1592: Dollar Loses Value On Biden News, Real Estate, REI Software Tenant Turner with James Barrett

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode 1592. 1592. Thank you for joining me today. Today we are going to talk about today technology, some more technology to help you manage your portfolios better. So I think you will enjoy this with our guest in just a moment. But I must tell you that it is time right now to take a sigh of relief. A sigh of relief that you have made the right decision to be investing in the right types of income property. First off, you have the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. But guess what, you also have the best segment in that market. What do I mean by that? Well, I always say compared to what? And right now we need to compare it to a couple of other sectors in the income property game. One of those sectors would be senior housing. Now, I take a little bit of a split view on this, I must tell you, because I think that there is a place for the sort of exactly right type of senior housing. I do believe, as I've said before, that a lot of this has been priced into the market already. We've known about the graying of America for decades. Much of the supply has been offered. There are some niche opportunities in this space though. But the other thing about it is we also have the factor of people aging in place. Technology has really enabled the aging in place movement, if you will. And I think it could be called a movement. A movement? Yes, it's a movement. A movement. Here we go. That's the sound of a movement there, folks. Anyway, I'm looking at an article from Globe street that says the pandemic continues to challenge senior housing. Well, you can thank the government of New York because that's who really brought the problem to light. And I mean that in a bad way. Usually bringing something light is a positive thing. That's what I do as a consumer advocate and Believe me, I paid the price to be a consumer advocate for you, for our listeners, because I believe in it. I believe in that firmly, strongly, and I will continue to do it even if I get a lot of crap and lose a lot of friends. Doesn't matter, because, hey, it's the right thing to do. At the end of the day, what you had in New York, of course, when the COVID era, if you will, was in its full swing, and obviously it has its ups and downs, but, you know, when it was new and more unknown and more concerning than it is today, I think that's a fair statement. You had, of course, New York City telling, let's put these COVID patients in the nursing homes, right in the senior centers.

And then the infections ran rampant and.

Sadly, that cost lives and it cost.

A lot of hardship. So thank the government again, as usual.

You know, it's the old saying that Reagan quoted many times back in his day. He said the most dangerous phrase is, I'm from the government, I'm here to help.

You know, that's the one you got to watch out for.

It really is. But yeah, you know, this article just talks about how these facilities are experiencing higher vacancy rates now. And you know, people are.

And I don't know if the article.

Is saying this, I'm saying it, but people are rightfully concerned about that. So breathe a sigh of relief that you are not in that sector because you followed my advice and you purchased good old, proven unsexy, but proven wonderful single family homes, the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. Now, an interesting thing, and this, this is not a political statement.

Famous last words, right?

Not a political statement, but I just get sick to my stomach every time the media portrays. And it's amazing how it's just this overwhelming conspiracy, really, it is a conspiracy to announce Joe Biden as the winner. He is not the winner yet, folks. Not the winner. But that's for another show and it's for past shows.

We're not going to talk about that today.

It's absolutely ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous. But let's not go into that. Let's not go down that rabbit hole. What I do want to tell you is this. We've talked a lot and I've taught you a lot over the years about inflation, about my trademark strategy, inflation induced debt destruction, and you all know about that and what a wonderful investment strategy that is, of course. But I must tell you, I am looking at a graph, a chart right now that says it's entitled this World Currencies Gain against US Dollar after Biden win. Note that again, we do not know if Biden won. But fine, let's leave that alone. Okay, the subtitle of this chart, change in value of Foreign Currencies against US Dollar upon confirmation of Biden Win with an asterisk.

Okay?

And it says at the bottom, the asterisk references from November6 closing to peak on November.

Oh, that's only the dollar value is what the asterisk is for, not for.

The Biden win statement, which is a total fabrication at this point. But fine, it probably is going to happen because there's just so much, so much of the ridiculous world wants it.

To be that way.

So fine, of course our trading partners.

Want it to be that way.

They prefer someone who's a softie, who's going to say, hey, listen, you give my son a consulting gig for 2 million a year and we'll make you a great trade deal. We're not going to be tough like Trump was. We're going to be easy. Just sell out the American worker. You know, no tariffs, no equalization of prices. Go ahead and, you know, devalue your currency to increase your exports to the US to make them look cheap here artificially so we can have more Americans lose their job.

I don't care.

My name is Joe Biden. I take bribes. Okay, fine, right.

So, you know, that's what we've got, folks.

That's what we've got. But we have what we have, so get over it. All right, so what this chart is showing us is that the dollar declined after the Associated Press, the official election.

Committee in the United States, apparently.

