Hey everyone, and welcome to Passive Real Estate Investing. I’m Melissa Nash, your guest host, jumping in for now. Let’s dive in.
Welcome to the show, Josh. I am so excited to have you here today. Now, I wanted to kind of let everybody know, I want you to do your intro and tell us a little bit about yourself, but just for a little bit for the audience here. Josh is a amazing contact and builder in Florida, and he has helped him and his team have helped many, many people in Florida. And you can give us all the numbers for that, Josh where we got into, or they rather got into a pickle with some builders who weren’t necessarily the best builders, I would say. And Josh and his team were helping people, and that’s how I met you. So I’m so grateful that I met you and your team, and I know you, again, have helped so many people. So if you don’t mind, just tell us about yourself, Josh, you and your team, and tell us kind of where you’re at, what you do, and why you do it.
——————————————————————————–
FREE copy of The Ultimate Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing.
If you missed our last episode, be sure to listen to TBT: 7 Steps for Picking a Strong Real Estate Market
Our team of Investment Counselors has much more inventory available than what you see on our website. Contact us today for more deals.
<Laugh>. Yeah. Thank you. Well, thank you Melissa. Yeah. so we’re in Southwest Florida. We basically, between Naples and Sarasota, that whole southwest coast. And me personally, I’ve been an investor there since 2009. I got involved in the foreclosure area, the big financial crisis. And I’ve been investing there ever since. Personally I own 110 rental units now, so I’m very involved in that market. You know, we’re a fully integrated firm. You know, we do development, you know, raw land department title, lots, new construction homes. We own the construction company, property management company. We currently have about 300 units under management. You know, the brokerage side, we have the whole kind of, you know, very fully inter, fully integrated, fully integrated, geez, we have to edit that <laugh> vertically integrated fully, you know, so across the board. And we really got big into construction in like 2000.
It start, or 2020, I think was started back in 2018 when it was the first time we recognized that it was actually cheaper to build new construction than it was to buy kind of off the shelf in this is all investment product for the record, not retail product. Everything you do is, is, is tailored for investors. And then in 2020 we got big, and then we actually got started the same way. I was working with another third party builder. I had a fair amount of builds going, like 50 builds with them going and like I noticed it was kind of going sideways. And my partner Dave, who is one of the most experienced guys in real estate out there, he is done over 15,000 houses. Yes. 15,000. You’ve heard that number, right? O across the country, almost every state over his, you know, 20 year careers of doing this.
Who’s originally from Cape Coral, Florida, got to come back and partnered with me. We started our company and we fixed the builds that were broken by the builder and kind of, it was a painful process to be honest. It’s not easy to go into a a half-built house and figure out all the problems that the previous builder struggle with and then solve those problems and then get it back on track and finish it out. It’s, it’s actually really painful work and everyone complains about it. But we actually developed what I would call a skillset of becoming good at this. And then we didn’t know it was gonna lead to that. ’cause That was just for ourselves, you know, personally. And then we were building new construction stuff on the side, but we had all these other, it turns out three or four or five of these builders all went belly up.
And there’s at least, you know, a fair amount, like about probably a thousand of ’em out there that we’re rare of. And I think we’ve helped over 70 of them get finished out and get fixed. And they’re all, they all think we’re like, miraculous. We’re just like normal, but these other guys, so, and some of Melissa’s clients now helping as well. But that’s kind of how it evolved into that whole business. But it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t designed that way by any metric, you know, like that. But it’s become a core competency. And, and what we’re doing now is we, we’re continuing to build new construction investment product. You know, again, as a, as a holder of real estate, my ourselves, you know, everything is built with the investor mindset. And and what we mean by that is it’s meant to hold, I hold all my properties for, for life.
I don’t sell. So, you know, I plan to pass these to my kids and therefore like that. And just want to, I believe in letting the, the assets appreciate, let the rents continue to rise, and then do a cash out refinance, tax free, never pay tax. You know, you can step a basis upon death. I mean, it’s all very like, long term and strategic, you know, 10 30 ones. We’ve done quite a few of, I’m sure your clients have, you know, it’s, it’s tax in my opinion. Real estate’s the best asset class. And I came, I worked 12 years on Wall Street, so I came from like the stock market world, you know, but I think this world is so much better in terms of anyone being able to create wealth. It doesn’t take a whole lot. You know, I’ve, you know, turned $300,000. So I put it into this business, you know, the current portfolio is worth $40 million. That’s all from $300,000. No other money was ever added, just to be very clear. So it doesn’t take a fortune to create, you know what I mean? If you’re creative and smart and thoughtful about it but also aggressive. Yeah. You have to be aggressive,
I would say. And connect sorry to interrupt you. I was, I was gonna say also connect with the right people. I mean, that’s, that’s what we’re gonna dive into. But I mean, I think that’s, that’s kind of what you did is you, you, you sounded like in the, in the beginning you met some people that you got into some issues with on the construction, and then you had to figure out a system, and now you have that system, and now you are the people <laugh> that other people need.
