Is Seth taking credit as per usual

yeah, yeah, I'm taking credit. It's what?

Let the record be shown. Doing this in here was my ideA This is the type of blooper conpen con blalalalalala content that people are looking for.

maybe this should just be our content from now on. We just sit here and argue with each other like we do all day, every day. day.

I bet we would. get better ratings then

We probably would. we're trying to bring like the good information out to people, but I'll tell you.

When it comes

to it,

to it People want to

see people bitch at each other about who's right and who's wrong.

everybody loves to have an opinion.

Listen, I'm the team leader, so I'm right by default. episode will be a fun one.

I think we're in the episode right now. No, we're not. I think we are in Millennium,

We're not. We're not in the episode right now. No, that's

beginning part, I think what we just said was funny.

Hey, listen, there's more where that came from, right? today we are going to talk about a topic that Jen doesn't even know why we're talking

Oh my God. Okay. So normally we'll kick off an episode with, Hey, welcome back to millennia. tell you why we picked the topic that we're going to be talking about today. And, I'm going to start this with, I have no idea why we picked this topic. Seth came to me to say, we need to do, it's urgent, we need to do an episode

need to do an episode on why This is urgent, this is pressing, this is imperative that we do this episode. Don't make me sound like I'm a freaking like, like army general. Jesus.

You're the

Are we gonna have fun? Are we gonna have fun or

I'm having a great

time. I know you're having

he said that we need to talk about an address. Why owning a home is still a great investment. But the reason why I said, I don't know why this is such a pressing matter and why this is so important is obviously. of course buying a house is a great investment. Who is saying that it's not? Apparently people. Apparently I'm living in my own little world. we're going to explain to those who don't think that it's a great investment or have

let me ask you something. How much stock do you own

you own? Why you gotta go there?

do you own equities or mutual funds? Or do you own timeshares do own all those things or no?

No, so what we talked about in our last episode about if you want to do those things, talk to your accountant so you can show that you make money.

The, it's not about you specifically, does every single person in this country own stock? Okay, no, and

Okay. No. And the reason why I don't is I don't entirely understand it.

don't entirely understand

Okay. Fine. so now we're

now we're Just on the baseline, I can win this argument right now.

That's fine. That's why we're doing

no, I can win this argument right now. Some people, literally just don't have the money. yes, for them it's not a good

Okay. Or

enough money to do it, which is it's not a good investment. The context of this question really

Well, that's a, buying a house is still a good investment, but can you make that investment? Are, I think, are two different things,

the question so broad that you have to qualify it. So is it still a good investment?

Welcome to another episode of Jen, Seth Tells Jen Why She's Wrong. That's right.

is it a good investment as a matter of a housing investment policy, meaning should you rent for your entire life or should you buy a house your entire life?

I know the answer to that.

Now, I would argue, and we probably will have an agreement here, that over the course of the,

been agreeing too much in the last few episodes. We had to spice

Yeah, yeah, over the course of a lifetime, absolutely, buying a home and being a homeowner a better investment than renting. That goes without saying. That's not, that wasn't the point of what I wanted to talk about. My point is, is that is it a good investment? Like, all the time.

It's not. Okay, It's

not. Yeah. And I want to be real with people because it's the easiest thing here is to get on a podcast, a couple of realtors were incentivized to sell houses were incentivized to help people buy houses. I just wanted to make sure that we were clear that we were also going to talk about what's real. It's hard out there for people. It's not always the right thing to buy a house. And I'm a realtor on a podcast, and this is going to be on YouTube and Apple Pocket, I'm a realtor saying that I cannot tell you the last time I heard anyone in the real estate business say that. And I want to make, just be on the record, there are times when it is not the right thing to buy a house.

Okay. That I can agree to.

agree to. You, oh, okay.

do agree to that.

do agree to

that? Of course there are

There are times.

you're looking, and again, this goes into being able to lay the groundwork but you don't know what you don't know. what people should not do is have stuck in their head and just tell themselves without actually having any of the facts in front of them, to say, Oh, well, I can't do it. And to just not do it. Find out

that that's a that's a informational that's a educational bucket you're talking about I'm talking about like when it doesn't make sense. if two people are divorcing and One person like doesn't have the ability to buy like they shouldn't Twist themselves into a pretzel trying to make that happen because that's what they've done for the last 25 years sometimes strategically It's better to rent it just is And I don't know what to tell everybody, downsizers, another huge one, you're moving out of this big house, a big like 2, 500 square foot house, you've raised your kids, your kids have moved across the country, you can't handle all the house, maybe the best thing to do is to rent a house for a year or two,

See

you get, leave your options open. A lot of times downsizers, they don't know if they're going to move and follow their kids across the country. They might move to Florida. But the idea that they have to go and buy another house is not necessarily, I don't think that's a message that comes out of the real estate industry nearly enough. It's all about, no, no, no, you should just go buy another house. And it's that's what the realtor playbook says. And I don't want to like betray the brother and sisterhood here. But I am very committed to giving good advice and so are you.

