Originally from upstate New York, Dr. Thornberg holds a Ph.D in Business Economics from The Anderson School at UCLA, and a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Christopher Thornberg founded Beacon Economics LLC in 2006. Dr. Thornberg also became Director of the UC Riverside School of Business Center for Economic Forecasting and Development and an Adjunct Professor at the School.Prior to launching Beacon Economics, Dr. Thornberg was a senior economist with UCLA’s Anderson Forecast. He previously taught in the MBA program at UCLA’s Anderson School, in the Rady School of Business at UC San Diego, and at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand
An expert in economic and revenue forecasting, regional economics, economic policy, and labor and real estate markets, Dr. Thornberg has consulted for private industry, cities, counties, and public agencies in Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Bay Area, San Diego, the Inland Empire, Seattle, Orange County, Sacramento, Nevada, and other geographies across the nation. Dr. Thornberg became nationally known for forecasting the subprime mortgage market crash that began in 2007, and was one of the few economists on record to predict the global economic recession that followed. Well known for his ability to capture and hold audiences, Dr. Thornberg has presented to hundreds of leading business, government, and nonprofit organizations across the globe including Chevron, The New Yorker, Colliers International, the California Chamber of Commerce, City National Bank, the California State Association of Counties, State Farm Insurance, the City of Los Angeles, the California and Nevada Credit Union League, and the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, among many others.
Episode Notes:
Narrator This is The Norris Group’s real estate investor radio show, the award-winning show dedicated to thought leaders shaping the real estate industry and local experts revealing their insider tips to succeed in an ever-changing real estate market hosted by author, investor and hard money lender, Bruce Norris.
Bruce Norris  Hi, thanks for joining us, my name is Bruce Norris. And once again, our guest this week is Christopher Thornberg. Let’s talk about the tax policies that are being discussed.
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah.
Bruce Norris  So, what’s, what policy change are you most concerned about?
Christopher Thornberg  Change where?
Bruce Norris  Well, federal tax…
Christopher Thornberg  Federal or state level?
Bruce Norris  I was thinking several right now. So, capital gains rates going up to…
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah, I’m not fussed. I wish they would instituted an economy wide wealth tax. Because the top 1% need to pay more. They just do. They just do.
Bruce Norris  You’re talking about overall wealth.
Christopher Thornberg  I’m talking about people in the top 1% of wealth.
Bruce Norris  Yeah.
Christopher Thornberg  And they need to be contributing more. I mean, the tax rates for the ultra-wealthy in the United States are obnoxiously no low. Yet, you know, what’s, what’s the latest outrage Peter Thiel, the guy who founded PayPal billionaire. He has got a billion-dollar Roth IRA. Did you hear about that?
Bruce Norris  No.
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah. So, he bought, he bought some very, very, very undervalued company with money through his Roth IRA. He then got that company back on his feet, the value of that stock exploded. And now Peter has got close to I don’t know, a billion dollars in a Roth IRA. On taxable.
Bruce Norris  Okay…
Christopher Thornberg  And you’re like, ‘What? Why do we allow these kinds of abuses?’
Bruce Norris  He’ll probably buy something with it in the economy?
Christopher Thornberg  Well, that’s not the point.
Bruce Norris  Well, that kind of is the point he follows…
Christopher Thornberg  No, it’s not the point. The point is, is, is the richest among us are not picking up their share of expenses. Because here’s the broader problem I’m having…
Bruce Norris  Let’s help me understand. Let me let’s let’s land on that for a second.
Christopher Thornberg  Sure.
Bruce Norris  One, half a percent of the households pay 42% of California taxes.
Christopher Thornberg  That’s California. We’re talking federal.
Bruce Norris  Okay. Well, I’m just talking in California at the moment.
Christopher Thornberg  That’s fine. That’s, that’s a separate story. Our, our, and you’re talking income taxes, and I’m talking wealth taxes?
Bruce Norris  Right? Well, I know, but you’re trying say…
Christopher Thornberg  That’s too different…
Bruce Norris  …in addition to paying 42% We’re now going to tax all of your wealth because you didn’t pay enough, even though you paid half a percent paid 42%.
Christopher Thornberg  You bet. But the richest among us, Bruce pay way more. But I’m sorry, not the richest man, everybody pays way more to the federal government than they do the state government. So, state government policy isn’t the critical issue. State government policy here is not the critical issue.
