505: Real Estate Problems - Affordability Issues and Foreclosures Today

Get Rich Education

Big capital gains tax bills are hitting more home sellers. Exemptions exist for up to $250K single, $500K married.

Bad housing affordability means a low home ownership rate, hence, more renters.

The homeownership rate has dropped from 66.0% to 65.6% in the last year.

I have a hole in the roof of a rental single-family home, with about $10K in damage. Learn how I handle it.

Two of the first three income properties that I bought performed poorly.

VP of Market Economics at Auction.com, Daren Blomquist joins me. We learn why foreclosure activity is 10% to 20% below pre-pandemic levels.

Learn about judicial and non-judicial foreclosure states.

From homeowners surveyed, the top concern about falling into delinquency are rising insurance and property taxes.

Auction bidders are confident about the real estate market. They’re willing to pay more, which is 60% of ARV nationally.

You can bid on distressed properties with your phone via Auction.com.

Opportunity Zones are generally working.

Resources mentioned:

Nation’s Largest Online RE Auction Marketplace:

Auction.com

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GRE Investment Coach, start here:

GREmarketplace.com

Get mortgage loans for investment property:

RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE

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Complete episode transcript:

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:00:00)) - - Welcome to GRE! I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, talking about a lot of housing market problems today. Capital gains taxes hitting more home sellers. Home affordability is still bad. The American homeownership rate is falling. I've got roof damage on one of my own properties. Then an update on American mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures. It's mostly bad real estate news today on Get Rich Education.

Speaker Syslo** ((00:00:29)) - - Since 2014, the powerful Get Rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate, investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show host Keith Reinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad Advisors, and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014, there's been millions of listeners downloads and 188 world nations. He has A-list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get Rich education can be heard on every podcast platform. Plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener. Phone apps build wealth on the go with the get Rich education podcast.

Speaker Syslo** ((00:01:06)) - - Sign up now for the Get Rich education podcast or visit GetRichEducation.com.

