Make 2008 your best year ever! Jason shares his discovery at age 16 of what many call “The Secret” nowadays with quotes from the books entitled Earl Nightingale’s Greatest Discovery and As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. Next, perspectives on the nice and stable Kansas City market from a few people. Finally, Jason admits that his ex-girlfriend was right about the sunscreen… including that world famous song with some great advice for successful living.
Announcer: Welcome to Creating Wealth with Jason Hartman, President of Platinum Properties Investor Network in Newport Beach, California. During this weekly program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven’t thought of before, or a new slant on real estate, fresh new approaches to America’s best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible.
Jason is a genuine self-made multimillionaire, who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He’s been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in nine states. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to financial freedom through real estate. You really can do it. And now, here’s your host, Jason Hartman.
Jason Hartman: Welcome to another edition of Creating Wealth. This is Jason Hartman. We’re glad to have you here with us today. And as we approach the New Year, I want to focus some of these podcasts a little bit about mindset and our mental state, and how that affects us in creating wealth in our lives and what it means to us.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about The Secret. Probably many of you have read The Secret or you’ve watched the DVD or the movie on the internet, and that’s all great stuff and I’m happy to say I discovered the “Secret” when I was about 16 years old. I remember I wanted my first car back in high school. I wanted nothing more than a Toyota 4×4 pickup truck with big wheels on it and really cool. And amazingly, I thought about it enough and because our thoughts are things, they are reality, they are real material things, I thought about it enough and I got it.
And I noticed that throughout my life, whatever I think about becomes a reality. It is the most amazing thing. When I was about 17 years old or so, I discovered Denis Waitley and Earl Nightingale and Og Mandino and some of these other great, I guess you’d call them motivational speakers, but they’re really much more than that. I sort of refer to them as philosophers. Jim Rohn would also be included in that bunch and there are many others. A lot of great information out there.
Throughout the course of my life, for better or worse, I’ve used The Secret if you will to create good and bad things in my life because our expectations seem to really create our reality. And in 1989, when I was 24 years old, I discovered a very technical view of The Secret. A program by a company called Cybervision called the “Neuropsychology of Achievement” – I would highly recommend you check it out. It was all about something they call “holographic brain theory” and a person named Karl Pribram, who was a neurosurgeon at Stanford University up in the northern California area.
And I’ve studied this throughout the course of my life and since The Secret became popular about, I guess, two years ago or so, I thought it would be good to start the New Year off right and not talk specifically about real estate right away. We’ll talk about that a little later in this podcast.
But first, I want to talk about mindset, The Secret, creating our own realities in our life and how we become what we think about. You know there’s a great old book that I read years ago, called As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. I believe it was written in 1906 and it’s just a phenomenal little tiny short book, but check that out. There’s just a ton of resources on this and we’ll talk about them in future podcasts as well.
But right now, I’d like to share with you a short part of a book called Earl Nightingale’s Greatest Discovery. And Earl Nightingale’s Greatest Discovery was sort of a follow up to his record, yes, a record – remember those funny vinyl circular things where you put a needle on them? For some of you younger listeners, you may not be familiar with them, but we used to use records. It was a long, long time ago. And I’m not that old, by the way, either so records were sort of fading out as became aware of this stuff.
Anyway, Earl Nightingale originally, I think it was even back in the ’50s, published a record called “The Strangest Secret” and it became hugely popular. And basically, the strangest secret is we become what we think about or as you think, so shall you become. Well, in his more contemporary book published back 1987, Earl Nightingale’s Greatest Discovery, that really had a profound impact on my life and the wealth I created over the years in real estate and in my business. I wanted to just share a part of this because think of your environment and think about how important your environment is to what you believe about yourself, and how you see yourself in the grand scheme of things and what you believe you have the right to expect in your own life. And what you believe you are entitled to and how you live and how you think.