Yes, and I think that is good advice. What I think that people end up getting trapped in is thinking that, if they go to rent, that's the end all be all. And not setting any kind of a path towards Being able to have home

you can run those numbers five different ways. The American citizen should own homes if they want to build wealth versus rent. that are talking heads out there that will say you should rent where you live and, you should buy something as an investment property, but you should rent your primary home, like where you live.

so

And so that's a total reversal, but that's for people who have money to invest in all these, Airbnbs

somebody on, I forget where it was. It might've been like Instagram or something. I saw some real, some dude said pretty much like exactly that. They're like, Oh, we perpetually rent and we won't like own our own home, but we have investment properties and whatever that man got. So roasted.

but we have investment properties,

trying to say that he wasn't.

you're still an owner. You're still benefiting from the ownership of a, of four walls and a roof somewhere. Even if you don't live in it,

okay, yeah, some people do have to rent. I understand that. it is not as cut and dry to get a house and qualify for a house today as it was even five, six years ago. I totally get that. There is such a need for rentals. totally fine. but do not try to, relate to the everyday renter by saying, we always rent and we'll never buy when you are literally the landlord of the people that you are saying that you're relating to.

if you look at the demographics and the socioeconomic data in cities, it's very renter heavy. that just comes from, just the lack of resources in order to buy homes. But if you're somebody who makes decent money. And you have a good job, and you live somewhere where homes are available, and you're going to be living there for a substantial amount of time, you should own.

I'm not going to be, like, down your throat saying, get a house, you have to

a

a house, no, I'm open for conversations. I will always say that, obviously owning a home is a great investment and you are going to only be able to build wealth with that, absolutely. Open to the conversation that if somebody tells me that, the reason why they are going to choose to rent is because they have no idea where their life is going to be within the next, year or two years and, they might be, like, getting up and their job is not secured in this one place or, Say they're like a tribal nurse or they're up for promotion in a different state. All right, that's fair because, you've got to move in and sell your house within one year. It's not a great financial investment. It was for my one seller, though. She did still make a profit, I will say. but you have to factor in just another layer of you've got capital gains and tax. If you're not there for what, two years? Yeah,

it's about two years.

so yes, there are certain situations where it is not the best investment, but that's more speaking to any

Yeah, like the people that I don't understand, or a lot of like people who relocate for their job, like a lot, I think military people, the VA program is great and all, I don't think it serves the vets because

it's a 100 percent down. You don't get any, it takes so long to get equity in it because you look at the, um, I don't raise, why can't I say this word? Please say it. The atom, atomization

amortization.

scale. Atomization. That one. so many constants together. you get oh, here's your mortgage payment, a whopping 5 is going towards your

yeah.

least you have your money that you put, down in VA. It's 100 percent down. It takes a while to build some

some here's the irony, is that military people, they're moving a

the ones moving the most.

They're the ones moving the most and they have 100 percent equity, but then when they go to sell, they don't have the equity to tap to pay for transfer tax and realtor fees and moving costs and all that stuff. So the, the irony is that the loan program that needs the most mobility doesn't have it. And so like I look at,

I had that conversation with a client actually who had purchased their house with with a VA loan They've been in it for now. At least 10 years which is like that's fine. They now have equity in it, but we're talking about getting another, a new loan to potentially move. And when they were very dead set on VA loan because of the like a hundred

the benefit. in mind though, just as a qualifier, I don't mean to interrupt, but a VA, a VA.

you

put, it's not like you can't put money down. But

you can, that's what makes it attractive.

there's a lot of military people who just go for the 100%. They're like, oh, that's nice, I don't have to put down any money, and I can just start, owning a home. But I don't think it necessarily serves people in the end, as much as, people think it does.

Again, it all depends on how you use it. But, they were really like dead set on wanting to use the VA loan. And when our lender showed them side by side with conventional, a conventional option, it actually ended up making more financial sense to them as far as like being a better investment. for them and, this isn't an entire topic on how VA loans work that would be a good one though. I think it's a great program that exists and I'm glad that it is available but, I think it's something that needs to at least be discussed of if it is a, financially suitable for your specific situation.

we were just talking about a client that we have, and we had a private deal that we could have put them in, I don't want to put people into homes where they're stressed in six months about their payment,

look at this. The further we go on, the more we're agreeing.

No, I'm saying I won't put, I will tell someone to continue to rent until they've saved up enough money

Okay, here's, oh, that was short lived. Here's the devil's advocate coming back. I knew we couldn't last that

No, I, you didn't let me finish my

That's okay. That's, I'm still going to interrupt.

