Duncan Duo 12-21-25

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Happy Sunday, Tampa Bay. We're with you for another week
here on the Duncan Duo Real Estate Show Christmas Edition
next couple of weeks. Obviously, we're during the holidays and
we're talking all things real estate, and this time of
year it gets a little interesting in the real estate world.
Andrew Duncan with the Duncan Duo team at LPT Realty.

(00:21):
And when we aren't on air, make sure you're following
us on all of our socials at the Duncan Duo, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook,
you name it, pretty much every single social media channel
out there at the Duncan Duo. Follow us for all
your updates on Tampa Bay real estate. I want to
talk today. This is a time of year when a

(00:42):
lot of people are first off, you know, you're home
with your families, or maybe you're listening today and you're
not local to Tampa Bay and you're traveling from somewhere else,
and so you know, this is usually a time of
year when people are kind of disconnecting, you know, kind
of reflecting on the year past as well as you know,

(01:04):
planning for the year ahead. So I always like to
spend some time talking to clients, customers as well as
our listeners this time of year about you're planning for
twenty twenty six. So who I'm talking to right now
are basically people that are going to buy or sell
real estate or potentially thinking about improving their credit, getting

(01:30):
other debt, applying for credit in some other way. And
you need to improve your credit score. So first and foremost,
there are a lot of home buyers out there, and
we run into this all the time our partnership with
Citywide Home Mortgage. They'll run people's credit and they'll find
out man great income, but there's some credit problems that
people didn't know about. The downside of AI and a

(01:55):
you know, a world that lives in the cloud is
that the mistakes can happen, scams and fraudulent people using
your Social Security number, or even as I experienced last
week on my Merrill Lynch brokerage account, somehow someone placed
a trade for a treasury bond, a purchase of treasury
bonds within my account and obviously it got all reversed

(02:19):
and they did the right thing and took care of it.
But there are things like that that happen all the
time with people's credit where there's accounts open or charges
or sometimes it's a mistake. Sometimes it's actually a family member,
sometimes it's a scam. Sometimes it's simply someone that has
a similar name and it got reported to the wrong
credit profile. So I want to talk about this idea

(02:42):
of you know, understanding your credit, improving your credit, and
you know that starts with the common sense baseline, which
is looking at your credit report. So all of the
major credit bureaus that I think, there's free credit report
dot com, there's some websites. Pretty much all of them
will offer you at least one free credit report. And

(03:03):
most consumers out there, in one shape or form, have
had some identity stolen or some lawsuit that's involved them,
where you very likely have free credit monitoring. A lot
of people you'll get the email or the postcard and
it'll say, hey, we're gonna give you free credit monitoring
because your information was stolen in the data breach. You

(03:25):
should always take advantage of those things and put locks
or alerts on your credit profile to prevent things from happening.
But if you haven't done that yet and you find
out there's a problem, first and foremost you know, get
your credit report, look at it, you know, question it,
reach out to the reporting agency, whether it's Equifax, TransUnion, Experience,

(03:49):
if there's something wrong on it, something like you know,
a medical bill that's not yours, a collection that's not yours,
an account that's reporting an incorrect you know, incorrect balance,
or an incorrect credit limit. All of these things really
do matter. So when there is something incorrect on your
credit report, it can be it can be something that

(04:10):
causes your rate either to be higher or your ability
to qualify for credit to be declined. So if you
notice disputes or disagreements, you can dispute those things. So
your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act allow you
to dispute those things. You know. There's there's a couple
different ways you can do this. You can either do

(04:33):
it directly through the credit bureau. You can mail, you
can call. But the purpose of this is to prevent
identity theft, but also for you to be able to
clean up your credit before you go and make your
major purchase. Again. Way too many consumers put the cart
before the horse. It costs consumers, in my estimate, you know,
billions of dollars a year because they don't do what

(04:55):
they need to do upfront on their credit, they end
up either not getting credit or getting credit at a
higher rate because they didn't do the work ahead of time.
It's kind of like imagine going into surgery and a
surgeon is going to operate on your hearts. They didn't
do any imaging. That's what you're doing when you go
out to buy a house, or when you go to

(05:16):
a dealership to buy a car, or you float into
rooms to go during the holiday season and you want
to get some credit for new furniture. If you didn't
actually look at your report to determine how they're judging you,
to determine what kind of offer they'll give you, you're
flying blind. So first and foremost, get your credit report

