How Demographics Support a Strong Canadian Housing Market Over the Next Decade with Ben Myers of Fortress Real Developments
Housing analyst Ben Myers of Fortress Real Developments is back to talk about the Canadian housing market on this week’s episode of the True Condos podcast. We talk about demographics, mortgage fraud, household debt levels, shadow banking, foreign buyers, and of course how it all relates to the Toronto condo market for condo investors.
Click Here for Ben Myers Interview Transcript
| Andrew: | On today’s episode, we sat down with Ben Myers, housing analyst extraordinaire and friend of the show. We talked about demographics, mortgage fraud, household debt levels, shadow banking, foreign buyers, and of course, we got into a little Blue Jays talk. Stay tuned.
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| Announcer: | Welcome to the true condos broadcast with Andrew LaFleur, the place to get the truth on the Toronto condo market and condo investing in Toronto. |
| Andrew: | It’s my pleasure to welcome back to the show for I think about the third time. Might be a record. One of our favorite guests. Ben Myers, Senior Vice President Market Research and Analytics at Fortress Real Developments |
| Ben, welcome to the show. | |
| Ben: | Thank you, Andrew. Thanks for having me back. |
| Andrew: | Yeah, looking forward to chatting with you. Of course about your latest market manuscript, which you just recently put out. I’m talking about the markets across Canada. Of course I want to focus on Toronto as well. Before I do that I got to ask, here we are April 1st, Blue Jay season about to get started. What are your thoughts? I know you’re a huge fan. |
| Ben: | Yeah. |
| Andrew: | How are you looking forward to the season? |
| Ben: | I’m pretty excited, obviously. It is probably the best team they’ve assembled since probably 1993. Certainly my expectations are as high as they have ever been. Hopefully they can live up to those expectations and the key is to stay injury free. If they can stay injury free they will be in it at the end of the year and that is all I really want is to be playing meaningful baseball in September. Hopefully, I will be back playing in October again. |
| Andrew: | Let’s face it the city is still buzzing from the playoff run in the fall. Isn’t it? |
| Ben: | Yeah. I mean … |
| Andrew: | People are really excited. |
| Ben: | Yeah. The calls into sports radio shows are being dominated by baseball which is shocking given how good the Raptors are this year. We will see. Hopefully, the team gets off well and hitting some more home runs and filling up the ball park. |
| Andrew: | What do you think is their … You are an analyst, obviously, for a living. Let’s talk to Ben Myers the baseball analyst. What do you think their biggest strength and their biggest weakness? |
| Ben: | Well, obviously, the hitting is their biggest strengths. They have got four guys that are MVP quality guys all back to back in the lineup. The weakness will potentially be the starting rotation. You have Stroman and Sanchez who are both so very young. Have never pitched 150 to 200 innings in a single year. You’ve got Estrada, who had one good year. We don’t know how good he is going to be moving forward. Happ, again, had 10 good starts with Pittsburgh last year and landed himself a three year, 36 million dollar deal. |
| Andrew: | Not bad. Yep. |
| Ben: | A 40 year old guy that chucks up a knuckle ball. Right? It could go horribly wrong in the starting rotation or it could go very right. As long as they’re average with this hitting line up they should be good. |
| Andrew: | Yeah. Do you buy into that theory that basically the pitching just has to be kind of average because the hitting is going to be so good? As long as the pitching is average they are going to be an elite team. |
| Ben: | Winning is about scoring more runs than the other team. Pretty simple. If your team is scoring five to seven runs every single game you got to let up less than six and less than four. Right? Depending on those two scores. You don’t have to go out like a Tampa Bay and let up zero or one run every single game if you want to win. Right? It should be exciting. I would much rather watch seven-six games than one-nothing games all day. |
| Andrew: | Yeah. Absolutely. I hear you. Well, I am looking forward. This should be a great year. Let’s switch gears and talk about housing. Housing markets and of course your market manuscript just came out where you’re analyzing the entire Canadian housing market. What is the number one theme as you’re reflecting on the markets across Canada right now? What is the number one theme or number one insight that stands out to you from your latest report right now? |
| Ben: | There was two topics that kind of came up over the last six months. I do this report bi-annually. There is two topics that are really kind of the discussion over the last six months were mortgage fraud and demographics. All right? It is either home capital groups suspended 40 brokers because of potential or suspected fraudulent applications that were coming in. That became news. How big of a problem is that overall in the industry? Is it something that is very small and going to be isolated? I describe it like a small fire in your microwave. Can you just put that out before it takes down your whole house or is there little small fires happening all over the place that are going to eventually burn down your entire house? That is what I kind of look at it in my head. All right? |
