SOTM 67: Washington Could Extend Eviction Ban for Two More Years

Kelly Skeval 

Hey, Real Estate Rockstars, this is Kelly Skeval, the guest host today with Aaron Amuchastegui. And we’re going to talk about the State of the Market.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

And Real Estate Rockstars, this is Aaron and we are both back. Kelly has agreed to join me again for another State of the Market where we get to talk about the news. And all of the crazy stuff we’ve seen is the first week of February, we’re a few days away from Valentine’s Day, Kelly, if you guys don’t remember, she was on episode 904 as a successful real estate agent up in the New York area, she also did a State of the Market with me just a few weeks ago, once last month and on here so I don’t have to talk to myself as we get to talk about the fun news. So what’s new in New York today?

Kelly Skeval 

We are under like two or three feet of snow up here right now. We keep we keep getting hit with it. Like you know, we got like 12 inches then we got like another eight. And then we got a little reprieve and now we’re being hit again. This morning, there was like three or four inches.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So do people do real estate when there’s two or three feet of snow?

Kelly Skeval 

Especially in this market right now. I’m still out showing houses all the time. I was at an appointment yesterday. There’s no stopping anyone.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

I guess you guys are used to up there. So I’m out in Austin, Texas. And it snowed for the first time in five years here like a month or two ago and the whole world shut down. It was like no one drives it and no one anything. It was like it was like the quietest snow I’d ever seen because literally no one even drove their car. Today we’re seeing like a freeze outside. It’s super cool all sudden went like 20 or 30 Oh, and we’re getting kind of some hail and stuff and people are like close the schools. It’s really bad out here. So they are to you guys up in New York are used to where I grew up in Oregon. We were always driving around in heavy snow. You must be used to it.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

But I wasn’t doing real estate then. So I didn’t know if people were like, yeah, show me the house. What do you do for inspections if like half the house is covered in snow?

Kelly Skeval 

So the inspectors will like put a disclosure in there that they couldn’t see the roof. And so they can’t they can’t make any evaluation on the roof. So and yeah, I think I’m trying to think the only other thing if like your doors, your basement on the outside and they can’t get in the vehicle doors are covered. But otherwise, it’s mostly just like assessing the roof that causes an issue on inspection.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

And I guess maybe they have pictures to show where the grass was or where the bark was or anything because they’d have to guess right what the outside of the house looks like.

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

It is fun stuff. So today you actually got some articles together. I have a few fun news articles that I’m bringing to the state of the market. You have some that you’re bringing what is the what’s the first one you found we’re going to talk about.

Kelly Skeval 

So the first one is that the one about Sylvester Stallone. It was a fun one. Just a fun one. Listing his house.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, I love seeing the big celebrity listing. So that one says Sylvester Stallone lists a knockout mansion. I love it. How clever they are realtor.com for a heavyweight price of 110 million. Did you look into that? Did you see like what kind of house it was?

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah, so it’s like an eight bedroom. Eight bedroom, nine full baths. Three and a half or sorry, three half baths and it’s on 21,000 square feet. 

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So now I’m looking at views or views to drive three and a half acres down there. What a crazy thing as you get to see the pictures. The pictures aren’t all that extravagant. The best part, if you look at the picture, though, is like the second or third one of the living room has all of these like artistic drawings. It looks like Sylvester Stallone when he was like an early boxer.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Right giant window walls. I mean, that is a market that I really, you know, I think a lot of those high end markets, just they just throw these people just throw numbers out and there are like local real estate experts that know what happens. But I remember you know, Michael Jackson’s ranch was on the market for 100 million or hundreds of millions or something for years, maybe like 10 or 15 years. Yeah. Before it’s sold. And the and some of those are like you know, if for me anything over two or 3 million is like somebody just has a ton of money. So the so when you get to like 100 110 someone’s like Yeah, I like it. That’s easy. I don’t think people are financing that.

