All Forum Posts by: Josh Green

Quote from @Mario Niccolini:

Hey BiggerPockets community!

I’m analyzing a potential deal in Florida, but there’s a catch—it’s in an AE (High-Risk) flood zone. Hurricane Milton recently caused widespread flooding, yet this house remained unaffected. Still, I’m weighing the risks.

🔹 How much does AE zoning hurt resale value?
🔹 Does it make renting harder?
🔹 Have you reduced flood insurance costs (Elevation Cert, mitigation, etc.)?
🔹 Would you still do the deal?

Is this a hidden opportunity or a deal-breaker? Would you buy it? Appreciate any insights! 🚀

1) you have the best data now making this decision easier than ever in the past!  Hurricane Helene was the biggest flooding event in Tampa bay in over 100yrs just last fall.  So if the house did NOT flood at all, I would feel much much more confident in buying.  I also just bought an investment property in AE recently actually!
2) next thing is to see WHY it is in a flood zone and how much of the property is in the flood zone. For example, my property has a pond bordering it and only a small corner of my lot is even called a flood zone.  This is much better than if the house itself is part of the flood zone.
3) get insurance quotes! In my case, flood insurance was under $1800/yr and for the numbers made complete sense for me as a good deal with that added cost. 4) Flood zone AE does not directly impact resale value, but can reduce the number of buyers considering your property which can lead to slower sale through time and potentially lower prices.  To combat this: market the property well, be transparent, secure a great flood insurance rate so a buyer can know the cost and be able to transfer the policy. 5) no flood zone AE does nothing to rental rates 6) if the insurance rate seems high then get a flood cert and maybe it will decrease. Otherwise reducing the premium is not simple but some engineering firms specialize in flood zone updating.  Feel free to dm me and I have a contact for that. 7) if all the above checks out and the deal meets your criteria then yes.  If it did flood though, I personally would steer clear. It will flood again, it’s a matter of when not IF.  

Quote from @Jonathan Blanco:

Is it worth seeking lenders with $0 lender fees (such as origination, processing and underwriting fees) or do they just get that money by increasing rates and charging higher points?

I would definitely reach out to @Raymond J. Rodrigues he’s done a ton of loans for me and clients and he’s always priced better and is super helpful the whole way through a loan

Quote from @Kris L.:

So I have a house I am going to be selling in a couple weeks in the Clearwater Florida area, but I’m confused about what the agents are saying. I have it narrowed down to two agents, one has more general experience in the area and are part of a large organization. The other is a smaller operation which does a lot of business in the specific neighborhood the house is in. The first agent is absolutely certain the house will sell in the high 400’s. The other is equally certain it will sell around 550. This is a pretty critical difference. The one with the higher number has 1 active and 3 pending listings pretty similar to my property. These range low 500s to the mid 600s. there just aren’t many sold properties in the neighborhood in the last 3 months and even out to 6 months is limited. of course the sale of hurricane damaged houses also confuses the issue (my house had no such damage but is only about 4 blocks from houses that did).

Is the higher price agent inflating to get the listing or is the lower price agent just not keyed in well enough in the specific neighborhood?

 Hey saw your other post on this earlier and wanted to repeat for others to see as well:

It's great you are recognizing this. I would really take a close look at their CMAs. What are the comps they're showing you? Should be within the last 6 months sold ideally within 1 mile. SOLD comps vs ACTIVE is very important. I see a ton of sellers and listing agents overpricing homes and end up with big "price drops" back to reality. Only wasted time and many prospective buyers in the mean time. I am selling a house right now that all the comps ACTIVE were showing much higher than the sold. We listed strategically and were under contract in 2 weeks in the slowest part of the year (December) whereas all the other similar homes in the neighborhood have been sitting for months and still sitting on the market. Part of this is due to marketing and pre-marketing of the home - an agent is your marketer. A good sign of an agent is how much business they are doing on the purchase and sale side. If they can't even market themselves to be a top agent, then they don't know how to market your home either. A good example of this is when an agent is selling you on their brokerage brand and saying things like:

1) Our brokerage has "X" agents and "X" employees all working for you! (HA!)

2) Our brand is recognized by "X" agency for your type of home! (LOL, likely a paid co-branding snippet and doesn't do anything for you)

3) We run "X" in ads to attract buyers! (you need to differentiate when a Mark Spain type company is running radio ads to attract business for themselves from it actually helping you out)

4) Our TEAM or BROKERAGE has sold "X" homes! (You're hiring the agent; why are they sharing stats that aren't theirs?)

