Real Estate Investing: Episode 3

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

Click here for link to podcast 

Jason:  Good morning, Triad. Welcome to Triad Real Estate 911 and also the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  I hope everybody is doing fantastic on this Saturday morning.  It is hot.  It is humid.  It is the south. It is what we love.  Well, not really, but it is where we live.  It is what we have got to deal with.  Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  So last week we started a little series that we are doing on real estate investing or just investing in general.  Of course, I have a little real estate spin to it. Obviously, being a real estate guy.  But I am just going to walk you down that path, and we are going to continue that for the next several weeks and teaching you really some of the things just to be aware of.  I am not really going to teach you how to do it, but I am going to give you some principles that work.  They are proven and I have watched them work not only for myself but other people that we have worked with and buy a lot of real estate.  So, last week we kind of broke down the why, and we are going to continue to move through that each week.  We are going to tackle a step, if you will, every single week.  So if you missed a show, you can always go to Jason Bramblett dot com, click on our blog and the radio show notes are there, but also the streams.  You can listen in.  So you can listen and read at the same.  Hopefully, those match.  It would be good if they did.

Mikell:  Yeah, there you go.

Jason:  It is always a plus when the words match the audio. And hopefully that is the case.  It should be.  And then you can always fact check me and send me those wonderful emails I get.  Right?  Which we love.  Keep sending them because hopefully we learn from those and we get better each and every week.  Reasons for investing. It is very, very important to know why.  Why you want to invest.  What is the purpose behind that?  And most investors that I come across or that reach out to us for the first time fall into probably looking for the quick buck type investor.  Okay?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  This is the group of people a lot of people call flippers.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  There are a lot of seminar guys that get you into the hotel or wherever they are sending you, and they are there to sell you a product or a system or something.  How to flip, and they love to use this term other people’s money.  It works.  They fill them up.

Mikell:  It does.  I have been to one.

Jason: They have been doing that forever. 

Mikell:  If you want to make $50,000 or $100,000, come here.

Jason:  In your spare time. Because that is all anybody has got. Spare time. Right?  There are actually those little signs that they put out on the road, they are called bandit signs.  You will see the ones that are on the corners and they will say part-time investor needs apprentice.  Make between $50-100,000 a year. That is a big swag.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  Think about that.  If you went in to apply for a job and they said look, we have got a great opportunity for you.  You can run this forklift and we are going to pay you between $7 and $21 an hour, but we will let you know what we are going to do.  Right?

Mikell:  Wait a minute.

Jason:  It is a pretty big swag.  Right?

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  Most people are going to be like wait a minute, I would like to have something a little bit more with confidence behind it.  Right?

Mikell:  There you go.

Jason:  I would like to know what that check is going to look like at the end of the month.  It is kind of that way with there are these enticing things to draw our attention, but house flipping, it has been going on for a hundred years.  HGTV just really put it on the map.  Now I do not even know how many shows are on HGTV about flipping and flopping houses, but it is a lot. 

Mikell:  At least 4-7.

Jason:  Yeah, it is a bunch. It is like the Food Network.  Ninety different ways to cook chicken.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Everybody has got something.  It is not bad.  And really, it is just not great either.  It is good, but not great to flip a home. And the reason being is it is really the same reason that real estate sales is good but it is not great.  And the reason being is once you flip the home or once you sell the house, you are out of business.  You are back to zero. Right?

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  And you have to start that process all over again.  We do it every single day.  We sell people’s homes. They hire us to provide them a service to market their home to get them as many options or offers that they can possibly look at in whatever time period that is. But at the end of the day when we sell that home, they do not need our services anymore.  So therefore, we have to go find new people.  We have to keep going out there and finding new people to sell their homes, to provide that service to them. It is not bad.  It has actually been really, really good for us. But it is not great in that –

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  -- it does not repeat itself. When you look at an investment, you want to invest in something that is great. The best thing that you can invest in to start with is you because there is only one of you. You are unique, so the best place to start is pouring in as much information and education in a positive way that you possibly.  I listened to a podcast this past week.  Jim Rohn, one of the most famous guys out there.  Just a humungous mentor.  When he was 25, he would wake up in the morning, get a cup of coffee and read the paper.  It was all war, break-ins, just horrible things.

Mikell:  Nothing positive.

Jason:  Nothing positive.  And then he goes then I would read the back page and look at the obituaries.

Mikell:  Obituaries.  There you go.

Jason:  He was like how do you think my day went?  Right? Because it started off with negativity.  It started off with things that are not positive.  I have a rule that myself, I do not touch my phone for the first two hours that I am awake.

Mikell: Wow.

Jason:  I will deal with whatever is in that thing after I get myself in the proper mental frame to deal with whatever may be on there. Good, bad, or indifferent.  It does not matter.

Mikell: I like that.

Jason:  I am not going to take the risk of derailing my day and dealing with something that could be negative right off the bat. Whatever it may be.  It may be a newsfeed.  It may be a real estate agent.  It could be a family member, but I am going to get myself in the right frame of mind and positively ready to deal with whatever comes my way.  The really cool thing about that is when you can get rid of that phone and put it to the side, all that stuff, and you really get your mind right, man, this stuff it is not even difficult.

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason:  It is not even difficult to do.  Now, I know some of you will say but my phone is my alarm.  Well, go buy a $3 alarm. Get an alarm for your bedroom and throw your phone as far away from you as you can, and that way it is not the first thing that you go to in the morning.

Mikell:  Well, honestly, you can just hit stop and then walk away.

Jason:   That is right.

Mikell:  That is not hard either.

Jason:  It is all habit and behavior. And think about this. It takes 21 days, they say, to create a habit.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  It takes a lot longer to break one.  Especially one that you are as addicted to it as you are like your telephone.  Right? 

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  Because it is not the device. It is the feeling that it gives you. Right?  Because you look on Facebook and you are like wow, so and so is my friend, and so and so is an idiot.  And so and so is really cool.  Anyway.  How does that apply into investing?  It is coming up with a game plan and you have to have the right mindset.  You have to have the right plan in real estate investing and investing in general is the same.  It does not matter if it is real estate, dog houses, widgets.  It does not make any difference.  You have got to have the proper plan.  So if you get into sales and you flip homes, so when you sell it you are out of business. Right? You have to start it over.  It is really the product. It is not long lasting. Right?  Because there is a finale to it.

Mikell:  So how do people consistently flip houses?

Jason:  Well, the interesting thing about consistently flipping homes, you are on a treadmill.  Right?

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  You can never stop it.

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Where is, and what I wanted to get into and we will talk about is the real way to create wealth is not through buying a product and flipping it or selling it or whatever.  It is actually when you create an asset and you have an asset and you hold it.

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  If you hold that asset for, well, you can hold it for infinity.  It makes no difference.  As long as it is returning capital to you and returning revenue to you, why would you ever want to sell it?  Right?

Mikell:  No, not at all.

Jason:  It does not make any, sometimes you sell them because things happen maybe in your life or maybe there are shifts that happen in geographical locations where this location was good 20 years ago and now it is not so good and the city has changed and all those things. But holding it for 20 years, that is pretty good. That is not bad. Most people have about a 4-second timespan that they think about, so 20 years is like eternity.

Mikell: That is forever.

Jason:  The power of accumulating over time is huge.  That is, most people that are flipping the home, they can make the now money, if you will, but again, the now money, there is nothing wrong with it.  I know people that do it for a profession. But really what you have created is a job, not an investment.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason: All right.  So that investment, because you are getting rid of it every well maybe 30 days or however long it takes you to do.  Keys to investing really is to get assets that pay you money in which you did not have to do any work for. That is the type of asset class that you want to create. So if you go to work every day, and most of us do, this is what we call earned income. I did a task. I got paid. I did something. I got paid. I added value. I earned income.  That is what you did.  You earned it.  What we are looking for is an income called passive which means I did no work at all and the income came in.

Mikell:  Absolutely.  I could be sleeping, and I still get this money.

Jason:  You could be sleeping, and it would show up in your what used to be your mailbox. Now it is your telephone. Right?  As long as it hits your bank account –

Mikell:  There you go.

Jason:  -- it doesn’t matter.  Right?  But that is the type of goal that you want to establish for yourself to create assets long term that deliver passive income.  This is where why wealthy people pay almost zero to no taxes.  The highest tax rates in America are for earned income.  Employees.  People that work.  They pay the most taxes out there. They may not pay the most in total money, but they pay the most in total percentage of their money.  Most people do not realize that every time they get a paycheck they have this person, there is a silent partner in there. 

Mikell: Unfortunately.

Jason:  And that silent partner is FICA –

Mikell:  Yep.

Jason:  and the I, the R, and the S.  Right?

Mikell:  And they just wrap it up and call it your favorite uncle.

Jason:  Your favorite uncle.  There you go. I had hired a young person for the first job that they ever had and an interesting thing happened.  They came to me. They got their first paycheck and they said I do not want, I would like to opt out of this FICA thing.  I really do not want to do that.

Mikell:  Wouldn’t we all.

Jason:  I said, yeah, that is not insurance.  That is called taxes, and they are not optional typically.  That is why they get their money first.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  You have lots of different things to think about.  Passive income is something that you really want to home in on.  It is really what you want to concentrate on.  I know we are taught differently.  We are not taught this.  We are not taught how to think wealthy.  We are taught how to become an employee.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  If this sounds familiar to you, go to school, get a good job, get or stay out of debt, save money, and everything will be okay.  And I will promise you that is not the truth. I have sold many, many, many homes where people did just that.  They had a good job.  They saved their money and everything that they ever had was stuck in their house. So they had no real assets and they had nothing that was going to pay them.  The only asset they had was a paid-for house, which they found out really wasn’t not an asset because they found out there was still this thing called taxes and insurance they had to pay.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Unfortunately, they get to the end and there is not enough.

Mikell:  So let me ask you this.  Would you suggest to someone who maybe kids have gone to college or moved out of the house for them to get tenants maybe?

Jason:  I am all in favor of other people paying for your stuff.

Mikell: Okay. Okay.

Jason:  So yes.  Now you have to check your zoning and make sure your neighborhood and all this stuff.  Make sure it is legal.  You cannot create a boarding house maybe in some neighborhoods. Right?

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  But you can have roommates.  And of course, roommates can contribute. We have sold many homes to young, ambitious college folks that they bought the home, they got two or three roommates, and they lived there for free, and they owned the house.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason: That is a very, very smart move in my opinion if you do not mind living with people.  Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  There is a trade-off there. Right?

Mikell:  There you go.

Jason:  Someday, well hopefully, they will probably graduate in less than five years or seven or whatever the track record is now, but if they keep that home, it will become a great rental property.  And that rental property is passive because other people will be paying for it, which is what you want to do.  You want to create that.  That is how you create wealth.  A lot of people get mad at the wealthy people because they do not pay their fair share in taxes.  Well, they do. They just get their income from a different source, and the tax rate is actually favorable to them.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  So you pay more when it is earned income.  But if I do not get any of my money, or any of my money comes to me from earned income, it comes from passive, and I pay the tax rate that I am supposed to pay on tax, I am following the tax code, and I am actually using the system exactly how it is designed.  The system actually is designed to create jobs and to give benefit to people that create jobs.  And when you do that, you pay lower taxes. But when you go out and you just get a job and a check, you pay a very high percentage of your income for that, I guess, type of income status, if you will.

Any time you can move, and here is the thing. The tax code actually is really favorable to big companies, people that are investors, and those things.  So copy that.  Figure out a way to shift your income.  You have to have earned income to keep your head above water, but stop increasing your lifestyle and take your money to buy assets that can become passive, and then someday down the road, you will not have any earned income, and therefore you will pay a very, very low tax rate.  I think it was Mitt Romney, I believe, when he was running for President, he paid several millions of dollars in taxes, but his tax rate was only like 13%.

Mikell: Wow.

Jason:  And people were like well, that is not fair.

Mikell:  Yeah, they were upset.

Jason:  But he is not earning income like you are. His income is passive from investments.  Your income is earned, and it is taxed at a very high rate. If you would switch your, the money that you receive to passive, you could be in the same 13% or whatever it is. It is not that the rich do anything wrong.  It is just that they do things differently.

Mikell:  If you think about it, passive income is not as guaranteed as earned income would be, if that makes sense.

Jason:  It can and it cannot be.  Right?

Mikell:  Okay, that is true.

Jason:  It can be somewhat guaranteed if it is diversified, but there is nothing 100%. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Other than taxes.

Mikell:  Yes. Yes.

Jason:  That is it.  So there are things that can be, there is still risk in most things. But if you build it right, then you can minimize the risk. We will talk a little bit about that.  Let’s do this.  Let’s take a quick timeout.  We are going to go pay some bills.  You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  We are going to take a quick timeout.  We will be back in just a minute.

And welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  I hope everybody is doing well.  So before the break, we were just kind of digging into different types of income.  You have got earned income, passive income, which one is better.  Well, I think most would agree that passive is good because passive means I did not really do, not that I did not do anything.  I just physically did not have to get out there and do something. Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  I had already done it.  I had purchased an asset or I already invested the money.  Now I have this income coming to me which does not take my sweat, if you will.

Mikell:  The sweat equity is working for you.

Jason:  There you go. The sweat equity is working for you.  You have got to understand a little bit about money, too, and one thing that is interesting that I have noticed about wealthy people is they do not save money.  And the reason why is because they understand what that paper is.  If you read it the definition of it is currency. And currency is it needs to move. It needs to be active. It needs to be engaged.  It needs to be pushed out into the economy.  Basically, it is product that we use to exchange something of value.  Right?  We give currency, this note, this paper, and people either perform a service or give us food or do something.  Right?  But if it just sits, it is actually worthless.

Mikell:  So let me ask you this. I am a homeowner.

Jason:  Yeah.

Mikell:  And, of course, it takes maintenance to keep up a home.

Jason:  It sure does.

Mikell:  Instead of saving it in a savings account, I invest it? Or do I save it?

Jason:  No.  There are two terms there. So you could be calling it an emergency fund.  We call it a sinking fund.  There are things that are going to be happening.  So basically by putting that money in an account, you are preparing for the end.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Eventually, the heating and cooling system will need to be replaced.  There are two ways in which you could do that. You can take that dead money essentially and park it and be prepared for when that happens, which is, in my opinion, the right thing to do. 

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  Or you have no plan, and the only way you can get that fixed is through using Mr. Visa or AMEX or whatever.

Mikell:  Oh, yeah, that is bad.

Jason:  Then there is really dead money, dumb money on that because now you are paying interest.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: So even though the money was not earning anything, it also was not costing you interest.  Right?  So you do need to have a sinking fund or you do need to have some money set aside for things that we know are going to happen.  Right?  Mama used to call it a rainy-day fund.  You need to have money sitting aside for things that are coming along and things that are going to happen.  But just to save to save, you will never accumulate enough to make it.  Inflation, everything, by the time you save today for 30 years from now, the math does not work.  And 30 years from now everything generally costs more, and the money that you saved will not compound.  That is what you need.  You need compounding.  The banks have figured it out.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  You ever seen that credit card bill? Compounding interest calculated per day?  Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  That is what you want your income doing.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  Compounding daily and making it passive.  So if you just flipped the credit card bill.  Instead of you paying the interest you were receiving the interest, the passive, that is what you want to create with your assets. You want to create to where that money comes in.  But you cannot leave currency sitting around.  It becomes, things that sit around get stagnant, and then they kind of develop this scum on top of them.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  And they start to stink a little bit. Nobody wants to be around anything that is stinky and scummy for very long.  Right? 

