Templar Real Estate Radio Show Transcripts 3-27-2021

Templar Real Estate Radio Show for March 27, 2021

START OF RECORDING:

The following program was paid for by Templar Real Estate. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of the staff and management of WMTR.  As always, it is advisable to consult a professional before making a major decision.

It’s time now for the Templar Real Estate Talk Show. Here’s your host for the program, Joseph J. Zoppi.

Joseph J. Zoppi:
Hello. Welcome to the Templar Real Estate Talk Show. My name is Joseph J. Zoppi, a real estate investor, consumer advocate, author and managing partner of Templar Real Estate Enterprises. You can reach us at templarcashforhouses.com that’s T-E-M-P-L-A-Rcashforhouses.com, that’s one word, or you could call us at 973-240-8593 and we can answer any questions you may have or you could email us from our website. I’d be more than happy to put any questions on air and answer them or if there’s any questions you have in general or you need some assistance, please contact us.

For first-time listeners, my company is a real estate investment firm. We buy houses for cash, we purchase apartment buildings, we do joint ventures with other real estate investors, we loan money for rehabs and provide transactional and gap funding as well. We work with individuals that want to invest with us in single-family houses up to apartment buildings. We do not speculate and we’re very protective of our money and our investors’ money. I’m not a real estate agent and I have individuals on staff that are agents that could sell your house with a traditional Multiple Listing Service. 

This show is going to go over everything there is about real estate and those things that impact real estate. We’ll talk about our rehabs, some of our investments, what went well, what did not go well and how we learned from them. I’m going to talk about the economy and interest rates, we’ll discuss trends in the real estate market. Real estate is one of your biggest investments. So, it’s important that you know as much as possible about it. I’m going to provide you with my opinion, it’s only my opinion. I highly recommend everyone do lots of research. As I say every week, it’s good to get referrals but ask lots of questions with those referrals.

Again, what someone might like in a person, another one might not like in a person. So, that’s very, very important just like spouses. So, you might have a friend that has a spouse and you’re like, “Holy mackerel. I would never marry her.” Whereas, of course he would, so again, what you like, someone else does not like, so you’ve got to be wary of that. Also, I’d like to do a shout out to a couple of my listeners; Paulette, Tim from Cedar Grove and Jenny and Johnny from Edison. Hey guys, thank you very much for listening. I would also like to thank some of my private investors that have gone in on some of my deals. I like to thank Tom and Janet for their money in one of our rehabs that’s going on right now, so thanks guys 

Again, as I always say, if you’re interested in investing in real estate passively and you want to team up with us, please give us a call. We’ll do a zoom call or you come into my office. We have a new office now, it’s in Parsippany and we could sit in a conference room or we could sit outside, there’s tables outside as well or we could do a zoom call. So, any questions or anything, even if you’re not sure, let’s talk, it doesn’t cost any money to talk, okay? Also, if you want to sell your house fast, please give us a call. We do a couple of things. We could just purchase it outright for a cash offer, especially if you’re having a problem with lots of repairs that need to be done or we could list it and list it on the multiple listing service, okay?

 Couple other things. I was originally looking for a person from my website. Well, I got that filled as well as an IT person this week, so I’m really happy about that and I asked last week also for underwriters. So, I’m still looking for underwriters. Those are individuals that have a good financial background, that could crunch numbers, that know Excel really well, someone hardworking and it could be part-time and then it could go full time, okay? And the hours are flexible. So, that’s another good thing. So, you could work on the weekends or after hours for this. There’s no really set time on it. So, that’s a big plus. It could be for anyone that was a CPA, former CPA, any individual that worked with large budgets and large numbers and like I said, knows how to crunch numbers and figure things out, very analytical and dedicated. So, that’s a key part of… what I look for a person is dedication, loyalty. Those are like two of my strongest things I look for in a person. Goes a lot farther if someone’s dedicated. I could have someone that’s not as good but they’re hard working, willing to learn, willing to do stuff and loyal. Forget it, they’re gold in my book, that’s just the way it is with me. 

