How to Avoid Property Scammers! | REIal Talk | The Freedom Show | EP.87

Foreign. Hey everybody. Welcome back for another episode of Real Talk. That's Real Talk for Real estate investing, episode 87. I'm the host today. My name is Chris Danino with the Independent Independent Property Management, which is part of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies. And I'm joined today by with Kayleigh.

Hi, I'm Kaylee Stowe. I'm the new property manager here at ipm.

Yep. Then today we're talking about property or rental scammers and how to avoid them. So this is for from a lens of a property manager talking more so to an applicant or potential resident. However, this is good information for our investor viewers, our resident viewers, anybody potentially interested in investing with us and current clients kind of gives you a lens as to how we operate a little bit. There will be some general disclosures and like, hey, point in this podcast about like how do you deal with this type of situation? But first we'll give you a little background on ipm. So for those of you that are first watching, Freedom Real Estate Group is a family of five companies that are all branded and vertically integrated, including renovations, acquisition, acquisitions, renovations, dispositions and turnkey. So we do renovate properties and rent them and then we sell them to investors like yourselves who are interested in having cash flow, monthly cash flow on assets that are rented and appreciate value and all that good stuff, as well as a property management division that, that manages all of that. And one of the cool things about the IPM Independence property management is we're starting quarter 2 of the year, but also it's our, it's our fourth month of having an apartments division, like a multi family division. So we're kind of branching out a little bit, expanding, including expanding our markets. So Independence Property Management does work for or work with as part of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies managing the turnkeys. But we also are open to other investors in our market that buy that need property management services. So enough with the sales pitchy stuff, let's move on to the good stuff. So ipm, we're a little bit different because or even your experience, you come from more of an apartment oriented like a couple hundred units in a small demographic area, usually in like a couple buildings.

Corporate, right?

Yeah, corporate, yeah, we, we may be a company but we're not corporate. So our structure including like internal operations are significantly different. And then also our portfolio is made up of about 100 multifamily units that multifamily defined here are larger than, larger than 15 units in a, in a complex. So we have 100 multi family units and 580.

Is it 580?

580, 580 single family, small multifamily units.

Like 608.

Maybe it might be, it might be more luck. She'll know better.

I was gonna say, I think it might be 608.

They do, they do this thing where they like we, we add some properties and we break a new record. And I don't even know that we broke a new record.

I see, I double check and I.

Was like, oh, we snuck past 600. Okay. So I don't know.

I have to double check.

We'll double check. Yeah. Regardless, you know, it's anywhere from 6, 580 to you know, 650 roughly of single family, small multis. And that includes duplexes, triplexes, quads and then one 15 unit complex. That's not. We didn't ship that over to the apartments. So our portfolio is pretty significant as far as where it's located. So you said that we're mostly in.

Dayton, around the Cincinnati and the Cincinnati areas. We even have some a little farther north.

North? Yeah. Like northwest.

Yes.

So Pickwa, Troy, Brookville, Eaton. And then we have some as far east northeast as Springfield.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. So Springfield, Brookville, Troy, Pequa, Heber Heights, Eaton. And then it goes out. Hamilton, Franklin, Middletown, Hamilton. We have one in Westchester that's a rental. Cincinnati. And then as far as southeast, we are like Xenia is like the furthest southeast. So it's a pretty significant. It's like 13.

Cincinnati is right there on that border too. It's pretty far.

Yeah. Our furthest property south is literally on River Road in Cincinnati. So literally you can walk halfway across the street and you're in Kentucky and there's literally a river is across the street. Yeah. So it's like you're into water at Ohio River. So yeah, we're pretty, pretty, pretty clustered across southwest Ohio, which is pretty cool. We offer a lot. I mean we're full service property management. The basis of our property management company is we'll rent properties. So lease them up. We'll collect rent and to perform maintenance. Some of the a la carte things. We can pay your mortgage payment for you directly. We can pay your taxes for you directly. We do utility management as part of our standard property management agreement. A pretty extensive resident benefit package for the residents. A lot of value there to our tenants. Yeah, I think that's pretty much.

We have so much.