Speaker Coates** ((00:01:14)) - - You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:01:30)) - - We're gonna go from Bavaria, Germany, to Batavia, New York, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to Get Rich education. There is a large online source of foreclosure and bank owned properties that you won't find on the MLS. In fact, they are the largest in the nation, and their VP of Market Economics will be here with us later today. Home price appreciation. That has been wonderful for the last several years. But one negative consequence is the fact that more home sellers now are getting hit with big capital gains tax bills. Now we'll discuss income property shortly, but when it comes to primary residences, you probably know that if you are single, you won't pay any capital gains tax on the first 250 K profit of your sale. That 250 K exemption. That is only half of what married couples enjoy.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:02:29)) - - They don't have to pay tax on the first 500 K of profit. Yes, a $500,000 exemption on capital gains for married couples. So basically, single people in high priced markets like you often find on the coasts, they get hit the hardest. Married couples in lower priced markets more toward the heartland and in the South. Those married couples, they're more likely to get away without paying any tax on the profit from their home sale. All right, well, just what proportion of homes are we talking about here? Well, last year, 8% of sales had capital gains of over 500 K. All right, well that potentially makes them exposed to the tax hit. Compare that to a couple decades ago. That share was just over 1%. So it's gone from 1% to 8%. These are exorbitant capital gains tax events. And you know what this does. People trying to avoid that it keeps even more homes off the market. Now it's not as pronounced as the well-documented interest rate lock in effect okay. Call this the capital gains tax lock.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:03:46)) - - In effect people avoid the tax by not selling. And it makes some older people age in place. That's part of what's going on here. Because if the homeowner keeps it until they die, then the heirs, they might be able to sell it tax free due to the tax laws and capital gains taxes. Like, what rate do you actually pay that can be as high as around 20% on you for selling your primary residence if the gain exceeds those thresholds? And yeah, those thresholds, they haven't moved with inflation in quite a long time. Now, understand that right now you are living in an era where many Americans, they can't afford to live in the home that they live in right now if they tried to repurchase it at today's prices. So again, it's not the mortgage rate lag in effect here. It's the purchase price paid lock in effect. Now look, yes, overall I am a real estate market optimist. You are too, when you understand how real estate pays you five ways. But as far as anyone saying something like, oh, there is never been a better time to buy, that doesn't make any sense.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:05:02)) - - Now. At the same time, I don't see any evidence that waiting is going to do you any favors, but there have obviously been some better times to buy. In fact, do you know the best year in modern history that I can think of for buying real estate? Any idea it was the year 2013? Yeah, 2013. That's when prices were low because they still hadn't bounced much off of the GFC lows and mortgage rates. They actually were in the absurdly low threes back in 2013. Now starting in 2021 you know I have been on record on this show. I've been on record on television and on our own YouTube channel here and in Forbes and elsewhere. Since then, I've said that home prices, they're not poised to fall, they're going to stay stable or they're going to keep going up. I was perhaps one of the earlier people to point that 3 or 4 years ago that the low housing supply and the government safety nets that won't let people lose their homes, those things keep the markets buoyant.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:06:16)) - - Now, today, I see more signs that prolonged bad affordability will slow down. Home price growth in that part is bad for investors, of course. Prolonged. Bad affordability. That means something good for income centric investors at the same time, sort of like David Stockman and I touched on last week here. Yes. Souring affordability. What that means is a falling homeownership rate that would make sense in the homeownership rate. That means that just what it sounds like, that is the proportion of American homes that are occupied by their owner in the past year. Yeah, the homeownership rate has fallen, but not too much yet because there are some lag effects and other factors to account for. Like, imagine if there are new zero money down loan programs that are made available. You can see how that would make homes more affordable, even if rates and prices and wages stayed the same. So there are X factors out there and lag effects out there. In the past year, the homeownership rate has fallen from 66% down to 65.6%.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:07:33)) - - Not too much of a slide, just 4/10 of 1%. That is a Fred stat sourced through the Census Bureau. All right. So what's that really mean if you're looking for income. Well, what that means is that there are now hundreds of thousands of additional renters today than there were just one year ago. And the number of renters, those that aren't homeowners, that looks to increase in both absolute and relative terms. There's a lot of people expect the homeownership rate to continue to drop from here. Now, no investor conditions are absolutely ideal everywhere you look. In fact, of the first three investment properties that I personally bought in my life, only one of those three went really well. It was that first ever fourplex I bought because it appreciated from 295 K to 425 K in just three and a half years, and it provided some cash flow and even a place for me to live. But the second property I bought, which was also a fourplex, it hardly cash flow because I bought it at 90% loan to value, and I also bought it in 2007.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:08:46)) - - Not great timing, so its value dropped. I was a pretty new real estate investor then, and when its value dropped, it didn't return to the 530 K value that I bought it for for about six years. And then I got wiser and I started buying across state lines, since that's where the best deals often are. Well, this was then my third investment property, a brick single family home that cost 153 K in the Dallas-Fort worth area. And the main reason I bought it is because it was cheap, which was a mistake. It was also in a growing area, but I couldn't keep it occupied, so I soon sold it for about the same price that I bought it for. All right. But even in those far less than ideal beginnings for me, two of my first three properties, they weren't disasters, but they weren't a great experience either. Yet I still got some leverage, a little cash flow. I got tenant made principal pay down all the while, tax benefits all the while, and that inflation profiting benefit.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:09:52)) - - And I did then find myself better off overall. Despite that the appreciation and the cash flow weren't all that great. If you blend those first three properties together and today, perhaps a lot like you or what you want to do. I own properties in multiple markets, and I remotely made as the property managers in those markets. And you know, just yesterday I got an email from one of my property managers about roof damage to one of my properties. It's a rental single family home. It's going to be about $10,000 worth of repair work. Some bad news and the way I'm hailing it is a way that you might think of handling a real estate problem. I sure don't just send off a $10,000 check right away and chalk it up as a loss, and ask myself how many months it's going to take me to make that up. The first thing that you can do in this situation is check to see if you have a home warranty that covers it in full or in part. Whether you bought your property new or renovated, a warranty might apply.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:10:58)) - - It actually does not in my case here. Well, if the warranty doesn't cover your issue, of course, check with your insurance provider and see what your deductible is there. Consider that when insurance premiums have risen sharply in a lot of markets, you need to get something back for that premium that you're paying in a lot of cases. All right. And if those things don't work, then don't just take the first quote that your property manager gives you that they got from the first contractor, which is. Ten K in my case. For a substantial work item, ask your property manager to obtain at least three quotes for you. That's reasonable. And then look at the most competitive of those three quotes. So to review here three ways to avoid paying. For example a full 10-K. In my case it's your warranty, it's your insurance. And if you feel like you must come out of pocket, then get three quotes in order to reduce your cost. And here's the thing you don't do these things yourself.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:12:03)) - - What you do is you ask your manager to do these things and make it easy for you. Your manager should check with your insurance policy and they should check on your warranty. And then you can back it up and take a look at it. If you don't like the answer, they should obtain the roofing contractor quotes for you to. You are paying your manager for this stuff, maybe 8 or 10% in a management fee, and that should not be for nothing. Have them do this stuff that's their job and ask them to do it. Because if you don't just watch, they'd be happy to have you do it for them. Don't. You don't have to. So we're talking about mitigating your out-of-pocket cost in your time expended when you have a real estate issue, like a hole in a roof of one of my single family rentals. Now sometimes you're going to get caught in some snafu. But again, our strategy here is that you're usually not even holding any one rental property for more than 7 to 10 years, because by that time, it's accumulated sufficient equity so that you can make a tax deferred exchange up to another property, keep leveraging that equity, because the rate of return from equity is always zero.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:13:16)) - - Now, that process, that 7 or 10 years, that might be on the slower end. Now though, since the property that you consider relinquishing is going to have a lower mortgage rate than your replacement property, it will. And one other thing to keep in mind here it's about providing America with that clean, safe, affordable, functional housing. What that means is that while roof quotes are being obtained here if needed, and it takes a few works until those roof repairs can begin, what you can do is have a cheap temporary repair done until the permanent roof fix starts. That's pretty common with roofing repairs, and that way not only is any interim damage avoided, but the tenant is not being negatively impacted here either. No slumlords around here. As we're discussing real estate problems today, we're about to delve into what happens when homeowners in real estate investors, when they can't make the mortgage payments on their property, and is that proportion of people going up or is that going down in this low affordability market? We'll also get some takeaways by looking at the bidder activity on foreclosure properties.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:14:33)) - - That can tell us quite a bit about the market and about buyer expectations for the future of the market. And I'll also tell you how you too, if you're interested, you can find opportunities and get a deep discount on a foreclosed upon property. That's all. Next with a great guest, I'm Keith Reinhold. You're listening to get Rich education. Your bank is getting rich off of you. The national average bank account pays less than 1% on your savings. If your money isn't making 4%, you're losing your hard earned cash to inflation. Let the liquidity fund help you put your money to work with minimum risk. Your cash generates up to an 8% return with compound interest year in and year out. Instead of earning less than 1% sitting in your bank account, the minimum investment is just $25. You keep getting paid until you decide you want your money back there. Decade plus track record proves they've always paid their investors 100% in full and on time. And I would know, because I'm an investor, to earn 8%.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:15:41)) - - Hundreds of others are. Text. Family 266866. Learn more about Freedom Family Investments Liquidity Fund on your journey to financial freedom through passive income. Text family to 66866. Role under the specific expert with income property you need Ridge Lending Group and MLS 42056 in grey history, from beginners to veterans. They provided our listeners with more mortgages than anyone. It's where I get my own loans for single family rentals up to four Plex's. Start your pre-qualification and chat with President Charlie Ridge personally. They'll even customize a plan tailored to you for growing your portfolio. Start at Ridge Lending group.com Ridge lending group.com. This is Rich dad advisor Tom Wheelwright. Listen to get Rich education with Keith Reinhold and don't quit your daydream. This week's guest is the VP of Market Economics at auction. Com they are the largest online source of foreclosure and bank owned properties that you won't find on the MLS. You can bid on properties from anywhere with your mobile device. We'll learn more about that later. First, we're covering a general real estate market update today, and then we're mostly going to discuss what's happening in the foreclosure market, including just what a foreclosure market even is.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:17:25)) - - Hey, it's been over a year since we've had you here. So a big gray welcome back to Darren Lundquist. Thank you so much. It's great to be back and.

