Taxes. Down payment assistance. Shout outs. Pre approvals. Insurance. Property tax proposals.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Navigating today's real estate market can be tricky. 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 Talk real 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 your hosts,
Jim Depola and Johnny c. You live on real radio.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, good Saturday morning. Welcome to another edition it's Florida
Talk real Estate. We got you for the next two
hours of infotainment. Great to have you with us. We
see out there in ninety one one o one seven.
Thanks for tuning in. Maybe you're on your free download
your iHeartRadio app. If you're not, you could be worldwide
listening for free. Thank you very much for doing just that.

(00:57):
And of course you can live stream with us on
a Sunday. It's two potential options right there, Facebook, Florida
Talk real Estate on Facebook on YouTube as well.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
That's Florida Talk real Estate, LLC.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Home of a ton of informational chunk videos and a
live stream every Saturday morning.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
If you're with us out the gates, good.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Morning, Thank you, and of course, you're always welcome to
be a part of the program. Eight seven seven nine
two seven six nine six nine. If you dial that up,
you'll be a part of the program with your questions, comments,
concerns in the world of real estate. Dive into the
conversation at hand. The first voice you'll hear the melodious
tones of our producer, Short and Air.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Jimmithy my brother from another mother. How you doing?

Speaker 4 (01:35):
Hello?

Speaker 5 (01:35):
Hello, and good good morning, Johnny.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
How you doing today? By I'm so good man, Thank
you very much for asking. Always nice to see you,
excellent good see you too.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
But Saturday morning, it's the twenty second today of February.
Just a timestamp it we're live. I'm your old buddy,
you'r old pal, Johnny C your air traffic control. Let's
get your starting line up on a Saturday morning. Let's
say good morning to Mike Row, the mortgage guy from
the mortgage firm.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
I'm looking right at you. Yeah, hello, my friend.

Speaker 6 (02:00):
Good morning.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
It's nice to see you.

Speaker 6 (02:01):
I just realized it's two twenty two.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
It is.

Speaker 6 (02:04):
It's amazing to to to quite a coincidence, right, yeah,
it is it coincidental. It happens not that often once.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Once a year probably, yeah, yeah, I mean it feels
like it at least about once a year.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Nice to see it.

Speaker 6 (02:17):
If there were other things you're doing only once a year,
you would say that's not very often.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
It's true. Yeah, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
I mean, I guess it depends on your perspective of
time and reality, right.

Speaker 6 (02:25):
Oh oh no, it's very often then, and like you know,
the time is universe, are you know infinite?

Speaker 3 (02:31):
We do that all Like I said, it's nothing, We
do it all the time. Yeah, yeah, we definitely.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Good morning to Ross Kamara Nazis with bright Wing Insurance.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Do you know beads? What's up? Ross?

Speaker 4 (02:41):
No? Hold on? Good to see everybody.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Good to see you as well.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
Yes, she might, but I think he's good.

Speaker 6 (02:45):
It's it's got a lot of equipment in a way.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, nobody cares about our configuration in the studio.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
But Ross is like most of my time on my left.
It's so weird to have you on the right.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
Yeah, yeah, but it's weird being a bear. Yea.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Is it comfy or is there?

Speaker 4 (03:02):
Is it all kind of cramped? Is it cramped?

Speaker 7 (03:04):
H You look good on video though, Yeah, you look
great over there. Yeah, you really did, Mike, Mike, Yeah, yeah,
I'm here. Can't okay there present. I couldn't say it.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
I can't see him.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
And if you are streaming with us currently, you're like, uh,
what's Jim doing. He's trying to get me on camera.
I believe, of course, for thirteen plus years now, I've
told you he runs a top producing Calowiams team, our
fairless leader, and you'll find him at the Florida Homepro's
team Callowilliams Innovations.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
That's Jimmy d Jim Defola. Are we set over here?
How you doing, my man?

Speaker 4 (03:34):
Well, we're doing the best we can, of course, a
good enough.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
A minute before the intro starts, it's hard to set
my camera up.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
Well, there's so many cameras in here now that it's
I didn't notice. But we're onto a second line on
the stream yards so uh second, like a second layer
of the thing. I didn't even see your camera on there.
So anyway, Happy South Florida, everybody. I hope everybody's having
a good February. Was nice. It was a little chili today.

(04:03):
Did everybody like that or not? Like it crosses? No,
but he's cold right now.

Speaker 6 (04:08):
Yeah, I don't mind it.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
I like it. I mean it's not that cold. I
mean sixty nine seventy degrees.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
The groundhog was.

Speaker 4 (04:15):
Right, Oh, it came out earlier or something, the.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Groundhog on Groundhog's Day. Yeah, we're going to get longer winter.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
So yeah, we got another bleapecs if it comes out earlier,
it doesn't see his shadow. I forget I saw a shadow.
So that means if you see it's getting more. Yeah.
Is that really scientific?

Speaker 6 (04:33):
I know, I know it's very, very one of the
early examples of American science exactly.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Because Patani Phil is the one that gets all the hype. Yeah,
but there are many groundhogs that they do this.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
I've heard there's like one in Georgia.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, and they're not. They don't all agree. They all
have different takes. We only kind of like Google right
as the main source for your search engine.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
So one of those duck that go, yeah, bing that stuff.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
Baby's right.

Speaker 6 (05:04):
It's like a credit report score, so it fills the Google.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
Everybody else is Yeah, he's the Google.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
That's exactly right. How and why that became I don't know, I've.

Speaker 6 (05:14):
Never really thought about it. So what happens he pops
up and then if he if the sun is at
the right angle, he'll see his shadow, and then he'll
go back in longer.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Winter, right yeah, and if not, then here goes spring.

Speaker 6 (05:25):
So it kind of depends on the direction he's looking
when he pops up or does he actually spin around.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
I'm gonna be I want to be honest here if
I can.

Speaker 4 (05:35):
I never.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
I don't watch that.

Speaker 8 (05:36):
I don't think I've ever seen it because it's a
full on festival. It's like a big thing that they
do in that town.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Is yeah, right, it's probably.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
And that's like trying to think if I'm like seen
like like maybe replays on the news or something.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
I think I'm.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Literally viewing the movie in my head. So yeah, I
don't know. All right, Well you imagine waking up and
knowing doing that.

Speaker 6 (05:59):
Maybe somebody could call it. Somebody who knows they could
call it.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
Sure you could do that.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, hey, Jim, Hey, so I think he saw a shadow?

Speaker 4 (06:09):
Yeah? Yeah. Every time I think of that, that Groundhog
Day thing, I think of the movie. And I really
hated that movie. What I hated groundhog Day? Oh my god,
I hated that. And I'm a Bill Murray fan. I
like Bill Murray. But I hated that movie.

Speaker 6 (06:24):
You don't like Groundhog.

Speaker 4 (06:25):
I don't like the whole idea of over and over
and over again. That really, that whole part of the
movie really bothered me, that whole again every day this
is my life. I actually liked that movie. That movie
was okay, I know it's that weird. I don't know
why I didn't like the other one.

Speaker 6 (06:41):
Maybe I was it's got to be something else.

Speaker 4 (06:43):
Then. I think I was younger and I was a
little too impatient when I was in the movie theaters.
It's like, I don't I don't.

Speaker 6 (06:48):
Oh, you saw it in the movie theater.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
Yeah, actually, movie theater. I'm old, I do.

Speaker 6 (06:52):
That that that. Couldn't you walk out of the movie, Jim?
Did I walk out of the movie?

Speaker 4 (07:04):
No? No, I didn't walk out.

Speaker 6 (07:05):
I walked out of one movie in my life, did
you did you?

Speaker 4 (07:10):
No?

Speaker 6 (07:10):
It was I went and it was I was on
a date. I was probably I don't know if I
was high school maybe just like close after that. But
it was the crying game, Oh the Christ And I
didn't see the ending, I know, so I got about
halfway through and we were just like, what is what
is happened in this movie. So now I've seen it
since then, and it's actually a good movie, you know,
interesting movie at least, not one that But I walked

(07:31):
out of that movie in the in the movie theater
because it was just two that movie wrong vibe.

Speaker 4 (07:35):
Did you ever see that movie? This is like a
really off movie. If you saw it, I'm very surprised.
But Chuck and Buck, have you ever heard of that movie? Chucks?
You have? You have heard?

Speaker 6 (07:49):
You have to announce something like that. There's There's Children
in Cars.

Speaker 4 (07:55):
Mike White was the writer and director of that, and
you know he did He's now White Lotus and everything.
But that was like his very first movie. That movie
was like the Crying Game to be As I was
watching it, I really didn't want to watch it, but
I watched it to the end anyway, and the Crying Game.
Everybody was too whiny in that movie for me. A

(08:17):
lot of the characters very whiny people. I'm like, this
just get me upset.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
It's a working endorsement.

Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah, exactly right. Hey, we do have a lot to
talk about today, so let's get into it. We have
the first market report for twenty twenty five came out
completely different than what the news says is what the
real estate report says. So we're going to talk a
little bit about that. We're also going to talk about
property taxes. Remember I mentioned what was it the middle

(08:49):
of last year, I said, Hey, Texas is going to
end their property taxes. Up in Florida isn't doing it
too well? Florida's got a bill out there where they're
exploring the idea of ending property taxes in Florida. So
we're going to take a look at that.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Is there a bill or the governor contemplating.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
There's a bill to contemplate. There's a bill to contemplate, right,
so what there is there's a bill that there's a
bill to I know, you gotta love politicians. There's a
bill to study it talked Ober first, right, so there's
a bill out there to see if they want to
do it.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Like because we haven't collected taxes long enough to understand
the impacts.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
That we got to act money. So that but it's
kind of interesting, you know that if you know, Mike.
The reason why this is really interesting we have and
this is a great success story. I'm so excited about
this right now. One of the shoutouts. I'm kind of
roman 're all over here, but I have to do
this shout out because we're talking about this specifically. Matthew

(09:46):
and Adina. They came to us eleven years ago. And
Matthew is a decorated war veteran and uh, thank you
for your service. And and he came to us because
he was in big trouble with his house and he
worked for a government agency and he was being laid off.

(10:07):
This is like eleven years ago during that crash, and
he was losing his house, and he was very proud,
you know, like most people, they're very proud people, and
blessure and it was really tough for him, Blessure, Mike,
really tough for him to go through this and have
his children watch him go through this and everything. So
we were able to, with the law office of Polykrasker

(10:29):
and short Sell Innovations, able to short sell the house
that he was in trouble with and then got him
to walk away debt free, so he didn't have to
worry about this hanging over his head and he got
some money to move, which was good. And for eleven
years I've been calling him and his wife, Adina, and
just checking in and saying, hey, you know, if you

(10:49):
ever want to buy again, And every year it was no,
well every couple of times a year was no, no
no or no answer right, no, no, no, no no.
And then last week they called me up out of
the blue. Adina, who is my second person that I
call force and nature. I'll talk about that later. She
called up and she goes, hey, I think we're qualified

(11:11):
for a mortgage. I really want to buy this house
that she already had one picked out and everything. So
we got over to Mike. You know, Mike is the
perfect person for Matthew and Adena because Mike is you know,
top notch when it comes to VA loans.

Speaker 6 (11:25):
All loans, but yeah, VA loans.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
Yeah yeah, Eddie loan Eddie type below right, especially Va, Yeah,
but Va especially. So this is the first time this
ever happened to me. Mike sent me a message and said,
don't worry about property taxes when you're budgeting for mortgage payment.
I'm like, well, what's up with that? So what is
up with that, Mike? Why don't I have to worry
about property taxes for Matthew and Adena.

Speaker 6 (11:49):
So one of the exemptions that's allowed, So you have
your your traditional homestead exemption that many people are aware of,
but there's additional exemptions like a senior citizen exemption that's
additional like five thousand. They also have a veteran disabled
veterans exemption. And so if you have, if you actually
have one hundred percent disability rating with the VA, you
will be exempt one hundred percent exempt from the advolorum

(12:10):
portion of your property tax bill, which is the large
percentage of it. They won't be exempt from the non advalorum.
The non advolorum is like the services like trash and
you know schools, now schools and oh schools. Yeah, so
it's think of like services that are provided versus like
budget items for the for the county. So yeah, any anybody,

(12:31):
any veterans out there who have one hundred percent rating
disability rating with the VA, if you haven't done that
part of your homestead exemption, you're really really missing out.
But the good news for them is we get to
exclude the property tax, that portion of the property tax
from their qualifying payment. We we it's kind of based

(12:53):
on like, hey, you're going to take advantage of this.
We actually have them sign and affidavid saying hey, they're
going to be they're going to be filed the homestead,
they're going to be finaling the the venor exemption, they're
eligible for it, and then we don't have to include
that in their qualifying payments, which means essentially use the dollars.

Speaker 4 (13:11):
Isn't it. Oh yeah, undred for sure more Yeah, well
not thousands, but hundreds and hundred.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Pinding on the homie.

Speaker 6 (13:17):
Yeah, but yeah, I would say it's something like the
number I use. I used one point six percent of
the you know, as a tax as basically a good
estimate for taxes. So on one hundred thousand dollars, it
would be sixteen hundred bucks annually. Yeah, so three hundred thousand,
you know, what's that forty thirty eight hundred.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
Nineteen thirty two. Yeah, huh, thirty two hundred you said,
you said one hundred and sixteen sixteen hundred.

