Indy's Real Estate Gurus
April 12, 2022

How to Invest in Real Estate with Guru Spencer Grey.

How to Invest in Real Estate with Guru Spencer Grey.

In this episode  Spencer Gray shares his abundant knowledge and experience in multi family real estate investing. Spencer will discuss  the difference between residential and commercial multi-family, what current risk are in the multifamily and real estate market, and why his preference is to invest in apartments instead of single family homes.

Spencer Gray serves as the President of Gray Capital, LLC. In this role he leads the Gray Capital team in directing investment strategy, tailoring investor experience, and fostering relationships with operator partners. Since founding Gray Capital, Spencer has been involved in nearly $1 Billion in CRE projects. Before founding Gray Capital in 2015, Spencer, founded successful businesses in the fields of media distribution, real estate, and agriculture before turning his passion for investing in commercial real estate into what is now Gray Capital.

Spencer has extensive experience in real estate investing beginning with his first rehab of a single-family home when he was still in high school to now overseeing an acquisition pipeline averaging $200MM per year.  Gray Capital is a commercial real estate investment and asset management firm with a focus on stabilized assets in secondary and tertiary markets. We work with family offices, individual investors, and institutions to build and preserve wealth through diversified portfolios of cash flowing real assets. Currently, our investor portfolios are comprised of over 37 assets in 7 states, and we continue to offer access to high-yielding Midwest and Southeast markets. Our primary asset class of focus is "workforce" multifamily apartments.

Spencer has also created several Thought Leadership / Media Platforms:  The Gray Report YouTube channel, podcast, the Gray Report Newsletter, and Gray Report.com.

Transcript

Announcer  0:00  

Branch NMLS number 33041. Witness NMLS number 664589 equal housing lender some restrictions apply. Advisors Mortgage Group is proud to present in these real estate gurus hosted by Rick Ripma, the hard working mortgage guy, please contact Rick for all of your mortgage needs at hard working mortgage guy.com That's hardworkingmortgageguy.com. Now, here's the hard working mortgage guy, Rick Ripma.

 

Rick Ripma  0:31  

Thank you for joining me, I appreciate it very much. And this is Rick Ripma, your hard work, and mortgage guy and I'm with advisors Mortgage Group. If you would like to get a hold of me and go to our website, hardworking mortgage guys.com That's hardworking, mortgage guys.com. All my contact information is there and you can contact me from that area. today. I'm joined. I'm really excited about it. Spencer Gray, serves as the president of gray capital LLC. And Spencer, thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate it very much.

 

Spencer Gray  0:57  

Absolutely. Rick, really appreciate you having me on. But looking forward to this. 

 

Rick Ripma  1:01  

I've listened to your podcast, and you just have a lot of phenomenal information. I think what you discuss too, is something that might be new to our audience. But I think it's one of those things that's really important. As it's certainly real estate, but it's also not everybody's meant to go own and manage a rental property. Yep. And you give a really good alternative to that to me. Of course, none of it not everything's for everybody. But man, what I've listened to what I've heard, it's I think it's a really good opportunity for people. But I thought I'd start with your kind of giving us an idea. You know, your background. I think you're from Indiana, and just give us a background kind of who you are.

 