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:17:34)) - - Glad to see you, Keith.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:17:35)) - - For listeners in the audio only Blomquist is spelled with just one oh, despite being pronounced. Blomquist and Daren, as we talk about the state of these markets today, it also helps to mix in lessons for the follower and listener that's watching or consuming this. In ten years. And before we discuss foreclosures. Now, Darren, when I look at the residential real estate market today, there are a few ways that it appears rather normalized actually. For example, all price appreciation rates are normal rent growth levels. They're pretty close to historic norms. Interest rates are even near historic norms, which is a surprise to laypersons. But that's three huge measures that are actually normal, and no one else anywhere talks about that. But there are some aberrations in today's market, the most chronic and saddening of which is the lack of housing supply.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:18:28)) - - So with that backdrop, what are your thoughts on today's overall American housing market?

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:18:34)) - - It's really interesting. We have these normal metrics that we look at when we look at how home price appreciation. Now home sales I would say are abnormally low. Right. But home price appreciation is doing well. Some of the other metrics that we look at. But it's coming off of this abnormal what I would say an abnormal period over the last three years or so, mostly during the pandemic when the housing market went a little bit crazy and you saw home prices rise abnormally fast. I would argue too fast for such a short period of time. And so you'd almost expect after a period like that to see a correction in home prices. And we saw a slight correction in late 2022, early 23. Right. But now home prices are, as you mentioned, kind of back to normal actually maybe a little bit on the high side of normal, 5 to 7% home price appreciation that we're seeing annually. And so there is this sense that things look normal.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:19:32)) - - But below the surface there are, I believe I would argue and you may not agree with this, some underlying problems that I think could come back to bite us if, you know, depending on how things go over the next few years. But certainly the underlying fundamental biggest storyline, that's not necessarily maybe as accessible to a lot of people is this housing supply that you mentioned, Keith. And over the last the decade that ended in 2020, we saw, I would guess, based on my analysis, about 4 to 5 million housing units that were not built, that in a sense should have been built. But we were short 4 to 5 million housing units relative to the number of households that were being formed during that same time period. And so that is set us up for this market that we're in now in the 2020s, where we're seeing, despite the fact that home prices are going up and are out of whack with fundamental price to income ratios. In other words, affordability is a problem. Despite that fact, home prices continue to go up because you have this underlying lack of supply and so you have enough demand to fuel rising home prices, given the lack of supply, if that makes sense.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:20:48)) - - Yes. You mentioned the paltry volume of sales, which is really one consequence of this constrained supply. And there are so many ways to measure it. You threw some numbers out there just using Fred's active listing count. They have one and a half to 2 million homes normally available. Inventory bottomed out near a jaw dropping, just fantastically paltry 350,000 units in 2022. And then the latest figure is about 730 K. So really doubling off the bottom, but yet still far below what is needed there in in 2021 and 2022, I started informing our audience that the housing crash of this generation, it's already occurred. It was a supply crash, which hedges against a price crash even amidst a tripling of interest rates. I guess there. And from your vantage point, when will this low housing supply abate?

