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Tom, Michael and Emil answer another round of listener submitted questions.    Transcript   Tom: Greetings and welcome to The Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Tom Schneider and I am here with   Emil: Emil Shour   Michael: And Michael Albaum.   Tom: And we are going to take on another episode of ask us anything. All right, let's do it.   Theme Song   Michael: Before we get into it, how was the holiday weekend? Monday, yesterday was labor day. What did y'all do?   Emil: I went out and shredded some gnar at the beach. It was so packed at the beach. I dunno, man. Little scary out there with how many people were at the beach.   Michael: Didn't feel like the surface of the sun. There was a crazy heat wave in California. Pretty much the entire state where you feel on a down South.   Emil: Oh yeah, there was that too. That the entire state of California was basically on fire. That was really fun.   Michael: So the only logical place to be is in the water.   Emil: That's right. It was nice. The water was cold, but it was so hot outside. So it was like the perfect place to be, which is why everyone was there, I assume.   Michael: Did you trunk it?   Emil: I did not know. I'm a baby. When it comes cold water. I always wear a wetsuit. The only time I don't is when I'm like traveling and the water is super warm, like in central America or Bali or somewhere. Alright.   Michael: Right on.   Emil: But in California, I'm always, I'm always in a wetsuit. I'm never, one of them…   Michael: Always suited up.   Emil: Every time I wear trunks, I immediately regret it, so.   Michael: Tom, what did you get up to?   Tom: I just, just managing this bit of a hellscape we have up in Northern California. You guys are further down South in Northern California. I think it's like record like 105 or 109. And you guys look at the air quality with all the fires. So I'm like constantly looking at yeah. Cause it's like, it kind of controls if you can like go outside or not. And it's funny, there are multiple apps out there and it's a Q, ACQ is the one that I'm looking at anyways it's like little bits of ash on the ground and it's, you know, you can't like go inside somewhere else with other people. Cause we're still doing some, some quarantine. It's like a, a, a triple whammy of the heat plus the bad air, plus the pandemic going on. So just being present with wife and baby at the house and making the most of it, playing games,   Emil: It got up to 115 where I live this weekend. It was crazy. We have all these like roses and stuff in the front of our house. And they all got torched. Like they're all dead. After this weekend. It was crazy.   Michael: Wow. One and done.   Emil: What about you Michael, what went on?   Michael: I was hanging out, up North, the central coast where I live for the weekend and my mom actually came up to visit. So we were hosting her and showing her around. But yeah, I was just super hot here as well. We were supposed to do some yoga in the park, socially distant yoga in the park on Sunday. And my buddy was like, dude, it's a hundred degrees. Like, don't come. It's just, you can't be outside. So they have an…   Tom: Outdoor Bikram yoga,   Michael: That’s basically it, yeah. Everyone would just be a sweat box. Yeah. We just went to the beach and hung out and got a little bit of a reprieve, but it was like 95 at the beach too. So we just ended up coming right back home to where I live and it was always a coastal breeze. So it was back in the seventies. So it was great. It was like the only place where we could be where it wasn't pretty much on fire.   Emil: Yeah.   Tom: Pierre did you do anything fun?   Pierre: Yeah. This weekend. So we're starting a music channel here with the housemates and we're going to be running a live stream or more like a virtual concert where we can control the audio quality. So we started filming for that.   Tom: Is it through YouTube or where, where is it published through?   Pierre: Yeah, on YouTube. We just started a YouTube channel.   Emil: Nice. Look at you, man.   Michael: That's really cool.   Pierre: Yeah. I'll drop a quick little shameless plug for Ansel Avenue.   Tom: Ansel Avenue is that what it is?   Pierre: Yeah, Ansel Ave is the page,   Tom: Nice   Pierre: It’s a music production channel and we'll be hosting five different artists on October 9th. And we've been following the COVID shooting guidelines for those of you worrying out there.   Michael: Good man. Good man.   Emil: Quick caveat.   Tom: Awesome. All right, guys, let's jump into this. Ask us anything. So this is a grab bag. We're gonna cover a variety of different topics and we're going to start with what assumptions go into property tax estimates. And I will take the initial crack at this and then I'll, I'll pass it along. So we're going to be talking about property tax estimates, and I'm going to talk about some of the methodologies that Roofstock uses. And then we're also going to touch on ways that you as an investor can think about it, but just kind of riff on the topic of property taxes. So this is what you're paying on a semiannual basis to basically support roads and schools and all those other local great stuff that property taxes pay for. So property taxes, two aspects of it is a, a millage rate, which is a percentage of the assessed value and correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's usually anywhere between like 1% or 2%. Some areas are really high. So in Florida and Texas, where they don't have income taxes, that local area, they make all their money on property taxes. So it's significantly higher. But back to my point, so calculating property taxes, there is a millage rate, which is a percentage of the assessed value.   