5 Smart Mortgage Tips to Thrive During a Recession: Expert Advice

John Harcar (00:01.079)
Alright guys, hey welcome back to the show. This is John Harcar your host. I’m here with Renee Gaugler How do you-

Renee Gaugler (00:08.173)
Goggler.

John Harcar (00:08.789)
Okay, okay, what we’re talk about is opportunities in this market, right? Helping helping folks really get into real estate Remember guys at investor fuel we help real estate investors service providers I mean all entrepreneurs two to five extra business and it’s helping them develop the business that they’ve always wanted to build and in turn live that life They wanted to live so Renee welcome to our show

Renee Gaugler (00:31.726)
Thanks for having me.

John Harcar (00:32.741)
Yeah, I’m super excited to talk about some of the things, especially that we talked about offline. But before we get into all that, why don’t you kind of tell our audience a little bit about you, background, how you got into real estate, and kind of what got you here.

Renee Gaugler (00:45.646)
Sounds good. Well, I live in Bozeman, Montana. I was born and raised in Montana, was a farm kid and came to school at Montana State Go Cats. And we, I thought I wanted to be a vet. I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. So went to school, got a biotechnology degree, realized I definitely didn’t want to do eight years of vet school. So scrapped that plan pretty fast, but went ahead, got my biotechnology degree, graduated early right after September 11th. Nobody was hiring and I didn’t know what else to do. So.

John Harcar (00:58.307)
Hmm.

John Harcar (01:12.599)
Right?

Renee Gaugler (01:15.126)
The only other thing I knew was title insurance. Believe it or not, when I was 15, that was my first job, was at a title company. And so my aunt worked there, so they hired me to do some filing and typing title policies and things like that. that’s the only other thing I knew. And after I graduated, there was a title company opening in Bozeman. So I called them up and said, hey, will you hire me? And they were like, yeah, you have title experience? Absolutely. Come on down.

John Harcar (01:27.429)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (01:39.247)
Perfect.

Renee Gaugler (01:40.238)
So yeah, so I started, worked my way up and eventually was an escrow officer or closer there. And so my job there was to explain to people their loan documents. And that was in 2002, 2003, 2004. And there was a lot of crappy loans being done. And it was my job to tell those people about their crappy loan and.

They never had any idea. They were shocked when they got to the table. And time and time again, they didn’t understand what they were getting, whether it was an option arm, which they didn’t understand how it worked, or it had a huge prepayment penalty, or there was just a ton of yield spread premium, or whatever it was, they didn’t know. And so it was my job to explain it without throwing their lender under the bus, because the lender was my customer.

And after a couple years of doing that, I finally just realized, you know what? This is the biggest financial decision that most people ever make. And somebody’s got to do this the right way. And why not be me? So I was scared to death of commission, but I thought, you know what? Let’s give it a shot. I walked down the street to a local lender and said, hey, I don’t know how to do loans, but I know loan documents. I know every realtor in town. Will you give me a shot? And they were like, sure. Here’s the stack of business cards and a link to the Fannie Mae selling guide. Like you’re 100 % commission. Good luck. So.

John Harcar (02:29.476)
sure.

John Harcar (02:50.67)
Awesome.

Renee Gaugler (02:51.406)
20 years later, here we are.

John Harcar (02:53.348)
Awesome. So, I mean, it seemed like you were right there when we had the crash in 2008. How did you kind of navigate that?

Renee Gaugler (03:01.454)
People ask me that all the time and actually that crash doubled my business. And I think the reason for that was, you know, I…

I have always worked really hard to be an expert based on where I came from. I wanted to make sure I knew everything, which it took me a while to grow in the mortgage industry because by the way, I thought if I was the best at what I did, people would line up around the block for me, which turns out that is not how sales works, but I wished it was. But before 2008, it was so easy to get a loan. You didn’t need somebody that was an expert as your mortgage person. You could fog a mirror and get a loan. so…

John Harcar (03:24.932)
Right.

