Podcast Episode 121 Transcript

Episode 121: Raising Over $20m For Real Estate Deals With Bronson Hill

This week on the Prereal podcast, we've got Bronson Hill. Bronson speaks directly, and I mean directly at inflation. What's happening? What's coming around the corner. He speaks about ways that you can use inflation to your advantage. This is a guy that 20 exed his portfolio in just a few short years, having zero real estate experience going into it. Super sharp investor. If you want to get some tips on how to get started, where to look, what's coming around the corner, don't miss this episode. Bronson Hill. Really tremendous value. Heck of a job. Check it out. Are you ready to bring your real estate game to the next level? My name is James Prendamano. I'm the CEO and founder of Prereal. And over the past 25 years, I've closed over a billion dollars in transactional real estate. Each week, I'm meeting with outstanding investors, high performing individuals, and visionaries operating in the real estate space. These are the people that are actually out there in the real estate game right now getting it done. This podcast aims at bringing anyone's game to the next level. This is the prereal podcast. Welcome, everyone, to the Prereal podcast. We're joined today, folks, by Bronson Hill. Bronson is the CEO and founder of Bronson Equity. He is a GP in over 20 multifamily units valued over $200 million. He's the host of the Mailbox Money Show. He's raised over 25 million in private capital for some of those GP acquisitions. He's got a really neat report on his website, how to use inflation to Your advantage, which we'll get into in a bit. He co-leads a multifamily meetup in Pasadena called Phoebe, foreign investors by investors, and he recently closed a $62 million, 382 unit deal in Jacksonville. So with that, Bronson, thanks for taking the time, man. Thanks, man. It's excited to be here. I love talking real estate, and I'm excited to get into it. Yeah. So it's an interesting time. And we were excited to have you on today for a number of reasons, but so much of your content. He's a great follow, by the way, folks. Really quality information and gets to the point. A lot of interesting topics that folks have kind of shied away from a little bit for a number of reasons. But Bronson deals with really directly and aggressively from a conservative investor perspective, which I love. So definitely check them out on all the platforms and all the information, as always, will be below in the show notes. But inflation, man, that's the talk of the day, right? Yeah, it is. It's something people were filling it at the pump. We're seeing it in prices everywhere, and I think it's here to stay. And so there needs to become a new strategy. And we really have not had a time like this since the late 70s, early eighty s. And so most investors have never really dealt with a period of extended high inflation. So it changes the playbook. Instead of being a saver, somebody just kind of sits on money and saves it. Now, savers are losers. We lose money just by saving. So things that were kind of pillars of investing have become things that have kind of been turned on their head a little bit in certain ways. So it's interesting how things are changing. And as a fellow conservative investor, that gives you a jetta, right, talking about this is not a good time to save. But you're right, it's not a good time to save in the sense of sitting on cash in the bank is probably the worst thing you could be doing at this point. Bronson, you had said it's here to stay. What does that mean? Yeah, so when this first started happening, the Fed came out and they said, hey, we're having this transitory inflation. We all remember, oh, this transitory, it's going to go away. It's going to last for six to twelve months. It'll go away. And of course we'll lo and behold, it there. And if you look at really what inflation really is, milton Friedman, who is an economist, said it's a monetary phenomenon. What that means is inflation is caused. It's an equation between goods and services, how many goods and services are available and how much monetary supply there is. So we actually had a change to both of those during COVID Right. People were less productive because they stayed home, they stopped working. There's a lot of supply chain stuff is messed up, which I think will continue because of the way things have changed. So there's less supply of goods and services out there. And they created 40.9% new currency, either physically or digitally, over a 24 month period between February of 2020 and February 2022. So 40.9%, that's a huge number to just drop into the just almost instantly just drop into the money supply. So everything is going to cost more. And not only is there more money out there, there's less goods and services available. So I think that is the recipe for high inflation. I don't think it's 8%. I think it's more like 15% to 18%. If you actually look at the actual cost, because the CPI Consumer Price Index is actually a fudge number. They actually substitute things in and it just feels so shady. They're