Keys to the Coast with Guest Ty Belford

On this episode of the Keys to the Coast Podcast, I sit down with Tyrone Belford of Legacy One Real Estate to discuss his journey into the real estate industry, the experiences that shaped his career, and the mindset it takes to succeed in today's competitive market.

Ty shares valuable advice for first-time homebuyers, including how to prepare financially, what to do before starting your home search, and the common mistakes that can cost buyers time and money. We also dive into the current real estate market, discussing the latest trends, opportunities, and challenges facing buyers, sellers, and investors in Southwest Florida.

Whether you're purchasing your first home, growing your real estate portfolio, or simply looking to stay informed about the housing market, you'll find plenty of practical tips and expert insights throughout this conversation.

So grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy another informative episode of the Keys to the Coast Podcast with your host, Darrel Peters.   

Looking to purchase a new home?  Contact me, Darrel Peters @ 804-402-0397 or DarrelRPRealtor@gmail.com
Darrel Peters | RealtyOne Group MVP

Looking for a mortgage?  Contact Ty's wife, Pamela Belford at PMB Mortgage Group at 239-601-8686 or Pamela@pmbhomegroup.com and look them up at pmbhomegroup.com.

#swfloridarealestate
#realestate
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#naplesrealtor

Check out my YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/@DarrelPeters_Realtor

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey there, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to another episode of Keys to the Coast Podcast with Daryl Peters. Today I have my special guest, Mr. Ty Belford. Ty, how are you, sir?

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Doing fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Good, good. Good to have you here. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. Yep, glad you can make it out. Uh Ty has been in real estate here now for a little while. He and his wife are in are in the uh in that space. So I wanted to get him out here and uh talk to the audience uh a little bit about what you do and kind of what businesses you have and and you know how real estate's been going for you. So uh without further ado, you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Yeah, okay. I'll I'll I guess I'll reintroduce myself. Um so yeah, so like uh Daryl said, uh my wife and I, we are in the real estate market here in Southwest Florida. Um my wife is actually licensed in Michigan as well as a mortgage uh loan officer. Um short story on how I got into this space. Um I've been entrepreneurial, you know, for a long time, maybe for 20 years since I've had like a nine to five traditional job. And uh because of that, it's it had always been difficult for us to buy a home. So my wife and I, we've been married for uh close to 20 years. And truthfully, we didn't own our first home until about seven years ago. Okay. And that first home that we bought, we actually rented it for almost seven years before being able to buy it. And it was mostly because our financial situation didn't fit in the box. So we made the money, but you know, I didn't have a W-2. Right. You know, you know, so even though she worked at the bank, you know, I won't name the bank, but she worked at a large bank, and many years we tried to get a mortgage and we weren't able to do it. And then um at the last, when right before the market took off, um which was like, was that 2022?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, 2020 to 22, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah, like around 22. The landlord slash owner of the property we were renting kind of put it on us like, you know, you guys gonna have to buy it or you have to get out of here.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

In a last-ditch effort, we reached out to a mortgage broker friend of ours that I went to school with back in Michigan. And they made it happen like in two weeks. It was like uh we closed early, and and so when that happened, it kind of got my wife to thinking about all the people that she had maybe left behind where she was working at the bank she worked at, I'm gonna say the name. But um, where they didn't fit in the box. And most of those people that didn't fit in the box are entrepreneurial. Um, my wife is Hispanic, obviously, I'm African American. A lot of those people were Hispanic or African American. And I don't know if it was survivor's guilt, but it caused her to quit her job, right? So she quit working at the bank, she came to work with me. We have we have another company, a marketing firm that we uh work with. The marketing firm is actually what keeps me having the audacity to just try anything. Right, right. Like tell my wife to quit her job and start, you know, a mortgage company and a real estate company at the same time, pretty much. Uh but long story short, there's purpose in what we do. So we named our real estate company Legacy One Real Estate. That term legacy is like equity. Right. And so you can't, you know, give your child the home that you rent. Right. Or you know, so so we feel like having real estate is a good way to develop legacy or equity, generational wealth. Probably one of the easiest ways. Right. Right. My I I would argue and I would say it as a fact. I believe it is the easiest way to generate wealth, uh, especially generational wealth. Right. So we we have a lot of purpose and passion for what we do out here.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Great, yeah, excellent, excellent. Yeah, that's that's great. So uh as far as real estate, you know, goes uh for the Southwest Florida market, where do you see things going? Uh I know like you you're saying, 21, 22, you know, things really picked up and they slowed down. Um do you think things are starting to pick back up again?