John Harcar (03:33.472)
Right.

Renee Gaugler (03:37.194)
it was really hard to find clients at that point that actually cared. And so after 2008, people didn’t think you could get a loan. And if you could, they figured they couldn’t get a loan. And so they needed somebody that was a true expert that knew how to help them get into that, help them see if it was a good idea for them to do that or not. And it kind of got rid of some of the maybe the shady people that shouldn’t have been there. So it was a great thing for my business actually.

John Harcar (03:40.44)
Mm.

John Harcar (04:00.524)
Right. Well, that’s awesome. What kind of challenges did you have or maybe obstacles of making that transition from title work to a loan officer?

Renee Gaugler (04:12.194)
Well, I think like I said, the biggest thing is I just really thought if I was great at what I did, people would line up around the door. And I really fought the idea of being a salesperson for a long time. I didn’t want to be a salesperson. I just wanted to be that good that people would just find me and.

people won’t use you if they don’t know about you. And so that’s what sales is all about. And so I really had to fight that mindset for a really long time. And I finally realized, I’m not trying to sell anybody something they don’t want. I’m here to help them buy something they already want and do it the right way. So once I kind of embraced that and learned, you know, I’m actually a crazy introvert. So getting out of my shell and learning to pick up the phone and call people was honestly the answer.

John Harcar (04:40.898)
Right.

John Harcar (04:53.952)
Yeah, no, and that’s a tough part for a lot of people that to understand like any business really and sales a sale. I mean, it’s you’re selling yourself, right? You got to get out there and do it. So did you prefer doing the loans versus the title stuff? Did that was like, is it easier? Was it more fun for you?

Renee Gaugler (05:03.66)
Right.

Renee Gaugler (05:10.636)
You know, I really did. It was so much more fun because I felt like on the title side of things, you’re coming in at the very end. There’s, you’re putting the rubber stamp on at the end, but it’s kind of warm and snuggly, but you don’t have that process along the way. And you’re too late to really make an impact to somebody other than just making sure that they really did understand. Whereas from the loan side of things,

I feel like we’re in a really unique position. There is nobody else in your life that sees your credit report, your bank statement, your tax return, and your pay stub. Literally nobody else. And so from that, I think it’s a huge responsibility for us. And if we don’t take into account that person’s overall financial goals, that’s a huge miss for us. So I love being a part of that. And I find, unfortunately, a lot of loan officers don’t take that approach. It’s more like, let’s just get this loan done. You walked in, you asked for this, I gave you that. And…

I think there’s an opportunity there and that’s why rental properties has been such an important part of my business because one of the things I ask them is what are your other financial goals? And I kind of prompt them in that one of the things is do you have any desire to own more real estate somewhere, maybe a second home in Arizona? Because again, I live in Montana. We all want a second home in Arizona.

John Harcar (06:19.428)
Mm-hmm.

Renee Gaugler (06:20.02)
or a rental property and almost always that is within their goals. So being able to figure out how we move them from we’re just buying a primary residence now to how do we get you to that next step of owning multiple properties. That’s super fun and that’s where really people can get to build that generational wealth and that’s what I want to do.

John Harcar (06:38.08)
Sure. And you said when you made that transition from the loans to mortgage and stuff, there’s a lot of sales stuff. What specific tools, training, maybe resources, or is there anything, books that you use to help build those, build that muscle, right?

Renee Gaugler (06:51.011)
Yeah.

Well, this is going to obviously, know, when I started, which was 2004. And so back then it was like you ordered DVDs to watch at home instead of like YouTube videos. That wasn’t quite as big a deal. I, so I ordered a lot of Barry Habib, who is MBS Highway now. And there was also a thing called certified mortgage planning specialist, which was Gibran Nicholas. And I went through those programs and I just like, honestly fell in love with the mortgage industry and nerded out on what makes a housing market move.

