Auction.com Market Outlook: How Today’s Economy Impacts Tomorrow’s Real Estate Markets with Daren Blomquist – EP 344

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A few years ago, the outlook on the stock and real estate markets were on a straight path upwards. As we all know, a lot has happened since then. The Federal Reserve is continuing to raise interest rates, everyone is wondering if we’re in a recession, and the investing strategies that worked in 2019 aren’t necessarily guaranteed to deliver the returns you want in 2023.

So, with all that in mind, I’m thrilled to be chatting with Daren Blomquist, VP Market Economics at Auction.com. I love having these conversations with Daren to get his valuable insights on not just about the state of our economy, but how things are looking in the worlds of distressed and defaulted assets.

In this conversation, we get into the economic indicators that make the case for and against a recession, how they will affect the real estate market in the years to come, and how you can use Auction.com to take advantage of his incredible knowledge.

As always, Daren came prepared with a great set of slides to accompany this conversation. If you’re listening to the podcast, you’re going to hear a lot of great stuff, but I’d highly recommend you visit our YouTube channel to watch this episode to get the full picture–literally.

Key Takeaways with Daren Blomquist

  • The key indicators that show we’re not in a recession right now–but very well could be in 8 months.
  • How the foreclosure moratorium has affected default rates and housing supply.
  • Why this spring selling season is likely to be more conservative.
  • Why credit card debt is up again–and how this may be a ripple effect from COVID stimulus.
  • What makes apartment rentals such a recession-proof investment when compared to flips or wholesaling.

Daren Blomquist Tweetables

“Real estate is always much slower than the stock market.”

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Josh Cantwell: So, hey, folks, welcome back to Accelerated Investor. Hey, I’m your host, Josh Cantwell. And today, I’ve invited my good friend and a longtime contributor to the podcast back on to the show. His name is Daren Blomquist. He’s the VP of Market Economics at Auction.com. We try to have him on the show at least once a quarter to talk about not only the general higher-level indicators of the overall economy, but we also like to then dig into specifically real estate distressed, real estate default because those are the types of assets that you can buy on Auction.com. So, Daren and I are going to talk today primarily about the larger macroeconomics and some of the changes that we’ve seen over the last quarter, last year, last couple of years, and how this is hopefully going to help us understand what’s going to be happening over the next couple of years and how that’s going to impact real estate.

[INTERVIEW]

Josh Cantwell: So, I want to welcome Daren Blomquist back to the show. Daren, thanks so much for joining us.

Daren Blomquist: Thanks, Josh. Good to be here as always.

Josh Cantwell: Absolutely. So, guys, as always, Daren’s got some great slides to share. If you catch this in more of an audio podcast format, you’re not going to be able to see the slides, but you’ll be able to get great audio information from Daren and I. If you want to see the video portion, make sure you go to YouTube to watch this because then you’ll be able to see the slides that correspond to the conversation.

And so, Daren, obviously a couple of years ago, we were never talking about recession, we were never talking about things going down. It was always about things going up, up, up, values going up, up, up. And then, of course, we had a lot of conversations around COVID. Today, a lot of people are just continuing to talk about the recession indicators. Last night was the State of the Union address. President Biden spoke about a number of different things. The Federal Reserve just raised interest rates another quarter percent about a week ago. And they’re starting to talk about tapering off some of the rate increases. And they’re becoming a little bit more bullish about a soft landing.

But I’m absolutely very curious to hear about some of the things that you’re seeing in the marketplace. So, let’s talk about some of the recession indicators and some of the indicators that you track. What are some of the major ones that you’re seeing right now that you’re tracking and the ones that are moving the most?

Daren Blomquist: Yeah. So, we look at the ones we have here on the slide, yield curve, manufacturing index, consumer sentiment, unemployment rate. We throw in foreclosure starts. That’s not really a traditional recession indicator, but for our line of business, that is one that we look at carefully. But we kind of just have a simple presentation here where it’s either red, yellow, or green. Each of these indicators in red means more of a recession is likely, yellow is kind of middle of the road, and green is not a recession. And it’s not indicating a recession.

