Real Estate

Stolen Properties and Why Your Rate Doesn’t (Really) Matter


There’s a silent threat out there that most real estate investors have no idea about. It’s a threat that could take away all your cash flow, ruin your real estate portfolio, and put you right back to square one after years of work. And even the most seasoned investors aren’t immune to this threat—our own David Greene almost got caught in this trap and had to act quickly to escape. What’s the danger we’re discussing, and how do you ensure YOU don’t lose everything? We’re about to tell you!

We’re back on another Seeing Greene as David and Rob take your real estate investing questions and give up-to-date advice on what they’d do in your situation. First, a real estate investor sees his cash flow disappear due to rising operating expenses—should he sell the property or keep a low/no cash-flowing deal? Then, we talk about the silent threat targeting real estate investors—title fraud. An investor wants to know if a low mortgage rate on a subject to deal warrants a higher price, and Rob and David debate whether investing in expensive markets is worth the cost.

Want to ask David a question? If so, submit your question here so David can answer it on the next episode of Seeing Greene. Hop on the BiggerPockets forums and ask other investors their take, or follow David on Instagram to see when he’s going live so you can jump on a live Q&A and get your question answered on the spot!

David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show, 9 45. What’s going on everyone? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast here today with a seen green episode for you and I brought back up Rob Abasolo. How are you today?

Rob:
I’m doing well. I’m excited. I’m stretchy, I’m stretched. I’m

David:
Stretch. Were you dabb just now. Was

Rob:
That a I was dabbing. Yes, that’s right. I think I’m doing it wrong, but I believe that’s what the children

David:
Are doing. You got to do it again and then look at your armpit. You can’t look where you’re dabbing

Rob:
Like that now.

David:
Yes, there it is.

Rob:
Okay,

David:
Dabalicious. In today’s episode, we’re not just going to be talking about dance moves. We’re going to be talking about a lot of real estate related topics, including title fraud and how to protect yourself, how to value lower interest rates when considering a sub two deal. If investing in Hawaii or other high appreciating markets is still an option, how to protect yourself as a short-term rental investor. What to do when positive cash flow disappears. A lot of people going through this as interest rate and taxes are going up and rents are not keeping up, getting into the trades, recasting loans, all that and more on another amazing fire episode of Seeing Green.

Rob:
I will say, hey, the first question, a little eyeopening, you may learn something. I didn’t know that this was possible, so hopefully this helps some of y’all prevent that.

David:
Alright everybody, we’re going to get to our first question, but before we do remember, head over to biggerpockets.com/david and submit your question to be featured on this great show.

Bobby:
Hey David. My name is Bobby Kemp. I’m from Long Island, New York and my question to you is what should I do with my single family home that’s also new construction in Rotunda West Florida? So I’ve had this home for about a year and a half now and I’ve been renting it out almost the entire time. Cash flowing great except now my tenants are about to leave at the end of March and my private manager has told me he’s kind of worried that we’re not going to be able to rent it right after because rental market’s not that great and on top of this, my mortgage went up, so I’m penciling the math out and it doesn’t look like I’m really going to cash flow with anything at all. Now I’m in a bit of a tough spot there and on top of that I’m in contract as of a couple days ago on a triplex in the St. Petersburg market. I’m going to house hack that and really make the most of that. I really want to make sure I’m set up for success, really, what should I do? Sell the single family home, 10 31 or just sell it or just keep it and really do my best to cashflow even just a little bit. Lemme know your thoughts. I really appreciate everything you do at BiggerPockets. It’s helped me tremendously in my journey with real estate so far and I look forward to hearing what you say.

David:
Well, thank you Bobby Kemp and shout out to all of our long islanders out there. A couple of my buddies, Chris Weidman and Aljamain Sterling are from All Long Island and they’re real estate investors as well, fans of Seeing Green. So let’s break down your situation. First off, great energy. You could be a podcast host. You’ve never thought of

Rob:
It. Well, hold on. No, don’t get my ideas. These are ideas.

