Which Host City Has the BEST Housing Market?
It’s February, and you know what that means…Groundhog Day! Just kidding, it’s almost Super Bowl Sunday, so we’re tackling some of the top Super Bowl housing markets to see which ones make for a touchdown investment market and which don’t make the team. If you’ve ever wanted to own a rental property within driving distance of the biggest football game of the year, now’s your chance as we review four Super Bowl host cities and give our takes on their investing fundamentals.
Dave and the panel will look at Tampa, Florida; Los Angeles, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Miami, Florida. One of these markets is an all-panel hit, while others boast distributing metrics that any investment property owner should look out for. We’ll review each market, sharing their metrics, best strategies, and whether our expert panel would invest in them.
Plus, if you want to hear who WE’RE rooting for in Super Bowl LVIII, stick around, but please DON’T bet on it…we’re investing experts, NOT football experts.
Dave:
Hey everyone. Welcome to On The Market. I’m your host, Dave Meyer. Today we’re going to be talking about the big news everyone’s thinking about, which is of course, the Super Bowl. I don’t know, is everyone thinking about it? Do you guys think about this? Well, Kathy, you clearly do because you’re wearing some sort of football uniform today. What jersey is this?
Kathy:
This is actually the Cardinals, and it is Devon Kennard, who is coming out with a BiggerPockets book very soon.
Dave:
That makes a lot of sense.
Kathy:
And his first interview on real estate was on my show, The Real Wealth Show, so I got this.
Dave:
Awesome.
Kathy:
I don’t think he gave you one Dave when he was on this show though.
Dave:
I don’t have one and I’m glad though because I would not look as cool as you do in your Devon Kennard professional jersey right now. If you guys don’t know Devon, he’s an awesome real estate investor, former NFL player. He is been on this show. He’s written a book for BiggerPockets and apparently, friend of Kathy.
Henry:
I don’t follow football too much. I like football, I understand it, but I have beef with grown men in kids’ uniforms. It’s just weird to me. I’ve never been a jersey guy. Just me walking around with some young kid’s last name on my back just always seemed like a weird thing. I just can’t get with the jerseys. It’s weird for me. I don’t know.
Dave:
Is that all sports or just football?
Henry:
All sports. All sports. It’s like I would get a jersey that you customize and put your own name on the back, but I don’t know.
Dave:
You’re just rooting for yourself. You just want to root for Henry.
Henry:
And then it’s just like everybody’s running around talking about, “We got a game. Who do we play tonight?” Sir, you don’t have a game.
Kathy:
When’s the last time you ran around the block?
Henry:
You’re not on the team. They don’t even know you exist. You got to pick your kids up from daycare and you got a chiropractor’s appointment. You don’t have a game.
Dave:
James, you got to jump in here because I know you disagree.
James:
Oh, I’ve invested some serious money into my jersey game. The Super Bowl is my favorite holiday, so it is the number one holiday. Make sure my calendar’s blocked out and I will be always watching, but unfortunately the Seahawks aren’t in there, but I’m heavily invested in Seahawk swag.
Dave:
Well, that’s perfect for you, James, because today we are going to be talking about different markets that have hosted the Super Bowl. So we aren’t going to dive into the teams that are in the game. This show should be coming out I think two or three days before the Super Bowl. We have 49ers and the Chiefs matching up. But today we’re going to talk about a couple of markets that have hosted them recently and we’re going to evaluate each and every one of them about how good they are for investment or what particular strategies might work in one of those markets.
So each of us is going to take one of the last four hosts of the Super Bowl and we’re going to break them down. So James, hopefully this is an appropriate celebration for you. Henry, you could just sit there mad for the whole time, but you do have to participate because we got a game today Henry, you do have to play it. And before we do it, we also have Super Bowl trivia to talk about to see how well you do. And Henry, I’m going to make you go first.
Do you guys know what year the first Super Bowl was, Henry?
Henry:
1941.
Dave:
Kathy?
Kathy:
I think we should toss this to James. I think he’s going to know the answer, but it’s been some decades.
Dave:
That is true. Very vague but true. James?
James:
I don’t know the exact year, but I know it was somewhere in the ’60s because there was two leagues and they merged them back when there was two leagues. I think Henry was close when there was two, but when the NFL came together, I think ’60s, somewhere in there.
