All Forum Posts by: Dominic Mazzarella

Would You Buy This Florida STR Generating $50K Gross? Curious on How Others Would Underwrite It

Hey BP community — I’ve been running a short-term rental in Fort Pierce, FL (Treasure Coast) for the past year, and we’re considering transitioning out of it. I’d love to get some outside perspectives on how others would underwrite this kind of deal in today’s market.

Here’s the high-level overview:

• 3BR / 2BA single-family home with private pool

• Fully renovated and furnished

• STR licensed and professionally managed

• Gross income ~$50K/year (AirDNA projection aligns)

• 90%+ occupancy YTD

• Located 10 minutes from the beach, close to downtown

• Asking $314,900 (below 2024 appraisal)

Expenses are pretty typical — utilities, pool service, cleaning, and optional PM (or self-manage). I can share more detailed numbers if it’s helpful.

If you came across this deal, what would your return expectations be? Any red flags I might be missing? Always appreciate learning from this group.

Hey folks — I recently got into wholesaling and have been doing a bunch of cold calling over the past few months. I’ve been tracking some basic metrics across my operation and I wanted to sanity-check something with the community.

I’ve read a bunch of posts and research on cold calling, and it seems like a 3–6% pickup rate on cold leads is fairly standard. That aligns with what I’m seeing, so no surprises there — but curious if anyone’s cracked that number.

What I’m more curious about is warm lead pickup rates — specifically, when a seller replies to a text message campaign saying they’re interested in an offer, and then I try calling them. I’m currently seeing a 30–40% answer rate on those calls.

Is that in line with what others are seeing? Or am I doing something wrong?

Hi everyone,

So I just got my first application from a couple with a kid for my rental and the background check shows that the male that applied has a felony from 2021 (stealing a firearm). At the time he would have been 20 and he now has a child and a wife. Everything else on the application looked great and I met them in person and liked them a lot. Would you accept their application and let them live in your rental or wait for someone else?

Hi everyone!

My wife and I have built up some significant savings and are highly interested and excited to purchase our first STR in the near future.
We enjoy the pan-handle of Florida as well as the Southwest coast (Cape Coral, Ft Myers, Naples).  We would be open to other East coast beach destinations as well.

Our goal is to be able to visit the property a few weeks and rent it out other parts of the year.

We have a few criteria that would be preferred:

- Single family home

- within a golf cart drive to the beach

- private pool

- $350-500k

It would be great to build some relationships in this community to learn about some opportunities in the market!

Thanks,
Collin 

While living abroad for several years, I contracted with a large vacation rental management company to manage my rental property. As I was living out of the country, I set up 'auto-pay' for regular bills, and alerts on bank accounts to keep abreast of any excessive dips in balances or unusual activity in general. After a while I grew to trust this company and began paying less attention to rental income summaries than I should have. I began getting alerts for balances below my established limit and notices of 'insufficient funds' on various monthly service bills. A more thorough look through the annual performance summaries ultimately revealed that, despite the appearance of all things being 'business as usual' - it was NOT.

Under all the usual categories of occupancy, unit activity, net rent, expenses, beginning balance, ending balances, etc., etc., everything on earnings statements appeared normal, as usual. Under the long overlooked category of 'payments' (the category where it displays payment/s ACTUALLY deposited in the designated, mutually-agreed-upon account), I discovered a prolonged period with 'payments' of $0.00. Moreover, I was blown away to find that - with no announcement or explanation whatsoever - this has been taking place from the start of fiscal year 2024 until present ALL rental proceeds earned have been withheld by this company. Meanwhile, bookings well into the busy season continue to be made.

I have NO IDEA how to play this 'game'. I'm hoping for any savvy legal minds out there to help with ideas as to what my next move should be. Ideally, it could be possible to resolve by way of a well worded warning of legal and/or monetary repercussion(?). Thank you!

