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When Pressure to Perform Becomes a Leadership Problem



Pressure makes performers of us all — leaders included.

Saudi Arabia faces nightmare scenario as Houthis threaten shipping route and drones close pipeline



It’s a nightmare scenario for Saudi Arabia, and it has sent jitters through global markets.

The Saudis’ most essential ally, the United States, has been unpredictableand sometimes unreliable. U.S. President Donald Trump seems reluctant to widen an already unpopular and stalemated Mideast war ahead of congressional elections. For Iran, the rebels’ advance and closure of the pipeline ramp up global economic pressure as its grip over the Strait of Hormuz has been loosened.

Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the latest developments are “incredibly frustrating” for the kingdom.

“Despite their antipathy for the Iranians, this is a war they had never asked for, they had great trepidation about. And once it started, all of their … worst-case scenarios started coming true.”

The Saudi government did not respond to a request for comment. But a Saudi official, who was not authorized to brief media and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the kingdom would defend itself and work with partners, including the United States, to ensure freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.

Saudi hopes for a new Mideast have gone up in smoke

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, has spent years trying to build a very different Middle East, with wide-ranging social and economic changes aimed at transforming the ultra-conservative kingdom into a global business hub in a more prosperous and integrated region.

Those efforts suffered major setbacks after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attackon Israel, which triggered one war after another. When the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, it responded with missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, and effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, bottling up their oil and gas exports and jolting the world economy.

Saudi Arabia escaped some of the worst effects by piping its oil across the Arabian Peninsula to the Red Sea, where it could be exported to Europe via Egypt’s SUMED pipeline and the Suez Canal, or to Asia via a route running through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and toward the Indian Ocean.

But tensions reignited with the Houthis in July, leading the rebels to declare a blockade of Saudi shipping and resume large-scale attacks for the first time in four years.

Over the last two days, the Houthis have seized the port city of Mokha and a Red Sea island from Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces, enhancing the rebels’ ability to block Saudi shipments through the Bab el-Mandeb.

On Friday, Saudi Arabia said it shut down the pipeline leading from major oil fields in the east to the Red Sea in the west because of drone attacks originating in Iraq, where Iran supports powerful militias. Regional officials recently told The Associated Press that the Houthis have helped the Iraqi militias carry out attacks.

Houthi attacks have already caused a plunge in Saudi oil exports to Asia, from around 3.4 million barrels a day in June to just 128,000 in August, though they had recovered somewhat this month to 700,000, according to figures compiled by Kpler, a global trade monitor.

The Saudis have few options

Saudi Arabia fought against the Houthis for years beginning in 2015, but its allies made little progress on the ground. The conflict killed an estimated 150,000 people and at times pushed Yemen to the brink of famine before a 2022 ceasefire.

“Saudi Arabia has spent several years trying to move beyond the Yemen conflict and focus on economic transformation and regional stability,” said Neil Quilliam, a Middle East expert at Chatham House.

“Recent Houthi gains increase pressure on Riyadh to respond, but every available option carries significant costs and uncertain outcomes.”

The Saudis could step up their military response and try to dislodge the Houthis, but that would prolong the conflict and lead to even heavier Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure, said Sherwan Hindreen Ali, Middle East research manager at ACLED, a conflict monitoring group.

“The kingdom already faced this in the past, but Houthi weaponry is more sophisticated now than it was back then, and the Saudis likely have less interceptor missiles available as a result of the U.S.-Iran conflict,” he said.

The Saudis could also seek a diplomatic solution with either the Houthis or their patrons in Tehran.

But the Houthis have demanded the lifting of a Saudi-led blockade, which would allow them to grow much stronger over the long term, and Iran has little interest in stabilizing the region without securing major U.S. concessions.

US help may not be forthcoming

For decades, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have relied on U.S. security guarantees. Those have eroded under Trump, who did not respond during his first term when a 2019 attack claimed by the Houthis temporarily knocked out half of Saudi Arabia’s oil supply.

In February, the U.S. joined Israel in attacking Iran without consulting its Gulf allies, and since then it has struggled to defend them from Iranian attacks.

Trump launched an air campaign against the Houthis last year in response to earlier attacks on Red Sea shipping linked to the war in Gaza. But this time, U.S. forces are heavily deployed around the Strait of Hormuz, where they are blockading Iran and trying to prevent attacks on shipping there.

The fighting has visibly strained the U.S. military and drawn down supplies of sophisticated interceptors.

The war is also deeply unpopular and has eroded Trump’s support after he had promised to keep the U.S. out of Mideast wars. Launching another military campaign in Yemen could compound the struggles of fellow Republicans in tight House and Senate races.

Trump on Saturday said Iran “probably” was behind the Saudi pipeline attack. Asked about a recent call with Saudi’s crown prince, he said: “He’s a good friend of mine, and I can just say everything’s going to work out fine and dandy.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether it plans to intervene in Yemen.

Speaking more broadly about the war with Iran on Thursday, Trump shrugged aside the idea of increasing military pressure, as some U.S. hawks have suggested. “Maybe I don’t do that because of the election,” he told Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”

Ratney, the former U.S. ambassador, said it would be difficult for the Saudis to achieve their objectives without consistent U.S. support, which they had at previous times while fighting the Houthis.

“My understanding at this point is the White House is not enthusiastic about getting involved,” he said.

Pulte moves give whole loan sellers reason to act on VS4


Credit score modernization overseen by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte has taken time to implement and the next tier of lenders considering it may need more, but there is one step they can immediately take.

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The whole loan market is already beginning to respond as government-sponsored enterprises that buy many mortgages made in the United States roll the modernized VantageScore 4.0 out to the broader market after a large lender pilot and add new data points to securities files.

Whole loan sellers or their vendors can add a field for VantageScore 4.0 relatively quickly and it will help ensure they will have access to the full breadth of future opportunities in the market, said David Battany, executive vice president of capital markets at Guild Mortgage

“If you are a whole loan buyer or seller, you should absolutely add the extra field of this data,” he said. “There’s no guarantee that you immediately get a bid up because of it, but there may be a day when that becomes the case. That’s why you should add it.”

Vice Capital Markets, which runs a whole loan trading platform, announced that it has already added support for VS4 by including a data field for its system in bid tape information amid a flurry of FHFA and GSE policy announcements around credit modernization.

“Most investors are still in the process of getting ready to accept Vantage 4.0 scores and use them in bid tapes, but I expect that to happen very quickly,” said Chris Bennett, chairman of Vice Capital Markets.

Bennett said he has already seen some investor interest as large lenders from the pilot have begun funding a small but growing number of loans.

“It’s not everybody, but we have a couple servicing buyers on a co-issue basis that have started accepting it, and we’re expecting that very soon we’re going to see widespread adoption, or at least the ability to do it by most of the tier one investor community,” he said.

Progress at the GSEs and FHA

The GSEs’ current grid for VantageScore 4.0 requires that metric to be 20 points higher than the equivalent classic FICO that the enterprises have traditionally relied on to get the same loan price pegged to the average difference between them.

Differences between the two metrics include the fact that classic FICO requires at least half a year of traditional credit history to initially score a borrower as opposed to as little as one month. 

VS4 also incorporates newer types of payment reporting, such as rent and trended data.

Views on how the two score types should factor into GSE loan-level price adjustments may shift over time. The more advanced FICO 10T model is seen as increasingly competitive with VantageScore 4.0, and its pending review at the enterprises could further reshape market dynamics.

The Federal Housing Administration, which jointly announced somewhat similar credit modernization as FHFA in April, said it will officially begin a 10T rollout next year, officially adding it to the Technology Open to Approved Lenders scorecard on or after Jan. 1.

The structures of FHA and the enterprises that FHFA oversees differ, so there has been some divergence in their credit score modernization paths.

Enterprise loan-level disclosure files reported at the end of each month show the GSE have slowly increased VS4 activity since April, when the test was first announced, according to a recent analysis done by equity researchers at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods 

Those sales accounted for 5.56% of new-issue GSE loans in August, KBW’s Bose George, Frankie Labetti and Graham Bundy, wrote in the report. Most or 69.4% of that VS4 volume came from Rocket Mortgage. Another 28.7% came from United Wholesale Mortgage.

Other lender considerations

While adding a field to bid tapes does require some data mapping, it is relatively easy compared to other steps the next tier of lenders may be considering when it comes to VS4. 

“The adoption is happening slowly because it’s not that hard for us to amend our processes, bid tapes and coordinate with investors to be able to include this. It’s a much bigger deal as an originator,” Bennett said.

All this means midsize and smaller lenders who have fewer resources may need more time to adopt VS4 and be watching for implementation in industry origination systems. 

At least one, Calyx, has an interface with credit reporting and data solutions provider Advantage Partner Solutions to this end.  

Informative Research, another credit reporting and data solutions provider, also has been working with lenders to accommodate alternative credit scores in response to client interest, according to President Matt Orlando.

“Lenders believe there may be real value in VS4, both in lowering the cost of credit and in qualifying more borrowers under better terms, similar to the opportunity with FICO 10T,”  he said in an email.

Given recent unexpected runups in interest rates, lenders are more interested in qualifying more borrowers, although external scores play more of a role in pricing than eligibility at the GSEs.

However, the GSEs announced Friday that they are releasing historic credit assessment data previously only used in connection with their own automated underwriting system scores for the period between April 2013 and September 2025.

“Releasing enterprise internal scores alongside classic FICO and VS4 may prove to be Director Pulte’s most impactful announcement to date,” Sam Valverde, a former acting president of Ginnie Mae and vice president at Freddie Mac, said in an email.

“Once we understand how GSE scores compare to each other and to the existing methodologies, lenders, MBS investors, and borrowers will benefit,” he added.

Analyzing that date and gearing up servicing as well as origination system will be a deliberate process, experts interviewed for this article said.

And while whole loan sellers should be able to get a field readied quickly, there is some work involved even with vendor readiness, and they may have to wait for other steps.

“You have to do the data mapping on it, and you have to know which of your investors is going to accept it, which ones won’t, and what are the rules they’re going to be?” Bennett said. 

Investors and sellers will need to consider risk management in questions about whether and how to go beyond readying their bid tapes for VS4 and actually engaging in transactions.

“As a lender, it’s not just, ‘Can I sell this?’ It’s, ‘what’s the credit risk to me as the lender,'” Bennett said. “If this goes bad, this loan might be coming right back to me. I’ve got to make sure that as a lender, I’m comfortable with this methodology and I’m comfortable originating loans using VantageScore 4.0.”

Competition and cost updates

Another potential incentive for lenders to weigh against possible risks is that Pulte has been positioning credit score modernization as a way to spur competition that could put pressure on FICO to do more to lower prices in ways that could ease homebuying costs.

FICO and VantageScore have offered some selective discounts as a result of this pressure, but Pulte has shown some frustration with the lack of broader price breaks for the classic metric.

VantageScore is backed by the three bureaus that provide credit reports, which complicates the question of competition, but it is far less expensive than the more independent FICO’s classic model. FICO has been willing to provide more competitive pricing for 10T.

Lenders have had to pick one score to submit to the enterprises

“If you’ve got co borrowers you have to use the same score for both. You can’t use Classic FICO for one borrower and VantageScore 4.0 for the other. You have to use the same methodology,” Bennett said.

Another aspect of credit assessment that Pulte has renewed efforts to spur competition in are the trimerged reports the big three players behind VantageScore provide. Both credit report and score costs are incremental loan costs that can add up, with the former being relatively larger.

“If we could use competition to force the big three to improve the quality and the completeness of their data, then that would be a huge deal,” said Chris Whalen, an NMN columnist, independent analyst and investor who has written on the topic.

Pultes’s new push to this end has revived past concerns about whether there are other concerns in the move to make loan decisions from fewer bureaus, which may limit available information in a way investors may respond poorly to and lead to gaming.

To address such concerns, “one option is for FHFA to randomly assign a bureau or use another blind, rules-based rotation,” Ed Pinto and Tobias Peter, co-directors of the AEI’s housing center wrote in one of the latest reports on the much-debated topic.

What to watch for next

Going forward, the market will be watching whether a growing number of new data sets can ease investor concerns about VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T. Some investors have been hesitant to accept loans scored with these models because the underlying data doesn’t extend back to the 2008 financial crisis, leaving less historical evidence of how the scores perform in a downturn.

Rating agencies that assess the GSEs’ CRTs and private-label MBS outside the enterprise’s market have begun to weigh in on VS4’s growing use, and may be influenced by its inclusion in some of the enterprises’ new mortgage-backed securities and credit risk transfer disclosures.

The enterprises’ MBS aren’t rated because they have implicit government backing, making investors more concerned about prepayment than credit risk. So VS4 CRT data disclosures may be the more influential ones where rating agencies are concerned.

As far as where Pulte sees this all leading, he indicated in a recent social media post that he is envisioning a future where “the evolution of technology will lead to no credit score companies and I believe there will only be one credit bureau.”



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High-ROI, Value-Add Renovations for Any Investor (and How Much They’ll Cost)


Investors have used the same proven formula for decades: Buy a discounted property, renovate it, and increase its value by tens or sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a simple investing strategy, and yet it’s one of the best ways to get rich through real estate investing.

But there’s a catch that too many investors miss. You can’t renovate just anything; you have to renovate the right things. After over 100 real estate deals, Henry knows exactly what moves the needle, and in part two of our series on estimating rehab costs, we’re showing you what to prioritize on your next renovation project.

First, we’ll walk you through the typical “moneymakers”—kitchens and bathrooms—what to improve, what not to improve, and what you should budget for these updates. But then, we’ll share three upgrades many investors never think about, yet they can have the greatest impact on property value (and rents!).

Whether you’re flipping houses or updating a rental property, this is the exact value-add playbook you should be using in 2026!

Henry Washington:
Spend $20,000 on a kitchen and your house is worth 50,000 more. This is the whole game of real estate investing, and I’ve done it more than a hundred times. You buy an undervalued house, you renovate the right things, and the value goes up far more than you spent. The hard part is knowing which fixes actually matter to home appraisers, home buyers, and home renters. So today I’m going to show you which renovations pay you back the most and how to estimate the cost of each one before you buy the house. We’ll cover kitchens, bathrooms, and even a few of my favorite hacks that really boost your value for a lot cheaper than you think. I’m trying to make you tens of thousands of dollars in this episode, and all you need to do is watch.
Welcome everybody. This is part two of our series on how to estimate rehab costs. Check out part one if you missed it. That’s where we covered the very important big five, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, foundation, and roof. Those are your big ticket items. We want to make sure that you are accounting for those prior to buying the home so that you can get the home at the right price. But today we’re covering the things that you can actually do that put the dollars in your pocket. We are talking value add investing. This is my bread and butter. This is what I love to do. And this applies to flipping, but it also applies to rental properties. You can add value pretty easily in single family and small multifamily homes if you know what to look for, what it’s going to cost, and you know that it’s actually going to give you a return because there is a lot of renovations and value add that you can do that don’t really add a lot of value.
It may look pretty, but it won’t always put money in your pocket. So today I’m going to cover where in the home you should focus on adding value, how much it’s going to cost you to add said value, and whether it’s going to be worth it or not for you to even take on the risk of doing it based on the returns that you could get. All right, since everybody knows that kitchens and bathrooms sell home, let’s start with the kitchen. When I am looking at adding value to a kitchen, first and foremost, I am looking to see is the layout of the kitchen as it sits desirable? Remember, just updating that kitchen is going to add value, but if it’s got a decent enough layout, spending the money to rearrange the kitchen completely is not going to bring you much more value than you just renovating in place.
So I would not recommend completely changing the layout of a kitchen unless the current layout is very undesirable for the house that you have. So let’s go through each one of these individual factors of a kitchen and talk about what it might cost. Starting with the flooring, I typically don’t budget flooring in a kitchen separately than flooring for the whole house. When I’m planning a renovation, the flooring that goes in the kitchen gets bundled into my flooring costs for the entire house. But on average, I’m going to put tile in wet spaces. And in kitchens, I’m typically trying to use larger tiles to save money. So think the 12 by 24 inch brick style tiles, or I’ll do a 12 by 12 inch square tile and I’ll mix up the colors to make it a little more modern. But think of a tile floor, probably going to spend anywhere from $1.50 to $3 per square foot for tile.
So if you want to understand how much it’s going to cost you to put flooring in your kitchen, you just need to measure the square footage of the floor and then multiply that by the cost of your tile and then the cost of the labor. Labor’s going to cost anywhere in my neck of the woods between $1.50 and $2.50 per square foot. So if I’m paying 2.50 for tile and I’m paying somebody 2.50 for labor, that’s $5 a square foot. If I have a 250 square foot kitchen, 250 times five is about $1,250 for flooring. Next, let’s talk about countertops. I am typically only renovating a single family, three bed, two bath, maybe smaller, maybe a little bigger home. And on average, in that size home, the average square footage of kitchen countertop space is usually anywhere between 35 to 40 square feet all the way up to about 70 square feet.
If you’re renovating massive homes, you’re going to need to be on the higher side square footage side. If you’re renovating smaller homes, you might have a galley kitchen that’s a little smaller, maybe you’re at 25 to 35 square feet. A typical price point for countertops, depending on what you get, maybe solid surface, maybe granite, maybe quartz, you can expect to spend anywhere between $25 a square foot all the way up to $40 a square foot. So if you’re pricing this, call a countertop company and ask them what do they charge per square foot for an average quartz or what do they charge per square foot for an average granite? If they’re charging $30 a square foot and you are installing about 40 square foot of countertop space, well, that’s just a quick math problem of 30 times 40, that’s going to give you about $1,200 for countertops.
And typically that’s what I’m spending. I rarely spend more than $2,000 on countertops. I rarely spend less than $1,000 on countertops in this space. So I can quickly do math when I’m in a house and look at a kitchen and say, oh, this is going to cost me about 1,500 bucks. The next item to think about, and I would encourage you all to consider this one because it is very low cost but can have a big impact, maybe not on the value, but on the desirability of the kitchen, is to install kitchen back splashes. I love doing fancy, more expensive tiles and kitchen back splashes. A typical kitchen backsplash may be anywhere between 15 to 25 square feet on up to 35 to 50 square feet, depending on where the kitchen is laid out or how it’s laid out, but it’s not a lot of space.
So you can spend more money on a nicer, fancier, cooler looking tile and really make your kitchen pop. Now, having a kitchen backsplash versus not having a kitchen backsplash isn’t going to make your house more or less valuable, but as I said before, it will absolutely make your house more desirable. The more desirable it is, the more people want that house, the more people want that house, the more offers you get, the faster you sell your home. Materials-wise, you’re not talking a lot of money. You can buy a five, six, seven, eight, nine, $10 per square foot tile. If you’re only installing it on 35 to 45 square feet of space, you’re still talking about less than a thousand dollars worth of materials and then the labor to install the tile is not very expensive either. So for right around a thousand dollars, you can get a very nice kitchen backsplash that I think is well worth the investment.
All right, next on the list is going to be kitchen cabinets. Now this is where you’re going to spend the majority of your money on your kitchen renovation. Cabinets are not cheap. You have several options when you’re doing cabinets. You’ve got your generic big box store cabinets where you can go and select the different pieces to fit the layout of your kitchen. You’ve also got much more higher end options, which you can get from custom cabinet makers. Those are typically going to be real wood cabinets. They’re going to be much more pricey. Or you could go with something shipped in from overseas like China to bring in cabinets that are nicer looking maybe and maybe less expensive, but the lead time on getting them can be very long. But cabinets are where you’re going to spend a lot of money. And I would encourage you, if you’re going to go ahead and spend the money on cabinets, don’t cheap out and get the cheapest cabinets possible because cheap cabinets look like cheap cabinets and people will see your renovated kitchen and see the cheap cabinets and think if they cheaped out here, where else did they cheap out on this renovation in the rest of the house?
So if you’re going to spend the money, make sure that you spend the money on a decent cabinet. I’m not saying everything has to be real solid wood all the way through, but don’t get the particle board cabinets that have a laminate paper cover over them to make them look like they’re not particle board cabinets. Those people spot them from a mile away. If you’re just going to ballpark it, I would say between eight and 10 grand is probably where you should ballpark this number for a typical 1500 square foot three bed, two bath home. But that’s not your only option for kitchens. Remember, I said I only put in new cabinets in kitchens if I’m trying to change the layout. If I like the existing layout and the current cabinets are okay, what I prefer to do is not to get new cabinets, but to get new cabinet doors.
I can take the doors off of the current kitchen cabinet boxes. If the boxes are in good shape, that’s great. Oftentimes you can get in there, you can just clean those boxes. And a lot of the times, if you’re renovating a home built in the 60s, 70s, a lot of those cabinets are solid wood cabinet boxes. If you were to replace them, you might not get the same quality. So they’re good quality a lot of the times. And so I like to keep them. I will have them professionally cleaned. I will have the inside of them all painted, and then I will get new cabinet doors and I will get soft closed hinges. And so to the naked eye, people just think it looks like brand new cabinets. That is a much more cost-effective option if you’re not going to change the layout. The typical cost for new cabinet doors on a standard three bed, two bath, 1,500 square foot house is usually run me anywhere between $1,100 and $2,200.
That’s going to depend on the size of the cabinet doors, whether they’re a standard size or something that’s custom and what style cabinet door that you have them build. The more intricate the design on the front of the cabinet door, the more it’s going to cost you. I typically just do a shaker style, which means it’s usually just a couple pieces of trim and it’s a whole lot cheaper. But I would much rather spend two grand to get a brand new kitchen look and feel versus spending five to $8,000 for brand new cabinets that look exactly the same and function the same as the ones that were there previously. All right, next on the list is paint. Again, this is pretty easy. I usually include my paint of my kitchen cabinets. In other words, if I’m keeping the existing cabinets and I’m just painting the boxes and the insides, that’s included in the paint quote for the entire house.
So just add the square footage of your kitchen into the paint quote and then that will cover painting the cabinets as well. But if you’re going to paint them separately or get a separate quote for painting the cabinets, I’ve spent anywhere between 500 bucks on up to $1,500 to paint cabinets. It’s going to depend on what kind of paint you’re using and how big your kitchen is, but it shouldn’t be too expensive. And last on the list for kitchen is appliances. Yes, appliances are expensive, but you don’t always have to put high-end appliances in your kitchen to get more value. So this is where things can get a little tricky because if you are flipping the house, you need to pay attention to your comps and what appliances are being sold with properties that are similar to yours because you don’t want to be delivering somebody a house that is missing appliances that they get with other competition that you have.
In my market, it is very rare that when someone flips a house or when someone buys a new house, that it comes with a refrigerator or a new refrigerator. Most renovated properties include appliances that are the dishwasher, and it’s usually a new one, a stove, oven or a cooktop, and it’s usually a new one. Very rarely are there microwaves, so we’re not including those, but we are including vent hoods. But this is very specific to my market. There are some markets where people fully expect a decked out kitchen. They want the fridge, they want the range, they want top of the line. You have to study your comps to know what you’re going to spend, but I don’t need to lecture to you guys about what appliances cost. You’ve all probably bought appliances before. On average, I’m spending about five to $700 on a range.
I’m spending about three to $400 on a dishwasher, and I’m not buying refrigerators and I’m not buying microwaves, but I am putting vent hoods in where it’s over the stove, so you’ve got a vent hood that will duct any smoke out from cooking. Those typically run me about 50 to $80. If you’ve been doing the math, we spent about $1,200 on floors, $1,200 on countertops, about $1,000 on a backsplash, $1,500 on cabinet doors, about $1,000 on paint, and about $1,000 on appliances. That puts us just shy of $7,000 for a standard cosmetic kitchen renovation, and that’s a pretty typical cost. When I’m estimating a rehab or I’m just ballparking a house as I’m walking through it, I’m usually estimating a kitchen renovation at about $10,000. So when you actually put pen to paper, I’m coming in a little under that, but I like to be very conservative on my estimates.
All right, that is a standard kitchen renovation. Next on the list is what’s it going to cost you to renovate or update a bathroom? And we’re going to get to that right after the break. What if your rentals could practically run themselves and give you a chance to win $10,000? That’s exactly why I’m excited about Baseline’s 10K giveaway. When I first started investing 10 years ago, everything was manual. Rent came into one account, bills went out from another, every transaction had to be tracked. I was constantly moving money between bank accounts and I could never fully switch off. What changed for me was switching to Baseline. It’s BiggerPocket’s official banking platform and with integrated bookkeeping, my rental finances are fully automated. Rent and payouts are deposited into dedicated property accounts. Transactions are automatically categorized and every property’s finances stay organized in one place. The biggest difference isn’t just the automation, it’s the peace of mind.
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All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets podcast. We are on our second episode of our series on how to estimate rehab costs. We covered the big five in the last episode, but in this episode we’re covering value add, what actually puts money in your pocket. We just covered renovating kitchens, what it costs and what you should or shouldn’t do, and now we’re jumping into updating or renovating bathrooms. So what is this going to cost you? We already talked about flooring and how you estimate the flooring in a kitchen. You do the same thing in the bathrooms. In bathrooms, I use tile in the wet spaces. We talked about how much that costs before. It’s the same cost here. Typically, an average bathroom in a typical three bed, two bath home is going to be anywhere between 40 square feet to 60 square feet. So call it 50 square feet and we’re spending about $5 on tile for labor and materials.
Five times 50 is going to give you about $250, maybe add a little more if it’s a little bigger, but just for flooring in a bathroom, three to 500 bucks is probably pretty normal unless you have a massive bathroom. Next item I want to cover is the bathroom vanities. Now, when you’re thinking about bathroom vanities, there’s a couple of things I’ve done both of these options. You can either keep the existing bathroom vanity and you can just update the top, but 90% of the time I would say that I’m putting a brand new vanity in. And the reason I’m doing that is because you can get vanities pretty inexpensively and there’s a lot of cool looking, more modern, updated bathroom vanities that you can get that doesn’t cost you much more than if you just put a top on the existing vanity. I’m typically spending anywhere between 300 and $1,000 on a bathroom vanity.
I rarely spend more than $1,000 on a bathroom vanity. There are tons of options for you to get decent looking bathroom vanities for under a thousand dollars. You can find them at big box stores, you can find them on online shops, tons of options, shop around, know what size you need, and don’t overspend. You just want it to look good and you want it to fit in that space and look like it belongs there. Next on your list is going to be your bathing area. Now, there’s a few options for bathrooms. Some bathrooms are going to have a tub shower combo. Some bathrooms are going to have a standalone tub and a standalone shower, and some bathrooms are only going to have a standing shower. So when I’m doing a bathroom, I almost always do floor to ceiling tiles. So if it’s a bathroom with a tub, I’m tiling from the base of the tub all the way to the floor.
If I’m tiling a shower, I’m tiling from floor to ceiling, but I am always pricing tile. I am never pricing putting in a plastic insert. Plastic inserts, in my opinion, just look cheap. It makes the property look cheaper and more builder grade, and it is not a ton of money to buy the tile and to pay the labor to have it installed. So I found for value add, it’s just a much better option to always go with tile. If you’re doing a tub shower combo, then you want to price the tub and the tile differently. A typical price for a tub is going to run you anywhere between 500 to $800. And then if you’re getting that installed with installation, it shouldn’t run you more than anywhere between 1,500 to $2,500, depending on if you’ve got to move plumbing from one side to the other because tubs drain in different areas.
There’s some things you have to consider, but for the most part, just like for like, it shouldn’t cost you more than $2,000 for a tub to be replaced. All right, so when you’re estimating tile for a bathroom, whether a tub surround or a shower, you have to measure the square footage. Average square footage for this space is going to be around 75 square feet. If it’s a bigger shower, you need to go up, but just a typical tub surround if you’re tiling from tub to ceiling, consider it about 75 square feet. Materials for that could run you anywhere between $500 to $1,000 depending on the cost of the tile that you want to use. So just take the cost per square foot of the tile, multiply that by 75 square feet, add a little bit extra for the other materials you’ll need like grout, and then you have to consider the labor.
So labor for installing tile for tub and shower surrounds, it’s a little more expensive than installing tile for floors, especially because floor tiles are usually bigger, whereas shower tiles are probably smaller, especially if you’re doing a shower pan with a much smaller penny tile. So the cost for installing tile for a tub or shower may run you anywhere between 10 to $15 per square foot, all the way up to 20 to $30 per square foot. So if you’re getting bids, make sure you ask them what their cost per square foot is on the install. Don’t just look at their out the door price and not understand how that number breaks down. So for the sake of this exercise, let’s say we’re spending about $800 on materials for a 7,500 square foot shower and then $20 for labor for 75 square feet. $20 per square foot times 75 is 1,500 plus 800 for the tiles, puts you at about $2,300 to tile a tub surround or similarly to tile a shower.
It’s not going to be that much more expensive. You don’t have the cost of the tub, but you do have added cost of more tile because now you have to tile all the way to the floor and you have to put a shower drain pan in. All right, next on the list is paint. I think we covered paint when we talked about how to estimate kitchens. It’ll be done very similarly here. Just add a cost per square foot for that particular room and add that to your total. And the very last thing is going to be all your accessories. That’s going to be light fixtures, cabinet fixtures, plumbing fixtures for the tub of the shower. Here’s how I essentially estimate those. If you bought a new vanity, it should already come with cabinet fixtures, so you’re not having to buy those if you bought a new vanity.
But if you kept the existing vanity, you may be replacing the old handles with new handles. It’s probably going to run you anywhere between a hundred bucks and 300 bucks depending on how fancy you want to get with those cabinet pulls. I always pull the old mirror off the wall and I order a new modern framed mirror. You can get a mirror on a big box store or you can get a mirror on an online store for anywhere between 50 to 150 bucks and then light fixtures. Light fixtures are typically going to run you about a hundred bucks per light fixture. So for five, 600 bucks, you can get all the accessories you need, even the plumbing fixtures. I get my plumbing fixtures from an online retailer. For a sink fixture, I’m spending anywhere between 20 and 50 bucks, and for a shower fixture, I’m spending anywhere between 50 and 100 bucks.
So putting all the numbers together, you’re spending about three to 500 bucks on floors, about a thousand bucks on a vanity, about 2,800 bucks to 3,000 bucks on a shower or tub, and then about another thousand dollars on lights and fixtures. That brings your total to around $5,000, which is right around where I estimate a bathroom renovation when I’m walking a house. This is a typical cost broken down for you. Now, a couple other things to consider when you’re estimating these is we talked about floors and paint for a lot of these renovations, and I told you when I do this, I actually estimate the paint and the flooring for the house as a whole and not in these individual rooms because there’s only going to be one vendor, typically two vendors who are doing all of the paint and maybe all of the flooring.
So when I’m estimating paint for the whole house, I’m taking the total square footage of the house and I am multiplying that by what it costs per square foot to do that work. In terms of paint, what I am typically estimating for painting the entire house is somewhere between $3.50 a square foot on up to $5.50 a square foot. So that’s going to depend on the kind of paint you’re going to use and it’s going to depend on whether that’s going to include the kitchen cabinets and the bathroom cabinets or not. If you’re going to do cabinets, then you’re going to want to go a little higher than 350, maybe you’re somewhere around $5 per square foot. And if you’re going to do no cabinets and you’re just talking walls, trim, ceilings, doors, then you can stay on the lower end of that cost per square foot.
So typical 1,500 square foot house at $5 a square foot is going to cost you around $7,500 for interior paint. In terms of flooring, it can get a little trickier. I am still going to take the entire square footage of the house because I want to consider all of it in one number, but I may be using different flooring in different rooms. I told you I like to use tile in the wet rooms, so I typically put tile in the kitchens, tile in the laundry rooms, tile in the bathrooms. I do LVP in the common areas, so hallways, living rooms typically get some sort of luxury vinyl plank. And on a flip, I do carpet in the bedrooms. All of these floorings are all going to be a different cost per square foot, and the labor’s even going to be a little different cost per square foot, but I typically blend all that together and use one number to estimate.
So my blended cost per square foot for flooring for a flip typically is going to be anywhere around 550 a square foot all the way up to eight to $10 a square foot, depending on the level of materials. If I’m doing a higher end flip, it’s going to cost more. If I’m doing a lower end flip, it’ll cost less. And then I just take the blended cost per square foot and I multiply that by the square footage. So for the sake of this exercise, we’ll consider $6.50 a square foot for the total flooring. For a 1,500 square foot house, it’s going to run me about $10,000 for flooring. So that’s how you estimate the entire home, that way you’re not having to break that out for each individual room when you’re estimating because now you’ve got one total quote, makes it a whole lot easier to estimate, allows you to be quicker when you’re estimating, and allows you to spot check what you’re getting from contractors when you get beds.
Okay, so those are your moneymakers, kitchens and bathrooms. Now you know what to renovate in the kitchens and bathrooms and how much it’s going to cost. I want to move on and talk about how to find opportunities within the current roof structure of a home to add value, and I’m going to do that right after the break.
We are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast and we are talking about how to estimate rehabs and specifically on this episode, which is part two of a series on how to estimate rehabs, we are talking about adding value. We’ve covered bathrooms, we’ve covered kitchens, and now I want to cover one of my favorite topics, which is how to spot opportunities to add value within the current home under its current roof structure without spending a ton of money. One of the first things I look for when I am renovating a house is, does the house that I’m renovating have space under the current roof structure that is not currently heated and cooled? And if I add heating and cooling to that room, A, can I do it easily and B, does it increase the desirability of the home or will it decrease the desirability of the home?
Is there maybe a sunroom that is under the current roof structure that is not heated and cooled? There is a lot of homes that are built in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s that have sunrooms. Some of those sunrooms are just screened in. Some of those sunrooms are complete actual rooms with drywall and windows, but the spaces are not heated and cooled. It is very inexpensive to heat and cool those spaces if you can just add a run off of the current HVAC system to that room. So sometimes all you have to do is add a little bit of duct work and a vent, and now that room is heated and cooled, and now you can add the square footage of that room to the heated and cooled square footage of the home. And we all know homes are valued based on a cost per square foot.
So let’s say your home is valued at $225 a square foot. If you add 200 square feet, well now you’ve added $45,000 in value to your home by just adding some duct work. Now, there’s probably some more you may have to do. You may have to obviously do paint and floors in that room. Maybe you have to insulate the walls because they weren’t properly insulated as a sunroom, but for less than $5,000, you can typically add heating and cooling, add any other ancillary parts that you need to that room, and you can now add that heated and cooled square footage. So I love looking for those opportunities. Another opportunity to look for in a similar vein is, can you convert garage space to living space? When I am looking to add value to a rental property, if it has a single car garage, I typically convert it to living space.
Why do I do that? Because the more bedrooms I have, the more rent I can charge. And so if it costs me anywhere between 2,500 and $5,000 to convert a garage to living space, but I get an additional $250 a month of rent, well, then that renovation pays for itself after about a year and some change, and then all of that additional new cash flow just goes into my pocket every month. So maybe I didn’t add value from the traditional sense of cost per square foot of the home, but I absolutely added money to my pocket because I’m getting increased rent and that renovation pays for itself because I now am able to rent that property for two to $300 a month more. All right, so when you were considering converting a garage, here is what to think about and what it may cost you.
First and foremost, you need to understand, is your home on a crawl space or is it on a concrete foundation? The easiest conversions for garage space are homes that are on a crawl space, but the garage itself is on a concrete foundation. This is a very common or popular style. Oftentimes the house will sit up a little higher and then when you walk into the garage, you have to come down a couple of steps because the house is up on a crawl space, but the garage is down on concrete foundation. So what I like to do in that sense is you build up the floor, so you have your contractor build a base and a subfloor, and then you can make the current garage level to where the current house is. And then it all feels seamless to walk from garage space into house space.
That is the easiest way to do that. You’re paying for some subfloors, and then it’s just paying for the cost of the flooring, the cost for any build out. So maybe you’re not just raw converting the garage to a big open room, but maybe you’re adding a hallway and making part of that garage, maybe a laundry room or a primary bathroom. Then you’re going to have to add some plumbing, but you’ve got now plenty of space to add plumbing because you built up from a concrete foundation up to the same level as the house. And now you’ve got all this crawl space area under that garage, makes it very inexpensive to add plumbing. So I love doing that. Converting a garage space can run you anywhere from $3,000 all the way up to maybe $10,000, depending on how fancy you’re trying to get. If you’re adding a bathroom, that cost goes up.
Remember we said it’s about $5,000 to renovate a bathroom. So you might want to consider you’re going to spend about five to $7,000 for a bathroom, plus you’re going to spend what it’s going to cost you to convert the garage space. So now you’re talking somewhere between seven and $10,000 for that renovation. But on average, just think five to 10 grand if I want to convert this space more if you’re doing a bigger space, less if you’re doing a smaller space. All right, I’ve got one more value add option for you to think about. This is going to be a pretty unique situation because it depends on the age of the home or the layout of the home that you are renovating. But a lot of homes that were built in the 80s and older have outdated layouts. And when I say outdated layouts, I mean they have things like formal living rooms and regular living rooms and formal dining rooms and eat-in kitchen dining rooms.
To me, that is opportunity to add a bedroom. Now, again, that heated and cooled square footage is already existing in the home. So by converting these spaces, you’re not necessarily making the home worth a ton more, but you are absolutely increasing the desirability because you’re modernizing the layout of the home. So I, 90% of the time, will convert formal living rooms and formal dining rooms to bedrooms or offices. So what all is entailed with doing this? All bedrooms must have a door, a window, and a closet. So if I’m converting a formal living room or a formal dining room, typically I don’t have to add a window because most formal dining rooms and formal living rooms have an exterior facing wall and should already have a window. But you do oftentimes have to find a space to add a closet. You can just add a closet along one wall of the room or you can build out maybe like a small corner closet if the room is smaller, but that’s just going to be some two by fours, some drywall and some paint in order to build that out.
It’s very inexpensive. If you are going to convert a room and you do not need to add a window, we’re talking less than $3,000 typically to convert that room. And you can now get increased rent as a rental or you can increase the saleability or desirability of that home. And I think it’s money well spent. Now, in the rare situation where you’ve got to convert one of these rooms and you have to add a window, the cost can go up substantially depending on what type of house it is. But without adding the window, very, very inexpensive and absolutely something you should consider. All right, there you have it. Now you’ve got all kinds of numbers, the ones that I specifically use for my projects, make sure you do your own research. Labor and materials cost more or less in different parts of the country. So don’t just take what I told you and use that blanket and hope it works for you.
Do a little bit of the legwork, use some AI, use some contractor bids, dial in your numbers, build your own spreadsheets, and you’ll be analyzing renovations in a snap just like that. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. I appreciate you watching. Hopefully this is valuable for you and we’ll see everyone on the next episode.

 

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9 Shifts Every Marketing Agency Needs to Make


9 Shifts Every Marketing Agency Needs to Make written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the Full Episode:

Overview

John Jantsch spends this solo episode naming something he keeps hearing from marketers: a quiet exhaustion driven less by the work itself and more by the business model wrapped around it. He lays out 9 shifts he believes every marketing advisor, agency owner, and fractional CMO needs to make to move from doing more work for less money to leading strategy clients will pay a premium for.

Jantsch walks through each shift, anchored by a quote from a marketer he has worked with. He covers replacing “we do it all” positioning with a clear point of view, productizing a flagship offer, pricing outcomes instead of hours, and installing AI systematically instead of hacking it in. He also makes the case for leadership engagements over execution retainers and for joining a network instead of solving every problem alone.

This episode is for agency owners, consultants, and fractional CMOs who feel the ground shifting under a service model that used to work and want a concrete roadmap for where to go next.

About John Jantsch

John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and creator of the Strategy First™ framework, used by hundreds of certified consultants and agencies. He has spent 30 years working inside agencies and with small business owners, and now leads the Duct Tape Marketing Certified Advisor program, the coaching and licensing model built around the 9 shifts he covers in this episode.

Key Takeaways

  • Replace “we do it all” generalism with a specific, provable point of view. It is the 1 shift that makes every other shift possible.
  • Turn one-off custom proposals into a single flagship offer you can teach, delegate, and repeat at scale.
  • Move client conversations from vendor-style execution retainers to leadership engagements where you own the outcome.
  • Build a lead-generation channel you own instead of depending on referrals or cold email for new business.
  • Put systems and SOPs behind the work so the business does not stop the moment you step away.

Great Moments

  • [00:01] – Jantsch opens by naming the “quiet exhaustion” he hears from good marketers and introduces the 9 shifts he will walk through.
  • [02:23] – Jantsch contrasts the $10,000 ebooks agencies used to sell with today’s collapsing prices, framing why leadership (not deliverables) is the new value.
  • [07:27] – Jantsch describes selling a $15,000 strategy engagement where the client stops asking about hours or deliverables and only cares about the result.
  • [14:28] – Jantsch explains why installing AI as part of a systematic marketing operating system beats letting clients hack their way through tools alone.
  • [16:46] – Jantsch makes the case for joining a network of 100-plus agencies instead of carrying every problem solo.

Memorable Quotes

  • “People are not paying for more stuff anymore. They are paying for marketing leadership, strategy, and a systematic approach to bringing AI into their business.” — John Jantsch
  • “All people want is a result. If they are trying to negotiate your price down, it is because they do not understand the value you bring.” — John Jantsch
  • “The conversation stops being can you send me a proposal and becomes can you do that for our business. That is the difference between selling and advising.” — John Jantsch
  • “It is chaos in most businesses right now, and the marketer who offers to manage that chaos as part of the plan is the 1 who gets invited into a leadership role.” — John Jantsch
  • “Imagine tapping into an entire network of people who have already wrestled with the exact problems you are facing right now.” — John Jantsch

Resources

  • 9 Shifts Assessment
  • Schedule a Call with Sara Nay

 

Email

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John Jantsch (00:01.964)

You know, I’ve spent thirty years or so around agencies and consultants, and I’ve never heard this much quiet exhaustion from good marketers. Not bad marketers, good ones. the work is fine. The business around the work is what’s breaking. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and it’s just me. doing a solo show. I’ve got some stuff I want to get off my chest, I guess. And so

I love to use this platform to be able to do that. So if you are a marketer, a marketing agency, a consultant, a fractional CMO, this show is just for you. The agency model, as I’ve called it, is outdated. The people winning right now aren’t working harder inside of it. They’ve replaced it. We have I don’t know. I’ve lost track. Thousands of marketers I’ve spoken with in a lot of the

Things I’m going to identify today are things that are really phrases, words, sentiments that have come right out of their mouths. and I want to frame those as the nine shifts that I think every marketing advisor must make today. Can’t get past two minutes here to talk without talking about I AI and the good, the bad, the ugly. I mean, a l a lot of our clients now think that AI can do the marketing for them. they’re trying to bring it in, produce more.

at scale, be more efficient, and it’s really just making more noise. And it it’s I think from a a marketer standpoint, from an agency standpoint or consultant standpoint, it’s added another hurdle in helping them understand the value that we bring because I think they’re looking at, hey, this tool only costs 20 bucks and I can make it do all this stuff. and really people aren’t paying now for more stuff.

They’re paying for marketing leadership. They’re paying for strategy. They’re paying for a systematic approach to bring AI into their businesses. And that’s really where I think we have to move as marketers. the the the I’m not saying that AI is doing all the stuff yet, but certainly it is getting low it is getting easier and easier to do, and people are willing to pay less and less for it. I mean, the the days when

John Jantsch (02:23.074)

You know, I used to get paid ten thousand dollars to write an ebook, for example. And I, you know, I can’t imagine anybody paying a hundred dollars for that. So the th those days are are quickly coming to an end. But again, I think that this is a real opportunity for people who embrace this idea of marketing leadership. So I’m gonna get into the the nine shifts, as I call them, that I think every advisor, marketing advisor, really needs to make.

Right now, in order to kind of catch this next wave that that I think is really upon us, quite frankly. All right. So number one, we have to go from invisible generalist to really owning a point of view. here’s a quote, and each of these shifts I’ve I’ve pulled a quote from somebody I’ve either interviewed or or spoken with recently. the quote, I sound like every other agency out there, and I do not have a unique

Method to stand on. I mean, I think this is this is number one because it’s the one that it’s the domino. It’s the one that makes all the other ones fall into place. If you don’t come aren’t able to come into people and say, here’s what I do, here’s what you’re going to do, here’s what it’s going to cost, and by the way, here are the results we can inspect. And this is the framework that I built it on. And we have actually installed this in hundreds of other businesses, and it’s proven to work. If you can’t

guide and lead a a business owner into what they need rather than saying, hey, we do it all. tell us what you need. you you’re setting yourself up for failure completely. So a lot of the people that license our methodology, our advisor certification,

really lean towards this idea that we have this framework called strategy first. We have a whole different approach to how we go to market to what folks in our networks sell. And I think that that gives you or can give you at least a point of view. Strategy before tactics is a point of view, shockingly still very unique in the world of small business marketing. And so adopting that kind of point of view and going to somebody and say, look,

John Jantsch (04:42.444)

You need a website? Sure, we build websites, but first you’re gonna go through strategy first. because we know that the only way we can deliver a valuable website, in fact, your marketing in general, is if you start with strategy first. That is a point of view. That type of thing is what’s something you have to hang on. Shift number two: from custom everything to a productized flagship offer. Here’s the quote: I’m exhausted from writing.

Custom proposals and starting from scratch for every new client. We have one engagement sold the same way, delivered the same way. So now instead of my I can do that when somebody out you actually are saying this is my process. and now at first pushback, sometimes people are like, yeah, that’s just like cookie cutter templated.

No, it’s not at all. It’s a framework that delivers custom work that can be taught, that can actually be delegated, that you can actually hire people to do. We successfully have consultants in our organization. We have con successfully licensed over four hundred agencies and consultants on this methodology, and being able to to productize that so that you can get good at it, so that you can get

Delegate it, you you you actually are able to deliver more value because you have a framework that you can apply everything to. Shift number three, from pricing effort to pricing outcomes. This is this one is.

Been dying a very slow death for many, many years. I actually had somebody ask us, you know, how much we charged an hour. It’s it’s been years since somebody’s asked me that. You know, that mentality is just not only is it a recipe for disaster, you basically are going to sell up all your time, you’re going to sell up all your usable capacity without any ability to scale. But when you have a proven framework, when you

John Jantsch (06:50.841)

Have a proven point of view, guess what? People will pay more. All people really want is a result. If they’re, if they’re trying to buy your price down, it’s because they don’t understand the value. And when you’re able to go in with a specific point of view, a specific framework, a flagship offer that you can show them the results that you’ve gotten for others, price goes way down the list because they the risk is goes way down.

the the list. And so if if you could start thinking in terms of

John Jantsch (07:27.489)

I sell a strategy first for fifteen thousand dollars and it doesn’t really matter to the client what they get for that. I mean they want the result for that, but but like the output or the input, I’m sorry, how many hours, who does what, how many pieces of paper they get for that. they no longer care if they’re convinced in the that you can deliver the result. So those first two shifts go hand in hand with shift number three. So shift number four.

From execution retainers to leadership engagements. Here’s the quote: Clients treat me like a vendor, question my tactics, and cancel when budgets get tight. That’s a sure sign that you are a vendor rather than a trusted advisor. As I said before, there’s still business out there for execution.

but it’s going to go away. it is going to become less and less, and it’s going to become commoditized. Even if there’s plenty of people willing to pay for it, they’re going to be willing to pay a lot less for it. So you have to shift now. Your whole, you have to take that strategic leadership seat because that’s the piece that’s really missing. And most of the businesses I’ve worked with, even if they have a founder who has built a tremendous business, and maybe they’ve brought in a couple of people to

Do the marketing, or they have an agency to do the marketing. They’re still lacking that person that’s making judgments, that’s making decisions, that’s actually keeping them on track and owning the results. And those are retainers people will pay handsomely for. In fact, they will pay far more than they will pay for somebody to do their SEO. SEO may be part of what you end up selling, but if you sell the leadership engagement, you sell strategy first.

All of a sudden, you have a completely different relationship with a client. What are we up to? Shift number five from referrals and hope to a lead system. Now, here’s the quote: I have no idea where my next client is coming from. If word of mouth dries up, again, most of the many of the agencies that we work with, they, I mean, you do good work, you’re going to get some referrals.

John Jantsch (09:41.44)

you work your warm network, you’re going to be able to uncover some opportunities. But actually having a lead system in place. I mean, marketers, I mean every industry does this, but marketers are the worst marketers. let me ask you this. How many LinkedIn posts or email, cold emails have you gotten telling you as an agency they are going to help you generate leads?

That’s the thing we’re supposed to be doing for our clients. We’re supposed to be really good at doing for our clients. And yet the industry realizes we’re terrible at it. and so shifting to a pipeline that is constantly being filled by having channels that you own fill that pipeline up and never, ever, ever, depending on cold email. There I said it. there’s some people listening that probably will debate that, and maybe there’s some people that have had success.

But you want to be in a position where you wouldn’t want a client that would come to you based on a cold email because they wouldn’t be the right fit client. They wouldn’t understand the value you bring. They wouldn’t understand what it is to hire a trusted advisor. Shift number six: from selling to advising. this one really gets people. I mean, here’s the direct quote: I hate feeling like a salesperson. I spend too much time doing proposal.

Theater. Boy, isn’t that true? So, what you have to do is start changing the entire dynamic of what you think selling is. Essentially, what we do is we actually demonstrate to somebody: here is a process that we’re going to run you through that will help you understand the gaps that you have in marketing, maybe help you understand what marketing actually is. And by virtue of doing that,

the the conversation will not be can you send me a proposal? It will be can you do that for me? What you just ran me through, could you do that for our business? That’s the difference between selling and running. I’m sorry, selling and advising. and it changes how you feel about it. It changes who you deliver to, it changes how you deliver. and you’ll never say I hate selling again because it’s a joy to actually do it. You’ve got to adopt that.

John Jantsch (12:04.621)

So I’m up to number seven. And coincidentally, these are all things that we do. People that come into our certification program, our duct tape advisor program. these are all things that we have figured out that that you not only need to make, but we’ve actually got the solutions. We’ve actually built it for you. So you don’t have to make any of this up. You don’t have to create any of it. It’s all been done for you. So I’m gonna give you one URL right now.

If you want to go through an assessment, all nine of these shifts are on an assessment. It’ll ask you, it’s very simple, it takes five minutes. It’ll ask you nine questions. They’re essentially you’re gonna rank yourself one to ten on where you are in these shifts. It’ll help you identify your three lowest, the ones where you actually could use the help. So I’m gonna give you the URL now dtm.world slash shifts.

It’s a hard word to say. Harder than it should be. Shifts. S H I F T S D T M.world slash shifts. All right, gonna keep moving here. Number seven, from doing the work to running the system. If I step away for a week, the whole business stops because everything lives in my head. You ever experience that one? So this is about SOPs and templates and you know delegation at 60 to 70 percent margin.

But it’s also about this idea of where you position yourself, where how you position yourself to a client. In fact, we actually talk about installing a marketing system in a business. In fact, we have a marketing, all the components of what we call a marketing operating system. So after strategy first, we’re actually going to work on what’s next, what’s next, what comes in the stage that they are in now and the stage that they’re going to be in 90 days from now. And we’re

Constantly building on that. It’s one of the reasons I think that that we have such long retention. We we keep our clients three, four, five, heck, one, it’s been with us over a decade. and I think a lot of it has to do with this mentality of installing a system. we have built all the components, and I don’t think there’s anyone else. certainly no one that has 30 years of doing this, but I don’t think there’s anyone else that takes this really system view.

John Jantsch (14:28.008)

Of installing marketing inside of a business. Shift number seven. No, we’re up to eight, aren’t we? From dabbling in AI to installing it. So here’s a quote: clients think AI can do my job for free, and I’m losing my margins. just trying to keep up. So here’s how I think we need to view AI. Sure, use it in your business. Use it, it does so many wonderful things. I’m not really gonna extol the virtues of that, anybody who’s

in marketing right now realizes that this is a tool that we have to embrace. But a lot of our clients are trying to embrace it as well. And they are hacking their way through it, they’re getting terribly frustrated, they’re actually discovering it costs more in times of in terms of time and effort. And so what really is resonating with the small to mid-sized business is part of marketing is actually having a systematic approach to installing AI.

Instead of everybody just bring your favorite tool and use it however you want, we actually need to get them to think in terms of if we build it this way, if we build these skills, it’s all still based on strategy. we’ve built the strategy to begin with, so now we have the tools and the ability to build the strategic approach to using AI with humans inside a business. And that mindset shift of

Not just like, we’re gonna create this automation or we’re gonna create this hack or we’re gonna save you this much time. It just needs to be part of the plumbing of the marketing system. And I think that you will find if you go out and start using just that message that that we’re gonna help you install a systematic approach because right now it’s chaos in most businesses. And so somebody who’s actually offering to manage the chaos as part of marketing.

is going to be invited into a leadership role inside that business. All right, number nine. From going in alone to being in a network. I’m tired of trying to figure out every problem myself, and grind is incredibly lonely. we have over a hundred agencies in our network that we meet monthly, we do things quarterly, we share.

John Jantsch (16:46.093)

resources, we share assets, we share a strategic partner network to actually do some of the implementation, to actually build some of the AI automations and things that that our clients need. and so that’s a huge component. If any of you are out there, even even in an organization with 10, 12, 15 people, a lot of times the founder, the leader feels at least a little bit alone in terms of addressing or getting advice.

on the on the things that they are experiencing. So imagine tapping into an entire network of of folks that that that could help you do that, help you wrestle with the problems that maybe they’ve actually wrestled with, that they’re wrestling with at the same time. So it’s it’s it’s not just camaraderie. It has tremendous value in terms of assets and people and network and mentoring as well. So those are the nine shifts.

I want you to imagine the next time a client says, okay, you want us to do strategy. How how how much is it? and you just without batting an eye, you don’t look down at your shoes, you don’t do anything, you just say it’s twelve thousand dollars. and the reason you say that is because the last 10 prospects that you talked to, you said the same thing and they said yes, and you had the confidence, you had the position, the

the the posture to say that’s what it is. And I know that it brings tremendous value. So the duct type duct tape marketing certified advisor program is really built around these nine shifts. And here’s how we structure it. When you join us, you will go into a 90-day one-on-one coaching engagement with our lead consultants who have now done this training

for many, many years that have actually implemented strategy first and the marketing operating system with clients for a number of years as well. and they will fit this to where you are. We have people that are just starting out and this is a great model for them because all of a sudden it’s like here’s the entire roadmap done for you. You’re boom, you know, you’re out there next day. We also have a lot of folks that are

John Jantsch (19:06.765)

Are feeling like, hey, the model has changed on me. It’s let me down. I need to do something different. But they’ve got experience, they’ve got team, they’ve got processes, and we’re able to mold this to exactly the shifts that they need to make. There’s also an entire library of training for you, for your team that you get access to, an entire network of partners that you get access to for implementation gaps that you might have. And as I said, you’d be part of this network.

for monthly masterminds and quarterly training on kind of the latest and and greatest thing. We bring in lots of folks to kind of keep us all up to speed on that. So if any of the shifts that I’ve talked about make sense and you want to jump on a call with Sarah Nay, who’s our CA CEO, she’s one of the people that does the training, the one-on-one training as well, just schedule a time with her. I’m gonna give you a link to do so. and

She’ll go over these nine shifts. she will walk you through, in fact, if you take the assessment, she’ll actually have what what you have identified as your lowest scores and you’ll spend time doing that. So if you want to take the assessment, it’s dtm.world slash shifts. And then if you want to schedule with Sarah, it’s DTM.world slash chat. So DTM.world either shifts or chat or both.

when you take the assessment, you’ll also be given the opportunity to schedule a time with Sarah as well. So if you didn’t go get all of that written down because you were driving in your car, we’ll all you can also find it at Duct Tape Marketing as well on the podcast homepage. you will find this as well as the links in the show notes. So thanks for tuning in. Appreciate it. And hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road. Let me also offer one other.

piece if you haven’t clicked off yet. which one of these nine shifts resonated the most with you? I’d love to hear from you. And it’s just John at Duct Tape Marketing. send me a note. All right, take care.

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GE Aerospace Is Making a $12 Billion Acquisition. Here’s What Investors Should Know.


GE Aerospace (GE -0.15%) announced this week that it is acquiring Consolidated Precision Products (CPP) for $11.75 billion. This is GE Aerospace’s largest acquisition since it became a stand-alone company in 2024. The purchase will affect the company’s balance sheet in the near term, so what do investors need to know?

First, supply chain constraints have made it difficult for companies like GE to keep pace with demand. CPP has supplied GE for many years and is one of just a handful of companies that are global suppliers of aerospace castings. It supplies approximately 25% of GE’s needs. Thus, it makes sense that GE would want to bring the business fully under its umbrella. It makes the supply chain more difficult for competition while loosening a known bottleneck for its own manufacturing.

Image source: Getty Images.

The deal will be financed with $7 billion in cash and the remainder through new debt. GE expects CPP to generate approximately $2 billion in revenue in 2027. The acquisition will, however, face antitrust scrutiny and concerns over fair competition. Still, if this deal goes through, it should boost adjusted profit per share and free cash flow even in the first year, according to GE.

GE Aerospace’s backlog reaches into the 2030s. It must secure sufficient capacity to meet contracted obligations. Purchasing CPP streamlines operations and fixes a serious supply chain issue. It’s a steep price to pay now, but it should pay off over the coming years.

GE Aerospace Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.15%) $-0.49

Current Price

$323.66

GE Aerospace’s stock has risen just 5% in 2026, and a recent pullback has created a more favorable entry point. The stock is still trading at a premium, with forward and trailing P/E ratios approaching 40 and a PEG ratio above 4.

Ultimately, I believe this acquisition solves a necessary issue. The short-term pain from the high cost of CPP will be more than offset by the additional capacity GE Aerospace will create for itself. The company’s $210 billion backlog provides incredible revenue visibility, and GE’s main risk is executing without delay. This acquisition will help ensure just that.

Catie Hogan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends GE Aerospace. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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The Marriage Tax Penalty In 2026: Every Rule That Costs Married Couples (And The Ones That Help)


Key Points

  • A marriage penalty happens when a rule’s threshold for a married couple is less than double the threshold for a single person. 
  • In 2026 that describes the top tax bracket, the SALT cap, the EITC, the new tips deduction, the Net Investment Income Tax, Social Security taxation, HSA limits, IRA limits, and the new student loan plan.
  • The penalties hit two-earner couples with similar incomes. The bonuses go to couples where one spouse earns most of the income.

The short answer: getting married can raise your taxes, and whether it does depends almost entirely on how your two incomes compare. Two similar paychecks on one return trigger most of the penalties below. One big paycheck and one small one usually gets a bonus instead.

Here’s every rule in the 2026 tax code (and a few outside it) where married couples get less than two singles would, with the numbers, plus the rules that go the other way and what you can do about it. If you’re here because of student loans, the Repayment Assistance Plan’s marriage penalty has its own section below and its own article with the filing-separately math.

2026 marriage tax penalty table comparing single, married filing jointly, and two-singles thresholds for the SALT cap, tips deduction, 37% bracket, Roth IRA, NIIT, Social Security, and HSA limits

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What A Marriage Penalty Is (And Isn’t)

A marriage penalty is any rule where the married-filing-jointly threshold is less than twice the single threshold. Two singles each get the full single amount. A married couple shares one number. If that number isn’t doubled, the couple loses.

A marriage bonus is the mirror image. When one spouse earns most of the income, filing jointly lets that income spread across the couple’s wider brackets and doubled standard deduction, and the couple pays less than the earner would have paid single. That’s why the Congressional Research Service finds more couples with bonuses than penalties.

Your filing status is set by whether you’re married on December 31. Marry on New Year’s Eve and the whole year is filed as married.

Dual-Income Tax Brackets: Why Two Paychecks Land Higher

For 2026, six of the seven federal tax brackets are exactly doubled for joint filers. The 32% bracket starts at $201,775 for singles and $403,550 for couples; the 35% bracket at $256,225 and $512,450. The 2017 tax law fixed the bracket penalty for almost everyone, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) made those brackets permanent.

The exception is the top. The 37% rate starts at $640,600 of taxable income for a single filer and $768,700 for a married couple, not $1,281,200. Two unmarried high earners with $640,600 each pay no 37% tax. Married, the same two incomes pay 37% instead of 35% on the $512,500 above $768,700. That’s $10,250 a year for being married.

The other bracket effect is subtler and hits far more people. When two similar incomes stack on one return, the second income starts where the first one left off. A second earner making $60,000 married to someone making $60,000 doesn’t get their own 10% and 12% brackets; their whole paycheck is taxed at the couple’s marginal rate. The doubled brackets mean the couple’s total tax is the same as two singles’, but the second earner’s take-home from an extra hour of work is lower than it would be single. That’s the “dual-income” penalty people feel in their withholding even when the math is neutral.

2026 Federal Tax Brackets | Source: The College Investor

Common Marriage Penalties In The Tax Code

Here are the 2026 rules where the joint threshold is less than double the single one.

The SALT Cap (New For 2025–2029)

OBBBA raised the state and local tax deduction cap from $10,000 to $40,000 for 2025 and $40,400 for 2026, then 1% more each year through 2029. The cap is the same for single filers and married couples filing jointly. Two unmarried homeowners in New Jersey or California can each deduct up to $40,400 in property and income taxes, $80,800 between them. A married couple gets $40,400. Married filing separately gets $20,200 each.

The phaseout has the same problem. The cap starts shrinking at $505,000 of modified adjusted gross income whether you’re single or a couple, and it’s back to $10,000 at $606,300. Two singles could earn $1 million combined before losing any of it.

This is the largest new marriage penalty in the law, and the one Congress has already been asked to fix (more on that below). If you itemize, the most common deductions page covers what else changed.

Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

The EITC is where the marriage penalty is most expensive relative to income. For 2026, a single parent with one child loses the credit entirely at $51,593 of income. A married couple with one child loses it at $58,863, only $7,270 higher. Two working single parents could each earn up to $51,593 and both collect. Married, they’d collect nothing above $58,863 (or $65,899 with two children).

The CRS report’s example: two unmarried parents each earning $25,000, each with one child, would owe $5,931 more in tax if they married, about 12% of their combined income. Most of that is lost EITC.

Student Loan Interest Deduction

The student loan interest deduction is capped at $2,500 per return. Two singles can deduct $5,000 between them; a married couple deducts $2,500, and married filing separately can’t claim it at all. The income phaseout is roughly doubled for couples, so the penalty is the cap, not the phaseout.

Mortgage Interest Deduction

The cap on mortgage interest is $750,000 of acquisition debt for both single and married filers, and OBBBA made that cap permanent. Two unmarried people co-owning a home can each deduct interest on $750,000 of debt, $1.5 million total. A married couple can’t. Married filing separately is capped at $375,000 each.

Social Security Taxation

Benefits become taxable when “combined income” (adjusted gross income plus nontaxable interest plus half your benefits) exceeds $25,000 for an individual and $32,000 for a couple. Those thresholds aren’t indexed to inflation and the joint threshold isn’t close to double, so two retired singles could have $50,000 of combined income between them before any benefit is taxed, while a married couple starts at $32,000.

OBBBA didn’t change those thresholds. It added a separate $6,000 senior deduction per person for 2025–2028, which is doubled for couples and doesn’t have a marriage penalty, though it does require married couples to file jointly to claim it.

Net Investment Income Tax And The Additional Medicare Tax

The 3.8% Medicare surtax on investment income starts at $200,000 of modified AGI for singles and $250,000 for couples ($125,000 married filing separately). The 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on wages uses the same $200,000 / $250,000 thresholds. Neither is indexed to inflation. Two singles can earn $400,000 combined before either tax applies; a couple, $250,000.

The Tips Deduction (New For 2025–2028)

OBBBA’s “no tax on tips” deduction is capped at $25,000 a year, and the cap is the same for a single filer and a married couple filing jointly. Two tipped workers who marry go from $50,000 of deductible tips to $25,000. The deduction also requires married couples to file jointly, so there’s no way around it by filing separately. The income phaseout ($150,000 single, $300,000 joint) is doubled. Here are the jobs that qualify.

The companion overtime deduction is $12,500 single and $25,000 joint, so it doesn’t have this problem.

Child And Dependent Care Credit

Starting in 2026 the credit covers up to 50% of eligible care expenses (on up to $3,000 for one dependent, $6,000 for two or more). The 50% rate starts phasing down to 35% at $15,000 of AGI, and that $15,000 is the same for single filers and joint filers. Two single parents each earning $15,000 get the full 50%; married at $30,000 they don’t. The second phase-down (35% to 20%) is doubled for couples, starting at $75,000 single and $150,000 joint.

Capital Losses

You can deduct up to $3,000 of net capital losses against ordinary income each year, whether you’re single or married filing jointly. Married filing separately gets $1,500. Two singles get $6,000 between them. Small, but it’s the same pattern.

IRA Income Limits

The Roth IRA phaseout for 2026 runs from $153,000 to $168,000 for singles and $242,000 to $252,000 for couples. Doubled, the single range would start at $306,000. Two singles earning $150,000 each can both fund a Roth; married, they can’t.

The deduction for a traditional IRA when you have a workplace plan phases out at $81,000–$91,000 single and $129,000–$149,000 joint, again not doubled. And married filing separately gets a $0–$10,000 phaseout on both, which is why MFS is rarely the answer to these.

Other Marriage Penalties

These are semi-tied to the tax code, but impact other areas. They can still be costly for married couples.

HSA Contributions

For 2026 the HSA contribution limit is $4,400 for self-only coverage and $8,750 for family coverage. Two spouses each on a self-only high-deductible plan can contribute $8,800 combined. Put either of them on a family plan and the couple’s cap is $8,750. That’s a $50 penalty for sharing a plan.

The $1,000 catch-up contribution for people 55 and older is per person, but each spouse has to make it into an HSA in their own name. A couple on one family plan with one HSA can only make one catch-up; open a second HSA and both can.

2026 HSA Contribution Limits | Source: The College Investor

Student Loan Repayment 

Income-driven repayment has always had a marriage penalty because payments are based on adjusted gross income (AGI), and a joint return has both incomes on it. The old REPAYE plan went further and required a spouse’s income even when the couple filed taxes married filing separately.

The Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), which launched July 1, 2026, doesn’t do that. An early Senate draft would have counted spouse income regardless of filing status but the final law dropped it. Under both RAP and Income-Based Repayment (IBR), the Department of Education uses joint income if you file jointly and only your income if you file separately.

RAP’s marriage penalty is different. RAP charges a flat 1% to 10% of your entire AGI depending on which bracket the AGI lands in, with no family-size exclusion. Two incomes on one return jump brackets. Two spouses earning $47,500 each, both with loans, pay about $317 a month combined filing separately and $713 a month filing jointly. A borrower earning $50,000 married to a $100,000 earner goes from $167 a month to $1,250. The full math, on both plans, is here. If you both have federal loans and file jointly, you get one payment split by loan balance, not two full payments.

Medicaid, SNAP, And Other Benefits

Benefit programs use household income, and the couple thresholds are less than double the single ones. In New York, the 2026 Medicaid income limit is $1,836 a month for a single applicant and $2,489 for a married couple. Two singles could each earn $1,836 ($3,672 combined) and both qualify; married, they’d be over the limit by nearly $1,200 a month. SNAP and child care subsidies work the same way in most states.

For lower-income couples, this is the marriage penalty that actually changes decisions, because the benefit cliff is larger than the tax bill.

Where The Code Treats Married Couples Fairly (Or Better)

This isn’t all one direction. In 2026:

  • The standard deduction is exactly doubled: $16,100 single, $32,200 joint.
  • Six of seven brackets are doubled.
  • The child tax credit is $2,200 per child and phases out at $200,000 single and $400,000 joint, doubled.
  • The overtime deduction is $12,500 single and $25,000 joint. The senior deduction is $6,000 per person. Both are doubled for couples.
  • The Saver’s Credit income limit is $40,250 single and $80,500 joint.
  • The estate tax exemption is $15 million per person, and married couples can combine unused exemptions.

And the marriage bonus is real. When one spouse earns most of the income, filing jointly runs that income through the doubled brackets and standard deduction, and the couple pays less than the earner would alone. CRS finds that’s the majority case: 53% of couples get a bonus, averaging $4,911, versus 37% with a penalty averaging $1,820.

Is Anyone Fixing This?

Some of it, slowly. In April 2026, Rep. Josh Gottheimer proposed doubling the SALT cap to $80,800 for married couples filing jointly, calling it “ridiculous” that two people can end up worse off married than single. The Congressional Research Service published its full accounting of marriage penalties and bonuses in July 2026, which is the source for the 37% / 53% split above. Neither has become law.

The fixes are not complicated: double the joint threshold wherever it isn’t doubled. The cost is the reason it doesn’t happen. Every doubled threshold is revenue given back to two-earner households, and Congress has repeatedly chosen the single-filer cap instead (SALT and tips are the 2025 examples).

Until that changes, the practical rule is this: if you and your spouse earn similar amounts, assume there’s a penalty somewhere on your return and go find it. If one of you earns most of the income, you’re probably getting a bonus, and the smart move is to make sure you’re filing jointly to collect it.

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