Where First-Time Buyers Can Still Buy a Home in California | Louis DiGonzini

The Southern California real estate market has been hot. In California, real estate prices have been going up significantly and it's caused affordability issues. But some people are looking at this as a big opportunity for people and for investments. Today, we sit down with Luis DeGanzini, who's involved in the real estate market in Southern California. He's gonna tell us what opportunities exist and how young people can still take benefit from the appreciating real estate market. If there is a will, there's a way. If you really want it, you're gonna figure it out and you will make sacrifices to do it. It may not be easy, but you can still do it because you want it bad enough. Even though the market is moving at a fast pace, there's still plenty of opportunity. I'm Siamak. Welcome to California Insider. Luis, it's great to have you back on. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you for having me back. It's a pleasure. We wanna talk to you about the real estate market in California. In Southern California, you're here in Orange County. And a few years ago, we had you on and you saw the market was going wild. It was growing a lot. And people kind of didn't believe you because at that time, the valuations were so high. It was very hard for people to believe that the real estate market would go up. And what are you seeing right now? Last time I was here was like five years ago, over four years ago. So this year, I would say between January now, we've had a stable market, but it's still growing. It's still growing. And it's not growing like four or five years ago, it was growing like 18 to 22%. Now the growth we're seeing, it's about 4%. Three years ago, it was like 12%. So it's been kind of slowing down a little bit. It's not crazy, but still growing steadily. So I would call this a balanced market this year. So still the prices are still going up? Oh yes, yeah. Still in Orange County specifically, I would say in the last 90 days, still a seller's market. So it's more seller-driven. It's almost like in the middle where you see a buyer's market and a seller's market, but it's still favoring the sellers because sellers are still getting 99.9% of their list price. In the average case of market, on average, it's 15 days on the market, which is very low. So it's a tight market. There's still not enough inventory. So that's what's kind of driving the market. How about the rest of Southern California? LA, San Diego, Riverside, do you have insight into- Oh yes, yeah. We have listings right now. Actually, right now we have listings between Bakersfield and all the way to San Diego. We actually just took one in Northern California, but that's a different isolated market. It's a massive property. But between Bakersfield, San Diego, all the way to, I would say Coachella Valley, which is still Riverside County, we're still seeing multiple offers. We have one listing in Bakersfield. That one has almost 20 offers now over the weekend. 20 offers? Yeah, it's crazy. LA market, that one multiple offers. Last one that went into escrow, 15 offers. Orange County, same thing, multiple offers, even though it's a higher price point. San Diego, same thing, multiple offers. The Coachella Valley is most stable, so that one's a little bit slower. So the days on market are over 30 days, but we're still getting two to three offers, which is better than no offers. And the offers are coming in, and most of them at price or asking price or above the listing price, like the one we just put on the market over the weekend, it's 30,000 over asking. The one here in Fullerton that we put on the market a week and a half ago is 15,000 over asking, and it sold in four days. So we're still seeing the sellers being favored for the market that we see. However, though, however, what we're seeing too, even though the market is moving at a fast pace, there's still plenty of opportunity. There's plenty of opportunity because a lot of those properties that move fast are the ones that are fully updated. The ones that need cosmetic work, paint, cabinets, things like that, are sitting on the market a little bit longer. So there is more opportunity for buyers to- To buy those and then- Yes, exactly. Do the rehab. Yes, and do the rehab. You know, do paint, cabinets, flooring, which is very, very simple. So there's opportunity for buyers to get into those and do- And one, they can engineer equity by doing that. They can also, in most cases, get concessions from the seller, meaning they can get credits for closing costs, for repairs, for updates that might be needed or required. So there is plenty of that throughout the county. You just have to look. And the biggest thing that I would say is if you're in the market to buy something, regardless of the price point, whether it's $500,000 or $5 million, you want to be pre-approved, not pre-qualified. When somebody says, oh, I'm pre-qualified for this, it's just a letter they do. They don't normally run your credit. They don't check your finances. They say, like, how much do you make? How's your credit? Just basic information without running your credit. Well, that's great. Except when a listing broker sees that, that it's not the mortgage broker that didn't pull the credit, because we know what they mean, then we know that this person didn't pull credit and they haven't verified the income and the assets. So that tells me it was a phone call. No one sat down and actually looked through the details. So if you have multiple offers and you have one that's actually pre-qualified with credit score or basically saying this person's pre-approved for this, here's a credit score, they have enough assets for down payment, attaches