Caption transcript. This text is pulled from YouTube captions and may contain minor wording errors.
[00:00] I don't really have a script for this video this video is going to be really uh it's going to be about what you look for in a long-term rental around Tampa Florida and so I'm I'm a broker here in the area I've been working on a lot of investment properties and rental properties I've worked with a property
[00:16] management company three different ones over the last 10 years here in Tampa so kind of from my experience this is what you want to look for and be aware of when you're looking to buy a long-term rental property in Florida now today we're not we're not going to talk about numbers and you know the aspect of
[00:35] things but we are going to talk about a lot of the backend of rental properties um like there's still some things that you'll want to look for when you're buying one we're not talking about rent rates how to calculate those or anything like that so first off when you're looking for a long-term rental in Tampa
[00:53] it's very important to know that there's really two options right there single families and there are dup lexes triplexes quad plexes and Beyond so a lot of times like an 8 unit will actually be two quad plexes or four duplexes there's rarely more than four units per one actual physical structure
[01:13] so when you're taking in account to Capital expenditures keep in mind that like your roof you know you're rarely going to have more than four now there's certainly there are them out there there are 12 units under one building there's six you know six and then there's two story so six per story uh but anyway
[01:30] we're I digress a little bit we're going back to the single family and kind of like the two to fourplex realm is what most investors are looking for unless you're institutional or you're you know a bigger apartment building buyer what you want to look for and the reason why I say there's only two
[01:46] because condos and town homes both have HOAs and those aren't always a bad thing but excuse me there are a lot of a lot of reasons why you might want to avoid an HOA or at least be very uh cautious and understanding of which HOA you're buying in and so you know you may need help from your agent to guide
[02:09] you and and pull up ra let me just talk about HOAs here for a minute if I can okay so HOAs around Tampa are very expensive it's like we're Tampa is like HOA Haven and every new construction development of course is going to have an HOA and that's probably true outside of Florida everywhere um there's just ho
[02:29] everywhere and there are I think ways that these can be eliminated in 20 years once you know cdds are paid off and majority of homeowners in the community decide and vote that hey we don't want the HOA here anymore again uh going back to to what we're talking about HS they're expensive for Town hoses and
[02:49] condos your typical monthly is going to be about 300 a month now there are several that are lower and there are some that are even $7 to $800 a month just on your HOA fees those really expensive ones are definitely um you might find condos in there that are super cheap and obviously it's because
[03:08] that offsets and and and makes the purchase price a lot cheaper because you can't afford it otherwise kind of like how interest rates go up and housing prices typically go down and vice versa to kind of keep the monthly rate the same now what these $7 800 HOA uh fees are for typically is because they're
[03:25] including a lot of high-risk insurance policies in those monthly HOA fees they're also including your water bill so anyway that's kind of what makes those ones specifically very expensive your average is going to be about $300 a month for most of the HOAs and most of the communities around here now uh on
[03:42] top of that fee a lot of HOAs are passing rulings that rulings that you cannot rent an uh you can may not be able to to to operate a rental property in those communities or you may have to own the property for one or two years before you can uh rent the property out on top of that even if
[04:02] you don't have any of those restrictions most of them have separate short-term restrictions where you cannot ever rent out as an Airbnb so you have to be very careful what you're buying and I know we're talking long-term rentals here um you want want to be careful um what the pet restrictions are on the HOA because
[04:22] Tampa is a very big dog city um there's a high percentage of tenants that have dogs and there may be some pet restrictions in the HOA where you don't allow certain sizes uh or breeds or whatever so all right that's enough about HOAs so what I think your two Best Bets are when
[04:40] you're buying a long-term rental it's going to be your your your single family and it's going to be your duplex Triplex quadplex and the single family uh I actually will say that if you're buying an ho a single family in an HOA the H is can be much cheaper for for houses um there's just less that goes into the
[04:58] management side of that um it might be $25 to $75 a month or like $1 and something dollar a quarter that type of thing so it's a lot cheaper for a house and uh it's a little bit more doable um all right completely off of HOAs now uh your single family and your your specifically for duplex Triplex
[05:18] quadplex and Beyond a couple things you're going you're going to want to look for on one of those properties is how the meters are set up and who pays for them so in Tampa it's very common for each unit to have its own electric meter as it's kind of rare actually for uh the electric meters to
[05:37] not be separated out um water on the other hand could be 60/40 or 50/50 whether they're you know each unit has its own water meter or um or not and so if it's been separately metered great if not you make sure you're factoring in what your rent rates are going to be with water included and make sure that
[05:59] um it doesn't mess up your numbers knowing that you have to pay for the water whatever they use so um you there's ways to to submeter water but it's not always uh practical uh depending on how the layout of the plumbing is and what you're buying if it's side by side or
[06:16] twostory um the next thing that we want to look for is uh um what is your what area are you buying in what type of area do you want to buy in our like what are you expecting because for multif family specifically most of them just are in C