John Harcar (07:00.484)
Carlton Sheets. Yeah.

Renee Gaugler (07:22.512)
what makes interest rates move, all of those different things. And just really fell in love with the way that you can help somebody understand what is normally a complex market and break those concepts down. that’s kind of how I started. Misfortune by Doug Andrews was one of the books that I read in the very beginning that really changed things for me as far as using your home equity and putting it to work and not just being focused on paying off your mortgage. So I’ve got a giant library of all the books I’ve read over time, but that was one of the first ones that really clicked in my brain that thought, okay.

John Harcar (07:37.38)
Hmm.

Renee Gaugler (07:52.236)
This needs to be done different.

John Harcar (07:53.913)
Got it. When you got it to that side, what kind of mistakes were you seeing people make and then maybe what mistakes you see people make now in regards to going out, finding a mortgage, you know, coming to you.

Renee Gaugler (08:03.362)
Yeah, well, I think the real answer is nobody really wants a mortgage, right? They want a house and they actually don’t even really want a house. They want a place for their family to live or to do things in. And so they just, their focus initially is always pay that mortgage off as fast as I possibly can or put as big of a down payment because they have this, I call it the Great Depression way of thinking because back then…

A lot of people lost their houses, even though they were making their mortgage payment. But when the Great Depression happened and there was a run on the banks, they didn’t have a way to get money back. right when you take your money to the bank, the bank doesn’t just hold it there for you. They lend it back out to somebody else. And during the Great Depression, when everybody started getting their money back, they didn’t have any money. So their tool to refresh that money was to foreclose on people. And that was called a demand feature. And when you do that,

John Harcar (08:29.348)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (08:39.684)
Sure.

Renee Gaugler (08:52.77)
Good people lost their homes. They would say, hey, you have 30 days to pay me in full or we’re foreclosing on your property. And so it created this mentality with people from their grandparents era of mortgages are bad and it’s scary. And if you have a mortgage, you could lose your house at any time. And that changed after that. Those demand features went away on your regular residential mortgages. Now, as long as you’re making your payment on time every single month, you have that full 30 years to pay that loan back. So it’s not something to be feared. And so getting people to think of that mortgage as an actual financial

John Harcar (08:57.732)
Mmm.

John Harcar (09:06.019)
Yeah.

Renee Gaugler (09:22.744)
tool to help them build wealth instead of that necessary evil to just try to get rid of all the time. So we try to get them to think about instead of focusing on paying extra, what else can we do with that money? And a big part of that might be how do we set you up to own another property in the future?

John Harcar (09:37.398)
And that was going to be my question because you said, people say, I should pay off my loan as fast as possible. Why wouldn’t someone want to do that? What are the benefits of utilizing equity and things with their mortgage?

Renee Gaugler (09:49.526)
Yeah, so I see I’ve been doing this for 20 years. So I see this time and time again that people hurry to pay off their mortgage and then they almost always come to borrow it back. And it’s either for doing some sort of home improvements, putting a kid through college.

or to buy another property. And so I try to get them to think about that, especially people that have a two or 3 % rate right now, you should not be paying one penny towards that ever, ever, ever, because today’s buyers hate you and they would be so mad at you for paying that off. We can talk about that more later, but we won’t see those rates again unless the reals like really, really fall off the economy. Those were fake interest rates. So those we won’t see again. So if you have that and your house is still fulfilling your needs, don’t pay that off.

John Harcar (10:10.788)
Mm.

John Harcar (10:17.442)
yeah.

John Harcar (10:23.511)
Mm-hmm.

Renee Gaugler (10:33.496)
Put your money elsewhere. I always say paying off your house is a good goal, but there’s four other things to do first. Number one, cash cushion. That’s the number one most important financial tool anybody can have, especially going into a recession. You want to prepare for a recession, have a really good cash cushion that’s going to get you through whatever can happen. Number two is paying off other debts. Credit cards, number one, auto loans, number two.

