It’s The Kim Monson Show, analyzing the most important stories.
That seems to me like government is establishing a religion.
The latest in politics and world affairs.
If you give people rights, women’s rights, gay rights, whatever, there can’t be equal rights if there are special rights.
Today’s current opinions and ideas.
Surveys show that people still really prefer freedom over government force.
Is it freedom or is it force? Let’s have a conversation.
Welcome to The Kim Monson Show. I’m Karen Levine. Kim is traveling today, and so let’s have a conversation.
Thank you for listening. Each of you are valued and cherished. Today, strive for excellence.
Take care of your heart, your soul, your mind and your body. You are made for this moment. Thank you to our producer, Joe, who’s going to try and keep me on track today, Joe.
And we want to ask you to visit Kim’s website, which is kimmonson.com, and sign up for her weekly newsletter. You’ll get the first look of all her upcoming guests, as well as our current recent essays. And I would say the most recent essay written by Alan was quite outstanding, wouldn’t you, Joe?
Yes, ma’am, that was fantastic.
What was it about the King, what, Nan Tuckett, Nan Tuckett was excellent. So with that, Kim’s email, you can always email her at kimmonson.com. And thank you to the Harris family for their gold sponsorship of the show.
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They offer great lunch specials Monday through Friday for dine in or to go. Wednesdays are Wings Day and you can buy 20 wings and get an additional 10 for free. And you know, we’re in the midst of football season, so wings are always a hot item.
And so with that, offer for to go or dine in in Hooters Restaurants. A great place to get together with friends and watch your favorite teams. So, Joe, our word of the week today or our word of the day today is presumptuous.
It is an adjective of a person or their behavior, failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate. I hope I won’t be considered presumptuous if I offer some advice. But you may need to do that today.
The meaning of presumptuous is overstepping due bounds as of proprietary or courtesy and taking liberties. A person who is presumptuous shows little respect for others by doing things that they have no right to do. Full of characterized by or showing presumption or readiness to presume in conduct or thought, as by saying or doing something without right or permission.
Presumptuous means overstepping the limits of courtesy or politeness. Some of the synonyms of presumptuous are arrogant, fresh, audacious, impertinent. When someone takes liberties, doing things too boldly, you can describe them with the adjective presumptuous.
Presumptuous comes from the Latin word or verb, presumer, which means to take for granted. It means taking for granted your access to someone or power to do something. It is very satisfying and effective word because it belittles and criticizes at the same time.
It’s usually pronounced with all four syllables, presumptuous, although presumptuous is acceptable as well. So, you know, we ask you to try to use presumptuous in a sentence today. And the sentence I came up with Joe is, they seem too presumptuous to be humble leaders of our nation.
So will they get elected? So the quote of the day that I chose is from GK Gesterton, and he was born and raised in England. And he was a writer, a critic, a Christian apologist.
And he said, The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion. And the great thing about The Kim Monson Show is we can have some amazing discussions and conversations about tough subject matter. And I thought that quote was so appropriate.
So Joe, I didn’t pull any history of the day, so I don’t know what happened on September, I think it’s the 24th today, correct?
Yes, ma’am, it is. And I’ll look at it right now.
So with that said, as you guys know, Kim is also involved in American’s Veteran Stories. That’s her other show. And through all of Kim’s work with Veterans, she is honored to highlight the USMC Memorial Foundation and all they are doing to raise money to remodel the official USMC Memorial, which is located right here in Golden, Colorado at Sixth and Colfax.
Paula Sartos is the president of the foundation. She is a Marine veteran and a Gold Star wife. Paula and her team are working diligently to bring the remodel to a reality.
You can help by donating at the usmcmemorialfoundation.org. That’s usmcmemorialfoundation.org.
Well, I think the next thing we want to share with you is, one of our other great sponsors is Roger Mangan with Stain Farm Insurance, and he’ll be joining us here shortly. So Joe, it’s been a rough morning getting us both here, but we are here safely and ready to have a conversation. I have a friend coming in who is a commercial real estate broker, and Doug Jennings is going to share with us some things that are happening in the commercial sector of real estate.
What else is on your mind?
You know, actually, I’m looking forward to that. I’ve always been curious about real estate and how it could actually, it’s one of the few things that accrues value over time rather than losing it like a car or anything else like that. And I find that just absolutely fascinating.
Yes, well, I have found, since I’ve been in the industry over 35 years, that investing in real estate gives you longtime wealth, because, like you said, Joe, it appreciates over time. And like any investment, investments go up in value and down in value over time. But we have seen historically that real estate can provide a place where we do our businesses or a place where we call our home and it creates shelter for us.
But in turn, it also is a great investment.
Well, and I also like that it’s an investment of time too. So there’s some businesses where to get rich, you have to spend all your time all day long every day. And that’s not the case with real estate either.
It’s like you kind of just put in some effort and then you get some time off and then you put in more effort to fix it again and then get some time off and it just kind of bounces back and forth. So you get to still enjoy life while still accruing a wealth.
Exactly, exactly. So when Doug gets in the studio, we’re going to talk about some what we would consider overreaching policy and maybe something that’s taking away our individual aspirations and control and that control is being taken away from us. So we’re excited to have that conversation.
That’ll be really good. I’m super excited as well.
Yeah. Do you find anything interesting happening that happened on September 24th?
On this day, in 1957, they sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, for a racial desegregation, took Center Sage when federal troops were dispatched to Little Rock, Arkansas to maintain order and enforce the right of black students to attend local public high schools. That happened today.
Oh my goodness. We’ve come a long way since 1957, haven’t we?
Yes ma’am, we have. And it kind of feels like we’re reversing again, though.
We are. We are as we continue to divide our society into many segments. Instead of being united, we create more division, which I have found interesting with some of the policies that have creeped into our daily living.
Well, and Kim says it’s not a good idea if you have to force someone to do it. And that’s the whole point. They’re trying to make these things happen that they want, because it puts green in their pocket.
But at the end of the day, does it help the local man, like me, you? No.
Generally not. No, I think it’s interesting that we do, as a nation, have strived for freedoms, and what we have found is public policy tends to take those freedoms away, and that the human, what do I want to call it, endeavor, our desire, our innate behavior is to do good. And we have found that, you know, we’ve been told that sometimes not doing good is better for all of us, which would be inaccurate and false.
Well, I think the way they’ve gotten it is, you’ll be more comfortable if you just don’t tell the truth this time. But sometimes you got to suck it up and tell the truth because it may hurt, but it’s going to be better in the long run. The return of value is much greater with the truth rather than lies and deceits and omissions of truth.
Yeah, most definitely. Then I think of our Word of the Day and I’m like, it becomes rather presumptuous of them that that is in our best interest.
Very nice of you to say that.
Not too poorly done. Well, it’s been interesting to feel fall in the air after the hot summer that we have, but we woke up yesterday and it was a little crisp and again today.
Well, and actually driving out to Great Lakes on Saturday, it was just gorgeous because you can see like the start of the leaves changing. So you can see kind of like these strips of orange just down the side of the mountain. It was just gorgeous.
So fall is definitely here.
Definitely here. I had a bunch of friends that were up in the mountains this weekend and shared their photos. And we commented that, why do we call Colorado Colorful Colorado?
It’s this time of year. So it makes it nice.
I’m loving it.
Definitely.
It sounds good. It sounds good.
Well, and I came from Oklahoma as well. So it’s not one hundred and four like it normally is for me around there. So that’s awesome, too.
Yes. We don’t hit those hundreds here very often, do we? No, most definitely.
It’s like, oh, okay. I’m just checking. I think.
Oh, so our guest, Doug, he’s here. I will just let him know that you’ll be down shortly.
And then we have silence, because I didn’t get of us more information to fill in here. But we’ll be on track in a minute.
Well, let’s just go to a break then. We have these, we get to have these conversations because of great sponsors like Roger Megan and the State Farm.
Excellent.
I can’t believe I just scratched that car. Find my insurance card.
Dude, what do you have in this glove box?
Ew, are these socks dirty?
Oh, forget about the socks.
I need my insurance card.
Just pull it up on the State Farm mobile app.
