Matthew Maschler:
Welcome to the Real Estate Finder podcast. I’m Matthew Maschler, a real estate broker in Florida, and with me,
Staci Garcia:
Staci Garcia, also a real estate finder.
Matthew Maschler:
Alright, well we record these episodes in advance. We don’t have a live audience, so you’ll be hearing this after, but today is a very special today. Today’s Tuesday. It’s Tuesday, 2 22 22.
Staci Garcia:
That’s pretty cool,
Matthew Maschler:
Right? So I’ve been enjoying the numbers. I’m not much of a numerologist, but February 22nd, 2022, is it Tuesday? 2 22 22. So I don’t know if that means anything. I don’t know if you did anything to enjoy your Tuesday, if you did, if you got married or close on a house or plan something on Tuesday, please let me know. You could reach me at Realestate Finder on Facebook or Matthew Ashler on most social media.
Staci Garcia:
And also I want to wish the Panthers good luck because we’re killing it. And tonight is a really big game.
Matthew Maschler:
Is it still regular season?
Staci Garcia:
Yep.
Matthew Maschler:
All right. But
Staci Garcia:
It’s a 2 22 22 game.
Matthew Maschler:
Alright, so go Panthers, and hopefully when you’re listening to this, you know that they won. It’s one of the great things about South Florida, living in this area of the world, we have all of our professional sports, and if you live in Boca Raton, the Florida Panthers are the closest professional sports team. It’s not very far to go to the Nona Arena. Do they have a
Staci Garcia:
Name? Florida Live.
Matthew Maschler:
Florida Live arena. And if you want to name an arena, they are taking offers. So if your business recently moved to Florida and you would like to name the arena, it was the Office Depot Center for a while. It was
Staci Garcia:
The BBT,
Matthew Maschler:
No, before bb t, it was Bank Atlantic. And then Bank Atlantic changed the name. So the bb t changed the name. It was Office Depot. Was it ADT at some point?
Staci Garcia:
No, but they have an ADT section, a
Matthew Maschler:
DT section. So I came down, it was the Office Depot Center I believe. And now it can be yours. It’s Florida Live until they get a new name. Apparently Truist wasn’t interested in the naming rights. So speaking of moving to Florida, there’s two topics about Florida that I wanted to address today. And the first is a college of the various reasons why people move to Florida retire or sunshine or low taxes. Another reason people move to Florida is Florida has some great colleges and you wouldn’t know it based on
Staci Garcia:
The people,
Matthew Maschler:
The people, the reputation of Boca Raton. But Boca Raton is a college town. There are three colleges as far as I know, maybe even more. There’s Linn University, Florida Atlantic University, and Palm Beach State College. So Bo Ratton is very much a college town. I go to the Division one FAU football games and the beautiful stadium that they built in 2012. So very often when we work with families moving to Florida, they ask questions about schools, usually about high schools, elementary school, middle school, and high school. But there are issues of college. And the reason I wanted to bring it up on this Tuesday is we’ve, the buzz around town, if you’re of that age, is that Florida State acceptance letters have gone out. So if anybody applied, any of you high school seniors that are listening to the Real Estate Finder podcast, maybe their parents, the high school seniors that applied to Florida State, Florida state decisions are out and those letters are received.
And this Friday, university of Florida decision letters should be going out. So it’s a very exciting time. Going back to FAU stadium, when they built it in 2012, one of the reasons they built the stadium and the state has put a lot of money into colleges like FAU Florida, Gulf Coast out in Fort Myers and Florida International University of Miami, university of Central Florida, university of South Florida is with a growing population, you need more schools. Not everybody can go to UF and Florida State, and those seem to be the premier schools because of their football teams. So the state has really put an emphasis on UCF. Their football team has been doing great. Florida Atlantic has been winning championships and hosting the Boca Bowl. So growing colleges in the state when the population is growing up, and not just the senior population but the population of school aged children.
So something that I want to bring up that’s important. And so it’s not necessarily real estate, but it’s adjacent to real estate because it’s moving to Florida. Florida has a great 5 29 plan, 5 29 plans. They’re similar to IRAs where you could put money in tax free if the money grows for college. So it’s a college savings plan. And when you use that money for college and college expenses, you don’t have to pay income tax on the money. So like a traditional ira, I think more people are familiar with IRAs, but if you earn money at your job, you could take before tax money, put it into a 5 29 plan. This is true in any
Staci Garcia:
State. This is called the Florida prepaid.
