The Norris Group Real Estate Podcast

I Survived Real Estate 2025 | Part 1: Economic Update

• The Norris Group, Craig Evans

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I SURVIVED REAL ESTATE 2025

The Norris Group Presents: The 18th Annual I Survived Real Estate – LIVE at the Nixon Presidential Library

The Norris Group’s award-winning black-tie gala, I Survived Real Estate, returns for its 18th year.  Since 2008, I Survived Real Estate has supported Make-A-Wish OC & IE—and thanks to your generosity, we’ve now raised over $1.2 million for children in need 

This year’s backdrop?


A California housing market still starved for inventory, mortgage rates hovering above comfort zones, affordability hitting generational lows, inflation and tariffs. Add in global uncertainty, sticky inflation, and the ever-watchful eye of the Federal Reserve—and you’ve got a landscape full of questions.

  • Inventory Drought: California’s housing supply remains critically low
  • Rate Pressure: Mortgage rates linger well above buyer comfort zones
  • Priced Out: Affordability has collapsed to generational lows
  • Global Tensions: War, tariffs, and instability rattle investor confidence
  • Inflation’s Grip: Costs remain stubbornly high, squeezing margins
  • Tariff Troubles: Rising import costs could ripple through construction and development
  • All Eyes on the Fed: Every rate hint could send shockwaves through the market

 Our expert panel brings top minds in economics, investing, and housing to help us prepare for what’s next. I Survived Real Estate was born from crisis, with a mission to unite thought leaders, give back, and guide our industry forward. 


In this episode:

  • Craig Evans reflects on the history of I Survived Real Estate, honoring Aaron Norris’ influence and the event’s mission of giving back.
  • Anne Grey of Make-A-Wish OC & IE shares gratitude for The Norris Group’s support and the life-changing impact of donations.
  • Discussion on key real estate metrics and their historical context.
  • Bruce Norris highlights median price as a vital indicator of real estate cycles.
    Affordability as a signal for the end of a boom or start of a downturn.
  • Comparing California’s median price to the national median to track market trends.
  • Historical look at new home vs. existing home prices, and why their intersection matters.



The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669.  For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.


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Narrator:

Welcome to The Norris Group real estate podcast, a show committed to bringing you insights from thought leaders shaping the real estate industry. In each episode, we'll dive into conversations with industry experts and local insiders, all aimed at helping you thrive in an ever-changing real estate market. continuing the legacy that Bruce Norris created, sharing valuable knowledge, and empowering you on your real estate journey. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a newcomer, this is your go-to source for insider tips, market trends and success strategies. Here's your host, Craig Evans. Evans,

Joey Romero:

The Norris Group is proud to present our 18th annual gala. I Survived Real Estate at The Nixon Presidential Library on Friday, September 12. Since 2008, our event has raised well over a million dollars. This year, we'll be raising funds again from Make-A-Wish OC and IE. Individual Tickets are available now. To get your tickets, go to isurviverealestate.com click the link here in the card. We would like to thank the following platinum sponsors, uDirectIRA Services, The San Diego Creative Investors Association, DouglasBrooke Homes, MVT Productions, Realty411, and DBL Capital. All right, I know we're starting a little bit late this year, but that's okay, so we're gonna go ahead and get started now. So welcome everybody. Thank you for coming out again. Really appreciate you guys. I know some of you guys are still eating but as tradition, we're gonna go ahead and start with the Pledge of Allegiance. We have a very special guest today. This is Addison Evans, or Addy bear, if you gotta call her, she's gonna lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. So if everybody could please rise and put your hand over your heart.

Addison Evans:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic of which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Joey Romero:

All right, man, I've been telling everybody it feels like a family reunion. It really does. It's so fun to see everybody again. Thank you so much for your support. It means so much to us. So I'm going to start out with the reason this all got started, and it's, you know, my best friend, Aaron, and it wouldn't be right for me not to say, yes, please. Thank you. Aaron's the reason you guys all fell in love with The Norris group. I guess that Bruce guy too. But yes, so I just want to mention one thing. If you're ever in Downtown Riverside on the corner of University and Lemon, we got a mural put up on the side of a building that has Aaron's face on it. So if you're ever there, please stop by, take a picture, take a selfie, tag us in it'd be great. Yes, that's awesome. All right, so without further ado, it is my pleasure and honor to introduce our new CEO, Craig Evans, and he'll kick this all out.

