Demystifying Real Estate

in history. I'm talking about making new history, from civil rights in the streets to silver rights SI L V E R in the suites, cutting a business deal. The new colors not black and white or redder blue.

and setting a little bit aside. He decided, and I think this goes back even to the nineties, to just buy a house, you know here, to buy a house there. Until he owned the block, most of the block that he grew up in. These the same blocks, same homes, or the same block. He said he was arrested a thousand times, same block where his.

values to come up. We just wanted to include us when it happens and not replace us when it happens. And so sometimes you got to not just talk about being a PhD, but a PhD too. I like both of those things. I like people who do things. Mike did things, went and bought these properties, slowly invested here and there with his wife methodical about it, quiet about it even and then got AGTV inspired and involved in a new program I think they call buying back the Block.

Check it out and check him out. They did it. And you know, as you can see, the black people who've benefited, white people who've benefited, you know, Asian India, everybody benefited, not just people who bought the homes and are living in the homes, people who worked on the homes. Plumbers, electricians, lighting, roofing. That's what I do with my own company. I try to make sure that half of all of my vendors at a promise homes company at least are minority in women,

small businesses, plumbing, heating, landscaping, rooting, roofing. This is job creation, by the way, this is you know, wealth creation through contracts.

and higher income moving back into the neighborhood. Now economic energy returns to the neighborhood, and so now nobody's getting kicked out. You've got people who live there who are middle income of working class and middle class. You have people working there on the homes in the neighborhoods who might be working class, might even be the working poor,

but they're participating and benefiting as well. Now you've got a tax base for the city, so the city can now afford to have proper public services, garbage removal, making sure the lights that's in the street lights are fixed, to make sure that there's money for I've already said green space, public spaces. You know, frankly, the schools get inspired. You start seeing businesses move into areas like this to serve they look like, oh wait, check that out.

And Mike and his wife have shown you how to do it right and make it tight and making smart sexy again and doing it in a way that actually enhances their economic plight like that, doing it right and increasing their economic might. And I'm not trying to be a rapper. It just so happens that, you know, sometimes when you do it right, it is cool and smooth. So tip my brother, tip my brother killer Mike. Don't get mad at me because I'm rapping a little bit

in rhyming a little bit. I'll never be a challenge to your talent on rocking the mic. But don't you rock this this economic pen that I've got over here?

The equity I keep talking about in real estate investment goes to the Epps family, it also goes to anybody else who's buying a home in that neighborhood that gets a knock on effect, meaning in other words, if the house next door to you gets improved, then you may want to improve your house, but certainly it improves the value of your house. If the house next door's got one hundred thousand dollars of rehabilization and improvement going into it, and then you're going to get some kind of halo

effect on your house. You know, you may get a twenty thirty thousand dollars pop in value in your house because somebody put one hundred thousand dollars in the house next door. You did nothing. If you then improve your house with some new paint and some landscaping, you may

get a pop of thirty or forty thousand dollars. I'm talking about homes that are you know, one hundred and two hundred thousand dollars three hundred thousand dollars in range at the moment, which sounds to me and looks at me based on what I'm seeing is going on in this neighborhood in Indianapolis that the EPP's family is revitalizing, and so as it comes up, they come up. As the community does well, they do well. That's good doing well and doing good. I keep saying that good capitalism

is where I benefit and you benefit more. Bad capitalism is I benefit, you pay a price for it. This is good capitalism. Back capitalism is you know, drug dealing, is you know, rent to own stores, title lenders, liquor stores, pawnshops, you know check cashers, Not all check cashers, but the predatory ones, you know, title lending stores, and all these folks praying on our neighborhoods and low credit score neighborhoods. This guy is actually raising the credit score, raising the

economic energy of this neighborhood. It will attract investors, as I said, it will attract involvement, positive involvement by the city. The police will be more respectful. I guarantee you right, Mike's not gonna have any problem in this neighborhood. I guarantee you. But people who live in this neighborhood are not going to have any problem with They're taxpayers. Hello, So what do you think about this. I mean, what's your opinion on this? But I'm just really excited about it.