And then there's also what they call ad valorem or special assessments where it's just adding a flat dollar amount. It's not a percentage of the assessed value. And these could be for, you know, one year the voting populations votes for a bond to put in a new swimming pool with the school or whatever, totally making up things. And this would be like a flat dollar amount that would not be specific to the value of the home. So that's really the, the ingredients that go up to go into making the tax value.   If I'm evaluating a lot of properties at time, I may use a flat percentage just based on it, uh, of, you know, go through this exercise in detail on a couple of properties. And with that neighborhood, I can just apply a set percentage and for properties that make it through the funnel of ones that I want to evaluate further, then I'll go in and looking at the, at the millage rate after doing that initial exercise as a way to kind of batch it and doing a bunch, um, that would be the another way that you can do it, especially whittling down a bigger list of properties. And, um, I'd love to hear, let's see what, Michael, what do you have to say about property tax estimate?   Michael: Yeah. I just have a follow up question. Ad valorem is that Latin?   Tom: Yes. I think it is. It is the proposition to the estimated value of the goods or transactions concerned, shout out to google.   Michael: Country of origin? Please use it in a sentence.   Tom: It's just like an additional flat rate and, uh, you know, really good questions, Michael, really good questions.   Michael: Really prevalent and pertinent question. Yeah. So on, on property taxes, I have a lot of thoughts on, on this subject. Um, cause it's something I see a lot of new investors get wrong and I've been wrong myself too. So there's three values that should not be co-mingled together. One is the assessed value of the property, which will often dictate what your property tax will look like. The other is the insured value from the insurance company. And the last is the sale price. Those three numbers often have no relation to one another. They can in a lot of instances like in California, the assessed value is the same as the sale price, which is then going to change your property taxes. But so just getting that out in the open. So Tom, I think you nailed it with the millage rate. Every County is going to have their own millage rate and they're going to calculate it based on whatever their needs are.   And then it's going to be multiplied by the assessed value and the assessed value can be any number of things. It can be this last sale price of the property. It could be a two year appraisal or a new assessment that the County does on a regular basis. They could do it based on a sale. There's there's any number of reasons why a property could be reassessed. And so you just want to call the County assessor to get a very clear understanding of how is this property going to be evaluated for the assessed value? What is the millage rate and what are the things that could cause the property taxes to change? Once you can ask those questions, you'll have a much clearer understanding of what the property taxes are. And I always tell folks, you know, look at historic to get an idea. You can make this ratio right of, I know what the last sale price is. A lot of that's public information, and I know what last year's property taxes were. So I can calculate, I can almost calculate out a ratio or percentage of the sale price. And you can use that going forward for your worst case scenario and say like, okay, look, if the last person paid 3% of the sale price and property taxes, I can assume I'm going to pay 3% of this new sale price and property taxes annually. As a worst case scenario, it might not be that bad. And so you just want to call the County sets or get an understand, how do you calculate property taxes for your property after the sale to get the most accurate picture?   Tom: An important point I want to make about looking at last year's taxes paid is I think that could be a tricky in that they may have a homeowner's exemptions for some areas. You might get a major discount on your property taxes, if you're an owner occupied and you lived in the property. So that's a super important thing. And you know, Michael, you asked that question in jest about ad valorem and being Latin and I double checked on it and it is Latin and ad valorem actually is the tax based on the assessed value. So I had that a little bit mixed up. So the ad valorem is that, is that calculation of the road relative to the assessed value and its special assessments is what you're paying for on additional and on top of it, for those like, you know, bonds that pass and whatnot. So it was my quick cleanup, a meal. Any final thoughts?   