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Pulte, FHFA fraud crackdown heightens counterparty vetting risks



Bill Pulte is banning people from doing business with the government-sponsored enterprises at a faster rate than his predecessors.

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The Federal Housing Finance Agency has added 51 names to its Suspended Counterparty Program this year, surpassing the pace of all previous years. The suspensions show the extent of the FHFA director’s anti-fraud campaign, which has failed to bear fruit regarding Pulte’s more high-profile mortgage fraud accusations. 

Since taking office, Pulte has overseen the suspension of 65 individuals, an amount under a single director only surpassed by the 96 counterparties banned by Sandra Thompson in her three-and-a-half year directorship. FHFA General Counsel Clinton Jones has signed off on all of those bans since taking his position in February 2021.

The regulator does not comment on additions to the SCP, and did not respond to requests for comment Friday. Pulte, however, promised to step up suspensions shortly after taking office last year, urging lenders to get their houses in order. The director also rolled out a fraud tip line, and last year fired over 100 employees accused of unethical conduct at Fannie Mae.

Who’s on the list

The individuals, most of whom are suspended indefinitely, are barred from working with the FHFA-regulated entities Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks. The regulator flags people who have a conviction or administrative sanction within the past three years that pose a risk to the GSEs, and suspensions are typically finalized years after legal proceedings. 

The program spans a wide variety of convicted fraudsters and isn’t limited to loan officers and real estate agents. The last addition on Aug. 26, Elvina Buckley, is a former Realtor who pleaded guilty last year to a charge related to her role in a wide-ranging mortgage fraud scheme, and was sentenced to three years of probation. 

Other suspended counterparties are serving federal prison sentences. That includes Mohammad Zafaranchi, who was convicted last December for running a fraudulent loan modification call center and was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment. He was placed on the SCP on July 29, one of 16 individuals suspended in the past six weeks alone. 

The previous high-number of suspensions in a calendar year were 38, under Thompson’s purview in 2022. Following Pulte and Thompson, ex-FHFA director Mel Watt oversaw the banning of 51 people during his five-year term from 2014 to 2019. 

Tim Rood, founder and CEO of compliance automation firm Impact Capitol, said that he hasn’t seen the number of suspensions rise dramatically since Pulte took the helm at FHFA. 

“I don’t know that we can speculate that Pulte is spending a lot of time on this,” he said in emailed comments. “The staff normally addresses this issue and publishes those who have been approved for suspension — which has different time frames.”

Over the past two years, the FHFA has also removed eight individuals and two companies from the list, while three additional people saw their suspensions expire. While people placed on the SCP can appeal their ban, the FHFA does not clarify why individuals were removed. The live platform also doesn’t provide information on possible prior removals and expirations. 

Enforcement updates

The bans come as the FHFA has proposed removing “reputational harm” as a trigger for placement on the SCP. The regulator suggested the condition potentially diverts resources from more salient risks. 

A federal lawmaker has also floated a bill to grant the FHFA even more oversight over third-party vendors amid the rising risk of artificial intelligence-fueled hacks. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Illinois, says his Strengthening Oversight for the Financial Sector Act would grant third-party oversight powers to the FHFA and the National Credit Union Administration. 

The regulatory reach is granted to other regulators and was temporarily given to the NCUA, but that power has since expired, Foster explained. 

“We have learned the hard way how much damage supply chain vulnerabilities can cause, and third-party vendors are attractive targets,” said Foster in a press release this week. “This bill will give regulators the tools they need to better protect Americans’ money and sensitive data as AI-assisted cyber threats grow.”



American Airlines Adding 7 New International Routes for Summer 2027


American Adds 7 New International Routes for 2027

American Airlines has announced seven new international routes for 2027, including three new destinations: Porto, Reykjavik and Vienna.

Most of the expansion is focused on Europe, with new service from Philadelphia, New York and Charlotte. American is also adding a new Chicago-Tokyo route and a fourth daily JFK-London Heathrow flight. All of the new summer routes will operate daily.

New American Airlines Routes for 2027

  • Charlotte (CLT) – Barcelona (BCN): Starts May 27, Boeing 777-200ER
  • Chicago (ORD) – Tokyo Narita (NRT): Starts March 19, Boeing 787-9
  • New York (JFK) – Amsterdam (AMS): Starts March 28, Airbus A321XLR
  • New York (JFK) – Nice (NCE): Starts May 6, Airbus A321XLR
  • Philadelphia (PHL) – Porto (OPO): Starts March 28, Airbus A321XLR
  • Philadelphia (PHL) – Reykjavik (KEF): Starts May 27, Airbus A321neo
  • Philadelphia (PHL) – Vienna (VIE): Starts May 6, Airbus A321XLR

American will also restore a fourth daily JFK-London Heathrow flight beginning March 28 using a Boeing 787-9 with Flagship Suite seats.

Philadelphia gets the three entirely new destinations. American will serve Porto and Vienna for the first time, while Reykjavik returns to the network for the first time since 2019. The Vienna route will run through early January 2028, giving travelers an option for holiday and Christmas-market trips as well.

New York also gets two new European routes. The JFK-Amsterdam service will complement American’s existing Amsterdam flights from Dallas and Philadelphia, while JFK-Nice will provide another nonstop option to the French Riviera.

American is also adding Charlotte as its sixth U.S. gateway to Barcelona and launching Chicago-Tokyo Narita in time for Japan’s spring travel season. The Tokyo route will also provide connections beyond Japan through American’s partnership with Japan Airlines.

The airline will also extend the seasons for Charlotte-Paris and Miami-Milan, with both routes returning earlier on March 4, 2027.

The Financial Case for Managing Your Search Engine Footprint


Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Key Takeaways

  • In today’s highly digitized economy, CEOs must treat their brand’s digital footprint as a high-yield compounding revenue engine that requires active management.
  • Long before an introductory call or formal proposal, page one of a search engine serves as an automated background check for every prospect, investor and high-caliber candidate.
  • Companies that actively own and protect their digital search real estate see significantly higher conversion rates. Over time, it compounds into a financial advantage in customer acquisition and customer lifetime value. 