(05:37):
and then look at it from a standpoint of correcting errors. Now,
the second thing you can do, depending on how imminent
your need for credit is, there are things that you
can do to improve your credit score. Some of those
things will depend on your actual score, but I'm going
to go through some of those today. First obvious no brainer,
disputing things that are incorrect on your credit report. The

(06:00):
second thing you can do is improving your utilization ratio. So,
for example, if you have three cards and you're near
maxed out on all of them, you can either opt
to look at getting and again. Depending on how close
you are to your credit need. If you're months and
months away or if you're really close, the things you

(06:21):
might do could be completely different. One of the things
you could do would be to get new lines of
credit so that you have more available open credit and
you're not utilizing all of the credit you have. Another
thing you can do is you can seek to get
your credit limits increased by the people you're getting credit from. So,
for example, if you've got a couple of cards and

(06:41):
are at ten or twenty thousand dollars each, you can
look to see if they'll bump up your credit limit.
Then you look more attractive to someone seeking to give
you credit because now you're not utilizing the full portion
of your credit. Other things you can do you can
negotiate interest rates or move your debts over to lower
interest rate payments by either balanced transfers, consolidation loans. Those

(07:06):
are things that can work. You can refinance things like cars.
Sometimes it's as simple as paying a card off. You
may have cash in the bank and a lender may
may advise you hey look, you need to take that
cash and pay this off so your debt to income improves.
So all of these things matter. Certainly. There are ways
that AI can help you with this. If you're someone

(07:26):
that uses a large language model, if you use GROC
which is my preferred, or chat, GPT or Claude or Gemini,
you can take your credit profile, you can upload it,
you can ask it for help in determining what you
can do to improve your credit score. If you don't
have credit, or you don't have enough credit, you may

(07:47):
need to establish some credit. Now Fanny May and Freddie
Mack and a lot of the mortgage lenders are moving
towards a model where there isn't a minimum credit score anymore.
And that doesn't mean that your credit doesn't matter. It
just simply means that there can be consideration for giving
someone alone if all things check out right, and maybe
you're a few points below what the minimum would be,

(08:09):
so nonetheless, your credit still does matter. You want to
improve your score, You want to improve how you look
to creditors, so paying off debts, disputing things that are incorrect.
Sometimes you can dispute things that are old, maybe they're
past the timeline that they're supposed to stay on your credit.
You can also ask for consideration. You can even renegotiate things.

(08:32):
You can renegotiate your rate, you can renegotiate your fee structure.
All of these things matter. So these are tips and
things that I would recommend. Always want to stay on
top of preventing identity theft and staying on top of
your credit score. I prefer to have a freeze online
and then when I'm going to apply for credit, I
can log into apps and do the unfreeze. That ensures

(08:54):
that it's less likely for someone to be able to
steal my credit you know or or you know scams
to happen. Nonetheless, you need to be paying attention to
your credit. It matters. It matters for you to get debt,
It matters for you to get debt at a certain price,
and it certainly has an impact on your ability to

(09:14):
qualify for home Another thing that can improve your credit.
Let's say, for example, your credit isn't great, but your
your partners is, whether that's your spouse, whether that's your
significant other, you're not married. It could even be your
children or your parents. Becoming an authorized user on the

(09:35):
credit of someone with a great credit profile will also
pull your score up. So one tip that I like
to give parents is, hey, look, I know not everyone
wants to buy their kid a house. I know you don't.
You may not. You may not have the means to
give your kid money to buy a house, but you
can early on add them. If your credit profile is good,
you can add them as an authorized user, and parents,

(09:55):
if your credit is maybe not great, your kid can
add you as an authorized you. Now, this adding as
an authorized user doesn't mean you necessarily have to give
the person the card. For example, my daughter has is
an authorized user on a few of my credit cards.
Now she doesn't know this and she doesn't have the cards,
but it will help pull her score up and give

(10:16):
her more open lines and make her debt to income
look better, especially because there are cards that are paid
in full every single month. So you had to be
cautious about doing this. You certainly don't want to do
it without someone's consent. But but the key is is
that someone else's credit profile can help you know, help
improve your credit profile as well, and of course, paying