| Just from what I saw. I just didn’t see anything from the stuff that I looked at that really set alarm bells off in my head. Certainly, I mentioned in the press release that we did, just not enough information. There is not really any type of time series where I can look at or reporting that I can look at. The only data that I could find was in the law society of Upper Canada where people put in complaints about lawyers. We are talking about 50 to 60 complaints in a year. When we’re having 600 thousand new mortgage origination’s across the country every single year. It is really not something you can glean much information from. | |
| Then on the demographic side there’s talk that the population is getting too old or the natural population is slow. They are having less kids. We continue to get strong population growth and a lot of that is fueled through immigration but we still have a very strong population of the 25 to 35 range. That is where most of the household formation is happening. People are moving out of mom and dad’s house. They are finishing up college and they are looking for their own place. Right? | |
| In the development industry it doesn’t matter if someone is renting or buying. They are still using up a unit or creating a new unit of demand, and that trickles across the entire industry. So, if someone comes in and rents a unit it’s one less unit for someone to rent. Somebody will have to and rent another unit or buy another unit. Right? Often the development industry needs to create that unit or that level of demand. | |
| It looks like that age group, that primary household formation age, is going to continue to be increasing out for the next five years based off Canada’s low growth scenario. If you take their high growth scenario this could be growing for another 10 years. That’s certainly positive for anyone that is in the development industry. Just as a comparison, it was almost 10 years or longer. Just off the top of my head I can’t remember. Where we actually saw decline in that age group happen and that was back in the 1990s. Not only do we have a recession but we had a decline in the key household formation age. That really kind of just added to the negativity that was happening in that market at that time. It was almost from 1990 out until 2001. So, it was like an 11 year period where we had a declines in that primary household formation age. | |
| Andrew: | Interesting. What is driving … I don’t know if you can speak to it. What is driving the growth in that key home buying demographic? Is it just the cycle? Like you said it was down and now it’s up. Just these things goes in waves. Is immigration driving it? |
| Ben: | I have got to look and say, “Yeah.” Where there is boom there is … There was a baby boom after the war and those people had children and a lot of those children are in that age. Right? I am probably one of the older kids of a baby boomer. Now you’re seeing this echo generation and these millennials in a fairly large numbers. Right? Again that is going to ebb and flow. Again, we don’t know the immigrants and what ages they are going to be. You may get a crop of older immigrants coming in or you might get a crop of younger ones. That is why there is this kind of a larger gap between the forecast by statistics Canada. |
| Andrew: | Right. Another key point from your report is talking about household debt. There is a lot of talk, obviously, about household debt. A lot of the bears of real estate will always point out household debt is so high or they will make comparisons between household debt in Canada today versus household debt levels in the US at the moment of their crash eight or ten years ago. Are Canadians over leveraged? Should we be worried? What do you find on that? |
| Ben: | Yeah. It was interesting. I actually went out to mortgage brokers. I did a survey of mortgage brokers and asked them, what do you think of your clients? Are they over leveraged? Are they buying the right home for their budget? It was interesting results. Exactly 50% of the agents said, “Yeah.” Their client was buying the right home for their financial situation. 22% said, “They are conservative. They are buying less than their budget.” Another 11% were risk averse. They bought a home that was like considerably below their financial means. They could have bought a much bigger house or a much more expensive home and 9% said they were over leveraged. They had to pull some strings to get them into the house. 8% was they were stretching their budget. |
| It is only 17% they expressed, “Okay. They are kind of going over what they should be.” That kind of matches what we have been told for a long time. We see lower arrears rates. You see our arrears rate is, other than a small period in the late 1990s, have been considerably below the United States for 25 years. Obviously that tells me that regardless of if you want to build in a lag time between when a market goes bad and a market doesn’t go bad. It is 25 years of information there that says, “We are being better. We are doing a better job of underwriting than they are in the United States.” | |
| Andrew: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). This question also ties in with another part of your report talking about home equity line of credit, HELOCs, and private mortgages that some people call shadow banking. Sort of secondary sources of financing outside of the traditional financing for people buying homes. What did you find out about that side of it? Is this a big factor in the market? |
| Ben: | Yeah. It’s interesting. It is kind of a double edge sword here. Right? We had this major market meltdown in the United States. Every major bank in this country not only took it upon themselves to do better underwriting but were pressured from the government side to do it as well. Also, put in several rounds of mortgage tightening. Once people are tightened, I guess, or forced away from a traditional, “Go to my bank and get a mortgage now. I can’t qualify for that.” |