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah, this is a he sold another one for three and a half million not that long ago. Like I was like 3.5 million I think he sold it for maybe I’m reading that wrong.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

That is a big difference. I you know, I think I think the people that would and it said semesters moving because he bought a palm beach compound in December for 35 million bucks. Yeah. So you’re gonna add him to the people that are moving from California to somewhere else. And Florida is where a lot of people moving to, and Texas. I don’t think people are moving from California to New York right now. I think people are leaving New York and vice versa, especially with the snow that you guys have. But are people moving from New York to like Florida to right now?

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah, Tennessee. Tennessee is a big one. Yeah, I keep hearing for years, we’ve been hearing about how people are moving out of New York pre pandemic. I think you guys have you guys, have you done high taxes in California too, right?

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, California had high income taxes. Texas has no income taxes, high property taxes. You know, there’s pros and cons of every state. One thing they don’t have in California, I was telling people last night is bugs.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

You start to go to these other states, you hear bugs, you see bugs, you see cockroaches, cages, things like that, that just don’t exist in California. It’s not a thing. But the I bet the person that pays 110 million is going to be a rocky fan. But listen, if you guys want to go see that one, go check out realtor.com search Sylvester Stallone. You could see the house that he’s selling for 110 million. And he’s downsizing by buying the $35 million compound in Florida instead. And I’m sure it has a boat dock where he could park his yacht, and he’s not going to pay. I don’t know Florida has income taxes. But people like Florida right now. People are loving Florida. So the so let’s see what I’ve got. I don’t have anything as cool as that. But I have two articles that I wanted to combine that are really super interesting. So one was, you know, so the paper that says Washington scrambles to avoid mass eviction as much as moratorium nears the end now, the rent and eviction moratoriums kind of keep getting extended throughout the US. And we’ve talked a lot on here about people being behind on rent and what we even think when you were on here last time we were talking about like tips and things to do when renters aren’t paying. We have in Texas, we have some some renters that aren’t paying we went to go look for have them apply for the stimulus that was for that. And and just last week, they opened it up on January 27. And by February 4, all of the money was spent in the cities that we were in and it was that quick if we didn’t get it filled out. I don’t think the form ever even came online, right? They had like said like, Okay, now we’re accepting it, but they were using old forums. But within one week, all the money was spent, I made some posts on my Instagram for people to look and see kind of how much money got got sent to their city and their state. I had a lot of people reach out and request that but I was surprised to see how quickly at least that first run got spent, I think there is still a second run from that new stimulus that will be sent out. But if you didn’t get it the first time and your landlord or your tenant, you want to apply right away, because it’s all going to be spent within four or five days of it going out. So this article is saying even as the number swells in the states eviction moratorium is up in Washington. Governor Jay Inslee extended the moratorium multiple times most lawmakers lobbyists and advocates expect March 31 will be it’s true and at least at the state level. So this is one thing where they’re saying hey, we think it’s going to be over and they think March 31 is going to happen. This is a staggering amount of estimated rent debt means that even 365 million in federal rent relief soon to be appropriated. balls, well short of what’s needed, courts will be inundated with eviction filings to the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance. And that’s what we’ve seen in some other places, too. So expanding tenants rights is necessary. This is from representative Nicole Macri in Seattle, because current state laws and adequate our residential landlord tenant act never imagined that there would be 200,000 renters who couldn’t pay rent at the same time. And then there’s people on the other side of that too, there. The other reason I wanted to bring this up. So right now they’re saying, hey, it’s going to come to an end. But they’re they’re really worried there’s 200,000 people will be in eviction because they haven’t paid rent since March or April. And I agree with that concern. I think it’s a problem. Then somebody that actually is an investor in Washington forwarded me an article from the rental housing coalition that said, SB 5160, extending the governor’s eviction ban for two years and permanently altering the process. So just a couple weeks ago, they were voting on this. I don’t know what the results of it yet, but it was absolutely terrifying. They’d be considering something else that says absolutely, absolutely terrifying as an investor as a landlord, or even as a real estate agent, because it says the 5160 would prohibit landlords from terminating or refusing to renew a lease that expires at the end of the lease. So just like hey, you had a one year lease at the end of the lease, you say, okay, you’re moving out, you can no longer say You’re moving out, it presumes that any no cause termination notice issued to a tenant for any unpaid rent that accrued between March 1 and the end isn’t valid. So March 1 2020. So if somebody stops paying in April of 2020, you can’t actually evict them for that until the moratorium ban and two years from now. So a renter could actually live in your house as a landlord for two years, nine months having never paid. And I mean, this article that got sent out so if you’re up in Washington, check out sb 5160. But it says it prohibits landlords from even inquiring about considering or requiring a disclosure for making sure that they have you know that they pay their rent. It’s it says, before any collection action for unpaid rent accrued, it has to be for rent before March 1, you have to allow repayment plans, and you can’t even reach out to them to insist that they pay rent. So you can’t even not do you can’t file eviction, but they don’t want you calling and say like, Hey, you still haven’t paid your rent. You imagine if something like that gets passed, does that the most extreme example you’ve heard?

