On this Flash Back Friday comes from, originally published in October 2017 as episode 892, Jason hosts client, Clay Slocum. Clay currently has four properties in his real estate portfolio. He explains that he worked closely with investment counselor Oscar before buying his first property. When he realized he his initial investment could grow exponentially he bought the property. He gives listeners insights on the power of compounding interest, asset protection, and the Memphis market.
Jason Hartman 0:00
Welcome to this week’s edition of flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason is hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy. This show is produced by the Hartman media company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts visit Hartman media.com.
Announcer 0:27
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 1:17
Welcome to the creating wealth show, Episode 892. This is your host, Jason Hartman, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been absolutely crazy. This Las Vegas shooting this terrible, disgusting tragedy has it has just it’s turned my life upside down in the past few days, but I have absolutely nothing to complain about compared to the victims and the people who witnessed it closely. I did witness the event. We published an extra Episode 891 yesterday on an off day, Tuesday, or we don’t normally publish episodes that told of my firsthand eyewitness account of the shooting and then one of my friends who was in lockdown how The Mandalay Bay hotel. I was of course at the top of the Mandalay Bay Hotel 25 storeys above the shooter. And recounted that story yesterday, but it’s just just awful. I mean, I can’t believe this and I just can’t wait to learn about this psychopaths motivation. It’s just unbelievable. It really is. I know we’re all still in shock the whole world’s in shock about this. Or at least all peace loving decent people are not Yeah, as you know, ISIS claimed responsibility right away. And you know, who knows what’s true anymore? The media person some of the media denies that some of the media is just not talking about it. I don’t know. Nobody really knows yet. But it’s absolutely a crazy thing. Today I was interviewed on inside edition, or was it extra? I can’t remember which one I got a couple media interviews. I know it was on TV in San Diego. They interviewed me via Skype yesterday. You know, you you Get a video of that and publish it. And it’s it’s like, wow, the whole whole world. I’ve given a copy of it to the FBI they asked for it. I mean, the FBI actually messaged me on Facebook. It’s crazy and never thought that would happen. I never thought I’d witnessed such a terrible tragedy like that, but at least I did not witness it close up. I was a pie. I saw the concert below. You know, you heard the whole story yesterday, if you listen to that episode, where we just talked about that. So let’s go back to real estate investing and talk about that. You know, this is all weighs heavy on everybody’s mind that I will never forget that night.
Jason Hartman 3:40
It changed me forever. I’m sure I don’t even know how yet but it’s, it’s unbelievable. It really is. It’s just tragic. Moving on. We have got a client case study today that was of course recorded before the shooting and then basically the terrorist attack that happened and that is our client place. Welcome. So So I so appreciate him coming on the show. And I appreciate all of you clients coming on the show to talk about your story and in definitely your unique insights about real estate investing, you know, play, we’ll talk about some things that have not occurred to me. I’ve not heard them before, really wonderful, original thoughts about how to evaluate one’s investments, consider one’s investments, just really great stuff. So we love it when clients come on the show. If you would like to be on the show, we’d love to have you. If you have something to contribute, just reach out through the Jason Hartman. com website. Or if you’re working with one of our wonderful investment counselors, reach out to them and they’ll get you connected. And we’ll we’ll have you on the show to share your story and your real estate investing goals or just your questions. You know, if you just have questions for me, I’d be happy to answer them on air as well. And by the way, we’ve got a whole bunch more questions. From the last three contests for the Amazon echoes and, and the Apple AirPods that we gave away, and you really had some very thoughtful questions and comments. So we will get to those over the course of the next several episodes. You know, we just got a lot to cover. We’ve got so many great episodes coming up for you that I’ve been recording episodes just like crazy the past few weeks. I interviewed Dan Burris today a really interesting futurist, who’s developed basically that the software that Zillow uses, kind of underlying their system that he licensed that and he developed several great real estate apps and it’s just a futurist in general, we’re talking to about having him come to meet the Masters in La Jolla, which by the way 96 tickets sold so far for that event, the most ever this early. So thank you to all of those of you who purchase tickets, and if you haven’t purchased your tickets, get in on the early bird pricing you know the price does end escalate, as we get closer to the event and is not just based on time, but also based on ticket sales. So it’s like an airline folks, the sooner you buy your tickets, the better. Okay, so get your tickets at Jason hartman.com. Click on the events section and do that. So we’ll get to a lot of those questions. We’ve got a really interesting interview coming up next week for you, where we interview a new lender in our network who has some really interesting financing programs. If you’re already working with one of our investment counselors, of course, they can connect you with her, but I did a really insightful interview with her. And we should be publishing that one next week. We’ve just got a whole bunch of interviews I can’t ever remember all of them but if it’s like a blur, all of the the interviews I’ve been recording, we’ve had some great guests recently, so stay tuned for that. I don’t mean to talk to you all about the future and what’s to come. Because today we have a great show with with our client clay on a case study as well. Do Get your tickets for the meet the Masters event. We look forward to seeing you there also, I also want to give a shout out to the new property tracker system. If you’re if you haven’t been to real estate tools calm lately and checked out the the apps for iPads and iPhones and the web based app property tracker that has been totally upgraded. Take a look at that really some great changes that Fernando and and Zach and and Michelle and that whole team did to work on property tracker and really upgraded and take it to the next level. I think you’ll love it. So check that out as well. And you can also find that at the front page of Jason Hartman calm But without further ado, let’s get to our client case study with clay Slocum. Here we go.