Emil: Yeah. I don't have much that you guys nailed it. The only thing I want to mention is that if you're evaluating different markets, let's say you're looking to buy your first property. This is such an important thing to pay attention to property tax, because you'd be looking at two markets, maybe two separate properties in two markets, you'll see one market that has an awesome rent to price ratio, right? Like let's say you, the sales price is a hundred thousand, but it's renting for $1,500 a month. So it exceeds the 1% rule of saying monthly rent should be 1% of the sales price. So if it was selling for a hundred thousand, it would rent for $1,000 a month and it far exceeds that. Right. But you'll go to another market and it'll be right at the 1% rule, but you'll see that the returns are completely different. And it's because of this property tax, some States, some cities just have super high property tax rates and others don't. And so you'll just be looking at two properties and you're like, why is it so different? And usually the differences of the property tax rate causing it to return to be much less. So that was my rant about price of rent and yeah.   Tom: Yeah. And with, so just some experience. Just some other musings working on the operation side with Roofstock taxes can be a little bit tricky in that when Roofstock, when we had opened up a market there's little sub pockets in the markets where there can be big swings, like where perhaps there's a school assessment that isn't in one pocket. So we, I think it might've been in Memphis where we opened up that market. We did some diligence on some properties and came up with a good methodology of coming up with the taxes and we are up and running and we have these properties listed and then a couple of people close and they, on the closing statement, it said their property taxes were significantly more. And we back as an operations team said, Hey, what did we miss on these property taxes?   And it turned out in some municipalities, the city adds extra taxes on top of the County. So that's something to think about as well. If that area, if there are city taxes that are thrown on with the County taxes, it's, it's not a one size fits all taxes are not as transparent as it should be on what the prices are at the way that certain States they change the assessed value on what you're taxed on, can be really unique from state to state. Like some of them do it on a transaction. Some of them do it on a rolling seven year basis. It's a taxes is not super straightforward. And I think it's a great place where you can play offense where if you're buying a property, you can appeal the tax values, uh, in writing to the County commissioner and say, Hey, this property should be worth this, you know, trying to lower that value to manage your money. So kind of the takeaway is, is taxes can be a little bit tricky, but it's just, you know, do your homework. And I love Michael's point about talking to the County assessor or looking on the County assessor's website is a good one.   Michael: What'd you say Tom, that taxes might almost be a little bit ethereal.   Tom: They are definitely a little bit ethereal for sure. No question   Emil: One additional thing, You'll also notice within your market that the tax rate will be different for a single family than multifamily. So that's, that's an important consideration as well. Often I've found that the tax rate on single family homes will be less than multifamily. So that's another thing. So if you're buying single families and you decide to move into multifamily, I wouldn't use the same rate you're used to seeing on your other properties. I would go figure out what multi-families of that size, what the rates seems to be. And you can, again, tax assessor website, you can ask an agent you're working with whoever, just people, local net market. And they'd be able to give you some insight on that.   Tom: All right, I'm going to tee this one up for Emil. So question for you. Do property managers automatically collect the reserves or is that up to the owner? When you think of mail what's your strategy on this?   Emil: They do not. So the, the only thing the property manager holds for you is they have like a minimum account balance. So some will be like $250 or 500. And that's just a minimum balance so that they can cover things when necessary, right? The property. Manager's not going to be your bank. So when little things come up, they maintain a small amount of reserves to be able to cover those things. All the reserves, you know, we talk about CapEx, repair and maintenance, all those reserves that's on you. So your, your property managers collecting rent, taking their fee and then distributing the rest to you. So they're not maintaining any reserve above that minimum I mentioned,   Tom: It's a baby. They keep a baby reserves, right?   Emil: Yeah. 250,500 is not a yeah.   