And he's my profile of the week of a celebrity doing it right. Happens to be a black celebrity as well. Who understands that he can't just cash the check. He's got to write some You can't just make the money during the day. You got to build wealth in your sleep. You got to you know, in real estate is the easiest way, well one of the easiest way to do it, in providing affordable housing to people. And it's just like plus plus plus everybody wins when you buy back the block.

Don't take my word for it. In this digital world we live in now, and also inner city world we live in now because by the way, the wealthiest neighborhoods and France or places called Paris, that's an inner city. The wealthiest places in the UK United Kingdom, places like London in the inner city. It goes on and goes on and goes on. Inner cities all around the world

are invaluable, but we put the world. American leaders put poor people, so called poor people, blacks and browns in inner cities in the twentieth century and move to the suburbs. Only realize with traffic and congestion they want to move back to centrally located real estate. I'll get to that in a minute, which means our real estate is actually invaluable, but we are actively giving it away. But I'm getting ahead of myself. In this digital world we live in,

you can get most information at your fingertips. So if you see somebody on television telling you that home ownership's a bad bet, use your smartphone to be smart. Use it for something other than checking out you know, the most interesting stats on sports, which is cool, or seeing the best you know, the most recent concert or music videos, which is cool. Use it to make smart sexy, to understand what somebody's telling you whether it's a lie or not.

Look up the person, look up the broadcaster or the TV personality and see if they own a home. You put in their name and put in home and see what comes up. And if somebody's a public figure, you know, in you know, eight times out of ten it'll tell you, yeah, this person owns a home, and our multiple homes. How do I know that? Because the number one business in

the world is real estate. The number one business in the world is real estate, all right in the world, and it's been that way for at least the last seventy five years. The number one sector, the biggest business sector in the world, right, not technology, not healthcare, not music, not entertainment, not you know, whatever it is you're interested in, None of that. The biggest industry, the biggest sector in the world. It's real estate. The number one way that

millionaires become such. And I know as much because I am one. It's real estate. I happen to be, in addition to being the founder of Operation Hope, the largest minority owner. I think this is still true. It was true certainly a year ago or two years ago, and I sold the company. The largest minority owner of single family rental real estate in America single family homes. Sorry, is the largest owner of single family rental homes in

America is me. It was a Promise Homes company. I built the company from twenty seventeen to twenty I sold it to twenty twenty one for one hundred and twenty one million dollars, did a twenty million dollars credit facility financing to recapitalize the company. Became a partner in the new company with my new partners. I owned the company myself. Now I own it with partners, but we owned, you know, at one point we own a little less than now

seven hundred homes in Georgia, Greater Atlanta, in Florida. And I started this, you know, I started my quest with one home, right we'll actually a condo. Then went from one condo to a condo and an investment property, and then three properties and then five and okay, then I you know, decided to go into a business and then went on supercharge mode. And my goal is actually ten thousand homes now. But that's a whole other conversation for another time. That it's not the strategies I'm talking to

you about. Now I'm just telling you I know what I'm talking about. In that operation Hope, we've helped, you know, literally thousands of people become homeowners with prime rates because we helped them get their credits corrupt, their debt down, their savings up. Okay, back to the topic, because all those just underscoories that I know what I'm talking about, right, and I want you to listen. I want you to

pay attention. My mother, who worked an hourly job, wanted to smith an hourly job job, I mean Donald Do's aircraft, bought and sold seven homes, making the equivalent of eighteen.

them buy homes multiple times. And I watched her buy and sell homes it gave her financial freedom and retire in dignity right. And she did it as a working class woman. So because my grandmother was on a shotgun shack, my mother owned seven homes. I then owned seven hundred because now I knew what I could do and I built on that success. Can I get an amen? This is what this is a church that was happening. Now what have you done for me lately? So I know

it can be done and I have done it. I'm not somebody talking about it read about it in the book giving you a motivational speech. I'm telling you that I made good moves and bad I'm gonna tell you about a couple of them in this podcast. Almost lost my rear end and would have had to file bankruptcy if the if the lender had not been gracious towards me when I was building a three unit apartment building. I don't want to commend that lender. It was actually

Wills Fargo. It was a banker at Wells Fargo who saved my bacon when I was building a home for my father to live in. And again I'll get to that story in a minute, but you know I came very close to losing it all. I also made it big, so almost lost it big there, but I also made it big. That was a construction loan, big relatively speaking.

