Brown and Brown Back In San Diego and Starring In Getting Outa Dodge

Posted @ 11:40 pm - Filed under 1031 Exchanges, Real Estate Investing, Boise, Retirement, Selling Income Property, San Diego Property Owners, Real Estate Brokerage, Real Estate Markets, Cash Flow, Retirement Income, Capital Growth, Dallas, Austin, Kansas City, Palo Alto, Tax Shelter, RE Investment Practice, Texas

Though we’ve been to Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Kansas City, Boise, Phoenix, Palo Alto, and the list goes on, we’ve pretty much ignored San Diego real estate investors for nearly five years. Our plan calls for reentry in April or May. And no, we’re not gonna be tellin’ folks to buy San Diego investment property. It hasn’t made sense for a few years now. In fact, we don’t think it will ever be wise to invest here again.

Why?

Here’s the short version.

Your half million dollar duplex has monthly rents these days of $1,800-2,500 or so. For easily less than half the value of your property,duplex you can own a duplex (and brand new, not ancient like yours) with monthly income of $2,000-2,400. Does yours offer 3 bedrooms and 2 baths? And an attached 2-Car garage? In a neighborhood you’d allow your 70-something mom live in by herself?

I’d put my mom into these properties to live alone. In Phoenix they started calling it BawldGuy’s Mom Rule. If I wouldn’t put Mom there, don’t tell me about the property. That policy cut out a whole lot of useless conversations. :)

If your small 1-4 unit residential income property has a net equity of $60-500,000 you’ll be able to move that equity, tax deferred no doubt, to areas in the country allowing for leverage San Diegans can only experience through time travel, or Grandpa’s stories. Your capital growth rate will soar. Oh, you’d rather have a whole bunch of cash flow? How ’bout doubling to quintupling your current cash flow?

San Diego income properties simply cannot compete with other regions. It’s not possible. And if your Plan calls for you to sell your San Diego stuff in the next 3-10 years, here’s something to think about.

brightly colored homes

If they’d be ah, ill advised to buy your property today, at it’s lowest value in quite some time, how silly is it gonna be for them to buy it in another decade? It’s ancient now, right? If it’s value goes up in the next 10 years do you believe they’ll pay even more? Really? It’s my professional opinion they won’t — even if they were all the colors of the rainbow. :)

The bottom line is this: We can get you Outa Dodge — significantly increase your capital growth rate and/or cash flow — plus your tax shelter — while dramatically improving your chances for a magnificently abundant retirement.

Let’s continue with an example of what’s possible.

Let’s use your duplex mentioned above, with loans totaling $250,000 — here’s what you can do.

Your net proceeds from a sale will be more than you might expect because of our new business model. Instead of having sales/closing costs of around $40,000 or so, they’ll be far less. Brown and Brown no longer takes a listing commission of 3%. Tell me that isn’t cool. More on the details later. (Or, here’s an idea — you can contact us and we’ll give you the scoop way before everyone else finds out.)

multiple street signs

Even with the normal brokerage fees your net proceeds from a sale will be about $210,000 +/-. With that capital we can tax defer you into $1-1.5 Million of very well located property — brand new too. And that’s not all, not by a long shot. The problem is, most folks don’t know what to do, where to do it, or who can help them get it done. In what direction should they go?

You’ll increase your annual depreciation by over $40,000 — not an insignificant improvement.

The difference is we’ll take your equity from here to there for a whole bunch less — and with way better marketing. We suspect our new model will end up costing our San Diego sellers about 75-90% less on the listing side of the commission. There’s nothing we can do with the buyer’s agent’s cut.

I mentioned marketing. We think those who have been selling small income props have been getting short changed on the quality of marketing. This has resulted in most of these props not selling, or taking forever. We’re gonna change all that — or at least that’s what it says right here. :)

Back to saving money.

This will result in a savings of well over $10,000 per property at the half million price range.

We’re serious about this.

Are you serious about your retirement plans? Are you seriously counting on San Diego to yield the retirement income you’ll need? If you could safely double, triple, quintuple your retirement income — never mind, silly question. :)

What are you waiting for? Contact me — we’ll sit down and let you know what’s possible. Most San Diego property owners can make surprisingly significant improvements in their capital growth rate, cash flow, tax shelter, and retirement income.

