1963: Population Demographics Effects on Rental Housing, Landlord Best Practices, Hybrid Property Management, Tenant Selection, Eli Secor

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Welcome to episode 1963. 1963. Today our guest is from Landlord Gurus and we're going to talk about some best practices for landlording. That all important part of being a successful investor. Where the rubber meets the road. And by the way, don't you just love that title landlord? You get to be the lord of land in our business. Pretty good deal. Anyway, before we jump into that, couple of things here. Number one, I was so happy on Friday, my first day back from Japan. And you know, I was, I was, I was super happy because I just learned a new way. You know folks, if you are not in our mentoring program, you have got to be in the mentoring program Empowered Mentoring. Why? Well, because I'm going to save you so much money you can't even believe it. Of course I'm going to make you money. That's the big opportunity. Nobody ever got rich saving money. But hey, saving money doesn't hurt. I like it. I just saved myself over $8,000 as a Friday with a thing I just learned and I'm super excited about it. I'm going to share it with our mentoring clients on our call this week and I'll show you all about how I did that. You know, the thing to do to shortcut your success in life is you gotta learn from other people's mistakes, right? And learn from my mistakes. Learn. You know, and I wouldn't say this isn't like Any big, glaring mistake. But I was just for years overpaying for something that I didn't need to overpay for. You know, one of those things is management. Another is legal services and accounting services and all of these different things. We all need living a big life, right? If you are on that trajectory to big success in life, then you're going to have a bunch of service providers, you're going to have a bunch of things that you need. And there's no sense overpaying for this stuff or spending money where you just don't have have to spend it at all. So on our mentoring call this week, we will discuss that. And I'm really excited to dive in with you on that. And I talked a lot about, and I have talked a lot about over the years about population and demographics and why this is so important to us as real estate investors. And if you're watching me on video right now, you can see on my screen I am sharing the demographic pyramid. And this is an example of it. It's just a kind of a cartoon example to illustrate the point. These aren't specific demographic pyramids for particular countries or anything like that. But this is the way it basically looks, right? And this is the way it looks in the US by the way. But it's much, much worse in some countries. The US Is dramatically better off than so many different countries. But the US still got a demographic problem. It's just coming much later than it is to other countries around the world. And why is that so important? Well, look, folks, I have said this many times. All of my strategies as far as real estate investing, they will work, right? In the big picture, they will work. Of course, there will be little things, little periods in time when, you know, maybe for six months or two years or even three or four years, that things change and there are changes in the market and nobody can control of that stuff. But overall, the big macro trend, I, at least, and most of you, I think, agree, have no doubt that my strategies work. However, I have always said that one thing will put a monkey wrench in them. One thing will make this sort of all bets are off scenario, and that is population decline. If the population declines, all bets are off. And this is a big deal because the one thing we need if we want to be successful as landlords, we need people to rent our properties, right? That is a key criteria. And that's why you look at blighted markets like Detroit, for example, where you have population decline, you can't fix that. It's unfixable and overall, the long term trend is this is what we're moving into, folks worldwide, but in the US going to hit much, much later. You don't really have to worry about this until the 2000 and 40s, even into 2050 in any significant way. And even within the US it's dependent on locale, right? So you could have the major hit to the population decline in, say, the northern markets, but still doing well in the southern markets. And it'll just depend on those migration patterns. And we'll have to look at that. And of course, you know, one thing, I have poked a lot of holes in this over the years, rightfully so, but that is climate change, right? There's just so many layers to that onion. And those who would hope to control us, they like to act like it's some simple thing and it's all bad. And it's not all bad. There are some actual huge benefits to climate change, right? And then there's the debate of is it, you know, caused by humans, is it just a cycle, is it solar activity, yada, yada, yada, right? Don't need to go down that rabbit hole. But that definitely impacts migration patterns, right? No question about it impacts migration patterns. But the big thing when you go back to this demographic pyramid issue is this. You've got to have a large base of younger people who are in those prime earning years in the workforce and innovating and working hard and active, contributing to support the older people who are taking out of the system right now. You know, certainly very young people take out of the system. They are nothing but a cost, right? And then they become adults and hopefully they get their act together and they become contributors