When I bought a home, you know, a condo townhouse home, I was living in an apartment and I moved and got this home and I paid you know, two hundred and twenty thousand dollars for it in Los Angeles on lati hera boulevard righted Lati here in four or five for anybody knows Los Angeles. And then when the economy took a dive, everybody was saying, you need to sell the house two thousand and eight, you need to sell the house. Get out of the house, all my poor friends,

and you know, sell get out, get out, get out. No, no, no, Warren Buffet says, when people are greedy, be afraid. When people are afraid, be greedy. I just doubled down, right. I had a tenant in it. I figured, you know, I'll just hold on to it. And you know, it went down to one hundreds of one thousand dollars. Everybody's like, get out, get out. But I had a tenant covering the rent, right, okay, all good, And I was still getting tax benefits from it. I'll get to that in

a minute, also the tax benefits of ownership. I held on and somewhere around twenty fifteen, I went back to check on the property again. This so this, this is you know, now to economic crisis two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, lost my shirt. Supposedly I didn't lose my shirt. I still owned the property and it was I had a tenant in it in the property, and so the rent was being covered. Twenty and fifteen, twenty sixteen, I decided to cash out by another property.

couldn't do better. They weren't financial geniuses, and they couldn't give me financial genius advice and give me be cool advice. How to address advice, how to hang out advice? A lot of other good advice, maybe even how to parent advice. I'm sure they give me a lot of great advice, but real estate advice was not one of the ones they could give me. Investment advice was not one of

the ones they could give me. And I knew better than to pay attention to what they were saying, as an old Southern saying in a blind town of one eyed man's king, if you don't know better, you cannot do better.

I went from renting in an apartment in van Ies believe it was, and buying us a townhouse for a couple, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars, having that property go down in value, holding on to it, moved to I think Atlanta rented that townhouse out right, but kept it and then turned around and that property has literally tripled, more than tripled in value when I sold it for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and then in up parleying that into a tax exchange. I think it's called

ten thirty one tax free exchange. I think it's what it's called it's a tax free exchange where you can buy one property with the proceeds from the property you just sold and you don't pay taxes on it. And I ended up leveraging that up into a multimillion dollar investment. So that little two hundred thousand dollars townhouse morphed into a multimillion dollar investment. And that's not the Promise Homes company I'm telling you about right now. Where else can

you do that? And then the piece where I lost my shirt, I'll just tell you this, I almost lost my shirt. Then I would get into the basics of why you should own a home. My dad made some financial mistakes, made some mismoves or some bad moves. A good guy, but was not financially literate. Nobody taught him how money works, so it wasn't his fault. But he didn't know better, so couldn't do better. So I'm not blaming it on you. I'm telling you that this is

in my own family. We're not ashamed of it because he just didn't know any better. And he worked his whole life working in construction on his own business, meeting a payroad to where I learned how to do it, and payroll was every race of people out of the front door of our home. So race to me was, you know, not a negative thing. I had no problem with white people or Asians or that they knows or whatever. They all worked for my dad, so the color was green.

But my dad couldn't keep the money. He made a dollar, spend a dollar fifty. The more money we made, the broker we got right, and he ended up, you know, fast forward, living with this lady. He was dating my mom and Dady divorced, and she controlled his life. Like I'll say, it's like he was pimping him, like, you know, she be my boyfriend. By the way, I'm giving you housing, right, So he lived in a house that she controlled. She didn't live there, she controlled it and she controlled him.

