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In This Episode

Hosts: Bob Frady & John Siegman

Properties: 1635 Liberty St, Hollywood, FL 33020

Episode Summary

Welcome back to PropertyLens! 🎙️ This week, Bob Frady and John Siegman are joined by real estate expert Dr. Axel Meierhoefer from Ideal Wealth Grower to evaluate a real property at 1635 Liberty Street in Hollywood, Florida. Uncovering hidden risks, insurance pitfalls, and investment insights every buyer should know.

Key Takeaways

📊 In this episode:
✅ How to spot flood, hurricane, and lightning risks that impact Florida homeowners
✅ The hidden cost of unpermitted additions and the “two-bedroom vs. three-bedroom” problem
✅ Why property taxes, insurance, and code compliance are critical for smart investing

💡 Whether you're an investor eyeing rentals or a buyer moving to the Sunshine State, this episode highlights the questions you must ask before signing on the dotted line.

🔍 What do we see

✔️ Detailed PropertyLens report on a real Florida home, with repair cost estimates
✔️ Discussion of flood zones, roof replacements, and insurance coverage gaps
✔️ Permitting issues, hidden remodeling work, and tax assessment vs. MLS discrepancies
✔️ Turnkey investing tips and risk management for out-of-state buyers
✔️ Guidance on evaluating property management, local market trends, and rental strategies

Resources

🔹Realtor.com

🔹 Try it: Propertylens.com

🔹 Questions Contact us: support@propertylens.com

Transcript

Bob Frady:

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ships at sea. It's time for another Property of the Week from PropertyLens Podcast.

For those of you who don't know, as always, I am Bob Frady, Co-founder and CEO of PropertyLens. With me is.

John Siegman:

I'm John Siegman President and co-founder of PropertyLens.

Bob Frady:

And today we have a veryspecial guest, Dr. Alex Meierhoefer, and I hope I pronounced that correctly.

My high school German is a little rusty, who is the host of the Ideal Investor Show from the idealwealthgrower.com.

So, Dr. Alex, why don't you give us an intro of yourself?

Let us let the world know about all about you.

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Yeah. Thank you very much for having me, Bob and John.
Intro about myself. Yeah. I came to the US with the military, with the Air Force actually. To basically switch the plane. I was flying for the Germans and, for a few years fly the plane for the US Air Force and in the projects that I was involved in, besides the flying, somebody recruited me for a company in California.

So we basically were able to get the residents and green cut and all that good stuff. Initially worked for a company for a couple of years and then in 2005 started my own business and realized, okay, something I have to do if I don't wanna work forever. I built like wealth and stuff like that.

And if you think about 2003 was basically when that big.com bubble burst.

So for me, that was still very fresh and I thought, well, stocks is maybe not it. What else could I do? And that's how I ultimately got into real estate.

Did it purely for myself or my family to protect and build portfolio and then you know, I am, when you have a podcast, at least I say this for myself, I don't know if it applies to you guys, but you kind of have to be a little bit of a blabber mouth.

So I was always talking about the properties and the evaluation and what I was looking at and so forth. And most people were surprised because we were living in the Santa Barbara area, which is extremely expensive and hard to invest.

So I was always looking far, far away from home. And yeah, and then people got
interested and ultimately I said, well, if you're all begging, then we should probably make it a real thing.

And in good German fashion, I created a model, which is the idea, let's grow our model.

And here we are, like, 20 years later and we're still doing it.

Bob Frady:

So let me ask you a question. Are you still in the Santa Barbara area?

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

No, we are not in San Diego.

Bob Frady:

Oh, okay. Hey, listen, great. My son is graduating from UCSB next weekend..

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Oh, my daughter did too. Yeah, she did too. Excellent.

Bob Frady:

There you go.

And John is in Carlsbad and in San Diego, and I have a presence in Orange County, all of which are extremely expensive markets.

So are you investing in California or are you still looking at places far away?

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

No. What actually happened initially, like I said, for myself and then also nowadays for our clients.

Over the years I built relationships and I know some people cringe, but I found it to be a really good way to work with turnkey providers.

Mainly because if you're that far away, and a lot of our clients are also people who have good paying jobs, they have their family, they have their interest.

