"Time To Sell!" Ben Mallah's Shocking Prediction For Home Prices, Falling Rents, & The Trump Economy

20:44Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:So if you feel like the system promised one thing but then delivered another, then this is worth checking out. Just head to petersonacademy.com slash iced coffee to get started today and learn more. Again, that is petersonacademy.com slash iced coffee with the link down below in the description. So let's say you had$100 ,000 liquid right now. What would you do with that money? And that's all you had. $100 ,000. $100 ,000. I mean, listen, having$100 ,000 is one thing, but it's all about the ability to borrow money because we all know$100 ,000 ain't going to get you. Unless you're in maybe, I don't know, somewhere, maybe.

21:19I mean, you got to have the ability to get along with that$100 ,000 if you want to get serious because$100 ,000 is worth$500 ,000 deal. What about seller financing? Seller financing. Listen, if you can get it, take it. Absolutely. You know, I consult with a guy. You know him even. I think he owns, I don't remember, 800 houses that he all got by seller financing in Georgia. You know, listen, if you can get it and it works for you, fine, do it. I've done, I haven't done seller financing never, but I have done, I've taken people's loans subject to. I bought them subject to their loan. I say, give me that loan.

21:57I'll take it. Adios. Here's a few bucks. Get the hell out of here. You know, that's how I started when I was younger. You know, then they were happy. They didn't want to get ready to get away from that place.

22:07Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:So what's your strategy for the next year in terms of finding deals? The strategy is find the next deal. All real estate is about finding the next deal. What makes a deal really good for you? The potential to have more NOI, net operating income. Come, make more money. The house property has to make more money so it's worth more money. Then you sell it for more money and you'll make money. Can you understand what I'm saying? Something about money? Let's say you have a property and a certain budget, a fixed budget to spend on it. Everything is C tier in this property. All of the components, the paint, the floors, the appliances, et cetera.

22:47Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:What would you, how would you allocate this fixed amount of money for the highest ROI on NOI? listen, if you buy a piece of property, you're talking about putting money in and fixing it up, right? You've got to know before you buy that deal, I'm paying X amount. I'm spending an X amount on improvements. Now, what did I do? All that shit I did in a property, how did it affect you in value? Is it worth more money? Can I rent it for more? Where's the value in it? And then the value is your profit. Yes, but focusing on which components of a house, a renovation would be the best ROI? Like, is it replacing the floors?

23:26Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Is it doing the walls? Depends on the house. Every house is different. You can go to a house and say, oh, you know what? This house just needs a roof. Put a roof on it. Oh, this house is 1970s. It's outdated. I got to rip out the kitchen. I got to put in new appliances. I got to do all this new flooring, new windows, new this, new that. Is it worth doing all that work? And then what's it worth after you do all that work? Every house is different. Every deal is different. You got to figure out, does it make sense? Does A plus B equal C? What type of deals are you just not touching right now? I'm trying to stay away from, listen, my kids dragged me out the other day.

24:04In our neighborhood, we have one big office building. We live in a beach town, residential neighborhood. We got this one big old giant office building sitting in a shopping center parking lot in the middle of town. And he made me go look at it. He'd probably give it away. I won't touch an office with a 10-foot pole. I never have, never will. I mean, I never did because I was never exposed to it. But then when COVID came, it actually crushed me also because I had hotels that depended on the office business, a corporate business. So that crushed even a hotel. But anyway, I don't deal with offices.

24:40We all know why. Because of COVID, because of technology, because people want to sit at home and work, and everybody shrunk down. So I don't do office. I'm kind of getting, scaling down to hotels. You can't have too many hotels. I mean, it's just too much. It's a business. It's not really real estate. I don't really do storage facilities, but I would look at one. Basically, primarily, we're only looking for multifamily. You know, I don't know industrial. Basically, it's just multifamily.

25:06Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:People always need a place to sleep, you know? Is there a price, though, if office space got so cheap that you would want to buy it? No, because it's worthless. Okay. Here's a true story. All right? all right true as much as i could believe broker calls me up well before he called me up i saw online a macy's for sale i started getting into retail was starting to chop up stuff we're making it work you know splitting spaces my son been pretty successful doing that but on a small level i said you know what man you get that whole building i knew it was a cheap price i said let me go look at it it was attached to a mall okay part of the mall but it was a separate piece of property that macy's himself owned okay but it was attached to the mall you know anyway long story short look at it and i think about what that was huge place i mean for the money you're getting it for like free practically for price per square foot and i'm saying man what the hell am i gonna do with it what can i do with it storage facility it's in a mall and then you got a mall to deal with you know i don't own the malls so i gotta deal with them you know people own the mall um and they're not in a good place right now wouldn't buy a mall i could buy them all right down a block from here for 100 million dollars right now probably one of the best pieces of dirt there is but all the stores on top of it and any good price at the price they want and all the bullshit i gotta deal with the return bad malls are dying all right we all know that um malls offices all dying anyway long story short But I look at the property, and I just didn't know what to do with it.

26:37And then I kind of got a feel for the mall owners because I got to pay them cam out of the mall. I got to pay the property taxes on it. I got to have insurance. I got to have security. I got all the expenses involved. So I'm walking into a deep negative, okay? And I don't have a plan. What am I going to do with this hundreds of thousands of square foot of nice but space? So anyway, I said, there's no way I could take that risk in life. So not too long goes by, the broker calls me up. And I'm just going to tell you, he led me to believe that Macy's corporate told him or insinuated that they would be happy if somebody, they signed a deed over to somebody just to get away from it.

27:22So they didn't have to pay the common area maintenance expenses, the utilities, the property taxes, all dealing with the mall owner and management, the parking lots, all that. security. They just wanted to get away from the expense. They didn't give a f***ing big company and write it off their books anyway. We all know Macy's went through some kind of reorganization, right? So anyway, he actually, I could have got her free f***ing Macy's, but I would have stepped into a f***ing deep bill paid every month, you know, of course. So I didn't do it. So what do you think is going to happen to that? Do they just sit on it?

27:55I don't know. A lot of balls are getting knocked down. Yeah. And then, you know, it seems like what works is, it seems These mall areas, they have to mix the use. Mix the use. Mix the use. Give me some multifamily. Give me some retail. Give me, you know, give me a nice gas station over here on the out parcel. Give me, you know, some fast food around, you know, independent. They got to reconfigure the entire property and come up with a whole new plan.

28:23Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:So it's interesting. We just had Rick Caruso on the podcast, and he builds malls. Caruso! Rick Caruso. Oh, whatever I hear. Whenever there's a vowel at the end of the air. He is the biggest mall guy in California. All of his malls, fully booked. He says he has a wait list for tenants trying to get in. It is the place of places for malls. We asked him about a place in Santa Monica. California is a different place, too. Yeah. We asked him about a place in Santa Monica that just went into foreclosure. And they owed like$100 million on this whole big structure. It's a big three-story mall, half indoor, half outdoor.

28:56How come Cruz said he'd buy to fill up with tenants?

28:58Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:He said he was offered, but he turned it down because he said they needed to start over. They needed to tear down the entire thing and build what he said was multifamily. Multifamily? Yeah. But he's a big shop mall guy. Why can't he fill it up with tenants? He said the design was flawed. Yeah. No one wants to be second, third floor. Exactly. Ground floor is where it's at. If you're in real estate, you can feel the pain when you walk into a mall. When I tore the mall down the block here, you could feel the pain. I went to a casino in Vegas that has a section that's a mall. You don't have casinos.

29:29Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:You hate casinos. You hate the strip. Only if I lose. Only if I lose. There was a show there. So we went for the show. But there's a whole section that was dedicated like mall space, like retail. All empty. And there was only one place. It was like a burger spot on the second floor that was open. Everything else you just walk by. Empty stores for like 100 feet and there's one burger spot at the end. That's it. That's where he was going to the burger spot. No, I think we had to walk through the parking lot. Retail is a dangerous game. You got to play it right. Okay. I just, luckily I'm selling a property.

30:03And luckily, ever heard of floor and decor? No. Ever heard of floor and decor?

30:10Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Floor and decor. Floor and decor. Floor and decor. Anyway, it's a, every homeowner that's fixing up their house goes to floor and decor. Okay. For flooring mainly, that's why it's called floor and decor. or, you know, remodeling, all that contractors go there. Anyway, listen, you know, thank God they, you know, stores like that, he just renewed a lease for me. And he, you know, he's got a big lease. You know, I don't know what they pay. Hundreds, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Can you imagine that store went empty? What it would have to do to me? Yeah. So anyway, luckily they renewed and I'm able to sell property because they have now a nice long contract.