like if you like apples and you eat apples, but apples double in price, they'll say, well, you'll make the switch to oranges because that would make more sense for you, right? You'll do that. Or if you have a twobedroom apartment, it's twelve hundred dollars a month and now rent goes up, they say, well, you would downsize to a one bedroom. These are things that don't make sense. There are ways that they're trying to fudge the numbers. And so I think in general, they just can't stop spending. Even the Inflation Reduction Act, even the name is just bizarre because it's actually going to increase inflation. Even more. So I feel like our government is very clueless to really understand what causes and what continues inflation. And I think it's going to be a perpetual issue for a number of years. So man, I referenced earlier that you're a great follow and the information is concise and impactful and this is the kind of stuff that I'm talking about. Many of us are thinking it, but so few of us are saying what you just said. Right. This shouldn't be to an astute and investor. This should not be in any way a surprise. We saw this coming. We understood what had to happen next as they continue to funnel copious amounts of money with no tether to it into the economy. And unfortunately, I think a lot of that money has gone through its useful lifecycle, if you will. It's left the recipient's hands and it's gone out into the economy with no tangible return. Right. So now we have folks that are accustomed to working less, who received more, and they didn't invest the money, they spent it on whatever it is that they were going to spend it on. And that brings us to a really unique point in history. The 70s is a great reference point because of the numbers, right. But I don't know if we've ever been in this particular place. Yeah, the thing that is taking place now and again, if you only looked at real estate in 2008, 2009, and a lot of friends that did this, they lost everything. They lost a lot because they weren't paying attention to this macroeconomic picture. So I think it's so important. I can tell as well, james, you're a student of the economy and of what's going on as well. Is it really important you pay attention to the kind of global themes that are happening and what's happening in the world and what are the trends and even politics and all this because it all relates. And so the thing that really did not happen in the paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, was able to raise rates to almost 20% over a very short period of time to try to bring inflation down. But inflation didn't get below 5% per year until it took like five years or so. It took years later. So it came down, but it came down over time and it was through a lot of pain. And the challenge now with doing that is our debt load. Instead of 30% of GP, GDP or whatever, it was back and we're like over 100% of GDP. And so for every percentage point the interest rate goes up. I don't have the exact figure, but the federal government's deficit or, you know, the interest payments on the deficit go up substantially. It's like a trillion dollars more per year for every percentage point that goes up, which people don't realize, like how significant that really is. So we've got this huge debt bomb. There that the government is really incentivized to actually understate inflation, which they're doing, and they continue to ride this out and hopefully kind of erode away some of the national debt. But the problem is, it really erodes away people's savings, particularly older people. There are a lot of boomers out there now. They're trying to live off of it. And if you can't find a way to actually ride that wave of inflation and take advantage of it, you're going to be destroyed. I mean, if somebody, and you kind of mentioned this earlier, but the confused mind will always say to wait, will take inaction, they won't take any action. So a lot of people are saying, I'm just going to wait. But the problem is, if inflation is actually 15% to 18%, then over a two year period, if you just wait, you're going to lose like 40% of your wealth. I mean, it's not going to be like the dollars are going away, but the purchasing power of your wealth is going away. And I don't think that we're going to have a decline in prices or decline in valuation in housing or any other assets of 30% to 40%. So you're right, sitting in cash is a very tough thing to do, and I don't think it's very smart city right now, but a lot of people are doing that. Yeah. So we put ourselves in a position where if we're not careful, we can't afford our own debt as a country. Right. And we saw a bit of a pivot in London a week ago and it's curious to see if our leaders here have the will to resist that temptation because it's a mess right now on a macro level and if we pivot too soon, where we'll buy a couple of years, in my opinion, but then it becomes a total and I don't see how we get out of it at that point. Candidly right. No, the options right now are very few. I just had a webinar to these monthly bronze and equity investor webinars, and