A lot of stuff. Yeah, we do a lot. And you're in charge of all of it. Yeah.

No wonder I'm tired.

Just kidding. Hey, sorry. It doesn't also help that it's like it's a quarter till two on a, on a Wednesday and it's pouring down rain outside and it's gloomy and like we all like, you're actually, you're dressed, you know, how I normally dress. So today I had court. So like I'm like, oh, I'm dressed a little bit nicer. But like normally I'm like, yeah, a step above sweatpants. Yeah. I wear a freedom hat.

Yeah.

But like it's raining and like it's the perfect day to just like hot tea or coffee and just chill.

Yeah. I'm so happy that I don't have a window in my office because I know I'd be staring at it like, oh, this rain makes me so tired, but I can hear it.

So scammers are a big problem. So let me get into the context here, the content scammer. So I'll quickly define scammers. They scam people, right?

Somebody does something that they're not supposed to do that's not correct that they're taking, they plan on taking something from.

Right. So in the context of what we're talking about here is specifically they impersonate a property management company or an owner and then they illegally rent the property out. So one thing with COVID that change that opened the opportunity for this type of criminal enterprise is Covid kind of pushed property management companies to be a little bit more flexible about how we were doing showings because there was social distancing and you know, in order for us to continue business and keep services, people still needed houses to rent during COVID so we still had to provide services to those that, that needed it. And so we moved to a. It wasn't just us. Many, many companies did this. Realtors do this too.

I've seen it all across the board.

But it's a digital access service that you have to pre qualify. The applicant has to pre qualify, answer some questions, do identity verification in order to schedule a showing. It filters through our office. We're able to verify it, approve it, and all of that. And then they can go out and do the showing and walk to you themselves. Some properties and buildings are the way they're set up. It's not, it's not best for that. Like some of our multi families aren't set up that way, which, that's when myself, you, a couple others maybe will go out and show a unit to make It a little bit more personable, but I'd say probably 90%.

Yeah, 90. Well, it's really nice because they can schedule their own. It's, I believe, show mojo goes until 8pm so when they, you know, they get off work, they can go.

Exactly. And weekends too.

I was going to say the weekends too. They. It's more of their flexibility. So that allows more shows showings to happen because then we don't have to be there in person because, you know, our bandwidth is only so much too.

Yep. And so what the scammers have figured out to do is they impersonate a potential applicant. They impersonate a potential applicant, they book a showing, they take that information and they put it on platforms like Craigslist.

Right.

Sometimes Facebook Marketplace, we can catch them there too, essentially. Places you don't have to verify, you know, because any of these places that we list, we have to verify our contracts. We have to verify that we. That we are allowed to manage the property. So like Zillow, we have an agreement with Zillow, we have an agreement with Apartments.com, we have a. With Trulia, and all these places that most applicants go to get rentals.

Right.

We have agreements with them to be able to post properties there. We also are in compliance with state Ohio listing regulations to make sure that our listings are. Are meeting the standard and what's required by the state marketing. Right. Scammers don't necessarily do that. Right, right. And so in Facebook is what we have. So we did create a Facebook page. So we have our Independence Property management page. We also have. It's not a fake account, but it's. It's an account monitored by our marketing team. That is my face, my name, but dash leasing. And that allows me, quote, unquote, us to post on Facebook Marketplace without it being spammy.

Right.

And also engage with potential applicants in a professional manner. And it comes from a person. Right. Whereas scammers will just post on the marketplace or on Craigslist and when people inquire, what they'll do is they'll actually stack two or three people to move into a property. Yes.

We saw this happen just a couple months ago.

Yeah, well, a couple months ago we had like two or three, like back to back. It was all the same person.

The same person. Right.

And it was all properties in our southern market. And essentially what this gentleman did is he had posted on Craigslist, few unfortunate people had responded. I know you stacked two people moving in on one property, our Hamilton property, and then they had Another one set up for a Cincinnati property, and essentially they had collected a security deposit at a discounted rate and first month's rent at a discounted rate and then had gotten the keys, gone through the process, signed a fake lease. And then we found out that somebody was moving in when they wised up a little bit and realized this isn't independence property management.