Jason Hartman 7:55
It’s my pleasure to welcome a another client to the show. We always love playing k studies we get great feedback on them. And if you’re interested in coming on the show, just reach out to your investment counselor and we would love to hear from you and possibly feature you on the podcast. So again, today we’re going to do another client case study with our client clay Slocum play. Welcome. How are you? I’m doing pretty good yourself. Good. Good. It’s good to have you on you are a 32 year old millennial. And we’re going to talk about some millennial stuff when it relates to as it relates to real estate investing in clay. Where are you located?
Clay Slocum 8:31
I am in Northern California.
Jason Hartman 8:33
Okay, great. The where we’re like more specifically than that
Clay Slocum 8:38
up in the Chico California area.
Jason Hartman 8:40
Okay, fantastic. So you you are not in the Socialist Republic of San Francisco. And, and you are not paying $8,000 per month to rent a closet either. So good for you. Yeah, I think these high priced markets are just crazy. I gotta I gotta A message from one of our other clients today who lives in Los Angeles and is a wealthy wealthy client, by the way, a celebrity client whose name I will not mention, but he and his wife been buying properties from us and he was just commenting how absolutely nuts. The Los Angeles market is. I mean, these markets are just Gosh, I mean, they are bubbles. I don’t know when they will burst but they are bubbles for sure. I mean, it’s just it’s just absolutely crazy. plate. You want to talk about a bunch of things today. One is the power of compounding for millennials. I think that’s super important. It’s a great message for people at any age to hear. And then you know, we’ll talk about some other stuff too. So go ahead and dive in. Where do you want to start?
Clay Slocum 9:44
Oh, well, I guess I’d really like to start with talking about compound interest. You know being being a millennial and potentially having you know, the the years ahead to to work the magic on these investments on the investment properties, that number can can do some real magic for you. And so it was something that I, myself actually kind of had to play around with and in order to discover the true power, and I’ve been honestly trying to explain it to my friends ever since, but it definitely has its power to make your growth just exponentially fly up at a certain point.
Jason Hartman 10:29
Yeah, no question about it. And, you know, I know you mentioned you had some spreadsheets and things like that. So feel free to share any numbers or figures you aren’t with us. But I will tell you clay, you are absolutely right. Einstein called compound interest, the eighth wonder of the world. And it is truly amazing. How you know, as I always say, most people in life are hurt by inflation. They’re hurt by government spending their hurt by time and as real estate investors when we do a right or All these things are to our benefit. You know, we watch the news and we look at you know, we hear a story about government waste, and, you know, government spending and, you know, that’s actually beneficial to us as real estate investors. You know, time passing by most people would rather not have time passed by they’d rather go back to the good old days and in as investors we put all these things father time, Mother Nature, even when it comes to natural disasters, this is all actually beneficial to us. Oddly, so, yeah, that’s that’s great compound interest. Very, very powerful thing.
Clay Slocum 11:35
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, looking at some of the numbers that I ran, you know, I’m looking, I just ran this a few minutes ago, so I can talk to it. But if you were to put down if you were going to get $100,000, you know, invested into into your properties and say you were able to achieve something like a 32% ROI. You know, in About 18 years that gets you all the way up to 14 million, which is, is amazing. It’s great.
Jason Hartman 12:06
Yeah, but let’s be a lot more conservative than that. Now, many income properties, with All Things Considered all of the different elements of return on investment of ROI can certainly produce 32% annually. But like I always say, even if it’s only half as good, right? It’s still pretty amazing. It really is and, and with leverage, you can vastly outperform inflation. So yeah, it’s true, truly amazing. Isn’t it? powerful tool.
Clay Slocum 12:40
I went back and checked my own, you know, spreadsheets and everything and ran the numbers myself after listening to one of your podcasts. It was I forget the gentleman’s name, but he’s the submarine Captain or Gary Pinkerton?
Jason Hartman 12:53
Oh, yeah.
Clay Slocum 12:55
Yeah. And he was talking about the the leverage factor of the appreciation and just how that that can dominate, especially if you can find yourself in a consistently appreciating area or, you know, heck anyone know, one of the hybrid markets and like Phoenix perhaps or and ride it up even higher that that could really drive drive some things. But now I do completely agree with you that it’s pretty safe to just stay with you know, your cash on cash and you and your principal pay down those are those are good numbers in in and of themselves.
