If you shut down your mind and let others decide for you, it’ll ultimately lead to the blame game. But at the end of the day, you are responsible for your results, which is why you need to know for yourself. What does that mean? In this part four of theTodd Langford series, Todd and Patrick Donohoe discuss how having experts can be helpful, but you need to know the facts, processes, and perspectives for yourself. When you do, you start to lead the course of your life, and you become invincible. Take the lead, begin with this episode. Not a second waste, dive in!
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Why You Need To Know For Yourself With Todd Langford
Entrepreneurs inspire me. I love meeting leaders of successful ventures who discover an idea, formulate the business, and then execute. You’d assume that they know how to structure their personal finances. I believed that too, but I was wrong. Entrepreneurs are never taught to effectively manage their wealth to work alongside their business and lifestyle. All of that work effort, toiland time wasted. Entrepreneur 101 is an online course that teaches you a financial strategy that works, so that success is not a flash in the pan but lasting. The spirit of the entrepreneur doesn’t have to be compromised. Register for the Entrepreneur 101 course for free at TheWealthStandard.com/ENT.
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In my experience, people seem to make decisions and think within frameworks. Most people’s frameworks are incidental and over the course of their life created haphazardly, not by design. There are others who intentionally create or develop proven frameworksin which they think and make decisions. Elon Musk is a name that most of you will recognize. I noticed that in many of his interviews, he references something that he credits to a large part of his success. It’s the way in which he looks at things, thinks and solves problems. He calls it first principles.
First principles are fundamentally breaking something down to its foundational building blocks that something could be a problem, an objective and then from that foundation, reasoning upward. Musk also contrasts first principles in these interviewssaying that most people think by analogy. Thinking by analogy is doing what everyone else is doing, but trying to improve it slightly, improve it by variation, instead of asking the question, “Why does that exist in the first place?”
Let me give you an example. I did an exercise with my team that was interesting. I had each of them complete a simple mazeas quick as they could. The quickest time was around fifteen seconds or so. I then asked them if they thought they could do it three seconds faster than their original timeif they had the opportunity to do it again. All of themraised their hand. I asked the question, “Could you do it in less than a second?” None of them raised their hand.
I then showed them a red line that went around the maze. It started at the same starting place, ended at the same finish line, but didn’t go through the maze. It went around the maze. I showed them a line that went right through the maze because I never said that the maze wasn’t three–dimensional.This is first principles thinking. Trying to go through the maze quicker is thinking by analogy, understanding the foundational objective, which is starting and finishing, leads you to find even better ways. Musk is an iconic figurebut this is a thinking model that has been used for hundreds of years.
What does this have to do with wealth, personal financeand investments? Only to consider the possibility that you are approaching your finances by analogy. That at least has been my experience working with thousands of clientsand me experiencing it personally. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to improve a little here, a little there, improve the rate of return, the risk–reward ratio, potentially get into something with fewer taxes? We’re trying to improve on what already exists.
Take a moment and ask yourself why. “Why am I planning? Why am I strategizing? Why am I investing? What is the ultimate goal? What are you trying to achieve?” Most people will say retirement. That is a very abstract idea because it’s different for anyone. There was a couple that I interviewed a few years ago that run InternationalLiving.com. They hosted twelve beautiful locations around the world that you could live on like a king or queen on less than $30,000 per year. Some of you may say,“Financial independence. Financial freedom.”I ask the same question,“What is that to you?”
Let me give you an example specific to those ideas. I was speaking to a client, very successfuland entrepreneurial physician. He wanted to meet because he felt he should be diversifying out of the market and into real estate. I asked why. His initial response was,“I want passive income. I kept going down this track.” Ultimately, he said he wanted to be financially free. I asked him the same questionas I asked you generallylike, “What doesthat mean?” I gave him the example. I said, “Right now, there’s a handful of locations throughout the world that you can live on for the rest of your life, your kid’s life and their kid’s life.”We started to break down what financial freedom meant, what it means to him. It was a realization that he had never come to before.
Know For Yourself: If things don’t map out exactly like your mentor said they would, it’s going to be on you to make the decision and make the adjustment.
The majority of the financial world is thinking by analogy.They’re trying to improve on what already exists with slight variation. That’s under the assumption that everyone knows what they want. That collective advice has conditioned you and me to some extent but I want you to step back now and think about your life from a first principle’s perspective. Start asking yourself new questions. What do you want financially? What’s the result you’re after? What will that give you that you don’t have right now? What are the underlying assumptions of what it will take to have that? From there, I have an infographic that I found and you can follow that infographic to reason new assumptions and new possibilities. Now to a segment of my interview with Todd Langford. Enjoy.
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It’s the very reason we can’t shut our mind down in whatever it is we’re doing. I’m not saying don’t bring in the experts to guide you, but there’s a responsibility on your part to take that a little bit further and say, “Ifthis happens, how do I react to that? Ifthings don’t map out exactly like this professional who saidit’s going to go, it’s going to be on me to make the decision and make the adjustment.” I’ve got to keep my mindopen and I’ve got to be able to understand at some level what it is I’m being told and not just take it hook, line and sinker.
Unfortunately, like I said, we’re going to be the ones that are responsible for what the results are. If we shut our mind down, the only thing we can do, which is where the society has gotten at some level, it’s the blame game. “It’s not my fault. It’s because somebody else told me this. It’s because I read this. It’s because I did that.” If it was somebody else’s information, you are ultimately responsible for it. You have to takethe effort, timeand keep your mind turned on.
When youexperience fear, it ultimately comes from the nature of risk or there’s anunknown. In large part, the future is what’s unknown. There’s a part of us that thrives to establish certainty or safety. It’s one of those naturalinstincts and invariablywhat happens is when you place the control or influence of the future on somebody else, it creates an amplified amount of risk and subsequently more fear. It’s not you that has come to a conclusion. It is somebody else that has come to a conclusion. You are ultimately leveraging them because you don’t have responsibility or skin in the game to the discovery of the assumptionby which you’re acting on. The fear is not going to go away. It’s going to go up.
The thing about control that we’ve talked about in the past, we want to push in that direction. I liked yourwording of influence. That’s probably abetter word we’ll get into maybe a little later on. We’re never completely in control.The idea isthelevel of control that we can secure is probably indirectly proportional to the amount of anxiety we have. That’s what the issue is. As soon as we start to give that control up willingly to somebody else, it’s got to raise our level of anxiety because we’re now in a period of hope. Hope comes out instead of being able to direct the course.
That’s going back to the simple example of an airline pilot. They don’t know what the environment is going to be like but they have the instruments and training so that as the environment changes, they know what to do. Technology responds to it just as much, if not more than the pilot.This is the ability to influence. You can’t control the environment. Environment’s going to be the environment. People are going to treat you a certain way. You’re going to wake up with energy one day, with not much energy one day. You’re going to wake up and something happensto government, laws, your employer, to the clients you haveif you’re self-employed.There areall things that are going to happen that are outside of your control.
That’s where you establish a degree of certainty aroundinfluenceso that when that environment changes, that is when you are able torespond. There’s a preparedness there. That’s what mitigates anxiety and fear. When it comes to the financial Math side of things, people these daysare concerned aboutmoney and theirfuture. What’s the environmentthat they’re making conclusions about what could go wrong in the futurebased on? How would you describe that environment?
Part of it is the unknown. That’s where a lot of that fear comes fromand then you hear people rattling stuff around about, “What happens ifthe dollar disappears? What happens if this or that?” Bad news, unfortunately is exciting for a lot of people. People want to be the first one to tell whatever different news it is in some formand add their bias to thatabout how they think it’s going to happento drive emotion. The bottom line is we all make decisions based on emotion. We make decisions based on our beliefs, not necessarily on the truth. That becomes a discipline or a conscious effort that we have to separate our beliefs, hype and our natural tendency to go to the fearto step back and be able to say, “What is the truth? What is it that I have influence over? What can I change in this scenario to fix that?”
