How To Get In On The JAX Real Estate Boom W/out It Taking Over Your Life w/ Whitney Ricci

As Jacksonville residents it’s pretty easy to see that this city has been booming, (and even feel a little FOMO watching real estate investors create life changing wealth from it), but just because you’re not a “real estate person”, doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from this real estate boom.  

That’s why we’re hosting this webinar- to answer the question: 
“How can I get in on this JAX real estate boom without it taking over my life?”

Come hear the story of Whitney Ricci, a local entrepreneur & mother of 3, who has built an impressive portfolio of Jacksonville real estate, spending less than a couple hours a month on it.

She’ll be talking about:

- What she did to grow a diversified real estate portfolio in her backyard, spending less than 4 hours a month on it

- Why right now is a uniquely profitable time to buy Jacksonville real estate (even with interest rates and prices being this high)

- How to get educated about this without needing to become an expert in everything by plugging into a whole community of people you can ask questions to


This conversation will be moderated by the host of a local real estate podcast, Not Your Average Investor Show’s Pablo Gonzalez, and the co-founder of one of the biggest developers in town, Gregg Cohen of JWB Real Estate Capital.

JWB has been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal (twice) because of their innovations in helping every day professionals build wealth in real estate passively, currently manage 6,000 properties for investors in Jacksonville, and are developing 20 blocks of downtown Jacksonville in an effort to make our city one of the next great American cities.

If you want to be a part of all the prosperity coming to Jacksonville, but hadn’t figure out how, you don’t want to miss this conversation.

Join our real estate investor community LIVE: 
https://jwbrealestatecapital.com/nyai/

Schedule a Turnkey strategy call: 
https://jwbrealestatecapital.com/turnkey/ 

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Transcript

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:17

Welcome everyone to a very special edition of what we like to call. The Not Your Average Investor show today we are bringing on, somebody who is a regular star of the show and the Not Your Average Investor community and a close friend to all of us to tell a story that we've been wanting to tell for a long time. It's, it's really hard to look around Jacksonville, if you live there and not think, Man, this, this place is going places. And I'm a little jealous of the people that are doing real estate here because whether I'm a real estate professional or not, I'm a busy person. I may not have the time. I may not have the bandwidth to do this. And this is the story of someone who, as an entrepreneur, mother of three. person who lives her life to the fullest has been able to like really take advantage of this real estate boom. And I am of course talking about local real estate super connector, the original flow from progressive, founder and president of Richie insurance, Whitney Richie. So hello, Richie Whitney.

Whitney Ricci: 2:23

Hi, it's great to be back. Thank you for having me guys.

Pablo Gonzalez: 2:26

It's good to have you on board. I am the host of the show, Pablo Gonzalez. And with me as always, my, esteemed co host who I affectionately like to call GC cause, he does genius concepts that he shares on the show. He knows how to generate cash flows for his investors. He's a great co host. And I'm Cause his name happens to be Greg Cohen. So those are his initials. Say hello, Greg. Hello, everybody. Great to be with you. So we're going to jump into this real quick, but we do have a little tradition on the show that we like to start off with when, when, when we do our regular occurrences, cause we have a lively community that joins us often. And it's, something we'd like to call the roll call. So we're going to kick it off with it. The roll call GC, we've got the MVP checking in first, Lee Bishop. We've got Joanna, our community manager. If you need anything in the chat, you can reach out to her. We've got the man that we call the shaman, Nadim Shah. from the West Coast with his traditional good morning. Good afternoon. We got the patron Centorio's of Northern Virginia, Michael Santorio's in the house. We have Susie Becker here with us, Susie. I think that you must be a, an invite from what? I don't recognize your name. So hope you like this format and you join us on Tuesdays when we do this at, at 1230. And of course the Maven from the mountains of Denver. Miss Leslie Wilson in the house. And I see some familiar names that I also recognize here in the attendees that haven't checked in. I'm not going to blow up your spot, but it's good to see you too. Oh, Dean pop up. is it my dad? Yeah. It's your dad and your sister and your mom. Now I see the name as well. So it's, it's very, very happy to see them as well. A little intro since I assume everybody here knows Whitney already. She invited you all to this, to this special webinar. Greg is the co founder of a group called Jacksonville JWB real estate capital in Jacksonville, Florida. They have over the last 17 years pioneered this way of investing in real estate for regular folk that don't feel like plunging a toilet or putting up a sign to land a tenant. And you know, make it really, really passive to buy. Own and build a portfolio of rental properties, as a regular everyday person that doesn't, you know, consider themselves a real estate investor. I'm one of those regular everyday people. Whitney's one of those regular everyday people. Greg is a true expert in real estate who has actually figured this thing all out, built a company of a hundred folks plus has been written about on the front page of the wall street journal a couple of times, won an Ernst and Young entrepreneur of the year award. Greg, do you need any more compliments? Is that anything else that you'd like me to highlight?

Gregg Cohen: 4:48

I think we're good. I think we're good. It is awesome to be here with, and thank you so much for being here and bringing your crew, and your family, my dad and my mom show up for the show on Tuesdays as well. So, I mean, it just makes it all that much better to have the family around. So appreciate you guys being here and, and really, I know this is a story that we've been dying to tell, because it's so impactful and, your story is really inspirational wit. So. Can't wait for everybody to learn. Thank

Whitney Ricci: 5:12

you. And I, you know, this is, I'm glad that we're putting this together. You know, this, I mentioned this in the invite email, and we mentioned this on social media. but when we did the not sure average investor show talking about the, you know, the world changing tort reform legislation a year ago, I was so excited to talk about that. And I'm talking, talking, talking about insurance, but It came up several times in that show that I was a JWB investor as well. And that show, I know a lot of my clients have watched that show. I know a lot of people have watched it back. and I think that they go to it to learn about the tort reform, but the follow up questions that we heard were, wait, how in the world did you have time to get all these houses? Like when you're doing. But he talks a lot about how I'm always doing the most and always so busy and so, you know, at first I was like, wait, are people going to think that I'm one of those people on Instagram? That's trying to have you make a million dollars from home by posting ads and selling education and probably assured me that nobody reads me that way. Nobody thinks that way. So I even put in there like disclaimer, I am not selling you anything. I'm not being compensated unless of course you get your insurance from me, which we fully expect that you will do. But really to hear, it's really cool to hear about the interest that there was in a sort of non traditional real estate investor journey. That is mine. So glad to share that with you guys today. Thank you for joining.

Pablo Gonzalez: 6:36

Great setup with, I love it. I think when I was talking to Greg about this show, I was like, what's the storyteller. We should just get out of the way and let her take it. You're already proving me right. Let's start somewhere. Let's start with this idea that you are, You've built a business on the back of essentially being the super connector of real estate investors locally in Jacksonville. If I'm not mistaken, you were doing that before you were actually investing in real estate outside of your, your primary home.

