 program, Gabrielle Donz. Gabrielle is San Francisco real estate broker and investor with more than 18 years of experience. So far she has published three books about real estate investing and is working on the fourth book in the series. She lives in San Francisco with her cat and loves to travel off the beaten path and connect with people, their cultures and languages. Welcome Gabrielle. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate being here. I love the San Francisco Public Library and I am excited to be doing this for the library. Thank you for inviting me. Let me bring up my screen, the presentation and then I'll start from there. Okay. One second. I think we have it. All right. Can everybody see the presentation in the background? Yes. Oh, perfect. Perfect. Really like that. I like it when it works. All right. Welcome everybody. My name is Gabrielle Donz. Thank you for your interest in real estate investing fundamentals, the basics. Whether you are an investor, you would like to become an investor or you simply want to own your own home, these fundamentals apply across the board. So enjoy the presentation. Before we start, Christy already gave a disclaimer and I'll just repeat some of that. Nothing in this presentation implies either legal or financial advice. So always please consult your consult appropriate professionals to help you evaluate your situation, the property, et cetera, whatever is applicable there. All right. What we will cover today includes, this is not all inclusive here, what you see here. Why real estate? Home prices and rents. So you get a sense of what you're looking at in those terms. Some of that information you probably already know and I'll just reiterate it. Then we'll go into buying and investing and time, money and resources. All right. Before starting, I'll just give you a little bit of a background about myself. My name, as I already mentioned, is Gabrielle Doms. I have been a San Francisco real estate broker for almost 20 years. So two decades, I've seen a lot of changes in the city of San Francisco and in the Bay Area. And I hold both a bachelor's and a master's in history. Something I think is one reason that real estate fascinates me. After all, every property and its owners have histories and their own story. So it's really quite amazing to tie it into that interest. Okay. I was raised in Germany. My parents owned a small hotel restaurant. They were entrepreneurs. And I learned a lot about small business and also customer service. Comes in handy in this profession. Okay. I have been a long time resident of San Francisco. Love the city. Have seen a lot of changes here. Probably some of you as well. All right. And when I don't do writing or when I don't write, when I don't consult with clients, et cetera, then I love to hike and trek. The last thing I did the last time I trekked was in Patagonia's Toro Salpina, beautiful with glaciers and everything. I did Wtrek, which some of you may have done because it's now fashionable to do that. On the bottom here, you actually see the books that I have written thus far. We'll be talking about the first book which contains the fundamentals. They all of course have some fundamentals in them. So this series, I wrote as a direct result of my background as an entrepreneur and a real estate broker and investor. Investing of course, like all things, offers choices. So the question is why real estate, right? Let's go there. First of all, so you'll see a lot of different components to real estate, renting, selling, buying, fixing, moving things, contract items, et cetera. The first of all, real estate consists of many property types. We will not cover all of them. It also consists of many income opportunities, whether residential or commercial. Everybody of course needs a home, a place to live, and also usually a place to work, a place to store things, a place to park cars, all of that. So real estate has just so much to offer and it applies across the board. As you might know, real estate is desirable for that reason because you can be quite diversified in it and it can also be very profitable. So it depends on what you're looking for and what you're doing. Let's look at a quick comparison of real estate and other investments. Hopefully, you'll appreciate these next two slides that I put together. Looking at real estate, stocks, bonds, and cash and savings. So I did this on sort of a traffic light, a red, yellow, and green color scheme. Hopefully, it makes sense to you. There are five components that are covered in these two slides. One is appreciation, another one is cash flow. The third one is creative funding. And on the next slide right here, we'll see that there's also leverage and there are tax benefits involved. You can see that real estate pretty much covers everything. So it's a green light for all of them while the others may not have that unless you're pretty advanced. At this point, I think I believe Christy is doing a poll. Is that correct, Christy? Yes, Leah has control of the poll. So she's going to launch poll question 2 right now. So the question is what do you want to take away from this presentation? How to get started in real estate? That's right. Stand the process. I want to learn about real estate investing options and I want to understand what financials are necessary. If you can't figure out how to do the poll, just write your answer in the chat. It looks like most people have voted. Gabrielle, can you see the pollings? I can. Thank you. There you go. Do I need to end it or are you going to do that? I can do that for you. Okay, perfect. Okay. I see a lot of you are interested in real estate investing options and while we will cover some of that, please, you know, attend the next presentation on profitable real estate niches. It will go into more detail about the options than what we can cover here today. I hope that makes sense. So this is more about the basics about why real estate, what you can expect, and so forth. So let's continue on. All right. Can