the verification of funds that they have the funds for down payment and closing costs, then most likely the seller is going to choose the one that is a stronger offer based on the finances, because no one wants to open escrow or accept an offer and they haven't started the process because that process can take a week or two weeks. And then in most cases, most escrows are 30 days escrows for residential. If you have somebody that's not pre-approved and you have a 30 day escrow, they're not going to meet that. And you already know that ahead of time because this is going to take a week to two weeks to get all the documents in, for the underwriter to look at the file, for the lender to make sure that they do the application completely and they get all the statements for investment accounts, retirement accounts, all that stuff. That takes time and most people work. So if you have an eight to five job and you have kids and you haven't started this process, it's going to be really tough to meet that timeline of 30 days. From what you're saying, it looks like sellers still have a lot of options in the market. Is the inventory level back to what it was in 2019, 2018, or is there still a shortage of inventories? And that's the reason that the market, the prices went up significantly, right? Oh yeah, we still have a shortage. We haven't recovered from 2018, 2019. So pre-COVID, we had like around four months of inventory. We're not there. We're nowhere near. And then we also have the other issue, which is it's harder to build homes because of the policy and the requirements that the government wants to impose on builders or other investors that go into building housing that a lot of them are just on the sidelines waiting to see if the policy changes so it's less expensive for them to build. Because they're looking at a profit margin. They're looking at a holding period for that property or piece of land. So with all the added costs, holding, high interest rates, and the policy layers that come into building a house, if the policy doesn't favor making money, they're not gonna do it. So it doesn't fix the inventory problem we have, which the government here in California thought, oh, we're gonna do this and then we're gonna fix this housing problem. Well, they didn't talk to builders. They didn't talk to brokers. They didn't talk to boots on the ground to help the situation. They just wrote it in Sacramento by their own wits, basically, right? So when you have that and then you try to force it out on builders, no one's gonna build because it's a free market. So these are the housing mandate, like the Reno numbers. What about the ADUs? Because they did approve ADUs and there was a lot of building of ADUs in San Diego and here, too. And has that impacted the market much? So, yeah, so ADUs, we're still building a ton of them, more than ever before. So it's actually every single quarter we see more permits being pulled for ADUs. One of the things that we see with that is that was great and it's helping the housing. However, a lot of those first-time homebuyers are still not getting into those because those are being used as rentals. We have a lot of Gen Zers and other millennials that are moving into Orange County because of the jobs. So a lot of those individuals that are coming out of college are taking those ADUs, but they were living at home, right? So we have five generations in the marketplace right now from people that are graduating college, which is Gen Z, all the way to 90, right? So people are living longer. That's the other thing. So they're living longer. And a lot of the folks that have two-story homes and want to move to a single-story home, they still do that. So they compete for those single-story homes, but they're not selling the second-story home. They're renting it. Or in many cases, we see a lot of vacant homes. They're just investments. They're parking money. Why don't they sell it? Because they don't have to. They have equity from investment accounts, from real estate, from all those places. So they don't have to sell. And then they go buy another one. And they go buy another one. Because they want to have a one-story because they don't want to go up the stairs. It's tough at the old age. Yeah, yeah. And whether it's Newport or Mission Viejo, you see vacant homes just parked with furniture, which is, it's crazy. Yeah, it just, but they have enough cash. Do they look at it as an asset that appreciates? Yeah. Because the real estate here appreciates significantly higher, right? Can you tell us about that? You have some experience with that compared to other states, right? So Orange County and in general, Southern California, it's an anomaly compared to the rest of the country in the fact that the appreciation, if we go back to 70 years and we look at the historical data, on average, it's appreciated around 8%, which if you look at Texas specifically, if you look at, if you pool us in San Antonio and Dallas, the average is between four, four and a half percent. If you look at other markets, Arizona is completely different. It's below, I think it's 3.75. Nevada, Idaho, same thing. The appreciation between those states, including Washington, all the way until you get to about, I would say New Jersey, it's very, very low. So this anomaly, I think, happens for two reasons. One is our weather. Two is the jobs. We have a lot of jobs. We're always producing more jobs, whether it's tech or whether it's finance. I mean, we have jobs. Android's another one. I mean, that's been amazing. And then they keep recruiting, they keep getting more. So with that, you're pulling more people from other places to come and stay here. That builds demand. And then since we don't have a lot of land to develop, we have