David:
Rob wants to keep his job. Second off, if you guys were listening to this on YouTube, you would see that Bobby has a strong resemblance to Colby Covington. We got a lot of UFC coming through in this clip and speaking of UFC, he’s trying to figure out if he should fight to keep that property or let it go and tap out. What do you think, Rob?

Rob:
Well, initially, I mean it was a bit of a rollercoaster because initially he said that it was cash flowing great, and then something happened with his mortgage and now it’s not cash flowing at all. My guess is that they had an escrow analysis, taxes went up and now his mortgage went up.

David:
Maybe insurance too.

Rob:
Oh yeah, insurance could change a lot. Probably that. So if that’s the case, listen, there are a lot of ways to build wealth and real estate. Cashflow is not everything. With all that said, I prefer to make some cashflow, so if you’re just breaking even on this bad boy, I would say sell a thing and get out of it into something that will hopefully produce a little bit of cashflow and then build your wealth with the other three benefits. Tax pay down, appreciation and appreciation, yeah, yeah, do that on the next property, but try to get that fourth cashflow one in there if possible.

David:
I like it. I was talking to my real estate team yesterday about contacting our past clients about selling their house and one of the agents said, I just hate telling anyone to sell a house because I want ’em to keep it as a rental, so I don’t want to go back to our past clients and ask if they want to sell their home. I want ’em to keep it. And I said, well, yeah, if you sell the house and you go buy a motorcycle and an RV and you take a bunch of vacations, that’s dumb. But if you sell a house in an area to buy in an area that’s better. If you sell a house that’s worth a little bit of money to buy a house that’s going to be worth more and make more cashflow and appreciate you just move the equity from a bad place to a better place. Don’t look at it like selling a house looking at like replanting a tree.

Rob:
You’re transferring, there

David:
You go. You’re transferring your wealth into a better pot for that plant to live in. It sounds like the Long Island market, or at least this specific property ain’t working out if a property is not cash flowing and even more so if you can’t find a tenant, get out of dodge. That is not a good scenario. The one Achilles heel for all real estate investing is it depends on having tenants.

Rob:
Yeah, yeah. He said that his property manager’s a little nervous that he’s not going to be able to rent it, I mean, or rent it for the same amount. So if your property manager is feeling that way, well, how much do you like him? Are they experienced? Maybe find a new property manager and confirm that this is true. I would hate for you to sell it without doing a little bit of due diligence, but if it seems correct, then yeah, just get it. Move the, I like that analogy. Move the flower pot, move the flower planting stuff into a bigger pot, David. I get it.

David:
Bobby also mentioned in our notes here that this property is actually furnished and you don’t want to lose all that furniture because the stuff’s freaking expensive. No one knows better than Rob buy. Nice, not thrice, Abba solo. And so you don’t want to waste furniture. You’re probably not going to get a lot for it in a traditional sale. So a couple things we could do with that. Maybe Bobby, before you sell, look, if you could rent this thing out as a medium or a short-term rental, you never know. Is there a strong market out there for a furnished property? And Rob, where would you recommend he go? Price labs, air DNA. What’s your advice?

Rob:
I typically use Air DNA. Just make sure that you are sifting through the bad comps and the good comps. There’s a whole strategy around this, but you just want to find comps that are very comparable to yours, right? Same bed, bath, same square footage, same location ish, same amenities, and that’s how you can get a gauge of how much you could possibly make, but typically air DA is the one that I use.

David:
Or you could talk to a property manager that manages short-term rentals and get a feel from a more experienced host in that realm. But let’s say that that doesn’t work. The next thing I would do is I would go into forums like Facebook forums or online communities in the Long Island area for people that are short-term rental and midterm rental operators, and I would see if anyone there wants to buy furniture, you’re probably going to sell it to them easier and for more money than if you just sell it along with the house. If you end up selling that thing, the last place I would go is Facebook marketplace. I’d advertise some of that furniture for sale, I’d sell it there, but you don’t want to just be like, oh, I’ll give it to the sellers. The sellers are going to throw in a couple grand. Maybe if they even want that furniture, they might actually tell you that you need to get rid of it. They have their own furniture. It’s a very inefficient way to capitalize there.