I do it? It's not advancing my slide? Hang on. There we go. All right. So real estate, as you probably already know, is a long or longer-term investment. So we're taking a look at what it does over time. I took this picture. I've enhanced it a little bit for you to see. This came out of a small real estate brokerage which probably no longer exists and that was located in the Mission District and they had these historical real estate posters in the window. So as you look at that, you can probably figure out, you know, which decades we're talking about, certainly given these prices. So I thought it was kind of fun and also for a bit of nostalgia because, of course, we cannot even get close to those kinds of values in San Francisco today. Okay. I actually don't know about you, but I certainly would love to own any of these properties. Yeah. And maybe you can even venture a guess as to what they would be worth today, probably a couple of millions minimum. All right. So that's a pretty big shift. All right. But before I get carried away here, let's look at some actual data about home prices and see what happens over time. And that said, we're going to go into a macro view of home prices. We'll start with the US then we'll go to go to California and then we'll go to the Bay Area in San Francisco. So let's start with the United States. What you need to know is that in all of these slides, real estate growth and wealth affects their effects. So that happens over time. It's not something that's immediate, for most people. There are some exceptions, but this is over time. Okay. So for the United States, the median home price history from 1990 to 2020, you see two lines here. One is adjusted for inflation. And the price last year in 2020, the median home price in the United States was $389,000. This year, it is $409,000. So right away, one year, that's the difference right there. Let's move on to California. All right. Here our home state. California home median home price appreciation in 1990, it was $195,000 to buy a home. That's a median price in California. Well, fast forward to today. And it sits at $700,000 essentially as the median home price. So that's quite a shift. And you see over time, like you see some rises and dips of course, and we'll correlate them in a moment in another slide. Let's move on to the Bay Area. And this is from 1990 to 2019. Here you see a little more detail about what happened in the economy in the Bay Area specifically. And you see, you can see the, you know, the increases, the appreciation percentages, or decreases during the stock market crash, the dot com crash and the stock market crash. And just remember, there's a there's a the high tech boom brought things up big time, very big. So we'll go on to San Francisco and you'll see how that differs from even this particular slide for the Bay Area. All right. San Francisco. Here we go. So this particular graph shows you sort of a more or less flat curve at the bottom there in the 90s until about 1995, when it starts a value start going up, they move up, they move up, it's the dot com boom. And then in 2002, you know, there's a crash. And I see that it's a positive number there. Oh, that's because okay, got it. And then we go to the Great Recession. That's the big number there where values go down by 24% in the city, which is less than in the Bay Area, which is less than in California, which is less than in the United States as a whole. And the big one here is the period from 2012 to 2020, really, it's 2019, but it's 2020. Actually, and that is 126% a whooping 126% of an increase in the median home price in San Francisco. That's that's pretty incredible. So people here have high expectations as to returns, of course, you can probably see why. Okay, however, the one thing to know is that all market markets have fluctuations. And we're going to look at, you know, at how that's actually, you know, the trends for 2021, what what happened, obviously, in 2020, we started going into the pandemic, right, we're still in it, but luckily coming out slowly, many of us are vaccinated now. So that's all good. But there are some effects of the pandemic. And one of those effects is that there's migration to the suburbs because people are working remotely, they do not need to live in high cost of living cities like San Francisco, right, so they're going to different places. Because they're because work is remote, there's also an increased demand for space. Okay. And, you know, so interest rates and inflation are going likely going higher over time. So that's a trend that's that's already happening, but it's it's a little harder to see. And this particular infographic actually comes from the rents free dot com, which you see at the bottom of the slide there. And that is their prediction is that lower interest rates right now and a desire for stability actually leads to an increasing number in homeowners and homeownership. Now this may be true in some markets, but certainly not true in all markets. So it's always market specific. So this is very general. But I wanted to show it to you because you might see it somewhere and go, well, how they arrive at this, right. So it's it's good to know. Now, the other thing about COVID-19 is that it created other issues like high unemployment, like people unable to pay their mortgages. All right. Excuse me or their rents for people who are in a situation where they're defaulting on their mortgages, we're going to see short sales and foreclosures down the line. So COVID-19 in some way because of the effects on the economy and the markets, including real estate, is kind of Janice faced. It goes both ways. There, you know, it's on the one hand, it represents social and economic hardships for people, not everybody, of course, but for many people. And on the other hand, on the flip side, it offers opportunities for those who want to become homeowners and those who are want to invest in real estate. So and that's across the board. This is this is not San Francisco