Kelly Skeval 

The repercussions of this, right? So like, so these landlords are not going to be able to make their mortgage payments, right, they’re gonna run out of if they have reserves, they’re going to run run through those reserves in almost three years. And then but then they can’t, it’ll be difficult for them to put it on the market and sell it because there’s non paying tenants in there for potentially another two years. I mean, so there’s gonna be more foreclosures, like it just, there’s like so many far reaching issues.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

It seems like such an extreme example and an extreme plan that I can’t imagine how it plays out, or it works or helps people. We were in escrow to buy a house this week. We were supposed to close on Tuesday, and the seller was supposed to deliver it to us vacant. And on Tuesday, they reached out and said, Sorry, our tenant didn’t move out. They were supposed to move out last week, it was the end of their lease, they didn’t move out. You know, do you want to buy it anyway? And we were like, No, well, first, we said, well, what are they paying for rent? Because we were going to put a renter in anyway. So like, maybe this works out? Well, they were paying $800 a month in rent, but the market rent for that is 1600. So so it was like, okay, we don’t want them but then it was also like, scary to think like so if some if a renter just isn’t going to move out at the end of their lease, they decide not to move out. And the local eviction court isn’t even hearing the eviction cases, because of all the moratoriums you’re like, so that’s a prime example of what you just said, right? Like somebody’s going to have a really tough time even selling their property. I love to remind people I put when I posted it on Instagram, I had one guy reached out he’s like, Oh, my heart cries for all those landlords It was like a real like a cancel rent mentality. And I just said people don’t understand that most landlords are like, people that are own a second house. Like most landlords aren’t huge institutions. Most of the landlords in the US are individuals. And most of the houses in the US that are renters are actually owned by somebody who only owns one other property. So they’re not people with deep pockets.

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah. They don’t have the reserves. I mean, even if you did, and had reserves, there’s no I mean, who has two years, almost three years worth of reserves to pay for that. Sad.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah,  so if you guys are agents up in Washington, and you’re paying attention to sb 5160, reach out, message me, let me know what’s happening. What are people thinking about it? Is it totally a scare tactic? Or is it a law that’s going to happen because I think it’s really just going to change the market. I mean, even it’s gonna change resale value of anything just because I wouldn’t want to be a landlord there right now.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

All right. Well, you have anything else? You have any other happy articles, any other fun articles? What do you got?

Kelly Skeval 

Let me see. So this is one that I’ve really, this is a subject that I’ve been really liking. It’s the one on, let me make sure I say it right, Housing economy brightspot, but regulatory affordability challenges persist.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, super weird. that real quick report came from the NHB. The National Association of homebuilders, right?

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah. Yep. On February 9.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. So it looks like it says housing affordability will continue to be a top concern. A lot of articles have been about that. What does this one say about affordability? And what’s going to happen?

Kelly Skeval 

This one speaks a little bit more about like the new bet the new construction and new builds. And you know what kind of what that’s looking like. And so they had a bunch of stats in there. Actually, I guess I’ll just go through it like you do.