Bruce Norris  Okay, so. Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah.
Bruce Norris  Do you think the top 1% pay the most by far in money?
Christopher Thornberg  Some do. And again, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re conflating income taxes with wealth taxes.
Bruce Norris  Well, I think when you have a wealth tax, I think then you start to think, okay, what’s the point? You know?
Christopher Thornberg  Or you don’t. Really, so are we really, are we really gonna sit around and say, a billionaire is going to stop working, because he might have to pay a half a percent on his billion dollars every year to the federal government? Or he’s just gonna give up. ‘I’m just, I’m just gonna go live on an island and do nothing.’ I don’t think so.
Bruce Norris  Would he move out of the country. Let’s say you said a welcome back to California.
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah.
Bruce Norris  Just, just say go back to California and California was talking about creating a wealth tax.
Christopher Thornberg  Yep. Yep, and by the way…
Bruce Norris  …leave California for that?
Christopher Thornberg  But Bruce, again, let’s, let’s you’re conflating things.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  He’s talking about income taxes.
Bruce Norris  Right.
Christopher Thornberg  And I am talking about wealth taxes.
Bruce Norris  I know.
Christopher Thornberg  But let me finish.
Bruce Norris  That’s still…
Christopher Thornberg  Okay. Let me just say something quick.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  ‘Cause it’s important.
Bruce Norris All right.
Christopher Thornberg  To this conversation. Look, I support a wealth tax. I don’t think it can be done statewide. That’s a functional issue. It needs to be done. federally, we need a federal tax on wealth, yes, now state, states can’t do it because that’s, that’s too fungible. I agree. That’s a mistake. We need a national wealth tax. With that in mind, what I would do is I would substitute a wealth tax for an income tax. I think that’s the way to do it, because you want to reduce the disincentive to work. And that’s decreasing the income tax. And of course, at the same time, you make up for that with a wealth tax because technically speaking because you are taxing a pool, a stock of cash that’s there, it doesn’t have incentive effects. Or at least not as strong of an incentive effect. And, and, and you shift, you shift the tax burden away from people who are working hard to people who are just sitting on giant piles of cash already.
Bruce Norris That already worked hard.
Christopher Thornberg  And again, we live in a world where we all benefit from the broad system that is around us. No one made it on their own Bruce, they all made it in the context of an integrated economy that is run by government. So, it’s not government versus private markets. They are all part and parcel. And if you’re going to benefit from the private market, by definition, you also have the due to support the public system that you’re working with it.
Bruce Norris  I would say most of the people that I know that are in that 1% category have paid an enormous amount of taxes to get there.
Christopher Thornberg  I’m not arguing that it just you’re talking absolute and I’m talking relative, guys, while they already paid a lot of money.
Bruce Norris  Yes.
Christopher Thornberg  I would argue two things A. relative to what they made, they’re paying a lower share. We know all know, the story of, of Snowball there paying lower taxes and the secretary. What’s his name? Bob? Sorry, Nebraska billionaire.
Bruce Norris  Yeah, I’m sorry, I don’t. But I’m sure that, that you…
Christopher Thornberg  Anyway…
Bruce Norris   You’re talking about percentages, okay. You’re not talking about dollars. You’re talking…
Christopher Thornberg  I’m talking about percentages, which are the relevant, relevant metric here. And, and the other part of that, Bruce, is, there’s a whole other share of these folks who don’t pay anything. And that’s where I really start having a problem. Maybe it’s less about the level and more about the loopholes. The fact that a billionaire like Peter Thiel is able to have a billion dollars in a Roth IRA is clearly a distortion of a system, that distortion needs to be fixed. The fact that a lot of that Trump didn’t in pay taxes for how many years, now mind you he’s under federal indictment, but regardless, that yeah, that, the fact that he didn’t pay taxes is a problem in my, my book, it just is. So, you know, I, I see that, that you disagree with me, and I appreciate that but…
Bruce Norris  No, that’s okay with that’s but they don’t want this is healthy, because this is what’s missing, with many different sides of the argument is a reasonable discussion. So, that’s I think it’s healthy, and I don’t get upset with that at all. What about, okay, well, are you in favor then of changing the rules when people pass away and pass their assets on?
Christopher Thornberg  Yes.