Right.

And then they got in touch with us and then we. I think we helped one of them out.

We did, yeah.

The other two, we helped get with the police department to get recoup some funds.

I never did hear back if they did or not.

I don't know. I mean, some of it's out of our hands, you know, so we just try to provide resources the best we can, but we don't post on Craigslist. Like, that's a big thing. And actually the bottom of all of our listings say that we do not post on Craigslist.

All of our listings say that we do not post on Craigslist. And all of our pictures are watermarked now. They are all watermarked.

Yep, yep. And so the goal there is that applicants, if you guys are watching potential residents or people that you may know that have been scammed, read the listings very, very carefully. Because there. There's contact information several places through that. The number may be different on different websites because like, for example, Zillow is when I'll pick on. They make their own phone number.

Right.

So we have a phone number in the listing. I think it's the 4, 6, 2, 1060 number.

I think 1060 or 1069.

Yeah. But Zillow might, like, mask it. They have a different phone number. I know apartments.com has a different phone number. Honestly, they all route to the same line. But those listing sites just try to keep a layer of anonymity.

Right.

How that's structured.

It's also really, really easy to. Not really easy, but if you Google the address that you're interested in, most of the time it's going to pop up with a management company and then you're going to be able to go to their website and then you'll be able to verify it that way, versus if you see something posted on Craigslist or if you see something posted on Facebook, you'll more than likely be able to verify just by typing it into Google.

Exactly. Yeah. So one of the things that we always try to encourage people, whether they rent from us or not, is make sure you know who the management company is. If you can't find a Management company which, because some like owners that manage themselves, they don't list. Under a management company that's an llc, there should be a contact number, ask for verification. I know our office hours a little bit weird, but there's always somebody in the office Monday through Friday, unless it's a holiday.

Right.

In which case we usually let residents know what days we're going to be closed. I know for us, my office is right next to the lobby. If somebody, an applicant comes in and says, hey, I saw your ad on Craigslist. I wanted, I want to call and check in. I'm gonna hop out of my office and I'm gonna say, hey, we don't advertise on Craigslist. This is a legitimate listing, but this is the contact information for our leasing team. Do not send this person money. Do not communicate with them anymore. And then I usually ask them to call the police and turn all the information in the police department for sure. Yep. Craigslist is one of those weird places that we don't like, usually comb. Like, we don't sit there and like look for our listings there.

Yeah. Because we don't post on there. So I mean, really, we don't. We're never on to comb through. And I don't really know what we would be able to do other than listing.

I haven't been on Craigslist in years, to be honest. So one of the big things I would say is like for our investors watching Craigslist, demographic of tenants is not the type of tenant that you would want to have in your property. More than likely.

Yeah. We require certain requirements.

Yeah.

To pass in the credit in the background as well as income wise. And most of the time you are correct, the demographic, it does just not meet the requirements for ip.

Yeah. Well, honestly, like, if we're being clear about it, like the way Google SEO search engine optimization works, if you go to Google, because Google's like the site now that everybody searches. What's Yahoo. Right. So people go to Google, they'll search in apartment for rent, Dayton or house for rent, Dayton. Craigslist is usually not the top five things that pop up. And what that means is that people are scrolling past that or they're going directly to Craigslist to look for that activity. If they go to Google and they type that in, they're gonna find Zillow, truly a hot pads, apartments dot com, homes, dot com, all of the other ones. They may even come up with property management companies. They may list off three or four that are top performers that have used Google SEO. And those are the types of people that we want to try to target for applications because they're the ones that understand and they're not trying to circumvent process. The unfortunate part, this is where it plays into our empathy, where we have to kind of balance, we have to have a dichotomy about how we feel about things is there are people that just don't know. Like, there are quite literally people that they came into web 1.0 and all they know is sites like Craigslist and ebay. Oh, honey.

You know.

You know what I mean? So they're like, I didn't know. I think we've had a couple of those. Actually, the one that we converted, she's like, I would have. She's like, I didn't know to look on this site. And I'm like, you mean you didn't know to look for an apartment on apartments.com.

Right, right. Yeah.

