Duncan Duo 9-07-25

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, like we
are every Sunday at ten here on WFLA News. Andrew
Duncan with the Duncan Duo team at LPT Realty, joined
by Ben Turk from my team. Ben has been with
me forever a decade plus has basically done everything in
the company and now Ben is a listing partner, but

(00:22):
he also focuses a lot on our renovation business and
homes that we represent investment groups, funds and then some
of our own funds to buy homes cash directly from customers.
So we're going to talk about that today because I
talked about this a few weeks ago on the show.
How the cash offer is. It's attractive to a lot

(00:43):
of customers, and I think some of these big hedge
funds came into our market and they advertised the you
know what out of it, and it became this thing
where everybody wanted that, and when the market was super hot,
they were offering like really good prices and you could
sell your home to one of those funds and financially
do pretty well. A lot of that has changed in
a challenging market, those offers aren't as competitive anymore, and

(01:05):
so you know, ben you know sellers that are out
there thinking about the cash offer. It's usually not the
right call for people. But when they want maximum convenience
and they and they want something as is and they're
just tired of it and they want to move quick,
then it's the right option for them definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
And I think that's what most people is they want
that cash offer because they want the safety, the security
of the offer, but a lot of times the numbers
kind of throw them off. So it's that's one of
the things we do and what we train our team
about is just understanding what's the difference, what do they
really want, and then asking the clients what's the goal
they want to achieve, and then we can help direct
them to the best.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Option for them and what their motivation level is correct.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Right, So if someone comes in and says, you know what,
I want to get the most amount of money possible,
the cash offer probably isn't the right path because you
have to understand if an investor, a fund, or even
me personally is bankrolling an offer on a property, if
we're going to put cash into it, we know we
can put it in the market. We know we can
put it in a mutual fund. We know there's treasury

(02:04):
bonds and things out there that are guaranteed safe for
five percent. So we've got to do better than that
because we're taking on risk. We're putting money into a house,
we're renovating it, We're having to do permits. We're then
having to have the carrying costs. We're going to pay
commission a couple of times, We're going to pay closing
costs a couple of so there's got to be enough
meat on the bone. And people sometimes don't understand that
that if they want the most amount of money, an

(02:27):
investor that's going to buy it, that's going to turn
it into an investment, can't be the one that gives
them the most money because they need to leave some
meat on the bone so that they can profit.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
It still has to be.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
An investment, like you said, I mean an investment by definition,
we have to make money on that deal. So it's
definitely something that we work on.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
And even like the times where someone's like, well someone
will overpay, like we hear this a lot too. You
just find someone outside of the country that will overpay
for or advertize it or attacked there plenty time. Well,
do you think Canadians don't know how to be math?

Speaker 4 (02:57):
Like?

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Do Europeans not have a calculators?

Speaker 2 (03:00):
It's explaining somebody who's gonna come and buy, even if
they come from overseas they're typically more educated. Yeah, you've
got to thousand dollars. They want to deal, not pay
full or top race for us.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Especially because they can see the data, They see what's
going on in the market. They see that we've had
a challenging market. They know that a year ago we
had hurricanes, and so they're looking for an opportunity. So
if you do want the cash offer, you have to
understand it's it's kind of like, you know, I relate
it to a couple of different things. One taking something
to a pawnshop. Okay, like, if you take your items

(03:30):
to a pawnshop, you're probably going to get less than
if you sold them on eBay yourself or put them
on Craigslist and then had to deal with the people
showing up and all, because that's what the pawn shop's doing.
The pawn shops saying hey, we're gonna take your inventory
in and then we're gonna put it on our shelf,
and we have overhead, and we have costs, and you know,
we're gonna pay you enough to where when we sell
it to the to the next person, we can make

(03:52):
a profit.

Speaker 4 (03:52):
Right.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
That's or trading in a car to dealership right like now. Again,
there are sometimes where a dealership will give you full
retail because they really want to sell the car that
they have, or because you're buying a more expensive car.
But most of the time the dealership needs to buy
your trade with enough percentage difference between what they give

(04:14):
you and what they can sell or so they can
make a profit on the trade. And it's very similar.
The difference is that real estate brokers, hedge funds, all
these they're not holding the inventory to sell to you
on the other side, so like they're not getting they're
not getting that opportunity. That's why their offer has to
make profit. And if it doesn't, then the cash offer
isn't the right solution for you. If those numbers won't work.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
It can definitely be the right solution for a lot
of people. But you know what I find is the
people who really want the cash offer the more are
looking for the convenience. They're looking for something quick fast,
they need to move for whatever reason in a hurry,
and this is just it's a simple done deal. There's
no financing, we don't have to worry about dealing with
appraisals or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's just let's talk about that too. Because again, now
typically even cash buyers, we'll do an inspection, but they're
not doing an inspection to need to check off boxes
for insurance or for a lender. They're doing an inspection
to make sure that their evaluation of the repairs needed
are in line.

