Templar Real Estate Radio Show Transcripts 7-24-2021

Templar Real Estate Radio Show for July 24, 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 could 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 could answer any questions you may have, or you could email us from our website as well. Ask us any questions or if you want something discussed on this radio show, we’d be more than happy to look into it for you.

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 wanna 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. We’re not a brokerage and I’m not a real estate agent, but I have individuals on staff that are agents that could sell your house through the Traditional Multiple Listing Service. This show’s gonna 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 especially, how we learned from 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 you know as much as possible about it. I’m gonna provide you with my opinion. It’s only my opinion. I ask everyone to do a lot of research and make sure you ask lots of questions when you do the research. If you get recommendations from someone, please ask lots of questions. Because what someone might like, another person might not like. So, just because they’re saying the service that was provided was great, again, you might have issues with it. So you really got to ask lots of questions. Same thing, you research on the internet. Again, the author of an article or something is gonna have a certain slant. And that’s what the article is towards. It’s usually not a balanced article for the most part. There’s always, usually, it’s leaning on one side or the other. So make sure you understand that and look for other information that might counteract that and you get maybe, a balanced opinion, or you could develop it yourself.

I’d like to shout out to some of my favorite listeners, Livingston’s Famous Crossing Guard, Paulette. And Timmy from City Grove. As well as Nick and Cindy. I’d like to say hi to you guys too. Thanks for listening to us. Again I’d like to thank some of our investors that have provided money for some of our rehabs. And especially Doctor Ty, and Mrs. Ty. I’d like to thank you very much for the investments. Also, I’d like you to ask yourself all the time, when you are looking into investments, always ask or determine, also what the downside is. Anytime you do any type of investments, I always, always tell people to look at both sides. Not just the most positive side or the negative side. You really have to, again, look at it from a balanced perspective. And when we bring on private investors, we explain what the upside is, downside is, the challenges, so on, and so forth. Nothing is perfect, but we have a very, very good track record, and if you’re ever interested in investing with us, please give us a call and we’ll talk. We’ll sit down in our office, or we could do a Zoom call, or whatever the case may be and go over it. I strongly recommend in person. It just works really well. We’ll sit in a conference room and go over everything. We have a long table, so someone could sit on one end. I can sit at the other. Or I’ll project on the screen or something like that. So we could discuss all the different options and different ways of getting paid, and just go over things. Also, it’s a good idea because you could learn additional things about investing, especially from a real estate investing side, okay? So I strongly recommend it. We’re always giving one-on-one sessions, as well as group sessions. We’ll be doing some more formal sessions starting in September. So, we’re looking forward to that. Especially since all this stuff like Covid, and all this craziness. I’m vaccinated, and anybody that was from my team that would be there would be vaccinated as well. So no one has to worry about that. And also, if you want us to wear a mask, we’d be more than happy to, okay? We want to make sure that it’s stress-free.

Last week I was talking about one of these, it’s a restaurant that I go to sometimes in Nutley. And I was surprised that the dining room was closed. And it’s a pizzeria and it has a restaurant. And it’s called Ralph’s Pizzeria. It’s very well-known, very well-known in Nutley. As well it’s always written up. And I know the owner for a very, very long time. Probably shows my age too much. But I saw him yesterday and then I said to Pat, I said “Pat, what’s the deal with the dining room being closed?” And his view was that, a lot of people ask questions. What are you protocols? What are you doing to ensure that people are protected? He said, “By the time we have to all that, and then my staff has to get anxious about it.” He says it’s just worth it for now to still keep it closed. So, people are still apprehensive and I guess the news doesn’t help. Everything I’ve even read with these new variant and everything is that, if you have the vaccination, the chances of getting very, very ill are extremely, extremely slim. And with any vaccination, that doesn’t mean you won’t catch it. Just like with Shingles. If you catch Shingles, even though you have the vaccination, it’s not gonna be as bad. And that’s the biggest thing. When I first… I’m usually laissez-faire about all this. You know, this go around, I was looking concerned to say the least, but right now, I’m comfortable with the vaccination I got. And I’m confident in the signs behind it. I just gotta live, it’s that simple. 

