Selling Cape Cod Beachfront Property

Introduction to Success Agent Podcast

[00:00:00] JP Fluellen: What are the tips, tricks, and tactics working in today’s entrepreneurial environment? The strategies, the practices, the psychology, and the exact how to grow in your business or start a new one. How to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That’s our promise, and this is your next favorite podcast.

[00:00:26] JP Fluellen: My name is JP Fluellen and welcome to Success Agent Podcast. All right. Let’s talk about today’s anti-sponsors for the show. The anti-sponsors just means that they didn’t pay me to actually do this. I actually am a real estate broker for real, and I get to do this because I serve as one of their managing brokers and for real.

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[00:01:11] JP Fluellen: Just go to go.joinreal.com and check out all the cool things that Real has to offer. So if you’re real estate brokerage in North America, this may be interesting to you. So there’s my pitch for the anti-sponsors, but let’s get into today’s episode. All right. Welcome to another episode of the Success Agent Podcast, where we interview top agents, broker owners, and business people from across the globe, and we’re here today.

Meet Tia Lilly: Cape Cod Waterfront Real Estate Expert

[00:01:44] JP Fluellen: Talking with Tia Lilly from Cape Cod. So welcome.

[00:01:50] Tia Lilly: Thank you JP. Happy to be here.

[00:01:54] JP Fluellen: This is gonna be a lot of fun. We don’t have a lot of people on this podcast that specialize specifically in waterfront property. So this is gonna be a lot of fun. We’re gonna kind of unpack this as quickly as we can to give you little edible treats that you can take to your business and figure out if, hey, if maybe you might wanna specialize in your real estate business. So, Tia, tell us a little bit about your business.

Building a Waterfront Real Estate Business from Buyer Agency

[00:02:18] Tia Lilly: Well, that’s how the business came to be. So I started off in an entry level company, believe it or not. That was predominantly foreclosures. So I was like, oh my, did I make a mistake ’cause I just can’t do this foreclosure. It just wasn’t for me. So I partially got lucky. But I still have the website to this day propertycapecod.com. Please take a look at it. Visit us if you’re interested. Love to hear from you too.

[00:02:52] Tia Lilly: This website drew buyers from all over the country looking to come to Cape Cod. ‘Cause we’re very much a resort destination to own a vacation home here. So I built my business in buyer agency. Usually it’s the opposite—listings they say—but I just started working with buyers all over that wanted to come here and own a home.

[00:03:18] Tia Lilly: And typically that involves on or near the water when they’re looking for a vacation home. Not always, but typically that’s what they want. And the Cape for those—I’m not sure if anyone’s familiar with Cape Cod or if you’ve heard of it. Have you heard of it, JP?

[00:03:34] JP Fluellen: I have, but I couldn’t remember where it was. I was like, oh, this is in Massachusetts.

Cape Cod Geography: Beaches, Lakes, and Island Access

[00:03:56] Tia Lilly: Right, right. To some people we probably feel like we’re in Africa. But yeah, we’re just like this little island at the tip of Massachusetts. When you look on a map, it’s comprised of 15 towns. It’s not a big place, but we’re known for beaches. Beaches and ocean. We’re surrounded by the ocean—Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard.

[00:04:19] Tia Lilly: This is where people typically will come to ferry over to the Vineyard and Nantucket. So it’s pretty special. It’s gorgeous, it’s beautiful. Lot of lakes and ponds here too, though, not just ocean beaches. So it’s all about the water here. So summertime, like from May to even now through September is our time here. It’s gorgeous typically.

[00:04:45] Tia Lilly: So it’s a fun place, it’s a great place to own, invest, vacation. So that’s pretty much how I got started. And then I started specializing in waterfront, in anything on or near water.

Why Real Estate Agents Should Specialize in a Niche Market

[00:05:06] Tia Lilly: I know you’re a realtor yourself. I talk to a lot of realtors. They are very hesitant to specialize in something because you might miss out on something else. And I did take a lot of flack earlier in my career for that, because it was just go sell, sell, sell.