30:46Retail is dangerous. You got to know what the fuck you're doing in retail. And the only way you can make money in retail is renting empty space. You know why? You know that retail space, typically in a retail world, if you buy a retail property, shopping center, mall, whatever the hell you're buying, the vacant space is free. You get free real estate. Did you know that? No. They don't assign any value to it. Free. because the real estate is sold to you based on a cap rate. You're only going to buy the property based on what the income it's generating. It's simple. So if it's only generating X amount of dollars and you got all this empty land, that's how you make money in real estate because you come in now and you rent the empty space out.

31:39Instant equity, instantly. My son took an empty bank. They sat empty for five years with the guy I bought it from. Nobody wanted to rent this bank. I was amongst a bunch of stores. Comes in, that didn't work, that bank that size for that market. Threw a wall down the middle. Instead of$4 ,000, now it's two$2 ,000s. He rented them like that. And one side had a drive-thru, and he put a smoothie in there. That's how you make money in retail. The only way I've ever seen anybody make money in retail. The leases are for many, many years, especially for the big corporate tenants. You may not get no increase for who knows how many years, and they're very small.

32:19All right? The money is in renting the empty space. But you got to have the balls to come out there and either reconfigure it, come up with a new plan, or be able to have the ability to find a tenant. But you get real estate for free. Are you still learning new things about real estate investing? I mean, you learn every day. You're always learning. Me and my son always say to ourselves, man, we didn't know that. especially when you deal with corporate. When you deal with corporate, oh my God, thank God I have to AI now. I'll tell you the honest truth. My son, he relies on AI. You can tell AI to do a lot of shit when it comes to these contracts, and it helps a lot.

32:55Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:How so? Do you put the contract in there and say - You're a lawyer now. Now he does something with the contract. He feeds it to AI, whatever, and then he sits there and asks all these questions that he has about the contract. And the thing spits all the answers out. And now when he goes to my lawyer to change the contract, we're learning how no work to do. AI did it all for them. Lawyers are going to be in trouble. But anyway, you know, what was your question anyway? Still expanding your knowledge in real estate. I mean, we learn every day. I don't think a day goes by we're going to learn. Every dealer is still learning new stuff, especially with the corporate stuff.

33:26When you're dealing with big shot corporations, they got every trick in the book.

33:31Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:What are some of the main things that you've taken away from working with corporations? Like, what are the tricks? Listen, they got all kinds of stuff, the rules in their contracts that make a head spin. You can't, if you have out parcels on your property you want to build out, you have a view clause. You can't block their view. Me and my son didn't know that. He had to move a building that he was building. Wow. Because he can't block their view. He was like a foot into their view. He had to redesign the whole plans and have everything redone with the engineer and move the whole building over.

34:02Why would a company insert that into? Because they want to protect their business. They want to make sure people drive by. It's all about traffic. Oh, so they had only sold you. They want to be able to see that store all the way back there, thousands of feet away at the end of the shopping center.

34:16Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:So they had only sold you the out parcel. I own the out parcel. I know. That's what I'm saying. So like they had the shopping center. You only had the out parcel or whatever it was. I own the whole place. So then I have my tenant. I got a place. He was a square. Corporate tenant. Oh. I got all kinds of tenants. It was for the tenants. Shop stores, whatever. Interesting. Then I want to add an out parcel in the front. Yeah. I understand. Okay. But blocking the view now. And I got permission to do it. Yeah. OK, we cut out that piece, we throw up a building, we rent it out, we make money. That's what developers do.

34:45So anyway, it was things we learn every day. I've heard all kinds of things, you know, that surprised me. And they're so smart. I mean, you know.

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36:00Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Upwork dot com with the link down below in the description. Enjoy. What's something you wish you had done differently this year? This year? Yeah. I mean, listen, all I can say is that I did everything I thought I could do to find the next deal. The next deal solves all my problems. It defers my taxes and it creates more wealth. That's what's all about, finding a deal with Upside. That's all that matters. But what about selling your house? How much are you asking for that? I mean, I don't need a big-ass house anymore. I didn't buy the house anyway because I'm a big shot.

36:36I bought the house because it was a hot deal at the time. It was a good deal to buy for 50 cents and a dollar. And now I held it for five years, and now I want to sell it because based on the market, it's worth more than I'm selling for. And what are you asking?

36:50Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:What do you buy it for? What are you asking? No, yeah, Bennett. I don't have to tell everybody. Nobody's going to buy my house now because I'm telling them. Anyway, long story short is five years ago, I bought a house that a guy spent over$32 million to build with land and building and lazy rivers and bowl alleys and movie theaters and over the top, top of the line, right? I got it for 50 cents and a dollar. But I was at the right time at the right place, okay? Now, five years later, people are my neighbors. Their old houses are getting knocked down for$10 million. And I got three of those lots.

37:29My house is three times. You've been to my house. My house is three times the size of my neighbors. That makes my land worth$30 million. And you'll never find three lots together on the Gulf of America? Who changes the name of Body of Water? He does that shit just to piss people off and shock them. See, us New Yorkers, we like to shock people. We get a pleasure out of saying something that just shocks the shit out of you or irritates you a little. We don't care. We can take it any way you want to give it. So that's why he does it, Gulf of America. Anyway. Any bites on the house? We just listed it, you know.

38:09I figured I did it. It was, you know, just stirred a pot a little before the holidays. Sure. You know? And then we'll see what happens. And, you know, if I got to adjust the price, I'll adjust the price. The last house I had in California that I sold before I moved to Florida, I put it on the market for$1.5 million because that's what it was worth 20 years ago. Sitting on top of a hill looking at the whole San Francisco Bay. $1.5 million. And I told my wife, Carla, and we had a sales sign outside. Every week, go out there and put a line through the price and not lower it$100 ,000. It was a tough market back then.

38:48So every week she did that. She lowered it$100 ,000. Yeah. Thank God, because I really didn't want to go below a million. Yeah. Thank God, right when she put it at a million bucks, somebody came in and bought it. Because that was my bottom. You should do that with this house, the new one. I might. I told my agent that I would probably, we're probably going to do something every week. All right? A million bucks a week until I squeeze and bleed. I don't know. We'll figure it out. But if I put something on the market to sell, I'm a real seller. What about auctioning the house? Auction! Or doing like a sweepstakes.

39:30It's a little too high priced for an auction. A house like mine is going to be somebody with Google's money that wants to live on the beach. If my house was in Palm Beach or Miami Beach, it'd be$135 million. Okay? And my neighborhood to me is better. Yeah. So anyway, it just takes the right, listen, you know the old saying, there's an ass for every seat. Okay? You just got to wait for that right person. It fits their needs. It fits their, it's a personal thing. It's emotional. It's not business. But your house is technically a little personal. It's not like. Not to me. I'm selling a minute. You're going from.

40:06I'm not personal when it comes to shit like that.

40:08Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:That's fair. I lived here for five years. I'm tired of the place too. But I don't like to sit in the same place forever. Arguably, you're going from the nicest house I've ever been in my entire life. How are you? Who gives a fuck? Where are you? Buy a smaller, nice house. You can always make a house nice. Listen, you know, once you've been there, you say, oh, big deal. You know how many houses I lived in worth big money? A lot. Like five, four or five. It's no big deal. When you get to be in. As you get older, you don't give a fuck either. You don't care. It's like, I don't want a bigger boat than that.

40:38That boat is big enough. Then why do you think some people aren't the same? I mean, you know, some people just, they may have a need for that house being that size. I don't need a house that big. My son just went into college. And I'm getting old. I don't want the maintenance. I don't want the responsibility. I don't want the expense. It has to fit your lifestyle. A house fits your lifestyle. Like you bought a house and you let somebody else live in it. That fits your lifestyle. Just so you can play ping pong in the back room.

41:05Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:That sounds creepy. You're the same person. You're weird. I think what you're doing is a little... How many roommates do you have? In my house right now, I have... And one you live in. I live with four others. Four roommates in a one-bedroom house. No, no, no, no. It's a five-bedroom house. Yeah, five-bedroom. Yeah, I have my own bedroom and bathroom. He puts up these partition walls you see in offices. It's a nice place to live. It's more of a curtain. And in fact, my rent that I charge is very low. One of his bedrooms is a closet the guy sleeps in. It's a walk-in closet. One of them is a very, very small room.