It goes back to what you were saying about the pilots.It’s to have those tools in place and the knowledge. That’s one of the biggest tools we have is using our brain and that’s one of the things that’s easiest to shut down and let somebody elsefill that void of that differenceis just turning your brain over to somebody else because they’re a professional,and then when you get into a crunch, what do you do? Because you’ve given up your best tool. That’s your brain to be able tothink through what’s going on. I think knowing that you have that tool is akey piece.
Know For Yourself: The bottom line is we all make decisions based on emotion. We make decisions based on our beliefs, not necessarily on the truth.
The guy that I was listening to is Sean McDowell, Josh McDowell’s son.One of the things he talks about when he was teaching kids was the idea of knowing something versus knowing you know something. There’s a key, huge difference in those two. What he talked about was this. He had students that knew the answers, but they might fail a test and then he had students that gave a little bit more effort to the point that they knew the answer. The difference is in knowing the answer and writing the wrong thing down because you can talk yourself out of it versus knowing you know the answer. In life, that’s a big piece. When we know what we know, we’re invincible because we can rely on our knowledge to get us through an anxious time instead of reverting to the fear and talking ourselves out of what the real answer might be.
The environment now is interesting because there’s so much information, perspective and opinion out there. The degree of understanding when it comes to Math and Science is, in large partsinstituted by a system that people just don’t like. How many kids do you know that love going to school? If you don’t have an enjoymentor curiosity associated withlearning, you’re going to be checking boxes and learning in order to pass a test as opposed to learningto have knowledgewhich is more of the practical side of things. You have an interesting environment where life is pretty easy when you compare the way in whicheven someone in aless fortunate circumstance in the United States has likely access to healthcare, shelter, entertainment that kings of old didn’t have anything close to.
We have reached an age where we reward people for their deep specialization of knowledge. Now, we have experts who have become multi-millionaires from leveraging what they know best. The downside is how, by being someone whose opinions and insights are held at a pedestal, it can be so easy to lose other people’s trust when you admit you’re wrong. Patrick Donohoe explores this topic by bringing back his conversation with Todd Langford, the CEO of Numbers Analytic, Inc. Here, they unpack the idea of the role of mathematical truths and what it informs us of the constants in a non-constant world. Dive deep into this brief but insightful conversation on individual specialization and how the uncertainties of the future impact what we do.
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Mathematical Truths: On The Constants In A Non-Constant World With Todd Langford
Humanityand life are messy. Every morning, we wake up to this individual awareness of what’s going on that no one else has. Our self-awareness recognizes our vast imperfections, our past and present mistakes and shortcomings, and our taxing insecurities if we’re being honest. We then venture out into a world of billions of other people who are in the same situation, and then hypocritically judge and discriminate against those who manifest imperfections or differences. Likewise, we envy and scorn those who live up to society’s lofty expectations or at least hide them well. As I said, humanity and life are messy.
We’re fortunate to live in a world where we don’t have to think that much anymore. It’s a world that no longer rewards generalized knowledge such as the breadwinner of a family knowing how to till the land, break a horse, hunt, skin animals for food, defend against predators, build a house, patch a roof or build furniture. Nowadays, the demand and the rewards go to those with deep specialization of knowledge. Specialization has led to multi-millionaire status by learning how to entertain viewers by opening toys or gifts on YouTube and maybe winning professional video game competitions. Deep specialized knowledge spreads across a wide range of subjects way too numerous to list here but I hope you get my point.
My purpose here is to identify that with increased individual specialization comes even more trust in the specialization of others. The paradox is that trusted sources might do more to protect pre-existing trust than to deepen their knowledge. More often than not, deepening knowledge requires admitting or at least being willing to admit that you may be at fault. You may be wrong. When you admit you’re wrong, you lose trust. I hope you enjoy this episode’s The Truth About Money segment with Todd Langford.
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That’s when the development of knowledge is in red. It’s in the experience of testing and proving in the real world. That’s where we’ll go next which is this balance between math, factual truths of the equationsand how they apply to a non-constant world that’s ever-evolving. Adding a layer to that is as human beings, we all have these limitations. We have to have sleep, eat food and drink water. We can’t just operate at full level–ten awareness and capacity for very long. We’re constantly seeking ways to conserve energy.
When you accept the truth, it’s almost as if you’re now able to conserve future energy because you don’t have to figure something out anymore. This puts things in a dangerous place. Especially the professional context not only has this belief established, but it also puts this layer or force field around it where that force field is built on, “If I’m wrong, I’m no longer a professional.” You look at the different truths that have been subscribed to. You have some of those simple ones whether it’s lightning, thunder, storm, fire or drought. It’s the wrath of God. That was the original explanation of how things operate. Science and math then came along and you’re able to disprove those things.
It didn’t go well for the Copernicus of the world. The other discoverers of these mathematical factual truths, many of them went to jail or were killed. You don’t necessarily have those consequences now. At the same time, you have people that are stuck in the adoption of belief systems passed on by someone who is a professional or their culture or some other way. It wasn’t necessarily the experience of the factual mathematical truths behind it. Maybe unpack that idea of what’s the role of mathematical truths and constants in a non-constant world.
You talked about people being jailed for the truth. Maybe it’s not as drastic but in a lot of ways, it’s probably as devastating to them when they shut their mind out because they hear the word professional. They turn their mind over to this other person without ever checking anything that’s been said, without even passing that through common logic to say, “This fits or this doesn’t fit.” There are some real dangers there but the math behind it is absolute. This idea of relative math, that’s not true. There are relative events in nature. There are changes in the components of the mathematics that might be wrong but the math itself is correct. Two plus two is always going to be four. That’s just the way it is. It may be that it shouldn’t be two plus two, maybe it should be one plus three. Maybe it should be some other number in the assumptions that are put in the wrong.
Think about Christopher Columbus. What happened in his timeframe was four ships went out and none of them came back. Mathematically, zero minus four means we lost four ships. The analysis at the time was they fell off the side of the earth because the earth is flat. The math was right but the analysis of what happened to the four ships was incorrect. You’ve got Christopher Columbus that does some math work, looking at the skies, looking at different things and figuring out, “The Earth is round.” I believe in those pieces but the only way he could find out was by proving it.
Even though the math was right, it might not come out that way. He had to send ships out to go find out if it was true. Prior to that, the fact that four ships didn’t come back could mean a lot of things. They went down in a storm or it could even be that they found a place that was a lot nicer than where they were and they didn’t want to go tell anybody else because they were afraid their place wouldn’t be as nice anymore. Who knows what happened to those four ships? We know now that they didn’t fall off the side of the earth. Something else clearly happened.
Over time, that happens. When we learn mathematics in grade school, everything is one-dimensional or maybe two-dimensional from the standpoint of two plus two is going to be four. Everything is considered constant. One of the differences we get into is when we get into more advanced math. Even financial math is more advanced math because it adds a dimension and it’s the dimension of time. That’s a big one that gets left out often. When we add that dimension of time, it changes the formula. It doesn’t mean the math is right or wrong. Pure mathematics is still the same. It’s just that now, we have different components in there.
One of the unfortunate things that skew the math when we add the element of time is we have to add other assumptions that are not constant or not guaranteed to be in a certain area. For instance, we’re going to look out 30 years into the future. If 30 years is our time frame, that is absolute, but what happens over the 30 years? Interest rates, taxes and inflation fluctuate. We have all these assumptions now that we have to guess on and that makes the end result flexible. It makes it move around. It makes it not absolute. The math is absolute but the assumptions that are applied to the formula are not.
