The Property Perspective
From hidden gems to billion-dollar deals, this is The Property Perspective - where seasoned real estate pros reveal how they spot value others miss, and industry disruptors share the unconventional strategies reshaping real estate.
The Property Perspective
Building Insights: Lance Lambert's Transition from Journalism to Data Science
Lance Lambert, a leading voice in housing data journalism, takes us on an unforgettable journey from a promising college runner to a distinguished figure in real estate media. His path, paved by determination and late-night writing sessions, led him to conquer the challenges of transitioning from journalism to data science. Through his experiences at Bloomberg, Realtor.com, and later CNBC, Lance uncovers the story of how he became a trusted source for real estate professionals and investors nationwide. Join us as we explore the pivotal moments that shaped his career and the grit that fueled his passion for storytelling.
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00:00 - Hope (Announcement)
After getting hit by a car on the interstate and giving up his dream of being a college runner, Lance Lambert pivoted hard and ended up becoming one of the top housing data journalists in the country. From Bloomberg to launching Resi Club, his journey into real estate media is anything but ordinary. Host Preston Zeller sits down with Lance to unpack how near tragedy late-night and writing sessions led to a booming business built on housing insights. Tragedy, grit and late night writing sessions led to a booming business built on housing insights, from hidden gems to billion dollar deals. This is the Property Perspective where seasoned real estate pros reveal how they spot value others miss and industry disruptors share the unconventional strategies reshaping real estate. Now here are your hosts.
00:43 - Preston Zeller (Host)
All right, welcome everyone to the Property Perspective. My name is Preston Zeller with Batch Service. I'm here with Lance Lambert today. Lance, welcome, I've always thought you had such a fantastic name for being in a boy band.
00:58 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
You know, I get a lot of comments about it, people saying that it sounds like it's a fake name. Uh, yeah, people, yeah yeah. Some people ask me if that's my real name. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good thing usually you know it means it's lumber is what I'd prefer to go by or yeah, just change the whole thing out. Yeah, just go with land or lumber.
01:23 - Preston Zeller (Host)
That's so good. Yeah, lance, we've been working together for almost a year on different things that you do in this space. I'm looking forward to hearing about that. Why don't you tell? Just delve a little bit into what you do and then we'll go back in time.
01:41 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, so I'm a data journalist and a financial journalist. I've been doing this for around 10 years and my niche now is housing data. So what's going on in the residential real estate market? I really get into the numbers across the country, the county, metro, zip code state, all these different cuts of the data, trying to figure out what's going on.
02:07
I look at the condo market, I look at the single family market, I follow build to rent, single family rentals, trying to figure out what's going on in terms of inventory trends, pricing, and then really just boiling it down in a way that makes sense to people, right, and so I think you know a cornerstone of my coverage is are my maps and charts and kind of just like boiling the idea down to where. If you see the chart, you see the map, you kind of get the story and so real simple headlines. And my audience is across the country. It's real estate agents, it's home builders, it's loan officers, it's buyers, sellers, single family landlords, people deploying institutional capital into the space, capital markets it's kind of anybody who kind of needs to understand what's going on in the housing market.
02:58 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, good stuff, yeah, and you know, if you're listening right now going, you know, wondering how deep Lance is going to get into the market today. That's not what we're doing. We're going to actually go back and Lance's story and we were talking about a bit before this, like everything you just explained how on earth someone like finds their path to getting into that? Like finds their path to getting into that? Um, because you do pump out some really cool work and very insightful, of course, on the industry. So, um, let's go back. Um, I don't know if you want to start college or whatever, even beyond that, like just where, where does your story kind of begin in your head?
03:41 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, that's a tough one, Cause it's like how far back do we go? I was graduating high school in. 2010 is when I graduated, and I will say I was not a good student. The only thing that I really cared about at that time was, like sports and probably girls, and I was a good cross country runner and a good track runner and you know like my mile time was in like the 430s. And the summer before my senior year, I got hit by a car on an interstate while I was riding a bike, so I got air cared the neck brace the whole thing, Whoa.
04:23
And you know, coming out of that I couldn't run too much. I did end up, you know, running my senior year was still able to, you know like, get runner of the year for my league for cross country, but I was done running right, I was in real pain at the point and so at that point in my life I didn't really know what direction to kind of go. There wasn't many job opportunities. I grew up in Southwest Ohio at a time that was, you know, didn't want to go for journalism or was kind of felt a little pressured not to is just, there wasn't great job opportunities and, like I said, even though I was a really hard worker and some other things in my life, I wasn't a great student right. And so I started to go. I was about to go to college for nursing and then I just made a hard pivot right at the end, right before, and I was like you know what, that's not what I want to do and even if I'm going to have to work tremendously hard to do it, I'm going to go and do what I want to do and I'm just going to take pretty much what I've done with running, which is just nonstop doing it all the time. And even the reason I got hit by the car is because I was biking uh to kind of uh, that was my one way to exercise that few months because I had like a hip flexor injury right, so I was like staying on top of it. And so I go into college, uh, university of Cincinnati. I went to actually uh the community college for it, uh, the? U Claremont, it's like a one of their community colleges that kind of filters up to the main university. And when I was there I learned that, you know, there was a journalism program at the main campus. And so I did, you know, half my time at the community college and then half my time at the university college and then half my time at the university. And while I was there, you know, working at the college newspaper, and then kind of started to find out you know what I kind of like this economics, business, finance type reporting, Did a few internships, eventually did one at the Cincinnati Inquirer and then my junior year when I was doing a fellowship up at the Columbus State House covering what was going on at the State House in terms of like political reporting, I found out that the business and data reporting reporter at the Inquirer had died in a head-on accident.
07:04
So I, you know, I kind of clicked in my brain. I'm like you know what that job would actually fit me? Well, I just interned there and then the editor reached out to me and I had already had like my next summer internship that I was going to do in, like West Virginia. I still had another year of school, but they had just felt like I was a great fit for it. So I took that job, worked at the Cincinnati Inquirer while I was still a full-time student, and so I was doing 40 hours at the Inquirer and then 18 credit hours at college, Like it was just a whole thing. But they kind of worked around my schedule. They really wanted me.
