Old dudes like us have fond memories of beer-belly laughing out loud at the hysterical antics of Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau in the original Pink Panther movies.

If you’ve never seen them, check them out.  Two of the best are Return of the Pink Panther (1975) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978).

Clouseau is a bumbling idiot.  But through sheer dumb luck he always ends up succeeding … in unexpected ways as a result of unintended consequences.

The Senate’s recent hearings on housing reform remind us of Clouseau.

The purported goal of the Senate shindig is to gather a group of big-brained housing industry leaders and experts to find a solution to the affordable housing “crisis”. 

But … as this Forbes article opines, some perspectives aren’t part of the conversation … perhaps for a reason.

Of course, you may have a differing opinion and that’s fine.  We have our own opinion too.  But that’s not the purpose of today’s muse.

We simply watch what’s happening today and consider how best to capture opportunity or avoid loss based on where things are likely headed tomorrow.

In this case, it seems Uncle Sam is looking for ways to make housing affordable.  That’s a noble objective.  Go team.

There are really just three basic approaches.

One is to increase supply relative to demand.  When supply exceeds demand, prices to drop.  That’s how abundance and productivity create prosperity.  

After all, lower prices make things more affordable to more people, right?

That sounds reasonable.  But it also sounds a lot like deflation.

And when bankers are in the room … the kind who make home loans secured by the dollar value of the property … they FREAK at the idea of falling prices.

So you’re probably not getting sincere ideas from bankers about how to lower prices.

Then there are the builders … 

While builders LOVE the idea of building more houses, they also want to earn a profit.   Profitable building is easier when prices are higher, NOT lower.  So you can guess which direction the builders are leaning.

What about the wizards of Wall Street? 

These guys make money shuffling paper.   So they just want LOTS of paper (i.e., mortgage-backed securities) created, so they have more chips to play with in their casinos. 

And Wall Street knows falling prices frighten the lenders who make the paper possible.  So it’s a safe bet Wall Street votes with the bankers for higher prices.   

Even at the Main Street level, there’s not much motivation to push prices down in pursuit of truly affordable housing. 

Real estate agents (the largest trade association in North America) aren’t raving fans of low prices as the preferred path to affordability … despite their rhetoric.

After all, real estate agents promote buying a home as a great “investment”.  No one wants to make an “investment” that goes down.  So higher is better.

Last but not least, there’s Dick and Jane Homeowner (often registered voters) … whom are keenly aware of their castle’s current market value, even though they have no intent on selling.

Of course, it’s fine for the prices of cell phones and big screen TVs to fall, but not home sweet home.  God forbid.

Plus, its fun for Dick and Jane to use their home equity to reset credit lines with debt consolidation loans, or to augment the falling purchasing power of their incomes.

And everyone knows home equity ATMs only work when housing prices steadily RISE. 

So yes, home BUYERS want the house affordable when THEY buy it. But after that … home OWNERS want up, up, up.  Sorry, next generation.  Figure it out.

When we asked then-candidate Donald Trump for his plan for housing , he simply said … “Jobs”.  Presumably, good jobs with higher pay. 

Higher pay leads to the ability to make higher payments which leads to bigger mortgages (happy bankers, happy Wall Street) which leads to HIGHER prices.

So it’s just a wild guess … but we don’t think there’s a chance in a very hot place that there’s any serious motivation to make housing affordable.

Not if “affordable” means “less expensive”.

ALL the incentives are to make housing MORE EXPENSIVE … but ACCESSIBLE.  That means more, cheaper, and easier FINANCING. 

So even IF the PTB (Powers That Be … it only sounds like Politboro) sincerely believe more and cheaper financing makes things more “affordable” …

(Hey, it worked for college tuition … oh, wait …)

… like Inspector Clouseau, they’ll end up pushing housing prices up by “accident”.   

That’s what happens when you use debt to pull purchasing power from the future into the present.

But whatever the motives, they certainly have the tools to make it happen … 

… lower interest rates, easier lending guidelines, government (taxpayer) guarantees, tax breaks … and the Fed’s all-powerful printing press.

Yes, we know all that is what first inflated and then deflated the housing bubble last time.

But smart, disciplined investors made not only survived the implosion … they made millions from the re-inflation.

So while this may not be the time to speculate on a housing price boom in the short term …

… it’s arguably a great time to liquidate equity, streamline expenses, solidify leases, and prepare for the long game.