Matthew Maschler:
Well, in general, 5 29 plans are available in any state. Every state has 5 29 plans. So wherever you’re listening to this, if you’re listening in New York or New Jersey, you may have 5 29 plans for your, they work like IRAs. You take pre-tax money that you not tax on, it goes in, it grows tax free, you take it out for college expenses, you never pay taxes on it. Every state has that New York, New Jersey, you don’t have to use your state’s plan. I know plenty of New Yorkers people in New Jersey who use the state of Iowa 5 29 plan because Iowa uses Vanguard to administer their plan. So if they’re a Vanguard customer, and I think New Jersey might use TIA cref. So if you live in New Jersey and you want to use Vanguard for your 5 29 plan, you have Vanguard for your other investments, you can open up a state of Iowa plan. But Florida has something unique that not everybody knows about. They do offer the traditional 5 29 plan where you can invest money, you put money in tax-free before tax money and you can select your investments and it grows tax-free and you can use the money for school. But Florida also offers the Florida prepaid plan. That’s what you just mentioned
And what that is, it locks the rate of tuition to the current year’s rate because obviously the cost of things go up. We’ve seen the cost of everything going up in this market, the cost of houses, cars, boats, trading cards, pocketbooks, food going up incredibly. And so obviously the cost of college goes up and that’s a very, very big cost. So what you’re supposed to do in Florida, the best financial move is to open up the pre-paid plan. If you move to Florida and your kids are five years old, you lock in the price of college at the time of signing the contract and they’ll put you on a payment plan. You don’t have to pay for it all in one lump sum. So they put you on a payment plan and you can pay every month just like you contribute to an IRA, you contribute to a 5 29 plan.
You contribute to this plan and with the ultimate goal of it being fully paid for by the time your child graduates high school and you use that money for a Florida school. So instead of investing the money in the stock market, you’ve locked in the lower price of college and you’ve paid it off. The money could be used at any college, any Florida State College at the price it’s paid for, it’s prepaid. But something that people don’t always realize is you don’t have to go to a state school. You can go out of state, whether it’s to an out-of-state school or private school. You can go to a private school now, it doesn’t pay for the whole amount of that school. So if you choose, let’s say University of Miami or you choose to send them out of state to let’s say University of Maryland, it doesn’t pay the whole amount. What you’ll get is the cost of whatever Florida colleges charge Then when the current market value, when,
Staci Garcia:
Oh the current market,
Matthew Maschler:
The current market value, no, if it was when you locked it in, you’re not getting a rate of return, right? So if you locked it in and college was 3000 and now colleges 8,000, you get the 8,000 you get what would have went to University of Florida or Florida State or UCF or FIU or FIU, you get that amount. What would’ve went to the state college would go to the college of your choice, private or out of state. I don’t know if it works internationally, but it’s a very powerful tool, especially for people who basically know they’re going to go to send their children to a state school because of finances. To lock in the price. Listen, it has to be paid for at some point. Why not lock in the price at an early rate? And that’s something very, very unique to Florida. It was started by a guy named Stanley Tate.
So it’s called the Florida Prepaid Plan, but you’ll always see Stanley Tate’s name on it. I actually met him a few years back at a networking event in Miami and I thanked him. It was such a gift that he created this for people of the citizens of the state of Florida. That’s something Florida’s always believed in is locking in prices. That’s why your primary residence has homestead. The taxes can’t go up too high every year. Florida is aware that you have seniors on fixed incomes, so you don’t want to raise their rate. How do people plan for the future? How do you plan for the future? If you’re on a fixed income and your taxes go up, your mortgage doesn’t go up, it’s locked in for 30 years, your insurance can go up, your HOA can go up. So let’s lock in the price of taxes. Similarly, if you have a child or whether it’s an infant or one-year-old or a five-year-old or a 10 year old, how do you save for college when it’s a moving target and you don’t know what college will be in 15 years and 18 years when your child grows up. So by locking in the rate and creating a payment plan, you have a target. And that’s why budgeting is so important. I’m actually going to do another episode, not today. I am going to do an episode on budgeting and investing, which sounds terribly dull,
Staci Garcia:
But
Matthew Maschler:
I feel like I’ve been waiting for a day where you’re not here.
Staci Garcia:
Stacey
Matthew Maschler:
And I talk about budgeting, investing
Staci Garcia:
For an hour. I probably should be here though. I kind of need to hear about it
Matthew Maschler:
Also. I like when you’re here.
Staci Garcia:
Oh, thank you. I
Matthew Maschler:
Like running ideas by you and you ask intelligent questions and I realize that I should not be doing this without you. So thank you if I haven’t said it before. Thank
Staci Garcia:
You. Thank you for thanking
Matthew Maschler:
For co-hosting the show with me. Do you have any questions about the 5 29 plan or saving
Staci Garcia:
For college? Yeah, why didn’t I do it? And
Matthew Maschler:
That’s always a question.
Staci Garcia:
Yeah, I know that a lot of my friends have done it and I am excited for them to have college paid off for their kids.
Matthew Maschler:
That’s
Staci Garcia:
A good idea.