07:37
And then the Inquirer you know, they at the time this is 2013, had a lot of financial issues and I was one of like 48 people laid off the Enquirer within a year period. And so there I am, and I was a dual major in economics and journalism, because that's kind of where I started to see myself get pulled towards and I was like, wow, do I go back to school after having finished or having gotten this full time job and that, you know, it kind of sets me back. Or do I just, you know, wing it, go move on with my career and kind of finish the schooling as I go? And that's what I decided to do. I moved to DC, was a data reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education. You could not come up with two polar opposite industries real estate and then academia. So my audience.
08:28
There was professors and I hated it with working with professors. Why did you hate it, real estate? They'll email me and kind of call me an idiot or say that they don't like my story or something. The professors will email you and be like hey, you misspelled this. You're like kind of petty stuff. It was yes.
08:51 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And so, uh, I then, uh, you know, to kind of speed up the story a little bit, I eventually find my way to Bloomberg, and I'm like, before you go into Bloomberg sorry, I want to I want to stop there for a moment because there's about what five years you're kind of covering. I'm curious. So your accident was this, like a swipe or a T-bone or what was it?
09:16 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
They pulled on while I was coming off and they skipped lanes. Now they got me and so I hit into. So I'm going really fast and they're accelerating lanes how they got me and so I hit into. So I'm going really fast and they're accelerating right as they hit me oh geez under, completely mangled.
09:33
I slide up the windshield and shoot off and I'm still not exactly sure where in the spot I landed, but the people who drove by and like stopped. I thought in my own head, and I still remember it this way that I got up and was like yelling, like holy yeah panic and the people who saw it said that I was like on the ground, flopping like in shock yeah uh and so eventually got me an ambulance, took me to, like, the local middle school.
10:05
A helicopter came in and they flew me to the hospital and you broke what then? I didn't necessarily break them, oh, you didn't, wow. Well, you know, if this happened to me today I would have been really hurt, but when I was 17, much better shape.
10:25 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And so I kind of got lucky in that regard so you had mostly, uh, I mean like kind of more mental trauma from that or what more physical too, where you know, just like you know, I pretty much could not sustain my workload of running and like all right, that makes. That makes running a 430 miles is really impressive.
10:47 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Um so, and you know, and the hope was, that was my junior year. The hope was a much better senior year too sure, yeah, you keep chopping it down brought it up because it was a huge pivot in my life of like I kind of thought I was going to go to college and focus on you know kind of start with running and figure it out, and then it was like, oh, this one thing that I'd worked really hard with is gone. Now I had to figure something else out.
11:11 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Sure, um, makes sense. So were you I mean, were you kind of, I guess, in some sense of dismay, that like hey, I man, I can't you pictured yourself running quicker and quicker times in senior year of high school and now you're like, okay, well, that's gone out the window. So was that, was that kind of an identity crisis to some degree for you, or For sure?
11:38 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, and it was like that's what I had really focused on and then it was just taken away so quickly. And then I wasn't a great student, but I was a really hard worker and I just had to find a new avenue to take all that energy and throw it into. Okay, and that's essentially what I've done from like the start of my career and that's even to now. It's just all been on uh you know media and uh you know my journalistic career. Do you ever think about?
12:06 - Preston Zeller (Host)
how different you would be turned out if you didn't get hit.
12:10 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
I mean, yeah, it is. Uh, you know, it's definitely one of those, like you know, like, uh, you know, uh, an inflection point or some personal Rubicon that you just go in a different direction? Yeah for sure. Rubicon, that you just go in a different direction, yeah for sure. And what did your?
12:24 - Preston Zeller (Host)
parents do growing up.
12:27 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, my dad worked in construction so he had a small business that he did home additions. So you know, somebody wants you know to add on to their house or they want to build a pole barn, something like that. That's what my dad did, and then my mom was a nurse.
12:46 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Okay, so you, yeah you, you, you kind of like, were somewhat straddling the two world you were exposed to. It seems like growing up cause you consider nursing your you know I'm sure you went to your dad's, you know builds at some points, right.
13:01 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, I wasn't necessarily wanting to go the direction that my dad had went, but I was cognizant of, like you know, that world.
13:11 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah.
13:11 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
And that's helpful even today to like understand, you know, like all the subcontractors, and how that, how that ecosystem works.
13:20 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, I it's. It's so trippy to me how much kids can end up being this sort of interesting average between their parents. As much as you know, we're growing up we're like I'm never going to be like you know. It's usually, you know your dad for men or whatever, or like the things you don't like, and then the older you get you're like, oh man, similarities there. Ok, so thanks for going back into that. So, okay, you're, you're kind of done with your tail into college. You're writing for professors, and then Bloomberg, is that this? Is that your first like kind of major thing that you're stoked about?
14:01 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Well, you know, I like the inquire thing. I really liked the Chronicle of Higher Education too. It uh cause the. You know the team I was on at the Chronicle of Higher Education. It was a great group of like data journalists who've gone on to do lots of great things Washington Post, associated Press, Los Angeles Times. We were a really great group and at a time when like data journalism was getting created, really the field had not really existed, the niche and what year is this? That's 2024, the end of.
14:37
Oh, okay, and so surprisingly, the Chronicle of Higher Education had invested all these resources into having you know, a great group of you know data reporters and developers. Wait 2014 or 2024? 2014.
14:54 - Preston Zeller (Host)
14. Okay, he said 2024. I'm like wait a second. Yeah, my years are all bending together. It's okay, yeah, okay, so 2014.
15:03 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, 2014, doesn't you know? I mean, I guess it's been a long time now, but it feels like just the other day.
15:10 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, right, yeah, that's, that's us getting older, lance.