But I can do that?
Oh, hey, I can do that.
Yep, it’s called Service.
I can file a claim on here too?
Yeah, it’s called Service.
Whoa, I can call my agent too?
It’s called Service.
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Well, who knows what Magellan did?
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Hey, Jack, you got a sec?
Yeah, sure, come on in.
I was wondering if you… Jack, your hair’s on fire.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I just need to finish this sales report, and then I’ll probably…
I don’t know, let me lie down for a bit.
But I’m sure it’ll go away.
But the flames are getting bigger.
Shouldn’t I… your hair, there’s so much fire.
No, no, I’ll be fine.
What can I help you with?
Oh, dear.
Well, at least we know the sprinkler system works.
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Welcome back. I’m Karen Levine. Kim is traveling today.
And sign up for our weekly newsletter. You’ll get the first look at all our upcoming guests, as well as our most recent essays. You can email Kim at Kim at kimmonson.com.
And thank you for contributing to our support. We are an independent voice and exercising the right of freedom of speech. Should that, oh, something that you should put on your bucket list is to visit the Center for American Values located on the beautiful River Walk in Pueblo.
The Center for American Values was co-founded by Medal of Honor recipient, Drew Dix, and Emmy Award-winning documentary maker, Brad Petula. The center is focused on honoring our Medal of Honor recipients and teaching and upholding the principles of America. Honor, integrity, and patriotism.
For more information, check out their website, americanvaluescenter.org. Definitely on my bucket list. We’re excited to have on the phone, Candace Stutzreim, and she is going to talk to us about rank choice voting, which I have to say, I find it a very complicated subject matter.
Welcome, Candace.
Good morning. Thank you for having me. It is complicated.
How much time do we have?
Well, we definitely have a few minutes to have this conversation. We may only get it started, but would love a little bit of background and how you can help us know why this is not a good idea.
Well, thank you. You’re undoubtedly referring to Proposition 131, which is coming at us like a freight train. Our billionaire neighbor, Kent Thery, is sponsoring the bill here in Colorado and Nevada at the same time.
And we are the David against the Goliath, trying to stand up against this thing because we believe it’s the worst thing for our vote and the worst thing for the voice of the average person when as we roll into this concept of rank choice voting in the general election and then the idea of the all candidate primary in the primary election. 131 has two components and those are the two. It’s the all candidate primary which is the open primary essentially on steroids that opens it up to everyone participating on the same ballot and enables everyone to vote on it and then after the top four candidates are chosen from the primary, they roll into the general where we practice an entirely different method of voting and that’s called rank choice voting.
And it’s something most of us have never seen before, and we’re not prepared for it. And you’re most of the time going to be surprised at what the outcome is, even though you’re never going to understand how it was done because it’s completely a black box computer driven operation and you’re just going to be told who the winner is in the end. So that’s what we’re up for.
Wow, that sounds quite dangerous. And when I was talking to Kim about having you on this morning, I said to her, is this the media play that we’re hearing across radio and TV, which is how it will improve our choice and how we’ll have this opportunity for all citizens, all voters to be able to vote on any candidate. And my husband and I were having a conversation about why that would be detrimental or why that would be positive because obviously, the PR push is all the positives and there is a significant underlying negative that could be so harmful truly to our freedoms is what I’m hearing from you, Candace.
You’re absolutely right. They are marketing the concept in the name of modernization. For me as a conservative, I prefer the tried and the true and the traditional and the tested.
And it really is undoing the way we’ve done elections, not only in Colorado, but in America, in Colorado for the last 148 years. And I do not agree with this statement that it improves the quality of candidates. What that’s really saying is that they’re no longer allowing the parties to use the primary election as their method for winnowing down their many candidates for each race in the form of the caucus and assembly method as we have known it, to nominate their candidates onto the primary ballot.
That’s really essentially the purpose of the primary, at least traditionally, is that it’s a party operation. And this, the objective of 131, in the big picture, is to eliminate the parties and to create basically two general elections where all people, all candidates, I mean, all parties, even unaffiliated, even no party at all, all vote off the same ballot on which all candidates of all parties, major parties, minor parties, or again, no party at all, are all listed in a random fashion on a single ballot. And the popular vote alone narrows down that list to the top four, which then advance on to the general election.
And I believe this is the most dangerous part of this proposition, 131, because it is, it’s changing who is nominating, the ballot access to the primary ballot and to the ballot in general is what’s being changed. It used to be that under the traditional system, that it used to be people like us could enter, enter the conduit to get on to the primary ballot through essentially our own neighborhoods, where we could just as a citizen, the concern stalwart citizen would stand up and declare candidacy for a race. And we would then enter into our caucuses in the March timeframe, where we would choose delegates from our party, among our neighbors, people that we know.
And these delegates would then go on to the assemblies at the different levels of division of the state, whether it was Senate districts, congressional districts, state, it goes up all the different levels. You elect delegates for all of these assemblies where the people gather and watch the candidates basically apply for the job, you know, right in front of 4,000 or 5,000 people. So you literally know the candidates, you see them, you hear them sparring for your vote.
It’s the marketplace of ideas. It’s the most pure form of constitutional republic government right before your eyes. And that’s what we’re trading in for what is becoming a blind operation.
We often, we use the example of Sarah Palin’s race in Alaska, where they had, have a single congressional seat there. They only have one person representing them in the House of Representatives. And on that ballot, there were 48 candidates listed.
This is under the same method that we are adopting. Now, yes, 48 candidates. And you almost have to see what it looks like to believe it.
And after the person’s name is their party affiliation, you know, the Rs, the Ds, the Ls, the I’s, the, well, it’d be green parties, constitutional parties, everybody’s all listed randomly on the same ballot. Now, for a while, I believe that at least in this 131, the parties will have the ability to endorse candidates on to that ballot, but the actual nomination feature is, it’s no longer what it used to be, where the top three or the candidates that receive over 30 percent in the assembly vote would proceed on to the primary ballot. It’s no longer a true nomination anymore, it would just be an endorsement.
But we used to have the distinction of the top-line candidates, whoever got the most votes was distinguished as being first. Well, all that’s going to be gone as well, because you’re going to be scattered in with all of these other people. And what happens is, they’re nameless, faceless people.
You have no idea who they are. And they have gained access to the ballot through the petition on system. And anybody who’s ever carried a petition knows how daunting a challenge that is.
I just did it myself this summer with hundreds of volunteers. We tried to get the band rank choice voting initiatives on to the ballot. And we learned how big a number, 125,000 is.
But Kent Theory was competing alongside of us, and they had hired six circulator companies to meet their numbers. And it was tough for them too, because each of us only had two months to collect 125,000 perfect signatures. So he was paying anywhere $6 a signature on up in order to gather those signatures.
So it really takes a couple million dollars in your pocket in order to get those kind of numbers. And the numbers are different for candidates, but they’re also very daunting. And the average person doesn’t have the money to pony up in order just to get themselves on to the ballot.
So you end up either having to have money yourself or you’re willing to dip into the pockets of other people who have money. And you know, they’re not inclined to give that money to just anybody.
Right.
So they’re looking, this is the most, this is the worst part, that you have to align with their values.
Well I think what’s interesting is that we see this big money get involved in these things. And if we look at history, history has proven in many cases, we have done many things right in our nation. And the party system and the way that we have voted has proven to done well.
And it has allowed all citizens of any status, wealth status to participate. And so I think that’s what you’re saying is we’re being sold the fact that this is better for average America and the average voter. And in fact, it’s actually gonna strip away even more of their rights and freedoms when it comes down to electing people who truly represent us.
Because you won’t even know what they stand for. You’re barely gonna recognize their name. And in the general, when it goes on to the rank choice method, you’re gonna not only have to have name recognition, but be able to rank the four that make it onto the general in the order that you’d like them to finish.
And I’ll just add that really what we’re giving away is the party system. And in a time right now, the party system has become so polarized. And people make that sound very sinister, but actually it’s the most sensible way for us to organize, because we have the concept of the platform.
Around which we gather.
So when we-
I hate to cut you off, but if you could just sum it up with a final thought for us and let us know what is the best way that people can reach out to you and or help defeat this rank choice voting proposition 131.
