Lance Mohr & Team

Tampa2Enjoy.com

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Lance Mohr & Team

Tampa2Enjoy.com

(813) 317-4009

real estate

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.

Florida Property Taxes and Florida Homestead Advantages

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This video should clear up a lot of misunderstandings about Florida Property Taxes and the Florida Homestead advantages. I wanted to do this video on Florida property taxes, homestead benefits, and CDD fees because there is SO much misunderstands on these 3 areas. I will explain each advantage to you. Watch and let me know what you think

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Realtor Lance Mohr and in this video, I want to talk about Florida property taxes and more specifically the homestead in Florida. How it works the advantages of it and then how you could get more detailed information on the property taxes if you have any questions. I’m to go over all this in this short video.

People are very confused when they’re moving to Florida. They’ve never been here and don’t understand homestead of us. Don’t understand property taxes. So let me talk a little bit about our homestead law and it’s a lot different than other states. I’ve lived in California where they have the homestead. I’ve lived in Texas where they’ve had the homestead and it’s so much better in Florida.

So let me go backward from 3 to 2 to 1. The number 3 benefit of having homestead is the $50,000 exemption. Let me give you an example and how the taxes work out here. Let’s say you’re buying a home for once to say $300,000 and you witness a new home or it could be a pre-owned home and you’re looking at it. You’re trying to figure out what your property taxes are. The best thing to do is not look at what they are right now. So someone’s living in it that’s what their property taxes are and I’m going to explain a little bit more this a little later.

If you don’t want to pay any attention to theirs so you buy the home for 300,000 the best thing to do is the figure they’re going to assess you 85%. They’re going to assess you $250,000 for the home. Now it may even be more like in my cases it’s lower on many of my properties. Anyhow you’ll look at 255 and then you’ll want to take the $50,000 homestead exemption off of that. You’re basically a tax base of $255,000 then depending on what can you live in and what their millage rate is. When I say millage rate so example, Hillsborough County in Florida. The millage rates about 21. So 21 would about two point one percent. If you have a two point one percent. If you have $205,000 dollar estimate you take 2.1% that’s your taxes.

Now if you have CDD fees on top of that you’re going to have to add those in. Now keep in mind CDD Fees are included in the property tax bill. Let me repeat this because there’s a lot of confusion out there. CDD Fees which stands for Community Development District fees are included in the property tax bill. A video on CDD fees. If you’re not really sure what they are you definitely want to watch this video because pretty much all new and newer homes have them. You could watch it up here but they are included in the property tax bill. So you just need to get an estimate on what they’re going to be.

The second thing that’s really nice about our homestead law out here is that creditors can’t go after your primary residence. If something happens and you have a lawsuit and not an attorney so unique legal advice but if that does happen, creditors can’t go after your primary residence if its homestead hence years ago OJ Simpson moved to Florida why’d he moved to Florida his home protected. Anyhow, at least that’s why I think he moved to Florida. So that’s the second thing.
The number one thing that’s probably the biggest advantage is they cannot tax you over 3% of your assessed value. So if your home is worth let’s say $300,000 and you buy it and that the home prices are continuing to go up they can’t assess it for more than 3%. That’s why you never want to use what someone else’s tax base is because if their home is homesteaded and they’ve owned they’ve lived in it for many years their tax base is going to probably be very low. See it didn’t work like this other states I lived in but it’s a huge benefit for women in Florida.

Now if you want to get more information on the taxes you just need to look at the tax bill. It’s public record. I’m going to give you an example just in Hillsborough County you go to Hills tax org you do a search for the property. You put the address in there and then you just take the most recent bill and it will be in a PDF format. You open it up and you could look at it’s going to say what all the different taxes are. So it’s going to say what the school taxes are and what percentage and what’s the dollar amount then it’s going to give the phone number if you want to call someone about it and what this is really helpful for is when you’re looking at CDD Fees. If you want to get more information and you’re in a community that has CDD fee when you open it up. It will usually say calm Devon it will have the phone number and then you can just simply call the phone number talk to them.