So the main point is I want to be an investor, but I don't want to have all the work associated with owning properties and one thing that is the distinction, if somebody listening says, okay, so what's different between idea resco and a lot of the other investment opportunities is that I am always been, and sir, remain to be a big fan of really being in control of the asset.

You can do syndications, you can do funds and all kinds ETFs. You can do tokenized
real estate, whatever. But when you really wanna be in control of the asset, you have to own it.

And so that's basically how our system works, that we are finding assets that we own, and that property management in turnkey providers, renovate, provide, buy, sell, manage, all those things that you need.

Bob Frady:

So are you going in looking to renovate properties and then increase their market value?

Or do you just buy good properties and rent them out? Or what's your MO in terms of the marketplace?

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Well, that's basically the type of turnkey provider that we are looking for does three main components, which will answer your question. They first, what I always call, find the ugly duckling in a good neighborhood and renovate it.

Then basically the second part, put it into their marketing queue.

And their marketing queue is not like a real estate agent.

Their marketing queue is like people, like the three of us here that have standing relationships, they would always first offer it to their network.

And I can't really remember a time, even in the worst of times when the network didn't ultimately absorb the property rather than putting it out on the MLS or anything like that.

Then the third part, and probably really important, most important part is the property management.

And the importance is not for each of the three parts individually.

We all know that, I'm sure your listeners who enjoy these reviews and these sessions know about all of these components.

But what is different in the right turnkey provider is that they have them all under one rule.

So if you really think it through, if they found the (inaudible) and renovated it, they can.
And we enjoy this. Give us as investors a one year warranty on everything they touch during the renovation. Because the same company, right? And they should take some responsibility. If you ask me if you renovate something and then you sell it and have it under management, if you didn't renovate it properly, you should fix it. Not the owner.

Now, obviously after a certain amount of time that goes away. But that's, for example, one of the things, and because they know this, I think it's pretty obvious when you know that you're gonna be within the same, under the same umbrella, within the same building.

You don't want your property management constantly yelling at the renovation people.

Right.

So you try to do it right the first time around.

Bob Frady:

It's one of the paranoias that I have about real estate investing is property management.

So solving for that and making sure that there's somebody there to go handle things in case it turns sideways is always the reason why I never wanna rent out a house that I have because it's like. I don't know who to turn to. I don't know who to trust.

So in your network, you're looking for somebody who's already got that part of the puzzle nailed down.

Is that true?

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Right, exactly. Yeah.

And like, turnkey providers we work with, the biggest one that we currently have a good long-term relationship with for years already has 1200 units. Right?

So it's one thing to say, okay, here's somebody who renovates a few houses and then manages those few houses after selling them to investors. When you get to scale, one of
the things, and I'm sure you have seen this too, is you get to scale together with systems, right?

You have proper systems in place. You have people dedicated for certain things. You can hire people with a certain background. You can have your own team for when the tenants call in and see that for me, there is a little bit, and this is maybe my German DNA, coming through. Sometimes words to me are really important.

So I would, what you just said, Bob, I would say I'm not renting anything either. I approved a certain version of a lease agreement and I approved a certain version of the criteria
that the tenants need to meet. But the work that's the turnkey provider, they get paid for it.

Right. So they might as well.

Bob Frady:

Yeah. I have a friend of mine who does something very similar in the commercial space where they, the developer puts up 10%. They put up 90%, but the developer
does all the work and then they just take their financial gain off the backend and, warehouses, multimillion dollar investments kind of thing.

So anyway, since you invest far away, this might be something that is of interest to you.

So what we did is we took a sample report and we sent it to Dr. Alex to say. Hey, here's what we show. So we'll bring it up, we'll walk through it, get your reaction to it because we're always interested in feedback and see where we go from there.

How's that sound?

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Very cool. And yes.

Bob Frady:

John, you doing okay over there?

John Siegman:

Oh yeah.

Just make it large enough for our audience to see, mostly me.

Bob Frady:

So this is a property that we have looked at before, so we're familiar with that. It is on 1635 Liberty Street in Hollywood, Florida.

And the reason why we picked Florida, and this was a random address that we picked. Because it's had a lot of bad weather. The market is getting a little bit saturated, in some places, and so it's cooled down a bit. And we wanted to take a look at a random house to see just what we could find.