we had some great leaders coming on talking about how do we fix the financial system? Right? And the consensus was, well, you've got to kind of take care of yourself. To actually fix it would just require incredible amounts of pain that I don't think any politician is willing to do. I mean, basically, you almost have to destroy the financial system to save it. And the fact that since the Federal Reserve was created, and I believe it was, the dollar has lost 99% of its value. And before that, we didn't have a central bank. There was 100 years, a couple of hundred years, we didn't even have a central bank at all. And so when you have a central bank, it allows governments to be irresponsible, it allows them to go into unnecessary wars, it allows them to spend more than what they have. And the problem is, when the government doesn't have any money. People don't realize they don't have any money. Whatever they create is taken from the people. It's taken from you and I and from other things or from future, whatever it is. And so it just creates this manipulation. But to actually end the Fed or end the Federal Reserve, or end the central banking system would be a very, very difficult thing to do. And I don't know if there's really any other way except for the eventual dollar collapse. And then to see, okay, what can we create at that point? Well, with all of that happy news, folks, and I know it's hard to hear, but these are things that are so important, and again, so few people are talking about it in this candidate of fashion. I wanted to touch on it with you. So with all of that and absent the complete collapse, where do folks go? Why is multifamily I assume that's where you're going to go, right? Why is multifamily the asset class that makes the most sense. And what are some of the strategies you've put in place now to help deal with this ever changing market? Well, that's a great question. I think the thing, whatever you invest in or whatever you buy or whatever you're doing financially, it's important to have a plan. It's important to think about, okay, what actually, instead of being hurt by inflation, how can you use it to your advantage? And there's things about real estate. I don't love real estate. I love what real estate does for me, right? I love that it gives me passive income. I love that I can pay almost no taxes. I love that we can have leverage to be able to buy real estate. So, for example, if I put 20% down on a property and it increases by 20% in value, I haven't had a 20% increase in my value. I've had a 100% increase in my value, right. Because of the actual leverage and the equity that's in there. So I think using leverage, using safe debt is great. There are other assets. I do some stuff in precious metals. There are other some people have big money for bitcoin or other things. But I do think owning income, real estate so basically the goal is with the bulk of my assets. I'm not giving anybody any advice, but this is kind of what I have done. As I've said, I want to have about my wealth in assets that pay you to hold them. Right? So there's some assets that you own and they're speculative. I own a piece of raw land. It may be worth a lot of money someday, but it doesn't pay me to hold it usually, unless you rent it out to farmers or something. But if I own a multifamily apartment building, I can tell very clearly, okay, this is a property that is going to be worth more in the future. And if you look at a trend line. If I had a chart, I would show you 1960, what the inflation line, what that inflation line has been just been up to the right and what rents have done, it's almost a complete corallel. Now, rents are slightly behind inflation, but it just tracks very, very well. So if you're trying to hedge inflation, if you get into assets such as multifamily property, where rents you watched in Jacksonville, rents have gone up 19% in the last ten months and it's happening all over the country. And I think it's only going to get to happen because we're not building enough, we're not building the right types of properties, construction process of the roof. So things are going to continue to cost more. So if I'm in the right side of the equation, I can have this asset that I own with leverage that basically the value of it is determined on how much income is coming in. So if I'm getting rent coming in and that rent is going up by itself and I'm doing some value add, them coming in and renovating and seeing, we're seeing in our properties in Jacksonville, we put a $6,000 renovation and we can raise rent by 55% for the next person. So the rent was a thousand. Now it's over 1500. It's a huge upside, right? So we know we're going to be okay even if interest rates rise, even if valuations go down, we know that this property is going to be worth more in the long term because it's in the whole process of it being worth more. We're getting paid to hold it. We're actually cash flowing from that asset and we're getting tax benefits. So to me, I call it it's an unfair advantage. It's like you pay hardly, you pay no, you defer or pay no taxes. You can