Duncan Duo 1-19-25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Happy Sunday, Tampa Bay. We're with you for another week

(00:02):
here on the Duncan Duo Real Estate har Show, like
we are every Sunday at ten here on WFLA News
Andrew Duncan with the Duncan Duo team at LPT Realty.
When we aren't on air, make sure to follow us
at the Duncan Duo Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, pretty
much all of them. You can find me on Instagram
and Facebook. I had the Little Blue check Mark Andrew

(00:25):
Duncan on Facebook and the Andrew Duncan on Instagram, So
those are the platforms I'm personally most busy on where
the business is on all of them, so make sure
to follow us on all those socials to keep up
to date on what is going on with everything related
to the Tampa Bay real estate market. I talked last

(00:46):
week a lot about what I expect to happen in
twenty twenty five's real estate market. Probably won't touch on
too much of that today, simply because I've got some
other things that I want to get to. But if
you are thinking about selling your home in twenty twenty five,
just go to Dunkin Duo dot com we have all
of the options available for you. If you simply want
to get a cash offer and get out of your house,

(01:10):
we can take you that path if you and we
can do that whether your your house is needing massive
work or whether your house is turn key. We have
buyers and cash buyers ready to make offers on properties,
cash offers on properties well above a million dollars. So
no matter your price point, no matter your need, we

(01:31):
have the ability to help you. Again, that's Duncan Duo
dot com. You also get a free home value estimate.
You can keep up to date on what is going
on with your home value at Duncan Duo dot com.
And I think that's important because of what happened last
year with the storms. Our market kind of segmented, you
know last year and kind of split up into different factions.

(01:52):
And so I want to explain this because our real
estate market has really never been more, you know more
kind of sectioned off and segmented off into different product
types performing at a different pace than other product types.
So prior to probably the last year or two, and
the storm of course had a major impact on that.

(02:14):
Based on geographics and whether a home is elevated or not.
And so prior to the last couple of years, if
you said prices were up in Tampa, prices were down
in Tampa, it was pretty much statistically lining up against
most product types and neighborhoods. Now, look, real estate is
always going to be hyper local. You know, you're always

(02:35):
going to have some neighborhoods outperform other neighborhoods. But the
reality was, if we said prices were up five percent
in Tampa Bay, you could pretty comfortably predict that that
same appreciation rate was across different products was the same
or comparable, not the exact same, but comparable around different
product types. So what has happened in the last couple
of years has caused our real estate market almost like

(02:58):
the stock market in a sense that had these little
factions and little product types that are performing at dramatically
different you know, numbers than other product types. So like
if you look at the Dow Jones, for example, you've
got you know, you've got tech stocks, you've got defense stocks,
you've got real estate stocks, you've got financial stocks, you've

(03:20):
got retail stocks, and you'll have different periods of time
depending on what's going on with the economy that one
sector will outperform the other, okay, and then you get
a blended average of what's going on in the market. Well,
in real estate you do get the same thing, but
the product types really hadn't had as drastic differentiation until
they do now. And I want to explain why that is. Well,

(03:41):
the first reason that is a couple of years ago,
if you all remember, we had a condo collapse in
Miami that caused massive chaos, and then there was another
one I think that collapsed, and so because of that,
the state of Florida passed much more strict rules, and
then all the insurance agencies followed with guidelines of things

(04:02):
that condo communities had to do or provide or inspect
or survey to show that that wasn't going to happen
to them. Well, those requirements increased costs for both insurance
and to have those things done in those communities, and
those costs end up getting passed to homeowners. So what

(04:22):
ends up happening is because our insurance has been an
environment and even more so post norm where rates are rising.
When you add all these extra costs and then you
add the extra HOA fees to condo communities, it causes
prices to soften and more people to want to sell
because it's made unaffordable for them. So what we've seen
in the condo market specifically is a dramatic increase in

(04:46):
the number of condos for sale to a comparable number
to what we saw during the Great Recession. The last
check I had, it was between twelve to fifteen months
supply of inventory for condos available in Tampa Bay. Now,
that is a really big number. To put it into perspective,
the entire market overall has around four or five months

