Ask Michael Anything – Real estate questions answered

In today's episode, we pulled together a list of questions that we were unable to answer in a recent webinar. The questions range from rising interest rates, market selection, the trade-off between cash-flow and appreciation, property management, cap-ex assumptions, and short-term rentals. --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What’s going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by…   Pierre: Pierre Carrillo…   Michael: …and we're going to be tackling some of the questions that you all asked from our AMA webinar the other night that we hosted as part of the Roofstock Academy. So we're going to be taking all or some of the questions we didn't get to, and answering them here. So these are all questions that your peers and fellow investors threw out to us, so let's jump right into it.   So Pierre, we had a bunch of really great questions come in from the AMA webinar we did the other night and for anyone not familiar, AMA is an acronym it stands for, it stands for ask me anything and we kind of spun it because my name starts with the first my name starts with an M, so it would be titled the webinar Ask Michael anything. So it was just a webinar where we had tons of folks come on and ask all their real estate questions that they've been dying to ask since and we just went through and answer them and had a really great conversation. Unfortunately, since we had so many great questions, we weren't able to get to all of them. So everything from today's episode comes to us from that webinar. So you want to just start tossing some out, Pierre.   Pierre: Sounds good. All right. So we have one here that says, with the increasing interest rates, increasing the cost of borrowing money, is it a good time to invest in real estate, what do you think, Mike?   Michael: It's such a good question and traditional finance and economics tells us that with an increase in interest rate, we tend to see a decrease in purchase price, or in list price, which in many markets around the country, I just don't think that we've seen yet and I think that the interest rate is often a leading measure and price can be a lag measure for those lead lag measures. So I have said, and I will continue to say that if the fundamentals make sense, i.e. the numbers that you're calculating makes sense, providing you an acceptable return, interest rate and purchase price are not really prevalent in that equation and what I mean by that is if interest rate hits 10%, but I'm still able to make these properties, cash flow out of cash on cash return, that's acceptable to me, I'm going to move forward with the deal and so I think that if we, if everybody listening, if everyone, all the investors out there continuing to do the same thing, and stop paying attention to the interest rate that as a number, but rather look at kind of the whole picture as the whole pie, it starts to become a little bit easier to digest. Now, if the interest rates are throwing your buy box out of spec, and you can't hit the returns that you're targeting, yeah, maybe that maybe that means let's press pause for a minute, take some time, retool, go get educated, go save up some cash for your next down payment for if and when interest rates do come back into check. But we don't know when that's gonna happen and so if in a year from now, interest rates are at 7,8,9 percent, a lot of us are probably gonna be looking backward and say, man, 5,6,7 percent, maybe wasn't such a bad deal. So I would say don't count on things changing. But you have to get back to fundamentals and do what makes sense for you as an investor.   Pierre: Yeah and if you look at interest rates, historically, 5-6% is still pretty dang low compared to you know, when some of the big dogs made their way in the in this industry.   Michael: Yes, very much, so.   Pierre: Another thing that you brought up, I believe in a past episode was that if you're an all cash buyer, it could be advantageous to you because it's kind of eliminating some of the competition that's coming in with borrowed money. So yes, another thing to think about.   Michael: Absolutely and suddenly, I always talked about it in the academy is like leveraging your primary, your primary residence, in terms of cashing out refi or getting a HELOC on the property. The owner occupant money is always cheaper than investor money and so if you can get a great rate on a primary residence, and then use that money to go invest, that can be a really strong a strong tool to happier to wealth as well.   Pierre: Nice. Alright, let's dig out another one. Okay, this next question here says I'm totally lost. How do I find a good market these days and how do you invest in properties with no cash flow? Do you put money in every month looking for appreciation down the road?   