Rob:
Yep, good point. Honestly, yeah, I mean midterm rental, short-term rentals could be the exit strategy that helps, but a lot more management. And then also just a little word to the wise here, just because there’s short-term rental grosses from a revenue standpoint, a lot more than a long-term rental, it doesn’t mean that it’ll make more money because to run it as a long-term rental might cost you now, let’s say $1,500 a month. Then you have operational expenses with midterm rentals and short-term rentals that could cost you 3,500 or $4,000 a month to run as a business, and you have to make more than that. There’s some complexities there, so just make sure you’re running your numbers and that it’s actually worth it to short-term rent it because you don’t want to just take a look at that gross revenue at face value. You want to make sure it’s still going to be profitable. There’s a fine line there

David:
Though. Alright, there you go. Bobby, thank you for your message, man. Best of luck to you. Love the energy, love that you’re making it happen, and good luck on that triplex out there in St. Petersburg. Alright, we’re going to be back after a quick break and we’re going to get into some advice for protecting yourself from title fraud, so stick around.

David:
All right, welcome back. We’re talking title fraud. This question comes from Brian and he says, I’ve got five rentals across four states, and I own most of them completely outright, so no loan. I’m looking for advice on how to protect myself from title fraud as this is one of my biggest fears. This title theft stuff is coming up a lot, hearing more and more about it. When I read the question, my first thought was, well, if you don’t have a lot of equity, this is something that’s not likely to happen. However, o’ Brian here has got himself a butt load. That’s a technical term. Yeah, it is of equity. So I believe his fears are founded here.

Rob:
Yeah, I got a question. What’s the problem? I didn’t know. Is you owning a house outright open you up to more title fraud?

David:
Yeah, basically if someone’s going to steal title to your home, okay, you got a million dollar home but you owe $950,000 on it, what are they going to do with a million dollar home that only has $50,000 of equity? They’re going to have a hard time selling it to anybody else. It’s not really that valuable to them, and they don’t know how to operate the thing, so nobody steals those houses. What they look for is a $300,000 house that’s been completely paid off because now they could go sell it to somebody else for a hundred thousand dollars. Who thinks that they just got a great deal and the fraudster just made themselves a quick hundred K.

Rob:
This is very educational for me. Run me through a scenario where this might happen. So I have a house, it’s paid off, it’s worth $300,000. Some fraudster can come in and what finagle some documents to make it look like or forge my name and then basically steal my house title from me.

David:
I don’t know the exact process, but what it would involve would be, and that’s I’m not a criminal,

Rob:
You weren’t a wire. You got to tell me if you’re wearing a wire.

David:
That’s funny. Are you a cop? You got to tell me if you’re a cop.

Rob:
Yeah, you got to tell me.

David:
So what you would do is you would forge documents, just like you said, that show you created an LLC and that person owns the property and they are going to be transferring the title from their own name or their entity into yours. You would then take that to a notary, which you could pay. I mean, it’s not like notaries work for the ca a a, I guess you could still buy someone off in the ca. They’re not that hard to buy off. So I’m getting at,

Rob:
I’ve seen pain and gain.

David:
Yeah, there you go. Exactly. If you and I were in that movie, who would be pain and who would be game?

Rob:
I think you would be Dwayne Johnson and I’d be the other guy. Mark Wahlberg. Oh, mark. Oh, I’d be Mark Wahlberg. Hey, say hello to your mother for

David:
Me. Look how happy Rob just got First time you’ve ever been

Rob:
Compared to this is the first time Marco Wahlberg actually is what

David:
Marco

Rob:
All? No,

David:
That means hamburger in Spanish for anyone who’s trying to put the pieces together. Very nice. And we’re back. So you would just go to a notary and you would say, Hey there, I’m buying this house. I need you to notarize these documents. Here’s a little five grand to grease the wheels for you. They would say, oh, I happen to have an ID from Rob Abello here saying that I want to sell my house to David Green, and now I take that to the county assessor’s website and I say, I’ve got documents here showing there’s a grant deed. This property has been transferred from Rob to David and now they record it as belonging to David and there’s nothing you can do. You could go to the tax assessor’s office and you could say, this was stolen from me. I never agreed to it. And they’re going to say, I don’t care if it’s recorded as his, it’s his.

