Trump vs. Harris: Which Economic Strategy Benefits Real Estate Investors? | Ep 43

James: Welcome to the Furlo Capital Real Estate Podcast, where we dive into the intricacies of passive real estate investing. And our mission is to equip people to invest wisely in both properties and residences so that together we can build wealth while improving housing. I'm James and this is my wife, Jessi.

Jessi: I'm here and I think it's super funny. I have no idea if this relates, but

James: it

Jessi: was this weird, like it was this weird juxtaposition today of reality versus. perception in my outfit. And so like, I chose my outfit today thinking like, what is the most comfortable? So like my skirt, super stretchy. It's super forgiving.

Like it's just a t shirt top. And I like, I didn't wash my hair, like threw it up in a bun. I had so many compliments. People were like, wow, are you dressed? Are you going out today? Like you dressed up. I was like, actually, no. Like the reality is I chose the easiest, most comfortable outfit. I was kind of funny.

Like, Just that weird, like perception of what people are thinking.

James: There's probably a life lesson somewhere in there. Yeah. Speaking of perception versus reality, we, we're going to embark upon a topic today where a lot of people have different perceptions about what is said, what isn't said, what should happen, what shouldn't happen.

That's right. We're getting political. We are going to talk about Trump vs. Harris, politics, policies, as they relate to real estate investing, and that, all that stuff. I mean, we're not

Jessi: at a dinner table, so I

James: guess it's okay. My hope is that we can have a cool headed and nuanced conversation. That's my goal.

I

Jessi: mean, we should be able to. I feel like we share most of it. Political views.

James: Yeah. Speaking of which I've gone back and forth on this, on whether or not we should just kind of caveat up front where we lean because otherwise I feel like people are just going to be guessing like, where do they land? Sure.

I don't think I can play it straight face. I

Jessi: mean,

James: generally, so as a general rule I tend to lean more conservative, more a little less government oversight, more personal responsibility that tends to be where I go. I'm also going to say, having researched all of their policies, I don't like either one of them fully.

I do like aspects of both of them. I don't know if you want to, like you said, we're pretty well aligned. Yeah, I,

Jessi: I would say I tend to agree with that. Lean conservative. Agree with pieces of, sorry, dog.

James: Falling down the stairs. It's alright.

Jessi: Hey buddy.

James: You tend to agree with pieces of that?

Jessi: Yeah, I agree with pieces of their policy or

James: some

Jessi: things that either of them might say or stand for.

But it's hard to choose, like, I feel like no matter what, whoever it is, it's hard to choose just one candidate And say, I agree with everything. I'm all in. And that'd be

James: weird, honestly, if you were like that. So let's talk about what all their policies are, because at the end of the day, you can have rhetoric, you can say stuff, you can either be a good speaker or a bad speaker, but it's policies that matter, because that's what your group is going to be trying to enact.

Jessi: And this is good. Cause I tend to not do a ton of research into policies and what's going on. And I live vicariously from three years. So,

James: So this is Harris's policies. Someone who tends to like bigger government. Yeah. Trump's policies is half the page. Less than

Jessi: half a page.

James: Which I think also speaks to each of their communication styles.

Sure. So it's going to be interesting. So we're probably gonna spend the majority time on Harris just cause and I got really lucky actually. I was, I actually want to do this podcast like weeks ago, but I was like, I don't know what her policies are. And just last week. Which will kind of give us some timing on when we're actually recording this.

She came out with them. And so I was like, Oh, perfect. Now I have something to talk about. Cause I've wanted to do this cause I think it's just really important for investors to understand. Yeah, here's where our leaders stand. And, and I totally also 100 percent get, this is just one aspect of them.

You can fully say, I do not like, They're economic policies, but there's this other piece about it that is really important to me, so I'm going that way. Alright, I feel like we have spent enough time trying to get out of being responsible for what we're about to say. You know, for caveating it.

But but yeah, so let's Well, of course,

Jessi: we're biased.

James: Yeah, so, So Harris's proposal number one. And so I'm just going to read them to you and feel free to react. And then I'll share my reactions as well. If I have any she wants to con she wants to, she's proposing the construction of 3 million homes over the next four years.

And so these are new homes. Specifically

Jessi: then this is, is this targeted in specific areas or just in general, in the United States,

James: In the United States, I don't think so. She has said. She wants to do tax incentives for companies who build units to be sold to first time homebuyers, which, depending on what I read, that's either one of the same thing, or those are actually two separate policies.