Couple other things. If you need to sell your house fast, please give us a call. We’re always looking for additional properties to purchase. Again, we will go to your house. We’ll look at what needs to be done, if anything. We’ll provide you with an offer, not always right there. I’m gonna be clear on that. But once we give you an offer, if we decide mutually that it’s an acceptable offer, then we’ll determine the closing dates. Send the contract over to the attorneys and then take it one step at a time. It’s really very, very easy and simple. And if we decide also that a cash offer is not something that you want to entertain, we can always list it through the Traditional Multiple Listing Service. I have a number of great agents and they are on top of their game. And they’d be more than happy to list your property. Market’s still strong, but each day, more and more properties are coming on the market.

I had someone call me last week. She’s from Brick Township. And she needed some work done on her house. I recommended at least some of it. I could’ve sent him one of my crews, or someone I always deal with to fix some of the stuff. And it was gonna cost, I think about 5,000 bucks. Again, you can translate, you put in 5,000 and you could probably get an upside sometimes up to 50. The house is really nice, but there was a few things that were just, not done with it. The pool was closed. The condenser for the air conditioner, the HVAC wasn’t connected. There’s some trim missing. A bathroom needed to be patched up a little bit. So, it was important that she spent the 5,000 dollars. Also, in the price range of 420 to 550, there was 49 houses on the market in Brick. So, she’d be battling against those other houses. So it’s important that she puts that house in the best light to get the most money for it. That’s really a strong deciding factor, whether, what you want to do to it, or not want to do with it. You know, sometimes people just want to walk away from the house, and say “I’m just tired of it.”, and then we could jump in and help out. So, it’s pretty straightforward when it comes to things like that.

So I had today, or yesterday, a woman called me. And she has a house, nice house. A very nice house from what I’ve seen online. I didn’t go there yet. And there’s just one little issue. And the issue is that, it was an inherited house and it had an oil tank. And she pulled, they pulled the oil tank, and the soil was contaminated. And the contamination went all the way down to ground water. So she had insurance for this and the insurance is taking care of it. But they don’t know when it’s gonna be fixed and cleaned. So they’re continuing to take samples of the water, so on and so forth. Then she said, and I know that it was the case, it was truthful, she said “I don’t know, it could take one year, or five years.” So, I was very, very leery about going forward with it. I’m still looking into it but she thought it was like a slam dunk. She’s all “You can buy and then sell it to first-time home buyer. Or a young buyer and because it’s in a very, very desirable part of town.” And I said, well, it’s not that simple. First-time home buyers, and new home buyers are very apprehensive on a lot of things. So they’re just not going to buy a house at a great price and then reap the benefits later on. They’re gonna be very apprehensive. And they’re parents which might provide some input are gonna be extremely apprehensive. Attorneys are gonna say, “You got to watch it. You might have some issues with it.” So it’s not just a slam dunk. I don’t even know how long I’m gonna have to keep it. And you know, when I buy a house, I determine how long I’m gonna keep the house before I could sell it. And it’s an estimate, but. So I wouldn’t even know if it was gonna be one year, or five years. And after five years, I got carrying cost for five years. So she kind of understood it, but I think she was trying to sell me on the positive nature of it. But the other thing is, she says “Well the insurance company is gonna take care of it. They have to take care of it.” And that’s not necessarily the case. We all know insurance companies. A lot of us have cursed out insurance companies. They don’t have to pay in the end. They’re obligated to pay on certain things, but they could just say, “I’m not paying.” Then you’re gonna file a suit. So it’s not just a slam dunk where it’s just, they have to pay, and they have to do it, and so on and so forth. That’s not necessarily the case. If they don’t want to, they just won’t. They say, “Come after us.” Then you have to spend money to sue them. My litigation attorney is 650 dollars an hour. If we have to go to court, he’s gonna spend a couple of weeks putting stuff together. And I don’t even know if he’d do something like that for some type of environmental issue. I could spend 40,000 dollars in a heartbeat. So… Or anybody can. So it’s not a slam dunk. It’s not just this easy thing. So it’s kind of naive on her side. And I’ll talk to her more about it but it’s just not a slam dunk.

