SOTM 43: Lenders Prepare for Biggest Wave of Mortgage Delinquencies in History

Aaron Amuchastegui: Real Estate Rockstars this is Aaron Amuchastegui, we are recording live The Real Estate Rockstar State of the Market 43. We have some really special guests today to help me talk about the news. First, I’ve got Curtis Roddy, he’s the COO of Roddy’s Foreclosure Listing Service out of Dallas, Texas. Curtis, thanks for being on here.

Curtis Roddy: Thank you for having me.

Aaron: Awesome and we’ve got Brandon Turner. He is host of the largest real estate investment podcasts around, the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m sure you guys have heard of him. Got these guys on here today to help talk about the news. Brandon, thanks for being here too.

Brandon: Yes, this should be fun. Definitely the largest, not the best, second-best to yours but we got some work to do. We’ll get there.

Aaron: Yes, the real estate podcasting competition out there.

Brandon: That’s it. Yes. You and I we’re neck to neck. I’m a slow start. I’m like the tortoise. You’re the hare.

Aaron: We’re only like 800,000 downloads behind you this month.

Brandon: Whatever.

Aaron: We are on our way, catching up.

Brandon: Yes, it’s okay.

Aaron: This will be a fun day. Rockstar Nation, we come on here to talk about the real estate news. Maybe some of you guys remember, five, six weeks ago, we came on here and we said, “Hey, the Coronavirus might crash real estate market.” That was our headline. At the time that seemed really far-fetched. It seemed really crazy. Like you’ve heard us the last few weeks, all we’ve been doing is trying to prepare content and news to talk to you about what’s happening with the Coronavirus, what’s happening nationwide and how that is changing on a week-to-week basis. Right now, out in Austin, Texas, we’re all on shelter-in-place. Around most of the US, people are on shelter-in-place.

It seems like people are starting to feel okay. It’s been a couple of weeks but a lot of businesses are closed. Sometimes people are on social and they’re getting used to it. Sometimes they’re freaking out but a lot of businesses have closed. We’re seeing a lot of innovation out there. Brandon out in Maui, have you seen a change yet? What’s going on out there?

Brandon: Yes, we’re in shelter-in-place as well. I think they have another name for it here but that’s what it is. We cannot go to the beach. You can go in the water, so I have been actually surfing more than I have regularly. You just can’t go with other people in the water, unless it’s your family. You can go on walks as long as it’s with your immediate family only. Other than that pretty much every business is shut down. It’s a lockdown here as well.

Aaron: You can be in the water. You can’t be on the beach so you just sprint right through the sand and hope you don’t get caught.

Brandon: Hope you don’t get caught. Yes–

Curtis: Just hop on right over it.

Brandon: No, I actually heard the story there. They have this guy who was riding his bike and you can exercise, you can jog, ride bike, whatever. The sun is going down and you guys know Maui, sunsets are like– You can’t not watch them. The sun’s going down and this guy stops his bike. He just stops it and turns to watch the sunset, cop comes over and gives him a ticket. $500 for watching the sunset even though he’s on his bike.

Aaron: Wow. That’s crazy.

Brandon: Yes, they are. They do not want people hanging out. You either are exercising or– If you’re like me and you’re not good at exercising, a good way to keep motivated. You got to keep running. That’s like a $500 ticket if you stop running. Don’t stop running.

Aaron: If you’re somewhere outside and you’re not in motion, you can get ticketed. Yes, Maui is pretty extreme. I think it was maybe a couple of weeks ago, they made the announcement and said, “If you go visit Maui, you’re going to have to do a two-week shelter in a place inside your hotel.” We were supposed to be out there for my birthday next month, get to come to see and hang out again. The hotel ended up canceling and it said, “Hey if people have to shelter-in-place for two weeks at our hotel, that’s no fun. We’re not going to be the ones monitoring them to make sure they stay out of the pool, so we’re just going to close down.”

Brandon: Yes, my brother-in-law came out here. He went home for the weekend like a week ago and then came back and has to stick for two weeks. He’s working on a project for me. He’s basically at the rental house that I bought here and he just has to stay there and work all day, which is great for me because now he gets 120 hours a week. It’s great.

Aaron: Tons of productivity. I think everyone’s getting more productivity right now with shelter-in-place because people are bored.

Brandon: Yes, either that or you’re getting the Corona 15. It’s like a Freshman 15 but it’s the Corona 15. There’s a lot of that going on.

Aaron: Yesterday, I interviewed Dave Hollis and that one’s going to be published next week. One of the things he brought up is that it takes 30 days to get a habit. 30 days you form a habit. Well, we’re into these like 60 to 90 day forced habits right now. What are you going to come out of Coronavirus with? What are you going to come out of the shelter-in-place? Work hard, form a new habit or not?

Brandon: I just told my performance coach, I had a call this morning and he was– We had to think about what meaning you apply to this? I was like when it comes to like food and health and nutrition, a lot of people are going to look at this situation and go, “Well, it’s a unique situation. I’m at home anyway, who cares if I gained some weight, lose my diet, and exercise goals.” I want to look at this the opposite way. Look normally, I go out to eat way too much. Right now I can’t go out. This is an opportunity for me to really drill down on what I want to do with my body. I’ve actually uptaked healthy eating and my workouts because how you look at this, you can either look as an excuse to let yourself go, or as a good forced reason to get in better shape.

Aaron: Yes, you can go both ways. You’re definitely going to save money right now.

Brandon: Definitely going to save money.

Aaron: For people that eat out, it’s totally going to change everything. Well, let’s jump right into the news. Curtis, one of the reasons you’re on here today is so much of the news that’s all over Inman, all over the LA Times, everywhere is talking about foreclosure postings and what we’re going to see in foreclosure postings. Last week, and in last two weeks, some of the news was, if somebody’s behind on their mortgage, there’s all these new forbearance opportunities out there. What we’ve seen so far is some lenders are letting people not make payments and really in three months, they’re just going to start making payments again. It’s going to tack on to the end.

Other lenders have forbearance that three months from now, there’s going to owe three months’ worth of payments. There’s a lot of belief that when that happens foreclosures will rise but if somebody’s going to buy a foreclosure in Texas, they have to buy the list from Roddy’s Foreclosure Listing Service. Today was auction, 200 and something counties auction in Texas, what was the news today though? What happened out there at auction? People all day long, were saying will there be an auction? Won’t there be an auction? What happened overall?

Curtis: Yes, it was crazy. We had chats coming in and text messages all day asking whether or not we’re going to have auctions. Counties across the state also, there were going to be no auctions. That was a little concerning, initially to us. We saw most of the courthouses were closed. In Texas, the foreclosure sale usually has to occur on the courthouse steps, most of them are closed. We’ve had trustees and we had investors lining up outside to purchase foreclosures. Typically, we’ll have 50 or 60 in some of our major counties, 50 or 60, major sales. In those same counties, we saw 3 or 4 and so it was definitely a different vibe at the courthouse today really through it.  The exciting part was we still had sales happen, contrary to what the counties were saying.