There’s no way around that outside of using past experience. That’s a dangerous thing to some degree. If we use past experience for what’s going to happen in the future, it can be one of those traps that put us back to, “This is the way it’s always been done. This is the way the environment has always occurred in the past. Therefore, it’s going to occur that way into the future.” Some things act like that but with technology, we have no idea what the future looks like and that’s one of the big unknowns.
Thirty ago, who would have thought that everybody walking around would have a cell phone in their pocket at all times? That they could not get more than 10 feet away from without being anxious and bothered? What kind of stuff is going to continue to the future along that same line? We have no idea what’s even going to be invented that we’re not going to be able to live without. The impacts of that both on inflation and on opportunity can’t be weighed. We can only guess.
Mathematical Truths: One of the unfortunate things that skew the math when we add time is that we have to add other assumptions that are not constant or not guaranteed to be in a certain area.
You also have preferences. There are many different forces that will impact life and the purpose behind what you do financially. You’re right. You are basing your future on the assumptions now. It’s similar to how we look back on what people did 200 years ago with a completely different moral code, set of circumstances, concerns and environments. We assume that they should have every bit of knowledge, experience, and wherewithal that we have today. It’s not fair. It’s the same thing looking into the future. It is changing at a rapid pace, and yet there are some widely held constants that are used that are essentially hurting whatever the future experience is because they’re based on today.
It’s similar to all planes have to create a flight plan. What’s the constant in the flight plan? It’s the starting place and the destination. What happens between the starting place and the destination? You have altitude changes, speed changes and pitch changes. There are all sorts of things happening. That’s why even though a pilot may fly the same route a million times, every single time he flies it, it’s a different environment. The idea is that there must be constant open-mindedness and an open door to what’s happening at the moment. Are the assumptions the same? Have they changed? If they’ve changed, what do I do about it? The requirement almost to stay in the course is to constantly be asking questions that challenge the previous assumptions.
Tony Robbins once said, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty that you can comfortably live with.” However, none of us start out with a healthy relationship with risk. As humans we have fear around risk – a fear of failing, a fear of getting exposed, or a fear of finding yourself to be not good enough, you name it. But what exactly are we fearful about? Is that fear justified when you get down to the facts? Join in as Patrick Donohoe goes back to a segment of his interview with Todd Langford, where they get into the idea of risk, how to control it, how to influence it. As you listen through the segment, think about where you can take more calculated risks in your life, where you understand the stakes and what you stand to gain in the end.
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What Is Your Relationship With Risk? With Todd Langford
Our topic is risk. What is your relationship to risk like? Have you ever taken a risk and lost? Have you ever taken a risk and gained? Risk aligns well with the statement from Tony Robbins, that the quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty that you can comfortably live with. At the same time, we have fear around risk. Todd and I get into the idea of risk, how to control it, how to influence it. You’ll enjoy this segment of the conversation. There’s a lot of risk being taken right now, risk with personal savings, within investments, business and monetary policy of our government in a very interesting time where we’re making these pretty big bets. I look at things we can control and influence. Those things are typically outside of ourselves. At the same time, I believe that when we understand our relationship with risk at a deeper level, then we can direct this risk energy in the right areas, not to take away from the relevance of cryptocurrency or blockchain technology, but taking a risk betting everything, a future and personal savings.
I believe that there is no control there. Not even much influence unless you’re Elon Musk and can put a $100 million into Bitcoin. The purpose of me bringing this up is I believe that you can take this risk energy and channel it toward the things that create a meaningful life. The things that Tony Robbins alluded to the quality of life, improving the quality of life, the meaningfulness of life. How do you redirect the risk? I look at, ultimately, the most important things people strive to achieve. It usually revolves around relationships, family and profession. My question to you and what I want you to think about through this conversation with Todd and me is where can you take more calculated risks where you understand the stakes and you also understand the gains? The gains are a multiple of the risk that you put on the table. It’s that whole idea of asymmetric risk reward. What can you do in your relationships? Can you apologize? That’s risky. Can you ask somebody out? Can you ask someone to marry you? Can you be open with a friend? Can you speak your mind, speak your truth? It’s risky, but is the reward worth the risk?
What about your profession? What about your business? What risks can you take that you can help more people where you can take that next step, where you can leave the comfort of a job that you despise, but it pays well. Go and do something on your own or work with a group whose values and mission align better with who you are and what you are about? Risks are misunderstood. Risk is a good thing. If you think about it, you can make it so that risk has no loss. There’s always a lesson. Case in point, you ask somebody out and they say no, wrong person, which gets you closer to the right person. Asking somebody to marry you, they may say no. Either you can keep being persistent or you know that you need to move on. That’s a positive thing. It depends on what you focus on. Risk in business is always necessary to stay relevant, to stay agile and to always keep a pulse on the needs of your clients, your employer, so that you can continue to create even more value. Guys, thanks for supporting the show. I hope you enjoy this short segment with my dear friend, Todd Langford.
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It’s the reason we can’t shut our minds down in whatever it is we’re doing. I’m not saying don’t bring in the experts to guide you, but there’s a responsibility on your part to take that a little bit further and say, “If this happens, how do I react to that? If things don’t map out exactly like this professional has said it’s going to go, it’s going to be on me to make the decision and make the adjustment. I’ve got to keep my mind open. I’ve got to be able to understand at some level what it is I’m being told and not take it hook line and sinker.” Unfortunately, we’re going to be the ones that are responsible for what the results are. If we shut our mind down, the only thing we can do, which is where the society has gotten at some level and it’s the blame game, it’s not my fault. It’s because somebody else told me this, or it’s because I read this or it’s because I did that. If somebody else’s information, you are ultimately responsible for it. You have to take the effort and time. Keep your mind turned on.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. When you experience fear, it ultimately comes from the nature of risk. There’s an unknown. In large part, the future is what’s unknown. There’s a part of us that thrives to establish certainty or safety. It’s one of those natural instincts. Invariably, what happens is when you place the control or influence of the future on somebody else, it creates an amplified amount of risk and subsequently, more fear, because it’s not you that has come to conclusion. It is somebody else that has come to the conclusion and you are ultimately leveraging them because you don’t have responsibility or skin in the game to the discovery of the assumption by which you’re acting on. The fear is not going to go away. It’s going to go up.
The thing about control, we’ve talked about that in the past. We want to push in that direction. I like your wording of influence. That’s probably a better word we’ll get into. We’re never completely in control. The idea is that the level of control that we can secure, that’s probably indirectly proportional to the amount of anxiety we have. That’s what the issue is. As soon as we start to give that control up willingly to somebody else, it’s got to raise our level of anxiety because we’re in a period of hope. Hope it comes out instead of being able to direct the course.
Going back to the simple example of an airline pilot, they don’t know what the environment is going to be like, but they have the instruments and the training. As the environment changes, they know what to do. Technology response to it just as much, if not more, than the pilot. This is the ability to influence. You can’t control the environment. Environment is going to be the environment. People are going to treat you a certain way. You’re going to wake up with energy one day. You’re going to wake up with not much energy one day. You’re going to wake up and something happens to government, laws, your employer and to the clients you have if you’re self-employed. There are all sorts of things that are going to happen that are outside of your control.
That’s where you establish a degree of certainty around influence so that when that environment changes, that is when you are able to respond. There’s a preparedness there. That’s what mitigates anxiety and fear. When it comes to the math side of things, mainly speaking to financial math, people these days are concerned about money and their future. What’s the environment that they’re making conclusions about what could go wrong in the future based on? How would you describe that environment?
