What can I say about this one? Gabby Dunn from Bad With Money is excellent. In this episode, she talks with David Sidoni about her rags-to-stability story. She explains how confounding the mortgage qualification system is for non-W2 employees by opening up about her own mortgaging struggles. Gabby shares insights about buying properties versus renting one, especially for those living a non-settled-down lifestyle. She even discusses her love-hate relationship with Pinky the feral cat, why IBUs are a scam, and why rich people are not necessarily financially savvy. Tune in to this engaging episode with Gabby Dunn and learn more about money and mortgages!
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Gabby Dunn From “Bad With Money” Interview On Money, Mortgages, And A Feral Cat
Super Fun Chat With The AWESOME Gabby Dunn
I know a lot of you readers like to binge this show while you travel for the winter holidays and gear up for the New Year, and that is rad. Think about this episode as maybe a little bit of holiday dessert, some pumpkin pie or fancy Christmas cookie. It’s going to be a cleansing of the palette for you. This is a crazy and fun discussion with Gaby Dunn. If you don’t know Gaby, she’s from the super awesome podcast Bad With Money. Check it out.
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Buckle up because this episode is going to be a little bit off-topic as Gaby and I chop it up. We talk about how confounding the mortgage qualification system is for non-W-2 employees. We discuss the pros and cons of buying versus renting, especially when you live in a non-traditional and non-settled-down lifestyle. We are also going to dive really deep into the love-hate relationship that Gaby has with Pinky, the feral cat. Enjoy.
I already told you what a full-on rock star Gaby Dunn is. They are the rags-to-stability story. I love the fact that instead of you going on social media to try to promote the rags to stability story and sell your workshop, you went to your core and said, “I want to help people.” Your freaking show is self-proclaimed Bad With Money. Tell us about the reason you started starting that podcast.
I’m not a financial advisor. I never wanted to be a person who had workshops or was selling anything like that. I work in television primarily. I’m like a regular writer. I sell TV shows. That’s how I make my money, and then a little bit through the podcast. In 2016, I had done a lot of work in the dating and LGBTQ space. Panoply, which used to be a podcast network from the Washington Post, approached me knowing my work. They were like, “We want to do a podcast with you. What should it be about?”
I never had in my life talked about money, not once. It was not part of my brand. It’s not a thing. I could have very easily been like, “I want to do a queer dating show,” which is what they were expecting. I was like, “I want to do a show about money,” and they were like, “Why? What?” I was like, “I had written this article called Get Rich or Die Vlogging,” which I had started doing a lot of stuff on YouTube. I wrote this article for Fusion that had gone viral and was named one of the best long-form writing of that year, which was amazing.
It was about people who are very popular on the internet but have no money. They are freelancers. They work day jobs and don’t know what to do with their money, and largely they are in their twenties. I was like, “I want to expand on that, and I’m bad with money.” I had a platform and had all these people who were like, “If I would do a brand deal on YouTube, you are rich but then, in reality, I would feel very resentful because I was looking for quarters in my car to have enough money to do my laundry.”
I started feeling like people don’t know the truth about what people in entertainment make and stuff like that. Slowly as I started asking more questions myself, I called my bank and my student loans and did this stuff on air that was embarrassing. Although, I lack the part of the brain that allows you to feel shame. I did all of that. As I started doing more and more, I was like, “This is all screwed up. This is unfair.” There are a lot of pitfalls and traps. This is not built for anyone to come out of their situation and everything about what I was learning.
The first season I’m like, “What is a credit card?” By the end of season two, I’m like, “We have to burn down the banks.” I become slowly radicalized. If you want to start and watch how I slowly become radicalized over the course of two seasons because it started getting so political. I couldn’t help that it was getting political. I realized that the name Bad With Money draws people in because they think of themselves as bad with money but ultimately, you can be very rich and be bad with money. You can be very poor and be good with money. It’s luck of the draw.
[bctt tweet=”You can be rich but bad with money. You can be poor and be good with money.” via=”no”]
It’s something that’s very interesting. I interviewed these great financial advisors from Brooklyn who help marginalized people that are having difficulty with the process, and they talk so much about mindset. What I love about what you do is that you bring the real story of the mindset. You learned it on the streets. Understanding the politics of us and assuming that everybody reading this has accepted that we are in the system and trying to beat the system as best we can. What would be your best tips for folks who are freaking out? You talk about Gen Zs and Millennials feeling helpless trying to save. For instance, they are thinking about trying to save for a down payment.
My partner and I bought a cabin a few years ago. It was a very small cabin for $190,000. It’s in a rural area of New Jersey. We bought it, and I had the mistaken idea that I had the money for the down payment. I was like, “I have the money for the down payment.” I go to the bank and I’m like, “Here’s a down payment.” They were like, “We need to see your P&L.” It was 2020 or 2021, and my P&L looked like crap.