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Or yeah, you know, so this might come across arrogant, but I never felt that it slowed down. And it may be because the timing of me getting into actually selling real estate, it was already what people perceive to be a bad market. Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

Because I've only really been selling real estate for, I've been licensed for like three years, but I've been like focused on selling real estate for about two years, but it really wasn't a good market.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

To most people in their perspective on it. Uh again, I consider it a blessing that we found this passion and purpose within our work. And we all we only do better every month.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Right? And and I think uh the passion and purpose allows us to kind of endure and push through. And also would say that the ignorance of never having the opportunity to say it was ever easy.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

So when you can look back about the good old days when it was easy, today feels tough. We we never had that luxury. Okay, okay. So we just push through. I will say that one of the things that we're doing, and again, it in a divine way, in my opinion, it ties into this legacy, one real estate or the name legacy, the word legacy, is that we've been putting a lot of young people in homes. Like, I mean, this year we've probably closed already this year, maybe six or seven individuals that are between 18 and 24 years old. Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, and and one of the, I'm gonna jump to it, because we we we had a little conversation before we started. Right, right. And I I know one of the last questions he was gonna ask me was what was my best deal? Right. So I'm gonna jump right into my deal. Okay. So my best deal ever, man, is my 21-year-old son, we sold him a home this year. Oh, wow. Yeah, my wife was a mortgage broker. Uh-huh. I was a realtor. None of us collected the commission. Right. But we got my son, my 21-year-old son, into a brand new home. You know, it's out in Alva, it's a two-bedroom, two-bath. We negotiated, we got a great price on it. You know, hurricane, granite, everything. It's small, but it got out all the bells and whistles. That's all he needs. It's all he needs, right? And but we did the math, I don't remember what the number was, but imagine, even you and I, if we had never paid rent, yeah, what would we have? Right. We would have equity, we would have a legacy. So my son, he wasn't the first one. He was he, my son was the last one that's in that range of 18 to 24. Um, second to last. We just closed one a couple weeks ago. But there were so many before my son that we closed, you know, even at the end of last year, that I felt like, man, I gotta do this for my kid. You know, yeah. And uh so not only does it set him up, I think it also sets up, um, I think a lot of people when we make plans for our future as adults, as parents, retirement, 401ks, whatever you got going on, the one thing we don't forget, we don't remember is our our kids and what they got going on.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