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  If you think about, if you need a word picture, like a pond that is just sitting there.  Right?  You want the money moving.  I am from Missouri.  We have lots of springs and different things there.  So one of the things there, if you go to a spring, if you to the head of the spring on a river, the really cool thing you will notice is the water is just as crystal clear as you can imagine.  It is freezing cold, too, so just do not jump right in. But there is just some amazing things you can learn from that visualization.  You go watch that spring. It never stops.

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  You rarely to ever hear of a spring going dry. Almost never. Where I am at in Missouri there is a river called the Current River.  You go to the head of the river, and the spring is there.  It is just billowing out this amazing, pure, clear water. It is freezing cold.  You can get in for a minute. That is about it. But they say that that thing is almost two miles deep. It is amazing to see. That is what you want your money doing. You want to create that spring to where you have got that passive income all the time. That spring does not have to think about producing water. It just happens naturally.  That is what your income to do.  You want it to be passive.  You just want it to happen naturally. There are things in which you can invest in that make that happen.  Real estate definitely is one of those. The thing I love about real estate, we talked about it last week is I can go touch it and feel it.  I can move into it if I had to.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: Whatever the case may be. I cannot do that with a bunch of stock certificates.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  Paper or whatever it is. Those are the things that I like to see in an investment.  Things that I can do once, get paid forever.  Here is the great thing about passive income.  If it is built correctly, it becomes legacy building. Meaning if it never stops, how many generations of your family have you set up for success.  Now I will say typically it is three. I do not know why, but the third generation always sells.  But anyway, pretend that they did not, and you set up legacy wealth for your family for a long, long time.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  It is really cool. So things to think about with your money and creating passive income. You can get more information if you go to Jason Bramblett dot com.  You can check out the website, check out the blog, go there, and listen to the show.  We will be back next week. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

Real Estate Investing: Episode 1

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

Click here for link to podcast 

Jason:  Good morning, Triad. You’re listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  Who was the crazy guy on the weather just a minute ago?  Good night.  We are just testing a few things like my voice, my mic.  But I hope everybody is doing good.  Hey, today we are going to start a new series on investing in real estate. So if you have ever thought about taking the plunge as they say.  Watching those great shows out there on HGTV, the flips, the flops –

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  -- and all those things.  So we have got some interesting ways in which you may have never thought about real estate or investing and kind of just going to dig into that.  But before we put in that piece, there has always got to be this question that has to be answered which is why. Typically, it is why, how, and what.  Right?  Those are the reasons that we process things psychologically in pretty much any decision that we do.  Why do we want to do this?  How is it going to work, and what is the overall outcome going to be?  Whether it be investing in a business, real estate, your house, everything, getting married, new cars, all that.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  The interesting thing about most Americans is we put more time into planning the perfect vacation than we do a lot of our financial futures.  And if we actually ran our day in kind of the same manner in which we planned a vacation, it would be amazing the difference in our success in everything that we do.  Because you think about how do you prepare for that vacation? You make sure you have got whatever.  The dog sitter, the pets are taken care of, you go out, you plan in advance where we are going to be at what time at what specific day.  Whether it be we are going to this theme park this day and the next day we are going to a new one, or we are going to do nothing this day and the next day we are going to float down a river or whatever it is.

Mikell:  That sounds wonderful.

Jason:  Yeah, right?  Just relaxing.  Or even if you have one of those vacations the all-inclusive things where I love all-inclusive because I do not have to make any decisions about money.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Right?

Mikell:  Everything is taken care of.

Jason:  Everything is taken care of, but there is still the decisions of the activities or events of the day.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  Most people just do not say I am going to go sit in Chair 2B for seven days and do nothing.  No, there is whatever activity that it is.  Then there are the excursions. Right?

Mikell: There you go.

Jason:  Get you off the boat so you can get swiped by somebody down, no, I am kidding.  Do not do that.  But those are things that we planned, and if we planned our financial future, and I think sometimes it is because we do not have a plan, so there is no excitement.

Mikell:  Well, financial planning is not exciting at all.

Jason:  Right.

Mikell: I want to go back to the vacation.

Jason:  Yeah, right.  Exactly.  Yeah.  And it is much slower.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  It is much slower, but here is the thing.  If you do the financial planning right, instead of having a vacation that lasts for a week, two or three, whatever you are fortunate enough to get, what if you live your life that way down the road? 

Mikell:  Oooo.

Jason:  So that is a much different way to think about it.  Right?

Mikell:  Not an instant satisfaction.

Jason: Right.

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason:  This is just what we do.  I have several friends that have achieved retirement, and they tell me I am going on a vacation.  I am like no you are not.  You are just living your life somewhere else. You are not on a vacation.  You do not work.  You have paid your dues.  You have done it right.  Now you just live your life in a different location.

Mikell:  So Jason, let me ask you this. Since we are talking about investing, of course, everyone talks about how to get rich fast on investing in real estate.  Is that the secret you are going to give us today?

Jason: Yeah, right.  Well, yeah, the only problem with fast is there is usually this other word that follows. It is called temporary.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  Normally, what we see, and if you need an acid test for this, just google idiots that all lost their money after they won the lottery. 

Mikell:  Oooo.

Jason:  Yeah, because that is get rich quick, and then almost, I think it is like a 90% fail rate. 

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  And so 90% of the people are not only broke, but actually in debt within three years.

Mikell:  You turned out worse than you were before.

Jason:  You turned out worse than you were before.  We not only see that with people that won the lottery.  We see that with a lot of professional athletes.  We see that with folks that have achieved success that they really were not prepared for it.  Professional athletes really fall victim to this for whatever reason. And some of it is you become who you associate with. So if you associate with a bunch of knuckleheads that blow their money, then you do the same thing.  So the guys that really do well are the ones that have the financial discipline to kind of set that aside and prepare themselves and understand that knowing that this is temporary.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  There are no 60-year-olds playing sports, at least in the NFL or the NBA at a high level.  At least none that I know of.  If I am wrong, I am sure somebody can correct me. I get those emails all the time.  But to my knowledge, there are not any nose guards that are 60 years old in the NFL.

Mikell: No, no.

Jason:  It is typically a young man’s sport, and for the most part, the guys, it is just so few that make it past five years.  It is so low.

Mikell:  I was looking at some celebrities on social media, and they are were buying hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry.  I commented that I would love to be your accountant. 

Jason:  Right.

Mikell:  Really.  I would love to give you some financial advice.

Jason: Yeah, well, if it were real gold, maybe it will hold some value.

Mikell:  But still, the money that you are getting now is only temporary like you said.

Jason: Exactly. You can see guys that have done the right things with it where they have invested the money in the proper places, but most of the time we do not. So we have the get rich quick, the temporary fix is really what that is because most people cannot handle that wealth that fast because well, one, they do not have a plan, and two, they think the money is not going to run out.  And the money is gone really, really quick. 

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  So if you want to build a life down the road to where you are not on vacation anymore, you are just living your life in Aruba or you are living your life wherever on that Alaskan cruise, but it is just what you do. It is just you experience the world in a different location.  You can do that. It is just now you have to make plans.  Of course, we want to do it now –

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  -- but that is not –

Mikell: Like right now.

Jason: That is not reality for most folks.  So why real estate?  And what do you want to accomplish?  What is the goal?  There are several points to this.  The series will probably go three to five weeks depending on the questions that we have, I am sure, and all the corrections that I will get sent in emails.  But I am going to share with you my experience, what I have seen 22 years in this business.  I have seen people do it right, and I have seen people do it wrong many, many times over. So you want to build it to last.  That is the key.  So let’s dig in. Grab a pen.  Grab a paper. We are going to get into this, but I think the first question that we need to answer is why real estate. Most people would say oh well, you are a real estate guy, so of course, real estate.  No, I was actually a real estate investor before I was in the real estate business. I believed in the product.  I believed in what was out there, and so, it was really kind of simple.  I was fortunate enough to get, I guess, some advice early and young from people who were far more experienced than I was.  And basically, the story I was told I will share with you, and so, it was kind of easy.  I really deal with common sense, logical stuff. Right?  If it walks like a duck, typically it is a duck.

Mikell:  It is a duck.

Jason: It is not a chicken. And so, I am just real practical, logical. What I figured out real quick is if everything went really, really bad, I did not really want to go glue all my stock certificates together and try to form some kind of shelter to live in because paper really is not that fun.

Mikell:  I was wondering. What?

Jason:  So, if you buy lots of stock and you do not even get paper anymore, but you used to actually get a certificate.  I do not even know if they do that. I think they just email you and say you are in the club. But you could not glue enough of those together if everything went bad because that is all you had was the piece of paper that said you owned the stock. But if the stock went to zero, all you had was the piece of paper. Right?  So I could not glue all that together to actually build something that I felt comfortable that I would like to live in. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  I do not dislike the stock markets.  Do not get mad at me for all you guys making millions of dollars in the stock market. Great.  I hope it works long term.  Everybody has got their little widget, niche, that is it.

Mikell:  There you go.

Jason:  Everybody has got their little niche. The thing with me it was almost like going to Vegas, in my opinion.  It was just legalized gambling in which you are taking a gamble.  You are sending your money to a company in which you have zero control of in the hopes that they are actually going to do what they say they are going to do which is give you a return.

Mikell:  And most of the time, you do not even have much knowledge about this company.

Jason:  You have no knowledge, but one thing is for sure.  You have no decision-making power whatsoever.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: So if they want to change something, they do not send out an email like what do you guys think?  Sometimes we see those decisions have repercussions.  Again, my opinion, shoot the messenger, which would be me.  Do not get mad at anybody else.  This is just my opinion.  But really the story I was told and kind of the acid test for me was if you walked into any big bank in America and said hey, I want to borrow $50 million, the first question they are going to ask more than likely is what do you need $50 million for? Right? It would be a question I would ask for sure. Here is the thing.  If you told them say hey, I believe in you guys.  I love your CEO. I love the fact that you guys have been in business for 100 years.  You have got a great image in the United States.  I love the leadership.  I love every single thing about your big box bank, and I am going to take that $50 million and I am going to buy your stock.  I believe in your company so much. Most, I would say 100% of the time, the answer is no.  We do not do that. Not only would they not loan you $50 million to buy their stock, they wouldn’t loan you $50 million to buy any bank’s stock.

Mikell:  No, because they are not guaranteed to get that money back.

Jason: They are not guaranteed to get the money back.  So what they want is something tangible.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  I like to walk out the door, see the bank does not even want to glue all their stock certificates together.  Right?

Mikell:  No. No.

Jason:  They do not want to build their next bank out of paper physically if you will. They do well building their banks out of paper for sure.  Is it really there?  That is the question, right?

Mikell: True.

Jason:  It is interesting that most people think you go to the bank to get a loan. There is no money in the bank.

Mikell:  No. We just send it to you digitally.

Jason:  That is right.  It is just digital.  Exactly. There is some there to make change.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  But that is about it.  But not enough change to, if you walked in the door and tried to take what was there it would not, well, you would change your location where you are going to live for the next 20 years, but it would not be where you want to be.  Right?

Mikell:  Exactly.

Jason:  Going back to this though.  You kind of have to look at why.  This is the story the guy told me.  It goes back to the physical.  Now, if I walk in there and say I want $50 million to buy houses, apartments, business, brick and mortar, things that are tangible, things that have deeds to them, things that are a substance in which they could physically see, then this whole conversation switches.  Now it is not so much I am trying to talk them into loaning me the money; they are trying to figure out a way to make it happen because that is what they are in the business to do. They want to get that money moving, and they want to invest it in things that are secure.

Mikell:  Exactly.

Jason:  Whether it be businesses or the actual brick and mortar of a business.  So if Honda Jet or one of the big companies, Heiko, Volvo, these big companies that we have right here in the Triad, they go to the bank with an idea. We need to branch out. We need to expand. We are going to create jobs.  We are going to create opportunities, and we want to borrow $10 million to do X, Y, Z.  The bank does not sit there and try to fight them on that. They try to figure out a way to make that happen.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  They believe in that is a good asset within a good corporation or good company, and we want to figure out how to say yes. The flip side of that is if any of these big companies went to these big banks and said hey, we just want to invest in you and we want to buy your stock, we want you to borrow the money to do that, the answer is going to be no even for those large companies. It was a pretty simple story. It was very basic.  It clicked with me. It resonated.  It made sense. So if I was going to put my hard-earned effort of all the years that I am going to work. 20, 30, 40, 50 years, whatever that is depending on who you are, I want to be able to put it into something that I can go out there and it is tangible.  If something really, really terrible happened, I could move into one of my rental homes if I had to.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.  Okay.

Jason:  I would have a place to live.  I would have a place to be safe, if you will.  I think, at the end of the day, that is what we look at is most humans want shelter. It is just something that is innate within us.

Mikell:  Absolutely. 

Jason:  Most of us do not choose to live under an overpass. Right?

Mikell:  No. No.

Jason: It does not matter if it is a trailer, if it is an apartment, if it is a house, double wide. It does not matter what it is. The product does not necessarily make a difference. It is just that we want that physical shelter. We want to know that that product is there.  And here is the really cool thing.  It is always in demand.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  It is always in demand.  There is never, well, I should not say never, but in my knowledge, there has never been a group of people in the Greensboro area, a whole subdivision, that walks out. Just imagine like Adams Farm. There are 1100 homes over there.  If one day they all just walked up and said no, we give up. We are going to go live under I-40. Probably this is not going to happen.  Right?

Mikell: No.

Jason:  You are probably not going to see a movement like that where people just get mad and walk out of their house.  Right?  One of the reasons why is it is hard to carry all your stuff on your back.  Right?

Mikell:  And the rain, storms.

Jason:  So real estate made sense to me logically.  It is sustainable. It is a product which I can go physically touch, see. I can also change it.  I can paint it. I can add to it.  I can enhance it.  I can improve it. And it is in really, really high demand, and not only is it in really, really high demand in Adams Farm, in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point, it is in the state of North Carolina and actually the entire world.  It is in high demand all over the place.  So it is a product in which the sustainability is everlasting.  It is not going to go away.  And the good thing is we keep producing people, and guess what, young people want shelter.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  And so, we always have a migration of, we have 38 million millennials that are all starting to come into the age of hey, we would like to not live at Mom and Dad’s house anymore, not to live at the college.

Mikell:  No.

