Buying More A Class Houses, Things that WILL Affect Housing Prices, Are We Real Estate Curious?

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] We have a ton of value, a ton of opportunity to like bring to sellers right now, even if they aren't like heavily motivated, just because they There's no one to buy stuff. And there are tons of people out there that have great assets that just wanna be done with the property and they will sell it to you at a discount because you're the best option. What's going on, guys? Welcome to this episode of the Collecting Keys Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today, I have exciting news. Dan is kicking off with a news brief that he is so excited about. Dan, take it away.

Dan Austin: [0:40] Oh my god, you're such a check ass.

Mike DeHaan: [0:42] Alright. Never mind, we'll scratch that. I've got

Dan Austin: [0:44] a good, I do have a good news update though. Side note, the news brief will come and it's gonna be better than what Mike can do when

Mike DeHaan: [0:50] I Alright. Do So there you go, there's Dan after he was talking mad trash right after this. But welcome to the real estate investing

Dan Austin: [0:56] All your topics were boring. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [0:58] Now you know, it's just news though. Right? But welcome to the real estate investing podcast, guys, where I, Mike DeHaan and my cohost here at Dan Austin, talk about real estate investing, business, and whatever else we feel like. And after Dan was sharing some very strong opinions about how boring like news update shows are, I figured that he would, you know, have something more exciting that he wanted to share with you today.

Dan Austin: [1:20] I do enjoy a good, you know, market update, but the data points you had were boring.

Mike DeHaan: [1:25] Well, thing is though is like honestly if you look at the economy right now, especially with real estate, it kind of is really fucking boring. Especially after we were just on the methamphetamine driven like insane market for the last three years. Right now where it's kinda you're just kinda flat and it's just a stalemate. Like people aren't even talking about if it's gonna crash anymore or if it's gonna go up. All that talk's over. Everyone's just kind of stopped talking about real estate in general.

Dan Austin: [1:55] Yeah. There's like,

Mike DeHaan: [1:55] ugh. You know? It's not exciting. It is. It's super unexciting. So like the couple points that were sent over are that home sales are pretty much like the same. So boring. Like they're not a lot has gone up, now it's gone down, but more people are looking at houses. So there's more real estate curious people out there. Right? And and then with like volume of, I guess, like price points, right, in different markets. The biggest drop year over year is in Austin, Texas, which is no surprise, which is only down 7%. Most markets have changed less than a percent across The United States. So there's like nothing from year over year. It's just exactly the same. Really? Just flat. You know, and this is despite interest rates. This is despite, you know, the affordability issue, the housing issue, all this sort of stuff. That's just kinda like whatever in the real estate thing right now. Okay.

Dan Austin: [2:46] It's just like whatever. Wanna know what's not boring is the Wins channel and the Instant Investor group. That thing was popping this week. Yeah. On fire, tons of wins. If you're not part of the Instant Investor group, you're missing out. It's time to jump in because it is it's actually a lot of fun right Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [3:02] So the instant investors are group mastermind and I mean I don't know what happened over the last month, but I feel like literally all of the members just found their stride. Yep. And there have just been deals popping off left and right all over the place. It's been super fun to see. We have good guys. One guy said that he made I mean, I've already talked about this one last week too. I don't remember. But he made as much in a week as he used to make it like his old salary

Dan Austin: [3:24] Yeah. It's pretty sick.

Mike DeHaan: [3:25] That he had just last year.

Dan Austin: [3:26] And that is the power of real estate, ladies and gentlemen.

Mike DeHaan: [3:28] It is. And that's the thing too is as I've looked at how that's the people there have started to really scale up looking at our own business talking to other friends that we have in the business. Even like the fact that real estate is kind of flat on a consumer end, I think is actually a really good sign for investors, especially if you're doing direct to seller marketing and sales, which if you wanna make actual money in this business, you should be. You shouldn't be relying on some realtor to bring you stuff. Like you can't wait for opportunities, you have to seek opportunities if you wanna do anything seriously in life. And like we have a ton of value and ton of opportunity to like bring to sellers right now, even if they aren't like heavily motivated, just because they, there's no one to buy stuff.

Dan Austin: [4:12] Totally. And there

Mike DeHaan: [4:13] are tons of people out there that have great assets that just wanna be done with the property, and they will sell it to you at a discount because you're the best option. Besides going on the market

Dan Austin: [4:22] They're tired of people walking through their house on the Yeah. The real estate curious walk throughs when they're just showing up to these open houses in their neighborhood. You know what

Mike DeHaan: [4:30] I mean? Like, they're tired

Dan Austin: [4:31] of that. They're like, you're not a real buyer.

Mike DeHaan: [4:33] Yeah. I like that real estate curious. We should definitely make that I'm That's real estate curious just funny.