Gregg Cohen: 7:04

Yeah, so I'll, yeah, so I'll

Whitney Ricci: 7:05

take it back. I'll take it all the way back to the real beginning. So the real beginning. Is I talked my husband rich into this dream that I'm going to leave my job at State Farm where I have a steady W two income and I'm going to start an insurance agency and we're going to make no money at all in the beginning. But it's going to be awesome. It's going to be awesome. Just buckle up. It's going to be awesome. We're going to build it. And so he gets on board with this. I leave State Farm open my agency 6 months later. I find out that I'm pregnant with twins. And so that means that it means so many things. It means I need to hire my first employee. It means we need a bigger house. The house that we were living in at the time was only two and a half bedrooms. Scarlet, when the twins were born, Scarlet was only two. So it was an insane time in our lives. And in that about 45 days after I found out literally the day that we found out that we were having the twins we already had. An appointment with our real estate agent, and we went looked at 7 houses. The 7th house. I was like, this is the 1. I wrote a letter to the seller. Turns out they had twin grandchildren and they were like, girl, buy our house. So, we did, but what that meant was, this was in 2015. Rich and I bought our first home as, you know, young, you know, almost newlywed age, you know, timeframe in 2007. So in 2015, we were still like a hundred grand upside down in that house because it was purchased at the peak of the real estate market. So we didn't have a choice. We couldn't sell that home. So I found myself in this crazy, Crazy lifetime as an accidental landlord, and it was really one of those things. I never sat down, sought out, desired to do, wanted to do, but it was, these are the facts. This is the situation that you're in. This is the path to how you make this work. Greg, you may remember that this is when you were not taking outside people for property management. I, out of necessity, I am such a big proponent of professional property management. Now I shop from the rooftops because you know, we couldn't afford it. They weren't taking it on anyways. And that first year or two, we really couldn't justify paying for it because we were just on such a tight budget in that season of our family and of, of my business. So, it was horrible. We had, I mean, I won't go into too many details, but, like, we had to get an attorney involved at 1 point with those 1st tenants. So, after that, I tried to hire another property management and property manager, which, which didn't work out my home sat vacant for 5 months. Started taking on outside clients and then they had it rented within two weeks. So I was like, oh my, you know, oh my gosh. Thank you so much. Please. Please. Yes. Take, ticket and manage this property for us. So around that time, I still, so we had that. I was a landlord. We started saving and I wasn't a good position because I had been saving for years to open a state farm agency. And they expected you to have a certain number in the bank to invest in marketing and stuff. So we didn't have that cushion when the babies were small, but when we started getting like a little bit of extra money, we were, you know, what, what could we do with this? And that's when we started private lending. So we've been in private lending with JWB for a decade. And I think that that's a wonderful place for people who have a little bit of money, but, but Are nervous about tying it up for a long, long run, but they are for long term, but they want to get good returns. So we did that. We still do that. It's still a nice option for us. But it wasn't until 2020. When we saw right, and you're like, you probably have my thing in there. You know, my story better than me, but fast forward to 2020 now, I'm not paying for daycare anymore. We paid off a car at this time. My business is in a much better situation. My husband was in the mortgage industry, and we are in a position when those rates for what they were to really, really capitalize on it. And every bit that we could get aside for a down payment that we'd save, we'd buy another house, we'd buy another house, we'd buy another house. And when I think about that time period in our lives. I'm literally trying to navigate running a business through a global pandemic. While figuring out how to homeschool virtual school, like a 1st grader with twin 4 year olds. And I'm not proud of this, but I did turn and say to my husband. I am positive that they are going to let Scarlett out of the 1st grade and this school year ends now. I'm done. I'm done. We'll see you in the fall when you figure this out. He didn't go for it. He stepped up and was like, that's not a thing. You can't do that. Um, so we did get started on the first grade, but, but like everything that was going on was so crazy during that time, my industry started to change. We had the particular, the, you know, the staffing challenges that everybody was facing. And so how in the world were we able to be invested in real estate? Well, I'll tell you why we had seen the documented history. I'd also at this point probably had several hundred clients that I did their insurance that had been investing with JWB. So I felt real comfortable with the business model, probably. And I don't know if I should, if that's something really I should be saying, but whatever I did, you see enough of it and you, you know, you feel more and more comfortable with it. So what did that home buying process look like? A spreadsheet. You sent us a spreadsheet and you said, these are the homes. These are the specs on the 1st couple. Like, we would look at them on Zillow and look at the pictures I walk around the neighborhood and I'm local. So it's funny to think of that. I'm walking around the Google maps thing, like, on the Internet when I could just go down there. But on the last few, we were like, yes, this is a widget. Like, if this you guys are the pros, if this is what you think, we'll trust you on this and I'm going to go run my insurance agency. And I'm going to go on this field trip at school and I'm going to go figure out how to get. Maybe one of these days I'll figure out one meal that all five people in my family can all eat, but like all these other things that take up the space and it was kind of like we came up for air and we were like, whoa, like that, that, that escalated quickly. So that's how we got to, like, have what I would say is a small portfolio. We had a couple of other things that happened. I purchased this building. This commercial went when J. W. B. lovingly evicted me when they hired too many employees and there was no longer enough room for me. Parking places in the entire shopping plaza. My team had to go. Hey, but you notice the theme here. I was an accidental landlord before, and that worked out. And I was an accidental building owner here. And like, thank goodness. Cause my team has grown exponentially and now we have a place to put them, which we wouldn't have had. I was never going to leave. I was never going to leave. I don't know where we would put all these people. But anyways, that worked out. So that happened. And then we did do a unique thing. I was able to pick up a couple more in 2022 because we had a unique property that we purchased. We had a condo that had a large amount of appreciation. And so we were able to sell that and do a 1031 exchange and bought the last three.

Pablo Gonzalez: 14:34

Okay. What, what, what a story. Wait, I love it. There's a couple of things I want to, you know, double click into that story real quick. So it's a, it basically covers everything we want to talk about. I want to talk about the webinar is now over. No, no, no. I think, listen, I think the story is really engaging the idea of you being able to do this. If I'm, if I'm hearing it without the context and without understanding all these different things can sound well. That was a wild ride. Whitney was able to do that because she's Whitney, right? Not, not a, Hey, you know, I've seen this many other times with many other people. And let's talk about the places where in the brain it pings that it's just like, yeah, this we need to click into. Right. A couple of things I want to talk about and we can, I'm going to bounce it off GC and you, but a, the idea of professional property management to the moment of you, y'all taking, you know, noticing a moment in time where it's time to make a move and seeing an advantage, taking, taking advantage of it. Three, the idea that during the most crazy period of your life, you can be buying homes, which is a crazy thing, right? Like when you're doing it anybody that's bought their own home understands or the cognitive bias of seeing it happen around you and how valuable that is. And then, you know, at the end of the day, I want to end on this idea of how. We see this all the time. So many people accidentally get into real estate and for whatever reason, it ends up working out. So is it, is it luck or is it just like, can you make your own luck by, by getting into this stuff? But let's start there at the beginning of the story. You, you became a, you became an accidental landlord. And one of the things that I think when people think of like passive turnkey and, you know, passive real estate, they. They, they first need to be able to move past the idea of I'm going to do this all myself and it's worth bringing on a, a property manager in order to like take the load off. But I think a lot of people have had bad experiences with property managers in the past and they don't really tend to trust them very much. Right, Greg, is that, is that something that you and your team, when you're having these conversations of turnkey real estate, is Is that something that you all encounter very much? Cause I know I did when I first started hosting the show.

Gregg Cohen: 16:40

Absolutely. And just thinking about how incredible with story is. the family and the season of life that you were in at the moment where you made some of these big life decisions to make investments that have done so well for you. Not easy to do that. I think you're, you, you are, you deserve a bronze bust for what you have been able to handle and all you've been able to do. But then I also, I

Whitney Ricci: 17:05

didn't like volunteer for the twins. That's not what happened. Sometimes life is like, this is what's happening. And then you have to decide, you know, where to go from there. But, but

Gregg Cohen: 17:16

But there's a lot of other people that didn't have as much going on in their lives that had a ton of excuses they could have used and did use to not do what you did. And you were able to do it, but not only that, the experiences that you had prior to this, I wanted to focus on that. Just kind of recognize the courage that you took that you had to, to do this because you were a product of 2007. You bought your own primary residence in 2007, and in 2015 it was still underwater. You knew that that. in essence, did happen to you, even though it's extremely unlikely it'll happen again anytime soon. But you had that experience. And then you had your own property management experience, which was, you know, terrible prior to working with JWB. So you overcame all of this stuff, which usually holds people back. And, you know, not that many people were investing in 2007. now than when we work with new investors that many have not, but they still have that same fear. And so that's really one that is difficult to overcome. I think for the last year or two, everybody is saying, Real estate is going to crash. It's going to, when is it going to, wait, it's not crashing. Wait a second. It's still going up in value. Why is this happening? People still have a hard time getting over that. But the property management one is the one that hits home the most, especially if people have had a bad experience with a rental property. It's almost like no matter what the return on investment is in their mind, they're like, it's not worth it because the fear of traditional property management and how It negatively impacts conversations with your spouse and takes away from the fun of weekends or late nights because you've got this in essence, a second job. And so there's a real action, right? Is that how you