(05:07):
of inventory, and most product segments when everything is blended
in some areas, it's only three months for single family homes.
So to know that you've got five x the month
supply inventory, that supply and demand curve is whacked for condos. Basically,
it has become a massive buyer's market for condos specifically. Now, again,
you'll have a community or a building here and there

(05:30):
that's a bit of an outlier if it's in strong demand.
And of course the uber luxury stuff you know above
a couple of million dollars, some of those probably aren't
as applicable to this because that crowd affordability isn't really
an important thing for them, So as important of a thing,
it's certainly still important. So what I mean by that
is it's caused the condo market to perform much, much

(05:52):
worse than the single family market. Now another segmentation. We
have two major hurricanes that call use flooding and wind damage.
The hurricanes didn't hit and cause damage in the entire area.
One of them was mostly coastal, the other one was
a little bit more broad in its scope. But nonetheless,

(06:13):
there are a lot of parts of Tampa Bay that
didn't really have any impact at all, and there are
some that had a lot of impact. So basically that
doesn't the hurricanes will certainly affect the entire market because
it zaps our population growth, It canceled sales, it freaked
buyers out, it freaked sellers out, and of course there's

(06:35):
expenses associated with repairing homes and then of course selling
homes that are not repaired that ended up showing up
as lower comps. So overall, the hurricanes have a negative impact.
But where they had the most negative impact is in
the neighborhoods that got hit the most. So what does
it end up doing in those neighborhoods it pulls prices
down and creates extra supply because people say, number one,

(06:56):
we want to move now because we don't want to
go through that again, or too, we're willing to take
a little bit of a break on our price. So
the people that don't really want to move now, those
become comps for those people. So it pulls the values down.
So that's another segment segment of the market that's more impacted.
The coastal areas and the areas that got hit more
by the storms and the homes that were damaged. And then, uh,

(07:20):
and then I think you know, so when you look
at the condo multifamily segment of the of the marketplace,
and then the flood impacted segments of the marketplace, and
then and then a lot of other little things, you
have a real estate market that has now a lot
of segmented product types that they're having different things happening.

(07:42):
Whereas you might have a neighborhood that doesn't have any
storm damage obstacles, flooded homes within miles do really really
well because it wasn't impacted as bad, and the suburbs
might do better now as people move away from the
coastal area, new construction might do better now, but what

(08:02):
it's causedes is fractioning of you know, pulling off different
segments of the market, and then those segments of the
market not performing like the rest of the market as
a whole. And don't get me wrong, it's always been
that way, but it hasn't been as drastic, and you
certainly didn't have the number of these things that you know,
happened during the same time frame kind of line up

(08:25):
and all kind of bridge together. So that's the reason
why there's so much, so many obstacles in our real
estate market and so much confusion out there. The other
thing I think is important for home sellers and home
buyers to recognize, Number One, we still have a real
estate market and economy that's that's fundamentally healthy once this

(08:46):
stuff kind of clears out. So from a single family
home perspective, the condo market, it's going to take a
while for that to clear up. I mean, I'm just
being honest, Like, if you own a condo right now,
it's like owning a stock that's been declining, that's been
and again some neighbor it doesn't apply to every neighborhood,
but the majority of them are declining. So you own

(09:08):
a stock that's going down in value, and do you
want to write it down or do you want to
get out poor? It gets worse, and unfortunately, there are
a lot of home sellers that put their condo on
the market right now and they're not willing to listen
to reality. Well, six months ago, this happened. Well, the
last six months, it's been a bloodfest and it's probably
going to continue because we're thirteen months of inventory. So

(09:29):
the condo owners, if you again and I mentioned this before,
if you have a condo on the market and that
hasn't sold, lower your price. And I don't mean like
five grand I mean lower your price, like dramatic lowering
of the price. Because the buyers that are out there,
they know everything. That's the reason that you're selling. They
know the reason you're selling, and for them to take
on the risk they want to deal. You can't go

