How LaDale Buggs Is Building an AI Tool to Analyze Real Estate Deals in 5 Minutes

LaDale Buggs (00:00)
we’re developing an app right now within our firm to be able to take your phone and make any type of novice investing a seasoned and ve a seasoned investor by just using your phone by going in and vetting a property within five minutes. It’ll give you a scope of work, it’ll give you the images, what it what it would look like post renovation,

Dylan Silver (01:50)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today we’re joined by LaDale Buggs, a Texas based investor and operator with experience spanning single and multifamily investing, including construction and value add opportunities. He’s also a private equity investor as well. LaDale, thanks for joining us here today.

LaDale Buggs (02:08)
Man, thanks for the invitation. This is gonna be an exciting conversation. Looking forward to it.

Dylan Silver (02:11)
What types of deals are coming across your desk these days?

LaDale Buggs (02:15)
a lot of distressed situations. In other words, there’s two type of distress situations. You have distressed sellers and distressed properties. Let’s go through the distressed properties real quickly. I’m a I’m buying a lot of distressed apartment complexes in certain cities. I’m doing a lot of new construction on college campuses. and I’m buying a lot of three two twos, four two twos in more college campus centralized mid-tier towns or Air Force Base towns. Where I can actually buy it below wholesale and increase the value through renovation. And then I do kind of a lease to own scenario for my for my business model. So that’s what’s been coming down my pipeline.

Dylan Silver (02:50)
I wanna talk about acquisitions in this college campus realm. I haven’t done a deal like this. I think when people think about college campuses, they think of a lot of new buildings, right? but there can be distress. Walk us through what that looks like in the acquisition side.

LaDale Buggs (03:05)
Well, on the acquisition side and on the college campus, I I don’t buy retail. Retail’s top of the market. That didn’t make sense to me at all. I make money when I buy and sell exists the ice on the cake if I am to sell a property. Typically I like to hold on to my properties because I love cash flow. Cash flow to me is king. And if you have the good equity position itself and cash flow is there coming in, which is great, I mean it’s a good performing business. So for me, I typically look for deals on college campuses outside of the campus, but kind of on the fringe of that, because a lot of college students they all they don’t mind living on college campuses, but they will most likely live off the college campus, as close or maybe a little bit farther away from the campus, and they’ll just drive to campus because they have more flexibility, more freedom outside of the campus versus being on the campus. I know because our daughter is in college right now and so she’s a freshman. So she’s very limited on her college campus in some form of fashion. So that’s been kind of my sweet spot there. And I typically buy SFRs, three two twos, four two twos. I can value add, bit of renovation, increase the valuation that way through forced appreciation. And then I’ll typically, if I have debt on there, go to a long term debt, which is great. Pull out some cash, pay back my original debt if I have any on that as well. Also, and then I cash flow, I can typically lease out each room at a certain marketable rate, which would be which is great. They love that. And typically I’ll get it at least that for the entire year, sometimes even two years, if there’s a good relationship there, man, and it’s been kinda like my bread and butter. I love it.

Dylan Silver (04:34)
Do you go with property management to manage those deals or do you manage them yourself?

LaDale Buggs (04:39)
no. Property ma property manager. I’m a big delegator, but I’m very selective on the PMs that I choose because PMs are known to do a terrible accounting job and they’ll make their money that way by causing chaos and they’re prescribing a solution to the chaos that they cause. That could be from a maintenance standpoint and to a bookkeeping standpoint. So I’m actually trying to implement AI right into my real my real estate model right now to the point to where I can lean on them a little bit, but I can also lean more on my on my AI software to be able to make sure there’s no bottlenecks.

Dylan Silver (05:13)
when people talk about different asset classes, this college campus rentals and anything with proximity to college, even multifamily buildings, is gonna have higher turnover, right? So that has to factor in into to the equation here. I’m imagining in a positive way, if done right, and conversely, i if done improperly, you might have vacant units if you can’t manage the turnover there. When you’re looking for a good property manager for a college, single family home, is this someone who already has, lots of experience managing that type of deal, or can this be a property manager who may not have done a college deal before?