Matthew Maschler:
And I think that the reason it’s important is by fixing the number. It makes the goal attainable. If you don’t know how much college will cost, how could you start saving for it? So it is several benefits. It fixes the cost, puts you on a payment plan, lets you start saving and start paying well in advance. And that’s the beauty of it. And obviously you have to make a decision. Do you lock in the price of college or do you want market return in a traditional 5 29 plan? But I just think that the benefit of locking in the price and knowing that it’s paid for, and some people paid off lump sum and some people paid off early. And knowing that no matter what happens in the stock market, no matter what happens in your life, God forbid, worst case scenario, somebody dies prematurely. So no matter what happens in the stock market, no matter what happens in your earning potential, fixing the cost and ultimately even paying off college early can really, really take a pressure off of people. And that’s something I started thinking about because I’ve been hearing the decisions. University of Central Florida, I believe has made the decisions. Florida State, as I mentioned, has made their decisions and the F comes out on Friday. So hopefully we will see more gators and Seminoles and knights. And what’s south Florida?
Staci Garcia:
I have no idea. It’s
Matthew Maschler:
The Bulls.
Staci Garcia:
It’s funny, I’ve lived here since the 1986 and I’ve only just recently seen UCF. I’ve never been to any other colleges except FAU. And I did graduate from FAU and I went to FAU for another six years after that. So I pretty much lived at FAU and FAU is a great school, but I applied to Miami University of Miami, not knowing it was a private school, I just thought it was a public. I thought all schools are public kind
Matthew Maschler:
Of
Staci Garcia:
Except for gw, which I applied to also. And all the schools I got into, never even, my mom never said how much schools were and never told me about. As a matter of fact, my mom would go to the supermarket and not watch the register and then just write a check for however much it was. And that’s how I grew up. I never really knew about how much things were, I just knew the end result.
Matthew Maschler:
I tried thinking you could look at the price on the shelf,
Staci Garcia:
But we just bought stuff that we liked and paid for it. And that,
Matthew Maschler:
See, I looked at the price on the shelf and I would watch the register to make sure that the price was
Staci Garcia:
The same, right? I never did that. We would talk and we would do other things and all of a sudden she’d write a check and we were gone. So I found myself as a mother remembering not to do that. And now I’m completely obsessed with making sure I get a deal everywhere I go.
So if I save 50% or more at CVS or if I saved less than 50%, I would be crying out the door. I wouldn’t even buy something. So with college, I applied to six colleges, Penn State, gw, American, Miami, all of these, most of them were private and University of Maryland. And at the end when I got into all of them, then the price became an issue. I had no idea. My mom was like, all right, we’ll just choose which one you want to go to because I get into all of them. And I said, well, it seems to be like this one’s like $27,000 a year. My mom’s like, wow, that’s like the price of a car. But I said to my mom, I’m like, but you can bring your car and you can come home. She’s like, you can’t go to that one. You can’t come home. I was like, okay, can’t go to Miami.
Matthew Maschler:
I brought my car to college.
Staci Garcia:
You did?
Matthew Maschler:
Yeah.
Staci Garcia:
What’d you get? An exception to the rule because nobody else could bring a card to Maryland.
Matthew Maschler:
I had a letter from my employer that said that I had an off-campus job that to drive to.
Staci Garcia:
Oh,
Matthew Maschler:
That I wrote on my computer. I wrote letter,
Staci Garcia:
No way you did smart.
My next door neighbor in the dorms had a car and she asked me to drive her to the train station so she could go to South Carolina and visit her boyfriend. And I said, sure, I’ll drive you. When we got down to the bottom of the dorm to get into a car, it was a stick. I didn’t really think about it. I didn’t know how to drive a stick. And she’s like, don’t worry about it. It was a Toyota Celica. She said, don’t worry about it. We drove to the train station, she went on the train. And when I got back in the car, I drove back to College Park. I pretty much destroyed her engine, just trying to figure out how to drive the car. But then I had a car for the weekend and I was all excited. I could go somewhere else except besides College Park.
Matthew Maschler:
So you mentioned American University. So my kids are of that age, they’re juniors and they’re thinking of colleges. And my daughter says to me, Hey dad, what do you think of American University? And so I looked at her and I was like, tell me about it. And she goes, I think you’d like it because she knows I’m a very patriotic, very pro USA type of person. And she goes, I think you’d like it. It’s like the most American of all colleges.
Staci Garcia:
It’s called American University
Matthew Maschler:
And their colors are red and blue and their mascots, the bald, the eagle. What about
Staci Garcia:
It’s in dc?
Matthew Maschler:
Yeah, I was like, she’s like, it’s the most American of all universities.
Staci Garcia:
That’s hilarious.