I said, oh no, we're not doing this. So with my dad's permission, I bought the house from the lady. But then I realized I couldn't just subsidize this payment every month of the more. So I learned the rules. I learned the you know, get the memo on money. That's my I think it's my fourth book, the memo Get that Right, And and learned the game built the knock three walls down, keep one wall up, and build a three unit apartment building around the remaining wall. Turned

it into an income producing property. Was my strategy. Let my dad live in the front unit and I'd rent out the other two. Actually was supped to be a four unit building, but my dad screwed up the sooning ordinance and I ended up having to go from four units to three. The numbers still work. He would live in the front unit for free. The other two units would pay the mortgage payment and you know, property taxes and maintenance and little income. Not bad, right, Well, I

let my dad emotional decision. Who was a you know, it was a construction guy. He knew what he was doing, but I let him manage, not the job of construction. I let him manage the money. And make a long story short, he ran through six hundred and fifty thousand dollars a construction loan. OUCH did not finish the project.

paid off the construction loan. I also gave my dad a americ Express credit card six thousand dollars limit. He ran that up to the limit, and I mean, this is back with six thousand dollars, it might as well have been six million, And I mean, money really does create drama in relationships, like the number one cause of divorces. Money like this really created a problem with me and my dad. But he's my father, so I couldn't be disrespectful.

But I'm like, he was being disrespectful to my wallet and he met well, but just you know, just financially illiterate. So I had to like learn to give him money, but not a credit card, you know, give him, you know, a gift card that you know, money on it loaded, but nothing more.

it's a number one ways you build wealth in America? Right, Why should you want to own a home because when you buy a home, you get the benefit of depreciation, the tax benefit. The tax system was created to benefit homeowners. You get the benefit of depreciation, tax benefits, You get the benefit of appreciation, the increase in value of that home. I'm going to break this stuff down. I talk to

you in plain English. You know, if you have a thirty year mortgage, on average fifteen certainly twenty years of that mortgage, you write office mortgage interest. Twenty of a thirty year mortgage is mortgage interest. Well, you write that off against your taxes, against your income. So you're going to get a lot of that money back as a tax refund. You can't get that back if you're renting, if you're renting from me, and I'd love you to be a renter for me, right, But at some point

I want you to leave. I want you to go from rent to own. But you're reading for me, or you're renting from someplace you can't afford, a neighborhood that don't want you with money. You don't have to press people you don't know about stuff that don't matter, right, real talk. So you're writing in this skuy scrape or somewhere with a dormant, right, yeah, but you don't have

a dormant. You also, you also want a window taker because you're opening that window and somebody's taking your money as you throw that money for rent out the window every month. By the way, I was a renter. There's a time to be a renter. You just shouldn't be a renter for your entire life, in my opinion. So if you consider yourself an ALLC A limited liability corporation, consider yourself a business. Right, where are your assets? Your assets cannot be on your ass. You've got to own something.

And you build wealth in your sleep. You make money during the day, you build wealth in your sleep. It's called appreciation compounding, right, Stocks home ownership, bonds, businesses, real estate, even education, higher education compounds. That's an investment. You know, only in real estate are you going to get this kind of secured opportunities. You know, real estate has never gone down in value in the history of the modern

world in America. Now, somebody's going to say, now we got John, this is wrong, right, there was a crisis in two thousand and eight. There's a crisis in you know, whenever you know two thousand No, there's a crisis. Right in real estate. It goes up, there's a crisis, it dips right down, right as it did in my situation.

And then when it corrects, it always corrects above the line, which means that it goes back up above the dip and typically breaches the value that you bought it for if you hold on to it long enough, because they just aren't growing in any more land it's fine, and it is secured investment. And again, for all the reasons I just mentioned you, the tax system is designed to benefit real estate owners, specifically home ownership. Now I'm going to tell you in short order why people benefit from

you not understanding this game. And this is not a racial comment of making I'm just saying that some people understood this game and other people did not. After the Civil War, I want to make this really quick. After the Civil War, you had forty acres in a mule. And I'll do this in a separate podcast around the Freedmans Bank. It was Field Action fifteen in Savannah, Georgia, twenty four former slaved ministers asked by Secretary of War Stanton General Sherman, what do you want after slavery?

