 They might think that housing, for example, is overvalued because the price in dollars has increased quite dramatically. But the problem is that no one told them to store their wealth in dollars over the last 10 or 20 years. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody, welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, alongside my co-host, Beth Popney Glove. And today, we're talking about housing, specifically housing prices. Are we going to see a bubble? And what the future of the housing market looks like? You can hardly go anywhere without hearing about the demand in real estate. And we are really excited to have one of the leading experts in the space on the show today to talk to us about it. We are really excited to welcome Jason Hartman. He is the founder of the Empowered Investor Network. He's a YouTuber. He's a podcaster. He's got incredible insight on the topic. Jason, thanks so much for your time. Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you, Beth, and thank you, Zach. I'm glad to be here. And I want to talk today about comparisons as a way to understand value, the value of anything. We're going to talk about it as it relates to real estate today, but it could be anything else in life. So happy to dive into that topic with you. Yeah, I'm really excited to hear from you specifically because you talk to small investors that are buying a house or two, as well as investors that are buying thousands of homes. And so I think you've got a really unique perspective about what's happening in the market. But before we go too much further, maybe for our listeners, just give us a 30,000-foot view of everything you do because you've got quite a long title. And I want our listeners to understand a little about your business and then, frankly, why you're an expert in this space. I think it's going to be really interesting for people. Sure. So just a really brief background is that I used to be in traditional real estate. I had a traditional real estate company that just brokered high-end houses in Irvine and Newport Beach, Southern California. And I sold it to Coldwell Banker in 2005. And about a year before that, I started another business where I was helping investors acquire properties nationwide. And we would help them build portfolios. And so I'm still in that business, although it's morphed and changed over the years, of course, like anything. And so really for the last 18 years, I've been helping investors buy properties nationwide. And I've been teaching them how to invest, how to evaluate markets, the economics of real estate and the general economy. On my shows, we talk a lot about monetary and fiscal policy and how it relates to our investments, what we should do about it. And then several years ago, I acquired a software company called Real Estate Tools, where people can evaluate and analyze real estate investments using the software and then track them once they own them. So those are the basic things that kind of apply to our conversation today. I've got some other interest with my entrepreneurial ADD, but those are the basics. Yeah. And so what I'd like to talk about today is this really faulty thinking, I believe, in the way people value things. And the problem I find, and many people are concerned about this today, is that they might think, and I'm not giving an opinion yet, but it'll come out in the presentation, they might think that housing, for example, is overvalued because the price in dollars has increased quite dramatically. But the problem is that no one told them to store their wealth in dollars over the last 10 or 20 years. They could have easily stored their wealth in gold commodities of any sort, whether they be soybeans, oil, or corn, or whatever you want, pork bellies, it doesn't matter any kind of commodity, lumber, whatever. So they could have done that. And many of them did, of course, or they could have just put it in the S&P 500 index. And so the more accurate way to understand whether or not we are in a bubble is to use multiple measuring sticks to compare the price of housing to multiple things rather than just one thing, which is the dollar, which is a very faulty way to make that comparison. So what I'll do is, and I assume this is on audio and video, so I'll share my screen. And for those people listening with audio only, we'll just try and explain the visual aids as we go along. Sounds great. And so it's really about what is your measuring stick? The dollar is only one measuring stick. There are many others. Of course, you look around the world, you could use the euro, the yen, the peso, the Brazilian real, a whole bunch of other, the rupee, you could use a bunch of other currencies, right? But you don't even have to use currency because all currency does is buy you things, commodities. And that's what everybody really wants is commodities because that's what makes life better is to have things, not pieces of paper with dead presidents on them, right? So that's what's important. The other thing we really need to think about is we need to understand that all real estate on the entire planet and certainly around the United States can be divided into three basic categories. And we've been teaching this for about 18 years now. And these three basic categories are linear markets that are