Intro Speaker 0:00
From Los Angeles, this is the Echelon Radio Network.

Brian Hemsworth
Hi, everybody. We are here with the Echelon Radio Podcast and today we’ve got David Burger in the studio. Thanks for coming in David.

David Burger 0:23
Oh, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Brian Hemsworth 0:25
Yeah! Have you ever done a podcast?

David Burger 0:27
No, first one.

Brian Hemsworth 0:28
Okay. Well, hopefully we’ll have a little bit of fun. We’ll get to know a little bit about you along the way. David, you are a real estate broker. And you took the path into real estate that most agents do as I understand it, you were a litigator for a lot of years before you were selling real estate.

David Burger 0:48
That would be accurate.

Brian Hemsworth 0:50
So tell us a little bit. Tell us how that happened. Tell us about being an attorney and then moving into real estate.

David Burger 0:56
I became an attorney in 1985. And I was in downtown LA, became a partner in a law firm down there, and really enjoyed it a lot at the beginning. And eventually, since I was always working 70, 80 hours a week, because the billable Gods always demanded that. And then my wife and I, we had a baby, and she’s special needs. And I started to get you know, calls and stuff. So we didn’t know she was special needs, but it became apparent. So I basically decided to make the transition to real estate. And I’ve been outside counsel doing stuff for Fred Sands Realty. And said to Fred one day, I’d like to be a realtor, and he says, David, you do my outside litigation. And I said, Do you want me or not? And he says, absolutely. What he didn’t tell me was that a month later, the company was going to move over to Coldwell Banker, so I was probably gonna lose him as a legal client anyway.

Brian Hemsworth 1:56
What were you doing primarily? You weren’t doing primarily real estate?

David Burger 2:00
It was only a small portion of my practice.

Brian Hemsworth 2:02
What was the brunt?

David Burger 2:04
Well, it was largely an insurance defense practice. We had a number of different things in there. We had lemon law, though I never did any of that. We had estate planning. I didn’t do any of that. So I was basically a litigator. So you took depositions, arbitrations, some trials, 98% of everything settled anyway, so. But, traveled sometimes, for depositions, or arbitrations up and down the state. And, you know, that sort of thing.

Brian Hemsworth 2:32
Now, if memory serves me correctly, and lately, it hasn’t always served me correctly, but I will give this a try. Real estate was actually not something radically new for you, right?

David Burger 2:44
No, it wasn’t. My dad was in the aerospace industry. And he had with my mom, five kids, you know, and money was tight. My mom didn’t work. She had been a teacher before we were born, and then just taught the five of us basically. So money was tight. And so he did real estate on the side. So we would often go to open houses. And I became very familiar with any neighbor’s house, that he would end up selling on the weekend. And so it was something I was very familiar with. And I was always told if you wanted to work outdoors, and earn good money, that being a realtor was a wonderful thing to do.

Brian Hemsworth 3:22
Well, you know, I think people that know you know you’re a nice guy. We actually don’t see you as the litigator type. Most of us that know you in the real estate part of your life. But tell us from your perspective, what was it like going from being a litigator and you know, fighting for what you needed to fight for, settling and negotiating and all that. And then moving into real estate. Very similar, very different?

David Burger 3:52
I would say, it’s rather different. I like to say that my attorney background, my legal background, informs my real estate background and it informs it in this way in terms of disclosures and negotiation, those two in particular, but as a litigator, you know, you’d have new clients, and you would prep them for deposition or trial or whatever the particular hearing was, and most the time they didn’t listen to you. And that’s somewhat sort of true with some of the real estate agents, you know, real estate clients, because they don’t always understand what’s going on, even though everyone pretends they know about real estate. There’s the finer details. And, you know, what’s been very good for me is the attorney background has become more and more important to the whole process, because of the constant litigation that has occurred with various people selling homes. And so every week or every month, it seems like there’s a new disclosure form. And there’s more regulation in regards to the industry. And so with the attorney background, it really comes in handy in regards to that.

Brian Hemsworth 4:50
I would think so. I would think just in conducting business for most of us, our real estate purchases are going to be among the largest purchases we ever do.

David Burger 5:02
Especially nowadays.