Bruce Norris  And what would you change that to?
Christopher Thornberg  I’d have a wealth tax for I’d have I have an estate tax that would take a portion and, and, again, moving into the public sphere. But again, I know that the general inclination for people to accuse me of being a tax and spend kind of guy. My point here is to build a fairer, better tax system. And we need to tax places that are under-taxed more, and tax places that are overtaxed less, you know, a very wise fiscal expert many, many years ago, give me a very short line that good taxes are low taxes on big basis, in our nation because of politics, slides towards high taxes on small basis. And that’s true in California. It’s true at the federal level, we need to take a step back tax, again, undertaxed portions of the economy more and pull back on taxes and overtaxed parts of the economy.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  And you know, and you say, well, who is that? Chris, let me, let me give you let me, give you two people in California, okay. You got the 35-year-old, 35-year-olds, they are married, let’s say they have graduate degrees they’re making between them good money. But you know, they’re still paying off their student loans. They haven’t really built up a nest egg. They don’t have a lot of wealth, right? They’re trying to make their way forward. Now go to the next person who’s 65 semi-retired, he lives in a home that they’ve owned for 25 years in Newport Beach, that’s worth $8 million. Now, who are we taxing more of these two couples? The answer is of course, the younger couple. They get hammered with California’s income taxes. They get hammered because they’re relatively new buyers of real estate. They’re the ones paying the freight despite the fact that they don’t have a lot of wealth. Whereas that 65 year old in the make million-dollar house in Newport Beach is not paying a lot in income taxes, they have a phenomenal degree of Home Equity, which they pay nothing on because of Prop 13. And what you see is here are these two people, one should clearly be carrying more weight than the other and the tables are completely reversed. The people who have the least wealth are paying the most in taxes. That’s just wrong.
Bruce Norris  Now, well you skip the whole part where the 60 some year couple used to be 34 and have college debt and solved all that on their own.
Christopher Thornberg  They didn’t actually have college debt, Bruce, and they bought that house at a heck of a lot cheaper. And a lot of that wealth occurred for no other reason other than the fact that they were fortunate to be able to buy a house in 1985 rather than 2005 or 2020.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  So, you know, it is it isn’t like all that money became because they work so hard.
Bruce Norris  Okay. Well, they had a plan. I’ll try one more time. A lot of us who end up with wealth, think about what we’re doing, and coincide our efforts with tax laws.
Christopher Thornberg Yes.
Bruce Norris  …about that.
Christopher Thornberg  I agree.
Bruce Norris Â
But you say okay, I mean, I’m amazed that you have $500,000 free taxation when you sell your residence.
Christopher Thornberg  I am too. And by the way, what’s funny is, is when you think about that Trump tax change that occurred, a lot of sort of long-run tax policy efforts actually said Trump did, Trump did the democrats a favor by limiting the state and local tax, an interest rate deduction, because the reality is interest deductions. And state and local tax deductions are giveaways to the upper-middle class. The group of Americans who most benefit from those tax write-offs are people who should be paying a little bit more. So, yet again, you have a situation by which, clearly, from any economic standpoint, these were inefficient tax policies, they just, they didn’t have the kind of small tax on big basis effect that, that as a society we need. Anybody who understands longer tax policy said these were bad ideas in the first place. And so Trump went to get rid of them at some level, and he pushed us in that direction. Now, I, I, again, appreciate that these are popular. But I’m going to go back to the idea, Bruce, that what is popular in public policy isn’t necessarily correct. In fact, I would argue more often than not policy, if it’s popular, it’s probably bad policy.
Bruce Norris  Alright, I guess we’ll, we’re going to agree to disagree on some of that for sure. Okay, let me ask you a general question. And do you think in general, as the economy fare better when the government takes a bigger share of the pie?
Christopher Thornberg  Um, no.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  And if there’s a lot of, if there, if there was, because you, look, you want it, you look for a, you gave me a binomial choice there, either yes or no, and that’s not a binomial answer.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  It’s not and it’s unfair. It really depends on and where you’re, where you’re starting place is. Can there be too much government? Hell, yeah. Can it be too little government? Hell, yeah. You got to find a sweet spot.
Bruce Norris  Okay. Let’s talk about inflation.
Christopher Thornberg  Sure.
