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This podcast is meant to inform and entertain listeners on the topics of finance, estate planning, taxes, and the beautiful area of Redding, CA and it's people
For some people I talk to right now, with the economy where it's at, I I tell them that their their their number one thing they need to do is to get in there with their team. Get in the, you know, get in the dirt with them and and grind a little bit. You know, I I mentioned earlier, I still sell a lot of homes in my market. And the reason why I do that is because then my agents have an example that they can then follow. You know, modeling is an easy way to teach and to coach.
Chris Hall:Hi. This is Chris Hall, and welcome to Healthy Wealth, where we talk about health and wealth and how they interact with each other and how we can be better at both. Today, I'm very excited to have a guest speaker with me. You if you're local to the Redding area, you definitely know who I'm about to introduce. Josh Barker is definitely, one of the titans of real estate here in Redding, California, And we're gonna have a great conversation, talking about what's going on with the market, when it comes to real estate and interest rates and all the different things.
Chris Hall:So Josh, thank you so much for being here. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Josh Barker:Yeah. Well, first, Chris, yeah, thank you so much for for inviting me on the show. I appreciate that. And to answer your question, yeah, I'm a Josh Barker real estate broker. Been here in the local market for a little over twenty five years now selling real estate.
Josh Barker:We run a small, what I call a boutique brokerage here in the Reading market. And we have a we've essentially run like a real company instead of as an independent agent brokerage. So we all kind of work together to service the marketplace.
Chris Hall:Nice. Okay. And then so you have been doing it for twenty five years. And so obviously, the topic conversation these days for everybody is interest rates. So tell us a little bit about what you think is going on, what's been going on, and what you think is going to be happening here pretty soon.
Josh Barker:Sure. Well, interest rates are an interesting thing, because it has a big impact on affordability. Shasta County tends to be more rate sensitive than other markets throughout the country. The primary reason for that is most of the Reading market is a primary homeownership market. It's not a secondary home market.
Josh Barker:So like for example, if you're down in the Bay Area or Southern California or in the beach in Florida, a lot of those are second homes and not necessarily as rate sensitive. Here, financing is about 80% of all purchases, which means that interest rates have a huge impact on what a buyer is able to do. And currently, rates are averaging just below 7% or so, right in that range.
Chris Hall:Now when you say that we're in the same market,
Chris Hall:I think people thought that people would sell their homes in the Bay Area and Southern California and then move here. Is that not happening as much as it used to? Are those same people that used to move here moving out of state, or what do you think about that?
Josh Barker:We've continued over the years to have a modest flow of buyers coming in from the Bay Area, Sacramento Region, LA County, Orange County, San Diego County, retiring up into our area. It's not significant. It's just a moderate number. During the pandemic, there was an increase, an influx. And some of those people came up here at a higher frequency than they had ever before.
Josh Barker:And now we're back to what we were prior to in terms of the inflow from people from out of the area. It's back to what it was prior to the pandemic. It's and not depending on price point, for your listeners or people watching this, a lot of it has to do with price point. So as the price goes up, the amount of out of market buyer participation also goes up.
Chris Hall:They're not as afraid of some of these things, maybe some of it local.
Josh Barker:Sure, yeah, they might be selling a thousand square foot bungalow in the Bay Area for a million and a half, and they're gonna buy a 3,500 square foot home here for, you know, a mill. I like
Chris Hall:to refer to those as equity refugees.
Josh Barker:That's right. That's what they are. Yeah. And they like to refer to themselves that way too. But when you think
Chris Hall:I had noticed that go ahead, sorry. Oh, I
Josh Barker:was going say, when you think about rates, one other thing that these folks might want to realize is that for every 1% that the rate goes up or down, it has an impact on the purchasing power by up to 10%. So for example, if rates are at 7% right now and a person can afford a payment or a purchase price of 400,000, if that rate drops down from 7% to 6%, that same buyer with the same payment is now qualified at 440,000. And so that's the real impact of interest rates in the market.
Chris Hall:Now, I feel like pre COVID, kind of going back to the higher end stuff, pre COVID, I would see like one, maybe two houses a month over the $600,000 range. It seemed like it was climbing up. It was more and more. And then during COVID, like those houses, like, disappeared from, I don't know about listings, but they definitely disappeared from sales. And now it seems like those houses aren't back up and you kind of run them again.
Chris Hall:Do you see that as well? Do you see the higher end stuff still moving?
Josh Barker:Well, I think the higher end actually moved a little better during the pandemic, believe it or not. And now it's been moderating back down again. We're about 50% in terms of of the volume of home selling in the upper end. And for those listening, upper end would be just about anything over 800,000. It's where you start to see the sales numbers drop off a cliff, essentially, and it starts to get real real real thin air at that point.
Josh Barker:Onesie, twosie per price segment kind of thing.
Chris Hall:And I know that, like, the average home sale in this town is what?
Josh Barker:About 400,000. Okay. We're seeing right now for the average sales price. Maybe maybe $4.00 7 at the moment.