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:21:46)) - - But I think on the multifamily side, you're seeing signs that we've, in a sense, caught up with housing supply. You're seeing the multifamily sectors start in terms of the builders start to pull back. I think because of that.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:21:58)) - - And one piece of evidence of that is the slowdown in rent appreciation. But then on the Single-Family side, we're still seeing pretty robust increases in housing starts and builders starting housing units. And I was just looking at the latest numbers for April up 18% year over year. And we're at over a million housing starts in April on an annualized basis. You know, it's hard to predict what household formation will be doing over the next decade, but I believe that million number is enough to supply the new households that are being formed and are projected to be formed over the next few years. And so we're kind of at a place where at least we're treading water in terms of housing supply. And I do think there are some demographic trends that could by the year 2030, which may seem like a long ways off still, but by that time we would see this kind of reverse a little bit. And the demographic trends I'm talking about are slower population growth, the birth rates. There's a big article in the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:22:58)) - - If you write, birth rates are surprisingly not really coming back. They dropped during the pandemic have not really come back. And in many areas, including the US or below replacement level in terms of replacing the population at 2.1. Yes. So not to get too deep into the demographics, I'm not a demographer, but I think that combined with these increases in housing starts that we're seeing, we will see that supply in the next five years. Maybe when I'm on next, I'm with you to see that it is a slow moving train. I think we're headed in a good direction in terms of that, that housing supply. And those are already, I would argue, some early signs at 2024 at least. It's still a low supply environment, but it's at least somewhat better, incrementally better than 2023 was in terms of inventory. And we're seeing some more inventory. Come on. One tip I would just say that's I think a long term thing to look for, no matter what environment you're in, is if you look at the inventory, inventory is a great and a barometer of market health.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:24:00)) - - And if you look at inventory numbers by market, which we do, you do see some markets all of a sudden inventory is starting to spike. And that to me is a signal that those markets could be softening in terms of prices and even in terms of sales. So you see some markets in Florida popping up like that. But whether or not we're talking about now or anytime, it's a great metric to look at. For anybody investing in real estate, especially at a market level, is that inventory of homes. You can look at month supply of inventory for sale. Six months supply is a great milestone. If there's six months supply, that's a balanced market. If it's below six months supply, it's a seller's market. And if it's above six months supply, it's a buyer's market. So just a general kind of rule of thumb to look for there.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:24:46)) - - Sure. We've seen months of supply three months or less in an awful lot of places. However, you alluded to coming potential problems for the housing market earlier.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:24:55)) - - Can you tell us more about that? Have you already done that with talking about a potential softening with some inventory coming on faster in some markets?

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:25:04)) - - I think you're a thesis about this. The housing crash has already happened and it was a supply crash is very interesting. When I look at price to income ratios over time, you know, home prices versus incomes, we've diverged from that long term mean of that price to income ratio right. In the last couple of years. We saw that during the the bubble of 2004 five six. But it's even more dramatic in the last couple of years where we saw at the peak of this, the actual home prices. We. Nationwide, we're about 30% above what we would expect the price to be based on incomes and that historic price to income ratio. And so I do expect a reversion to the mean at some point. Now, whether that could occur as a pretty sharp correction, although I can't point to a specific trigger that would cause that correction necessarily may could occur more of a stagnation over time, where home prices kind of flatten out and increase less than the median long term average.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:26:07)) - - I do believe that we will see a reversion to that mean eventually, especially as we see more supply coming onto the market. I think it's actually healthy for the housing market, but it could be experienced by many people as weakness in the housing market, because you could see home prices decline a little bit, especially in certain markets.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:26:25)) - - From your vantage point. Darren, you are an expert there in helping people find deals because you really keep a pulse on what's happening in the foreclosure market. Maybe some of our audience doesn't completely understand what the foreclosure market means. Now, Darren, I think of delinquency is that condition means that mortgage borrowers have been making some late payments. Tell us about how delinquency differs from foreclosure. And that will help if you go ahead and define just what the foreclosure market is.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:26:57)) - - Starting with the foreclosure market. I mean, when you can call it the distressed market or the foreclosure market. And that's really where auctions. Com operates. And is this foreclosure market, it's loans that the borrower cannot continue to make payments for a variety of reasons.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:27:12)) - - When you have a home that's financed and the borrower cannot continue to make payments, the recourse for the lender is foreclosure to take back that property by taking back that property and then selling it, recouping or trying to recoup as much of the losses on that property that they can in terms of the loan that was given on that property. Okay.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:27:34)) - - So let's talk about delinquencies here. We're looking at certain levels of severity being 30 days late on your payments, being 60 days late and being 90 days late. And interestingly, we see a big spike in FHA loan types that have had more delinquencies than conventional loan types.

