Failure is for Winners

Mike Hambright (00:33)
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Really excited to have my good friend Josh Deshong here. We always make this joke. He lives about five miles from here. We hardly ever see each other. It’s been too long. we’re going to be talking about a lot of stuff. think we’re going to go a little bit deep today. But Josh has been involved in over 10,000 transactions. But I right up front, he doesn’t care about real estate at all. And I think if you’ve been around for a long time, you kind of understand that real estate is a vehicle. It’s not the thing. It’s the thing that can get you the thing. So Josh, welcome to the show, buddy.

Hey man, thanks for having me. Yeah, good to see you. How is it that you live five miles away and we always say we should get together but we never do? What’s going on here? I don’t know. I personally, think it’s on you. I think it’s on you. I think you’re the one that’s always busy and you never call me. no. No, it’s actually crazy, man. It really is. ⁓ We run into each other every now and then, but I see you more out of town than I see you in That’s true. That’s wild. But it’s probably that way for a lot of people, I think. ⁓ I don’t know. It’s easy to get caught up in life.

with business and kids. Business, kids, volleyball. Go Cardi. Yeah, exactly. Cool. So hey, really excited to talk to you today. It’s always good to have conversation. mean, that’s why I do this, just to get together with new friends and old friends and talk about stuff. And before we jump in, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? Yeah, happy to. I started in real estate ⁓ almost 20 years ago. was 17 years old. I took all my real estate classes, got licensed immediately.

when

I turned 18, joined Keller Williams. Didn’t know anything, didn’t know anybody, had $500 to make ends meet. At that time, Craigslist was popular and I was buying and selling stuff on Craigslist and doing whatever I could. What were you selling? Give me an idea. PlayStations, radar detectors, those were really popular back in the day. yeah, forgot about that. Stereos, subwoofers, amplifiers, anything I could negotiate somebody down on. Yeah.

post it on Craigslist and I would try to make 20, 30, 40, 50 bucks on it, but I did that in addition to real estate. ⁓ But I obsessed over real estate. I didn’t have to do that very long, probably six months. ⁓ And I was very disciplined and I built one of the top teams in the world. ⁓ By 2012, ⁓

a mentor of mine told me, he said something that was very profound and he says, you can’t build wealth through services. You can only build wealth through products or assets. So you need to shift your thinking. I immediately, like within two weeks, I went out and bought two houses. I’m too coachable, almost. Went out and bought ⁓ two houses and then three years later, I was buying over 100 a year and ⁓ four, five years later than that, it was over 500 a year. ⁓

2016, I launched the second largest home builder in Japan. They wanted to come to the United States. We built an investment model, and we actually launched their acquisition team and property management business. We did that for about seven, years. There’s here? remember that. house group. That was in 2016. In 2016, we also launched a

a platform that was a of a software to look at the MLS. offers. Yeah. Make offers. It look at the MLS and it would use the machine learning to back into values, not averages like a lot of the other platforms did. We licensed that around. Fast forward a few years, I shifted my focus from flipping to wholesaling. And really, because just the velocity of the returns is unreal. ⁓

So that’s when we’ve launched Myers Homebuyers. And ⁓ Myers is, we think it’s the real estate agency of the future. ⁓ We have agents, they buy and sell houses, and our company helps people build ⁓ wealth through real estate.

That’s great. So we talked about up front that you, and I’ve said this on the show before, I talk about this all the time, that real estate is just a vehicle to kind of get to the end. I didn’t always think that. Like, I used to love real estate. I used to love the transformation. were primarily ⁓ fixing flipped hundreds of houses here. And I love the transformation. I love the art of finding a deal, catching one, right? But then it just starts to be like, OK, we got another one. Great. Whatever. Who cares? And it just becomes, it’s just a business at this point.

I love the idea that we’re changing people’s lives, changing impact in communities. I love all that stuff. But the real estate is I’ve kind of fallen out of love with it, ultimately. Sounds like you have to. Yeah, would say actually Trevor Mock is one of your members, right? OK.

