02:23
Robert Chadwick
Hi everybody, this is Robert Chadwick with America Mortgages. Thank you for joining us once again for our series of webinars where we invite valued partners on to share their expertise and to assist our clients and being able to be the most effective international real estate investor that they possibly can be. So today we are excited to have Lucee with Nobility Consulting, which is an LLC expert in setting up and the formation of an llc. So thanks Lucee for joining us. I appreciate your time. How the webinar will go, just so you’re aware, is I’ll introduce you can talk somewhat about your company, introduce yourself, and then we’ll go through the slides and then we will talk about U.S. Mortgage financing for non residents. And then at the very end we’ll have a question and answer session so whoever is watching can enter a question.

03:36
Robert Chadwick
These questions will be addressed at the end. There will also be in the chat a way to contact either one of our US Loan officers or Lucee Direct to set up an appointment if you would like to discuss llc. So with that said, Lucee, again thank you for joining. Can you tell us about yourself and what Nobility Consulting does?

03:58
Lucee Cesena
Yes, thank you for having me, Robert. Welcome everybody. Thank you. I am Lucee Cesena and I am the owner of Nobility Consulting Services. We are a full business consulting firm. What that means is I set up corporations. I’ve been doing it for 14 years. I do everything from DBA setup, LLCs, S Corp, C Corps, I do all of the amendments, I dissolve them and I keep them in compliance. So we have a lot of customers that we’ve opened up many LLCs and S Corps for and then we take care of the compliance part of it. Because it’s one thing to open an LLC or a corporation, but it’s another thing to make sure that it stays in good standing every single year and making sure that the customer knows what goes with that.

04:43
Lucee Cesena
So we make sure that our clients are in compliance and taking care of all of that.

04:49
Robert Chadwick
Fantastic. Thank you. And I know the LLC question is something that comes up probably on every single phone call we have with clients. So this has been a well awaited webinar. Again, we appreciate your time. So I’ll start the slides and you can go from there.

05:04
Lucee Cesena
Perfect. So we are going to be talking about understanding the setup and benefits of a US LLC for real estate and specifically llc, because LLC are really the best option for real estate purchases, investments. If we can go back to my last slide real quick again, I am the founder and owner of Nobility Consulting Services. This is my contact information Which I’m sure they will put it in the chat if anybody needs to ask questions or would like information about setting up an LLC and then we can go ahead. All right, so why invest in US Real estate? So there’s a couple of reasons, but you know, the stability in the US Market, the U. S. Real estate market remains one of the most stable and lucrative in the world.

06:01
Lucee Cesena
There’s constant developments taking place and there’s a lot of homes to be purchased for investments. Fix and flips, you know, primary whatever you’re looking to do. There is so much to do here. There’s high returns on investment. You know, you can buy a property today and in three years you’re already getting a return on that investment by having equity in the home or prices going up. So there’s a lot that can be done when purchasing in the U.S. Diversification of your portfolio or owning property in the U.S. Offers diversification. And particularly for international investors, because of the fact that you guys are purchasing here, you may not live here. So you have the option of doing things like Airbnbs, renting it out, or even if you wanted to, again fix and then flip it.

06:52
Lucee Cesena
The values out here are a lot higher, as I’m sure every one of us knows, and then attractive funding, financing options. So there’s a lot of US Lenders that offer so many different financing options from, you know, FHA to stated documents. And again, that’s not my specialty, but I know that there’s an array of them. So those are some of the great reasons why it is good to purchase and invest in the US Next slide. All right, so benefits of setting up a US Entity asset protection. You know, a lot of lenders nowadays, especially if you’re going a private lender sector route, but any type of lender are really trying to gear away towards lending to individuals because of the protection.

07:39
Lucee Cesena
And even for yourself, if you’re going to buy a property and invest your money into something, and if you’re going to rent it out or if you’re developing whatever the case may be, somebody can come in and sue you. And what you don’t want to happen is to have your personal assets be at risk. The money in your bank, the homes that you currently own, vehicles, whatever it is, you want to protect your personal assets. And in order to do that, you set up a legal separate entity. You set up that entity, your home becomes a part of that entity, it becomes the asset of that. And then if somebody sues you, they are only allowed to get what is in that asset. So in that corporation, if it’s one property, that’s all they have access to.

08:23
Lucee Cesena
So it protects you from your assets personally. Tax benefits. If you are purchasing more than one property or doing developments and you are making loads of money doing that, you’re going to be taxed as an individual, which takes you to higher tax rates and you don’t get a lot of the tax benefits and write offs that you would by having a business. So having properties in a business in an LLC gets you tax cuts, tax rate cuts, and then also you get to do your tax write offs and you get the asset protection. Also, the ease of ownership, setting up a business entity allows investors to more easily manage property purchases, especially when handling multiple properties. So again, you’re going to purchase a property through your business, the business does it. If it needs to sell, you sell it through the business.

09:13
Lucee Cesena
And if that’s all you want to do with it, you close the business, you’re done, right? It doesn’t mess with you personally or anything, or you decide, I’m going to purchase a property through this entity, but then I want to sell it later. You sell that, you buy another one in the same entity and it just keeps going. So it makes it much smoother for you. And then also streamline financing. So again, US Lenders often prefer to deal with US registered entities because it makes it easier than having to deal with entities that are in, you know, a different country. As we all know, it’s just the business of doing that makes it a little bit more difficult.

09:50
Lucee Cesena
So having a US registered business makes it easy for a lender to do business with you, and then it makes it easier to obtain financing in that regard. And then the next slide now steps to setting up a business entity. You have to choose the right state and this is going to be a topic that we can talk about in a whole workshop on its own. Right? But different states do have different tax laws, different fees, and different regulations. And when I say compliance, this is what I’m referring to. When you set up an entity in the state, each state has their own compliance needs. Some have more than others, some cost more than others. So it really does depend on where you set up your LLC for your purchases.

10:39
Lucee Cesena
But the reason I say this can go on is because some lenders refer or prefer you to have your LLC set up in the state that you’re buying the property in. So this again can go down into a rabbit hole. But choosing the right state is what is really important. So before you just open An LLC in, you know, Delaware or Wyoming, because you saw on TikTok that’s the best place to do it. You got to make sure that it’s the right fit for you and for the goals that you’re trying to accomplish in your investments and what you’re going to be doing in the long run. And then registering the new entity, we have to register it with the Secretary of State. It’s not just a matter of getting your articles and then that’s it.

11:21
Lucee Cesena
For instance, if you guys are going to purchase property in California, there’s compliance that goes with that. You have to file your statement of information, or I’m not sure of how many you are aware of it, but there’s a new regulation called the BOI filing, which is the beneficial information ownership report that has to be filed with every new entity that gets set up. So making sure that you have the right documentation and the right paperwork and forms when setting up an entity is very important. And then also your employer identification number, this is the number that is attached to your corporation when you set it up. It’s required for tax purposes and for opening any bank accounts here. Now, as a foreign national, you know, it’s. It’s not as easy as just going to the IRS and applying for it online automatically.

12:12
Lucee Cesena
So there is a different way to do it, but it’s something that has to be done and it does go hand in hand with setting up the entity. And then as I talked about briefly, compliance, you have to stay compliant with the irs, with your local state laws, and with anything else that the state is going to require, whether that’s annual renewal, annual list officers, statement of information. Every state has different requirements. So it’s really important that you do know what those are and you stay compliant in that or you come to somebody like us at nobility and we make sure that we keep you compliant throughout the time that you keep your entity and then securing financing.

12:51
Lucee Cesena
So once you have your corporation set up and you are have all your paperwork and your ein and you have the property that you’re looking to purchase now you get to go to the lender with your package and say, I am ready to purchase properties. So the next one is why invest in. Oh, actually if we can go. We’ve already done that one more time. Okay, so how we can help so end to end service, we help from setting up your entity from the beginning and that’s what. By having a conversation. As I said, I know everybody looks online and sees what’s the best way to do it. What’s the best state to do it in? Everybody likes certain states like Wyoming and Delaware and they’re great because they do have some great benefits to those states.

13:36
Lucee Cesena
But are purchasing a property and the lender requires that you have an LLC set up in the specific state that you are purchasing that property in. So let’s say you want to purchase a property in Texas, but you set up an LLC in Delaware. Well, now you have the Delaware LLC that has to have permission to do business in the state of Texas because that’s where you want to purchase, which is doable. We would be setting up a foreign entity. But now you’re responsible for whatever Texas requires for the year, along with whatever Delaware aware is going to require for the year. So it’s those types of conversations that you want to make sure you’re fully aware of and understand before you just go and open an entity anywhere. And then again having the expertise in setting up that entity.

14:22
Lucee Cesena
I have set up entities all over this country for different types of businesses. I work with direct lenders, I work with direct consumers and businesses. So I understand what goes into it, what is needed, if there was ever a change that needed to be happened. So for instance, you might open something with a partner today, but later down the road you decide you want to get a new investor or a new partner, and now you and this new partner want to buy a property together. Well, there has to be some changes in that llc. So you want to make sure that you do go to a company that knows what that looks like and exactly what to do, how and how to make those changes, and then ongoing support.

15:00
Lucee Cesena
Once we set up your llc, that doesn’t mean you’re done or we’re done with you. You won’t get a call from me every day, but you will get your annual compliance updates. And if there’ ever a question, if you just need some consulting or you have, you know, one specific thing that needs to be done and you’re like, hey, where do I get this done? You can always contact us to help you in those regards. So having that helps a lot. And then the process. So the process would be a consultation. We’ll have an initial meeting to discuss your goals and needs. And the reason I like to do that is because every situation is different. It’s not cookie cutter, it’s not a blanket.

15:40
Lucee Cesena
You know, there’s some LLCs where you can have what’s called a series, meaning if you know you’re going to be buying properties and you’re Going to buy more than one in a state and you want to have them all separated in different llc. That’s a conversation that we need to discuss because I want to make sure that I’m putting you in the right type of entity and the right type of structure. As you’re growing, as your business is going to grow, your investments are going to grow. I want to be able to make sure that you’re set up properly from the start. And then the entity setup, we make it so easy that we take care of everything.

16:13
Lucee Cesena
So by the time you’re done dealing with us, you’ll get a book with your articles and everything in it to make sure that all of your documentation can be stored properly. Because the one thing you don’t want is to have your articles here, ein there, and then five years down the road you want to purchase a new property and you don’t know where everything is. Right. You want to keep them together and keep them in a nice safe place in neat order, because this is your business. And then ongoing management. So again, we offer management not for your entity, so management on your paperwork or any kind of compliance or changes, amendments, you constantly have us to take care of those needs when and if they arise. And then. So the next steps would be to either contact me via phone or email.

17:06
Lucee Cesena
I am on Instagram as well. I have two pages there, so I do a lot of content, sometimes with information, just educating, dropping little nuggets here and there, I like to call them. And then you can contact me for consultation or we can just have a discussion if you have questions and that would be it.

17:28
Robert Chadwick
Awesome. Thank you, Lucee. Super good information. I know this is something that again comes up on every single call. I just had a few questions on some of the items that you were discussing. So when a. Obviously when a U.S. Citizen, because they already have a Social Security number, but when a foreign national applies for an llc, I know you can do the LLC setup very quickly. You know, maybe you can talk about that a bit. But how long does it take to where they’re normally issued their tax identification number? Because I know that can be a delay.

18:06
Lucee Cesena
Yes, great question, thank you for bringing that up. Because yes, it can sometimes be a delay. So because it is coming from a foreign national, I can set up the entity sometimes in three to four business days, sometimes, depending on what state it’s in, I can have them the same day. But when it comes to getting the EIN number, we have to apply for it annually and normally it’s for business days. However, Sometimes the irs. And we’re dealing with the irs, and there’s a lot of changes going on right now. I have had some that take up to about a month to get, and that’s just because the IRS is slow or.

18:43
Lucee Cesena
And the only way to really apply for them is via fax, unless we want to mail them in, which I try not to do, because mailing it is much longer than faxing it, so it’s having to stay on top of them. So it’s. It can take anywhere from four business days up to sometimes I’ve seen 30 business days. It just depends on what the IRS is going through at the moment and what time frame we are. So for instance, right now we’ve had in the beginning of the year, the IRS went down for one week, the computers were completely shut down, and it is taking quite a while right now to get tax ID numbers.