(10:36):
off debts, renegotiating debts, all of these are things that
can help improve your score. I encourage you to track
your score as well and track the progress of the
things that you do. There are agencies like at our
at our mortgage company Citywide Tampa dot com, we do
have credit repair specialists that can help guide you through
and even for a fee or consideration in your mortgage

(10:57):
can help do this for you. But there's a lot
of it that you really can do yourself with some research,
with some help from AI and following a few couple
of different websites or blogs online. The key though, is
to stay informed, stay on top of your credit, and
be proactive. But start the process early. Let me repeat that,

(11:18):
start the process early. If you're going to buy a
home in six months, start working on your credit now. Okay,
don't bury your hand, don't bury your head in the sand,
don't say all do it when it's closer. You may
not have enough time. If you wait until a month
before you're ready to buy, your spouse may find the
dream home the first house you go out and look at.
And I can tell you because I've seen the look

(11:38):
in husbands and wives faces when they've let down their partner,
when they've gone out to look at houses and they
knew they should have done something sooner and didn't and
now they can't buy or they lose out on the
home of their dreams, all because they weren't prepared. Again,
I use the analogy if you're a heart surgeon, you're
looking at scans and images of the heart that you're
about to operate on. If you're about to buy a house,

(12:01):
you need to be looking at your credit profile because
it is the heartbeat of helping you, you know, buy
a home in today's real estate market. It's also the
heartbeat of all things financial, car loans, furniture loans, credit cards,
you name it. The more your credit improves, the more
benefits and value you get, even from a standpoint of

(12:22):
better credit cards, benefits on cards, certain points, certain sign
up bonuses, free this, free that, all these things open
up based on your credit score. So those are tips
that I have to help you during the holiday season.
Get ready to take on credit or buy a home.
In twenty twenty six, and we're gonna be back continuous
conversation after a quick break here on the Duncan Duo

(12:44):
Real Estate Show. So we're back here on the Duncan
Duo Show talking about the Tampa Bay real estate market.
You know, I had this question and I talked about
it a week or two ago on the show, and
it was what was my prediction for the real estate
market in twenty two twenty six? So I want to
use this segment to touch on that. And you know,
first and foremost, I believe that I'm already seeing signs

(13:08):
in the last couple of months of the year in
my business that tell me that the real estate market
in Tampa Bay is going to be better in twenty
six than it was in twenty five. And I'm going
to go through a few you know, points over the
next few minutes about why that is going to be.
And again, this is Andrew Duncan with the Dugan Duo
team at LPT Realty, twenty year real estate agent broker

(13:31):
within the Tampa Bay market, a few billion dollars in sales.
So I got a little bit of a track record
and seeing the ups and downs of real estate markets
through my career, and what I can tell you is
that the last couple of years have been rough, and
they've been rough for a lot of reasons. One obviously,
economic pressures, two, interest rates, and three and probably the
most pressing for Tampa Bay were hurricane, the hurricane impact

(13:54):
from last year. So the first reason why I believe
our market will be better in twenty six is the
elephant in the room and the biggest thing that's impacted
and harmed our market, which is, you know, the hurricane impact.
So you know, I talked to friends and other markets
that had massive hurricane impacts, and you know, we got
hit with two big ones back to back, And even

(14:14):
if your property wasn't damaged, the damage to Tampa Bay
as a region from a marketing perspective, from a fear perspective,
as well as the impact on areas and the kind
of the hangover from storm impact impacted the entire market.
It slowed down our market, It canceled sales, It turned

(14:35):
people to other parts of the country or other parts
of Florida. It had massive, massive financial as well as
psychological impact. The longer we get away from that without
hurricane impact, the better our market kits. So first and foremost,
we had a clean hurricane season, hopeful for another one
and again another year with a clean hurricane season, and

(14:57):
our market improves even more. The second reason why I
believe the real estate market will improve in twenty six
is because we have seen interst rate relief. Now it
hasn't translated. The FED drops haven't completely translated to a
an interest rate drop. And what I mean by that

(15:18):
is the number of BIPs that the Fed has dropped
hasn't completely turned into the same number of BIPs on
mortgages because the way the Treasury yields work. But it
has caused interest rates for mortgages to drop. They are
lower than they were a year and two ago, so
they're trending in that direction. Most people expect that to continue.
I expect that to continue. I don't know if it'll