steady and profitable and have good cash flow cyclical markets that if you're looking at a chart act like a roller coaster with glorious highs and ugly lows and have very poor cash flow because they're expensive markets and then hybrid markets that are between the two of them. So if you look around the world, you know, most of the world is a linear market and most of the United States is a linear market. It's boring. It kind of chugs along. It, you know, has little spats of appreciation and little spats of depreciation. But if you're looking at a chart, those movements in the line aren't, aren't very, very significant, right? But a cyclical market is the opposite. Very significant moves up and down. So which one makes more money, right? That's, that's the million dollar question. Well, if you can time it just right, the cyclical market's going to make you more money. But I've never met anybody in all these decades who can time it just right, including every time, right? Every time, right? Every time. It's just they're right until they're wrong. Okay. And then they're wrong. And they usually never hear from them again because they're broke, right? And, and they've lost credibility. But the linear markets are boring, slow and steady. And those markets over time, because you don't give back a lot of your, your gains. I mean, you give them back slightly, but not significantly. Those tend to perform better long term, and they have better cash flow for sure. So those are the markets we like to invest in. So which ones are which? Well, most of the West coast of the United States would be cyclical. Most of the expensive northeastern markets in the US would be cyclical. South Florida, near where I live, cyclical, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, cyclical markets. Around the world, places like London, Paris, Dubai and Hong Kong would be cyclical. Okay. Most of the rest of the world is linear or at least hybrid. Okay. And, and so that's just an overview of, of what's going on. So that's how we have the first evaluate things is understand that there are different types of markets. And then we can, we can basically go into the big question I am constantly saying on my show that my listeners have dubbed the Jason Hartman question. It's not my question, obviously, but, you know, they kind of have dubbed it that way. And that question is compared to what? Yeah. And I think this is literally quite possibly the most important question in life, not just in the topic of our discussion today, because think about it. Everything we do in life is a comparison. I mean, try and think of something that's not a comparison. Maybe there is something I don't know. But, you know, when we, when we are dating and meeting and picking a partner, right, we're comparing, we're looking out in the marketplace and thinking, Oh, well, you know, this partner is better than that partner, right? When we're picking a business partner, friends, right? You know, you, you, you compare people to other people to make decisions, right? And that's what people do in any marketplace. And what I've noticed is that money flows to the best value most of the time. Not always. It, it, you know, it gets some, you know, there are manias and, and, and, you know, stupid things throughout economic history, of course, but over time, money will flow to the best value. It won't do it immediately. People will be hypnotized and they'll have crazes and they'll buy tulips at high prices, right? And all sorts of other things and maybe Bitcoin, I don't know. And, and, and sometimes real estate for sure, right? But eventually the market will figure it out. And, and so that's what happens when people compare things over time. So before we get into some specifics of these comparisons, do you have any thoughts or questions? Yeah, I have a million questions. I think this is interesting because, you know, you know, because we look at this for the lens of building products. And the reason I'm excited having the show is to, is because, you know, commodities are increasing, the cost of a home is increasing. And for a lot of our clients and manufacturers we speak to, they're seeing, you know, incredible demand to the point where they're like, I don't know if you're familiar with this, like a lot of them on allocation, meaning they can't sell, but to individuals they've already agreed to sell to, they literally don't have available product. Right. And so if we look at that from a macro perspective and take a step back and say what's happening in the housing market as a whole and investing as a whole, are we going to see this trend continue because as a store of value or as you said compared to what, is it going to continue to perform better and comparison to other things in the market that people could hold their wealth in? So I'd love to hear from your perspective if you look at that, you look at the home, you look at other commodities, are you still seeing this as a place that people are going to continue to invest in? Because that is, and we've read about this, like a lot of people are putting, you're seeing a lot of PE money come in, money from other larger investment corporations are coming into single family homes. Is this going to continue to be a trend or are you seeing a slowdown or, you know, let's say in your