Many CEOs treat their company’s online search presence like a quarterly credit score — checking it periodically to ensure no major damage has occurred, then forgetting about it.  

Such a passive and defensive view misses how online searchers actually make decisions today, representing a fundamental misunderstanding of modern enterprise growth. When business-to-business (B2B) or direct-to-consumer (DTC) executives relegate their digital footprint to a mere reputation metric, they mistake active pipeline development for simple cost management.

In reality, in a highly digitized economy, a brand’s digital footprint must be treated as a high-yield, compounding revenue engine that requires active management. 

The danger of the passive approach becomes obvious when you look at how customers, partners, investors — quite literally anyone and everyone — interact with a brand online. Long before an introductory call or formal proposal, page one of a search engine serves as an automated background check for every prospect, investor and high-caliber candidate. This digital environment dictates whether or not a deal even has a chance to close, a reality supported by critical market dynamics: 

  • At the onset: Industry data indicate that 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, making page one a brand and/or an executive’s digital front door. 
  • The trust hurdle: Buyers strongly favor independent research; 68% of B2B buyers prefer to research online before engaging with a sales representative.  In conversations with mid-market CEOs, I consistently hear about lengthened sales cycles. The root cause isn’t a bad product; it’s that prospects are disqualifying companies, based entirely on unmanaged search results, before the first sales call even happens. 
  • The cost of doubt: If that self-directed search surfaces a fragmented or negative narrative, historical complaints or irrelevant noise, high-intent leads quietly exit the sales funnel, directly suppressing conversion rates and inflating customer acquisition costs (CAC). 

Ultimately, treating search presence as a static score to be monitored four times a year allows third parties and fast-moving competitors to control your brand’s narrative. To capture modern demand and protect margins, executive leadership must stop playing defense and start managing search results as the aggressive distribution channel it is meant to be. 

The page-one economy 

Marketing organizations invest significant capital in optimizing downstream assets such as landing pages, automated nurture sequences and sales scripts. However, far less strategic energy goes into controlling the search environment above the click, where consumer trust is actually won or lost. 

Every dollar allocated to paid media or organic campaign traffic is essentially a wager that our search destination will withstand scrutiny. A flawless user interface or an aggressive ad buy cannot overcome a search results page laden with brand inconsistencies or unmanaged risks.  

The actual conversion decision often occurs in the search engine results page (SERP) before a prospect ever navigates further. In fact, search behavior data shows that the first organic result on Google captures 28.5% of all clicks, with click-through rates dropping sharply to just 2.5% by the tenth position. 

Look at your current marketing budget. If you are spending $50,000 a month on Google Ads but ignoring the organic complaints right next to those ads, you are actively subsidizing your own friction. We must stop treating paid acquisition and organic reputation as separate silos. 

If those premium top positions are held by disjointed or negative third-party content, brands and executives lose traffic they have already paid to attract. With this, there is a compounding business advantage. Imagine two businesses execute identical marketing budgets with identical creative assets; the company that actively owns and protects its digital search real estate captures significantly higher conversion rates. Over time, this variance compounds into a financial advantage in customer acquisition and customer lifetime value. 

Transitioning reputation into financial growth 

Historically, companies have regarded online reputation management as a defensive, reactive crisis communications and PR function. In today’s digital reputation landscape, the market leaders who treat their search footprint as an offensive growth asset are the market winners. 

When a brand’s search environment is proactively structured with its digital reputation prioritized, overall marketing performance rises. Paid search performance increases because prospects see cohesive, positive and accurate organic results. Organic traffic converts at higher rates because supporting digital assets validate organizational credibility, and proactively managing this pre-click environment can drive overall revenue while reducing operational acquisition friction. 

Ultimately, safeguarding the digital front door is no longer just an IT or marketing task. In a digital-first economy, controlling the narrative on page one is a core fiduciary responsibility for the modern chief executive. 

Executive summary for leadership 

If your current marketing strategy excludes proactive search and digital reputation management, your team is optimizing only half of the conversion equation. What prospects find in the moments immediately preceding business engagement dictates the financial return on your entire ad spend. 

The goal is not simply to spend more capital, but to spend it strategically through a proactive lens focused on the brand’s positive digital reputation. A strategic, well-curated search results page is not a side project for corporate communications; it is the first consumer impression, a primary trust signal and a critical line item on a brand’s revenue statement. 

Key Takeaways

  • In today’s highly digitized economy, CEOs must treat their brand’s digital footprint as a high-yield compounding revenue engine that requires active management.
  • Long before an introductory call or formal proposal, page one of a search engine serves as an automated background check for every prospect, investor and high-caliber candidate.
  • Companies that actively own and protect their digital search real estate see significantly higher conversion rates. Over time, it compounds into a financial advantage in customer acquisition and customer lifetime value. 

Many CEOs treat their company’s online search presence like a quarterly credit score — checking it periodically to ensure no major damage has occurred, then forgetting about it.  

Such a passive and defensive view misses how online searchers actually make decisions today, representing a fundamental misunderstanding of modern enterprise growth. When business-to-business (B2B) or direct-to-consumer (DTC) executives relegate their digital footprint to a mere reputation metric, they mistake active pipeline development for simple cost management.

In reality, in a highly digitized economy, a brand’s digital footprint must be treated as a high-yield, compounding revenue engine that requires active management. 

The real jobs problem CEOs are talking about isn’t hiring



Good morning. Happy post-Labor Day! This is the time of year when hiring is supposed to pick up, and Friday’s job report did show U.S. employers adding 162,000 jobs in August, 98% of which went to women. Much of the job growth was in lower-wage sectors like food service and home health care, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects total employment to grow only 3.5% between 2025 and 2035, down from the prior decade’s 10.9% rate. My conversations with CEOs about jobs elicit less optimism and more concerns about skills gaps, low engagement, the leadership pipeline, uncertainty about AI, and pressure to cut costs. Here’s what a few are doing about it.