Because when Uncle Sam is working on making something “affordable”, it usually means that something is showing serious signs of slowing and needs a boost. 

Of course, when you find reasonable deals in relatively affordable markets and you have a GREAT boots-on-the-ground team, it’s also a great time to use cash flow real estate to stock up on cheap long-term debt.

Remember, real estate … even housing … isn’t an asset class. 

Every individual neighborhood and property is unique.  So while deals might be harder to find, they’re still out there.

And if the cash flow makes sense, you’ll weather the storm … warmed by the notion that everyone with power to influence policy will be voting for HIGHER prices year in and year out … forever. 

Of course, they might break the financial system or crash the dollar trying to do it … so it’s smart to be prepared for that too.

That’s why we like gold, oil, agriculture, and paid for properties in non-leveraged markets … including, and perhaps especially, in non-domestic markets.

Real assets like food, commodities and land tend to hold relative value when currencies struggle.

Gold and silver can almost always be easily converted into any currency … and are a useful way to store liquefied equity privately outside a fragile financial system or hostile jurisdiction.

And if the dollar continues its long-term slide relative to gold, a little gold might go a long way toward retiring dollar denominated debt (like a mortgage).

That’s where we think gold bugs and real estate bugs don’t understand each other.  We know.  We spend a lot of time with both.

Gold is great for reducing counter-party risk and hedging against a falling currency.  But gold doesn’t cash flow.

Real estate is great for using cheap long-term debt to create tax-free cash flow and long-term equity growth. But it isn’t liquid and it takes a long time to retire the debt.

But putting gold and leverage cash-flowing real estate in a falling currency environment together makes each much more powerful.

It takes time to get your mind around it … but we encourage you to dedicate a little of your financial education time and budget to learning more. 

Because once you understand how gold and real estate make each other better, you’ll probably be more excited about both.  We are. 

Until next time … good investing!

We’re still just a little more than a week removed from a mind-blowing 9-day mind-meld with brilliant thought leaders, niche experts, and seasoned investors and entrepreneurs …

… so we’ve been busy catching up on the news and looking at the world through our freshly expanded paradigms.

There are two things bouncing around our brains we think are important, but few real estate investors are paying attention to …

Gold and oil.

Sure, both these “commodities” fit well with real estate in a strategic real asset portfolio.  And if you’re not sure how all that works, you can start with these past podcasts about gold and oil.

But bigger picture, both gold and oil probably drive more of geo-politics than most casual observers realize … and both are quasi-proxies for the dollar.

In other words, when you understand what’s happening with gold and oil, you have insights into the future of the dollar … and some of the things governments are doing to either defend dollar dominance … or break free from it.

Of course, if you earn, invest, borrow, or denominate wealth in dollars, the future of the dollar should be of great interest to you … even if you think of the dollar as being as permanent and reliable as air (it’s not).

As real estate investors, our primary interests (besides occupancy and cash flow) are demographics, migration trends, local economic strength, interest rates, taxes, and the supply and demand dynamics in our local market.

But all of that sits on the foundation of a functional financial system with two primary components … credit and currency.  Gold and oil provide insight into both.

Oil is important at both the macro and the micro level.

In the macro, it takes energy to drive economic activity.  When energy’s expensive, it drives up the costs of everything and is a drag on economic activity.

At the micro level, high dollar-denominated oil prices drive up the cost of living for your dollar-denominated tenants.

But for metros where oil is big business, oil also means local jobs.  Remember, Texas and its robust energy sector were the primary driving force for U.S. job creation coming out of the 2008 recession.

Investors who realized this (like our pal Kenny McElroy) strategically invested in those markets while most people were hiding under the sheets.

So whether or not you’re interested in oil as a direct investment, paying attention to the oil business can be a great way to pick markets likely to hold up well if oil prices rise.

Oil also has a potential impact on credit markets and interest rates.  Billions of dollars of debt has been created to fund shale oil production.

If oil prices drop, it both undermines the ability of regional oil economies to grow … but also for those employers to service their debt.

In the macro, if a big chunk of the debt goes rotten, credit markets could tighten.  Think about what happened in 2008 when sub-prime mortgage debt went bad.

So again, whether you’re an oil investor or not, the oil industry has a direct impact on your real estate investing.