Brian Hemsworth 5:03
Yeah. And for you to be able to not necessarily bring as a practicing attorney, but somebody who’s got a very thorough knowledge, just bring a sensitivity that that maybe avoids some problems that maybe other agents out there might not be aware of.

David Burger 5:21
It’s true. My plan when I was making the transition was to have attorneys and accountants refer me and they make up a very large percentage of my business. And because I basically appealed to the professional class, they want their clients to be taken care of, and they know what the legal background and negotiation and the presentation and the disclosures, they don’t have to worry. They don’t have to wonder if you know, someone’s taking their client astray. They know David Burger’s on it. And right now I’ve got two deals that are closing. And they’re both attorneys and both have referred to me over the years, and I’ve done a lot of transactions with them. So it really comes in handy. And I’m not kidding, seriously. All the real estate outfits constantly talk about the lawsuits that are out there constantly. We have new forms. There’s a new forms coming out this week. And with all the issues with the Coronavirus, and the many changes that have occurred as a result of that, the attorney background really has proved critical for me and has brought a lot of clients to me who go, “That’s what I want. Someone who knows and understands what the obligations of the sellers and the buyers are and can provide a level of protection by doing it the right way.”

Brian Hemsworth 6:28
Yeah. And probably getting it done a little quicker and cleaner along the way.

David Burger 6:31
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I don’t have to figure it out.

Brian Hemsworth 6:34
Yeah, yeah. You’ve got the roadmap. So let’s talk a little bit about Coronavirus. And I’m guessing that if people were honest, a year and a half ago, 15 months ago? Yeah. As soon as here in California things shut down. I’m guessing that if most people had to bet, they wouldn’t have bet that real estate was going to do well. I think most of us would have thought most businesses aren’t going to do well. That wasn’t the case.

David Burger 7:03
No, it wasn’t, we actually did think it was going to be really bad for the business. And for the first two or three months, we were not at that time deemed essential workers. But eventually were deemed essential because it has to do with the financing. And thus the financial sector was the process that led to us being deemed essential. But the market as everyone knows, by now has just taken off. And the pandemic is largely responsible for that. Yeah, interest rates are low, there’s no doubt about that. And the cost of money is as cheap, especially from historical paces. But the pandemic has changed in so many ways. Now, you can, though I don’t recommend it, you can buy a house without seeing it or investment property. And about a third, according to studies, about a third of the people do, especially in Hawaii as an example. In Hawaii, a third of all the second homes are sold sight unseen. Now, maybe that has to do with the fact that, you know, it’s harder to get into Hawaii, maybe, you know, with all the regulations, but a fair number of people do. Now I don’t recommend that, you know, photos can be deceiving. And I think you really need to see a place. But I guess it depends on what you intend to do with the place. And therefore that can guide you as well. But the market has been tremendous. Now, why is that? People asked me and I said there are many components to it. But a lot of it is pandemic driven. And it’s not just that there are insufficient houses. That’s true, but why are they insufficient, in terms of the number of them? Well look at this way: when I was getting ready to in April of last year put on five homes, three of them involve foreclosures, okay. Well, those homes are still not on the market. It’s illegal in the state of California, at least through the end of the upcoming month of June to do any foreclosures. So how many of the properties out there would have been on the market, a fair number would have been on the market, they would have been in good shape or whatever it was, they were currently rented. That didn’t come on, then you had all the people living in apartment buildings, okay, and you’re there, let’s say with your spouse or your roommate, and you usually see them in the morning or when they come back in the afternoon, at the evening. But now you’re in there all day. And you heard the people, the couple next door fighting and people just going nuts. So a lot of people suddenly wanted to move from apartments and they wanted to move to homes. Okay, and no one was really renting, okay. And in the San Fernando Valley, as you know, the last five, six years. Oh, my God, you can’t find a rental property.

Brian Hemsworth 9:23
Well, and things like fires don’t help that.

David Burger 9:26
No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t.

Brian Hemsworth 9:28
Take some houses off the market and some other people that need a little bit of repair, they’re looking to rent houses.

David Burger 9:33
I took two houses off the market in Calabasas during the fire season because smoke was coming on the property and that’s really not a saleable idea.