15:15 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
And so was there with this great group and I just kind of really what I realized pretty early on is that I'm you know, what drives me in my coverage is really the topic area, right. And so there was a period where I kind of enjoyed the higher education coverage. I think a lot of my coverage of higher ed was less of like, oh, I think higher ed's great and it's more of like, wow, this is a really inept system, an archaic system that is, you know, not really producing great outcomes for a lot of people and is very resistant to change. And you know, a lot of people leave not in great positions and they leave in debt, without degrees Right. So I was very concerned about, like, the affordability side of higher ed and the outcomes. And so I was very concerned about the affordability side of higher ed and the outcomes and I think that's what kind of pulled me into it for a bit.
16:15
And so I go to Bloomberg and I also am very into higher ed. There they gave me I was tasked with running the best business school franchises and this is a carryover from business week, which Bloomberg bought, and so business week in 1988 had started doing the first ever MBA rankings, which then everybody kind of copies and they still existed. And so I would go and I would meet with. You know, I'd fly to Boston and meet with like the heads of Harvard business school and heads of MIT Salone, and it was kind of a fun year to kind of do the business school stuff. I learned a lot about like that ecosystem, got to meet a lot of great people. But when I was there I started to get more of an itch to go more into like the data science direction. I was kind of like you know what, I don't know if I want to necessarily stay in journalism, if this is kind of where I want to stay with my career. I was kind of I don't know what exactly gave me that feeling.
17:14 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Was it kind of one-dimensional for you? That's what I'm picking up Like it just wasn't. It didn't have the depth, maybe, that you maybe wanted out of it.
17:24 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
I don't, you know what it was, I'll tell you what it was. I can I can feel it out now is that I didn't feel like the pathways really fit with me. Right Is I have a good amount of ambition and you know the data journalists are not the people who become the editor in chiefs of these organizations, they're not the people who run things, they're not the things who build things. Right, and there's kind of like how I said, the thing that irritated me about academia Right, and it's probably experience in it is it's very like it's an archaic system. They're trying to fit people into squares and triangles, right, it doesn't change much. And then I go into journalism and it's this field that is very much like here's how things go, here's how things progress, here's how you have to write a story, it's all these rules, right, and that's what I hate. And so I, you know, I decided I was going to take a job that would kind of be like a bridge job for me, becoming a data scientist. And, again, because I'm kind of disenfranchised with academia, I didn't want to leave and go to graduate school and just get a degree, right. So I was like you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to take a bridge job and then I'm going to do a bunch of courses on my own and kind of figure this thing out Right.
18:42
So I get an offer from Realtorcom, which is owned by News Corp, and so Realtorcom's editorial team that I was on they're in the offices with like Barron's and Wall Street Journal and Market Watch in New York. So it was just a little bit of a actually for my interview. I just walked over from Bloomberg, did the interview and then walked back to work. Oh, nice type situation. And so I go there and I'm kind of a bridge between the editorial team and then the the economics and data folks at Realtorcom. So the data people, the economics people and editorial people all different teams and I was kind of like a bridge between them and my job was like to take the housing data that they have and they have a lot of data and to tell stories with it. And so what I did take for Bloomberg or for a realtor realtorcom at Bloomberg I was doing more of like the business school rankings, creating new rankings and then doing some like data stories on the side.
19:44 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And so, uh, what this? At what point did you go to realtorcom?
19:48 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Uh, that would be August 2017. So I started at Bloomberg at April 2016.
19:55 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Okay, and, and I'm curious, is realtorcom um, cause they're owned by who again like that site? They're owned by who again like that site, so is it? Is it just the name associated like, as like with NAR? Like, does NAR have much you know affiliation, or they just, it's just the name, they don't?
20:16 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
they don't have much. So it's owned by, you know, media company news Corp and the, the company that operates it is move, which is out in Santa Clara, but I think they're moving to Austin now, um, and so, yeah, you know, I think there's probably still some underlying connections with that deal. They did to get it from national association of realtors, but uh, they're their own thing.
20:41 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, because you see, like the whatever trademark next to the realtor name all the time and they want it spelled in caps and like that kind of stuff. And I actually I was, I found that confusing, but also I wasn't really sure the tie there of like NAR and then realtorcom, so it's. It's, yeah, kind of bizarre. It's totally separate entities but have the same name.
21:06 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
I don't know, yeah, yeah, it's interesting, and so have the same name. I don't know, yeah, yeah, it's interesting, and so news Corp, which you know is owned by the Murdochs uh, they also own, which is pretty much the Zillow of Australia rea, so that's a part of it as well. Okay, and I think a lot of the executives now from realtorcom have been pulled over from REA.
21:24 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Okay, Got it Okay. So you go to realtorcom and that's where you're really sinking your teeth into the sort of data journalism arena sounds like.
21:35 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Well, so I'd already kind of been in that arena, but in this at realtorcom, I was trying to get into more like the data science stuff. So what I was doing is I was taking a lot of courses outside of work and I would just probably be working on my computer like 80 hours a week, right, Because I was doing my day job, or maybe it's 70 hours. And then I what I was doing is I was taking all this real estate data and using it like to analyze and figure out how to, you know, run these different functions and understand the data science side. And what ended up happening is that I just got really good with real estate data.
22:14 - Preston Zeller (Host)
You put in the time.
22:17 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
And so it's not like I went out and was like you know what I really want to cover? Housing, right. It kind of came to me right and which is also a lot of how people get into real estate as well in general they fall into it and maybe they find their way into it. And so eventually, at some point there I was like you know what? I still want? To stay in journalism, I just kind of want to be more of like a hybrid data storyteller and I find my own niche and find my own way. And I then leave Realtorcom to go to CNBC.
23:00
And before I took the job at CNBC I had gotten a, you know, fortune was interested and they kind of ghosted me and so I was like, well, I'll take the CNBC job. And the day before I started the CNBC job, the headhunter from Fortune calls me like hey, fortune wants to have you come in. Or maybe they emailed me and said Fortune wants to have me come in. And I'm like, hey, I've already accepted this job. And so then they call me and of course the headhunter probably wants the commission, and so they're talking like Lance, this is going to be a great job. The editor, the CEO of Fortune. He wants to, you know, have breakfast with you at the Yale Club in New York. They're really interested in you, can you do it? And I told him no. And then I eventually reconsidered and I was like you know what, I'll just do the interview.