[00:05:25] Tia Lilly: It doesn’t matter what you sell. Right? Just sell. That’s how you pay the bills, whatever comes along. But I stuck to it. I stuck to my guns to kind of cut a niche in that, and I said, Nope, this is where I wanna be. Plus it’s fun and it’s my happy place. I’m passionate for it. It’s not as fun with the foreclosures for me anyways. It’s depressing. This is—everybody’s happy and you’re changing people’s lives for the better.

[00:05:49] Tia Lilly: I have the amazing clientele. They’re always just so grateful that they bought that vacation home, that maybe they even hesitated for a while. But I encourage whether it’s waterfront or whatever specialized, you will not lose out. Just because you specialize in something doesn’t mean you can’t do something else too. That’s just your specialty. And then just know it inside out.

JP Fluellen: Sure.

From Sales Agent to Broker Owner: Building a Team

[00:06:16] JP Fluellen: So how does that work then? If you get a person that’s like, no, I want a house in, you know, I don’t know how far the mainland is from the island, but like if somebody wants to look at something there or anything like that, do you usually just hand those off as a referral then?

[00:06:32] Tia Lilly: I do a lot now in my career, now that I’m a brokerage, so this is how I started. I started as an agent, went and got my broker’s license, went out on my own. So that’s been out on my own for seven years now. And now it will depend, but yes, I will outsource. You know, I have great agents that are so much better than I am at certain things too, you know, so we all have our strengths.

[00:06:56] JP Fluellen: That works out pretty well. When you have agents, you can just hand them over.

[00:06:59] Tia Lilly: Hand them over and they do a so much better job than I would do. That’s a whole other podcast if you go into going from sales agent to broker owner and how that all goes, and how you recruited agents, things like that.

[00:07:11] JP Fluellen: So maybe we’ll unpack that at a future date sometime. That’d be a lot of fun.

Tia Lilly: Sounds good.

Types of Waterfront Property: Ocean, Lake, River, and Dock Access

[00:07:19] JP Fluellen: Alright. So let’s talk about a little bit about like the different types of water and kind of like the different types or is there different architecture around different bodies of water? Are they built differently? And then how does that add value to the different water?

[00:07:40] Tia Lilly: Oh, that’s an excellent question. That’s how it usually starts. So what, we’ll just say for example, you’re working with a buyer that wants to come, JP, and you say, I want a waterfront home. That’s where they mostly start. I want a waterfront home. It’s just not that simple.

[00:12:48] Tia Lilly: So there’s a lot of questions that follow with that because there’s so many different water. There’s so many various types of water, especially on the Cape. You have rivers, you have beachfront. You have the lakes and ponds too, and then you have the homes that have docks. Do they want a dock?

Buyer Consultation Questions: Boater vs. Beach Goer

[00:08:19] Tia Lilly: So usually my first question: Are you a boater or are you a beach goer? Like, where are you looking to be? And then pricing, depending on location, that’s where price will dictate too. And depending on what they want, if they’re more boaters, then you kind of know where you’re looking.

[00:08:36] Tia Lilly: How will they use the house? Do they wanna be near a town? Do they wanna be private, more secluded? So there’s so much and there’s so much water on the Cape. So that is really where you gotta kind of start there and narrow in. So that’s a great question. So that’s usually where I start with the client.

Waterfront Property Values: Beach vs. Lake vs. River

[00:09:00] JP Fluellen: Gotcha. And is there a difference between like a property value that’s on the lake versus on the beach versus by the river or a pond? Do the values drastically change in terms of like entry point into the different types that they’re close to?

[00:09:20] Tia Lilly: They do, it varies. It can vary a bit. COVID really changed for, I think for all of us countrywide pretty much. So we’ve seen prices really, really go on the upswing, but typically for the Cape, for people that want beachfront that’s more expensive, like true beachfront. Not to say that the others aren’t, but it just depends.

Understanding Docks: Deep Water, Tides, and Boat Requirements

[00:08:19] Tia Lilly: And then you get into the whole dock situation. So you say, Hey, I’m a boater. Okay, that’s great. What type of boat? How much depth do you need? So there’s docks, there’s deep water docks, there’s docks that you have to watch the tide and be aware of where the tide’s at to get your boat in and out.