19:18
Robert Chadwick
Okay, great. Great answer. I know it’s. Especially when we’re doing loans and clients want to close right away and they haven’t pre planned for their llc. I think it’s something that, you know, you need to take into account not so much the setting up of the llc, but finalizing it with the irs. So thank you for that one thing as well. I realize it differs, you know, by state on what the state charges and so forth, but in general, what is the cost when setting up an llc? I think there’s a lot of people that think it’s going to be tens of thousands of dollars, and I think that’s absolutely incorrect, but I’ll let you address that.

20:00
Lucee Cesena
Well, yes, because every state is different. So some states charge a lot more for the filings than others. So it rains anywhere between about 475 to about 975, depending on the state that it’s being set up in. Because again, the state fees alone range from that amount. So it just depends on the state, but I would say a good range is between 475 to about 975.

20:25
Robert Chadwick
And when you think about it, the cost is nominal in the protection that you have when you establish an llc.

20:32
Lucee Cesena
Well, yeah, let’s think about that. So if you have a property that you’re buying because you want to do it as an investment, meaning you’re going to hold on to it and either set it up, like I said, as an Airbnb or having renters in there, now you have people coming into your property. You don’t know what they’re doing. You don’t know if they get hurt and if they get hurt. Everybody loves to sue. And if they sue that owner, then everything that owner owns is up for grabs. So everything you’ve worked hard for to be able to put you in a position to own an investment property is now at risk. So having the protection of your assets is invaluable compared to what could happen should somebody sue you by being in this property.

21:13
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, absolutely agree. And I think it’s a very unique feature of the US where you can just, you know, ring fence your asset and that’s all. If anybody was to ever go after you for anything, that’s all they’ll be able to access. So, okay, so I will start the mortgage portion again. We’ll go over the mortgage programs. If you’re not familiar with America Mortgages, we’ll discuss, you know, our company. And then at the very end, please start populating your questions because normally there’ll be quite a few questions and Lucee and I will address this at the end. So we’ll see you in a little bit. Lucee, thank you very much. So again, I’m Robert Chadwick with America Mortgages. American Mortgages has one focus. We provide US Mortgage financing foreign nationals and expats.

22:02
Robert Chadwick
What makes us unique is we’re actually a direct lender and a broker. And with that stated, we are normally able to find or to be able to give you the best terms and the best rates of any US Mortgage for a non US Resident, both expats and foreign nationals. You know, this is all we do. This is our expertise. And you know, coincidentally I, I was talking to a client the other day and they asked, we asked, you know, where did you find us? And he actually found us on Chat gtp. The fact Chat GTP is recommending American Mortgages has to say something. So our general mortgage overview, we do loans for purchase, refinance and cash out. So basically equity release, if you’re a non US Resident, so no US Credit, no U. S.

22:54
Robert Chadwick
Exposure, we can get up to 75% financing in all 50 states. If you’re a US expat, then you can get up to 80% as long as you still maintain US credit. Another unique benefit of the US which I think if everybody is calling in from somewhere abroad, you will realize that most mortgages in your home country or the country that you’re living in have limitations on the age of the borrower for the amortization period. In the US you cannot discriminate against pretty much anything and age is being one of them. So they consider if you’re 19 or 99, you should still have the same benefits of a mortgage, meaning that you are able to take the longest amortization period regardless of age. Fantastic way to optimize yield.

23:48
Robert Chadwick
We have a really good program as interest rates I think are still a little bit higher than certainly where they were a few years ago. But we have a program where It’s a fixed 10 year interest only. A fixed rate that lasts for 10 years, you’re servicing only the interest. So you’re able to get maximize the returns over the next 10 year period. After that 10 years, the loan does not reset to the current rate. Could be higher, it could be lower, who knows. But it continues at the same rate that you fixed in the very beginning. But now you’re paying principal and interest. So it’s a really good loan. If you’re looking to optimize yield. Again, loan programs in all 50 states and one of the most important things that we do is because 100% of our clients are clients like you.

24:37
Robert Chadwick
We qualify the loans with common sense underwriting. So we’re not going to go through your tax returns, your pay stubs. If you’re buying a property for investment, we qualify it on how it should be qualified, which is the cash flow of the property. And I’ll go over that in a further slide. If you want to use foreign income, even for US expats, that’s absolutely allowed, no issues. And again we have for non citizens or, you know, US expats that are living abroad, no US credit is required, no minimum deposit required, meaning that you have no requirement to set up a bank account and deposit a minimum fund. All we do is dry lending. Normally you can get a loan approval within 72 hours.

25:25
Robert Chadwick
If anybody has gone through this process with us, I mean it’s probably much more simple than actually qualifying for a loan in your home country. We have a very good encrypted platform that allows you to do the application online after you speak with a loan officer, securely upload your documents. We say approval in 72 hours. Often we can get it in 24 hours, 30 to 45 day closing.

25:52
Robert Chadwick
And of course, as everybody is probably aware, because this is all we do, you are able to open the application and close the application, meaning that you can start it and end it all in your home country without ever having to travel to the US we have a variety of ways to do it and I think one of the things that we’re actually very proud of a company because we have such great structures, 97% of the loans that we submit actually get approved. So fantastic average. You can assume that if you submit your loan and the loan officer is willing to go through the process that the loan likely will be approved.

26:36
Robert Chadwick
We have loan officers all over the world speaking your language and in your time zone, no longer do you need to stay up at three in the morning to speak to somebody. In New York, you’re working with loan officers in the same region that you are in makes for communication and the process much easier. And if anybody has any questions, there’s a number that is listed there. It’s a 24, 7 number. You can reach a loan officer at any time. So going forward, our goal in 2025 is just to make real estate investing easier and more accessible to everybody. And that’s why we have partners like Lucee. We realize, you know, not being in the U.S. You know, you may not have access to what a US investor would have.

27:26
Robert Chadwick
So we try to make it as turnkey as possible with the right embedded partners. So our loan programs, this will go through fairly quickly. The loan program that I had stated earlier, which is common sense underwriting, is probably our most popular loan program. What makes this again very unique is we do not require you to provide your personal income documents. This is actually quite important, especially for people that are self employed and maybe don’t show their true serviceability of debt. These loans will fall under a, it’s called a dscr and it is a loan program that when we do the appraisal for the property, we get a supplement to that appraisal and that appraisal will state what the average rent is.

28:19
Robert Chadwick
If you’re buying a property that’s already rented, or perhaps you’re refinancing a property that already has tenants, then it’s likely we will go off of the rental income of the lease application or the lease agreement. Again, you qualify only on the rental income. We can go down to as little as $100,000 on this program and up to 3 million. These are 30 year fix and we also have interest only available. And again, if you missed the first part on the 30 year fix, it’s regardless of age. So just if you look at the bottom of the slide, this explains in very simple terms how these loan programs work. So when we take the rent, we will compare it to what the mortgage payment is.

29:08
Robert Chadwick
And when we say mortgage payment, we take into account the principal, the tax and insurance and maybe if there’s any HOA or condo association payments. Now as long as that qualifies On a one to one basis, which is very generous, then the loan will qualify. Now say perhaps it doesn’t qualify or there’s less rent than maybe what the mortgage payment is. That’s perfectly fine. All that means is your loan value will be adjusted to make it work. So instead of maybe getting 75% perhaps maybe you’re getting 72 or 73% which requires you to bring in a little bit more money. So the AM investors plus this is a sort of a, the loan program that we had in the, on the earlier slide, but it’s with a little bit of a boost.

30:02
Robert Chadwick
So say the rents do not qualify to cover all of the mortgage payment and you really would rather not put more money down, but you actually have provable tax income. We’re not going to ask for your tax returns, but if you’re employed we’re going to want a letter from your employer. If you’re self employed, a letter from your accountant. And that letter just merely states your two years of income and your current year to date income. And we’ll use that in lieu of tax returns. It’s a great way to be able to maximize your LTV when rents maybe are coming in a little bit lower than what you would want. On this loan program we do have a minimum loan amount which is a bit higher of $150,000. But again as all of our programs we have 30 year fix and interest only.

30:54
Robert Chadwick
If you look at the bottom of the slide, it’s a good explanation of how this works. And it works off of the debt to income ratio. So in this case we would go off of a 43%. If you have children that are going to school abroad, and this is something that is very common for us, you are able to purchase a property in two ways. One, if you can service the debt in your home country and you can service the debt in the country that you’re buying the property, where you’re, where your child is going to school, then that’s actually a very simple, easy program. It does require tax returns and so forth. But if you would prefer to qualify on the rental income, then we would look at your child as the tenant of the property.

31:45
Robert Chadwick
So again we would qualify them on the rental income of the property. It’s again a great way if you have children that are attending school abroad and you want to be able to provide housing for them. If you are a US expat, excuse me, we try to make this as if you are living and working in the US and walking into your local bank. It’s that simple. There are no difference in terms or programs or rates that we offer for expats than you would be able to get again if you were living and working in the us what makes it unique is we allow foreign earned income. And if any US expat has tried to get a bank loan, once they find out you have foreign earned income, it’s game over. So for us that is no issue.

32:36
Robert Chadwick
This is something that we deal with every day and what we expect and what also makes us unique. If you’re working for a foreign company, you’re obviously not getting a W2, which is like the end of year statement. We do not require a W2 as well. So it makes it a very simple, easy process. Again, minimum loan amounts are a bit higher than our own lending, but it allows you to get a loan from 150,000 all the way up to 5 million. You do need to maintain US credit and as you see on the bottom, it does go off of the standard debt to income of 43%. So we do a lot of loans for high net worth clients, mainly referred to by their private bank.

33:27
Robert Chadwick
As most people are aware, private banks, especially the international private banks, very few of them do offer US mortgage financing, a pure product of mortgage financing. And we’re very aware of that. So what we have is the AM high net worth mortgage program. No personal income documents are required. And as everybody knows with very high net worth people, the tax returns can be very complicated. If it’s multiple jurisdictions, multiple countries, it can be very challenging. Instead what we do is we qualify you on your liquid portfolio. We take a two month average of your stocks, bonds, anything that would be considered liquid and we divide that over a specific period. In this example, it is a five year fixed loan. So it’s divided over 60 months. But it allows you to qualify on your savings or your investments that you’ve been able to acquire.

34:32
Robert Chadwick
No AUM again is required on this loan. Amount minimum for this program is 3 million. And go it says 100 million, but certainly it can go above that if the numbers work. What makes this loan program fantastic is even though you’re using these liquid assets, and again it can be stocks, bonds, cash in the bank, there is no requirement to move that to another bank. And even more importantly, there is no encumbrance of those assets. So we’re only using those assets to qualify and not and there again there’s no requirement to move the funds or there’s no charge put on these assets the day after the loan closes, you can trade it. You can, you know, do whatever you choose to. So that is my presentation.

35:23
Robert Chadwick
If you look into the chat, there is a link to be able to arrange an appointment with Lucee and Lucee’s team. There is also in the chat a phone number to speak to a loan officer 247 if you want to arrange a convenient time, there’s a link to the calendar and even an email to be able to reach out maybe if you have any questions. So with that said, Lucee, you know, perhaps maybe you could come back online and we will start with the question and answer session. Okay, let me pull this up here. Get quite a few questions already. Okay. So how it will work is, I will read the question. If it is LLC related, you take it. If it’s mortgage related then. And then I’ll answer.

36:15
Robert Chadwick
So first question, are there benefits to living in a home that is owned by my own llc? It is even permitted.

36:25
Lucee Cesena
So not necessarily because again, when you have a home and you put it in an llc, it’s usually because you are having it as an investment or a business and you’re making money from it. So you’re not really making money from living in the home that you. Or from, you’re not making any money from living in a home. Right. Because you’re paying mortgage on it. So there’s really no benefit to it. You can do it, but again, it’s no real benefit to it.

36:54
Robert Chadwick
But what if on that question, and again I’m not, because we really don’t deal with owner occupied properties. But what if you held the owner occupied property and LLC and somebody got injured? I mean, would that be a possibility or.