41:35Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Thank you. But he pays very cheap rent. Yeah. Okay. How much? No utilities. $7.50 a month. He's such a cheapskate. You know where he sleeps? A cheapskate? On a couch. I wouldn't be good. I mean, in fairness, the couch is disgusting. We've had it for a few years. We bought it from Alex. You know Alex. I would not even think about sitting on a couch Alex has ever passed gas on. Well, it's ours now. I guess I won't be sending him all the clothes I got. If you want a blue couch, I will sell it to you. You can come pick it up from my house in Las Vegas. It's the most comfortable couch you'll ever sit on, but it is gross and it does need to be cleaned.

42:08Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:And Alex is sad on it. Yeah, everyone's sad on it. Ram is sad on it. I've sat on it, too. Why don't you burn it? I'm just saying, if you want a blue couch, please DM me on Instagram, JLSSELBY. Anyways. Listen, I'm going to tell you, honestly, what I heard was he called the Salvation Army to pick it up and they refused to take it. That's how bad the fucking couch was. Did they call and they asked, did Alex sit on this couch? Yes. Sorry, we can't take it. They told him, take it to the dump. Now at the Home Depot, receive 12 months special financing and free basic installation on carpet projects with LifeProof, LifeProof with PetProof Technology, Home Decorators Collection, and Traffic Master Carpets.

42:43Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Bring a new look to your floors or give them a durable surface that stands up to life's tough messes. Get 12 months special financing on installed carpet projects right now at the Home Depot. Offer valid March 12th through March 29th, 2026. Exclusions and additional charges may apply. For licenses, see HomeDepot.com slash license numbers. If you're interested, you know what to do. How much is it? And that's a pull-out couch that he sleeps on every night. I would sell the couch. I mean, I think I paid over a thousand bucks for it. No. I think I did. Yeah, around$1 ,000. Yeah. $1 ,000? To the highest bidder.

43:19Wait, I can buy those? I'll sell them. Everything's for sale. Those things will recline all the way. You got recliners, the heads, everything in the back. How are you going to get a DeVegas? And that's real sheepskin. What would you sell those couches for? Oh, sheepskin? I can't afford it. Or is it alpaca? No, it's sheepskin. Sheepskin of Florida. I am curious to understand. You know what that means? I got a good deal for it. Yeah. Who the f*** buys sheepskin in Florida? Okay, how much did you pay for those couches? What are your business? I don't remember. My wife walks in the store. She sees something on sale.

43:49She says, that look in the house. Those couches are probably, I don't know, a couple of grand apiece probably. Couple of grand, baby. Couple of grand.

43:57Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:So how much would you sell it for? Five grand. Make a thousand bucks. So you got to make a profit to sell it. I got overhead. I am curious because it's so fascinating to talk about. You want to build up to a certain net worth of like hundreds of millions of dollars, right? Not anymore. Done. You're done. Done. And how did you realize you were done? Now I just have to figure out who gets what and take care of the government, take care of the kids, and make sure I got enough money to fill my boat up and leave my wife enough money so she'll have some young Mexican guy when I die. What made you realize you were done?

44:34Because I've done enough. I don't, you know, listen, I want my kids to grow. Don't get me wrong. My kids want to grow, and they will grow. But I'm done. I started working. I left home when I was 12 years old. I joined the Army at 17. When the f*** do I get to stop working and see what life is like, not worrying about it? Imagine waking up in the morning knowing you got enough money in the bank to pay all your bills, do whatever the f*** you want. I'm not a big extravagant person. I got a plane with one pilot. I only got two pilots on my plane. And I got my boat, and that's it. I started enjoying my life.

45:07I just turned 60. Life is only last so long. The clock's ticking, baby. I don't want to spend it working. Some guys do, and God bless them. They feel like that's keeping them going and, you know, 80 years old, still working. Hey, power to you. Not me. I don't have to drive anymore. I like helping people. I just want to consult with people. I want people to consult with Ben. Go to BenMattle.com, consult with Ben. Get me on the phone and get some real honest advice on what I would do if I was in your shoes. That's the only work I want to do. help other people. I want to help other people. Even today on the way over here, I tell you the guy bought my whole lunch today for a whole crew of us because he said, I just listened to you and did what you did and said what he said.

45:49And now he's doing a million dollar refis from nothing. I like helping people.

45:54Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:I will say the consult with Ben is a good deal. I think you're under charging. But we already discussed that you're charging too little for your time, but that's fine. But it is interesting because last time we spoke, you made it seem like you still had some ground to move. Listen, I gotta do things in a logical way. I can't walk away tomorrow. I gotta take the assets I sold, I gotta make sure I limit my tax hit as much as possible and preserve our wealth, and then I have to figure it out. I may have to pay the government some money, I might replace some of it, I gotta help the kids buy assets that they wanna do, maybe they'll start building multifamily.

46:32I got to get things organized. All right? And then I can, they can always reach me by phone. Anybody can reach me by phone. Anybody. Go to BenMetal.com. You can reach me by phone. You know, my kids can reach me. I mean, as long as I got a phone, I'm good. I hope. It's more than Jack. I cannot reach Jack. I wouldn't want anybody to call Jack.

46:50Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:He just wants me for this most insignificant little thing. What do you do? Jack, where is this thing? And I'm like, have you looked over here? No, I haven't. And he goes and he finds it. You would have no purpose if he didn't ask you to do stuff. You would have no purpose in life. Oh, I disagree. He disagrees. I disagree. My purpose would be to pickleball and ping pong. Yeah, that's what it would be. It would just pickleball and ping pong. And I'd live a really good life. What would you be doing right now if he turned around and said, you know what? I'm tired of your shit. You're fired. Don't ever talk to me again.

47:21He wouldn't be able to.

47:23Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:We're partners on the podcast. Partners on the podcast. It would take a lot to get to that point. And even then, Jack would - He could make it on his own without you. You can't. I would be able to. I probably wouldn't do YouTube, but I would probably do some sort of a consulting thing. Jack could do consulting. Consulting. You'd be a consultant. Yeah. Pickleball instructor. You could use some pickleball. Is it consult, in other words, another definition of consult? Like if somebody dies, you consult them? That's consoling. Consoling. That's what you would be. You'd be consoling, not consulting.

47:49Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:I can consult. Yeah. Because you'd be like a funeral. I'm curious. What do you think of me selling off my real estate? I'm slowly just getting rid of everything. I sold my house in West L.A. I know. We talked briefly about that. I knew it wasn't easy, though, eh? I sold it. I got three offers. All of them were over-asking. Two of them were cash. Sold. The buyer's fantastic. The buyer's actually a subscriber, believe it or not. Yeah. And they made you sign a refrigerator, too, I heard. A what? They made you sign a refrigerator. I would do that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's great. But if you sold it with three offers for quick cash, then, you know, you probably left money on the table.

48:30Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:No. You have money on that table. You don't want to admit it. So I purposely underpriced it. It burns you up, doesn't it? Here's the thing. Makes you f***ing angry. I don't have money on that table. I thought the home was worth anywhere from$2.6 to$2.8, depending on who buys it, at what time of the market. We priced it$2.499, purposely. On Zillow, it was like a trending home in that zip code. Trending. It got more views in the first 48 hours. I was checking the views on Zillow. He was checking those views, baby. The view-to-save ratio on my house was higher than any other listing in Santa Monica.

49:04Any other listing in Santa Monica.

49:05Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:And so I knew it was going to be, we got a lot of activity. We had so many showings. We got three offers pretty quickly, and we just countered. So I feel like I got a price where— You listed the house for$2.5, right? Yeah,$2.499. You sold it for$2.8. $2.650 is what I ended up getting. Are you— Which I was happy. I mean, your strategy can work by going low. I like to rather play the old game. I'm selling. I'm up here. You coming down here. We meet in the middle. I mean, I always like to leave a little cushion room to bargain with people when I'm selling, you know. But see, here's the thing. I had more leverage because we could say to the buyer, listen, we have two other offers.

49:46Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:We have, you know, these cash offers here. You got to remove your contingency. So we did no loan, no appraisal. I think we only did a three to five day inspection window. And we opened escrow, I think, on a Tuesday. and all contingencies removed on a Friday. Otherwise, we're going with the backup offer. Quick money, baby. Quick money. He sold it for overlisting, and he got quick money. But that honestly selling that property was a weight lifted off my shoulders. It felt so good. I'm just paying the tax on it, just getting it over with, but just not having to think about, you know, the gardener didn't show up, and then the squirrels were chewing through wires, and I have to fix this, or the pump in the fountain broke and now I have to figure out how to fix that when I don't live there.