Jason Hartman 13:30
Yeah, they definitely are. I mean, you know when you can get 10 or 12% cash on cash, and you know, used to be better than that, but it will those numbers will improve over the years as we see rents go up but of course, rents always lag appreciation. We always say don’t don’t count on the appreciation. It’s just the icing on the cake, but boy, it sure is a nice treat when you get it and sometimes you get it in spades. I mean, it’s just phenomenal. Really is really is so good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah,
Clay Slocum 14:02
I pulled up historical data on that actually I went back to Fannie I think Fannie Mae’s website had had it printed but I went back since I think they had a record it up to last World War Two, maybe even. And, and they just had by decade, you know, home values. And I plotted it all out how just for the audience, I’m an engineer, and I’m also a licensed real estate agent. And so I love the numbers. I’m in the numbers all the time. But regardless, when I use engineer are you I am I’m actually a pavement engineer, which is in the civil engineering realm. Formerly a geotechnical engineer, which is why I think Oliver and I get along so well. He’s a former geologist, sometimes we we nerd out on that topic.
Jason Hartman 14:50
And then in Oliver is your investment counselor with our company, so yeah, it’s good. We have clay. We have so many engineers clients, it just boggles my mind how many of our clients are engineers, and I always used to say, like, when I was in traditional real estate for many years before I got into the investment only side of the business, the most difficult clients to work with were engineers. Because they were just they were, it was very hard for them to make a decision. And, and but now, I love engineers, you know, they’re, they’re, there are our best clients because our approach is so analytical. Our approach to investing is really, you know, it’s just very nice to be able to deal with things on a very sort of rational analytical basis. But I tell you, the one thing about this is that when you invest in single family homes, the most historically proven asset class in the entire world, rather than apartment buildings, or mobile home parks or office buildings or retail centers around You the other types of real estate outside of the single family home realm, you’re dealing with people that see here’s the power okay? You can buy a property with an analytical mind you buy a single family home with an analytical mind you buy it like an investor based on my 10 commandments of successful investing and all the other stuff we teach, but then when you sell it someday, you can sell it to a non analytical person in emotional person who, who will pay you a premium for emotions, okay? You know, I call it the emotionality premium. And and that’s, that’s just a great thing. You know, when you sell, you can sell to either an investor or a regular traditional homebuyer. And when you buy you buy like an investor. So it’s great. All the other types of real estate all the other classes, you buy it hopefully as an investor mind, and you sell it to an investor mind. So you don’t get any emotional. premium. Do you know what I mean by that? Does that make sense?
Clay Slocum 17:02
Oh, you know, I just renewed my license. And so I completely agree. That’s why real estate agents use the comparable sales approach whereas, you know, with multiplexes and everything else like that they like cap rates, and they like the income approach or the cost approach. Yeah, but with comps that, you know, we in order to use comparable properties that that’s how you can account for the human element there. I think.
Jason Hartman 17:30
It really is amazing. Okay, go ahead. Tell us more about your analysis and the other stuff you wanted to talk about.
Clay Slocum 17:37
Oh, yeah. So I mean, I did track the the the median house prices across the United States and it definitely is, it’s asymptotically approaching, it’s actually hovering around 5%. I think it went 464465 something like that, over the period, but I think that’s a pretty good estimate or I’d like to think that that’s going to be a good estimate to go with and, you know if you’re if you’re getting emotional, oh, sorry. Yeah, no, that’s national.
Jason Hartman 18:08
Okay. So that’s a national average. And what time period I know you said Fannie Mae went back even to like World War Two, I think you said, but like, what, what time period are you talking about?
Clay Slocum 18:20
I’m
Jason Hartman 18:22
gonna explain how nerdy I am. I actually did it by a 30 year period, 20 year period, 10 year period, and then a running aggregate period. And they all started so tell me where you started and stopped though, stop and start because I just saw this today. One of my clients, our clients tagged me on Facebook, and someone else had posted this, that they had just read an article that if you wait, the cost of waiting to buy a home in Nashville, Tennessee, okay, Nashville’s not one of our markets always been a little too expensive. So we’ve never been a to recommend Nashville, unfortunately, but we do a lot in Memphis and I think play you own in Memphis as well. And if you wait a year in Nashville, it’ll cost you $32,000. That’s, that’s what the article said. So interesting. It’s a $32,000 per year cost for not making a decision. That was pretty interesting. If you’re in Los Angeles, it’s even more. So that’s why it really matters. see a lot of those surveys, like if you’re looking at Fannie Mae, for example, the last data that they’re posting might be from a couple years ago. I don’t know. That’s why I’m curious as to when you started and stopped, because it makes a pretty big difference if you include the last few years,
Clay Slocum 19:40
right? Yes, yes. No, it does. I don’t know exactly when they stopped it was it was stored data and so I would have to go back and check that but I did like that it was kind of it. The curve was asymptotically, approaching about 5%.
