Jeff Tumbarello is a Real Estate Broker. Originally from Stuart Florida, after an enlistment in the United States Marine Corps, he found his way to beautiful SWFL and married Cristina Tumbarello and it has been home ever since.
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Jeff Tumbarello has performed market metrics and product modeling for the capital markets and several private equity firms. As well as materially participating in large bulk asset and distressed note sales. Jeff Tumbarello also was a Trainer/Speaker for the Florida Housing Coalition. Since 2009, He has brokered extensively in Commercial Real Estate. These projects have ranged from large office buildings in Cape Coral, distressed gulf access development sites in Naples, and numerous large warehouses from Sarasota in Fort Myers. Jeff Tumbarello is also very active in commercial leasing.
He has invested in Real Estate since 1997 and has materially participated in almost every type of Real Estate Investment Transaction a person can.
He has worked with the following media outlets as a subject matter expert. (General Real Estate, Real Estate Statistics, Real Estate Investing & Foreclosures): NPR, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, NBC, ABC, Wink, Fox, Fort Myers News Press, Naples Daily News, Fort Myers Weekly, and Gulf Coast Business Journal.
In 2003, Jeff Tumbarello and 3 other SWFL Real Estate Investors founded the South West Florida Real Estate Investment Assoc.
Jeff Tumbarello is a veteran of the USMC. He served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm as an Infantryman with First Battalion Third Marines.
In this episode:
- The impact of elections on real estate market
- Impact of inflation and interest rates on sales
- The Southwest Florida REIA
- Migration in Southwest Florida
Episode:
Narrator Welcome to The Norris Group real estate podcast, a show committed to bringing you insights from thought leaders shaping the real estate industry. In each episode, we’ll dive into conversations with industry experts and local insiders, all aimed at helping you thrive in an ever-changing real estate market. continuing the legacy that Bruce Norris created, sharing valuable knowledge, and empowering you on your real estate journey. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a newcomer, this is your go-to source for insider tips, market trends and success strategies. Here’s your host, Craig Evans.
Craig Evans  Hey, thanks for joining us. We are back at it with Jeff Tumbarello from Southwest Florida REIA for part two. Let’s get right to it. You know, there’s a lot of things going on in the press now about what’s the market going to do? I mean, there’s so many click bait headlines right now that foreclosures are up a certain percent, and Florida could see as much as 50% of listings reducing their price that thing. So you’re a broker, I just want to pick your brain from from a realtor’s point of view, what’s your take on the current market? Where do you see the rest of 24 and then heading into 25?
Jeff Tumbarello  Right now, if you want to sell something, if you price an asset at the comps of right now, you’re going to sell it. There’s plenty of buyers out there. I mean, you’re still and believe it or not, last month, 40% of the sales were still cash. There was a point Lee County had 75% cash sales, like 9,10, 11,12, those years, but you still have about 40% of the market are writing a check to buy the home that is such a different than 2005 which was about 5% so it’s just a different world that we’re in. But when you look at going forward, if you price something within the comps, it usually sells unless you’ve got a major issue with it. But, and there are people wanting to buy homes, they just what they don’t need is the home priced at the peak of 2022 so right now, in my opinion, most assets 10 to 12% from that peak of 2022 which technically is a correction, that’s a correction. You go another 10% and that’s technically a crash. 20% a crash. I was laughing. I’m like, the whole market went down another 40 grand. Technically, that’s a crash. Can we check the box and say we did it? Because there’s so many people, it’s called recency bias. They want to go back to 2008 because, like, you know, I know 2008 won’t happen right now, Craig, because I am ready. I would buy enough income properties. I’d never work again. And so my joke is the way my life works. Whatever I’m ready for, I gotta. It’s always the pivot that makes me money. You know what I mean? It’s, so when you look at big picture, like foreclosures. We still track that. We still release that data. We had 71 last month in Lee County. So and this something that Bruce articulates so well, that what drives markets down are bank sales. Bank REOs are what causes negative price pressure. I mean, he’s articulated that the best of anybody I’ve ever heard talking about it. And so without the bank foreclosures, you can have a correction. You know, the oversupply is a thing, but it’s kind of hard to have a crash. And when I’ve overlaid the last two cycles, at this point in the last cycle, we were already 1500 foreclosures a month. So, you know, with that backdrop, it’s hard to say that, you know, this huge drop in pricing something, could it happen? Could foreclosures take off like a rocket? I think when these tax bills hit this year, there’s some people that are their payments are going to go up, but so the tax bill hits, it’s