Lance Mohr & Team

Tampa2Enjoy.com

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Lance Mohr & Team

Tampa2Enjoy.com

(813) 317-4009

Home Buying Tips

How To Hire A Great Home Inspector

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One of the biggest mistakes home buyers makes when they hire a home inspection to inspect their home is thinking all inspectors are the same. This is a HUGE mistake that can cost your thousands of dollars. Watch this video to get some great home inspection tips so your hire a GREAT home inspector. Not all inspectors are the same. You have to do your due diligence to make sure you are hiring the right inspector for the task. This video will help you.

Transcription

Hi everyone. It’s your Tampa Bay Realtor Lance Mohr and in this videos, I want to talk about how to hire a great home inspector. I know this is really hard looking at buying a new home or a pre-owned home if you don’t know a home inspector but I’m going to talk about what you need to do to make sure you get a really good home inspector. That’s going to rip the home apart. That’s what I’m going to talk about in this short video.

I think when you’re buying a home, whether you’re buying a pre-owned home, whether you're buying a new home you need to get the home inspected. It doesn’t make any difference. A lot of people think while I’m buying a brand new home why do I need to get the home inspection before? Why do I need a home inspector? Well as I always say it’s a new home, it’s not a perfect home. So get a home inspector but don’t go out there and just get anybody and let me give you an example.

A while back, I had one of my clients and they hired their own home inspector and it was a 3,000 square foot home. Is about 10 years old. The inspector went out there and did the inspection in 55 minutes on a 3000 square foot home. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it would take him a nap short of a time to do an inspection. So I was curious I asked the buyer I saw how much did you for the home inspection and he said $250 and they’re like oh well there you go.

See there are two types of inspectors in my opinion. Number one is you have the inspector that just goes out there. Tries to cram as many appointments in a day as they can. Maybe they do hour inspections or an hour and a half inspections they charge $250 or $200. They can knock out three or four of them a day and a lot of them do that. There’s a lot of those out there. That’s not what you want. You want someone you might have to pay him a little bit more money or at least fair market rate but if you want someone’ who’s going to be in there a while.

If my inspector went out to that 3000 square foot home he’d probably be there a good three and a half hours. Maybe four hours just depending. You want someone to go in to check the irrigation system. You want them up on the roof. Crawling through the attic. You want them looking at everything. The home inspector is pretty much at least in Florida they’re licensed, they’re insured, they’re bonded but you get what you what you pay for.

So I would say like my inspector he’s four hundred dollars. He would approximate let’s say $400 to $450 on a 3,000 square foot home. He would probably have been out there three and a half to four hours maybe more. I’ve talked to mine 2,500 square foot home where he’s been out there five hours before. He only does on to two inspections a day. Where this one was out there 55 minutes and it was $250.

So first off on how to hire an inspector, you get what you pay for. If the going rates about 400 dollars and you’re going to pay 300 or 200 or something like that. You got a figure you’re not going to get the most detailed inspector out there. Now the other thing I would highly recommend doing. Now but of course you might get the inspector from your real estate agent. You might get them from a family member, from a friend, from a co-worker but you want to do is ask them for an inspection report. So they should have an example inspection report that they could give you. So you could hoe detailed it is. Do they go over and above? Do they not only go through what’s on the state form but that they go through their own form? Do they take a lot of pictures that they give detailed explanations? What about the inspectors done can the selling agent call him or can you call him back.

I’m sure you can, you should be able to. Can the seller of the home call him or is it just like hey we’re one and done sorry I’m on to my next inspection unit pay for a bunch of people to be calling me. So you got to really look at it like you get what you pay for but always do your due diligence. Talk to people get an idea how long the inspector will generally be there for the inspection and get a copy of one of their inspections so you could see how detailed they are. You can see what the inspection report looks like.

I hope this video helps you. If it does and you like this video please do me a favor. Give me a thumbs up so I know that. If you have any questions. There you have anything you want to say leave them in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you. I’d do this videos for you. The home buyer and the home seller. So I hope this helps. I hope you have a wonderful day. If you are in the Tampa area and you’re looking a great aggressive agent don’t hesitate to reach out. Give me a call (813-317-4009) I would love to help you. Have a great day. For more educational real estate videos please visit my YouTube Channel.

Mortgage Insurance – Explained

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If you are wanting to learn what mortgage insurance is and how it does work, watch this short video, where I talk about PMI, MI and funding fees.

There’s a lot of confusion on what mortgage insurance is, how does mortgage insurance work and what’s the difference between mortgage insurance (MI) and private mortgage insurance (PMI).

Here are 3 important takeaways:
1. Conventional Loans have Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI)
2. FHA Loans have Mortgage Insurance (MI)
3. VA Loans have a Funding Fee

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr and in this video I want to talk about what is mortgage insurance. How does mortgage insurance work and what are the different types of mortgage insurance. I’m going to talk about that in this video.