Dave:
All right, James, you’re correct. It was 1967, so it was Chiefs versus Packers in 1967.
Kathy:
Guys.
Dave:
That was the first Super Bowl.
Kathy:
I’m older than the Super Bowl.
Dave:
Well, you’ve been around for some decades also, Kathy.
Kathy:
Thank you. Yes.
Dave:
That’s how old you are, some decades. Could be 20.
Kathy:
Thank you.
Dave:
All right, I’ll ask you one more trivia question and spare you. Maybe I’ll just ask James, see if he knows. Which two starting quarterbacks won the Super Bowl with two different teams?
Henry:
Are they currently playing?
James:
No, they’re not. This is easy though because it’s fairly recent.
Henry:
Okay. Okay. Okay.
Kathy:
This is easy. This seems easy. Yep. I even know this one.
Dave:
Okay.
James:
Two of the greatest. You got Tom Brady-
Dave:
And?
James:
-And Peyton Manning, because Peyton Manning won it with the Colts and the Broncos.
Dave:
Bravo. Well done James. That was a good one.
James:
Can we get Tom Brady on the On The Market podcast? I would love to interview Tom Brady.
Dave:
I don’t think we have that kind of pull, man. Kaylin just slacked us and said that she’s going to work on it.
Kathy:
Oh, he’s probably listening right now. Yeah.
Dave:
Yeah, he definitely listens. So we’ll get him on here any day now.
James:
There’s two man crushes I have, Tom Brady and Mark Wahlberg. Those are the two. Mark Wahlberg, if we could get him on too, that would be a great show.
Dave:
Mark Walberg? Okay. Who knew? All right, well we should probably move on from football, even though I’m excited about the Super Bowl. And what’s cool about the Super Bowl is we’re all going to be together for the Super Bowl this year. We’re going to be together in Denver at a Super Bowl party, which will be very fun. And if any of you by the way are in the Denver area the day after, so the 12th, we’re hosting a BiggerPockets meetup in Denver. So if you’re in the Colorado area, James, Henry, Kathy, myself and the other podcast hosts will all be there. So go check that out.
But we’ve talked enough about football, let’s get into real estate after this break.
All right, Kathy, you are the best dressed for this event today by far.
Kathy:
Thank you so much.
Dave:
For those of you who aren’t watching on YouTube, it’s like full shoulder pads. It is a really good outfit right now.
Henry:
Yeah, it’s a legitimate game jersey. It’s not one you go and buy from the store.
Dave:
It’s like a professional game jersey and-
Kathy:
It shows my guns. Look at that.
Dave:
It does. It does show your guns. And because you’re doing so great today, we’re going to have you go first. Tell us about the market you’ve been researching as a recent host of the Super Bowl.
Kathy:
Well, this city had the Super Bowl five times. The population is 3.2 million and the population growth is 1.9%. Unemployment is at a very low 3.1%. Median income is $60,000 approximately, and the median rent is about $2,000. Rent growth has been 2.7%, which seems low, but maybe high considering this past year. And the median home prices, $372,000 with price growth at a whopping 1%. Who knows what city this is?
Dave:
I do because reading it.
Kathy:
In your notes.
Dave:
Yeah, I’m reading it. Yeah, I could see it. It’s Tampa, Florida. I’ll help you out.
Kathy:
Thank you.
Dave:
Tom. Brady’s most recent Super Bowl winning team.
Kathy:
Yeah, so Tampa, Florida, would I invest there? Not only would I. I do, but not specifically in the city. And I think this is something that people should really pay attention to is they’ll see these big city names as a great place to invest, but oftentimes it’s not actually in the city, it’s in the surrounding suburbs where it just gotten too expensive in the city and people move out and jobs move out because they can get cheaper land and so forth. So we do invest, but not in Tampa, just right outside, mainly St. Petersburg, but in and around Tampa.
Dave:
Kathy, actually tell us a little bit about that because a lot of what we talk about here on the show is sort of at the metro level, like the whole metropolitan area, but you’re talking about differentiating it. So when you first started investing in that area, how did you decide that St. Pete was a better option for investing than the downtown area of Tampa?