Craig Evans:

Hey guys, thank you so much for being here this evening. This is our 18th annual I Survived Real Estate. That's right, I can't tell you what an honor it is. You know, I had about an hour, hour and 15 minutes last night. We sat with Bruce and Joey and I and Bruce and Andrew, my new head of capital markets for another company we've got. We got to sit around and talk, and just to talk about Aaron and what he meant to people and as who he was as a person. It was, it was an incredible time. You know, listen, yes, just reminiscing and talking about things, but to think about, as Joey just said, this event would not be here. We wouldn't be here 18 years later, celebrating some stuff that's about to happen if Aaron Norris hadn't had a brainchild of saying we need to put a group of people together that care enough about other people that it's not about ourselves. Yeah, we want to learn. We want to study. We want to learn from some of the greatest minds in real estate, but we want to give back to children and to people that need help, right? So with all that said, none of this would happen without you. Aaron started it, but at the end of the day, you show up, year after year after year to be a part of learning, to be a part of giving to each other. I had the opportunity to sit and kind of watch from the back and yeah, you know you got it's fun to watch you guys, you're all laughing and talking, but to also start to hear the conversations that we've got young people that are just getting into our industry, that are learning from seasoned pros. Listen to sit and listen to Peter Fortunato. Are you kidding me? That was like a master class in itself last night to sit in and talk with some of these people and what you're going to experience tonight. You know, when we finished last year, I told Joey, I said, I want next year to be even better, and I want us to push each year to be better and better and better. And I said, What's better than, let's put some of the greatest economic minds together, and we've got some magnificent people, but on the investor side, I said, I want to do something that we pull some of the greatest of the greats, and that's what we've got tonight. But for that to happen again, you show up year after year, and to that personally, on behalf of The Norris group and everybody, all of my team that work so diligently, I thank you for showing up. I thank you for giving and all that you do to make this event possible. So give yourselves a hand, a round of applause for that. Now, with that, as most of you were here last year, you remember, I made a complete fool of myself because I was so excited to be here that I completely forgot to announce the main person that we were here to see , which is, why are we here? We're here to raise money for, listen, I've been very unashamed of that. We're here to learn. We're here to see some great people. All of that, I don't care those that know me know I'm a teddy bear at heart. And I love kids. I love my own kids, people that know me will tell you I'm an idiot when I get around kids. So to have an opportunity to raise money for children at their darkest hour of their life, to make a difference, we all make a lot of money in this room. We're all blessed to do what we do, but to be able to give a child an opportunity to change their life in their darkest moment. I'll do this every night of the or every week, if that's what we have to do to help that. But I thank you for giving to that, and I thank you for that process. So tonight, I want to welcome somebody that's very special. I want us to welcome Anne Grey. Ann is the president and CEO, CEO of Make a wish of Orange County and the Inland Empire. Under her leadership, Make-A-Wish OC & IE fulfills the dreams of children facing critical illnesses throughout the region. Anne's passion, her compassion and dedication keep the mission of Make-A-Wish alive. It's bringing hope and strength and joy to so many young lives and their families. Let's give a round welcome to Anne Grey.

Make-A-Wish:

When a child is in the fight for their lives, you need to find hope. When that happens, it reinvigorates. Wishes can heal. You know, we see it all the time. Your wish to have a gaming computer was granted. This wish allowed them to dream and just feeling important and feeling the community involvement is just an amazing feeling, and somebody care about you. The biggest unexpected benefit of my wish was the way I was able to use it as a tool to get through chemotherapy and just to keep me motivated. Fact that Make-A-Wish could give us something hopeful and happy I'm just so thankful for and it had such an impact.

Anne Grey:

So I'm here tonight to say thank you to all of you, and especially to The Norris Group. We have been a beneficiary of this event since 2008 and since the inception, we've been able to grant so many wonderful wishes. Thanks to the proceeds from this event and everyone's generosity. The Norris Group has donated over a million dollars to children's charity. So I think they deserve a huge round of applause for that, and they just keep going strong and Make-A-Wish Orange County and the Inland Empire serves children throughout orange sand. And Dino and Riverside County Make-A-Wish. Has 57 chapters throughout the United States. I've met a lot of people from out of town tonight who are wonderful, and we'd love to get you involved back home, if you have a passion for our mission. We locally granted 273 wishes this past year. Our goal was 272 and so we exceeded that, and we are also the hometown chapter for Disneyland. And so that means that our chapter coordinates the wishes for children from all over the country and all over the world whose wish is to go to Disneyland Resort. So our local chapter really works on over 1000 wishes a year to make magic happen for kids, and so it's so beautiful to experience seeing the wish revealed like you saw in the video. That's such a delightful moment. It's so exciting to accompany families on their wish when we have that opportunity. But one of the most exciting things is to meet our wish alumni. 70% of kids who receive a wish from Make-A-Wish go on to live through to adulthood. And the impact that the wish has on the wish kids lives, it carries them through their whole life. I met a wish alumni tonight. I won't call her out, but she was telling me how grateful she is for her wish, and she's here as a successful professional today. So let's just give that person a round of applause for all they've been through and all they've accomplished. I learned last night that wish kid that received a laptop from us, founded his company on that laptop and sold that company to Nestle. So I mean, the stories are incredible, and I've only been at Make-A-Wish a year, and I've learned so much about the impact of wishes, and it just keeps you know that ripple effect is just leaps and bounds. So we are so grateful for The Norris Group and them helping to make wishes happen, but also creating an incredible future for our kids, their families, the community. So I'd like to invite Craig back up here. I have a special plaque to give to you. I'm going to read a wish we're dedicating to The Norris Group this year and the I Survived Real Estate Gala. So can I read this?