Dan Austin: [4:38] Oh, dang. There you go. Can we put some graphics on it?

Mike DeHaan: [4:42] Yeah. We definitely Hey, Daniel. When you listen to this, you should put make an I I'm real estate curious shirt.

Dan Austin: [4:47] Please

Mike DeHaan: [4:47] do. Yeah. Daniel's our our designer. He does a lot of our our swag and different things. Can we in this shirt, can we have a rainbow in

Dan Austin: [4:55] the background with a unicorn jumping out of it?

Mike DeHaan: [4:57] We gotta be careful. We're getting on. We're getting on sensitive subjects. That's the

Dan Austin: [5:02] bottom line. Alright. I went too far. Dan went too far.

Mike DeHaan: [5:06] But no. So like, I mean, even right now, we're closing on a property here. They're buying on seller finance. We're buying it on seller finance with awesome turns and at a discount, purely because it's older and they're like, we could sell it on the market. We know it needs a tiny bit of work. It's an A class neighborhood out here in North Idaho. Yep. But they're willing to take the hit just because they don't want to deal with the process. They know that if they put it on the market, they're just gonna get beat down by inspections and stuff and end up selling at a discount anyway. So they might as well just take the sure thing. And that is happening all over the place. Like, we had two people this week get houses with pools in the instant investor program.

Dan Austin: [5:44] Nice houses.

Mike DeHaan: [5:44] Very nice

Dan Austin: [5:45] houses. With pools. Yeah. Nice pools too. Not like the ones we've seen with the waters like still like good and

Mike DeHaan: [5:52] water slides and stuff. And it's funny. They they they were sitting over. Was like, this like a listing that you get? And he's like, no.

Dan Austin: [5:56] Yeah. Is that your comp?

Mike DeHaan: [5:58] Yeah. This is the actual house that I'm buying. I was like, damn. Yeah. I would love to live in that house, let alone own it as an investor.

Dan Austin: [6:05] For sure.

Mike DeHaan: [6:06] Yeah. It's a really, really interesting time. And, you know, I think that, if you were kind of on the fringe of starting to market or just like, double down on building your business systems, it is time to start taking this seriously. Because the longer the stalemate goes on, the more and more those people that are considering selling and are realizing they might not be able to have a simple process they hoped on the market, they're gonna consider you as an option. Even if it means they get 10 or 15% less for their property.

Dan Austin: [6:35] Totally. And like, think I think about it this way, like the image I have, it's not a good image, but it's like, okay, so you're gonna go list your house with a real estate agent, maybe you have a perfect house, or maybe you have kind of a house that needs a little bit of work, maybe it a rental property previously, you have tenants to deal with, whatever. Your real estate agent is going to come in, they're gonna do all this stuff with you, take some photos, good or bad, who knows, they're gonna go put a sign up in front, then they're gonna schedule a couple walk throughs with people, they're going to have an open house on a Saturday, and maybe even a Sunday, which is really just to help them build out their list, or people that they can cold call after that, right? They're gonna do all these things that are like the standard checkbox realtor that haven't changed. Or they're gonna have somebody that comes in that mails to them, directly markets to them, comes in with a value first mindset of like, how can I help you sell this house? Like, what can I do to actually release this burden from you and let you do what you're trying to do, what what your end state goals are?

Mike DeHaan: [7:28] Yeah. Exactly. It's a totally different value add, right?

Dan Austin: [7:31] So if you're showing up with that mindset, you're gonna blow a real estate agent out of nine the times out of 10 on on value and service that you can provide these people. Yeah. That's why to your point, this is a great time why the retail side is just a bunch of real estate curious people walking through houses, for you to come in and start chipping away at some of these deals. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [7:48] Exactly. And you know, and don't be like a greedy dick. Like, don't go in and offer someone 50¢ on the dollar for that turnkey house.

Dan Austin: [7:54] Yeah. That's not how it works.

Mike DeHaan: [7:55] People always do that shit and I'm like, don't understand how I'm supposed to get deals. Like, I don't get any deal.

Dan Austin: [8:00] I can't find any like no shit.

Mike DeHaan: [8:02] I know like we have we have, you know, some of our partner clients right now. They're new to this. Right? And they'll get in and we'll have a house and they're like, I want to get it for 200. And was like, well, says it's worth $5.20. And then a week later, this I was like, I signed with somebody else for $3.30. I'm like, well, no shit. Like, that makes perfect sense.