Investing in skilled trades. BlackRock is investing $100 million in skilled trade training programs; it’s also partnered with Ford, Carhartt and Alphabet on the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades. (More information on that here.) Meta has partnered with CBRE and other groups on a five-week program that guarantees a job upon completion. Matthew DiCanio is president and incoming CEO of Concentra, a national health care company that conducts employment screenings. He told me last week that he’s seeing “white-collar jobs shrinking slightly and blue-collar jobs picking up speed.” While trade schools are becoming more popular, most parents continue to push their kids towards four-year colleges, the annual cost of which can now surpass $100,000. But they’re favoring public or elite institutions, as I did with my kids. (The opportunity to think, forge deep friendships, and explore are more important than ever.)

Employee engagement. Fewer than a third of employees are engaged in their jobs, with Gallup reporting that more than half of U.S. workers now report significant daily stress. As Gallup CEO Jon Clifton recently told me, “work makes people unhappy because we’re not focused on the things that really matter.” What does matter? Trust is a motif that emerges in our surveys of top employers in partnership with Great Place to Work, as does purpose. But tangible signals matter. Workers want pay that keeps pace with inflation, which is not happening as real wages have fallen for four months in a row. And benefits matter. Earlier this summer, one CEO talked about implementing a new T&E system that deprived employees of the right to get personal loyalty benefits from travel. “People started refusing to go on trips” or demanded compensation in other ways, he said. “We underestimated the hit to morale.” 

Leadership pipeline. As ADP CEO Maria Black points out, AI should be a teammate that increases the value of judgement and other leadership skills. But the data shows that AI is also decreasing entry-level jobs, which impacts the ability to develop those skills. Voya Financial CEO Heather Lavallee thinks about that a lot. As Lavallee told me: “If you’re relying too much on automation and AI for some entry-level jobs, how do you create future experts?” She’s focused on bringing in talent of all ages while investing in training and mentorship. People learn best on the job. But CEOs of U.S. public companies spend an average of 8.5 years in the top job, where they’re rewarded for cutting costs, not building up the bottom of the pyramid. The federal government is doing more to incentivize apprenticeship programs, as are different states. But the most direct route is for companies to hire and train more Gen Z workers.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top leadership news

Tech leaders’ pay jumps on AI demand

Median compensation for executives with “technology” in their title rose about 45% from 2021 to $2.6 million in the latest fiscal year. That’s more than the increase for CEOs, COOs, CFOs, and CIOs combined.

Wall Street expects a Fed rate hike

Traders put the odds of a 25-basis-point rate hike at roughly 58% ahead of the Federal Reserve’s Sept. 16 meeting after August employment data showed the U.S. added 162,000 jobs and unemployment held at 4.1%. The shift conflicts with President Donald Trump’s calls for lower rates, putting pressure on Kevin Warsh’s Fed as inflation remains above the central bank’s 2% target.

AI leaders meet protesters at G20

At a G20 event in North Carolina, tech leaders, including Sam Altman and Jensen Huang, promoted AI and the need for more data centers while hundreds of protesters outside raised concerns about water use, energy consumption, and other potential consequences. Data-center resistance has spread nationwide, with 142 demonstrations in 42 states in July and two-thirds of Americans opposing a facility in their own community, according to an Economist/YouGov poll.

The markets

S&P 500 futures are down 0.40% this morning. The last session closed down 0.38%. The STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.59% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.18% in early trading. The Nikkei 225 was down 1.70%. South Korea’s KOSPI was down 0.58%. China’s CSI 300 was down 0.36%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.38%. India’s NIFTY 50 was down 0.55%. Bitcoin is down at $78k.

Around the watercooler

OpenAI’s AI agents secretly used a German wiki website as a message board. OpenAI stayed quiet about it for weeks by Beatrice Nolan

This billionaire founder made his first million at 27—years before Warren Buffett. His advice to Gen Z: Don’t ask for a raise, ask for equity by Orianna Rosa Royle

Exclusive: Ineffable Intelligence adds six ‘cofounders,’ hiring veterans from Google DeepMind, InstaDeep and venture firm Flying Fish by Jeremy Kahn

‘Uncharted territory’: The $40 trillion U.S. national debt just got uglier as interest payments rise to $1.25 trillion a year by Sasha Rogelberg

Asian family philanthropy is ‘a lot more hands-on’—and more corporate—than the West by Nicholas Gordon

CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.

Business Management ൽ എന്താണ് Control – Let's Learn Commerce | Xylem Plus One Commerce



#plusone #commerce #shorts #commerceclasses #xylem

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How to Buy Your First Multifamily Rental With Low Money (Rookie Reply)


You’ve picked an investing strategy, you’ve studied your market, but now you need the money to get started. You’re not alone, as this is perhaps the most common hurdle for rookie investors. But today, we’ll show you how to work around this and get the funding you need, so you can finally buy your first (or next) rental property!

Welcome back to another Rookie Reply! This week, we’re tackling three questions from the BiggerPockets Forums. One investor has $250,000 saved but is stuck between strategies in a market where the numbers don’t easily work, while a SoCal investor is trying to find a more landlord-friendly real estate market to invest in. We’ll share the one habit that quietly derails a lot of new investors once opportunities start rolling in, and when “close to home” is a real requirement versus just a security blanket.

And our last question comes from someone who needs the actual money to buy his first multifamily property. We’ll share our favorite creative financing options, as well as the two skills any rookie can use to attract potential investing partners!

Ahley:
Hey everyone, Ashley and Tony here. Happy Labor Day. To celebrate, we are going to share an episode of BiggerPockets Real Estate with you that we think you will love. We’ll be back on Wednesday with a brand new episode on how to maximize the income from your rental properties. But until then, we’ll let Henry Washington take it from here.

Henry Washington:
Hey everyone. I am Henry Washington here, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. And today we’re bringing you an investor story with Joe Crocker from Houston, Texas, who just started investing but is already well on his way to replacing his income with real estate. Let’s bring him on. Mr. Joe Crocker, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you.

Joe:
Well, Mr. Joe,

Henry Washington:
Why don’t we start off and tell us a little bit about your background and what got you into real estate in

Joe:
The first place? Sure. So my background is long. I’m not a young man, but I’ll give you the highlights. I have a W-2 job that keeps me on the road a lot. Due to that, I had to relocate recently end of last year. Came down to the Houston, Texas area and started researching real estate. I started studying the Burr method particularly was kind of what I honed in on. And I work with my mom and my wife both help me out because I’m on the road a lot. And so mom came down, we went and looked at some property, said, “Hey, let’s do it.” And so we closed our first transaction in December of last year. Why don’t

Henry Washington:
You tell us what traveling a lot means to you because I think it’s important to your story.

Joe:
Okay. Yeah, it is. So traveling a lot for me means I’m on the road about 300 nights a year.

Henry Washington:
That’s wild.

Joe:
And I work six 12 hour days.

Henry Washington:
You work six twelves and you travel 300 days a year?

Joe:
Correct. Yeah.

Henry Washington:
There’s a lot of people that are listening that want to get into real estate and they think they don’t have the time to fit this into their schedule.

Joe:
Well, my mom helps me a lot, so you need a good mother.

Henry Washington:
Yes, yes. Everybody does it with some sort of help. That is very true. For

Joe:
Sure.

Henry Washington:
So you said you moved to Houston and you started researching real estate, but why? What made you look into real estate at all? Why was that even on your mind?

Joe:
It’s been on my mind prior to being in my current career. I worked in commercial construction. So I’ve been around real estate a lot throughout my life and have done well on personal properties. And so part of it also is with that lifestyle I just described, I’m getting older, I don’t want to do that forever. So I kind of a backup plan, I guess you would say, is trying to plan my exit. And so I had to come here for work and I saw some opportunities and decided to jump in with both feet, so to speak.

Henry Washington:
Did you have a goal getting started or did you just want to jump in?

Joe:
Well, yes to both of those things. I would look on Zillow and for about two months probably I would go every night and I would just go drive properties that I saw and just check out the areas, see what I liked and just kind of get familiar. And then I think it got to a point where we just went, “Hey, you know what? You got to pull the trigger.” And so we made offers on several properties and ended up with actually buying two at the same time. And so yeah, so we definitely jumped in with

Henry Washington:
Both feet. It’s one thing to say making offers, but it’s another thing to be making the right offers. So you have to know how to analyze the deals and what makes a good deal in the first place. So was all that new to you or were you studying and analyzing prior to just

Joe:
Making offers? Definitely studying and analyzing prior to making offers. I spent a couple months probably of actually driving every day and looking at things. I listened to your podcast and some other things, so it was familiar to me, but I really got serious about it. I would say I spent about two months of almost daily looking at properties, doing my own analysis, watching them, MLS properties, but you could see them. The ones I think are good deals, they all sell right away. Then that makes you go, okay, maybe that was a decent one. And so I spent about two months, I would say, before making offers.

Henry Washington:
Well, why don’t you tell us about that first one? How did you find it and what was the goal with it?

Joe:
The first one was on the MLS. It was a listing that had been up for a long time. One observation I made is that sometimes when things are listed for a long time, nobody looks at them anymore. The price goes down and the seller gets super motivated. So this was, I think, one of those situations. And what it was was an estate sale where the guy was mid-flip and passed away. So what was attractive to me about it is number one, it was two homes. It was a house and an ADU on the same property. So my goal was to hold it as a rental. So what attracted me to it is it was pretty easy. The cabinets were in, but there was no countertops, needed some trim work. The bathrooms were tiled but not grouted. As it turned out, I had to totally rip that all out.
But anyhow, it was a fairly light one. And so that was my thought on it was, hey, for the first one, I don’t want to go huge. I want to try and go as easy as I can. But anyways, we bought it for 134,000.

Henry Washington:
134,000. When did you buy this property?

Joe:
End of December of 25.

Henry Washington:
So this isn’t some five-year-old deal. You paid 130 some odd thousand dollars for a house in Houston, Texas.

Joe:
Yeah, and a guest house.

Henry Washington:
And a guest house, and you found it on the MLS. Correct.

Joe:
There’s

Henry Washington:
Probably tons of people in Houston right now talking about, “I can’t find a deal. There’s no deals to be found. There’s too many investors here. You can’t do anything here.” So it can be done is what you’re telling me.

Joe:
It definitely can be done. So we’ve done three this year. I bought two of them were MLS deals, and I have one that we’re closing next week that’s also an MLS deal. So they’re there. So

Henry Washington:
Tell us the rest of the numbers. You paid $134,000. How much work did it need, if any?

Joe:
Total budget was about 44,000 and I actually came in a little bit under that. So I think we spent about 40.

Henry Washington:
So you’re all in at 175 and I’m assuming this was a rental because you said you honed in on the Burr strategy. So were you able to refinance this one already?

Joe:
We did. So we refinanced it right at 90 days. I did the refi. 161,200 is what our new loan was. So that was a successful Burr. It’s rented for 2,350 between the two units.

Henry Washington:
Not a perfect Burr, but that’s okay. I don’t think you need to pull off a perfect Burr. It looks like you pulled out about $13,000 and you were able to rent this for $2,300 on a loan of $161,000. That sounds like a pretty decent cash flowing deal that you found on the MLS basically in 2026. So I don’t want to hear anybody saying you can’t do this or you can’t do it in cities that are very investor heavy. Houston’s one of the most investor heavy markets in the country. It is. And you walked in the door, found something sitting on the MLS. I love everything about this. I love how you found it. I love how you took it down. I love that you did everything people say you can’t do right now in 2026 all in one deal. Perfect. But you also said you bought two at the same time.
So I’m very curious what the second deal in this two deal package looked like.

Joe:
Well, get ready for this one. So I said I bought two, but they both had two separate units. The

Henry Washington:
Second one had an ADU too?

Joe:
It had two full homes. Oh

Henry Washington:
Wow.

Joe:
Yeah. So I bid off a lot, let’s put it that way. But that one was an MLS deal too. And I’ll tell you that the way that I found that one, and I’ll go through the numbers with you, but that one was one that was tenant occupied, so it was impossible to see. There was no sign in front. It showed terribly. I couldn’t even hardly get ahold of the realtor. And then the square footage was wrong on the MLS. And the big thing on that one is the tax assessment. I paid 295 for it and it was tax assessed at 780.

Henry Washington:
So

Joe:
The taxes in Texas are huge. So the taxes were 13,000 a year.

Henry Washington:
Geez.

Joe:
Yeah, it was crazy. So especially for an investor that’s buying rental properties, that kills your cash flow.

Henry Washington:
See, everybody’s like, “Come to Texas. There’s no state tax,” but the property tax is crazy. But

Joe:
Here’s the opportunity there. Since then, I appealed those taxes and I got them lowered to 5,000.

Henry Washington:
Whoa.

Joe:
Yeah. That was a big cash flow pickup.

Henry Washington:
Before we get there, I got to know the numbers on this deal.

Joe:
So

Henry Washington:
Tell me about it.

Joe:
There’s two homes. So the front home is about 1,500 square feet. It’s a three bedroom, two bath. And then the rear home at the time was a two bedroom, one bath. The front home was vacant, the rear home was occupied, and I paid 295 for the whole package. And the rear house at the time was occupied. He was paying 1,200 a month for the rear house, and the front house had been rented for 2,000 for quite a while. And so I was kind of looking like 1%-ish and it seemed to work. So we ended up converting the garage in the rear house, so that’s now a three bedroom.

Henry Washington:
Nice. And

Joe:
Then we redid the front house completely. It’s two blocks from the beach, so we’re going to end up doing it as an Airbnb and doing the short-term rental. You

Henry Washington:
Said two blocks from the beach, so I assume this is Galveston. Yeah,

Joe:
Down in Galveston. Yep.

Henry Washington:
Man, that sounds like a screaming deal. What kind of condition were these properties in? I mean, people were living in one of them, so I assume that it was okay condition.

Joe:
Well, so it was decent condition. I mean, we ended up spending, partly because we’re doing a short-term rental, we ended up spending about a hundred fixing it up. We ended up just doing a DSCR loan out of the gate. We just put 20% down and got no prepay and just paid cash for all the improvements. So we’re in it right now, probably about 395, rough number, and it should be worth somewhere between six and seven.

Henry Washington:
Whoa. So you got somewhere between 100 and $200,000 of equity

Joe:
On a

Henry Washington:
Deal you found on the MLS in 2026. That’s incredible, man. Congratulations. Congratulations. And so one of them’s a short-term rental, you’re keeping the back unit as a long-term rental?

Joe:
So I think our plan right now is to short-term rent both of them. I’ll tell you, my analysis you asked about that is I wanted to have multiple exits. So number one, could I sell it if things didn’t go my way, can I sell it? Yeah. Two is, can I long-term rent it? Because the short-term, I mean, you said it were down here in Galveston, 4,500 short-term rental permits. It’s pretty competitive. So my plan was I’ll try to short-term rent it. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll just put in long-term tenants. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll sell it. That

Henry Washington:
Is a huge tip for anybody that’s listening, especially if you’re going to do short-term rentals. I don’t mind short-term rentals. I have, I think, four short-term rentals, but every single one of my short-term rentals, with the exception of one that I sold recently, could be a long-term rental. And the one that could not be a long-term rental, I had so much equity in it, I could sell it because short-term rentals aren’t like it was before where you could throw furniture in anything, stick it on the market, somebody was going to rent it, it was going to make money. It’s not like that now. Most of the people who don’t know how to operate short-term rentals have exited the market or are actively exiting the market. So who does that leave in the short-term rental space? Professional operators, people who are very good at this, people who know exactly what their customers need, exactly where their customers want to be, provide them the exact experience their customers are looking for.
So if you’re going to compete with that, you have to be good too. And if you’re new, you may not be able to be as good, but you may not find that out until you get to start operating and it doesn’t produce the results that you’re looking for. And so if it doesn’t produce the results that you’re looking for, what do you do? Well, if you bought it and the only exit strategy you have is to keep it as a short-term rental, well, you’re in a world of hurt. If you can’t sell it and make money or break even, and if you can’t long-term rent it and make money or break even, then you’re going to lose money. It’s just a matter of when and how much. And so I always say buy with two exit strategies for every deal. If you’ve got two exits for every deal, you’re better protected.
It doesn’t guarantee you that you won’t lose money, but it makes it harder. And so you kind of already mentioned that you’ve already bought a third deal that you are short-term renting. So did you go specifically looking for one that you would do as a short-term rental now that you had found the other two?

Joe:
I’ll tell you what happened. I was on Facebook one day in the investor group or whatever, and I see somebody had posted the wholesaler that had posted a condo for sale at this place. So I was in Michigan at the time, so I call my mom. I go, “Hey, can you go check out this condo?” So she goes over there, she goes, “Yeah, it’s good.” So the guy’s on the phone with me, he was asking, he started at 99,000 and it needed some work. So I said, “Hey, I’d be a buyer, but not at that number. I can’t make it work. There’s no way.” I treat it like a flip, right? So I’m kind of old school, 70% minus repairs is the most that I’m going to pay. Dude, me too. I still do

Henry Washington:
That. I still analyze everything as a flip, even if I’m going to keep it as a rental because I buy it cheaper that way.

Joe:
Maybe I learned that from you. I don’t know, but that’s definitely what I do. So as time ticks, he’s going, “Well, what will you do?” So I paid 73,000 for it. Did

Henry Washington:
You pay cash or did you get a loan?

Joe:
I just paid cash for it. Here you go. Here’s 73,000. And that was beginning of June, end of May. So since then, I’ve already rehabbed the whole place, furnished it. It’s been rented for 22 days in the month of July we have on the books.

Henry Washington:
Are you going to refi out of this thing?

Joe:
I already did. So we already got all our money back out of that one and it appraised at 143.

Henry Washington:
Nice. That was higher than you expected.

Joe:
Yeah, it was good. So I ended up being in it all in, including furniture and everything, about 90-ish, and it appraised at 143. So we ended up refinancing it at 60%. So we got most of our cash back. I think we had 83,000 was our loan. So that’s good. And the kicker on a condo is that dues are 611 a month. And so you combine that with a couple hundred bucks in taxes and then your electricity because you’re paying for that. Everything else is included, but you pay for electric. And then your debt service, the payment principal and interest is about 600. So it seems like it’s going to be pretty good, but time will tell. Color

Henry Washington:
Me impressed, man. Three pretty amazing deals in 2026, no less, in Houston, Texas, no less. And now you said, I heard you earlier, you said you had one under contract right now, so I’m assuming that’s your fourth deal. So come on, give it to me. Tell me about this

Joe:
One. So the fourth deal, I haven’t done the whole thing yet, but we’re going to close the next couple days. So again, two houses because that seems to be my thing. So it’s got a five bedroom house in the front and then a two unit in the back. And it’s section eight rented. So two of the three units are occupied. So I got under contract at 355. The front unit currently brings in 2,800 a month and then the rear units are 1,400 a piece. Well, it gets better though. So

Henry Washington:
You’re bringing in 2,800 in the front, 2,800 in the back.

Joe:
5,600.

Henry Washington:
$5,600 gross rents and you paid 350.

Joe:
355.

Henry Washington:
My brain can’t even hold onto the numbers.

Joe:
So my plan with that one, we paid 355. We got about 75 in our construction budget to just bring everything up to nicer finishes. We’re going to put in. Even though it’s section eight, it’s going to be a nice place for people to live. And then actually the rents, when we do that, we can increase the rents. The section eight limits are higher, so we’ll be able to go up to 3,300 on the front unit. And then the rear units will go, one of them will be 1,730 and the other one will be 2,328. So we should be at about 7,300 a month cashflow. So

Henry Washington:
For the people listening, first and foremost, if you have a stigma in your head about section eight, get it out of your head. There are good tenants and bad tenants in every price class. I don’t care if it’s top tier $3,000 a month rent or if it’s bottom of the barrel under a thousand dollars a month rent. There are good tenants and bad tenants everywhere. Our job as investors is to be great at tenant selection regardless of the class of unit that we have. And so section eight can be very cash flow positive. And not only is it very cashflow positive in some markets, but obviously you get the guaranteed rents or a good chunk of that rent is guaranteed through the government. So in larger cities, places like Houston, typically Section eight will pay higher than market value rents. In other words, you can get more rent out of a Section eight rented house than you could if you took that house off Section eight and just rented it traditionally.
And the amount of rent the government is willing to pay per house goes up based on the number of bedrooms. So if you can add bedrooms, you get more rent. So it sounds like the one you’re getting 3,300 on, that’s probably the, was it a five bedroom? Five

Joe:
Bedroom, yeah.

Henry Washington:
That’s fantastic. So if you’re in a larger city and you’ve already got rentals, you may want to call down to the housing authority and see what they pay for rents and see if it’s higher than what you’re currently getting, man. I love that. So 3,300, 1,730, 2,328. And what’s your debt service on that? What are you paying for mortgage taxes and insurance? So

Joe:
I haven’t purchased it yet, so I couldn’t even tell you exactly what the payment will be, but probably about four grand a month, I’m going to guess. I

Henry Washington:
Mean, that’s probably about right. Somewhere between 38, 42. But you’re bringing in after you fix it up, 73. Wow. That’s cashflow, folks. That is cash flow. Was this an MLS deal too? It

Joe:
Was. Geez,

Henry Washington:
Man. Geez. Man, oh man. I don’t even got to do the math to know that that’s a screaming deal. Man, that’s awesome. And you’ve done it by using some of your own cash, but pulling it back out. I mean, these are just traditional things that people talk about, but I love hearing how people take these methods that we talk about and they implement them in their business, man. Fantastic deal. Why don’t you give us a summary? How many deals and/or units do you have and what’s that putting in your pocket every month? So

Joe:
We have currently five, about to be eight once we get this next one closed. And I think that should cash flow us at about 6,000 a month net after all expenses. I’ll

Henry Washington:
Take that all day long, my man. That’s incredible. And like I said, you were using some of your money, but it looks like you’ve been able to pull the majority of your cash back out.

Joe:
I would say by the time we finish up this round, I’m going to call it, we should have all of our cash back and probably then some.

Henry Washington:
So all your cash back in your pocket, plus you’re getting $6,000 a month in net cash flow, and sounds like we’re just getting started. I would like for you to share with our audience maybe some lessons that you’ve learned over the past 12 months because you’ve done a lot. It’s not just that you bought these eight units, it’s that you’ve renovated them and you have refinanced them and you are operating them. And so what was maybe something that was a lesson on a deal that you weren’t expecting or maybe something that did not go to plan? So

Joe:
Lots of things didn’t go to plan, so I don’t want to give the impression that this is easy. It’s definitely not. The hardest challenge for me has been the financing piece because I’m ready to move really quick and I haven’t had the right lending relationship is how I’m going to say that. And I’ve tried a few different ones. So I’m still trying to work that out. That’s probably the biggest piece I would say. And then the other thing is sooner or later you just have to do it and that’s going to be your lesson. So for me, the first one, it was only $135,000 purchase. So I figured what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? It’s not going to be worth zero. So my risk is fairly limited and it worked out good, but I think just my best piece of advice would be if you’re ready, just do it.
You got to do one. And it may not go perfect, but that’s how you’re going to learn. If

Henry Washington:
You’re starting with a single family home, I mean, as long as you’ve done enough analysis to at least have a general understanding of what kind of discount you need to be buying properties at, just buy it. Real estate, very rarely is it ever going to go to zero. You’re right. So your risk isn’t that you’re going to lose all your money. Your risk is that you might lose some money, right? You might have to deal with some headaches, but you’re going to learn something in exchange for that. And if a single family home not going well is going to put you in the poor house, then I’d say you’re probably not financially ready to invest yet. You need to save up some more cash before you jump in. That’s why it’s important that you take your bumps and bruises on a deal where your risk is limited.
So just be careful, protect yourself. I love that. Any other lessons or things that you wish you would’ve done different?

