What I Wish I Knew Before Buying a Home in Tampa Bay

all right so this has been one of those highly requested videos and it is definitely time for an update so let's get into it y'all cuz we got a lot to talk about here in casad alage you can see behind me it is a mess and we're going to get into it because today's video was titled what i wish i knew before moving to tampa bay and uh if my house isn't any indicator of the potential pitfalls that you can have when moving here i don't know what is now if this is your first time joining us on this channel um i talk about all things tampa bay what it's like to live here what it's like to work here what it's like to play here the food the dining the outdoors the beaches and the sunshines and the hurricanes unfortunately and a little over 3 months ago i think almost 4 months ago i sat in this very space it looked pretty darn similar to what it does now um and talked about how our home flooded during hurricane milton and as you can see we are definitely still displaced so i'm going to give you a little bit of insight here now um this is not one of those fun videos to talk about but you know mistakes get made and over the last 3 and 1/2 years we've helped over a 100 families relocate to the tampa bay area and here's one thing i am very proud of um none of them are living through anything like this but juan learned the hard way and i'm going to explain what happened to our home the things that you should be um really focused on when you're moving to the area here and why this video is going to be important for you is because you don't want to make those mistakes um we're right in the middle of a full-blown renovation now um it went from a hey let's get back in the house to let's do everything and that was a choice so i'm letting you know that now and and some of the the decisions we've made um and things we've uncovered too um have led us to just go ahead and go all the way through with it and i wanted to give you guys an update you know a lot of our viewers have been asking "hey juan what's going on with your home?" and if you can see behind me here you can probably still see the rv outside that is on my lawn that we're living in and that was not the goal if i knew we were going to be out of the house for four potentially 5 months we would have rented a place but here we are so let's give you the quick nickel tour if you don't mind all right so this is where the kitchen was last time you've seen this video um as you can see now it has been completely removed um kate has decided that she wants a um a 10-ft island here so we can do everything with the family which is great the flooring is starting to go in man this just happened over the last couple days and i got to tell you it's one of the most exciting things for us um taking place as you can see we've got electrical hanging down everywhere i know it's dark in here and the video is not great forgive me we don't have lights um but you can see them up here uh maybe if i climb up here yeah let's do that right let's do that you guys can see it um but the lighting is coming down we're doing all recess lights through the house um they've reworked all the texture in the home and we're doing some really cool stuff we're adding a half bathroom we're redoing all the bathrooms every room in the house is being redone um and my wife is getting the home of her dreams now that is this is not the way we wanted to get it um we loved where we lived and the house didn't need anything we wanted things and we wanted to update them but it didn't need anything and i shared with you uh we went through the whole journey of making an insurance claim we're in a non flood zone 43 ft above sea level where we are right now so we did not get wet because of the storm surge with the hurricane we got wet because my neighbor is 3t higher than us in the back they were built 10 years after our home and the two neighbors on each side of us were both a foot and a half higher than us we got 12 in of rain and a little bit over 6 hours and um juan's house and kate's house is the lowest home in all of that mix and that's why we got wet now we only got a few inches of rain water in the very back of the house um and then what happened is the rest of the home actually sucked the water up from the concrete we had hardwood floors in the bedrooms and i we showed you that as well and water got underneath that and the hardwood was not real hardwood it was that engineered stuff they used to put back in the '90s which is like really plywood um and it doesn't do well with water so all that had to come out and then that led us to the point of working the house so we don't have to deal with this ever again now we're doing outdoor projects which i will of course update you guys on how we're going to mitigate the water um we haven't had to do any of that yet it's been the dry season we've been really really fortunate but we're going to do some drain tile and some things outside i'm going to get you guys to that um but ultimately i think you guys should take a tour so let's do that together okay so i'm going to take you guys with me here so what i'm going to do now is give you guys a tour here as you can see hopefully you can see it that the flooring is going in the back of the house now again kate's going to have this whole thing set up so we've got a a 10ft island that's going here the whole kitchen you know what i'll throw the design in here right about now okay now you guys can see that so this is going to be the living room area this used to be our dining room right here dining room table um and then right where i'm standing technically is um uh this is where our coffee bar is going to be in the future we're holding that off because you know again we can only go so far with the resources we have um but the tv will now go there um in the house closet here they had to trench the electrical because the previous homeowner did not do it the right way and now you can