Spencer Gray  1:45  

Yeah, no, absolutely. So yeah, born and raised in Indiana. Born on the west side of indie kind of pike township did haven't had exactly the most linear career path, though, I'd say, which I don't think is typical for folks in real estate sometimes. Always wanted to, you know, build a business. I've always been interested in entrepreneurship. My parents were entrepreneurs, and I then build a business. But I started like, kind of following some of my passions. So, I was a music major. And at IU, I worked in recording studios. And at the side, I started on the side though, I started getting into real estate, started flipping a couple of houses. And I kind of got this bug of there's an opportunity here and no matter what I wanted to do in my career, I wanted to always be doing something related to real estate on the side. Then throughout that process, I couldn't really make the music business and opened a recording studio and I was doing a lot of audiobook production. I couldn't really make a scalable business and but the real estate thing was it was going but it wasn't, I was gonna I was flipping houses. I didn't see that as necessarily scalable either. And I had this opportunity with a buddy of mine to start a business completely unrelated to real estate. So we got into the craft beer industry and we started selling hops about 2013 2014 started calling up you know, whether it's Sun King, all the local breweries around, saying you know, you guys worried you get your hops from would you buy them from me if I could sell them to you? There was a hot shortage at the time. And we all suddenly got a lot of interesting yeah, we'd buy anything you had. I flew got on a plane flew out to Yakima, Washington met with hop farmers started brokering hops between craft brewers and ourselves essentially started a hop farm or the largest top farm in the state of Indiana, then sold that business in about 2015 at that point and said, Okay, what's my next thing? I love real estate. I love real estate investing. I've been reading books after books getting on bigger pockets, learning about multifamily investing, buying hold, not flipping. So I want to build a business around this. And I was fortunate, I was networking with a lot of folks that were in the business who were doing what I thought that I wanted to do. And eventually, I partnered with someone who was buying large apartment communities in Central Indiana, and partnered with his kind of to kind of assist in that process, finding the deals, putting the deals together, helping to raise the money, you know, guaranteeing the loans and really leveraged his experience and track record obviously was multiple steps ahead of where I was to build my own track record. To get to a point I could start building my own team. And from that point in 2015 to today, we've invested in over 10,000 apartment units. I've got a staff of just 10 full-time employees now buying apartments throughout the Midwest, mostly in Indiana, mostly in Indianapolis, but kind of throughout the Midwest. And it's been a lot of fun because it's such a relationship business real estate in general. But I've always considered myself a more of a creative person and taking a creative approach to putting partnerships together or looking at real estate projects. And so now we work with investors from across the country who are looking to invest in real estate but they either don't have The time they don't have the knowledge or experience, and they want to partner with someone that does have that experience and has a track record. So they can basically be a completely passive investor, they get all the advantages of owning and investing in real estate.

 

Rick Ripma  5:13  

Yeah, it's, to me it's a great concept. I'm sure. It's proven. And it sounds like you're doing extremely well. If somebody wanted a little more information on it, as your website is the best thing,

 

Spencer Gray  5:26  

yeah, great capital llc.com. That's kind of where we have most of our information and get in touch with us. We've got a lot of educational materials as you said, we've got a podcast, we've got a newsletter. When general we try to kind of front-load, people who are interested with kind of information and resources are not you know, there are some groups out there that are really just focused on education, we'll teach you how to do all of this. We're more focused on making you knowledgeable about the industry and what you're investing in getting you up-to-date information. Not necessarily gonna hold your hand to go out and buy the real estate yourself, although happy to have those conversations, but yeah, gray capital llc.com.

 

Rick Ripma  6:03  

So, what's the difference between residential and commercial? Multifamily?

 

Spencer Gray  6:21  

Yeah, so in some ways, they're not that different. You know, it's, they're built very similarly, specifically. So when we're talking about kind of your garden style, you know, two to three-story, you know, apartment buildings. And you know, the management of them isn’t too different, you know, the things break, you have to fix them, but they're built not too dissimilar compared to a single-family home. One of the big differences though is how the properties are valued, and how you finance the properties themselves. And because of the way commercial properties are valued strictly based on the income that that property produces. And then sometimes, especially today, the future income that it may produce over the next year or two years, were single-family homes, noncommercial, single-family homes and properties that are up to four units, one to four units are considered residential, and you finance them the way you would finance any single-family home. And they're valued based typically based on comparable properties. You know, you look at comps, you go to the MLS, what are other similar properties selling for in commercial real estate, since it's based on the value, it gives us the ability to force appreciation, so we can go into an apartment community, we can add value in terms of you know, renovating it in terms of the maybe the interiors of the units, maybe we're adding amenities, increasing the curb appeal, after adding the value, raising the rents, and that increased income has a direct mathematical correlation of the value itself. And so for today, you know, for every additional dollar that we're getting in rent, that equals to about $26 of value. And so like we have a property up in South Bend, Indiana, it's large property about 290 units, it has a model unit, big three-bedroom model, it's running out, it's a newer property, so it's higher rents, so it's around like 24 to $2,500 a month, just bringing that one unit online, we're going to add about $600,000 of value to the property itself. And if it was valued the same way you that you might value residential property, but you would just look at a similar apartment community and see what it's sold for. So it gives us a direct ability to force the value force, the force appreciation, which down the road, we can then go and refinance the property, take tax-free loan proceeds, and really kind of de-risk the asset because we're kind of taking chips off the table, big differences that I see. But really they're made of a kind of the same, you know, two by fours, and you fix them kind of this fix them up the same way. And there's not a whole lot of difference between a 10 unit and 100 unit. It's just a couple of zeros