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:27:50)) - - That's right. Yeah. So delinquency is kind of the top of the funnel if you think of the distressed market or for leisure market as a funnel, the top of that funnel is someone can't make their payment one month. They miss their payment, mortgage payment one month. That's what this 30 or 30 day delinquency. And when you look at the chart that we're looking at, you do see those 30 day delinquencies rising over the especially on FHA loans, which are, I would argue, the most kind of risky loans in our current marketplace.

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:28:19)) - - Yeah, the last ten years, over the last decade. And we see those even from 2021, rising steadily up back to really 2019 highs on the 30 day delinquencies, you also see a slight gradual increase in conventional loans, which are loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as VA loans. But those are the 30 day delinquencies. They're are not back to pre-pandemic levels even on that front. So that's the 30 day. Usually if someone misses a monthly payment, it's not super serious at that point. What really gets more into our marketplace is when we see a 90 day delinquency, or what's known as a seriously delinquent loan alone, that is past due by 90 plus days. And we have that chart here. What stands out to me on this chart is you actually see those 90 day delinquencies continuing for the most part to trend lower, even though the 30 day delinquencies are going up, 90 days are coming down, and there's a lot of reasons for that. But at the end of the day, that means people maybe are getting into trouble, but they're able to get out of trouble before they lose the home to foreclosure in many instances.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:29:29)) - - All right. So in summary, 30 and 60 day delinquencies have risen over the past two years. But over the past two years, serious delinquencies, 90 day delinquencies therefore, are lower over the past two years.

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:29:43)) - - That's right. And then if we look at foreclosure starts, which is kind of the next step. So you missed three months worth of payments. That's when the bank starts to think about starting the official foreclosure process. And if you look at foreclosure starts, we are seeing those rise as well. And part of the reason that you see these rising, even though seriously delinquent loans are falling, is because there was a bit of a backlog from the pandemic still. Yeah, loans that were delinquent when the pandemic started that were delayed from going to foreclosure, that are now coming back. So we see this sharp drop off in 2020 when there was a foreclosure moratorium. Those numbers have reverted back, have bounced back. But there's we're still seeing about 60 to 70,000 foreclosure starts, a quarter nationwide just to put some numbers on this.

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:30:31)) - - But back in the first quarter of 2020, before the foreclosure moratoriums, we were at 81,000. So we're still at about 80% of the pre-pandemic levels. But foreclosure starts have come back. We're just getting back to what I would consider kind of normal levels of foreclosure, and especially if you look at in the context of what we saw during in 2009, 2010, we were seeing over 500,000 foreclosure starts a quarter back then. Now we're seeing 68,000. So we're paling in comparison to those numbers.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:31:04)) - - As you, the investor, is thinking this through, we're talking about how many opportunities there will be for you here, basically to scoop up a distressed deal, a fixed and flip property. If you're looking to fix and flip one just in the general context, that's what we're talking about here.

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:31:21)) - - Opportunities really foreclosure starts are for. Opportunities. If we look at where the opportunities are emerging in terms of those foreclosure starts, we do see a lot of increases in looking at March of 2024. Year over year, a lot of increases in Florida, and foreclosure starts and also Texas in California.

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:31:42)) - - So it's interesting. I mean, these are markets that are doing pretty well, pretty healthy. But we are seeing some of those foreclosure starts come back in pretty big percentage wise in those areas. If we look at auction com data, specifically the state level, in the interest of time. But just to look through the lens of looking for opportunities. Auction com resides a step after the foreclosure start. Then eventually it goes to a foreclosure auction where the property either sells to an investor or it goes back to the bank is what's known as an REO. And where we're seeing on our platform the biggest kind of return to normal levels of foreclosure auction volume, where there's that property actually is sold, is mostly in the Rust Belt, Upper Midwest. That's where we're seeing volumes return to normal. And a place like Florida, we're only seeing foreclosure volumes are over 70% below normal, and Texas were 55% below normal. And when I say normal, I'm saying I'm comparing that to pre-pandemic levels. And then in California, we're at about 45% below those pre-pandemic levels.