see the electrical come out for the stove which is awesome um this up here on the ceiling here was about uh two inches lower than the rest of it there was this weird drop down so we removed that the kitchen um refrigerator used to be right here that's going away and the pantry will go on the end as you guys saw that there okay this used to be our living area but now we're going to turn this into the formal dining that out there is the sun room and then as we take you around it's going to be super dark in here so bear with me um this is the main bathroom that is now being uh reworked uh in the household here that is my studio that we used to do all the videos in um bedroom you know bedroom on the other side and then we come over here into this part of the house you guys can see it goes out to the garage out there this is our laundry space um and then there used to be a pantry right here and uh the pantry was right here now that is going to be a half bathroom so that's what's going on i'll show you guys over into our bedroom as well which is like crazy talk right now because um as you can see as we work through it there are the kitchen appliances we had in the home before there will be no microwave hanging off the ceiling and then uh that is the only working bathroom we have currently so um i know this video is a little bit unorthodox but like man things have changed right we had the sophets up here that hung down and the microwave was below that all that crap is going away so i'm excited for that you know like i said ultimately the wife is going to get the house that she had hoped to have so i'm excited for her oh man all right so her kitchen just arrived i know you can't see it but these are all the boxes all the way back over to there down here i have no idea what all this stuff is but the boss will it's good news we got flooring going in and i really wanted to shoot this to give you guys an update here you know this is not it's not the funnest thing i it's been it's been a big deal i mean um it's been hard on kate it's been hard on the kids um it's been hard on me and uh you know i'm not here looking for sympathy or empathy i'm just sharing my journey with you guys um the things we wish we would have known okay so even though i'm in a in a non flood zone and i'm 43 ft above sea level i wish that we would have had um flood insurance on the property now would we have gotten everything covered and got the renovation no and i wouldn't even try to take advantage of the system like that i'm not wired like that but it would have been really nice to had have them contribute to the damage that was done you know it cost us $7,000 just to get all of the old flooring we tore out of the house and yeah we paid a premium but that's what you need to do during times like that because everybody's busy and they get to pick their jobs and if you want it done you got to that's the way it has to work um so it cost us seven grand there um the thing i didn't share with you is we hired a contractor that we found off of thumbtac cuz everybody we called was super busy um they had great reviews on thumbtac and uh within the first week they fired their drywall crew off the job now they had cut the drywall at the outlets in the house which is already a mistake and then they made some other mistakes in the home um crooked walls that they were repairing and i called them out on it and u the general contractor showed up and fired the um drywall crew that week and within within the next week they hired another guy came out and started doing some repairs and then i noticed some inconsistencies and when i called them out on it they said they weren't going to fix it so we ended up firing that crew now we got a great referral from a friend of ours who had their home rebuilt and he worked us into that so the general contractor that's working our home now has been outstanding um despite what you see here because we see the progress finally listen man this was a huge ordeal they had to fix a bunch of stuff that wasn't done correctly in the house in the past all of those things are now have been corrected i'm super proud of the condition of the home um when we take care of the water mitigation we're going to be like rock solid here and then next year we're going to do the do the outdoors the the windows the pool everything and then this house is going to be an oasis and we're jacked for that um not the way we want to learn it so again rule number one don't pick the lowest house in the neighborhood even if you're 40 50 60 80 ft above elevation that won't matter if you're the lowest property so that's rule number one you definitely want to make sure that you know that before buying a home you can check out the elevation maps usually at the county and the surveys show those things too so that's important a lot of the newer construction developments these home they really focus on that so that's usually not an issue but you know how close are you to water that's another thing again getting homeowners insurance does not include flood insurance you have to add a policy so even if you're in an x flood zone which is a flood zone they're all flood zones fyi according to fema every home is in a flood zone but x does not require that policy now i'm adding that policy now because i don't want to do this again and i can't afford to and that policy is going to cost me $430 for the year well worth it and again if this was to ever happen again in the future i would now have coverage which i didn't have on a standard policy so that is another thing that i think you should absolutely look at um yes it's an added expense but y'all i'm going to be real with you guys by the time we're done with the interior renovations of this home we're going to be somewhere in the range of $130,000 deep um and that is not me flexing y'all trust me i didn't budget for this it's taking my entire uh life savings to make this happen um it has definitely been a challenge and we're so