But, you know, it isn't oh, honey situation. You know, so there's. We definitely try to provide some empathy and try to help them navigate that. But like I said earlier, like, there's only so much we can do.

Exactly. We can only point someone in the correct direction or tell, you know, how many times that unfortunately scammers are. I mean, it's not just our company that has problems. It's throughout all of property management. So it's really, really hard. And like you said, it's still to this day, people, oh, on Craigslist, I'm like, don't get on there.

Yeah, yeah. So we kind of have. So our leasing team has like a full, like, disclosure disclaimer thing. When people say they are from Craigslist, like, we send them something that says, hey, we don't advertise there. This is what you need to do if you've been contacted by anybody that's not like one of these two or three people, like, call the police, do this, do that. And most of it's just referring them to other people. But in the meantime, like, we have them on a hook. They reach to us now, like, let's see if I can help you get approved for an apartment.

Right.

And then the other thing that's cool about our leasing team that I didn't actually realize until, I mean, it's an idea I had in my head. But, like, it's already been kind of implemented. If somebody applies for apartment A and they don't qualify and it's because the rent, there's a debt to income ratio there, or income to rent value ratio there if they don't qualify for apartment A. But apartment B is in a similar area. But it's. They could be approved for that one.

Right.

We shift their applications and say hey look, would you be more interested in this one? It's a little bit more fit to the budget. You can probably be approved for this one which is good. It also helps curb some of these scammer situations because a lot of unfortunately a lot of them have already paid money to the scammers.

I don't. I hate that they have paid money. I personally am. Would be a little really cautious. I'm really cautious with my money anyway.

Right.

I'm just not going to be out here willy nilly, you know, Venmo and cash app out to thousands of dollars especially through a Venmo and a cash app. So that can be a little. Because that's typically, you know, where scammers can get them. Or it can be just a zelle payment. I mean any electronic payment that's outside of the application fee or like the website is a little suspicious.

Yeah, yeah. So we encourage any applicant if you feel because our our process normally there's a couple different ways to pay your deposit any monies. Once your application's approved, you'll have access to our online portal where you'll live for the rest of your time with us.

Right.

All of your communications, your documents are in there. Rent payments, you can text us from there. Work order management, all that's in a portal for the, for the tenants. So once they have an approved applicant, we'll go in and we'll turn on their portal and they can start paying their monies there directly. We also have an office you can walk in and you can pay with our Wonderful admin team. Ms. Betty runs that, that front end there, Betty Land. So I mean you can do payments there. You can always meet with a member of staff too that we also have the pay near me system.

Yes.

Where they, you know, you can pay it like Casey's General Store, cvs, Walmart, Walgreens.

Right.

Just take the money up to the register, tell them hey, I've got this barcode. Can you scan it? I'm going to pay this. That's another secure way for us to be able to make sure that we're real scammers are. They may be sophisticated but they don't have systems in place like that.

Not like that. Typically if they're asking you to go somewhere it's going to be like a green dot card and I'm pretty sure. Or it's like a money card or.

Western Union or something like that, which obviously. And I think you may be able to take Painter me to Western Union, but it's still not gonna be the same system. It's gonna be them scanning a barcode that you provide to them. It's not you giving them an account number that you're going to wire money to some random person.

Right.

I would say one of the nightmare situations I heard about somebody got scammed for $1,000 a month rental in Dayton. I think it was. It was when the market was a little bit lower. So it was like a 4, 2, I think it was on 4th Street. And this scammer was pretty sophisticated. They had gotten us for maybe three or four units in like a three month period. And this particular one, like we ended up approving her and moving, bringing her in still. But the total amount that she transferred was almost $2,000. And the part that was like, okay, there was like several red flags that I indicated. Like, well, you didn't think to ask, like when the number changed halfway or when he said his number, his name was this. And then the email you got was from this. Yes. You know, so there was like some red flags on. Like if you just pay attention, you'll be able to indicate and be able to see.

Right.

But the big one for me was go to this random gas station and they have a Bitcoin ATM. And she wired this gentleman $2,000 worth of Bitcoin. And I mean, I couldn't help but kind of laugh. I was like, bitcoin, right?