50:32Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Or just all these little things like, oh, I had a car back up into my gate, the gate that's in front of the driveway. It backed up and the gate was crooked coming out. And I had to figure out how to fix that from another state. I hated doing that. Oh, and then the property tax bill would come and that's$26 ,000, gone. And I don't know where the money goes. And that upsets me. And then it's seeing what happens to the Palisades and insurance companies dropping out. And they didn't drop my house. But I'm worried about it. All they got to say is, hey, we're not insurance. Single families to me only make sense if you live in them.

51:09If you're not living in it or you're not buying it to fix and flip, forget about it. Single family house is a waste of time. So you did good. You got rid of it because you didn't need it. You weren't making money on it. And now you got all that money sitting in the bank, not in your greedy little hands.

51:24Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:So for your family's sake, though, you wanted to exit all of your real estate and what, put it all in bonds, put it in treasuries? No, I'm not going to exit real estate. I'm going to turn over assets that I feel have some future value upside to my kids. And, you know, if I have to stay in the portfolio, what am I staying in? Who cares? But, you know, I just, bonds are definitely a way to go. Tax-free municipal bonds is the safest, smartest thing anybody could ever do if they really want to truly protect their future and their life. because it's the safest, smartest thing to do. And then the bond funds are really good.

51:57You know why? Because the bond funds pay you monthly, baby. You don't have to wait. Bonds only pay twice a year. You know that, right? But bond funds.

52:05Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:I'm invested in one of your bonds. Bond funds. I get paid 5.3 % no taxes. No federal income taxes. Now imagine, if every million bucks you get over 50 grand a year. Let's say you got 10 million bucks. 10 million bucks sitting in a tax-free mini bond is going to get you$500 ,000 a year. Tax-free. Tax-free. That's like a million if you're in California. Yeah. You got to make a million dollars to get$500 ,000 to have taxes. You're getting it tax-free, baby. What have you noticed in your life is the perfect amount of money to have? I mean, everybody's life is different. It depends on how many kids you got.

52:43It depends on the future of those kids. It depends on how much money you got to think about leaving people when you're gone. I'm at the point in life now where I got to just try to live the rest of my life life with good years you got left when you hit 60. Because let's face it, nobody's having a good time over 70 years old. Come on, stop. Even in the 60s, you know.

53:02Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:I feel like 70. I see a lot of 70-year-olds that are younger looking, you know. Listen, when you hit 60, your body's giving out, okay? Let's face it. It's natural. It's life. Oh, yeah, you can do this. You can take some of this. You can work out, whatever. You might extend your life a little bit. Your quality of life might improve a little bit. But let's face it, there's not that many 60-year-olds and 70-year-olds having a good time. You know, it's just, you know. So basically, you make the best of it and try to enjoy what makes you happy. But anyway, I'm just going to do what I got to do to preserve my family.

53:40Every family's got a different situation. You know, that's it. I got to make sure I put the right money in the right place and make the right investments and smart moves to where I keep everything stable. and, you know, an easy transition. Anyway, listen, everybody needs to try to get ahead in life. Everybody needs to buy some sort of real estate. It's like part of being part of civilization, you know? You need a house. You need rental units. You need whatever you want, whatever fits you. You're doing very well now. You're renting houses out. You're cash flowing. You get a good return on your investment, and you get to play ping pong too.

54:15That's pretty good. That fits your life. You're happy with that, aren't you? Very happy. Well, there you go. And it makes sense because it makes money.

54:25Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:How did having a family affect the quality of your life? I mean, my kids helped me grow to the level I'm at. If I didn't have the kids, I'd never would have grown on this level. Why? Couldn't do it on my own. No way. Wouldn't they have taken time away? It's impossible. And what about employees? Who? You could have employees, no? Employees aren't like kids or people that are serious about really being part of something. Employees get paid a salary, okay? Okay, employees, they'll do their time and they'll do their job, but they ain't going outside their fucking job. Okay, it's the people that have their ownership interests that are really going to take you out and make you grow.

55:00Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:So you went into business with your kids. How was it a right decision for you, but for so many other people? It's just like what ends up ruining a business. What do you say? Ruining a business. Sometimes people hire their kids and the kids just run it into the ground. How did it work out so often? You can't let it happen. I mean, if I thought my kids weren't capable of being in a position, then they wouldn't be in that position. They got to show that they can handle a position, you know. We got the girl in our family called, her name is Brenda. I raised her like my daughter. She's really my sister-in-law, long story.

55:34Anyway, Brenda decided she wanted to go in a hotel business. Well, Brenda went to college. She got her master's and worked in this, and we bought one while she was in college. So we had a hotel for her to work in while she was going to college, and she demonstrated her seriousness about it, and she made us money. So we kept growing. Ben Jr., he went up on this, you know, and if I said, Ben, I'm in trouble over here in Texas, Ben backed up. He moved to Texas for three years. He was stuck there. I really didn't want him to do that, but, you know, he bailed my ass out, totally bailed me out. got in Texas, Houston, all over that area, took over thousands of units and, and, and, and took care of that for me, you know, otherwise I'd have to do it.

56:18Then I mean, I'm going to be failing over here. I can't be everywhere. And management companies, I don't trust because they piss away your money. They don't care. It's not their money. So, you know, my kids played a very important role. Vincent, the same thing. I can't even count the number of places my kids have packed up and moved into on site, lived in the buildings. Ben Jr. lived down the block there, a hotel. It was closed up when we bought it, just a remodel. He lived in a boarded-up hotel a few blocks from here. And now somebody we sold it to, and he made it a flag. He made it nice. It was all great.

56:49We sold it. And then the guy bought it and came up with some boutique instead of using the franchise we gave him. And then he went belly up, and now the place had a fire, and now it's closed down, and it got torn down. So anyway, I mean, anyway, my kids played a point of role. They all lived around many places and paid their dues and, you know. What's your advice to other parents who want to do business with their kids? You got to bring them into business. You got to make them, give them, give them tasks, give them responsibilities. You got to say, listen, when Ben Jr. was playing around in college his first year, you know, I could see he was just partying.

57:26His first year in college was partying in California. And I said, what are you doing? He showed me his grades. I said, this is ridiculous. You know, I didn't even heard of somebody's classes. Witchcraft is a class. I've never heard of this thing. Witchcraft or religion is something he said. Anyway, I said, listen, he missed all the real classes. Anyway, I said, college ain't for you. Smart kid, but you got to go. Back up, ship your car. I just bought a building in Largo, Florida. Go in there and take it over. I gave him one nice little 150-unit building to move into and become the manager. He already knew the ropes or he knew the basics.

58:02He could learn to collect the rents, rent the units, fix the units, what he asked him to do. Anyway, he did it at the age of like 19. What if he didn't

58:10Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:want to do it? What if he said no? Well, he didn't want to do it and I told him I had to turn my back on him. Exactly my words weren't. I said, listen, this is what you're going to do. You're going to pack up everything you got here, which ain't much. You're going to ship your car to Florida and you're going to go to this address and you're going to take over this building and be the manager. And otherwise, I don't know what to do. I'm not going to sit here and fund you partying. You know, I got no time for that. So he said, I'm done. Did he hate the idea of it, though? He was fine with it. Listen, it was either that or maybe go get a job at Radio Shack, which he liked.

58:42He wanted to do. Because he was good at electronic stuff back then. I mean, that's basically the story. It's true. And, you know, he said, okay, I'll do it. You know, what's he going to do? Turn down and want to be there? Run the family business? And in fact, by him doing that, it put him way ahead of the game. because I didn't have to wait four years to graduate college. Okay. It helped me because I got him now. You know, so it was a great thing that he didn't go to college. And, but, you know, you would never know it by not talking to him.

59:11Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:He's brilliant. Was he naturally motivated to do that or did you have to kick that into gear? I just gave him a choice. Ben Mallah and Iced Coffee Hour Hosts.

59:48college, it's fine. You know, I don't expect my kids to be straight A's. I never went to the ninth grade. I just realized the other day, I always thought I went to the ninth grade. I never did because my school, I looked up the school I went to in Brooklyn. The last school I went to ended in the eighth grade. And then they told me I couldn't go to ninth grade unless I took some special tests over the summer. I never went to the ninth grade, only eighth.