Exactly. Yeah. No, and that’s true. We, I didn’t, did not plan on own a construction company, you know? But glad we have that now, you know, and didn’t, didn’t plan at all. That was more on the investor side, but you know, you know, it, it’s, it’s worked out really well. And just to kind of expand upon that, what we, the way we build it. And that was part of the reason too, like when you’re working with a third party contractor, you don’t really know. And most people don’t really know what’s going into that house like we do. And so we’re in Florida, we have hurricanes, we have three of ’em in the last three years. And for the record, none of our new houses had any damage. Not even a shingle loss, just, just to be very clear, I think. Good, good.
Now, the older ones have 20-year-old roofs. We lost some shingles on those, but pretty minimal for all things considered. And they were all fully paid for by insurance, brand new roofs. But so you know, we have concrete block shell, I mean, these things are basically indestructible hurricane impact windows, which are great for absent, you know, owners because now you don’t have to put up these big metal storm shutters. You know, there’s a lot of false hurricanes, right? Hurricanes coming, never comes. That’s been most of the history of Florida. Like, it’s coming, it’s coming. That’s why people probably stay when they shouldn’t, when it actually a bad one comes. But, you know, those hurricane impact windows, you don’t have to replace. You don’t have to you know, get in a hurry. They’re there. We do all LVP floors, that’s luxury, vinyl plank. We don’t do tile.
That stuff is basically indestructible and actually looks modern and, and sleek. You know, tenants love it. Owners love it. And if it, if pace were to get scraped up, you just put heat gun on it, slap it off super easy. We put the air handler for the HVAC system. A lot of, a lot of builders put it in the top of the garage. We put it inside the house under air conditioning. So it’s less stress on that unit that probably extends the life we guesstimate three or four years. You know, these are all small details, but in my opinion, they add up. And you know, we have this, this rain and ice underlayment underneath the shingled roofs, which again, if there were blown off, that house is not taken on water. Again, another level of expense that most people don’t put in.
But we built this stuff that thought that we’re gonna own it 30 years, and we’re gonna be the owners, you know, and, you know, I i, if somebody else buys one of our products, still the beneficiary of that kind of quality, right? So everything you can see, it’s all, you know, shaker cabinets, quartz countertops, not granite. We go up on level from the all mow and grade faucets, which lasts longer like that. So we really thought about it from, you know, how we want to own properties long term. And that’s every build we do has that in the mindset of it.
Well, I was gonna say, I mean, gosh, there, there’s so much to unpack that you just talked about that i, i definitely wanna touch on. But just kind of on that last point is you, you are an owner, you are an investor, and your plan is to buy and hold these. So how do you want them to be built? So they’re gonna last, like you said, you’re creating generational wealth. This is the plan is for it to withstand this generation and hopefully the next, and, you know, as, as long as possible, we can keep that going. And so if you have really quality stuff in the houses and that is your mindset, then that absolutely, it, it makes sense. And that’s what’s happened in Florida, I think. And that’s what scares so many people is when they open up the news. And I kind of wanna talk about the market a little bit, but you hear about, you know, all the builders rushing to the market and everybody’s trying to make a buck, you know, the last 10 years.
And a lot of ’em, ’em are just lipstick on a pig. A lot of ’em took people for their money and acted like they were gonna build something and they never did. And just really crappy work. And, you know, warranties are, what are those, you know? And so a lot of people have heard those stories, so they are a little bit scared. And so, which is again, you know, why it’s so important to vet out the team that you’re working with. So, you know, aside from that, like, I mean, thank you for kind of going over a little bit about, about your company and kind of what you guys do. Let’s talk about the Florida market a little bit. Yeah. I <laugh>, I, I just opened up my email yesterday, <laugh>, and I saw an, an email in there from a pretty big networking company with a big podcast. I’m not gonna say their name. We don’t need to give them any more press than they have. And the spotlight was on Florida, and they were like talking about like you know, Florida’s failing and you know, you should run from Florida. And I was like, huh, that’s interesting. I kind of feel like that was a little bit of old news in a, in a way. What do you, what do you think about that?