Aaron: Right, so that was kind of the belief that there is forbearance available, foreclosure, moratoriums available but it’s supposed to be specific. People are supposed to ask for it. I think the first month the moratoriums too, people are always a little bit more nervous.

Curtis: There’s articles out there that say there’s a 2,000% spike in people requesting these forbearances right now. The lenders just can’t keep up with that. We’re in month one of this. People that are requesting forbearance right now or that were posted for the April auction probably weren’t caught up in the COVID and the crisis yet.

Aaron: I saw reports today, it’s like Brandon’s idea, the guy’s out there riding a bike, he stops, he gets a ticket. What happened to people when no sales were happening out there? Usually, your teams are out there. They’re standing in front of the courthouse. They’re just trying to provide information to people and I heard some stories. What happened?

Curtis: Yes, it was crazy. We have teams covering the 22 major counties in Texas. In most of them, we actually had sheriff’s deputies come and escort our teams off the premises. Usually, they let them stay there for about an hour but around 11, 12 o’clock, they were getting called supposedly. Most of our teams were escorted off or asked to go sit in their car.

Aaron: Yes, so run through the beach, run through the courthouse, don’t be ready. That is some of the foreclosure news we’re going to talk about today. The big news in Texas is some foreclosures happen. Significantly less happen at the first month out. In California every day, they’re used to 300 sales a day and they’re getting 20 or 30 sales a day right now. They traditionally are the strange loans. The first ones out are always the investor loans, not the FHA, not the ones that are backed stuff by a big servicer, they’re ones that have smaller servicers. Those investors are a little more gutsy.

Brandon, I sent you some of the articles coming out, one that I thought that maybe I wanted to see your opinion on because you’re out in Maui. The hotels are closed now. There’s so much of the world out there is travel. There’s a Dallas developer, this was an Inman industry news today. It says, “Dallas developer pays up for hotel rooms for medical professionals.” Dallas-based development companies centering on Americans spent nearly $800,000 to provide free rooms to medical professionals at luxury hotel, The Statler during the pandemic. We actually had a nurse reach out to us on one of our Airbnbs up in Oregon and she’s like, “Hey, I’m afraid to go home to my family right now. Could I get a discounted rate to go stay at the Airbnb?” There’s a lot of nurses out there wanting to go stay at hotels. What do you think? What do you think about that, that developer doing that says average hotel room cost $130 a night and it’s like the whole hotel?

Brandon: Communist. I’m just kidding.

Brandon: That’s a pretty hefty– What $800,000, is that what you said?

Aaron: $800,000.

Brandon: Yes, that’s a chunk of money to give away. I’m super, what’s the word? I’m cynical and so my mind is always like, “Okay, well, what kind of PR is he trying to drum up for this?” Which, who cares if that’s what he’s doing? He’s doing good and why not get a benefit out of it but that was always my like, “Did he hire the PR team that put together this article and that’s why and then published it?” I don’t know, that’s always my way of looking at it. That said, maybe he’s just being a nice person and they’re a nice company, and they’re helping the nurses. I think that’s great.

Aaron: I think there’s probably some interesting business play in there too because it’s a dead asset. When you talk about all of our Airbnb bookings were completely canceled. I’m sure hotels have mostly canceled, they’ve got this dead asset. Maybe if you’re getting government money to keep people employed. You get a stimulus to say, “Hey, our hotel workers, we could pay them to be there but no one’s going to stay there. Well, maybe putting the nurses in there helps offset it.” I would challenge there’s probably a lot of opportunities for us in real estate out there to look around and say, “Hey, do we have any dead assets out there that might be able to get help in this?” I don’t know what they are. I picture them turning schools into hospitals and things like that. Right now, the medical industry seems to have a pretty good handle on what’s happening. Nobody knows when we get to start going outside again.

Brandon: Yes, I read an article this morning. I can’t remember where it was at but it basically just said that they’re re-forecasting the virus now based on our current, what’s going on with them, with everyone social distancing and basically yes, it says the hospital should have enough room. They’re not really freaked out any more about hospitals, people having to shelter outside and die out on the parking lot. That sounds like because of the actions we’ve taken, that’s probably not going to be a likely thing.

Aaron: Do you think that means it worked? So far shelter-in-place has worked?

Brandon: It must, right? If we’re not spreading it as fast. I think the whole idea was to slow it down. It couldn’t not work.

Aaron: It is definitely slowing down. We’re still going to see what the final outcome. A lot of stuff has been written the last few days of people saying, “Hey, would it be better to have 2 million people die than have this crash on our economy?” I think for years to come 5, 10, 20 years from now, in universities, in Ethics classes, they’re going to be talking about this. The moral decision that was made that really– Maybe the stimulus is going to help but the I don’t know. I think we’re bracing for some stuff.

Brandon: You get crazy people on both sides. I’m sure you’ve seen on your Facebook. The conspiracy theories, this is the government, this is the 5G thing coming down and this is, I don’t know. There’s so much craziness out there right now, I don’t know. On both sides, actually.

Aaron: Yes, there is. Any time you have big news happening the conspiracy theories is just tripled. There’s so much stuff out there on both sides on what’s going to happen. I think the sad thing is we aren’t going to know what that is until a year or two from now or what the real stats were. Now, it’s about staying up on it the best we can, trying to forecast, look at our local markets. You’re looking at some of that, maybe the bad news says, this article posted by the LA Times today says, “Home lenders brace for up to 15 million mortgage default,” and this is from Prashant Gopal actually was the first publish it on Bloomberg. We’ve talked to him several times and he’s come out and looked at our stuff out in San Antonio. “Mortgage lenders are preparing for the biggest wave of delinquencies in history. If the plan to buy time works, they may avert an even worse crisis, mass foreclosures, and mortgage market mayhem.” Man, if that’s not a headline just to try to scare the crap out of people. Mortgage market mayhem but there’s some truth to that. Curtis, so far with postings, have you seen any change in postings for things like that?

Curtis: Yes, most of the postings we’re seeing from Bay were posted again, prior to most courthouses shutting down. I think, as far as foreclosures are concerned, the biggest hurdle for postings to show up to the courthouse is just going to be the fact that courthouses are not open and most courthouses still in Texas don’t allow for the e-filing of foreclosures. Right now, trustees typically manually, they bring down a big stack of foreclosure postings and they deliver to the county clerk. What we’re hearing right now is the county clerks don’t want to accept it. Some clerks are allowing the trustees to set up an appointment to bring their postings in but we’re still waiting to see the deadline and Texas is for the May auctions actually, next Tuesday. Right now, we’ve got a decent amount of postings. The big thing will be whether or not the June auction maintains this high in postings.

Aaron: As you get to see, I think, as they’re waiting for the news to come out, and really what the law is supposed to be because they’ll see a governor say foreclosures are postponed, or the presidency of foreclosure postponed but then the local lender saying they just said that on stage, they didn’t do anything. Then there was a judge in Bexar County that actually made a ruling and said, “Hey, there won’t be any foreclosures this month. We’re not going to let any happen.” but then in some states still did happen so then figuring out–

Brandon: Yes, started in ’07. I wasn’t going crazy then but yes. Everything I bought was a foreclosure back then. Those are good times for buying deals.