Brian Hemsworth 9:41
Yeah. Well, so give us just a quick snapshot now, 15 months after that shutdown, things are beginning to loosen up. We’re still not 100% there but definitely the pendulum is swinging back to recovery right now. What are you seeing in the market right now? Or what are you seeing, maybe not so much the market, but people, what are you seeing in the the sentiment of people, buyers and sellers?

David Burger 10:08
Well, there’s just tremendous demand to move. And that’s going to continue at least for six months to a year or more, regardless of the pandemic, and part of it is, unfortunately, what’s happening in civil society. In regards to politics. There are a lot of people, some of my clients who say, you know, what, I don’t want to be in this state, I really should be in a more conservative state, you know, they’ve lost Facebook friends, and you’d be surprised at how much of an impact that’s having on the market as well. So I’ve recently moved some people that wanted to move to Arizona and Idaho as an example. So I anticipate the demand for housing and invest, you know, two unit, four units, six unit, whatever, will remain strong for the foreseeable six months, year, year and a half, and interest rates are low. And while there are certain pressures on the Fed to raise them, they’re going to do everything possible, according to Chairman Jerome Powell to ride above that 2% interest rate in terms of inflation. And so I don’t see that, you know, moving it up from the Fed standpoint. So I see extended demand for housing, there’s just isn’t enough out there and the buyers will continue to suffer. 30% of my business are buyers, and it’s hard to get them places.

Brian Hemsworth 11:18
Yeah. Well, you know, it seems like we’re, if if we’re going to have that for a little while, we’re seeing something on the flip side. You and I are involved with a lot of different people, different business people in a lot of different businesses, but professionals that typically might have a little bit more discretionary income, we’re starting to see something and have for maybe the last six, nine months, in friends and clients that have maybe sold a property or maybe not, maybe just rented it out. But they’ve purchased another property in another state, like Arizona, like Nevada, like Idaho, seems five years ago was more Oregon, North Carolina, Texas, is maybe sort of back in that newer mix with Idaho and the others. But what we’re also seeing is those professionals that are not leaving their jobs here, they’re now going to be doing those remotely from another states. And it did matter five or 10 years ago, the optics of it, people wouldn’t want you to be remote. Now, they don’t know. You’re on zoom, it doesn’t matter.

David Burger 12:26
That’s right, and there’s a fair number of people doing that. And some are my clients and of course, I have friends that have doing it as well. But you’re exactly right, there’s no, I would use the word stigma, associated professionally, with moving your footprint, even if you have a place here in California and going to Idaho or Arizona in particular. And Texas has had a strong market for five to seven years. But certainly the the zoom or Google or whatever it is platform that you’re using to interact with your clients certainly made it more available for people to be in a in a more vacation environment, if you want to phrase it that way, more rural environment. And I can certainly understand it.

Brian Hemsworth 13:08
Yeah. Let’s move a little bit out. Well, we’ll stay in the in the discussion of moving. There were a handful of people that you and I both know, that maybe thought you had moved a few months back a few months back to Scotland. So you had a kind of a lengthy stay there. Tell us a little bit about that.

David Burger 13:32
Well, I married up I married my wife, Robin, and she’s very talented and very smart. And she happens to be a screenwriter. It’s a very tough business. You talk about Zoom. That’s been a godsend to her because she’s able to Zoom two or three times a week, let’s say and pitch to you know, networks or streaming services or production companies. And she had sold a movie idea with with her assistant back in 2017 to Netflix called Princess Switch and ended up being the number two movie for Netflix in the world that year, just behind Sandra Bullock’s Birdbox. So they made another one. So that was being shot. First one was shot in Romania. We didn’t go. The second one was shot in Scotland. And so the second one, which was the one that aired last year in November of 2020, shot in Scotland outside Edinburgh, we went. We were there for seven weeks. And then this last year, Princess Switch 3 became a much bigger deal, bigger budget, but also because of Coronavirus, which was responsible for 30% of the cost. And so I spent November, all of November, all of December, January and February, four months in Scotland. In a small town called Queensferry, nine and a half miles out of Edinburgh. Everything was shut down. There was nowhere to go. But they were deemed over there essential under a manufacturing requirement. Interestingly enough, they’re manufacturing a movie. And that’ll be out mid November of this year. Yeah. 2021.

