Turning a Commission Check Into Long-Term Wealth in Broward County

A few weeks ago I read about Steve David, a Realtor who has closed on 621 properties over a 53 year career and spent more than two decades among the twenty largest residential property owners in Broward County. He spoke at the Florida Realtors convention this month, and his entire investment philosophy came down to one sentence. If it breaks even, buy it.

I have thought about that line since I read it, because it explains a pattern I have watched play out for 23 years in this business.

Every closing produces a check. For a seller, it is proceeds. For a buyer's agent, it is a commission. And every single time, there is a decision buried inside that money that most people never notice they are making. Spend it, or put it back to work.

David's math is not complicated. Gross income minus expenses. If the number clears zero, the deal works. He bought a waterfront property years ago for $160,000. Today it rents for $4,500 a month and nets him about $35,000 a year. He still owns it. Two apartment buildings he picked up together for $285,000 eventually became a combined $2.8 million position. None of that happened because he found some secret market nobody else could see. It happened because he kept applying the same simple test, year after year, decade after decade.

Here is what stands out to me. Most of my clients already understand the mechanics David used. They know what a property is worth, what rent a neighborhood supports, and how financing works, because they just went through it themselves. The gap is not knowledge. It is what happens to the money once the deal closes.

I have represented buyers who took their savings, bought the house they needed, and stopped there. I have also represented clients who bought that same house, then turned around two or three years later and used their growing equity to pick up a small rental in Davie or Cooper City. Same market. Same rough starting point, in some cases. A very different balance sheet ten years later.

That does not mean every closing should turn into an investment property. A primary home that fits your family and your budget is worth plenty on its own. But if you are sitting on proceeds from a sale, or weighing what to do with a commission, or wondering whether that second property actually makes sense, the test David uses is worth running before you decide either way. Does the income cover the expenses. If yes, that is a real option, not just a nice idea.

One thing David mentioned that I want to underline for anyone thinking about a condo purchase as that second property. He tells buyers to check the building's reserves, the ownership mix, the default rate, and the potential for a special assessment before they commit. That is not overcaution. With reserve requirements and milestone inspections reshaping condo economics across Broward, that homework matters more than it used to.

If you are trying to figure out whether a property in front of you clears the bar, or whether now is even the right time for you personally, I am glad to sit down and run the numbers together. That conversation costs nothing and it tends to save people from decisions they would otherwise regret.

Roger Averbuj, Broker | Prestige Heritage Realty | (954) 663-8461

Source: Florida Realtors, "Turning commissions into lasting wealth"