Dealing With Difficult Tenants | REIal Talk | EP. 55

Foreign. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Real Talk. That's Real Talk for real estate investors. I'm Chris Sonnino, part of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies. Took me a second there. I forgot the name of our company. It's really bad. It's all right. It's been a long week. Ye joined today with Erica Marlini. Coming back, talk about dealing with problematic tenants and podcast 55 today, by the way. 55. I feel like I've been on a couple of these now, and I remember when we were like, in the single digits.

Oh, my gosh.

Now that we're up there, we're approaching retirement age. It's kind of feel like we've been such a long journey. Yeah. So we'll be talking today about dealing with problematic tenants, or we call them residents. So problematic residents and some of the things that you assist in managing and kind of what we've done and how we're doing it differently than some of the peeps and competitors in the. In the industry. And I want to kind of set the record straight right off the rip. But residents rent properties.

Yeah.

And we help facilitate their experience.

Yeah.

That doesn't necessarily mean that we bend to their will and do everything that they ask of us. Right. Part of your job currently as a maintenance coordinator is you're managing the expectations and the emotions and sometimes the financial obligations of our three main stakeholders, which is our residents, which are gonna be the major topic today. Our vendors who help do maintenance, repairs, and our clients, our owners, who we manage their properties. And you're in a difficult spot sometimes to be able to actually do what's best for everybody and make everybody happy. Thus some problematic tenants that come up.

Thus.

Yeah. So one of the big things I think right off the rip we can probably start with is the com. We're just going to call them the complainers, the ones the residents that you can never truly just make happy. There's always something that they're unhappy about. Give us a little insight, maybe a story.

Yeah. I think that we definitely have a couple stories that I could pull from. I love all of our residents and I do my best for them.

Right.

There's just a few that you're like, there's this one property that residents been there probably for a little while, and they just had some, like, pretty big expenses come up. Like some, like, big things needed to be done. I think they're. They're the capital expenses, the capex ones. So those are, you know, those need to get done. But then there's all the little things that they also want to get done, and those are the things that you can't always make him happy. You know, they want the doorbell fixed. They want this done. But they just got new windows, a new water heater.

Right.

They needed it.

You know, that's a good point. So for those that are maybe newer to real estate capex or capital expenditures, those are usually bigger projects like roofs, windows, siding, lots of exterior stuff, maybe some mechanical stuff that's functioning. It's not a safety issue, but would definitely add to the value of the property if they were. If they were taken care of. Most of our owners usually just have, like, a plan for how they handled capex items. So actually know what resident you're talking about. Yeah. And so that particular resident. Yeah, I remember being a part of that conversation and kind of dealing with some of the owner's concerns with that, like, the owner. So this is a perfect example of, like, balancing the dichotomy of all the parties. The owner was. Felt he's responsible, but he felt responsible to make sure that the owner, the resident, felt happy. So when the resident explained, hey, two or three of my windows are failing, I'm concerned about safety. And, you know, I have children, and I've been here a long time and been a relatively good resident. We only look at their rent, they're paying on time, and we look at the whole thing. The owner felt a little bit of ownership there and was like, okay, yeah, I can probably build out some windows. I can't afford 10 windows, though, you know, and of course, we understand that his margin is, you know, we're talking about two or 300amonth.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

So windows are. Yeah. Two or three hundred a piece. Probably more than that right now, so. Well, yeah, before inflation.

Yeah.

Thanks, Covid. But we had to, like. We had to, like, set the exact. The expectation of the resident. Like, hey, the owner wants to take care of the windows and replace the water heater and fix the garage. And fix the garage, yeah.

Like, that wasn't added.

But he can't do them all at once. We have to do it progressively. So what's the biggest thing? Water heater is the most important thing. And then the next most important thing. Okay, the windows, your safety issues. So he'll replace the three that are broken that are a safety issue right now. But then the other ones that are failing, we will replace in a sequence. I think he ended up replacing.

I think it was like four.

I think he replaced four, which is half and then he said, you know, we'll kick the can down the road on the other ones till at least fall. I think he's what he said that way he can recoup some costs and then plan accordingly. Here's the kicker though. Did the resident care? Oh, no, no.

It was the fact that they weren't all done, you know.

Right, right. So you have the wonderful job of having to listen to her problems to the moon and bring her back down to earth a little bit.

Yeah.

And then reset expectations.

Yeah. I think like helping the residents understand that these, this is someone's like investment. This is their like long term plan for maybe retirement. I mean, it's maybe just one small portion of it. But having them realize, helping the resident realize that like, this is like their income for certain things. So this is not necessarily. They can't just pull all this money and throw it into the house for, you know, I don't know how long you're going to be there for. You know, you know, something might come up in a year and then you're out and then the next resident has their list of complaints. It's just, it's never ending at that point. So just kind of like helping the resident realize, like we're the, the owner wants to make it like livable and a nice place for you. But also, come on, you have to like, kind of give like the doorbell is not that big of a deal. Like we're not going to spend money on the doorbell right now. Get yourself a ring doorbell.

Right.