for 30, 40 years of their life. And then they retire and they become a cost on the system. And so you've got to have that big base of that pyramid so that you know that there are young people moving up into the system, into those prime working years who will support those who need to withdraw from the system. And this is only fair because the people withdrawing contributed for many years, for decades, right? And they deserve to withdraw. There's, you know, nothing wrong with that. But when people don't have children, then you have a big problem. And like I always say, if you want to have a country, you must have children. And so this is just an example of the way those demographic pyramids look. And they are very, very different. And as people age into retirement, issues hugely significant. And as you know, I have another podcast, the Longevity and Biohacking show. And Lifespans have a huge impact on this in numerous ways, right? Because when the Social Security system in the US was originally designed, they only planned for people to live for about four years, withdrawing from Social Security. And they're living much longer now, sadly, because of bad health habits, bad diet and a poisonous food supply, we have actually seen lifespans decrease. That is absolutely unacceptable. I mean, it is just totally unacceptable. Right? But it is what it is. Hopefully that trend will turn around. Now that's because of habits and because of poisonous food. But on the other end of that, which is a distinct element, is the concept of science and longevity sciences. Now these are progressing rapidly and there are a lot of things that would imply that we are going to be living much, much longer in the future. But we got to get our act together in terms of our habits, right? And we've got to not fall for the poisonous food supply. I mean, we really are being poisoned and not just the food supply. Of course, if you look what happened recently in Ohio and numerous places around the country, I mean, a mature person has to ask themselves, is the government at war with the people? Right. This is not some whack job conspiracy idea. There are all of these train derailments, there are all of these fires going on at big manufacturing facilities that have toxic chemicals. And I just saw a video this morning of how, you know, that toxic cloud from Palestine, Ohio has now migrated into other places. And this video was from Canada. They showed how, you know, they've got these, these basically chemical rainbows on the ground in riverbeds. That wasn't in Canada, by the way. That one I saw last week, but this morning the one I saw was melting snow in Canada. Just wait a few years and you're going to see deaths, you're going to see stillbirths, you're going to see miscarriages, you're going to see cancers, you're going to see all kinds of disease from this stuff. You know, we don't need to get into that shot in the arm discussion. And only a fool who is an ostrich who is sticking their head in the sand could just give the powers that be a pass on this idea that they really do want to reduce the population. Folks, you just gotta look at this. There's just so much evidence that would imply that this is what the elites want to do. And there's all kinds of ways they're doing it, right? They've destroyed the birth rate in western countries and many eastern countries too. We had the feminist movement, we have this discontent movement. Watch the movie Kramer versus Kramer, okay? The famous movie from the 70s. Look at the food supply. Look at, you know, the whole Covid thing. I mean, there are words I can't say on the show, right? But you would have to be just intellectually dishonest to ignore this. And you know, this is not some wacky idea, right? It is a real thing. There are just so many examples of this. It deserves attention, to say the least. I'm not saying one way or the other for sure, but there's just a lot of evidence that needs to be looked at. Okay? Now I want to talk about the savings rate because the savings rate implies whether we will have a homeownership society or a renter society in a big, big way. So let's look at a chart here of personal savings rate and go to this here. And this is from the Fred website. And if you are not watching this on video, well, I remain able to publish videos. Thought police are out there everywhere. And the kind of things you say really do get you in trouble. So let's look back 20 years and really, you know, 20, I guess 22 years will be the anniversary this year. Back to the 911 era, okay? And we see that the personal savings rate in January of 2001 was 4.9%. Now we go up and interestingly, you go to September. This is, remember 9 11, 2001, okay? The personal savings rate shot up to 7% in September. So remember George Bush, who was president at the time, who said, well, don't let the terrorist win. Go out and go shopping, you know, I mean, yes, we need people shopping to make an economy, right? No question about it. But just the sort of glib way in which he said that was so absurd and so ridiculous, right? Anyway, personal savings rate shot up. People were staying at home, they weren't spending. They were scared. Everybody was worried about what's going to happen next, what's going on with the world, right? But then I guess people started shopping because by October, the personal savings rate went down to only 3.1%. So it kind of goes along here. It's, you know, 5%, 2004, you know, and kind of just goes along. During the Great Recession, it shot up in May of 2008 to 7.3%. And you see it kind of bump along. It also got really high here in 2012 at 11.6%, really, except for the COVID