What is going on with Real Estate and Interest rates? This is a question that many are asking right now, including myself. I started in the mortgage business while I was in college in the early 1980s, so I have seen a lot about the industry. My father was in the mortgage business before me so you could say I grew up in the business. I received my bachelor’s degree in economics and started full-time in the mortgage industry in 1986. Things have changed over the years in the business, but the core of the business has remained the same. When I started in the business there were no computers and everything that is now printed by a computer was hand typed and there were no fax machines or cell phones at that time either. From a technological standpoint, there have been many changes but the way we qualify a potential home buyer for a home loan has not changed. The Stock Market’s DOW Industrial average was around 2500 in the early 1980’s so things have changed there as we are over 38,000 today. I have observed many changes, some for the good and some not so good but overall up to this point in my life I can say the business cycles have been pretty consistent.
What I am seeing now is something I have never seen, nor did I think I would see in my lifetime. Like I said above the business cycles have been pretty consistent over the decades until now. With all the economic data I see and more importantly, what I am observing is happening right now is scary. I have always trusted the economic numbers that have been spoon-fed to us from the government until now. Yes, I have lost confidence in the system I helped create throughout the years. When the executive branch of our government stands in the public eye and lies directly to us I have to believe that everything that doesn’t fit their agenda is a lie and that is very sad for America. When I hear the powers at be say that Bidenomics is working and America is thriving I have to call B.S. We all know that things cost more than ever at the store, at the gas pump, and with housing so why is it that the powers at be say otherwise? I try my hardest not to get into politics on this blog but is has gotten to the point that I have to bring it into the conversation as this is why the Real Estate markets are sluggish and interest rates remain high.
My observations in the Real estate markets are that people want to buy but with prices so high and interest rates that are too high, they can’t buy. Inflation has made the cost of everything go up and the value of the dollar goes down. So, when prices of Real Estate should have gone down with higher interest rates and lower demand, we have seen Real Estate values stay the same and, in some markets, continue to go up. The reason for this is that inflation has caused the dollar to go down so much that housing prices have stayed the same which means that they have gone down as inflation has eaten away the buying power of consumers. To put in in other words as inflation makes the price of things increase it also devalues them in that fewer people can afford to buy them. What higher interest rates should have done without inflation is to cause fewer people to be able to afford housing thus slowing the demand and making sellers of real estate have to lower prices in order to sell. As we have observed with the higher interest rates over the last 2+ years Real Estate prices have not reduced as they should have or were intended to do. They have stayed steady or have gone up and this is due to the inflation or the devaluing of the dollar which is the same thing.
What is going on here, you ask? It is pretty simple from my standpoint, but I am not sure our education system is actually teaching these concepts for the younger generation to fully understand. To be clear, how the dollar devalues is simple economics. The government is spending more money than ever, thus putting more dollars into the world economy. When you have an oversupply of anything the value of that item will go down and that is what we are seeing with our US Dollar. The national debt has risen over the last 3 years from $30 trillion to north of $34 trillion consumer debt (Revolving debt credit cards) has risen to historic highs of over $1 trillion in the US alone. This means that every Citizen of the US bears the liability of government spending. When we send Billions and Billions of US dollars overseas this becomes a double whammy in that there more dollars are in circulation but no benefit to the American Citizen. Ironically a lot of the money the US is sending overseas is to protect the borders of other countries while our borders are wide open. This poses many problems for our economy, the most obvious problem is that as more dollars are pumped into circulation the value will continue to decline, thus inflation. You may have heard that” core inflation” has come down which we all know to be a lie, however, core inflation is the price of those goods that exclude energy (gas and fuel) and food prices which is what most middle-class Americans use the most. When your cost of living goes up so high that you can only afford food and housing you have lost wealth and wealth potential.
How do we get out of this cycle of lies and deception from those we used to trust to give us the truth and who are constantly lying to us? I would say vote them out and start over, however, deception, lies, and corruption have taken over the media, social media, and the voting booth. You see when the average citizen loses confidence in the voting system, we have lost our constitutional Republic. When you hear that the United States is a democracy it is not, it is a Constitutional Republic, that is the kind of rhetoric we are hearing that is either a lie or something they want you to believe. I am tired of people blindly believing everything they are told; we need some real changes quickly or our way of life we grew up with will be gone forever. We as a nation are as close to a tipping point as ever before in our history and my fear is that with spending for foreign wars, out-of-control illegal immigration, and corrupt leadership we are very close to something we all should fear. What we need to do is to come together to see what is happening right before our eyes and collectively do something about it. If we don’t stand united, we will fall divided.