analogy, the roller coaster, is it going to start to add back down? So dividing it up into the three types of markets, when it comes to linear and hybrid markets, I am very bullish for quite a while. Now, we will eventually get to a point where there truly is a bubble, of course, that always happens, there are always corrections. But for the time being, in the term of maybe a good solid two years, I think we're in pretty darn good shape when you compare the value to other things in the market. Now, of course, there are other factors, right? You know, there could be some black swan event like a pandemic or a terrorist attack or something that changes things, obviously. But when you're strictly looking at what is the value of this versus that? Amazingly, real estate is still really cheap. I know most people will not peel the layers of the onion back to really understand that. And just so you know, I have no big vested interest in saying it's cheap. In fact, this type of market for my real estate company, I hate this type of market. It's very difficult to operate in this type of market because inventory is so low and investors, when they're trying to buy houses through our network, they're just disappointed a lot. And it's just you've got to act very fast. It's not a pleasant market in which to operate. But people are making money, okay? That's good. And that's why that's why the mania, right? Everybody just wants to get their hands on assets. You know, something else that's interesting. About maybe 15, 16 years ago, when I was mostly doing live events, I used to quote an article that was written by Jeremy Siegel and Michael Milken. And those are two names everybody probably recognizes, especially Milken's name. And Jeremy Siegel in that article was talking about the looming asset shortage. And I think this was a really profound idea that he had. He was talking about how there was a rising middle class around the world. And, you know, that those numbers are about, at the time, about 300 million people lifted out of poverty. Now it's probably more. I don't have the latest stats. And he was talking about how with all these new people that are now moving into the middle class, they're not just going to be consuming more, but they're going to be, you know, part of consumption would be considered, what do you do with your money? What do you invest in? Right? And he was predicting, and I say his prediction has totally come true, a looming asset shortage. And that's, I believe, what we're experiencing today. And I believe that's only going to get worse. Because, you know, he would say in the article, where are all these assets for people to buy? There just aren't enough assets, actually. You know, if you think about that, that's kind of an interesting way to look at it. So, you know, the most common question we get asked or I get asked is, you know, are we in a bubble? And if we're in a bubble, when will it pop? When will the bubble pop? So instead of using just all the typical ways to evaluate things, I decided to create a new index, a new economic index called the HCI, the Hartman comparison index. I originally called this the CTWI, the compared to what index? But that name seemed a little corny, so I gave it a different name. So this is an index that helps compare housing prices and mortgage payments to a whole basket of other things. So let's go into that a little bit. So, you know, when will the bubble pop? Well, first of all, of course, and your listeners know this all too well, I don't need to say this, but usually I do need to say it. So, you know, I started talking about something about 18 years ago that I call packaged commodities investing. Okay. And that was just understanding, you know, what is, instead of looking at the value of the house and the value of the land or the value of the apartment building or office building and the value of the land, as most people do, I said, well, what if we were just to look at the value of all the ingredients, right? If you're going to bake a cake, you've got to go to the grocery store and get a whole bunch of ingredients. So it would be, you know, silly to say, hey, I'll sell you the cake for $10 if the ingredients are going to cost you $14, right? You would never do that, right? So that really is a good determinant of value is packaged commodities investing. I'm really a commodities investor, not a real estate investor. Okay, I just, you know, when, when it's bundled up and packaged into a piece of real estate, that's the way I like to buy it, because you get tax favorable tax treatment, the best debt in the world, 30 year fixed rate, ultra low, it's absurd, right? Negative interest rate debt, right? Yeah. It is absurd. You're absolutely right about that. So you look at it from this way, packaged commodities investing. Now, you know, I'm not going to have time to go into all of this. But if we look at housing prices, you know, this chart goes way back to 1950s. Okay. And you see that if you look at the case Schiller index versus the consumer price index, they generally go in lockstep, but occasionally they get out of sync with each other. And I say this is a really faulty way of looking at things for a few reasons. Number one, the consumer price index is highly manipulated. It cannot be trusted at all. A better