Who is The Best Short Term Rental Realtor On Florida’s Emerald Coast? (Episode 5 of 10)

Avery Carl [00:00:03]:

What’S up guys? It’s Avery Carl from the Short Term show doing the intro for the Panhandle of Florida. We are doing a 10 episode deep dive on two markets here, both the Emerald coast and the Forgotten Coasts of Florida, which basically makes up the entire Florida Panhandle. So 10 episode deep dive here. We are going to add quarterly updates so make sure you hit that subscribe button. We also have some supplemental materials for you guys on our website. So anything you need to know about current short term rental property pricing in terms of how much it costs to buy a property in these markets, you can find that on our website@theshorttermshop.com you can also find current air DNA income data thanks to our friends over at, you guessed it, Air DNA. And we’ve got all that for you guys so that you can listen to this at any point in time and go find live pricing and live income data. Also, if you guys want to buy a short term rental investment with a short term shop agent on the Emerald or Forgotten coast, you can just email us@agentshorttermshop.com and we will get you hooked up.

Avery Carl [00:01:08]:
These are two of my very favorite beach markets by the way. I’ve chosen to live in the Emerald Coast. I also invest in the Emerald and Forgotten coast. So very near and dear to my heart. Also, if you guys just have more questions and you want to chat about short term rentals, we’ve created an amazing community over on Facebook with over 50,000 short term rental investors just talking shop all day. It’s got the same title as my book, it’s called Short Term Rental Long Term Wealth. So head over there to chat more about short term rentals. And if you want to chat live on Zoom, we’ve got a call every Thursday that you can join@str questions.com Happy investing y’ all.

Avery Carl [00:01:49]:
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Emerald and Forgotten co series of the short term show special episodes. Today we’re going to talk about building your buying team so or and your management team so all the people that you need from start to finish, from finding your property to managing your property. We’re going to go through who those people are, how you find them and the questions you need to ask to make sure you’re hiring the right person. I’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 person panel of awesome, awesome agents on our team. So I’ll let them introduce themselves really quick. We’ll start with January.

January Johnson [00:02:27]:
Hi. January Johnson, Emerald Coast. I sell everything between Panama City beach and Navarre beach, and I own four short term rentals in Panama City myself and I’m a community leader for Airbnb.

Avery Carl [00:02:40]:
All right, next we have Rush Valentine. Rush, you want to introduce yourself?

Rush Valentine [00:02:44]:
Hey, Rush Valentine. Kind of like January, everything from Navarre beach over to Panama City Beach. Been with the short term shop for about four years now or one on year four. So that time specifically work with only short term rental investors. So I feel like I’ve got a good bit of knowledge on helping everyone get through that process as seamlessly as possible.

Avery Carl [00:03:06]:
All right, next we have Austin Lewis. Austin.

Austin Lewis [00:03:09]:
Hey guys, I’m Austin Lewis. Pensacola born, native, still live here. I cover from Perdido Key, which is the Alabama state line, all the way over to Fort Walton beach, which is just west of Destin and everything in between, which be Pensacola beach and Navarre Beach.

Avery Carl [00:03:26]:
All right, next we have Pete Apposado. Go ahead, Pete.

Pete Appezatto [00:03:29]:
What’s up? It’s Pete Abbazado here, agent on the short term shop covering from Destin to Panama City Beach, New Jersey, local, I mean, native now, now in Destin. And I’ve been an Airbnb host myself since 2010.

Avery Carl [00:03:46]:
All right, so got a lot of people here to help us through the journey of hiring the right people from start to finish. So once you decided on a market, you have to find an agent, you have to find a lender. Sometimes you’ll find the lender first, sometimes you’ll find the agent first. But today we’re going to talk about agents first, we’ll talk about lenders second. So when you are looking for an agent to find a short term rental in a certain market, where are you.

Pete Appezatto [00:04:14]:
Guys looking@theshorttermshop.com.

January Johnson [00:04:18]:
Is a trick question.

Pete Appezatto [00:04:20]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:04:21]:
Okay, so how, well, how would someone come across a shorttermshop.com? so if you’re going to buy, let’s say you’re going to buy a property and you, you’re wondering, okay, how do I find the right agent for this? Because there’s tons of agents on Zillow and redfin and realtor.com. so how do you find the right agent? Where you.

Austin Lewis [00:04:41]:
I think the first thing someone’s going to do, you know, is early in the due diligence process is going to depend on, you know, of course, what stage they’re in. But you know, personally, me, whenever I was first looking, I’m watching YouTube videos, I’m hitting Google and just trying to learn everything I can. And luckily the short term shop had a big enough presence that, that I stumbled across Everybody but yeah, YouTube and bigger pockets, things like that is a good place to start.

January Johnson [00:05:10]:
Yep, I agree with Bigger Pockets. I mean I’m on there personally answering people’s questions, but I just love the, the forum because it’s, you know, people helping people. You can’t be salesy. It’s not about that. It’s just about answering people’s questions and giving advice. And personally, if I’m looking for an agent who you know and I know I want to specialize in short term rentals, I’m going to ask that of every agent I come across because a lot of people know a lot of realt. I mean I’ve got lots of realtor friends myself. But are they investors? And if they’re investors, do they own short term property? How, how good at it are they? You know, I want to know those things about them.

January Johnson [00:05:45]:
I want people that I can model.

Pete Appezatto [00:05:47]:
Yeah, absolutely. I, I came actually came across Avery on this at you on YouTube and that’s how I joined the team. But So I think YouTube’s actually a really good place to start because it’s, it’s not only a video website, it’s also a search engine. So if you just go in there, buying a short term rental will probably pop up the short term shop. But I think working with an agent who actually understands short term rentals is super important because just like January said, there’s tons of agents but if they don’t actually understand this business or have done it themselves, you kind of are putting yourself in a sticky situation.