Dan Austin: [8:20] That's actually a good price

Mike DeHaan: [8:22] for everybody. But yeah, but you're seeing it across the board. I mean, we had we had another one we signed for one of our partners down in Central Idaho, that was literally listed on the market two months ago for $6.75. And we just got a set around a 500. And the house is literally turnkey. Right? The story with it was they listed a little bit high, dropped price, dropped price, dropped price, Just lost favor on the market because it had been up for a while and everyone's like, what's wrong with it? I don't wanna look at that one anymore. And they're looking to move out of town and there's like, we need to get this thing over with. We set it at 500. The play will be to like basically vacuum the carpets, do some basic handyman touch ups, throw it on the market for $5.99. Easy. It's gonna be like slam dunk. It's gonna require almost nothing. So, you know, I mean, it's it's interesting. That's kind of been the joke as well as you've been talking, you know, with some of our coaching clients and some of our partners too is, we have all these stories about dealing with crackheads and trap houses and all sorts of things like that. Is it the bulk of our deals? No, it's actually not. I would say we've we've had a massive reduction in those deals, primarily because those people have nowhere to go.

Dan Austin: [9:29] Uh-huh.

Mike DeHaan: [9:29] So they're just gonna stay in their situation. And there's been a huge increase of deals that are more Yeah. Turnkey, like super light rehab ready to go properties, just because like those people have the ability to sell and move somewhere. And they really just need the convenience and that is where the value is right now.

Dan Austin: [9:45] How much longer are we gonna do this? They just raise rates Yeah. Again, what, today actually this will get released a week later. So the question is how long will this retail stalemate last? And then is that when the feeding ground is over for these types of deals in our business? Or is the flood gates going to open if they start dropping I don't know. Rates?

Mike DeHaan: [10:04] That's always a key question, isn't it? I mean, at this point, like, I don't think their decision on rates impacts everything because it's been what like 11 times in a row. So everyone's like, old news, I'm kinda done with it. Is it a what, yeah. But you know, I think that the important thing is as you are looking at marketing and making offers that you really are sure to analyze opportunities like for yourself, and like what you can buy them for, and you know, not like sort of put yourself in a box, or have these biases based off of like certain kinds of properties that you're interested in or like certain areas of town, things like that. Because if you do that, if you kind of limit yourself, you are the first person that loses when things start to change. Like you need to be willing to be flexible and analyze all sides of a deal, regardless of what the seller says they want for the house, regardless of where it is, regardless of whether you'd want to live there. That's always a big thing that's shocking to me is there's investors that are like, I only want to buy properties places I want to live. It's like, fine. It means you don't wanna make any money. That's cool. I don't care. Yeah. But like having that holistic view and understanding how to recognize opportunity, it makes it so that when this stops, it doesn't really matter because you get good at being an opportunist and not just like going by whatever the current trend is, so.

Dan Austin: [11:23] Yeah, I would imagine there's a lot of people right now that aren't able to move forward because they only had one Mhmm. Type one speed and that was like brr.

Mike DeHaan: [11:30] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [11:31] You know, for your typical real estate investors that we've seen out there flooding into the market, hey, I have to buy a property, which they probably weren't getting great deals on anyways, but because the market was going up and rates were locked down at zero Mhmm. They were able to burr most everything that they could get their hands on, and now that that's not an option, it's like brakes are on, can't go to the next level, can't go to the next step, can't keep buying. So what do you do?

Mike DeHaan: [11:54] Some sidelines for two years? Yeah. I mean, that's what people do. Right? It's just like how in 2021, there was all the people that said, we have never bought houses with tenants, so we will not do that still. Yeah. Right? And what was the number one motivator that you and me made literally millions of dollars off of in 2021 was properties with tenants. Yeah. Because you couldn't evict them. That was the biggest stress point for most people across the country. Right? Especially here in Washington where people are super hard. And literally, the process was, okay, we buy the house, we knock on the door, we say, hey, mister tenant, you've been causing problems. We own this house now. We'll pay you $1,500 to leave and they go, sweet. And then they leave. And we did that so many times. Yep. Worked like a charm. Yeah. We we had several houses. We made $50.60 plus thousand dollars by having a ten minute conversation that the previous owner was afraid to have. Okay. But then the thing is too is we get those deals and the reason we started buying those is we try to wholesale them and be like, oh, bro, I don't do anything with tenants.

Dan Austin: [12:56] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [12:56] I remember the first couple we did like that. I was super nervous about it. And then we're like, oh, that was easy. Like, let's just do it again. And I think we only got bit once.

Dan Austin: [13:05] Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I'm trying to think of another time. Remember the well, remember the one we sold to our act manager and she just basically went in there and like almost drugged the tooth out because he didn't wanna leave the tenant. Yeah. Right? Because we wholesaled it and then she was going to take care of She got under a contract and she really wanted it. It was a cute house, she said. Mhmm. And so she, yeah, had the deal with the tenant and it was like a big step for her to realize, because the guy was a dirtbag.

Mike DeHaan: [13:26] Oh, yeah.