What is mortgage insurance? I get a lot of questions on this a lot of people are very confused. They say words like mortgage insurance and PMI and what is that? How does it work? Let me break it down in three different types.

The first is on a conventional loan. When I say conventional, I pretty much mean financing by either a Fannie Mae or a Freddie Mac . The second is on a FHA loan. So the Federal Housing Administration which is a department within HUD Housing and urban Development. The third is VA which is Veterans Administration.

Let me talk about VA first. A lot of people think oh well they don’t have mortgage insurance and in a way that would be right because what VA does is they have a one-time upfront fee that you can roll into the price of the home and it’s called a funding fee. So you’re not like a typical mortgage insurance. You’re not paying upfront and then every month or you’re not paying just every month. So you’re paying a one-time fee and that’s it. You’re sort of one and done. Now the thing about the insurance. The thing about the funding fee is this VA’s way being the government of ensuring the mortgage of default. If they go into the default the lenders not on the hook. Which is the whole reason for the funding fee or mortgage insurance in the first place.

Now the second one is FHA. Now FHA program that’s primarily designed if you’re not going to put a lot of money down but there’s a lot of other great benefits to FHA. The one negative to FHA is their mortgage insurance. It’s mortgage not private mortgage insurance. There’s this EMI for mortgage insurance it stays with you the entire time of the loan. If you live in a home and you have the FHA loan for five years, you’re going to have mortgage insurance for five years. If you have the FHA loan for 25 years you’re going to have the mortgage insurance for 25 years. The only way you are going to get rid of it is to get rid of the loan and that could be a good it could be bad. So it’s not you don’t fall under that rule where you’re going to get 20% equity and then you automatically get it removed that isn’t what FHA does. Now again, a lot like VA if they chase the govt. so they’re insuring the lender in case there’s a default.

The third is conventional and this is what most people talk about when they talk about mortgage insurance is called PMI or it’s called private mortgage insurance. The difference is FHA is mortgage insurance MI. Conventional as PMI private mortgage insurance because they’re not the govt. they’re private companies that are that are basically insuring the lender of default. Now if you put down 20% on a loan you don’t have to worry about mortgage insurance or private mortgage insurance. I should say you won’t have it if you put down 15% or 10% or 5% you’re going to have mortgage insurance because the lender is going to require. Now the less money you put down the more reliability it is. So the higher the insurance cost. So someone putdown 5% is going to have a higher insurance than someone putting down 10% or someone pinning down 10%. Their insurance is going to be more than someone putting down 15%. Most of the time people just put down 5 or 10% then it jumps to 20% but that’s basically how it works. Again they’re insuring the lender in case of default.

Now on a conventional if you get that 20% equity then you could get the mortgage insurance taken off. What usually happens and I don’t want to speak for every mortgage company out there but I always tell people. When they feel they reach that 20% mark pick up the phone give a lender a call tell him you would like to take the mortgage insurance off. Sometimes they just do everything in house to see what the value is. Other times they might send out an appraisal and you may have to pay for the appraisal but you know maybe 350 dollars or something and they’ll value it and to see where you are. So if you could take the mortgage insurance off your home. That’s how mortgage insurance works or private mortgage insurance or a funding fee. Again, it’s just protecting the lenders assets in case the buyer defaults on the one. Hopefully this never happens.

If you have any questions at all don’t hesitate to give me a call (813-317-4009) or you know I always tell people call a lender they could give you all the detailed information in your area and what you’re looking for but I’d be more than happy to answer any questions if I can. I hope you have a wonderful day. If you’re looking for an agent in Tampa give me a call (813-317-4009) I’d love to talk to you. If not, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for watching my YouTube Videos. Don’t forget to if you like these videos give me a thumbs up. Thank you very much.

Save 3% – 6% When Buying A House – How To Buy A House In Tampa

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Check out how to save 3 – 6% when buying a house in Tampa, FL. Here's how you can save dollars when buying a home.

Transcription

Hello home buyers. Your real estate expert, Lance Mohr and today, I want to talk about how you could possibly save 3 to 6% when buying a home. As a real estate agent, I am always trying to get my home buyers a competitive edge so they could get a better deal or if it’s a multiple bid situation, beat out other buyers from buying their home. And as you probably know by now, the National Association of Realtors, take statistics every single year. They spend millions of dollars and talk to home buyers, home sellers, see what there likes are, dislikes, concerns. And they have shown that home buyers that are pre-approved for a mortgage can save an average of 3 to 6% but let’s just say you are not going to save anything, but you get the home a beat out another buyer in a multiple bid situation.

Pre-approval means so much in today’s real estate market. Now the difference between a pre-approval and a prequalification is when you go to the lender, prequalification is just based off of the information that you give the lender but pre-approval is based on the information that you give the lender and they verify it. So you are essentially a cash buyer. And at the end of the day, you are going to have to get approved for a loan sooner than later. So you might want to do it sooner than later and use it to your advantage.