So, yield curve is definitely indicating a recession. And I have a slide, we can talk and dig into that. I think that is historically the most reliable indicator of a recession where it’s now indicating a very high percentage likelihood of recession about a year from now in late 2023. So, that’s red.

Manufacturing index is below 50, at least it has been. And it was in November when I pulled these numbers. And so, that’s kind of right in the middle. Anything below 50 means a contracting market. And that’s historically been a pretty good indicator of recession. Consumer sentiment is also red because that has been coming down. And we look at the University of Michigan Consumer Survey for that.

Unemployment rate is the one that’s extremely strong in the green. And the numbers just last week, I think, came out for January, even lower than what I have here, and unemployment rate at 3.4%, over half a million jobs added in January. That is the area where it seems to be bucking the trend and bucking expectations of what most economists believe.

Now, my argument there is that that’s actually not to look for the dark cloud behind the silver lining, but that’s actually kind of bad news for the recession because that to me is going to put more pressure on the Fed to continue raising rates to tame inflation and that low unemployment rate. Of course, we always want to say employment is good, but if you have underemployment, too low employment rate, that’s putting upward pressure on rate wages, which is then impacting inflation. And so, that will put pressure on the Fed to continue for a longer term, even though they may pull down the rate of increase of their rates. I think this is an indication that they will continue to raise rates for a longer period of time, which then increases the likelihood of recession in the long run. But in the short run, unemployment is going gangbusters.

Josh Cantwell: I agree with that. I know the Fed had talked about unemployment going to at least 4.4%, 4.5%, somewhere in the middle fours to upper fours, and that stayed down. I mean, right now, actually with all the jobs that we just added at 3.4% was at a 53-year low. And Janet Yellen, who right now is in this current administration, used to be very involved in Federal Reserve. She said, “Look, if unemployment is this low, you don’t have a recession,” which I agree, we don’t have a recession right now.

But a year from now, with rates keeping going up in order to tame inflation, it’s almost inevitable. It has to happen. And again, recessions are not a bad thing. Recessions are cyclical. The economy is cyclical. They need to happen. That needs to tame the growth in order to set up the next growth phase. And so, hopefully, the Federal Reserve allows that to happen. I would be actually happy to see a recession actually take place.

There are a lot of indicators around the last two quarters where GDP had gone down, but then it popped back up. And people say, “Well, you can’t have a recession if unemployment is below 4%. But we’re all talking about not being in a recession today, but in later this year, maybe Q4 or in 2024 or early 2024 that happening. And I absolutely see that happening, and I’m actually looking forward to it.

How about foreclosure starts there? And obviously, we’ve tracked foreclosures for years. We had the foreclosure moratorium during COVID. Things are starting to normalize out. How is that an indicator? And what’s happening when foreclosure starts?

Daren Blomquist: Yeah, we put foreclosure starts as a red indicator, and it is more of a return to normal. It’s not that foreclosure starts are hitting concerning levels in context of, say, 2009, 2008 levels, but we are seeing big increases in foreclosure starts as the moratoriums lifted at the end of 2021. So, 2022, if you look at the whole year, we saw 169% increase in foreclosure starts in ‘22 versus ‘21. That’s expected because the ‘21 levels were so low. But that does mean there’s more distressed property supply coming to the market and we expect to see some of that hit our foreclosure auctions in 2023, some of that increase.

Now, there’s tons of effort continuing to be put on making sure that unnecessary foreclosures are prevented, which is good. So, I’m not expecting 169% increase in foreclosure auctions in ‘23 that parallel that increase in foreclosure starts, but we’re calling for actually, conservatively, about 24% increase. Anyway, to me, it’s actually a healthy thing to release some of this inventory that’s just been held back by the moratorium and it’s actually healthy for the housing market, some of that distressed inventory getting into the market so it can get to what we call local community developers, local investors, investors who can rehab that inventory, get it back into the retail market and put it to good use. So, it’s actually helping the housing supply issue. But in the short term, it may mean it’s going to put some downward pressure on home prices.

