Podcast Episode 71 Transcript

Episode 72: Affordable Housing Investing: Learn How To Benefit From Investing In Affordable Housing

Welcome everyone to the Prendamano Real Estate "PreReal" podcast. We're joined today by Thomas Hopes, Thomas is an investor. Well, he's an investor, and he's also a realtor who represents investors down in Central Texas. And he's is an affordable housing specialist, something that we've talked about quite a bit on the show. And I'm always happy to take a deep dive on Thomas. Thank you so much for taking the time out today and joining us. How are we doing today? I'm doing pretty good, James. I'm just glad that I could be on and join you today. Yeah. We're excited to have you, and we appreciate it. I know everyone is busy and everyone's got a million things going on these days. So you've taken the time to spend a few hours or an hour with us and share some of your information with the audience. I think it's going to be really valuable. You do some work with Teske, correct? Yes, sir. I work with Tiki Real Estate here in central Texas. So I had Matt on maybe a month or two ago. Yeah, we ran down the platform. Great guy. And I wish you guys the best of luck there. So let's kind of go back here to the beginning. I'm always fascinated because I found that there's, like, common threads for people who are in real estate and especially someone like yourself that seems to have multiple different disciplines, and you appear to be involved in a number of different areas. There's always these common threads that make up who we are. And I was wondering if you could share with the audience, give us a little background. How did we end up in the real estate space, in the investment space and specifically the affordable housing space? Absolutely. So, James, for me, I always start with a story that's personal to me. And it's a story about my high school teacher in 12th grade bringing in rich dad, poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and the game Robert Kiyosaki created, which is called Cash Flow 101. And what this game taught me was basically a lot of the basics for Monopoly, but it basically took the basics of Monopoly and added more of a real estate real-life scenario twist on it. And so when I got the opportunity to play this game, it actually began to open up my mind. I was trying to figure out, hey, what do I want to do after high school? I'm not sure if I want to go to college or can I go to College? Am I built for College? Do I have a job lined up if I don't go to College? So it was a little bit intimidating when I reached that 12th grade year. So that book and that game that my teacher brought in, he really just opened me up, and he told me. He said, hey, everyone doesn't get a scholarship and go off to College. Everyone doesn't go straight to a job. But some people go into careers or trades and trades are alternatives to these things that with the right discipline, you can still make some great money just as much as people who are in college or who are in these well educated areas of life. And so I decided to go ahead and pursue it from that moment on. And I would say it took me a few years. But after those few years of attempting to go to community college and take on the real estate classes, I ended up sticking with the real estate. And once I completed those classes, it was up and running from there. And it was really important for me because growing up, I remember living in a duplex, and I didn't realize it then. But I was always curious about house hacking and the bird method. And so in this duplex, my mother would give me the rent checks and she'd say, hey, run this right next door to side A. We lived inside B, and I was like, okay. And so after a few times of doing that, I got curious. I was like, Why are we taking the rent to our next door neighbor? And she was like, Because he's the landlord. And I was like, Huh, how is our landlord, our neighbor? And so from that time, I was always a little curious about real estate. And so when I got older, got into the industry, learned about house hacking, learned about the birth strategy, learned about buying multifamily with FHA loans and things like that. It just started to trigger. And at that moment, I knew I'd been always kind of going into this industry without even knowing. It's funny because I never lived in a house. And so to be a realtor selling homes. And now, buying my first home to remodel is an entire experience for me. So that's fascinating for me on a number of levels. So we have a book club here. And we recently did rich dad, poor dad. Yeah. And you're the first person who I've ever had on the show or I've ever spoken with. That said, a teacher actually introduced rich dad, poor dad. Was that part of the curriculum, or was this just a cool teacher that was doing extra work? How did that come to be? This teacher is definitely off the grid. He actually stopped teaching to follow his passion in music. He's big on music and also a guitar player. But I will always remember Chris Gleason bringing in Rich dad, poor dad, and Internet to introduce that to me and a few others, a lot of other kids. And that changed my life forever. Well, shout out to Chris Gleason wherever he may be, because one of the things that we took away from that book was there's no curriculum that addresses financial