I'm not 100 percent certain. Kind of depends on how people interpret it. And I've read her stuff, and I'm like, I don't, I'm not sure which one it is either. So but yeah, so three million homes somewhere across the U. S. I'm going to guess not in big cities because that's really hard to build homes.

Well, yeah, they're already dense. Suburbs types of places. But I would imagine that it is in more densely populated places already because that's where home prices are higher. Sure. So, here's, okay, I guess I've got to take a step back here. What you're going to notice is that the big theme is affordable housing.

Jessi: Okay.

James: And that is what both candidates have decided to focus on, which makes a lot of sense. So they're both trying to come up with policies to solve the affordable housing problem. And it is just, that seems to be from an economic policy standpoint, like, That's number one on the list. So really convenient for us because there's a lot to talk about, I guess.

Not convenient for the affordability piece. But yeah, so she wants to do them. And my guess again is it's kind of paving the road somehow. Probably, like I said, giving tax incentives and funding to build these homes and, you know, four years. So first term would be what she's going for. The second thing that she wants to do is apparently, I don't know this, but Biden.

created a fund and it was like 20 billion and she wants to create a 40 billion fund to support local governments in innovative methods of building affordable housing that have, she says that have proven to be successful. And she specifically is citing this one Town that did it, but they did everything in 2021.

I'm like, I don't know if you could call it successful. That's like in the housing world. That's like, that's baby. You know, it's like, let's go out like 20, 30 years and see if this is actually successful, but whatever. But the idea is there's these different groups that have been trying innovative methods in Oregon.

I, I honestly, I don't know if this is related, but they have been focusing on what's called middle housing and trying to come up with. Well, creative ways, innovative ways to enable that. So like, for example

Jessi: that's what I was going to ask. It's not just

James: like they have, what's called, Oh, I didn't even look this up.

So I don't know the name of it, but essentially like normally you might have like a fourplex in this case where they're saying like, no, let's not do a fourplex that you're going to do four separate units, but they're all kind of attached. So it's almost like it's like a hybrid between you have your own little condo.

And it's a fourplex, but it's your own standalone place. And you, but you also own it separately, but it's all on a single lot. There's things like that where it's like, it's condo, but it's like a condo, but you still have your own walls. 'cause normally a condo is, and what's the benefit of that? Like, get shared walls?

Jessi: Sure.

James: It's just people like living in their own homes. They don't want, they don't want shared walls. That's what they're trying to, what does that have to do with affordability? They're smaller units. And so they're a little bit cheaper. That's what's hard about this, right? It's like the nice part about condos is since they're shared walls, they are cheaper to make because it's just shared walls.

Jessi: But, and this is

James: part of the innovation, trying to figure it all out piece. And there's like, gotta be a shared courtyard because they're trying to encourage community. There's things like that, that they're experimenting with. And that's like, we're very much in the experimenting phase of things like that.

So far, every investor I've talked to, like I've just built a four blocks. Yeah. But. That's the, but the idea is to put money towards those kinds of ideas. Okay. Put them out there, see what their response in the market is. That's the thought. And yeah, they're experiments. So a bunch of them are going to fail.

And the whole goal

Jessi: is to provide more available units that cost less for the home buyer,

James: correct? Yeah.

Jessi: Because currently prices are super high and people can't buy. So they're just renting.

James: Yeah. Or something. Yeah. Or living with other people. Yep. Huh. Yeah. That's the problem we're all trying to solve, which is and I was going to get to a little bit later, but it's, and we will.

It's a very interesting, really hard problem to solve. We may actually dive, just like do a whole podcast just on that one particular topic because it's just really fascinating, which is why all these all the proposals fall short in ways. And part of it is cause like, this is almost an impossible problem to solve.

Right. Here's one that, she said more recently, I don't actually think this is in her official thing, but she said she wants to speed up permitting and review processes to get housing stock on the market more quickly. So again, that's, that's nice for builders and yeah, and that's the idea. That's how, that's part of how she'll hit that 3 million goal.

Cause that's genuinely a lot of extra houses. I think I was reading somewhere that there's a housing need of four and a half million homes. Oh, wow. So she's trying to solve a lot of it.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: We'll see. Yeah, go ahead.

Jessi: What was, I, I just thought of something.

James: Your dog's gonna cause a problem, but that's okay.