basically hold it for a long term using leverage and we know it's going to be worth more over time. And I think because of all this high inflation, we're going to see, no matter what happens in the short term with valuations of housing, single or multifamily, the value of these places is going to continue to rise. So the beauty of it, folks, simply put, if you measure it against a commercial asset, and again, I do think there is a place for those longer term, fixed increase portfolio assets. And I say that because cash flow is still critical as we move through this process. So if you have a ten year lease with a corporate and you're getting 2% increases every year, or even worse, 10% every five, and inflation is at 810, 12%, 15, 20%. Technically, from a cash flow perspective, you're losing money on the asset as time of falls because the increases can't keep up with what's happening in the market with multifamily to a large extent. And again, depending on the type of multifamily, if there are rent regulations, you can recast that rent almost in real time, or certainly yearly, and you can increase the cash flow. So instead of relying on just appreciation, you're relying on controlling the amount of revenue that you are receiving for that particular asset. As that revenue goes up, eventually you'll be able to trade on a cap rate, thereby increasing the sale price. Right. So multifamily gives you a really neat opportunity to do that. The trick is bronson, in a climate like this, how do you find the assets that are going to pencil out and the right debt? I think that's the biggest bogey that a lot of folks have not accounted for. How do you get to the other side of the rainbow? Yeah, so it's interesting right now because as rates are rising, I mean, if you're looking at single family, because a lot of people evaluate kind of all housing based on what's happening in single family. So if you bought a house at 3% interest rate and now we're at 7%, your payment has gone up 41% and you still have about the same buying price, it's like, well, how does that work? Right? It's a challenging equation to get your head around. Is it just your payments way more? So there are fewer buyers out there right now, especially for a single family multifamily. Maybe our rates are similar, maybe a little bit lower, maybe six, six and a half percent, whatever that is. But I think the challenge, or at least the opportunity here as well, is if we're truly short of housing supply, right? Because if now single family has become less desirable, right. There's less desire for people to buy single family houses because of interest rates. Fewer people qualify, less people are saying, hey, their payments are much more expensive. So where do those people go? They've got to rent, they've got to go somewhere to rent. They either got to rent a house, which continues to drive rents up, right. So that's another positive for rents. Now, multifamily, let's say we're in a place where interest rates are six and a half percent or whatever we know we've got, we do a lot of 85% of debt in the multifamily spaces, bridge debt, which means it's typically two to four year type of debt. So what we've done is we will buy something typically two to three years with an extension or we'll buy some private debt that allows for if we know we can renovate of this 382 apartment unit complex we bought. If we know we can renovate 80% of those units over the next two years, and we have a high degree of certainty that we're able to do that. Even if rates go higher, we're going to be okay because we increase the value of the property through the rents increasing. Right. So that we should be able to refinance or have no problem when we're ready to refinance. Now the challenge where that gets in place, if you're buying brand new class A apartments where there is no value at. Right. Like in Pasadena, California, we got some really nice apartments that are 4200 for a two bedroom. If there's a recession or things that they're not going to get 4200, right. They may be able to get 3500 or 3000. It's really going to hurt those particular projects. So for us, I think, when we look at it, we say if you get in and the interest rate is higher, the price you bought, it is fixed. You have a fixed buying price, let's say $60 million, whatever the price was for the building. But the interest rate can be adjusted later. Right. So if I have a six and a half or 7% or whatever it is down the road, your interest rate, if it goes lower, typically they'll raise rates for six to twelve or 24 months, depending on how long it is. Rates will rise and then they'll start dropping rates again. So what happens when these multifamily properties that were at 7% interest rate, whatever, the rates are dropping to five or to four? Well, what happens is then you can refinance to a lower rate. And I think what's going to happen is that these valuations of these properties are going to go way up because we want to say, oh, now the cheap debt is back, we're going to do it. So people will regret not buying now. So I've had other people kind of share that, yeah, this