Speaker 6 (13:47):
Times three, Yeah, forty forty eight hundred, eight hundred, right,
so yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:51):
So that's yeah, that comes up to four hundred dollars
a month. Yeah, so you're looking at three hundred to
five hundred dollars a month for most people, depending on
the price point. That's a pretty amazing amount. It is,
So that really opened up a lot of opportunities for
them on their budget or what they could buy. We've
gone out a couple of places already. We haven't found
the right one yet. And one of them I really

(14:14):
thought it would have been a great deal for them.
It was a two story house in West Palm. It
was a much better neighborhood than the first house we
looked at. The first house was in better shape though.
The second house we looked at better neighborhood, gated community,
Low h Away, but that community, half the community has
wood frame houses and they're in really bad shape most

(14:36):
of them. The siding, the siding in all that community,
the exterior siding for the homes very very bad conditioned.
Most of them. They just don't upkeep them the correct way.
Now this one they clad it. So. It used to
have what's called like T one to eleven siding, which
is a thin half inch or five eight inch piece

(14:59):
of plywood basically that has some decorative grooves on it.
And they call T one eleven siding, right, And that's
the siding that was used over there, and it's over time.
If you don't take care of it. After a while,
you can actually just stick your finger through the siding
and just feel the insulation behind it.

Speaker 6 (15:16):
Right, So I mean it's wood. It's not not even
pressure treated.

Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yeah, yeah, like had it. So what this family did
on this house that we looked at, they did what
you did, which is put the hardy plank on, right?
Can you put a hardy plank on yours? Hardy plank
is a cement fiberboard material. I love it. It's got
a fifty year lifespan, very fire retardant, and if you

(15:42):
if you prep it the right way and you do
all the right things like the backing behind it, and
make sure you do all it the right way, it
could last a very very long time. Don't have to
worry about wood rot that much anymore. You know a
lot of really positive stuff with it. They put it
on this house, and but it was not in good

(16:02):
shape at all. There were a lot of it broken pieces,
broken like. It was brittle. I'm not even sure it
was cement fiberboard. It might have been a different type
of product because it was so brittle.

Speaker 6 (16:12):
Maybe it wasn't the name brand, yeah, man might not have.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
Been that name brand. And it was all beat up
and there was a ton of wood rot around the
house and good for V loan right via loan. But yeah, VA,
so we had to pull out on that one. Thank
god they had us working it because a lot of
people might not know that, you know, that house would

(16:36):
meet VA standards. There's a lot of agents that I
don't even know about VA and FHA standards for appraisal,
which is not any harder than other ones. They're just
more diligent on making sure that there's certain things like
I have a house right now, Mike that doesn't have
carpeting in the bedrooms. So with a v A loan

(16:58):
or an FHA lone, if you have cement floors, unfinished
cent floors in bedrooms or or anywhere, yeah, that's not
gonna fly with f h A or v A correct.

Speaker 6 (17:11):
Yeah, that's right. So unless it's like an area where
that's normal, so for example, an unfinished garage floor. Of course,
of course i'm finished basement that we have a lot
of that, but that would be fine. But yeah, if
it's if it's normally covered, then FAHA and V are
gonna want that to be covered.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yeah, so you have to be careful on this stuff.
But what a great success story, you know, we helped
them get out of that jam. Now they're ready to
buy again. So I'm really excited for them. I was
so happy when they called. It was so great, and
we and when I met him in person, I haven't
seen him in eleven years, right, and it was just
like when we saw him eleven years ago. It was

(17:47):
just great. So really happy for them and looking forward
to helping them out. Also, we had Sophia and Andres
decide to work with me to help them buy their
first home. We're going to be doing that this summer.
The reason why we're waiting for the summer is that
right now they can get Mike, I always get this wrong.
I called the Florida Bond program. Is that the incorrect

(18:09):
name for it?

Speaker 6 (18:10):
I mean, that's it. Florida Bond is one of the
programs that Florida Housing offers for down payment assists.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
Is that the ten thousand dollars one?

Speaker 6 (18:18):
It's one of the ten thousand dollars ones.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
Okay, so I caught the Florida Blob program anyway, that's
the Gindapola name.

Speaker 6 (18:24):
But you're not the only one. I was just talking to,
like the you know, one of the very top executives
at our company about that program, and she called it
the Florida Bond and I was like, no, I'm talking
about this one. And she's like, yeah, Florida Bond. So
she did the same thing that you do. Is just
because she's smart, umbrella, Well she is very smart. She
is very smart.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
Yeah. So the Florida Bond program, this bond program I'm
talking about, it gives you ten thousand dollars to help
you pay for your down payment payment and closing cross
down payment assistant some However, you do have to give
the money back if you refi, you sell the house,
you pay the loan off, or if you move out
and you turn it into rental or something it's not

(19:03):
your primary resident. You're supposed to give the ten thousand back,
but with no interest, you just giving back to ten grand.
So if you keep that money for twenty years and
then you sell the house, you're giving them back ten grand,
not ten grand plus interest. So that's a really great
program to get people in the door. But there's another
program that's actually a little better, and it's called My

(19:26):
Florida Hometown Hero or the Hometown Heroes.

Speaker 6 (19:29):
Hometown Heroes.

Speaker 4 (19:29):
I'll get a confused, might say Florida Holmes. Yea, the
Hometown Heroes program. That program, you can get five percent
of the loan value of the house that you're buying. Now,
can you explain that the difference between the purchase price
and the loan value, so that when people calculate this
you understand the right.

Speaker 6 (19:47):
Yeah. So essentially, when let's say you're doing an FH loan,
traditional FAHA loan has a three and a half percent
downpayment requirement. So if the purchase price of the home
or one hundred thousand going to your loan amount would
be ninety six and a half percent or ninety six thousand,
five hundred, right, The other three and a half percent
is your down payment, so that thirty five hundred dollars.
So when they calculate the down payment assistance on the

(20:10):
Hometown Heroes program, it's five percent of the loan amount,
not five percent of the purchase price.

Speaker 4 (20:15):
Right, So wouldn't be five thousand, which is five percent
of one hundred thousand, It would be five percent of
the ninety six fix exactly right.

Speaker 6 (20:23):
Yeah, And there's a minimum ten thousand, so you know,
you kind of work out those details. But essentially, if
you're buying a three hundred thousand dollars home, you're going
to get some a little bit less than fifteen thousand. Yeah,
and depending on your down payment.

Speaker 4 (20:37):
I was just checking for one of my buyers, just
messing around with it. So if they were buy a
four point fifty home four and fifty thousand in this example,
I use checking with the taxes and everything, it was
going to be thirty three thousand out of their pocket
right to buy the house. Then if they use the
Florida Bond program, they'd only have to bring to the

(20:57):
table twenty three thousand, right because they get to and
from the state. But with the with the crowd heroes,
they'd be getting almost twenty three thousand back. And that's
an extra thirteen thousand dollars compared to the other program.
And if you only need thirty three and you're getting
twenty three ten thousand, you're in your home. That's great.

Speaker 6 (21:18):
And it's the same caveat like you know that that
grant or that that's it's a second loan essentially, but
it's going to call a silent second so it stays
attached to the home. Zero enter a zero payment. But
when you when the first loan is paid off, that
money is repaid, and also if you were to move
out and keep it as an investment property.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
So really, so with Andre's and Sofia, what we're going
to do is we're going to start setting up the
searches right now and and really get understand the market
or what they're looking for, and then we're not going
to get out in the car and actually start looking
until probably late April, mid third week April, fourth week

(22:02):
of April, because the program doesn't start until July first.

Speaker 6 (22:05):
Mike, Yeah, So it's it's refunded every year on the
fiscal year, So if Florida's fiscal year starts on July first.

Speaker 4 (22:11):
So we're probably based on years past, we're probably going
to get one hundred million put into that coffer for
the Hometown Heroes program. And based on the last couple
of years, they spend about ten million a week roughly
with that program. Last year was a little slower, but
just rounded off to ten million a week. I think
it's going to be more this year. I think it's

(22:32):
going to be more buyers using that program this year.
I think it's going to be hotter.

Speaker 6 (22:37):
It could be it's I think we have two years. Essentially,
it was only it's only been two years where they
opened it up to all first time home buyers. So
the the original conception of this program is called Hometown Heroes,
and it was for a limited set of occupations, which
was basically first responders, right, hospital work, please well please fire,

(23:00):
you know, frontline kind of first responders. Then they expanded
it to something like fifty professions which included medical, included education,
county employees, things like that. And then when they actually
put it into law so it was now now codified
in the Florida statutes, they opened it up to all

(23:24):
first time home buyers. So that one hundred million, which
used to last you know, it would last all year.
It went very quickly, and it was it was months.

Speaker 4 (23:32):
Right, three months gone, and sometimes.

Speaker 6 (23:35):
You could stretch them out, you know, as we've done
that before and been very successful.

Speaker 4 (23:39):
Kind of.

Speaker 6 (23:40):
Once the funds are depleted, well there's some fallout like
loans that were reserved but didn't ever close, and so
those funds would come back, you know, maybe two million
at a time or one point two million, and then
nine hundred thousand, and then eventually it's like okay, the
funds are gone, like there's no more, so we're.

Speaker 4 (23:56):
Going to start getting ready for them. So the understand
the market really well. And then what's going to happen
is is we're going to wait and then if we
find something really hot, Mike, Let's say we found something
in May seventh, Okay, but we know that the funds
aren't going to be a bow bull to July Firth first,
could we go into contract and have a closing July

(24:17):
tenth and use that money or yes, right, that's good
because that's what my plan is. And my plan is
is to go find the house like in May June
with the longer cloth so that we can get the
money's that's what the plan. It's a much better plan
to do that. People buyers, if you're saying, hey, I
want that program, don't wait until July or even late

(24:40):
June and say I'm going to start the process now
and try to get everything going. I'm not just talking
about the application for the Hometown Heroes. I'm just talking
about trying to qualify for the loan. Understand it, what
you want to buy all of that stuff. Don't wait
till the last minute because everybody, there's tons of other
people that are going to be prepared, waiting in line,
ready for that money, and you're not going to get

(25:02):
that money.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Is there is there a negative to being in line,
getting prepped and applied right now and then not using it.

Speaker 6 (25:11):
No, No, could you reapply? You're not really even apply.
You don't apply for the down payment assistance like that
because basically you just you qualify for it, just like
quality like guidelines for you know, FHA a loan approval. Right,
So there's basically guidelines as long as you fit in

(25:31):
within the guidelines, which are things like there's income limits, right,
you can't you can't your household income or the borrow
income depending on the program, can't exceed a certain amount.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
You know.

Speaker 6 (25:44):
So there's there's minimum credit score requirements as the maximum DTI,
so things like that that are what I would call
typically overlays the rules on top of the rules. But
as long as you're within those, it's like you could
you just have a loan originator who knows what they're doing,
and you're gonna you're gonna get in the program.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
So yeah, you're touching on two really important parks there
alone originator that knows what they're doing. Yea and understands
the program and understands how to get at that money.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
Yes, Florida talk real estate dot com if you're looking for.

Speaker 4 (26:09):
That kind of knowledge for sure.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
And then it's so it's essentially about just getting in line.

Speaker 6 (26:15):
You just you The process is you reserve your funding.
So if you were there, it's almost like locking alone.
There's no negative to doing it.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
No, if you don't use it, that's right, And then
you can kind of when you are ready. So in
the instance that we're talking about right now, looking for
like a July ten clothes, are we getting them in
line right now?

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Like that is that processing?

Speaker 6 (26:40):
You can't reserve it, so I won't be able to
reserve the funds. But with Jim, what Jim is saying,
the reason we can do this is Jim's saying, once
those funds become available, the sooner you can reserve your funds,
the better.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
So nothing can be reserved right now on.

Speaker 6 (26:54):
You can't reserve anything until July first. You can reserve
the ten thousand. That programming, you can actually switch from
one to the other, like we we might do something
like that right like, hey, let's reserve the ten k
and then when July first, comes up. If we're still there,
we can do whatever. Now, none of this happens until
you have a contract, right, so you're not like reserving
months and months in advantage.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
Here, So this this has to be in contract.

Speaker 6 (27:17):
Yeah, you have to be in contract. That's definitely one
of the rules. And but we can like we do.
The whole loan is underwritten in house, like everything is
done just like it's a normal FHA or conventional or
VA loan. And then which is why the answer to
Jim's question is like, can we get started. We have
a contract, let's get the file approve, We're gonna have appraisal,
we're gonna have you know, loan approval. All of this

(27:38):
stuff is gonna be happening. And then as long as
our close date is after the funds are available, we
just quick you know, reserve the funds, make sure we
meet those guidelines, which of course we will sure and
we can do it very quickly. Right. So the process
of underwriting the loan is exactly the same. The only
difference is you have to number one, be uh, you know,

(28:01):
part of the program as a loan originator, as a professional,
and then you have to know what you're doing able
to get in and reserve check check check, and yeah,
and of course your company has to know what they're
doing too, right the underwriting and the loan delivery and
all the all the stuff that happens behind the scenes.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Okay, beautiful.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Well thanks for shedding a little bit of thirty on
that for me, because as I'm kind of walking through
it in my head, I'm thinking like, are there are
there negatives or is there is there some caveats to it?

Speaker 3 (28:23):
And the answer is no, there isn't there really is
there is.

Speaker 4 (28:26):
It's I mean, you do have to pay it back,
so you're you're taking out a loan, but you're you're
for the house anyway.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
For money that you maybe don't have a need. And
that's yeah, never and if you do have it. So
that's the other perspective is you can still get sometimes
you can still get it. Why why spend your money
if you can spend the state's money and you're going.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
To pay it back one day, but let them kind
of throw the.

Speaker 4 (28:51):
Extra a long long time ago. Oh PM. Other people's money,
people's money, other people's.

Speaker 6 (28:56):
Money, especially PM and GERO percent interest, cheap money right
zero and no payments, not only it is zero percent.
There's no payment obligation at all whatsoever. So it's even
better than like, hey, you go to your furniture store
and get the three years zero percent right. Well, no,
you got to pay that back in three years, right
or pay a bunch of interest.

