All Forum Posts by: Braden Smith

Try Pelican Realty and Property Management. Check them out here:  https://pelicanrealtyla.com/se...

Hi @Jessica DeMelo. I own a real estate brokerage and a real estate investment company in the New Orleans area. Short Term Rentals are tricky in New Orleans. The city last updated the STR rules in December of 2019. Those rules state that you must have a homestead exemption in place to legally operate an STR, which basically means the owner lives on the premises. Properties that are zoned mixed-use or commercial can be an exception.

See the following links for more info:

Short Term Rentals

OWNING SHORT TERM RENTALS IN NEW ORLEANS

A Guide To Orleans Parish's New Short-Term Rental Rules

Here are a couple of recent news articles:

Weak enforcement of short-term rental rules could cost NOLA millions

New Orleans council wants more muscle in fight against illegal short-term rentals

I took a quick look at the doubles listed on the MLS to see what is out there at 200k or less, and there isn't much and most of them are in rough areas. There are no triplexes at 200k or less.

There are 48 doubles/duplexes listed at 200k or less. See map below:

In total, there are 223 active listings for doubles/duplexes, but most are over 200k. The median price point for all property types in New Orleans is currently $328,500. The current listings for doubles/duplexes in the Greater New Orleans area range from a low of $60,000 up to a high of $1,795,000. The median price for all doubles/duplexes is $320,000, and the average price is $373,617.

@Nancy Bachety @Melissa Bovee STRs in Orleans Parish are only allowed if there is a homestead exemption in place. Whole home STRs are not allowed at all. The only exception to the rule in some instances is for properties that are zoned commercial or mixed use. 

@Lemanuel Turnipseed the only way you could legally own and operate a STR in Orleans Parish would be to buy a property that is zoned commercial or mixed use.

Hi @Gilbert Jagot. I own both a real estate investment company and a local real estate brokerage in the New Orleans area. I may be able to help you. I will send you a message. 

You need to give this a read:  https://www.reiblackbook.com/g...

From what I understand, the federal government is cracking down on cold calling, robocalls, dialers, SMS marketing, RVMs... all of it. For those that are breaking the rules, they will also now go after both the user and the provider of the platforms. There has been some new legislation in the past couple of years and this year, such as the TRACED Act, the STIR/SHAKEN Protocol, the Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, etc. They have also increased penalties and fines for violators. Some of the new regulations require carriers to authenticate the caller ID, which is why numbers you don't have saved now have names that show up on your cell phone. This is to prevent the spoofing of numbers. The use of spoofed numbers is illegal. Spoofed numbers will show up as spam or scam on caller ID after some use, so if you are going to go that route you have to constantly check and change your numbers. You are also required to scrub against the national DNC list. This article has some good info regarding the rules, laws and regulations, as well as how to stay compliant: https://www.reiblackbook.com/guides/tcpa/

Here is a brief excerpt from the article:

What You Need to Know About the National Do Not Call Registry

In order to understand how this impacts your real estate investing business, let’s take a closer look at the National Do No Call Registry.

Within the DNC, there are 3 types of organizations or functions; seller, telemarketer/service provider or exempt organizations.

A seller may also be a telemarketer if it is calling on its own behalf or if it retails one or more telemarketers to place calls for it.

You, as an investor, will want to register as a “seller”.

Every seller should subscribe to specific area codes, pay appropriate fees and agree to certification requirements in order to receive a Subscription Account Number (SAN).

The DNC Registry requirements are as follows:

• Annual subscription by area code
• You must maintain an in-house DNC list and sync it with the nation registry at least once every 31 days. (The national DNC is updated daily at 8AM)
• Data for up to five area codes is free. Beginning October 1st, 2020, the annual fee is $66 per area code of data (after 5) for up to a maximum annual fee of $18,044
• Companies that have provided the required identification and certification and paid the appropriate fees will be allowed to check a small number of telephone numbers (10 or less) at a time via interactive internet pages. This will permit small volume callers to comply with DNC requirements of TSR (Telemarketing Sales Rules) without having to download potentially large lists of all registered telephone numbers within a particular area.

What happens to companies that don’t pay for access to the registry?

Any company that is a seller and/or telemarketer could be liable for placing any telemarketing calls (even to numbers NOT on the registry) unless the seller has accessed the registry and paid any required fees. Violators may be subject to fines of up to $43,792 per violation. (Each call may be considered a separate violation.)

Now, let’s take a look at the Telemarketing Sales Rules (TSR).

Telemarketing Sales Rules

According to the TSR, it is illegal for a telemarketer to:

• Ask you to pay with cash-to-cash money transfer (like those from Monogram and Western Union)
• Ask you to pay by giving the PIN from a cash reload card like MoneyPak and Vanilla Reload
• Ask for your bank account info to create a type of check that you never see or sign. (These checks are called “remotely created payment orders”.)

What’s more, telemarketers must transmit their telephone number and if possible, their name to your caller ID service. This protects your privacy, increases accountability on the telemarketer’s part and helps in law enforcement efforts.

Telemarketers are also required to connect their call to a sales representative within 2 seconds of a consumer’s greeting. So if you’re using an autodialer tool like MojoDialer, make sure you are on top of connecting to a live representative right away.

We do it all the time in New Orleans. What questions do you have?

And yes, FEMAs Risk Rating 2.0 went into effect as of October 1st.

Hi @Nicholas Durr. I am not sure if we have spoken before or not. I own both a local real estate investment company and a real estate brokerage. I may be able to assist you with your real estate needs depending on what those needs are exactly. Let's have a conversation to see if I might be able to help you.

Where is the New Orleans area property located? If you want to sell it as is, I could make you an offer on it. 

It is both in my opinion. We were already seeing a bit of a softening in the market. I think that is partially seasonal, as things always slow a bit at the end of the summer, and partially due to buyer fatigue. With the recent hurricane many people are dealing with insurance companies and adjusters, and things are moving slowly.