125: Building Your Real Estate Team and the First-Time Landlord's Guide to Renting a Single Family Home with Janet Portman

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Our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com. Welcome to win the Women Investing Network, the podcast where you can learn from successful entrepreneurs, business leaders and real estate investors who are winning in business and life. Learning from others is the fastest way to grow your skills, gain knowledge and avoid pitfalls so you can win. Join our hosts, Elizabeth Embry and Jason Hartman. Elizabeth is a seasoned real estate investor, experienced corporate executive and skilled mentor. Jason is a self made multi millionaire investor, entrepreneur and highly acclaimed thought leader. Together with their successful guests, you'll get the tools you'll need to win.

Welcome to another exciting episode of the Women Investing Network where we help women win in investing and in life. This is episode number five and I'm your co host Elizabeth Embry. Today, Jason's going to be speaking with Janet Portman, talking about a guide to renting out a single family home for first time landlords. Whether you're a first time landlord or you have several properties and have been owning properties for a while, investing in real estate, I find that it's always great to have a refresher of information. There's always things that are changing, new ways to attract tenants, new ways to address problems. And so Janet's going to be covering a lot of good food for thought for a first time investor. There's going to be a lot of gems in there for you as well. If you haven't had a chance to listen to our first four episodes, I strongly encourage you to go back and listen to those episodes, download them and subscribe and please rate, review and give us feedback. We'd love to hear what your thoughts are. We're on the early parts of this podcast and we've got an a huge queue of amazing speakers, entrepreneurs, people that are giving their insight and strengths on how to build your business, be an entrepreneur, be a credible career person, communicate more effectively with your family, health, longevity, the whole nine yards, and of course, real estate. There's always that cornerstone of real estate investing, so I'm really excited where the show is going. Speaking of real estate investing, as new investors talk to me, they get overwhelmed with the idea of how the heck am I going to invest remotely, how am I going to invest locally? And they get overwhelmed pretty quickly with all of the things that need to be done, all the people that they need to interact with, how do they go about finding the right real estate and then how do they support it once they've actually acquired it? And it really comes down to A team that you need in order to be successful. You've got to build a relationship with this team and these people will be your ongoing support. If you're investing remotely, I strongly encourage you to leverage the investment counselor and Jason Hartman's company so that you can identify the great inventory that they have. But they'll also walk you through the process and introduce you to a lot of key people along the way so that you can really find the right investment for you. They'll help you assess and strategize the types of investments and the areas that you should be in. But if you don't have an investment counselor and you're really trying to figure out how to do this on your own, there's really six members of your team that you're going to need to have. The first is your mortgage broker. You're going to have to identify what you can afford, what your debt to income ratio is, what your scores are. They'll be able to walk you through all of that. They'll be able to determine other creative ways that they can help you get into a specific loan type, what the current interest rates are, is an arm rate for you, is the 30 year fixed, a 15 year fix. All of those things that they'll discuss with you, of course, that you'll need a real estate agent, a local agent that really understands that area. I strongly encourage you to deal with people that are on the ground and really know the market. There's a lot of due diligence that comes with investing remotely and we'll cover that on a later episode. But really your real estate agent needs to understand not only the neighborhoods that are good, but the streets that are good. Even the sides of the streets that are good sometimes. Because I Remember in Washington D.C. about 10 years ago, I was walking down the street and friends were like, oh, we can't walk on that side of the street on that road because it's not a good one, Right? So every market is very specific and unique and you need people to understand the specific and unique nuances of a given area. If you're looking at investing there an insurance provider. Now if you're lucky, you're going to find an insurance provider that can work in multiple states, in multiple areas and can provide you one policy for all of these properties that's pretty rare. You may end up needing to find the best price and the best coverage for you and the property that you have in a specific area. You may end up needing to go with a local person. Also, you'll need Legal help. Now, not everything requires a lawyer, but especially if you're buying without a real estate agent and you're going with a specific direct contract, you. You definitely need somebody that understands the real estate laws in the local area. And then, of course, your tax person needs to understand how to take advantage of all of the tax laws that are not only national but also local in the state or in the region that you're investing in. My personal preference is that the CPA is also a real estate investor as well, so they really understand how to use and leverage the tax laws that are most favorable to you. And then the last piece of this is the property manager. Now, if you're investing locally, you may want to function as your own property manager. Even if you're investing remotely, there are opportunities for you to function as your own property manager. But remember, you're going to have to be responsive to your tenant's needs within the letter of the law that is local to the area that you're investing. And, you know, one of the challenges you might have if you are investing remotely and functioning as your own property manager is not being able to pop over when there's a problem or showing the property. There's ways around this, of course, and that's for another episode as well. But the property manager role is critical, and this is where Janet goes into landlording and functioning as a property manager, it's really critical that you are able to meet the needs of the tenants, the. The relationship that you have with your property manager in a remote location. If you define the types of communication processes that you need, the duration, the cadence that you might need, you're going to be better off. You need to build the relationship with your property manager because they're the person that is certainly going to have an enduring relationship with not only you, but with your tenant. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jason.