 

Rick Ripma  8:54  

right. Now, this may or may, you may have already answered this. I just want to make sure. So what are there different ways to finance a multifamily project?

 

Spencer Gray  9:05  

Yeah, there are in it, it comes down to really deciding the project. Anytime that the loan size is typically under a million dollars, you're going to be going towards more local banks or credit unions that are going to be offering a lot of times the terms are not necessarily as attractive as residential mortgage terms. And so that's why a lot of folks kind of stick in the one to the four-unit range because you actually get better terms. Whether you go in for an FHA loan, there are a lot of other options that are made for residential homebuyers. Once you get to that five-unit range, you don't have a loan size up to a million dollars. You're really talking to you more portfolio lenders, you know, smaller banks. Typically, once you get to properties that have loan sizes beyond a million dollars, you then start becoming attractive and qualifying for agency financing so Fannie Mae Freddie Mac, and even HUD loans themselves, when you can qualify for those agency loans, the terms get much better. So you're really looking at non-recourse financing, lower interest rates, you know, longer amortization periods, longer interest-only periods. And so once you get large enough, the term starts getting better than even residential mortgages themselves. So there is a bit of a difference between residential to then this kind of gap, up to, you know, a million dollars of the loan balance, and then the larger mortgage, which is why we typically target properties that are usually 100 units or more one because of the loan size, but also because of economies of scale, as well.

 

Rick Ripma  10:46  

I know I have done in the past lending on that type of property, and it is a lot different. And it is a lot. It's amazing how, as you said, you can add value to a property. So, which is totally opposite of how you do it with a single-family or, you know, one to four-units, which is what I deal with. After the break, we're going to talk more with Spencer gray about his company and what they do, and a little bit about how you can get involved. Hi, this is Rick Ripma, your hard working mortgage guy at Advisors Mortgage Group, you've heard me on the radio for nearly a decade now speaking to a loyal audience about mortgages in my industry for a sustained period of time has allowed me to partner with and save money for so many people, the industry is always changing. And so are the do's and don'ts for the first-time and repeat homebuyers, because I believe in helping and educating. I also host my own show right here on freedom 95 I'd love it if you join me every Saturday at 330 will dive deep into the trends of the ever-fluid mortgage world. And as always, I'd love to talk and see how I could save your family money and stress. Please call me at 317215 7600 or visit hard working mortgage guy.com That's Rick Ripma Your hard work and mortgage guy at advisors Mortgage Group call me 317-215-7600 Rent

 

Announcer  12:03  

NMLS number 33041. Rick Ripma is NMLS number 664589 equal housing opportunity some restrictions apply.

 

Brought to you by advisors Mortgage Group, where we believe the more you know about financing a home, the less stressful buying and refinancing will be

 

Rick Ripma  12:26  

Welcome back. And thank you so much for joining me. I'm here with Spencer Gray the president of Gray Capital LLC. And we're talking about, you know, the commercial properties, not buildings over five units is what we're talking about. That's what your company does. And it's very interesting. And I know that one of the things for somebody to get involved in your company is to be an investor. I think it's called an accredited investor. What is that? And how does somebody become accredited?

