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565: The Tax Trap Hiding in Your Home Sale, Life's Too Short to Be Cheap
About this Episode
Keith discusses strategies to avoid capital gains tax on primary residences, highlighting the potential impact of the "No Tax on Home Sales Act" proposed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
He explains the current tax exemption thresholds of $250,000 for singles and $500,000 for married couples, noting that 34% of homeowners could exceed the single filer threshold.
Keith also explores the rise of small investors in the housing market, representing 30% of purchases, and the potential of peer-to-peer storage and parking platforms to generate income from underutilized property.
And concludes with a critique of government dependency through Section 8 housing.
Resources:
You can see the video footage of that section 8 clip here.
Show Notes:
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Complete episode transcript:
Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai
Keith Weinhold 0:01
Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, when you sell your primary residence, you need to pay capital gains tax. Learn how to avoid it, then how to increase your rental income with new peer to peer platforms. And finally, a perspective on capitalism and collectivism, with Section Eight housing today on get rich education.
Speaker 1 0:27
Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests and key top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki, get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast or visit get rich education.com
Speaker 1 1:12
You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 1:28
Welcome to GRE from st, Joseph, Missouri to st, Albans, Queens in New York City and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith weinholden. You and I are back together here for another wealth building week. This is get rich education, the Treasury and the Fed keep conspiring to print dollars like crazy, create currency, debasing every single dollar that you're currently holding onto. They are stealing your purchasing power, stealing the value of your work and your grit. It makes dollars pretty fake, since they can just be conjured out of thin air, therefore your job is to convert fake dollars into real assets. That's what you need to do, and this is a strategy that dominates. Like Sydney Sweeney, they print more money, causing inflation, so you have to invest in assets, but then they put a capital gains tax on those assets so that most people never escape inflation. But of course, as real estate investors, we have a strategy to avoid capital gains taxes. Well, I'll talk about that more later.
Keith Weinhold 2:46
I mentioned to you on an earlier episode that I recently attended my high school class reunion in Pennsylvania. It was just a few weeks ago, out in a rural area with a lodge and trees and grass and inflation came up in a conversation between me and a few classmates that was some time before we played cornhole in badminton. I talked about how I sort of enjoy spending money. One classmate replied that he is cheap. I don't really directly respond to something like that, but my preeminent thought when someone says that they're cheap is that life is too short to be cheap. There is a way to guarantee an improvement to your quality of life and your standard of living, and that is spending it can do exactly that invest Well, first, that's an antecedent, and then you can spend now, in the short run, when you're young, living below your means that can make some sense, until you've accumulated some Capital, sure, but when you're age 30 to 35 plus, like my classmates and I are Sheesh, you've got to have yourself figured out better by then than to still be cheap make your quality of life exceed your cost of living, because at least here on Earth, this is your last life ever the risk of too much delayed gratification is denied gratification. So be more frugal with your time than your money. And a lot of people point to external circumstances for their circumstances. Most people wait for the economy to change, not realizing that your mindset is the economy that you live in with each property that you own, you just created another small economy that you are in control of. You are at the top of it. Yeah, you created. Another small economy, the actors in it are you, your tenant, your lender, your property manager, your contractors, your utility companies and more, and you control it all. Most people think wealth is created from high salaries, and they go their entire life, therefore chasing the wrong thing, thinking that wealth is created by high salaries all along it squarely is not you get wealthy by owning things, and you certainly won't get wealthy by being cheap. Now, when it comes to owning things, the government taxes you when you profit on those things during your ownership period of them at sale time through the capital gains tax. And of course, we've talked about the specifics in how real estate investors can completely duck out of that with the 1031 tax deferred exchange. But what about homeowners, primary residence owners, they often have to pay it well. President Trump and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene recently suggested either removing this tax or reforming it. Now this would require congressional approval, but most members of Congress own their home, so they could very well be in favor of it. And green introduced what is simply called the no tax on home sales act.