Thank you for asking. And we have a website, it’s called firstchoicecounts.com. firstchoicecounts.com.
And you can go there and learn more and better and more depth about how both of these processes are going to work. Two different elections, two different voting methods, two different ballots. There’s a lot to learn.
And if this passes, we are giving away the purest form of representative government. Really, there’s very few states in the country that enjoy exactly what we have and exactly what we’re giving up. Yeah.
And I hope that people wake up in the time that we have left to stop this thing. Because I’m afraid that if we give it up, there’s no going back.
Yeah. Well, I just appreciate.
There’s like 12 states that are also doing the same thing. It’s not just us. Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you taking some time this morning to get on the line with us, Candice, and make us aware of how bad Proposition 131 is. And I would just encourage our listeners to go check out your website.
Thank you very much, Karen.
Thank you, Candice. You too.
Thank you.
And now we will head to a quick break and come back, and we’ll have a conversation with Doug Jennings with Remax Alliance.
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.
Welcome back to The Kim Monson Show. I’m Karen Levine, and I’m filling in for Kim today. And it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride, but we’re making it through.
I appreciate your patience. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. You’ll get the first look at all upcoming guests, as well as our most recent essays.
And you can email Kim at Kim at kimmonson.com. And we thank you for contributing to support our independent voice and exercising our right of freedom of speech. This morning, I have in studio with me, my dear friend, Doug Jennings.
He’s with Remax Alliance, and he’s a commercial broker. And he had a conversation with Kim a month or so back regarding benchmark.
Benchmarking, yeah.
Yeah.
Regulation 28, it’s for the commercial world. Remax Commercial Alliance looks at just commercial activity. And it’s a big deal for us because now this new requirement of benchmarking, it sounds really good.
All the greenies are like, okay, we should do this thing called benchmarking, which means every property owner has to report their energy usage. So they have to show once a year how much energy you’ve used, have to turn in your Excel report or whatever energy provider you have, but it’s turning into like a government catnip. Because now Denver turned into another thing called Energize Denver.
And then Fort Collins turned into another, their municipality said, well, we can beat that one and we can go even higher and harder than the benchmarking rules. So, generically, benchmarking was Reg 28 and they have at a state level. But then there’s also these other municipalities that are ganging up on that to say, okay, now you have to do more.
You have to have less square footage and report more improvement on your property’s energy usage.
Well, we see in the residential arena, and now you’re helping me understand, Doug, this is happening in the commercial arena as well. You use the example of Energize Denver. And we are in the residential arena, always discussing affordability.
And what happens with this regulation is it increases the cost of bringing the product to the market, as well as keeping the product in the market. So I’m sure you’re seeing that in the commercial arena.
Oh, it’s big. It’s huge. And it’s costing everybody.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a property owner or not. Let’s pretend for a second you have an apartment complex or you live in an apartment, and all of a sudden you have this new regulation. Well, every regulation has a cost.
So just submitting, we tried to comply. We’ve tried to go through this process. And when you try to submit a benchmarking report, it took me, and I consider myself to be at least tech knowledgeable, maybe not tech savvy, but knowledgeable.
It took me over 45 minutes, and there’s all these things that contradict, because what if there are solar panels? What if there are this? Which one do you report?
Are you reporting the top line, the kilowatt hours? Are you reporting the net usage out of the solar panels? So it’s so confusing like anything government, you can imagine it’s layer upon layer of confusion, and it costs more.
No matter what, it takes more to report that now. So these companies are popping up and saying, we’ll take care of your benchmarking, we’ll report it, but that means your property management company then has to hire out, and the cost of even managing the property becomes more. So then your leases go up.
And that doesn’t necessarily, the intent of the law was to improve the energy usage. Well, what if you didn’t have any tenants in this year, and then next year you get a bunch of tenants, and all of a sudden your usage goes up? So it doesn’t take into account in an easy way.
They say that you can actually file a petition but realistically, what if you have two different tenants at different times? Over the years, now all of a sudden a vacant space, which is popular and commercial, becomes occupied and they use more energy. So you don’t lower your energy usage and now you have up to a $15,000 fine for not reducing your energy usage?
It’s ridiculous.
Well, and I guess the underlining theme I see is the restriction, the taking away of our freedom, which would be as a property owner, whether that’s a commercial property or residential property. If I have the desire to use more energy for whatever purpose, maybe the industry I’m in or a hobby I have does that, then I have the choice to pay for that energy or not pay for that energy from the standpoint of my use. And now the government is telling us how much energy we will use or not use.
Is that what I’m hearing?
They’re gonna penalize you for using more. So they will tell you that you can use as much as you want, but if you don’t use less than you did before, then you will have a penalty over time. And right now it’s just in commercial, but there’s no way they’re stopping at commercial.
There’s no way they want to just be in the commercial sphere. It’s gonna be a residential thing too. And that’s where they’re saying, oh no, no, this is just for the commercial side, but realistically, we all know how this goes.
They’ll make money off of this. They’ve already established a state energy office and they’ve already gone through the process of hiring people for this. So it’ll be in residential.
That’s what everybody should hear is all of a sudden, now you’re gonna have to report for your house. Did you leave your bathroom light on? Now, are you gonna get penalized by the state or Denver or Fort Collins or?
The local municipality of what you live in.
Right.
And I think you’re correct. We see things in the commercial arena that always over time flow over into the residential arena and again, increase the cost of us taxpaying citizens in our day to day living. And government gets bigger and the they who are representing or not us, take over control of our freedoms.
Yeah.
And this is just one more situation.
One more layer of regulation where it’s like they’re here to protect us.
Yeah.
This is here to protect us that they need to tell us how to use our energy. But there is some hope on the topic. I’ll say that’s the government side.
That’s why I like to say that’s the catnip. It went from the state and then the cities are like, oh, we can do better than the state because the state said there was this 50,000 square foot threshold. Then Denver came in and said, well, energize Denver is going to be better than benchmarking.
Benchmarking, so passe, we’re going to go ahead and say 25,000 square feet. Then Fort Collins said 25,000 square feet. That’s not enough.
We’re going to go to 5,000 square feet. Now, I don’t own a house that’s 5,000 square feet, but there are houses out there with 5,000 square feet. So it’s coming to the residential side real soon.
The good news is we have organizations, right? I do believe in the associations and we have two lawsuits that have spurred out of this. And so the contrary to this is NAOP.
NAOP filed a lawsuit against Energize Denver and then also the apartment association filed a lawsuit against the state. So right now we have a fight, a legal fight, which these things can take hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars to go against because you’re fighting the state. So there is hope in the sense that our associations are fighting for our people and for our agents.
We as agents, we obviously say it’s worth going after and worth being a member. All the NAR stuff that we hear. This is another example of why you want to be affiliated with some of these organizations that speak what we can’t.
You and I can say something, but our voice isn’t even heard because we’re not at the table.
But that brings us back to the conversation we were having with Candace, is that if we go to a rank choice voting situation, we’re not electing people who will have our voice, that are going to go out and represent us. I think let’s take a break and when we come back, let’s continue this conversation. And we have our friend and sponsor, John Boson with Boson Law.
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Welcome back to The Kim Monson Show. I’m Karen Levine and I’m sitting in for Kim. She’s traveling today.
I’d like to remind you to sign up for Kim’s weekly newsletter. You’ll get the first look at all her upcoming guests, as well as her most recent essays or recent essays of those she gathers. And feel free to email Kim at Kim at Kim monson.com.
We thank you for contributing to supporting our independent voice and exercising the right of freedom of speech. I have here in studio my friend Doug Jennings. He’s a commercial broker with Remax Alliance and we’re talking about benchmarking, which has to do with the collection of the government, the collection of energy use across our commercial buildings here in Colorado.
And why that the collection of the data doesn’t sound bad. It’s how they intend to use that data. And the fact that they are looking at finding people, property owners because of their over, quote unquote, overuse.
Well, and I would say to your point that it is actually bad. What is the point of the government taking my energy use? There’s a fundamental freedom that we have to say, I don’t need Big Brother telling me, I need to report to them what I’m doing.