Jason: We want our own place, whether it be apartments, whether it be buying their homes, whatever it is, but they are looking for this product.  It creates a golden opportunity for investing. Let’s do this. We are going to take a quick timeout.  We are going to run through some more notes. We are going to set up the next four or five shows to really break down real estate investing.  Stay tuned.  Stay with us.  We will be right back.  You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

Hey, and welcome back.  You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  So we are talking about real estate investing, talking about investing in general.  We are going to dig into all the different aspects of real estate investing and the different types and how and why would I and where would I get the money and all these things.  So over the next several weeks, we are going to dig into these.  Stay tuned into this series.  Here is really, what is the reason, and this is very important, what is the reason I want to invest. Most, I find, especially with real estate right now, and part of this is because the media and what is being pushed in the media. I get it because it makes for better entertainment, better things to watch, but most people are looking for the quick buck. Right?  They are the flippers and the floppers. Right? Sometimes those flips turn into flops if you do not do them right, if you do not do the right amount of due diligence.  It is also one of the highest risk categories in real estate and investing is to flip a property because most of them you buy sight unseen.  If you buy a home at a courthouse anywhere in North Carolina, and you have been in that home prior to you buying it at the courthouse, if you did not know the owner, previous owner personally, and they did not invite you in, you trespassed.  Some of you broke in. Some of you have excellent degrees in B&E.  You just have not got caught yet.

Mikell:  Yikes.

Jason:  And you will actually, when you go to fill out a bid, and you will get, and even in the contract in which, if you win the contract, the bank or trustee says do not under any circumstances enter this property prior to you owning it.  If you do, you are trespassing.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason: So you are buying this sight unseen.  Now, some of my amazing guru house-flipper guys out there will be saying well Jason, that is kind of more a guideline.  Yeah, it is a guideline until you get caught.  It is trespassing and it is against the law.

Mikell: That is just a gray area.

Jason:  Yeah, it is gray.  Exactly. I do not know, but just for whatever reason my store card always seems to open the lock just perfectly.  Yeah, that is called breaking and entering and it is illegal, and you should not do that. I do not advocate anyone breaking into anybody’s home just to be clear, but it is something that I see that it does happen. It is the way it is. But because of the risk, and even the most professional house flipper does not want to take that risk. That is why they sneak into the house to get there, to somehow figure out what am I buying outside of what is behind these windows. Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  They do that to hopefully minimize their risk.  Maybe they do not, now that I know what is on the inside, I do not even want to bid on this house.  But if you do it legally, you are buying it sight unseen.  You are taking all the risks no matter what has happened inside that house unless, by chance, you knew the previous owner and they let you in. But a lot of times, these homes are abandoned, and they have been abandoned for a long time.  Many have them have sat through winter months, not properly secured.  Some of them are missing parts and pieces.  I bought a home in Kernersville.  All the math was perfect.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  It was just like this was a great deal.  We did not have a lot of competition.  The house was pretty, pretty, in need of love, but we did the math.  It made sense, but we did not go in.  We actually did not break in the house.  So we do not do that.  We actually do it the right way.  Sight unseen.  Everything was awesome until we finally got the bid, won the house, closed, we are now the owners.  We get to go walk in for the very, very first time, and the house is great condition it is missing something.  The entire kitchen is gone.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  Like there is none.

Mikell:  Like gone.

Jason:  Like no cabinets, no appliances.  You assume that it is just, even if the cabinets are ratty, they will be there.  No.  Pipes sticking out of the floor.  That was it.  That is a $6-7000 difference.  So you go from doing oh really, really well to okay to holy smokes, are we even going to make a dollar.  Well, I guess we are going to keep it.

Mikell:  Or we can just break even.

Jason:  Or we could just get to zero.  Right? And those are some of the unknowns that you would say, and most of you guys that do this for a living say well, you idiot, you have got to go look in the windows.  Right?  You have got to at least, you just have got to put your eyes on it.  You cannot buy a house without a kitchen.  Well, you can buy a house without a kitchen if you cannot see it from the window.  Right?  So what you think was there was not. So anyway.  You live, you learn, you prepare for the unexpected.  But house flipping, it has been around for a hundred years.  As long as we have had real estate it has been around.  It has become very, very famous and very much a fad now that with the HGTV craze and stuff that is going on.

Mikell: Can I ask you a question?

Jason:  Sure.

Mikell: Really quick. There are a lot of companies out there that says hey, you can do house flipping and you do not have to invest your own money.  Is that a scam?

Jason:  It can be.  Sure.  Well, anything can be a scam.

Mikell:  Absolutely, but –

Jason:  There are definitely ways in which you can buy real estate with no funds.

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  It is higher risk.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  Not necessarily for you, but somebody has got to have the money. 

Mikell:  Gotcha.

Jason:  It depends on who is carrying the risk in the deal.  There are ways to do that, and we are going to dig into that as we move through this series.  We are actually going to talk about buying real estate with other people’s money.  It is something you could do.  You actually, if you own a home today, you bought that house with other people’s money if –

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  -- you borrowed anything from the bank.  This is the acid test to prove is your home an asset or is it not?  If you want to disprove me because a lot of people disagree with me, and I say the home you live in is not an asset, and I am here to say that it is.  Anyway, you are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  We are going to be back next week, and we will answer that question.  Do not go anywhere.  Go to Jason Bramblett dot com.

Getting to Sold - Episode II

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

Jason:  Good morning, Triad.  Hope everybody is doing well today. So kicking off your Saturday with a little bit of real estate radio.  If you need to sell that house, you definitely want to stay tuned.  We got some stuff coming your way.  It should help you get on the right track.  Of course, you can always go to Jason Bramblett dot com.  Shoot us any message you have, and what we do is we share those on the air when we feel that it will benefit the Triad listeners.  So we always have some good questions coming in actually every day.  You guys have some great questions out there.  Just life and stuff and things that are happening.  So it is always a good thing to get information. So before you cut that wall down, give us a call. Before you rip out that bathroom, maybe –

Mikell:  Yikes.

Jason:  You might want to make sure you have got another one you can use. That is always a good idea.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Because taking a bath in the kitchen sink not so much fun.

Mikell:  No.

Jason: Are you frustrated in not getting that house sold? So we are going to talk a little bit about that.  Really there are two reasons most of your homes are not selling, and it has to do with these two things.  It is price war and a beauty contest.  You are not winning one of the two or both of them perhaps.  So we are going to dig into that.  There are lots of other ways in which those things can go, but those are the main two topics that we are going to kind of get into those things, so it is time to get real for some of you folks out there.  It is interesting.  About 20% of the population that own homes actually probably should not. Part of the reason is that they forgot about this word that goes with owning a home.  It is call maintenance. Maintenance. Houses need maintenance. They do not, well, there are certain pieces of them that will last, well, I would say forever, but they will last longer than you will be here.  But there is a lot of pieces and parts to the home that have to be maintained, that have to be taken care of.  This is where a good percentage, about 20% of homeowners fall off the radar on this.  So it really puts you in a backpedaling situation when you go to sell.  So we are going to talk a little bit about that.  The transient owners actually feel this the most. These are the people that move the most often, and when you are moving something quicker, you need to make sure it is more up to speed with what people want.  So if you are going to be in your house for 30 years, it does not really make any difference because whatever is going on today will not be the same in 30 years.

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason:  No way. If you have got long-term plans and you do not care to keep up with the times, that is fine.  But if you are thinking of selling from a retirement position or a moving up position, and you know you are going to do that in the next 5-7 years, you do not want to wait because these things compound.  So we are going to talk about that today. The best place to start is really you have got to understand ownership and why you even want to do it.  Why do you want to own a home and what is the purpose behind it?  We have been talking about different things with sales and those types of things for the last couple of weeks in a little series that we did, but the real reason to own a house or one of the reasons behind owning a house is it is a forced, horrible savings account.  Right?  It is forced in that you really have almost no chance to not to save money because there is a thing in there called principle.  Right?  You have got principle and interest. So the bank puts in place a way in which you can save money.  It is forced on you.  It is included in your payment.  You are paying down that debt every month.  Now obviously if you did something really, well, I better watch my words. How about this? If you did an interest only loan, then you are not getting anywhere.

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason:  You are simply just mailing the bank a check.  You are essentially renting the house from the bank at that point.  If you are not putting anything towards principle, you are not even in the situation where it is a good, forced savings account.  You are simply renting from the bank.  We do not see a lot of those loans any longer.  There are not many of them.

Mikell:  They actually kind of phased out.

Jason: Yeah, they did.  Definitely.  Well, it was a high-risk deal for the bank because the whole hoping that is the house actually goes up in value.  Well, we kind of learned from the last crash maybe that is not a bed we want to, because just as all things go up, the saying is what, they must come down. And when they come down and you have no principal saved, it hurts.  You have no equity, or your equity gets sucked up by a market correction. The second reason is to raise a family or just have a place that you enjoy.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Those are the two things.  So it is a really poor savings account, but it is also a place that you can enjoy.  And that is it. There is no other means behind owning a home. Those are the only two goals that it accomplishes.  Shelter and a really horrific savings account. Better than what you are getting in your savings account at most banks, but it is still not great. But at least does force you to put some money aside. I cannot tell you how many hundreds and hundreds of houses we have sold and we meet with the folks, and all the money they have in the entire world is their paid for house.  Had they not had that, they would destitute.  They would be below poverty.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: Completely bankrupt.  So even though it is not a great return, for some folks, it is all that they have in the world because they never saved a dime in their life other than paying off the house forced them to save money.  In some cases, that is all there is, and sometimes that is still a good thing.  As we look through this and why you would own a home, here is why it is not the best investment in the world.  It consumes your revenue.  Right?  You only make X amount of dollars and X amount of dollars goes toward your housing.  It does not pay you anything.  Right?  So this is why in a, it is kind of an oxymoron.  A lot of these big-time bankers and people will say buy a home.  It is an investment.  Well, technically it is not an investment.  It is a savings account.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  Investments pay your money. It is called cashflow. Now if you own a house, a single-family home, and you get a check every month and you live there, come talk to me because you have figured something out. Now you probably have a thing called roommates –

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason: -- and that is okay, but that is not for everybody. Most married couples that have children do not have roommates.

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason:  And parents, if you figure out a way to get your children to pay rent, then definitely we would like to talk to you there, too, because that is a great strategy.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Not your 50-year-old son living in the basement.  He needs to go away, but I am talking about minor children.  Right?  Okay, so it is not an investment that pays you cash or cashflow.  So when you look at a balance sheet, it is always a negative. Right?  Because it is costing you money to be there.  As we look through homeownership, we have got to decide is it right for me at this time in my life?  For some of you, it is in the fact that you cannot save a dime.

Mikell: I am sorry. That is funny.

Jason:  So you need a forced behavior.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  You need a forced way to do that, and owning a house is a forced way to do that.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  The money is being saved which is a good thing. That is your equity.  Right?  But just like all investments, there are risks involved in all this.  The property goes down in value.  You are going to lose some, if not all, if your money, and you cannot control that. Your one house, your island that you have does not have, the economy does not revolve around one singular thing.  Even though you own it, it is still, there is still some risk out there.  Now you can destroy the investment, and some of these banks out here love to do that, and they have created this lovely thing called a HELOC, which is a home equity line of credit. Meaning hey, we noticed something.  You paid a lot down on your mortgage.  You have this thing called equity.  You do not want to do that. That is just wasted money.  You could borrow that equity at a really, really tremendous interest rate –

Mikell:  And one thing I would tell you, Jason, is a HELOC quote unquote a second mortgage.  A lot of people get tricked in that name, and so they really do not know what it is.

Jason:  Absolutely.

Mikell:  It is pretty pointless.

Jason:  We will talk about the goods and the bads and all that stuff of these particular tools that are out here.  But the problem is what happens is it wipes out your equity, so everything you just saved, you just borrowed. Okay?  And they put these really amazing interest rates on there, but most Americans use this money for cars and boats and college and vacations, and all these things are depreciating. They get no, there is no return.  Your car is not going to pay you a check every month.  Right? Even if you pay for it.  I have people call the office, and they want to invest within our group we flip houses and buy and hold real estate.  The first thing I ask them is where did the money come from.  And if they borrowed the money against their home, we reject them. We will not let you invest with us with borrowed money.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  And the reason why is it is way too risky for you.  It is really money that you need to keep it where it is at.

Mikell:  It is not yours.

Jason:  Well, right.  And essentially, it has to be paid back and life changes.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: And when your life changes and you need to get a hold of that money and it is invested in an apartment building, it is difficult to get that out quick. 

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Emergencies do not wait on you.  They happen. That is why they are called emergencies. Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: It is one of those situations. We have many, many folks that invest with us.  We have got several millions of dollars that we turn through every month.  But that money is idle money that is not sitting in people’s homes.  It is sitting in their checking accounts, and they are earning 0.00000, I forgot how many zeroes. It is a lot of zeroes, two five.  Right?

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  It is almost nothing.  Those are the people we want to talk to you that get that dead money moving and get them a return on the money.  But we do not work with people that pull money out of their home or borrow money to invest with us.  We do not do that either. It has to be cash.  Cash that you have parked that you do not need that you just like to see something get returned on it.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Now, that is who we like to work with.  Actually, that is the only people that we work with.  Rarely do I see owners using that money to actually grow investments when they do a HELOC. They end up buying things like cars and boats and those types of things.  The set up on the bank’s part is brilliant. That is what they are there for.  You are not going to the bank, a lot of us, they have taught us like it is a big favor that they are doing to loan us money.  Right?

Mikell:  It is part of their reward program.

Jason:  Yeah, it is their reward program.  Right? No, it is the only thing they have.  It is their product.  They sell debt.  That is what they do.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  You have got to think about who you are going to talk to and what the purpose is behind what they do. Right? They sell debt.  They want you to borrow money. That is how they make their money. They say things like hey, it is your money.  It is your equity.  Why don’t you get that working for you?  And here is what we find out.  Here is typically what happens.  Like I said, it is a great rate.  It is usually below 2%.  It is a teaser rate.  The first 12 months are amazing, then sometimes they escalate after that.  Sometimes they are locked in for five years. Whatever the case may be.  There are lots of different ways that you can skin the cat. But instead of buying something that may be a good idea, maybe it is a rental property that is actually going to give you a return.  We see folks taking way too much risk or buying things that do not make any sense like cars. You do not win by going to the car dealer and saying I am paying cash.  No, you are using the equity from your home in the form of a loan.  That is not cash. Okay?  And the other thing is that car is going to drop like a rock the minute you drive it off the lot.  Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  So you look at the depreciation on a car in three years it is ridiculous.  I have been fascinated by Tesla mainly just because it is interesting to me. Electric car.  It goes amazingly fast, really, really quick. It does not make any noise.  It is neat.

Mikell:  The design is awesome.

Jason:  It is. But I have been looking at some of them.  You go order one online it is $160,000. You go look at one that is three years old, and it is 70.

Mikell: Wow.

Jason:  It is a pretty substantial amount of depreciation. Most cars are that way as well.  Maybe not quite as significant as something like a Tesla or something that is a novelty or something new.  But it is interesting how fast these things depreciate.  You look at, if you are thinking about buying a new one, go look and see what one that is three years old looks like.  It did not go up. Right?

Mikell: No, not at all.