Nightingale taught me that our environment is a reflection of our thoughts, but our thoughts are also a reflection of our environment. So this works both ways. One reinforces the other and then it becomes circular and goes the other way.
So let me share with you just a part from Page 8 of his book, right in the beginning. He talks about how we grow into our expectations. Now, think about this and how you visualize and what your environment is like and how critically important your environment is to you. And as I read this to you, I think of us moving into our new office and it is really a tremendous upgrade in terms of the business, and the business’s image. But not only that, it will change the way all of the Platinum Team thinks about their place in the world. So listen to what Earl Nightingale says about this. It’s really quite poetic. It’s a great story.
He says, “A business executive leaves his home to go to the office. It is early summer, a beautiful morning. He drives his late model, expensive car, shining from frequent washings, out of the garage, sweeps down the drive to the shaded street and turns toward town. On both sides of the street, fine homes can be seen, their lawns and landscaping well-cared for, their paint bright; their windows sparkling clean in the early morning light.
“Our business executive drinks in the sight. ‘Beautiful,’ he says to himself. ‘It’s a lovely morning. All is well and the world is in order.’ His fine car makes hardly a sound as it moves along the clean, orderly street. The neighborhood and the homes up and down the street reflect the people in his socioeconomic group. It is as natural for the business executive and his wife to have chosen that home in which they live and pay the price for it as it is for any family anywhere. They think and live in those terms.
“The neighborhood reflects them, their education, and their aspirations, and their levels of accomplishment, and their way of life cost them no more from a percentage of income standpoint than do the homes and neighborhoods of anyone else anywhere in the country. And that is important because once acquired, that home and neighborhood and society constantly reinforce their view of themselves and their place in the scheme of things. They may move farther upward or sideways, but the chances of their moving backward or downward are so small as to be negligible. Their environment is a mirror of their current place on the human achievement ladder.
“At work, his office is also a reflection of him and the reinforcement of his place in the scheme of things. And when our executive drives home in the evening, he is bathed once more in the agreeable ambiance of his place in the world. His world is a reinforcing mirror of his thoughts, a mirror of him, his wife, his family, and what he thinks about.”
Now, that’s an interesting picture so think about your environment. This is me talking, not Earl Nightingale. Now, let me go on a little bit further because what he says next is quite interesting. Back to the book.
He says, “Not long ago, I received a letter from a radio listener in Tarzana, California. Rabbi Steven Ruben. He enclosed copies of two sermons he had delivered to his congregation. One of them was entitled, “You Already Know the Secret.” In his letter to me, he wrote, ‘This talk was inspired by your own messages and I’m sure you’ll recognize many of the quotations that you have used in the past.’
“In his sermon, the Rabbi said, ‘Yes, I did discover the secret of success and it led me to explore the thoughts of authors, poets, philosophers, prophets, sages, and a host of teachers of our time and ages past. To discover what each of them believed about the secret of success. What I discovered was astounding. I found an abundance of wisdom as ancient as our 3,000 year old Torah and as modern as 20th Century science. To my amazement, I realized that from the Bible to the Greek philosophers, from the wisdom of Rome through Medieval studies of the human condition, from Shakespeare to Milton to Emerson to rabbis of the Talmud, each of them had discovered the secret of success.
“‘But the most astounding discovery of all was the realization that all of them, each in his own language and in his own way, discovered the exact same secret. The universal key to success, simply put, is as you think, so shall you become.'”
As you think, so shall you become. Isn’t that brilliant? Well, that’s the older version of The Secret. So I hope you enjoyed that and now, let’s turn to some more specific Creating Wealth stuff. But nothing can be more important than our mindset and so we’ll talk about this from time to time in upcoming shows.
Okay, now, what do we have left for you today? I want to talk about profiling one of our markets. It’s a market that I own four units in, a very, stable, good corporate type market in the Midwestern, near the Southeastern United States, which is some of our favorite real estate around the country, and that is Kansas City.