It's my pleasure to welcome Janet Portman to the show. She is an expert who has authored several books on landlording. And one of the books that we're going to talk about heavily today is Every Landlord's Legal Guide. We'll discuss leases, deposits, fair housing laws, repairs, rent, privacy, terminations, disclosures, various state laws, and she has written under the NOLO Press banner. And you've probably heard of nolo. I've used their website extensively. They've been around for a long time. Great company. And, Janet, it's great to have you on the show today. Welcome.

Thank you very much.

So let's talk a little bit about what landlords need to know, especially in today's somewhat treacherous economic climate, I'm sure we have seen more tenant defaults and problems with people paying the rent nowadays, because these are just tough times out there. And my statement there is somewhat anecdotal. I don't have any specific stats on it, but I just know it from experience. What are some of the things that landlords really need to know about when screening tenants? Maybe we'll start there.

Okay, that's a good place to start because that is actually the most important part of any landlord's business is choosing the tenant. If you make a mistake, then you're setting yourself up for all sorts of problems down the line which can not only harm, but actually destroy your rental business. So it pays to spend a lot of time screening carefully. And that begins by knowing what questions you can ask and what questions you can't ask. What I'm talking about here is fair housing. You talk to any landlord who's been in the business for any length of time, he or she will tell you that fair housing is the elephant in the corner. If you make a mistake with a fair housing issue, you are likely to either face a complaint from a fair housing group or a lawsuit from a disappointed applicant. On the other hand, if you don't know which questions you can ask without fear of legal problems, you won't get the information you need to choose the right tenant. So the most important thing is knowing. Knowing what you can ask in the fair housing context.

Right, Right. Janet, I think the fair housing laws are very easy to obey and comply with, and this should not be an area that a landlord ever has a problem with, in my opinion. And believe me, they don't want a problem with this one because it's rather serious. So what are some of the things landlords can and can't do as far as fair housing?

Well, they can certainly ask any question that has a legitimate business motivation behind it, such as, what is your current income? Will you give me the names and contact information of your current landlord and your employer? Landlords can ask for credit reports. They can even ask for more detailed reports called investigative background reports. What they can't do actually, though, Jason, and sometimes this is pretty surprising to many people, and it's not that easy to know. They can't ask questions like, are you two married? In many states? They can't ask questions like, what are the ages of the children who will live here? And what is their gender? They can't ask questions like, this is an adults only community Are you comfortable with that? They can't even do things that they might think are actually well intended. Such as, I see that you have. I think you would be more comfortable in this particular area of my property. That's called steering. And even though the landlord might think that it would be better for the kids to be on the ground floor, for example, they can't do that. So some of the questions in a fair housing context, you're right, are obviously ones that are easy to learn and avoid. Others are surprisingly not intuitive. And that's why landlords need to spend a little bit of time learning what the law is.

I have to confess, I have never heard that you can't. I've never done it myself, I don't think, but I've never heard that you can't ask the ages of the kids. That's sort of an interesting one.

You wouldn't want to do that because you wouldn't want to suggest to your applicant that that is a factor in your decision making. If it becomes a factor in your decision making, it gives the applicant perhaps reason to think that you may be discriminating on the basis of their. Now, in fact, in this example, suppose you turn them down because they simply don't earn enough to just to pay the rent. They may think that once they answered your questions about their family, that your real reason had to do with the age and sex of their kids. The fact that it didn't is not going to prevent them from complaining and maybe resulting in an investigation of why you turned them down. In other words, you never want to give anybody a reason to think that your decisions are based on anything but sound and legal business reasons. That's why you don't ask about the kids. You simply want to make sure that the rental is big enough for the number of people, but the age and sex of the kids is none of your business. And you don't want to give anybody an opening to claim that you use that as a basis for a rejection.

Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So name the protected classes, if you will. Obviously race, religion, familial status. Maybe you want to go into that one a little bit because we sort of just talked about it and all the other classes and then maybe talk a little bit about the more complex or newer ones like sexual orientation. That one, I think is a big one, but the other one is weight, obesity and things like that. Is that a protected class now?

Well, it is in some states, but somewhat indirectly it is not under the federal guidelines or the federal rules, but in some states, and in particular California, it may well be. Now, in California, we have an old Supreme Court case, but it's still good law that prohibits landlords from using what's called arbitrary discrimination. And arbitrary discrimination has been held to cover things like refusing to rent to people with long hair or beards, men with beards. It really, in its classic form, it means refusing to rent to somebody whose personal characteristic or traitor is the reason that you turn them away. So, for example, somebody who is obese, that's a personal characteristic or trait. If you had a rental policy, either explicit or not, that said, I won't rent to overweight people, you could very well be violating California's ban on arbitration. I mean, arbitrary discrimination.

That's interesting to know, I suppose, like tattoos or piercings would fall under that even, huh? Yeah, okay. Absolutely. Okay, good. So landlords need to be careful. Again, These things are easy to obey.

But not so easy. No, I have to tell you.

Well, you know, I think they're easy once you know about it. You just got to be really smart. But tell me where landlords mess this up, maybe. And tell me about sexual orientation. Is that a protected class?

Now, it is in California and in many states, but not under the federal laws.

So the federal law is the most lenient, I guess we should say. And then some states add to the federal law and make it more stringent.

Yes. And some states, cities within states become even more protective. Now, to get back to your original question, the federal rules under the federal Fair Housing act prohibit discrimination on the basis of race or color, religion, national origin, gender, age, familial status, which includes pregnancy and having children, and physical or mental disability, which also includes recovering alcoholics and people with a past drug addiction. Now, again, I would say to you, those aren't so simple.

You're right. Those aren't so simple. They're not.

They're not.

Interesting. Janet, one of the other issues, especially in Southern states or states that border Mexico, what about legal status? What about immigration status? I mean, this is all over the news nowadays.

The federal position on that is that being in the United States without permission, namely without legal status, is not a protected class. It doesn't fall within any of the protected categories that we just enumerated. And from a federal point of view, it's not illegal to ask an applicant, can you show me that you are in the United States legally. However, California is a huge exception to that. It is not legal, period, for a landlord in California to inquire about legal status. And there are significant Penalties if a landlord does. Certainly Arizona does not have that protection, nor does Texas. California does. We also saw in years past these statutes have pretty much gone away. We saw several cities, starting with the city of Hazleton in Pennsylvania, not a border state, attempt to pass a local ordinance that would penalize landlords. I think they would face a fine and actually lose their business license if they rented to people who were in the country illegally. That was struck down as an impermissible attempt to enter the area of immigration law, which the federal government occupies exclusively. And there were about two dozen other states which had, I'm sorry, two dozen other cities that passed similar ordinances. A few in California, including the city of Escondido. None of them have survived. But it was an attempt on the local level to basically make it impossible for people who did not have legal status to rent in those particular cities. And as I say, they were either withdrawn when the legal landscape became very clear or they were thrown out by the courts.

What about advertising your rental property? You want to make sure in the ad, obviously, that you comply with fair housing and that you're not saying things like fair family area or perfect area for singles or something like that. Right, right.

You don't even want to say things like near the Catholic Church.

Good point.

That may in fact be true. But what you're doing is sending perhaps a subtle message that you want people of the Catholic religion and not others to apply. Now, that would be a conclusion that would maybe be reasonable or not. The problem is that if you say that and someone decides to challenge you on it, you may ultimately win, but you will have spent a lot of time and trouble fighting and defending yourself. So you want to avoid even getting entangled in any kind of a claim.

Very good point. What else about advertising the property besides fair housing laws?

Well, you want to make sure, from a practical point of view, that you give enough information to whoever's reading the ad that they will self select and not bother you. It's a delicate balance to reach the market that you really want to rent to and not exclude people whom you might ultimately want and at the same time make sure that you don't get deluged with people who aren't suitable and who just take up your time.

So how do you do that?

Yeah, well, you want to certainly give the rent. You want to explain what the amenities are, if any. You want to make sure that if your rental is, for example, in an area that has great shops and restaurants that you mention that. You want to make sure that if the town has an outstanding school system, you mention that you'd want to make sure, for example, that if you are near a major employer, you'd want to highlight your proximity to that employer. And if that employer has a housing office in which they help their newly arrived employees find housing, you probably want to work with them. And the same would go for a university.