index is called the chap wood index, but you can look that up. Yeah, you know about the chap wood index, that's much better in my opinion. And there are others too. But also the case Schiller index is very flawed in my opinion, because the main index they use profiles only 20 markets. And 15 or three quarters of those markets are cyclical markets. Only 25% of them a quarter are linear or hybrid markets. So if you're looking at case Schiller, you're just going to be way too heavily weighted on one kind of market. And that kind of market is really a small percentage of the geography of the country. But unfortunately, it gets all the attention because there's more going on there. Because the chart looks like a roller coaster, right? You know, I mean, linear markets just aren't that newsworthy. Can you imagine a news report on the real estate market and say, you know, I'll pick a couple of our markets, Memphis, Tennessee, or Ocala, Florida, or, you know, Jacksonville, Florida. Oh, well, here's our real estate reporter and let's hear what's going on in Jacksonville. Well, thank you. Pretty much nothing much happened last month. So that's not newsworthy. The other thing too, and it's funny you're showing us this chart, the other thing too is price availability, the amount of homes, the inventory of homes in the market. It's the lowest ever in terms of how long they attract it. Right. And that's pretty much true in almost every market. In every market, yeah. But if you look at, you know, your point about assets, you know, the availability of assets across the market, it's an incredible shortage. Now the pandemic has created squeeze because people are like, I got to get out of here, you know. But if you go out a year or two and we see this relaxed ability to move and to go out, is that going to continue to play out in this way or is it going to see to your point, is it going to see any type of reduction in cost? I don't because if we're at a million plus home, you know, lack of availability right now, you know, we're a shortage of over a million homes, catching up is going to take, it's more difficult too. Like to build a home, there's more regulation, it's more, you know, labor is more expensive across the board, you know. All those commodities are more expensive. So, you know, that's really a question I would ask you because you're much closer to that world more specifically than I am. But is this shortage of raw materials, whether it be lumber or concrete or appliances or windows or, you know, whatever, right? Is it as Jerome Powell likes to say transitory, right? Or is this permanent inflation? I mean, certainly COVID disrupted supply chains, but I'm kind of amazed that we haven't recovered from that yet. I mean, are we still in a COVID supply chain mess or is this just a broader problem? I think it's a broader problem, but I also think that there are some things in conjunction with COVID that escalated the problem. So, if you look at every major commodity in the home specifically, most all of them have experienced supply chain issues that are separate from COVID. So, you take lumber for example, there was issues with bugs and infestation in Canada and, you know, the areas where they harvest lumber, that's separate. You know, that's completely separate from the scenario and it just escalated the problem. If you look at things like plastics, there's petroleum shortage because of what happened in Houston and in Texas. So, like each one of these things, and I'm just calling those two out, each one of these things is causing an issue. I do think- But we always have various issues like that in little parts of supply chains. Yeah, but it's very interesting to me, like the manufacturers we speak to are like, they're literally saying like, you have no idea what we're going through, never seen so much demand for a product and I literally can't sell it. I literally don't have a product to sell. We have a dealer we work with. They sell lumber, they sell products, they get on a call on a weekly basis with builders and they're like, yeah, my job right now is to basically get yelled at. I get yelled at because I cannot give them what they want. I sit there, I take a beating and I go when I pick up the phone and I get another beating from another builder. And so, I don't think demand is going to slow down. I don't think, I think if anything, what this has shown people is that the home is even more important than it is in the past. And so, I don't think you can point to one specific thing other than culture society has changed and the ability to build homes at the rate we need, we don't have technology to solve that problem in a place today that's going to solve that. This isn't something that's talked about often is if you look at some of these commodities, take lumber, a lot of these mills have operated on very slim margins for a long time. And what the pandemic has afforded them is higher margins and are they going to let that go, looking at what's happening with the housing market? So, you could say, hey, we've got supply, but they're doing what diamonds have done for decades, which is artificial inflation. Yeah, artificial scarcity. Yeah, artificial scarcity. Yeah, that's exactly what they're doing. And do you blame them? If you're operating on single-digit margin and