Fraud. Shout outs. Title insurance. Economy. Mortgate rates. Home owners insurance.

Episode Transcript

(00:14):
Navigating today's real estate market can betricky. Want to buy or sell a
house, finance or insure a house, or stuck with a house and don't
know what to do. Florida Talkreal Estate has been your local one stop
real estate shop since twenty twelve.Get the advice you need from your local
real estate pros. Here are yourhosts, jim Dapola and Johnny C Live
on Real Radio. Hey, that'sright, it's Jimmy D here standing in

(00:40):
for Johnny C, who isn't feelingso good today. He just has a
little cold. He'll be back nextweek. I wanted to say hello to
everybody for him, and we gota really good line up here. Today.
We've got Mike Rout from the MortgageFarm. Good morning, Mike,
Good morning, the mortgage guy.I'm sitting here watching apps today. Your
Mike was about three feet away andI'm watching it. As the music is

(01:00):
playing, I say, when isJimmy gonna grab that mic? I got
a little bit of Jimmy. Whenis Jimmy D going to enter the room?
Good morning, Yeah, good morning, Good morning. It's a great
day here in South Florida. Alittle hot, it's gonna get hotter in
the day, but we've got alot of cool information for you today.
We've got Ross Kamarinet's fro Bright WayneInsurance, the Juno Beach Office, the

(01:21):
only office when it comes to insurance. Good morning, Jim, Good morning,
Mike, good morning. Heat thesummer heat like just having cool information
exactly right. And of course wegot Jimmithy, the producer extraordinary or the
hardest working man in radio. Goodmorning, gentle. I'm been a pleasure

(01:42):
to be here with you, lookingforward to it. Uh is everybody?
Are you going to the thing tomorrowfor Jimmy? Oh yeah, I didn't
know. I didn't know everyone wasinvited. I'm not saying everybody. We're
leaving alone. Thank you, veryquiet. You know, hey, we
got a lot to talk about today. We're going to be talking about a

(02:02):
little bit about interest rates. That'sbeen a little cooling off, which we
really need. I took a littlenow sis that MC yeah, just to
see the last time we were atthe today's interest rate. And the thing
I noticed that we were at thatinterest rate last year for about four months,
four and a half months at theinterest rate we are now. So
it isn't like unheard of interest ratesby any means, it's you know what

(02:24):
we were experienced a lot last yearfrom August December. We're back into that
swim, right. Yeah. Ithink the big difference is how did you
get there? Were you were yougoing up to it or did you come
down to it? So yeah,I mean it's not like it hasn't moved
crazily, but it's down from recenthighs. Yes, so that feels a
little bit. That's a little goodnews. Later on, we're going to

(02:44):
talk about insurance, but from likea little part of a different perspective,
the national perspective of what's happening inhomeowners insurance, but also how it relates
to Florida in a way and howwe compare to other states. I thought
that would be a little interesting.But first, let's go ahead and start
off with some uh only in Florida, du news, if you will.

(03:07):
Let's see, let's start off whothis is like a shout out, but
kind of a consider going on inFlorida. There might be kind of real
estate related but not so much so. Should we start off with the fraud
or the attack of the new animalcoming into our our perview? Which one

(03:27):
do you want to do fraud theanimal. I mean, we might as
well get fraud out of the waysince I kind of saved the animal for
the dessert. Like that joke justreminded me of a joke. The punch
line of the joke is it kindof tasted like a cross between a bald
eagle and a manatee. I can'twait. Well, you know when I

(03:57):
when I go on listing appointments andalso buyer appointments, and Ross has filled
out this form in the past forus where we talk about fraud in Florida,
and one of the things we alwayssay is is that Florida is number
one in fraud and not just anykind of fraud. Where mortgage fraud,
identity fraud, Jimmy'd fraud, mortgagefraud, title fraud, immigration fraud.

(04:21):
Yeah, I guess immigration. Idon't know if that's fraud. I don't
know if that's fraud just criminal stuff, but actual fraud. So identity also
wire fraud, transfer fraud, notjust title fraud, but also like fishing
and stealing your money fraud. Sowe actually have a form that we fill
out called wire Fraud Prevention and say, look, nobody is ever going to

(04:44):
ask for your banking information online electronically. We're not going to ask by email.
We're not going to ask by text. We're not going to ask I
guess it's only text or email,but we're not going to do that.
So if you ever get anything sayinghey, you know, for closing,
we need have your water transfer information, even if it's coming from quote the
title company, do not fill outthe information. You call us first and

(05:06):
we're going to make sure it's legitor not. We know that Trident Title
doesn't. One of the sponsors ofour show does not ask you for that
kind of information electronically and try totheir email system or something that is ensured
for up to like three million dollarsper email in case they do get fished.
But it's really careful. I mean, it happens all the time down

(05:29):
here. So we have a newerthing. So when I was reading this
article, it's not real estate related, but it's fraud related, and it
made me laugh, So I figuredwe go ahead and talk about it down
in Miami. Where else right,one of the tag agency clerks for the
auto tag agency down to Miami Dayjust got busted for being involved with three

(05:49):
million dollars of fraud of transferring titlesillegally from stolen cars into legit titles.
And it was over three million dollarsof property that was stolen and retitled again.
And it was this big, big, uh what they called three million
dollars title fraud scheme in the newspapers. So they've been tracking these people for

(06:14):
about four or five months now,and they finally did the bus so they
got the government person that was involvedin it. Wow. So anyway,
I just thought that was kind offunny. I think that's like a government
person because you know this tag thoseare private agencies, right, the tag
and title So they're not working atthe actual you know, tax appraiser's office,
but tag and title offices are independent, I think, and they just

(06:35):
helped transfer with specifically with vehicle registrationsand title transfers and things like that.
You know what, I think you'reright. I think this is this is
this tag they called a tag agency. They've even heard of that before.
Why don't they just go down tothe tax collector like everybody else. What
do you go to an outsourced personfor? I think that you pay them
so you don't have to go doit right. Oh, you know,

(06:58):
like they'll go stand in line anddo all that stuff right. They make
that's one hundred percent what it is. So they make sure it gets done
right. They have expertise. You'relisten, you're going to the pros.
You know, do you want toforesale by owner? You want to hire
a realtor? How many times haveyou been at the I'll call it the
d MV. I don't know whatthey're the only differences. Realtors can't take

(07:18):
the title from one person to anotherperson and change it, right they you
know, I'm sure there's some sortof fraud that can right you listen,
you can record real estate documents withthe county, or you can hire a
settlement agency to do that for you. Yeah. Right, So it's it's
kind of it's kind of like that. Yeah, that's true. Anyway.

(07:39):
I thought it was funny. We're, you know, just keeping up our
reputations. So I thought that wasgood. You know, Miami is like
the you know, Silicon Valley forfraud, you know, all the latest
innovations, that's all. It's sotrue. It's so true. I mean,
listen, I guess if you're goingto steal cars and then you want

(08:00):
to sell them legitimately as a titledvehicle that you got to have an inside
man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, figure out what should do the chop
shop, you know, if youdo the shop shop, Yeah, but
imagine how much to eat better?Is it? Like you could just post
it on you know, Craigslist orwhatever, like you know, just like
any other private seller, and youactually have a title that can transfer and
then all of a sudden it's onehop away from from you Facebook marketplace.

(08:20):
Yeah. We just had We justhad something that happened in our office where
I might have mentioned this before becauseit was a couple of weeks ago,
but it's just so unusual. Somebodywas acting as the buyer's agent for a
person buying a piece of land,and they were going through the transaction and
everything, and the agent I thoughtit was the title company, but it

(08:41):
was the agent and it was oneof the agents in her office, and
they were like, this just doesn'tsmell right with me. This transaction is
moving forward, but it just doesn'tfeel right. So the title company started
investigating and found out that they trackeddown the owner of the property and call
them up and said, hey,we're about ready to close in your property

(09:01):
in a couple of days. Wehave a couple of questions. He's like,
what property are you talking about?And they were like, I don't
have that for sale. And itwas a scam and it was a lot
of money. It was millions,right, and uh, thank thank god
somebody, Yeah it was uh yeah, so it was a big deal.

(09:22):
It was a very big deal.And it happens. This isn't stuff you
just read about. It doesn't happen, happens in real life Miami. So
no, this wasn't a Miami deal. It was not a Miami deal.
So I can't tell you what areait is because I really don't know.
I didn't get all the details ofit. But it was scuttle butt around
the office. And that's kind ofinteresting. Thank god that agent uh raised

(09:43):
the raised the question you might noteven expect it to get through closing.
If it gets through closing and theyget paid, it's like, wow,
that was the best. But maybethey're looking for like a deposit on the
contract, right, maybe just skelledin held in our escrow and well select
the escro agent type of thing.Yeah, I got a tag and see
that we can get the money withreally good Yeah, I got a very
trustworth. Now we're going to talkabout the attack of the killer lizards.

(10:07):
I was up for an inspection aweek and a half ago or so for
one of our customers, Jay,who just gave us a shout out on
the show. So, hey,Jay, good morning, how are you
doing? And Jay is buying aproperty up in Saint Lucie County for a
relative. And when I was outthere, I noticed this like super colorful

(10:31):
lizard. And I'm always interested inthe lizards because when I grew up,
when I started here in seventy four, the lizards were so different than they
are today. There's so many differentspecies of lizards that we didn't have back
then. Yeah, and so Isaw that one. I was like,
I think we got a new lizardin the area. Well, I can't
tell you for sure, but thelizard I saw it kind of looked like

(10:52):
the one in the Florida Weekly Report. If you see a lizard with a
bright orange head, blue body,and colorful tail, local environmentalists want to
know about it. They're called petersrock iguanas iguanas. No wait, they're
called peters agamas iguanas agamas m asyou've heard of that African Is it an

(11:18):
African thing? That means? Ithink I've seen one at the Donald Ross
ninety five exit. When you're headingsouth on Donald Ross and you get off,
or when you're heading south on ninetyfive and you get off on Donald
Ross, there's a big palm treeright there on the left, and I've
seen when they're like, every timeI get off, it's on that palm
tree. Well, it's very interesting. They said that they've been around here

(11:41):
since the seventies because they from petstores, right so people released them just
like a lot of other critters downhere. But what really amplified it was
the hurricanes Hurricane Charlie in two thousandand four because of the plants that were
moved around after the hurricane, youknow, the debris and everything, and
the new plants coming in. That'show they split. They started spreading across

(12:05):
the state, so it really gotmore and more since two thousand and four,
more on the west coast and centralFlorida right now. But they're invasive
because they eat everything. They eateggs, larvae, they'll eat other lizards,
they eat bugs, they'll even eatsmall animals if they can get a

(12:26):
hold of them. So these thingsare going to be big and bad.
I gotta tell you, they're prettyto look at. Well, I saw
them, just looked like what theirsizes they say? The males are only
about a foot long. Yeah,they only get about fourteen inches or something.
Yeah, yeah, but I thoughtthat was kind of interesting. I
remember when the Cuban lizards. Iremember the communit lizards, the little curly
tail I hate, I know,but they weren't real popular when I was

(12:48):
growing up, and then all ofa sudden they're everywhere. They took over,
and we used to have, likethe little lizards. We used to
have salamanders too, I think,not just lizards, right, we used
to have salamanders, and all thoseare seemed to be gone. I've got
a few, do you you've seenthem? Yeah? Yeah, they're not
as popular so as curly tales.Man. Yeah I don't like them.

(13:11):
Yeah, yeah, I agree withyou. So anyway, now we got
a new lizard coming on, sohave fun with that. I love Florida
right, the place of the flyingcockroaches. I love saying that, right,
Florida home with a flying cockroaches.Ever goes what it's like for real,
really all fly. You know,I haven't seen that many when I
when I moved down here, whenI was a kid, flying cockroaches everywhere,
it seemed like wherever you went,it seemed like they were there.

(13:35):
I haven't really seen that many.I have a lot of cockroaches. Yeah
maybe maybe. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not a young, young single
guy anymore like that. Right,we're hanging out now, I'm on the
same page. Let me see,let's give a couple of shout outs.