23:50
So on my second day at CNBC or maybe it's my second week, but whatever I leave, or I come in late and I go and I meet with the editor or the CEO of Fortune, Alan Murray, and I go and I meet with the editor or the CEO of Fortune, alan Murray, great guy, great journalistic career, who was a longtime person at Wall Street Journal, had led their DC Bureau, really somebody respected in the industry. I had breakfast with him and I just felt like you know what, even though I just accepted the CNBC job, fortune was going to offer the thing that I really wanted, which is just freedom to create, and so they were going to allow me to come in and create a data newsletter to Fortune 1000 executives and I, you know, was going to call it Fortune Analytics. And so I left CNBC, not even two months there. And so I left CNBC not even two months there, just because I, you know, I had a few different roles at places and I just felt like the fortune when I had this itch, that I was like you know what this is, the? I got to do this one, and so I go to Fortune and I build Fortune Analytics, which is, you know, it was a really fun newsletter for executives, you know, and it was a lot of fun too because I would have, like CEOs of I had like CEO of Target email me, like who had read the story, you know, sent me a message because I had the full list of the Fortune subscribers, which is and the thing about Fortune that makes them unique in the space of financial media is their whole niche is the top of the C-suite across these Fortune 1000 companies. That's really their niche. They do a lot of conferences for that group and I started that job in August 2019.
25:39
And come March 2020, everything goes to chaos in the world. Right, yeah, covid-19 lockdown started. I was in New York and, uh, I this is true story my wife and I we both are from the Cincinnati area and we were living in New York for a few years at that point and we had a three-year-old and our whole plan was to leave within a few years. Right, at some point I would get a job that I wanted in, like data science maybe, or something else in media that was going to allow me to take it remote. And the day that they sent us home, they were like you know what? It was mid-March 2020.
26:27
And they're like hey, we're going to send everybody remote for a week and when I went down the elevator I was like you know what? I think this is going to end up being my opportunity to take this job remote, because I feel like I'm going to do a great enough job that they'll be like yeah, lance, a great enough job that they'll be like yeah, lance, we'll just let you keep working remote. So at this period I really realized this is a moment that I really need to work very hard and show my value because I want to take this job remote.
26:59
And so I, starting at that moment, and really even to this day, I've just been in a sprint and I've just I haven't stopped it. And uh, and so I you know, we go into the lockdowns and uh, housing starts to do some interesting things. Right, and I'm still like paying a little bit of attention to housing data. You know, I'm still running my scrapers and all this stuff and uh, and I'm not writing about housing at all, but housing starts doing just some interesting stuff, and so I just started following in it and then I just started writing about it every once in a while, like story here, story there.
27:38 - Preston Zeller (Host)
um, just the weird inflections in the market. You know especially. Yeah, because, well, it's interesting, because, like you people go look at the fed rates. Right, they started going up and then they just dropped them back down.
27:50 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, exactly, and uh, and following like lumber and these different things. And so at this point housing starts to really go crazy and there's a huge amount of uh reader interest to understand what's going on in housing. And so, even though I wasn't brought in to cover any housing I wasn't even really brought in to write that much I was really brought in really to focus more on fortune analytics and the premium business that fortune was building. And so I just jumped more and more into it and I started over time to build a following on Twitter. And so you know, back when I started at Fortune, I had less than 2000 followers on Twitter and now I have like 92,000. It's really just soared because of this for housing and my type of coverage that I did for it.
28:37
And so at Fortune, I just kept writing more and more about housing. That started to take off, more and more about housing. That started to take off. And then at some point I got the opportunity to build a business for Fortune called Fortune Education, which I was going to run a team of four people and we were going to build a lead generation business. And so it was completely out of my wheelhouse in terms of what I wanted to cover Lead gen. For what Do what Lead gen for what? Education? So degrees.
29:12
So people who want to go get a master's or something like that, yes, and I kind of got tapped into it because somebody realized, oh, lance used to do the business school rankings for Bloomberg, so Lance would be a great person for this, to kind of just do the rankings. But then somehow I kind of morphed myself into running the whole team and was an editorial director for it, which is not something I've really ever been bitten by and had not had too much experience with and I was like, wow, this is kind of fun, this is kind of a thrill. But then I was like, wait, I have none of the upside I have, I have all that, I have all of the you know. You know I put all the sweat into building it but I don't have upside for it. It but I don't have upside for it. And so I kind of got bit by that and I started building that in spring of 21 and still covering housing through all of 2021, 22.
30:16
And 22 is really when my audience really took off for housing, because one of the things that I was prepared for more was the mortgage rate shock. Even when rates were at three, I was talking about this risk of a bigger shock to the housing market from a rate shock because, given where inflation had went. And then also one of the things that I had that was nice is I would have frequent calls with like Mark Sandy had that was nice is I would have frequent calls with like Mark Sandy, chief analytics or chief economist of Moody's frequently and was able to pick his brain about housing and rates and was able to really figure out what that rate shock was going to look like early and I was kind of prepared for it and my audience really took off at that point.
31:01 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Well, so let's pause there for a moment, because I'm curious, the timing of when things started to really get wonky and like 22. Was that sort of what was on your radar? And if it was, like, how far ahead of that?
31:20 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
So I made a you know every, I think that you know. You know there's very few times in like my career where I've been like this thing is going to happen and when. And that was one of those few ones where I was like I think this is so people were talking about maybe rates go into four, and during just my calls with Zandy was like, and Zandy was even like maybe they get to high five, I was just like I'm gonna work as if they're going to six or seven and so that was my premise and that is of my whole career, that's one of the. I've never had a moment where I was just like I feel like for I just never had bet that way on a story, but I was like I think it really is going there. And you know so calls with Mark trying to figure out okay, if we go there, what, how does that kind of play out? And so even when we're at like high fives for existing home sales, I thought we're going to low force, like that was my premise. That I kind of got to, and so I just kind of bet on that.