If you really want one.

Yeah, I think. Yeah. And that's brings up a good point. And there's some like internal processes on the front end. Like I guess if it was a newer resident. Right.

Yeah.

Because we have the same thing from newer residents. I think we had one that just been there for a month or two and she has a list of things, you know, those, those are different. Right. Because they moved in and they identified some things like, hey, you know, I accepted the unit, but these are some things that came in after I moved in. I'd like to get them addressed. That's a little bit more reasonable than I've been here for three years. And just, I think that we're just, we're just renewing her too. So like we had offered to do some upgrades just because she was renewing. Like the owner was willing to come in and Yeah, I think we offered her like a couple light fixture upgrades. And I don't know if that was one of the screen door ones. I don't Remember, we'd offered a couple of things, and, like, we had. The owner had done that, and then all of a sudden, boom. Gets slammed with a water heater and windows. And it just felt kind of like a snowball moment where, yeah, we gave an inch, they took them, they wanted a mile, and we compromised for a couple hundred yards. But, yeah, that's. That's a good point. But the. The key is, like, I'd say a lot of residents just generally don't. They don't care. They. They expect everything. All the time, they expect everything. So one of the things we're doing here at IPM one things, like I said, you've been really helpful doing, is changing the narrative on resident responsibility and accountability, starting with some lease revisions that happened last year or the year before, maybe, where residents are baseline responsible for all maintenance. There's always room for error there. There's some things that owners need to be the responsibility, but we always default to residents. It's your responsibility. This was fine when you moved in. Not working. Now it's your responsibility. Obviously. Water heater's an exception. Windows are sometimes an exception, though. We have had residents that have quite literally said, I think I saw a work order last month for this where the resident was quite literally like, my son did this. And then when we hit her with a bill, she's like, I'm not responsible for that. And we're like, excuse me. Sure.

Like, what?

Literally said, my child did this?

Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. Was it a window? Was that one a window?

Yeah, that was a window.

Okay.

And then, like, the week after, there was another resident that was trying to, like, lie about it. She was like, you didn't do this one work order in a timely manner. And then now this has happened. And it was like, she said that the screen of the window had broken the window. And I was like, I don't think that's how that goes with wind and screens.

Yeah. So there's. There's definitely some, like, investigations.

Like, little, small investigation. It's kind of fun.

Yeah, there's some, like. There's like, a general. Just. Just in property management in general, residents tend to have a little bit of an entitlement.

Some of them do. It's not all and not everybody.

It's enough of the. It's enough of the group.

I wouldn't even say it's a large percentage. It's probably like, 20%, because there's, like, properties that I find. I'm like, we have this property. I've never Seen a work order for this one, so that's great. Yeah, that's great.

Wait, we manage a property on Santa Clara. What?

Yeah. What.

Where's that at? But you know, and it's maybe it's not just our market, maybe it's just the industry in general. I think that's what my point was there that, that residents tend to have like this, like, give me, give me, give me. And we don't usually allow that. It's one of those things where like we're adults, right? I use that analogy a lot. Like we're adults, we read to adults sometimes. So there's some, you know, need to be level headed with that.

And that's something I really like about our company because I feel like that really helps the owners or investors. Like because we have their, they can see that we're caring about their finances, we're caring about what they're putting their money into. So the fact that we hold accountable people that need to be held accountable, I just really appreciate that we do that. And the lease is like very easily laid out. I mean you can, I can go through it very quickly to find like, does it say that they're responsible for this? Like, it's very simple for me to find it. So I mean it's easy for the resident to also see that.

Right? Yeah. We were talking before this about, you know, I think sometimes when residents, when we sign, I have leases signed, they just hit the, they just click through real quick. But like it's broken down, like you said, in a way that's like, these are the terms, like paragraphs. This is what your responsibility is. This is what the landlord's responsibility is. Here's some procedural stuff that you used to be aware of. And they're signing and saying, hey, I've read this and I agree to this. And then as soon as they move, in a perfect example, I'm not going to say the property, but you're going to know as soon as I say this. I was recently brought in the conversation because it's a, it's a, one of our properties is a turnkey property.

Okay.

We had talked previously on a different podcast about like one of the major pitfalls we had with rehab process is that we were having a lot of main drain backups. And so we adjusted some processes and we built in like a main drain scope as part of the rehab on every single property to make sure that there was nothing, nothing predictable blocking the main drain. So that way we can try to mitigate that for our clients in the long term, this property is one of those. This was one of the ones where we had, like, we had done the drain scope, and there was nothing obstructing it, and it passed on flying colors. And resin's been there for two months, and now there's a main drain backup, and it's. It's minimal when it comes to those. Like, there's. There's a presence of some stuff backing up, and you guys had it looked at. We. It's. Try to have. We have a warranty process built in a little bit. So we had that vendor go back out and take a look at it again, he did the same process again. He's like, well, there's definitely an obstruction. Now here it is. Had it in his hand. Show the resident, and there was things being flushed on the toilet that weren't supposed to. Y Resident did what?

She immediately said, I did not throw that down there.

