In this episode of the BigMikeFund Podcast, Big Mike sits down with Lancelot Lennard, a dynamic real estate and mortgage broker from Florida’s Daytona area. Recorded in December 2025, they dive into the evolving Florida real estate market, including softening values, rising construction costs, and the impact of DeSantis’ proposed property tax cuts for primary residences. Lancelot shares insights on negotiating deals in a buyer’s market, the surge in inventory, and how commercial developments like Amazon warehouses are boosting local infrastructure. They also explore his family legacy-building through The Lancelot Group, blending real estate, construction, mortgages, and philanthropy. Whether you’re eyeing Florida investments or seeking strategies to maximize home sales, this episode offers actionable tips for navigating volatility and seizing opportunities.
Lancelot Lennard is the founder of The Lancelot Group (thelancelotgroup.com), a multifaceted enterprise spanning real estate brokerage, mortgages, construction, and philanthropy. A Hungarian immigrant and proud father of two, Lancelot has built a legacy-focused business in Port Orange, Florida, helping clients buy, sell, and develop properties while advocating for efficient governance.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE EPISODE
0:00 – Welcome to the BigMikeFund Podcast
0:19 – Guest Intro: Lancelot Lennard
0:46 – Lancelot Group: Real Estate, Construction, Mortgages, Philanthropy
1:26 – Name Origin
2:10 – Location: Port Orange/Daytona Area
2:16 – Family
3:36 – Father’s 1956 Hungarian Revolution Role
4:14 – Residential Market: Softening, Easier Negotiations
5:10 – Commercial: Larger Multifamily Unrealistic
5:45 – Price Drops Emerging on Listings
6:11 – Rate Uptick: High 5s Boosting Activity
7:06 – Leverage Window: Negotiate Before Rates Drop Further
8:35 – Transaction Volume: 20% Aug-to-Aug Increase
9:38 – Inventory High: 3600 vs. 2400 Average
10:34 – DeSantis Bill: Eliminate Primary Residence Property Taxes
11:47 – Funding: Audits Cut Waste (e.g., $2M Orlando Poetry)
13:46 – Excess Spending from Rising Assessments
15:22 – Commercial Influx: Pepsi, Boeing, Amazon
16:12 – Developer Negotiations for Infrastructure
17:02 – High FL Insurance Costs Post-Hurricanes
18:43 – Bill’s Appeal: Attract Seniors, Offset Insurance
19:57 – Low-Insurance Areas vs. FL’s Single Bill Relief
21:31 – Daytona: Rare Direct Hurricane Hits
23:02 – Book: “How to Prepare Your Home for the Market”
30:27 – Closing: Website for Free PDF Download
If you found this episode substantial and want to dig deeper into real estate, or maybe you want to discover better investment opportunities, be sure to check out www.tempofunding.com.
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Website: https://www.thesirlancelotgroup.com/
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Full Transcript:
Mike Zlotnik (00:02.413)
Welcome to the Big Mike Fund podcast. the Big Mike, Mike Zlatnik, and today it is my pleasure and a privilege to welcome Lancelot Lennard. Should I call you Sir Lancelot? How are you?
Lancelot Lennard (00:13.998)
Mike, it’s on you. can call me Lance, Lancelot, however you want to, however you feel comfortable.
Mike Zlotnik (00:21.443)
And at the very start, you have a website, your business is thelenselatgroup.com. Is this correct?
Lancelot Lennard (00:28.526)
The Sir Lancelot Group. Yes, yes. I’m trying to build this enterprise, Mike, which is really interesting and has a lot of real estate aspects to it. We talked about that back when I interviewed you. I have real estate as my main umbrella, and then I have construction, have mortgages, and I have a philanthropy side of things as well. So I’m working on the Sir Lancelot Group as a whole, being the umbrella company and then sub companies for that.
to build up this enterprise basically for my kids. It’s something legacy type business.
Mike Zlotnik (01:06.425)
What’s a wonderful name, right? It’s who doesn’t know the story, right? So it’s very, very catchy. And you don’t see too many people with the first name Lancelot nowadays. It seems to be like from medieval times that might’ve been popular then, but not too many folks today. Unless I am just, you maybe I’m in the U S maybe it’s more popular in the United Kingdom.