is actually a great time to buy because there's fewer buyers out there, because people are looking at the interest rates, whatever. But if you again, you fix your buying price, which you can't change that, but you can adjust the interest rate at a later point. Right. So, without a doubt, I believe we're headed into the greatest buying opportunity of my lifetime. For sure. So the trick is, again, getting to the other side of the rainbow. How long do we need that fixed debt? Is it two years, three years, five years? With extensions and everything baked in, how far out are you going in, locking in or having the option to keep that rate locked for? Yeah, so it's a really good question. The big thing is you don't want to be in a place where you have to sell a property when it's not favorable to sell. And this happened in 2008. There was about six months where it was just hard to get a loan. Right. There was a financial panic. It was just difficult. It happened during COVID it happened for about three or four months. It was really hard to get a commercial loan. I mean, between March and June, there were very few deals 2020, there were very few deals happening. So if your loan is due at that time, like you were okay, you're in trouble. So the goal is to have options and have multiple different ways, whether you're going to refinance or going to sell. A lot of our deals we do are typically five year olds. We'll typically have a two, three year type of debt with an extendable one or two years on it. So usually it ends up being a four or five year potential where you can extend at the same or similar rates. One kind of issue on some of it that we're seeing now is that these interest rate caps, which you pay to have a cap on the interest rate, so the debt is a flexible floating debt, but you're paying to say, okay? And these have gone up ten to 20 times as much now as they were a year or a couple of years ago. So you're paying for this interest rate cap. It's like an insurance. That interest rate doesn't go above six and a half percent, it doesn't go above 7%, just so that even if interest rates go sky high, you're protected and you're covered, but you're paying for a protection on that. Right. So if you have those in place, you're going to put more money into that. But I do think there's going to come a point where all of this stuff, higher interest rates, interest rate caps, it leads to higher ownership costs. We still have a shortage of housing. We just talked about single families, less desirable. All these people that were going to buy houses, where are they going to go now? They have to go to apartments after rent places, which puts a lot of pressure on rents. And then if they're built, they just can't build stuff fast enough. And the costs there are just going through the roof. But I think all of that leads to higher values for multifamily apartments. Yeah, long term, I completely agree. I think the last report I read cited four and a half or 5 million housing units that were short in the country right now. Right? Yeah. There's three or four different major reports. It's basically from 3 million up to like, 6.8 million. And so somewhere in there, some people would say, well, there's other things. We don't know exactly what it is, but we're short a lot of whether it's a million or it's 8 million or we're short a lot. And in certain markets, it's very acute. So, like Jacksonville, 20,000 new people are moving there every single month. Right. So it puts a lot of pressure. And there are other areas where people are leaving, so it depends on where you're buying as well. Yeah. So the strategy we've deployed and what we're advising and again, of course, everyone speaks to your professionals. We're here chatting, right, to try and share a little bit of experience and knowledge for us, those rate locks or rate caps or the best fees we can possibly pay at this point, we're worried that we're going to get to a protracted period where there's no source to refinance the debt. We're seeing some of the big institutional banks offer incentives now to put money on deposit. Right. We've seen this before. They start to offer a quarter of a point or half a point extra. And they're starting to pull some of that money out of the smaller and midcap banks that can't compete at the same time that COVID money is burning off and the deposits are dropping. And a lot of those smaller lenders are the ones that funded so many of these deals over the last few years. This bridge money that's going to be coming due now over the next 612 1824 months. And when it does, if the big banks are not lending now, what right? You can have technically performing loans that are due for refinance. And because the bank's deposits have dropped, they're out of charter and they need to debt off their books. So we're advising, when you've got those opportunities, lock those rates in, folks. Make sure you can get to the other side of the rainbow. As Bronson had said, the demand is there, it's irrefutable, and it's continuing. Right. The demand is going up. Folks are going to have a really hard time. I believe