John Harcar (10:49.187)
But.

Renee Gaugler (10:54.102)
and then student loans is a maybe. But if you have other debts, you should not be paying anything extra towards your mortgage. Number three is retirement, maxing out your retirement accounts and or just investments. I don’t know about you, but for me.

I don’t want to wait until I’m 65 to retire. part of my strategy is to have additional investment accounts that I can access before those qualified plans are going to be penalizing me to do it. building that kind of wealth for you that’s also still liquid. then number four is what are your other financial goals? And it’s usually buying other real estate or putting somebody through college. And if you’ve tackled all of those things and you’re crushing it by all means, you can pay extra towards your mortgage. have my

John Harcar (11:09.271)
No!

Renee Gaugler (11:36.496)
blessing. My dad and I’ve had this argument for years. He always wants his stuff to be free and clear. I’m like, that’s fine. You’ve done all the things. I don’t care. But if you’re not in that boat, don’t be paying extra on that mortgage, especially if it starts with a two or a three.

John Harcar (11:38.914)
You

John Harcar (11:43.491)
Right.

John Harcar (11:49.154)
So how are some ways that can people use their mortgage as a tool?

Renee Gaugler (11:53.676)
Well, I think it’s just that like instead of trying to get that balance down, you want to have the biggest mortgage balance that you can for your payment or where your payments comfortable. So here’s a here’s a prime example. I see a lot of clients that come to me, especially move up buyers. These are my favorite demographic of buyers because they’re selling one house and then they’re buying another house and they’re probably getting a big chunk of tax free money.

if it was their primary residence and there are very, very few slight few few times in our life, we get big chunks of tax free money. So that’s the perfect, perfect time to go through and think about all of those other financial goals. So, of course, first cash cushion paying off everything else. And this is a big one I see with people who have that two or three percent mortgage and they think they’re stuck because here’s the real truth. Most people that bought their house in 2020 or 2021 don’t like it.

John Harcar (12:24.43)
Right.

Renee Gaugler (12:42.754)
They bought whatever they could get their hands on. It wasn’t their perfect house and they feel stuck in it because they’ve got two or three percent and they don’t think they can afford it. But a lot of times what we do is we sell that house, pay off everything else they have. No more car loans, no more credit cards, put a chunk in the bank and now they go get their new mortgage with less down and their payments higher, but they have one payment. So now we’ve eliminated everything else that they have. They got the house that they actually want. They kept themselves a cash cushion.

John Harcar (12:43.972)
Sure.

John Harcar (13:09.715)
Mmm.

Renee Gaugler (13:12.688)
And again, if there’s other financial goals in there like buying a piece of rental property, boom, we accomplished that at the same time too. Or people that are looking to buy a house for cash, that drives me absolutely crazy. Buy two, put 50 % mortgage on each one of them if you want. You go buy your house and go buy a rental property as well. 35 % of the real estate in this country is owned completely free and clear. And that to me is just straight up missed opportunity.

John Harcar (13:37.42)
Yeah, I’ve always been under, know, been always taught, right? Pay it off, pay it off, pay it off. What you’re saying makes sense. But then why not just refinance out your current property, take that equity and put it into more property.

Renee Gaugler (13:50.19)
You absolutely could do that. It’s really hard to get people to do that if they have a 2 % rate and you’re like, here’s your new 6 % rate. But yes, we do see that a lot. And that’s where I’m trying to get people to think of instead of having to like focus on paying it down and then you’re going to come borrow it back.

John Harcar (13:53.698)
Hmm. Very true. Very true.

Renee Gaugler (14:06.754)
just stop paying it down and take those extra dollars and throw it in a side account for you. Bonus points if you put in an account that is not where your main checking account is, so you forget you actually have that money. And then when you get ready to go buy a house, you’re like, hey, go put it in a bank that you’re getting 5 % interest on right now. That money will grow pretty fast instead of trying to pay that mortgage down. Or again, when you go to sell that property, don’t put all of that equity down into the next one, put it somewhere else. mean, if you have enough money in this pocket to pay off the mortgage that’s in this pocket,

John Harcar (14:16.62)
Mm.

