever after like imagine someone cuts you off in traffic and there's like ah here's 100 bucks wouldn't that be like oh wow yeah I just made $100 like that would kind of solve it's not though no it's true I think it's very true you could solve anything like that I mean you know if somebody cut you off and there was no damage done you didn't do it on purpose you know and the person apologizes that's being human yeah you know but if he hit your car and you didn't want the insurance claim because your rat's going to go up and you know damn well that that damage isn't really that much it's only you have it fixed for 100 bucks and the guy gives you say 150 for your trouble whatever it's a good way to just you know people just need to come together find a meeting point meeting ground and and and make things happen to where it's peace I don't believe in violence I don't I cannot believe in this day and age with all the technology we got with all the space travel we're doing and all the uh electric cars and your Teslas were still hurting each other you would think violence wouldn't even play a role in the human society anymore it's not logical how is destroying a country helping anyone how is it helping I don't think many people are as logical as you look at life it seems like emotion really runs the majority of people out there what is what is oh let's get down to it what's Russia gonna have if they totally destroy Ukraine they're GNA have a country that's totally worthless garbage I hate to see destruction of Real Estate when you're in real estate all right listen if the building's got to go and it's falling apart and you got to knock it down like you do the casinos here that's understandable that's logical you're going to build something new but to go in and Destroy families and people's lives and and things that have been existing and for many many years where is the reason in it where's the reason that's not solving the problem you know crushing somebody is not the way to do it you know it's better you know you find Common Ground find a solution that works for everybody violence it's not humanly it shouldn't be in part of our society anymore I'm sorry I mean I I it sounds nuts that I'm saying that but I don't feel that anybody should have any reason you know I mean yes the person that if you're defending yourself well that person that you're defending yourself from shouldn't be violent to begin with so you wouldn't have to defend yourself I mean you know we got a lot of issues in society we need to focus on you know taking all the violence people that we do have and trying to either correct them or do something with them but we need a nonviolent Society I think you know I've been to other countries and it's scary I mean the governments are are very some of the governments these countries are very dangerous I mean you know you go to China you say the wrong thing in China you're in big trouble come on I think the difference is that you and I feel like Graham and I are probably pretty similar it's just too logical I know you know what I mean you can't relate to the average person it's like I mean we're we are animals we are driven by our animalistic instincts and our emotions and our desires got to control them and stuff like that this our brain should take control over our emotions it should 100% okay we have brains that have created all this stuff you know how this the world has progressed in the past 50 years alone I mean it has gotten better right we still have in many I think for a lot of people all it takes one one trigger and people lose their temper and they could do one thing that they throw their lives away I think unfortunately I'm sorry to say people may not like me saying it I think religion when it's when it's taken to the extreme number one I don't care what anybody believes in you could sit in a corner and stand on your head as long as you're not bothering nobody if you think that that's your life and you enjoy it it makes your life peaceful or content then be my guest I don't care but when you feel like you have to force your beliefs on someone else okay and you're willing to go to violence to do it you know I mean a lot of these religions they're practicing uh Traditions that went on thousands of years ago we're a lot different human beings than we were a thousand years ago okay let's get real now you know I mean you know it's fine you want to believe in something see I'm also with me you got to prove to me you got I'm I'm the type of person I need to be proven okay you can tell me this person exists or this exists and that exists prove it I want to see it what do you you believe in when it comes to that I just believe that we're all here for this little amount of time on this Earth all right we're intelligent and we need to keep progressing to be you know get along everybody should get along all right we're all not going to be Filthy Rich all right yes the world does need people to be landscapers the world does need people to do all SS of jobs and that's the world we live in but everybody should be treated with respect okay if everybody just respect each other and everybody got their own space and respect the world be a perfect place I don't know why we can't accomplish that you know it just doesn't make sense we got AI now ai it's all I hear about is ai ai ai at the convention I'm at ai ai ai let me talk to AI you know it's funny pretty soon um I think actually are we doing the sponsor where they they're able to take your face and then make that into a video and they take your voice and face and'll look just like you so you could be speaking right here as AI we could do the whole thing you train the the model