Michael: It's a really good question. I think a lot of folks who are just getting started probably feel similarly to us. So getting started in identifying a market you can you can approach is one of two ways and you can let the deal dictate the market or you can let the market dictate the deal and one of those is probably going to feel easier and what I mean by that is you can go pick a market, let's say you are really interested in Tampa, Florida, because you've heard great things about Tampa, Florida or you have family that lives there or you maybe have visited there, wherever you reasoning justification. Start at the market level and go do some research into Tampa, Florida as a market and decide if that's summer that you want to invest. Do the economics make sense to you? Do you believe in the market as a whole are things trending in a positive direction? Let's say all those things, check out now let's go look at the deals, let's go get granular and look at what types of deals exist in the Tampa market and you might find the Tampa market has deals that support your investment by blocks your investment thesis, and the market does too. So that's going to be a go for you versus letting the deal dictate the market. Let's say you pull up Zillow, or you go on roof stock, and you're looking at properties all over the country and you just try to find something that it was within your budget from a bed bath count that fits your buy box as well, you're gonna find properties all over the country that fit your buy box and make sense as an investment for you. Well, now we need to zoom out a little bit and find out if Chattanooga Tennessee is a market that you're interested in investing in and whichever way you approach it, if you approach it from the deal level first or from the market level.   First, you're going to find great deals and terrible markets, you're going to find great markets that have terrible deals. So it's an iterative process, whichever way you approach it. But as someone that's very numbers driven, I was always letting the deal dictate the market and I was purchasing properties throughout the country, knowing what I know, now I maybe wouldn't have purchased some of those deals because they're in markets that I don't think really appreciated much over time and they haven't appreciated much over time and so while I was focused on cash flow, that wasn't a big issue for me, again, now I'm in kind of the second part of my career, I would be putting more of an emphasis on appreciation and so I would make decisions a little bit differently. But so think about what it is you're trying to accomplish. Are you trying to accomplish appreciation? Or is that really what your main driver is? Are you really looking for cash flow? Is that your main driver, and that's going to help direct you as to what markets to participate in and again, pick whichever one is more fun for you. Do you want to approach it from the deal level first? Do the numbers get into the nitty gritty and then zoom out or do you want to look at do you like looking at demographic information, population economic information from the macro level, and then zooming in to property specific stuff? One of those is probably going to feel easier, I would start there and then to the second part of that question of how are you investing in properties that don't cash flow? Are you, are you sinking money to them every month? My answer is no, I don't invest in properties that don't cashflow and like I was just mentioning cash flow is the main focus for me back when I first started investing. Now that shifted a little bit to definitely more of a balanced approach, I want there to be at the appreciation potential as well as the cash flow, and you tend to have a tradeoff, if you're going to take some appreciation, you're likely going to give up a little bit of cash flow, and vice versa. So depending on what's important to you, if you are someone that's looking for a cash flow property, I would say don't go buy properties that don't cash flow and if you are looking for someone, if you are someone looking for appreciation, that's a very realistic possibility. In today's market, you might have to put money into this property every single month just to make your mortgage payment. That's not something that I'm comfortable doing. A lot of investors would tell you to shy away from that, because that could be considered speculation. You're hoping your property appreciates and if it doesn't, if it goes the other way, well, now you've just got a property that is worth less than you paid for it and you're putting money into it every single month. So I see cashflow as your defense for a lot of folks appreciation as your offense. So just think about what's important to you and if the market turns are you okay, putting money into an asset every single month that is worth less than you bought it for and that often it gives you your answer.   Pierre: So kind of I want to expand on this one a little bit. Given that, you know, there's like the slider there where the house that appreciates more might cash flow a little bit less and high cash flowing property might appreciate less. Given that you're later on in your career of investing in real estate and you're looking more to appreciation, how much cashflow are you willing to sacrifice to make that appreciation play?   Michael: Yuuh, such a good question. If you're looking for the secret sauce or yeah… , you know, I think it really depends on everyone's personal preference, my kind of minimum cash flow that I was targeting back in the day, it was like 100 to 150 bucks a month per door and when I was buying multifamily properties, that's kind of still around where I am, but I'm willing to look to fudge the numbers a little bit less to make the numbers work. So I would probably be okay with 75 to 100 bucks a month, maybe even 60 bucks a month for multifamily stuff, because of the appreciation potential that that is there. But it really it has to be there. It can't just be speculation, it really has to be these properties are under market value or there's some capex that I could do to improve the value of the property. I'm really now focusing more on short term rentals and getting involved in that space and so that's a totally sort of different calculation. As far as like cash flow goes, you're looking at a gross annual number as opposed goes to a monthly cashflow number. And so I'm willing to take less in terms of cash on cash return in those instances, because the purchase prices are higher, and so the actual cash flow dollars that I'm ending up with each month tend to be higher, but on a percentage basis as a percentage of how much money I'm putting into the deal, they are not as attractive as they used to be, or as I used to demand that I that I hid. And part of that is because I am just no longer in growth mode. I don't need to grow as aggressively as I have in the past. And so I'm okay taking a not as attractive return. Because it's easier or because I think it's a good deal. I don't need to hit 7,8,9, 10, 11 13%, you know, 6,7,8 percent. That's kind of good in my book at this stage in the game.   