Part of it is the unknown. That’s where a lot of that fear comes from. You hear people rattling stuff around about, “What happens if the dollar disappears? What happens if this or that?” Bad news, unfortunately, is exciting for a lot of people. People want to be the first ones to tell whatever different news it is in some form and add their bias to that, about how they think it’s going to happen to drive emotion. The bottom line is we all make decisions based on emotion if we make decisions based on our beliefs, not necessarily on the truth.
Relationship With Risk: We’re never completely in control but the level of control that we can secure is indirectly proportional to the amount of anxiety we have.
That becomes a discipline or a conscious effort that we have to separate our beliefs, the hype and our natural tendency to go to the fear, to step back and be able to say, “What is the truth? What is it that I have influence over? What can I change in this scenario to fix that?” It goes back to what you were saying about the pilots, it’s to have those tools in place, to have the knowledge. That’s one of the biggest tools we have, is using our brain. That’s one of the things that’s easiest to shut down and let somebody else fill that void or that difference, is turning your brain over to somebody else because they’re a professional.
When you get into a crunch, what do you do? You’ve given up your best tool, that’s your brain, to be able to think through what’s going on. Knowing that you have that tool is a key piece. There was the guy that I was listening to, Sean McDowell, Josh McDowell’s son. One of the things he talked about when he was teaching kids was the idea of knowing something versus knowing you know something. There’s a key, huge difference in those two. What he talked about was he had students that knew the answers, but they might fail a test and then he had students that gave a little bit more effort to the point that they knew that they knew the answer. The difference is, in knowing the answer and writing the wrong thing down because you can talk yourself out of it versus knowing you know the answer. In life, that’s a big piece. When we know we know what we know, we’re invincible because we can rely on our knowledge to get us through an anxious time instead of reverting to the fear and talking ourselves out of what the real answer might be.
The environment right now is interesting because, number one, there’s so much information, perspective and opinion out there. The degree of understanding when it comes to math and science is, in large part, instituted by a system that people don’t like. How many kids do you know that love going to school? If you don’t have a curiosity associated with learning, you’re going to be checking boxes and learning in order to pass a test as opposed to learning to have knowledge, which is more of the practical side of things. You have an interesting environment where life is pretty easy. Even someone in a less fortunate circumstance in the United States has likely access to healthcare, to shelter, to entertainment that kings of old didn’t have anything close to. Yet they’re still upset, frayed, unhappy, depressed, unsuccessful people.
The environment is evolving at a rapid pace where life is going to get easier. Transportation costs are going to come down. We already have entertainment in spades, but even more and better-quality entertainment. You’re also going to have energy costs and food costs come down. There are some revolutionary things on the horizon. The environment is changing to the point where science and mathematical truths have been discovered that has designed this environment for people that don’t necessarily understand the underlying trues and math associated with it. When you think about that, Todd, what do you think is going to be the result of human beings and their experience of life?
A quote by the Mathematical Association of America says, “It’s time for all members of our profession to acknowledge that mathematics is created by humans and therefore inherently carries human biases.” This intriguing statement makes us think what math is and its role in general. To help us answer these questions, Patrick Donohoe brings on Todd Langford in a series of episodes that revolve around the principles of math and how math specifically relates to finance.Todd is one of Patrick’s original mentors and the CEO and Founder at Numbers Analytic, Inc. Today, they discuss why most of the significant innovations resulted from accidents and also touch on the importance of mathematics and curiosity.
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Todd Langford Series: Mathematics And Finance – An Introduction With Todd Langford
I’m going to introduce a series that’s going to begin. It’s going to be an episode per week. Short episode but it’s a snippet of a couple of long interviews that I did. Let me introduce the topic, subject and why. I came across a quote that led me down one of these philosophical paths. I had lots of breakthroughs and understandings of certain fundamental, simple things. I wanted to express that with you and expand upon it ina number of episodes. Who knows how long it will go for? I want you to understand the quote, at the same time, it led me to understand other things.The quote is by the Mathematical Association of America.
It said,“It’s time for all members of our profession to acknowledge that mathematics is created by humans and therefore inherently carries human biases.”It’s an interesting quote. I’ve stepped back and caused me to think about what math is. Did humans create it?Does math carry biases? It’s an intriguing statement. I’m going to unpack it in a sense. As I began exploring, I found out number one, there’s been this debate going on for quite some time between two camps. The intuitionist camp says that the human mind created math. There’s another camp called the Platonists who argue that math was a discovery of the human mind. I was reading and understanding both points of view. I realized that in the end, I’m not sure if it matters that much.
It caused me to question what the role of mathematics is in general. I wanted to explore itat a more practical level. What did it have to do with my life? What would it have to do with my profession? What would it have to do with anyone else’s life? Some of the conclusions are math is a more objective way to evaluate a hypothesis or an assumption. Some simple examples, thiscomes down to the scientific revolutionbeing able to prove and understand what goes on below the surface. What I mean by that is a surface observation or an assumption we can make ismaybe based on how a child looks outside and seesthe sun rising in the East and then going West, and it sees it again. You can reason the sun revolves around the Earth.
You can see how these surface observations can lead to faulty assumptions. I was on a hike withtwo of my kids, my youngest son and my fourteen-year-old. We got up to this peak, it’s on the East side of Salt Lake City. It was an amazingly clear day. You can see all the way across to the other side of the great Salt Lake. I thought of there, I can see why someone would assume that the Earth was flat. These general surface observations have been disproven. Science has disproven itbecause there was an assumption made. Aperson wanted to test that assumption and realized that it was false. Those are simple examples. That trend has gone on for quite some time and it’s led to an insane science of revolution and the miraculous life we get to live now.
I look at math more objectively, I’m not going to say pure objectivelywith regards to math but more objectively, testing out an assumption or hypothesis. That’s where I realized I’m going to get down to somebasic truths.This is what I came across. I’ve come across this a couple of times, this thinking model called First Principles. Elon Musk credits this way of thinking as to why he’s so successful with Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX,SolarCity, you list all the companies. He says that he finds opportunities using the First Principlesthinking methods. Let me unpack that and relate it to the mission of the show. This thinking model, first principles, predatedMusk. This was something that was maybe born during Aristotle’s times. It was used by Copernicus, one of the most famous physicists of our modern time, Richard Feynman, who’s deceased. His way of thinking, his books, you can see it there when you understand first principles. He also used it to understand the core of something.
Mathematics And Finance: People don’t want retirement; they want to be independent.
What is first principles? First principlesessentially boils down a problem or an idea or assumption to the fundamental truth. From that fundamental foundational level, you reason up from there. Musksays that the way in which most people think is reasoning or thinking by analogy. How he describes that is people copy what other people are doing, and then they try do it with slight variation. They look at the activity, the solution something that other people are doing to solve a problem and make slight variations and tweaks to that. First principles goes to that deeper level. Instead of assuming the truth of the world is flat, you go to the deeper level to understand what is that fundamental core truth. Going back to the mission of the show, I’ve made a claim in the book I wrote in 2018. It’s alsothe purpose of the show and reasons why I have certain guests on is because I have the assumption that people want to achieve a meaningful life.
I also have an assumption that people want to be financially independent.That’s the mission of the show, to empower people to those ends. It caused me to think. I realized something that, to me, this idea wasn’t born using this rational line of thinking.The financial services industry specifically financial planning, retirement planning is a multi-trillion industry, finance, personal development. Achieving these ends of financial independence and a meaningful life, I don’t believe that they’re wanting to achieve. I believe thatthese financial industries are pushing for this end result of retirement and being successful with the way in which you manage money until that point in time. This goes to thinking by analogy. I don’t believe that retirement is what people want. They’re solving for retirement. This comes from experienceworking with people as a financial advisor. They don’t want retirement. They want to be independent.