| Well, “Okay. I still want to buy a house.” Have we … Underwriting is now much better for the people seeking traditional sources of mortgage funds but now we are creating a bigger group that is potentially going out into this secondary market to find financing for a house because as we know people want what they want. If they want a house they are going to go out and try to seek a house. Yeah. Some will just say, “Okay. I couldn’t get my mortgage from RBC. I am going to just not buy a house. I am going to just continue to rent.” A lot of them are saying, “No. I really want a house because it is part of the American dream or the Canadian dream to own something.” | |
| They are going out and seeking private mortgages, a second mortgages, or something to get them into a home. There is always that worry that that is happening. My survey of the mortgage brokers showed that 89% of them said that the private mortgages were increasing. 76% said that second mortgages were increasing. 55% said unsecured credit lines were increasing. 56% said HELOCs were increasing. That’s certainly something we are keeping an eye on. | |
| In the end if you look at studies done by mortgage professionals Canada, formerly CAMP, and just look at the shares of people and the interest rates that they are getting. These private mortgages are often times are 8, 9, 10, even as high as 14% interest rates. If you look at the share of Canadians that have mortgage rates in that range it’s extremely small. Less than 5%. In some cases less than 2% in some of those double digit interest rates. It’s certainly not something I am too worried about right now. | |
| The only time I would potentially be worried about it is if we had any kind of major recession. If we had a major recession where a lot of people were forced to sell their houses. Right now the market is good. Even in Calgary and Edmonton. Yes, they are not adding new jobs. They are not seeing any price growth but the market is down 1 or 2%. There is no blood in the water. There is not major foreclosures. None of that is happening right now. You are not going to see any type of the bottom of the market come up and cause any other major issues. | |
| In Toronto, if any of these peoples houses came on the market, there would be a line up to buy them and that is just … That gives me some comfort in this shadowy part of the market, which everyone loves to talk about, is really not something as big as a concern as some make it out to be. It makes for good stories in a magazine and you do get the anecdotal story or the one sad sack story of someone that lost their house or got taken advantage of. I think it is a really small part of the overall market. | |
| Andrew: | Small part of the market. Not something that could potentially be a catalyst or trigger for a market collapse or something like that. In the same way that we saw in the United States, 8 – 10 years ago, where the market sort of collapsed on itself because it was sort of just a house of straw kind of thing. |
| Ben: | Well, people say to me, “Well, the market crashed in the United States because prices were too high.” No, prices were high because it was a symptom of easy credit and fraudulent activity that was happening. The prices were just a symptom of that. Yes, there was leaders in place that it didn’t see it happen but once … The thing that I always tell someone, “If a kid almost drowns in your neighbor’s pool. Guess what? You are going to be a lot more diligent around your pool.” That is what is happening in Canada. |
| We said, “Okay. Wow, that was bad. We don’t ever want anything like that to happen in Canada.” Just go on about being much more diligent which I think we already were in who we give mortgages to. We are not … There has been crackdowns on even … You can probably talk to this more than I could but crackdowns on how many mortgages investors can get for multiple properties. A lot of those things I hear across the board when I talk to realty agents. They say, “Yeah. My guy used to be able to get 20 mortgages. Now a bank will only give him five.” Even though this guy is a multi-millionaire who has been doing this for 25 years. They are just being more conservative on how they treat that secondary or as the bears like to say, “The speculative home buyer.” | |
| Andrew: | Yeah. Absolutely. We can … This happened very slowly too. I mean over the last decade it certainly … It happens little increments, little bits, little pieces, but it is all going and tightening up. The whole package has been tightened. It has become more difficult for sure to get a mortgage today in 2016 than it was in 2007. Absolutely. |
| It is not just something that happened over night. There is government policies and bank policies. A number of factors have contributed to it but it certainly has been a tightening process as opposed to a loosening process. The demand is still there. There is so much demand. There is so much growth. Especially in the GDA. The market just keeps pushing forward and keeps progressing. | |
| Ben: | Sure. |
| Andrew: | Go ahead. |