David:
It’s a civil matter. Take it up with the judge and during that period of time, you’ve lost access to the house and then what I can do is I can go sell it to somebody else. Now I can’t sell anybody else this house if it’s got a lien on it for a lot of money because when I go to transfer the title from me to them, the lender’s going to get notified and they’re going to ask me paid off. So if I try to sell them the house at a discount of 900,000 when it’s a million dollar house, but there’s a note on it for 950,000, there’s no money in it for me. So that’s why they target houses that have a lot of equity, particularly

Rob:
That’s been paid off it. Wow, okay. That’s super interesting. I guess I would say can you get title insurance after, I mean title insurance is just

David:
Protects the buyer.

Rob:
Yeah,

David:
That’s the problem is if someone’s fraudulently stealing your properties, you are the seller in that situation. So the title insurance will be protecting the person who’s stealing the properties from you. So that’s like putting a bulletproof vest on the bad guy that’s not helping us here. So for anybody else that’s worried about this checkout episode 8 0 8 where we interviewed Sheila and Theresa who have a company consortia, that’s a blockchain company that’s designed to help with property details and ownership. It was kind of like Carfax for a home. You might be able to protect yourself with some of the offerings they have and then look for these warning signs. This will alert you to the fact somebody might’ve stolen title to your property and you don’t know it. You stop receiving water bills or property tax assessments because if the title changes from you to somebody else, those bills are going to go to that person.

David:
When the county tax assessor’s office has their mailing address listed instead of yours, the utility bills on a vacant property rise suddenly, or you find other people living there, you stop receiving your tenant’s rent payments and learn that they’ve been making the payments to another person and location. That should alert anybody if that happens. But if you’re using a property manager, they might not have understood that you didn’t sell the property. You receive payment books or other information from a lender with whom you haven’t done business. So if you get letters in the mail from a lender and you never did business with them, that’s a sign that something might’ve gone on. Or you find yourself in default on a loan or are notified of foreclosure proceedings through a notice of default. Any of these things like what’s up? This might indicate title fraud. You want to call your county tax assessor’s office immediately and say, Hey, I own this property, can you make sure that it is still in my name?

David:
Now if it’s not in your name, they’re going to have the name of the person who recorded it under their name and now you can start your gumshoe work of hiring a private eye, a detective or doing your own work to figure out who that person is and how they took title. Now the good news for you is because most states require someone to have valid id, in fact, all states that I know of to buy a property, they would’ve had to make up a fake ID and somehow pulled the wool over people’s eyes to not use their own identity. So most of the time when this happens, you could find out who the person is that did it.

Rob:
Yeah, I mean there’s definitely some paper trail and I guess corrective action that could be taken, but it sounds very expensive and I’m really glad we answered. I mean, mostly we talked about this question, but I think it’s important. I bet you there’s a lot of people at home listening right now that were just like, wait a minute, this can happen. And I’m one of them.

David:
Yeah, it actually can happen. It happened to me. It didn’t happen this same way, but it did happen to me and it was a huge, huge, huge problem for me that triggered a domino rally of a bunch of other things that went wrong. So especially if you’re a prominent investor like we are where people know who we are and we can become targets, it’s even more easily to happen and if you own properties that are paid off or have a lot of equity, you’re basically running around with a big target on your back.

Rob:
Yeah, that’s right. Remind me, you mentioned it the other day, what was your mother’s maiden name again?

David:
So at this part of the show, we like to read some comments from previous YouTube posts as well as comments. People left when they left us a review on their podcast app. Our first comment comes from Brady Morgan and he says, David, you said it. Learn the trades. I left the corporate world about five years ago early in my real estate investing journey from the first bird deal that I did, and I learned that construction is the biggest margin on real estate and I needed to know more about it. I started working as a framing carpenter, joined my local planning and zoning board as a volunteer and then became a building inspector for my town. Today I have my own construction company, building rentals and specs, investing in new construction homes become so much easier when you don’t have to pay someone the 20% general contractor fee. Honestly, learning the trades and construction has been more valuable than my MBA degree plus. I enjoy it so much more than sitting in a computer all day in a windowless office crunching data. That is a cool, I love this story. In fact, we need to get Brady Morgan on the podcast and talk to Old Brady about how he pulled this off. I think this is a great strategy for how you can make deals work in a tough environment. What do you think, Rob?