We’ll be standing by — there’s a pretty convenient Contact BawldGuy button on the upper right side of this page. Says ‘Contact BawldGuy’ and everything.

It works too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 11:40 pm and is filed under 1031 Exchanges, Real Estate Investing, Boise, Retirement, Selling Income Property, San Diego Property Owners, Real Estate Brokerage, Real Estate Markets, Cash Flow, Retirement Income, Capital Growth, Dallas, Austin, Kansas City, Palo Alto, Tax Shelter, RE Investment Practice, Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

14 comments to “Brown and Brown Back In San Diego and Starring In Getting Outa Dodge”

Mark A. on March 28th, 2008 at 7:52 am said:

  • Jeff, the situation in Chicago with regard to 2-4 flats (I guess you call them duplexes-fourplexes in your neck of the woods) pretty much resembles the ones in San Diego. I’m curious though, how do you envision San Diegan building owners to get outta Dodge when you simultaneously suggest:

    And no, we’re not gonna be tellin’ folks to buy San Diego investment property. It hasn’t made sense for a few years now.

    Surely, a discounted listing side fee can’t be the answer. Am I missing something?

Robert Coté on March 28th, 2008 at 9:23 am said:

  • Careful oh ye of the shiny pate. If you start making too much sense you’ll run out of people to sell too. The only thing I’d add is that everything you say applies to every coastal area not just San Diego.

    The age of the infrastructure is another important point. Thanks.

Jeff Brown on March 28th, 2008 at 9:57 am said:

  • Mark — Excellent question, and one with which I struggled for quite some time.

    First, I will not be putting my clients into San Diego investment property — READ: WILL NOT.

    There are still many, many brokers/agents in town who think I’m incorrect and will be more than happy to sell my clients’ property to their buyers. I’m pretty much the contrarian around here. It’s my observation 2/3 of the agents in town disagree with my view on this subject.

    We won’t be representing any buyers — with the very rare exception of a condo/home someone wants for a vacation home (outa town buyer) OR for one of their kids/parents to live in.

Jeff Brown on March 28th, 2008 at 10:00 am said:

  • Robert! Good to see you here — haven’t heard from you in awhile.

    I’m with you, and I tell folks ‘the west coast is over’ as an investment in income property’.

    Age? In San Diego a 20 year old property is just good and broken in. :)

Sean Purcell on March 28th, 2008 at 10:39 am said:

  • Jeff,

    Pretty innovative for Japan. ;)

    I do have to agree with Robert:

    start making too much sense you’ll run out of people to sell too

    I know you like to fly under the radar, but ideas like this will have you floating out there more visable than the ReMax balloon.

    Maybe you could write some articles on why San Diego is no good for your clients. Similar to Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack :)

    Al Czervik: Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh? [looks at Judge Smails, who’s wearing the same hat]
    Al Czervik: Oh, it looks good on you though.

BawldGuy on March 28th, 2008 at 12:55 pm said:

  • Thanks for reminding me of that scene, as it’s one of my favorites.

    I’m wondering what a Brown & Brown balloon would look like? Bawld maybe? :)

Robert Coté on March 28th, 2008 at 1:54 pm said:

  • Ballons? As a side note if you ever ride Disney’s California Soarin’ at California adventure I had a hand in a few of the airplanes in the entrance and when you fly over the lemon orchard those are family friends and my house is just at the extreme left left edge.

    Anyway, the thing about California investment/income producing RE is that all the good news is “baked in” and and there is no provision for bad news even now. I see deteriorating pricing power and inexorable cost increases. I cannot think of a single recurring expense that isn’t going or about to go much higher. If I may be permitted an observation; insurance is likely to be the next shoe. Far too low for too long because insurance companies reinvest as part of keeping policies cheaper. That hasn’t worked out of late. What good is a 6.3% rent increase in the face of energy and insurance?

    My Caddyshack quote: “See your future, be your future.”

BawldGuy on March 28th, 2008 at 2:04 pm said:

  • Robert — Agree wholeheartedly. How ’bout future water costs as a California expense about to blow up?

    Also, how ’bout the age factor in California? There’s gonna be a real problem in San Diego due to the number of income properties having their 30th 40th and 50th birthdays. Now the poor owners have to decide between expensive and ongoing repairs, or biting the bullet and either trading outa Dodge, or opening their wallet for a complete rehab.