Jason:  Some of them do.  They have horses on the front of them, and they easily cost $300,000 or more, and they are for a very, very small percentage of people.  The other thing I notice about those cars with horses on them that go up in value, you do not see them driving around too often.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  Yeah, very low miles, very limited use. Those guys are not driving those things to work every day for a reason.  You put the miles on them they are not worth much anymore.  Anyways think about things before you borrow money.  You have got to think about these, where you can dig yourself, what kind of hole you can get yourself into. So we are going to take a quick break.  When we come back we are going to talk about what happens when you have a HELOC and the boss says we no longer need your services. We will dig into that when we come back.  You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

And welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  So we were talking about the trap sometimes for some folks of the HELOC and sucking up some of your equity.  There are sometimes when every product is good, but every product does not work for everybody.  And where it does not work is when you make plans and those plans get changed and you had a great amount of equity in your home, and you borrowed it to go whatever it is you want to do with it.  And then you get the call which is the boss saying hey, we are downsizing.  We are no job, no equity.  It is all gone.  Right?  And it is not a good place to be. Or the spouse says hey, I am moving on.  And you went from two incomes to one income to how I am going to pay for this house, and my whole entire world is shook up.  Right?

Mikell: Wow.

Jason:  Just a side note on divorce, too. Ladies, you are getting killed when you keep the house.  Twenty-two years of doing this, some of the most devastating sales I have had is when the wife in particular wins the house in the divorce settlement, and they do a HELOC or they do some type of loan to cash the other spouse. That is not what you want to do. I know it sounds like you are winning because you stuck it to him or her, and you got to keep the house.  I promise you when you go to sell it, it is never, ever is how you think it is. And part of the reason why is because you are basing the number, it is made up.  It is fake.  You get an appraisal done with no buyer, therefore, this appraisal is not market value. It is an opinion of what maybe the bank would loan on the house if there was a buyer.  You need to sell the property and move on.  Then you equally distribute the pain and the equity.  Okay?  I know that is not what a lot of you want to do because everything in your world is upside down.  The home is the safe place.  The kids’ lives are upside down and you think that is going to give them some type of stability.  It does not. They are screwed up.  Okay? Just get over it.  It is the way that it is.  Divorce screws up everything, and you are not, by keeping your home, you are not going to insulate your children from it. Okay?  Because they have their own little safe place room is not going to make any difference.  You need to financially look out for your best interests, which also is probably your children’s best interests, and when you go to sell this home, I will promise you, very rare, like I cannot even think of one time off the top of my head, where this has actually come out good for the spouse that got the house through the divorce settlement. Okay? Just as a side note.  Note to self if it ever happens, sell all the assets.  Split all the money, and then that way, you have equal distribution and not made up equal distribution.

Mikell: Absolutely.

Jason: All right. So, we have got the boss.  We have got the HELOC. We have got no spouse.  We have got something that it is going on in our life, and now we have no equity.  And this is where the problem comes in.  We cannot do anything.  We cannot move quick because we do not have any equity.  The other thing, too, is a HELOC or a home equity line of credit is very easy to qualify for.  It does not have the same underwriting guidelines as when you purchase a home, and we find that the appraisals are a little bit more liberal on the HELOC side.

Mikell:  They are.

Jason: You could actually be very, very much upside down in your property.  Meaning you could actually borrow more than it is worth, which is not a good place to be. Right?  Because if you need to do something quick, emergency, think about that.  Blue light, red lights, doctors, all that kind of stuff. When you do not have mobility, and you have no money, it is hard to get out of things.  So if you use your equity for your home purchase, you need to make sure it is earning money.  So if you buy a rental house with the home equity, make sure whatever you do with it, it returns capital back to you.  It should return the money you borrowed plus profit.  That is what an investment does. It does not just return your principle. It returns principle and profit. Both.

Mikell:  Now, I did work in banking for a little bit.  I know that some banks would deny if you would do that with a home equity because they are selling debt.

Jason:  Yeah.

Mikell:  So they did not want you to actually buy rental property, so you cannot really say that when you are doing the home equity loan.

Jason:  Yeah, they would much rather you go buy a Tahoe because that is smarter. 

Mikell: Yes.

Jason: Yeah, right exactly.  And to Mikell’s point, if they actually ask the question, which some of them just do not, you get the money, and you go do whatever you want with it. Originally, it was supposed to be for what, home improvements.

Mikell:  Absolutely.  Yes.

Jason:  No question about it. The interesting thing about that is I have sold a lot of homes with a lot of HELOCs, and I did not see a lot of improvement.

Mikell:  No, you do not.

Jason:  It is kind of a, especially for as big as some of those HELOCs are, your house should be amazing. Not so much.  Now I will tell you that the ride in the driveway is looking pretty good, or the boat in the garage. Or at the lake or whatever it is.  There are rules. They are just not enforced well.  We will just put it like that.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  The other thing that we see is you get this money, you buy the depreciating thing, or you start a business.  What we typically see, and this is what we talked about a few weeks ago is no proof of concept. Really what you are doing is you are borrowing money for an idea or a dream or something like that or a hobby.  But you need to make sure it returns the money that you are borrowing.  Right?  Hopefully at a very fast rate. That is what businesses should do. But normally what we see is a hope, a prayer, and whatever. And unless you are inventing the next new iPhone, and you are like 100% sure this thing is going to fly, you may not want to go all in because that is what you are doing.

Mikell:  You were talking about entrepreneurship in our previous episodes.  You will fail in the beginning.

Jason:  That is it.  Absolutely. How I have made it is I have been told no more than anybody else.  How I became successful I took risks when nobody else would do it. I stuck my neck out there further than other people were willing to do.  Right?  I have been told no a lot, and I have made mistakes, and I just kept trudging through. Right? At any one of those times, I could have quit.  It does not even necessarily make you a failure, but it did not work.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  And you would be doing something else.  That is why I said in the previous radio shows it does not take money to start a business.  It does not take money to make money.  It takes courage to do both of those things. If it was just borrow the money, everybody that had a HELOC could go out here and start a business, and I do not know.  Everybody would be selling widgets on every corner.  Right?

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  It does not work that way. So it takes courage to go through the pain of whatever it is you are doing to earn that. So just be careful.  Especially in these situations where they are highly emotional.  We see people make the most mistakes in real estate when they act out of emotion.  Unfortunately, that has a lot to do sometimes with divorce and death and different things.  Hopefully, that is what I can bring to the table is a level head, some math, some numbers, take the excitement out of it.  We are going to look at this from a real numbers’ perspective and what is best for you because that is, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters in the whole deal. Sometimes just because it works does not mean it was good.  Right?

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  And we need to make sure we have somebody there that can help us with that. So next week we are going to dig into getting that house ready to sell and what I need to do to win this price war and this beauty contest. You can hit Jason Bramblett dot com any time. All of our homes are there. Send me a question.  We look forward to speaking with you.  You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

Sales Series

Sales Series

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason:  Good morning, Triad.  Hope everybody is doing well. Hope everybody survived last night’s, well whatever it was that blew through here.  It was wide open.  So maybe you got your canoe out. Maybe you are floating in the front yard, but unfortunately, there is more to come.  Hey, if we did not have the weather to talk about, some of us would not have anything to say. Right?  It is too hot.  It is too cold.  It is too this. It is too whatever, but anyway, if you are out there, be safe.  I think flash flood warnings are still out, so be cautious if you live anywhere near a little stream.  Sometimes it becomes a very big one quickly. Use precaution and obviously do not let the kids out playing in the creek.

Last week, we got into a series on sales.  We are going to continue that this week. We started talking a little bit about sweat equity last week, and now we are going to dive into the good old-fashioned sweat equity, hard work, making it happen, getting out there doing well, digging in and grinding out stuff.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  It is a piece of business that is required for all business especially when you are getting them started.  Somebody has got to push the boulder to get it going, to get the momentum.

Mikell: And I really appreciate this topic, Jason, because one thing you touched on last week is basically just having confidence in yourself, knowing that what you want to do matters.  When you are talking about the part with the tractor, you probably thought that was a silly idea.  Now, that is a million-dollar company.

Jason:  That is right. Yeah, absolutely.  People a lot of times they avoid problems.  I want problems.  Problems are what give us security in what we do.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  The internet cannot fix problems.

Mikell: No.

Jason:  I can. I can fix your problem.  I can fix your problem house. You are not going to do that by clicking the mouse and going to whatever out there.  You still have to have human capital and human people to do many, many, many of the tasks.  I am not afraid of the robot generation although it will replace some jobs. Some of it is good because for safety reasons and those kinds of things we need robots doing certain things like it gets pretty dangerous out there in some of these careers and careers paths that people have.  So technology is good, but it does not replace hustle.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  It does not replace getting out there and making it happen. One of the things that you have really got to start doing is you have got to stop doing stupid, too. Warren Buffet has a great quote. He has got two rules in business.  The first rule is never ever, ever lose money.  The second rule see rule one. That is it.  That is a great line –

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason:  -- from a guy that has a few Benjamins under his belt.

Mikell:  Just a few.

Jason:  Just a few. Just a few. You need to start looking at doing smart things with your money and time and making good moves in the right direction, right place.  So today we are going to dig into that.  The mindset.  The mindset of champions.  What do champions do in order to win? I will assure you they do not sit at home and watch TV and just entertain themselves.  Right? 

Mikell:  No.

Jason: They have a plan. They have a purpose, and they are out there working it. So grab your pen and paper and let’s crush this Saturday morning and get things rocking and rolling. We can make excuses pretty much for anything that does not line up with our quick, easy plan and basically avoid this thing called sweat equity, avoid this thing called work. It is called work because it is no fun.  Right? It would be awesome if you could, think about this. I am waking up today and I am going to go do fun at your job.  Right?  Typically, that is not the mentality that we have, but that is a mind shift, and when you can make fun at your job and what you do, my wife gets frustrated with me sometimes because she will call and she is like are you coming home.  I am like yeah, sure, absolutely.  What time is it? It is like 8:30.  Oh, whoops. Just kind of blew right through that.  Sometimes it is I just get caught up in what I am doing, and I get excited about it and time just blows through.  Sometimes I am there late because well, it is busy. We have got a lot of stuff happening.  And you cannot get it all in and done in a 40-hour week.  I have folks that tell me I work 40 hours. I am like what do you do after Wednesday?  They look at me like what?

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason: I was like well, yeah, what do you do after Wednesday? If you are only working 40 hours you are not really getting, I do not know.  Get a bigger stick. Get more leverage. Things to think about as we go through this, the mindset, the difference between having an idea and making it happen is really in the work, in the sweat equity.  And so as an investor, one of the things I look for is the proof of concept before I invest, before I put my money into anything, I want to make sure has it been done before. And you should ask the same thing.  Have you done it?  What are the results and can it be scaled?  That is what I am looking for.  I get a lot of folks call me, and they have great ideas.  They are like hey, would you partner with me on this?  I am like sure, but I find out it is theory, and it is hard to invest in theory.  There are companies that do that, but most investors do not invest in theory, and if they do, they are a very, very, very high-risk investment.  Just to give you an idea.  When you have an investor, when those three things line up, when you have the proof of concept, when you have done it, you have the results, and it can be scaled, the banks and investors will throw cash at you.

Mikell: Absolutely.

Jason:  You will never have an issue with money ever when you have those things lined up. I got a friend who needed $20 million for a project.  $20 million is not a little bit of money.

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason:  That is a lot of zeroes. But because he had all three of these things lined up, he was able to raise that money in less than 90 days. Okay?

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  So that was from lots of different people, lots of different people that had faith in what he was doing, but he was also able to show them that he was able to do this, and he had done it in the past. He had done it on smaller scales.  Typically, when it works on a small scale, it most of the time will work on a big scale.  That is called working out your proof of concept.  And so, those are the things that you have to do.  He was able to show that I have done so and so with x amount of money and here are the results and here is where we will go and here is how it is going to grow.  And the formula works for any widget on the planet.  Anything.  Any kind of widget out there it works as long as those three factors are deployed in every single transaction.  So he got his $20 million because he had a proof of concept. He had a plan, and he was able to show and prove that it was not a theory of concept.

Mikell:  It seems like he showed that previous sweat equity as well.

Jason:  Yes.

Mikell:  That is what sold it.

Jason:  There is no doubt about it. Yeah, because if you do not have the sweat equity behind it, what do you have?

Mikell:  Nothing.

Jason:  Theory. You have got theory.  You got an idea.  Theory may be good for the science labs, but they are not great for business. 

Mikell:  No, not at all.

Jason:  They are not great for business.  If you prove it works small perfectly, first, keyword, first, then you will get the opportunity to show it big. But you have got to do it. So next question I get is where in the world and how do I start?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Really the key thing is you start with what is in front of you.  You start with the prospect next door. Knock on a neighbor’s door.  The business next door. The school, whomever you know that needs your product or service.  It makes no difference.  Action is the key to sales.  You have to go do it.  You have to go make it happen. A lot of people want to skip that step because that is the rejection step.  Right? Think about, there are so many stories out there, but everybody from McDonald’s to KFC and all these different companies and they are billion-dollar corporations, most of them got told no hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of times because maybe they were talking to the wrong audience, or they were just working out the grind.

Mikell:  My generation is afraid to fail.  I admit that. 

Jason:  They are. They are hypersensitive to failure.

Mikell: I like that.

Jason:  Hypersensitive.  Most people want to skip that step and they want to go straight to advertising. Advertising does not create really much. What it does though it enhances what you are already doing.  You start by beating the street.  All right?  You start by knocking on the door, knocking on the business.  I have spent, fortunately, where I am at in my career in my life, I have been able to spend time with people of Shark Tank and the host of the show, and got to know some of them better than others, but I have been fortunate to get around people that are big thinkers.  One of the interesting things is all of them started out kind of with this door-to-door, ground-roots, knocking on businesses or knocking on their neighbor’s door, it is how they started their careers.  They did not start at this high level that we see.  Dave Ramsey used to say on the radio all the time, he goes people think we are an overnight success.  I have been doing this for 28 years, but I am an overnight success. Because they only see what they want to see or they only, now you are only visible to them at the level that you are at.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  You did not see them going through the grind.  And that is why they have books. You go back and read the books and you listen to the grind.  Damon Johns has a got a great story, one of the guys on Shark Tank. This guy closed this company five different times and threw in the towel, and just something kept going out there and going out there.  Now he is running an $8 billion company.

Mikell: That was actually really key what you just said, Jason.  I do not know if you know it or not.  But I would say my generation needs to read more books and stay off social media because social media shows where I am at now. They do not show the grind.  They do not show the sweat equity. They do not show the pain.

Jason:  That is right.

Mikell:  The book would cover all of that.

Jason:  Yes.  Absolutely it does, yes. Yes, books are phenomenal.  I find that most leaders and most people that succeed at a high level read many, many, many more books than they watch YouTube or the book of faces that are out there.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Most of those faces are fake faces.  So think about where you are getting your information. Nobody gave these folks millions of dollars to get started.  They started one sale a at a time.  It is fun. If you watch Mark Cuban, he does not invest in much.  He is probably the shark that invests the least, but he carries a lot of wisdom in what he says.  If you watch him closely, especially his body language, you will notice when someone says that they door knock to sell their product, he lights up, man.  That is when you get his attention.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  You want to get Mark Cuban’s money, you tell him you knock on doors to sell your product, and you sell it at a high level, and you have some profitability in that, and I will tell you what.  That guy, he gets excited.  He lights up. He is behind that. Why?  Because you cannot duplicate or replace that kind of hustle. A machine will not do that.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: Right?  And that is a drive and a will.  At the end of the day, if you really think about it, he is not investing most of the time in the product. He is investing in that person that has the courage to get out there and present.  The person that is willing to go knock on doors and present their product, that is what he is investing in.  You look at some of the widgets that he does not, and they are successful. What is the story behind it?  Is there hustle in there? Is there grassroots’ sales? And those are the things that he gets excited about.  Not just him.  There are other sharks that do that as well, but anyway. So this weekend, dig down, drum up the courage to get started, and that is all that it takes.  Some of you guys are sitting on billion-dollar ideas, and unfortunately, they will go to the grave with you because you will never take the action to do it.  People ask me.  What does it take to make money? What does it take to be successful in business?  Most people immediately go to money.  It absolutely has nothing to do with money. It is 100% courage.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  If you do not have the courage to get started, the money makes no difference.  If I give you $100 million, and you do nothing with it, one, as an investor, I do not get a return, and two, you just have $100 million.  Right?