Josh Cantwell: Got it. And how about long-range forecast? Home price appreciation is starting to slow down. I still can’t believe when I see the statistic about the average days delinquent. I remember back in the day, when if you were 90 days delinquent, the bank would start the foreclosure process. And now, you see this average days delinquent is pushing up to 600 days almost a year in three quarters because of COVID and because of a lot of the foreclosure moratoriums. But tell us a little bit about these gauges and what story do they tell.

Daren Blomquist: Yeah, and the long-range forecast here is in the context really of the distressed market for Auction.com, what we’re looking at. So, home price appreciation is a big one and that has been coming down as of December. It was in the low according to NAR and ATTOM Data Solutions. We look at both of those. And the low single-digits home price appreciation nationwide, some markets are starting to see negative home price appreciation, places like the West Coast of California or the coastal markets. And so, that’s a signal that the housing market is going through what I agree with you what would be a healthy correction if we see home prices correct a bit and what some others are predicting of anywhere from a 10% correction in some markets to much more in other markets.

The seriously delinquent rate is also something we look at. That is still going down and looking good. There are some indications and maybe this is a topic for a future podcast. We can dig into those delinquency numbers. There are indications now, though, that early-stage delinquencies are starting to rise. And so, that’s presenting another issue down the road.

But for now, the seriously delinquent numbers have been tamed. They spiked during the pandemic, but I would say they’ve been tamed. One thing that the housing market has going for it in terms of the distressed market is real estate at worst, which is basically home equity. Many people have a lot of home equity in their homes. Now, home price appreciation could change that, but that will also help prevent a lot of foreclosures.

The biggest headwind for the market that could lead to more distress is the rates going up, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate that has flattened out a little bit and even comes down in recent weeks, but it’s still about twice the level it was a year ago even. So, that kind of increase is unprecedented. And I do think it’s going to have some kind of impact or it already is having dramatic impact on the housing market, and as we get into the 2023 Spring, selling and buying season especially, I think that you’re going to continue to see that have an impact on dampening demand and pushing sellers to become a little bit more realistic on their prices.

And then finally, you mentioned the average days delinquent is just crazy at over, basically 575 days average days delinquent. That tells us and that has gone up quite a bit during the pandemic, tells us there is a lot of this distress that was deferred during the pandemic that’s very aged. And it’s the longer that goes delinquent, the less likely it is that that person’s going to avoid foreclosure. So, we think that’s an indication that some of that backlog from the pandemic is going to be hitting 2023, 2024.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. And the 30-year mortgage is a headwind. I agree with that a lot and that it was a year ago, good God, 3% on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage a year ago. The Fed started raising rates in March of 2022, and then they raised them at an unprecedented speed. And so, because there’s still a significant lack of inventory, there’s still demand for houses. But I think buyers have a much more realistic, if you will, or a much more tempered expectation of what they’re willing to pay because if you double your mortgage rate, it’s a high likelihood you’re about doubling your payment. It may not double the taxes or the insurance costs, but the actual payment on the mortgage is going up substantially.

And with that being said, buyers still want properties, buyers still want inventory, buyers still want to buy, but a seller might put a property on the market for $700,000, and in the past, would get multiple offers over $700,000. Now, they might put the property on the market for $650,000 and get offers for $600,000. You know what I mean? So, there’s a major difference there in the price expectations of buyers, and buyers are just simply going to write lower offers because their cost of debt is higher. And also, there’s sentiment as far as growth and appreciation in the market is not this frenzied expectation of future upside. And so, if that upside is tempered, they’re going to want to be more conservative in their offers, and sellers are going to have to adjust to that. That’s what I think is coming in the spring selling season, in my opinion.