some, but not a lot. With some of those restrictions, it's going to continue to have a steady growth, in my opinion, for years to come, because the government's not helping alleviate the inventory problem. If the policy changes, they're like, okay, we're gonna remove these restrictions. Go ahead and build. Here's a permission slip. And they start building between Riverside and San Diego, and it just becomes one big city. Then it would change, but they're not doing that. And I don't think they're going to. As long as the policy stays that way to try and control, it's actually backfiring. So more people moving in, less construction, that's gonna force the inventory to stay low. That's gonna force the growth. So I'm buying, like my wife and I, we're gonna escort our property on an apartment building for the same reason. Why? Because we know that even if it breaks even, even if it breaks even, we're still gonna be okay because I foresee the appreciation at 6% minimum. So even if I just hold it, and I don't make any cash in a month, it's still gonna go up. So that property in a few years, if you do the future reality calculation, it's probably, from 1.3, it's gonna go to two million in just a matter of a few years. So yes, I have equity there. So it just depends where people are and what they want to do. But it's gonna be really hard to compete with this market. Austin, I mean, they have seen a dramatic drop in prices, like 15, 20%, sometimes more, depending where you are in that corridor between Dallas and Austin. But it's because they overbuilt and they- It's a lot easier to build in those areas. It's a lot easier to build. And they have the land, right? They have a lot of land. Like San Antonio, they're doing a lot of infrastructure to actually help the traffic. So if you go, you're gonna see a lot of new freeways, new streets, all those things, because they, kind of like Austin, they overbuilt a little bit. So then the market dropped 20, 25%, some areas 30%. And I helped a client do 8, 10, 30 ones from San Antonio specifically back to California because he bought like 15 years ago and then he almost sold at a loss after 15 years. If he had done that here, even if he was not cash flowing as an investor, if he just parked the money, he would have tripled his money, which is not doing anything, right? It is because of the area. You can't move the Pacific Ocean. You can't move the jobs. I mean, they're here to stay, in my opinion, as long as possible, because with some of those jobs that are tech and finance, you don't have to have a big office. You can do a remote. So there's flexibility and you can't change the weather. I have friends who went left to Denver or Denver area. There was a movement. A lot of people have left California, a good number. And then some people came, but we had a Delta. More people left than came. Yeah, yeah. So initially a lot of people were leaving. I even considered moving to Dallas. There was one point where my wife and I were looking at moving to Dallas and then we thought about it. It's like, what do we want long-term? So in that thinking and planning, it's like, well, long-term, we still want to be here. So why are we going to do that? Yes, you know, the policy is bad. Everything's expensive, but it's ultimately, we're making sacrifices to stay here, really. Because in the end, what we want is better than what we're going through, if that makes sense. And some of those friends that moved to Denver and tried to come back to get into the housing market, they had it, I mean, they had trouble. And actually a couple of them have not been able to buy. So they sold their home, they moved to Denver, and then they couldn't come back and buy. Or Idaho, a lot of them moved to Eagle, Idaho, and they can't come back and buy the same house they had because it's gone so much. And then what they can sell there, yes, it went up a little bit, but not as much as if they had kept the house here. So Luis, who is buying right now? A lot of us are puzzled because to buy right now an average home in Orange County, you have to have more than a six-figure income, right? That's kind of like, it doesn't make sense compared to the incomes here. Who's buying now? The biggest bracket in the market is still the move-out buyers at the moment. But we still have a lot of first-time home buyers buying. We have first-time home buyers, we have baby boomers that are still buying. So we have people that are 24 years old all the way up to like 85, I think is one of the last. That's one of the clients that we have that is on that spectrum. It's 85, he's still buying property, which is amazing. So we still have that entire spectrum in the marketplace. Everybody's buying. There is a way to get into the real estate market or in the real estate game here in Orange County specifically and build wealth long-term. And the way you do it is by focusing on value-add or focusing on identifying a property that you can engineer equity into. So looking at it as a strategy versus emotional, like, oh, I love the cabinets, I love the flooring. So be more strategic with the purchase because you can have all those things and you can make sacrifices for two, three years and then move back to Central Orange County. That's very doable. We see it all the time. So you can go to a location that you may not like. This applies to LA, San Diego, all over Southern California. You start from a location you don't like and you have to not pay attention to the looks of what you're buying, the cosmetics, right? And then you might get something that is a lower price but not what you wanted originally and then later on. So can you tell us how the appreciation works? Here's an example. I helped one of my clients, an investor, was three and a half