Data Driven Real Estate Podcast #39 – Land Investing and Sales with Jeff Tumbarello DDRE#39

Jeff Tumbarello is the Broker/Owner of Steelbridge Realty LLC. He’s a data-driven expert in Southwest Florida that has survived hurricanes, a foreclosure crisis, and the seasonal extremes in Florida real estate. Jeff has performed market metrics and product modeling for capital markets and several private equity firms. Land acquisition, investing, and sales is his specialty in Southwest Florida where he also runs the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investor Association.

This week, Jeff shares how the land acquisition game has changed since the Great Recession, how his team consistently markets to and closes land deals, the data they use to do so, and his predictions on if Florida's housing marketing will remain hot.

Get your questions answered on the upcoming show by posting your questions in our community: https://bit.ly/ddre-39

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Show Topics

00:00​ The Data Driven Real Estate Podcast Welcomes Jeff Tumbarello of Steelbridge Realty LLC

‍03:15​ How Jeff got started in real estate

‍05:57​ What is a real estate investor association

‍10:15​ What does a typical land investment look like in Florida?

‍18:49​ Jeff talked about what happened to the market after hurricane Charlie and how investors survived

‍25:47​ Is land banking a key strategy?

‍27:11​ The return on investment when it comes to land

‍29:25​ What type of leads are targeted

‍31:06​ What are key channels for marketing to potential land sellers

‍38:18​ Why investors should blame or be worried about iBuyers or proptech

‍40:24​ What makes a perfect team for land acquisition and sales?

‍48:58​ What technologies are used to help Jeff's land acquisition and sales teams market and close deals

‍53:10​ Jeff's predictions about the red-hot housing market in Florida

Show Transcript

Aaron Norris  0:06  

Welcome back to the Data Driven Real Estate podcast, the podcast for real estate professionals dedicated to driving business using data. I'm Aaron Norris along with Sean O'Toole with PropertyRadar and this is episode 39. This week we have Jeff Tumbarello. He is the broker owner of Steelbridge Realty LLC. He's a data-driven real estate expert out of the Southwest Florida market and even runs the local Southwest Florida Real Estate Investors Association. He's been through everything from massive hurricanes to a huge foreclosure crisis and somehow has landed on the data-driven world of land. You will not want to miss this week. Welcome back to the Data Driven Real Estate podcast we are really excited to have Jeff Tumbarello with Steelbridge Realty LLC and he's been a longtime real estate investor out of Southwest Florida who survived hurricanes and the foreclosure crisis, we're gonna get into a lot of different things today. So, Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff Tumbarello  0:56  

Yeah, it's the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investors Association. I can't imagine trying to herd 10,000 real estate agents around.

Aaron Norris  1:05  

You know what, that is actually a really great place to start, I would like to say that I know you're data driven, you really like data. And I've found Florida to be a very difficult place to collect data specifically in the real estate, the realtor space, because somehow the state and the, and the different MLS has just haven't worked together over the year, and it's- over the years, and it's been really difficult to get long-term trends is that am I seeing that correctly?

Jeff Tumbarello  1:29  

For now, I sat on a stats committee. That was fun. And the board of realtors, silly committee I've ever sat on, you know, because I just don't, I just, I'm not inspired by 'let me go volunteer at a trade organization', if that makes any sense. But the, it was a good, it was a good committee. There's some smart people on it. And far has started the Florida Association of Realtors now can kind of conglomerate your, can- can- can- gramma. I can't even say it.

Conglomerate.

Everything together and they're coming up with their own numbers. And while I can't validate their numbers for the whole state, my database for Lee County's pretty amazing. I have a really nice spreadsheet I built. I dumped from Excel from the MLS into that and that's how I generate my reports and views and everything. And I mean, there's some minor, very, very minor differences, but I may have an error they there's always going to be some kind of nobody's ever going to be perfect on it, maybe there maybe me. It's probably both. But---

Sean O'Toole  2:29  

Yeah, what is the sale? Right? Like, sometimes even that stuff, and you know, the MLS is typically only have the listed sales, not the public record sales. So, yeah, there's a lot of differences.

Jeff Tumbarello  2:42  

Yeah. Well, far they're putting out some statewide numbers that are pretty good, but for the most part, it's county by county. So, yeah, it's irony, public records here is pretty amazing to get at. It's a very easy place to get data. But it's, it you know, the hard part is actually doing something with the data.

Sean O'Toole  3:03  

Making it actionable.

Jeff Tumbarello  3:05  

Yeah.

Aaron Norris  3:07  

Well, let's talk a little bit about the niche. Let's go forward to what you're doing today and maybe figure out how even landed in Florida and how it's changed?

Jeff Tumbarello  3:15  

Florida is interesting. I've been investing since, god 90? 98? I was in the mortgage business and I was doing loans for an investor. And I realized that his proceeds on the HUD were a lot more than my, my broker commission. So, I kind of really liked, I really liked his part of the HUD not mine. I felt like I did more than he did, trying to get these people approved with all these crazy subprime loans and as opposed to just yelling at the handyman to make sure he painted everything. And so, I, in one day, I bought five flips with hard money. And I started on the lease...

Sean O'Toole  3:52  

That was your first day? You did five properties?

Jeff Tumbarello  3:55  

Yes, sir. I bought five in one day with hard money. So, and the easiest rehab was the first because we you know, needed to turn something. So, started from there. And that entity I think I did like 60.

Sean O'Toole  4:07  

Okay.

Jeff Tumbarello  4:08  

And, you know, and had rentals and did all that. But '04 I think we founded the Southwest Florida REIA. We were going to the Broward and Dade clubs, because it was just fun. And we wanted to have the meetings here. And we actually, I never forget, it was Woody's barbecue had a private room and we had to commit to 25 Chicken dinners. So, everybody kind of had to order food. So, there was four of us doing it. So, I'm like worst case scenario. We each have to buy six chicken dinners and nobody shows up. It's not the end of the world. You know, 'Hey, kids are going to eat chicken for two days'. So, but we actually have about 60 people that came to the first meeting we had Bob Hunter who founded the Dade REIA, came over and just talked about investing and we've been going with that ever since. Currently, I mean, I own a retail brokerage. I invest in some stuff personally, I'm real big on notes and defaulted notes and originating notes on seller held stuff. And we have a business called the Florida Land Team right now, where I think we've done, I think last year in the pandemic, we did probably 170 lots. And it's really taken off like a rocket now. And I think we've got three virtual assistants and six or seven people in the states all working remotely either closers or transaction coordinators, or it's become like it started out as a, we planned it hung over New Year's Day, last year. We met at my office and everybody was basically needing a Bloody Mary. And we kind of said, let's try this. And we tried it. And then we actually did some things and made some money. And we've just kept scaling it. And every time we scale it, it's just react.

Sean O'Toole  5:57  

Gets better. That's great. I want to jump into that stuff a lot. But let's close out. We mentioned REIA a few times. I don't know that everybody listening knows what a REIA is, and Real Estate Investors Association. And so, it's a local group of investors. And a lot of times these are run like meetups, right? People come and meet monthly?