32:26
And then what I did is I went back and I studied the 1981 rate shock and there was a lot of talk then in terms of like, uh, price? A lot of people thought prices would tank if rates went up a lot, right, and then a lot of other people were like no, prices won't fall at all. But I went back and I studied the 81 rate shock and what occurred in the 81 rate shock is prices actually destabilized and fell for six months. And what happened in the second half of 2022? This it's the Freddie Mac house price index. They have it monthly going back to 1975. And so you can go in and see it. And so it was a rate shock induced correction. And that's again kind of what I bet on in 22 and how I covered the market and it built me a lot. I went from the start of it. I only had like 3,000 followers on Twitter at the start of that year and I think by the end I had like 40,000.
33:31 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Were you posting daily or were you just dropping such great nuggets that people like you know they got reposted and all that?
33:41 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
And I was writing nonstop. I was staying up till like three or four in the morning writing these pieces. I was just uh, yeah, I just was all in on it. I was just like I kind of saw that story and I was like I'm running with this how many, how many times a day were you posting on, say on twitter, x, whatever uh, maybe still up to what I'm at like, I don't know, 10, 15, 10, 15 I don't know multiple stories a day.
34:05 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I was cranking out a lot you're using a scheduler, I hope, or are you just going?
34:10 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
yeah, I'm a little. No, I'm for what?
34:13 - Preston Zeller (Host)
yeah, but you just have a thought and you're like, bam, I'm gonna write it in and send it pretty much.
34:19 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, okay, I don't schedule much. Uh, the only thing I schedule is every three months or maybe six weeks, I do a tweet that's like hey, real estate agents, home builders, blah, blah, blah. What are you seeing in the market now?
34:35 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And please, make a note of that.
34:37 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Because I have a lot of followers across the industry and so it's a good reminder for me to like hey, get some commentary from these people because they see a lot of different things. I get those anecdotes.
34:49 - Preston Zeller (Host)
You're kind of interesting too because you're this, you're a live wire on what's happening right Versus you know, just sort of evergreen content, I mean. I mean, I think that speaks to it really kind of, um sort of persona that people can become. It's really hard to maintain that. I think that speaks to a really kind of sort of persona that people can become. It's really hard to maintain that. I think you have to be really genuinely passionate about that, like you are about a subject matter to be keeping up on it as much as you are.
35:19
Otherwise, like, if it's just the thing you get into to get followers, you're going to fizzle out. Thing you get into to get followers, you're going to fizzle out because, like you said, doing 10, 10 posts a day, even five posts a day, in between all the other things that you may be doing in a day, could be daunting. Um, well, you know, I think one thread I got to call this out that just you know is very consistent, in case people haven't caught on right, is like you're taking this, really, this obsession you have with running and decreasing your time, which I think is a typical like runner's thing for you know, whatever mile or whatever they're doing, um, but applying it in such a way, just you're kind of like outworking your competition, it sounds like, and from a journalistic standpoint, um right, I mean, is that fair to say?
36:05 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
And that's, and that's why, when you kind of told me what type of discussion we were having, that's why I went all the way there. I was like, well, if we have this much time, I'm going to go all the way back, cause that's exactly what it is. And you know, it's kind of that feeling of like, you know, at that, you know, as a runner, you feel like the most successful is when you're the most exhausted, right? So you know, maybe that's a toxic thing to take into your career, but that's, you know, that's how I felt at some of these moments.
36:39
And so in 2023, this is when I had already been bit by that entrepreneur bug I talked about in like April 21. And I was still running fortune education. And then I kind of starting to figure out you know what I want to do something on my own for real estate. And in the start of 23, I'm starting to figure out what that could kind of look like. And so I had some discussions with Fortune, like, do we want to do a royalty deal right, where I'm going to go build something and I get a royalty cut of it, right? That's something that they had never done for anybody and not something. You know, they were a little interested and the CFO, who I was actually my boss. I had a unique situation where I reported to the CFO because I was building like these hybrid businesses and so they were interested, but it was so unique to the space that they didn't really want to do it Right. Okay. So then I was like you know, hey, you know I had a few different pitches and I kept getting no's and then at some point I got contacted by Anthony Pompliano, who I had worked with his wife, Polina, at Fortune she was an editor there covering the VC space and he has a call with me and the reason for his call is he was trying to build something in the real estate space and they had built one business and it wasn't successful and it had like hyper focused on to individual markets. So their plan was to, like you know, cover the Miami market and then they would add another market, right.
38:19
And so I kind of gave my whole view of what to build based on like this. This whole period I had had like thinking about it Right and um, and like how it would be monetized and all these different parts. And, uh, Anthony is kind of like yeah, that's a yeah, that's a really good idea. And I'm like, yeah, it's because I plan to build this thing. He's like you know what, give me a week, let me think about this, and I think maybe we could do this together. He comes back to me with a proposal, um and uh, and so then I, you know, I kind of have a little bit of a top, like I would say. It felt like a year within three weeks, where I'm like trying to figure out like what am I going to do here?
39:03
it felt like another one of those big moments in my life Like what do I do? And so I had three different options which I do this thing with Anthony uh, who is a great entrepreneur, understands how to build media businesses. I do this thing on my own Right. And so then you know, 10 years, 20 years down the road, when whatever, yeah, maybe you know I, just I have more control, right. And then the third thing is like I give Fortune one more chance and I give them this proposal. What I decided is spontaneously, on like a Wednesday, or maybe it was a Tuesday, I bought a flight at like I don't know, like 6 or 7 pm to go to New York the next morning. Where?
39:51 - Preston Zeller (Host)
are you living at that time then?
39:54 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
So I skipped that one story. Yes, oh yeah, you didn't fully able to take my job remotely to Ohio. You know a lot of people took their jobs remote. I didn't see that happening. But yes, uh, I w I was able to buy out here, had the house built uh through the end of 2020 and moved in at the end of, like December 2020.