Lancelot Lennard (01:27.482)
I’ve been on this earth for almost 40 years now and I’ve only met one other Lancelot and he was an Indian bartender on Carnival Cruise Line.
Mike Zlotnik (01:36.288)
That’s interesting. I think it’s a great name. Everybody knows the Knights of the Round Table and sort of lends a lot, it’s not popular. Well, the name definitely has a great reputation. Let me put it this way. So you hail from the East Coast of Florida around Daytona area. How is it there? Tell us a little bit about your family. You got kids, you said, and…
Just tell us a couple of words about your family and just confirm exactly where you work.
Lancelot Lennard (02:09.624)
So we’re in Port Orange to be more accurate, but yes, the Daytona, a greater Daytona area is our little nest where we built our little empire sort of. I have my wife, we’ve been married for 12 years. She is from Russia. I am from Hungary originally. So we’re Eastern European and she’s Siberian. So I could say Central Asia almost.
And we have two beautiful children that were both born here in the United States. Max, he is two years old. He’s our youngest. And Elizabeth is our six year old. And they’re both wonderful and smart kids. High achievers and leaders seems like it. We’re like hit the jackpot with them. Elizabeth is in scouts and she plays tennis. Besides, she’s in a gifted class in school. she’s above and beyond, you know, testing scores and everything is amazing.
Max is too little to see that yet, but he has definitely shown signs of leadership and stuff like that. He likes to delegate as a two-year-old. I don’t know, I think it’s a toddler thing, but it might be him too, you know? And what else I could tell you? I still have my mom. She lives back and forth, sometimes here with us and sometimes in Hungary. She’s the American part of the family.
And my father passed about 15 years ago from cancer. He was a revolutionary in the 1956 war, a revolution in Budapest against the Russians. And he had a really exciting and long life, sort of, I think. I don’t know if you want to talk about him a little bit, but he just…
Mike Zlotnik (03:55.728)
Well, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, thank you for sharing. You have a wonderful family. God bless. next, let’s talk a little bit about business. So you’re a real estate and mortgage broker in that part of Florida, and you have a construction business. So let’s talk a little bit about how’s the market, how things are looking in that part of Florida. We’ve seen some…
volatility I know on the left coast of Florida west coast there’s been number of obviously hurricanes lots of lots of problems with hurricanes but a lot of softening in values has you know it’s not exactly news it’s already yesterday’s news but I’m not aware what’s happening on the on the right coast of Florida are you also seeing some softening
Lancelot Lennard (04:48.75)
So I do a lot of residential, some commercial. On the residential side, definitely see the softening much easier for buyers to go out there, negotiate, get a better deal. Even on the commercial side, small triplexes or multi-families, do those. Larger multis, people still don’t see the reality. And you and I had a conversation about this that what’s the value of a property?
the purchase price is higher and the carrying cost is higher, you can’t afford to pay what a lot of people are asking per door price for multifamily, large multifamily. And that’s what’s going on here is I think the realization is starting to set in because I have gotten a few emails in the last week from some of my bigger commercial guys. They’re sending out like big price drop, $2 million, $3 million. And I’m like, okay, so finally the owners are starting to realize that
what they were asking for was a little bit too much for the current market situation, interest rates, et cetera, et On the residential side, we had a little uptick here in the last couple months, which I think was due to the weight of the interest rates dropping a little bit. We’re finally in the fives, at least my company is, where I work.
mortgages were in the high fives, 5.75, 5.99, somewhere around that mark, which is great because I think that a realistic interest rate is somewhere in the fives. know, the threes, threes and a halfs, that was really unrealistic, but we had them. So if you picked up a property when it was super low, you’re super lucky. Hold on to it, you know? But I think in the fives, my first mortgage was in the fives on my first multifamily. So I think that is
where we are and where we’re standing about that. I always tell my buyers, guys, if the rates keep dropping, people will keep coming to the market more and more and more. the best time to go and negotiate is probably from now until rates keep dropping, you know? Because you have leverage. You’re going in and these people are desperate. They want to sell. They’ve been on the market for six months. They haven’t experienced that because when they bought, everything was flying off the shelves. Now they’re like,
Lancelot Lennard (07:08.398)
What is this 90 days, 180 days? That’s a normal market. That’s a normal market to be on the market for 90 days. So I always tell them to go in, let’s go in and then let’s negotiate our butts off and get some good deals.