Now, we will have three people on talking about Kansas City today. One of them is our Area Manager Lynda for Kansas City. You’ve heard from her in the past. And also, our Kansas City local market specialist, the person on the ground, who’s in the market every day. We’ll bring you a little bit of thoughts from him. But also, we’re going to do something a little bit different today. We are going to have my ex-girlfriend from many years ago, Melanie, who will also talk about Kansas City because she happens to live there and she likes it quite a bit.
Now, what’s kind of amazing about Melanie is that she moved there from Newport Beach and I never pictured her as living in a place like Kansas City. But it turns out, after living there for several years, she likes it quite well. So she happened to be in town over the holiday and stopped in my office, and I said hey, why don’t you come in and say a few words about Kansas City.
And then, after that, we will have a thought for you about the sun and sunscreen, which I think you’ll kind of enjoy. It’s kind of lighthearted. So stay tuned and we will be right back and listen in to the interview on Kansas City market profile. Here it goes.
Welcome. I’m here with Quinton and Lynda. Quinton is the Local Market Specialist for Kansas City, which is one of our markets that has been a very stable, exciting market to invest in. I personally just purchased a four-plex there and I’m very excited about my property.
And I’m also here with our Area Manager, Lynda Mulley for Kansas City, as well as many other areas. We’ll talk about those on future podcasts. And welcome to the discussion folks.
Quinton: Oh, thank you.
Lynda Mulley: Hi, Jason.
Jason Hartman: Hi, Lynda.
Lynda Mulley: Hi, Quinton.
Quinton: Hey, how are you?
Lynda Mulley: Very good.
Jason Hartman: Good. Okay, Quinton, tell us a little about the demographics and some brief facts about Kansas City’s greater metropolitan area.
Quinton: Okay, Kansas City is the thirteenth largest by landmass city in the United States. There’s about 1.8 million people in population. We’re expecting a growth of 14 percent by 2020. We have a high median income, educated workforce, diverse economy. We have projected job growth in over 70,000 people. [Inaudible] just added a few thousand itself. The largest employer in Kansas City is the United States government. We have everything from Honeywell to Sprint to St. Luke’s Health System, AT&T, Ford, Harley-Davidson, GM, Russell Stover; you name it.
Jason Hartman: Those are some big corporate names as major employers. That’s excellent. So Sprint, Honeywell, St. Luke’s Health Systems, Hallmark Cards, AT&T, Southwestern Bell, and many others as well.
Quinton: Well, a study came out a little while back that talked about why these major corporations actually come to the Midwest. There are two major points. One is the work ethic of the Midwesterner, and two, the central location in the United States, so it’s easy access for the CEOs or whoever who are living on the East and West Coast can get in and meet in, and have confidence in, Kansas City easier than flying all the way across country.
Jason Hartman: And don’t forget low cost of living for employees. When cost of living is low, you don’t have to pay the employees so much to be able to have a good lifestyle and afford a nice home there. That’s excellent as well. Okay, what about the multi-billion dollar investment in the city development.
Quinton: You know, those are just getting wrapped up now. Sprint just did a huge, new entertainment center. They just opened up about a month ago and they’ve had all kinds of concerts. They’re trying to attract a NBA or NHL team to come in and have their home base here. Part of that, that was called the Power and Light District, and there’s also the Entertainment District, and it’s a revitalization of all downtown Kansas City. There have been millions and millions of dollars pumped into that. It’s a multi-billion dollar project for the downtown area.
Jason Hartman: Excellent. You know the other thing, Quinton, there’s been much debate about this sort of NAFTA transportation corridor, the I35, that links Canada and Mexico and it’s right through Kansas City, which is controversial because of all these immigration issues and so forth. I hear about this all the time. But it definitely bodes well for Kansas City’s economy being right there in the heart of it. So that’s good news for housing and the real estate market here. Lynda, you just came back from visiting and researching the Kansas City market. Tell us some of your thoughts about the market.