Now that's not what this podcast is about. That's not what this episode's about. But the reason I'm telling you that story is some people think that four million slaves got forty acres and a mule no no, no, no. Eighteen thousand families split up four hundred thousand acres. And that land was reversed after they got it. And it wasn't even good land. It was along the ocean around North Carolina, South Carolina. It was a coastal property. It

was just hard to you know, grow agriculture on. But we took it and ran and worked it anyway, because we we've been doing so much with so little for so long. We can almost do anything with nothing. Meaning African Americans were very industrious, but they took that back. Why am I telling you that story because soon after that, a couple of years after that, there was a Homestead Act about two hundred and seventy million acres ten percent of all land in America given to anybody read mostly white.

Ninety nine point something percent of all the recipients of the Homestead Act where white settlers that were going west would get I think it was six hundred and sixty acres as I'm right, if I'm correct, You had to work the land. The government created institutions of agriculture. They created basically mentors business mentors for agriculture in these counties. That would help new farmers to understand how to own

and grow the land. But you got this land for free and two hundred and seventy million acres and one point five million families took the two hundred and seventy million acres and I think it was six thousand families if I got that number right, were black of one point five million total families that got a plot of land, which is upwards of one hundred million beneficiary families today. It's a whole another conversation, but that land represents ten

percent of all land in America. That was a homestead Act.

right in neighborhoods. But if a neighbor was viewed as as risky or you know, dangerous. They would put whether there was a green, there were green neighborhoods. Guess where those were. There were yellow, you know markings. Those were sketchy but you know, debatable, and then they were red. Oh no, that's a no go zone. And the government refused to finance, I'm sorry, to guarantee of mortgage in those neighborhoods. Well, guess where the banks refused to make mortgages.

It wasn't necessarily racial, but if you're in a red zone and the government's not gonna guarantee of mortgage, then the bank's not gonna lend on a home in that area on a mortgage. They got to go to where it's safe. Because money is a coward. Money wants to be safe. I understand that. So money would go to what would in this case be white neighborhoods, and they'd make the mortgages there. So where do you think the

values went up? The values went up in the white or the green neighborhoods, which happened to be mostly in this cave, you know, example, white homeowners, and it went down. It was depressed in black neighborhoods, all right, And then you had covenants, restrictive covenants on homes that Blacks cannot buy in these green neighborhoods. As a whole nother game. And then you come up through World War two and the GI Bill ninety nine. You know, percent of all

the GI Bill recipients were non black White. This is where the middle class was created. Again, this is not a this is not a white versus black thing. This is a green thing. I'm just giving you a history lesson of why black people have a net worth that is, you know, a mere fraction of white net worth because you know, in one of these areas of home ownership, we have not either taken advantage of it or mostly it's been denied of it. Right now, we're not taking

advantage of it. Forty one forty three percent of all home ownership is black compared to seventy five percent of our mainstream count of parts. But in history, right, you know civil rights moving in before it was restricted from us, it was kept from us. But I'm demystifying the game. I'm telling you now how this game is played. And if you have good credit, the bank will just say yes. Right, So the colors green. The playing field is more leveled today than it has ever been. My mother's story is

an example of what I'm telling you, right. My story is an example of what I'm telling you right. And by the way, there's more poor white people than poor anybody else, and they suffer from the same problem because they never got the memo on money. That's another video for another podcast or another time. I don't know anybody here thinking that this is John making a case against anybody. I'm making a case for you. I'm trying to not emotionally explain to you how bad things can happen to

good people. So you had you know this. You know, the government for the GI Bill, will give you a mortgage and an education, sponsor you in the college and get you through college for the skill of marketable skill, and give you more to become a homeowner. And that's where you know, broadly define we can see the white middle class really emerged from and then black middle class came from, you know, in large part the civil rights movement, getting people and educated and all that stuff. But we

learned the cash a check, not to write it. I'm going to teach you how to to cash a sustainable check. You know, the upgradious skills, but also learn how to teach you how to do what I do, which is to write the check. I'm an employer. I have hundreds of employees. FOREI undred employees just in my in my companies, my direct companies and organizations payroll. You know, I'm not afraid to say it, A million dollars every couple of weeks. I've been doing this for thirty years, so I know

what I'm talking about. I made good choices and bad, and I'm telling you that that one of the choices you need to make, if you're listening to this, is to own a home. Now, somebody's going to say, here, ah, John, I don't know what he's talking about. You know, I don't want to own a home. I hear this all the time. I don't want to own a home. The bank owns a home. This is a game, This is a scam. I don't own a home. The bank owns

a home. If you don't pay yeah, I said it, if you don't pay the mortgage, Yes, the bank owns a home. As I would do, as I said in a session with my brother Ti at our whole Global Forum. You know, I if I lend you money to buy a home and you don't pay me, I'm going to own your home.