Mike Zlotnik (07:23.055)
Yeah, these are great comments. I mean, they all make sense. Kind of the environment of high or for longer interest rates build up the pressure on owners, sellers, especially if it’s a financial pressure and then operating challenges. And then obviously if they need to liquidate and the buyers are not there, then it’s going to be buyer’s market when they do show up. It’s kind of interesting, as you said, as the rates have been going down. It’s the Fed action plus the
At the of day, the mortgage rates are affected by the 10-year treasury yield as the primary driver. And that has come down sub 4%. So mortgage rates trade on a spread. And that spread is somewhere around 2%. So you’re now could be sub 6 % range. then the fives, that’s exactly, it’s good news. It’s definitely good news. It creates more affordability.
Is transaction volume still pretty slow? I realized that the activity level may be picking up, maybe more people looking around, but as far as the closings, are you still seeing decent volume or the volume is still subdued versus when the rates were super low? And then next we’ll switch to the what’s going on with the dissenters bill to cut taxes, which could be tremendous boost to values.
Lancelot Lennard (08:45.102)
Definitely, definitely. think that transactions has uptick too as well. this year’s not my best year. I haven’t been in it as much because I’ve been focusing a lot more on the construction side of things because I’m building that company up in the ground. So I had a lot more focus on that, not as much on real estate. But I’ll be honest with you, at beginning of the year was super slow. And the last two months, know, four, five, six deals in a row, you know, so boom, boom, boom, boom, one after the other. So I think that
that shows if you’re not really focused on it but still getting deals done, then I’m pretty sure the guys that are focused on it are closing a lot more deals. So I think there’s an uptick. I read it somewhere that it was a 20 % uptick from last August to this August in sales. So I think it’s coming, finally. We’re going back into the sales part of the business and we’re starting to sell some homes.
People are finding homes that they like they’re they’re realizing that hey rates are coming down. Finally. Let’s get in the market You do have a high inventory. So I When I started up here in this area about six years ago the average inventory like 2400 homes on the market. We’re at 3600 right now so
Mike Zlotnik (09:59.024)
So inventories are high, but more buyers coming out, so transactions picking up a little bit.
Lancelot Lennard (10:01.704)
Yes, finally, they’re coming out. And I think a lot of people came here during the COVID era and they’re like, hey, I want to move back north. So a lot of those people are hitting the market as well, not just the locals. And that’s what that extra 1,000 homes probably are in our statistics.
Mike Zlotnik (10:21.601)
Interesting. So what’s happening with DeSantis Bill? He is proposing to cut taxes on residential properties, owner-occupied. I guess not investment properties yet, not commercial, just more of owner-occupied. Is that what’s happening?
Lancelot Lennard (10:39.47)
So this is really big. I think this is a game changer in the whole United States. I don’t think there’s any state that’s doing this. He came out basically and said that you shouldn’t pony up money or quote, this is quoting him, you shouldn’t pony up money or something that you already paid for. Like you go into Best Buy and buy a TV, you pay one sales tax for it, then it’s yours. You don’t have to pay taxes on it again. So basically what he was saying is you never really own your property because you always have that tax hanging over your head.
So he’s trying to eliminate property taxes for primary residences. I think this is the first step. I’m pretty sure if he could pass further on those tax savings to other properties, I’m sure they’re going to work on that too. But this is something that he could probably push through because more people will say yes to that than no.
Mike Zlotnik (11:30.9)
How are you gonna pay for this? Because here’s the thing, right? This is definitely a very popular bill, right? Who’s gonna say no to get their home property cut, right? That’s a no-brainer. He’s gonna get the vote. The big question is, Florida has no income tax, no state income tax. How do you pay for infrastructure? How do you pay for…
policing for ambulance for all the things you need to do to maintain a healthy environment. maybe sales tax on on is the only tax. I’m just curious because again, Florida taxes are well known for again, no income tax, no state income tax, but the property tax is what generates a bulk of the revenue. You got property tax. How do you pay for things?