To conclude, the Real Estate and Mortgage Markets are being drastically affected by the ridiculous monetary policies put forth by the current administration. With out-of-control spending outside of our own country, cutting oil production in our country, and starting foreign wars we stand to be in this type of crazy economy for a long time without some significant changes. My next big concern will be a crash of the stock market due to American companies not being able to profit like they have been able to in the past. We must also watch the emergence of the BRICS monetary system that Russia and China are spearheading this could cause further inflation by the devaluing of the dollar on the world stage and if the BRICS system replaces the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency, then we have more problems than I can write here. This has not been covered in the media and is one of the biggest threats to the US Dollar in our lifetime. This could also be one of the underlying reasons it seems we are marching into World War 3 to prop up the dollar. To think how many people will die in a war so the US Dollar is protected when other moves could have been to avert this situation. This is a very pivotal time in our history, and it seems that our media is more concerned about who’s feelings are getting hurt rather than the hard-hitting stuff we all know is going on and we should be concerned about. So, if you are reading this I hope you understand the magnitude of what I have written and I pray it doesn’t get censored in our so-called free society.
PS
I fear we may have gone too far with out-of-control corruption to the point where the economy as a whole is suffering from incompetent leadership. If we don’t get immigration under control we will have too many people trying to get the same jobs and the same housing that American-born people need. As it is those same immigrants are getting government checks or taxpayer money to compete with natural Americans for housing, food, goods, and services not to mention that these people have not been investigated properly at the border so there may be bad people that could hurt Americans or damage property or worse we don’t know. This is causing a higher demand for housing and the longer it goes on the more it will hurt the American people. Crime is also rising in the cities where these migrants have gone and is getting worse every day.
Here we are in the middle of 2023, had to believe. This year has been one of the slowest Real Estate Markets we have seen since 2009. We are experiencing record inflation for the 21st century of the like we have not seen since the early 1970s. This tells us that the cost of goods and services has risen faster than most people’s income streams have. What does this mean for Real Estate now and into the second half of 2023?
Based on the history of inflation you see the Stock markets go up due to the fact that the valuations of companies tend to go higher with inflation. We have seen this throughout history and this time is no exception. What you must be cautious of is when companies’ costs rise so high and the demand for those goods or services decreases thus income for those companies will also decline. After this companies will have to lay off salary-based employees to keep up with the rising costs and when this starts to happen you will see the economy fall into a recession or worse depression.
Inflation is such a killer of economies in many ways not just with the higher costs of goods and services but also with the availability of money with higher interest rates. Over the last year and a half now we have seen interest rates move from historic lows for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages from the 2%-3% range to now a 7%-8% range. What this has done is cut out a whole segment of the population’s ability to qualify for a new home loan. In California, we have starter home prices hovering around $500,000 on average for the state. What the higher interest rates have done is cut the people that could have qualified for this house. For example, the payment on a $500,000 house with 5% down at a 3% interest rate is $2002.62 principal and interest at 7.5% Interest rate the payment would be $3,321.27. At the 3% rate, an average borrower would have to make right about $7,000 a month to qualify for the mortgage. At 7.5% the borrower will have to show around $11,500 a month. This shows you the power of interest rates and buying power.
That said you would assume that Real Estate prices would have to come down to accommodate the higher interest rates. We saw this occur in some markets but not nearly enough to make up the difference. Today we see Real Estate prices staying relatively steady. The reason for this is interesting. Since so many people refinanced or purchased their homes with lower interest rates, they are reluctant to sell their homes as the can’t qualify for a move-up home, and in some cases, people couldn’t afford the house they are living in if they had to do it all over again. So, we are seeing people holding on to the lower interest rates and not selling their homes as they would have to qualify for a new home under the higher interest rates. With people not selling their homes, we are experiencing a supply shortage of homes on the market and with that low supply of available housing prices have remained steady even with the higher interest rates.
