Templar Real Estate Radio Show Transcripts 6-19-2021

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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. Again, that’s 973-240-8953, and we can answer any questions you may have, or you could email us from our website, again for any questions, or anything you would like to discuss on this ratio show.

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. 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 brokerage, and I’m not a real estate agent, but we have people on staff that are agents that could sell your house through the traditional Multiple Listing Service. This show’s gonna over everything there is about real estate and those things that impact real estate. We’ll talk about our rehabs, some of our flips that went well, and some of the challenges we had with them. We’ll 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’ll provide you with my opinion, it’s only my opinion. I ask everyone to research everything they do whether it’s for our company, or any other company. One of the good things out there is the Better Business Bureau, I say that all the time. We belong, and we’re a member of the Better Business Bureau, and you know, they enforce any type of issues, and they’ll go to binding arbitration, or anything else that’s associated with it, if there was a problem. And I think that’s very important, that’s why if you’re looking for a contractor, ‘cause contractors are very challenging, so I always say that, you know, everyone has heard their stories of individuals, or companies that they’ve given money to, to do contract work, and they don’t show up, or they disappear altogether, or they do a unprofessional job. That’s why, use the Better Business Bureau, I say that time and time again. It’s very important. I also say, to ask other individuals about recommendations, but make sure, you ask lots of questions, what’s good for one person is not good for someone else. I’d like to also do a shout out to my favorite listeners, one of them is Livingston’s Famous Crossing Guard, Polette, and Tim from City Water Grove Department, as well as Cindy, and Agnes. I’d like to also thank you guys for joining, listening, and your great comments to me. Thank you very much. I’d also like to thank some of my investors, and investments some for properties, one is Cindy, and the other one is Nick Ty. Thank you guys.

Again, if you’re interested in selling your house fast for cash, please give me a call, we’d be more than happy to take a look at it. We would provide you with an offer, and if we come to a mutual agreement, you set the closing date, anything you wanna leave behind, we’d be more than happy to. If the property needs a lot of work, or a little work, it doesn’t really matter. Subsequently we also could sell your house through the traditional Multiple Listing Services. I’ll have a great team of agents, that’d be more than happy to take a look at your house, we’ll see what the comps are, and list it. 

One of the things that occurred this week, and it happens a decent amount of times is that, someone calls, and they say they want to sell their house, and they want to sell it fast, they wanna sell it for cash, so on and so forth. And I spoke to this one gentleman, sounds like a really nice guy, but going through a lot of pain. And he took a reverse mortgage, and right now the mortgages are probably, I think it’s around 340, and the issue is, traditionally, that property, where it’s located, would cost probably, we could sell it for, maybe 500,000 or so, but it needs a lot of work, and that’s the problem. So, he said, you know, “I don’t know what to do.”, on top of it, he needs money to move somewhere else. And he says, “Joe, I just need like, a small condo, I want internet access so I could get on, and put, I don’t know what to do.”. I said, “I’ll come by, and we’ll take a look and we’ll try to figure something out.”, and he said, “No, I don’t really want you to come by. I am ashamed of where I’m at.”. And I talked to him for a good half an hour, about not being ashamed, and that’s a big thing. You know, some people feel very ashamed of where they’re living, and the disrepair of their house, and they feel that people will judge them based on that. And, we’re here to help. I do not care what it looks like, I don’t care if most of the rooms are filled, or all the rooms are filled, I don’t care, and we don’t care about any of that. We, because we’ve been doing this a long, we kinda look past all that stuff. We’re looking at the house itself, not everything that’s in it. So, we have blinders to that, and we don’t look down on the individual, we don’t question why it was that way, and things happen. Because we’ve been in the industry for so long, we understand that. All we’re here is to really, get individuals out of bad situations like that. And some of them aren’t that bad. Some of it is, “I just don’t want to deal with an agent, and individuals walking through my house. I’m a private person, I don’t want that,”, and that’s fine too. But it’s especially important for individuals that live in these places and you know, they don’t feel good about themselves. He says he’s very stressed out about money. I have a lot of sympathy, and empathy towards a person like that and the situation. And if you know someone like that, and they can’t stay in that house, please give us a call. I’d be really happy to take a look at it. Try to figure a solution out, and move forward. And that’s the thing, to move forward. After we do things like this, the individuals that the, how at peace they are, saying “I’ve finally passed this.”. It can’t be explained to the degree that it is”. I couldn’t put words in it, and I could just see it, and they say it, they’re faces just look different. When they’re in this situation, they just look beaten, and life sometimes really beat you bad. But, I’d love to hear from you, please give us a call, and we’ll take a look at it. It’s free of charge. It’s only gonna take some time. We could, I could come in, come out, we could sit for, sit down, just talk, just go outside and talk, it doesn’t matter. So please give me a shout, and myself or one of my team members will come out there, and we’ll just take one step at a time, and I think that’s the most important thing, is one step at a time. 