Brian Hemsworth 15:12
Well, gosh, congratulations to your wife.

David Burger 15:13
Thank you. Thank you. She works very hard.

Brian Hemsworth 15:15
And you know, other than the fact that everything was shut down, I can think of a lot worse places to spend a few months.

David Burger 15:23
Yeah, it was kind of interesting. We would all tease and joke amongst ourselves because all the restaurants were shut down. So they only had one restaurant there. And so what that resulted in is, well, we got this lovely Chinese menu tonight, which they didn’t, but we would just pretend that we would have to travel, take the elevator down. And you know, I’ll meet you in a half hour, and we would all show up, but I was not part of the production staff. So I was there every day, and I got to know the whole production team. So I’ll be honest, I like to eat. I made friends with the chef and I found out his wife liked to certain champagne. So I plied him with champagne for his wife. And suddenly we got pork chops, and we suddenly got other food items. And so everyone was very happy with my work in Scotland.

Brian Hemsworth 16:06
Oh, very, very nice. Very nice. Well, you know, Edinburgh is kind of one of those cities that’s got some great character to it. I sort of nicknamed it a Harry Potter kind of city. It’s just got that vibe and and I think that must have been a very interesting experience, especially during during COVID.

David Burger 16:29
It was, and the previous year I was there, my grandfather on my mother’s side was born in Glasgow in 1900. So I have family there. So it’s a real treat to have relatives.

Brian Hemsworth 16:42
That’s another great city, you know.

David Burger 16:44
Oh, Glasgow. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a different feel than Edinburgh, obviously. But what was nice, the first time I was there, I was able to go down and see the Scottish Parliament. I was able to go to Holly Ruud house, the palace. I was able to go to various castles and things like that, and got to really meet the people, and experience you know, not being a traveler. Hey, we got to get there today. I could come back a second day. It was just it was it was terrible. Right. And I suffered.

Brian Hemsworth 17:14
I’ve also heard that rumor that they have some distilleries.

David Burger 17:20
It’s a rumor. I can verify that there are a few over there if you’d like whiskey. Yeah. And you know, we were there during the winter months, which is a little bit different than the summer months, the summer months, you can’t even move.

Brian Hemsworth 17:33
So then whiskey is an essential?

David Burger 17:35
Absolutely. Well, it’s a warming mechanism, and it goes down smoothly.

Brian Hemsworth 17:40
So when you’re not selling real estate, and when you’re not globe trotting off to Scotland to shoot a movie, tell us what you do. What do you do in your spare time? What do you like to do?

David Burger 17:49
Well, I like to visit my daughter who lives in Idaho, in Cortland. And we have a fair number of friends. So we’d like to get together with them, obviously before the Coronavirus, and then we love cruising.

Brian Hemsworth 18:02
I was gonna say, I remember cruising is a part of that. So how many cruises have you been on?

David Burger 18:08
29, and my favorite cruise is Alaska. We’ve done seven of those, I like to go every two or three years. Unfortunately, the difference between the first cruise to Alaska, which was probably 1993, and now, you can see how much the land has as has changed as a result of, you know, global warming, and it’s quite disconcerting, but what a beautiful place and I love to go up there and see the salmon run. That’s quite compelling.

Brian Hemsworth 18:38
What’s your favorite thing about cruising?

David Burger 18:42
I think what I really like is, I’ll be honest, I pretend it’s my own. And I’ll go on the front or the back—

Brian Hemsworth 18:48
Just like it was your own Edinburgh.

David Burger 18:50
Yes, it’s my own yacht. I really enjoy the service I get on the cruise ship. But I enjoy being away from the everyday challenges and worries that we all experience and it takes me out of my reality that I mean most of the time. And so I’ll go to the back of the ship and just imagine this is all mine as I look back on the water, or the landscape or whatever it is, and it’s quite freeing, and I find it rejuvenating and I give my wife credit for that. Because she she says balance is very important. And I’ve learned to be more balanced.

Brian Hemsworth 19:22
So what about going forward with cruises? We you know, we heard some of those horror stories, that one ship that had been around China then docked in Japan after that and had a rough go, what does that do in terms of future cruises?