The next hammer to fall, unfortunately, is going to be employment layoffs. This is going to happen due to inflation and government spending that fuels inflation with an oversupply of money. In the second half of 2023, I see consumers holding on to their hard-earned money as the average consumer feels that something is going to happen, they just don’t know what. There are many factors that could fuel inflation, but the biggest unreported issue will be the worldwide devaluation of the dollar. When the world drops the US Dollar as the worldwide reserve currency, all the goods we buy from overseas will cost more and more. This is something that no generation of Americans has ever seen, the closest we got to this was the great depression. The way America got out of that was World War 2 by producing Ships, Planes, Autos, Guns, Ammunition, and such. The largest difference between then and now is that we produce very little in the US, we outsource to China and other countries. History tends to repeat itself, so shouldn’t be preparing for a war? If you are paying attention to the world and not preoccupied with all the social issues going on in our country, you will see how close we are to this prophecy coming true.
I don’t like to be negative, and I truly believe in America and the American way of life, however, I must be a realist with what I know and have seen with history. As the US Dollar becomes less valuable in the world markets this will cause further inflationary pressures on our economy. The only way out of this at this point is to figure out a way to re-set America’s debt to the Central Bank or get rid of the Central Reserve Banking system altogether and start with something new. How this could be done I would not know, but I do know it will be a very painful process to every American. With the BRICS nations and a new world reserve currency on the horizon, America is going to have to do something fast, very fast as that is supposed to launch in August of this year, and over half of the world’s nations have agreed to sign on this new asset-backed currency. Our central Bank is going to try and compete with this with a new Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The problem with this is that even our own citizens don’t like the idea of this as Americans don’t like the idea of being watched or controlled in the name of some made-up government issue like climate control. For more on this please I urge you to do research on this as this CBDC is supposed to come out in July of 2023.
What will a CBDC do to interest rates, housing, and inflation? This is something that remains to be seen but rest assured it will be a rocky ride going into the end of the year. I always say if you can own Real Estate do so as Real Estate will have value. I believe that once people see the changes happening there will be a flight to quality investments like real estate. I will bet the Stock Markets will struggle, to say the least. Interest rates will be dependent on how much inflation we have as interest rates will rise as inflation rises. So, if you are looking for advice as to when to buy Real Estate my advice would be to buy as much as you can now, if you can find it, and hold those properties that you hold currently. Keep an eye on the world and what is going on, and research other sources other than your mainstream media that most of us have grown up on as we are not being told the truth to keep the masses under control for as long as they can. Not that one individual can do anything, but the power of the masses can make changes.
As most of you know Mortgage interest rates have been rising at a speed at which most people alive today in the home buying market have never seen before. Some of us old timers have seen this before and it is very true that history repeats itself and we should all learn from it. We are going to explore why rates are moving up so rapidly and then we will look at the future and where rates are heading and why. When I say history repeats itself all you must look to is the early 1970s through the early 1980s and see how monetary policy was run. I was a kid in the early 1970s and remember the gas lines and high inflation and interest rates that topped out right around 20% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. During this, the government also set the interest rates for FHA and VA loans and put ceilings on gas prices.
If this sounds familiar it should be as the government has been involved since the beginning of time with free markets and it has never really worked out. In the 1970’s President, Nixon put gas price ceilings in place in hopes to make gas prices go down or at least stabilize them. This failed miserably as when you try to put a ceiling or a cap on prices that de-incentivizes producers from producing. During this time the government was also spending and expanding the government and services the government felt would help the common American. Then to pay for all the spending they were forced to raise taxes across the board and the Federal Income tax rate got as high as 60%. So, Government spending caused inflation, and the taxing of the citizens meant less money the average worker could take home on every paycheck thus they did spend less, and the economy was basically stagnant. During this time the term “Stagflation” was coined meaning a stagnant economy with high inflation. If this sounds familiar, then open your eyes and look around with the Government spending Trillions of dollars on “COVID relief”, the Ukraine war, AKA money being sent to the United Nations. Then we have all heard about the 87,000 IRS Agents they are hiring to make sure they get their money from the average American after they raise taxes on all of us. This type of economics is called tax and spending or Keynesian Economics.
