Property tax and maintenance in Tampa, FL

[Yeshudas Nair]

I am a newbie in Real estate investing. I have been reading and studying on Real Estate's in Tampa, FL.
I had a concern about the taxes and maintenance costs in Tampa, FL.
Suppose if i bring a house for $350k, what could be the average maintenance cost and taxes i need to pay for such property?
(You can share your own experience too.)

[Michael Haynes]

@Yeshudas Nair, Hello again, one of the things that people do not understand, who are not in the business is that properties do not always go up in value. I belonged to a Stock Investors Club here in Tampa, Florida for ten years. We had about 500 old guys with money, who were just looking for a "safe place to park their money and make some money." I was a "newbie" who had made some money with Mutual Funds and now I wanted to learn how to short term trade for more returns. Stock Investors are looking to Buy Growth and Hold for as long as possible. Stock Traders are looking to Buy Value and ride the short term Momentum moves to make quicker profits. Right now, the Markets are Volatile, going up and down very quickly on a Daily roller coaster ride. So, it is very hard to Buy and Hold for a long time and have any guarantee of the price of the stock ending up and you Creating Wealth while you sleep. The Central Banks have destroyed the Fixed Income Bond Market, so that retired people who depended on Bonds making them interest to live on is done for maybe the next 20 years. The search for Yield has everyone thinking of buying Real Estate to make money. The Pros can give you the business numbers and percentages may work on paper, but, I am selling because I think that we are at a top and not a bottom in the Real Estate Cycle. The time to buy is going to be after the next downturn in the US economy. The thing to do now is to pay off all Debt, fill your garage with food and water and save your money in Dollars while we wait for the next downturn and the opportunity to pick up properties on sale. I am a gold miner too, but, I would not save my money in gold bars, or like you in India with gold jewellery. Imagine that next year we start the next Economic Downturn and the Sale of the Century is on. Do you think that you are going to be able to buy houses in the US with your gold bars? It is very difficult now in Europe with Negative Interest Rates at the Bank, to pay them to hold your money while you are waiting for the next opportunity. In foreign countries Negative Interest or really low interest rates are used to force the guys who have the money, to put that money to work and not just live off of the high interest rates. The Central Banks and the Governments want to try to Financial Engineer us out of the Recession and they can't. Now, back to the idea that you should be able to make money renting a house. Here in Tampa, rental houses do not make money. The people who can pay rents of $1000 a month or more, try to buy a home. So, you end up with the ones that are just starting out, with no savings or the ones that have to rent for life because they will never save any money. With 10 to 20% down and mortgage rates at 3.5%, what is the sense of renting if you will be staying in the home for five years or more? Take a chance and see if you can't make a Gain in Time and Sell tax-free as your Residence after Homesteading for at least two years. My rentals have always been under $1500 a month houses and mostly duplexes that made me at least $100 a month in positive cash flow. To give you another example I also have rentals in the oil field capital of Brazil where all the JOBs were until this newest and worst Recession started. My one bedroom and efficiency apartments rent for one Minimum Wage. The value of the minimum wage fluctuates with the value of the Real against the Dollar. Two years ago that was $550 US a month. This year that is about $250 a month. I built my properties and I don't owe money on them because it is extremely expensive to borrow money in Brazil. Interest rates on a Credit Card can be 20% a month. If you finance a car, any car, you can pay double the cash price in 2 years. Lots of Brazilians buy a new car and pay the outrageous interest rate until the car is paid off and trade it in for the latest model, considering the monthly cost like an expensive Lease vehicle. So, where I could have been making $6000 a month in rents and living on my farm, now I will be lucky to get back and make a couple thousand a month. The numbers you describe in Mumbai, don't work at all. So, trying to make money with rentals or even save money with Buy and Hold Real Estate in India is not possible. Do you know anyone from India who owns rental properties in the US? You know why? Because the Government used give Immigrants, zero percent loans to buy up all the Convenience Stores and the small Motels here. One 7/11 store on a weekend, can sell $15,000 or more in just wine and beer. Why would they try to struggle to make 1 or 2% a year, with luck, with rental property? That is why the guys in BP are always looking for a Deal and some Wholesaler who does the work to Search and Buy the Deals and resell them to the Flippers. Do you watch the Flip and Flop or Flipping Las Vegas type rehab shows on TV? Do a Google Search and try to find them on youtube.com to see how its done and how much they spend on sight unseen auction properties that turn out to be tremendous nightmares. And don't believe that you too can hire the best builders in town and install first class materials in your auction nightmare and make the kind of money that they say they made. It is hard to get the Big Picture of how things are in different countries for making money and what the tax consequences would be.Don't you have any partners here in the US who may be in the business? My best friend in Brazil told me that "you cannot think of business outside of the US as being the same in a foreign country." A lot of smart, rich, connected people were buying farm land in the US after the 2008 Economic Collapse. Those conditions have changed and if they are carrying a mortgage, they may lose those properties in this next downturn. The Chinese, English and Asian Buyers who are driving the price of luxury apartments sky high in the major cities around the world, are not immune to the Real Estate Cycle. The  ones who are buying all the art and jewels and antique cars etc. All those Buy and Hold seekers of Yield are going to suffer the biggest losses in this next downturn. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."