Keith Weinhold 6:29
Let's discuss how this can affect you, especially if you're a homeowner, or even if you don't own a home under the current law, which has been in place since 1997 on a primary residence, your first 250k of profit is sheltered from tax if you're single, the first 500k is sheltered if you're married. This is called the primary residence capital gains tax exemption or exclusion. Let's use an example. Say you bought a home years ago for 500k you're married and you sell the home for $1.3 million that's an 800k gain, alright? Since the first 500k is sheltered from capital gains tax, you would therefore have to pay the tax on just 300k on all but the lowest earners, your capital gains tax is 15 to 20% so this means if you sell this home on that 300k of profit, you'd have to pay a tax bill of between $45k and $60k and you might not be done there. You could also be subject to a net investment income tax of 3.8% on top of that, you cannot duck out of this because the 1031 exchange that's only for investment property, not primary residences, like we're talking about today, with home prices on the rise so much over the last five years, how many people exactly could be subject to this tax? 34% of homeowners could exceed the single filer threshold, and 10% could exceed the married filer threshold. Another way to say this is that only about 10% of US homes have more than 500k of equity in them, and it's the homeowners in high cost states that are most likely to be impacted here, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California and Hawaii, states like that. So therefore this tax it acts as a deterrent to people selling their homes. Now, what about, say, an elderly person with a really modest income that bought a home in Los Angeles for $30,000 back in 1970 and now it's worth $15 million well, they actually would not get caught in this net, because, like I said, for those with lower incomes, and it's below about 47k for single or 94k married, the capital gains tax rate is zero. For most of you listening again, it's going to be 15 to 20% one reason for the President and others wanting to cancel the capital gains tax on primary residences like this is to get the housing market moving again and get more homes available for sale on the market. Now these 250k and 500k thresholds, they have not moved since 1997 almost 30 years here, they haven't been adjusted for inflation and the median home sales price, it's jumped about 190% in that time it was 145k back in 1997 it's 435k today. So is. Home prices appreciate, more and more people will get caught up in paying the capital gains tax if your home value goes up by 10k That's another 10k that's subject to this 15 to 20% Capital Gains Tax, with that erstwhile possible net investment income tax on top of that. Well, what can you do about this growing capital gains tax obligation that you'll have that a lot of homeowners aren't even aware of? Well, even fewer realize that it is possible to reduce your home sales profit by adding capital improvements. That means making home renovations to the original purchase price. So therefore that home kitchen renovation that you were thinking about doing, well that might not be as costly as you think, if it reduces your capital gains tax at sale time to reset what we're talking about here, it's been proposed that the capital gains tax be removed when you sell your primary residence. Usually, we discuss tax on investment properties here, but this is a significant proposal, and whether it happens or not, it helps you understand the housing market and how to limit your personal tax hit now see if the tax were removed, it could be costly, because it would decrease the government's tax revenue, of course. So in my opinion, what I think is really going to happen here, a more likely course of action would be that instead of eliminating this tax they would just move up the threshold, say, from 250 and 500k up to 500k and $1 million another angle to keep in mind is that relaxing the tax that helps out wealthy people more than it helps the poor. Now, house flippers want to pay particular attention to what happens here, for instance, simply eliminating capital gains tax on house sales that could benefit those who buy and flip homes for profit. If policymakers want to benefit only homeowners, then they need to parse that out. Otherwise, this would be a huge boon to eliminating the capital gains tax on House flippers an absolute godsend, a windfall. In any case, relaxing the tax would mean that homeowners who move they would therefore retain more capital to reinvest in their next property, which you could use to outbid others. What does that do that would drive up home prices even more. I mean talking about the capital gains tax on primary residences, its proposal to be removed and what this would do to the housing market.
Keith Weinhold 12:50
Before I tell you about an interesting real estate investing niche and trend, let's pull back and look at the national housing market. The NAR recently let us know that national home prices hit yet another all time high. The median existing home price reached a record high of $435,300 and that is a 2% increase compared to last year. At this time, it's also the 24th consecutive month of year over year price increases. And you know, it's funny, I recently talked to an investor based in Phoenix that also does a little investing in Las Vegas. She thought that national home prices were falling because she sees a little price flattening in her home area, which is a little overbuilt. Well, prices are up as much as 10% in some areas of the Northeast and Midwest, because those areas are substantially underbuilt. I mean, for some perspective here just one metro area, New York City, one city with its population of over 20 million people, has twice as many people as both Arizona at 7 million and Nevada at just 3 million combined. One city twice as much as two entire states combined with all their cities. So it's remarkable how little perspective some people have see my geography degree holder perspective strikes once more again, national existing home prices are up 2% year over year, nominally, pretty modest growth, not that exciting. And who is doing the buying of these homes supporting and driving up prices. Well fewer and through of them are first time home buyers due to the well documented affordability strain. More and more of them are investors. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that investors are responsible for fully 30% of the purchases of. Of both existing homes and new construction homes this year, and this is the highest share since property analytics firm kotality started tracking it 14 years ago. Investors are really buying today, and what kind of investors? Interestingly, it is people just like you. The Wall Street Journal went on to report that smaller investors who own fewer than 100 homes are doing most of the buying. That's a big change from when massive private equity firms like Blackstone and Starwood Capital Group dominated the market. So this 30% of single family home purchases being made by investors today. Smaller investors are 25% and larger ones only accounted for 5% so yeah, the little guys, people like you, they can take bigger risks because they don't have boards and shareholders to answer to, and plus builders with too much inventory are offering them discounts that were once reserved only for the bigger fish. They're being passed on now to smaller investors like you. That's exactly what the journal went on to say, much like we discussed on the show here last week, where builders are giving massive discounts.