This is poor Monetary Policy from an economic point of view. I can say without one doubt in my mind that if Monetary Policy continues down this road then we are in for many years of high inflation and high-interest rates. The government has totally neglected the economic curve's supply side and focused only on the demand side. The evidence is seen at the gas pump, the grocery store, at the automaker's showrooms, and the list goes on. Current monetary policy is to raise interest rates with the hopes that with high-interest rates consumers will slow their demand for goods and services, which has held true, however, when staples like food, fuel, transportation (automobiles), and housing prices have risen due to normal demand interest rates can’t slow the basic demand for these goods. Couple the fact that we have just come out of an economy that was shut down for basically 2 years the supply of the goods consumers need has been diminished as there were fewer workers to build or produce these basic goods. Since this has caused a shortage in supply and with the same amount or more consumers going after the same amount of goods and services with the same or less ability to produce more goods due to lack of labor and now high-interest rates or a high cost of money to pay for these workers to produce a normal amount of goods you get supply side inflation. If you have heard of this before you are not wrong, Ronald Ragan was the first to look at the supply side of the economic curve and after that was addressed in the mid-1980s the economy was more manageable. Also, with more workers working the government was getting more tax dollars by taxing the workers less and having more workers paying lower rates but more workers paying those lower rates made the government more money. This is a concept that has been lost by our current Monetary Policies which are only looking at the demand side of the demand and supply curve.
I think you now have the knowledge to see where this is all going unless some drastic changes are made. The economy has no feelings and reacts only to what is given to it. I will say without a doubt in my mind that if the supply side of the global economic and American economic curve is not addressed soon interest rates have to continue to rise. The Federal Reserve or our Central Bank only has interest rates to fight inflation with they do not have the ability to address the supply side of the demand and supply curve and without the Government’s policies changing to address this we will continue to see high inflation and high-interest rates. The way out of all of this is to actually do the opposite of what is going on currently. I agree with the Federal Reserve in raising interest rates as inflation is high, however, high-interest rates will not curve the demand and it will only hurt the supply side of the curve as it is costing companies more to have workers with high taxes and high-interest rates. Until the Government addresses the supply side of the curve this will continue to spiral upward out of control, and I am truly convinced that our current government leaders do not understand this basic economic concept. In fact, they have gone so far the other way spending money to “protect the environment” they have basically stopped the expansion of oil production in the United States, and with a low supply of oil you get higher gas prices. Oil is not only used for our automobiles but our roads, plastics, fertilizer, and so many goods are produced from oil that people don’t even realize. The price of fuel is directly related to our food prices, as well, and people may not realize that it cost more to deliver the food on a truck, it also costs more for the fertilizer to grow the food. It also costs more for the farmers to till the fields and harvest the food as that is all done with fuel. We are nowhere close to using electric vehicles for all of this and then you have to ask the question, are we going to need fuel to power generators to make the electricity to power all the electric vehicles? I agree we should be more environmentally friendly, but not at the expense of our way of life, and our economy invest more time to come up with real solutions not a knee-jerk to some environmentalists. The real solution to clean power is Hydrogen as 2/3 of the Earth is covered in water and when you burn Hydrogen the byproduct is water, why we have not gone down this road baffles me, but I digress.
So, I will conclude this by saying if we stay on the current course the interest rates will be around 8% by the end of the year, and by the first quarter of 2023, we will have interest rates at or above 10%. You might think this is a crazy prediction but look at the history of this type of Monetary Policy and see what happened last time. I am not a Doom and Gloomer, I consider myself a realist and everything to this point under the current Monetary policy has not worked or has made things worse. If you read some of my earlier blog posts and the dates, I wrote them you will see I have been dead on. Remember the economy has no feelings it does what it is told to do, all you have to do is look to see what it is being told to do and you will come to the same conclusion I have. Unfortunately, I have no say in how the government creates its policies and if I did I fear I would be called an “Extremist” in my views. We will see sagging housing prices, but the rub will be that no one will be able to afford them with rates as high as they are headed without some income inflation to match the current inflation rate, however, if you make more income but are taxed at a higher rate your net income will have gone down. We live in a world with cause and effect and if the elected people can’t see the cause and effect of their policies then We the People pay the price. If you are a first-time home buyer don’t be discouraged by all this as there are only 2 things you should be concerned about and that is “What is my payment going to be and what is it going to cost me to get the house?” Once you own the home and you can make the payment then it should not matter to you what your rate is if you are comfortable making the payment. When the rates come down you can always refinance to a lower mortgage payment. So now is a great time to buy your first home, but it is now before the rates go even higher because they will be worse before they get better.