37:11
Lucee Cesena
Of course, yes. So if you’re having a party and somebody gets hurt, then yes, there’s a benefit to that. I’m just not quite sure that some lenders will lend to owner occupied. If it’s an llc, it might have to be an individual. So that’s not really a question on the lending side that I can answer because again, it’s not something that we normally see.

37:32
Robert Chadwick
Good, makes sense. Thank you. Next question. Do you have to form the entity in the state that you are buying your property in? Oh boy. This is a question that comes up all the time. Yes.

37:43
Lucee Cesena
So that’s a great question. And it’s really up to the lender. So I work with a lot of lenders. Again, I deal with this on a daily basis. Okay. And I’m going to give you an Example, I had a real estate agent, or she was the broker loan officer calling me every day this week because their client has an LLC in Pennsylvania and they’re purchasing a property in Florida. And they needed to set up this foreign entity because closing was last week. Right. So everything is now, hurry up, I need it now. They did not have the right paperwork for that foreign entity to purchase it in Florida. So it depends. If you know that you’re going to be purchasing property all over the US then it doesn’t make sense to have LLCs in every state.

38:30
Lucee Cesena
So you can have your main LLC in one state and then set up that LLC as in foreign entity in the state that you’re going to be purchasing properties in. And so you’re not having all these different LLCs with different EIN numbers. It’s only one, but this one can do business in every state that you want to purchase in. But it really does depend on the lender because the lender may be okay with your LLC in Texas if you’re buying it in Florida, and then the other lender may say, no, it needs to be able to do business in Florida. So I hope that answers.

39:04
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, no, it’s a good answer. And as you know, America Mortgages is a direct lender and also a broker. I think it’s important that, you know, there’s a coordination between the loan officer and the client and yourself when they’re actually going through the initial steps to make sure that the process goes as smooth as possible.

39:26
Lucee Cesena
Exactly.

39:27
Robert Chadwick
Next question. How do I get an EIN number? Very good question.

39:32
Lucee Cesena
As a foreign national, you have to do it manually. So you will have to fill out your 2553, which is the application, and submit it over to the IRS with the copy of your articles. Or you just hire us and we handle all of that for you and make sure that we are on top of getting that from the irs. But you have to order it manually.

39:53
Robert Chadwick
And I think, you know, the cost that you had discussed earlier, just for the brain damage of having to deal with the, you know, any authorities, is much better to actually use a professional like yourself. Next question. How does the loan process work specifically for the difference between the process of purchasing a home under an LLC versus an individual? Again, a very good question. So we would prefer if you purchase it in an llc. And again, there’s only benefits and really no downside on why you would not, however, like your client, you were just talking about where they needed to close right away or whatever it May be we can do loans in both individual names and we can do loans in both LLCs. So it really just depends on your preference and what you would like to do.

40:48
Robert Chadwick
But they’re both available and really there is no difference in the process. Next question. What is a registered agent? I don’t even know that one.

41:01
Lucee Cesena
A registered agent is the person that you are going to put on your LLC documents. So your articles of organization as the person that will be contacted. If you are to be sued or if there are court documents or any type of important documents that need to go to the business, it will go to the registered agent. So this is a great question because everybody here is foreign national. When we set up the entity in whatever state we’re going to set it up in, we have to hire a registered agent and then there’s a yearly fee to keep that registered agent on file. You cannot set up an LLC without having a registered agent because they want to know that the documentation can get to you if it needs to when it is important documents. So that’s what a registered agent is.

41:48
Robert Chadwick
Okay, fantastic. Next question. Other than years of experience, what qualifications do you and your company have in doing this type of work? I. E. Attorney, tax advisor, et cetera. Believe that’s for you.

42:01
Lucee Cesena
Yeah. So I am not an attorney, I am not an accountant. But I do have attorneys and accountants that work with me and that use me to do all of their work when it comes to setting up the entities. So I am a certified small business consultant. I do have my certification in that and I have 14 years of working this specific field directly with the IRS and directly with the Secretary of State. So that is the answer to that question.

42:33
Robert Chadwick
Fantastic. And I think too if you. Again, our goal is to make foreign investing as easy and as painless as possible. And I think, you know, the US Is probably one of the easier places to invest. But as America Mortgages as a company we have contacts and agreements and referrals to guys or to girls like or companies like Lucee and to also tax accountants, attorneys, all of these service providers that add value to what our clients need. Next question. I am looking to purchase a property through an llc. For context. I am currently a foreign national, but I live in the US On a visa. I am wondering if I should get an accountant or should I do things myself.

43:25
Lucee Cesena
So this is going to be on what you want to pay because if you do an, if you get an accountant, you are going to pay accountant fees just as you would attorney fees. And if you do it yourself. You can definitely mess that up and end up having to pay more money because you’re going to still have to go to somebody to try to fix whatever you tried to do. Because there are, again, documents and requirements that need to be filed along with the articles. It’s not just articles. And I’ll give you an example. And this kind of goes to the other question. I had a client today call me that paid an accountant to set up a corporation for her and it still has not been done. And there are so many issues.

44:03
Lucee Cesena
Whereas I set up an LLC two days ago and I just got it back today. It doesn’t, it’s not hard if you’re doing it. An accountant is great at taxes and bookkeeping. Their specialty is not setting up entities, but some of them do it and they know how to do it. This is just my specialty.

44:21
Robert Chadwick
No, and I, I think it’s actually working with an expert. And we talk about this all with the U.S. Mortgages, you know, people like yourself that focus one, you know, one area and perfect it and become an expertise expert and an industry, you know, leader. Those are the guys that you want to go to. You know, they know all the ins and outs. This is all they do. This is all they see. And it’s similar with the mortgages. Probably 25% of our business are people that have gone to, you know, mortgage brokers or banks that aren’t familiar with foreign national lending. They get 75% through the process and the thing just falls apart. So, you know, if you have a BMW, you’re not going to take it to a Toyota dealer for servicing. And that’s sort of how I look at this.

45:12
Robert Chadwick
You should deal always with industry experts like Lucee. Okay, next question. Are mortgage rates and terms different based on the state where the LLC is registered? Say that’s probably my question. And the answer is no. So mortgage rates and terms, they don’t vary by state. It’s. As long as we’re able to lend in that state, we can lend in all 50 states, then you’re going to have the same terms. Now, some states do have issues where maybe they don’t allow prepayment penalties or whatever it may be in order to get the interest rate cheaper. Certainly that will adjust.

45:54
Robert Chadwick
But what I would suggest is, you know, if you’re looking at a variety of states or multiple states, you speak to one of the loan officers and they can tell you what is more favorable in many ways from, you know, all the way from, you Know the property tax to the type of loan available. Next question. Is it easier to obtain financing if the LLC has multiple members or co investors? Oh, good question. So in general, we can have up to four members of the LLC when you’re doing a mortgage. Now, one thing that you want to check, and it depends on which loan program we have, if a member has a certain percentage and I believe it’s over 23%, then they need to be included on the loan.

46:42
Robert Chadwick
So that’s something to take into account and again to speak to one of your loan officers about it. Next question. Maybe we’ll skip that one. Next question. Hi, Robert. I’m hearing this correctly. I don’t need 20% down payment if I’m buying a property in an LLC. No, that’s actually the LLC is the vehicle to hold the property. It doesn’t really have anything to do with qualifying on the loan. So for our foreign national loan programs, you’re required a 25% down payment. If you’re a US expat and you maintain US credit, it’s a 20% down payment. So regardless of if it’s an LLC or an individual, they still have the minimum down payment required returns. Next question. Are there any situations where an LLC would not provide light full liability protection? Your question.

47:43
Lucee Cesena
So, yeah, that is a question that people ask all the time. And I this is my answer. Any great corporate attorney can break that corporate seal. So although it comes and corporations limited liability companies provide asset protection, any great attorney can pierce that corporate veil. So it’s not really a definite answer of yes or no because yes, it does provide full liability protection. But if somebody was to sue and you had an attorney that was just a beast out there, they can break that corporate seal. So there’s not 100% guarantee in any corporation that you have.

48:24
Robert Chadwick
Okay. Probably not the answer that were looking for, but honest, I appreciate it. Next question. Any suggestions on how to build U S credit while living abroad if we don’t have U S Credit? Great question. We do not need U. S Credit. So our loan programs, especially if you’re a foreign national, do not require US Credit. If you are a U. S. Expat and you no longer maintain U S Credit, that’s perfectly fine. We would treat you as a foreign national just to start out with. But as soon as you got the mortgage, probably take 24 to 36 months, you should be able to reestablish your credit and then you will be able to refinance into a standard US Expat loan. So hopefully that answers your question.

49:14
Lucee Cesena
Can I add to that question?

49:16
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, sure, absolutely.

49:18
Lucee Cesena
When you form an LLC or a corporation, you can add a DUNS number to your corporation, which basically builds business credit. So just as we have our credit scores from 300 to 800, businesses have credit scores from 0 to 100. So when you start a business, you can attach a DUNS number to it and build business credit that way. So if you have a loan in it, or if you get a, you know, lease a vehicle through it or anything that you purchase through that entity and you have the DUNS number attached, it’ll start building business credit and you can make more purchases and do things with that. So I just wanted to add that to it.

49:57
Robert Chadwick
Oh, great. Yeah, great answer. Thank you. Okay, next question. I, and you put in parentheses, mostly understand the protection aspect of keeping rental properties in an llc, but I thought the tax benefits were just a pass through. What are some of the ways that an LLC can benefit you when it comes to tax time?

50:19
Lucee Cesena
It can benefit you in different ways. So if you are doing maintenance on the property, if you are doing upgrades or making purchases, or any of the money that you’re getting in now, an individual is going to be taxed, and these are just figures, they’re not exact. But an individual based on the amount of money that person makes is taxed anywhere between 12% to 25%. As an individual, all personal income, when you have it in an LLC, that gets cut in half. So now instead of 12 to 14, 24%, you’re probably looking at like 7 to 16%. So you’re getting a tax cut in the rate and then as well is you get to write off. So now you have expenses when it’s just you as an individual that has the property and you got to do maintenance on it.

51:05
Lucee Cesena
If you’re doing it as a business, Airbnb or rental, and you got to paint or you got to have somebody come in and fix things and do maintenance. That’s all your personal income. It’s not a tax write off when you have it in a business, in an llc. Now those are expenses that the business is doing. So all the money that’s coming in, you have now these tax write offs that takes away from your gross income. So there’s two ways to benefit from having the businesses on, the rates and the expenses.

51:33
Robert Chadwick
It’s a great answer and actually a really good question. And again, when I talk about American mortgages partnering with experts, we do have a, an accountant, he’s Actually a CPA and a tax attorney that we deal with on a regular basis and is, it’s in the middle center portion of our website on our concierge program right next to Lucee’s page. And these guys, if they are, I think that they’re one of the best foreign national tax accountants out there and they certainly can make sure that you have the best tax advice to optimize your rental yield. Next question. Does Washington state require the LLC to be based in their state?

52:19
Lucee Cesena
Again, this is going to be based on the lender and what the lender is going to require. If you are purchasing in their, in that state, if they’re going to allow you to use your, I’m sorry, if you’re purchasing in a different state, they’re going to want. If they’re going to allow you to use your LLC from Washington state or if they’re going to require you to set up a foreign entity somewhere else. So that really is going to be based on the lender.

52:44
Robert Chadwick
And I think, you know, to kind of add to that, when you’re speaking with one of our US Loan specialists, discuss that with them. And you know, again, working with a partner with Lucee in conjunction with your loan officer, you know, from the very beginning is the smartest way to do it to make sure that you’re not wasting time and money with your structure. Next question. Does Nobility offer accounting slash tax filing services?

53:13
Lucee Cesena
We do not file taxes. We do offer bookkeeping services, but that’s about it. No taxes. Because I do not want to be an expert in that field. So. No, just this corporation setup.

53:28
Robert Chadwick
Yeah. And again, if you go to our [email protected] there is the section in the center and it has everything from, you know, LLC set up with Lucee, all the way to tax expert tax advice, to FX transfer, to hazard insurance. All of the things that foreign nationals or US Expats living abroad require when it comes to investing. Again, we tried to make it as turnkey and as easy as possible. And people like Lucee and the others that were partnered with are not only experts in this field, but we’ve worked with them in the past and you know, we can stand behind them. Next question. I currently have my US Visa, so I am able to live and work in the US I am currently awaiting my green card. From a loan perspective, is it more beneficial to wait until I am a permanent resident?