Watching oil helps you see what’s coming sooner … so you have time to position yourself to capture opportunity and mitigate risk.

Of course, the good news and bad news about real estate is it moves slowly.

So while you have plenty of time to be proactive IF you’re paying attention, it’s really hard to act fast if you’re not.  That’s why we pay attention.

What about gold?

On the macro level, gold is a good gauge of how the world feels about U.S. Treasuries and the dollar.

When things get choppy in stocks, paper investors worldwide tend to flee into Treasuries for safety.  After all, Treasuries are backed up by the Fed’s printing press.

Of course, what does the Fed print?  U.S. dollars.

But to quote Watto from Star Wars – The Phantom Menace … 

“Republic credits are no good here.  I need something more … real.”

That is, when investors worldwide are looking for safety … and they don’t trust the paper … they go into gold.

So what does that mean to real estate investors?

Remember, mortgage rates and availability derive from healthy bond markets … most notably, U.S. Treasuries.

The 2008 Great Financial Crisis had its genesis in a broken bond market … mortgage-backed-securities.  When those went bad, frightened investors worldwide piled into Treasuries … and rates fell.

But what happens if investors worldwide don’t trust Treasuries?

You don’t have to wonder.  China came out in 2009 and scolded Uncle Sam about the size of the deficit and all the dollar printing doing on.

Why did it bother them? Because they own TRILLIONS in U.S. bonds.  They don’t want to get paid back in diluted dollars.

But Uncle Sam’s debt, deficits, and printing have BALLOONED since then.

So it’s no surprise that China … along with Russia and several other countries … have been diligently accumulating and repatriating gold.

They’re getting out of dollars and Treasuries to do it.  And who can blame them?

Paper money has an atrocious long-term record as a store of wealth …

Source:  World Gold Council 

Consider this when you think about where you’re storing YOUR long-term liquid wealth.

Meanwhile, there’s just a little more to the developing story of gold … and the story behind the story.  It’s a little complicated, but interesting and noteworthy.

After the 2008 crisis, the world’s bankers got together in Basel, Switzerland to come up with voluntary rules to prevent another financial crisis.  The agreement is called the Basel Accord.

A provision in the agreement, known as Basel III (the agreement’s rolled out in phases) allows financial institutions to consider gold “Tier 1” capital.  So adding gold is supposed to make banks more liquid and stable.

This is a bit of a promotion for gold.  Some observers think this means demand for gold will increase, but we’re not smart enough to have an opinion on that.

But there are a couple of things we are thinking about …

Perhaps most obviously, international bankers apparently consider gold more valuable than simply a “barbarous relic” with no place in a modern monetary system.

Keep that in mind when you hear people criticize the placement of gold in a portfolio. If gold can make a bank more stable and liquid, can’t it do the same for you?

To be clear, we’re not fans of gold as an investment.  It’s just an alternative to cash … a way to store long-term liquidity while hedging against a declining dollar and bank counter-party risk.

But the more interesting aspect of gold’s now elevated role in bolstering the banking system is why it’s necessary in the first place.

Is it because the banking system is still fragile and in need of support?  Is it because the world needs more leverage to expand … and so more collateral to lever?  Why not just use Treasuries?

We don’t know yet.  But we’ll be checking in with our big-brained gold experts to see what they think.

Meanwhile, we encourage you to think outside both the real estate and mainstream financial media boxes.  It seems like oil and gold might be trying to tell us something.

Are you listening?

Until next time … good investing!

You’ve probably heard the expression …

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

We’re not sure why anyone would want to skin a cat… that sounds gross and cruel.  But the idea is there’s often more than one way to get something done.

In this case, we’re talking about wealth re-distribution.

We realize that’s a politically charged topic, but anyone who’s rich … or plans to be … should be paying close attention to the winds of change on this hot topic.

No matter which side of the political spectrum you’re on, the problem everyone is staring at is the same …

There’s a big and growing gap between the rich and the poor.

Meanwhile, only a small percentage of middle-class are successfully fighting their way into the realm of the rich.

Most are falling off the back of the bus into the pit of poverty.

We’re not here to point fingers.  There’s plenty of blame to go around.

But we think it can be credibly argued that the Fed’s decade-long easy-money policy has inflated both asset prices and the cost of living.

This worked to the advantage of asset owners, but to the detriment of the paycheck-to-paycheck folks.  It’s no surprise they’re mad about it.