Craig Evans:

Yeah, absolutely.

Anne Grey:

Okay. I'll try and be quick and not mess it up. So Kimberly is a playful five year old from Apple Valley, and she loves to play outdoors, drawing the chalk with her friends, jumping on the trampoline and feeling all the baby chickens and dogs her family has,"feeding", not feeling sorry, should've wore my glasses, just a little comic relief. But when she was diagnosed with leukemia, her time outdoors was limited, replaced by long hospital stays and tough treatments. In the midst of her medical journey where there are no choices about what comes next, Kimberly was given a chance to dream, to decide and to wish. For her wish, she wanted her very own play structure so she could spend more time outside doing what she loves. Thanks to the generous support of I Survived Real Estate, Kimberly's backyard has been transformed into a joyful escape filled with laughter and fun. Her new play structure isn't just a place to play, it's a place to be a kid, to heal and to make happy memories with her family right at home, we are incredibly grateful to I Survived Real Estate for making Kimberly's wish a reality. Your kindness has given her more than just a play space. You've given her the freedom to laugh, explore and reclaim a piece of childhood that illness tried to take away. Thank you for helping witches like Kimberly's come true.

Craig Evans:

Thank you.

Anne Grey:

Thank you.

Craig Evans:

Thank you.

Anne Grey:

Thank you all so much.

Craig Evans:

Let's give her a round of applause. And as she's exiting the stage, there's one thing that I forgot to tell you, and if I don't say it, Joey will kill me, because again, this goes back to you guys. This year, The Norris Group, for the first time, actually broke $1.2 million to Make-A-Wish. So all right, now there's somebody that I want to bring to the stage with me that I know doesn't need an introduction. I don't know how you introduce a man like this? So I'm gonna do this instead of talking about all his accomplishments, because you guys have read all this. You know all this. You know what he's done. What you don't know is he's become a friend to me and a mentor to me that has taught me more about real estate than I could ever imagine. And also the aspect is, you know, there's a lot going on in real estate, right? We're all dealing with, with tough things in business right now, I received a call from Bruce about three weeks ago, and he could hear in my voice that I was stressed, right? And I'm like, Bruce, I got it. What do you need? You know, I'm just, he and I are kind of cut from that same cloth, we just go into solution mode and we keep going. And it was Bruce's solution. He said,"I can hear the stress in your voice. Why don't I drive down and see you?" I said, "What are you talking about?" He said,"Now". I said, "Bruce, it's 11:15 at night. You're two and a half hours away from me". He said, "Yep, I'll be there". That's the type of man that was a part of starting this, and that's the man that I'm proud and honored to call my friend. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Bruce Norris to the stage. Love you, brother.

Bruce Norris:

Thank you.

Craig Evans:

You alright?

Bruce Norris:

May I tell a story?

Craig Evans:

Well, it's your show.

Bruce Norris:

Quickly, the day I understood that I could sell The Norris Group to Craig, was after a hurricane, and we were busy with projects and stuff, he called me up. He says, You know what? He said, I have to pull off of things for a week, and he has a boat for a week. All he did was save people's lives, driving into dangerous areas where people could not get out. And he took them out and brought them back over and over and over again. And I said, "Yeah, I can sell him The Norris Group". Now we got boring charts to turn into.

Craig Evans:

All right. So listen, every year, Bruce used to do this where he talked about the six comps of how he would evaluate real estate, right? Nothing's going to change. We're going to move through some of that quickly tonight, though, because there's one portion of that that I want us to touch on, and I want us to kind of push through and get to the moodometer.