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah, let’s see. So they talked about, you know, how the the single family homes generated strong price gains in 2020. And then it goes on to talk about even though there was price gains, while supply side pressures such as resurgent lumber prices, a shortage of buildable lots inconsistent access to building materials and a regional skilled labor deficit foreshadow higher costs and longer build times this this year, in 2021. A changing regulatory landscape threatens to further erode housing affordability and make the tight inventory environment worse. So this is interesting to me. Because as a real estate agent, and with my buyers getting into these bidding wars and really having to go way over their comfort level and like purchase prices, I’ve been actually talking to clients where it makes sense that we’re we’ve been looking for vacant lots and building. Now all of our builders are backed up into the builders that I work with are now backed up into next year, they’re scheduling into 2022.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

What a crazy thing. So an important part in there that it says, you know, so lumber prices alone are increasing the build at least $16,000 on a typical single family home, like typical 2000 square foot house, it’s cost them an extra $16,000 to build right now, just from the cost, just from the lumber increase? Yeah, that means if it was $30,000 lumber before now, it’s $45,000. You know, so that’s, that affects things and then with everything taking longer, I think that there are people that are like, let’s build houses instead, I think building houses is going to be one of the answers to the housing shortage. But also as a results having the all the supply gone. I think there’s so many reasons the supply is lacking, right? So someone’s getting shipped from, you know, other countries and kind of that has slowed down everything around the US food supply is really hard right now, if you order a playset for your backyard, it takes four months for it to show up. Right now.

Kelly Skeval 

We ordered a couch for our house in December, and it’s not supposed to be delivered till April, like we totally forgot about it.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Oh my gosh, by the time it shows up, you’re gonna be like, “Whoa, that’s like a surprise.” Everything right now is like that. So our RV that we bought an RV this year to try to when we went on the road and started interviewing people and all the replacement parts when something broke, they’re like there actually aren’t manufacturing any replacements right now. So yeah, really strange time definitely going to affect that supply and demand. So I said, Hey, so, so demand is still high supply is still so the demographics look good for the 25 to 40 age group. The problem is a dearth of new and existing home sales, the number of existing homes for sale has never been lower. Why the pandemic it says, you know, current inventory stands at 1.9 months supply around the US there’s less than a half a month of supply in Austin, Texas right now, of houses. That’s the lowest it’s ever been since they started tracking it, you know, a gazillion years ago. And since that single family rents are up three and a half percent over the last year while rents on multifamily properties are down 3%. So I think that also tells you that the people that they’ve seen in the pandemic, like even renters are saying we’d rather rent a house than live in an apartment having having a little bit more space, you know, things like that. So my expectation is a single family built for rent construction market share, which is currently 4.5% will grow from five to six. An interesting thing about this, so a week or two ago, we’ve been trying to buy houses I mean, I’ve been telling everybody we like write all these offers, and we wrote like 20 full price cash offers within hours of listings coming out, and we got not accepted or we got like one or two accepted, but there was a new home community that just got released on the same on the same day last week, all these different lots five different builders and and they’re it’s rental product it’s new homes for rent and we need more rental product out here. So we gotten a contract on every single lot in that community. We wrote full price offers to that every builder and love it in that community. And the and so we’re gonna own we’re gonna buy the whole community. Community. Yeah, because we’re writing. We’re writing full price offers on Zillow and realtor.com. And we can’t even get titles, I think new construction by the time the new constructions done nine months from now, it’ll probably be worth more than the remainder.