Matthew Maschler:
And I said, you know what, Lindsay? I love that. Yeah, let’s go take a look.
Staci Garcia:
Are you going to go see American University?
Matthew Maschler:
I’m not sure.
Staci Garcia:
I’m
Matthew Maschler:
Not sure. So maybe, so anybody has questions about Florida prepaid or colleges or went to American University? The most American of all universities. Feel free to reach out to us on social media or Facebook website is realestate finder.com and I try to keep it on real estate,
Staci Garcia:
So
Matthew Maschler:
We’ll try not to delve too much into college after that. But that was my point. It was the benefit. Yet another thing that Florida offers, the Florida 5 29 plan. I do think also with a real estate show, talking about investing in general is important. Investing tips.
Staci Garcia:
I think that investing in property around the university is also an awesome idea.
Matthew Maschler:
That is true. That is true.
Staci Garcia:
So all around FAU, there’s houses all different types of houses, townhouses and condos and mid rises let’s say. And then there’s single family houses. So I do have FAU students living in my neighborhood. I’m less than a mile away from FAU. And I’m sure that at some point a couple seniors or juniors want to get away from campus for a bit and do with their own thing. So it’s a great investment to get a property right near a school. You can always rent it to college students.
Matthew Maschler:
Yes. If you wanted to be an investor who a landlord and buy and hold and collect rents, certainly near a school,
Staci Garcia:
Especially these days, certainly
Matthew Maschler:
Near a school would be a good place to know that you’re always occupied and always rented even in a bad economy.
Staci Garcia:
There was a guy that owned a lot of Knox boxes in College Park here in mine and 17 others.
Matthew Maschler:
17,
Staci Garcia:
Yeah.
Matthew Maschler:
Wow.
Staci Garcia:
All he did was just go make sure they’re clean, rent ’em out constantly. And that was a full-time job. But I’m sure that guy is bank right now.
Matthew Maschler:
So again, the Florida 5 29 plan, super unique to Florida, a huge benefit for the citizens of Florida. And so it’s never too late to start. And it’s not only for state schools, it will work at whatever school you choose. So besides college, the other thing I wanted to talk today about Florida is tourism
Staci Garcia:
Or is it tourism?
Matthew Maschler:
Tourism? Florida obviously known for its tourism and tourism boards and Disney World and the beaches and those commercials. If you need it bad, we got it. Good. Come to Florida. So Stacey has become an expert on tourism
Staci Garcia:
Tourists as they call tourism tourists.
Matthew Maschler:
So being a realtor sometimes is being a tour guide.
Staci Garcia:
It is not by choice,
Matthew Maschler:
But
Staci Garcia:
Tell us
Matthew Maschler:
About it.
Staci Garcia:
Okay, well my specialty is no HOA. So I enjoy the fact that I don’t have to usually deal with the country clubs and take tours of them. And I don’t necessarily know much about them anymore because even though I grew up in Boca West, I haven’t been there in a really long time in the club.
Matthew Maschler:
And on the flip side, I know a lot about the country clubs and I can rattle ’em off the top of my head, although there’s a little bit of work I want to do, I kind of have a fantasy of creating a database.
Staci Garcia:
Oh no, on my no HOA website you could put K-N-O-W-H-O-A.
Matthew Maschler:
Oh, interesting.
Staci Garcia:
We can list all them. So all the HOAs and what they cost.
Matthew Maschler:
So sometimes we go back and forth if we’re talking to the same customer and I’ve been talking about the HOAs and the golf club communities, but then if I can’t show them Stacey shows and then sometimes I drop Stacey off into a situation without explaining it. Yeah,
Staci Garcia:
Well it’s great in a way because what I don’t know, I don’t really care to do until I know it. And then I’m totally fine doing it like everybody. So once I’m confident in something, it’s a no-brainer. So I got a tour of Stonebridge last Friday by an awesome chick named Alex who works there.
Matthew Maschler:
She works in membership and we’re talking about Stone Bridge in Boca on 4 41 opposite the Oaks. We’re not talking about Stone Creek.
Staci Garcia:
And this is like 398 homes. They have 80 children that ride a bus to school. So it’s not an older community necessarily, but it might be known that way up until in my mind definitely was known that way because I only knew of older people that live there. But there’s lots of families and all of the houses are on the golf course and everyone there has a golf cart pretty much. And they all golf and they have a huge social, like a social, not just the social membership, but a social neighborhood. They all pretty much know each other based on the fact that they all go to their club and they have lunch, dinner, pool, bar, entertainment events, gym.
Matthew Maschler:
It’s like camp.
Staci Garcia:
It is like camp. It’s like camp. It’s a lot. But everybody gets a house.