I know. Don't get, don't get distracted.

Jessi: Okay, so it no, I lost it, keep going.

James: Okay we're just talking about speeding up housing permitting. So, alright, so here's an interesting one. She supports the Stop Predatory Investing Act, okay, which is aimed at removing tax benefits such as deducting interest or depreciation from your home for major corporate or Wall Street investors who acquire a large number of single family homes, which is defined as So it's not about apartments.

It's about if you have any entity that owns more than 50 homes, you will no longer be allowed to subtract or deduct depreciation or like mortgage interest from your taxes.

Jessi: That's kind of a silly rule in my opinion. Cause it's like, okay, so create another LLC and buy another 50.

James: Yeah, I definitely think there's part of that.

It's based off of the theory that when a big corporation owns a lot of housing in an area, they have more price setting power. And, cause there's just less competition around. And so they're jacking up prices is the theory. The problem with that is that the largest owner of single family homes right now is called Invitation Homes.

And they own 0. 6 percent of all houses on the rental market. Thank you. So

Jessi: in the entire world

James: in the US, but so it's just one of those words, like, yeah, maybe they own price setting power in, in a neighborhood, but like, they're not, there's no, like, majority anywhere. They're the biggest. And it's 0. 6%.

So I think that's one where I don't think it's actually going to go anywhere. But that's one of the policies that she wants to support that won't have an impact on us because we don't focus on single family homes. But there are bigger corporations where that's what they do. I thought this was interesting.

One of the commentaries about it was it said, counterintuitively, it's not necessarily Equitable to bar large investors from buying and leasing single family homes, because what it does is it actually reduces the supply available to renters. And so it just causes like, again, this is where the stuff gets really hard.

It's like at the end of the day, there's not enough homes. So if you restrict the types of homes that can be rented without increasing more homes, like you still got a problem. If you add more homes, then it doesn't really matter what happens. At the end of the day, if you don't fix the, Like, the inherent supply and demand problem, housing prices will be high.

And, or apartments will be high, or whatever, like, doesn't matter.

Jessi: Right, because people need a place to live.

James: Yeah, and I think she would make the argument, well like, yeah, I'm not saying these are all individual policies, they all work together. We want to build more houses and not make it so that the big guys can buy them.

You know, it's kind of, I think, is what she would say. She also backs, this is really interesting, I actually was learning about this one recently. She backs the passage of the, ready for a name for this one? Preventing the algorithmic facilitation of rental housing cartels act. Okay, so here's the deal.

Whoops, kicking our stand. There's a software company out there called real page. Okay. They do essentially property management software. And what they do is they have created incentives to get all landlords using their software in an area.

Jessi: Okay.

James: And then what they do is

Jessi: they aggregate

James: all the data.

Okay. And use some data analytics to say, here's what you should price your rental at. Now, the whole thing about like the big companies, kind of coring the market, is essentially what RealPage has done. Is they say, we have the software, and we will set the rents for you. And if everyone's doing it, they all just kind of go up together, because, It can, because the algorithm is essentially negotiating against itself.

That's one, I actually think I can get behind. It's this unintentional monopoly that's happened for certain areas. Now, it's actually not huge here in Corvallis, because it's just not the prominent property of software management. But in other places, a hundred percent is.

Jessi: So, what's the difference between something like that and like, Zillow or Rentometer?

Or, you know, if you're going and they're Collecting all the data and they're pulling it all into one place.

James: So Zillow doesn't say you must sell your house for this. RealPage is like, this is your new rent that we're setting. I do agree there's a different, like, there's still independence with Zillow, with other brokers and buyers.

Whereas with RealPage, it's not. It's as real

Jessi: page is actually managing the properties while

James: they're setting the rent rates in the software. Like when you say, make this thing available, it goes, this is the price you will offer. Weird. And they're not allowing property managers to overwrite it. Yes. Yeah, that's weird.

Which is where the lawsuit's happening. Well, and they make the argument, Well, this is just good for everybody. Because if our, like, you'll make more if you use our system.

Jessi: Well

James: I'm just saying. That's what they're doing. And the Harris camp has come out and said, This is a problem. Yeah. And I actually kind of agree with that.

Yeah. It's not great.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: I get the Land Prolerge perspective where you go, Man, this is awesome. Yeah. Well,

Jessi: of course, it's a problem. Yeah, it seems like it's, it would be better to get more rent, but

James: Getting rid of competition and not because you're a better product, it's just, you're it's very cartel esque.