Dan Austin: [13:27] And you know, we would have done the same thing to get him out or paid him or whatever. And so she finally went in there and basically dragged him

Mike DeHaan: [13:32] out of there. I think

Dan Austin: [13:32] she told him she was gonna drag him out

Mike DeHaan: [13:34] if he didn't leave. Yeah. Well, she also brought her husband who was like a huge black dude. Yeah. He is a pretty intimidating. Nice guy. Super nice guy.

Dan Austin: [13:41] Intimidate. She's definitely one I'd be more afraid of.

Mike DeHaan: [13:43] For sure. But she was like small, you know, and like just wasn't gonna have the same power.

Dan Austin: [13:47] Yeah. Yeah. Small little blonde girl.

Mike DeHaan: [13:48] You gotta do what you gotta do. But, you know, I've that's like perfect example of it. Right? Of like, that was a house that we bought that from a affluent homeowner. Right? Property owner. They were actually a professor at Gonzaga where we both went to school. They were sympathetic towards us, first took advantage of them. No one else really wanted to buy it. She just started with us and wanted to get into a flip. So we sold it to her. And then she saw the problem. And then she had her own problems with the renovation, but that was also But anyways, yeah. So so we got going on with our stuff. We have had a closing frenzy this

Dan Austin: [14:21] week.

Mike DeHaan: [14:22] You have a bunch of stuff closing left to right, which is always just a good test of the process. I mean, think if everything closes, what, should be like ten or something by the end of the week.

Dan Austin: [14:31] Yeah. Yeah. We'll see how things work out. We've got a couple things just kinda teeter tottering as typical with escrow.

Mike DeHaan: [14:36] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [14:36] It was funny in our kickoff today, I was talking about the the title people. I was I finally got ahold of the front desk and I was like, here's the deal. If this lady can't call me back, I want another escrow officer assigned to me. And so immediately, another escrow officer calls me and she's like, what's going on with this? And I was like, blah blah blah. She's like, she hasn't called you back? And I was like, no. She's like, I'm on this. And then literally thirty minutes later, things started moving. I was like, sometimes you just gotta put your foot down with the title company and really get after it, which they got a lot going on too, guess.

Mike DeHaan: [15:05] Yeah. It's so just like crazy to me how prevalent of a problem it is. I mean, more in like 20 markets across the country now.

Dan Austin: [15:13] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [15:13] And the only one that has a closing agent that I like is Spokane because we have built that relationship over years and we have the lady that we work with here. She's on it.

Dan Austin: [15:24] Sure. She's on it. It's actually worse that she's on it because I'm like, we're having to buy. She's like, well, know you're supposed to close on the property on the twenty eighth. I'm like, that's two days away.

Mike DeHaan: [15:32] Yeah. And we're buying

Dan Austin: [15:32] the property. Like, we are with our money. It's like, oh crap.

Mike DeHaan: [15:35] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [15:36] No. I like her that we actually have a lawyer down in Mississippi that's on our Like, he can like literally close a property. I don't know how he does it, but he can like close a property in three days. That's pretty sick. Like, those are the kind of people once you get them, like whatever they charge, who cares. If they email you or call you, email and call them right back immediately. Always like, especially with those types of people. I mean in general, anytime you're dealing with anything in business really, be the first to respond. I think that always goes a long way with people. But definitely with your title companies, if you're having and working with somebody that responds quickly, match that and mirror that, because you're gonna get even better service out of them.

Mike DeHaan: [16:08] Yeah. And it's one of the most underrated relationships, I think for new investors, is they think like, oh, I'll just find a title company. And even a lot of our partners they do this, they're like, oh, I don't know, I'll find one when we get deals moving. And so I was like, no. You establish that now. It's like, no, you don't know this. You don't know this, right? If we get a weird seller that needs to close in two weeks because they have a pre foreclosure or tax lien Yeah. Or they're, you know, they're trying to leave town because they did something illegal and they're not gonna tell you about it, right? Need to have that relationship already established or you're not gonna get it done. Mhmm.

Dan Austin: [16:39] Right? Yeah. And that person you you would hope when you connect with them, understands the long game, because there is going to be some, there are going to be some transactions where they're going to have to do a little bit more work than they're used to doing Mhmm. Because you are dealing with some weird situations or whatever happens. But if they can really understand and see the long game, and this goes with obviously anybody in your sphere of influence, but definitely with your transaction team, because that long game, they're going to make more than enough money on all the transactions you're gonna bring them. You're not a one and done or two and done. You're going to bring them fifty year. That's huge for them and their business.