Aaron: Yes, it’s like that investment time right now. I think part of what we’ve seen, it seems like from those postings if it’s hard for people to post right now, they’re afraid to post right now, courthouses are closed, we’ve got those forbearances. There’s a couple of months, three months depending on the state and their regulations, that there will be this crazy influx of postings. Curtis, back in 2008, 2009, when there was this– How many postings you guys are having in Dallas County? A month back then and how many you’re having right now?

Curtis: Really, prior to the 2008, 2009 mortgage kind of crisis, there was maybe three or 400 postings every month in Dallas County. That’s the same for Bexar County, some of the other major counties, the crisis hit and we were up to 2,500 postings every month, consistent 2,500 postings every month.

Aaron: Per county?

Curtis: Per county and yes. That’s just in Dallas County. We saw the same kind of ratio increase across all the– It wasn’t just the major counties, it was major and the more rural counties as well.

Aaron: We’re really going to be able to follow over the next few weeks to see if the foreclosures are stacking up and all of a sudden they start hitting those numbers. If it was a 2,500 and now the last few months has been between 300 and 500. We’ll see in a few months, I won’t be surprised. I absolutely will not be surprised if it goes up and it starts hitting 1,000 a month, 1,500 a month in counties where we were 300 to 500 just months ago. [crosstalk]

Curtis: Go ahead.

Brandon: No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Curtis: If there’s a moratorium and it’s not like people are going to be able to pay everything that last day and so I can’t imagine that banks are going to continue to delay these foreclosures when they’re allowed to legally foreclose on people.

Brandon: I was going to say, I just can’t imagine a world where a 15 million mortgage– I can’t imagine a world where the US government lets that happen, where everybody just can’t pay their mortgage so everyone just loses. It’s not just those people. It’s landlords who can’t pay the mortgages. I read the other day, I don’t know eight or 10 million landlords own less than 10 properties and all those people can’t pay.

At some point, I feel the government’s got to step in and be like, all right, we’re just going to halt everything here for a little while. If this continues I’m optimistic. I don’t think it’s going to last forever. If it did, if this was six months of lockdown or a year of lockdown, no bank, no government, no person wants 15 million mortgages defaulting on the same month, or in a couple of months foreclosed on. I figure they’re going to do something.

Aaron: What do you think is going to happen? You think they’ll just reset it and say, “We’ll just add six months to your loan? How does that work?

Brandon: The problem right now of course, if you read the cares act and all with all the forbearance stuff they don’t define what that even means. Everyone gets to make up their own definition. I’ve talked to a number of my banks and everyone says the same thing. “Well, yes, you can take three months off but we’re going to make you pay all of it on the fourth month.” It’s completely ridiculous. I don’t care. Not that it’s going to help me. If they stick with that policy, that’s not going to help anybody. Nobody’s going to be able to afford it. That’s like you’re letting a tenant get behind on rent.

You guys know rentals, you’re going to let a tenant get three months behind on rent? Are they ever going to be able to catch up? No, they never do. It’s not like they suddenly just inherit money. I feel at some point what will happen, the government will probably step in and just say, no, this is what forbearance means. It means add it to the end of your loan. Or you can spread it over a year or something like that. At some point, they don’t want 15 million foreclosures to come down all at once because that’ll kill everything.

Aaron: Well, they get to remember what happened that last time.

Brandon: Yes, exactly. This would be worse than last time. Everyone remembers the pain from last time.

Aaron: Yes, people died from that. That’s another thing that happens in poverty and for foreclosure and things every time one of those happens, there’s people that struggle through that. That’s where we’re going to have that ethical conversation 5, 10 years from now. What was the right thing to do based on the outcomes?

Brandon: I looked at the Facebook posts people are like, even a single human life isn’t worth millions of dollars. I’m like are you sure? You drive a car every day and cars kill people. I feel like everything’s a trade-off of death. Everything that we do, trade-off mass death in life. Your cell phone killed a bunch of people who had to mine the stuff for it. You’re still using your iPhone every day. We as a society have to make those calls at some point on what is the human life worth and what are we willing to trade for it? That’s a hard ethical dilemma.

Aaron: Yes, and right now nobody wants to make the call that says– I think the biggest fear that happened with all of this was they didn’t know what he wanted to look Italy. Where people were in the hallway dying because they didn’t have room for them. I think everybody just pictured that could never happen in America. You could never have so many sick people that you’re having to turn people away at the door. It was like preventing that bad press thing and now we’ll see.

We got another one on Inman says, “Post-virus home price growth forecasts show spike in the West.” It says, “In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic home prices are expected to increase at half the rate prior to the outbreak.” That’s really interesting. That’s probably the best-sounding real estate news I’ve heard in a long time but they believe that still prices are going to continue to go up, just not quite as fast as before. They talk about in the West it says, “In the first quarter of 2021, that’s next year. Markets in the Western half of the country are anticipated to see the greatest home price growth. According to forecasting how many bureaus real estate solutions.

It talks about Boise, Idaho, Spokane, Washington, Idaho Falls, Idaho, Sierra Vista, Arizona. Some markets where I don’t think they’ve had a whole lot of price appreciation. It says Boise will see a 7.6% year over year price increase, Spokane will see 6.4. Big things says , “Home price trends and forecasts certainly take a back seat in more pressing health and safety issues. We’re expecting a softening of housing prices. We anticipate a rebound as soon as the pandemic subsides.” A guy that I interviewed last week, he said, “Every year on the East coast, we get three months of winter where it’s so cold, nothing happens. No one buys a house, no one goes outside, and they come out in the spring and they start buying houses again. He said why don’t we look at this as maybe just an extended spring?” As soon as we can go out, people are going to be like, “Hey, I want a house. I’ve been stuck in this little house for a while and I want a bigger house now.” They’re really going to know the stuff they don’t like in their house right now. What do you guys think about that? Do you think it’s too bold to be able to guess already and say, “Hey, we think the market’s going to go up?”

Brandon: I think it’s fine to predict and make a guess but the fact that all of this depends upon stuff that we don’t know yet. Is this going to last three months? Is it going to last one more month? Is it going to last nine months? Those are all very different outcomes on the real estate market, depending on that. Putting out an article this is again, I’m cynical, but it’s more about PR and getting get your name in the headlines than anything because we just don’t know.

I would agree with that, him actually. You ever hold back a bunch of water? I have my hot tub out here in my pool and my hot tub drains into the pool. If you sit there plug the hot tub so it can’t drain the pool, the hot tub just builds up more and more water. When you move, it’s like boom all rushes out. I think that’s the same that’s going to happen. Especially to the travel industry, I think Maui is going to be hit with the biggest travel boom we’ve ever seen because of everyone’s pinned up in their houses. Like I got to get out of here. It’s like that pent-up energy. I think if this goes away in the next month or two, I think we’ll see a strong growth this coming year.

