Templar Real Estate Radio Show Transcripts 8-21-2021

Templar Real Estate Radio Show for August 21, 2021

RECORDING COMMENCES:

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. Again, that’s 973-240-8593, and we could answer any questions you may have or you could email us from our website, again, to ask any questions you may have or if you want a certain topic discussed on this 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 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 an agent and we’re not a brokerage, but I have individuals on staff that are agents that could sell your house through the 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 especially how we overcame them and 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 going to provide you with my opinion, it’s only my opinion. I ask everyone to do a lot of research, make sure you look at things from a balanced perspective. You might have a certain belief on something and you might read an article or talk to someone will support that, but really you need to look at the contrary of that and really take a step back and be very open-minded. Whenever you’re researching anything or you want to get a particular contract or whatever the case may be, it’s very, very important to have an open view of it, so I can’t say that enough. You know, one of the things that my son was discussing, so I’ve talked about numerous occasions about crypto and bitcoin, and things like that, and my belief on that. I’m going to talk about that very shortly, about that and his discussion I had with them today and a couple days ago as well on that.

But before we do that, I’m going to do a quick shout out to Livingston’s Famous Crossing Guard, Paulette, and Tim from Cedar Grove, as well as Jenny, one of our new clients. So hello, welcome Jenny and also Sally as well. So I want to make sure that a couple of things are understood. We’re not a brokerage but we sell houses, we sell a lot of houses through the Traditional Multiple Listing Service. If you’re interested in selling your house in New Jersey, please give us a call. I have some really rockstar agents and we’ll go through everything with you. We’re very flexible to work with and we’re very passionate about supporting our clients, extremely. You will be able to get in touch with us all the time and we will make sure that we over communicate to you. Again, that’s very clear and that’s something you really need to understand. We deal with agents all the time, and not all of them but a lot of them are horrendous, they just are and it’s just the way it is. Some of them do it part time and we eat breathe real estate and the people that work for us do the same thing and that’s very, very important. So if you’re selling a house in New Jersey, please give Templar a call.

Now, as I’ve said before, also, we buy houses in New Jersey, we buy assets exclusively in New Jersey. We had an individual the other day went onto our website and he says, “Well, I see that it says, ‘We Buy Houses in New Jersey,’ but do you buy houses in Bloomfield?” We definitely buy houses in Bloomfield. Definitely there, we buy houses. In New Jersey we buy houses in Carney, we buy houses in Somerset, we buy houses throughout New Jersey, and we buy houses in North Jersey, we buy houses in Central Jersey, and we buy houses in South Jersey, so we buy them everywhere within the state of New Jersey. So that’s very, very important to know. And we have two offices, one in Princeton and one in Parsippany, but we cover the entire state. So that’s very important.

Also, one of our strengths is that we’re listing agents. So there is a distinction between listing agents and buyers agents. Now, for a buyer’s agent, it’s very, very important that they know the particular town really well, and they understand the politics associated with it and everything else that’s associated with it. But when you’re a listing agent, our biggest strength is our marketing, and that’s what you want, and that’s very, very important. Just because there’s an agent that’s in a particular town, that doesn’t mean anything. We are listing agents. We’re very, very strong at that. So with any house, you want to be able to get a lot of traffic to come in, even in a strong market, you always want to get a lot of traffic in. I’m going to talk a little bit more about that and some of the things that are happening in the real estate industry from a listing perspective. But that’s one of the biggest strengths that we have, we market and we market a lot. And we do it through a lot of different avenues, everything from Craigslist to Facebook, basically on Google, we do it on just about everything, and we spend a lot of money as a result of doing that marketing, as well as through mass mailings, and so on and so forth. So that’s a big thing that we do and we’re experts at it. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, we are experts at it. We know it really well. We have certain companies that do certain things for us, because they’re experts at that within the marketing. But we do a lot of marketing, and that’s one of the reasons why we are so successful at what we do.

Another thing, as I stated last week, mortgage forbearance is ending. If you need assistance, please give us a call. Again, even if it’s not to sell your house, just you want to talk, please give us a call. We’re here to help you out. I hate seeing anyone stressed out about losing their home. I think that’s extremely, it’s just debilitating to the entire family, and the stress it brings on the entire family. So, you know, that’s something that I want to make sure that if you have any questions, please give me a call. We’d like to help you out in any way possible, not even selling your house or buying your house, just if you need help at all and you need a second opinion on something, we’d be more than happy to help you out with a loan forbearance and then eventually you could speak to the loan institution, whatever it may be. And you could get a loan mod or possibly refinance, but a lot of times if you’re not paying your mortgage right now, reifies really for the most part out of the question, maybe under certain circumstances, but for the most part they’ll be leaning more towards a loan modification. So with that, all those fees and everything that was charged to you, they’re just going to put on the back end of the mortgage, and they might lower your mortgage a little bit, and they probably will, but it’s not substantial, it’s not like 50%. So I’ve seen loan mods where there reduction of like 50, 75, maybe a couple $100 sometimes, it’s not that much of a difference. Sometimes you could get more, most definitely, but you’re not going to, for the most part, chop it down astronomically lower. So just be wary of that and be wary of the fine print associated with that.

