Hello everyone, welcome to Options with Doug, streaming live daily on Bookmap Discord and the Bookmap YouTube channel at 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Before I get started, I need to go through the disclosures. General disclosure, all Bookmap limited materials, information, and presentations are for educational purposes only and should not be considered specific investment advice nor recommendations. First disclosure, trading futures, equities, and options involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Here's my contact information. The best way to get in touch with me is through Discord. My name on Discord is Doug P. Also on Bookmap Discord, there's an options-dougge chat channel that's a great place to post questions, comments, and content related to the topics of my presentation and the topics of the channel that I'll go through in just a moment and note that Bookmap Discord is a very large community. There's a wide variety of content there, options, stocks, futures, crypto, also a wide variety of languages, great content, traders working together to help each other learn to use Bookmap and to help become better traders. I'm also on X, formerly known as Twitter. My name there is at Doug Pless. Here are the key tenets of my approach to trading. Excuse me, here are the key tenets to my approach for trading. First of all, I believe that options trades and market maker hedging activity are key drivers of price in many stocks and futures and definitely the stocks and futures that I follow, large cap tech stocks as well as equity futures. And for the SB500, SPX is the underlying index, SPX is the SB500, SPY is the ETF version of that index, and ES is a derivative of SPX. So when traders buy and sell puts and calls and SPX and SPY, market makers take the opposite side of those trades and they hedge their delta exposure with ES futures. And for the NASDAQ, NDX is the underlying index, and QQQ is the ETF version of the NASDAQ 100, and NQ is a derivative of NDX, so just like the SB500, when traders buy and sell puts and calls and NDX and QQQ, market makers take the opposite side of those trades and they hedge their delta exposure with NQ futures. The focus of my presentation today, and the focus of the options-dog chat channel, is options order flow, the impact of options markets on stocks and futures, and the influence of market maker hedging flow on price action. I have a two-step process for trading at the first is planning, and I use positional analysis. I look at how traders and market makers are positioned at the options market and how those positions change from day to day to develop a thesis regarding the expected trading range and volatility for the day as well as the directional bias. And the second step in my process is execution. I look at real-time order flow on book map and real-time market maker hedging flow on spot gamma hero to confirm my thesis, and for setups for entries and exits. And when I talk about setups today, I will be focusing on an underlying asset. And setups in those assets can be taken any number of ways. For example, the SB500 setups can be taken with ES futures, SMI shares, SMI options, SPX options, or even ES options. Questions and comments are welcome, and I will be watching both the options-dog chat channel and Discord, as well as the chat and YouTube for your questions and comments. Please feel free to post, and I'll do my best to answer your questions. And hello NC40G, welcome, glad you're here. Afternoon for me. All right, here's my agenda for today, Tuesday, February 27th. First of all, I want to go over news items, economic data for today as well as the rest of the week. Then I'll go through my positional analysis. Then I'll review some setups from earlier today. Then I'll take a look at the live market. When I get to the live market, if anyone has any stocks they want me to take a look at, please let me know, and I'll be glad to take a look at them. Let's start with economic data. There were a couple of data reports this morning. First of all, the durable goods orders report came out at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time, and that was less than expected, less than previous, and also negative number, lower than zero. And I really didn't see a whole lot of reaction to that data. And then at 10 a.m., consumer confidence came out. There was more of a reaction to that data release. It came in lower than expected and lower than the previous number. So that was today. The rest of the week, GDP report comes out tomorrow, 8.30 a.m. Eastern time. That's the fourth quarter second estimate. And then Thursday, the big data release of the week is the PCE data comes out at 8.30 a.m. Eastern time, could be a market mover. And then on Friday, 9.45, there's manufacturing PMI data, also at 10 a.m. more manufacturing PMI data, and then consumer sentiment also at 10 a.m. on Friday. And note the jobs report that normally comes out on the first Friday of the month. Looks like that will be next Friday, not this coming Friday. Also a variety of Fed speakers during the week. All right, let's take a look at the S&P 500. Let's go to ES Futures and Bookbamp. And let's just take a look at the... This is the reaction to the 10 a.m. data release. Initially a bullish reaction than a reversal lower. Again, that was consumer confidence. And hello, Steven. Welcome. Glad you're here. Just if somebody in YouTube could let me know, can you hear me? Anirag says hello. He... All right, he has... He or she is able to hear now. All right, hello, welcome. Anirag, glad you're here. All right, so this is the S&P 500 Futures and Bookbamp. Before I take a closer look at this chart, I want to step back, take a look at a larger time frame. I'm going to go to the underlying index. And this is the S&P 500. And let's take a look at S&P X. So this is the rally that began last year, October 30th. And that rally... S&P X rallied for just a little over a thousand points so far from the low to the high. All right, so that's the context. S&P X still moving up in a very strong rally. Now let's step back and look at a one-hour chart. That was a one-day chart. We'll take now a look at a one-hour chart, 30-day one-hour chart. I'm going to focus on the expiration dates. This was the Friday expiration for January. January 19th expiration. S&P X broke out above the 4,800 level. That's right there. And then on the February expiration, there was also a call-dominated expiration. There was a little bit of a consolidation as expected in a call-dominated expiration. And that was broken up by the NVIDIA earnings released last week that propelled S&P X to just a little over 5,100. And so far, marking the all-time high for S&P X as well as the high of the current rally. So during this year, 2024, the call walls for S&P X have moved up from 4,800 up to 5,100 where that's the current level of call wall. I'll talk more about that in just a minute. All right, so now let's take a look at the levels on this chart. I'm going to zoom in just a bit. Actually, that didn't help because the put wall is way down low. All right, so first of all, the dash purple lines are showing the lower and upper weekly expected move. This is based on the options market, updated once a week. These levels stay on the chart for the entire week. And then the dash blue lines are showing the lower and upper daily expected move. Also, based on the options market, I update those levels once a day. They're based on the closing price from yesterday. So I post both of these levels, the lower and upper weekly and daily expected moves and discord the evening before. So I posted the current levels yesterday evening for today. All right, note S&P X is trading within both of those ranges, both of those expected move levels. All right, the other lines on this chart are showing spot gamma levels. These are proprietary spot gamma levels. They're provided to spot gamma subscribers. They're based on gamma weighted open interest. I'm going to point out the key daily levels. First of all, here's the put wall at 4,500. That's the strike where the largest net negative gamma that can be expected to act as support. And note that level dropped pretty substantially from yesterday from 5,000 down to 4,500 down. So if you recall from yesterday, the range of levels for S&P X was very narrow with the put wall at 5,000, potential floor, and the call wall at 5,100. All right, so now the put wall is back down to 4,500. The next level up is the absolute gamma strike. That's at 5,000. That's the strike where the largest absolute positive and negative gamma. That's where most of the gamma weighted open interest is concentrated. And above that is the volatility trigger. VT, that's at 50,70. And that is the strike. That is spot gamut's proprietary gamma and volatility flip level. Below that level, market makers position on the gamma curve is negative. In a negative gamma environment, market makers have to trade with price to hitch their delta exposure. And that tends to enhance or increase volatility. On the other hand, above that level, market makers position on the gamma curve is positive. In a positive gamma environment, market makers have to trade against price to hitch their delta exposure. And that tends to subdue or decrease volatility. And note that SPX, it looks like it is trading now below that level today. Then the next level up is 5,100. That's the call wall. That's a strike with large net positive gamma. And that can be expected to act as resistance. And the call wall has remained at 5,100 for several days now. So the potential floor at 4,500, the put wall potential ceiling for price at 5,100, that's the call wall. Alright, shifts in levels, the only shift in level for the SPX was the put wall shifting lower again down to 4,500. Alright, let's take a look at, let's wrap up our view of SPX by taking a look at a one minute chart. This is three days worth of data. Note the rejection. This was last Friday. Rejection at the 5,100 call wall. And since Monday, SPX has been trending lower. Now down below the volatility trigger. Alright, let's take a look at book map now. So in book map I have my own cloud notes shown in this column, C levels column. So I can show SPX levels. There's the 5070 volatility trigger. And then the SPY 506 volatility trigger is just below that. So I'm showing SPX levels and SPY levels. And then other key ES levels they're done on this chart. Alright, Faro Fias asked what happens below volatility trigger when market makers position on the gamma curve shifts from positive above to negative below and that's really a volatility flip level. Below that level, that's where market makers will have to start trading with price to hedge their delta exposure. We'll take a look at the Vana model in just a minute to get a graphical representation of that. So again, below volatility trigger we're looking for higher volatility, wider price, wider trading ranges and market makers trading with price to hedge their delta exposure. Alright, so the SMB 500 is below these SPX and SPY volatility triggers. And note there is a difference in price between ES and SPX and right now that offset or ES to SPX difference is about 10 points. So I'm using 10. So I'm using ES minus SPX equal 10 and so the volatility trigger 50-70 volatility trigger for SPX I'm showing at ES 50-80. And Ragn asked what are the bottom two levels? Alright, so that's another SPX level also a SPY level. Alright, this is the 50-60 SPX level that was noted as support in the SPOT GAMMA M Founders Note. So I put those levels on my chart and what SPOT GAMMA is doing is looking at combo levels and then picking out key levels that they think will act as support. And then that is the SPY 505 that's a large GAMMA 2 level and that is also the zero GAMMA level. So that is where the GAMMA actually shifts from positive to negative. Even though below the volatility trigger market makers will start to need to trade with price to hedge their delta exposure. Alright, so very narrow range today in the morning session up until about 11 a.m. So the first 90 minutes I thought was pretty difficult to trade. Price chopping up and down around the two volatility triggers until finally moving lower 11 to 1130. We'll talk more about setups in a few minutes. Alright, let's move on to