With recent rate hikes and Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell saying there are several more to come, investors should expect a recession right around the corner. Some say we are already in one, and that could be true, except that unemployment is still very low, job creation is high, banks have high reserves and corporations are sitting on lots of cash. Retail sales are strong and consumers are still spending. Plus the Fed is planning to continue raising rates, which is not what they do during a recession. They lower rates in a recession. This tells me the economy has been racing at full speed, while the Fed is stomping on the breaks. That sounds like a volatile ride, and Powell admitted it could be a hard landing. Investors need to be wearing their seat belts, and maybe a helmet and pads. Hi, I'm Kathy Fettke and this is Real Estate News for Investors. If you like our podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. If you haven't recession-proofed your life yet, you better get on it. This means cutting back on unnecessary expenses, sticking to a budget and saving money so you have plenty of cushion. I was at a real estate conference in yesterday, and it seemed that a lot of people were not fully aware of how much the economy is changing and will change over the next year. Last year's strategies may not work today. In fact, strategies from the last decade may not either. Real estate investors should take an audit of their portfolios and make sure they have plenty of reserves for potential vacancies. After all, Powell is planning to wipe out a million jobs, at least. With that said, times like this can offer some of the best opportunities for investors. We are seeing it already, as there is far less competition in the market. That's why I've launched a single family rental fund in North Texas where job growth is not slowing down. The Biden Administration wants chip manufacturing to come back to the U.S., so chip manufactures are headed to North Texas to build their factories, along with many companies escaping high tax/high regulation states like California. You can find out more about the massive job creation in North Texas, and our new fund at https://www.GrowDevelopments.com. It's a Reg D 506C.When buying property in today's market, I stick with four building blocks that I've found to be resilient in any economy. Let’s call them the legs of a chair. (1)Job GrowthThe first leg is “job growth.” Today, it's not too difficult to find markets with job growth. This year, companies created an average of 450,000 new jobs every month, compared to less than half that amount during the decade before the pandemic. There are now more than 11 million job openings. As investors, it's important that we understand where those jobs are. It's also important that the metro area be well diversified with employment opportunities, and not dependent on just a handful of industries that could be affected in a downturn. According to John Burns Real Estate Investing, the top 5 markets that have had the highest growth of high paying jobs are Las Vegas, Dallas, Jacksonville, Austin, and Atlanta. Metro areas that have more high paying jobs today than before the pandemic are Austin, Dallas, Jacksonville, Raleigh-Durham, and Tampa.When you are looking for a place to buy investment property, make sure the job growth we are seeing at the national level is also happening at the local level, because… where there are jobs, there will also be population growth.Population GrowthThat leads us to the second leg of the chair: “population growth.” Right now, there’s a whole generation of young people, the largest in U.S. history, ready to settle down, start families, and buy homes, or rent if they can’t afford to buy.This generation is also highly educated and good with technology, so many can work remotely. That’s something to take into consideration when you are looking at migration patterns. You can check migration reports from U-Haul and Atlas Van Lines to se