Kathy:
Well, when I first, first started investing in Tampa, it was in 2009 when the housing market had completely crashed and I was in a different city pretty much every day just trying to pick up the pieces of that mess. There were whole neighborhoods boarded up, Tampa, most of Florida in fact, was one of the areas that got hit the hardest because it was one of the areas where investors went a little nutty and it was pre-demographic growth there. So they had the right idea, they were just too early basically into Florida. So that area went up the highest and then came crashing down the hardest.
So when I went to Tampa, we were finding properties for 20 to $30,000 if you can believe that downtown. But the issue was crime. So in a lot of these areas where if you have a lot of boarded homes, you’d have vagrants, you’d have drug dealers, it completely transformed what had been a middle class neighborhood into a D class neighborhood. So for me, Tampa was, it was just too scary to invest there in those neighborhoods. So we just needed to look out. Part of what I do is finding property managers and teams, people who can help me at the time find those foreclosures, help me, I live in California, I didn’t want to oversee it myself, so find teams. And one of those teams was showing the growth that was happening in St. Petersburg.
The suburban areas tend to have less crime in general, not always, but it was really just the property manager and local team that I found there that gave me the insight on where they’re investing. And again, that’s how I do it When you’re investigating a city, I think going, walking it, talking to people, going to the Starbucks, learning where do people like to live, but most importantly really getting to know the property managers and where they invest because they know all the secrets. They know where who’s calling and who’s wanting to rent.
Dave:
I mean that’s a great situation. I’m sure people who are listening to this now want to invest in Tampa are a little bit jealous. Are there still good options to invest in either Tampa or St. Pete or in that metro area?
James:
I think Tampa is on the upswing for numerous reasons. A, I still believe there’s a lot of relocation coming out of California, coming out of New York, and Tampa is a very hot place for people to move to. The beaches are awesome, the quality of living’s good, and they’re also improving the city. They announced actually in 2023 that the violent crime rate actually went down. And so they’re really working and I know the whole state of Florida is working on getting the crime down, especially the violent crime, but they’re making progress with their policies. And that’s also why it was ranked number eight is one of the best places to live in America as quality of living.
And so I think with these strides and then still that the attractiveness of Florida from a lot of some of these states with very high income tax, I think there’s still a lot of runway there. I personally would move to Tampa if it wasn’t such a long commute flight to Seattle. And so I still think there’s going to be a migration in. Lower taxes, crime decreasing versus if you look at some parts of California it’s increasing, and so quality of living’s going. It’s just coming around. It’s attractive. I would move there for sure.
Dave:
So what would you recommend Kathy to people who are interested in this area? What kind of tactics work right now?
Kathy:
I think in Tampa city, in the city area, I imagine there’s still lots of opportunity to renovate. If you’ve got the skills of James Daynard or Henry Washington and you have teams set up there and can find older properties, fix them up. It’s a growing city for sure. And James wasn’t kidding, those beaches are gorgeous, but prices have been high. I mean prices have gone up quite a lot since 2009, so it is going to be a little bit more expensive versus again, the suburbs.
Dave:
Tampa, I totally agree. I actually remember, I think it was our second show ever, we all picked markets that we really liked and I think Tampa was the one I picked. There’s a lot to like there on the fundamentals level, but you have to adjust tactics and sort of make sure that you’re using the right ones for an expensive type of market. With that, after we’ve talked about Tampa, let’s move on to our second city. And for that, let’s go to James.
James:
All right, the market I’m covering is Los Angeles, one of the biggest cities in our country. It has hosted the Super Bowl eight times. Their new stadium, SoFi Stadium, is absolutely amazing. I’ve been there a few different times. I do know that they did what Los Angeles likes to do and overspend and overbuild. I think they spent what, $4 billion building the stadium, which was four times what they spent in Atlanta. But anyways, population is 12,872,000, and the concern is the population growth has dropped by 0.77% this year. People are starting to leave California. Expensive life, a little bit more crime, and they’re looking elsewhere to make their dollar stretch. Unemployment is at 4.9% and the median home price, and like Kathy mentioned, it depends if you’re in city or out of city because if you’re in LA proper, it’s going to be substantially more. And then the median rent is at $2,858, with rent growth of 2%.