Next thing I wanted to talk about, and I’ve brought this up before, is cryptocurrency, and I always talk about that in terms of investing. And I talk about that in a speculation perspective, most of that, for the most part really is speculation. It moves up and down very very quickly, and it’s a gamble. And if you put money into that, be prepared that you could lose some, or all of it. If you go into it like that, then that’s fine, just like when people go to the casino saying, “I have 300 dollars in my pocket, and I don’t expect to have it when I come home. I expect to lose it.”. So, if you go in with it, with that mindset, that’s okay. Obviously, I hate to hear, hate to see anyone investing large sums of money, and they’re confident, or fairly confident that’s it’s just going to continue to go up, and that’s not necessarily the case. Case in point, there was one cryptocurrency called Iron Titanium, and they called it token, or tokens. And Mark Cuban invested money in that, and it was trading this week, I think it was this week at 64 dollars, not too bad. A little after that, it’s trading at below at one penny, so from 64 dollars down below a penny. And so, again, someone that maybe put money into it, 32 dollars, or you know, some, “I’ll do a thousand dollars.”, it’s worthless right now. Might rebound some, I’m not sure, who knows, but if you have the stomach for that, that’s fine. But, it’s very very speculative, and that’s the problem with it. Other cryptos have also been hit very hard, Bitcoin, is off its high of 60,000, and it’s just down to around to 30,000 something thousand as of today, on Friday. So, we’ll see. But, again, the moves on it are a lot, and it’s gonna continue that way. There’s a lot of sourness towards it because of, to mine these coins you need a lot of computing power, and a lot of people are using computers, or teams and groups of computers to mine these coins, or a portion of a coin. But China has really pushed hard against doing things like that. So, that also decreased some of the positiveness of the coin itself, Bitcoin. And it’s the same thing for some of the other coins as well. But again, it’s speculative investment instrument, and it’s one that needs to, need to be very prudent on it. So, please please, be prudent.

Right now, I’m gonna close out on this segment, and I’ll be right back, and you could reach us at templarcashforhouses.com, that’s T-E-M-P-L-A-Rcashforhouses.com, or you could call us at 973-240-8593. And when I come back, we’re gonna talk a little about interest rates, and UCC Liens, and what is that. And some of the things that happened this week for us in terms of our acquisition of some of our properties. So, I’ll see you shortly. Thank you, 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 at 973-240-8593, again that’s 973-240-8593, or templarcashforhouses.com, that’s T-E-M-P-L-A-Rcashforhouses.com, that’s one word.