Of course, there’s no point in ranting about what we think policy makers should or shouldn’t do.  They don’t listen to us anyway.

So we simply watch and consider how the future might unfold … then get in position to capture opportunity and mitigate risk.

You’re probably aware, the USA is ramping up for yet another knock-down drag-out presidential election cycle.

In addition to stocking up on popcorn, we’re thinking about which issues will frame the debates.

Based on the mid-term results … and the predominant philosophies espoused by the challengers …

… it seems a major objective is to make rich people do more for the poor … by hook or by crook.

There’s the “Robin Hood” approach of taxing the rich and giving benefits to the poor … free college, healthcare, basic income, etc.

Let’s call the Robin Hood approach “by crook.”

Then there’s the “Opportunity Zone” approach …

The Opportunity Zone idea is to provide tax incentives to the rich so they voluntarily move their money into poor areas … thereby creating jobs and commerce for the currently disenfranchised.

We’ll call the Opportunity Zone approach “by hook.”

There’s a lot of history on the crook approach … and it doesn’t have a strong track record of creating abundance.  But it’s easily sold to desperate people.

Obviously, no one yet knows how the Opportunity Zone “hook” will work out … but the idea seems promising, so we’re watching it closely.

And when you consider the common sense wisdom in the saying …

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.”

… at least Opportunity Zones are a new approach to the problem of getting capital to where it’s needed most.

That’s why when we saw Yardi Matrix had released this well-written and informative white paper on Opportunity Zones, it captured our attention.

You should read it, but there are a few excerpts we think are noteworthy …

“… within Opportunity Zones, there are either in place or under construction 1.9 million multi-family units, 960 million square feet of office space and 189 million square feet of self-storage.”

Clearly, Opportunity Zone pioneers are quickly moving from idea to action.  And even though it’s still ramping up, the scope is impressive …

“As a percentage of total space, properties in opportunity zones that are in place or under construction represent 13.1% of total multifamily units nationwide, 13.7% of total office space and 11.4% of total self-storage space.”

So Opportunity Zone development is already up to over 10% market share nationwide in not one, but THREE real estate niches.

That’s impressive.

And even though many details about the Opportunity Zone program remain unclear ….

… BIG money is moving forward NOW and creating a wave of capital small investors can potentially ride to profits of their own.

This creates an unprecedented opportunity for Main Street investors.

Because while a small investor might have the means to fix up a single derelict property on his own, he can’t really change the local economy all by himself.

Sure, a large group of small investors might team up to upgrade a specific neighborhood … changing the personality of the neighborhood and improving everyone’s chance of seeing their value-add stick long-term.

But only BIG money can rehab entire regions … or “zones.”

And when it does, it creates critical mass which can fundamentally change the economic drivers and opportunities of entire local economies …

… including jobs, and access to services and opportunities for those people who get left out of financial boom times.

After all, you can only benefit from asset inflation if you own assets.  Most lower-income folks don’t.  For them, inflation just means higher living expenses and a higher hill to climb to become an asset owner.

But Opportunity Zone incentives entice rich people to move their profits from inflated financial assets into depressed real estate.

But not as flippers.

The best Opportunity Zone perks go to those who stay in their markets for at least TEN years.  That’s enough time to light a permanent flame in a local economy.

And as jobs are created to do the actual work of rehabbing these regions …

(and remember, these are jobs which can’t be off-shored)

… the workers will have both the incomes and opportunities to purchase affordable properties themselves.

Now the worker can get into the asset owner class.  And until they do, they have paychecks to pay YOU rent.

Of course, as the workers’ labor is partnered with investors’ capital to improve the Opportunity Zone, the asset owning laborers also get to ride the equity wave they’ve helped create.

And so do YOU … if you’re in the right position.

So we encourage you to read the Yardi Matrix white paper because there’s useful data and insights to help identify specific markets to explore.

Opportunity Zones may not yet be a proven model for creating access to prosperity for lower-income folks, but the potential is there.

And if YOU aren’t as high up the economic food chain as you’d like to be … consider syndication as a way to get rich helping the rich get richer.

When you syndicate, YOU marry your capital and labor to the capital of your wealthy investors … and then marry all that to the BIG money driving the growth in these Opportunity Zones.

It’s a win-win-win.

Until next time … good investing!

Until next time … good investing!