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I was like, bitcoin. You hear the stories on the Internet about the guy that bought the first piece of pizza ever, or first pizza was bitcoin. You spent $20 on bitcoin, bitcoin pizza. And that pizza is now worth millions of dollars because bitcoin inflated. You know, I was like, we would never ask for rent in bitcoin.

Right.

And if we ever in the future go to cryptocurrency as any sort of form of payment, it's going to be a more stable and versatile payment system than bitcoin. Right, Right. So I mean, we told it, we had to put like verbiage in our leases about how we accept no cash and it's only debit or credit payments or checking account. Like, there's not bitcoin, there's not cash app, Venmo, any of those other sources. Because I. And the thing is, like, I felt bad too because like I would have never thought to put that in a leasing pamphlet.

Well, I wouldn't have either because, I mean, being in property management since, you know, 2013 or 2013, it's. You just don't hear of Bitcoin. And obviously it's new, but I mean, rental payments have always been cashier's check, money order, online payments, like, I remember a good old day, paper checks. Like, we don't even accept personal checks anymore.

Well, the evolution of rent payment has moved from it used to be cash to no cash. And then it used to be checks. Now it's no checks.

Right.

So everything's same as cash. The closest to checks we get is a checking account.

Right.

But even then, like, it's wired through an ACH system where banks communicate and there's nobody's touching anything.

Right, exactly.

But I don't know for the scamming purposes, like, there are lots of red flags. The big one is if you find. The big one, I would say is if you find a listing on Craigslist or Facebook, immediately research the company.

Exactly.

So do your due diligence, because if it's legitimate, it will point you directly to us. At some point, you'll be communicating with the rent me@independent mgt email. Because we have one email that's for all of our leasing efforts. Right. We try to streamline it as much as possible. The other thing I'll encourage, and this kind of puts you in the spot, but ask to talk to the property manager if you're. If you're in question about whether the leasing person is legitimate, ask to speak to the property manager. And if you've done your due diligence. Our property managers are public knowledge. It's on our websites.

Right.

So ask to speak to somebody by name, because when you speak to that person by name, then you can have.

It verified contact form on our website.

We do have a contact form too. So you can fill that out.

Fill that out. And then, you know, one of us would reach out. But if you are looking to speak to somebody, you put in that contact form, hey, I would like to speak to this person. Or I need to speak to the property management or I need to speak to leasing, or I think that that's probably one of the top ones. Another one of the top ones is to personally, I think is to kind of cross reference what they're stating about the property, because you can easily Google property, take a look at it. Because they might be wrong about the number of bedrooms, they might be wrong about the square footage. They might not know a whole lot about the property. So I think that that obviously is another red flag. Obviously, a property management company is going to know what know about their property. They'll be able to answer your questions. It's typically gonna, I mean, one might come from me, one might come from Cath, but it's going to be Independence. It's not going to come from, you know, jdog2417mail.com and it's going to be.

A corporate brand communication.

Right.

And then all of our employees are required to have signature lines. So you're going to see a signature and most of the time, pretty face, so you know exactly who you're talking to.

I need to get my going.

You're new. The other piece of it is when you're doing your due diligence, you know these scammers, when you're communicating with them, they're going to eventually give you the address, right? Whether that you say, hey, I'm interested in this property, or it's them on their listing saying, hey, this is the address. Immediately take that address and plug it into Google. Because if you plug the address in the Google, if it's actually for rent, you're going to get three or four different websites. The Trulia Hot Pad, Zillow apartments.com and when you click into those, you're going to see Independence Property Management. You're going to see whatever property management company that is and then you can call them directly.

Yes. You can also go on to the auditor site. They have it on there. It's free knowledge on who owns it. Even if it doesn't come up as independent property management, typically they can reach, they can reach back out or reach out to, or connect the dots that, oh, this person owns it.

But the scammers, yeah, because sometimes the scammers, they use the verbiage of I own it.

Right?