Michael: Yeah. I think that's not the reserve that most people are talking about when they talk about reserves. Like Emil mentioned it's for the one little stuff and the reserves that you should have for those, but the lender is going to require you to have, or for your cap tax and your maintenance. That's all on you as the owner to set that money aside to your market. When you get it out of the monthly rent to then have it sitting ready to deploy,   Emil: How do you guys maintain your reserves personally? Like, do you have a separate account for it? Do you just leave it in your checking account where everything's deposited, like at a minimum level? I think it'd be good to…   Michael: My property manager does it for me.   Emil: Oh, nice. So you just, uh...   Michael: I figure out how much I should be having and then set it aside. And I figured out how much cashflow I should be making. I try to not touch the cashflow from properties, or at least I did that when I was first started investing. Now I'm using much of that to fund other projects in my daily life. So my strategy has since changed a little bit, but I try to never take more than my calculator tells me I should be making on a monthly or annual basis from a particular property. And I leave everything else in the account.   Tom: Yeah. Similar amount. I just have a separate, separate bank account where I keep a few thousand few thousand bucks, maybe a thousand, 2000 bucks a property on top of the reserves that the, you know, that baby reserves that the property managers all keep. And just within that one account, it's this, this beautiful flow of mortgage going out, rent payments coming in, and if need be, you know, pushing some additional of my larger reserve account into that particular property manager account.   Emil: Nice.   Tom: Excellent. Once this next question relates to 10 31 exchanges and we cover a lot of topics related to 10 31 in episode 15 of the remote real estate investor. Uh, so if you want to go deeper on this stuff, check out that episode. But this question is with a 10 31 exchange from, can you go from a multifamily to multiple single family or from a single family to multifamily or multiple single family? Basically that question of going up and down, uh, as an exchange and you gentlemen, like to a step on this one?   Michael: Short answer is yes. From what we learned from the podcast episode about 10 31 exchange, episode 15, like you mentioned, Tom, and it just has to be like kind property. So that's the investment property for investment property, both ways the property you're selling into the investment property and the property you're buying needs to be investment property. And there are some very strict rules, guidelines, and regulations about the cost basis of those properties, the purchase price, the equity share that you have in those properties. So yes, you can go from a single family to multifamily or from a single family to multiple single families or from a single multifamily to one single family. Any combination of is my understanding that you can, you can go and I'm going to preface this all, talk to a tax professional, talk to a 10 31 professional accommodator, but this is my 2 cents. This is my understanding based on that episode, as long as you're following the rules. Yes, it's absolutely possible. But you just want to make sure that you're involving a professional accommodator to assist with that process. And they can absolutely walk you through the do's, the don'ts and everything in between of how to go about it.   Emil: You can also do commercial to single family as well. We actually have a case study up on roofstock.com of two entrepreneurs who live in the Bay area who had a commercial property. They ended up selling it and 10 30ing into like 167 homes in the Southeast and Midwest. So you can, you can also do commercial insists.   Michael Yeah. I think the restriction is only investment to investment. So if it's an investment property, industrial, whatever, as long as the new property is also an investment property, I think you're in the clear.   Tom: Yeah. And just to redefine the value of the 10 31, it allows you to sell a property without paying any taxes on it. So as long as you, you roll all those proceeds into another and investment following all the 10 31 rules, but pretty cool. Like imagine trying to you buy a bunch of stock, it appreciates a ton, you sell it and you can move it into a different stock without paying any taxes. You can't do that with stock, but you can do it with real estate. It's just one of those really neat aspects, but makes real estate so fun and cool.   Michael: Well, actually, Tom, there's something that I think we've covered on a previous episode, but there's the opportunity zone. And so if you sell stock and look to invest in real estate, there are ways to avoid paying capital gains on the sale of the stock. If you invest in an opportunity zone, but that's for another episode.   Tom: A zigzag 10 31 that's right. I mean, not, not, not really, but you know, a different way to approach it. Okay. My, the next question I have here is what is a REIT or a real estate investment trust.   Michael: Tom, do you want to take this one because you're kind of, you played in that space. Yes, you're right. My goal, I did play in this. I worked for a REIT. So a, a re is defined as a real estate investment trust. And essentially what it is is you're buying a percentage in a company, a collection of homes. So unlike buying an individual home and owning it in your name, you're just buying a percentage of this.   