probably November, by the time the bank figures it out in the escrow department, when they do the shortfall statement, and then they got to do this. So you’re eight, nine months before you’d see a foreclosure if that person quit making that payment as soon as they got the adjusted payment. So we’re still a long ways off from that and this cycle, if you look at it, from like 10 to 22 was a really long, linear growth kind of cycle that looked like a hockey stick for the pandemic. The last cycle was just a hockey stick. There was no long growth. And things tend to unwind as they wound, not perfectly. Every cycle is different in intensity and duration, but you’re looking at a totally different cycle and without a credit event, because ’07, we were all here. I mean, there was still some stuff happening. There were some people making pretty good money with builder closeouts in ’07. And there was, you know, there was people that were ready to come still live here because they didn’t want to shovel snow anymore. And we still have red fish. We still have snow, we got all the reasons why you want to live here, but you have that credit event when Lehman bear all that, that that just changed everything. So, I mean, right, the biggest thing I’m looking for, do we have a credit event? And, I mean, it could be out there. You’ve got the regional banks are behind the eight ball on a lot of commercial real estate loans. But, you know, that’s more than 1987 SNL crisis. That’s not 2008 you know, 87 that crisis was about big commercial that’s Gulf harbor was the biggest, one of the biggest foreclosures. And I believe, as Ambassador Hoffman put a group together, took it down, and now it’s one of the coolest places you’ll ever eat dinner here the club so, but exactly Marina too. But, yeah, it’s, it’s a different cycle. And as far as this year, I think the debates, I know we’re not allowed to talk about politics, but I think that everybody that I know we’ve been ignoring politics because they don’t want to even think about what we’re about to deal with, and the debates kind of put that front and center. And something I learned from my grandpa, he always told me, he goes, Jeffrey, you’re never going to make big money in an election year, no matter what you do. People get scared. They don’t know what’s going to happen, so they start hoarding a little bit of money. They spend a little less. And I’m seeing that everywhere right now. So you’ve got an election year depends on how it goes. I always say, as an investor, at the end of this election, okay, I’m going to take the tax rolls and I’m going to skip real I’m going to not the the voter rolls, and then I’m going to skip trace what they own. And if one side wins, I’m mailing postcards to the other side, and if the other side wins, I’m mailing postcard to the side to lost. And you know, your candidate lost, sell me your assets for cheap. Uh, basically, some nice spin, but you know, you’ve got an election year. Honestly, the market’s been going up for so long. I’m kind of shocked we haven’t had a correction. So when’s the last time you’ve seen what 12 years worth of growth? 14 years worth of growth?
Craig Evans  Right. Yeah, it’s an interesting time right now. And you know, when you’ve got the amount of migration that’s still coming into Florida, there’s a lot of things at play that are still driving what this market, especially the Southwest Florida market, looks like, you know, even as I’m talking about that, I guess you know, the median price in Florida has always kind of mimicked and followed close to what the national median is. What’s your thought on that, combined with inflation? What’s the chance that the Florida market will dip below the national median price?
Jeff Tumbarello  Oh, in a way, I kind of wish it would, you know, because that was the Southwest Florida. We’re what I call the catcher’s mitt. Okay, it’s actually the best thing could happen for us is a recession. Because, you know, if you’re in a bad recession, do you want to ride that out in Chicago or Manhattan or Boston or, I mean, those beautiful, cool cities, great food, you know, people are amazing, but pretty high tax base. You know there’s a lot of government fees to function against. It’s a lot cheaper to be here, you know. And that’s really what’s always been going for us. It’s a beautiful place, you know, we’ve got the water, we’ve got the beach, we’ve got all the cool stuff. And also, it’s pretty affordable place, you know, especially when you take like the house I’m sitting in right now. Can you hear the nail gun going in the background at all? Or is it not picking it up? Yeah, my brother in law is a senior banker. He’s a little bit younger than me. He’s just turned 50, and I’m sitting in what will be his retirement home on the water, big pool home on the water in St James, city. And he’s 50. Bought a storm damaged house. We got him a really good buy on it, and he’s remodeling it. And oh yeah, my joke is, as soon as he bought it. My boat’s been on the lift since he bought it, so I kind of love having the ability to just drive out here and jump on the boat and go do a little fishing. But there’s a lot of very you know well, to do people that want to be here. More importantly, the money goes farther here. I mean, you can even talk about how bad our pricing is now, but then try and buy whatever house you’re trying to buy here in Miami. Better yet, try and find in San Diego.