(14:00):
If you don't mind, let mego here. Well, shout out to
Jay. He's going to be closingon his property next Friday. Mike,
you were the mortgage guy for it. I am, I still am,
and Ross is the insurance person.That's true. True, And we are
not using Trident title. Sorry,because why the sellers are picking title because

(14:20):
it was in Saint Lucie County,so normally that would be the case.
But for whatever reason, I thinkJay actually wanted to select titles. So
Trident is doing the closing. Ithought it wasn't. Maybe it's the other
one that's closed in next week,is not what Trident. I'm getting them
confused. Yeah, Sometimes so it'sactually a good point. So sometimes,
like in Florida, different counties havea custom of who chooses the title company,
and there's additional costs, right,they're having to do with the title

(14:43):
insurance policies. Yeah, let's justgo over that real quick, because that's
a kind of funny thing. Okay, so that's actually a good thing where
like out of state, Yeah,have no idea where yeah, they're like
clows their mind, It's like what. Okay, So in Florida, Uh,
And I love Florida, Don't getme wrong. I live her on
purpose, but I also love itbeing Floria Da. Yeah, you got
that tattoo on your exactly right righton your lower good place for it.

(15:11):
Tramp stamp. I remember one ofmy friend's wives got a tramp stamp,
and we were at a party andwe were all drinking, and well my
buddy mentioned that, hey, nicetramp stamp right to to the my other
buddy's wife. She got so madand she was just livid that he called

(15:33):
her, you know, called thetattoo a tramp stamp. And I guess
she never heard of that, youknow that saying before, so she thought
he was just calling her a tramp. And she didn't talk to him for
like two years because of it,and I had to tell her a couple
of times. It's like, that'swhat they're called. You're the one who
got the tattoo that he didn't nameit that word back tramp, that lower

(15:56):
back tattoo. So no getting backto picking title because it's kind of interesting.
So when I sit down with sellers. One of the costs for sellers
sometimes is that they may have topick title, and whoever picks title in
Florida has to pay for the titleinsurance and then all the costs searching for
the title, right, and there'sextra cost for that. The title insurance

(16:19):
policies based on the purchase price ofthe house. It's kind of a set
fee. You can't really negotiate it. It'll be pretty much almost any place
you go because it's a national insurancekind of companies that handle that. And
there's two policies, right, there'sa when you're getting financing, so there's
a policy that protects the owner it'scalled Owner's Title insurance. And then there's
a policy that protects the lender calledlenders Title Insurance. What's the different Why

(16:42):
would why would you have two Well, it's insurance. Imagine if you could
write two policies instead of one,like as an insurance. I think that's
the general idea, right, Andof course the overwriting idea is that these
title companies, the title they doa very very thorough job of making sure

(17:04):
that you're never going to have atitle claim before they issue the policy.
They're like, we got to makesure go eight years. Yeah, yeah,
that And it's kind of like,so after you close, if there
was some cloud untitled, meaning therewas some something that perhaps inhibited the ability
for title to transfer to you,and you're now the clear the owner of

(17:25):
the property, maybe in the chainof title leading up the past eighty years,
something wasn't done right, and thensomebody has a claim on title.
So these insurance policies basically will defendyou or you know, fund whatever it
is to resolve that claim. That'swhat Then title insurance is coortant. So
the lenders require it, and thenthe title companies are like, well,
since we're doing one, we mightas well do the owner too. We'll
give you a discount, like it'sa heavily discounted simultaneous issue. But essentially,

(17:51):
yeah, it's two policies, andbelieve me, they never want to
claim right and that's why they doa thorough background because they want to make
sure that there's no title claims.But so with title, the way it
works is in Florida is that itdepends on the county you're in who usually
picks and pays for title. Butit's customary, not a regulation. So

(18:15):
and so this is how I sayit. If I'm in Saint Lucy County,
I go in Saint Lucy County,seller picks the title, and Martin
County buyer picks the title. InPalm Beach County, seller picks the title,
and Broward County buyer picks the title. And guess what happens in day?
This is my script. Guess whathappens in day? Come on,

(18:36):
what happens? I have ross fraud. You just set it up so that
they say fire. It depends becauseit's stayed, right. They have this
special Miami Dade Broward provision that theyuse down there. Right. So yeah,
So it's just like every county isdifferent, and the cost can be

(18:59):
significant because it's based on the priceof the home. So like if somebody's
selling a five hundred thousand dollars home. I estimate that it's going to be
probably close to thirty five hundred dollars, around thirty five hundred dollars to do
that to have the title policy andthe check. So it's a significant cost
to somebody. Now, one ofthe things that people don't get, so

(19:21):
most realtors know buyer picks or sellerpicks title, right, they kind of
know which county. So then whenthey turn in their offer, if the
offer isn't what we like, oneof the things that I'll negotiate if I
have to, is who picks title. And a lot of times people are
like, you can't do that.Right, So if I'm in Saint Lucy
County, sellers supposed to pick title, I come with a lower offer.

(19:44):
We can't budge on price, orwe didn't get what we wanted out of
the price negotiations. We might say, okay, we'll take that offer,
but you're going to pay the title, right, You're going to pay title
and title and you're picking. Andsome agents will say you can't do that,
you know, blah blah blah.It's like, no, it's customary,
not a regulation. So you cannegotiate that. So that even could

(20:07):
be a negotiated component. And itreally matters, you know, what happens
if somebody like five years ago orten years ago or fifteen years ago had
a divorce or somebody died and thenthe house was sold, and then some
air finds out that they should havehad a claim on the property they believed
and the house is already sold maybetwice, right, and then they find

(20:27):
out about it, and then theycome out to go to the claim.
That's what the title insurance is forat that point. That that's when it
kicks in. Yeah, and normallythey'll hire the attorneys and everything to handle
it, and it doesn't really haveto do much. Is the title companies
themselves like they're not issuing the titleinsurance policy? There's a title insurance underwriting

(20:48):
Who are you know these big nationalmaybe even international companies who write the actual
policy and those title the title insurancecompany has an underwriting process. Right,
so essentially the company or some liketried in title, is it issuing the
title policy? Maybe they go tolike Old Republic or whatever. Old Republic
has an underwriting process where they're basicallymaking sure title can be transferred properly and

(21:14):
if sometimes they miss stuff, yeah, but very rarely. And if the
title company feels uncomfortable that in thisexample, Old Republic is going to underwrite
it, yeah, they won't.They won't get ready to close until they
know Old Public is going to beokay, So they can be real sticklers.
And sometimes there are gray areas.It can get complicated. Sometimes it's
very rare, but sometimes it getsvery complicated trying to figure that stuff out.

(21:38):
Yeah, and some of it forthe from the lenders perspective, we're
mostly interested that nobody can come in. So when you're doing a typical mortgage,
it becomes it's called a first mortgagebecause it has the first lean position,
meaning the ability to essentially foreclose ifthe promissory note isn't fulfilled. Right,
so, you you promised to payme over thirty years munch payment.

(22:00):
If you don't make that payment atsome point, I have the right to
foreclose as the lender, and weneed to make sure that nobody can jump
in front of us and prevent usfrom foreclosing. So the title companies will
also and the title insurance the lender'spolicy make sure that there's no not potential
claims on title. But potential lean, you know, like mechanics leans for
example. So somebody did work foryou in the past, you didn't pay

(22:22):
them, they filed something with thecourt system. If they filed that before
you did this loan or your newbuyer or refinance or whatever it is,
that has to be something that istaken care of or look that absolutely.
I just want to wrap up thisfirst half hour with just a couple of
things real quick. I wanted tosay congrats to Jason. We're going to

(22:42):
be closing next week. Everything's goinggood with the deal on his had an
interesting thing d h Away when ithas to survey the property before the deal
closes, find out that there wassome dead vegetation on the property. So
now the seller, in order toclose and get from their HOA, they've
got to go in, rip theplants out, put new plants in,

(23:04):
have the HA approve it. Jason, they did all that yesterday, so
we're all good to go and we'llbe closing next week, no problem with
that. Also wanted to say thankyou Brian for allowing me to list your
property. We have a really nicetwo bedroom, two bath with a really
large den that can be converted intoa third bedroom in the Madison Green area.

(23:26):
It's the house is I'm sorry,hold on here once I can't.
The house is two thousand and eightynine square feet. It's got a really
nice back porch that's screened in witha multi person hot tub that's there and
ready to go. It looks brandnew, so it's ready to go.
Yep, party party sign. Thisguy likes to party. His whole house

(23:49):
is situated with a air hockey tableand situated bar inside the living room.
If you look at the photos,that bar is going away with the property.
Say that stuff stay in. Here'swhat it could be. The spat
on the hot tubber stand. Whatdo you call a single person hot tub?
Jam, I don't know. Iknow, I said multi person.
I was like, that's yeah,you got it, got its Yeah exactly.

(24:15):
So thank you Brian for allowing usto list the property. We're looking
forward to getting that deal done.Thank you so much. Just a couple
other things. We've got a wholebunch of properties on the market right now.
I haven't really talked about it alittle bit, so I figured we
just go out. We've got ato two town home over in Point In
Beach. It's just a little underone thousand square feet. It's been upgraded.

(24:37):
We have that on the market foronly two hundred and thirty nine thousand
dollars. So there's a town homeunder three hundred thousand ready to go for
somebody. Not a condo. Nota condo, it's definitely a town home.
Interest. Why is the difference whateverthe legal description says, no,
the down payment. I was tryingto throw you a softball for the down
payment. Why is it important?Yeah, So townhomes you can do FHA

(25:02):
financing with three and a half percentdown, and you could do three percent
conventional and five percent conventional. Butif it's a condo, you could possibly
do all of that, but probablyprobably not. Yeah, you're probably looking
at twenty five to thirty percent downcorrect. Yeah, yeah, but it
just depends, right. But justif you hear condom dag, Yeah,
if you hear the word condo,if you're a buyer or a listing agent

(25:25):
or a buyer's agent and you seecondo in the legal description, you should
have a little like, hey,let me talk to somebody who knows what
they're doing, because the townhouse whatever. Looking at it, yeah, looks
like a townhouse that's right, butlegally it could be classified. It could
yep. Exacpends on the association andkind of how they were formed and formed
in the beginning exactly. So wehave that one of the crossings that is

(25:49):
a townhome with low down payment.We had a property that went back on
market. We sold it very quickly. I think it'll go back on market.
It'll be off contracts because we're gettingso many showings. But we have
a property in Point In Beach.It's great central location. It's close to
ninety five, but not too closewhere you're hearing the zoom zoom zoom.

(26:11):
What happened with that deal, Well, let me see, No, it
just seemed like it wasn't their cupof tea. After they got into it
looked like to me that they werehaving buyers remorse and they just wanted to
pull out. Maybe they had anotherproperty that kind of came back on market
or something. But this one isa fully renovated house with new roof,
new impact windows, ac is newer, new kitchen, new bathroom, new

(26:34):
flooring. The house is in reallygreat condition. It's a pool home,
and we're only asking five hundred andseventy five thousand for three to really big
lot a pool home. So that'spretty good in Palm Beach County and Point
In Beach. We also have apiece of land almost six acres up on
Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Pierce. It'sfive point nine acres. We have that

(26:56):
on the market for five point fiftyHave you vetted the cellar? There?
Are they legit seller? Actually weknow the seller very well because it's yeah,
it's you go. So I willtell you the story about the software.
The software and uh and Hugo.Now, so you know my previous
career, I did software debate,right, So we did. It's actually

(27:18):
a local company is based in WestPalm That's what that's the reason I'm down
here is we moved down here fromNorthern Virginia. The whole company, you
know, five employees at the time. But so we did software for promotional
products companies, so screen printing andbroderers, you know, people who would
print cups like my mug here thatI have, you know, promotional products,
and so we did software to runthose types of companies. So Hugo

(27:40):
turns out had a T shirt company, Yeah, he owned and he still
does graphics. And so I wastalking to him about it, and he
actually bought our software back in theday. Now this was I think it
was after I left the company,but still I think I know who did
did the sale with him. Hetold me, said, Mike, that's
the most expensive uh time clock thatI ever bought. Because you know,

(28:00):
having employees clocking and clock out wasjust one small function of the software.
It was like to run your businessright, right, But he didn't use
it that way. Yeah, it'slike you know, customer contact management and
order entry and production and accounting andlike scheduling and receiving, like I had
everything, And he said he boughtit. They but it's complicated, right,
so you have to put some effortinto learning how to use it and
everything. And I guess he justnever got further than the time clock feed

(28:23):
technology is always complicated to me.That property is we've had a lot of
action. We've had a lot ofcalls off the sign and on Zillo for
that property. So if you're lookingfor a piece of land, you go
was going to use it for likea family compound. He was in the
middle of making a lake in themiddle of this five point nine acres,
like digging it out of himself.Yeah, but it's time for him to