 

Spencer Gray  12:56  

Yeah, you know, it's really a product of the SEC. In there are rules on you who can participate in certain types of investment offerings, and there was a big change back in 2012, the jobs and Tax Act was passed, that really allowed for a new kind of the crowdfunding you hear about today and kind of raising money online, it changed some of the rules. So, in the past, someone could participate in a will a real estate syndication, which is essentially kind of what we're putting together a partnership with a lot of different passive investors, you wouldn't necessarily have to be an accredited investor, but you would have to have some sort of experience. But the sponsor or the company, gray capital, we would be limited to how we could discuss the investment offering, we couldn't advertise it, we couldn't go out and tell people, hey, we have a property that we're buying, do you want to invest, we'd be limited to discussing that. But when they change the rules, they allowed for a different type of securities exemption is what they call it. So, where we can actually, we can advertise our investment offerings, we can go on, you know, go on the internet and say, hey, we've got this great investment offering come and check it out. But because we do that, we are now only limited to accepting accredited investors. And what an accredited investor is there's no test there, mate, will there technically is a test you can take. But it's more of Do you already qualify. And there are two basic rules or tests. One is net worth tests. So if you have a net worth of over a million dollars, you're automatically an accredited investor. Or if you are a single individual with an income over $200,000 for the last two or three years, you would qualify for $300,000 as a married couple. So not to get into kind of the frustrations with the SEC but its essential rules to kind of protect investors from themselves with the idea that you know, there are some bad actors out there and you don't want to make bad investments. Now, I don't think someone who has just because they have more money necessarily makes them safer. skated to make their own investment decisions. But according to the SEC, they've drawn the line there, they've changed the rules a little bit, there are some tests you can take, but it's more of you have to be a licensed security broker. So usually, individuals don't have the time to go down that road and get licensed to sell securities, which is the only way to do it unless you're making the income or net worth tests.

 

Rick Ripma  15:21  

Okay, and so who checks that who makes sure that that investment is that?

 

Spencer Gray  15:26  

That's a good question. So in the past, it was literally it was a self-accreditation, there would be a form and you would check a box, it would ask you are accredited, and you would just check the box, there was no verification. Now it has changed, the way we do it is you have to provide some kind of verification, and the easiest way and what most investors do is they you can provide a letter from either your CPA, your attorney or you’re stockbroker, that basically says short couple sentences, this person is based on my knowledge as a professional, this individual is accredited. And that checks that box, so I

 

Rick Ripma  16:02  

Can't just have my mom do it.

 

Spencer Gray  16:04  

Unless your mom does CPA, we've had people say I'm a CPA, can I write my own letter, right? We wish but we gotta, you know, don't want the SEC not gonna know, oh, that's, that's ugly, stay away. Yes,

 

Rick Ripma  16:17  

you don't want that. I know, for me, in mortgages, it's like anybody, because you read about it, and people do stupid things and end up committing mortgage fraud and all that there is no mortgage worth committing mortgage fraud and not being able to do mortgages. Exactly. And there's, I'm sure there's no investor worth doing that over. And losing, you can't do business anymore.

 

Spencer Gray  16:39  

And we, you know, we're split because on one hand, I'm very passionate about working with individuals who are trying to allocate their resources to real estate. And oftentimes, it's the non-accredited investors who could benefit the most from these types of investments. And on the flip side of the coin, it's the larger investors who are going to, you know, move the needle in terms of us, you know, fundraising to, if we're gonna buy a multimillion-dollar apartment community, certainly no investor, that's going to write a million-dollar check, obviously, you know, they can do more for us than someone who could write a $25,000 check. But I kind of, I'm more excited about the guys who need the only the one and write that $25,000, check and get them into real estate, because they're usually working harder, you know, full time, they don't have the time to go out, do all the research on finding a property managing it, you know, put all your nights and weekends in, because I'm already working a full-time job. Right. So, you know, there we’ve been working on some programs where we can allow non-accredited investors in alongside our accredited investors. But it's again, it can be it's a process of being on the right side of the SEC. And so, for now, only our projects are only open to accredited investors, and

 