Yeah. I think it's, it's a, it's a very long name, but I actually think it's correct. Here's an interesting one that on the surface seems awesome, but maybe not. She wants to provide 25, 000 down in, or sorry, provide 25, 000 in down payment support for first time homebuyers. Okay. With expanded support for first generation home buyers, homeowners.

So the idea is, like when we bought our first place, our duplex, we'd get 25 grand as part of our down payment. And I think it's a gift, I don't think it's a loan. I think is how I'm interpreting this. We know which would obviously be awesome. Is that like, for us, as

Jessi: a tax credit? Or just like, they write you a check?

James: That's my guess, is that it's as a tax credit. Cause they, they

Jessi: had a bonus. I mean, when we were first time homebuyers. Yeah, so when we bought our place,

James: that was Obama was in office. And he had his, like, first time homebuyers, No, it was like 9, 000. But the deal was, you had to live in there for three years.

And if you moved out sometime within that three years, it was prorated back to you. And it was just a straight, like credit, tax credit or whatever. So it was like, Oh, you paid 9, 000 in taxes, I Boom, we're not taking that back, which we were right on track. So we got a check. So for this

Jessi: particular one, the 25, 000 would have to be applied towards a down payment.

James: Yeah. Not just, and it might be one of those weird, like, I don't know how it would be implemented. It could be as a tax credit. It could be one of those that shows up as a line. I'm on the closing statement and the title company has to go talk to this third party organization and says, Hey, are you like kick over your 25 grand to fund it?

They do. I don't know how it would be implemented, but something to that effect. I thought this feedback on it was kind of interesting. And again, like my bias comes out, but that's okay. They said there's an issue with you're talking about. So here's who we're talking about. People who, Can almost barely semi sort of kind of afford a house.

Right. That's the kind of person we're talking to. They didn't, maybe their income's there, but they don't have the savings yet.

Jessi: Well, how do you, like, why is that the assumption?

James: Well, because they're using, they're getting the 25 grand for their first home, because, because we're talking about first time homeowners who say, yeah, I'll take the 25 grand to help me afford this place.

Jessi: Okay.

James: I mean, there's very few people who are like, nah, I'm going to save up until I have my 25 grand.

Jessi: I guess I'm, I don't know, I guess I see it as like, it's hard to buy a house as a first time person. Like, if you think of just the general phase of life that most of those people are in, it's like, it's not that they're getting a free handout.

It's just that, yeah, this is a hard, they are, but it's, it's like, it's not because they're in dire straits, I guess. It's like, Oh yeah, this is just a hard phase of life. It's, it's making it easier for us to do something we were going to do. All right. Here's what's

James: interesting about this. I think, did

Jessi: you, did you hear my last it's making it easier for us to do something we were going to do already.

You're implying they wouldn't have ever been able to do this. And now because they're getting this, I'm

James: no, I'm saying they were barely able to do it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Like you were saying, right. It's a hard phase of life. You're just getting started. So there's two problems with this. Number one.

And I think this is, we'll start with the big one is this is helping people who, like you said, we're already on a good path and going to do it. It is not helping people who are not on that path and would never be able to do it. Sure. So in some ways it's not progressive. It's a little regressive, just a little bit.

And it's kind of like, whoa, like these are the people who are deciding to help the people who are already on a good path. It's right up there with canceling student loan debt.

Jessi: It's like,

James: all right, you're already talking about people who had a leg up, who had a good education. Yeah.

Jessi: They got a job. Just going to be like, awesome.

James: Keep going on that course, which so it's kind of in that same, it's that same realm. So

Jessi: would you be. Happier with a policy that said you qualify for this 25, 000 down payment, help, credit, whatever it is, if you are at a certain income level, that implies you will never be able to buy a house. And now it's possible for you.

James: Yeah. You see, that's the second objection that I have to this is if we're talking about that type of person. We have now concentrated all their investing into a single asset in a single market. And it's like as zero diversification, highly, highly, highly risky. I mean, it's less risky than like if it was in the stock market, but still, right?

It's this idea of, is this really what we're going to do? We're going to incentivize people to say, So, you know, what you should say is, honestly, keep running cheap and invest this money in the stock market. That is your smartest move right now. And instead of saying, no, no, no, don't do that. Put all your eggs in this one basket and let's hope that the market goes up.