I got really close ⁓ to Japanese culture ⁓ over the years and there’s something in Japan called Ikigai. ⁓ I’m familiar with that, Yeah, and… I’ve had some training on that, is that where you’re going? Yeah, so he’s the only person that’s not Japanese that I’ve ever heard reference Ikigai ⁓ or not in a book. And ⁓ he explains it very eloquently. Ultimately, it’s having a purpose. And what I realized, my purpose was originally about making money. And then

that became less satisfying. And my purpose shifted, even though I wasn’t cognizant that my purpose was, my icky guy was shifting. And so through COVID and all that BS and all that, it really pressured a lot of people, think, to say, who are you and what do you actually want? So I would say my icky guy.

is the same as it always has. I want to help people. I want to see them grow. I want to see them win. I just don’t, I don’t rationalize it the same way of like doing a transaction. And so since I’ve detached those thoughts, real estate is honestly, it wears me down because I’ve been talking about it a hundred hours a week for 20 years. now if it’s some, if it’s, you know, one of my agents is going to go do their first flip or they’re buying their first rental property, I’ll talk about that for days. You know, like that gets me excited.

I have a lot of that too. I’d rather see other people be successful. The truth is, the way that I’m set up now with the Mastermind and coaching and Legion and other things we do for other people, I can’t win if my members or customers are failing. I can’t.

So, interesting enough, my wife and I, Lindsay, are going to Japan next year. We booked next April during cherry blossom season, which is when went to Japan. We booked an 11-day cruise that takes you around Oh, that’ll be amazing. So we do Kyoto. It’s a bucket list item. Yeah. We wanted to go this year. The World Fair was there. I was there in November last year. And I wanted to take the kids for the cherry blossom season. But we ended up

making it and the World Fair was going on and then we were also going to try to go to the the F1 race and ⁓

in Japan at the same time and it was like, I can’t get all of this plus keep everything going back home at the same time. But that is my favorite, my second favorite place in the world. So. Yeah, that’s cool. I have been to Tokyo before, probably about 15, well more than that, probably almost 20 years ago, but it was just a business trip. were kind of in and out in a couple days. I didn’t really see anything other than some meetings and hotels and stuff like that. But.

So we’re going to talk about kind pushing past failure today. And we started talking about failures before we hit record here. And it kind of occurred to me that you and I are very much the same and that we, I wasn’t necessarily always this way. Like I was probably afraid to fail at some point. And a lot of times I’ve talked on the podcast or on social media about like failure is just a stepping stone to success. Like you have to fail. You have to get beat up. You have to get knocked down to get back up and learn how to not do it. And so you started talking about some of your failures.

And ⁓ then you started talking about, well, here’s a new thing I’m investing in, and I’m trying this stuff. I think we’re the same in that we’re like, I’m willing to keep trying new stuff, because I think that some of it hits and some of it doesn’t. But let’s talk about this ability to kind come back from failure and not be afraid to try new things, if you will.

So talk about maybe some of your early failures. Yeah. I started to go here. I know this is a little deep. But I think it all comes down to childhood. I see this watching my kids. I see this with kids I had grown up with or people I had grown up with. guess we’re not kids anymore. big kids. Yeah, big kids. We are all big kids at heart, in all honesty. We’re all acting professional and whatnot. But we still leave our clothes on the floor.

know, I honestly, I grew up not thinking I was very smart. I grew up thinking I was dumb. I had high expectations because my family put these expectations on me, but I couldn’t connect the dots in school and all the people around me could. So just to be straight up, I actually feel more uncomfortable when I’m not failing.

than I do when I’m failing. I have faced failure so much in my life and so like, it’s just like, it’s a constant thing. I’m always failing somewhere that it doesn’t, I’ve realized that the way I interpret it and the way other people interpret it are different. Here’s an example. I have a mentor of mine, he’s actually ⁓ a great man. He mentors me on just being a good human. Has nothing to do with finance. He’s successful or whatever, but.