January Johnson [00:06:26]:
I would say stay away from people who say call me for all your real estate needs. I don’t, I don’t want people to call me for all their real estate needs. I don’t want to, I don’t sell land. I don’t know about short sales. I’m not a commercial realtor. I do residential and specifically vacation rentals. So that’s what I know. Call me for that.

Pete Appezatto [00:06:47]:
Yes, absolutely true.

Avery Carl [00:06:50]:
All right, so bigger pockets. So referrals, YouTube, Google, lot of. When you search short term rental agent in such and such market, I would say if you are getting a referral from another investor, which is where a lot of people will find that they’ll go on biggerpockets or they’ll go in a local Facebook group because there’s short term rental Facebook groups for almost every market you could think of now and they say, you know, okay, I need an agent in X market and a bunch of people will comment and recommend some people. So if you are getting a referral from another investor, make sure that you ask that investor, hey, have you actually bought a property with this person? Because a lot of times, especially on Facebook, people have their moms and sisters and friends and so, and so people that are in their other Facebook group that they’re friends with go recommend me. So a lot of times it’s not based on personal experience. So you want to make sure that you are only taking references from people who’ve actually used the agent that they’re recommending for a deal. I mean, it’s great if you’re friends with somebody, but that’s got nothing to do with making a good investment. So keep that in mind.

Avery Carl [00:07:56]:
Questions you want to ask a lot. We’ve hit on several of them already. I want to hear that an agent is busy, especially the way the market’s been up and down over the past couple years. So when you’ve got an agent who, you know, maybe you’re friends with, who has been an agent for a while, you know, we all know a bunch of agents, you know, two years ago, when everything you had to make offers, thousands and thousands of dollars over asking and remove all these contingencies to do all these crazy things just to be considered an agent who’s not that busy might not have known that at the time, exactly how crazy that it got. And they could be advising you to make, you know, let’s offer 10% under and see what happens. Well, you would never get a deal that way. And then conversely, same thing now that the market is slower. And if that person like finally got the picture two years ago, okay, we got to be really aggressive here.

Avery Carl [00:08:47]:
And then they haven’t sold anything until today. And you’re coming in to make an offer, they’re going to advise you to offer too high. So you want an agent who’s busy, not because busy agents are better at anything necessarily than slower agents are not talking about anyone’s capabilities. But a busy agent is going to have their finger on the pulse of the market better than an agent who just does a few deals a year. So, so you want to make sure that that person is, is, has their finger on that pulse and knows what’s going on in the market. And the only way to really, truly know that is to do deals.

January Johnson [00:09:20]:
I ran into a friend of mine the other day at a gas station who I actually gave the opportunity. I said, hey, I think you’d really be really good at the short term shop. You know, this is where I am, this is what I’m doing. And we were expanding at the time. And he gave me a very, he had given me a very well reasoned response to why he didn’t want to leave his current brokerage. But when I saw him at the gas station the other day, he said, are you still doing great with that short term shop? And I said, oh yeah, yeah. And he said even in this market? And I said, yes, in this market. This is not the housing market.

January Johnson [00:09:49]:
We’re in the short term rental investment business market and that’s different than the residential market. So he was surprised that we were so busy. But this is all we do and he does a lot of different things and he’s not busy. So there you go.

Avery Carl [00:10:03]:
Another thing too is so there’s a lot of, a lot of older school real estate investing advice on just general real estate investing podcasts and books and things like that that say the agent who answers their phone is the one who gets the deal. So let me tell you exactly what the agent who answers the phone first means. It means that they happen to be holding their phone at the exact moment that you called. It doesn’t mean that they know the most about short term rentals or are the best person for the deal. I’ve always thought that that was terrible advice even for long term rentals, even for anything. Because the person who. It doesn’t mean anything that they just happen to answer right then it means they’re not busy actually is what it means. So make sure that you’re asking questions of agents when you call them and you’re just saying, oh, you answered your phone first.

Avery Carl [00:10:48]:
Here we go, let’s go, let’s go make some offers because you might end up in a bad situation. You also want to make sure that even if they are busy that they do a lot of deals of the asset class that you’re trying to buy in. So yes, I’m really busy. But if you call me and want to buy a 50 unit apartment complex, I am the wrong person for that job. I do not do that asset class, I invest in it. But I cannot help you buy one in in any of the states that I’m licensed in. So you want to keep that in mind. Somebody who’s busy.

Avery Carl [00:11:18]:
But maybe they did all primary homes last year. It’s an entirely different mindset working with primary homes and working with investment properties. So let’s say that you find out, okay, your agent did X amount of deals last year, that’s pretty busy. So they’re going to be pretty hip and with it here. But only two of those were Short term rentals, that’s still kind of, they can probably get the deal done, but they may not be the best agent for your short term rental deal. You want an agent who’s done a lot of deals in the asset class that you’re trying to buy, that specializes and who isn’t like, oh yeah, but come to me for all your buying and selling these, which I totally did, by the way, when I first started in real estate and I tried to fight being the short term rental girl, I didn’t want to be, quote, pigeonholed. And then when I finally stopped trying to do other kinds of real estate, I actually like started building a business and it worked.

Pete Appezatto [00:12:08]:
So anyway, see how that worked for you.

Avery Carl [00:12:10]:
Yeah, yeah. So what else, what other questions are we asking?

Pete Appezatto [00:12:16]:
It’s funny kind of what you were saying. You know, I speak to a lot of listing agents that have been in this market for 15, 20 years and they post these properties as excellent short term rentals. But when the number, when you work out the numbers, it doesn’t make sense. Some of them, so it’s, I, I, and I’ve had heated discussions with some of these listing agents and, and you, you tried to explain to them how that property is not going to make money. And they’re like, what are you talking about? It’s generating this much money a year. I’m like, yeah, look at the purchase price.

Avery Carl [00:12:51]:
Yeah, it makes a hundred thousand dollars, but it’s $5 million.

Pete Appezatto [00:12:54]:
Exactly. So they don’t truly understand this business because if they did, they actually wouldn’t be posting what it did in revenue.