David Burger 19:37
Well, we have a number of friends who are entertainers and cruise captains and stuff like that. So a friend of ours, Big Bob, is going to be going back on silversea. He’s due in trance by the end of May, just found out a couple of days ago. He’s very excited about that. But the entertainers, it’s much, much more difficult. They haven’t been lined up on any gigs or things like that. We, my wife and I, we’re gonna wait before we go on a cruise again, we’re gonna see if we can get the kinks out on the new protocols and things like that. So it’ll probably be at least a year before we go on. But a lot of our friends have been devastated economically and otherwise, because they work in the cruise industry. And there was no work. And it was that’s quite challenging.

Brian Hemsworth 20:20
That truly shut down.

David Burger 20:22
Just truly dead. Yeah. And one of our good friends who’s an entertainer, he was also on a ship that was at sea and it took it like five weeks to get home, no one would have them. Now no one was sick on the ship. But the perception was that if they docked anything could happen. And I think it was a Royal Caribbean ship. I forget the name of it at the moment. But they had nowhere to go. They would just float at sea because ports wouldn’t take them. So, that industry was devastated.

Brian Hemsworth 20:48
You know that travel really was a challenge for some people, things like getting home or getting back. I had some students in the spring of last year. And most schools shut down right then in mid March. And one of my students was from China. Her family’s from Wuhan. But she stayed here and she had a little bit of family in the Southern California area. So she stayed here in the hopes that we are going to get back, you know, onto campus. And finally come fall when it was announced no schools will be able to be open or at least no universities. Everything will be Zoom. Her family called and said we think you should, you know, come back home now. And I spoke to her the day before she left, actually wrote her letter of recommendation for grad school. So we were chatting just a little bit. And she had to get a rapid test, which at the time was not easy. Now it’s much easier. But back in August of last year, that was not very easy. She had to get it within 72 hours, she was flying out of Orange County. And I forgot exactly where she had to go. But I think she had to go to someplace like Brazil or Argentina. Spend three days there in hotel, then fly to China, spend 14 days in a hotel, then fly to Wuhan because I think she flew in via Beijing. Then she went to Wuhan, spent another week in a hotel before she got home, so was about five weeks to get from Los Angeles to China. I was saying how it’s become commonplace that you can typically get on a plane and be there tomorrow. Not right now.

David Burger 22:29
We’ll see if things move back towards the normal.

Brian Hemsworth 22:32
Yeah. Let’s do a little rapid fire just with some fun questions. We’ve been asking kind of a series of people just to kind of have a little fun on the back of the business talk.

David Burger 22:44
Blue is my favorite color.

Brian Hemsworth 22:46
So that wasn’t going to be one my questions but thanks for playing the game. No bonus points for that one. Your favorite food to go out and eat when you go to a restaurant?

David Burger 22:58
A steak . Filet Mignon.

Brian Hemsworth 22:59
And do you have a favorite place to get that steak?

David Burger 23:03
Um, well in Scotland, the hotel we were at, it was actually outstanding. I like Ruth’s Chris.

Brian Hemsworth 23:10
Yeah. Did you have a favorite superhero when you were a kid?

David Burger 23:16
Superman. And it was so funny, my brothers and I really liked the comic books, but my mom and dad disapproved of that. It was considered frivolous. They had no idea that Marvel and DC was going to be huge that people would have tremendous careers. But it was bad. But I was big Superman fan. I had a buddy. Tim Cave was his name. And he lived a couple miles away and we’d ride our bikes over there. And we’d look at as many of those books as we wanted.

Brian Hemsworth 23:47
And where abouts in LA did you grow up?

David Burger 23:49
I grew up near LAX, out in Westchester. And I remember when friends would come over after school, they would start to yell at me. And I said, Why are you yelling? And they would go,the planes. I go, what planes? We were not far from one of the runways and the planes would come in. Like anything you get used to it. Yeah.

Brian Hemsworth 24:05
So where was high school?

David Burger 24:06
I went to Loyola high in downtown LA run by the Jesuits,

Brian Hemsworth 24:09
A great school. College?

David Burger 24:11
I went to Stanford University.