Yeah, no, it’s fine. I mean, you made a point, I just saw an article of Wall Street Journal today that Cape Coral’s the worst housing market, et cetera. And I, I find the news to be outdated and, and not incorrect, but just like behind, I mean, the Florida market definitely had this big boom during the pandemic, right? You know, people flooded to Florida, interest rates were low, and it was just, it was, you know, high prices got too high, right? They got a little crazy there, specifically in 2022. You know, and then ever since, like, rates really spiked, I think October of 23, really for the last 18 months, I’d say prices, you know, at least on the single family homes, let’s just talk about that. Our duplexes have held up much, much better, but like they’re probably down duplexes are probably down about 5%, but the single family homes are probably down about 20%, you know, on average.
And I’m talking about the investor grade stuff, and we don’t do anything in the higher level, like, you know, five, 600,000 or even luxury. Like that may be a whole different world of, you know, kind of things. But we kind of stick to what we call affordable housing or, you know, workforce housing. Kind of the, the lowest entry level rent is, is what our place owes. And I’d actually argue, you know, I’m a guy who made my all my money from buying when things were really tough, you know, when I bought in Lehigh Acres in oh nine, everyone told me to run away. Like it was gonna be this awful place. And like, you’re never gonna like make your money. And you know, I was buying a duplex at that time for $50,000, 25,000 aside, you know, and I didn’t listen to what everyone else told me, right?
You know what I mean? And they, and I’ve watched that place change so dramatically over 15 years. It’s mind blowing how much nicer it’s gotten, the higher quality of tenant. You know, there’s only so much land available and as things get nicer. And so to the answer question, yes, the Florida market is down, but I actually kind of see it bottoming and I think it’s a good time to invest into Florida market. I disagree with that. You know, the sky is falling, kind of we’ve seen a builder response. The builders are pulling back. You’re seeing there is a bit of a current oversupply, but when that gets kind of eaten up and past that, I think we’re gonna be back to the growth market that Florida is. I mean, people forget, I mean, in 2008 I remember reading articles about Florida saying it’s never gonna grow again.
That people don’t wanna retire there anymore. This is 2008. I remember it in the Wall Street Journal over and over. Well, in 2015, Florida surpassed New York City, you know, where I used to work for the third largest state in terms of population, you know, so you have California number one, Texas number two, and Florida’s number three with 23 million people. I don’t think people realize how big Florida has gotten. And it’s not slowing down, you know, if you’re, you know it’s only gonna keep continuing to grow. I, I believe, right? You know, it had a bit of an overhang, it’s recovering from that, but it’s a long-term growth state. You know, the sun is always gonna shine there. Retirees love sunshine. There’s no state income tax. People love not paying taxes. You know, it’s got a very friendly it’s a red state, very friendly, do business as a landlord.
Someone doesn’t pay you rent, you kick them out. There’s no squatters’ rights. I’ve heard crazy stories and some other states about squatters, you know, not even tenants having rights. Lenders have talked about. So you have all these positive dynamics. So I think you’re gonna see that go back, you know, and I, you know, Texas and Florida I think will continue to be there. When I invest in real estate, I think 30 years, I don’t think two or three. So if you’re trying to make a quick flip in a year, I wouldn’t do that. But if you want to build real wealth, it’s a great time to buy. I mean, all the stuff we do, it’s, it’s rented. You know what you’re gonna get in rents you know what you’re gonna get. Everything’s kind of there for you, right? There’s no guesswork here involved.
And if somebody has watched rents, that’s one mistake I made in oh nine. I didn’t never could’ve imagined or dreamed the rent growth, you know, the rent was probably five to $600 for a duplex, and that peaked at about $2,100. So almost three and a half times. And, you know, whatever that was 15 years. I, I, I would’ve never dreamed that back then, right? But now I’ve seen it and I’ve seen inflation. I see the government spending on the big picture, and I, you know, I’m very quite confident that if you look in the next 15 to 20 years, I believe that the, the prices will double again. You know, in terms of price, I think rents will double. I think you’re gonna see that grow again. I just think as this country continues to print money, you know, real estate’s still that best hedge against inflation. So and you wanna be where it’s growing, not where it’s declining.
Yeah, definitely. Well, I mean, again, you said so many things there that I want to kind of talk about and dive into a little bit. Two, two things I wanna come back to and talk about what inventory you guys actually have available and where, and kind of take a dive into those numbers because you were talking about there that your properties are already rented. So I want everybody to know right now he does, Josh has some amazing properties that I wanna share with you guys, and we’re gonna kind of set that aside for now and tease you with it and kind of come back to it a little bit. Yeah. That’ll be the dessert of the conversation. Kind of, yeah. Yeah. but what, what does the rental demand look like? Because that, that was something that I’ve seen, you know, I’ve been helping investors buy properties in Florida for 10 years, and I did see that spike you know, the timeframe that you talked about right after COVID.