Sometimes they use the verbiage of I manage it. So you kind of have to pay attention. The other thing is we're all human, so sometimes we have typos. Our team is very, very diligent about trying to type full sentences, have proper grammar because a lot of times scammers don't. The other thing is, if you get to a point where they're sending you a lease, our lease is branded. Most property management companies, leases are branded. And I'm not just saying it says Independence Property Management on it. It has our logo on it, it has all of our information. It has contact information of how it will reach out to us. Anybody can go on the Go and search Google and print a lease for Ohio.

Rocket Lawyer has them for free.

Rocket Lawyer has them for free. Branded leases or leases that clearly have property management companies in play. I have yet to see a scammer actually put our name on a property on a lease.

I haven't seen that either. I haven't seen that with any of the lease. Typically it's like some either handwritten thing or it's just like some word document that you. That it's something that's not very, it's not really thought out and if you read the verbiage is not right.

Yeah. So I don't want to discourage people because scammers is like one of those things. It's not necessarily a new thing. It's just they, they evolve as technology evolves. It's part of our job as a property management company to try to stay ahead of emerging activities like this and try to mitigate and any liabilities as we go. So a couple of things that we do internally is we check properties regularly.

Yes.

We make sure we have people out there. We check and lock boxes. We cycle. We recycle lockbox codes too. So that way there's a primary access code that we all have access to. We'll change that every now and then. So that way if somebody had access before, they can't get access again. We audit our listings on a regular, regular basis as well to make sure we're updating wording as well as at least do an annual lease revision just to make sure that we're still in compliance not just with the state, but also any new fancy things that have come out that we need to be aware of, mitigating. But overall, like scamming, there's always going to be somebody trying to loophole the system.

Right.

And for investors watching, make sure your property manager is up to date. If you don't, if you don't manage with us, like if you're not with us, reach out to your property manager asking like, hey, I just watched this podcast another property management company, Real Estate Division, put out about scamming. What are you guys doing to help protect my properties from this type of problem? Most property management companies, I would say, have some sort of procedure in place to handle this type of issue.

Another thing that I always recommend is take a look around the property. Sometimes property management companies will put their information on a piece of paper and post it in a window.

Yep.

So they know like, hey, we've had some issues with scammers. You need to reach out to this Number this number only. Because if the scammer hasn't been to that property yet, but just knows a.

Lot about them, haven't.

Right. Most of them haven't. And because they verified their identity, but then they have that lockbox code, you know, they're sending that out. So most of the time they haven't been there. And then you're. That person who's going to tour is going to realize like, hey, this isn't correct. This is the actual information. So I've seen that happen a lot too. So that's another thing that your property company could help with.

Exactly, exactly. And we do a form of that. Yes, we have in the past there's kind of been hit or miss whether or not that's the best thing to do.

Right.

But we, I mean all of it. Do all of it. I mean that's what it comes down to. You'll find what works best in your, in your markets or your sub markets for potential applicants that may come across this as you're doing your due diligence. You'll find this podcast. It's very important that you pay attention to the details.

Yes.

I do this when I'm buying vehicles or buying anything really. You always try to find the lowest price. You're not necessarily gonna find the list price on a rental necessarily, but you look at multiple different sites.

Right.

You know, when you're buying a general product, you'll go to Walmart, you go to Target, you'll go to Kroger, maybe like different sites, different places to try to find the best deal. Do that with rentals.

Exactly.

Verify your information. Because if we have syndicated out, if we push the information out, it should be the same on every single. Your website. Yes, and that's why we audit our listings to make sure that everything's accurate and updated. But if you go out there and there's a thousand dollar here, 800 here, 700 here, something's not adding up.

Right. Like the, the deposit is only 600, but the rent's 12 something. Some the little numbers add like add up like that, the details on it. Most of the time rent is not the same as the deposit. I mean that can differ. So it's not always a telltale sign. But yes, definitely pay attention to the little details.

Exactly, exactly. Awesome. Well, that was a pretty detailed how to avoid scammers and kind of explaining how that all works. If you have any questions, there's contact information in this podcast. Feel free to reach out myself or Kaylee. Be more than happy to answer any Questions whether or not you work with us directly or right now, that's not a problem. We'll make ourselves available to answer any questions. If you use other property management companies and you've asked that question and they don't have procedures in place, I don't mind consulting and helping out, making sure that they're equipped to be able to handle that. It's very, very important this market that everybody works together and try to curb this type of activity. I will say, you know, we kind of put a lot of scary details and information out there. This is a non common commonality.