And I guess they've taken the place of the Supreme Court, of the voters, of everybody else, and the vote counters and everybody, the AP News, you know, a private organization, of course, after they announced the Biden win, guess what? The peso rose in value by 2.5%. The ruble rose in value by just over 2%. This is all against the dollar. Okay? And the Canadian dollar rose in value almost 1%. The yuan rose in value half a percent. The euro 0.2, the rupee 0.13, and the yen 0.1. Now, in the yen is a country, you know, the Japanese yen is based on a country that has the highest debt to GDP ratio in the civilized world. In the big economies of the world.

I don't know, there may be some.

Other small economy that has a 230% debt to GDP ratio also. So what is that showing you? That is showing you that Biden Is inflationary. That's what the markets say. And I would agree with that because Biden is more of a spender than Trump. So that's inflationary. But it's also showing you that the dollar is viewed as a less important, less secure, less meaningful currency if Biden is the president.

Why?

Well, I would draw a conclusion to that. It says that Biden is weak. He's not an America first president, he's an America second. And give my kid a big consulting job for 2 million a year. First president.

That's what he believes in.

So the dollar got weaker. Right. Instantaneously upon the announcement by the official election committee of the United States of America.

Oh, wait, sorry, the Associated Press.

That's, I guess, the official source now. Yeah, it is. All right, so interesting, just so you know that. Because it affects your investments. Right. Also, Wall Street Journal is saying that US homes are now selling 17 days faster than they did last year. It says high numbers of tenacious buyers across the U.S. now remember, all these stats are typically about a month old, at least if not older than that. But you know, still valid because, hey.

I'll just tell you anecdotally that we're still seeing it.

Okay? U.S. homes now selling 17 days faster than last year. High numbers of tenacious buyers, the article says, across the US Are wasting no time snapping up. Snap. Did you like my sound effect? I did that with my own fingers, folks. Snapping up, hey, not bad. New homes and in doing so are dragging down the time homes spend on the market. And there's no signs of them slowing down over the coming months. According to Zillow, houses are typically on the market for 12 days. Did you hear that? 12 days more than two weeks faster than the same time last year. So the market is en fuego. It's on fire. One more note on breathing a sigh of relief for the types of properties you own for being in the right place. Folks, I am looking at an interesting infographic about apartment buildings, the new COVID 19 design ideas and requirements based on the new world in which we live. And wow, these apartment owners are having to spend an absolute fortune gobs of money on this to allay tenants concerns and to reduce to mitigate their own risk because they can be sued over this stuff. So are you breathing a sigh of relief? Ah, yes. Let's do that again one more time. Ah, sigh of relief that I followed Jason Hartman's advice. Yes. Doesn't that feel good? It does. Okay, here's something else that's going to feel really good. You need to attend our webinar tomorrow. If you're hearing this on Wednesday, the day it was published tomorrow and or on Sunday. So this webinar is coming up and where do you go to register for the webinar? You go right here. You go to Jason hartman.com/sweet home because it's all about sweet home Alabama. Okay? And we've got brand new construction there. We have got low cost, brand new beautiful homes in Sweet home Alabama. Jasonhartman.com sweethome attend our webinar tomorrow or on Sunday or both. You know, it's like the Kennedy campaign, another Democrat back in the 60s. Of course they used to tell the voters in Chicago vote early and vote often. Joe Biden on the other hand, says vote even if you're dead, I'll bring you back to life just so you can vote for me. Yeah, pretty, pretty good. That's a miracle, I tell you. That's a miracle. All right, without further ado, let's get to our guest and let's talk about some good real estate technology for you. Well, you know, I love great real.

Estate technologies that make it easier and easier for us to self manage our properties or sometimes even manage our managers. Well, today is no exception.

We've got the co founder of Tenant.

Turner and we're going to talk about getting tenants into your properties, making this easier. You know, like I've told you before, if you told me I could self manage a property 2,000 miles away, a property that I've never seen with a tenant I've never met, I would have thought you were crazy 12 years ago. But now I've done it many times and so have many of our clients. So we've got James Barrett here and he's co founder and he will give us a demo. James, welcome. How are you doing?

Great Jason, thank you for having me on the show. I think you summed it up perfectly. With the power of technology and automation, property owners, investors and real estate can manage their properties without physically having to be there. And that's why we created Tenant Turner. So that way people have the control and the ability to get good quality tenants without physically having to meet them there at the property without having to drive cross country or without having to expose themselves to any of the, you know. Yeah, exactly. It's a new era we live in, right?

Yeah, exactly. So by the way, I just want to tell everybody for a special offer on this, just go to jason hartman.com turner t u r N E R and that's our special link for you today. So. Jasonartman.com T U R N E R Turner. All right, take us through the demo here. And I think we're going to go in kind of a chronological order, so. Yeah, tell us more.

