The Real Deal about South Florida Real Estate

Recently, the Real Deal magazine, which covers significant real estate happenings and trends nationwide, held a forum focusing on real estate investment in South Florida. It's a 38-minute video, and here is what I got out of it, and found to be of greatest value, hopefully for you:

- Long-term investors don't worry about up or down markets. Translated, they don't even worry about price. Investor Michael Shvo says it well, "If you build something special in the right location, you're not competing with something in Brickell or in Wynwood. I don't lose sleep at night over undersupply or oversupply."

- We are one of the most attractive places in the country for real estate investors. We have lower taxes, no state income tax. Our real estate growth is ahead of the rest of the nation. 
- Lissette Calderon stresses that you have to know your market and who you are going to be serving. She also gave us some words of wisdom on financing, which was echoed by the rest of the panel. "We are taking a conservative approach. We come in with a lot more equity, to minimize the amount of money being financed."

- Florida continues to be one of the fastest-growing states in America. Not everyone will be able to buy, and so owning rental properties is a sound strategy.

- Florida is unique in that development projects can be funded with buyer deposits. Other states do not have this luxury. Increased equity helps protect the investors against risk. 

I've attached the entire video here in case you want to hear everyone's comments. They provide a lot of insight into the way investing works--it doesn't matter whether you have millions of dollars or not. The principles are pretty much the same.

Watch: The Real Deal- The next wave of South Florida Development

Stay tuned to this blog for more real estate news and information you can use! What would like to see more of?


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All Manners of Ghouls and Goblins

Not talking about Halloween here. I'm talking about the wide variety of shysters, fraudsters, and other pond-water denizens that wiggle, ooze, and scurry about the streets of South Florida, trying to separate you from your hard-earned money.
There's this thing called "wholesaling" in real estate, and it goes like this. A regular unlicensed person can sign a contract with a seller to buy their house, and put in the contract the contract is "assignable." In fact, the standard As-Is real estate contracts have a checkbox for it. What that means is, Buyer A can sign with Seller A, and then assign the contract to Buyer B, who might want the house. So Buyer A will typically "buy" seller A's house for, say, $200,000. Then he sells the contract to Buyer B, for a fee--that can be $6000, $8000, whatever it is. This is sometimes done with a "double-closing" : Buyer A buys the place for $200,000, sells it the same day of closing to Buyer B for $208,000. Get it?
And it's all legal, IF, and only IF Buyer A had the property under contract.

What the sleazebag wholesalers are doing is identifying a distressed property (typicall) advertising it on Craigslist without ever having met the seller, and then when an interested party comes along, he approaches the seller and says, "Hey want to sell your property to me? I'm interested!" They sign the contract with the assignment clause, and then he takes an assignment fee from the interested party and washes his hands of the whole thing.
There is one big problem with that process-- it's a FELONY. What the sleazebag wholesaler has done is practice real estate with a license, by marketing a property and taking a fee for selling it. So what? Well, I along with thousands of other real estate agents had to pass a test, pay a fee, pay a broker to work with them, and a bunch of other hoops to represent ourselves with professionalism to the public. SO, Sleazebag Wholesaler, so do you.
Why don't I, as a licensed person, wholesale on the side to make a few extra bucks? I cannot. The law requires that I get paid for real estate activities exclusively from my broker.
I happily report these thugs to the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. I hope that before you sign ANYTHING from anyone with regards to real estate, you call a lawyer, and me--preferably both.
Thanks for reading! Your comments are always welcome!

MAIDEN VOYAGE! Welcome aboard!

I'm excited to launch this blog today, so we--that's you and I--can discuss real estate in South Florida. This is something near and dear to me, as I've been working with sellers, buyers, and investors here in the greater #Miami (and Broward) area since 2005 to help them achieve their dreams.
I hope you enjoy the market updates; let me know what you'd like to see more or less of, please. I love the feedback!

In the video I posted on LinkedIn this morning, I shared some #mortgage data that's important to all of us, especially if you are buying. The mortgage rate is "on the move" according to an article in #HousingWire this morning.

Remember, I encourage and love the feedback.
I love even more to meet with people, hear their challenges, and see if I can help, whether that results in business for me or not. I am in this industry because I enjoy helping people succeed.