And I think a lot of people's savings in their retirement kind of gets sucked away because they still gotta take care of their kids in a way. They might be adults, they might be married, but you still got the grandkids and all that kind of stuff. Right, right, right. You know, and so I feel like setting my son up also helps us in the in the future of when we truly retire, that he has a nest egg no matter what.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Right? He can he can screw all his money up if he won't, but he's paying that mortgage every month and he's creating equity every month, and that's gonna, I think, make our retirement a little bit easier, a little, a lot less stressed.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Right. Right, right. So those 18 to 24 year olds are buying typically like uh smaller homes or condos or town homes.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Not condos, but not town, not condos, not town. Nothing that has um the the problem with condos in Florida right now is the insurance. Yeah. Right. So so there there's some wonderful condos on the market. I listed one for two years and it never sold and it went off the market. Now it's back on the market. I'm not the realtor, I'm kinda happy I'm not. But that that property, I actually sold it the first time and we rehabbed it and I tried to sell it again, it wouldn't sell. Because the HOA, the the property's only like $179,000. But the HOA is $700 a month. Oh wow, wow. Right? And but but these condominiums, because of the insurance and the cost of the insurance, the storms, the issue that we had in Miami where the building collapsed, yeah. That that's created an issue with um I used to sell a lot of properties in uh my first year in the business. I probably sold eight or nine properties at Oasis Grand, right? Um some of them I sold them twice, the same property. Um but the HOA there has gone up to like $2,100 a month. Boy, you know, and so so that so long story short, answer your question, I I wouldn't help them get a condo or anything that has that scenario. And preferably not even anything with HOA, something that is a small home, yeah, you know, you know, under 200,000 or 230,000. We we've been selling a lot of two-bedroom, three baths, but but smaller homes, yeah, like uh a thousand feet to sixteen hundred square feet. Um so the the benefit, it is easier for a child out of high school to get a mortgage than you would think. Because they only have to show one year of employment because the the year in school counts. Oh wow. Yeah. So and and and they haven't screwed their credit up yet. They haven't, right, right, right. And there's all kind of count payment assistance programs for them. Right. Uh specifically. You know, there's a there's a ton of grants and I won't go on the list, but there's grants in this market that pay up to $85,000 total purchase of a home. Oh wow. Right. And they don't put it out there, you won't hear it on the news. Yeah, yeah. But they're out there. If you know the right people, you you you look for it, Google it, it's out there and believe it. One of the issues that we've been having with helping people is they don't believe it. You know? But uh that's why every day we try to create more evidence and help more people so they can start believing all that. Like, you know, I see him doing it. Like if eventually, if I don't help you, if you really want to buy a home and we don't help you do it, we're gonna end up helping one of your friends. And then maybe you believe it, then you know, it's good, it could be for you too. Right. Everybody should own a home in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is, it is, especially at that young age. I mean, it's definitely uh because rents just keep going up and up and up. And and I know your mortgage can change depending on, you know, uh taxes and insurance, but it doesn't go up like rent. Don't go up like rent. Though those landlords can ask anything they want. Whenever they whenever they want it, depending on what the market is. Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Right right now, they're desperate.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

You know, like I got a few rental properties, I got a couple that I'm trying to sell and rent. I got a duplex, I'm trying to sell it and rent it, whatever comes first. Yeah, I got two signs on the rent for sale.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

But you know, that that you know, right now you can find something that you can rent for a decent price.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

But as soon as the market picks back up, which it will, right.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

It'll it that'll increase in a bad situation. So absolutely, yeah. Yeah, that's good because that actually touches on our uh the next section, um advice for home buyers. Um what's your what's your thoughts on um uh new construction versus uh resale homes or you know, pre previously occupied.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

I I for if you're gonna live in it, I I would say I I prefer new construction. I would I would almost always recommend new construction. Um because of the the warranty scenario. Yeah, right. You know, if you normally normally come with appliances, the insurance is gonna be cheaper, the loan is gonna be easier. Yeah, you know, so it's just for a lot of reasons, you know, if there's a certain community that you just want to be in and they're not building new homes, then you don't have a choice, right? So it's you know, it is still location, location, location. You've heard that many times in real estate. So if location is is an issue for you, then you might not have the option to get a new home for what you can afford in some cases. Or some markets, they're just not, they're not building, you know, along with McGregor, you're not gonna find too many brand new homes. Right, right, you know, but people want to live in that area. So, so uh, but if you're looking for, if it's not your forever home, I want to say just consider it, for sure, consider it an investment first. Yeah. Yeah. Look at it on what is what can my what is the potential for my return. Right, right. And and if I can bear it even, you know, especially if you don't have a family yet. Yeah. Yeah. Get in the game.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Like get in, get in the game. You know, um, I won't give you the numbers, but part of our story, the house that we were in it, for six years before we could buy it, the owners of that home, they lived in like, they live in Colorado, right? So they don't really know this market.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Right. So they just knew they paid to build it. Right. So, long story short, we had a whole lot of equity real fast. So when we, because they sold it to us for what it was valued at when we started to rent it.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Oh, I see. I see. Yeah, I got it.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