Rush Valentine [00:13:02]:
Correct. I’d say most of the properties I look at, and that’s, that’s the thing too that you can, you can always ask your agent to kind of, I guess qualify them or verify that they have what you need. You know, I can not tell you, just like Pete said, how many agents there are in this market. And I’m not saying they’re making that. They’re, they’re probably awesome agents. Just they don’t know that area. They see that a property has already done a six figure gross revenue a previous year and they immediately think this is a moneymaker, this is a great business. I mean like, so when you’re, when you’re actually, you know, picking your realtor or whatever, I mean, you’ve got to ask the other question, not how much did this property make? You got to say, what in your market makes the property possible to be, you know, an excellent rental? You know, tell me more about just what the house did last year.

Rush Valentine [00:13:45]:
But tell me, what kind of location do I have to be in to make this thing a good rental? What kind of, you know, architectural style do I need to have to make this a good rental? You know, just what amenities, what things like that. Just pretty much anything and everything that a piece of paper that shows what revenue was last year is not going to show you.

Pete Appezatto [00:14:02]:
Yep.

January Johnson [00:14:02]:
Even before that, knowing where the short term rental areas are because not everything on the Emerald coast, for example, is short term rentable. Panama City beach is a case in point. It’s short term rentable, neighborhood by neighborhood. So, you know, and even within a neighborhood, one neighborhood we have here, the first two and a half blocks are short term rentable and the rest of it isn’t. So you got to know that if you are in this market. So things that just because it looks like a beach house doesn’t mean you can short term rent it.

Pete Appezatto [00:14:28]:
And the flip side, even areas that are short term rentable don’t make the best investments either.

Austin Lewis [00:14:35]:
I would say if somehow you got two agents that were neck and neck, you could ask them, you know, what they can bring to the table. You know, like us as a team, we’ve got, I don’t even know anymore, 50, 60 agents that, you know, if somehow we ran into something we haven’t come across, we can, you know, we got a lot of very knowledgeable people we can bounce things off of. And we’ve also got management Monday, which is huge. You know, where they, they teach every, you know, we, we teach them how to be successful and be there in the background to be sure that happens. Just, you know, I don’t feel like there’s any other agents that are bringing that sort of thing to the table.

Pete Appezatto [00:15:11]:
Yep, absolutely.

Avery Carl [00:15:12]:
Thank you.

January Johnson [00:15:14]:
We’re also here after the sale too because, you know, like I’ve more than one time have I gone to a, a buyer’s house after closing and pulled Amazon boxes in from the porch just on my travels. I mean, that’s not, I’m not, I don’t do that on a regular basis. But you know, I tell my clients I’m here for the empire. I’m not just here for your one short term rental. Want to help you build the whole, everything that you want to build. I’m here for that.

Pete Appezatto [00:15:36]:
Yep, absolutely. I have plenty of clients that reach out to me after we’ve closed and bounced ideas off of and, and they really appreciate that.

Avery Carl [00:15:47]:
Okay, so let’s hit on a few more things that we need to ask them. It really does. It’s not a necessity as long as they’re experienced in, in the short term rental space. But it does help if an agent owns their own short term rentals just because they’ve, they’ve been there, they know what you feel like. Like I’ll never forget how scared I was on my first one and, and I always try to remember that when I’m helping a client how scared I was. But again like that’s not a deal breaker. You just want somebody who’s experienced in the space. But there’s a few kind of personality things that personality that sounds bad.

Avery Carl [00:16:19]:
Like hire this person who has a better personality than the other one. But there’s some things that I personally when I’m hiring an agent in an area that I’m not licensed that I don’t like and the main one that is an automatic no for me is when an agent presents themselves using aggressive terms like I’m a fighter, I’m a pit bull agent. I’m a pit bull for my clients. So I as a negotiator for my clients know and have seen over 5000 deals of experience that, that does not work. That does not get your client very far at all. You are actually, it’s a your to your client’s detriment to get in a deal and start bulldogging people. It just doesn’t work. Just like we tell our 4 year old, you get more bees with honey.

Avery Carl [00:17:06]:
So if you come in and you’re automatically injecting angst and aggression and tension into the deal, you’re not going to be able to get your client as much as you could. As if you came in and talked to people like a normal person and showed people respect when you’re negotiating. So that’s a big one for me. You guys have any other red flags?

Pete Appezatto [00:17:24]:
No, I 100% agree with that. You know, it. Our job is to not bulldoze the listing agent. It’s to actually work together with them. So if you don’t have the ability to actually, you know, work in tandem with that person, it’s going to be a hard fight.

Avery Carl [00:17:40]:
Okay, I’ll give you another one that I, that I, that puts me over the edge that people might not realize. I do not like, I don’t like to see every, every pending deal. I don’t, especially if there’s an address on it. Like don’t call attention to my deal that’s not under contract yet. I mean that’s not closed yet. It’s fine if it’s closed, but if it’s pending and it’s got the address or like, or it’s obvious the property that it is. Especially like two years ago, because I did it to other agents, I would see somebody say, oh, this property is pending. Got this from my client, and my client wasn’t aware of it.

Avery Carl [00:18:14]:
And then they saw it, they said, oh, man, this one was really cool. How much does this go for? I’m like, I don’t know, but I know how that agent works, and I think we need to go make a backup offer because you’ll, you’ll be able to get it. So I don’t like to see that either. If every now and then it’s okay as long as there’s no, like, identifying features of the property. But I don’t like to see an easily identifiable thing that’s not closed yet being posted to be on the Internet to call attention to my deal. So maybe that’s just me.

January Johnson [00:18:44]:
Anything can happen before the keys and the money change hands. So it ain’t done until it’s done. And I’d also like to say, you know, I, I want to. I mean, I think all of us are probably the same. We want to help our clients purchase something. But I’m not here to sell you something as a, as a client. I want you to buy the thing that works for you. And I don’t chase commission.