Chris Hall:And then I know that, like, it seems that we have more listings than we have in quite some years and years now. Would you be
Josh Barker:Yeah. That's a part of the story right now. So, you know, if you look at the pandemic, you probably had 375, 385 properties pending in July in closing. This year, we're probably gonna be two fifteen to two thirty.
Chris Hall:Okay.
Josh Barker:Yeah. So it's dropped, you know, almost 50% in sales volume. Our inventories have also climbed, so we had a low of in the five hundreds. And right now, we're sitting at about 930 properties for sale, single family. So we have sales volumes dropping.
Josh Barker:You have inventory climbing. And the next question will be what happens with pricing.
Chris Hall:Right?
Josh Barker:You know, and it's Well,
Chris Hall:and so that is a good question. You know, I you know, with interest rates for my business, you know, interest rates are really high right now, which means that, you know, there's pretty decent yields in the bond market. And there's usually some of these stocks that have been wrong for a long time or raise their dividend so they can sort of compete with bonds or just So need to do from my standpoint, you know, the interest rates being up is after you took that initial blow in 2022, when it really when the interest rates were just jacked up right away. You know, everybody led bonds was suffering for sure. But now it seems like, you know, they're doing pretty well.
Chris Hall:The yields are better, etcetera. We're looking for a rate decrease for the idea that, you know, the bond prices will go back up. You guys are looking for it for a different reason. But, you know, what do you think is gonna happen if they do turn around and drop rates a half a percent or 1%? Will that make it effective?
Chris Hall:Will that be effective in the market?
Josh Barker:I think it will. I think it'll have a positive impact on pricing primarily. If so you know? But there is a there's a line that would get crossed where it would stop. So, like, for example, if rates right now around 7%, if rates were to drop to six and a half, that's a half a point.
Josh Barker:Buyers purchasing power increases by 5%. We'll have a positive impact on on selling homes in the market. The volume will likely respond to that and increase a little bit. If rates were to drop a full point and a half to two points and get us down to a 5%, I think you would start to see our inventory growing even faster because those who were sitting on an interest rate at three, three and a half percent will probably be more willing to relinquish it for a rate of five than what they were you know, because right now, it jumped from 3% to 7%. That's a that's a that's a double the cost.
Josh Barker:Right? Right.
Chris Hall:But I
Josh Barker:think that if rates come down even into around that 5% range, it'll actually increase the the demand in the market, but it'll increase the inventory. So I I it's funny because the Fed, I don't understand how they're looking at this because I think if rates went down, you know, I think you'd actually see the real estate prices go down also. Right.
Chris Hall:Right? Because And, know, would that you think that would be that's that's do think that'd be a temporary thing? Like, other words, they'd go down a little bit in the beginning because there'd be competition for purchase, but then after a while, those lower rates will increase the housing costs?
Josh Barker:We'll always yeah. It'll definitely find it's a new equilibrium around 5%. So if rates come down to 5%, the inventory will climb as a result of that because more people will wanna sell their homes and participate so they can move on to another home. Because there's lot of people locked in a home right now that just they can't afford the 7% rate, so they're staying in their home. So they're not providing a piece of inventory to the market, and they're not buying a piece of inventory.
Chris Hall:That's a really good point.
Josh Barker:Yeah. When the rates come down to five, that person will relinquish their home. They'll go buy another one, and now you're seeing your inventory increasing, giving buyers more options. Prices will moderate as a result. Well, I think it could soften prices slightly, but not by too much.
Josh Barker:By by enough, though, that you'll you'll start to feel a plateauing effect in the market, which is good. I mean, that's kind of what you want. I mean, real estate really should be appreciating around 4% of your max.
Chris Hall:Right.
Josh Barker:Otherwise, you risk pricing your own kids out of the market.
Chris Hall:Right. That's true. Yeah. Do you feel like they were still feeling any sort of lingering effects from the car fire? So, you know, disappearance of a thousand homes in this town, like overnight?
Josh Barker:Well, that's a good question. I mean, less than half of those homes have been rebuilt. There's some different reasons for that, but I did an interview with the Record Searchlight about two months ago about this exact topic, like how many homes were rebuilt, and it was about half. And I think that the when the fire first happened, yeah, there was an immediate response. The rental market tightened up quickly.
Josh Barker:Those who had the means were purchasing homes almost immediately. The rest of them kind of had to wait until after they had their financing figured out after getting paid off from their insurance companies. There was a lagging effect to it. But at this point, the ones that are not rebuilt are either in a really decimated fire areas where everything is just scorched earth, or the topography is not, and it's not really affordable anymore to build at the method that they used back then. So like the back know, the West side of town, you got a lot of slopes, so there was a lot of daylight basements and retaining walls and and things like that that all cut raised the cost of construction, and it's some of these places is not financially feasible to rebuild them now.
Chris Hall:Right. Just like even the engineering to draw it up is probably like an extra $30 nowadays.
Josh Barker:Exactly. And then you got the cost of actually building it versus, you know, just taking your insurance money, go and buying another home and then eventually making the decision if you're going to sell the lot or or what have you. Right. Which is what we're seeing.
Chris Hall:Right. Yep. So what what got you into real estate? You've been in it for a long time. You're a local guy.