I mean, so many people rushed Florida and the rental demand was just crazy. I mean, some of the prices they were getting for these rental units, I was like, wow. You know, and they were renting and then we’ve kind of seen a little bit of a slowdown. We saw places kind of take a little bit longer to rent. And what I think, and maybe you can kind of enlighten us a little bit and, and correct me if, if my thinking is wrong, is I think that for the time being when that rush happened, it’s all supply and demand. So the property managers were pushing the rents up ’cause they could. And I think they pushed the rents up too much too fast and didn’t take ’em down soon enough and kind of lower that expectation when things kind of started to even out.
So it’s kinda like they went up, got forced, people were not, were being stubborn and not lowering the rents less because you know, hey, well six months ago, nine months ago, that house did rent for that. But when there’s more demand, you can’t necessarily get that. And so we kind of saw places be on the market for just a little bit longer than we’ve seen rents go down a little bit. But then what I’m seeing right now is actually rents are going back up again. I don’t know if that’s just me and what I’ve seen or if I’m crazy, but I almost feel like because you know, homeowners aren’t, are, maybe not they’re putting off buying ’cause interest rates are high and maybe they’re like, Hey, I’m just gonna go back to the rental market. I don’t know, I feel like I’ve seen the rental market. They’re kind of start to go up a little bit more or what are you seeing?
Yeah, well it really depends on the submarket too. So I don’t wanna like call Florida one big, you know, <laugh> true one big market. There’s lots of little submarkets that is true. There’s, there’s pockets and we can help people guide to which we think are the stronger and like that. But yeah, I think everything you just said is true. I mean, generally we’ve seen, and, and, and it’s hard when you, you know, again, I’m, I own 110 units, I, I dealt this person like, oh crap, you know, like people are saying, I get, I can get rent lower elsewhere, right? You don’t wanna lower your rents, but you have to have this realization process that there is and they dropped about 10%, you know, and on a duplex, for example, we peaked around 2100. Now I’m giving you an average somewhere higher and whatever like that.
But on average we could rent pretty much any new deal for that. Now they’re about 1900. And the good news is this, this started probably in October of last year and it’s been pretty stable since then, right around right around 1900. We, we do what we always do slightly under 1895. And we’ve got pretty consistent dam demand. We can fill that, right? You know, and we’ve gotten very creative on that stuff, but, and we can talk about that you know, about the rent by room program, some other cool stuff. But, you know, for the stable normal rents that, that’s where we’re seeing about a 10% decline and it really feels like it’s firming there. Right? And I think that, you know, if you do the, the normal kind of ratios, what people’s incomes are like, that’s an affordable rent you know, for the new construction product.
And the nice thing about the new construction product is it’s the nicest thing, right? So people wanna, you gravitate to that. I think if you have older product that’s not nice, you may be experiencing even maybe a worse situation. I think they’re the ones even affected more. And here’s some of the things, ’cause like they got the benefit of getting some high rent when there’s no inventory. But when you have a lot of inventory, like nobody wants the old crappy stuff. Everybody wants the nice new shiny stuff, right? And I, I just on the, on the oversupply thing, the other thing, the big offender of the oversupply really even wasn’t the home builders, it’s not the single family homes and the even the ones out there, it’s, it’s the apartment complexes. Those are the guys that went nuts. So in my opinion, and it’s still me, it blows my mind how many they built.
The good news about those, those are big projects. You can watch them, you know, I think most of those are coming online by the end of this year. And once they’re leased up, like that to me is the big, what’s caused the biggest thing, right? But there is no, or very little new construction on that front. You can see that pipeline, not just in Florida, but nationally. Like, you know, the multifamily really dried up so that you can see that kind of window of over like the next two years. That’s like the one that’s 300 units, that’s another 500 units. Like that’s not <laugh>. Those are big units, right? And we can say they don’t compete with single family rentals, but that’s not true. They did do right. You know what I mean? They’re, they’re offering big discounts and, and you can see that overhang kind of clear. I mean, to me it’s very clear the next one to two years that’s, that’s passing like we’re kind of in this bottoming phase now. And like you said, we have even seen some rinse, like spike up a little bit very slightly. But we have seen that kind of turn. So I think they’re all good points you make there muscle.
Perfect. So let’s talk a little bit about, one of the things that I’ve always appreciated is that is new construction insurance is a little bit lower than a, let’s say somebody buys a property built in 1960 and they did a renovation on it. You kind of touched on this a little bit earlier. You know, when you guys are building new construction, you guys have code for hurricanes, right? Like you have to build them a certain way. It’s, there’s certain requirements by the state. Can you kind of walk us through that and kind of, because that’s one thing that, that I always get hands down.