then all of a sudden you're like, hey, we can make money. Yeah. No, the prices really do, once they reach a certain point, there's a lot of support at that level. They do soften a bit in any, and this is any market, any commodity, but they rarely really drop back to their prior level. So, if anybody watching and the two of you know better than I, but I would just say, anecdotally, if anybody watching or listening to this thinks lumber is going to go back down and be cut in price by two-thirds anytime soon, don't hold your breath. That's just extremely unlikely. We've had multiple guests say the exact same thing. It can't keep climbing. It has to come back down a bit, but we're never going back. We're not going back to where it was, to where when you're building a home, your lumber package is not even thought about line item. It's going to stay rather significant for a while. I agree with you. I agree completely. So, Jason, we get back to investing. Are you seeing large-scale investors continuing to pour cash into this market and they're just trying to gobble up as much as possible? Are you still seeing that? I'll answer your question. I'll answer a bigger question. I am seeing that plus small-scale investors do that. So, we certainly know that there are a lot of institutional investors in the residential housing market nowadays and the small investors are trying to buy everything they can as well. So, both are true. There's just a ton of optimism out there. And the reason is, is really because the topic of our talk today, the prices are still very low when you compare. So, let's look at a couple comparisons. How about that? Let's do it. Okay. Good. Let's dive into a little bit of the index. So, we'll give you a little taste of it. So, for the last 5,000 years, the human race has considered gold to be money. Now, I'm not a gold bug, but gold is a good measuring stick because it's been used for five millennia, right? It's got a very long tradition, in fact, the longest tradition. So, a generation ago, 21 years ago, there's a little difference on what a generation's considered, but 21 years ago, to buy the median price house, it would cost you 610 ounces of gold. 21 years later today, you can buy the median price house for 186 ounces of gold. So, I mean, look at the difference. It's over 400 ounces cheaper today than it was back then. Well, and if you look at gold specifically, Christ in gold is the house cheaper expensive? Well, even, I mean, I was going to say that with gold itself, like there's been commentary on how it hasn't really increased in value over the last five years, it's stayed relatively stagnant, but still in comparison to a home. Yeah, gold is holding up and the dollar is declining in value. See, the thing we've got to understand is, did the house get more expensive or did the dollar just become more worthless, right? That's the question, right? It's a scary question, man. I have here, one of my listeners years ago sent me a package of Zimbabwe dollars. Okay, now these used to be worth something. Okay, this is 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars and it's worth about four bucks today in US dollars, right? So, you know, when you ask compared to what, this Zimbabwe dollar used to have value. I mean, right here, I've got 100 trillion, 20 trillion, 10 trillion, 50 trillion, I've got 180 trillion trillion with the T Zimbabwe dollars. Right? So, you know, it's a fluctuating measuring stick for sure. So in gold, the house is much cheaper than it used to be, right? And now also, don't just compare it to 21 years ago, compared to 11 years ago, let's take 2010, because that was when real estate was really the cheapest, right? And in 2010, it took 162 ounces of gold to buy the median price house. Today, it takes 186 ounces. So, it's not really that much more expensive than it was in 2010, which most people consider to be the low point, right? So, you know, interesting to look at that. That's really interesting. Let's look at Bitcoin, something that gets a lot of press nowadays. Well, it didn't exist in 2000. So, in 2010, it took 773,000 Bitcoin to buy the median price house. Today, it takes 9.5 Bitcoin, okay? Now, Bitcoin is a highly risky, very speculative investment, but it is what it is, right? There's another comparison for you compared to what? How about oil? The whole planet operates on oil, okay? Oil is probably the most important commodity after food, but, you know, food is many things. It's not just one, right? Oil is just one thing, right? So, 21 years ago, if you wanted to buy the median price house, it would take you 5,500 barrels of oil. But today, it only takes you 5,100 barrels of oil. So, priced in oil, our houses cheap or expensive? They're cheap, okay? And now, let's look at 2010, by the way, because it has gone up since 2010, for sure. 2,500 barrels of oil to buy the median price house in 2010, more than double that today. But if you stretch beyond the low point, which you should, to have a more accurate picture, you know, if you look at 2005, 2000, and then you look at 2015, 2020, and today, you see, you know, houses are cheaper, for all times except one, well, two on this chart. 