Aaron: Did you see that picture in China? There was a thing on–

Brandon: Yes, yes.

Aaron: A few days ago they said, hey, you can go back outside and everybody went to all the big tourist destinations. It just showed a gazillion people going on this hiking trail at the same time.

Brandon: The fear is does that just restarts this whole virus thing among the population then they have to go do it again. That’s what I’ve heard some people predict.

Aaron: It’s too bad that China’s it’s such a different country than ours that we can’t follow their lead for what’s going to happen next. I guess the human condition though tells us that as soon as people are allowed to go out- I’ve wondered, hey, when we’re allowed to go out, are we going to be too scared to be around people? Are people ever going to shake hands again? Are we going to change these habits? I think maybe one thing that we can learn from that picture is the human condition says as soon as people are allowed to get out of their house-

Brandon: I’m going to get out.

Aaron: They’re going to get out of their house.

Curtis: Do you think employers are going to be quick to hire people again? I guess that’s my only concern with the market is that you’ve got a lot of people that have been laid off. I’m sure employers are realizing that they can still function without having this big infrastructure having all of these workers at an office and people are working from home now. I guess that’s my only concern with the market rebounding quickly. These last two months, yes, I think you’re right. If this is a long-drawn-out play, then who knows what’s going to happen?

Brandon: It’s commercial real estate news. We closed our offices, we had everybody worked from home. We made sure that we weren’t going to have any office rent that was due during this time. That was even when it was only last month and now we’re going to be a month to not paying our office rent. After another 30 days we’d be like, “Hey, that’s a saving that we can keep every month right now.” When people are trained to work successfully. I think commercial real estate will likely take the biggest hit from habits that will change.

Aaron: I agree.

Brandon: I think it’s going to open up more opportunities. Somebody brought up the fact that the other day to me like, “Who’s going to want to put their parents now knowing that this is a thing into big nursing homes?” I sure wouldn’t let my parents go there. I wouldn’t want them to go into a nursing home because it’s just like a festering of disease now. Are there opportunities for more real estate development in terms of almost a shelter-in-place or agent-in-place kind of thing but individual private homes? Maybe that’s going to be the next thing instead of cramming everyone in a little. I don’t know, I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunities.

I think Jay Scott, who hosts the BiggerPockets Business Podcast. He made an interesting point about half the restaurants in the country will probably go out of business in the next few months which is sad but half of them are going to go out. People still need to eat so what a massive opportunity for people who want to start a restaurant is going to be in the next few months. I don’t know. Energy doesn’t disappear or what is it? Matter is not created just transferred. I think the same thing. I think business doesn’t disappear or appear, it just transfers is my theory.

Aaron: Yes, people still want to eat. People still want to go out. I think that comment there too of people wanting to not have their parents go into a home, that’s going to maybe in real estate, it’s going to increase a lot of added value in-law quarters. They’ve always had a value to people like the house we just got has a separate building that my office runs in right now. Maybe there’ll be a separate value to that and be like, “Hey, now somebody can shelter in place a lot closer to home.” That will be interesting news. Curtis, are businesses still operating in Dallas right now? Are restaurants opening, delivering places that?

Curtis: Yes, just the standard rules. It seems like most of the car washes are open. I didn’t realize that was an essential business. It’s a little bizarre to me what’s open, what’s not open. Everything seems to be going. I was driving one of my rental properties the other day. It was 8:30 in the morning in downtown Dallas and there was no traffic. I was driving and marveling about all the cars on the road and thinking to myself, all these people are essential workers. Then I realized I’m in Dallas at 8:30 with no traffic at all. It seemed it’s not bad but I think people are definitely taking this seriously and sheltering in place and trying to ride this out.

Aaron: Are the surf shops in Maui essential? Brandon? rent a surfboard?

Brandon: The surf shops I do not believe are essential. There’s no tourists on the island right now, anyway.

Aaron: Yes, everybody that lives there has a surfboard.

Brandon: Yes, we have our boards. Yes exactly.

Aaron: There’s an opinion article that hit me today that I think is definitely worth some conversation for agents that are out there. We have so many of our listeners are just real estate agents and its headline says, “Hey, six realities your buyers and sellers should prepare for.” As you look out there, there’s a lot of things going on. I’m just going to read them off really quick and see what you guys think about it. It says that buying and selling landscape has changed. As a reminder, if you guys are listening, right now on Facebook live on the Real Estate Rockstars with Pat Hiban Facebook page. You can ask us questions, we’re going to answer them live today.

If you’re not and you want it on the future, state of the markets go to that Facebook page, add yourself to the group, we’ll add you to the group that way you can get in there. Then you can ask questions during the future state of the markets because we would love to start getting your guys’ comments, opinions, and questions about the news that we might be missing as we’re flying through here. Back to “Six realities, your buyers and sellers should prepare for. Buying and selling landscape has changed” Seems pretty obvious right now. The transaction will likely be socially distanced.” We’ll come back to that but I think that’s an interesting comment.

“Now’s the time to try to take advantage as buyers might be tempted to throw out multiple lowball offers at sellers to see what will stick. Delays will inevitably happen. Adjust your expectations and accept that you might not have all the answers.” I’m going to start with that one for the big beginning thing that’s like the big thing that everybody needs to remind themselves right now. Whatever was normal will never be again, we will come out of this in a different normal. Life will be forever changed. The varying level of what I think will be changed, we’re going to find that out.

Business is going to be done different for quite a while. That idea of just coming out of this accepting that you might not have all the answers, and being honest with your clients, being honest with people, and just go, “Hey, we don’t quite know how this is going to impact yet. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know how it’s all going to work.” Accepting that you don’t have– This one is tough, it can be easy to panic about the thought of the unknown. Will things get better after mid-April, when the temporary closures are open? With arbitrary dates and deadlines, you’re going to have customers asking you like, “Hey, what should I do? Will it get better? Will it get worse?” I think it’s okay just to say, “I don’t know but I’m going to educate myself the best we can.”

Curtis: We’re hearing that all the time, it’s on a daily basis, customers asking, “Should I pull out of the market right now? Should I keep trying to buy properties?” I think we’re giving them that same answer, like, “Here’s an educated guess, based off the data that we have and the articles we’ve read. Three months from now we’re going to look like geniuses or is going to be a totally different landscape.”

Aaron: Yes. Brandon, one of them says, “The transaction will likely be socially distanced.” What do you think that means? What do you think on that?

Brandon: Yes, couple of thoughts on that first, I closed on a property a couple of days ago. This is pretty normal for me anyway but I had a mobile notary come to my house. We didn’t shake hands. I did all the transaction stuff right there. The seller did the same thing. That’s pretty normal. Now in some states, I don’t know what Texas is like. Will they actually make the buyer and seller still sit down at the table together. Is that Texas?

Aaron: We can do mobile notaries here.