Keith Weinhold 16:22
Well, you probably heard it said that Airbnb doesn't own any real estate. Uber doesn't own any cars. Facebook doesn't own any content, and Tiktok has no original videos. Yet, they all dominate their industries. Well, when you own the real estate, you can make the rules and leverage some of these connector platforms to help you rent out space that you own and increase your income. Do you own any property that's sitting vacant with nothing going on on the lot, perhaps even overgrown with weeds and shrubs. You can use an app like neighbor that helps you rent them out as parking spaces. Neighbor.com customers request your space, and you can approve it. They can park their cars on your space or RVs, boats, boats, trailers. This can be especially lucrative if you're a few miles from an airport, and then there are platforms that let you leverage them, sort of like the Airbnb of storage. Roughly one out of every nine Americans is renting a self storage unit, and that's not even counting all the people searching for a spot to park an extra car, boat or RV. At the same time, there are millions of garages, basements, attics, driveways and backyards sitting underutilized across the country now, platforms like store at my house, Pure Storage and park for share, that one is spelled Park, the number four and share, they're all stepping up to connect people who have extra space with the people that need it. And the result is that renters can typically save 50% or more compared to them using traditional storage companies they can rent from you, and it's often more convenient for renters, since the space they're renting that might be just around the corner instead of across town. Neighbor.com is one of the biggest players in this space, though, its founder, his name's Joseph Woodbury. He says you'd be amazed at what people will pay to store something if the location is good and the price is right, they have had a tiny three foot by five foot closet in Manhattan that rented out in a snap, almost instantly in Woodbury. He even uses the platform himself, leasing part of his own driveway to someone with a camper. Now, you probably want to check with your HOA before you do something like that. But like Airbnb neighbor, they earn money by taking a cut of the host's revenue. But unlike Airbnb neighbor, hosts average just 16 minutes per month managing their listings now Woodbury, the neighbor.com owner, he calls it the most efficient, least time intensive form of passive income in America. And the peer to peer storage trend, that's become a great entry point for new investors, especially those that aren't ready to buy a full property. But it's also catching the eye of experience real estate investors who want to squeeze more cash flow out of the land that you already own. Some are turning unused sheds into rentable storage units. Others are converting open acreage into long term parking. I know someone that's hosting campers and. RVs on his 10 acres in Florida, and he expects to earn about $100,000 this year alone from that land. And they say it's mostly hands off. And now, whenever he buys he looks for acreage plus a home so that he can generate multiple income streams from one property. Well, can this peer storage and parking shake up the $500 billion self storage and parking industry the same way that Airbnb rattled the hotel world? Some think the potential is huge, with national occupancy rates for storage centers hovering around 93% there really is not any sign that the market is oversupplied. In fact, even public storage, that's the company name, public storage, they are the country's largest self storage space operator, even they use neighbor to help lease out their leftover inventory, and so do some REITs that have extra space at their office, retail or apartment properties. And as far as the types of listings, people are getting creative on these platforms. They're monetizing everything from empty barns to church parking lots. Think about how much of the week church parking lots sit vacant to vacant strip mall storefronts, and they're using that as parking so more and more people are realizing that there's hidden value in the real estate that they already own, and you can too. If you own the real estate, you make the rules. So check out those four platforms that I mentioned, if you think it can benefit you to increase the income at your properties in this growing peer to peer storage and parking industry. It was around 2010 when Airbnb really started to take off and really take market share away from hotels, and today, these platforms like neighbor store at my house, peer storage and park for share, are taking market share away from traditional, centralized self storage spaces to review what you've learned so far today, if you're going to Live life full time, you can't be perpetually cheap. Be aware of the primary residence capital gains tax and its elimination proposal. Small investor interest is growing now, making up fully 30% of today's home purchases, and grow your income with Pure Storage and parking platforms coming up next, a viral audio clip that borders on the unbelievable and gives you a new perspective on capitalism, collectivism and Section Eight housing, you'll be flabbergasted. I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to Episode 565, of get rich education.