Matthew Maschler:
Everybody gets a house
Staci Garcia:
Instead of chairing, they all get to have their own house. So in a way it’s great if that’s what you’re looking for. And we did a house on Friday, three houses on Saturday, and sometimes you’re like a tour guide because the houses that we saw the house on Friday and the three houses on Saturday are going to be sold, I’m going to guess by next week or the week after, which is actually a long time in this market. Usually houses are sold within a minute or they’re sold before you get to see ’em or they’re pretty much under contract on the first day. But when you have to chunk down a bunch of money to get through the front gate to pay for your equity or what now is not called equity anymore. To be in the club, you have to pay and then you pay your HOA and you might have a secondary HOA.
So the people that live in there don’t necessarily usually worry about money, but they have different echelons houses and so forth. So I got a tour of Stonebridge, which was nice, but it’s not my favorite thing to do. And so in that respect, I was thinking that there should be some sort of tour. But the funny thing is I think that real estate agents in not a seller’s market did have tours and they did take people to different clubs and it was like a timeshare kind of thing. If you put down money, you got a tour, you went to four different clubs in one day and if you bought something you would get your money back. And if you didn’t, you paid for a tour for the whole day. That’s a great idea. Not in this market because everyone is competing to buy a property and all of them. And there are very few properties available. So the people that we took around were super nice and awesome, but I don’t think they’re buying and therefore whatever they saw is not going to be for sale if they don’t buy it today.
Matthew Maschler:
In previous markets, the clubs would have, sometimes they would even have
Staci Garcia:
Complimentary
Matthew Maschler:
Lunch, stay in tries,
Staci Garcia:
You
Matthew Maschler:
Can come down, they’d put you up at the Hilton then, but you can enjoy the club for a day or two.
Staci Garcia:
Well the first place that I lived in Boca West, the whole entire street was complimentary staying accommodations for people that came down to try the club for a week. They would stay in Sable Lake East or stable Lake North. It’s not Sable Lake West, but they would stay there for a week. Every single property looked the same and they were all turnkey. So they would offer a unit, Boca West would offer a unit and say, Hey, you can stay here for a week, try our club, and if you like it then you can buy and here’s a place for you to stay for a week like a hotel room. But it was a house.
Matthew Maschler:
And the other thing is back then the clubs, the equity membership that you had to join, they’d actually give you a good amount of it back when you sold
Staci Garcia:
Or it stayed with the house.
Matthew Maschler:
But what happens is equity means ownership. So each member of the club was an owner of the club. So if you had to pay $30,000 to join the club, there was an initiation and an equity piece. But you can get back, let’s say 80% of the equity when you sold the property. So for people who were new to the area or maybe on a short-term contract, you get a job at a school or at a sports team and you’re here for the area, you’re not necessarily retiring and staying forever. You could buy the house, join and get some of that money back when you leave. And the problem lately has been they’ve lowered the amount of equity that’s returnable as a way of not increasing the fee. So they’ve lowered the amount that’s returnable and in some cases to a dollar. So if you join a club for 75,000 but you get back 50 when you sell, okay, well that’s reasonable. I can buy it and if I don’t like it or if I change my mind, if I want to move or if I have to move, I can sell the house and get my equity back. But if you’re only getting a dollar back, it kind of cramps someone who maybe is not committed to living here forever. It kind of discourages them from buying.
Staci Garcia:
Also, another thing about that is since it doesn’t stay with the house like it used to in Boca West, at least since it doesn’t stay with the house, it becomes another expense when you’re buying a house, it used to be part of the house. So in a way Stonebridge is similar. They have memberships attached to the house that are already allotted to that house, so they know how many memberships they have out there. And so some houses are called golf and some houses are called social. Some houses are both or upgradable, but that’s just so they can keep track of how many people are actually members.
Matthew Maschler:
So in Stonebridge, if you buy a golf house, you have to take golf.
Staci Garcia:
No, but it’s there to take and I think they want you to take it,
Matthew Maschler:
But I know that if you buy a house that’s social, you could upgrade to golf
Staci Garcia:
If it’s available.
Matthew Maschler:
But in Stonebridge it’s available.
Staci Garcia:
It is available currently
Matthew Maschler:
Right now it’s like Stonebridge is available. And the reason we talk about availability is a lot of clubs in this market have gone to wait list,
Staci Garcia:
Which is a pretty unbelievable thought because golf was everything and that’s why people came here to begin with. And then golf slowly became an elitist sport of sorts. You have the time for hours and hours and hours to play and a lot of the golf courses have closed because they didn’t have enough business. So now they’re building townhouses where golf courses were or houses where golf courses were, and now golf is coming either coming back or there’s so many less golf courses that people are using their memberships and golf is now at a premium where some places where they offer golf are not even available and you’re waitlisted and you don’t have to pay a discounted rate or anything like that. You’re actually paying for the golf membership, but you don’t have golf. You’re on a wait list. Stonebridge is one of those places where they’re not on a wait list yet and they still have memberships available for golf
Matthew Maschler:
And they have houses available for sale that are nice.