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  And if it is not doing anything for you, you will eventually go through it.  There is a masterful teacher that talks about this.  He does not use money.  He uses a thing called talents, and he gives you an example.  It is a story of three different people with three different talents, and three different ways in which they used the talents.  He gave one person ten talents and the other a couple, and one guy got one.  And the guy that got one did not do anything with it.  He had the talent to go out and make it happen, and he did not.  And what did the teacher do?  He took the talent away from him and gave it to the person that actually had the most, that was actually using the talent. Think about the stories that we hear and when you read books, you learn, and there are simple, teachable moments that are in that book. It just takes one little ah ha to really get you started.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  Think about that. America is built on small business. Most people think it is built on corporate America.  It is not.  Corporate America does not drive America.  Small business, people out here, the HVAC guy, the plumber, the electrician, the real estate agent, the insurance guy.  These are the heartbeat and what drives America.  The guy that fixes the truck. These are the guys that make it happen.  We unfortunately put too much emphasis on corporate America.  If you want to know the power, and some of you guys do, or the lack of power and the lack of hope and faith that you can have in corporate America, some of you have experienced this.  You are working for a Fortune 100 company.  Everything is awesome. You have got your pension.  You have got all the PTO time you want. Four weeks of vacation.  Everything is awesome, and you walk in one day, and they say we are closing the division, and 10,000 of you, 3,000 of you, 500 of you are going home. They did not ask about what was going on in your life.  They did not ask about the struggles that are going on with your family.  They simply said the bottom line says we cannot afford you any longer, therefore, you have to leave.  That is not a place of control that you really want to be in especially when you are 57 years old and you get that message, and you are making $85,000 a year.  Try going and replacing that at 57 years old.  Very difficult. So small business. Those opportunities that you have, those ideas that you have, let’s go put them to work this weekend.  Take action.  Get the courage. Go out there and do it.  Hey, guess what? You are going to mess up.  The first 100 people may say no.  But if the 101^st guy says yes, it actually could change your entire, well, it could actually change you and every person behind you.  Your entire legacy of what you want to do and leave on this earth could be changed just by one person saying yes.  But you might have to hear 100 no’s first.  All right.  We are going to take a time out, go pay some bills, and we are going to come back and we are going to dig into the how a little bit more.  So will be right back. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. We will see you here in just a minute.

And welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. So we were digging into the why and the get started and what should I do, so now it is the how.  I hear this quite often when I talk to, especially different real estate agents around the country.  They are like well, Jason, that is easy for you. You are on the radio.  You are on TV.  You have got billboards everywhere.

Mikell:  You have the number one real estate company in the Triad.

Jason:  There you go.  Even better.

Mikell: Yeah.

Jason:  All these things that I do, yes, but remember it goes back to marketing enhances.  It does not actually get the stone rolling down the hill.  I get a lot of folks.  I am just working from my kitchen table. I am just working from my garage. I started on a cardboard box, which was my kitchen table because we did not have a kitchen table.  We had a big cardboard moving box, probably a refrigerator or something.  That is where I started.  I did not start with billboards up and down the highway, and I did not start on the radio.  I did not start with those things. So stop looking at where you are and look at where you are going.  That is the key.  You cannot look at where you are.  And then you need to set targets.  Targets are key. Targets show predictable numbers. When you do start, you need to know where you are going.  You have got to put that number on paper.  You have got to be able to create a formula or a recipe in order to get to the sale. So if you do not do that, then you have this unpredictability.  Unpredictability is not something people invest in. They do not invest their money in a service that is unpredictable, and they do not invest their money in a product that is unpredictable.  So you have to track everything. You have got to do it every day, and you have got to build a predictable system for your product, your service, or your widget.  So we use a tool called a Daily Activity Report. This is how I learned.  This is what I came up with, and this is what I teach our team members. It is just a simple sheet of paper that we created that tracks the dials, the contacts, the appointments, the tasks, and our priority touches.  Every single day.  It tracks the time that we are calling, and basically this is a blueprint to ensure that we are achieving the highest productivity in the shortest amount of time.  Doesn’t that sound like a good plan? As opposed to just doing it all the time.  Having basically building the perfect recipe to ensure that you succeed, and you do that by prioritizing and tracking that daily.  Then what happens is you create the proof of concept.  I have a plan here.  I adjust my plan daily and I get it to where it starts to prove the concept that I have. And especially for prioritizing your time.  I teach a principle called time blocking.  It is simply just being focused intense on your task for a certain period of time because if you do not do that, this thing comes along called the whirlwind, and it will blow up your day if you are not prepared.  You have got to make sure.

So the data, then that we do from our Daily Activity Sheet is actually loaded up into some cloud-based software that we have, and it creates a history.  It creates a system in which I can see numbers over a long period of time.  It takes that daily activity and it creates a nice, long tale in which I can see where a team member may start to kind of get off course.  If they veer off course a little bit, I can see it happening, and I know the result of veering off course. This basically lets me see around corners.  It lets me know when I have got a team member that is headed to the ditch, and they do not know it because their head is down and they are working hard, but they are not working in the right area or they are not doing the right things.  So now I have data to be able to see that.  I can see that deviation. 

We will play with some numbers, and I know numbers are hard on the radio. But let’s just say you had 18 conversations in order to get to an appointment.  You talk to 18 people and now you have got an appointment to get in front of them, and let’s say it is seven appointments to get to the sale.  So you have got 18 people you speak with to get an appointment.  Now you have seven appointments, and then you get a sale.  If the team member is getting the appointments but they are not getting the sales, then there is an issue with their face-to-face contact.  They are doing great on the phone, but they are blowing it up when they get in front of the people. Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  So we are able to see that.  So what is it?  Is it their body language? Did they show up late? Are they off script?  Are they not asking for the business?  That is a simple one.  Maybe they have face-to-face appointments nailed, but they are making 24 contacts to get an appointment instead of 18.  And now we have a scripting issue. Maybe they are off-topic, they are off-script, or they are not using the scripts in which we laid out that we know are successful in getting people to meet with you.  Maybe they are calling at the wrong time of the day.  People are busy.  If you interrupt them at the wrong time, they are not going to talk to you.

Mikell:  No.

Jason:  So you have to have a metric every day to be able to see this. You have to have a report.  You have to have data, and the cool thing about this is you do it daily to prove your concept, and then our CRM system that we have and our cloud-based software allows us to take a look at a long period of time to say hey, maybe I got off track. Everybody has a bad day. Everybody should not have a bad week.  Right?  So maybe there is something happening.  Maybe there is something going on in that team member’s life that they have not shared. Maybe their home life is a little tough.  Maybe the spouse is nagging at them.  I told you this would not work.  I told you this was a waste of time.  When are you going to make some money?  Just go get a real job.

Mikell:  Which happens.

Jason:  Go out and get a real job and quit trying to sell that widget on the side of street or knocking on those doors.  You know that is stupid and it is not going to work.  Maybe that has just gotten into their head, and it has veered them off and it has got some doubt in there.

Mikell:  You need a strong support system.

Jason:  You need a strong support system, but you also need to be strong yourself.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  If you do not have a strong support system, do you use that as an excuse.  Read books, build up your self-confidence.

Mikell: Okay.

Jason:  All right?

Mikell:  I like that.

Jason: Do not dig into the YouTube haters and doubters and your Facebook friends that think you lost your mind and all these different things.  You have got to push through that stuff.  Life is not easy. It is just the way it is.  I cannot fix that.  I am not going to be able to fix that.  This is not paradise, and so you have got to push through those obstacles.  Next week, we are going to dig into more in our series on sales.  You can go to Jason Bramblett dot com.  If you want a copy of our Daily Activity Report, just shoot me an email.  I will be happy to share it with you.  No cost.  My gift to you. Everybody have a safe weekend, and we will be back here next week on the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

Sales Series

JASON BRAMBLETT REAL ESTATE SHOW  

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Jason:  Good morning, Triad.  I hope everybody is doing great out there, enjoying the sunshine and the beautiful North Carolina blue skies.  It does not get any better than that.

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason: I tell folks everyday that if you are coming in from out of state and we got the Carolina blue skies going on, it is a disadvantage.  It is hard to beat that for sure. Now, of course, in the next little bit, the humidity will show up.

Mikell: Absolutely.

Jason:  Blue skies are nice, but when you are melting, it does not matter.  Anyway, I hope everyone is going to have a good, wonderful, safe weekend out there.  Remember slow down, take it easy. That plate of food is going to be there when you get there.  I promise you. But you have to get there in order to enjoy Grandma’s food or wherever you are headed.  So be careful out there.

Mikell:  I would say leave early.

Jason:  There you go.

Mikell:  Because you may not get a plate.

Jason:  Depending on what family you are going to. Right?  That is right.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  Yeah, it is possible.  That is possible. But just be safe. There is lots of traffic out there this weekend as always.  I have heard there is no sand left at the beach. It is completely covered with human bodies. Carolina Beach and all those out there are wide open this weekend.  I think it is like state law. You have to go to the beach on Memorial Day weekend.

Mikell: Yeah, absolutely.

Jason:  If you are there, be safe.  If you are on a boat or on the lake, be safe out there.  We are wrapping up today the series on getting your house ready to sell.  So whether you are now, a year, three years down the road, whatever the case may be, stay tuned because we are going to walk you through each step as we go through it. And if you have questions, of course, you can give us a call at the office, 553-0796, or shoot us a message or email or, of course, Facebook, whichever one.  We are pretty much everywhere. Instagram, whatever all these other things are. The tweeters and the twitters and LinkedIn. You name it, we are out there. What we find is interesting. We have got folks that are avid Facebook folks, but they do not do any of the other stuff. So we do it all so we can get in front of you. Get the information out to you.  Get homes out to you. So if you are thinking about selling, you can reach out to us at any of those one social media platforms.

So last week we left off with the kitchen, so we are going to recap on that just a little bit.  One key thing, this is a big mistake that some of you folks make. If you are going to buy appliances, make sure they all match.  Okay? You do not want to end up with the white wall oven and the black dishwasher and the stainless-steel refrigerator and all those things. So get some continuity there, get something that matches, and just set a budget if you are replacing as you go. Or actually there are some great sales this weekend if you are in the market.  There are actually some phenomenal sales at these big box places out there. And also make sure that the appliance package you choose matches the quality of the house that you are selling. So if you are selling a home north of $300,000, most people do not want dishwashers with turn dials on them. Right? It is kind of like a TV, well, you guys do not even know what that is.  Now, once upon a time you actually had to get up, walk over to the TV and spin a knob to choose the channel. Right?

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  Channels did not get changed a lot back in those days because somebody had to get up off the couch. Right?  Now you do not even have to have a remote.

Mikell:  I actually remember those days.

Jason: Yeah.  Now the TVs are so smart you just speak –

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  -- and it just does whatever it is you want it to do. Amazing.  Granite as we get into the kitchen. Granite, it is simple. Unless your house is over $500,000, you really do not need to worry about these exotic different types of granite, these different levels. They have got level one to level 4, level 5 and all these different things.  If you are over $500,000, okay, then that is fine. But in the 250-450 range, you really just keep it standard. Keep it simple. Granite is granite. It is a rock. It is kind of like diamonds. There are still places out there that talk about they are precious stones. They sell them at Walmart.  Okay?

Mikell:  They do.

Jason:  They sell granite everywhere now, and that is why you have seen the prices come down. That is why we are selling $150,000 homes with granite countertops now.  It has become affordable. It has become a product in which, once the big box stores start carrying it, you see the prices get pushed down, making it more affordable.  But the number one investment in the kitchen for 22 years in real estate, this is the best two things you can do. Organize and clean. You cannot go wrong with those two things. So a well-organized pantry and an eau de bleach smell in the kitchen is a wonderful, wonderful thing.  People never ever complain about those things. They actually, actually you will really draw attention to your kitchen. Think about grocery stores. You will probably go in one in the next week. Look at the amount of money they invest in make sure that all the labels are facing the aisle.  Everything is easy to see. You notice they do not put the warning labels facing the outside of the aisle. Right? It is the representation of the food. It is the photo of the front of the can or the box or whatever it is. They do not turn the cereal box to the side where you can just see how horrible they are for you. Right?

Mikell:  Exactly.

Jason:  They put the Tony the Tiger.

Mikell: And they put the cereals at the bottom shelf so they are eye level to the children.

Jason:  Oh absolutely.  Yeah, yeah, all the gross cereal is up high.  All the granola whatever. All your sugar cereals are about 36 inches off the ground.

Mikell: Grape Nuts is definitely not going to be at the bottom.  

Jason:  That is right. You are not going to pay for premium placement there because no kid is walking around going I just feel like some barely today.  No. They want those magic marshmallows and sugar –

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  -- in nine different colors and flavors.  Right? It is the same thing with your house, and if you can duplicate that, take a look at that, observe what they are doing and do that with your pantry.  Right? And make sure that it is orderly and neat and looks like or feels like that grocery store feel. It also makes everything feel a little bit bigger. Organization, continuity there actually really kind of duplicates or exponentially grows the space.  It is amazing. If something is organized, if it is a 24-inch shelf, it is 24 inches, but yet, when we go in and organize the shelf, it makes it look bigger simply because you have that continuity there. Think about Dillard’s, Macy’s, whatever department store out there, whatever clothing store that you go to. Look at the money they invest in displays.  Right? In making sure that the clothes are presented well. Obviously, they have got mannequins and all that stuff, but if you look at the shelves, if you look at how they display the clothing, duplicate that. You have got your closets. You have got your, not that people are going through your drawers in your house, but they are going to look in your walk-in closets.  Make sure they are orderly. Right? There is a different price in retail shopping. If you go to some of these stores where things are just kind of thrown in bins, it is a lot different price than when you go to a name brand store, where they are really doing a top-level job of making sure everything is properly presented.

Mikell: Absolutely.

Jason: And the prices that they charge are substantially different.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  And some of that appeals to folks, and that is fine. But remember this. People that go to those types of stores where you have to dig through stuff and it is like an Easter egg hunt.  Right? You are in there digging around for the deals. They are there for a deal. The people that are going to the nicer stores, if you will, the stores that are have a representation of orderly, clean and all that, they are paying a different price. So when somebody comes to your house, do you want them thinking hey, I am looking for a deal or do you want them thinking like they are retail shopping?  If you want to get top dollar, you do not want them on an Easter egg hunt in your house. Right?