Lynda Mulley: I just got back a week ago. I really liked what I saw there. Nice growth going on east of Kansas City in the suburbs. There’s some cities there called Blue Springs, Lees Summit, and Green Valley, which are growing substantially and they’re only about a 20-minute commute into Kansas City where all of the great jobs are available. And they have a great suburb quality of life there, too. There’s a lot of upscale, what I call “yuppie” shopping centers because they look like Irvine or Tustin Marketplace here, so we really relate to it. Fine dining, all the major retailers that you’d find in any major metropolitan area.
In researching the area, I was pleased to find out that Forbes and Expansion Management Magazine and Moody’s all have ranked Kansas City as early – as late as 2007, this year, have ranked them as a great place to invest, as well as one of the top MSAs in the country.
So what I found is this is a market with good linear growth and appreciation, no ups and downs in the market place and I just liked it a lot.
Jason Hartman: Yeah, we’ve talked about this before in live seminars and on podcasts the difference between the cyclical and the linear markets, and Kansas City is a really solid, sort of linear, market. So good. Quinton, what projects do you have right now for our investors, based on the criteria we just mentioned.
Quinton: What I have is I have a project that’s north of the river. It’s single family homes. We’re trying to bring them in right at $189,900.00 and that is for all the different plans. That’s for ranch, split, and a 2-story unit.
Jason Hartman: Now, that’s an interesting point you bring up, Quinton, because isn’t the median income in Kansas City just over $50,000.00 a year and here we’re talking about properties that are $189,000.00?
Quinton: Yep.
Jason Hartman: That’s good. That’s a good metric for affordability. Excellent. Go ahead.
Quinton: It’s very affordable, but on the same token, 42 percent of the people in Kansas City rent, so we don’t even have these homes built yet, they’re not even finished, and it looks like we have four of them rented. It’s a great rental market to be involved in up north. Some other locations that we have are in eastern Jackson County over here in a suburb of Kansas City. What we’ve done is we’ve provided a product that is more dressed up, that has higher trim than any other townhomes that have ever been built in Kansas City, as far as I know, that were put out as rental units. We’ve put in all the extras. We’ve put in the granite look, frege carpet, the 4-inch trim boards. We put in the clubhouse, a new pool. We did all the amenities of walking through and around the neighborhood to try to attract the high-end, cream of the crop tenants because that area did not have a renter community that was conducive to that type of tenant that would want to live in that environment.
Jason Hartman: A few seconds ago, you were talking about the amount of renters there, when we were talking about the affordability of Kansas City, so the affordability issue is good for seeing potential appreciation in the future. But why is it that so many people rent in a place that’s so affordable? We get this question from time to time and one reason is certainly with big corporate headquarters like this, they’re probably transient. They move people in for a year or two and then move them out to another location, right?
Quinton: Yep.
Jason Hartman: And so that builds wealth for the rental market place because transient people don’t usually buy houses, right?
Quinton: Right, yeah, it just costs them too much to get in and then have to sell everything one year later. And it’s a slowly appreciating market, so it doesn’t lend itself to be conducive to moving in one year and moving out 12 months later. Just won’t work.
Jason Hartman: That’s one of the great things about real estate is that the transaction costs are actually kind of high. You can go online, you can trade a stock for $20.00, but when you sell real estate, you’ve gotta pay that 7 percent usually if you’re paying realtor commissions and closing costs and so forth, and so that makes it less liquid, which some people wrongly think, I believe, that that’s a bad thing. But I think it’s a really good thing because it makes it so stable. Liquidity, as it is in the stock market, creates a lot of volatility, so we actually like that. But also, like what you were saying, it makes your tenant class more available because it’s not worth buying and selling in a year. So go ahead with what you were saying, though.
Quinton: That was all. It lends itself to keep people in place, which gives you that stability that we’re talking about, and I completely agree with you. There’s so many people out there investing in so much liquidity, money can go so fast from one stock to another stock in the market, which in real estate it tends to stay in place and hold that value better for us.