Couple other things. Last week I talked a little bit about The Feast of St. Joseph and that was after my recording. I kept realizing that I wanted to say like almost like St. Patrick and I cut myself off and then I’d say St. Joseph and I did that every single time. So, I was thinking about that and so I feel like it was kind of my mom looking down on me, trying to push me to say St. Patrick because like I said, she was from Ireland. So, I’m going to give you a quick, quick story on this and see why I think that. When my mom passed away, I did a eulogy and it was more on just funny things that I encountered and I experienced in my life with her and one of them was. and I was telling everyone at the church, that when I was younger and we’d eat, my family would eat together and then sometimes I didn’t like something, whatever it was, it was dried out pork chops or something like that and I wouldn’t finish it and my father said, “You’re staying here until you finish it.” So, he’d leave, he’d get up and maybe go into the living room or lay down for a half an hour and I’d be stuck at the table, my sister and my mom and she’d be cleaning up and like, I’d always think, and I wouldn’t do this all the time, but like, how do I get out of this deal? Because I don’t want to eat this and my mom was very fanatical about hair going in someone’s food or her food. Even if it was our own hair, she would just… it would just skeeve her out. So, she used to wear this like shower cap when she was cooking because she did not want any hair on her food. So, every now and then, if I really didn’t want to eat something, I’d wait until she’s looking and I make believe I was pulling a piece of hair out of the meal and then dropping it on the floor, the hair and then I’d see her shaking her head, not saying a word like mouthing to me, don’t eat it.

And I’d be like shrugging my shoulders and pointing over to like the other room where my father is and she’d say, she would again say “No.”. Then she’d take the food, throw it in the garbage, bury it into the bottom and then I was done with it. So, everybody was laughing at that. So, when we had the repass for her, we were at a restaurant and all of a sudden, one of the individuals, Dex, he was [0:08:44] son called out my mom’s name, Marie and there was a piece of hair. Like, I don’t know if it was on the table or what it was and we all started laughing. So, after that, for two weeks on two occasions, there was both times, I think, when I was driving, I was in the car driving and all of a sudden I’m like, “What’s going on?” And I feel in my mouth, a piece of hair. I pull it out and I think of my mom. So, I imagine she was just up there and having laughing, making fun of me because of what I said. So, I think the same thing it happened this past time when I kept saying… I was trying to say St. Joseph and she wanted me to say St. Patrick. So, that’s that. 

So, a couple of things, real estate, let’s talk about couple of things going on, which, were a little concern of mine and I think it’ll eventually be a concern of everyone and that’s taxes and I know President Biden is looking at different taxes and it’s not a simple thing where they’re going to say tax the 1% because that’s never, ever the case. They always say that but that’s not the case. So, they will tax the 1% and they might, whatever that burden will be, will be, okay? But there’s a couple of things and I heard a presentation on this and I think it’s pretty accurate is that before they do that, these individuals have lots of holdings in stocks. So, they might want to liquidate stocks as a result of it before the next or before the next tax year and so there might be pressure sometime this year because of that on the stock market. Another thing is, is they might say that the taxes that are going to be done on some of this stuff is going to be retroactive. So, that’s another problem and that’s not priced into the market right now. 

Another point is that they’re saying that they’re going to do some additional taxes on anyone over $400,000 married, which would be $200,000 single. Now over here in the Northeast and in California, you could make $200,000. It is a lot of money but in the grand scheme of things compared to other parts of the country, it really is not and that’s the thing and that’s going to put a burden on all of us and the other one is capital gains and they’re going to be taxing capital gains more and that’s going to hurt a lot of small businesses. So, individuals that are getting ready to retire, they might sell their business and take some of that and use it for whatever living expenses or whatever but when you’re getting up close to retirement and you start getting hit with larger capital gains and things like that, that’s going to also affect individual. So, it’s not… this tax thing is usually not a very benign thing, it’s it doesn’t happen to one thing.