Staci Garcia:
So
Matthew Maschler:
It’s been one of my go-to clubs in 2022. I’ve been recommending Stonebridge a lot because they have houses and golf and not every community, Boca Woods does not have houses anymore. There’s not a single house for sale. In Boca Woods where I live in Woodfield, there’s a few houses for, but there’s a very long golf wait list, I believe Broken Sound recently started a golf waiting list.
Staci Garcia:
And in the Polo Club there’s only one house for sale
Matthew Maschler:
In all of the Polo Club.
Staci Garcia:
Well, it’s not even a house, it’s a condo.
Matthew Maschler:
So some of the clubs don’t have houses for sale, some of them don’t have golf for sale. Right now in Boca. I’m highly recommending Stonebridge if you would like to have some selection of houses. I saw a beautiful house a couple days ago with a beautiful Waterview. I really, I’m trying to think who do I know that would buy this house? It’s different from 10 years ago where some of these houses would sit on the market for a while. So that’s where we are. It’s a strange feeling. I have several buyers that I don’t have houses to that’ll work for. Them’s a strange feeling as a real estate agent not being able to find someone.
Staci Garcia:
It is, right?
Matthew Maschler:
I’m real estate Finders
Staci Garcia:
Is my brand. We’re real estate finders. We’re still trying to find you a house. And the funny thing is, these are houses that are just so this is going to a restaurant and asking for water, isn’t it?
Matthew Maschler:
Right? It’s like
Staci Garcia:
No-brainer.
Matthew Maschler:
It should be simple. I want a three bedroom house with a pool,
Staci Garcia:
One floor
Matthew Maschler:
On one floor. There should be a thousand of them for sale. There’s a million of them here. There should be a thousand of them for sale. But I think we talked about this on the last episode, we’ve redefined what home means, right? We’re safe at home and we work and play from home. So what better place to work and play from is a house on the golf course with access to swimming pools and tennis courts and fitness center and social activities. And you don’t have to leave the gates because as we all know, COVID can’t get into the gate.
Staci Garcia:
It needs a special pass to get in,
Matthew Maschler:
Right?
Staci Garcia:
Funny thing about it is when I was telling these people that I showed that were super nice that they should decide on the club before the house,
Matthew Maschler:
I’ve always recommended
Staci Garcia:
That, but they didn’t quite understand what I meant. I think there was a communication issue. So in Boca there’s a whole bunch of country clubs like Matt was just saying, and some of them have houses available for sale and some don’t. So let’s just rule out the ones that have nothing for sale. But you could still go to the country club and check it out if you like it. You can wait for a house to come up for sale.
Matthew Maschler:
And all the country clubs in Boca, they all have golf, they all have tennis, they all have swimming pools, they all have restaurants and social activities. What’s going to make one different from the other is the people.
Staci Garcia:
So
Matthew Maschler:
A lot of people will tend to join where they already have friends. So people want to be with other people that they know and look, they want make friends and meet new people too. They want to make sure that they can get a game. So what distinguishes one country club from another is the people. And it’s been true. People need to pick which club they want and then the house follows not the other way around. I love Boca West. It’s an unbelievable club for golf courses, fantastic restaurants. If you wanted Boca West, you don’t look in polo. If you want polo, you don’t look in Boca West. But if you know what club you want, the house generally follows. That’s why the subject here was tourism. Because if you’re just looking at houses that are available, not without necessarily understanding the club, it becomes almost impossible to make the decision. And then you’re just on a tour, you can get golf. There’s other clubs. So when I’ve been recommending Stonebridge to people, I skipped a few steps. There are clubs that have houses also that I’m choosing Stonebridge over. But somebody might need to go look at one of the reasons I choose Stonebridge over a club, let’s say like Whitecliff is nothing against Whitecliff, but Stonebridge is in Boca and Whitecliff is not. It’s in Lakeworth. And part of me feels, if someone’s calling me and they tell me they want to live in Boca,
Staci Garcia:
They want to live in Boca, they
Matthew Maschler:
Want to live in Boca. And that’s without getting into unincorporated Palm Beach County. But Wycliffe, it’s a nice club and there’s two golf courses, but it’s in Lake Worth. So then we have to talk to people about, okay, well geographically where do you want to be? Because we can put Whitecliff in the equation if they’re okay with going, it’s 20 minutes north of Boca 4 41, but it’s no longer Boca, right? You’re closer to the Wellington Mall than you are to the Town Center mall and it’s a great club and we have some listings there. I currently have three listings in Whitecliff, but I’m not quick to show them to people who want to move to Boca. But it’s an option. It’s an option. So that’s why we have to play tour guide and show people around to the different clubs if they never heard of ’em, right? They’ve heard of, let’s say they’ve heard of Polo Club or Addison, but they didn’t hear of Whitecliff or Stonebridge. So then we have to play tour guide a little bit and show them around to the clubs.