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah, I mean, and that’s, that’s why I’ve been pushing my clients, you know that where it’s a right fit, and it’s not a right fit for all of them. But if they’re going to be, you know, bidding wars and they’re getting outbid on properties that they still don’t have, they still need some cosmetic upgrades, they’re not checking off their boxes, we might as well find a builder, you know, then there’s predictability. Right? They know when they they know, they can rent a house or an apartment until whatever date next year, you know, resign for one year lease or whatever. And they can even with it. For me, I feel like even with the increased cost to build that we’re hearing about, you’re still getting, you’re still not overpaying, you know, because in the in the existing home market, there is a cost to buy through the roof.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, it used to be that, you know, and for all you guys listening out there that hadn’t considered new homes yet for your clients. It used to be that new homes would sell for 10 to 15% more than the same plan even from a year ago. Because if somebody if somebody moved into a new home, and wanted to sell it a year later, it would be for 10 to 15% discount, because people wanted the new homes instead for the warranty. So used to be this huge premium. So new homes are always 15% more. Well now as the market is getting so high on the on the resale side. Now new homes are getting a little bit more affordable. Now those builders will raise those prices. But one of the things in Kelly’s article is that it might take six, nine, 12 months for the house to get built right now. Depending on where you are, look at what prices have done over the past six or 12 months. If you think it’s going to continue to stay tight. You know, your clients can get into a new construction right now. And by the time that the builder is done with it, hands it to you it could be worth more than they offered. Or you know, the same with like building a house like getting land and building make sure that you get that contractor locked up soon. Because people like why don’t wanna wait next year to build and you’re like, well, like it’s, I don’t see anything that’s going to change the supply dramatically where you’re this part of the businesses, I don’t think there’s also going to be a bunch of supply. So get on the list, start checking out new homes, even though they are going to cost you more. I guess it’s not too surprising. The prices have gone up that much. But that is is really interesting. So let’s see what else I got. I got so New York City, man, I feel like I’ve been harping on New York City and San Francisco lately, but I’ve also interviewed several people, several agents for both New York City and San Francisco. One recently that was like, hey, New York City’s gonna come back. He lives downtown. He loves it. The you know, and he’s, he’s confident with that. But two articles that came out in Bloomberg, the one says on February rents slide in New York City in San Francisco while cheaper cities surge. So kind of in line with your last article. And then New York City apartment landlords getting burned in gentrification crashed. That one I think is going to be pretty interesting. So really quickly, rent slide in New York City, San Francisco, all cheaper cities surge, flexible work policies have given Americans permissions permission to move, driving up apartment rents and suburbs and lower cost cities and pushing landlords to slash prices in New York and San Francisco. We’ve talked about this a bunch like people, San Francisco, New York used to be really expensive to live in people needed to workers especially needed to live close to their jobs. Now they can work from home, why wouldn’t they move to a house and so we’re seeing apartment prices go down single family rent prices go up? rents fell 22%. So let me see over this timeframe first. So it says rents fell 22% San Francisco 16%, New York and 9% in Boston. It’s not saying if that’s year over year or month over month, but I know a 22% rent fall even if it’s year over year is not good. They climbed 6% Memphis, Tennessee 5% and Phoenix. We’re seeing rents increase on average 10 to 11% year over year right now in Texas. So when the renewals are coming up, a lot of the rents are 10 to 11% higher than they were the year prior so big city rents slide San Francisco, San Jose in New York getting the biggest decreases Boston it’s it’s down a little bit. So rent is 9% cheaper this year in Boston. It’s only 6% cheaper in Seattle, which that’s kind of a surprise to me, because of all the craziness of Seattle has been in the news for this year. And then a related thing to New York apartment investors suddenly waist deep in distress. By December they were behind on $395 million of debt back to mortgage bonds almost 150 times the level a year earlier. Tenants rent stabilized units, at least 1 billion in rent and wealthier ones are fleeing the city lead mine vacancies and pushing newly built luxury towers into foreclosure. So that’s the part about gentrification is the anything that was like, imagine have been under construction on some of that giant stuff down. Have you guys talked about that at all out there where you are?