[06:38] areas around Tampa and St Petersburg so um if you wanted to find something in more of an A or B area you're probably looking for a house um if you wanted to find a duplex in one of those areas they're very limited they they really just haven't been building multif Family Properties as quickly or uh consistently
[06:58] as single family everything's been single family around here so all the multif Family Properties out there generally are older like in the 80s or or or younger than that actually or I'm sorry older than that 80s or or or older so uh 70s 60s 80s 50s that you know kind of in that range most of them are block
[07:16] construction which is great you don't have to worry about termites as much which actually leads me to my next thing termites and mold those are the two big things in Florida that you're going to want to look for because uh we have such high humidity in Tampa that mold grows very very easily
[07:34] now it's not always the bad mold there's like you know 50 different 100 whatever there's there's so many different types of mold out there that everybody assumes you know you say the MW uh and there's you know your mind mind runs crazy but that's not always um as bad as it seems
[07:52] now we don't want any type of mole ideally but uh you know there are some moles that are easier to get rid of and some that aren't so so when you're going through and doing your inspections during your inspection period um I think it costs like $300 to do a mold test just get get an idea of if there's
[08:08] anything kind of lingering in the Attic or in the walls um and typically uh I think that block construction um properties tend to hold a little bit more moisture than like wood framed properties would so keep that in mind um now the benefit of having a block built home is that you
[08:28] really don't have to worry about the subterranean termites termites are another big uh big big pest in Florida so if you have a or you're looking at a a wood framed house that's not necessarily a bad thing you just need to know to look for what termite Dam and there's always
[08:46] going to be some termite damage even on block Built Homes because there's two types of termites there's Subterranean and there's the drywood ones the drywood ones are typically in the walls or in the attic and they're they're not they don't nest in the ground and like the subterranian ones and kind of everything
[09:01] ferociously um now again with block buil you don't really have to worry about the sub tranan at all with wood frame you do and that could be a uh an an ongoing maintenance cost to keep um bait and the perimeter around the house um it could be you know anywhere from $100 to $200 a month um to keep those bait pellets in
[09:21] the ground and then there's like a system you could it's a century it might just be called Century where you can uh pay an upfront fee to to um be installed and I think it's like a couple thousand dollars but it'll last you for years and years and years so it it won't have to be renewed for I know something like
[09:40] seven years and I think the last thing that I'll talk about on this video is uh is the weather and hurricanes we get a lot of rain throughout the the rainy season which is generally from April to I did another video on this actually from April to uh I think it's like October or November um and also your
[09:57] hurricane season lines up right in there towards the end I think from generally August to uh November is the hurricane season we don't always have hurricanes that hit us but that's kind of that's when they would if they if they were to come and uh hit the right trajectory now Tampa is in the right spot for
[10:15] geographically for hurricanes to really we avoid them all the time now we don't avoid the outskirts of them we don't avoid tropical storms we don't avoid like just the bad weather but we avoid generally direct hits which is where you know by the time hurricane hits us it's at least a category three instead of a
[10:33] category 5 and there's a massive difference if you look at the seir Simpson wi scale of what each hurricane um hits at what you know what what category it's a pretty massive difference from three to five so we get lucky in that sense um and then alt together we we just avoid them all
[10:49] together so um that's one thing to note that Tampa is not as risky as some places like Miami The Keys Naples Fort Meyers Fort Lauderdale like that kind of that General south southern Florida they're more likely to get hit than us um but then the rainy season I was talking about we get a lot of rain so
[11:07] roofs tend to last a short period of time in Florida and so a lot of a lot of insurance companies in the past have had a 15-year um window where your roof if it's over 15 years then it needs to be replaced before it can be sold so when you're looking at a new property or a
[11:23] property and the the roof is getting close to that or maybe it's already surpassed it your lender or I'm sorry your insurance um agent may need you to get a new roof on that property ASAP or before close something to keep in mind now lately too this makes things worse I've actually heard reports that some
[11:42] insurance companies are making um they've changed that 15 years to 10 years and part of that is because we've had that bad hurricane hurricane Ian about a year ago year and a half ago did over it was actually one of the most ciest hurricanes in United States history I think it hit the top five
[11:59] um it kind of triggered a lot of insurance companies to go broke um several of them have also left the state and so there's kind of a few remaining now and they're kind of setting the rules and and you know I think there's some policies that are going out there to try to Tamper down what the
[12:16] requirements and how how bad how high insurance rates are getting all that type of thing but for now um You may be looking at at roofs that are over 10 years old and just the standard ones not the 30 or or 45 or metal roofs but just like your your kind of low tier shingle roof they may be looking at about a
[12:32] 10year lifespan for those for insurance purposes doesn't mean that they can't last another 10 on top of that but just something to keep in mind so I think that's about it for this video I'm going to link uh my my last hurricane video up here so if you have any questions about the weather or anything other rental
[12:50] related drop it in the comments below please subscribe thanks for watching