Ask them what’s all in the CC you know what type of bond do they have in there? How long is the bond going to last? Is it 20-year bond? 30-year bond? When was it taken out? What else is in there like maintenance or if it’s a homeowners association dues that are in there. You might want to see if that’s in low homeowners association dues. Ask them if some of that’s wrapped into the CDDP. Get an idea but that’s where you go and get it.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to give me a call (813-317-4009). If you like this video give ma thumbs up or leave a comment below. I appreciate it. I wish you the best of luck and I hope this helps you. Have a great day. Click here for more educational real estate videos.

#1 Concern With Mortgage Lenders – In Today’s Real Estate Market

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A lot of loan officers in the Tampa area are very complacent with the real estate market so good. Learn what to do and what questions you need to ask. With the real estate market being so hot in Tampa Bay many loan officers (lenders) are becoming more and more complacent. So I have been doing their job for them and explaining the different loan programs and closing costs to my buyer for them. Thank goodness I was a loan officer and I know a lot about mortgage loans, closing costs and programs.

What you need to do when you talk to a loan officer is get a Loan Estimate (LE). This will give you a breakdown of all your reoccurring and non-reoccurring closing costs. Then ask the loan officer to go over the different costs with you so you have a good understanding.

It’s also a great idea to ask the loan officer if there are other loan programs that you are qualified for and to go over the pros and cons of each loan program.

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Realtor Tampa Bay Lance Mohr. In this video, I want to talk about why loan officers in Tampa and probably everywhere in the United States right now are very complacent and what you need to do about this.

I wanted to do this video because this week I had several buyers. A couple that was local first time home buyers and then some that we’re relocating to Tampa and one thing I noticed just how complacent loan officers have gotten now. I talked about this a weeks ago but I want to bring up a little bit different twist and what you need to do about this.

In Tampa right now our market is really busy. So I think again everybody is getting complacent. Realtors, loan officers, builders, inspectors, everybody and I’ve just noticed a lot of time when first time home buyers are going in and getting a loan. The loan officers are not taking the time to really explain the different loan programs to them. They’re not taking the time to explain the lender's estimates called the LE and going over different closing cost and when someone’s coming in from out of state they’re used to different closing cost or different procedures in the state they are coming from and the loan officers. What they are doing is they’re basically directing everybody to their website. They’re saying fill out an application. They’re filling out an application. They may send them a lenders estimate, they may not. They’re supposed to but even if buyers are calling and getting pre-qualified. They’re not really going over everything with them. They are not explaining things to them like different types of state taxes and how things work here.

What I would say is this. When you talk to a loan officer and you get a quote. Whether it’s on the interest rate of closing costs. Get everything in writing from him. Ask him to send you a lenders estimate and go over all the different cost with them and have him explain it to you. I know when I was in lending years ago. I always did this to people and when I was working with them whether they’re a first time home buyer or a second time home buyer. I always went over the different options with them on loan programs and told them the advantages, disadvantages and let them pick out what was best for them. And a lot of cases they just simply asked me well what one would you go with and why.

So you need to start asking questions because I see so many buyers out there they are just getting information from these lenders and what’s happening is I’m having to step in as a real estate agent and explain the different loan program, the different closing costs and it’s okay because I understand this. I was a lender for so many years. I was a co-owner of a mortgage company but very few real estate agents understand anything about loans and most of them just say oh we’ll just ask the loan officer. It’s unfortunate and I know a lot of people that are watching this video are not in Florida or certainly not in the Tamp Bay area but just make sure to talk to the lender. I mean the loan officer and ask them.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to give me a call (813-317-4009). I’d be more than happy to help you or just shoot me an email. If you like my videos subscribe. Hit the bell button and you’ll be notified and give me a thumbs up or leave a comment. Have a great day! I hope this helps you. Here is my YouTube Channel https://youtube.com/tampa2enjoy for more educational real estate videos.