So you're, you're, and then you'll be able to keep up

Jessi: on

James: maintenance. Yeah.

Jessi: You're kind of saying this policy prioritizes home buying, which shouldn't be what's prioritized necessarily. Or

James: potentially for people at that particular level.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: Maybe. Huh. How would I, what would I do differently? I like the idea of helping people get into homes.

And maybe there's some sort of, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, at the end of the day, this is a supply and demand problem. And it's really a supply problem. And this is something that is going on the demand side. Yes. It's trying to solve the demand side of it. Yep. By increasing the demand. Which guess what?

If you don't change the supply and you increase demand, yeah. It's gonna cause

Jessi: a problem.

James: Prices go up.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: So you're just like, I, it doesn't, it doesn't solve it,

Jessi: I guess. Yeah. It's, it's like you need to, you need to solve the supply issue first, like what you're talking about. And she, there's something in there that like, what's number one on her list?

Right. Let's build a bunch of houses. She gets credit for that, but I wonder if it's like you, you almost wanna do like build a bunch of homes. And then have some sort of like graduated scale of assistance or something where it's like, where it doesn't put people in a position of like, okay, you know, if you, if you would never be able to do this to begin with, we're not going to leverage everything that you've got into this one thing, you know, maybe it's, it's structured.

I don't know how to structure that differently, but

James: maybe, I don't know. Or, why not just make it easy, right? And just say like, hey, everyone who's earning less than X dollars a year, we're just gonna give you some money to either help with your rent, or to buy a home, whatever. That's true.

Jessi: Whatever housing you choose.

James: And maybe you can't do 25 grand, but maybe you can do 5 grand for a third of the people.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: I don't know. Interesting.

Jessi: Hmm.

James: Maybe. I don't, I don't. Yeah, the

Jessi: priority is, is what matters. Cause like, this priority that she has is to get people into homes for themselves. Like homeowners to create homeowners, which is not necessarily helping with housing.

James: Yeah. I mean, what I just suggested is like a one time shot in the arm, right? It's not a, that's not solving a systemic problem. Yeah. So here's a little bit better than that, but yeah. Something else that she wants to do that she has recently said is she wants to repurpose some federal land to make room for no new affordable housing.

Actually, Trump was the first one. I think, to say it, and and I don't know if you know this, but the federal government owns about 28 percent of the nation's land. I know, right? More than a

Jessi: quarter of it? Yeah. Like, like as federal reserves or national parks or? Yeah, I think it's

James: all in there. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

So they want to

Jessi: take like national park space. They don't, but they want to

James: carve off like three or 4%. Okay. Interesting. I don't know that around where it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I, it's one of those probably where like, it will not always make sense just because it's a big city. Big organization and stuff happens.

Jessi: Just like what popped into my head was like just big old apartment building is right in the middle of like

James: two little towers. Right. I was just

Jessi: like,

James: you'd be like, we're calling it Goldstone. Oh man. She has a bunch of other non housing. Economic policies as well, but I'm looking at the clock and we're going to skip all of them.

Jessi: Okay.

James: Cause there's essentially like, we want to give money to people, stop spending, stop allowing food prices to go up. I guess stuff like that. At the end of the day, what she's trying to do is make housing cheaper. That's like, that's the thrust of it. Now, the thing that what makes it super complicated is every single homeowner out there goes, wait, what, what is it that you want to do?

You want to make homes Yeah,

Jessi: you want to lessen the value of the investment that I have. Now

James: ideally what she figures out how to do, and this is like the thinnest of needles to thread, is going, I just want to slow the growth of homes, while increasing the growth of wages. And so they're both still heading up, but relatively speaking, homes are more affordable, but I'm still not going to whine about it because at least it's going up.

And I just will try to not pay attention to the inflation rate and wage rate.

Jessi: That makes sense.

James: Yeah. At the end of the day That's if you're just playing a straight appreciation game. We don't do that. We play value add. So we buy a house that is whatever it is and we make it better. And so I don't really care about, you know, from this policy standpoint, I'm kind of like, whatever.

You know? Cool. Either way, your strategy works. Yeah, exactly. As long as she doesn't tank the housing market, and I don't think that'll happen, given what she's saying.

Jessi: Yeah, what we just talked about doesn't sound like it. I don't see that happening.

James: So, honestly, I'm kind of neutral on her I On our economic plans.

