All week, Inman is taking a Deep Dive into eXp Realty. We’re talking to key executives, unpacking the company’s strategic moves and reporting on the EXPCON event — taking place this week in Las Vegas. Stay tuned in the coming days for more on the tech-focused brokerage and for future Inman Deep Dives into other top companies.
Financial guru and real estate investor Grant Cardone on Thursday described the current real estate market as experiencing a “super cycle” and said that “real inflation” hasn’t arrived but is coming.
Cardone made the comments while speaking at EXPCON, a gathering of eXp Realty professionals taking place this week in Las Vegas. Cardone — who struck up a partnership with eXp earlier this year — appeared on the event’s main stage with eXp World Holdings founder and CEO Glenn Sanford. Near the beginning of his remarks, Cardone said that what is going on right now in real estate is “gonna be massive.”
“We’re probably in a super cycle of super cycles in real estate,” he continued, adding a moment later that people have “never experienced the production of this much currency and that money has to go some place.”
His point was that the currency being produced right now will fuel the real estate market, and that will in turn benefit agents — scores of whom were in the room to watch Cardone’s comments.
“This is a great time to be in this thing,” he said.
Glenn Sanford, left, and Grant Cardone on stage at EXPCON Thursday. Credit: eXp Realty
Cardone went on to dismiss the idea of a housing bubble, saying “housing has not even partially kept up with how much money has been printed.” But he also said inflation, which is a growing concern in the economy generally, could get worse.
“You have not experienced real inflation yet,” Cardone said. “It will come, but it’s not here yet.”
Later during his time on the stage, Cardone went on to give agents advice. At one point, for example, he described pursuing his wife and said that he had to ask her out 26 times before she agreed to see him.
“I just knew that every time was an investment in what I wanted,” Cardone said.
He went on to compare that process to the way real estate agents pursue leads, often giving up after a couple of phone calls and a mailer.
“And you wonder,” he said, “why people aren’t running up to you at the mall saying, ‘I’ve got a listing for you.'”
Cardone also explained that he came up with his signature “10x” philosophy in 2010. At the time, he had $50 million in debt and his creditors came asking for the money back. No one had any money at the time, and he began to wonder how much bigger he’d need to be for his creditors to not come knocking. He decided he needed to be 10 times bigger.
“The next time this shit happens,” Cardone recalled thinking, “I need $500 million of debt not $50 million. I’m going to have 10 times the customers, 10 times the products.”