And now typically, and I’ve seen too with LA, it gets steady, rent growth, because of the regulation to where you can only increase it at a certain points. So there’s very steady, but it’s never really jumping that high. LA is just one of those big cities that you can make a lot of money in, invest in, especially I think if you’re a developer or flipper, it’s kind of the best avenues to look at doing there because there’s still a lot of money pouring in, inventory’s still low. And even with I think some of the issues that LA’s having right now, people are still attracted to it. It’s still that, “Hey, we want to move to LA,” that LA dream. And I think it’s good for the short term.
Personally, I would never invest there long term. There is way too much rent control going on. There’s a ton of regulation. And if I was looking at any So Cal market, I would actually pick Orange County over LA because we are seeing some massive growth in Orange County because the crime that’s going on in LA, people are reloading out, they don’t want to move off that coast of California because they can’t find a better spot, but they are going to places that are a little bit more stable. I know in Newport Beach, we’re seeing prices just climb year over year and it’s all that LA money selling and bringing the cash down south.
Dave:
So long story short James, and thank you for sharing all that information, that’s really helpful, would you invest there?
James:
I would not invest there. For me, I want to invest in climates that welcome development and growth. And there are so many regulations just pumping through California on the regular. In addition to the biggest concern is what is happening in the back end is causing massive problems. You can’t even get home insurance. It is near impossible to get home insurance in California. That is a basic need of investors and homeowners. And when you have a basic need that’s being taken off the table, that can cause issues in the market in general. It is crazy what you have to do to get just even that simplest thing, home insurance. If you want to buy a property, there’s so much regulation between what you can do. So if I was forced to invest there, I would flip and do development. I want to be in and out. I don’t want their hands on me for longer than 12 months and get out. But I would definitely pick elsewhere.
And also tying into the football, I have a fundamental problem investing in LA, the LA Rams, or investing in San Francisco, San Francisco 49ers. I just won’t support them.
Kathy:
Hey now.
Henry:
See, this is the problem with sports fanatics is you’ll make financial decisions about your money and wealth based on absolutely nothing that has to do with finances. The fanaticism is insane to me.
Dave:
I grew up in New York and I’m a big Yankees fan and I for work for a while had to move to Boston. And it wasn’t just financial decisions, I was just a miserable person for six months. I just hated every single thing I saw or did for six months. It really does impact your whole life, Henry. You just start committing yourself to this.
Kathy:
And James, those were fighting words about the 49ers. I’m third generation San Franciscan. Not anymore. I did move to LA County, but I mean what a story though. Come on you guys. You have to admit that the 49er Brock Purdy story is amazing. He was third string, he was considered Mr. Irrelevant. Let Brock Purdy completely inspire you to never give up, never give up.
James:
Very relevant, love the guy’s story, but I hope he gets smashed by the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. There’s a lot of players I like individually on the 49ers, but as a whole they get crushed and I’m happy.
Dave:
Well, I don’t think anyone here is standing up for LA as an investing market. There’s a lot, like James said. Personally, I’ve never spent a lot of time in LA but it does seem like the stats don’t seem overly encouraging.
All right, we are going to take a quick break. Just to remind everyone, we talked about Tampa, which everyone did seem to think had strong fundamentals. Talked about LA next, which probably overpriced. James talked about regulations that probably weren’t good for investing. And after this, I will share the market that I’m going to be sharing, and so will Henry.
Welcome back everyone. Now for our third market, I’ll be sharing, so happy I get this city, it is one of my favorite cities in the country, the world. I love visiting this city so much. It has maybe the best sandwich I’ve ever had in my whole life, and that is not an exaggeration. It is New Orleans, Louisiana, and I know I don’t know how to say it correctly. I’m from the Northeast, I’m proud, I’m sorry. But New Orleans, Louisiana has hosted the Super Bowl a whopping 10 times. It has a large population but it is declining. So that is something that I personally think of as a red flag when I invest anywhere is a population that’s declining. It’s not necessarily something that you can’t invest in, but it’s something that I worry about. Would any of you invest somewhere where the population is declining?
Kathy:
I have. I wouldn’t do it again. What about you Henry?
Henry:
It depends on how long. If it’s a decline, I’m seeing a decline over five years history, then probably not. But if it’s a blip on the radar, then I probably wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Dave:
That’s a good point, Henry, because I wonder how much of it is COVID and migration patterns changed so much, and some of them are proving and looking like they’re permanent, or at least not permanent, but the trends are enduring past just the pandemic. But some of them are starting to reverse. So I do think you probably do want to follow Henry’s advice and look a little bit broader there.