Speaker 4 (05:12):
You know.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
So for example, if they see that your house has
a torn up old kitchen, they factored that in. They're
not going to doing They're looking for the things that
they can't see, you know, the things that they can't
notice in that inspection to either decide, hey, look we've
got to renegotiate this, or to cancel the deal, because
they can they can only they're not contractors. They can
only they can only do the math on what they

(05:33):
physically can see on the property. Right.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Some of the biggest examples of that are foundation We
see that a lot, you know, in most wholesalers or
or investors or anybody. They're not crawling underneath the house,
but we need to know if the foundation is solid,
are their sinkholes around the electric or plumbing up to
up to today's standards. And that's really what most of
the time the inspections are for, just for those wild
cards that we can't see on a visual inspection.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
And I think also the convenience factor, Like you said,
it's you inherited a property. You know, you've got a
property that got damaged. You you know you've owned a
lot of rentals and you've done well on it, and
you're just you just don't really care about the extra property.
You just want to exit, or you want to sell
a property with a tenant in it and because you
can't get the tenant out, or maybe the tenant's behind

(06:16):
We've had those right where they're just like, hey buy
this and take over my problem. So those are all
reasons too. I think again, you maybe you bought another
home already and you failed to sell it, and then
you're willing to say, Okay, I just need the cash
because I don't want to make the payment. But if
you're somebody who's home hasn't enlisted before and you want
max dollar and your home is in really impeccable condition.

(06:38):
That's probably a traditional traditional seller listing instead of a
instead of a cash offer scenario.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
I agree. And one of the things I always let
people know when I'm when I'm working with a cash offers,
it's as an investor, I'm not emotional when I buy
when I buy a property, right, but as I'm listing
the home and a buyer is going to come, traditionally,
we want those emotions. We want the family to fall
in love with it, we want little job. I need
to pick out what room is going to live in.
But as an investor, I might math. I might be

(07:04):
looking at that at the end results of who I'm
going to sell it to. But for me to make
an offer, it's just math.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
It's math.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
And and I think again that's one thing that does
differentiate us because there's a lot of there's a lot
of companies on both sides. Either they want to convince
you to sell it traditionally right because they don't want
you to do the cash offer because they want a listing,
or you've got the cash offer. People that are like
oh no, no, no, you don't want to list it, you know,
like we're we're a condo it for either like we
we will give you your options. We will say, hey,

(07:31):
look you're going to leave some money on the table.
We'll we'll do this, but we want you to know,
like if you went this path, you might you might
put more money in your pocket. And there are customers
that just choose to forego that they want the convenience,
they would they would rather have a really cool you know,
we've had we've done closings in a matter of week.
We've done we've let people stay, we've let people post occupy.

(07:52):
Those are things we can do creatively that some of
the bigger funds won't do. You know, they have a
very strict criteria where it's this, this and this. We
can be a little bit more, uh, you know, make
decisions from a local level and say you know what, yeah,
you can stay there for an extra month. We've got
a draft an agreement, but you know, we've maybe got
to do a hold back or something, or we can
close really really fast because you know, you some emergency happened,

(08:16):
you know, so so again, those are things where we
can be you know, kind of flexible and nimble that
that other funds, you know, that other funds aren't capable
of keeping up with.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is just giving people
options right when they call us. You know they're used
to calling a realtor and they say, Okay, this is
what we're going to do. We're going to go on
the market. It's this percent and that's it. We we
can definitely do that. We can help you that we
have different options of going on the market. We also
have different options of getting local investors to work with you.
So we really want to provide you a menu of
different options to figure out what is the best direction

(08:47):
for you, because we know everybody out there has a
different goal in mind and different timeline, so we want
to be able to adjust ourselves to that.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Yeah, and then giving you the options right like, hey,
look here's the different paths you can go. Right, it's
your it's your choice in terms of you know which
of these paths you know that that you choose to go.
So so funny story, you know, when we do this,
we obviously have clients. I mean we sell three four five,
I think we had a six million dollar sale not
long ago. We sell really high end real estate. I

(09:13):
have agents on our team that that kind of focus
on that specifically, and then of course we you know,
we work with clients that are selling more inexpensive homes.
I joke and call it wheel estate. You know, we've
we've bought the mobile homes, we've sold the mobile homes.
But you had one recently in Saint Pete. I think
we're actually gonna list. We'd originally looked at it potentially

(09:33):
as as a by opportunity, but I think we're going
to sell it traditionally. And you know, we really do
kind of see all all all shapes and size of homes,
but this one has a stuper pole in it.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
I mean, I have no judgment on my part at all.
I had a little twirl on it, so it was
it was fun.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
Yeah, how do you renovate that?

Speaker 1 (09:50):
You know, like no, but but seriously, it's it's we
have seen kind of the whole, you know, the spectrum
over the years, and you obviously having been on the
team for as long as you have, you know, we
see amazing, beautiful luxury real estate, celebrity owned real estate.
We've seen a lot of that. And then of course,
you know, on the other end of our business, we
see the stuff that just needs a massive amount of work.