Jason Hartman: Yep, that’s a great point and that’s what we like about real estate. It’s stable. It’s stable, not volatile. Now, it looks like on these three areas that you just talked about, Quinton, the performance projections are showing these communities based on the financing we recommend here at the Platinum Properties Investor Network. A minimum projected return on investment of about 34 percent annually, so that’s very exciting. Lynda, any comments on that?
Lynda Mulley: It is and I loved the location of the projects that Quinton has chosen for us; very close to great shopping areas, in the best school districts. Those things are very key to holding the value and making these homes very attractive to our tenants. And like you were saying, when I was visiting there, these properties rent before you even finish them, so this is a great opportunity for investors, and this is why I purchased one when I was back there.
Jason Hartman: Excellent. Lynda, talk to us a little bit about the RV ratio of these properties in Kansas City. We like to ideally look for that .7 number from the single-family homes, the townhomes. Any thoughts on that?
Lynda Mulley: Yes, these have a very strong RV ratio of .7, a little over .7, in fact. And the rents here are very strong and it is because of the combination of having high incomes and people who are not necessarily buyers in the local communities. They like to rent and these new homes are perfect for them to rent. And when they’re placed in great school districts, you have a line of people waiting for these before they’re finished.
Jason Hartman: Excellent. Quinton, you have some great expertise in commercial property as well and some of our clients have purchased commercial properties from you in Kansas City, multi-unit apartment buildings, etc, some bigger stuff. Talk to us about what’s going on there in the commercial market and what kind of opportunities are available for investors. I know that one of our clients that I’m thinking of right now – Scott – was extremely happy that he was positive cash flow first month in the apartment building he bought through you.
Quinton: Well, what I do with my commercial properties, I’m very, very conservative up front because in commercial, a lot can move and it can move fast and take the bottom out from under you. So when I start shopping these deals to investors, I’m as conservative as I can be on the numbers. You guys figure in 8 percent for vacancy; I’m figuring 10. And then on top of that, I’ll double the taxes, I’ll double the insurance; I’ll do all these things to make sure that when that final user, or Scott, or whoever else that we sell it to, when they get it, yes, I might have said it for the cash flow at $2500.00 a month, but my goal is to try to get it to cash flow at $5,000.00 – $6,000.00 above.
It’s just that when you have a 30-unit apartment complex, there’s always going to be something happening. Somebody’s gonna be moving out, somebody’s gonna be moving in. You’re going to have the turnover cost. I try to be as careful as I can, and the nice thing about Kansas City right now is because of all the commercial work going on downtown and up north and around these eastern Jackson County areas, commercial properties are appreciating at about 10 percent.
Jason Hartman: Wow. That’s excellent. Now, there are many segments of commercial real estate, of course, some different areas geographically within Kansas City, so of course, that would vary a little bit by area. That’s excellent. Quinton, any specific commercial property opportunities you wanna talk about?
Quinton: I have a 2-year-old, all brick building for $2 million. It’s a 10-cap deal. It’s a triple-net, actually triple-net lease deal. It’s an elderly set that the people are pulling their cash out and they’re going to go do some other things with their money and the business that is doing the lease-back has been in business for almost 13 years. So you’ve got 13 years of financials to look at. It’s a 10-cap deal, absolute net, so you’re paying nothing and you just collect your rent each month. The sellers will provide all their tax returns, personal and corporate tax returns up front so we can review all that. You take it to your tax attorney, have them review it and sign off on it, make sure you’re comfortable. That’s the way I do these commercial deals. We make sure that everything – all I’s are dotted and all T’s are crossed. We don’t want any problems.