And it's a REIT is a company that owns and operates and income producing properties. Uh, it is a way to be really diversified in that you're buying it. And you automatically kind of have access to all the markets that the portfolio of that REIT is in. I worked for a single family REIT, it's called Invitation Homes. It previously was Waypoint Homes, and then it got gobbled up by another company and became colony Starwood Homes, and then got gobbled up by invitation homes as businesses do. But it is a, an easy way to invest in real estate. You know, you're not investing directly into the individual assets, but you're investing into this pool of assets. Some other aspects about REITs is most of at least the single family REITs, they have a similar makeup in that they're all using about 50%. They all have a similar market footprint covering, you know, mainly the Southeast, the, the Florida, maybe Arizona, Texas, a very similar footprint up makeup.   So an advantage of a REIT is you have great liquidity where you can get in and out very, very quickly. But what isn't as attractive as a REIT is you do not have the type of upside that you would on an individual property. It's ‘cause it's peanut butter spreading like the uber peanut butter spreading the risk. Something that also just kind of personal anecdote with a REIT is I, as I worked at this rate and I saw how the properties were performing and oftentimes the value of the rate, wasn't completely indicative of the performance of the property. Just the way that globalization has. There's, there's so many aspects that can affect a stock's price that doesn't have to do with the property. So, you know, one reason that I like to own property directly is the performance of the property is going to dictate the performance of the returns versus a lot of other stuff that's going on in the economy. So that's my 10 cents on a REIT. It is a publicly traded stock where you're buying a percentage of a collection of properties.   Michael: Tom, you worked at the single family or read that own single family homes, but aren't there also REITs out there that own multifamily and commercial and kind of any kind of piece of property that exists. But is it fair to say that there's a REIT that probably owns that?   Tom: That's right. Big multifamily data centers, hotels, offices, warehouses. So there's a lot of different flavors of reads and reads have been around for a while. Single family reads a pretty new just in that industry really came to fruition in the early mid 2010s. It's a relatively a baby versus some of the other types of REITs out there, but that's right. There are a REITs in all types of different flavors.   Michael: Awesome. Thanks   Tom: A few last points about REITs. So there are publicly traded REITs and these are REITs that are traded on stock exchanges. There are public non traded REITs, and then there are private REITs and with private rates, these are not registered with the sec and do not trade on any security exchange and typically require you to be an institutional or an accredited investor. So the last question that I have here is what is the best type of account for holding cash in preparation for investing or reinvesting kind of ties into reserves a little bit. I think that's typically in the same vein. Michael, do you want to take the initial stab at this?   Michael: Yeah. I always think it's, whatever account can get you the best interest rate that's as safe, insecure as they come. And it's kind of a hotly debated topic. I posted about it on Twitter a while back about, Hey, if you've got 10 grand that you're saving for real estate investing, but you need 20 to get in. Do you place that in the stock market or do you place it in a savings account and some folks at stock market to grow it? Others said cash in the bank. I'm of the opinion that if you're looking to invest in real estate cash preservation is really important because as we've seen in the stock market, especially over the last couple of weeks, there are some major ups and some major downs. And so for folks that are willing to ride that rollercoaster, they might have a very different opinion because they have big potential upside. So that 10 grand could turn into 20 grand in a couple of weeks, a couple months, depending on how good the stock market does. I'm not willing to play that game because it could also go to zero. So I like sticking it just in a checking savings account, whatever gets the best interest rate and it's free to have.   Tom: Yeah, I think convenience could be a factor. I think just like Michael said, liquidity of being able to move quickly. If I know that I'm not going to move to buy something in the next six months, I mean, I could put it in a CD if I'm feeling a little exotic, not that a CD is very exotic, but anyways, if you look around, there are great savings accounts that pop up every once in a while, I know a couple of years ago, allied bank had a 2% return and I think Marcus, it might've been Goldman Sachs. They turned them on at this great rate and they often will kind of flow back down as an initial kind of teaser to get people, to put their money there. But it's worth looking at that. And it's, this is a good personal preference answer. I'm in a similar vein as Michael, where I'll keep it in a savings account, but you know, if you want it to put it in some ETF, like that probably would be okay, there's been a little bit more volatility as of late, but if you know that you're going to be sitting for a while on that cash, it could make sense where you can get a better return somewhere else on what your risk threshold is. Risk tolerance. That's the word. Yes.   