Craig Evans  You’re talking about Lehigh acres. It’s interesting, you know? I mean, you know us, we with Douglas Brook Homes. We build a lot of homes each year, and it’s been interesting to see the amount of people that are coming from Miami to live in Lehigh acres and still work in Miami. Because, you know, they can cut to the back, and they can be back in Miami in 4550 minutes. But they’re, they’re living for 350, to $400,000 for a home instead of, you know, 750, to 800.
Jeff Tumbarello  Yeah, Golden Gate Estates got very expensive, I mean, and so a lot of them are trying to get a half acre lot, or in many lots as they can get together and Lehigh and just calling out their Golden Gate Estates. And cool part is there’s plenty of places to eat and shop in Lehigh. I used to say the Lehigh was a lot like the North Cape in the last cycle, if you want a pizza, you better bring it home. You know, there’s nobody delivering it to you. If you lived up around Jacaranda and the cape or out off and Alexander Bell Boulevard and Lehigh, there was nobody bringing you pizza. You better DiGiorno, that stuff. But the…
Craig Evans  That’s it.
Jeff Tumbarello  I mean, everything’s out there now. And then, you know, there’s a in in Henry County, and then part of it’s Glades County. There’s a little called Banyan village. It’s part of Port LaBelle, right? That place is in the middle of nowhere. We’ve done a bunch of lots in there, and they are rocking because I talked to a guy who lived there, and he’s he told me he goes while the miles are different. I spend the same amount of time in my truck going to work, leaving from here as I do. He goes when I lived in Fort Lauderdale and worked in Miami, so, you know, and then for them, it’s just a better place. He enjoys, he his kids love it, his wife loves it. It’s a slower pace of life. You know, Miami. I love the East Coast. I grew up on the East Coast. I love Miami for about three days. And then, you know, I gotta get out of there. I just can’t, you know, the water’s beautiful. There’s restaurants are amazing. The people are fun. But after about three days of bumper to bumper traffic and $20 parking, I gotta get out of there. I go say, you, if you’re last in three days, you got me beat. I’m good for about eight hours. Yeah.
Craig Evans  So,let me ask you this. We’ve got, you know, you’ve got inflation, you got interest rates. You know, we’ve talked to a lot of people over the last year or so that, you know, it’s not so much the price of a home that they’re struggling with right now, it’s that monthly payment due to an interest rate. Well, you know, what do you think is having a bigger impact on sales right now, though, inflation or interest rates?
Jeff Tumbarello  Honestly, yes, because they’re pretty much tied together, they can’t lower interest rates because of inflation. We can’t lower inflation because of the deficit we’re running. If we just balance the budget, inflation wouldn’t be a problem. So, but when you’re looking at it, I mean talking to a builder the other day, and there are some builders out there that are doing insane, insane upgrades, closing cost, credits, interest rate, buy downs to make stuff happen. I’m seeing some of the bigger investment groups are offering two years. They’re just writing a check for two years worth of the property management, guaranteeing they’ll get at least three months rent no matter, you know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot of incentives being thrown around out there, and the interest rate would definitely help if it went down. But you’ve got in Florida, insurances make stuff difficult. You know, property taxes aren’t the greatest either, right now. I mean, and this year, even though the market slowed down, and I can point to why they should probably drop it. They’re not. There’s enough comps they’re there. You’ll look at another increase in the tax bills. I think they actually already hit. But the you’re just looking at, then, you know, there’s a cost to buy, and the cost to keep, the cost to keep is what’s the problem is right now. But you know, you can buy a rate down, particularly if you’re a builder, you buy a rate down. I was talking to somebody the other day, and he’s like, why would I reduce the price 20 grand where, if I, did the math on it, if I give him a $20,000 credit towards buying their rate down, he goes, I save them 600 a month, in some cases, versus, I think he came up with two something a month, is what the, you know, what the difference in the payment would be. So, yeah, it’s a problem, but if you intelligently attack it, the builders, in my opinion, have done a great job. You know, as far as you know, not. I mean, they’re definitely not making the same mistakes they did before. But then again, you know, everybody wants to go back to the last cycle one old time guy been around town forever that I knew he made a comment to me over coffee one day. He goes, Jeff, we’ve never had 20,000 houses built for the heck of it. That’s why this one’s different. And at that point, I’m like, You know what? I think Ralph’s right. So then I go, sort of permit office, and start talking to them, and they lady ran some numbers for me, and I’m like, dude’s right, you know? So that’s when I started really pulling back and scaling back. And said, you know, we need to get lean if we’re going to make it through this. So, right, right. That’s the difference now, is it’s just not as overbuilt, the cost of construction is a problem. I mean, we’re actually finding, I can hire people to do stuff, and that was not the case for a while, even before the storm. So, you know, labor’s starting to free up a little bit. I think you’re going to see a lot of the labor leave the area or go back to where they came from, you know or if. Have a bunch of tornadoes or hurricane hit Texas, they’ll all run out there and chase that work. But, you know, there’s a lot of, it’s not one thing. It’s an equation with just like playing Jenga, almost you just keep stacking this stuff on top of it. And that’s kind of what it is.