NASDAQ. Oh, shifts in levels I mentioned SPX and for SPY the volatility trigger shifted lower. You saw that on the chart. And also the put wall shifted lower. Same as SPX. Alright, here's NASDAQ. NQ Futures and Bookmap. And before I take a closer look at this chart I do want to take a look at the underlying index charts. I'm going to start with QQQ. This is a one minute chart. Right shaded portion showing data for today. And this is a gamma level. Large gamma two level acting as resistance earlier today. And then earlier 436 acting as support. And then not price didn't quite make it down to the 435 zero gamma level. Alright, so those are the levels in play for QQQ to date. Note also the volatility trigger at 437. So right now QQQ trading below its volatility trigger. And that is also the absolute gamma strike. So that volatility trigger for QQQ shifted higher. And the absolute gamma strike for QQQ also shifted higher. Alright, let's take a look at the index chart real quick. Last time I looked there were no gamma levels in play for today. I don't see any. The 18,000 level is up here above. Let's take a look at the index chart. There's the 18,000 level up above. Alright, back to NQ futures and book map. Again, I have my own cloud notes so I can show index levels. There's that 18,000 level. And there's the QQQ. Large gamma two level acting as resistance 436. That's also right on top of the NQ 950 level acting as support. There's the volatility trigger 437. And then just about one o'clock the 435 level acting as support. Let's see what that is. That's a combination of levels there. So it's a large gamma three level also the zero gamma level. And then it was also noted as support in the spot gamma M founders note. And they were spot on did its job acting as support. Again, as noted in the spot gamma M founders note. Alright, so those are the levels in play. For Nasdaq primarily the QQQ levels from 435 to 438. 438 acting as resistance and so far today 435 acting as support. And for NDX again just to wrap up shifts and levels. Volatility trigger shifted higher put wall lower. And for QQQ volatility trigger higher and absolute gamma strike shifted higher. So slightly bullish shifts higher for QQQ. Alright, let's take a look let's wrap up. Wrap up positional analysis by taking a look at gamma notional. To see how market makers were positioned on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day. This is the data table at the bottom of the AM founders note. Noting gamma notional this is market makers position on the gamma curve at the beginning of the day. For the SP500, Nasdaq and Russell 2000. Note for SPX at the beginning of the day market makers gamma notional was still positive. So on a positive gamma notional this indicates traders are short calls market makers are long calls. Hence the positive gamma and they have to trade against price to hedge to their delta exposure. And if price continues lower and trades probably ends the day below the volatility trigger. That gamma notional may shift to negative tomorrow. And it did shift to negative for SPI. So from yesterday to today gamma notional did shift lower for the SP500. Still positive for SPX and now shifted to negative for SPI. And then still slightly positive for Nasdaq. Let's take a quick look at the gamma model so we can get a graphical representation of what that means. Let's take a look at our SPX chart again. Low of the day right around 50, 57. High right around 76. Let's see. Alright so here's 75 that's pretty close to 76. Alright so let's back up. Let's take a quick look at what's on this chart so we can understand it. So on the vertical axis this is showing market makers delta notional. And the horizontal axis showing the spot rise for SPX. There are two curves on this chart. The first curve is showing how market makers delta notional may change with changes in price only. And the purple curve adds implied volatility to the equation. This shows how market makers delta notional may change with changes in price and implied volatility. And that change in delta with a change in implied volatility is the van effect. Alright so let's go back to the chart and we want to look at the purple curve. We're going back to the high of the day right around 74. So as price was dropping, as price was dropping, this curve shows that market makers delta notional was increasing. Market makers want to remain delta neutral. So in this portion of the Vana model here, this is showing that market makers delta notional again was increasing and they had to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And that tends to enhance or increase volatility. And that's typical of a negative gamma environment below the volatility trigger. And if price moves higher, price moves higher, implied volatility drops, market makers delta notional will decrease and they can buy back their short futures. Alright the curve is similar for SPX and SPI and QQQ. Alright let's wrap up positional analysis now and move on to execution. So other than book map, everything that we've looked at so far is based on static data, the levels that I showed on the chart, the key daily levels. Now we're going to take a look at real-time data. Move on to execution, the second part of my trading process. I'm going to start by looking at what options traders have been doing today. So this is the hero signal in book map. Hero stands for hedging impact real-time options. So what this chart is showing is options trades and market maker hedging activity for a combined signal for SPX, SPI, XSP, and ES futures. And a falling hero signal indicates traders are taking negative delta positions. That means they are buying puts and or selling calls. Market makers take the opposite side of those trades and they have to sell futures to hedge their delta exposure. And then a rising hero signal indicates traders are taking positive delta positions. They are buying calls and or selling puts. Market makers take the opposite side of that. Stop ESH for CME by 330. So market makers take the opposite side of these trades and they have to buy futures to hedge their delta exposure. Alright, let's zoom into this chart. So this morning I thought this really this choppy range here was very difficult to trade. There were better trades in NASDAQ and elsewhere earlier today. So I do want to point out a short. It took some patience. So around 1020 the hero signal made a high. Then made a lower high right around 1050. And then started moving lower. One thing that Spot Gamma has pointed out. One thing to watch out for. A lot of flow alerts. This is indicative of CHOP. A lot of flow alerts. Alright, so really the clear setup in the SB500 really didn't take place until about 11 a.m. So let's go take a look at book map. ES, let's zoom in. So during this CHOP, ES was making a series of lower highs. And then really broke below these two volatility triggers. Several between 11 a.m. and 11 a.m. There were a couple of retests as the SB500 continued to make lower highs. Retest of the 506 level. And wrong tool. CVD started moving lower. Finally made it to the next target below. These two levels that Anirag had asked about. The 5060 support level. And the 5 large Gamma 2 level. Scroll over to the right a little bit. And note all the liquidity in the order book. This is the heat map and book map showing the history of the limit orders. And the order book. And these were all limit buy orders. With their below price limit buy orders. All those levels, all those orders consumed. Absorption here. With the final stop run. Down to the liquidity at 67. Stop run shown by the falling yellow line. And then price reversed higher. Back to hero. Right around one o'clock the hero signal shifts. Higher. And that's when price reversed. Trader started taking positive delta positions. All right, so that is the. That's the SB500. And again pretty difficult read in the morning up until about 11 a.m. At least for me. And as Steven says a tricky open today. Tricky first. First 90 minutes for me. All right, Steven also says slowly getting to understand that Vana curve graph. I don't know if spot gamma recently did a 30 minute webinar on Vana. I don't know if that's available on their book map on their YouTube channel or not. It's worth taking a look at provides a lot more in depth information on Vana so. It's worth taking a look at. If you want to better understand Vana and how that affects what market makers are doing. All right, Steven says he wants to this weekend. It's definitely worth a watch. Help you better understand Vana and how it has an impact on on market makers. Hedging activity. Let's move on to Nasdaq. Nasdaq was much easier read today. So let's go to hero first. See what options traders are doing. And for Nasdaq, I've been looking at this mag seven signal. Getting a little choppy now. Let's zoom in on the morning. So this was much more. I thought much more linear than the hero signal form. So what this is showing is options trades and market maker hedging activity for a combined signal for the stocks known as the Magnificent Seven. Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla. And these stocks make up a very large portion of the Nasdaq 100. And they drive price. And we'll see in a minute that Nvidia tends to drive the mag seven, which tends to drive the Nasdaq. All right, so let's zoom in on this again. Go back to the morning. So this is what I saw this reversal in the hero signal right around 942. So note how that moves higher. And then just a couple of minutes later. This is using price for QQQ makes a low and price starts to move higher. So initially traders were taking negative delta positions and 942 they switch start taking positive delta positions and price moves higher. So let's go take a look at Nasdaq. We'll zoom in. All right, this reversal point was at now it's showing 436. That's QQQ 436. Right on top of the NQ 17,950. Let's take a look at order flow. The volume dots are showing market buy minus sell. Magenta dots indicate more sellers than buyers. Green volume dots indicate more buyers than sellers. So they're showing delta. So as price was approaching that level, remember traders started taking positive delta positions in the mag seven stocks. Also large traders were buying with iceberg orders. That's shown by the rising light blue line and also the on chart indicator there. Large traders buying with iceberg orders. The dark blue line is showing cumulative volume delta starts to increase. Aggressive buyers come in at that level and pretty quickly move. Move Nasdaq up to the QQQ 438 large gamma two level. Alternate entry point at VWAP and the 437 level. That was right after the data release. So jump up at the data release. Move back down. Then a nice deep pullback for an entry from 437 up to 438. So much easier trade, much easier read for me at least in Nasdaq this morning compared to the SME 500. Let's scroll over to the right. Let's go back to hero. So right around 1020. And let's keep track of the turning points. So 940, 1020, hero signal shifts lower. Nasdaq moves lower. A little bit of a divergence short set up here. And let's go back to bookbamp now. So initial short at 1020 and then a divergence short as hero continued to move lower right around 1035, 1037. So there's the initial entry for a short pullback for a short. One more pullback until Nasdaq finally made it down to the 435 level right at one o'clock. Let's go back to hero. All right, so here's the one o'clock turn around. All right, any questions so far? Let's take a look. We'll take a look at some stocks. Then we'll get to the live market. I'm going to start with AMD. Note 172.50 is the hedge wall. AMD found support at that level. Hero signal shifts from negative to positive as AMD tests that level. Let's see what traders are doing. So initially they were selling calls and buying puts. And at 950, they started selling puts and started buying calls. Price moved higher. When traders buy calls, market makers sell the calls and they have to buy stock to hedge their delta exposure. Let's go to book map. Go to AMD. And I don't have the 172.50 level marked on this chart. You can see a little bit of liquidity here right at this level, this little bit of shade of region. And that was the low of the day. An aggressive buyer started to come in showing by the green volume dots. So traders started buying calls, started selling puts, and AMD reverses higher at the 172.50 hedge wall. All right, let's go take a look. Next one I'm going to take a look at is Netflix. I think Netflix was, oops, Netflix was upgraded today. Let's see what options traders were doing. Go back to hero. Go to Netflix. Traders were buying calls from the open, also selling puts. They continued to buy calls and sell puts. AMD made it up to the 600, Netflix made it up to the 600 call wall. And note how traders call buyers took their foot off the gas. Price did consolidate at that level and right around noon. So they've continued to sell puts all day. And right around noon they started buying calls again. And price has chopped up and down around the 600 call wall. Let's go back to book map. Here's the 600 call wall. Price shoots up to that level. Call buyers take their foot off the gas. A little bit of consolidation up and down around that level. Traders start to take. Positive delta positions again. Price moves higher. So that's Netflix. Let's take a look at Nvidia. Let's go back to hero. I'm going to go back to the total signal. Go to Nvidia. So I'm looking at the entire day so far for Nvidia. Let's note the key turning points. 