I was sitting down with him and I was like, I just don’t want my kids to be the rich kids. And he said, well, I got news for you. Your kids are the rich kids. And that hit me like a ton of bricks.

And then I started observing stuff. And what I noticed is when you don’t let your kids fail, they end up not trying because they’re scared they’re gonna let you down. So I actually think that the reason I’m good at pushing past failure now is because I embraced it.

my entire life. And I think anybody who even isn’t good at pushing past failure now, they can change their mind and start looking at it differently. But you have to have that conscious, like, this is part of it. If I’m not failing, I will never win. But yeah, I was going to say, when you’re like, we’re always investing in new things, I own a bunch of cattle right now. Always do stuff. Let’s talk about that offline, because I have a ranch in East Texas now. Let’s do it. ⁓

Yeah, I think.

I always kind of say that failure is not final unless you quit, right? So you have to try stuff. And if you think of any big companies, mean, they’re constantly, not that this is always in the public news, but they’re constantly buying stuff, trying stuff. You you know of a bunch of big companies that will buy somebody a massive acquisition just to shut it down a couple of years later because it didn’t work out. it looks stupid, but at the same time, they hit some home runs in there too. It’s like being at the driving range. You have a bucket of balls, and you’re going to shank a bunch of them. But there’s a couple in there that are going to work out, right?

It’s a numbers game. think what happens too is a lot of people, their net worth becomes their self-worth. And when that happens and times get tough, people will get desperate and then they get emotional. So, you know, we were talking about cryptocurrency ⁓ earlier. ⁓

Like, I have a plan. I have crypto. I bought into crypto a while back. I have a lot. And I’m not selling any of it until 2030. ⁓ Somebody called me yesterday and they asked me about that. And they were like, why 2030? And I said, it’s an arbitrary number that I can commit to that doesn’t allow me to get emotional.

emotion is the thing that prevents us from leveling up. It’s the thing that we get scared, we self-sabotage. And when you fail, you experience these emotions, and that’s where the imposter syndrome, that’s where the I can’t do it comes from. But it’s in that moment that you’re learning the most valuable lessons. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

What are some of your, you talked about some things that happened when you were younger, some early failures, some losses in your life. I’ve experienced a few, I hadn’t really had a lot of loss in my life until my grandfather passed away that I was close with a while back, but that wasn’t a surprise. He’d been sick for a long time. My mom passed away way too early, just a couple years ago, and it kinda changes you.

And it kind of gives you a probably even COVID was a little bit like this, too. It’s like, what is this all for? Why am I doing this? Forced you to kind of look internally. But I’ve kind of experienced that probably not to the same level that you have based on some of the things you told me. But loss, whether it’s losing people that you care about or losing the business, forces you to like refocus on what matters sometimes, too. I can’t stress that enough. Can I go deep? Let’s do it.

in you know as a child growing up I ⁓ raised by a single mom ⁓ lost ⁓ lost a lot I got picked on I only made a b honor roll one one ⁓ semester

period, six week period or whatever, and that was because I took my medication the full time, right? Where’d you grow up at? Highland Village. Okay. So, Louisville area? Yeah, yeah. And I had gotten in a lot of trouble. I went to live in a boy’s home.

got out of the boys home, went to live with my dad. ended up ⁓ getting beat up pretty bad. I almost died in the hospital. I woke up at one point to them literally telling my mother ⁓ that I had 45 minutes to live. And that’s kind of a surreal thing to wake up to, ⁓ Fast forward, I get into real estate, I need purpose. And so real estate becomes my inky guy. Making money and providing becomes my inky guy. And I just, I see that through real estate. ⁓

And mind you, I get in real estate no six.

