Economic Avalanche: Bill Pulte’s Real Estate Refuge Tactics

Eric Chemi 0:05
Welcome to Wealthion. I’m your host, Eric Chemi. Today we are joined again by Bill Pulte. He’s the CEO of Pulte Capital. Bill, thanks so much for coming on. I know you were here just a few months ago, not that long ago, we got a lot of viewer requests, a lot of comments coming in to say, how to build back on we’ve got so many more questions, housing and real estate are such difficult markets to make money on because everybody thinks they can make money on it. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of fun out there. There’s a lot of misinformation. So people came back to us and said, Can we have bill back on? We’ve got more questions, we want to ask them. So we appreciate you making the time to do that

Bill Pulte 0:39
Of course. Yes. Great. That was a good segment.

Eric Chemi 0:42
That was fun. So you know, I’ve got I’ve got my list of questions here. I see you’re, you’re in the office, by the way. Where is the office? Where are you today?

Bill Pulte 0:49
We’re in Florida, in Florida, and I’m in the conference room, our studios down but we’re in our conference room. So we’re making do

Eric Chemi 0:55
You’re making do your making do see the investment strategy, obviously people know Pulte Homes. We talked about that in the last episode and and your relationship with the company there and how it was good and maybe not so good now and all this stuff happening. So people

Bill Pulte 1:08
It’s very good, except for a couple executives. It’s very good. Other than that, I’m a big shareholder, big fan of the company.

Eric Chemi 1:14
And obviously people can can go back to that episode to get all the specifics on that and everything that’s that’s happening. But people today really wanted to know, how can I get wealthy and and part of it was, what is your current strategy now right now that you’re at at Pulte Capital, right? What are you doing there? And we know there’s inflation, right? We know that inflation is not going away, regardless of what the Fed says, just can’t, can’t worry about that. You’ve got a big single family business, you got a big mobile home park business. Explain how the strategy works in first how you’re doing it, and maybe how other people could try to emulate that on a smaller scale.

Bill Pulte 1:52
Of course, well, like a lot of other people. You know, you have a business, some people are in doctors, some people are veterinarians, some people are nurses, some people are journalists. In our in our family’s business, for example, we were Pulte Homes, which is, which was the number one homebuilder when we were running it now it’s number four. And basically, what we did there was we built home last, my grandfather founded the business, it was a great business. And so we really came up in the housing industry. And so we’ve really become experts on housing. And as you mentioned, we have gotten into a bunch of different areas and polti capital, what we’ve really focused on is investing in companies, air conditioning companies have been our most successful one, frankly, if you can believe that, as well as other products that go into the home, other contractors that go into the home. And why that’s important, Eric is because usually people in housing, think about real estate, like you’re gonna go buy a home, and then you’re gonna flip it, we take a little bit different of approach. And we’ve learned this through our Pulte Homes experience, which is that you really want to focus on recurring revenue business because and what I mean by that is, we are focused on you know, air conditioning, which as I mentioned, is a recurring revenue business that goes into the home, right, when your home air conditioning unit goes out, right, you have to get it replaced. mobile home park business, you own the land, and you get paid to own the land, or in the case of single family rental, you can offer affordable, either rent to own or single family homes. And so that’s kind of the next evolution of our wealth generation, frankly. And we’re very, very bullish on the space. And because of all the reasons you mentioned, including inflation, I just think it’s a complete no brainer. And I think a lot of people are gonna get rich in this space in the coming years to come

Eric Chemi 3:30
Get when you say get rich in this space. Specifically, which space do you mean? Do you mean mobile home parks? Do you mean just buying homes and renting them out? Do you like what exactly is the space?

Bill Pulte 3:41
It’s great question. I think specifically in housing. That’s general, of course, but I think it’s the right specific areas and housing. So yes, I think single family rentals is where people can really generate wealth. I think mobile home parks is where people can really generate wealth. I also think being a strategic homebuilder, you can make significant wealth. But Eric, you know, it’s so important that when you go when you build a home, for example, or when you go and flip the home, that you really know what you’re doing and where you’re doing it, because you can be very quick to bankruptcy if you go about it the wrong way. And we can talk a little bit about that. But I think that there’s gonna be many, many millionaires and probably billionaires made in housing over the next 1020 years.

Eric Chemi 4:20
Let’s talk about right now. Right, like people think they know what they’re doing. And then they realize they don’t know once they’ve lost a bunch of money. And at that point, it’s too late to learn that lesson.