I think that is an element of dissension from what we believe. It goes at our core to say, if we’re truly free people, why do I have to report?
Exactly.
Why do I have to turn in how much I’m using? This is not what freedom looks like.
Well, in a capitalistic free market, companies go out and they create product, that they believe there is a market for, there is a consumer for that product, right? And our energy companies, which have been under attacked over the, what, last decade, especially here in Colorado, when we look at oil and gas, there is resources out there for these companies to utilize to bring energy to our community, to our use. And then we have the choice or have had the choice of utilizing, taking in, consuming that energy at a rate that creates comfort for us, creates a good environment for us to live in.
And I just look at myself. I live in a home with hot water heat. That means I cannot have central air because I don’t have duck work.
People think I’m crazy that I live in Colorado with no central air. But I wanted hot water heat for a cleaner air system when I built my house. It’s gotten a little hotter in Colorado.
We now use room air conditioners in places like the primary bedroom, right?
Where you spend bulk of the time. Exactly.
But again, choice was involved.
Yeah. You weren’t forced. In the sense that we also see things like the gas stove being pushed from a government standpoint saying we’re no longer going to want that in the houses.
So the government saying that is totally different than you making a choice at free will to say I don’t want forced air, I want this radiant heat. That’s a fair market decision. But having somebody come in and say, nope, you have to do it this way, that doesn’t feel right.
No. And you use the gas stove as an example. And I love cooking on gas.
And so when I heard that they, we refer to they, the government, taking away my gas stove, what right do they have in a country that has offered freedoms to their citizens? And we continue to be told in our media that we’re not capable of making free decisions.
We’re making the wrong decisions, right? We’re too stupid. I mean, that’s the message I’m getting is you don’t understand.
You’re just dumb. Just do it our way and we know better than you. So it’s, I’m okay being stupid.
That’s all right.
Right. Well, we have that choice.
Right.
As we would say, Joe, freedom versus force. And we can be free to be knowledgeable. Yeah.
And yet we’re being forced to use or not use an amount of energy for the benefit truly of the government, not of the people.
Right.
Yeah.
Right. It’s a tough, it’s a tough situation. And I just, I just like to tell people, just be aware of it.
Know what’s going on.
And I think it’s super helpful for Kim’s listeners to understand that as these things start in the commercial environment, which is our businesses, those are the places where we go to shop. It’s the places we go to do business. Those property owners are taking on this burden that will then get passed on to us.
Yeah. And it’s multi-faceted. The rest of the world doesn’t know all these associations, right?
You talk to that general person has never heard of the NAR lawsuit or has never talked to NAOP or doesn’t know the apartment association. So it’s also a fight against our, our voice, collective voice. So we have in the industry of a collective voice that really helps us in these kind of scenarios where we want to fight.
Well, I can’t fight on my own. I’m just, I’m one person. So having that group come together and coalesce to fight on our behalf, that’s one of the values and the benefits of the associations.
Right.
And can you break down what is NAOP stand for?
NAOP stands for North American or National Association of Industrial and Office Professionals.
Ah, very good.
It’s, it’s focused on industrial and office, but this is across the board. Retail, you have plenty of retail centers. Just looking over the horizon here, you can see all the different buildings that are over 25,000 square feet.
And each one of them would have something to report. So having an institution say, no, this is the wrong, this is the wrong way to go. It’s helpful.
Well, and then when you talk about required reporting, that takes time and energy out of that property owner, that business owner away from them developing business, which brings in income that they then disperse to employees and to their own households.
Right, right. And on the fighting side, on like NAOB side, I’m hearing grumblings from different groups to say, if we can’t fight this legally, then we go to the ballot. But a ballot issue costs hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get on the ballot.
So there are groups right now, they have not come public and they haven’t come out to say, this is what we’re doing. But there are groups out there saying, hey, if we can’t fight this head to head, then we’ll just go to the people.
We’ll go to the people.
So that’s the point of this to say, hey, we’re going to be asking for votes and asking for help. I think that’s going to be the more efficient way to fight even though it’s probably over a million dollars.
The dollars involved. And then if you circle back to the conversation earlier today, this morning, which is ranked choice voting, once again, what I hear is if we take it to the people, are the people, one, we want to make them educated about the issue, but in turn, are we putting the right people into the positions to represent us in government so that they too can fight on our behalf?
Right. That’s the whole point of a vote, right? If you have the ranked choice voting, then it sounds like there could be a puppet for whatever cause the group has.
If the state has these specific causes, well, they could position somebody and say, this is the person we want, and if you use the ranked choice voting, well, they can manipulate the system to get to that. Whereas our typical system, what we have now is, what do you believe? Write that down.
It’s very simple.
Very simple. Well, this has been a great conversation, Doug. And I look forward to hopefully our listeners hanging in for the second hour.
And we have some great conversations that will continue kind of in the arena of real estate and what’s happening nationwide in elections and government. I was reading a headline at the break, which stated that the American people are inundated with credit card debt. And we wonder why we’re in a state of inflation.
And the fact that the point or the propaganda the government sold us about going out and spending money, and then they told us to stop spending money. But didn’t they give us money to spend?
I wonder where this inflation came from.
I know. Where did I think it was embedded into the system as it is typically. Well, I have a quote for the end of our show.
And I would just ask each of us to ponder on it. Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination. And that is from Roy Goodman.
And I can’t tell you a thing about Roy, but I loved his quote. Today, be grateful, read great books, think good thoughts, listen to beautiful music, communicate and listen well, live honestly and authentically, strive for high ideals, and like Superman, stand for truth, justice, and the American way. You are not alone.
God bless you and God bless America. Stay tuned for our number two.
The views and opinions expressed on Klz 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or Klz Management, employees, associates or advertisers. Klz 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting and God and Country station.
It’s The Kim Monson Show, analyzing the most important stories.
That seems to me like government is establishing a religion.
The latest in politics and world affairs.
If you give people rights, women’s rights, gay rights, whatever, there can’t be equal rights if there are special rights.
Today’s current opinions and ideas.
Surveys show that people still really prefer freedom over government force.
Is it freedom or is it force? Let’s have a conversation.
Welcome, welcome to The Kim Monson Show. I’m Karen Levine and I am thrilled to host the show. Kim is traveling today, so let’s have a conversation.
Thank you for listening. Each of you are valued and treasured. Today, strive for excellence, take care of your heart, soul, mind, and body.
And thank you to producer Joe for his great work and getting me through the first hour. We’ll see how the second hour goes, Joe. What do you think?
We’ve got him working hard out on the backboards there, but we want to invite you to visit Kim’s website, kimmonson.com, sign up for her weekly newsletter. You’ll get the first look at all of her upcoming guests, as well as her most recent essays. And you can email Kim at kimmonson.com.
We thank you and we thank Larimer Energy and Sirius Oil and Gas for their gold sponsorship of the show. They offer reliable, efficient, affordable, and abundant energy from oil and gas, and oil and gas derivative fuel, that the hopes and dreams and prosperity of everyday Americans, which I have in studio, my friend, Doug Jennings and we’ll continue the conversation we started in our one regarding benchmarking in the commercial industry, which has to do with energy. So we’ll get to that shortly.
We also want to thank Janssen Photography and their sponsorship of the show. Janssen Photography is located in Lakewood, Colorado, and they specialize in family portraits, portraits of children, senior portraits, and professional portraits for your business or political career. Find more information about them at janssenphotography.com.
They have a lovely setting in Lakewood on a little over, I think, an acre and a Victorian type home, and lots of settings where we can take some amazing photos. I have selected my word for the day is presumptuous. Presumptuous is an adjective of a person or their behavior, and it is failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate.
I hope I won’t be considered presumptuous if I offer some advice. The meaning of presumptuous is overstepping due bounds as of propriety or courtesy or taking liberties. A person who is presumptuous shows little respect for others by doing things that they have no right to do.
Full of, characterized by, or showing presumption or readiness to presume in conduct or thought, as by saying or doing something without right or permission. Presumptuous means overstepping the limits of courtesy and politeness. And some synonyms for presumptuous is arrogant, fresh, audacious, impertinent.