What happens immediately after that? The crash, right? So that was impeccable timing. And I remember watching, like even on CNBC, in 2010 I remember watching somebody say, real estate will never be the same. And I was a 20-something year old kid looking like, I’ve done the worst thing I could. I’ve picked the wrong career. But then fast forward, I started having serious success. 2012, 2013, 2015, I’m…

probably the highest earning agent investor in the country. Individual, not privately funded. that year I lost, or well, 2016, 2017, 2018, that year I lost my grandmother, my dad, my brother, an aunt, an uncle, and a cousin in a freak accident. And…

And then… All of them were together? No, they weren’t together. was within six months. was like every day I woke up and somebody was dead. It was honestly, it was… My brother was the last one who passed and it was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back. It makes you really question why you do what you do. It makes you really go like, who am I and what do I actually want? ⁓ Especially when they’re like unexpected, you know? ⁓ And so I think… ⁓

That makes you, your self worth becomes your net worth or your net worth becomes your self worth. Going through that detaches all of that perspective.

you start to really value life. So then ⁓ in 2018, my fiance, we have two kids together, we just never got married, life got busy. ⁓ My fiance and I, she immediately has a brain bleed where kind of like a brain aneurysm. ⁓ Fortunately, it’s okay. ⁓ But then fast forward to COVID.

Now, 2019, I blew my company up. I decided I wanted to step back because in 2018, I had gone through some stuff and I needed to pull back. And I grew the business. We went from 35 people to over 100 salaries like crazy, internal. We had an on-site engineering department. We grew as fast as we possibly could. we let some decisions get made that would have made sense had we been funded.

⁓ And they were bad decisions. They were just the wrong decisions. And so I think I had to learn a little bit about ⁓ imposter syndrome, because after going through all that loss, I kind of felt like, hey, I don’t want this, or this doesn’t actually make me happy. Maybe this isn’t who I am. Maybe I shouldn’t be the CEO of this business, right? Maybe I should find somebody else who could be the CEO. So I had to rationalize and appreciate my experience. But then I had to double down and say, OK, what makes me happy?

And it’s not money, it’s never been money. It makes me happy, it’s building. I like to build, I like to see problems and solve them. I like to see people do things that they didn’t expect. I like to take the kid from $30,000 a year and then take him to $300,000 a year. Like that is, that’s cool. ⁓ And so I think, you know, this goes down to pushing past failure. Your original question is like, go back to some of the earlier failures.

I think if your why is strong enough, pushing past your failure is easy.

That makes sense. I didn’t mean to drop too much deep stuff on you there, Mike. No, that’s crazy. I’m sorry that you went through a lot of those things. mean, that’s tough stuff. I can’t imagine. It’s hard. Everything happens for some weird reason, directly, indirectly. I don’t know why, but it is what it is. And it is life. And we all go through stuff. It’s fragile. You realize how fragile it is,

And we all go through it. It’s a balance between realizing that it’s fragile and realizing that you better make the most of it. Like sitting in a corner and curling up and feeling safe is not good either. You can’t do that. No. Doesn’t work. I tried doing that. like you and I can’t do that. tried doing that. In 2019, I really did. I tried to pull back. And I basically took all of my gut instincts and shoved them real down deep.

And I didn’t. ⁓ And that’s on me. That’s not nobody, nobody but me. yeah. So let’s talk about Trelley. Like you launched this platform, the distribution platform. And I know you tried a lot of different things and it didn’t work out. But just maybe talk about that experience and what you learned from it.

Yeah, we launched Trelli. It was a marketplace. ⁓ By the way, before we go there, so you actually sponsored this for a while. Do you remember I had a listing platform on Flip Nerd? Yep, I do. And I used to post houses on. Yeah, and a lot of people did. But our challenge is probably some of the same ones that you did. So first off, I was just making so much money at the time that we built this platform. We built a custom platform, which in hindsight was a huge mistake. ⁓

Because I had to pay somebody like $300 an hour to cross a T or dot an I because nobody knew how to use it because it was a proprietary platform that this company created. Bad idea. Anyway, but I didn’t know how to monetize it. That was 12 years ago. That was 12 or 13 years ago. That was 2012.