over the long term, it's always cheaper to own. Well, sorry, it's always a better investment own. It may not be cheaper on a cash on cash basis in the short term, but your rental property is not your rental property, and it's not going to appreciate in your pocket. Right, So you're just living in the moment. I'm telling you, here's your plan. If you're a working class person, if you're a middle class family and you're listening to this podcast,

here's your business plan. I want you to buy a home, and I want you to buy the best house on the worst block. Right, So, if you're going to a middle class neighborhood by the worst house and the best block in rehabit and live in it. Or if you're in the hood, right you would define a house on that block and rehabit and live in it, but preferably the best house. I'll get back to that that strategy

one second. But buy the best house right that you can, that you can afford, so you don't have any deferred maintenance, but rehabit and live it or sorry, upgrade it. Yeah, you know, make that as part of the acquisition that you build enough in for painting and anything that needs to be needs to you know, get an inspection on the house, right, get pre approved. Operation can help you do that for free. If we get your credit screw

up above seven hundred seven fifty for sure. Used to be just seven hundred, but now that interest rates have changed, it might be a little bit above seven hundred. We'll get you a prime mortgage. Right, We'll get your mortgage like every other successful aspiring person in America. Right, not when he's homeboys shopping at word mortgage is a good one right now, one that it explodes on car loans. We used to say, no, that's not a Mercedes in

the hood. That's a mercy these payments. That's what I'm gonna do a whole thing on auto loans and how that game really, how car dealerships in the car business really works. I'm gonna unpack that whole I'm gonna do a masterclass unpacking that whole situation so we can get you into a home right. And that will include you know, a budget you're gonna have for maintenance and anything to

fix up. Then I want you to to to take over time the equity from that house you build up and over time, have a plan over five years, ten years max right pay patient, buy a home in the hood using equity from your home if you can, or you have to if you don't have other sources. As your home appreciates, and buy a modest home in the inner city, rehabit and rent it. Do that twice. Now you have three homes, one you're living in and two that you've bought as rentals. And you've now created generational

wealth for a lifetime. So within thirty minutes, we've given you a history lesson, we've given you a context lesson. We've unpacked the mystery of some finance, the mystery of why good things happen sometimes to bad people, and how

bad things can happen to good people. We've talked about the easy ways that you can figure out immediately why you should own a home and not why you shouldn't rent for any longer than you have to, which is appreciation which goes in your pocket, depreciation which helps you from a tax perspective, and writing off mortgage payments against your income, which means at the end of the year you have a good tax pro or even a decent one, you'll get a refund a tax refund from some of

the mortgage proceeds that you put into your own home. And is that home compounds and increases in value. Guess who benefits you. No, I'm gonna tell you little bit, a little bit of private news, just to tell you how powerful real estate is. Less than two years ago, we bought a home in another country, Turks and Caicos, And I'm not going to give you exact numbers, but you know respectable value right bought it, and less than two years later, the realtor calls me and says, I've

got an opportunity to sell that house for you. Would you like to sell it? Just tell me the number, Well, the number was seventy five percent more than what I paid for it in eighteen months, less than two years. I could have almost doubled value, doubled my value in less than two years on a secured real estate investment in another country. What business, right legal can you do that in now? I didn't buy it for that purpose.

