Templar Real Estate Radio Show Transcripts 7-10-2021

Templar Real Estate Radio Show for July 10, 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. Again, that’s 973-240-8593 and we could answer any questions you may have, or you could email us from our website, again, any questions or if you want something discussed on this show, we’d be more than happy to look into that.

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, we 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, we’re very protective of our money and our investors’ money. I’m not a real estate agent, 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’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 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 will provide you with my opinion, it’s only my opinion. I ask everyone to do lots of research and just do research, research, research. And, make sure that again when you read an article, you understand that it’s based on the slant of what the author wants to portray for that particular article. It’s usually never balanced where it’s even. So, you gotta understand that. And again, just because an author says something, again, these individuals are writers, they don’t necessarily, or in the market, they necessarily do not invest. So, you gotta understand that. So, anything you see, you gotta make sure that you understand where they’re coming from, what their track record is, so on and so forth. And even if you know what their track record, you don’t know if it’s real or not, you know, that’s the problem sometimes. But, again, just do lots of research, ask lots of questions, same thing with references, ask lots of questions, you know. What one person might like, the other person might not like. So, that’s, that’s very, very, important. 

I wanna do a shoutout to some of my listeners, Paulet, famous crossing guard from Livingston that I talk about every week, and Timmy from City Grove Water Department. As well as Jonathan and Amy, I wanna say hi to you guys too as well. I’d like to also thank number of investors that have provided some investment for some of my deals. So, specifically I wanna say thanks to Paul and Cindy, thanks a lot guys for everything. Again, if you’re interested in selling your house fast for cash, please give us a call. We’ll come in, give you an offer, if we agreed to a price, we could set the, you could set the closing date. We’ll buy it as is, and you know, you don’t have to worry about, you could leave anything you want, if you want to move everything out you could, or you could leave just about everything. I guess, before I had a woman up in New Milford, basically, it was, in a year, she had a suitcase with some stuff in it and left everything else, that was it. So she was moving down to Florida with her brother and she had a suitcase, some were clothes I think, I assume. And maybe some light jackets or whatever, and that was it, everything else was left there. So, you know, you could do it either way. So, you don’t have to worry about that. And what we do normally is we contact, initially the veterans associations and then we do, we send everything also to some churches and synagogues in the area, and then sometimes to Goodwill as well. But Goodwill is really a full profit organization technically, so, that’s like a last alternative, so we rather give it to someone that really needs it. And, a lot of times we even clear out things from the kitchen, there’s good canned goods and things like that, so we’ll always donate them to a food pantry or whatever the case may be on that. Also, I’m looking for apartment buildings, preferably fifty-plus units, hundred, even better, but I’ll do smaller ones depending on the deal, so if you have anything please give me a call. If you know anyone, please tell them or you could give me their name, and again I’ll give you a finder’s fee, I’m very discrete with that, so you don’t have to worry about any of those things like that. Again, please give me a call on those things.