Right. It happens, but not a common.

So we talk about a cluster of a couple months that, you know, have three or four happen and then it won't happen for eight months to a year.

Right.

So over the last four years we've had a cluster of two or three times where people have been scammed sporadically. You know, we rent 15 to 20 units per month. So the grand scheme of all the volume that we do, we're talking about like 1 to 2 per 30.

Right.

Maybe. So it's low, low, low percentage. And it's a maybe it's right. It really is a maybe.

I haven't seen it since, since the incident in January. I mean, in all honesty, a couple of the other property management companies that I've talked to about this gaming was all the same timeframe and it hasn't really happened again since then either.

It's definitely clusters and then usually like you said, it impacts several organizations at once and then it's like they go into a cycle and they don't, they don't do anything. So it's just very important on downtimes like right now we're not getting that type of activity is that we're being very, very thorough and all of the things that we're doing to try to curb that. So that way hopefully it doesn't happen. And the other thing that we do is we have really, we try to have, maintain really good relationships with local police as best as we can. Yes, they're very, very busy too.

Yes.

But having that relationship really helps. When situations come up, we can point them to a person that says, hey, so I know you got to know the detective in Hamilton quite well. Yeah, I think the one in Cincinnati, it might actually have been just the county, I was going to say.

I think it's.

It was just. It was, yeah, I think Hamilton split between Hamilton and Butler.

Yeah.

But yeah, anyway, so we have really good relationships with the detectives that handled those cases. Recently. And you know, they're, they're probably still ongoing cases, to be honest.

But anyway, that's the unfortunate part about scammer.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I don't know, I don't know what the success rate is for them getting caught.

Me neither.

And I, I will say we haven't had the same person twice. At least we haven't had the name of the same person. The same, it might be the same person. It's just they've restructured their brand, if you will.

Right.

So anyway, Clarity, that's, that's the theme.

That is the theme.

So we've kind of gone over everything. But be very, very thorough when you're looking through your properties, when you're going through, when you're, you're an applicant, you're going through some stuff, double check everything. Don't hesitate to call. We also advertise on our website what our address is. So stop in. Not opposed to unsolicited applicants stopping in. Okay. It's one of those things that, it helps build also our brand reputation a little bit because people know we're here. And then for investors, we got you.

Yes. Don't hesitate to ask questions. If you've already asked the question and you didn't like the answer the first time, ask again.

Yeah.

Because most of the time scammers are going to be like, especially with price. They're like, oh, well, I can give you a discount on your deposit of 600. Just, just be careful for that stuff too. I think we might have touched base on that earlier. But those small details, I know that you said were really, really important. So. But Clarity, ask all the questions in the world, especially if you are unsure of it.

Yeah. It's worth a 30 minute phone call to hop on just to iron things.

Right. Because that'll save you a couple of thousand dollars and dealing with detectives. Yeah, yeah.

And then save us the same amount of time. And plus, you know, in normal circumstances we can get an application approved in 48 to 72 hours and you have you moved in within a week or two. So if you go through a scamming process, they can probably move you in the same day or next day. But then the headache on the back end because then we have to go through a whole process if you're not approved and we have to evict you and it becomes a big thing.

Yeah.

Just go directly to the source managing the property. I wouldn't even be necessarily be opposed to showing you a contract that shows that we're legally responsible to manage it. Of course, I have to clear that with the client that owns it, but, you know, we. We can verify whatever we need to. To make sure that you're protected as a tenant.

Absolutely. And as a. And as an owner.

As the owners, too. Yep. Well, cool. It's been great chatting. I'm not sure what the next podcast episode is going to be about, but I'm sure it's gonna be a banger. I think we're going to bring Ashley and I think we're going to bring in a multifamily, a manager, and then she'll do some cool stuff there, too. But anyway, this has been a fun time. We like to end these things by saying, invest smart, live happy. Thank you. Thank you. 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.