specific. This goes across the board in the United States. Okay, having spoken about that, the big question is also always which market are we in? Is the market going down? Is it going sideways or is it going up? And there are other questions that come from that or that are corollaries to that. And one of those is, is it actually a right time to buy? Right? So if so, where and when? So in this presentation, we're just briefly going to touch on remote investing or investing in other states and so forth, because obviously we're in a high cost of living area and our markets, even though, you know, even though there are affected by all of this, they're tight, they're very tight, and they remain tight. Inventory is low, there's high interest in purchasing property. That means the market is actually still hovering between, it's not really sideways, it's going up definitely. Okay, but the point to remember about the market is about any market you're interested in, or you might be interested in, is that market knowledge is essential. There's no way around it. You must know those markets, whichever one you want to go into or you're interested in. So there's some work to be done there, because the more you know, the better position you are to move into a market that actually and to get properties that are right for you. Okay, so let's go on to something that's really piggybacking on that, and that is preparation and opportunity, how are they connected? In all markets, including in high cost of living markets, like the San Francisco Bay Area, opportunities exist. But to take advantage of these opportunities, you really, it requires readiness, it requires preparation. Well, what does that mean in real in real life? For one thing, stay informed about the market you're in, the market you're interested in, stay alert, pay attention to news stories, you know, read industry specific articles or books, then focus your efforts, because and that actually focusing your efforts becomes the prerequisite for that is knowing what your financial situation is, how you would like what you could possibly do with the finances you have with the time with the effort you have, you can put in and then be focused those efforts by knowing, okay, this is a possibility that this might be the right market for me, whichever market that is, okay, might be Sacramento, might be San Francisco, it might be somewhere else. So basically the preparation part is so important that once that's in place, once you've figured all those parts out, then consult with professionals as well, and then you will be ready to move on opportunity, okay. Basically, preparation sets apart any buyer, any investor, no matter what market they might choose, okay, and I had a client in 2011, so this is before the move up of the markets in 2012, right, so it was hovering between, in between the Great Recession and the recovery basically, and this particular man he wanted, he had a certain financial situation and because of that he was looking for closures, actually he was looking for probates initially, and that was, you know, he didn't know anything about it and so we worked at getting him prepared for it, and eventually, you know, my recommendation to him was probates are very competitive, they also require usually a lot of cash, and there's bidding going on, so all of that drives up the prices, certainly he was looking in San Francisco, if I haven't mentioned that, I'll mention that here, so eventually we found one of the rare foreclosures in San Francisco at the time, I say rare because San Francisco, as you saw in one of the graphs, did not experience the same downturn that other parts of the country did, so therefore that means there's more money here, people can sustain their properties, they don't get foreclosed on very often, so that's also something to know when you're looking to buy in a certain market, if that's your market, it means that there's a lot of competition for those few properties that might come on the market, so hopefully that makes sense, I'll just say the preparation and opportunity, they're connected, and the Roman Seneca said it best perhaps by saying that luck is when preparation meets opportunity, so that's, it's a big long explanation of what this really is about, all right let's move on to the next slide, that is about timing, inevitably it doesn't matter who you know I speak with, inevitably people ask me about the right timing to enter the market, and that implies the next question which is can you actually time markets, well there are many opinions out there and I will just say from my perspective from what I've seen over in over 20 years in in the business is that anything is possible, but usually you know I have yet to meet someone who could actually time the markets, okay, yes you can go on trends and you can make projections, but timing the markets, there are so many moving parts that it's very difficult to do, okay, and usually again in my experience those, there always are some people who believe that the bottom will fall out of any market, I've heard that in San Francisco so many times it's amazing, and usually when a person has that attitude and perception what that means is there's fear involved, there's fear present in in you know making the wrong decision which is totally understandable, I mean it's a big decision to make when to enter etc, what that also means is because there's fear that fear is holding people back, and what it what it then means is that that person usually stays on the sidelines rarely have I seen a person in that situation who has bought property, they just stay on the sidelines and then they hope that there will be a bust in the market, so to say to make it short timing is really less about the markets, okay, it is less about the markets and it's more about whether the buyer or investor is prepared, has done all the things I talked about in the previous slide, and then whether they have the right mindset and are willing to take action, so you've got to stay positive