So for this location in Hollywood, Florida, two bedrooms, two baths. It was built in 1951, so it's 74 years old, 1,460 square feet on about a quarter of an acre lot, and it has had prior damage in the past.

So the first thing that we do is we basically type in an address and we send out hundreds of bees, data bees to go out and get the data, pull it all back together, and then analyze
that data to help you understand what might be going on in this house.

So the first thing that we do. We build a two year expected repair calculator. And the reason we do this is because the number one reason why people are dissatisfied with home purchases is unexpected repair expenses in the first two years of ownership.

So, we bring together the data, we bring together the analysis, and we say, here's what you should look out for. Now, this number is an estimate. It may or may not come true, but what it does do is to say, if you're thinking about buying this property, here's some of the things you should be looking at.

For example, we don't know the age of the pipes.

We don't know the age of the HVAC, the electrical or the water heater, mostly.

Those are permitted events, so you need a permit in order to change all this stuff.

We don't see any, so we just have to assume that all of this is the age of the property itself, and sometimes we make adjustments for that and sometimes we don't.

But we do sit, A repiping will cost you between $10,000 and $14,000. We take a slice of that, depending upon the age, and we come up with an estimated repair expense of $8,400.

And so we can see that there are some things where there's permits.

If plumbing fixtures have been replaced in 2025, the roof was replaced seven years ago. And this is the first step that we do.

So Dr. Alex, as an investor, does this help you at all?

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Yeah, absolutely.

It totally helps to have an idea.

For one, what you're potentially facing, but also how fair the purchase price is.

Bob Frady:

Exactly.

So, we expect a max renovation cost in two years of $75,000, but we see about $30,000 in expenses. Now this house lists for about $600,000, so it's not an insignificant expense.

And then we look at the key findings to say, regardless of how much it costs to repair, what are some of the things that you need to be aware of in this area? And the first is that this isn't a 500 year flood zone, so you want to make sure that you have flood insurance on here, but you also want ask, has there been anything that's happened in the past with fema?

If you have a FEMA claim, they don't. Inspect after the claim has been fixed, they just assume that you fixed it. And we've seen stories where people buy a house in a flood zone, a flood comes and FEMA rejects the claim because somebody else had made that very same claim and never repaired. It just dried everything out.

So these are the questions that you want to ask before you go into, purchasing the home.

So has there been any bad experience with flood? We know it's Florida, there is a very high risk of hurricane. There's also a very high risk of lightning.

The property insurance market in Florida is tight. It's hard to get inexpensive insurance because there's so many perils, and we'll see later why this is such a big deal for this house.

So hint again, here's the questions. Has the property been updated to the current building codes?

Florida's pretty good in that every time there's a disaster, they redo their bus, their building codes. Well, not every time, but pretty much, most times after. And you wanna make sure if the property's been updated. Has it been updated to the local codes? And this is something that you want to ask of the inspector as well. Is this insured by Citizens
Insurance, which is the insurer of last resort in the area?

Is the roof strapped to the structure? You pop the top off and all sorts of bad things happen. Then we'll see.

It's high risk for toxic exposure. It's got some risk for mold. Of course it's Florida. You close the doors, you get a lot of mold, especially combined with the flood. You really need to check for mold when you're looking at this location.

And there might be some PFAS, pfas in the drinking water, so you might wanna test the drinking water.

Now most municipalities do a pretty good job of trying to eliminate that, but you still want to test the water just to make sure there aren't any contaminants in the water.

We've got risk of termites, termites Love Florida.

The 1974, 74-year-old property last built in 52. It's built before 1978, so you're
probably gonna have some lead paint or asbestos or, maybe even some knob and tube wiring in here.

The roof's in good condition, which is nice.

And then from an insurance standpoint, there's a pretty wide range of expected expenses here. And the replacement cost is below the selling price, which is great. Some of the factors that insurers are gonna be looking at is it's in a five year flood zone.

It's not required to have flood insurance 'cause it's not a hundred year flood zone. But it is something that you might want to consider getting if you can afford it.