Uh, no, but in, you know, FHA is another, government loan program. And, they let some people in

Hold on, wait, I had a point before you moved past it.

Oh, I'm sorry. You had a point.

You literally said, I'm going to, I didn't mean to interrupt you. you just said that I'd rather have people continue to rent, and save up more money. a lot of people who are renting can't save money while they're renting because their money's going towards the rent.

I believe that people shouldn't necessarily hemorrhage all their cash. They can make up, they can save over what they're paying in their rent in order to put more money down to keep that payment down when they actually buy. when someone buys a house, it's the same thing with stock. if you buy too much stock and you spend way too much of your money, Then you're not going to have money for other things. same thing as if you buy a house, you want that payment. And we've talked about this on multiple episodes. You want that payment to be manageable, not only from a dollars and cents in and out from a paycheck to paycheck situation, you want that payment to be where you can still put yourself on a trajectory for. Other wealth endeavors. And I don't like some of these government loan programs like FHA and VA that don't necessarily do that. And I think that we work with really responsible lenders. We work with really responsible people because that they share my philosophy. And I get laughed out of rooms without this shit. Cause we were like, ah, if they say they're qualified, then, that's just capitalism and caveat on tour buyer. But where I'm like, fuck that man. We just went through like a 15, 15 years ago, we just went through a whole. thing about people buying houses they shouldn't be buying and so I feel very strongly about protecting the consumer.

that's why I always ask our lender, like when we're going to see a house, before we even go, and I talk with Mike about, Mike is our lender, can they qualify for it? Yes, I said, but Can they practically live here? that's why I'm very selective with which lenders are being used because, any lender who just wants to close a deal says Oh yeah, sure, but it'll put their debt to income at 54 percent and then they're eating ramen for the rest of their life. But I say, okay, but if they do get it, what does their quality of life look like? And he will tell us. no, it's going to be tight, and then would advise against it,

So yeah, I, again, there's within the context of this question, yes, in general, the American consumer should own homes instead of rent because it does put them on the trajectory of wealth building, versus paying someone else's mortgage through, through the rent. There are times where this logistical from a timing, a marital. financial, there are times when it's no, you shouldn't buy a house. You shouldn't buy a house right now. you won't hear anybody say that. That's not the battle cry, And it's I just care about giving good advice to people to make sure that they make the right decisions. Because I just, I don't want to be woken up at night thinking

Did I just ruin this person's

yeah, on paper they could afford it. Nah, that's not gonna and I know people think I'm naive and they think I'm a kind of a boy scout like I'm in the real estate space when I talk to them and there's not, I don't have a big audience for this man, most agents are trying to do the best they can. But I do think we could all do a little bit better of a job of really thinking through the logistics. And I also think there's a lot of realtors who don't understand what things cost. Like, when I look at an HVAC system that's 15 years old, and I know that the timeline on that thing's 15 to 20, I know that person's gonna be buying that house, and then they're gonna have probably anywhere from a 7, 000 to a 10, 000 replacement cost. And I think within the next few years, potentially, we get a really hot summer, who the hell knows, as like, can they afford that,

And in a more normal market than necessarily the competitive one we're about to get into, that's where you can also be able to throw that into offers and be able to ask okay, can we get, we all know this is going to be on its last leg. Can we get a credit for that?

That's right. but it's hard. It's hard. back when I first started, it was like, houses for 65 days. It's yeah, we need a full 6 percent assist. like that can happen in certain circumstances. But it's really, it's, the buyer really needs to have the right people in place to, to advocate for themselves. But I also want to go and just say like this episode is not meant to be discouraging where it's like, you've got no shot, bud. that's not what this is about. I just wanted to be absolutely clear and disseminate our philosophy is that we're all about putting people into home safely. And I've been telling you that since 2021, since you first started, like I'm not into selling people. a bill of goods and tell them everything's going to be warm and squishy and it's going to be totally fine and nothing's ever going to go wrong and peachy keen and any other analogy or, metaphor you want to come up with.

Aw, you said PG

Yeah, so peachy keen. But as somebody who owns a house, I've owned other houses. I know things that can come up. and again, we always talk about a lot of preparation, having people in your corner, and that's who we are. But I just wanted to talk about this because it's like, People don't, you go and follow a hundred Realtors on Instagram. Not one person's talking about this. It's all about buy, sell, buy, sell, buy, sell. And

People like me saying, of course, it's a good investment, but that's, it's, I say that so declaratively, because in my mind, when somebody asks me, is owning a home a good investment?

Yeah.

I say, obviously, because the only place my mind goes to is doing it responsibly because it's not even a second thought in my mind to just get somebody in with who is not adequately equipped to be able to handle the home or be able to live comfortably. but so long as you do it correctly and you have people who are actually advising defending you, then of course it is. And if you can, obviously, I may be a little bit more impulsive than the average person. and when I made the decision to buy my house, it was a, a conversation between my old roommate and I saying, she said, I don't want to run here anymore. And it was a, okay, I'm gonna move. I might as well just buy my own house and just very over, not even overnight was like, okay, I'm going to buy a

a house. And you are absolutely a success story of somebody who probably jumped in with two feet and didn't know, and you did it and you're succeeding and that's great. imagine how much, have you calculated how much rent you would have paid since 2017?

Oh God, no. It would probably make me feel a lot better.

was paying a little less with a roommate in rent than I

I was paying a little less with a roommate in rent than I pay for my mortgage. I don't have any equity in it. It's

in it. I know.

I have so

it's, there absolutely is validity.

It's more than a security, it's more than a

it's a more than a security deposit. No. and the longterm arc, like I will sit on any stage and talk to people about the longterm arc of homeownership versus renting. I don't think many people will take that chair. There's certain people out there who are incentivized to tell you, Oh, you should rent where you live and then own other things and all that. But that's where people like,

It

Have

to be able to do that.

Yeah.

if you are able to do that, you are not, you're not

yeah, why don't you also go, like, go, go buy a share of like a gold mine in South Africa too and all this like crazy exotic shit or buy land in Montana. It's no, like most people are just trying to do the things that they need to do to, or save for college, save for their retirement and that type of thing. If you got extra money, then great. Let's go buy, let's go buy a McMansion or go

buy something nice, a McMansion

Let's go buy something nice.

buy a compound.

Let's go buy a compound. But,

and I think that the people who are renting, do also agree that owning a home is a good investment, Or how am I supposed to do

there's structure, yeah, there's structural problems. People don't have the logistical ability to do it. They don't have the financial ability to do it. Some people like to rent just to, because of the mobility. They like the idea of being able to move every two years, just to a different change of scenery.

And I think that the time that I spent renting was like. Was the time that I needed to spend renting. some people just need to know where they want to put down roots and what is going to be a little more long term.

term. An extension of this conversation we are going to talk about in the future is about kids living in basements.

basements. Yeah.

For parents. That's going to be a big one. you guys are going to want to get a cup of coffee for that because I got a lot to say on that one. but no, so I think we can agree that the, in the aggregate in concept, in theory that American homeownership is still alive and it's absolutely the best thing you can do. Renting for the rest of your entire life is the way to turn around when you're 65 and have nothing to show for it. But there are times. Whether it's financial, it's logistical, marital, familial, whatever. There are times when, yeah, we're not gonna tell you to buy a house. We're gonna tell you to sell the house and just rent. Or In fact, there's

Realtors help with rentals

yeah? Oh yeah.

we can help you with a rental. Yeah. And I was surprised my cousin is also an agent in Delaware, shout out Kim and Kayla. and they were like, I can help with rentals. I was like, what do you mean? I was always just privy to, I was in apartment complexes and leasing managers and that's just, you go online and do, but, this whole world that I've discovered of, Realtors being able to help you get rentals in houses that are, more of what you'd want while you Get ready to be able to

Yeah, and also just be able to review your lease to like if you ever want to throw a Lease over to a realtor like they look at them a good one We'll look at what or one that has experience will look at one and be able to tell you the pitfalls because a lot of our Tenants I've seen just Robo sign these things and if the landlord prepares them like they're not slanted towards the tenant, like

That's like new build. It's like new

like new construction. The terms are written by the, by the builder or by the landlord.

That's going to be another podcast topic, too, is new construction.

Yeah.

and, realtors Can help you negotiate your rent too, which is also something I don't think people know, but

people know, but

just to be you know, so that if you do need to start saving more money to be able to build up your nest egg and You do need to rent for the time being At least try to get your rent down a little bit so that you can bank some money

And then I think we'll definitely in the spring talk about your favorite, which is the amortization. we'll have to do am, I actually just sent a video over to show the benefit of pre-paying a little bit of your

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

month, like you'd be amazed. I might just put a video on the YouTube page about that because, and

On the YouTubes. What's that? Nothing, I'm making fun of you.

You're making fun of me. just to show everybody like what that does, I can take like just a random house or whatever new street or, to show you, man, yeah, you can save a lot of money, man, by prepaying your mortgage. So we'll get into all that. But I think this was a good conversation. I'm glad

it would be a really good investment to prepay on the principal of your mortgage? Don't

to get that final word, huh, Nusky? All

ahead. Do you want to put that in the final word? I'll let you have

no, I've tried, I've, I've, I've tried to wrap, I've, I've tried to wrap up this episode three, three different times, which you always have to have the last word, so I will allow you to have it this time. See ya.

a great day, everybody. Bye.