Like I like very clearly there's things I, I don't, I'm like, ah, this is a waste of time and money and would be super annoying. But there's other ones where I'm like, yeah, you know, hearts in the right place and we'll see what gets passed. So let me make sure I got everything here. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

Yeah. And some of these are very yeah. Hostile to just regular homeowners stuff, but you know, okay. All right. Let's talk about Trump's. I. I think this will be faster. He wants to eliminate certain regulations on the construction of new homes, which he says will help with the cost. Like he wants to ease environmental and permitting rules.

And apparently according to the national association of home builders, government regulations account for over 40 percent of apartment development costs.

Jessi: Wow. Nearly half the cost. That sounds

James: really, really high to me. Cause I've read other stuff where they're like, it's negligible. It's not actually helpful.

So I'm just like, I don't know who to believe anymore. So,

Jessi: well, I know that, okay. I have no idea if this is like applicable or not, but I know that our church is looking into doing some construction and expanding and it is a, a significant cost. I don't know the percentage to do like. We had to do an environmental study.

We had to get all the permitting. We, we, we can't do anything. We can't even like move forward with a proposal until all of that is done. And it's like, it's a significant cost. So I could see that

James: time as well. I mean, for our roof let's see, we're getting a new roof and gutters, which would be nice and solar panels.

Yeah. We are still waiting for the permits for the solar panels. Like that hasn't actually happened yet. Which we're moving forward with the roof part and just kind of crossing our fingers that the solar panels get approved. I mean, we are I think we're eight weeks in on what should be no more than a two week process and it's just kind of, which who knows, I'm sure there's good reasons for it, but like, that's just an example of it where it's just like, it's just time and money.

And for us, we're like, we're watching the weather, right? We're like, Oh my gosh.

Jessi: Well, okay. So side note, I know we're tight on time. I was, the kids and I were watching them put the stuff on the roof. They're getting ready. They're getting prepped. And Eleanor goes, so. They're going to take our roof off, but what if it rains?

I was like, well, we are right on the bubble. It could be, and it'll be fine.

James: It'll be fine. I'll put a new

Jessi: one on.

James: So that's what he wants to do is eliminate some of those things and somehow do it in such a way where it doesn't reduce the quality of stuff. Maybe, or maybe he does, I don't know. You might make an argument.

Some of these things are too nanny state. Maybe. Yeah, I don't know. But that's one of his things he wants to do. The next one is he wants to open up, I already talked about this one. He wants to open up portions of federal land for large scale housing construction. And he says that these zones will be ultra low tax and ultra low regulation.

I think the problem I have with both of like him and her. With these two policies, it's this one time thing. Like you open it up once, cool. And now it's all filled. It's not a ongoing, sustainable systemic solution. So I don't like that for either policies, but I'm also like, I mean, if there's land that's not really being used for anything else, yeah, let's put it to good use.

Cool. Like

Jessi: it, it's helpful, but not necessarily sustainable. Yeah.

James: We'll just be in this exact same spot. Yeah. Whatever it is. 20 years from now, 50

Jessi: years from now.

James: Sometime. Yeah. So. Good, but not enough. He wants to, okay. Again, these are Trump's policies that I am reiterating to you. So, he wants to ban mortgages for undocumented people.

Which is part of his curtail illegal immigration stuff. Which honestly I'm part of it's like, as an undocumented person you can get a mortgage. Didn't know that. And, I guess, I don't know how much I cared, I guess. But, yeah, that's something that he wants to do, because, again, the argument he's, it's the supply and demand, so he's trying to take away demand.

Is the name of the game for him.

Jessi: Yeah, economically, it makes sense.

James: Yeah.

Jessi: Ethically, there's, that's a whole other argument. I mean,

James: I don't know if I care if it's undocumented or not. I guess, I mean, I guess I care. I'm trying to decide how much time travel I want to go down. I mean, cause I'm like, if there was an opportunity, we've joked about buying a place in Paris or in Italy and then renting it out as an Airbnb, and then we have an excuse to visit and so buy it as a foreign person, like I'm, I have no problems with that.

I think it's the undocumented part that I don't love. Yeah. I'm like, dude, yeah, they're not playing within the rules of the system. And then you're all in. Yeah. But I also get like, if they play within the rules of the system, there's a high probability they can't. So, I, I get, I get the issues there. So I'm probably in favor of it just from that standpoint because I'm like, because I'm a rule follower.