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:32:54)) - - So some of the big volume states, we're still waiting for the foreclosure volume to return. But if you look like at states like Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, places like that, Oklahoma, we are seeing that foreclosure auction volumes have returned to those pre-pandemic levels. So there are more opportunities in those areas, at least relative to their population and their their size of in terms of housing units.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:33:20)) - - So in general, in a lot of these upper Midwestern states, in northern Great Plains states, we see a greater foreclosure volume than we did pre-pandemic, because those levels are at over 100%, 100 being the pre-pandemic level. There is one aberration on your map, for one thing, Darren, and that is in Connecticut, where we have 306% of the foreclosure volume that we did pre-pandemic. That's over three x what's going on in Connecticut?

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:33:50)) - - I'm glad you pointed that out. I mean, that is part of the the issue with Connecticut is you do have relatively low foreclosure volumes there. So the 306% is coming off even pre-pandemic, some pretty low volumes of foreclosure.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:34:03)) - - We are seeing and I can't point to exactly what's happening there in terms of the economy, any other extra weakness in the economy or in the housing market there? But we are seeing definitely that's the top state in terms of where foreclosure volume is back way above, in fact, pre-pandemic levels. That was one of the areas, at least parts of Connecticut where the work from home trend maybe got a little bit out of control, and people were buying homes and willing to pay very high prices for homes that were who worked in New York City. And now we're thinking, well, I can work from Connecticut. In the country. There was probably more of a pandemic housing boom in Connecticut than some other areas of the country, and that may be part of the story that's going on there.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:34:54)) - - We're talking about the most densely populated part of the United States here, the tri state area, which is New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. And what's unusual is that one of those three states, new Jersey, is the antithesis of what's happening in Connecticut.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:35:09)) - - Connecticut has about three x the foreclosure volume than they did before the pandemic, and new Jersey is just 25%. They only have one quarter the foreclosure volume that they did before the pandemic. Are there any other tri state dynamics going on there with foreclosures there?

