The Real Estate Espresso Podcast

Two weeks ago hurricane Michael tore a swath of destruction through this coastal community. We toured the area and spoke first hand with local residents.

This week, The Bank of Canada increased its benchmark interest rate 0.25% to 1.75%. They also signaled increases in the future might be necessary. So Why do interest rates rise?

Fair Isaac Corporation, the creator of the FICO score will introduce the Ultra-FICO score early in 2019. It's designed to make it possible for millions of borrowers who marginally don't qualify for loans today to have access to credit. The idea is that it will make more credit available without increasing risk to lenders. Is this a good idea? Listen and find out.

Could there be a situation where prices increase, but asset values decrease? On today’s episode we will examine this very question. In an inflationary environment, the cost of construction goes up. In fact we’ve seen very real increases in the cost of construction over the past several years. In 2014, you could routinely build new B class apartments for $88 per square foot. That’s exactly what I was building for in 2014. Today, prices are closer to $120 per square foot. It amounts to an average 9% increase per year over the past 4 years. This is during a time when government is telling us that inflation is running close to 2.5% over that same time period. The price of any item is not determined exclusively by the intrinsic cost, but in fact by people’s ability to pay. We've seen real estate prices fall all over Europe. Could this happen in North America?

In celebration of 100,000 downloads, we're going to be giving away an autographed copy of Robert Kiyosaki's latest book "Second Chance". If you would like to enter to win, send an email to victor@victorjm.com and put 100,000 in the subject line. Today is another AMA episode - Ask Me Anything. David from Pittsburgh asks "How much passion do you need to consider moving from a passive investor to a full-time active investor?" Such a great question.

The broad economy seems to be performing strongly, but we are also seeing weakness in new home construction at the same time. At the root of this is money. On today’s episode we’re going to follow the trail of the money and see some of the factors that are influencing the housing market. We will eventually see this slowdown reflected in the macro economic numbers.

Tammy Mitchell is an expert in relational capital. If you're not familiar with that term, we break it down in detail and describe the power of developing deep and meaning relationships with people of significance.

Russell Westcott is a Canadian from Western Canada who has built a reputation as an investor, an educator, and a specialist at raising capital. In today's episode we're talking about exploiting new zoning rules to attain higher density and lower the cost of development.

The question of rent control centers around the broader issue of affordable housing.. The rates for housing have increased faster than wages have grown in the same time period. This is particularly true in major markets we're we have seen dramatic increases and real estate prices. Governments cannot force investors to make investments that lose money. When rent controls are in place, existing buildings experience deferred maintenance and new rental stock doesn’t get built. The economics don’t support new investment. Rent control is a well intentioned, but misguided solution to the the affordability problem by treating the symptom and not the root cause. Listen for some new ideas.

Back in the day, items you could not find in a local department store could be ordered from the Sears Catalog. They owned the market. The Sears brands became synonymous with quality. The Sears Kenmore appliances were a rebranding of other appliances from Maytag and Amana. Sears Craftsman tools were as good as any tools on the market. They were well positioned as as retailer and in the culture of a generation. Sears problems go beyond money. The problem is that they stopped being relevant to shoppers a long time ago. An injection of cash won’t fix that. They kept looking at the retail business as a numbers game and not as a customer experience. It’s a sad story of missed opportunities. They sat on the sidelines and watched as Internet commerce devoured their catalog business. Even Walmart, late to the party has recognized that the Internet is key to their survival.