literacy. It's a book full of basic elements and some not so basic, but they're primarily basic elements. That until you take the time to really pull back the curtain on. You don't fully understand. And it gives you for anyone who hasn't read rich dad, poor dad, you have to read it. It's an absolutely amazing book that shines the light in a few areas where we really need to be shining the light. And for us, we actually ended up we're building out a really comprehensive Institute, and it's been so heavily focused on the deal side we said we have to include a whole section here on financial literacy. Like, these are things that nobody is teaching, and they absolutely should. And everyone we chat with, we can't figure out for the life of us why they haven't incorporated financial literacy into core curriculum. Fifth grade, 6th grade, 7th grade. Start this stuff early, give people an understanding of the time, value of money, trading, time for money, and the basic principles of real estate investing. And it's just absent from at least any curriculum I've ever seen. And I really applaud Chris for good reason. Yeah. Right. Well, that's a whole other discussion, right? I think you're absolutely right for good reason. And that's scary stuff. But we've been given an opportunity with this technology now, right? You and I wouldn't have connected if we didn't have access to the tools that we have today. And I think the more that folks like us get together and talk, the more that we can affect you a chance. And the more that we can start looking underneath the mattress a bit saying, Why isn't this stuff in the schools? Why isn't this part of the core curriculum? And you're absolutely right, man. It's a tremendous book. Even now, I've been in real estate for 20, I don't know, 23, 24, 25 years. It was eye opening for me to go through that. I couldn't pinpoint that, man. As we went through it. I just found myself highlighting and highlighting and highlighting. This principle has got to be in the Institute. This has got to be in the Institute. It was one of my favorite books, and it had a profound impact on me, a profound impact on the team. So it's great to hear that you were exposed to that at an early age, and that makes a lot of sense. Now for you to have that exposure in the 12th grade, I could see certainly why it began to set your course on being involved as an entrepreneur and being involved in real estate. So you're investing and you're doing I don't know how the acronym is pronounced, but it's T-S-A-H-C. It's the affordable housing acronym, essentially for Texas, correct? Sure. TSAC. That's correct. Okay. So TSAC Affordable Housing Corporation got it. So are you working on the buyer side? The landlord side, the tenant side. Where are you specializing your efforts at this point? Sure. Well, specifically with TSAC, I'm actually one of their Travis County buyer's agents that signed up with them. So if you go to their website and you're searching Travis County and you're looking for a realtor in the area. You're going to find me and maybe a handful of other agents. And what we do is we partner with lenders who specialize in down payment assistance programs in this area and all over Texas, of course. But the lender who is approved for the down payment assistance and myself kind of work hand in hand tag team to guide these clients or clients through this buying process. Typically, it's first time home buyers. And if it's not first time home buyers, it's people who are curious about the program or if they could buy again after they've purchased their first home, or if they can possibly get some sort of assistance, because in some circumstances they actually provide up to 5% down payment assistance, which is great for those who are closing on deals with FHA, which are about 3%. So I noticed you have a slick portal. Part of the challenge, folks, right, is for a first time home buyer and a first time home buyer that's trying to navigate the affordable process. Sometimes it can be daunting. It can be confusing. It's not as easy to source the resources that are available when they are available. So Thomas has a site that you can go to, and we'll share it in the link with the show where you can essentially enter your information, and the site will help identify programs that are available to help you source the money for the transaction. Correct. That's correct. Okay. That's correct. I have a down payment assistance website where it doesn't take any in depth information like your Social Security number, but it will ask basic information that you can plug in about your neighborhood location, income. And it'll just kind of give you an idea of what kind of down payment assistance programs you may qualify for, or that you could at least start to ask lenders about. So you are specifically asking about programs that are aligned with your goals. Is that a website story, Thomas? Is that a website that is built in conjunction with Tax? Or is that a separate site that you build? What TSA does, along with the Texas Realtors Austin board, Realtors is they provide us with a personalized website for these particular transactions. So it's kind of separate from Tesla, but a lot of the programs lead right back to TSAC. Got it. So folks can go there register, get an idea about potential down payment assistance programs and potential