| Ben: | I was just going to say, I mean, young people from across Ontario want to come to Toronto. People, even in the United States and other countries, are seeing what Toronto is. It is a very welcoming city. It is a growing global city. It is a clean city. It is a welcoming city for all races, colors, and creeds. If you look at the opportunity. If someone is looking for opportunity in New York or they are looking at the opportunity in Toronto. Are you going to pay 2400 dollars a square foot to live in New York or are you going to pay 4 thousand dollars a month for a one bedroom in San Francisco or are you going to come to Toronto and pay 700 dollars a square foot or 650 dollars a square foot or get a one bedroom for 1500 bucks a month and still get those same opportunities that you would in New York? |
| I think people are seeing that opportunity and seeing that how such a great opportunity that is involved with Toronto. I don’t see that changing. I think the condo boom has been the greatest thing ever for Toronto. It just allows all these young people to have access to the city and everything the city has to offer. Instead of being stuck out in the suburbs and taking a two hour bus ride to get to the job downtown. They are living in the city. They are spending money in the city. They are consuming in the city. It creates jobs. Creates restaurants. Creates bars. | |
| It just feeds in on itself. I think that is just amazing. We have people having startup companies running out of their condos. Got three employees in there. When they have a client over they go rent out the guest suite or the office. I think it is very conducive to getting creative, intelligent people into the city. | |
| Andrew: | That is a great segway to this. How does Toronto compare to the rest of the world? We have seen you talking about that and tweeting about it as well. Toronto versus other major world cities. What do we need to know? |
| Ben: | Yeah. There is a few different sources of information that is contracting that. One is a little … It based off of people putting in the the information. I guess that is only as good as the people entering the information that is through a website called Noon Deal. It has a lot of information where you can compare across several different companies. Then UBS did a study where they looked at housing costs, wage levels, their food costs, or the cost of services. Basically for the NGO data I just looked at city centers. Basically, just the core of the cities. What it would cost to rent a one bedroom? What it would cost to rent a three bedroom? The average price offers both a basis for a condo. I looked at the average annual salary after taxes. |
| You look at New York and London, these big, massive worldly global centers and people are making 20 to 25% more than they do on average in Toronto. Yet, they are paying in London $3,167 per square foot for a condo. In New York, like I mentioned, $2,419 per square foot for a condo. It costs on food average 30% more in London than in Toronto. In New York, 37% more for food costs. 17% more in London for services. 21% for New York. You are not making that much more money. Yet you are paying a lot more for services, food, and housing. It really just shows you why a lot of investors are very bullish on Toronto and continue to put their money here. | |
| Andrew: | How long do you think this can last? Is it inevitable that Toronto will become this very expensive city on par with these other cities and we’ll look back on these days so to speak and say, “Wow. Toronto was just this small little cheap city and now we are just like all the others.” or will we always be lagging behind. Will we always be sort of a cheaper city? What do you think? |
| Ben: | I think it really depends on the level of supply we add to the city. Right? You might go to Boston. It is a small little place and everything is just so expensive. They don’t have a lot of high rise condos. You look at Los Angeles and they do the little … I don’t know if you are watching the basketball game. They pan the downtown. It is is like literally 10 high rise towers. It is unbelievable. Everyone is driving from two hours from their giant house and being stuck in traffic all day. It is just not conducive for a dense, urban, walk-able communities that people want in transit. |
| We are adding 20-25,000 units a year and we thought, “Oh my goodness. That is way too much. There is never going to be the people to fill them.” It was kind of the other way around. The investors saw that the demand could be higher. Right? As opposed to demand being there. Instead of end users buying them, because they wanted to live in Toronto. Investors bought them, thought the demand would be there, and the demand ended up being there. The supply actually came first before the demand. It is kind of an interesting change in what’s typically the way things happen. | |
| Yeah. I could get a job offer in New York, and Toronto, and say, “You know what? The incomes are close but hey. It is so much cheaper in Toronto. I am going to take Toronto because there is something available that is a lot more inexpensive.” It is a different way of thinking about it that rarely gets talked about is people that people that wouldn’t have ever moved to Toronto. No they say, “Wow. It is actually not as expensive as I thought it would be.” or ended up moving here because we created the supply and we’ve kept housing relatively affordable. | |
| People still think, obviously, it’s still expensive. If you want to live in a 1,000 square foot unit at $650 a square foot. Yeah. That is not cheap but in reality if you want to buy a 400 square foot condo, and have no parking, it’s very affordable in comparison to any major city in the world. Certainly anyone that is in cities that is on par with Toronto. | |
| Andrew: | Yeah. Absolutely. It is a very interesting hypothesis. One that we … I don’t know if it is our Canadianess or what. We don’t think of it that way but it is almost like we assume that no more people will want to come here. It is like we seem, “Okay. We are okay but this is probably as good as it is ever going to get.” Well, you kind of flipped that on its head just in the way you describe it. |