Chris Hall:Right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm a local guy.
Josh Barker:My my dad was a broker. My grandfather was a broker. I swore I'd never be one. So but my wife and I moved back up here in 1999. I started working with Mike Medley, Medley Realty here in Reading.
Josh Barker:Sure. His dad, Bob, was my first broker. And, you know, we I was in college at the time. My wife was in college, and I I needed to pay the bills, so I started selling real estate with my buddy. And within a year, it just really took off.
Josh Barker:I didn't, you know, I didn't really think. It turns out that if you when you're raised with a parent who's doing nothing but listening to sales tapes in the vehicle while you're driving around town all day long, I guess it gets in here even though you didn't
Chris Hall:know it. So That's awesome. I love that. Yeah. So, actually, I
Chris Hall:listen to a lot of stuff.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Yeah. My kids with me a lot.
Josh Barker:Yeah. My kids are both my older daughters are in the business with us. My 26 year old and my 22 year old. And they're out they're salespeople. They're selling silly.
Josh Barker:Yeah.
Chris Hall:Yeah. So you have two kids?
Josh Barker:I have four. Yeah. Got a 26 year old in the business, 22 year old in the business, and then I've got a nine year old, and I have a four year old. My wife and I adopted two more when they were babies. So we're going to be going for a long time.
Chris Hall:Now did you have a relationship to those kids before you adopted them, or just decided you wanted to adopt kids and went for it?
Josh Barker:No, good question. No, they are technically my second cousins. So my first cousin and I, we grew up together, and we were in the Marines together. Not together, but different times, but in the Marines. And he just didn't adjust as well when he got out.
Josh Barker:So Sure. I saw that, and, you know, we wanted the we wanted the kids to be you know, we wanted to be with and with the family not not being adopted out or something. So
Chris Hall:Alright. Awesome. That's awesome. Good job.
Josh Barker:Thanks.
Chris Hall:What do you feel? What do you kind of foresee coming up here? Know, like, know that every day we hear a little bit about pals not really like one to bend at all. And of course, Trump's talking about replacing him, you know, to get what he wants out of the deal. Yeah.
Chris Hall:I know you had mentioned earlier you don't know what metrics he's looking at. Like, what do you what do you feel like? I mean, you don't have a crystal ball. No one's gonna hold your feet to the fire. But, like, what do how do you feel this is gonna play out for the next six months?
Josh Barker:It's it's entirely up to to Jerome Powell what he wants to do. Trump's not gonna fire him. If he'd even fired him, it wouldn't work. Because if you fired him, they're just gonna file an injunction, and they're gonna put it in court. And by the time you get there to court, his time is up anyway.
Josh Barker:I think it's up in May year. So Okay. Yeah. So I don't think it's gonna I don't think that it'll be anybody's decision but Powell's. It wouldn't be a good thing for the market, in my opinion.
Josh Barker:I don't think people want it's already fairly political. I think everybody recognizes that Powell is probably playing a little bit on that side. But it to what degree? I don't know. Because you the Fed, there's there's 12 different people.
Josh Barker:I think it's 12 people that all have a vote on what rates do going up or going down. I mean, we don't have just one person making that decision. Jerome Powell is one vote of 12. So Okay. Yeah.
Josh Barker:So if you replace him, you still have to lobby the other 11 to make a decision one way or the other. And I think they're right now, the consensus, the majority, I should say, in the Federal Reserve that sit on that board feel that they should take a very patient approach. And it hasn't proven to be a bad thing. I don't I I am not actually all that disappointed in what they've done so far. I do think that it's probably time, though, at this point.
Josh Barker:You know, inflation is down. I don't believe that tariffs are inflationary. I think they're a tax. So if you treat them as a tax if they if your taxes go up, you don't raise rates as a result of taxes going up because it actually sucks up the money supply. It doesn't increase it.
Josh Barker:Right. So I don't understand the tariff piece why that's inflationary. I know I know that the products might cost a little bit more, but it's not based on the demand side of an equation.
Chris Hall:Yeah.
Josh Barker:Yeah. It's based on the fact that your you know, the taxes are higher. You have to pay the tax when you buy it instead of the tax late. Right? So I don't understand that piece too much, but, you know, we'll let the smarter people figure that out.
Josh Barker:I'm trusting with our company. We're we're planning that we have a rate environment similar to what it is now until the fourth quarter, and then we start to think interest rates will start moderating down a little bit. We'll probably have a decent response to that in the market. And then next year, if things continue to show well, I think rates will start really sliding down.
Chris Hall:What do you feel like like a local person who has been sitting on the sidelines right now, you know, to buy or sell, like the people you just talked about? If we're, you know, roughly, you know, six months away, four to six months away from some sort of rate change that's going to be beneficial to both buyers and sellers, What can people do to prepare right now for that? So they're not the one you know, like, there's not a thousand people in it all at once since, you know, maybe they can they can be at the top and ready to go.