Clay Slocum 19:56
But you know, when when you put that in
Clay Slocum 20:00
Well, I think going back what I was, what I was getting at is if you know if you put in the hundred thousand dollars to start and if you can, you know, if you do get that 32% return, you know, the power of compound interest is so, so big and I think I said at 18 years, you’d be about $14 million. But all it takes is two more periods for you to get back up to about $24 million. And so two periods is $10 million. And that’s, that’s the that’s the numbers. I like to tell my my friends when I’m trying to explain what I’m doing and also see if they have interest because, you know, it’s easy for them to say well see how it goes for you. And you know, oh, maybe it maybe after you know, maybe we can do it after we buy another car or we remodel this part of the house and I just kind of tell them like you know, it pays to do it now. It’s not that I’m not turning this A $20,000 down payment into, you know, into 22 or $23,000. It’s, you know, on a 20% return, it’s the turning a million dollars into $1.2 million or turning turning $10 million into $12 million. Okay, so when you said $10 million per period How long’s a period? What do you mean by that? Oh, a year, if you get a 32% over a single year and turn. So if you take 14 million and then multiply it by, you know, 132%, then and then you essentially do that twice. So two years in a row, you can get that 32% right, then yeah, you get that okay, but
Jason Hartman 21:40
But what did you What did you start with to get to 14 million and how long did you wait, what was the compounding period to get to that? Oh, it was the starting
Clay Slocum 21:49
amount. Gotcha. So 100
Jason Hartman 21:52
were Yeah, yeah. Okay, so $100,000 invested or $100,000 property because we’re throwing around some things numbers here, I want to just make sure we’re clear, you know, compound, the reason Einstein said, compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world is because when it compounds, you keep working with a bigger tool with a bigger war chest. And that war chest gets so big that, you know, once you get to the $14 million number, increasing that by $10 million isn’t I mean, it’s hard, and it takes time, but it’s not incredibly difficult. Like it might sound I mean, I know we’re throwing some huge numbers around. So I almost want to rein that in. And I want to, I want to I know you didn’t do the math for this, but I want to really look at I want to say to the listeners look, even if you got 12% annually or 10% annually, I mean, it’s truly amazing. It’s phenomenal. What you can do in a relatively short time. I mean, I just cannot believe how quickly Life has passed. And the older any of you get, you know, if you’re 30 4050 years old, six years old and older, you know, you just know you. It’s like you remember 20 years ago, like it was yesterday. I mean, every year passes so much faster, you know, from our perception of it does. And it’s just amazing. Like, there’s an old saying, everybody overestimate what they can do in a year. And they underestimate what they can do in five years. You know, and that’s so true. Because the compounding, you know, in a year, you don’t get much compounding can’t go very far. But in three years and four years and five years, you’re starting to see some real compounding going on if you just stay the course. So so go ahead with your thoughts on that clay I interrupted you.
Clay Slocum 23:54
Oh, yeah, no, that was a $100,000 is you’re in investment that’s not a $100,000 property, that’s 100,000, which might be four properties, you know, okay,
Jason Hartman 24:07
so besides thousand dollars each, you know, kinda
Clay Slocum 24:11
and, but if you were to take that out that’s, you know, 18 years get you to 14 million which, you know, maybe it’s a lot easier to think about it as far as just, you know, taking taking that hundred thousand dollars and you know a 20% return on that gets you $120,000 that’s 20,000 you know, $20,000 is a pretty good pretty good money especially to be making passively of sorts, no question about it and like
Jason Hartman 24:40
the iceberg, a lot of this return on investment sits under the water and you don’t notice it, you can’t really see it until later, you know, you wait a few years, and then you do my reply to your diet plan or you sell the properties and you contend 31 exchange them. But if you want to Take the money out, you can do a new vehicle that I’m looking at and I’ll have a guest on to talk about this in the future called a deferred sales trust. deferred sales trust a vehicle I’ve been looking at if you if you want to essentially cash out, okay? And and maybe you don’t want to buy another property now I don’t think that’s the best plan. But it’s a way you can defer gains and extract the wealth from your real estate portfolio slowly and just pay taxes and little dribs and drabs. So it won’t be such a hard hit. So there’s there’s a lot of structure opportunities available and things like that. So yeah, it’s play. Isn’t it? Amazing? You know, when you really look at these, the numbers and the compounding effect, it’s just incredible, isn’t it?