I’m passionate about this topic because everyone has the topic wrong. I was actually just at the big IMN the big single family rental conference developers conference in Miami about a month ago. And I actually spoke about this ’cause so many people get it wrong. Even professionals like myself get it wrong. I’m like, I’m gonna make this statement. Insurance is never been cheaper in Florida than it is today, <affirmative>.
Wow. Okay. People have not repeat that, repeat that again. For those in the back.
For investors, that’s huge with investor product. You know, it has never been cheaper. And what I mean by that, let me explain that. ’cause Like again, you know, if I go back to 2011, like I could probably get insurance on a duplex for 900 to a thousand bucks, but my rents were 600 aside. That’s 1200 bucks. It was basically about a month for the simple math was, it was basically about a month of rent from both sides to cover my insurance. Well, fast forward to today. Now you have to be smart about insurance. It’s not just a gimme, you can’t just go to your broker. That doesn’t work. In my opinion. Insurance companies are overcharging everybody intentionally. You know, I personally think it’s fraud, but like the insurance account be committing fraud, but you can fight it. And we do, as a builder, we have something called a replacement cost estimate.
So we know what it costs to build that property. Exactly. You can’t argue with us. And that’s actually gone down 10% over the last year. It’s not gone up, it’s gone down. And so you don’t rebuild the land that’s already there. Right. So it’s just the structure. So if land prices go up, that’s irrelevant to replacement cost. And land prices have been crazy firm and strong, to be honest. So if you look at insurance, our average cost on a duplex new construction is about 1500 bucks. But what I just tell you rent was right, it’s 1900 aside, so that’s $3,800. So it’s 1500, 3800. So it’s less than a half of a month of rent. It has never been cheaper in history for our products. Now that’s assuming no, no flood zones. We don’t build ’em flood zones. So flood insurance is expensive. I will say that I would highly advise your clients to stay away from those.
We don’t build, we don’t touch it. We just see a flood zone. We’re out of it. A lot of times. We can actually take a lot and actually build it outta a flood zone, do what’s called a Loma X with the FEMA and get it out of the bet. That’s a whole process, right? You don’t have to deal with all that. Like we just avoid it. Right? Build a little further inland and, and you don’t have to worry about that. But yes, I mean, it is cheaper than ever as an investor insurance. So this whole narrative drives me bananas. And, and yes, they will try to charge you more, but if you fight them and say again, RC you replace cost estimate, you probably drop your cost about 20%. Wow. And then we’ve been successful in every one of those. So I, I, yeah, I really, I’m passionate about that topic because you know, so many people get that wrong and they don’t realize, and it’s this not an issue for us.
Well, it’s an excuse to, you know, we all have fears about risk levels and I think it’s just an excuse <laugh> for people to kind of, you know, cater to their fears a little bit. And, you know, real estate investing has risks. I mean, but the risks are, I always look at insurance as you’re protecting your property. There actually is no risk in anything happening to your property as long as you’re covered and you’re protected the right way. So you’re actually limiting risk by having good insurance. But then the question is the math, we have to make sure that if your insurance is one cost, that the property looks good on paper, the math has to math out, you know? And so that’s, that kind of goes into this next part. You’re like talking about these duplexes and you’re throwing out these numbers and we’re teasing everybody with this stuff. So let’s just kind of get into it. Tell us about this amazing project that you have going on right now. Give us the lay of the land and kind of what the price points are. And I know you guys are renting by room, is that correct? Just let’s just go for it. Tell me all about this.
Well this is kind of proprietary to us, but like yeah. You know, so we’re always creative in thinking new ways. Like you said, we do have a new program that is exclusive to our company to be, candidly, I don’t know anyone else. We have a relationship with an ad agency kinda like section eight. So the rents are guaranteed you know, fully funded and we are renting them by the room. So we take, and for example, that same duplex I just talked about instead of getting 1900, which is our standard market, 1895 we get $900 per room. So, you know, on one side of duplex that’s $2,700. And then the other side that’s 2,700. So instead of 3,800, you’re getting 5,400 for that duplex. Now we do have to pay utilities, so we have to pay like the electricity bill if it’s on city water and sewer, the water bill, if it’s on septic, there’s no bill. I mean that’s, you know, well water’s free and some lawn care. So we have to back out some of that cost. But like generally you’re, you’re netting about a thousand dollars a month extra in cash flow on these deals.