They don’t want to necessarily work in something they don’t like. That’s why they want to retire. They also would rather do other things than work all the time, which is why they want to retire. Financial independence is possible sooner than 65. It’s pushing this date out to 65 years old. I don’t believe that’s necessary anymore.I don’t even believe it was ever necessary.If you have this end result and you have this entiresystem designed around this end result, right then that narrative is going to continue and new entries into the system are essentially going to think by analogy and try to make improvements. Maybe it’s the mutual fund, the ETF or the asset allocation model. It’s still to the same end result butthere are slight variations to it. I want you to you to consider that as a possibility of why you are managing your money. What’s the purpose? Why are you investing?Boil it down to the fundamental truth. What will that give you that you don’t have now? What problem will it solve?
Once you can get clear about those end results, then you try to remove the constraints between where you are and where you want to go. What does this have to do with math? If math is a better way to evaluaterather than just by observation or by copying what somebody is doing and making a slight variation to it, it’s the measure of the evaluation of these assumptions.If yougo to financial planning, investment planning, there are these surface level assumptions that are being made about rates of return, income, purchasing power,taxation. There are a number of things as far as assumptions being made in the financial services industry. I looked athave those claims been properly evaluated. This where I’m going to move toas far as this series is concerned. I am going to have on as a guest of mine, a man that was one of my original mentors,Todd Langford.He’s the developer of financial strategy, financial advising, financial planning software. He’s been doing that formany years on multiple systems and platforms.In general, he’s a good man. Also, he’s curious about life and an engineer at heart, wanting to know how things work, the truth behind how things function.Because of that, he’s done some pretty crazy, bizarre things.
He has these crazy multistage fireworks display and this big ranch that him and his wife, Kim, live on. He’s programmedthis metal 3D printer laser cuttersfrom his phone. Everything in his home, he has managed, programmed and automated. He built this massive solar complex that powers not just his house but other houses. He built the structure behind it, how the batteries worked and how the solar panels would be facing and the pitch of the roof. He’s a brilliant man. He understands the principles of math specifically how math relates to finance.To be able to evaluate at a more objective level the claims made about what money should be doing both the end result but also the methods to get to those end results. I hope you enjoy this series. The series will go on for most likely several weeks, several months. Who knows? Thanks for tuning in. I appreciate the support. We have some new stuff coming out, some tools that relate to this subject. Make sure you bookmark the website and also look out for some emails coming from us. Take care.
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Todd, first question I have for you is our relationship.You’ve always been a curious person. What’s the driving force behind that curiosity? How would you characterize that?
I always like to see a different way of doing something. Kim relates it to my code and the way that fits in. Sometimes, one direction of answer. I may not like the answer that I get, so I try to attack it in another way to see if those two come up the same. Where that differential is drives the idea somewhat of efficiencies. It’s pretty easy to get into a rut of, “This is the way it’s always been done.” In order to keep me from getting into that road of this is the way it’s always been done, I tend to try to do it a different way.
What do you discover in the process? Let’s say you find that it’s been done this way. That way is inefficient, inaccurate, it could be done a better way. What happens in the experience of that discovery?
Mathematics And Finance: When you don’t like the answer you get, try to attack it in another way to see if those two come up the same.
Often, ignorance in a particular field or idea allows you the ability to learn more. It allows you to innovate a lot easier because you’re not smart enough to be on the path of what somebody’s already discovered. If you look at history on innovation, most of the significant breakthroughs came from an accident. The reason they came from an accident is because the tried-and-true way that everybody had always done something was limited on how far it could go. When they made a mistake, they figured out it’s not that what we were doing is wrong. It’s that our thought process was off base. We have to shift our mind and thinking into a place.It’s difficult to get out of the box that you’ve created forthe way things have always been.
Since those accidents occur from the outside, I find myself a lot of times seeing things thatyou’ve always heard were true but maybe they’re not. When you dig pretty deeply on things, you find that the labelprofessional has an interesting connotation.These are mainly the people that are considered professionals. They’re supposed to be the ones that know it all buta lot of times you find out it’s just that they know a little bit more than everybody else does. If you dig a little bit deeper, sometimes you find outmaybe they don’t know everything that’s there. I found some of that out. You mentioned about the solar project. As I was going through some of the solar stuff, I would come up against people, I would question them like,“Can I do this?” They said, “That won’t work.” I would back it up and say, “Here’s the math. Follow me with the math behind what we’re talking about doing.”They’d look at it and there’d be this pause. I was like, “That could work.” The only way I could find that was doing it because nobody would give me a definitive answer.
April 8, 2021Patrick DonohoePodcastComments Off on Capitalizing On The Massive Economic Shift Through Multifamily Real Estate With Michael Becker
There is a massive economic shift going on that comes with a corresponding demographic shift towards areas with lower living costs and tax requirements. In what way is this development conducive to multifamily real estate? Joining Patrick Donohoe on the show, SPI Advisory Principal Michael Becker invites us to take a look at the case of Texas, specifically the DFW market, and how the changes going on in the economy are giving rise to massive opportunities to invest, whether actively or passively, in this no-income-tax state. Whether you’re looking to set up your own mom-and-pop or you just want to let your money do the work by involving yourself with REITs or syndications, terms are going to be very favorable for you in Texas and other areas that have been at the receiving end of the massive in-migration of people and businesses from more costly metros like New York and California. Join in to learn more on how you can start to build more wealth by capitalizing on these changes!
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Watch the episode here:
Listen to the podcast here:
Capitalizing On The Massive Economic Shift Through Multifamily Real Estate With Michael Becker
My guest is Michael Becker. He is the Principal at SPI Advisory firm and also the host of The Multifamily Investing Podcast. You can check him out at MultifamilyInvestingShow.com. I wanted to have Michael on for a few reasons. First, I had Ken McElroy on a few episodes back, speaking about what’s going on in the economy in multifamily investing. I wanted to have Michael on as well to emphasize some points that Ken and I talked about then in that show. Many real estate investors start out excited. They see potential, opportunity but it becomes a job of sorts, hence the word active.
What I’ve seen is people gravitate toward more passive types of investment. Multifamily investment is an excellent way for accredited investors mostly to invest for cashflow in a passive way. The second reason is I believe our economy is shifting. Richard Duncan was on a few episodes back, and we spoke a lot about what’s going on in the economy, what’s likely to happen and what’s happening. It’s causing some seismic shifts. You are having some big capital flows impact things. You also have immigration, people moving from state to state based on the ability to work remotely, leaving a high cost of living areas, high tax areas. You also have a gist of emotion that’s driving investments up, driving some investments down, fundamentals are out the window and there’s a lot more. Multifamily is an ideal way to capitalize on some of these shifts.
It’s dependent on the market, but I wanted to have Michael on because his specialty is Texas. I look at the economy and human nature. It’s not a straight line. It’s not always predictable. In fact, I don’t think it’s predictable that often. There are variables that can lead to outcomes. At the same time, humans are odd where they make decisions that are irrational and subsequently cause their behavior, what they do to not be a straight line, but to be more of a curved line. We’re seeing that with a lot of movement out of high-income tax states like California, into states like Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Texas, which is a no-income-tax state.
This movement is going to continue. That’s how people behave when there’s more money taken from them, where there’s a high cost of living. I believe that Texas has a very interesting economy and there are a lot of people that are moving there. There are additional benefits to multifamily investment and there are risks. Make sure you do your due diligence. I’ve known Michael for several years. I think you’re going to enjoy the interview and make sure you go check his podcast out and learn more about investing passively in multifamily. Thanks, guys.
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Michael, it’s awesome to have you on. First off, congrats on your podcast.
It’s good. I’ve been the co-host of the Old Capital Real Estate Investing Podcast for many years. In 2020, I started a show called The Multifamily Investing Show with Michael Becker. It’s a video-audio show done in a studio. I’m focusing on high-level guests in the multifamily industry brokers, owners that own tens of thousands of units. If you’re an apartment nerd, it’s probably a place for you. We’re talking about the industry and all the various things that go into it.