So you want to self select because you get a lot of calls in these rental ads. So it's good if they self select and you tell a lot about the property in the ad. Of course, keeping in mind fair housing laws and making sure you don't step.

Over those, you want to make sure that you state the deposit, which can be quite a bit of money these days. Many states. Most states limit the amount of deposits, but it's not uncommon to ask for twice the monthly rent. And in many states that's perfectly legal. When you add that to the first month's rent, we're looking at several thousand dollars in many cases. And if you require a deposit of that size, you should say so so that people who don't have it aren't going to call you and take up your time.

My understanding, at least with California, I believe, although I haven't dealt with this directly in years, is that a unfurnished property, you can have the first month's rent plus two months, as is the highest allowable security deposit. And then if it's furnished, I believe it's. Although I've never rented a furnished property. It's three months rent, right as the security.

That's correct. And if by chance your tenant has a waterbed, it's hard to believe that too many people still have them these days. But you can add another half month's rent to the deposit in either furnished or unfurnished.

That's interesting. Can you do it with a fish tank or anything like that?

No.

Okay. Just a waterbed.

Right.

And what about in other states? Do those vary a lot?

Yes, they do. Some states don't set a limit at all. And when that happens, the market will limit what you can ask for. If you ask for much more than a couple months rent, you just aren't going to get people because that's just too much money. And some states specify only one month's rent. It's important to know what you can ask for. And of course you can find out by looking at the 50 state chart in every landlord's legal guide from Nolo, which gives you that precise information.

Excellent. I had one tenant who applied to me. I remember this many years back where he had just recently declared bankruptcy and he wanted to pay me the rent like six months in advance. Not a security deposit, but advance payment of rent. Can he do that? Can I accept that, Jason?

It depends on the state. Now, was this by chance in California?

Yes, it was.

Well, California specifically does allow that. It allows the landlord to collect up to six months rent in advance. Honestly, I'm not sure whether the statute was written with this situation in mind, but I do know that it's written in a way that makes it legal for the tenant to make the offer. I'm not sure it's legal or it was intended to allow the landlord to make the demand. But in California there is a specific provision allowing the tenant to do that. But you know, there's another way that that situation could be handled that would be certainly safer for the tenant. Because suppose the tenant puts that amount of money, gives that amount of money to the landlord, and then after the second month, the landlord lets the place deteriorate or there's some major habitability problem that the landlord doesn't deal with and the tenant is entitled to leave and wants to leave. If he does leave, he's got to sue to get his money back. I mean, giving you six months rent in advance puts a lot at risk. The better thing to do would be to put that rent money into an escrow account in a bank with instructions to release it to the landlord on the first of every month.

Yeah, that definitely shifts the power in the landlord's favor in that situation. No question about it. He what do people need to know about renting a property that's still occupied? Can they show it? Can they gain access? What I've done sometimes over the years is I've just sort of bought the tenants cooperation, saying I'll give them a rent reduction if they help me lease it to a new tenant. Sometimes I've had that, I've seen it written into leases in advance that upon their last 30 days of occupancy that they'll agree to cooperate with showings of the property. And I'm sure this varies state by state.

You need to do both. You need to find out what the rules are in your state for access to rental property. And many states are very, very small, specific. They specify how much notice you have to give when you can enter and for what reasons. And in California, in fact, there's even a separate set of rules regarding showing it for the purpose of selling or renting to new tenants. So the first thing you need to know is what the structure is in your state. After that, there's absolutely nothing wrong with saying within this structure. I appreciate your cooperation. I know it's a hassle for you to have people coming in, and to compensate you for the aggravation and annoyance that this will cause, I will reduce your rent by a certain amount. That is a very smart thing to do, because there's nothing more like the kiss of death than to show prospective buyers or tenants property that has resentful people living there already. What gets communicated is, you know, not the nice granite countertops, but the message is this landlord is a pain in the neck to deal with, and you're likely to lose those prospects. So what you need to do is both. You need to know the law in your state for entering occupied property, and then you need to put on your street smarts hat and get the cooperation of your current tenants by compensating them for the aggravation of traits into their house.

What should people know about dealing with tenants and accepting and rejecting applications?

The most important thing to know is that if you have ordered a credit report or a background report, but most people are really just dealing with credit reports. And if you decide to reject somebody based in part or wholly upon what you read in the credit report, you have to send them a federally required notice called an adverse action notice. It has to have specific language in there appraising the tenant of the basis for your decision and where they can get more information. We have such a form in every landlord's legal guide, and it's very important that you follow that rule and send that letter if the credit report played any part in your decision to reject or impose a higher rent or increase the security deposit or do anything negative with respect to that client.