Brandon: Is it normal to sit with a seller– Some states that’s normal. You wouldn’t buy or sell a house without being at a table with them.

Aaron: People still ask me, will I be there with the keys? I do tell them no, I’m doing the– I think it is customary for a lot of the transactions that happen where people are shaking hands at the table together.

Brandon: Yes, I think that’s going to end with this whole thing and that should end. It’s the weirdest thing, you just have this weird awkward three months negotiation and you’re buying their house and it’s so emotional. Then they force you to sit in a room with somebody, I don’t know. They’ve made me fly to Ohio. I bought a property in Ohio last year, they made me fly into Ohio to meet with the seller at the same time at the table and it was really uncomfortable.

Aaron: How big was that property?

Brandon: It was a 24 unit apartment building.

Aaron: Okay, that’s probably worth the fight Ohio.

Brandon: Yes, it was probably worth it. I think it was more of the lender wanted me there so he could build a relationship with me thinking I was going to buy more, which I didn’t really buy that much more. Anyway, so the signing, I think that’s a big thing. I interviewed a guy on our podcast comes out this coming week here. They do work in Dallas, they’re doing 125 wholesale and flips every year in Dallas.

He said what they’re doing right now is, they’re advertising, “We will buy your house, or we will sell you a house, 100% virtual.” Social distancing. When they’re buying a house, they’ll go and bring an iPad, and wipe it off wearing gloves, hand it through the door that’s mostly closed and so the person will go through and take the tour of their own home, or they do it on a Zoom call. It’s like they have all these systems set up for actual closings of social distancing. I thought it was interesting.

Aaron: Yes. We had some sales over the last couple of weeks for agents called ahead of time and said, “Hey, has anyone seen the house in the last day?” Because they only wanted to show it if no one had been there in the last day asked permission if they could go. it used to be like, go and check like, “Hey, is it okay, and is it safe to go?” We’ve seen people doing a lot more of the video call interviews. One of the technologies out there that has started to get better and better over the last few years, is that walkthrough technology out there where people can do the 3D virtual tours, where you can click through it.

I can’t imagine buying a property like that all the way but I could imagine narrowing it from 10 houses down to two, based on the things because some of it is, “Needing to count bedroom sizes or is there a bedroom near the master for my kid or something?” I think a lot of that technology we’ll start to see that. What about notaries? Curtis, you’re a notary, do you think they’re going to change some of the notary laws to be able to have people do it remotely and whereas not just a mobile notary but where I could sign on a video and have somebody notarize it?

Curtis: Yes, we closed on some properties last week, where they said, “Yes, it’s fine to have just a video notary.” I don’t know if state laws are going to adjust to that but I know lenders are saying, “Hey, you can notarize this over video.” You’re attesting that you know who that person is and typically when you see a driver’s license over Zoom is going to be just as good verification as if it’s in person. I don’t see a lot of reason to have in-person notaries.

Aaron: The notary itself is the one taking the risk on it, right? I sign I FedEx it to you, you stamp it at that point, you’re the one saying, “Hey, you’re taking the leap and the risk to say, I believe this is his signature that I watched him sign.”

Curtis: It’s also easy enough just to go to UPS where they always have notaries and spend $6. Instead of trying to find a notary to come to me, we had to close on three deals, and I just drove to UPS real quick. I don’t think it’s as big of a hassle yet. Now, if they said UPS and postal services are not essential, then I think we’ll see some modification to those rules.

Brandon: Agreed.

Aaron: So far, the UPS is essential. The CEO of FedEx and UPS are sitting at a table with Trump and they’re other talking about how are they going to keep going around. One of the things that Pat said six weeks ago when we were like, “Hey, is Coronavirus going to be a big deal?” At that time, he said, “Donald Trump wouldn’t have asked for two and a half-billion dollars to fight this thing. If he didn’t think it was a big deal.” That was before any of this had broken out and now it’s a $2 trillion thing. At the time, he was trying to get ahead of it and said, “Hey, let’s pull some money and be ready for some of this.” That was before they knew the shutdown was going to be part of it.

Transaction will be socially distanced. I think that is definitely changing. Buyer and seller landscape is changing. One thing on here it says, “Now is not the time to try to take advantage.” I read that wrong. It says, “Buyers might be tempted to throw out multiple lowball offers at sellers to see what will stick, they might feel like they’re entitled to a deal during these unusual circumstances. Stop. While you can certainly try to negotiate, trying to rub salt in the wound of what’s already trying time probably isn’t going to go over very well. That’s a moral piece of advice.

Brandon: It’s written by such a hippie.

Brandon: We want everyone to feel good during this time and we want to give sellers hugs. We would actually like you to overpay for a property because that will make everybody feel better and help the industry as a whole. We’d actually prefer if everyone just doubled their offer. Let’s just do that.

Aaron: We got to pay everybody more.

Brandon: We pay everybody more because that would make everyone feel better. Yes, I think that’s ridiculous.

Curtis: Got some houses I’m selling.

Brandon: Yes, exactly. On my house as you can pay double. I’m going to still make low. I don’t think sellers are going to adapt to this new market quite as quick as buyers will. I will throw out a lowball offer all day right now and hope to get something. I don’t think sellers are going to take it but there is zero downside to me doing so, zero downside to me making an offer.

Aaron: There’s never been a downside to that and right now some of those people might be like, “Hey, I know that if this was a normal market, I could get my full price for it, but I also don’t want to wait 90 days so it’s a normal market.” You never know. I think there’s a problem with not doing that is if it’s only worth 80 cents on the dollar to me, I should be writing that offer because there’s a chance they need that offer. There is a chance they want that offer because they’d rather sell it for 80 cents on the dollar.

You just did a huge deal out in Maui and we were talking about it like a few weeks ago, he was right when this was starting to happen. I was like, “Are you going to go through with that? As a buyer, did you change any of the terms because in general, I think any house is worth less today than it was three or four weeks ago. Did you take that into consideration when you bought that house?

Brandon: Yes, we did. A couple of thoughts we put into it. One, when we put our offer, and this is just a lesson I learned, the contract we use was a fairly boilerplate, purchase and sale agreement that

didn’t specify what would happen if we backed out. The fear I had was that they could sue me for non-performance. They were trying to 1031 and it would have screwed up their other deal. It could have been a legal mess, so I didn’t want to back out. Lesson learned. I should get a better contract, which I’m working on.

That said, we still push because this whole thing collapsed around us. It sucks for the seller, it sucks for us. I’m afraid. I was afraid of going through the deal, a little bit nervous. We were in contract for 935. We ended up dropping it down to 899. We basically just said, “Look, the world’s changed,” so we needed more of a discount. I was hoping for more than that, but hey, $35,000, $40,000 off was still good. It gives a little bit of breathing room.

Then a buddy of mine actually convinced me, because we were going to flip this property. He actually mentioned to me. He’s like, “Well, think about it this way. You bought this property, tried to sell it, it didn’t sell because the market’s kind of crazy, you end up holding it for a year. Now you pay short term capital gains that are long-term. You can break even on the cash flow. You’ll just sell it a year from now, or two years from now, or three years now, and probably make more because of the taxes than you would have anyway.”