I just didn’t know how to, I just didn’t understand that yet. Like in hindsight, I know what I would do differently, but that’s how hindsight works. But very similar, mean, you know, yours had a lot more tech behind it probably, but very similar in approach, I guess. Yeah, I think, you know what is interesting is I think you and I are feeling the same, you know, unspoken thing that’s probably pulling on us that like this industry is going to get democratized.

the investing space is going to expand. have this, I still have this pulling on me and I still have full conviction that Trellis ⁓ is necessary and will exist. ⁓

Really, it’s like this, man. Have you ever seen the movie Gary Glenn Ross? Oh, of course. OK. Did you know or do you realize that’s a real estate agent office? Yeah. Most people don’t realize that. And it resembles a modern day wholesale office, right?

So taking the taking the the.

the real estate agent and the evolution of the real estate agent. They started as these fly-by-night people that would go around and like the city of Dallas was started because a traveler came into town and started selling land he didn’t own. That is a fact. didn’t know that. that up and he died in an insane asylum. ⁓ Fact. Real estate people were crooks back in the day.

and then it became more more formalized. ⁓ And then in the 90s, had the intro, actually, you had the introduction of the MLS concept, which was a black book.

And all it was is a marketplace. It’s the exact same thing as the New York Stock Exchange. No difference. You have the same thing with cattle, with beef. You the same thing with gold. 500 years ago, if I were buying gold, I would offer 70 cents minus repairs or whatever. But today, if I’m buying gold because the asset class is de-risked, I’m paying a slight discount to spot pricing. Real estate’s gonna be the exact same 100 years from now. ⁓

there has to be a marketplace, there has to be an open exchange because that’s the only way that a ⁓ property and the value will trade for its true price. To me, a bond and a stock in Highland Park in South Dallas are kind of the same thing, right? They both have different risk portfolios. So ⁓ when I think about Trelley, I still have conviction

that a marketplace works. I still have a conviction that Flip Nerd works. I still have the conviction that it’s necessary. I don’t. You want to buy Trelley? No, I’m kidding. I actually wouldn’t sell it. Yeah, we actually had a talk about this when we locked ourselves in the cabin. Would we sell it? Because the tech is, we have a lot of tech, and it’s enterprise-grade development. And I would rather not, because if I sell it and see somebody buying that one, fuck.

I missed it’ll kill me. It’ll honestly it’ll crush my soul It’ll be like the Victoria’s Secret guide, you know that story He sold Victoria’s Secret for a couple million dollars then a few years later He jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and Victoria’s Secret was worth like 400 million or something. It’s a crazy story, but like Yeah, I just don’t I don’t want to be that guy So I know someone’s gonna do it and the truth is Mike I may go back at run back at it

I may. We’re still developing some stuff internally. And I know it’s necessary. So talk about the ability or the importance, I guess, of being willing to try new things. Like, fail and keep trying something new.

I think it’s about being curious. you’re, you know, over the years I’ve known you, you’re one of the more curious people I think I’ve known. And I would say they’re probably correlates your curiosity directly to the, to the, your, how much of a pioneer you are. I am, I, I can’t help, but try something. It will eat at me if I don’t try something.

So that’s the God on his truth. It’s in my nature to take shots. I do worry that I’m gonna take too many shots one day.

My team might say otherwise, but I’ve gotten better for sure at not having this waking up in the morning, having this new idea. Like we got to go do it today. Oh yeah. Like I tend to be more, if it’s a big thing, I’m like, okay, I’m not going to let it go, but I’m to put it on a shelf for right now. Actually, what I’m more likely to do is try to find somebody to partner with to do it. Like somebody that has a skillset or has the capacity or has, and I bring whatever resources I have. It might be money, it might be knowledge, it might be relationships, whatever. But I’m more likely to try to JV with somebody now just because I know

I can’t do it all yeah, and I’ll drive my team. I team will be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge if I’m not too careful exactly I invest in people now ⁓ for the most part like if I