54:26
Robert Chadwick
I am speaking with America Mortgages Rep, and they told me that the down payment is higher when not a US Permanent resident or Citizen. Yeah, that’s, it’s a little bit of a complicated question. If you are you know say being relocated to the US with your company and you have a letter stating that your income won’t change or will increase, then you can look at you know, buying a property before you move over or even while you’re there if you’re self employed or like you said you’re waiting on your green card, you would still be treated as a foreign national. So as a non US resident, especially if you do not have US credit established. So with that it’s 75% down, I’m 75% loan to value, 25% down payment.

55:19
Robert Chadwick
Now if you look at what the difference in rate is and we get these questions all the time, what’s the rate for a foreign national? What’s the rate for a US Expat? U S Expats is absolutely market rate for a foreign national not having US Credit, no U S footprint, no U S exposure, your rate is just slightly higher. It’s going to be anywhere from about a half a percent to 1% higher than what a US citizen would pay and the LTV is slightly reduced by 5%. But I think if you take a look at the overall risk, it’s, and again you know we do loans all over the world. It’s, it’s absolutely a fantastic rate and fantastic program. Next question. Can I use my properties in Canada to refinance and secure funding for a purchase of a new property in the U.S.

56:09
Robert Chadwick
So if you’re refinancing your properties in Canada and you want to use that as a down payment for your US property, all we need to do is see where the money came from. For AML purposes, the money laundering purposes, we need to be able to track any funds that are used in the transaction back two months or 60 days. So as long as you can show that you’ve owned these properties in Canada for 60 days, you’re pulling the cash out. We have the closing statement, it’s absolutely fine. Next question. This would be for you Lucee. I had an LLC for six to eight years. I let it close last year. I had my DUNS number. Can I re establish the same LLC.

56:54
Lucee Cesena
That is going to be dependent on which state it was in and how you let it close. So if the state closed it due to non payment or non filing for annual reports or something like that and there is a certain time frame that they’ll allow you to reinstate it if it is past that, you’ll have to open a new one. Other states, once it’s closed, you cannot reopen. So it’s not an easy question to answer. I’d have to look at the state that it was in and then take a look at the Secretary of State website to see why and how it was closed. But sometimes yes, sometimes no.

57:27
Robert Chadwick
And again, Lucee’s contact is in the chat, so you can schedule an appointment with her. With her. Quite easy to discuss something like this. And you know, again, if that LLC doesn’t work out, it’s inexpensive and rather quick, especially if they already have a DUNS number, I would assume. Or does that DUNS number connect directly with that entity?

57:47
Lucee Cesena
It would go to that entity. So they’d create a new one. Yeah.

57:51
Robert Chadwick
Okay, next question. Hi Robert, I am a US Expat living in Bermuda. If I set up an LLC for a rental quadplex property in Texas and look to buy another rental property in Mexico, perhaps setting up a similar structure there, would it be wise to have the LLC co owned by a C Corp, perhaps in Bermuda? And Lucee, before you answer this, let me kind of explain it on the mortgage side of it because we see this a lot. We see this especially for Canadians and we see it for Australians because often the tax situation in those countries where they’ll try to use an offshore blocker or foreign blocker on an llc. So that would mean I’ll just use Canada. For example, if you are Canadian, you set up a Canadian entity that owns a US LLC if you’re paying cash.

58:49
Robert Chadwick
And Lucee can probably expand on this, that is not an issue. But if you’re obtaining a US mortgage and whether it’s with us or anybody else, you have to have the individual as the owner of the llc. The individual can have a foreign passport, that’s absolutely fine. But you can’t have a foreign tax blocker like a foreign entity actually owning a U.S. LLC. And Lucee, you can perhaps expand further on that.

59:17
Lucee Cesena
Well, that’s one thing I’d want to look into because you actually can have a corporation own an llc. So that’s the only time you can have C Corps, own other C Corps and own LLCs. As far as it being a foreign having like a foreign national corporation, owning a US LLC is something that I’d want to look at for you, Oscar, because I don’t deal with a lot of foreign national entities as I only set up in the US but in the US you can have a corporation own an LLC and another corporate C Corp owning another C Corp. So that in us. Yes, but I’d want to get back to you on as far as outside and seeing if an outside foreign entity can own a U.S. LLC.

01:00:05
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, and you know, it’s certainly will allow multiple entities owning the end entity that is, you know, owning the property. But the foreign entity thing is actually a fairly common question. And I can tell you from a mortgage level, it’s, we won’t allow it and I don’t think actually anybody would allow it. There has to be a direct access to, you know, whoever the sponsor is, the UOB, the borrower, etc. So yeah, oh, maybe we answered a question wrong. And I think this is the last question. And then after this has been going on for a while and I know, you know, everybody’s patience, so I’m sorry, that wasn’t my question. I meant someone who owns properties in Canada and wants to use the equity from these properties as a down payment to secure a U.S. Mortgage.

01:00:58
Robert Chadwick
Okay, so I’m assuming you mean you’re, you just have a property in Canada, you don’t want to pull cash out of it, but you use the equity you have, you want to be able to pledge it towards the down payment. Unfortunately, that would not be possible. You would have to release the equity from your Canadian property in the form of a refinance or sale, and then you can use that cash in order to purchase a property. If you have any further questions on that, you know, please speak with the loan officer because maybe I’m not fully understanding the question and you know, it could be very complex, but, you know, please schedule a time to speak with one of the loan officers. So. And with that said, Lucee, thank you very much.

01:01:46
Robert Chadwick
Do you have any parting words that you would like to say to everybody?

01:01:51
Lucee Cesena
Just thank you guys for having me. Thank you for listening. And I am here for any questions that you guys may have. And yeah, thank you, Robert. Thank you guys.

01:02:00
Robert Chadwick
Sure. And we have a webinar coming up. I believe the date hasn’t been finalized, but we do these webinars once a month with partners like Lucee. And the next one we have is a Wealth Advisor and International Tax Strategies that can assist in when it comes to real estate investing. So again, Lucee, thank you very much. Your contact information is within the chat. So please, anybody they have any questions, contact Lucee directly so she can assist. If you have any mortgage questions, you can schedule an appointment or you can call directly. So thank you everybody for your time. I appreciate it. I think we had pretty much everybody stay on the entire hour. Lucee, super informative. We’re really glad to have you as a partner. And, you know, thank you very much.

01:02:48
Lucee Cesena
Thank you. Have a good evening.

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Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated, so kindly pardon any transcription or grammatical errors that may be present.

00:25
Robert Chadwick
Hi everybody, this is Robert Chadwick with America Mortgages. Thank you again for joining on our webinar series. This webinar is something unique and it’s been requested by many of our clients. As most people are aware, the whole Airbnb craze, or short term rental craze is phenomenal. Great way to optimize your rental yields when you’re buying us real estate. And we’re happy to have Rob Mehta from Rob Mehta Partners. Rob is the founder of the company and an expert when it comes to short term rentals in the US not only just Florida. So with that said, Robert, Rob, why don’t you take few minutes, introduce yourself. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it and take it away.

04:06
Rob Mehta
Okay, fantastic. Thanks, Robert, and good to be with everybody today. Yes, as Robert said, my name is Rob Ma. My company is Rob Mehta Partners and we have a brokerage division called the Florida Property Group. We do specialize in the Florida market. However, we’ve worked in a number of markets across the United States and over the last seven to eight years in our business, the Airbnb, we call it the str, the short term rental market. And short term rental clients have become a huge part of that market. And so if you would have asked me eight, nine years ago, is this a specialty that were going to wade into, I would have said, well, we’ll see. But it has become that way.

04:45
Rob Mehta
We’ve formed relationships with some very strong property management companies in this space that send us their clients as well, not only to buy, but to sell as well. And so we have become experts in this and unknowingly, but that’s what’s happened over time. And so our market, our primary market, which is Florida, which is I’m going to discuss today, is a little bit of what I’m sharing with you. But however, realize that this really does apply to a lot of Airbnb STR markets across the United States as well. So we’re very bullish on Florida because it is our home market. And I’m going to share with you some pointers, some key statistics, as well as to why we are so bullish on this market. But again, we can assist a client pretty much in any major market across the United States. So.

05:37
Rob Mehta
So a little with that, I’ll jump off into the first slide a little bit and give you just a little bit of background as to what’s happening with the Florida market.

05:47
Robert Chadwick
Well, hold on, Rob.

05:48
Rob Mehta
Okay, sorry. Sorry.

05:49
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, I’ll share the slides in a second. But so everybody on the webinar is aware how the process will go is Rob will discuss, you know, his business, the market, etc. Then I’ll talk about obtaining a mortgage as a non US Resident, both foreign national or expat. And then, please, any questions that you have, we’ll save them to the end and then Rob and I will answer them. As you know, they pertain to each one of us. So during the chat or during the webinar, there’ll be a chat box. Feel free to put your question in there at any time and they will be addressed at the end, within the chat as well, you’ll see a link or a couple links if you want to make an appointment directly with American Mortgages to speak to a loan officer or.

06:39
Robert Chadwick
Or you’d like to speak with Rob or one of Rob’s team members. So with that said, Rob, I will share the slides and let’s go.

06:49
Rob Mehta
Fantastic. Thanks, Robert. Okay, great. So let’s talk a little bit about what’s happening in Florida. I’m sure this is a market that probably no one on the webinar is not somewhat familiar with, but this is one of the heavy growth markets and has been for a long time in the U.S. However, what’s happening is that demographics are changing, and I’ll share those with you in a few minutes. Our inflow of migration is changing as well as the investors that are entering this market. And so that’s what really makes us a unique opportunity, or has been for the last few years and will continue to be moving forward as well in migration, of course, does play into this, and I’m going to share some stats on that as well as our tourism market, which is among the strongest in the world.

07:36
Rob Mehta
And so with that, also a lifestyle play, Florida has some of the most cleanest waters and cleanest air anywhere in the world. And that also does drive tourism and it does drive livability, of course, when you’re in an environment where you don’t have to worry about these things. And I spend a significant amount of my time in Asia, where I do have to worry about these things at time in certain markets. And this is just not the case in this market. So go ahead and click on the next slide there. So the STR play is a very interesting one, in my opinion. And the reason for that is that we are the largest Airbnb STR market in the United States. There are pros and cons with it. Go ahead and pause there For a second, pros and cons would be that you have.

08:26
Rob Mehta
The biggest pro would be that we have a lot more revenue yield on a property that is a long term, sorry a short term rental property versus a long term property. So str or slash Airbnb versus some a property where you would rent it out on annual basis. Now that being said, I also like to discuss what the cons are. The cons are, is that you have more revenue volatility, meaning that every month there isn’t a stable income. It can go up and down depending on seasonality and trends. It is a more labor intensive type of property to own, meaning bookings have to be managed, guests have to be managed, communication has to be managed, turnover of the property has to be managed.

09:03
Rob Mehta
Now we found solutions to all of these, but I never want to cover up the fact that it is a more time intensive process depending on how you run your property. So great. Now we’re on some stats here which let me share these quickly with you. So I mentioned in migration, what we’re looking at here specifically is not migration. First we’re looking at visitors into the state. And you’ll notice that Florida is a, of course, as I said, a large tourism market. But what’s interesting is that about 80% of our tourism is driven by the domestic market. Now why is that important? It’s important because this is a market. And we noticed this during COVID We had about a 30 to 45 day Covid shutdown and then the state was open again for business.

09:45
Rob Mehta
And so what happened is that our property owners never suffered much of a Covid effect. Properties maintained bookings. In fact, bookings got even stronger during that period, minus a little bit of a dip you can see in 2020. And that was mainly due to that little bit of shutdown that we had. So yes, flights were expensive, so on and so forth, but the domestic market stayed very, very strong. And so that kept the market very buoyant, which was fantastic for our owners. Go ahead and go to the next slide there. Now we’re looking at growth by region. So now we’re actually looking at some in migration trends. Florida has been the largest in migration market now for several years, along with other areas in the U.S. Like Texas, Arizona, Nevada, so on and so forth.