and we could just have a conversation with you and you can control what I'm saying there's a podcast out there I'm not going to say which podcast but the audio got messed up we've already posted it it did very well for us and we ran the entire audio track through Ai and then an AI voice regurgitated in more clarity the entire transcript of the podcast matching each person's voice so if you guys want to try to figure out which one that is oh I don't even know which one it is could you could you say it and we'll bleep it out sure it was uh Justin Waller no the entire podcast was AI are you serious we use AI on the iced coffee hour no I had no idea yep it's all AI it's not AC that's one podcast not gonna say which one it is yeah last night told me he can do a book on my a book he said I can write a book totally with AI yep I me simple that's why a l had no idea the entire thing why how bad was because we had buzzing so like you could remove sounds that are input actually and recorded into the track so like a lot of the times I don't know if you guys won't care about this but it's kind of interesting when we record in the iced coffee hour a lot of the times there will just be random interference so for example if we have a battery pack that's sitting on one of the cables these are analog cables that we record all the audio into if you have something like a power cord that's resting on top of it it for some reason just makes buzzing start to appear so you can have like as we're talking and you can remove that as long as you have a transcript of the words and a general idea of the way that someone's voice sounds you just read it with AI and then spit it out with AI again and it can work question is insan are you real or are you AI That's a good are are any of us real or AI if anyone's AI here I would say it's probably you you're AI I know yeah I know we do this with he just a artificial I know we do this with some of our some of our Tik toks so what we'll do with AI and this is incredible is uh Josh who runs our Tik toks some sometimes wants a good hook in the beginning cuz you got to get people in the first like second and he'll say Graham could you just repeat into the mic say this one phrase and I'll say it and then what he could do is he could take my face and make it look as though I'm saying exactly that on the Tik Tok as a hook even though I've never said that on camera before I don't even realize when I'm doing it or when I'm not sometimes I could slightly point it out if you if I know the specific one you could kind of tell but if you don't pay attention I would have no idea it's scary insane we've used it for titles of videos we've used it for guest research before we shoot with someone we just ask AI like what are some interesting topics we can talk to so some of them are good we we used to online dating now ai now so that's dating in AI his AI is going to somebody else's Ai and now they're going to have ai together oh w i i want to know this is this could get me in a lot of trouble but I'm just going to say it we're talking about being logical rational that's how you go through all of like life's problems now you know I have had a girlfriend before and when she comes at me when she came at me with you know certain issues a lot of times I would try to solve them I would be like here this is the rational and logical way of solving this issue and that would not yield the best benefit usually that would really upset her so how do you navigate relationships let's say listen I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for it this but it doesn't work with women only works with business and numbers and Deals if it has to do with a relationship with a woman you could throw logic out to God damn window okay this is anecdotal guys this is not you know General broad sweep you know it's I mean you know I just tell my you know when you're in a relationship basically I I'm going to be married 20 years next month when you're in a relationship you finally figure out basically the simplest way to deal with your wife is to just agree with her agree with her but what if it's something you really disagree with you just don't want that whatever it might be do you still agree or like when do you decide when to push back I don't know I typically agree unless it means it going to cost me a lot of money I'll cry poverty but uh but you're fine bending your principles of like it had to be something really serious I mean you know listen you know every relationship is different you know I mean me and my wife are 100% opposite there is not one thing in common between me and my wife and how did it work out in the first place you know because maybe being opposites really works you know um I don't know like you know my wife's a lot younger than me so she likes to you know do everything a younger person like to do she likes to party she likes to you know have a good time which I used to do but I'm older now she likes to go running she likes to work out she plays tennis you know she she worries about things that I could care less about what we're eating or you know we're opposite in every possible way you can imagine okay and somehow it works what bonded you two together then um was it physical attraction and then everything else of course well for me it was physical I it was physical for me and she saw opportunity with me you know but um you know I mean I don't know all I know is that you know we've been accepting each other and putting up with each other for almost 20 years and um you know her world is totally different than mine totally different we don't work together uh I don't get involved with uh her world with the house with the kids or