[00:08:19] Tia Lilly: So I usually at that point will say, like, from a boater standpoint, okay, what kind of boat do you have? Well, I don’t have a boat yet, or I have this, so you gotta know the drafts and what, where are they looking to go and what are they looking to do too? So that’s another conversation with that. But yeah, it does vary and it varies. Location can be a huge factor. Rivers would be with docks or easier buy-in, if you will, for the water than something like directly on the beach. But it depends on what river you’re on.

What Draws People to Cape Cod: Water-Driven Lifestyle

[00:10:40] JP Fluellen: Yeah. I guess in terms of geography, I guess you would need to figure that out when they get there. So what is it about the Cape that draws people to the area?

[00:10:56] Tia Lilly: The water. It’s really the water driven. Yeah, because the beaches are gorgeous. It’s great for boating, for fishing.

Matching Buyers with the Right Lake: A Client Success Story

[00:06:51] Tia Lilly: It’s even for people that just say, Hey, you know, I’ll give you an example of a couple not that long ago that said, Hey, we wanna sell our home. It was smaller and now they were gonna live here full time and we wanna buy—this is called Wequaquet Lake. It’s one of the bigger lakes on the Cape. It’s a full recreational lake.

[00:09:46] Tia Lilly: So yes, that’s another thing too. What kind of lake do you wanna be on? Do you wanna boat on the lake? You can’t boat on all the lakes. Some of the lakes are just kayaks and paddleboards and more serene and quiet. There’s other brackish too that you just don’t even wanna go in. So there’s quite a variety.

[00:11:39] Tia Lilly: So they said, look, Tia, we wanna be on Wequaquet Lake. All right? It’s more expensive on Wequaquet Lake. I said, okay. We looked at a couple houses and he’s a past client. I said, now, just let me ask you, are you guys, when are you getting your boat? We’re not getting a boat. I said, okay, why do we wanna be on the water?

[00:12:01] Tia Lilly: Well, we like being on the water and we wanna look at it. I said, okay, well why are we buying on Wequaquet Lake then? I say we all the time. I’m not buying it with him, but that’s just how I am. And he, well, I don’t—I said, let’s go find something on another lake where you two can enjoy it. You can kayak if you want.

[00:12:21] Tia Lilly: And we found a really great deal. It saved him probably half a million dollars than if they bought on the lake with a fixer upper. Maybe more, maybe it could have ended up being close to a million and they’re so happy. I just visited recently. So you really have to kind of dive deep into what it is they’re trying to accomplish. But yeah, there’s so many different types of water, so it is—how are you going to use that water?

Buyer Consultation Process for Waterfront Properties

[00:12:54] JP Fluellen: Yeah, no, I get that. I mean, I know I like water, but I also don’t like noise too. I like to boat and do stuff, but you know, so it’s like, it seems like there’s just a ton. So like when you’re doing your initial buyer’s consultation, like how long does that typically take?

[00:13:11] Tia Lilly: Depends on the buyer. Some of them it’s hard. We talk a lot through email. Some of them will get on the phone. Some don’t wanna get—these days, nobody wants to talk that much, they just wanna email. Some wanna text. So it all depends. But I try to at least get an initial conversation going so that we spend our time wisely.

[00:13:32] Tia Lilly: ‘Cause it is time consuming for them to drive here, fly here, and yeah. It’s usually, I’ve been doing this so long, so I can usually ask very few questions and get to know exactly what they want.

Cape Cod vs. Florida: The Snowbird Connection

[00:13:45] JP Fluellen: Is there anything special about Massachusetts that draws people to the area? Like in terms of, you know, like why would somebody wanna retire there versus Florida?

[00:13:59] Tia Lilly: Well, there’s a lot of correlation from Florida to Cape Cod. Cape Cod can be more of a retirement community in the winter, but they all leave. So it’s interesting. Naples, everybody knows Naples, right? Vero Beach. Even Clearwater. So there’s a lot of correlation with people back and forth from Cape Cod to Florida. So they own two homes, so they travel from here.

[00:05:06] Tia Lilly: Naples does have similarities to Cape Cod. Cape Cod is like an island. It is an island. It’s not like an island. It is an island. But what’s different is it’s connected by two bridges. So you drive over a bridge, you’ve got water on each side of you and now you’re on the mainland. So that’s the Cape. Then you can either get on a plane or take a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket if you wanna take it further to the islands.

