The Real Estate Espresso Podcast

Victor Menasce

Welcome to The Real Estate Espresso Podcast, your morning shot of what's new in the world of real estate investing. Join investor, syndicator, developer, and author Victor J. Menasce as he shares his daily real estate investment outlook. Our weekday episodes deliver 5 minutes of high-energy, high-impact content to fuel your success. Plus, don't miss our weekend editions featuring exclusive interviews with renowned guests such as Robert Kiyosaki, Robert Helms, Peter Schiff, and more.

  1. 2h ago

    Impact Of The Trade War

    There has been a lot of discussion over the past few days about tariffs and the trade relationship between Canada and the United States. The events of Friday where Canada withdrew from the negotiations put the impasse in stark terms. Most of that discussion has focused on manufacturing, autos, steel, aluminum, and politics. The trade war is clearly escalating. Tariffs are just the start. What happens if the nations take the even more drastic step of withholding exports to each other? Major parts of the US are dependent on Canada for critical resources. We don’t know where this will end.  But underneath all of that is a much more practical question for real estate investors. What happens when a trade dispute starts changing the cost of building? Canada is an important supplier of construction materials into the United States. Lumber is probably the most obvious example, but it goes well beyond lumber. Steel, aluminum, cement, plywood, and a number of manufactured products cross the border every day. The trade dispute also puts the agreement with Mexico in uncertain territory. Higher construction costs are obviously not helpful if you're trying to build something today. But they can have a very different effect if you already own the finished product. If a new apartment building becomes more expensive to construct, some projects that were marginal simply don't get built. If fewer projects start this year, there may be fewer units delivered two or three years from now. That can reduce future competition for existing properties. So the same tariff can be negative for one real estate investor and potentially positive for another. The developer is dealing with higher replacement cost. The existing owner may eventually benefit from that same higher replacement cost. ------------ **Real Estate Espresso Podcast:** Spotify: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/3GvtwRmTq4r3es8cbw8jW0?si=c75ea506a6694ef1)   iTunes: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-real-estate-espresso-podcast/id1340482613)   Website: [www.victorjm.com](http://www.victorjm.com)   LinkedIn: [Victor Menasce](http://www.linkedin.com/in/vmenasce)   YouTube: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](http://www.youtube.com/@victorjmenasce6734)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/realestateespresso](http://www.facebook.com/realestateespresso)   Email: [podcast@victorjm.com](mailto:podcast@victorjm.com)  **Y Street Capital:** Website: [www.ystreetcapital.com](http://www.ystreetcapital.com)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital](https://www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital)   Instagram: [@ystreetcapital](http://www.instagram.com/ystreetcapital)

  2. 3d ago

    Underwriting A Matter of Perspective

    On today's show, we're talking about a situation that confuses a lot of investors. How can the same property have two different underwriting models, and how can both of them be correct? The answer comes down to perspective. A lender is underwriting the property for one purpose. An investor is underwriting the property for a different purpose. Those two objectives overlap, but they are not identical. Let's use a real-world example. There are a number of state and local programs around the country that offer some form of property tax abatement for qualifying projects. Perhaps the property provides affordable housing, senior housing, or satisfies some other public policy objective. The economics can be very meaningful. Suppose the property would normally pay one million dollars a year in property taxes. Under the applicable program, the actual tax expense might be a $700,000 difference in net operating income. But there is a wrinkle. The tax abatement has to be approved each year. There is a small but non-zero risk that the property might not qualify one year. Should you assume the tax abatement in your underwriting? ------------- **Real Estate Espresso Podcast:** Spotify: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/3GvtwRmTq4r3es8cbw8jW0?si=c75ea506a6694ef1)   iTunes: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-real-estate-espresso-podcast/id1340482613)   Website: [www.victorjm.com](http://www.victorjm.com)   LinkedIn: [Victor Menasce](http://www.linkedin.com/in/vmenasce)   YouTube: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](http://www.youtube.com/@victorjmenasce6734)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/realestateespresso](http://www.facebook.com/realestateespresso)   Email: [podcast@victorjm.com](mailto:podcast@victorjm.com)  **Y Street Capital:** Website: [www.ystreetcapital.com](http://www.ystreetcapital.com)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital](https://www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital)   Instagram: [@ystreetcapital](http://www.instagram.com/ystreetcapital)

  3. 3d ago

    Is The Software Business Model Dead?

    Today we’re going to venture outside real estate for a few minutes and talk about software. But this is really a discussion about business economics, and those principles apply to every industry. For the past twenty years, one of the most attractive business models in technology has been Software as a Service, or SaaS. Instead of buying software once, customers pay every month or every year. From the software company’s perspective, this is wonderful. Revenue becomes recurring and predictable. Investors love recurring revenue, and software companies have been valued accordingly. But artificial intelligence may be starting to challenge the fundamental economics of that model. We recently conducted an audit of the software subscriptions inside our own business. Like many companies, we had accumulated numerous applications over the years. Accounting software, project management software, communication tools, document management, CRM systems, design tools, and numerous specialized applications. What became obvious was that we were paying for a tremendous amount of capability that we simply weren’t using. In several cases we were subscribing to the highest tier because, at some point, somebody believed we needed one particular feature. When we looked carefully at actual usage, we discovered that the basic version accomplished virtually everything we needed. We downgraded several subscriptions and, in some cases, reduced the cost by more than fifty percent. Did productivity decline? Not at all. Suppose your company uses only ten percent of the functionality in a large project management platform. What if instead you built exactly the workflow your organization needs? Instead of changing your business process to accommodate somebody else’s software, the software accommodates your business process. There is something very attractive about that. But before declaring the SaaS industry dead, we need to distinguish between development cost and lifecycle cost. ---------- **Real Estate Espresso Podcast:** Spotify: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/3GvtwRmTq4r3es8cbw8jW0?si=c75ea506a6694ef1)   iTunes: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-real-estate-espresso-podcast/id1340482613)   Website: [www.victorjm.com](http://www.victorjm.com)   LinkedIn: [Victor Menasce](http://www.linkedin.com/in/vmenasce)   YouTube: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](http://www.youtube.com/@victorjmenasce6734)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/realestateespresso](http://www.facebook.com/realestateespresso)   Email: [podcast@victorjm.com](mailto:podcast@victorjm.com)  **Y Street Capital:** Website: [www.ystreetcapital.com](http://www.ystreetcapital.com)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital](https://www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital)   Instagram: [@ystreetcapital](http://www.instagram.com/ystreetcapital)

  4. 5d ago

    Will Treasury Intervention Make A Difference?