I’m gonna close out this segment and I’ll be right back. You could give us a call though at 973-240-8593 or templarcashforhouses.com. Thanks a lot.

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 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 973-240-8593 and we’d be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

The last segment I was closing out on a house that had, oil tank. The oil tank was leaking and some really bad environmental issues associated with that. So I have, right now, under contract, four properties from this one individual. It’s four parcels, but it’s five houses. One property has two houses on it. Of those four parcels, two of them have oil tanks and two of them have oil tank issues. So, we’re going to be remediating that before we purchase it. I wanted to do it before, after, or before, I was debating back and forth on it, but it looks like it’s probably gonna be before. Because some of them are pretty bad. One of them is really pretty bad. So we’re gonna check and see how bad it is. I got a couple of quotes. One’s like 20,000 and one’s like 11,000. So we’ll see where it goes but we will buy just about any type of house. Houses in flood zones we’ll buy depending on the situation. If I could correct it, it’s not an issue. The issue becomes like in places where there might be a train track right in the backyard, or where it’s going through. I’ll buy it, but I have to buy it at a deep discount because most people don’t want a freight train going through their backyard four times a day, or whatever the case may be. With that, and if they have kids, so it’s just, you have to balance it out. But we buy just about any type of house, structural issues, termite issues. The one house that we are purchasing from that gentleman right now is burned down. It’s kind of just really a lot with the burned down house. Now, I think someone died there because there was a cross there and there’s flowers. But I really didn’t get into it with the owner. Because it really didn’t matter either way. Obviously, it’s not nice that someone passed away on it. But he was really anxious with getting rid of it and I didn’t want to put additional stress on him in terms of explaining certain things. The house is burned down, it’s burned down. I’m gonna have to replace that. It’s that simple. There’s an oil tank on there too and it’s leaking. So that has to be fixed. But we do just about any type of problem house, molds, hoarder’s houses, whatever that case may be. We’re here to help on difficult situations, but also we’ll purchase houses that are fairly pristine and individuals just need to sell because they’re relocation, or some other medical issues. So we run the gamut. It goes any way. 