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:35:25)) - - That's a great observation. And one thing that becomes very important with foreclosures is the foreclosure process is governed by state law. It's not a federal national law that governs how the foreclosures work. And so you do see a lot of variation in the states based on how that foreclosure process works. And then also even how the the legislatures in those states have stepped in in some cases. And that's the case in new Jersey and created new laws even in the last couple of years to, for lack of a better word, stymie the foreclosure process and may put extra barriers in getting to foreclosure. And so, number one, new Jersey is what's called a judicial foreclosure state, where the foreclosure process is inherently longer than many states, including Connecticut. And then on top of that, the new Jersey legislature has enacted at least one law that took effect in January that even creates more barriers to foreclosure.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:36:22)) - - And we probably don't have time to get into the details of that law. But that's really, I think, what's it's less about that new Jersey is a much more healthy housing market than Connecticut. As to what you see there is the effects of the state governed foreclosure process with those numbers.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:36:40)) - - So just some great context for the listener and viewer here. The state jurisdiction in the judicial process has an awful lot to do with foreclosure volume. That's not necessarily indicative of the condition of its housing market.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:36:55)) - - That's right. And it does vary quite a bit. When we look at going forward at risk. We actually asked, so our clients are the banks, the mortgage servicers, the lenders who are foreclosing on these properties. And we ask them what they think is the highest risk of increasing foreclosures in the future. And the the top of their list was rising insurance and property taxes.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:37:22)) - - That's super interesting.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:37:23)) - - Yeah, and that's been a hot topic recently. I would put that at the top of my list of risks.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:37:29)) - - Going back to your question about why could the housing market experience weakness in the somewhat near future? I think this is the top of my list of as a catalyst that could potentially trigger weakness in the housing market, specifically home prices. Because of these variable costs of homeownership. You know, your mortgage is a fixed cost. You know what it's going to be every month, but your insurance and property taxes are variable costs. And there are in some states, those have skyrocketed. For some homeowners. This insurers are pulling out of states.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:38:02)) - - This is all such a great finding. Again, Darren's firm asked the survey question how much would you assign each of the following in terms of risk for higher delinquencies between now and the end of this year? And the number one answer is rising insurance and property taxes to Darren's point. That's because these are variable costs that everyone is subjected to. And we need to be mindful that more than 4 in 10 American homeowners are free and clear of their mortgage, so they don't have any payment.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:38:27)) - - So on a percentage basis, when you look at homeowners expenses, when they have rising insurance and property tax problems, you can see how this can increase foreclosures.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:38:38)) - - That's right. That's a great point. A couple other risks that ranked fairly high with our clients. We're rising consumer debt delinquencies so that we do see things like credit card debt and auto loan debt, specifically those two delinquencies on those types of more or loans, not mortgages, are rising quite quickly over the last few quarters. And so that's an area of risk that we're seeing. And then they put rising unemployment is third. But you know right. We're not seeing unemployment rise right now. And unemployment is very low. They put that a little bit lower on the list. Those two things to look out for are those rising insurance and property taxes. If we continue to see that be a problem, that could be a trigger that causes some fallout in the housing market, as well as if we continue to see those rising delinquencies on credit card and auto loan debt that could ripple out as well to the housing market.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:39:35)) - - It's really interesting. Higher property taxes are often a result of a homeowner's property having gone up in value. But if you own a paid off home and you're just going to continue to live there for the rest of your life, that rising property value that really doesn't help you so much, it actually might hurt you in a way, because you will have a commensurate increase in your property. Taxes, making it harder for you to live.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:39:57)) - - Yeah, that's right. It's a double edged sword there with the rising values. And usually it's, you know, property taxes is not an unbearable cost for most people. But when you're on the margins and you're just barely able to make your mortgage payment each month, and if you're in that situation, a fairly small rise in property taxes can make a big difference in whether you're able to continue to make those payments.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:40:21)) - - Yes. And then the rising insurance premiums, they've gone to X to three X on some homeowners in just a few years. It won't go up that much on a property taxes.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:40:30)) - - The insurance is there's been more of the problem recently, but property taxes are kind of layered on top of that. Moving on. I just wanted to land, I think really on getting back to that question of opportunity for investors out there and auction com buyers are typically fix and flip or you know, fix and rent investors. And so what they're doing is they're looking to buy these properties. And it usually takes maybe six months, 90 days to six months to renovate these properties and turn them around and sell them. And so one of the things we look at very carefully is, are the bidding behavior on our platform as an indicator of what's coming in the retail market, because our buyers are they're pretty good usually at anticipating what's going to be happening in their market over the next 3 to 6 months. Our buyers did pull back in their bidding behavior, they got more conservative and were willing to pay less. Back in 2022, when mortgage rates spiked. But it appears now that our buyers have gotten comfortable with this kind of higher for longer concept of interest rates.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:41:36)) - - Yeah, and our bidding behavior on our platform is mostly trending higher, meaning that our buyers are pretty confident that the housing market, despite, you know, I might have sounded a little doom and gloom, but our buyers are pretty confident that in their local market, they will continue to be able to buy these distressed homes at a discount. The metric we look at is what they're paying at auction, relative to the after repair value of the home, the estimated after repair value, and as of March of this year, that was at 59.8%. So they're buying at 60% of after repair value at 40. You could turn that around and call that a 40% discount. That number is, believe it or not, been trending up over the last few months. So they're willing to pay more, which indicates confidence in the housing market going forward. Historically, that's our bidders have been a good harbinger or indicator of what's to come in the retail market when they're more confident the retail market typically does well and vice versa.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:42:39)) - - You know, if we look at that by market, it's really interesting to see where our bidders are most confident about home prices going up in different markets. And we see a lot of confidence actually, the places where we see it's probably coincidental, but some of the places where we see higher foreclosure volume, as we talked about earlier, some of the upper Midwest Rust Belt areas are where we're seeing our buyers willing to pay more than they did a year ago relative to after repair value. So that's where they have a lot of confidence, actually, even out in California and most parts of Florida, they're still pretty confident. And Texas, there are some areas where our buyers are pulling back and and are paying less relative to after repair value. And there's kind of a cluster of markets in on the Gulf Coast, right? You know, in Mississippi, Alabama. And I don't know if that relates to insurance costs. I haven't made that connection solidly. That's an area where there has been rising insurance costs.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:43:39)) - - It varies quite a bit. There are some other markets mixed in across the country. Even though most of Florida, our buyers are pretty confident there is one area where they're they've become cautious, which is Cape Coral, Florida. They've pulled back in terms of what they're willing to bid.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:43:55)) - - Buyers for foreclosure properties still look overall quite confident in Florida. But yeah, like you touched on Darren, it's the lack of confidence to pay more for foreclosure properties in and around southern Louisiana. I know there's been some population loss there. And yes, like you touched on, they are more sensitive to insurance premium rises in Louisiana too.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:44:17)) - - That's right. So the takeaway is there's still the beauty of buying at that auction and distressed properties you are buying at a discount below after repair value. There's still a lot of risk involved because you may not know all that that's needed to renovate these properties, but you do have that. Rather than just counting on the housing market. Home price appreciation to increase to drive your profits, you have this component of added value.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:44:45)) - - So you're buying the property at a discount. And even at the housing, home prices don't go up in the next six months. By adding value to that property, you can still turn a profit because you're selling it for more than you bought it for. We have two types of auction on auction. Com there's the foreclosure auction, which we've talked a lot about, which comes at the end of the foreclosure process. And that's typically on the local courthouse steps. Although auction com in many counties allows you to bid remotely on your phone, we're we're pretty excited about that technology that we've introduced in the last couple of years. And then the second type of auction is if it doesn't sell at the courthouse steps foreclosure auction, it goes back to the bank as an REO. And we do the Ro auctions, which are mostly all online, and you can bid from anywhere. And it's pretty consistent between those two types of auctions. On average, at least over time, buyers are typically paying about 60% of after repair value, so about a 40% discount between after repair value.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:45:46)) - - Now, a lot of these homes need are in need of a lot of repair. But you have that type of discount available. And even though foreclosure volume has not come back to pre-pandemic levels, we're still seeing a consistent flow of that happening. There are certainly many markets, especially if you're willing to go off the beaten path a little bit in terms of markets where you can find inventory and also good discounts on these properties, especially if you're going to markets where maybe other investors aren't as aware of or aren't as interested in.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:46:18)) - - Therein. I wonder about local flavor. For those that bid through your platform on these distressed, foreclosed properties. Here we have a lot of investors that buy properties pretty passively where the property is already fixed up for you, maybe already held under management. And a lot of those investors, they go ahead and buy across state lines, because the best teals tend to be in the Midwest and Southeast and a few other pockets in places. So there are an awful lot of out of state investors.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:46:49)) - - On the passive side, what do you see for a breakdown of local investors in state investors and out-of-state investors through your platform for these distressed properties? I imagine it might be somewhat more localized than what I just described.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:47:01)) - - We do have some investors who are buying out of state, but actually the majority are buying in their backyard. Again, because these properties require their high touch, they require a lot of renovation. And so it's good to be local. It's definitely possible, especially with the REO properties where you can buy online. There is some more flexibility there if you have a crew, if you have boots on the ground in the market where you're buying, where you can do that, actually, the average distance between our buyers and the properties they buy is about 20 miles. I should say that's a median distance. So they're very local. There's definitely some exceptions to that you can buy across the country. But it is harder with these properties. These folks are very local. They know the markets they're operating in, and they know they have the resources in those markets to do the renovations.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:47:53)) - - Our buyers are probably a great resource for your students, Keith, to be able to tap into these types of local investors who have a supply of homes that they're creating, and sometimes they're selling back to owner occupants, you know, they're putting those properties on the market as renovated properties, and those might be good turnkey rental opportunities as well.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:48:17)) - - You know, that makes a lot of sense. And how your platform can help people not just find properties, but maybe network and find some like minded people that have tread where you're trying to go. Well, Darren, is there any last thing that you would like to tell us along with your online platform? Is there also perhaps an auction mobile app?