(15:40):
continue as aggressively as the President is pitching it. But
I think that leads towards the real estate market improving.
And it does twofold because one, it brings more buyers
into the marketplace and gives them more more budget. The
second thing is that doesn't pull some sellers off the fence.
The lower the rate gets, the more that sellers that
are sitting in homes with three percent and four percent mortgages,

(16:01):
the more motivated they get to say, you know what,
now I want to sell my home and buy another.
And those are two transactions. So I believe that increases
transactions another reason why I believe the real estate market
in twenty six will be better. Now that President Trump
has been in office for a year, he has another
year maybe of you know, maybe more, but another year

(16:22):
of controlling the House in the Senate. I believe that
we will see some pro real estate actions, legislation, and
politics that help improve our real estate market. Whether that's
the proposed fifty year mortgage, whether that's tax benefits, whether
those are executive actions to public make public Fanning and
Freddy or more publicize them. All of those things lead towards,

(16:46):
you know, me being more bullish about real estate in
twenty six. The last thing, which I think is the
wild card, and that is property taxes. One thing I've
learned about markets, whether it's real estate or stock or
whatever it is, the markets move ahead of the news.
They move ahead of the speculation. So when interest rates

(17:07):
are expected to drop, the market prices it in and
predicts it. When the Fed is expected to put in liquidity,
the markets move in the direction of the expectation, not
the actual news. So as we get closer to the
end of twenty six, there's going to be a lot
of talk about the abolishment of property taxes or massive
property tax relief in Florida that could lead toward towards

(17:31):
some home owners not having property taxes at all. There's
a big push throughout the country. It has momentum. Our
state is aligned from a political environment to have a
chance at having that pass a sixty percent constitutional amendment.
The closer we get to that date, the more bullish
real estate becomes because it will knock some people off
the fence. It will also move some people here as

(17:52):
it gets closer to that day to becoming more likely
if it happen. If the constitutional amendment happens in twenty six,
then this impacts in twenty seven, But the market moves
ahead of that. Okay, So if it starts to look
more and more likely, our real estate market will see
some improvement. People act in anticipation of that because they'll
want to act before the pump up that the market

(18:12):
would expect from homeowners not having to pay property tax anymore. AKA.
Prices would go up and people would move here. We
would have more demand, we would have more appreciation, and
a lot of the rumblings and complaints about the scarlet
letter in our real estate market. Insurance would go away
because taxes are a lot more than insurance. So for

(18:34):
all of those reasons, I'm very bullish and optimistic about
twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven. And if you
want to stay up to date and see as the
statistics come out, you want to know what's going on
in the market, you can follow us at the Dunkin
Duo and all of our socials. You can also know
what's going on in your neighborhood with your house Dunkinduo
dot com. Type in your address, gise you a free

(18:55):
market report. You get to know. You know what's going
on in your neighborhood, what's your neighbors soldier house or
who in your neighborhoods in foreclosure? You know all of that.
You can also get an instant cash offer at duncinduo
dot com or We're going to be back continuing this
conversation after a quick break here on the Duncan Duo Show.
So back here on the Duncan Duo Show talking about

(19:15):
the Tampa Bay real estate market. Andrew Duncan the Duncan
Duo TMLPT Realty at the Dunkin Duo when we aren't
on air. If you want a free home value estimate
sit up dunkin Duo dot com. You can also get
an instant cash offer. If you're someone who's home didn't
sell during the holidays, you're frustrated, you're ready to move on,

(19:36):
you can again get an instant cash offer at duncan
duo dot com. Just the last few weeks alone, we've
bought a handful of homes. We're always looking to buy
more instant cash offers, and again, my goal is to
buy your house and clothes on it. There are a
lot of wholesalers out there that don't have my reputation
or my you know, the funds that I have backing
my purchases. They're simply one need to lock your home up,

(20:00):
give you a Fantasy Land number, give you a deposit,
and then they go out and shop your contract to
hope to assign it to someone else that would actually
close on. We don't do that. Our goal would be
to close on your house. Uh to buy it and
close on it, renovate it and then either rent it
or resell it. So, speaking of renovation of homes, you