Right. So now we're in this conversation about should it be her responsibility, should it not? I mean, I'm one of those. You know, me. I'm like, absolutely, yeah.

And the thing is, is I so didn't want to have to charge her. Like, that's when. This is when I, like, I try to have everyone's best interest in mind. You know, I tried. I tried to find, like, maybe something had gotten missed in the, you know, inspection. So I asked our, like, renovations team that did the. That did the inspection or had it done. And then I, like, was even going through with Chris about it, and he's like, I mean, maybe the cleaners threw down some toilet or what, you know, the paper towels. And then I realized I had cleaned the property. I helped. I, like, volunteered to clean it. And I was like, I know we didn't do it.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it was just so funny. Like, there was no way. It couldn't have been, because the time that we got it inspected versus when the, like, it was completed, like, contractor complete, all the work had been done was only, like, a couple days, and there's no way. And they would have been able to throw enough to cause a blockage.

Right.

If they did do that, you know, so there was really just no way that it couldn't. It could not have been the resonance.

Yeah. And that, you know, we go back to that balance is, like, on one hand. Yeah, we. Okay, we now know that it wasn't because of a rehab. There wasn't an issue with the rehab, that we can go back to the owner and say, hey, look, we messed up. We're going to take ownership. We're going to cover this. We're past that. Definitely not that. Now it comes down to two people are going to be responsible. So you're going to be the resident or the owner. How do we make that determination? And per the lease, I mean, if we're going strictly by what the lease says. Property was fine before they moved in. We verified that everything was good, they moved in, and now they're having a problem. We found out that there's things being flushed down. It's their responsibility, strictly by the lease. So that's where I. That's where I go to. I'm like, what's the least say?

Yeah.

And you're like, chris. But the lease doesn't have emotion. This doesn't have human interaction and empathy. And so it's kind of an interesting thing. We can't. We can't track how our residents are feeling and being engaged to their emotion. And then also, on the other hand, slap them through things that make them mad. Right. So there has to be a balance there. So now, like, we're in the figuring out, like, okay, well, explaining the situation of the resident bringing. Maybe bringing the owner in the fold, saying, hey, this is what we've done. What do you feel about this? Like, this is a good resident. She's paying her rent on time. This has been her, like, major, first, major issue. The resident may say, hey, you know what? I'll cover half. He may say, I'll cover the whole thing. But that goes back to, like, owner's interest. Like, may only have a 2 or 3, 400 profit margin per month, maybe on this property. Plus, it's a new acquisition. So he just, he's just getting through, like, his first mortgage payments and stuff on these properties. So, yeah, we have no idea what his financial situation is. And his. And his obligation to pay for this is zero.

Yep.

I mean, the reality is his obligation, zero. So he can say no. And then we have to manage the expectation with the resident, and we could have a really upset resident after this, more so than right now. But I know that's one project you're currently working through, is one of many.

One of the bigger ones.

But that, that particular resident, actually, I'm going to segue this into legal obligations. That resident, even in her rant, I was forwarded that message.

Yeah.

Was like, you know, I'm gonna get the attorney involved. And this is what I call Google lawyers, because the reality is the lease is very clear. And I have the honor of being a part of that process of building that lease. So I know it's ironclad and it's, it's good to go. But you know, she's like, I'm gonna get, you know, my attorney involved and you guys can sue me. And it's like we never go that route anyway. So a lot of it's just her vending frustrations and I can understand that. But there are legal actions we can take. And I try not to go legal route for maintenance related stuff unless like they've intentionally damaged the property to the point where the owner is going to be eating years of income and profit to recoup. But like our legal parameters are eviction up to lawsuit. Like we can sue tenants for damages and add things to their collections and all that stuff. But interesting ones are we, we're trying to wrap our head around like DIY residents because owner taking responsibility and saying, hey, this is my fault, I'm going to pay for this is not us giving residents free will to do their own repairs. I want to make that 100% clear. They are not allowed to do their own repairs. Now I'm sure if like we have a plumber living in a property and he has a small sink, like he may tighten, you know, the fixing or whatever, but not a, hey, I'm reporting this problem by the way I fixed it. Like that doesn't happen. Actually, I think of only one resident that's allowed to do that. And it's because they're one of our contractors. Like they don't do repairs. I do remember one situation though where there was a water supply line leak. So the water was. Water was. Oh no, I saw the face. You know what property I'm talking about?

I don't actually. I'm trying to remember.