I was like, “Here’s the P&L but a heads up, it’s not as good as usually would be. Here’s $40,000. I have that for you,” because I got paid for a script. If you sell a show, they pay you a lot of money to do all this work on a show that then they won’t put on the air. It’s truly wild. I work hard for things that don’t go on air.
Do you mean as an option buy?
No, they are paying me to write scripts that will ultimately go nowhere but I have essentially a 9:00 to 5:00 situation where I am working on these scripts. I’m writing multiple things, and I write things for free all the time. I had saved the money and was like, “Squirreled away my little money,” and then the bank was like, “No,” and I was like, “But I have it,” and they were like, “Your P&L shows you don’t make enough money.” I was like, “Okay, but the money is here,” and they were like, “No, we don’t believe you will ever have that again.” This might seem obvious to your readers.
I was so warped and was like, “Maybe I won’t ever have it again, and I’m a lying loser piece of crap.” I was surprised. I thought you gave the down payment, and they said, “Great.” That was not the case. Saving for a down payment is part of it but it’s also extremely hard. You have to keep track of what you are making so that your P&L or Profits and Loss looks good and make sense because mine ended up shaking out to being like, “This year you only made $16,000,” and I was like, “I know but I have a lot saved.” They were like, “We simply don’t care about that.”
I was shocked. I don’t mean to say don’t save for a down payment but that was shocking to me. Basically, I truly lucked out by getting a couple of chunks of money at once. I hear a lot of people say, “A distant relative died, and they got $10,000. They put that into a down payment or one of my friends was poisoned accidentally by a CVS and sued and got some money.” It sucks.
I had tried saving a few times. One time I had $8,000 and was like, “I’m on my way,” and then my car broke, and I needed a new car, and then I was back at zero. It’s hard. My friend Amy was like, “Life keeps coming, and it doesn’t stop coming.” It’s a play on the Smash Mouth lyric in the sense that you are like, “I’m saving, and I’m saving,” and then the universe is like, “You broke your leg. Now what?” It’s hard. I don’t know. It was extremely difficult. When I was feeling good about myself, the bank was like, “No, you are garbage.” They didn’t say that but it felt like they said that.
I’m a listener. I’ve listened to a ton of your podcasts, and I scrolled from the very beginning like I recommend all my readers do. Go to now Bad With Money with Gaby Dunn. I put it in my notes before we talk because that episode was on August 4th, 2021. First of all, I always talk about how dope NerdWallet is on my show, and you had someone from NerdWallet whose last name was Renter.
That’s Elizabeth Renter. Isn’t that funny? She covers housing.
It was classic. You guys talked about savings equals squat. Income is everything. The reality is that I’m trying to help the people who read this show. A lot of them come in, and some of them are like, “I want to do this. The system is rigged. How do I do it right?” Some of them go, “I don’t even know how to do this,” and that story was so huge. It’s funny. Everybody, listen to that August 4th, 2021 episode. You said that you didn’t realize that talking to a mortgage guy was going to be such a trigger for all your insecurity.
He was like, ” Lay out everything you’ve ever done,” and I was like, “It’s not good.” I have a lot of privileges. I’m a White person. I’m purchasing with my partner, who’s also a White person. We are both artists already the bank was like, “No.” They are a musician, and I’m a writer. Our income is not steady. The mortgage guy was pulling teeth and being like, “Do you have anything else to prove that you make money?” I was like, “Sir, I’m out. I don’t know how else to show them that I make money.”
When I first moved to New York, if I needed $50, I would like to scrounge and get $50 but my bank account would only have maybe $500 at a time. I remember moving to Boston in 2008 and looking for an apartment, and I was like, “I cannot pay more than $400.” When I came to New York, and that was in 2010 or 2011, I was like, “I can only live somewhere for $700.” Even that, I was like, “$700? That’s insane but I’m going to push it.” My rent would clean out my bank account every month.
Now, this man is like, “$40,000 isn’t enough.” My small little brain, I understand that 15 or 12 years seems long but it’s not that long for your brain to make the jump from $700 is too much money to pay to live somewhere with two roommates to all of a sudden, you are so proud of yourself, and then a mortgage guy is like, “$40,000 is nothing,” and then you are like, “I don’t understand reality.”
It’s true. I talk to my readers all the time about understanding that it’s a monthly number. When you are going to buy a television or cell phone, you are thinking about the individual cost, and that’s what you’ve done your whole life. A lot of times, I talk to people about there’s a first and last to it but the difference is it’s a first and last, and a security deposit that’s your down payment and your closing costs. The difference is that you can’t make just enough as you did to pay your rent. That needs to be 30% or 40% of all the money you bring in every month.