Cape Cod Waterfront Home Prices: What to Expect

[00:15:04] JP Fluellen: Yeah. And what would you say the average price point, if you were to just generalize the pricing of homes out there? What would be the average price of a house out there?

[00:15:13] Tia Lilly: Well they’ve really gone up. In waterfront, you can’t get into anything great on the water for under a million right now. Wow. You’re really at a million. Yeah. There’s nothing on the water. On the water. So, and if you do find something in that, it’s usually not quite as desirable, like with recreational or deep water or whatever, or it requires a lot of work. It’s a fixer upper. But yeah, a million five’s hard. It’s more and closer to 2 million.

Real Estate Investing on Cape Cod: Vacation Rental Success Story

[00:15:42] JP Fluellen: And do you see any real estate investors purchasing out there?

[00:15:49] Tia Lilly: Absolutely. That’s how I actually started my rental division. I’ll give you an example. It was just not that long ago. We had this wonderful couple that came. They lived in Arizona. So they wanted a home on the Cape because they were constantly vacationing on the Cape, but they wanted a home they could come to with their stuff and not have to keep going to different houses, have a house they loved, have a house the way they wanted it.

[00:16:24] Tia Lilly: So we found them a home. They said, will you take care of our home while we’re not here? Sure. We’ll take care of it for you. Can we rent? We wanna rent the home. We’re not here all the time, so let’s rent it. Yep. We can rent it for you.

[00:30:27] Tia Lilly: So this was on a beach and we did that for them for four years. They bought the home for 2.2 million. And they just sold it. We just sold it for ’em last year for 4.4 million and that does not count the rental that they received, which we rented out for 13,000 a week for most of the time, and it was booked solid. There was never an opening.

[00:17:11] JP Fluellen: That is so crazy.

[00:17:13] Tia Lilly: Is that not crazy? I mean, COVID definitely sprang to the, you know, jumped that price. Yeah. But it still would’ve increased anyways. It really would’ve. So it was still going up. Probably maybe not to that degree, but still at least a million without COVID.

Cape Cod Vacation Rental Income: What Can You Earn?

[00:17:31] JP Fluellen: That’s so crazy. So how does that, like right now, in terms of, you know, if somebody wanted to invest in a piece of property out there, what kind of rents could they expect out there?

[00:17:44] Tia Lilly: It really is location driven. Yeah, so it’s gonna be location driven, the condition of the home, what it offers. We love, like these guys were great because they came in, they said, do whatever you want to the house and we’re very respectful with money too. We don’t just go buy things. We’re always looking for the best deals for our clients when we purchase. We’re top of mind with that.

[00:18:12] Tia Lilly: But they were very open to making it a comfortable rental. So that helps a lot in what you can get for money. But if you’re on the water, just to try to give you some kind of idea range at least, so you buy investment property that maybe you’ll use a little bit and rent it out the rest of the time on the water, especially on a beach.

[00:18:32] Tia Lilly: I mean, it depends on the bedrooms. How many bedrooms? A four bedroom’s better than a three. Definitely wouldn’t recommend a two if you’re renting. Not worth it. There are rules and regulations. I won’t bore you with that unless you wanna hear about it. So this was a four bedroom home. Five is even better, but say you had four or five bedrooms and it was on the beach, you could be looking anywhere from 20 to 30,000 a week.

JP Fluellen: A week!

Tia Lilly: A week.

[00:19:06] JP Fluellen: Whoa, that’s insane. [Ad break for Java Mortgage]

Maximizing Rental Income: Property Presentation Matters

[00:19:58] Tia Lilly: It needs to be a nice home. Yeah. So not all of them. So then there’s a different type of caliber home. Like even the home I just described, it was nice, but it wasn’t high, high end luxury nice. I mean, it was nice though.

[00:20:12] Tia Lilly: But when we first took that over, they weren’t renting hardly at all. They were renting for six to 7,000 a week, and it was sporadic. So when I said to our client, you know, we’re gonna go, this was four years ago. So I said, we’re gonna go to 10,000 after we do a couple things here.