@Dominic Mazzarella  I think so as well. My only concern is the borrower has no skin in the game 

I have a 4-bed, 3-bath single-family home available for rent. One prospective applicant is a professional caregiver responsible for three adults with intellectual disabilities. During the showing, she mentioned that her contract prohibits her from disclosing personal information about her clients, including their names and Social Security numbers.

I'm considering accepting her application but charging higher rent—for instance, an additional $200 per client—to account for the additional risk and lack of standard tenant screening information.

I'd appreciate input from the community on a few questions:

1. Fair Housing & Rent Adjustment: My understanding is that adjusting the rent in this case is not considered discriminatory, since the applicant cannot provide essential screening information and I would be assuming greater risk as a landlord. Is this interpretation correct?

2. Legal Risk & Liability: Since the three clients would not be listed on the lease, what legal risks or liabilities might I face if I allow them to reside in the home? Are there ways to mitigate these by adding special clause to the lease?

3. Tenant Selection Strategy: Would you proceed with this arrangement, or would you prefer to wait for a more conventional applicant to avoid the complexities?

Thanks in advance for your insights.

Rick

Hey guys, need some insight.

I’ve got two private loan deals on the table. The first is for a property in Hamilton being purchased for $254K—he’s asking for a $250K first mortgage. He’s a broker with other properties in the area valued around $340K and the current owner had a $330K appraisal last year on the subject property. I have a conservative appraiser from Schindler going in who does appraisals for the banks. If the value holds, I’ll likely do the loan at 11–11.5% interest with a 2–2.5% lender fee. The property is held in his corp, but I’ll get a personal guarantee, and if appraisal value is lower than expected , I’ll ask for cross-collateral or reduce amount loaned out. I also think to myself with this deal Worst case, I’d foreclose and offer to buy the property back at my loan amount for 250k. Since I’m about 600k liquid right now. Then I could just hold it until it appreciates.

The second deal is with my real estate broker—he’s asking for $300K as a second mortgage on a construction property in Pickering that’s about 70% complete. RBC holds the $1M first mortgage, and comps are around $2.5M. I told him I’d only consider it if he adds cross-collateral as the market is a bit risky and the property is u see construction. He hesitantly offered another property that just closed for $1.3M with 20% down that he uses for his office. If he allows me to use both properties, I’d lend at 11% annual interest with a 3% renewal fee after one year. His exit strategy is to refinance next year and pay my 300k back.

Which deal makes more sense?

The other person is my personal broker

Hello,

I have been thinking on buying a duplex in putting 5% down, it will be cash flowing -$300-$400/month (negative)

Right now prices are thru the roof and I found a nice duplex for significantly lower than the rest of the market and even so it doesn’t cashflow with the amount of downpayment im giving.

I have been thinking on using the cashflow from the other one to cover it while I wait for interests to come down and refinance.

Even if I didn’t have the other duplex, I could cover the cost out of pocket.

For context, all the other duplexes in the area are going for at least $100k more.

I appreciate your input.

I am having the hardest time finding a duplex to house hack in the Allentown Lehigh Valley area. I made the decision to get into investing by starting out with a house hack but I only qualify for FHA financing due to having fair, but not bad credit and a higher debt to income ratio. I paid what little remained of my car loan off to help my DTI but it was not enough to move the needle too much and I cannot pay off or down anymore debt. As it stands I qualify about a 275k mortgage and what I am finding is that most of the duplexes in my area are around 300-325k. The ones in my price range either go so fast you don't have time to react (cash deals, hard money investors )or they don't take FHA financing so I'm forced to either try to convince them or sit on the sidelines while it gets sold elsewhere. I've started pitching the fact that I would be willing to do a 203k loan with the financing so the seller doesn't have to worry much about post inspection repairs but that's something new I've started doing. I've also started shifting my focus from just looking MLS to looking for off market deals via real estate groups on facebook and sending "interest to buy" letters people that have purchased a duplex within the last 5 years based on Redfin data I can utilize. Does anyone have any other suggestions or strategies on how to create buying opportunities for a small multi family with FHA financing? I've been at this for about a month and a half. I've only had 1 showing and 1 open house visit.