It’s an interesting time. With COVID, housing and markets have been shaken up because of relocation. A lot of companies are moving to a hybrid or full-on remote working environment, which makes a lot of sense. People have figured that dynamic out. Maybe speak to what you’re seeing with regards to occupants of multifamily, apartment complexes and what the behavior is of people. Reference specifically Texas because I know Texas is the recipient of a lot of immigration.
It’s important to talk about the perception or view I have of the world is coming from you, from Dallas, Texas. We own multifamily properties in Dallas, Austin. We’re expanding into San Antonio. That’s what my lens of the world is colored with. We’ve done about 10,000 units in the last decade or so. We own about 6,500 units give or take as I talked to you between Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin is where we’re focused. That matters because if I’m sitting here talking to you from New York City or San Francisco, I probably have a different lens of the world than what I do from Dallas.
It’s funny, we’re in this backward world and a lot of ways where generic suburban multifamily, and Dallas-Fort Worth trade at lower cap rates than multifamily on the Island of Manhattan does and whatever world have you been in where Manhattan Island has a higher cap rate than a generic Dallas does. It doesn’t make sense in a historical context. It’s been an interesting year. We’re at the end of Q1 2021. This time in 2020 where I’m stuck in my house and wondering if we’re going to collect rent in April 2020 because everything started to shut down in mid-March 2020. Every day we are wondering if we’re going to collect 50% or 60% of our rent.
The reality turned out to be much better. In a normal month going into COVID, we’d probably have about 1% of our scheduled rent is be delinquent or non-collectible. We’d collect 99% or better. In the early months, we went from about 97%, 96%. The worst we got was probably around Christmas time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we got to about 95%. We collected about 5% to 6% delinquent portfolio-wide in Dallas-Fort Worth. That’s not great, but it’s manageable. We’ve seen an uptick as we get to Q1. Seasonally, a lot of our tenants every year around Christmas time prioritize buying Christmas gifts over paying rent. That’s a normal high watermark for delinquency.
We’re doing well. Occupancy is full. We’re 95% plus across the portfolio over 6,000 units on average. That’s higher than what it has been in the last several years. Places are full. We do have a small contingency of people within our units that are multiple months behind and they have the eviction moratoriums. Most people probably have heard or read headlines about the CDCs, put some eviction moratoriums in.
As we are talking, it’s about to expire, but we anticipate the Joe Biden administration extending that, but the counteract that we’ve been seeing, some of the stimulus money from the December $900 billion stimulus bill, and then I was added on with the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill out of some rental assistance. We’re in the process of probably collecting 75% or 80% of those large balances that we otherwise would have evicted those residents. The 75% or 80% of that would probably be collectible. I have manually written that money off. It’s going to be like a windfall. Magic money comes out of nowhere or maybe there’ll be no ramifications. We’ll see what the real-world ramifications are.
It’s one of those give and takes. When you put those eviction provisions in there, even though people might be able to pay their rent, they’re not. The mortgage industry from those who owned homes, being able to go into forbearance without having to be foreclosed on, people may have had the capacity to pay their mortgage, yet took advantage of that. That dynamic is interesting too. If they include those elements of the stimulus bill where they would pay back landlords, it would have been weighted in the favor of tenants and would hurt landlords.
It’s obvious that they put those different points in the bill to pay back landlords for the bill that they were paying over the course of time. Maybe speak to the role that multifamily is playing in society nowadays. The big apartment complex, who’s the tenant, why is there demand? Where are we at with the cycle of demographics and the demand especially in Texas for housing, specifically apartments?
Multifamily Real Estate: The current demand for multifamily comes from a variety of sources, from young people right out of college, all the way to empty-nesters and a whole bunch in between.
It’s a variety of sources for demand anywhere from young people, right out of college, or young working professionals, all the way to empty nesters and a whole bunch in-between. It’s across the current of all society types and depending on the type of asset you own. We own anywhere from workforce housing to brand new Class-A stuff. We see a little bit of everything, but in your workforce housing, it’s a lot of blue-collar-type tenants. People that work manual jobs, construction, work at Starbucks, serve your coffee in the morning, to the nicer newer stuff where you rent or buy by choice more than necessity. Where either you want to be in the urban coordinator amenities when they were open and active.
We’re starting to come back a little bit. That was a lot of your gateway cities people that want to be next to the museums and the restaurants, the nightlife and etc. There were a lot of suburban people as well. We have a lot of suburban multifamily in my portfolio. We get some families in Dallas-Fort Worth disbursement of jobs is not just concentrated in the urban core is well dispersed throughout the metropolitan areas is a bunch of pockets of employment throughout the whole region. People want to live close to those suburban jobs. It’s a little bit of everything and seeing the demands insatiable. A lot of that demands are driven here locally by the migration that we’re seeing, a lot of the corporate relocations that have taken from the higher-tax states, predominantly California.
We see a lot of California reloads to Texas for big corporations. They bring people or jobs and hire people locally. We’ll get a little bit of a transitory population. A lot of people come into the market. They don’t typically buy a house. A lot of the large segment of the population doesn’t buy a house out of the gate to go rent for a year or two until they realize that they want to stay in the area and then to find out what part of town fits their lifestyle best, then be in such a large metropolitan area. We were like 7.7 million people. We are the fourth largest metro in the country which should surpass Chicago in the next many years.
There’s a lot of cross-market movement as well. People will move from this part of town to that part of town. Austin, which is the other market I focus on is a little bit younger city than Dallas-Fort Worth even. You get a lot more tech jobs. It’s more liberal than the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area. There are a lot of people coming from the Bay Area who tend to relocate to Austin. That tends to be a higher rent or concentrated market than even Dallas-Fort Worth.
Every market is different. Some markets are different. It’s across all current populations across demographics cross country. You see a lot of younger people not married. The natural delay of people getting married gets older and older. We tend to see in our renter demographics, people stay in the rental pool longer than maybe they would have many years ago when you and I were probably renting out first apartments before we got married and had houses.
Speak to how does someone invest in apartment buildings? There’s clearly an opportunity, especially in Texas, with the demand coming in and most likely is not going to end anytime soon. How does someone invest? You have some of the institutional types of investments, like real estate investment trusts. You’re starting to see more crowdfunding opportunities. What are the different and predominant ways? Speak to the way in which you’ve learned to set up investments so that people can invest?
It’s anywhere from a mom and pop landlording where you go buy a ten-unit deal with your own money, run it, collect rent yourself, and fix the leaky toilet yourself, all the way to sophisticated institutional ownership groups that are public and trader reaps that are best institutional quality properties and everything in between. We’re in-between where I’m an apartment syndicator. It’s what I think of myself. We do private equity. We raise capital from high net worth individuals. I know you had Ken McElroy on, our mutual friend. I do a very similar model to what he does, where we go raise from high net worth individuals $100,000 at a time.
The syndication model is popular nowadays and it’s much more popular than many years ago when I got started. The crowdfunding was starting with the JOBS Act in 2012 when that came out, which allowed you to raise money from people you don’t have a preexisting and substantive relationship with, so you can do advertising and that’s when all those crowdfunding portals popped up. What I’ve found through my raising $250 million to $300 million equity that we raised over the last decade or so, people do business with people they know, like and trust. You can try to have all this technology, which is great to be efficient, but at the end of the day, if they don’t, one, get to know who you are. Two, get to know, like and trust you, and didn’t find you credible, they’re not going to invest in your deal.