It doesn’t make sense for me necessarily to start a business because I’m going to over complicate the start in all honesty because of what I know and same for you. I’m a fast starter. Like I get a lot of traction early on but I’m a slow finisher. OK. Because then I’m probably move on to something else or I get frustrated with the details. OK. OK. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓ I think for a long time about every idea and then I’ll do I’ll dip my toe into it test it and I check my hypothesis like for example the coaching.

a very limited number of people and I did not try to push it past that because I wanted to see

You know, one of the things I’ve hated about being a leader is when you hire somebody and then they, say, hey, like, just do this and it’ll work. And then they just won’t do it. That’s one of the most annoying things. When those people are directly paying you and then they still won’t, that’s really annoying. So that’s coaching. That’s the coaching world. And yeah, hats off to you. You have more patience. I, yeah.

I can do it. So let’s talk some more about this convergence of the agent world, the realtor world, and investors, because it’s clearly happening. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So again, mind you, I came from the agent world. I am an agent at heart, foundationally. And I don’t know if you know that. Do you know that I have my license now? No, I didn’t. Hey, congratulations. I don’t know if I’ve ever said that publicly. Oh, wow. I got it a few years ago. Crazy enough, I got it in Michigan, because the education requirements were like 40 hours versus 100

⁓ wow.

how it’s dumb to have your real estate license when you’re an investor.

Well, the world’s changing. Yeah. the truth is it doesn’t create more liability. That’s something that the gurus created. I’ve never once been sued because I have a license. And out of all of these transactions, that is something that like, the moment you are self, ⁓ you can run without having this particular educator on speed dial, their value drops. So like you should have your real estate license. There is no reason.

and not to mention, is, if you look at the Texas Workforce Commission, look at the definition, look at the occupation code of what the definition of a real estate broker is. You tell me if you do an assignment that you are not brokering based on that definition. And I can also tell you that,

federal agencies are creating, are in the background investigating and could create task force to go after this. And so.

Sorry, you hit on the license thing? I love that you have your license, Mike. I think that that is a good thing. You can pay me referral fees now. Yeah, exactly. So let’s talk about this convergence, though. It’s going on overall. I in some states, you’re required to get a license now to even wholesale. Some states are trying to make wholesaling illegal. There’s a lot of interest or signing, for sure. So there’s a lot of interesting things kind of going on. But there is a general convergence. I think there, I always used to say that realtors,

like investors think that realtors don’t know what they’re talking about because most of them have not been taught to be an investor right and Realtors think investors are slimy, but they secretly want to be one so there’s this kind of peanut butter and jelly thing coming together So let’s talk about that a bit. I was hanging out with somebody the other day ⁓ They’re in the commercial space and they said resi Marshall and I was like that’s perfect because the space we are in

or the space I think I play in, it’s commercial talk with residential houses. It’s the commercial real estate world, but with houses. Commercial in that it’s investors, the investor mindset. business to business. Whereas the agents, and also,

investor ownership is going up in the United States. There’s over 17 million as of 2012, 17 million, or 2016, individual real estate investors. That number’s supposed to be 30 million by 2030. That ⁓ is expanding. But look, with the Sitzer-Barnett settlement, with National Association of Realtors, and the changing of Buyers Agent Commission, and all of that stuff, you’ve just shifted.

how much money was available to be paid out to all of these different agents. So naturally you’re going to force some of those to do other things. And they, like myself, I started investing in 2012. I had my real estate business, I had my team. ⁓ It was inevitable for me to do that. Everyone else is just realizing that.

over the last few years and they’ve started adding, hey, we’ll give you cash offers too. And it’s even making it harder for your open doors and your Mark Spains to get deals because they’re now competing with the agents. Yeah. And I think agents have been beat up too over, over the last few years, right? So they have to find other ways to make money. They’ve got to adapt. ⁓

But you have a lot of agents that have money. They have money in their coffers. They’re ready to spend, and they’re ready to scale. And they know marketing. Your top real estate team in the country.