LaDale Buggs (06:40)
In today’s economy, any economy in my opinion, you need to have somebody actually has some type of experience there because they know what type of property said college students are looking for, what the parents looking for because the parents are really paying for it. If the paint is cosign, they can and parents typically want a good looking property in a kind of a safe area to where they actually so that was what they know, hey, I could my daughter or my son is gonna be safer, which is Which is great. So they look at that and look at the relationship with the PMs. The PM is the first really line of defense to say, okay, does this does this PM know what they’re doing? And typically the parents do vet them very well. They do. And typically you want a PM that has a good name in the marketplace so that you get past that first hurror.

Dylan Silver (07:26)
when folks are looking at this off campus housing, especially, I think there’s more and more students and parents which value this because you’re realizing, well, i I’m sending them, to school. Schools cost, more than ever, cost is only gonna go up. I wanna give them the best opportunity to have that, peaceful study area where they’re not gonna be bombarded with so many different things. And I think more people are aware that you can still participate in the college experience without living in a dorm.

LaDale Buggs (07:56)
Corre. that is correct. typically a colleges want the freshmen to be on campus to get accustomed to campus life and life outside of being with mom and dad. That’s fine. And sometimes they’ll allow sophomores as well. But once you get to that sophomore range and into junior range, typically the student wants to explore more of the campus life outside of being on the campus. And they get more flexibility. Now I know in the area that I’m in that I’m actually in Starkville, Mississippi, which is Mississippi State University, they love living out living off that, off the campus. They adore it because Starkville is kinda like I we’re both in Texas. Starkville is kind of like let’s say a the beginning of Waco. Beginning of Waco. Waco’s really developed. Starkville is kind of developing now. I’ve sat down with the mayor of the city. Pleasant lady and also the county judge city and they’re needing some additional capital to could to continue that development. So those students love being off the campus. And also the faculty have been coming to us as well. The faculty like, hey, I know this is for students, but hey, I have a family here. I have a job here as well. Can you accept my family in? Sure. So we’ll sit down and talk with them what they can afford, look at that when it comes to the market rate and come up with a deal. That’s been a very successful for as well.

Dylan Silver (09:13)
one of the things that this brings to mind is there’s a lot of folks that are looking for these deals, but you mentioned you gotta make your money on the buy, right? And so we talk with a lot of wholesalers, and folks who work in that distressed off market space. In and in many cases, the deals are, pocket listings, a referral from a realtor, or you’re going direct to seller. How are you finding these deals?

LaDale Buggs (09:36)
Well, I don’t market at all. because I have been in the game since 2008. So I’ve kind of learned how to get this accomplished. I ha I do have people on my team that can look at these deals for me and they bring me these deals, whether it be on the market, off the market. One of the most successful ways I’m getting a lot of properties is old school driving for dollars. I have located a ton of properties here in Dallas, Texas, in Fort Worth. Just driving. Cause everybody’s on social media. Yep. Everybody’s i is trying to get a wholesaler. And ho those wholesale are sending out these trash deals. there’s no good deals on MLS at all that I’ve seen. Now you may be different ’cause you’re realtor that I’ve seen has come to my desk. There’d been nothing at all. And the numbers don’t make any sense to me at all. So I say, what? Let me try to figure out how I can actually find these diamonds in the rough. I have a good system outside of Texas, ’cause I’m in three or four different states, which is fine. So that’s it was doing well for me. Let’s go ahead and rebuild Texas and From 2008 to 2015, I was known as the subject to investing king of Dallas. So let’s go to distressed properties now. sorry, just sellers now. Is one of the best ways that I’ve been acquiring a lot of properties just through distressed sellers, behind on payments. Yeah. Job transfer, long days on the market. I believe that leash to own andor seller finance is gonna be a path to home ownership because the rates right now is Five and a half plus two, prime plus two, which is yet seven a half percent, but a seven twenty plus credit score. I don’t know about you. I don’t see people leaving a two percent interest rate in the current home, get that cash out and they go into a seven percent interest rate. That didn’t make any sense to me at all. So there’s a there’s not a lot of supply on the market of properties going on the market. That’s why there’s a lot of stress on the new home builders. Now, new home builders also what they’re doing now is they’re throwing money at people. All

Dylan Silver (11:20)
They are.