The other thing they’re going to be taxing more of is corporations. So, it’s going to be very simple. You tax corporations more, they make less money, they make less money, the stock’s not going to go up as high. It’s a really simple process. Not that stocks are, I think, extremely high right now but again, that’s going to put additional pressure on everyone. So, anyone that has mutual funds and those mutual fund on stocks, so on and so forth, it affects everyone, not just the company, it affects everyone and that’s a big problem and we’re going to see where that goes and again, it might not be right away but it’s going to happen and that’s the issue. So, before I close out the segment, I wanted to tell you about a couple of businesses are that I always frequent. So, I wanted to give them a quick plug, so maybe you could go there. One of them is Basilico. It’s a restaurant in Millburn, it’s on 324 Millburn avenue and the phone number is 973-379-7020 and that’s Basilico, it’s an Italian restaurant. The owner’s name is Mario, tell him I recommended you guys. He’s great. Excellent, excellent, excellent food. I was just there this past weekend. I do all my parties there, he’s really good. 

Next one is called Mara’s Italian Deli. They’re at 263 Changebridge road in Pine Brook. Their number’s 973-808-7480. So, Theresa’s is the owner, she’s great, her food is really good, it’s very close to the way my family cooks, very close, it’s really good but I always tell her my family cooks better. Any Italian is going to say their family cooks better. So, that’s the way it is but it really, really good Italian food and on top of that, until Easter, she’s going to give you 10% off on all trays that you order or lunches. So, please go over there, see Theresa, use my name and you’ll get a 10% discount, again, the food is great and it’s in Pinebrook, right off route 46 and like I said, the food is very, very good Italian food. She has all the different things for Easter and Pizza Rustica which we always call Pizza Gain and everything and it’s all really good, so I highly recommend it. I’m going to close out this session and I’ll be right back. Again, if you want to reach out to us, call us at 973-240-8593. Again, 973-240-8593. or templarcashforhouses.com. Thanks guys. Bye. 

Joseph J. Zoppi:
Hello. Welcome back to the Templar Real Estate Talk Show. My name is Joseph J. Zoppi, managing partner of Templar Real Estate Enterprises. You could reach us templarcashforhouses.com, that’s T-E-M-P-L-A-Rcashforhouses.com. That’s one word or call us at 973-240-8593 and anything that you need in terms of real estate, whether it’s selling or buying a property, please give us a call. Again, if you need to sell your house fast, please give us a call, we can either do it through a cash offer or we could do it and we could list it on the Multiple Listing Service. 

One of my good friends, he’s ready to sell his house, so I’m coming in with my team and we’re going to do a bunch of things to it and it’s a nice house already but it’s located in West Orange, on the West Orange-Verona border and he has solar panels on it. So, it’s going to be very marketable and then it’s a bi-level. What we’re going to do to it, we’re going to knock down one wall and redo his kitchen, we’re going to redo a few things in his bathroom and take care of paint all around and finally do the floors, they’re nice hardwood floors, so we’re going to make them a dark, like espresso color and it should be really nice. We’re excited to jump on this and I’m here to help them out and stuff and whatever money that goes into, we’ll make sure he’ll be able to get that back plus a lot more, so market’s strong and he wants to jump on it and I think that’s a wise thing to do and I’d encourage anyone to do that. One of the things that’s been going on is the interest rates have been creeping up a little bit but you might read certain articles that say you know, certain statistics about certain things that are down.