It's at a high risk of hurricanes, lightning, a lot of lightning in Florida and lightning. We'll fry your electrical systems in a heartbeat. So one of the things you want to ask is do you have a whole house, surge suppression on this location?

What's interesting is they have below average resilience to natural disasters in this area. So if you have a natural disaster, the best advice sometimes is just to leave because this area's not really that well prepared to deal with it.

John Siegman:

I think when you're looking at some of the pieces and parts here, we know Florida is risky. It's the riskiest state in the nation. It's got a lot of pieces and parts, but a lot of what we just went through, you would want to definitely point out to the inspector that you hire. So they make sure that they cover those specific points. So they test the water,
they look for mold.

They do the things that a lot of times aren't in a typical inspection, and given the age of the property, you also want them to scope the sewer line because that's a nasty little repair to deal with, and you wanna make sure that somebody else is taking care of it.

Bob Frady:

John, you mentioned three things that most standard inspection reports don't deliver.

They don't deliver a mold report.

They don't deliver a water quality test and they don't deliver a sewer inspection, which is fine.

They're not designed to do that. But this is why having a PropertyLens report is such an advantage because I need to get these things done. Now, maybe this inspector can do all of those. Maybe they have to refer it out, but this is how it works together to make sure the person buying this place has a better experience than if they don't.

Here's the real estate data that you'll see on, from the assessor or from the real estate listing sites. It's stucco on masonry.

It's a, a fair, build $650,000 listing price about a $609,000 market value.

Here's the, description.

Now we use this description to, help us determine what the age of those systems are, because a lot of times it may not be in permits, but they will talk about it here.

So we use this data together with the permit data and some aerial data to help come up with the age of our estimates.

It looks like the nice location, it was last sold in 2021, listed in 2025. It's a pretty big jump, in four years.

So is that a fair price? That's a question for the negotiator to answer is maybe this isn't quite the right price because of the expected expenses as well.

Taxes are going up. Taxes in 2023 were a couple of grand more than in 2021. So those, and I believe that Florida re taxes every year, not dependent upon the sale, but dependent upon the local value. So that number's gonna keep going up.

Here's the pictures. It looks pretty, it looks like a nice place. But that's what pictures are for. They're supposed to make you look nice.

It's like a dating profile. Real estate websites are like a dating profile for a house.

It's designed to cover up all your flaws and make you look really hot. And we're not necessarily saying that you're not hot. We're just saying, well, here's some issues that you might want to investigate beforehand.

John Siegman:

They never tell you about the personality.

Bob Frady:

Yeah, exactly.

John Siegman:

I only show, here's my looks.

Bob Frady:

So there was a hurricane here in 2022. There was also the hail event, in 2023. Now, here's where it gets a little more interesting.

Here's views of the roof so we can go back in time. In this case it goes back to 2019, and
you can take a look at how the house looked then versus how it looks now.

Now, what's interesting about this roof, we spend a lot of time on roofs because A, it's the most important part of the house. If your roof fails and you get all sorts of problems, and two- Insurance is problematic for roofs that are over 10 years old, increasingly problematic no matter what the value of the house is.

If your roof is more than 10 years old, then you might not be able to get insurance or well
price insurance for that house.

So we see that this roof was replaced in 2018. It's a shingle roof. It's got a 26 year lifespan for a shingle roof in Florida.

And if you're replaced, it'd be about $17,000, which is a pretty big expense, is in good condition right now and it's got medium exposure, risk, a little bit of ponding, a little bit of staining.

What's interesting about this, the house is, we'll see this in a bit, is it's actually been, the roof has been replaced three times in the last 20 years, which is a lot of roof replacement.

Here's the roof, potential.

Here's the roof description.

Here's the soil composition.

What sort of soils do you have here? Abundant organic material.

You might need some lime if you want to garden it.

More and more detail, termite risk.

Water's not hard, which is good.

And then here come the permits.

Now the first thing we tell you is, are permits required?

Because permits aren't required everywhere.

So that's the first question, is are they required?

And sometimes, like for like, permits aren't required.

Like if you're doing a complete replacement of a roof and it's the same type of roof, then you don't require a permit in some parts of the country.

So the first thing we do is tell you, A, are they required? And B, how do you learn
more about permits?