Lancelot Lennard (12:27.918)
So he has multiple avenues or he has the one avenue he’s talking about is he created a Florida Dodge basically and he hired a new CFO for Florida and they’re going around auditing all the cities, all the towns, all the counties and everything and they’re finding a lot of excessive spending that is unnecessary. Just for an example, in Orlando, they were paying out $2 million for people to send them poetry.
Why? You know, like these are things that is unnecessary. Of course, fire, police infrastructure, super necessary. We need to focus on that. Teachers, know, schools, really important. We got to fund that and make that work. But all in all, they found, I think West Palm Beach had like $250 million of overspending for stuff that’s unnecessary for a city to have, you know, grants and things like that. That is
really unimportant for what their job is. Their job is to run the city, make sure you have good roads, make sure you have good education, you have good policing, good fire department, medical, et cetera, et cetera. That’s their job. And then above that, why are they looking at all these like side things? This is what happened. As the prices are growing in Florida, they might not have raised millage rates, but they’re collecting more and more and more taxes. And if you look at, well,
Mike Zlotnik (13:55.065)
Through what? what? Sales tax?
Lancelot Lennard (13:57.774)
You know, as the properties prices go up, they get assessed higher. Every sale that happens in Florida, you get reassessed on the value of the home. So when you reach, you know, that’s obvious. They might not be raising millage rates, but the money is more that’s coming in. And what does the city do? Well, we can’t have excessive money because then they’re going to be like, why are they paying so much taxes? So what they figure out is, let’s just make a grant for this, a grant for that. Let’s just spend the money.
Because that’s what Paul is.
Mike Zlotnik (14:28.163)
Which is normal, typical and common. The government’s love collecting taxes because the bureaucrats in charge wind up with more cash and they could even spend it on their pet projects. I mean, that stuff actually breeds more corruption and inefficiency. that, yeah, it makes sense.
Lancelot Lennard (14:44.718)
So they’re out there cracking down on these people now and saying, you don’t need to spend money on this, this, this, this, this. This is not your responsibility as a responsibility of someone else. You should focus on what you’re supposed to focus on. Make sure that the grass is cut. Make sure the roads are good, all that stuff. And I think they’re over a few billion dollars of excessive spending already and they just started like a few weeks ago.
Mike Zlotnik (15:11.247)
I understand the idea makes sense, right? You could find savings with better efficiency and eliminate waste. So that’s the whole concept of Dodge.
property taxes on a lot of people move to Florida. So owner occupied is probably majority of the of the population. Again, I don’t know, maybe half of them an investment property, half owner occupied. Not sure. But the point is the amount of tax collected versus the savings they realize. I haven’t seen the math, right? I mean, maybe these projections exist somewhere, but it looks it looks
If he can do it, that’d be a miracle. It’d be… Yeah.
Lancelot Lennard (15:57.422)
I think we would have a flux of senior citizens on fixed income moving to Florida to finally have and own their property. This is the thing. And I come from a country where we don’t have property taxes. And once you purchase your home, it’s yours. So you don’t have to worry about every year putting up, you know, four, five, six, seven, 10, 20, 30, $40,000 in instances in property taxes. have, we have a really nice neighborhood on John Anderson.
here in Ormond Beach. And I think that every third or fourth house is on the market right now. Imagine those tax bills, know, 30, $40,000 because they’re nice waterfront properties, $30,000, $40,000 every year to pay for your property taxes. That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money going into the pockets. And we have a lot of condos. condos. I think we have a really good rate of rentals slash homeowner.
Think about one building and this is, talked to one of my friends about this. He lives in one of the towers. There’s 400 or 500 unit, one parcel. Each unit pays $6,000 in property taxes. How much money is that? You know, like that building on its own could pay for all the teachers’ salaries pretty much in the city. I’m just, you know, if you put it in perspective and we have a coastline going north to south,
with condos full of units. So there’s a lot of money being collected and probably not spent the right way. Also, we have an influx of businesses. Now we have Pepsi, have Boeing coming to town, Amazon just built the largest warehouse in the last few years. We have Trader Joe’s. We have so much infrastructure and commercial coming into town and those will stay taxed.