Clay Slocum 25:45
Oh, yeah, it definitely. And that’s why I really am trying to, you know, show all my friends. I have a friend who drives a forklift and I was asking him, you know, how long do you think it would take you to save up the downpayment He said, You know, I probably do that in about 18 months. And so, you know, I actually ran through with him, I said, Okay, if you can take $25,000 and, and put that into a house, and then you get, let’s, let’s just assume conservatively about 24%. And I just walked him through every single year multiplying it by, you know, 1.2, which is 20% increase, and his eyes kept getting wider and wider, and he kind of walked away. And at one point, he looked at me because he’s a high school friend of mine, and he looked at me and he said, why didn’t they teach us this in school? And we just kind of laughed,
Jason Hartman 26:41
because they, they don’t want you to know this, you know, they don’t want you to know this stuff. You know, it’s, it’s an amazing thing. And so you just keep multiplying it by 1.2. And then you take that number and multiply that times 1.2 and you keep doing that over and over again, is truly amazing. You know, we’ve all heard the thing about how you can Take a penny, and double it every day for 30 days, and you have, I think, like $14 million at the end of the month, you know? You know, it really is it really is shocking. And I just want everybody to be careful. If you go, you know, Google compounding calculator or actually don’t Google it, because Google is evil. Dang it, you bring it, you can bring it. Yeah, you heard me say that before you can bring it but you can do even better than bringing it, you can DuckDuckGo it. I think everybody should switch their search engine to DuckDuckGo that does not keep any logs on your searches. So that’s the better thing DuckDuckGo it’s a search engine. And it’s pretty good. I’ve been using it lately. And I like it. It’s good. Yeah. Really, really produces some good results. And so you can use that. Okay. Compounding is the eighth wonder of the world. We talked about that. Tell us about your properties. So how many properties Do you have now playing
Clay Slocum 27:58
I now have I have three and then I also have, well actually, I guess four. So I have three active ones. And then I also pulled off one of the properties, you’re buying it through my self directed 401k. So that was, that was a lot of paperwork. I will I will admit a lot of paperwork. But I was tickled when i when i got it to come through and so I have that and then I guess my and then my, to my wife’s 401k we also have one locally here in California.
Jason Hartman 28:35
Good stuff, good stuff. Okay, good. So congratulations on that. Keep up the good work. What else should we talk about? You want to talk about your experience with any of those properties or anything or Yeah, do you want to talk about working with our investment counselor or, or some of the other questions that we discussed before we started
Clay Slocum 28:53
definitely Yeah, no, I think you know, the, to get some other people who might be on the fence out there. It took me a while to, to buy into the concept of buying out of state. And that’s really one of the things that I really attribute to you guys, you know, you all the podcast and then working with all over extensively in the beginning just kind of working through that and how the numbers worked and the comfort level of it. But you know, one of the things that I think Oliver did the best for me is after talking extensively with him, I think he might have paired me up with you know, like almost like a match com like he paired me up with the perfect local market specialist to fit my, my personality and my my investment philosophy. And so I kind of attributed to him but I’m very, very happy with the way the transactions go and, and the way the interactions kind of all fluidly occur with you know, with me and all of her and the local market specialist and just you know, It, it really has been a pretty seamless process, which I didn’t necessarily anticipate, but I’m thrilled that it has worked out that way. So
Jason Hartman 30:12
glad to hear it. It’s excellent. Yes. Good stuff. Yeah. Okay, good. No, you you wanted to talk about also some legal questions and you have a bunch of things here that you sent me on my appointment request. What else? Just take it wherever you want.
Clay Slocum 30:28
Oh, I have lots of questions. Um, I think, let me let me finish up on on the Memphis market. I did do an analysis that that all of her was was thinking would be beneficial for some people to have because I ended up running the numbers. I was a little bit concerned. I mean, out here in the Socialist Republic of California, I see a bubble already occurring again. I and you know, I see what’s real what is happening in the Bay Area. There’s another bubble going on. So I’m I’m in fear that maybe there’s a correction coming. But I had to go back and I, you know, it’s not perfect data but Zillow Does, does have a, a list of essentially the median housing price. And they have it published for Memphis. And so I went back into that, and I was able to kind of plot the entire, you know, January 2008, all the way through their anticipated January 2018 median housing prices. And so I actually plotted you know, the the depreciation that occurred during the during the bubble, you know, during the burst of the bubble, and then kind of the tumultuous news that occurred for the next few years followed by the rise that we’ve seen in the last couple few years. And then I put all those you know, different depreciation and appreciation numbers into you know, my performer and I did an analysis I needed to see what was going to make sense because The thing I had to get over was not being the, you know, analysis of proud, you know, paralysis of analysis. Maybe I should put my money in, you know, in a bank account until the bubble burst guy, you know? Yeah, good luck with that
Jason Hartman 32:15
idea. I’ve seen many people try it over the decades, and this is where I even agree with the stock market people I hate to say, but market timing does not work. Okay. You know, you can you can sort of nip at it around the edges. I’ll admit that, that, you know, of course, you want to be smart. And of course, there are some things to consider when it comes to market timing, but the pure market timers, they just never end up
Clay Slocum 32:44
as good as the people who just get their money in the market and get it working for them. And that’s what actually penciled out. I was I was a little bit surprised to find this, but essentially, I modeled four scenarios. One of them was the You know, the investor who wasn’t wasn’t decided they wanted to keep their money in the bank. And they wrote out the whole, you know, downturn and then the tomato business and invested at the exact right moment, you know, at the low in which occurred in January 2016. So I modeled what that, you know, what would that would look like followed by in January
Jason Hartman 33:21
2016 is not the low. I mean, you know,
Clay Slocum 33:24
if you look at the, if you actually look at the Memphis market, there was January 2016 was lower than January 2015.