and believe the properties that the right property shows up and it takes homework, unfortunately I wish it was an easy fix but it's not, so the preparation is really important, okay, yeah it's good also to understand the differentiating factors between home buyers, home sellers, renters, and investors, and when I talk about that let's go to the next slide here, so today's home buyers it could also say today's home buyers and sellers and also investors, so all these different generations these demographics as you see here have different approaches, the silent generation is looking to live in, to downsize and live in a retirement home or something like that or a community that allows that for them, the boomers are in the same position now and also they want to, they're transferring wealth to the next generation, both of these generations actually, so the boomers are retiring and then we have Gen Xers, Gen Xers have a lot of student debt, they want flexibility and they like working from home, that's a requirement for them, Gen Y and Millennials are actually the biggest group of new home buyers out there currently and that is because they are just starting families, they're looking for homes to raise their families in and they want flexibility but they also rent longer because they have more student debt and they have expenses that they have to cover, Gen Z, you see the median age is 15 which is kind of funny, most people at 15 don't own property and are not buying property, but some of them are because maybe they have parents who encourage them to do that, that generation though is highly tech savvy and they are usually in high tech, they're influencers and they make a lot of money if they are old enough to make that money, right? Okay, so the reason I mentioned this is that it is important to know what these home buyers and sellers actually want and I will tie in that investors in all groups, I'm going to switch to investors now, want return on investment and they want passive income, so when you know these demographics you can see what you could do to generate that, right? I'll let you think about that a little bit longer, okay? Now here's an interesting article that was published in Barron's in July 2010, obviously right after the Great Recession when people had a really tough time and it's talking about the United States becoming a renters nation, well that is still true, there are more renters out there than most people believe and in the United States home ownership overall stands at 65.8 percent, this is per the U.S. census and renters at the remaining 34.2 percent, in the Bay Area however that number is flipped, it's totally reversed, so we have about 65 percent of renters in the Bay Area and that's according to the San Francisco Planning Department, not my number, anyway we live in a time of flux with changing demographics and it's also a changing economic environment, some of that I discussed in the first book how trends make you a smarter investor and one of the trends in there is about the gig economy which is pervasive, so I just mentioned the millennials and Gen Z, those millennials 40 percent in 2020 per a ballot poll were gig workers, freelancers okay and that number is growing, Gen Z's it's even higher at 53 percent, huge numbers, so from there you probably can see that rental property has appeal to investors okay, so that could be anything from a single family home to a multi family home to a condo to a TIC to anything that you can rent okay, rental properties provide of course services to those renters okay and this is true even though during the pandemic you know rents dropped, now in San Francisco rents are increasing, they're going back up so it was a little while but they're going back up, now there's more vacancy so renters have more choice, so here is the median rent for the for the Bay Area versus the rest of the United States, I want you to know that even though the rest of the United States rents look lower, way lower, there's still money that can be made, so take in those numbers and see that you know how you could possibly apply them in in investing, making some money, creating cash flow and return on investment, so rental property has appeal to investors for all those reasons that I just mentioned, the formula in my opinion to to invest in real estate is to get rich slowly, so it's not uh I buy it today I'm rich tomorrow kind of thing, so the way to do it is to buy to hold and to repeat to buy to hold to repeat and and you know that is really very powerful because as you as an investor builds a portfolio over time that's when income starts to flow and from there we'll just go into the the slide here of what a traditional real estate investing and and even buying looks like and that is to buy a property with a loan okay this is a traditional way to do it, you buy with a loan you generate cash flow after that the loan gets paid off over time this is obviously the ideal right and then there's an eventual benefit from appreciation whether it's refinancing or selling the property which of course if selling the property then the cash flow goes away and it it's simply what what is is uh procured from that appreciation and uh ordinarily you would repeat the process as often as possible to create a portfolio that that brings in that income okay from there the financing part is really is really the biggest part because people uh most people understand what I just said but the hurdle here for for many people is having the money and having access to the money so either having the money or having access to the money some um buyers for example might qualify for loans but cannot come up with a down payment um in that situation often people rely on the bank of mom and dad to to to get going okay so I already mentioned conventional financing and we'll look at some other ways to buy so cash that's probably out of reach for most people unless they have all that cash in the bank okay it's also less about leverage when you buy with cash because you're