Whitney Ricci: 19:02

felt to this and our, yeah. And you know, it's funny. I think that the theme of, of why I have the perspective that I do on on both of those things. The 1st, you know, buying a house that in theory. On paper was a dog for 15 years and somehow still became a real estate investor. And also the piece about valuing professional property management both come from. I have an incredible sense of urgency. And that's I can make a decision and I can move quickly and I'm very tuned into the the missed opportunities of when things take too long. So, when you look at, you know, buying the house in 2000, I talked to people about this a lot for, like, literally for, like, 15 years, you would have said, Whitney buying that house was like a bad financial decision. You're underwater in that house. Well, guess what? None of that matters because now I'm majority of the way paid through the mortgage. It's pretty, and this is again, I did not purchase this home from JWB. So when I say it's most of the time covered, it's, it's carrying costs. That's not a reflection of any of. You know, so just know that piece of it, but just real estate in general. It doesn't matter if I spent 10 years underwater or whatever in that property. The only thing that matters about that property is when I'm actually ready to sell it. And if I can afford it and I can carry it, and now if you look at that on paper, that Property purchased in 2007 at the worst time is actually at this moment anyway, a phenomenal investment. And so why? Because I didn't wait. If there would always be an excuse to not, so I bring that up because in theory that was the wrong decision. It was a bad decision, but with real estate, if you, if you do it and you get into it, if you wait long enough and you have to be in a position where you can wait long enough, if somebody is 75 years old, maybe not the best. time for them to gamble on money that they're gonna need in five years. They should probably talk to you about private lending would be a good, a good candidate for that. So, that's the first piece. I feel like I've experienced firsthand that if you just take action for me, generally it works out on the property management side. I felt Acutely aware of what it meant to me every week that went by that my home was not rented. For example. And how, I mean, I, I still, I mean, I can't believe I'm saying this because I don't know who's on this webinar, but I kind of feel like their lack of effort or lack of prioritizing us. I mean, I don't want to say, like, I feel like they owe me money, but, like, to me, it felt very personal. And I felt that, you know, they were not working towards making me a priority and getting that house filled. And because I wasn't working with an expert in the field, that delay of getting the home occupied that delay and future potential property terms, like, time is money. So, I. I mean, rich laughs at me when we get the thing about making the maintenance requests. If I take more than, like, a day to, like, make a decision on it, he's like, if you wait until the weekend, then they're not going to be able to start. And then that so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm on board with that, you know, with that now, but I put a tremendous amount. So

Pablo Gonzalez: 22:28

I want to key in on two things there. Number one is this idea on the show, we've, we've really started to adopt this moniker of just like, it's not about waiting for the right time to buy real estate. It's about buying real estate and waiting, you know, because it, it does over a full market cycle. It has shown to. Perform very, very well, create wealthy people in America for ages and ages and ages, right? It's, it's always commonly referred to as like the, you know, the, the spine of the American dream essentially, right? Like this upward mobility that we all have at this and his company and in that light. If, if what you're hearing about, if wanting to invest in real estate is something you've thought about for a long time, and you're hearing this, it makes some sense and you just want to put something on your calendar to have the next conversation. Go to chat with JWB. com and just pick out a time that looks like it works for you so that you can take the next step in this and just find out more about everything that we're going to talk about. Chat with JWB. com, pick a time that works for you and go. And then second, I just wanted to real quickly, GC, what is the difference between a professional property manager and and a part time property manager? How do people, how do, what, what are the questions people can ask? What are the things that people can look for as quickly as possible to help them if they want to do this? And maybe they already have real estate or they're thinking about this and they just want to feel covered there. How, how can we tell what a professional property manager looks like?

Gregg Cohen: 23:55

Yeah absolutely. I think that's a great question and something we can really help educate folks on. Because that story that you were just telling Whitney is very common. And it, you know, you mentioned you almost felt like they owed you money, but in reality, what you, what you absolutely felt was that your goals were not aligned with their goals. Right? What people don't understand is that in property management, there's a lot of ways to perform a task that not necessarily contributes to a return on investment for you as an investor. There's ways to keep your house rented without driving return. And unfortunately, most property management companies are misalignment. Of goals. Did you experience that winning?

Whitney Ricci: 24:39

Well, Greg, I was so green at the time that like, I mean, Pablo mentioned about when you try and self manage the issues that can come up with like tension in your marriage and like, just this added stress. And I mean, I remember having you know, rich having to work and me begging our handyman, like, will you please come meet me at the house? Because like, I don't know if I feel safe, I mean, that kind of, you don't need, you know, if you do it, so that's in the self managed side. So when I decided, like, I just can't do this. I again, my green mindset. I pretty much thought that all property managers do is place the tenant collect the rent. Deal with the random calls when, like, something breaks. And so I had no idea that there were a whole spectrum of competency with this. So, when I picked somebody to hire to to professionally manage it, I just, you know, I didn't do a whole lot of research. I just thought, like, I will not be managing it. I will be hiring a professional property manager and didn't even know the questions to ask. about what makes a good one versus a bad one. at the time really thought that they would all be pretty much doing the same thing. And

Gregg Cohen: 25:53

that's, that's what we say. You know, when most people, when most people, unfortunately, get into rental property investing, they, they switch the order of operations. So they spend a ton of time thinking about the property, Do their due diligence on the property. And if they know how to analyze a property, that's where they spend their time. They spend almost no time thinking about, is this the right market for me to invest in? And then they definitely don't spend time thinking about, is this the right team to support the investment? But wait, like you've of course have, have experienced. And like anyone will experience if you're holding on to real estate, the team is the defining characteristic as to whether or not you're going to enjoy this investment. The

Whitney Ricci: 26:39

ability to scale. Like as you add more on there, then it's more of like, okay, one, okay, two. Okay. But you know, when you start building, you know, and that those numbers get up there also, I want to add, cause I know that, you know, we sent out this invite. One of the things that I think is going to be really interesting is not many people know that I'm a real estate investor, so I think a lot of people are going to be surprised that I've been like quietly doing this. Which also speaks to the like, how could I be quietly doing this because I'm really not doing anything. It's

Gregg Cohen: 27:13

so funny, I always joke about, you know, our clients and we do have some clients that are professional real estate investors and invest with JWB on the passive side, but I'm like the vast majority of our clients, if you see them at a party and you ask them what they're doing. 97 percent of them are not saying real estate investor, right? They're saying entrepreneur. They're saying, you know, doctor, lawyer, whatever it is. They don't even think of themselves as real estate investors. And I think that's really critical for this to be successful because what holds most people back from investing in real estate is not the lack of understanding that this is profitable. What holds most people back is the experience. and the perceived poor experience or the perceived amount of time and expertise you need to be successful here. So this is, this can be built for non real estate investors and

Whitney Ricci: 28:05

I think that there's an added layer also of people Look, like everybody wants like get a deal like they want to, you know, in theory, like negotiate and get the price down and find the unicorn house and do the thing. And but if they buy it and it's distressed and they do the renovations, then, you know, all these and, you know, maybe for 5 seconds. I had an idea like that. But again, going back to all of those for me are reasons that are delays. That are taking longer that are for, for me not doing anything. So, you know, I think that when people have, you know, do they identify as a real estate investor or not? I think that sometimes people think that if they were to be investing in real estate, that they would need to be spending tons of time finding the home, looking at the refinings of all of this stuff. And, you know, if you're willing to trust people that. I've done it longer than you and, and, and place a value on that. It can be for me, very passive and a very good experience for a busy person.