Kelly Skeval 

Not really, we’re so far removed where we are from, from the city. And we don’t have, there’s like a couple builders that you know, do big, big projects here. But they, they none of them were in the middle of a bill. So we’re just getting ready to get them off. And I know that they put those builds off to see how things you know, to see what happens in the pandemic. But no, we haven’t really talked about that much out here.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, you know, and I think what it’s really talking about is these super high end, condos and apartments, ones that are built for, you know, luxury, where they were, you know that one bedroom, one bedroom apartments for 2500 bucks for 2500 bucks a month, all these different deals going on. And a lot of them are in default right now. $46 million mortgage in default on on a big building, all sorts of stuff. This reminds me of in 2007, 2008, last housing crash. Then Las Vegas had a few giant buildings that were you know, almost done with construction, they got foreclosed on. And they were about to be like the biggest luxury buildings ever. And then they ended up getting foreclosed on. And a few years ago, they got resold and now they’re getting finished. And now they’re getting occupied. And they’re great real estate, but they literally sat for like 10, 11 years, with nothing going on. And I wonder what might happen because those are, those are a few of those assets that feel like there’s no short term solution, because they were pro forma to be a really high end rent. And now it’s like to show do they spend the money to finish these things? They spend the $20 million to finish these things, only to have them be 10 or 20% occupied? Or do you sit and wait and have this giant building sitting and waiting the one in Vegas because it was like exposed to the weather for so long? Like it like it was like sinking and other like it became more construction after the fact. But I’ve only seen that the only one I can really think of from the last crash that that happened was in was in Las Vegas, and it was a super, super interesting deal. I can’t think of any others from past stuff where you’ve seen like a giant hotel or something crash.

Kelly Skeval 

No, not we’re such a small like I’m in such a small town.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

I’ve never lived in Las Vegas either. But I’m fascinated by some of the biggest builds. So what else? Yeah. So what’s your next one? You had something about Houston? Houston construction?

Kelly Skeval 

Yes. Yeah, that’s the one about warehouse occupancy. Get my thing back up here. Here we go.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

The Wall Street Journal article. That came out February 9.

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah. So this one yeah. This one is says Houston warehouse construction risks creating glut. And this one talks about how a building search for such facilities in a Texas City over the past three years is driving vacancies up and rents down. About 8.5 million square feet of new space warehouse space was built just in the fourth quarter of last year.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, talking about the timing on that. So said rush to build during the e commerce boom is now leading to an oversupply in Houston. So it was kind of like when COVID first hit I think a lot of people talked about Texas was going to benefit with you know, people bringing labor back to the US instead of outsourcing because of worries that the pandemic may have on these other cities that don’t really have. So, in the US for example, people can work from home. Everybody has internet from home in some and a lot of common places where they’re outsourced, you know, Philippines and India. Not everyone that is a great worker has internet at home, or has availability to it. So there’s a lot of talk about a lot of those jobs, we’re going to move out to Houston I remember I saw several podcasts on it back in March and April. And so then they kept building they kept building you know, so the they’ve been building so much construction out there. That’s like the only that’s like one of the few sad spots in real estate right now. Right like the vacancy is going up. So we’ve been talking about you know, rentals in San Francisco rentals in New York. But it’s remembering on the commercial side the commercial side pretty much nationwide is struggling and warehouses are struggling to it’s interesting Their plan was is distribution centers for online retail you know have been the the recent stars the commercial market, but then there’s Houston and so you see like all these like last mile Amazon facilities getting up like a whole bunch of things that people are doing. That’s like great real estate right now imagine having Amazon as a tenant, except they’d probably just out negotiate me on everything. They would just keep going. We’re just not gonna we’re just not gonna pay this month. And we’re gonna be like, or we’re gonna show off your deliveries at your house. I’m like, Alright, fine. It’s fine, your necessary evil you do whatever you want. But But Houston Yeah. It’s really interesting, such a hit there, you know. And so there’s people from out of state, you know, looking into the Houston market, but now they’re talking about kind of buying that warehouse and distribution as a distress. A lot of construction happening in Texas. There’s the there’s SpaceX stuff, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of companies moving here from out of state, but I don’t think they’re moving to Houston. And I don’t see anything in the news that’s going to be changing that. Listeners, as always, if you guys know a secret, if you know something that’s going on in Houston, that will, you know, change that. But right now, it’s definitely standing out is one of the one of the few places where warehouse construction is slacking, there’s articles specifically saying, hey, warehouse construction around the US is doing great because of tenants like Amazon. But in Houston, it’s doing the opposite. And vacancies are going up. And it’s losing value. That is that’s really interesting. My last funny one, I shouldn’t say funny with this. But the last thing that stuck out to me, I couldn’t believe it was an Inman article. I had to take a second, a second look at it. And then it said, One in five criminally charged capital rioters have faced foreclosure. So the I mean, I don’t know how many people are actually getting charged for the capital riots, the name of this article, it says 125 defendants on Wednesday. So Washington Post took the 125 defendants that had been charged with the capital riots. And there’s I don’t know how many 1000s of people there. So they didn’t get very many of them. Or they didn’t choose to go after very many of them. But it said one in five is in bankruptcy or foreclosure. And, you know, they went through to kind of try to see that. So I thought that was, that was interesting, because if nothing else, it talks about really what people are like, what people are going through. And some people are wondering why people got so passionate and what people are out there. And the other side of it is I mean, I definitely agree with eviction laws and foreclosure laws, I think they’re there for a reason, and they create stability, but the pain of being in foreclosure, the pain of being an eviction, I, I couldn’t imagine a greater stress that’s also placed on someone and I think that that was part of part of what happened, especially what the post is saying. What do you think about that? 