(10:12):
And if you're someone that does own something that needs
a massive amount of work, we're not judging you, like
look like you know, like there's people that are like, oh,
I never I spent six months not paying my bills
because I was so frustrated to call anyone because my
house is in such bad condition. Like, we're not judging you,
like in all honesty, Like we're gonna come out with
a solution and we're going to help you. So if
you're one of those people that has that home that

(10:34):
needs a lot of work and you've fallen behind, and
maybe you've hit some financial roadblocks and maybe it needs
some work and you've been embarrassed to have anyone come out,
I promise you we've seen it.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Oh, we've definitely seen it. And I can't tell you
how many times we walk into a home to talk with,
whether it's for listening or a cash offer and they, oh,
I'm sorry I didn't get the tidy up or some
you know, we really see homes in every different condition.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
We look past it.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Correct, We're not there to judge you, but we yes,
we definitely want to buy look at the homes that
have you know, issues, roofs, they see plumbing issues. But
at the same time, if you're someone who has a beautiful,
gorgeous home and just time and you just want out
in time as most of it. We've bought plenty of
homes that really didn't need much work at all, but
just wanted to because we provided that option to.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
And sometimes unfortunately they need an out because they had
they got bad advice, so they had a bad agent
that didn't market the house or overpriced it. I've seen
that happen a lot lace recently, where you've seen a
home goal on the market massively overpriced, like like they
were from three or four years ago, and then by
the time they finally do get to the right price,
the problem has been on the market so long that

(11:37):
every buyer looks at it and it's the scarlet letter.
And now they've reached the end of their financial capabilities
and they've got to do something because they spent too
much time, too high of a price, gambling with bad
advice and bad marketing, and and now they're stuck. And
now it's like, look, I've got a great house, and
it's really not the house that's the issue.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
Was the strategy.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
So so the strategy was just bad.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
And so we've bought some like that where it was
simply the price that we were buying it at really
wasn't that much that much lower than their last listing price.
The problem was is they just ate up their reserves,
sitting on the market too long and not getting to
the right price. So if that is, if you do
have a house that needs a lot of work or
you just want out, if you want to cash offer

(12:19):
Duncan Duo dot com again, that is Duncan Duo dot
com really easy website to use. You pop in your dress,
your phone should be able to auto populate most of
the information.

Speaker 4 (12:30):
You can do it.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Don't do it while driving, pull off the side of
the road, but very easy to do. You can do
that again at Dunkin Duo dot com and you may
very well have a conversation with Ben who will definitely
take a look at your house. That's one thing we're
gonna talk about when we get back is that we
actually go and physically look at the houses. And I
think that's where there's a lot of beata and switch
going on with the cash offer programs. People will say, oh,

(12:52):
let me generate an automated offer for you, and I
want to.

Speaker 4 (12:56):
Talk about that. After a quick break, we'll be back
on the.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Other side here on WFL a new so back here
on the Duncan Duo Show talking about the Tampa Bay
real estate market. Andrew Duncan the Duncan Duo team at
LPT Realty with Ben Turk for my real estate team.
Ben and his wife Jackie have been you know, phenomenal
agents on my team for a long time.

Speaker 4 (13:13):
And you know, we were talking a.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Lot about cash offers today because it is something that
has become very common. Uh, there's a lot of misconceptions.
We talked in the first segment about how many people
we can help and give them their options, and then
how creative we can be and how we've bought homes
that need massive amounts of work, you know, through our
fund and investment groups. And again you can do that

(13:36):
at Duncan Duo dot com if you're interested in that. So,
but I talked before the break about you know, specifically.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
I lost my train of thought. What was I talking
about before the break?

Speaker 2 (13:46):
We were talking about correct?

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Correct?

Speaker 4 (13:49):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah. So, So, the the reality is is so many
of the cash offer programs will generate an automated offer
for you, because what they've basically determined, and I think
it's society in general, is people want Amazon Prime for
real estate.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
They want to click a button and then.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Have their house and then money show up in their account,
and unfortunately it just doesn't work like that. And real
estate is there's too many moving parts, there's too many
condition things that can't be evaluated, and especially in cash offers,
because these are homes that typically need a lot of work.
So if you accept an offer from someone that hasn't
seen your house, I don't want to call it a scam,

(14:27):
but it's certainly closer to a scam than if somebody
is going to physically look at your house and then
give you an offer. That's a difference that we take on.
So what we see end up happening far too often
is that customer says, oh, I want to cash offer,
and then this website spits out a magical, fairy tale
number and it says, hey, we're going to give you
this number, and you get the number, and you're like excited,

(14:48):
You're going to the casino, You're ready to win.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
You think that you hit the jackpot right yep.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
And then when they finally come out and look at
the house, and then they figure out what's wrong with it.