2005 and 2010, they were cheaper priced in oil than today, but still very good. How about orange juice, okay? Priced in orange juice, houses are more expensive, in the last 21 years, okay? Only took 1,800 pounds of orange juice to buy a house in 2000. Today, it takes you 2,800. I love that you're tracking orange juice. I feel like I, well, well. That's true. You know, now, I wonder what happens if we add vodka to it, because we don't know. Yeah. Or champagne from Momosa. Maybe we got to do that. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So how about rice? Rice is the most important food on earth, possibly, you know, two-thirds of the world's population survives on rice. And in rice, the median price home 21 years ago was 29,000 pounds, okay? Today, 25,000. So priced in rice, houses are cheaper today than they were 21 years ago, okay? How about the S&P 500 index, okay? The standard and pours, the S&P 500, possibly the most likely measure of the economy. When someone says, how's the economy doing? Yeah, they look at GDP, they look at other stuff, but they just want to know what the stock market's doing, right? And so 21 years ago, if you wanted to buy the median price house, it would cost you 1,885 shares of the S&P to buy it. Today, it only costs you 825 shares. I'm rounding, obviously. Yeah. So priced in the S&P houses are a lot cheaper than they were literally at any time in the past 21 years. There's no time when they were this cheap. This is really, really helpful, by the way. Like the context of comparison is so helpful. But I mean, the narrative that's we're understanding here is that houses are comparatively cheaper. I'm going to ask you to go into the intangible for a second, which is if you say this to anybody who's looking at real estate right now, who's looking to just buy a home, not even investors, but investors, I would include that as well. I mean, frankly, like we were talking about lumber memes at the beginning, like there's memes and videos and gifts that are jokes about how competitive the real estate market is. And we obviously monitor the real estate market and it feels and seems like houses are more expensive than they were 18 to 24 months ago. And Beth, it feels that way because you're only tracking it in dollars. I think that's my question. It's help me understand why it feels more expensive. I think I could even throw some comparisons out there of houses that are in our local area. But why does it feel more expensive versus when we look at it from your comparison index? Well, maybe because you don't even realize how strong the conditioning of the dollar is. It's incredibly powerful. I mean, look at it. It's the reserve currency of the entire human race. It's the most powerful currency the world has ever known is the US dollar. And it may not stay the reserve currency forever. That's a different discussion. But the conditioning is very, very powerful. So I would say that's probably the major reason for it. It's a perception is reality situation. Yeah, you know, we all make that a reality because our mind has just been conditioned to think in dollars. Look, if you think about it, you mentioned the word context, which I think is a really interesting word. You know, in life, there are really sort of two major things, right? There is the context in which we live. And then there's the content that we get out of that, right? And so if you think about it, I mean, we all live in air, but we don't notice the air unless we live in a really smoggy place, okay? I was in Cairo once and it was so smoggy, you could literally see the air four feet from you. It was terrible. But everything that is generated in our life comes out of the context in which we live. Fish live in water, right? That's the everything comes out of that, but they probably don't notice the water they're in, right? And so that's how the dollar is. It's a context, right? And we just, our minds have just been trained to value everything in dollars. And, you know, hundreds of millions, if not billions of people around the world value things in that same exact dollar you do. So that's part of it, I'm sure. So, Jason, if I'm allowed to ask you this question, I'd love to know and wrap in things up. When do you think the bubble happens? Like, if you had to guess today, are we seeing it in the next five years or do you think it's happening longer? Well, the further out? The reason I can't answer that question and nobody can, is because they don't know the prices of other things at that time, right? So we could sit here and say, okay, look, let's assume housing keeps appreciating at 10% every year, right? So, you know, next year it'll be 10% higher and the year after that will be another 10% higher on top of that. And remember that compounds on the prior price, right? So it's a compounding effect. But we don't know what the price of rice and oil and orange juice and gold and bitcoin will be, right? So all of these things are constantly ebbing and flowing together. And that's what's going to determine that. Everybody asks the question. I mean, look at everybody in the world who doesn't own a house and wants to buy a house is thinking they're making decisions about their financial life, right? They're thinking, I mean, can you picture this young couple, right? They're living in an apartment, you know, they coupled up five years ago, right? And they they're thinking, you know, the typical thing you do is you buy a house, right? Well, I don't know, should we go on that vacation? You know, or should we buy some new clothes or get a new TV or get a boat or new cars? Or should we buy a house, right? We're always comparing what benefit we get out of each of these things. Should we, you know, spend more money going out to nice restaurants all the time? Or should we save our money and buy a house, right? And so all of these comparisons are always being made. You know, I would just urge everybody listening to really catch themselves thinking, you know, it's been said that the most important discussion any of us will have is the discussion we have with ourselves, right? And we do this all day, right? In our own head. And we're constantly making these comparisons. That's the only way we know anything in life is by comparing it to something else. And so, you know, as we wrap up, the last thing I'd like to do to just share with your audience real quickly is not only compare the price of the house because that would be very misleading. We need to compare the payment on the house. That is much more accurate than the price. The reason is that really almost nobody buys the house based on the payment or based on the price, they buy it based on the payment. And so when you reverse engineer into the payment and you solve for the payment, that's really what people are doing. Okay. And our rich uncle Jerome Powell, chairman of Federal Reserve has made these payments incredibly low. Now, listen, I'm no fan of the Federal Reserve, but I'm just reporting on what's happened. And, you know, I don't need to tell anybody this. They already know it's not about the price. It's about the payment. So what does that payment look like when compared to some other things? So just real quick, right? Here's your mortgage payment, mortgage payment for median price home. Here it is over over the years based on the price and the interest rate at that time. And here's your inflation adjusted mortgage payment. So you can see that in the past 21 years, right now $777 a month, pretty cheap. Okay. It's been a little cheaper before. 11 years ago it was $731. And so, you know, in last year it was $763. It's a little higher than it was last year. But 21 years ago it was $988. So it's cheaper today, right? Priced in Bitcoin. We won't even go into that one. Too volatile. Okay. So how about the mortgage payment in Troy ounces of gold? So today, if you wanted to pay your mortgage in gold, you would pay them 0.63 ounces of gold for your mortgage. Okay. You'd take your one ounce gold coin, you'd cut it almost in half, and you'd hand it to the lender and say, here I've made my payment. But 21 years ago, you would have to give them 3.6 ounces of gold to make the payment. And then you see on the chart over time what it's done. What if you wanted to pay your mortgage in barrels of oil, right? You drove up in a truck to your lender's office with some barrels of oil. Well, 21 years ago you'd have to give them 33 barrels of oil. But today you'd only have to give them 17 barrels of oil. So priced in oil has your payment become cheaper or more expensive than it was 21 years ago? It's cheaper, right? Yeah, the interest rates are definitely helping keep thinking, keeping velocity moving forward. Absolutely. Now, Zach, that is the understatement of the year. Of course, helping. Yeah, it's you're absolutely right. It's, I mean, it's everything. You know, the mortgage interest is so significant that it just makes a giant, giant difference. And look at this one. How about in the S&P? You know, 21 years ago, if you wanted to pay your mortgage in shares of the S&P, 11 shares today, 2.78 shares, way cheaper price in the S&P. How about average hours worked or a number of hours worked at the average wage? This one is very meaningful, if you ask me, hugely meaningful. 21 years ago, to pay your mortgage, you'd have to work 69 hours at the average wage. Thank you so much, Jason. Not the minimum wage average. Okay. Today you only have to work 46 hours to pay the mortgage. Yeah, yeah. So priced in hours in your time, the only thing you can never get back, it's cheaper to have a house today than it was back then. Even priced in minimum wage, it's cheaper. Yeah, over-s buying or investing. Yeah. Pretty amazing stuff, huh? This has been great. Jason, for our listeners, if they want to connect with you or follow you, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, so I did offer that free book at pandemicinvesting.com that what I did is I took a lot of my strategies and adapted them for pandemic times and supply shortages and stuff we've talked about, Zach and Beth. And that's totally free. It's at pandemicinvesting.com. It's just an immediate download, no credit card or any stuff like that. And my main website is just my name, Jason Hartman.com. And then, of course, I have my YouTube channel and podcast. And just type in my name, Jason Hartman. You'll find me anywhere. That's great. We'll make sure we link to all of that in the show notes, too. But Jason, man, I really appreciate you coming to the show. This has been fascinating. And for our listeners, if you like this content, make sure you go to venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe. Until next time, I'm Zach Williams alongside Beth Popney Glove. Thanks, everybody.