Feel free to dm me if you want a 3rd opinion on your home. I've sold over 80 homes personally in the last 30 months and I'm usually within $5k of the appraisal report when I run my CMA for clients. I'd say nearly 95% of the time I'm within that margin.

Quote from @Kris L.:

So I have a house I am going to be selling in a couple weeks, but I’m confused about what the agents are saying.  I have it narrowed down to two agents, one has more general experience in the area and are part of a large organization.  The other is a smaller operation which does a lot of business in the specific neighborhood the house is in.  The first agent is absolutely certain the house will sell in the high 400’s.  The other is equally certain it will sell around 550.  This is a pretty critical difference.  The one with the higher number has 1 active and 3 pending listings pretty similar to my property.  These range low 500s to the mid 600s.  there just aren’t many sold properties in the neighborhood in the last 3 months and even out to 6 months is limited.  of course the sale of hurricane damaged houses also confuses the issue (my house had no such damage but is only about 4 blocks from houses that did). 

Is the higher price agent inflating to get the listing or is the lower price agent just not keyed in well enough in the specific neighborhood?

 It's great you are recognizing this.  I would really take a close look at their CMAs.  What are the comps they're showing you?  Should be within the last 6 months sold ideally within 1 mile.  SOLD comps vs ACTIVE is very important.  I see a ton of sellers and listing agents overpricing homes and end up with big "price drops" back to reality.  Only wasted time and many prospective buyers in the mean time.  I am selling a house right now that all the comps ACTIVE were showing much higher than the sold.  We listed strategically and were under contract in 2 weeks in the slowest part of the year (December) whereas all the other similar homes in the neighborhood have been sitting for months and still sitting on the market.  Part of this is due to marketing and pre-marketing of the home - an agent is your marketer.  A good sign of an agent is how much business they are doing on the purchase and sale side.  If they can't even market themselves to be a top agent, then they don't know how to market your home either.  A good example of this is when an agent is selling you on their brokerage brand and saying things like:

1) Our brokerage has "X" agents and "X" employees all working for you! (HA!)

2) Our brand is recognized by "X" agency for your type of home! (LOL, likely a paid co-branding snippet and doesn't do anything for you)

3) We run "X" in ads to attract buyers! (you need to differentiate when a Mark Spain type company is running radio ads to attract business for themselves from it actually helping you out)

4) Our TEAM or BROKERAGE has sold "X" homes!  (You're hiring the agent; why are they sharing stats that aren't theirs?)

Feel free to dm me if you want a 3rd opinion on your home. I've sold over 80 homes personally in the last 30 months and I'm usually within $5k of the appraisal report when I run my CMA for clients. I'd say nearly 95% of the time I'm within that margin.

Quote from @Trevor McCormick:

Hi All, looking for some advise or mentoring on purchasing a short term rental property in Kissimmee Florida.

1)Is it still a good investment with the current prices?

2) how to get started and what property management company to choose?

The price you pay for being part of the Disney World spoon-feed of guests is that the barrier to entry for profitable STRs (ones that leverage close to or max LTV) is very, very high.

The benefits of Kissimmee for a newbie is analyzing property potential is very easy - you will have a ton of carbon-copy comps to look at and the online estimators like Airdna can actually be pretty accurate.  The con?  The majority of investments is a game of "race to the bottom" and "who holds the cheaper debt" card. 

To have a successful STR I HIGHLY recommend listening to this episode of a podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-market/id161508...

Once you listen to this, and any highly involved STR operator will agree, you will find a lot of the fundamentals are lacking in Kissimmee or you have to have deep pockets to hit those.

I won't spoil the episode, but if you listen to it (and anyone out there that does) feel free to DM me afterward and I'd be happy to talk details tailored to your situation on if you're on the right path or maybe I can help.

Quote from @Fernando Sosa:

We have two rentals and looking to buy 2 or 4 more but I want to see if we can do DSCR loans.

Looking for recommendations in the orlando area thanks 

@Raymond J. Rodrigues is your guy!  He's GOATED when it comes to competitive loan terms, communication and knowledge!