LaDale Buggs (11:20)
right. Throwing money at people. My aunt bought a new construction property with Viking appliances. Fully applianced. Zero down FHA program. Zero down. she actually put down $3,000, furnished money, got it back at the closing.

Dylan Silver (11:34)
Yeah, I mean and it’s shocking to hear, but then, of course, anywhere you go in Texas, it seems like there’s a new subdivision or multi new subdivisions are coming up, which also, has an effect on folks who are flippers. And I saw that when I was cutting my teeth in the wholesale space, is you realize, traditionally flippers weren’t competing with new construction, but now there’s a solid case that because I can say in the east part of San Antonio, Texas in Converse, you have new construction that’s going up literally for, a hundred forty thousand dollars. Right. Right. And so that is certainly gonna be something that people are gonna be looking at. Hey, we can get this starter home here brand new for that price point. Let’s take a look at that.

LaDale Buggs (12:17)
I agree with a hundred percent. You’re seeing builders not build smaller homes now. They have to. Because they’re borrowing that money, the money at a IO interest rate, 15 year construction rate, and that put the money to work. They have to. So I know in Dallas, in Dallas, really in the Collin County area, you have Lennar homes, Gehan Homes, Shaddock Homes, they’re building properties, even Gal I think it’s First Texas homes, they’re even building properties just to have ’cause they have to get the money to work, and the properties have been vacant for like six, seven, eight months.

Dylan Silver (12:45)
Yeah.

LaDale Buggs (12:45)
Seldom.

Dylan Silver (12:46)
They have to get rid of them. I mean, that that’s a thing. And then many of these are publicly traded companies. and so, they at this the end of the year, they’ve got to sell the homes. And then you’re seeing them, of course, buy down the rates, but then they’re also having incentives on top of that. Incentives for the realtors on top of that. So the realtors want to sell the homes. Everyone wants to then be looking at the these homes. And i in many ways too, it’s good marketing for themselves when they’re leasing up the community or they’re selling the community, I should say, while it’s being built. those people are their best marketers in many ways. Hey, I’m living over here. Come take a look at this community. I do want to pivot here though. Sure. we were talking in the green room about AI, and you’re a private equity investor in very interesting AI ammo space. how’d you get in into that space?

LaDale Buggs (13:35)
Well, buddy of mine brought that to me. I ran for public office and for Texas House in twenty. Lost in the primary. And developed some relationships there. And a buddy of mine brought me the brought me the deal. It was the first AI powered ammunition vending product. And I wow, what is this? and again, I’m not a gun guy, I’m not an ammo guy, I know very little about that. I said, Well, ps what is this about? A after we went through the whole pitch and everything, I said, This is Wait a minute. This is this is all right. Being able to automate ammo sales. That’s a that that’s phenomenal power by AI and it went through the FBI vetting and ATF vetting, which is great. And that’s okay. Let’s go. And we it came out with a boom, man. We were on CNN, Fox News, Valuetainment News. this is this is ABC, CBS, this is Nashley County as well as regional, as well as locally. It was crazy. People call me. Hey man, this is your new company. I’m like, I know, I know. I mean it was pretty exciting. it really, it really was. And that market is very untapped right now because it was landed in my lap.