Speaker 4 (29:15):
Right, as long as you qualify, and I mean there is.

Speaker 6 (29:18):
There is the one key, Well, first time home buyer
is the number one thing, which is technically within three years. Right,
It just means that you haven't owned a primary residence
in the last three years. And that's a little that
that primary resident. I could own ten investment properties, and
as long as I haven't owned a primary, I can
still qualify for this down payment assistance program.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
And even if it is your primary but it's not homesteaded,
you could consider.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
That a rental.

Speaker 6 (29:44):
Is that how you No, No, you'd have to not
have lived there.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (29:48):
Yeah, the definition of primary like homestead is a bonus
being a primary, But that doesn't make it your brains
like where do you live?

Speaker 4 (29:54):
Where you live?

Speaker 6 (29:55):
Do you own where you live?

Speaker 4 (29:57):
Essentially, but three years is a short window h a
lot of it.

Speaker 6 (30:00):
I've run into many people who haven't owned in the
past three years.

Speaker 4 (30:04):
Me I'm gonna be probably buying later this summer, and
I'm now a first time home buyer again because I've
decided to slumber it and live at the beach for
I'll be a beach bump for a while for a while.

Speaker 6 (30:14):
Yeah, so I don't know how you're going to move
away from that. You might as well buy it.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
Let me tell you, last night, with the windows open
and the breeze burrowing through the windows and they're here
in the waves cross on the beach, it's like, oh
my gosh, leave that well. When you hear the jackhammer
all the time and the building boom right for working
on the concrete. And let me tell you now that
I lived in one of those complexes.

Speaker 6 (30:38):
That went through it.

Speaker 4 (30:39):
They're never going to finish. They're going to do it
over and over over it. It's never going to be done.
It's never going to be done. They're celebrating in the building.
I live in a fifty. It's the fiftieth year anniversary
of the buildings, and I'm like, these places were not
built for fifty years.

Speaker 6 (30:56):
You know.

Speaker 4 (30:58):
The toilets, the toilets in the in your house, they
can smell very septicly because the cast iron pipes are
so bad in these buildings and everything. Yeah, it's it's
like there's a lot and they take care of very
good care of this building, right. They have big maintenance

(31:18):
workers that are there.

Speaker 6 (31:21):
Imagine that they didn't take right, That's.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
What I'm saying. And they spend a lot of money
care of this building. It isn't a poorly run building.
It's just that it's fifty years old and it wasn't
really designed. I don't think to be much past that.
So this this community, they spent thirty thousand three years ago,
each unit had to spend thirty thousand dollars to do
certain upgrades just for the downstairs pool area. Right now

(31:47):
they're spending seventy thousand dollars unit for the concrete restoration.
And I just think that watching how they do this now,
actually physically watching how they do it. Every time they
do this inspection report that they have to do, the
required report for structural integrity, there's always going to be

(32:07):
something to do with these older buildings. Yeah, I feel
like it's going to be never ending assessments. Eventually, what's
gonna happen is everybody's gonna throw up their hands and
they're just gonna tear it down and build new stuff
that's stronger and better. That's the one thing.

Speaker 6 (32:23):
Is that your official outlook on condos here in South Florida.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
They really is Yeah, they're teared out, tear.

Speaker 6 (32:29):
Out of it. They're gonna just cost so much until
they just got to tear it down.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
Only they only last so long. And you know, the
bottom line is, I don't think that most people are
going to want to pull fifty thousand a year plus
their assessments, plus everything they're paying, I mean, plus their
HOA fees and everything, and pull out on average, you know,
fifteen to fifty thousand a year to deal with concrete
restoration all the time. Eventually, it's better to tear the

(32:54):
building down and build new construction. And that's the other thing.
I think that this is one of the times in
Florida that we're going to see new construction being different.
Like the construction is going to be different. I think
they're already doing that kind of like in the Keys,
and they're doing that on the West coast because all
the hurricanes hit, all the houses now have to be lifted,

(33:16):
so they all have to be like stilt homes or
what do you call those, Ross when they're when they're
lifted up in the air like that stilt homes. Yeah, yeah, okay,
I didn't I'm making it up, but the stilt homes
and stuff like that, because they want that breakaway on
the first floor.

Speaker 6 (33:33):
So there isn't as much anticipated rising waters.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
Yeah, so I really think, you know, I'm I always
thinking that I'm wondering if you know, the what do
you call that that three D printing houses. I'm wondering
if like they're going to use special materials or something
like that and make it more cost effective. This is
an opportunity right now where we can change things up
in the industry, the construction industry to do different types

(33:58):
of construction. It doesn't have to be everywhere. Like Ross
was saying right off the you know, before we run
on the show about how the central part of Florida,
windstorm isn't as expensive as obviously on the on the coast. Right.

Speaker 7 (34:13):
More so, windstorm isn't unavailable because we were talking about
citizens expanding windstorm to the entire state, and I said
one we talked about it too. Windstorm isn't tough to
get in the center of the.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
State, right it's easier to get it in the central state,
so that construction might be a little different than on
the coastal areas. Maybe right like that could happen, but
I you know, we'll see. I think there's a lot
of opportunities out there. Just want to do a couple
of shout outs for all the people on Facebook and YouTube,
and yes, you can catch our show as rerun some

(34:49):
Facebook YouTube and iHeartMedia app. I want to say hello
to Kelly. Thanks for coming in. I haven't seen you
a while. Kelly, so thanks for stopping by. Francis as always,
Thanks for you're a big fan. Thanks Mom, Thanks missus
C's mom, Johnny's mom for stopping in. Uh and Betty,
Kelly gave you a nice comment here, John, I didn't

(35:11):
even John, she says, Uh, you know.

Speaker 6 (35:13):
Kelly, Kelly, Kelly Ce. She says, Johnny looks like he
could stand in as a bass player for Limp Biscuit
with the bread.

Speaker 4 (35:21):
Nice.

Speaker 6 (35:22):
I think she meant Beard Beard.

Speaker 4 (35:24):
Yeah, it must have been Beard. That's good, Mike, you
figured out Beard from bread.

Speaker 6 (35:27):
I didn't get the bread. You know, Johnny's got the
bread too. One pocket.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
Nice. Oh thanks, So anyway, shout out to Matthew and
Adina getting getting back to everything. Thanks so much for
trusting us. We're going to help you buy your home.
We are going to use those down payment assistance programs,
which is going to be awesome for them. And if

(35:56):
you're thinking about buying a home you and you're thinking, hey,
nobody's talking talk to me about these down payment assistance programs. Yikes.
You got to give us a call because we're experts
on using government programs that are out there that help
people just like you get what you need. And we
pretty good at all the programs to know what's out
there for you.

Speaker 6 (36:14):
And yet I guess it's worth repeating the like the
cash requirements to buy a home, or oftentimes the one
factor that's stopping somebody from being able to get to
buy right, Like credit's right, debt to income is right,
They just don't have enough cash. Where's the cash going
to come from? This is actually a good time of year.

(36:36):
People are doing tax returns. They get maybe get a
little bit of that tax return money back, and that's
good timing down payment assistants available. We're kind of in
a market gym where sellers are willing to negotiate seller credits, right,
they don't have so many offers where they're just rejecting anything.
We're asking for help. So where the things are converging?
Where if cash is the one thing, Because it's hard

(36:58):
to accumulate the thousands and thousands of dollars that are required,
Joan like, it's really hard. You know. People have not
saying you should get in over your head, Nope. Right,
if you can't save, now, that should be kind of
an indicator of where you need to be from a
payment perspective, that's always a challenge. But people are able
to save thousands of dollars two three, four, five, six,

(37:20):
So you can do that successfully. But what happens when
you need twenty thousand dollars to buy a house or
twenty five thousand or whatever. So down payment assistance has
really been a boon for people in that position. And
they don't look back like you get the house, you
don't look back like. It just starts like we don't
have to preach like why own home ownership is a
good thing, But yeah, these programs are available, and if

(37:44):
you're waiting for July, you're doing it wrong, right, not
saying you don't wait till July to close. But if
you're waiting till July to start to make sure your
credit is right, to make sure your debt to income
is right, you're going to be too late. So you
don't want to miss that. You also don't necessarily want
to be in the rush right of people who are

(38:05):
trying to buy a home in July. No, you want
to get into contract before because the people who are waiting,
they're all gonna be out there in July and all
of a sudden you got competition for your house, right.

Speaker 4 (38:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Well, and you mentioned taxes too.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Man, the value in having expertise and understanding what you
need to qualify for a loan from you know, your
taxpayer and your loan originator, if you're a private business
owner or you you know your your your money's accumulated
in weird ways.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
Yes, yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Oftentimes what you're trying to do is is pay the
least amount of taxes, right, I mean, that's that's that's
so American Pay as little as you can. And you know,
there's all kinds of the little caveats and loopholes and
things you can do to pay as little taxes as possible.
But when you're trying to qualify for a loan, you
need to document income. So yeah, as you talk about
tax time, but get ahead of filing your taxes. If

(38:59):
you're in a weird positioning like that, I mean, if
you're just regular W two and I mean, you know,
that's pretty cut and dry. But if you if you
do have weird means and I don't want to say
weird means, but different means.

Speaker 6 (39:10):
It's just like sometimes the goal of tax preparation is
to minimize taxable income, so you take advantage of every
deduction the IRS allows it. We're talking for self employed
borrowers mainly.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
Then you say it's so much better than me.

Speaker 6 (39:21):
Yeah, it's but I talk about it a lot, right
the uh you know conceptually yeah, I think conceptually it's like, Okay,
I need to minimize taxable income, so I'm paying as
little taxes as possible.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Right.

Speaker 6 (39:32):
That's hard when you're trying to qualify for a morgage.
You kind of want to have maximum taxable income, right
in order to qualify for a payment. That's suitable or think,
I say, the biggest pain if possible. Now, I don't
want you going crazy on your payment. I just want
you making the call like drawing the line where how
high to go?

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Well, we're talking about being able to get a loan,
I mean.

Speaker 6 (39:51):
Being able to qualify for a loan. You want as
much income as possible generally, right, So this is actually
a very good time of God you brought that up, John,
A very good time of year four or self employed
borrowers where you are the one man show, or you
have your small business. If this is the year or
maybe even next year is the year that you're going
to be buying a house or potentially buying a house,

(40:14):
you need to talk to a mortgage professional who knows
how to analyze your income tax returns and tell you, hey,
you might want to think about adjusting.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yep, how you do this? Get ahead of it. Yeah, yeah,
it's not it's not. It's not easy to do.

Speaker 4 (40:27):
After the fact that I I did it with money. Impossible.
I asked Mike back in the day, if I want
to buy a house at this price, what do I
need for my income to be? So he gave me
the numbers, so I know, I'm not going to yeah,
fudge from that number, right, if anything, I'll report higher.
I'm not going to report lower. I'm not going to
be able to buy what I want to buy, right.

Speaker 6 (40:48):
So, even hey, guy, I want you to feel bad
about like having to talk to me about this, even
Jarrett from Perry and talk to me, say hey, Mike,
you know or when he did, this is the year
we're buying a house. You know, let's talk about what
these returns, what kind of income needs to be on
the returns because you, at the end of the day,
as a self employee borrow, you have a lot of

(41:08):
flexibility on what your taxable income is. Right. You just
which deductions do you take and which ones don't you take?
And it's pretty much as simple as that. You know,
he knows he's in that game. But he's like, wait
a second, let me talk qualify from my low what
do I need?

Speaker 4 (41:23):
Right?

Speaker 3 (41:23):
I don't want to that don't make too much income,
but what do I What do I need?

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Right?

Speaker 4 (41:27):
Yeah, So don't be embarrassed as these questions. I mean,
you know, that's what we're here for, and we we
don't know the answer. We'll find out the answer for you.
We'll do the researcher figure it out.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Always f to Talk real Estate dot Com from Florida.
Talk real Estate dot Com on Facebook, on YouTube. But
your resource for the entire team pros pros experts in
all these fields that touch the world of real estate
is Florida Talk real Estate dot com.

Speaker 4 (41:49):
Thank you, Johnny. I had a question. Now this is
a live this is going to be real live stuff
in real life. Okay. So I have a customer who
went into contract where the listening side. Okay, a customer
fuire goes into contract. The loan approval was on the
twentieth Okay, the loan approval Okay, never got anything response

(42:11):
back from the agents.

Speaker 6 (42:13):
No response, like you asked, and they didn't reply.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
We didn't hear anything from them at all. Okay. And
then the day after the loan approval was done, they
said that they were having a problem with the loan
and that they were going to add other people onto
the loan and that part of the problem that they
had was that the transcripts that they submitted to the

(42:38):
lender did not match the transcripts in the irs. Nice right,
So either they lied or they had a maybe a
an estimate of what the transcript would be and then
they use that instead of but something went wrong.

Speaker 6 (42:55):
But your loan approval period had coming gone right, Okay.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
So the loan office or didn't seem to care at
all or worried about it.

Speaker 6 (43:04):
I mean, it's not his deposit.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
Well, but that's what I'm kind of asking is, is
do you see if they what they he didn't. We
didn't get into this too much yesterday because I didn't
want to get in a fight with this guy. And
I've already it's so funny this mortgage guy. When I

(43:26):
called him up, I asked all the questions I normally
vet mortgage brokers do, and and I ask a lot
of questions. And Mike knows, I ask a lot of
questions the mortgage broker, and most of the mortgage or
loan officers or mortgage brokers, most of them handle the
questions pretty well, but once in a while.

Speaker 6 (43:42):
They're not off put by you asking the questions.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
But some of them are, and some get really poed
that you're asking him these questions. And I'm like, I
don't know you from right. I don't know you from Adam.
Why are you mad at me from asking to make
sure that you did what what we would expect to
do for the loan. I don't know you from Adam.
Maybe you did it maybe you didn't. There's no wrong answer.
I just want to know if you did it or not.