(09:51):
back to what happened three or six months ago. It's fantasyland.
It's gone. It's over. Like, you can't talk about what
happened six months ago in a condo sale and expect
that you're going to get that Today. The market has
shifted and sellers today have to get very aggressive with
their price, you know, if they're going to move their property,

(10:12):
or of course have by far the best condition. So
that's really what it boils down to. Real estate is
always boiled down to when the market gets competitive. Now,
look when the or excuse me, when the market isn't
a competitive. When the market's competitive, everything sells. Anyone could
sell real estate. Like we're printing money at two and

(10:35):
three percent interest rates, everyone's a buyer. People are buying
as much as they can. The market's you know, skyrocketing prices.
Everyone's winning. You can mess up and overpay for a property,
but a year later it's worth more because the appreciation
rates so dramatic. That's not what we have now, Okay,
we have a completely different market where now you have

(10:55):
a lot of homes on the market, okay, and you've
got to compete. So you've got to have the best price,
best condition. You've got to have some strong differentiating factor,
I mean strong, not some weak answer to be able
to justify just getting your sould, much less getting a
reasonable value. Buyers know why all the condos are on

(11:16):
the market. They can see the news, they can read
the data. They know what's going on. They know insurance
at HOA fees are going up, They know that about
the milestone surveys. They know, and they can do the math.
They can see there's twenty six units for sale in
here and one sold last month. What does that mean?
That means they should be able to get a deal
and a steal, and if they can't, they just keep

(11:38):
waiting until they can, and eventually someone else in that
community will be the person that sells to the next
buyer and not you unless you're willing to get really
real about your price. So if you get real about
your price, you'll move your property today. If you don't,
you're just gonna sit on the market and flounder, especially
as a condo with fifteen months supply of inventory. And

(11:58):
that same thing applies to single family homes, probably just
not as drastic and not as substantial in some neighborhoods
where it didn't have as much storm impact and it's
doing a little bit better. Hopefully that's helpful for you
to understand the kind of the overreaching theme of what's
happening in real estate market right now and why we're
having these different factions where our real estate market is
more segmented into different product types and areas than that

(12:23):
it pretty much ever has been. So anyway, we're going
to continue this conversation after a quick break here on
the Duncan Duo Real Estate Show. So we're back here
on the Duncan Duo Show talking about the Tampa Bay
real estate market like we are every Sunday right here
on WFLA News. I want to talk next to the
real estate agent crowd out there. We're seeing a revolution

(12:46):
in the real estate agent business right now, from businesses
that kind of held all of the worth of the
business and that held the keys very centralized and a
small group of people, to cloud based real estate brokerages
that allow agents to participate in the victories of the company.

(13:09):
And I joined LPT Realty in September of twenty twenty
three because it opened my eyes into what I owned
as a franchise owner and what I didn't own. And
when I really opened my eyes to the value you
added that I personally added to a real estate company,
I realized even agents on a smaller level that don't
operate as much as I do or don't do as

(13:29):
much production as my team. Even those agents that do
a handful of deals a year, have the opportunity to
benefit in the upside of the business and to do
things that bring value to the business that historically hadn't
brought as much value to the agent themselves. Things like
recruiting agents and selling real estate and being a steward

(13:51):
of the company and supporting the business. All of those
things have started to change. It's one of the things
I'm so excited about with LPT is that agents can
build a retirement. A couple of years ago, I had
an agent whose career was nearly done, was nearing retirement,
and if they didn't sell another house, they really didn't
have much left for themselves. They were a great commissioned salesperson.