So the the other part of that story, we only really technically owned it for 11 months. Right, right. Because it was it was so much equity, so we was able to get out of that home, sell it, take that equity, put it into the new home that we that we live in now. That is, it's not our forever home in a sense, uh, because we we at some point we won't have children in the home anymore.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's too big, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

We gotta download, we gotta, you know, it could be the forever home. Right. Uh because there is a a a bedroom downstairs that has a uh a bathroom. So that's important when you get older. Don't say downstairs to go to the bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Oh yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

So I'm looking at that.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

But uh, yeah, cool. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. That those those are some great uh some great stories. Um as far as uh the neighborhood, uh, what should people look for uh in terms of like the neighborhood? Schools, uh golfing, I guess it's more just a matter of preference what they what they want.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Yeah, yeah, right. I think um, again, I'm always about the value proposition to me. Like, like, because and again, I don't know if it's because we named the company Legacy, but I'm still thinking about it on ROI. Like, where am I gonna buy that's gonna give me the best, if I had to liquidate or if I sold it, what's gonna give me the best return? And so I look at the the, you know, when they build these gated communities like Lenar or Poti, you know, they'll have like phases, like first, second, third phase. Right, right. You want to get in there, like you, and you'll see like Lenar, they're building the same community over here and over here. Exactly. So you might see them over here, you know, third phase. Even our home that we live in now, we bought it, we were we were at the third and final phase. We we were like the last six houses built. But it was again right before the market took off. So we still got a great deal. But I still look at my neighbors that live to the left of me, right? And they pay $70,000 less than me. But I looked at my little neighbors to the right, and the last house on my street, I know her, and uh same house and everything, they pay like $80,000 more than we did. Oh. So it's like, and it was just a few months later. So my point is that, you know, find a house that you love. You know, to me, Southwest Florida is not really that big. We don't have great highway systems, right? So it seems kind of big sometimes. But then go and make sure that there's not another development being built that has that same home that's pre-construction or an earlier phase and buy that one.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah, you know what, that's funny you mentioned that because that's exactly what I did. I I looked at um, I looked at a I you know, I were in a Lenar home as well. And uh I originally looked at uh the same home in Babcock Ranch.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Oh yeah, we did too.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Yeah, and uh and and I didn't mind being, you know, way out there um because I'm I'm we're still essentially still out there even where we are now, but because I you know I I work from home at the time, uh remote worker, so uh, you know, working, you know, living anywhere really didn't really matter. But um yeah, I I looked at what you know what I was getting at Babcock versus what I'm what we have where we are now, which is only 10-15 minutes away. Actually, I got a bigger home than what I could afford at Babcock because the the prices were just higher. Yep. Um just based on you know everything, you know, they have the solar farm. I mean, all all that money has to come from somewhere. Right, right. You know, all that infrastructure has to come from somewhere. So um, yeah, I just got a better deal uh where we are uh for a bigger home with a pool. Uh I I couldn't I so if I had settled on Babcock, I would have gotten into a smaller home, still nice, but it wouldn't have been a smaller home with no pool. Right. You know, so uh I'm I'm glad uh and it's funny actually the uh it's funny because I looked at another Lenar community right right here in uh in the city of Fort Myers, right down the street here, actually. And um I said, yeah, it's nice, you know, the the homes are nice, the community's nice, but it's a smaller development. And um the saleswoman said, she said, well, you know, Daryl, she said, we're building this same home out in Buckingham, and it's it's gonna be like 20 grand less. Yeah. I was like, really? I said, Well, the portico? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, Well, where I said, Well, where is Buckingham? That sounds like it's in the middle of nowhere. And it kind of was, you know. It's not too bad.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Depends on which way you go in.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, right, exactly, right, right. And I said, I said, really? I said, oh, okay, well, I'll I'll take a stroll out there, and sure enough, I'm and it was there was still phase one. Yeah, yeah. And and and Lenar was giving those homes away back then. I mean, 15,000 and in closing costs or upgrades, you know, plus they were throwing in some upgrades. I said, I said, well, this is a no-brainer. You know, it's a no-brainer. But um, pivoting over to um the technology side in real estate, yeah, I I know you do the uh the digital marketing and and and um so tell us a little bit about that and how you've been able to tie that into uh your real estate endeavors. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