Jason Hartman 33:35
And so, there was some volatility for some reason in the market right there. And so, you know, what I attribute that to, I bet it was the hedge funds and the private equity groups that were beating up the market. So, that’s a small anomaly. But I think to do that, right, you’d really have to go back to like, 2009 2010 you know, to look at a study like that, but but go ahead,
Clay Slocum 33:57
tell us what you did. Yeah, no, no, no, there was definite depreciation for for the first two, three years, and then it was kind of flat a little gain. And then 2016 was was the low again. But essentially, the way that it penciled out is, if you were to invest, you know, let’s take $100,000 investment again, if you were to take $100,000 and get a single year’s return based on, you know, some of the performances and then go through the exact downturn that occurred based on that median housing price. By the time that you know that that person that stash their cash in the bank, you know, making pretty much nothing, got their money involved. After the volatility in 2016 ish. You know, everything had already come back up and the person that had gotten just a single years of single year of a performance pulled ahead, and so that was the One of the things that really helped me feel like, you know, if I can’t time this, and you know, if I, if I don’t want to look at my crystal ball, then hey, you know what this person not only did pretty well, but they, you know, there’s a chance that they came out ahead of the person who was kind of waiting for the dust to settle.
Jason Hartman 35:18
Yeah, then so there’s so play, there’s that old saying, We’ve all heard it, you know, keep your powder dry. Right? We’ve all heard that saying, and there’s some validity to that in some areas of life. But the problem of market timing is that the human mind has this bias, that it does not see the cost of waiting. Nobody really interprets that opportunity cost of waiting very well. Our minds just don’t do that. But it does interpret the cost of losing. So say for example, you invest and the prices go down. Now of course, since we’re all smart investors listening to this. Or if you’re new, you’re not smart yet, but you’ll be smart soon. Right? I promise. And, you know, we understand that income property is a multi dimensional asset class. So, you know, I talked about the three dimensions of real estate, there’s really many more than that. But, you know, even if the prices go down, you know, we still have the return on investment, from cash flow from cash on cash return. So, our bias just looks at prices. Number one, that’s the way most people think they think, Well, you know, I bought this house in Los Angeles, and I paid $500,000 for it, and the market tanked. And it went down to 350 or $400,000. Right, and I lost 100 grand or 150 grand, and that’s what everybody sees, but, or they bought the property in Memphis, and the market went down. It went from 120,000 to 100,000. So I lost 20%, but they never see the amount of money They made from the cash flow and from the tax benefits and the other benefits. And they they don’t see that, that they lost that money by waiting. You know, it’s just funny how our minds work. We’ve got to overcome our own mind. A lot of time, don’t we?
Clay Slocum 37:17
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah, that that bias
Jason Hartman 37:21
is there. Yeah. I mean, even if you’re an engineer, you have the same brain that all the rest of us have. And the way you overcome it, is by doing what you did, and really doing a study, and really looking at the numbers, and really evaluating opportunity, cost, opportunity cost is a cost that most people don’t see. They don’t evaluate properly. And it’s just an oddity of the way our brains work. I’m not sure why but I’m sure we just had to have that it’s built in from evolution. And it’s there for some reason,
Clay Slocum 37:56
right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Clay Slocum 38:00
And then to to carry on the the other two, two scenarios Iran is the the investor that invests the money and then gets two straight years of of returns based on the performer and then goes through the same, you know, median house fall that we saw in 2008. Nine and that person never went below their original price. And so, you know, if you think it’s going to happen in a year or two years or you don’t know, that was that was really powerful to see that if you know unless you can do it to the day. It makes sense to get it in there and let it start compounding and getting the cash on cash. But you’ll you’ll appreciate this, this last scenario ran and that was I pulled up s&p 500 numbers from the downturn and and then I used historic averages and I ran the same scenario and I took it out about 20 years. And I’ll just talk in terms of percentages here. But yeah, it was about 5% it was only one 20th of what the investment properties ended up yielding in a 20 year period.