Jason Hartman: Yeah, promise less, deliver more. That’s always a good philosophy. Quinton, the cap rate you’re talking about, and that’s a metric we usually don’t use that much in the residential side because it indicates the performance of a property exclusive of financing, and one of the great things about the residential side of the business is the financing is so desirable and it makes the investments so much more attractive in many cases. But a 10-cap, cap rate of 10 percent on a commercial real estate bill is really excellent. I mean I know people here that are shopping for commercial properties in Southern California and they’re looking at like 4-, 5-, and 6-cap rates, so that’s excellent. Okay, good.
Quinton: Well, you know, 8-caps are pretty abundant. I can find 8-caps almost all day long. Nine-caps, yeah, it gets a little thinner; 10-caps, they’re out there. And I did – last year I did two deals that were 12-caps.
Jason Hartman: Wow, that’s amazing. So you can also – everybody’s whose listening – talk to Quinton about commercial properties as well as residential properties and it’s great that you have those available, Quinton. Let’s close with Lynda. Lynda, do you want to summarize just a couple of the quick key points on why you’d recommend Kansas City?
Lynda Mulley: Sure, thanks, Jason. I love this area because it’s solid. It has not experienced volatility, has not gone up in appreciation too quickly so it won’t adjust back down in the near future. There’s a lot of growth, continued growth and commitment into the downtown area, which is solid. That’s why businesses like to move there. It’s really being positioned as a national and multi-national area because of where it’s situated. It’s in a great transportation corridor. Again, housing is so affordable and well under the current national median price of $224,000.00, and rents are strong. All the key combinations of what make an area great to invest in are here in Kansas City. I liked everything I saw. I love the house that I bought and I’ve opened up the escrow on that, and I just think that this is a great opportunity for the even beginning investor, as well as the seasoned investor for good long-term investment.
Jason Hartman: All right, excellent. Well, thank you, Lynda and thank you, Quinton, and we will get this up on the podcast. And a lot of people, I’m sure, will be inquiring to both of you about the opportunities you have. Thanks for being on today.
Lynda Mulley: Thanks, Jason. Thanks, Quinton.
Quinton: Hey, thank you.
Jason Hartman: Hi, everybody. We wanted to just kind of do something very odd on this podcast, which we’ve never done before. We have in the office here visiting for the holiday season, my ex-girlfriend, and the reason I wanted to introduce you to Melanie is because she happens to live in Kansas City, one of our excellent, stable, good cash flow markets that you’ve heard about before and we’ll be talking about on future podcasts as well. And Melanie, welcome.
Melanie: Thank you.
Jason Hartman: It’s good to have you here. And then we also have our Area Manager for Kansas City, Lynda Mulley. Lynda, welcome.
Lynda Mulley: Well, thank you very much.
Jason Hartman: So Melanie, we’ve talked a lot about the investment perspective of Kansas City, but we’ve never had anyone talk who actually lives there and likes it, and one of the intriguing things about your story, I think, is that you were really kind of a dyed-in-the-wool California girl when I met you ten years ago and your parents live in Newport Beach and you’re pretty into fashion and the high life sort of, I guess, is a fair way to say it. She’s laughing here, folks. And it kind of surprised me when you said you had moved to Kansas City. So what do you like about it there?
Melanie: Well, let’s see, I moved there about six years ago and I have to say, at first, when I was told I was moving to Kansas City, I wasn’t that excited about it. My impressions were hay bales on the side of the road, but after I moved there, I have to say it was a welcome surprise. See, having two children – I have a little boy that’s 3 ½ now and a little girl that’s 6 years old and it’s a great place to raise children for the affordability standpoint.
Jason Hartman: Yeah, that’s what I always here is that it’s a really great place to raise a family, and what kind of house can you buy if you want to live there? Of course, we’re talking about investment properties and renting them out, but you told us before, a $200,000.00 house, you can buy a really nice home there for two to – your house is about $400,000.00 and something, I think, right?
Melanie: Yeah, about $400,000.00 and it’s a 3800 square foot home with a basement. There’s plenty of room for the kids and family life.
Jason Hartman: Right, without a lot of stress and being house poor.
Melanie: Exactly.