Bruce Norris  Because I’m really interested in the future of that.
Christopher Thornberg  You should be.
Bruce Norris  Yeah.
Christopher Thornberg Let me let, me, let me, let me modify what you just said. You shouldn’t be interested. You should be worried.
Bruce Norris  Okay. You know, yeah. Are there winners and losers in inflation? Let’s, let’s go there first.
Christopher Thornberg  Well, everybody’s a little bit of a loser. And it’s not that inflation itself is purely bad.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  It’s just that it makes decisions more difficult. It makes, I’m sorry, excuse me, it makes longer run decisions more difficult.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  That is, you know, you have to, you have to factor in the uncertainty because it isn’t so much that 6% inflation is the problem. It’s the problem that a 6% inflation rate looking ahead is really an inflation rate that runs between 4 and 8. And if it’s 4%, it could be great, 8% you get your clock cleaned. Well, that’s a huge problem. And so, it just makes economic decision making whether it’s buying a house, lending money, giving somebody raise, it makes all those decisions that much more difficult to make. And that inflation premium is a problem for the economy.
Bruce Norris  Okay, what were the elements? Let me ask it this way the elements that caused inflation in the 70s. Are they present now?
Christopher Thornberg  Yes.
Bruce Norris  They are?
Christopher Thornberg  Okay. And there’s four of those factors. And to be clear, again, I’m not in the mainstream on this conversation. Mainstream forecasts suggest that the kind of inflation we’re seeing right now is only transitory. And of course, you’re hearing that, particularly from our public officials, Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell, who have been more or less saying inflation, sublimation, don’t worry about it, everything’s fine here, move along, folks blah, blah, blah, right?
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  Um, no, no, you cannot be that ‘blahs’ about it. And, and how is today like the 70s a couple things. Um, first and foremost, we have a lot of money floating around the system. The, the quantitative easing that was put into place by Yellen and Bernanke, back then, back at and post Great Recession, beginning of the Great Recession, that money was necessary to offset the problems in the financial system and the collapse in wealth, right. In other words, all the money they pumped into the economy more or less balanced things out and money supply growth was basically steady. They did what they needed to do to keep it steady.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  We didn’t have any of those problems and yet Powell decided to go ahead and do quantitative easing. So, he was using a prescription for a crisis that didn’t exist. And as a result of that the money supplies exploded to a level we’ve never seen before. We’ve never seen so much empty creation in such a short period of time. And overall, the amount of money relative to nominal GDP today is not only insanely higher than it was two years ago, it’s higher than it was for the spring, the 70s for the first time since the 70s, right? We’re, basically have the union money supply, which is the amount of money to you know, over the amount of nominal transactions we have has never been higher than it is right now. So, nobody can say for sure, we’re not going to have inflation because we are in uncharted territories, we just are. Okay, that’s number one. Number two, and I apologize that this is a little long-winded.
Bruce Norris  Oh, no this is good. Because as I, I’d like to get to the bottom of this.
Christopher Thornberg  The second issue is, of course, the economy is loaded to the hilt with money. Again, going back to the 70s, they were attempting to stimulate an economy that was adjusting to deindustrialization to change fundamental changes in the oil markets and they stepped on the gas at a crazy level. And that’s exactly what we’re doing right now. And in fact, it’s even more intense right now, because it isn’t just the Federal Reserve, which is stepping on the gas. But the federal government is engaged in, in fiscal stimulus $5 trillion in spending, the vast majority of which didn’t actually get spent in the short run, the money they spent in terms of PPP loans and direct checks to people. They gave hundreds of billions of dollars to people whose problem was they couldn’t spend money. And of course, what do you do you pay down debt you you put in your bank account. So, we have so much liquid cash floating around our economy today, that is already spurring an incredible amount of demand. That’s the spark that sets off the kindling, known as excess money.
Bruce Norris  Now…
Christopher Thornberg  …money supply. And then…
Bruce Norris  Let me just ask this real quick. People didn’t necessarily earn that, that was a one time check. So…
Christopher Thornberg  Well, it was a three time check. They got three stimulus checks, and forget that because the real money was in those PPP loans.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  That’s, that was the real cash injection. I mean, you know, what’s funny is is about, I would always call those stimulus checks of distraction against one of the most regressive stimulus policies we’ve ever seen in our entire life, which was handing out hundreds of billions of dollars to business owners in the form of PPP loans.