Kelly Skeval 

I mean, it’s sad, right? But I agree with you, it makes sense. Like, our emotions, when we’re under that kind of stress, that kind of financial stress what we do with our emotions, and how we react, and then with the news you consume, and you know what I mean? It all just kind of feeds on itself. And, yeah, it’s, it makes me kind of sad.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. You people should listen to Real Estate Rockstars radio instead of, instead of the news, cuz we do that. We do. Like, we do the Real News. People say I’m a little biased about stuff, but it’s but I think my bias changes on a weekly basis. So the good, the good thing is, I changed my mind a lot. So if you want to get advice from me, don’t worry, I won’t stay one way too much. I like, I really like to pivot my ideas. 2020 was the my biggest year pivot and the, you know, and maybe a couple months ago, like the market is about to crash. And then last month, we’re like, Let’s buy everything we can because I think we got another year of this. So we’ll see. We’ll see if I’m right or not. But But man, I think it would be an interesting article for them to look at those 125 I bet there’s way more to the story of the people that were there too, if they went into how many people are on unemployment right now. Yeah, or, or even just crimes on a national basis right now of crimes that are happening, how many of them are on unemployment? How many of them are facing foreclosure? The the biggest catastrophe to me is still been that there’s plenty of people that want to work and those jobs are shut down permanently. You know, God bless my friends in Northern California. I’m getting to fly back and see them this weekend. But they are, but they still aren’t eating inside at restaurants. And the I mean, in New York, you’re obviously where you are, you can’t eat outside right now. You’d be under three foot of snow.

Kelly Skeval 

Oh, they made the cabanas Some are. So some some places we can eat inside. But some places have heat cabanas, put up with heaters in them. And I’m like I I’m getting so cold. I’m like that I know that can still has to be like 50 degrees at best.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Isn’t that funny? A friend of mine was at the Ritz Carlton up in like, it’s like east coast of California. It’s up by this ski lodge. So it’s like on North Star. And he’s there for his anniversary. So the shout out for you, Tyler. And he shows the picture. And they’re like eating outside in like 30 degrees under a heater. And they’re like, can look into the window and see this empty dining room. And they’re the only ones there and you just go like, Oh, man. Yeah, I still think that’s the biggest tragedy over the last year is there are still a just a ton of people that are suffering and a ton of people that are struggling because their jobs don’t exist right now. Yeah. And it’s it’s really tough to go pivot and find another job when every month you’re told next month, it’ll be back to normal. So the at least you know, when people know like, Hey, your industry is shot, they’re gonna pivot they’re gonna go find other things. Lots of good service industry workers that should be joining your real estate teams out there listeners. So the if you haven’t started going and asking about your, you know, the people that used to be your favorite restaurant server that aren’t there anymore because they’re out of work, go find them. Go find them on LinkedIn or go find them on Facebook, see if they want to join, join your real estate team, because there are some prime candidates that would really crush it in real estate that also need it right now. So the that is Kelly, it’s awesome to have you on here. Did you have any other articles that we have one more that I missed?