When someone takes liberties, doing things too boldly, you can just try to describe them with the adjective, presumptuous. Presumptuous, I found interesting. It comes from the Latin verb, prosumer, which means to take for granted.
It means taking for granted your access to someone or power to do something. It’s a very satisfying and effective word because it belittles and criticizes at the same time. It’s usually pronounced with all four syllables, presumptuous.
But although presumptuous is acceptable. So for those of us who like to cut things short. So they, we’ve been talking about the they in the first hour.
They being the government, they seem to presumptuous to be humble leaders for our nation. So will they get elected? We just ask that you try to use that word presumptuous in a sentence today.
So Doug, I’m going to challenge you when we talk about benchmarking. Maybe they’ve been a bit presumptuous. And our quote for the day, which really, it just circles back to all the work that Kim does on The Kim Monson Show is, it is from GK.
Chesterton. And he was born and raised in England. He was a Christian apologist.
He was a critic of art and literary. Sounded like a really fascinating guy. He was born in the late 1800s.
And he said, The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion. That’s good. Isn’t that great? That’s good.
And I made a note in the first hour about a headline I read, and it really hit home from the standpoint of what we have seen over these last few years, which is Americans are drowning in credit card debt. And we can stem that back to a lot of policy and rhetoric that has been happening throughout our nation. And during the Cove era, when all citizens will receive money to go out and spend, and they got us all spending, and then we find ourselves in these inflationary times which are challenging.
With that, we, I think, are going to move to having John Bosen. He is one of Kim’s sponsors, and he is on the call and is going to share with us a few bits of information regarding Bosen Law. Welcome, John.
Good morning, Karen. How are you this morning?
Well, I am waddling through. I am, this is a new task for me. I don’t know how Kim does this.
It becomes habit, I’m sure, but.
It does, and with all things experienced, you know, you’re doing well, you’re doing very well.
You’re very kind. Thank you, and welcome. And how are things with you and Bozen Law?
Things are very well with myself and Bozen Law. Thank you for asking. The topic this morning is one I’ve covered before.
Like so many other topics, though, I mean, I just I keep getting reminded on a weekly basis, basis with phone calls from prospective new clients that folks out there really need to understand, especially in Colorado, is kind of a sanctuary state. And with Denver as a sanctuary city, folks need to know what they have as far as insurance coverage for their automobile. And what I have learned and I continue to learn is how many folks don’t understand what they have and the importance of having proper coverage.
And so uninsured, underinsured, motorist coverage is the big point I want to make this morning. As a sanctuary state, as a sanctuary city in Denver, we’re seeing more and more and more folks on the road, have no business being on the road, do not have any insurance coverage and accidents that are resulting because of that. And if you, as an individual in the state of Colorado, driving, don’t have what’s called uninsured motorist coverage and you get hit by one of these individuals, then there’s no recourse, there’s no remedy, there’s no ability to take care of yourself when someone else hurts you like that.
Uninsured motorist coverage covers you in the event you get hit by someone that has no insurance coverage, for whatever reason. And so I encourage people, make sure you know what kind of auto insurance coverage you have. There’s other options, there’s other coverage that’s important, but having, especially in Colorado, uninsured, underinsured motorist coverage is an absolute must right now.
That’s a really important topic that you’ve brought, you know, to our attention.
Yeah, and rates are going up because of the situation of our state and the city of Denver. But I’d encourage folks, that’s one area you just absolutely do not want to cut. And I encourage folks, get with your agent, your auto insurance agent, and make sure you’ve got that coverage.
And talk with your agent about what’s good coverage in the state of Colorado, in terms of the amounts or limits. Because I’m seeing more of it, Karen. Every week, I have at least one phone call.
Sometimes two, with folks who have been involved in an accident with someone that has no insurance coverage. And if, again, as an individual in the state, if you don’t have that coverage for yourself, then you’re out of luck.
Yeah, it’s not probably a place of risk you want to put yourself. If people want to learn more about your services and how, unfortunately, should they be in a position of a car accident and need some assistance, some legal advice, et cetera. How can they best reach you?
Well, for a free consultation, they can call me at 303-999-9999.
Well, thanks for calling in. And I know you’ll be on the air next week and giving another really valuable update. And with that, we will take a quick break.
I can’t believe I just scratched that car. Find my insurance card.
Dude, what do you have in this glove box?
Ew, are these socks dirty?
Forget about the socks.
I need my insurance card.
Just pull it up on the State Farm mobile app. But I can do that?
Oh, hey, I can do that.
Yep, it’s called Service.
I can file a claim on here, too?
Yeah, it’s called Service.
Whoa, I can call my agent, too?
It’s called Service.
There are always opportunities in changing markets, and the metro real estate market is no exception. That is why you need to work with seasoned RE-MAX Alliance Realtor Karen Levine when you buy your home, sell your home, consider the opportunities of a new build, or explore investment properties. Rising interest rates are spurring creativity, innovation, and opportunity in the real estate and mortgage markets.
Kim Monson highly recommends award-winning RE-MAX Realtor Karen Levine. Call Karen Levine today at 303-877-7516 for answers to all your real estate questions. That’s 303-877-7516.
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Well, welcome back. I’m Karen Levine, and I am pleased to host the show today. Kim is traveling, and we encourage you to sign up for Kim’s weekly newsletter.
You’ll get the first look at all her upcoming guests, as well as our most recent essays. And you can email Kim at Kim at kimmonson.com, and that website is kimmonson.com. And so reach out to Kim and check out what’s upcoming throughout the week.
We thank you for contributing to support our independent voice and exercising our right of freedom of speech. And we also encourage you to put on your bucket list to go visit the Center for American Values. It’s located in the beautiful River Walk in Pueblo.
The Center for American Values was co-founded by Medal of Honor recipient, Drew Dix and Emmy award-winning documentary maker, Brad Petula. The Center is focused on honoring our Medal of Honor recipients and teaching and upholding the principles of America, of honor, integrity, and patriotism. And for more information, check out their website, AmericanValuesCenter, americanvaluescenter.org.
And that’s americanvaluescenter.org. We have on the line with us is my dear friend, Lee Brown, and she is from North Carolina, but she is here in Colorado, getting ready to teach a class for the Pikes Peak Realtor Association, which is down in Colorado Springs. And I came to know Lee.
She taught a class when I was at a remax convention years back, and I just appreciated her love for America and strive to ensure our freedoms. And I just say welcome, Lee, to The Kim Monson Show.
Well, thank you so much. It’s such an honor to talk to you again. And you have to tell Kim I missed her, but I hope she’s enjoying a breather.
Yeah, right, right. And I think we brought you some good weather for your little trip here to Colorado.
I mean, it’s nice, but I was expecting a little cooler. Let’s be honest, where is the 50s? I was looking for that.
Or the hope for fall upon us. And we’ve got a little hint of it this morning and yesterday morning.
So I mean, it’s hard to complain when it’s sunny and beautiful and y’all don’t have any humidity here. So for that, I am very grateful.
Yes, yes, it is humid on your part of the country over there on that East Coast, right?
All the time, 95% when I left yesterday.
Oh my goodness. Well, we talked about briefly, we were communicating back and forth about what we wanted to chat about this morning and how we could help and empower Kim’s listeners on the show today. And you had suggested maybe starting the conversation about what is happening with the governor race in North Carolina.
I took a peek at some of the media and, oh, my goodness. Can you give us a little background and kind of share with us how, once again, it seems to me that our elections are under attack and good people are also under attack. Is that fair to say?
Absolutely, because Mark Robinson, which a lot of people on the national stage have even heard of him because he is such an impassioned speaker and he is not of the political class. He is a factory worker. He lives in a town where he grew up and he burst onto the scene in 2018 with a speech that he did at Greensboro City Council.
It’s called I Am the Majority. And many of you may have seen it in clips, but they were doing a gun grab in that city in North Carolina, of course, used to be red. And now we’ve gone purple because of our cities, very similar to what’s happened in Colorado.