Oh, you're going to know in just a second because we have like three people that will never go back to that property because of this. So the water comes into the building, into the unit in the basement, like through concrete wall. Like probably a foot and a half of concrete comes in the building and it takes a hard 90 degree directly to a water meter and then it goes from there to the, the rest of the supply of the house. It goes to the water heater, wherever else it needs to go. It was leaking right there where it comes into the house right at the 90 degree. However, it wasn't leaking at the 90, it was leaking somewhere back into the wall like as it came through the building. And we're not talking about, we're talking about a little drip. Little. Obviously there's Water coming in. You know anything about plumbing? It's before the meter. Going to have to have a certified plumber do it. Possibly have to pull a permit probably. Pretty sure we have to pull a permit anytime the utility company involved in some regard because it is before the meter. However, because it's on that side, it's technically the owner's responsibility to repair, not the cities. Right. Because it's after the main shut off. Like the city supply shut off. Yeah, before the meter. So that was the backstory. We had one of our maintenance technicians go out because we always try to center maintenance first because that's cheapest for our owners, is just if we can get it done for 50 bucks, we're gonna do 50 bucks, call it a day. At that point, the picture the resident provided wasn't really clear what the issue was. It was just we could definitely tell there was a small puddle. We saw the meter, but it wasn't like super clear. So we sent our maintenance technician at that point and he's years of experience, looked at it and goes, yeah, you're going to get a plumber. Your supply line is leaking before the meter. We sent a plumber, a new plumber. By the way, we're testing out a new plumber. I think it was his first or second job with us.

I still have no idea.

Oh, resident. He, he went in there. According to the resident. Resident was already upset. I had a guy here yesterday and he wasn't. And he didn't do this and was like threatening to not let our plumber in. And we're like at this point, and this is where I lay down the hammer. I'm a little bit more assertive, great work. Than other people in the company where I'm just like, listen, you can't not let us in. At this point. I start pulling out legalese from our lease and all this stuff. And you have to let us in because there is damage to the property at this point. You have to let us repair this and if you don't let us in, that's fine, but we're going to do 24 hour notice. We are going to enter this property. Property whether you want us to or not. This is also why I don't manage maintenance, by the way, because she's definitely have a softer touch. Those things get managed. Resident didn't like that too much. There was some altercation between her, the gentleman that was living there and the plumber. And the plumber looked at it, took a picture, gave us a quote. But then also in the same Sentence said, and I'm not going back to that property to find somebody else to do it. I remember, there it is.

What is it?

So we had to go get a different. First off, we're like, we try to salvage it. Like, oh, come on, please. You were already there. Like, I'm giving you the approval. Can you just go right back in the door and do it? The owner doesn't really have much of a say at this point. Like, we have to get it fixed. That's one of those emergency situations where the owner can push back, but, like, we have to get it done. The resident wouldn't let him. Like, well, first off, he's like, I'm not going back. Sorry. We get another plumber, and the resident at this point's going, I'm just having my uncle do it. And we're like, no, thank you. No, no, no. We have to get. We have to get the city on the phone. Like, you know. You know, there's going to be a permit that we have to pull. And the resident's like, well, I already called the health department. And I don't know if anybody knows this, but I called the health department after he said that, and I said, hey, listen, you guys, I know you guys have your process. Absolutely do whatever you have to do. Understand, I can provide all documentation. This is what's happening, and this is what we're doing to try to remediate the situation. And by the way, this is within 72 hours of the work order being reported. We're not talking about a week. We're talking about mere hours and days. And so I let the city know, and they were like, you know, I don't think I've ever actually just had a property manager just call us and tell us that they just have a difficult resident and that they're handling the situation. She's like, honestly, I haven't even seen the claim come through yet, but I do see there was a call from that number, so this is probably getting processed. She's like, but just let me know how it goes. And that was it. Like, I. I called them back to let them know, like, hey, this has been resolved. Here's a copy of the invoice. And like, I don't think they even responded to that. Like, it was done, but that was a. That was a situation. And then from there. Oh, from there, the resident reported, like, issues with siding, and all of a sudden the roof is falling off and all of these other things started snowballing off of this, and it was just. It Became a lot to manage. But honestly it was. It all started because of that plumbing repair. And I'm. I haven't heard from that residential a while.

No, they've been doing really good. They have one situation going on right now, but not.

Not a big blow up thing.

It's all good. Taken care of. Getting taken care of at least. Yeah, Yeah.

I think overall the team handled that really well. I remember, I remember that day because you were like, whoa, Chris, Chris, what's going.

I think, Yeah, I think I walked into it like what. I didn't know anything was happening until right now.

Yeah, it was, it was definitely an interesting project.

And I just want to give a little shout out because we have two other people that I get to work with and we kind of act as a team. We all kind of do the same thing in a sense. We got Johnna and Lou.

They are wonderful.

They're so great.

Yeah.

They really take it on. So I'm thankful that I get to work with them because we have, what is it, like 560 properties.

Yeah, yeah.

Our units that we manage. Like, there's no way I can handle all of those.

Right.

Work orders. So the fact that we have a team that is as good and handling it as much as we are, I think it's great. So that's the reason I didn't know about that one is because someone else was handling it.

Yeah. Somebody else handling. For the most part. Yeah. And unfortunately, because you're local, like, because those team members are virtual team members. We're local. Like sometimes you have to handle the fire. That is local. Because our office is local. Like our office is right in the middle of our portfolio.

Yeah.

So we have randomly residents coming in, coming in the office and they're very, very rarely is a resident coming in because they're happy. Yeah, I wish they would.

That would be fun.

I thought about just having like a stack of thank you for coming in gift cards just to give residents that are just happy for being here.