not leveraging really anything um then the traditional financing which I already talked about uh after that we go to hard money lenders which often uh is is uh most uh applicable to those who want to fix and flip uh but fixing and flipping is high risk high reward and uh that also is reflected in hard money loans you need to know the timing and make sure that things are really going right before uh coming to a high uh interest rate hard money loan okay so the next one is one of my personal favorites and this this one is about uh investing in real estate through self-directed IRAs those are specific or those are separate custodians um specialty custodians actually um that allow people to invest their retirement dollars into um into real estate they they're specialty custodians like if you go to Schwab or Merrill Lynch etc they will not offer that option so you have to open a particular um account with a particular custodian there are now many more of them than they used to be but it's a great way to to generate income the only caveat is so it's an IRS approved basically and uh you get tax benefits uh because it's sitting in that IRA and all of that uh but you cannot buy your own personal home that way the IRS will not allow it that's called self-dealing anyway there are a lot of different rules on that and we could have a whole webinar just on self-directed IRAs um okay we'll move from there and then through the last one I have here which is crowdfunding uh now very popular so people are pooling their money to buy an investment and then they then they get a certain percentage of returns um now there are their fees involved usually and you really have to check out um you know all the different um the different parts to to crowdfunding it can be very good or not so good some crowd funders also will only allow accredited investors which are investors who make I believe it's over $200,000 a year um and have other have lots of other assets so that's probably uh something to look at when looking at crowdfunding to make sure that it's the right vehicle for um for the investor okay so but it's an option it's a it's a great option actually all right so the next part is really probably one of the most important components here and that is going from thought to action from idea to execution and we've talked about the markets we talked about uh preparation the importance of it about financing options and this is actually probably what um sets people apart to move from thought to action that's yeah working with the right professionals education educating yourself etc understanding which property is right for uh for the particular buyer or investor whichever one you would like to be and um let's just I'll have I'll show you this because I thought it was very funny um kind of have to you know when we go into real estate it's like okay I want all of this and that's when I'll buy well uh if you want unicorns and rainbows maybe it's uh it's going to be more difficult unless that broker produces them for you all right so um the big part of this is the big thing to remember main point to remember here is the first step is the decision to move ahead it's usually the most difficult step and it is also the one that builds momentum for you so remember that and preparation will help you to move to that step to take that step all right here is uh I couldn't say it better what will Roger says I'll let you read it so you can see the quote um and uh it is as applicable today as it was when he said that and it's uh it's pretty uh common sensical but not as easy to do in some ways hopefully you got some ideas of how you could do it okay then of course find uh resources find look at markets go shopping all of that I'm putting all these uh parts together so what you can uh do find things on Zillow of course the mls trulyahomes.com realtor.com etc there are some foreclosure sites you can look at for sale by owner wants you can even go to Craigslist and uh get some of the you know have some of these resources at your fingertips okay uh that's really important uh we haven't even talked about making offers or remote investing or or you know um hot markets well we've talked about a little bit of that but basically uh the important thing to remember is that real estate is market specific it is market specific very important the adage is always to make money when you buy i'll repeat that the adage is to make money when you buy versus hoping and and banking on appreciation which may or may not come uh what this means uh here are the seven rules these are my rules okay so buy for cash flow not for appreciation so if you can't cash flow when you go in uh it's usually not a great sign you may make money with appreciation but appreciation is the icing on the cake this is for uh for people who are investing of course okay then uh being conservative about um uh about your resources whether that is time money uh effort uh or anything else you need understand that uh how to use those resources in the most effective way uh in other words waste not i guess that's that's the way i'm going to say it so uh to repeat find assets that cover your costs know your costs up front and budget for those costs buy where you know the market and think long term okay have sufficient cash reserves this may not be as easy as uh as it seems but you'll have to figure out or whoever wants to invest needs to figure out where the where the money is going to come from so i gave you some ideas and that hopefully will help you to um to move forward in finding uh the reserves that you need to move into investing or even buying your own home this applies in either case okay enrolling others in your vision real estate is a team sport so sometimes you can get great things by engaging others and enrolling them in your vision and that also means to treat them with respect which is not always a given but it's very important and then we've talked about this ad infinitum doing one's homework very important i can't um really emphasize it