Kelly Skeval 

Oh boy. Here we go. So this one is the Forbes article on how the pandemic continues to affect the commercial real estate market. So this one talks about office space. So office space in that the demand for space has been impacted by social distancing, shutdowns, quarantines, layoffs, remote work, and as a result for commercial real estate has changed dramatically. So yeah, they’re talking about like, there’s still a demand. But whereas they were looking before for spaces, the gyms, lounge areas and meeting rooms. Now the demand is for good indoor air quality, touchless technologies, appropriate distancing between office cubicles, and some businesses are going for a blended remote and in office model. So I thought that was interesting that the demand is still out there for commercial real estate office, but they’ve just like you were just saying they just have to pivot.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Right, like prices are down. So they started the article was saying, is it a good time to invest? And you look at that and go, maybe, but one of the like, so in one in one sense, I personally believe that, yeah, commercial real estate is gonna come back and a lot of places, maybe not everywhere, but it’s kind of come back. But a guy that I interviewed already from Austin, I interviewed him a couple weeks ago, and he’s a commercial developer, and everything’s changing, right? So they’re making it to where the elevators don’t have buttons that the offices now have windows that you can open and get fresh air. And that used to be like a danger, because someone was going to fall out a window and now and now they’re like, well, they want to make sure that you can open a window on the 100th floor. And then the other side of that were like more social distancing. So it’s like, so maybe people are going to come back to an office, but and they need less space because of less employees or because of working from home, but they need more space per employee. So they might not be saving money. You see what I’m saying? 

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Like for businesses to come back, they’re like, hey, maybe they if all of their employees are going to come back, they would need two or three times the square footage they had before to get those extra amenities, the touchless amenities, I bet there will be a business and people buying some of the old commercial stuff, and retrofitting them for this sort of thing for the social distancing and the touchless. Man, I don’t know if it’s just a personal thought, but I hope that in three years we’re not so stupid, like, I am not stressed to get on a busy elevator with people or even or if I should be or I should I don’t want that to be forever. I know there was a time when when we could fit 30 people in an elevator and it you know and it stunk and was uncomfortable but it wasn’t like we were gonna do that it was like a health hazard. I just I someday I hope things are somewhat normal again, I don’t really I don’t really like I don’t really want to accept that offices are going to be totally changed for the future although I’m seeing that they are making it just makes me a little sad personally.

Kelly Skeval 

Yeah, I agree — all the changes are it’s just a lot to take in.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

But the but the quick pivots, right? The people that are smart enough to say what do we want next? Those will be the first commercial buildings to fill up again. The ones that say like the ones that are catering to the new normal, whatever whatever that word is the we will see Kelly how’s your so we’re almost out of time our State of the Market but let’s jump to so how is your how’s your business going? Now in the last month, you’re showing buyers homes, you have a lot of stuff in escrow right now?

Kelly Skeval 

Oh my gosh, it’s crazy. It’s like January 1 hit and all the buyers came out, and they were like we’re ready to go. And of course there’s no inventory. You know, normally in the winter we’re not we’re not seeing multiple offer situations or bidding wars and it’s already happening. So yeah, it’ll be another fun year.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, I’d be I use I remember in March talking to some people that said, Well, usually the wintertime like in like Boston or like usually the winter time Real Estate’s really slow. But you know, so we’ll just stay indoors till then. And we’ll just expect you know, they’re like, this is just like winter. They were kind of they were like we’re kind of used to the market getting shut down a couple months a year, and it’ll be fine. And now it’s like people are pushing right through it. Well, Kelly Skeval from New York, thank you for coming on and talking to me again today. Real Estate Rockstars, thank you for listening. And Kelly, I can’t wait to have you back on again. Thanks for being here.

Kelly Skeval 

Thank you, Aaron. I always love chatting with you.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Alright, talk to you later.