Last week, I had my show, it was, it started early so, didn’t start at ten o’clock, I think it started at ten to ten. So, I had some listeners jump in at, you know, like right after ten o’clock and they listened to me for like two or three minutes and then I went to a commercial break, and then it was for another fifteen minutes, I was done by it by ten-twenty. So, they started the show early and there was, I guess, some mix-up with the scheduling and things. So, it wasn’t that I was only talking for a couple minutes and then there was a commercial. So, please, understand that. You could listen to my broadcast also on WMTR, it’s recorded, so you could always listen to it there. The other thing that I’d like to talk about is, sometimes people ask me the question, I’ve said it before, about my name. So I always use my middle initial, and the reason for that is, there is another individual that has the same name as mine, and he’s a real estate agent, so I’m not an agent. So, I wanna make that clear. Like I said in the beginning of the broadcast, but I always use my middle initial a lot of times just to distinguish myself accordingly. Same thing with my eldest son, so he has a middle initial of B, so he has my name as well. Originally, when we had him, traditional Italians, the first son is always named after the father of the, the grandfather basically. And unfortunately I lost out, because I was gonna name him my father’s name, which was Vito, and that was next, and then he also went by Victor and that was next, so I said, “okay, let’s do Joseph.” And that was okay, so he got the name Joseph. But so, you know, he likes that name and I just think it’s a great name. I would’ve liked, obviously, my father’s name just for my tradition, perspective Italian tradition. But, he still got a good name. So, I’d like to talk about a couple things. Last week I talked about a deal we were doing  and we were supposed to close on a given day and it was taking a few days longer than it should’ve, and the attorney was getting, well, hostile on us for the seller. And he issued what was called, a time of the essence, which is basically, “the clock is ticking now and you only have x amount of days before your breach of contract.” So, now, I had a situation this week where we were supposed to close and sell our four-family in Belleville, and we had scheduled it for June fifteenth. We had a couple things where it took a little bit longer because of the township and the buyer, you know, had to okay that, you know, had to approve it, not formally but they had to accept it the way it was because it was township, we weren’t holding anything up. So that took a couple weeks, and then we said “we’re all clear,”” and we were waiting for them and we didn’t hear anything for a week, and then another week and a half. So then, I’m, you know, all of a sudden I’m like, what’s going on?” I ping the agent to say, “what’s going on?” She said she’d look into it, still didn’t hear anything, and you know, it was like two, or pushed in three weeks. Whereas my situation was, on that given day we couldn’t close but we knew it was imminent. But, the attorney was just giving us a lot of hell for no reason at all. Well, on the flip side, we always try to be realistic and understanding, and we were waiting two and a half, three weeks, we didn’t hear nothing. So now, we had an issue with time of essence. So, we sent the letter and within like two hours we got a response. So, days before we didn’t get no response, we had to issue time of the essence and I said, “well it wasn’t because of the credit worthiness of the buyer but because of the rent roll and the mortgage company and their underwriting team was looking at it and had some questions, and blah, blah, blah.” But we’re fairly close to, as they say, clear to close. So, that’s all we were waiting for, is just some statement from them. We would’ve been more than understanding, but, you know, it was like a blackout, basically, and we just heard crickets. So, you know, unfortunately we had to do these things to get some type of response. And I expected some type of response as a result of that. Another situation that occurred that I have talked about previously is this one house that we did have some challenges with the attorney on, is the solar panels. So, I pushed back on the solar company, and I spoke to a few people the week, a couple weeks ago, and then this past week I called them again and said, you know, “the clock is ticking ’cause I’m basically gonna take those solar panels off or you have to take them off within thirty days.” That was about a week ago, I called again and says, “well now you have twenty-five days, and you better take them off.” And the one person that I was talking to said, “no, you have to continue paying the lease or buy out the solar panels.” It was like seventy thousand dollars, and I said, “no, I think you got it wrong, I didn’t sign the lease, it’s not my house. And either we’re going to renegotiate in terms of something more favorable for me, or you’re taking them off. It’s one of two things.” He escalated, I spoke to an individual, and he says, “well why don’t you just want to buy back the lease or just continue to pay,” and I said, “because it’s extremely unfavorable, and you took advantage of these, this elderly couple.” And, he protested it, which I expected, and I said, “listen, you can say anything you want. The issue is, is that the solar panels overtime decreased in terms of their storing capacity, and as a result of it, more power needs to be pulled off the grid or from like the power company. In