Michael: Yeah. I was gonna say on that note, you know, I had a, um, like an eight or nine month time horizon. So I bought some municipal bonds or some or treasury bills that were like paying at the time, I think like 2% or like 2.05. Cause it was just a super short term. And if it was better than the point, Oh 1% of the bank offered so super safe, you know, relatively liquid investment that if you need to get out of you can. But yeah, that's all I wanted to say on that. Those are gonna be good options as well.   Emil: I think it really matters on your situation. Like, let's say you have 5,000 bucks and you need to get to 20 K and you look at how much you're saving each month and it's going to take you three to four years, right? Like you're just not saving enough. I would say you, you have more to gain than to lose. It's just going to take you awhile. I would personally go put that in something where I can get higher yield. Yeah. It's you could call it gambling or whatever, but right now you're really trying to accumulate capital. You don't have as much to lose. I, I would try to bank roll that into something bigger. And that's, I'm speaking from that personally. That's like how I bought my first property. I invested some money in the stock market invested for a couple years, got lucky and cashed out and bought some rental property. I mean, but if you're like looking to buy the next six to 12 months, I personally wouldn't want to take that gamble with such a short time horizon. I would just be putting it in the savings account. I would even say like the account type, even just like find a savings account, all these banks right now, they're pretty close to one another.   And the interest rate they're giving you is nominal because of how like interest rates are so low right now. I think I looked at my savings account. It was like 0.65% annual yield. It's like, it's irrelevant. You're not, you're not getting really any yield there. It's just cash preservation like Michael mentioned. Right? So if your time horizon is short, you just are saving cash to deploy in the next six, 12. I just put in a savings until you get to the, the amount you need to invest.   Michael: That's such a good point in the order to make that you have in that instance, more to gain than you do to lose. If you've got a long enough time horizon and you're playing with the smaller amount of money, as long as you're not needing that money to pay your bills or whatever, that's purely allocated for investing. I think that's a really good point and something definitely to consider for each individual.   Tom: All right, last question for the day is for this episode, is, are there any litigious trends against landlords? How likely is it to be sued? I'll kick this one off and say that, you know, this is not legal advice. This is, we're just talking from our own personal experiences within my portfolio. I've never dealt with any litigious issues. When I worked at one of these REITs, that own thousands of homes, we had some stuff pop up, but I think sometimes there are people that would see the big company and, you know, they would see it as an opportunity to come at them. So I'm not going to say that it doesn't happen, but I haven't seen or heard of any litigious trends happening within my experience. Haven't been sued or had any of those types of issues. Let's pass this off to one of the other hosts. What are your, what are you guys?   Michael: I think he talked to anybody in this space, any professional in the space, they've got stories, then you hear about, it's a very litigious environment. And we know this, the U S is often referred to as a very litigious country. People are often suing each other for all kinds of reasons. And so I personally knock on wood. I have never been involved in a super, my older brother has, he was served actually, um, for a kind of ridiculous thing, ended up getting dismissed by the judge because it was somebody trying to make a cash grab and, and didn't really have much to their claim, but this kind of stuff happens at any time and we're in a people business. And so people do stupid stuff. People do all kinds of crazy stuff. And so you can only control what you're doing. And so protecting yourself from those types of litigations, I think is really important. And so just make sure you're doing your homework and talk to professionals about what it is you can do to set yourself up for success.   Tom: And this is another annual episode, shout out to making sure that you, you know, you have a good property manager and a reputable property manager. Cause if I know if I were to have any sort of litigious issues, like they would be on the front lines of, of managing that with the tenant or the person living there at the property, they're really their first line of defense of deescalating, any types of issues and managing that. So shout out to getting a good property manager and vetting your property manage. Emil?   