Think of it this way, if you are going out to a home seller, and let’s say there is another buyer, you are both offering $200,000 and the other agent says, “Well my buyer talked to lander a few weeks ago and they told them they could buy the home with $200,000.” And we go in and we say, “Well, my buyer is already fully approved for a mortgage. Everything is verified, they are basically a cash buyer. Would you like to close this month or next month?” I’ll tell you 1000 out of 1000 times, they’re going to take the pre-approved buyer. So if you’re going to do it sooner than later, you might as well get it done sooner than later.

I hope this helps you. If you have any comments, any questions let me know. If you are looking for a great real estate agent to work with, give me a call, my contact information is below. I wish you the best of luck in the home buying process. Thank you very much. Here is my YouTube channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy. We have tons of educational real estate videos. You can also visit my podcast https://www.spreaker.com/tampa2enjoy.

Buying a Home and Wire Fraud

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Earlier this week, one of my clients almost lost $18,000 on this home buyer WIRE FRAUD scheme. I'm going to show you how he caught the scam and what you can do to prevent it from happening to you and your family. See how wire fraud is costing home buyers $1,000's. I'm going to show you 2 “wire fraud” emails that were sent to one of my clients. Here's how it happend.

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr and in this video, I’m just going to get right to it because this involves wire fraud. I had some wire fraud that happened to a client of mine a few days ago and it was really elaborate. It was pretty high tech and to the degree that they went to do this, I just haven’t really heard of it before. So I wanted to bring this up to you because I know a lot of home buyers out there are going to probably be losing a lot of money dues to this because it just looks real. So I’m going to go over that and I’m going to do a screenshot video showing you the email so you get an idea of what was sent to look out for this.

Now, I just want to say before I get into that if you are buying a home and you wire money somewhere always verify where you’re wiring the money. If you’re getting the wiring with instructions from an attorney or a title company it should be encrypted. So, in other words, it just shouldn’t be an email or as a PDF instruction or a word attachment. If you see this run for the hills. Always call up whoever sent it to you or wherever the money supposed to be going. Say a title company and verify this with them. If it’s a builder sometimes the Builder reps will actually hand out writing instructions for their title company or for wherever it’s supposed to go. So you just want to make sure that you check everything out. If it seems a little suspicious always take caution and always go ahead and make sure and verify that you’re sending it to the right place and then when we get done with the end of the video I’m going to give you a little tip and what I do how to protect what I have so this doesn’t really happen to me.

Anyhow, so let’s just jump right into it and here’s the screenshot of the emails. Okay so here’s the email and what ended up happening. I had my buyer get this email and he contacted me and I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about so I picked up the phone called him and he was explaining to me how I sent him an email to wire the money and I asked him to send the emails to me so this is the first email and then what happened when it came over to him. It only said the form and only how to Lance Mohr here. It didn’t have this whatever email this is that they use as Comcast.net right here. So it only had Lance Mohr in it basically just said good morning. You can see it’s not personalized. The $18,000 should be wired to the title company’s commercial trust account. I will send you the instructions once you would know its receipt of this email by replying and then it says I have I’m busy and I have limited access to my phone. So can you send me an email because they obviously didn’t want him to pick up the phone and call me and then they put thanks Lance Mohr, Keller Williams and then my license number, my broker number? So obviously that is a little weird right there because that isn’t how any of my signatures go. Now, this was the first email right here. So this is the second email it came over it has the property address on it. Looks like it’s coming from me. This one came over about 15 minutes later in the morning and it said to see the wiring instructions below. You know it told him to wire the money to Chase Bank in Pasadena California, gave the routing number.

Now here’s this where I knew something was really weird going on with this. He recognized it when he saw the Pasadena but this was a Lennar Homes that the buyer was buying and if you look at the account name in the beginning and at the end it has the beginning say Eagle and at the end says mortgage. So they know when Lennar’s Mortgage Company is Eagle Mortgage. Now there are three ways it could happen it could have, someone could have hacked into my computer and got to my email and saw everything going on with myself with the buyer with Lennar and everything but it went into my email. I only use my laptop computer at home and work and I have a virtual private network. So unless they’re getting through military-grade encryption it’s not my computer. The second option would have been Lennar. I highly doubt it was Lennar and I talked this over with Lennar rep just because of the protocol that they’ll have on their computers in their office. The buyers don’t have a computer at home. If he needs to use one he’ll use his neighbors but he has a mobile device and I think that’s where it happened. I think what happened is someone hacked into his mobile device. Got into his email and started looking over everything.

This is really scary. You know again thank goodness he had the whereabouts in the sense to pick up the phone and call me. He also picked up the phone and called the builder rep and talked to her and she’s like no I have no idea why Lance would send that. Then I talked to him. When I talked to him and I asked him to send me this. You know obviously, it’s not me right away. It gave some junk email address at Comcast.net. I knew when he forwarded to me it would say the email. I did tell him should send this to the FBI because it’s basically a federal issue. Wire fraud they are trying to get his money.