But the one thing that does tend to happen with lower population, lower growth cities is oftentimes you find that there is better cashflow potential. And that stood out to me when I looked at some of the stats here about New Orleans is that the rent to price ratio is about 0.7. That is more than double what it was in LA and significantly higher than it was in Tampa. And so it does allow for interesting cashflow opportunities, but on the other hand it’s experiencing one of the biggest corrections in the entire country with prices dropping over 8% last year. So to me, this is a little bit risky, especially it’s a market I’ve visited and enjoy visiting but don’t know much about the fundamentals. I would probably stay away from this until we saw some sort of bottoming of the market because an 8% drop, that is significant. That’s not a one-year correction. That is something that could really hurt if you were on the wrong end of that decline. Any of you have any thoughts on New Orleans?
Henry:
Well, I think New Orleans as a city is amazing. It’s probably my second favorite city in the country. I think what I want to say about all of these markets is yes, we’re giving our opinion on whether we would invest there or not, but there are investment strategies that would work in all of these markets. In terms of New Orleans, I think you’re 100% right. If you’re looking for a market where you can get cash flow, maybe you live there, it’s in your backyard, you’ve got some sort of advantage and understanding the neighborhoods and having boots on the ground and a team you can build, it’s a decent market for cashflow. New Orleans isn’t going away tomorrow because it’s had population decline, right? It’s around. It’s going to be around. And if you understand the market and you understand how to find deals, I think you can make great cash flow.
Are you getting appreciation right now? No. It’s got negative price growth, but I don’t know that that’s going to last forever as the interest rates come down. But when you look at something like Tampa, what we talked about earlier, you can almost get the best of both worlds in Tampa because of the growth that that market is seeing and because you have positive population growth and you have affordable home pricing, right? You’re at 372 there for median home price, which means you can probably go in there, find an off market deal and get it to cash flow because the median rents are $2,000. Now is going to cash flow a ton? No, probably not. So you can probably get cash flow and appreciation in Tampa if you look hard enough, where Los Angeles, you can’t hold anything there, right? You’re not going to get cash flow, but the margins on flips are amazing.
You can flip one house in California and make what it would take me like five flips to make because of the margins are so large because the home prices are so much more there. But you’ve got an inventory problem, you’ve got 12 to 13 million people, you’re going to be able to sell those homes so you can get great margins if you’re turning money. So there’s strategies that work everywhere. If you’re going to turn money, like I said, you can do a flip. I get jealous every time I see Tareq flip a house out there and make like $250,000 and I’m like that’s six flips for me. So there is a strategy that works in all of these.
In terms of New Orleans, yeah, I think you got to go for cash flow and I think you have to understand the market because another thing that’s going to play in New Orleans is crime, and so you got to understand where am I buying these homes? What’s the crime going to be like? And factor that into your strategy, your purchase price. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t invest in an area where there’s crime. I’m saying A, you got to be built for that, and B, you got to plan it into your numbers. It’s like Walmart. You think Walmart doesn’t plan for stuff to get stolen from stores? They plan it into their numbers when they’re building out stores and figuring out where they’re going to go. So you just have to understand those markets.
Kathy:
Henry, I’m just curious because you said you’d have to do five or six flips to make that same kind of money. Do you think it takes the same kind of money and time and you’re just doing one big flip five different ways and maybe that’s better diversification?
Henry:
I’d say the timeframe is no different really. A big renovation is a big renovation. It takes the same amount of time if you’ve got your teams and your contractors in place. I think the difference is the risk involved when you’re flipping in LA because of the holding costs. So if I’m doing two flips in LA and I paid $600,000 for each one of those houses and I have a 12% interest only loan from James Daynard because he charges me a whole lot of money to do that, then I’m going to have to get them things turned fast or else I’m paying James a lot of my profits.
Dave:
Then James is making the money, not you.
James:
But it may be expenses Henry, but think of your overall cash on cash return. It’s infinite.
Henry:
I keep coming back to you, so it must be good.
