All Forum Posts by: Timothy W.

Here's another inside tip on Florida.  Avoid 2 story where the first story is masonry walls, the second story is frame and there is stucco all the way up.  You have two frames with varying degrees of rigidity with a rigid, inflexible stucco coating.  It's a target for micro cracks and resulting water problems..

I have a JD but don't practice as an attorney so I can't give you legal advice.  However, my JD is from a Tampa area school so I have a good local network of attorneys.  Let me know if I can help.

I just remembered Dolf de Roos is an engineer.

Depends on the engineer.  I work in a forensic expert firm as a non-engineer but surrounded by civil and electrical engineers.  A lot of them do end up investing in real estate because let's face it, what are they going to spend the money on - wild engineer parties?  You know the difference between an introvert and an extrovert engineer.  The introvert engineer looks at his shoes while talking to you.  The extrovert engineer looks at your shoes while talking to you.  It's a crowd that, as an average, generally makes really good money and looks for something to do with it because they don't blow it on stupid stuff.

Maybe you just suck at being a landlord.  That's ok.  I sucked at it too.  I was too nice.  I was too nice to the point the local property tax assessor told me I was too nice.  When you suck at something so bad by being too nice to the point a local government official notices, it's time to reassess yourself.  I sold it all and got out before I lost it all from being too nice.  I figure it's because I was doing residential and I couldn't deal with threatening people with homelessness.  Whatever, but self management there will never work for me and I know not to do it.  I won't touch it again unless I'm flipping only or it's self storage.  You can't cry to me that you have so much stuff and can't pay your rent.

Your exposure as an investor is going to be a lot more premises liability than general liability.  This means you have exposure now for something some yahoo does on your property whether you were directly negligent or not.  It would be a good time to look into umbrella liability coverage.

Right now I'd be looking for local governments' response to coronavirus to see who's going to be insane when given a chance and who's going to be pro-business.  Some of these local government responses are absurd.  After that I would check through the government list of "essential businesses" to find a local economy that runs on that.  One of the "secrets" about the Tampa Bay area is it runs on insurance.  I've never seen such a concentration of insurance business like I have here.  But that's the business I know so it's the business I know how to look for.  You probably know something else.  Finally, and this was my biggest mistake, work a market with people who have credit to protect.  If you go cheap enough, eventually you get into a market where credit doesn't matter because they don't have it anyway.  You have to go into a market where protecting a credit report is enough incentive to pay the rent.

If they're too old to insure, they can't get financed.  Everything eats houses down here.  Salt, mold, bugs, critters, gators, florida man, all of it.  My Indiana house was built in 1890.  I'd never do that down here unless it was an old St. Aug coquina house and I had a lot of cash coming in to maintain it.

It's outside of Tampa but Apollo Beach is kind of a little secret niche.  Don't do Gibsonton.  Gibsonton was literally designed as a retirement community for circus sideshows (not a joke) and the legacy remains.  The power plant is an eyesore but if you look into certain subdivisions in the area, the plant is out of view.  The secret to Apollo Beach is 41 gets you in and out of Tampa, dodging traffic, and you can go the other way into Gulfport and St. Pete in about 45 minutes.  I can get to the courthouse in under half an hour on a good day.  I used to live in Tampa near Odessa and the traffic getting into Tampa from the north side of Tampa made the commute twice as long as coming in from Apollo.

The secret for the standard rehabber is estimating isn't really estimating.  Estimating is the professional title but that's not really what you're doing.  You're learning how to scope damage.  Scoping damage is looking at a room and being able to capture the data on what is damaged, what are its measurements and does it need to be repaired or can it be fixed in place.  Common sense will answer 95% of this for you but that 5% can bite you.  Defer to experts on anything involving electrical, hvac and plumbing that isn't blatantly obvious.  Trust your gut too on anything that doesn't look right, i.e. cracks in stucco.

Once you know how to scope, estimating is no more complicated than multiplication with a unit price reference guide like Hometech, Walker, or Xactimate to guide you.  If you need 200 square feet of drywall replaced, they will tell you what the price is to put down tarps, replace those 200 square feet and repaint the affected rooms.  Personally I recommend Hometech. It's a lot easier to use for a beginner than Walker and a heck of a lot cheaper than Xactimate. Now I personally use Xactimate, Walker, Symbility and sometimes even Bluebook (yes there is a blue book for estimating rehabs) but estimating is my business.  And yes you can hire a professional estimator but just be aware they range between $125 and $250 an hour.

Caveat, as with any profession that involves a professional opinion you're going to run across people who are more and less expensive than the book.  You'll have to adjust to that.  That just comes with time.