The one thing that I would I recommended to him and I have it on my computer and I recommended it to a lot of people is to get what I have. It’s a virtual Private network. It’s a VPN, there’s a lot of companies out there you know and what this ode and you can read it up on it. Watch YouTube videos on it but it basically shields you from someone wanting to get into your computer, to get your information. It basically encrypts everything with military grade encryption. It’s really tough if someone would be able to try to crack it. So I don’t personally use my phone for business much other than calling and has called some pictures, some videos but I don’t email on my phone or save any accounts or anything for this reason. If I did I would get a virtual private network on my phone as well but I don’t.

So I hope that helped you. Again I’m not here pitch I haven’t you get a VPN. I just think it’s a really good and safe thing to get. I would definitely do it you know, there’s just a lot of wire fraud going on right now. A lot of its just spam email where they just sending out hundreds of thousands of emails hoping they catch someone who’s buying a home. I would just ask you favor if you can and if anybody that you that’s looking at buying a home send them this video because you don’t want them to get taken to the bank and there have been people out in Tampa area that had been on the news that has been out $51,000 dollars due to wire fraud and I certainly don’t want that to happen to you. I don’t want it to happen to anybody you know, family, friends, co-workers, anybody. So anybody looking to buy a home, share this with them please if you have any questions about that don’t hesitate to give me a call. Have a wonderful day. Thank you.

Please Visit my YouTube Channel for more educational real estate videos.

The Truth Above Home Builders In Tampa

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I did this video because new home buyers have a lot of unrealistic expectations from home builders and they just don't understand what the builders and their contractors are going through. Most all home buyers do not understand what is going on in the real estate market (now) in regards to new construction home builders. Everyone knows that it's a crazy seller's market and home prices are going up. I will help you understand what is really going on right now.


Transcrption

Hi everybody. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr and in this video I made a go over about the truth about new construction homes in Tampa. What’s really going on and I'm going to be talking about some stuff a lot of you may not want to hear and personally won’t like but that’s what I’m going to talk about in this short video.

So as most of you know, we are in a sellers’ market. In other words there’s a lot of buyers out there and not a lot of inventory and not a lot of inventory and a lot of people are starting to lean, have been leaning toward new homes in the Tampa area. The reason is because a lot of sellers just aren’t realistic on their price. If you look at a lot of pre-existing homes they’re either overpriced or they’re not nice condition or their assumption something functionally wrong with them and it’s just drawing people to new construction homes but the problem we have here and it’s not just in Tampa, it’s not just in Florida, it’s in a lot of places across the country is that everything is going up up up. So labor cost is getting higher. Prices that people want is getting higher. Material cost a whole bunch of different factors and there’s not enough qualified people around the country to build homes or having to do a lot of training. Then of course people get the training they want to go somewhere else and make more money.
So this is coming up everywhere. Now this is something, if you watch my new home videos. I talk about all the time, inspections, inspections, inspections, but I’ll give you a couple of examples. The other day I was talking to a representative with multi-home. He showed me this upgrade on the home and he said “see that upgrade over there?” and I said “yes” he said “last week that was $3800 this week it’s $5,200”. He said “that’s not something we’re doing”. He said “the company that we go to that does that their cost to us went up $1,400”.

I was talking to another builder and he was telling me where I always tried to get my buyers to get their scheduling if they’re coming in from out of town to go into the design center and take a look at everything before their appointment and a lot of builders will actually let you go in before you even write a contract. So I had buyers go into this one company before they even wrote a contract and I had them take the pricing catalog to get a good idea. The problem was the builder just cut that out, they said “You know, what we’re not when people in our design center. If they are on the fence there’s no more of that. You have to be under contract with the home. Once you’re under contract with a home then you could go to the design center and just look around before your design center appointment.”

So things are starting to change and a lot of this because a lot of the builders especially the good builders and the good areas are just busier than they know what to do it. They have so many buyers out there and there are so many consumers. I’m going into this model homes and I’m walking in and there may be on or two cars in the parking lot all of a sudden I’m walking out an hour late. The entire parking lot is full of people parking on the streets. So it’s just something to keep in mind when you’re looking for a new home just take everything with a grain of salt because things are changing. They are always changing, it’s not that the builders trying to be mean, it’s just that they’re very very busy right now and they’re really taken their pick and going with buyers that are ready to buy right now opposed to sitting on the fence in another six months or a year. And this happens when the market is busy. So hopefully you’ve had a chance to watch some of my new construction videos and how to save money and understanding the process. I’ll put a couple up above.

If you have any questions at all don’t hesitate to give me a call (813-317-4009). If you like these videos give me a thumbs up and if you’re in the Tampa Bay area and you need a good real estate agent let me know I’d love to talk to you, help you out. Thank you very much for watching my videos. I wish you the best of luck no matter where you’re building a new home.

For more education real estate videos. From home buying tips, new homes and new construction, seeling a home tips etc. Please visit my real estate YouTube channel. Share my videos and don't forget to subscribe. You can also visit my podcast https://www.spreaker.com/tampa2enjoy. Thank you.