Rob:
Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, doing the whole construction thing, whether you’re doing it yourself, DIY or professionally, I’m always an advocate for trying to build stuff at cost, and if you’re doing that, I think new construction is one of the best ways to build wealth because you’re getting amazing assets at cost to you, I think as long as you’re willing to suffer through the construction process and all that stuff. But super sound, I love doing it. I’m doing more new construction this year. Next comment, this is from dash ZB 0 8 8 8 5. He says, the recast explanation was a little light. Most lenders now will allow you to do it purely because it will typically free up lower interest rate capital that they wouldn’t see and now can relend at a higher rate. Inflation has some benefits I suppose. Basically a recast is tied to a reduction of principle and then the payment is reduced as the remaining balance is amortized over the remaining term. If you as a borrower don’t mind the opportunity cost of not investing the principal reduced amount, assuming it’s a lower rate than the lender slash borrower, it is a win-win scenario. Borrower gets a lower payment at same interest rate to pay less interest over time, and lender will get to reinvest those funds in another borrower at a higher rate. Did you keep up with all that?

David:
It’s a nice summation of the recast dilemma that we were talking about. So yeah, when rates go up, but you have a lower interest rate, lenders are more likely to let you pay them back quicker because they let you borrow money at 3%, you’re paying it back, they can lend it at a higher rate. That also puts them in a position where they are incentivized to now call notes that are due. If you assume a loan from someone else at 3% or 4% and rates go up to eight, nine, 10%. Lenders are like, Hey, if I could get that back from you, I can lend it out at three times the rate that I let somebody borrow it at. It increases the odds that that could happen and it decreases the odds. That could happen, obviously when rates go low, but when rates go low, people refinance. They’re not going to hold on to assume mortgages at 9%. So that is a great point, and if you’re having trouble finding loans and you’re sitting at a high interest rate and you’re just trying to find a way to get more of a return, cashflow wise, hey, putting a hundred thousand dollars or $50,000 towards your principal balance and decreasing it, especially if you’re at an eight, nine, 10% interest rate, is a way to increase your cashflow without buying more real estate.

Rob:
Yeah, I love it. One little note here from island, Derek. He says, recasting your mortgage, they typically require a 30 to 50% equity before they can recast. I don’t know if that’s you. I’ve never looked into it that much, but something to keep in mind, I suppose for some mortgage companies.

David:
Thank you, Rob. Great job there. I’m glad I brought you along. We love you guys. We appreciate your engagement. Please continue to comment and subscribe on YouTube, and if you’re listening to this in a podcast app, take some time to follow the show so you get notified every time seeing Green comes out. Alright, we’re going to take a quick break and then after that we’re going to get into advice for investing in Hawaii if it’s still possible and how to do it.

David:
Welcome back. We’re going to close out today’s show with one final question. This comes from G Petit in Florida. David, what’s your opinion on investing in Hawaii? Where do you invest there and what strategies work on what islands? You have mentioned frequently having different property types there, but is it worthwhile market over the long term? Many properties that I see are scummy leaseholds condos that don’t seem to appreciate due to their vast quantities and overpriced shacks. Is the Hawaiian dream dead and what strategies actually work on the island from your experience? Is it worth it to burn cash on a house hack just to live in the area and get high appreciation? Are condos worthwhile with their fees and lack of control or appreciation? And can Airbnbs actually make money past all the regulation? Rob, I’m going to let you start with this one.

Rob:
Well, this is very much a like, Hey, do you have five minutes to chat? And then it’s like 80 questions and it turns into an hour. There are a lot of questions to unpack here. So what is your opinion on investing in Hawaii? To be honest, I don’t know if maybe I’m just, I don’t know. I think too much about it, but I haven’t really put a lot of thought into it because I hear the different backlash and people not being super happy with, I don’t know, real estate being snatched up. I got to be careful about how I word that. I know you own real estate there, but I like the idea, but I don’t know. I just don’t really, I do think about it a little bit, I guess I think about that. I’m like, well, I don’t really ever want, it’s already hard enough to be a real estate investor in the United States where everyone on TikTok hates you, but if I were to talk about how I invested in Hawaii, I don’t even want to know what those TikTok comments would say. So I guess I haven’t really thought about it. I could have said that.