940, 1020 move down. Then 1040 move up. So 940, 1020, and then 1040. So that's Nvidia. Let's go to mag 7. 940, 1020, 1040. And there as far as Nvidia goes the hero signal after the 1035, 1040. Reversal higher. Continues to move higher. Let's see what traders are doing. So in Nvidia they are, they are mainly selling puts today. Excuse me. So in Nvidia, net for the day, they are selling calls. That notional value for the orange line showing calls, still a little bit negative. Blue line showing puts. That's positive notional value they're selling puts for the day. So it looks like they're taking advantage of higher volatility in Nvidia. Let's go back to the total signal. Sorry, there's a bug in hero. I have to jump from one instrument to another whenever I shift from puts and calls to total. Alright, so let's go back to book map. Go to Nvidia. Another bullish day in Nvidia. Start reversal lower at the open. Then traders start taking positive delta positions and Nvidia continues to move higher. Let's go to Tesla. And a bearish day in Tesla here. Let's see what options traders have been doing. Go to Tesla. Starting right around, right around 10am, hero signal shifted lower. Traders are taking negative delta positions. Note the timely flow alert there. And Tesla was trading above its call wall at 200. Trader below that now trading just above it. 200 is the key gamma strike and also the call wall. So there's that 200 level. Alright, does anyone have any stocks they want me to take a look at? Alright, let's check on the SB500. Alright, now SB500 back above the volatility triggers. Let's check on NASDAQ. Also above the QQQ volatility trigger. Go back to hero. Go to the mag7 signal. So note the turn around of the signal actually started just about maybe five minutes before one o'clock. And then price reversed higher right at one o'clock. As traders continue to take positive delta positions. And the mag7 stocks. Back to book map. Let's take a closer look at this reversal at one o'clock. So we know in the mag7 stocks, traders started taking positive delta positions just about five minutes before one o'clock. And before that, large traders were buying with iceberg orders. That's shown by the rising light blue line here. And I'm showing that in some mode. I like to show the cumulative effect of all the iceberg orders. You can see on the on-chart indicator. These are not large numbers. But traders were buying with iceberg orders. They were fading the move down. And then also continued to buy as price started to move higher. That's all these blue icons. Again, not large numbers when you look at the individual events. But the cumulative effect is moving higher and adding up. And aggressive sellers stop run on the way down. It's shown by the falling yellow line.  And price reverses higher. Again, as traders start taking positive delta positions. And the mag7 stocks and aggressive buyers start to come in. Check on the SP500. Back to Nvidia. Let's go back to Hero or for Nvidia. Alright, so Nvidia 800 is the call wall keygam strike. So that's the next price target higher. Looks like traders started to take their foot off the gas right around 130 or so. Right now, Nvidia consolidating. Here's that next target above at 800. They'll have to get through the liquidity at 7.95 first. The heat map and book map are showing a history of the limit orders in the order book. Above price, these are limit sell orders. And this is very typical of a stock. These limit sell orders come into the order book at the cash open. Typically stay in the order book until they're filled. And again, these levels of liquidity often act as magnets for price. Again, does anyone have any stocks they want me to take a look at? Or any questions? Hey, Cesar, welcome. Cesar wants to take a look at Apple. Okay, we can do that. Cesar, what's their news about Apple? It certainly looks like it. Let's see what options traders are doing. Let's go to Apple. Note the flow alert. Alright, Slotarazzi. Thank you very much. Says Apple winding down electric car plans. Ending decade long for a some Apple car employees to be cut. Many will shift to AI. Alright, so that makes sense. And note, if you were watching Apple, this flow alert came in just right around 205. Something to get your attention. Let's go take a look at book map. Flow alert came in right around 205. And you could have gotten a long entry at VWAP there. If you've been watching that alert, waiting for that. Alright, Cesar and Slotarazzi. We're pointing that out about Apple. And Cesar says right off the 180 level to previous lows. Looks like some of that liquidity in the order book was absorbed. But it came back in just after that. So there's still some buyers at 180. Heroes continues to move higher. So traders buying calls in Apple. And just to add to what Cesar said, 180. Sorry about that. 180 is the Hedgewall, Key Gamma Strike and Putwall. So support level doing its job acting as support as expected. Let's check NASDAQ. We'll see. Didn't have a whole lot of impact on the Mag7 signal. Let's take a look at NASDAQ and book map. And not a whole lot of impact on NASDAQ as well. Looks like NASDAQ started to move higher. Just a little bit before too. Alright, after an up and down day, so far a bullish afternoon. And ES making its way up to the highs of the day. As well as NASDAQ. Back up to the 438 level.  Thanks again for watching. And remember tomorrow at 8.30am eastern time, GDP data comes out. And we'll talk about that tomorrow. Alright everyone, thank you very much for your questions and comments. And thanks for watching. And I will see you tomorrow. Thanks again. Bye.


Mark Shklav, the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we're going across the sea to Los Angeles and New York City. My guests are Gerald Libby, a partner in the Zuber Law Firm in Los Angeles, and Kenneth Stewart of Council to the Becker-Glynn Law Firm in New York City. Both are good friends of mine for many years. I usually meet with Jen, Jerry, and Ken at our annual meeting for the Inter-Pacific Bar Association. This year the IPB annual meeting was scheduled for April in Shanghai. Well, the COVID-19 pandemic changed that and has changed all of our lives. COVID-19 has kept us apart, but also strangely, it has brought us all together in a way. I've asked Jerry and Ken to tell us what's happening in Los Angeles, in New York City during these unprecedented times and how COVID-19 has impacted them and their cities. Welcome, gentlemen. Good to see you. Happy to be here, Mark. Thank you. Thank you both. Honolulu has a quarantine for out-of-state visitors, and we just went into a 14-day lockdown for the entire city. What's happening in Los Angeles and New York City? How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your city? Jared, let me start with you and go from there. Well, COVID-19 has had a major negative effect on Los Angeles, not surprisingly. Initially, Los Angeles and also San Francisco reacted very quickly and went into major shutdowns right away, and that was seen as very successful and for quite some time, San Francisco and LA had relatively little infection from COVID. But there was great pressure from more rural areas of California to ease up on the restrictions, and those restrictions were eased up in the early part of the summer, resulting in a major return of the coronavirus. Actually, not a return, but more infection than had ever been seen in Los Angeles to the point where Los Angeles became one of the most affected cities in Los Angeles, and that has resulted in a new round of closures imposed by Governor Newsom that just took effect today in an effort to stop the major spread that we saw in Los Angeles, and it has affected everyone in a very dramatic way. Well, we're kind of going through the same thing right now, too. That's very interesting. I mean, it's very interesting that we're all together in this in a way. I mean, we're all going through the same thing. Kenneth, what's happening and what has happened in New York? What's happening? OK, well, it's a long chapter in New York because we were, as you know, COVID central, starting pretty much mid-March. The virus seemed to come from travelers who have been to Europe more than Asia, and New York had an insufficient number of personal protective equipment, insufficient supplies, substantially not enough hospital beds, not enough weight to dispose of bodies, et cetera. Ultimately, the governor, Andrew Cuomo, took a very firm hand and remarkably from a drop of, I mean, from well over 1,000 cases a day, the rate in New York for the last 23 days has been below 1%. The most recent numbers are that there are total hospitalizations of 429 people, Saturday or Sunday of this past week, and an intubation of no more than 47. So it's been a remarkable turnaround. I don't know if you have a photo that I sent of myself standing in Madison Avenue, which would show what New York looked like during the lockdown itself. That's amazing. Empty. But it was absolutely empty. A little during that period of time, New York was one of the first cities to see pretty severe rioting. There was looting. There was some serious problems. Gradually, things got better. And if one walks around now or goes out as I did this past weekend and went through Central Park, I think I provided a photo of the sheet metal in Central Park. And much to my pleasant surprise, there's actual social distancing, which is not something that we often saw, but was strongly encouraged. Unlike other cities, New York City still is prohibiting bars from serving and restaurants from serving indoors. And there's no sign as to when that will be lifted. So a walk on Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue is on the west side. And I think if it's available, I sent a photo of outdoor dining because that's how many of the restaurants are surviving. Of course, it's the summer. Suddenly a thunderstorm comes late afternoon or evening. And restaurants have to cope with that because they can't bring people into us and serve them. But New York has gotten substantially better. I would say that we still have a mandate of masks statewide by the governor. If one walks through the streets of New York, you would find maybe 50%, some days 40%, some days 60% properly wearing face masks. The other people have them on their chins, their elbows, their heads, anyplace, but where they should be. But fortunately, the current rate, as I say, was 0.67% statewide. So that's remarkable. We are all very concerned about what's going to happen next. There was one photo you sent us of some police officers sitting on a bench, I guess, in Central Park. What was that about? It's actually where we live pretty much across the street from Central Park and credit where it should be because I think it's a pretty good photo and my wife took it on my iPhone. But it was shortly after the worst of the riots happened. And that part of Central Park is also fairly close to Trump Tower. The headquarters of Trump Organization. So it looks like they were taking the break and on the personal devices, but I just