months ago, purchased a condo in Fullerton, two bedroom, two bath, doesn't have laundry in it, a single story, 360,000, 360,000, right by a Cal State Fullerton, a block away from it. What we did, obviously needed everything because the person that was there was not, the tenant that was there was not taking care of it so then the owner sold it. If you looked at the aesthetics, you would be scared because like, who is living here, right? That one was about 45,000 to do the full rehab. So it was not a ton of money. Now that same property is an escrow for 585. So like this, 90 days. Four months ago. Yeah. From the keys, the time I picked up the keys. So the value that that rehab created was a couple of hundred thousand. That's equity. So for first time home buyers, that a lot of younger people are struggling and they kind of see that homeownership is not possible for them. Unless their parents write a big check. Yeah, right. So they can do that but also looking at opportunity is different. Yeah, if you want to be in Irvine, that's going to be tough. If you want to be Huntington Beach, that's going to be tough. But if you go to Cal State Fullerton, you go to La Habra, you go to some areas in Orange, some areas in Anaheim, you go to Stanton. I mean, that's still Cypress. I mean, that's still Orange County. You go to Capitol Beach, San Marco Bistrano. We see opportunities every single day. It's just, you have to look in other places that is not obviously Costa Mesa, Irvine, Aliso Viejo, because it's a different level of purchase. And do you have to live there? So like young people, you had suggestions that some people can even go to Oceanside and Corona and other places. And if they're in San Diego, because San Diego has a lot of nice places, but then they can be in outskirts. Same thing with LA, right? Right. I'll give you a couple of examples. So we'll go with the one San Diego first. I have friends that, friends, clients that work in fashion in Newport. And then because of the pricing and everything else, they ended up buying a house in Oceanside. Well, the commute between there and Newport is only like 35 minutes. It's not that far. And then, so they bought a house for half the price. I mean, they fixed it up. It was a value add, but instead of them buying a house in Newport where they were living before and paying $4 million for that house, they bought something for 1.1. And then they made it their own. Obviously they did work overtime, but you can do that. Or let's not even go to a million. You can buy condos there for like 5.65. Two bedroom, two bath, nice condos, nice community, safe. You can do that too, right? So that's very, very possible. I mean, that's still happening today. We have other clients that moved from Irvine to that area between Oceanside and then, what's that, is it 54? That goes- 70, is it 76? 76, yeah. Along that corridor, there's some really nice communities with condos. So there's still opportunity there. Or I have clients, I have another client, husband and wife. He works in the food industry for a restaurant, a yacht club, food and beverage. Their wife is a hairdresser. And one of the things that they did, they initially, years ago, they bought in Costa Mesa, but then they've been buying investments, not in Orange County, but in Riverside County, in the Coachella Valley. So they started with one duplex, and then they saved. Two years later, they bought another one. So right now, they have 12 rentals, right? So they don't live in it, right? But they bought each one, I think, per unit, when they started buying the duplexes. It was a two-bedroom, two-bath, one car garage each, with a yard, and $230,000. In Riverside County. And the appreciation's not 8%, but it's still like 6%. Plus, you get the benefits of writing off the interest. And who pays the interest? Who pays the mortgage? Who pays the taxes? The tenants do. So even if you can't live in it, you can still build wealth, and you can still get income from it, because the tenants are paying for it. And as long as you do your job, and you have a good agent that educates you in that process, then you're still gonna build wealth. And let's say you get tired of being a landlord in two, three years. That's okay. You have a nest egg. You have equity that the market gave you, because it's just gonna keep growing. So you're building equity because of the market and the demand. And then your tenants are paying your mortgage, so you're gonna have an equity that you can transfer back into a property here. So it's not lost. You can still use that to buy your personal residence. So the opportunity is still there, but you have to work for it, it seems like. It's not as easy as it was like 15, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, where you could easily buy where you wanted to with a normal job. Now you have to kind of go other places, or you have to buy something you don't like and fix it up. Right. And COVID did that. What people figured out is they can live anywhere in the world and work from a computer. And that was a big push that happened between 2021, 2023, where a lot of people from all over the world set sites in Orange County because of the Pacific Ocean. And you can't move it. If you go, like my wife and I, we love traveling. So if you go to Italy, we made waiters that vacation in Laguna Beach. All over, between Rome and Florence, we had two different waiters who bring their family every year in the summertime to Laguna Beach. And then if you go to Paris, you'd meet people and they're like, hey, where are you guys from? They're like, oh yeah, we're from Orange County, California. Oh, I love that place. Hey, have you been here? Have you been here? So people, when you travel to another country and it's far away