So the technology piece, and I'm gonna speak mostly about this AI scenario that we're in. And um you you touched on it, so so you know, I own a whole nother company. Real estate for me was supposed to be part-time, passive. Right. But I I took a liking to it because I really feel like I'm making a difference. Because we like, not the other deals don't matter, but I feel like we we have helped people get into homes and never thought they could own a home. They cry and I love that, right? Right. And so I've kind of become a little bit addicted to real estate. But I actually run a marketing agency. And so, uh, and I'm a creative, um, I'm a graphic artist, a web developer, and uh I was very resistant to AI when it first came out, believe it or not. Even though I work in the digital space, I kind of took offense to it because I'm like, it's gonna replace me. Right, right. You know, and uh and to the point where it was maybe a detriment because I think I did get a little behind the curve for someone that is working in the digital space. Because I didn't want to replace my content writers. Because it also meant those people that I was, you know, have working on my team or contracts that I outsourced to that I could no longer outsource to because it just didn't make any sense anymore. Right. So in this digital space, the one of the terms that we say is content is king, you know, and so you know, you know, content creators and influencers, blah, blah, blah. But from an algorithm perspective, content creators, if you have a high frequency, you get recognized. Even traditional life, if you get out and talk to people all day, every day, eventually people are gonna know who you are and what you do. Exactly. So with this AI, now things are so hyperactive, and the speed and the frequency is just impossible to keep up with unless you join the game and get into the AI. Right. Right. And so there's so many, um, I see it every day, I don't call people out on it because we probably gonna start doing it too. But AI, like there's people that are doing walkthroughs in homes and they ain't there. Oh, wow. Like I have the technology, you know? Yeah. And uh I'm working on perfecting it where you can't tell.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

But I like right now, a realtor, if you knew it or not, you can go take a picture, like this, then you can walk through with your camera and take some pictures, still or video, up to you, and then upload it into a few different softwares, and they're not expensive at all. And it'll do a whole walkthrough. You, you, you type the script, you you clone your voice, right? You you your they they clone you with the image, and it will do a full better than you could have done it, it's sad to say. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Wow, yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Your voice, your image, you know, and so um, yeah, I struggle with that, like cloning myself. Yeah. You know, like what can happen? Your wife's gonna leave me from a clone.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

He's gonna talk back, no. Right, right. But yeah, so so that just so the it's it's become kind of necessary to to participate in AI to some degree, to automate some things, to be able to create enough content. If you want to generate business for your um, and we're talking more, I'm talking more as a as a realtor to realtor or but from a from a homeowner perspective, I would say um, even even the staging, like virtual staging.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_02 20:51

Home, homes, that that would that would probably be the first um step for a homeowner that's trying to sell to experience AI, what AI can do for you. Some of these homes are either not furnished or poorly furnished. Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Or they pick horrible pain.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

You know, and so now with AI, I can go in and I can kind of show how it looked without this horrible paint. Right. Or I can switch up the furniture to make it a little bit, you know, there's some disclosure that you have to do when you, you know, do the rendering. Um but you could have it on Zillow with with the with the um with the with the staging, the virtual staging. But you know, I know for sure that I've sold sold properties where I at least got enough showings to be able to sell the showing because of the furniture we had in the staging.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Yeah. You know, uh, and and now we can take that same concept and create video content where it's not only a beautiful staged property, but my beautiful self is walking through explaining how people know. But we can just walk through and say, hey, but it's really not happening. It's all it's all virtual, and it's a lot of people.