thought it was a unique photo of New York City's finest. It sounds like things are getting better in New York City. Now, Jerry, we have a shot of the freeway near your house. Normally, I mean, I've been on the LA freeway. Not how it looks. That photo, that is not just any freeway. That is the infamous 405 freeway. North South freeway and it is very frequently described as the most congested highway in the United States. It's an infamous burden for those of us who live here. And you can see this picture is taken during the daytime. And on any day, even not during rush hour, there would be heavy traffic on this particular stretch of road. And as you saw from the photo, it was completely empty. And that was, that was the case during the early days of COVID, you know, March, late March, April into May, when LA and San Francisco had really locked down, the traffic just disappeared from the streets, which was perhaps the only good thing that came of it. It is different now. But there are still many serious restrictions on restaurants, museums, stores and the like, which are going to be in place for a long time to come. So it sounds like in both cities you've gone through some hard times. LA, Los Angeles seems like it's still having a tough time. New York City seems to be doing okay. Am I reading this right? Yes, Mark, interestingly enough, on Saturday, I think of this past weekend, the museums have finally opened in New York City, Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, very popular places. But they are open only at 25% capacity, limited hours and only five days a week, and you must make a reservation online in advance and, you know, show up at your appointed time. And it's a very big museum, I think personally, it could probably, and they mandate mask wearing. So I would think that they could probably do more than 25% capacity, but it's a slow go. Gyms have been closed, but I think they are getting very close to when they can be opened as well. Whereas in Los Angeles, the museums are closed. Disneyland, Universal Studios, they may have opened in Florida, but they are closed in Los Angeles. Pac-12 football, Pac-12 sports for the fall season have been canceled, including football and soccer, and I mean, it's been a severe impact on recreation and working life in Los Angeles, not to mention the schools. The Los Angeles public schools will be closed for on-campus learning indefinitely in the fall semester. And in Los Angeles, have you also had to deal with these racial justice protests? And how have you handled that? How has that been handled? What's happened? Very much so. After the George Floyd killing in the beginning of the summer, there were many protests throughout the LA area. LA, it's no secret, is a liberal political, in political terms, city. We're very used to civic protests. And generally the police are equipped to respond to them. But there were many, many protests throughout the greater LA area, even in some of the suburbs. And we have a complex municipal structure. We have Los Angeles County, which is a very large area, which contains 88 incorporated cities, one of which is the city of Los Angeles, but other familiar names like Santa Monica and Beverly Hills are, are their own incorporated cities. They all have their own police forces. And they don't always respond with uniformity to emergency situations. And unfortunately at these protests were met with, in the view of many excessive police force in, in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica in one particular location in Los Angeles. And that was, that was a, that was a bad, a bad moment in the, in the Los Angeles experience with COVID. Well, you know, we, we are all experiencing similar economic problems too, I think, and New York, what's happening in, can in New York? I mean, how do you, how are you dealing with the down economy at this point? With difficulty, interestingly enough, today, or I think tomorrow possibly today or tomorrow is the first day in five months that people have to pay bus fares and subway fares if they take public transportation in order to provide protection for the operators of both buses and mass transit subways. And particularly the buses. They had people boarding in the back and not having to pay any fare, which is usually up front and the driver was somewhat rolled off. So there's an enormous deficit in the, the MTA, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which governs essentially the mass transportation in New York City. And they haven't quite figured out if the federal government doesn't provide assistance how they'll ever deal with that. Just as one illustration, obviously New York has probably more restaurants than certainly as many restaurants as any other place in the world. And a substantial number of them will never reopen again. You know, I still close notwithstanding the outdoor dining. So that's been severe hit. Interesting enough in today's New York Times, and this may be getting a little astray of the thing, but one of the headlines, it might have been yesterday. Today's New Yorkers are fleeing to the suburbs and the demand is insane. And just having heard something not too long ago about the census, one of the most underreported areas in the whole country is the Upper East Side of New York. Probably because people haven't been home to get their mail or haven't bothered to respond to it. Because they all have all obviously I'm living in the Upper East Side and I'm here, but a number of them have fled. I'm in a building that has approximately 205 apartments or so. And you can almost count on the fingers of one hand, the number of apartments that are still occupied. We have seven on our floor and we are the only permanent residents who have been fled. Jerry, is that happening in Los Angeles too? I mean, are people fleeing the city and going, where are they going to? Yeah, well, there is a lot of that. People who are fortunate enough to have second homes or are vacating to those homes in other areas of California or out of the state. There are many other people who may not have homes elsewhere, but are looking at opportunities to get out of the city, partly for COVID reasons, partly because their employment may have been jeopardized. I mean, there's massive unemployment in Los Angeles. There have been layoffs. The film production business, which is probably the second biggest industry in Los Angeles, is shut down. Nothing is being produced. The tourism business, like Hawaii, tourism is a big part of the LA economy and again, Disneyland, Universal Studios, countless facilities, sporting events and so forth closed. Massive layoffs in the industries that support all of that. And some people are moving out of state. California has a quite high state tax rate. And Los Angeles has become a very high cost city. And those factors are driving quite a number of people to move to places like Texas, which does not have a state income tax and is, is a much lower cost in general, not, not perhaps Houston or major cities, but in other parts of Texas, the cost of living is much lower. Same would be true of Arizona. So there is a certain exodus from Southern California, but Southern California, of course, does have, still has great appeal. And this is, this is, this is not a new phenomenon. I think that in general over the last 10 years, it's been a net zero effect. A lot of people leaving, but new, new people coming in as well, both, both U.S. citizens and immigrants from abroad, legally or illegally. And so it tends to be net, but we, we certainly, I certainly am acquainted with people who are moving out of state. So Ken, let me, you know, ask you directly about your law practice. How is that being affected?  But Ken first, I mean, how, how has your law practice and been affected? How has your law firm dealt with it? And is the bar association involved? Well, we have a firm of approximately 35 lawyers, about five paralegals and 10 non-legal staff. We have been working remotely since mid-March, maybe around the 15th to 20th of March. As of today, actually don't mention partner just sent an email that I got about a half hour ago saying, because previously we were looking at post labor debt as a possible reopening. And now it looks like the earliest might be 31st of October, and that's still up in the air. So it is all working remotely. It is possible to go into the office if one needs to. But partners, for example, cannot ask an associate or a secretary to come to work unless it is an existential client emergency and requirement. And before you can go into the office, you have to fill out an online health questionnaire to answer three questions, whether you've been out of state, whether you have temperature or cold symptoms to go into my office building itself. They have a machine to take the temperature and, and various other restrictions about it. But as far as the practice is concerned, it's been, I won't say vibrant, but it's been remarkably steady. We are fortunate that, you know, some of our clients work just keeps on going. The one area that, or maybe the two areas that probably are less successful are litigation, because of course, if not closed, they've certainly been putting off everything they can. And it's difficult to do a state planning and administration, although that still goes on. But, you know, the remote notarization, particularly for elderly clients is quite a challenge. So, you know, the inability to have people come to the office or to go to their apartment is a problem. Jerry, what's, what's, what's Los Angeles like? My firm has offices in our main offices in Los Angeles. We have offices in New York, Chicago and the Silicon Valley. They all closed in mid-March and we've been all of us working remotely without interruption ever since. We have no expectation of going back to the office before the end of this year, January at the earliest. We can go to our office in LA with a letter from the firm explaining that it's necessary for us to enter the office. We will not be permitted to enter the building without such a letter. I have not done that. But I have to say that as a corporate transactional lawyer, I've worked fairly effectively. And I think my colleagues would say the same. Los Angeles is famous for its driving commutes. I ordinarily have a 60-minute drive each way to and from the office. And I've exchanged that for a 15-second walk from our kitchen to there I'm now. That's two extra hours per day, which sometimes are billable. So I would say that our business law transactional group is functioning more or less as we did before. The litigators, as Ken suggested, life is different. The federal courts and state courts in Los Angeles are essentially closed. There are no hearings, no trials, no hearings. Filings are made. And there is sort of an easier path to settlement of many cases because when lawyers are told that their trial may be two years away, there tends to be a greater motivation to settle a case. So we're seeing some of that. We're seeing an increase in the amount of employment law matters, given the huge number of layoffs and the like. A great deal of work, particularly in the early months and analyzing force majeure and clauses and business interruption, insurance policies and the like, all relating to the shutdown and contracts being not performed and terminated and so forth. But the firm is doing okay. And I think we had involved ourselves in a lot of Zoom traffic before COVID. And I think we were pretty facile with Zoom. And we have, I mean, I'm on Zoom all day with department meetings and client calls. And we have a firm-wide town hall every month with everyone in all the offices on Zoom. And I think most people would say we've been able to maintain a sense of communication and cohesion, but I think we've been able to maintain a sense of communication and cohesion, despite the fact that no one has seen each other in person since mid-March. And what you say is kind of interesting too. I walk around my neighborhood in the morning and I feel rather thankful in a way that I'm home. And now you've mentioned, Jerry, that you don't have that hour every which way to work. But has something good come out of this? Is there a positive light you can shed on COVID-19 that you feel? Well, one of my partners who spent 10 years working for US