During a real estate meeting, Benjamin Sens, President of BOSS Construction Group, explains about Zoning and the issues with Airbnb.
Transcript
Benjamin Sens 0:14
A lot of things The city has control over with zoning with municipal ordinances. So, before I got into real estate, I used to work for the city and the building department in the trenches, doing code compliance, Miami Gardens, Weston, places, places that are privatized places that you don’t, you don’t want to go to because they cause migraines. And people don’t want to deal with these things. So I deal with open permits, expired, permits, liens, code violations, construction, permitting things after the fact. So I’m here to make things right. I’m here to evaluate valuate things so you guys can know if it’s a good deal or not. And again, some of these things, some of these code violations, they’re not fixable. What do I mean by not fixable, you can have an expired permit from the city of Pompano Beach, where it’s an expired air conditioned permit. But service America total appliance left it open, simply because there’s an addition behind the house. And there’s an electric panel outside, and there’s an open roof area. So you know, you have all this illegal stuff you shouldn’t have there. So I’m gonna go to the presentation real quick. But so these are examples where I tell the wholesaler, the buyer, the person who’s looking to flip, I say, Hey, guys, let’s leave that open or expired permit. Point being we just really want to make sure that we don’t call the city or the county on the property where there’s going to be an issue. Every city is different. Every building officials different. Every policy is different. Sometimes they’ll close a roof and Tamarack with an engineer’s letter, and it missed the last inspection. And then six months later, the building official changes and it won’t. So I deal with all those things. I just want to raise the hands in the room, how many people have seen have have bid or have looked to purchase properties with permits or code violations are distressed. I know David, have you? Oh, yeah. All right. So we just have to evaluate these guys. Everything has a number. You can get financing with open permits, open permits, or permits that didn’t get fine didn’t get closed out. Or code violations. As long as there’s not a lien attached to it. It’s not a title issue. So open permits are again, okay. But before David gets this going, part of the really important process that I deal with people call me all day. Hey, Ben, are there open expired permits on this property? I went on the city’s website. But the problem is there’s multi jurisdictions. So for example, you’ll have a, say Weston, for example, before 96 it was Broward County before Brett so you have five backups of data. So it’s really important to pull a lien search. This is a company that I work with reliable lien search, you could go on the city’s website and see and you know, see five, six years of what’s going on. But it’s very important and especially when, especially when you have when you when you have time to make the investment and valuate it municipal searches cost between two or $300. And typically people don’t pull them or title does not pull them until they get a contract on the property and pass the inspection period. Most of the time, I’m called by real estate agents, Thanksgiving, title companies, called by mortgage professionals, all different types of people to resolve these things at the last hour, because someone messed up or someone sat on information or there’s a sticky situation. So this is the name of my company. I’m an owner’s Rep. So I am a GC I handle permitting code violations. anything having to do with the city and a property
owner. What did he do? I don’t know if anyone Okay. We’ll go to this one. This is okay. So this is from the city in North Miami. Whoa. wasn’t a good video game player. This is this. This is from the city in North Miami. And basically the city in North Miami has what’s called a re occupancy certificate. So if you’re ever looking to buy a property in North Miami, make sure it’s a really good deal. In Dade County. The city’s have started doing inspections prior to the transfer of title. So in order to get a closing in Miami in North Miami, Biscayne Park, airport tall, opa locka, Miami Gardens, all these cities you need re occupancy certificates. That’s where the city comes into the property. They check the bed and bath count and they check for open and expired permits. Typically, we were finding that they were looking for multi families with four units, or the zoning was wrong where it was a single family with an efficiency on the back. But we found they’re looking for water heaters, air conditioners, and Gary Beswick is the most hated person in the city because he blows up people’s deals in North Miami, whether it’s someone flipping whether it’s someone who’s sold, who lived in a house for 40 years, and is now selling so these are things where people were selling properties and the city created a process in Broward County. We have Deerfield Beach, Pompano a lot of municipalities, they’re using Zillow. They’re using Trulia, when I told David about this, he was like, wow, how are you know, we were in seahaven. It’s a huge condominium. And how does the city of Pompano know that there are 10 units renovated without permits? Well, when the realtors put it up on the MLS, and those pictures are syndicated on the website, these code officers are sitting like party crashers in front of a computer looking for what’s going on. So just just keep keep those things in mind. They’re in there, they’re issuing warnings again, and they are they are problems. And it usually the owner gets the warning once the property is under contract because the market so hot. So we want to be aware of making issues a bigger deal. We want to be aware of tempting, you know, a lot of people whether you’re a wholesaler or a professional Realtor, or whatever you do, or property owner, a lot of people think they could call the city and the property and clear the violation. Well, a lot of times you’re calling the city into the property, and they’re finding more problems. So we want to be cognizant of that. What else do I have here? That’s interesting. Airbnb.
Airbnb, a lot of the cities are cracking down on this. People, Airbnb, zz are cash cows. But most municipalities out east, they’re requiring a business license to operate an Airbnb. So they say now that you’re going to use your single family property as a hotel, we’re gonna hold you to the same building code is Marriott, and everyone else we’re standing in. So this inspection or license triggers a code compliance officer coming into the property to look for unpermitted work, ADA, compliance issues, accessibility, that’s federal laws. So this can, they’re they’re looking for permitted improvements that the zoning allows for it in the city. So these are all very important things to look for. A lot of times we we are investors, or we help our clients facilitate these processes. So again, knowing what city you’re in, I know in Miami Beach, with the hotel lobby, which doesn’t really have many people anymore since COVID. But they were they found a lot of condominium communities and the management facilitating doing Airbnb, which is illegal in the city. And it’s like a $20,000 fine. So they started going after the management companies and the condos. So again, that’s, that’s really important as these things are really cash cows. But the but again, if it doesn’t, I was just in an office condo that had a loft. if, if, if something doesn’t catch up with you, for example, if you have an inspection today, and there’s a problem found, and you’re given a violation, it might not catch up with you for years. So some of these things lie dormant for years but they eventually end up catching up with the property owner.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