1:00:13Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:All these years, Do you think people would be better off just stopping school at ninth grade and then going and working? Depends on the desires. Listen, school is great. You know, it's a balance. You got to have everything in life. You got to know how to work your way, you know, in the real world, in business, in the streets, whatever you want to call it. And you got to have some education. You got to have a balance. You can't be an idiot and just be an idiot with street smarts. You got to have some education, you know. Jack, I don't know what the fuck you got. One day we're going to figure out, because I ain't seen you demonstrate any type of abilities to do anything.

1:00:51I almost graduated college. I'm surprised he even graduated high school.

1:00:57Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Jack's good at delegating. If there's something he doesn't want to do, he's going to have someone else do it for him. He don't want to do shit. He wants to figure out an easy way to make somebody else do shit. It's about work and see. He just wants to stand around and be the guy that knows everything. Hi, I'm Jack. I know everything. Just ask me. I ask the questions. Yeah, and then you find somebody to do whatever the answer is. I'm just kidding. I don't even know what the fuck Jack does. He plays ping pong. He must be the bank's a loan of the money, so on paper he must look pretty good. Him and his 18 roommates, he thinks he's Mexican, I guess.

1:01:33Is that true?

1:01:34Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:My roommates think I'm Mexican? No. So Mexicans only have 18 people in a house. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I married into Mexican family, I know. So what do you think the role had to... I'm curious. The whole family aspect is what's really interesting to me because, you know, all things considered, I hate to even admit this, but it seems like you're a decent father. It seems like you knew what you were doing because all of your kids so far turned out to admit that. I was not a good father when my kids were young. What'd you say? I was not a good father when my kids were young. But they all seemed really...

1:02:05Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:I neglected them. turned out great. But then how did that end up working out for them? Because I had no choice. You know, in my situation, I happened to be a single father for long periods of time in my life until I married Carla. You know, and, you know, my kids didn't have a lot of things other kids had. You know, they played a little sports, but I wasn't the real sports. Dad signed them up for flag football and all those other s***. And, you know, they did sports if I could swing it. Most of the time when they were very young, they spent in the backseat of my car while I was working, running around town working.

1:02:37That's the quality time we spent together. You know, and maybe, you know, back then I could afford a happy meal. And you never know what the toy is in a happy meal. They had some good toys for a while. They used to. Until some kids started choking on them and, you know, all that. But anyway, my kids did not grow up with silver spoons in their mouth except the youngest one, you know. And we'll play it by ear with him. He showed me his grades today. Okay. He's having a good time in school. Let me tell you, he's having a good time in school. I see my credit card. I know everything. How bad is that?

1:03:06I track him on my phone. What's he spending per month in college? You know, I don't know. But his tuition's, you know, I don't know. What's that? 50 grand a year for tuition probably. And he has to live in a big fancy apartment across the street with two roommates. You know, that's cost to be at least a couple of grand a month. And then he's out eating out all the time because, you know, well, he ain't going to cook. And he's like to hang out and go to party places, you know, and it costs money. And I had a nice little talk with him over a weekend about it. you know and um but his grades are okay but they could be much better he's probably a b student he's you know he's a b he's not an a so we'll play it by year he's only got six months in i think we'll play it by year and see what the rest of the year goes and why does he want to go to college to me it seems like such a no-brainer just in our world it definitely you know we'll prepare him and give him some basic knowledge and tools on business.

1:04:03He's taking mostly business courses. Really? I feel like you get more business just doing it, right? Well, yes and no. I mean, with today's technology and reports and underwriting, it's good to learn the basics. It's like I could never do shit if I didn't learn the basics in math. If I never took math. Yeah, but it's going to be Chad GBT pretty soon.

1:04:22Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:As long as he knows how to type on a computer. We'll see. We'll play it by ear. If his grades go down, he ain't going to stay in college. And I still got him going to the hotel when he ended up in class to go work behind the desk. You know? So, um. See, it's crazy to me because I would love the opportunity just to work like that and, like, be immersed in it. Let's face it. With a YouTube channel, too. Real estate is really, you know, listen, management is not that difficult until you get to a corporate level. It can be. But the point is, it's all about finding the next deal. You could give me the biggest schmuck in the world and the biggest loser in the world, but if he has some knack of finding the next deal, that's all it takes.

1:05:04You could pay for everything else. You could pay for accountants. You could pay for property managers. We have 600 employees. You have people doing all these jobs. Somebody has to watch everything and everybody and the money, but we got bankers, we got brokers, we got lawyers, we got everybody we need.

1:05:20Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Finding the deal is all that matters. Now really quick, I just want to say that we've been using our sponsor today, Notion, for years to keep the iced coffee hour running smoothly. I'm talking about guest planning, sponsors, workflow. It's where everything lives for us. And with Notion Agent built in, they've become so much more powerful. So honestly, we were just really excited when they reached out to sponsor this episode. Notion Agent feels like having an AI teammate built directly into your workspace. It understands your notes, pages, and documents and takes care of the things that usually take you a lot of time.

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1:08:06Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:One more time, gusto.com slash iced. I'm curious your thoughts on Momdani winning the Merrill election in New York. You know, all I know is everybody keeps calling him a communist, right? Right? Yeah. I don't really get into politics too much because it's all like. I mean, you know, most people in politics are not business people. So if you haven't been a business person, it's hard for me to respect that you know what the hell to do. If you didn't run a business, how the hell do you know what to do? Because when you run a business, you run a people, you know, and you're controlling, you know, numbers and money.

1:08:37And I don't know. I don't know the guy. What is his background? Doctor? What is he? He was a rapper. A rapper? An Indian rapper style. He's very charismatic.

1:08:46Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:I don't. Is he Indian? I don't know. I don't think he's going to have a career. I got the letter, by the way. I'll tell you about this. Got a letter, a certified letter from the city of Los Angeles. Signature delivery with receipts so they know I received the letter. I finally found out it was in the letter. I got a permit to remove a tree in front of a property from urban forestry. It took us almost a month to get the permit. We removed the tree. apparently now even though i got a permit i got a notice of violation for removing a protected tree even though they told me the tree has to be removed because it's diseased and now i got a notice of like i have to comply with this thing because it's a protected tree even though i got the permit to remove the tree they told me i had to remove the tree you're a cratic but bullshit But it's a notice of violation dated after I removed the tree.

1:09:44Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:And so now we have to set up another meeting with Urban Forestry. That's what the notice was. Report to the Urban Forestry Division. I have to comply by January 9th. Otherwise, I'm going to be issued fines. Do you have to physically be present at this meeting? Me? No. The contractor does. I'm not doing anything. But just the fact that I removed the tree. And this said, like, either a neighbor or a tenant or someone, like, filed a complaint with the city. And now they're cracking. Like, I don't know what, even though we have a permit. It makes no sense. And my understanding is that the departments at the city of Los Angeles don't talk to each other.

1:10:22Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:So even though you go this one to get a permit to remove the tree, this one could issue a fine because they don't talk to each other. And they don't know what's going on. So it's going to get resolved. It's just insane. the city of Los Angeles. You're going to court. So good, so good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60 % off. Stock up and save on Rag & Bone, Madewell, Vince, All Saints, and more of your favorites. How did I not know Rack has Adidas? Why do we rock? For the hottest deals. Just so many good brands. Join the Nordic Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more.

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1:11:42Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:You know, like George Washington. Did you chop down the cherry tree? This gives me video topics at this point. You know about that? What, chopping down the tree? Yeah, you never heard about George Washington chopping down a cherry tree? No. Man, I thought that was in history class. What is the story? I don't know. Google it like everybody else. You don't know what it is. I know. Now, somebody, his parents asked him, George, did you chop down that cherry tree? And he said, I cannot tell a lie. I did chop down a cherry tree. I don't know anything beyond that, but you can Google it. I'm sure you will, because it's fascinating, fascinating story about our father of our country.

1:12:16Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Now, you were talking earlier about finding deals. Do you think that AI will eventually get so good that it will be able to just bring you deals and say, hey, this is the best deal on the market based on these photos, based on this location, based on where it's priced. Our AI says, this is the deal for you. I've seen a lot of stuff with AI now, so it wouldn't surprise me. It would not surprise me if you could go into AI and say, okay, show me, you know, every property under this price, this return or something, I don't know. But the thing is, when real estate deals, they don't give you enough data sometimes at first.