law firms in Moscow, and I'd say 95% of his clients are not in Russia, but around Russia, around Europe, some I guess are still in Russia, but not on the sanctions list. And he used to come into the office at 6 a.m. and get up at about 4.30 because he has an hour and a half commute. He lives up in Westchester and has chickens on his property, among other things. So he is not only as Jerry pointed out, saving three hours a day of commuting, but he doesn't have to quite worry about being at 6 a.m. because of the time difference in dealing with his clients. In my case, I live 17 blocks from my office and it's about a 15 or 20 minute walk depending on traffic lights. So I have been going in generally on a Saturday or Sunday when I know nobody's going to be there or if it's a weekday I would try to go in late afternoon or early evening. So I'm essentially the only one walking around. I'd say very few of the lawyers have been going in. Interestingly enough, in our proposed Zoom, we had a new partner along with a team of three other lawyers join us on June 1st it was. And of course he had met some of the partners in the, you know, in the process, but most of us have only met him on Zoom. And we're working with him as if we know him, but we haven't seen him and we haven't met him. Well, and you know, we have a couple of minutes left. Jerry. You know, if I'm a new lawyer, I'm not a new lawyer, but I would just pass the bar. What are you going to, what advice would you give me? And then I'll ask Ken the same question. A young lawyer starting out, what advice would you give that young lawyer about the practice of law or beginning a legal career in this, in these weird times? Well, my advice, I'm asked that question from time to time. And my advice would not really be different. Now that it would have was a year ago or five years ago or 10 years to go and my advice would be first that the law is a, is a remarkably satisfying profession. I virtually every day I remind myself how, how fortunate I was to have been to stick it out. And stay with it. There are many, many rewarding aspects of it. So that would, and so my advice, the first bit of my advice would be to, to really, really try it and really make an effort to immerse yourself in the law and, and, and give it a, give it a good solid shot. Number one, and number two, if, if, if, if I'm speaking to a recent graduate and newly minted lawyer, I would do whatever you have to do within reason to get into an office where you will have some supervision and training by more experienced lawyers. And it really, there are many different types of offices from, from law firm offices to, to governmental offices, public interest law offices. But the most, there's no substitute in my limited experience for being exposed to more senior lawyers with experience who are good, who are interested, taking interest in younger lawyers and are willing to impart some, some type of training. That to me is the most important thing a young lawyer can do after, after graduating from law school. Okay. Ken, I mean, has, has the COVID 19 changed your advice to young lawyers or is it the same or what, where are you at? Not remarkably different or not very different from Jerry. Although, you know, as you can see from the color of my hair, I've been doing this a long time. And during my 50 years of practice, there has been a remarkable change in the nature of the law practice. And, and I think, you know, it has its pluses and it has its minuses. If I were advising young lawyer, I would encourage them that it's a wonderful, a, area in which to, to learn and acquire knowledge, whether you end up practicing law or not practicing law. But in addition to the training, which is so important, unless they have an enormous student debt and they need to try to get a big paying job to help hang off the debt, you know, try to find something that will give you personal satisfaction and reward because so many young lawyers get burned out, you know, pretty quickly if they go to big firms, they might, you know, be working on some challenging things. But I would really ask them to try to step back and, and try to figure out what they want in life and try to select the firm on that basis. But I agree with Jerry training and working with experienced people is invaluable. Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for your time. And, you know, it's good to get together. During this pandemic, it's interesting. I just feel like it, the pandemic is, is bringing us together in a good way. And I appreciate your willingness to talk with us about what's happening in Los Angeles. In New York City. And it makes us all relate. Because similar to Hanlulu, hopefully we can all work together and make things get better. As we move forward in life. So gentlemen, thank you. I'm glad to see you. Look forward to seeing you again. And maybe we'll meet up at the next IPBA meeting. We'll, we'll see how, how it goes. So Aloha. Or sooner I would hope. Yeah. My pleasure, Mark. Good to see you. Good to see you can. And you're caring. Right.


Going on everyone Sam here with late sports cards have been 2019 through 23 bowman chrome baseball through the years nine box Mix number four random team style look again at your end results as always you can find all of these on the website under the results Tabs will as a link that's in a chat So good luck here, buddy Let's do it We start with Bowman Chrome choice from this year 23 Bowman Chrome choice first base auto is blade at it. Well go to the mats. Yes, Nick. Yes, Nick One there congrats Matt's blade did well first base auto Hans Montero very nice for the Yankees Hans Montero and First refractorado. You and her Rivero to 499 refractor again and go into the nationals Congrats, Washington. Yes, sir. Okay. Let's see. What do we got next to 23 hobbies? 23 Bowman Chrome hobbies See a Papadea come out of Sapphire today, too A little promo code magic when late night on Sunday night. Oh, yeah, I had a leftover rice shoot longer I got a little something here. It's promo code magic one. Oh, yeah, that's that can do for you That is a alien sort of to 125. It's a good question for us. Vincent Peroso for his base art Black fine, I should have told him. We're shy white There we go. Oh Wait, no, Jake or Mayfield cards on Instagram posted that let's go has a post about that Masatake Yoshida Jake or Mayfield cards on Instagram Shame a plug a few more times. Yeah, Jake or Mayfield cards Instagram Lots I would check it out May get a little let's go Spencer. That's our 10 o'clock right here. Yeah, we're just going magic money line So excited 10 o'clock starts So excited for that Raymond Mata. Oh Spencer's got like three 16 leggers for Sue's telling us earlier Honestly out of control. It's a little bit out of control He's also betting first baskets Two 499 sounds like it'll eat themselves probably will dude honestly probably well if that's the base of it like the cornerstone It's magic mile. I'm feeling good white speckled Kate Hunter to 299 and got on that one there reds Very nice cornerstone of any parlay. Oh, yeah Giovanni with a 10 box spot Alan with a 10 box basketball spot. Thank you guys So we are now down to 22 to go on Ten box basketball and three to go on Ten box baseball Sipeda as well Again, let me drop you guys that link to All the basketball is weird this year. I saw Gonzaga lost.   Why are we losing you to go? That's not great Okay, well BC sapphire now. Yeah, I've been college basketball is a good a good way to go Yeah, I Hailed a forest on this one. Yeah, I did Orson on the hard rock. I downloaded the hard rock after a forest parlay So I tell that five I tailed everything but the Roman you see point a gaho guy Shield that's 99 Wilson Contreras only reason Joey Weimer first You see rochka Arias first And Daniel Vasquez. Oh, we got a whole already. Let's go. Let's go No, one leg down. Yeah, Rod rookie and Yasser Mercedes first Throne the first sapphire and Danny Dandrade Got your special a cove goal. Let's go Nick. He's a he's a stud to Roger I guess so man. We're all in on Carolina Yellow Brandon March to 50 Congrats on that one. They're angels.  There you go. Love those man, man Max Muncie Jordan Lawler to 99 and Colton Couser Chuck with two spots in Star Wars. Thank you, buddy. Got spots and everything coming in now. So thank you Chuck Appreciate you, buddy Of course. Yeah, do to 2019 bullman chrome hobbies. Oh Did I forget to do this one?  This is her first reaction That's not good Should have put 10 Yondre Vargas first what am I hitting a 16 leg touchdown at all dude yellow to 75 to Sebastian Walcott a couple hundred K That's on that Rangers. Yeah, dude 500 K more than you had First base auto jump sock shim for the Pirates It's a really good wheat a lot of Sam cards on golden this week. It's gonna be a heavy buying Thursday Heavy buying day on Thursday. I don't even bother your Arias Don't even bother signing in the golden this way. Let's say third longest odds ever really Brent. First of all, what's up, Brett? It's like we're all wow I'm mad. I have Melinda same base. Damn. You got a 10 leg of that missed by one Nick. That's brutal That's brutal That's really tough 125 tomorrow for the Pirates Pretty helps if you're Isaac. I can see four is getting a nice little 16 legger going. Oh, yeah, absolutely Shimmer first is a sues golly's fell in Celestin and sorry me until First base auto Carlos de la Cruz Grats on that one there Philly Sebastian Walcott first Gennaro Miller aka. Gennaro Miller guy's money guys money I'm in Oscar Colas. That is refractor to 499 That's Matt Mervis to 25 three-color patch Arizona fall week congrats Cubs. That's pretty sweet. I'm not gonna lie Not gonna lie Elijah green Got more spots coming on in here Derek with the Lions and a bunch of breaks tomorrow Kyle with two spots in baseball and Patrick with a spot in baseball sold out on 10 box Tuesday baseball everybody Thank you all appreciate that very much Sold out on that. Let's get you another link to one-in-one really quick 10 to go on one-in-one We're one third of the way there everyone one third of the way there On one One and oob. Whoops. Yeah, tend to go on that one Spencer Don't don't summon him back, please We just got rid of them. It's true. She's got rid of them. It's true. It's true. I Didn't see anything I think one of those sounds correct to me Almost toggled it to don't talk and I must hit 22 to foe We didn't need that if you could type in class I have an interest in it a class to be honest TBH TBH TBH all right to 2019 Bowman Crohn's LBB or LTV can we get him out of here, please? My god, this guy's long overdue. I'm out Sam's in a blender right now boys. Let's go This guy that guy is so long overdue for a timeout. I'm a real man Sam is in a blender right now Danny Jansen and Kobe Allard Mark Trumbo Bryce Wilson Oftop and that's another guy also long overdue for a timeout. That's our time and everybody Turning chat off. I hear fours carried a little skydive into the other. Oh, yeah Old TPL Sean was doing everything. I mean now Shane was doing everything you could to lose the 125 is a Ryan Rawlsson as long as TPL got my back. I ain't scared First base auto is Jorge Alcala Congrats on that one there twins Very fellow Larry Sanders super collector We need we need Larry Sanders back Lindor Joey Gallo Curve your enthusiasm Many box number two refracted 499 smell Zilla for the rays like snow the other Ward Josh James I miss out on nice one a couple weeks ago because Old AJ Brown girl and gets the one-yard line not the not the two-yard line or the three-yard line or the touchdown He got to the one-yard line. I'm on and we and we push the tush That was it. That was the implants here Chris Davis One-yard line is someone's touchdown every time a real dude not AJ Browns Ripple shimmer Brian Rockio first nice one guardians Persian David Peralta first base auto Nick Green go to the X That's on that Yankees bright sorry for Chris Bryant and more base more base Chris and with two Star Wars spots. Thank you Chris We're down to just three at breaks left on the night two basketball breaks one Star Wars break everybody It's all we got everything else is sold out Nails is sold out Ten to go on one and one twenty two to go on ten box basketball Get a move and everybody flew to 150 Blake Trinan these Of course Course Ottawa had five games. Yeah, I just chuck wasn't one of them. Yeah, exactly. Why would he be to keep sanjay cave? That would only work out too. Well, Nick custom hero green first is Eli white to 99 for the Rangers Nick Senzel the new Atlanta three now the new national Nick Senzel first base auto cam Roosner the Brewers Go MKE and Baraki Christian Stewart be I'll be making a Boss it up one. Oh, I love it. Let's go forest. I love it. I love it. I love it. Let's go Bruins roll Bruins Let's say we have a little thing here What is it a little statue's not there? I was gonna have a little yeah, I was gonna celebrate a little You see kukuchi ruin statue bear guy Bear Bruin the bear Bobby the Bruin Barney the brewing Sounds right Yeah, boom For 99 Josh Bell next I got let me get through all my parlays about the bar. See if I took the rat Shattenkirk gotcha First refractor Louise heel to 499 congrats on that Yankees again first like shatter and captain Kirk combined And Kyle Tucker rookie all right do 21 bowman chrome hobby went the horn BC hobby some likely is usually Right exact usually one of the guys to do it plastic sports Good day. All right, Chris M said the new stick for him today might I Guess I was pissed dude was pissed what day might See Sean not liking that one as much No one are not at 150 But you say you can see him what not liking that one so much.  