(20:21):
know I had revived. I've had Revived Design and Renovation
on the show a couple of times and again, that's
Revived Design and Renovation. You can check them out on
Kennedy Boulevard. You can find them on Google Revive. It's
pretty easy. Uh, they're they're a great remodeling contractor. So
some of the things I'm going to talk about in
my next segment don't apply to them. Okay, if you

(20:41):
want a luxurious, amazing design renovation, uh, you know, by
someone that's going to do everything right above the board,
They're they're are go to. They're they're who we would recommend.
They do an incredible job. They do it all right,
and they do a clean quick, you know, as quick

(21:02):
as a contractor can, because none of it's quick. So
the things I'm going to talk about, the horror stories
I'm going to talk about my next segment, don't apply
to them. If you want it done right, call Revive.
So finding the right contractor for renovations, now, this is
something I want to advise you. One of the worst
mistakes in my entire home ownership history was doing an

(21:25):
addition to a home that I lived in. So, and
this is someone who has a massive amount of real estate,
both renovation sales brokerage experience, owning multiple real estate companies
and it was horrific. So I want to caution you
that if you're thinking about doing an addition on your home, okay,

(21:46):
there's a cost associated that a lot of people forget.
They think, Okay, well, i'm going to improve my house.
I'm going to make it more valuable instead of giving
up my low interest rate. I'm going to stay in
my house. I'm going to make it better instead of
going and buying the other. Nine times out of ten,
the customers that we've worked with through the years that
do an addition on their home that live in it

(22:06):
while the addition is going on, nine times out of ten,
they wish they hadn't. Okay. Now, so a renovation a
little bit different. You know, if you're doing a kitchen
or a bathroom or floors, you know, some of these
things can apply to that as well. The additions are
the worst part of it, though. So do you want
to make sure that you're going to find a contractor
that's license permitted, insured. You want to talk to customers

(22:29):
who have done work for them. Okay, and let me
repeat that, you want to talk to customers that have
done work for them, working from a referral, asking your
real estate agent asking us again heard me talk about revive.
They don't really do additions though, and this is probably
why additions are challenging. They always take longer, they cost more.

(22:51):
It's a nuisance you're living. Your home is your your paradise.
You know, you work all week and you come home
on the weekend. But guess what, they're still there. They're working.
They're showing up at five in the morning and jack
hammering around while you're trying to sleep in on your Saturday.
They're having your dogs bark, they're interrupting you, They're showing
up when you don't expect it. You basically lose the
privacy and control of your home. And so if you're

(23:14):
gonna do an addition, first off, i'm gonna recommend against it.
I'm gonna encourage you, instead of doing the addition, to
really think twice about the inconvenience it causes, because you
don't know what you're walking into. If you've not done
an edition before, I promise you it is going to
be way worse than you think going through it. Okay,
most of the time, it's not worth it, especially if

(23:35):
you have to live in the home. Now. If you
can go stay somewhere else, or you travel a lot,
you travel during the week, you live alone. If you
have a family and animals and you do an addition
on your house and you're gonna be opening it up
to contractors all the time, absolute nightmare. Let me repeat that,
absolute nightmare. Okay, sell your house and go buy a

(23:58):
house of the one that you want. And you may say, oh,
I don't have to pay commission twice. Okay, you're gonna
You're literally going to live in hell for months and
months and months, and it's going to cost you more
than you think. It's going to cost you more than
the commission and closing costs you're trying to save by
doing two real estate transactions and moving. Okay, moving is
quick compared to dealing with the consequences of giving up

(24:22):
control of your house, giving up access, the violations of
your privacy, the constant interruptions, the stuff that's the coronas
that are left all over your part, are all over
your garage, all over your yard. Okay, it is a nightmare.
I cannot recommend enough that if you're thinking about doing
an addition, if your spouse is thinking about doing an addition,

(24:45):
go on to my website, go onto our podcast, play
this episode for him. Okay, hundreds of customers through the
years have done additions. Very rarely are any of them happy,
especially while they live in the home. The only time
they ever are happy. Okay, the only time that they're
ever happy is when they don't spend a lot of

(25:06):
time at home. That's it. Outside of that, it is
way more painful than you're expecting. You're going to tell
the construction company, who generally is going to use labor
that isn't their own labor. Okay, they're going to sub
it out. All these construction companies don't have a bunch
of they don't have a bunch of labor on staff,
they don't have a bunch of employees. They sub everything out.