You know, the bigger lots they get, the larger they build, the more value, you know, on the assessor paper, it says the more taxes they’ll pay. They also, when you’re negotiating deals with these guys that are coming in and doing commercial and developing land, you negotiate infrastructure into those. It’s like, hey guys, we’ll allow you to do that, but fix up the roads or add another lane or do this or do that. That can get a lot of the weight off the city shoulders to
Lancelot Lennard (18:26.018)
fix infrastructure. Now, those are probably one of the most expensive items to fix for a city is infrastructure. If you can get the developers to do that for them to be allowed to come in and do the work they’re doing, I think that could offset a lot of the costs that they have.
Mike Zlotnik (18:45.389)
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. guess the financial backing of the bill has got to be on growth. Growth of Florida GDP through commercial and other activities which create tax revenues versus their residential owner occupied primary residence. guess Florida can get by without that tax. I mean, that would be fascinating and it would drive more people to move to Florida.
because the cost of ownership ultimately comes down. You have interest rates coming down and you eliminate taxes. The insurance is the difficult part, right? The insurance has been very difficult to obtain. The rates are through the roof because of increases in hurricanes. But the elimination of property tax is a huge step forward for property owners.
Lancelot Lennard (19:43.374)
To balance out the scales on your insurance costs compared to, now you don’t have two, four, $5,000 bills to pony up. You only have one for your insurance costs. Yes, there’s parts of the country where it’s $500 to $1,000 for a year insurance. Yes, in Florida, we are higher than that. Yes, we have a higher insurance cost because of what happens here every year, every two years, every three years we get hit by a hurricane. A lot of claims go in and the insurance companies are
are for profit. they obviously want to make their money back. I disagree a lot of times when I get the bill because I’m like, my house didn’t have any issues. I went through two hurricanes, not a new roof, not a claim, but my insurance doubled or tripled in some cases.
Mike Zlotnik (20:31.213)
Yeah. And, and, and the crazy part is, yeah. And you, you haven’t been hit that much. I your part of Florida has actually been spared the last couple of years on the other side, but everybody pays. They can’t, you know, they can’t assess the rates only on those who got hit. So that says that rates on everyone who is in potential risk, you don’t know another year or two passes. There could be a serious hurricane on the, East coast of Florida. You just don’t know that. So.
Lancelot Lennard (20:59.032)
That’s thing about Daytona. This is a good thing about Daytona and its area. If it’s coming from the Atlantic, it usually curves up because the streams are going far out from the shoreline that it takes them up. Direct hit, I don’t think there was maybe one direct hit to Daytona in the last hundred years. So it’s pretty good. We do get hit because whatever comes through Tampa and through Orlando, we get that too. So the last few years,
Mike Zlotnik (21:27.181)
You still get wind damage. You might not get a storm surge, not the water gets pushed, but you get the heavy wind. But it weakens if it goes through land, it weakens usually.
Lancelot Lennard (21:29.006)
Yes.
Lancelot Lennard (21:35.706)
we get water too. we get water too because of the way it’s twisting. It’s pushing the water back onto our shores once it passes us or right above us. We got flooded in the last three hurricanes in most of our cities here too. It is risky. know, we’re in Florida, we understand, but I think that it would charm people here to have no taxes on their homes.
Mike Zlotnik (21:52.569)
So it’s still a risk zone. So this still.
Mike Zlotnik (22:04.047)
I think it’ll be fascinating. It’s an exact contrast to what everyone else is doing in other parts of the country where the governments try to get more revenue, higher taxation, both income tax and property tax to give away more free services to… And ultimately it’s corruption, right? It’s just like we’re in New York City here, we’re expecting to get a socialist mayor and at the end of the day he wants, you know…
free bus rides, wants to give freeze rands and a bunch of other ideas that’s gonna theoretically help those who are in need in practice. It’s more co-offers for the government to justify higher taxes. And then ultimately, these side projects siphon a lot of money to their buddies, their friends and family. And that’s how the…
Lancelot Lennard (22:55.02)
Yeah, there are people. Exactly. I totally agree with you. Like this poetry thing I told you about, I mean, I’m pretty sure nobody knew about it except for the people that are around the mayor or, you know, that circle that made that happen. And $2 million a year? I mean, that’s a lot of money for poetry, I think, to be honest with you.