programs from a lending perspective that are available to help conclude the transaction. Now, are you working with investors for affordable housing product as well? I wouldn't necessarily say in that aspect, but what we're doing with investors and new investors is those who are financially challenged. We've actually put together a private investment group here in Austin, Texas, and I 35 corridor, which is one of our major highways. So from Dallas to Austin to San Antonio, and Houston, we actually have agents and brokers and relationships in these different areas. And what we do is when we see a project, we analyze it together. Any of those who are interested in the project, they pull their money together. And once pulling our money together, we create a strategy, whether that be for us to buy it, fix it, sell it, whether it be for someone to buy it and live in it or whatever alternative it might take. Because in some circumstances, people can't get traditional lending all the time. And that is one of the things that I became passionate about in real estate is when I learned about the unconventional ways to invest in real estate and the unconventional ways to actually own a real estate. And so that is what our private investment group does. We invite these people in and they find passive ways to get into real estate, or they find ways to do group activity in real estate. Got it. Okay. So this is a group, and I applaud you for being a part and helping to pull it together where everyone is collaborating with it should be. And if there are opportunities, I guess there's an informal process you go through of who wants to participate and what that structure looks like. And these are passive investors, right? They're not actually getting involved in running the deal. So actually, one of my clients was a first time home buyer, and a passive investor has ended up partnering with me on one of our first fix and flip properties. So we're actually knocking out a fix and flip property together in Austin that we just decided, hey, we don't want to passively invest on this next one because of the potential one of my other partners, who is someone I not only went to school with, but he actually began remodeling. And so he brought the deal. He had his cash locked up. He presented the deal to me. It had a great spread on it. I went to my partner who wanted to go in on a deal, and we decided to pull our heads together. So we'll be kind of like a three headed beast, me and her providing the financials. And he'll actually be providing a step by step mentorship to do our first fix and flip together. Oh, that's great. Congratulations on that. Super excited and nervous at the same time. Yeah. It's an exciting time, right. When you're jumping into that first property. And for those of you in the audience that are not familiar, the Burr method, which is kind of a buzzword for those of us in the business. But I know many of the folks that are not in the game on the day to day basis may not be familiar, and we've talked about it before, but essentially, it's buy, renovate, rent, refinance. Repeat. So the idea is Thomas has identified a deal where there was some capital needs. They're going to acquire the asset, get the property to a point of completion where it's ready for occupancy. They go ahead, they rent it to a third party and then use that rental income to backstop the underwriting when they refinance and stabilize the asset. I assume at that point, you're going to pull some cash out. You now have a performing asset. It's positive cash flow. You've provided a home for somebody, and you then take that money and you go and you do it again. That's correct. That's absolutely correct. Congrats on for people who are financially challenged to put their money to work in real estate. Yeah. And again, the tools that we have available today is making it easier and easier to connect the dots between those in the industry and those that are not to give an opportunity and a pathway to invest. We've had some folks on that started out on the show where literally, they either borrowed or one guy even leveraged all of his credit cards. And he took cash advances across the board on his credit cards. He got into his first fix and flip, and now, seven or eight years later, he's got 1000 doors under his belt. I believe it once you learn about creative ways to invest in real estate, you can't unlearn and you get super excited and even challenged when you can't get real estate the traditional way, because it just makes you say, oh, I can't do it this way. Or what other way can I figure out how to get this deal locked up or closed? Yeah. So if you're a problem solver, you could do a lot of damage in that space. Yes, absolutely. We worked with a company. It was a family owned business for 25 years, and we just went through the process of rebranding to prereal because we want to scale and backstop it with a fund. And the fund will give agents in each of the locations the opportunity to do these things, to not only earn fees on acquisitions, but give them the opportunity to have equity kickers and more deals through the pipeline. We feel like if we can offer the agents that additional level of servicing where they know that there's a couple of hundred million dollars in the till behind the company, we think we could do some really