anomaly. That was the highest personal savings rate in the past 22 years. So think about what was happening at that time. Well, we Were coming out of the Great Recession, lending standards on real estate were extremely tight. The banks had overcorrected, overreacted. I remember that was a pretty tough time for my business because we saw the market shrink because lending shrank. And it was actually a very good time to buy properties. But a lot of people were still worried. They were also unable to get financing. But remember, there's always an equalizing factor. So the harder it is for you to do something, the harder it is for you to get financing. Right? Also the harder it is for a renter who is a would be home buyer to get that financing. Okay? So we saw that personal savings rate shoot up now. Then it started trickling down and it bumped around in the normal range. But then we had the COVID era and everybody stayed home. And look at this. This is truly incredible. The personal savings rate in May of 2020 was shockingly high. Like 34%. 34%. And remember how when people would go to shop online and you go to like Amazon, for example, they were out of a lot of things, they were rationing things. You could only buy a limited number of things. And they actually took off the website a whole bunch of items that were like the want instead of need items. And they started focusing on the need items. Right. And you know, this was smart business decision for Amazon. And also as evil as Amazon is, and most of these big disgusting tech companies are just totally evil, they were doing the right thing, I think, at that point. Okay, so personal savings rate just shot up. Now, even at the low point in the COVID era, it was 13.3% was the lowest point in that era. And then it peaked again, 26.3% in March of 2021. And now it has really come down as of December of last year, 3.4%. Personal savings rate, very low. So what does this tell us? Does it say that everybody has become an irresponsible hedonist and they're just living for today? Well, that could be a thing. They're blowing all their money. They don't care about the future. But I think what it tells us more is that they are in more financial stress now. A huge dichotomy here, because as we know, 25% of all the mortgages in the country are below 3%. And 65% of all the mortgages in the country are below 4%. And 42% of all the homes in the country have no mortgage at all. They're free and clear. So homeowners are not under much financial distress at all. The foreclosure rate is extremely low. Remember, there's like 17 people in foreclosure in the entire country. That's a joke. Okay? But the foreclosure rate is extremely low. So we see this dichotomy where you're going to see this huge separation moving forward into the years to come, where people that own a house, because they locked them in at those super low mortgage rates are just dramatically better off financially than people that don't own a house. And it doesn't have to be the house in which they live. It could be a rental property. But suffice it to say, if they got that cheap mortgage, it's a huge asset. And this shows also that the rental market will be expanding in years to come and the homeownership rate will decline. Remember, every 1% decline in homeownership rate equals approximately 1 million new tenants. 1% decline in homeownership rate, approximately 1 million new renters. Wow, folks, the word I just said, without saying it, is opportunity. Yeah, opportunity. That is a huge opportunity for landlords, for investors. Serve this market. Look at any business. You want an expanding market, you want a big market, you want an expanding market. And the other thing you want is a barrier to entry. And being an investor, that barrier to entry has increased with higher interest rates and higher down payments due to higher prices. So a lot of good things going the way for investors. Remember, over 10 years ago, in about 2010, I made the prediction, I said, the next 10 years. The demographics coming at the housing market over the next 10 years are nothing short of phenomenal. And I renewed that in 2020, and I'm still there. Okay, we're a couple years into that now, but I am still right there. The demographics coming at the rental market are nothing short of phenomenal. Yes, there will be little ups and downs along the way, of course there will. But the macro trend is just undeniable that the phenomenal demographics coming at the rental market just cannot be stopped. So take advantage of that. Let's get to our guest today. Let's talk about some landlording. Best pract. And I look forward to seeing all of you who are in empowered mentoring on our Zoom meeting this week. We're gonna have a great time and I'm glad to be back hosting these Zoom meetings myself. So looking forward to seeing all of you there. And here is our guest with Landlord Gurus. It is my pleasure to welcome Eli Secor. He is the co founder of Landlord Gurus. And we're going to talk today specifically Drilling down on some great management techniques and strategies, some tools you can use and especially we're going to go into what I think a lot more of you should be doing and that is self managing your properties remotely from a distance. As Bette Midler would say, I've done it for years. A lot of our clients do it, but not enough of our clients do it. And oddly we have found that it is actually sometimes easier and less time commitment to self manage your properties than to manage your manager. You can do it either way, as you know through our network. But we really want to recommend the self management idea. Eli, welcome. How are you?