more than this okay so the next part huh my slide is not moving there we go needed a little help from me your big decision well the big decision really is does real estate belong in your investment portfolio uh that is i'm posing this question to you and um i think we have another poll question is that correct yes they are going to launch the poll oh thank you yeah i launched it can you see it yes okay about uh 74 of our participants have voted so i'm going to end the polling and share the results thank you as you can probably tell those of you who are unsure or say no there's there's obviously more detail that needs to happen we don't have time to go into all of that today i'm afraid so um you can send me questions if you want and uh i will answer them as i have time may i close this down uh christie the poll yeah great okay all right um let's see what i can move to the next slide we're almost done hmm there we go all right uh here's the here's another quote by mark tween about uh the what real estate why it's so important and this is of course a little funny we certainly don't make it anymore all right um so to just remember this real estate has a lot of moving pieces make sure you understand those pieces by educating yourself and then um understanding how much time money effort and other resources you will need uh is just as important assess the risks and the rewards and stay positive believe that there's it's forthcoming for you um you know having done all of this my recommendation is to read everything and anything about real estate and real estate investing uh that you can get your hands on um there are a lot of people out there who have different courses and all of that usually that means they want to sell you their system and that's fine but just know that and take those uh their advice with a grain of salt just as mine okay and that is it thank you so much for attending we have a bonus for you um i think we have two right is that correct yes yeah and uh kirstie is going to send it to you uh via email and that's it and if you have any questions i'm happy to stay on and answer your questions as long as they are uh fairly general because uh i can't get into your personal situation in this case i hope that makes sense thank you again and uh i'm ready when you are thank you so much gabriel that was a great presentation thank you so much so i'm going to start at the top of the chat and someone's asking how does one qualify for loans when you have a down payment but not sufficient income let me repeat the question because i only heard part of it i i believe the question was how to come up with a down payment how to qualify for loans when you have a down payment but not sufficient income that is a very good question you probably have to find uh some way uh to either pool resources with someone else who has the income or uh have you know have a different uh approach to it now if you're if you have a lot more than the down payment uh then possibly you can go in with some of the other um the other financing options that i told you about but i'm not sure whether the question is about investing or about uh about owning your own home because that would make it would make a difference because you you can do different things with um with those particular financing options that i presented to you if that makes any sense i'm not sure that fully answered your question but uh if you have additional questions just let me know and i'm happy to attend to them thank you okay here's another question i own a condo in san francisco that used to be my primary residence but i recently converted it to a rental i'm wondering if i should consider selling it given that the rent i received is less than my total monthly cost well that's actually that that depends on uh first of all how long you've you've owned it whether your mortgage is paid off or not uh it doesn't sound like it because you're saying it's netting less than your monthly costs um it also would be helpful to know well how far apart they are and um you know whether you are managing the rental yourself you have a property management company in place uh those things make a difference um also you might you maybe you live in san francisco maybe you don't um so if you want to sell you can right now uh for a lot of properties the marketing time is somewhat longer because we're just getting back sort of into the flow of things so assess your situation and i'm happy to attend or you know if you send me an email i'm happy to answer the question in more detail i can't really go any deeper here uh because it's there are some missing parts and i don't i don't know um i don't have those so i can't answer the question fully i hope that helps you thank you have we all okay so um someone asked a question about um recommendations on resources to keep up with the market to keep up with the market with the market okay so you know the internet has a lot of different uh has has so much information uh real estate information however is still proprietary even though there are startups now who want to change that but what's been happening with those startups most of them have uh found big hurdles to that and so they are tied in like everybody else with the mls so if you go to zillow or to trulia or to realtor.com all the information that is displayed there comes from the mls however most of those companies make their money by uh getting market uh doing marketing for realtors and mortgage brokers and therefore they're not going to show you all the information so one of the ways to get uh information that is pertinent is to um to have a realtor who will help you with some of the components that you cannot get on the internet it's not easy to get and that's because of the state of the industry i'm not saying it's great but that's what we're dealing with and for consumers it's very confusing so one of the ways to do it is to to read about again my recommendation is to read about markets then uh depending let's say you're going into the midwest um