unique things, and it gives us a way to have access to these markets where they're exploding. How's the market down by you guys now, Austin market is on fire. Like my broker and partner, Matt Tie always says, it's opportunity city down here, and a lot of the economy in the nation is struggling, which is a little saddened in some areas. And here in Texas, it's just a different animal. It's almost like Silicon Valley is moving to Texas. And so in the middle of the world being on fire, it's actually an opportunity for Austin because it's growing massively and rapidly. So part of what you're seeing down there, right, is a decentralization of real estate. This is something that we've been talking about since, really the retail, what I call the retail apocalypse as the retail brands began to see an opportunity to move out of some of these lost leader flagship stores where the rents were just unimaginably high because they were in great traffic locations, tourist locations. And it was great exposure for them. And they found that they can reach people in the most intimate way right on their phone for a fraction of the price. We started to see a pullback in the major cities on the retail front. And then with the pandemic hitting, obviously, we're seeing the continuation of that now and across what feels like every single market segment. You're seeing a new way, if you will, of working right. People are choosing to what was once frowned upon in corporate America, where you need to be at your desk. You need to be here. That's really changed a lot in the last year, year and a half, and the big companies are starting to say, Wait a minute. If we can pay folks a 20% discount and we're still getting great work product and they can go live wherever they want to live, right? People started to decentralize and move to markets like Austin. And what you can do in some of these secondary markets financially is just amazing. People live amazing lives now. And it really did give people from a quality of life perspective, an opportunity to go there's a different way. There's a different way to do this thing. So are you guys forecasting down there? Is there any talk of a bubble, or are they thinking that it's getting to the end of the run here, or are they forecasting continued growth into the future? What's the overall outlook? I mean, my team and I, we talk about this all the time. And with such major companies coming down here that have been established just recently here in the last five-plus years, it's just created this growth that I would say we weren't prepared for traffic-wise, but as far as space and location, we have all of the available needs and necessities. And so, above all, I wouldn't say five or ten years from now. I think we're still looking really strong. Our growth is looking really good. For the most part, it may be pacing out. I know last year we were experiencing home sales where there are over 75 people at one open house, putting in 75 offers and making sometimes over $100,000 over the asking price offers. And so that lasted nearly. I think that lasted from about February of this year to about July or August, and it died down. And now the market is barely starting to stabilize. But even in stabilizing, I haven't seen any forecast of a drop. The numbers are still going up consistently and sometimes in double digits as well. So let me share with you some numbers from a survey that I was studying over the weekend. The survey is from a partnership from New York City, and I think it will speak to what you guys have on the horizon. All right. So on an average weekday, 28% of Manhattan office workers are in the workplace. As of late October 2021, only 28%. 8% of Manhattan office workers are in full time five days a week, which means 92% have not returned to the office full time. 10% are in four days a week, 12%, three days a week, 8%, two days a week, 8% one day a week, and 54% of Manhattan office workers are still fully remote. 54%. So you touched on something a minute ago where you had said that some of the big companies are starting to relocate, right. And I think the first trend or the first run was folks that got to that point and said, you know what we're done. We're either going to retire early or we just want to change the pace. We've talked about this on the show. It takes by most accounts of experts somewhere around 60 to 65 days to break a habit and another 60 to 65 days to replace that habit. That habit could be smoking, eating work habits, whatever it may be, this thing went on for so long that folks have changed that habit of going in the rat race that we hear about in the major cities. And they've exchanged that now and replaced it with a new habit that is this decentralized, not going in every day and working remotely. So the first run that you saw, I believe in, we're seeing this in the Carolinas, we're seeing it in Florida, we're seeing it in Texas. We're seeing it in Arizona, of folks who just were ready at that point, they were ready to pack it in. They were ready for a lifestyle change. But now you're going to see corporate America follow suit. And you're going to see physical relocation of these major companies and the ones that relocate and even the ones that don't relocate are going to start allowing for this decentralized, remote work to be the norm moving forward. So I