Dylan Silver (14:36)
when we talk about, how AI is innovating certain spaces, I mean, when you mentioned AI ammo, I thought, wait, did I hear it right? Because how does that work, right? And so for folks who may not be familiar with this, sure, when we talk about how AI can influence, different industries and specifically, for consumers, I think a lot of times people look at How AI might be able to facilitate business and people look at hiring. But now we’re talking about AI vending machines. Sure. I’m sure you’re on the frontier of this. Did you see, more AI like mechanical? We’re talking about vending machines. We’re talking about different ways where people could potentially interface and have their, day to day be made. What are you seeing out there?

LaDale Buggs (15:19)
Well, go to airport. If you go to DFW Airport, just Love Field. What do you see a lot of the times when you walk into the to the food area? There’s a lot of AI MO machines. You can actually walk into Love Field, which is here in Dallas Fort Worth, and g walk through and do the entire let’s say, convenience store. And with that convenience store, there’s no one there. I don’t via AI. It’s everywhere. Yeah. AI is money right now is separated itself from labor, and depending on the context. If you are in the business of making money based on your labor, you better pivot very quickly. Because if you’re not in a plumbing space, maybe in the roofing space, like or the l electrician space at all, on those trade spaces, unfortunately you’re gonna be out of a job very quickly because that’s what AI is do. AI is making business run more efficiently and at a lower cost. So as business owners, we’re looking at efficiency and kind of mitigating the cost in a in a the most effective way that we can. And AI is doing that at a fast pace. And then you see all these data centers going up. They’re going up for a reason, guys. This is not just for show.

Dylan Silver (16:23)
i a lot of people of course, and rightfully so, are concerned, but you also mentioned the trades. Correct. And I think, we probably agree here the trades are gonna be more valuable than ever. You think folks who are, even at university, if they’re in college, should they consider maybe getting a degree and going into the trades?

LaDale Buggs (16:40)
Yes. Yes, unless you are going into medical field. ‘Cause medical field is v is it’s using AI, it is, but not as prevalent as other fields.

Dylan Silver (16:50)
Right. Right.

LaDale Buggs (16:51)
if you’re going to like people are getting degrees right now, you may know this already, Dylan. If people are getting degrees right now and they can’t get a job. But you spent a hundred and seven thousand dollars for a degree, and let’s say business administration for hotel. The hotel’s like we don’t need you no more. Wow, people just go in and buy it. I know people actually I got deals came across my across my desk of AI running an entire operation for a hotel, convenience store as well as food.

Dylan Silver (17:14)
Goodness.

LaDale Buggs (17:15)
And I’m like, what in the world? This is AI. Like,

Dylan Silver (17:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

LaDale Buggs (17:20)
whoa. And if that’s been induced to me, you better believe it’s been induced to Hilton, Marriott, all the big players. And they are looking.

Dylan Silver (17:29)
Yeah. I mean look, you see it at grocery stores. You I don’t know if you’ve seen it. You see the aisle cleaners will be a robot that’s roaming and yeah going in and out of the aisle and dodging carts. And so initially, the first time you see this, it’s like, that’s neat. Then you see it and you see more of it and you see more of it. Of course it’s gonna be a trend. And this speaks to a larger question. And as someone who ran for office, I can imagine you’ve thought quite a bit about this is, do we look at maybe different models for what constitutes an education? is a college degree gonna have the same value? Is it something that’s gonna be like a credibility booster for folks in the next ten years, or is it gonna be looked at entirely differently?

LaDale Buggs (18:09)
I like what Grant Cardone actually said. He said you should go to college to broaden out your network. That’s it. That’s it. He said because of the fact that technology is moving so fast, your job may be obsolete then. Yeah. If you can actually get the right connections there in college, from a networking standpoint, that’s right. not learn from stuff. Because typically, you cannot get your phone and use either Claude or ChatGPT or pick one. Learn how to be a private investor just by b just by with the right prompts.