Speaker 4 (14:59):
That number drip, and that.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Number typically drops to lower than what we were going
to be at if they had just listened to our
straightforward offer from the beginning, where we actually physically look
at the house to tell you what we'll give. It's
it's It is a bait and switch. There are people
that are selling to these funds, and then the funds
will renegotiate after they lock up the house. The client
thinks they are getting this amazing offer and then they're
going to get renegotiated, or they find out that it's

(15:23):
a wholesaler. Uh, that's a whole other ballgame. You know,
we'll talk about that. Maybe we'll kick that to the
next segment because that's a long conversation. But they get
bait and switched. They they now have Okay, well now
we've got to go through our our process to look
at your house. Haven't you looked at your house like
they looked at data, and they shot at an offer.
They don't know that your roofs shot. They don't know,

(15:44):
and then they gouge you down. You know, so now
you've you've you know, gone at a contract, you're all excited.
Now they have you on the hook, and now they're
going to take advantage of you. So that we cut
through that and say, hey, look we're going to be
straightforward and transparent. We're gonna come out well, actually physically
look at your house and tell you a number without
a bunch of fees loaded in. Because when our when
our fund buys it cash we get there's no commission markups.

(16:08):
We're typically saying, hey, look here is your net, Like,
here's exactly what you're going to get. A lot of
these funds will say like, oh, we're giving you, you know,
twenty thousand dollars more than them, right, but then there's
twenty six thousand dollars in fees. You didn't really make money.
It's a vanity thing, but there's a lot of bait
and switch and people don't read through the math on it.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, a lot of times the questions we get when
people call in asking about cash offers, it's just that
it's hey, i've got a three bedroom, two bath, it's
fifteen hundred square feet, what's my cash offer?

Speaker 3 (16:34):
And you know it's I wish it was that simple.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
I wish it was because you know, we've all been
to many homes and you might have one person home
who's gorgeous and doesn't need a thing, and you know
they've they've meticulously maintained it. And then that same your
next door neighbors three bedroom, two bath has a whole
track route right right, the AC's falling apart everything. So
to get you, you know, to get you a really
great offer where we're not trying to nickel and dime.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
You and it'd be straightforward and transparent, not tie you
up with some bs offer that we're going to come
out and you know, take fifty grand off of you know,
just to give you a straightforward like here it is, right.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
And that's kind of going back to what we talked
about in the in the first segment is we still
want to get it inspected, just to make sure there's
no wild cards, but that's not our goal. Our goal
is to give you the number. That's the number we
walk away with. You know what you're getting, and once
again we can be flexible. You need a little bit
more time in the house, whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
You need a lease back, you need you need this,
you need that.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
There's things that we can do that other that a
lot of the other funds won't do because how they're
set up corporately. We're smaller, local, so it's you know,
kind of local, community owned opportunity, so we can do
things a little bit more nimble than others. But I
think that's where there there is a lot of confusion
because we'll have people calls, oh, I already sold my home.

(17:47):
I already have it under contract. I got you know,
two hundred and eighty for it, right, and then we
look it up after it closes and sold for two
thirty five. It's like you told us you got to eighty, Like, oh, well,
you know, they came out, they to go we would
have paid two fifty, you know. Like so so again,
don't fall for the trap of the online offer.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
It's fake.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Okay, it's fake. It's bait and switch. They're gonna come out,
they're going to renegotiate, you know, go with us. We're
literally going to tell you straightforward to your face, Manda
man man to woman, woman to woman, we're gonna say, hey,
look here you go. Here's the reality of it. You're
gonna deal with a real person. You're not gonna be
dealing with AI it's gonna be a real human experience.

(18:28):
We're gonna be straightforward and honest and tell you like, hey, look,
here's where it's at, Here's what we think the reno is,
here's what we make. Like you know, we're we're not
trying to take advantage. We're actually trying to return our
reasonable profit that our money could probably return in other investments.
But but yeah, there's a lot of transparency with how
we operate. But there's a lot of bait and switch
that goes on with some of the other funds because

(18:48):
they tie you up and then it's like, oh, I'm
getting two twenty. Well it's not really two twenty because
you're paying eight percent an eight percent selling fee. You're
paying somebody these costs. It's really it's really more like
two a one. Like you know, we're offering you two
to nine. You know you lost because they don't do
the math. They look at the vanity number and they're
not backing out all the fees.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Right, the net number is always the most important.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
That number, the number that you know, I tell people
all the time, what matters more the number you tell
your friends at the bar, or the number that you
actually put in your bank account, and it's the number.
If it's the number that you put in your bank account.
Skip A lot of those, a lot of the bs
offers and wholesalers now that we're going to talk about
in the next segment. A lot of people don't understand
what this is. But wholesalers are basically middleman. They're sometimes

(19:32):
the real estate agents, oftentimes they're not, and their goal
is to basically, you know, come to your house and
tell you they're going to give you a number. Sometimes
the number isn't realistic, and they're going to put up
very little les grow and they're going to want really
long inspection periods and really long closing periods because their
plan is they don't have the money to buy your house.
They don't have any cash in the bank.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
Like.