I give you ammo. That's what I'm saying man. Yeah, it's not our coast Oh, come on bluejacket scored. What are we doing Armando Cruz aloe vera? Thank you Spencer a stewed observation from the Detroit area How he was busy here's that There's not busy anymore chop chop chop chop furniture boy. Come on Jordan Grosjean's the one 99 first base auto willman Diaz go to the Dodgers Grats Los Angeles shoemaker and looking over juggles six baseballs Moselle or your bean up to 125 Jordan Grosjean's control six baseballs any I'm gonna call cap on that next time I see Jordan Grosjean be like six chop chop juggle boy six baseballs, bro See what you can do it. See if see if this bowman chrome fact is true. No, I Don't believe it. I don't either. I I don't I'm calling absolute cap on that Hi, oh Dylan Carlson nice one there to 100 on the bowman ascension Zodos Congrats on that one there at Cardinals Dylan Carlson, that's a rookie to Base first is Zika Tovar. Nice one there guy met his debut this year very very cool Can crats on that thank you awesome to spot tomorrow Luis with a Star Wars spot as well and Pablo a braille it's a 250 for the brew crew I'm looking at Red Sox top prospects in 2021. Oh god Who could this be and 2020 bowman chrome hobby? There's gonna be some some absolute names on that one. I'm sure it's Luis Garcia that manning Royce Lewis noise Royce purple Trevor Lornaq to 250 Speaks for the trees. He does Luciano and refractor first auto von Grissom not bad. Congrats briefs. You go. That's awesome, dude Now we're talking Red Sox Yeah, the now. Yeah the now Red Sox Congrats on that problems With all Bruhan and Revis Martinez downs and all back two and three will beos 19 Whitlock was 30 Wow Wow, that's kind of wild That is Red Sox legend von Grissom as big-time Red Sox legend von Grissom It is go lions Sanchez Michael Bush Orange orange shimmer is a Donis Medina to 250 Congrats on that a cousin drafted by the Red Sox never made out of triple a double a it's hard man It's hard to make in a baseball Recedo Dubon Corbin Carroll DL Hall That's kind of cool though Nick You're done to 499 of the rookie not bad. That's on that Astros and the refractor Is there a you're done when priest there? It is a will Holland the first base auto for the twins This one there Minnesota. Oh, yeah, the Dodgers You said originally sound by the Dodgers Who's going to know he was originally sound by the dogs. It's traded. I did not know that did not know that either That would probably probably helped yeah 22 to go on 10 bucks basketball and Tend to go on one-in-one. Yeah, no, it's it is not easy to get there. No making it. There's its own thing man All right quick recap here everybody we've got patch Matt Mervis the 25 Greenstone 99 Eli white Jordan Lola wills Contreras to 50 Brandon Marsh Sebastian Wolcott Rosie Contreras. I don't miss my Dina Got autos of will Holland Zikil Tovar will be DS cam Rosier Nick Green or hey, Alcala Carlos de la Cruz John Sock shim into prozo haunt Montero late did well for 99 Louise Heel You I end a Rivera arovera von Grissom to 250 at Pablo Bray you to 100 Dylan Carlson and a few 99 at Cain Hunter Sorry about that. Sorry about that. Yes. Yeah, that'll do for the break everybody. Thanks. I guess Thanks again for the field coming up next is


Good evening and welcome to tonight's episode of the Private Property Podcast. I'm your host, Zaman Donga Kumalo. This is episode 14, and we are currently on day 34 of the national lockdown. Now today we'll actually be covering something that a lot of people are very likely not aware of when they're buying their properties. And we'll be looking at the five hidden costs to home ownership. Now a lot of us know of some of the costs that might be involved when we're buying our home. And just last week we were talking about some of the costs in selling your property. But not many of us are aware of some of the costs when you already have your property and you essentially need to keep with the day-to-day running of your particular property. And joining me this evening to help us understand some of the costs in home ownership is Marius van Rensburg, who is a partner at Schindlis, who's going to help us. And we'll also talk about some of the costs as you buy your property. Good evening Marius, and thank you so much for joining us this evening. Good evening. Thanks for having me. Now maybe perhaps before we even start with some of the hidden costs, as I mentioned, I mean there are probably three big costs when you buy your property. And of course maybe let's help our viewers at home understand some of those costs. I think something that's probably right up your alley of course are the attorney costs that give a lot of us quite a lot of headache. If you can just take us through the two, I'll say attorney costs associated when you buy a property that's a bonded property. Yeah, so I mean if you know that there are essentially two sets of costs, the first set of costs is your transfer costs and the second set of costs are your bond registration costs. So if you buy the property, the conveyance gets appointed generally by the seller and that conveyance attorney is the transfer attorney and that attorney will charge and will send you an account for transfer costs. And those costs are different to the bond costs. So if you're taking a mortgage bond, the bank is going to appoint a bond registration attorney and that bond attorney is going to raise a bond cost which is separate from the transfer cost. And I think it's important to realise because there are a lot of buyers who who they get the second account from the bond attorney and they didn't realise that that account was coming so they haven't planned for it and it does create a problem. A good agent will explain to you what your bond costs are and what your transfer costs are. And what we advocated, Schindler's, is that get the agent to give us a call, give us a call, get a pro-former account and actually look and see what those exact costs are before you buy the property. I mean, most conveyances will happily give you the costs. And then also remember on your transfer costs, it's, you know, people get terminology confused. They try that, you talk about transfer costs in campuses and number of things. One is the conveyancing fee and the other one is the transfer duty and then there's a bunch of disbursements like deed office charges, that kind of stuff. So it would be nice if the conveyances took the entire transfer costs. We don't, we only take a conveyancing fee and that conveyancing fee is based on a tariff that's issued by the law society every year. And then of course the transfer duty is what you pay to the government in, it's a property tax that you pay when you buy the property next base on the stallion scales. So yeah, I think it's massively important to know exactly what those costs are upfront because, you know, the higher, the higher the purchase cost, the property, the more expensive it gets. And, you know, one of the things that you're mentioning is that when you're buying a property, you might know of the transferring attorneys, but you hadn't actually budgeted for the bond registration attorneys. And when I shared in one of the episodes with our listeners at home that I was in the exact same predicament. I mean, when I bought my first property, I actually bought two properties at the same time. So in my budgeting, I don't budgeted essentially for two attorneys, not knowing that I actually had to budget for four, because the two bond registration attorneys that I was also going to deal with. And it's such a substantial cost when you are not aware of it, that it could potentially derail the purchase of a particular property that you're interested in. But staying with the transferring attorneys and perhaps even the bond registration attorneys, are these amounts negotiable?  How likely is it really that we can get a decrease when having a conversation with the attorneys? It's the, it's a, it's a potentially unpleasant conversation for us to have. Yeah. I can imagine.  But you know, there is a reality and, you know, there are pushes and pulls within our own markets. And yeah, I mean, if you ask for a discount and you justify it, it's, it's possible that that you can get a discount. You know, generally speaking, you know, I mean, to give an example, if I receive a transfer and I also receive the bond, it makes it easier for me to discount the bond fee. And in some instances, you know, the banks want you to discount the bond fee if you bring the bond and the transfer together. But that depends on the, on whether that can happen or not and whether the transfer is on the bond panel. But yeah, you know, the other basis on which I think is a good basis to discount a fee is, is if, if I get two transfers. So for example, if you are selling a property and you're buying a property, then you certainly Maurice, you know, if simplest does both, both transfers, I'm really you double business, can you give me a discount? And then yeah, we can work out discount. And we also, we also try to track a practical approach to these things. There are certain people like first time home buyers who we want to help. And we'll, we'll discuss an account. So, you know, I always say, if you don't ask, you won't get. So it's, it's worth asking. I mean, I remember when I bought, I wasn't aware that you could even ask for a discount was only in later properties that I learned that, that pro forma invoice is not set in stone. So you can actually ask for a discount. And of course, if you've got any questions at home, around some of the costs associated with home ownership, you're more than welcome to send them through for Marisa myself to discuss. And let's look at perhaps another substantial, well, depending on how you look at it, potentially big cost that goes with owning a home, which is of course the home owners and the life insurance when we spoke a little bit about it offline. But I mean, I was saying that I know with some banks, they may sometimes require you to have insurance on your bond or even a life cover on your bond, if could just, you know, speak to us about those, those two types of insurances and potentially the reasons why banks might insertion instances require us to have them. Yeah, well, that's, I think that's, that's really distinguish, first of all, between the two kinds of insurance because they are very distinct and different insurances. You know, the first car, the first insurance is your home owner's insurance over the property itself. So, and it's really important to, if you're buying, if you're buying a property, let me sell this again, and let's drill down two different scenarios.    If you're buying a freehold property or a property within a class of development, well, then it's slightly different. And then you need to take your own insurance.   So that particular bank has an insurance kind of that they deal with. They can't make you take the insurance, and they don't, but they give you the option.  