Bruce Norris Okay. So, you think inflation is here to stay or we have to keep…
Christopher Thornberg  But I am finished because there’s other factors involved here.
Bruce Norris  Okay. Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  So, there’s that.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  Another spark is expanded federal spending that happened in the 70s. And this time around, we’re running into the stimulus bill that Biden wants to push.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  And then last but not least, you have a bunch of government officials who seem either intentionally or ignorantly completely at ease with where we are on this conversation. So, those are the recipes.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  I’ve been spending a lot, a lot of aggregate demand lots of money in the system and a bunch of government officials that don’t think it’s a problem. That was where we were in 1975. And that’s where we are in 2021.
Bruce Norris  Minus a Paul Volcker.
Christopher Thornberg  Paul Volcker will show up eventually.
Bruce Norris  Yeah, okay.
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah. He, he’s a he’s not a cause he’s an effect.
Bruce Norris  Right. So, so, right now, okay, GDP, what would be the GDP estimate you have for the year 2021 total?
Christopher Thornberg  How much growth you mean?
Bruce Norris  Yeah. GDP growth?
Christopher Thornberg  Oh, 8% I think we’re at it’s, it’s hard to say it’s a huge number. But remember, we’re measuring off of a 2020 that’s weird because of that, that second quarter.
Bruce Norris  Yeah. When we had the last time we had GDP growth like that was ’84?
Christopher Thornberg  Well, again, it’s not, it’s not a reasonable number. Yes, it’s got to be excessive growth. Look, part of that number is the fact that we are recovered, we recovered from the pandemic recession in a record short amount of time, this was a phenomenally fast recovery. We’re done. We’re out. As of second quarter, we’re back to long run trend. Now, it was always going to be a rapid recovery. As tragic as this was, from a human standpoint, it was always going to be a V, it didn’t matter what the government did, because natural disasters have short run economic impact on the economy. But they acted as if it was a demand shock, they acted as if it was the great recession. And as a result of that $5 trillion in stimulus, $3 trillion in quantitative easing. This is an economy that was already coming up rapidly, and they strapped rockets to it, and they set the rockets off. And so, over the next year, year and a half, two years, you’re going to see an economy, it’s going to be above trend, we are entering into an overheated economy right now.
Bruce Norris  Do you think we will still retain the interest rate level that we have for the duration of that?
Christopher Thornberg  No, I think that right now, the bond markets are responding to all that liquidity, right? That is to say, they could ignore the potential for inflation, they will ignore the potential for inflation. Because look, here’s the reality. I’m a fund. I’m TIAA, I’m, I’m the California, you know, teachers fund. I’m getting massive amounts of cash and I have to invest it, I have to that is my job. And if there’s nothing else to buy, I will buy bonds. And so yeah, interest rates are low, because there’s willingness to buy bonds just because I have money, and I have to buy something. So, that’s what’s keeping interest rates low. Now, does that situation turn around, right? While the economy is overheating, people are spending, consumer spending is going to grow like nobody’s business over the course of the next year, that’s going to take money off the table. At some point in time, you’re going to have to have quantitative easing reversed, that taper is going to take cash out of the system. And when all that starts going down, that’s when you start to see the, the impact of all this, that’s when you start to see interest rates rise.
Bruce Norris  Do you, one of the charts that’s interesting to me is the velocity of money. So, money supply is way up. But the velocity of it is still basically like a 60-year low. Does that change in the next couple of years?
Christopher Thornberg  It will, but the velocity conversation is kind of the reverse statistic from the unit money supply I was discussing.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  Well, I say there’s a lot of unit money supply, that’s the same thing as saying there’s low velocity. And when you say the velocity picks up, well, in that equation, that means prices are picking up. And when prices start picking up, that’s when you know money supply comes down, because it’s the same amount of money for a higher nominal transaction volume in the US economy. So, those two things are two sides of the same coin. Exactly the same argument, the inflation comes from that, from that rebalancing.
Bruce Norris  Okay. It’s out of my field of expertise, some of these, I like talking to you because I am interested in knowing more about what’s to come. So…
Christopher Thornberg  Job at some level, again, we try to do the best we can, given the uncertainty of what Yogi Berra famously said, right? Forecasting is hard, especially the future.