Renee Gaugler (14:36.688)
That is the exact same thing as having a free and clear house. But in the meantime, you have choice and control over your money. You have liquidity. And if something good or something bad happens, you have access to money. I’ve seen clients time and time again where they… I had a client when I worked at Wells Fargo, walked into the bank and he said, I just lost my job and I need to borrow some money until I can get another job. Well, the guy had a big 15 year mortgage. He had a ton of equity in his house.

But he had no cash because he was taking every penny he had and he was plugging that in there to pay that down. And what’s the first question we ask is mortgage lender. Like how much money do you make? Right. So without an income, how am I supposed to give you equity out of your house? And so that’s the thing that people don’t think about. And it’s the same thing for retired folks. They’re I want to get rid of that mortgage so that I don’t have a payment in retirement. Well, guess what? That house still isn’t free. Your taxes are going up every year. Maybe your HOA, your insurance is going up every year.

John Harcar (15:08.077)
Right.

John Harcar (15:18.103)
Mm.

John Harcar (15:28.59)
Yeah.

Renee Gaugler (15:32.034)
And by the way, there’s maintenance associated with that property and they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to pay for their home repairs because they’re literally living off this little shoestring budget with no liquidity. So instead, keep a small mortgage, have that monthly payment, but have some liquidity on the side that you can actually do something if you need to replace your roof.

John Harcar (15:51.499)
Sure. Well, and I think the problem is in the disconnect in our, you know, in our whole learning system is that’s not taught, right? It’s taught to just pay the mortgage down. Exactly. So what do you do now? Now you’re obviously still doing loans. Yes. Okay. Do you do any investing on the side? Do have any personal properties? Anything like that?

Renee Gaugler (15:57.645)
Right.

That’s why I’m here.

Renee Gaugler (16:11.766)
Yeah, so we do. will tell you where my kind of passion is. have some rental properties and I’ll tell you about that. But the reason I’m passionate about getting people into investment properties and and by that I mean like just get started, get one property. I’m not telling you you have to go be the monopoly guy, but get started somewhere. And my biggest real estate regrets are the things that I didn’t buy.

the investment properties that I had a chance to buy and I didn’t buy because we were too conservative. We were like, man, that thing barely cash flows. And now when I look back at what the rents would be on that property now or what the thing would be worth now, I would be multi, million dollars ahead of where I’m at right now. So I think it’s really important to look at that. yes, so we have…

John Harcar (16:48.644)
Mm-hmm.

Renee Gaugler (17:01.398)
Our first rental property that we bought was actually in Arizona. As I said, you live in Montana, you need to get out of here in the winter sometimes. So, born and raised, still not a fan of the old winters. so we started looking around, where can I be in two hours on direct flight that I can get out of this snow? And Arizona was the answer for that.

John Harcar (17:08.088)
Yep.

Renee Gaugler (17:21.346)
And was a lot more affordable. Like Bozeman is a college town. It’s trendy. It’s expensive here. And when we were younger, we were like, how do we get into this market? A rental is so expensive. So we started looking at Arizona and our money went a lot farther down there. So we bought a little two bedroom condo and we Airbnb’d it. We had a property manager down there take care of it for us. And you know, we had it for seven years and it totally paid for itself. And we had a free second home that we could go to anytime we wanted, which is great.

John Harcar (17:30.66)
Hmm.

Renee Gaugler (17:50.708)
It didn’t cash flow crazy. It did more in the beginning before the RBOs kind of got more saturated, but the thing doubled in value in the seven years that we owned it. that’s the thing people get so wrapped up in cash flow, they forget about the fact that appreciation is the real reason to buy rental real estate in the long run.