I was like, “Oh yes, that’s true.”

In other words, what I did is I made sure the reason I went through with it and the reason I’m still buying in today’s market– I think we put six offers in last week on mobile home parks. The reason we’re still doing it is because we have the backup plan and we’re going to rent these things out as long as it takes. We’re living on cash flow still and we’ll still survive. I believe cash flow is a good defense against losing your property. As long as you can cash flow or break even you can’t lose. That’s how I’m looking at it.

Aaron: Speaking of Brandon and his mobile home parks, if you guys don’t follow Brandon on Instagram– You’ve got 100,000 followers on there, but you have this big offer you have out there right now if somebody finds you a mobile home park. Is that still going right now? You think-

Brandon: It is.

Aaron: -that more and more people are going to need to come help you?

Brandon: Yes. What we’re doing is we’re basically just saying, “Hey, bringbrandonadeal.com.” We made the website bringbrandonadeal.com, and it’s like, “Hey, $50,000 if you find me a mobile home park. An off-market mobile home park.” Why not get other people involved in the grand scheme of things? If it’s a $20 million purchase or $10 million purchase, what’s $50,000 for a referral fee? We can handle that. We just put it into our numbers, make sure the deal still works. There’s a lot of people sitting at home right now not making money or bored to death. Why not pick up the phone and start calling?

That’s what we’re doing, is we’re just trying to get other people involved with helping us find properties because we’re still buying.

Aaron: We can agree that we don’t necessarily think that is great advice on there for the– I think stuff is going to have to transact right now. I think values have changed. I understand, I’m not adding insult to injury, but just send over an offer because maybe somebody wants to close it. I sold one of mine for a lot less last week than I thought I was going to because I just want to sell it. I would rather not have an extra property right now.

Brandon: People tend to put their own bias into their seller’s mind. They’re like, “I don’t want to offend them with a low price offer,” but you might be offending them by not making an offer because really in their head they were okay with an 80% offer. They just needed to sell in the next three weeks, which now you just offended them. Now you just ruin their life because you didn’t make an offer, because you put your bias in their head.

Aaron: Anybody can always say yes or no to a deal. Curtis, did you sell any houses this week?

Curtis: We’re getting the lowball offers, but as an investor you’re always getting lowball offers anyway. Kind of like Brandon said, when we purchase properties we’re happy to flip them, but we also buy them knowing that we could have to rent them out. As long as we can cash flow as a rental then we’re happy to buy. We’re going to keep the properties that we have listed. We’ll keep them listed if they don’t sell with an acceptable asking price and we’ll just rent them out. Like Brandon said, two or three years we’ll either keep them in the portfolio or we’ll sell them and realize those gains then.

Aaron: This next article, I think the headline might be a little skewed and unfair. Inman came out yesterday. It says “Keller Williams franchises consider reducing agent profit sharing.” A franchise owner confirmed that they were suggested to roll out all expenses into the current April budget and able to hang on to more cash. If they do that, then all their profit share agents are going to get less of a profit share. I read it and as I looked through that I was thinking– because there’s lots of different agency news going on, there’s agents closing. Another article, same time, says “Redfin is furloughing 41% of its real estate agents.” The company announced it’s also laying off 7% of its staff.

I think there’s two strategies there. In times of crisis there are strategies. There’s one strategy that says you lay people off, you close offices, you close overhead, you close expenses. It’s good; I agree with that. Another strategy that I remember seeing, this was back in like 2006 and 2007 when I worked for this homebuilding company. Right when the market started to crash they had some cash. What they did is they paid for our office space for the next 12 months. They paid cars off for the next 12 months. They purchased a bunch of things to know that no matter what we could survive for the next year if we had to.

I think there’s two interesting strategies on that, and it ends up looking like, “Well, there’s less profit shared.” Yes, it’s about survival. We had David Osborne on here a couple weeks ago talking about, “You got to put your oxygen mask on first. If you’re going to be a business owner you put yours on first because when the economy comes back you need to be able to hire people.” What do you guys think of those two articles in general? We’ve seen a lot of agencies are doing the same thing. Have you guys heard it from agents where you’re at? Do you think there’s a philosophical reason why you should want to do one or the other?

Curtis: Maybe. We’re seeing a decrease in real estate activity. It’s not as sexy to list your house right now. I don’t know if laying off agents is necessarily the right answer. I think they’re just trying to make a reaction. The people that keep going right now, like you said, they’re going to be able to keep going after this crisis is over.

Brandon: What is it? What’s the stats? You guys probably know the stats more than I do, but 10% of agents make more than 90% of the other agents, whatever. It’s like vast majority of agents don’t make anything anyway. Those are the ones getting furloughed, laid off, not working, and going to struggle. Everyone’s struggling a little bit, but I don’t know. I think that this is going to cull the herd of the 4 billion real estate agents that are in America today. The cream of the crop will rise and they’ll be fine, and everyone else will go find another job.

Aaron: It’s time to work hard. It’s time to work hard and double down. I’ve said this several times over the last few weeks. I spent the first few days realizing this was a big shift. Closing offices and looking at expenses and doing whatever I could to make sure I could survive for the next nine months. You’re kind of following that strategy of pay off what you have, make sure you’ve got enough to pay all of your expenses in case you make no income over the next nine months. I did that.

For three days I was super sad, then on day four I woke up and said, “All right. Now we got to start doing some webinars today. Now we got to start creating new products. Now we got to start reaching out to our customers and see what they need during this time. It’s the time to innovate.” I think there will be plenty of people that have dabbled in real estate. I don’t think there’s going to be very many people right now saying, “I’m going to leave my real estate license.”

Not very many people next month are going to say, “You know what? I really want to get in and start selling houses.” I think it’s going to be a little while, so there’s an opportunity for the cream of the crop to rise. When you’re reading those headlines out there of this company’s doing this, just read the article because the headline is very different than the description and how you can take that. It’s the same as the news of coronavirus that’s out there. You could see each article as one way or the other.

Just our last couple of articles. We talked about the Dallas developer. This is maybe the funniest one. It says– as I pull up to the top of the article, “10 cities best prepared to weather a coronavirus-fueled economic storm.” It’s titled “ANALYSIS” on Inman, and it goes through and it says, “While most Americans are anxious as the coronavirus pandemic widens and veins its way into the center of the country, some cities are better prepared than others.” This was a new study that Redfin released. Redfin released it. Their motivation, I don’t know what their motivation is.

It says, “Rochester, New York. The industrial Upstate New York City has relatively affordable home prices.” Now, when I think of New York right now I do not think someone is going to weather the coronavirus storm very well. Maybe there’s something I’m missing. “Hartford, Connecticut,” it says, “At one point, the capital of Connecticut’s high vacancy rates lead experts to believe it was poised for a future crash,” but now it’s doing good because of jobs. “Raleigh, North Carolina; Buffalo, New York; Kansas City, Missouri has a 39% risk of falling into an economic recession. For the time being at least, the number of coronavirus cases is low though.”