Mike DeHaan: [17:13] Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's just like every other sort of business. Right? If you can be one of their 20% of clients that's 80% of their revenue

Dan Austin: [17:21] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [17:22] Gonna treat you the best. Right? That eighty twenty rule

Dan Austin: [17:25] is massive. They're gonna treat you the best. You might get a fruit basket at Christmas.

Mike DeHaan: [17:28] I mean, yeah. Did we get one this year? I don't know if we did.

Dan Austin: [17:31] I don't know. I don't know.

Mike DeHaan: [17:33] I guess we didn't do enough business this year. We got one two years ago.

Dan Austin: [17:36] Yeah. We didn't meet the tier, the fruit basket tier.

Mike DeHaan: [17:39] Yeah. Right. We got one in 2021. I remember.

Dan Austin: [17:43] But And you ate it all?

Mike DeHaan: [17:44] Did I? I thought you went well, I mean, it probably went to UPS store and everything rotted because we only get stuff there once a month. I have

Dan Austin: [17:49] no idea. Yeah. You're right. I don't remember. But Anyways.

Mike DeHaan: [17:53] Anyways. Have you heard about this new social media platform?

Dan Austin: [17:56] Wait. I'm still on threads. What are you talking about?

Mike DeHaan: [17:59] No. No. Is it the one on next one now? It's called x. Oh. Have you actually not heard?

Dan Austin: [18:04] I can already tell you it's gonna fail by X because yeah. I am out of the news loop this week I guess.

Mike DeHaan: [18:08] Have you actually not heard about this? X? No. Austin, I'm so excited. Am I missing Yeah. You're totally missing something. The X social media platform. Look it up under your phone right now.

Dan Austin: [18:17] Ex social media. What am I gonna get on here?

Mike DeHaan: [18:20] I'm just so excited for your

Dan Austin: [18:22] Ex social media. Get more qualified clients using social media and digital TV. Okay.

Mike DeHaan: [18:27] Apparently, they

Dan Austin: [18:28] didn't show up. Is that not the right one? No. Okay.

Mike DeHaan: [18:30] So Elon Musk has officially rebranded Twitter as X.

Dan Austin: [18:36] Oh, no way. Are you why?

Mike DeHaan: [18:38] I don't know dude. Because when you have a multi billion dollar company that's floundering, you might as well do something wacky trying to figure it out.

Dan Austin: [18:45] It still says Twitter on my phone though.

Mike DeHaan: [18:46] Yeah. I mean it still says it, so they can't figure out how to change the handle. But yeah, so if you look it up, changed the profile picture, and it's like all this campaign about how it's x now. But the funny thing is is Oh, I see it. This. Yeah. There you go. But people are are joking. There's, you know, like videos and stuff on there and people are saying, oh, yeah. It's on like the new x videos. That's like a porn site, I guess. Oh, that's

Dan Austin: [19:13] so I wonder if he did it like that. Like, I could see him doing it that way. It's just I mean,

Mike DeHaan: [19:17] could be. He kinda trolls that way. But Someone pointed this out to me the other day about this is how, you know, Elon Musk kind of is. Think about the models of Tesla. Okay? So we have the Model S, the Model three,

Dan Austin: [19:28] the Model X, the Model Y. Yeah yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [19:30] You see this?

Dan Austin: [19:31] Yeah yeah, it's spelled sexy.

Mike DeHaan: [19:32] Spelled sexy, yeah. That's just like him at at it's core.

Dan Austin: [19:35] Oh yeah, and everything's like, he'll price things for like $4.20 or 69 or something like that. I'm like, dude, what is going on? You're like a dude in your fifties, this may be 60. I'm laughing. I mean,

Mike DeHaan: [19:47] I get it. Stupid, man.

Dan Austin: [19:48] I guess the so this is one of their posts. It was just says more words more words more words over and over again.

Mike DeHaan: [19:52] Can't see that because it's all Oh, yeah. It's on your brain light.

Dan Austin: [19:56] Sorry. Yeah. Oh, my bad. Yeah. Just says more words more words more words like a 100 times. That's the Twitter's post called the x.

Mike DeHaan: [20:04] That's funny. Yeah. Just thought that was so stupid. No. Didn't know that. Little Then the funny thing is is like this is one of the people that like rules the world. Like they have like insane influence of things and this is what they do with their energy. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [20:18] Okay. If you were worth a 100,000,000 plus, what would you be doing?

Mike DeHaan: [20:24] That was worth that. That's the real question.

Dan Austin: [20:25] I mean, we had a conversation about jet skis before the I'm not gonna bring that up here. Like, would you buy a nice jet ski?

Mike DeHaan: [20:33] I would buy the Jet Ski Company. I would buy Ski Doo.

Dan Austin: [20:36] There you go. Okay.

Mike DeHaan: [20:39] If I was worth It's not

Dan Austin: [20:41] Ski Doo. That's no. It's Ski Ski Doo is their snowmobile brand. You got Ski Doo as the waterfall.