Craig Evans  So, you know, we’ve all, if we’re in this market, especially in the Southwest Florida market, we’ve seen the inventories rise over the last year or so. Migration is still strong, both the net migration, you know, like we’re talking about net migration of people and the net migration of wealth. How do you see that kind of taking play over the next let’s call it two to three quarters, you know?
Jeff Tumbarello  Yeah, I’m actually looking at a manatee in the canal right now, sorry, but…
Craig Evans  It’s not a bad place to be, right? When you sit there and and look at manatee floating down the river for you, right?
Jeff Tumbarello  Yeah. Now he’s running around having a good time, but the the next couple quarters are going to be competitive for buyers. I mean, in we’re in a right now, my opinion, more of a normal market than anything else. Nobody knows how to work a normal market anymore, you know. And you know, depending upon whoever you’re engaging to help you do business, you know, I always have they been through at least one cycle, you know? Do they know what everything before and after looks like? Because most of the people I see in the industry, or quarter or half cyclers, you know, then each cycle is its own little thing, its own playbook, like the peak of the cycle. I’m a contrarian. I mean, I’m the guy. I want everything to crash, because that’s how you make money, as you buy cheap assets. But I’ve always struggled at that top third of the cycle. What I learned was flip lots and that top third. So that’s what you know. That was my pivot into the last cycle. Instead of trying to fit into everybody, I actually I just started being my own buyer and seller, and made my life so much better, because I actually listened to myself.
Craig Evans  So, you know you’ve lived in southwest Florida. When did you move that here? ’94? 95?
Jeff Tumbarello  Yeah.
Craig Evans  So, you know you’re here almost 30 years. What? What do you think about the Southwest Florida market, and how does it behave compared to the rest of Florida, let’s say?
Jeff Tumbarello  I kind of equate Florida. It’s two Florida’s. There’s south of frost proof, north of frost proof, you know, there’s, it’s not true what we all say about how nothing froze south of frost proof. There it has happened. But you know, you’ve got South Florida, North Florida, and then you’ve got coastal Florida versus not coastal. You know, Polk County is a different market than Sarasota County, you know, even though they’re all Florida, you know, and there’s a lot of cool things in Polk County, you know what? I mean, we ain’t, we ain’t knocking them. But the, yep, it’s…
Craig Evans  I love their Sheriff there.
Jeff Tumbarello  Yeah, he’s, he’s very, very, very fun to listen to when he talks to people. But you have, you’ve got a ultimately, what draws us here is the lifestyle. And if the lifestyle gets expensive, it will appeal to less people, you know, because some people can’t afford it, but some people will be able to afford it. But you look at what’s happening in Fort Myers Beach, it is not the Fort Myers Beach, what’s coming is not what we knew, it’s going to be South Beach, in my opinion.
Craig Evans  And that’s what’s interesting. You know, we you and I both know Bruce. You know you’ve known him for a long time. I’ve done business with a long time, and it’s been interesting, because Bruce has been talking about the migration of wealth to Southwest Florida for so long, right? And Fort Myers Beach is a clear picture of what’s going on with that. You know the amount of homes that you know Douglas Brook Homes that my home building company is doing on the beach right now, that it used to be, we were going to do $120,000 remodel out of our remodel department. Well now it’s a tear down and a $2 million or $3 million. $6 million new build, you know, and it’s, it’s new money coming in and saying, Okay, I want that spot, and we’re going to build. And it’s been very interesting to see that shift of wealth coming into this market in such a an isolated area, I shouldn’t say isolated in such a distinct area, like Fort Myers Beach, you know, that’s been super interesting to see that.