[00:20:33] Tia Lilly: They looked at me like I was crazy. Are we gonna get that? We really wanna book it. We don’t wanna have weeks open. We were booked solid for the first summer, then we just started going up.

Investment Opportunities: Fixer-Uppers and Long-Term Equity

[00:07:55] Tia Lilly: But there’s a demand for anybody right now that wants to buy. It’s not as much inventory, so it’s finding the right house. I wouldn’t spend too much if your idea is to invest, but it’s equity too, right? So you’ve got both ends of it. So if you’re looking at equity, that’s what I always look at, no matter where they’re buying, like if it’s important to them and they’re pulling money out of a stock market or out of their 401k, let’s make that money work for you too. That’s what real estate’s supposed to do and enjoy it.

[00:21:13] JP Fluellen: A hundred percent. So like for example, a lot of real estate investors starting these days are not your typical, you know, we have just cash to come in and just buy stuff because the stock market or my money market accounts or my 401ks are not performing like they want to. But for somebody that’s coming in and says, Hey, you know, where can I buy for the cheapest amount of money and get the highest cash flow returns?

Current Market Conditions: Are Numbers Working for Investors?

[00:21:43] JP Fluellen: ‘Cause what we’re seeing right now here is that right now the numbers aren’t working. It’s either break even or just below break even. And then it’s a long-term play until interest rates start to change and then refinance to get the margins back to where they should be. Are you seeing a lot of that right now, or are you still seeing a high demand for decent rents? You know, let’s say I wanna find something that doesn’t necessarily need to be on the water, but maybe it’s 10 minutes away from the water and there are still some advantages of purchasing off the water, but still have the access. Are you still seeing cash flowing properties out there?

[00:22:30] Tia Lilly: That’s a great question. I think we’re seeing a lot of what you’re seeing in terms of generally speaking, right? The inflation’s up, the prices are just crazy. And now we’re in a—we’re plateauing and I don’t think we know where that plateau is yet. That’s how I see it.

[00:22:46] Tia Lilly: I think there definitely is opportunities, but here’s where I see the opportunities more for somebody that wants to come in. If you’re—if you see a house that’s completely done and your clients go in and they don’t have to do a thing, they’re willing to pay a little bit more for that house, maybe a lot more, right? Probably, I’m guessing no one wants to do work. And then that’s where it’s hard for the numbers to work too.

[00:31:10] Tia Lilly: But if somebody is willing to do some work, ’cause there are opportunities, but they need work and it is a little bit of the longer game. ‘Cause now you have to fix up the house and sometimes it needs a lot, sometimes not that much. Depending on location now, you can get the rents, you know, in the summer, not in the winter. Only in the summer. So the big rents, and it is gonna take a few years for things to shake out a little bit and have rates come back down and to see it. But is it worth it? Absolutely. You know, I think anyways, ’cause I don’t think our real estate’s going down in nice areas anyways. I don’t think it’s gonna go down personally.

Real Estate vs. Stock Market: Stability and Long-Term Gains

[00:23:57] JP Fluellen: No. I mean, you’re always gonna have those places around the globe that are always gonna be high, high destination places. And you know, if you can get in and you can hang in there through the tougher times, you’re gonna get a huge, huge payoff at the end. And of course we might be slightly biased, but in the real estate space, you know, real estate is much more stable than any other investment, I believe.

[00:24:22] Tia Lilly: I do too. Period.

[00:24:23] JP Fluellen: And you don’t have the huge swings and the ups and downs like you see in the stock market where, you know, if I turn 65 and I wanna retire, that timing might not work out for me. Which we’re seeing over and over and over again that the timing just hasn’t been working out.

[00:24:43] JP Fluellen: And so then people are stuck and they’re like, my 401k just dropped by 30%. But I can’t work anymore. I physically cannot work anymore. I need to cash out. And now, you know, when they may have had 25, 30 years of income available, now they might have 15 and now they’re standing as a greeter at Walmart right now because they gotta supplement that income somehow.