And that’s the problem, that’s fine print. So, most people do not read the fine print, and it’s very, very difficult sometimes to get out of those loan mods, with all the fees they put on top of it, it just makes it very cumbersome. I don’t like them at all. You know, it’s better that, from my perspective, you try to sell your house and then move to smaller one or do something else. But when you’re in that loan mod, it’s one step closer to foreclosure basically. And they make it very, very challenging for you to get above water to when you could barely afford credit cards and they’re charging 25% interest, then you pay the interest than the minimum payment, you’re never getting above water there and really paying down the debt associated with it. And even if you throw 100 or 200, it doesn’t make much of a dent in it. And the same thing is with loan mods and the way they do it, and all the money they piled on top of it, they don’t forgive anything. They really don’t. They might forgive something there, but then they put it somewhere else. It’s just crazy. So just please watch that out.

Another thing is inflation. I’ve talked about that and I’ll continue to talk about it because it’s still occurring. You know, they’re saying now that it’s going to ease up within the next year or so. Well, that’s always good. You know, they put a shit out a year because a lot could happen in a year, so they could hope and pray a lot that the inflation is going to go down, but we’ll see. You know, some of the inflation could go down, with oil and lumber, those things will definitely impact some other prices and drive prices down. But there’s other things that are going to stay high, rent is high right now and they keep raising it. That’s a problem. And usually, for the most part, rents are not going to go down for the most part. Especially with not enough housing right now, the chance of it going down a lot based on some economic turn or something is not going to be a lot, the chances of that. So, you know, you’re going to have still high rents and you’re going to still have, you know, salaries have gone up, they haven’t gone up as much as the inflation to counteract it, but prices are going up in terms of salaries. So those types of things are going to continue to impact on prices and inflation as a result of that. So when they talk about it’s going to level off and go down, I wouldn’t hold your breath on it, we’ll put it that that. I really wouldn’t.

So, the other thing before we go to a break is about crypto. So, again, my son was talking about, “Well, dad, should I invest in crypto?” and he did some investment, he made some money on it. I said, “That’s fine.” But I said, “If you’re going to continue with that, because it’s so speculative, you know, pull off what you currently put in and then keep the rest in.” So you always want to do capital preservation. When you invest in something, you want to make sure you preserve that capital, you don’t want to be losing what gains you made and decreasing your capital. That’s, I think, one of Warren Buffett saying is, don’t lose your investment, and number two is, remember number one, don’t lose your investment. That’s basically your capital associated with their capital preservation, so that’s very, very important. So if you’re going to invest in certain things, just protect those, protect your capital that you’ve put in and invest away. But what we do here is we invest in hard assets and that hard asset is real estate.

So that’s enough for now on this segment. So I’ll be back shortly, please give us a call at 973-240-8593 or templarcashforhouses.com. Thank you very much.

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 or templarcashforhouses.com, that’s T-E-M-P-L-A-Rcashforhouses.com, that’s one word. Again, if you need to sell your house fast for cash, please give us a call. We’d be more than happy to help you out, as well as if you want to sell through the Traditional Multiple Listing Service.

So a couple of things I want to talk about. There’s a survey that was done, and it was done by Lending Tree. It wanted to know who is using a spy cam when they’re trying to sell their house. And a third of the individuals that responded said they currently use some type of spy cam when individuals are in the house and trying to sell it. We don’t do that. We have certain — sometimes, depending on where we are, we will have cameras. If it’s far away, we do have our cameras, but they’re only activated really at night and not when individuals are in any of our houses that we’re selling. We just don’t do that. But the participants that surveyed it said that one of the reasons why they do that is to understand what the buyers like and disliked about the house. And I guess they got the idea partially on TV, where you see these houses being flipped and you see the individuals going throughout the house and comment how much they liked the house or if they don’t like the house. So I guess maybe that spurred some ideas. The other reason is that they want to do it from a negotiation perspective. So if they hear certain things, they could negotiate or counter that objection or whatever the case may be during the negotiations. And the last is to hear what the agents say about the house, which there’s always individuals that have a mistrust of agents and some of it maybe rightfully so and some of its not. So I’ll balance that out. But you know, we’ve had instances where agents say things, and not our own agents, but other agents that say things that are just totally incorrect and they’re just saying stuff. When I’m at a house, and I don’t do it often, but if I’m at a house and I’m listening to another agent and they say something just crazy, just makes me cringe and then I got to delicately afterwards interject and correct them in a benign way so nobody gets ruffled, their feathers get ruffled or anything associated with that. But yeah, a lot of agents, they just say things and they spew things out and they’re incorrect.