Jeff Tumbarello  Retirees love us, and there’s a lot of retirees. We’re on the tail end of the boomers, because we actually have a chart. I think I’ve shared it with you at one of the meetings, where we took the live bursts and carried it forward 62 years and charted that against our sales counts, and you can watch our market go up and down based on what I call the new batch every year retirees. This year’s the first year we’ve got less of a new batch than the year before, but you still have and it’s same amount of retirees that want to come here. That’s why I keep saying a 10% drop in price when I’m watching when people drop the price to what the market wants to pay, it trades. Like I ran one part of Bonita Springs, the average sale was 585, the average listing was 850, you know, that’s not as much of a broken market as broken sellers and weak agents that won’t tell them no. So you know…
Craig Evans  Exactly.
Jeff Tumbarello  So, and I’m not saying that. You know, everybody tends to, you know, real estate, ultimately, is a personal thing. Real estate is simple. Real Estate is a asset class that I can put in Excel. I can generate metrics. I can generate reports. I can tell you everything from a statistical standpoint you need to know. But real estate is ultimately owned by human beings, and human beings don’t make a lot of sense. So there’s, a lot of and that’s why I love bus southwest Florida. I always tell everybody, I’m like, when in 2020 when the world went totally crazy? Okay, everybody moved to Florida because we were normal. That’s how crazy the world got, that Florida was normal. And because I used to use the old Hunter S Thompson quote when people would call me from like, New York, I’m like, hey, when the going gets weird, the weird GoPro, and Florida is where you get weird as a professional, so, you know. And that’s, right, that’s really what you know, and that’s what we all love about I love Florida. I will. I mean, I own property in Georgia. I hunt in Georgia. I love Georgia. So I will in southwest Florida. So it’s just that’s, yeah, I always thought I’d go back home to Stuart. I’ll be honest. I missed the fishing from Stewart, the fishing offshore. It’s pretty amazing. You know, here I gotta go 80 miles out.
Craig Evans  It’s good stuff to catch.
Jeff Tumbarello  What I catch five miles out there. But, you know, that girl decided this was home, so this is home.
Craig Evans 21:58Well, so listen, you know, we, we have been on a little bit, but I want to take a little bit of time, because obviously, Southwest Florida REIA is near and dear to you, and special to you as well. So I want to talk about some of that. So walk me through when, when you started, and why you started the Southwest Florida REIA?
Jeff Tumbarello  We were all going to the East Coast meetings. There was a dadry, a guy named Bob Hunter, founded it. He’s kind of the godfather of a lot of the clubs in Florida. But we would go to those clubs and we would, it’s just cool. You get to go meet people that are doing the same thing you do. You might find a deal. You might sell a deal. You know, I get most of my contractor recommendations from other guys on the REIA that are doing business. Hey, hey, Kevin, who can I use for electrical? You know, I get a text a number, and I already know he’s worked with him and vetted him, but you have, we were watching what was going on at those meetings and having a lot of fun going to the meetings like and then some people had from Miami had come over here and tried to do a REIA, and they just didn’t have the local footprint. So we said, called Bob, and Bob said, hey, I’ll walk you guys through having a couple meetings. He came over and was our first speaker. Bob’s referred to as the king of Liberty City. He owned a whole bunch of Liberty City, and then as stuff got read like he had a duplex that Home Depot had to buy off him to build a Home Depot. He did really well on that. But you know, Bob, yeah, apartment buildings. For the longest time, he was everybody called him the king of Liberty City. He owned a lot there. So he came over and spoke. And I’ll never forget, there’s four of us. We were all getting together to talk about this over some really bad Chinese at a buffet to plan the meeting out, and we found, I think it was Woody’s barbecue on Daniel would let us have the private room, but we had to agree to buy 20 chicken dinners. So our joke was, everybody’s going to have to take home five chicken dinners if nobody shows up. I’m like, I got three kids or two boys, and then we got no problem eating some barbecue chicken. So that was the first meeting, and we had about 50 people that showed up for it. We just through our own networks and emailing people, put up a really rudimentary website, quick. And ironically, at that first meeting, people were trying to join. And we’re like, we don’t even know what membership’s about. We didn’t even know what levels, what it was going to cost. So we had another meeting, and then we sat down and said, Yeah, there’s definitely something to this. And then started selling memberships. And that was probably January of ’04. Fast forward to 06 when Kendra Todd won the apprentice three, and she was the pre con girl at the Broward clubs, and she had a guy she was seeing at the time called Charles Andrews mortgage guy, smart, smart guy. And I was taught me and Charles would talk, and he we actually got Kendra booked, probably about two weeks after she was announced the apprentice winner. Well, almost 500 people at the meeting. It was pretty wild. And the club’s going, you know, over the years, the ’08,’09,’10, years were pretty lean, you know, but we still have 20, 30,40, people in a meeting. Nowadays are we have, we meet twice a month. We meet at the luncheon. Right now, we meet at Three Fish in North Fort Myers in their private room on the water.