All of them have a version of it. Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Virginia; Pittsburgh; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Indianapolis, Indiana. If you lived in one of those cities or invested in one of those cities, do you invest in any of those cities, Brandon or Curtis?

Brandon: I don’t think so. Columbus, Ohio, I’m right outside. Not quite outside, but I’m up in Northern Ohio. That’s about the closest I got.

Aaron: What I think is funny about lists like this, I was telling you guys this earlier, I feel like half the time they’re just like– I’m a marketer. I write blog posts and stuff like that. It was like, “Grab 10 cities quick and tell me why they matter.” I thought I’d feel like most people now. I’m sure there was some more logic put into this. They didn’t put Maui in here because Maui is just getting decimated because it’s all tourism. Obviously, they had a little bit of thought into it. What I thought was interesting though is where they say these are the 10 best, and they all have 39% to 45% chance of economic collapse.

Curtis: You have 43.2% chance of economic risk due to the virus. It is like pulling stuff out of the air.

Aaron: Yes. I’m like, “What does that even mean?” First of all, that would mean every other city in America, the other 50,000 cities, are greater than 45% chance of economic collapse, maybe. Where do we get these numbers from? Some of them say risk of economic collapse. Some of them say economic risks due to the virus. That’s two totally different things too. I think every city in America has an economic risk right now. I saw the jobs report this week that said all these jobs are down. Hospitality was obviously the biggest down in March, but the government gained 10,000 jobs. I guess the only part where you’re stable is going to be DC when the government comes in.

If you were going to change that around, if people were going to look local, I would say don’t take articles like this and bank on them. Know your market, know local, look at the stats that are out there to try to prepare yourself. If you guys are going to take the same question and say is there a part of the real estate industry that you think is more at risk due to coronavirus, and a part that’s less at risk to your current virus, what would each of you say? Starting with you, Curtis. Do you know which ones you think are going to do the best and the worst in this?

Curtis: Just like during those other downturns, the more at risk are going to be the new luxury markets, the ones that are dependent on tourism. I think the properties or the markets that are going to be less at risk are going to be the lower income. Like in North Texas, you have the $150,000, $200,000 house, there’s always going to be a demand for that. We’re always going to have blue-collar workers in North Texas, and those jobs aren’t going away. We’ll see a good spectrum of that across Texas, and I assume all of these other markets too. The funny thing is, I think a year ago, Aaron, you sent me an article. I was in McKinney, Texas, and you said, “McKinney is the worst place to buy a house right now.”

Aaron: Yes. That was on MSN Money. The worst place in the world was where you lived.

Curtis: Yes. I was like, “That’s crazy.” The article was just like this, by the way. Even the styling. Probably the same author or something. You said that to me and then the next day I actually went and searched it, and McKinney actually was ranked the number one place in America to live. I don’t know that you can give any weight to these. Like you said, where do you choose Richmond, Virginia from?

Aaron: What do you think, Brandon? If it’s not a real estate market, is there a type of real estate you think will do better than others?

Brandon: I think commercial real estate is going to struggle a little bit because all these companies, they realized they can have their people work from home. I don’t think it’s going to be that severe. Even if you can work from home, most people in the world don’t want their employees working from home, whether or not they can or not. I think there’s still a certain energy that people like in office. I think it will be okay. Vacation rentals, I think are going to suffer for a little while. Though I’m not saying it’s a bad time to buy a vacation rental. In fact, I think now might be the best time in human history to buy a vacation rental.

Let’s say you’ve bought something right now from a desperate seller because vacation rentals right now are making nothing. You buy something, get a great deal on it. When this thing goes away six months from now or a year from now, you’ve got a great rental property, a vacation rental. I think it’s going to suffer for a little while. I would not invest in large nursing homes right now, [chuckles] but in affordable housing, I think there’s always going to be a demand for that, just like you said, Curtis. That’s where I’d probably focus my efforts, and that’s why we’re buying mobile home parks because I think that there’s always going to be a demand for the lowest income housing you can get before homelessness.

Curtis: You know you can lease more vulnerable areas? Let’s just say senior housing. They’re going to have COVID certified or something like pandemic certified. Like, “Hey, we have the best air filters out here.” Or, “You have your own AC unit,” or something like that, where people are going to be able to take advantage of this.

Brandon: I could see that being a marketing thing going forward.

Aaron: We’re starting to see that on Airbnb. People marketing is like, “Hey, we’re COVID friendly. We bleach everything between every guest.” We have a certain list of things that people will do. I know my personal Airbnb investment in California and Oregon are both hurting right now. We’ll get to see how long that lasts. Maybe a personal question to each of you guys. Concerts. We were going to be going to New York for a Broadway show, and my wife was going to be going to Phoenix for some concerts.

Do you think that once people are allowed to get back out, or maybe even you personally love something, are you going to be like, “Hey, I’m ready to go to a concert right away”? Do you think people are going to go to basketball games again, and soccer games again, and concerts? Do you think it’s going to take a while or do you think industries like that will come back up quick?

Curtis: I personally think it’s going to take a while. I’m sure that the NFL stadiums are going to be full. I don’t know how long that’ll take. My wife and I were just talking about football season starts, are we going to get season tickets? My answer was no because I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not comfortable bringing my family out. I’d like to see what else happens to the herd before we do. I don’t know if that’s going to be the mentality that the average American family has, or is that just going to be the people who are a little bit more risk-averse?

Aaron: You’ve got young kids.

Curtis: Exactly.

Aaron: Brandon, you have young kids too. You think you’re going to be ready to go to concerts and stuff like that again?

Brandon: I would jump on a cruise ship next week.

Aaron: That’s the one thing I wouldn’t do is a cruise right now, even though I really love cruises and I would love to do it. I think cruises are going to be decimated, and they’re going to be decimated for a long time.

Curtis: Didn’t we see people getting on cruises last week? I can’t believe they haven’t just shut them all down.

Aaron: It is good they haven’t shut them down. How many people out there don’t believe anything that’s going on right now? They’re just like, “This is a government conspiracy to vaccinate.”

Curtis: Yes, they’re out there.

Brandon: Those people are always going to be out there, so they’ll still be going to stuff. I think within a couple of weeks of being freed up, everyone will collectively forget this period of life. I think you can go back to concerts and sporting events. We have to just get past this entirely before that will happen though. Until then fear is going to drive people. You get in a car accident. For a few weeks maybe you’re nervous, won’t get in the car, and then you get back in the car and you’re fine. It’s not a lifelong fear usually.

Aaron: That’s a great point and a really a hopeful point to it. Yes, as humans one of our survival techniques is we remember bad stuff that happens to us, and another one of our survival techniques is we forget a lot of the bad stuff that happens to us. We can go on and be happy again. We’ll get to see stuff like that, function again, but if you don’t believe in any of it you can probably get a great deal on a cruise ship right now. Flights. Whereas a flight and laydown seats from Dallas to Maui would have been $8,000 round trip last month, they’re $1,000 right now.