My mortgage for the cabin is $500. It was not expensive. I felt crap because I was like, “They think that I can’t pay $500 a month.” That’s what it triggered because I was like, “I’ve done several years of work on myself.” I work so hard. I made money from my job. I’m still not that great at it, and things come up. I mess it up all the time.
I have to gain perspective on how amazing it is that I even have a retirement and in the stock market even though I stare at and get upset every day. I was giving myself these big wins, and then the guy was like, “No.” I was like, “You don’t understand. I can pay $500 a month. I swear.” They were like, “The bank doesn’t believe you.” I feel like I’m going nuts.
In the second half of that episode, you talked to your friend Alexis G Zall. She talked about the importance of a team. The reason I started my show was that I have been doing this since 2006 in Disneyland. I help all the people at Disneyland. That’s a lot of artists. Back in 2006, ‘07, ‘08, and ‘09, when the market was crashing, I learned how to help them look right on paper as the online lenders and mortgage brokers and all that got bigger and frankly more corrupt, greedy, and crazy.
If you call the wrong person, they are order takers. They punch your numbers and say, “You can’t do it.” That was what Alexis was talking with you about finding the right team. She said, “It’s hard but it’s doable.” I do this all the time with people. We are like, “Are you a W-2 or W-4 employee?” When they say no, then it’s like, “Roll up your sleeves,” and then me and the lender go, “Give me everything.” You give us everything, and then we don’t make you feel worthless when you show it to us. We go, “Here’s how we got to structure this to show the bank.”
Sometimes people have to go back and redo their taxes from last year because I got a lot of performer friends who write off every pair of shoes they buy because they might wear it to an audition. They made $100,000 last year but they wrote off $60,000. I’m like, “You showed the bank that you make $40,000 and, more importantly, showed the bank that it costs you $60,000 to make $40,000.”
It’s so counterintuitive because everyone talks about, “Write off as much as you can.”
That’s because the plan isn’t in place, and that’s the gap I’m trying to fill.
You have to plan years ahead of time.
The reason people don’t is because the system is rigged. You call a realtor or a lender, and they were like, “How close is this person?” “They are not paycheck in 30 days.” There’s a saying in real estate, “An A client is 30 days, a B client is 60 days, and a C client is 60 days or more, so see you later.” They then don’t talk to you.
I might get paid $100,000 once and then not get paid anything for a few years. They will dump that in my account being like, “Thanks for the script,” or whatever. I then have to make that last. It’s funny because people will be like, “You have $100,000,” but that’s a $50,000 salary per year if I don’t supplement it in some way.
The way the bank is going to look at it is the same way. If you have someone who’s done this a lot, they are going to go, “We are going to do this like a teacher.” A teacher works nine months. We take their entire salary and divide it by twelve. For us, they are going to take your $100,000.
I will have my corporation, and then I pay myself out of my corporation to be like, “See, I got a paycheck,” but it’s me paying me.
Your $100,000 or whatever is a little more than $8,000 a month. That’s the way you look at it. At $8,000 a month, you could afford technically almost a $4,000 monthly mortgage payment on a home but you would have to have zero debt. One of the other things you talked about on your podcast was Zillow and the iBuyer stuff. One of the first people pointed out, “This is BS. It’s all going to crash,” and it did. They lost $360 million and laid off tons of employees.
I have been reading my nerdy real estate news, Redfin closed and completely laid off a bunch of people. Opendoor is down and laid off a bunch of people. I keep trying to tell people, “iBuyers are a scam. Find real people who care.” That’s why your podcast was so interesting to me. For fun, now give us some of your overall thoughts on housing and the struggle because you went through it and where your head is on that now and how you see it. I’m curious to hear where you are at.
With iBuying, it was essentially that these companies were buying houses and buying out entire neighborhoods. It’s hard because, after COVID, I bought a home in a rural area, and a lot of people did that. Thus, pricing out people that were already in that area. I see that in the town where we bought our cabin. There’s a big divide between the people that have lived there forever and the people that have all moved into the lakeside cabin areas, who are all people who came from the city and bought these nice homes or knockdown in our building a $2 million homes in the area. Where we live, there’s all this discourse about what they are putting in a Starbucks. Everything is changing.
I feel a bit like we are canaries in the coal mine there. The housing prices for those people who have been there forever go up in value if they ever want to sell. With the iBuying stuff, it’s hard. I saw a post that was an apartment building and then a bunch of different lock boxes, and this is because 39 out of 40 units here are Airbnbs. Especially in LA, the unhoused crisis shot through the roof during COVID, and they haven’t done anything to clean that up.