grateful for the clients that have trusted us i mean honestly you guys are helping us rebuild this home and and it's a huge blessing and i can never ever repay um either the lord or our clients for trusting us uh to go through this process and again i'm so happy that none of them experienced this but that's the reality of it and i'm going to be honest with you guys if you'd have told me a year ago that um we would have to foot the bill for this whole thing i can't imagine ever getting it done and it's amazing how the human brain works and like when you have problems you figure out how to solve them um we have had to take a loan um which was not ideal but it had to happen um it was not for the whole amount we didn't know what the whole amount was going to be um we could have probably got back in the house for around $30,000 so i just wanted to give you that insight as well again we're going beyond that point but y'all if you're going to move out of your house and you have the ability to do the thing that you were hoping to do you don't want to do it again we're not moving in and out of the house we're getting all this stuff done now so we don't have to deal with it anymore um and putting the house back and then moving back out 6 months later to do the things we want to do that just didn't make sense to us and i know i'm rambling a lot here uh hopefully um this helps you uh the thing i want you to know is like we're not planning on moving right we know what happened we know why it happened and we know how to fix it so for us the house like i shared before we only had a couple inches of water in the very back of the home and the rest of the house got wet because the the block absorbed it and um concrete's porous it's it's different it acts a little bit different but the things that we're doing are going to mitigate that can we control whether the house ever floods again no i mean if we got 24 in of rain nobody's surviving that but if we got another 12 in of rain could we could we withstand that in another 6 hours yeah with what we're doing now we absolutely can so i'm not worried about that we're you know 1.93 mi till toes in the sand from my door to indian rocks beach we love it here um we've had opportunities galore our community is amazing um i'm wearing my florida strong shirt today because it's it's what we are right we're a very resilient community and people have been so helpful from our neighbors um to the contractor that we're working with now and just the overall community and um i know it sounds crazy to say out loud that somebody could go through something like this and they're not like disgusted and ready to run for the hills but like we're not wired that way and it doesn't make us better than anybody but man we love it here it's 76 degrees today and the sun is shining in february yeah we had to pay the ultimate price but i'm going to be honest with you this is basically the worst thing that could happen cuz if a tree would have fall fell through the house we've got everything covered right but it didn't you know what i mean and and at the end of the day a home is what you make of it a house is just a thing and stuff and my family's safe you know our community safe and we're rebuilding and we're part of that and we're grateful to be part of it i don't want to go through this again my wife doesn't want to go through this again so we're going to do everything we can to asssure that never happens again in the future and we're definitely going to make sure that our clients are extra protected and like i said i'm very fortunate none of having to go through it so far um but hey it might happen in the future but we want to give you guys that update now as this project rolls around here the next few weeks things are going to start to happen appliances show up next week the flooring is already starting to go in um and he assures us that we'll probably be in the be in the house in approximately five weeks so um i hope to give you guys the full tour here as we get this thing um completely renovated and rebuilt and uh again if i key takeaways add flood insurance even if you don't have to right make sure that your insurance is replacement cost not actual value that's a different conversation for a different day um make sure you check in the elevation not only of the um the property but in adjacent properties as well because that's going to tell you if you're the low man on the totem pole um and most importantly don't let you know the negative outweigh all the positives and the benefits we have been blessed beyond our wildest beliefs um since moving to tampa bay um we've been here for 6 years it'll be 7 years in december and we got no plans of leaving and uh i hope this video was helpful for you guys today i know it's one of those weird um juan's not in the studio the lighting's not great but man i you know i still get to look out back and even though it's a hot wreck right now i'll show you guys right you look out there that's my pool those are my palms and the gulf of mexico is no more than a 7minute drive from my house and i'm grateful for it so thank you for hanging out with us today i hope this update uh helps you in some way shape or form um learn the tough lessons ask the questions if you guys want to ask me more about it put them in the comments below or reach out to me all my contact information is down below um we do we did 60 zoom calls um scheduled in the month of february which is bananas with people just like you who are considering relocating to the area and if that's you feel free to reach out and ask the questions i want to make sure this doesn't happen to you number one but more importantly i want to make sure you're able to live your dream so feel free to reach out youtube's going to put up two more videos as a matter of fact i'll put the video from the original update in here so you guys can kind of get hang on that and as always and until next time go out and live that tampa life [Music]