securing financing for those single family and two family homes and being a renter is just the natural next step. So the next question is, where are you buying these assets? What markets are attractive to you at this point? Yeah, so we look at trends of where are people moving. There are places you can go to find that one of the fastest growing areas of cities where people migrating to and it really primarily is the sunbelt. Right. Basically from Arizona all the way to Florida. It's a southern part of the US. Kind of south central to Southeast. And why is this? Right, it's because I think there's a thousand people retiring a week. It's a few thousand people a week. There's many people that are retiring. Maybe it's a thousand people a day. It's a substantial amount of people. So if somebody's living in Chicago, they're living in New York, they're saying, hey, I have some flexibility here. I'd love to live in Florida. I'd love to live in Texas or Arizona. And that's why these areas are booming. And so I think just from a demographic standpoint, there's so many people that are looking to be in a place like Florida. Now. I look at it then. We love Florida for this reason, is that in Pasadena, where I live, a basic three bedroom house is about one 2 million. That's about kind of the going rate here in this neighborhood I live in. It's a nice neighborhood, but the same house in Jacksonville is the average house actually in Jacksonville is 311,000, or about 300,000. You get a small three bedroom house in a decent area, and that's the average house. Now, there's some obviously much more expensive. There aren't, but you get a much, much cheaper housing. You have much. Better quality of life. There's no state income tax if somebody's living off a pension or it's like when LeBron James, right, when he left Cleveland for a while and when played in Florida, he was going to save like millions of dollars a year. Even Joe Rogan, that has $100 million spotify contract, whatever, he saved something like $12 million by just moving to Texas. Right. These things matter. People think that, oh, there's just money and whatever. People that are in high tax states are fleeing them because they can go live much cheaper and better and have a better quality of life. I think in general, we love Jacksonville for a lot of reasons. I get into kind of specific market, why we like that. But there's a lot of areas in Florida, there's Georgia, there's Arizona. Arizona, I don't like it as much just because the cost per unit is actually we're buying stuff in Jacksonville at 160,000 per unit for kind of Class C, 1970s built type of apartment units, the same stuff in bigger markets. Maybe it's Orlando or maybe it's in Arizona. 250 to 3000 for some of these. And so we feel like we're buying pretty significantly below replacement costs. But for some of these other places, it may not necessarily be true. Of course, it's hard to tell what replacement costs actually are. But I think if you're buying in places where people are moving to, you're seeing growth, you're seeing there's a lot of pressure on the supply. You're in the path of progress. I think it's going to continue to be safe even if there is a recession. We've seen that in areas like Texas and Florida and Georgia, Arizona since 20 08 20 09. So we've dubbed it the decentralization of real estate, right? We've been talking about this for some time. And what typically happens is there are emerging markets, the secondary markets and tertiary markets that heat up when the economy is booming, right. Because people are looking for, from an investment perspective, that more reasonable barrier of entry, price wise. Not everybody can jump into the markets in New York and California and do anything sizable because it's damn expensive. So we would see these secondary and tertiary markets start to pick up ahead of steam. But then when this would happen in the cycle, the wind gets sucked out of them, those markets get clobbered, and it's this game of retreat. I don't think that that's the case anymore. I believe that we've seen enough relocation and decentralization. It is so underreported. I cannot bump into somebody without hearing another person that's picked up and called it a day in New York. It's very, very real, right? Like, folks are retiring or not even retiring. They're opting for remote work and they're just saying, hey, let's go. You know, quality of life has become more difficult. Crime is up, things are wickedly expensive. Traffic, all of those things that we kind of put on the side for a while. But an impact from COVID that I believe is here to stay is it did give people a bit of too much time to think. At the end of it, they went, yes, no, we're not going to do this anymore. We're going to go opt for a place that you can live like a king in some of these places in the Sun Belt. We've picked up a ton of assets in the Sun Belt over the last several years for that exact reason. So I just was curious on your take for the secondary and tertiary markets that have seen this influx and historically have then seen a rollback, do you think that we've hit