So I want everyone to follow the rules. So, you know, that's how I, that's how I roll. And I, and I also can recognize that is a very messy situation that honestly no one really wants to solve because there are a bunch of benefits along with the costs and it's super hard and no matter what, people are going to get hurt and that's super lame.

Which is the same problem we're having with affordable housing. Like, if you make the houses affordable, it hurts everyone who already has a house. So, you know, what are you gonna do? Alright. He also wants to promote home ownership through tax incentives and support for first time buyers. I don't know what that means.

It sounds very similar to Harris's general bag. That's who knows all of the, a lot of his stuff is very general and big. Which is part of, he doesn't have actual

Jessi: numbers attached to it. Like she did.

James: No, he does not. He also wants to protect, Oh, this was okay. All right. This one's really interesting. This one's genuinely different.

He wants to protect single family zoning to fend off developers and policymakers looking to lower prices by increasing housing density. Okay. So like, for example. In Oregon, there is now no longer a single family home zone. It's like a minimum of a duplex oftentimes triplex fourplex. And he's going, no, I don't want that.

I want you to still have your single family home. And obviously the reason why they want to do it is because if you increase housing density, that again, just increases the supply goes up. It's one of the tricks. That's again, like part of that innovative solution, right? They're trying to figure out how do we make it?

So instead of a person putting on a single family home, they put on four smaller single family homes and we call it a multifamily. Well, doesn't

Jessi: it sound better to do the multifamily construction?

James: Well, his, his example would be like in our neighborhood, we got a bunch of single family homes. He's like, what if our neighbors cross the street?

They sell, bulldoze it, duplex. And now you got renters. Now you got illegals living there. Criminals. Like, that, again, it's not my language, it's his. And again, there's some, definitely some fear mongering. I think it's a super weird policy. I don't get it. Other than, he clearly heard someone talking about this idea.

And from what I understand, it's actually a flip from where he was. When he first ran and then in 2020, when he ran again, he now had this policy and he's kind of kept that one going forward.

Jessi: Interesting.

James: So he, he obviously heard some constituents complaining about it and changed it. I don't get it. It doesn't like it.

I don't get it outside of, yeah, it'd be super lame if all of our houses got torn down, but I'm also like, but it's also not happening, but I get like, it'd be kind of lame if we suddenly had a three story triplex next door. Yeah, that's not. And that's the kind of stuff he wants to stop. But it, from an economic standpoint, not great from an investor.

Here's some opportunity to invest in. Not great from a homeowner. I like my neighborhood. Let's keep it as is. Oh, that's great. From a, yeah, I want my homes that are nice and big where, you know, it's all my rich friends. Cause we're in a rich neighborhood. We're not like, I guess I get that. That's part of the narrative.

Like this is why he hates it. Yeah. So. It's a weird policy. And that's one of the frustrating things about him, just in general, is he'll say a bunch of stuff where you go, Yes, yes, yes. Then you go wait, what? I like, I really disagree with this one. It's not even neutral. So, anyways, that's one of his policies.

I don't actually see that one going anywhere. It's so extreme. And a lot of it's at the state level anyways. So, I don't know. It's a weird one. He wants to reduce mortgage rates by slashing inflation. So, So I guess he already got that one since inflation's going down. Okay. I get it. I'm not an idiot. The rate of inflation has gone down.

Actual inflation, like year over year is still higher. Prices are all higher. They're like over 20 percent higher than when I think it was the pandemic started as the last measure. And I get it. We all feel it. So inflation going down, I'm talking about the rate of the increase is going down, but it's still increasing.

I get it. And his whole thought behind that is when inflation's down, then the Fed doesn't have to keep the interest rates aside. That's, that's the entire. Plot behind that. It's already happening. So whether he gets an office or not, this is going to happen. So there's that here's another one. That's kind of like, I don't know, conflict.

He, he has a different goal is what's happening here, but this is the economic impact is she wants to levy. It sounds like at least a 60 percent tariff on Chinese imports.

Jessi: Yeah. I heard, I heard

James: that

Jessi: some, some back and forth on that one.

James: So here's the fun one. The United States imported. I think it was last year 613 million, which probably isn't that much, of iron and steel from China last year.

That's according to the United Nations database. And so that, imagine those prices, that 613 going up 60%, and the assumption is that most of that iron and steel is used for construction, so it's gonna make construction costs go up. So we've got a couple of policies in there that are not necessarily.