What To Do When You Get Denied By A Builder’s Mortgage Company?

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If you have got denied for a mortgage loan by the builder's mortgage company this video is for you. You still have hope. Everyone in the lending industry knowns how complacent new home builder's mortgage companies are. The business is given to the loan officers, so how hard do you really think they work for your business?

It's not too surprising when I hear of a home buyer getting denied from a builder's mortgage company. If you got denied a loan by a builder's mortgage company or any lender, check out this video where I will give you some good workarounds for getting approved for a mortgage loan.

Transcription
Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr. In this video, I want to talk to people who have been denied by a mortgage company of a builder. So you go in, you put on it, you put an offer on a home you go to builder company whoever it is ABC, XYZ and you get denied. What do you do? That’s what we are going to talk about in this video.

Everybody pretty much knows in the lending industry, its common knowledge that the mortgage companies with these builders these big national builders they’re just complacent. A lot of them barely even know what they’re doing. I hate to say that. They do a lot of loans but the problem is this, they’re a banker, they use their own set, they’re own money. They’re own set of guidelines and if you’re around circle and they have a square whole you’re not going to be able to fit in there and unfortunately they’ll just tell you denied because they want they generally want people that are like the cream of the crop and have the real high credit scores, the real you know, the real low debt to income ratios the employed borrowers and when you get anything outside of that they a lot of times they’ll just deny you. It’s sort of known. It doesn’t happen all the time. So what you need to do if you do get denied.

The first thing you need to do is, you need to ask why. Why was I denied? What was it? Was it that the income ratio? Was it the credit score? What was the reason and then what you want to do is you want to try to find a really good mortgage broker. Not a bank or a broker. Again, a bank, a lot of credit unions, bankers they only use their money. So if they can’t qualify you for their money you’re dead. They just tell you, sorry Charlie we can’t do it but if you go to a broker, a broker will generally have five to eight lenders or banks that they use consistently. So when I was in lending, if someone was on FHA, I had one lender for this. If they were a jumbo deal I had another one. If they have bad credit scores I had another one. If they are the high debt to income ratios I had another one. So they’re going to be the person you want to talk to.

The other thing is unlike the loan officer who’s at the mortgage company with the lender they only get paid if they say yes. So what would I do is I would ask around, ask any friend, you know ask real estate agents you know try to find a really good broker, a local broker. Please don’t go online and call Joe’s mortgage shack in Des Moines, Iowa or someplace like that because out of sight out of mind because you need to make sure you’re qualified and be upfront with them. Tell them say hey I went into XYZ builder their lender said I couldn’t buy and this was the reason why what do you see and it could have been they just maybe don’t do that type of a loan that will meet your criteria or maybe though I’m an officer didn’t know what they’re doing but you need to really make sure you get someone who’s good. You get someone who’s honest. You get someone who knows. What they’re doing because you’re going to be on the hook. If your loan doesn’t close, you know the lenders going to say hey sorry I mean the builder is going to say hey sorry we’re going to have to keep your earnest money. So a lot of times if you can’t qualify for the builder’s mortgage company, you could qualify and get approved they’re an outside mortgage company. They’ll give you that incentive money. Most all lenders, most all builders will do that. So you need to be careful though because you need to make sure you’re really approved. In other words, if you come up say four weeks prior to closing and the all of a sudden you’re not approved, you’re going to probably most likely lose all your earnest money or any money you have in it.

So definitely make sure you work with a good reputable knowledgeable mortgage broker called the BBB (Better Business Bureau) on them try to find out. You know if you go on Yelp or get recommendations or maybe a friend use them or if you have a real estate agent, you know the real estate agent should know as someone who is a broker as well depending on who they work with

I hope this information provides value to you. I know for a lot of you it will. If you have any questions let me know. Give me a call. I know a lot of you know people who are looking at buying the home if you do pass these videos on to them. Pass my YouTube channel onto them because I’m doing this for you. I’m doing this to help people and I hope you have a great day. Again if you have questions let me know. If you like these videos give them a thumbs up. Take care and I wish and I wish you the best of luck.

Please share this article with your friends who are in the process of buying a home. For more educational real estate videos please go to our YouTube Channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy.

Understanding The QUALITY of The Home You Are Buying

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In this video, I go over some of the things buyers should know and understand before they buy a home. I talk about someone who paid $493,000 for a home that was built in 1996 by US Homes. They either did not know the type of builder US Homes was or they did not care. Well, US Homes was an entrance (low end) level, builder. I do not understand why someone would spend a 1/2 million dollars on a low end built home? You will be paying an upper-end price for a product that uses lower end material.

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa bay realtor Lance Mohr and in this video, I want to talk about understanding what you are buying because I see every now and then a lot of buyers getting bamboozled because they don’t really understand the quality of construction and different type of builders. Neither do the real estate agents or even the appraiser. I’m going to go over what’s important about this and what you need to understand and know before you buy a home or for that matter even write a contract on a home.