John Harcar (17:56.696)
Right.

John Harcar (18:08.894)
Right. So what are some of the ways or some of the suggestions that you give to people to help them get into real estate, to help them maybe go get their first rental or get their first deal?

Renee Gaugler (18:19.212)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, one I use a lot in my town here again, where people are their kids are coming here to go to school a lot of the time. So, you know, if you’re going to go buy a rental property, typically it’s a larger down payment and a little bit of a higher interest rate. But if you can take your college kid that’s going to school here or in Missoula or in Arizona or wherever it is and make them the primary borrower on the loan, they don’t have to have an income, but they do have to have a credit score, which we can talk more about that. But

If they are the primary borrower, you can do it with as little as 5 % down payment. There’s kind of a sweet spot at 10 % down because your mortgage insurance is pretty cheap. And then…

You get your primary residence interest rate, your kid gets to learn about the mortgage process early and understand the value of building real, building wealth through real estate. And now you can put them and all of their friends in there. They’re all going to put rent towards something anyway. So you might as well put it in your pocket instead of theirs. And then, you know, let them cycle through school. If you got more than one kid, you can hang on to it. And then at the end of them graduating, you can make a decision like, Hey, this thing’s cash flowing great. I want to keep it. Or if it’s appreciated and you’re ready to move on, then

John Harcar (19:07.853)
Right?

Renee Gaugler (19:23.288)
Great. And that’s, think the key for people is how do know when it’s time to sell? And for me, it’s what would you do with that equity? Where would you put it? If you know somewhere else that would be better served, if you have another property you want to buy or something else, where would you put that equity to work? If you don’t know, you might as well just hang on to it. It’s not, chances are it’s not going down, right? But if you know where you would put that money, that’s the reason that you would want to start looking at something different.

John Harcar (19:32.206)
Yeah.

John Harcar (19:44.27)
Sure.

John Harcar (19:50.949)
OK, and that’s a great opportunity. It’s a great suggestion if anybody’s got kids going to college. What other opportunities are you seeing now in the market for people to invest and get into?

Renee Gaugler (20:01.784)
Well, I think there’s just a huge market opportunity in general right now, whether you’re looking at a rental or a primary residence, we have so many people sitting on the sidelines and waiting right now. So they’re waiting for rates to drop. They’re waiting to see what’s going to happen with tariffs. They’re waiting to see what’s going to happen with a recession. And so

That creates a good opportunity. In my market, you’re used to having 27 other buyers that you have to compete with and you’re offering over ask and you have to make an immediate decision. And frankly, that sucks as a buyer. That is not fun. That’s why so many people have a house they don’t like from 2020 and 2021. So right now you don’t have to compete with as many buyers. So almost every deal I’ve gotten the pipeline right now, which is quite a few, they all are either got a price reduction.

John Harcar (20:25.86)
Mmm.

John Harcar (20:31.127)
you

Renee Gaugler (20:45.09)
The seller’s paying closing costs, the seller’s buying down their interest rate, or they’re fixing repair items. That’s not a real market we’ve seen in a while. That’s more of a buyer’s market than I’ve seen in a long time. So as a buyer, you have more power, and it’s way more fun to be a buyer right now. And for all the people that are waiting, when NF rates do drop, and I think they will, but slowly, and you know, I…

John Harcar (20:54.126)
Yeah.

Renee Gaugler (21:08.49)
It’ll all depend on this recession. I’ll talk more about that in a minute. But as rates come down, if they drop 1%, that brings 5 million more buyers back into the market, roughly. So if I throw 5 million more buyers into the housing market, what happens to prices? Do they go up or down?

John Harcar (21:24.664)
No.