kind of a high watermark here and we've set a new norm? Yeah. Again, I just think real estate in general, even buying single family, no matter what you buy right now, in the long run, we know it's going to be worth more because of the fiscal irresponsibility of the Fed and because of our government. I mean, some of its policy and some of it's just spending and they're kind of different things, right. You've got monetary policy and then you've got actually just spending and budgeting and just both are terrible. We've just terrible jobs. So with that being in play, you're just going to continue to have more and more money, and more and more money is going to go into assets and different things. So I think owning in these areas you brought up a great point and that's people can work remotely. So if I can work remotely and I can live anywhere I want, why would I live in New York City when I could live in Florida? I'm on the same time zone, basically. I don't have to go to work. Maybe I got to go to work once a month. Well, you can do that. You can take a flight. People I would happily do that going once a week. Or people are finding other things too. People are finding is that instead of having to be an hour away from work, you can be kind of two to 3 hours away. Because if you're going in a couple of days a week or a few days a week, people do that. People drive in the find a way or the place in the city, and they can kind of make it work. But I think things are going to continue that way where it's going to become more decentral. We've realized that COVID is the plus side of that, is that we can be on Zoom. I used to do I've had over 301 on one investor calls on Zoom with investors. And over the years before COVID people didn't really know how to use Zoom. And now nobody knows how to use Zoom. Everybody knows it from somebody who's 80 years old. Everybody knows how to use Zoom. And so I think these are subtle things and people realize, like, I can be in a triciary or a secondary market. It's beautiful. I can do a lot of work, stuff I need to do, and I can travel. And so there's a lot of ways to be able to do it, and I think that's super attractive. And as I see, like you said, the quality of life you can live can be way better for your family, for yourself. And why would you not? What would keep you in a place besides just maybe other family members? So maybe your job is to try to convince your family members. Everybody moved to some sunbelt place. Right. So technology has certainly played a huge role here as you've touched on. We saw in 2000 and 910, during kind of the retail apocalypse, retailers started to catch on to like, hey, we're not going to pay $3 million or $4 million a quarter in rent to be on Fifth Avenue because it's a flagship and it's an opportunity to brand and it's a place to be seen. They realized that for a fraction of that money, they could reach their customers in a very personal way right here on the phone. And as they started to opt to take real estate and shift from some of those flagship locations right. And reach people digitally, we're seeing now the same type of connectivity where folks are saying, we don't have to physically be in that office. We're going to opt for that. We're seeing people that are taking assets, and they're like living in different states for six months at a clip. Right. They want complete freedom. They're bouncing around, they're taking down our airbnbs and saying, hey, we want to be here for six months, and we'll see how it goes. And it's like this completely different lifestyle because technology has afforded us all of these amazing tools. It's a really neat time to be an investor. There's no doubt about it. Yeah, absolutely. There's a saying to you as an investor where you can live where you want and you can invest where the numbers make sense. And that's amazing. It's true. I mean, I live in California, which is a very high tax state. I pay about a 1% total tax rate. And how do I do that? It's through some of the advantages of real estate. And so for people, it's the same. If you find a way to get your assets working for you, whether it's actively you're actively doing these deals or you're passively investing with a group that does it, I think it's an awesome way to grow wealth and you can live where you want. So tell me a little bit about Bronson equity at this point. What is it that you're focused on? Are you guys raising capital? Are you training and coaching up the next generation of investors? What's happening over by you? Yeah, so our target really is we work with a lot of business owners, people that own a business, have sold a business, just really interested in being involved in real estate, but don't want to manage toilet, tenants and leasing. So we offer passive opportunities for people to invest and enjoy the tax breaks and really grow wealth over time. We're doing that in multifamily. We've got almost 1500 units in Jacksonville, Florida. We've got other markets we work in. We're also working with the fifth largest operator of ATM machines in the country. We've got a fund that basically does