Jeff Tumbarello  6:20  

We meet twice a month we have the nighttime meeting, is the third Wednesday, the daytime meeting, we meet for lunch the first Wednesday, we don't do information, product sales. For the most, I mean, it's just we mainly it's just real world stuff. Our last meeting was an attorney discussing, you know, specific performance, what to do when your seller refuses to close. And we kind of just do a lot of topics like that. It's a lot of fun actually, I think our membership is about 260 members. And collectively, they probably own, because we actually tracked this metric in Lee County. And I think it's like, oh, like 4000 properties, believe it or not, it's pretty...

Sean O'Toole  7:01  

Wow.

Jeff Tumbarello  7:02  

Yeah.

Sean O'Toole  7:02  

So, you got a very, you got a very seasoned group. I know a lot of the REIAs attract newbies and people who want to learn and that kind of stuff, and a handful of experienced folks, but a lot of it is new folks. But it sounds like you have a very seasoned group.

Jeff Tumbarello  7:16  

I would love to have more newbies at the meetings, because then I can pull them in on my land wholesaling, because I need talent terribly.

Sean O'Toole  7:22  

Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, we always tell right, the new folks that show up that one of the things they should do is go find a mentor. And there's two places we recommend doing that. One is the REIAs and the other, a lot of you're foreclosure sales are online, our foreclosure sales are all still at the courthouse steps. We're like, go down to the foreclosure sales, because you'll meet the guys that paid cash buy without title insurance, you know, buy the house, you know, they they know how to do the whole deal. Like go meet and talk to those guys see if you can't get one of them to mentor you. But the REIAs are the other great place.

Jeff Tumbarello  7:56  

I missed the foreclosure sales with the courthouse. Those are so much fun.

Sean O'Toole  8:00  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  8:01  

You'd bid up somebody and then they'd come stand next to you and try and step on your foot. And I honestly think that gamesmanship is why our county push so hard to get them online.

Sean O'Toole  8:12  

Yeah, yeah. No, I've seen people throw shoes at people. And...

Jeff Tumbarello  8:18  

It got to the point where you just all say, All right, everybody would nod, we'll partner up the three of us stop. I'd rather make a third of the money than no money just to, just to Yeah.

Sean O'Toole  8:29  

And some of the sales people were bringing cell phones. So, then guys started bringing illegal cell phone jammers to keep people from getting the bids. Yeah, no, it got, it got pretty nuts.

Aaron Norris  8:40  

I always warn people, that's one of the hardest strategies, but I have not heard that little tidbit. Wow.

Sean O'Toole  8:47  

No, it's like a...

Jeff Tumbarello  8:48  

I got to the point. If I liked the house, I would find this typically, if a neighbor had a little kid, I would tell the little kid, if you write down like what they look like when people came, I'll give you $5 and I would have, nowadays would be even better with the cell phones. You know, I'll give you $5 to take a picture of their car and who is walking around the house so you can see who your competition is. I mean, we even went so far when the game cameras came off for hunting, we're thinking about finding somewhere to put a hunting game camera on the really hot foreclosure coming up so that you can go grab the data and see who you're going to be bidding against.

Sean O'Toole  9:22  

Yeah, yeah. That's funny. That is definitely the toughest way to invest. But it's all online down there. Anyways...

Jeff Tumbarello  9:30  

A lot of risk, too.

Sean O'Toole  9:32  

Lot of risk.

Jeff Tumbarello  9:32  

So much risk in that.

Sean O'Toole  9:33  

Yeah, no, no, it's a I think it attracts some of the folks that drax because it's like legal gambling, right. And it has all the high stakes poker kind of stuff going on with it. But back to the REIA, just you wrote a pretty good one in Southwest Florida. We'll get information about that for folks at the end so that they can find you and you can get more newbies showing up.

Aaron Norris  9:55  

Hopefully.

Sean O'Toole  9:56  

Let's jump back to you know. Sounds like you're scaling and really making it happen. How many deals are you guys do in a year?

Jeff Tumbarello  10:06  

We're looking at this year, we are probably, if we continue at the current pace, we'll be 300.

Sean O'Toole  10:15  

What's a typical, tell me what a typical deal looks like walk us through that.

Jeff Tumbarello  10:20  

It's changed a lot, because the markets changing a lot. Last year, we were doing a lot of, because we have our own funds. So, we close on some, we assign some. And we would, we would, last year, we were tight margins, the market was pretty well defined markets really doing kind of what I call some open field running right now. And so, we're at the point where I'm closing on almost everything, because the margins are just that much better than and then the time it takes to close the margins are going up even more. Case example, we had a five pack a lot and they kind of get problematic, because you'll have like three lots of a developer says hey, assigned to me, and then there's always the other two, and it's kind of like, you know, you know, the two people that nobody wants to dance with at the club, then, you know, somebody does a dance with them and nobody dances so we, we always end up closing on them. And this is how much our market has come up. We were $5200, no $5,750 was the way it came out each lot. I had I'm comped that we were going to list them at $10k. So, we were really happy with just on the two bad lots of the five lot package to just make a couple grand after cost in and out. We were thrilled. I just put one pending for $18,900.

Sean O'Toole  11:37  

Wow.

Jeff Tumbarello  11:38  

So, I've got another one listed at $19,900 and we'll probably end up getting $17,000 for it. So, we're at the point where we've shifted to where I'm now closing on almost everything because the market is so good. And the time it takes the title agent to track down the correct deed, the lots went out three grand. Well, that is a kind of a red flag a little bit not a bad thing, but just the thing. You know, the markets got a lot of momentum right now. So, we're shifting to where we're realizing every lot we didn't close on we probably left two to $5,000 on the table.

Sean O'Toole  12:13  

Yeah.

Aaron Norris  12:14  

Jeff-

Sean O'Toole  12:16  

Oh sorry. I'm just gonna ask what the mix of land, single family residential...

Jeff Tumbarello  12:21  

It's all land... All we do is land.

Sean O'Toole  12:25  

Okay, great.

Jeff Tumbarello  12:26  

And I've done pretty much everything there is to do in real estate. And once you have worked in land, you will never want to touch an improved property again. Because you know, there's no plumbing, there's no, it's, you know, yeah, you've got environmental concerns, you got vegetation, you got elevation. But you know, I've never ripped out a bush and had the repipe a lot. Every time I tear out a piece of drywall, I'm fixing something else. You know, it's just the way the way houses are. I got big rehab going right now on the property.

Sean O'Toole  12:59  

Peeling the onion, and there's always something else underneath. Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  13:03  

Yeah. So, that land is, I call it print and $10,000 bills, once you find it right, the key is you've got to have the exit. So, it's like everything else. You know, you got to buy it, right. But you better have a predefined exit, whatever you're doing.