the day-to-day stuff uh you know and and I focus on making money and we enjoy a lot of time together what do you guys do together oh I mean we got you know we go out on a boat we'll take the boat all over to Bahamas we'll take trips um you know we do whatever you know go out to dinner we go to parties whatever I we have a social life and um but um total opposites you know can you see me playing tennis come on so so you just agree with the the wife in the situation but she also agrees with me it's like she's got her department and I got my department okay she's not going to come in and say okay listen you need to sell that hotel it's going to happen she's not going to you know she's not going to cross into a world that Sheed no I don't recall her ever like a house she see something stressing you out we just bought her sister a house okay cuz we sold a hotel in Fort Lauderdale her sister's moving back home she's taking over over all my Beach property hotels and uh we need to find a sister a house so you know to me I told my wife to handle it well of course that didn't work so good but you know CU her sister wanted one thing she wants to another it's not good enough for my sister blah blah blah anyway long story short I told my wife you know listen do whatever you feel best as far as a house is is um I go along with you know so why not rent the house this is the one for 1.2 yeah um renting a house is just you know I don't know just if I would have rented the house it probably a house like that in that neighborhood probably would have cost me at least um six seven Grand a month probably yeah it's a big house I mean the house is like 4500 square feet she's got four children uh you know and we're pretty much on the level where you know and a sister's like one of my sister's my daughter basically I raised like my daughter okay so you know when it comes to your kids it does get emotional with real estate because you want your kids to live somewhere nice all my kids live in big beautiful homes which they're entitled to they deserve it you know so you know she should have her own home and uh you know renting her house would be very this is more of a permanent thing too it's not like a temporary situation typically I would always rent yeah you know uh if she's living here for a year or there for two years yeah rent her house but in this situation we're trying to get her stable and you know more permanent so we bought the house and I got a good deal on it I'm happy with the price we paid it was on a market of a million5 we paid a million two and it came fully furnished and everything really quality and everybody live happy ever after and I agreed with my wife on the house that she thought we should buy so we're all happy seems like you really don't like having lasting issues or things that you're not content with like you just like to all right let's let's figure it out let's move on fine that's good I got every day I got different things fires to put out I'm constantly waking up every morning putting fires out okay figuring out what are the problems right now that we're facing what do I got to do to solve them you know and uh that's what I do for a living managing a portfolio how did you meet your wife family was the caretakers in probably the most dangerous building in Oakland California at the time that nobody wanted to buy I used to buy all the rough stuff that nobody else wanted because that's the only place I can get in you know um no competition cheaper price you know so she lived in a very very tough building and I bought it it was a foreclosure and it was 14 apartments that stretched a whole street city block and um family like the caretakers there you know which nobody else lived in the building but them at the point when I bought it there was nobody else living but them you know and I could have told him to leave but you know I met her grandfather and her family and then you know she was very young we weren't dating you know when she was very young but I met her family and the family started helping me fix up the building her grandfather was a roofer oh let's fix the roof but he couldn't fix the roof while he was there because there was no money to fix the roof well I came in I bought the building I got some money for materials and to pay him some labor he started help me fix the roof or you know when you marry in Mexican you inherit 15 family members it's just the way it is is and they all work for me they all help me you know accomplish a lot of things so you know next thing you know we're fixing up all the apartments we're painting them we're cleaning them the women are cleaning the guys are painting we're fixing this we're doing that we're renting them out to Section 8 and we uh got that building turned around I paid $250,000 for that building 14 units you do to ma what's that 20 grand a door yeah less than that I probably put like five back then not even a few grand a door into them I sold a place for a million bucks eventually um but it was very dangerous place but we cleaned up the area too and you know we used our management skills to make it a garbage to gold and uh you know and then as she got older you know we um we you know you just stayed close with her with her and her family and stuff like that family became very close to me because we were they work for me we work together every day you know and then she matured into a young woman and um you know we had the attraction and we got married and um but like when would when did you ask on a first date like how did that even come up in a conversation where you said hey she actually pursued me she did yeah she'll deny it but she pursued me I remember I I kind of remember when I seen a twinkle in her eye we finally got the building all rented and my partner I had a partner then too he didn't want to buy the building he was afraid to but I told him listen I can handle it and then I had him come back and take a second look after we got rid of all the criminal activity around there and stuff anyway got the building rented the building had a laundry room and my partner even though he had all these millions of dollars he got some kind of personal thrill of me and him going around all right in his big fancy Mercedes whatever he was driving that day and taking the money out of the damn laundry machines yes bags are quarters he loved it and I loved it too because I didn't have much money and half the money was mine so we it was like a tradition you know we go around all our buildings we had you you know a few some were his some were mine some were ponds whatever anyway we go around one day every other week and we collect all these bags of money and we take them to the bank and put them in the machine they count them up and you know we have some cash you know whatever deposit whatever anyway the long story short I remember I seen a twinkle in her eye because let's face it I was very poor back then and she was very poor um when she saw me carrying those bags of money that's what did I think so one day I dropped the bag and the quarters were everywhere all these kids in the rough neighborhood were and that's what spared she saw that came down and protected me was she picking up quarters too yeah but she was giving them to me and you know listen we both came from a very very tough place and very very poor place and um we struggled together for a while but it was great you know we made it that's cool that you've you've acquired all of this wealth with her you know what I mean like I feel like you don't see that a lot it's more of a rare thing where you got this like you know I acquire it and she spends it but the age difference you know with the with the wealth and everything you know everybody's different it worked for us you know it doesn't work for everybody but it works for us and we you know she's helped me raise you know children from a previous I helped raise her daughter I mean her sister U you know it's been a a weird situation but you know we both always work together and try to do the right thing for everybody is there anything you guys disagree about or for the most part do you just agree with whatever she wants no I mean you know we we disagree you know everybody has in disagreements but nothing that serious you know um you know she might want to buy a $6 million yacht and I rather find a bargain that's worth that can probably for two that's worth maybe three or four and yeah we have our little disagreements but we always work it out we always find a middle ground we always find a meeting place you know she's always going to complain about what I'm eating but you know that's good for me do you feel like you need to eat a little bit healthier for her or is it all just well I need to do I need to take care of myself so I can you know do of everybody else you know and then you know she's the Drinker and I'm not the Opposites I don't drink she drinks why do you not drink it puts me to sleep that's what that's what it does to meod she she she starts drinking tequila and she's drinking margaritas and all she's ready to party baby you know me I'm you know I mean is Andre huberman did a whole podcast on the effects of alcohol and he noted that in people's brains you either have the type where they drink and they get really energetic or the people who drink and it puts them to sleep and there's something in your brain that you just process sleep me too yeah me I go right to sleep it's terrible it's really bad I Dr straight to sleep it makes me not want to drink but if you continue to drink you drink then if you if you continue to drink like past the point of being tired and everyone's all excited then I can get the energy but my default is just like I slump and I just go on a couch if there's a couch nearby and I fall it might be 20 minutes where I have a bit of energy bit more talkative but then immediately after it sleep unless I just keep drinking but yeah if you keep drinking then you can get the energy but like I got to go all right yes okay is there anything else that there's to anything else you want to cover okay the real deal is this yes get ready because what's the worst thing going to happen it doesn't happen you got ready get ready seriously deals are coming they have to trust me I'm watching cap rates going up now's the time to start looking and watching and lowballing all right there's no emotion in doing a real estate deal if the guy wants a million bucks offer him 750 that's the world we live in right now and that's what you should be trying to do because you may not take it now but you'd be surprised a month from now you might get a phone call or you might take eight or 8150 you might say oh that's still a good deal so be prepared because we have to it has to to happen when the bad happens that's what opportunities knocking at the door don't don't make sure you answer the door don't just look at him on the ring deal amazing thank you so much thank you so much man I every time I see it puts a big old smile on my face we can do this easily another two hours three hours just chat and unfortunately um I would stay as long as you want but I got people I'm obligated to well thanks Ben really appreciate it thank you guys for tuning in thanks for watching until next time adios amigos and don't get go to Ben Ma on YouTube and Ben's hotels and ben.com you want to consult with Ben one day