And they were wanting to come after guns. Well, Mark went to the microphone and gave a speech that catapulted him into the lieutenant governor’s race in 2020, where he came out of nowhere in one, never been elected before, and beat a lot of the usual suspects to become lieutenant governor. President Trump, of course, took notice of him because he is an outspoken man of the people.
And he said, at Trumpian populist character, there’s so many of us identify with, because we’re tired of being talked down to, and we want our elected officials to remember they worked for us. Mark’s done a very good job as lieutenant governor, and as a black conservative, it’s almost, I can’t even call it laughable, but it is. They call him a Klan member.
They’ve called him every name in the book, white supremacist, even though he’s black. And there’s just this assumption that you have to fall in line with the narrative. He hasn’t done that in running for governor either, and he’s poised to become our first black governor, and not just the first black Republican, but the first black governor.
And of course, here’s the background. If you’ve seen him in the news, you saw it on CNN, he saw it in the New York Times, and you saw it on all the mainstream media, which should be your first warning sign that this is not up and up. And I think even conservatives fall into the trap of, oh no, could this be true?
Well, of course, this is a fabrication to destroy him, because the Democratic candidate is of the machine. He is a far-left attorney. So of course he is.
The deadline to get off the ballot was last Thursday. Mark was told by some certain leaders in the Republican Party who shall remain nameless until he takes them down, but they’re rhinos. And he was basically trying to blackmail him with this fake, made-up news story, because this is AI-generated.
Mark did not say these things that they say he did on the porn website. And let’s just say, even if he did, it was 20 years ago, and I would rather we protect life and not elect somebody who was pro full-term abortion versus somebody who’s pro-life. But that being said, it’s made up.
AI is probably the most dangerous thing we have now. And of course, they told Mark, get out of the race or we’re going to drop this. And Mark said, I’m not dropping out of the race.
And so they drop it all on Thursday, trying to get him to withdraw into his credit. Even with the death threats he’s receiving, he did not withdraw. His campaign team quit.
And I know several of them personally, and I’m very glad they quit because they were dragging him down. So we’re in the same site we see presidentially where the media thinks it’s okay to kill President Trump because they have supported these assassination attempts. Even the DOJ dropping that assassin’s letter yesterday, basically trying to encourage copycats.
We’re seeing the same thing in our governor’s race in North Carolina. And I think it’s going to ramp up all over the country, Karen. This is that moment of people versus the system, and the system does not want to be questioned.
So if you see it on the mainstream media, y’all, you really got to just slow down and give it time before you believe it.
Well, oh my goodness. That is a lot, Lee. And the thing is, is it is replicating what we’re seeing on the national stage.
Now you’re seeing it in your state. We have seen those type of things. You hate to admit here in Colorado as well.
And the use of the word machine strikes me as somewhat evil from the standpoint that if a machine is taking over, and related to that machine is this AI technology as well, which is a machine. Yes. It takes away individual thought, individual creativity, individual rights, individual freedom.
And I appreciate you bringing this to the forefront from the standpoint to make us aware that the things that we hear on mainstream media in so many cases is fabricated and not truthful. And we need to be wary because over my years on this earth, I came to rely on that as good information. And I found myself pushing back as we went through the COVID era and realized that I was being sold a lot of information that was incorrect.
And Kim and I have been on this journey with regards to home ownership and the assassination on that here in America. And the things that have happened in our marketplaces that are keeping people from being able to become homeowners, which has always been the American dream. And I give credit to Americans, to us, that we are not going to give up on that dream and can, you know, and continue to pursue it.
But we need to be aware of the things that we talk about here on The Kim Monson Show. So people can be empowered. What are you seeing as we kind of move over to real estate and home ownership?
What are you seeing in your part of the country? And then also nationwide with your involvement, because you’ve been kind of in and out of involvement with the National Association of Realtors and the fact that you travel nationwide, you hear and see a lot of things. And Kim and I talk about it weekly about the environment here in Colorado and we’ve watched inventory double over the last about 90 days and some downward pressure on pricing, which might improve some affordability.
Well, I’m glad that you mentioned that, because it is happening all over the country. Although what’s fascinating to me is it depends on how active a real estate agent is as to whether or not they recognize it happening. The person who does one or two transactions in a year, they will argue with me that it hasn’t slowed down.
But those of us that conduct buyer and seller activity every day, we know exactly what’s going on because we live it and we’re watching the data. So as the inventory goes up, I’m starting to look at the big picture and I like to look at showing data. So when we have all these national showing platforms like showing time, which is baked into our multiple listing service, so we can make it seamless to schedule a viewing for our health, we can pull their data.
And if you look at when showing quieted down, it was in the middle of July, right with the first assassination attempt on President Trump. And it makes sense. People of all political shades took a step back and said, Whoa, what in the name of heavens is happening here?
And when people get fearful, they stop and they don’t buy houses. They don’t sell houses. They just take a pause.
And we see this every time there’s a great drama. If you remember at the beginning of COVID in March 2020, you remember it got really quiet. Nobody knew what to do.
And then about a month after the whole era started, real estate went wild and picked back up. But there was a quiet moment. The same thing happened to the great recession.
When the first banks failed, we had some quiet moments, but it didn’t all just happen at once. And we’re seeing that same pause here, except that the media has worked so hard to cover up the assassination attempt on President Trump at the public. God love them, they’ve moved on.
And it’s a little astonishing to me that we’ve now had possibly three assassination attempts on President Trump, and the public just acts like it’s no big deal. We’re so desensitized, it’s kind of frightening. But when the showings stopped in July, anybody who has an active seller who needs to sell estate sale, job loss, relocation, whatever, they start to reduce their prices to energize the buyers that are out there.
We know this is just the nature of supply and demand. If you want to get a buyer to buy when the buyer doesn’t want to buy, you put it on sale. I think it’s why, frankly, women are so successful in real estate because we go into a store, and the first place we go is a clearance rack just to see if there’s something there that we like just as well as at 70% off.
We’d rather buy that than buy the full price item. If you can’t find it on clearance, well, then you go to the full price items, and then you think, well, do I need it or do I don’t? You’re not committed to it.
Real estate is the exact same way. And I think right now, this is a great buying opportunity with so much fear in the marketplace that sellers are able and willing to negotiate because many of them do have equity that built up over this run we’ve had in the last four years. And we may not see sellers negotiate after November 5th if President Trump wins.
I do think it’s going to bring consumer confidence back, and that’s going to create the bidding wars coming back. God help us if Harris wins. We’re going to see so many negative housing policies, but they’re going to consist of free money for a while.
That may actually juice the markets artificially. So I think we’re in a good moment here for somebody who wants to buy, but the caveat is, can you afford the payment? And I think rates are about as low as they’re going to get.
There’s so much misunderstanding of how interest rates work, it makes me really frustrated. But anybody who’s waiting for rates to go back to 3% to 4% should know it’s not happening. It can’t because we have too much money in the marketplace and inflation is still high.
So it’s not going to go down much further. It may go into the 5%. But right now, when we’re around 6%, and you can do a buy down into the 5%, if you can handle that payment, real estate is supposed to be long-term anyway.
You’re supposed to buy something that’s going to last you for 10, 15, 20 years. So if the numbers work and the neighborhood works, you go ahead and buy because you might get $20,000 right now. That’s better than you would have gotten a year ago.
But you also have to then turn off the data.
Right.
If prices do go down, you need to not look at that. During the recession, I always look at myself as the kind of bad luck sign because my husband and I bought our house in December of 2007. And then our markets went all the crap in August of 2008.
So we were the high water market, our neighborhood for 10 years. And the neighborhood was struggling through foreclosures and it finally came back. But for 10 years, we were the high sale.
So we just had to wait it out, but it was okay because we were raising our kids there. We liked the schools, we liked the neighbors, we liked the house, had no intention of leaving. So you also have to detach yourself from the noise of the news cycle when you’re ready to buy and sell real estate.
Now, I will say that I look at this presidential election as the first time in my lifetime. And of course, I’m medium age and I’ve been in the business 24 years. I’ve seen a lot of presidential cycles.
I’ve never seen housing policy in the center of their statement. And I don’t think you have either, have you? I mean, except you go back to the Carter era, maybe there were interest rate conversations, but then you were preoccupied by the hostages and the rest of the bad policies.