(25:28):
They take your job, they take a viig, they take
a percentage off, and then they hire out other people
to do the actual work. Okay, they have no control
over these people. They're going to say, hey, we need
you to go do this. Well, these people are literally
going to show I'm telling you right now, they're going
to show up whenever you tell them not to. You
can say, hey, I don't want you work in Saturday
at five o'clock and you know in the morning they're

(25:49):
going to show up Saturday five o'clock in the morning. Hey,
I want you to pick up your beer cans. They're
going to leave their beer cans. I'm one hundred percent
telling you it is a It is like hell on
earth living in a home that you're having an addition
done on. So sell your house, buy another one. Okay.
The second thing that I would tell you do if

(26:09):
you're thinking about hiring a contractor, don't rely on reviews. Okay,
don't talk get referrals from actual customers that you can
speak to. Okay. Reviews can be slanted. Reviews can be fake,
AI can fake them. They can hire people and literally
they can be faked. Okay, talk to someone that has

(26:30):
worked with that contractor, ask them for recommendations. Make sure
that you're not just talking to their buddy. You should
be able to go online and look up the person's
home and see that that contractor actually did work on
their home. Make sure you're talking to people, because again,
you know, contractors are almost especially with an addition, they're

(26:51):
going to they're definitely going to overpromise and underproduce. They're
gonna tell you we're gonna be done in three months.
Double it. Let me see, they're going to tell you
the price at fifty percent, it's going to be more. Okay.
Most contractors are really good at selling you the job
and then not executing. Okay, again, are there some great ones.

(27:13):
Of course, Revive for us on renovation work does a
great job, but they don't do additions. Now, let's talk
about the next things you need to look at. So
again talking to actual customers. Don't just rely on reviews.
You want to look at the quality work. You want
to stay local, you want to confirm their insurance, secure
multiple written estimates, but more than anything, seek word of

(27:35):
mouth recommendations. And then this is an important one for contractors. Okay.
If it's not in writing on an actual contract form,
it does not exist. Okay, well I told them that
they couldn't come on Saturday. That will not get relayed
to the people doing work. Okay, if you don't want

(27:56):
them coming on Saturday, there should be It should be
in the contract. If you want it done by a
certain date or they have to pay you, it needs
to be in the contract. I am at the point
now where I have a commitment dates when you're going
to be done. Hey, well if you're not done by
this date, what's the consequence. That's what you have to do.
If you don't do those things, it will take forever.

(28:19):
They will book other work, They will get too busy.
Most contractors are absolutely horrific at booking work, getting overbooked,
and then not being able to keep up. They may
be good at construction, but most aren't good at running businesses. Okay,
so get it in the contract. Okay, it's supposed to
be this dollar amount. Get it in the contract. You

(28:41):
don't work, want work on these dates. Get in the
contract with a penalty. Okay. You want to be able
to have something to show them. You cannot rely on
word of mouth. I told them not to show up
on Saturday. I promise you in that contractor hires a
subcontractor to come out and do work. They didn't commune.
They looked for the cheapest because they're trying to make

(29:01):
a profit. Okay, they didn't make sure to tell that person.
They're not going to communicate to that person to not
go to your house on Saturday at six am. They're
not got to have it in the contract, and there
needs to be consequences in the contract needs to be
done by this day or X no Saturday, or X
know this or X you know it. Really does need

(29:22):
to be specific. And I hate to say it, but
I've seen it happen far too many times where people
get taken a dam job by contractors. The last thing
you need to do is you need to verify that
they actually are a contractor. Okay, this is a mistake
I made early in my career. I hired a guy
to work on a home that I was renovating that
was not an actual license contractor. He had done a

(29:43):
bunch of work for other people I knew, so I
assumed that he was well. Come to find out he
was not, and it caused all kinds of problems permitting
and issues to the point where he wasn't licensed and
it cost me a lot of money to repair that.
So again, and make sure that you're dealing with someone
licensed and ensured. Verify all this information, Verify who the

(30:05):
actual contractor licenses under, and then get everything in writing.
Get the financial structure, how much you're supposed to pay
and when, and what their obligations are, what your requirements are.
If you expect that you want a certain type of

(30:25):
floor and your certain type of flooring, and it shows
up and you don't like it, but it's not in
the contract. Guess what. They may not be obligated to
change anything. Okay, if the language isn't clear enough in
the contract of the type of flooring that was supposed
to be used, including images, you're in trouble. So when