And here's what we see.

2018, there was a reroof.

2013, there was a reroof.

2002, there was a reroof.

So this roof, either one of two things is happening.

Number one is the roof just happens to get replaced on a regular basis.

Number two, when bad things happen in the neighborhood, the people go and the all the trucks drive by and say, we can get you a free roof. People listen and take you up on that offer.

So, and again. I'm talking on a monologue here, Dr. Alex. My apologies.

How does this help a potential buyer?

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Well, if, if you ask me if from an investor perspective, I would say, I would ask the same
questions about the replacements.

And obviously there is going to be some agent representing their property, I'm assuming, so we could find out why has it happened that way.

The other thing, talking about rules, when I look through this, after you send it to me. Is there were actually, hurricanes, one specifically in 2018, which went pretty close to exactly to that area.

So the question is, was it maybe the last time we placed because of that?

The other thing that would concern me if we are specifically looking at roof is the codes.

Everything that I have learned about Florida, not just because of this, our session today, but over the last few years is that the codes, through the Miami Authority have gotten
stricter and stricter and stricter.

So it could well be that, like you said, nobody really checked how it was actually be placed or renewed in 2018. So it's not just that it's kind of getting closer and closer to that 10 year point, but it might still be relatively looser approach, but there are a bunch of other
things that I would also point out.

I don't know if you're gonna have time for that. Or maybe at the end, to an investor's perspective, that I would definitely evaluate.

Right?

And one of the things you already brought up is the price.

What is been happening, and this is a little bit of an issue in my opinion, is sometimes when you see these things yeah.

You can say, okay, it was last sold in 2021. When you think about what was the
market in 2021 and what is the market now, and how is the area in general in southern Florida been behaving?

Prices in general have gone down quite a bit from the peak.

When you purely look at the comparison data, 21 to 25 or 24, it almost looks like nothing happened, right?

So besides all the things of repairs and so forth, I would probably question.

Now, here's one other thing that you know is, in my opinion, important.

You showed in your report, which for an investor like me, is awesomely helpful, that the replacement value according to the insurance is around two $300,000 And the asking
price, just for a second, assume the asking price were fair at $650,000.

The real question is, if this is a fair deal, can I find a property a lot?

For $300,000, $350,000 or less.

Because if I find a quarter acre lot with a replacement value of $300,000,

I can basically buy a, have a new build house in this current market where building is pretty much dead, right?

So if you would be willing as an investor to say, build me a new house, 1500 square feet, brand new to brand new code, and I give you $300,000 or $310,000 because I got the property, the land for $250,000. You wouldn't buy a 1954 and 51 house in comparison.

The last thing I wanna just comment on, I don't know if the audience caught that or we'll catch it.

It's kind of interesting.

When you look at the top there on your screen it says two bedroom, two baths.

But when you go to the property description by the agent, it says three bedroom, two baths.

Now, I don't know if that's just an honest mistake or if they changed something to the house that's not in the permits or stuff, but that would be not really a super grave concern.

But you know, on the other hand, I would definitely want to question why is there the difference and is that the only little mistake?

Bob Frady:

We are adding that to our report, which is because the tax assessor information.

A lot of times people don't report improvements to a property because it means they're
gonna have to pay more taxes.

And so the, the tax assessor is what you, you do to lessen the value of the house.

The real estate description is what you do to increase the value of the house.

And we'll point out if there's a difference in those two.

Because you're right.

A lot of times the insurance companies will use assessor data to price your house, and they'll build back to what they think the actual two bedrooms, two baths, 1400 square feet is.

So, you're right, it's a flag, and we're adding that flag into our reports.

Say, just explain to me why this is the case. Was it something that wasn't permitted? Is it something we just didn't report? What's the impact?

Because, this house is much different in terms of its size than other houses.

And we, you know what we are, we're hearing from the, we're hearing from the audience people barking in the background.

I like that. The dog likes this house.

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

I'm sorry. Somebody rang the doorbell and that's his job is to alert.

I'm with you.

I mean, the part of the reason why I wanted to bring it up is. You asked me earlier how value it is to have an idea of how much the cost of repairs might be.

I'm assuming that doesn't include, let's just say they converted a garage into a third bedroom if it's not permitted and you basically, going through this in different locations.