Craig Evans  Okay.
Jeff Tumbarello  Bridge shut down. I think we had 40 people at the luncheon couple days ago. Normally, we’re 60 to 80 at the luncheon. We get 70 to 90 at our nighttime meeting. You’ve been to one or two I think so. But the, it’s, you know, it’s a cool event. We don’t do information product sales, so that’s kind of big. It’s we’ve kept the club, what we call intrinsically focused. In the beginning, we did information product sales, and honestly, the club can make a lot of money selling books and tapes, but we just decided we’d rather talk about real business, because a lot of the books and tapes you got to really pick and choose who you’re going to trust in that world.
Craig Evans  I was going to say that’s one of the things. When I’ve been to your meetings, I really enjoy being there. And speakers are there to give information and to try to help build a community that builds this industry that we’re in. So whether you’re builders, whether you’re an operator as a buy and hold an investor for flipping whatever it is. Everybody’s there to try to help each other, you know, that’s, that’s a, that’s cool thing that I’ve seen out of you guys REIA there. So…
Jeff Tumbarello  I used to think we were, let me tell you something cooler. I used to think we were different, that we were than most of the clubs. And we had our virtual assistant. For a long time every month, would go through and grab every Ria, every real estate club we could find, grab their meeting topics, and she’d prepare a report for us what everybody was talking about. So that’s what we use to plan our meetings and the downturn, except for the big like major cities, nobody else. Everybody’s kind of on the same path we are. So, you know, it’s, you know, like Atlanta, they still do stuff like that, the big Minneapolis one. There’s a lot of the Dade clubs do that, you know. But you know, the smaller clubs in southwest Florida is a smaller area. Everybody’s what I call in trend. I used to think we were special, until I got that report, and I realized I just didn’t, hadn’t seen enough people that, you know, because you I’m on email list of most of the big clubs, but it’s more and more becoming the norm to not do information product sales that I see.
Craig Evans  Yeah, and that’s yeah, I was talking about that with Bruce, I don’t know, a month or so ago, six weeks ago, something like that. And just talking about the processes as to better go into those environments and know that you’re there, being a part of support for the people around you, and that either you’re supporting giving information off, or that you’re learning things from other people, that’s one of things I’ve always loved about the REIAs So it’s, but it’s, it was great to see what you guys do in your club there, you know.
Jeff Tumbarello  You know, what’s cool too, is when you focus on the intrinsic you get to do business. It’s hard to do effective, profitable business in a room full of people that are, you know, trying to get started in real estate with no money, no credit. We all started there, but like our group, I don’t, we don’t really make a lot of money off the club. I basically, I say, it’s a hobby we meet people. I make a lot of money doing deals with people in the club. They bring me a deal, and we make it happen. And, you know, everybody makes money. So you know, when you focus on what I call the intrinsic side of the business, you actually get to do business, as opposed to selling, courses and pitches and then, you know, fulfillment and all that. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. We’ve thought about doing a mentor program, and just so I can get a bunch of bird dogs, that was our idea recently. Like, let’s do a really cheap Mentor Program, and then put them all on the phone, and then I’ll pay them, and we’ll split 50/50, I’ll put up the money all that. So you know, and that’s we’re actually kicking around doing some kind of really low cost mentor program, because I love to have 50 people banging on doors, calling people.
Craig Evans  Well, so let me ask you this, what do you think is the biggest question that you get asked at your meetings, when you’re hosting and you’re putting these on, what do you think the biggest thing you see in here is?