(14:16):
They kept to themselves about their own personal financial life
and probably made some bad financial decisions. But I didn't
have an option for them to buy in and own
a piece of a big company. I didn't have an
option for them to earn stock in a company I
wasn't large enough to offer those things. So when I
moved to LPT, I realized that every agent out there
that is looking to the future and looking to maybe

(14:38):
an end game for themselves, or even just simply from
a wealth building perspective to have another opportunity at a
cash out or a liquidity event. When I saw the
opportunity on the table with LPT and I met with
Robert Palmer, it completely opened my eyes to everything that
I could do to help get people to LPT Realty,

(14:59):
to understand the opportunity and and to grow my team. So,
if you're a real estate agent and you're struggling and
maybe you want a piece of that, or you've helped
the business grow and you haven't, you haven't shared in
that victory of the mothership, reach out to us at
Join the Duo dot com. We've got a few different
paths we can take you again. That's Join the Duo
dot Com. I can if you're a team owner, if

(15:21):
you're somebody that owns your own brokerage, I can sit
down and talk you through the financials and see what's
available for you to help you understand the benefits that
you get from a marketing perspective, keeping things real estate first,
helping your agents do more production, and an owner that
is growing massively I mean owns a sports team, owns
owning a sports arena, owns a mortgage, owns all these

(15:43):
other entities that help drive and fuel each other brilliantly.
And if you're an agent, you want to be on
this rocket ship. It completely blew my mind when I
saw the availability and the experience that I've had in
the year and a few months that I've been there.
It has been pretty awesome. So if you're interested in LPT,
if you're interested in my team, if you're not doing

(16:05):
the production you want to do, we've got a path
for you again. Joined the duo dot com. You can
register to set up a consultation a confidential consultation with us.
You can register for our career night for our team.
You can also apply for one of our open positions
to where we can share with you the reason that
we brought our team to LPT Realty and why we
believe it's a brokerage for life and has something for everyone.

(16:26):
For the agent that's going to do a couple deals
a year, to the agent that wants to build a
mega team, to the agent that wants to have the
number one team in America. It's got something for everyone. Again,
you can find out more about that at jointhduo dot com.
And my real estate team is in growth mode this
year excited to let the public know that last year,
with the storms and all the different things going on

(16:49):
in our change, you know, we had kind of carved
out some of our advertising that we had normally done.
And we're actually tripling our advertising budget for twenty twenty
five because we're committed to growing at a very fast
paced this year. We want to grow, We want to
improve our rankings, we want to do more production, and
I want to add more value to real estate agents

(17:09):
than I ever have. So, if you're someone thinking about
leaving the brokerage, you're with joining a team, joining a
different team, not motivated or inspired where you are. You
want to get around to a players. You want to
get around somebody like me that's done what you want
to accomplish. Way better to learn from within than try
to learn from outside. You can again go to join
the duo dot com again, that is Jointhduo dot com.

(17:34):
So real estate scams hit their highest number of dollars
impacted in twenty twenty four. There are so many real
estate scams out there, and I want to talk about
those scams and help you avoid them. Okay, I want
to help you avoid real estate scams. Now, some of

(17:55):
these things I want to talk about may not necessarily
aren't always a scam, but it's where some things can
be a scam. So I'm going to talk about some
of the common ones. So if you want to avoid
real estate scams, stay with us here on the other side.
We'll be back after quick break here on the Duncan
Duo Show. So we're back here on the Duncan Duo
Show talking about real estate scams. And unfortunately, twenty twenty

(18:17):
four was a record breaking year for scam artists that
want to take advantage of people in the real estate industry.
So I want to go through a few of these
common scams and we'll share some of these on our socials.
So again, make sure you're following at the Duncan Duo.
If you miss this, share with a friend. If you
want somebody to avoid having a financial loss and avoid

(18:40):
a scam, just hit us up at the Dunkin Duo, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube,
and TikTok so. One of the most common scams is
someone renting a property that they do not own, and
you go to meet them at the property. They advertise
it as if they're the real estate agent or that
as if they're the owner. You go to the property

(19:02):
and you give them a deposit and they say, oh,
we're going to get back to you and here's a lease.
You sign a lease, You've gave them your deposit, and
then you follow up with them and guess what they
vanish because they didn't own the property. They weren't a
real estate agent, they had no representation of the property.
So that is a very common real estate scam right
now that people are falling for if a property. The

(19:24):
key is is when they do this, when they take
one of these properties. What they typically do is they
take a property that's for sale okay, and then they
advertise it for rent. The reason they do that is
because some of the algorithms make it a little bit
harder for the owner of the property to figure out
what's going on or to be tipped off. Because the
property is being shown it's likely vacant, someone doesn't live there.