But right now, housing is a centerpiece and we don’t usually see that because housing is just not sexy from a political standpoint. However, the viewpoints are so starkly different because we know that President Trump, we can judge him by his actions because he’s not talking about housing policy a lot. But while he was president, he brought Opportunity Zones in and Opportunity Zones might be one of the best real estate tax policies we’ve ever seen, which encouraged capital investment in really fragile census tracts.
Right.
And that was a way to really bring our commercial markets up and commercial markets bring up the residential markets with them. We also saw that his tax policies didn’t make low tax dates, paper high tax dates. And for those of y’all that wonder why this term salt is in the news all the time, that has to do with the state and local taxes.
You have a cap of $10,000 on how much you can deduct. Well, in Colorado and North Carolina and Texas and Kansas, most of us are under the $10,000 limit unless you’re super high dollar. But California and New York and New Jersey, the really high tax date.
So that made them mad because their taxes are higher. So somehow, they’re getting President Trump to talk about taking that cap off so that they can deduct all of their taxes. But in essence, that means the low tax dates have to subsidize the poor tax policies at the high tax date.
So I’m hoping cooler heads will prevail on that policy. But his policies tend to revolve around how do you support deductions and homeownership in a reasonable way. Whereas, the Harris campaign is in the space of throw money at it.
Let’s throw down payment money to people. And the worst thing, and I really wish more people knew this, and you’ve got to pay attention, y’all. There is a bad policy that Obama came up with in 2016, and it’s called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.
It is AFFH. It was a standalone policy, and the premise of it is that the federal government can override local zoning. I absolutely would never want to see that happen.
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Well, welcome back. I’m Karen Levine, and I am sitting in for Kim. She is traveling today, and I have on the line my dear friend and fellow realtor Lee Brown.
And we are talking about lots of amazing things. We were heading into a conversation about housing policy, and if the Harris administration were to get elected, there would be a lot of money thrown at the housing, probably at the housing market towards down payment assistance, etc. And yet we saw with President Trump some policy that empowered people to be able to make housing choices because they had more money in their pockets and the tax policy was more favorable.
So Lee, it’s interesting when you were sharing a lot of this information. I rolled back my memory to an NAR meeting. When we pushed, we have our Washington meetings where we go to Washington, DC and meet with our legislators and talk about policy.
And we were pushing for down payment assistance for first time home buyers. And I remember thinking that that was something that was positive to get home buyers into housing. And yet I saw that over time, it was harmful from the standpoint of affordability for all Americans.
And I think that’s when I started to become aware of being cautious about government getting involved in many things in our lives, but particularly housing and our industry. So I would love for you to jump in on that.
Well, you’re so right. I mean, we, I think we all want to help. And I think that’s our human nature.
And if there’s a way to help, we think the government should be helpful. However, we’ve come across that Rubicon into a place where the government thinks of itself as a parent. And too many people in the public think the government should take care of them instead of helping them.
So it’s that old adage of give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. And I looked at this just in the down payment assistance fees. When we had the $8,000 down payment assistance for first time buyers, that was during the Great Recession.
The fundamental difference between that policy and this one, that was during a time of low demand. Nobody was buying. But giving the $8,000 to buyers juiced the market because we did not have anybody to absorb all this excess inventory in the market.
Now we have the reverse problem. We have not enough inventory, even though inventory’s gone up, it’s still historically low for our buyer population. And we have too many buyers, a lot of which has been caused by the number of illegals that are in the country.
We have a bigger population and it’s being acknowledged. So you still have competition for houses. So we’re gonna give money to the demand side.
That’s backwards. If you wanna make the problem better now, you would put the $25,000 toward a tax credit for builders. Say, hey, you’re building first time buyer house, we’ll do a $25,000 tax credit so you can lower the price.
And then you start creating some different opportunities. And we’re just, I don’t think we have basic math skills in DC right now. Can we make math great again?
I think we should make math great again. Or make economics great again. We desperately need some people who are able to look at the metrics and start making some decisions.
But the other problem with adding in a free $25,000 down payment, and I understand in the public why that sounds good. You’re listening, you may have a kid that’s unable to get into the market. Well, that $25,000 may not even be enough on how expensive some of these markets are.
I look at Boulder, Boulder’s out of control with cost. $25,000 is not going to help a first-time buyer get in there. Now, it may help in Colorado Springs, but you got to look at the different markets, and that’s, of course, the government policy is blanket.
It doesn’t take into account the intricacies of the market. But then think about yourself as a seller. You’re selling your house, and here comes some first-time buyers.
You’re like, I’ll just raise my price 25 grand, because they’ve got an extra 25 in their pocket. And it’s too easy to manipulate the system. So I’m just against any free handouts at this point, and especially when the government is in the insane amount of debt that we have.
We can’t sustain this. We just need to get smarter. And if we want to encourage people to buy homes, let’s start by getting the illegals out of the country so that we can give American citizens first dibs.
California’s new plan of 150,000 in down payment, free, forgivable, grant money to illegals, is exacerbating the problem. I mean, I don’t mind if you offer it to people who naturalize, but what are we doing?
Well, and you look at that, and that takes opportunity out of the hands of our citizens. And my hope is that when people listen to The Kim Monson Show, they get empowered and they understand that they really do have a voice and that they can go out into their communities and speak up on the issues that we’ve shared with them. And I look at Kim and I have continuous conversations about affordable and attainable housing.
And Kim is very much opposed to incentivizing. And I said, but if you historically roll back the clock, you will see that as how we, the government, has acted is through incentives. And if you were to roll back the incentives, is that a good thing?
But we come to the conclusion that what we need to roll back as policy and that affordability has become unattainable because of the layers and layers of government intervention into the houses that we have to live in. And in the first hour, I had on a commercial broker, Doug Jennings, and he was talking about benchmarking in the commercial arena. And that is meaning that they are requiring, they, the government is requiring commercial property owners to disclose their energy usage.
And then based on that energy usage, they are going to be fined if they overuse. But of course, they probably aren’t going to be given money if they underuse.
That is just more power to bureaucrats who don’t understand how markets work. And there’s so much benefit that comes from adding commercial properties and adding residential properties. But you got to have balance.
And it shouldn’t be always no or always yes, or always a fee on this side of the business, or always a grant on this side. It’s just out of balance. It’s why I wish more realtors were doing what you’re doing and having these conversations so that we can get to the planning and zoning meetings and say, look, there’s got to be balance because we do want there to be housing and all price points.
But you also have to take care of the community that you already have. Right. Craziness, but the local controls I think are the most important.
I was on a run this morning with a wonderful realtor friend of mine. Of course, when we hang out together as realtors, we talk real estate. And in my county at home, if you have five houses on the same parcel, now the parcel could be five acres or 100 acres.
Five houses makes it a mini subdivision. When you’re a mini subdivision, you have to have curb and gutter and mailboxes and first responder access. And the county gets to tell you how to do it.
Well, five houses on 100 acres used to be a family compound. And a lot of us and a lot of you listeners, you grew up with a family compound. Your grandparents had a house and your mom and dad built next to them.
And then their sister built on the other side. And then you eventually built a house there, too. The federal government doesn’t like that because they like density.
And there’s such a wonderful need for rural and farm properties in this beautiful country that we have. We have to preserve that and not let decisions all come out in DC. Right.
Right. Well, and again, as Kim said, has continued to say, we, back in the day, we had our own private park, which was our backyard. And as we increase density, our parks are not private parks.
We’re to use the open space provided by our government. And there’s balance. If we would have balance, I think we’re all very open to the idea of creating more balance.
And when we pick winners and losers, which is what happens when government gets involved, the winners obviously win. But the losers are typically the ones that don’t have their own voice or a group of people that can come out and fight for them. And hopefully that’s what Kim’s able to do with her show and what you and I are doing in our marketplaces, making people aware.
It’s just interesting, you made a comment about mortgages and about the mortgage environment and the misunderstanding that we have when the Fed made the rate cut last week and how that would affect or wouldn’t affect mortgages. And our great sponsor, Lauren Levy, he did a great job explaining the fact that the marketing departments of mortgage companies had already made improvements in the rates prior to that adjustment. But the thing to be reminded of is that adjustment did help with credit card, interest rates and homeowner equity lines of credit.