(30:46):
you're dealing with contractors, you have to understand that a
lot of them aren't really good at business. They're really
good at construction. You're gonna have to bring the business
element to check off boxes. You may have a real
they may do really really good work, and I've dealt
with this a lot. They do really really good work,
but they're terrible at business and terrible with details and
terrible with schedules. You have to iron that out to

(31:07):
make sure your expectations are set and those expectations should
be set in the contract. If it's not in the contract.
With dealing with contractors, it doesn't exist. And guess what
if they're not an actual contractor, you've got a contract
that isn't even enforceable because they're not even licensed. So again,
a lot of mistakes people make. It's why I strongly
recommend if you're going to do an addition on your house.

(31:30):
It takes so much and there's so many things that
get done sloppy when you don't do it right. We've
seen additions where you know they did like really low
quality work and they're like, well, I spend one hundred
thousand on this edition. Well somebody's gonna come in and
want to tear it out because it's a horrible job.
Like it just you're creating all this extra risk and
when things aren't done right, you didn't really add the

(31:52):
value that you thought you'd add. You wasted a whole
lot of time, and now someone's going to devalue that
space because it wasn't done appropriately because corners cut. So
hopefully that helps again sell your house buy Another one
called The Duncan Duo the Dunkin Duo dot Com. W'all
be back after quick break here on the Duncan Duo Show.
So back here on the Duncan Duo Show talking about
the Tampa Bay real estate market. Andrew Duncan, the Duncan Duo,

(32:12):
TMLPT Realty at the Duncan Duo and all social channels.
One of the questions we get a lot is what
should I do before I sell my house? What are
the things that I need to do to prepare it
for selling? Well, first off, if you hire us, we're
going to sell your house. Start moving now, start packing now.

(32:33):
The biggest mistake that I see being made are the
biggest mistakes that I see made by home sellers are
generally on things that don't cost a lot of money. Okay,
things like landscaping, clean up. Okay, look at your house
from the eyes of a buyer. Okay, what is it
that's going to make the customer not love your house? Okay?

(32:55):
First the curb appeal. Your lawn needs to be freshly cut,
pressure water to deal with any oil stains. Throw down
some fresh mult You don't need to repaint the whole house.
You don't need You don't need all kinds of crazy plants.
You don't need to lay all new sod. You don't
need to replace the mailbox. You just need to clean
things up. Okay, So pressure wash removing oil stains. Okay,

(33:18):
there's products on Amazon that are like ten dollars that
you can pour on and let soak overnight that will
remove the oil stains I use in my house. All
the time, remove oil stains, pressure wash and then freshen
up the mulch up front, trim the bushes, make sure
the lawn is freshly mode all the time. Those are
simple things on the outside. The inside you want to remove.

(33:42):
You think like if you were walking into a builder's
a builder model. Okay, you don't see a lot of
personal photos, you don't see a lot of personal artifacts. Okay,
you don't see a lot of clutter. You want to declutter. Okay,
start packing as if you're going to move, especially if
you hired us. If you hired somebody else, maybe you're
gonna be there a while. Okay, But if you hired us,

(34:03):
start packing now, okay, and declutter. Get rid of items
that make the home feel like yours. Here's what I mean. Okay,
this is funny because I walked through a house in
Beach Park a couple of years ago, and they're want
the customer. They didn't end up hiring us because they
didn't like my advice, but their daughter it's like, you know,

(34:25):
like one beauty pageants. They literally had a shrine to
their daughter. Like it was it was impressive. It was
an entire eleven foot tall ceiling wall, covered with her photos, trophies, awards.
It was it was like it was like a it
was like a mural. It was. It was crazy. Okay.
I told them that your house is not going to

(34:47):
sell as long as that's there. If you want, if
you truly want to sell, you've got to take all
that down. They were super offended. Okay, they didn't hire us.
The house sat on the market through six agents before
it finally sold. Year on the market. I remember looking
up and when it was sold, of course, the shrine
to their daughter wasn't there anymore. If they'd listened from

(35:08):
the beginning, it would have sold. But the problem is
is that when that's there, it labels a home so
much yours, and that buyer needs to fall in love
at your house. It needs to feel like their house.
It can't feel like their house. If you have a
shrine to your beauty pageant daughter all you know, all
over the wall. It's like, you know, falling in love.
You're you're not gonna you're not gonna be able to