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Their plan is to basically find someone that they can
then convince to buy your home for more than what
they're under contract for and then they make a tenenty
twenty or more fee, and homeowners all the time get
duped into that and then they lock up their property,
especially in the market or price for dropping. So we're
gonna talk about wholesalers and kind of how do I
identify that there, and look, there's some good wholesalers, there's

(20:13):
a lot of bad ones.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
We'll be back after a quick break here on the
Duncan Duo Show.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
So back here on the Duncan Duo Show, talking about
the Tampa Bay real estate market. Andrew Duncan with the
Duncan Duo team at LPT Realty, Ben Turik with my
real estate team. That Ben specializes in working with home sellers.
He does a lot of our creative stuff. He's certainly
he's worked with a lot of luxury clients, but he
also does and manages a lot of our you know,
our our renovation and flips and so Ben, you know,

(20:39):
I kind of teased this before about wholesalers, and we've
worked with them, We've bought from wholesalers.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
I've got love.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
There's some great ones out there, but there's a lot
of course sellers in the wholesale world, and there's a
lot of people that get into wholesaling that that maybe
don't have the customer's best intentions in mind and take
advantage of them. And we've seen it happen a lot.
I think customers don't really understand the difference. So I
kind of want to explain. You know, if you're selling

(21:06):
your home to someone for cash, you should really have
a strong way to validate that they have the ability
to buy your house. Sure, you know, like I mean,
I again, we'll certainly provide bank statements. No one's asked
me for a bank statement for a long time. I
think you can look up where I live and kind
of see my face on billboards. I think the cars
I d got the money to buy the house, right like,
So it's proven with me more than happy to provide

(21:29):
bank statements and anyone that wants it. But there's a
lot of times where you go into contract with a
wholesaler and then don't actually have the funds to buy
the house. They're now going to lock up your property
and search for the funds or find someone to take
it over that they can make a fee on. So
you think your home is under a contract when all
you're in your you're moving towards closing, when all you
really did was basically sign a contract to allow someone

(21:50):
to go sell it and sell for a fee.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, and then we see this all the time. They
lock it up. A lot of times we even see
the wholesaler try to market and advertise the home for
sale on the m that's just like a traditional listing, right,
you know, So, really, what have you gained if you're not?
You know, and I lost my train of thought there,
But what have you really gained if you're if you're
selling to someone else who's gonna put it on there're.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
Not going to buy it, right, Like, who's really not
going to close and give you cash? They're basically just
using contractual language to lock it up, to convince you
to think that they're buying your house, but they're really
not going to buy your house. They're going to try
and find someone to buy your house. And here's here's
the telltale sign. Okay, there's a couple of things. One
is a low esper deposit okay.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
And usually less than one thousand dollars a couple hundred
bucks at most.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
If it's less than that, like if you're selling a
three hundred thousand dollars house, a strong s grow and
a cash offer should be ten grand plus, right, Like,
even five grand is still good. But like if someone's
doing a few hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, basically
what they're saying is I'm going to risk only a
few hundred bucks, and I'm going to try and find
a buyer for your house, and if I don't find it,
then all I really lose is a few hundred bucks

(22:57):
they're taking on. They're taking on a risk, right. So
the second thing that you can do is there's a
portion of the contract and again a lot of people
just don't read it. They look at the number and
they say, oh, I'm getting three hundred thousand for my house,
and you're really not. It's a bait and switch. They
don't know. They don't read the contract. And there's a

(23:17):
portion of the contract talks about assignability, and that's that's
where you can where a telltale sign of if someone's
a wholesaler, if they're asking for an assignable contract and
they're putting down a low escro deposit, and you can't
really easily validate them, like you google them and you're
not finding a lot of information. You're not finding blog
posts and videos and radio shows, and you know, you're

(23:37):
probably not validating that they have the ability to buy it.
You're dealing with the wholesaler.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah, if the contract's of one page, another telltale one
page word document that they can adjust on the fly.
You know, all the contracts we use are the standard
created by the Florida Association of Realtors. We do everything
above board. You know, we're not coming in with a
word document that we're giving you two hundred bucks. And
a lot of times, even with that escor that you mentioned, Andrew,
I've dealt with a lot of home sellers that were
frustrated and they go after that two or three hundred

(24:03):
dollars just out of principle, just to find out that
it was never even depositive at all, and it was
never even there. So there's nothing they can do.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
And there's not a lot of licensure, especially if they're
not licensed, there's not a lot of remedy. But again
those are telltale signs, you know. And again, like I said,
are there good wholesalers, Yes? Have I bought have we
bought homes from wholesale yes? Do I have relationships with wholesalers, yes,
But there there's no regulatory body, you know, over them,

(24:30):
and there are a lot of them that have poor training,
poor ethics, and there's really no way to kind of
rein that in. So another thing that you can probably
be assured of is if if they knocked on your door, right,
if they knocked on your door, you went behind on
your more, probably a wholesaler, you know, like it. Just
the reality is we see it happen far too much

(24:52):
that that it does the bad wholesalers, just like the
bad real estate agents put a black eye on the
whole industry. So then wholesalers get labeled, right, and so
I think again, there are times where wholesalers have legitimate
relationships with huge hedge funds, and they can be a
conduit for that. But you can usually google the company
and google the person and figure out if they're legit