and they know where you live and where you're from and they can name cities by name, that's when you know you're not the only one that's thinking about Orange County. So there are more people that through COVID move here because they can be remote and they haven't left. A lot of people wanna be here and they're competing with people that grew up here. Right, yeah. So I grew up here. Obviously, I'm selfish. I went out to college and then I came back and I'm still here. Obviously, I love it here. I'm not moving anywhere. I live somewhere else. And so for me, it's like there's no other better place to be that one, for work, two, lifestyle, you just can't beat it. And also for investments, you can't beat it because we have investments in other areas. And the equity gain or the appreciation you get, you can't beat it. It's really, really hard to beat. Yes, the policy is what it is. And then that's a sacrifice. Obviously, we pay more in income tax. We have to deal with more policy, but it's worth it. What about first time buyers? Do you have situations where people come to you and say, I wanna do something, but I don't have the income? Oh yeah. We have that, I would say, once or twice a week. Like in the last 45 days, we received, I think it was 62 leads for my advertising. And the majority of them were first time buyers. So part of the education is working with our lender partner for that specific situation for the person based on income and how much they have for down payment. Recently, we had one where they only have 30,000 for down payment. And it's like, okay, so how do we work? They have great credit. They have a stable job. They don't make a ton of money, but they make good money. And how do we help them get into something? Well, we look at, one, the payment. What would it look like with 1% down or 3% down? So those opportunities are out there. Oh yes. 1% down, 3% down. Yes, loan programs, we have 1% down, 3% down. For first time home buyers. And they're really available for anybody. For somebody that makes more money, it may not be as beneficial. But for first time home buyers, yes, 1%, 3%. They're out there. There's also, there's CALHFA, which is a state-funded program. But cities also have their own programs to help buyers get into a home. Now, with those programs, including some of the California programs, one of the things you have is you have where they give you the down payment, but you may be in business with the city or the government, right? So they're a buyer with you. So they're an investor with you. So if you wanted to refinance a loan or a sale, then they may get a portion. So you want to get familiar with the loan that you're getting from the government because everything has a cost. There's no free, there's no free down payment. Some people are like, oh, there's free down payment for this. It's like, there's nothing free. They're available and they're accessible. Some of the other ones that are free or grants, I mean, that happened, I think it was 2022, 2023, but it was a very short period of time. And the money basically left in like two days. But that was a grant, but you had to have the property. I think it was at the time, I think it was 15 years or 17 years, something like that. They had to keep the property and not sell it for a very specific amount of time. So you're tied into that. So you can't do much with it. So there are different programs that still exist today to help first-time homebuyers. It's just a matter of finding the right person to help you with that process and give you the right advice. But they're there. Where is the market going based on what you're seeing? You're on the ground, you're seeing the deals, you're seeing the inventory, what's happening? Yeah. Specifically for our market, I still think we're going to have a very strong market throughout this year. Next year, I still think we're still going to have a very steady market. I don't see a bubble coming. In the interview from 2021. A lot of people were saying there's a potential bubble right now in the bubble. Because the growth rate at that time, I think it was like, I think when I did it, it was like between 18 and 20%. It was really high. It was an anomaly. And then I did another interview somewhere else in 2023. And one of the questions I was asked is, would you still buy today? Because we had just come from that bubble or that crazy market we had. And I said, yes. And guess what? I bought a property at that time. And that property went up in equity by almost a million dollars from 2023 to now. So why would I say somebody that is listening or thinking about doing something, I would say buy. Because I think it's going to be more expensive in two years. And I think it will be more expensive in three years. What about a lot of young people that are looking at this situation right now and they're saying all odds are against me. My parents could buy a home at a really good price. I can't do it. I would say get a different circle of friends because it's doable. I would say, don't lose hope. I would say that's the biggest thing. Do not lose hope because the opportunities are still there and you can still buy a house or a condo. You probably can't buy that four bedroom house right away, but you can start with a condo and you can trade up and you can, over time, you can get there. You can still get there. Even if you buy in La Habra, if you buy in Fullerton and start moving your way down, you can still do that. If I can do it all over again, I've made a lot of mistakes in real estate before. And I've had some wins and some losses, which is part of the game. But if I was graduating Gonzaga again, let's say I'm just coming out of college and I'm graduating and I hit the market, my first thing's going to be