I've always said that landlords should be keep all the applications they receive from a tenant, and some people just kind of throw them away. Hopefully they're shredding them because they've got confidential information on them and they only keep the application of the tenant they've accepted. I believe that the best practice is to keep all applications in that file, right?

Wrong.

Oh, really?

Oh, no, no. Is it because look at every landlord's legal guide.

You know what? I know what you're gonna say. Yeah, I didn't think of that.

On the federal disposal rule, Believe it or not, that's what it's called. And employers and landlords are required to get rid of material like applications and credit reports when they are no longer needed. Now, that, of course, raises the question at what point are they no longer needed?

Right.

Quite arguably, the tenant you rented to five years ago, who's been gone for four years, is not likely to be a part of your business life ever again. And you not only need to get rid of his file, you need to do so in a way that will ensure that it can't become the subject of identity theft.

Right, yeah.

Shred it. Shred it. Or if you have all that information on your computer, you need not just to delete it, because we all know that deletion is never really deleted. You need to use a program that will wipe the disk. It's very important that landlords know about that rule and constantly go through their files and get rid of information that's no longer needed.

Yeah. You know what? I would just want to tell you where I got that from. I remember years ago, I used to be a member of the Apartment Owners association, and they said, keep all applications. But this was before the big movement on identity theft and privacy and all of that stuff. It was really before that all came about. And their thinking was that if you turn down a tenant, you should be able to produce or at least refer to that application and say, look, these were the reasons, and you should write notes on the application as to why you didn't accept that tenant.

Well, that's true, but the disappointed tenants have only, under federal law, two years in which to bring a lawsuit. So once that statute of limitations has passed, there's really no reason to keep it.

Do people, Janet, insulate themselves from a lot of these problems when they hire a property manager? I mean, I know the law of agency, but the nice thing is it puts a third party in between them and the tenant. So they're not making any statements to the tenant, and they're not asking their manager what is their familial status or anything crazy like that make them discriminatory. Talk to us maybe a little bit about using property managers and how that impacts the whole thing.

Well, the value of a property manager from a liability point of view is not so much that you've got a firewall, because oftentimes you don't. The law of agency and principle is very, very tricky. You might think that because you've turned the whole show over to a management company, you've got a firewall, and you might find yourself in particular situations, sadly disappointed. The real value in terms of liability is that you've got somebody else's insurance policy to respond if something that the management company does blossoms into a claim or a lawsuit. If you pick the right management company, they are insured, you yourself should be insured so that any unpleasantness that follows from what the management company has done or not done is at least handled by your insurance companies. In the end, you know who actually ends up paying the judgment or the settlement. As I say, it's not always very clear that you have protected yourself by hiring somebody, but it's. It hardly. It really doesn't matter that much if you've got a policy that's going to pay.

So you've got their errors and omissions or professional liability insurance. That's what you're referring to, right?

Right.

Anything on finders fees for people that are not using a manager and they're wanting to get some help in renting the property. What I've seen a lot of times is people will use like a handyman that they have a good relationship with and have the handyman put up some signs for him and maybe help them find a tenant and kind of, that kind of thing, and pay them a finder's fee. Is that legal to do that? I've never really known the answer, but I've heard about people doing it.

Yeah, it is legal. You're basically paying somebody to find you a client, a tenant. Where it sometimes gets tricky is sometimes there's an attempt to provide that the fee will be clawed back, so to speak, will be forfeited if the tenant turns out not to, for example, honor the terms of his lease by breaking it and leaving early. In other words, landlords get a little greedy in the sense that they say, okay, I'll pay you this fee, but only if everything works out. Of course, the person who's done the finding may not have done the screening. So how is your handyman going to know that this person has a background that you didn't check out thoroughly and the person ended up being a bad tenant. So that's where things get tricky. But there's nothing wrong with paying somebody to advertise and bring you somebody. I think as a responsible landlord, you have to realize that at that point, whether you rent to him, this applicant or not, it's your responsibility and not something that you can put on the shoulders of your finder.

Right. And so that finder that maybe handyman or whoever it is, doesn't have to have a real estate license or anything like that, Right?

Right.

And you can pay them $200 or something to find you a tenant, right?

I think so. I mean, there are states that require management companies or resident managers to have either a license or be working directly under the wing of a licensed person. But if you're really just talking about doing nothing but bringing me an applicant, I doubt that that would fall within those rules.