We had one agent that was telling me that the cabinets were on an angle and they weren’t level and I said, “Well, is it the cabinets are not level or is it the ceiling isn’t level?” And it was the ceiling, I knew it was the ceiling. And then she just looked at it and then she kind of acknowledged that it wasn’t the cabinets that weren’t level, it was really the ceiling that was not level. And that happens, especially with older houses, and the way they put up drywall, so on so forth previously, all those factors play into it. But, you know, agents just say things to say things, and then when they’re wrong and when they’re grossly wrong, it gets me crazy inside, it really does.

Another thing that’s happening, which I haven’t encountered and I’ve spoken to a few of my associates, but what people are doing now is when they’re selling a house they’re taking some of the fixtures along. So normally in a contract all the fixtures associated with the house stay, and those are usually the things that are kind of connected to the house. We have lights, and you have your cabinets, and you have a lot of times, not always a lot of times, the appliances are included, and sinks and toilet bowls and things like that. And obviously on the outside, all those things that are, trees on the outside, so on so forth. There was a New York Times report that said that certain things they’re now taking, people are taking like expensive toilets, one of them high end appliances, and the reason for the high end appliance is because there’s a shortage on them. So they’re taking those as well. There was one agent that said that he had a list and it was approximately $15 million listing and the seller was taking the cabinets along, the kitchen cabinets. So depending on how you arrange the agreement, technically you can take any of that as long as it’s in the agreement, it says I’m taking the cabinets and you’re making it clear to them, but you can’t just take them and not have any cabinets. There was also one where someone took the fruit trees in the backyard and just left two big holes, because they were sentimental for some sentimental reason, I’m not sure why.

But, again, any of those things can occur if you put them in the contract. If you’re selling your house and you want to take the toilet, you can take the toilet, but you kind of have to replace it with another toilet. But yeah, you could put anything for the most part in the contract. And if you want to take some, you can take it. A lot of times, like the blinds stay, shades stay, things like that, because they’re really custom size to a particular window. Window treatments stay, for the most part. But we get that question all the time when we’re selling our houses and we do put window treatment knobs. We don’t do that a lot, but when we do we obviously it goes with the house, because we’re picking certain colors and certain types of window coverings to highlight certain things that are in the house that we want to highlight. So we always do that. But yeah, it really depends on what you want to put into your contract and what you don’t, what you want to keep or not keep. But for the most part, those fixtures, anything to do with lighting, sometimes you might have a beautiful chandelier you want to take and you’ll say, replace it with XYZ chandelier, so on and so forth. And that’s definitely doable, people do that all the time. But taking toilets and taking kitchen cabinets are not something that normally occurs, just so you know.

Now, there’s also a thing, something that’s going on in the industry sometimes, and it’s private listings, it’s whisper listings, it’s pocket listings, those are all things, and sometimes pocket listings occur, but I think they’re starting to occur a little more often. And there’s a belief, at least, that you’re going to get more money that way, and that’s not the case. There was just a recent study on that. So if broker comes to you and says that they want to do a pocket listing or a private listing or whatever the term they want to use, please be wary of that. Now, obviously, if you want it to be private because you don’t want it listed on the open market, that’s one thing, okay. But if they come to you and state that and say you’re going to get as much money, for the most part, that’s false, plain and simple.

As I said in the segment before about listing and marketing, one of the biggest things you want, and you want lots of people to come to your house from all around, and the more people that come the better chance you have, again, meeting list price, above list price, so on so forth. You’re always going to get more when you have more people looking at the house, it’s just that’s the way it is. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, when we market in any industry or any one markets in industry, and you get more eyes on it, you could command a better or higher price. That’s the way it is. So for brokers telling you that they’re going to get the highest price, so and so forth, be very skeptical of that, be very, very skeptical.

So there was a study done and found that homes listed on the MLS sell faster and the median sale price was 17% higher than homes sold privately, 17% just think about that. So 17% is a big number. A house medium price listed at $310,000, and if it was listed at 260, you get another 17% on top of that, that’s a big number. That’s a big number, and that’s huge. I can’t say that enough. The other thing is, is that it’s always good for the broker because what the broker is going to do is they’re going to get both on the selling side and the buying side for their commission. So it’s always in the best interest of the broker to do a private listing or something exclusive listing, so on so forth. But for you as the seller, you want more eyes on it, you want it on the MLS. If you’re going through the Traditional Multiple Listing Service, that’s the way you want to go in a heartbeat as opposed to these private listings. I don’t care if they have 10 buyers. It’s not the same. Anyone that says that they can always confidently get the same price or higher, they’re lying to you. So please, please make sure that you don’t fall into that trap. It just gets me crazy.

So I have to close out today. Thank you very much for listening. I want you to have a nice weekend, everyone, you and your families. Take care, God bless, and I’ll see you and talk to you next week. Again, if you want to reach us, you can reach us at 973-240-8593 or templarcashforhouses.com. Again, take care, God bless, and I’ll see you. 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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