Bill Pulte 4:31
Yeah, so I mean, let’s just take rentals, for example, right? This deal is kind of keep it simple. If you wanted to go buy a rental property, what you want to do is you want to have a yield meaning the amount of income that you’re getting on an annual basis, you want that yield on a percentage basis to exceed what a interest rate was. So for example, Eric, if you have a rental property, you want to essentially to get 10%. Let’s say cash flow per year on rental property. What I mean by that is if you take the cash flow and you divide it into the value of the The asset you want that number to be, let’s say 10%, for example, you want it what I’m trying to say is you want it to be higher on a percent basis than interest rates. Because if you have

Eric Chemi 5:11
which, which interest rates, government bonds, any corporate, which interest are you looking at?

Bill Pulte 5:15
Basically anything that you can borrow debt on? So let’s say 10 year rates, hypothetically, say 510 year rates, whatever it is your cost of borrow on those real estate properties. Eric, do you want to have your interest rates be less than the annual cash flow yield that you’re getting? Why is that? Because essentially, if interest rates are higher on a per cent basis, and you’re being paid in order to rent out property, you’re actually paying for that property. The fancy word for saying that is negative leverage, I basically just call it losing your ass. And so you want to basically make sure that you have interest rates that are dramatically lower than your annual yield, that you’re getting on rent. And as I said, it’s rent divided into the acid value.

Eric Chemi 5:58
But that feels like II something easy to say that we would all know, right? Like, why VC, you should borrow it 5% And get a 10%? Cash flow, right? Like, who doesn’t know that?

Bill Pulte 6:09
You would say that?

Eric Chemi 6:09
People don’t know that?

Bill Pulte 6:11
I would tell you that a lot of people have justified. And I say probably millions of people have justified doing the exact opposite of that right now. And they’ve done it because their underwriting properties or assuming interest rates are going down. And frankly, to your point, yeah, it’s a no brainer. But a lot of people aren’t calculating it, right. And what I’m sad to see is that a lot of people are not truly understanding what is their actually yield? Give me an example. Somebody will have Airbnb rental property. And they’ll say, Yeah, well, DeVille. Of course, I’m doing that. Well, they’re only taking two or three months. So they’re only taking a year, or they’re only saying, Well, the last year hasn’t been there, I guarantee you, many, maybe most, maybe maybe most are actually not meeting the criteria that I just gave you. And I think instead of generating positive wealth, it’s going to generate negative wealth. And I’ll tell you, Eric, this is why it’s so important to focus on the right areas of real estate, where you can get those double digit coupons that you for sure will be locking in higher rates than you would get, then you’ll have to pay out in interest rates. And a lot of people chase these Airbnbs and stuff like that. I think it’s a very dangerous game to be in that business.

Eric Chemi 7:17
Why is chasing Airbnbs more dangerous than some of these other businesses that you’re talking about?

Bill Pulte 7:24
Well, I think that first of all, it’s more of a get rich, quick thing, get rich, quick thing. And while that works, the probability is that on a sustained basis, it’s an extremely low probability that you’ll be able to be successful. Now, again, I’m not saying you can’t get rich with Airbnb ease, but do you want to take that, do you want to take that risk, what I would rather do is go buy either single family rentals in the right in the right areas where you’re probably not gonna lose money, and you can still get a double digit yield, or apartment complexes where you can get a double digit yield, or in the case of mobile home parks, where you can get a double digit yield. And again, how you’re also able to increase the yield this by you’re able to go in and make great improvements, you’re able to attract high quality tenants. In order to do that with Airbnb. Yes, you can make some improvements, but by and large, you know, you’re gonna get whatever Airbnb is going to pay you. And again, I think this is kind of the razor’s edge between people were able to generate wealth in the space, and people were more speculative fly by night and trying to get rich quick, and I just would encourage people to, you know, really take the long term view, because over time, it compounds and it can generate significant wealth for you.

Eric Chemi 8:30
You mentioned, you’re gonna see a lot of millionaires and even billionaires with this strategy. So you’re saying anybody could start out with a small amount of capital, become a future millionaire become a future billionaire doing this? What what do they what is the first move they should make? Let’s say $100,000. Let’s say Say you’ve saved up 100 grand, and I’m going to start doing this. Maybe Maybe you think they need more in order to get to these higher levels. But what’s the first move they should make if they’ve not actually invested in anything yet?

Bill Pulte 9:00
Well, the first thing is to make your first 10 grand before you make your first 50 grand your 50 grand before you must make your first 100 grand and your first million. And that is the key number one. And so if you have any type of money, or you’ve saved up some type of money, I guess what I’m trying to encourage people to do is to do less risky things than like an air b&b. Again, I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m just saying that you can have wealth and do it in a higher probability fashion than investing in an air b&b. And so to answer your question, let’s say you go and buy a mobile home park and I know people will say well, I don’t have a million dollars to buy a mobile home park, let’s say 100 grand mobile home park, you could probably get a mobile home park for 100 grand and you could probably earn 15 to 20 grand a year on that. Now you can go and you can take those proceeds and reinvest them somewhere else. Could you do that an Airbnb, could you make more than 15 or 20 grand on $100,000 investment? Maybe but you could also lose your butt on it. And so I guess what I’m saying is I would start very, very small you know Jack Dorsey of Twitter for fame, you know, founded square He always says start small. And what I’m saying is if you pick these specific areas in real estate and housing and you start small, soon, you’ll wake up, and you’ll have a very big portfolio. And that’s kind of what we’ve done.

Eric Chemi 10:12
And I wonder about someone trying to do these strategies. When there’s someone like you out there, there’s already big guys out there, because like you said, you need to get the right purchase price and the right yield, so that you’re doing better than your borrowing rates. But at some point, the market will move against the Raiders, like prices will get so efficient, that people will keep spending more and more money and outbid you, because they’re gonna get to that natural breaking point. And the only way to buy something is to know to make a bad purchase.

Bill Pulte 10:41
Correct. However, I would tell you this, Eric, it’s a great question, there’s actually higher yield on the smaller properties, number one, so you can actually make more money. And number two is institutional guys or guns of our size, aren’t necessarily buying parks, in the case of mobile home parks, or aren’t necessarily buying apartment complexes or an apartment for 50 or 100 150 grand, if you follow that, or 200, grand or 300 grand, that is way below institutional level. So when I say about generating wealth, there really is a way whereby people can buy these smaller assets and generate significant wealth. And maybe one day the institutions will come down. You know, we’ve seen that in private equity, we’ve seen that in different spaces. And you know, this very well being in business and company business a long time is, over time, the institutions, you know, there’s so much capital out there chasing these big assets that over time, the institutional capital does come down, and does lower their threshold for where they’re willing to go. And I do think over time, that let’s say, if you’re a retail investor, and you’re buying some of these assets, you may be able to sell those institutions for a lot of money. Does that make sense?

Eric Chemi 11:46
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I know, just saying it reminds me of reading Peter Lynch’s old book from 35 years ago, one up on Wall Street, and he said, the institutional buyers, they’re not going to buy very, very tiny stocks, but people can buy tiny stocks, right? You there’s an opportunity to make money on the real high growth companies, because it’s just too small of the dollar amount for the big guys to invest in. So what you’re saying reminds me of that.

Bill Pulte 12:12
Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I’m saying that you can do it, and you can do it right now. And in my opinion, you can do it in a very risk adjusted way where, you know, if you do it, right, you shouldn’t lose a lot of money, you should actually be making a lot of money in a predictable way where you can put your head on the pillow at night, and know that you’re doing okay, with some of these Arabic Airbnbs, or some of these one off locations. You know, I would have a hard time sleeping at night.

Eric Chemi 12:36
I’m gonna ask you something crazy, because you just you took a sip from your coffee, and it was a McDonald’s cup. And I’m thinking, why would Bill Pulte Who’s talking about you know, millionaires and billionaires? Why do you have McDonald’s coffee, it suggests that you’re that you’re still a common everyday man, and you don’t have some kind of fancy grind your own beans at home. Like what what’s going on here,

Bill Pulte 12:55
I definitely err on the side of not thinking that I’m wealthy throughout the day, because I think it can really make people go kind of loony in the head. So I don’t get any kind of fancy anything. This is actually a Diet Coke from McDonald’s. And I’ll tell you that love the McDonald’s diet coke. And I definitely don’t need a Diet Coke machine myself or whatever. Although I’ll tell you though, it’s crazy. I think I used to buy these for like $1 apiece, these Diet Cokes. And now they’re worth like, now it costs like $2.60 or something like that. I mean, inflation is just crazy. And that’s also why you can’t afford to lose money on these Airbnbs. And all these other things have to shift between Diet Coke and Airbnbs. But it’s like, this is why you can’t afford in my opinion, to lose on these Airbnbs. And these seven things is because like, you have to hit the right target right now. Because you’re dealing with massive inflation. And in some ways, you’re dealing with low growth and high inflation. And that’s that’s kind of a stagflation airy environment, in my opinion. And, in my opinion, you gotta be very smart right now.

Eric Chemi 13:55
It’s funny that you had that because I wasn’t planning on talking about this. But you mentioned inflation, the Diet Coke, what it used to be, I don’t know if you saw the story became the cover of The New York Post today. Were Wendy’s yesterday said they’re going to experiment with surge pricing. So in 2025, when he CEOs to the fast food chain will introduce surge pricing, hamburgers may cost more, let’s say during the lunch rush hour, for example. That’s crazy. This is crazy. It’s it’s it says inflation’s next frontier, it’s exactly what you’re talking about.

Bill Pulte 14:26
It’s crazy, and it’s coming. And, you know, they got away with so much when I say that they have seen the managerial class, my opinion of the people who run many of these companies, they think that, you know, they can just put money in their pockets and charge whatever they want. And, you know, if they can get EPS on for a quarter or if they can put, you know, 10 million bucks more in their pocket. They’re not looking at this as human beings on the other side of things, in my opinion. And I think in the end of the day, it will end up bad but in the meantime, I think a lot of people suffer as a result of these inflationary policies that these either bureaucrats or like So the managerial class is, isn’t an acting upon people. And that’s actually why we have such a strong retail industry falling on Twitter is because people like that somebody of my position, so to speak, is speaking up and saying, you know, this is crazy.

Eric Chemi 15:14
I’m gonna get to that in a second because that was some of the questions we had coming out one and finished with the housing strategy, because you kept saying buying the right places? How do I know what’s the right place? And how, let’s say my or anyone watching or listening? How are they going to be the one that says, I figured out the right place that nobody else has figured out? That’s, that’s a tricky game.

Bill Pulte 15:35
Well, first, you know, it depends on what your risk is. But what I would try to do is I would try to look at for looking at an areas I’d look at where the wealth is really going. That’s kind of I don’t know how to say it. But that’s kind of the that’s kind of the number one way you could look at school districts you could look at, where they’re opening Chick Fil A’s, you could look at where they’re opening gas stations, you could look at population growth, what I tried to look at is really where’s the wealth going? And where are things getting really expensive, because if you buy things, where the wealth is going, and where money and, and resources are going, naturally, it’s going to be kind of a lot rising tide lifts all boats. And so for example, you know, and again, I’m a little biased, but I wouldn’t necessarily be investing in California, even though it has a lot of wealth. But a place like Palm Beach, Florida, I don’t see how anybody can go wrong. And again, I’m not talking about West Palm, and I’m not talking about speculative properties. And this is not investment advice. But I don’t see how people generically can go wrong investing in Palm Beach, Florida, or close to a Miami, Florida or close to a Naples, Florida, or close to a, you know, a Dallas or in Austin Yes, in the short term and really buy something that’s maybe speculative on the outskirts, you’ll be in trouble. But if you go to some of these areas of the Carolinas, for example, these are great locations. This is where somebody who’s smart and astute should be going, not buying some, you know, heavy cyclical Airbnb in Phoenix.

Eric Chemi 17:00
You know, I’m looking at the story, I wanted to make sure I got the details right here. It’s it’s, it’s what I’m thinking about population growth, where people are moving those big macro trends. In the last few days, the Toll Brothers CEO said during investors call a data center offer them more than $180 million for a piece of undeveloped property in Virginia, that originally Toll Brothers was going to make us the site of apartments and townhouses. I don’t know if you saw that story, or what you think about that, that’s now we’re getting out competed, I can’t even afford to buy a house because the freaking data center that needs to store all of our information in AI models is now going to buy up land and compete against us.

Bill Pulte 17:38
Correct. And that’s why we’re buying a lot of these mobile home parks and redeveloping them. I mean, we’re trying to take trailer parks out of the equation and make them into nicer parks where people want to live not where they have to live. And I think that that’s going to be the future. So whether it’s data centers or whatever, there’s so much capital chasing this land, and then you forget where you remember, depends what party you’re in, you know, the immigration situation, you’ve got this situation where you’ve got all of these people coming in, right, wrong, whatever you may think it is, but it’s just a fact. And what they’re doing is they’re pressing up the lower, they’re bringing up the lower end of things, the pricing on lower end things. And I think you’re going to start to see that happen in multifamily and housing. So from, I guess what I’m saying is from every which way, you’re just getting nailed with housing. And that’s why if you can buy in the right market, at the right price with the right yield. I think over the long term, we’re going to be a very wealthy person, in my opinion.

Eric Chemi 18:32
What are the what are the trades that you don’t make? What are the things that you don’t buy?

Bill Pulte 18:36
I don’t buy things that are far away. I don’t buy things in heavily taxed states where the government thinks that the government is the solution when really it’s the problem. I don’t buy things that are overpriced. I don’t buy things that have low yields. Like I said, you try to work with our minimum yield that we’re buying eight 9% on rental properties, we prefer to be higher now in the case of single family rentals for the right markets will actually buy a lower yield going in. But we’ll calculate how we’ll calculate the yield is basically factoring in the appreciation. I’ll give you an example. We own some Pulte Homes in Florida and our family’s legacy business. And, you know, we’re up as I’ve been told, and I can verify this myself, but I’ve been told that we’re up 30 to 40%. On those properties that we bought. You can you can look at either, you know, looking at homes and some of these markets like New York or Pennsylvania, nothing wrong with the people in New York and Pennsylvania, where you can look at things in the high gross parts of Florida and buy something. I choose Florida all day long. So when I say good and bad location, you just you really have to use your head and say, you know, yeah, things are cheap in New York and Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Connecticut, but do I really want to be investing there? You know, I’d be very careful.

Eric Chemi 19:52
As someone who lives in New Jersey and sees the taxes all around. I have a lot of these conversations at home right like what is the future of of owning a house here, or where else can you be right? So I understand I understand the the thought process there. And then you’re talking about the kinds of debt, the kinds of debt that people can borrow to do this, I think you see some people they’ve, they get in trouble because they’ve got the wrong kind of debt, or they they have either too much or not enough. What’s your approach on that?

Bill Pulte 20:21
I think, you know, with regard to debt, number one, you have to buy a really good asset in order to, to be able to provide for the cash flow to provide for the debt. What I mean by that is, if you buy a good asset that’s generating the cash, you can reliably put debt on it. I think where people run into problem is not just when they over leveraged, but when they buy excuse my language is shitty asset, and then they try to put debt on a shitty asset. Well, that’s just a shitty idea. And so I say that somewhat graphically, not to swear. But I say that to get through to somebody that it’s not the debt is a problem, it’s the debt under the wrong circumstance is a problem. And so when you look at whether it’s mobile, home parks, or single family rental, you couldn’t convince me to put $1 worth of debt on a bad product. But if you had a good asset, like I talked about, let’s say you own a mobile home park that was worth a couple 100 grand and Florida generating 50 grand plus in earnings a year, you can probably put some debt on that and sleep good at night. So to me, it really comes down to what is the asset number one that you’re buying? Number two is what is the cost of capital? Do you have a higher yield than your cost of capital? And number three is what are the covenants on that capital. And I’d say one of those big covenants is maybe number four, which is do not sign recourse debt, I would not sign recourse that you do not want to be personally on the hook for this debt. Because these banks, especially these big banks, they can be vultures, and they will come after you and they will come after your family. And they will create all kinds of problems if you can have recourse debt. So you really want to have non recourse debt. And frankly, people who are not wealthy can have non recourse debt, you just have to buy the right asset, and create a competitive enough auction, with debt providers with local banks with credit unions. If you do that job, you can have non recourse debt, and that we, in addition to those three points, that the fourth point would probably be, you know, a very, very important point, which is do not sign personal guarantee debt, I don’t care how rich or how poor you are, do not do it.

Eric Chemi 22:21
Yeah, that’s a good reminder for people who may be get over enthusiastic about their purchase, and they think it’s a no brainer, it’s gonna win. But the only way I can do this is is to sign the personal guarantee. So you’re saying under no circumstances, I don’t care how good you think this idea is, you don’t want to take that risk of bankrupting yourself personally.

Bill Pulte 22:40
No, because they don’t care. And what’s gonna happen is when there’s a recession, which there inevitably will be, the banker, in the case of the bank will get a call from somebody on the credit committee at the bank and say, hey, you need to call this loan, or you’re going to be fired. And whether you believe it or not, they’re going to they’re going to pull that loan before they get fired. And again, this is just my own opinion. And I’ve seen a lot of people, I’ve seen a lot of wealthy people sign recourse debt. And so this is not just a problem with people who don’t have money. This is also a problem of people who do have money. And I will not under any circumstances, and I have never signed personal debt, and I will never, and when you set that precedent, you set it with banks, yes, you will lose some banks, but you will also people will know, hey, polti, in my case, or hey, so and so, you know, they’re not screwing around and going to take on debt. That’s recourse.

Eric Chemi 23:31
You mentioned the phrase vultures that the banks can be vultures with with this debt. I’m sure we’ll get a comment from somebody because it’s the internet, they’ll say, Aren’t you the vulture? Because you’re taking advantage of people in mobile, home parks, you know, people who can’t afford and, and like, you know, that they always hear about the slum lords. And this is a version of that. And I asked it, you know, in preparation for the troll comment that will come later?

Bill Pulte 23:58
Well, the trolls are always there. But number two is, if we wanted to take advantage of people, of course you could. But that’s not in the interest, in my opinion of how to create wealth on a long term basis. Yes, you could, in a short term basis, get rich, but the way to generate a significantly, in my opinion, over a long period of time, like we have done has been to make good genuine improvements that increase the livelihood and the beauty and the safety of a community. And that to me is how you get more money. That is how you get more earnings is by genuinely making improvements, not through just you know, short term fix. I mean, even looking at like our investment in Pulte Homes. It’s like, you know, we could go in and just buy the stock and then try to pump it and dump it. We’re not interested in that. We’re interested in trying to make the right improvements over a long period of time and build good businesses. So you know, it’s a fair comment, and it’s a fair concern, but you got to really look at the track record and see that, you know, we have really been focused on creating that value. I mean, I’ll give you an exam. A couple were in the process in one of the mobile home parks and we you should see some of these things. We’re taking what used to be a trailer and making it into a beautiful home. And we’re putting in significant money before even ever having substantially raised any type of rent or brought in any type of new tenant or sold any the new homes. I mean, we’re putting new panels on these things. Were putting new asphalt, we’re putting in guard gates. I mean, there are people never even heard of guard gates and trailer parks. Have you ever heard of a guard game and trailer park? Nobody’s ever heard of it. So we’re taking some of these lessons that we’ve learned in the Pulte Homes, safe world, the subdivisions, etc. and putting them into what people have traditionally written off as just, you know, trailer parks, and really making them into beautiful communities. And I’ll just mention one last point on this, why are we doing this, we’re doing this because the zoning regulations are so significant, that the only way to get around zoning is to go and do AI stuff that’s already zoned for this type of stuff. And mobile home parks are already zoned. So you can go in and effectuate positive change and put panels on the side of buildings and, and re asphaltum and do what you want. I mean, if you tried to do that on some other type of, you know, thing that wasn’t zoned for that, you know, you wouldn’t be able to do it. So I think it’s a really creative thing. And I think you’re gonna see more people do it.

Eric Chemi 26:09
And at what point do you sell some of these properties? Or is your goal to just keep buying accumulating and taking in the rental cash flow over time?

Bill Pulte 26:16
I think we’ll keep accumulating, we may go public at some point. I mean, I think, you know, obviously, I have a big following on Twitter, and a lot of people want to invest with us, which I think is great. But I want to make sure that I perfect the model both with the single family rentals with the home building to the extent that we do any. And with the mobile home parks. Before we do that.

Eric Chemi 26:35
You mentioned the big following on Twitter, you got the big retail investors who who follow what you do, and there are a lot of big fans of what your approach. And I know you’re you’re tweeting about a lot of the meme stocks, you know, we’re Ryan Cohen’s up to, what is the perspective you’re getting right now about the everyday person, a lot of them feel like they can’t get a fair shake, the system is set up against them. And there’s really no hope for them. A lot of them believe that work? How are you helping them? And what are the conversations you’re having?

Bill Pulte 27:07
Well, I do think that the system is rigged. If I didn’t say think that the system is rigged, that wouldn’t say it. And I do think that a lot of people have gotten a fair haven’t gotten a fair shake. Now, when people say that they say, Well, you know, of course, you’re just saying that or oh, you know, your, you know, whatever conspiracy? Not really, I mean, you tell me, I mean, why are these CEOs making, you know, 1020 30 million bucks a year, and their stocks have either been stagnant, or in many cases, you know, they haven’t really done anything to really, you know, return anything to the shareholders of substance. I mean, there’s so much going on, not just for the executive management teams that needs to be talked about, but also these different things in terms of short sellers. And in terms of market manipulators, in my opinion. And in terms of, you know, these market makers, I mean, I’m not going to sit here and say bad things about market makers, but I will say, I think there needs to be more transparency. And he’s been more transparency into who shorting what stocks, do they own the stocks that they’re being that they’re shorting? How are they borrowing them? I mean, there’s all these kind of regular restrictions that are on the retail investors. And, you know, you have to report to the IRS and stuff what you’re doing as a retail investor, why, why is there not more stringent regulations around some of these, you know, they call them dark pools or dark funds, where God knows, I mean, who knows what’s going on in these things. So I think that the retail investor, that’s one aspect of it. The other thing with the retail investor that I think is very interesting is that they haven’t really had representation in these public companies in these public boardrooms, you know, you’ve got these big bulge bracket firms, whether it’s BlackRock, fidelity, or Vanguard, and I’m not saying anything negative about them for purposes of this comment, but they hold tremendous power. And the retail investor doesn’t hold a lot of power, at least at the current moment. And I see that changing over time. And I think that that’s going to be, I think that’s going to be the next thing over the next 1020 30 years, it’s going to be quite incredible as the empowerment of the average person to vote their shares, to register their shares, and to say, Look, I’m a shareholder in this, I have just as much of a right to certain things as Blackrock or fidelity does

Eric Chemi 29:08
They can vote, but they’ll have one vote, or maybe 100 votes are 1000 votes, and BlackRock will have a billion votes.

Bill Pulte 29:17
Until that changes, but I think I think it may change. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised to see people, you know, you try to move their different shares out of Blackrock or fidelity over time, or there’d be big campaigns, I mean, over enough time, I think things are gonna happen and people are sick and tired of it, you know, and you to your point, they, you can, you can only have 100 or 1000 at a time, but you know, look at GameStop I mean, look at how many direct registered shares there are, and talk about people standing up and saying we’re not going to take it anymore.

Eric Chemi 29:46
What do you think about the whole Gamestop movement, the example of it, the other stocks that that now we’re seeing have this, you know, let’s say consumer takeover, right, the retail takeover, a lot of people can make money a lot of people can lose their shirt. Like we talked about in real estate, what’s your advice for those people who who want to play that game? But but you could, you know, get lose a lot of money if you do it wrong?

Bill Pulte 30:09
Yeah, I think you have to be very careful gambling and I wouldn’t tell people to go invest in Gamestop if you’re just trying to make a quick buck. No, in my case, I believe in Ryan Cohen, I think he’s going to try to figure out how to turn this thing around. And I think he’s done a nice job of that he’s completely gutted a lot of the expenses. It’ll be interesting to see, I don’t know if you know, this, Eric, but Gamestop has got over a billion dollars worth of cash on the balance sheet. Most people don’t even know that. I mean, you could do a lot of damage with a billion dollars. I’ve encouraged Cohen publicly on Twitter to invest in a high, you know, I had to practice what I preach, right? I can’t sit here and say buy a recurring cashflow business and then not advise him to do it. So I’ve said publicly, I really hope he buys a cashflow, positive business, I really do still hope he does that. We will see time will tell. But you know, I’m invested in GameStop, I’m going to continue to be invested in GameStop. And I think there’s gonna be way more game stops going forward. And we started Craig stuck in Entity Group. So if you’ve seen this, but we’ve got 10s of 1000s of people in our own communities on X on Twitter, between AMC Gamestop Bed Bath and Beyond polti group, with retail investors just kind of banding together talking about the stocks. And I’ll tell you this, one last final thought on this is a lot of these retail investors do a lot of really good due diligence. And it’s kind of scary, what kind of information people can find out out there. And I really like it. In I think that you’re going to see I’m not saying an analyst will go away on Wall Street. But what I’m saying is the quality of information, I think over enough time with journalists, like yourself are entering into new media coupled with the retail investors, I think that you’re going to see more and more of these type of people than the traditional so called mainstream media.

Eric Chemi 31:44
And you had a rally a couple of months ago in December, you’ve got another rally planned in a couple of months in May. You’re talking what is the rally who’s coming? And what is happening there?

Bill Pulte 31:56
Yeah, it’s quite crazy. We had 250 people, if you can believe that it’s $500. To come in town, we set up a huge rally, I had actually come out of pocket for the cost for it. But they paid $500 to come and meet us and talk with us about stocks. And it was crazy. It was amazing. It was an amazing, amazing time. There’s a guy who was dressed up in eight costume if you can believe it, of all things like an actual ape. I mean, people are fed up, and they’re making this fun. And it’s a movement. It’s a total movement, this whole stock retail movement. Now obviously, I’ve gotten to be well known on Twitter, for philanthropy, but I think that the stock thing is very much philanthropy and getting people wealthy and getting people rich. And, you know, we have the stock thing going on where people are showing up, like I said, Turn 50 People at airport hangars and saying, we’re gonna have 350 people, maybe more in Atlanta, and may we’re actually doing that around the pultegroup annual meeting, if you can believe that. So a lot of these people are gonna be shareholders in the company, and we’re going to Atlanta where pultegroup is going to be. And this is the future, you know, they used to have the Berkshire Hathaway meetings in the day where you’d go and you’d go to Berkshire Hathaway Well, we’re going to the pultegroup annual meeting. Now I hear they’re so worried about it. And again, this is third hand and speculation. So I don’t know if it’s true, that they’re so worried about it, that they’re thinking of going virtual this year, which is a very big disappointment, because, you know, we shouldn’t be embracing these retail shareholders, if somebody owns 10 shares of Volpe group, they should be able to go into headquarters and you know, your name shouldn’t have to be polti or BlackRock, or Fidelity or Vanguard to go do it. So I think what we’re doing is very exciting. And I think in the years to come, you’ll see, you know, probably hundreds if not 1000s of people come to these different rallies and people try to take back the power from, you know, the handful of people that are running these big companies.

Eric Chemi 33:33
So what’s next for you? I hear all this and I feel like, like you could be the next Trump asked figure REIT or real estate fino he was in a real estate family behind a big media presence became an elected official. Right? You got a lot of the same vibes that that I’m hearing.

Bill Pulte 33:51
Yeah, I rather die than run for office, at least right now, that’s for sure. But I’m just having fun. And the reality is this, this retail crowd thing is very exciting. Because, you know, it’s one thing for me as a philanthropist to give away my money on Twitter, and I’ve given away millions of dollars literally just on my Twitter account. It’s another thing to then go and get other people to understand about finance and stocks and become financially well versed, and then then be able to help other people. I’ve always said Twitter, philanthropy will never be successful, or now x philanthropy will never be successful. Until I until it exists without me. That’s the only point when when it can go on and direct giving can go on in a viral in a very viral organic fashion, where if somebody’s dying of cancer in Utah, somebody in Georgia can help them that needs to exist independent of Bill polti and independent of everybody. So to me, it’s like we need to get people rich. And I’m not saying I can get people rich, but you know, I have an opinion about how to in my own opinion, but we need to get people rich and we need to get people rich so they can help people at a higher and bigger level. And you know, the churches used to rely on this church. Churches, which I’m a big fan of churches, and I think, you know, we need a revival of churches in this country. But the churches used to take care of people, these days with, you know, things being so secular and stuff, people also, in my opinion, need to get wealthy so you can help other people, because we can’t just rely, at least in the short term, we can’t just rely on the churches, we have to help each other. And so I’ve used the retail investor thing is very much an offshoot of the philanthropy thing, and, you know, we’ll see where it goes. But in the meantime, I just say, we’re just trying to help one person at a time and over and over enough time, if we help one person a day, or, you know, in this case, we’re helping whatever, 510 people a day, it adds up. And now I think we’re at four or 5000 people that have been helped people are dying of cancer, or, you know, people who’ve lost loved ones and tragedies. I mean, I could give you the stories. It’s crazy. What what happens in the world.

Eric Chemi 35:45
That’s amazing. I appreciate your sentiments, and we have a whole other podcast episode about the breakdown and families and churches and everyone’s living in an isolated life. So they rely on the government and the government thinks it’s going to help and then we all become worried to the government. Okay, well, no one’s here to help you, the government will help you and then you get stuck in that trap, and they raise taxes on everybody else, and then they don’t give. And then it goes to where we are now, right? It’s highly secular culture where you get people aren’t as generous, maybe as they used to be. And maybe these tighter knit family and religious groups,

Bill Pulte 36:19
Correct, correct. Yeah, it’s gonna make it worse before it gets better, but we’ll figure it out.

Eric Chemi 36:25
We’ll figure it out.

Bill Pulte 36:26
And the human race always does. You know, I was with Dr. Ben Carson yesterday, if you know, I’m the HUD sec, former HUD secretary, and we’re talking about a lot of the issues we talked about. And he said something to me about how you know, and I don’t know whether people believe in God or not. But either way, it was an interesting point, he said something about how, you know, God saved Sodom and Gomorrah, and you know, there was only 10 or 12 people and, and in that situation, and he’s like, so I think God can handle this one. And, and I would say the same thing. I mean, whether it’s inflation, or whether it’s the breakdown in the moral character, or the lack of churches or lack of family, I think, all in due time will figure itself out.

Eric Chemi 37:02
I appreciate it, Bill, I appreciate it. It’s nice to see you again. Everyone obviously can follow you on Twitter AX, see what you’re up to, you’re always posting you’ve always got, you know, money being given away somewhere that you’re at, you know, or rally a public appearance or whatever you’re investing in. So people definitely should keep following you there. And, and we’ll talk soon, Bill.

Bill Pulte 37:21
Thank you. You got it, Eric, take care.

Eric Chemi 37:24
Thanks again to my guest, Bill Pulte for joining me here on Wealthion and if you liked this episode, of course, please like it, subscribe, share it, comment for it around, pass it to others so they can learn as well. And more people can get this content and enjoy. And if you’re thinking about investing your family’s finances your future how that all is gonna work out for you go to Wealthion.com. We’ve got a short form there, connect you with some investment professionals that that we endorse that we think can do a good job. There’s no commitment, no obligation, there’s no cost, you can just have a conversation with them. And that’s a free public service at Wealthion.com. And of course, also check out all the other shows at 12pm got a lot of programming going on right now. So you can check all of that out at the website. Thanks again for watching for listening. I’m Eric Chemi. We’ll see you next time.