(19:48):
So they take this vacant property okay, that has a
lock box. Okay, they somehow have lockbox access or get
lockbox access or find out the code if it's a man.
They usually aren't doing this and letting people into homes
to have electronic lockboxes. They're looking for homes with codd lockboxes.
Then they show up, they meet you there, they tell
you that they're the property manager or they're the realtor, okay,

(20:12):
and then they take money from you. So they're typically
doing it on a vacant house that's listed for sale,
and they're also posing and saying that it's for rent.
They'll often lie and say they're a part of the
real estate brokerage that's selling the property. To try and
get you to let your guard down. They'll present you
with a fake lease, all this kind of stuff. Well,
typically they have to do this really fast because they

(20:34):
only have a few days before it's gonna get caught.
Someone's gonna call into the real estate broker that has
it listed for sale, someone's gonna tip off the owner,
someone's gonna figure it out, or someone's gonna smell scam
from the person that they're meeting with. They're either gonna
be suspicious. They're gonna ask for a business card and
the person doesn't have it. They're gonna ask for their
name and they're gonna look them up and it's not
the right person. They're gonna find out they don't have

(20:56):
a real estate license. They're gonna look it up on
tax rolls and find out that that's not the person
that owns the property if they lied and said that
that's what they did. So, nonetheless, there's so much publicly
information available that they only have a short period of
time to try and scam someone. So what do they
do to scam you? If you're a renter? They put
it at some unbelievable price for rent. Look, there's no

(21:19):
such thing as a free lunch. If it looks too
good to be true, it probably is. If the property
should rent for four thousand dollars and they're advertising it
for thirteen hundred dollars a month, run, it's a scam.
No landlord on Earth is renting out there four thousand
a month property for thirteen hundred dollars. Okay. If it
looks too good to be true, it is, it's a scam. Okay.

(21:42):
So they have this small amount of time. So because
of that, they have to make such a sensational offer
to try and scam someone out of money before it
gets caught and blows up in their face. So, as
a renter, the things that you can do. Number one,
you can vet the person. You can you can you
can somehow find out if they are really a property manager.
Can you verify their photo? Do they have a business card?

(22:02):
Can you uh, you know, get look up the owner
and find out if that person that described themselves is
the owner. But also trust your gut instinct. So those
are all things you can do to prevent, you know,
prevent your celf from being taken advantage of. But there
that is a very common scam in our real estate
market right now, and again it happens we get we

(22:25):
get calls all the time from people who are advertising
our listings for rent. We don't, We're not, we weren't
doing it. So be very very cautious when you're handing
over money to people, you know, again, because that that
specific reason you need to be able to look up
the entity, is their registered entity, is that personal licensed
real estate agent is you know? And certainly uh you know,

(22:46):
if they're pushing for cash, probably not a good sign. Okay.
So all those things are reasons of ways you can
avoid that particular scam. Another really common scam is from
people that wholesale properties. And when I say a scam,
there are a lot of legitimate wholesalers that really truly
explain what's going on. And then there are some others
that are pretty scammy because there's not a lot of
regulation and they don't have to have a license. What

(23:08):
a real estate wholesaler does. Okay, a real estate wholesaler
will come to you and offer you cash for your home. Well,
what they'll basically do is explain to you it's not
really them that's gonna buy the property. They're gonna put
your home under contract and they're gonna say, we'll pay
you two fifty for your home, we're gonna close in
ninety days, and we need a forty five day period.