think this next wave of folks might be bigger than the first wave where people are saying, okay, our company is on board with this, right. So now we're going to pick up and we're going to even if it's 70, 80%, 60% in some cases of what our salary was, we can go live like Kings in certain parts of America. Let's get the heck out of here and live a little bit of a different lifestyle. So we're super bullish on those markets. I'm sorry to cut you off. I always tell people when they come in from New York and California and Florida, some of those bigger markets with, I would say, state taxes. But some of those markets, when they come here, always let them know. Hey, for the price of a broom closet in some of those States, you could be living large here in Texas. And it's literally no joke. Like when I hear some of the prices for the price of a condo or apartment or a 1400 square foot home and people are paying $800,000 a million for these items in other markets. Then you come here to Texas and you spend $800,000 and you got a mansion. You have a five or six bedroom house with a pool, an acreage. And so when people start to see, as you mentioned, that physically changing the location can pretty much change your lifestyle completely, it's going to strike in many people and those creatures of habits who have been forced to move and adjust to this. Well, they'll find more easier reasons to adjust and move. So I totally agree with you on that. And I like that analyzation that the people and the employees were moving first. But now we're literally going to see the corporations changing and shifting on people's location and perspectives. Yeah. Well, look, the reason these cities have endured for as long as they have these major cities is because they were the employment capitals of the world, right? People wanted access to the jobs, and now that they can access the jobs remotely, and they're relocating out of these major cities for reasons like corporate tax rates and a number of other different reasons. I think that we're in the midst of a real shift. I don't think that this was an anomaly. I know there's a lot of folks out there that feel that things are going to return to the way they were. I think that that is absolutely not the case. I think that we're in a new world. And I believe we're just at the beginning of that new world. I think that there's still quite a bit of change on the horizon. Absolutely. With the way that money is going as well, just to throw that in the conversation, we're in the middle of one of the greatest wealth transfers in the history of our nation. And so that blended with everything changing in the housing industry and the workforce industry is all moving together. They're moving pieces that are moving together and going to be affected together. So I agree with you. I don't think it's going to be the same again. And it doesn't necessarily have to be that it just takes us being open to the change and the adjustments and just learn some new techniques. Absolutely. Look, if you're not growing, you're dead, right? Yup. You know, the world has given us through technology, an opportunity to basically become pretty damn close to an expert in anything simply by logging onto your computer, right? I mean, there is so much information out there. There are so many people that are willing to share their knowledge for free just to put it out into the universe that there's really not a topic that you can land on. That you can't research and find quality, verified sources that will help you bring yourself up to speed on that individual area. It's really an exciting time, and we have access to information. It's hard. I think that people get lost in the shuffle, and they don't take the time to realize and recognize the moment of time that we're in right now. This is a wicked exciting time. Very much so. James, I like that you said that it's wicked exciting because for the first time, we've had access to so much information in one place. And for the first time, it's scary because we have access to so much information in the same place. And what I've seen in my own personal life is there was only excuses to not grow and learn from this information. So as I was saying a little earlier about, can I go to College, or am I going to have the skills to do this or this or that? Well, the birth of the internet. My curiosity was, hey, if I can't get it from school, I'm going to go online. I'm going to ask Google and I'm going to go to the library. I'm going to go to all these alternatives, which it's funny when you're living near a library and you don't ever think to go to a library to grow or get information. But when the Internet came across, Google came across and I was staying right next to a library, I was like, what else do you need from a schoolhouse that you don't have between the Internet and a library? Like all the information is right here in front of us now. And for me, that was golden. I had the opportunity to take learning into my hands for the first time ever. And it's been amazing for me. It's a profound thing when you start to really look inward and kind of Peel back the onion, if you will, and start to recognize maybe some of the reasons why we didn't do this sooner or why we didn't embark on this journey earlier in life. But once you move past those roadblocks, book club is probably