Yeah.

But that hasn't happened yet. I think maybe one or two are like, hey, I'm just here to pay my rent and that's cool.

Yeah.

So unfortunately we have the pleasure of being office folk that have to deal with that. And you. I actually, I think the one, the example we did earlier with the windows. She comes into the office.

Yeah. She comes in a lot and she gives me a lot a list of things that she's upset about. So that has helped my customer service very much, being able to work with that. And those Kind of situations, really.

Yeah.

That's what helps me the most.

Yeah. One of the difficult things we're dealing with right now, and we have. This happens more. It's happening more during COVID for some reason, but illegal subletting. We've had two units in the last month where the resident moved out and just handed their keys to somebody else. And that person moved in without notifying. Without even notifying us or anything. Like, we were following up because a rent wasn't paid the next month. And, like, we open the door and we're like, that's a new face. And they're like, oh, yeah, I just moved in. I'm like, no, we've had a resident there for. It's like six months to a year. They're like, oh, no, no, no. That person doesn't live here anymore. Like, neither do you. So, like, we're having to navigate that process with that tenant. And, you know, we try to, you know, first off, we get on the last resident, like, look, that's illegal. You can't do that. It's in your lease. No subletting. So then, honestly, they're responsible for the rent, like, at that point. Yeah, they love collections, I guess. But then the new person, like, if they're decent people, like, we'll keep them. I'm not going to. I'm not going to put a property into vacancy status if they're good tenants. Yeah, it's a little bit of a red, actually. Not a little bit. It's a red flag that they just moved into a property. So we're definitely very, very cautious about how we approach that. But that, I think, has happened twice in the last month, which is really weird. I don't know if there's just like a. I don't know. I haven't searched the Internet to see if there's, like, people advertising that as an income source. But, yeah, I don't know. That's. That's an interesting one. That makes for difficult tenants too. Difficult tenant experiences, too. There was probably one, probably three months ago where they put in a work order. Like, the person gave him access to the online portal. They gave him a work order. We went to call the tenant, and they were like, well, I have to check and see what my schedule for the work order. And then I guess they had to call the. The person they rented to.

Oh. So they were like, really?

Yeah, they were like, real scheming. I'm just like. And then we showed up, and then we found out, like, what happened is a cat was going to update the number, the phone number, the person that reached out to update their phone number. And then like, oh, and also, I need the name changed. And we're like, what? Why do you need the name change? Because they weren't the same person anymore. We're just like, goodness gracious. Yeah, they get a little bit creative.

Yeah.

So back to a couple of things that we're doing with residents that are a little bit different. You know, we talked about the ownership, and they sh. I'm not gonna say they share in the ownership of the property, because that's not how that works, but they share in the accountability of how the property runs, which I think our owners appreciate. I think I could speak for the owners there. But one thing that we do with that is we look at the tenant holistically. Actually, we. You and I just talked right before we came in here about some of the things that we're helping train the rest of the team on doing. You know, Jules, the person in our office that manages rent collection, she's not a part of the maintenance process, but maintenance isn't a part of rent collection either. But, yeah, we look at rent sometimes in determining how this resident really cooperating. These little nitpicky, like, my light switch or this little thing like, should we make the effort on somebody that's behind on rent? It hasn't been very helpful. Intensity.

Something that you've taught me is that a lot of times when residents are, like, guilty of not paying their rent, they like to put in a work order, like, well, you're not, you know, doing my work order, therefore I'm not going to pay rent. So it's like, a way for them to feel, like, justified that they're not paying their rent. You know, so it's just kind of like.

Right.

Do you have you help me, like, realize that kind of stuff?

Right. And that's where the legalese comes back out again, where it's like, these are two separate things. They operate completely separate of each other.

Yeah.

You know, your obligations to pay rent, our obligation is to fix your maintenance concerns if it's within reason. And, you know, there's some blurred lines there. And then, like, tenants have the right to withhold rent, but they have to go through a legal process to do that, which I don't think we recently talked about how that works. But you can't withhold rent because a light doesn't work in one room. Right. It has to be a safety issue that I don't think residents necessarily realize that at the time I'VE gone to court for that. By the way, that process is called escrow, by the way. Resident rent escrow. The times that I've gone to court for rent escrow, we provide all of our documentation because we take stellar records about every communication about everything we've done, every vendor we've contacted, their responses. And I've never actually, only one time have we ever lost an escrow case. And the only reason why we lost that escrow case was because the resident was pregnant. Oh, well, it was a no heat call. The resident was pregnant. Now, we had serviced that particular AC that. That furnace, I think 12 times. So even though we were working on it, it was a. It was a high urgency to get repaired. And this is, like, years ago. This wasn't, like, recent. It's not a new process. And there were some, like, sticky transitions. We had just taken over the property and we weren't fully involved. But that's like, the only time that we've ever lost an escrow case. And even then, like, the resident already wanted them. She had already moved out. She was just trying to not be charged with back rent. So we had already moved on and gotten it fixed and went through the rest of the process. Residents are very interesting sometimes when it comes to their level of expectation versus reality.