Jeff Tumbarello  Right now, it’s about the market. We’ve got, probably, within the membership of the REIA at least 1000 properties, you know, we have a lot of people that own a lot of real estate that come to our meetings, and everybody’s, you know, what’s the market? What’s the market between the last cycle , we gave out the foreclosure information to the media. I mean, I’ll never forget, I was on Bloomberg TV, and they’re like, so what’s your background? And I’m like, well, I, you know, I went to high school, kind of graduated, barely. And then joined the Marine Corps. When I got the Marine Corps, I worked at the Waffle House for a little bit, is what I told the lady. And she was just like, we’re just not really going to talk about your background. Then, you know, then I gave him the interview, and it was pretty 32nd clip, but, you know, that kind of really separated us from a lot of the clubs, and the fact that we were giving out, like, actionable information. And then in ’07, I got everybody in a room, I got paid by a guy to do some data work. And doing that data work, I really came to the conclusion this is about to get ugly, and I was using what they call poly trend lines, a poly six trend line carrying the pricing momentum forward. And when I was going six months out, I’m like, this is about to go into a free fall. You could see it happening. And so we actually had a meeting where I pulled everybody in the meeting and said, This is what’s happening. If anybody wants a spreadsheet to see if I’m wrong, because I hope I am. I don’t want to live through what we’re about to live through. But you know, if you should know this, because this is your financial lives, just like mine, and when I shared that information, I got ostracized. About 25% of the club never wanted to come again. But by taking that stand and telling people what we knew, that wasn’t the popular thing at the time, because I laugh when people now, when I tell them this cycle is different, they’re like, well, you’re just saying that. I’m like, No, in the last cycle, I called it, and I’m like, on the record of calling it. But then again, that doesn’t mean you’re, you know, always tell the story. Have you ever heard the story of the infinite chimpanzees and infinite sharper typewriter theory? There’s a…
Craig Evans  No.
Jeff Tumbarello  It’s great. I mean, it’s from a guy named Nicholas Taleb Nassim. I read it in his book called Fooled by Randomness. If you haven’t read those books, get all of his books. He is an amazing mind. He really will, you’ll question how you view investors and information. But he says, if you put in an infinite number of chimpanzees in front of an infinite number of typewriters and let them beat on the keys. It’s a mathematical certainty one of them will type you out the Iliad. He goes, but what are the odds that that same chimpanzee will now type you out the Odyssey? So, you know, I will throw that out there. I may have just been a lucky chimpanzee at that point beating on a typewriter, but I was right, so, and, you know, that’s why that really put us on the map, because so many people came back, and we’re thankful because, you know, they got good information that they weren’t getting anywhere else, and help them make good decisions to position themselves to succeed, versus, you know, be on the foreclosure report In six months.
Craig Evans  Well, listen. How does, how does somebody you know, any of our listeners listening? How do they get connected with Southwest Florida REIA?
Jeff Tumbarello  You just go to the website, SWFLREIA.com, you can all and if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, here’s a little widget to put your email address in and your name and your phone number. You don’t have to give them your phone number if you don’t want to, but you and that’ll get you on the email list so you can you’ll get meeting notices. And when we put out data, we just put out a foreclosure report Monday morning at 8am just went out to the email list about to I did a lunch presentation this week about what’s going on in the land market, and I’m probably going to make some content out of that and throw it out for everybody that missed it, because it’s good information to know and you know. But yeah, you could just go to the website. You can search us on Facebook too, Southwest Florida REIA. It’s on there. I don’t think we’re on Twitter and all that, so. But yeah, go to the website. If you go to the meetings tab, you’ll see a general meeting and a luncheon at two different meetings, the luncheons, the first Wednesday, the general meeting is the third Wednesday.
Craig Evans  Well, Jeff, Listen, man, I am grateful you spent a lot of time with us today. I thank you for your time. You know, we look forward to doing more stuff with you in the future. For all those listening, I am grateful for you being here today. Thank you so much for jumping on with us, and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks so much. Have a great day. You great day.
Jeff Tumbarello  Yeah, thank you for having me on.
Narrator  For more information on hard money loans, trust deed investing, and upcoming events with The Norris group. Check out thenorrisgroup.com. For more information on passive investing through the DBL Capital Real Estate Investment Fund, please visit dblapital.com.
Joey Romero  The Norris group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE license 01219911. Florida mortgage lender license 1577 and NMLS license 1623669. For more information on hard money lending go to thenorrisgroup.com and click the hard money tab.