January Johnson [00:19:06]:
I don’t chase my money. So, you know, I’m not going to push you to buy something. I, I have plenty of clients and plenty of deals. And, and if this is not the right property for you, something will come along that is. And I do, I can, you know, having said that, I can help you get out of analysis paralysis if you’re just stuck or scared. I think we’re all really good at that. But beyond that, I would never high pressure somebody to make a sale ever.

Pete Appezatto [00:19:31]:
I’m sure.

Austin Lewis [00:19:32]:
I think different personality traits kind of, you know, they, they merge differently. But if I go to Walmart, I know what I’m buying before I walk in the door. I’m going in, I’m getting it. Like, you know, I don’t, I don’t want to be sold something. So I, in the same way, Jan, I, you know, I don’t like trying to sell something, but I actually just had a client close recently that we went there after or during his inspection. We’re kind of talking things out, and there was a couple things that, you know, we’re going to cost some money. It was still a good deal, in my opinion. But kept asking me, what would you do? I’m like, and I, I kind of, I stayed back a little bit.

Austin Lewis [00:20:07]:
I don’t want to him to in the future say, hey, I, I wish I wouldn’t have bought this. I always tell him, hey man, I’m not trying to sell you anything. What do you, you know, whatever feels like. And at the end of the day, after we looked at a couple other properties too, he was like, man, I think you’re, you know, you just tell me you don’t want to sell me nothing to get my guard down and that way you can pounce later on. I’m like, no, man, it’s, it just, just not how it works.

Rush Valentine [00:20:31]:
I had that same thing recently. I was talking to somebody and they kind of said the same thing. And I said, you know, one thing I do love about our group is I think everybody is really treated more like or treated and also thinks of themselves more like advisors and salespeople, you know, and that’s, that’s kind of the way. And I was actually saying something like that. And he was like, that sounds like a sale. And I was like, no, I’m really not trying to sell you. I promise you, like, I will not try to push a single property on you. You know, whether you get this one, the next one, or, you know, I had a, had a client recently that we worked together for almost two and a half, three years and we finally got the right one, you know, we cancel probably three or four over that time frame and, and looked at a couple dozen more, you know, and we finally got that last one.

Rush Valentine [00:21:07]:
And this specific person called me back almost a month later after that and said, hey, this is going so great. We might try to get another one before the end of the year, you know, and that’s, that’s already this year in a time where, you know, numbers maybe not for everyone or quite what they were two years ago, you know, and I just think it’s really important that all of us continue being those advisors. And you know, when you’re, when you’re searching for your realtor, if you can find somebody like that, rather than somebody that’s just trying to unload a property, you’re going to turn out a lot better on the short term rental side.

Avery Carl [00:21:35]:
Absolutely. Well, and on a selfish note too, I would rather not sell you on one property. I would if I would rather make sure that you get the right one to be successful so that you come back and you buy more with me. A rising tide raises all the ships so Anyway, that’s enough on real estate agents. So let’s talk about lenders. So how are we finding lenders in the current, current environment? So there’s a lot of places you can go that, I mean the first place you’re going to go is the Internet. That’s actually the only place you’re going to go is the Internet in some form or fashion. But how do we know that a lender is going to be the right one for the job outside of just interest rates? Because everybody shops rates.

Pete Appezatto [00:22:19]:
So this, this is touchy because you get a lot of clients that come with a pre approval already and so they’re not familiar with the local market. So a lot of my clients, you know, especially if they’re going to buy a condo and they send me a Pre approval from better.com or whatever online lender and I’m just tell, I have to tell them right off the bat this isn’t going to work. So it really kind of one comes down to the local market because you know, in condos we require here a portfolio loan and conventional financing. Just not going to work. And a lot of clients don’t understand that until they get on the phone with us. And then we have, all of us I know are lenders that we prefer. So you know, it’s just kind of a, it’s a learning process as you go buying a condo, a home or a single family, you could go with a townhouse or a single family, you could use conventional. But condos are just a different animal.

Austin Lewis [00:23:20]:
Yeah, I think we got to, I hate that, that aspect of it because I think a lot of them feel like we’re, a lot of clients feel like we’re affiliated with lenders and we’re like, hey, this, this lender is not going to work and they might have a 20 year relationship with them like, and then like you said, just break it down. And of course since we do have that issue, we’ve got to have a good list of lenders. You know, we’ve all few that I’m sure that that can get the job done and from there just kind of process of elimination. A lot of people that I talk to don’t know that like once you apply for a mortgage you can also apply with other lenders within 30 days in the credit. It’s only one hard pull on your credit and because the credit bureaus know you’re shopping around. So I mean definitely shop around interest rates and talk to a few people, kind of like the real estate agent. Find someone that, that message with you that you can talk to.

Pete Appezatto [00:24:13]:
Yep.

January Johnson [00:24:13]:
I think, I think a good lender is a good educator and they will teach people about the products, why you can and can’t do this. And, and I have a couple of lenders that I recommend. I mean I always give people several choices and just say call them. I’ve worked with all these people before, see who you click with. But my preferred lender, you know, I, I, they sometimes a client will say well I don’t want to waste their time. And I said no, no, no, I send him a lot of business waste his time. It’s actually, it’s not a waste. But you know, he, they will spend time with you, educating you.

January Johnson [00:24:45]:
They will look at your, your financial situation just in a conversation. And I say that they’re 3D thinkers. They can see the whole financial picture and say, well actually if you have this much to put down, if you do it this way we can get you more house or whatever. And so I think a good lender expands what you think is possible and they educate you.

Pete Appezatto [00:25:04]:
Absolutely. Yeah. But like you said, like we, I don’t have a, I have several preferred lenders. Whichever lend, whatever one my client decides to go with is, is to them, I don’t care. I just want to make sure that we’re going to work with a lender that’s actually going to get the job done. That’s my only prerequisite.