(28:45):
sell. He wants to buy anotherpiece of land nearby to do something else
with it. I'm kind of excitedfor him. Okay. A couple other
things we have, like a wehave it's an Airbnb time shary thing down
in Fort Lauderdale. It's time share. Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
It's it's in the community called GalleryOne in downtown Fort Lauderdale in Sunrise Boulevard,

(29:07):
so it's really close to the beach. But this is like a timeshare
complex with all the facilities that youwould expect in a vacation community. And
is it a condo hotels. It'skind of like a condo. It is
a condo hotel, and you cancontrol yourself or you can have the property
manager in the building book to placesthemselves. Our person's been doing it by

(29:32):
themselves and not using the company thatthe property manager company on site. They
have books that go back three orfour years. The numbers look really good,
very solid. So we have thaton the market for two hundred and
sixty thousand dollars. It's a oneto one and it's in very good condition
and those can be financed. Jimit's tricky finance. You're not doing traditional

(29:55):
conforming financing for those, but thefinancing does exist out there. So some
people think that's got to be acash dealer cash equivalent, but there's financing
like thirty year fixed rate loans thatare possible. What do you think down
payment on that is twenty five thirtypercent? Probably the least right? Yep,
Okay, that's good. And thenwe have a property that is back

(30:15):
on contract, back on market twotimes now, which really happens to me.
I can't remember the last time.Yeah, it's our property in lake
Worth. This is a really greatfifty five and over two bedroom, two
bath unit. I think we're goingto be getting an offer today that we're
probably going to take if I'm here, and it's going to be a full
so we'll probably take it. I'mjust waiting for the paperwork to come in,

(30:36):
but it is still available. Andlet me tell you, this is
a great little unit for somebody ona budget. It's two hundred and forty
thousand dollars, it's a two totwo. It's got acquordion shutters everywhere,
it's got impact windows in the glassenclosed porch. It's all impact and shut,
and it's got yeah, and it'sgot a roof that's twenty twenty and
it's got an ac that's like ayear year and a half old. So

(30:59):
all the heavy lifting has been done. But the kitchen is original, the
bathrooms are original. The carpeting reallyneeds to be replaced right now. So
we have a price based on allthose, you know, all those upgrades
that are needed. And at twohundred and forty thousand, the HOA in
this place is very low. Andthat one is a condoct and this one
is no a town home and itcan go for three and a half percent

(31:21):
down. We we helped the nextdoor neighbor used FHA financing I think through
you, Mike, in order tobuy the house. Okay, yep,
you can purchase on it. Youcould do a reverse mortgage on that,
which we could talk about later.We have another property that just went on
the market yesterday. It's a onebedroom, one bath. Well wait a

(31:42):
second, ours doesn't show any bath. I got to make a correction.
We put it up yesterday. Onebedroom, zero bath. I've never seen
that before. One bath house unitin North Yeah, yeah, exactly,
in North Palm Beach. We're onlyasking one hundred and eighty thousand dollars for
the unit. It's in the VillageGuard Garden condos. One of the things
I really like about this is location, location, location. You're right across

(32:06):
the street from Frigates. Frigates Restaurantin the inner coastal. Friget's a really
great restaurant. It's a great placeto go waterfront restaurant over there, So
you're in that whole waterfront area andit's only one hundred and eighty thousand dollars
for the condo. Mike is tellingme that we have a call. We
do have a call, all right, Yeah, we have Tom online.

(32:27):
Tom, you help Tom sell ushome. He had a couple follow up
questions, Tom, welcome to Florida, talk real estate. Good morning fellows.
Have everybody doing good? Good?Good Tom? How are you doing
good? Good Jim? Thanks?Oh, I know which Tom this is
now. I'm sorry Tom. Iwasn't sure which Tom it was right away
because there's a one Tom that Idon't want to talk to. I was

(32:52):
pause waiting to see but I didn'tthink that he would call. So how
are you doing? Tom? Ihaven't talked to you all and I appreciate
being on the positive side of yourphone. Uh, this is good,
Tom, this is good. I'mthe guy with the white hat. Yes,
yes, that's true. That's true. Oh Tom, before we hang

(33:13):
up, I want to hear yourstory. But before we hang up,
I want to talk about the scamthat happened at your house, the rental
scam. The rental scam. Wenever talked about that on the show,
so this will be our opportunity.But anyway, go ahead, Tom,
I'm sorry, so so no worries. I appreciate you know, you sold
the house faster than we thought,and you got us more money than we

(33:36):
anticipated. So we're extremely happy.Don't you hate it when that happens.
I know, I know. So. So we so we took the profits
from from the sale, we paidoff our primary. Nice and uh,
we went ahead and we put onwhere we're in line to have a new
metal roof, put on the primarywith so many fun and so now I

(33:59):
get a call from insurance and thenobviously we no longer have an s grow
because we've paid the house off.And I get a call from the insurance
that our insurance is due. Weknow eight thousand dollars it's basically better than
twice what we paid last year.I understand that what's going on, and
that's just the deal. But we'rein the process of putting a new roof

(34:22):
on, so I don't imagine anybody'sgoing to even talk to us about a
quote until we get this roof installed. What are your thoughts? Yeah,
Ross, well, I mean youcan quote it, and you know,
here's what it is with a newroof. When right, when does your
current policy expire? It has expired, it has expired? Are currently without

(34:50):
for how long? Until I getHow long are you tom? This is
important? How long have you lapsed? How long have you been in lapse
for the insurance? About two weeks? Okay? And how long is it
going to take to put your roofon? I'm in line. He's telling
me about about six weeks. Sixto eight weeks is what the South telling

(35:15):
And did you did your insurance justlapse because it was too expensive? Technically?
Yes, yes, the price wascrazy. We were gonna start getting
some quotes, possibly talk to youabout quote, but I figured until we
get this roof on, no one'sgoing to even talk to him. How
old was your current roof or thehow old is the roof that's on there

(35:36):
now twenty plus? Is it ingood shape? Uh? No? Is
it actively leaking? Tom Lady,No, No, but it it's got
some Uh I mean it's it's it'sjust a very old roof, yes,

(35:57):
very old. Uh we're not,but it's done. We have another rent
on next door that we went throughthe same deal where the insurance company reached
out to us and told us thatwe had to get a new roof,
So we put a metal roof onnext door, and now we're doing a
duplicate roof on our primary. ButI just didn't anticipated taking almost two months
for the roofers to do the work. Can I ask Ross a question for

(36:21):
you, Tom, please? SoI'm a little concerned that Tom doesn't have
insurance right now, because you've toldus in the past that if you lapse
an insurance you might not be ableto get a new insurance policy at all,
or it's very difficult, I shouldsay, Well, so that's what
I'm concerned about right now. Insome case, different carriers will give you

(36:43):
different amounts of time, but mostof the time, once you get to
thirty days, a lot of carriersare kind of saying Okay, we're not
going to touch that anymore, citizenalgive it to you. You know,
up to forty five days without priorinsurance, you can get coverage right away.
Once you go more than forty fivedays without insurance, then you'll have

(37:06):
a thirty day wait before it wouldbecome effective. Right. So, oh,
they just want to make sure youdon't get a claim, like they
go, okay, why you didn'thave insurance? Okay, now you you
know wanted want right. Yeah,So that's the way that that they look
at it. But you know,if you're if your current roof, if

(37:28):
we have an inspection that shows thatthere's at least five years of life left,
then you could get insurance now,you know, and then when you
put the new roof on. Dependingon the characteristics, citizens might be the
best bet anyway as far as premiumgoes. But then at least you'd kind
of not really have too much ofa gap in insurance. And for me,

(37:50):
I try and get a citizen calge. I kind of agree with the
four point inspection done and yeah,and see Tom, we can help you
with all that off air. Wejust did a useful life inspection for somebody
down and plantation. Thank you rosssome uh the uh ross God is to
Alan who got us to somebody else? Because it was embrowered And just because
the the roof is old doesn't necessarilymean it's in bad shape. What it

(38:13):
sounds like his previous is his previousinsurer was willing to ensure him. They
just the the premium doubled. Isit too late for him to go back
to them be like, hey guys, I'm sorry my check got uh you
know, got slowed down. Letme let me renew this policy and then
get the new roof on and thengo back and say, hey, I
got a new roof. Depending onthe carrier, because some carriers maybe they're

(38:36):
closed in that count maybe they haven'twritten a new policy and they're closed in
in that particular area. A lotof the times when you go back to
them and say, hey, wejust can even one day, Oh sorry,
we're closed in that county. We'renot gonna reinstate it, you know,
but I would, yeah, Iwould go back to your curtainsurre and
see if they'll see if you canget it reinstated with a payment. Maybe
they'll not have, you know,have you sign a no last statement,

(38:59):
but I would check there didn't Theydidn't question my roof. I'm doing that
on my own, right. Theydidn't come out and say, look,
you're you're so old you have toreplace it before we'll and show you we're
doing this on our own. Butthat's and then they came up with this
ridiculous quote. So so what you'resaying, my best bet is to get

(39:22):
a I have a property, andI have an inspector that I used.
I'm a contractor. I have ainspector I used for work. I can
have him come out basically give mea like you said, good for another
at least another year life of theexisting room, another five years five,
We'll see what my my inspector cando for us. But then I would

(39:42):
take that to an insurer and say, look, I've got five years left,
I have this roof on on onon order to be installved. Can
you give me a quote? Youjust take it to want to go back
to my original guy, No,you take it the ross, Tom,
you just give it the ross.Yeah, that would be great, but
I you know, I would callyour current insurance company, even though it's

(40:04):
it is a high premium, atleast get that. See, if you
can get that reinstated, right,even if it's temporary, right, because
you know that's first because if youcan get that reinstated, awesome, because
then you don't have to worry about, Hey, does this roof have at
least five years of life left?Getting an inspector out there? You can
just have that policy, I meaneight thousand dollars, yeah, but that's

(40:29):
for the year. If you're onlygoing to have it for another six weeks,
that's not too bad because you'll geta refunded yeah, right, right
right, Okay, but you gotto come out of pocket a green well,
I mean you can go quarter youknow, hey, you know you
can go quarterly and that's going tobe forty percent down, so you don't
have to come out the whole eightyou know, so you're like thirty two
hundred or something like that, right, Yeah, yeah, I would buy

(40:51):
me some time. And so wefigure it out. Tom We're gonna on
Monday. I'll get you over toRoss right away and we'll figure out a
plan for you on that. ButI don't want you to hang up yet,
Okay, So we're gonna blow throughthe commercial. I know where passed
the commercial Bank, Jim Tom,I'm so glad you called today because we
had that scam. Uh. Yeah, we had that scam that happened at
your house that I thought was reallyI thought was really interesting at the time

(41:15):
because you had to put that noticeon the door and everything. So can
you explain what happened when you wereyou were putting a rental property up for
sale with me, and while youwere renovating the house, you noticed some
strange activity happening on the internet.Well, what it was is people were
coming to look at the house anticipatingmy soot, but they were there to

(41:38):
to purchase the house, but they'rethere to rent the house. And I'm
like, well, the house isnot for rent, and they're like,
no, no, no, I'vegot this information off the internet. This
house, this address is for rent. I'm like, absolutely not. I
am the owner. This house isnot for rent. This is a scam.
And as for your instruction scam,I put a big old posted sign

(42:00):
inside the window of the repel thatI'm selling saying this is not a repel
property, this is a stamp,you know, and and nothing against our
local police department. I went downthere when this first happened they really did
nothing for us, you know.Yeah, there's not a lot they can
Unfortunately, there's not a lot theycan do until something bad happens. And

(42:21):
even then it's hard to find thepeople. The scammers, A lot of
these scammers what what what they'll dois they'll say that they need that the
property is so popular that they needmoney up front before they'll come over to
show you the property. And it'slike, you're gonna have to put a
deposit down right now if you wantto see the property, send me the

(42:43):
money first, and then I'll meetyou at the house. Are these agents
out of Miami? We were veryhands on with the house during a time
of sale. I mean we werethere every day, you know, kinker
and whatnot. So we were ableto combat this problem. But had we
been an hour a stage seller orsomething, who knows what would have happened.
So this is a good lesson forrunners. How long ago that what

(43:06):
was about a year and a halfrecent? Wow, the first of the
year, just around Christmas? Yeah, a year and a half. I'm
a little off on time there,right, It's like, wow and a
half months? Yeah, so right, but I'm not your only client,
Jim so I think you're okay.Yeah, so that's a really you know,

(43:28):
there's a lot of teachable moments here. The first teacher moment is to
reunners right, protect your money.Anybody asking you for money upfront just to
see the property probably a scam.Okay, And when I say probably,
I mean it's a scam. Isit normal for let's say renters. Oftentimes
renters will hire a real estate agentto represent them. Is it normally the

(43:49):
defeat is collected upfront for that typeof no, no, no, and
they need no money out of posh. So you're essentially right, yeah,
exactly August seven. Now it's allseventeen. We're going to talk about that.
So yeah, so be very carefulyour renter. There are a lot
of scams out there. And oneof the things you can do, especially
if you're not dealing with a propertymanagement company or something that looks really legit

(44:13):
and you're meeting real people, whatI would do is I would find out
who you're cutting the check to,if you're thinking about cutting a check,
and then look at the property appraiser. He said his name is cash,
exactly right, And you look atthe property appraiser and making sure that it
kind of gels together that the personasking for the money is the person that
owns the property. And if it'san LLC or something, if the property's

(44:36):
under an LLC or something, askthe landlord show me that you're controlling this
LLC before I cut this check toyou. Show me that you have some
kind of corporate power within that LLCbecause it all could be fake. So
it's really really important to make sure. As far as the homeowner, like
Tom, there's not a lot hecould do. Somebody selected his property.