Now, when you get there you have to stay in your hotel for two weeks, but still, there is a way that– Buying flights right now is a deal, and if it’s time to buy season tickets for one of those football games I bet they’ll be less expensive right now than ever before. The last article as we look at some good and bad news, back to foreclosures really quick. It says, “This is where we’ll likely to see the first wave of coronavirus-fueled foreclosures.” Personally thinking, Las Vegas, they were one of the first to shut down. So much of their income there is based on hotel workers and casino workers that make so much on tips, and that’s not going to be covered through any of the stimulus.

It said, “These counties have the highest foreclosure risks. About 14 of New Jersey’s 21 counties were ranked in the top 50.” That makes sense to me, they’ve got a coronavirus outbreak right now, followed by 10 in Florida. According to the report, four counties in New York, three in Connecticut also made the top 50. The only Western and Southwestern counties that were at risk was Shasta County in Northern California near the Oregon border and the Arizona Navajo County near Phoenix. It said that homeowners who bought there recently at the peak of the market, they’re going to face the biggest issue, and it increases the chance of what happened in the great recession back in year 2000 through early 2010s.

The Midwestern states are pretty much immune. On the other side of that it says though, “Here’s the counties with the lowest risk.” This all came from ATTOM Data Solutions, and ATTOM, they provide a lot of great nationwide data. If you’re going to get Texas foreclosure data, I’d be getting it from Curtis and also over at Roddy’s, but for nationwide foreclosure data they’re great. They said, “These are the counties that have the lowest foreclosure risks.” One that Curtis actually mentioned earlier is that on the other– Texas led the nation with 10 of the 50 least at-risk counties on the list. I think that’s because prices are so much lower and so many properties out there have equity right now.

It says three of these counties were in the Dallas Metro area, two were in the Midland area. The Lone Star State was followed by Wisconsin, seven of the least risky counties, Colorado with five. That’s looking at statistics out there for where the coronavirus is, where jobs are and where pricing is. They went into a lot of different details beyond that. We’ve talked about there’s going to be a whole lot of extra factors that come in, but can you guys either be thinking of something that agents or investors should be thinking about out there as they start to look at that news?

Foreclosures is one of the news. It’s also a news piece, and one of the reasons we got Curtis on here today is because we knew that foreclosures were so much in the news, but that’s a word that the news agencies like to say. Is there anything else that we should be paying attention to out there when you’re thinking about the market?

Brandon: My thought is the same advice I’d give whether it’s a real estate agent, whether it’s an investor, whatever it is. You’re playing a game of Texas Hold’em. For those who don’t know, Aaron is a very good Texas Hold’em player. I played in a tournament one time and he just cleaned up and just took it in one play.

Aaron: It’s just this one time. One time [crosstalk].

Brandon: You were a rockstar. A couple of cards are on the table right now. There’s three cards on the table. I don’t even know the terminology. The run, is that what it’s called?

Aaron: Yes, the run in the river.

Brandon: Okay. We don’t know what those cards are going to be yet, but you’ve got a couple of cards in your hand. All we can do is play the cards to the best of our ability right now with the three that are on the table, and we can make decisions to better not bet based on that. When a new card gets flipped over we’ve got to change our entire strategy because that’ll make us fold or bet. We don’t really know. To use it like a poker analogy, I guess, if you’re a real estate agent right now, what’s the best, best bet?

If I was doing that I’d be focused on things like foreclosures are coming, how do I become the guy who’s listing all the foreclosures around here? How do I become an expert at that? What books am I reading on foreclosures right now in the process? Who am I building relationships right now with that will help me level up for that? If it doesn’t happen, if a new card gets dealt and everything goes away, no foreclosures happen, okay, now do I shift? What am I going to do now? It’s not really a specific advice as much as it is just pay attention to what’s going on and adapt your situation quickly to whatever cards are being dealt.

Curtis: I think you hit the nail, Aaron, when you talked about all the people that are buying properties, they have been buying properties or probably have equity built into them. I think in areas that you would have been more likely to see foreclosures before this, you’re still going to see it. You’re probably going to see more foreclosure increase there. To use Brandon’s analogy, if you have three aces in your hand you’ve got a great– It’s not like you’re going to have a high card ace or something like that. You’re likely to still be okay at the other end of this.

Aaron: Yes. One thing that I would be telling people to look at right now, because there’s a lot of real estate-related stuff to see, what’s happening with the market. Look at how many new listings are coming on every week, look at how many are pending, kind of that traditional stuff. What I’m focusing a lot on right now is actually the medical news. When do people think we’re going to get shelter-in-place lifted? I think that is going to have the biggest impact right now. They said, “Now we’re down. 30 days from now, New York is supposed to hit its peak.” To me, that means that 60 days from now New York gets let off of shelter-in-place because they’re not going to let you out during the peak.

They’re not going to release shelter-in-place at the peak of it and if they’re 30 days away. I would be looking at your local markets for where that peak is. I would be looking into ways to get yourself different when it talks to you’re looking at the– Are you ready to social distance? Are you ready to look for the listings out there that have the 3D tours, things like that? Have those conversations with agents now to see what’s the way to communicate, and in the same lens with those buyers that they’ve got to be looking at. Look at what’s happening in the health news out there and then what technology out there is going to help you.

Curtis and Brandon, you guys were great today to come on Real Estate Rockstars to talk about the market. Brandon talked about if you guys know of a mobile home park out there go to bringbrandonadeal.com, but you can also hear Brandon every week at the BiggerPockets podcast. He is rocking it over there with our good friend, David Greene. They talk everything investing, and you guys have been talking about a lot of the same stuff. You’ve still been interviewing people out there, but so much of it is, “Hey, what’s happening over here?”

You can find Curtis over at flsonline.com. Any other ways people should be reaching out to you guys if they’ve got questions and they want to ask you about foreclosures or mobile home parks or any of that? What’s your preference for how they can find you?

Curtis: Yes. For us, it’s always going to our website. We’ve got lots of resources. We’ve got a chat. We’re actually always monitoring that chat, so go in there and then monitor that. We’ve also got a Facebook page, Roddy’s Foreclosure Listing Service. You can post questions there still. We’ve got a lot of other useful content for both investors and real estate agents.

Brandon: I’m like a 13-year-old girl when it comes to Instagram so you can find me there, beardybrandon.

Aaron: Beardybrandon, and his beard is getting bigger every month. The listeners out there that are on the podcast right now, we are definitely encouraging you to go to our Facebook page, Real Estate Rockstars with Pat Hiban. Ask to join the group. We want to get you on there because next week when we do another State of the Market we want you to be able to ask questions about what’s happening in the news.

Send us some articles too. Get on there, send us articles earlier in the week, let us know what you want us to talk about. We want to talk about the news, and the news is so much corona right now, but hey, it wasn’t all bad news today. There was some hopeful stuff and some actionable stuff. Thanks for joining us on State of the Market.