Avery Carl [00:25:22]:
Well, and that’s, that’s kind of how you find a lender. So you, they don’t have to be local to the market that you’re in. It’s, if they are local, there’s a pretty good chance they’re going to really understand the nuances of the market. But if they’re not local, you do need to ask those kind of similar questions that you would ask an agent which is, you know, do you do deals in this market often? If so, are they short term rentals? So you want to make sure that they’re doing again, deals of the asset class that you plan to buy in in the market that you plan to buy in often. So you know, you’re probably not, if you’re living in Houston, Texas and you’re buying a condo in Panama City, like Bank of Kansas is probably not going to be the one that’s going to be able to get the deal done. You want a lender that’s familiar with.

January Johnson [00:26:05]:
The market and we have listing agents here who will get all up in the business. They will look at the, at the proof of funds not proof of funds, but the pre approval letter. And they will say, who is this? Do, do they have experience in this market? Do they know what they’re getting into? Can they fund non warrantable condos? And I always say please feel free to call. You know, and sometimes clients still think, well, I can get a better rate, you know, at my home Ohio lender, but can they get the deal complete for you? You know, you’re going to add two or three weeks to the process if you go with a lender that is not experienced in this market.

Pete Appezatto [00:26:42]:
Yep.

Avery Carl [00:26:42]:
Yeah. Well in the non warrantable condo thing that’s the big issue. And what happens is the way that it goes is usually the listing agent will say they want to see a local lender pre approval for obvious reasons that we just discussed. And what will happen is your bank of Ohio or someone will say, yeah, we can do it. We’re not sure that it’s non warrantable yet. We just need to ask the HOA people a few questions. And they’ll send what’s called a condo questionnaire. And based on the answers to that, they will determine whether it’s warrantable and non warrantable.

Avery Carl [00:27:13]:
Now that seems like something that will happen over the course of five minutes, but it can often take weeks. And what’s always going to happen is it’s going to come back as non warrantable, but you’re going to be three weeks into the deal and then it’s going to be really difficult to go find a new lender and start the process over and get it closed on time. So those local banks will have already done several deals, if not tons of deals in those, those condo complexes. So they’ll already know. They don’t have to go through this whole process of asking these questions. They already know. So they’re just starting from the beginning of okay, we know this is non warrantable, we’re moving forward this way.

Pete Appezatto [00:27:48]:
I just had that happen recently and I told them from our first conversation that I’m not familiar with this lender, they’re out of area and if they’re not, if they cannot do non warrantable condos, it’s not worth moving forward. With that pre approval letter. A couple of weeks went by, we found a property he liked, we went to go offer, he sent me the pre approval. I got on the phone with the lender before I even submitted the offer and she asked me what a non warrantable condo was.

Avery Carl [00:28:16]:
Oh goodness.

Pete Appezatto [00:28:18]:
And I said to him, I called my client back, I said, we’re not even going to try because they don’t even know what it is, you know, and he told me she told him something different in their conversation. So long story short, we didn’t put the offer in because it probably would have ended up three weeks into the deal and the deal wouldn’t have got done. So I don’t want to waste my client’s time either. You know, we could try it, but the chance of it happening is probably not. It’s less than 50%. So why, you know, why even take the risk?

Austin Lewis [00:28:48]:
And lenders, you know, I found that they, and I get it, you know, everybody’s trying to make a dollar. A lot of them are paid commission. So they try to sell on the, you know, the, our buyers, hey, we can do it or hey, the condo might come back as warrantable. You never know. And let’s just try it. And it, you guys, I mean honestly, you just kind of got to trust us that it’s 99.9% going to be non warrantable and, and just find somebody that can, we know can do it.

January Johnson [00:29:18]:
I know, I say just go ahead and give them your rates for non warrantable condos and if it turns out to be a unicorn then you’ll be, you’ll feel lucky. But let them know right now what you can. Let the client know right now what you can and can’t do with non warrantable condos. In the off chance that I might be right about this then I also.

Rush Valentine [00:29:36]:
Had, it’s not even a condo. I had a client not too long ago that just really wanted to use a local bank that they just used forever. They were actually trying to do a second home loan on a single family home. No trickiness, nothing, nothing out of the ordinary on this property. It should have been a slam dunk. No, no problems at all. However, the person that they were using was not familiar with short term rentals. They just didn’t know anything about that really.

Rush Valentine [00:29:58]:
They didn’t know anything about this particular market. They approved my client for, you know, X amount we get down the road. And the calculations that the lender had used towards what their monthly insurance was going to be was not even a fraction of what it actually was going to be. They no longer qualify because their debt to income being too high. And so just that one little piece, the insurance being so much higher than what Realtor told them it might be based on, you know, primary residence insurance was. It changed the whole entire game. And you know, if somebody locally or not even locally, I mean if it was just a, even if it was a, you know, lender that’s specified with second homes, investments, things of that nature. You know, they probably would have saved some time and not had to go through that whole issue and finding out that they actually didn’t qualify for as much as they thought they did.

January Johnson [00:30:41]:
That is a great underscore to having a realtor that’s busy. Because if you’re busy in this business, you know that as a Realtor, the first thing I say to clients is, we got to look at the age of the property. We need to look at the age of the systems. Before you fall in love with this, let’s, let’s, you know, let’s talk about insurance. It’s going to be higher than you’re expecting, and here’s why. Call these, these insurance brokers that I recommend to you. Of course, you can use whomever you like, but call these people and just get some what if scenarios before you get too far down the line on this property. Very important.

Rush Valentine [00:31:12]:
You know, I always reach out and say, can we get a cost to own it? I mean, I’ve had, I can’t tell you how many times I have somebody else ask me, what do you mean? Like, what kind of information are you looking for? And I’ll say, you know, like, first off, is it a. Is it a primary residence? Is it this? Is this house market being used? You know, when do they. If you are claiming that the insurance is $404,000 a year, when did they buy this insurance? Like, what did, you know, what was the situation? And so if we can go ahead and tackle all that up front, you know, we can help put you in place at the right, you know, at least give you lenders that we think, you know, would understand what we’re working with and just save everybody a lot of time. And those same lenders will do the same thing.