[00:25:05] JP Fluellen: Whereas if you’re listening to this podcast, you definitely need to start thinking about real estate investing now, you know, because now sellers are much more open for negotiations, especially if there’s days on market are starting to climb again. There’s 40, 50 days on market. You can start coming in and say, Hey, you know, I can come in a hundred grand less than asking, and sometimes they’re like, what?

[00:25:33] Tia Lilly: We’re not seeing that yet. Well, it depends on the house. I shouldn’t say that.

[00:25:37] JP Fluellen: Because I’ve seen a hundred grand, but I had 160 grand actually just recently, which I was like shocked, you know? That they decided to negotiate that much. But you just never know people’s situations.

Tia Lilly: Exactly, exactly right.

[00:25:52] JP Fluellen: Make tons of offers. You know, if you’re not in a hurry, make tons of offers, eventually something’s gonna land. You’ll find somebody that’s, you know, like, absolutely. Let’s go. Can you close in a week? No, not in a week, but maybe two weeks.

HOA Fees on Cape Cod: A Surprisingly Low-Key Approach

[00:26:06] JP Fluellen: Well, very good. Okay, so let’s talk about another thing. HOAs. I know people, you know, a lot of higher end areas have crazy HOAs in some places. How are you seeing that and are you seeing pushback on HOAs with any of your clients?

[00:26:25] Tia Lilly: So it’s so interesting. We don’t deal with HOAs here hardly at all. Wow. Not saying we don’t have ’em. But it’s not a factor, especially on the waterfront.

[00:11:20] Tia Lilly: So Cape Cod is very interesting. It’s a mixture. So you have a street, one side of the street is water. Very seldom will both sides of the street be water. We do have those streets, but that’s not the norm. So one side’s water, one side isn’t. It’s mixed. It’s a lot of mix. And they’re not always—we’re very laid back here. We’re a little bit behind the times.

[00:27:17] Tia Lilly: I work a lot with, especially the New York clients. Oh, they come in, well, I don’t understand what fees for this or what fees for that, and where’s the HOA fees and where’s these fees? I’m like, no fees. Well, that can’t be right, you know? No fees. Massachusetts makes it up in taxes, but it’s a beautiful state.

[00:27:37] Tia Lilly: There’s no fee. Like it’s just, I find it so—yeah. It’s interesting. So HOA fees are usually in like condos here.

[00:27:49] JP Fluellen: Yeah, here we have the county decided that they’re no longer plowing the roads in the winter anymore. So now you have to have an HOA to cover all of the road maintenance and things like that during the winter months.

[00:28:06] JP Fluellen: In some areas it’s pretty minimal. It’s like 150 bucks a year or something like that. You might get a picnic once a year for the HOA, but that’s about it. But in the state of Wyoming, we only got 500,000 people in the whole state. So there’s—we just don’t have the income base to pay for all of this equipment to do all the road maintenance.

[00:28:31] Tia Lilly: I mean, and don’t get me wrong, we do have ’em. Like I live in an association that does have a HOA fee, so it’s $550 for the year. So it’s like nothing. So that’s what you see in certain areas. Condos have the HOA fees for sure.

[00:28:56] Tia Lilly: But as far as if you do see any in a resort area, it’s usually something like that. It’s so laid back and you can participate if you want to, and you don’t have to if you don’t want.

[00:29:11] JP Fluellen: That’s way too laid back for us. We have an HOA, but it’s, you know, optional. You know, it’s up to you. Not all of them, but whatever you’re feeling today.

[00:29:26] Tia Lilly: Not all of them. But there’s a lot that are. We collect a couple hundred a year, but if you can pay it, great. If not, you know. You’re not supposed to use the beach or something, but you know. We’re interesting here on the Cape. Very laid back though. Definitely compared to other parts of the country for sure.

Due Diligence for Waterfront Properties: What Buyers Must Know

[00:29:54] JP Fluellen: Awesome. So is there any other kind of special considerations that somebody might wanna consider that we haven’t covered today? About someone coming to the area. Is there some things that maybe would be surprising outside of kind of the stuff that we’ve already covered for someone that’s interested in buying waterfront?

[00:30:13] Tia Lilly: Well, there’s a lot. Yeah, there’s a lot to waterfront. It’s such a different sale. And there is so much to it that a buyer and a seller, they both really need to be aware of that. They do a lot of due diligence, like if I’m selling for them, so we don’t have any surprises.