I have this very strange thought process. I remember I was dating this guy, and his parents had a home in Aspen, and we went to it. I was young and was like, “Who lives here the rest of the time?” He was like, “No one,” and I was like, “What do you mean this is an empty house?” He was like, “Yes.” I was like, “Can I live here?” and he was like, “No, it’s our winter home.”
I didn’t know anyone with a second home when I was younger but that was in my early twenties. I was like, “There are empty houses?” That sounds old to realize that but I feel strange about the idea that there are empty buildings and people who need homes. Maybe that’s simplistic, and I’m not a politician but it seems so bizarre to me that there’s no way to make that work.
I understand that there is a lot of stuff with regards to, “You can’t be here and be using drugs,” which, if you look into harm reduction, they do a lot of good work there, and safe injection sites have been a very interesting topic that has come up more and more. The prerequisites or the rules placed on people that are finally getting into housing are largely unrealistic.
People are also jerks and will be like, “I don’t want that. I don’t want these people moving into the empty apartment building next to me.” There’s a lack of humanity. There’s this article that I always go back to that was by this woman named Cleo Chang called The Empathy Gap. I reference it all the time but there’s this big, “What can I do?” It’s the American way of thinking, and then you look at other countries who have done much better on housing and on helping people find housing. Now, even for the middle class, there’s no way to own a home. If they do own a home, they Airbnb it.
Much of what I try to share with my readers is the history because what you were talking about is your place and the town getting other people coming in. It’s not gentrification. It’s a second home. What’s interesting is that it happened during the last run-up. You think that’s a post-COVID but in 2004, ‘05, ‘06, and ‘07, the hottest place to buy property was Bend, Oregon.
Why?
In 1998, the market started to go back up. It should have come down in 2001 but it didn’t. They started giving loans to everybody like all the stuff you see from The Big Short and Margin Call. The Big Short I talk about it all the time.
Margin Call is a great one too.
Margin Call is a little heavier. I tell people, “Get The Big Short first, and then when you are feeling jeopardy-style, jump into Margin Call.
Unfortunately, starring Kevin Spacey but a very interesting film nonetheless. If you can pirate it, I don’t know. He probably doesn’t make any money off of it. It’s an incredibly stressful movie.
My wife and I are like, “We liked House of Cards.” Jeremy Irons is great in that, and you get to see how the banks get billed out and how the system is corrupt. That’s why I tried to share with everybody that back then, at the peak in 2005, 40% of the homes were purchased in America. We usually sold $3 million or $4 million a year.
In 2005, it jumped to $7.1 million, and 40% of them were greedy people who thought that this was going to going to go on forever, whether they were intentionally greedy or their second homes. People were seriously flying, getting in a van, and these investment people would take them out, and they would buy property. They did it in Phoenix, Vegas, and Florida.
I saw the stats, and the average distance that people usually bought a home from where they lived was 6 miles. It jumped up to 45 miles because of the post-COVID remote. What that should be doing is making the urban areas less expensive because not everybody has to live there. Simple supply and demand but what it’s doing is the weird stuff in the areas you are talking about.
We own a cabin in New Jersey, and then we also live in Los Angeles. We don’t own this place in Los Angeles. I wish we owned the place. It’s funny because we bought a whole cabin with a half-acre or whatever of land in New Jersey for $190,000, and then this house that we live in Los Angeles, that’s like a little house with no land, it would be $2 million to live here.
We like the idea of owning some place in LA, which seemed out of our reach but we spend the summers there and the rest of the time here in LA. I felt guilty during COVID. I had a friend of mine living for free in my old apartment because she didn’t want to be near her roommates, who weren’t taking it seriously. We had another friend living here in one of the extra rooms during COVID. I still hold the guilt of like, “Who lives here?” Someone needs to be in this building. Otherwise, I don’t know how to feel. A friend of mine broke up with her partner and needed a place for two months, and I was like, “Please live in my house.” I feel so bizarre if it’s empty, which is guilt.
It’s one of the reasons why a lot of people don’t think about buying a home themselves. What I try and do on my show is explain to people if you find the right person who can plan with you to make you look good on paper to the banks and can replace your rent with a mortgage and one of the biggest fears I see is people freak out about, “What if I get a job in New York?” “Cool.” I never bought it in the ’90s because I lived in Studio City. I was like, “What if I get a job in New York? Let me think, who knows a dozen people that are always looking for a place to crash and active from LA?”
If we were landlords and rented out the cabin, it would be a lovely writer’s retreat for someone. It would be nice. Honestly, if we lived in the cabin and we didn’t have this house in LA, I would save so much money. It’s a big house but the rent here is $3,000, which is lunacy. The mortgage, as I said, is $500. If I had moved to New Jersey, didn’t have this place, and thrown out 90% of my clothes, I could probably be more financially savvy.