Aaron Norris  13:17  

So, you're cultivating relationships with your end buyer. So, you've got a list of buyers going after this stuff?

Jeff Tumbarello  13:22  

We'll literally, three buyers.

Aaron Norris  13:25  

Wow.

Jeff Tumbarello  13:30  

....One guy who flips them to somebody else, but he makes my life easy. So, I know, we're probably leaving a little on the table with this guy. But he buys everything we put in front of him and he closes and you know, he gets to make a little money too. And that's great, so...

Sean O'Toole  13:45  

Yeah. That was one thing I found, you know, flipping was, you know, sooner or later too, you just run out of capital at times, right? And so, having a good, a good list of folks that you can like hand stuff off to. And this is one thing I think a lot of folks miss, right? So, just keep the math simple. You buy a lot for $10,000. You sell it for 20. And let's just assume there's no cost, right? If you make $10 grand, so really good return on investment. But if that takes you a year, right, it's a very different investment. It's, it's actually a lower return than if you make $1,000 in one day.

Aaron Norris  14:24  

Yep.

Jeff Tumbarello  14:25  

We probably are still assigning some. And I've got some markets that they're I mean, we're working. I'm in Lee County, which is Fort Myers. And we're working Palm Bay. We're working Northport. We've even doing some stuff in Ocala. We're actually getting ready to get Tad's just got a task that we're going to go to three other states and start getting for a couple other clients. Yeah, we're gonna have to set up some more land teams. I guess we're going to be the main land team or something that set up some new companies but our platforms early robust were really a tech platform. That gets pointed at land is really what we are. But you are, the assignments or, are your bread and butter in this game but the key is, is you know you need real people to close and honestly the hardest part lately is keeping the sellers in the game.

Sean O'Toole  15:17  

Right.

Jeff Tumbarello  15:18  

They've got a million...

Sean O'Toole  15:19  

..they start seeing value go up and.

Jeff Tumbarello  15:21  

Yeah, we're actually filing a specific performance lawsuit from a guy that refused to close and normally I would not do that. But this was just so egregious and there's a pretty big spread in the lot that we're actually, we just wrote the attorney the check and go get him, dude.

Aaron Norris  15:39  

There's a lot of nuance in the market. I mean, the areas that you're talking about that's that's huge. And there's so many environmental things that you have to know and some of these lots have been passed down from generation to generation that's, that's some good use of some public records. Can you talk a little bit about how difficult...

Jeff Tumbarello  15:54  

You want to talk about the coolest we just picked up in Cape Coral and they developed it they had they call them skinnies because it's an 80 by 125 lot to build and for God knows what reason they sold a bunch of 40 by 125s. So, you have people that bought these lots that aren't buildable because every time you see a Cape Coral lot, it'll be lots five and six. Well there's some that are just last five, and you get people out of state that don't know any better and they don't realize they're not buying a buildable lot because it's not wide enough. Nobody has a 20 foot wide floor plan that the city will approve to go on it someday maybe even not yet. We actually data mine the skinny lots. And we found two side by side. We're about to sell they'll offer 35 grand we're in it for 15 because it took us 10 days to match the two up together.

Sean O'Toole  16:46  

Yeah, so neither person had a buildable lot but get the two and you're good.

Jeff Tumbarello  16:50  

And then the funny there was skinnies on either side of these and it once we combined ours they're, they're done, 'cause you know they're, unless one of the lots on the either side was to buy an absorb it in but they'll never build on them and one had so many liens. It couldn't, we couldn't buy it. And the other one was the I-know-what-I-got seller. So, when we're like 'Ma'am, once we combine these lots you're done.' You know, you're never going to build on this lot. But you know, maybe we could do something here. It's a win-win for everybody. And it was the I know what I got you a you know, okay, you win. So, we combine the lots and now she's got this skinny lot she'll never build on so at some point, whoever builds on that lot. And honestly, you have kind of a free 40-foot parking lot next door that no one's ever going to build on. Not that legally you can park on their land, you know, but when you have a pool party on Saturday, you can probably stick a couple cars on it.

Sean O'Toole  17:41  

Place to keep the boat. I actually I had a lot next door to me that I tried for years to acquire and couldn't but it was just it was vacant. And but I would I actually planted seeds. I put seeds for grass and watered it because it's all weeds and terrible that made it like a big extra lawn.

Jeff Tumbarello  18:01  

Yeah, I have a, I live on the water and across the street from me as a half acre lot. That's just a lot that's wooded up and I call it my parking lot. And I actually keep the trees knocked down and mow it and because when you know when we have a pool party, I'll put four or five cars on there for I feel like I shouldn't be like sending them a bill for my services, but I'm trying to buy it but...

Sean O'Toole  18:23  

Or jet for rent.

Jeff Tumbarello  18:24  

Yeah, they paid 90 grand for and like '04 and it's worth 25 today. I'll buy it.

Aaron Norris  18:33  

I definitely want to go back. You said you started the club in 2004. And hurricane Charley happened in 2004. Correct?

Jeff Tumbarello  18:40  

Yeah. Yeah, I actually think it was November of '03 was our first meeting, believe it or not.

Okay. So...

You were like eight, I think?

Aaron Norris  18:49  

I would love to cover that really quick because when a hurricane happened, something very unusual happened in that market. Can you talk a little bit about what you experienced after that happened? It was a category four and it hit the market directly, right?

Jeff Tumbarello  19:00  

Yeah. Well, it was a really weird storm. Here's an interesting thing. If you become friends with a lot of firemen and you move to Florida, they all get called in when there's a storm coming. So, I had a house full of Firemen's wives and kids. And this was supposed to go up the coast seems like fun but really wasn't being the only guy in this mix. It really wasn't I was mixing a lot of margaritas because we actually had quite the party going on because they're supposed to go straight up the coast and not hit us and then it shifted and came right down the river and my house took a direct hit. But so, I went from, we had projectors going with kids playing video games and margarita's and people on the pool it wasn't, it wasn't a terrible day until we got the call that hey, it's coming up the river you need to, you need to take shelter because it's pretty nasty storm and intensified from a 2 to a 4 and shifted right.

Sean O'Toole  19:52  

You're on a river so probably no basement?

Jeff Tumbarello  19:55  

Nah. No, no, there's no basements but it's the hurricane really. It's pretty rare to destroy your home, but it'll rip the roof off is the problem like the shingles, and then you get water in your house. But you know, you take the you know, the eyewall is just a small thing, give me example, go off topic, I helped the guy portfolio build in 2010. And I purposely had him in three markets, each one of those markets would have only taken the eye wall from a hurricane. So, we split up the house buying so that if an eye wall hit Lehigh, his cape portfolio was fine, because the eye wall is generally not that big. So, your whole portfolio is a newt. You know, it's kind of something to think about in Florida with hurricanes. If you're in one concentrated area, one eyewall can take out most of your portfolio, and then you got insurance claims. And you know, it's, it's not fun. But it had an interesting corollary, we were already pretty hot. By then, I mean, the middle of '04 was really a growth phase. And it was, that's when the No Doc loans hit. And so, we were starting to go from what I call a boom to a mania. But then the most interesting thing happened, that hurricane hit, it dumped about a billion dollars of insurance money in the market, it brought in all these construction crews. So, we took a little inventory out, we threw a bunch of capital in inflationary. And then we had a huge rental demand of all these, all these construction workers that need somewhere to live while they're working. So, it kind of threw gas on a really hot fire and then couple that with the No Doc loans and everything that was going on it, it turned into a mania overnight, third quarter of, '04 our average price and a quarter went up 30%.