Quote from @Tyler Magee:

Hello everyone, I’m looking to get into real estate investing. I live in Tampa Florida. I am a husband and a father to 3 children. I work 40 hours a week usually from 4pm -12am. I’m 37 and I’m wanting to do real estate full time eventually(if it takes 5-10 years, that’s fine). 

So my question is, if you were in my shoes, where would you start if you had $150 cash with good credit?

I love the idea of flipping houses and I love finding good deals. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between markets like Chattanooga with higher appreciation, and markets like Birmingham with more cash flow. Im truly open to any suggestions and any markets (I chose those because of proximity to Florida).

Thank you in advance for any advice. 

I would recommend an STR for the best tax benefits and cash flow no doubt. Appreciation as well.  With $150k here you’re just a little tight on budget but can make it happen if you self-manage and do your own furnishing and design.  I personally did a couple last year that I self furnished and self manage while working full time.  Takes a lot of work don’t get me wrong but it was so worth it.  I used to be an engineer before going full time in real estate a few years ago and those two STRs net me more than my salary was! Not to mention they wrote of over $300k worth of taxes for me utilizing a cost segregation study.

 
If you're looking to buy and hold and get all 3 benefits that's the way to go. If you just want to build your cash reserves then flipping is the way but just be careful - that too takes a lot of work and research to make sure you don't lose money. There's not a ton of margin to play with these days when you're financing everything on a flip on hard money loans. Just for example, if you buy a single family home to flip at $300k and your rehab budget is $70k (which isn't a ton - very easy to hit that amount) your ARV is definitely going to need to be above $500k to make any profit/make it worth doing at all. That spread is hard to come by as many wholesalers grossly overestimate the ARV and undershoot the rehab. But you should be doing the number crunching yourself and not rely on someone else especially the person selling you the property. ✌️ (and don't forget to calculate short term capital gains tax - that's why I prefer passive income over flipping)

Quote from @Raymond J. Rodrigues:

@Josh Green any pointers for @Heather Loyal?

Thanks for the shout! I only currently take on higher end, larger pool homes for management personally.

@heather PM and I have someone I can recommend for something like that!

Quote from @Megan Hyde:

Hi, any recommendations for Homeowner's insurance brokers/companies in the Tampa Bay Area (non-flood zone)? It would be for a duplex landlord policy (no STR).

Thank you. 

Shoot me a text and I can introduce you to mine. He’s super knowledgeable and priced the best but is a little hard to reach due to how busy he is!

Quote from @Annie Anson:

My husband and I are ready to invest in our first vacation property, likely in Florida. We hope to eventually have multiple properties, but want to take our time to learn and make the right decisions with our first rental. I should add it will be a short term rental property. 

What adds complexity to our plan, is that we live in Minnesota. We would like for the investment to be treated as active, of course. However, we will likely need a property manager to assist with some facets of running this rental (since we would not live locally) and would primarily market it through platforms such as Airbnb and VRBO to start, (eventually setting up a direct booking process).

Here's our question for those who have experience in STR's or who might be involved in a similar scenario: How challenging is it to meet the material participation hours needed to achieve active status? My husband is a high income W2 earner, and meeting active criteria would put some of our tax dollars back in our pocket. Is it possible to have a property manager who manages some of the property, while I manage the rest remotely? For instance, said property manager manages maintenance issues, problems that arise during bookings, basically anything that needs a physical person at the property, while I manage the rest? (i.e. initial decorating and painting, bookings, rate structures, marketing, bookkeeping housekeeping, etc)?

According to what I have read straight from the IRS website and other places, we need to either meet 500 hours, or at least 100 hours and also work more than anyone else on the property. I feel I could definitely meet both of those on my own, as my husband works full-time , and I will be the only person besides the hourly employees stated above that would be accruing hours. However, the one CPA I briefly talked to said the investment would be treated as passive. No real explanation as to why or whether there were exceptions to that. 

We are newbies, and don't want to miss out on a great investment and tax savings opportunity, but obviously want to do everything correctly in the eyes of Uncle Sam. Thank you so much in advance for your help.

 Hey Annie,

Most my clients I help with STRs and the STR loophole are out-of-state. To answer the question, not hard. In fact, feel free to text me and I can literally text you a copy/paste text I wrote to another client that had a similar question.

That text I just jotted out maybe 30+ you can do that will help you meet those requirements and most of those can be done 100% remotely. I've done this a lot and personally as well, so I really know the details that go into making a successful STR and how much work is really involved.