Maybe not as many people applying for mortgages, so on and so forth. Again, you got to take it in the context that it is. One of the things that, if I gave you this context, you could just think of it this way. So, you have AMC entertainment, they do all the movies and if I said their sales went crazy and they’re up 200% and in itself that sounds great, it really does but their sales were down approximately 90%. So, if you went 200%, they’re back at 30% basically of sales. Now, you wouldn’t say 30% is good of sales compared to like a year and a half ago, whatever the case may be. So, you got to understand the context of it and really what they’re measuring and how they’re measuring it, so on and so forth. I might’ve said this a couple of weeks ago, there’s a book out there called how to Lie With Statistics and one of the individuals that was quoted in the book or at least his name was on there and stuff was Bill Gates and I know he’s read that book before and he’s probably used those same techniques also to lie in his favor, probably. So, he’s a very intelligent individual. So, I would probably think that and probably be accurate with that. So, again, statistics can lie and it depends what you ask, how you ask it, so on and so forth.

When I took over a group, so I was very good at turning around failing groups for different companies that I worked for. I was very, very good at that and one group was not performing as it should have and I came into the group new, so I wanted to ask lots of questions, I gave them a survey and one of the questions is basically, I said work is difficult, there’s lots of work, are you just have enough time to get work done? Do you have… is it too much work and you could get almost all of it done but not all of it? You’re over your head? And some other thing and everyone, a lot of people said, I have lots of work but I’m getting it done and a few other said I’m getting the work done but I still have some leftover. Well, if you’re really overworked and I worded that specifically that way and if you’re really overworked, you’re going to be so under and you’re not going to be able to really keep up with all the work coming in and it’s based on the question and I knew that was the case, I could see by the workloads that everyone had enough time to do their work and it wasn’t that taxing but again, everybody’s taxing is something different. I knew it was very stressful, so on and so forth but again, it’s asking those questions, how you ask the questions to interpret that and someone could change a few words in a survey and it could go one way or the other even though it’s pretty blatant. So, you have to be really cognizant of it. So, when anyone quotes surveys or anything else, be extremely, extremely wary of really what the question was and the slant on it. I say that all the time. That’s very, very important. 

So, with the increase in interest rates, everybody’s going to say, well, it’s going to hurt the housing markets, so on and so forth. I don’t think that’s going to be the case and I’ll tell you why; because interest rates are still low. Second of all, there’s hardly any houses on the market still and once the economy opens up more and individuals feel more comfortable, I think more houses are going to come on the market. With that being said, you’re going to be able to, instead of having 10 offers on a house, you might not have that no more. Also, as a result of that, the houses might not be going for what you think they’re going for. So, again, that’s why I say sell while the going is good because I would not be surprised that we have a little bit of a pullback, at least a little bit. I’m not talking about the economy right now going in the tank, not yet at least but for the short-term, I really believe that as more houses come on the market, again, you’re going to see the prices come down a little bit and it’s based on supply and demand. That’s why we were caught off guard and everybody was caught off guard last year and nobody thought about supply and demand and that was it, that was the big thing. A lot of people say they were but they weren’t. 

I’ve spoken to a lot of people. I’ve listened to a lot of different presentations on real estate and nobody was really ever talking about that and these were really smart guys and gals. So, you might see a little pull back but again, the housing prices should be strong for the most part. Now, if the market goes down the tubes, then there might be some issues but I’m not seeing any of that immediately. Maybe towards the end of the year, maybe next year. I think, I was talking to a couple of other gentlemen and they were looking out at eight months, I think that’s about right. I think by next year we might be running some issues beforehand, I don’t know, it’s too early to see whether that’s going to happen but I would just be cautious of that and I’ve always said, make sure you be cautious about the holdings that you have in the stock market, make sure you have your stop-losses, in the event that goes down to a certain number it sells off. You want to control and keep your profits. So, with real estate, again, we might have a pullback. We might have the market… real estate go down some, it’s not going to be catastrophic but we’ll see what’s going to happen with those individuals that are underemployed and can’t keep up with payments. Again, you had individuals that did not get paid and they had mortgages, there was forbearances, they’ve come to completion. So, there, going to be some impact in that.

When you look at some of the articles, they were talking about people saving more during this COVID crisis, so on so forth. That might be the case. I haven’t seen any statistics though that state where those individuals were. So, if you got $3,000 and you’re in the Northeast, it’s a lot different than if you had $3,000 and you’re in Alabama. Same thing with the $1,400. It’s one thing to have $1,400 in Jersey, it’s another thing to have it in Alabama or Mississippi or in Texas or Oklahoma, one of those states. There’s a big difference, big difference between California and those states. So, it’s not just people are saving money, so on and so forth. You got to look into those things and understand it. So, it’s just not a blanket statement that you could just take for granted for the entire country. The country’s very big, so it’s very regional and you got to look out for those things and within a region, within a state or a portion of a state, certain things will happen and when they report on them, they report on them as a global, as a United States, not as a regional area, a lot of times with some of these major publications and that’s something that you have to really understand. So, again, some of it you got to take what a grain of salt or just understand it and say, “Okay, possibly.”

So, again, I’m always cautious about the black and white with this and because I belong to an investment group, a mastermind that has approximately 150, the top rehabbers in the country and they’re in every state, so I talk to a lot of them and see what’s going on. I was just talking to a gentleman today, a good friend of mine in Waco, Texas. Waco, Texas is a big area and it’s moving up in terms of the quality and the type of people going in there. It’s really starting to really pick up but he said there’s only like only 89 houses on the market right now, it’s very tight. So, again, I’m going to be talking to a couple of good friends of mine out of California and see what’s going on with them as well but I think it’s the same thing and I know [0:29:17] is pretty tough also right now. So, right now there is a shortage holistically but again, certain factors you have to look into about who’s saving and who’s not saving, so on and so forth. One of the things that I’m having challenge with is evicting someone and so I’m going to court with that and it’s not really an eviction, it’s an ejection, so there’s a difference. Ejection is basically the person’s a squatter and I want to get them out. There was some cases in California where this one family, this husband and wife purchased a house, the guy says, “I need $500,000 cash.” that’s it, case closed. I think he said “I wanted to close on Sunday.” which is kind of weird and they closed and he didn’t move out.

So, the people that bought the house can’t move in and they can’t evict him and the police say, “We can’t do anything. If you were in Nevada or Arizona, you’d be able to evict the person but not here in California. We understand, we would love to do it but we can’t.” which is crazy. So, this article had something about there’s like seven other cases like that. Now, what I’m scratching my head is you should be doing a walkthrough beforehand. and you should have the keys in hand. So, they didn’t do that because then everything would have been out of the house and you would have had the keys. So, that shouldn’t happen. I don’t know what scenario or how this occurred but traditionally, it really shouldn’t happen because everything should be moved out. Unless, they said, “Well, I was going to stay there and you got to move the stuff out yourself.” Who knows? But they should have the keys and been in there and the other person should have been out. I don’t know. It just… I don’t know. 

So, I’m closing out again. Thank you very much for everything. Again, I’d like to give a shout out to two of my favorite restaurants and deili. That’s Basilico, 324 Millburn avenue. Talk to Mario, say I recommended Basilico please and Mara’s Italian Deli, 263 Changebridge road in Pine Brook. Talk to Theresa, she’ll give you 10% off any lunches, the whole price 10% off or any catering also up to Easter please. Her food’s great, you could tell her it was great, you could tell her Joe says his family’s food is a little better though but the food is really great there, it really is, both places. Mario’s the consummate host and I’m going to be having a party there, at least one party, maybe two. They have a nice outdoors, so a couple things with that; you could eat out on the sidewalk as well as this little like ally, it’s really cute or in the back which is really nice. It’s like a gazebo type thing, it’s really pretty cool. So, that’s the case. Again, God bless. Please give me a call at 973-240-8593. Again, God bless and have a nice weekend. Take care everyone. Bye.

The preceding program was paid for by Templar Real Estate. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the staff and management of WMTR. As always, it is advisable to consult a profe…

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