(45:00):
I think that happened, Tom,because you were doing I think before you
came to me, you were doingfour cell by owner. Is that true
for just a little bit while youwere fixing the place up. No,
I think it was posted on Facebook. Yeah, what happened. So so
somebody picked that you make the factthat they were the broad disposer was asking,

(45:23):
was offering the place at a ridiculouslylow rent feat and that's why everybody
assume was jumping it was more thansmart. So there's a lot of people
in Florida that take advantage of people. So don't be one of the people
that are victimized by that and useyour common sense if the deal's looking too
good, take a breather and makesure what's going on before you plunk your

(45:47):
money down, because you can getburned. Tom. I'm so glad that
you called, and I'm really gladyou called about your insurance because the lapse
of insurance is a little that wasa little scared to me. If you
saw my face on the video,it's like, Oh, is there any
way to make a case that it'snot a lapse, It's just I switched
from institutional insurance to self insurance?Can you can you say that? Can

(46:07):
you provide me a self insurance declarationspace? Yeah, I've been paying a
premium into my into my insurance fund. I have this lady in Miami that
can draw the documents for you.So yeah, so we're gonna jump on
that. Monday time is of theessence for that. You don't want to
get burned and then not have anensurable house for a while. That would

(46:29):
not be a good time. Iwould I would call your current company and
see if you can get that,right, Dad, I agree, So
so then touch base with you firstof the weekend. See if we can't
get a plan. Yeah, we'regonna talk Monday for sure. Okay,
okay, thank you so much.Your yeah, enjoy the weekend. Thanks
to thank you so much. Ihave a great weekend. Good time.

(46:53):
We were talking about the condo inNorth Palm Beach that's for sale hundred and
eighty very reasonably has it's not likecompletely brand new, updated, but it's
got newer appliances. The kitchen wasrenovated probably in the last five to eight
years. It's got maple cabinets.One of the things I like is that

(47:14):
the whole house is ceramic tile,so there's no carpeting in anything. Houses
really great, great location. Socome if you're interested in that, come
give us a call. We alreadytalked about Brian's house and Madison Green in
Royal Palm Beach, two bedroom,two bath with the den that's with the
multi person hot tub, right fiveseventy. That's a great neighborhood. And

(47:37):
let me tell you, those schoolsover there are great and depending on how
old your kid is, the kidcan probably walk to one of the schools,
depending if it's elementary, middle orhigh school. Yeah, I hope
so. I remember one part ofMadison Green, Daryl and Amy's house.
They created a fence. They puta gate in the backyard of their fence

(47:59):
and the kids were able to walkright backyard into the school. It was
pretty cool. We also have aproperty in Century Village. This house is
so completely renovated. It's only askingone hundred and forty thousand dollars. It's
a one one. This house haseverything. Even the crown molding in the
house has led lights in the crownmolding. I mean, it's such a

(48:22):
cool effect. It's so wild.Yeah, it isn't there wild on videos
online and it is such a neatlook. And this is like a Century
Village isn't really known for like reallyupscat yeah, like bling bling, but
this unit is kind of bling bling. It almost feels like you could take
it and put it into an expensivearea of New York for a small loft

(48:44):
or something in New York. Interesting. It's it's that upgraded and it's only
one hundred and thirty nine nine.The reason why this property hasn't sold right
away is there's something like eighty unitsfor sale over there, but hardly any
of them are as fixed up asnice as this one. And it's priced
right. So if you're interested insomething affordable that's a fifty five and over
two. The last one is wehave a property of condo over on Flagler

(49:07):
Drive. It's a one to one. We're only asking two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars for this one one.It's in Regency Surf and Racket Club.
And let me tell you, thisproperty might be a good play. Not
necessarily because you like the property,but you like the opportunity. This building
has been nearly bought out by adeveloper like three times, and the units

(49:30):
we're supposed to be selling for aboutfive hundred thousand apiece, we're only asking
two fifty four ours because that developmentdeal hasn't gone through yet, because there's
a handful of owners that are sayingwe don't want to sell out. But
it's only a few and that couldchange, and then all of a sudden,
you're buying it for two fifty andthen developers, based on the previous

(49:51):
negotiations, we're saying they would buyit for five and then there what's their
long game too, They're going totear down the building start buy it to
sell it. You buy it,you rent it out, or you live
in it. Because it's right onFlower, you have a beautiful view and
everything in your community. You buyit, you you live in there until
the developer comes it says I'll giveyou twice what you paid for it,

(50:12):
or or you or you keep itas a rental and the cash flows.
If you're not living in it,keep his rental cash flown until you're ready
to make your move or developer comes. Okay, a lot of people won't
leave that building because they like thearea so much. That tells you something
about the property too. So alot of opportunities here, and as you
can see, we're all price rangesall areas, all the way from Indian

(50:37):
River down to date. So ifyou have any kind of questions about buying
or selling or investing, including commercialinvesting, give us a call. We
can help you out with all ofthat. Eight eight eight nine seven three
seven eight to two eight or FloridaTalk real Estate dot com. Tom is
such Thank you, Jimmy, andTom is such a hardcore guy. He
didn't need that, He didn't needthat shout out number, and he knew

(50:57):
who to call. That was prettycool. I like that. Hey,
I wanted just to leave off.We're gonna take We're gonna take a break
in a second, But I wantedto leave off at the end of this
anchor segment to talk about some goodnews for renters in South Florida, which
we haven't had in a while.Uh not that what it feels like.
Yeah, what could the good newsbe? The Sun Sentinel came out with

(51:21):
a report that said, a goodsign for renters, competition may not be
as fierce as before in South Florida. And what they're saying is based on
a redfin annalysince. So I takeit a little bit of a grain of
salt. The Redfin is saying inthe first quarter of the year. Oh,
I'm sorry, it's Forbes Advisor isdoing this. Forbes Advisor did analysis

(51:44):
of rental stuff all over the country, Florida, the South Florida region.
They're seeing a decrease of about fourhundred dollars per month in median rental price
for this quarter January February March.So they're seeing the rental prices starting a
flatten out. This is a reallygood sign. I hope this trend continues.

(52:05):
I had one of our guys,Rick, who callless his daughter works
for a grocery store, not makinga ton of money and He called me
up and he's like, yeah,she really needs a two two for twelve
hundred dollars a month and between basicallyPointon and West Palm. Can you find

(52:25):
that? No? And I waslike, either some kids in the house.
I would love to set up there, yeah, right, exactly,
yeah, right. So the prothe problem is is if you get something
at that price point, if youcan even find it, it's either going
to be a dump, or it'sgoing to be in a neighborhood that you
probably don't want to be in,right, a high crime neighborhood. So

(52:46):
you know, you don't want youdon't want the ladies of the evening and
mister drug dealers sitting on your cornerand stuff every day, right, yeah,
unless that's your lifestyle. Maybe that'sa plus for some people. Yeah
right, I don't have to drivefor one hundred yeah. Yeah. So
uh, hopefully this is the beginningof a trend that will continue. I

(53:07):
would like to see that it mightbe continuing of a trend. I think
that a lot of landlords are pullingout of being a landlord. And the
reason why I'm saying that, Ithink a lot of new people are coming
in. But people have been doingit for a while. I think they're
tired of these insurance Yeah, yep, exactly selling his places. I can't
think of why rents would be goingdown, Like, so, what's what's

(53:30):
the leading you have people? Uh, the housing market is cool, right,
inventory hasn't really gone up or wesee we see yeah, which mean
by buyers aren't we're sighing. Sothey got to be renting or continuing to
rent. What what's driving rent isto go down? Like, I think

(53:52):
that a lot of people are leavingthe area, so there's less demand.
I also think that there's I thinksome of the landlords have been asking,
Like I live in a beachfront community, so I watched like the beef beach
front rentals and what they were askinga year and a half ago. They're
not even getting close to what they'rewhat they're getting today because they were just

(54:14):
pushing push and pushing the limits.And then after a while they missed a
cycle. Oh I have it atthis high thing and I haven't rented my
place for four months. I justlost four months of rent and they'll bring
it down to We also have aseasonal thing at play here and for we're
coming in you know, now we'reout of season. Well, the rents
typically get a little lighter this timeof year. Well, but January,

(54:35):
February, March it was verse quarters, so we're still in season for that.
Yeah, so that includes short termrents. I don't know, that's
a good point. I don't knowthe months or something like that. So
they're they're affected more rightly. Ithink that's it's just got to be based
on invatory So I guess the amountof rental units must be higher than before.
It's got to be something like that, right, it's applying demand.

(54:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'reright, Jimmy, thank you. I'm
reading the article a little more carefully. It says another trend working against supply
catching up to demand is the useof short term rental units, often used
by vacationers. So they're saying alot of the regular renterers that would have
places don't get it because people areusing it for airbnbs and short term rentals.

(55:21):
That's cracking down all over the countrythe short term rentals. So be
very careful if you buying a shortterm rental to make sure that you can
continue to do that way. JarrettPerry from Perry's CPA group who was here
last week. He has a reallygood philosophy with his athletes that want to
buy rental properties. His attitude is, if you can't make your money off

(55:42):
of long term rental, don't buyit. So that way you always have
a safety net that if the shortterm rental isn't working out, you could
still you could do long term andstill make some money. And if you
can't do that, then don't buyit. It's not worth it. I
love that idea because that way,if anybody changed the regulations in the neighborhood,
you're not You're not stuck with theproperty. You can't monetize. Yeah,

(56:05):
so anyway, it might be alittle better for the renters right now,
but not twelve hundred dollars a monthfor two to two Yet we're not
there yet. Hey, let's goahead and take a break. And on
the flip side, we're going totalk about insurance. There's a lot of
stuff in the news about insurance today, and some of it's related to what
Tom was talking about a little bit, how high the insurance rate. And

(56:25):
I had two people I talked tothis week that decided that they were going
to self insurance self insured. Sowe're going to talk about self insurance in
South Florida, DA on the flipside. Check us back, what and
what is? What is that guyused to say? A love connection?
Two minutes and two seconds. We'llbe back four minutes. Yeah, what

(56:46):
was that guy saying? Woollery,Chuck Willery. We'll be back at two
and two Love Connection. Yeah,one of the one of the shows that
he hosted for a long, longtime time. So we'll be right back
after this short break. Here onReal Radio ninety two one and one on
one seven on a Treasure Coast.This is Florida Talk Real Estate with Jim

(57:21):
Depola and Johnny c. Got aquestion for the show. Call us live
at one eight seven seven nine sevensixty nine sixty nine. Hey everybody,
it is the Florida Talk Real EstateShow. Did you know that we're the
number one news and information provider aboutall things real estate in Florida. We're
right here live two hours a week, Saturday, nine to eleven. You

(57:44):
also can catch us live on YouTubeand Facebook where we're live on right now.
Say hello to everybody, Hello,and thank you for checking in with
us today. And afterwards these allbecome replays By the way, that reminds
me Greg A. Remember Greg upin Vero Beach. He was trying to
do a deal a couple months agowith us. He's a big podcast listener,

(58:06):
and he says he has to signin or log in or sign up
for something to do the podcast.I want to find out where he's trying
on. Iheard to do that.I'm not sure, so I need to
check it out. And I lookedat it one time. I just I
was on my browser, so Idid it on Google. I just typed
in iHeart all right, I probablydid Florida Talk real Estate iHeart podcast and
it came up and you can startplaying. But it's probably not the official

(58:29):
podcast. Yeah, app thing right, So we have it all So if
you miss us, you want tocatch us later, or you're driving around
your car, it's like, oh, I wanted to jot something down,
or I wanted to call those guysor find out about something. Just go
to our podcast on Facebook YouTube.You can go to our website too,
but our website's kind of like intransitioning. It's still a great place to

(58:49):
contact us. All you got todo is call eight seven seven nineven.
Wait, I don't said it wrong. Eight eight eight nine seven three seven
eight two eight is my office number. It's live twenty four to seven with
a live operator that will take yourmessage and we call you back if we're
not if it isn't during regular hours. And you could also contact us on
that website, through email, throughtexting. You can even check on calendarly.