    That movie was ripe with quotes, and most of them made you miss the next line or two.

Robert Coté on March 28th, 2008 at 2:56 pm said:

  • I’m not worried about water particularly. There is a lot of capacity for the population I expect which is half what the State is scaring us with. Whole blogs could be filled with even things like “wheeling charges” and ordinal rights determination. We got enough water for now and more won’t be that expensive. Besides it is such a small portion of total cost of ownership large rises won’t filter to the bottom line. Sorry, bad pun.

    The age factor is a big issue. A lot of the stock is on its last botox injection and face lift. Looks great until the end. Blame our weather and such. Anything before earthquake standards is going to be tres expensive to rehab and unlikely to be able to command rents that justify complete replacement. I don’t need to tell you my advice is to make it someone else’s problem.

    I didn’t talk about taxes. Angry people do foolish things. Prop 13 and any number of other possible changes are being proposed. My last post talked about taxing RE transfers out of state. nothing but bad news there either.

    One small bit of good news, my eldest is still considering UCSD vs UCLA and is only waiting for Harvard before choosing. One more renter can’t hurt.

Sean Purcell on March 28th, 2008 at 3:04 pm said:

  • Sounds like I should reactivate my General Contractors license!

    BTW, let you son know that UCSD is n a beautiful area whereas UCLA used to be. As for Harvard… all hat and no cattle. Princeton is twice the education and direct from the professors. :)

Sean Purcell on March 28th, 2008 at 3:06 pm said:

  • PS

    Although Harvard would make a good “back-up choice” while he waits to hear from the others.

BawldGuy on March 28th, 2008 at 6:50 pm said:

  • Robert — I’m for UCSD. :)

    The age thing in San Diego is gonna bite income property owners HARD. That’s of course one of the main reasons we’re launching a campaign to get them outa Dodge. :)

    Prop 13? It’s a constitutional amendment, so any change would have to be with a super majority of either the state legislature or the public. Not much chance of that.

    Any politician even giving audible sound to a thought like that will find themselves in a new profession soon thereafter.

    It’s possible they’d try to tax those fleeing the state. After Gov. Davis’s experience with driving business from CA and losing his office because of it, one would think Reps and Senators would think long and hard before trying that approach again. But then that would indicate a thoughtful and rational approach, wouldn’t it? :)

Robert Coté on March 29th, 2008 at 9:16 am said:

  • For the casual listener (reader, I know) it may sound sometimes like we are “talking our book” or just spouting anecdote when we talk about the age of occupied housing units in the region. Here is the data from the 2006 American Community Survey for San Diego County:

    YEAR STRUCTURE BUILT
    2000 or later 9.6%
    1990 to 1999 11.0%
    1980 to 1989 19.6%
    1960 to 1979 38.7%
    1940 to 1959 16.3%
    1939 or earlier 4.8%

    It’s great that we’ve got a nice conversational tone but don’t mistake that for people like Jeff not having the facts to back up the talk.

    With a deficit of ~$18b and that only because of taking on an additional $3.5b in new debt and the term limits unchanged I can easily foresee some significant shennagins in Sacramento starting about the time the figures for income tax receipts are calculated. Residential Prop 13 is as you note sacrosanct but I keep hearing about “splitting the tax rolls.” That could pass and might find rentals on the wrong side of the line. More likely however may be the elimination of investment property interest against regular income. I don’t need to tell you what that would do to investor calculus.

BawldGuy on March 29th, 2008 at 11:28 am said:

  • >More likely however may be the elimination of investment property interest against regular income. I don’t need to tell you what that would do to investor calculus.

    It would have Brown & Brown working around the clock moving folks Outa Dodge.

    That would be an ironic twist, wouldn’t it? Raised expenses gets them off the dime, but 4-5 years of their investments becoming more and more unattractive to the experienced and knowledgeable investor didn’t phase them.

    Go figure.

    Thanks for the age of property for SD backup. For outsiders it was a great eye opener. I doubt San Diegans learned anything though, as so many are on a first name basis with all their repair guys. :)

Leave a Reply

Copyright © 2006-2008 Brown and Brown Investment Properties - All Rights Reserved.
WordPress Theme designed by 1158pm.com