Pablo Gonzalez: 29:15

I love it so much that I relate to here that that idea of not calling yourself a real estate investor at a cocktail party for, for a very, very long time is very real to me. I just, I just recently. Now, I'd like to tell people that I'm a real estate investor now that I've gotten to like five houses, even though I've been doing this for close to four years now. And I feel like it makes me sound cooler at parties when I say that on top of entrepreneur. That being said, just to get to the, the punchline of the original joke I was trying to, I was trying to tell here. The, the difference between a professional property manager and a, you know, a typical property manager is what Greg was referring to this, like alignment of incentives. And what we've, what we've noticed over and over on the show is, and we talk about a lot is that most Property management companies make somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of their revenue off of tenant placement fees, which means that they're doing best when you don't have a tenant in the house. So they're incentivized to have these turnovers often. And yet the people that really succeed in real estate that had this great experience. They enjoy a longterm tenant stays. They enjoy people that live there for five to 10 years at a time. And that is what avoids these dinner table conversations. So this idea of alignment of incentives in signing longterm leases, having very, very high renewal rates. Those are questions that you want to ask a property manager. How, you know, how long, how, how, how long is your average tenant stay? They better know, and it better be good. How often do people renew their leases? They better know and it better be good and they better be answering why they're able to do that. And then also if you want to go one level deeper, it's this idea that if you're a small property management company, then you likely have like two to three sharp young people that manage, I don't know, five to 10 properties themselves. And one day they're like handling maintenance. One day they're trying to fill somebody in. And once you get to a certain size, now you have departments. That are in charge of occupancy that are in charge of renewals that are in charge of lowering maintenance rates. And they're driven by like specialization of metrics. So anybody that's wondering what, what conversations to have with property managers, I wanted to make that pretty succinct for you. Ask those questions, right? What are your metrics around occupancy? And are your people incentivized to drive the metric? Or do they have 10 metrics that they're driving at the same time? Now? Yeah. What you're going to say. So if I

Whitney Ricci: 31:38

can put my insurance agent hat on as well, If you could also ask them. What's your plan for hurricane season? For real? We have on the calendar next year. We do every year. We do a lunch and learn with JWB at the beginning of hurricane season to retrain refresher for their we're senior employees and intro for their newer employees to talk through, Hey, 000 homes. When the storms come through, what are you going to do, you know, and it's that they have those, those plans for when the winds blow, how they're going to react as employees, how they're going to react as, as manager of the properties, how they're going to manage the owners, how they're going to manage the residents how they're going to navigate with, with us and with any potential insurance claims. It's a big deal. Who is on your vendor list? That's going to go out there and tarp the roofs. How long is your vendor list? It's a big, big deal. And again, keeping my insurance hat on for a little bit. I was just meeting with a big regional vice president of sales for one of the insurance companies. And we were talking about, you know, we're one of the biggest insurance agents in Florida. We are a thousands of rental properties all over the state, not just with JWB. It's a, it's a really strong niche of ours, but we're particular about the new business that we take on. And if the person isn't local, we don't work with them unless they have a professional property management company. We say who is going to answer who's going to, who's going to address the situation if they go out there and there's a dog fighting rain, God forbid, that's the worst one we've ever seen. And that was not a rental property. Actually, that was an unoccupied property, but we need to know if something comes up, like, who are we going to reach out to and who's going to take care of it because we'll get investors from Las Vegas and from Israel and from wherever that want to come in and in passion on Jacksonville. their areas of the state, Orlando. And so anyway, and if you don't have a name for us of a human being or, you know, business that an actual person that has a network set up to address these things, we're not going to work with them.

Gregg Cohen: 33:41

I think that's a great point, Whitney, because we keep driving back to why, why was this possible for you, Whitney? You know, why was this something that you and Rich decided to go so strong into? And of course you believed in the returns, but it was only really possible because There was peace of mind built into this for you with the trust that you have given to us and to my team. But you know, that peace of mind is what makes this possible. People believe that this can be a good experience and that You know, JWB or whoever can be good stewards of your wealth for you. And it's not going to create negative conversations and stress between spouses and family and interrupt family measures. Then this becomes possible. So most of our clients actually come from outside of Jacksonville. They live in California, New York, Virginia. actually 49 different states. So most are not here. So if you're thinking about peace of mind, and you know what? It's going to be hurricane season here. You better make sure that when storms do happen, because they do happen in Florida, that you're not going to have to be glued to the TV wondering what happens to your two, three, five, 10 investment properties in Jacksonville, or else it quickly becomes not worth it for you, no matter what the returns are. And that's why working with such a great insurance team is critical and a big, a big value that we get to bring You know, to our clients,

Whitney Ricci: 35:44

Greg, do you know about when Rich and I went to go look at our houses,

Gregg Cohen: 35:49

we

Whitney Ricci: 35:49

heard the story. Okay. So again, it was a busy time. Okay. So even though we're local, like we did not go look at these houses. I had an extra comfort level because I've been insuring these houses for years and years and years. You guys have the formula down. So I, you know, I, I didn't feel. Or frankly, to have the time to go look at them. So we'd own these homes a couple of years and we were going to the movies at Regency and Rich is like, we're going to be right by like this group of the houses. We should go look at them. And I was like, Nope, I'm not going. And he was like, what? What do you mean? And I was like, I just don't see any upside of that. It's out of sight out of mind. What am I going to do? Go look at it and be like, annoyed that they're not mowing the glass, the grass or something. Like, there's just no. Like, no, I don't want to do this. And he's like, come on, is this really something we should do? And like, I'm kind of excited. Like, I want to see them. And so, my dad's on the thing. I'm going to be embarrassed, but I was like, hold, please. So I took a tequila shot.

Gregg Cohen: 36:50

I was like, let's go. Hopefully Rich was driving.

Whitney Ricci: 36:54

Rich was driving. I took a tequila shot. I did it like kind of to be funny and we're going to the movie, so I wasn't real mad about it. So, so I took a tequila shot. I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to be a little bit more chill.

Gregg Cohen: 37:10

That's so funny.

Whitney Ricci: 37:11

We pull them up. We like look at the addresses and the GPS and oh my, it was. Amazing. First of all, I hadn't been in that neighborhood in a year, so I didn't know about the glow up that that whole area had had. So that was amazing to see our specific houses. There were so much pride of ownership. They were like, decorated for it was, it was in January. And I remember 1 of the houses was decorated already for Valentine's Day. They had little birds out there and another 1 of ours was having. Like Super Bowl weekend or something, but there was like a really cute. They had set up like a TV or something in the garage and they had like, chairs over and they had a couple of friends over and people were like, throwing the football in the front yard. And I just got this incredible, like, this is amazing. These people are loving where they're living. They're taking great care of my property. Their whole neighborhood is so much nicer than the last time that I had been in that area. And it ended up being like this really great experience. Experience. And I was probably like, what? No, I wasn't

Gregg Cohen: 38:16

What a great song.

Whitney Ricci: 38:17

But it, it was funny. I broke my like, nope, I'm, I'm hands off. I don't even wanna see it. But Rich, rich was right. Rich won that one. It was a good idea. So when we did it at the summit, when we did like the drive around, I'm like, Ooh, this is gonna be like that again.