If you ever want to, I can set you up on a long-term plan so that you would be buying something much smaller but $3,000 a month could probably get you a condo with the down payment. You could sublet it for eight months out of the year and live in New Jersey. When you are coming back, there are options. Most people think that unless you are doing the, “I want the Norman Rockwell little house in the neighborhood,” you need to rent until you get to a place where you want to settle down.
[bctt tweet=”Most people think they need to rent until they get to a place where they can settle down. ” via=”no”]
For me, it’s about letting people know, “If you want to, you could take a little time and figure out,” because I blew it. I spent $104,000 in rent in the ’90s in Studio City in four different apartments. When I got into real estate at 35 years old, I realized that from 21 to 28, I could have made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and instead, when I moved out, I got a $1,500 security deposit back.
I’m 34, and I’m figuring it out.
Rock on. You bring such a wonderful mindset and attitude where there’s empathy involved with everything that you talk about. I don’t get political on my show very much because people think that when you talk about finances, you are going to be politically one way or the other but I love the fact that you tour Dave Ramsey’s new one on both sides. I stayed away from politics but he cost everybody so much money by telling them they had to save 20% down, and the market was flying. It was horrible advice.
It’s bad advice bookended by Jesus quotes, which is just beautiful. The show is not for everyone. I have listeners or people who leave Apple reviews that are like, “There’s advice but then sometimes Gaby says the politics is bad and the only way that this is going to get better is through governmental change and huge change. There’s not anything you can do personally,” or whatever. They are like, ” I don’t want to hear that.” I’m like, “There are plenty of other shows that will tell you what to do.” Some of our episodes are like, “It sucks out there.”
I have people that troll and talk to me. I have people come in thinking my show is a show for investors. I’m like, “No. Here’s the thing. The system is rigged. If you want to beat the system and replace your rent with a mortgage payment, I will walk you through it.” If you were freaking out and pissed off about it, you have two choices. Run for office or find a way to work with what we’ve got.
Become super politically engaged and vote. A lot of my friends in the wake of COVID have become big housing activists, which is amazing. It bore a lot of people who are like, “We got to do something about this.”
There’s so much going on in LA. One of the things I keep seeing a lot of stuff talk about is such a weird cycle. During COVID, Stranger Things got huge, and the third season was in a mall. Now, they keep talking about, “Why don’t we turn empty malls into affordable housing.” That’s a huge topic that people are trying to work with. It’s a struggle in real estate because there’s so much corruption in the way the builders do things.
Builders don’t want the land that could be expensive and could make much money, and it takes the politicians to come in and create a percentage of affordable housing. I have some readers who come in and say, “That’s awesome, and I want to advocate for that but it’s not affordable for me. What do I do?” I’m like, “Let’s back up.” I tell people, “If you do this and you become more financially stable, cool. Make sure you give back afterwards.”
Do you think I should buy a condo? I want to go back to that. My P&L still looks nuts.
You talked in the episode when you were buying this that you appreciated Mal’s support. Their partner is Mal. You got support from Mal and Mal’s family, correct? Somebody was helping you out.
Ma’s dad put his name on stuff. He didn’t need to but everything was taking so long. I was like, “I don’t know what else to do to prove to these people other than showing up and throwing dollar bills at their faces.” He just put his name on it, and then eventually, he took it off, so it could go through, which was annoying.
The definition for everyone out there is that what they used was a co-signer, and then they eventually removed the co-signer from the title. That’s something that you can do quite easily.
My parents couldn’t have done that. Mal’s parents did it.
This will be a fun experiment, then. For your particular situation, how many months a year is your home that you are in vacant? How many months do you hang out in Jersey?
We are in Jersey for four months total out of a year.
Do you rent it out or do you give back and let people stay in your LA place for free?
We do not rent out the LA place. We tend to let people stay mostly because they are usually watching some of the pets.
You have $12,000 a year that you are paying out in the rent for that place for a dog sitter and the luxury of being able to enjoy this other part of your life.
I understand that it’s not good.
No, I was not judging. That’s the one thing I don’t do on my show. People come in and say, “I want to buy a house like this,” and I’m like, “Cool, do you want to cut this?” They are like, “No.” I’m like, “We are not doing it.” Many freaking realtors walk and look at the house with their first-time home buyer, “You guys can’t buy this place.” Meanwhile, they are both lighting up and love it. They are like, “Why not?” It’s not your personal opinion. You do what you want to do. The reason I brought it up is that what that tells me is that you probably have more money that you could show the bank than you think. If it’s a $2 million place, I’m assuming you’ve got some decent square footage. Is it an older place that’s quaint and has cool architecture?