Josh Barker:Well, that you just said it, though, Chris. I mean, that's it. I mean, if you wait until everything's a frenzy again, well, then, you know, you you you can write an offer on '3 properties and not buy any of them, you know, if if everybody's trying to buy them. So right now that you don't have that same activity, you don't have that same frenzy, if you will, there are some competing offers, but not very many. And right now, you don't have the pressure of you have to hurry up when you find something.
Josh Barker:And so, you know, that's if you if that's something that that you prioritize is being able to take your time, be more methodical in those things, then now is not a bad time. And it will be probably less expensive, though, next year in terms of rates to do it. But, you know, some people now would say that, well, if you do it now, you could refinance later. But there is some cost to that. You know, you you pay fees every time
Chris Hall:you refinance. That's not free. That's for sure.
Chris Hall:It's not free.
Josh Barker:No. But so I, you know, I I've always kinda told people it's usually the right time with your primary residence anyways. It's the right time when you say it is. Because normally, you're just trading a position in the market. Right?
Josh Barker:So if I'm selling my home now, then I'm gonna go buy another home now. If the market goes up, I'm gonna receive the benefit of inflation in my home I'm in now or the one I buy. Right?
Chris Hall:Right.
Josh Barker:And if the market was to go down, well, if I if I sold my home now and I bought another home now, whether I stay in this one, the market goes down or go in the other one, the market goes down. Either one, the market's going down. So Right. You know, with your primary, you you're taking a position in the market. And like the stock market, you wouldn't recommend that people buy and sell stocks in the same portfolio all day every day.
Josh Barker:That would not probably be a good strategy.
Chris Hall:We recommend against it. Right.
Josh Barker:Well, real estate is kind of the same thing. Right? It's like, you know, you just when you take a position on your primary residence anyway, you know, you're gonna hold that position. Market will go up and down a little bit, but you're you're okay either way.
Chris Hall:I think that makes a lot of sense when you when you when you talk about, like, hey, people are well, they're thinking that maybe they're gonna miss something or they're gonna like, you know what I mean? Or like, maybe they they want to wait long enough to because they they're afraid that they're gonna get into early. But really, honestly, you're just like you're saying you're just trading positions, Unless you literally don't have a house at all right now, if you're selling to buy, whatever gain or loss on this house is gonna
Chris Hall:be a gain or loss on the house.
Josh Barker:And you there's actually some argument for you. You'd rather buy an asset actually when the rates are higher. You know? Because Warren Buffett, I think, said it really well where he said that interest rates serve as gravity to value of an asset. So as the interest rate goes up, it pulls the value of an asset down.
Josh Barker:And then the reverse happens when rates come down. So when the rates go down, it pulls the value of the asset up. And so right now, our interest rates are a little higher. They're elevated. That you could argue that that might mean that at least in the short term that as rates go down, it's gonna have an increase in in value with an asset.
Chris Hall:We that's exactly how we see it in the in the bond market as well. You know, the bond market, when the interest rates are high in the bond markets, you know, stifled. But then again, like, as time goes along, the rates sort of catch up and then and then interest and dividends that you see kind of goes up. But then when the rates start to go down, the price of those bonds go up. You know, I have several clients now that we have, you know, six and a half percent bonds in their portfolio.
Josh Barker:Right.
Chris Hall:And, you know, that's, that's a pretty crazy number for, you know, what we can what we can really consider a glorified savings account, or what I like to call war chest. Sure. That money is kind of sitting there ready for us. When the market does go down, we can put that money into the market.
Josh Barker:That's
Chris Hall:right. But yeah, I mean, six and a half percent on your war chest is pretty great.
Josh Barker:Oh, it's good. I mean, it's hard to get that anywhere else. So good for you.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Sure. They're happy with you, Chris.
Chris Hall:Oh, I hope so. So, with regards to, you know, like your your your business itself, tell me a little bit about what it what it came to to become like. You were a a, you know, real estate agent, and now you're a broker, and now you're running the most successful brokerage in town. Like, kinda like walk me through your life as a business owner instead of just as a an agent. Tell me a little bit more about how that progressed for you.
Josh Barker:Sure. Yeah. Well, it was a good question. I mean, it was just a slow progression. So, you know, starting off as an agent working for Medley Realty, like I said, and, you know, finding some success in it.
Josh Barker:And then, you know, what I learned was is that I couldn't be available for the customer at the moment the customer wanted me when it was just me. So I hired my first administrative person to support me in my efforts almost on day one as soon as I figured out how the how that worked. And so then all of a sudden, you know, I'm out there servicing the customer in the field, but if a customer is calling into the office, they're talking to somebody that works for me, they're getting serviced right away, they're not having to wait for anything. And and it'll it freed up my time to be able to go out and serve more people. And so, you know, over the course of, you know, four or five years, I figured out, you know, how to grow from, you know, one administrative person to three or four administrative people, move from just myself in sales to myself and a few other people to support me in our production, again, with the focus of just making sure our customers are being serviced well.
Josh Barker:And so today, we'll do close to 700 transactions here in our local markets, serve about 700 families. I'm still actively involved in several 100 of those personally, and the rest of those are serviced by our sales team in our office. But it's all overseen by me, right? So I still have a large administrative staff now. Think we have about eight or nine people that work for us on the administrative side.