Dylan Silver (18:38)
I mean, it it’s incredible how much you can learn on your own now with especially these conversation modes. You can simply open up these tools and have a conversation. You mentioned the networking component. One of the things that I’ve seen from being a realtor, honestly, is in real estate, people tend to be natural networkers, right? Because in order to find deals, you’ve got to talk to people, you’ve got to get your name out, you gotta be able to be comfortable going into maybe a distress seller situation. Someone’s losing their home. There could be death, divorce, any number of things going on. But not everyone is cut out for that. And it’s not exactly like we’re taught in school how to be networkers. and so do you think maybe we should move the needle on this conversation from, I I’m going to school to get a degree and I’m going to school to meet people to then how do I set myself up to make the most of those four years? Where that first year is not just, I’m afraid of being out by myself and instead it’s, Hey, who do I know here who’s well connected? Who do I know here if I wanna work on Wall Street? Who do I know here that works on Wall Street? What eighteen year olds are thinking like that? Probably

LaDale Buggs (19:43)
Very few. And I’m gonna give you a case study, which is my daughter. My daughter’s a freshman at Oklahoma State University now. And initially she wanted to go to Baylor, and Baylor’s a great school. We toured Baylor. Baylor was wonderful, loved it. And then I got the bill and I said, hell no. I’m not paying ninety four thousand dollars a year to go to Baylor. That’s not happening at all. No. And so Oklahoma State came with a better deal, and of course it may and it meets it meets her degree. Now I agree it’s recreational physical therapy. And that’s a it’s in high demand and education for that. Again, in the medical biology field. That that’s needed there, right? Which is fine. So my thing is I said, okay, babe, Oklahoma State is a really medically strong university. Meet everybody. If there is a social function for your for medical et al kids, you need to be there. Well, you never know who you’re going to meet. That can talk to somebody, to talk to somebody, talk to somebody to get you into a job here in Dallas or anywhere else. Now we do have doctors and medical people in my in my family, so she should be able to find a job very easily, but you never know what opportunities can come all from networking. Just don’t go to school for the fun and for the football and for the party and for the academics. Learn how to network. And she’s been networking a butt off and doing very well at it.

Dylan Silver (21:01)
Good for her because I think for a lot of people, young people especially, it feels uncomfortable because you’re kind of in your own clip, your own niche when you’re in high school. And then going off to, a different state or a different area and now you’re out on your own and now you’re trying to meet new people. It can feel very vulnerable. But always remembering everyone’s in kind of the same situation, right? And on the other side of this thing too is there’s so many I keep reading more articles on LinkedIn about this. There’s so many employers who say it’s tougher to hire good people and that people don’t stick, right?

LaDale Buggs (21:33)
Yes, that is correct. You’re beginning to see a lot of companies for a while now, they’re they are orchestrating or generating their own universities within their companies because the talent coming out of college is not sufficient to do the to do the said job. And so in their mind, wait a minute, I could take someone off the street, put in through my company’s university and get a more efficient worker than taking an a an entitled person. a college student from an Ivy League school or a smaller school to say I got a degree, you must hire me. No, you’re bringing a certain type of thinking into my organization that can be it can hinder our culture. No. So my advice to a lot of these college students go to school, network to do well. Don’t be surprised when you land the job you get re educated on your entire practice. Yeah. Because it can and at the exact same time what I would say is You better get used to familiar with AI. ‘Cause AI could get you ready for an interview. Also let the culture of the of the companies that you want to get into. It’s very simple.

Dylan Silver (22:33)
Yeah, there’s no question about that. And even in the fields that are we think protected by AI, like the trades, like medicine, of course they’re seeing massive utilization of these tools. And then also people talk about, medical research being one of the ways and advancements in medical technology being one of the ways where AI is most applicable and most able to benefit to benefit us. I can imagine in like physical therapy for instance, sure people might be able to have different medical equipment very shortly which can facilitate a lot of their recovery.