I didn't buy it for that reason. I bought it because it was a nice place for me and my family to get away to. Right, and the way I structured it, it pays for itself. That's a whole other conversation I may get into by the way. You can put comments of what topics you want me to cover, by the way, But this example is like when when when right it pays for itself and it went up in value when I was in sleeping It made me

look like a genius. My net worth went up and I didn't do anything but own it because there's just not enough properties like the one I bought in the area, and other people want the property and there's nothing else available for sale, and I'm not selling right out on that property as long as I as long as I can, I'd like to buy property and hold on to it. Some people need to you know, I this whole buy

and flip thing that's just not for me. I think you should buy properties, cash flow them so they take care of themselves and hold on to them because they will go up at value if you have to sell. If there's some strategic reason is selling like the ten thirty one tax FI exchange I did that I told to you about early in this podcast, then fine. But

in general, you want to accumulate wealth. And again, forty one to forty three percent of black folks own a home today compared to seventy five percent of our white counterparts. There's all kind of obstacles in your way, you know, in generations before us, but those obstacles don't exist today. You can do this. Half of black folks not poor people. Half of black folks today have a credit score below

six to twenty half. That means when you wake up in the morning, you're locked out of the free enterprise system. Operation Hope can help you. Download the Hope in hand app or go to Operation Hope dot org. Are called eighty eight eight three eight eight Hope and get a Hope financial coach and they will help you raise your credit score on average fifty four points in six months over one hundred points in you know, less than twenty

four months. They'll help you get your debt down on average thirty eight hundred dollars for somebody making two thousand dollars a year, and your savings up more than two thousand dollars that same person, and we can get you bank qualified right, get you in the game so that you can become a homeowner, or through one million black business issues you know one MBB, become a small business owner, or whatever it is you want to do. Live your dreams.

Will give you optionality in life. Freedom is self determination, but you cannot self determine yourself unless you understand the rules of the game and understand that financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. If you don't

know better, you cannot do better. You can go to church every Sunday, be the nicest person in the world, but if you don't understand what we've been talking about here, you can win in this game, and we're going to help you master it step by step and real talk. I'm not going to use twenty words when two will do. I'm the latest stuff this thing out for you. I'm

gonna use my life as a personal testimony. I'm going to take questions and answer questions and talk about what's going on in the moment, but also talk about things that I call it are evergreen, that just is stuff that will help you for the rest of your life. This is a radical movement of common sense.

even a car. I don't buy anything this way. But sometimes we asked the wrong question, like what's the payment when there's an interest rate attached? We asked on a six figure property one thousand, three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand dollars, what's the payment on that going to be? Without understanding that people were giving you these crappy loans, these perfect eye side loans. Twenty points twenty percent. Injury is twenty twenty loans. When you got the loan, you

went blind. Twenty points is like twenty cents on a dollar in a fee going to the mortgage broker typically and twenty percent interest or just you know what's called a negative mamoryization loan, which means every yeah, your payment's low, but every time you make a payment, you owe more on the loan than next month. I'm sorry, look, yeah, you owe more money on the loan balance the next month. So basically it's negative amorization. It's going up in debt

even though your payment is what you want. There was adjustable rate mortgage. You really don't want an adjustable rate mortgage if you can avoid it at all on a thirty year home, because as rates go up, your payment can explode. Imagine if you had an adjustble rate mortgage in the current environment in twenty three, twenty twenty three, going into twenty twenty four, your payment might have doubled or tripled. You want to fix rate mortgage. We do that by getting you good credit so that you can

negotiate from a place of strength. There's a lot of tricks in this game, and I know most of them. If I don't know my team does, and we're going to teach them to you so that you can master this game at scale in your life and become the leader of your life. I didn't cover everything, but hopefully I covered enough to moisten your taste for aspirational success and silver rights from civil rights in the streets to silver rights in the suites at scale. Okay, go to

Operation Hope today. Take back your life and map out how you're going to become a homeowner so you can send your kids to college, start a business with the equity, buy other homes with equity, go on vacations, plying your retirement, whatever you want to do.

for most people, but homeownership, I believe is. And anybody telling you who's successful that you shouldn't own a home, I don't know why they're telling you that other than they want more for themselves, they're just being provocative because

they own a home nine times out of ten. I mean this just it's just crazy, bringing real empowerment right to your front doorstep in this case, right to your microphone, to your headphone, to your video reception on your mobile device, or whatever you happen to be watching or listening to. For this podcast, we have empowerment right from the streets to the suites and back. We've got a fan question we're going to answer it today. Her name is Sasha.