10:30
Rob Mehta
So what you’re looking at, the green bubbles, if you will, that I’ve highlighted, are the largest in migration markets in the state. You can also see that there is an orange bubble here as well. That market, the Daytona Beach Melbourne market, a Little bit of a slower migration market and there’s actually been a little bit of population shift out of there. Why is that? Primarily because NASA has moved some of its jobs and some of its resources into the subcontracting market. So some of those NASA staff have left, some of those support staff have left as well. And then you’ll also see a couple of markets that I’ve got marked in red. Now, I don’t have them marked in red because they’re bad markets in migration wise. However, they are not markets that we would generally recommend from an STR perspective.

11:13
Rob Mehta
And why is that? Well, number one, we’re looking at the Miami Fort Lauderdale market and number two, we’re looking at the Florida Keys. Both markets are very regulatory intensive. Both markets are also more susceptible, more so than other parts of the state, and especially the Keys when it comes to climate change and hurricanes and so on and so forth. And I’ll address that a little bit later as well. So the green bubbles, if you will, are the markets that we’re the most bullish on and also where we see the most growth. And so how that helps our investors is that perhaps in the future, maybe you don’t want to hold your property as an str. Maybe you do want to put a long term renter in there.

11:50
Rob Mehta
When you have a market that’s got this kind of growth, you can flip back and forth if you want to. You might decide to switch to STR mode for one year and then after that perhaps your investment goal has changed. Okay, let me put a long term renter in there. And if you’re happy with the revenue, leave it as a long term rental. So our goal is to give our investors maximum flexibility whenever we can. And these markets allow you to have that maximum flexibility. So the next slide here, this is an article that just came out a couple of weeks ago. This is another reason we’re a little bit less bullish on Miami. Because Miami right now is going through a huge condo boom. And not just a huge boom, but condos that are specifically targeted toward the STR market.

12:33
Rob Mehta
So what does that mean? It means that there’s going to be a glut of inventory on the market in the next three to five years. Whenever there’s a glut of inventory, that means that yields go down. And we are not looking for properties where yields are going down. Now, we’re not going to say don’t buy in Miami. Sure, if you’re investing goals and your lifestyle goals match up with Miami, you can still earn revenue in that market. But from a pure investment standpoint, what we see coming is we see a lot of inventory that’s going to cut those yields down for the investor. And that’s not going to be a good thing. Generally. Go ahead and go to the next slide there.

13:06
Rob Mehta
The other thing to realize, and this is true of any market in the United States, very much so of Florida, is that as an STR investor, you’re not exposed necessarily to the entire property market as a whole. And what do I mean by that? Well, there are regulations. We’ve got overlays, we call them overlays. So regulations, homeowner association, HOA policies, so on and so forth. So if you pick any market, let’s say we pick Tampa, if you look at 100% of the market, what you’ll realize is that based on local regulations, there’s probably only about 30% of the market that actually qualifies as short term rentals.

13:43
Rob Mehta
And when you divide that even further, when you divvy deep down onto that, you’ll realize that on top of that you’ve got hoa Homeowner association regulations will then bring that actual market down to maybe 10 to 12%. So you’re not looking at the entire market. But where this also helps you is when you go to sell, because the vast majority of properties do not qualify as STR properties due to these regulations. So yes, it’s a much smaller market to enter, but we’ll realize it’s a very finite amount of stock when it also comes to exit. And that also helps, of course with rental rates and so on and so forth, because the US is a very regulated market. So next slide there. So the next couple things we’ll talk about are what we call the key market drivers.

14:27
Rob Mehta
You know, why is this such an attractive investment and especially for our home market? So go ahead and jump to the next slide and this is a little bit of an overview. This applies pretty much anywhere in the United States. You know, number one, the US is a freehold market, fee simple ownership for everyone. And I do mean everyone. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a U.S. Citizen or a citizen of a foreign country, you have the right to hold that property, as we call it freehold or locally we call it fee simple. Big data in our market allows you to see transparency in pricing and ownership. You can literally look up any property in the United States today and find history online, public information as to when that property was sold last, how often has it traded hands, so on and so forth.

15:08
Rob Mehta
There’s a lot of data around this which makes investing with the right information very easy to do. Very clear zoning laws. And specifically when it comes to Florida, what you’ll discover is that the state has been very stringent on development. So what does that mean for you as an investor? It means that if you buy into a development, it doesn’t mean that in six months there’s going to be a development next to you. You can typically look at development maps and look at city planning to see what’s happening in those areas. And so that also assess you’re not typically looking at a lot of inventory all over the place. Title insurance, if you’re not familiar with title insurance, basically it’s an insurance policy you buy once you buy it at closing.

15:49
Rob Mehta
And what that does is it protects your title and it protects any liens, encumbrances, anyone that might come back at some point and say, hey, I have ownership in this property. That’s why you have that policy. So it’s a very ironclad protection for you as an investor. Obviously, title checks are done before you close on the property, but this insurance protects from anything that might come up as well. You can own the property in your own name or in a legal entity. We’ve had foreign investors where we help them set up legal entities, so that’s easy enough to do as well. Robert’s going to talk about financing, so I don’t want touch upon that. But obviously foreign purchasers through GMG and American Mortgages can use financing and he’ll touch on that. And lastly, the round trip transaction costs are typically between 6 and 7%.

16:32
Rob Mehta
What do I mean by round trip? What I mean is that from the time you buy to the time you sell, and I’m estimating a little bit on the high end, but I’m the kind of guy that likes to estimate a little bit high rather than a little bit low. So your cost might be 5%, but again, realize you probably want to budget for 6, maybe even 7%. Depends on what the market is doing. And that includes things like selling commissions, title fees, miscellaneous, you know, selling costs, buying costs, so on and so forth. So again, I’m estimating a little bit high, but realize that you’re probably going to be somewhere in that neighborhood. So go ahead and jump to the next slide. Relatively low prices and strong returns.

17:10
Rob Mehta
If you take a look at the investment hotspots and the markets in Florida, we are still globally a very affordable market on a price per square foot or price per square meter basis. And so that makes us a very attractive market. Even if you look at areas such as Miami, which I just talked about, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, the price per square meter is literally a fraction of what it is in any other world city out there, whether it’s Hong Kong, New York, London, etc. Etc. So the value play is definitely very strong. If you bought property on the west coast of the United States, such as California, you know what I’m talking about. That is a very expensive market. Very, very difficult to make money in a market like that, where you’ve got a lot more opportunities in a market such as this.

17:53
Rob Mehta
Go ahead and go to the next slide. Quality of life. I kind of touched upon this briefly, but one of the things that attracts not only a lot of tourists, but of course a lot of folks that want to relocate is of course, the environment, the air quality, the water quality, the amount of recreational opportunities and so on and so forth that exist. Our local leadership, state leadership, doesn’t matter if they’re Democrat or Republican, have been very strong on protecting those natural habitats, the natural resources, and also limiting the amount of growth in any given area. And so, again, if you look at the city planning for even a place like Orlando, what you’ll realize is that they’ve set aside a tremendous amount of green space to ensure that there always will be that green space that will exist for future growth.

18:39
Rob Mehta
And a lot of that is government lands. Wetland areas, Florida. The old joke is don’t buy a swamp in Florida. No, of course not. But there is a lot of wetland, and that wetland is protected. So it’s not designed to be infilled in the future and built upon. It’s protected, and it’s there as a natural resource to exist for decades and centuries to come. Go ahead and jump to the next slide there. So now I want to talk a little bit about some properties, and I’ve got three properties in particular that we’re going to talk about and share with you again, a little bit of pros and cons from each of these properties, because each of them are distinct from. From each other. So the first one here, and I’ve pulled up some properties that are currently on the market.

19:22
Rob Mehta
But as everyone knows, properties come and properties go. We do have these listed on the America Mortgages website, of course, as well. So feel free to go and take a look at additional information. This property is a villa. It’s in a town called Ocala, Florida. Ocala is about an hour and 15 minutes northwest of the Orlando market. So it’s not necessarily a part of the Orlando submarket. It’s kind of its own market. But Ocala is a growing area. If anybody has heard of the development called the Villages, it’s one of the largest single family developments in the world. It is located not that far from Ocala. This property is not in the Villages. And I’ll. And the reason why I picked this is because of the numbers. But you can find similar properties like this in the Villages if you’re so interested.

20:08
Rob Mehta
This property is priced at 289. It has a gross avenue. This is a producing property right now at about 24,000 a year, roughly as a short term rental. STR has about $8,400 a year in expenses. Now that would be your taxes, your insurance, your management fees. One thing I haven’t included in this is such variables like electricity, because those can go up and those can go down. Water usage goes up, goes down. So we’ve got to add a little bit of buffer there. But just to keep the math very clean, we’re looking at about a 5.4% cap rate. Cap rate is what we like to use, capitalization rate, which is basically taking the revenue and dividing it into the purchase price to see how this asset stands up against other assets out there in the marketplace. So clean property turnkey.

20:51
Rob Mehta
What’s interesting with a property like this is when you buy a performing property, you’re buying the property and you’re buying all the assets inside. So this property comes fully furnished. In fact, the date you close on it, you pick up all of the future bookings, those transfer to you. So you’re buying, in effect, you’re buying a business, you’re buying a property, but you’re really buying a business that is already running, already has goodwill and you’re taking it over. So it’s a really fantastic way to own property. Two, this is a small condo in Fort Myers. Very, very inexpensive. It’s very difficult to find a property like this. And I wasn’t even going to include this until recently where I saw the news that America Mortgages is offering financing down to this price point, which I’m sure Robert will touch on.

21:37
Rob Mehta
But this is a very difficult find out there. And this will not last very long. 105,000 is pretty amazing. And this is making 24k in gross revenue a year, same as the property, which is phenomenal. 9,200 in expenses. The expenses are a little bit higher because you’ve got HOA fees, homeowner association fees that are of course not on the single villa. But look at that cap rate. 14% to be honest, anything north of 8, 9, 10 is really, really good. So this is a really phenomenal buy. And if somebody is looking to make a move very quickly, I would say contact us on this one very quickly because it will not last. And then we’ve got property three. This is, I call it new. This is a new property. It’s Orlando, but it’s actually Orlando. Orlando Southwest.

22:27
Rob Mehta
It’s in an area called Champions Gate, which is about a 20 minute drive to Disney. So South Orlando, Southwest Orlando are your hottest str markets in that market. Why is that? Disney, your closest proximity to Disney and then second closest to the Universal resort markets. And if you’re following any of those, you know all the growth that’s happening with Disney and all the growth that’s happening with Universal and they are both competing against each other to build, build, develop, develop. And they’ve turned into bigger destinations today than they were even five years ago. So that’s pretty amazing. So this particular property, this is a new construction property. It’s priced at 560. This one we’re estimating gross revenue at 48k. We’re basing that on the comps in the immediate area.

23:14
Rob Mehta
So knowing what properties typically fetch now Orlando is interesting because it is a, it is probably the most seasoned market in the state and it’s also the one that has the less, the least, excuse me, seasonality as well. And why is that again, Disney and Universal, they attract families year round. If you look at stats on short term rental properties, you’ll notice that Orlando holds its own very well. It doesn’t matter what month of the year you’re in, taxes are estimated. But again this is a pretty accurate estimation of taxes, insurance, management fees. And you can see this one comes out at a 6.1 cap rate. Not bad for a new property, a new construction. By the way, in the United States, new construction properties are sold with 10 year warranties, structural warranties.

23:57
Rob Mehta
So if you have any problem, you can go back to the builder. It is the builder’s responsibility to correct any structural defects. So you’ve got a property, it’s like buying a new car that you shouldn’t have to worry about maintenance wise for a long, long time. So, so that’s our third property there. And I’ve got a couple of stats that I want to share with you. That are specifically interested if you are based in Asia. I’m sure many of you traveling around have flown on Airbus’s new A350 which is I think been around now for at least a couple of years. The A350 is actually has the capability of flying direct from Asia into an east coast market like Miami.

