All Forum Posts by: Eric Odum

Wow...a couple of S Fla investors.  Not many of you guys on here.

This site is great from info on investing....very helpful people.  Check out the Ultimate Guides and Podcasts.  

@Andrew Davis, Yup. We are seeing unprecedented starts in MultiFamily here in Tampa. Ratio of square footage MF to SFR is something I have not seen in my career. Not saying the institutional guys are always right, but their money is definitely in MF right now.

I guess it depends on their desired lifestyles.  The cities at the top of the list are also the cities that offer the best and highest paying job opportunities.  Young people grew up experiencing their families being displaced from homes, because breadwinners were locked in to high mortgages coinciding with falling home prices, while their incomes were either eliminated or squeezed.   Mostly suburban markets like Tampa, Phoenix, Orlando were the hardest hit.   

Time will tell whether they become interested in marriage (large percent say they will never marry) and having children will influence their decision to move to areas with lower costs of living and lower priced homes.

Personally, I think the statistical fact that young people are interested in staying uncommitted is great for real estate investors.  For the meantime, they mostly seem interested in leaving themselves financially "available" to the best job opportunities....which means not anchoring themselves with a mortgage.  

It's brutal right now.  Now other way to look at it.  Two years ago, it was primarily the institutional owners of MF who were being solicited.  We had a couple of good years cherry picking.  Those days are over.  I had a owner with which I have a solid relationship tell me they received three solicitation letters on the same day last week.  He has a stack of them he has not opened.  

Blackstone and the like have pushed the typical SFR buyer in to the MF arena and the prices reflect that fact.

Depends on what you say are "areas to avoid" DJ.  One man's trash is another man's treasure.  

Jax

Orlando

Tampa

in that order.  Ask me a month from now and the order might change.  I like Jax.  I am studying it quite a bit.  It lacks a lot of the intensive institutional real estate pressures that S Fl and to a lessor degree Orlando and Tampa face (remember...the hedge funds dumped billions in the Tampa market when it was in the toilet.  Prices turned on a dime and haven't looked back since).  Jax, like Tampa, has some big dollar players lining up plans to improve the area.  It doesn't have the growth potential that the Tampa Bay area does, but it doesn't have the volatility, either.  It has a decent mix of Government/Military, large business and entrepreneurial job markets, which makes it a slower and steadier market.  

Trust me.  Tampa is no push over.  It is highly competitive here. Besides having a large number of aggressive investors, there are roughly 8000 active Realtors in the area, which I believe is one of the highest ratios of Realtors to Residents in the State, if not THE highest. They are out pounding the same people investors are.  What we lack is the overwhelming number of foreign investors that Metro Dade has and some of FLL has.  We still have the foreign investors....just not in the same quantities.  The further you move north from Dade county, the lower the number of foreigners....and it drops off pretty dramatically, at the Dade-Broward line and again at the Broward-Palm Beach line. 

Yeah, 60 acres is a man-sized deal, no doubt!

You have the right idea.  Tie it up before you spend money on it.  

How are you pricing the option?  How are you pricing the strike price?  

getting a hold of the owner is not that big of a deal.  Drop them a personal note showing you have actually done research on the property and are interested in buying.  If they don't respond in a week or so, pick up the phone and call them.  They will remember the note.  

If you haven't dealt with environmentally challenged properties, get an attorney.  There are opportunities with these properties, but you need to know what you are doing, beyond what the regs say.  The laws are complex. Even the regulators get lost and will take the easy route and say "no!" if you let them get away with it.  Having a respected attorney with some relationships in pace will be important to helping to wade through a potential quagmire.  

I am assuming you have done development before, correct?  

Its an extraordinary zip.  You will literally find every demo in this zip.  Whether it is east of west of Florida/US41 is a big deal.  Whether it is east or west of Bruce B Downs/30th is a big deal.  Upper middle class around Lake Magdalene, students around USF and a lot of Section 8 in between.