It’s older. I have an office. Mal has a studio. There’s a garage and a second bedroom. It’s a lot.
You and Mal going $36,000 a year go into nothing, and we never see that again. The market is shifting. Will you be thinking that in 2023 or 2024, you guys decide, “How about we put $36,000 a year into something that is going to grow into hundreds of thousands later on that we can access? We then have to make a sacrifice. We are going to the garage.” You might be able to get a garage but lose the yard.
We are going to have to drug this cat and take it with us. This cat lives on our porch, and when he deigns to grace us with his presence, he enters the home. I was like, “If we move, we are going to have to drug this cat and then completely change where it lives because there’s no way it’s going willingly.”
“What happened to my porch?”
“Where the hell am I?”
“Why am I in a condo courtyard? What the hell happened?”
We are trying to make it an indoor cat, which is an uphill battle because the cat likes Mal and not me.
I don’t understand the cat is liking one and not the other.
Mal’s out of town. He was like, “Have you seen Pinky?” I’m like, “Yes. From a distance.” I then go, “Baby, come here,” and then the cat goes away. It looks at me PO’d and goes, “You are not Mal. Bye.” Mal was like, “Before I left, the cat was coming in the house and stuff,” and I was like, “Not for me.” Mal had a camera outback and saw me coming outside with Pinky’s food.
I’m talking out loud and don’t realize. Mal said that I put the food down and went, “I come in peace,” and then I left. “I come in peace. Here’s your dinner. Goodbye.” It’s funny because I’m sure you encounter people where there are better financial decisions to be made but they are like, “What if I was comfortable?”
It happens all the time but that’s the big thing I talk to people about on my show and the reason why I like your show so much for my readers is to open your brain or open your mind. If you went through this giant struggle and had to change your mindset to understand something and get to a certain comfort level, live in that comfort level for a little bit and enjoy it.
Some of the people at Disneyland that I’ve worked with were 30 days. One dude I met was single in an apartment at our first meeting. By the time we closed on his house, he had got a girlfriend, got engaged, got married, and had a kid. It was three and a half years later. The season was right for him, and he went, “I have these extra things that I want to settle down for.” When we talked about it, I was like, “Yes.”
I would say for someone like you in your position from purely financial, not emotional. First of all, I would never give you advice until I talk to you for another 30 minutes about your life, dreams, goals, wants, and needs. That’s me. I heard you talk in your other episode about how crazy it was to buy at the time that you bought. It’s still going to be a great thing but the buyers are going to get some more power over the next few years. How many years have you been paying $3,000 a month?
Since 2020.
If you have been paying that for a few years and think that you are not going to get evicted and not going to miss a payment for the next three years, it’s worth it to look on paper and see what would happen if you look to buy something knowing that you are good paying $3,000 a month for the next three years. It might be that the down payment and closing costing are too much. It might be a sacrifice to go from this place. Are you in hipster town?
We are in North Hollywood. I remember when I lived in Los Feliz and Echo Park when I was younger. I was living in North Hollywood, “What are you dead?” Now, I would go so far out to the valley that I don’t even care.
Coming from Orange County, I moved up there. We are becoming Californians on SNL. I went to North Hollywood. I was too far North in my first place. Someone threw a rock through my window because I was up by Oxnard. I was like, “I need to get down.”
I used to think that if you moved to North Hollywood like you were retiring, you were basically dead, and no one would be your friend. I had the wrong idea about almost everything.
I moved there because I thought it was the closest thing to the suburbia that I knew.
It is. It’s very suburban. My whole street is becoming condos, though.
When I moved there, Echo Park and there was no hip area because it was the ’90s, and I’m way older than you, so I moved to Studio City.
This whole street is becoming condos. It’s our house, and then there’s a house next to ours. The woman was a very close friend of ours. She passed away. They sold her house to developers. Now, our house is the last hanger-on, and they had to sign another lease but in our minds were like, “How soon before they are like it’s $2 million.”
You all be careful. Those developers come in and make an offer that they can’t refuse and check your lease.
They are going to.
Check your lease and see if you’ve got 30 or 60 days. You could be calling me out of necessity.
That’s true because they are coming, and they want to build condos. I don’t know how fast they are going to do it. By the way, the woman who lived there bought it in 1973 for $20,000. She lived there until she passed away in May 2022. It’s wild. She’s a very eccentric woman and left all her money to the ASPCA.
The ASPCA needs to get in there and sell that thing out of probate or a trust sale pretty quickly and get some money.