Aaron Norris  21:42  

Wow.

Jeff Tumbarello  21:44  

At that point, I'm at the REIA meeting, and I can't remember people pitching me, pitching me $330,000 houses that rented for 1200 a month. And I'm telling my buddy, that's not an investment. That's an act of lunacy. That's not you know what I mean? That's not, don't, please don't do this. And then later '07, I'm having coffee with the same people giving them a good attorneys phone number two, you know, get out of these things.

Aaron Norris  22:09  

And a therapist.

Jeff Tumbarello  22:11  

You know, on top of that, the prices went up so high so fast, and the rents did not keep up at like today, the prices are going up, but the rents are keeping up. So, where's then you had a point where everybody was negative cash flow the moment they bought it. And then, and then, you know, the market crashes, rents went down 25% taxes and insurance went up. And it was that's why the beginning of our foreclosure crisis was 70% non homesteaded.

Aaron Norris  22:36  

I wanted to bring that up, because you just mentioned some of these people were buying land with loans, just does nothing but hold the earth together. For as long as you own it. For 90 to 100 grand that you're, you're now the market has improved at the bottom of the market. What was that $90,000 lots selling for?

Jeff Tumbarello  22:53  

I was picking up Lehigh lots for 1500 bucks that were selling for 55,000 6 years earlier.

Aaron Norris  22:59  

That is painful.

Jeff Tumbarello  23:01  

It all depends on your timing. It's really amazing if you're on the right side of the trade.

Sean O'Toole  23:07  

Painful for them, not for you.

Jeff Tumbarello  23:09  

But the it was, give you an example we started the REIA, me and one of the other principals. One of our tricks was we would acquire a lot. We put it in a land trust, and we just sell the beneficial interest in the Land Trust. So, it's less closing costs, less brain damage, you know, here's the title commitment, where we bought it, have your guide, do a gap run, you know, and it was just quicker and easier. Well, we sold a lot and Lehigh we got it for like, six sold it for 14. We're hig-fiving each other. And then a year later, it's running around the room, my land trust, I know it because I made up the land trust. And it was 50 and somebody bought it. And I'd looked at the, the other guy, I'm like, we should have just paid the taxes for a year. So um, like at the time we were brilliant. And you know, year later, we were the dumbest people I met because we didn't pay the taxes for $300. And just wait for a year.

Sean O'Toole  24:03  

Everybody was flipping from nine to whatever 2013, wishes they kept everything they flipped.

Jeff Tumbarello  24:10  

Yeah, it was just it got to where it was just purely a mania. I mean, right now we're in a boom market. The whole country is. There's a difference between you know, the tulip bulbs, the Southeast Trading Company, the dot-com stocks from 2000 and, and just a bull run. You know, there's a, there's a delineation when it just completely leaves intrinsic value. But right now, I think what's saving us is the fact that we, everything still tied to wages, the mortgages are so as long as they keep that we're okay. I mean, I definitely, like I ran numbers, and I'm big on math. I mean, Aaron and I just completely geeked out over breakfast recently over doing some math but like our cash percentage for this February versus last February, it actually went up. So, you know, there's people trying to scream that it's 2005, when the cash percentage was almost 36% of the sales were all cash. And above a half a million there for the year, it's significantly higher. So, you really have just such. And it's something when you look at Southwest Florida, like maybe 5% of the sales on '05 or cash. By the time the market correction, say '09, at least 75% of the sales were cash. So, we went from being probably one of the most over leveraged markets in the country with us, Arizona and say, Scottsdale, we're probably the most over leveraged markets in the country, to when we washed out all of that unsustainability. It was replaced with equity. So, we've went to becoming one of the more free and clear markets in the country now as far as equity wise.

Aaron Norris  25:48  

Man. Well, okay, so we, I wanted to cover that because land is a very interesting asset class, you know, it's it. I don't know, some would consider it really risky unless you build on it. So you're not? Are you land banking at all? Are you sitting on a lot of stuff?

Jeff Tumbarello  26:02  

There's two reasons you buy land there, you're either for speculation or to use it. You know, and I always say, we teach us at the REIA, the one thing we, I watch in this market is the cape land market, because land represents hope. You know, what that lot was 1500. because there wasn't much hope. You know, that lot was $65,000. Because it was just insane euphoria. So, and there really wasn't any difference, the land hadn't changed. Just the people changed. So, land represents hope. And there's two reasons you buy it. Well, there's other reasons, you know, you can buy things and just a store of value. I have an investor friend who only buys land with his, basically, he makes a lot of money, he buys land with, you know, after his reserves, because he doesn't, his tax situation, depreciating rental would be bad for him. So, he has a very semi unique life. So, for him, the depreciation doesn't work for him, according to his accountant. So, he buys land as a store of value. So, he doesn't have to depreciate it. And then his joke is he buys land wherever he vacations. So, he calls it all business trips.

Sean O'Toole  27:11  

Yeah. What about, you know, the hard part with land banking land, obviously, is that you have expense without income. You know, so that you've got, you know, you know, a lot of people like complain about gold, because gold doesn't have any income, right? And so, you're kind of constantly losing value versus if you have a store of value that has some return on investment. So, there's no return on investment on land. So, how do you how do you answer that?

Jeff Tumbarello  27:40  

Well, it's ultimately it's not an, it's, I don't consider things an investment when you're working off games. For me, the way I work, I put $1 here, I get seven cents a year. I call that investment. If I put $1 down, and my hope is to get $1.25 someday. That's a trade. So, land for the most part unless you're putting it to use and there are ways to actually make money on land. I'm a member of fraternal organization, and we just got approached to put a cellular tower next to our Lodge. Actually, that's an investment. There are other ways you can do that. I have a...

Sean O'Toole  28:20  

Bill boards, cell towers, cattle grazing, you know there are quite a few.

Jeff Tumbarello  28:26  

Oh, you also have these uh, fireworks and Christmas tree guys.

Sean O'Toole  28:30  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  28:31  

If you buy a good corner, particularly you put a saw pole on it, you know for temporary power. And I have a friend who talk about a deal he stole it '09 and then he sold 20 feet off the front of the DOT for a stupid number. It's a decent corner in Lehigh. And now he's about to sell 20 feet off the left hand side to the DOT for a rather stupid number. And he still got enough to develop but he's got the fireworks guys that are there for what New Year's Eve, Fourth of July. He's got the Christmas tree, he got, he actually makes a pretty decent little return. And on top of that he gets a free Christmas tree.