Mike Zlotnik (23:16.291)
Yeah, yeah agreed. All right. So let’s remind people once again how to reach out to you if they want to learn more about That part of Florida Maybe they want to buy something in your neck of the woods And then we’ll talk a little bit about construction business. So once again the website the Lancelot Not come and let’s go now to the construction a business house construction business III
Lancelot Lennard (23:36.024)
thesirlanceloggroup.com.
Mike Zlotnik (23:45.248)
What are you doing? What’s what’s new? What’s different? Are the costs higher lower? Everybody’s talking about potential inflation But now are you seeing inflation other materials with tariffs are the cost of material that up what’s happening? Just curious
Lancelot Lennard (23:57.582)
So cost of materials up about 30 % from a few years ago and you can see it when you go shopping. I used to buy a 2×4 for 2 bucks, now it’s 4 bucks. So that’s actually 100 % increase on that one. Drywalls up a little bit too, went from $10, $12 to $18 a sheet. It affects the builds of course, but you always try to still be…
really considerate with your clients and give them the best deal possible. In my shop, what we do is I give them whenever I get a discount and I don’t charge them more for materials than what it costs me. That way they can put some savings on there. Labor is also higher. So it used to be 15 bucks an hour for a guy. Now it’s 20, 25 to start with. So we’re going up in labor prices too. So we try to save them money on
on things we can.
Mike Zlotnik (24:54.735)
Why is that happening? this because we’ve had significant Trump administration has been deporting a lot of illegal, undocumented, whatever we want to call it, Folks who are here, here, the border without legal status, right? And many of them are being deported. And I came here legally, isn’t it? And I’m sure you came here legally too, and your wife too.
But at the end of the day, I am pro-immigration, pro-legal immigration. But obviously, illegal immigration, we don’t know who has come over, but a lot of folks in the construction industry were undocumented or illegal, whatever you want to call it. Now, a lot of you folks working now in that group, is that what’s happening? I’m just curious. I don’t know how to call it. I’m trying to be politically correct. Yeah.
Lancelot Lennard (25:52.224)
That’s right. Yes, I think that we had a lot of laborers that came through and that’s the only job they could find because a lot of times you can pay cash, so you can pay cash, et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, losing labor is not the main reason why prices are going up for labor. It is inflation that happened in the last few years. Prices of food
of everything has gone up, rents, et cetera, et cetera. So if those prices go up, they need to make more money to be able to survive. When a guy was able to survive on $2,000 a month, they can’t do that anymore. An average rent for a one-bedroom home is over $1,000 now. That’s 50 % of a $2,000 income. So you want to make that affordable for everybody. And the way you do that is you pay them more so they can afford their rents more. So it kind of helps both of my
all my businesses in a way, because it just goes back into the system in a way at the end of the day. If you’re looking at a one bedroom, maybe three, 400 square foot, 500 square foot apartment, not in a luxury development with the pool and all that stuff, those are going from somewhere from 11 to $1,500 now. So if you don’t pay them more, they can’t afford to work. So they’re going to go somewhere where who’s going to pay them more. So everybody’s raising their
their their pays, daily pay or
Mike Zlotnik (27:18.371)
Yeah, and this overall wage inflation is following the cost inflation and cost of living inflation. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So and the amount of work I assume is still pretty significant. Are you seeing new construction or it’s mostly renovation projects on existing properties because the interest rates are high, right? Still, mean, they’re still higher than before. They’re coming down, which is good news. But typically,
Lancelot Lennard (27:22.584)
Correct. Correct.
Mike Zlotnik (27:45.296)
Any type of new development requires lower interest rate. mean higher rates make it more difficult to justify these projects. So new construction is not really happening in any kind of a volume or at least it’s subdued. What are you seeing? I’m just curious.
Lancelot Lennard (27:55.15)
So the main point is…
Lancelot Lennard (28:01.55)
So what I’m seeing with the big boys, the Art Horton, the big players in the field of residential real estate that build new homes, they have bought, spent a ton of money on buying rates down prior. So they just bought lower rates and they’re given, in the last few years, we had, when it was 7 % on a regular market, they were given 599, 565 interest rates to upload homes. They knew this was gonna be temporary.
for short period of time. Of course, these guys have massive analysts working the whole field of how we’re going to do this. And they still want to be selling a lot of homes because that’s what their business model is just to pump them out. We see new developments popping up everywhere still today. Yes, they’ve slowed down. They don’t pre-build 30, 40 homes at the same time. They’re a little bit slower on the construction side, but that could be due to labor issues. You know that they don’t have the power of
build them that fast. It could also be due to the high interest rates, they’re not selling as fast as before. I remember going into a place a few years ago and if you didn’t put a deposit down that day, you didn’t get that house. That’s not the case anymore. You could go back two, three, four times and the house is still there and then even negotiate with builders, which is unheard of.