Wow. Okay. So would, are these considered, now I just actually had an interview with a CPA company and we were talking a little bit about active investing slash passive investing and tax benefits. Are these considered short term rentals or mm-hmm. Are they, or are we still kind of in the passive zone, or, or what are…
Percent Yeah, no, they’re long term. They’re one year leases. Not short term leases. I know there’s some companies that do like weekly, like we don’t do any of that. Everything’s an annual lease. In some cases a two year lease then fully guaranteed funded. Right. You know, so you don’t have to worry about that. And the group we’re working with, it’s actually one rent check they send us. So we get 2,700 for the side. We don’t get three rent checks. It’s one check. So for us as a property manager, it’s easier. It is more work on the PM team you know, just dealing with three individuals versus like that. But it’s been really good. We’ve been doing this for about a, it’s relatively new, about 30 days. Candidly they sell very fast <laugh>, you know, those properties. So as they kind of come up we have more coming.
They, they, they, they tend to sell pretty fast. You know, our R oi ROIs are looking like 13 to 14% on those deals. So pretty juicy deals considering that’s brand new construction, you know, and you know, with great rental rates and, you know, arguably better than some of those numbers are better than it’s ever been. Right. in terms of any time during that 2000, 20, 21, 22 cycle, like we also work with a lender. We’re agnostic. We have no, like, personal relationship, but we have lenders that work with cross country and the best ones right now are getting like 6.375% to investors doing DSCR loans 30 year fixed. And that’s a great rate. I mean that, I haven’t seen those rates in quite some time, to be honest. Oh, wonderful. So you penciled that in and like, you can’t complain about rates, you can’t complain about insurance and you can’t complain about rents, you know? So I don’t know, <laugh>, <laugh>,
What else can we give the people? What else do they want? This is, you know.
So, but that’s that’s an exciting little program that’s exclusive to us that we’re, we’re excited about. I’m putting them in, in, in my properties. We’re putting them ones we’re selling, you know, so we don’t, you know, obviously like I love to own every property, but I don’t, I’m not, I don’t have endless capital. So like we do sell properties, you know, dump them, you know, so that’s an opportunity for, for some of your clients potentially.
Amazing. So my follow up question to this is, you know, you guys have been doing these for, you know, about a month or so, and they’re pretty awesome. I think it’s a great opportunity to take advantage of it. And if you’re looking to get into the Florida market, or even if it doesn’t even matter, like put market aside, if you’re looking for a new construction property with some really great cash flow done for you service, I mean literally everything is done for you. I mean, you don’t have to get a loan, you don’t a construction loan, you don’t have to find the tenant or manage the tenant or, you know, these are literally just handed to you on a silver platter. My question though is how does the math look if you know the system goes away or if, you know, all of a sudden you can’t buy rent by the room anymore, like take advantage of it, right? Like right now, like <laugh> gobble up that cash flow, but then what if that disappears? And you kind of mentioned earlier Yeah. About the rent.
That’s a, that’s a great, that’s a great question. Listen, I’m glad you asked that because we have people that question on time and like, you know, I believe the program’s gonna last a long time and get refunded. I mean, if you get more into details in the program, but like, let’s just play, the worst case scenario goes away. Well, we know what market rent is and that’s $1,900 and you’re still generating 8% return to that level. Right. You know what I mean? Which is still phenomenal for new construction. Phenomenal. And so you can’t really lose, you definitely benefit at a very minimum, get the high cash flow. And if for some reason the program went away, president Trump takes away all section eight. Like we can’t do it. Like, I don’t think that happens for the record, but like, you know, if you want to play that out, you’re still gonna get that 1900, right? That’s the market rent. And that’s a pretty, pretty stable number right now across all of our submarkets. That’s kind of the number we’re seeing really firming up. You know, you drop below that and it’s like, like there’s not much to add, you know, so.
Right, right. Well, and also like, this might not be for everybody. Not everybody wants to do this, and that’s okay. Like, don’t take advantage of that extra cash flow. You don’t have to do it. You have plenty of properties and, and inventory where they can just put a straight tenant in there, like you just said.
Yeah, we have, we have, you know, standard ones. Well, and those are great numbers as well. I don’t ever want to, like the normal deals sell Well, we sell very well. I mean, honestly, back to your question about Florida and the market, like June was our best month, you know, in history. We sold 16 deals, which is the most for us, right? We’re smaller. I mean, it’s, it was a record month. I think July was gonna be even bigger than June. So we’re performing very well, even though, you know, some of our peers that are really not. But we, again, we only deal with investors. We don’t list our houses on, you know, MLS We don’t deal with like showings. Like that’s a different world for us. Like we work with investors, sell to investors, we want self investors to become long-term clients, you know, enjoy the experience with our company, the kind of turnkey nature of it.