Bruce Norris:

Yeah.

Craig Evans:

You know, you and I talked about this. There's some things on that that I really want us to start focusing on. So if we can, I want to start getting into the six comps that you've historically always looked at. So one is median price, whether it's California, wherever it is. Tell me why. As I'm going through these, I want you to tell us, until we get to the moodometer, tell me why your top, the top factor, why you picked these as a six comps, right? So as we go through, if you'll, if you'll do that for me.

Bruce Norris:

Okay, you know, I looked at this at the first time, and I wrote the first report in '96 and to be honest with you, I didn't know what mattered. So when I did my research, I was in libraries for a year and a half just writing data and making a chart of it. So I didn't know what mattered. I had probably 50 categories, and what I did was laid them on the floor, and I wanted to see if I could, if they, if it duplicated, is what starts a boom cycle and what comes after the first chart tips over, and the same on a downside, and I discovered it. And so part of what you're seeing is and this has grown over time. So this is just a history of the median price. I needed to see that, it doesn't, it's not a proof text, but it's interesting that you can have amazing times up and down when we get to the last chart. I'll spend a little time explaining why that last chart kind of ties all this together.

Craig Evans:

All right, so we look at median price, then we got affordability.

Bruce Norris:

Yeah, affordability was key, because there was a repetitive ending point. And so when I recognize that, and it's usually when you're euphoric about real estate, all of a sudden, you can go, well, it's about over, so everybody loves it, but it's about over. And the opposite is true. When it's down in the bottom, everybody's afraid of it. And if you're smart, you can go, "Hmm, maybe I should want that at that time".

Craig Evans:

So the next now you're starting to compare things. You've got historical, new home price versus existing. Why is that a major comp for you to look at?

Bruce Norris:

Well, again, what it taught me was it was only a few times that the intersection happens where the existing home is more expensive than the new home, so the new home builder didn't build enough to meet the demand. So the demand flew to the existing home, and they overpaid for that because there wasn't anything else to buy. They wanted it bad enough. So that's what typically happened. And once that happens, you know, you're at toward the end of the cycle, you're euphoric, but that's got to end, because it's never continued.

Craig Evans:

So one of the questions that we got a lot on this, and I want to just touch here quickly, though, when you're looking at this chart, in particular, this metric, are you looking at where things are moving, or do you study the where the inversion of those curves hit?

Bruce Norris:

Yes, that's the most meaningful thing. It doesn't matter to me that there's a repetitive inversion. It matters that it goes through the whole cycle where the spread begins again to where I know that has a meaningful ending again. So you could be 10 years away from that being a meaningful chart. But when it crosses is meaningful. It doesn't matter how big the spread gets, by the way.

Craig Evans:

So why are you then in a metric, if at the time when you start creating this, you're only looking primarily at California, why were you comparing California to the US?

Bruce Norris:

Well, again, it was sort of like you're you're looking for all the evidence. So this chart didn't probably start in the first two or three reports. So as you grow you're thinking, 'Okay, is there a is there any connection?' You know, there's usually a spread, a percentage of value California is more expensive than the nation always. Well, when does it get to the ridiculous? So when it gets to the ridiculous, what happens is we say, well, hmm, maybe we'll sell our stuff and go to Idaho where, gosh, I can buy two houses. Well, I sell mine. And so that starts to happen. So the bigger the spread, you have it exiting, where California goes. This is so great. I can go do what I want and pay for it in cash. So that's what was the significance of this chart, that when that starts to happen, then you have people selling, but you also have it go back to somewhat of a normal number, so.

Joey Romero:

Don't forget to visit isurvivedrealestate.com for tickets to the event on Friday, September 12. The Norris Group would like to thank the following Gold sponsors, Keystone CPA, The Inland Valleys Association of Realtors, Pasadena FIBI, The North San Diego Real Estate Investors Association, LA south REIA, NorCal REIA, The Wizard of the Wobbly Box, Andy Teasley, Shepherd's Finance, The Thompson Group, PropertyRadar and White House Catering. The dinner wine is provided with a generous contribution by Rick and Leanne Rossiter. Hope see you all there.

Narrator:

For more information on hard money loans, trust deed investing, and upcoming events with The Norris group. Check out thenorrisgroup.com. For more information on passive investing through the DBL Capital Real Estate Investment Fund, please visit dblapital.com.

Joey Romero:

The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE license 01219911. Florida mortgage lender license 1577 and NMLS license 1623669. For more information on hard money lending go to thenorrisgroup.com and click the hard money tab