James:
And we are dependable. I want to touch on New Orleans real quick because it is an awesome city. I love it. It’s food, the culture, the people. An amazing, amazing city. I think it has just infrastructure problems. I think like what Henry said is really important. You can invest in any market, whether it’s LA, New Orleans, you just want to adjust your strategy. The good thing about New Orleans on flipping is you can get real high cash on cash returns. Entry level price is small. You can get construction loans. They’re usually cheaper, bigger fixture properties. And so you can lever more when you get construction loans so that the amount you’re putting down on a cheaper property at the big rehab, your cash on cash return is going to hit like 50, 60%. And it might not be the same amount of profit, but the velocity in your money is always going to keep moving and growing. And so it’s good for that.
My concern with New Orleans is they have police force problems. It’s a little bit of a lawless city when you go there. Again, I love the city, but they got some infrastructure problems and for me, I’m already an active investor in a market that has crime problems. I don’t want to go into another one. It does cause issues, cause infrastructure, and pick and choose. I’d rather balance into a safer market at that point.
Dave:
Makes sense. All right, well thank you all for sharing your input. I’m going to share one last piece of advice. If you’re in New Orleans, go to a restaurant called Cochon Butcher and get the sandwich called Le Pig Mac. It’s like a high end pig mac with really good pork patties. It is truly one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had in my whole heart. Go check that out. This is more important to me than real estate. Henry, let’s round it out with our last market. What do you have for us?
Henry:
All right, last market of the show is Miami. Miami, Florida hosted the Super Bowl 11 times. So what about Miami? What I like about Miami here is average home price $473,000, but they’ve seen a 5.9% increase in pricing over the past year. So we’re going up in Miami in terms of values. The sale to list price ratio in Miami is 97.3%, which means things are getting listed and selling for just a little under what they’re getting listed for, which means people are buying the homes there, they’re in demand. And that is because Miami has a very rapidly growing international base that is moving there. You’ve got lots of people moving there from other countries. You’ve got a lot of people moving there, especially from Canada right now. And so you’ve got people who are always migrating into and landing in Miami and they’re buying homes. I think I read here that the demand for homes around that $1 million price point is pretty high, so people with a lot of money tend to move here and they’re wanting to buy these nicer homes.
So in terms of median rent, you’ve got median grant and about $2,700, so just under $3,000 a month for median rent. You got median income at $77,000 and your median home price is around $472,000. So Miami, I think it has some decent fundamentals. You’ve got $472,000 for the average home price, you got about $2,700 for the median rent. So to me that tells me if I can find a decent enough deal, I can probably cash flow a property, maybe break even more likely to break even than cashflow. So not a super great cash flow market, but you’ve got demand there. And I think what you really have here is a market where short-term rentals and midterm rentals would probably do well as long as the rules would allow for you to be able to do that in the different areas around Miami because it is such a tourist destination. You’ve got people always traveling there to go and have a good time.
And so I think we’ve kind of seen markets where each one of the popular real estate strategies would work. I think this is a short-term rental market where you can probably get something to pretty well as a short-term and midterm rental. It’s a flip market. You can make good profits flipping deals here because you’ve got people who want those million dollar homes. And so you could go buy a distressed property for four or five, 600,000, put a couple hundred into it and sell it for over a million because you got demand there. And if you want cash flow, you’re probably going to have to work really, really hard to find a good deal.
Kathy:
Here’s what confused me about Miami. I love Miami. I love to visit. I love Miami Beach and ride my bike there along the beach whenever I get to go there for conferences. So great city. What’s confusing to me is that I think President Biden said that the biggest crisis we have today is climate change, which is there’s a lot of crises, but you hear this and that yet companies are flocking to Miami. I would think that Miami would be number one in climate change crisis potentially, but that city has grown like crazy. So apparently people aren’t paying attention to that or they don’t agree with Biden in that. But that concerns me because it seems like Miami would be right in direct line of hurricanes and then they’ve been saying for years that city’s sinking into the ocean. So I don’t know, maybe it’s not as bad as they say, but that to me is the biggest concern and that probably reflects in the insurance.
James:
And Miami’s insurance has increased dramatically and that’s what makes it hard to be a buy and hold investor there. It’s 31% higher than the national average and is climbing every year, and it’s also another tough state to get insurance in. And so the cash flow is a little bit tight in that market. And then when you start stacking on these insurance costs and the property taxes that are increasing because the market is moving up, it does make it hard to be a buy and hold investor. I do like the fundamentals of quality living, the lower taxes, the attractiveness of the investor, but these costs are a real issue for investors.