Keith Weinhold 23:00
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Keith Weinhold 23:32
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Kathy Fettke 24:42
you this is the real wealth network's Kathy betke, and you are listening to the always valuable get rich education with Keith Weinhold.
Keith Weinhold 25:00
Keith, you are back inside one of America's longest running and most listened to real estate investing shows. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold, and this is get rich education, the voice of real estate investing. Since 2014 wealthy people's money either starts out or ends up in real estate, we tell you why and show you how. I've got a clip to share with you that gets a little wild. We usually share what I suppose is more cerebral content here, but some real perspective can be gleaned from listening to this. This kid wants to work his mom says, No, you can't, because she'd lose her section eight housing benefit. And apparently, free housing is more valuable than his future. This is about one minute in length,
Unknown Speaker 25:52
not getting no job. If you go get a job, they're going to take my section eight, then you won't be able to get no section eight. You're not going to get no job. They're gonna count your income against my section eight and my link card. You're not working, no. So I don't care what you gotta say. I don't care how you feel. You're not working, you're not going to get a job, you you're not going to school, you're not doing none of that like Ma. I'm saying how I'm supposed to be successful in life, huh? So you basically telling me I gotta I gotta be broke to be successful. I got to be broke so I can get section eight. Government can help you. So the government can help me. So you telling me I can't work, no job, bro. Like, that's like, all my friends got jobs and live and nice houses. So you telling me I got the I got to go through the same thing you went through if you have a house, any of that, they're going to take my section eight. How? What they be like,no, they will look at that and be like, he's doing something. And give me a bigger house. Ma, that's what you told me. I can get off your section eight and apply for my own section eight. Okay, but if you do that, you're gonna have to go the hard way. It's gonna take a long so what? That's what I'm saying. Get on Section Eight. Find you a nice apartment, go get you a link card. You will be fine. You don't have to sit up and work. You don't have to work, no job, if the government is here to help us.
Keith Weinhold 27:11
Gosh, this mom won't let her son work, or else she'll lose their government section eight housing benefit, where taxpayers pay for most of their housing. And by the way, is this real? Is this a rage bait skit? I can't quite tell, but it surfaces some interesting questions. For sure, it is true that section eight housing voucher recipients like her can lose their benefits if the household earns more and exceeds a certain threshold. Gosh, here's the youth that wants to do something and maybe be better and have more than his parents. You should want what's best for your child? Some parents have to beg their children to get a job. This kid is willing to go out and see what he's capable of doing. This eaglet is looking to leave the nest, and you're clipping his wings, and yes, you the listener, are the one paying for their housing. There's no such thing as a free government program, because taxpayers like you and I fund the government section eight housing is therefore tax payer funded at one point. The mom says the government is here to help us. Yeah, this woman is making you poorer. This is where the taxes that get knocked out of your paycheck are going. You're working at a job, spending less time with the people you love, and maybe doing fewer of the activities you love so that she can perpetuate a culture of laziness and government dependency. Another successful entrepreneur or employee is not making you poorer, this woman is making you poorer. Thomas Sowell said it best. He is an author and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's got a lot of brilliant thoughts. Soul famously said, I have never understood why it is greed to want to keep the money you have earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else's money. That's Thomas Sowell. Now it's possible that this woman couldn't get a job that would pay so much more than the section eight income ceiling that it would be worth her getting one. She said there that she doesn't have a job at all. Maybe she has a disability, but there's a video of this. You can see the video. She doesn't appear to be disabled, but the appalling part is that she's discouraging her son from working now. Understand some section eight tenants do work full time jobs, but they're almost certainly going to be really low paying like, say, washing dishes for a restaurant. Section Eight is supposed to be a temporary program. It's supposed to be helpful, not a hindrance. It is a federal program. It's administered by HUD, and it pays the rent money for low income people, allowing them to rent housing out in the private open market. The program has high demand and some long, long waiting lists. They can be years long, even a decade long, waiting list for Section Eight housing some housing authorities even close their wait lists entirely due to the length the overwhelming demand and understand as well, veterans and the elderly are probably on a wait list, waiting for substantially younger people like her to get off the program to qualify for Section Eight, most families need an income below 50% of the area's median income, and your criminal background check has got to be clear, so