40:16 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Okay.
40:17 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
So I got lucky on the rates. Yeah, right, 2.6, yeah, I got, I got lucky there. I didn't see that happening. But uh, and so at the end of 20 so this is like September 2023 I decide I'm gonna buy a last minute flight to New York, go in and see the people at fortune and give them, uh, tell them that I'm quitting, uh, in a week to, or in two weeks to, build Resi club. And that's what I told him. I told them that on October 11th, or maybe it was three weeks, I'm like on October 11th, I am leaving to build Resi club and I'm launching it at this time, on this date. And I was like now, if fortune wants to invest with me, uh, I'm willing to do that. Uh, otherwise, I'm, I'm, I'm leaving on the 11th.
41:07
And so they had a few days where they considered the proposal. Uh, you know, because you know I already had an audience for this space, right, and I was. I wasn't going to start it like scratch. And you know, I laid out like my business plan for it and they were interested, but they just decided that they weren't going to do it. And so I called up Anthony. I'm like Anthony, the state rock, we're rocking and rolling.
41:30 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah.
41:30 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
We got it signed and uh, and then I launched Resi club October 11th 2023.
41:44 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Very cool man, yeah, and that that's, um, I think, uh, a good lesson for people listening that you know. You didn't. It sounds like you didn't necessarily set out with this innate entrepreneurial itch from the get-go. You, you actually had all these other interests of just like obviously putting in really long hours learning, continuing to learn the things you wanted to after work and then refining your craft, and then these other opportunities along the way sort of kind of gave you the idea for ResiClub. It sounded like.
42:16
But I think sometimes people who have this entrepreneurial bent and I've been in this too you kind of vilify having a traditional W2 job. It's like that's not a bad thing, there's stability in there generally speaking, but it can also give you legs to go explore what it is you're trying to build before you actually just jump into it, because that can be, you know, pretty sketchy too, unless you have, you know, a good cushion on, you know, financially or whatever the case is and what you know. I'm curious for you, what was the sort of defining moment of being like, defining moment of being like hey, I'm ready to go take this leap into the entrepreneurial path and in the risks, that come with it, right?
43:08 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, I think it came from a lot of different things and it goes back to what you said, which is the benefit of having like a W2 for so long. So I was, you know, a big saver and you know I'm pretty like conservative in my approach in life, uh, which is also one of the reasons I wanted to come live back in Ohio, right? Uh, so, you know, having so many years where I'd saved so much, and I, you know I did get kind of lucky on some of these stocks like Apple and Amazon for a bit Um, so, yeah, you have.
43:36 - Preston Zeller (Host)
You have investments going on. That you're, you know you're being smart in that way as well. I'm not letting it sit in a bank. Don't let your money sit in a bank.
43:43 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
So just having like a conservative approach to things for so long and getting into a financial situation where I felt like you know what if I spent, you know, for if I spent so many years doing this and it failed, I would still be in an OK position is kind of how I felt like and so. But I never like in my 20s and thought I was going to be an entrepreneur Never, never, really even crossed my mind, and really just the whole thought of that is, you know, back then would have probably been a little bit terrifying, right? Especially in media, where if businesses have X percent failure rate right, whatever it is for media, the real number is substantially higher. Right, there's a lot of competition. You know, advertising is very cyclical. There's a lot of downsides to media, but there's also some areas of opportunity where my thesis for the space is that a lot of these bigger media companies are going to struggle and they're going to fail.
44:56
And they're going to fail and the media companies that will be successful heading forward, I think they're going to be very niche. I think they're going to be personality driven and they're really just going to have to deliver smart content, right, because there's so much content out there. You're going to have less of like these. You know, I don't think you're going to see a business insider launched in 2025, right. I don't think you're going to see a Huffington post launched in 2025. It's a much smaller, smarter content with a relationship with the audience is what I believe.
45:33 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, I think there's a lot of things headed that way too, just in terms of, um, you know, sort of like really personalized solutions, whatever it is. You know we'll have a lot more out there and a lot more you're not aware of, but it's because you're going to have something that's so specific for you because, um, yeah, a giant media publishing company who was it think it was Inc who kind of got lambasted recently on SEO by Google, I don't know, or by by SEO talking heads.
46:09 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
There's a lot. There's a lot of things going on. So entire businesses within some of these media companies are getting killed because, like Google will classify things differently. So, like what I was talking about earlier, the lead generation business I built, some of these lead generation are getting killed because, like Google will classify things differently. So, like what I was talking about earlier, the lead generation business I built, some of these lead generation businesses that have been built by some of these media companies are getting like penalized and just completely walked out by Google and so, yeah, and so that's happening.
46:34
There's a lot of things happening in media right now. It's the chop's, it's one, it's the. It's the choppiest period for media. I think in my career that I've seen, because you have this, I mean you have the long period of Zerp, right, and there was a lot of structural issues wrong with media during that whole period, but they didn't necessarily manifest because the advertising environment just was a little more favorable right In that window than it maybe should have otherwise been. And what I mean by that the structural issues is Google and Facebook absorbing online advertising, right, and some of the media companies benefited because online advertising was so new so that they kind of rode that secular wind and they kind of benefited from some of the low interest rate period. But coming into this window, I think things have shifted in media yeah.
48:02
Yeah, so I know we said at the beginning we weren't going to go this route, but we are going to go a brief rabbit trail because I think people are interested. But you know what is your take on. You know why prices got so screwy.
48:08 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Is it just?
48:08 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
that we, you know, passed so many laws on money supply or what so, in terms of like home prices.
48:11 - Preston Zeller (Host)
The past zoomed in.