Yeah, absolutely. So with Tenant Turner, the goal is to automate the leasing process. So we market the properties, we accept the leads from sites like Zillow or Hot Pads or Zumper or Facebook Marketplace, and then they end up here where we can get their contact information added to our CRM. You know, so our customer relationship management tool, which allows us to follow up with those folks and get them pushed through the process to ultimately get to a scheduled viewing.

Is the CRM built into the system or is it someone else's, like another CRM tool that your users use?

Yeah, great question. So the CRM is built into Tenant Turner, but we do have integration. So if some of your folks are using like a Rent Tech Direct or a Tenant Cloud or a Buildium or other property management software, we can certainly integrate. But with the leads, they're going to live within the Tenant Turner CRM.

Right, right. Or, you know, they could use just a normal non property CRM probably too. So good.

Okay, exactly.

So non real estate CRM.

That's right, exactly. And so as many of you guys know, particularly in the single family space, when you're, when you're listing a property, you can easily get 50 to 100 leads who are going to inquire about your property right out of the gate. So something we're very keen on is pre qualifying them and making sure that we're only scheduling people to go view that property that meets your criteria. Somebody might be a good fit. But if they can't move in for six months, we hope that this property is leased within a couple of weeks. Certainly they were looking at things like income requirements or pet, but you can configure this questionnaire to your heart's content and we can dynamically ask for any sort of additional details around income. They have pets, how many pets they might have. If there has been a bankruptcy, an eviction, a judgment, or anything of that nature, we can certainly capture the details of that. We're going to track where your leads are coming from. So this is particularly more important now more than ever now that Zillow has started charging in many states in order to have single family listings being posted. So part of our process is we're going to get your property on Zillow and Trulia and hot pads, homes.com, zumper and Facebook marketplace, apartments.com, the list goes on. But if you're having to pay for any of those services, we want to make sure we're telling you where you're getting your leads from and ultimately where you're getting your leases from.

So does the system syndicate, like, do you create the post inside the system and then it syndicates it to all these different platforms?

You got it.

Okay.

And so it's a really great tool because if you're just using like a Zillow rental manager, you're only going to the Zillow rental network and then you're having to manually post to other places or not get all the leads you could otherwise receive. And it's just, it's nice to have it all in one place for you. So in this case, you can just assume behind the scenes Tenant Turner went through the validation checks to make sure the person is a good fit for the property. And because they were, we can now access either your calendar, your leasing agent's calendar, whoever is going to show that property to that person. And here we can see only the times that you've made yourself available for them to go Take a look at it. Once that appointment gets booked, calendar invites go out through calendar integrations with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook. And it's one way to see a property these days is obviously in person showings. But tenant Turner can also facilitate self showings using electronic locks and lockboxes where we've seen a significant uptick in that adoption, you know, since the pandemic. So once that prospective tenant has gone through the process to get themselves interested into a particular property, get themselves pre qualified for the property, you get a notification that somebody is now interested to take a look at it. This is your leads dashboard for your active rental. So the example that we're using in this demo account is Grand Drive here and I've got a qualified lead in James Barrett who has already scheduled a viewing. And the ultimate goal here is that we're going to generate the leads, pre qualify the leads, get them scheduled, and if you're using our self access solutions with our electronic locks and lockboxes, we're going to take that person all the way through that process without you having to lift a finger or a phone. You're not going to have to meet them at the property and they can do it all on their own.

So these tenants have already done an application and a credit report and a background check. Right.

So these are, these are like you can consider a pre application or a pre qualification so we're not going to, you know, charge them a fee to go see the property like you would traditionally see with a paid application. And so the application will actually send them a link to the online application after they viewed the property. So 30 minutes after somebody goes to go view the rental, we're going to send them a text message, we're going to send them an email and it'll include a link to a PDF or online application so that they can complete that part of the process. Some of that can, you know, operate within Tenant Turner, but if you guys have your own application solution that you're already using, we'll just direct them through that part of the process and they can pay their app fee and get their background check run from there. But you can see from here this is all the answers to the questions that they provided. You know, where did they see the listing at? Will automatically calculate that income to rent ratio for you. And if there are any financial or legal issues that they would like to report, we would display that here. Another great thing about Tenant Turner is if you do need to communicate with that prospective tenant or tenant lead and you don't really feel comfortable sharing your cell phone number or contact information, you can do all those communications through our platform. And you can see any of the text messages that we would have sent to that prospective tenant. You can see any of the submissions that they've made around the rating for the property, their confirmation, things of that nature. But then you can also send personalized message to that prospect again to get them excited about taking the next step to go view the property, or getting them excited about the next step of signing that application.