LaDale Buggs (23:05)
Correct. The medical field, my mentor was a former lobbyist in the Reagan administration. he was the lobbyist for the National Home Building Associations of America. Him and the owner, former owner of Fox and Jacobs homes were the actual ones that was actually running that. And he I got some stories I can tell you about that. It’s crazy. but he had said that if you ever want to not be fired, Ladell, Go into or if you ever want to make a good rate of return and not go broke, he said, invest in the medical field. Cause people will never start to have babies and they’ll never stop being sick. I said, wow. And so my daughter, she is one of the records of physical therapy because her whole her whole audience is the elderly, especially these kids. Yeah. And it’s wide open right now.

Dylan Silver (23:44)
Yeah, I mean the other side of this i is people are living longer, right? No question about it. And then you also have an aging population. And if you go into any physical therapy office, that’s gonna be mostly, aging or elderly people. and so that is not gonna slow down anytime soon. There’s gonna be need to be many more folks involved in that side, taking care of, nagging injuries and so forth. What’s interesting in Texas, which is not the case everywhere, but it does seem to be becoming a trend is that all medical offices seem to be owned by, a corporation. It seems to be one corporate conglomerate. You’re seeing the same thing on your end, I imagine, right?

LaDale Buggs (24:23)
you begin to see a lot of consolidation in the banking industry, in the medical field, which has been going on for a little for a long period of time. And when it comes to the trades, a lot of PEs and VCs are buying roofing companies, HVAC companies, plumbing companies. Those have become even CPA d accounting companies, CPA firms, because those are what they call those boring businesses. I love boring businesses because they give a great rate of return, which is Pretty good for me. So also here’s another thing that people don’t understand is there’s the next boom is gonna be in digital banking. That’s the next boom because you’re beginning to see a lot of banks begin to get begin to get consolidated as well. One of my good friends owned a kind of a mid to tiered regional bank here in Dallas. They sold a Huntington’s Huntington Bank. and he made a ton of ton of money, but Hunter Bank also bought another bank. And so you begin to see a lot of these big conglomerates coming out and buying these smaller banks because of competition. Now what’s happening is the legacy banks, a legacy bank is like Bank of America, Chase, they’ll feel a little bit threatened by digital banks like Chime, Venmo. there’s another one called Dingo Blue that just came out as well. and N V Bank. It’s another one as well. And what’s happening is whenever a legacy bank, right, they have a they have a bigger footprint in the marketplace because of branches. So you can drive anyway and find Bank of America or a or a chase, which they have a footprint there. But people don’t understand this typically the cost of running those branches is about thirty percent of a cost just to run it. Digital banks are different. Their cost is zero.

Dylan Silver (25:56)
you mentioned that they feel threatened by this. And I’m thinking about if I wear, my hat as a lender, I’m not a lender, but if I was wearing my lender hat, sure. I’ve often heard lenders, whether you’re buying a home or a car and someone has a digital bank, they kind of frown upon this. They say, Where’s your where’s your brick and mortar bank? And I’m wondering, is that by design or is that because, they view these people as riskier?

LaDale Buggs (26:18)
Well, it’s cause of how people have been educated. And so whenever you think about it, Dylan, when you got out of high school and you began to go to college, or if you went to college or began doing life, your parents probably told you, Hey man, let’s go open up your up a bank account. Where? At the bank. So you went to a branch. That was part of life. That’s what you actually did. I don’t know about you. I don’t go to branches anymore, do you?

Dylan Silver (26:39)
Rarely, right?

LaDale Buggs (26:40)
So I normally make deposits on my phone. So I don’t have to go to branch anymore. Everything’s done via digitally. So now you begin to see a pivot over to the to the digital banking space. This is how SoFi has grown so huge right now. They began with just student loans. Now they offer CDs, money to markets, credit cards, mortgages, business loans, savings accounts. They offer all every single product that legacy banks actually offer, they actually offer that and they pay a higher rate on your savings.

Dylan Silver (27:09)
Hm. no physical locations. Yeah.