24:35
Rob Mehta
We haven’t seen that yet, but I don’t think that it’s far away to see flights from areas such as Hong Kong and Singapore to Miami. And I think that’s going to be a phenomenal ad and create some new opportunities in terms of tourism and so on and so forth that didn’t exist before. And I always say watch where the airlines go. An airline is not going to launch a new route unless they’ve done all their research. They know all the economics and they know that they’ve got demand. So when an airline launches this route, you know that the demand is already there and it’s going to bode well for investors. And then a little bit about us. So go ahead and jump to the next slide there. This is just a look at all of our services that we offer.

25:15
Rob Mehta
We work with buyers, we work with sellers, we’ve worked with developers on projects directly in the past as well. But realize that we are an end to end solution. We can assist you in the acquisition of your property. We are not a property management company, but we can place you with property management. We have a number of really strong relationships throughout the US and we can assist you when it’s time to sell as well and sell in a very economical manner so that you’re hanging on to as much of your equity as possible. So realize that we’re with you a whole step of the process. We’ve also assisted our clients with things such as setting up LLC to purchase the properties and so on and so forth.

25:50
Rob Mehta
So we can be a resource for a number of different things in addition to the actual property process. So and with that I’m going to hand it back over to Robert.

26:07
Robert Chadwick
Thanks Rob. Super, super interesting stuff. You know I, as a real estate investor myself, I’ve actually not, I’ve not gotten into the short term rentals but I do have a lot of friends that are, and they love it. I mean it increases the yield on the properties and I think especially the property number two that you showed with the 14 return that is absolutely fantastic. What’s your thoughts on buying I guess less expensive properties to buying more expensive properties when it comes to rentability, whether it’s short term or even long term. And also I think one thing that is really important, especially in the US is the capital appreciation. So I don’t know if you could expand on that a little.

27:01
Rob Mehta
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great question. Well, a couple of different thoughts on that. So you know, generally speaking, when you look at, you know, a long term, a property that has a long term renter, you’re going to put a long term renter in there. Long term for us is a year or more versus the short term. There’s a, there’s a few trends happening there in any given market. If you’re buying a property and you say, okay, I’m going to just keep this as a long term property, rental property, it never hurts to go after the smallest property because there’s always going to be a renter for that. You know, to pick up a two bedroom house and rent it for fifteen hundred dollars a month. Easy as pie to do that. No problem.

27:34
Rob Mehta
There’s always a huge base of renters when it comes to this market, a little bit more different. So some of the trends that we’re seeing is especially with villas or what we call single family properties, those properties tend to do best when you’ve got at least three bedrooms, four bedrooms. Because the trend that we’re seeing is that your target market likes to holiday together. Sometimes two families get together, sometimes even three depending on the size of the property. And instead of booking separate hotel rooms, they want to book a villa where they’ve got a pool, they’ve got amenities, so on and so forth. One of the things which I don’t see this trend perhaps lasting in the way it has.

28:09
Rob Mehta
We’ve seen this in the Orlando market where there are mega mansions literally with eight and 10 bedrooms that are being rented for, you know, pretty good sums of money on a nightly or weekly or monthly basis. Now the challenge there is that if that trend changes, you’ve got this mansion that probably is not going to fetch what you need it to cover the cost and the debt service on the law on the long term market, as it does on the short term market. So there are a few things to look at. We want to be careful of the outliers. So of course as well you mentioned about appreciation. Again, this is where, you know, location, location is the adage in real estate.

28:45
Rob Mehta
We want to make sure that you’re not buying in an area where there is not growth potential, where there is not, you know, industry coming in, you know, businesses coming in. And obviously that’s what drives of course, the in migration foreignmost what’s interesting today versus maybe 15 years ago in the Florida market is that a lot of the in migration today is families moving in. It’s, it’s, you know, Gen X, gen Y. Why are they coming? They’re coming for jobs. And so when you look at a lot of the new development today, you’re not looking at single family villas, you’re not looking at single story, you’re looking at multi story properties. Why is that? Because it’s more attractive to a family. So again, the demographic change has been a rather interesting one and that’s where you want to focus.

29:26
Rob Mehta
If you’re looking at also long term.

29:29
Robert Chadwick
Appreciation, great perspective. I also too three year discussion. It absolutely makes sense. But I had never thought of it this way. When you are buying something that’s an existing Airbnb, you truly are buying a small business because, you know, as you mentioned, you’re getting not only the property, but you’re getting all of the, you know, the furnishings inside. But I wasn’t aware. But it makes absolute sense that you’re also getting any of the forward bookings that are already in the system. My one question is, and is, you know, there are reviews obviously for Airbnb. I know when I’ve looked at Airbnb, I’ve looked at the reviews and I’ve looked to see, you know, okay, how is this person perform, you know, how is the property?

30:21
Robert Chadwick
If you are buying an Airbnb, do your reviews or I guess your feedback from does that all start fresh or how does that work, whether it’s with Airbnb or other services?

30:34
Rob Mehta
Yeah, that’s a great question. So typically what happens is when you’re, you know, you’re inheriting those bookings. That’s correct. We’ve had properties close where, I mean, the day of closing, there’s already 50, 60, $100,000 in future bookings. Now of course, some of those bookings may cancel. That’s just a fact of life. But generally speaking, those bookings are already there. What we always advise our clients is it’s usually if you’ve got successful bookings into the future, it’s well worth staying with that property management firm, at least for a short while before you look at switching and that. So to your question about the reviews and such, that really depends on the contract that’s in place. Many property management firms will sort of hand over the keys, to lack of a better term, to, you know, the Airbnb listings and those Kinds of things.

31:20
Rob Mehta
However, if you’re with a property management company where the vast majority of their marketing is through their own portal, then of course you’re going to lose that visibility moving forward. But generally speaking, yeah, your Airbnb listings, booking.com, vRBO, those would all transfer to the new owner as well, whenever that’s possible to do so.

31:41
Robert Chadwick
Great, thank you. And one last question before we start online again. I find this to be. It’s something that comes up all the time and it’s very interesting, but when you buy an Airbnb and you’re getting these bookings and so forth, are you able to kind of readjust that, like cancel any forward bookings or, you know, maybe you want to renovate the property, you want to do something different to increase the value, to increase the rent. Is that a possibility as well?

32:14
Rob Mehta
It is, it is. And it does happen from time to time. I mean, you generally don’t want to cancel bookings whenever possible, but if you are doing a renovation or you have some other plans for the property, then of course, you know, the different booking sites have different policies when it comes to, you know, refunds of deposits and things like that. But yeah, absolutely, those things definitely are, are cancelable if need be. But again, to be avoided whenever possible, of course.

32:40
Robert Chadwick
Certainly, certainly. Okay, perfect. All right, so with that said, I shall start mine if I can figure out how to get this thing back up here. Okay, so again, thank you everybody for joining. As always, we like to have some amazing guests. And in this case, I think something that has been asked a lot about is Airbnb, how do we finance it, how do we find it, how does it work in the US And I think Rob was able to really address all of these issues. However, I know there will be a lot of questions, so please put it into the chat and then we’ll discuss it at the end. But right now I’m going to share American mortgages capabilities for financing for non US residents as both foreign nationals and US expats. So our general mortgage overview.

33:45
Robert Chadwick
We do purchases, refinances and cash outs. We’re seeing a lot of demand for cash out. A lot of that has to do with the strength of the US dollar. Obviously, if you’re able to release some equity or some money out of your existing US property and if you are living abroad and you move it in back into your home currency, you know, you’re getting a big upswing on that. So certainly that has been trending and you Know we’re open or our loan office is open to discussing this further if you have any questions on that. If you’re a foreign national, So a non US resident, non US passport holder, likely no US credit, we can get up to 75% financing.

34:30
Robert Chadwick
If you’re a US expat and you maintain US credit, we try to make it as exactly as if you walked into your local bank and you were living and working in the US you can get up to 80% at market rate, as everybody is probably aware. But if you are not, the US does not have any limitations when it or restrictions when it comes to the longest amortization based on your age. So with discrimination laws, you cannot discriminate against somebody that is 19 or 99. So regardless of age, you are able to take the longest amortization period available. So 30 year fix for a 90 year old person is absolutely not an issue. The most important thing is it really allows you to be able to capitalize on the rental yields because you’re spreading that loan over a long period of time.

35:29
Robert Chadwick
Interest rates have gone up as everybody knows. We’re hoping with the new administration, interest rates go down. But we’ve been able to, I guess, foresee this and we have a fantastic program that allows you to maximize on the yield but still take advantage of the fixed rate portion. So we have a 10 year interest only fixed loan. What that means is for the first 10 years the rate is fixed but you’re only servicing the interest. After that 10 year period, the loan converts into a principal and interest 20 year fixed without an adjustment in rate. Absolutely fantastic loan program. Especially if you’re looking at doing either Airbnb long term rental. You can truly forecast, you know what your payments are and you assume that rental curve is going up every year. Loan programs in all 50 states.

36:25
Robert Chadwick
So regardless of where you’re at in Florida or elsewhere, we can still get financing qualify on the rental income and not the salary. Common sense underwriting. As a direct lender in the U.S. We look at properties the way they should be looked at. You do not have to provide your personal income documents. We qualify the properties based on the cash flow of the property. Now that can either be long term or we have programs also for short term, such as what Rob had discussed with the Florida properties. If you want to use foreign income for some reason the rents aren’t enough to qualify for the maximum loan to value, then certainly we can look at foreign income.

37:12
Robert Chadwick
It’s absolutely allowed with us both foreigners and for US Expats, which, if you’re a US expat and you’ve dealt with any of the banks, you will know this is the biggest hurdle and getting approved, we have no issues. Again, the borrowers can be non US Citizens, they can be US expats living overseas. If you’re a foreign national, no US Credit is required and we have only dry lending. What does that mean? It means that you do not have to open a bank account or have a minimum deposit while you have these loans in place. Fantastic process. Takes about 72 hours once you submit your document. We have a very secure, easy to use mortgage application portal that makes this actually as seamless as possible.

38:01
Robert Chadwick
30 to 45 day loan closing and you never have to travel to the US you can open the application and close the mortgage all from your home country in a variety of ways. We’re really proud that 97% of our loans that we submit into underwriting get approved. So huge advantage, especially when we are using common sense underwriting and qualifying the properties on the cash flow. We have 24. 7 service. There will be a phone number within that chat that will allow you to speak to a loan officer in your time zone and in your language. So loan officers based all over the world and also based in the US Allowing you to have perfect service. You’re not staying up at 2am to talk to somebody in New York. So going forward in 2025, we had this webinar last, I think a couple weeks ago.

39:04
Robert Chadwick
Our goal is to make US real estate investing easier and more accessible for everybody. You know, as we had Rob on this conversation, you know, the idea that we want to make this as turnkey as possible. We bring in, we bring in partners like Rob Mehta and partners and we allow the investors, regardless of where they’re living, a seamless entry into the US Real estate market or if they’re already seasoned investors, to be able to come in and be able to increase their real estate portfolio and increase their wealth. So our u, our loan programs for non residents and US Expats, this loan program is going to cover exactly what Robin discussed. Again, we do not need personal income documents on this. We’re going to qualify the property on the cash flow.

40:02
Robert Chadwick
So if this has already been an existing Airbnb property or somewhat similar to an Airbnb company, we can get those records quite easily and we can present this as the income to qualify for the loan. We have loan amounts that go as low as $100,000 and when I say $100,000, it means that is the minimum purchase price of the property. I don’t think you will find anybody else in the market that has this advantage to go this low with the loan amounts. And of course you know, we can go on these programs up to $3 million. But it becomes a little bit more difficult when you’re trying to qualify on the cash flow of the property when you’re in a high purchase price. But certainly it is possible. It’s just maybe a slight LTV adjustment.

40:55
Robert Chadwick
Again, 30 year fix and interest only available on all these programs. And to show you how this qualifies, if you look at the bottom of the screen you can see that we used a one to one ratio. Certainly there are other people out there that maybe not specializing in foreign nationals, but most likely they’re using a one to two ratio, meaning for it’s much more difficult to qualify. We look at these programs again in common sense. So as long as the rental amount, whether it’s long term or short term, covers the mortgage, taxes, insurance, and perhaps if there’s an hoa, then the loan is going to qualify. If for some reason it does not qualify, it does are for the maximum loan to value, it does not mean that the loan does not qualify.

41:47
Robert Chadwick
It just means that maybe you have to come in with a little bit more cash for the down payment. Our US Expats Investor mortgage, this is super popular. And if you are a US expat and you have tried to get a loan, you know how frustrating it is. You have. I mean you could have been a client at a major bank for decades, but as soon as you move overseas, you start earning in foreign dollars or perhaps you’re working for a foreign company that doesn’t issue a W2, it becomes almost impossible to get a mortgage. We’ve changed that. We’ve made this, if you’re a US expat to be exactly like if you were living and working in the U.S. As long as you maintain U.S.

42:35
Robert Chadwick
Credit, you will have the same rates, the same programs, the same terms, except you won’t have what the standard requirements are for a US bank. Now with this, the minimum loan amount is $150,000. And like most US loans, we do qualify this on a debt to income ratio which is 43%. So as it would be the same in the US so if you again you look at the bottom of the screen, you can see how it qualifies based on the 43% debt to income ratio. This is what I Had talked about on the first slide. Say you want to qualify using the rental income of the property, but perhaps at this time the rental income is not supporting the highest loan to value which you would like to do. We have a way to switch this, but to not actually use your tax returns.

43:34
Robert Chadwick
As you can imagine, we’re doing loans all over the world from Sydney to Shanghai. And with that it would be very complicated for our underwriters to go through all of the tax returns in a variety of languages. Be very complicated for you to have these translated. So what we do is we make this as simple as possible. If you’re employed, we want a letter from your employer on your employer letterhead that basically states your last two years of income and your current year to date. If you are self employed, absolutely fine. We just need something from your accountant stating the same. With that we’re able to use your income as if you were to provide tax returns and pay stubs. So it makes it a very simple, easy to qualify loan.

44:25
Robert Chadwick
So again, loan amounts on this program are limited to 150,000 starting, but again up to 3 million 30 year fix and interest only available and 75% loan to value foreign nationals. So we work with a lot of investment banks, you know, they have their clients, they, you know, they want to be able to service them. But as most people are aware, most international banks do not have U.S. Mortgage programs. So we’ve created a loan program that allows high net worth borrowers to be able to qualify in a very straightforward, simple process, but for very high loan amounts. You know, we’re aware that high net worth foreign national investors maybe have very complicated tax returns. Various jurisdictions, perhaps they don’t even show their true serviceability of debt. This removes all of those hurdles. No personal income is required.

45:29
Robert Chadwick
How we qualify this loan is we take a two month average of your liquid portfolio. When I say liquid portfolio, I mean cash, bonds, stocks, things that can be liquidated easily. And we’re going to average that out over a 60 month period or a 5 year fixed loan. There is no, there is no encumbrance on this portfolio and no AUM required, meaning that we will use this to qualify. But the day after the loan qualifies, you can trade it, you can sell it, you can do whatever you want. There is no encumbrance on the monies that is used to qualify for this loan. And if you look at the bottom, it explains exactly how we do this. If you are a high net worth individual, you will probably find this to be the easiest loan that you’ve ever qualified for. So that’s my presentation.

46:26
Robert Chadwick
I’m sure there are quite a bit of questions. This is our contact information. You can scan the QR code. It brings everything up. You can reach out to, again, any of our loan officers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you speak, you know, a specific language, just please make sure you enter that in there. And also in the chat, you know, I’m sure everybody found Rob’s presentation extremely interesting. You can go on and you can book an appointment directly with Rob and his group to be able to speak about Airbnbs or, you know, just a catch up in general. So with that said, Rob, let’s start the Q A. Let me see what we got here. Okay.

47:17
Rob Mehta
Sounds good. Robert and I did answer a few questions in the chat as well. Okay.

47:23
Robert Chadwick
But we’ll talk them all out and then if you answered it, then I’ll leave it to you and we can go from there.

47:31
Rob Mehta
Sure, sure. Sounds good. Well, I can rehash a little bit. I kept the answers fairly limited. So should I go ahead and just ask the question and provide a little.

47:40
Robert Chadwick
So, so how it’ll work is I’ll read the question. If it changed to you, I’ll ask you to answer it. If it pertains to me, then I’ll take over. So the first question is, did I hear that the first 10 years is interest only payments? That would be for me, yes. So you have the option to do a 10 year fixed interest only loan or you don’t. You can do, if you want to do just purely a principal and interest 30 year amortized loan, you have that as well. What we do at America Mortgages is try to give you the flexibility to be able to get the most from your rental property. So you have the options. I would suggest probably going in and clicking and making appointment to speak with one of the loan officers to explain in more detail. Next question.

48:32
Robert Chadwick
For the 10 year interest only, is that optional or mandatory? Oh, perfect. I think I just covered that. So it’s absolutely optional. You have the choice to service principal and interest from day one or you have the choice to do the interest only. Next question. How much is the AM application fee? Oh, fantastic question. We get this a lot. We do not have an application fee. If you want to apply for a loan, it is very easy and straightforward. We have a platform that allows you just answer some questions, securely upload documents. Once we receive this, then we normally we run it through underwriting and we can issue you a pre approval letter within 24 to 72 hours.

49:19
Robert Chadwick
Once you have that pre approval letter, you can go to Rob or somebody like Rob and you can say, hey, look, I’ve already been approved for a loan and it shows that you’re serious. Next question. Sorry, Rob, this seems to be a lot.

49:34
Rob Mehta
I did, I did answer a few while you were chatting, so that’s okay.

49:40
Robert Chadwick
Question. I’m not a US citizen. How long would it take me to get a mortgage approval with America Mortgages? It’s very quick. A US citizen is a little bit different because you are submitting tax returns and so forth. But in general, once we have this, we can tell you very quickly if your loan is going to be approved or not and we can issue you the pre approval letter. And again, the pre approval letter is that’s, that’s the catalyst to be able to start shopping for properties. It’s the most important thing to do when you’re looking for US real estate is to actually get pre approved for a loan and be comfortable with the mortgage payments and actually the qualifying requirements and standards. Next question. Hi Robert, can you give us a breakdown of your services fees with rough estimates? Thanks.

50:35
Robert Chadwick
So whatever the fees are in that state, like title, escrow, insurance, all of these specifics are identical. There are no adjustments to this. These are what I would pay as a US citizen or what a foreign national would pay as a non US citizen. It’s very straightforward. The US is absolutely transparent. Everything and every cost of that loan has to be documented and has to be accounted for. For us, we charge a 2% origination fee which is paid only at the successful closing of the loan. But keep in mind too, and please, I’m not a accountant or a tax advisor, but check with your accountant or your tax advisor. With proper tax planning, most of these fees can actually be taken off of any income that you would earn on the property. Anyway, next question.

51:36
Robert Chadwick
Which loan program is most popular for investors keen on short term rentals? Well, I mean really for this type of program we truly have maybe two programs. We have the short term rental program. Keep in mind, because this is qualifying on short term rental, there may be an LTV restriction instead of, if you’re a foreign national, instead of getting to 75%, you know, we may only be able to get to 65%, but it will allow you to qualify on the short term rental income. If you buy it and you base the qualification on the long term rental, then you are Able to get the maximum loan to value at 75% and then how you rent it is really your choice. Next question. Oh, this is for you, Rob. Which states do you handle property management?

52:31
Robert Chadwick
Now I know you’re not doing property management, but I think you can still kind of expand on this.

52:35
Rob Mehta
Yeah, absolutely. So as far as property management goes, we have relationships across the U.S. Let me break this down a little bit because there are a number of different options when it comes to management. There are full service management companies that we work with. So we have full service companies in the state of Florida that we can recommend as well as other markets. Typically when you pay a full service company, it’s exactly that. They are going to take care of everything for you. They’re going to handle bookings, they’re going to handle revenue management, guest management, guest communication, turnover, all of it. You don’t have to do a thing typically. And this question always comes up. So I’m going to mention it here is what do fees look like?

53:14
Rob Mehta
Fees typically for a full service property manager are higher than they are if you’re hiring a full service manager to manage a long term rental. And why is that? Because again, you’ve got a lot more human power, if you will, involved. So typically those fees for a full service property management as I described typically are going to be in the neighborhood of 15 to 20%, sometimes even as high as 25% in certain markets. The next option is of course more of a regional company or a national company that is more of a booking agent and we do have those as well where they handle all of your bookings, your guest communication, so on and so forth. But because they are national companies generally they don’t have local manpower.

53:54
Rob Mehta
So for example, you still need a maid service to come in and turn over the property and so on and so forth. However, that being said, national companies charge much lower rates as well. So typically those kind of rates tend to be in the neighborhood of about 10 to 15%. And so you’re, obviously your yield goes up, but it does involve a little bit more work setting up those relationships initially in terms of having the right people on your team. But yeah, we can help somebody nationwide. It’s not something we do directly, but again, the relationships that we formed with some very solid companies, you know, to drive that exposure and make sure, especially for an overseas investor who does not have the time to obviously self manage, I don’t even recommend that to our US investors.

54:36
Rob Mehta
Some of them do, some of Them have their Airbnb and VRBR portals, but I would say it’s better to hand it off to somebody who’s a professional in this.

54:45
Robert Chadwick
Super good answer. And I think, you know, again, this all sort of circles back around on the questions that we get if we can finance a, you know, an Airbnb. And a lot of it comes back to, okay, if I can finance an Airbnb, I can find an Airbnb. How do I manage the Airbnb? So, you know, anybody has any questions on this, again, Rob’s contact and his team’s contact is within the chat. Please click on it and schedule an appointment with him. Okay, next question. Can you share an example of effective marketing strategies for Florida short term rentals on platforms like Airbnb, especially during the slower seasons?

55:26
Rob Mehta
I can, I can. So specifically, Airbnb and vrbo, one of the trends that we’ve seen, and I’m sure some of you that have used Airbnb and VRBO have noticed this where in the last few years there’s been a lot of padding of fees to drive revenue. So, for example, you book a property and it says 150 US a night. But when you get to the checkout page, you realize that you’ve got an Airbnb service fee, you’ve got a cleaning fee, you’ve got miscellaneous fees, and by the time you look at your true booking cost, now you’re up to 225 a night for just to make up an example. So what we’re seeing a lot more happening recently is that owners are eliminating some of those costs or they’re just adding them into the fee.

56:05
Rob Mehta
So it doesn’t feel like such a bait and switch for the renter for that holiday maker. So from that perspective, being very clear about your fees front the description of your property, I’ll tell you, a while back I was, I stayed in a property that we sold to a client. And even I didn’t realize this. It was a condo in Orlando. And when I got there, I realized it was a third floor condo. And I realized that it was one of the very rare buildings that does not have an elevator. So I’m dragging my suitcase up three flights of stairs and I thought, gosh, this should have, you know, again, we don’t handle the property management, but this should have been in the description to let us know.

56:40
Rob Mehta
Because if you have somebody that has special needs or has trouble walking or an elderly person, this could have been a real problem, you know, so it’s just little things like that you want to be very clear about as far as effective strategies. Again, this is where having a solid booking agent or property manager is really crucial. So criteria for a good one, they should have a very good presence on their own website and ideally a booking engine on their own website as well. And then of course, that they’re playing nicely with all of the other portals out there. Airbnb, Vrbo, you know, even sites such as booking.com, the OTRs, as we call them, the online travel agencies out there, you know, booking.com and hopper, and you know, all of these orbits and all these different sites that exist out there.

57:25
Rob Mehta
You want the maximum exposure you can get, of course.

57:27
Robert Chadwick
Right.

57:27
Rob Mehta
If you get the maximum exposure, you’re driving more. More eyeballs. More eyeballs means, you know, more traffic. More traffic means more bookings. The other thing with that is that a good property manager or booking engine will also help you price the property effectively. So that, and of course, with an STR situation where you have the volatility of the market, rates go up, rates go down, you really have to make sure you’ve got a good player on your team that will help you manage that in real time. Because obviously if your rates are up by a week and your competition is down, you’re not going to get bookings. Most likely. Most likely, unless it’s an outlier the week of the super bowl in New Orleans. Outlier, Right.