Emil: I think this question kind of gets that too. Like, do I need an LLC? Do I need umbrella insurance? Like what all the different ways I can protect myself. And just, again, speaking from personal experience, first property I bought where I knew like most of my net worth, I hadn't really generated any wealth yet and still haven't generate anything meaningful. But I think again, when you have less to lose getting caught in the weeds and all these things, like you can just get brain damage from all the different ways to protect yourself when you don't really have a ton yet that needs protection. Again, personal experience, as you start acquiring more, as your wealth goes up and you have more things to lose, this is when it's like, you need like a real estate attorney having all these different protections, I think matter more and more and more like as you're, you're playing a lot of offense early on. And then as things grow, it is really about preservation and not losing what you've built. That's at least the way I've, I've kind of approached these things.   Michael: It's such a good point and that's kind of the second time you've made it as is what's what's the risk. And so I come from the insurance world, we always ask ourselves, okay, what's the risk when we're making a decision? What's the bet, how big of a downside is it? And if it was a $1 billion semiconductor plant that was going to burn down or not based on the decision we made, we're going to spend a lot of time evaluating and analyzing that decision with a microscope and a fine tooth comb, if it was a $10,000, uh, swing one way or the other, which in the insurance world is not a big deal. We would just make a decision and move on because the impact wasn't really meaningful, same thing with your, with your personal finances. If the impact is not going to be significant make a decision and move on.   And I also want to caution people. There are tons of snake oil salespeople out there that are trying to use scare tactics, to get people, to buy products that they really don't need and protect themselves that they don't need. I remember talking to somebody a few months ago, they were talking about setting up series LLCs and Delaware trust and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, great. How many properties do you own? Well, none I haven't bought any yet. Okay, well, let's use that money to maybe go buy the property first. And then we can talk about all that type of protection. And that's not to say, don't protect yourself on the front end, don't do your homework if you're small, quite the opposite, you need to be informed, but you also need to understand what's overkill. And there's absolutely a point where you can be over insured and deciding for yourself as an individual is what's important because I can't tell you Tom or Emil, if you're over insured or not, if you feel comfortable, great, that's what matters. Doesn't really matter what I think. But I would say that there are, there are things out there and there are tactics being used out there to scare people into buying products that they probably don't need.   Tom: Alright guys ready for the fun end of the episode, get to know the host.   Emil: Let's do it.   Michael: Totally.   Tom: Alright, so get your phone out. This is going to be the exercise. You're going to go to your phone. You're gonna go to settings. I want you guys to talk about…   Michael: If you make me change my language is something I don't understand I’m going to be really upset.   Tom: Yeah. So click on settings, click on settings. And then you're going to click on screen time, which is below notifications. Okay. And then you're going to click on, see all activity. And you're going to look at your most used apps and we're going to talk very quickly on our top two most used apps. You can't count messages or Gmail or whatever, like the nonstandard apps. And so I'm looking at mine right now. I'll go first, my top two, Audible, I had a little bit of a car ride and I'm, that's one of my most recent ones. The audio book, one shout out to Eric Larson. That guy is such a, he writes these historical stories that are really awesome. He wrote this one called devil in the white city, the splendid and the vial is the one on audible. I'm listening right now. It's about Churchill and world war II. And what a neat dude. And the other one I've let's see, go ahead.   Michael: Any relation to Gary Larson?   Tom: I don't think so. Eric Larson. Super interesting guy. So, and the other one I've been using is downward dog. It's this yoga app, but like what? It creates a new routine every time, but it's you like set these settings like, Oh, do you want to be really tired at the end? Or do you want to as a more mellow and then you pick how long it is. And it's probably my favorite, one of those types of apps. So downdog is what it's called. Shout at the down dog. Emil you're up. What's your two most, Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Grill me. Go ahead.   Michael: I wanted to say, before a meal goes, I want to know too, in addition to the, the top two, what's your daily average screen time?   