So the first thing I’d like to talk about is inflation and the interest rates. I’ve been talking about inflation for the last few weeks, on and off, and I think it’s very important we talk about that. And where we are with it, and what the outlook’s gonna be for it. So, the Federal Reserve expects inflation to climb to 3.4%, that’s higher than they originally estimated, okay? They’re also estimating that they’re gonna have two interest rate hikes in 2023. Now, the Feds did not initially expect interest rates to go up until 2024, okay? Today is June 18th, 2021, and I’m gonna say that interest rates are gonna go up before 2023. I think probably maybe, sometime in 2022. I think that’s when it’s gonna go up, I don’t know when, but I think it’s gonna be well before 2023. And we’ll see. Jerome Powell sent the message to the Feds and everyone else, that he’s keeping a close eye on inflation, and as I said before, the Fed was originally staying behind the curve as its called, instead of in front of the curve, so I think they’re moving up closer and closer, so we’ll see. You know there’s a big shifts in demand and things could happen very very quickly. And that’s one of the concerns that Jerome Powell has. He said “Inflation could turn out to be higher, more persistent than we expect.”. And I think it is. I think some of this will, some of the prices will come down, but I would not be surprised, we’re in for some problems ahead. Senator Rick Scott, he’s a Democrat, out of Florida, he says “We’re seeing substantial increase in inflation, which means that the prices of everyday goods are going up for families in Florida and across the nations. Governments shouldn’t work this way.”. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, he’s a Democrat, and he said that “Policy makers are critically underestimating inflation’s threat to the economy, and that they need to adjust their policies to meet reality.”. And I think that’s really important, ‘cause I think they’re really worried, and they’re hoping that inflation is not as bad as they might think it is, but they’re not gonna say it. They say that the market’s gonna take a hit, bad. So, I would just be very wary of that. Now it’s believed that the Feds are not going to raise interest rates until the labor market gets better. And, that’s a big thing. And they’re expecting that the labor market’s gonna go back to pre-pandemic some time in 2022, like summer of 2022. That kinda falls in, that’s why they’re saying, “Oh, 2023, we’re gonna raise rates, so on and so forth.”. But, I don’t know if it’s gonna be that simple. I’ve spoken to numerous individuals, I belong to a lot of business groups, and right now, it’s hard to find individuals to fill the positions, in a lot of industries, in most industries. I had a discussion with one individual, he’s a distributor, where he owns different warehouses, and he had, I don’t know how big his staff was but, he had 35 individuals leave, and some of them he offered bonuses to keep on, he offered them promotions and they said “No. We’d rather just collect unemployment.”. So, that’s a problem, that’s a major problem. And I said “Well, then they’re not gonna be able to collect if they voluntarily resign.”. He said, “Well it’s not that simple, because they could say, well I didn’t feel comfortable being in the warehouse, or whatever the case may be. So, they’ll still get benefits.”. So, this situation with the pandemic, it’s just not going away. It’s not going away for a long time, no matter, about the shots, or whatever the case may be, what it’s done to the economy, and what the government has done, some of it good, but some of it, not good. And, we’re gonna have a lot of challenges going forward, I firmly believe it. I think we’ll probably skate out of 2021 okay, I don’t know about 2022, but we’ll see. But we track things very closely here at Templar. One of the things that we’re happy about is lumber prices are coming down, and we saw that, not that long ago, on some of the future contracts for lumber. We look at the futures very closely, we look at, mostly, we didn’t look too much at lumber previously until most recently, but we look at gold, silver, oil, and a number of other things in terms of why things are tracking, and we’re always looking at these numbers and see where the future is gonna be for us as an economy, and where we’re seeing headwinds. So, we look very very closely at that, and we’ll see. But lumber prices are coming down. We looked at some of the futures contracts for July and they were down substantially, and we expect it to continue as a result of that as well, so we’ll see. But I think we’re in a little better shape with that, and that makes me happier. Another thing is, we were seeing a considerable number of additional houses on the market, which is good. And we’ll see. But, there’s a big shift and change because now you have a lot of millennials, which were not looking for homes previously, looking for homes. So, I think that’s one shift. One of the things also there’s a shift also, i in New York City, because of the migration of individuals out of the city. I think that’s gonna be supplanted by a younger crowd. We had a discussion at one of my business groups on that, but we’ll see where rent goes. I think rent’s gonna continue to stay low, or continue to go down, because you’re gonna have these commercial buildings that are available, and they’re gonna be dead space. So they might be converted to rental units for individuals as opposed to businesses.