Josh Barker:They're all licensed agents, but they stay focused on administrative related activities. And my sales team stays focused on servicing of the customer out in the field activities, and it helps us to be able to do things a little better. Most brokerage is ran where you have, let's say, 50 agents in an office doing 50 things, 50 different ways. And that's fine, and and they're all trying to figure it out for themselves. But in our office, we don't do that.
Josh Barker:We all work together as team. We have one business plan. We have a vision, a mission, a plan. We work the plan. Everybody stays in their lane.
Josh Barker:You know? And I and I have 14 agents doing that. So much different much different that was an interested buyer, Park One, about to come in. Nice. So so we have a a system and an operation, and it's a little foreign to real estate businesses because most realtors are just an independent contractor trying to figure it out.
Josh Barker:And I would say that I'm a I'm a business person. I know how to run a company, and I also sell real estate.
Chris Hall:Right. That's awesome. And there's a huge difference. I remember a long time ago, read a book called the e net. Oh, yeah.
Chris Hall:Middle of the entrepreneur. Have you read that?
Josh Barker:Oh yeah. Michael Gerber wrote that book. It's a great book.
Chris Hall:Yeah. If you guys haven't read it, it's good. Basically just talks about how, you know, you can be really good as a technician, but that doesn't make you a good boss. Doesn't make you a good leader. You know, you really have to like, you're gonna be an entrepreneur, you gotta like put on a lot of different hats and most of those hats don't include being the technician anymore.
Chris Hall:Yeah. So That's true. There's you're still out in the field doing things. But for the most part, you know, like if you're gonna an auto mechanic and, you know, you try to open up your own shop, you spend more time in admin than you do turning wrenches. So Yep.
Chris Hall:Great book.
Josh Barker:Yeah. No. That I mean, glad you brought that up because that that I read that book very early on, probably in 02/2002, 02/2003, I think, is when I read it. And then I read The E Myth Revisited, of course. Rockefeller Habits was another great book that really talked about how to scale.
Josh Barker:But Michael Gerber's probably got the, you know, got the, you know, the price for that one. Yeah. And I and a lot of what we did and how we figured it out was because of some of those insights of, wait a minute. I I can't be good at all things, which I'm not anyway. But but it's better to find better people in those areas that you're not as good in and have them do a better job.
Chris Hall:Right. Oh, I love that too. One of the things I learned early on in my career as a financial adviser was I really think of paperwork. And so, you know, most of the things that we do
Chris Hall:for people, if it's an investment strategy, if it's, you know, making sure that we're doing
Chris Hall:Yep.
Josh Barker:Yeah. You know, I've I've had a consultant. I mean, I've worked with a couple of different people over the years. I was a coach for a real estate company called Mike Ferry for many years, and I did all of their team building workshop stuff. So it was my job with the company, and it was an national company.
Josh Barker:So, you know, working with people from every state in the country. And, you know, I I think by having influence, you know, that's one of the my little secrets, I think, to how we've done well is I've I've spent a lot of time in the air flying to different locations, figuring out what business operations are running well, why are they running well, how do you serve a customer at the highest level, why is that working, how do we duplicate that. You know? And I've been I'm on the ground, you know, in these different companies. I'm starting off in their p and l department and then working through all the departments in their company, helping them dissect that.
Josh Barker:And it's it's really had a huge impact on our success here because I've just tried to take the very best that I've learned and then bring those back to Reading and and implement them in our office here.
Chris Hall:Love that. You know, I find it funny because people say like those who cannot do, you know, they'll teach or whatever. But I actually have found in my life that if I can teach something, it's because I've gotten really good at it. And then also, like, as you're teaching it, I feel like as you're teaching it, you're getting even better at it. Oh, yeah.
Chris Hall:Really have
Chris Hall:to see the process.
Chris Hall:All over the place. And you're seeing that people doing right and seeing people doing right.
Josh Barker:Yep. So I think that's very valuable. Yeah. I I agree. Yeah.
Josh Barker:You know, and when I'm on the ground in these locations, I mean, I might be sharing, you know, some insights after I've had a chance to really get my my bearings around what they're doing. But I'm also picking up things too, you know, that they're doing really well. So it's a great exchange in ideas. I call it a mastermind in some ways.
Chris Hall:Oh, yeah.
Chris Hall:What do you think like, this this is more out to because this this podcast has a reach for, you know, business owners as well as, you know, just listeners. What do you feel like business owners are missing right now that they could like one or two things that they could do that would really help them, like turn their business into a, like, a real legitimate business? What do you think is good for people to start out with if they're not doing it?
Josh Barker:It kinda depends on what their situation is at the moment. Right? So I mean, if you're on this trajectory of of of growth and and doing extremely well and that's where your focus is right now, I would say bring in the best talent as fast as you can because, really, you need to leverage is gonna be the key to getting to the next step. But for some people I talk to right now with the economy where it's at, I I tell them that their their their number one thing they need do is to get in there with their team. Get in the, you know, get in the dirt with them and and grind a little bit.