Avery Carl [00:31:46]:
Well, this is actually a perfect segue into the next thing that I wanted to talk about. So typically on these episodes where we talk about building your buying team, we’ll go to home inspector next because that’s the next person that you need to have. But in this market, I would say you need to talk to your insurance people first before, like, as you’re making the offer, to figure out about how much that’s going to be. So let’s talk about insurance in Florida. Everybody knows insurance in Florida is a little difficult at the moment. And what are the things that I think January super experienced in how, how old the property needs to be and all that to kind of sidestep some of the more expensive stuff. But let’s talk about finding insurance agents to what, how are we finding those? As a client, I mean I have.

Pete Appezatto [00:32:34]:
I have a list of multiple that I send to my clients and I, I recommend to my clients literally the day we get under contract if it’s a, if it’s a home or a townhome that they reach out for quotes immediately. Condos are less difficult. You know, you just need content and personal property type insurance. The HOA covers the exterior and wind and all that. So I always tell my clients, literally we get under contract, start reaching out and getting insurance quotes now because it’s not a five minute process. It takes a bit of time and you don’t want to be surprised a week down the road or two weeks down the road.

January Johnson [00:33:13]:
And to be clear, you know, you’re at the very beginning before your inspection, you’re going to have to just get ballparks or kind of what if scenarios because you will need a four point inspection and a wind mitigation report if you’re buying a townhome or a single family. And, and those ages of the systems and the age of the roof are very important here in Florida. Not only the age of the roof, but the types of fasteners that the roof has. We call them hurricane clips. And you would think that even a new roof would have them. But I can tell you I got a new roof put on my house about four years ago and I didn’t, they didn’t put hurricane clips. I had to have them added later. So just because it’s a new roof doesn’t even, doesn’t mean that it’s got everything it needs to have.

January Johnson [00:33:57]:
But at least you’ll know kind of a worst case scenario because it could be better once you get the, the actual inspection done. But you will need to know about the roof and the systems specifically.

Pete Appezatto [00:34:08]:
Exactly. And typically the newer the property, the better your insurance premium will be. You know, so that looking at the age of the property it kind of gives us a somewhat of an indication of how high the insurance premium will be. I never venture to guess I leave that to the insurance agent. That’s their. Though I stay out of my lane, I know not to be in that lane.

January Johnson [00:34:32]:
I’ve had clients say well what, what percent of the purchase price should I figure as insurance? I’m like no, doesn’t work like that. I mean every, every property has an insurance score like you have a credit score and it depends on how many claims have been made on that Property in the past, you know, has the owner filed repeatedly for different things and there could be something, you know, materially wrong with the property itself. Properties built after 2001 are generally going to be much better on insurance. We do have an agent on our team who put in an offer, I don’t know, six or eight months ago on a property that was built in the 1940s. Fifteen insurance carriers would not even give him a quote. So don’t fall in love with a cute little cinder block. Although I think, I think some of the Florida properties that have been here since the 40s should get extra credit for still being here. Yeah, they’re still here.

January Johnson [00:35:25]:
That should count for something. Yeah, yeah. I mean even things in the 70s, 1970s are going to be expensive to insure.

Avery Carl [00:35:33]:
Yeah, My grandmother has one that was built in 68 and again it’s never had hurricane damage period. Like there’s a lot of things that need to be done with it. Like she has not made any updates and she just paid off her, I mean so she hasn’t owned it since the 60s. She bought it in like 2008 but nobody has done any updates anyway. She just paid it off rather than deal with the insurance that was going to be to keep the loan this year. So just don’t, just don’t even mess with those older properties. It’s not worth it. I mean it could be potentially down the road if they, once they get the insurance sorted out here, but I think that’s going to be a year or two.

Avery Carl [00:36:14]:
All right, so local insurance people, I think, I think that at least Florida, Florida based insurance companies are where you want to look. Obviously your agents will have a few recommendations of people who’ve gotten good quotes for their clients in the past. But definitely doesn’t hurt to do your own digging and see what you can find. But you want to like, I don’t think that a farm bureau or state farm or something is going to be the insurance company to get you the best quote necessarily. But you know, just keep that in mind.

January Johnson [00:36:43]:
And there are proper, that will quote you insurance for your short term rental. But they, they don’t do wind coverage which is necessary in Florida. So some people will have to get their dwelling coverage from one place and their hurricane or wind coverage from somewhere else. That might be something that you have.

Pete Appezatto [00:36:59]:
To do and that’s a strategy that a lot of my clients have done. They, they split up the carriers and for some reason the, the premiums that they get tend to be more favorable that way.

Avery Carl [00:37:09]:
Oh well, That’s a good tip.

Pete Appezatto [00:37:11]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:37:11]:
And guys, I know you know this, but. And I’m not talking to you, the agents, I’m talking to the listeners. Of course, you cannot just get regular primary homeowners insurance. It has to be short term rental specific. So keep that in mind. Just wanted to throw that out there. And we do talk about that on another episode, but in case you weren’t listening, I’m saying it again. All right, let’s move on to home inspector.

Avery Carl [00:37:32]:
So you’ve gotten your insurance quote, you’re okay there. Think you’re, you’re comfortable with that number. And now we need a home inspector. So typically you’re going to find home inspectors from recommendations from your agents and you can also find them, again, bigger pockets or local Facebook groups, recommendations from other investors. Again, make sure you’re taking recommendations for people who’ve actually used that person. Here’s what I don’t want you to do, because this, I see this happen a lot and it’s very irresponsible. Don’t say to your agent, just schedule me whoever you use usually. And that’s fine with me.

Avery Carl [00:38:09]:
So it is your job to call these people and interview them. It’s your investment. You want to make sure that you’re choosing the right person for the job. So, like, I’m happy to give you a list of people who’ve done a great job for my clients in the past, but you have to call them and hire them. We can get them scheduled, but I’m not hiring anyone for anyone. I’m not ordering inspections for anyone. You call them and hire them and then we’ll schedule them. It is your investment.