(59:15):
I can never say that word Lee, calendarly, calend lye. I
hate that name. Yeah, Ihate that calen Lee. You can click
on the thing that's on my websiteand make an appointment with me. It'll
say chat with Jim Fireside, Chatswith Jim fires Yeah. Maybe I should
have like a little green screen inthe background Fireplace Rocker yeah, no,
Scotch nice scar, yeah, Jim, exactly what's going on with Jim?

(59:38):
Got a question right now? Youcan give us a call eight seven seven
nine two seven six nine six nine. Keep me busy as to the phone.
We'll get you right on the airand you can ask Mike. Got
a question about a mortgage, homeownersinsurance? You got a question about buying
a property, selling a property,Give us a call right now eight seven
seven nine two seven six nine sixnine. Hey, Uh, Tom,

(01:00:00):
had called on the last segment askingquestions about his insurance policy. Which was
a great time because I had threeinsurance things I wanted to talk about today
with Ross. First of all,Newsweek did a oh, this is the
Redfin thing. It wasn't the Forbesthing. Redfin and Zillow, Redfin and

(01:00:20):
Zillo came out with this report wherethey did a survey asking people who are
moving, what is the reason thatthey're moving out of the Sunshine State and
the reason the eleven percent of thepeople said insurance is too darn high.
I'm getting out. Nationwide, that'ssix percent, so that's still a big

(01:00:43):
chunk. I was surprised to seenationwide that more than you know, more
than one out of twenty people arebasing their move based on insurance costs.
I thought that was just endemic,you know, kind of a Florida thing.
But New York Times is saying,no way, Jose because they're hold
on here on a second, waitWest, no way? Oh wait did

(01:01:05):
I lose everything? I hope not? Oh yeah. New York Times came
out with an article a couple ofdays ago that was really interesting if you
want to check it out, andit was doing analysis about how this isn't
just a Florida thing. Iowa,Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, Colorado,
Arkansas, Illinois, all of thoseplaces are experiencing spikes and insurance pretty big.

(01:01:29):
They didn't even they didn't put Floridain California in because we're so obvious,
right, they were taking the otherstates people don't think of, right,
our spikes already happened. Yeah,now the rest of the country is
yetching up spike wise. So thisis a thing that's becoming nationwide. We
were just the beginning of the treadof a nationwide thing that's happening right now.
And you know, back in twentyfifteen, there were only three states

(01:01:52):
in the country that were considered unprofitable. Insurance companies were considered unprofitable. Twenty
twenty three, there was one,two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, and eleven twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, one third of the country of
the insurance companies. One third ofthe country is not profitable for these uh

(01:02:16):
for these insurance companies. As Ifind it's interesting then, when we were
talking off air, Ross, youhad a really important point to talk about
while we're still seeing major increases acrossthe country. You were saying something about
how Florida compares. Yeah, Imean every I think it's more of a
shock to us because our premium levelsbefore it went crazy where, you know,

(01:02:43):
higher than everybody else. So ifour premiums were two thousand dollars and
they jumped to six thousand dollars,that sounds crazy tripling. Yeah, but
you know the same thing is happeningin other parts of the country. But
their premiums were only four hundred dollars, so now they're going to twelve hundred
dollars. It's a big jump,but it doesn't sound as bad as six

(01:03:07):
thousand. Yeah, you know,so, I mean, yeah, the
whole country's experiencing it. We're justexperiencing it, you know, with higher
numbers, same increases, but highernumbers. And the reason why of these
other states are their insurance is trackingup. You know. They have a
breakdown in the report in the NewYork Times about what types of storms are

(01:03:28):
causing the most money claims, andhurricanes obviously are a very big part of
the claims in the country, butsevere storms are probably almost equal to hurricanes
as far as damages. But wildfiresare even bigger than hurricane damage. You
know, that's even bigger, thewildfire stuff. And then other whatever that

(01:03:51):
means, others a farm chunk.Yeah, I don't know what other means
because they have wildfire, hurricanes,severe storm flooding, So I don't know.
Yeah, other probably you know,water damage, a lot of water
damage. But wouldn't that be floodingflooding? Oh yeah, okay, I
suit you mean, like, yeah, I get you, like a tornado

(01:04:13):
come in, and then you havewater damage too, like broke, like
a pipe breaks in your wall.So like our biggest issue down here with
that was you know, your yourdishwasher having a leak while it was running
and okay, yeah, you know, ruined a cabinet or something like that,
other water line to the fridge orright, and you know, you
got a contractor that comes in.And I don't know if you know,

(01:04:35):
but contractors, the more work theydo, the more money they make.
So it would go from okay,all right, we just need to replace
his cabinet and get a you know, you know, something minor to no,
no, no, I think theyneed a whole new kitchen. Oh.
So it's the profit mode of I'mthinking of the CH's with a lot
of more companies right now. Ifyour home is you know, thirty forty

(01:04:59):
years or older, it's only comingwith ten thousand of water damage covered.
So right I just oh, wewere talking about that in our networking group
about how flood you're only I meanwater damage you can only be covered up.
Not only, but most policies areonly ten thousand. And it's captive
the mold coverage because you could switchfrom water to mold if it developed.

(01:05:21):
So citizens is only going to giveyou ten thousand for mold. Some of
the carriers that cap the water damageat ten will will not allow you to
increase. It's still going to justcome with that ten thousand of mold.
They don't allow you to increase it. You know, we try to if
possible. We always try to increaseour mold coverage at twenty five supplemental or

(01:05:42):
just increased, just increase it.Yeah, it's like fifty or sixty bucks.
So it's interesting that Gym's talking aboutincreases nationwide but based on weather,
and I think it like Florida areincreases over the years has been not based
on weather, only peripherally based onweather, right, so media playing present
storms yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but they didn't cause it the damage.

(01:06:04):
Then my my favorite insurance company alltime, which Ross knows. I'm
not talking about the broker. It'snot Bright Wing Insurance, but the company
I was insured with. They justgot fined a million dollars and they put
a big smile on my foot.Yeah, it's like, yeah, I
find more money. As far asI'm concerned, I want to find the
one carrier that when their TV commercialsstart, my mom's dog goes crazy?

(01:06:30):
Which one is that? Why can't? I don't want to call them out,
but there's one. Well, whathappens in the commercial that makes the
dog go crazy? You know?You would think like maybe it's their Yeah,
maybe it's their jingle, maybe it'sbut it's not right. It's they
have some sort of high pitch dog. Can he can hear it? Yeah,
Because it doesn't matter which commercial itis, and it doesn't matter like
when it starts, it's like assoon as it comes on before the music,

(01:06:55):
before tagline, whatever, the dogknows the genus genius. I think
that dogs starts barking, that's whatthey're doing. A hundred for real one
hundred percent that's what's happening. AndI guess it's because they want a reaction.
Now, it doesn't like we haveother dogs that don't react, so
it's got to be something. Butthey're doing it's some advertising employee to get

(01:07:16):
the dogs subliminal mood to make theconnection, whatever it is. And then
they're doing one hundred percent. They'relike a little fla. Have you have
you recorded it and played it backin slow motion to see if it says
buy insurance. You know what's funny? I went, I went as far
as downloading a frequency like listening onmy phone. I went, I didn't

(01:07:39):
take it that far. Now,I never got anything conclusive from that,
but I'm one hundred percent sure it'shappened. Were you wearing your til exactly?
Well, you tell me why wouldthe dog react? It's not the
tell me, Well, this insurancecompany got fined a million dollars because they

(01:08:00):
weren't They weren't handling the insurance claimsfor Hurricane Ian properly. They weren't responding
fast enough when people were bringing inclaims, and it violated the way the
claim hand claims should have been handled. Whatever the heck that means denied,
deny, deny. Yeah, likeyou know statute required response times and you

(01:08:25):
know, I get you know,you get back to them. They got
to get back to your next amountof decent. Ninety eight of the people
that filed the claim. Out ofninety eight out of three hundred and twenty
four claims that they reviewed, thecompany did not acknowledge receiving communications within the
fourteen day periods. So you said, hey, I got a problem,
and then you never heard back fromthem, right, they just didn't.

(01:08:46):
That sounds very similar to me.And it said seventy out of three hundred
and twenty four claims, the companydid not pay or did not pay or
denied claims within the ninety day timeframeperiod. So they did not pay or
deny the claims. So they haveninety days to just you know, after
you follow your complaint to respond.They didn't do that. That happened to

(01:09:09):
me. Sounds like somebody in theircompliance department was not paying at somebody.
I mean, there's a whole Dothey have a compliance department, Jim,
We have very similar in the mortgageindustry, Like you have rules about when
you're like if somebody does mortgage applicationyou're supposed to give them an underwriting decision
within thirty days essentially, which meansyou have to underwriting. You have to

(01:09:30):
either prove or counter offer. Theycall that a counter like if you can't
approve the loan the encounter and sayhey, if we make these changes or
whatever, or you suspend it,meaning it's not getting approved unless you really
fix things. But you got acertain amount of time. And compliance is
on top of that, like theyare managing these deadlines because they don't want
to be the ones who, youknow, are I guess getting fine,

(01:09:51):
we're not doing things on that rightAnd yep, and ten out of the
three hundred and twenty four of thereview, they didn't maintain claim records for
the deal, so they got paid. They got fined a million dollars.
I'm wondering. You know, thatdoesn't seem like a very big hit for
the amount of amount of stuff theydidn't do. But you know, that's

(01:10:13):
my opinion and I'm sticking with it. I mean, I think the insurance
company's feet need to be held tothe fire too. You know, it
has to work both ways. Imean, the consumers can't rip off the
insurance companies and take advantage of themthat way. That's not cool either.
But at the same time, ifyou're going to be an insurance company,
being an insurance company, you goyou gotta stay within the wolves and regulations.

(01:10:34):
Yeah, and protect customers rights.I'm glad that at least somebody's reviewing
these companies and at least holding themaccountable to some extent. The other thing
I found interesting about this so HurricaneIan. There were a total of five
hundred and fifty eight thousand claims fromIan for residential and another thirty three thousand

(01:10:55):
and four commercial. Right now,I mean at auto claim. It doesn't
have that in here. It's justresidential. But what they did say is
as of last month, So sixhundred thousand claims if you had him together
as of last month. Ross howlong does a homeowner have to file an
insurance crime afterwards? Right? Iknow it changed. So it used to

(01:11:17):
be two, it used to bethree. Now it's two. I think
it's one. Now I thought itwas one. Everything we'll figure out.
Yeah, come on, man,you know, so that's okay. It
was three and now it's two.I don't think it's two too long.
So this is for insurance hurricane insuranceclaim. Let's say I wouldn't have guessed

(01:11:40):
that long. I would again,it was years. It was years.
That's why you had all those roofing. Somebody's injuss knocking on your door two
years after the hurricane. You're runningout of time, you know. So
very interesting. I felt that it'snice to see that there's some accountability.
Be careful with your insurance claim ifyou have one, and my advice to

(01:12:03):
you is be super diligent that they'refollowing up because you got to hold them
to the fire. In general,I thought that was kind of interesting.
Ross the let me see, I'msaying three years it used to be,
but I think it. I thinkit changed to one. I think it
went down. I want to sayI can't remember so, but anyway,

(01:12:29):
I just thought that was interesting.Let's go ahead and switch over to what's
going on in the economy, So, Mike, before we get into interest
rates, I just want to setthe stage for a little bit. Did
everybody see how high the stock marketgot this week? You know, we
hit our record that we went overforty thousand. A couple of times,
we went down, went back upagain. I think we're still having a

(01:12:50):
chair problem. You started to thinkingabout itself. It happens on that one.
It's this chair. Yeah, yeah, like Johnny has never had this
happen. Well, I've had thatwith my Yeah, you probably have the
cha I probably switched it on you. I like this one. So what
what I found interesting was this lastweek, we you know, the week