Mike DeHaan: [20:46] Whatever. I'd buy both and I'd do a roll up. Right?

Dan Austin: [20:50] Oh, that's hilarious. But

Mike DeHaan: [20:51] like, if

Dan Austin: [20:52] you're

Mike DeHaan: [20:52] I wouldn't buy that. Buy a jet ski, I'd buy all of them.

Dan Austin: [20:54] No. What you would do is you would buy the jet ski. You would buy a jet ski, the best jet ski, and then you'd throw it away in the ocean when you're done. You wouldn't want the company. You just wanna ride the jet ski for a couple hours.

Mike DeHaan: [21:02] I mean, you don't even need to be a billionaire to do that. Like, jet skis aren't that expensive. You and me could do that.

Dan Austin: [21:07] I don't wanna like throw it away in the ocean. I feel bad about that. Know, when you're a billionaire, you're ambivalent and all that sort of stuff like, you

Mike DeHaan: [21:13] know, you I don't wanna throw away in the ocean because I don't wanna pollute things. But I mean, I don't know. I'll send it off a The point is

Dan Austin: [21:18] is you're a billionaire, you don't care.

Mike DeHaan: [21:19] No. But they should care. That's the problem.

Dan Austin: [21:21] You throw things away. Care. You buy a social media platform for $42,000,000,000 and you just throw it away.

Mike DeHaan: [21:26] You buy it on accident because you run your mouth and then they hold you to it. Then you yeah. Mean, it's it's it's basically the equivalent of like so like, let's let's say that we had like a seller that was an asshole. And we're like, we'll give you a million dollars for your house. That's like a heap of shit. And then you know, he goes and like does all these things, right, to like hold you to it to the point that you're like, damn, I guess I actually do have to buy this house for a million dollars even though it's not worth that. That's essentially what happened to him. Right?

Dan Austin: [21:57] Right, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we've bought houses we don't really wanna buy. Sometimes you just run your mouth. Yeah. But anyway. I guess, oh I should rephrase it, we bought houses that I don't really wanna buy.

Mike DeHaan: [22:06] You don't wanna buy anything. I feel like almost every house we've ever bought, you haven't wanted to buy it.

Dan Austin: [22:11] Yeah. And now more so than anything, I'm like, god, seems like work. Buying a house, oh my gosh.

Mike DeHaan: [22:16] Like we have this was one that we talked about before that's like the nice turnkey house. We did everything that we could really think of to like not buy that house.

Dan Austin: [22:23] We played hard to get.

Mike DeHaan: [22:24] We played hard to get. We have kinda like to speak. And now that it's not a good bad house, it's a great house. Totally. Just fully focused on our collecting keys business and our partnership business right now. This is gonna be a distraction. The people came back and they were like, please will you buy it for 5% down? We'll give you awesome turns on the seller files and stuff. And we're like, at this point, it's just stupid not to.

Dan Austin: [22:45] You're right.

Mike DeHaan: [22:45] Like, even if we just buy it and we do nothing with it. It's just rude not to buy it at this point. We just like let it sit there. Like we'll come out ahead at the end of it, know? Yeah. Don't have to do anything with it. So I don't know. You know what I'm interested to see happens with with real estate though is all this stuff down in Florida with like all these insurance companies. I know. That's a big deal. That sounds like legitimately a big problem. And and the thing is too, you know, people are kinda making jokes and stuff about that. Here's the thing about insurance companies. Insurance companies are they employ some of the like smartest minds when it comes to data, and analyzing trends, and all those sort of things. So typically when insurance companies, they're all in the business about hedging bets about what's gonna happen, and their goal is to, you know, basically provide security right off of things that you're worried about happening, but technically have a low risk of happening. Right?

Dan Austin: [23:40] Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [23:41] When they start to pull out of like an area, that means their analysts have been like, the odds are no longer in our favor.

Dan Austin: [23:46] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [23:47] We are now betting against the house on this and we don't like that, so we're gonna back away. And that's kind of freaking scary when they're doing that in terms of like weather, you know, and they're worried about like the ocean rising and stuff. Which ones have I

Dan Austin: [23:58] know farmers pulled out. Would is there any other big names that pulled out? I mean, I'm assuming The General pulled out.

Mike DeHaan: [24:05] The General. Have you seen those commercials? Yeah. That's like a flashback to my childhood with like those really

Dan Austin: [24:11] shitty animated thing. DUIs? No worries.

Mike DeHaan: [24:15] I know Farmers has, I think a couple other have. I haven't actually seen a full list. But the thing is, once one does it and sets the presidents, others will follow it very, very quickly. But there

Dan Austin: [24:24] could also be an opportunity for insurance companies to swoop in and take up a bunch of market share though.