you know you have to you have to find someone who actually knows the market there you can find some information sort of generic on the internet but then to dig into it you have to do more one of the ways to assess markets is also to go to unemployment data to go to infrastructure projects that are happening is amazon moving to town uh are there you know are tech companies like in san francisco being attracted into the city that of which is what what happened uh what drove up the prices so immensely uh over the last few years uh you know they they receive tax breaks and all of that so you know so those things make a big difference in how the markets develop now the other thing is you can go on the internet and and take a look at great markets to invest in the only thing there and that's they it will give you great ideas however please be aware that when something is being published it's already old news what what that means is that most investors will have already moved into that market which means that prices are going up so i hope that gives you a sense and you know you can go to other websites like fh aid websites like uh let's see uh there are there are some other loan programs for you know for investors you could do a search for um invested investment loans real estate investment loans which are different from regular loans from traditional stuff things because they're different property types that kind of thing so i've gave you a long answer and hopefully you got some morsels that you can work with from that thank you gabriel someone made a comment that proposition 19 hurt the family wealth transfer is there an upside well that's getting into politics and i i would say uh is there an upside well it you know so pardon i'm sorry he actually said what asked what is the upside what is the upside of prop 19 uh well for one thing uh you will see much more of that kind of movement on the balance at the at the at the um at the balance and the reason is that is that cities and counties and governmental institutions certainly in california prop 13 are not getting the money they need to maintain the infrastructure that's necessary for communities whether that's schools or roads or sewer lines or whatever it is uh they're looking to get money so the the good news should be that uh some of the those monies are actually flowing into communities and those communities get revitalized now it's not what most homeowners want to hear because they don't necessarily want to pay for that right but eventually all of us are paying for it so so it's it's it's a it's very difficult to say this is really the upside but that's what cities and counties are looking for that's what governmental institutions are looking for that's why you're going to see a lot more of similar propositions showing up at the ballot box thank you um someone is asking using conventional financing methods how much leverage is currently possible how much leverage leverage well uh there is quite a bit of leverage you can have uh even with conventional loans uh because the down payments could be as low as let's say 15 percent usually lenders like you to have 20 down okay uh now if you go with an FHA loan it would be a three percent down loan which is I mean that's pretty affordable for most people so you know leverage all depends on what's available in your area whether when you have for instance an FHA loan in San Francisco uh you may have that loan but it's not easy to to move through the loan because most sellers don't want to have that they want to have people who uh have what they perceive to be skin in the game so so you're dealing with different parts to that it is possible to have leverage and it's important uh to consult with a fantastic mortgage professional who knows his or her stuff to assess what actually would work for your situation so there it becomes personal and uh I would need to to know more details as to what your situation is to say well you could do this or this or this thank you um there's another question what are the possible ways to get loans if you are a self if you are self employed with a less stable income stream I'm sorry it's about a self employment um what are the possible ways to get loans if you are self employed with a less stable income stream so self employment is an interesting part for some uh you know most or many self employed people if your tax returns are are complete and uh you can show a consistent income over the last several years um then there should be no problem for a certain income level usually okay um now the the the challenge with that is that many self employed individuals may not you know they may be may be writing off too much or they may be uh you know their income their actual income is completely different from what that tax return shows and that's what a lender would go by uh so for for that reason it becomes uh really imperative for someone who's self employed who wants to uh own property to do tax returns that uh that are you know that are honest and and and transparent where the lender can see the trajectory of what that person is actually making because the lenders are conservative they're risk averse uh they want people who you know who can pay them back um and although you know if someone defaults they can take back the property lenders are not in the business of real estate buying and selling you know that that's not their business they want to make money on them on on lending money um so the answer to your question is to consult with uh a knowledgeable professional and in in the field of mortgages to see what's available for you it is a lot easier today to qualify as a self employed individual than it was even 10 15 years ago yeah thank you um how many more questions and we have several more questions that we all um uh would you like to um answer just a few more or yeah I can I can answer a couple more that's fine okay thank you um as long as I can hear you okay let me know if you can't yeah you may have touched on this in an earlier answer