In this power-packed episode, Keith delivers a masterclass on the current real estate landscape, blending personal insights with market-changing trends. From the nuanced world of home flooring to the pulse of national housing markets, Keith breaks down complex real estate dynamics into actionable intelligence. The episode reveals a market at a critical inflection point: declining home sales, shifting apartment dynamics, and emerging investment opportunities. Keith provides listeners with a strategic roadmap to navigate these changes, emphasizing the importance of adaptability and informed decision-making. Exclusive Takeaway: Get Rich Education offers free investment coaching to help you turn these insights into wealth-building action. Your real estate success journey starts here. Free Resources: Connect with a free GRE investment coach at GREinvestmentcoach.com Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/552 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments: You get paid first - Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I’d be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review” For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE’ to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai Keith Weinhold 0:00 Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, there's been a real estate tragedy in my family. Then this past month, national home sales have plummeted to their worst level since 2009 then something is happening in the market for apartment buildings that shocked everybody and more all today on get rich education. Speaker 1 0:24 Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, and delivers a new show every week. Since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guessing the top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki, get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast, sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com Speaker 2 1:09 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education. Keith Weinhold 1:25 welcome to GRE from Montreal, Quebec to Montrose, Michigan and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are back inside get rich education here in our 11th year, you're listening to one of America's longest running the most listened to shows on real estate investing, indeed, the 552nd consecutive week before we delve into the sad topic of terrible national home sales, the worst since 2009 which is a serious topic, first, a bit More of a light hearted topic, a real estate tragedy of sorts, has taken place inside my family, right inside my parents home, the same home that I grew up in. And you know, it's been a while since I had a good rant in an episode. So before we get to our core content today, my parents just replaced the nice, plush, warm, soft, inviting wall to wall carpets in both of their living rooms with laminate, hardwood floor. Oh no, this is disastrous. I mean, this is an abject property atrocity right in the home that I grew up in. Now, if you're a longtime listener, you know what I'm talking about. If you're newer here, it's probably been a couple years since I mentioned it. You know, everyone has their own quirks and idiosyncrasies, like you have certain ways of thinking about some things in your life, where you just know that you're in the minority of society with how you behave with that thing. Yeah, there are some things that you're counter cultural on. It's part of your unique personality, and it's what makes you you, well, one of my real estate idiosyncrasies and unorthodoxies is that I love deep, plush carpet, not hardwood floor, and hey, I don't expect you to agree with me on this. It's what makes me different. Now we'll talk about the flooring that you choose to use in your rental units in a moment and compare their prices and when you might want to use those things and when you don't. But we're just talking about home here, the flooring that you live on your primary residence. Why would anyone replace carpeting with hardwood, plank flooring? It is uninviting. It is cold, hard, and it even transfers noise more than quiet, comfortable, plush carpeting. And yes, hardwood floors can be heated. And some homeowners do that. They use what are called radiant heating systems, and they are installed beneath the floor, and these systems use either electric cables or sometimes mats or hydronic tubing, which are pipes filled with hot water in order to radiate that heat upwards into the floor. Now, something like that is what you'd be more likely to do in your own home, and not a rental unit, but even if you do that, hard floors are still, well, hard and noisier, like I just don't get it deep, plush carpet is superior. I'm not talking about the shag carpet that was popular 50 years ago, just plush carpet that hit its peak. In the 1990s Oh yes, that is the stuff I'm telling you. I mean plush carpet. That is the stuff that turns a house into a home. Well, my parents did just the opposite. They turned their home back into a house. Oh, dear. And, hey, it's their home. They can do whatever they want. Now, what are the main reasons that I hear about why people prefer laminate, hardwood flooring or luxury vinyl plank flooring over carpeting? That's what the majority of people want to do, and that's not what I want. Well, one reason, and this is the main reason that my parents did it, is that it looks nicer. In their opinion, looks nicer. I don't get it at all. I mean, even most cheap $1,000 apartments have been using like hardwood, plank flooring for close to 25 years now, there's nothing special about the way that it looks. Most of it anyway, some of it can look pretty cool. Now, some people want the hardwood because, well, they say that it's easier to clean. Easy to clean. Why in the world would you have trouble keeping your own home clean? I mean, if there's any space in the world that you keep clean, it is your humble abode. Now I know that it's easier for me to say that because I don't own any pets and still don't have kids, maybe you do replacing carpet for hard flooring is just an unspeakable act. What an uncalled for abhorrence, a repugnance. Other reasons that people say they prefer hardwood or vinyl plank over carpet is that it is allergy friendly. All right. Well, I don't have any trouble with allergies. But here's the thing that's even more confounding, most people that install a hard flooring. Well, the next thing that they do, and this is exactly what my mom and dad say that they're going to do next now that they put the hardwood floor in, is find some area rugs and cover it up so people put carpet on top of the hardwood floor anyway, but then yet, that carpet cannot be plush and padded underneath like real Carpet would be, because it's just like a piece that's rolled out, plus it cancels out, then all these pet friendly and allergy free benefits, plus it might be even harder to clean, because now you got to clean both the carpet and the edges of the room where the stupid hardwood flooring is showing I mean, it makes zero sense, so this just all compounds how I am confounded on how almost everybody in the world, it seems they want hardwood floor. I feel like I'm the only person in the world sticking up for carpeting. I do not expect you to agree with me here. It is just my, I guess, oddball preference. I also do a lot of exercises down on the floor. That's where the best high intensity interval training workouts take place. Down on the floor. Plush carpet is best for that too. Oh, the myriad reasons that carpet is superior, I'll tell you. Well, I'll next be staying at my parents place in two months, as I'll spend a lot of July there, and that's when I will first be witness to this transgression, this incomprehensible abomination. I mean, it is almost malfeasance. The reason that I care more about this than most sons of parents would is that my parents have lived in the same home since I was age one. I have a lot of memories there, and when I visit my parents in rural upstate Pennsylvania, I sleep in the same exact bedroom that I have since age one. Really special continuity there. What's more important than the flooring changing in the two living rooms is that, like I've told you before, I won the parent lottery, I did not have an affluent upbringing, but my brother and I had a top 1% childhood anyway, because we have two married, committed parents that are still together, still healthy and loved us. I phone my parents at least weekly, and I send them messages all the time. I guess it's a good time to think about that as this is the last episode before Mother's Day, and if you did not win the parent lottery, like I did in the way that I just described. Well, the good news is that you can do something about it. You can provide that same stable, nurturin