Pablo Gonzalez: 38:30

Yeah. That's so funny. With that, it's such a, I guess it's a guy thing. I remember, I remember like when we hit. Our third property. I was like, all right, I've got three. Now we've got a portfolio. We've done this. I proposed for one of our anniversaries to go check out our properties and hard pass, hard pass, not interested. Right? So yeah, I, I, it's a likely story, right? Even, even Jacksonville residents that invest with JWB don't, don't go see their properties, right? This is how passive the whole thing is. Part of, part of the scope to this as Susie Becker writes the intentional care for the whole environment, city community, Is what seems to differentiate as more than a property manager is the idea that a lot of these outfits that do this type of stuff, they kind of like look for deals in whatever market and pair you up with whatever property manager they're find while JWB has met a very con made a conscientious bet to go. An inch wide and a mile deep into Jacksonville only operate in Jacksonville. They now operate 6, 000 properties. They manage 6, 000 properties. They own 300 of them themselves. They've invested into developing 20 blocks of downtown. So like this flywheel of effect of like the data that you get from it, the contractor base, the connections that you're able to get really, really starts to compound into this thing that really. You know, they're playing at like a different level of raising median incomes and driving higher returns, which brings me to the, one of the topics I wanted to talk about. And it's what you saw, you know, you guys saw back then this idea of super low interest rates creates this opportunity. And those interest rates we all know are no longer around, but as you know, servicing a lot of JWB clients through insurance and in your network, People are still investing in Jacksonville right now. And I wonder from your perspective, the folks that you talk to, what is it? That's continuing the investment in Jacksonville that people see as the opportunity right now?

Whitney Ricci: 40:19

Yeah. Well, I mean, I bought one since the interest rates, since those rates were gone. We still continued. We did pick up another one. I went on and I'm in Murray Hill. if you're in a position and you're interested in real estate and you want to invest somewhere, I mean, you kind of look at it scientifically and you want to be in a city where there's a lot of potential upside. And I believe in Jacksonville, I believe that we're a city on the rise. I believe that we have a shortage of nice places for people to live. And I think that while interest rates are higher, that also provides a whole lot of tenants that need places to rent. So, I'm big on diversification and real estate is a portion of my overall plan. And in my experience, as we started, you know, with the. Accidental landlord, like I'm, I'm 40. That's how old I am. I have a lot more working years and I just feel like the potential upside for me is, is. Long enough until I'm going to actually be relying on that that I could weather these little bumps. But what I can't ever do is go back in time.

Pablo Gonzalez: 41:30

I like that.

Whitney Ricci: 41:31

I like that. I'd be willing to bet that, you know, if we were to look on paper now, my little 2007 property, it was the dog. If people would be like, could you, if you had the chance to go back in time and buy that horrible deal back then and still own it now, would you? And I think, you know, People would say yes, they would, even if it was a dog on paper for a decade or two.

Gregg Cohen: 41:54

Yeah. I'll just add on to that. I ran the numbers. So my business partners and I bought 40 properties in 2006 and 2007. Uh, so we know exactly how it feels to you know, to have a hope and a dream and build a real estate company. And then within, you know, a couple of years, see the market values of those properties drop by 30, 35%. I mean, we really have. Seeing the worst case scenario here. And so I ran the numbers because I, I constantly get that question. Oh my gosh, whenever I would tell people that I invested in 2006 and 2007, they used to be, they used to look at me with pity. Like, Oh, I'm so sorry that you did that. So I actually ran the numbers. And it's a beautiful story about how actual home price appreciation works and why real estate is so consistent. Because if you actually look at what the historical average for home price appreciation is over the years in the Jacksonville market, it's about 4. 9 percent per year going back over 40 years. Well, I ran the numbers from 2006 to when I bought till 2023. And guess what? The average annualized home price appreciation, a little bit over 5%. And it just shows that this mantra of buying real estate and waiting with an expert team to support you, that's a, that is an opportunity to have a significant part of your financial plan realized in something that is non traditional, right? Diversification, like you mentioned, Whitney, is, is really important. I think it's a need in this country. We tend to have all of our assets and certain traditional investments. Well, this is the way that it's possible. And you know, you, it's not as mythical about how you become a successful and wealthy individual when you know how you can see real estate working for you.

Whitney Ricci: 43:42

I just remembered just now a very funny conversation that I had with Alex when, I mean, we were like, 25 years old or something and you guys, the, you know, the business was new and he was like, explaining it to me. And I mean, I was not your ideal client at 25, but he was still like, you know, this is whenever we were all figuring out who we were. And so he was, he was kind of like. Soft pitching me on real estate in general. And I'm asking questions and I just remember him like these, these statements about real estate in general. I was like, but, but, but what if this, like, what if, what if prices go up or something and, and people, you know, there aren't renters, he's like, And I was like, well, well, well, what if, you know, prices go and anyway, there was just the always the out there was like, well, then that means that the opportunity is here. Well, then you do this. Well, then that means that the opportunity is there. Well, and every so yeah, at 25, he, I don't remember those specific instances, but I remember Alex making it be like, that's fine. It's fine. There's a way out. There's a way out because you own a thing. You have an asset, you have a commodity that you can sell or you can rent out.

Gregg Cohen: 44:53

You have a lot more options.

Pablo Gonzalez: 44:54

Yeah. And I, and I love the, I love the very tempered, very rational approach of, Hey, diversification is good. I want to diversify into real estate. Hey, long term fundamentals are always good in this space and they have more options than people know until they get educated on it. And I want to be in this asset. I mean, for me, the, the thing that makes me excited and the reason why I recently bought a duplex to get the five doors and like all this stuff is the. Is what's happening currently in the city, right? Like it's, it's this idea that, you know, we've done a lot of data and a lot of research behind this of. downtown urban cores and how they affect the home price appreciation of the area. You look at Nashville, you look at Austin, you look at Charlotte, you look at Denver and you see that these sleepy downtowns that came online and became something have turned these into markets that everybody's like, Oh 10 years ago. Right. And, and, and the fact that we now see Jacksonville. We see the stats of going from 3, 000 residents in the, in the urban core to about to eclipse that magical 10, 000 mark where all of a sudden that makes sense for all these other types of developers. And we talk about that in the links that shows, and it being on the precipice of going from what we call an 8 hour downtown, where people just go to like work and then go home to a 16 hour downtown where people go, like, work, live, play and entertain themselves. And knowing that that. You know, that causes this like jump in the home price appreciation that we've seen in other cities that I personally lived in Miami and knowing that this is coming to me is the most exciting part, right? Like I see it as this like giant insider stock tip of like, Hey, company just released this amazing thing, but they've got these 10 other things and they're about to be the greatest company ever. I see that in the city. So, so that to me is. Is the thing, but I think it's still bears to question. Even Susie put it in the chat interest rates are still high GC. What's the, what's the argument for, for right now being a great moment to go to that chat with jwb. com setting up a call and maybe not waiting for interest rates to drop and getting in on all of this.

Gregg Cohen: 47:08

You know, as long as I've been investing, there have been reasons to not invest. And Whitney, you talked about a number of them back in, you know, when you started to invest in 2020. There were a thousand reasons to not invest and many more scary than just high interest rates back in the day you were investing. You know, but the thing that we know is that real estate works long term. But I think when you're starting to ask about interest rates, I think most people have the You know, just they, they need to think about what really happens with interest rates and think about what steps you can take today to help your financial future. If you really, really think about interest rates, all right, let's take a second. So right now, interest rates are higher than we want, and everybody in their mom believes that interest rates are going to come down at some point. Jerome Powell, the Fed chair has said that interest rates are going to come down at some point. If we know that higher interest rates have slowed demand from housing like they have, what do we think the opposite, what do you think is going to happen when interest rates come down again, right? We would think that the opposite effect happens. And when demand goes up and supply stays constant, demand goes up, what that means is there's short term problems. Home price increases and these short term home price increases can be substantial, right? Just like we saw in 2020, we saw very limited supply and we saw high demand and that led to significantly higher home price appreciation. Well with interest rates, what's nobody is talking about is that interest rates right now are higher, but when they come down, you're expected to see significantly more demand. And guess what? We still have very low supply here in Jacksonville and across many markets in the country. So what many people are not talking about is the best way to take a step forward financially in real estate is actually to think about what happens when interest rates come down. Because interest rates and loans in this country are such a beautiful asset, many people don't realize that in the United States, we have access to debt, to these loans that are so much more advantageous than other countries. And these loans allow us to take a loan out today, while interest rates are higher than what we want. And when interest rates come down in the future, in six months, a year, two years, whenever that happens, You simply just refinance. There's minimal cost to refinance and you're able to refinance your loan. You're not able to do that in other countries. It's not that easy. But when you think about what's likely to happen when interest rates come down and home prices go up, the thing that you can't go back in time and do is find a different purchase price. As things appreciate in the future, you can't go back and find a different purchase price. So that the not your average investor approach that I've been singing from the rooftops now for probably six months is I want people to think differently about interest rates. Actually, buying while interest rates are high, if you expect them to come down in the future, is actually a very smart move as a real estate investor. And that would be the reason to jump on the phone with my team to have some serious consideration about, is this the right time to invest? Because interest rates being, being high is actually the reason. That right now is a great time to invest.