1:12:52You know, you have to kind of... But here's the thing. But here's the thing.

1:12:56Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:If there's 100 ,000 properties listed, It could just say, hey, here's the top 100 that we think is good. I'm not a tech guy, but it wouldn't surprise me. I've seen a lot of AI cut out a lot of time in people's work that they're doing, underwriting. My son has questions all the time, and he seems to get an answer that may be 100 % on target, but it'll put him close to the right direction it needs to go. We use it quite a bit. Even for design, I'll take a photo of something. I'll say, stage this and make it look like it's on the cover of a magazine. The height is this, the width is this, design something.

1:13:37Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:And it just gives me these incredible illustrations within like a minute. Well, it's technology, you know, and that's it. So, you know, that's where the world's going. How do you save so much money on some of the renovation projects? I saw on John's Pass, your recent video. Being involved. Well, your recent video, I think you got like an$80 ,000 quote to paint the exterior, and you said you got it done for$30 ,000. Yeah, because, you know, listen, that contractor's got to make money. He's got overhead. He's got all kinds of costs about running a business, you know. But, you know, my son goes out and he just hires people that know how to paint, you know, on our payroll, under our employees, and puts in the work painting.

1:14:14And buys the paint himself, negotiates a good price on the paint, rents the lift, and does it. I mean, you know, it's always going to be cheaper to do stuff yourself. I mean, we all know that, you know. I mean, that's why these guys are in business, to make money. You know, they got to come out there and, you know, be a company. We go out and we just hire people and supervise them and buy the paint and rent the lifts and do it ourselves.

1:14:34Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:What do you think about alternative investments like storage units, parking lots, campers, senior facilities? Parking can be a very good revenue if you have the demand. It's all about supply and demand. You know, everything's supply and demand. If there's a demand for storage rooms, then yes, you'll make money. But if you build them out in the middle of nowhere and you sit in half empty, there ain't no money in storage. Every deal is different. It's all about is there supply? Are you putting a supply in for what the demand is? And then are you making money at it? I mean, you know, if you go in urban areas, storage places do very well because everybody's living in a tiny little place.

1:15:10They got nowhere to store their stuff. But if you go in a suburban area, they don't do that well. And the prices are a lot different.

1:15:17Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:You know, it's interesting. They're starting to pass or initiate proposals to crack down on storage unit evictions. Have you seen this? No, holy California, baby. Well, what the argument is, is that they need to have stronger protections against evictions with rent increase limits. And then what they want to do is protect the areas where storage units are going up for residential. because they're saying the storage units are going up in prime real estate locations, that you could be building more units. They don't contribute so much to the economy because they don't hire that many people. You can have one person overseeing all these hundreds of storage units.

1:16:01Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:That's better purpose for residential. I think it's only like a seven days if you're late, all your stuff could be kicked out. There's certain things that they say needs to be protected. Well, I haven't heard of that yet, but definitely possible, especially if you're talking about California or New York. I mean, it is what it is. I mean, you know, basically, if you go to an all-purpose storage place, you're either going to make money or you're not. You know, they can't come in and change you to not be a storage place anymore. As far as people don't pay their storage bill, you know, they got the right to auction them off.

1:16:36You know, and I don't think it's more than seven days. I think it's probably like 30. They got to send certain notices to you. Yeah. It's a process. But the point is, if you don't pay it and you ignore it, then yeah, they're going to auction your crap off. What do you think about the 50-year mortgage? The 50-year mortgage. I mean, I don't know. 50 years is a long time. You know, who's going to really keep a 50-year mortgage? Even if you buy a house in your 20 and it paid off in your 70? I mean, who's going to stay with the same house for 50 years? But who's going to keep the same loan? The 50-year mortgage would keep the payments down.

1:17:10That's a fact. Then wouldn't it just raise prices, though, again? I mean, yeah, it would definitely raise prices because we would spread the payments out and bring the payments down pretty low, you know. But still, at the end of the day, you know, you're going to be paying 50 years worth of interest.

1:17:28Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Well, that's assuming they keep the mortgage for 50 years. My understanding is that if they did implement it, you would keep it long enough to be able to refinance into something else, maybe at a lower interest rate. I mean, typically, people always refinance during the course of their loans. Nobody keeps it long for 50 years. I mean, the old days, it was the old 20, 25-year thing. Yeah. Then they came up with 30. Now they got 50. Do you think they'll ever do a 99-year mortgage? Make no sense. Does it not humanly? What? A person doesn't live that old. Yeah, but then the bank could eventually take it over.

1:18:00Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:And at that point, you're just renting, basically. Isn't that what a reverse mortgage is? They could call it creatively a 99-year mortgage. The only thing I see in 99 years is the leases. I've had 99-year leases. What does that look like? What? A 99-year lease. It means that you're entitled to have this property for 99 years and you pay in accordance with the terms of the lease. You see it more in ground leases. In New York City, most of all those buildings are all on land leases. They own the building, but they don't own the land. Some smart guy said, oh, you want to build a building here? Fine.

1:18:33I'll let you build a building here, but you're going to have to pay me X amount of dollars per year and lease the land.

1:18:42Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:I'm not going to sell it to you. Then what happens at year 100? The building just belongs to the person owning the land? I mean, it's different clause in the contract, you know. I mean, some leases say that you have to tear that building down. Some say you can just walk away and you walk away. I see a lot of hotels on land leases. I turned down one yesterday in Disney. Disney actually holds a land lease to it. They own the land, but they let somebody build a hotel on it. but the land lease is up in like 40 or 50 years, something like that. But that means it becomes a depreciating asset because as that building or hotel gets closer to the end of that land lease and its time's going to expire, it's going to have no value because you can't have a hotel anymore.

1:19:27Leases, you know, play a big thing. Big thing with leases. Most McDonald's are on land leases.

1:19:32Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Yeah, because McDonald's corporate owns the land. McDonald's, I heard, is one of the largest corporate landlords in the entire world. They own more land because they buy the land and then they lease it to the franchisee that pays them rent. So everywhere they buy, they own it and they get paid rent. And they make the franchisee build a building. I mean, you know, it's all real estate. But you got to find the deal that's going to make you some money. Do you think it's possible to eliminate property taxes? I mean, DeSantis has been talking about it here in Florida. What he's talking about, he's only talking about doing it for the people that are homesteaded.

1:20:08People have been living in a house many years. The price of value has gone up. And they'll never own their house because the property taxes should keep going up with the values. It costs them more money. I mean, I think that he should come back and just do a logical adjustment. Okay? Don't eliminate it. You might cut it in half. If you're homesteaded, you know, your property should be half the value. That makes sense. Okay? based on homeowner benefits, but then the county still has the revenue. You got to do everything in a balance. See, these guys are not business people. I meant to Santa. He's a nice guy, you know, but he's not a business guy, okay?

1:20:47You know, basically, you got to do things in moderation and balance for them to work. So every side is taken care of. Because if we cut out property taxes, then one side is doing really good, but then the county is getting screwed because they got no money to operate. Fire department, police department, schools, whatever, all their expenses, you know. They got bills to pay. They got to run a whole county. But I think they need to do a smart approach to it. You know how much my tax bill was this year on my house? On the fancy? Over a quarter million. Maybe 270.

1:21:22Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:It's about. One house. Well, that's about 1%, though. 1 % of the property's value. I mean, normally they take the price of the value of the house and you buy it. then they take an 80 % value of that, and then they multiply it by close to 2%. But it is what it is, you know, and then, you know, but that's a pretty big tax bill, don't you think? How has the quality of your life changed over the past few years? Physically, it's gone down. What about overall? I mean, you know, listen, I'm always making moves, you know. Quality of life is okay. I mean, you know, I got a new boat. You know, I'm doing okay.

1:21:57I'm paying my bills. You know, everybody's doing well. You know, has it skyrocketed? No. Has it gone down? No. Everything is just like stagnant right now. Is that the right word? What would it take for it to skyrocket? I mean, it would take, I don't know, let's see, skyrocket? It would take all these idiots to start selling their real estate for what it's worth and not over-inflating it like people like you.