Had another situation the other day. We had a four-family in Belle. I’ve talked about how we’ve had it up for sale. Took a while to close because the buyer was having some challenges with the mortgage. We issued time of the essence, like I side, Time of the Essence saying basically, the clock is ticking. You’ve gotta meet the deadline. It’s usually like 10 days or so. Or you can be on default on the contract. So, finally we closed, which is a good thing. We listed it for 689. I just threw it out at 689 just because of the way the market was. I did not expect to get that. I did not expect to get close to that but who knows. So in the end, we got it at, I think it was about 645. And that’s probably pretty close to where it should’ve been. But like I said, put it up pretty high, and it probably could have been maybe, it should’ve been even lower, like 620. But we got 645 out of it. And it was on the MLS. So we closed that out. As a result of it, Zalo was updated. And then I got a text last night. We have this group text where a lot of my agents will see things and I’ll see it. Even though it goes to one number, a lot of the agents and my staff could see certain things out of it. And it was probably like 10 o’clock last night. An agent texts me and says that he basically had put an offer in and that we didn’t take his offer. And we offered well above the 645. And I’m like, I knew there was no offers above that. There was a bunch of offers that came in right around the same time, but one was a cash offer and it was like 20,000 below. And then there was another one that was 20,000 below the 640. And there was one that was even below that. So it was basically a 100,000 less than the asking price. I was thinking about it because the name seemed very, very familiar. And I was looking at it and I’m trying to figure out who he was, so and so forth. And what happened was that, he said basically in a text, “Why if it was listed for 699 was I told offers are higher than mine? And today you closed at 645?” That was his basic text. And I said, incorrect. It wasn’t listed at 699, it was listed at 689. And I said, what was your offer? And I didn’t hear anything. So 20 minutes later, had one of my staff members. Looked it up because she was interested and she was scratching her head on it and she told me, she said “Joe. They offered 592.”, which was a 100,000 dollars less, approximately. And so, I said the offer was 592, and he said “It was not 592. It was 692.” He said, “We wouldn’t have submitted an offer a 100,000 below in this market.” And I said, I had the written contract. And he says “Can I see it?” And I say, you should be able to look at your own contract that you submitted to me. And then he said, well he doesn’t have it. It was lost it. The way he puts the offer in, it erases the previous offers and then he submits new offers to other people. So he has no historic information on it. And I told him again, I said, I told you the number that you submitted. It was that simple. And he responds saying, client saying I’m a liar now. And I told him next time he needs to change the process if he’s having this problem he can substantiate what it is. And then he apologized and he said, “I was able to go through the archives.” This was almost an hour later. We found the contract in like five minutes, if that. It took him close to an hour. And then he apologized and he says he was sorry. His client was yelling at him, blah, blah, blah, and all that stuff. Again, it just shows the, I feel, the lack of professionalism. You know I had a couple other staff members saying “Whew. What’s with this guy? Is he crazy? Doesn’t he know what’s he’s doing?” And that’s the thing. You have so many agents out there, unprofessional. I’m not saying everyone. But there’s a lot out there. They’re unprofessional that do not know what they’re doing. And just shoot off the cuff. Someone’s accusing of something, I’m gonna look into it before I say anything. I remember where I used to work, when I was in the city. I was head of Professional Services and it was a very tough job. Extremely, extremely tough. I had New York clients out of the financial industry. They’re very tough clients. And then I had sales on one side. I was in the middle, so every email I kept, I stored it. So if someone had some questions or challenged me on something, I would just go in. Take a look at history of it and say, I said this here. I said this here. I said this here. And I remember a number of times, even sales people come to me said “Joe. We have a problem here.” He says, “What do you have in your emails?” Because they knew I always kept everything. Because you always forget things. You think it was one way or another. Everyone does. My father, he was a cop. He said, when he was in the police academy, he said “Never rely on your memory. Write everything down.” He always said that to me. And that’s the thing. All this gentleman had to do is before he reached out to me and looked like an idiot basically, all you needed to do was look in his archives, which might have taken an hour like he did. Whatever or however it was. And find that and then go back to his client and say “No. We offered 592. That’s the reason.” Simple as that. But individuals, again, they jump into real estate and they think it’s just, it’s easy and it’s quick. But to do it right, you got to have attention to detail. You gotta know your craft. You gotta have, understand things and take one step at a time. He was just shooting off the cuff. Because he had a client that was yelling at him. All he needed to do was say, “Let me take a look. Let me see what was offered. When it was offered.”, so on and so forth. And even if I did settle at 645 and he did have an offer, let’s say 699. Say he had that. And I said there was an offer above that. One never knows what negotiation and what things came on, and as a result and it went down to 645. Nobody knows that. So for him to even say that is wrong. Because just what it settled at and what the offer price was are two different things. Who knows, the roof could’ve caved and I said, okay. Take off 40,000 dollars. Who knows. Or they found a problem. And then I gave in and said, okay. Let me take off 45,000 dollars because of this, or this, or this. So even that statement, it’s unbelievable. That’s why I always challenge people. talk to us. Talk to my staff and I know that will impress you. And we’re very good at what we do. So I gotta close out now. Take care. God Bless. And again, if you need to call us, call us at 973-240-8593, or templarcashforhouses.com. Again, have a nice, safe weekend. And I’ll say it one more time, God Bless everyone. Take care. 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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