(44:07):
And most people say, you know, you get a pre
qualification letter saying that you're qualified for the loan, It
doesn't really tell you in great detail most of those
letters as to what they actually did to find out
if the person's qualified, right, And most agents only have
this rudimentary thing saying were you loan prospected?

Speaker 6 (44:28):
Right?

Speaker 4 (44:28):
Or Desktop underwritten? That's the two terms they use, Desktop
underwritten or loan prospect Those are two computer software programs
that basically loan officers and mortgage companies throw your information
into to see if you will qualify based on conforming
loans pretty much correct.

Speaker 6 (44:47):
All the loan types. Yeah, conforming, yes, fahava, they all
run through. So Fanny May has a product called Desktop Underwriter,
and Freddie Mack has a product called Loan Prospector. So
you got DU and.

Speaker 4 (44:59):
LP right and those things. So everybody says, are they
du'ed or they du'ed? But let me tell you something.
In real life, you can mess around with the software
by inputting information in there and get you the result
that you want that might not be accurate. What do
I mean by that ring ring. Hey, I want to
buy a loan. I want to buy a house. Great,

(45:21):
give me your Social Security number? Right, click clack, click clack. Okay,
you got a six to seventy credit score. Great? How
much money do you make a year? Eighty five thousand?
Click clack, click clack, you know, putting it into the
software system. Okay, great? How long you've been working at
your drop click clack, click clack, right, and they go, okay,
you're good for five hundred thousand dollars. Then the person
got this letter and they'll run around, I'm good for

(45:42):
five hundred thousand. They don't know what the mortgage, mortgage
originator or loan officer set for insurance. They don't know
what they set for taxes. They don't know if they
budgeted anything for Huay or Cardo Fiest. They don't know
any of that.

Speaker 6 (45:56):
I don't know if you really make eighty five thousand
a year?

Speaker 4 (45:59):
Right, Well, that gets That's the next thing. Now, there's
no proof that that buyer that just got approved and
does stop underwritten, that they really are making eighty five
thousand a year, or that eighty five thousand a year,
fifty thousand of it is uber and lift money that
is not reported properly to actually count, right, or they
have a different number than of their income that's on

(46:21):
their tax transcript.

Speaker 6 (46:23):
Yeah, ubers are great. I got a ten ninety nine
that shows eighty five thousand dollars from mover. Okay, well
that's not a W two. That's not your that's not
your gross you know earnings, right, that's that's what you
pulled in for your business. Now what do your expenses
look like? You don't know that until you get the tax.

Speaker 4 (46:39):
Return, right, So, like, there's all these things that could happen.
So when I ask questions, I go way deeper than hey,
does the person do you? The first thing I say
is did you actually look at hard copy documents of
everything that you need to get this loan? Have you
looked at the tax returns? Have you looked at the pace?

(47:01):
Have you looked at everything that's supposed to be looked at? Right?
And I ask all these things. This guy was giving
me attitude the whole time.

Speaker 6 (47:08):
Right, which is just crazy. I mean it's absolutely, like Jim,
very common. You get a listing agent, A good listing
agent will do the job for their sellers of vetting
the offers that come in, right, Like, it's your kind
of your responsibility. Of course, we all want to close, right.
If we're not closing, what the heck are we doing?

Speaker 4 (47:28):
What we're doing?

Speaker 6 (47:29):
Right, So the responsible agent will make that call and
it should go something like, you know, hey, this is
a Jim. I'm calling. I saw you. You got pre
approval for these borrowers on this home. Right away. I
should be taking over the conversation. I shouldn't be waiting
for Jim to ask me a ton of probing questions.
I should be like, Jim, listen, I've been talking to

(47:49):
these people. I got all their documents, I got credit,
pulled everything's document I've verified it. Not only that, Jim.
I don't issue pre approval letters unless I'm sure that
we're going to be good for it, right. So if
you got my letter, look at it. It's dated today, right,
it matches the offer. Like we've got the numbers on
this home. It's going to close now. I can't control
the appraisal, I can't control inspections, but as far as

(48:11):
the borrower is qualifying, I have done everything I need
and I don't have people out there shopping and getting
into contract if I'm not sure that we can close,
like that's how that conversation should exactly.

Speaker 4 (48:22):
And when I get answers like that, yeah, yeah, thank you, yeah,
and then I say, that's awesome. Let me just ask
you a couple more questions. It sounds like you got
under control, but let me ask you this and that
and this.

Speaker 6 (48:33):
Right, I should never ever get upset with the questions.
Jim is right.

Speaker 4 (48:36):
And in fact, the really sharp sharp loan officers, some
mortgage brokers I talk to, they actually compliment you, right,
And I know it's puffery, Okay, I get it, but
they actually say, wow, you're asking questions. I love that
you're asking these questions. You know why they say that?
Most of the time, they know you're a closer yep. Right,
they know right away just by talking to you close

(48:57):
deals because you're talking my langue, which right, So then
they know I want to work with this person, right,
You know.

Speaker 6 (49:05):
I appreciate you reaching out to me. Yeah, right, Like
because I'm we're interested in the same thing, Like we
want to get to the finish line for everybody's going
to be happy. And guess what, you and I we
have We've never worked together before, but this could be
the beginning of a long relationship.

Speaker 4 (49:18):
So so with this, with this current with this, it's
so true. But with this current person I'm dealing with. Yah,
his attitude was when I called him up yesterday and
I said, hey, the loan approval was yesterday. You never
called us, and now you're saying you have a problem.

Speaker 6 (49:32):
Yes, rightful.

Speaker 4 (49:34):
He did not care, And I was like, am I
missing out on something? Because the way that the contract is,
for the ASA's contract, you have a certain amount of
time to get the loan approval. It's one of your
outs in the contract. If you have a financed offer,
you say, hey, I want to buy it for this price,
and this is the type of financing I want to do,

(49:56):
and you got to give me. Usually a lot of
people put down twe days for the loan approval from
the time you start the contract. So during that twenty days,
you're doing your inspection, you're doing your appraisal. If you
get that far, you are putting scrow deposits down is
needed according to the contract. But as you're doing all that,

(50:17):
you're applying for HOA if there's an HOA or condo approval.
But as all that's going on, Mike behind the scenes
from day one is going through the loan making sure
that by the twentieth day or earlier that they have
a loan approval to move forward.

Speaker 6 (50:34):
So if you're not, if you're going to have a problem,
you should be extending the loan approval. You don't wait
until the loan approval expires and then say, hey, we
got a problem on the finance thing.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
What do you think about this? And I'm thinking, this
is what this guy's trying to do, okay, because I'm
trying to think what's his endgame. This guy's endgame, right,
I think he thinks is out is going to be
that he did have a loan approval by the twentieth
you know, the twenty today, but it had conditions. Yeah,
and he didn't say anything to us because they had

(51:06):
a loan approval. Right, he had a loan approval, but
there were underwriting conditions that needed to be checked. In
this case, they had a problem with the transcript. Okay, Right,
So let's say that a week later, ten days later,
they find out that they cannot close because of that
transcript problem. Does that mean that they they have an

(51:30):
out to get their deposit back. I'm talking only contractually.

Speaker 6 (51:34):
Yeah, contractually, the answer is no.

Speaker 4 (51:36):
Right, that's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 6 (51:38):
They don't it. So the buyer's agent, in conjunction with
the lender, have put the earnest money deposit.

Speaker 4 (51:47):
How much?

Speaker 6 (51:47):
How much is it? Jim? Just ball park?

Speaker 4 (51:49):
I don't even remember, to be honest with you, it's
just five.

Speaker 6 (51:53):
Yeah, that money is now it's at risk if the
seller wants to go for it, and the seller would
be within their rights and would win if it came
down to court. That money is theirs.

Speaker 4 (52:07):
And this montgage booker did not care, and I talked
to him about it. I was pretty pod with them
myself when I talked to him, I'm like, this is
the second person you're adding onto the mortgage. So originally
it was one person on the mortgage. Then they said
that they had a problem, so they put another person on.
Never told us, right, never gave us any documents to

(52:29):
go to the title company to say that the document's changing.
Now there's two people in the chain for the purchase.
Never told us that, and now they're putting on a
third person, right, And they never told us any of that.
So that means that the title company wouldn't be able
to close in the normal time period because they were
going to be blindsided that there were these extra people

(52:50):
involved in the deal that they didn't know about, which
means they have to do more due diligence or research
on the file. They won't be able to close on
time these realtors, and the realtors are worse than the
mortgage broker in this one. It's bad. It's really really bad.

Speaker 6 (53:07):
Sometimes you get I mean, there's like maybe logically common
sense would say, hey, listen, I can't get my loan,
not my fault, give me my money back, let's move on, right,
And some people think that goes all the way through
the closed data in some states. I'm licensed in multiple states.
Some states the contract is that way, right, you have

(53:28):
the entire time to get if you can't get the
loan approved. So there is a difference, and I don't
know how deep you want to get into a gym.
There is a difference, excuse me, between the loan approval
or the underwriting approval, and what we call the clear
to close right. The loan approval, the initial underwriting approval
is always always a conditional loan commitment, meaning we have

(53:50):
reviewed your file, everything, we have in here. The loan
is approved, subject to get me these last things. This
is the underwriter saying, hey, here's everything else. I need
to button up the loan and give you a clear
to close. Very common. We got to get insurance, you know,
a final insurance policy, right, So Ross might have provided
a quote, but we don't lock in that insurance until

(54:11):
we're kind of we're sure we're closing. You know, I
need an updated bank statement, right. We're waiting for the
tax transcripts to come back so we can verify that
what you pulled.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
I have one where the appraiser is asking us to
do repair for them.

Speaker 6 (54:29):
Even that make sure the appro It could be that
we don't even have the appraisal back yet, and that
wouldn't be a condition to get out right once the
loan approval period. So essentially it's always going to be
a conditional commitment. My job is to get it submitted
within the right time frame, get the underwriting approval within
the timeframe. If we have problems, If within those conditions

(54:49):
there is something that I know is going to be
a major problem like that potentially prevents us from closing,
I'm going to call you right away say hey, Jim,
I need you to extend the loan approval period. I'm
not doing that because I don't have the loan approval.
I'm doing that because once that loan approval period expires,
you no longer have a way to back out gracefully.
Gracefully meaning you get your deposit back, right, So you

(55:10):
have to extend that because ultimately you're not going to
get the final loan approval unless you can overcome this
and you want to extend your period of time that
you have to do that.

Speaker 4 (55:21):
That's all it takes. Yeah, So I think.

Speaker 6 (55:24):
It's just like a misconception, and maybe common sense will
tell you, like, hey, what if I can't get my loan,
that's not my fault, right, But there's deadlines. You have
an inspection period or contingency, you have a loan approval
period or contingency. Sometimes there's other contingencies. But those deadlines
are contractual, right, and they're important. And like this case

(55:44):
where the date came and went, the contract will tell you, hey, listen,
if the buyers haven't delivered Number one, they delivered their
loan approval, meaning they gave you notice that they were approved,
or they didn't do anything at all guess what after
if the seller would then have the right to cancel
if they wanted. If the seller does nothing, then the

(56:07):
loan commitment is considered delivered. It's done. That protection that
period of time, the protection earnest money posit is over.
So the fact that they didn't do anything as of
the date, that's it. Like, if they can't close, your
seller is within their rights now whether or not they're
going to go through the trouble of doing it, but
they're within their rights to retain the earnest money deposit.

Speaker 4 (56:27):
And you know, you have to look at the big
picture when you're the seller, because it's very frustrating when
you're going through this. But the big picture is you
want to sell the house, of course, so you don't
want to collect just the deposit money and then put
the house back on the market and start the whole
process over again. That doesn't usually it's not worth your
while and the headaches because let me tell you, even

(56:47):
though that Mike is saying, and I agree with everything
he said about if you don't give notice, you know,
the deposits at risk and you're going to lose. That's
the way it is in paper world. Yeah, but when
you get into real world, it gets much more complicated
mercury than that. Remember that one couple Mic that we
had together, a young couple and they went into a

(57:09):
contract on a house, and then they went out and
bought a car, and then they bought furniture for their house,
and they just they were young kids, so they just
went nuts, right, And then Mike found out that they
had spent the money that they spent was the money
they needed for the down payment for the house that
they didn't have it anymore, and the sellers were living.

(57:30):
We were the buyer's agent, that was us on our site,
and the sellers were livid and they wanted that money
so bad, and we did kind of lose the money.
We were going to lose that.

Speaker 6 (57:43):
But there can become a protracted, elongated battle over the
earnest money, and so then sometimes it's like, well do
I have to get a lawyer involved? What's that going
to cost me? How long is it going to take?
And so sometimes you can kind of get away with
it and be like, Okay, you know what, the sellers
aren't going to go through the trouble. The problem is
they have the right to do so, and if it
did eventually end up in front of a mediator or

(58:06):
a judge. You know, you can you can tell which
way it's going to go, because eventually they got no
leg to stand up.

Speaker 4 (58:13):
The worst one I had was one you knew about
because one of your friends we used to hire as
the attorney. And in this case, the sell the buyer
came in and looked at the final walk through the house,
and the sellers were not ready to close at that moment.
It was like nine o'clock, ten o'clock in the morning
on the closing date, and the house was in total disarray. Right,

(58:37):
It's like, how are you going to get all your
stuff and make this improom swept condition by the end
of the day. It's just not going to happen. Well,
the reason why is the couple that was selling it
were divorcing, and it was war of the roses, and
they both had moving companies. They had separate moving companies
because they were, you know, divorcing. Both moving companies didn't

(58:57):
show up and then over that week and the air
conditioning broke and both of them were fighting with each other.
You hire the air conditioning person, No, you hire the
air conditioning person. So they had nobody hire the air
conditioned person. And by Monday, the day we were closing,
the AC broke on Saturday it was July. So by

(59:17):
Monday that you walk into the house and it was
like ninety one degrees in the house. Right, So of
course the buyers were very upset, no doubt about it, right,
And they came in it's like we're not closing. And
in fact, I don't even blame them for that part.
But we worked, our team worked very very hard, brought
into moving companies. Right, we brought in an AC company.