Aaron Norris  29:08  

He's doing pumpkins this fall, he's got...OK.

Jeff Tumbarello  29:12  

Trucks, there's food truck guy and the job, I called him on, like so how much a taco guy given he just like, lunch.

Sean O'Toole  29:19  

Lunch.

Jeff Tumbarello  29:19  

He parks and know him, but you know that there are utilities to land but you, lands generally more of a trade, but like you brought up gold. That's a really good analogy, but no sane person would have 100% of their portfolio in gold or land.

Sean O'Toole  29:34  

Or land.

Jeff Tumbarello  29:35  

You know, it's a, it's a nice it's a good little insurance edge.

Aaron Norris  29:38  

Yeah,

Jeff Tumbarello  29:39  

It's a cyclical market-based insurance hedge, but it's a good little insurance edge.

Sean O'Toole  29:44  

Yeah.

Aaron Norris  29:45  

In public records. In public records. Can you share maybe a little bit of insight into the leads that you really like? Is it somebody who's owned a piece of land for 60 years at somebody licking their wounds from 2006 who bought it for $90 grand like, what gets you excited?

Jeff Tumbarello  30:01  

I used to only do out-of-state people and I've come to the conclusion I'm just, I just send everybody something.

Aaron Norris  30:10  

Okay.

Jeff Tumbarello  30:10  

Believe it or not Yeah, I call it vintage based marketing too like you get this people that bought in these years and that year, but landowners are probably the most interesting sellers on the planet because there's so many people that owning a piece of land for them as part of their almost our makeup, you know, they go to cocktail parties and they're like yeah, I have this lot in Florida and it's just kind of part of their makeup It really is. And they get separation anxiety about selling their lot in Florida that they'll never build on some have never seen but it's just kind of part of 'Hey, I got land in Florida I got something going for me' and believe you're not there's a lot of them. And, and then on top of that, it's all the right timing. Timing is everything and really time right you need to be on scale for people you just need to be touching. We used to do very particular vintages. I'm now hitting just basically 33976 and Lehigh everybody in it.

Sean O'Toole  31:06  

Do you, do you time your marketing like for like when the property tax bill hits? Because that's when people go, 'Oh, God, do I really want this anymore?' I think that's one thing that I've found works well for land.

Jeff Tumbarello  31:19  

See, I look at it differently for us. Our approach is we market constantly 24/7 every day, we have a metrics in our dashboard of how many leads came in today. And if it's under 25, it's in the red. So, life is about building a database. That's really your entire business. We're at the point I think we've got 10,000 people in the areas we work that have responded and we've talked to. So we're you know, we, my plan is someday to have that be every piece of land on planet Earth. So, when we're the, and I'm then going to talk to Elon about hitting Mars once we you know once we totally get that going, but you know, it's all about the database we do better when the tax bills come out. We do better right after the first of the year. But there's people that are ready to sell land for any transmission drops out of their car. Their daughter just informed them she said yes to that young man on his knee. There's a lot of reasons that people suddenly need some capital and get in front of them and talking to them you know the old time yeah you mail here, mail there. It's the most efficient, but we live in a 24/7 interconnected world and it's so easy to market now. That there's no reason not to never you know, I always say always be closing. It's really cheap. ABM always be marketing. Always be marketing.

Sean O'Toole  32:39  

So, on that direct mail, I assume as part of it. Cold Calling?

Jeff Tumbarello  32:45  

Yeah, it's not the funnest.

Sean O'Toole  32:47  

Yeah, email?

Jeff Tumbarello  32:49  

No.

Sean O'Toole  32:50  

No, you're not doing...

Jeff Tumbarello  32:51  

Once they opt in and they talk to us. We email them. But cold email? No.

Sean O'Toole  32:56  

No cold email. Custom audience?

Jeff Tumbarello  33:00  

Yeah, some? Yes. No, I'm really good with the social media stuff. So, I'm not going to give on a whole lot of that. But yes, we do that. In theory, we might do that. Yes.

Sean O'Toole  33:13  

Any that I missed?

Jeff Tumbarello  33:15  

Oh, SMS is, they're really about to make that go away.

Sean O'Toole  33:19  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  33:20  

They are really working on SMS to go away. Voicemail not. Mail pays probably the biggest dividends because while it's more expensive, it is a physical piece of the world that they stick in a drawer.

Sean O'Toole  33:33  

What I always say is like when you think about impressions, right? Think about the number of ads scrolling by in your browser and stuff every day. Right? And everybody's like, well, people just throw away direct mail. But think about that for a minute. How long does it take you, you got to get that piece of mail out of the mailbox where you might see it, you got to sort it where you're gonna see it, you've got to decide you're going to put it in the trash can where you're feeling it picking up and you're putting it in the trash can. That's way more of an impression than any online ad, even if it's just on the way to the trashcan.

Jeff Tumbarello  34:04  

Well, a lot of a lot owners are older too. So, they read their mail. I think when the millennials and younger are the biggest general biggest percentage of lot owners. Direct Mail will probably be useless.

Sean O'Toole  34:17  

I will tell you, I disagree. Because having a 17 and 18 year old they're fascinated by mail.

Jeff Tumbarello  34:26  

Really?

Sean O'Toole  34:27  

Yeah, they'd like to pick, my son is like oh yeah, I'll pick up the bell. He's like, oh, Dad, you got up. You know, whatever a card off.

Jeff Tumbarello  34:38  

You let your kids have a phone though is the question.

Sean O'Toole  34:41  

They do.

Jeff Tumbarello  34:44  

Now that the mail like, I own a brokerage too, and when we mail in predominantly 55 and up areas, we get double the response rate. Generally I find it in any asset class that has like an older demographic that owns it, your direct mail just trends better. But direct mail in and of itself is useless. You know, it needs to be multiple touches, accompanied by every bit of electronic anything you can do to back it up and get in front of them. It's, you know, I think about how easy we had it in 2004 for marketing, because all you did was mail some postcards, or maybe do a newspaper ad or a shopper ad. And at that point, you know, there was some online ads, but they weren't really as prevalent, it was kind of like an arcane art too. But when I really look at marketing today, it is, it is complex. Like the ad sets that I use are three to five, deep down. It's really complex, you know, and they've taken away a lot of the ability like that whole hack the election with Facebook thing actually cost me a lot of money because I lost the ability to upload some custom audiences. I mean, we at one point in figured out a way to when I would get something in a neighborhood, I add a custom audience from public records of just the people in that neighborhood.

Sean O'Toole  36:03  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  36:04  

So, I would spend like $8 to fully expose an asset to the people that are most likely to know somebody to want to buy it. You know, and, you know, biggest thing I'm mad about the whole thing, I'm not to get into any kind of partisan politics, but the aftermath of that raise my, my advertising cost online about 300%, because I went from, I went from very targeted laser things to broad, broad based everything.