Avery Carl [00:38:33]:
It’s up to you. So you do your due diligence on them.

Pete Appezatto [00:38:36]:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I always tell my clients I can’t hire them for you. You’re the client. Actually, I could give you recommendations, but it’s your job to actually contact these people and hire which one that you want to choose.

January Johnson [00:38:48]:
Yeah.

Avery Carl [00:38:48]:
And I mean, there’s always Google. Typically a home inspectors don’t. I don’t. Not all home inspectors are going to have, are going to have websites or like ones that really come up well on Google. So I would rely a lot on, excuse me, on recommendations from other investors and calling them and seeing if you like them. If your communication styles mesh, you need to understand, especially understand what is covered in a typical home inspection because I’ve seen that go sideways for people before where the home inspector says, oh, there’s clearly, you know, there’s moisture in the walls. Well, why didn’t you open up the walls and look at it? Well, that’s not covered in a home inspection. Home insp.

Avery Carl [00:39:25]:
Inspectors inspect what they can see, so definitely get a good handle on what is covered and what other inspections outside of a regular home inspection you might need. But you can only find that information out by calling them yourself.

January Johnson [00:39:38]:
So I want to say two things about the home inspectors that I recommend. One of them, I mean, both of them are super busy. But my. My main go to guy, his website’s not great because he’s out doing inspections. He’s not a website guy. So don’t judge my. I don’t judge the inspector by his website. But the other one that I recommend, they.

January Johnson [00:39:57]:
They actually have a service that will give you a floor plan also. So they can. They can do different levels of inspections. And one of the services they offer is that. So if a floor plan is important to you, you might want to go with them.

Pete Appezatto [00:40:10]:
Yeah. And the floor plan is actually useful for putting on your Airbnb listing. It can be a lot of clients like that. So clients or potential guests can actually see the property layout and the size of the rooms, if that’s important to them.

Avery Carl [00:40:26]:
Yeah, that’s totally helpful because you can then take it, even if it’s just like a black and white drawing, you can take it on fiber or something and they’ll make it a cute, like 3D layout.

Pete Appezatto [00:40:36]:
And it’s good. It’s good for the investor, too, because if you. If you have to. For. If it’s a property that comes unfurnished and you need to furnish it now, you know the dimensions of the rooms.

Avery Carl [00:40:47]:
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know they did that.

Pete Appezatto [00:40:49]:
Yeah, I think we used the same one January.

January Johnson [00:40:53]:
We also have an app called Flow Plan. I’m not doing floor plans for people. I have used it. It is provided to us as agents and I did it on my house and it’s quite easy to use, but I don’t. That’s not the service I provide for clients.

Avery Carl [00:41:09]:
Okay. So we talked about insurance, we talked about inspectors. So. All right, we get to closing day. We are closing on this house and. Or it’s getting close to closing day. Time to hire cleaners and handymen. Where are we finding those?

Pete Appezatto [00:41:26]:
Well, you’re going to get a good list from management Mondays here, but also Facebook Marketplace next door, stuff like that. Or one of the overlooked things that I always point out to my clients. I don’t know if it’s not overlooked. But one of the really powerful things of working with us actually is, is the, the private client Facebook group. Because now you’re networking with other short term rental hosts all across the country. It’s like an on demand, you know, mentoring group or. Yeah, mastermind group. So a lot of my clients have reached out to other Destin or Panama City beach hosts and gotten recommendations that way too.

Pete Appezatto [00:42:07]:
So don’t overlook our Facebook groups.

Rush Valentine [00:42:11]:
And that’s another thing too. I mean, you know, for example, let’s say I have a handful of cleaners or handyman that I personally could recommend and say, oh yeah, you know, I’ve had clients have great success with this. You know, the chances are if I’ve known who that person was for two years, I’ll probably give them their phone number out to enough people or any of us have that, that they may not have the space or the ability to take on another person, whether it be for handyman services, cleaning service, whatever it may be. So, you know that the Facebook group and asking around, you know, luckily, because of the kind of area that these vacation markets are, there’s constantly new people moving in, there’s constantly people moving out. You know, it’s a, there’s a lot of, you know, I guess not exactly permanent residents that end up moving to towns like this. So there’s always a lot of people that are starting a new business and they may be here for a year or two and then they bounce somewhere else. So it’s ever changing. And that Facebook group is going to give you the absolute best chance of finding somebody who’s currently taking on new clients.

Pete Appezatto [00:43:03]:
Yep.

January Johnson [00:43:04]:
I think nextdoor.com I call it Facebook for nosy neighbors because I don’t really like it for other stuff, but it’s good for local people, recommending local people. And so if you need something, you know, a cleaner, a handyman, a specialist in something, chances are somebody’s already recommended somebody there and there are people there who will say, yes, I’ve used him or her. And, and I can vouch for them. So I think that’s a good source as well. And if you’re in a condo, it’ll be easier to find cleaners because there’s a lot of people already cleaning in that building. So you can probably just ask your neighbors or whatever.

Pete Appezatto [00:43:35]:
Yep.

Avery Carl [00:43:36]:
Yep. And again, you’re interviewing people exactly the same way that you would that we’ve talked about throughout this. This call. You. I don’t think you would run across this too much in the emerald and forgotten coast, but you Might. You really don’t want to hire a cleaner who does cleans primary homes like once a week and then try to train them to turn a vacation rental. You want to find someone who specializes in the vacation rentals because they, their processes, they know what they’re doing. It’s a different process than cleaning a primary home once a week.

Avery Carl [00:44:06]:
So definitely kind of steer away from that. I would also kind of let the cleaners do their jobs. Don’t micromanage them, don’t give them a thousand point checklist that they have to fill out every single time. This is a very well established blue chip. Well, this is blue chip over here in Emerald Coast. Forgotten coast is a little more emerging but for the Emerald coast like they have their processes, they know what they’re doing. Same thing for Forgotten Coast. There just won’t be as many of them choose from.