(59:38):
Thank you Ewing and Ewing Air. I'll still say that
to this day because they fixed the AC force without
being paid until closing, right, and if it didn't close,
we're going to be in trouble. But they trusted us
that we were going to.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (59:50):
I mean the sellers have contractual obligations as well, which
is to like cake.

Speaker 4 (59:54):
But the point I'm trying to make is there was
one hundred thousand dollars deposit. The buyers walked the sellers like, well,
I'm keeping your deposit. Because by five pm that house
was in tip top condition to be transferred over, completely empty, cleaned,
ready to go. Because of the hard work of all
the contractors. We brought in on an emergency to get

(01:00:15):
it done. So we performed, but the buyer didn't care.
They became emotionally like crazy town. So he was like, well,
it wasn't ready at ten o'clock in the morning, and
we were like, but it was ready by five, and.

Speaker 6 (01:00:27):
Right now you get into the nitty gritty of the contract.
So both of them were kind of right.

Speaker 4 (01:00:33):
They were kind of right, and they were both kind
of wrong. They were both kind of cut off my
nose to spite my face, and I don't care. So
the seller told me that the buyer made a big
mistake and told me they lawyered up right, and they said,
we're lawyered up, we're not closing, and we want our
money back. So as soon as I heard lawyer up,
I went directly to my sellers and I'm like, you

(01:00:54):
got to go hire the law as a public grasker
right now, right because they're lawyered up. Don't want to
go to a gunfight with a knife. So we lawyered up.
The whole deal fell apart. We put the house back
on the market, sold it to somebody else, got the
same price or a little bit higher than what we
got the first time, but the one hundred thousand dollars

(01:01:16):
was still sitting there over a year that the escrow
deposit was not dealt with. They went to mediation two
or three times, couldn't agree, didn't they wouldn't agree with
what the mediator said, which was that they told the buyer,
you're going to get creamed. Take fifty percent and be happy.

(01:01:37):
And the seller's like, I'm not giving you fifty percent.
I'd rather let the lawyers eat it up. And that's
what they did. They hired lawyers. I called the lawyer
friend that you have, Mike, and asked him a year later,
it's like, get whatever happened with that escro fight and
he's like, oh, all that money's gone. It was all
lawyered up right. It was all the lawyer fees. It
went all lawyers. And the seller he told me from

(01:01:59):
the day high that attorney he's that buyer's not getting
a dime and if it goes to lawyers, I don't care.
I just don't want to see that guy have the money.
And the buyer's attitude was like it yeah, and the
whole money was gone, right, The whole money is gone.

Speaker 6 (01:02:14):
There's a couple point if you were to wrap up,
like if you're getting a class to agents on how
to deal with Number one is stay on top of
your deadlines with your contract, work with professionals who are
also cognizant of that, and protecting the buyers, protecting the sellers,
working amicably towards a closed date. If you have to
massage the loan, you have to massage the loan approval period.

(01:02:35):
Like all that stuff should be communicated and negotiated and
it's workable, right, It's only when you ignore it or
you hide it, or it's like, oh, I got bad news,
let me sit on it, like those problems. Like, it's
not unheard of to have to rearrange your loan structure.
We call restructure alone. So in this case, maybe there

(01:02:55):
were like tax returns where the buyer supplies the tax return.
Then you pull the transcripts and they're different numbers. Okay,
what's going on there? Got to figure it out. So
but in general, as a buyer's agent, you want your
earnest money deposit to be as small as possible, and
you want your loan approval period to be as long

(01:03:17):
as possible, so as close to the closed data as possible.
So if you do those two things, now, of course
you have to get your deal signed, right, so you're
gonna have to figure out what works. But in general,
small earnest money deposit, long loan approval period, so you're
protecting that earnest money. As a seller, you want the opposite.
You want the biggest earnest money deposit possible, and you

(01:03:40):
want the shortest loan approval period possible. So there's gonna
be some middle ground to get your deal signed. But
if you're working with one agent who knows what they're
doing and one agent who doesn't, you're going to get
all of what you want. And you know, one hundred
thousand dollars in earnest money, Guess what, that's a pretty
big attractive If things go wrong, we're going to fight

(01:04:00):
for it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:04:01):
If it's two thousand dollars, seller is gonna be like, okay,
you know, yeah, you know whatever. So I had one Jim,
it was twenty thousand dollars, and I was in court
testifying a year and a half later, and I actually
did the loan. We did everything right. The buyer kept
his earnest money deposit, the sellers in that case who

(01:04:22):
were litigating for it had to give the money back
and pay the lawyer's fee on both sides.

Speaker 4 (01:04:28):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:04:29):
Yeah, so they really made a mistake.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
Wow Yeah, and you're half worth Yeah, all that could
be taken care of usually just by having the right
professionals doing the right thing for you.

Speaker 6 (01:04:39):
Don't communicate.

Speaker 4 (01:04:40):
Yeah, and these what a bunch of stumble bumps I'm
working with right now in that case. And it's been
really bad. It's been bad since day one. But you
know what, we always jam it through. You know, I
know we're gonna jam it through because I always do.
But it's just like I cannot believe. And we're gonna
leave off on this note before we take the break and.

Speaker 6 (01:05:02):
Know we're running away the super executive somebody just higher
jam or hire Mike to do your stuff. Yeah yeah,
pretty simple.

Speaker 8 (01:05:08):
But but you can put stumblebum in theation somewhere.

Speaker 5 (01:05:13):
That's bonus point.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
So I wanted just to give you a little stat
just to show you, like how what we're talking about.
You know, me and Nancy, my admin who's been with
me for twelve years. She's been really going through a
lot of pain with a lot of agents that are
not following contractual procedures at all. And we have one
agent that has been going back and forth with us

(01:05:38):
to get into contract on a deal for five days
and we still don't have the contract right. She will say,
fix this and this and this and this and this,
and then get it signed to bring it back to me.
Five days. We've been going back and forth because the
agent doesn't know how to write a contract properly, and
Nancy's telling them exactly what to do on this line,

(01:06:00):
change this, on this line, changed this. That's can she
just change it right? Intend it? No? Because the sellers, well,
Nancy's attitude is, why am I going to do your job?
I'm being read I'm.

Speaker 6 (01:06:11):
Telling you how to got a job.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
I'm not. I'm already telling you how to do it.
I'm not doing it for you. You know, you know
you got to you know you've got to do it yourself.
And that's her attitude.

Speaker 6 (01:06:20):
I got a PSA for all your real estate agents
out there. If you're in that situation, don't forget that
your loan originator does need a certain amount of time
to get the loan done. So maybe adjust your closed
date too. While you're while you're delaying five days from
your original offer, right, all of a sudden turned into
a twenty day cloth because you can't get the contract
executed properly, and nobody adjusted the clothes.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
Nancy takes care of that too, because she just saw
the numbers. Because of that, like children saw all the
change in the dates. Let's go ahead and take a break.
I want to ask everybody this one question, talking about
experienced agents or not so. In the United States, Slasher,
there were one point five to five million agents. How
many what percentage of those agents closed more than one

(01:07:06):
deal last year? Just one? Just one? One or more?
How many? How many of those one point five to
five million agents percentage wise close at least one deal
last year? The number you're going to hear is going
to be shocking, because at least it was shocking to me.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Okay, well, we got that and a lot more another
just about hour remaining on this Saturday. Thank you for
being with us. Of course, you're always welcome to join us.
It's a four minute reset. You can dial in right
now at eight seven seven nine two seven six nine
six nine. If you're not comfortable on the radio, believe me,
I understand. Remember Florida Talk real Estate is on Facebook

(01:07:41):
and YouTube, but that dot com is everything. Your access
to the entire team Florida Talkrealestate dot com prospros. These
are experts in their field that do work cohesively together.
When you are trying to buy a home, sell a home,
you're stuck with a home, you don't know what to
do anything that touches the world of real estate, you
need a real prose pro to handle it. To get
done what you're trying to get done right by you

(01:08:03):
and on time. We just highlighted a bunch of things
that can happen. You got to have people that are
great at what they do. Lots are good at what
they do. How about people that are great at what
they do? You can get them at Florida Talkrealestate dot Com.
That's Florida Talkrealestate dot Com. We're back in four minutes.
Thanks for being with us every Saturday, Florida Talk real Estate.
We're right here on real Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
This is Florida Talk Real Estate with Jim Depola and
Johnny c. Got a question for the show. Call us
live at one eight seven seven nine two seven sixty
nine sixty nine.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Yeah, go ahead, dial it up. We are alive on
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dial in eight seven seven nine two seven six nine
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Speaker 4 (01:08:58):
Of real estate.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
If you want to dive into the converse, you're more
than welcome. Jimmithy will line you up there. What's up
our producer extraordinary sir.

Speaker 5 (01:09:05):
Hello, Hello, good morning.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
Always good to see him. Good see you too, Buddy, Johnny.
See here, old buddy, your old pal, Mike Row. He's
the mortgage guy from the mortgage firm. He's present on
this Saturday presente. Nice to see you. H Ross Kamara
Nuts with Bright Winning Insurance. JUDEO Beach he's here as well.
Here President, we're just talking turtle fest. It's you said

(01:09:29):
your office is like right across the street from lock Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:09:33):
Was that a food festival or appreciation?

Speaker 4 (01:09:37):
They're grilling turtles.

Speaker 7 (01:09:38):
You got turtle for Bob, turtle soup, turtle soup, you
got poke turtle fried turtle.

Speaker 4 (01:09:45):
Oh. I like the fin soup. I like the turtle
fin soup, turtle soup.

Speaker 6 (01:09:49):
Yeah, that lines always different than Turtle.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Yeah, we key we Keith so uh sir, Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:10:01):
Nice to see Ross.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Okay, and of course our fearless leader thirteen years I've
told you. Plus then he runs a top producing Callowiams
team at the Florida Hopros team caller Williams Innovations. If
I had Jim Topolo, there's Jimmy everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:10:13):
I am here. Yes, I love the Turtle love. Stepping
on Johnny is my life to step away? What day
is going to blow up? Never? Hey, step on my cube? Yes.
So I just want to bring this up about insurance.
I'm really happy to hear that one of our customers

(01:10:35):
just got what I considered being extremely low home insurance
rate for a pretty large house. I mean it's it's
three bedroom, two and a half bath, two car, garage,
pool shut on the property and the property insurance full coverage. Right,
this is full coverage, Mike.

Speaker 6 (01:10:57):
It's what Ross would call his premium.

Speaker 4 (01:11:00):
Yeah, basically the normal with a normal doctor fully premiere,
I'm sorry, premiere quote yea under four thousand a year
for yeah, this house. That's pretty amazing to me. That's
kind of more like what we used to see years ago.
Do you think that policy and you might not know this, Russ,

(01:11:21):
but do you think that policy like a year and
a half ago, would be around that price or do
you think it would be much higher? Probably would have.
Let's see, so that rufe is five years old.

Speaker 7 (01:11:37):
Maybe you know, I don't know, Yeah, you know, I
don't know. Maybe maybe maybe a little bit more.

Speaker 4 (01:11:43):
But this is well under the fifty six hundred to
year average for Florida for insurance policiason, this is pretty
much an average home in a way. What I mean
is average size.

Speaker 6 (01:11:55):
And yeah, seventeen square fee I had just for comparison,
I had them estimated a little bit above five thousand,
as like what I thought the insurance would come in at.
So if we're making decisions, they're making decision about buying
the home based on that number, and then we get
a policy that's a thousand over one thousand dollars less

(01:12:18):
than my estimate, that's a nice it's a pleasant and
for like the premiere coverage, right, this isn't even.

Speaker 4 (01:12:24):
Like a budget option something.

Speaker 6 (01:12:26):
Yeah, this is kind of like what you would ideally want,
and it's a thousand dollars less than we thought. That's
it's winning It's also doesn't happen often. It hasn't certainly
over the.

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
Past few years.

Speaker 6 (01:12:40):
Right, Normally it's like, hey, if you want the number
I was hoping we would get, maybe we have to
go budget, you know, cut corners on something. So this
was a pleasant surprise. Thank you, Ross. You're very welcome
and the borrowers are going to be happy with that. Yeah,
And it's also just a jumping off point, right like
they can.

Speaker 7 (01:12:56):
Yeah, maybe we don't need that much of this, or
I'd like to increase mind to duct, but still keep
all of this on there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:01):
Yeah, So pleasant surprise for Mike. Were you kind of
surprised about what you found her? Is this kind of
starting to settle into your.

Speaker 7 (01:13:08):
Norm I'm jaded, Yeah, you know so, and you know
I kind of.

Speaker 6 (01:13:16):
He stopped beating surprised. He's just like whatever, Yeah, yeah,
I mean these.

Speaker 7 (01:13:20):
Are the rates or you know, like yeah, that that
my mentality went from, you know, because I was used
to being like, oh, these rates are good, these rates
are good. To know these rates are fifty percent higher
and then so for and then higher higher. I just
got I just stopped looking at premium because it is
what it is. Yeah, the premium is what the premium is. Right,

(01:13:43):
if we need to make it cheaper, there's things we
can do to make it cheaper.

Speaker 4 (01:13:46):
But that's what it is.