Joe:
I think the short-term rental, one thing I will say there, that looks really good at first glance, but there’s a lot to it. You hit it right on the head. You can’t just give people a bed. Nowadays you got to have this house you end up putting in a hot tub and a fire pit and all this kind of stuff. And we do little, you’ll appreciate this. We do little gift baskets where we give them customized gear and a Bluetooth speaker and try and make it really an experience. But the Airbnb side, the other thing I didn’t fully anticipate is how much it costs to furnish a complete house. And people think it’s not very much. And I’m like, when you do three or four bedrooms and I’m talking, you got to do everything, three sets of bedding, the bed, the mattress, the TVs, all that stuff, you can spend 30 grand in the blink of an eye furnishing a house, especially if you want it to be nice.
So that was one thing I kind of under anticipated a little bit. All

Henry Washington:
Right. Before we get out of here, I wanted to revisit something. You said that your second deal, which was the two SDRs on one lot, had $13,000 in annual taxes and you were able to get that reduced to $5,000. How did you do that?

Joe:
So I anticipated that. That was one of the things. Just to give you a flavor of MLS, I called the realtor and I go, “Geez, the taxes are 13,000. Is that right?” And she goes, “Yeah, if that’s what it says, that must be what it is.”

Henry Washington:
Thanks, lady.

Joe:
Instead of saying like, “Yeah, hey, but you could appeal that and get it way knocked down.” So to me, I went, “That doesn’t make sense. I wonder if I get that knocked down.” So I did some research and you can do it here. It’s once a year and you get a pretty tight window. So I anticipated that as part of my buy was that I’m going to get them knocked down. So what surprised me, Henry, is how easy it was. It’s

Henry Washington:
So easy. People do not realize this. It’s so easy. Listen,

Joe:
Here’s how easy it is for everybody listening, at least where I am. I filled out the form and then I went down to the place in person. So I sit down in the lobby for 10 minutes and the girl goes, “Yeah, come on back.” And she goes, “Tell me what’s going on.” I go, “Well, hey, I just bought this property for 295 and it’s tax assessed at 780 and that seems bananas.” And she goes, “Oh, okay. How’s your day?” “Oh, good. “He’s typing away. And then she goes,” Okay, are you good if we just drop it to 295? “And I go,” Yeah, I guess. “And she goes,” Yeah, your tax will be like 5,000. “I go,” Okay. “So that’s how easy it was. So it’s shocking. So I don’t know why you wouldn’t do that. I’m lessen to myself every time I’m going to go down there.

Henry Washington:
Every year, folks, find out what your window is. In some cities, it’s a longer window. In some cities, you can do it whenever you want. You just need to figure out when you can do this. But yeah, you can challenge your property taxes. So a lot of times what happens with investors, guys, is you buy something and then you renovate it and then you refi it. And then maybe a year down the road, six months, depending on whenever they do their inspections and assessments, you’ll get a letter in the mail that says, Hey, your property taxes are now why? And what most people do is they just say, man, that sucks. Okay, I guess there goes my cash flow. But you don’t have to do that. You can challenge them. Some people, you have to provide comps to show that, hey, this property is similar and its taxes are lower.
And sometimes you just go down there and say, hey, I don’t think this is fair. And then they just look on their computer and go, okay, how’s this sound? And then your taxes are lower, but it’s very easy process. There are companies that will do this for you, but you don’t need to do that. You can literally negotiate these things yourself. And most of the time they will reduce your tax bill. Not always, but most of the time you can get a reduction, which is going to save you money and put more cash flow in your pocket. This is something everybody should be doing every year, but most people don’t do it at all.

Joe:
I agree. All right,

Henry Washington:
Joe, thank you so much for coming on the BiggerPockets Podcast. I love that you’ve had so much success really in a seemingly short period of time. I’m curious though, have you had more or less or as much success as you thought you would in your first year of real estate investing? No,

Joe:
I’ve had a lot of road bumps along the way getting all these projects done, but at the end of the day, I think it’s gone really good. So I think that probably now, if I look at it as going, here’s the portfolio and here’s what’s in there, I go, geez, yeah, we’re killing it. That’s great. So

Henry Washington:
What’s the goals moving forward? Are you going to continue to buy more? Are you going to just focus on paying off what you’ve got? Where are you headed? Oh

Joe:
No, I’m definitely not going to sit still. So my first goal is to get to 10 and trying to figure out our lending relationships, I think that’s the one thing that’s holding me back right now is you only have so much cash. And so working that piece out, that’s over the next year. And I think once I get over 10 projects completed, that door will really open up. So no, I want to keep grinding. I think 30 is where I need to be just in my head to maybe shift away from my W-2 employment and into doing this full time. But if it keeps going like this, yeah, I’ll keep rocking it. It’s fun. How

Henry Washington:
Much longer do you think it’s going to take you to get to where you want to be in terms of being able to not travel 300 days a year and work six 12s? I

Joe:
Think somewhere between one and two years from when I started, I’ll be at a point where I will have replaced my income. Hey,

Henry Washington:
That’s pretty incredible, especially for starting in literally the last month of 2025 and getting this far now. Congratulations, man. Thank

Joe:
You. We

Henry Washington:
Talked a lot about these amazing deals, and I think it almost gets lost that you’ve done all this while traveling 300 days a year and working six twelves. So if you are listening to this and you have been hesitating jumping in to investing in real estate because you don’t think you have enough time or you don’t think you have the resources or you don’t think you can find a deal, I hope you find some inspiration in this story because none of those things are true. You can absolutely do this. You just got to do it. And I know that sounds cliche, but just talk to Joe. You just heard him for the last hour telling you he just did it. This is not an easy business. It is challenging and scary and uncomfortable, but it’s a simple business. Buy something that you can add some value to, add the value, monetize it at its new higher price, rinse and repeat.
If you do that, you’ll look up in 10 to 15 years and realize you’re pretty wealthy, and that’s super stinking cool. Thanks for sharing, Joe.

Joe:
Welcome. Thanks for having me. All right

Henry Washington:
Guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. And if you, like Joe, have a pretty amazing real estate investment story and you’d love to come on the podcast and share it with us, then go to biggerpockets.com/guest and fill out the form. Maybe we’ll get to interview you on the show and you can share your story with our audience. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We’ll see you on the next one.

 

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Florida broker gets 30 months for fabricating client income


A Clermont mortgage professional admitted to submitting fake paystubs and altered bank statements



Nathan Fielder Got Unusual Access to Elizabeth Holmes Before Prison. Now His Documentary Is Almost Here



The comedian surprised a Telluride Film Festival audience with a first look at the film no one knew he was making over the past 3 years. ‘You Can See Everything’ offers an intimate look at the Theranos founder’s life before and after she went to prison for defrauding investors.

Marriott Files Trademark For Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Business


Marriott has filed a trademark for MARRIOTT BONVOY BRILLIANT BUSINESS. It’s Class 036 – Insurance & Financial Services and description is:

‘Issuance of credit cards; Processing of credit card payments; Credit card authorization services; Credit card transaction processing services’

American Express already issues a Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card that is for personal cardholders and sent out a survey for a new premium business card with a $600 annual fee in December last year. I’m not sure what Marriott/American Express’ lag is between filing a trademark and actually launching a card but this does indicate that a card is in the works. This is one of the rumored cards we expected to launch in 2026. 

Peter Thiel’s Fund’s Single Biggest Reported Position Is Amazon. $10,000 Invested in Amazon 10 Years Ago Is Worth About $66,000 Today.


Billionaire Peter Thiel’s hedge fund, Thiel Macro, disclosed its latest portfolio in a regulatory filing last month, and the fund’s largest reported position (a stake worth about $118 million as of June 30) is e-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon (AMZN -0.15%).

But I’d argue the filing itself is less notable than the track record behind its biggest pick. In early September 2016, Amazon shares closed at a split-adjusted $39.44 (the company split its stock 20-for-1 in 2022). At Friday’s closing price of $258.51, a $10,000 investment made a decade ago is worth about $66,000 today — a return of about 555%, or nearly 21% annualized.

And that’s price appreciation alone. Amazon doesn’t pay a dividend.

What produced that return, and could the company possibly do it again?

Image source: Amazon.

The profits grew even faster than the stock

The Amazon of 2016 was a very different company. That year, it generated $136 billion of revenue, $4.2 billion of operating income, and just $2.4 billion of net income. Investors were paying more than 100 times earnings for a business that was barely profitable.

By 2025, revenue had more than quintupled to about $717 billion. Net income grew about 32-fold over the same period, reaching $77.7 billion. In other words, Amazon’s bottom line compounded far faster than its share price did.

That gap explains a lot. The stock’s big decade didn’t come from investors paying a higher premium for Amazon’s earnings. Shares cost about 24 times next year’s expected earnings today, a fraction of what buyers were paying in 2016. The business simply outgrew its price.

The profit engine

Most of the transformation traces to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud computing segment. In 2016, AWS generated $12.2 billion of revenue (about 9% of Amazon’s total), yet its $3.1 billion of operating income accounted for most of the company’s overall operating profit. By 2025, the segment’s revenue had grown more than tenfold to $128.7 billion, and its operating income reached $45.6 billion.

Notably, the segment became more profitable as it scaled, with its operating margin expanding from about 25% to about 35% over the decade.

And AWS’s growth is speeding up, not slowing down. Segment revenue rose 20% in 2025, with growth picking up as the year went on and reaching 24% year over year in the fourth quarter.

“AWS is booming, growing 36.7% year-over-year in Q2 — our fastest growth in 18 quarters — and our AI and Chips businesses each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion,” said CEO Andy Jassy when the company reported second-quarter results in July.

In dollar terms, that was $42.2 billion of AWS revenue in the second quarter alone — an annualized pace of about $169 billion.

The cloud isn’t Amazon’s only newer profit stream, either. The company’s advertising business, which Amazon didn’t even report as its own revenue line a decade ago, generated $19.8 billion of revenue in the second quarter, up 26% year over year. That’s faster growth than the overall company posted, and an annual pace approaching $80 billion.

Can the next 10 years measure up?

A repeat of the past decade is a high bar. Another 555% gain would take Amazon’s market value from about $2.8 trillion today to roughly $18 trillion. That’s far more than any public company is worth today. I wouldn’t plan on that.

However, the stock doesn’t need a repeat to reward shareholders. It needs profits to keep compounding.

Amazon Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.15%) $-0.39

Current Price

$258.51

And Amazon is spending aggressively to make sure they do. In fact, the investment is heavy enough that free cash flow over the trailing 12 months swung to an outflow of about $7.6 billion, largely reflecting spending on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.

Of course, an outflow like that may look alarming, and the spending could weigh on profit margins for a while. But heavy investment ahead of the payoff is also how AWS got built in the first place.

Would I buy Amazon stock today?

I would, though not because Thiel’s fund owns it. A quarterly filing shows where a fund stood weeks ago, not what anyone should buy today. The better reason is the business itself: It arguably looks stronger than it did a decade ago, and a price of about 24 times next year’s expected earnings seems reasonable for a company still growing this quickly.

I just wouldn’t buy shares expecting a repeat of the past 10 years. If the profits keep compounding, the stock should do fine.