Foreign.

The House with Eric G. Your go to source for everything home improvement.

Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric.

G. Is here to guide you through the latest tips, tricks and trends.

So grab your toolbox, put on your thinking cap, and let's get to work right here on around the House with.

Eric G. Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining me today.

This is our midweek update.

This is that show we do in the middle of the week that covers maybe what didn't fit into last weekend's show and of course, what isn't fitting into this weekend show.

Happy April Fool's Day.

We are not going to be playing April Fools here today.

So this is not something we're going to do today because it's just a regular show and not going to pull your leg because there's so many other people out there.

I figured let's create a safe space today for you so at least you can get something that you know that someone's not going to mess with you.

Let's also our 38th birthday here at around the House.

So we were founded on April 1, 1988, in Portland, Oregon.

When they sat down and said, hey, we got a show tomorrow.

And that was on a Saturday.

They announced it and here we are today, 38 years later.

Back then it was just a local Portland home improvement show.

It's grown.

I am the fourth host.

Before me was Handyman Bob.

That was there for about a decade and we had other hosts before that.

So when I moved to Portland and I tell you what, I had moved to Portland out of Seattle, was kind of just wanting to kind of reboot everything down in Portland and I needed to advertise on the radio.

And I wasn't going to start a big company like I had in Seattle with 13 designers and all that because I learned and what I was trying to do that bigger wasn't better when it came to my quality of life.

But I tell you what, when I moved to Portland, I said, I'm going to start over.

I'm going to advertise on the radio.

So I got a hold of the local radio station here that was the number one station in the market.

KXL still is today for news, news, talk and all that stuff.

It is a flamethrower.

What was cool was is sat down and said, hey, I want to advertise there just in the show just to be able to get people that needed kitchen and bath design And I always hung my shingle out as a kitchen and bath designer.

Here's what got fun.

I met Handyman Bob back in the day.

He has, hey, why don't you come on the radio?

Great.

I used to do radio.

Came on the radio a few times, few guest spots.

We had a blast together.

And he said, hey, you know, you want to be co host?

Yeah, I'll be co host.

Now, here's what was funny.

Bob's wonderful wife, Lynn, days later, I meet her for the first time out.

Running around at a.

It was an event, I think, for the building or National Kitchen and Bass association or one of the groups around, I can't remember which one.

We're sitting there in a showroom, met her, gave me a big hug and said, I'm so happy you're gonna be taking over for Bob because he wants to retire soon.

And I went, in my head, I smiled, oh, yeah, it's gonna be so great.

In my head, I was going, wow.

We hadn't had that conversation, but I now see the future.

We went on for maybe another year, and then he said, hey, I'm good.

And back then, we were doing it locally.

We were on seven or eight stations around the Pacific Northwest.

Many of you started here with us back then and before that.

And the cool thing was is we started to grow after I took over around the house with Handyman Bob and Eric G. Then it was Eric G. Like it is today.

And we've continued to grow it since then.

We were on KXL all the way up until a handful of years ago, seven or eight years ago, maybe.

And then we turned around and went, cool.

All right, we're growing.

We're on a bunch of stations.

We are getting ready to go national syndication.

And here's what happened.

Kxl, which was Alpha Media back then, crashed and burned.

Not the station.

The parent company that was in the floor above it crashed and burned.

They had internal struggles.

They had a lot of issues within Alpha Media.

Not saying anything that hasn't been in the news here, guys.

So I'm just going to call the spade the spade what it is.

And they got rid of all their live and local on the weekend.

They got rid of everybody except a couple people that were in the weekdays, Lars Larson and a few other people.

That's when KXL sold it to Connoisseur.

Connoisseur took over.

And it has been the most amazing breath of fresh air they are bringing back live.

And local people are loving it.

They've really done a Great job here in the marketplace.

They keep growing.

It's great to see this station get back to its glory days and they have already done that and it's really cool to see that happening.

So hats off to Connoisseur Media for coming in, taking over and being kind of the new bright light in radio out there.