Sean O'Toole  36:31  

Now, because you're in land, you're not feeling probably at the impacts of something like Sundae, and I don't think Sundae's in your market. But there are basically the Opendoor of, on the investor side or, you know, Zillow Offers or those Offerpad, that kind of thing. And we're seeing the same thing where they're coming into a market and they'd have so much money, you know, capital that they've raised the spend, it's pushing up the advertising cost dramatically for our customers, you probably aren't feeling that yet from any kind of institutional players?

Jeff Tumbarello  37:05  

There's a whole lot of us, there's two other groups that are exactly what we do in town. Some members that are in the REIA, too.

Sean O'Toole  37:13  

So, you're pushing up each other's costs?

Jeff Tumbarello  37:16  

Yeah, no, it's the, some people respond to it. Ultimately, what this all boils down to, and why I'm never worried about iBuyers or anything, it's all about your level of talent, your level of focus. And the most important thing is for a human being to either sit in front of another human being or have a phone conversation, that, that is relevant, and that you have some cognizance about it. Because, you know, I did a, we did a wonderful attempt at having VAs close people.

Sean O'Toole  37:47  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  37:48  

Did not work.

Sean O'Toole  37:49  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  37:50  

You know, and it was a good experiment. But it just, it's not even the talent. The one the one, one lady, particularly is very talented. But there's just such a difference barrier of not understanding what Publix means for a Cape Coral lot that she'll probably never know, even if we explained it to her, it doesn't correlate well. So, well, all the technology platforms and all that in the world. My experiences they can't close well.

Sean O'Toole  38:17  

Share with us...

Jeff Tumbarello  38:18  

That's what the game is. A lot of people blame Zillow and blame iBuyers. And they really, the only competition you have is you.

Sean O'Toole  38:26  

We always like to say changes, the only constant and changes we're all opportunity comes from. And so, you know, if you can't roll with that change and deal with that change, you're just shutting yourself down to opportunity. So, it sounds like you're pretty good on the change.

Jeff Tumbarello  38:40  

In Palm Bay, we hit that market, we got amazing response rates. And somebody came in at the time lots were retail 12 to 15. Some group mailed everybody an offer for 15- $25,000. And with the intent, I think to retrade them. But in the meantime, it killed our marketing because we're writing offers and they're going Hey, and he sent us some of the letters that were an offer. But what we did is we we jumped in and we waited for that 30 days when we knew they were never going to close. And then guess what? Yeah, you know, and one of our guys on the phone his pitches 'Look I'm easy girl at prom, I'm a sure thing.' So, it's literally what he says to people and but then they sign they love it. They think it's the funniest thing on the planet. You know, it's all about how you say it, but we got to use the 'we're the', 'we're the,' you know, 'we're the easy prom date, we're sure thing.' So, you know, you want to keep dreaming or do you want to have a fun prom? And that was literally and we got a bunch of deals out of that by just backing off. We kind of shut down the marketing. We let that take place because you know, math means things if a lot is $10,000 unless there is BlackRock know something we don't and is gobbling up a whole market. And this was obviously not BlackRock and its marketing that somebody sold this these people, of course, that said, you know, retrade them, and then you'll you know, that kind of thing. And the beauty is they put out a lot of mail. And while it disrupted our initial run in 30 days, we were slammed.

Sean O'Toole  40:22  

That's great.

Aaron Norris  40:23  

It is great.

Sean O'Toole  40:24  

Well walk us through, you know, you're scaling up, you're adding people, Like, what, what is your team look like? What are the key people that you need to help you scale?

Jeff Tumbarello  40:35  

That's really hard, because we've got probably the most eclectic group of human beings on the planet. So, I mean, it really there is no model.

Sean O'Toole  40:46  

Their titles are there, like people who are just focused on closing and other...

Jeff Tumbarello  40:50  

We have, we have people that kind of do the workup. Then we have closers. We have one lady that all she does, she is extremely OCD. And all she does is manage our transactions. And she will figure out if the title company misspelled something in email, because that's her level of OCD, which is exactly who you want managing your transactions...

Sean O'Toole  41:14  

Absolutely.

Jeff Tumbarello  41:14  

...reviewing your HUDs we've got some VA's that actually work just our CRM, you know, we kind of have a little bit of everything, it's a pretty big scaled up with very specific role players. And, and honestly, as we identify friction points, we add people to fix the friction.

Sean O'Toole  41:33  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  41:34  

Because the biggest thing, you know, you're scaling when there's friction. Because nobody scales. And, and, and, and, you know, have it's not wine and roses scaling, it's, you know, things come up, you get overwhelmed, it's just a, it's business. You know, if you haven't had an argument with your partner, you're busy, you're probably not busy enough. Just the way it is. It's just the way business is done. You know what I mean? And you get human beings and you're, you're talking to each other a lot. And it's just the way it is. But yeah, we basically have role players we kind of have a schematic of our, of our process. And we have people and then the hardest thing for us is sales people because sales people are such a rare breed like real closers. I mean, I'm not talking to somebody to read from a script a real life closer, and like, we have one girl who's amazing. And she'll call me and she talks for like, 30 minutes, about like, what do you think this lot Lehigh is worth? And it dawned on me and the other one of the calls I'm like, that's why she's so amazing, because I'm on the phone and we're talking about her kids and my kids and this and that music video and, and but by the end of it, you know what I mean? You're completely at ease. And you know, she's just really good at it. And she actually enjoys talking to people and you know that, that is probably our hardest thing because we have another guy who only does really high volume deals. But his, he could probably do a lot more business if he wasn't so curt about everything you don't I mean, I'm almost ready to somehow have a grading system in our leads. You know, Edie Kathy's go to this one...

Sean O'Toole  43:13  

Lead scoring.

Jeff Tumbarello  43:16  

...go to this guy...

Sean O'Toole  43:17  

Busy professional probably prefers the curt fast to the point guy. Right? And, you know, Grandma, who hasn't talked to anybody in two months, you know, or kids aren't calling she's probably loves his other gal.

Jeff Tumbarello  43:31  

Yeah, now she'll talk. She likes to talk and she slays it we've done, she's picked up like a 13 pack a lot from a guy that was just a huge rainmaker.

Sean O'Toole  43:41  

Wow. That's cool.

Aaron Norris  43:45  

And the and the VAs, you're just having the background you said working on CRM stuff. And research?

Jeff Tumbarello  43:50  

They do everything, data cleaning the VAs are. VA 's are like we have a VA with the REIA, I have VA's with my brokerage I have VA's on every business, there are certain things that VA is actually do better than us.

Aaron Norris  44:04  

I will have to tell you, I'm on your marketing for your club and you do a great job, I get your voicemail drops, I get your emails, you've really got it dialed in. So, your team does a really good job.

Sean O'Toole  44:13  

VA is super interesting to all of our folks. Give us a list of things that you think we these are exceptional, whether what you think they're even better than you know, what you're able to find talent locally for?