I had a client send me a property the other day. It already sold. He wanted me to use as a comparable for his so I started looking at it and I noticed it is an about twenty-five hundred something square feet and it sold four-hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars. I’m like hmm I wonder who the builder is. I’m sitting there thinking it’s something equivalent to maybe a Rutenberg or maybe a Cardel sort of an upper-end builder, semi-custom builder, and custom builder and I was shocked to see it was a US Home and I thought to myself “oh my gosh! I cannot believe someone would pay four hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars for a US home and take nothing away from US home but let me just sort of explain US home is an entry-level builder. They were always an entrance level builder. Matter of fact years ago in the early 2000s Lennar ended up purchasing them as their entry-level builder and then they just found out they were a real piece of junk company they ended up shutting them down then for some reason the brought them back over in New Tampa and Live Oaks again and then they ended up shutting them down again. Again they were just the entrance level builder so I’m looking at this home at four hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars and sure it has good architectural detail with columns outside and you’ve looked inside the home and it has some a deep attention to detail inside the home but the problem is they’re basically building the same home as an entry-level home. They’re just making it look a lot nicer. I mean again it’s one of those things you could put lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day it’s still a pig and I don’t want to be that mean about it but I’m looking out and I’m sitting there thinking to myself well this is the same quality of construction is behind the walls. The same type of wood, the same type of insulation, the same contractors are all pretty much being used. They’re just making everything grander cosmetically and I really feel personally I just can’t believe someone would spend half a million dollars on a US home.

Now if they go in and it’s a Cardel. Well, Cardel is an upper-end builder or builder equivalent Homes by Westbay or Rutenberg, a really good builder. That’s what I would expect. I just didn’t expect this and I think the problem is when people were buying these homes, they’re not really and I say the buyer, the buyer may not know but they’re going to real estate agents, the real estate agents aren’t really doing a lot of research and they’re just thinking okay well it looks nice, it’s big, it’s in a nice area but what about the utility bills and it’s sort of like a car, you could go buy a car and it might look really nice inside outside but if it’s going to break down all the time, if the maintenance is really bad. Are you going to buy it? Then it’s sort of like that looking at this with the US Home the insulation isn’t going to be anywhere near the insulation of say a Cardel, a West Bay, a Rutenburg not that WestBay was even in existence when this home was built in the late 90s but the appraiser goes out there and unfortunately appraisers are very complacent and a lot of appraisers just don’t know what they’re looking at because they don’t look at many homes when they an appraiser goes out and doesn’t appraise a lot of home they’re looking at one home and one home only that’s the subject property. They’re just looking at the other ones and seeing the other ones in black and white and take nothing away from appraisers there’s a lot that understands a lot about homes but some of them don’t and I even had an appraiser compared a Lennar and a Ryland years ago with an art the Rutenberg so all I would say is do your homework, get an agent that understands the different types of builders. Just so you know they could be perfectly happy in the home and they could even know it’s a Us home and know about the history of Us Homes and know what type of quality US Home was being built to and they might still like it, you might still like it but it’s understanding. I personally would never buy a US Home for five hundred thousand dollars at least today. I just can’t see it. I know what the insulation is going to be like. I know what the quality of construction was like behind the walls. They could fix it all up and make it look nice outside and make it look nice inside, but I do this video because I just think you need to be educated when you’re looking at the homes when I look at homes and I go through I always look at the builders. Now there are some builders that I don’t know who they are. They were built before my time. Maybe they were just a small little builder but that’s not the vast majority of it. The vast majority are the bigger builders, the Rutenbergs, the Centex's, the Lennar's, back then the US homes, now the Homes by WestBay, the Cardel's, the Cal Atlantic's, etc.

So understand who the builder is and that’s the whole point of this video. Just get educated on who built the home in what type of builder they are. It’s sort of like I would tell people in this price range would you rather have homes by West Bay build a home that’s used to building homes in the fours, the five the six hundred thousand dollars range or would you rather have a Centex where is an entrance level builder who would rather have built your home for the same price because that if a builders building if they’re an upper-end builder and their building down there is still using the same quality of construction the same people built in the home that’s an entrance level builder building up. They are still using the same people much like a car you have $30,000 to spend on a car would you rather have a Mercedes Benz build it or would you rather have Kia build it so that’s all I’m saying.

I hope this video helps you. If you have any questions at all please feel free to contact me and if you like these videos share them on Facebook, share them with your friends. Have a wonderful day.

My YouTube channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy has hundreds of educational real estate videos. From buying, selling a house to tips for first time home buyers. Don't forget to share these videos with your friends. Thank you.

How Many Homes Should I Look At Before I Buy?

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Most home buyers ask this question a lot. How many homes do I have to look at before deciding what home to buy? This is a common dilemma for most home buyers, especially first-time home buyers. In this video, I will address that question for you. If you like the area, elevation and floor plan – you found your home. Because you can not change these three things. They are MUST haves! Enjoy the video.