LaDale Buggs (27:12)
Now, for instance, you notice that the Elon Musk, as he went public, he became a trillionaire. He is still working with Tesla and SpaceX in some form of capacity, but he pivoted over to digital banking. That’s called a clue. Now, why do you do that for? Interesting. He began a digital bank called X Money. He’s paying four to six percent in cash back. Four. To 6% for checking accounts. Not care to credit cards, check-in accounts, and savings accounts. And also, guess who’s his first clients? The employees of SpaceX and Tesla and Twitter.

Dylan Silver (27:49)
Yeah, they gotta be happy.

LaDale Buggs (27:50)
And also almost all of the users on Twitter have access to X money. Now why would he do that for? He makes himself more ben more bankable, more lendable to. His balance sheet has grown tremendously now. So he can get he can get anything he wants.

Dylan Silver (28:05)
do you think that the traditional banks will have to become digital or do you think that they will still exist in some form or capacity, forever?

LaDale Buggs (28:14)
They will have to, they already talking about it. Jamie Diamond took went on CNBC, I believe him, and said that he was concerned about digital banking. Because not because it was dangerous, because of the market share. Larry Fink is talking about tokenization now. Larry Fink, this is BlackRock, talking about this now. So the big boys are seeing this huge pivot right now. They see it coming. I don’t know about you, man. I don’t. I mean, I borrow money from institutional lenders at times. I don’t ever go into a bank. Everything is done electronically. I

Dylan Silver (28:46)
Yeah.

LaDale Buggs (28:47)
don’t do nothing at the at a branch. I don’t know about you. And guess who’s panicking right now? Bank of America right now is panicking because they don’t know what to do with all the real state they actually own because of the branches. that they’re trying to create an a virtual office type of experience to where you can actually from your phone go into a virtual office. And talk to a banker on your phone and make a deposit as if you’re walking in.

Dylan Silver (29:10)
Walking in.

LaDale Buggs (29:11)
It’s what they’re doing now. It’s already there. It’s already there. The thing about it is so what I did request to pick back over to real estate instance here. Is I’ve actually partnered with the bank to where I can also I can not only get paid by my tenants, but I can also monetize their entire lifestyle to pay every time they go do something. Be a digital banking. So when they go pay me, I get paid.

Dylan Silver (29:31)
Piggybacking off of that, there’s this idea of tokenizing real estate and tokenization of real estate and then fractional investing. And people are talking a lot about is this a good thing? does this threaten realtors? I am a realtor. I don’t necessarily know if I have a feeling about it, although I can imagine that realtors are of course gonna protect their own. But I also think generally speaking, if home prices keep going up and up and up, which everyone thinks that they will. Then this tokenization of real estate and Robin Hooding it, if you will, and being able to buy a fractional part of a home like you would buy a fractional stock, seems like the next logical step.

LaDale Buggs (30:08)
They to they to go to open this. They have to. I’m I’m gonna make this as simple as I can. I get asked this question a lot because of my content, is if the government would not would have would not have pushed tokenization, this whole house of costs would have went down because no country is really buying identity anymore. So when if you look at when Trump came into office, right, he appointed two people first. Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of Commerce, who are those people? Well, Secretary of Treasury is Scott Bessent. He to me is brilliant guy. Guess how he made his billions? Through currency exchange. Hence his secondary treasury. Now let’s go over to Secretary of Commerce. Name was Howard Lutnick. How do you make this his billions? Cryptocurrency. He’s known as the godfather of cryptocurrency. So what they pushed initially first, the genius act for stable coins. It was his whole play. And then you have the Clarity Act for to get signed into law here in a couple weeks as well, also. That this has deregulated the banking industry as a whole to where they have to go digital. They have to. What they’ve doing by going digital is they are trying to effectively take the responsibility of paying back our debt from the American people to the globe now. Because of the fact that they can now, they have now attached with the stable coins, cryptocurrencies, which is what it really is. it’s backed by treasuries and the dollar. So now instead of instead of the audience being the US citizens, it’s now every country on the planet. Why? Because when it comes to cryptocurrency or digital or coins of some sort, 95% of all cryptocurrency is done with the US dollar.