Yeah. That's why taking such good notes is so important, because then anyone can kind of, like, hop in. Like, if I'm handling. Because maintenance coordinator, you know, handling that. But Chris needs to jump in because now it's a legal situation. Like, documenting everything that we've done throughout the whole process is so helpful. And then just. Yeah, just communicating really well. Communication is, like, the biggest thing. And my job is communication to the. The owners and to the residents that everything is getting taken care of. And that's. It just puts out. It, like, prevents any fires that could come up by just the communication efforts.

Yeah. And beyond that, like, one of the hardest things to do for me personally is being empathetic. Like, I. I care. I care a lot. I almost care too much about certain things. But being empathetic to somebody who's not understanding your point of view when you're actually trying to help them. Like, I don't. For me personally, that kind of puts me in a spot where I'm just like, okay, well, we'll just not do it, or, okay, well, well, you got to pay for it. Like, I'm less inclined to help somebody that's not kind of helping. See the middle ground. But you've. You and the rest of the Maintenance team, actually, the whole team. Very, very empathetic.

Yeah, definitely. We. For me, it's like, I'm kind of empathetic by, like, nature. So I've had to, like, kind of learn where to place it and where to kind of, like, hold back. Like that one example where you're talking about earlier about. I didn't really want to charge the resident because she was really. She was very nice and she, you know, she was just genuinely. She was keeping me very updated. So it's like, oh, well, I don't want to do that to hurt you. So, you know, I have empathy. But then when it's a situation again, that sometimes it's just like, well, there's really no other option.

Right.

So just. But putting it in a delicate way, you know, like explaining the facts, explaining where it is in the lease and things like that, you know, that's the best you can do to try to kind of, like, have a middle ground of empathy. But, like, this is my job, you know, I'm not gonna, like, gut the owner. Because you're a nice person.

Yeah. Allowing. Allowing all parts. Parties to be heard. And then, like I said, you. Finding the dichotomy, the balance to all of it, to be able to say, okay, here's your list of 10 things. Maybe not 10 tasks, but like, these are your 10 concerns from the resident. And then owner has these three concerns and they overlap here. And the vendor has this, you know, stipulation, where can we all meet in the middle and agree that this is the compromise and move forward? Because all that has to be actionable. Like, we have to agree to stuff and then also be able to do it. And sometimes, like, the residents like, oh, no, I need all of these things done. And we're just like.

No, no, it's just not available.

Yeah. The hardest thing to do is to tell somebody that's angry that they're not going to get their way. Unfortunately, we have to do that.

Yeah. Well, that's. Again, it kind of goes back to the communication aspect of it all. You just. I realized that if you're genuine with people and you're genuinely like, I'm sorry, but this is not available. And this is why it's not available. Typically, people are like, all right, I get it. I mean, of course there's people, there's the one off that are more challenging. But just genuine communication and not acting like a robot really helps in those situations. Make sure that people understand your point.

Yeah. So I want to give you a little bit of props because there's another situation I thought of that was very, very current. Like, actually, I think we're still kind of in the tail end of working this one out. And the compromise had to happen. And part of it was a portfolio issue of being able to get her service quickly. We had a resident move in, and that move in was a little bit sticky because there was a couple things at the rehab that weren't 100% that we weren't like, we weren't aware was not a face value thing. There were some things in the happening in the background that wouldn't have been identified in an inspection. Like as the lease is already signed and the resident was moving in all at once. So we're like as like literally the day that she's moving in, we're like having to call her and shift some things and like say, hey, you can still move in, but we're going to be in your business for a couple days because we're having to manage a couple things that we weren't expecting. She was really, really cool about it, right? Really calm. I'm like, oh, this is gonna be a rock star resident. Usually residents are like, oh, this is a major inconvenience. I want compensated. She was very, very cool. We're like, all right, this is gonna work out. Until she got moved in. And then it was. She completed move on, movement, inspection, and everything was actually pretty good. I think there was like a few minor things that were super cosmetic. And we're like, can you live without that? She's like, I'm just documenting. Right, all right. Restore faith, this residency. Great. And then like I said, she got fully settled and we got through all the, the, the little knick knacky like, repairs that had to happen as she was moving in. And then she reported that there was airflow coming in underneath her door. I think it was her front door. And she took a picture of it and I was like, how did we miss that on inspection? Well, you can literally see underneath the door. And it probably is just the hustle of bustle of just everything that was going on that property that we messed up. So we sent our guy out there to try to get that addressed. And at first he's like, okay, well it's not just the front door. It's also the back door. Back door is not as bad as the front. But actually when rain, it was raining. When he went, he's like, it's actually hitting the door, running on the door and then into the, like into the kitchen and we're like, oh, no, that's not good. No, he wasn't able to mitigate it right then.

Like, there was also something, like, very specific on the door that didn't look good. And the resident was like, very much like, this needs to be repaired.

Yeah, that's true.

Like, I'm ocd. I can't deal with it.