Avery Carl [00:44:34]:
But again, don’t get in there and micromanage them and make them hate their job or else. You don’t want them to hate you, you need them. They’re your most important person. So be nice to your cleaners.

Pete Appezatto [00:44:45]:
Treat your cleaners like partners because they are. Yes. And you don’t want to keep looking for a new cleaner either. So yeah, once you get a good one, treat them well and keep them around because you know you, the next one may not be the, may not be as good. And you don’t want to learn that lesson.

January Johnson [00:45:05]:
I advocate people have two cleaning teams going just so that there’s two groups of people who have had experience in that property. If somebody doesn’t show up, you have at least somebody else who’s been there before or at least have a cleaning team or have some, a company that has multiple cleaners as opposed to just, you know, a couple that’s doing the cleaning because if somebody’s sick or their car broke down or they’re on vacation, you’re stuck. But if, if the service has a team of people then they’ve got backup.

Avery Carl [00:45:35]:
I see new investors sometimes who will say I don’t want somebody with a team. I want it to be the same person every single time. And that’s it. No team, no other people. I want it to be the same person. And that’s just not realistic guys. A, it’s kind of sort of like indentured servitude in a way because they’ve got to people in order to make a living at cleaning they have to turn three or four a day. They’ve got to have more properties than just yours.

Avery Carl [00:46:00]:
So by saying you can clean mine. And you know, it might take them. If they don’t have a team, they can only probably do two. And then you’re keeping them from being able to earn a wage that they can live at. So I get why you would want it to be the same person every time so that it’s consistent. But you have to have somebody with a team. It’s beneficial not only to them, but to you. There’s traffic here in the summertime and if they’re cleaning one at the other end of 38 and they got to get to Miramar beach in the same day, you.

Avery Carl [00:46:27]:
You want them to have other people besides just them. So anyway, don’t, don’t try to trap people into it being them every single time. That’s only going to backfire on you. And people got to make a living, so.

Pete Appezatto [00:46:38]:
Absolutely. And listen, they might get sick. You know what I mean? So you can’t put all your eggs in one basket. You have to have several backup plans. Like I always say, being a host is anticipating issues before they ever happen. So if you’re putting all your eggs in one basket, eventually that basket’s gonna spring a hole.

Avery Carl [00:46:59]:
And handyman kind of the same, same exact way we just went over with cleaners of. Of how to find them. I would recommend having a list of as many handymen as possible. Handy people as possible. That could do it. Because with handy men, it’s a lot of times it’s time is of the essence. And if that, if your favorite one can’t get there, then you go down the list and call the next one and call the next one. So whoever gets out there the fastest is the person who gets the job.

Avery Carl [00:47:25]:
So anything else, like any. Anything else we want to hit on in terms of cleaners, handyman, other types of vendors that they might need and.

January Johnson [00:47:32]:
Need to appliance people. I have a good appliance person. So I’ve had a home warranty on some of my properties before. But the. A home warranty in my opinion is only as good as the strength of their relationships with local vendors. And I have had home warranties before that didn’t have a whole lot of vendors for a particular appliance or whatever. So I just, I got rid of my home warranties. I do have an AC warranty that they just go and change the filters and check my ac because in Florida I do not want my properties AC going out and having issues.

January Johnson [00:48:04]:
But if they, but if it does, then if I have the AC service, I’m a priority customer for Them. So I have a good appliance repair guy and he can usually get out there within a day or two. And I, I think that’s a good person to have on your team.

Avery Carl [00:48:18]:
Yeah, and pool cleaners, pool maintenance people.

Pete Appezatto [00:48:21]:
Photographers, videographers, stuff like that. Obviously that’s your marketing expense that should not be overlooked. You should not just hire someone you want to do someone that has done short term rental listings almost exclusively or a majority of their business. Because you see some pictures on these listings that clients of mine went under contract with and I’m like, the listing’s horrible. You know, I don’t know who took these pictures. So you don’t, you, you don’t want to hire just some photographer.

Austin Lewis [00:48:52]:
Don’t buy a half a million dollar place and then save a hundred dollars on a photographer.

Pete Appezatto [00:48:56]:
Exactly. You’re stepping over a dollar to pick up a penny. It’s like, it’s, it, it’s stupid. But you know, all that stuff, that’s your marketing expense. So spend it once, change them every, you know, freshen them up as time goes on. But that’s super important too.

January Johnson [00:49:12]:
I have a couple of flooring people too, because invariably there’s condos with carpet and people want tile or they want something else. And so I have flooring people that I recommend and also furniture places. Because if you’re, if you’re furniture, I mean, Amazon delivers anywhere. But if you want something a little different or funky or specific to this market, I have several furniture furniture stores and recommendations that I give people. I don’t know how often they use.

Pete Appezatto [00:49:37]:
Them, but yeah, furniture, local and even online, just have it. You know, obviously it depends on the look that they’re going for, but you know, that’s super important. I have a list of all that stuff that I provide to my clients.

Avery Carl [00:49:51]:
Yeah, I would say always local furniture stores, but if you’re going for any other look than khaki white and maybe some light blue thrown in, then the local furniture stores are not going to be for you.

January Johnson [00:50:04]:
Yeah, we don’t do red here.

Avery Carl [00:50:08]:
No purple? No black? Heaven forbid. All right, any, any other vendors that I think we kind of hit on everything. Any other points anybody wants to make before we go?

Pete Appezatto [00:50:22]:
No, no, I think we covered a lot.

Avery Carl [00:50:25]:
I think we have two. All right then, guys. Well, if you would like to buy a short term rental in the Emerald or Forgotten coast with any of our wonderful agents. Agents here. Some of them are here, some of them aren’t. Email us at agents the ShortTermshop.com or if you just have further questions, you can join our Facebook group. It’s the same title as my book, Short Term Rental, Long Term Wealth. And we also have a an every Thursday office hours call live on Zoom where you can ask us any questions that you want and you can sign up for that@strquestions.com thanks everyone.

Avery Carl [00:51:04]:
Sam.