A lot of it is going to different real estate investing clubs. We have a podcast. Referrals are big things. Getting out there, getting network, and knowing people, getting referrals, that’s where we source most of the people that invest with us. From there, we take all different types of investment from cash. People have money to buy their trusts and LLCs. Retirement is a big chunk of that as well. A lot of people invest through self-directed IRAs or solo 401(k)s, and they get it out of the financial system, and the main mainstream financial system through Wall Street, and put it in the “alternative investments” like multifamily, syndications or the likes.
That’s how it is. It is evolved quite a bit with the crowdfunding platforms. You can take that software and raise money efficiently. It’s all virtual through our online portal and you fill out paper electronically wired, and it’s streamlined where we first started out. You had to email someone something, they print it off, hand fill it, scan it or fax it back to you. There’s a lot more laborious. It’s been a good transition from a technological standpoint and moved the industry forward quite a bit.
As you’re raising money or private capital, where has the focus been? Are there opportunities that exist that you’re buying into, or are you buying into dilapidated complexes that you fix up? Especially based on demand, are you seeing opportunities to develop ground-up projects?
Everything in the above is something that works. What we focused on when we first started out, we did a lot of workforce housing. Texas in the 1960s or 1970s, that’s when we first started seeing large-scale multifamily properties built in the region generally speaking. That’s most of our older stock. We’re not like New York where you can buy a 100-plus-year-old building because Texas didn’t have very many people. Hundred years ago, we didn’t have AC. Most of our apartment stock is a lot younger than if you’re in the Northeast then, their C-class stuff might be 100 years old, where our stuff is 40 or 50 years old. Buying that, renovating it, increasing the rents through renovations, that was very popular, still is nowadays with where we’re focused.
Over the last many years, we’ve been slowly transitioning in older stuff, buying newer, better, bigger. This has been a function of the marketplace where when I started out there used to be a larger spread. The rates of returns, you can get by buying older, tougher deals compared to newer deals. Commercial real estate, multifamily included trade on cap rates or what we call Capitalization Rates. It’s like your unleveraged return. If I were to buy a building that produces $100,000 in net operating income, so all the income that I get is less all my operating expenses excluding my debt. If I produce $100,000 and I bought it on a 10 cap, I would pay $1 million for that $100,000 income stream.
If I bought it on a 5 cap, I’d pay $2 million for that same income stream. My rate of return would be 10% if I paid $1 million or 5% if I pay $2 million. What happened many years ago to nowadays is those cap rates used to be maybe 3% of point spread between the top of the grade and the bottom of the grade. I’d pay an 8 cap for a C class deal when I started and a 5 cap for an A class deal. Now those cap rates are basically on top of each other where most of these caps are somewhere around 4% nowadays in Texas. We’re irrespective of location quality. To me, it doesn’t make as much sense to pay the same or similar cap rate for something built in the ‘70s that I can for a brand-new deal.
We’ve been trading up and buying bigger, better, nicer things and getting similar cap rates. That’s been the evolution of our business over the last many years. It’s been a good trade for us. They are developing it. People keep moving here. We need to supply more housing because there’s a demand for it, especially in Dallas-Fort Worth, and also markets where I predominantly focus. If data is done well and right, that certainly is a good business model as well. You have different levels of risks because you start a project now and two years later before yet you start leasing units and collecting rent. A lot of things can happen in between then. You hear the headlines all the input costs, labor, land, lumber in particular, are all going up. You could start a project with certain economics and then lumber, which is maybe 15% or 20% of your costs could double, then that could blow your profit out quickly.
Speak to the economics of interest rates too because you’re not buying these things in cash. You’re raising private equity, but then you’re utilizing a mortgage and debt. From what I recall, that’s your background. It’s where you started in the financing side of multifamily. What’s the market nowadays, and why has that helped with the opportunity in multifamily?
My professional background is in commercial real estate lending. In the last part of my banking career, I focused on multifamily lending and that’s how I cut my teeth in the business. One thing I’ve learned from being a banker and a borrower for a long time is whatever the environment is, it’s always changing over time. You’ve got certain principles that are timeless, but at the end of the day, the markets are always shifting wherein the multifamily space, the agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the two largest lenders, not only single-family space, but they’re the largest lenders in the multifamily space as well.
Multifamily Real Estate: We need to supply more housing because there is a demand for it, especially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The only lenders that were loaning money this time in 2020 where the agencies were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because of a mandate to do it and all the other lenders shut off. It was impossible, but it was next to impossible to get a loan that was in an agency loan because there are so much fear and uncertainty in the marketplace. It’s turned off. For the better part of 2020, if you wanted to buy a multifamily property, you are going to get a most likely a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loan. They have these caps that are mandated by the regulator FHFA.
They started getting full because that was the only game in town. To slow the demand, they started increasing their spreads. They charge on the interest rates of their indexes, the ten-year treasury or LIBOR, depending on which you floated or fixed it. They’d become less competitive. At the same time, the alternative lenders like your banks or life insurance companies, they have some debt bonds out there that are prominent popular. Those were completely on the sidelines. Now they started loaning money, and then they realized that they didn’t loan any money in 2020 or they’re way behind their projected goals. They needed to get some assets out. They started getting a lot more competitive on the leverage that their offer, interest rates, fees, etc. They’ve been trying to win the business.
The marketplace nowadays is shifting, and we’re doing a couple of deals where we do a bank loan, and we’re about to do a life insurance bridge loan where before it would be 100% Freddie Mac loan, where nowadays is not. It’s always ever-evolving. That’s one of the things that you need to stay on top of, and what’s separates the good from the better within the industry is paying attention to the debt because it’s 65% to 75% of the capital stack with the remainder 75% debt and 25% equity. It’s a large part of the business and staying on top of that.
It’s the key. It’s always evolving and ever-changing, but the multifamily space is a darling of the commercial real estate industry. We get the most favorable terms relative. Let’s say, like an office building, a retail building, or a hotel, they have much inferior debt markets than what we have in the multifamily space are. It helps the returns and then the environment that we’ve been in for several years. Particularly, in 2020, we’ve seen extremely low interest rates. It makes the returns you can get on your assets go up quite a bit. That’s why we’ve been seeing these cap rates get lower because people were able to pay more for that same income stream because our cost of capital is lower. They can produce similar returns even if they have to pay more because the debt market is low.
In the first quarter of 2021, we’ve seen rates take back up on the long end of the curve, but on the short end, your LIBOR, SOFR, the indexes are 1 and 11 basis points respectively nowadays so it’s zero. All these adjustable-rate mortgages, we took out a couple of years ago. In other words, I’m printing money on those deals because these indexes are zero. We have many loans out that have a sub 2% interest rate on them that we took out a few years ago. It’s a free money, which is unbelievable.
You know Richard Duncan and I had him on. He was talking about the massive amount of excess reserves that banks are carrying. It’s going to continue for quite some time as far as 2021 is concerned. The interest rates are going to keep it that low. Michael, let’s wrap up with two points. Describe what you’re seeing in some of the stimulus bills in regards to multifamily. I know we briefly touched on how eviction moratoriums were in place, but now part of the stimulus is to essentially pay back those missed rents. Can you speak to that, and other provisions you’re seeing, and the $1.9 trillion? In the end, speak to your typical investor. What are they looking for? What’s their financial profile so readers of the show can identify with that, potentially reach out to you, and learn more about multifamily or at least start listening to your podcast.
With the $900 billion stimulus that passed in late 2020, they had earmarked about $25 billion approximately for rental assistance within that greater bill. That money was distributed to the states. The states and local housing authorities would then disperse that money. It took a while to get the programs going. In February 2021, they started rolling out in Texas and every state has different rules, but they were allowed to go back to March of 2020 and three months forward. At this point, you could get it. If someone had not paid me their rent in the whole year, I could get a whole year with a back rent plus three months’ forward to get caught up. There’s some paperwork to fill out that both on the property and on the resident side that proved that their loss their income.