Brian Hemsworth 24:13
I knew there was a reason for you being so smart.

David Burger 24:17
Rumor, rumor.

Brian Hemsworth 24:18
And law school?

David Burger 24:19
I went to Santa Clara Law School. Yeah. It was a Jesuit law school. I was very close friends with the former head Father Kaylin of Loyola High School and he was dismayed that I was going to Stanford and he says, well, I know you want to go to law school, you you need to go to a Jesuit law school. We teach you right. And I listened to him. What was I thinking? And I went to Santa Clara.

Brian Hemsworth 24:42
Gotcha. And so if everything in the world were open right now and you had one day off, to just do whatever you wanted, somewhere in this general vicinity, what would it be?

David Burger 24:54
Is Cabo San Lucas in this general vicinity?

Brian Hemsworth 24:56
You know, I think you can fly there pretty quick.

David Burger 24:57
I could. I’d go to Cabo for a day. I like Cabo. I enjoy it. You know, it’s out of the country but it’s not that far.

Brian Hemsworth 25:06
Okay, and so here’s my final round of quick questions for you. I think I recall, in addition to the cruises, you’ve also done a few trips to Disney World.

David Burger 25:18
Yes. Right. Yes, absolutely.

Brian Hemsworth 25:20
You’ve been a few times.

David Burger 25:22
Yes. In fact, we’re planning to go there in November, December of this year. So that’s going to be a sort of a birthday present. My birthday was earlier this year. We’re going to go to Disney World. I really love Disney World because of the broadness of it. And you have Epcot. I love the pavilions there. It’s just so enjoyable, and have I have such a great time. So it’s been about seven or eight years since I’ve been there. It’s been a long time, relatively speaking, but I’m looking forward to going back. And then, you know, we’re going to try to time it at the end of November, December because my wife’s movie will be released in mid November, but there may be like this last year, a billboard in Times Square. So we just shoot up to New York, and she wants a picture of herself in front of the Billboard.

Brian Hemsworth 26:08
That’s kind of cool.

David Burger 26:09
Yeah, it is kind of cool.

Brian Hemsworth 26:10
And then maybe they’ll have a picture of a filet mignon and you can take your picture, a selfie in front of it.

David Burger 26:15
Yeah, before and after.

Brian Hemsworth 26:18
So, the last question on Disney World: favorite ride?

David Burger 26:22
My favorite ride, you know, I’m a traditionalist. I really like Pirates of the Caribbean. So to me, that’s, you get lost in the moment. Classic. Yeah, just a classic. I really enjoyed that one.

Brian Hemsworth 26:34
I got to hear an Imagineer. One of the original Imagineers talk about working with Walt Disney and when they were making the original Pirates of the Caribbean, and Walt was so proud of it, but he actually took people in the boat with him before they opened it up to the public to ask their opinions. And one of the people, as the as the person who told the story said, one of the people said he took, I think it was a secretary, and “he said what you think?” And he was like a kid. And she said, Oh, Mr. Disney, it’s wonderful, but I’ve never really been in the south. I’ve never been to the Caribbean. And then she said, well, actually, I did visit cousins once but I was very young and about the only thing that I remember were fireflies. And he said, “fireflies.” And that’s the reason why when you first get in the boats, you see the fireflies.

David Burger 27:25
While you’re going by blue Bayou, the restaurant.

Brian Hemsworth 27:28
Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. So Disney World coming up for you. Any other big plans when the world opens up for you?

David Burger 27:36
No, not really. Not really. Yeah, I wish I could say we were doing something exciting.

Brian Hemsworth 27:41
Well, you’re gonna have some pretty busy real estate for some time to come.

David Burger 27:45
Yes, I’m busy. And my wife’s busy right now, writing a movie for Paramount+.

Brian Hemsworth 27:51
Nice. Life’s pretty good if you let it be.

David Burger 27:55
Yeah, well, that’s right. And, you know, I think balance is incredibly important. I wasn’t always well balanced. But because of her, I have to give her 100% credit, I’m a lot better balanced than I was. Very fortunate. Knock on wood.

Brian Hemsworth 28:09
David, thanks so much for coming in today.

David Burger 28:11
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, Brian. Thanks.

Speaker 28:23
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