but someone is asking aside from your books are there any other educational resources you'd recommend well um there are many different aspects to real estate and um the resources I recommend if you are so there are other books again the books are usually about people wanting you to become part of their system like you know there are a lot of um and I actually like bigger pockets you may be part of bigger pockets already uh that's a resource it's like for it's a platform online they have and and people publish books but their books tend to tend to drive people to become members of their club so to speak uh and those those memberships you have to pay for those memberships and then supposedly there's mentorship and all of that so whatever resources you find make sure you check them out versus taking them at face value one of the things I would also say I like reading the wall street journal I like reading uh the san francisco business times they often have very good articles and I believe the uh the public library actually has those resources yes so you wouldn't necessarily have to subscribe to them is that correct chris that's right yeah so uh so those I like reading those because it's going to give you a broader view of not only the economy but also some real estate specific uh columns that will talk about what the trends are and what people are doing all of that then if you are a realtor like myself you could you know their their industry specific publications but they tend to be more about uh you know how best to sell this particular house or home or property to a consumer what consumers are looking for so some of the demographics that we talked about those demographics you can easily find online uh and then when you go into into the markets that you might be interested in maybe choose uh up to three to start otherwise it's too overwhelming go into those markets and find the demographics first that would be my uh my recommendation see all those numbers that we talked about uh see uh how the communities are what the composition of the communities are what their challenges are uh what uh their economic trajectories are all of that make it's it's going to tell you a lot more than just looking at real estate books you should still read them but you know just looking at look at books and I believe the public library also has as if I'm not mistaken quite a good selection of real estate books is that true I I recall that it is true but I don't know yes including your book oh it's hard to see okay so you take a book uh at the San Francisco Public Library yeah okay there's another question regarding sufficient cash reserves how much is considered sufficient okay so this is uh what I usually tell uh my clients when looking at cash reserves you want to have enough for the down payment but that is not enough because who knows what else you're going to pay you know you might pay you might have to do insurance you might have to do some repairs you may all of that so figure out some estimates for that that's very important and when you see the property you should be walking around it with a notepad and a pencil and writing down some of these items there will probably be more that show up later but it will give you an idea like an overview of what to look for and then you need to compare what those costs would would amount to build in another five to eight percent on top of that of that amount and then compare all of that to your income the how much you spend every month in other words your budget and see how that aligns if you only have a few dollars left uh it's probably you probably have to look either in a different property category that which where you can buy right or maybe even a different market um or you have to find a higher paying job that's another possibility not a bad idea uh but probably you know a little more difficult to do in some cases right um and the way I usually say it is just to own property eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches is unlikely to make you happy for you know if you have to do it for several years so I mean that's that's just so so you need to look at that because uh I've seen people who were so stretched they they couldn't they really didn't enjoy their life so it's a quality of issue as much as a financial issue thank you there's a question uh do real estate professionals believe that another summer of wildfires and their smoke will have a large impact on day area home prices I'm sorry you're going in and out do real estate professionals do uh do real estate professionals believe that another summer of wildfires and their smoke will have a large impact on day area home prices what will have a large impact I'm sorry I do you go out at a certain point okay um actually um maybe we should just send you the the remaining questions in an email because we're we've gone over so um is that okay yes yes that's fine so send it and uh you know again I me uh I may get to uh some of the questions not all of them so please don't be offended if your question if I'm not able to answer that uh just because it's it's a you know there's there's time involved in all of that so I'm happy to answer what I can and uh get back with you so people um can email us and then we can send you the your question so you can email us at this site tech at sfpl.org if you have any questions so thank you so much Gabrielle that was excellent I appreciate your time and your expertise we will be sending the recording link to everyone later today with the follow-up email and also some uh the copy of the slides and also some PDFs that Gabrielle has shared with us so I want to thank you all for joining us and especially I want to thank Gabrielle for an excellent presentation it was fantastic well thank you I hope you got value from it and uh maybe we'll see each other uh for the next one that's right I put the registration links in the chat so thank you everyone thank you for joining us thank you Gabrielle thank you thank you I'll end the meeting now bye