Pierre: Cool. Thanks for that.   Michael: Yeah, totally.   Pierre: Got a quick one here. How do I get a pre-approval letter from the financial institutions for commercial multifamily as a foreign investor?   Michael: That's a really good question. It's all going to be lender specific lender dependent and so some lenders are going to say, hey, send me your bank statements send me your PFS, your personal financial statement, send me Just some background information around who you are as an individual and what your financial picture looks like and they'll write your letter on the spot that day sort of a thing, other lenders are going to be a lot more tedious about it, they're going to want to pull credit and do a bit more of a full cavity search, as I like to call it into your financial background to see how you qualify as a borrower. Because remember, commercial lenders are more so looking to the property to carry the debt as opposed to you as the borrower. But until they have the property to underwrite and to work with, it's tough to give you that letter, because they don't know what the property looks like. So they have to default to looking to you as the borrower. So it's kind of like chicken or the egg situation. If you're looking to get involved in your first commercial multifamily deal, your first commercial deal, I'm assuming you're using recourse debt, because you're under that, just assuming you're using recourse that the lender is going to look to you as the borrower, and they are still going to underwrite you as the guarantor and they'll probably make you sign a personal guarantee and so you can usually get a letter from those institutions from those lenders, if you have a strong enough financial background. So I would just chat with them and the fact that you're a foreign investor, I mean, there might be some complications are hurdles to get through there. But as long as you've got assets here locally in the States, I would imagine that they're going to be a lot more comfortable with that, as opposed to having all of your assets somewhere else overseas, that they might not be able to claw back, because you could sign a personal guarantee. But if none of your stuff is here, then they're probably going to make that's probably going to make them uncomfortable. So think about that. But have those conversations with lenders with different lenders, and ask what is it that they need from you.   Pierre: I can't add anything there. So sounds good. Also can verify if anything you said was right.   Michael: Neither can I, oh, man, this is just you know, off the cuff.   Pierre: So the next one here: What all does a property manager? Do? I have been thinking I want to self-manage, but I don't have all the contacts?   Michael: Yeah, so it's another really good question. I mean, all these really good questions. So property manager is responsible for really the day to day management of the property. So from placing a tenant to managing the tenant relationship to collecting rents or handling all the repairs for that property, they're going to handle the day to day stuff, they might even handle bigger projects, bigger capex stuff, if you're doing a remodel, they might be willing to participate in that. But that usually is a little bit outside the scope of a general property management agreement. So if you're thinking about self-managing, I think it can make sense for a lot of people it can also really not make sense for others and so I think it's important to get your head around what is involved in managing a property day to day, how much time is involved, what are the typical repair calls that come in what is your Rolodex need to look like in order for you to self-manage, if you've got a good handy person, a good plumber, or a good electrician that you can call on a whim and they can get out there within a couple of days, that's probably a good place to start. As terms in terms of what you'll likely need, having a home warranty can also actually be a pretty good way to go if you're self-managing or also, if you're not self-managing. I'm a big proponent and believer in home warranties. I just had them replace the furnace in my primary residence, which was several $1,000. So a good home warranty company can definitely be worth its weight in gold, but they often have their own vendors and so if you call them up, and you're like, hey, I've got this leak. They might have a network that you get to plug into they might send someone out there and so you might not necessarily need your own Rolodex or your own contact list for folks. Now if you'd like now, Michael, I'm not into home warranties. But I still do want to self-manage, figuring out what are like the parts of the home that tend to have the biggest issues and for my variance has been plumbing and electrical and so if you have those folks on hand, you can call them up, they can come take care of you, that's great. Versus a property manager, they're likely going to have their own folks as well, their own team, they might even have handy folk, in house on staff and so you might be getting, they might be getting better rates than you as an individual and so it's kind of like the Costco affects your property managers buying in bulk, so to speak, in terms of repair and maintenance, versus you as an individual might just be a loan shopper.   