(35:28):
fall in love with someone while you're going on dates
with their current partner. Okay, that's what it feels like,
all right. The shrine to your Nascar collection and all
the personal photos, the you know, all the things that
label the house to be yours need to come down.
It needs to be decluttered. Those need to be put
away and packed for your next house, especially if you're
gonna sell. That allows you also to emotionally detach from

(35:50):
the house and think about it as a financial decision
instead of you know, the shrine to your to your daughter. Okay,
so declutter that means light up the furniture load. You know,
if you walk into a room and it's just crowded
to furniture, some of that furniture needs to go. If
you walk into a room there's just rugs everywhere, and
there are all kinds of different design rugs, those gotta go.

(36:12):
Like it's got to have a certain flow and symmetry
to it, and all the personal items need to come down.
Neutral colors, paint can go a long way. Decluttering paint
and cleaning floors, polishing floors, you know, patching up holes.
Any cosmetic things that can be seen need to be
taken care of. If there are defects that you know about,

(36:32):
the buyer is going to leverage those things into more money. Okay.
If an item's going to cost you five hundred dollars
to repair repair it because the buyer's going to ask
you for they're going to over exaggerate. Okay, they're gonna
use it to their vantage because they know they have
the levers. They're going to ask for two or three
grand for some simple dumb repair. Take care of stuff. Now,
cosmetic repairs, address them because buyers see those and they think, oh, well,

(36:54):
if they didn't fix the ceiling, they didn't clear up
the stain, they didn't repaint it, then there's probably other
things that are wrong with the house. It's going to
lower their opinion of what's behind the walls. That they
can't see anything that can visibly see that's broken or
wrong makes them think that there are other things wrong
with the house. Okay, so fix all the cosmetic stuff. Declutter,

(37:15):
pack up, and look, if you don't want to pay
for storage, a place that things can go where people
are okay with it being a little bit cluttered. As
the garage. Maybe you park outside for a little bit
and you load your garage up of storage. As long
as someone's not like a car fanatic, you know, it's
likely that they're going to walk into the garage and
measure it for size. They don't need it to be
like you know again, if you don't want to pay

(37:37):
for storage. Of course, I'm a car guy. I love
seeing a clean garage. I love seeing you know, nice
flooring and cool things in the garage. But at the
same time, I'm an anomaly. I'm not the average consumer.
The average consumer just wants to see the garage to
make sure it's big enough to park their cars. And
if you've got stacks of boxes in it, you're gonna
be okay. Okay, of course if you can move with

(37:59):
the storage, if you can move somewhere else, great, But
if not, it can go in the garage if you
don't want to spend the money, but it needs to
get out of the main living areas. That's those are
the areas that people fall in love. You want someone
The longer someone stays in your house and feels comfortable okay, aka,
it doesn't feel like they're intruding and someone else's home,
But more likely that are to buy it. So eliminate
everything you possibly can that would make them feel like

(38:21):
they're intruding or that it couldn't be their home. If
you have the daughter's beauty pageant, shrine on an eleven
foot you know, by by fifteen foot wall with hundreds
of photos and trophies and awards. They're not going to
be able to fall in love at your house. They're
gonna they're not They're just not okay, all right, So

(38:42):
hopefully that helps you understand. Those are some tips. Decluttering,
freshening up the landscaping, cleaning up any cosmetic items, packing
stuff up away, neutral paint colors, and then, last but
not least, have your home professionally cleaned, especially if you've
got animals. I've got two dogs. If I ever sell
my house, I don't have plans to, but if I
ever did, I would need to make sure that my

(39:03):
house is cleaned and vacuumed. I would need the room
but running all the time to make sure there isn't
doggreer everywhere. So you know, have your house professional and
cleaned on the regular. You want people to walk in,
you want to smell nice. You want it to be
fresh and clean because then they'll stay longer. So hopefully
those tips help you. And if you're somebody is going
to sell your house in New Year, maybe your home
failed to sell with another agent. Maybe you didn't get

(39:24):
what you wanted done this year. Go to Duncan Duo
dot com again. That's Duncan Duo dot com and have
an awesome rest of your week. Tampa Bay