David:
Yeah. Thank you for answering a true politician with a lot of words and very little substance in anything.

Rob:
I’m scared. Okay, I’m scared.

David:
All right, so I own properties in Maui. They are short-term rentals. I’m trying to get to all the questions that was asked of me. Here they are in a form of an HOA in Hawaii. I guess they would be technically classified as condos. They’re not leaseholds. So these scummy leaseholds that G petit is describing is, how would I describe this? Basically, instead of owning the land, you own the building that’s on the land and you are leasing the land from the owner, which is usually a Hawaiian native. So they didn’t want to sell all their land, so people coming in that didn’t live there. So they said, look, I’m not going to sell the land, but I’ll let you lease it from me for a hundred years, and at the end of that a hundred year term or whatever it is, we’ll have to renegotiate another lease on this land.

David:
Otherwise, I get to keep all the improvements that you made on the property, which can obviously be scary if you go build yourself a nice waterfront villa and the lease holder says, Hey, I don’t want to renew the lease, or Here’s my real expensive lease terms, they’d be able to take your property. The other way of owning property is called fee simple, which means that you own it yourself, which is how most of us are used to owning property as far as should somebody do it or not, should they buy in Hawaii. I’m going to just relate this to every appreciation market in the golden era of real estate where we had low rates, lots of inflation, lots of opportunities to buy real estate before it became easy to do because software was created and podcasts were created and strategies were shared, you could get cashflow and appreciation in the same market.

David:
It’s getting to the point where I’m starting to see in my mind a delineation between these two strategies. You’ve got cashflow markets, which tend to be low priced homes, closer to 1% rule where you can get cashflow, you’re probably not going to get a lot of appreciation, and then you’ve got appreciation markets that are almost the opposite. You’re going to get appreciation, but you’re probably not going to cashflow in order to invest in these appreciation markets without losing money every month. You have to put a very sizable down payment down. So what’s starting to happen is that if you want to get into the appreciation markets where you will make more money longterm, you have to have more money to play. So what happens is instead of buying a million dollar place and putting $200,000 down, you buy a million dollar place and you put $500,000 down and then that million dollar place becomes worth 1.2.

David:
So you made $200,000 on your $500,000 investment, which is a 40% return on your money, but it did not come as a cash on cash return. It came as a cash on equity return. Let’s call it that. Like an ROI basically, right? Yes. Oh yeah. ROE. Yeah, return on investment has been synonymous with cash on cash return, but it really shouldn’t be. No, there’s different ways. Definitely not that you get an investment. That’s kind of the topic of the book that I’m writing. So if you don’t have a really big down payment, you really shouldn’t be investing in a market like Hawaii or Malibu or Miami, some of these places that are going to be more expensive because you’re not going to cashflow, and if you’re not in a financially strong position through a lot of money or through the ability to weather a lot of not cashflow, you shouldn’t be playing there.

David:
You’re going to have to go to these cashflow markets that aren’t going to get appreciation and just go slower. You’re going to slowly build equity. You’re going to slowly 10 31 into something better. You’re going to learn the principles of real estate investing. You’re going to take a couple years to get it down, and then maybe you 10 31 into a market like Hawaii. And I guess that’s the way that I’m starting to notice investors have two different routes that they can take. Well, we never had to have this conversation before. It was, do I want a lot of cashflow in a cheaper market or a little bit of cashflow in an appreciation market? And I think that the scales have kind of tipped away from that. What do you think?