    On August 20, I'm going to be hosting a webinar on how to use AI to validate the quotes you receive from contractors and subcontractors. To register for the webinar click HERE. Even if you can't attend live, we will send you the recording. -------------- Today we're talking about an announcement from the U.S. Treasury Department that has generated a surprising amount of noise in the financial markets. The two words getting attention are Treasury buybacks. Treasury announced today, August 19, that beginning September 9 it will increase, by at least double, the size of its liquidity support buyback operations for longer-dated Treasury securities. Specifically, the maximum size for operations in the 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year sectors will increase from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. It might be coincidence, but this happened on the same day that US debt topped $40T. The country’s “total public debt outstanding” officially hit $40.047 trillion on Tuesday, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday, ticking up from $39.987 trillion a day earlier. Immediately, people started describing this as quantitative easing, QE light, yield curve control, and even a new version of Operation Twist. I think we need to separate the mechanics from the headlines. A Treasury buyback is not the same thing as Federal Reserve quantitative easing. The Treasury is already issuing enormous quantities of debt. In a buyback operation, Treasury can issue securities in one part of the market and use some of those proceeds to repurchase securities that are already outstanding. The important distinction is which securities they are buying. The liquidity support program primarily targets what are called off-the-run Treasury securities. When Treasury issues a new 10-year note, for example, that newly issued security becomes the on-the-run Treasury. It tends to trade very actively. The older 10-year securities that were issued previously become off-the-run securities. They're still Treasury obligations. Their credit quality hasn't changed. But they don't necessarily trade with the same liquidity. That becomes important during periods of market stress. If a large investor needs to sell a significant quantity of an older Treasury security, there may not be as deep a pool of buyers as there is for the newest issue. -------------- **Real Estate Espresso Podcast:** Spotify: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/3GvtwRmTq4r3es8cbw8jW0?si=c75ea506a6694ef1)   iTunes: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-real-estate-espresso-podcast/id1340482613)   Website: [www.victorjm.com](http://www.victorjm.com)   LinkedIn: [Victor Menasce](http://www.linkedin.com/in/vmenasce)   YouTube: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](http://www.youtube.com/@victorjmenasce6734)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/realestateespresso](http://www.facebook.com/realestateespresso)   Email: [podcast@victorjm.com](mailto:podcast@victorjm.com)  **Y Street Capital:** Website: [www.ystreetcapital.com](http://www.ystreetcapital.com)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital](https://www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital)   Instagram: [@ystreetcapital](http://www.instagram.com/ystreetcapital)

  5. Aug 17

    AI In Construction

    Later this week we're hosting a deep dive webinar on AI In Construction. To register, click HERE . Since the beginning, construction drawings have been one of the hardest documents for artificial intelligence to understand. That makes sense when you think about it. A construction drawing is not simply a page of text. It contains symbols, dimensions, schedules, notes, details and references to information that might appear twenty pages later. A symbol on the floor plan may tell you almost nothing until you find the corresponding detail or section. But something has changed dramatically over the past couple of months. The newest generation of reasoning models has become substantially better at reading and cross-referencing construction drawings. Testing across structural, civil, mechanical and electrical drawings is now showing surprisingly strong performance, particularly when the task involves extracting information from schedules, identifying specific elements and following references between sheets. That matters even if you're not a contractor. Suppose you're renovating an apartment building, replacing a roof, building out an office or doing a major addition to your house. The contractor hands you an estimate or a quote. Is it a fair price? How do you know? This is where AI is becoming genuinely useful. Register for the webinar. We have nothing to sell, just sharing how we are using AI in estimating. --------------- **Real Estate Espresso Podcast:** Spotify: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://open.spotify.com/show/3GvtwRmTq4r3es8cbw8jW0?si=c75ea506a6694ef1)   iTunes: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-real-estate-espresso-podcast/id1340482613)   Website: [www.victorjm.com](http://www.victorjm.com)   LinkedIn: [Victor Menasce](http://www.linkedin.com/in/vmenasce)   YouTube: [The Real Estate Espresso Podcast](http://www.youtube.com/@victorjmenasce6734)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/realestateespresso](http://www.facebook.com/realestateespresso)   Email: [podcast@victorjm.com](mailto:podcast@victorjm.com)  **Y Street Capital:** Website: [www.ystreetcapital.com](http://www.ystreetcapital.com)   Facebook: [www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital](https://www.facebook.com/YStreetCapital)   Instagram: [@ystreetcapital](http://www.instagram.com/ystreetcapital)

4.9
out of 5
133 Ratings

About

Welcome to The Real Estate Espresso Podcast, your morning shot of what's new in the world of real estate investing. Join investor, syndicator, developer, and author Victor J. Menasce as he shares his daily real estate investment outlook. Our weekday episodes deliver 5 minutes of high-energy, high-impact content to fuel your success. Plus, don't miss our weekend editions featuring exclusive interviews with renowned guests such as Robert Kiyosaki, Robert Helms, Peter Schiff, and more.

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