I have one associate of mine that were part of this business group, he’s out of Princeton, and the building has like a 100,000 square feet. He has 5,000 square feet, and another individual has another 1,000 feet, and the rest is vacant. So, to run a building, you know, and cleaning and everything else associated with it for 6,000 out of a 100,000 square feet is a losing proposition for the owner, period. They’re expecting, they’re hoping that, a portion of that’s gonna be rented out by another company but, this is just not this one building, this happening throughout. There’s other challenges. I have one individual, again part of this business group, he does online betting, so he’s company is an online betting company. So he does everything from casinos, to baseball, and things like that, and he wants to build about, add about 600 people to support the application and some sales, so on and so forth, and he’s having problems hiring people. He’s having problems hiring people that don’t want to come into the office, because he wants to establish a culture, and you can’t do that when you’re home. And you have 600 people home, you just can’t. And rightfully so, I agree with him, you need the people back, so we’ll see where it goes with employment, the shift from this new normal, and what’s gonna happen.

Next thing I like to talk about is, the challenge we had that, I was telling you, we were purchasing a house, has solar panels on it. We ran a title on it, we’re about to close on it, and the lease agreement was really poorly written, or it was positively written for the business but not for the homeowner that had this, it was atrocious. And as a result of it, what’s going to probably happen is that the seller’s gonna default on it, yes, the seller. And they’re gonna have to go after them, and it’s gonna be after the estate, there’s not gonna be anything in the estate, so it’s not gonna be a big deal for the seller. I told them that, “I would handle it after that, upon the sale of this property.”. The seller’s attorney is going to send a letter to the solar company saying “We’re not paying it anymore.”. I’m gonna be sending, or my attorney’s gonna be sending him one too, “We’re not gonna pay anymore.”, and take the panels off the roof, or let’s negotiate a more favorable agreement. When we’re doing the title search, there was, which is fine with us, it’s called the UCC Lien on it, UCC stands for Uniform Commercial Code. So what is UCC? UCC is a set of laws pertaining to commercial transactions, business transactions let’s say, that is accepted by all states throughout the country That makes it easier for business to occur, Jersey and Delaware, Jersey and Colorado. Because each state has its own laws, but there’s a set of these business laws that are universally accepted. They’re not federal laws. There’s a UCC Lien put on this, on the panels, and they can’t be sold or taken off technically, unless it’s down by the solar company, and they have 30 days to take it off once we notify them. It basically protects the solar company, or any other business so that someone can’t sell the property to someone else. So I couldn’t go on there and sell it to someone else because there’s a Lien on it. And that’s how the company is protected, through that Lien. So the Lien’s not on the house itself, but it’s on the solar panels. And as a result of it, they’re gonna have to take those panels off. And on day 31, if they don’t arrive to take off the panels, one of my guy’s is gonna take them off, it’s gonna be that simple. Or they could renegotiate with me, and I guarantee, the renegotiation is the, the contract is gonna be a lot betterly, better written for myself, or the future buyer. So, we’ll see. 

One last thing is that, I had a quick call with an individual that I want to a purchase one of his businesses and some of his properties. I didn’t realize how many properties he had, so that guy got me kind of excited. He’s a Korean gentleman, he’s like 80 something years old, I say “Are you Korean? I see your name.”. He says “Yes. How did you know?”. I said “Well my son’s a Korean, and you know, I’ve learned some things about the Korean culture, and he said “That’s so great. This is an emotional thing for me, what you’re saying.”, because, he said, “I was in the Korean war as a refugee, and America helped Korea out and myself out so much, I am indebted to America, and I’m indebted to what they provided for me”. And this gentleman is 80-something years old. He’s got commercial properties all over the place, and he’s done really well for himself. And he just said, “I just can’t say enough of good things about America.”, and it was a great thing to hear that, that America, what we here is how bad America is by some people, and how racist they are. This gentleman, he’s Asian, and he probably had some prejudicial things against him. I definitely believe that, but he was, he was able to overcome those, and have a decent portfolio of properties, and it’s worth millions of dollars. So, I gotta give him a lot of credit for it, so I can’t wait to talk to him some more. I’m gonna keep everyone updated on it, but I gotta close this out, and wanna say thanks a lot. Happy Father’s Day to everyone. I’m gonna be down in for Father’s Day at, in Clark, at the German Club, which is, they have a big picnic, and it’s, a it’s really great time and having German food, and some German beer, and everything else like that, so you should come down. So I’d like to thank everyone, you can reach me at 973-240-8593. Bye bye everyone. God Bless, and Happy Father’s Day to 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 professional before making a major decision.

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