(01:13:11):
before last week, had a veryscary inflation report that looked like inflation wasn't
slowing down at all and it wasstarting to pick back up again. That
made Pal say We're not sure whatthe future holds, but we're going to
hold tight. And everybody got excited. This is like two weeks ago,
Mike, two and a half weeksago where they got excited when he said
we're not going to be raising.We're not raising. That was good news,

(01:13:34):
right. And then now the stockmarket blew up this week. And
when I saw I saw it goingup so high. When I say blow
up mean and going high, Iwas like, something happened with the economic
reports, and it did. Theeconomic report came out. The headline in
CNN says the backbone of America's economywas just dealt a serious blow. So

(01:13:59):
I was like, what the hell'sgoing on here, But this actually is
good news, and you know,just clickbait headlining and basically you know,
welcome to it because broken the backis broken, and they're like, that's
actually good news. So what they'resaying is is that consumer spending is slowing
down. And the good thing isthe last report they revised it down,

(01:14:19):
so the spending is even less thanthey thought from last month, and then
the current month we're even seeing lowerthan that. So the consumers are at
least now two months in a rowor starting to slow down their spending.
We're almost that trend period where wecan actually you know, three four,
five months in a row that wouldbe a trend. So that's exactly what

(01:14:43):
they're looking for. That's the lynchpin in order not to go into a
severe severe crash meaning high unemployment andthen the economy really going into a bad
recession. The way that they're goingto avoid that is if consumers would just
slow down their spending but not likecut it off, so that the real

(01:15:04):
retailers would then have to start droppingtheir prices to get their stuff moved right
and not have too much unemployment.But if the consumers like go from spend,
spend, spend to just shutting theirwallet. Yeah, like shutting their
wallness says, I'm not doing anything. That's where we can have a lot

(01:15:26):
of massive layoffs and then that canstart rolling into a real recession. So
we'll see what's happening right now.But this stuff look pretty positive. Food
is still up, beverage stores isstill up, whatever that means, and
bars and restaurants are still up.As far as spending, people are spending
more there. Part of it islike food is more expensive and that's why.

(01:15:49):
But they are slowing down on goingout to restaurants and bars that kind
of thing, Like what do theycall that discretionary spending? Part of the
reason why they are spending, they'reslowing down in cars. Car purchases is
slowing down a little bit. Interestrates have impacted that too. Yep.
Interest rates are helping. So it'shard to once you once you get into

(01:16:11):
that like eating out lifestyle, it'shard to go back and me like,
I'm gonna cook more at home right, Like you're probably a good example,
like how often are you preparing yourown meals at home? I cook like
once a week and then I tryto spread it out but I do eat
a lot, you know, beinga single person, I do eat out
a lot, and I've got greatrestaurants all around me. It's like so
hard. I love I love livingin North County. It's awesome, all
the food up there is. ButI could see that as being like one

(01:16:33):
of the last Yeah horrible. Yeah, I hate living there. It sucks.
So I'm sorry, Mike, Icut you off. Just yeah,
I would. I could see ifif you're tightening up on your budget,
going out to eat is probably oneof those that you hit. But it's
hard to do like regularly. Yeah, Thursday night, let's get a pizza.

(01:16:56):
Yeahs like six thirty. Yeah,you know. Yeah, So I
thought that that's kind of positive newsthere is that we're slowing down on the
consumer spending. What are you laughing? I just thinking, what are we
gonna do for dinner? I don'tknow. We got an apple, slice
of cheese, right, I thinkthere's some peanut butter left my house.
Chop it's guaranteed. Right around likefive, we started like what are we

(01:17:18):
doing for dinner? And what doyou want to do? What do you
want to do? Like we havethis conversation over and over and you always
are surprised and don't know what todo, and it's like your whole life,
you've been eating it's good. Likewe do do a lot of cooking
at home. So now it's basically, all right, what's our protein and
then once you decide on your protein, then you can figure out yeah,
yeah, yeah, it's a steak, chicken, fish, shrimp, you

(01:17:42):
know, right everything? Yeah,caby are oh no mic lifestyles. Let
me see, I'm just going,Oh, the mortgage rates. So let's
just talk real quick about the mortgagerates as we continue. So the mortgage
rates this week actually had more goodnews. We're still wait, I'm going

(01:18:03):
to the wrong ones. Sorry,I just lost my It's interesting you talked
about the doubt Jim. We neverwatched that or we never talk about that
chart in general, just because it'sthe reason why I don't talk about it.
It's a Wall Street thing. Itisn't really for main Street. And
I mean it does affect you ifyou have four and one K or you
invest in stocks, but it isn'tas many people as people make it out

(01:18:26):
to be. It's also the styeah, and it's more long game and
you know what, they don't andas far as I'm concerned, and I'm
talking about the the group mentality thingof it, right, I'm not talking
about individual investors or analysis or anything, but just the whole group mentality about
the stock market going up or downbased on these little indicators and making a

(01:18:50):
big deal out of it. Tome, all that is to have volatility
so people can make money, right, so that there's a bread that there's
always a spread, even if ithas a slow market. Yeah, So
they're going to create the movement andthey also are bully pulpits for what they
want for how they want the economyto be. So that's why we were

(01:19:12):
at the beginning of the year,everybody thought, oh, we're going to
have six cuts this year. We'regonna have six cuts this year. The
only people that were saying that,they're laughing in my face. The only
people that were saying that were werethe Wall streeters that wanted those cuts really,
really bad. Because they create theexpectation to pressure so that then when
they're when it didn't come through,like and they want to pressure them,

(01:19:35):
right, they want to pressure themto do it. And you know that
isn't healthy. That's not healthy.I look at Wall Street as pigs of
the trough, and they're going toeat until the food's gone or they're dead.
And there's no self controlling mechanism inthere. Make the profit, Make
the profit. I don't care whathappens tomorrow. Make the profit today.
Make the profit today, and thentomorrow they go, oh my god,

(01:19:56):
I lost all the money, youknow, and then they have to rebuild
it again, and and I'm justnot into that. Okay, that's why
I'm not a stock guy. You'rean equity trader out there, give us
a yeah, yeah, yeah,just go ahead, you slobbingly pitched I
don't know how to stop eating likepuppies and stuff. That's how we reel
in our listeners, right, blobbingout those wonderful It's actually it could work

(01:20:19):
both ways, because a lot ofpeople might have the opinion that Jim just
just sent out, and so he'sendeared himself to that public. But the
traders there, right, yeah,yeah, So interest rates went down again.
I think for the third week ina room where we're at seven,
that's only two weeks. Well,I feel like it's three, yeah,

(01:20:40):
a half percent or something like that. Well, we're at the recent high
two weeks ago is seven point twoto two, and now we're at seven
point zero two. So we're goingpoint two down in two weeks. Can't
help, I mean, can't cousinhurt. So I went and took a
look a little bit just to seethe last time we were at seven point
oh two that was roughly December oflast year. We got seven point oh

(01:21:06):
three, okay, and and thelast and then if you go back it
would be I'm sorry, I waslooking at something yesterday. It looks different
to that. Like we were atsix point nine for gym the end of
February, so that's a little bit, you know, a quarter point and

(01:21:26):
a half quarter point. Yeah,So the last time we were at this
level was December of last year.But we started this trend of higher rates
basically back in September and September wewere only at seven point one two when
we got all the way up toseven seven nine in November, and then
we had a very long drop allthe way down to six six one.

(01:21:50):
And if you looked at the chart, it looks like a ski chart on
a mountain, meaning like it's prettygood skiing, right, and meaning that
it dropped relatively fast but it onlygot down to six six to one.
So the beginning of the year iswhere we were at. We were at
six six one at the beginning ofthe year and we're at seven point oh

(01:22:12):
two, so we haven't seen atremendous, tremendous increase. And remember I
said it's going to be a varianceof about a half a percent, and
we're going to be in a choppyYep, it will be up, will
be down, it will be avery choppy waters. That's kind of what
we're experiencing right now. We're experiencingthat with the core inflation rate, the
consumer spending, it's going up anddown and up and down. We're just
in a very choppy market. Andthis is the kind of market that you

(01:22:35):
can't really control or try to likemanipulate really well because things change almost too
fast to take advantage of it,because it can move around so much.
So don't play, don't please doyourself a favor and don't play I'm going
to beat the market game. Yeahyou should. If you're thinking about buying,

(01:22:57):
you should say, you know what, if I can afford and it's
time for me, I better dosomething now, because I don't know what
the future holds, and I thinkthat would be a much safer bet than
trying to say, oh, I'mgoing to wait for the interest rates to
do this, or I'm going towait for that to do that. That's
not a very good situation. Thebest saying, if you had your crystal
ball, what you're waiting for isinterest rates. You want housing prices to

(01:23:19):
come way down, and you wantinterest rates to come way down, and
that's possible. When's that happened.Yeah, that's not going to be happening.
That's like throwing a ball up andexpecting it to go down, right,
I mean like when you throw itup, yeah, eventually, But
I'm talking about when you as soonas you let go of the ball drops.
It depends on what planet you're on. Yeah, that's just thinking about

(01:23:40):
that. I was just thinking aboutthat. Jupiter. It's like, you
can't even throw the ball up.Well, Jupiter, you can go right
through because it's gas. Yeah,when you get to the I just watched
it with Neil Tyson, it's agasp. Yeah, Jupiter is total gas.
There's no solid again. But bythe time you go through, by
the time you get into the middle, you're so compressed. Yes, so

(01:24:01):
Dente, you be squishly doesn't havean iron core. Nope, it's a
totally gas gases giant. The gasis could call in it. Yeah,
no, Maybe we can ask Neil. Neil if you're listening to Neil de
grasse Tyson, if you're listening,give us a call. He might be
a pompeyat you know, Yeah,that would be cool. I like him.
He's pretty cool and he used tobe a former wrestler like me,
so around the same al To talkedto him about that. Based on what

(01:24:24):
we do know about Jupiter, wesuspect that there is indeed an iron a
solid core. No solid core composedof heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen,
oxygen, that's not what Neil saysthem and rock forming elements such as
magnesium, silicone, and iron.Interesting, that isn't what Neil says.
And I'm sticking with Neil. I'mgonna ask chat GPT. There you go,

(01:24:45):
there you go. I just dida chat GPT to figure out what
kind of computer I needed for bettercamera system for the show. I don't
know if it's right or not.I don't know if it's right or not.
But anyways, my brother, butget him back, get him back
to the get him back to theinterest rates and everything. This is really
important to know that right now wedon't really know what's going to be holding

(01:25:08):
in the future because the reports areall over the place. And that's why
I'm saying there's no real trend happeningyet, we're just like kind of in
this choppy water. I want tojust reiterate what Mike is saying, because
this is such a common thing whenpeople are waiting for the interest rates or
the prices to drop, and justsaying that without thinking it out, it

(01:25:31):
really doesn't make sense. And thereason why is the last time that we
had tremendous drop and interest rates wasduring COVID right, and we went down
from roughly five percent to two sixfive percent over a period of twelve months
or so. And what happened duringthat period we didn't have much inventory,
less inventory than we have today,and everybody went nuts because they wanted the

(01:25:56):
low interest rate and they started justgobbling up everything. There were so many
buyers compared to the properties that peoplewere waving inspection waving appraisals, paying above
a praise value. And most ofthose people that paid above a praise value
in twenty twenty early twenty twenty one. They have equity now, Yeah,

(01:26:16):
maybe not as much equity as theycould have. They didn't pay above praise
value at the time. But eventhose people probably made money on the properties
they bought, and I think theylike that. Those those weren't investments.
Those were like, we had alot of people coming in, you know,
retirees who were coming down to Florida. They basically took advantage of the
high prices where they were selling,put that money into the new house,

(01:26:40):
took it, borrowed money, tookadvantage of low rates. But yeah,
I mean demand was definitely high fora variety of reasons, including that,
you know, the whole reason partof this inflation problem was that everyone got
some relief during COVID, whether theyneeded or not. So a lot of
people took advantage of that, andtherefore we had some fun money. And
of course the moving, the flexibilityof they could live wherever they want to,

(01:27:02):
many people working home. That changedthat. That changed our lifestyles maybe
forever. Yeah, in a waythat that was a seminal moment, I
think so. I think from whatI'm hearing you say, is that we
need another pandemic. Yeah, well, if you're looking at the thing I'm
not saying. I'm not saying thatat all. I would love to get
to a normal market someday. Ithink Jim was saying, though the last