Josh Barker:You know? I I mentioned earlier, still sell a lot of homes in my market, and the reason why I do that is because then my agents have an example that they can then follow. You know, modeling is an easy way to teach and to coach. I mean, if if I want people just, hey. Just do what I do.
Josh Barker:And it's not just with servicing a buyer or seller. It could be with how I talk to our staff, how I communicate with my colleagues how I solve a problem. You know, you raise your bar as high as you can, and then other people then will actually emulate you. Before you know it, your sales team and and your operation and your company is shooting in the right direction. It's a lot easier to pull a chain than it is to push one.
Josh Barker:And I think a lot of people, you know, they wanna get somebody else to do the work. I'm like, no, it's not my approach. I'd rather get out in the front and say, just follow me. Let's go.
Chris Hall:Right. Right. Well, I think that, you know, when you're a business owner, you have a vision, you know, it's really easy to kinda write a vision on a board, you know, and and say, hey, this is our mission statement. This is our vision. But then when they see you actually working the vision, working the mission statement, then I think that really I think people do wanna follow somebody that's leading by example.
Chris Hall:So I think that's good. I think you're right. And
Josh Barker:I think that so it it depends on where that person to your question where they're at. You know? But I the biggest bottlenecks, choke points, whatever you wanna call them, that we have in our company is always trying to find better people. I mean, that our people aren't great, but if you want to grow, you got to bring in more great people into your organization. Right.
Josh Barker:And that's the key. Know, everybody's looking for the same thing. Good, good people.
Chris Hall:Right. I do. I find that's really, you know, in my industry, you know, I've seen some financial advisors who are operating without even an administrative assistant of any type. And I just think like, oh my gosh, like you are literally stepping over dollars to save pennies, you know, that's they're not worth their weight. You know?
Josh Barker:Oh, totally. I mean, like I said, my my first year in the real estate business, I I I immediately, within a couple of months, I figured out, oh, wait a minute. I'm not gonna be able to stay in income producing activities if I keep on doing these administrative related tasks. So let's solve that problem immediately and bring somebody in that can do that side of the business, and I'll stay in the income producing side. They're in the income servicing side or the client servicing side, and now you have a chance to scale with that.
Chris Hall:Right. Right.
Josh Barker:Yeah. People need to bring in assistance right away. You're not good at everything.
Chris Hall:That's right. Or or you're gonna not like, if you can hire a a a professional or a paraprofessional, even just part time to kinda, like, help you get through those things that, you know, get you get you stuck.
Josh Barker:That's right.
Chris Hall:So Yeah. You can do it
Josh Barker:in one hour. Know? I mean, business owners, it's hard because you don't always know what you make per hour. But I think going through that exercise is important. Figure out, you know, what did I make in the last twelve months, you know, net taxable income to me.
Josh Barker:Break that down to an hourly wage. And then and anything anything that's 30% of that that you can hire for 30% less than that, that's an that's a no brainer. Somebody else is doing it. Right.
Chris Hall:I've heard that before. You know, people will say like, hey. Listen to podcasts and and and audiobooks, they'll say, hey, you know, at the end of day, I'm making a thousand dollars an hour or $500 an hour. And it's like, but yet you're still stuck doing a task that you could pay somebody $20.30 bucks an hour on.
Chris Hall:Mhmm.
Chris Hall:You know? So it's it's it's a good point. How how old were you when you first started getting into coaching? Like, where I what I mean, like, you actually went out and got a coach.
Josh Barker:Oh, I'm really lucky. So when I went to start working for that Mike Medley I told you about, on day one, they handed me sales tapes, they said, if you're gonna stay with our company, because I was just a young kid out of the marines, they're like, if you're gonna be with our company, you're gonna learn this stuff on day one. So I immediately started burning out these tapes. And for the younger kids, your tapes are the things you used to put into a machine, and you'd press play. You know?
Josh Barker:But and I, you know, I spent all my time listening to these tapes. And, you know, within a year and a half, I had my business going enough where I had enough money to afford hiring my first coach. You know? And that and I'm so a year and a half in the business, I already hired a coach, and I've never not had a coach since.
Chris Hall:That's awesome. Yeah. I think that's huge. I think it's such a testament to your success, you know, is to always have somebody from the outside looking in, rooting for you, Mentoring you, I think it's a great idea. And I'm sure your coaches have changed three years.
Chris Hall:I'm probably Yeah. Mean, I still have Your coach now is probably pretty high level.
Josh Barker:Yeah. I mean, one of my close friends now, I mean, he's 80 years old. That's to give you an idea what my my number one mentor in real estate business is 80. He just turned 80. And so I obviously over and I worked for him for many years.
Josh Barker:So for me, I'm I I work with other people too periodically, but those relationships are typically, hey, here's my problem I'd like to work on. I'd like to work with you for six months to help me solve it. Know You what I mean? So I'm getting really granular and intentional with some of the people I work with too.
Chris Hall:I think that's another really cool aspect of coaching is, like, I think some people think if they get a coach, they need to just, like, stick with that same person forever. And maybe they do. It just depends again, like where they're at. But like in a non business world, let me just kinda so like my son is a football player, and we've been working really hard on his 40 yard dash because it's it's a little bit,
Chris Hall:you know, little bit more to be.