Renee Gaugler (21:26.046)
Right. Home prices go up. And when I say that and I just be quiet and I wait for the customer to say that and when they come to that they’re on their own accord and I say, you know what, I think you’re right. I agree with them and they got it. They understood that the market is going to go up as rates drop so they can see why now is a good opportunity for them to get into the market and buy. And for the people that are scared of recession, that’s one of the biggest concerns I’m hearing right now. And I think it’s

John Harcar (21:27.576)
Yeah, shoot up.

Renee Gaugler (21:54.144)
What they don’t realize is that real estate tends to do really well in a recession. So six out of the last seven recessions, everything but 2008, real estate has gone up in recession. And it’s because typically interest rates go down. on the most simple level, stocks and bonds compete for the same investment dollar and mortgages or mortgage backed securities are packaged up as bonds. So if the stock market is doing good, people feel really confident in the economy. That tends to be when mortgage rates are high. Also, obviously inflation has something to do with that, has a lot to do with that.

John Harcar (22:02.401)
up.

John Harcar (22:22.276)
Mm-hmm.

Renee Gaugler (22:24.078)
As the economy gets more shaky and people are uncertain, they start pulling money out of stocks and it goes into that safety of bonds. So as more people put money into that, mortgage rates get better. So the worse the economy gets, again, oversimplified, but the worse the economy gets, the better mortgage rates will get. Now, I think we’ll probably see low sixes maybe high fives by the end of this year. Again, slow trajectory, unless the recession gets real bad.

And if it does, that just creates more opportunities because rates will go down, which makes properties more affordable to buy.

John Harcar (23:02.744)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Renee Gaugler (23:03.532)
But that drives prices up. So if you’re already owning that home, you get to ride that appreciation up and you can refinance that loan later if you want to. But I think there’s a huge opportunity for that just to get into the market right now. And for some people that live in these really expensive markets, you know, do that’s why we went somewhere else. And I think that’s kind of the sleeper right now is people want to be in these markets where everything is going crazy. And that’s fine. But you could also look at Columbus, Ohio.

John Harcar (23:26.435)
Yeah.

Renee Gaugler (23:33.408)
that you can buy a fourplex for two hundred and some thousand dollars and there’s seven major universities in a very small radius that you know is gonna rent and it might not cash flow crazy and it might not see the crazy appreciation shorter term like some of the areas but it might be a really strong long-term property for you so I think that’s kind of the key is explore a little bit farther out if your markets out of reach for you or find somewhere that maybe you would want to go spend some time with like Arizona or Florida or California and

John Harcar (23:40.686)
Great.

John Harcar (23:56.868)
Hmm.

Renee Gaugler (24:03.362)
some of the smaller markets.

John Harcar (24:04.674)
Yeah, and I love that idea. know, find a property where you want to go, where you want to vacation. Then you can like you do an Airbnb in it. In this economic climate and with things are going, what are some what’s some advice that you would give someone that wants to get into real estate?

Renee Gaugler (24:19.884)
Yeah, think that real estate, people want real estate to be about timing the market. And I think that it is, but I think it’s different than what people think. I think timing the real estate market means get in as soon as you possibly can. And I really truly believe that that is the answer. And I think people get worried about what happens if prices go down. Well, guess what? I built a house in 2006 at the top of the market that was the biggest house in the subdivision at the time, like something stupid I probably shouldn’t have done anyway. And I was way upside down on that house at one point.

John Harcar (24:31.128)
Mmm.

John Harcar (24:48.867)
Bye.

Renee Gaugler (24:49.07)
But I just stayed. I didn’t leave. I kept making my payments. I actually had an adjustable rate mortgage on it, which dropped to 2%. So I had a 2 % rate before adjust or before 2 % was cool. And I just stayed there and we waited until prices came back because.

John Harcar (24:58.798)
gonna

Renee Gaugler (25:05.806)
Real estate has gone up something like 72 out of the last 81 years. It’s just you just ride it out. The worst case scenario is you’re not paying rent and you’re still sitting in the house that works for you. So I always tell people buy something that you could stay in long term. That house we intended to be in for two years. We stayed there nine. It was fine. We bought a house, built a house that we knew that was going to be okay. So I think that is part of it. Don’t be afraid of it. Get in sooner than lighter. Everything hard.