get a job, start saving and not buy a BMW, right? So, which is funny because I was driving a BMW after college, but I was broke. I'm not broke now, but now I don't drive a BMW or Mercedes. I'm driving a GMC, right? So it just, there has to be a mind shift of where you want to be and when you want, and where do you want to be in five years, seven years, 10 years, 10, 15 years, or like 20 years, right? I'm 44 now. If you're 24, in 20 years, where do you want to be? Do you want to be broke? Or do you want to be in a position where you can go to any restaurant and travel anywhere in the world with your family? There's a big difference, but you have to make sacrifices. So at some point I got rid of the BMW. I got smart enough. And if I was doing that again, I would not get the BMW. That's number one. Number two, I would save up more because I was going out to restaurants almost every night. I would save up more. So make sacrifices early on. The sooner you start making sacrifices, saving your money, and then as soon as you start investing, I will buy a condo or a duplex. So you have options. Based on the income you make, you want to see, okay, how much, what is the most that I can afford? And then what you do is, okay, this is the most of what I can afford. And then you get a good agent that can advise you and guide you of where you can buy either a duplex or a home or a condo, but you want to get roommates. So the roommates pay your mortgage, right? So let's say your mortgage is going to be $5,000. And then you have a three-bedroom place in La Habra. Okay, can you get your roommates? Charge your roommates $1,800 a pop. You pay very little. And you get the benefits of the write-offs. And then let's say you wanted to move out in the future, then you can still rent it, or you can trade that equity. Every time you sell, you have to pay fees. So you have to be careful. But if you keep that as a rental and you already get three roommates to pay, cover the cost, and then you save, because you've been paying very little, you've been paying, I don't know, $1,000 or $1,500 less than you would if you were renting, then you do it again a year later or two years later. If you bought a home, every two years, in five years, if you did nothing else, you would be a millionaire in about 10, 15 years, guaranteed. My parents immigrated to the US, so I'm a first-generation Mexican-American. And my mom always had a philosophy and still has a philosophy today that if there is a will, there is a way. And I still remember it. I use it all the time. And if there's a will, there's a way means that if you really want it, you're going to figure it out. And you will make sacrifices to do it. It may not be easy, but you can still do it because you want it bad enough. And one of the things that it is, obviously, they came here to give us a better life and them have a better life and have investments and be able to have a nice retirement. That was part of it. But that's one of the things that I would say that most people that immigrate to this country have. It's first-generation immigrants to this country or people that have those same values that came from a different place that was hard. And they have parents that educated them and told them that, okay, this is the way you do it. You make sacrifices, you start doing this, you work hard. When you have those values and you're able to do that and execute, it's almost guaranteed you're going to be a millionaire over time just by working hard, saving, and investing. Because those things, you can't do that in many countries. It's really hard to do it in Mexico, South America. It's really hard to do that in China and other countries. It's not isolated to one country. Most of the world is really hard to do that. But when you come to the US, if you have good values, you make sacrifices and you have discipline with money, you can do that. You can become a millionaire over time. I don't want to say it's guaranteed because there are things that happen in life, but it's almost guaranteed. And this country is so beautiful in that way that anybody can have anything they want. So I think some of the values that we have or that people have whose parents didn't really either educate them or they didn't learn them, they have a difficult time with that because they don't know what it's like. One of the things that we're doing with our kids is getting them cultured in regards to going to other countries, going to poor areas. They need to see that life is not the way they have it so they appreciate what they have and they have values and they have a system of you need to save, you need to invest, you need to give back. That's one of the things that we push to do with our kids. We get them involved in giving back to orphans and other places. Because in other countries, you would not have these kind of loans. People would not give you a 30-year loan at a fixed interest rate and then you may have to put down 60% or 50% of the value. Right. Yeah, so you're right. In other countries, they don't have mortgages like we have here, like 1% down, 3% down, 5%, 20. No. And also at such a low rate, they don't have that. And the value of the labor is not much. Right. Because if you work somewhere, it doesn't mean you're going to get a big pay. Right. Compared to this country, right? Oh, right, exactly. You know, it's really hard in other countries. I mean, we have virtual assistants from India, from the Philippines, and for us it's great because we pay very little, but for them, even though they work remote and they're working for a U.S. company, it's completely different than what the average person makes. And then when you hear the stories of what their family members are making, their friends are making, compared