Takeaways from IIREC 2022

Today we’re talking to you about last weekend’s absolutely fabulous conference: the Intelligent Investors Real Estate Conference. They do it every year about this time of year. it’s put on by Asym Capital and Capital Stack Investments. They put together a panel of unbelievably talented and smart people day after day, networking and discussion groups with the people that came to the conference, who were well worth knowing and getting to know. I was pleased to have been able to be there, and I’ve got four takeaways that I want to share from the two-day period that seemed to be generally agreed upon by all the speakers, though one thing that was great about the conference is not everybody agreed sometimes. There were great healthy discussions in the panels. So my takeaways:

1. Don’t be sitting on cash right now. With inflation being where it is, get your cash invested in inflation protected and appreciating assets. If you’re sitting in cash and there’s seven percent of inflation then you’re losing money. we’ve all known this since our first ever economic education, but inflation’s hardly been an issue that we’ve had to deal with for several years.
2. Restructure all your debt into long-term debt, as long as that makes sense. You don’t really want to be floating your your debt right now. You don’t want to float your interest rates at the bottom of the market. Refinance your properties, or sell your properties and buy something else, or just restructure all of your debt with really low interest rate long-term debt. Because in inflationary times going long on your debt means you’re going to pay back with cheaper dollars.
3. Consumers’ balance sheets are as healthy as they have ever been. They’ve got more cash and more assets. All of this is great. However, with the end of the free money stimulus coming out in the trillions of dollars from the government, and with the end of PPP, and the end of the federal reserve, investments are tightening on their credit consumers in the markets, and really in general will be under pressure now. They’re in a great position to be under that pressure, so there’s no real expectation that the economy is going to tank or that we’re going to have a big foreclosure crisis or anything like that, because consumers have so much money, but it’s going to be a bumpy ride. So it’s great that they’re in such good condition, but things are about to change and are changing, so that seems to be the consensus.
4. What’s one of the best places for your money to be? Real estate! Or any cash flowing investment. I would even argue for consistently dividend paying stocks–I’ve been holding a position in Verizon for years. The stock doesn’t react to the market hardly at all, but it’s got a good strong dividend yield on it. Real estate is almost always structured to adjust with costs, either with shorter one year leases or with inflation factors built into your lease.

We highly recommend checking out this conference! They’re already selling tickets for next year. IIREC 2022 was just absolutely fabulous. Check it out!