John Harcar (25:11.896)
Right.

Renee Gaugler (25:33.004)
is worth doing. Everything worth doing is hard. It just kind of goes that way. So it’s going to be a little bit scary. You’re never going to… Everybody’s looking for certainty and we can’t give you 100 % certainty, but…

John Harcar (25:34.294)
Sure, is that, yeah.

Renee Gaugler (25:43.062)
That’s why we, you know, the loans look different than they used to. We’re not likely going to put you in a bad position. And here’s something I actually find a lot of people are spending their money on stupid shit, to be frank with you. I see a lot of buyers that make good money and they got nothing in the bank. And I’m like, what are you spending your money on? so the ever this being house poor gets a bad rep, but guess what? You’re blowing your money on stupider things than that right now. So if you can stretch a little bit and get into a piece of real estate that now you have something to direct

John Harcar (25:54.629)
You

John Harcar (26:07.275)
Mm-hmm.

Renee Gaugler (26:13.046)
money to. It’s funny how when you have a goal or something you need to reject redirect your money to you do. But if you don’t like it doesn’t matter how much my income is increased over the year. I still spend it unless I have something specific and automatic that I’m directing that to like a mortgage payment. So stretching for that isn’t always a bad thing. It’s very likely going to work out for you in the long run. So I feel like that’s something to not be as scared of as maybe people think that you should. But the key is cash cushion.

John Harcar (26:26.659)
Right.

John Harcar (26:34.84)
though, yeah.

Renee Gaugler (26:42.976)
back to that same number one rule. You don’t ever want to put every penny you have into a house. So we do a lot of, you know, asking the seller to pay closing costs, things like that, because I want that buyer, whether they’re an investor or a first time buyer or a move up buyer, they need to have that cash cushion to get them through the good times and the bad times because that’s what it’s there for.

John Harcar (27:01.22)
Definitely. You dropped a lot of good stuff. We could probably keep this going for a lot longer if we didn’t have a little time limit here. I don’t know if you have any type of education program or maybe something that you coach folks, but how can they get in touch with you, whether it’s just to talk about the things that you mentioned today or maybe learn from you?

Renee Gaugler (27:06.318)
No.

Renee Gaugler (27:22.942)
Absolutely. My Instagram page is probably where I’m the most active on. It’s Renee Gogler Mortgage. You can hit me up there, send me a DM. You can also, my website’s just my name, rennegogler.com, and you can find me on there. My cell phone’s right on there. My email address, reach out to me.

don’t have a coaching program because I actually still love doing loans and it’s all I actually want to do right now. So that’s my focus, but I believe in abundance and I love giving back to this industry that has treated me so well over the years. So I would love to communicate with other lenders, with real estate agents or with buyers that wants more ideas.

John Harcar (27:45.451)
Awesome.

John Harcar (27:59.748)
I it. I love the go-giver. I don’t know you ever read that book, but I love the go-giver and that’s who you are. I could just tell Thank you again so much for coming on and sharing all this with us guys I hope you took notes because she dropped a lot of good stuff Don’t pay your mortgage in full That’s well pay it just don’t pay extra. That’s a let’s correct that Guys, I hope you guys enjoyed the show. I know I sure did and I look forward to seeing on the next one Renee Thank you again

Renee Gaugler (28:03.047)
yeah.

Renee Gaugler (28:17.102)
Pay it! Pay what you’re supposed to! Just don’t pay extra!

Renee Gaugler (28:28.898)
Thanks, John.

John Harcar (28:29.683)
Have a great day, guys.

See, that’s the hardest part, man. The hardest part is cutting it off, not talking, not making the length go. But that’s so awesome. Thank you so much. Is there any…

Renee Gaugler (28:36.522)
I know I was.