Chris Hall:Working with the same guy for like six months. And I love this guy. And he's a great coach. But I've noticed that like his his start off the line is not as good as it I think it should be six months later. Right.
Chris Hall:And so, you know, and my son's like, well, maybe I'm just not athletic. And I'm like, I just don't think that's it, you know, and I really do truly believe. So I took him down over the weekend to talk to a coach down there, who who's basically he's a football coach, but he also was a track guy. So all he did was work on this kid where for basically like two and a half hours, we did a little break in between but just improvement and I can actually watch my kid go, Oh, like, because he said something differently. And it's not that he said a different thing.
Chris Hall:He said the same thing my kid's been hearing for six months, but he said it differently.
Josh Barker:Sure.
Chris Hall:And I think that's huge in coaching too. For me, I always like to go, hey, listen, I think I'm stuck in this spot. Like, I don't know where to go. So like, maybe go like to ask your friends, hey, Josh, who are you? You know, who's your guy, you know, because like, I've noticed that, you know, a lot of people who coach real estate will also coach financial advisors, they'll also coach plumbers.
Chris Hall:Yep. You know, they will, they don't care about that. It's really about and it really it does translate to, you know, like being able to be so I guess that would be sort of my take home message to people listening as if you're in a business and you're doing, you know, pretty well, but you feel like you're stuck, that's that's time to get a coach, You know? So would you agree with that?
Josh Barker:I 100% agree with that. You know? And it's I mean, you wouldn't just read one book for your entire life. You're you're gonna pick up other books. You're gonna get different insights.
Josh Barker:I mean, the the truth is there's probably nothing new under the sun. Everything's been just reinvented in a new interesting way, but it's still the same old stuff. Right? But how you hear it is different. You know, I've got friends of mine that are around the around the country that I'll call them up, and I'll say, hey.
Josh Barker:I need I need a favor from you. My team is stuck on this particular thing because I coach my sales team every morning for fifteen minutes, five
Chris Hall:days Yeah. A
Josh Barker:So that I'm with them at 08:30 to 08:45 every day. But every once in a while, I noticed that we're stuck on a topic that I just can't get over the hill on with them, and I'll bring in somebody else and say, here's what I'm working on. This is what I need you to do. This is what I need you to coach on. Right.
Josh Barker:And have them hear it from somebody else. And I try not to I try not to coach them on what to say or how to say it because I they need to hear it differently. I'm just I'm not able to get it to them in the way that they need it. Right? But I wanna see them grow.
Josh Barker:So that's how we sometimes kinda game the system a little bit.
Chris Hall:Yep. I like that. What's the what's the last great book that you read for business?
Josh Barker:Oh, that's a good question. I read so many books. Alright. Hang on. Let me give you an answer to that.
Josh Barker:I wanna make sure I put the author correctly for you. Pull away. Right here. Buy Back Your Time and the author on that I've
Chris Hall:never heard of that.
Josh Barker:Yeah. It's a good one too. It's Dan Martell.
Chris Hall:Dan Martell. I've heard that name though. Yeah. I've heard that name, Dan Martell.
Josh Barker:Yeah. So
Chris Hall:So what just the synopsis of it. What is it? I mean, Buyback Your Time is a great title. What does that
Josh Barker:Well, it actually talks a lot about leverage. It talks about how important it is to actually have an assistant, to have multiple people in your organization that are doing things better than you can do them. One of the interesting ones, it's kind of a Bay Area kind of term, but the definition of done. Mean, one of the things that even our agents struggle with is how to delegate properly. I use the word set proper expectations.
Josh Barker:Right? So when I talk to a person in my team that I'm collaborating with, I don't just give them a task. I will give them a task. I'll explain to them what I expect and what that definition of done looks like. Right?
Josh Barker:It'll be complete when these things have taken place. And, you know, if you don't do that with people and you're not clear on what your expectations are and they fall short, you start blaming the call the person you're collaborating with. And that's not a good thing to do. It's probably in your communication that caused the problem.
Chris Hall:Right. So Right. Okay.
Josh Barker:You know, I think it's so that that's a pretty good book for just talking about how important it is to to bring the right people in.
Chris Hall:Well, appreciate that. And I do appreciate your time. I wanna basically give you a chance to if there's anything that we didn't talk about that you'd like to talk about, I'd be happy to discuss it with you. Is there anything going on that you wanna talk about in the local market?
Josh Barker:No. I mean, I I wouldn't get I wouldn't buy into the hype one way or the other. This real estate market today, just generally speaking, that's what I would consider to be more of a normal market. You know, I've seen markets that were going straight up, and boy, those are no fun to work in. I've seen them going straight down.
Josh Barker:Those are no fun to work in either. Right now, we're really sitting in a what I would consider to be a more moderate market right now, where neither the buyer or the seller has an equal or or superimposing position over the other. You know? So it's it's motivation is a big thing for both the buyer and for the seller, But it's a it's a it's a good market. I'm I'm not concerned about if anybody's worried about the market too, I would just say that we don't have anything right now related to the market that is gonna cause us to go into a major crash.