So he. So he primed it. Like, he went ahead and, like, made it look a little bit better. But the weather has to cooperate in order for the paint to dry. So there's other factors going in. Like, we weren't able to mitigate everything in one stop. But then the hustle, bustle of everything else was going on, schedules. We didn't necessarily lose sight of it. It was more of a, like, we need to do this. But then the resident got really demanding and kind of rude.

Yeah.

And a little bit disrespectful. And I don't know if she'd threaten anything legal, but, um. I know, I know. Usually when the resident gets to that level, I'm involved. So the fact that I know about it means that she was pretty hostile. Because we have such a great team. They handle so much stuff that you included that normally things will get to me. Like, when it gets to me, when it hits my radar. Yeah, I'm, like, having to figure out everything that's going on while everything we've done. And we started thinking critically, like, okay, residents really upset. She just moved in. Not a great moving experience. Owner just bought the property, too. As the first tenant in this property, it was one of our freedom properties. So it's like, okay, now we're managing owner expectations and that we're in the full swing of emotion, trying to find light through. And I don't know who. I don't know who came up with it, but somebody's like, why don't we just deliver her something temporarily?

I think it was like you and Mariah worked on.

Yeah, we're like, let's just give her, like, one of those little sock things that you just put up against the door to stop. Stop the airflow until we're able to get our maintenance technician back with the proper piece of equipment to actually put under the door properly so that way we can stop the airflow and make this resident happy cost effectively for the owner. We hashed a plan. You guys coordinated it, and the plan fell through because we delivered it to the wrong unit. It was a duplex, and I guess the number wasn't on the door. And so we delivered it to the neighborhood neighbor came into the clutch, though, because neighbor was like, hey, I think this is yours. And the new resident took it, put it on her doors, and now we're in the process of tightening that up.

Yeah, I think we like finished it. Yeah, we finished that project now.

So that was like a scramble of like three days of like a little bit of chaos trying to get that all coordinated Properties in Cincinnati, which is at the southernmost tip of our market, next closest, like submarket to that is like 35 minutes away. So it's pretty far from our normal market. We're merging into that area. So it was hard to get somebody there fast if it was in Dayton. We have a whole bunch of people in this office that will stop what they're doing and drive and make sure a resident's taken care of. Cincinnati is a bit of a stretch, but we handled it and it's turning out well. And I think other than the resident changing the locks on us, I think it's actually that's the new development that happened this week.

I didn't know that. I think we even gave that resident an option like, okay, do you want to buy them yourself or reimburse you, or do you want us to stop and bring it down to you the next day? Because we couldn't do it the same day. So we were trying to be flexible and really helped us resonate. So, I mean.

Yeah, and I'm an Amazon junkie, so I'm like, look, you can buy yourself or we can deliver it to you, or I can have a two day ship to you. Which in that case, two day ship would have been Saturday. And she was like, I want to deliver it. And so we delivered on a Friday. Didn't realize it was messed up till Monday.

Yeah.

So by that point, like, we just called the other resident and it all worked out.

Yeah, she had already handled it.

Yeah. So it worked out. That was just one. That was, that was a fresh one. That was a newer run.

Yeah, that took the whole team, really, Because, I mean, I'm. I didn't drive down to Cincinnati and deliver it. It took like another part of our team to do it and.

Right. Yeah. Jason, one of our ops guy, was like, okay, how can we do this economically without adding to other people's schedules? And we're like, oh, Mariah's going to Cincinnati.

Yeah. Like, just.

So it just worked out and, yeah, perfect. It added 30 minutes to her route. But at that point it's like, you're the closest. There would have been two hours if I went and done it. Two and a half hours. So then the team tries to keep me from doing stuff like that too. So. But yeah, no, that's. Yeah, those are a couple of things that we deal with, with problematic tenants in general. But I have to say, like, these are. We told, what, four or five stories here? Yeah, we manage 600 residents. Yeah, six or six to 700 residents because, you know, some. Some are multiple adults. So the fact that we only have four or five stories off the top of our head, you know, there's. It's difficult to manage emotion for one person, let alone, you know, almost a thousand.

Yeah.

And that doesn't even touch our owners. Like, that's just residents. So when you throw in the mix that we have, you know, 287 owners, you know, it's. That's a lot of people that have feeling actively about what we do on a day to day. And like I said, you and your team handle it with ease. I say with ease because you make it look easy. But I know it's. It's a lot. It's a. It's a lot. It's a lot.

There's definitely times that I, like, I take things home a little bit and I have to really, like, all right, it's okay. You did your best. You know, like, don't take it too personal. So that's something, you know, that you have to, like, kind of work through and grow through and. Yeah, but. Because if you take your job and you care about people, take it seriously and just care about the people, it's like you want to do everything you can for those people, but sometimes you're never gonna meet someone's expectations.

Yeah. Yeah. You and I connect on the arts and comedy and show business a little bit. We have some similar interests.

Yeah.

