4th Annual Affordable Housing Panel

Zac Ruiz [0:00] Alrighty, everyone. What's going on? My name's Zachary Rees. If we haven't met yet, I run the Ruiz Report. So I've been doing this since March of 2020, so 65 months, which is kind of crazy. And today, we're gonna do kind of a high level overview to set the stage for a conversation about affordable.able housing. Our mission's essentially twofold, right? So we're trying to empower everyone with the best real estate data, and then actually teach them how to use it. That's an easier way to describe it. And there's gonna be just a quick plug. There's gonna be a huge change coming up for the Ruiz Report. I wanted to give you a quick little look.

So, for one, instead of a PDF, many of you either have it or get it from one of your agents, it's just gonna live, kind of, like, Instagram slash at, I'm at, I'm slash at Zack, thankfully. Uh, and so it's gonna be interactive. And so you're gonna be able to get all your slides and all the data live and kind of interact with it, have videos, call outs, all that cool stuff. And if those aren't your colors, we'll be able to change the colors. That's kind of been like a big thing. And we'll be able to customize the data by price range, city, or zip, so you'll kind of call it out, like, within the county, what does my price range look like? So that'll be cool, too.

And you'll get data and analytics. This is kind of, like, a look, we're going through this, 'cause I know you want the information, but you'll see who's using your report, all that fun stuff, right? Cool, cool stuff ahead. That means, on the back end, all of my existing clients need a new account. And that kind of sucks. So as I was going through that database migration, uh, Byron Greener was the first person to ever buy the Ruiz Report, the dwell team was at, uh, Keller Williams professionals, they left, and then became Dwell Asheville. And he was the first guy that said, Yeah, you know what, I'll sign up after that. And unfortunately, last month, we suddenly lost Byron.

So I wanted to kind of pay tribute to him. He was a bigger guy in the real estate industry, been around a long time, was the president for a while. His loss has been felt. And if you're dealing with Dwell Realty Group, right now, they need some grace, as you might imagine, the logistics of everything happening there are pretty serious. So I just wanted to quickly honor Byron, and, you know, love everyone in your life. So, sure. So with that, I thought it would be fun to kind of title this high level presentation. What even is affordable, right?

So we're gonna get to the actual definition at the end there, but probably what you're thinking in your head and what, like, affordable housing, by definition is, are not the same thing. So we're gonna get into that a little bit. So 50,000 foot overview of Buncombe County, leveraging the report. So, at the beginning of the reports, there's three executive summer slides. We'll go through them, right? Right now, one of the things we're seeing is that there is a lot of inventory. If you look over here on the right, you'll see months of inventory, which is a metric that's essentially, if we stopped selling houses, or rather, if we stop putting houses on the market, the market stayed as is.

And they continued selling at the rate they've been selling at for about the last year. how long would it take to run out of housing inventory? It's like when you open your fridge and you say, Well, man, if we keep eating, we need to go to the grocery store. Same idea. It has been three months or less, even less than one month during COVID times. And as you'll see, even year over year, almost 120% increase. Right? And so how is that happening? This is one of my favorite slides. I always say that, 'cause it talks about supply and demand, and I think supply and demand at the end of the day, trumps all.

And so if you look here, the pro tip is basically, keep an eye on the difference between the listings and the pendings. The listings are the red bar, and the pendings are the green line. And when the red bar, or, rather, when the red bar, excuse me, is above the green line, look at this. We have been adding more inventory for the past 15 months plus. This has not been happening historically for the past, basically, five years in this market, and it's been happening for a little bit more than a year now. So supply is up. And as a result, go figure. It's taking a lot longer to sell these homes. So 35 days medium.

That means 50% of the homes, sold in 35 days or less, if your glasses have full, or 35 days or longer, if you're a half empty kind of guy, right? And that is double last year. which was more than double the year before. So that has been the trend. This is the graphical view of that, if you like pretty shapes and colors. The red is the average. The green is the median. Remember, the median is 50% of the home sold in that much time or less, right? And so, let's look at the trend up until the right. So it's taking longer to sell homes. Part of that, well, one quick, interesting thing. Look at this. The fastest homes were 1.5 to 2 million, basically, and then up to 200,000.

Anyone have any ideas as to why? Cash! Look at that. You got cash money, right? Either for your personal home, or maybe you're investing to flip. Interesting little metric. And it's a lot harder to price. So, this is our pricing slide. We have our list to sale on the left, the average price that we're just gonna kind of gloss over, and then the original list sale, and we're gonna focus on original list sale. So, if you list a home for $1 trillion, and nobody buys it, and then you list it for $100,000, and it closes for $100,000, you have 100% list to sale. But your original list of sales, like 0.01% or less, right? So the original list of sale is, how good were we at pricing the home?

You'll notice there's about a 7% haircut. And so quick math on every $100,000, 7 grand, $400,000 home, $28,000 wrong. So it is hard. It is hard to price homes right now, right? And interest rates have been very sticky. So, back in the napkin math here from the Fed. This is, I call it, call it September of 22, basically. They've been about this rate for some time. These are high rates. We'll all have the debate that historically, they're not high, but the prices weren't that high, either, and so the numbers larger coming out of your pocket. But prices have been very sticky as well. All right, so let's dissect this slide a little bit. Same pattern. The red is the average.

The green is the median, right? So, the pro tip here, why I kind of said we're going to gloss over the month of a month change, is because when you're looking at pricing, you want to see the trend. You don't really care what happened month over month, right? So let's look at the trends. The trends, let's go one by one. So the average trend looks like it's trending down, that's that yellow line. Right? But it's important to know, at the bottom here, I'll move out of the way, the average is consistently higher than the median, because we have a really strong, expensive market. The higher priced homes are pulling that average up.

So to the extent that very expensive home sold, or didn't sell in that month, that's where those fluctuations come from. For this, I kind of like the medium. The median is, remember, 50% of homes are worth this much or more. And I would call that positively flattish, right? So, basically, the homes are sticky. They're a little bit more than they are year over year, but that line is about as straight as it gets. All right, so let's review. Way more inventory, right? The seller's idea of price, way off, right? Like tens of thousands of dollars off right now. It's taking a lot longer to sell the homes, and the interest rates are high, so they're more expensive twice.

They're more expensive debt income ratio, and they're more expensive just sticker press, right? So, obviously, all this adds up to prices coming down, right? But that would be false. That has all happened recently, right? So somehow it adds up to sticky prices, at least in our market. Right? So let's run the numbers. What does that mean? So I found a sweet article. What's the most you should pay for housing? Here's a breakdown by price, basically, right? So 30% conservatively. 40%, and then 50% of your income, if you want to throw it. Let's go with the middle. So at 40% of your income, how much can you afford? So, turns out the census website was down today.

But there is another site that leverages the same census data. So for Buncombe County in 2023, but we all know wages are kind of stagnant right now, so it can't be that much higher. The median household income was $70,000. We'll call her, right? So $70,000, according to the chart, 40%, bomb, you should be at 2,300 bucks a month, if you want to stick to these numbers. So let's do it. Annual income, $70,000, debt to income, 40%. Don't tell anyone, we're gonna give this person Great Dame Ramsey, Dave Ramsey credit. got no debt. Nothing else. All he has is a house, right? Uh, you can afford, uh, a $290,000 home. So let's look at that again. So let's look at our prices in Bunkin County.

This is what we can afford, right? This is Asheville's affordable zone. Very well below the medium, almost half. for the medium, right? So, now the definitions. There's workforce housing, and that is 60 to 120% of the area median income. That's what we just went over. Then there's affordable housing, like the actual technical term, and that's typically less than 60% of the area median income. So let's use numbers, so that's, so workforce housing would be $42,000 to $84,000 a year. Affordable housing would be less than that. So with that, we'll kick you to a table question. We'll see what you get, and we'll ask for responses. So this is super cool.

Scan the QR code, you get to vote, and we'll talk about it. Which type of housing shortage best describes Buncomb County. Is it really affordable housing? Maybe as workforce housing. So let's kind of talk about that. Set the stage, we'll get everyone's response, and then we'll kick it to the panel. We'll see you in about 10 minutes. All right, everyone, who is gonna be the brave first person to share their views about the Buncombe County market? We have what's called a catch box here. We're gonna lightly toss it in your general direction, and all you have to do is speak into the mic. So, who wants to share their views with the crowd?

Unknown [9:33] Come on.

Zac Ruiz [9:34] I mean, look, it's a gimme. Basically everyone agrees. You don't want to just be the hero.

Unknown [9:40] Nobody? Oh. Uh.

Zac Ruiz [9:44] There we go. Big Mike, saving the day as usual. OG in the house. Hey, y'all. How are you?

Unknown [9:51] Doing well, man.

Speaker 2 [9:53] My thought process is if the working house is lowering, and then affordable is lowering. Do landlords look to try to use the federal funding for the lower end, or do we continue to try to take market rates, and that was kind of our conversation. I don't really know the answer to that, but it's kind of an open question.

Zac Ruiz [10:15] Yeah, that's definitely happening, where you have Section 8 vouchers that is coming into, like, the average rent. Right now. And that's the thing. Fun math trick from the checking question. I've got the results here, right? So about 75% of you said that it would take about 500 bucks a month profit. for you to be willing to be a landlord. And about 75% of you said that you consider affordable housing less than $1,500. So unless you have a cash purchase, I want to know how that maths out. And that's kind of the problem, right? That's literally the problem now. Everyone's locked in at these low rates, or if you didn't win then, you know, you're in trouble.

And so that's when I was like, what is your definition of affordability? It might not be what you think it is. Anyone else care to share it? We have a contrarian opinion. Do we have, you know, one of the seven percenters? My view is that, if you can't solve workforce housing, good luck solving even less expensive housing, or for people with lower... Oh, well, look at that, you agree. You have nothing to say about it, nobody, come on.

Speaker 2 [11:16] All right, cool. What? I will add that affordable housing going with government funding is guaranteed. So that's the other aspect that you might want to consider. Market rents tend to be iffy 'cause you might have a job today, you might lose your job tomorrow, and that falls on the landlord. Whereas the government subsidies definitely are guaranteed. So that's the other portion I'll add to that. And, you know, not...

Zac Ruiz [11:40] Well... For the lease. So that is an incredible segue. I don't know that everyone knows about that, and we're probably gonna talk about it. All right, so if we can get our speakers to come up and sit in the general order of their cartoon likeness.

Beth Silverman [0:00] Next time you hear something sort of off, like, you know, some myth about affordable housing or homelessness, continue that conversation, but with curiosity and compassion, 'cause I think we get really stuck in silos because we just automatically say x or y, and I think everyone in this room is capable of having a compassionate and curious conversation.

Speaker 2 [0:24] So, I think a fun way to kick it off, we try to get, like, you know, a panel that represents different segments, and you guys represent very different segments to try to solve the problem. If we could start with Ross and come this way back. If you kind of tell us about what you do, how you got into it, and basically your core competency, your unique ability of...

Ross E Hamilton [0:42] Well that's gonna take the entire time.

Speaker 2 [0:43] Oh, well... Great answer. There we go.

Ross E Hamilton [0:46] My name's Ross Hamilton. I originally founded a site called Connected Investors.com. Did anyone use that site back in the day, a few people. Rodrigo. Okay, just the people making money. Just kidding. I built a social network for real estate investors. It became a data platform, and we wound up selling it to First American title a few years ago, and now they're taking it to whole new levels. So, I've been a real estate investor, knocking on doors, talking to people that were behind on their mortgage at 18 years old. And I've kind of seen that whole side. I've seen the data side, and I moved to Asheville a few years ago and founded a nonprofit called savinghomes.org. Check out the site, please.

And essentially, we have a... I liked how you used the flywheel. up there. We have a flywheel effect tied into our non profit that keeps all of the donations that come in, working over and over again. So I am focused on helping people that already have homes, because I believe the home someone's in is the most affordable house they're ever gonna get. So that's kind of my background and, uh, some of the value I can bring to the table today.

Beth Silverman [2:00] Great. Hi, everyone. I'm Beth Silverman. I'm a co founder and the executive director of an organization called Lotus campaign. We're a national organization, uh, not working in Asheville, but I live in Asheville, and have, uh, I think, some thoughts that Zach and Rodrigo thought would be relevant to this conversation. My background is urban planning, real estate, and policy, and Lotus campaign is all about how do you bring unlikely allies together from the private real estate sector and social service organizations, and tackle homelessness from an economic lens. So, for many, many years, we've looked at homelessness totally through the individual drivers, like the social issues.

And so Lotus is all about how do we bust through those economic drivers and bust some myths along the way. And so, we've had success in two cities of really bringing together unlikely partnerships and unlocking stable housing in market rate residential communities.

Anna Zuevskaya [3:04] I'm Anna Zyeskam, the executive directors of the Asheville Buncomb Community Land Trust. We are relatively new and still relatively small here in Asheville. I started in this position about a month and a half before COVID, and now we've obviously been through a natural disaster. So it's been really fun and easy. The way that our model works is we separate the ownership of the land from the ownership of the structure on that land. And effectively, our homes never sell on the open market. So, we target the affordable, the workforce housing, populations that were mentioned, and our homes sell for usually less than half of the market value.

So, we have to find the money to fund that 50% upfront to make sure that it is affordable to the end buyer. And the goal is to keep it affordable for generations. So that money that goes into the home, right, stays with that home upon every resale. So every buyer, every future buyer, will be paying an affordable mortgage on that home.

Speaker 2 [4:09] So many unique businesses. This is gonna be fun. All right.

Speaker 5 [4:13] All right, so our first question for the panel tonight is, what is the biggest misconception about affordable housing and who it is meant to serve?

Beth Silverman [4:24] I can start with this. I feel like this is a really good question to crowdsource from the audience. If you guys are okay with that, Because I think you've got three practitioners up here.

Speaker 2 [4:36] Is everyone ready to talk? Is that gonna happen? Who is the yes? Where was that? You are speaking. You volunteered? Mike over there. Go for it. It's coming. Who's Frank?

Unknown [4:49] She's ready.

Speaker 5 [4:50] Hello. Boom! Okay. Okay, ask the question again, so...

Speaker 2 [4:57] How would you define affordable housing? What's the biggest misconception?

Speaker 5 [5:01] Gosh, I have to say... If you keep talking, we'll fix it on this side.

Unknown [5:05] Okay.

Speaker 2 [5:05] Put it close to your mouth, speak into it. Are we good?

Speaker 5 [5:10] I mean, I think of it as the opposite of house pork. And what that percentage is keeps changing, right? So we, I was born in 1983. The conception was 25 to 30%. I don't know very many people who are paying 25 to 30% of their household income on rent or mortgage. And that's everybody who's here with enough knowledge to talk about the topic. So the opposite, the inverse of that, means that a lot of the country is house poor. So that is a very liberal arts answer to a very quantitative question, but it's a feeling, right? It's more like, gosh, this mortgage, this rent is just too high. And I think a lot of people are feeling that.

Beth Silverman [6:06] I think that's a great answer. I mean, to me, it's about choice and accessibility, and I think affordability has been weaponized, whether that's in sort of public meetings or sort of how we think about what makes up a healthy community. So a lot of what I do in my work is bust myths about, um, you know, the power of, um, a really income diverse, uh, community and sort of what does affordability mean, and what are the drivers that are making things either more affordable or less affordable.

Ross E Hamilton [6:38] Yeah, no, I totally agree. I'll jump in, and I think the biggest misconception, I have a few. But number one, is that it's a charity, or it's a handout. Um, to me, affordable housing is, like, infrastructure, because we need the people that live in our community to be able to work in our community, to be able to stay here. And what I found at saving homes is most people are just one medical emergency away from not being able to pay their mortgage, not being able to pay their rent, and needing a more affordable option that's out there. So it's not charity, it's infrastructure for a good community. And also, one of the big issues I have with affordable housing is it's affordable...

I almost feel like there should be a different word for it. It's like affordable rentals is different than housing. If you own a home, you have the ability to build generational wealth. You have the ability to leverage what you have and pass it on to your children. So, there's a lot of people that are trying to solve affordable housing from a rental standpoint, which is great, but that still puts people on a hamster wheel forever paying into it. So my favorite part of affordable housing is when someone can actually own a house, and then get all of the benefits of owning a house.

Anna Zuevskaya [7:56] I agree with that and appreciate it. And the one thing that I'll add is that affordable housing has to be low quality, because it has to be built cheaply on a budget, right? And that is one of the myths or misconceptions that we are trying to work against, is that, because, especially because people are purchasing the homes, they have a mortgage, just like everybody else, the quality of that home needs to last, especially because they have less income to be able to put into future renovations of that home.

Speaker 2 [8:31] All right, so that's, so, I had this misconception. When I think of affordable housing, I absolutely think of, like, owning a home, but it's almost always about renting a home, isn't it? That's interesting. All right, fun. So, you'll have to forgive us. We forgot our cue cards, got to look off the phone here tonight. But the next question kind of plays in great with all of you, so we'll start with Ross, right? So generally, people think of adding new supply. More affordable housing, which is a fun word. I don't wanna. use anymore. But what about the creative ones, like stopping foreclosures and keeping people in their homes? Tell us, you're focusing there. Tell us more about that.

Ross E Hamilton [9:05] Yeah, so you're talking about not having to add inventory. And kind of stopping a problem before it's a problem. And does anyone here work in foreclosures? Has anyone ever, like, knocked on the doors of people that were in foreclosure? Yeah. Yeah, I used to do that, and I would smell what they were cooking. I would see the... how they were suffering in silence, and they'd see some little kid there being like, Do you wanna sell your home? And I always wanted to be able to help these individuals, but there was no other option at the time. So, really, these people have passed so many tests. They bought a home. It takes a lot to buy a home.

They're in a home, and they usually just have a medical emergency that hits them. That's what we've seen in saving homes. It's usually a medical emergency. It's the first domino. And a lot of these individuals have, um, have other, you know, the second domino, the third domino. But it's so nice. Has anyone ever done a subject, too? Does anyone do subject to investing? That's how I started investing in real estate. And it was the most affordable way to own a home. Because you didn't need to bring hundreds of thousands of dollars to the table, to buy a house. You just needed maybe 10 grand.

So if you can keep someone in a house, you don't have to build it, it doesn't cost much more than $10,000, maybe $15,000 on the homes that we target, and we're able to keep good families in their homes. So foreclosure prevention is very important, and people have so much equity these days, that it makes it risk free for companies like mine to help these individuals because of the amount of equity. So it's just an innovative solution within, uh, within this little equity bubble that is, uh, been created through so much profit in real estate. So keeping them in their home, I think, is the easiest way to have the biggest impact. That's what I've seen so far. So, two quick follow up questions.

Speaker 2 [11:05] One very quick high level, if you could just describe the subject, too, so everyone's on the same page. And then the second question, how do you do this? How do you keep them in the home specifically? Great.

Ross E Hamilton [11:14] Yeah, so subject to investing is when you essentially take over the mortgage subject to, you take over the house subject to the mortgage. There's due on sale clauses in there that you have to be careful about, and there's ways to structure it, and to do a subject two class, it would be an entire, would be an entire class. But the, at the end of the day, it didn't take a lot of cash to be able to control properties. I got started right before the last crash, so I would, I was in a world of short sales to where I would... do a subject to you on the second mortgage and reinstate the first mortgage. So I was able to make the second mortgages disappear.

That's how I built my equity, 'cause back then there was no equity in homes. And then I would take over the payment. of the first mortgage. So that's how I was able to leverage my way into owning a lot of real estate without a lot of money. So after selling my company and being approached by people to make charitable donations, I looked at all of the charities, and really, what I wanted to see was long lasting impact of my dollars. And I didn't really find anything that I really liked. Made some great donations, built some villages overseas, did that whole thing. But when I wanted to come back to the US, and help people that were here.

I kind of reached into the same thinking that I had when I started Subject 2s. And what we do at saving homes is we find individuals, families, the more children, the better. A lot of people will victim shame, the parent that's kind of fallen behind. But we want to keep the kids in their school district. We want to keep them in their home, get them stability. So we look for families with lots of kids. And then we essentially crowdfund the reinstatement of their mortgage, similar to GoFundMe, through our non profit, fully tax deductible, and we reinstate their mortgage. The money comes right to us, right to the mortgage company. It's all done through attorneys.

Attorneys actually donate their time for free. There's no points, there's no fees, there's no funny business. But then, the part that kind of recycles, and the flywheel is a second mortgage is recorded against the property. No payments, no interest, no points. But in the future, when they sell or refinance that house, that money comes back into saving homes, and we can help the next family. So to me, when I thought, okay, what do I want to spend the next five years of my life doing? If I can get this ball rolling down the hill and start to build up a lot of money in that, we can help people for generations to come.

So that's kind of what I call the generation donation, and we raise money for families all the time.

Unknown [13:56] Very cool. Beth?

Beth Silverman [13:59] Um, I'm gonna go back to what your question was, which I think was stopping people from losing their homes. Right. So, let's, I'm gonna make it really simple. There's a bucket and it has a hole. That hole doesn't get fixed, more people flow into where there's not enough resources to help the most vulnerable. So preservation, super important. If it's, you know, I'm obviously really big on what are the structural causes. Why is someone finding themselves in that position to begin with? I think that's really important to tackle. So just to give you guys an example, a big thing at Lotus is eviction prevention. So we have a less than 1% eviction rate.

And that is 'cause we partner with really, really strong social service organizations that have all different approaches to what they do, whether it's trauma informed care, whether it's sort of job training, workforce development, basic finance 101, 'cause you gotta get at the cause of what's causing that hole in the bucket. And ideally, look at it as a system, systemic at a systems level. But, yes, I think it's a really good idea to keep people in housing, but if you're only keeping people in housing and not getting at the root causes of what got them there in the first place, You're not stopping the flow. So.

Anna Zuevskaya [15:24] Similarly to that. I'll add a couple of stories from work that we've done, especially since the hurricanes. So one is, we recently just purchased a home that has been in foreclosure for about six to nine months. So this family was husband and wife, raised their children in the home, lived in that home for over 20 years. Unfortunately, they've refinanced a couple times. So, you know, it wasn't quite paid off. But the husband had passed away suddenly, and the wife couldn't continue making the mortgage payments. So she got behind, and, of course, foreclosure, right?

So, through our connections to the neighborhood, we were approached by her neighbors and asked if we could make this happen, and in a partnership with another nonprofit. We were able to purchase that home. It does need a lot of renovations. There's a lot of deferred maintenance on the home, and we can have another conversation about why that is. But we, even though don't have the funds right now for all of those renovations, we said, we are going to raise the funds necessary to purchase this home and purchase it for the remaining mortgage on the home. So we were able to do that, I think, about a month ago. That was our first kind of foreclosure prevention purchase.

I anticipate that there will be a lot more of those. The other thing that I'll say is that Asheville Buncomb Community land trust, it's a lot of words, so A, B, C, L, T, for short, if you can remember that, we prioritize the homes in our historically black neighborhoods in the city of Asheville, so the neighborhoods that were impacted by urban renewal, have been impacted by gentrification. It displacement, all of these things, waves and waves, of systemic racism that have pushed people out of their neighborhoods. And so that is one of the reasons why we're seeing people moving out and foreclosure is happening.

So that home that I mentioned is in the Burton Street neighborhood, which is one of those areas that we focus on. The other thing that we've seen since the hurricane is we've created a couple of rental programs, and those rental programs are specifically to help avoid displacement. In that, we've also seen a couple of homeowners who have gotten behind, and so we have helped bring them mortgage to being current to prevent that foreclosure. So, it's really, really important, one for our workforce, but also for keeping our communities intact after decades of displacement and people being pushed out.

Speaker 5 [18:07] So since we are in a room full of real estate investors, how do we balance the need for investor returns, with the community's need for long term affordability, and do you think they can coexist together?

Unknown [18:23] I do. Let's hear it.

Beth Silverman [18:25] So, one thing Lotus does is we also invest in multifamily, so we have one property, that's a multifamily property in Charlotte. We always said that any investments we made would be adjusted to make sure the investors get their return. So there's this thing out there called impact investment. I would say it's still very niche, and it is really good branding and marketing, and there are not a ton of people actually doing it. But there are some, right?

And it's growing, but, you know, lotus and friends put in $300,000 to, um, a $17 million, $17 million property, um, as part of that, 20% of the units, get set aside for our core mission, which is housing for people at risk, or experiencing homelessness. The rest is just market rate workforce. So fast forward seven years later. By the way, we did this three months after we started Lotus, and I thought, What terrible mistake did we just make investing in this property? Seven years later, we just recapitalized the deal.

We're gonna stay in, roll over our investment, which is, I haven't totally done the math, but two and a half or three times what we started with, and we're gonna keep that affordability. But I think there's something out there called responsible real estate investment, and it's pretty much simple. You either believe the pie of capitalists. Capitalism is big enough to share or you don't. And that's just an ethos you have, or you don't. And, you know, oftentimes the real estate industry is totally villainized. And there are so many brilliant entrepreneurial problem solvers out there doing really hard work to try to build workforce housing, to try to make sort of the numbers of a deal work out.

And I sort of, you know, we got, by the way, like, a list of 15 questions, and I was like, this is a lot of homework for this panel. But I saw this one, and I'm like, maybe this is an easy, sort of, you know, like, low hanging fruit one. There are so many examples of how this can happen. So, to me, the easy answer, though my long winded explanation is yes.

Speaker 2 [20:41] Dive deep. That's why we're here. We're trying to pick your brains. All right, so Ross will go to you, and then back to...

Ross E Hamilton [20:47] Yeah, I mean, people have to start off finding people that care, right?

Beth Silverman [20:51] I don't know, actually. Impact investing. I think the heartstring thing doesn't work. I think you can make economic cases where the heartstring thing doesn't work, and you figure out what people's motivations are, which tend to be different.

Ross E Hamilton [21:04] If the numbers line up, then we just need the innovative solutions for these people. And, uh, I loved hearing that, and I've seen some stuff like that happen. Uh, yeah.

Anna Zuevskaya [21:19] We live in a slightly different world where we don't work with investors, at least not right now, so my take on that is that there is a lot of money being made in our community, and we do ask for the generosity of people to give back. We effectively lose money on every deal. So we have to come up with that money from grants, donations, corporate sponsorships, things like that. So that's just kind of where we are right now, but there are definitely a lot of innovative models out there that do utilize investments.

Speaker 2 [21:58] So, in a previous life, I knew this guy who was in charge of, like, the philanthropic wealth fund at J.P. Morgan, and he had these, like, 10 rules, and I don't remember any of them, except for one, where he says, the deal starts at no, because if they say yes, then you didn't ask them for enough money, because they are looking to invest into philanthropic things, right? So, that being said, I am of the opinion that if this is a profitable endeavor, we will get a solution to it. And to the extent that it's not profitable. We're gonna continue to struggle, I think. Right? So, we're gonna bounce around, and we'll see how it works.

Do you think private capital can be sustainable through profitable endeavors? For example, Beth, if you're two or three exing a deal, you'd be silly not to want to do more of those deals. And all the better if it helps people. Yet, if you're asking me to take a 50% haircut, I am very much, I have ulterior motives to do these, goodwill and whatnot, right? Do you guys see any business models that or have any opinions on some that you've seen that kind of make it work for the investor? You know, like, the best way to make money is doing good.

Beth Silverman [23:02] I mean, doesn't it always have to work for the investor? Because you're essentially borrowing their money.

Speaker 2 [23:06] In a very, in a very individualist. Like, yes, I value losing money more than having the money, so I can help, yes, but from, like, a financial standpoint, where my accountant says, Wow, what a great move you made versus, like, Oh, you're such a good guy. You know? So I definitely think, to the extent that we can make it profitable, like Mike was saying, right? If you know that the economy is a little shaky, and that a voucher is gonna cover 100% of your rent, That is a smart financial decision. I also get to do good. So we're doing both here.

So to rephrase the question, Do you think private capital can be a sustainable method to fund these endeavors, or do you think it's very much in the philanthropic, or perhaps the triple Ps, the public, public, private partnerships?

Beth Silverman [23:51] So, if we just look at the amount of capital that exists in the world, this is philanthropy, this is public, this is private. Right. So, just math, right? The math doesn't matter. for public and philanthropic capital alone to solve these issues. Right. I would say it's necessary that we better align private capital, uh, public sector, and nonprofit sector, just 'cause, you know, just supply and demand. There's not enough capital in philanthropic or public sector. And also, there's a business case for solving these issues. Sure, no.

Ross E Hamilton [24:31] And we could dig into that next, if that's where we go. Yeah, I mean, there has to be an incentive for people not to invest in something that they can make. I mean, five, 6% return just for having your money in a savings account. Right. Right? It takes a lot to wake people up. So I love the model where a percentage of the units are for the underserved markets, and I think that has to kind of start with the agencies, the government, that helps with those incentives. Because you're right. It's a very small amount of people that want to prioritize doing good over making money. And they're great. And there's also timing on things. You have to find the right person at the right time.

Sometimes making a big investment that you know might not win, makes sense. And sometimes it doesn't.

Anna Zuevskaya [25:26] Yeah, again, this isn't really the world that I live in. Um, but one thing that I'll say, that we have experienced, we've seen people experience, and we hear, um, business owners talk about is that we need housing for our workers to live, right? So we can't hire somebody, because they can't afford to move here, because there's not housing for them. So that's kind of my argument to that question is that we need people here at all different incomes. especially in the tourism industry. We need to be able to house those folks.

Ross E Hamilton [25:59] That ties back into this being an infrastructure. Not a charity, 'cause we need those people in our town.

Speaker 5 [26:09] So, kind of to build on that one. So what would you say to the skeptics who think profit and affordable housing can't mix, how do you demonstrate that investing in housing for working families can generate both returns and impact? Beth?

Beth Silverman [26:25] I think I answered this one already, but I'll give you an anecdote. So, started Lotus seven years ago, this big investment fund out of New York City, just, like, put on your total stereotype of a New York City investment fund, right? Um, we tell them they're investors in a partner of ours properties, and we say we're gonna start beta testing, unlocking housing for people experiencing almost this. I get an email from the head of this firm and forgive my language. But he goes, What the F are you doing to my investments, right? That's the email I get. One line, not high, Beth, you know, no salutation whatsoever.

This guy is now our biggest corporate donor who also has tripled the amount of investment capital he's been able to raise by saying that they proactively are investing in housing that is doing X and Y. And I would say, well, sort of, this is not totally studied or documented so much, I have so many examples of our housing partners that have been able to raise more investment capital by saying, Hey, we're opting into this challenge, right? Because here's the reality. Asheville is not unique in its housing affordability challenges. And I, if we get to sort of what the roadblocks are, they pretty much mirror most other communities, right?

So, everywhere you go, whether it's Boise, whether it's Salt Lake City, whether it's Boston, these are challenges that no longer are just exclusive to the coastal cities. So we have to deal with them, because we're, I think the low end estimate is, we're 2.1 million units of housing that we're under supplied by, right? So, you know, my point is, there's also sort of an investor, um, incentive to be part of the solution. You know, they're largely raising money from high net worth individuals, sometimes it's the Ford Foundation, sometimes it's healthcare, uh, companies that have an incentive for people not coming in through their doors, uninsured.

So while it's not the dominant thing, It is out there, and investors are able to raise more capital for their projects and be more competitive by opting into solutions.

Ross E Hamilton [28:46] Yeah, I haven't. I haven't raised capital from a New York City firm, like Beth has. I don't have that perspective, but I don't think profit and affordable housing need to be separate. There's definitely a win there, and the best businesses solve the biggest problem. The biggest problems, and this is a really big problem across the whole United States. So there's a lot of innovative solutions that we're starting to see. that I think we'll talk about a little later, and a lot of new ways things are being built, and I'm optimistic. Well, let's talk about it now.

Speaker 2 [29:19] That's the next question. So whether it's other markets that you're trying to bring here, or models that you're modeling yourself after, in other markets, excuse me, what are some of these innovative ways that you're seeing at work?

Ross E Hamilton [29:30] Yeah, again, full disclosure. I'm not in these industries, but I do watch them, and I love what I'm seeing when it comes to building homes. I believe we're seeing things change rapidly on how we can build houses. I'm building a house right now, and it is ridiculously inefficient and expensive. So I'm really excited about some of the new building techniques I'm seeing come out. And then also, you know, equity sharing, There is new financial vehicles that I'm seeing in the venture, capital markets that are being invested in to where people can buy and sell pieces of real estate. And I do believe if we fast forward out. houses will all be, like, a stock.

You be able to sell little bits and pieces of them. So as I watch that industry mature, there could be a place to where people might own a portion of their house, to where it's somewhere between renting and homeownership. So there are some things on the horizon that are exciting. So, like, a co op?

Speaker 2 [30:35] What do you mean by that? What's that? Like a cooperative? Or... For ownership? Yeah, it's like, Yeah, it's different than a co op.

Ross E Hamilton [30:43] Are you close enough to expand on Howard? I'm not close enough to expand on it. No worries. But you would own a percent. You'd be able to sell pieces of your house in an open market. Fast and fluid. Wall Street wants things to be as fast and fluid as possible. So there's a lot of people that are working on this. The legal hurdles are real, and it's expensive to do it, but I've seen a few companies start to do it. There was even a few little startups in Asheville, uh, that tried that ran into some roadblocks, but I believe we'll get there soon. Hold on, Katie, do you need the catch box? I think you do.

Speaker 5 [31:23] I know it's not time for questions, but, like, on that note, before that level, What's the level of people, as paradigm shift, people maybe aren't getting married. They're not having a bunch of children, but they still want ownership in a house. So, how will it maybe shift where friends go in together on a house? There's four, you know, I think about my kids, totally different game. You know, maybe they start going in as four of them co owning. So it's ownership still, fractional ownership, if you will. Right? Could be a stepping stone.