(23:28):
They're gonna ask for these longer timelines because they don't
have the money to buy your house, or they really
don't want to buy your house. And secondly, they're basically
trying to take the offer that you've accepted and sell
the paper to someone else. Okay, Now, the reason I
say a scam isn't because a lot of them aren't,
but because a lot of people don't read the contract
and then they feel duped because they didn't know that

(23:50):
that person really had no intention it wasn't going to
close on their property. Some ways you can avoid tying
up your property into a wholesale deal that lasts a
really long time. Ask for a bigger Okay. A lot
of wholesalers want to put up a small dollar amount.
They don't want the risk. Okay, they don't want to
tie up their money, all right. Read your contract, read it,

(24:10):
read it, and ask questions before you sign it. Okay.
Those are two things that can avoid you tying your
property up into a wholesale deal where that person isn't
going to buy it, and then you eat up a
bunch of days on market when they don't find an
end buyer. Okay. A second way you can avoid the
wholesale game is you can ask a real estate agent
or a lawyer to look at the contract. You can

(24:32):
ask for some time to have the contract looked at.
All right, If the person putting your home under contract
wants to assign the contract, there's a portion of the
contract that says assignability. If they want to assign the contract,
they're not really buying your house, they're buying the contract
so they can sell the contract to somebody else. You
want that box to be unassignable, okay, not assignable for

(24:55):
the if they're a real legitimate buyer, unless of course
they say something like, you know, we wanted to be assignable,
but only to an entity in which we own. So
I have done that before because I didn't know which
entity was going to end up owning it. Some of
the hedge funds will change LLCs. Some of those things
are okay, But if someone just wants a bear assignability class,

(25:16):
it's a sign they're likely a wholesaler. Last, but not least,
avoid tying your property up for long periods of time.
Make this period shorter. Say look, i'll give you ten days,
probably not losing a lot of our ten days. Or
I'll give you a few weeks. But again, homeowners call
those scams. They're not always scams. A lot of times
it's the homeowners fault because the homeowner didn't read the contract. Again,

(25:38):
I'm going to repeat this. I cannot tell you how
many times we have people call our office and say, oh,
I'm under contract with this buyer. Well, he's not really
a buyer because he's never going to close in your home.
He doesn't own any property in the county, never has
closed on any property in the county under that entity.
He's wholesaling your property. And you know you just didn't
read the contract, So read the contract. Another real estate scam.

(26:01):
So we've got the wholesaler one, we've got the we've
got the rental one. And then another really common real
estate scam relates to wire transfers. ESCRO deposits funds for
closing win in doubt, not just win in doubt. Always

(26:22):
called the title company and verify the wiring transfer instructions.
Here's what happens. Okay, scammers can track the MLSS and
they see that a property went pending, and somehow they
hack into a real estate agent's email. Somehow they get
your email one way or another, and they send you

(26:43):
a spoof email trying to pose as the real estate agent. Okay,
saying here are your wiring instructions. Well, first off, real
estate agents don't and should not be ever sending wire instructions.
Those come directly from a title company or an attorney,
and when they come via email, call to verify. Okay,

(27:04):
do not send wires unless you have called the phone
number for the title company or the attorney and verbally
verified the wiring instructions. I I am an owner of
a title company. I cannot tell you how often we
have to deal with this, and I personally buy a
lot of real estate, and I still I know the
wiring instructions. They change every few months because title companies

(27:27):
change banks, but I call and verify. Hey, looks it's
still the wiring instructures. It's still it is this, you know,
is it ending in this number? I still do that today. So,
whether it's a deposit for a property, whether it's the
proceeds for closing, whether it's your down payment, it's a
lot of money. Double verify the wire transfer instructions before

(27:49):
you send out the money. Okay. So so those are
the most common real estate scams today. Hopefully those have
helped you miss out on, you know, some of the
scams going on. Last but not least, here's another one
of the common real estate scams that we are going
to see post hurricane storms that did massive damage to

(28:13):
homes and the people that renovated them didn't actually do
certain work. Okay. Now, look, there is no question there's
going to be a lot of unpermitted work completed because
of the storms. Okay, The reality is that the permit
organizations were buried, they were behind, and people needed to