And is the message only SMS text or is it email too?

So with Tenant Turner, we do a lot of both email and text messaging. In this case, those messages, those are all text messages. That's obviously going to be the best way to get those folks re engaged with.

Okay, so they can email through the system as well, right?

Yep. Okay, exactly.

What about phone? Can they actually talk to people through the system or not?

So if they would like to talk to somebody, that would happen outside of the system. But the great thing is the information is all here. And this page and all the other pages we have are all mobile friendly. So you can go to this from your phone and from there you can click the phone number and it will automatically launch your phone app. So it makes it really easy. If there's any notes you'd like to make, you can track all those here. So you're not, you know, notepad at the office, sticky note at home, things like that. You put it all in one place. The way that we, you know, pre qualify those prospects and go ahead and get them scheduled again, you can configure how you want folks to be pre qualified. What questions you'd like us to ask. Another good thing to keep in mind here is that it's all fair housing compliant. So in certain states like New Jersey or Connecticut, you can't ask about lawful source of income. Worry we've got you covered, we'll make sure that we're not pre qualifying anybody in something that's illegal for your state, that happens automatically.

You can't ask about laws. Can you elaborate on that?

Absolutely.

We don't do business in Connecticut or New Jersey, but I assume they're a disaster. Just like California.

There's a certain set of states that I'm sure you can imagine what they are where you can't ask about lawful source of income. In this case, it's really meant to protect people with government housing vouchers. So if you're a landlord in Connecticut, you can't say I won't rent you if you have a Section 8 voucher. Obviously if you're in Florida where you are, Virginia where I am, you can be a little bit more open to what you feel comfortable renting to. So the pre qualification can be configured. If there are other custom questions that you would like asked before somebody can schedule to go see that you can add that here to the platform. Keep in mind, you know, this is them self identifying. So if you're looking for somebody with a certain credit score, you can ask if it's above that certain credit score but it's not verified. That's what you would do after the showing and run that through your background check. And then the different viewing types we offer, we have combo lockboxes, which is just a traditional master lockbox, which a lot of landlords use and property investors use. Especially if you're managing remotely, you put those contractor lockboxes on the property. Contractors can go in, clean, paint, get the place rent ready. But you can also put those combo lockbox codes and tenant turner. So that way we can schedule those folks to go view on their own. The downside with those is a static code. So every, you know, every person is going to have the same code. Bright side of using a tool like tenant turner is we're going to run fraud detection checks on that person. We're going to schedule them for a specific day and time so you can track when the access occurred. And we're going to be able to log all their information.

So for virtual showing, do they have to do the actual paid check? No, they don't, right?

No, they wouldn't, they wouldn't pay. So the, one of the things we do, one of the safeguards we have in place is that we do require that they upload a government issued ID where we run some self, some selfie checks on that facial detection checks. And then as long as those checks have been passed, so they're having to get their contact information verified, which will do so automatically behind the scenes, running a series of fraud and scam detection checks on that person's information and, and details that we can collect behind the scenes like device id, IP address, time zone, things of that nature. And then they're going to upload a copy of their id. Then we're also going to check that against our device fingerprints that we store within our database before we allow them access to the property in order to keep it super secure. So combo lockbox is kind of the easiest path to self access. But we also offer electronic lockboxes provided by Codebox is one of the brands and Century Lock is another brand. The benefit of the electronic lockbox is each person is going to get a unique access code. So Jason, if you go view a property at 3:15, we know to the minute when you arrive there and what your specific access code was. And then if I go view a property, the same property at say and I arrive at 4:11, we can log that to the minute when I arrive.

Which brand of locks or lockboxes are you using?

So code box is kind of the entry level and those are $65 per box. And that's a box that you can then own. And even if you're not using tenant turn, you can use it like a combo lock box. Century Lock, that's actually a product that's used quite widely by Realtors. So Century Lock is a subsidiary of the national association of Realtors. Cost is about double, but definitely a higher quality box. And then we've definitely seen, particularly within the investor community, an increased adoption of smart lock technology. So Prem Point is a great example and somebody that we integrate with and they utilize Bluetooth locks. So you don't have to have WI fi at the home, you don't have to have any sort of smart home hub or cellular technology. So it's a nice lower cost entry point in order to get a smart lock on your investment properties. That again is a tool that people would use bluetooth keys in order to access and tenant turner would generate those for you automatically. And then on the highest of high end here we've got Point Central, that's the subsidiary of alarm.com so as you can imagine it's a very secure hardware solution that we can generate unique one time use codes for. But the cost of that is much higher. It's about $1,000 to get the hub installed and then there's an additional monthly fee for that because it actually is powered by cellular technology. So you can see the full spectrum going from combo lockboxes all the way to like a Point Central smart hub.