Ross E Hamilton [31:57] Yeah, I mean, you know, people syndicate deals right now. Like, there's investment deals and all that. Exactly. Yeah, I'm seeing a real trend in mother in law suites. You know, people moving in together. So that's a first step there, for sure. Well, sorry.

Anna Zuevskaya [32:14] Yeah, one of the things that we have kind of heard, in regards to that, is that people want to leave their houses to us as an organization, to ensure that lasting affordability. So that's something that we're exploring. Another example from other disaster hit areas. So, for example, Lahaina in Maui, what they're doing is not outright purchasing the home to create that lasting affordability, but they are providing cash to the owner, whose home was destroyed, in exchange for deed restrictions, and a right of first refusal. So that's something that we're also exploring here.

You know, in my example of we purchase a home to prevent it from foreclosure, possibly something that we could do is just put those deed restrictions on the home, not own it outright, but in the future have an opportunity to purchase it for an affordable price.

Speaker 2 [33:06] So, Beth, never before has a panelist brought notes that are highlighted to the stage.

Beth Silverman [33:11] I just highlighted the questions I wanted to answer. Okay, well, so, the ones I didn't want to answer.

Speaker 2 [33:16] As someone who works in other markets, take the floor. How would you like to...

Beth Silverman [33:20] Well, I think here's what I would say high level, I see communities really miss the boat on. Like, what the hurricane gave this region is an opportunity to address what was already causing huge roadblocks. So, right? This is kind of, like, once in a generation eye. oppunity. What causes the roadblocks here around housing? whether it's regulatory? Like, do we need to re look at some of our sort of zoning, um, and our approval process, and I would put in their community courage to give our elected officials, the political will, to not let perfection be the enemy of good when it comes to housing in this community? Pause for applause. There's also sort of who has access to capital.

Do we have a perception issue in this community that prevents sophisticated real estate owner and operators from wanting to invest here and go through the hard processes of building housing? I think the answer is yes, 'cause I've looked at buying stuff here, and it's I'm not sure, sort of, I want to go through the political process here. And then also, sort of, looking at what were the issues before that we have an opportunity to address? So, sure, you know, there's always gonna be shiny, prop tech innovations, and taking, sort of, capitalism to the nth degree, but what were the issues already here are we looking at those? Otherwise, we're just spinning our wheels, right?

It's a difficult place to build. We've got mountains. At least before the hurricane. It was, like, a 1.5% population growth. People want to be here. And then, sort of, we haven't ever really figured out the workforce housing anti displacement thing. So I would say, like, before even looking at what's out there in the rest of the country or working in other markets that are peers, what are the roadblocks that we're not saying out loud, right? And I would say, like, a professional mantra I have, is if you cannot name the problems and say them out loud, you absolutely cannot solve the issues. So.

Speaker 2 [35:30] So, uh, around 2008, this economist Joseph Shumpeter got, like, super famous with the idea of creative destruction, right? And it's kind of been played out in Hurricane Katrina, all these things that wear a disaster, or something where there's so many pain, and it forces you to kind of, like, address things that maybe have gone underline. And so to your point of there being an opportunity, as this market has evolved. I do agree with taking advantage of that versus taking capitalism to the nth degree, where you commoditize the home and sell it, and then we get derivatives off it, and it'll be really awesome.

So to your highlighted questions here, because we're going to move to Q&A in about five minutes, because we like to leave about 15 minutes for everyone we get you out of here at 7:30. Is there anything we didn't hit that you wanted, 'cause I'm very impressed with this.

Beth Silverman [36:15] Well, because I'm not, I don't work locally, so I wanted to be prepared. That's amazing. No, I think this is great, right? You're dealing with different spectrums of, like, there's no one size fits all solution to housing. And I think we often, as communities, look for what that big win is, and the reality is, it's many different things interconnecting. And its policy level, its investment level. It is busting myths about real estate investment, affordable housing, sort of things we've long standing, held as truths that maybe aren't really truths.

Speaker 2 [36:50] So, to tie in the whole creative destruction thing and the opportunity, and that'll probably get us to the end of the questions here. For each of you, what are the opportunities you see with current roadblocks, whether it be political zoning, infrastructure, something along these lines? What are the roadblocks in your industry, specifically, preventing you from being as successful as your wildest dreams? And we could start with you. Sure.

Anna Zuevskaya [37:13] I actually appreciated the report on the numbers earlier, because that, to me, is an opportunity right now. So, um, the fact that there is more inventory, the fact that prices have at least plateaued, right? Because we typically purchase homes on the market. So sometimes we get a little bit of a discount, or real estate agents work for us, pro bono, we're able to save a little bit of money there. Sometimes we have benevolent sellers who will drop the price, but for the most part, we're still paying market rate.

And so, seeing that amount of inventory, seeing the prices drop, pretty significantly, kind of on that listing price, and being corrected, is actually really exciting for me, because we're hopefully able to take advantage of purchasing some of those homes and keeping them at even a lower price than they are selling on the market.

Speaker 2 [38:09] Are there any roadblocks to that currently, you think, with infrastructure, policy?

Anna Zuevskaya [38:15] Well, the biggest roadblock to us is money. So... You are not alone? As a small nonprofit, access to capital is everything. And, you know, one of the things that I'll also mention is, for us, it's not just that financial capital, we also spend a lot of time living in the world of social and cultural capital, because that has been destroyed. So I just want to kind of bring that up, too, because it's really important to focus on those aspects. We're not just building the bricks and mortar of the homes, we're building communities, we're restoring communities. We're restoring people's homes and people's lives, and that's what really matters to us at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 [38:55] I love Ross's point about, you know, the workers of the infrastructure of the economy. If they can't live here and afford to live here. A lot of other things stop.

Beth Silverman [39:04] Okay, so I'm gonna not answer your question, but it's gonna be related. I'm excited. Um, there's a great book. You don't have to read it. You can watch a documentary on Netflix that sort of gives you modern day. It's called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. And there's this Netflix documentary called Join or Die, which is really great. It's all about how you have to participate in your community. And what you should hope about Robert Putnam is his work has been used by Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and also Steve Bannon. So, in terms of sort of building coalitions, right?

Which means he did something right, had unintended consequences, depending on where you fall on the political ideological spectrum. I think you have to participate in your community. So whether that means showing up to a city council meeting, learning sort of what the big issues are, thanking the city staff, that really is kind of doing God's work here, frankly, and figure out sort of what your lane is, and then, in terms of housing, next time you hear something sort of off, like, you know, some myth about affordable housing or homelessness, continue that conversation, but with curiosity and compassion, Because I think we get really stuck in silos, because we just automatically say x or y.

And I think everyone in this room is capable of having a compassionate and curious conversation and sort of getting, you know, someone to maybe think a little bit differently. So that would be what I would say, big opportunities from, like, just the community level of, we're all part of the solution. It's not the city alone. It's not city council, it's not just one developer or one investor. It sort of everyone in the room is actually responsible for the community. The book is bowling alone, and I just have to point out, my friend in the crowd, a Harvard real estate professor, where Robert Putnam is also, he might have retired, but he taught in the public policy school.