It got sold to developers. There are condos right next door, so now it’s creeping up on us. It used to be pretty quiet. Now, you hear partying in the condos. I’m elderly, that’s what happened. I was like, “It’s going to be a nightmare when they knock down the house and put in the condos. They are going to be doing construction all the time. I podcast from home.” I might only have another year here before we get a jet.
First of all, if people come to my show, they’ve made some decisions. If you read a couple and are like, “This isn’t for me,” you are out. I put some of this stuff up on social media, and I get so many people angry at me and I’m like, “I’m trying to warn you. When the recession hits for real next year, a lot of landlords are going to sell out from under from you because recessions hit landlords.” Watch yourself.
Maybe, it’s condo time. It sucks because I have so much stuff. My partner is a hoarder, and I’m a hoarder. I walk around and ask, “What is all of this?” My partner is very into the yard and stuff but you go through phases. You are right that owning stuff is complicated. I would never want to be a landlord who takes advantage of people but it’s such a hard thing because everyone always says, Real estate, how you have stability,” and I’m like, “I hate everything.”
[bctt tweet=”Owning properties is complicated. Many stay away from it for fear of becoming a bad landlord, and many jump into it because it has stability.” via=”no”]
What you can do is be a part of the change. When I talk to a lot of people on my show, I have to explain to them, “You are paying $3,000 but you can pay $3,000 and have this condo. It’s not a house. It’s a condo.” When you leave, you can rent it for $3,200 or $3,500 a month sub-leasing while you are gone depending on some of the areas, because you know how rents are. LA rents are insane. If you can afford the $3,000 and you are going to Jersey, and it’s only $500, you have already been given it away. You don’t have to rent it at market value. You can rent it at Gaby and Mal’s value.
I would be guilty. I would be like, “I don’t know. You could give me a bag of potato chips or something.” I’m sorry for all of this. This is why my mom was bad at being a lawyer because if people couldn’t pay her, she would be like, “I will take a haircut.” This is like a terrible instinct of mine where I’m like, “I feel bad. Do you want to maybe Venmo me $50, and we will call it even?” I’m a crappy landlord or a good landlord.
We are on the same page. I’m a crappy real estate agent. I stopped to do a show. I was in my living room at 3:00 AM, yelling about what was wrong with the horrible industry. My wife comes downstairs and goes, “Do you make any money doing this?” I’m like, “No, but I’m helping people.”
I’m like, “Look, I’m not going to charge you rent but you do need to film all my TikToks.”
“Film, edit, and do my captions.” Trust me on that. I’m with you.
“Honestly, that’s worth it. Thank you. Also, if you can brainstorm TikToks that I should do, I will be appreciative.”
“Get me the right content and right hooks.”
“Please, I will lip-sync the house down. I need you to come up with what I should be lip-syncing because I’m 34 years old.”
On my TikTok, I’m giving real nuggets of wisdom, and there are 20 or 50 views.
People hate it. Have you tried dancing and then pointing to what you want to say?
I did one where I made fun. I go, “If your realtor does this, it’s because they are brand new, and they suck at their job.”
No one cares. They just like it.
The minute I said, “Make sure you turn off your utilities two days before you move into the home that you bought because if the seller doesn’t or turn them off, you might have to pay a reconnection fee.” It was 20,000 views with everybody yelling at me. “I’m not paying two days for that person. Screw that.” God bless TikTok.
I would rather be the person that they have a lot of opinions about. People are sharing it, being mad, and I’m like, “That’s views for me. I don’t care.”
[bctt tweet=”Be the person other people have a lot of opinions about rather than becoming someone who makes other people mad.” via=”no”]
I’m feeling you for that.
Also, you are like, “I know I’m right, so whatever.”
I love the people that come on and rag on me and go, “Look at you. You are such a corporate. You are trying to get my workshop.” I’m like, “Go look at my feed. I post tips on how to buy a home three times a day for nothing. I make no money out of that.” It’s always going to be that way. That’s the fun thing.
People have a lot of opinions about real estate.
That’s why until I get Dave Ramsey’s popularity, I must keep screaming into the wind and having fun conversations with people like you. I knew we were aligned on a lot of things, and it’s interesting to be able to go and tell people, “It’s great to meet you. You shouldn’t buy a house now,” and then if my broker is reading back in my old job before I quit to do the show, they would come in and yell at me. I’m like, “I can’t work for the dollar. You have to work to try to help people better themselves.” In five years, if you are still renting for $3,000 a month, you might look back on this conversation and think about it. It’s going to take a big game plan for you to figure it out.