Staci Garcia:
Imagine picking the house before picking the city and then you find out you don’t really like the people of the city. And that’s kind of how I look at it.
It’s not just the house because you’re not going to spend a hundred percent of your time in the house if you were wouldn’t be in AHOA country club kind of place. If you don’t care about the people and you’re only about your house, then I wouldn’t even want to be behind a gate in a country club with all the expense. If you only care about your house and if you’re antisocial and you don’t want anyone in your business and you don’t really care for that sort of not the authority coming around and checking everything, you wouldn’t want to be in an HOA, you wouldn’t want to be in a country club. So let’s just assume that you pick the house and everybody around you is from California and you don’t like California. And that’s kind of how I view it. So I ask these people to pick the country club, go check out all the country clubs.
I contacted membership made appointments and tried to encourage them to take the tours so that they could meet the people at the club. There is a vibrant amount of people hanging out during the week at the clubhouse. These people are retired, they’re not on vacation, and this is what they do every day. And I’m assuming that you’re going to join them. The people that live there are going to also participate in the same lifestyle. So find out what’s going on and if you like what’s going on at the club and you enjoy the people, then you find the house. And if it’s not available, you wait. And then our job is actually to come in at that moment and say, you say, I know where I want to live. I know what country club I want to live in. Find me a house and we can do that.
But the tour guide part is not, I don’t feel like it’s part of the job. I’m sure there are people that when you come to Florida and you see the vacation and visitor building as you come down 95 or the Palm Beach County tourist, whatever, they have tons of information on every club in every place. But I’m not sure that you want to put that responsibility on a real estate agent or a realtor or a broker. You should do your homework. And I’m not saying it in a bad way, saying it in a good way. You’re going to buy a house and you really need to know where do you want your house to be because your house is actually, even though you think it’s the big part of the decision, it’s a smaller part of the decision. If you’re already a country club person, especially with golf and especially with tennis and social, I would like to know just picking camp when you’re little, are you going to go to a camp where everybody is a sports camp and you don’t like sports?
Are you going to go to a camp where it’s a theater camp and you hate performing and theater and arts? I can’t imagine doing that to one of my kids. And my mom definitely asked me first, what kind of camp do you want to go to? I said, I want to go to a performing arts camp. And I went to for forming arts camp. And then the next year, what kind of camps do you want to go to? I want to go to a sports camp. So all the people that are there are sports-minded and no one’s going to sit there and go, I don’t want to play. There’s bugs. So everybody that’s in Stonebridge loves golf and I doubt that there’s anyone in there that absolutely can’t stand golf. It seems like a awesome community, everybody, not that everybody knows everybody either, but they have this common denominator and it’s a great place to live and you would fit right in if that’s what you’re into. So as far as tourism, if you want to move to Florida and you just seriously, Google is your best friend. And then once you find out, I always feel like the people ask first, should we live east or west? But really that’s not the most important thing to ask because you have a car you can drive,
Speaker 3:
You
Staci Garcia:
Can drive to dinner and you can drive home. But if you put your house where you think you should live and it’s not the right place for you because you didn’t research the people. Different clubs have different people and I mean, I don’t think anyone, well, I did see someone on Facebook that said, which club is most Long Island?
Speaker 3:
Right?
Staci Garcia:
And I was like, stay in Long Island. If you’re looking for Long Island because we are in Florida, this is Boca and you should not want to come to the mini Long Island here. I mean, I definitely wouldn’t want anyone to live in a little mini Long Island if that’s what they’re looking for, but I’m not sure that’s what they meant. But I think once you get here, you need to shed all of that and start a new lifestyle. You’re in your Boca lifestyle. So I get looking for something comfortable that you already know, but don’t try to recreate what you had. Start finding out by how are the people, I have a bunch of people in my neighborhood from Philly and that’s cool. I’m from Philly, but we don’t all run around with our Eagle shirts on,
Speaker 3:
Scream
Staci Garcia:
And Go Eagles.
Speaker 3:
So
Staci Garcia:
I like it because the people in my neighborhood are really down to earth and they’ll just say or do anything and they’ll help you out. And I have my neighbors over all the time, but if you’re a non-social person, which I definitely know a lot of people like that, they don’t want anyone ever coming over to their house or asking ’em anything. Then you find a neighborhood where people just don’t socialize and there’s tons of ’em. So definitely find out, do your research and you can ask people, but I don’t think people are necessarily outward from their community. They don’t have the experience of living in other places. So I would definitely do your homework. I’ve lived in every sort of different place. I think I’ve lived in 14 places in Boca, so I have a feeling for every community that I’ve been in. And I mean I’ve enjoyed every place that I’ve lived on the beach in two different places. I’ve lived in Central Boca in country clubs in Fairfield and Boca West in two different, no, HOA communities in Near town center in townhouses, in condos, out in Boca Rio. That was as far west as I’ve ever lived. And
Speaker 3:
Boca Rio.