Jason Hartman 39:14
Wow, isn’t that amazing one 20th. And this is why we don’t none of us ever know anybody who got rich in the stock market. Unless, unless they’re an insider, right? That’s the only ones who ever get rich in the stock market. But um, we all know lots of people who got rich in real estate isn’t isn’t that just, you know, the reason why true because the stocks don’t have the multi dimensional characteristics the income property does. And so that’s a that’s a very important thing to consider. It certainly is. Okay, hey, Clay, we gotta wrap it up. But is there anything else quick that we can talk about before we say goodbye?
Clay Slocum 39:51
Yeah, I mean, if I if you don’t mind, I’m going to open up two cans of worms and you can answer them however you want or choose to hold them off, but You know, I guess the
Jason Hartman 40:01
I have a feeling I know one of those cans of worms, it takes like, three hours to answer but
Clay Slocum 40:06
go for it, just just the whole concept of when to think about putting properties into an LLC and kind of detaching them from your own personal assets and whatnot. And then the second one is just whether there is a place or the best place to go to try to understand, you know, the in an easy fashion, the tax aspect of investment properties. And so I’ll leave it to you to take us out. I’ll
Jason Hartman 40:34
take those two and answer them as quickly as I can. So first of all, the question of entity structuring and asset protection is extremely complicated. I’ve had Garrett Sutton on the show several times. He’s a good attorney in that in that field. I’ve talked about it several times. I’m not a lawyer. But I want to say this one thing that so few people understand And that is the concept of the internal threat versus the external threat. When it comes to asset protection, most people, again, there’s some for some reason they have this bias and it really makes them dumb and blind or you know, and in here, here it is the bias is that they think all about the internal threat, meaning the threat that exists inside of the asset. So with income property investing, that’s usually the tenant. Okay. Now, in all these years, I’ve never been sued by tenant. Okay, so, I mean, I’ve had hundreds of tenants, okay. But and, you know, just never had any legal problems with tenants. Okay. I’ve had legal problems in business for sure. You know, especially with what I say on the podcast, some people get bothered by what I say when i when i out there crooked behavior. But anyway, you know, that’s one of the things we have to deal with, right. So that isn’t external threat. So let’s take me as an example. This is a good I’ll just use myself as the example to explain this. So I’ve got all these rental properties and all these tenants, right? And if one of them slips and falls, and you know, and Sue’s me because they say it’s my fault, they have the slip and fall, the famous thing you always hear about right? That I’ve never ever with thousands of investor clients heard of that happening, that lawsuit. I’ve never heard of it. I’m not saying it hasn’t happened. I’ve just never heard of it. Okay, so none of our clients have ever told me, oh, attendance slipped and fell on their property and sued them. In fact, I don’t think any of my clients ever, ever even told me a tenant has ever sued them. And I know that I haven’t been sued by a tenant, you know, bought my first property at age 20. And then all these years, you know, just never happened. Right? Okay. So that’s one thing. That’s an internal threat. And that threat is very easy to ensure around to just have good insurance and make sure you renew your insurance policy on time. So it doesn’t lapse. Okay. That’s pretty easy to insure around. Okay? Now, the external threat is and let’s use me as the example. So here I’m doing this podcast. And I stumbled on this, you know, property manager who’s ripping me off and ripping my clients off in Kansas City. I talked about it on the show, he Sue’s me, that is an external threat, or at least it’s external to the properties I own. Right. So if that guy was able to sue me and win and get a judgment against me, then he could go looking for assets that I have in my personal name, right? Or in states, even in entities in states that aren’t, you know, friendly to the investor. And and he could get a judgment and then go domesticate that judgment in that state. And say, you know what, this guy owes me money. He hasn’t paid me and I want in court, blah, blah, blah. And he has a house in the Socialist Republic of California. And even if that house in California is inside an LLC, it doesn’t matter, I can foreclose on the shares in the LLC or the corporation, and I can get that asset. Okay? Now as Garrett Sutton explained, and again, I’m not an attorney, I gotta say that I’m just speaking from my own personal knowledge as a layman. So check this out, you know, reach out to Garrett Sutton or any attorney that knows this field and ask them for details. I’m just giving you the concept. Okay. But if if I have that property in a Wyoming LLC, as Garrett explained when he was on my show, and he’ll probably be speaking at our upcoming meet the Masters again in January, he’s spoke at the last two of them, then they can still get that judgment. But until I take the asset out of the LLC. They can’t attack. Okay, when it’s inside that LLC, it’s protected. If it’s in California, it’s not if it’s in another state that’s unfriendly, it’s not. Here is another big complication about all this stuff. When you start crossing state lines, it gets very complicated and this is why you really need to talk to Garrett or another attorney and get this straightened out if you if you even go down this path because it’s it’s a fairly complicated path. Okay. What happens is say you have the Wyoming LLC, but you know, Wyoming is not a place we necessarily recommend to buy properties right there. We haven’t found like good investments there. So you might buy