So it's important to think about what you know, what is that worth to you and also think about how much time you're actually going to spend managing the property versus what you have to pay someone else to do it. So a lot of people will say, oh, I don't want to pay someone 10%. That's, you know, I can be paying that to myself, well, if your property rents are 1500 bucks a month, that's $150 a month you're paying someone else to manage the property. If you spend 10 hours managing that property yourself doing whatever, coordinating repairs, handling maintenance requests, you're essentially valued your time at $15 an hour. Now, if that's true for you, awesome, that's a great use of your time and that's valuable and money well spent. If you're someone that you think your time is worth more than $50 an hour, it might make sense to actually just go pay someone that property management fee to do that for you on your behalf. So really varies, but that's kind of my take on it, I've always found it more efficient. Because I'm not a property manager to have someone else go and manage the property. I self-manage two properties. One is a central coast rental, that was my primary, I have a long term tenant in there, he's super easy, he's great to work with. So there's nothing that has to get done on any kind of regular basis and as part of a condo association, by the way, so the exterior maintenance, roof, painting, all that kind of stuff is taken care of. I don't have to coordinate anything. And then the other one is my private residence. It's a house hack duplex upstairs, downstairs. So we're here. So it makes sense for us to manage that as well.   Pierre: Mike, have any of your properties ever costed you 10 hours a month?   Michael: Yeah, I mean, no not those specifically not the ones I self-manage. But in terms of the ones that have it or management? You better believe it like…   Pierre: Oh, not during a rehab, but just kind of in regular maintaining your property.   Michael: A lot of the multifamily stuff. Yeah, I would say there's definitely someone is spending more than 10 people hours, you know, per property, and gets a little bit different because the rents are tend to be quite a bit higher on those multifamily because you get the economies of scale. But it's just, it's just like truth be told that worth my time, because I have to go get good at all of the stuff that they do and I'm frankly just not willing to do that at this stage. In my life and career, I have so many other priorities, and places where my time is better spent, that it just doesn't make sense for me to do that. Now, if I were just starting out, maybe a different story and I think that there is some merit to self-managing, because you learn what it takes to manage and so then you can really be scrupulous as you're talking to other property managers and evaluating other property managers and it's kind of testing them that what their systems are, as opposed to me I kind of just have taken them at their word after interviewing multiple and seeing which ones I work well with. So it really depends on who you are, as an individual, what it is you're looking to accomplish. How do you value your time and what are your other priorities? For me, it's always just made sense to give that to a manager and let me focus on other things.   Pierre: Do you think there's different tiers of property that would lend better to self-management?   Michael: A 1,000% and that's a super great question. To kind of clarify, so my property down on Central Coast, it's a long term rental, I was managing it myself as a short term rental, but it was 30 Day minimums. So it's kind of midterm and then I had a tenant asked if they can move in full time for a year, that's been super easy and so they pay a significant amount in rent. It's an easy property, it's a new word of property. 1990s build, so not a ton of old stuff and I know it, I know the property I used to live there. So I have contacts there locally. If you're talking about a rougher property, that's an older property that constantly is in need of repair and maintenance, you know, all those calls, you could get a call to have a $10 repair, you could get a call to have a $10,000 repair, but the time it takes to coordinate could be the exact same and so I think for those little kind of death by 1000 cuts type of stuff. Those are much easier to give to a property manager. Also in areas that you have high evictions or high tenant turnover. That can be easier to get to property manager because chasing down these folks to deal with the court system, which is a local court system which will be different than from that watch where you live. Figuring out all these nuances could just be too much hassle more hassle than it's worth. That being said, I mean coach Dean as part of the Research Academy, he lives in South Africa. He used to live in the States but he invests In the Midwest, he, he manages himself, he manages everything himself remotely from South Africa and systems and teams in place to help him do that. So that worked really well for him. So it's not that you can't do it, you just have to really figure out, where's your time best spent? What do you enjoy doing? I mean, he seems to enjoy that kind of stuff, so that's great. You know if that's if that's your kind of personality, more power to you.   