I am going to start this by stating that this is not meant to be political but it sure is going to sound that way after I give a true and accurate accounting of what will happen economically to the US if this Student loan forgiveness is allowed to go through. I will not even get into the extreme unfairness this is and the blatant attempt to get votes this is, that would not be productive to the economics of this. We are going to explore history, and what happened in the past when the Government tries to spend it’s way out of inflation and a recession.
It appears the current administration believes that the value of the dollar will not decline if they put more dollars into the economy. That is like saying if I gave you more money what would you do with it? Then give everyone more money and ask what they are going to do with it. You would be right if you said they are going to buy things with the money, cars, houses, clothes, vacations, electronics, etc.. Logically, you can say if more people are buying more things and those things are in high demand the price of those things will go up. This is called inflation. Inflation happens when more people want the same things and the supply can’t keep up with it. If you forgive someone’s debt it is like giving them a raise, they will have more money every month to spend if they are not spending the money on the debt they owe because the government paid it off.
As you ponder that basic economic theory, let’s look at the effect on the value of the dollar worldwide and how that will affect you here in America. So, our government gives its citizens money, and in this case to pay off debt. By doing so they put more US dollars into circulation and that will devalue the dollar worldwide. Why? Simple the more of anything everyone has the less value it will have. For example, if I produce a specific widget and I have more than I can sell I will have to lower the price of the widget to sell them. The same holds true with the dollar, the more US dollars that are out in the world the less value they have to other countries. If other countries, see our dollar as plentiful or in oversupply then they will ask for more dollars when they sell stuff to the US thus inflation. This type of economics is called Keynesian Economics and in the history of the world this has never worked, kind of like socialism has never worked, I digressed.
I told you I would not get into politics here so I will give you the facts and you can do what you want with the information. Keynesian economics is a tax and spend way of running a monetary policy. Yes, after the spending will come the taxation, it is inevitable and already shown by the government wants to hire 87,000 new armed IRS agents. It doesn’t take much of an economic mind to see what our government is trying to do. When you couple the climate change agenda with all this and the slowing of domestic oil production you are staring at an economic disaster. The people it will hurt the most are those older folks that have saved for retirement all their lives to see it all erode away with poor government money management.
Again, trying not to be political here, but I am 59 years old and have seen this disastrous mindset in the early to late 1970s. Back then the monetary policy was very similar to today’s tax and spend mentality. Where that ended up was high inflation and high-interest rates which was called stagflation (a stagnant economy with high inflation). I started in the mortgage business in 1982 and mortgage interest rates at the time were hovering around 18-20% for a fixed rate loan for 30 years. We have just seen mortgage rates jump from the start of the year (2022) when they were at a nice 3-4% to a staggering 5-6% with no end in sight for how they will go. The Federal Reserve (for those that don’t know is not part of the Federal Government they are a Central Bank that other banks use), has vowed to continue to raise interest rates until inflation gets back down to 2%. Anyone can see that under this tax and spend regime we will never get there, so interest rates will continue to rise. If you go back to my previous posts from last year you will see how correct I have been in my predictions.
You might be making more money now at your job and that is great but now if the government cut your expenses more than half you would have even more money to spend. Initially, you think this is a great deal but eventually, you will have to pay for it and in the end, you will be paying a lot more than the short-term relief you got. It is simply the price of everything that went up and so has your tax obligation. The more money you make the more you pay in taxes. Next, the Government will raise your tax rate to cover the short-term benefit of getting your student loans paid off, and over your working life, you are paying more in taxes than the student loan was by about 10-fold. So not to be political, but would you rather pay fewer taxes and have more freedom to open a business and not worry about the government coming after you, or would you rather pay more taxes and see the government pay for people that have not contributed to our economy in any way or send money overseas? Or simply put would you like to put your neighbor’s kid through college or your own kid? If you are close to retirement and you have saved all your life for retirement, would you like to see the government tax your retirement away to pay for people you don’t know and suffer because of it? If you are a first-time home buyer, would you rather pay a 3% interest rate or a 6% interest rate and be taxed on your income at a higher rate? If you said yes to any of the above then your wish has been granted by this administration. Again not being political, I can’t stand back without informing those that have not had the benefit of a good education to fully understand the principle here. You can probably tell I don't like the idea of paying off student debt or any frivolous government spending that appears to be only for getting votes at the expense of every American.