But if you're taking a bond, the bank is going to want to know that there is insurance of the property. And the reason for that is, if the worst happens and the property burns down, then the bank can't pay, the property gets rebuilt, and the bank's security is there again. So that's, you know, that's the actual homeowner's insurance.  Well, you know, please be sure to go and take out your own private insurance, because it's important.  But of course, I think it's a good idea, you know, that's my personal opinion. Take out the insurance, have it be. So that's your first kind of insurance, which is your insurance over the property itself. But the second kind of insurance that comes into play is the life insurance. So that means if you die, you're in a car accident, the life insurance policy pays out and potentially settles your bond. So, you know, a lot of banks, you know, they don't make it, it depends on the instruction, it depends on you and the client, it depends on what you're buying. Banks may make it a condition of the bond that you take out life insurance.  You know, we're talking about this offline. I think, you know, I personally think insurance is a good thing to have. But, you know, if you want to avoid the experience, it depends on what phase of life you're in. You know, if you are 25 or 28 years old and you're buying your first property and there's a bit of equity in the property and you don't necessarily have a family to look after or spouse, you know, maybe you can forego the luxury of having the insurance. If you are maybe a bit older, you don't necessarily have to be, but if you're, let's say, 35, 40 years old, you have a spouse and children need to support. You know, it's, you know, and for me personally, I have life insurance over all my properties and all the bonds. And it gives me a great amount of comfort to know that if I'm hit by a bus and I die, once I can get out of lockdown, of course that is, at least my life insurance will pay out. And the comfort that that gives me is that while my state is being wound up, my bond gets paid off. There's no pressure on my family. They can remain in the house. We don't need to sell the house to pay debts. We don't need to worry about the bond installments. It's paid and it's settled and that gives me a lot of comfort. So I personally think it's a, it's not a bad thing to consider. I think, you know, one of the things when it comes, whenever I think about insurance and particularly life insurance, and we're saying earlier conversation is around, I mean, so I'm unmarried, no children, got multiple properties. And sometimes it's a part of me that thinks, oh, perhaps there's no need to necessarily have life insurance.  So in as much as I may not be married or have children, they still essentially admin that goes with my particular estate. So you also want to ensure that the loved ones that you've lived behind don't have to deal with the anxiety of having to find out about different bonds or properties and you know, whether equity in them and those kind of things. And if anything, I think for us, certainly as a private property podcast, it raises the question of us having a conversation around estate planning when you've got a portfolio and different ways we can navigate it. I mean, I know there's been quite a keen interest from our viewers at home to even look at the different ways of ownership. So are we going to be buying prospective properties in our personal names or in our companies and understanding what's the implications of it being owned by, you know, in our personal capacity or it's owned by another legal entity and how that potentially has an impact on how your estate gets wound up in the event of your Now, Marius, we do have questions coming in from, from listeners and viewers at home. And one of them is coming in from a south hill in Tonbeni who asks, who are points on the attorneys? Do I have the option to use my own attorney? So that's a pretty ferocious one.  I think that the, the, it's a case of often acceptance. The, the, the way it works here, I know and certainly in Johannesburg is that it's, it's the seller's right to nominate the conveyance material. Once the, once the seller's, once the conveyance material has been nominated, it must be understood that the, that the conveyance, so they act on the instruction of the seller, but you know, conveyances, we're not litigating, we're not fighting with each other. We, we, we, we're going towards a positive end and we have a legal duty to, to observe the interests of both parties in that process. And I know I have colleagues overseas who think this idea of having one conveyance for both parties is, it's absolutely terrible. But you know, in my view, it really does actually to, to work out. That's not to say that, that a buyer can't make an offer to purchase on the basis that they make it a condition of the sale that they utilize the services of their own conveyance. You can do that. And if the seller agrees well, then you, you know, you can utilize the services of your own conveyance. In regard to, to the appointment of the attorney for a mortgage bond, well, you know, that's, that, that depends on the banks. The, the, the, the various banks have different policies. There's certain banks who as an absolute matter of policy will never allow the transferring attorney and the bonnet to be the same. There's other banks that, that will allow the bonnet transfer to be the same. And there's other banks depending on, on what panel you're on with the banks, you know, you can do it. But bearing in mind that in order to do the bond, you have to be on the bank's panel. And there's, so each bank has a panel of attorneys. And the bank can only appoint attorneys or will only appoint attorneys on their panel. But the bank generally reserves the rights in the final analysis to appoint their attorney, but you may well influence it here and there. And, you know, Maris, another question coming in, this one is from Holiness Lindy Wellela, who asks, you know, the question is around, I'm interested to know if you're planning to buy a property cash, you know, what are the, the implication in terms of attorneys? Because I mean, we've been speaking a lot about bonded properties. So they essentially want to know if you're buying in cash, so you're not going to the bank, then as far as attorneys are concerned, which ones would you essentially be paying for? Yeah, if you're paying cash for the property, then you don't need a bond, you don't need a bond attorney, and then you just have a transferring attorney. So, you know, it's as simple as that. If you pay cash, there's only a transferring attorney. And what you would then do is you have an agreement to sell. Your agreement to sell would provide for you, for example, to pay deposit and then the balance of the purchase prices in cash as opposed to mortgage bond. And the convincing teams would guide you as to how to present guarantees. And there's two ways to do it. You could either pay the money into the conveyances trust account and they issue guarantees for you. And all what you can do is you can use the money in your own bank and ask your bankers to issue a guarantee for you. But the conveyances and the bankers work together to work out, you know, to issue those guarantees. It becomes a technical issue. But yeah, if cash don't need a bond attorney, then you only pay transfer costs, which are the conveyancing fees and the transfer duty. Okay. And another one, and of course, another cost that's involved with home ownership is, and that people potentially, you know, aren't mindful of as we're buying your properties is levies. And that's a levy amount that, of course, you typically tend to find when you are buying into a sectional title. Yeah, I mean, you know, when you say to when you tell me the word levies, I think of two scenarios. One, one is if you're going to buy into a sectional title scheme, you know, as a member of a sectional title scheme, you're a member of the body corporate and the body corporates charges levies. And then of course, the other kind of levies you've got is you've got a levy for a home owners association. So if you buy freehold property within a class of development or within a home owners association, then you're going to pay a home owners association levies, which are slightly different to normal levies, but they still levy nonetheless. And my advice to people looking to buy properties, and this is my advice to estate agents as well, is when you're going to buy the property, ask for a copy of the actual levy statement. Because what we find is that if there's verbal discussions around, you know, I say to you, well, you're the seller, say, what is the levy in this complex? And you said to me, it's a thousand red. Then I buy the property, I move and I get my first levy statement and I see, well, the levy is a thousand red, but there's a godly for 200 red, there's a DST levy for another 150, then there's a security levy for another 300 red. And before you know it, I'm at 1,000, none of a grand. Now I've budgeted for 1,000, I'm paying 1,000, none of a grand and I'm unhappy. So, you know, get a copy of the levy statement and see what the actual levy is. And that applies for sectional title and for, and for, you know, cluster developments. In each case, ask for the levy and find out. So for example, you might buy into a, into cluster development, and now you're going to pay the home owners association a levy. But the, the home owners association provides you with water in that levy. It's just a useful fact that you can understand and you can again try and plan for your purchase. You know, once you've taken ownership of the property, what am I live? What, what, what, what, what are my costs going to be? And of course, then the next item would be rates and taxes. And, you know, sometimes I struggle with this one because obviously different areas have different amounts. You know, different municipalities would usually charge you based on the size of that particular property. Who would we be getting this information from? Because sometimes even the state agents don't know. Well, I think that the, the, the same principle applies with, with levies. Ask for a copy of the, ask for an actual copy of, of the rates and taxes account. You know, for a state agent that's got some useful information is the seller in arrears is the seller in arrears. But the most important information we get there is what are the actual rates and taxes payable on this property.  And they tell me, no, there's no, there's no rates and taxes on farms. These rates and taxes on all properties. I also come across some people who buy, for example, sexual toddler, right? And what they do is they own the property for three, four years, but they never receive a rates and tax, a rates and taxes account. And then this happened.  They never get cut off because, you know, the, the, the, the electricity and water is charged by, by the lady, by the body corporate.  