Speaker 7 (01:13:48):
I kind of stopped paying attention to the premium unless
somebody said, hey, we needed to be less than xt Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:13:54):
It's kind of like I feel the same about mortgage
rates at this point, where it's just kind of like
it is. You know, you can't control it. It is what
it is. Like we can do our best to find
you the best scenario for you, but it's what. We're
in this ballpark, and right, you're not going to be
anywhere out other than in this ball park.

Speaker 4 (01:14:12):
Yeah, So just real quick on that. This is our
fifth week in a row where we've been going down.
That's a good thing. We're at six eight.

Speaker 6 (01:14:22):
Fort six point eight five.

Speaker 4 (01:14:24):
Six point eight five, which our high was seven point
oh four. Did you get in in that we were tying?
You locked it in there. So we're over the five weeks.
We haven't even gone down a quarter point, but we
have gone down five weeks in a row. So at
least it isn't going up anymore, not going up, right,
It might go up next week, might not but at

(01:14:46):
least it hasn't gone over the it's gone.

Speaker 6 (01:14:48):
Down two one hundred's three weeks in a row. So
we're at six point eight nine in six point eight
seven or no, six twenty seven, then six point eight
five you lost to one hundred.

Speaker 4 (01:15:00):
Yeah, So so at least we're seeing the mortgage rates
starting to flatten out for at least a little while.
But if you're expecting it to go down because significantly,
forget about that.

Speaker 6 (01:15:13):
I mean, I get that question a lot still, like
when a rate's going to get better, and I kind
of have to I'm a little bit I'm like Ross,
I'm a little bit jaded, so I don't really know
what get better means. But if you're talking about getting
down into you know, the fives on the regular, I
don't know when.

Speaker 4 (01:15:29):
I don't know how to hold don't hold your breath
on that one, because you are not going to make
it if you hold your breath on that one. The
all the national economists are saying that we're going to
be at the rates we are now is going to
be pretty much this year.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
It's kind of where we should be.

Speaker 4 (01:15:46):
That it's not horrible races. What I'm holding out for
I'm getting that three again. A really good comment and
an insight that I thought was really really good. Could
you talk about what you talked about the year, like
the average home back then?

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:15:59):
Yeah, today, because there's a really good point to make
on this. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:16:02):
I don't know where I heard it, but somebody was
talking about, you know, we talked about, oh my gosh,
it's so hard to buy a house these days. You
need way more money than you did wave you know,
back in the day. It's just so different. And I
heard somebody saying, yeah, but back in nineteen fifty, the
average square footage of a house was nine hundred square feet.

(01:16:23):
Now the average square footage of a house is like
twenty five hundred, So.

Speaker 8 (01:16:29):
We've redefined what certain parameters are, right, house is what's
considered poor.

Speaker 5 (01:16:35):
You know, we're all sort of poor nowadays.

Speaker 8 (01:16:37):
Has an iPhone of seventy five inches flat screen TV?

Speaker 6 (01:16:40):
You mean I called from two years ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's poor.

Speaker 4 (01:16:44):
It's outdated.

Speaker 6 (01:16:46):
Yeah, but mostly every Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:16:48):
I just find it interesting, like even homeless people have phones, right,
I mean to me, that's a very weird comp concept, right.

Speaker 6 (01:16:58):
Especially phones that cost a thousand dollars. I mean, just
the fact that we're saying that, Like, there's a time
guys when all of us were like, what is the
phone cost? Three dollars for a phone, like we were
getting there and then it was like eight hundred nine hundred.
Well they figured it out, Johnny. They just let you
borrow the money paid back over three years.

Speaker 4 (01:17:14):
Yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):
To sign this contract, you get the phone for free.

Speaker 4 (01:17:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:17:20):
I bought a clear cordless phone from radio Shack in
nineteen ninety four for like fifty dollars.

Speaker 6 (01:17:28):
Nice, you still have it, Yeah, Court, you were on
the cutting edge, did any on?

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):
Yeah? Oh yeah, that's why you had to get the
clear one.

Speaker 3 (01:17:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:17:38):
Ross's point that he heard from uh reading that stuff
is actually a good point that, Yeah, the prices are
houses are more unaffordable, not really because of the interest rates,
but because of the prices themselves of the houses, and
then of course insurance recently has been higher.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):
So we just got to go back to it. We
got to go to tiny holmes.

Speaker 7 (01:18:00):
Yeah, right, Hey, if you want to go back to
nineteen fifty times prices and you know, qualifying exact, you
just got to get a tiny home.

Speaker 6 (01:18:08):
Also, the square footage one thing I just came to
mind is also we're building like taller ceiling homes, right,
so now it's not like eight foot ceilings or you
got you got twelve foot fourteen foot ceilings. That's you
have to remember. Part of what your insurance costs you
is based on what it costs to what do they
call it the to rebuild the home?

Speaker 4 (01:18:30):
Why?

Speaker 6 (01:18:31):
Why?

Speaker 4 (01:18:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:18:32):
The replacement costs, right, that's the driving force. So the
driving forces. What if you had a complete total loss
a fire for example, or some of the tornado comes through,
What would it cost to rebuild your home from the
foundation up? And that is very dependent on estimates of
building materials and labor costs and everything like that. So

(01:18:52):
as that stuff goes up, of course the cost to
replace the home, it's going to go up. And the
bigger the home, the more modern the materials, like, it's
just an expensive proper there's.

Speaker 7 (01:19:00):
Different houses that the houses today are more expensive just structures,
they're bigger, they're more intricate.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
The bells and whistles.

Speaker 6 (01:19:09):
There, all the extra nails that the you know, the
county required third nail.

Speaker 7 (01:19:15):
Man, right, extra eight dollars man.

Speaker 4 (01:19:21):
But I wanted, uh, I wanted to do just some
really quick shout outs, just really really quick. We had
three appraisals come in last week, and all three came in,
so we all had three listings. All three listings were
praised and approved. There were one there was two of them.
I was concerned about, Daniels. I was a little concerned about,

(01:19:43):
not too concerned, but a little bit because the owner
bought the house eighteen months ago and the price was
significantly higher than he paid, but he did do a
lot of renovations over this eighteen.

Speaker 6 (01:19:54):
And the market hasn't gone up as much as that increase, right,
So I was.

Speaker 4 (01:19:58):
A little nervous about that. But we we squeak through
on that one. I don't even know if we squeak
because I don't know the appraise value, but I know
that we got the appraisal we needed. And then there
was another one where I was really worried, where I
had a very cranky appraiser last Friday, a week aldg Go.

Speaker 6 (01:20:14):
That's always interesting, and I was.

Speaker 4 (01:20:16):
Very nervous because the last time I had a cranky
appraiser like this, that's the one that didn't a praise
a couple months ago. So my redar was like, and
this family's gone. This is the same family that was
going through the crazy mortgage broker with the bad realtor.
So I'm like, oh my god, this family's gone through
hell and back. But it appraised, thank god. But now
we got the loan approval problem with that one. So

(01:20:38):
who knows what's gonna happen with that one right now.
But congratulations, everybody. Your houses did a praise for what
we contracted them for, So congratulation on that. And I
forgot to do a shout out last week, and it's
really important I do this because I really liked working
with him. It was John. John came to us about
four months ago, maybe three months ago. His mom had passed.

(01:21:00):
It was very rough for him, but he needed to
sell his mom's home. She had lived there a very
very long time and the house needed a lot of work,
so we need He was very emotionally distraught every time
he went back to the house. It was very emotionally
difficult for him to deal with that. So he wanted
the house gone as fast as possible. We got the

(01:21:22):
household in like five days. It was an investor special
kind of thing. An investor bought it. Everything went well,
with the closing, John came to us because he had
to deal with the probate in the estate for that house.
Once again, John, like many other people, they did the
write the will on a piece of napkin on the

(01:21:42):
coffee table or the kitchen table kind of thing. I'm
kind of exaggerating a little bit, but that's kind of
what they did. And so that created a problem when
they try to actually sell the house because the paper
was written on was worth about what it was written
on a piece of toilet paper. Joking, but it took
us a little while to get that clear. Thank you LOFE.

(01:22:03):
Polycrasker and trying to title her to get that cleared
up and taking care of it for us. John was
really happy at the closing table. We'll have a beer
sometime soon. So thank you John for trusting us to
get that house sold for you and to deal with
the legal issues to get the household. That's one of
the things that we specialize in. We're so much more
than a one dimensional Hey, you want to buy a house, house,

(01:22:27):
come to me. We help you with so many other
different ways if you need and we're here for you,
So give us a call.

Speaker 3 (01:22:32):
Florida Test com.

Speaker 4 (01:22:34):
Yes, Now, let's slide into property taxes. Okay. I've been
promising that we're going to talk about this last year.
I think it was around the summertime or something. Last year,
Texas was toying with the idea of eliminating deer property
taxes on homes, and I was like, Hey, we're supposed
to be the sister state of Texas, We're supposed to

(01:22:55):
be like a mirror state. Why don't we end our
property taxes? I would say, solve a lot of for
mortgages because of the high insurance bills. It would be
offset by not paying the property taxes. But you know,
being a former government, well not even a government, but
a former reporter, I know that those property taxes are

(01:23:15):
pretty heavily needed for the services we have. And how
would you make up that difference? Like our sales tax
I think is six percent in Florida for sales tax, Okay,
I mean what would that have to be? Nine percent,
eight and a half percent, ten percent? In order if
you would, you know, you waive the property taxes, the
money has to be made up somehow.

Speaker 3 (01:23:35):
Well, the property taxes are all like county to county.

Speaker 4 (01:23:38):
Right, Yes, that's true. It's not you.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
It's going to be a different kind of approach. And
that's a that's a budgeted aspect for But.

Speaker 4 (01:23:46):
I think that the state would end up telling the counties,
you're not allowed to do levy property taxes anymore, right right,
I think that's the way it would work.

Speaker 6 (01:23:55):
But then the counties are going to say, but how
where's our budget come from?

Speaker 4 (01:23:59):
Then it's going to be like sales tax and things
like that.

Speaker 6 (01:24:02):
But that's a state level.

Speaker 4 (01:24:03):
It is, but you could also add it.

Speaker 7 (01:24:05):
But also the counties because the county sales tax differs
by every county. Yes, so the counties can levy their
own sales tax.

Speaker 4 (01:24:14):
I don't know if I ever realized that. Yeah, yeah,
like this school board, like you know, hey, pay an
extra penny so that we can raise the money for
the school district. Oh yeah, I guess we do vote
on those kind of things.

Speaker 5 (01:24:26):
Yeah, oh yeah, I never really added that up.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
That means I'm going to pay different tax rates in
different county.

Speaker 4 (01:24:31):
Though that Remember going to Saint Lucy is the highest
tax rate in the in the state.

Speaker 7 (01:24:37):
Remember going like Indian, like my dad property mill Jero
and it was different than it would be here. Yeah,
no doubt it makes sense. But as you say it,
I'm like, wow, but clearly.

Speaker 4 (01:24:49):
So what So then that got me thinking what happened
to Texas? Right, because they're ahead of us in this process.
So did they? I was like, did they drop the
property tax?

Speaker 2 (01:25:00):
The power grade crash out every time it gets cold,
that's what happened.

Speaker 4 (01:25:03):
They could use their calculators just they ran out of
energy their power So did they? Did they eliminate property
taxes or did they not? What happened do you think
in Texas?

Speaker 3 (01:25:15):
I think it's a bad decision.

Speaker 6 (01:25:16):
So my prediction is no, there's just no way to
make up the kind of money exactly that they would
be losing. And like you could say the very topical
like cut the budget, right, but Jim is saying taxes
pay for the services that were provided at the county level,
which includes infrastructure but also education, and you know, just

(01:25:40):
the the state of your county, right like kind of
like the state of the union, state of the county
is very dependent on what the budget is. So I
don't know that budget cuts is an answer.

Speaker 4 (01:25:48):
So here's what Texas found out. If they were to
end their property taxes, which is one of the highest
in the nation. Right, it would cost them eighty one
one point five billion dollars a year to end the
property taxes, right, so that's what they'd be losing. But
the way they wrote it, the way Newsweek wrote this was,

(01:26:10):
you know, they said it would cost him eighty one
point I was like, how does it cost them? It
just means they have to make up the difference, But
eighty one point five billion for Texas, right, which I'm
thinking Texas and Florida one of the highest populated states
in the air, you know, in the country, other than
California and New York, We're right up there with population size.
So I feel like Texas is going to be very

(01:26:31):
similar to that. I think our I think are Our
average price home in Florida is a little higher than Texas,
But other than that, I think that we'd be very
similar in a lot of this. So they said they can't.
They still want to do it, but they can't figure
out a way to make up the difference for the
money yet. So Texas has them figured that out. Now. Florida,

(01:26:54):
what's happening now is the governor is supporting this idea
to eliminate the property taxes.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
And it sounds like it just sounds like a bunch
of eyeah, it sounds great and it's just never going
to happen kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:27:07):
Yeah, and I'm not I'm not sure if it's going
to work or not. But you know one thing I
do And I've asked this many many times, and nobody's
ever When I say nobody, I mean politicians, I've never
heard anybody talk about this. Are the amount of money
that we've collected from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty four
in property taxes has increased something like thirty one percent

(01:27:29):
in that five that eight year period, right.

Speaker 6 (01:27:33):
Because the home value is increasing, right, Okay, but my
thing is.

Speaker 4 (01:27:37):
I didn't get thirty more services exactly exactly. So they
are making so much the government is making has and
I've been saying this for a while. They're making so
much more money doing the same exact thing without any
extra expenses.

Speaker 6 (01:27:53):
Like have they built new schools that they redoing roads?

Speaker 4 (01:27:57):
Like I mean, regulation has not increased to have a
thirty one percent increase in your property taxes our population,
but not increase that much to add that many services.