The Netflix documentary is called Join or Die. Um, and, you know, this guy is close to 80, 25 years later, everything he says is still very relevant.

Speaker 2 [41:25] I think you did answer the question. So there's another book. It's called, like, either Revenge or Revolt of the Elites or something, and it talks about that, where the status of being elite used to be, like, having a library named after you. Or reinvesting in your city, and now it's being a global citizen, where you can travel an Airbnb everywhere, and not invest in where that is an infrastructural problem. That's a, you know, that's a problem where the people live here don't want to invest here. So...

Ross E Hamilton [41:47] Yeah, great recommendation. I mean, food, water, shelter. Right? The home is the most one of the most basic needs. And I don't know about you, but just my heart rate's kind of high right now, I'm hearing all of these different things, talking about all this big capital that we need to raise and all these different ways we can potentially solve a problem, and it makes me feel kind of helpless, just a little bit. That's part of the reason I'm here. Because saving homes, we're in the process of building our team. We've proven out the model, we've helped over a dozen families. Now we're looking to scale. Yeah, we need money. We all need money. But we need people that care.

And I kind of set it up that way, because you can volunteer to just save one home. I know it's just one. Right? But if at the end of the year, you're like, Wow. I put my time into this, and I saved that family's home. Check. That times, you multiply that out. That's how we solve the problem. So if anyone wants to jump on board, low level commitment just helps save one family's home, you can make a tangible impact in North Carolina. And I have, I have a way for that to happen for you, so you can actually do something, 'cause it gets so overwhelming with all the different things you can do.

So if anyone's on board with that, just find me afterwards, and I'd love to talk to you and introduce you to the awesome team we have. If you take a look at the website, you'll see.

Speaker 5 [43:14] All right, so before we go to audience Q and A, we have the lightning round. So, short answers. One to three words, 10 seconds or less, Ross will start with you. If you had one word to describe Asheville's housing future if we get this right.

Ross E Hamilton [43:30] If we get this right... I would say just... We need something that's, we need something that scales. I don't have the one word, but replicatable, something that we can just rinse and repeat in some ways to, yeah, to start, to start adding up until the, while the big capital is coming together to do, to do the big stuff.

Unknown [44:00] Nice.

Speaker 5 [44:02] That was a great one word. Beth?

Beth Silverman [44:04] This is a tough one. I mean, I would say thriving, right? Like, let's aspire to what we want to be.

Anna Zuevskaya [44:11] Minus equitable.

Speaker 2 [44:14] I thought the gimme was affordable. But...

Anna Zuevskaya [44:18] We don't like that word. If that's your only takeaway from tonight, nobody likes affordable.

Speaker 5 [44:23] I like that scalable, though. That was good. And last lightning round question, if you had $10 million to spend on housing tomorrow, what would you do first? And I will start with you.

Anna Zuevskaya [44:34] Um, I'm part of a collaborative effort right now to create a land bank, so that is what we would do, is buy up as much land and property as possible in our focus neighborhoods.

Beth Silverman [44:50] So I'm gonna make a joke for... I need a button, sorry. And say that's not enough money. But what I would actually say is, I'd probably invest in some infrastructure in the city of Asheville, whether that's a development review person, whether that's sort of bringing on more things to innovate the actual process to get things built, built with a city that has a budget deficit, I think, of 17 million this year. I'd probably follow Michael Bloomberg's lead and do some innovation investment in the infrastructure of how things get built. Ross?

Ross E Hamilton [45:25] I would just scale out saving homes. That would essentially help roughly 2,500 individual people, um, to save their home. The man would replicate again. That's a great answer. Just keep doing what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 [45:41] All right, awesome. If we can get a round of applause for the speakers, please. All right, so the box is out in the wild already. Opening it up to the audience. Who would like to kick us off? Gentlemen over here on the left, Katie. There he is.

Unknown [46:00] Give it a throw. Boom.

Speaker 2 [46:02] All right, so the one thing I wanted to say is that, hearing you guys talk, and being a builder myself, the word subsidies, comes to my mind, just constantly, which could come in the form of private money, partnerships, in public, but subsidies, which, I feel, are kind of on the chopping block without going too deep into that. My thought is, it's like, this is, you know, reaching out for this guy, but it's almost like bonds. We need, like, uh, we need attainable housing bonds that can be made, because it's really just, like, a, where you put your money where you want it safe, because it's not a big growth market, but it's safe and secure, and it gives opportunity for people to get a leg up.

Because the challenge is, you know, as a builder, I look at it, and I crunch the numbers, and it's like, how do we do this? Like, how am I gonna go in? Like, I can take a reduction in my profit? And we can squeeze things, and we can do a modular, but land's expensive, labor is expensive, and you can cut out a lot of the fat out, which is not great for jobs, but that's kind of the reality of it. And so, everything I hear you guys talking about requires, whether it's said it doesn't have to be, like, you know, I forget the pulling on the heart strings, it kind of does a little bit, it's got to be safe, right? I guess let's call it safe, whether it pulls on heart strings or not.

Beth Silverman [47:30] But I think you're talking about risk mitigation, not...

Speaker 2 [47:33] It is risk mitigation, for sure, right? So, yeah, not everybody's gonna put their money into high investment, you know, or high risk investments, right? Or high risk. But there has to be a portion of the people that are willing to invest money, whether it's co ownership, which I think is a great strategy. I know I'm sure it's very complicated. The owning the land, whether, you know, some sort of trust or something, which I'm not sure how that would work, you know, national parks around the chopping block, so... If I could help you land the plane. I'd like to hear it. What is the question for that? There is no question.

I'm making a statement, because I'm just saying, I'm putting it out there, because I think the reality is, with anything affordable or attainable, it requires public concern and involvement, and a, and a mitigate a risk mitigated investment, which would be amazing to find, you know, sources out there that are gonna go out there and fun projects.

Anna Zuevskaya [48:33] Yeah, I'll just say that, um, if you all don't know, the city of Asheville passed a $20 million housing bond last year, and to Best Point, you know, the city is very understaffed and under capacity. And $20 million is not... Is nothing. Right, right. Yes. But there are certain tools. Some of them are on pause, but, you know, the developers, builders can come to the city for certain incentives. So, we are currently advocating that a good chunk of that 20 million is set aside for home ownership, because the city has been so focused on rental units, and we need a balance of both. So, just wanted to put that out there.

Speaker 2 [49:15] And that is great, and the going rate for affordable housing is?

Ross E Hamilton [49:22] Ross, are you gonna add something in? No, I was gonna say, like, I love what you said. If you can keep your money working, like, almost in a bond, and then use that when you need it, I mean, that a solution like that would be fantastic. And... Yeah, it needs to happen on a national level.