Henry:
I just did a quick search and what I’m seeing here is the average cost for a policy with a $300,000 dwelling coverage is approximately $3,500 per year, which is 56% higher than the Florida average and 104% higher than the national average. That’s crazy.
Dave:
104% higher.
Henry:
That’s insane.
Dave:
Okay. I’ve heard from a couple of real estate investors who I know who are trying to get out of Florida buy and hold just because the costs just aren’t worth the taxes and the expenses. It’s really interesting because people tend to want to go to Florida because there’s no state income tax, but states need to raise money somehow. And so they often do that through property taxes and that, especially if you’re an out-of-state investor, disproportionately impacts you negatively, right? Because you don’t get the benefit of no income tax as much as you would if you live there, but you have to pay higher property taxes. Happens in Texas too. So it’s just something that you have to think about if you’re going to consider investing in one of these markets.
Kathy:
Dave, I’m so glad you brought that up because people do give California a hard time. And one thing that we actually do have in our favor is really low property taxes and they stay there. They only go up very small amounts every year. So I do have two short-term rentals in the Los Angeles County area and they’ve performed really well. But there are regulations that people need to be aware of when it comes to short-term rentals and make sure you follow them. But property, I mean our property taxes are 0.07% in Los Angeles County. That’s really low.
Henry:
That’s super low.
Dave:
Yeah. The national average for property tax is about 1% just for record, so 0.7 in California would be below. Just as a benchmark, in Texas it’s 2%. So it’s double that. And that might not sound like a lot, but it can really add up.
Henry:
Oh boy.
Kathy:
And some areas are 3% or 4%, but our insurance in California definitely trumps everyone, even Florida. It’s worse here in California.
Dave:
All right, before we get out of here, I need to know your picks. James, since you’re the only qualified person here, who do you think?
James:
You got to go Chiefs. I fundamentally cannot root for the Niners.
Kathy:
Hey, hey, hey now.
James:
Go Mahomes.
Dave:
All right. Kathy’s a homer, so we already know this one.
Kathy:
Listen, Brock Purdy, he’s the age of my daughter. How can you not love him? You just got to love him. He’s got to … Come on.
Dave:
I’m not really following that logic.
Henry:
Yeah, I don’t know if I’m following either logic.
Kathy:
I mean, okay, so Taylor Swift, I do want to see Taylor Swift in the audience too. So you know what? All good. Both teams, they should both win either way. Let’s make it a tie.
Dave:
One of my buddies is a big Chiefs fan, so I’ll just say Chiefs. What about you, Henry?
Henry:
Well, unlike these two people, I’m actually going to make a prediction based on the football skill that’s involved in playing this game. James won’t pick the 49ers because he can’t, emotionally can’t, and Kathy thinks Brock Purdy is pretty. So I just think Kansas City is the better team. I think Patrick Mahomes is playing phenomenally.
Dave:
So good.
Henry:
He’s one of the best quarterbacks we’ve seen play the game of football in a long time. Yes, you look at some of the greats and I think when it’s all said and done, he’ll be up there with some of the greats. It’s just incredible to watch what he can do with a football. And I think that because he’s dating Taylor Swift, his football skill has been downplayed. So Travis-
Dave:
He’s not dating Taylor Swift. Travis Kelce is dating Taylor Swift.
Henry:
No, I’m talking about … No, that’s where I was going. I transitioned. Because he’s dating Taylor Swift, his football skills have been downplayed, but Travis Kelce is incredible and has been playing phenomenal. I mean look, I grew up a Raiders fan, so I shouldn’t even be allowed to say this, but Kansas City is going to win and it’s pretty cool watching how well they’ve been playing.
Dave:
All right, great. Well, thank you for your predictions, your insights, your real estate discussion, and all the nonsense that went on in the show. It was a lot of fun. Thank you all so much for listening and we appreciate it. I hope you all enjoy your Super Bowl festivities if you’re watching. I know not everyone even likes watching it. To be honest, this will be my first time watching it in like three or four years, but I’m excited to do it with all of you. Again, if anyone’s in the Denver area on the 12th, we’re having a meetup, make sure to just Google that. You can find that on BiggerPockets. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you for the next episode of On The Market.
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