Rob:
Yeah, interest rates have made it harder to have made everything a little bit tougher. I want to impact something you said, which is the cash on cash versus ROI, because some people might be like, whoa, what? I totally get this cash on cash, you’re right, has been synonymous with that. So basically cash on cash is how hard your money works for you in one year time. So if you invest a hundred thousand dollars into a property and the profit after all of your expenses is $15,000, you would divide that 15,000 by the a hundred thousand dollars investment and that would be a 15% cash on cash return. That is the golden metric in a lot of different real estate investments for sure in Airbnb two, whereas you get into the ROI side of things, and I think ROI is a breakdown of cash on cash. The tax benefits that you got from deductions appreciation. When you factor all four of those in, that’s what gets you your IRR or your rate of return,

David:
Which is another metric for measuring return on investment.

Rob:
Are you agreed with that definition too? That’s

David:
What literally the next book that I’m writing is about is ROI should not be synonymous with cash on cash return. They’re not the same thing. There’s 10 ways you make money in real estate, and I haven’t divided into the four categories. You said Rob, cashflow, appreciation, tax savings, which is depreciation. That’s why you keep getting mixed up as well as loan pay down. So you can make money in real estate in all of these ways, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all equally good for everybody. If you’re someone who’s got a $3 million net worth, you can go invest in Hawaii and delay gratification and make your money through equity, which is energy stored in the property. But if you’re someone who’s living paycheck to paycheck, you don’t really have that luxury. You’re going to have to go into somewhere that’s lower risk where you actually get cashflow every single month and you’re going to make your money through energy you put in the bank, which would be the cash, and we’ve never needed in the past.

David:
To differentiate between these two things, what we always said was invest for cashflow and hopefully appreciation will happen. So the question was, is the Hawaiian dream dead? It probably is not dead, but it is out of reach for the new investor who’s like, I want to buy my first house. I want to do it in Maui. No, you don’t. That’s like, I’m going to start going back to the gym and get in shape. I should go to CrossFit. Absolutely not. You will die. Don’t do that. Start taking a walk. Measure your steps, go to a gym, work out at a pace that you can handle and earn the way to get into CrossFit. I think investors should look at it the same way with these appreciation markets.

Rob:
Final little thing on the question he ended with, which is, can Airbnbs actually make money past all the regulation? And what locations do you invest in? I do want to say one little thing, going back to my non-answer earlier about genuinely considering what the Hawaiian population, their feedback about investors coming in and snapping up property. There is a housing shortage in Hawaii and typically in cities like la, New York, San Francisco, and then places like Hawaii where there are such extreme housing shortages, the regulations typically follow suit. And so for that reason, I’m also uninterested in investing in Airbnbs out in Hawaii because I don’t know if I can trust that regulation will keep me as an Airbnb investor, keep my interest at play. I think they’re not going to watch out for us, which is, I don’t have an issue necessarily with that, but that

David:
Is my, I mean, that happened to me in Maui. I bought properties, luckily I bought it in a resort zone. A lot of people were not buying in resort zones and they all had the hammer come down on them. Our producer here put Ordinance 22 7, which is Pax in October of 2022, basically spelled out that Hawaiians can find people for operating short-term rentals if it’s not in a resort zone. And I believe it’s like $10,000 a day. And they actually have department officials that are proactively go look for these. They send someone in a car, they take pictures of your guests checking and out with their suitcases, they hit you with a 10,000 fine. So they’re not joking around and it’s not just Hawaii. I’m seeing this everywhere. And they only do it when people apply for a short-term rental permit. So it is not like it’s a bad strategy, but you have more due diligence going into this than people ever had before. Alright, everybody, we hope you enjoyed today’s show, Rob and I sure did. So if you like this stuff, please make sure that you subscribe to this podcast. Rob, anything you want to say before we go?

Rob:
No, I liked all of these. Were all thinkers. Usually we have a couple softballs, but I feel like we really had to talk through every one of these questions.

David:
Absolutely. This was a tough show. Thanks for being here with me to take some of the pressure off. Rob, if you want to know more about Rob or I, our info is in the show note, so go check that out and keep an eye out for the next episode of Seeing Green. This is David Green for Rob Aristotle. Aboso signing off.

Rob:
What’s the connection on that one? You’re a

David:
Thinker.

Rob:
Oh, I like it. Thank you. That’s the nice thing you’ve ever said about me.

 

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