Rick Ripma  17:52  

I agree with you, I've had a rental property in the past and I learned that I shouldn't have rental property. Yeah, without a rental, I have to have a manager because I can't do it. I don't have time. And I don't want to go over on Saturday or three o'clock in the morning and plunge the toilet. Yeah, that's just not for me. So I what you're doing, I think is like, Oh, this is a great way for somebody who would like to be in real estate, which is a great investment. As we can see, this last year or two has been phenomenal. And that's it, they don't have to manage it, you manage it, you take care of the what I think is the worst part of it, and they get to take advantage of the best part

 

Spencer Gray  18:29  

of it. Exactly. And not only that, is it, it's very efficient with your time because you need to factor in your time, how much are you going to put into that property, you're spending all your nights and weekends, you know, starting adding up your hours and all of a sudden, you're not paying yourself that much, maybe you're getting, you know, $200 $300 a month from that property. But you're probably spending, you know, hours doing that. But it's also leveraging the experience of a group that does real estate full time. This is all we do. You know, this is all, you know, live, breathe and sleep real estate in just every single day. And I had to ask myself, when we were I was getting into real estate, you know, was I going to be able to do a better job compared to you know, a group that had been doing it for years and you know, had a track record and it wasn't gonna be the first time. How much do you look at your potential return on real estate investment, you do it all yourself and say, Well, you know, I'm not paying a manager, I'm going to get a higher rate of return. But then factor in the risk of what you don't know the mistakes that you might make. You're going to, you know, pay for your education, which is fine, but is the objective to have a second job and learn every single piece about managing a property, or is the objective of I want to invest in real estate and allocate myself to real estate and reap all the benefits of you know, owning a real asset with tax benefits cash flow to be diversified away from the stock market. You can achieve all of that without swinging a hammer and you know, learning how to be a plumber on the weekends.

 

Rick Ripma  19:54  

Yeah, that's a beautiful thing. The best way for somebody to get a hold of you if they want to find more out this is your website which is

 

Spencer Gray  20:02  

Gray Capitals at Gray Capital llc.com. We do have fun if anyone wants to learn about it's even easier. I'm just gray dot fun can type it directly into their browser. But yeah, those would be the two kinds of fastest ways to fund yep, that's yeah.

 

Rick Ripma  20:19  

I didn't know that. 

 

Spencer Gray  20:20  

Yeah, no, Go Daddy. They suggested I'm like, well, that that's the one. Easy enough.

 

Rick Ripma  20:25  

Yeah. That's why they do that. Yeah. So this, this question is like, so what is a real estate syndication? Yeah.

 

Spencer Gray  20:32  

So real estate syndication in Let me qualify, I didn't know. I hadn't heard the term real estate syndication until after I had been involved in a couple of real estate syndications. It's essentially just a partnership thing about a partnership, you know, you and I, were going to go out want to buy real estate, but I'm going to be the active investor, I'm gonna find the deal, run it if I get the financing, but you're going to provide the capital to do it. Now in a real estate syndication, typically, it's not just one passive investor, it's usually a pool of investors. But the idea being we're all we have a similar goal and objective, we want to invest in, you know, large apartment community, but individually, you know, we don't have the capital, as an individual, did you go out and buy that property, or if you were extremely well off, maybe we did have the money, but you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, you rather diversify and make a smaller investment. So, it's a pool of investors, pursuing, you know, a common objective, which is typically either, you know, a single property or a portfolio of properties.

 

Rick Ripma  21:30  

I've always wondered, and I don't know why never looked it up. But it makes sense. It sounds, I don't know, it sounds more difficult than it actually is. It doesn't want you to explain it. It's like, oh, okay, that makes sense. Just a bunch of people who get together and invest in real estate,

 