Jeff Tumbarello  44:26  

Well, VA's don't believe it or not make as many mistakes as people in America, right? You tell them to do A, B and C they will do a B and C as opposed to try and innovate. You know what I mean? If they have a better way to do it, they will but you know, it's very bad... So, I kind of respect by the books.

Sean O'Toole  44:48  

Yeah. And the Americans we're not good rule followers.

Jeff Tumbarello  44:52  

Yeah, they don't and that's the amazing part is of 'Hey, I need you to click this button 65 times', your average American is going to grown, and complain and whine the entire time they click the button 65 times, where, first of all, they're in another country. So, you don't know that's another thing I love about VA is that if they're having a bad day, you really don't know, because you're not they're in the Philippines. They're in India, they don't really you know what I mean? That, if she's having a really bad day, as long as all the tasks, click, that's fine. And, you know, it's it, they do a lot of but VA should be doing things that, that you basically what makes you money? And what makes you money, you shouldn't be doing the actual what I call moments of truth, everything else should be set up. So, in my opinion.

Aaron Norris  45:42  

Okay. Is there any opportunity in, I know the area just had FEMA go through and update all the flood zone maps? Would you take on that point of data and your marketing and say, 'Hey, your, you know, flood zone just changed. You might have a challenge with selling' or I don't know.

Jeff Tumbarello  45:58  

Well, let me share something with you in downtown Fort Myers, there was a pretty well esteem building that was for sale. And they changed the FEMA map so that a little sliver of the building came into a flood zone and it killed a really good deal. So, you know, that, that the FEMA maps can be in either direction, and generally the FEMA maps are just more of a negative event, in my opinion here in Florida than they are anything else. We do notice them. Almost every builder wants flood zone acts, you know, it's no dead, they just don't, because the problem when you get into the other flood zones, you're bringing in more fill, more fill is a much bigger cost. You know, on lots it's elevation and vegetation are your two biggest things to pay attention to. Because when you're building a home, the lot clearing and the filtered are two variables. That can be tough. And if you're ever going to do land, you need to get pretty good at figuring that out. But when you're doing when you're doing that kind of stuff. Yeah. If something suddenly became flood zone x, that'd be all over that.

Aaron Norris  47:07  

Yes, it's usually not going that way. Is it?

Jeff Tumbarello  47:09  

Yeah, generally goes the opposite direction.

Sean O'Toole  47:12  

Right. Because all of Florida is sinking, right?

Jeff Tumbarello  47:15  

Yeah, if you listen, but you know. You know the scary part, there really are people that believe all this stuff on the internet, like the world is flat. I mean, it's not a joke.

Sean O'Toole  47:29  

Yeah, it probably is not something...

Jeff Tumbarello  47:31  

We had a seller who was a flat earther. And we used to just listen to the calls, because he would just continually bring stuff up like that, and I almost wanted to call him and that's not really what I do. You know, and I almost wanted the calling just to hear it.

Sean O'Toole  47:45  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  47:47  

Have a couple glasses of wine and call this guy and just hear what he has to say.

Aaron Norris  47:52  

Now, you mentioned CRM, do you have a favorite one that you recommend?

Jeff Tumbarello  47:55  

No. No, we're always trying to find the next better one.

Aaron Norris  47:59  

Okay. Any other...

Jeff Tumbarello  48:00  

I mean, we use a, we used multiple CRMs for different things, some for marketing, some for follow up some for this, but we are always looking for a better product, I was almost ready to buy my own or build our own. And so, I talked to one of my mentors, and he brought up a point he goes when you build your own platform, when it breaks, no, there's nobody to fix it, but you. It really is a pretty, pretty wow moment. And then you're, you're also married mentally to this thing you built. It's now kind of part of you. And it'll prevent you from pivoting. So yeah, we're very agnostic when it comes to CRMs whatever works the best. If they have, you know, works the best and cost relation, there's some great CRMs. But the spend, you know, $4,000 a month to use a CRM is insane. And there's some out there that once you add the users that hit that level.

Sean O'Toole  48:55  

Oh, for sure.

Aaron Norris  48:58  

Is there any other technology stack that you are really enjoying this year?

Jeff Tumbarello  49:03  

Well, skip tracing has a lot of fun because they seem to just flip back and forth. Some days are good, some days they're bad. Really, it's just more integrations. I mean, the greatest gift to the world since the Gutenberg printing press is Zapier. So, I mean, there's few things that bind the world together better than Zapier.

Sean O'Toole  49:30  

We've got a lot of customers that are, that love the fact that they can now feed their CRM and marketing automation tools with public records directly from our systems through Zapier, and we're the only ones to do that.

Jeff Tumbarello  49:41  

Yeah, it's Zapier is. There's some other clones that are out there that we haven't tried yet. But I mean, without Zapier, this would be a lot tougher to do.

Sean O'Toole  49:51  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  49:51  

I mean, I was the other day the REIA's like the Southwest Florida REIA we do some marketing. It's very rudimentary. It's not nearly on the level of what we do and like I'll have a video and then you know retarget with another video. And then there's a lead ad. But then I was just looking at what happens on the lead ad, you know, Zapier takes it from Facebook. The REIA uses Podio. So, that takes it into Podio then adds it to MailChimp, then adds it to another service I use for some additional retargeting. It's pretty amazing. And it costs I think we do $20 a month. Yeah, I honestly want to call him up and say, I don't know, you guys are kind of showing yourselves a little short guys.

Aaron Norris  50:31  

Oh, don't!

Sean O'Toole  50:34  

We can help you spend more money with them.

Jeff Tumbarello  50:37  

Yeah, no, I'm, we're always I would love to talk to you guys about that I, we're always looking for a better way to do it. I had lunch with a guy who did what I did before. And he's now worth a lot of money as a result of what we're doing. And I came out of it. Well, you know, because there's nothing like the insight of having done something.

Sean O'Toole  50:55  

Right.

Jeff Tumbarello  50:56  

Because at the time, you know, what appears to you isn't what really is, generally in business. In hindsight, well, we should have did this. Like, in hindsight, you asked about the targeted list. And hindsight I should have been hitting every person, should have just taken zip codes and worked every zip code instead of trying to pull out the special people that...

Sean O'Toole  51:16  

Did it occur to you to use, you still have a targeted list? Right? Because you're not you're hitting lots, you're not hitting every property, right. You're not...

Jeff Tumbarello  51:24  

I'm at the point, if you have land in the market, we want you're getting, you're getting marketing.

Sean O'Toole  51:29  

Right.

Jeff Tumbarello  51:29  

There's no reason not to.

Aaron Norris  51:31  

Commercial as well as residential?

Jeff Tumbarello  51:33  

No. Commercials tough.

Sean O'Toole  51:35  

You say you're targeting?

Aaron Norris  51:36  

You're targeting!

Jeff Tumbarello  51:38  

When you say target, I'm thinking from Minnesota who bought five to 10 years ago.