| What if we took the approach, especially as condo investors, to say, “You know what? The city is pretty good right now but I think it is actually going to get a lot better and I think more people are going to want to live here. I am buying today under that hypothesis, because I am buying something pre-construction today that is going to be in 3, 4, 5 years. I am pretty confident in that time there is going to be more people wanting to come to this city.”? | |
| Ben: | Yeah. You rarely hear someone say, “Hey, I went to New York and I hated it. I absolutely hated it.” People love going to New York. There is something happening on every single corner. There is fantastic restaurants everywhere. They are all independent and attracting the best cooks. This fantastic night life. All the retail shopping that you could ever want. |
| I lived in Dallas. There is no such thing as independent restaurants. Everything is a chain. You want to go somewhere. You have got to get in your car and drive there. There is very few communities there that are walk-able at all. I think people are … They would rather live in a smaller home and have the ability to jump on the subway and go somewhere or be able to walk to all the things that they need to then to live in a larger house. I think that is the trade off that people are willing to make now. | |
| Andrew: | Absolutely. Yeah. Great points. Another big buzz topic that never seems to go away is foreign buyers, foreign investors, and non-resident buyers. How much of a factor are they in the condo market specifically? I think the bigger question … I mean we have beat this question to death but I mean is it something we need to care about or is it really just a nothing sort of an issue? |
| Ben: | Yeah. For me there is two different issues. If foreign buyers are amazing for the pre-construction condo market because we need rental in this city. I think it is trending more towards young people renting for longer. That just seems to be the trend that I am witnessing right now. We need that intermediary. Right? End users aren’t just going to come in and buy 500 condo units, and with the size of the towers now, wait five years before they get to move in and put 20% down. It is not feasible anymore. People don’t, one, have the money for a 20% down payment and, two, don’t want to wait from being 22 years old and then be 27 before they move in. It kind of creates that intermediary where they can hold it and even they might even be selling them at completion. A lot of people are holding them for five, six, seven years before they are selling off. |
| I think foreign buyers and investors in general are a really huge benefit for the city. Where I get worried about it, certainly, I have no data to back this up. I mean I did a survey of the mortgage brokers and just asked them, what percentage of your clientele was foreign buyers or was new immigrants? They said it was 8% which seems pretty consistent. Again, I sent that survey out to mortgage brokers across Canada. If I had just tarted ones that were in downtown Toronto or in the GTA suburbs. Then, maybe I would get a different answer. | |
| Anecdotally, just by talking to real estate agents out there and other people in the business, there seems to be more foreign investment happening in the lowerized market. That does give me a little bit of worry because we’re already so under-supplied in the low-rise market that any addition demand is going to put major pressure on housing. We’re down to, in the new low-rise housing markets, 4,000 unsold units. 10 years ago it was 17,000 units. Right? This major decline in available new low-rise products is just causing catastrophic increases in pricing. We’re down 15% year-over-year growth in the resale low-rise housing market. We have 18% growth in the new low-rise housing market. It’s getting crazy. | |
| We’re about to announce a couple deals. These are future low-rise deals in East Glowenberry and potentially one in West Glowenberry. I just looked at the numbers for the total for 2015 versus February of 2016 and they’re up 25% over last year. [crosstalk 00:30:53]. It’s unbelievable. Young people still want a single detached house so they’re driving farther out to get it. They’re paying unbelievable prices to get that single family home. | |
| Andrew: | Yeah. It’s true. Like you said, that’s a segment of the market where it’s very difficult to track the foreign buyer component and how it may or may not be effecting the market. It will be interesting to see how that develops. |
| Ben: | The thing is, it is a foreign buyer or is it someone who’s buying for their child to come here? Are they planning to move here? It’s such a weird line to draw. The people are buying because they want to move here in five years and they want to rent it out in the mid-term because they see the value of the Toronto market. I’m not as concerned about that but if they’re just trying to park their money here because they’re worried about what’s happening in their country. I just worry a little bit about how that can negatively impact the market. |
| Andrew: | Uh huh. (affirmative) What are we? Three months now. Three months into 2016. On my end it looks like the condo market in Toronto is going to, in the resale-end and the pre-construction side, is going to have a very good year. What are you seeing? What are you tracking for the condo market in Toronto in 2016? What kind of year do you think it’s going to be? |