And it does put a little bit more money in our consumers, our taxpayers’ pockets. With that, we’ll take a quick break and we’ll hear from Lauren.
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Welcome back, I’m Karen Levine, and I’m pleased to host the show while Kim is traveling. Sign up for Kim’s weekly email newsletter. You’ll find and get the first look at her upcoming guests, as well as her most recent essays.
And you can email Kim at kim at kimmonson.com. Something, Lee, you might want to put on your bucket list is to visit the Center for American Values. It’s located in the beautiful river walk of Pueblo.
So being in Colorado Springs, you’re not too far away. The Center of American Values was co-founded by Medal of Honor recipient Drew Dix, and Emmy award-winning, I can’t say that, Emmy award-winning documentary maker Brad Padula. The center is focused on honoring our Medal of Honor recipients, and teaching and upholding the website, The Principles of America, honor, integrity, and patriotism.
For more information, check out their website, americanvaluescenter.org. That’s americancenter.org. So welcome back, Lee.
We have covered a lot of territory, and one of the thoughts I had is maybe taking a few minutes to share with the listeners what you and I are experiencing since the National Association of Realtors settled some lawsuits that we were in the middle of, which had to do with quote-unquote price-fixing, and it had to do with the compensation that you and I have charged our clientele in doing business and how we make a living. And what is ironic is those fees have always been negotiable, and I have been practicing home buyer agency, as well as I represent sellers on the listing side, but I started practicing buyer agency in 1989, and it was recognized in the state of Colorado as an agency relationship in 1991. And so my practice has really not changed much, and what I have totally enjoyed is having conversations with my clientele at their kitchen table about the journey we’ve been on, the threat to home ownership and the threat to our industry, and why people like yourself and me have been able to help educate them and help them continue to get the top dollar for their home and to help home buyers get into housing with good, strong negotiating.
So we’d love to get an update from you and your thoughts.
Well, first of all, I would love if the public would fuss at your elected officials in DC about how the Department of Justice has been allowed to come after our profession. Now, they’re not going to hear it coming from us, but those clients that you and I have sat with at kitchen tables, they have benefited from having us in their corner because it’s very complicated buying and selling houses, and people do it three or four times in a lifetime. It’s time consuming.
The rules change, the laws change, and they need a professional in many cases to help them get all the way through the process, even though some do it on their own. Most people choose to have a professional guide them. So it’s a core of everything we’re talking about.
You have to ask yourself why these lawsuits, which were supported by, backed by, and are being driven by the Department of Justice, why are they coming after a bunch of little independent realtors roaming around in every market? Because we are tiny businesses. You have a different client base than I do.
Inside one company, every agent is different, and the consumer is going to have to speak up on our behalf at some point. But with that being said, the involvement of the DOJ and these lawyers into real estate has taken an efficient market and made it inefficient. It’s still operating, and people can still sell.
You can still pick your agent. You can still buy. You can still pick your agent.
That hasn’t changed, and I’m similar to you. North Carolina has had buyer agency as a matter of general statute since the 90s. I have been operating this way my whole career.
And so it’s just that the conversation goes from something that’s pretty transparent and efficient to something that is not transparent and is inefficient. And the consumer may have to actually come up with additional upfront money to compensate the realtor instead of having it baked into the price. I think there’s a misconception on the behalf of the public who have been told by the mainstream media, I guess that’s just going to keep coming up through our conversation, how devastating their propaganda is to the individual.
Where the media, which has told people for the last four years, that it’s not affordable to buy, and there’s nothing to buy, and you’re going to be a nation of renters. Well, now they say, well, all these realtors got too much money, and but now you have to pay your own realtor. So they’re talking out both sides of their mouths while they make it hard for people.
And it just, it makes me mad that it’s now harder for the public. But I know how to operate. And if you wonder what’s changed, friends, it just means that when you hired your buyer representative, it used to be that their compensation came through in agreement with the listing broker.
So the person who listed the house had the seller agree to a fee, and then the listing broker and the seller agreed that part of that fee could be used to compensate the buyer’s broker. So the listing agent was splitting with the buyer’s agent. The seller was not paying the buyer’s agent to negotiate against them.
The seller agreed to pay a fee to their listing agent, and that person split it. Well, now we’ve been told that you can, but you can’t publish it. So you can still provide that buyer agent coverage, but it’s all in secret now.
So now you have to make phone calls and text and email. And I think we’ve introduced the opportunity for discrimination into the market. We’ve introduced the opportunity for boycotts into the market.
And worst of all, we now have a public that knows less about a process where they’ve been saying for years they wanted to know more. And of course, back at the beginning of this, the National Association of Realtors got sued and said that they fixed prices. Well, I don’t care what the National Association of Realtors says.
I’m running my Lee Brown business. And so I set the fees that I want to charge based on what I offer. And I’ve negotiated that with people who’ve chosen me in my marketplace.
That’s nothing to do with the National Association. And I’m not going to lie to you. I’m a little bit mad that they sold out the agents and said, Oh, we’ve been doing it wrong all these years.
We’re going to change it. Well, no, I didn’t do anything wrong. And how dare you implicate me in being found guilty in this lawsuit and then settling and dragging my reputation through the mud.
That drives me nuts because I have done nothing dishonorable or underhanded or shady. And just like you, I’ve encountered people in the past who don’t want to pay the fee that I charge. And they’ve moved on to somebody less expensive.
And that’s fine. That’s called the marketplace. Not everybody wants to shop at Target.
Some people go to Walmart and some people go to Nordstrom. And there are options. There are still options.
And now there’s still options. But my favorite thing that I wish the public knew is that the plaintiff in that original lawsuit, that big class action suit. Oh, he started a real estate company now.
Isn’t that convenient? So you went after real estate to destroy the business. And then you decide to get in because you think somehow you’re more special?
Okay, good luck, dude. Good luck.
I know. Well, you know, and he knows better. And it’ll be interesting because the media probably won’t watch his journey.
But I would like to watch that journey and see how his platform performs. I think the other piece that I think is important for people to understand is, and it wasn’t brought up in the testimony or a lot, at least not to my knowledge, that the costs of buying and selling real estate are embedded in the price. And when those fees are not included, the price is going to get adjusted accordingly.
And when you explain that to a home buyer and a home seller, then they understand the position of where we operate and how we run our businesses independently. And so I think this has been an amazing conversation. I so appreciate you, Lee, taking time to cover lots of different subject matter.
Before we wrap up here, do you have a closing thought that you would like to share with us?
I just wish that everybody who listened to this show, who knows a realtor, who has been served by a realtor, just call that person and tell them that you appreciate what they did for you at some point, because this profession is being unfairly attacked by the government. We’re being unfairly attacked by our own trade association. We’re being attacked by mainstream media, Hollywood and everywhere else.
And I know that if you’re within the sound of my voice, there’s been a realtor along the way who answered a question for you, didn’t charge you or showed you a house or listed your house, who’s helped you along the way, please thank them because they need some encouragement right now. And it doesn’t mean that everybody’s perfect and everybody’s always been the best possible professional version of themselves. But I still believe on balance that realtors are good and they’ve done good work, and the public has been well served by them.
And right now, when we look at all these big housing policy issues happening on the government side, if you’re in the public, you should know that it is only the realtors who have been willing to go talk to elected officials about housing policy. And if we’re not around, who is going to speak up against the federal overtake of zoning or the continued aggression in the demand side of the business? It’s realtors who have been the voice of reason.
So support your local realtor. That’s my message.
Thank you so much, Lee. Thank you for taking your morning with us here on The Kim Monson Show. And my closing quote is, Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.
Today, be grateful. Read great books. Think good thoughts.
Listen to beautiful music. Communicate and listen well. Live honestly and authentically.
Strive for high ideals. And like Superman. Stand for truth, justice and the American way.
You are not alone. God bless you and God bless America.
The views and opinions expressed on Klz 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or Klz Management, employees, associates or advertisers. Klz 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting, God and country station.