48:12 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Well, let me, I'm going to zoom in and then maybe I'll zoom out. Okay, to spring 2020, right, and the policies that were enacted, but in terms of economic policies, and then also the lockdowns, all of it, right, what I would call COVID-19 economics, right, whatever you want to call it, pandemic era economics, it happened across the developed world, happened in Europe, us, Australia, these different places, and what occurred is that housing demand, which is more elastic than supply, accelerated. It just took off and that's, you know, the work from home which creates the work from home arbitrage, where people of these higher incomes of San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, dc can go buy other places. Right, they were locked in by affordability constraints in those markets and then they took those incomes and bought elsewhere, right, so it created more demand. And then even the places who stayed in those markets, there was an increase in household formation and total demand for space, because people were then working from home and, like you know what, I need an office, or they're working from home and they have a roommate and they're like you know what, I could stand you two hours a day or three, but I hate your guts being here all day. So they decoupled and that, and stimulus, and all of that helped to increase that as well. Right, if there was like a real recession, then you know there was a recession on paper, but not financially for a lot of people, right. And so the all the stimulus, the, the work from home and the increase in demand for space, and then the ultra low rates, which made a lot more of these properties cash flow, a lot more investors poured in, and then, as all of this demand comes in, supply is not elastic in a way that can meet that demand. Right.
50:05
And so the Fed estimates, in the first two years of the pandemic, home construction housing starts specifically would have needed to increase 300% to match the increase in demand. Home construction can barely increase 10, 20, 30%. Right, there are hard constraints in terms of how many people know how to do the things right the roof, the whole labor network right. There are then also hard constraints on how much the supply chain can shift over time. Right, it takes years to build out the supply chain for windows, for concrete, all of this stuff. Right. You cannot increase housing starts to go from 1.4 million seasonally adjusted annualized basis to then produce 2.8 million. That's 100% increase. Then you go up to like four something million, let alone close to 6 million. It cannot happen. So what happens when you have way more demand than can be met?
51:07
Prices overheat and so the demand that pays the most transacts, and so what we saw is a historic overheating for home prices going up like 40 something percent and 50, 60, 70, 80 in some markets in an 18 month window, and so that has created this very big problem for the industry. Now where the rate environment has shifted, monetary policy has normalized out of this ZERP period and we had this rate shock, and now we have this huge affordability constraint and a lot of people who would like to sell and buy something else. They can't even qualify for the new mortgage right. There are some people who could downsize their house and they still couldn't qualify, right at current prices and current rates, and so existing home sales have really just plummeted and we're just in this market where prices went too high too quickly because housing demand is elastic and they kind of allowed that to happen and we're just really pinched and squeezed. So that's one part to the structural issues with housing. There's a couple of different ones there which is, I believe that there are a few markets in the country where supply elasticity has just really tanked, and that's like places like Boston, it's places like San Francisco, los Angeles, san Diego, seattle, right.
52:37
And so those markets are the ones where, whether it's because they don't have enough room to build, or it's a zoning or whatever it is, they just aren't adding as much supply as the demand and incomes have gotten to, and so prices have really just moved to astronomical levels. And what that's going to create over the cycles and this is going to happen throughout the rest of our lives, I believe is that we're going to have these periods where you will see these bursts of migrations out of these markets like we saw in 2003, 4, 5, like we saw in 2020, 2021. And that's going to create overheating into these spill off markets. These spill off markets have greater levels of supply elasticity Austin, tampa, jacksonville, right. And so in those markets they will potentially, and through these boom bust cycles, see come downs in price, right, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for that market, because it, you know, would you rather have the market the affordability just continues to deteriorate or a little bit of a let off. So it's not necessarily a bad thing.
53:50 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And so that's probably making them more stable too, right.
53:54 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yes.
53:55
I you know, when people talk about, like, the drops in some of these markets and I cover them, you know the ones that have seen drops I don't necessarily see them as a bad thing, right, especially given the fact that only a very few group of people bought at the tippity tops in these markets. Right, there wasn't that many transactions occurring at the very end of the boom Now. So that's the number two, so that's zoomed out. So there is the structural supply issues that I believe in specific markets of the country. But maybe the story gets told in a way that acts like it's everywhere, right, and I don't necessarily believe that's true.
54:35 - Preston Zeller (Host)
That is one thing that bothers me so much. By the way, when, like, the real estate market is generalized in the US, you're like to your, to your point I mean you're talking about regional markets and stuff like that I mean it's, it is like, by definition, a kind of a local thing, because you know where people move, you know, so I it's. I think the insights you're able to pull out are great, but keep going.
55:02 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Okay, so here's the other one. Then I do believe that there is some type of structure, some type of under building for the entry level single family home and the U? S dating back to the bust, home prices soar, right. There's all of these dynamics that lead to the crash, but one of the very specific ones that helped to push down home prices is we redid lending standards in the middle of a housing downturn, so like, right now, this is a housing downturn. Now imagine we go out into this market and we change the lending standards and we take a big group who could buy and just take them off, right. So that's what we did following the bust, is we? We kind of panicked and we took some of the people who historically would have been, so the ones that had to come out, like the Ninja Lens, right, like that's right. Yeah, those are terrible, yeah. But there was also another group who had been buying for a long time and kind of got taken out at the bottom of the market because we were just kind of worried about them, right.
56:03
And so if you're talking about like subprime or what uh, kind of a a mixture there of, like some of the, so some of the, the, the people who were financing historically 80s, 90ss, right, 2000s, but 2000s more people get, there's more products. That allows more people in who shouldn't have bought right.
56:27 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And.
56:27 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
I'm not saying that that should have been something, but there's also, when we tight, as we tighten lending, a chunk of the bottom of the market that had been there for a long time gets pushed out right, and so what gets created and this is the more important part that you can find in the data is that the very bottom of the market gets hit the hardest. Following GFC, yeah right.
56:50
Just crushed right and it gets to the point. It's crushed so hard that the pricing data for some of these medians doesn't fall as much as it did in the real world, and the reason is the top of the market stayed a bit healthier, even though it was bad too. Like I'm not saying anything was really good in GFC, but relatively right, better Right, and so what actually transacts is more of the high, because the bottom is just so hit. But what happens is because the bottom of the market gets hit so hard that it just takes out even more of the building ecosystem in the building at the very bottom of the market. So the view is you have some type of correction for the market that may be needed, and then you have some type of overcorrection to the market, right, and so the single family level of home building and you could Google single family housing starts just completely falls through the floor and even as the market starts to recover, it just takes a long time to get it going and the thing about it is, like we talked about earlier supply chain and labor is not as elastic in construction, right. So even as the market's recovering in 2013, 14, 15, we don't have a same increase in the home building levels relative to that recovery, because it takes so long to get that moving up.