(25:12):
and how much business they do, and you know, and
and and if you've done those things and you're not
finding that, I would be very cautious about about entering
into that contract because then you're stuck. Then there could
be legal obstacles, you know, you could have a hard
time selling it, or they're simply locking up your property
and eating up months of your mortgage payment that you
keep paying, or the price goes down. So again we

(25:35):
run into it a lot where we're trying to help
people that were taking advantage of by a bad wholesaler,
and even.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
A bad agent too. It happens.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
So but again, I think customers a lot of times
don't really know that they're dealing with a wholesaler. They're
led to believe that the person that's under contract on
their house is actually going to buy and close on it.
And I think that's the differentiator between a legitimate, good,
fair wholesaler who will fully make it clear and then
kind of some of the unscrupulous ones.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, I mean, and there once again you said, there's
a lot of telltale signs. Look at the contract. If
they've never seen your home and they're just giving you,
you know, blind offers, there's a lot of ways to
look at it. But if the offer seems too good
to be true, or something that they're telling you, you know,
is even a way higher number than you ever anticipated,
stop question it. Just ask and if you if you
don't know, like Andrews said, just google them, see what

(26:25):
you can.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Find, and then call us for a second opinion. Hit
us up a dunkin do it dot com. You will
look at your stuff. We'll look at it and say, hey,
here's what we here's the advice we can give. Or
maybe you need to talk to an attorney or you know,
here's the legit you know that that will help you, right,
we can give you a second opinion.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
You know.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
I had Melissa Rodriguez a citywide home mortgage on last week.
She's our preferred mortgage lender. And it's interesting because I
think this happens in the mortgage world too, where someone
will say, oh, they're going to give me such and
such a rate, and then they look at the closing statement.
They they don't compare apples to oranges. They're like, oh, well,
I'm getting five percent rate over here, but then you're

(27:00):
paying three points, you know, like over you know. So
I think the same thing happens with both wholesaling and
flipping with a lot of customers as they see the
top line number, but then they don't get the actual
closing disclosure statement showing them what all the fees and
costs are, So they're comparing apples to oranges. They're only
looking at the top line number, not what actually what
you talked about before. The only number of that matters,

(27:22):
which is what goes in your pocket. What goes in
your pocket, that's it, or what goes out of your
pocket and the mortgage world.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
Right, so so I think again.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
You know, the same thing happens in the mortgage world,
the same thing happens in real estate and then flipping
and wholesale and buy, read and understand your contract.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah, we actually just had something like this came understand
it for a client. We were trying to help them
with a cash offer, trying to help them, and they
ended up going with someone else. They called us same thing. Hey,
we sold our house, No need to worry. Well, I
kept watching it, kept watching it, and guess what you know?
Two months later, that buyer came back and asked for
a forty eight thousand dollars reduction in price on a

(27:59):
three hundred thousand dollars home. That's a pretty big sixteen percent.
That's a huge, enormous Obviously, that's that that client was frustrated, upset.
I won't even repeat any of the words. I don't
even think I can repeat that that conversation. But but
you know, we're now working with that client to give
them the right advice that they should have had months ago.
And of course I can understand they're frustrated. They've now

(28:21):
paid a couple extra months of electric bill, of property taxes,
of mortgage. That's for a house that's now vacant that
they've already moved out of.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
So it's it's sad, but you do you see it
a lot.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
See people get taken advantage of them, and again we're
trying to be transparent with them and say, hey, look
here's our upfront cut to the chase, and our upfront
cut to the chase. Sometimes isn't as sexy as the
lie that you're being told or how you're going to
be duped later on. And so but that's the way
that we operate, that's how we differentiate. It's it's more
old school. So if you're listening to this and you

(28:51):
like old school, it really is. But but the reality is,
I think it's it's it's a better way to do it.
And and you know it's more uh, you know, personal connection.
You're gonna be you know, you're gonna have a human
that you're gonna deal with, You're gonna have somebody walk
through your house like all the other stuff. And again,
could people buy homes and flip homes you know, without

(29:14):
seeing them, without doing all that stuff, Yes, they're gonna
miss a lot. And it's really really challenging in a
market like today, like were there sometimes too good to
be true real estate deals? Yeah, four years ago, five
years ago. I mean I posted it, buzzed a meme
on my Facebook, and it was a picture of the
Rock if you've seen, if you've seen the Rock of Defence,

(29:36):
the Rock has lost a bunch of weight, a bunch
of his He's still huge though, Like people don't understand,
like even him looking skinny, the dude would still break me. Right,
So but I made a joke and it was like, oh,
here's the rock from twenty twenty, realtors in twenty twenty one,
and realtors in you know, twenty twenty five, and it's true.
Back then, there was just you know, the money was flowing,

(29:56):
the market was hotter. We didn't have a storm that
we had dealt with, right, so, you know, you could
you could miss. Someone could do that and miss on
a house, and appreciation would would erase their error when
prices aren't appreciating like most neighborhoods today, guess what you
can't miss. You can't do that because then it's going
to be worthless. So so the idea that someone's going

(30:17):
to buy your home for some fantasy reality fantasy, you know,
fantasy land, not reality.