Daren Blomquist: Yeah, and we see that on our platform. I think our platform is a great microcosm and even forward-looking microcosm of what’s going to happen in the retail market. Our buyers became– and we’re a bidding environment Auction.com. And so, you can kind of see that real-time standoff between sellers and buyers happening. And what we saw is buyers pulled back dramatically starting around March of 2022 when interest rates went up and became extremely more conservative, and sellers didn’t adjust for a while. But finally, in the fourth quarter of 2022, we started seeing sellers saying, “Okay, we give in. We’re going to lower pricing a little bit.” And the buyer demand already in January, we’re seeing as a result of that lower pricing is starting to come back. So, it’s really interesting kind to see that play out in our platform and I think probably want to be exactly the same in the retail market, but I think we’ll see a similar pattern here in the next few months.

Josh Cantwell: We’re seeing the same similar pattern even with commercial. A real-world example is back in the fourth quarter of 2022, there was a building that we were offering on and the seller was expecting multiple offers, multiple bidders. That’s what happened. This actually happened in the third quarter. We were actually awarded the deal at 12 million bucks, and in the 48 hours after we were awarded this $12 million asset, this apartment building, we ran back through all of our underwriting and we ran back through the cost of debt. And not only did we decide to not only lower our offer, we decided to completely tap out. And we didn’t want the asset at any price. We just decided to tap out.

And also, there were two other buyers that were hot on our heels for the same asset. They decided to tap out and move on to either other assets or not buy either. And now, that asset is basically kind of quietly listed, quietly for sale, then the expectation on that price is down by a million bucks. And that’s changed in just the last three to four months, where buyers are much more nimble than sellers because buyers can change their mind immediately. Seller is more married to what did they see everybody else getting three months ago, six months ago. They have a certain expectation that they get married to.

And when they can’t get that, especially with all the equity that we’ve seen for both residential and commercial real estate, with all the appreciation, they’re just not forced to sell because they have cash flow and they have a lot of equity. So, they just simply don’t sell the asset. They’re going to wait it out. This particular seller still wants to sell the asset because he lives out of the area, wants to get his equity out, has a tremendous amount of equity, has a very low basis. So, he’s willing to sell and he’s come off of his asking price by a million bucks. And so, that’s an interesting phenomenon.

So, we’re looking at that asset again. It doesn’t mean that we even buy it at this new price because the cost of debt is so much more expensive. The debt service coverage ratios are still problematic. And so, that’s a real-world example in the commercial space.

Daren, tell us in this next slide a little bit about this rising recession risk when we look at the inverted Treasury yield, that inversion happening, consumer sentiment changing, and the probability of an upcoming recession. Obviously, looking at this chart, the red line is going up, so it looks like the risk of that is increasing all the time.

Daren Blomquist: Yeah, this is data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which creates a derivative off of the yield curve that predicts the likelihood of recession in the next 12 months. So, they’re seeing a 38% chance of a recession in November 2023. That may not sound bad, but that’s the highest likelihood percentage of a recession since March 2008. And we know it happened right around March 2008, we were in a recession.

So, this to me is the most reliable indicator going back historically. This chart goes all the way back to 1959, and you can see that there’s the probability of recession, which is the red line. You referred to spikes right around when the recession actually happened. And keep in mind, it’s predicting it 12 months in advance. And so, it’s a great way to see– let’s have a little bit of a crystal ball. I mean, there’s always a possibility that we could somehow avoid a recession, but it seems extremely likely at this point based on these numbers. And then, at least in the next 12 months, late 2023 being the time frame here. So, yeah, that’s a deeper dive there. The next slide, by the way, it really gets into a lot of what you’ve been talking about with the affordability and the cost of debt really putting a damper on demand in the market.

Josh Cantwell: If the home price appreciation fell to 3.5% back in November, as we record, this is the first week of February 2023, I’d be curious if we’re kind of flat now or if even negative to a small degree.

Daren Blomquist: Yeah. Actually, December numbers have come out and the NAR puts us at 2.3% appreciation in December, so very low single digits. And we use our bidding behavior on our Auction.com to predict home prices, actually, and it’s a pretty good predictor at least about two months in advance. And those buyers are predicting that prices would go negative in January nationwide.