58:16
And so I think there's three parts to housing. Is that there's some of these very high end markets have become not very supply elastic. They've become very little supply elasticity. San Francisco is to the world right, there is some type of underbuilding that occurred for single family that the market is still evening out. And then the third is and this is on the other side this is that we overheated prices. Prices got too overheated during the pandemic housing boom and now we're in this real affordability squeeze where there isn't necessarily the lever down that's manifesting at the moment for prices and we're just kind of in this really big squeeze. And so what's the what's occurring is you're just not having very many existing home sales and sorry if I threw a lot out there. I kind of wanted to take your question and do a bigger zoomed out of the market and kind of talk about these three different uh phenomenon that have happened.
59:17 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. That was like the Lance, like performative. I love how passionate you are when you talk about this stuff and I also I sort of intentionally didn't tell you that we were going to talk about that, so that wasn't keeping in your mind so much. But, like you, you explain it very clearly and I think for anyone who hasn't heard that explanation, um makes a lot of sense, because I think you know, you hear bits and pieces of what you just said, right, and so you can think it's all. Everything is just kind of boils down to this one aspect.
59:55
But you know, our economy is obviously so much more complicated and I, you know, I even wonder to what degree. I mean, I'm in the Southwest but, like um, this gets talked about amongst people. But like, how many people are undocumented here working on job sites and if those people get, you know, deported or who's going to, you know, is there a labor force there that you know has to be backfilled, or you know things like that. So that can come up sometimes too in the construction trade.
01:00:27 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I think that I could understand why that's a concern and I think what we're going to see in that area of the market is and you know, my base case for the Trump administration and I don't know if you want any of those takes is I'm a little more skeptical of these huge full-blown trade wars, even now, when it's getting talked about so much and some of them are getting pushed out, other than what's going to happen to China. I think that is very much going to go into effect. That's a different thing. I think a lot of these other ones are probably like negotiating tactics, right? Oh yeah, you know, canada, mexico, to do some of the things, to cooperate with us that we wanted them to.
01:01:11 - Preston Zeller (Host)
It's a twisted arm in a. In a way Seems like that.
01:01:16 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
My base case that I published in this a few months back. I'm also skeptical that there will be like the huge mass deportations in terms of like 10, 20 million, because we went through the Trump administration last time and that didn't necessarily happen. But I think the most immediate impact and this has already occurred is that we are going to see a huge deceleration in the number of people coming through the southern border.
01:01:39 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Right, yeah, that is already happened. I was actually talking about that with a friend last night who used to be Border Patrol and they said her friends in the Border Patrol are like there. There's a lot going on there right now that they that they kind of were told not to do.
01:01:57 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
And I don't know if uh like like that type of impact is kind of an opportunity cost impact, right, where it's like uh, some of that lower end demand, uh, for multi, you don't get as much of that Um and again, on the other side of it, we had way more of that migration than we were expected, right? John Burns did the analysis and they found that we had 700,000 more households formed because of the burst through the southern border, and now there's a lot of people in these households. They're not necessarily like one person household too. So 700,000 households is a lot more people than it might sound like. But 700,000 households it created 100,000 additional homeowner households, which I'm not exactly sure, and then and then also 600,000 additional renter households, more than expected.
01:02:53
So there's always some of those households formed from like a legal, undocumented immigration, but this one, we just saw way more of that than we had expected. But so now I think on the other side you're going to get like this correction where uh, maybe some of the uh households that would have formed from that segment of migration heading the next couple years won't happen. But we had also had like a pull ahead effect, but we had had more formed in that window than we would have otherwise expected. And so where that could maybe impact some of the um, like builders, is that maybe they're not necessarily seeing a lot of their workers deported but maybe they're having a little harder time finding more of the workers the way they had before, because you see such a that deceleration and this is a lot of speculation here and it's kind of you know, you know how everything works out could potentially be very different, but that would kind of be like my base case, yeah no, that's good.
01:04:00 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Well, I'd love for you to be able to share you know sort of what your goals are with Resi Club, where that's kind of, yeah, what your goals are with Resi Club and how people can help, of course, subscribe to Resi Club, I mean that's but and retweet you all the time. But, yeah, I'd love to hear a bit more. What are your, what's your vision for Resi Club?
01:04:23 - Lance Lambert (Guest)
Yeah. So my goal with Resi Club is to create, like a data driven gateway to the heart of the US housing market, and so it's like a lot of me analyzing the housing market and showing through charts and maps what's happening right, connecting these dots in a way that just clicks to people, and I still haven't done as good of a job with it as I would like to Like. I think readers have loved the content, but I want to go deeper and I want to like take some of these bigger points like we talked about and boil them down better. But then there's the other side of it. It's like making sure that these things are right. There's this when I was going to journalism school, there was a saying that you know is what we, this is what's been stated in the industry, this is the view, but let's like take that and like make sure all of it's right, and so turn over all the rocks and make sure, like that, we're not missing anything Right, and so that's kind of my approach with it.
01:05:35
Audience is home builders, loan officers, real estate agents, buyers, sellers, sfr, build to rent across the you know, capital markets, institutional just anybody who is, you know, a stakeholder in the housing market. I want to provide good information for them and so they can go to resiclubanalyticscom, put in their email, get signed up. I also do have a premium tier where they get like three additional articles more access to the data analysis, my monthly webinar and stuff like that called Resi Club Pro. And they can also find me on Twitter at News Lambert and LinkedIn, googling Lance Lambert.
01:06:18 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Awesome, well, thanks so much, Lance. This has been fantastic to learn more about your story. I knew a little bit of it, but learning the details has been really good.
01:06:29 - Hope (Announcement)
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