Friendly towards affordable housing or doing construction jobs. Like I would do again, I, well, it's the

Jessi: point of that one to push to push developers to buy their things from someone else, from, from local, from local, from

James: the U S yep, yep, yep. Yeah. He which

Jessi: is more expensive, rightly

James: so doesn't trust China.

And there are lots of reasons to not trust them and to not, you know, Play nice with them. I think he's right in that regards, but it's also one of those, man, that's gonna be your policy. Like,

Jessi: Yeah,

James: there's this impact. It's gonna have a

Jessi: real impact.

James: I mean, he's okay with it. That's one of those where you go, Hmm, all right, which one's less of two evils here?

Jessi: Hmm,

James: you know, are we willing it like, you know, and there's certain times where you and I, like, we got a moral standard here. And yeah, I'm willing to lose or I'm willing to sacrifice. Yeah, in order to do it. This is one of those. But from an economic standpoint, It's probably not going to be great from an increasing local jobs standpoint.

Yeah, it might be wonderful. In which case you go, yeah, I guess bring on the higher costs because people have jobs in those particular areas. I don't know. Again, six, 613 million. I'm saying it out loud like that's a big number, but it's not ridiculously big. And then his final one is he wants to lower energy costs for consumers by half.

Yeah. If he wins re election, then it's by like extra drilling type of stuff. Cause the increased fossil fuel production impacts, will impact home costs because energy prices consume a significant portion of construction costs and just living costs in general. The way he would do it, he would just enact a law and then it would have to happen so it wouldn't be like an overnight thing.

But, that would be his like, let's get energy costs down. Because then it just makes it cheaper for everybody to live their life and to do construction because, you know, you have tractors and you have trucks. So how do you,

Jessi: I don't understand. You increase the

James: production. That's again, it's supply and demand.

So increase the production of supply in the United States, thus driving energy prices down. That's what he would like to do, which he, I think if I remember correctly, he started to do that in his first term. And then Biden went, or not. And so that's. This is kind of all played into it. But energy prices have been falling just in general.

And mostly because, which is kind of concerning because the cartels have been reducing a supply and energy prices are still falling, which means demand is falling, which is concerning because oftentimes demand, the demand for energy is related to an economy's health. And so we're like, all right, what does this mean?

So all sorts of questions, but anyways, there's a

Jessi: lot more people working from home.

James: So. Yeah, that's been happening for a while. And this is more recent that it's been following. Interesting. So yeah. So so there you go. There are those two policies. Again, his not quite as fleshed out, which again, I would imagine someone who is less the government's the answer for everything.

isn't going to have as many answers for the government. It's going to be more of a, yeah, I'll let things go. And and Harris, who is more of a, no, like, the government is this big, efficient machine, which, again, you know my bias, I don't necessarily agree with. She goes, no, we can enact all these policies, and that'll fix everything.

And I think both of them have shortcomings. I think both of them are good. I think you know, if I were to, like, very, like, you know, high level summarize it, I would say Harris's There's some good stuff, mostly neutral on it. And there's a couple where I go, Huh. I wonder, like, this doesn't, I think I would like it.

Yeah. I feel like people who support her shouldn't like it. That's kind of how I think about it. And then for Trump, there's a couple policies where I'm like, Yeah, you know, these are the right directions, probably not enough. And then a couple where I'm just like, What? Yeah. That doesn't make sense. No. And, and a couple that are, I guess, neutral, I suppose.

I guess so hopefully that's cool headed and nuanced. I'm definitely not going to be like this one all the way. Right. But yeah, that's kind of their impact. I think from an investor standpoint, as long as you are focused on doing value ad and and not just relying on whatever the market's going to do, I think investors will be fine.

Cause none of this stuff moves fast either. That's the thing, like the markets. Okay. Outside of like 2008, 2009, as a general rule, they don't move very fast. And so whatever policies they are, they enact will have movement over time and I think it will be okay.

Jessi: You'll be able to adjust.

James: There you go. That was a lot.

Yeah, there you go. At the very least, hopefully now you understand what they are and, and you can kind of form your own conclusions and whether or not you like it or not. I would love it. If I missed something important in the comments, please. I am also here to learn we do mail in voting, so I haven't voted yet.

So there's definitely time for me to change my opinion. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. And if you are interested in investing with us, you can check us out at furlo.com and you can learn more about our investing policies and how those work. And yeah. And with that, thanks for listening.

Have a great day.