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr and I want to address a question I get quite frequently and that’s how many homes should I look at before I purchase a home and I’m going over the answer to that in this short video.

All right, for the last 20 years or so being in the business, I actually get this question quite often how many homes should we look at before we purchase? We’ve only seen a few homes, I think we need to look at a lot more homes before we buy this home and I’ll tell you the answer is there is no sin answer for this. You could look at one home, you could look at five homes, and you could look at twenty-five homes. You just need to understand what I call the top three things when you’re looking for a home to make it a lot easier on you.

Number one is you have to like the area. So you have to like the city. You have to like the subdivision. You’re not going to be able to change the city. You’re not going to be able to change your neighbors in the subdivision if you don’t like the area don’t buy the home. Buy somewhere where you like it.

The second thing is you have to like the elevation of the home. The elevation is how the home looks outside. I’m not talking how the landscaping look or the yard does or maybe you have an overgrown tree or the color the paint of the home. Who cares? I’m talking how the home actually looks.

The third thing is you have to like the floor plan. If you don’t like the floor plan, forget it. It doesn’t really matter. The reason is that you can’t change these three things. If you like the area. If you like the elevation and you like the floor plan you’ve pretty much found your home and the reason is because before you go out to even look at the floor plan you could always drive by the neighborhood and around the neighborhood and look at the outside of the home but by the time you get inside the home you’re going to know a lot about the home already. You’re going to know what the price is. How many square feet it is. How many bedrooms. How many bathrooms. Does it have a garage or how many car garage or carport does it have? What year was the home built so you can have a lot of questions answered and then you’re going to have to just take all those questions, decide if you like the are the elevation of the floor plan and then come up with the price? On what works for you but if you like those three things you’ve pretty much found your home.

If you have any questions at all let me know. I would love to help you and please leave a comment. Let me know what you think about this video and give me a thumbs up if you like the video. Have a wonderful day. Thank you very much.

If your looking for more educational real estate. Visit my YouTube channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy. Don't forget to share the videos and please subscribe to my channel. Thank you.

4 Tips to Winning a Multiple Bid Situation

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In most part of the county, buyers are finding themselves in a multiple offer situation and are not that familiar with how to beat out all the other offers on the table. If you follow these 4 (of my 8) tips you will be well on the way to owning the home you want. Multiple offer situation or a bidding war is hard especially if you have encountered it for the first time and you don't have any idea how to beat other bidders. This video will help you close the home you really want during a multiple offer situation. This is part 1-2, that will tell you how to win if you are in a bidding war.

Transcription
Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr and I want to talk about 4 ways to win in multiple bidding situations. This is going to be Part 1 of Part 2.

Alright, so everybody knows pretty much around Tampa Bay, Florida and most in the country there’s a lot of multiple bids and sometimes it could be just 2 offers, 4 one offers, 10 offers, 20 offers and you’re one of many and you really need to separate yourself from the other buyers who are out there. I’m going to give you four tips that work really well and then in my next I’m going to give you four more that work really well. So you’re going to be really ready, locked and loaded to win the home you want. We’ll start off with number one, we want to keep things simple. We just want to make sure the contract looks simple. Don’t write contracts and cloud it up asking for a bunch of stuff. Don’t ask for stuff like washers, dryers, refrigerators, warranties etc. Now if the agent is offering that in the MLS. If they say they are offering a washer, a dryer or curtains or refrigerator then, by all means, you could put in the contract and then just put a little note on it her MLS. But keep the contract simple. It’s a really easy thing to do.

The second thing you want to do and I know this probably sounds funny to a lot of people but write a letter to the seller. Write a letter to the seller, you could type it, sign it, email it to your agent and afford it. Just tell them how nice their home is. How much you would like to live there. I know that sounds funny but people really like to hear how nice their home is. I have many buyers who do this to my sellers in multiple situations. Even in situations that weren’t a multiple situation and sellers love it. They really think a lot of it. So definitely do it, it’s not going to take you more than 5 minutes.

The third thing you need to do is put down more earnest money. A lot of times people, at least in our area in Tampa it’s always considered you put down 1% rounded down. So maybe the homes 350,000 and you put down 3,000 or maybe if you want to put down 2,000 or 2,500 try going up and I’ll give you an example what I did. When my wife and I were buying our home, I put down $10,000 earnest money. My wife said why in the world you would put down so much. Now I said because I want this home. I want them to know I want this home. I don’t want any misunderstanding about that. I said look, I have the financing contingency that will back me up. I have the inspection contingency that will back me up. The appraisal contingency that will back me up and if you don’t have to finance then put an appraisal contingency in there. Put something in there if you think you need that but make sure you offer enough earnest money. I mean, I would offer at least 1% probably 2. I mean I offered a lot more than that but I think it’s a really good idea to offer a lot of earnest money and let them know you’re really serious about buying their home.