And I’m a little biased, I will say that. But your top real estate investor and your top residential real estate team, your top real estate team has run 10X ⁓ more sophisticated, for sure. Investors, I find, usually don’t have a lot of structure and they don’t have a lot of process. Whereas your teams, they are built like machines. So imagine this big mega team that’s built like a machine. Now they’re going to just turn on, get a fast cash offer.

hey, they have endorsements on the radio. They’re gonna just add this little tagline and now it takes away from all the other people that are existing in that space. So I think the only way to make money in this business is to be abundant about it and to celebrate it, champion it, expand it, do what you’re doing, coach people.

And to have more tools, which is what the convergence with agents and investors has happened. It’s like, well, I could list it for you. I don’t necessarily say it this way, but you could list it or you could buy it. And the fact of the matter is with appreciation, at least in the DFW market and a lot of markets, with appreciation that’s happened over the years,

agent commissions are not that far off from a wholesale fee, right? So it’s like, and I’ve always told people ⁓ that get their license or that have their license or that send a referral to somebody else that can list it for them. It’s like, don’t make that, if you’re an investor first, you don’t have to make that the business. Just make that a way to get some of your bait back, some of your marketing dollars back. So that’s another way you can monetize the leads you’ve already created and plow that back into marketing, because that’s what really drives the investor side.

that generate probably the majority of the profits for a real estate professional that does both. would 100 % agree. that’s, you know, have a lot of these big agents, they realize that, and then they start doing what I did, and really slowly killing off their traditional team. You know, we were doing, we were doing 12, 1,300 units a year. And the level of sophistication around that, and the profitability.

to do that many transactions and the profitability, it’s just not worth it. It’s just not. So where do you think the market’s going? And we were talking about that a little bit. I don’t talk about this with everybody. And I used to think I had a crystal ball, but I’ve kind of turned out that I don’t really know much. Yeah, I that. But where do you think? There’s some clear things that are going to happen probably, but where do you think the market’s headed?

Yeah, I’m kind of like you. I used to make predictions. Over the last two years, I would say I’m not batting really well on my predictions to be just very straight up.

As of lately, I believe it’s going to be next year. I don’t believe housing transactions are going to pick up. I don’t see housing prices actually going down. No, me neither. There’s no data that really A lot of people think if rates go down that prices are going to shoot up. don’t think there’s going to be. I mean, every market’s different, right? But I don’t see prices going down. I just think this is the new normal.

I agree. actually housing is just going to become more and housing is never going to become more affordable than it is now. Generally speaking, I don’t believe. me ask. OK, I just said I shouldn’t be giving predictions, but that is my prediction is housing. It’s not like it’s going to become more affordable. I agree with that. Let me let me. What if when we look back on 2025, what if we think it’s 2020 10?

I’ve said that a bunch. I’ve said in the Dallas market, I’ve said that exact thing many times. What if, because if I could go back to 2010, I was buying houses for $0.40, $0.50 on the dollar or less. I we were buying stuff deep. I started in 2008 when the market crashed. That’s the market that I knew. So we were buying everything deep, but usually pretty distressed as well. so, however, I’ve said in hindsight, because I have a rental portfolio here that’s generated a lot of net worth for sure.

and at least on paper. And so I’ve said, ⁓ if I could go back to 2009 to 2012 or 2013 in the Dallas Fort Worth market and any market like it, I could have bought every house under $150,000 right off the MLS full retail price, and I would look like a freaking genius right now. Bingo. And then I’ve said the same thing. Well, what if we look back 15 years from now and we say, man, if I could just go back to 20.

every house on the MLS under 300,000. You know what mean? Are we going to do that? I don’t know. I think there is more than likely that it will be the case. Right now, and this is, know, I don’t know if I’m on the spectrum or what, but like, but like the data. we all are on some level. think any entrepreneurs, kind of have to be, but the data supports the economy is doing well.