Mike DeHaan: [24:29] So that is something that's happening. But of course, because now there is a monopoly forming in that market because all the people are backing out, they're like, awesome. We are now going to 10 x our rates to get insurance here. And so I've been reading on Reddit these sort of situations where and it's fine. It's always people talking about their grandma because everyone's grandma lives in Florida, especially if you're on the East Coast. Yeah. And they're like, yeah. So my grandma just had her insurance insurance increase from $1,800 to $12,000 for the year. Wow. Grandma's on social security. She can't afford that. Yeah. Like, that's a major thing. And but like, what's that going to do with the property values there as a whole? You know, people are fleeing that, but that's gonna start affecting people's their ability to pay their mortgage payments, their monthly payments, you know, then to be able to qualify for loans. Ultimately that does bring down property values. It has to, right? It has to.

Dan Austin: [25:20] It's like having a high tax district, If you have a high tax district, property values are typically lower.

Mike DeHaan: [25:25] Austin, Texas, right? The only reason properties in Austin, Texas are not $3,000,000 is because they have the most disgusting tax rate that I've ever seen anywhere. That's crazy. You know, like when I was looking at buying a property down there earlier this year, the house that I was looking to buy was like, it's like $28,000 a year in taxes or something insane.

Dan Austin: [25:43] That's just mind blowing. Dude. Also because Texas has a state income tax. Correct?

Mike DeHaan: [25:48] Yeah. No. It doesn't. Oh, doesn't? It

Dan Austin: [25:50] just Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [25:50] It doesn't have

Dan Austin: [25:51] a state income tax. For some reason I thought it did. I don't

Mike DeHaan: [25:53] think so. I could be wrong on that. I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

Dan Austin: [25:56] Yeah. Either way, that's I was gonna kinda make that argument that if they had both and that's just a crazy reason. Mean property taxes are tough to tag to a property too because that just does not it increases the cost of living for people.

Mike DeHaan: [26:08] Exactly. Right?

Dan Austin: [26:09] You know I mean? It's not good.

Mike DeHaan: [26:10] That brings down property values because, you know, us as investors, we kinda look at like the higher value. What matters most to consumers is the monthly cost. Right? That's why like property values went insane in 2021 because people don't care what the house actually costs. Most people live month to month by their budget, and they look like, okay, we could afford this on a monthly basis. And if that amount is higher, it's gonna bring property values down because people are gonna pay whatever they need to pay to be able to pay that monthly. And the

Dan Austin: [26:36] thing that sucks that most people don't look at is their actual overall monthly payment. They look at principal and interest because that's what their lender tells them. Their agent doesn't tell them what like the property taxes are gonna be this much or that much. And then if you actually look at the house where we live now, they do automated appraisals and updating to the property taxed value, so immediately, if you bought a house that was, you go and look at their taxes, and you're like, it's only $5,000 a month, well, that's when it was worth 500, but

Mike DeHaan: [27:01] you just paid 900 for it, Yep.

Dan Austin: [27:03] Now your property taxes are gonna nearly double, and they don't actually see that until they get their actual PITI statement from the mortgage company after they put the offer in, you're like, oh boy.

Mike DeHaan: [27:11] Yeah. That's a lot. Or like after you've owned the house for two years, like,

Dan Austin: [27:15] that jumps up.

Mike DeHaan: [27:16] Yeah. Like me right now in this house, I guess not quite two years. I I moved in here last year.

Dan Austin: [27:20] I bet you it's been two years.

Mike DeHaan: [27:22] Was it 2021 I moved in this house? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. You helped me buy it. I don't remember. But either way, I got a notice from my lender, I guess from the county lender, whatever, that my monthly payments increasing $700 a month. I'm in a new development and there's people around that have like been buying the houses for $909.50. Yeah. These higher price points, which is several $100,000 more than I bought. So my mortgage is my monthly payments increasing a huge amount. Yeah. So you have all the people that really stretched to lock in those lower interest rates. Now they're gonna start getting bit by the extra taxes. Like imagine being a standard homeowner, but like has two salaries, you kinda live month by month, and all of sudden you have an extra $700 a month that you have to pay.

Dan Austin: [28:08] Yeah. It's pretty shitty, and that's where I think California in some senses had this right where they wouldn't increase your property taxes if you bought it. The thing that happened though is I think they allowed that loophole to stay closed or open if it was like generational. Whereas like, no, what it really should be is like, you if you own the house and you live in the house as your primary residence, your taxes should not go up while you live there.

Mike DeHaan: [28:29] I mean, there's loopholes around that too, right? You just buy it with an entity That's what I mean, I think And then you sell that entity to somebody else and there's never a change of ownership, so you never see it.