Whitney Ricci: 50:37

I was actually at a real estate event earlier this week. And there was a mortgage guy talking and I couldn't believe that it had been a month or so since I heard it, because I feel like it's been harped, harped, harped into us, but the whole date, the rate, marry the house. Have you guys been they're like, I know it's cheesy, but he said that they're already seeing the 1st wave of people that bought houses last year and that when the mortgage rates were, like, actually in the 8th, and they have come down a little bit and they're already starting that refinance process, which will take a few 100 bucks a month off of their loan.

Gregg Cohen: 51:10

Yeah, I'll just put some numbers to it, right? It might cost, it costs, let's say about 3, 000 to refinance a typical JWB's properties loan. So it might cost 3, 000. But if your home value is, let's just say that it's worth 300, 000 today, and it goes up the typical average home price appreciation rate in one year, that's 5%. Well, that's 15, 000 of return of appreciation of equity that you would have earned. So would you as an investor spend 3, 000 to make 15, 000? You certainly would, right? And it may be more than that. So there's the math behind why it makes sense to buy. If you believe the data, which shows that interest rates going down leads to more demand and home prices going up, which it's shown over, over the decades. This is a great time to either get started or to expand your portfolio, just like you did with when you knew it was a great time for you guys to jump in the game. You know, again, in 2021, I think it was more difficult time to see through the, to see exactly, you know, the opportunity.

Whitney Ricci: 52:21

I feel like I don't I can't tell you that we knew that it was rich was confident in the, in the, you know, the moment of the world of that unique opportunity. But I was just like, who knows what's going on. I just know that if you wait long enough, you've got time, it would be fine. And it's, it's worked out very well for our family.

Pablo Gonzalez: 52:42

It's the classic moniker that we hear from Warren Buffett all the time. And yet it's so hard to do the whole get greedy when people are scared and get scared when people are greedy. Like this is, this is one of those quintessential moments where everybody is everybody got really greedy in 2021 and every, it was the obvious move to make, right? Like it's played out well for everybody. But right now is those like intergenerational, you know, those sliding glass doors moments where you. Create this generational wealth in one time by locking this thing in being a part of that home price appreciation when the rates go down, instead of like trying to rush into it on the back end, chasing appreciation then set yourself up to succeed really quickly. GC, I could have sworn you told me that there was more to that though, right? There is this idea of locking in before rates go down, but aren't you guys doing something special for Whitney's friends right now?

Gregg Cohen: 53:35

We are. So, you know, this, this talk track of like, Oh, I want to invest, but I'm going to wait for interest rates to go down is one that we've heard quite often. And I help people see the other side of it. Like we just talked about, but you know, it'd be a whole lot easier if interest rates were just lower today for, for individuals, or at least as low as people think it's going to go down to. Right. Again, and so, you know, we here internally here have, have kind of heard you and we have a special opportunity because of our lender relationships to actually buy down interest rates for our clients. And so we actually just announced on Monday of this week, an incentive package for new clients. So anybody on this call who might be a new client and current clients for both of you and anybody else who's their current client, where JWB is actually going to be buying down your interest rate. three quarters of a point, which means that it's very likely that your interest rate when you buy a JWB investment property will be in the low fives. And so if you think about, you know, this idea of waiting till interest rates come down, I think it's pretty likely that interest rates are kind of going to go back to call it low fives. Again, it's kind of like the middle road of where we've been over the last decade, let's say. So this creates an opportunity for you to be able to buy your investment properties right now. JWB buys down that rate to probably what it's going to go down to at some point in the near future. And you can kind of take that interest rate conversation off the table. You get the best of both worlds. You get an interest rate, again, likely in the low fives, depending on your credit and whatnot. While also locking in the purchase price, because again, as interest rates go down for everybody else, home prices, we expect to go up and you're going to jumpstart your investing career with JWB with additional home price appreciation, which is a beautiful thing. So yeah, so that is available for all properties that go under contract this month. So by the end of July, and the reason that we extended that a few, a few weeks longer than we typically would is for those new clients in mind. Because when you become a JWB client, you don't jump on the phone and just start talking about properties. We're going to take some time to get to understand your goals, the resources you have, put a plan together for you. And many times it takes, you know, two, three weeks to do that the right way. So there is a real sense of urgency. If it's something that you're interested in, this is, you know, our, our current clients will tell you, this is not normal for us to do. This is actually the only time we've ever done this. And it's something that I would highly encourage you if you're interested to reach out to our team and set up a time to chat. wow. First of all, that's very cool. Very, very cool. I didn't want to get right into that. I feel you're not impressed with it. No,

Whitney Ricci: 56:10

I'm very impressed. I think that that's, I think

Gregg Cohen: 56:11

that's awesome. I think that's awesome.

Whitney Ricci: 56:12

But one of the things I wanted to bring up though I was talking to somebody on your team about how you work with local real estate agents. If they're working with somebody who really want something in the investor space and.

Gregg Cohen: 56:24

You

Whitney Ricci: 56:24

know, they're looking for that deal, but it's going to take work or this it is that, but don't you have a way that you work. With them. Cause I think we may a hundred percent, my audience we're real estate adjacent. We're so, they may see some of this

Gregg Cohen: 56:38

a hundred percent. Thank you for bringing it up. We love to partner with you know, folks in the local real estate community here. I mean, we have such strong relationships here locally within the real estate space. We've been here for 18 years and it's always surprising to me that you know, many times folks don't know all the ways they can partner with JWB, but if you're a real estate agent. And you might have a client that wants to own investment properties and you might have problems sourcing it. You might not have enough inventory or you don't know a reliable property manager to refer them to or they want a new construction house and you don't know how to Get a builder to build a new construction house for them. You can just simply refer them to JWB and we have commission structures built in place for you. So yeah, basically can make a connection and continue to receive commissions. And that's for the lifetime of the client as well. So as that client continues on their plan with us and acquires two, three, 10 homes, you receive commissions every time they purchase, even though you don't have to. Reintroduce them to us every single time. So it's a great way to, to make another passive income stream for real estate professionals here locally. And it's, and we just love those relationships that we get to build with, with more of our community here. So if that's something you're interested in, just send an email to our team. It's info at JWB companies. com info at JWB companies. com. And we'll make sure that we get the you in touch with the right part of the team to, to set up those relationships for you.

Pablo Gonzalez: 58:03

Cool. Thank you. I love it. I love it. The chat's lighting up with Susie and Leslie saying that they set up a time to chat just now. So that's super, super exciting. Welcome. Welcome on board. You know, we want to, if you want to meet other people and, you know, become a part of this community, we do host the show every Tuesday at 1230. So you can come join us live, ask questions, do things like that. We also have a WhatsApp group that Whit and I are both active in with a handful of the folks that are here in this chat. So if anybody. Yeah. Wants to join that and meet other people. But in that light, are you good with us, us jamming through a couple of Q and a's here that we have here for cool patron Santorio's Michael Santorio says Whitney, I see Richie is now licensed in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, California, Texas, and DC. Are you planning on expanding it to other states such as Virginia and Maryland?