Radio is growing.

It's fun.

It's great to see that out there.

Now we're on what, couple hundred stations across the country.

The podcast as well.

So super excited for season what, 38 now.

Gotta get used to saying that.

And just a lot of fun.

And I really have to say thanks to all of you out there for playing a part in our growth.

The the million plus people we talk to each weekend is amazing and I love to hear your stories.

So feel free.

I do take those emails.

So if you've got a question or comment or if you have something you want to hear us talk about, just run over to aroundthehouse online.com contact us right there.

I will do my best to get back to you.

If I missed you, it was by error.

And here's what happens.

I have every single podcast promoter, YouTube expert messages me over there and I get probably three to one sales pitches over there to question.

So we have to filter through those.

And sometimes very rare things get lost in a spam bin.

So hey, before we get into the show, other stuff I wanted to talk about today.

I thought, hey, let's get these recalls out of the way.

Nothing too crazy out there.

Lots of bikes, furniture, kids stuff, that kind of stuff.

But there are a couple things that are interesting.

If you did some work on your house with gas, you know those yellow gas connectors?

Duratrack recalls stainless steel gas connectors Due to fire hazard.

There's about 197,000 of them out there.

Those are those yellow pipes.

So take a look.

Make sure you don't have those.

They have a manufacturing defect that could cause a leak.

That's a big one.

And then CCCEI brand power strips recall due to risk of serious injury from fire.

Sold by Middle Way Electronics.

There's about not too many of those.

Here is the thing that's important with this.

You'll notice usually a power strip will have one switch right next to the plug at the end where it comes out and that controls the whole power switch.

This one, looking at the picture, has six switches, one for each plug.

And it looks like it's got the 20amp style plug on it.

So that looks like that one could be interesting.

And then Here is one thing to keep in mind in barbecue grill accessories out there, guys, and this is a big one.

Next Grill is recalling over 10.2 million wire bristle grill brushes due to ingestion hazard sold at Home Depot.

I tell you what, between Weber and Next Grill, there are millions of these.

So if you have your traditional barbecue brush for your barbecue and it has the wires sticking straight out of it that are individual wires, stop using it, guys.

Those wires can get hung up in the grease and stuff and it can end up in your food and it can cause a serious issue.

You don't want to be ingesting that.

So time to change to a different grill brush.

But if you have a NEX grill or if you have a Weber, jump online.

There's recalls on this stuff and there's injuries reported.

So this is not anything to mess with.

So about 10.2 million of those.

So the rest of the stuff is like ice axes for climbing toys, all that kind of stuff.

Bikes, helmets, all that stuff.

So there's a lot of stuff.

Find out more@cpsc.gov you can find it over there.

Now, here's one of the main topics I wanted to talk about.

We're seeing this show up in social media.

It's around there, and it's driving me absolutely crazy.

We have people out there predicting there's going to be a housing crash in 2026 unless something big happens out there.

We don't have enough houses on the market for a housing crash.

With construction in many states behind, not enough homes out there.

Now, really, what we have to see our housing crash where we saw maybe 30% of the value go away.

We had a extreme glut of new construction homes out there.

There was just too many homes on the market.

Is that the case now?

No, it's kind of quite the opposite, actually.

In most areas, we have a shortage of homes now.

So I think until we can put some more money in people's pockets, I think we are going to see the market stay about where they are right now.

And I think that's what's going to happen.

And I think for people out there, and I feel for everybody, because I'm feeling the same battle, my energy costs here.

We used to have some of the cheapest electricity in the country.

Now, because what's happened out there with energy companies saying, hey, we're gonna get rid of that cheap energy and we're gonna go with wind, solar, all that other stuff, all of a sudden we're seeing energy rates that are 25% more, 30% more what they were just a handful of years ago.

And so I get that we're going greener and that's probably great for everybody.

But when it adds 30% plus to your energy rates, that's a hard bill to swallow when everything else has been going up as well.

And we saw that over the last five or six years of just absolute inflation killing us.

So we need to get our wages up to do that.