the favorite thing for me that we do here that in our creative meetings, just an opportunity to pour through and share and pull and extract information from these amazing books and from my colleagues. It's scary. It's tough sometimes to look inward, very tough if you're being honest with yourself. And it's tough to admit that after being in the business as long as we have, there are still so many things that we don't know, but it's exciting as hell. Man, it's been awesome. The book club, for me, is absolutely one of my favorite things that we do here. Books are our life to me. And when used wisely to me, you can give yourself so much information, so much wealth, so much currency, mind currency, emotional currency. So many things that are valuable in so many different ways by picking up a book that add value in your life in a lot of different ways. I wasn't an avid reader when I was in K through twelve. I became an avid reader when I got sick, and I got curious why I was sick. And so that led me on a path to get into, like books on neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and how our brain transmitters deliver messages within our body. And so that made me see myself in a area I never seen myself before. And so I realized I was curious about psychology and the psychology of people. And so I have books all over the house like that because that was what was appalling to me. Unlike kind of growing up in school, I wasn't really into, like the spooky storybooks and kind of fun books. But when it comes to the brain, I love those kinds of books because it allows me to know that it's okay that things are always changing because guess what? All these tools are here to guide you through that change anything you think you're going through, somebody's been through it before, and they probably put it in a book for you to learn from it. I hold books dear to my heart now, and sometimes it doesn't matter what kind of book it is as long as you read with intention or purpose. And sometimes that intention or purpose can just be to take a load off of life because so many things are going on in life sometimes. But for me, I typically pick up a book. I'm probably going to dissect it, study it. I probably have split it in half. I might even start in chapter five just because that particular chapter has what I want to go learn about. And then I'll read the rest of the book according to how I want to learn from the book. So I always tell people I'm not a traditional book reader. I go into books to dissect them and see what I can extract from them. And then if I believe the rest of the book can teach me, then I'll finish the rest of it so that there's a huge difference between really doing anything as we've kind of gone through the motions in life and being intentional. You had said intention when you've got clear intention, it opens up all sorts of doorways and pathways. Right? And all these books that you're reading. And I'm reading books on psychology, learning about the human mind, learning about how people digest and perceive oftentimes information at the end of the day. That makes us better deal makers, right? That makes us clients better. Without a doubt. Some people scoff at book club and they don't understand what value there is as it translates into the work world and touched on two important things. Number one, it doesn't always have to be a self help or a book about work, right? It's important to have that downtime. But number two, so many of these things we're finding that we're using in our work world, if you will. And it's just made us outstanding deal makers. It's just raised our game to such a different level. You've seen explosive growth down there, Thomas, I'm curious if we can get back to the market for a minute? Sure. How has the market responded from a construction perspective? Is there a new construction? Are you seeing cranes everywhere? Is it exploding, or has that not happened yet, or what's happening down there? I would say Austin has been in a construction zone for years now. Some of our major highways and downtown areas have been expanding for years now. Some of the work has been backed up for years now you're going to see cranes everywhere when you go downtown because that's what most people know. Austin for our downtown area, some of our skyscrapers and tall buildings, our capitals down there. But what you'll also see is in the outskirts and in the suburbs where a lot of homes that were being built new builds last year actually ended up being backed up. I have a new bill being completed. It's about 45 minutes outside of Austin. It's called Lago Vista, and it's one of the suburbs that people are going out to if they want to enjoy some Lake life and also some Hill country life. I'm doing a build out there with some of my clients and their home was supposed to be completed in August, and we're looking at finishing it in December now. But a lot of those builders stopped taking on new builds to catch up with their old bills from when Covet started. Makes sense. That's what you'll see echoing all around the city right now. Now, some are catching back up since our stated open back up this year around March or April. But as I was saying, those things are still delayed in some areas for sure. And are you seeing now changes or discussion about changes to zoning? Are you seeing