properties in Tennessee, or in Florida or Indiana, Indiana, and or wherever we recommend. And then you have those properties owned by your wife. LLC. Well, then you have to register most of the time. I don’t think you have to do it in every state, but in most states you do. You have to register it in that state, like it’s doing business in that state. And then the question is, what laws apply the laws of Indiana, or Florida or Texas or Tennessee or the laws of Wyoming? And these become murky, complicated issues. Okay. Now, note that I’ve only talked about the internal threats so far. Now, let’s talk about the external threat. Okay. So the external threat is here I am doing my podcast and I explained that you know, the guy in Kansas City and you know, he could sue me and get a judgment and so on so forth, right, or the property tax lien company in Georgia or South Carolina or wherever the heck their base because it’s complicated. They’ve played the game. Right, just like we’re talking about, right, and so I don’t even know where they really exist to tell you the truth, okay? But the external threat is you know, you’re driving your car, you get in an accident, the insurance doesn’t cover all of the damages, or you say something on your podcast, or you run a business or you’re a doctor and you have a high liability business or whatever, right? That’s the external threat. So the external and the internal threat are different threats. And with the internal threat, the tenant suing you, for example, they can still get that asset from the inside, okay? And the best way to protect the asset from the inside is to either have that asset, you know, own through a bunch of structures or just have good insurance. Good insurance is the best asset protection if you asked me, the other one is a high loan balance, so leverage the assets so there’s not much equity in the asset to get The external threat is a different set of circumstances. Okay? So again, this stuff is complicated. It’s most people just massively oversimplify it. They go to one of these, these disgusting In my opinion, Mills that all just sell you a bunch of entities and they don’t really consider what you’re doing, you know, you need someone to thoughtfully consider this stuff with you. Okay. And the other thing is, once you set up all these entities, then you got to start keeping everything separate. And there’s like governance, things that you have to do and follow some formalities and, and you know, you gotta maintain them and it’ll cost you money every year to maintain them. You know, it all can be done, but I’m just saying, you gotta really think it through. Okay, so how’s that for an answer? I know I didn’t answer it. But did I confuse you?
Clay Slocum 48:51
Start with the start.
Jason Hartman 48:53
Yeah, it’s a it’s a start to the road down confusion and complexity. So there you go. And then the other problem is If you put your properties inside of LLC, it’s going to be harder to refinance them later. Okay. So that’s a whole nother ball of wax. Oh, it’s also harder to insure them because the insurance becomes a little more complicated too. Okay. Okay, so Okay. All your tax No, let’s let’s take your tax question clay. Okay. So, tax question. So if you really want to learn about taxation, there are certainly many courses out there that you can buy and things like that. And I don’t have one to recommend, unfortunately. But h&r block, teaches courses. And I was going to take one several years ago just because I wanted to improve my own knowledge. But the problem is they’re not focused and they’re not targeted. They’re mostly just how to fill out the forms. Okay. They basically teach you how to become an enrolled agent, basically. Right? And so they have courses, but one of the best ways I think you can learn about this stuff is to simply buy a software like turbo packs, or, you know, there’s many others out there too, right. And you can buy one of those software’s and try doing your own tax return. I’m not saying that’s the return, you want to turn into the IRS. But just by going through the exercise of using the software, you’re going to learn some stuff. I have not done this. But I think it could be a good education. The other thing you can do is you can just listen to my podcast. And if you haven’t listened to some of the interviews I’ve done with tax experts over the years, go to Jason Hartman calm and use the search engine there and find those interviews and just listen to them and they will help you and you can reach out to those professionals and talk to them and ask them questions. I will tell you one that I did not have a very good experience with is Kohler. Okay, so I had them do my taxes one year and I did not like the experience at all. I found his law firm to be a little bit better than that, but you know, had some issues there as well. But tax wise I didn’t like my experience. Okay. I hope it doesn’t sue me for saying that. You see how my businesses external threat. But you know, I mean, I like him. He’s a nice guy and all but I just did not like the experience using his tax firm. We’ve interviewed some others on the show that, you know, I’d recommend had some good experiences with If nothing else, you can learn some things from them. Okay, and just learn some things by listening to that interview. Does that help? Does it make sense?
Clay Slocum 51:30
Yes, yeah. No, it does. It does. Okay, good.
Jason Hartman 51:34
Good stuff. Well, Clay Slocum, our client, thank you for bringing some of these issues up sharing some of your research. I appreciate it. The power of compounding. Very important. Don’t like like Robert Allen says the old saying, don’t wait to buy real estate. buy real estate and then wait. And I just want to wish all of you happy investing to you clay and to all of our listeners. And thanks so much for coming on and sharing your story to
Clay Slocum 52:02
today. Thanks, Jason.
Jason Hartman 52:06
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