Whitney Ricci: 58:47

Yes, actually. So I need to, I need to update that because as of gosh, I can't believe it says as of October, which means almost a year, we actually can write in all 50 states now. But it comes with the caveat because we're not going to just say, oh, you have a property in Montana. We've never insured a property in Montana. It takes us like, when we decide we're going to start doing business in a state as an independent agent. 1st, we have to. Find out, like, what regulatory issues are there and what companies are going to be good for us to make sure that we have access to, to take care of you. So we've been getting the infrastructure in place, and we have a couple people on our team that have been kind of taking the lead on doing the stuff in other states, but it's 1 of those. If you need a quote on on property in Florida, really, or in Georgia, they do a better in Texas. We can do that in a day or maybe 2. if it's a property that it's in Virginia, I'll write down those other ones. It just may take us. A week or so to hear back from the companies check with our association and make sure that we're truly taking care of you. We don't want to just rubber stamp it that I take very seriously that we're an independent agent that we have options for our client. So, just because we are able to write business there, if I only have 1 carrier, if that carrier is not the best carrier, that's not where we would drive our, our focus. But we'll be glad to continue the convo. That's exciting. It was great meeting you too. You guys were great at the, at summit was so fun. I had so much fun at the summit. I loved that.

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:00:20

Yeah. So it was fun. And anybody

Whitney Ricci: 1:00:21

on the bus tour,

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:00:26

anybody knew we do have a, we have a real community here, right? So like this, this idea of like the show happening on Tuesdays, we've all become really good friends. We host an event at least once a year, maybe two or three GC where we bring a hundred, a hundred foot, 50 people. And we. Yeah. We all get together and you, you'll be invited to the next one. So, uh, I had

Whitney Ricci: 1:00:43

the bar tab. Do you remember that? I was like, listen, if I'm going to sponsor, I need to be the bar sponsor because insurance is making everybody drink. This is last year. It's getting so much better now. I was like, please let me go have the drinks

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:00:54

for these

Whitney Ricci: 1:00:55

good, good people.

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:00:57

Indeed. Santorius also asks, you know, now that. You know, in April, the Florida OIR approved eight new property and casualty insurance to enter the Florida state market. Will Richie be able to competitively shop policies from these eight new insurance carriers once they're up and running?

Whitney Ricci: 1:01:12

Yeah. So we've, we've got most of them. So, the good news is that this is what's going on in the markets, the carriers that are filing rate decreases. I would say 80 percent of the time. They're not the core companies that we're working with. Now, that being said, I was shadowing with 1 of my new team members yesterday on some software and she was downloading a renewal policy for 1 of our real clients and their policy came in and it was 400 less than last year. And I was like, we're finally starting to, like, the real people are seeing it. Those carriers, the rate increases are in, like, the 2 percent range. But what is wonderful one of the biggest companies that we work with and that JWB works with American Integrity just came out on the 3rd. I can send a follow up link of their article. They filed no rate increase and an increased discount on their binding arbitration discount that's going to take place next quarter. So those folks should be pretty. Let me get and look at all of it. Like, if you have a situation with your credits for whatever, like, it's not across the board all equal, but should be for the most part flat or tiny rate decreases. The big, big win is we've been saying, get us to stabilization, get us to stabilization and the tort reform has delivered. It has brought back competition carriers are coming, wanting to come into the States. The thing that's really the States, the state of Florida. The thing that's really exciting when you hear new carriers, you're kind of like, well, I mean, for me, I'm like, listen, I'm not real excited to place business with a company that has never had a claim. Like, what is that going to be? Like, we sell peace of mind. It's important, but in many cases, then the new companies are actually just new writing paper. That is, they're basically a sister company of a more established company. So I love that. And it gives them the ability to say, okay, we feel comfortable writing, for example, older roofs with this new company, because this new company has no tail that goes back to hurricane Ian or anything before where they would have to battle these. You know, 1 way attorney fees and be multipliers and all this stuff. They get to start with, like, a clean slate. So they feel a lot more comfortable with the roof. That's maybe 18 years old or 20 years old versus like, well, we wanted to be 9 years old or whatever. So we're seeing a lot more capacity that way. I mean, it really. Is like a brave new world for property insurance in Florida. It's so improved. And if you saw my calendar, it's all of a sudden every and bless them. I love them. I love seeing them. But like, every big wig is like, coming through making the rounds, getting face time being like, remember us. Let's grow together. Let's win. Let's do. And I'm like, yes. Because competition is the thing, but listen, we're not going to see those 2014 premiums ever again. We've had storms like that stuff. That was like, those are superficially low, but getting back to stabilization no more of this, you know, 40, 50, 80, sometimes crazy percent rate increases year over year. We should not see that for the foreseeable future. That was a symptom of a broken system that has been fixed. You know, I did it again. Holly freaking Lou. Yeah. Are you going to put me on loop saying that again? I said that last time and Pablo put it on a Holly freaking Lou. Yeah. I was very excited. I'm still excited.

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:04:38

I can tell. Do you see any thoughts on that? That whole idea of like insurance rates and all that stuff and what that means for investors?

Gregg Cohen: 1:04:43

I mean, I'm just really, I'm super excited as well. You know, while investors have won since 2020, when it comes to home prices going up and rent prices going up and things of that nature, it still has been really painful to see those insurance costs. hitting our, our, our pocketbooks. So we have been waiting and Whitney, you've been incredible at leading the charge here, going up to the Capitol.

Whitney Ricci: 1:05:07

It's been, and thank you for, you know, for acknowledging that it really has been a tremendous amount of work. It's like, look, what are the things that we can do? I can staff up, we quadrupled the size of our staff to try and meet the demand for making sure that we're, because it's not just, you know, The rate increases with the remarketing losing that coverage. We've got to rewrite 1 of the statistics between the 2 year period around 2022 when the carry when we went through all the carriers going into insolvency 1Million policies were rewritten by Florida insurance agents as a result. And a lot of that was during hurricane season. Like, when you think about, like. That is a once in a generation moment of time that I'm so glad to be on the other side of and have that in the rear view. I mean, but we said, yes, we can do that. Just like, for our clients in this moment, but big picture, this is a huge deal. And what we found works the best were to tell your specific stories. I have this client. This is what's going on. They're trying to get this job. They can't do this because. All of the problems that the insurance premiums were resulting in, and, you know, our, our local legislators, like, they want to hear it. It was also a little bit of a tangent and then we'll come back to it now, but to talk with the people that voted to support us and to talk with the people that didn't. Was almost as valuable because it's like, explain to me why, like, what are, what are your reservations? And it was, it was pretty eye opening where sometimes people will come from with that. And it's nice to be able to put, like, a real human who's, who's nice, and it's coming from me. He's coming wasn't caring and talking about my clients, like, to see the other side of it, because the insurance, the insurance industry as, like, a on paper. Doesn't really make the best, you know, you're not going to pity them. And I'm like, you should save them.

Gregg Cohen: 1:06:59

Yeah, it's been a tough time. I mean, against the backdrop of home price affordability, it's, it is really, really important that we fix that, but it didn't just happen by coincidence. It was a lot of hard work by you, right? By our legislators coming together to, to fix a broken system. And you know, we you know, pardon the pun, but we've weathered the storm, right? It should be getting better.

Whitney Ricci: 1:07:22

Florida and our tort reform is now actually being used as like the blueprint for the rest of the country. I mean, it's, it's wild. Never in a million years did I think that Florida would be the state that shows everybody how to fix something like a a broken legal system.