(28:35):
get work done, so that additional damage didn't happen. Things
like you know, let's just use an example, there's an
open hole in a roof, okay, and it's raining. You
kind of can't really wait on a permit to fix that.
You got to fix that pretty fast. So nonetheless, because
of the storms, there's going to be unpermitted work, and
of course that can always be scrutinized and looked into more. However,

(28:59):
it doesn't all that doesn't always symbolize that where corners
were cut or work wasn't done properly. I'm just not
a big supporter of the government in terms of believing
that they even know what they're doing most of the time. So,
you know, the idea that a permit work checks off

(29:19):
a higher quality box, I don't align with that personally.
I think it's simply a lot of people opt to
avoid the hassles of dealing with the government for a
variety of reasons. But where you have to worry about
it right now is did they remove the baseboards? Did
they really replace the drywall? Did they really cut it out?

(29:41):
Is there mold behind there? Is there? So those are
things like did they actually do that stuff? Because we're
seeing inspections now where people are popping off base boards
and there's mold behind it because they didn't even replace
the base sports. They aired it out and put some
fans on it and then didn't even actually remedy in anything,
but they made it smell good, they made it look good,

(30:02):
and later on it's going to be a mole, a
big mold problem for somebody. So if you're buying a
home that was flooded, okay, and it's been renovated, double
check everything. Be extra scrutinizing. And sometimes it isn't necessarily
the homeowner that cut corner. Sometimes it's the contractor. Sometimes
it's who they hired cut corner. So it isn't always
a homeowner's fault. Sometimes they may not. There may have

(30:25):
been zero intend to scam anyone, but the contractor pocketed money,
didn't do the dry wall, put some cuts in it,
made people think they did it, aired it out, thought
that'll be okay, and years will go by, and then
eventually it's a mold problem. So be extra scrutinizing to
make sure you don't get scammed by somebody that says
they did work that they didn't do on a property

(30:47):
that you know that was renovated, So hopefully that's helpful
for you. And again scrutinize the stuff that didn't have permits,
but it's not an it's not an actual always indication
that something wasn't done right. There are plenty of times
people do stuff not permitted that was, you know, from
a construction standpoint, was done properly. They just simply wanted

(31:09):
to avoid the government being in their business. They wanted
to avoid the hassles of it, and certainly maybe they
wanted to avoid the tax that they didn't like paying
for whatever it is the government in whatever municipality charges you.
So all those things relevant, but you need to do
your due diligence to your inspections, make sure you're happy,
and of course also verify what impact that has on

(31:32):
insurance because sometimes it can, especially if it's like an addition.
All those things can matter. But extra scrutiny on the
homes that were flooded and needed renovation that are now
supposedly turn key. We're back wrapping up the show with
our last segment after a quick break here on the
Duncan Duo Show. So we're back here on the Duncan
Duo Show talking about the Tampa Bay real estate market
when we aren't on air at the Duncan Duo on

(31:54):
all of our socials. If you're real estate agent, thinking
about changes, tired of where you're wanting more upside, wanting
ownership in the mothership, in the big company jointduo dot com,
we can bring you on our team. We can introduce
you to LPT Realty if you want to operate your
own business within the cloud based brokerage. So many options

(32:14):
available for you again at Join the Duo dot com.
I want to talk next about credit score tips. Look,
we're post holidays this year. It was a rough year
in Tampa Bay. Maybe you had a little retail therapy
to make up for all the stress of the storms.
Maybe spent a little bit too much money, and you're

(32:36):
not quite in a good enough position with your credit
or your income to buy a home. So I want
to give you some tips, okay, to how to help
your credit. Now. I've read a lot of articles on this,
I've helped people with it through the years. Your credit
score really matters from a standpoint of getting approved to

(32:57):
take on debt and to finance things. Okay, whether it's
a car, whether it's a house. There's probably not anything
that's going to cost you more be more important for
you than buying a house. So there are some unique
things according to experience that I found interesting that can
improve your credit score. So getting on top of your score,
though the little tweaks here and there could make a
massive difference. It could get you over the threshold for