(01:27:26):
time we had really low rates,buyer demand went through the roof. Yeah.
And the thing is is now wehave more pent up demand because there's
a lot of people that should havebought over the last year historically I'm talking
demographically, certain demographic segments should havealready bought by this point, and they
have it and they're holding on thesideline. And then you have the normal
people during historical demographic histories wouldn't wantto buy two. So you're going to

(01:27:50):
have this pent up demand and oncethe interest rates dropped, we're going to
have a huge release. Yeah,you want to take a break, Jim,
Well, no, no, no, Actually I had a question for
Mike or actually all three of you, but mostly with Mike because it's a
mortgage rate. And and that simplyis that this is something that I find
myself in when I talk to otherpeople, is what is a normal interest

(01:28:12):
rate? Because people say, andthis is something we have addressed on the
show before, but like, ohmy god, interest rates are so high,
They're so high. They're so high. Yet in my opinion, which
is not very good because I'm notinto the mort but between six and eight
percent, it's fairly normal over thecourse of the past. I don't know,
what do you want to say,thirty years, forty years, fifty
years. I mean when you lookedon your memory, right right, there's

(01:28:35):
that too. But we had themdown to almost close to zero for I
don't know what a decade, sothat became the norm, and what is
now normal. I mean, it'shard to answer the question, Jimmy,
because it's like, well, what'syour personal experience, Like I just look
at my person. My first mortgagein nineteen ninety nine was six and a

(01:28:57):
quarter six point three seventy five somethinglike that. I've seen rates when I
got into this, starting in twentytwelve, we were probably in the five
force maybe fours. When I boughtin ninety four, I was paying nine
in a quarter. Yeah, Imean you could see the charge. I
would say the majority of the entirehistory of recorded mortgage rates. Per Freddy's

(01:29:18):
report, we're somewhere between five andten percent, right, well, that's
a pretty big thing right now.I can tell you before when we started
the show, the forty year trendwhen we started the show during the middle
of the crisis was seven and ninepercent. Now they're looking at a thirty
year trend because there's so much crazinessthat happened during COVID. So if you
just do the thirty year trend,we're at seven percent. So we're right

(01:29:41):
historically where for the last thirty years, we're right there right now, just
being average, not high, notlow. What's different is, and this
is took me a long time tounderstand the affordability. So not just the
interest rates, but the prices.Prices of the house are so high with
the high interest rates that it justturns into completely unaffordability. And so key

(01:30:05):
factor right there. Yeah, Soone thing's gonna happen. Either the interest
rates eventually you're going to drop andmake it more affordable, or the prices
are gonna have to the value ofthe homes are going to have to drop.
Something's got to give. Eventually,something's going to give. But nothing's
going to give until we have higherunemployment. And that's why we've been protected

(01:30:27):
from all this we've been very blessed. Everybody's saying, we have this terrible
economy. It's not perfect by anymeans, but they don't even know what
bad is yet. Because once ifwe start shedding off jobs and we can't
stop that from happening, it becomesa self fulfilling prophecy. More people are
laid off, they can't buy stuff, Employers don't need as many employees to

(01:30:49):
make stuff. They start laying off. More people are laid off, they
have less things they were buying right, less need to make stuff, lay
off more people. If we getinto that cycle, then you're going to
know what a bad economy's like.That's when you're gonna say wow, and
they're going to look back at thisand say that economy was not a bad.
Act of that happened. Nobody knowsbecause what I'm saying, and I

(01:31:13):
don't want the massive layoffs, I'mnot saying. That's why they're talking about
this soft landing. That's what everybody'spraying for, is the soft landing,
which would be inflation naturally comes downbecause consumers slow down their spending, but
not so much that it crushes theeconomy. And that's a delicate dance.
And the problem is is the FEDS. There is no Crystal Balden. No,

(01:31:34):
for sure, if I dropped theinterest rate or raise the interest rate
for the FED rate by this muchor that much, we're going to get
a definite result out of it.They kind of have an idea what will
happen, They throw it out thereand then they monitor this see if that's
what's happening or not. So it'sa very interesting time we are. But
these aren't the worst of times byany means. And if you want to

(01:31:57):
take advantage of being a home owner, as Barbara Corkoran says, if you
can afford to buy a house,by the house right because in the long
run, think about think about,especially in Florida. You can count on
one hand the negative markets we've beenthrough over the last fifty years in Florida

(01:32:18):
right now. The last one wasa doozy. Yeah, it was bad,
Okay, a twelve year yeah,and we we went a four year
drop and then and then like atwelve year recovery. Yeah, housing prices,
So we went through that. Butdon't play games with yourself right now.

(01:32:38):
I'm going to look at people thatbought houses in twenty nineteen, twenty
twenty one from us, and I'mgoing back and I'm talking to them,
right, I'm going to go backand talk to them and sit down and
just say, hey, when youbought the house, like do little videos
to educate people. So you boughtyour house in twenty nineteen, what did
you pay? How much was theinterest rate? Was that high? Interests

(01:33:00):
it in your mind when you boughtit? Right? And now I'm going
to do a comp and see whatthe house is worth today, right,
and see if there was if therereally was a bad decision in twenty nineteen
to buy that house or not.Like a loaded question though, why would
you say that? Well, justbecause it's like from twenty nineteen we've had
very good appreciation the same thing thatwe're hearing today as to why you shouldn't

(01:33:24):
buy people were saying in twenty nineteen. And the point I'm trying to do
is teachable moment, not trying tosay ah, I told you so,
but to say, look, don'tlisten to the herd mentality. Necessarily,
you got to do your thing.And I really have anybody that I think
I had one person in the lastfive years that had a let go of

(01:33:45):
a house. We ended up theyhad equity, thank god, but they
had to let go because the paymentsgot too high for insurance, right,
and the payments got too high.Sorry, but we ended up selling the
house for him and he ended upmaking a little money on it. It
wasn't a big because he only ownedit for about two years. But that's
the only one I know of infive years that had really big problems with

(01:34:09):
their house. Yeah, since theybought. I'd like so, you know,
like my philosophy as you can't predictthat we don't know what's happening.
But if you are a potential selleror you're a potential buyer, like you
can get very caught up in theanalysis what they call it analysis paralysis,
right, but you're because everything isa little bit foggy, so you have
to start clarifying certain aspects of whatyou're actually analyzing. So, if you're

(01:34:32):
a seller, the question is isit a good time to sell? Should
I sell now? Or should Isell in six months or should I sell
a year from now? You don'treally there's no way to really know whether
the right answer, But what youcan do is assessed, well, if
you sold now, here's what you'dbe looking at right, and you can
take that information and then compare thatwith some sort of projection on the other
path, right or the other choice. If you're a buyer now we're talking

(01:34:56):
about for lifestyle reasons, like itmakes sense, like it Jim, if
you told me I got should Ibuy now? But listen, I'm moving
out of town next year, I'mretiring next year, I'm gonna buy.
I don't want to rent. Ihate renting. Can I buy kind?
I might be to solve for profita year from now or two years from
now. You can't really answer thatquestion, but you would say, well,
if you're definitely moving out of townand you want to guaranteed profit,

(01:35:16):
there's no guarantee, So maybe maybeyou're not a buyer right now. Right,
But if it's like, yeah,this is where we're gonna live,
we can ride out whatever the marketbrings, then you know the next step
is figure out can you buy?Not should you buy? Can you buy?
Because unless you know if you can, then then you're just it's just

(01:35:39):
like you're just doing thought experiments.Right. But if you're a potential buyer
and it's fine to wait, youcan wait for whatever you're waiting for,
but know if you can do it. Also know kind of hone in on
what you're waiting for, which usuallyis a payment in a neighborhood, right
like a style of home and thislocation. The results in a payment that
I'm comfortable with, and then youcan sit back and wait for those stars

(01:36:01):
to align for you. So it'sjust there's a lot of fog in the
analysis, but you can start toclarify specific acts aspects of it. Right
So, if you're a seller,you know what you can get if you
sell it for you know, withina margin. If you're a buyer,
you're going to know kind of whatyou're upper limited is. For qualifying,
you should hone in on what yourupper limit is from a budget perspective,

(01:36:21):
those times, those are oftentimes twodifferent numbers, right, Like what you
qualify for is my world what youcan afford. A lot of people like
say, hey, Mike, whatcan I afford? I don't answer what
you can afford? I answer whatyou qualify for? What you can afford
is you have to do that analysisand you should know that, right what
are you paying for rent? Howtight are things right now? Are you

(01:36:41):
able to save? Are you youknow scrapping and scraping for every dime to
make the electricity payment. You know, like, so you have to know
where you stand there, so canyou do it? Is super critical to
when should I do it? Right? Should I do it? Or when
should I do it? You haveto know can you do it? You
just have to know. It's soimportant and people get so It's funny how

(01:37:02):
so many people I talk to kindof like, yeah, I know,
I got to get the mortgage.I'll deal with that later, and good.
Yeah, you should never go thatway. You need to flip it
the other way. I always say, wouldn't you be better if you're doing
a if you're doing a finance deal, to be so well qualified and vetted

(01:37:23):
for the finance that when you getthat approval, it's almost like having a
cashiers check in your back pocket,right, you're walking around with the cashiers
check, as opposed to I thinkI could buy the house. You're walking
around with cash in your back pocketeffectively to buy the house as long as
it specs and appraises and it meetsthe federal guidelines for the loan you got

(01:37:43):
the house. How it's such abetter expying experience when you're in that situation
and having that confidence as opposed tonot knowing or I got a pretty good
idea and then your shell shock thatsomething throws you for a loop that you
didn't know you You definitely don't wantto be because this still happens in this

(01:38:04):
industry, right like you, somepeople think the goal agents fall into this
category, buyers fall into this category. The goal is to get a pre
approval letter, right, or thegoal is to get into contract, and
they lose sight of what the ultimategoal is, which is to get to
the finish line. And so youcan get you can have a pre approval
letter you know that's either worth somethingor not worth much. You can get

(01:38:28):
into contract and cross your fingers.You know, even people in my position
loan originators crossing his fingers that,oh gee, I sent him out,
you know, four to fifty preapproval. Let's hope this thing works out.
I don't know, though, We'vegot to throw it to the underwriters.
So like you know, we don'tknow until the underwriters get into it,
and it's just a different approach,and you don't You definitely don't want
to be that person if you wantto start that process. Eight eight eight

(01:38:50):
nine seven three seven eight two eighteight eight eight nine seven three seven eight
two eight. You can start thatprocess. Mike can help you out with
that. You can see how youcredit is. Maybe you have to do
some repair work, right. Yourun out of me head all the time.
It's so valuable to have somebody whoknows like what they're looking at when

(01:39:11):
it comes to credit and things thatyou can do. I'm not like a
credit repair expert, but I'm definitelya credit optimization expert, and so there's
things that I can say, Hey, listen, if you need work,
if you need to work on it, you know, when's a better time
to know than now? Right,if you need some work, So you
don't want to find that out whenyou're in contract or when you're you know
your lease is up next month andyou have to give notice to your landlord,

(01:39:32):
like, hey, I'm buying rightyou and Jimithy mentioned so many things
that happened this week in our teamAto Florida Home pros. Right. We
had a guy call us up acouple of days ago, Dan, and
he has credit problems and he wouldlike to buy something soon. We went
over his situation. I was goingto give him over to you, Mike,
But his credit situation seemed complicated.So he had already used a free

(01:39:57):
service back in ninety four and gothis credit repaired at one time in the
past ninety four, a long timeago. Yeah, So I recommended that
he goes to a certain nonprofit groupthat can help him walk through. It
was way more complicated than just doa couple of things. But we're not
making any money of that. Wegot him to a legitimate group that's free.
It's a nonprofit you know, thatwill work with him. No,

(01:40:21):
it's a reputable company. I cando the right thing. I'm curious.
Oh Kevin Morris, Oh yeah,that's right, Kevin mar Well, he's
not there anymore. But where KevinMahr used to work, and then we
had Today, I'm meeting with Richard. He is going to sell a rental
property that I helped him buy acouple of years ago, and I need
to go over there to do apunch out list with him to find out

(01:40:43):
what kind of work needs to bedone to get the most money for the
house without going nuts, you know, just a little pain or a little
fluffing up here or there. Yeah, so what you Yeah, yeah,
exactly, So we're going at Yeah, I knew I should have said that
word. So we're going to man. As soon as I said it,
as like that was, Jimmy jumpedin with yeah, like you did for

(01:41:04):
me. So nice. So we'remeeting with Richard today and we're going to
go over what we think needs tobe done to the house, and then
I'm going to be bringing a cleaningcrew and handyman people and stuff like that
to come in and take care ofit. Did you say handyman people are
handy people? Handyman people handy manpeople know because we haven't decided which group

(01:41:29):
handy being. But so we domore than just hey, you want to
buy the house, sell the house, We you know, walk you through
the process, get you to thepeople that you need to solve your problems,
whatever they are. I'm working withthree probate cases right now or estate
cases, and probably going to beworking with the fourth soon. And in
those cases there's a lot of movingparts that you don't have to deal with.