addition, every couple months, or every couple years, you’re raising the price on the lease. So I’m paying more per month, and also I have to take more off the grid, as a result of it, so you’re hitting me twice.” And, I said, “the buyout was extremely high, so you took advantage of them on that.” They said they couldn’t get any tax benefits as a result of it. I said, “you took advantage of them in every single way.” And then he was saying that, “if you average it out,” I said, “don’t give me any of that, please.” And, I was very stern with them on that, and he said, “okay what do you want?” And I said that basically, I get out a lease any time I want, I could transfer the lease to a person that’s gonna buy this house eventually, and they don’t have to qualify, and they could cancel any time, and I want a more favorable monthly payment. And he said, “okay,” and he said, “tell us what you want and we’ll see, you know, based on what you want and what you’re willing to settle with.” And I said, “well what I want and what I settle with are gonna be the same thing.” I made it very clear because what he was trying to say is, “you’re gonna give me a number and then I’m gonna give you a higher number and then we’ll see if you could settle on that,” and I made it very clear to him that was not gonna be the case. And I said, “send me an email and I’ll tell you what I’m looking for,” and he said to me, “okay.” Then again he sent me something that’s talked about again about tax credits and I sent something back that said, I stated before, and I looked it up again, and I still was correct, I cannot get tax credits because I don’t own it, it’s a lease. So, we’ll see where that goes. Right now, I gotta take a commercial break and I’ll be back very shortly. But if you need to call us, please call us at 973-240-8593 or templarcashforhouses. Thanks a lot, 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, 973-240-8593, or templarcashforhouses.com, that’s T-E-M-P-L-A-Rcashforhouses.com, that’s one word. So, one of the things I want to talk about is, which I brought up before, cryptocurrency. Now, as I said, it’s extremely speculative. Do not, beg everyone, do not use that as a regular, just, pure investment strategy, it’s too speculative. And, right now, it’s, on the trade net, Bitcoin is trade net, thirty-two, thirty-four thousand dollars, it was up at sixty thousand, maybe sixty plus. And now, it’s down around, you know, like I said, sixty-two, or thirty-two, thirty-four thousand. And who knows, there’s probably a lot more downside. And, you need to understand and, one of the things I did not like about it, is that it’s this individually grown monetary system. Now, the government, I figured, at some point, is going to push back on it. You gotta think of the government, I always think, I don’t like big government because the governments like the mob, it’s that simple. Is that, if you start horning in on their territory, they’re gonna push back because there’s people of power and they want to keep the power and they want to keep control, it’s that simple. So, I hate big government, the smaller, the better, and they’re pushing back. And, you know, all the governments will do that. Now, China, for one thing, you know, started banning, you know, cryptocurrency and started shutting down all these companies that are mining these bitcoins. And, they said that, you know, “you can’t be doing that anymore. But we do like cryptocurrency, but you’re gonna have to use our cryptocurrency.” So, again, doesn’t matter if it’s a communist country or not, again, they’re pushing back. And the same thing occurred basically with American government. A few weeks ago, the Senate Banking Committee had hearings on the “digital dollar,” as it’s called, you know, and it’s was an exploration of basically the concept of Centrally Banked Cryptocurrency for America. And while that occurred, you know, there was individuals that were calling basically Bitcoin or all these other types of cryptocurrencies, bogus or they’re fakes so on and so forth. Elizabeth Warren is one of them, Senator Warren. I don’t agree with too much that she says, but I, to some extent, do agree with her on this. I’m not big on crypto period even if it’s centrally backed, just based on the ability to kind of lose money if you forget passwords and things like that, and technically something could get hacked, obviously, you know, you get hacked inside the bank and stuff like that, but it’s a little different. But, right now i’m still pretty negative on crypto compared to other people, I’m very conservative on this and I really think people have to watch it, I think there’s more downside than upside, especially on all these different platforms. Especially with different governments pushing for their own centrally controlled coin platform. So, I would not be surprised in the future if they banned it all together, who knows? You never know that. So, I would just be really weary of it. There was a group of individuals that in South Africa, that gave their money to some group of teenagers to invest their money into crypto and now they disappeared, and they’re looking for them and I think they took the money and everything. So, you know, it’s just very crazy and it’s the wild, wild west with that. And, you’re really, putting that money in terms of, being very speculative. I just can’t say that enough. So, just watch it please. I always think of money and you always gotta protect that and build it conservatively or semi-conservatively, you know, our business, we are not technically a conservative business per se, flipping houses, purchasing