| Ben: | Yeah. I forecast a little under 20,000 sales. Again, a very strong year. The thing that was interesting last year that hadn’t happened in a decade is every single quarter in 2015 resale price growth was bigger than new home price growth. I thought that was really interesting. That hadn’t happened in a decade. Generally what you see is the resale market reacts quicker than the new sale market. The resale market leads the new sale market. If we’re seeing big increases and we saw a 17% increase in resale condos in the 416 [inaudible 00:33:04]. That tells me that you’re going to start to see some more increases in the new home market. |
| I know that the developers are being really unaggressive, surprisingly unaggressive, seeing that we had the second highest year ever for new condo sales in 2015. Very unaggressive in terms of their launch prices. They still have 2009 on their mind. They want to make sure that they get up to that 70% sold before they start cranking up their pricing. That’s obviously positive for the investors who get in on day one. You have to get in early before those prices go up. | |
| I see another strong year. I’m not … Unless, again, barring some black swan event that happens globally that spooks everybody I’m looking at a very strong year. I expect stronger price built-in in 2016 than we experienced in 2015. I said in my report 3-4% but now I’m thinking, based off of the first three months of the year, that it might be 5-7% growth in the resale condo market. | |
| Andrew: | That’s great. Yeah. It’s very interesting. Like you said, the developer side being very quite conservative with their launch pricing and also just with their launches in general. Not too many new launches so far in 2016. Even the last few months of 2015. There not a lot of new product that has been launched and introduced to the market. It seems everybody is … I don’t know if they’re waiting for the second half of 2016 or it’s just a lack of available sites. Particularly in the core of the city but we haven’t seen a lot of new product so far. |
| Ben: | Yeah. Exactly. It’s all just about availability of product and who the developer is. The developer has it and they’re already working on a couple of other deals. We don’t have to rush into bringing a new one on the market. Right? In 2011 it just seems like guys were just rushing things to market. They’re just trying to get it as quickly as possible because everything was just … Everyone was buying everything. Right? |
| People just, “I was going to launch this in 2012 but everything’s going so amazing right now. I just don’t want to lose out on them.” Stuff was launching in the middle of summer or even August 1st. You know? It’s craziness because they knew that everyone was buying and if they went out in August then they’re not going to have as much competition. They’re not fighting for the interest of the investors. | |
| We saw too much price increases in the early part of 2012. Everyone had gotten way too aggressive. The market really slowed down in 2012 and again 2013 was … I wouldn’t say a terrible year but in historical perspective it was a terrible year. In the grand scheme of things it was still a pretty good year. That really forced developers to take a second thought on what their mix was and who their target was. That and everything [inaudible 00:36:17]. I think that has sort of carried through into even 2016. | |
| I think it’s fantastic that we’re kind of continue to have a market where guys are being conservative. I think it helps everyone. Everyone wins. You don’t want the investors to win. You want the end-users to win. You want the developer to win. You want the lenders to win. You want everyone to win as opposed to one guy trying to take more of the pot. Right? If one guys raising his prices too much is that another guys going to raise his prices. One guys paying out 5-6% commission. Does that force his competitor to raise it up? Then it just eats away profits. You’ve really gotta find a balance somewhere there and it seems that there’s a pretty good balance in the market right now. | |
| Andrew: | Yeah. I would agree. Ben, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it as always. If people want to find you online and obviously I’ll include a link to the market manuscript on the show notes for this episode. People want to hit you up or reach you, what’s the best way to do that? |
| Ben: | Yeah. I’m pretty active on Twitter. I’m more than willing to chat with people until they call me a name. Then I block them. |
| Andrew: | Wait. You? People call you names? No way. |
| Ben: | Some do. People don’t like if you’re bullish on the housing market. I don’t see why that is. I make my forecast available and you can find my forecast in the last five market manuscripts at fortressrealdevelopments.com/news. You’ve got all the manuscripts there so you can see my forecasts. You can see all the line-ups against all the other independent third party services. Just letting them know that I’ll have the closest starts [inaudible 00:38:15] in the last two years.
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| Twitter is @benmeyers29. I link a lot of my articles in there. I write for the Huffington Post, the Journal Sun, and the Condo Guides. I link a lot of my articles there. Right next to [inaudible 00:38:32] as well which is a fantastic resource for real estate movies and information. Yeah. Lots of stuff in there. I’m happy to engage any of your followers if they want to get my opinion on what’s happening out there on the market. | |
| Andrew: | Awesome. Great. Thanks a lot. As always Ben. |
| Ben: | All right. Take care Andrew. |
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