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason:  You want the house presentation to match the price point in which you are attempting to achieve for your price level. So it does not matter if it is a $100,000 house or $1 million house.  I have been in some amazing homes that looked phenomenal on the outside. Landscape, yards, everything just perfect, and go inside, it looked like a bomb went off. Wow. So price range does not dictate behavior.  Okay? Just because if it has got a big price does not mean it is a great presentation on the inside. I have been in some very nice, amazing homes. You walk in and you are just like wow. Unbelievable with the way in which, it is just the disorder, if you will, that is in the house. So think about that.  It is a key thing. So as you observe these stores, steal ideas. Look and see how they have it at the grocery store, at some of these finer clothing stores that are out there or whatever your flavor of store is. But just recognize that people that are digging through bins are looking for deals. That is not what you want them to do at your house.

Mikell:  Not at all.

Jason:  You do not want to be showing your house as a deal.  Remember you do not need any help to get the lowest price. You can just do that stupid all on your own. Right? That is what we are here for.  We are here to get your more, but you have got to be willing to do some things. The most frustrating thing is to have somebody say yeah, we want top dollar.  Then you go to their house and you are like no, you really do not. Nineteen different shades of blue is no. You are not looking for the best price. So we have got to coach you through where it is we need to get you as far as that presentation.  It is huge.

So as people are moving, typically, they are looking for more space.  You see a lot of folks that are upgrading right now, especially with rates being as cheap as they are.  Most people do not move to the same. They either move up or down, but very few people make a lateral move. So you have got folks that are coming to your home that may be in an apartment. They are looking for more space. And so, you need to think about that.  Make sure your closets are organized. They need to look clutter free. If they are cluttered and they open up the closet and they are like wow, there is no storage here. Well, there actually is. It is just you have got way too much stuff in there. It goes back to being organized, and neat and clean and organized closets help sell homes.  Closets that are jammed up, I mean, some of you guys have got more bedsheets than the daggone Hyatt Hotel. You got three bedrooms and 90 sets of sheets. Pack some of them away. Use some minimum stuff. You have been hanging onto things for quite a while. Or get rid of them. Donate them. Sell them. Whatever you want to do. Chuck them in the trash.  It does not matter to me. But just make sure you have a minimalist idea of what it is. Even folks that are downsizing, we see that they still are looking for storage. It is one of their biggest concerns. I am in a 5,000 square foot house. I am going to go down to 2000 or 2500 square feet, maybe a townhouse or something like that. And what they are looking for is something that they can take, memories, stuff that they do not want to get rid of yet, and they are still attempting, some of them are trying to put 5000 square feet of stuff in a 2500 square foot house and it does not work. But even if we have a downsizer that is considering your home, it is still important.  They need to know or they need to have that visual that hey, I can take some of my lifestyle with me. I can take some of my lifestyle, will fit. Because they are making a huge change. Think about it. They have maybe been in their house for 20 years, and it is time or whatever. Empty nesters or they just do not need that big of a house anymore. But they still want to make sure that what they are buying is going to fit the essentials. Now the essentials to them may still probably be too much stuff, but we have got to be able to make the presentation. We have got to be able to show off the space. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  Kids’ rooms. Kids’ rooms are their own little unique animal.  I really do not care that much about kids’ rooms and the reason why is this.  I would say kids’ rooms are probably the least important room in actually the selling process. Every parent that I have worked with in the past 22 years bribe their kids with something that they are going to be able to do in their new room.  Every single one of them. So whatever is there is going to change 99% of the time. Very few exceptions to people who move into a home and not change anything about the kids’ rooms, especially teenagers because teenagers hate you. Right? When you are upsetting their apple cart, you are ruining their life because we are moving to a new city, to a new area, to a new state.

Mikell:  New school.

Jason:  New school.  New everything.  And you are absolutely destroying everything that they know that is good in their life.  You are messing it up. And so what we do is we tell them hey, you can do whatever you want in your new room, and it will be all yours. And so, that is okay.  That is why sometimes we go into some of these kids’ rooms and they are creative. I will give you that. But I do not worry about it so much. If it is screaming craziness, then yeah, we may need to tone it down a little bit. Maybe neutralize it, but the biggest key with the room is it just needs to be clean, and here is the kicker, smell free.

Mikell:  I was going to say smell nice.

Jason:  Yeah, I know teenagers in and of themselves come with this odor.  Eau de teenager, which is typically pizza from three weeks ago that is jammed under the bed, empty drinks, all kids of stuff and things that just never seem to migrate back to where they are supposed to be.

Mikell:  Workout clothes –

Jason:  Yes.

Mikell:  -- that never made it to the wash.

Jason:  Never did.  Shoes that have not seen a washer in a long time.  Yeah, so it needs to at least smell presentable.

Mikell: Absolutely.

Jason:  That is a key thing there.  Get it at least somewhat organized, but clean and the proper smell is a good thing in the kids’ room.  But do not go crazy with spending a lot of time there because we have seen time and time again that is what parents do.  Parents will do everything they can do to ease that transition by selling the kids on hey, we will let you paint your room purple.  We will let you put whatever. We are going to get you a new bedroom suite of some kind. Beds, bunkbeds, whatever it is. It is something we do as parents to attempt to make that transition as easy as possible. It is an attempt.  That is all that it is. It does not mean it is still going to work. Hopefully, it will.

Mikell:  Hopefully.

Jason:  So let’s do this.  We are going to take a quick timeout.  Go pay some bills. We will be back. You can get us at Jason Bramblett dot com or at the office, 553-0796.  You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

And we are back. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate show.  I hope everybody is having a great, great weekend. Remember be safe out there as you are traveling around to wherever it is you are headed to.  Use time on your side. Right?

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  Drive a little slower, leave a little earlier and relax, and when that person cuts you off, it will be okay.

Mikell:  It will. Actually, there are a lot of red and blue lights out there on the highway.

Jason:  Yeah, I am sure. I am sure.  America is the only country that I have driven in that we actually have people that get mad when you get like, somebody cuts in front of you.  What is funny about America is you can have somebody pull out in front of you like three football fields away, and you guys still go crazy and honk the horn.  In all the other countries I have driven in somebody can pull out in front of you three millimeters, like there is just enough room for air and that is it, and nobody honks a horn.

Mikell:  Nope.

Jason:  Just relax.

Mikell:  That is their reality.

Jason:  Just flows. It is no big deal.  I have been in countries, where there is one stoplight, and actually the stoplight causes more problems than anything else.  So just relax. It is going to be okay. So before the break there we were talking about well, teenagers and those smelly little things that they are. But there are other things that smell in a house, and since we are talking about odors, I thought I might as well go ahead and make everybody mad and talk about your puppies and your kitties and those things and your pets.  We love them. I live on a farm. We have got lots of them. They all have odors, good and bad. Right? And so when you are selling your home, you might want to have a friend that is honest with you. An honest friend. Not a friend that tells you hey, that dress looks good on you. Or no, you do not look like a goofball with that shirt on. Right? You need somebody that is going to be honest and not just tell you what you want to hear when it comes to the odor in your house and your pets. You have become what we call nose blind.  You do not know that it smells as bad as it does at your house, and a good, honest friend is worth their friendship when you are going to sell your home. Just to be clear with you and say yes, the cats are really a problem. Now, I would say if you have got 32 of them, you do not even need to call anybody. Right? Just know that that is going to be an issue. Right? Sure.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  But it is something that we deal with and it is something that is where you need some help sometimes because we do get used to the odors in our home and we do not recognize or know that they are just a little bit, we say funky, if you will.  The other thing is if you are a smoker, and I know this is a tough one for some folks, but we find smoking in a home is typically going to reduce the value of that property between $10-20,000.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  Especially if you are in the 2000-3000 square foot range, simply because if they are non-smokers, if we can even get them to consider your home, you are looking at a 100% complete paint of every single thing in the property.  Ceilings, baseboards, walls, everything. New carpet all that, and then hours and hours of cleaning all the other areas. So there is a price that you will pay for smoking in your house. Now, I know some of you will say I do not smoke in the house.  I smoke on the deck or I smoke in the garage, and I just only smoke one a day. Whatever it is, it still follows you home unfortunately. It is one of those things that if it is a non-smoker that comes into your home, even if you do it very, very rarely, and sometimes if you do not even do it near the house, you just do it in the car, it still lingers in the property, and people will discount the price in which they are considering to pay for your home to deal with the cleanup of that.  So it is something to think about. All the more reason to maybe to decide not smoke anymore if you choose.

All right. Master bedroom. This is, and the bath. This is typically the second place most people spend a majority of their time in looking at the properties.  Number one is definitely the kitchen. No question. Most people go straight yo the kitchen when they look at a home. The second place though is normally the master bedroom suite or just master bedroom master bath.  If it is not a suite, do not worry about it. It is still where they are going to go look. We see that carpet is becoming less and less desirable. Hardwoods are definitely the most preferred thing right now, and that could be a fad and it could go away. The good thing about hardwood floors is they will last 100 years. It is one of those things.  You can put it down if you put down good quality hardwood floors they will last forever. They will last longer than probably you want to be in the house, and or they will actually last longer than you. I have sold many, many, many 1910, 20, and 30-year-old homes that have outlived their owners and they still have hardwood floors and they are still there.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason: And many, many generations of people have passed through, and yet the hardwood still remains. So exercise equipment, this is one of the biggies in the master bedroom.  If you have exercise equipment, I would suggest during the sell you get rid of it. I find most people dispose of exercise equipment in the master bedroom to get it out of the way, and it ends up being a really fancy place to hang your clothes.  Like on that treadmill that you bought that you were going to lose weight with, and yet it is doing a great job of holding up your shirts and pants and whatever else you have –

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason: -- hidden it with.  We say we try to hide it. I think that is it. I think if I put enough clothes over it, I will not remember it is a treadmill.  Right?

Mikell: There you go.

Jason:  I will not remember that I need to get on that thing and maybe do some miles. But as you move into the bathroom, brass right now again, you guys know that I am an anti-brass guy.

Mikell:  Anti-brass.

Jason:  But especially in the master.  This is where you are going to see some real hesitation and some kickback from buyers.  Nothing screams 1990 like brass. It is just fake gold. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  And realistically that is all that it is.  So investing money in the master suite, in the master bath to get rid of that is money well spent especially if you are in a neighborhood that is really kind of plagued with it and you are the standout.  The houses that we see in those types of neighborhoods that move the quickest are homes that have transitioned to the satin nickel and the oil-rubbed bronze and all those things. So money well spent to remove that brass. So we have got lots and lots of tips if you go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Click on the email icon.  You can shoot us a message over there any time you like. Remember be safe out there this weekend guys. We will be back next week as we continue walking you through every step to get the house ready to sell.

JASON BRAMBLETT REAL ESTATE SHOW 

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Jason:  Hope everybody is doing well. Market, the market, the market. What is going on?  It is crazy out here, Jason. Yeah, it is a little bit. It is that time. We are getting into the peak season, the prime time to sell the property and or buy one.  That is the mantra. Of course, statistically, we sell about the same houses every quarter. So it is more of a feeling than it is reality. But that is okay as long as you are feeling like buying a house.  Give us a call. It is 553-0796 at the office. So we have been talking about getting the house ready. So whether you are now a seller and want to sell today or you are one, two, or three years out, we have been talking to you in the last couple of weeks in the series on getting the house ready.  If you are wanting to sell to achieve the highest potential price, that is what we are really looking at. As I have said before, you do not need anybody to sell it for the lowest price.

Mikell:  No, not at all.  

Jason:  You can do that all on your own.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  I can assure you.  So it is about maximizing what you have and maximizing what you have done and or are thinking about doing to the house to get well, potentially the greatest sales price that you can possibly get.  And that is what we are looking at. So grab your pen, your paper, and if you do not have that and you are driving now. Do not worry. Hit the website Jason Bramblett dot com. You can listen to the podcast, the show notes, and everything that you would want to see plus a little bit of behind the scenes stuff that we fill in there. Sometimes we run out of time.  We just run out of time. Time goes no matter what. Last week’s show, we got a boatload of emails in, but one in particular stood out, so I am going to share that with you as we kickoff the show.

So Sandy writes in. Mr. Bramblett, I will be selling in the next three years, so your show and the topic is perfect timing for us.  You mentioned adding a new heating and cooling system will give us a return of about 80% on our money. Is there anything we could do to the house that will return more than 100% of our money?  Basically, getting an investment. We want to make money on our home and not lose on everything we invest. Thank you, Sandy.

Mikell:  That is an excellent question.

Jason:  It is a great question.  That is one that we deal with a lot.  It is one that if you did not send it in, it is one that you probably were thinking as we go through this stuff.  Hey, we have got thousands of people listening, so this is a benefit to everybody. So the answer to her question is not what most people want to hear.  The answer to her question is no. To my knowledge, there is absolutely nothing that you can do to your home to improve it that you can get more than 100% return on.  

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  All things being equal.  Now, you can fact check me.  Go to your big box store, orange or blue, whichever one you choose, okay, and they actually have some amazing data out there. They have about every product or improvement that you can purchase at one of the big box stores, they give you a synopsis of what the return is of that purchase throughout the entire United States because it does vary based upon where you are.  And so what you will quickly notice is there is nothing that is 100% plus percent. It averages anywhere from 30 to about 82% is the highest return.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason:  So if you put let’s just say $10,000 in an improvement in your house, and we will just make math easy because it is well, it is radio.  If we do $10,000 investment in the house, then perhaps you are looking at about an $8000 return on that. So hence, not getting to 100%. Right?  And so, here is the thing, guys. It is not really because of the improvement. It is the product. The product is the wrong time. It is the house, not the item.  And the reason that nothing is more than 100% return on the product is because it does not generate any income. Okay? It is an expense. No matter what you do, no matter how you look at it, if you are living in the property, even if it is paid for, on a spreadsheet, on your P&L, it is a negative.  It is not a positive. So whether you have a paid for house and you are paying taxes and insurance, it is an expense to you, not an income.

Mikell:  Gotcha.

Jason:  The house, the mortgage, it is an expense.  So it is not that updating the property is wrong. It is just the wrong product.  Right? And so the product is where you live. An investment is something that other people pay for, not you. That is impossible to do in your own home or unless you turn it in to a boarding house.  Most of us choose not to have renters under our same roof. Some of us –

Mikell: That does not sound fun.

Jason:  That does not fun. Some of you even worse. You have tenants in your home, and they pay nothing.  Actually, they are a double expense. They are called 40-year-old sons that cannot grow up, and they live in the basement. Right? And they play video games or whatever it is they do.  Anyway, they need to be introduced to the front door perhaps would be a good place to start. But that is a different show. We do that one on Sundays. You can come out and take a listen. But here is the thing.  If you pay, again, radio, so bear with me. You can get the show notes. It makes more sense when you see it in writing. So it is a $250,000 house. All right? You have done some work over the past ten years. Things, you have got to keep the house up or it just turns to shambles. Right?  It is interesting. If you look at vacant homes, vacant homes deteriorate faster than homes that are occupied, and the reason being is weather. Stuff happens. Temperature change. All these different things. But a vacant home can actually go down hill really, really quick if not properly checked on weekly, regularly, and somebody is there to look after it.