Speaker 4 (30:22):
Price doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
In this market, definitely not. And we can see, we
can see people already in this market. And I think
a lot of the times when we go out, a
huge part of what we do is just educating the
client about what's happening, not just in the real estate
market and whole around Tampa Bay, but also specifically to
their specific neighborhood. Right, you know, this is what's going on.
These are how many homes are selling, this is how
long it's taking to sell. And if we do a
cash offer for an investment, it's very transparent, just showing you, hey,

(30:46):
this is where it is, this is what we see,
and and most people understand that. You know, if you
go into a house and they know their roof is
leaking and they know the kitchen shot, most people understand
that that you're going to have to replace that. But
but it's still about educating and we're there to answer
all your questions.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
And I think it's also relative to people sometimes don't
take this into consideration. And if you listen to this
and you're like, you know what, I am one of
those people wants to cash offer again, hit us up
at dunkin Duo dot com Again, it's Dunkin Duo dot com.
But I think one thing that people don't realize is
it's really all relative. If they're going to sell and buy,
maybe they don't get as much for the sale, but

(31:22):
the market is challenging in a lot of places of
the country. No matter where you're moving to, you may
be able to make some of that up on the
buy because you can negotiate a little bit more aggressively
today than you could have five years ago. Because the
market isn't as hot, right, it is more in favor
of the buyer it is. It does take longer to sell,
it does sell for less lists to sell price ratio
than it did. So sometimes people can't get past that.

(31:44):
They get attached to some number on their house. You
know we I mean, how many times you heard that, like, oh,
I got a I got oh my house for four
to fifty. Well, I need to wait till it's five hundred.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Right by the time they wait till it's five hundred,
the house they want to move into is.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
An house, right exactly. It's like they lost money because
they don't don't understand that. So it's really all relative.
If you don't make what you want out of your sale,
the listing or the or the sell to to us.
In a cash offer scenario, you can make some of
that up in the buy agree to one hundred percent?

Speaker 4 (32:12):
You know, but people don't. They It's all.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
About math, right, It's just understanding the numbers. And even
even if you're not investing in real estate yourself and
you just want to sell your your your home that
you've lived in for a while and now you want
to buy something new, Yeah, you might not get that number,
but you're going to get a better deal and better
opportunities when you go to buy, and I think you'll
in this market, you will definitely make it up.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yeah, one thousand percent. Well, we're going to continue this
conversation with our last segment when we aren't on air.
Make sure to follow us at The Duncan Duo, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok,
Facebook can follow me personally Andrew Duncan on Facebook, The
Andrew Duncan on Instagram. You can see Ben on a
struper pole on my Facebook page. Yeah, Ben, Ben was,
Ben was having a hoot.

Speaker 4 (32:51):
You know, we.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Put a house on the market that has that and
you know what, I think it'll sell. I think it'll
get some attention. I think people. I think there will
be someone that buys is that. Uh there's a lot
of bachelors in Tampa, you know. So it's a great house.
I can think of a lot of fun things.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
I can think of a lot of fun things.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
All Right, We're to be a back wrap up for
last segment after a 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
with the Duncan Duo team at LPT Realty. Ben Turk
on my real estate team for more than a decade now. Uh,
him and his wife and top agents with me for
a long time, do an incredible job for their clients.
If you were thinking about using our company, I would

(33:27):
strongly recommend them. They are They're amazing agents, both of
them and so Ben, you guys have built like a
nice little rental portfolio. And I think that there's a
lot of misconceptions and the pros and cons of of
of being a landlord. I've been there. I've owned a
lot of rentals before. I don't own many now, but
I've done it. And it can be very financially advantageous.

(33:51):
There's a lot of financial benefits, but there's also some
obstacles with it too. And one of the one of
the you know, I think one of the ways that
people in the real estate business and then you know,
people in general can build wealth that is you know,
pretty safe, is through the rental property acquisition phase. They
buy through markets, they rent them, they grow them, they

(34:12):
they depreciate them, they get a lot of rite offs,
and then of course someone else is paying off your
you know, someone else is paying off your debt. So
anyone out there that's listening, maybe what are some you know,
what are some pros and cons of being a landlord
or what advice would you give people, maybe someone that's
not been a landlord yet and is thinking about being
a landlord.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
I mean, look, there there's no secret that I'm definitely
you know, I have a lot of rentals. My wife
and I have bought them over well over a decade now,
and I love it. I'm a firm believer that I
think this is a great way for the average person
to create wealth. But the biggest misconception is this is
a get rich, slow get rich. It is not something
that you're going to buy a rental and start making

(34:52):
you quite so it does take time. You know a
lot of times people don't understand the math behind it.
So I would say, really just understanding the math the
tax benefits for your situation. There's a lot of things
that you can't really talk about that you're not thinking about.
We just think it costs me this I make this
much every month. It's the intangibles, the appreciation, the depreciation
that you know for your taxes, writing off if you

(35:14):
have an interest expense, for your loan. There's a lot
of great things. But the con one of the biggest
cons that I tell people all the time that think
it's just mailbox money and I won't have to do anything. No,
that AC. That AC never breaks at nine am on
Monday morning. It breaks Friday night, right before you're about
to go on vacation, right the plumbing bat.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
The toilet bats up on Super Bowl Sunday. Those are
the calls that you're going.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
With their whole family and tell the family reunion and
the stuff stocks.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
AC breaks, the speaking that that's always when it's going
to happen. So you've just got to understand and a
lot of times people say, oh, I'll just hire a
management company.