to them, it's just, it's really, it's a reality check of like, we're very blessed to be in the U.S. Because if we were in that same situation, even if we had talent, even if we saved, it would be extremely hard to save as much as we can here. So the mind shift of like, oh, I can do something, or it's really hard, it's just not possible anymore. I think we just have to, us as a society, we have to shift that mindset and see, where are the opportunities? How can I find opportunities with what I have? Because if I was in India, I wouldn't have these opportunities. If I was in the Philippines, I wouldn't have these opportunities. We have them here. And not to mention, if we have a college degree, even if you don't have a college degree, I have clients that are bartenders and waiters that own a ton of real estate. So you don't have to have a college degree to, one, have real estate, two, become wealthy. I have a client right now that is, he's amazing, he didn't graduate high school. Immigrated, his parents immigrated from Mexico, grew up in Santa Ana. It's very humbling, and the reason I'm telling this story is because he got married when he was 17 to his wife. They're still together. He borrowed his brother's ID to get married because he was 17. He didn't even have a bike. It was one of those things where he didn't know what he didn't know, but he came to this country to work. He was door knocking in Santa Ana, in the manufacturing center to get a job, anything he could. He barely spoke English, and he finally got a job. His brother got him a job at a manufacturing facility that was manufacturing for airspace. They were doing aluminum, stainless steel, different metal products for the airspace industry. He started with Packer and just basically building up pallets, and then became a machinist. He worked at that company. Then, five years later, the owner of the company told him and another employee that was there he was gonna sell them the company in a few years. Long story short, that owner of the company did sell him the company in a few years. I don't know the numbers. These two fellows owned the company. Keep in mind, never graduated high school, barely spoke English. Fast forward, the partner wanted out, so he bought the company from the partner. Then, he just kept growing the company, got his kids involved, so he got his two sons involved. Then, it was a daughter-in-law later. Basically, he had the whole family involved. Fast forward, he owned several buildings. He owns a lot of real estate. He recently purchased an asset of cash for over $10 million, and never went to high school. His company produces, I think their revenue is over $20 million a year. Never went to high school. Barely speaks English. Came to this country with nothing, and he has multiple brothers. He's one of 12, and the reason I'm sharing that story is because I think we have lost a little bit of our American spirit. If you go back in history, and you read the books, and you educate yourself on what this country was founded on, who founded it, and what happened throughout history, up until the, I would say the 50s, 60s, that's when it started changing. Now, COVID changed it, and a lot of us have this mindset of, oh, I just need this, and we depend on the government to start doing something versus us being a Yankee and going out there and getting it ourselves. You know what I mean? I'm going to go conquer this. I'm going to go find this, right? So there's a little bit of that spirit that we have lost, but opportunity's still there. I meet people that are millionaires that don't have a college degree, so don't let the college degree define that. That's one. Two, if you have a college degree, it's that much easier for you to get into the game. It should be, because a college degree, I have one, but it's just a gateway to get interviews, to get a job. You start getting a W-2 job because you're going to, that's part of what it is, or you can start your own business. So I would say it just takes, it takes some tenacity to do it. It takes discipline with money, specifically. I was really bad with money. Obviously, BMWs. I had three, so that's how bad I was with money. But it just, that, for me, it was like, that was important at the time, and then it was one of those things where it's like, why did I do that? It just, I didn't have my mind set straight, and then I was prioritizing things that didn't really matter long-term. It just was little as, okay, slow down, plan it out. Instead of planning for two, three years, plan it out for 20 years. Where do I want to be? And then, so my choice to send me back, I would say three to four years, maybe longer, because of what I was doing. And then now, you kind of learn a lot, and you have more advice for your kids, but it's like, if I had done that sooner, I would have retired at 40. But I didn't. And then, obviously, God had a different plan for me. But now, all the lessons that I, all the bad mistakes that I made, I try to share them so people don't make the same mistakes. Don't go for the fancy stuff. It just, nobody cares, ultimately. Nobody cares, and you're wasting your money on something that, most of the time, had more problems than solutions. So it's possible for people to get out there and own homes, especially young people. It was great to have you on, Luis. Thank you so much for sharing all your experience. Of course. Thank you for having me. What do you think about this conversation with Luis? Do you think there's still opportunity for first-time homebuyers to get involved in the market? Make sure to tell us in the comments or email us at siamakacaliforniasider.com. We read all of your emails and comments. I'm Siamak Khorrami. This is California Insider. We'll see you next time.