Is Real Estate Dead in 2026

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Michael Zuber (0:45)

Alrighty, folks, I have a special treat for you. We are trying something new and different, where we have Mark, the financial firefighter, digging for comments to usually piss me off. We actually have Gus, who is part of our amazing school community, going through our school community and comments, looking for questions that we need to answer. But given it's Gus's first or second time on the channel, I think it's important to let him have an opportunity to introduce who he is and what he does. Gus, please tell the world who you are.

Gus O'Filly (1:16)

Thanks, Zubair, I appreciate it. So my name is Gus O'Filly. I'm a real estate investor in the state of Maine. If you don't know where it is, that's right up at the top.

Michael Zuber (1:26)

That's like way over there, right?

Gus O'Filly (1:27)

Yeah, way over there. Some people, probably the first time they heard it since geography in school.

There are people that exist. So currently in my portfolio, I have 76 doors. Currently have a 15 unit process under contract. Also as on my agent side, I've sold over 460 properties since 2019

And last but not least, I am in school. Glad to be a member of the school program with everyone. And I do host a podcast, Behind The Doors Podcast.

Michael Zuber (2:07)

Yeah, Behind The Doors Podcast is awesome. Kind of like ESPN for real estate investing. I love when I get the opportunity to come on there. You're the Stephen A. Smith of real estate. So I appreciate you, but let's get into it.

Always interested to see what kind of questions you have because you are a part of the school community, a big, big part of it, and let's see if we can help some people.

Gus O'Filly (2:25)

All right. So I wrote them down. So I know you call me Stephen A. Smith, and that's a big compliment right there. It could be a bad thing. It's a good one for me.

Michael Zuber (2:34)

It's meant as a compliment.

Gus O'Filly (2:35)

Okay. So I wrote them down. I'm going to read them off here. Let's start with the first one.

So basically, sometimes what I go ahead and hear is there's creating value, and then there's capturing value. If I buy a property for 250,000 for 200,000, I didn't necessarily create 50,000. I captured the value that already existed. So let me go ahead and ask you this, Uber. How much of real estate investing is actually creating wealth and how much of it is actually getting better at capturing wealth from somebody else?

Michael Zuber (3:16)

So I do think if you're going to be in the game long enough, you'd certainly need to understand the difference between the two. They're both important. I will say, and I've said it many times, you make your money when you buy. So in this example, that would be capturing value. I don't think enough people focus on that. And really that's because of the last five years, it's been a seller's market for much of that, only flipping to a buyer's market in much of the country recently. And it's just mathematically easier to capture value, capture and find motivated sellers in a buyer's market versus seller's market. But as somebody who's been doing this almost 30 years, I've seen plenty of cycles.

So it's probably easiest for folks to understand buying at a discount, meaning capturing value. However, I would say creating value is where most of the wealth will be made long term. Creating value is always possible. I think the easiest example of that is buying an 1,100 square foot, two-bedroom, one-bath house and converting it to at least a 3-1, if not a 3-1 and a half, depending on where the bathroom is located.

You know, these are some things you could do going forward. I've known people who buy, like there's a big thing in San Jose, California today, which is near where I used to live, where they're buying big lots and they're adding ADUs in the back. So again, there's creating value and capturing value. I do think you need to do both.