Speaker 6 (01:28:07):
Many of the homes won't go up Like so if
real estate has increased thirty percent over that time. And
I don't know if that's what's actually happened with the taxes.
But if real estate is increasing thirty percent, my homesteaded home,
my taxes won't go up thirty percent.

Speaker 4 (01:28:22):
They're limited to elected thirty.

Speaker 6 (01:28:24):
I just I just addit some math on here. So
let's say let's say your property tax is four thousand dollars.

Speaker 4 (01:28:31):
That is.

Speaker 6 (01:28:33):
Six percent of sixty seven thousand dollars.

Speaker 4 (01:28:36):
Okay, right, So.

Speaker 6 (01:28:38):
In order for that sales tax to make up that difference,
I would have to spend sixty seven thousand dollars at
a tax rate of six percent to make up that
four thousand dollars tax. So basically a good consumer, yeah,
if you switch it to like a consumption tax, saying
is what I'm saying, is said twenty eighteen.

Speaker 4 (01:28:58):
If they said, if they said, if they sent a bill,
if they set, if they set a tax rate to
pay all the costs that they need to, and they
weren't running a deficit, right, and in twenty eighteen they
needed thirty one they were getting thirty one percent less
sent today? Right, where's all that extra money going? And

(01:29:20):
I've been saying this for a while. It's like, you know,
when the property valves were increasing and the property the
government was collecting more taxes. I'm okay with that as
property values increase, but there should be kind of a ceiling.
And I know they're going to say, well, save our
homes is the ceiling, right. You can't go more than
three percent year over year on your property tax bill.

(01:29:41):
And that's true, but there's a lot of but it
still comes out to thirty one percent over that eight
year period. And I feel like there's a lot of
slush money in there that they're either just sitting on
or they're using for extra stuff that they wouldn't if
they didn't have the money. I heard they're going to do,

(01:30:04):
of course out of Jonathan Dickinson. Oh yeah, the hotel.
I think they When I think pickleball, I think Jonathan
Dickenson is where I want to like.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
I like to think they audit it pretty well. But
everything costs more. Everything costs more. And if you're going
to get a new squad, new squad cars, you're going
to upgrade this tank, these choppers, everything's more than.

Speaker 4 (01:30:30):
It once was. So that you've got to point there
can get.

Speaker 3 (01:30:34):
Sucked up real quick.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
I just hate hearing things like, oh, we can't get
body cams because they're too expensive. When you're talking about
making thirty one percent more, we're talking about a county, right,
like thirty.

Speaker 8 (01:30:45):
I see the overall number, but if you look at it, like,
I understand what you're saying. So I used to think
that about San Lucy County, right, So that's where I live,
and that's why I think that way.

Speaker 5 (01:30:55):
The way it's expanded, and you think of.

Speaker 8 (01:30:57):
All these I mean, it's quadrupled into years, all right,
So I'm sure that number is probably even higher in
that in you know, San Lucia County, Right, But how
many more roads are there to maintain, how many more
traffic lights are there to maintain? How many more patrol
cars and policemen did they have to hire? How many
more fire department members did they have to how much
more garbage garbage?

Speaker 4 (01:31:19):
Well?

Speaker 5 (01:31:21):
So has that, you know, gone up the costs?

Speaker 4 (01:31:24):
Oh yeah, that's advocate that, okay, So, and I understand
that point. You're you guys are probably closer to me.
But I'm going to be headstrong about this. Okay. Before
the house was built, you were just paying property taxes
on a piece of land which was not very valuable
as far as taxable income to this government. Right, yes,

(01:31:45):
you're building new roads and you're putting infrastructure in, but
you're also putting a house that's going to have a
way higher tax build than that faking piece of land
just sitting there before you put in those roads and
built that community. So they're getting a lot more money.
There's a lot more services have to be paid for,
but government should be and I'm just talking about government
in general, they should be spending what they have. I

(01:32:07):
know that, yes, I would like.

Speaker 3 (01:32:10):
Government to spend abody off.

Speaker 4 (01:32:16):
E word right, the E word now. But the thing is, though,
is like I just think there is I've been saying
is the property value started increasing after twenty twenty sixteen.
Is when I started raising the questions about this. It's like, wow,
we're really growing again. But it doesn't seem like we're
getting any tax breaks. Every year they raise our tax bill,

(01:32:39):
or they kept it flat, they didn't go backwards, they
kept it at least flat, or they raised it. We
didn't really see people dropping the tax bill. Talking about
all the cities with their militar rates. Didn't see too
many drops you saw flat or minor increases, right, I
just don't you know, I still always every.

Speaker 5 (01:32:59):
Year to see those numbers.

Speaker 8 (01:33:01):
I love to see you can when you have that
much more income coming in from the newer homes, right,
because because the older homes that are already there are
only going to go up three percent, right, regardless of value.

Speaker 4 (01:33:11):
Rights, investment or secondary.

Speaker 5 (01:33:14):
As long as they're home standard. Right, So they that.

Speaker 8 (01:33:16):
But because I see your point, I really do, because
that is a tremendous amount of more money that the
counties are.

Speaker 4 (01:33:22):
Getting more years.

Speaker 6 (01:33:23):
But is the.

Speaker 5 (01:33:25):
Expenses equals to that? I'd love to see those numbers.

Speaker 4 (01:33:27):
Yeah, And I don't know, And I just that's why
I always raise the question, is.

Speaker 6 (01:33:31):
Well, every year homeowners get the trim notice. The trim
notice tells you what the budget's going to look like,
what they're projecting for this next year. And you can look,
you could compare trim notice year to years past to
you know, you could say, well, where are they where
are they increasing their you know, what they're budgeting for?
Is it? Uh? You know, I see here. I'm just
looking at the category. So it's library, it's county, it's

(01:33:54):
South Florida. Water management, it's schools, it's children's services, healthcare,
fire rescue, like these are the categories where those taxes are,
you know, allocated, and.

Speaker 7 (01:34:05):
Could it be that they're you know, we got extra
money the firehouse.

Speaker 4 (01:34:08):
Let's just redo it. I think they need a new gym.

Speaker 6 (01:34:11):
So just yeah, just I'm thinking even in your own
personal life, sometimes you got good years, sometimes you got
slow years. What are you doing the good years, you
start spending money, maybe on stuff that you have put
off that you couldn't deferred maintenance. Sure, maybe you need
your new driveway. Finally you can do it. Resurface a pool, sure,
install a deck thro siding, right, like put your roof on.

Speaker 3 (01:34:34):
Finally, your community standard what your community wants.

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
Like I'm you know, in Royal Palm, we love our parks,
and yes, money gets spent on the parks. Sure, that's
part of that community kind of standard and understanding. So
I mean every every community is going to be different,
but that money is collected differently in different county.

Speaker 6 (01:34:53):
I mean, we we all live in areas where the
uh beautification of the community is important, right, So having
things like the lawns and in the public areas cut right,
having your trees look nice, having your bushes look good,
having just beauty nature around is important. Right, So it's
very easy to cut that stuff off, real easy, right,

(01:35:16):
that's not important.

Speaker 4 (01:35:18):
Right. We kind of went through that a little bit
during COVID because remember how many government ages just completely
shut down and they were only open like on like
a couple of days a week and only for certain
limited hours, and that was it. And they scaled back
on a lot of maintenance stuff and things at that time.
They really cut back, They really got a steer at

(01:35:40):
that point. It'll be interesting to see about these property
taxes if they could figure out a way to eliminate
the property taxes, if they could do it, you know,
looking at people's tax bills, it really does affect their
ability to buy a house or not buy a house.
And we go into great educational detail with our buyers

(01:36:01):
before even getting the car to understand that whole process.
Greg and Diane, or in the process Greg and Diane
with a.

Speaker 6 (01:36:10):
Little yeah about Greg and.

Speaker 4 (01:36:15):
Here's the story about gregged Diana again right for the
third week in a row. But they had to learn
about tax portability and how tax portability affected to sell
their home in the purchase of the new home. They
had huge savings because of it. And we sat down
and we went over all the math before we even
went looking for our house, so they can understand how

(01:36:37):
to do the math to understand how it was going to.

Speaker 6 (01:36:39):
Impact them and what the bill's gonna be.

Speaker 4 (01:36:41):
And they were so happy when they saw the numbers
because it was pretty dramatic.

Speaker 6 (01:36:45):
Uh, we did that, Jimmy and I went through that.

Speaker 8 (01:36:48):
I go through that with two thousand dollars a year.
Over two thousand dollars a year we saved because with
the portability.

Speaker 4 (01:36:54):
Yeah, and I'm thinking that if you eliminated property taxes,
people would be saving somewhere between. I was just thinking
between you know, three hundred and you know, twelve hundred
dollars a month in their mortgage payment if.

Speaker 6 (01:37:09):
You just eliminated property taxes altogether.

Speaker 4 (01:37:12):
I'm thinking not full property tax. Let's say you have
an ten thousand dollars a year bill now and now
it turns into a three thousand dollars a year bill
because the avolorum goes away. I'm just making it up. Yeah,
that would be a savings. The six hundred dollars a
month right.

Speaker 6 (01:37:27):
There, that part sounds great.

Speaker 4 (01:37:29):
Yeah, but then you've got to figure out how you're
going to pay for everything that needs to be paid for.
And that's where it gets sticky.

Speaker 6 (01:37:35):
My kids are all just about to be out of school.
I don't care about the school system anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:37:39):
Right, it may, I don't care about the school system anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:37:47):
Barely go in.

Speaker 6 (01:37:48):
Right, that's true. We have two seniors and they're both
very ill this year.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
Oh it is very They got staggering the number of
kids that don't go to school.

Speaker 6 (01:37:57):
Senioritists. It's crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:38:00):
Senior at a like, oh, that's just another level.

Speaker 6 (01:38:02):
I remember having that. But you weren't not allowed to
go right, I mean my school was strict. This is
in northern Virginia. But if you had three unexcused absences
in a quarter, you failed that class for the quarter.
And if you had three tartis, you mean just show
up late. And if you had a strict teacher, we're

(01:38:23):
talking thirty seconds late. Three of those equal to an
unexcused absence. So if you had nine tarties or some
combination of tarties, and you would get an F for
the quarter.

Speaker 3 (01:38:33):
Nothing you'll do.

Speaker 4 (01:38:35):
My poor sister, she always got screwed on all those rules.
So like when I was eighteen in Florida, I was
able to start drinking. I was able to go into
bars at eighteen because Florida had eighteen And then right
before my sister turned eighteen, they changed the law to
twenty one. Oh. One of the things for school was

(01:38:56):
there weren't any amount of absences where you'd be kicked
out of school. So my senior year, on my last semester,
I don't think the last quarter, I guess schools. I
think I had quarters down here. The last quarter, there
was forty five days of school. Does that make sense?
Forty five days or what? I only I went less

(01:39:18):
than half the time that you were supposed to. I
missed fifty two percent of the classes, right, Yeah, and
I still was able to graduate. My grades were okay
and everything.

Speaker 6 (01:39:27):
You'd already been accepted to.

Speaker 4 (01:39:28):
Uh No, I screwed up so bad on college.

Speaker 6 (01:39:32):
I went, you went later, I went.

Speaker 4 (01:39:34):
I I lest I missed either two semesters or one semester. Call.

Speaker 6 (01:39:38):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 4 (01:39:39):
I never filled out the paperwork because I'm so stupid
about paperwork. I didn't know how to fill out the paperwork,
So I didn't go.

Speaker 6 (01:39:44):
The first person, what part of him missing half of
the classes the last quarter of senior year implies he
went to college. Well, I know he went to college,
so I get right into college, Like I can't wait
for college.

Speaker 3 (01:39:56):
I well, miss half these classes.

Speaker 4 (01:39:59):
Here I go. Oh when I went. I went to
Palm Beach Atlantic for one semester. I failed out of that,
but then I became a A plus student. Were not
a plus but the University of Florida.

Speaker 3 (01:40:09):
I found your you found your groove.

Speaker 4 (01:40:11):
Yeah, yeah, but but it was your dad have.

Speaker 6 (01:40:13):
To sit you down and be like, Jim, what are
you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:40:16):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (01:40:16):
What time to get off the pod?

Speaker 4 (01:40:23):
No? Not really. Once I went to UF and he
saw my grades, you know, I was getting like the
three seven, three eight.

Speaker 6 (01:40:29):
You showed him your grades. Oh, he yeah, I can't
get my kids to do that.

Speaker 4 (01:40:32):
Yeah, yeah, right, were paying for that. He was paying
for it, so God bless him. He was paying for it.
So you can see my grades. But but it'll be
interesting to see this property tax thing. I don't really
think it's going to happen either, Johnny. I think there's
just not a way to pay for it, and then
it's going to come down to if they can figure
out a way. What they're going to argue is is

(01:40:54):
that the lowest economic the people in the lowest economic
brackets are going to be the one consider paying the
highest tax costs because of this. That's what other studies
I've seen shown over and over again. So I'm thinking
they're gonna say you'd have.

Speaker 6 (01:41:10):
To do a sales I'm gonna say state sales tax. Yeah,
not only do people in Florida pay.

Speaker 2 (01:41:17):
For it, but you know there's so much that comes
in through tourism, so much tax already. I mean, they're
just gonna keep it on them. But Mike did the mask.
You saw how much has to be spent to just.

Speaker 6 (01:41:28):
Recoup four thousand dollars one persons like, and I did that.
I did that at six percent. So imagine, like they've
already got a six percent sales tax. So in order
to get my four thousand dollars property tax built out
of me, now I have to have twelve percent sales tax.
And I don't know what I spend per year, but

(01:41:50):
do I spend sixty five thousand dollars a year on
like groceries and buying stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:41:55):
Now, not a typical year, I'm gonna send it now.
I don't think close.

Speaker 4 (01:42:00):
Don't think close.