I don't want to say I know exactly in that particular jurisdiction how they treated, but in many places I've been.

The, permitting department requires you to put it back to what it was.

Right.

And if you actually change the garage into something else.

Yeah.

Well, the point is that rebuilding it is probably not in the $30,000 or $75,000 include it.

Bob Frady:

Yeah.

I had that happen.

I had a house in Mission Viejo and I didn't know that the room wasn't permitted. And that's one of the things that the report also tries to point out is this house was sold, a while ago, but some of this stuff happened before the last sale.

So the current owners might not know what happened in the past.

Yeah, yeah.

So I bought a house in Mission Viejo, lived in it for a while, and then when I went to sell it, they're like, that's not a permitted addition to the house.

Well, I bought it this way. They're like, sorry, you gotta rip it out.

So it had to rip it out, which was the garage conversion. Had to rip it out. It was very painful.

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Right.

Well, the other part that also plays a role, we touch briefly on replacement value.

We touch briefly on the sales price. All those things are obviously always in comparison to, is it really a two bedroom, two bath, or it really a three bedroom, two bath.

Right. Like if you start comparing from a perspective. That obviously makes a difference even if the square footage is the same, right?

So I'm just pointing out a few things as an investor that besides all the great information that you already have, that I would bring up where, in this context and especially, when you have to look, and this is probably my final comment on this.

What is the purpose of the investment?

I don't know how close it really is to the beach. That area is in high demand because people are growing out of Miami more and more.

Like there's almost no free space between Miami and Fort Lauderdale anymore.

And so if you think about that, depending on the location, are you looking to use it yourself? Are you looking to use it as an investment property, as a long-term rental?

Are you looking to use it as a vacation home, like Airbnb if allowed in the area, those kind of things from an investor perspective, where you're looking for example for cashflow or
are you looking for appreciation?

Well, for a small old towers, it's $650,000. You might have to wait quite a while
if you want to get appreciation because this run out of Miami and out of Fort Lauderdale to meet in the middle is already going on for quite a while.

Right.

So there are these factors to consider, and I am becoming more and more just to finish on that, a fan of what's called bid to rent.

So if I see a scenario, one of my things would be to ask the guys in the area, okay. Are there any lots.

Or a lot where some horrible thing is on that we can just rip away and buildsomething new, same time, same size. Give me a call because if I can build a $350,000 house, that's about the price for that square footage, brand new, and I can get a lot for $250,000, I would probably prefer that as an investor than getting a like $75,000.

Bob Frady:

Sure, yeah.

Everything is brand new, which is very appealing from a rental standpoint as well.

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

I mean, it's all to code, right? It's not gonna fly away when you have a hurricane,

Bob Frady:

Yeah.

Well, we hope.

We hope.

That's for sure.

That's the, well.

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

The new codes are pretty good. The new coats basically make you build a bunker more or less.

Bob Frady:

There's an interesting picture of a house in Mexico Beach, which is on the Western part of Florida.

Yeah.

It's that one too.

Mexico Beach is all grandfathered into the 1972 codes 'cause they're like, eh, nothing's happened here.

One guy built that house.

You're right, it's like a bunker.

He survived and the rest of the houses all got wiped out, which was unfortunate for everybody.

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

And that was a really strong storm down there that went through there.

Yeah.

Bob Frady:

Oh yeah. It was a sitting duck.

You got old building codes, the unprepared for a big event, and then you have the big event. It was really, really tragic to see all that stuff.

From an investor standpoint. For this house, what are the two or three things that you would be concerned about with this house?

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Well, the first thing would be price.

And, second thing would be, and I know this sounds harsh, but honesty, right?

Like what is really true about it and what's not true about it?

The third thing would be use case.

What do we really wanna, if we even consider it, what would we wanna buy it for?

Bob Frady:

Did you find the information contained in the report useful for helping to answer any of those questions?

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Well, absolutely.

I mean, I think the only thing that you would probably get without having a report like yous is basically more or less the advertisement that the agent or the broker puts out, right?

Like either on Zillow or realtor.com and stuff and all these other details.

Yes, there is.