[00:21:09] Tia Lilly: And that’s what’s really important about getting a good buyer agent and to go to someone that specializes in water because there’s a lot of great agents, but they’re not always on the water. And there’s different things you’re gonna look for. Certificate of compliance, COCs, for example. You know, like if they have any, what their order of conditions are, are they continuing? Like is the town, has the conservation saying, look, you need to plant X, Y, and Z for the next five years or for the entirety of the property, the life of the property. We do see those.

[00:31:10] Tia Lilly: If there are order conditions, have they been closed out, whether you’re selling or whether you’re buying, that’s important. ‘Cause those need to be closed out and what are they? And you need one for pretty much everything you do on the water as well.

Dock Permits and Licensing: Avoiding Costly Surprises

[00:31:30] JP Fluellen: What does that mean in terms of the buyer? Like if a person’s buying a piece of property on the water and they’re not familiar with the conservation, what does that mean?

[00:31:44] Tia Lilly: So basically, for me, I can just speak for what I do. I do all the due diligence. ‘Cause I want my buyer to know what they’re getting or what they’re not getting. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just so they’re aware. No surprises. Because I do hear some horror stories out there.

[00:29:32] Tia Lilly: Take docks for example. Is it a licensed dock? Is it a hundred year dock? What is it? Has it, you know, they need to be approved up to the state level. So where’s the standing of this dock? Because you don’t wanna—and is it legal? Because sometimes people just put things there and it’s not legal. And so people can buy a house and be told the dock has to be taken out. Well, that’s the reason they bought the house. This has not happened with me. I’ve heard these stories and never wanna be a part of it.

Beach Ownership and Conservation Regulations

[00:32:32] Tia Lilly: So we do, I do a lot of the due diligence. If it’s beachfront, for example, do you own the beach? Not always. Do you own the beach? How far do you own? Is it up to a certain point? What are the conservation regulations here? Are they requiring anything for that property? And have you done any work? Okay, you got permission to clear trees or to do something? Okay. Did that permission get closed out and get recorded at our Registry of Deeds? So there’s so much in it.

Understanding Flood Zones and Flood Insurance Costs

[00:33:11] Tia Lilly: I hear a lot. Just talk about flood zone for a second. Everybody just hears flood zone. And actually it’s something I, when we are off this that I’m gonna take a look at for a client right now that’s upset ’cause it’s in a flood zone. But be open-minded too, because some of these flood zones are not a lot of money. It’s not. It’s just—but it can be.

[00:33:28] Tia Lilly: So it’s doing the due diligence to find out, okay, am I in a flood zone? What does that look like? What is it gonna cost me? If the house is perfect and it’s great and the flood insurance is $300 a year. I don’t know. Maybe it’s worth buying the house. They can only answer that. But it doesn’t sound like a lot to me.

[00:33:48] JP Fluellen: Depending, I mean, in a lot of ways you’re kind of asking for it when you’re like, I am on the water.

[00:33:57] Tia Lilly: Yeah. Well, right. I mean, I wanna be on the water. I don’t wanna be in a flood zone. Right? Like, no, I think that’s an oxymoron, like the definition of an oxymoron right there.

[00:34:11] Tia Lilly: Absolutely. But you know, the range is so much where that flood insurance can be though. What flood zone. So that, I think that’s more what it is. Like if it’s in that worst flood zone. I mean, you could be paying 10 to 20,000 and that’s a lot. That’s a huge amount.

[00:34:31] JP Fluellen: That’s a lot. I mean, really, because I think people get this idea that real estate is just this one generality thing, that there’s just you do these 10 things, you check those 10 boxes. And that’s just kind of it. And they don’t really think about all these little nuances along the way when in reality it’s like, oh, I guess I never really thought about flood insurance.

Hurricane Risk and Coastal Property Maintenance

[00:35:03] JP Fluellen: Do you get hurricanes ever out there? You know, and if you’re on the ocean, there’s a possibility you might get a hurricane. It doesn’t matter where you are. If you’re close to the ocean, there’s a possibility for a hurricane anywhere. And I know that Cape Cod’s not a hurricane path place, generally speaking, but that doesn’t mean that it’ll never happen.

