 If you think buying a house last year was tough, welcome to 2022, where prices are still high and interest rates are even higher. But that's not all. The whole reason this is happening is because of inflation, just the basic cost of living at skyrocketed, and put your dream of home ownership on the back burner. But what does 2023 look like? That's what we want to know. I've been a real estate agent and investor for over 20 years now. I was the number one REMAX agent in the state of Alabama. And even though over 40% of people think there will be a massive housing crash in 2023, I can tell you, this is nothing compared to 2008. Hey bro. What's up bro? So we're totally under contract? We're totally under contract on the property, right? He basically signed a counter and then we accepted it, right? Oh yeah, yeah, I mean as far as that goes, yeah it's a fully executed contract at this point. Go bro. See you man. Now that is a property that I'm purchasing myself to develop into 92 townhomes. So I own a lot of rental property and I've flipped about 70 houses in the last couple of years, but I've never done a big development like this. This is big to me, 92 units. You see, when we're done building this thing and it's totally rented out, we can take cash out of it completely tax free, millions of dollars. And then guess what? Go do it again. You see, right now it's completely different than 2008. 2008 was an absolute nightmare that no one saw coming. Everyone's blindsided. And that's why so many people lost everything, including myself. I made so much money as a real estate agent. I started flipping houses back in 2003 and 2004. And by the time 2005 and 2006 came, I lost everything. Why? Because I over leveraged to flip houses. You see, I was thinking short term. I was thinking about, I can flip this house and make this much money now, but it wasn't thinking about the consequences if something went wrong, what I would do as a plan B. Now back then, the prices escalated so high that the rent could not take care of the mortgage. Completely different situation than it is right now. There's so much equity out there right this second and rents are so high that even if a homeowner got in trouble on a property, they could just sell it and take cash off the table or they could rent it out to take care of that mortgage. And one of the big reasons this happened was because there was no regulation, very little regulation on appraisals and the way the banking system operated. So much subprime lending, no dock financing. You didn't even have to tell a bank and prove to them what you make as income. You could just write down what you made on an application and they took your word for it. Say you made $2 million a year and they would take that at face value and let you borrow money against that income that may or may not have even been true. Now that's a big difference in what we're looking at today where things are extremely regulated and they make sure that every single person is well, well, well qualified. The lessons that the banking system learned in 2008 was incredible and the pendulum swung so far the other way with how they're regulating their loans and how they're approving people to get loans. So that itself right there has created an incredible foundation that prevents a massive, massive crash like we saw in 2008. There are other factors. One being inventory. Inventory is so low right now. Back when the crash happened, there were 4 million units actively for sale. Right now we're looking at around a million give or take. Now for there to be a massive crash, the supply and demand has to get out of whack, which means we have to have way more supply than we have demand. And that ladies and gentlemen is where the cabaco comes when we try to figure out if a crash is going to happen. And for the people that think a massive crash is on the way, I would love for someone to explain to me where all this inventory is coming from. Builders have halted building. They're down 20, 30% right now in just a matter of months. All the regular average homeowners in America are sitting on 3.5% mortgage rates right now. They're not going to sell that to hop into a 6.5% interest rate. Delinquent sales, meaning foreclosures and so forth, only took up about 1% of sales in the past couple months. Now the other side of this is the economy in general and inflation and what it's done to the middle class, right? It's been really difficult because that inflation has eaten up a lot of their nest eggs, right? Gas is higher, food is higher, everything is higher. Cost of goods, cost of living is sky high right now. And if you've been living paycheck to paycheck, you are really filling it. Now a lot of the bears say we're going to have massive layoffs, right? And that's what's going to cause this massive amount of foreclosures that's going to end up flooding the market. There's two things there. First, I don't see that happening. I don't see the amount of layoffs turning into a massive amount of foreclosures. I don't know for sure that there's going to be massive layoffs. But even if there is, will that turn into foreclosures, seeing how prices are supposed to be flat next year and people have so much equity and rents are so high. And secondly, even if that were to happen and the market were to be flooded with foreclosures at what level we don't know, it would be nothing like 2008, nothing like 2008. But even if it happened, there's so many investors on the sideline, individual investors and institutional investors who will be buying if in fact something like that did happen. And it would gobble up all the inventory. If we had a surge of inventory and prices adjusted in any kind of way, there are buyers sitting there ready with cash. And this one problem which is inventory is the real reason why we're going to see prices flat next year. It comes back to supply and demand. And it's crazy because of all the negative headlines out there that's scaring everyone. Everybody wants to be that guy that said, oh, I saw this coming a mile away. But the facts are that the data does not show that. So here's what I believe. I think that we are in a new normal. I think that this is our new life where we're living at these type of home prices. And I think spring of 2023 is going to be the exact opposite of a crash. I think it's going to be a surge. I think there's a lot of pent up demand that's brewing right now and the longer it brews, the bigger it's going to be. But either way it goes, guys, you're going to win. If you are a real estate agent, if you're an investor or if you're just a home buyer looking to purchase or if you're a home seller, you are going to win. Why? If you're a seller, prices are still extremely high, much higher. We're still higher year over year right now. If you're a buyer and you buy right now in 2023, you are going to have appreciation over the next three to five years. If you're a real estate investor, it's always a good time to buy. There's always cash flow in properties and we may even see some really good deals on some commercial and multifamily. And if you're a real estate agent, you always win because you make money on the transaction regardless of what the price is. And there's always going to be transactions every single day for the rest of your life regardless of market conditions. 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