Very passive. We handle the utilities, we handle all the nightmares. You know, like you don’t deal with any of that. Like I said, I would never I think construction’s hard work. Yeah. Like it’s hard, very hard to find a reputable builder that truly will deliver exactly what they say and solve problems or make things right if something isn’t right. You know? And Yep. And that’s what the, that’s why it support us because we do the whole process, right? We don’t just sell it, we’re managing it. We’re keeping that client, right? Like you’re with us the whole way. There’s no like handoff to somebody else, you know, that’s somebody else’s problem. Or you know, if there’s a repair or a maintenance issue, we gotta deal with that, right? Yep. Our company is dealing with that. So our whole network is kind of, like I said, we’re fully vertically integrated, so we’re all self-contained and you know, every, we keep all the property management so it doesn’t leave our world well
And keeping things as easy as possible. And I want everybody to know that you do have opportunity available for people. Right now you do have some multi-family. Do you have single family as well or is it just multi-family?
We have single families, yeah.
Okay. Okay, perfect.
Just to touch on that, we had one single family I don’t want, I shouldn’t say this ’cause it’s, it’s not repeatable. We did one of the rent by rooms, you know, and here’s a good example. We’re getting $2,500 for that 1800 square foot four bed, two car gr garage house which is a good rent. But when we went rent by room, we put $900 times four, that was $3,600 in that single family. Wow. It was like an upper teens kind of ROI deal. And I mean it’s sold within hours, but like, yeah,
I was gonna say, sign me up <laugh>.
Well, we have some more, so hopefully come like that, you know, like that we’re just, but yeah, there’s opportunities arise, right? So,
Okay, perfect. And then this is what this is all about. It’s networking, understanding, setting yourself up in the position to be able to take advantage of these opportunities when they come up. That’s why we have this podcast. That’s why I’m like education, education, education, get lined up, talk to lenders, put your ducks in a row, have your money plan set up, whether you’re investing with your cash or, you know, another perfect investment is if you have a retirement account and you wanna do a self-directed, these new construction are so good for that. And we’ve got amazing lenders that can help with that as well. But we’ve gotta set ourselves up so that when somebody like yourself Josh says like, Hey, we’ve got this great opportunity and this, the return in Florida is in the teens. Like, come on guys, we gotta be ready so that we can jump on these opportunities.
So with that said, I want everybody to know that you gotta get to Josh through me or our team. So there’s going to be a link in the show notes. All you have to do is grab that link and then we will hook you up, we’ll get you the information, we’ll talk to you about the opportunities if it makes sense. And, and then you’re like, yeah, definitely. Let’s see what we got going on. Then we will set you up with Josh and his team. You’ve got duplexes, you’ve got single family, and again, where, where does the location kind of go?
Basically south southwest Florida, you know, from Naples, you know, which is crazy high expensive to like Sarasota, that kind of southwest quarter, Naples to Sarasota. So yeah, you know, Lehigh Acres is a big market for us and one of our favorite markets for that matter. It’s been really strong. You know, Cape Coral is kind of going through a bit of a correction right now, but like, I think starting to come out of that Punta Goda, port Charlotte, Sarasota County, north Port, like that whole thing. And like, I’ll just give you my take on that whole thing, right? The back to the growth market, if you look at a map, I love maps and like aerials and views. And if you look at the east coast of Florida, you go from like Miami up to like Fort Lauderdale, well, that’s fully developed. I mean, everything from the coast to the Everglades is all one giant suburb.
I mean, you know, it’s huge, right? And then if you go to the west coast of Florida, you’re much more affordable, reasonable. And, you know, Naples is really getting built out. And if you see this kind of like, my belief is from Naples to Tampa, it’s just gonna be one giant like suburb. It’s gonna mirror the east coast eventually. And that’s over the next 30 years. That’s not tomorrow, but you can see all this development, it’s gonna be coastal. It’s not, nobody lives in the center of the state, right? So that’s the areas and I think you, you come just out of the flood zone, so you know, you know, the higher ground, it’s, it’s a good safe, long-term bet. The bet I’m making feel very comfortable with it, right? I’m, hopefully we cleared up some of the, the misnomers out there. I, there’s some guys out there, oh, the sky is falling and I’m like, well, that it already fell guy.
That’s old news. <Laugh>. Like, you know what I mean? <Laugh>. So we’re, that’s, that’s not, you know, the the, the media apps, they think they’re like giving this new breaking information. I’m like, that’s yesterday’s news. You know what I mean? Like, tell me what’s happening now, right? And so, yep. I think there’s great opportunities for opportunistic people, happy to discuss those, you know, that anyone you introduce us to and help guide people. And again, all these are rented out. Like you don’t have to guess on the numbers, you know what you’re paying, you know what your interest rate is. We, like we said, a great 30 year fixed, no variability there. You know what the rents are like, you know, there’s a bit of an oversupply now that goes away. Rents start climbing again. You know, all that extra, that’s one of the things I learned and that that whole rental increase I talked about, you know, back in oh nine when rents were 600, what you don’t realize is when your costs are covered, like every dollar of rental income increase falls to your bottom line.