Lynda Mulley: What surprised you about moving to that area, Melanie?
Melanie: Well, I guess I didn’t expect it to be such a suburban area. I actually live in the Johnson County area, which is, it is a very wealthy county and there’s a lot to do there. There’s a lot of opportunity for the children. Everything is basically geared to – around children.
Lynda Mulley: I think one of the things I found when I investigated the area, too, is that the school districts are phenomenal there and the grades that the children are getting in school are among the highest in the United States, and I think probably as a parent, that’s something that would impress you and that’s why renters would tend to go into certain parts of the counties there, like Johnson County, to be renters because they’ve got great schools.
Melanie: Right. As a parent, that is extremely important to have your kids in good schools and that is definitely a great selling point for the area.
Lynda Mulley: Now, when I visited the area, too, I noticed that a lot of what looks like Orange County there. I visited the Zona Rosa, the shopping center, and found it to be just like Victoria Gardens or even like a Fashion Island. All the major retail stores are there.
Jason Hartman: Lynda, Melanie likes shopping centers with high end stores.
Melanie: I have to say the shopping has really taken off. When I moved there six years ago, there really wasn’t much there. But I have really watched a lot of the stores come in, a lot of different boutiques that have come in and really been able to take advantage of the economy there.
Jason Hartman: One of the other things you mentioned before we were recording, Melanie, was you talked about how there isn’t as much competition for a high end boutique store in a place like Kansas City and with that in mind, some people actually come there and are able to open businesses because that market was a little bit underserved and the businesses do really well.
Melanie: I actually met a number of people that have moved there specifically from Orange County and opened various boutiques or a children’s sort of Gymboree establishments where kids can go play. And they’ve come there from Orange County because of the standard of living and because it’s a great place to make money in the market.
Lynda Mulley: What you’re saying, what it boils down to, any great metropolitan area has a great downtown, great suburbs, but I think what’s neat about Kansas City is you have a great quality of life.
Melanie: Right.
Lynda Mulley: And that when I visited there, that’s what I saw and I think that’s one of the reasons that the area’s growing and why families are attracted to move there, and why businesses go there, and it’s just a great area from an investment perspective, as well as people are moving there and the population growth is sustaining over the next couple of years.
Jason Hartman: Yeah, it’s a quality of life perspective, too, isn’t it?
Melanie: Yes, I would definitely say that. Moving from Orange County to Kansas City, I think you definitely get a better quality of life living there and raising a family there.
Jason Hartman: As far as that quality of life goes, I mean, I know that you shared before we were recording, you talked about the crowd issue. So you know, here you’re back in California to visit your parents for the holiday and you said you’ve gone to stores here, you’ve gone to restaurants here on your visit, and I mean it’s a different experience, isn’t it?
Melanie: I would definitely say so. It’s very refreshing to be able to walk in a store and it’s just the ease of getting around there. You’re not in a ton of traffic trying to get somewhere, and when you go into the store, you don’t have tons of people around you. It’s the ease of going into a store and being able to get out.
Jason Hartman: And get something quickly and get on your way, yeah. Well, that’s good. What about some of the cultural and sort of hip, swanky lifestyle stuff in Kansas City? You know there’s a big downtown redevelopment going on. Can you tell us anything about that?
Melanie: Well, yeah, actually, there’s an area called The Plaza, which is actually in Kansas City, Missouri, and I believe The Plaza actually might be one of the oldest malls because the Kansas City was sort of the gateway back then and then The Plaza was built as – I think it’s the oldest outdoor mall, I believe.
Jason Hartman: Of course, there’s a concept called myopia, right? Where people focus on the small thing and forget about the big picture, and I think maybe I’ll invent a new word here. I’ll call it Californmyopia. Californmyopia; how’s that? There are some people that live in California because this has such a reputation, of course. We’ve got Hollywood, we’ve got the weather, we’ve got all this stuff. They kind of think that the country is sort of California, Chicago, New York and they forget about everything else, and a lot of these areas are great areas to invest in real estate, but they’re also very nice places to live. So it’s kind of surprising when I talk to Californians that Kansas City has as much culture as it does. I was surprised that someone like you would move to Kansas City. It really did kind of shock me. So what were your experiences and thoughts since you moved? Was it pleasant?