Spencer Gray  21:45  

you know, it, the, you know, the old school way of doing it, people call it, you know, the kind of the country club methods. So, you know, I, I buy, I'm in the real estate business, I'm hanging out the Country Club, and I've gotten, you know, 10 buddies who are already making decent money and say, Hey, guys, I've got I know a building, you know, in town, why don't we all pull our money together and go buy it, I'll take care of, you know, the financing, I'll put the business plan, I'll manage it, you guys just chip in a little bit. And let's all do this together. That's kind of how it originated, you know, certainly was more institutionalized. And, you know, people have been syndicating for a while, but typically relatively privately. And again, coming back, going back to 2012, when they passed the tax and Jobs Act, or the visual ad for crowdfunding, it really kind of opened the floodgates of where there's now you can go online, you can see syndicators, who are publicly advertising these partnerships, which is great, but there's a lot of people doing it, you also need to be careful, because there's a lot of folks that are, you know, syndicating a project for the first time, you want to make sure that and really, this is important. When you're looking at investing in syndication. If it sounds like it's right for you, it's much more important to do your due diligence on the sponsor, or the company that is going to be running the deal. Rather than like the actual property itself. Obviously, that's important too. But it's it, you want to think about it as more of betting on the jockey rather than the horse. And you want to make sure you have an experienced team, and it's not their first real estate project, and they're going to get learn, they're going to buy their education using your money. So there's definitely an elevated level of risk. But we've seen a growth of kind of the syndication business really over the last decade or so it's

 

Rick Ripma  23:29  

just that it makes total sense. You want the if you research the people and the people that you decide on to know what they're doing, they're going to do the right things, they're going to find the right properties. Yeah, if you find somebody who's new at it, they may I mean, I've seen it, I've seen people go and just themselves, they want to buy a rental property, they go by, and they buy bad properties. Yeah. And it's, you need somebody who knows what they're doing. So what's the difference between syndication and I think it's a writ which is trust?

 

Spencer Gray  23:59  

Yeah. They're similar in the sense that you know, they're both passive vehicles. You know, I would say a REIT is the most passive vehicle because you can go on you know, whatever the stockbroker brokerage you use, you can buy, you know, Mid-America apartment, trust, whichever REIT that you would like to buy in an instant, and you can buy it for a relatively low cost of capital relatively cheaply, you know, just buy a share. The big difference though, are you lose a lot of the benefits to real estate when you're buying a REIT because really, you're not buying you're not investing in the real estate, you're investing in a company and so it's much more it's paper real estate, essentially, there are no tax benefits when it comes to REIT so like when we put syndication together, it's a partnership. So, all of the depreciation for example, that passes through to an investor in syndication were as a REIT, you receive your dividend but it's you know, comes to you as you know, fully tax taxable dividends that you're paying regular income tax on syndication we have so much to appreciate Question that distributions are almost always in the first five to seven years is enough depreciation to shelter that income tax. So, if you actually get your k one tax document, it actually shows you have a loss for that year, even though if you've received, you know, large distribution, you actually have a negative number. According to the IRS that continues to be carried forward, you lose that advantage when you are investing in a real estate investment trust. So those are some of the big advantages also REITs, you know, they're on the stock market. So they have exposure to stock market volatility, you look back in during the pandemic, and 2020 REITs and the value of the REITs plummeted. But when we looked at our properties, since we're in private markets, so there's no day today, you know, Minute to Minute, second by second trading? Well, you know, we had concerns, we didn't know where the economy was going to be going. We didn't know if people could pay rent, but our values stayed the same, right? And we ended up getting through and everything was great. The values went up 30 to 40%. So it was all good. And I ended up being all good.

 

Rick Ripma  25:59  

Yeah. So what's the difference? Or what is the risk associated with a larger building over the smaller buildings? Yeah.

 