1:22:27Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Underpricing. Would you say the quality of your life has remained pretty stable throughout the entirety of your life? No, my life was a straight, like if you looked at me as a stock, you'd see it going like this. And then it kind of leveled out at what age? I mean, yeah, it's pretty much leveling out now because there's no opportunity. How could it grow if I have no opportunity? So the opportunity determines the quality of your life. I mean, I determine quality of life as growth. How much money you got in a bank. the more money got a bank the better quality your life is that's the way I'm interpreting what you're saying the quality of life what are you talking about fancy cars fancy houses that quality eating in restaurants that's like I'm way above all that I'm just talking about protecting your family wealth one day you may have a kid it's possible I hope I have many it's possible I feel sorry for the person that has it with you but it's possible I am curious you were artificially inseminated right Inseminated?

1:23:26Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Whatever. Inseminated? Artificial. I have never been inseminated. You're an artificial baby, right? No. You don't know who your parents are, do you? You're a test tube baby. I think I know them. But you were out of a test tube, right? I hope I wasn't. And you grew in some kind of brown plastic thing and you developed? Some lab somewhere. Here's a lab baby. Coming from you. Coming from you. You look like you were born in a lab more than I do. That's right. What do you call it? evil ab of Dr. Frankenstein. First he made my mother, then he made me. I do wonder, though, in terms of the quality of your life.

1:24:03Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:What do you mean quality? What do you mean? Enjoyment. Whether we go to fucking Burger King or go to a restaurant, what's the quality? Sure, like happiness, enjoyment of life. I mean, listen, you know, I try to enjoy my life as much as I can, yeah. And I'm still working, so I can't just walk away. What changes in your life determine or change the quality the most? less responsibilities less you know getting my portfolio in a position where call me if you need me not have to be around everyone you know too much not to be too involved you know not always out there hunting for the next deal every day i'm gonna look for deals every day i'm gonna do a thousand emails and maybe catch one or two decent deals worth my time pursuing.

1:24:48And I don't want to go out of state. So it's just challenging right now to find the next deal. And if not, pay the government tax.

1:24:56Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:What would it take for you to invest in California? Nothing. Is there any opportunity? I don't care if you offered it to me for free. For free. I mean, it's like somebody said, well, would you ever move back to New York? I said, I don't care if I was a billionaire. To have to definitely possibly stay in New York would never happen. It's just not worth it. But what if it's just your money? You don't have to live there, but there's a good opportunity somewhere in California. Who's going to run it? If it's a good opportunity, it's going to require some sort of management. It's going to require some sort of something applied to add value to it, I would assume.

1:25:34I mean, I turned down an Amazon warehouse the other day. I could buy something like that in California, but the problem with California is, number one, my basis is low. so I don't get any depreciation barely. So that means I pay 37 % tax on any money I make there. And then if I think about making the money in California, I pay another what, 10? Yeah, give or take. Fuck that. I'm not giving why am I going to work making half the money there when I can go somewhere else and I have to, you know. Yeah. I don't know. Are there any downsides? I did 20 years almost. 18, 17, 18 years in California. I did my time.

1:26:11I served my time.

1:26:12Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:And now I got paroled. Florida. Are there any downsides to posting the deals and the things you're looking at on social media? I mean, I don't want to give it to people I could be competing with. You know, if I find deals, I'm not going to share them with other competitors. You know, I was thinking about starting a commercial listing service, but I'm too old now. Like, you know, LoopNet sucks. Okay. They throw every piece of crap in the world on LoopNet. I want to come out with a serious one. band net. You know, it was for serious people looking for serious deals that made some sort of sense. Not a little crap bullet that they just throw online for sale at stupid prices.

1:26:54Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Where do you get the best deals? Brokers. And they just email to you off-market? Yeah, they reach out and say, listen, you know, this looks like a deal for you. They know how I operate. They know I come in quick, don't waste no time, but won't pay top dollar. So if they know they have a seller that kind of matches with me, they're going to call me up and make the marriage. Like, we just closed on 88 units in Fort Myers. You know, I was trying to buy 300 units in Fort Myers, but the guy in me just can't come to terms. They're not realistic on their price. How often does a subscriber come to you with a deal?

1:27:29Subscribers? I don't really take deals from subscribers. You know, I have people that may do a consultant throw a deal my way, but I don't, you know, I try to tell them right up front, I'm not looking to invest in anybody. I don't like to invest in anybody. All right? I don't like mixing my money with other people's money. That's a game you got to be very careful playing. Why do I need anybody? If they find me a deal, I'll give them a referral bank. I'll pay them a commission. You know, if the deal was that great and I felt like the person was genuine, then maybe, I don't know, my kids can deal with it.

1:28:02Yeah. I just push it to my kids.

1:28:04Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Have you had any unique calls lately? Any consulting that stood out? A lot of my calls are pretty unique. I get them all over the board. I get the people that have absolutely nothing to the people that have, you know, a couple hundred million dollars. You know, most people just need to learn. The biggest calls I get is people have real estate and they need to know what's my next step. What do I do? Here's my portfolio. Okay. What do I do now? Okay. Do I borrow against it? How much money do I have in the bank? I got to find out. What do they got? What do they want to do? And how can they get there?

1:28:40You know, that's what people just need to push. People know what to do. They all know what to do. They just need a push. You know, you need, you want to do a deal? You need money. How much money you got? How much money are you willing to risk right now to do a real estate deal? We got to establish that. If it's a hundred grand, fine. Let's look for$500 ,000 deals. And then you have to look in your area of what makes sense for$500 ,000 with some upside. Or I get a guy with, you know, a couple of hundred million and say, you know what? I really want to get rid of some of this. I want to keep some of this.

1:29:10We have to determine which assets you want to keep, which assets are worth keeping, which assets I see that you already exhausted most of the value in. It's time to let it go before it could become a problem. You know, when you own these big department stores, if there's only a couple of years left on a 10-year lease, and you don't know for sure if that tenant is going to renew that lease, you're in bad shape. You're in a purgatory. The boat. You just got a new yacht. We got a new yacht. How is it? I haven't seen it. So far, it's great. You need to come take a tour. I want to see. I mean, it's just the yacht that has the things that I wanted on it.

1:29:45The last shot that you went on didn't have any bow seating. You know what I mean? Bow seating. Yeah, sure, in the front, too. You're sitting in the front with a table, and you're relaxing, and you're cruising, and you see all the water coming, and you're parting the seas like Moses. You ever see a boat like this go down the ocean? It's parting the sea. It's like a bee. It's a bee. and the seat of water just going away. What did you pay for the yacht? Out the door, it ended up costing me$4.8 million. And how much is it worth? I'd say that boat's about$6 plus million, bro.

1:30:17Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:What does it cost per month to operate a boat like that? I mean, I don't have any payments on it, but, you know, you have a captain. A boat like that, you need a full-time captain. You know, so a full-time captain's going to charge you, a good captain's going to charge you about$1 ,000 a foot a year. $1 ,000 a foot? Yeah. So how many feet is that? 92. So it's 92 grand. I got a break. Test them out. That's interesting. People say, though, that boats are, what do they say? It's like, oh, if it flies. We all have that dream trip we've been wishing we could go on. But too often, life, or usually price, gets in the way.

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1:31:47Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Or floats. Floats. You're supposed to rent it. Yeah. I did rent boats for a long time, but you know, once you get to a certain income level, it's not going to hurt you to own a yacht. You want your privacy. It's like a house. You buy a house, you rent the house. Some people rent, some people buy. Some people say I have to buy. You know, I want my own place. I don't want to own this thing. Plus, with my own boat, I go wherever I want. I ain't got to schedule nothing with some other body's boat. You know, I like owning a boat. It's one of the things that, you know, the quality of my life. And what's the purpose of this house that we're in right now?

1:32:19It's a boathouse. You got to park the boat somewhere. So I parked the boat at the house. Why? Because it makes sense. So it's cheaper to me to keep the boat here at this house than just take that boat to a marina and pay.

1:32:29Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:It's cheaper to keep it here than at a marina? Because if you sold the house, you put this in a muni bond, wouldn't that just pay for the... A place that I would have to keep that boat would cost me a couple hundred thousand a year. Really? So you bought a house for it? Well, yeah. I have a house that serves its purpose. So, you know, I save a couple hundred thousand dollars a year docking, and I'd rather just have the house. Why don't you Airbnb... Plus, if I go to a dock, I ain't got the pool. I ain't got the privacy. You ain't got a house you can use. I could Airbnb this sucker for probably a grand a night.