Okay. So suffice it to say, you know, they're, they're in there. Okay, so say they like the property. I guess that's the next step. They like it, they want to apply. How's the application part work?

Yep. So the application part of the process is all handled after they viewed the property. So we know when somebody's arrived or when they were scheduled to be there. And we can send them an application link. So if you're using a tool like, like Rent Screener or Rent Prep or My Smart Move, we would then send them to that application that they can go through and complete that part of the process. And we're going to send that link to them via text and email so they're not having to search around for it. So ultimately increase your application rates. We also have an integrated service powered by Rent Prep and that is a tool that runs the background checks and whatnot. But it's not going to be inclusive of credit. So that's something that you can keep. My no additional cost for that, but There is a $40 application fee to the prospective tenant. And just as it goes with access, you know a lot of folks, particularly if you're managing remotely, it's always good to know specifically when somebody arrived at a particular property. And so we have a full suite of reports. This one is a lockbox access report. And this can tell you to the minute again when somebody arrived. And not only can you use these electronic locks and lock boxes for prospective tenants to go view the property, but you can also use them for your, for your vendors. So here's an example. We've got Mark from Inside Out Renovations. He arrived at the property at 508 in order to do some painting and some cleanup. We've got Peter Jackson who arrived at 3pm he's somebody who's going to go view the property as a prospective tenant. So all that access can be monitored from one place you get email notifications when somebody arrives, but you can also track it in the reports that Tenant Turner provides for you.

Excellent.

And if you do have folks that need to go in a more on demand way, you know, you have an inspector who calls you up and says, hey, Jason, I need to get into the property real quick. Sure, let me generate a code for you. And you can either get a code for them and send it to them while you're on the phone, or you can send a code to them via text message. We just need to know the date that they're going to go, view the property, their phone number so we can text it to them. And then for record keeping purposes, we asked for name company and you can even send them a message if you'd like to.

Got it.

So yeah, the goal with Tenant Turner is to provide that full life cycle for the leasing process. Generate the leads, get them pre qualified after we've handled the phone calls and emails, and then ultimately get them scheduled either with a person or an electronic lock or lockbox. And then after they've gone to go view the property, we track all that information within Tenant Turner, notify you when they arrive, and then we'll also go out and collect feedback from them. So that way you can make some actionable changes to your property, either maintenance related or potentially price related, based upon the feedback that they're providing you.

Okay.

So it seems like the things you.

Don'T have, but I'm guessing you're working on this, as any tech company would be, is you don't have the application system built in to your system. I mean, you sort of said you did and you said, or go outside, but there's like an integration or so. I didn't quite catch that.

Yeah, so. So what we have within Tenant Turner is a nice basic background check tool powered by Rent Prep. So that's included as part of what you'd utilize. We run a nationwide eviction search for that prospective tenant. We'll do the criminal, we'll do the public record check. But it doesn't include credit.

It doesn't. Okay. So they got to go outside the big credit.

Different. Exactly. And if you wanted the credit, that's when you could go into like a rent stand by smart move and whatnot.

And is there a doc signing platform? Does it generate a lease, does do that kind of stuff or you're not doing that?

Nope, it doesn't do that. No, that's correct.

Okay.

Okay.

So you've got to, you've got to do some stuff. So this is basically a showing product.

That's right, yeah. It's about generating those tenant leads, getting them pre qualified, scheduled and into that property with the appropriate access solution.

Okay. Okay, good stuff. What else do you want us to know?

I think you know, for everybody who's in this pandemic world that we're living in right now, I think the self access is really important. So if it's something that you've been hesitant to utilize in the past, now more than ever, it's important. 38% of the self showings that are scheduled through our system happen on nights and weekends. And so not only will you be keeping yourself safe and maybe those that you work with, but you'll also be increasing the number of showings that get scheduled for you by letting people go in and view the property on their own. And ultimately the more showings, the quicker the properties will lease, the more money in your pocket.

Okay, good stuff. Well, thank you very much, James. I appreciate it. Again, that link is jason hartman.com turner t u r N E R We look forward to really empowering investors and helping them use tools like this to manage their portfolio. And it's just incredible what you can do nowadays. It's so much easier than it's ever been in human history to get people access to properties. And again, not just tenants like you did mention, but contractors. If you someone who's doing an inspection, painting, H vac, anything, you can get them access as well. So good stuff. James, thanks for joining us.

Yep, absolutely. Thank you. Jason.

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