Pierre: Yeah. So ironically, the short term rental, which has the highest turnover, and much like an elevated level of maintenance seems like a lot of the people in that short term rental space are doing their own management. Are you self-managing your short term rental or do you have a property management company for working for you?   Michael: So the ones out in Tennessee?   Pierre: Yeah.     Michael: Yeah, so we've got a management company handling those, we're debating taking over management of one of them. If we do it, probably one of the one. Again, it's just something that our time, when I say arts, collective art, my wife and I, our time is spent out better elsewhere in our opinions, we find that our time is gets us a halt a higher return elsewhere. But you're right, a lot of the short term owners are self-managing and I think it's because a big part of it is so much of it is centralized and when I say it, like the management of these things, so many, like, when you get a new tenant from a long term rental, that 10, it could come from them walking into the property manager's office, from Zillow, it could come from hot pads, there are so many other there are so many different locales in which an inbound lead can come in from, and you've got to handle that inbound, lead and talk to them and screen them, and then give them a tour of the property. So there's a lot involve a lot of steps involved with getting a new tenant physically placed into a property with a short term space. I mean, they're coming through on a couple of different channels, Airbnb, VRBO, maybe direct, but all of that communication is handled centrally, there is no touring of the property, everything is listed online, there's no background check, what are those should be background check, but not in the same capacity as that of a long term tenant and there are just a little bit more protections in place through these channel managers and through these sites, versus that of I have to go understand the lease the state lease that's used in Kentucky, and I have to understand how an eviction works in Kentucky, like oh, that mostly goes out the window when you're using shorter midterm because there is no lease there is no courts involved, it just becomes a lot more transactional and when you have transactions that's just easier to manage, I think is what most people are finding and then there are companies that are built around supporting these types of businesses, they short term rental businesses, so channel managers, and cleaning companies and maintenance companies that you can kind of farm a lot of this stuff out to. So you don't have to be the one picking up the phone every time calling to handle these repair items. So I think that's why that's the case. That's my thesis.   Pierre: Yeah, there's a lot of tech enabled, you know, with Airbnb and with VRBO. Is that what it is?   Michael: Yeah.   Pierre: Yeah, there's a bunch of plugins that are apps that connect to both of them and just kind of handled the booking process and they rely heavily on their cleaner as the boots on the ground and eyes on the property. So, it's pretty cool. Yeah, save, I mean, saves a pretty big chunk. I think 25% is common for the management on short term.   Michael: It can range from 25 to like, 20 to 30% of gross rent collected and so we had Avery Carl on the show a while back, and she was like, yeah, if I was paying someone 20 30% That's like 200 grand. So I'm gonna pay myself that and so in that instance, you know, it's kind of a no brainer. But what for folks just getting started out, you know, I think everyone has to weigh, weigh their options and figure out what is their time worth and what are they willing to give up for that peace of mind and not having to worry about stuff.   Pierre: Cool. I think we hit that one.   Michael: I hope so.   Pierre: Let's All right, next question. Within three months after closing on our new property, we had to purchase an HVAC, roof, furnace, all which were not anticipated. How do we improve our process for see these unknown issues?   Michael: Yeah, it's welcome to the club. First and foremost, it's a it's a bummer of a club to be in, but we've all got some good worse stories like that. So I think you're first off approaching it from the right way and saying, okay, how do I do better the next time and I think it all comes down to your due diligence and your inspections and so I'm hoping that you had an inspection looking at the roof looking at the mechanicals and the systems of the home and there are also like specialized inspections that you can get for those type of things. You can have a specific roofing inspection you can have a specific, HVAC inspection and you've got to pay for those. But I think that that's often money well spent and it's something that I've done on a lot of properties. I just got burned by this on a short term rental I bought, it has this was a short terminal that has a hot tub in it and the jets apparently aren't working properly by and I closed on the property right and so that's on me for not having known to go turn on the jets, we had turn on the heater and the heater works. So I, you know, it's new for me. So I didn't know to do that, so I think as you get further along in your career, and you talk to other investors about the different systems in place in a home, you just organically learn about different inspections you can do on a home and so just physically inspecting the H back with a qualified technician who can look at the inner workings of an H vac system, and hopefully identify issues before they become issues or as they have arisen before you purchase the property and then you can go back to the seller negotiate