Actually went to a comedy show. We happen to be in the same room, and we didn't even know until the day of. Yeah, yeah, but you. You said that, and it made me think of a, like a little round table thing I watch where there's a bunch of actors sitting in a room just talking about their experience of being actors. And I love that stuff. I feel like I was an actor in a past life or something, but I'm a bit of a comedic person too.

But.

But they were talking about, like, how sometimes you get so much into character that it physically affects you. How, like, your mental health and your physical, like, you go home and you're still that person because you've literally tricked your body into being somebody else. And maintenance is. That's a Little bit. You. It doesn't matter what you're. How you're feeling that day. It doesn't matter. You woke up and the coffee pot was empty because you forgot to buy coffee yesterday. Ultimately, like, you have to put on a face and you have to say, okay, yeah, I'm going to hit this in a perspective that shows empathy, even though I'm a cranky person today or the other way around. You're. You're like. You are the office joy. Yeah. You're right up there with Miss Betty with, like, the happiest people in the office. Getting on a hard call and being able to smile, shake it off, and go into the next call with a smile is a really hard thing to do. Now, Lou, on the other hand, I can never tell what emotion Louis she is. She is the most. But she's funny. She is so funny when she says stuff. She's hilarious. Yeah. But she never, like, I can count on one finger the number of times I've seen her smile and actually remember, like, oh, is Lou laughing? She's. She's smiling right now. And then I called it out, immediately went away. She was like, I'm just me. Yeah. So that whole team, you and Lou and Johnna handle that with ease. By extension, Cat and the other members of the team that have to handle complex resident situations or owner situations. I have to say, I'm a little bit jealous because it's hard for me to do. Is actually difficult for me to get off a different difficult call and then turn around and be happy about the next one. Same with wins. Like, we talk about, like, in my seat, like, I handle a lot of fires, a lot of the most difficult situations for this company and this family of companies. Hard to see the win sometimes. So that's why we talk about wins every single week in our meetings. We're really trying to say, hey, look, this is what the team's doing. Because it's hard to see sometimes when you're so close to the pit that there's good stuff going on.

Yeah.

So you got kudos to you and the rest of the team, and you guys had a heavy lift. You talk about, you know, in your vlog that we recorded earlier that you've only been here for 11 months.

Yeah, 11 months from yesterday.

From yesterday. So you guys had a huge undertaking getting maintenance to where it is now from. I think we were up. We were up over 400 work orders, I think.

Yeah. It was like 350.

Feels like a decade ago. Yeah, 300 work orders. Not even A year ago today, and now we're sitting at 150, which means that, to put that in perspective, that means that, you know, 10 of our portfolio is 50 doors. Right. So that means that a couple of those. A couple of those properties probably have one or two small things or residents have put in a couple things. That means that less than 30 of our properties have work orders on them, which still seems like a lot, but when you really think about it, it's really not. And a lot of those are cycled through. You know, we have like a two week turnaround average for work orders from creation to billing. So you guys do a lot in there.

Yeah, it's great. Working, working on it, getting better every day. We've got it down to almost like last week. For the last couple of weeks, we had almost under 100 work orders. And yeah, that was like. Yes. And then just things come up, you know. Yeah, the rain, when it rains a lot, you can expect a lot of work.

Yeah, yeah.

Just people have problems with old houses, you know, we have old houses.

Well, another thing. Yeah. TV has credit to kind of bring a little bit more. 150 sounds a lot. But we're also going to spring. I mean, we just went through Ohio's third winter.

Yes.

I always joke, our, our. Our weather in Ohio is like a Tolkien book where you have like, you have breakfast and second breakfast and mid morning tea and then lunch and second lunch and yeah, we have like four versions of winter in the state.

It's very exciting.

Yeah. So we're finally back on the mend and it's been raining for two weeks off and on. So you guys get a lot more work orders in the. In the rain as the seasons. And then also we have H Vac servicing that's going on too. So there's an influx of H Vac services as we're preparing to get furnaces decommissioned and central air and AC units up. So yeah, there's a little bit of flex there.

So just taking care of things before it becomes a problem.

Yeah. So to recap, residents are fun.

We keep it exciting.

But without residents, we'd be out of job.

That's true.

So they're arguably the most important aspect of our organization and their involvement, engagement and how properties run is crucial to our success. So their emotion and feeling and all that matters. There are difficult tenants. Percentage is small, but there are difficult tenants. And one difficult conversation can set the tone for the rest of the day. So how we handle those situations is very important and it sets the pace for everything we do, but we cannot control human emotion, no matter how hard we try. Though the pharmaceutical. Pharmaceutical companies probably say differently. You cannot control human emotion. So managing those expectations is definitely an art. And there's some fun stories. There's some stories I go home and tell family and I'm like, you'll never guess what we had to deal with today. Yeah, of course, I don't like to make other people's pain my joy, but I have to. You have to laugh at it sometimes.

You gotta cope with it. Yeah.

And just like I said, be empathetic. Create solutions, act on those solutions and keep it moving. But I think that's it. Yeah, I think we've covered. Covered a lot, a lot more than what my notes even had down. So we like to end these things with a little invest smart, live happy. See ya. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions and information on this show are not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss.