PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
Hey Beon, really great to have you back on the show. I feel weird. We’re both dressed in black here, is everything okay?

Beon DeNood
Are we mourning the state of the economy and outlook on the next quarter?

Ian Robertson
I don’t know about that. I just thought you were like, going to be in a devo music video, you just need the red cone hat.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, and the voice to match them up.

Ian Robertson
I feel bad. I kind of always tease you about something that you’re wearing. Like that time we were in a big business meeting and it was little horsies on your shirt.

Beon DeNood
You know, okay, this is this is really funny, because this is my thought process. Today. I almost wore that shirt that you were talking about, cuz I figured I’d give you a free like intro, right? Like, I mean that you will there’s no ways you will not say something about that shirt. And then I thought to myself, nah, you know, let me just go like, plain ole black shirt. You know, Ian will have nothing to say about that. And sure enough, here we are.

Ian Robertson
I don’t know what it is. I feel like it’s a soft target when you’re wearing horsies on your shirt, like so everybody in the audience, if you want to hear the story, it was, that’s basically the story. We’re in a big business meeting. All these guys here, corporate guys. You know, one guy was a CEO, CFO and middle of talking about something and I go, wait a second. Hang on guys. Beon, are those tiny little horsies on your shirt? And I said it just like that, and Beon’s like, what the heck, man?

Beon DeNood
They were little dogs, you know, first of all, but ensued a whole conversation about who selects my wardrobe. And anyways, it was good diversion for a little bit there.

Ian Robertson
But it was surprisingly, the other company they were like really into it. They’re like, I think they are horsies.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, I think we totally closed that deal because of my shirt. Those.

Ian Robertson
Well, I guess I guess that’s any kind of segue to our our Q2 2023 Market Outlook. We’re a couple of weeks late into this. And we were laughing probably like a week or two ago. Boy, I’m glad we didn’t do our Q2 market outlook because things have changed. And in like a day or two later, I’m like, oh, good thing. We didn’t do it. Things have changed. Yeah, no kidding, man. It’s it’s a, it’s a roller coaster ride out there a little bit. Yeah, for both real estate and the home inspection industry. It’s pretty crazy, don’t you think?

Beon DeNood
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the whole, the whole banking collapse was just another thing to add into the banking crisis, we should say adds on top of that, but yeah, just all kinds of unexpected things. That I mean, that’s been the underlying part of this whole story is all the unexpected stuff. Nothing has gone according to plan, if you want to call it that, and everybody’s finding it hard to anticipate. But yeah, kind of nuts.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, you know, no matter what you quote, unquote, predict there’s always going to be some sort of wrench in the works. And the bank collapse that you were talking about was SVB. So I actually haven’t been reading about that for the past couple of days, because it’s just wild how that is the second biggest banking collapse in US history, isn’t it, Beon? I believe, that’s what they were saying. Yeah, yeah. So Silicon Valley Bank out in Silicon Valley, they basically just fell apart. You know, there was companies, big tech companies that couldn’t pay their employees, which led to all sorts of other problems, which contributed to an already mass layoff in certain industries, and kind of changed the landscape a little bit for California and the US market as a whole. Because I mean, anytime you have a major bank collapse, that’s a big deal.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, it does reverberate through an industry and even all the way through to to effecting some of the stuff we see playing out in the housing market. We’ll get into that in a little bit, at least my my theory on it, but yeah, it’s just a lot of crazy stuff. It’s put a lot of the people in the financial markets on edge or banking business on edge. So yeah, they’re being a lot more careful about how they go about things for sure.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. So a lot of times, we may see that stuff and say, Boy, I’m glad I’m not in the banking industry, or in tech company or something. But that has a very deep trickle down effect to our industry as home inspectors. So it did change for quite some time and still is changing how people go about things both money wise, spending, and it affects the housing market very much directly. But interestingly enough, the government had to react to it. So interest rates were changing. And then as soon as SVB happened, they’re like, oh man, what do we do? We’re raising interest rates, are we lowering interest rates, because they need to adjust those now, to kind of stave off a big financial collapse, which to be honest with you, it hasn’t collapsed the whole system, the whole banking system hasn’t collapsed. So whatever they’re doing is keeping it together, albeit with gum and string. It’s, it’s holding together for the most part.

Beon DeNood
Yeah. And I think that’s one of the the underlying stories I’ve also seen in the story they’ve been covering is that in the case of SVB, wasn’t, it’s not like this is just like the whole banking sector is, you know, messed up. SVB there were some, some really big errors that were made in the management of that bank that ultimately led to its downfall. But I mean, just last week, we were reading about Chase’s quarterly profit report, right. And they, they’re hitting it off the charts, because of the smaller bank uncertainty, everybody’s flocked to the bigger institutions, and they’re posting mega profits. So it’s not like the whole banking sector is, you know, bad shape. There are companies in the banking sector, they’re actually doing really, really well. But they are some that haven’t been as, as careful as they should have been, and yeah, the mismanagement at SVB obviously caught up with them. And, and they had, it just collapsed.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. So let’s, let’s maybe dig down into what some of this might mean for us as as home inspectors too because you know, you just mentioned some banks are doing great, SVB has kind of fallen apart or has fallen apart. It brings us back to things happen very regionally. Even though we have a global economy. We hear a lot about de-dollarization lately, because what was it Brazil and another country? Was it Russia, basically just worked out a deal, and they’re trying to decentralize US Dollar as world currency. And everybody’s like, freaking out. It’s like, all right, things still happen very regionally. You know, Silicon Valley, it’s not like Bank of America collapsed. Let’s be honest about it. Or, you know, one of the other big banks, can’t think of any right at the moment. But it kind of hurt the economy in a lot of different ways. But it happened very regionally. And, you know, a couple months ago, we had a podcast with Christian Adams from Repair Pricer. I thought that was a great podcast, and I had guys call me afterwards and say, Wow, he was spot on. And then I had other guys call me and say, Nothing changed. Nothing happened. And that podcast was talking about how March was going to be a great month. Because of well, end of February and into March, because there was an uptick, quite a large one in mortgage applications, and mortgage applications that got approved, and most of them were not refis, they were going to go purchase a new home. And that was really good for some, but not for others. And when I started putting the people together, just anecdotally, I’m like, Man, this is just regional. It really, the economy is kind of, especially with the housing market, sticking to a very regional, hey, this is what’s happening. My region, I kind of broke almost even with it. You know, you go down into the Midwest, and guys did really, really well down there, Texas, was doing really, really well. California has just not, not doing really well. And I’m just assuming guessing SVB with some other factors are kind of affecting it. And actually, interestingly enough, you know, I live in upstate New York, and we’re known for people flocking away from upstate New York, they want to live in other parts of the country, the two biggest states that they moved to two of the biggest states, California and Florida, Florida being the biggest, we actually had a resurgence of people moving back from California, to New York, to northeast in general, a matter of fact, last year, one of the hottest markets for like three months, almost in a row was Concord, New Hampshire, according to the National Association of Realtors, I’m like Concord, New Hampshire? And a lot of those people were moving from California. So that ended up leaving us in New York with what they called a housing deficit. There were too many people for the number of houses that we needed for the first time in forever. It feels like they’re like we don’t have enough houses for the people that live here. I’m like in New York? Everybody’s moving away. And now that’s kind of reversed. So I guess that kind of leads me to my roundabout point that, yeah, it’s very regional. So if you listen to some of those podcasts and said, Hey, I didn’t feel and some people were like, Hey, I did feel it. It’s definitely going to be dependent on your market. Totally.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, we definitely do see a lot of market segmentation here. And I think I remember Zillow put out a report as far as their property, evaluation predictions going into the next year. And I think the California market was one of the areas where they were predicting that houses would experience in general a higher devaluation than what you will have in other parts of the country. So yeah, Why is that funny?

Ian Robertson
No, I’m just thinking I’m like, so my 1300 square foot $2.4 million home is going to be worth 2.2 million.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, well, that’s that’s the thing I guess. That’s the sector luxury houses, higher end houses that has lost the most, I guess they’re down a good number of percentage points in value, which has caused some fall out, you know, but your buyer in that segment is also a little different. They typically sitting on cash, they’re not looking for like long term financing and that kind of thing. But it is interesting how everything’s happening. The one point, though, that I’m gonna counter a little on the SVB thing, because I think what the SVB thing has done, even though yes, you’re right, that was regional to that area, Silicon Valley was was plugged in everywhere. And it was also a very big name when it came to investors investing in tech startups, that was their big thing. So I think with the collapse of SVB, and then I mean, Credit Seuss in Switzerland, that needed shoring up, there were some signs that things are things are weakening, there was also that other smaller bank, I think it was in New York that also followed, but what it has done, it seems it’s rattled investors generally. So instead of investing in the type of projects that banks like, SVB, were investing in, they’ve sort of wanted to take that same cash and put it somewhere safe. And it looks like, looking at the numbers, that they’ve stuck a lot of that money into the bond market. And that’s been interesting, because when more people are buying bonds, those bond prices increase, they become more valuable, obviously. But what results then is that the yield percentage rate for the bonds decrease, and that is usually pegged to the mortgage rate. So what’s been interesting to see now is as that’s been happening, that’s why the Fed has kept increasing rates, but you’ve seen your mortgage rate actually come down, because the bond market is hot investors are putting money into the bonds. So even though it’s a very roundabout way, the instability from investor’s point of view in the banking sector has caused money to flow somewhere that is actually having an effect. And you know, with interest rates coming down, we almost, what’s the lowest point we came to? Was it close to six?

Ian Robertson
I think it was just under, wasn’t it?

Beon DeNood
What, it was just under? I didn’t notice. But as of this morning, we back up to 6.9. You know, so we were heading in the other direction. So for me thinking about it, at least from my very limited perspective, it seems like that the interest rate, the mortgage interest rate, where wherever that’s going to end up looks like that is going to play the biggest role in what the housing market is going to do from this point forward. But that that’s just my take, I don’t know what your thoughts are.

Ian Robertson
So I never made that connection between bonds. And I was actually kind of sitting here, like, Where in the world is going with that? I’ve never made that connection before. That’s an interesting connection. So thank you for that. But I think it’s a little bit more complex than interest rates, though, because we have a couple of things in place. So let’s say interest rates dropped down to 3.5%. The Fed say, Here you go, you’re welcome. And let’s be honest about us as home inspectors, we need houses to move. We don’t care what the interest rate is, we don’t care what housing prices are, if houses get sold, and bought, generally speaking, as long as it’s in relative moderation. And I say that because we don’t want people skipping inspections. So the markets are five to seven out of 10. That’s the sweet spot. You know, that’s where we make money. That’s where the industry goes. So the problem is, you know, I was looking at this article from Forbes that they published. Here’s a couple of problems. It will, here, I’ll just read this one section says, “median existing home sales price was down 0.2% to $363,000, in February compared to a year ago, according the National Association of Realtors.” So that is, first of all a nutty number 363,000. But at least it’s on a downward trend, because total existing home sales jumped 14.5% From January to February, but we’re still down 22.6% from a year ago. So even though the numbers in the short term look, okay. The numbers in the long term were actually down. So, let’s say 20. Okay, so down 22%. That’s one out of four inspectors not having work, or four inspectors losing a quarter of their work each. That’s nationally, there’s some areas where it’s just dead. There’s just nothing happening. And a lot of that comes down to inventory. So that brings me back to my point, even if we have a 3.5, 2.5 Let’s say 0% interest rates, there’s no houses to buy. People are just sitting on them, not selling and moving. Because if I sold my house right now and decided to move oh, man, I made a whole bunch of money on my house. I doubled it. Great, the value of that is still going to be equal to the value of anything I’m going to buy. So if your house was 200,000 dollars and now it’s $400,000, you can still only take that money and go buy another $400,000 house. So it’s going to be of equal value to the home that you’re you’re owning. So people are sitting on it, they’re like, I’m not going to do that, because I’m only going to get the same house if I can even find one. So now you’re limiting our market to not people, upgrading houses, or people changing houses or moving within their area. Now, it’s basically just down to let’s be frank, did somebody pass away? Did you get a job somewhere else, and now you need to move? That limits our market, because now you’re not having I forget what they call that a judicious move or not judicious move, basically, you move because you want to instead of you have to. So now people are only really moving because they have to.

Beon DeNood
Those are very interesting factors. Because the one point that you make there is let’s imagine I’m a homebuyer that bought a house in the you know, doing the part with it with the interest rates are super low. So I’m sitting on a, you know, close to 3% interest rate. I mean, a lot of guys are just saying, you know, I’m not gonna give that up. So I’m not putting my house in the market. I’m staying put, that’s their decision for now. And on the other side of things, folks looking to buy a house, they’re looking at the interest rates, and look what the market said very clearly is if it’s over seven, we’re not we’re not touching that we’re not doing that the market almost stalled when the interest rates were above seven. But how low does it have to go to start tempting people to move on both ends? And that that’s the answer. We don’t have yet. You know, where where buyers will say, okay, you know, what, at five at five and a half percent, I’m ready to commit because I want to get my house, and a seller, I don’t know is that I’m at the point yet. I guess it would depend locally on how much that valuation or how much their home value has increased over whatever period of time they’ve owned it, where they can still walk out with what they want from the deal, you know, but I guess it’s all just to kind of a wait and see kind of thing, you know, because there’s so many factors at play.

Ian Robertson
So I guess that brings me back to the point I was trying to make that I don’t think it’s so dependent on the interest rate as it was before. Because I mean, it comes down to people just getting out there and doing it. I think people need to get used to the new interest rates, because let’s be honest, 3.5% and stuff like that, that those are just stupid low numbers. I’ve said that before. It doesn’t need to be that low, but people were used to it. So now they’re, what a year and a half, maybe almost two years away from when the interest rates were that low. And they’re like, Well, I want to wait till they get that low. I think what we need to get into as a market where people view 5.5% as a good interest rate, and that’ll happen people will get tired of sitting and feeling stuck in one spot. And then they’ll be like, You know what, 5.5% It hasn’t been that low in two years. 6.25% I can handle that. But right now I think mentally it’s like the stock market is all about emotion. People are scared, stock market goes down. People are confident, stock market goes up. It’s the same thing with the housing market. People are like, I feel good with this number, houses will start moving, I think it comes down to inventory. Like I’ve been watching the spring market happen in my area just locally. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this few houses actually pop up on the market in the springtime, not even during the Great Recession. Just anecdotally. I’m like man, I just don’t remember this few houses coming on. Because even during the great recession, we had repose, you know, your house gets repossessed, and then yeah, it was a fixer upper, but you’d have some houses to look at. I was actually just reading in that same article on Forbes, that according to National Association of Realtors, repossessed houses, foreclosures, are actually lower now than they were pre pandemic and they were super low pre pandemic. So I imagine there’s a lot of unhappy house flippers out there, which for every home inspector that you are listening to this, you just smiled a little bit, didn’t ya, house flippers, finally gone.

Beon DeNood
So house flippers and home inspectors are not good buddies.

Ian Robertson
Oh my goodness. It’s like the Jedi and the Sith man. You know they’re doing something you just got to figure out what,

Beon DeNood
Kind of see where it is.

Ian Robertson
Inspecting a flip I’ve always said is like an Easter egg hunt. And I would never scare my clients. But I would always train the agents, I’m like if we have flip, we’re gonna be finding some stuff. So prep the clients, tell em it’s like an Easter egg hunt. And they’d always prep them for me and stuff like that. And be like, you’re ready? And one client even said said, you’re gonna find some Easter eggs isn’t gonna be great. Just the craziest stuff I had…

Beon DeNood
That is too funny.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I had one where the main drain didn’t work. They’d never run water. So I turn on the shower, showers going into the crawlspace, we’re trying to do a sewer scope, the sewer scope goes like 10 feet and hits this big blockage of we still don’t know what, the flippers getting all mad at us. Everything worked perfectly fine until you got here. And I’m like, because I disconnected all your drains from your showers. They had a water heater. I’d never seen this before. It was a 25 year old water heater that had never been used. And they installed it. I didn’t even know how to I’m like, how, why? They’re like I got it on sale. I’m like, Okay, it’s 25 years old. I’m gonna report this 25 years old. I’m like, this is weird.

Beon DeNood
Oh my goodness, flip, flippers. Beware, everybody listening to this podcast is now armed with this knowledge.

Ian Robertson
I have no problem with the flipper. It’s the flip I have a problem with. But ya know, house flippers are hurting right now. Because foreclosures, there’s just nothing. There’s nothing out there for them right now.

Beon DeNood
Yeah. And I think that also supports some a lot of people will compare this to what happened in 2008. Following 2008, the difference in the market was that there was, you know, the reason crisis happened was because of the bad credit, you know, people were in over their heads. So there was just a lot of inventory, because there were a lot of foreclosures, that’s not the same market we’re in now, we’re not expecting that same inventory flood to happen.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. So that’s a weird, weird issue that the US and Canada has not been in, ever, if not in a long time, where it’s just like, hey, guys, we could change interest rates all day, there’s just no houses for sale. In the short term. The builders are ramping up a bit. So applications for building permits, and things like that are up, and builders are starting to put up inventory. But builders are not building fast enough to complement the inventory. And things still just fly off the shelf. You know, I was talking with another home inspector about this, basically. I mean, we were talking about fiat currency and the race to the bottom and all that stuff. But it’s basically making housing unattainable for the average person. So I mean…

Beon DeNood
Yeah, that’s up there.

Ian Robertson
$363,000 I believe the number was that National Association of REALTORS gave for the median house price. That’s expensive for the average family. I mean, right? So the average US family makes something with two incomes something a little in the $70,000 range, right. So for them, the median household income to meet median house price, that’s difficult for them. That’s if not impossible for most families. So it’s, it’s basically making a house a commodity, that people can’t afford anymore. You know, so affordable housing is becoming a little bit of a little bit of a problem out there. And it’ll correct itself to a degree. But it’s gonna go up and down, in my opinion, and still go on the upward trend of pushing the average person out of the housing market.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, it is a sad reality. Looking at renting, too. So you know, if you don’t own a house, you’re a first time buyer, you’re looking to buy those buyers are renting right now. And that’s the one part of the industry that has seen a little bit of a respite where renting rates are not, they’ve actually sort of reached kind of a plateau. So that comes with some relief to folks who, you know, are having to rent not able to buy a house yet. But it all depends on where this thing goes, you know, how much the Fed feels, they still have to cool things. It’ll all have an effect, you know, interesting, you know, what you saying on inventory, and it does check out we’re still low inventory, even builders, they’re under pressure, because the cost to buy, build a house is still a lot higher than what it was, you know, some years ago, or even last year this time. So it they’ve had a little bit of a break, but their margins are still really, really tight. So they’re not looking to extend themselves super far by just building a ton of houses. They got to be careful, too. But yeah, it is interesting. It’ll be it what the prediction that has been made, at least is that overall, obviously, this varies by local market. Overall, we will still continue continue to see some devaluation stabilization of home values going on. Now, I’m not sure how that relates to inventories. But I was hoping that if we do see a little bit of a respite in in interest rates, and that if inventory, stabilizes if we, if we don’t go to this major issue when nobody wants to move, that we could see some movement in the market, but it can also go the other way. Because if like what you’re saying is if inventory remains a chief issue in the housing market, and if the bond market cools down and interest rates have to go up, then then we’re dealing with with a bit of a problem, with a bit of a drought. And from my vantage point, I have no idea how to predict which way It’s going to go, I think that’s kind of how everybody’s feeling at the moment.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I’m kind of, for the most part sticking to, if we’re talking about predictions, this is my prediction. And again, I’m not a financial expert, I’m not a real estate expert. I’m an old home inspector that’s just seen the market go up and down before. Unless the builders can really push new inventory in, the rest of this year is still just going to be meh, at best. And I use a term M-E-H, meh, because as soon as the house comes on the market, it gets sold, people are still skipping inspections in certain markets. But that has gone down like crazy, it’s still not nowhere near as bad as it was last year, because there’s actually a bunch of lawsuits that are happening, because agents had skipped the inspection or never get the house, now people are in a house, and they’re losing a bunch of money, which by the way, has pushed a couple of states and at least one province in Canada to discuss making home inspections a requirement, which I have a whole thing about that I actually think that is going to be good. But then it’s also going to commoditize the home inspection industry, and have a similar effect, like licensing does. So that’s a whole different podcast. But either way, I don’t think people are going to be skipping inspections as much. I do think this spring is doing okay, for the most part in most markets. We have data that we look at and home inspectors that we talked to anecdotally and things are looking better, at least better than they were the last half of, the last half of last year. 2024 is still going to be our year, in my opinion, just got to make it through this one. This spring is not that bad. And I could be wrong, maybe something turns around. And people are like, Hey, let’s start moving again later this year, and we feel comfortable with the interest rates. But I think sitting around waiting for interest rates to go down and inventory to come up is like sitting there waiting for the grass to grow. It’s just, it’s just gonna be mind numbing, I think we just need to wait till people get comfortable with the new norm, and then start trading houses. You know, that’s that’s really what it comes down to. My uncle used an illustration one time imagine six people standing in a circle with $1 bill, the faster they pass that $1 bill around, the more times you make that $1 in an hour, so the slower they go, the slower you make that dollar bill. So switch out that dollar bill with a house, we need the houses to change hands more often. The faster they change hands, the more often they change hands, the more often a home inspection happens. If that happens, that’s great for our market. Whatever happens with real estate agents and other stuff, that’s going to be secondary to we just basically need the houses to move and change hands faster.

Beon DeNood
Yeah. And that’s the focus, I guess, that we shouldn’t forget about is it’s based on transaction volume that determines you know, how the home inspection market is doing. And, yeah, there were some positive indicators there in February. But then we’ve had a few other factors. So let’s see how it goes. You know, I feel maybe the episode would be incomplete without mentioning at least mentioning the word recession, because even if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s on everybody’s minds. We’ve touched on it before. But what are your thoughts? Well, first of all, predicting recessions almost, it’s almost impossible. It’s hard. You know, if you want to go there you can, Ian, I’m not that brave. But I think what I’m interested is a recessions effect on the home inspection market. Like if if it were to go that way, how’s it going to look? Or, I don’t know, what are your, what are your general thoughts?

Ian Robertson
I mean, predicting a recession is easy, because you can just say I predict, in about 10 years from the last recession will be another recession. And you’re, and you’re gonna be right. I mean, it’s market correction. We all worry about recessions, because we’re like, oh, we’re going to lose this and that. It’s a market correction, it’s going to happen. It’s like worrying about the wave as it’s going to hit you, worrying about is not going to change that wave. So we can’t sit and worry about that. If there is a recession, I have always said that is great for home inspectors. When it becomes in a recession, it typically becomes a buyers market. Houses start to devalue, more foreclosures happen. There is more inventory. And right as you start to swing out of the dip, that’s when we start to make most of our money, to be honest, that’s when businesses are built. Businesses are not built during the booms that happened in 2020. That’s when you think you’re building a business. And then all of a sudden the market changes and you have to layoff all your guys and you’re down. You’re down and your numbers aren’t working. Built when half of your competition is gone out of business, which I’ll be honest with you, if you’re, if you haven’t talked around, a lot of guys talk a big game. There’s a lot of home inspectors out there that are still hurting and a lot that I know of that have gone out of business. I’ve been trying to pull together solid numbers, but it’s really hard to tell because you have one guy that was doing three inspections a week. How do you technically say when he’s out of business? You know, he did one last month. He didn’t, didn’t do two in January or February, do you say that he’s out of business? You know, so it’s really hard to say, but a lot of home inspection companies are going out of business. And one of the biggest inspection companies recently started laying a lot of guys off, one of the biggest inspection companies in the country, leave their name out of it, great company, but it’s just a matter of the market. You know, so recession, though, is good for the home inspection industry. There’s more inventory. There’s, yes, there’s fewer buyers, but fewer buyers, more inventory also means more inspections, and they’re going to be choosier, and investors are gonna buy two or three houses. So you get two and three inspections out of them, etc.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, okay, no, good. And that was the sound bite I was, I was looking for, because that’s what I thought in my mind, you know, because recessions typically have not been bad for the housing market. As far as you know, transaction volume is concerned. So at least that maybe for somebody who’s listening to this, if you’re hearing the recession, oh and there’s a recession coming, but you know, wait, if that does end up happening, we have no idea if it will or not, it’s not necessarily bad for your inspection business.

Ian Robertson
You know, and I said this before, we may have already had a recession, because they kind of redefine it every once in a while, as to meet certain markers. And it depends on who you ask. Like, in New York State, my wife was just telling me how kids in New York State did really bad on the English tests. So instead of saying, Well, how can we improve the school system? They actually lowered the standards, and are having all the kids retest? Oh, come on. That’s, that’s they didn’t have that around when I was a kid. I failed like every test. But it’s kind of like doing the same thing for a recession, people are so scared of that word, is that they change the standards all the time for a recession. It has to meet XYZ, well, XYZ plus B, and an XYZ plus B plus D and a half, but not always X.

Beon DeNood
Right.

Ian Robertson
So to say that we’re in a recession, it has to get pretty bad. And somebody has to actually stand there and say, yeah, we’ve been in recession for two years, and we’ve just denied it. I mean, there were aspects of a recession since 2020. And it could have already gone past and maybe in 10 years, we’ll say, yeah, that was pretty much recession. But it’s not being said now, but that’s just my opinion. I’m not a financial expert, by any means. I just, I just watched the markers. And I’m like, wait a minute, didn’t we just meet a whole bunch of markers here? Like, no, no, no, no, we’re not recession. We don’t like the R word.

Beon DeNood
No, it’s true. And I think a lot of it also just comes down to how it affects you personally, you know, if you ride through a recession, and you’re able to still keep your livelihood or you keep your job and, you gotta maybe tighten up spending a little bit, but you ride it out, and you do pretty good. Your story about whether there was a recession or not, is gonna differ a little sentimentally anyways, to somebody who lost their job and couldn’t find another one and, you know, couldn’t pay their mortgage payments, then it’s like, oh, yeah, recession, big time. So, you know, I think there’s the, you always say the word anecdotally, there’s the anecdotal like, stories around around a recession and whether it happened or not, it’s a very personal experience. But yeah, it’s interesting to watch, you know, I guess what they obviously still trying to do, what the government has its eye on is trying to make sure that the the red hot economy that you know, was pushing us higher and higher, bigger, bigger, that we come off of that growth, with, I guess they call it a soft landing so that things can kind of be eased back as opposed to crash landing, which would involve a recessionary cycle. But either way, I am not an expert on these things. It’s interesting to watch and see how economics play out but just a few things, at least, I think for the guys to keep their eyes on and to know how these things may affect their business going forth and forward to the rest of the year. You know?

Ian Robertson
Yeah, and I do like that word anecdotal. Because it sounds like a noodle to me. Like would you like some anecdotal with some sauce on it, you know.

Beon DeNood
Anecdotal, anecdotal.

Ian Robertson
No, they say it enough. And it doesn’t sound like a word. Anecdotal. Yeah, I had an anecdotal removed.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, that doesn’t sound pleasant.

Ian Robertson
But anyways, there’s my prediction. I think, Beon, do you agree for the most part or not, I’m sticking to what we were saying, I think spring 2024 still going to be okay, this is when we finally turned around for the most part and I could be wrong but still think the rest of the year is just going to be man, this kind of drags.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, no, look, I don’t see that changing much, at least for the rest of the year. But as far as the rest of it from my point of view, I don’t feel like I personally can make any, you know, real peg on which way this thing’s gonna go. I feel there’s just too many factors at play in the current market.

Ian Robertson
Hang on, hang on, hang on, your opinion can’t be, I don’t have an opinion because there’s too many factors, you have to have an opinion.

Beon DeNood
My, my opinion is, is that there’s too many things going on in the market for us to definitively say what is going to happen. And I think that’s where a lot of the guys are at the moment. But yeah, I’m, you know, I’m not quite pleading the fifth, but maybe I am in a way.

Ian Robertson
All right. So my opinion, I’ve made clear and Beon’s opinion is he has no opinion. So we’ll, we’ll leave it at that. But Beon, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be on the show. It’s always great when the architect of our home inspection app can be on and share his thoughts. Thank you very much. We’ll have you on again soon.

Beon DeNood
Thanks Ian, always great to talk with you. Take care.

Ian Robertson
Thanks.

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