Josh Barker:You know, people are sitting on fixed mortgages right now. Home values are not outpaced based on what rents are and what mortgages are. And really, we have a tailwind that's likely approaching us with interest rates coming down. So, you know, if anything, this one occurred.
Chris Hall:You you had mentioned you had mentioned, you know, with the interest rates coming down. And and one of the things that kind of kicked in my brain was, you know, I see it
Chris Hall:right now, it seems like the market is few. Some people are trying get look at their houses, something almost
Chris Hall:Mine. I'm like, hey. Well, great that you have a 3% interest rate, but if you have an eight and a half percent HELOC, you're gonna, it's only a matter of time before like, okay, wait a minute, maybe I should merge this down to a one solid five and a half or something like that. So I do feel like that's probably gonna happen. It's gonna be like a tidal wave, Not in a bad way, but in a good way.
Chris Hall:I think people are going to give up their 3% interest rate to get rid of their eight and a half percent HELOC. Yes. And I'm being I think I'm being generous with eight and a half percent. I think they're higher than that. I don't know.
Josh Barker:They are higher than That's what we're seeing right now that are out there, like, 11%. I'm like, oh my goodness.
Chris Hall:Yeah. That's bananas. It it is bananas. I mean, it's still better than a 28% credit card.
Josh Barker:No kidding. No kidding. Well, we're seeing people consolidate that too right now. You know, some of the advice the mortgage companies are giving is to consolidate the credit cards and even a even a mortgage or a a car payment to get their overall monthly obligation now.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Well, one
Chris Hall:more question for me.
Chris Hall:So we're healthy wealth, and the reason I say that is because I don't feel like you can truly be wealthy unless you also have some degree of health to go with it. Mhmm. You know, there's an old saying that basically says, like, you know, can imagine that you want a million things, but when you're unhealthy, all you wanna do is be healthy. That's the one thing you want. So what do you do to keep both physically and mentally healthy in your life?
Josh Barker:That's a good question. So for me, it starts with your mindset first. So I I don't allow any negative media in my life. I'm not I don't watch the news. I don't get in social media.
Josh Barker:My daughter manages my Facebook, so sorry for those who thought I did. You know? I'm not involved in any of those activities. I just don't think it's productive, So I'm not participating in things like that. And if you think about it, I mean, most of that is designed the algorithms are designed towards negativities.
Josh Barker:News is sells negative stories, not positive ones. And it's the same thing with social media. So so that's the first thing. I I really put a lot of time into being grateful for, you know, the attitude of gratitude. Right?
Josh Barker:So I I spend time thinking about the things I'm grateful for. You know, I read scripture in the morning. That's my home base for me personally. And I exercise every morning. You know, I'm in the gym by 05:15, and I work out until about 06:45.
Josh Barker:And, you know, I've got a nice gym at home, so I don't have to go anywhere. I have a trainer that shows up, so I I have to go because he's already there for an hour and fifteen minutes or so. And, you know, and I've just I've had that very regimented approach to my life for, you know, really since I won in the marines. I've I've just never stopped.
Chris Hall:That's awesome.
Josh Barker:You know? And a good day really starts the day before. So I get great sleep. I don't drink a lot. You know?
Josh Barker:I stay away from anything else. I don't I don't participate. So
Chris Hall:That's great. Just, like, the little side note on that. Like, you know, we go we talked about coaching, but it's like, once again, it's like having a trainer come over. Mhmm. Like, he's not telling you anything that you don't know.
Chris Hall:He's not like, hey. You know, if you do this way, rise ups will get bigger. Like, you know all this stuff. It's just having somebody there to, like Yep. Motivate you and keep you from sticking and going, you know what?
Chris Hall:I'm just gonna hang out today. I don't need to work out. Like, he's there to make you do the work that you know you need to do. So
Josh Barker:It's an accountability partner. Right? It's Yeah. Yeah. And I I mean, I never flake.
Josh Barker:I mean, the guy would probably come and throw a cold water on me if it did. So
Chris Hall:Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. It was really great talking to you. You too.
Chris Hall:I'd love to do this every once in a while and just kinda give updates on the market from you. I know that you're very active with these kinds of things. I know that you do, do you do a weekly market update or a monthly market update?
Josh Barker:Yeah. We do two things. We do a monthly market update, which is about five minutes long, and then we do a podcast that's a bit more, you know Okay. You know, broad stroke and covers all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, we a couple times a month, we send something out.
Chris Hall:Okay. Alright. For those listening, I'll make sure that I link to both of those so that you guys can access them very easy from this podcast. Yeah. That's great.
Chris Hall:So thank you so much for your time. Anything else you wanna say before we get to take off?
Josh Barker:No. Thank you so much, Chris, though, for everything you do too. We appreciate you. And this is kind of information that you're committed to sharing with the groups out there. It's just awesome.
Josh Barker:So thanks.
Chris Hall:Thank you. Appreciate you, Josh. Thank you so much for being on the show, and thank you all for listening. And we will look forward to talking to you again soon. Have a great day.