Staci Garcia:
Yep. I lived when it was called Cypress Creek. It lakes at Boca. Rio
Matthew Maschler:
Lakes At Bo Rio,
Staci Garcia:
Yeah. But spans and there’s good and bad for every place. And it’s funny because if you ask someone in East Boka about West Bo, God, they’re going to say frogs, mosquitoes, bugs, blah. But if you ask someone in West Bo about East Boca, they’re going to say it’s so expensive and it’s too crowded and there’s traffic. So it’s good to ask your real estate agent, but it’s also good to do your homework and find out where you think that you would fit in. And that’s kind of what I encourage the people that we’re working with to do. It might not even be Boca after the end of the day. It could be Delray, it could be, could
Matthew Maschler:
Be Lake Worth,
Staci Garcia:
Could be Lake Worth. And Boynton is actually booming like Boca was. So you could get more house in Boynton and it’s brand new and you and everything. There’s old Boynton and there’s new Boynton and there’s a lot of places now that are great, but Boca ends at a certain spot in the west side. So we can’t get any bigger. We can only grow within. And that’s another thing, people that have been here a really long time don’t love because we feel like we’re big enough or we’re crowded enough. And some people say we’re crowded. No one else can come here. Which is funny,
Matthew Maschler:
But I’m
Staci Garcia:
Sure it equals out.
Matthew Maschler:
It is funny when people have been here for a few years and then start talking about overcrowding.
Staci Garcia:
Yeah, they just got here and then 10 years later they’re like, stop coming here. But I also feel that way about people that say they immigrated from another country, they came here and then they turn around and say, yeah, we don’t want immigrants. But yes, they’re also immigrants. They just came here earlier.
Matthew Maschler:
Right, right. But yeah, GL Homes is going to open Lotus Palm on Glades Road and then you hear people saying, oh, too much new construction. And I’m like, yeah, you’re in a 10 year old house. Speaking of Lotus Palm, if you’re considering it, it starts at one point. 3 million goes up from there on Glades, not far from the turnpike. Single family house, single family homes, and it’s lotus palm, not plural, palms palm. I’m guilty of saying palms sometimes. Feel free to reach out if you want more information, I’d be happy to take you over there. The other thing is, for 55 and over communities, if you’re thinking about that in Florida recently, someone that I work with bought in a Valencia in Port St. Lucie. The same model that starts at 900 in Boynton Beach starts at 300 in Port St. Lucie, although it’s closer to 400 now.
So if you’re willing to go, it’s 45 minutes north of here to Port St, maybe a little bit more than that. Hour 15 to Port St. Louis. But you get the same house on the same lot for more than half the price. So there’s Valencia by GL Homes, 55 Nova Communities, new one opening up in Boynton. So reach out if you want me to take you over there. But then also Port St. Lucie and then on the West coast and outside of Naples and Bonita Springs. And those start in the six hundreds. So also less than the one in Boynton. So feel free to reach out to me. I can show you these options. Play tour guide for new construction 55 and over Valencia’s for Lotus Palm on Glades Road or for your country club Dreamhouse and for no HOA or, and even in this low inventory market, Stacey’s still finding properties for her investor clients. So that’s really good as
Staci Garcia:
Well. Yeah, if you have a handyman special, if you have a piece of crap house, let me know.
Matthew Maschler:
Yeah,
Staci Garcia:
We can make magic out of it.
Matthew Maschler:
Get you a cash offering. Close
Staci Garcia:
Quickly.
Matthew Maschler:
All. Well, that’s our time. Thank you for spending this Tuesday with us. And I usually don’t say the date because we are prerecorded, but it is two, two on 22 and Tuesday as we record. But hopefully you have enjoyed that day and you’re listening to this. And check us out on realestate finder.com. The future looks bright and the storms pass by the sky’s dog. Blue. When it’s almost that time, light shows cameras flash when I pass living in the moment, forget about the past. They saved the best for last. Matthew Mania. We about to make a splash. Life is a marathon full of sharp turns, got to keep pace while the hands on the clock turns high sticks. Five star real estate. I run a show, you could tell the boss, center plate, electricity, energy. If I brace, I’m always on time. Even if I’m late, I dreams come living life Real. What time? Whose time? It’s what time? It’s Matthew, man. Yeah. Got him shook, scared. Can’t look. We’re not afraid of the big bad wall first comes to right.