This question comes from Sasha King Skid and she's on Instagram. She asks what's the best way to start investing in real estate? It's a good question, and my answer is keep it simple, like keep it simple and keep it modest. Don't be dramatic. But this is no time to get fancy, right. I want you to ask a whole lot of questions. I asked Quincy Jones once. Man, how'd you get so smart? He said, John, I'm just nosy as hell. I want to know everything about everything. Well that's how I want

you to be about real estate. I want you to know everything about everything. Ambassador Andrew Young, my mentor, my hero, my man, the right arm to Doctor MARTINTHA King Jr. One of the central leaders of the civil rights movement, says that men and women fail for three reasons arrogance, pride, and greed. Hello, I don't want you pride for I want you arrogant.

question because no one taught you this stuff. No one gives you a lesson in financial literacy or how capitalism and free enterprise works. It's what you don't know that you don't know that's killing you. Think you though, Here's what I want you to not do. I don't want you to have to listen to anybody who's trying to separate you from your wallet. Don't invest if you want to call it that in fractional real estate. That's not the way to start. Don't invest in one of these things.

I mean, I did these time shares. I'm not hating on time shares, actually I am.

I have to I can't just go sell it. I got to negotiate with in alignment with all the other fractional owners and the master controller of that which is a but I won't name, And I got to pay. If I don't pay the maintenance fee every year, you know, they can take the property from me. It just gets ridiculous. So you don't have to like do something complicated like that you don't even need to go buy a big home.

You can buy a condo, a townhouse, start modestly, right, you can buy There was a when I got the Atlanta you could buy a rundown piece of property for five, ten, fifteen thousand dollars. There are small towns maybe where you live you want to drive, buy something you know close to where you can get to Trend. You know, drive back and forth there every day if you need to. So you don't want to do something more than a

couple hours from where you are. I'd see more than an hour from where you are, and somebody who can maybe help oversee the property with you if you're you know, doing this with somebody else, doing it with a partner or family or whatever. Right, but you want to do it modest you want to keep it simple. Clearly, buying your own home is smart. But if you do that, start there's nothing wrong with the starter home. Don't go trying to buy a mini mansion if you you know,

work for the postal service. Look, my mother worked at Madondola's Aircraft and she when she got laid off there, she was she was a janitor part time at my school. I'm not hating on any kind of job occupation. She was a security guard. I'm saying, if you are a security guard, if you're a janitor, if you're a postal worker, if you you know whatever, some you know, cool, really

important but modest employment situation. Don't go trying to buy a half million, seven and fifty thousand dollars a million dollar property. That's crazy, right, and don't listen to anybody trying to sell it to you.

almost twenty thousand dollars. There's your down payment for your home. You buy your first starter home, you want to buy well if you need ten percent or five percent down payment. Now you have a down payment, plus you have a reserve for maintenance and anything that goes bumping the night,

up keep for the house, whatever. Right, if you want to have a little count set up set aside for you know, a pipe urset or whatever you know, and my team can also like help you put you know, a proper budget in place and get your credit score up so you get you know, a great mortgage. So you want to get pre qualified with a lender, and you want to make sure there's not a hard money lender.

to represent you. They know more about you, know the area and all that than you do, and take your time and wait for something to inspire you. Again, you got to decide whether you want to invest in your own starter home yourself, or whether you want to invest in an investment property like a raggedy home in the hood that you buy, you rehab and you rent, or you know, maybe it's a duplex, or maybe it's a triplex, or you know, I wouldn't suggest a multifamily as your

first investment. So keep it simple and be humble, and ask a lot of questions and take your time. There's always a chance to do it again. But it's very easy to get married, very hard to get divorced. And the same thing applies to real estate. Very easy to get into something bad and very hard to get out of it once you're already committed to it. So again, keep it simple, keep it humble, keep it modest, and keep it moving. And thank you very much to this

wonderful question from Sasha. I looked forward to seeing you the finish line. Sasha, you know, with questions like this, no doubt you're going to be successful. All right, Love and Light, I'm out, John O'Brien, let me know what you think.