Now, what’s interesting is, though, because sellers have adjusted prices, we have seen that resurgence in demand from our buyers. And if we see that same pattern in the housing market, this could be a pretty quick bottom. I’m just not sure if sellers in the retail market will behave quite as flexibly as the distressed sellers who are less emotionally tied to the properties.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. I mean, if by the time we’re done recording and then the data comes out for February, which will come out around March, it’s going to be negative is my prediction. And in those boom-bust markets, you’re going to see a lot of correction. I think, my prediction, I don’t have a crystal ball, but you look at places like Austin, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, parts of Florida, San Diego, San Jose, those types of markets. I just don’t see how they could not come down significantly. Significantly, meaning a 5% or 10% would be huge. That would be a big number. We’re not talking about 30% decline.

But over the next couple of years, real estate tends to lag. As we all know, the stock market can drop very quickly. Back in 2007, 2008, the stock market dropped by 50% in six months. It took the real estate market all the way until about 2012 to really hit the bottom. There was a 33% correction before it started going back up.

So, real estate is always much slower than the stock market. And so, this is going to take all of 2024, 2025 until we see the bottom and see what happens with that. But the fact that we’re starting to see some indicators that this is either flat or possibly going negative here in January, February, March, I think, is telling a big story. And I think those gateway markets like a Los Angeles, like a Chicago, like a Phoenix, like an Austin, those are going to see more dramatic declines because of just the run-up was so big and so fast in 2020 and 2021 when the cost of money was so cheap. It’s just got to revert the other way to some degree.

Daren Blomquist: Yeah, And I think, what we’re showing here is for a while, I felt like the affordability didn’t matter, like people would just pay whatever. But affordability does matter in the market. And I think what we show here is the payment-to-income ratio for a median-priced home in the United States. It seems like the ceiling. We finally found that ceiling at about 34% payment-to-income ratio and we can round it up to 35%, but that seems to be the ceiling. And when we hit that, that’s when we saw home prices start to come back down, at least on a month-to-month basis, now down over 10% from the June 2022 peak. So, yeah, affordability matters.

And if those interest rates, mortgage rates stay high, and the cost of debt stays relatively high and that’s not moving and you don’t see incomes moving, I mean, you do see incomes moving, but not as quickly as home prices that the only thing left to move in that equation is the home prices. And so, I think that’s where this pressure is coming from. And I don’t know if you want to be put in the same sentence as Zillow forecasters, but the next slide looks at what Zillow is forecasting for home prices. And this really stood out to me just more about direction than necessarily these specific numbers.

But their forecasts, they forecast about 800 markets nationwide, over 800 metro areas nationwide a year in advance. And in September and October, they were forecasting about a third of those markets would see home price declines in 2023. But then in November, this really stood out to me, that doubled. They went from about a third of markets. They were forecasting a decline into 75% of markets, now that they’re forecasting a decline by November 2023. And so, certainly, you see some of those markets that you mentioned, the darker red in coastal California and other parts of the west that have seen big run-ups.

And 75% of markets in most of the country you’re seeing red in here, but the darker red does tend to be really focusing coast of California. There is some in Texas as well, has seen a big run-up. One of the biggest pockets of green is really still in Florida and other parts of the southeast.

Josh Cantwell: Wow. That’s really wild to see. It’d be really wild to see when we have you back on again three months from now, six months from now if the whole thing’s not red. But to see it jump from 37% to 75% and double since October and September into November is pretty wild. Just backing up…

Daren Blomquist: And actually, I should add, Goldman Sachs came out with their metro forecast and this was a little bit more recent in January. They’re forecasting about 95% of markets will see a decline. So, they’re even more bearish on things. Now, I mean, there’s been some good news come out just in the last few weeks, and that could indicate maybe things aren’t going to be quite as– maybe there’s this chance of a soft landing out there. But I still think the most likely path that we’re going to see is some correction. It may not be this huge correction. I would call it a healthy correction that we see happening in this data.

Josh Cantwell: Yep, that’s fantastic. Just going back one slide, looking at this, again, prices responding to affordability, it’s amazing to see, when COVID hit in March of 2020, the drop in home price appreciation, the drop in the speed, it was still up, but it was only about 2%. And then it just absolutely takes off. Why? Because the Fed funds rate went to zero and stayed at zero.