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:48:37)) - - Absolutely. We have an auction. Com app, and that's a great way to just either on on the website or on the app. You can go on and start searching. There's no subscription fee or anything like that to start looking and seeing where the opportunities are in the markets that you're interested in. You go to auction.com/in the news.

Speaker Wheelwright** ((00:48:57)) - - I actually end up talking to quite a few buyers of our buyers, and we've done some videos where we've gone and visited some of these buyers on location to see what they're doing, how they are operating on a human level. It's very interesting because these buyers are actually doing a lot of good in their communities. Many times by willing to take these down and out properties and down and out neighborhoods and renovate them, but also just on the level of understanding how this all works. That's a great resource. So that's auction.com/in the news and look for those videos featuring some of our buyers. I think that would be a great resource.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:49:33)) - - Well this has been great information to get an update on what's happening in the foreclosure market and where some of the local areas of opportunity might be as well, especially compared to pre-pandemic conditions. It's been valuable and it's been a pleasure having you here on the show. Thank you so much, Keith. Yeah. Good knowledge for foreclosure expert Darren Bloomquist today. It's when borrowers miss three months of mortgage payments.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:50:05)) - - That's that mark, where banks often begin foreclosure proceedings. Another thing that you learn is compared to pre-pandemic levels, national foreclosure levels are 10 to 20% lower today than they were then. And see with those that have a late mortgage payment or two, oftentimes that's not going all the way to foreclosure. They're getting caught up on their payments before it goes to foreclosure. And what's really going on here with that dynamic is that, see, today's homeowners, they are more motivated to stay caught up on their payments if they fall behind. And that's because they usually have a substantial positive equity position to protect. And the other factor is that if you lose your home today and you're locked in at a low pre 2022 mortgage rate, it's often going to cost you more per month to go out and rent somewhere else. So it's cheaper on a monthly basis to live in the home that you own. One piece that you might have learned is that high foreclosure activity in a state or city that is not necessarily indicative of that area's economic fortunes.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:51:10)) - - Instead, it might be tied to its judicial foreclosure process. Nationally, buyers are paying about 60% of after repair value for a foreclosure property. I just talked to Darren some more outside of today's interview, he discussed that foreclosure properties are often in opportunity zones, and if you don't know what they are, are designated distressed areas. That's where there are benefits given to you. If you invest specifically in that zone, you might remember that Opportunity Zones were part of Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. They have those zones in all 50 states. And Darren said that overall Opportunity zones are working next week here on the show. Properties are vanishing. Yeah, it is a real tweak to your investor mindset. Disappearing properties. Tune in next week as I cover. Properties are vanishing here on the show. If you haven't yet on your favorite pod catching app, be sure to subscribe or follow the show on your favorite app. Until next week, I'm your host, Keith Windle. Don't quit your daydream.

Speaker Blomquist** ((00:52:23)) - - Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice.

Speaker Voice** ((00:52:27)) - - Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of yet Rich education LLC exclusively.

Speaker Weinhold** ((00:52:51)) - - The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building. Get rich education.com.