And when they sell the property to get the surprise that there is an account, it's in the ether somewhere, we find it, give it to them in the bigger areas and then they must not pay. So rates and taxes, it's a reality. And it's one of those costs that you must factor in when you, when you're buying a property. And again, you know, I'm all for, you know, I think all good estate agents are all for letting the buyers know, what are the, what are the costs of owning this property? And the way you do it is by looking at the actual rates and taxes account, and you can see what those rates and taxes are. And of course, the other thing that the rates and taxes account may tell you is, and it's not definitive, but what is your electricity and water consumption? Which is also another cost to consider. Yeah. And today I'm actually exposing myself quite a bit. That was another mistake that I made early on in my property journey where I bought into a sectional title. Everything is going well. Maybe four or five months after having bought, I get an SMS from COJ saying that my account is in areas. And of course, I'm going crazy thinking, what are they talking about? I've been getting my levy statement from the border corporate and I've been paying it diligently every month. But now I'm being told I'm in areas only to find out that an account had in fact been created. It's accumulating all this money every month. And luckily I was able to, firstly, luckily I'm glad I got the SMS. Because imagine we've accumulated all these years, all these years. One day I'm thinking of selling and, lo and behold, I owe many, many thousands of brands in rates and taxes. So that is definitely something that happens when I bought those first two properties I wasn't aware of. And I think I'm also just quite grateful that that SMS came in. I think it was only 2,000 rands in areas. So it wasn't quite a big amount. So it was easy to just pay that off and then set up the account online and then be able to pay it off on the monthly basis. Yeah. I'll tell you something that I've experienced personally as well, which I think is a mistake sometimes people make, is that you own a property and you receive your monthly accounts from the City of Johannesburg each month. And what you need to do is look at your electricity and look at your water readings and look and determine are they estimate readings or are they actual readings? So for example, at the moment where the property where I live, I can see that I'm paying the actual amount due on water. But I can also see that for the last couple of months I'm paying based on estimate readings for my electricity. And the estimate that the City of Johannesburg is estimating is lower than it actually is. So what I'm actually doing is I'm actually paying in additional funds into the account every month because I know in six or seven months time, or it might be 10 months time, maybe 12 months time, maybe 18 months time, the guy from COJ is going to arrive outside my house and he's going to take a reading on that meter. And I'm going to be in for a shock in that I'm going to do the actual readings and I'll have a massive bill to pay.  I mean the City Council is on perfect, I'm afraid. Yeah. So I'd like us to just address some of the comments and questions coming in from our viewers at home. We've got one from Lena Davis who says, I've been a victim of Libby's that just balloon once I've taken ownership. So thanks for the advice. It's a pleasure, Lena. Seems like we're not the only ones, certainly I'm not the only one who's gone through an experience like that. And then another one from South Yale, Ntombé, who asks what fees are involved when your mortgage is paid up and you want to cancel the mortgage? Okay, yeah, that's a, let me deal with the second question first. Once you understand that when we register a mortgage bond in the deed's office, what happens is your title deed gets endorsed with the mortgage bond. And if you do a deed's office search, you're going to see the endorsement of the mortgage bond. So if you pay up the mortgage bond in totalitarian, you don't owe anything on that bond, the registered mortgage bond will still be endorsed against the title deed. Okay, and what people do is people have a choice. You can, you can either leave it like that, or you can, you can ask the bank to cancel the mortgage bond because now you don't owe them any more money. Now some of the advantages of keeping the mortgage bond in place is it acts as, providing you have an access facility, it acts as quite a nice way to access instant money very cheaply, very effectively over a 20-year period and normally at a pretty good interest rate.  And that's a, that's a personal decision. The other reason people keep mortgage bonds alive is because often the, the insurance is linked to the mortgage bond. And what they do is that they just keep it alive for that. But to the extent that you don't want to that bond, you want to cancel it, you know, what you could do is you could write, write or call your bank, ask them to, to cancel the bond. The bank will then instruct a bond cancellation attorney who's an attorney on their panel and that attorney will cancel the bond in the deed's office. And what that involves is taking your mortgage bond, taking your title deed, getting a consent to cancel sign and actually lodging in the deed's office and canceling that endorsement in, in the deed's office. And for that, you know, if I recall correctly, the attorneys will charge about four to 4,200 rand as a cancellation fee and then it took the deed's office charges. So that, that's how that process works. Okay. And, and of course then, another question that, or another issue that could potentially be a cost of home ownership. And this is before you probably take full ownership of the property is the occupational rent. If you could just take us through occupational rent, what it is for viewers at home who may not be aware of it? Yeah. So occupational rent is if you enter, enter an agreement to sale and you've now bought that property. Okay. You, you, there's normally a clause that deals with what is the date of occupation of the property. So in many instances, instances, it's going to be occupation on registration or transfer.  So you may enter an agreement to sale now, occupation will be in a month's time or six weeks time and that date is then prior to the date, prior to the date of registration. Now what this means is you're going to move into the property before you are the registered owner and you will then, you will then pay the occupational rents, which is in the contract. So the first thing to note is in my view, when you sign the contract, you should stipulate what the occupational rent is. Don't wait to negotiate at a later stage. The second thing to note is, you know, then there's often confusion while what amount of occupational rent should be insured and people are tempted to say, well, my bond is going to be X. So I'll make the occupational rent that or the seller will say, well, my current cost of the property is this, I'll make it that. I think those things are, those, those ideas are not correct. What we should do is we should make it a market related rent. So we should ask our agent to advise us, what is the market related rent for that property in that area? And that's the rate that we should insert because I think that's the, that's the fair way to do it. And also remember that if your transfer is delayed for an extended period of time, if it's too high or too low, one of the parties will be kind of prejudice. So a fair market rent clause is, is I think the fair way to go. I mean, I've seen in quite a lot of OT in a lot of offered to purchases that a lot of the times they make it 1% of the purchase price. And I mean, I haven't seen many parties trying to negotiate it. Sometimes they're okay with it. And sometimes it depends on whose favor it typically works towards, but that seems to be a figure a lot of people are relatively comfortable with. Yeah, I think that if you have regard to our current rates of market one percent is pretty, pretty high. It might, it might, I mean, take for example, a one million round property. I mean, you might get a seven or eight or eight and a half thousand round rent. So you're doing 0.8, 0.7, 0.8, maybe 0.9% if it's a great property. But if you, if you buy a property for six million rounds, you know, generally speaking, a six million round property is going to have an occupational rent of 40 to 45,000, maybe 35,000 grand. So in those cases, you're probably looking more to 0.5, 0.6% of the, of the purchase price. So I think, you know, in my view, though, the 1% is not always going to be the right, the right way to go. Market related is probably better and also have regard to the actual property buying the purchase price. And Amaris, before we, you know, we wrap up our conversation this evening, what are the other costs? Would you want our viewers at home to be aware of when it comes to home ownership? Well, I mean, let me just run through a few of them. And I think, you know, one of the biggest costs that people don't think about is the mortgage cost. So when you take out a mortgage bond, right, the bank sends you a sheets, which is a quotation which is sent to you in terms of National Credit Act. And what they do is they actually tell you what is the capital. If you pay this bond off over a period of 20 years, what is the capital and what is the interest portion that you're going to pay over that period of time. And that's, and that's an, that was that that's obligatory in terms of the National Credit Act. And I think it's worth looking at that because that's a cost of owning a property. And then of course, incentivizes you to pay down as much as your bond as quickly as you can to avoid Amaris, I must say, it's quite an intimidating document, especially, you know, if you're new home buyer, not particularly aware of it, it's so thick. There are so many terms and I know towards the end, they've got the the terminally do a terminology breakdown. But I must say, I mean, it is quite intimidating. And I hope that shows like this help our viewers understand that that's something that's coming. So you're almost shouldn't be too overwhelmed when it does come. And perhaps another episode will even go through what you would typically expect in a grant like that. And some of the major things perhaps doing an explainer, because I know that so many people who've gone through that process for the first time, often speak about how intimidating it is and how some of the terminology, you know, the words, but you don't really understand the full effect of what it is that you're reading.  And just because we understand the process doesn't mean the client does. So I mean, I encourage my team to be as patient and as clear as possible. And I encourage sellers and buyers, you know, speak to your originators, speak to your agent, speak to your conveyance, pick up the phone, you know, make a call, ask them to explain this process. Because remember from Mark, one of you as a conveyance, the better I can explain the process to you, the more comfortable you're going to feel. And generally speaking, the easier that transaction is going to run. So I encourage people to ask questions and also the intelligence.  And I find people are quite willing to take time to explain to people once they've asked those questions. Yeah. So you are actually going through some of the other costs. So that first big one is of course, the mortgage cost. Yeah.  And if you want to maintain the property to its standard, then there's going to be maintenance costs. So that's just maybe something to consider. The other cost you should consider is depends where you're buying is there's sometimes there are additional security costs. So you may be moving into a free old house or a cluster, you may want to upgrade yours to a security. You also want to look at how much the cost to have the on the sponsor, those kind of costs.   And but you know, people also want to make improvements. So you may move into the house and you want to cool it down so you pay for air conditioning or you heat it up. So you want to put in heaters. You know, there's also a little cost that people don't expect. For example, you know, you need to clean your property. So it's going to cost you excellent cleaning costs every month in terms of detergents. You arrive at the property, is there internet facilities? Well, maybe you need to have incursive costs in terms of internet. You may also have some safety improvements. You may move into a property where there's a pool, you want to put up a security. So I think what you need to do is look at your property holistically, look at the obvious costs and then also say, right, let's think about these additional costs. And there are certain costs like the improvements, which over time, and as part of improving on your own investment, you know, you could look at doing those at your own pace. That's perfect. Marius, thank you so much for joining us this evening. That is Marius van Rensburg, who is a partner at Schindelsen. I'm packing some of the costs associated with home ownership. It's not just the bond amount. There are other additional costs like we've spoken about this evening. Thank you very much for all your comments and questions at home. And of course, if you want to read up on any more tips, whether it's for buying, selling or renting, you can always go to www.privateproperty.co.za until tomorrow evening. I'm hoping you're staying at home and staying safe. Good night.