Dylan Silver (31:34)
Yeah.

LaDale Buggs (31:35)
They had to do it.

Dylan Silver (31:36)
USD. that brings up an interesting point, which is how far away do you think we are from this? Right? Are we right on the cusp? Is should people be looking at this and saying, I’m gonna get more involved in cryptocurrency? Because you see Bitcoin, for instance, what was it a high of 120,000 and now it’s at eighty seven? So it feels like it’s pretty speculative. Should people be more or less invested in crypto right now?

LaDale Buggs (32:00)
Depends on appetite. Full disclosure, I don’t know crypto at all. Zero, none. To me, it’s too much of a hype for me. as far as just buying it like that. But we have to cuss because people understand that they’re off, they’re issuing mortgages right now, a couple of cryptocurrency. Now, right now, this is talking about from an investor standpoint. Yes, this has been done already. And then you actually had the Trump administration, the Ferry and the FHA, the Ferry Housing Authority. Their chairman, I think his name is Bill Poulte, I believe. but he came out and they said, Hey, you can the retail people can now use cryptocurrency as an asset to qualify for a mortgage. It is here. Cause they have to be they have to do it because we print too much money. Guys, we’re forty trillion dollars in debt, which is a lie. It’s actually over $100 in debt because I don’t I don’t have Medicare. Medicare to Social Security in that $40 trillion figure. Medicare and Social Security are off balance sheet account, those are liabilities. If you and I actually went to actually did that, we go to jail for fraud. that’s not included in $40 trillion. So they’re lying to you here. They have no other choice but to go digital. So it’s up to you as an investor, as someone that’s in the market, you better make pivot. Because if not, you’re gonna get left behind.

Dylan Silver (33:10)
And AI is only gonna accelerate this. I’m thinking about this, is there’s a lot of people who maybe up until now have pretty much said, Well, I’m continuing doing it, this way. we’re gonna have to come to a point, and I think we’re there, probably i i if it’s me just spitballing here in the next year, where, like you mentioned, people are gonna have to go into a digital bank, right? that bank, that brick and mortar is not gonna make sense any longer for the bank, the institutional bank to have you’re gonna have to log in your phone and walk in digitally through an app into a digital bank. Right. And this will end up being the next wave. We are coming up on time here though, LaDale. Any new projects or activities that you’re working on these days, also anything you’d like to mention directly to our audience.

LaDale Buggs (34:37)
Well, right now we’re developing an app right now within our firm to be able to take your phone and make any type of novice investing a seasoned and ve a seasoned investor by just using your phone by going in and vetting a property within five minutes. It’ll give you a scope of work, it’ll give you the images, what it what it would look like post renovation, it’ll link in to local vendors here locally no matter where you’re at also. It’ll be able to pull comps as is in the ARV and let exactly what it’ll look like before and after. So you can actually have it vetted out, like on the spot. With your phone. That’ll be done in about 30 to 45 days. All right. again, AI. AI. number two, I I’m kind of making a pivot away from banks right now as far as we come to my investing. And so I’ve been asked to start a real estate investing fund of some sort that Invest in commercial, new construction, private equity VC, as well also do a lot of joint ventures. My whole thing is if I can give you the education to be able to make money in real estate, I’ll partner with you, bring the capital, we can make money together. Learn as you earn. That’s gonna be called the Cash Flow Pro. Cash Flow Club Pro Club. That’ll be launch in about thirty days as well. Also, and then lastly, man, for me. just as a side sidebar, guys, do your research on digital banking. It’s the next play. I’ve infused it into my business model and I’ve seven to eight X my return per tenant. Wow. That changed anything for me.

Dylan Silver (36:01)
Amazing. Amazing. LaDale, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for your time.

LaDale Buggs (36:06)
God bless Thanks so much for your time, brother. Enjoyed it.