What about co signers? On the subject of having a cosigner, I find this a lot in student housing type of properties where the student goes away to college. Student rentals can be extremely lucrative for landlords because the rent to value ratio is very high in some cases. And the student that's renting the property, they are harder on the property. There's more maintenance to consider usually. But they also don't have any credit. Usually they're just a new adult and they don't have a credit report. And people worry about them being flaky and they want to get their parents to co sign the lease. And a lot of parents are more than willing and understand that it's fairly normal to co sign. But if they do co sign, can you really hold them to it?

Well, if you've done a proper cosign agreement, yes. The one in every landlord's legal guide is inclusive and it does the job. The important thing to remember as a landlord is that if you've got a parent who lives in New York and the kid is going to school in Arizona, you're not going to to be able to easily go after the assets of that parent in New York. Unless either you're willing to go to New York to serve them with papers for the lawsuit or you've done what we do in every landlord's legal guide's agreement which is to make the child the agent for service of process for the adult.

Oh, how interesting.

That's a little lawyerly trick you didn't mention at the beginning of your of my introduction. But I am a lawyer and that enables you to serve the child which brings the parent into the lawsuit and then they do have to respond or they will find themselves with a default judgment against them. So that's one way to deal with an out of state parent. The other thing you would want to make sure about is that the out of state parent actually is worth something. So you would need to and a sense screen your co signer, at least financially, as carefully as you screen your tenant. You'd want, for example, tax returns. If that parent doesn't have any money, they're not going to do you any good even if you can't.

Right. But I do have to really compliment you. That agent of service little lawyerly trick there you just mentioned is absolutely brilliant. Thank you for Sharing that, that's really, really something good. So co signers, you can check their credit report and they sign the lease and then sign this addendum that you talked about. Right, right.

They agree to be financially responsible for the consequences of, or financial consequences through the rental.

Let's talk a little bit about the bad side of it. And I just have to comment that in 23 years of being a landlord, now myself, I find that people really overplay some of the bad sides of it. But it can happen. And you're the attorney, so you're obviously the careful person and the one that doles out all the caution, as you should. But let's talk about eviction and maybe about collections after evictions, too, when things go wrong. What should a landlord do? How do they do it? They serve a notice. They can hire an attorney service to do this. What should they know about that part?

Well, if the rent hasn't been paid, for example, or the tenant apparently has a dog and the lease says no pets, the first thing they need to do is contact the tenant and if the tenant isn't working, willing to immediately pay the rent or get rid of the dog. The first step in any eviction process is service of a notice, a legal notice that tells the tenant that if they don't pay the rent or get rid of the dog within the legally specified amount of time, and it varies by state, that the landlord will proceed with an eviction. Landlords who don't take that necessary first step and go right to court will find that they'll have to start all over. They'll waste a lot of time and money. What landlords also need to keep in mind is that in almost every state, when they actually get to court, their case is going to be put ahead. It's going to jump the line of all the other civil cases, almost all the other civil cases, it's going to go through much faster than a personal injury case, than a contract dispute between businesses. And that's. It's intentional and it's legal. It's what enables them to get into court quickly, although it may seem rather long if the tenant fights it. But it's certainly much, much faster than any other civil case. Now, the thing they need to remember, though, is that the price they pay for that expedited trip through court is that they have to follow their state's rules very, very precisely. And if they don't, they're going to have to stop and start all over, which is why it's very important to start right by serving the termination notice according to law and then handle the eviction correctly. If they live in California, they can use Nolo's book on how to file an eviction, which has all the forms with instructions. There is no such book for other states, so most landlords in other states are going to have to hire an attorney, but the price they pay for a fast trip through the court is that it's a very tricky and complicated.

Janet, this has been some great advice. Thank you so much for sharing it on the show. What would you say to wrap this all up and tell us where people can learn more?

Well, people can learn a lot about the landlording business@www.nolonol.com. that's the website of my company, Nolo Press, and there you'll find lots of free articles on all sorts of issues important to landlords. You'll also find sample chapters of the landlord and tenant books that I've written. You'll see the tables of contents, the forms, and you'll see great descriptions of the books that we've talked about today. Every Landlord's Legal Guide and First Time Landlord. And it's been a pleasure to talk to you too. Thank you so much.

Thank you Janet. These books are great. Everybody go out and get them. They need to be in your library. Appreciate having you on the show, Janet.

You're very welcome.

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