that. It's probably the most predictable cash flow deal that I've ever seen. And so we've got that. We've also got some other stuff in the alternative energy space that we're looking at. So again, I love real estate, but I more love whatever the asset is. What is the asset do for you? Right. So again, it can change certain times in certain markets, multifamily can be amazing. Other times it's like for a certain person, maybe the ATM machine or maybe some other type of investment can work well. So I think as an investor, it's so important that we educate ourselves what are our goals and what's going to help us to get there. That's the beauty of real estate for us. It's been the door opener to literally everything. We have found ourselves in investments across the spectrum because real estate does kind of open those doors to all sorts of neat ways to make money. Yeah, absolutely. It truly is an amazing asset. Everybody knows they should do real estate, but you watch people that have become exceptionally wealthy, and it's typically because they've been wise and they've put themselves out there into different deals. And I know that's financially free, they have a business or the real estate, or most of them do both. Like, it's very rare people are not involved in some sort of asset that pays you to hold them. It's interesting. So before I let you go, I'm curious, how did you end up in the real estate multifamily space? What's the story? Yeah, so I was a well paid medical sales professional. I used to go into for ten years I was in medical sales, went into surgery with physicians, heart surgical stuff, leg surgery stuff. I was getting paid over $200,000 a year. I was working hard in a while, for a while, and then I kind of slowed it down to about 30 hours a week. I was getting paid really well. My family is like, why would you ever want to leave this? Right? I was like, Well, I just want to develop my own thing and I want to get into real estate because I see much more upside. And so I had been doing single family houses and I had a cousin kind of a chance meeting. I saw him since I was a kid and he said, hey, he's like, why don't you do multifamily? And I said, Well, I'd love to, but I don't have the money. He said, you can raise the money. So he said, Go to this course, read this book, listen to this podcast. And I just kind of did everything. And then within two years, I'd raised $50 million. And it was kind of on track to get ready to quit my corporate job. So it just went very well. So my experiences may not be typical, but I just think the more you learn about it, I realize the skills of understanding passive investing, understanding how real estate investments work and being able to explain it, being able to put your own money and help others to do it. It's such a valuable thing because I was able to 20 X my net worth in a period of four years. Right. And that only happened because I learned how to do this for anybody who's out there. I just love being able to be a part of those conversations or just help learn myself as far as how to do more things with investing and particularly real estate. Yes, man. And that's why we're here. The technology has given us all this amazing opportunity. I'll stop short of the word expert, but you could become pretty darn well educated on just about any topic in real estate, really any topic at all. The resources are out there and we have found the community. It's amazing. There are so many folks out there that want to be a part, that are willing to give an hour of their time like you did today, to get on and connect with the audience and share a bit of your story. And to be able to 20 X your net worth in four years in an industry you didn't grow up in, you didn't have prior experience, there wasn't Uncle Joe that pulled you into the company business here. That's pretty remarkable, man. Congrats on the success and best of luck. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. It's really great to be here and great to be able to share and talk, and I love having the conversation, man. It's really fun to see how you're looking at things. No doubt. What's the best way for folks to find you? So we talked about this. I've got my report here how to use inflation to your advantage. There's some awesome stuff in here. It's about 50 color pages. You can go to Bronsonequity.com, you can download it for free. You hear about stuff that we're working on, some cutting edge things. We're trying to just stay ahead of what's happening in the market, both in real estate and finance and talk about stuff beyond real estate as well. But love connect with anyone about investing. Yeah. So folks definitely take them up on that. Bronsonequity.com. You log on, you put your email in, and you get the report in 10 seconds. It's 55 or 56 pages, but it's in presentation form. It's a quick read and it's packed with neat information. So definitely give that a quick read. And, Bronson, best of luck again, man. Really appreciate you. And look forward to connecting again. Thanks, James. This is awesome. All right, thanks, everyone. As always, stay safe.