[00:35:24] Tia Lilly: Right, right. I mean, it’s inevitable anywhere on the Cape and everything’s close to the water here. I mean, everything is fairly close. So sometimes you do, it’s part of the maintenance piece of it. Right. So, yeah. But there is a lot of nuances to take a look at, depending, and each property’s different, you know, they’re all different.

Insurance Challenges: Local vs. National Carriers

[00:35:50] JP Fluellen: So this is something that’s going around right now. Are you guys running into any issues with insurances out there? ‘Cause I know right now, especially in Florida, insurance companies are bowing out and taking premium, and then basically one day you get a notice, Hey, we’re out of business. Thank you for your premium. We’re pulling out of your state.

[00:36:24] JP Fluellen: State Farm just pulled out of Florida and I believe there was one other big one too that just pulled out of Florida.

[00:36:32] Tia Lilly: Florida not doing insurance. And it’s the big companies that are pulling out, right? Yeah. It’s more the big. So this is a lot like I get, I do get this like when people arrive on the Cape. They’re buying a house and I will ask ’em, do you have an insurance agent? Oh, I love my insurance. It’s State Farm or whoever. It’s some big company.

[00:36:52] Tia Lilly: I say, okay, that’s great. Why don’t you look at a couple local insurance? And it doesn’t hurt to compare. They always go with my recommendation. I believe most of the time, because we have a lot of great insurance, and I’m always about local business too, but not just local, do a good job. Not just because they’re local, but they do do a good job.

[00:14:20] Tia Lilly: So a lot of people are concerned about that, but we have a lot of great insurance agencies that can write the business and usually for a lot less than the big companies do too. And they’re here. They’re not going anywhere.

How to Contact Tia Lilly at Property Cape Cod

[00:37:32] JP Fluellen: Yeah. So I guess, yeah, if people wanna know more about how to live on the water or if they want to pick your brain, how can somebody get ahold of you if they wanna reach out and see if Cape Cod’s a great place for them?

[00:37:50] Tia Lilly: Thank you so much for even asking that. That’s nice. To make it easy, I would just say go to, ’cause you’ll find all the information, the contact information. I can be reached any way you want. But just visit us at propertycapecod.com and you can even book time there or just call me. I’m very flexible. I’m really all about the other person and what’s best for them. And my team all works the same way. Everyone’s great. So thank you very much, JP.

Final Thoughts: Specializing in Luxury and Waterfront Real Estate

[00:38:22] JP Fluellen: Absolutely. Well, Tia, this has been a wonderful interview. I wish you all the best, grow your team huge, and just dominate that market out there because I think that’s a lot to unpack and I think that you’re a wealth of information for living on the water, if people just wanna think about like, how do I specialize?

[00:02:06] JP Fluellen: ‘Cause that can be scary in and of itself. And then, oh, now I’m sending out referrals. Like, will they ever come back? You know, because we hear a lot of times right now is people are wanting to specialize in luxury homes. But yet they get so used to the small business because it continues to bring income in rather than like—now if you study the course, the success will follow.

[00:39:09] Tia Lilly: Well, I also think it’s how you position yourself. You do it all, but what you show. So if somebody wants to get into luxury, start somewhere in luxury and showcase what they’ve done in that luxury, you can still be selling the other, but you just don’t have to have that front and center. Just put what you want out there, front and center.

[00:39:28] JP Fluellen: Absolutely. Well that will conclude another episode of Success Agent Podcast. And so if you like what you hear today, just hit like and subscribe. Follow us wherever you can find podcasts, whether that’s on Stitcher or Apple Podcasts. And leave us a great review and we’ll catch you guys on the next episode. Thank you for joining us.

[00:39:52] Announcer: On this episode of the Success Agent Podcast, hosted by JP Fluellen. To find more content, go to wyomingrealestatecareers.com. Please also go to Success Agent on Apple Podcasts. Hit subscribe and if you find the content valuable, please share this podcast and give it a five star review. It helps us with our rankings. This has been another episode of the Success Agent Podcast.