All Forum Posts by: Jason L.

Nothing I saw in the management agreement or lease about the order in which the SD is applied in the event of eviction. Wasn't sure if maybe there was some sort of global rule about it instead.

I evicted a tenant back in June through my property manager. The tenant was in default on 2.5 months of rent (about $1700 total), but also left the house with over $3000 in damages. The tenant had a $650 security deposit, which I had assumed would come back to me to cover some of the damages. However, my PM took their normal 10% fee and is claiming that the SD is being used to cover the unpaid rent instead. 

Are they correct that the security deposit of the evicted tenant covers unpaid rent before incremental damage to the house? I'm not looking to cause a stir either way (I'm in over $6k on this eviction after the legal fees, so what's another $65  :P ), but I am curious if there is a legal order for how the deposit gets applied post-eviction?

Space Coast Credit Union is really weird. They had no problem underwriting me for a HELOC on one of my rental properties (which is something most credit unions don't even do), but then refused to underwrite me for a traditional mortgage to buy another, even though I technically hadn't taken on any additional debt since the HELOC was still at full balance. Kind of similar to what they said to you. Maybe they're just more conservative on long term debt?

However, as many in this post have already pointed out, I then went to a traditional mortgage broker and had no issues getting a loan. So I would definitely shop it around if I were you.

@Michael Haynes Sounds like you're getting quoted on replacement cost and not actual value. I bought a house in Indiana last year that was worth $100k, but every insurance quote I got was for between $130-150k because that was the least amount they would underwrite. So that's not just Florida unfortunately.

@Dan Maciejewski That's really interesting. I'd think something like that would've built up gradually over time, instead of the firestorm that came with all these recent hikes. Why do you think this would've been such a big issue in 2020-2021 all of the sudden? Is there any possibility this gets sorted out at some point or is this just going to be the new norm for insurance quotes?

I got renewal quotes on 2 of my investment properties in Tampa this week. Last year I paid $1475 in premiums for the 2 houses combined, but the quotes this year came in at about $2200. That's about a 40% YoY increase! In a non-hurricane year!

Do any other Florida investors have recent insurance hike horror stories? Any recommendations on other providers or is just universal across the board?

I have used Matt from Sunshine State Best Home Inspections.

A big part of the supply shortage (on SFHs at least) in most markets has been driven by the parabolic growth of mortgage forbearances this year. I've seen estimates that in 2019, only about 0.25% of homes were in forbearance but that jumped to almost 10% at its height this year (it's estimated to be just under 7% by the last report I saw). That's a growth rate of 2800% in 1 year.

Essentially, you have a lot of homeowners in distress who are being paid not to sell their houses right now. Most forbearance programs are only active for 12 months (though this could easily get extended), so that would put a lot of homeowners from the first wave of Covid-forbearances up to a decision to sell by around April - May 2021. If that is the case, then you'll likely start seeing supply increasing shortly thereafter and thus prices declining. However, that doesn't mean demand is necessarily going away, so don't start shorting the market yet either.

Good lesson for the OP (or anybody else interested in buying). My property tax rate ended up being closer to 2.4% with the referendum (not anywhere near enough to blow up a deal or anything, but it's still a few hundred off the top).

 Thanks for the info. Are the referendums every year or just temporary?

I just bought a rental in Indy this year and my taxes were actually a little more than 2% ($2300 on $98k assessed), but they said there were "special projects" that they were collecting extra beyond the cap for. I'm curious if this is across the board for everyone?