(33:18):
a lower rate. So here's some tips of things you
can do to improve your credit credit score. The first
one get on the electoral role. I was surprised by this,
but many people may not realize that being registered to
vote can have a positive impact when it comes to
your credit rating. It helps build your financial profile as
it confirms your identity to lenders. Regularly review for mistakes

(33:42):
in your credit report. If you see something that's not accurate,
contact the credit reference agency to check. Checking your report
can also thwart fraud. You can find things that are
reported incorrectly. You can find old collection accounts that have
shown up that hadn't for a long time. You want
to keep up to date on what's going on in
your credit profile, look at it on the regular keep

(34:04):
your credit card balances low. Okay, using credit cards wisely
can enhance your credit scores. Experience suggests aiming to keep
balances below thirty percent of the credit limit to avoid
paying interest charges. Is also wise to try and repay
the full amount of each month. So if you're on
a zero percent deal, okay, because there's been a lot
of those, make sure you make your payment so that

(34:26):
you don't get kicked out of that into the high
rate okay. But also don't keep your head in the
sand that once your zero percent ends, you've got to
divide the balance and then start making payments, or else
you're not going to pay towards any principle, keeping the
credit card balance is low is probably relative. Though. If
you keep the credit card balances a little high, a
little higher than the thirty percent, you pay them off

(34:47):
for a really long period of time. Sometimes that can
actually help to build up your credit history. If you
don't have a lot of accounts, adding extra accounts, bank accounts,
credit cards, getting your name on household bills such as energy,
water and water, and broadband can all help a positive
credit score. Pay on time, of course, if you're going
to miss a payment, try and call your lender. Sometimes

(35:09):
the lender or the people you owe money. You can
actually work with them to change how they may report
that to the credit bureaus. Make the most of online
eligibility tools and it'll help you find credit deals. So
look for things with soft credit polls to enable an
initial look at certain information so they don't leave a
footprint behind, but also so that maybe you can lower

(35:31):
your your interest rate or increase the amount of your
credit limit. Let your credit history mature. It's good to
shop around for the best deals for long term credit accounts.
Keep them open. If you have a joint credit with
someone you have a financial association, meaning if you're no
longer financially connected and sure, you break this link to

(35:52):
prevent their credit history from affecting you when you apply.
One other thing you can do that I didn't see
mentioned in here is ask for in increases in your
credit limit. Okay, now they mentioned thirty percent. You wanted
to be thirty percent of the credit limit. Well, if
you've got a high balance, another way to do that
besides just simply paying it off, is to have a
higher credit limit. So there are a lot of experts

(36:14):
out there that will encourage you to ask for higher
credit limits. That doesn't mean go spend more money. It
simply means to lower the ratio of the amount of
credit you're using on that particular card. So those are
all things that can help you improve your credit so
that you can buy a home in twenty twenty five,
so that you can refinance, you can do all the
things you want to do. Maybe it's buy a car,

(36:35):
maybe it's something completely else, but those are all things
that can be helpful. So again, when we aren't on
air at the Duncan Duo, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, if
you are thinking about selling your home again duncanduo dot com.
Our team has hundreds of years of combined experience, some
of the best agents in the market. People have been

(36:56):
with me a really long time. We have every option
we can focus on. I'm getting you maximum value. We
can sell your luxury home. I have agents on my
team that focus specifically on that. If you have a
distressed property, if you have a property that you need
to short sell, if you have a property that's in
pre foreclosure and you need options, those are all things
we can help with and so much more at duncinduo
dot com. So if you need to sell your home,

(37:18):
we have every option available for you. You just simply
go to Duncan duo dot com, you fill out your
quick address, It should auto populate from your phone and
should be a really quick and easy way to do
that again at Duncan duo dot com. So thanks so
much for tuning in, have an awesome rest of your Sunday,
Tampa Bay