you don't need to pass some high bar to get into the program. Now, in reality, a large share of the benefit recipients have an income that's under 30% of an area's median and how much of your rent does section eight pay? Participants typically pay a portion of their monthly income toward rent, usually around 30% they pay around 30% where section eight pays 70% I once run into a section eight tenant, and the tenant paid closer to 20% while the program paid 80% for you. And by the way, landlords don't have to accept section eight tenants. It is voluntary, and it pays landlords about the market rate in hot housing markets with fast rising rents. Well, you probably don't want to accept section eight because a regular, unsubsidized tenant is often going to pay you more in a slow rental market, Section Eight is better for landlords. Now, some landlords like section eight because it is guaranteed rent income, but some don't like it because they say they get low quality tenants. Well, foreign landlord can rent to a section eight tenant, a person called a case manager inspects the unit, and I think I shared with you before that, the first one that inspected mine, they wrote me up because they said that one of my Windows didn't open all the way. I fixed it, and the tenant stayed two years before they moved. But the average duration of time that a tenant spends in the program is six to nine years. It is supposed to be a short term bridge, but often becomes a long term subsidy people get dependent on the handout. HUD tells us that only one in seven families leave the program due to increased income, and there is a strong stigma around section eight housing, for sure. Who knows? To shake the stigma, maybe they will just change the name of the program. That happens sometimes, sort of like how they changed the name of the food stamps program to snap. And by the way, the link card that she mentioned in the video that is for food assistance. That's actually the name of the snap card in the state of Illinois. Oh, dear God bless America, training her kids to live off the government. I almost feel trashy after thinking about this. I'm probably going to go shower next now. Should the minimum wage be high enough that everyone can afford at least a one bedroom apartment, and therefore people wouldn't need section eight? Well, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 it's been stuck there since 2009 the economic commentator Peter Schiff, who I had lunch with a couple times last month, he and his wife Peter, makes the case that there should be no minimum wage at all. That is government intervention in the free market. If you make the minimum wage too high, people get laid off and people get replaced by robots. That's just what's really happened in practice, if a person can only make the minimum wage, they need to get better, and they need to skill up, is what Peter contends. Now, when I graduated college, I would have thought that premise sounded ridiculous. No minimum wage. But the more I think about it and the more I experience life, it does begin to make more sense. The fresh post collegiate me would have said that, ah, a working human being, they deserve the dignity of a minimum wage. That's livable, but some time and perspective has me saying that you are the one that brings dignity to your work, your earning potential and your life. It's not up to someone else to provide you with dignity. You don't lean on the government for your dignity. Learn more, be better, skill up. You'll be dignified, and you're going to earn multiples more than minimum wage. When it comes to the section eight, mom, everyone would like to live at the expense of the state, but few realize that the state lives at the expense of everyone else. If you'd like to see the video footage of that section eight clip that I played and more of my commentary on it. It's pretty interesting that should be available on our YouTube channel now. The channel name is get rich education. What else would it be for the production team here at GRE? That's our sound engineer, Vedran Dzampo , who has edited every single GRE episode since 2014, QC and show notes. Brenda Almendadadas, video lead, Binaya Gyawali video strategy lead, Talha Mughal, video editor, Sorosa KC and producer me, we'll run it back next week for you. If you'd like the show, please tell a friend about it. I'd really appreciate you sharing it until then, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.
36:29
Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice if the means of guests are their own information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC exclusively.
Keith Weinhold 36:53
You know, whenever you want the best written real estate and finance info, oh, geez, today's experience limits your free articles access, and it's got paywalls and pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers, it's not so great. So then it's vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that adds no hype value to your life. That's why this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor, and it's to the point because even the word abbreviation is too long, my letter usually takes less than three minutes to read. And when you start the letter, you also get my one hour fast real estate. Video, course, it's all completely free. It's called the Don't quit your Daydream. Letter, it wires your mind for wealth, and it couldn't be easier for you to get it right now. Just text gre 266, 866. While it's on your mind, take a moment to do it right now. Text, gre 266, 866,
Keith Weinhold 38:08
The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, getricheducation.com.
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