houses, doing that type of things is not technically conservative but we mitigate a lot of the risk associated with it by the way we underwrite so we reduce that considerably. That’s why traditionally, the cost of money for any person or any company in the acquisition and rehab of properties is expensive, because there’s a risk associated with it. Greater than someone purchasing the house and being in there for ten years or twenty years, it’s definitely gonna go up in value, and as a result of that, the bank is protected, the lending institution is protected. Whereas with a flip, you know, a lot of things could go wrong, if it’s not managed correctly. I spoke to an individual today, he does landscaping and he said to me, “Joe, I was thinking about going into it but there’s so many factors and so many things you have to worry about in terms of costs and what you’re gonna sell it at and it’s not that simple.” And I said, “Exactly it, it’s not.” Some people say it is, some people say it’s a slam dunk, it’s not necessarily a slam dunk. It’s like how much do you invest and how much don’t you invest? And that’s the question, how much are you willing to pay to take that chance, that it’s gonna go up in value based on what you’re gonna do in terms of making it look nice or so on and so forth. Another thing I’d like to discuss is, in the beginning of my show, I always say I’m a consumer advocate. So, I’m a strong consumer advocate. I’m always helping individuals out, especially if there’s some problems that occur. And one such issue is, I had a person that we had helped them sell their house through the Traditional Multiple Listing service, and then we were also a buyer’s agent, and we worked with them as a go-between-us agent for her to purchase a house. Everything went well for the most part, but there was like a thousand dollars that was in Escrow that, there’s a debate with the individual that purchased her house. Whether something was done or not done. And the person that bought the house is just being vindictive and doesn’t want to approve or say anything in terms of what the issue is, and as a result there was a thousand dollars of hers just laying out there, that the seller, which we worked with her, and she can’t get. And then there was another issue with something to do with the title, where she was supposed to get part of the rebate back, the homeowner’s rebate, and that too, she can’t get out. So, that’s stuck in my mind, I called her up and said, “you should go to small claims court.” And she was thinking about it, and I said, “listen, I’ll back you a hundred percent. I’ll help you with the case, I’ll help you fill out the forms, I’ll review the documents, I have some additional supporting emails and everything else associated with that.” She was all, “that’s so nice.” And she’s gonna do it. And, it’s that simple. That we wanna make sure that she’s taken care of. And I could’ve just walked away and say, “oh well that’s your problem.” But that’s not the way we do business and that’s not the way I do business. So, she’s gonna be sending me a lot of information over the next two weeks, I’m gonna look it over, change things, and then, I’ll go to court with her. It’s simple as that, to support her whether she needs me as a witness or not, just as some moral support. So, that’s gonna be the case, and we’ll see, we’ll see where it goes. I’ll keep everyone addressed to that, I won’t let any of this go. You know the buyer was just being vindictive and just cold and heartless. So, I think I have to stand by my client and work ’em with her and we’re gonna push through this, it’s that simple, it’s that simple. One of the other things I’d like to talk about, I only have a couple minutes, it’s mortgage life insurance. So, with mortgage life insurance, you purchase this insurance and basically if you pass away, the mortgage life insurance kicks in and it will pay off your mortgage. My father was a police officer and he had that, and he always said to my mom, he says, “you know, if I die, the house is paid off, the kids are taken care of with that and all you have to do is to make sure you always pay your property tax.” And, you know, he passed away at like, fifty-two, and I remember that and the mortgage insurance, mortgage life insurance, kicked in and paid off our house. So, it was, you know, no burden on my mom or us, and I think she also got some life insurance. Now, you could always have life insurance and it’ll pay you off the mortgage, but this is specifically just for the mortgage, and it works really well. And there’s a lot of different options with it, but it’s always something to think about. You know, you could have your life insurance and then augmented with mortgage life insurance, so it’ll take care of the mortgage and then you have what’s left for your life insurance for just regular investments for the family. So, think about that. I think it’s a good alternative and it’s not as expensive as life insurance. I think it, depending on your age and stuff, it will decrease as time progresses if I’m not mistaken, because there’s less and less that it’ll have to pay off, but that’s over a longer period of time. But I would definitely, definitely, look into that and it could really help your family. So, I’ll have to close out today, thank you very much for everything. Again, if you want to give us a call, call us at 973-240-8593, again that’s 973-240-8593, or templarcashforhouses.com. Thank you very much everyone, God bless and take care.

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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