We had over 6,400 to 6,500 units. We had somewhere around $600,000 in accrued accumulated deferred rent over that twelve-month period. That’s relatively instead of getting on a percentage basis in the grand scheme of things. It’s a lot of money in the real world. We anticipate that we’re probably going to collect $450,000 to $500,000 of that. That would tell you if there’s about 75% to 80% of that. I tell you there’s probably 20% to 25% fraud within the system where these residents could have otherwise paid, just said that they didn’t have a job.
They filed a fraudulent CDC declaration to stay an eviction. That’s what roughly I’m deducing from what we’re about to experience so then those people are going to be evicted and credit ruined, etc. because they can’t produce the paperwork that showed they lost their job. There’s somewhere around that type of fraud in the entire system. With all the stimulus stuff is why Michael Becker’s cowboy Math is here. That’s how much waste is out there. I know you said Richard Duncan doesn’t believe there’s going to be inflation and he thinks rates are going to be low. I concur that I think rates are going to be low. There’s so much excess liquidity on the system that is going to drive it down.
On the short end of the curve, you’re floating adjustable-rate mortgages. Your two-year treasury rates will stay low for a while. We’ve seen a little pressure on the ten-year treasury, but I don’t think that’s going to go very far either. I think we’re range-bound somewhere around where we are for a period of time. If it starts going, the Fed will start doing yield curve control and start buying the long into the bonds and then keep it from going. I do believe there is inflation. They mask it with having a flawed calculation. If they would calculate CPA as they did many years ago, we would see a lot of inflation because you look at all the input costs to all the real things of the world, the oil, lumber and you try to get an appliance package.
They’re doubled in the last several years to get the same basic appliance. All these input costs are going up. I can promise you looking at my portfolio with 95% occupancy, all this back rent about to get paid, all these people moving here, and the input costs to build a new multifamily product going up. We’re raising our rents. We see in the markets I play in. We had a flat year. Austin was negative 2%, Dallas is positive 1%, and rental rate growth, as a market as a whole in 2020, in spite of everything, it’s relatively tamed. It was flat. We see 5% to 6% rent growth in 2021. Real-time when I’m trading out my old leases, my new leases, that’s what we’re seeing and we need to because these places are full.
We’re able to push rents. That’s what I’m seeing. I believe there’s inflation out there in the things that matter, like housing, and buying a car or trying to drive a new one with oil. There’s real inflation there. I don’t see what’s going to stop it. Seeing the pricing of these things feels like we wrap it up in the first quarter of 2021. It feels like prices moved $20,000 a unit citywide, both in Austin and Dallas, because there’s so much capital coming here. It’s insatiable the amount of demand because all these people that were previously investing in the coastal markets are starting to look in the center of the country and Arizona, Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas, those are on the end market.
California, New York and Seattle are on the out markets. That money is coming here and a lot of money is rotating out. If you want to make commercial real estate, it’s hard to invest in hospitality, retail or even office. They’re rotating out of those sectors more into industrial and multifamily. There’s more money chasing it. At the same time, they printed 25% or so of the money circulation was generated in the several months or something like that. This is all money sloshing around and it’s going into risk assets like commercial real estate. It’s disproportionately going to multifamily. We’re seeing prices accelerate.
You have the dynamic of when somebody moves from California, first off, tax savings. Second, they’re going from $3,500 to $2,000 a month for an apartment or maybe less. You have the built-in flexibility where raising rents by 5% to 6% will be a no-brainer for most.
Multifamily Real Estate: Rates are going to be low. There’s so much excess liquidity on the system that is going to drive it down.
That’s what we’re seeing. I’m still bullish on Texas multifamily. We have done well. One of the things is talking to investors that have been with us for a while. Leading up to the COVID lockdowns, people would talk to me about what happened in the prior decade, the teams basically. What seemed to me was in the Dallas-Fort Worth, in the workforce housing space, in particular, rents much doubled in the last many years. The price has tripled because the rent has doubled and then the cap rates compress. It’s the combination of those two things. This hasn’t stopped. We went on hibernation for about three months, got right back at it and prices didn’t move at all.
If you had the ability and the guts to buy something in that 2 or 3-month period in April or May 2020, maybe you got a 3% to 5% discount if you bought it in that two-month period, and someone was willing to sell. Most everyone else took their ball, went home for a few months, and put the head back up and things were okay in the multifamily space, at least. Most people that come to us, your second party question was, we get a diverse investor base. Mostly high net worth people from various industries, either they have a good income, make over six figures, accumulate some money and want to get a return. We have some business owners, doctors, a lot of people that pay high-income taxes, especially in the coastal markets where you not only pay the Federal Income Tax.
You pay California, not only Uncle Sam, but Uncle Gab out in California. They come to multifamily space and they get some good tax savings with the depreciation, the law, the way it’s written at is favorable for the multifamily industry. We see quite a bit of that. Business owners, you see a lot of people that even have bought some commercial real estate that appreciated, and they want to stay into space. It was a diverse mix of people. We would finish up our tax returns not too long ago. We did $1,300 and $50,000 ones for the 2020 tax year. We have 700 or so unique investors that invested with us. We are growing by the day seemingly. It’s been a good business and bullish on multifamily in Texas.
I don’t see what is going to stop that. Immigration wasn’t going to stop the price appreciation because rents are going to grow. Was fuel ever going up? I don’t see how it let interest rates rise to any material respect. If they do let it rise, it’s going to make single-family housing, even that much more expensive to own, which will then further drive rental rates up. All things being equal. There’s a world full of bad options from an investment standpoint. If you want to get some yield, you’ve got to take some level of risk and there’s no rule. You can’t go get a 5%, one-year CD as you could have many years ago. If you want yield, you got to put risks either in the stock market or some investment as I do or various other things out there. All things being equal among the better asset classes out there, which is why I dedicated my career to it.
Michael, thanks for your time. Thanks for sharing your expertise. What’s the best way readers can follow you to learn more about multifamily investing?
I appreciate you having me on. Hopefully, we see each other for the next cruise sometime. The best way is to go to a company’s website, which is www.SPIAdvisory.com. There’s a Contact Us form. You fill that out. We’ll happy to send out information about what would we do and potentially working with us.
What a crazy time to be an investor. At the same time, there are lots of opportunities out there if you know what you’re looking for.
Michael Becker is a Principal at SPI Advisory LLC and heads SPI’s Dallas, Texas office where he oversees all aspects of property operations, including asset management, property management oversight, accounting and taxation, capital improvement and renovation projects and investor relations. Michael is a lifelong resident of North Texas and a graduate of The University of North Texas with a BBA in Finance. He is married and has two young children.
Michael is a 15 year veteran Commercial Real Estate Banker and has originated and managed numerous portfolios of permanent and bridge loans in all major asset classes. Over the last 5 years of his banking tenure, Michael focused exclusively on multi-family properties, where he was the number one loan producer for his division at a Top 3 National lender for his last 3 consecutive years.
As a Portfolio Manager, Michael directly oversaw the management and financial performance of the countless C & B class Multi-Family properties he originated loans for. As a result, he accumulated an exceedingly diverse network of suppliers, contractors, consultants and service providers during his tenure. This gives him the ability to quickly and efficiently implement a breadth of value-added strategies for a fraction of the typical cost.
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Patrick is the President and CEO and started Paradigm Life in 2007 after learning from his mentor Kim Butler about financial strategies outside of Wall Street.
With a background in economics and marketing, Patrick immediately realized the opportunity to teach investors, business owners, professionals and families on a large scale using modern digital media and communication technology. Since 2007 Paradigm Life has worked with thousands of individuals in all 50 states.
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