Speaker 4 (35:48):
Well, it's going to eat your profit.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
It does eat your profits, and that management company is
still going to want to know before they send someone out,
you know on Super Bowl Sunday, down clog of toilet
or you know, fix that ac So you're still there.
You're not giving away all that responsibility if you've got
you know, if you really want to build well over
a long time. I think it's great, But not every
property is a great rental.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
No, And that's the point I want to make in
our last few minutes here. I think there's a lot
of customers out there that have their primary homes that
they maybe can't get the number that they want, and
they're going to turn them into rentals and they're going
to lose money every month because their mortgage maybe is
too high. Now, look, if you bought a house and
the mortgage radates into threes and fours from back a
few years ago, that's probably a house you can make

(36:30):
some money on, right. But a lot of people say
things like, well, I'm just going to turn it into
a rental and lose money on it, smaller amounts of
money until the price goes up. The problem with that
is one, if you really want a good rental property,
buy another property. Right it's a bad rental property doesn't
make money, you can sell that, take your loss, and

(36:51):
then go in debt yourself on something. You know, again,
assuming you've got a mortgage rate above six, you know
those are things right now, it's hard to turn those
in rentals and cover the costs. So I think it's
a mistake for a lot of people right now that
are saying, oh, I can't sell my house. I'm just
going to rent it out versus just selling it taking
the hit because you're just going to keep bleeding money

(37:11):
and you don't you're not factoring in all the risks.
The roof goes bad, the plumbing leaks, a storm hitch.
Now you forgot to update your insurance to a to
a rental policy instead of a homeowner policy. I'm not
a big proponent of renting out, moving out of your
primary residence and renting it because you've got an emotional attachment.
I'm a proponent of sell that and then go buy
better rental property. Yeah, and that's the other thing to remember.

(37:33):
A lot of times, you know, when we live.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
In that home. We're just connected to it, right, we
are emotionally invested. I've never met a tenant who's a
same way as you do.

Speaker 4 (37:43):
It's going to be discouraged.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
And in your example, you know, let's say you're going
I'll only lose two three hundred bucks a month. You know,
I'll wait for a year or two and ride out there.

Speaker 4 (37:50):
I'm going to go down more.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
The problem not only that, but the problem is once
they move out. Now you've got to repaint the house,
you got to change the car.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Ten grand easy, everything's ten grand to day at least
like literally everything, you know.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
So now you've lost money for the net last year
or two every month on your mortgage because you're trying
to hold onto it. Now they move out, you want
to sell it. The price is probably lower, and now
you've got to go back put at least ten grand
to get a clean difference.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
If you can sell it and get out and pay
your loss, get out. Because rental properties only make sense
if they're positive cashlow period. In my opinion, if you're
negative cash flow, because you want to get the number
up into a certain number so you can net out
or whatever, it's a gamble because you're assuming the prices
are going to go up, and look, they have for
a really long time, but they for the last few

(38:32):
years they haven't, right, and so so I and again insurance,
I see. You know, we had multiple people calls last
year during the storms and their insurance declined them because
they'd moved out, turned their properties into rentals and then
didn't update their policy. They didn't have a rental policy anymore,
they didn't have coverage for that stuff, and they ate money.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
People that aren't perfect. They just don't know the difference.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
So I think most people with their if their home
isn't going to be positive cash flow, they should and
they can't write a check to get out of it
if they're negative, or maybe they don't make as much
as they want, so go buy better rental property, get
rid of that when it's not a good property. Like
you buy rental property to make positive cash flow, like
the appreciation and all those things are bonuses. Those are gravy.

(39:14):
But if you can't make positive cash flow, get out correct.
Don't turn your primary into a rental. You're making a
big mistake. There are so much risks that you're taking on.
There's gonna be repairs and maintenance and all these things.
You're gonna lose money every month. Like, I just don't
I really don't understand it, especially when the math doesn't
show you that.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
There's a path to appreciation.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Now, look, if you're negative cashlow and the market's appreciating
twenty seven percent a year like it wasn't twenty and
twenty one, okay, maybe then it can. But right now
that's not the case. That's not going to be the
case for a long time. So anyway, that's been great
having you on Ben. We're gonna do it some more.
If you want to talk to men, hit up dunkinduo
dot Com'll come out, give you a cash offer for
a house, or tell you know what, maybe the cash

(39:54):
offer isn't right for you.

Speaker 4 (39:55):
We should look at a traditional listening.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
You can do that at dunkinduo dot com and have
an awesome resture weekend in Tampa Bay