58:04
Rob Mehta
But other than that, you really have to have somebody on your group and your team that can really manage this on a real time basis and adjust that. Now, what you can do as the owner is you can set caps on that. You can set a base, and obviously no one wants to set a cap on the high end, but you definitely can set a base to say, you know, I want this property rented at a minimum of 150 a night and I won’t even accept bookings below that. So you’re free to do that as an investor, but you really do need somebody who can handle that in real time.

58:33
Robert Chadwick
Excellent answer. Thank you, Rob. You know, I think one thing that, especially as all of our clients are living overseas, the one thing that they’re concerned about, besides finding the, you know, the right property management or, you know, manager for this property, is the tax planning. If you have proper tax planning, I think you will find the US is by far the best place to invest in US real estate. With proper tax planning, whatever rental, your income or whatever income you’re making from this rental property, a lot, most of it, if not all. And of course, you know, we have, we’re tied in with this foreign national expat tax Planning Service and they are fantastic at making sure that you see proper rental yields on these properties, whether they’re short term or long term. So next question. I believe this is me.

59:34
Robert Chadwick
What is the current rate for a 30 year fixed? Well, I believe if you’re a US citizen right now it’s kind of floating below 7%, you know, in the high sixes up to seven. But if you’re a non US citizen, I think the easiest way to look at this, and we get this question all the time, you know, what are interest rates? And it’s kind of like saying how much is a car? Right. Interest rates are, especially foreign nationals and even US Expats. There’s a lot of factors that go into it. You know, what kind of property it is, what the loan to value you’re looking for, you know, where the property is located, is there a prepayment penalty. All of these things certainly impact the interest rate.

01:00:22
Robert Chadwick
In general though, a US citizen will pay whatever the market rate is, plus if there’s any kind of variance on loan to value or you know, property difficulties, etc. A foreign national, the easiest way to think about it is in general, somebody without US credit, with no US footprint and qualifying on the rental income of the property, you’re normally paying about a half a percent to 1% higher, which if you look at it on a global scale, because through our parent company Global Mortgage Group, we do mortgages all over the world. This is by far the most competitive when it comes to the difference between a non resident and a resident obtaining a mortgage. Next, let’s go to the questions that you answered, Rob. So I’ll read the question and then you can kind of just free flow on it.

01:01:18
Robert Chadwick
So given Florida’s hurricane seasons and insurance challenges, how do STR investors protect their investment and stay profitable during the slow periods? This is a very good question.

01:01:33
Rob Mehta
It is a very good question. Absolutely. So really two questions here. Number one, we’re talking about of course, what’s happening with climate and number two, how do you stay profitable? So let me touch upon number one, because this is a big one and I myself have lived through at least four hurricanes since I’ve been in Florida for the last decade or so. So definitely have some firsthand experience getting in my car and heading inland a little bit. So this is of course going to be an ongoing issue, what we’re seeing with climate change. However, you Actualize that is that the storms are increasing in frequency and in some cases intensity as well. Long story. If you’re living anywhere near the coast now, I my property is near the coast.

01:02:15
Rob Mehta
I’m about 10 miles inland from the beaches, so I’m technically coastal, but I’m fairly well protected where I’m at. But anywhere near the coast, you’re going to pay higher insurance costs. Insurance is really broken down into two separate components. You have what we call the actual hazard insurance on the structure itself and then you have flood insurance. And flood insurance actually protects you from, you could say flooding, but it’s a very specific type of flooding. It’s actually flooding that occurs because of accumulation of water. If you have flooding due to roof or structure damage that is covered by your base policy, the flooding insurance typically is an add on policy on top of it.

01:02:52
Rob Mehta
Many areas are not in flood areas, but we always recommend it’s worth having a flood policy if you have a main level property such as a villa or so on and so forth. So long story short, this is a risk that it’s not going away. It is pay to play. Of course, you know, wherever you look in the US California has fires, we have our issues with hurricanes. The Midwest has tornadoes. You have certain levels of risk. And to be able to recognize those risks and say, okay, this fits in with what I want to do, what I want to achieve, but insurance is a big part of that. It’s a big part of that expense.

01:03:25
Rob Mehta
So you have to consider that when you move further inland, Central Florida, Orlando, those markets, your insurance is significantly, not significantly different than if you were buying in the Midwest of the United States. So again, it’s going to, a lot of it’s going to depend on the location, proximity to water, you know, things like that. As far as staying profitable during slow periods, you know, I mentioned a few minutes ago really key to have somebody on your team, whether it’s a property manager, whether it’s a booking manager, booking agent that is watching revenue, adjusting rates for you, making sure that you’re staying competitive in the market. Because I’ll tell you, even today when I go to book an Airbnb in a different market and I like staying in str properties generally more space and amenities and so on and so forth.

01:04:07
Rob Mehta
I’m usually scrolling by price and then I’m looking at amenities and so on and so forth. So you know, people are price conscious, of course. And to make sure that you’re priced correctly, you know, in any given situation, week by week is going to be really key to make sure that you are driving, you know, occupancy rates that are, you know, hopefully 70%, 80%, 90%, so on and so forth.

01:04:28
Robert Chadwick
Yeah, great answer. Next question. What are your thoughts on competing markets within Florida? For example, how does investing in Orlando’s tourist corridor compare to beachfront properties in Tampa or Miami in the terms of ROI and expected occupancy rates?

01:04:44
Rob Mehta
Another great question. Yeah, so the best way to describe the Orlando market is that I would say seasonality. Orlando is least affected by seasonality. Why? Again, because of Disney? Because of Universal. It is a family market year round. Obviously there is a little bit of seasonality, but not that much. Not that much. And so Orlando is a very stable market. That being said, Orlando does have a lot of short term rental properties. So again, it’s a price sensitive market as well. Something to consider. Coastal markets tend to be a bit more seasonal. So I’m in southwest Florida and I’m also in South Florida and Miami. These are much more seasonal markets. We have high season and we do have low season as well. You know, high season is typically January through April. Low season is the rest of the year.

01:05:30
Rob Mehta
Now when I say low season, it doesn’t mean that it’s crickets. There are bookings, but again, bookings are driven by different things, not so much snowbirds and so on and so forth. Like you get with high season. ROI really is going to depend on the type of property, the location. There’s just so many variables. I think Robert, you mentioned this about one of the other facts as well. There’s just so many variables to play with there. One of the things that we do have access to is we do have access to some of this data through partners where we can evaluate and give some recommendations based on that. But again, a lot of that is really going to depend not just on the property, but the location, the amenities, you know, many things that come into play, you know, with that.

01:06:09
Robert Chadwick
Okay, perfect. Next question for villa properties. Sorry, that was your question. What type of properties? That is condos. Single family homes tend to perform best on short term rentals.

01:06:23
Rob Mehta
Okay, another really good question. And we have this discussion comes up, I would say fairly often and what I answered here as far as amenities goes for a villa property or single family, however you want to call that, you want to have a pool. People that rent these properties love the fact that they can hang out in their, you know, backyard, you know, use the pool, use the patio, so on and so forth. Now if you have a property without One or you buy one, right? You can add a pool, that kind of thing. It’s fine. You can even run one without a pool. But again, generally speaking, that is a very desired amenity. People come to Florida for the weather and, you know, they want to hang out at the pool.

01:06:58
Rob Mehta
Even, even folks that are going to Disney, you know, many of those individuals will not go four days in a row. If you went four days in a row, you’d, you probably need a vacation from Disney. So typically you’d go one day and then the next day you’re staying at the property, you let the kids play in the pool. That kind of thing, you enjoy, you know, you enjoy that property. So, so that is a big amenity. Also, this applies to STRs, to single family as well as condos is community amenities are a big deal. So community clubhouses, community pools. Many of the projects that we market have like Mini Mar, mini water parks inside of the project themselves.

01:07:33
Rob Mehta
And so those amenities are also very, very desirable to anybody that’s coming down and staying for, you know, four or five days or a week or whatever it is. Again, roi, it really is going to depend on the property in terms of what’s going to return the best roi. But again, having these amenities makes ROI go up. The last thing I’ll mention on that is proximity. So you could have the most fabulous property and you could have a review that says, oh, the home was great, but it took me 20 minutes to reach the closest restaurant. That can also affect you as well. So proximity to external amenities such as restaurants and shopping and, you know, things like that are also really crucial.

01:08:12
Rob Mehta
And obviously, if you’re not close to that, very important to spell that out, you know, in your marketing description because again, that will impact your reviews, that will impact, of course, future bookings and so on and so forth.

01:08:26
Robert Chadwick
Excellent. Okay, so I think we have one more question that popped up in the general chat and then I think we will end this. I think we’re going a little bit over time. So, you know, in respect for everybody’s time, again, I appreciate everybody staying on. And if you want to get an individual appointment with either America Mortgages to speak to a loan officer or with Rob Mehta and his team, please click on the links that are in the chat. So, last question. Would you recommend buying a condo in Orlando and Orlando as a str, given the new laws on condos and higher HOA fees? All good questions in depth conversation. I’m sure this could kind of expand for 30 minutes, but please, we’ll keep it short.

01:09:13
Rob Mehta
Yeah, absolutely. So the question has to do with new condominium laws that have come out since the Surfside disaster happened a couple of years back with Surfside, the building that collapsed due to poor maintenance. So the Florida legislature in the last two years has put out a number of new legislation. You can google it. So I’m not going to go into it right now in the interest of time. Those apply to high rise condos and the vast majority of the legislation has to do with older buildings, you know, 20 plus years old. So take a look at that legislation, you’ll see it. That being said, I definitely recommend a condo. A condo is a very good investment. There’s nothing wrong with a condo. Now I will say as a generality, if you look at condo versus a villas tend to appreciate better.

01:09:57
Rob Mehta
But as far as if you’re looking at ROI on revenue, again, a lot of that is going to depend on your purchase price, you know, nightly revenue rates, again, which will fluctuate, things like that. There’s nothing wrong with owning a condo and it is a very popular type of booking for the Orlando market. Now again realize you have to buy a condo that is in an HOA that allows short term rental. Not many do. Not many do. It’s a much smaller market than the general market. As I was talking about in the beginning, that we have a lot of overlays, you know, with laws and regulations. So again, you can’t look at the entire market.

01:10:29
Rob Mehta
There is a subset of market where you can buy one, where you can rent it on typically a weekly basis is kind of the minimum for these type of HOAs. But those do exist, but again, it’s not the entire market.

01:10:41
Robert Chadwick
Fantastic. So Rob, any final parting words to the audience? That’s left back on.

01:10:49
Rob Mehta
I know we’re running short on time. I just want to say to our audience, of course, thank you for joining us. My email is up of course next to Robert and happy to answer any questions whatsoever. For those of you that are tuning into Asia, I am based in Asia, part of my time as well in Bangkok, so I’m available a lot of different hours of the day. It’s not a problem. So feel free to reach out and you know, either myself or one of my team will get back to you right away and we’ll get a calendar slot booked with you so we can discuss anything you want. And even if you’re further out in the process, it’s okay. We love having conversations. Even if you’re a year or more out in the process. It’s okay.

01:11:27
Rob Mehta
We can start having the discussion today and when the timing is right, you know, we’re ready to move forward with you.

01:11:33
Robert Chadwick
Fantastic, Rob. Thank you. Thank you very much. And everybody, thank you for joining the webinar. There will also be a recording of this sent out in probably about a week or so after it goes through editing. And keep in mind, again with our series of webinars, on the 26th of February, we will be having a webinar on something that is actually extremely important. And I think, you know, Rob will also appreciate this on setting up a US entity or an LLC to be the owner of your US Real estate. Variety of reasons why you do it. We’ll have an LLC expert on there and can assist you with, you know, all the questions. So again, February 26, 9am Singapore time. Thank you again, everybody. Thank you.

01:12:24
Rob Mehta
Rob.

01:12:25
Robert Chadwick
We really appreciate you and your team working with us to get this out into our audience. And again for everybody, thanks again. Enjoy the morning, evening, afternoon, wherever you may be and we will see you February 26th. Thanks, Rob.

01:12:40
Rob Mehta
Thanks everybody.

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Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated, so kindly pardon any transcription or grammatical errors that may be present.