So let’s say you replace the roof for $10,000, and I am just making up numbers because it is radio again.  You changed out both the HVACs. That was $10,000. You painted the house at $5,000. You put $5,000 into landscaping, $5,000 into new appliances.  And then you decided that well, the kids are gone and the dog is gone, so we will get new carpet or floor coverings and that was another five grand.  So you have invested all this over ten years. $40,000. About $4,000 a year. Very within most budgets of what it takes to keep a home updated in today’s world for a $250,000 house. Ten years later you decide to sell.  You want to downsize, and you sell that property for $300,000. And most of you would say I win. I did it. I bought this and I made $50,000. Well, however, when you start looking at the math and what you put into the property, well, the difference is actually ten grand, and you are like well, I still won.  I got $10,000 more than I put in. But then you forgot one little thing is you have got to sell the house, and it is going to cost money to sell the property. So you have to hire the most awesome real estate company in the world, which would be Jason Bramblett Real Estate.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  And you pay commissions, closing costs, and attorney’s fees and all that, it ends up looking like about $25,000 to sell your $300,000 house. And when you do that math, you end up with $15,000 backwards.  Right? Now, some of you will say well, that is crazy. Real estate is easy to sell. I would never hire the greatest real estate company in the world. I would do it myself. And that is a possibility. You are going to put that $25,000 in your pocket because I am a do-it-yourself kind of guy, but in actuality what really happens is only about 3% of the properties sold in America sell at the result of a For Sale By Owner.  Not my numbers. Again, you can fact check me. Go to the National Association of Realtors. They are some digit heads out there that put all this together. You can check with them. But then the other thing is, out of the 3%, about 50% of those properties are actually sold to family members.

Mikell:  Yeah, that is what I was thinking.

Jason:  So it sold to somebody they know, or it is either sold to a family member.  That always works perfectly. Right? When you sell to a family because everybody in the family is like hey, I will buy your house and I will pay you top dollar. Not normally. Most of the time –

Mikell:  They want a deal.

Jason:  -- they want a deal. Hey, you are my mama.  I want a deal. Mama needs to get paid. Right?  It does work out that way in which most of those sales are actually discounted.  This is why the bank actually looks at that. They want to see what they call an arm’s length transaction meaning you do not know this person, and if it is not, then sometimes there are different qualifications in that, and they take those things into consideration.  Where you really see it is in the short sale process. Most banks will not allow a family member to buy a short sale. So let’s say if the kids are struggling, and they are behind on the mortgage and Mom and Dad want to buy the house. They make an offer and it is below what is owed. Normally, the bank will not accept that offer because it is not an arm’s length transaction. You know the owners.  You will actually sign an affidavit at closing that says you do not know these people, and the reason why is because the banks know most family members are going to work a deal. Right? They want to get the most money for that house. How do you get the most money? You sell it to a stranger. You sell it to somebody. You put it in the free market. Right? You put it out there into the free market where anybody and everybody can buy it, not just your family member.  So we have got 3% of sales are by owner. Those are the people that are tempted to sell or save that $25,000. 1 ½% typically sell to family members. Well, we already concluded no deal. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  It is not going to happen.  You are not getting anymore money by selling it to the family.  So then we really got 1 ½% of those sales that are left, and then what we see is they are still going to have one agent involved most of the time. There is going to be at least a real estate agent typically in those 1 ½% of the sales.  Most of the time they are going to have a buyer, somebody representing the buyer in the situation. So even if you are doing it by owner as the owner, most of the time, the buyer will have an agent. So let’s just make it easy and say okay, let’s just split the difference, 50-50.  So instead of it costing you $25,000, it is twelve grand. You are still $2,000 less than what you had in the house. Okay? So think about that as you are improving things and you are looking through those. This is math you need to know. This is math that before you make that purchase, you need to think about down the road. Does it make sense to do that? So you see it is not really what you are putting into the house that is the problem. It is actually the house.  It is the product. It is just the wrong product. Compare it to a hotel. Most people have stayed in a hotel. This should be a good visual for you on the radio. If I put money into my hotel, restaurant, apartment building, whatever it is, I do this with the full intention and plan of increasing revenue. All right? A remodeled, updated hotel always have a higher room charge than a rundown, dated property. Always.

Mikell: Absolutely.

Jason:  Same situation.  But that money can get more than 100% return on the product because the product helps me increase revenue. If I stay the way that I am, my revenue could actually decrease because I am not keeping up with the times. I am not keeping up with the changes.  You will see a lot of hotels typically every ten years do a complete transformation and remodel. Sometimes they even switch complete brands. They may go from a Holiday Inn Express to whatever.

Mikell:  A Holiday Inn Suites.

Jason: Yeah, there you go.  A suite or switch it to a Hyatt or whatever. They change brands completely.  Change the look. It could change ownership. But they update the brand, they update the look.  Why? They do not update the look because they got money and they have nothing to do with it. They update the look to increase the revenue.  Right?

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  And so you simply cannot do that with the home that you live in because it is an expense to you. So no matter what you put in, you are never going to get a higher return because you are the one that is paying in both scenarios.  You are paying the mortgage, taxes, and insurance, and you are also the one making the investment. So remember the key to owning a home. First and foremost, it is a place to raise your family and enjoy life, and have a safe, clean environment to live in.  And then it is a really, really savings account. And that is owning a house. You buy it for shelter and a great and wonderful place to raise a family or just to live your life. And then secondly, it is a really, really bad savings account. It is not a terrible, it is a terrible return as far as savings go.  It is actually not a bad thing. But keeping it in perspective, and that way you have the right understanding when buying a home. So many young people watch a lot of these TV shows. I am going to buy a house. I am going to buy it for 250 and sell it for 300, and I am going to make money. If you did nothing to it, okay, yeah, that math works. But show me any product or any home out here that sits for ten years and nobody has done anything to it, and they have made money.  Very rare. Very, very small percentage. Why? Because we like to change stuff. I like to change the colors. Think about it. Go back when you bought your home. Did you leave it the same color? Now some of you painted it yourself, and we have already talked about that. Remember? There is a difference between painting and schmearing. You guys are schmearing, not painting. Okay? Some of you would be better off leaving the paint brushes alone because all you are doing is applying color to the wall, not painting the wall.  There is a difference.

Mikell: Yes.

Jason: For sure. Believe me.  Here is your tip or clue. If you painted, and you have paint on your ceiling from the roller, that is when you should have hired a professional.  Okay? Because it does not come out of that popcorn very easy, and when you pick the colors you picked, which is everything under the rainbow, most people like neutral.  They do not like whatever that color is that you cooked up.

Mikell: True.  And I realize a lot of people let their kids pick the color.

Jason:  Yes.

Mikell: And then it really gets creative.

Jason:  It does. It does for sure. So over the past ten years, you have made all these payments.  You have done everything that you are supposed to do. You made your payments on time. And here is the good thing.  You built equity. Savings. That is what that is. That principal payment is basically being set aside for future use down the road. Right?  And so think about that as you think about putting money into your home, do it wisely. Let’s do this. We are going to take a quick timeout, go pay some bills. We are going to come back. We are going to go paint some walls.  We are going to come back and dig a little bit further. There is a second step to this mathematical equation we will dig into. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show, and we will be right back.

Mikell:  And we are back.

Jason:  Welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. So we are digging into does it make sense to put this money into the house?  Sandy sent us a question and said man, I want to put things and invest in my home that are going to get a return. So we walked through that.  Which leads to the question is Jason, why in the world would I ever put money into my house? If I cannot get a return, why bother? Right? That is kind of a logical place to go.  And there are reasons. Right? There are reasons why we do everything. I talked about the vacant houses you got to keep up with it. Well, one thing is you live there, and most people fix things up because why, we like them.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  It is like why did you buy a new car?  I used to give people when they would argue with me, I would help them with their budget and their financing, and they would, or finances, they would say well, we had to get a new car because we have a baby and it has got to be safe. I am like, at that time, I was like well, I drive the safest car they made in 2014, and I did not need to get the 2019 version because the 2014 version worked just fine.

Mikell:  Just fine.

Jason: And it was the safest one on the market, and I bought it used and let somebody else take the hit and depreciation on it.  Most cars, if you will buy a 3-4 year-old model, most of the depreciation, 30-40% of it has already been hit, has already been got.  So you can save yourself quite a bit of money right there. But I know you want to buy the safest car on the market.

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  So you are trying to tell me that they were just putting out a bunch of junk to kill people?  No.

Mikell:  Those would be recalled by now.

Jason:  Yeah, they would be recalled by now.  It is the same argument with the car. It is hard to see anymore because money is so cheap, and people do love to buy new cars because they can buy what they want. They look cool driving down the road.  But you could go back and you could find a 1990 Honda on the market and on the road. You could probably buy it for probably $1000.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  And it will get you to work.  It may be 14 colors.

Mikell: Great starter car.

Jason: Great starter car. It may smell like Cheetos.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  And not your Cheetos, but it will still get you to work.

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  It will have another really cool thing that goes along with that.  It is called it is paid for.

Mikell: There you go.

Jason:  Or you could drive the bank’s car to work. The one that you are making payments on every month.

Mikell:  True.

Jason: You could do that.

Mikell:  With high insurance.

Jason:  And it will be cleaner, and it will look better, and you will be broker, but that is not a good investment. So let’s get back to houses, but it does work the same for them.

Mikell:  One thing that I did want to say, Jason, is I know it did sound crazy earlier like why would I invest in something that I would not get my full return on? But it is like if you think about selling an item, you never sell it for the price you actually paid for it.

Jason: Right.

Mikell:  Do you know what I am saying?

Jason:  Unless you manufactured it with your hands.

Mikell:  Exactly. It is the same concept where you have to take yourself out of it.  

Jason:  We have, as a society, tricked ourselves into believing that oh, you buy real estate, you never loose money. Not true. Not true.  You definitely can lose money in real estate. And you have got to buy it with the right purpose in mind. And again, the right purpose is to have a great place to live and raise your family or your kids or where you want to be in a safe environment, and it is a really horrible savings account.  As long as you have that in perspective, you are going to be fine.

Mikell:  One reason I love talking to you is because you give the real advice, and you are really in the field.  We see so much things on the internet or how to flip houses or how to make money, and you are basically telling us, it is not, it is not false, but it does not have a lot of truth to it as well.

Jason: There are ways you can make money in real estate, flipping houses, no question.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  But it all comes back to it is really not what you did to the house. It is what you bought it for.

Mikell: Exactly.

Jason:  People are like how do you make money in real estate? You buy it right. Now buying it right does not mean you go in there and you lowball everybody because not everybody is in the business of helping you be an investor.  Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason: You have got to buy it from the right institutions in order for that to happen.  You are typically in the foreclosure realm. You cannot get the best deal and sell it at the highest price, and it be the same product.  Okay.

Mikell:  Not every time.

Jason:  Not every time and not in residential.  When there is income involved, the game changes.  So I could take an apartment building that somebody wants $10 million for, and it is worth $10 million, and I could pay $11 million for it, and I could still make money.  What do you mean you still make money? You lost $1 million. You overpaid for the property. No, the X factor is there is income coming in every month.

Mikell: Right.

Jason:  If you do that with your house, there is no income.

Mikell: No, not at all.

Jason:  Again, it goes back to the product.  Wrong product. Are there things that you should be fixing out in your house and do?  Sure. You might want to put an AC in. You ever try living in the South without AC? Let me know how that works in July.  July 4th we will just rub the fireworks up against your house and they will light up.  It is going to be hotter than fire out there. But think about this, and here is where we see this.  This is why I say still owning a home is a great thing even with the perspective of it is a really bad savings account because I have sold hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of houses over the years, and sometimes we sell them when they are at the end and all the kids are gone and it is Mom and Daddy or Grandma and Grandpa and we sell their house, and they have no money because Americans only save, or they save less than 1% a year. And at least the house forced them to save money.  They have got nothing in the world but a very small retirement because they never saved any money. They started too late. They have got under $100,000 cash in the bank. No other investments, but they have a paid-for house. That is still better than nothing. Right?

Mikell:  Absolutely.

Jason:  So at least when we go to sell the home, it is paid for, and now 100% of that money we have options and things to do. This is why it is still a good deal because if we did not have that, if the payments on your home were interest only, where would you be down the road with no savings?  So owning a home is still a great thing to do. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com. We will have more notes up there. Send us your questions as always. You can click on that email icon. Fire it over, and we will share that on the air. We love sharing your stuff. So Jason Bramblett dot com, check us out online, and it is 553-0796 at the office.  Have a safe and great weekend, and we will see you back here next week.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason: …man, there isn’t anything to do in Raleigh.  You do not want to be in Charlotte. Take Charlotte out of your GPS.  You are home. Just stay right here. There is no need to go. There is nothing to see in Charlotte.  You want to go to Charlotte, you can do that on a day trip. You do not want to get caught up in all that mess.  Life is short. Do you want to spend it on I-40, 77 –

Mikell:  No. Not at all.

Jason:  No. Not at all.  No way. Forget it. No chance. Spend it here. Go take a drive today.  Go checkout Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point. We cover those. We talk about you guys all the time.  Let’s talk about some of our other fun places. Have you gone over there and checked out Lewisville? How about Mocksville?  Mocksville and Lewisville have some pretty cool little downtowns actually. You can go over there and just, I do not know. They are just kind of Mayberry-ish.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason:  There is not a lot to them, but that is what is cool about it. Right?  It is just relaxed. Go to the park. Walk down the street. They actually have sidewalks.  Those type of things. Oak Ridge, Summerfield, Pleasant Garden. You got all these great little towns.  Sophia. Some people were like I did not even know there was a Sophia. We have got some great new houses coming up in Sophia.  You need to check out our website. Hit Jason Bramblett dot com. How about Wallburg, Ramseur, Julian, all those places?

Mikell:  Never heard of them.

Jason:  Never heard of them?

Mikell:  Never heard of them.

Jason:  They are a nine iron just south of Greensboro all around.

Mikell:  Really? Okay.

Jason:  So there are lots of great little towns here.  Advance, Bermuda Run, you got Burlington, obviously.  Mebane or if you are from the North it is Mee-bane, but we do not say it like that here.  Phonetically, it is Mebane in North Carolina. But how about we got Blues Creek, Walnut Cove. We have got Brown’s Summit, and Brown Summit because they cannot even decide up there how to say the name.  And so, it is either way. What is crazy is you can get there with the S or without the S. It does not matter. Everybody knows, but there is still an argument whether it is Brown or Browns Summit unless you are from there, and then they are emphatic about what it is.  But you need to go there and ask them. Go up there and hang out in Browns Summit and see what happens. But it is interesting. So we sell in all those, and we have a great time getting to meet the local people. All these great cities and towns that we have around there.  We are your full-service, one-stop shop buying, selling. We cover 36 towns and cities, located all over the Triad. And I know I have left off some of you. I did not forget you, King, do not worry about that. Walnut Cove, Wallburg. Who else did I miss up there? I am sure somebody.  Send me the email and I will make sure I mention you next week. I promise you. Most of you guys know we are all over the place. So come over to Jason Bramblett dot com. Send me a message. Get on that email link up there and we will get you on our mailing list because we have some interesting things and things that people are looking for that pop up, and sometimes we have to reach out to people in our database to say hey, you have what somebody is looking for.  Have you thought about selling it? Because maybe you attempted to sell your home 3, 4, 5 years ago during the dark ages of real estate when nothing was going right. No appreciation was happening, and we were just stuck in the ditch pretty much in the Triad for, oh I do not know, about a decade. It just took a while to climb out. Now, we are finally climbing out and some of you actually have not got the thought back in your head of maybe I can move now. Actually, you may very well be able to. You have been paying down the mortgage for 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 years now. Real estate is actually just starting to tick up just a little bit so we have some appreciation. So between you making payments and paying down the mortgage, real estate ticking up a little bit, now we have this thing called equity created. You may actually have enough equity to be able to make a change.