Spencer Gray  26:05  

So, you know, the, there can seem like there could be more problems, because it's like, well, it's a big building, there can be what can go wrong, you know, what if you have to replace, you know, 15 roofs, you know, the single-family home, it's, it's simpler, in a sense, you've got everything, you know, right there, you have one roof to replace. On the flip side of that, though, on a large multifamily apartment, apartment, yeah, you may have more buildings, and it may be more roofs, but you may have 10 to 20 units under that one roof. So sure, you have to replace a roof. But compared to a single-family home, you may have 20 roofs, so you have to replace them. Also, if a single-family home, if someone you have to evict someone or they move out, you go from 100% occupied to 0% occupied overnight, and you're all of a sudden on the hook for that mortgage-paying all the expenses. Whereas an apartment building, one person moves out, one person gets evicted, well, you've got 100 other units. So, you go went from 100% occupied the 99%. So there, there are, there are complexities with larger properties. But there's also the economies of scale to really address those. And that's, again, why we like kind of 100 units in more and really kind of 200 units is like a really nice sweet spot. Because we can afford to have onsite staff, I had the property every single day. So, we have a maintenance supervisor, we have a maintenance tech, a property manager, you know, in a leasing agent that work with these properties every single day. So, it's not like we have to go and find a contractor to come in and fix something we've got. We've got people on the ground every single day. Yeah, and that's a big deal. Because right now, you can't find a contractor. So, and it's hard to find the maintenance crews as well, you know, that's a major challenge. And we're gonna continue to see that, but it's nice to have somebody on staff,

 

Rick Ripma  27:52  

like so now, what do you see as the current risk in the multi-family market and the real estate market currently.

 

Spencer Gray  27:58  

So, you know, there are two ways that we've been looking at it, you know, one, let's just look at housing and not necessarily the entire economy. I mean, the supply and demand imbalance is just, it's incredible. And it's been, it's coming to a head now for really last decade, we just haven't built enough housing. I mean, here in Indianapolis last year, we saw 5000 units, apartment units are absorbed in the market, we only built 2500, we're at our lowest level of construction in Indianapolis since 2012. Apartments and our population continue to grow and rents continue to go up. So that so in terms of housing, that looks great, but in terms of the macroeconomy, and specifically the Federal Reserve and interest rates, we have not been in a rising interest rate environment since 2018. And when that happened, you know, a recession happened not too much further after now. COVID really caused it. But still, many would say there would have been a recession anyway, the Federal Reserve can really ruin an economy, and the way that they the steps that they are going to have to take to bring inflation in, they're gonna have to raise interest rates. And that, to me has exponentially increased the amount of risk if you're using certain strategies, like if you're using a floating rate loan right now. Now, you may have been able to get a good interest rate, you know, low threes, even still today, it could be five and a half 6% In the next month or two. And if you're not anticipating that, you could be left holding the bag because you know, the valuations are so high cap rates are low, which means the cash flow is skinnier. If your amount of debt service goes up, you could be you know, below your breakeven point very quickly. And that risk wasn't apparent three or six months ago, right. And I don't know if everyone has really gotten up to speed.

 

Rick Ripma  29:41  

Yeah, and that's a little different than like we do arm rates but that you're talking about floating rates, which are basically a month. Exactly. Not something that's you could get a locked-in rate for 10 years. That's totally that's totally different. Yeah, totally different. We're running out of time, but I wanted to thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it very much. I against bets are the best way to find any information.

Spencer Gray  30:04  

Yeah, great capital llc.com. And if you want to sign up for our newsletter, it's great capital llc.com/newsletter Yeah, just pop over and take a look. And again, we've got podcast materials and are happy to hop on a phone call resume and have a conversation about real estate investing love talking about real estate. So

 

Rick Ripma  30:21  

I just started because I didn't know about you before and a friend of ours introduced us. The information is very your information is extremely good. It's extremely well put together I can't encourage people enough to go they need to go do that. Again. Thanks so much for joining us.

 

Unknown Speaker  30:38  

It was a pleasure. I appreciate the invitation. This was awesome.

 

Rick Ripma  30:41  

Well, thank you, and thank you all for joining us. I'm Rick Ripma with the hard work and mortgage guys and advisors Mortgage Group and you can go to hard working mortgage guys.com That's hardworking mortgage guys.com Thanks again for joining me Have a great day. At advisors Mortgage Group, we have been coming alongside and helping families with their mortgage needs for years. Hello, this is Rick Ripma Your hard work and mortgage guy you've heard me on freedom 95 for nearly a decade now we believe there are already enough hassles and headaches that come with the moving process. So let my team and I handle your mortgage for you. We have a proven track record of helping families to make the mortgage process as seamless as possible. Call me at 317-215-7600 or visit hard working mortgage guy.com That's 317-215-7600