Speaker 2 (01:42:02):
Yeah, and that's just one one property tax violin that
we're making up, like at about four grand. Yeah, it's
just it's just unattainable.

Speaker 3 (01:42:11):
Not to make it up.

Speaker 4 (01:42:12):
You can eliminate it, but to make it up is
it's that's a fantasy.

Speaker 6 (01:42:17):
World, or you just have to cut the budget. What dramatically?

Speaker 4 (01:42:21):
Dramatically just it doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 6 (01:42:23):
And we needed the Florida Department of It's just confficiency.
When everybody float float I.

Speaker 4 (01:42:31):
Think that's the right term, Florida Department of Deficiency.

Speaker 2 (01:42:37):
Anybody's like, yeah, let's not pay taxes. But then when
you look at the reality of what happens, you're like,
how do we do that? That's just that sounds great.
We have a voluntary of tax. It's like when you
go to the car wash and they're like donations, whatever
you want.

Speaker 6 (01:42:54):
Some guys that pay a thousand, some guys would pay
a dollar, you know, So I guess that's probably the
way we shoul do it.

Speaker 4 (01:43:01):
We had the monthly reports come out. I'm sorry, we
had the monthly reports come out since January. The January
reports was the first time in Oh, I didn't even
see the.

Speaker 3 (01:43:15):
Six Who you got there, Jimathy.

Speaker 8 (01:43:17):
Our friend Kelly is checking in. She had a property
tax general question. Kelly, welcome to the show.

Speaker 9 (01:43:24):
Hey guys, long time, no see Michele Justin. Justin says,
hi there Johnny.

Speaker 3 (01:43:29):
Well give him my love.

Speaker 2 (01:43:32):
Uh huh.

Speaker 9 (01:43:32):
So my question is with these loans, is that gonna
affect my taxes or put me in a different tax bracket?

Speaker 4 (01:43:40):
We knew the down payment assistance money. Yeah, no, yeah the.

Speaker 6 (01:43:45):
Answer yeah, no, that's not going to have no impact
on your taxable income. Yeah, there's you don't pay interest
on it, so there's no like interest deduction, so no
zero zero impact on your Federal income tact stated income.

Speaker 4 (01:44:04):
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 9 (01:44:06):
Another question, are there loans out there if you're a
parent taking care of a disability child that can help
you out a little bit more or no?

Speaker 6 (01:44:13):
Uh, not in particular, although if you're receiving supplemental Social
Security income, you can use that, uh for your qualifying income.
So if you have a disabled child and you're getting
Social Security income, even if that income sometimes you have
an adult disabled child and the checks come to them.
But essentially, if you're in care of whatever you can.

(01:44:37):
You can use that income under the right circumstances, so
it can help from a qualifying perspective.

Speaker 4 (01:44:41):
Excellent, be helpful.

Speaker 6 (01:44:43):
Yeah, well that's what you know.

Speaker 9 (01:44:45):
And I've been I'm trying to work with you guys
and looking forward to now I'm getting my taxes.

Speaker 6 (01:44:50):
In so yeah, yeah, it's a really great time, Kelly,
if you like I I for me, it's like it's
never too soon to see where you stand from a
credit perspective, from a debt to income perspective, and from
like kind of a cash perspective. It's never too early
to get in front of that. And me, the earlier

(01:45:12):
the better because if there are certain things you need
to focus on, we can really get a kind of
a detailed plan of Hey, you know what, over these
these ensuing months or whatever it is, focus on this,
focus on this, focus on.

Speaker 4 (01:45:23):
This, Kelly. Have you gone to my kid? I know
that we've talked in the past. Did you actually talk
to Mike credit a little bit?

Speaker 9 (01:45:31):
Yeah, I work to my credit a little bit. Not great,
not you know, but we're getting there and just some
and I think somebody needed to call it and say,
what's up, guys, you're doing a great job.

Speaker 3 (01:45:42):
Amazing.

Speaker 9 (01:45:43):
You guys are saving the world one broken home down
at a time.

Speaker 4 (01:45:48):
Well, well, that's great that you're working on everything. And
just remember a lot of people don't. Just quick tip
here is that you only need to get to six
twenty after six ' twenty because you're probably going to
do it facha financing after six twenty, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 6 (01:46:03):
Give them DPA sixty.

Speaker 4 (01:46:05):
Oh if you have okay, so we need to get
you yeah, cross that out then sixty okay, So once
you get to six forty, it doesn't matter if you
have seven fifty or six forty. You're gonna pay the
same interest, right, So don't worry about it, okay, right, Okay, Well, I.

Speaker 9 (01:46:22):
Mean I just I thought you guys need at least
one caller or not. Johnny C's mom texting on Facebook.

Speaker 3 (01:46:29):
You well again, glad, I love you guys.

Speaker 9 (01:46:32):
But yeah, but those are important questions, and they're you know,
it's rough out here and we're all trying and there
are a lot of I just you know, houses for
sale on the corner of the street and people don't
know what's going on. They're just putting up road times. Hey,
house to selle open house, come in, let's do this,

(01:46:53):
and they have no idea what's going on. And you
guys are legit real people. So if anybody out there
really needs to get a home and needs a group
and a program to work, these are the guys, man,
these are the guys that are going to do it
for you.

Speaker 4 (01:47:06):
Thank you, Kelly. That's awesome, thank you. Yeah, yeah, give
our best adjusted.

Speaker 3 (01:47:11):
I hope Liam's well. We'll talk real soon, Kelly.

Speaker 4 (01:47:13):
Thank you for being with us.

Speaker 9 (01:47:14):
William Williams ready to go in here and get some
lunch here, but just wanted to call in and say
we miss you, we love you, and everybody send those
emails back to me because we might be ready soon.

Speaker 4 (01:47:26):
You know what I mean. Awesome, Okay, cool, Thank you Kelly.
You soon. Can't wait to get them home. That'll be awesome.

Speaker 6 (01:47:32):
Actually, she pointed out something. It's a good sign for
buyers right there. You see a lot of homes for sale,
a lot of the for sale signs in the in
the yard, and they're lingering, good time to be a buyer.

Speaker 4 (01:47:43):
Well, we're not going to get into the full market
report today, but we will talk about this real quick. Okay.
Is that we are now in This is Jim Depaula's
official announcement. Now, okay, we are now in a at
least neutral market. We are not in a seller's market more.
And this is why I'm saying that, is that all
five counties that I checked, wait, six counties, Indian River,

(01:48:08):
Saint Lucy, Martin, Palm Broward, Dade, all of them are
at five point five months of inventoria. More there's actually
up to five point seven months.

Speaker 3 (01:48:20):
So it's officially official, although you have said that we're probably.

Speaker 4 (01:48:24):
More in a buyer's market. Feels like a buyer's market,
but I could say that we're officially at least neutral.
And the reason why is is that normally neutral six
months or longer. So what that means if no other
houses going on the market, based on current sales, it
would take six months to gobble up all the homes.
That would be a neutral market. If it's a lower

(01:48:46):
number than six months, it would be closer to a
seller's a strong seller's market, higher number better buyer's market.
But we have been hovering in the fives for quite
a while, but this is the first time all the
counties are at five point five are above, so I
feel like we're definitely a neutral towards neutral market, sliding

(01:49:10):
more and more into a buyer's market. And here's some
other proof.

Speaker 6 (01:49:14):
Wait, hold on, Jim, you were supposed to tell the
big the big number about the agents.

Speaker 4 (01:49:19):
Oh, I forgot about that. So how many agents and
how many agents in the United States closed?

Speaker 3 (01:49:25):
Fingering them out with that tease? It was the teas
and we're like, we'll give it to you.

Speaker 4 (01:49:29):
He's going to stick around that home.

Speaker 6 (01:49:30):
Yeah, yeah, wondering we're going to run what.

Speaker 4 (01:49:35):
The next hour. There's one point five million agents in
the United States, real estate agents. How many of those
what percentage of those one point five million actually close
one deal or more? Three hundred thousand let's not spendousand

(01:49:55):
on That would be twenty percent one deal, just one deal,
that's all I'm talking about for the whole year, just
one deal. Fifteen percent much lower. The real answer is
twenty five seventy one percent. I mean, I'm sorry, twenty
nine percent closed one deal or more.

Speaker 6 (01:50:16):
Seventy one percent didn't close a deal.

Speaker 4 (01:50:18):
Didn't close more than one deal for the whole year. Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:50:22):
So I actually went with the other way. I went,
who did close?

Speaker 4 (01:50:24):
Yeah? I know at twenty five, but.

Speaker 6 (01:50:26):
You were right, were closed.

Speaker 4 (01:50:28):
So seventy one percent of the realtors in the United
States closed one deal or less last year. That's how
bad the real estate market was last year was pretty.

Speaker 6 (01:50:37):
Corect And those one deal that they closed are those
are those are the deals that where it's like your
your own deal or very close family were like, he'll
be going to hire Oh you know, Johnny, my brother
in law has I use that.

Speaker 4 (01:50:55):
We've only got like two and a half minutes left.
I just want to go through this. This is a
really statistic, Okay. Of the top ten of the top
ten highest growth mean the highest appreciation in twenty twenty
four of the top ten cities, how many of them
there were five and one state. So the five of

(01:51:18):
the five of the ten cities that had the highest
appreciation were all in one state. What state do you
think that was last year? Jesus, We've always been.

Speaker 6 (01:51:28):
My gut was Texas, but I don't know if there's
five cities in Texas.

Speaker 4 (01:51:32):
I was stick with Florida, right, that's what you think, Florida, Texas? Right?
New York. In fact, how many of the top ten
have the highest growth that come from Florida zero. We
normally have three to five, three to six of the
top highest growth area.

Speaker 3 (01:51:51):
Place where the New Yorkers left went better and where
they came got worse.

Speaker 4 (01:51:55):
Yes, and guess this. The highest appreciation was Albany in
New York work at eleven point three percent, eleven point
two percent Rochester, and then Buffalo was eleven Newer New
Jersey was eleven point one now and the lowest Buffalo.
The lowest appreciation Cape Coral negative two point nine, Northport,

(01:52:17):
Florida negative one point one, West Palm Beach zero point three.
In the positive, Tampa zero point eight, Fort Laurel one
point eight. Remember when I said last year, I thought
that we'd have phenomenal to just a little bit of appreciation.
We might be pretty close to flat, maybe even a
little decrease, but not a lot. That's where we ended

(01:52:39):
up right now. That's that's redfin.

Speaker 6 (01:52:41):
There's gotta be something funky and wait, well, Buffalo. It's
got to be because the New Yorker they want to
they're being like the densely populated areas and they're like,
we really want to go to South Florida, but it's
pretty expensive down there. Maybe we've got a good buff
We'll go to Buffalo.

Speaker 4 (01:52:58):
It makes to me, it makes a lot of sense
because I think that Florida is really slowing down about
the amount of people coming here based on what I'm
doing every year.

Speaker 5 (01:53:06):
But we're talking about the appreciation. We've already gone up
so much.

Speaker 6 (01:53:10):
This is a good point too. So we had an
off year, but what were we leading up to that
off yet?

Speaker 5 (01:53:15):
And we have cities like Newark that are already way low.

Speaker 4 (01:53:18):
You can't go from one point eight percent inventory to
five one point eight months of inventory to five point
seven months of inventory and have great appreciation stuff. However,
if you believe the National Association of Rilters, that's exactly
what happened because Palm Beach County. So what are you
going to believe the zero point three percent price appreciation

(01:53:39):
for our area? Or are you going to believe this
median sales price pom Beach County for January twenty twenty
five for single family home six fifty where were which
is the third highest price ever recorded in single family
homes for Pombach County? Now what was it a year ago?
This year? Six fifteen? So they're saying we had a

(01:54:01):
five point seven percent increase from last January. I just
do you really believe that we had five point does
this fielding a five point seven percent increased market?

Speaker 6 (01:54:10):
No way, was it there. It's cherry picking. There's lies,
damn lies and statistics.

Speaker 4 (01:54:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:54:15):
Yeah, there's one average and one median, so the market.

Speaker 4 (01:54:19):
Is showing now. The other thing I think is interesting
is we only had eight hundred and fifty sales in
Palm Beach County for single family homes. Are normal for
the last several years before we went into this slump
was about fifteen hundred homes, So we're doing half the
homes what we were doing in a normal market before COVID.
Pre COVID, we were selling fifteen hundred homes, right, So

(01:54:41):
we're only selling half of what we used to sell. Anyway,
that's where we are in the stay.

Speaker 6 (01:54:45):
If you're a buyer, it's a good time to be
a buyer.

Speaker 4 (01:54:48):
It's a great time to be a buyer. You're gonna
get a deal, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:54:51):
You got to work with the best of the best.

Speaker 2 (01:54:53):
When you're looking to buy a home selling homeer, stuck
with a home, you don't know what to do, and
you should do just that. By going to Florida talkreal
Estate dot Com a team appros pros like Mike Row,
the mortgage guy from the mortgage firm.

Speaker 3 (01:55:03):
Have a great weekend, my friend.

Speaker 4 (01:55:04):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:55:04):
Like Rosskamaronettes with Bright Williams sharing as Juno Beach, I hope.

Speaker 3 (01:55:08):
You have an excellent weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:55:09):
You know I will and like jimmyd over here jimda
Polo with the Florida Home Pros team, Keller Williams Innovations,
have an awesome weekend.

Speaker 4 (01:55:15):
I think we're going to have an okay weekend.

Speaker 3 (01:55:16):
All right, okay one, I'll take okay. Jimmythy thanks for
all your efforts always.

Speaker 5 (01:55:20):
Thank you, Johnny, have a great weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:55:22):
I always remember Florida talkreal Estate dot Com. Know what,
use it, love it, share it. It's real Radio.