Melanie: Well, I have to say, I so much enjoy living in Kansas City and I actually, at this point, am thinking about moving back to California, to Orange County, for other reasons, but if I do do that, I’ll really miss Kansas City because it’s been such a pleasant place to live. I’ve loved the people that I’ve met there. They’ve just been so refreshingly easy to meet and easy to talk to and easy to make friends there. And also, I’ll miss the ease of getting around if I choose to move back.
Jason Hartman: You know, on that note of making friends and the new friends you’ve had in Kansas City, I remember you saying to me the other night when we were having dinner, you said the friends there that you have met in Kansas City are pretty new friends for you, I mean a few years. And you said they would just do anything for you.
Melanie: Right.
Jason Hartman: You know, like they’d come and get the ice out of your driveway when it’s icy and all this stuff. Anything you want to say about that?
Melanie: My whole experience with Kansas City, I’ve really, really enjoyed living there. I do think the quality of life is great there and it’s a great quality of life for raising children, for the affordability standpoint and from the social standpoint.
Jason Hartman: Excellent. Okay, Melanie, thank you so much for coming in and sharing some of your thoughts about Kansas City, and Lynda, thank you for being here as well.
Lynda Mulley: Thank you.
Melanie: Thank you for having me.
Jason Hartman: All right. Over and out.
Okay, so I hope you enjoyed that little market profile on Kansas City. Now, you always learn something from your ex’s, right, hopefully? One thing that Melanie used to say is always wear a hat and always wear sunscreen, and she was so adamant about that, that I gave her a nickname and it was Casper, named after Casper the Friendly Ghost. So I’d like to play a little song for you to tell you that Casper was right and this song was very popular all over the planet about 8 – 9 years ago and it is a song with some very good life advice in it. The only thing they leave out in the song is that you should buy a lot of prudent real estate. So enjoy the song and we’ll be back after that.
But trust me, be a smart real estate investor. Anyway, this was kind of an odd podcast today. Thanks for joining us. We thought we’d do something a little different to start off the New Year. So Happy New Year to you again and join us for the next podcast. We have a whole bunch of great guests coming up and every subject under the sun. I’ve been interviewing a lot of experts lately and they’re all in the cue, so we will have more for you next week. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for a couple quick announcements.
Hey, I just wanted to announce a couple of quick things for you. I’m here with Area Manager, Karam and if you’re looking for positive cash flow – yes, you can actually do that with only 10 percent down. Quite an amazing deal to do in today’s market and remember, the interest rates are getting a lot lower right now, so it’s a good time to be locking them in so that you lock in your cost of borrowing for the next three decades. Karam, tell us about positive cash flow and rent guarantees in Columbus, Ohio.
Karam:
Well, Columbus, Ohio, we have a builder who is very, very creative. What he did was he went ahead on all these brand new single-family houses, townhouses, and condos. He’s guaranteeing six-month rent. Not only that, he is going to pay our investors the homeowners association fee and the management fee for two years. And what that does is, with 10 percent down, you get anywhere from $100.00 – $200.00 positive income before even the tax benefit is considered.
Jason Hartman: Wow, that is really phenomenal. That’s gotta be one of our very best markets in terms of cash flow, so excellent. Anything else you wanna say about Columbus, in general?
Karam:
Well, the economy is booming there. There are several major corporations headquartered there. University is big, so a smart workforce, low cost of living. That attracts a lot of investors there.
Jason Hartman: Okay, Karam thanks for updating us on Columbus, Ohio. Great market.
Karam:
You’re welcome, Jason.
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Duration: 39 minutes