and say, Look, there's this issue with the H factor. It's x many years old. I mean, the other thing to do is just look at the age of these systems and hopefully that gives you a little bit of insight into the remaining useful life. Roof isn't a pretty good one, if they someone at the general inspector goes is yeah, the roof looks like in good shape. But you know that it was built in 2000? Well, you know, that roof is 22 years old roofs tend to have a life anywhere from 20 to 30 years, depending on the condition and kind of physical climate that they're in and so think to yourself, okay, I've got eight years left on this roof. What does that mean, how much is the cost to replace? Do I want to negotiate even though the roofs in okay shape right now do I want to negotiate with the seller, hey, it's gonna have come time to replace this thing in eight years. Those are discussions that you want to have with your agent and you want to be thinking about what those costs in terms of replacement or repair. The other thing you can do is investigate a home warranty. I mean, this really came full circle the home warranty conversation, I should like go work for home warranty companies like I could get Commission's or something. But these are like the devils in the details in terms of these companies and for your H vac your furnace and your condenser. If you had a home warranty in place, they usually have a 30 day waiting period, after that 30 day waiting period is up, you can make claims for anything that that's covering. And they tend to run excuse me like three to 600 bucks a year and on older properties with older mechanicals, they can be a really great investment and for at 400 bucks a year, you go 10 years, that's four grand to replace my furnace was 5700 and they covered 4200 of it and it happened like four months after I bought the property. So you got a pretty long runway in terms of your print your annual premium payments, still being worth it to in order to make a claim and so I would investigate that and you can often request that from the seller, have the seller pay for a home warranty for a home warranty and if they balk at it, just buy it yourself or ask your agent to pay for it depending on the price of the property. But it is often a great investment and so long answer short, I would say due diligence, look at the different types of inspections you can get on a property coupled with a home warranty to reduce your exposure and then thirdly, negotiate with the seller and look at the age of the systems of the home.   Pierre: Nice. Mike, is there anywhere that people can go to learn all these things to be a successful real estate investor?   Michael: Yeah, I would say come check out the Roofstock Academy. This this is all information that we talked about, we've there was really developed for investors by investors by all the mistakes we made over time and we put it together and said, hey, what's all that stuff we wish we had known when it first got started in investing, how to avoid pitfalls, what are things that are important to be thinking about years down the road that weren't even on our radar as we got started investing, we bundled up everyone for everyone and put it together and look don't get me wrong, like all this stuff is available online for free. You could go find it yourself. I spent two years doing self-education because we've talked wasn't around. At the time I started investing Roofstock Academy was not around, Bigger pockets wasn't around, like this stuff is out there. It's not like we're selling the secret sauce or teaching anyone the secret sauce of investing. But what we have done is we put it together in one digestible place and then we pair it with one on one coaching and that I think is one of the biggest keys to success in this space is having someone in your corner alongside you figuring out helping you figure out what makes sense for you. Because I don't know what it was about me personally, but like I did a lot of classroom training at my last job and that was having a really hard time applying that in the real world because I was like, yeah, well, that situation I read about or I learned about isn't exactly the same here and so I was having difficulty applying the logic or the knowledge. Same thing goes for investing, like you can read about stuff and you can hear about stuff. But when it's your own personal dollars, it maybe becomes a little bit scarier the situation you find yourself in might not be exactly the same as what you learned about and so having someone that's seen over the that mountain that can help you help, you know, let you stand on their shoulders, so to speak, to use a metaphor here can be really helpful and so that's I think we're some of the best value and biggest wins come from is that one on one coaching that folks can get as part of the Roofstock Academy. So yeah, I'd highly encourage him to come check us out.   Pierre: Excellent. Well, we got a ton of other questions here, but I don't know if we'll have time for them today. So I think the Roofstock Academy plug is a good place to call it up.   Michael: Well, we will be sure to get to the rest of those ama questions on a future episode. Thanks, everyone for sending those in. Thanks for hanging with us through this episode. Hopefully you enjoyed it got some value. We love hearing from you all we love these ama questions, so feel free to leave us a comment with any questions. Leave us a comment with a review, leave us a comment with things that you'd like to hear more of and we will work to deliver that for you all as always, we look forward to seeing on the next one and happy investing.   Pierre: Happy investing.