Have you checked the price of Gold lately? If you do you will see that it is bumping up against $2,000 an ounce. This is about a $700 an ounce gain since March. It is fantastic if you own gold, but what is this signaling? Traditionally gold prices rise as an offset to inflation, but we don’t have any nor do we see any inflation in the future with more people out of work due to the COVID-19 scare. So why the sudden increase? So many questions as to what is going on in the world these days that things of late seem to be backward. The stock market hitting new highs during a pandemic with so many out of work. Interest Rates are at all-time lows. And the government is handing out money like it is nothing.
Unfortunately, the ladder is probably what the reason is for the increase in gold and silver prices. The reason is simple and yet complex. When the government puts so much stimulus (money) into the economy eventually that money will make it back into the economy, which is good right? Not always, as people view the government stimulus checks as “free money” so they spend it on other items than food and necessities. This effect has not been quantified yet in the economic world as we have never seen this in the history of the U.S. People that didn’t need the money to survive simply put it in their savings or invested it in the stock market. The government is considering another round of stimulus checks as I write this and there are a significant amount of people that really need the money yet there are significantly more that don’t need it. There is no real way for the government to determine who needs the money and who does not. Tax returns can show what people make but they are not accurate as most people write off as much as they can. So, the Government sends the checks out to all Americans to keep people spending and since we are in uncharted territory with all this stimulus gold and silver (precious metals) see this as a potential for future inflation.
The Government has also implemented the Paycheck Protection Loan (PPL) Program for small businesses. This program provided small businesses (businesses with less than 500 employees) with loans that can be forgivable under certain circumstances. Some of these “small businesses” received millions of dollars with no oversight. We are seeing news now of people buying expensive cars and other things with the PPL money. We have no idea who received the money, how much, and how they are spending it. I myself was offered $150,000 for MAE Capital Mortgage Inc. which I declined as we remain busy even though I had to lay off our receptionist and my wife. I might be too conservative in not taking the money given to me, but I was raised to borrower money only under dire circumstances or to leverage Real Estate. In addition, we don’t know what the payback terms will be as the government has not done its due diligence and could end up hurting more than helping, we just don’t know yet. This could lead to even more bankruptcies when these loans become due. Precious metals are taking this into consideration in a belief that there will be inflation due to this uncontrolled government spending.
Then there are the unemployment benefits that were pegged at an additional $600 a week and that was in addition to the state unemployment money that was, at it’s maximum, $400 a week. So, people have been getting $4,100 a month, and for most people that was a raise without work. This has created a disincentive for employees to go back to work and employers that have seen a slow down will not feel a responsibility to hire back the laid-off employees in the short term knowing they are getting paid by the government. This has created people with more money then they had before when they were working full time and time to spend it. This has contributed to more investment in the stock market in hopes of making even more money from “free money”.
These effects are why precious metals have been rallying. We are also seeing an extraordinarily strong Real Estate Market. These are assets that will grow if there is inflation or the devaluing of the dollar. The devaluing of the dollar to other currencies worldwide will cause an immediate increase in cost for goods that are imported to the U. S., and you guessed it, China will be the big winner of the U.S. Stimulus packages. It appears, as I write this blog post, that the U.S. government is negotiating for yet another stimulus package. This is a huge reason for the increase in precious metals prices as people are looking to the future to see the inflation coming. People will also ask the question; “is this political”? I won’t go there in this post as I believe there is definitely politics involved on both sides, but if and when the next stimulus package is released it will pump even more money into, what some believe an already bloated economy. We have all been hearing how people are really hurting with this pandemic, I would argue that sure there are some hit hard, but the majority of folks are doing just fine and more money will mean more spending which will put more inflationary pressure on our economy. As we are starting to see shortages of some products since a good portion of the U.S. labor force in manufacturing was laid off for a month or two or more. This shortage of supply of goods will drive prices higher thus creating inflation in areas where there would not have normally been. All these factors are scaring the economically minded person, and if you study basic economics you will read that holding assets during inflation is the best thing to do other than holding on to cash. The reason is that assets will increase in value and cash will decrease in value and precious metals are the original assets to go to during inflation. These are the reasons for looking at precious metals and why they are increasing at an alarming rate. On the Real Estate end of this discussion, we are seeing a rising real estate market outside of big cities. I will be following this discussion as the world evolves and posting more updates as we move further into stimulus and the pandemic. www.maecapital.com