And also, because of COVID, very few people were selling their homes. So, inventory was at an all-time low. So, you have cost of money at an all-time low. You have the number of homes available to buy at an all-time low, maybe not all the time, but as far back as I could remember. And so, that forced prices up.

Daren Blomquist: I would add the third piece of that is you had people getting stimulus checks, and so wages, income going up. And so, that helped as well.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, it would be interesting to see that slide with somehow the Fed funds rate overlaid over top of it and showing as the appreciation goes up in the green directly corresponding to the Fed funds rate dropping to zero and staying at zero. And then now, as the Fed funds rate has gone up which basically started in March of 2022 and that goes up, it’s amazing to see these statistics here where the home price appreciation starts to crater and go down starting in March of 2022 and really drop off.

And then, of course, that payment-to-income ratio skyrockets because the cost of the debt is going up. And now, you see, again, like you mentioned, kind of a threshold where the payment to income has hit a ceiling, where now it’s starting to go down and people just can’t afford to pay anymore. And with that, home prices have to pull back. And that’s also, at this point, interesting to see where the Fed has now said we can do smaller rate increases, maybe not as frequently as rate increases, maybe 25 bips or 25 bips there because they’re starting to see some of this deceleration of inflation.

And it’s just so wild to notice that all of that is predicated on the cost of money that the Federal Reserve really does have so much demonstrative control over the economy by how much money they put in play, how much stimulus there is, and the cost of that money. If the cost of that money is more expensive, it definitely tapers things down. And as the cost of stimulus checks out there, $7 trillion being printed, and the cost of that mortgage money being so low, it’s amazing to see how that directly correlated to values going up. And then now, as the Fed funds rate has gone up directly correlating to seeing those home price appreciation values come down, it’s amazing to see how much power the Fed really has.

Daren Blomquist: Yeah, I mean, it’s a perfect case study for macroeconomics actually working the way that macroeconomics is supposed to work. So, yeah.

Josh Cantwell: Amazing stuff. So, we’ll track that. And then, I think this is our last slide, maybe one or two more slides for today, but indicating just that for a long time, consumers had gone into saving mode, save, save, save, save, save, probably because they were panicking about what was going to happen to the world economy. And now that the stimulus checks have worn off and people felt good about the economy for the last year, now they’re starting to tap back into their credit card debt. So, let’s talk for a second just about consumers and how they’re behaving and their comfortability with dipping back into their credit cards.

Daren Blomquist: Yeah. So, this is just data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, again, looking at its household debt, and specifically, if you make credit card debt, it hit $930 billion in the third quarter of 2022. That’s basically an all-time high equally an all-time high we saw back in Q4 2019, right before the pandemic. And so, yeah, you saw during the pandemic, people stopped using their credit cards as much. I think because of the stimulus they had, they didn’t have to actually dip into savings because there’s another chart that I don’t have in this deck that shows the savings rate going up during the pandemic as well. So, they’re saving more and having to use their credit cards less because in part because of the stimulus, in part because they pulled back on spending.

But now, we’re really seeing that revert back to the pre-pandemic norm. So, we’re basically going back to 2019 levels with credit card debt. And the 15% increase that we saw in the third quarter was the biggest year-over-year increase we’ve seen in this data set going all the way back to a couple of decades. So, this isn’t necessarily a huge warning sign for me, but it’s just saying that, yes, people are reverting to their kind of pre-pandemic consumer habits, which is relying more heavily on debt than they did during the pandemic.