Tom: It one hour and 48 minutes. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. You guys got to answer that. I have a big advantage in that I had my phone hidden for like four days last week. So I was just taking a break. If you guys are over that you guys are using way too much phone time.   Emil: I feel like this is going to be very, very easy for you guys to guess mine. Top two. I'm going to say Twitter and Gmail. No, it can't be email. Yeah, exactly. No messages, no GMO, no phone. It has to be like apps,   Pierre: Wave tracker or some other surf app?   Michael: Oh, just apps. Okay. Twitter and boy littering and littering it right on Twitter. Twitter by LinkedIn. Instagram. No, I don't have, I deleted my Instagram. LinkedIn is Facebook. Worst list. I deleted Facebook off my phone surf line guys. Come on.   Pierre: I said wave trackers.   Emil: Oh, you did? You were muted. Okay. So yeah, surf line. So Twitter and surf line. I am very predictable. And uh, yeah. So that's me and Twitter by a large margin.   Michael: What’s your daily average use?   Emil: Two hours and 45 minutes.   Tom: That's not bad at all. I, I bet you mine is normally way over. If I didn't have my phone hitting hidden from me,   Emil: I've been trying to, I think some weeks it goes three and a half plus, but I've been trying to make a more conscious effort to like, not be on my phone, especially when I'm hanging out with my family it away. Yeah. Right. Michael your turn. Yup.   Michael: All right. So we said nail apps don't count.   Tom: Nope. You can't repeat one that Emil has picked.   Emil: No I want to know if Twitter if it's on there.   Michael: Yeah Twitter is my, it is my number two. Okay. Twitter is my number two. Let's see. Photos is the next, which isn't really an app. Facebook is next. I get a lot of, I like reading news stories on Facebook so that, yeah, Twitter and Facebook are my two.   Tom: I like it. Right. And my daily average is one hour and 14 minutes.   Emil: Oh my God. One 14. You're on Twitter or you just Twittering on your desktop.   Michael: Yeah. I, I am. I do Twitter on my desktop. I do tweet from my desktop occasionally, but yeah. I try to not be on my phone a lot and I'm just constantly, I do a lot of work from the computer. So I think that's probably why I like, to be honest, I just make phone calls a lot. Um, yeah. I try to, I try to keep the phone away as best as I can.   Tom: I like it. Alright Pierre?   Pierre: I'm not seeing that option in my settings?   Tom: Are you on an iPhone?   Pierre: No I am on an android.   Tom: Oh.   Pierre: Nobody's perfect.   Tom: That good news. You get to make up whatever you want.   Pierre: That's true. What do you think your top two?   Emil: What do you think? You probably know what apps are.   Pierre: I have to say YouTube and either Google podcasts or Audible.   Tom: And what do you think your average screen time is?   Pierre: I don't know. A couple hours. I use my phone quite a bit. There's gotta be a way to tell that. I guess I don't track that stuff.   Emil: Pssht, androids…   MIchael: I remember my first smartphone.   Emil: You don't, you don't even want to get into it with Pierre he will just tell you you're a, you're an Apple sheep.   Pierre: No, there's some good things about Apple.   Emil: Oh yeah. Just cause we're recording. It's just cause we're recording.   Pierre: I'm about to put some new ram in my computer and I was considering getting an Apple until I realized I can't put more ram in an Apple, and I was like, get the hell out of here.   Michael: Yeah. It's factory set. Right? You can't, there's not a whole lot of changes you can do. I think that's the big draw for non-Apple products, right? It's just a bit more customizable.   Tom: I mean, if most of the software you use is like Gmail, YouTube, Chrome. Like why not go, go straight to the source, you know, and have Android. I've always thought about switching to Android. And I think at some point I will. I just get used to the, the smooth iPhone functionality   Pierre: And also the power per buck. You know, the amount of power you can get per buck with a PC as opposed to an Apple for me, it's just a pretty great thing. Just get more value out of a smaller down payment.   Michael: That make sense.   Tom: All right guys. Well that wraps us up for today. We would appreciate it. If you like the episode to give us a rating and subscribe as always, this episode is brought to you by the Roofstock Academy. Roofstock Academy, your one stop shop for all things, getting to the next level in real estate, we have over 50 hours of on-demand lectures. We've got coaching. We've got really cool book clubs where we bring the author in, which is really fun. We sometimes do that. I hope to do it all the time and a really awesome Slack channel where you can get real time conversations with other folks in the program with the coaching, all that good stuff. And last but not least, we have $2,500 of credits back if you buy on Roofstock. So the program costs $1,250. And if you buy on Roofstock, you get $500 cash back for five transactions, totaling $2,500. You're actually making money. It's kind of like a buyer reward program. You can think of it that way. So we hope you liked this episode and happy investing!