It’s very powerful, right? So when rents go from six to 1200, well now you’re making a lot of money, you know, and then it, it gets crazy. I mean, for example, like we make as much rental income here as one year as I paid for that original duplex, right? Like, it’s kind of mind boggling. So like you can really, you know, if you’re opportunistic when people say stay away, that’s probably when you should take a look at opportunities. And when everyone’s going at the same time, you may wanna stay back. That’s my general advice to people who wanna make money in the long term. So
Yeah, definitely. Well, there, there’s always opportunities everywhere and we just have to know where to look and who to trust. And again, like you said at the very beginning of this, this is a long-term strategy. If somebody is, like you said, gonna go and, and flip something and they, they wanna do that like, like let ’em like go for it, that’s their risk. That’s not what we’re about. That’s not what we educate, that’s not what your team is about. Obviously with your own portfolio, this is a long-term strategy and with the growth, like you mentioned the, the largest states and the fastest growing states, and even with comparing Florida to Texas, I tried to make the numbers work in Texas so hard for people, but the property taxes there are so insane. It really eats up at the cash flow. And I mean, I’m talking maybe they can find a good deal that has a one or a 2% return the first year.
And if somebody can get a duplex with you in Florida at the minimum of, like you said, an 8% return, I mean that’s <laugh>, you know, a lot more than we’re seeing in Texas right now. And with the growth patterns and the jobs, and I mean, everything that’s happening in Florida, I still believe in Florida, like you said, and I know people are really cautious and, and they, they wanna kind of do their due diligence. And so I welcome that again, you guys talk to Josh, talk to his team, they have the numbers, they have the stats, they have the experience. Just talk to people and just kinda see where the conversation goes.
And I, I just wanna add, I did live in Texas for four years, so I’m very familiar with Texas and I, I was a homeowner in Texas, actually, Dallas, Texas. And I, I had the same experience, right? Like I, the, the, I think it’s about 2% is your property tax ’cause they don’t charge a state income tax either, but I guess they need to have a higher property tax and like, it’s hard to, that’s a big differential to make up, you know? It is. I always found it hard to make those properties really, I always found them inferior to the stuff I was doing in Florida. You know, it’s a great growth market. I love so many things about Texas in terms of, you know, the businesses going there and like, you know, the young families. But the, the rental real estate was just harder. So I chose Florida was a, a favorable market, so.
Yep. Yep. Perfect. Well thank you again for your time, Josh. And you guys know where to go? You guys know, you gotta get to that, that link down in the description below. We’re gonna hook you up and we’re gonna share with you all the options out there. And maybe you’ll get that golden unicorn. You’ll get that single family that rents by their rooms. <Laugh>. I don’t know what we’ve got at the time that you guys reach out, so you better reach out.
You gotta be fast though. You gotta be fast. I’m not, it’s not like a cheesy real estate sales. I tell people that and then they get mad at me when it’s sold and I’m like, you know, and it’s like, you gotta, like, we’re not, we’re telling you if it’s a, it’s crazy good deal. Like it’s, you gotta go quick, you know? But there’s, but again, like there’s, there’s, we have regular good deals all the time that are, in my opinion, just quality, good investments. Sometimes the home runs pop up quickly, but like, you know, those things. So
Yep, you got it. Be in the game and put in the rep so that you can jump in on those opportunities. So thank you. Thank you again, Josh. It was wonderful having you here today. Yes, thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. You’re welcome. And we will definitely be in touch as I see these opportunities as I’m about to open up your folder of, of all these amazing things. So thank you again. I appreciate it.
All right, thank you.
Big thanks to Josh and Melissa for delivering such an insightful and informative episode. If you haven’t already, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss what’s coming next. Help us share the show with other like-minded people that you know who can benefit from it as well. We’ve got plenty more valuable content coming your way, and we’re excited to have you along for the journey. That’s all for now. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you in the next episode.
Ready to Get Access to These Florida Opportunities?
Josh’s team is currently offering select investors access to their turnkey Florida properties.
Get the inside track on Josh’s current inventory.
Click the link below to connect with our team. We’ll review what’s available and see if Josh’s Florida opportunities align with your investment goals.
👉🏽 CLICK HERE
——————————————————————————-
Download your FREE copy of: The Ultimate Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing.
See our available Turnkey Cash-Flow Rental Properties.