Dan Austin: [28:37] I mean, I guess I'm okay with that. I'm all about loopholes, but my point being is like to take care of people, especially elderly people that tend to stay in place, it that really does, like for me and you, had the same issue. My property taxes have gone up about, I don't even know how, a lot per month Mhmm. Since I've lived here, over and over, every year is going up. I can absorb that because first of all, my income has been increasing beyond inflation Yeah. Every year because I that's just how I've been growing. If you're just a person on a fixed income or a standard job, you can't take a $700 a month hit, you know, especially if you're buying it at at the brink of of what people are now. I think it used to be like 30% of it of your income should go to housing, now there's quoting that people are almost up towards 40% lately. 50? Yeah. I'm sure there's some extreme cases, on average across the country, it's 40%, which is actually pretty tough because of what people actually have left over to budget for actual expenses other than shelter. So, just yeah, it's kind of a shitty situation.

Mike DeHaan: [29:35] Yeah. Look out for that. Yeah. I mean, and for the the retail side and like property values, that's a big thing because, you know, it's gonna reduce the values of properties. It's gonna make so people get priced out, things like that. But also as an investor, you gotta keep this in mind for your Because like same with like this neighbor, let's say you had you own a rental up where I'm at, and you were thinking you gotten $500 a month in cash flow, and all of a sudden, they increase your monthly taxes $700 a month. Now you're negative.

Dan Austin: [30:00] Yep.

Mike DeHaan: [30:00] Right? And your house is worth less, because people are less are gonna be able to afford that monthly payment. So you need to make sure that you are kind of hedging in these additional increases that can happen. And it's also one of the reasons I really do not think it's a great time to be buying rentals unless you can get something creative figured out or like absolutely insane deal.

Dan Austin: [30:20] Yeah. Or follow where like the investment's being incentivized. Right? Yeah. Like, so if there's incentives where like and this is where like if you can step into the the bigger arena like building apartment buildings, there's a there's like tax deferrals and things in certain areas because they need affordable housing, and so if you can somehow figure out and track where in a local area that there is affordable housing needs, they typically will have things like tax, or when you can get like interest free loans up to a certain amount from local municipalities and stuff like that, so then you can actually afford to buy a rental. Yeah. But if you're just trying to do it, back to the earlier conversation, if you're a one trick pony, you're just trying to burr things that you found on the MLS or bought from another wholesaler, you're not gonna be able to build a business, you're not gonna be able to do anything but sit on the sidelines. Mhmm. You have to get creative and you have to find where you can invest and and actually make a good return. Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [31:07] Back to what we said at the very beginning of the show, if you yeah. If you're in that box, you're not gonna get anything done right now. Like, you have to be flexible. You have to be educated on the different options that you have, and you have to be willing to take shots. Mhmm. Like, that's the ultimate thing too is whenever you listen to all these different podcasts and me and pieces of media and things out there with these investors that have these deals that now seem like home runs. I can guarantee you at the time that they like made a decision to buy that property, there was some risk and some gray area that they decided to push past and just go for it and then it paid out in the long run. And that's the key to any sort of success, especially the business like this. So you gotta shoot your shot. Take the risk. Cool. Anything else, Dan, before we sign off here?

Dan Austin: [31:49] No. No, I'm good.

Mike DeHaan: [31:51] Right on. Cool, guys. Well, we appreciate you all listening. You should all check out our instant investor program. If you go to collectthekeyspodcast.com, up there in the top right, this little button, this is become an instant investor. You should click on that and you can get some details about what we offer. And we don't talk, we don't like plug this hard that much, but it is really going off right now. It is. Like, I feel like if you look at percentage of people that are doing deals to other masterminds, we had to be near the top because we're at basically like a 100%

Dan Austin: [32:22] at this point. Yeah. We don't we don't have a lot of lurkers. Like everybody we got, they're doing their active, which is really cool to see because I mean, that's how you build a community of people that can help each other and share knowledge is by people doing stuff. If you're just lurking and showing up to hang out Mike and Dan, you're not gonna get much out of it.

Mike DeHaan: [32:37] Yeah. You're not. If you if you wanna be around like a bunch of Mike and Dan's at this point that are just like hitting out deals out of the park left and right, you should definitely check it out. So click the keys podcast.com. Click become an instant investor up there on the top right and you get some information Or you can shoot me a DM on Instagram at Mike underscore invest. I'd love to chat with you about what that looks like. Besides that guys, please leave us a five star review on iTunes and share this podcast with anyone who might have any interest in making money, real estate, kinda just the news of the world in general, or just listen to two guys talk about nothing too. That was also good general good general, audience for that. So anyway, guys, thanks for listening. We'll talk to you all next week. See y'all.