[bctt tweet=”You cannot simply work for the dollar. You also have to try to help people better themselves.” via=”no”]
I won’t, probably. I move all the time, which is also probably bad. In New York, I moved six times, and then in LA, I’ve lived in multiple places. I impulsively move a lot. I have a big place for a while and then will move into a one-bedroom and be like, “This is fine.” I tend to jump around, so I don’t know.
Where the market is going, you’ve got advantages over the next 3 or 4 years. I hate to mimic the 1% who are screwing all of us but I realize they all make their money in a recession in bad times. As the recession happens in 2023, I’m not saying I’m going to do what they do and screw other people over but I’m hoarding cash now. I’m looking to take advantage in ‘23 and ‘24. I’m telling my readers to do the same thing. If they go on and be a jerk with it, that’s on them. We do what we got to do. Gaby, you rule.
Thank you for having me on. I hope this was helpful in any way.
It’s amazingly helpful and entertaining. This is my version of a mailbag.
Thank you.
I talked to other people about buying a house. You are a bunch of random thoughts and ideas, which is like a mailbag, so it was perfect.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
These are some of my favorite episodes. I love your mailbag episodes.
They have gone off the rails.
Behind the scenes, maybe you will tell me what the hell is going on with Mal these days because when he comes on, you are like, “What is with your energy?”
It fluctuates. It’s either high energy or they are like, “And another thing,” or they are like, “I don’t know. The world is useless.” I enjoy the vibe that you bring.
I heard one this morning where someone was talking and sent you a long email about the numbers for disability and how that was upside down. You were giving such a wonderful response, understanding, and sharing it with your audience. Mal was like, “Numbers, I have a headache.”
This is a 1-2 punch where if it’s something they are fired up about, they are fired up. I do it to mess with them.
Besides Bad With Money, where can people find you if they want lots of Gaby things?
Bad With Money Podcast, we release on Wednesdays and Fridays, and then the Just Between Us podcast is another show I do with my friend Allison Raskin that is more of a variety show. I’m on TikTok at @DabyGunn and on Instagram at @GabyRoad because of branding. Those are where you can find me. I left Twitter a few years ago and shall never return.
My Twitter is a dead feed, and especially now, I don’t touch it but me too. Someone else is @HowToBuyAHome on Instagram, and they won’t give it to me. They haven’t used it since 2018. That’s branding. What are you going to do? If they type Gaby Dunn in any of those things, you will pop up.
Yes, I pop up.
I will find you. Daby Gunn makes me laugh.
Thank you. I was sitting there racking my brain like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.” I was like, “Fine.” There are 4 or 5 Gaby Dunns, and they are all beautiful women and stunning. They all have every variation of the name. I’m like, “You all keep it.”
I can’t recommend it. To my readers who enjoy my occasional semi-scripted rant, Gaby is great off the cuff but when they get to writing, there are such incredibly fun little nuggets to sit and read. Your whole thing on the mortgage one, when you talk about how the bankers made you feel, the trigger and the stress was wordsmithing. It’s amazing. I appreciate you taking the time. I’m very excited to introduce you to my readers. Folks, remember, no matter where you are buying a home, you can always listen to multiple different opinions and make the choice that’s right for you. Thank you, Gaby.
Thank you.
—
That was so much fun. I hope that it helped to entertain you while you are enjoying your planes, trains, automobiles or whatever transit you’re doing right now and taking a small break from the intense home purchase planning and studying that you are doing reading the rest of the show. That was a good long one.
The break is over. Back to work. First order of business, share and review the show now. Don’t tell me you are too busy. You’ve still got 4 or 6 hours left before you get home. Share it. Next, decide for yourself that when you get home, you are going to get serious about your planning for 2023. You are going to make a spreadsheet, buy a whiteboard, and even make a vision board or whatever. The last piece, you can do this.
Important Links
- Bad With Money
- Get Rich or Die Vlogging – Article
- Elizabeth Renter – Bad With Money Past Episode
- NerdWallet
- Just Between Us
- @DabyGunn – TikTok
- @GabyRoad – Instagram
This podcast was started for YOU, to demystify things for first time home buyers, and help crush the confusion. After helping first timers for over 13 years, I knew there wasn’t t a lot of clear, tangible, useable information out there on the internet, so I started this podcast. Help me spread the word to other people just like you, dying for answers. Tell your friends, family, and perhaps that random neighbor you REALLY want to move out about How to Buy a Home! A really easy way is to hit the share button and text it to your friends. Go for it, help someone out. And if you’re not already a regular listener, subscribe and get constant updates on the market. If you are a regular and learned something, help me help others – give the show a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or write a review on Spotify. Let’s change the way the real estate industry treats you first time buyers, one buyer at a time, starting with you – and make sure your favorite people don’t get screwed by going into this HUGE step blind and confused. Viva la Unicorn Revolution!
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