Beth Silverman [49:39] Yeah, I mean, I think what you're saying, though, is how do we revisit economic and sense it incentives and subsidy policies, right? We've largely used, like, two programs in this country, low income housing tax credits, and, um, the voucher system, and maybe new market tax credits, right? Those are old tools, they do really good things, but maybe the conditions have changed, and more tools need to be in the toolkit.

Speaker 2 [50:05] And just to say, I'm not saying that to be cynical, I'm saying that because this is the solution, really. Some people have to actually come up and create these opportunities, because the money's not gonna come out of thin air, and there are more people in need than there are people willing to, well, I don't know. So there are plenty of people to provide. To help you land just a little. So, past life, I did debt capital markets, right? So bonds, right? So there's general and revenue bonds. General bonds, like the unlimited taxing authority, and then revenue is, like, if you build a bridge in New York, and the tolls pay for it. So, this is real.

This is a great topic, and it's worth talking about.

Unknown [50:41] Anyone else?

Speaker 2 [50:43] On the right, in the blue hoodie, or green hoodie, standing up. Good throw.

Unknown [50:50] Hey, you.

Speaker 2 [50:52] Hi. Uh... So, you know, I'm new to the whole entrepreneurial side of things. But one thing that I've learned, is that to really be a prime mover, you have to, you have to catch the wave, and affordable housing has kind of always been the definition of chasing after the wave. Uh, do you see any possibility for any of your methods or any other methods out there for tackling affordable housing to be actioning? rather than reactionary, to solve for tomorrow's tomorrow, rather than the problem that we face today. Does that make sense? Who wants to tackle that? Beth seems excited or not.

Beth Silverman [51:50] Yeah, I mean, I can try. I think you have to do both, right? Because the problems of today if they don't get solved, morph into other problems. So both end, right? Um, and I think, listen, there's a lot of money that is made in affordable housing. Um, and anyone says that there isn't, I think, is not paying attention, um, and it is the highest. I was just reading the very long study today, and it's grim, right? The level of cost burden that people face the levels of sort of what you need to now spend on your income, the amount of affordable units, the growth of rent that's predicted over the next year, not to be an evil capitalist.

But if you really wanted to leverage what's going on in the market, there's money to make off of that. But I would just say, you really have to solve, you have to do both. I mean, if you leave behind what the challenges are today, you're just creating more costly things you have to solve down the line. And that's part of why we're in the situation we're in.

Anna Zuevskaya [52:57] I feel like we're always behind. I wish we started 10, 20, 30 years ago, you know, I look at the prices from back then, compared to now, and it's crazy, you all know this, but I do have a lot of faith in our model, because if we can get to scale, like Ross is talking about, if we can get to 300, 500 properties, then we create that lasting affordability, because, again, our homes won't sell on the market. So we recycle that affordability into the future.

Ross E Hamilton [53:33] Yeah, no, they summed it up perfectly. The problems we're gonna have tomorrow are the problems that we're having today. You know, with a little, with a little twist to it, so...

Speaker 2 [53:46] I have a three year old. Someone told me a three year old, it's like a terrible two with a year of experience, right? And so tomorrow's problem's just not being addressed today, it sounds like that's what's happening. Alright, we have time for one last question. Who's right at there in the front? Jackson, yes? Boom.

Unknown [54:05] Okay.

Speaker 2 [54:05] My question is, is the only way to solve this problem to make it financially advantageous or attractive to investors, like taking a very, in a very capitalist direction, or does there have to be a point where people are making sacrifice for the good of humanity, is the only way to make it financially attractive.

Unknown [54:28] Deep.

Ross E Hamilton [54:30] Who wants to tackle this? No one? The more financially attractive it is, the faster the problem's gonna be solved. That's for sure.

Speaker 2 [54:39] Is it possible to solve it without that? Well, well, you know, post World War II, the boys coming home. We had houses for all them. Like, there's all sorts of times where the where the nation does more things that scale, but, yeah, well, Katie, for the studio audience at home, I can't hear. We have lively audience participation. Would you like to close this out? We do have time. We have two minutes.

Unknown [55:03] I hate to say it.

Speaker 5 [55:06] I hate to be this way because I'm a total idealistic dreamer, one of those. But, yes, creative destruction. It probably has to get bad enough to where it really, really hurts. And I'm not saying it doesn't hurt now. But to where it affects the wealthier people, et cetera, et cetera. The big mass, you know, there's gotta be that tipping point, right, to where it hurts, the people with the money first. I mean, kind of like, you know, the Earth and everything. If we cared.

Ross E Hamilton [55:38] I mean, the next generation feels locked out of housing. 100%. 100%. At a whole. So something's gonna happen with that generation one way or another.

Speaker 2 [55:46] Going back to ancient Greece, this will be a Greek tragedy, we're gonna end on a low note, but we are out of time. And we are committed to getting you home at 7:30. So, in your inboxes right now should be a summary. We ask for feedback. believe that feedback is a gift. Let us know how you like the event tonight. And as long as the technology didn't break. It's in your inbox right now. Finally, one announcement. We have the cornhole tournament coming up in October. Thank you for being here. Drive safe. We'll see you next month. Hey, guys, Rodrigo here wanted to say thank you for taking the time to listen into this month's panel conversation.

We hope that you join us in person at next month's meeting. You can find out more at AVLmeetup.com. We primarily meet on the 1st Tuesday of every month, but be sure to check out our website, AVLMetup.com. You can also watch this conversation on YouTube at AVLmeetup. Well, also, I have a quick announcement. We started a property management company called Vesta Property management. So if you're looking for third-party management for long-term rental, we'd love the opportunity to talk to you. Our goal at Vesta is to turn houses into homes and investments in 2 returns.

If you're looking to work with a third-party management company, that will allow you to have peace of mind and experience freedom around rentals. Uh, reach out to us. We can help make that happen for you. That's the PM.com. What's going on, everyone? Zach here to close it out before you sign off for the day. If you liked the data driven portion of today's meetup, then I'd love to take a moment to tell you about the Ruys report and REMC.co. If you're a real estate professional, then you know that you should become the local economist of choice, but you're probably unsure of how to learn the skills required. That's where the Ruiz Report comes in.

We offer customized market reports to promote your business, training videos so you learn how to interpret the market data, and monthly quizzes to keep you sharp. Learn more at reseport.com and sign up for a free account to watch all of our training videos at no cost. If you're more interested in the live data and some data and analytics dashboards, then I highly suggest you check out ramc.co. REMC.co is the 1st of its kind, data and analytics dashboards for the real estate industry. Now you have to be an active participating member of the MLS in order to sign up, but it is unparalleled data on every market participant, whether that's an office, a listing, or one of the realtors.

Again, you can find out more about REMC.co at REMC.co. As always, thanks for listening, and we hope to see you at one of our next meetups. If you can't make it and you still want to be part of the movers and shakers, then sign up for a free account at AVLmeetup.com and get yourself into our member directory. Thanks again. See you next month.