Consumer sentiment, fear, the what’s gonna happen with Iran or China, this, that, Taiwan, that seems to have made a bigger impact. And it’s harder for me as a non-emotional, like I’m just unemotional about this stuff, it’s hard for me to relate to the people who are freaking out over Russia. ⁓ I just can’t. But I will say that

I remember in 2010, know Ben Stein, the clear eyes guy? Do you know he’s an economist? Yeah, I did know that. I didn’t know that. I thought he was the clear eyes guy. I did not realize he was an economist, but in 2010 I saw him on CNBC and he said the housing market was never going to come back. And that stuck with me. His eyes weren’t very clear apparently. Apparently they weren’t. But that stuck with me because in that moment,

would anybody invest in real estate? In this moment right now, why would anybody invest in real estate? ⁓ Six weeks ago, why would anybody invest in crypto?

I got calls yesterday, everybody’s asking me about crypto. I’m like, you should have called me six weeks ago. You want to invest when nobody wants to invest. There’s always a silver lining. There’s always, not always, there’s often opportunities where, mean, like Warren Buffett said, be greedy when others are fearful. There’s always opportunities. It doesn’t mean, it’s always a good time to buy real estate, especially if you can get it at a discount. If you’re not buying a full retail, and sometimes it might be a good deal if you’re buying a full retail too, in hindsight, over time.

there’s always opportunities here i think a lot of people if you wait until everybody else says it’s a good idea and you’ve missed out on some opportunity for sure you know what you know what the united states did in early two thousands okay

Housing did really well from like 96 up until 2001, 2000, the dot com bubble really. ⁓ And then the US government introduces all kinds of housing programs, additional housing programs. did a bunch under Clinton in the 90s, but they introduced a bunch of new ones, Nehemiah Down Payment Assistance, et cetera. What that did is it opened up the buyer pool by almost double. So it kept the economy going.

The United States has a phenomenal track record of manipulating the situation and kicking the can down the road. In fact, a substantial part of our GDP derives from real estate, right? If I am actually kind of banking on the fact that there is likely going to be insurance reform and there is likely going to be property tax reform.

So the moment that happens, the value of property changes like that. Because if they don’t do some sort of reform, now what happens? GDP starts to drop, state GDP, national GDP. So I think there’s gonna be some intervention and manipulation because…

It’s just what the US does. Yeah, we’re good at propping stuff up. We are great. We are the best ever. I’ve said it many times. I was a recovering finance guy. Some of the stuff that happens in the real estate market, I know it’s not good for the long term, but it benefits me now. And so it’s kind of hard to. I don’t want financial assistance for real estate, but I know it props up the price. Well, it’s against what I believe in, but it’s like,

I gotta play the game though. Somebody was talking to me about Bitcoin and they were like, in my mind it’s like if it goes to zero in 20 years, well you’re wrong today, you should be invested. But if it goes to zero in a week, well you’re wrong in a week. You shouldn’t have been invested, right? So hindsight’s 20-20. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, cool.

Well, good talking to you, Yeah, I appreciate it, Yeah. Yeah, so we got to get together more often here. Yes, we definitely do. Yeah. So hey, if folks want to connect with you, they want to learn more about what you or Myers or anything like that, where can they go? ⁓ Instagram, ⁓ at joshdeshungre. Yeah. Just DM me on Instagram. ⁓ Shoot me an email, josh at myershomebuyers.com. Cool.

Thanks for coming in. Absolutely, Thank you for having me. This is great. Everybody, hey, thanks for joining us today. A little bit of a different type of episode, I guess. A little more freewheeling, which honestly, I enjoy that more, quite frankly. But at the end of the day, I’ve said this many times, failure is just a stepping stone. It’s not final unless you quit. So you should be willing to take risks. And don’t bet the farm on it. if you have some money set aside where you can take some risks, you should do it. So I appreciate you guys for joining us today. We’ll see you on the next show.