Bruce Norris  Well, do you view the real estate industry going to have a reasonably good couple of years then because…
Christopher Thornberg  Oh hell yeah.
Bruce Norris  …money to spend?
Christopher Thornberg Â
, yeah, yeah. I think the gains we’re seeing today are sustainable. Because, again, the fundamentals were very good coming into it. And you can see a big increase in prices. And the fundamentals are still good. So, I think the gains we’re seeing now in real estate are absolutely sustainable. Now, they’re sustainable now, could they become unsustainable later? Sure. saying there’s not a bubble now is not saying there’s not going to be a bubble.
Bruce Norris  Correct.
Christopher Thornberg  But at this point in time, I don’t feel the numbers we’re seeing as dramatic as they are in any way shape, or form represents a bubble, that is to say, unsustainable gains in the market.
Bruce Norris  The other thing about this market, you touched on it, this is a very healthy market where people borrowed money where they actually qualified, they put money down, they left their equity in place, share their huge amount of equity on top of a fixed-rate loan.
Christopher Thornberg  Right.
Bruce Norris  There’s some people talking, you know, calling for a giant foreclosure pile coming.
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah.
Bruce Norris  I just don’t see that one.
Christopher Thornberg  Not, not, not a chance. That’s a zero probability.
Bruce Norris  The other thing that’s really interesting is the builders started to build rent-to-own homes and rental home tracks.
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah.
Bruce Norris  Well, a new game there is that they get them all rented, and they, they bulk sell them to Wall Street in a package?
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah.
Bruce Norris  And that the Wall Street companies buy it for a premium over what it would normally sell for by like, 20%. Which has the builder going, well, holy cow, why would I build a house for somebody to live in if I can get a premium profit, and sell a bunch of them at the same time? So, that’s a new niche.
Christopher Thornberg 26:37
I guess it all depends on what Wall Street’s doing with those homes, are they buying in 20% premium? Because they think that they can make money by maybe selling them slower? Maybe I don’t know,
Bruce Norris  Oh, they’re just renting them. So, the cash flow…
Christopher Thornberg  It’s funny. Now, we don’t, we get statistics on this, Bruce, from their community survey. And I will tell you that from there was a huge increase in single-family rentals from starting 2008 to about 2011-2012 and 2011-12, we had more single-family rentals and ever before in the United States as a share the housing stock, but since then, it’s been falling not rising. And again, 2019 was one of the lowest we’d seen in decades, at least as long as we had had that, that data available to us. Now, if things are reversing right now, then that, those numbers may change when we get more data, from the American Community Survey, but at least from my standpoint, if Wall Street is buying and somebody else is selling them because the overall number of single-family rentals has been falling in the US.
Bruce Norris  Okay.
Christopher Thornberg  Now again, different amounts may be happening in 2021. Well, you might be describing is absolutely something happening right now. I just don’t know.
Bruce Norris  Yeah, I think it’s a, I think it’s a new toy for, for with the funds, you know, they raised billions of dollars, and there are no foreclosures to buy. So, they’re, they’re buying new single-family homes.
Christopher Thornberg  Yeah, maybe I again, I don’t, I’m not, I’m not enough of privy into the system. But I would argue that ownership rates, overall ownership levels are going up right now in the US.
Bruce Norris  Yes.
Christopher Thornberg  I seem a little contrary to that or at least it says that the non-Wall Street, single-family rental market is shifting towards ownership.
Bruce Norris  Well, as always, I have enjoyed our conversation. But I find it very educational, and I appreciate getting to bat it around with you, even if we land on some points of disagreement. To me, that’s how I learned.
Christopher Thornberg  I understand you, Bruce. And so, but I always appreciate you coming in. We didn’t get you talking enough because you obviously have a lot of insider knowledge of the real estate industry that I can learn from as well. Unfortunately, this time I did most of the talking. That’s because we haven’t talked enough in the last year, Bruce.
Bruce Norris  Well, we’ll have to get together and we’ll just bat around that’ll be fun. Okay, all right. Christopher, thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate it.
Christopher Thornberg  Always great to be here.
Narrator  For more information on hard money, loans, and upcoming events with The Norris Group, check out thenorrisgroup.com. For information on passive investing with trust deeds, visit tngtrustdeeds.com.
Aaron Norris  The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669. For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.