Also makes sure you’re pre-approved. I did another video in this you could go in and you could be pre-qualified but being pre-approved to be able to begin to an agent and be in a situation like this and say my seller and my night buyer is already pre-approved for the mortgage they’ve already run their credit report that already verified their income. They already verified their employment. They’re pretty much a cash buyer and they will close on your home because at the end of the day the seller is having three question; how much money are you going to offer me, are you pre-approved to buy my home and do you really want to buy my home. Those are the three questions they have. You need to make sure they’re very clear about your answers and all that.

Then if you like this videos leave me a comment and I know you probably know a lot of people out there buying homes, selling homes refer my YouTube videos referring one of my videos in my YouTube channel. I do this because I want to help people and I know it helps a lot of people out there. Feel free to pass my information on. Leave a comment below, give me call if you’re in the Tampa Bay area or if you’re in another area you have any questions, I would love to work with you. Have a wonderful day.

Check out my channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy for more educational real estate videos. Share them and don't forget to subscribe.

My Biggest Mistake as a First-Time Home Buyer

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I had this question from a home buyer. “What was one thing you wish you would have known or done differently when buying your 1st home?” So I thought I would let you learn from my mistakes.

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr and in this video, I want to go over a question I got and that’s, what is the one thing you wish you would have known or done differently before you bought your first house. And I'm going to go about that and I think it’s going to surprise you will help it in this video what I ended up doing as a first time home buyer and some of the mistakes I made so that's what I’m going to go over in the short video.

I remember buying my first home. I was 23 years old, single and in engineering, with no kids. I just wanted a home for myself so I was going snow skiing whit a buddy. We are on our way back from Big Bear outside Los Angeles. I asked him to stop by a real estate agent’s office. We stopped by, I talked to an agent. Pulled the agent a little about what I was looking for and the agent called me up the next day and we went out what we started working in a bunch of different homes. Now I thought I was a little weird because all the agent wanted to do is just look and look and look and look and look and drive me around and I thought, well I’m a first time home buyer are you supposed to be educating me are you supposed to be telling me anything and he just wasn't doing that. Then we went out again and again. The problem was, every time we went into a home. He wanted me to buy it. He just thought I should buy every home and so I find a way out 2 or 3 weeks into it. I just said, hey this just isn’t working. I don't really think you have my best interests in mind. I appreciate it good luck. So I pick up the phone call someone else, an agent met me at the first home. I told him a little bit about what I was looking for. It was really much a very similar set of circumstances. I mean we went out and we looked at the 1st home, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and every single home were looking at He’s telling me how great the market is. I need to be buying every single home. If it was up to him I would have bought the very first time I saw. We walked in about our 8th home and there's a big water leak and I looked up and I'm like what do you think that's from? And he said, don’t worry about it. I would just write a contract on the home and so again I can I called him up and I said there's just like a communication. You're not listening to me. You’re fired. Good luck.

So I put things off for a little while. Then I decided to use my friend who just got his real estate license but he was part-time and I thought well, at least I could trust him and he's a really nice guy. He just didn't really know what he was doing, He didn’t really do it before and you know there’s a lot of issues but I ended up closing on my home. So the question I guess the answer is what I wish I would have known, what would have I done differently and of course it is always hard to say but I wish I would have interviewed agents. I wish I would not have looked at all agents is being the same and I did. It was a mistake and I had a really bad taste in my mouth for a long time about buying property. Which is one of the reasons I think I do why do these videos? I want to help people so this doesn't happen to you but I wish I would have looked at agents is there some good agents, there’s that look out for me, there are agents that won’t. Really spend time trying to find a good agent. Trying to find an agent that's going to look out for my best interest. An agent that has a lot of knowledge that has a lot of experience.

You know, asked questions. Some of the questions I always tell people to ask is, certainly you want to know how long they've been in business. Do they work with first time home buyers like example tell them a little about what you’re looking at your first home? If you’re looking at new construction or maybe you're looking for a rehab or whatever. Let them know because you want to see what their experience level is in that. In other words, when I was looking for my first home I don't have a lot of education. I need someone to hold my hand and guide me through the process. Not just assume I know everything but really give me an education on the process. I wish I would have asked questions. Questions that I think are good to ask a good question is why I should work with you. What makes you different than the other agents and see what they have to say. You could ask them that, you could do it face to face. If you wanted to do an email if you want to do it over the telephone but asked questions you don't need a whole bunch of questions. You don't need a list of 10 or 20 questions that you will see online. Just try to find an agent that knows what they are doing, that cares about you and has a lot of experience.

I hope this helps you. If you know anybody looking at buying or selling a home refer them to my videos. Hopefully, they’ll help them. If I could help you what so ever don’t hesitate to give me call. I wish you the best of luck. Visit my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/Tampa2Enjoy
 for more informative real estate videos.

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Keller Williams Realty – Tampa, Florida

Mohr Home Group
18302 Highwood Preserve Parkway
Tampa, Florida 33647
(813) 317-4009 | Map | Email
Licensed REALTOR® in the State of Florida

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