Listing Agents Should Always Do This

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It is VERY important for the listing agent (Realtor) to call the buyers lender and verify that the buyer is actually qualified for a mortgage. In this video, I go over what can happen if they don’t. This might sound a little odd, but most loan officers like and respect real estate agents that do their due-diligence by picking up the phone. By doing this you’re going to take the sellers home off the market for 30-45 days and possibly miss a qualified buyer because you could not spend 5 minutes doing your due-diligence? This is WHY you, as a home seller, have to interview Realtors. You need to hire someone who is going to look out for your best interest and protect you.

Transcription

Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr and in this videos, I want to go over, should you have your listing agent or realtor talk to the buyer’s lender before you accept a contract and that’s what I’m going to go over in this short video.

So the answer is YES always have your real estate agent, your listing agent call the buyers lender. Now, I know in our market our average sales price is 200,000 is someone’s making an offer on an $800,000 home. I know it’s not their first rodeo but certainly, I would still call. I would do my due diligence. The lower the price the more important it is. I just want to do it because I want to protect the seller but I also want to protect my own assets because if things go sideways, I don’t want to wind up with an in my face. I want to do everything I can to make sure the seller is protected. To make sure they’re not going to have put their home on the market for two weeks or four weeks or six weeks and all of a sudden it blows up and comes back. What I do when I get enough or coming in I’ll go ahead and pick up the phone. I’ll call the lender. I’ll introduce myself. I’ll see what kind of or type of contract it is. Say it’s conventional sit-down. On to say it looks like the buyer is going on a conventional loan.

I’m guessing this is a FannieMae loan they’re putting down 5%. I just want to make sure that they meet Fannie Mae’s debt to income ratios. Their guidelines and they’ll usually say you know yes then I want to make sure they meet their credit score guidelines. Yes, I want to make sure they need their depository car guidelines and what’s in the bank accounts etc. Now I’m not asking personal questions. I’m not asking what their credit score is or what their debt can come in as or how much money they have in the bank every blue moon I’ll get a lender and they’ll say well I can’t, I can’t go over this you and I’ll say well why not buy while you can’t go over personal information that this is just guideline information I just want to make sure that they meet the guidelines most lenders are quite the opposite most lenders will be more than happy to talk to you because they rarely get calls from real estate agents like this.
It rarely happens in good faith estimates or I should say pre-qualification letters rather are good but there’s a lot a genetic will write a pre-qualification for people who have they haven’t even talked to or who haven’t even filled out an application.

When I was in lending years ago. I would actually have three orders call me up that would go out and show buyers properties. They would look at the home they would write a contract then call me up one a pre-qualification letter. A pre-approval letter and they won’t even let me talked to the buyers and it’s ridiculous and when I tell them I’m not going to do that they’ll just say well find someone who will. It’s absurd but it does happen. So always have your real estate agent, your listing agent pick up the phone and just go through is the buyer qualified. I meant I know it sounds odd but I’ve actually had situations where the buyer hasn’t been qualified and I found this out upfront because keep in mind if the buyer has 30 days to get qualified. If they’re not qualified they have 30 days to get qualified and they couldn’t show up that 30 days and you could be missing other potential buyers who would actually buy your home.

Always make sure your listing agent calls the buyers lender and goes over. Are they qualified and confirm this. I hope this helps you remember these videos are for you. So if you have any questions real estate questions or anything like that put them below in the comments below should be an email go to ur Contac Us page and send me an email let me know what your questions are because I’d love the answer them or I’ll probably do a video on it because if you have a question. A lot of other people have questions if I can help you at all if you live in Tampa Bay area or if I could help you don’t hesitate to give me a call, shoot me an email. I hope this helps you. I wish you the best of luck buying or selling a home. Have a great day. For more real estate videos you can visit my YouTube channel Mohr Home Group.

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.

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Mohr Home Group
18302 Highwood Preserve Parkway
Tampa, Florida 33647
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