More take home pay tax decreases if we can get government spending down.

And by the way, guys, that's on us as people out there.

We need to vote people in.

They're going to say, hey, we don't need more taxes.

And we're going to have to say enough of that.

Now.

Some states are doing great, others are horrible.

I live in Oregon State.

We are one of the biggest overspending states in the country.

If you look at what we spend and the results in it, it's just what it is.

So I think we're gonna have to take control of our own destiny a little bit across the country to see things change.

And that's going to be up to us on election day.

We need to get stuff dialed in.

And this is, this is not a right or left thing here, guys.

This is a, everybody needs to do it.

I think that we're going to get a little bit into politics for a second here just because we're going to be talking about elected officials.

But I think if we're going to shut a government down, we should have it where Congress house.

Everybody out there isn't receiving paychecks as well.

If the government shut down, they're not getting paid, they're not paying their bills, they're not paying anything for them.

That should be the first thing that shuts down.

And I'm cool with that because why these guys are off on vacation doing stuff while there's hard working people out there like our TSA people out there.

Now if you're investing in commercial real estate, hope you're not in Portland because you have just lost your ass on this one.

So let me tell you a little bit what's going on in my city here, for instance, and we're seeing this in other cities across the country.

Our downtown office vacancy rate is probably somewhere at 34 and a half in May, mid to late 2025.

Citywide, it's close to 30% and it's 10 to 15% higher than most national areas.

Now if you want to see a collapse, Portland has crashed and burned.

Portland's 20 largest office building have lost 70% of their combined market value since 2019.

That's just a little drop of about 2 billion bucks from 3 billion to under 1 billion.

So if you look at our big famous buildings in our town here, U.S. bancorp Tower, what they call Big Pink, sold for 45 million in 2025, 2015, those same people had bought it for 373 million.

88% Crash.

PacWest center, that's where KXL we were just talking about broadcast from, sold for 56 million.

It was bought in 2016 for 170.

So you're seeing that kind of stuff citywide.

And so these fire sales of people just going, whoa, we've lost it this bad.

We're out.

And so that put Portland ranking 80th out of 81 US markets in the 2026 emerging trends in Real Estate report for investment development projects.

Who was worse?

Hartford, Connecticut and the metro area also lost 800 jobs in 2025, fourth worst nationally.

So that's what we're seeing out there.

And yeah, if you walk around town, it can be a ghost town down.

So what is the reason for that?

In a place where people go, the taxes are high, it's dangerous walking the streets and nobody wants to be there.

So all of a sudden you see companies moving to Nashville, companies moving to other places, Texas, Florida, Austin, Texas, to be specific.

So we're seeing that.

So we've seen big crash on that.

We'll see what happens.

That's going to take probably years for that to come back because they're still making the same decisions down there.

Cities like Portland.

Could values go down?

Yeah.

If we keep losing businesses, absolutely.

Is it going to crash now?

Because once prices get low, people that are in apartments that want to get up into that, they start buying.

And that's going to be interesting.

But I just really wanted to get into this here to make sure that we're talking about this.

I wanted to address is there we have a real estate crash coming?

I've had more people ask me that over the last six weeks.

Answer is no, not gonna happen.

So stay in your home, invest in it, fix it up, do what you want to do, enjoy your spring cleaning and enjoy your spring projects.

If you can save money doing DIY when money's tight, that's the best way to do it.

And you could do that by listening to the show right here and we could walk you through those projects.

Happy birthday to the around the House show.

Thank you guys for being a part of this.

Some of you for the entire 38 years.

And for that, I say to every one of you listening, sincerely, thank you.

We appreciate you.

We hear you.

And if you want to hear something, send me a message over to aroundthehouse online.com I'm Eric G. Thanks for tuning in.

Thanks for tuning in to the around the House show.

Make sure you subscribe on your favorite way to catch podcasts.

Also, be sure to subscribe to our new YouTube channel and you can find it at around the House hq and ring that bell for updates.

Thanks for tuning in to around the House.