1:33:01Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Why don't you? I'll let you stay here for$9.99. That's a good deal. I mean, because I ain't got time, you know, for that. I mean, you know, I don't live near here. You know, something's just not worth my time or aggravation. Maybe my cabin gets good. And then with the boat here, I don't think I want Airbnb. Because if my boat's sitting here while they're partying or whatever, I don't feel good about that. I don't like strangers. I don't trust strangers. For this boat. But the boat's great. The boat's great. It has everything I need. The last boat, you remember, you were on. Yeah. It didn't have the mouth seating.

1:33:31It didn't. It had that kind of closed-in upstairs. Right. Which really benefited the captain. It didn't have the outdoor entertainment area upstairs, top deck like this one. It didn't have an on-deck master where I could just walk onto the boat and without going down the stairs to my room. I got my room all in the front. It didn't have. Do you want to go bigger? No, no. This is it. It's the right size for me. I could buy bigger, but it's the perfect size. Not too big, not too small. Just right. and it's newer, much newer boat and it's classier and I like it. It's got a garage, put the tender in the garage to have it sitting on the platform.

1:34:09You know, it takes me up a notch, okay? This boat is a notch up, you know, it's like going from B class to A class, okay? In that size range.

1:34:18Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Is there any other luxury in life that you want that you don't have? Because I remember the boat seemed to be the last thing. I got the boat. I'm happy with the plane I got. and um cars i know i got a new roseroids i got rid of traded a couple of cars a ferrari and a a dawn for a nice phantom i got a i got the nice car you can drive i mean i'm just going to sell my house and shrink down to a small house that's it how big of a house how nice of a house are you going to be moving into no more than about 4 000 tops tops on the beach no i hate the beach really I want a house on the intercoastal. She likes to be, but I like the intercoastal water.

1:34:58It'll be on the water. Yeah. It'll be in the coastal water. Maybe keep a small boat behind there. Why don't you move into, like, this house? Why don't I move into this house? Because it's too far from where my base of operations is right now. I'm not ready to make that move. Once I get my portfolio adjusted, then, yeah, I get to run a boat all year round.

1:35:16Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:So this is in Fort Lauderdale area. Yeah. And then your base of operations is in Clearwater area. Why don't you buy a house that you can dock this boat at in Clearwater? Because Clearwater is not a yachting place. Clearwater is a fishing-type boating place. You know, you're too far from everything. There's nowhere to go. There's nothing to do with fish. I mean, here, I could shoot right out here. Two hours, I'll be in a bar. I can go to West Palm Beach. I can go to Miami. I can go Hollywood. There's a lot of—this is a boating community. This is a boating mecca. How much does it cost in gas? total cost of running to go to, like, Bahamas.

1:35:54Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:How much? 100 gallons an hour. 100 gallons an hour? I just bought gas today. I couldn't believe how cheap it was. My diesel was only$2.60 a gallon. Guy comes here with a truck, he fills up the tank. So, fine. If it's at least a three-hour safely, I'd say ride, play it safe. So, you're paying about$1 ,000. $300. So,$26. $600 to get there,$600 back. So, you're paying about$1 ,200 in gas. There you go. My gas used to be$4 a gallon. When you go to Bahamas, it's five. Wow. Why do some people that have money for a good portion of their lives never feel wealthy? I don't know. I mean, it's a personality.

1:36:31I mean, do I feel wealthy? Yes. At what point did you feel wealthy in your life?

1:36:35Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Comfortably wealthy. At what point did you finally feel wealthy in your life? A hundred million. A hundred million? It was what it took to feel wealthy. To feel like I didn't have to worry about anything major happening. You got to understand, I may have had$100 million, but I probably owed$200 million,$300 million. You know, when you start becoming equal with the bank, then you're pretty good. And when you start becoming more than what your loans are, then you're even better. But borrowing money is a way to save taxes. Because the more you borrow, the less you make, the less taxes you make. Okay, real quick.

1:37:13If I go out tomorrow and I buy a building, or let's say I own a building. Tomorrow I go out and I refinance a building and pull a million dollars out of it, right? Fine. I owe the bank another million dollars. That million dollars is going to cost me roughly about 60 grand a year, right? So now that 60 grand a year is going to come off of my income that I made that I can write off, right? So the place made 100 grand a year. Now it's only going to make 40 grand a year because I'm giving the bank 60 million bucks. So now I'm going to write off that money and only pay tax on the$40 ,000. But what am I going to do with that million?

1:37:53I'm going to put it in tax-free muni bonds at$5 ,000. So now I'm going to get paid$50 ,000, right? But the$50 ,000 is non-taxable. It's$50 ,000. If I would have made the$60 ,000 that I'm giving the bank, I would have had to pay tax on it, 37%. You guys follow that? Mm-hmm. So basically, by borrowing money from the bank, you eliminate your tax bill if you properly invest it. But the muni funds could go down. The value could go down, but they're always going to pay you. True. They're going to pay you whatever the degree rate is. Whatever that muni bond says is paying you when you buy it based on that price, whether it's par or below or above, that's the rate you're going to get.

1:38:40So, yeah, the funds can go—the funds rates could probably change. But, you know, that's what you do. The more you borrow, the better, providing you reinvest the money you borrowed in a vehicle like muni bonds that are going to eliminate your tax on the same money. Give the money to the bank. Take the money the bank gave you. Put it in muni bonds, tax-free. And now you eliminated 37 % or California, 50 % of the$60 ,000, which would be$30 ,000. Yeah, I understood that. He understands that. You, I don't think you'll ever understand.

1:39:15Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:That's interesting. Honestly, I never even thought about that. Some of it's not worth your time, though, to spread. And it might be like a half a percent in between. The point is, if you're paying a lot of taxes, it helps. Big, large numbers, yes. If you want to lower your taxes, borrow from the bank, take the money you borrowed, and invest it. How is your weight loss going? My weight loss is not going well. It went okay for a while, but I got to, you know, discipline myself on it. I need to cut out all the starches. You know, no bread, no cake, no pasta, no rice, no potato, all that kind of stuff.

1:39:54If I could do a diet without any starches, you know, definitely no cakes. If I could do that, then I would be in a really good shape. Why don't you do it? What? Why don't you just do it? Because I don't have the discipline. When I go to a restaurant and the owner brings out this hot, delicious basket of bread where it just smells and the butter melts all over the soft inside part with the crust on the outside. I'm hungry right now. I mean, and you bite into that bread when you're hungry.

1:40:23Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:But why don't you just make an agreement with Rafal and you say, hey, every time I have a piece of bread, I give you$1 ,000. Oh, you can do what they do with me, too. If I were you at this point. We even heard about sharing meals lately. 2026, my New Year's resolution is to lose 50 pounds. But then some fat people lose weight and they're unhappy. Because you know why? They're just like you guys. There's nothing special about you. Shit. All right. Now, listen. Seriously. Yeah. You guys aren't into heavy commercial real estate. That's my shtick, right? All right. You need to let people know. Because you know and I know that I'm not full of I don't want people's money.

1:41:09And I feel sorry for people that don't consult with me. Too many people call me up after the fact that they made the mistake and say, what do I do? Call me before you make the mistake.

1:41:20Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:That's what I want people to do. We think you're undercharging, too. We said this the last time. I've also spoken with a few people who say that they even paid to come to your house and show up and consult. Every single person I've talked to, I think it was like two or three people I've talked to, said that they had a great time. And they said you were very hospitable, and they said you went above and beyond, and he said you showed him a whole house tour, I think, afterwards. Listen, I try to really treat people right that want help. I like to help those who want to help themselves. I don't like just helping somebody and they didn't do shit like you do with Jack.

1:41:56I'm going to start doing the yacht consulting. Get on the yacht, cruise up and down the air coastal, stop for lunch, you know? like big shots. So, but you know, if you know anybody that has a real estate issue, tell them to call me up. They got nothing. They never have to worry about me trying to screw them over, get their money, sell them some. Just good, strong, honest, hard advice from somebody that's been doing it a long time. What's the website? BenMalla.com

1:42:24Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Consult with Ben. Link is down below in the description. The phone is awake. And don't forget that we have a members episode where we don't bleep all the times you were swearing. Fully uncut. Fully uncut. So if you want to see those episodes, join as a member. It helps us out too. And Mikey has put a lot of time making those members episodes and you get early access. So enjoy. Thank you guys so much for watching. Seriously, thank you guys. We would not be able to do this if not for you. We would not have the pleasure of sitting across from the one and only. So thank you guys. Thank you, Ben, for the hospital.

1:43:01Iced Coffee Hour Hosts:Howdy goes, amigos. Adios. Adios, amigos.

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