Gregg Cohen: 1:07:36

Yeah. Well, and so now let me just kind of bring in again, a not your average take on insurance while the rest of the country is saying, Oh, well, I can't buy real estate in Florida because insurance costs are so high because we have Whitney and her team advocating it because you have access to this information. You can look at it and say, Oh, listen, I understand now that those, those broke that broken system was fixed, right? I understand that things are starting to happen and you can use this to make better financial decisions. Like, for example, in evaluations for rental properties, and this is for JWB rental properties, we expect insurance costs to go up 3 percent a year. That's what it's done over the long haul. That's about what it has done. And that's what we project going forward this year and next year. Well, we obviously have heard Whitney talk about this for a while, and now we're starting to see some rate decreases. May or may not happen, but we feel really good about under promising and over delivering when it comes to the insurance cost expectation. So you as an investor, these are hidden ways that you can get additional rates of return and better cash flows for yourself than, honestly, what is on paper. Then what the expectation is this information, this, this advanced knowledge on insurance is absolutely going to increase cash flows for those who buy properties now and will increase rates of return for many years to come.

Whitney Ricci: 1:09:00

And if I do say so myself, I may also throw in there that our agency, and because of our partnership and our advocacy and our long standing relationships with some of these companies, we have more capacity to write things that no other agents can do slightly older roofs homes that are of a older year, the carrier that just left has a cap on, you know, will only work with people if they own 10 properties or less, unless they're a Richie client. And then we just have a separate line that we can, and we can write as many as because they know how we operate. They know who we work with. And so those kinds of things. I mean, we never really get an opportunity to, like, tell that. And it's like, if that's what's going on, because people are just like. Yeah, I bought a policy from you. That's you sell, I buy, you're welcome for your business, you know what I think? And sometimes I'm like, but I, but I would like a little bit of credit because of the, you don't know how hard it is sometimes to sell in this market. We have to exchange, you know, underrating capital, underrating favors, like currency in this market. And so that, that's been and a lot of that is tied specifically to JWB. Remember the days when we went all those years without having to get four points?

Gregg Cohen: 1:10:10

I do that went away, but

Whitney Ricci: 1:10:12

that was like, what was that? Like four or five years, we got like a blanket exception for just JWV clients for the underwriters to go look at those walkthrough videos instead.

Gregg Cohen: 1:10:21

And there's, there's still so much value that we have from being a partner with you. Just setting the right expectations on what insurance costs should be in the real estate space. People have underrepresented what insurance costs are expected to be, and then they own the property and they wonder why they don't have as much cash flow. But we don't have that problem because we have you and your team and your team looks at our properties ahead of time and sets what those insurance rates are going to be so we can accurately. estimate you know, for our clients. So just an incredible partnership we have with it's, people will, they might not know all the details, but I know the details and I appreciate you

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:10:57

just for the record, it's something I've known for 22 years. It's good to be friends with Whitney. I'm just saying it comes with, it comes with a lot of perks. Two last questions, rapid fire. Jen Filson is asking, can we share with Susie and others the training that Greg and I created? We do have a course. I think the trick here is that courses cost money and we've sent up for it online. But if you go to chat with JWB. com plan a call with the sales team, I'm pretty sure we can find a way to get you that for free. So that's the back of it. I said that, isn't it? Yeah. Go, go, go to chat with JWB. com and, and, yeah, yeah. I appreciate it. I

Whitney Ricci: 1:11:30

didn't know you were doing that. Sorry.

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:11:32

It's cool. It's cool. And then Leslie Wilson also asks interesting that when he's an independent agent, agent instead of a captive agent with State Farm, can you ask her about that? Any, anything that you want to share about that with, of like, Yeah, I'm

Whitney Ricci: 1:11:43

actually in a, in a a really, Kind of warm and fuzzy space about this because I worked at State Farm for seven years. I went through the process to try and open a State Farm agency. I thought it was my dream and in my young adult life changing my dream and deciding no, I don't want to be a State Farm agent. I want to open an independent agency was like one of my first big brave decisions that I made. And really, it came down to Florida is a really unique state. And insurance just isn't a one size fits all. So for me, there were a couple of things that were happening right at the end, right before I left, where I just felt really strongly that I needed to be in charge of what I sell and what I provide clients and I need to have options. And with State Farm, you can't do that. Another reason why I'm specifically in my feels about this is because, You know, on on paper, so I worked for the state farm agent. I learned how to run an insurance agency there. Right? Like, I. You can 1 could be like, oh, she taught me everything I knew kind of thing and I had a great relationship with my boss and then I left and I opened up an insurance agency. Now. I'm like, right now after kicked me out. I moved basically, like, right down the road and then competing and life's busy. We do a terrible job of staying in touch, but I recently found myself on the same flight as her coming back from Denver. This was only like a month ago and I'm sitting here and it was amazing. We had this wonderful reunion and she's like, I'm so proud of you. I see all the stuff you do for industry. I'm so proud that, you know, I had a part in that and all. And I'm like, how cool is this? That this story could have been like, Oh no, I was trapped on the plane for four hours with, with the boss that I left, that I went, you know, and competed with. But it was, it was. A very, very cool experience. So I think that you know, I, I credit State Farm with a lot of our training of how much we value relationships with people. A lot of great training there. I think that they do some things really well. But for me, for my family, for my business model it's very important to me that the power is I have the clients variety of carriers. You show me what you've got. That's the best for them. And I put them together. And if that ever breaks, then I'm like, bye, we will go. And we have other options and that's never been more valuable to me than in the last couple of years when we've had all of this you know, those 1 million policies that needed to be rewritten it's very important.

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:14:07

another reason why you guys I think. Resonates so well together, the longterm thinking, the longterm strategy that you have, the longterm thinking and strategy that I've, you know, we've gotten to know of, of like how JWB thinks and stuff like that. Great partnership. This was awesome with, thank you so much for bringing all your friends to the show, your family to the show.

Whitney Ricci: 1:14:25

I was so glad to do this follow up. This was a lot of fun that we could show a peek under the hood and everybody's going to be like, Whitney does what? When was she doing that?

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:14:36

Yeah, I'd, I'd, I'd get ready. I'd get ready for the media requests. Cause you know, when you, when you show up on a special edition of the not traverge investor show, we give, we give the ratings a bump over here. So, pumped. You did this super, super grateful that we had a bunch of people show up here for this. I encourage you to join us on the show on Tuesdays. If you want to meet other people doing it, continue to get educated. It's called the not traverge investor show. If you want to look it up on YouTube. We're on Spotify or iTunes or wherever you want, but more than anything, don't wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait, go to chat with JWB. com lock in a day to start talking to the team and start getting this journey going. Like we've all taken here. GC, I'll give you some final words here, buddy.

Gregg Cohen: 1:15:16

Just super appreciate you with it. Thank you so much for doing this. It's funny when we think about the vertically integrated approach we have at JWB, a lot of that started with the relationship with Whitney. She really showed us the importance of an insurance teammate to make sure that our overall mission of making it easy for people to invest in real estate would be, would be real. So I remember those days and us figuring this out together. And You know, you just mean so much to, to our clients and to me and Pablo too. So

Whitney Ricci: 1:15:43

we love

Gregg Cohen: 1:15:43

you. We appreciate you.

Whitney Ricci: 1:15:45

Hey, look at you holding down my old office.

Gregg Cohen: 1:15:47

How about that? I'm in it right now. Put that

Whitney Ricci: 1:15:49

in the chat. That's my old office. I like to spread the rumor that that's why I had to get evicted. Really, was so Greg could have a TV studio. Because

Pablo Gonzalez: 1:15:59

our heads got this big. I also would like to say that none of this would have happened for me if it weren't for Whitney. Whitney is the person that introduced me to Greg. And her and Rich doing private lending is what got me involved investing in JWB. In 2014. So this is all one giant reunion, a long time in the making. I hope to see everybody on Tuesday when we talk about the, the new reports of CPI and the signals coming from the fed and what's happening and something we'd like to call not your average insights. And from now until then, GC, usually we like to leave everybody with a little bit of advice, which is what you see.

Gregg Cohen: 1:16:32

Don't be average. See everybody. Thanks.

GMT20240711-163150_Recording_avo_1280x720: 1:16:35

Bye.