Mikell:  There you go.

Jason: You just do not know.  What do we have to do? We have just got to do the math and take a look at it and see is it a good decision for you.  And that is what we will check out and take a look at. Hey, Jason Bramblett dot com. Put in your city. Let’s talk about it. How about that?  Let’s do it. What else do we have coming up today?

Mikell:  All right. So, we talked about that the spring market has kicked off.  Is it too late to get a house on the market?

Jason:  Oh absolutely, no.  You are good. You are good.  I say that. Some of you, some of you, you are going to need some help and some love, but that is okay. Actually, here is the deal with selling a house. A lot of times everybody is trying to figure out the exact time to hit the pinnacle to get the best, to get the most. Here is the truth of the matter.  The right time to move is when you are ready to move.

Mikell:  Okay.

Jason:  And that could be October.  That could be December. It could be (indiscernible).  The benefits of selling now, well you have more buyers hitting the market now because of the time of year more than anything else.  The downside to selling now is you also have more houses hitting the market. Therefore, you have more competition. So if you are one of ten that are hitting the market in your price range, and nine of your neighbors have outperformed you in cleanliness, upgrades, updates, all those things, they have been listening to the show for the last 12 years. Right?

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  They have taken hold of all the wisdom and knowledge that I have dropped on the Triad real estate market.  Right?

Mikell:  The gems.

Jason:  The gems.  That is it. Yeah, they jumped right in there.  And so, they are way ahead of you because maybe you just tuned in last week and the only thing you got last week was something about the ACC tournament that I was ranting on.  But anyway, they are ahead of you. It may be that now that that competition is there, you house does not look quite as good as it used to. Whereas, maybe if you had put the house on the market in December when nobody was on the market and people had absolutely no choice, all of a sudden, hey, the bridesmaid became the bride.  Right? It was like wow, there is not anything else. This is what we will have to go with. So there is a downside to selling in the spring market. It is what most of us will consider the peak, yes, and most of the houses do sell in this cycle. But here is the thing about looking at trends and cycles. With real estate especially, the only way you can know if you were ever at the top is you have to look backwards.  So it is not a trend in which you can forward, you cannot see it coming forward. In order to know that you were at the top it is what we call it is in arrears. Everything happens in the past. So when you put a house under contract, that sale is not recorded that day. That sale is recorded in 45-60 days when it closes. Therefore, the buy trend is always in a lag of usually 45-90 days. So we will not know what the top was until probably we are 45-90 days past the top.  And now what do we see is the ski slope it is heading down the other way. So now we have people chasing the market down, which is never fun. And if you need a visual of that graph, just google anything over the last ten years in the Triad real estate market, and you will look like you were on Beech Mountain headed down really quick because that is what it looked like. It looked like you were skiing Black Diamond. This was not bunny slope, tow ropes, gentle, little rolling meadows.  This was a cliff that just went straight down. So this was double Black Diamond, holy smokes, here we go. That is the visual.

And what you do not see is that lag.  So when it is perpetually for nine years, you see it, or nine or ten years, but the bottom line is this. Real estate in general is all about timing.  It is all about your timing. If everybody could pick the winning ticket everybody would be winners. Right? It does not work that way.

Mikell:  Of course.

Jason:  Another thing we have got to look at is most people when I get a question like timing is they are trying to maximize the investment.  They are attempting to squeeze as much as they can out of that. But by definition, an investment is something that is earning you money for effort that you are not having to do and potentially, like in the case of real estate, other people are paying for your debt.  That is a win. So I have a rental unit, house, condo, townhouse, apartment, whatever it is. If I owe money on it, the tenant is actually paying that money back. The difference between what I owe and what the tenant is giving me is profit, or at least income of some kind.  It may not be profit, but it certainly could be income.

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  And to qualify this real quick, your 40-year-old deadbeat son living in your basement paying you rent is not really investment property. Okay?  That is a parenting issue. Right? That is not income property. Put all things together equally here to understand what is, just because somebody is giving you some dollars does not mean you have got an investment property.  The house you live in is technically, under that definition I just gave you, not an investment. Why? Unless the kids are paying for it, I cannot get rent out of mine. I have tried. They just do not go for that. They are still hopefully on the we-work-for-food program.  Right? If you can get them to do a little something around the house.

Mikell:  Just a little bit.

Jason:  Just a little bit. Just lean into it just a little. Right?  But by definition, the home you live in, if no one else is paying for it and you are, it is a liability. It is actually not an investment property.  Could you make money off of the home that you are living in? It is possible. It is rare, but it is possible. Typically, what it ends up becoming is a really, really horrible savings account. And the reason why is we actually always over-improve our own property. Why did you do that?  Why did spend $14,000 on your kitchen? Because I liked it.

Mikell:  My wife told me to probably.

Jason:  There you go.  That is it. That is it. That is not investment logic.  That is keeping everybody happy logic.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  Which is more important.  See there is a return of value there. It is not monetary.  Money. But it is lifestyle. I did this. Mama happy. Everybody is happy.

Mikell: Everyone is happy.

Jason:  It is priceless.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  You cannot put money or put a money factor on that. Now, we look at houses all the time that are over-improved.  Why did you that? Why did you put that there? We loved it. This is what our family does. Our family is an outdoor family, so we put a $60,000 outdoor kitchen in. Okay.

Mikell:  Wow.

Jason: Okay, great. You can do that, but you may never ever, ever get that money back and probably will not because there are not that many people.  Now, people will take it all day long –

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  -- but they are not going to pay you what you paid for it. But I like the fact, I like the $60,000 outdoor kitchen.  It is awesome. I just do not really want to pay $60,000 for it because I could take it or leave it. Right?

Mikell:  Leave it. Yeah.

Jason:  It is kind of like a horse barn.  We sell horse properties. A horse barn is an awesome feature to have if you have horses.

Mikell: If you have horses.  I was going to say.

Jason:  If you have no horses, it is absolutely a useless building on your property.  So it has different value for different people. Same principle with your house. And typically, we get in the situation where we over-improve our house.  But real estate investing is great to do, but it is investing when other people are paying you money for what you either own and or they are helping you pay it off.  That is when it becomes an investment. That is when it becomes good. That is when you start making sense of those things.

Now, all that to say, is it the right time to sell.  The right time to sell, what I am getting at, the essence of this is do not spin your wheels attempting to time out a market in which no one can predict and or no one has ever really timed out.  Because it is always in arrears. You never know where the top is until you are past it. You can get close. You can kind of get in the window. You can do whatever. The right time to sell the home that you are living in is when you are ready to do it. That is the bottom line. Because all of those factors. Because even if I sold my house seven years ago when the market was horrible, but I sold it in order to take a new job in Tennessee that was paying me 40 or $50,000 more a year and I lost money here, it was probably still a good decision for the family.

Mikell:  Right.

Jason:  It was a horrible decision as far as real estate goes.  Maybe I should have never bought the house to begin with. But the fact of that new opportunity, me being able to get rid of the home, I was able to take advantage of that opportunity. So lots of different things out there. Mikell, let’s take a quick break. We are going to come back. We have got something coming up you might be interested in.  Have you ever thought about, I do not know, sticking your toe in the real estate world? Well, we are going to talk about our career night coming up in April. So stay tuned. We will be right back in just a minute. Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show live right here. (in/out music)

Mikell:  All right. We are coming back from the break.  We talked about our rental properties and investing.  

Jason: Absolutely, and then we kind of well, we threw out that little teaser out there of have you ever thought about well, what it takes to actually be in real estate, be in sales?  Have you wanted to stick your toe in the water, kind of check it out? Well, we are doing a career night coming up in April. Actually, it is April 10th, 6-7 o’clock, and I am going to walk you through what it takes to, well, an opportunity if you will.  I guess. We are going to talk about what it takes to be successful, but also the opportunity we have created within our company that you could potentially come in, take a look at what it is, and everybody has got their own opinion of what real estate sales really is.

Now look, I am not talking about order taking. Okay?  There is a difference. Okay? If you have been to a really nice restaurant and you had somebody take your order and you have been to a really nice restaurant where somebody has given you concierge service and served you well, and or hopefully you have bought something in which somebody did not just say, what you want to drink?  That is called order taking. All right? When you have a great experience, and that is what we want to create is the experience of real estate, not just sitting back, taking orders to either buy and or sell. If you are the type of person, your whole experience is doing open houses, eating chips and cookies, that is not what we are talking about here either. We are talking about selling at high level, but really here is what I am talking about.  We are looking for leaders. I am looking for people who understand that serving their clients, what it is like to do that, and to do it at the highest level possible. People that pick up the phone and make things happens instead of waiting on the phone to ring and reacting to what is happening. There is a big difference in the two.

Mikell:  Taking initiative.

Jason:  Yes. You might want to rewind that later and listen to that again.  That is the difference between you taking ownership of your life, your sales career, and or your sales career happening to you. There is a big difference.  The other big difference are the zeroes at the end of your paycheck. Okay? There are definitely different levels of compensation in all of sales, and the people that serve their clients the best offer the greatest service, provide the best concierge-type service, and do it at a very, very high level earn the most money. That should not be a big surprise to anybody. And I know some people will say that is not fair.  Well, guess what? We have a fair in October. It is called the Dixie Classic Fair, and you can go there and ride the rides because that is what a fair is for.

Mikell:  Bring the family.

Jason:  That is it. Life is not fair.  Get over it. If you have not figured it out by now, I am sorry.  I do not know where you have been hiding. But it is not fair. It is not fair to all the young kids that got snowed in to going out and getting a higher education, $80,000 in debt and they are working at the big box store with the circle and the pretty dog at the checkout counter. Right?  Sorry for you, but it is about taking initiative for yourself and getting out there and making it happen. Okay? And you cannot just go through the motions.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  That is what we are finding out.  That is what this generation is finding out. Going through the motions.  Well, sometimes going through the motions smacks you right into a concrete wall, and it is no fun.

Mikell:  It is not.

Jason:  I have hit a few concrete walls in my career.

Mikell:  I have, too.

Jason:  And guess what?  They are hard.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  And you have got to move through them or over them. Right? But you just cannot sit there and just stare at them and talk to them.  Right? They are not going to move. You have to make the one making the move. So April 10th from 6-7 at our campus here in Greensboro. We are going to dig into that.  Get in touch with my office. You go to Jason Bramblett dot com. You know the deal, drill.  That little email icon in the top right corner. Shoot us an email. Put in there career night.  My team will reach out to you. We will get you an Eventbrite sent over so you can register. There is no cost to this event.  We actually paid all the handling charges for you, so there is no cost to take a look. We will get your money later. No, I am kidding.  Just relax. It is not one of these sales pitchy things. You cannot buy anything when you come there. I have a couple houses for sale if you want to buy one when you are there.  That is fine. But really what we want to do is we know this. In the Triad, there are an extensive amount of phenomenal, great sales people that are looking for the right vehicle and the right opportunity, and where they are at now, it is not there.  So real estate can be it. The wonderful thing I love about real estate is that you have a lot of control in your destiny. I have had in the last 90 days four really good friends that work for pretty large companies for years, one of them well over 25 years, and at that age where they are making pretty good money.  So they are probably making anywhere between $80-90,000 a year, making a great living, been at the company a long time, and all of a sudden, they wacked the whole division.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason: So when you are 55 plus and you are in the job force looking to replace a $70, 80, or $90,000 income, that is very, very difficult to do.

Mikell:  In today’s society, it is very hard.

Jason:  In today’s corporate workforce, like 41 is hard.

Mikell: Yes.

Jason:  So when you get up to 55 plus, one of my friends, 61 years old, and you just cannot touch, there is nothing.  Nobody that he found, I should not say nobody. Few, and nobody that he found was hiring a 60-year-old person at the income level that he was at.  And what do you do? Here he is. He is too young to retire, too young for Social Security. Most all the retirement benefit cannot kick in. Right?

Mikell:  No. Yeah.

Jason: And you are stuck in this abyss until you reach those years. And the real thing that stinks is usually with Social Security, my understanding of it is, what you make in your last few years is kind of the most important part.  Right?

Mikell:  Yes, it is.

Jason:  That is what establishes some of the tables as to what you are going to get.

Mikell:  True. It is kind of hard to downsize your life before you really want to.

Jason:  That is right.  Yeah, well yeah, think about that.  It is like here I got this great plan. It is awesome, and everybody set the timeline, whoever did that decided it was 65.  I do not know who. Or 67, I guess it is. They move the cheese a little bit every year out there a little bit.

Mikell:  Yeah.

Jason:  So 67, I have got my plan.  I am working my plan, and all of a sudden, my plan does not work anymore.  And that is out of your control.

Mikell: Yeah.

Jason:  The great thing about real estate is you have control. We actually had a couple times I have known, I have been around a while, so I have known agents who are up in their years, and we actually had a really, one of our top agents in the Triad pass away a couple of years ago.  The interesting thing about that was when he died, he had multiple homes still under contract. So there was actually money coming in even after he was not with us anymore.

Mikell:  Oh wow.

Jason:  So all the way to the very end, you could actually be in control of your own destiny, making money.  That money could go to your family, your estate or whatever it is. But my point is you have the control of that and not maybe somebody with a pencil out of state in a different part of the world that does not really, I will not say they really do not care about what you are doing, it is just that they are not living in your shoes.

Mikell:  That is true.

Jason:  The only person I want living in my shoes is me, and I want to be in control of them.

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason:  Real estate career night, come check it out.  It is going to be April the tenth, 6-7, get in touch with our office. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com. You can get all the information you need there.  The last little thing I just want to throw out. We have new homes popping up all over the Triad. We get this question all the time, especially in the spring because they seem to pop up like the tulips and the daisies and all that stuff.  Should I buy a home directly from the homebuilder? Interesting enough, I had lunch this week with one of the area’s top homebuilders, and I was pleasantly surprised, not surprised, encouraged that their team, they really push the fact that they want people to have representation.  They actually want another set of eyes there. So there is a perception that you can save money by buying direct and not having a real estate agent. And with this particular builder, and they sell a lot of homes, and most of them out there, that is simply, it is a myth. It is actually not the truth.  You are not going to get the house at a cheaper price. The only thing you are going to get is no representation. So think about that. We are going to do a show on that coming up next week. You can stay tuned there and stay tuned obviously to WPTI. We have got great stuff coming up like basketball –

Mikell:  Yes.

Jason: -- all day, and of course, I do not know. I am sure Duke is going to win –

Mikell:  I am sure they will.

Jason:  -- but that is my bracket.  It is not totally busted yet.  Everybody have an awesome, awesome weekend.  We will be back here next week. Go to Jason Bramblett dot com to sign up for career night, and we will see you then.  Enjoy the weekend, guys.

Mikell: Enjoy the weekend.