Sean O'Toole  51:45  

Yeah, I do think though that, you know, to some degree like, so yeah, I think you, you're targeting to get down to the product you want and then mailing to everybody, which is great. But I do think that this is just becomes a time, amount of time that you have, like, the person who bought a year ago versus the person who had it for 10 years, right? The person is 70 versus the person who's 30. Like, those people have different wants and needs, and you could probably improve your messaging and get better, you could probably improve your response rates by...

Or it's a lot easier, to buy a lot for 7000 that they bought for four, than to buy a lot for 7000 that they bought for 85.

Yeah. So, that, you know, understanding those things do right, which we've got, you know, we'd like to talk about that as segmenting. So, you start with that big list. And then you segment it into these smaller things so that you know, the guy who is 85 you know, it's like, hey, you're lot's probably never going back to 85 it's a different message than the guy who bought it for four, and he's gonna get a double.

Jeff Tumbarello  52:47  

Yeah. Well, the lot for 85 are fun. And the interesting thing is, is probates on land don't seem to be just as viable. I just don't, like I did well, with improved properties with probates. The probate, we tried it, it's just not it's for some reason, not as viable.

Aaron Norris  53:10  

We're about out of time. What are you excited about in 2021. You're in the middle of a hot market, it's scalding hot in Florida overall. Some people are worried and you know, you see the headlines, you know, it's gonna bust. How are you feeling about the market?

Jeff Tumbarello  53:26  

Um, I drill deep into the market, like for the cape land market, I have a spreadsheet that does year over year closed sales, and then blends in what's pending, and then blends in what's active based on pricing. And I call it momentum, momentum. Basically, it's probably trend lines carrying stuff forward of where it's gonna end up. But we're, I'm watching all of the markets what, you'll know when I shut down the Florida land team will be probably when we not I, there's few of us doing it. Well, when we pivot out of the Florida land team is probably one you'll know, because we've got probably the best data sets around. I'm not saying I'm the best or but we probably have the best data sets and we have two of us in this that are extremely analytical. So, it's not just me there. There's at least two opinions on everything. But I we're not, we're not there yet. And this is a different driver like you've got from 2000 to 2025. A lot of retirees coming here. And then on top of that, I'm seeing a modality that I've never seen before in my brokerage, I have a retail brokerage, and we're selling to 40-year-olds that are going to Snowbird because they can now remotely work here which that I've never seen in mass. I've done three of those. Our company sold three of those now, recently, and then I'm also seeing the biggest consumers in America by, by a percentage of Gen Z. And they like the millennials were late bloomers because they kind of grew up with this backdrop of a bad economy. Gen Z's never seen a bad time that they really remember. So, they're, they're a little more, they're a lot more bullish. Like I kind of, you look at a generation and you know, they either grew up in a bull or a bear back- backdrop, like Gen X, we grew up in kind of a bear backdrop. So, we're, we're kinda a little always got a bearish lens to things because, you know...

Sean O'Toole  55:20  

My son's Gen Z, and he called me to pitch me on GameStop. So yes, bearish...

Jeff Tumbarello  55:25  

You know what though? I made money on Gen, on GameStop 60% on what I put in it.

Aaron Norris  55:33  

I love it. Well...

Jeff Tumbarello  55:34  

What's cool about GameStop? Is a whole younger generation realize that you can actually make money on your phone and not just play things and watch things. through both of my boys are my son for 22 and 24. And in college, and all we talk about is Robin Hood now.

Sean O'Toole  55:51  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  55:51  

Every day they call to tell me what stock they bought. So, I mean, as a father, I'm excited that they're, you know, that they're, you know, they go to college, they have jobs, but they're also spending some of their spare time and trying to figure out how to make money.

Sean O'Toole  56:04  

It's crazy how big this is in the college scene like Robin like, yeah, it's a little scary, though with that, with the with some of the what's the word? The funding.

Aaron Norris  56:16  

Crowdfunding?

Sean O'Toole  56:17  

No, no, no. When they let you trade the

Jeff Tumbarello  56:24  

Margin?

Aaron Norris  56:25  

Oh margin.

Sean O'Toole  56:25  

Thank you. Yeah. If you did margin stuff, you know, I don't know that you should be given 20 year old kids in college margin to be trading GameStop.

Jeff Tumbarello  56:35  

Yeah, I don't know. There's all crush it and then you'll hear about the bad ones. But when you look at our market, Gen Z is coming on strong. So, I see two primary drivers right now. There's Gen Z and some of the millennials buying their first homes. And then you've got wealthy to do baby boomers coming down here. And between the two, excuse me, they're driving both ends of the market. You've got the entry level housing market is insane. Good luck finding a cheap home.

Aaron Norris  57:09  

Yeah,.

Jeff Tumbarello  57:10  

But also good luck finding value on a $700,000 waterfront home too, you're not stealing that either.

Sean O'Toole  57:17  

Right. Right, right. This is fun.

Jeff Tumbarello  57:20  

You guys out of California. I talked to a guy today, following me about a $700,000 California house. As compared to, I'm like, he was telling me about a $700,000 California house that is a 1500 square foot three, two with a pool. I'm like, well, that here would be 4000 square feet with a water view and a pool. And...

Aaron Norris  57:44  

Yeah.

Jeff Tumbarello  57:44  

That'd be a lot. And it was pretty, pretty basic. Like you need to go to Home Depot and buy some new cabinet kind of finishes. And, you know, you don't have to do much to move into this house and start enjoying life. So, it's a matter so much capital coming from the west coast to this area right now that it's insane.

Aaron Norris  58:03  

Well, Jeff, if people wanted to get in touch with you, how is, what's the best way to follow you?

Jeff Tumbarello  58:09  

Ah, that's a really good question, actually.

Sean O'Toole  58:11  

Let's start with the REIA, how do they find the REIA?

Jeff Tumbarello  58:15  

REIA's website is swflreia.com. There's also a Facebook page for the Southwest Florida REIA I think well, about 30,000 followers, believe it or not, for me personally, honestly, give me a call. My number is 339-671-8248. I'm down to talk to anybody if you have a question. I started out in this business, and I really had no clue what I was doing. And I'm only alive because I had some amazing mentors who drew no value from helping. So, I don't, I mean, I don't understand why one guy has spent so much time saving me from myself, my mentors, so I feel kind of duty bound to repay that. With that said, I'm probably not going to be your full time mentor. But if you got questions, if you need some help with something wants somebody to bounce something off of give me a call.

Aaron Norris  59:07  

Thanks Jeff.

Sean O'Toole  59:08  

Before you call him to ask for mentoring. Go online, and do a little research on how to ask for a mentor, what to expect from a mentor, how like, you know, there is, there is, there's stuff on you when you ask people to mentor you. And you should understand what that is because otherwise you're you know, Jeff's probably going to stop returning your calls. So, do some research. Before you call Jeff, please.

Aaron Norris  59:36  

Thanks, Jeff.

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