But something like, could you guys do this for me or that for me? And they’re offering incentives for agents. They’re offering incentives for buyers. They’re putting it out there. They pay closing costs. They don’t want to touch their bottom line. So the house price, they don’t want to touch that because that’s how their growth happens is they keep the price going up little by little by little after every sale.
Mike Zlotnik (29:47.562)
It’s the concessions. They’re giving you lot of concessions, seller credits, mortgage through their subsidiary with a bought down rate by the seller. Yeah, all those things make sense.
Lancelot Lennard (29:51.576)
Yes.
Lancelot Lennard (30:00.843)
Yes, that’s what they’re doing.
Mike Zlotnik (30:03.119)
Very cool. Any final comments, any book recommendation? And we got to wrap up. All good things must come to an end, unfortunately, and so does this episode. So any final comments and thoughts?
Lancelot Lennard (30:14.446)
So if you are a seller, you go to my website, www.desertlamps.com, you can download my book, How to Prepare Your Home for the Market. I wrote this in a buyer standpoint, over 200 transactions now under my belt. A lot of them were buyer transactions and I went through this book. It’s free download, PDF, you you can get a copy on my website. It’s about when you walk through a home as a buyer, what you’re looking at.
You know, what a buyer is looking at your front yard, your driveway, your house, your paint jobs, all that stuff. anything I’ve learned from my buyers, I put in that book. you guys can, as sellers can profit from that and learn that, hey, it’s not always just put it on the market. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. It’s how to make the most money of your home. Small things like a paint job or removing clutter.
just removing clutter, putting it in a storage. You’re moving out anyways. So just put it in a storage and declutter the home and make it pure for a person to come in and look at it as a blank canvas can boost your value by tens of thousands of dollars. And a lot of people don’t get that. And I’m like, here’s the book. I wrote this just for you guys to make more money on your homes. Also, fixed up home will sell a lot faster. So if you guys are ready to sell, like, hey, I need this off the market.
put some effort into it. You could do sweat equity if you need to, but you could hire a good crew and get out there and pick up the home a little bit, update it little bit, and make some money. It’s not hundreds of thousands of dollars to do that. That’s what flippers do all day long.
Mike Zlotnik (31:55.427)
But by the way, I’ve seen something really interesting. As you mentioned, just very briefly, we’re going to wrap up. I have friends who actually will work with the owners to enhance their sales value doing the spruce up of a home. So literally instead of the owner who may not have the resources or the ability to actually do that, some folks like you or other folks who do construction and renovations.
can come in and say, listen, pay me on sale, right? I’m going to invest $30,000, $50,000 in this home and that’ll increase the value by a hundred. Just pay me 50 and maybe a little more for the delay. So I’ve seen those, those types of arrangements.
Lancelot Lennard (32:39.854)
We do that. Yeah, that was one of my ideas when I started construction businesses to help my sellers get their homes into a better shape so they can net more. And of course, it would be a benefit to me too, because I’d make some more money as well, but it really benefits them more. And it will raise the price of the home. It will help the neighborhood, help the neighbors and everybody else in the community sell their homes at a better value.
Mike Zlotnik (33:05.133)
Yeah, that’s a great tip and and yeah, thank you for sharing and Letting for folks know about the book. I’m sure it’s it’s a it’s a wonderful book to help folks Make their home ready to sell which is just important Way to maximize the value Thank you. Lance a lot. I appreciate you coming on a podcast Really enjoyed the conversation learn a few things about the Florida dissenters bill. Hopefully it’ll go through it’ll enhance a lot of Florida residents experience and
help them financially. good luck with that and thanks for coming on a podcast.
Lancelot Lennard (33:40.27)
Thank you Mike for having me. It was a pleasure.
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