The savings rate also, which again, I don’t have here, but the savings rate is kind of a mirror image of this where it spiked during the pandemic, but now, it’s reverted to actually below. That is a little bit more concerning. Savings rate has reverted to below pre-pandemic levels, so people are saving less than they were back in 2019, which puts them more at risk if there is some kind of shock.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, and I would venture just a psychological prediction is that many people, especially if they’re living paycheck to paycheck, they get used to the stimulus dollars and used to a new kind of lifestyle and used to affording some new things that they previously couldn’t. And then, all of a sudden, the stimulus dollar is no longer there. But they’re used to this new sort of lifestyle with the extra thousands and thousands of dollars they were given. And they’re like, well, I really enjoyed that. So, now, I don’t have to dip into my credit cards to afford that same lifestyle. That’s a guess of mine just based on consumer behavior.

Daren Blomquist: I think that’s absolutely spot on, yeah.

Josh Cantwell: Thank you. I mean, I get used to certain things, right? I buy something new and I’m used to it. I want it. I want to keep it. And if I don’t have the income for it, you have to make that decision. Do you cut back? Or do you use credit? And I think that’s what we’re seeing right now. Daren, do we want to go any further today? Or do we want to save the rest of the delinquencies, the real estate, save that for another discussion, right?

Daren Blomquist: Yeah, I think this is a good stopping place because the rest of it really does get into then all of this that we’ve talked about in a macro level, how is that impacting the housing market and specifically distress in the housing market. So, this is a great stopping point.

Josh Cantwell: Tell our audience just a little bit more about where they can get more economic news from you, or they can go on the Auction.com platform to buy properties and just learn a little bit more about what are the services that Auction.com can provide.

Daren Blomquist: Yes, absolutely. For a lot of the stuff I’m presenting here, you can go to Auction.com/inthenews, or follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter. I’m trying to post a lot of this stuff as I get it. And then for Auction.com, if you just go to Auction.com, if you’re interested in looking at what types of distressed assets are actually available right now to purchase, just go to Auction.com and search and you’ll find that we have both the foreclosure auctions, properties that are sold, and the courthouse steps typically, although we’ve moved a lot of those online.

And then we also have the bank-owned or REO auctions, which are all online, and you can bid on from anywhere in the country. And it’s a great way to buy low in this market and add value through renovation. Many of these properties are distressed, not just financially, but physically as well.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, awesome stuff, Daren. And listen, I always appreciate your insight, all the work you do to gather up all this data. I know it takes a lot of time and attention to put this all together, so thanks for aggregating it all for us and for our audience, and thanks for jumping on the show today.

Daren Blomquist: Yes. Josh, thank you for that, and thanks for the opportunity to talk to you and your audience.

[CLOSING]

Josh Cantwell: So, hey, guys, listen, I hope you enjoyed that show today with Daren Blomquist, again, VP of Market Economics at Auction.com. Check out Auction.com/inthenews. You can also follow Daren on LinkedIn, as he mentioned. Daren has been a friend of mine for going on, I think, eight years. He basically is the economist for Auction.com and is an amazing resource.

If you paid attention now to the last couple of days, couple of weeks, we’ve released a lot of data, including the interview with Harry Dent, this interview with Daren to talk about the overall economy. And I think it’s important that we start to make smart financial decisions to prepare for this. One thing I do love about what we do with apartments is that they are very recession proof as long as you have the cash flow and the occupancy in the apartments to pay the debt, pay the debt service, the expenses, your investors, and just hold them through the trough. It’s a great place to be in versus being in fixing flips or being in wholesaling. And when the market is on its way down, there’s no way to compensate for that when the market’s going down. It’s not like you can short the market.

And so, I think it’s really important that every investor get liquid, get into cash flowing real estate, whether it’s single family or apartments, buy some of those assets or invest as a limited partner, and then get your cash flow for the next couple of years because I do see some trouble brewing. That’s really hard not to see, right? You can’t turn a blind eye to this stuff, especially after what you heard from Harry Dent and Daren today.

So, if you’re interested in investing in a limited partner basis or learning more about what we do, go to FreelandVentures.com/passive. There you can check out and we can get to know each other better. You can learn more about some of the things that we offer. You can learn more about inside of our investor portal, build a relationship with us, and then go from there. So, look forward to having that discussion with you. If you enjoyed this episode, as always, subscribe, rate, and review. Thank you for being here, and we’ll see you next time.

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