people starting to push back on density? Has that started to happen yet? I wouldn't say we've seen a change on the zoning much because we had the opportunity zone introduced to our state a few years ago. And so I would say maybe that's already been set in stone in place to start moving zones. So it wasn't necessarily affected by Corona. But opportunity zones were definitely introduced a few years ago. I'm a big fan of the opportunity zones. I've done a good bit of work on them, and I think that they're a great tool to help foster investment. You do a lot of work with first time home buyers and first time investors. Is there a reason, specifically, can you kind of put your finger on why you chose the first time home buyer or the first time investor as a point of focus for you absolutely kind of what you said earlier, if you're not learning, you're dead or you're dying, and if you're not growing, you're dying. And so I started real estate back in 2012 without a plan, without intention, just thinking I could just go in and make some money, like I was pushing a nine to five clock metaphorically. I ended up dying in real estate. So about two years ago, I came back into the business full time 100%, and I said, I'm going to service a particular market of people, and I'm going to create a niche for a particular market of people. And this is what people are going to know me for. And so that two years has gone by. And I am now known as the realtor here in central Austin, that you could also partner up with me on deals. Or I might even be negotiating my Commission to close the deals with you. It just depends on what type of deals that we have on the table. But that is something that I told myself that was important because I believe anyone that does great business, they're a master at something. And so instead of spreading myself in like I did before, I said, I'm going to become a master in these two realms, and people will be able to at least depend on me in these two realms. And so those are the primary reasons that I was seeing that everybody who was great at something, they were mastered at something, and they weren't spraying themselves in tremendous response. Tremendous advice for folks out there. When you start dabbling in too many disciplines, you get lost, and you really have to demonstrate excellence in a specific niche, and you'll find the market will respond to you because just like we're out there looking for information in other areas. Folks are out there looking for information and experts in real estate. Right. Right. Expertise. I like that. Absolutely. Do you have any plans of expanding beyond the Texas market at this point, or are you staying? Absolutely. As you know yourself, this is a relationship business, and that has been the foundation for my growth in my business. And being that I'm meeting people from all over the country in some circumstances the world. We have these discussions and talks about investing in other places. Albany, New York, has even come up a few times just because it looks like it's in a place where it's being revitalized right now. So I think some things are dirt cheap out there. I met some fellows out in San Diego last year who are in the construction business who are curious about investing in real estate. And so we have our constant dialogue about California and what's going on over there. And what is it going to be like in a few years after all of their big corporations are in Texas and not in California? And so these talks about different markets. And I think it's important to try to break into these other markets, because sometimes you don't want to limit yourself to any particular market. If you're focused on investing, sometimes you just need to find a market where you could trust the numbers, find some people there that you can trust and just invest there. I love it. And again, these tools are making it so much easier to connect with folks from all over the country and really glean some amazing information and make sound decisions. I think there's a trepidation. People are nervous about investing outside of a place where they can touch it and feel it. But the tools available to us today have made it so much easier. Man, it's just a different world. Exactly because you won't be able to touch and feel it when virtual reality gets to work. Yeah. There's a reason Facebook changed their name to Meta, right? No, it's coming. I want a black mirror. If you could offer one piece of advice for a first time investor, what would the advice be? A mentor? It doesn't hurt to ask questions to the right people. I think a lot of people get discouraged about asking questions because they ask them to people who don't want to see their growth. Get a mentor who wants to see your growth. That's outstanding. Thomas. How do people find you? What's the best way for folks to connect with you? You can find me on Instagram at Mr. T Hopes. That is M-R-T-H-O-P-E-S. Like you have high hopes. You can also find me on Facebook at Thomas Hopes investment solutions as it sounds, or at Facebook as just Thomas Hopes as well. We really appreciate the time here, folks. All the information on how to reach out and connect with Thomas will be below. This was a great conversation. Best of luck, Thomas. I appreciate it. You have a great one. Thank you. I appreciate you. Stay safe, everybody.