(01:41:51):
The owners never lived there, theydon't know what's going on with the
property. The house implantation that Iwas dealing with. I had to hire
a ten company to go over theretent the house. Now, I just
found out during the inspection that there'sa fireplace chimney and the tent was so
heavy it smashed the fireplace chimney.Unluckily it wasn't a brick fireplace chimney,

(01:42:14):
was like a metal No, it'slike a metal tube. What do you
call those? You know? Yeah, the flume thing. So, uh,
it isn't gonna it isn't sound asbad as I thought it was going
to be, but it's still gotto be dealt with. And the owners
are out of state. They can'tbe dealing with all this stuff. And
the other thing that a lot ofpeople are realizing with me is that they're
dealing with the attorneys. Not all. None of these people working with Paul

(01:42:39):
Krasker right now. Because of theareas they're working in. Paul referred them
out to other areas. But thecommunication isn't always the greatest, and they
talk like lawyers, so you don'tknow what's going on. Even I had
to ask them like four emails,four different times, can you explain this
again? So does this mean basedon what you just said, does this
mean that you know? No,no, it doesn't, And you don't
have to go back and back andthe owners they're just like, I don't

(01:43:01):
know what to ask even right.So having people that know what they're doing
about this stuff and having the resources, yeah, task all the people Ross.
We came to you recently for theplantation property for the useful life report
to find the great company that youhave to get is the loose useful life
report for the house, so thatbefore or after the chimney damage. The

(01:43:25):
useful life was after we found outafterward. Yeah, we tented and then
we found out we had the thingafter the inspection. Just wanted to wrap
up one. A couple other thingshere. I want to get back to
Mike. I want to say acouple of things. One of my favorite
companies when I was doing short sales. It seems like everybody's getting their karma
this this week. Aquan, whichwas one of the companies on my own

(01:43:47):
services. They were based in Texas, but they had a place in West
Palm and they were at the bigoffice. Oh my god, this is
Aquan where the loans were. Sothe servicing, the loan servicing transfers throughout
the life. Alona cantarent I thinkand loans started to go into default.
Ackland was picking up the akolons thatwere called the servicer, so they were

(01:44:09):
servicing loans that went into default.Aquan specialized in either collecting the money or
foreclosing on the property or negotiating aloan mod or negotiating a short cell.
The bank and the lenders weren't reallyinvolved in that. They hired Aqwan to
act as the servicer for them.At tacked on their behalf and Aquan dealt

(01:44:30):
with it. And at the heightthe height of the crisis in you know,
twenty ten to twenty thirteen, thiscompany was one of the biggest players
in that market. But everybody hadcomplaints with them because they were so overrun
with stuff and they weren't handling thefiles according to the federal regulations like they

(01:44:53):
were supposed to. What deeds whenyou had bankruptcy courts that were two year
backlog, I mean, what canyou do if you're the services so payments.
So Oquen is now settling three hundredand thirty thousand homeowners who were in
trouble with their mortgage from twenty tento two thousand and seventeen are eligible to

(01:45:15):
get money back from Aquin for BPOsthat were conducted while they were in trouble
with their house. So what isa BPO. It's called a broker's price
opinion, and that's where an agent, a license agent will go out and
give you a comparative market analysis ofthe house. But broker price opinion is
a higher standard than a comp andthen BPO broker's price opinion is lower than

(01:45:41):
an appraisal, so it goes appraisalbroke a price opinion than a realter Coman's
a method of current market value onyour own so determining the current market.
So what Aquinn did, like alot of other companies, when the market
was just crashing and every month thevalues of homes were dropping every single month
for years, Aquan every month wasdoing a BPO on the property. And

(01:46:02):
the BPOs the people that analyzed theproperty for these companies, some of them
didn't even go to the property.They did drive bys or just did a
computer analysis. And they were chargingbetween sixteen and seventy dollars apiece for these
BPOs and then Aquan would double itand then put that fee onto the homeowner

(01:46:23):
so that when they were you know, when they were in trouble with the
mortgage, if they did a shortsale or a loan mod or if they
did a foreclosure, they can countthat cost as a cost of doing business
and charge the homeowner for it.So now they're going back and say,
you shouldn't have done that, andit was okay to do BPOs, but
not the way they were doing it, and not the way they were charging

(01:46:44):
the excessive fees. So homeowners thatgot ripped off during that period or got
damaged by that period are now ableto get sixty to seventy dollars per person,
right for that's nice, Right,So three and thirty families, three
hundred and thirty thousand families, andthen double it for the lawyers exactly.

(01:47:05):
Yeah. So I just thought thatthat was kind of interesting that we're seeing
these old companies. Let's see,it comes out, oh, eight point
five million in attorney fees, eightpoint five to nine million, fifty three
million for the refunds, eight pointnine to five million for the attorney's that's
so bad, yeah yeah, percentagewise. Yeah. So it's just really

(01:47:27):
funny how all those things worked out. If I'm not mistaken, I thought
Aquan changed their name. I thoughtat one point they got so the reputation
was so bad that they actually changedtheir name so that people didn't know who
they used to be. It's possible. I mean there was a couple companies
they specialized in, uh, youknow, taking over servicing for mortgages that
were in default or struggling mortgages.Right, So you don't have a whole

(01:47:50):
lot of that happening. So ifthat was their, if that was their
you know, specialty, well thatmarket's kind of gone away. So I
don't know what Aquen is doing now. Yeah, I haven't heard about them
along. I thought it was misterC. You know what I'm talking about,
mister C. Mister Cooper, Yeah, I do you want to say
it? Yeah? I thought Aquinis mister Cooper, but I'm not sure.

(01:48:12):
No, that was that WASPS andNation Star, Oh Nation Stars,
mister Cooper. Yeah, okay.So the other thing I wanted to talk
about is I took a really interestingstatistical annow analysis class this week at the
Kelwilliams office. It was taught byRichard Bass, who's been around in real

(01:48:35):
estate for forty years. He ownslike four Kellowaniams brokerages in the area.
The guy's like really wonky, likeme probably more wonky and really likes going
into the stats. And let metell you, the stats he was able
to pull out from the MLS wasamazing. Like when we sat down,
I said to him, so we'resliding into a buyer market. The inventory

(01:49:00):
is increasing. And he looked atme and he goes, you're crazy.
We're not sliding into a buyer's market. And he got and I go,
you know me, no, mystats, And I'm very proud to go
up against anybody about the stats.I'm like, well, March of twenty
twenty three, we are a twopoint eight months of inventory, and now
we're at four point four months ofinventory. And he looked at me like
he didn't care. I go,six months is neutral, right, and

(01:49:21):
he's like yeah, And I go, well, the month before March,
we were at four point eight monthsof inventory, right, So we went
from two point eight to four pointeight, then down to four point four,
but we're still way up compared toa year ago. And he was
just looking at me. Then hepulled up the stats, and I saw
a whole new way to look atthe way this market is down here in

(01:49:42):
Florida. First of all, aswe already talked about the interest rates are
not crazy high historically, right,the seven percent interest rate is kind of
you know, is yeah, thefive to ten, Yeah, but it's
kind of the norm of what's happenedover the last thirty years, and people
just don't want to acknowledge that.They don't want to acknowledge it. But

(01:50:03):
that's the way the stats are.The other thing I thought was really interesting
is the reason why he said thatwe're not sliding into a buyer's market is
that the amount of houses that wesell every year. We used to we
got as high as over six millionunits sold a year a couple of years

(01:50:23):
ago during COVID, and the lowhas been four million, which was last
year. So our range is betweenfour and six million. And what they're
saying is is that at the fourmillion mark, which is what we hit
last year, that's the base basebase. No matter what happens, you're
always going to have. As longas we have the same amount of people

(01:50:43):
in the country and the economy isnot bad, you're always going to sell
at least four million. It's almostimpossible not to just because people pass,
people grow families, people get sick, people have to move for relocation.
That's like, based on our population, the four million that has to happen
and no matter what. So thenit becomes you know, how do you

(01:51:04):
get back and that that would bethe luw. So then it becomes how
do you get back to that fivemillion five point five million normal sales that
we've been experiencing for so many years. And what they're saying is is that
the pent up demand is so badright now. When he showed these stats
that when the interest rates do drop, yeah, they there really is going

(01:51:29):
to be a flood of buyers outthere and it's going to get crazy.
And they feel that Richard feels thatmost of the realtors are not explaining that
to the customers, and the customersaren't thinking that way. They're just hearing,
oh, I feel like interest ratesare high, I'm going to want
to wait from the drop. They'renot thinking, well, what happens when

(01:51:50):
that happens. Everybody's thinking, likeyou, So you're much better off.
And I'm going to keep pounting this. Okay, I've said it many many
times. If you want to buy, you're much better off buying now,
as long as you can afford it, and you want to buy and you're
going to be there for a while. You're going to buy it now,
you're going to pay the higher interestrate. Then you're going to wait for

(01:52:12):
the market to change. And whenthe market does change, when the prices
do drop and you have that higherinterest rate, what's going to happen is
you've already bought your house. Sowhen the values in your neighborhood start going
up, because everybody else is buyingin your neighborhood and the values start going
up, you're going to be ableto profit in that or take enjoy it.

(01:52:32):
Enjoy that appreciation because you've already boughtthe house, and you're not worried
that you're paying too much for thehouse because you're watching your house voul you
grow, your values growing because ofthe demand. Because the interest rates are
low. You just follow the interestrates and wait for those rates to get
to the to the point where youfeel comfortable it's time to refine. I

(01:52:53):
always call it the trough. You'relooking for that lowest price before it starts
going up again, the edge ofthat, and then you refine into the
rates that everybody else is paying.Whenever those rates drop, but you've already
bought your house. So you boughtyour house at the low rate compared to
what's happening when the interest rates drop. So all you're doing is just in

(01:53:14):
your interest rate. But you've alreadybought your house lower and you'll have more
equity than waiting around for the interestrates to change before you do it now.
The trick to that is is thatyou have to want to buy the
house now and you can afford it. If you can't do either of those
two things, you shouldn't pressure yourself. We should talk like if we're talking
about the demand of predicting that there'sone prediction I think is a reasonable one

(01:53:36):
right now, which is hometown heroes. Maybe we talk about this next next
week, so that hometown here isis coming back refunded. That starts July
first. If I were a seller, I would expect to have more buyers
on the street starting in July,maybe even June next month because getting into
contract closing after So I think thatthere's going to be more buyers in the

(01:53:57):
next two months than there have beenrecently, right, and so that could
impact your ability to sell, whetherif you want to be a buyer,
if you want to take advantage ofthat you have to like, we got
to talk now. We got totalk now. If you're not talking now,
don't wait till July, it's gonnabe too late. You're gonna miss
it. You might miss the funds, but you're also gonna miss the You're
gonna be on the back end ofthe rush yep, which is not gonna

(01:54:20):
be good for you. So no, it's not, so take advantage of
it. We know that we're probablyonly have ten weeks of that program,
probably based on historical facts roughly,So take advantage of it. Now,
start coming to us today. We'regonna talk more about the Hometown Heroes program
next week. Mike, thank youso much. Ross, thank you so
much. Jimothy, what's gonna happennext? We got the locker room coming

(01:54:41):
up next, are going to talka little bit of sports with Greek,
Joe and myself. Now, ofcourse, we just had the NFL released
your schedule for everybody, so weknow what games are when and everything,
so we'll be going over that.We have the Dolphins schedule right here,
so we know who they're gonna beplaying when. We'll be going over that.
Big time Panthers just won their theirtheir series last night against the Boston

(01:55:03):
Bruins. So they'll be taking onthe New York Rangers. It starts on
Wednesday. That series the Eastern ConferenceFinals, so we'll be getting into that.
So we got a lot coming uphere in the locker room, so
don't go anywhere right here on RealRadio ninety two one and one on one
seven. We you've done, Jimall done, all right than you,
guys. I'm great, guys,