REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
SUMMER 2025
2. The Ongoing Role of REIA Groups in Supporting Real Estate Investors 3. NREIA Legislative Update
10. Million-Dollar Deals, 10-Cent Books/ The Hidden Leak: How Bookkeeping Blind Spots Drain Investor Returns
5. Resilience
11. Navigating IRS Form 8824: A Guide to Reporting Like-Kind Exchanges
6. 5 Smart Tips for Real Estate Investors Using a Self-Directed IRA
14. Arizona Lawsuit Against Investors
8. Tariffs and the Residential Landlord
16. The Liquidity Trap: Why Real Estate Investors are Rethinking Capital in 2025
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The War on Landlords
RE Journal
Member Spotlight
Vol. 10 Issue 3
From COVID eviction bans to tenant-slanted laws, property owners are under financial siege. Here’s what Trump can do about it. By Steven Malanga
O
ne of the ironies of Donald Trump’s first presidency is that a former real-estate investor and landlord enacted an unprecedented federal eviction ban. In early 2020, as COVID lockdowns paralyzed the country, Trump signed the CARES Act, placing a moratorium on evictions for any rental properties with federal loans or assistance. Despite the unprecedented scope of the eviction ban and billions in aid, tenant-advocacy groups blasted Trump for doing too little to prevent what headlines called an impending “eviction tsunami.” While landlords sued to overturn the expanding moratorium, states and cities imposed their own tenant protections,
Brendon Pishny
B
rendon Pishny is a buy-andhold investor from Olathe, Kansas, and invests primarily in the suburbs of Kansas City. After completing several flips toward the beginning of his real estate career he determined his main expertise, and the best way to build wealth, is by owning properties long term. Currently, he manages his personal rentals and a few family-owned properties, all within minutes of his home. Brendon owns several million dollars’ worth of real estate with the goal of eventually having a completely paid-off portfolio. He is an active member of the Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors (MAREI).
Please tell us a little about who you are and what you did before getting into real estate investing:
Rental Housing Journal, LLC 4500 S. Lakeshore Drive, Suite 300 Tempe, Arizona 85282
I grew up in a rural area of Southwest Kansas. Both sets of my grandContinued on Page 12
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By Chris Kuehl, Ph.D.
The TACO Tariffs
A
t some point we might be able to talk about the economy without focusing on the tariff situation, but that time has not yet arrived. It has become nearly impossible to determine the policy in place for more than a day. The investment community has come to call these the TACO tariffs (Trump Always Chickens Out). As one would expect, this term infuriates Trump, and he may stick with them in the future to make a point. The assertion is that he changes his mind when presented with the impact of the decisions. It may also just be part of the negotiating process. It is probably time to revisit the motivations behind the tariff struggle, as the priority ranking seems to shift on a daily basis. From the beginning there have been three rationales or justifications for the tariff policy. The first is an attempt to recover some of the manufacturing base the U.S. has lost over the last several decades. The manufacturing sector once accounted for almost 25% of the nation’s GDP (in the 1960s and 1970s), but that share has shrunk to 10%. Imports played a major
role in this decline, but it was not the only reason for all the job loss (some 20 million in the 1990s alone). Technology replaced a great many of those industrial jobs, but so did outsourcing and imports. The thinking now is that restricting imports would allow the recovery of the industrial sector. It is clear that re-
Published In Conjunction With nationalreia.org
stricting imports or making them more expensive will help, but there are many other changes that would need to take place – changes the manufacturer has been asking for over a several-decade period: Labor force expansion, infrastructure support, assistance in developing
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