If you do, the homework may be possible, but it's so much more convenient to get it from PropertyLens and have it all in one place.

Bob Frady:

All right, John, what would you be looking for at this house at at 1635 Liberty Street in the Hollywood, Florida. What would you be looking for?

John Siegman:

It's got a lot of environmental issues, so you're gonna have to expand the scope of the inspection.

I'd be looking at the definition of a bedroom by the assessor.

So a lot of times you'll have the requirement of a closet being in a room for it to be a true official bedroom. And maybe there's three bedrooms really, but there's not a closet in the third one.

So what's the discrepancy issue going on there?

And then it's in a flood zone.

And I know it's in a 500 year flood zone, but it's still in a flood zone.

And so on. You're gonna have to look at the cost of insurance because you're definitely gonna want insure against that. Or you wanna see if the property is in any way raised because maybe there's a crawl space under the property and you're up two or three feet, which could make the difference of you getting wet, where you staying dry.

Those would be my three primary concerns.

Bob Frady:

If I were buying 1635 Liberty Street in Hollywood, Florida, I would look at the following three things.

Number one is the roof. It's been replaced three times in 22 years.

So why is it because of the damage from the last hurricane that caused the last one?

And also, is it built to the current code and is it strapped down properly?

What have they done to make sure that roof doesn't need to be replaced again in the next couple of years?

So that's number one.

Number two is insurance, is get an insurance quote before I buy the property because I need to figure out how much this is gonna cost me to insure.

Because News Alert, the price of insurance is not going down anytime soon. So insurance and taxes are both going up pretty dramatically at this location.

And the third is, The discrepancy between the bedrooms on the assessor and the bedrooms and the realtor.

And again, listen, I don't wanna question anyone's motives.

I don't wanna say that something is dishonest, but it's a point that you wanna raise up because that point might expose a lot of other points.

So those are the three things that I would, and then the fourth would be flood.

I can't just limit it to, to three.

I would get a flood insurance quote to figure out what's the long-term operating cost.

It looks wonderful. You may walk in here and go. Golly, this is great. And usually what happens in real estate, listen, if you're a steely-eyed investor like Dr. Axel, then you know you're gonna have a, you gotta have a little different approach.

But if you are walking in here and you fall in love with this, it's beautiful, it's been renovated, et cetera, et cetera, but all this other stuff is lurking in the background- this is the kind of stuff that we're trying to tell you upfront.

So when you walk in, you don't fall in love.

And as we love to say.

The worst time to make a multi-hundred thousand dollars decision is when you first fall in love with something. So let's try to avoid that behavior.

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

If we, basically, I think there is one component that we all probably automatically have in the back of our minds and didn't necessarily mention it.

It is important to look at what is the market condition in the general area that you're looking for, especially when you're not purely looking to occupy it for your own residence or for your own home.

Like what has happened in the last couple of months, in the last couple of years and so forth.

And what is likely to happen going forward that I think is in the context of evaluating properties and as an investor, especially, what's going on in Florida and has been recently versus other states.

Our main point since we are focused on cashflow is to find well performing properties.

And, even if it's three bedroom, two bath, $650,000 is very hard to get performance outta it.

Even with the vacation rental, it would be hard.

So that's obviously a little bit the investor lens versus the owner occupancy lens. As far as finding us for the podcast, the ideal investor show, we find it by just typing it in.

You get it on Apple, on Spotify, on YouTube, and all those regular places.

As far as if anybody is interested to learn a little more about our investing approach with like using turnkey investors anywhere in the country where the performance of the property is good, you just go to idealwealthgrower.com and there's a little button that says book or call or something like that.

And then you get on my calendar and we talk.

Bob Frady:

Excellent.

We love real estate. People think that we're anti-real estate. Like, no, we love real estate.

We buy and sell houses all the time.

We're just all about transparency in the real estate process to make sure that the buyer isn't the one holding the bag.

And our special guest, Dr. Axel Meierhoefer from the Ideal Wealth Grower. The Ideal Investor Show.

I'm Bob Frady.

John Siegman:

I'm John Siegman.

Bob Frady:

See you next time.

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:

Thank you.

The Risks on Hollywood, Florida’s Market | with Dr. Axel Meierhoefer

Know what you're buying