I'm well, thank you, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here.

It's good to have you. And you are coming to us today from tenant friendly Seattle where nobody wants to buy rental properties.

Yes. Yeah, we are an island in terms of landlord tenant law, that's for sure.

Yeah, good stuff. Well, hey, you know, just give us a, like a broad view. We'll drill down on things, you know, just in terms of your general philosophy about landlording, some of your favorite tools, wherever you want to start and we'll go from there.

Okay. My philosophy philosophy about landlording is that I want to provide a great product and also an experience for, for my tenants while at the same time being able to do other things with my life. I believe in quality and at the same time, you know, I've got lots of other things I'm doing and landlording is a part time project for me. I do it for a relatively small number of units but I'm all about finding better ways to manage and having a, having more time in my life.

Right. So what are some of those better ways, those best practices?

Well, we write a lot about, you know, property management software and we found that those products can really streamline the process of managing property. I go to the property a fraction of the number of times that I used to. I'm not carrying paper anywhere anymore and you know, products, I'm using a bail right now.

You know, we have relationships, have them on the show.

Yeah, you have. Yeah, yeah, they do a great job. We have partnerships with most of the other products out there and it's a bit, you know, some are a better fit for, for other people. You know, I mentioned pay rent to you not you know, before we started and they're great if what you really want to do is get that elect electric funds transfer every month to your bank and we found that everybody likes it. So if that's just what you Want to do pay rent is great avail. I use because it does the full, the full spectrum. I can go from listing, you know, broadcasting, syndicating my listing all over the Internet to screening to collecting rent, writing a lease, you know, the whole deal.

And most of them are doing that nowadays. I mean, Hemlane does that. A lot of them do that nowadays. You know, of course, using software can be very powerful tool and it can do a lot for you. But other than the tech, which we've covered a lot, or that technology of various software, you know, management software programs, what else? Like any best practices in terms of marketing your properties, screening your tenants, relating to your tenants and dealing with them and things like that.

Yeah, I'm sure this is obvious, but good, good photos are.

Oh, that's not that obvious, my friend.

Yeah, it's really important. You know, you got to get the lighting right. And I don't do anything sophisticated, you know, it's all on my phone.

But.

But I do manage the light. So you get you good representation, you know, that, that and writing a clear and thorough listing so that the, you know, the renter has a good idea what they're getting, even though they almost never read it. But having that all clear, presentable, the photos are the first thing that, that that rental shopper sees, and it determines whether or not they look at the listing and reach out at all.

One of the things we recommend is that people hire a real estate photographer. There are photographers that are just real estate photographers and pay, you know, 149 bucks, which is about all it'll cost. Okay. To have them come when your property is looking its best. Right. And get that set of photos for your property. You can use it for years and years and years and years through multiple, multiple tenant turns. But if you just purchased a property and it's all turnkey and it's looking good, spend that money, get a professional photographer to do your photos, and you will use those for so, so long. It's fantastic. You know, if you were at a time in your property ownership or you just did some improvements to the property, that's an ideal time before a tenant moves in to get a professional photographer over there and get that set of, you know, 30 pictures for your rental properties and have, you know, these on each of your houses, label them in your computer. You'll just use them over and over. Pictures has a thousand words, so I couldn't agree more.

Yeah, I'd suggest adding video to that at this point.

Sure. And they do that.

Different platforms enable you to add A video and others don't, but to have it and every, every one of them. And I'm talking about Zillow and you know, apartments list and all those and Craigslist. Not all of you can support video at this point. But to have it, you know, it is invaluable and you can send it to somebody. So another best practice in my mind is to have a bit of a discussion which with each of the people who reaches out to you where you just establish a little bit of rapport. I value niceties, you know, thank you for your inquiry. And I find that depending on how people respond, some people just won't want to take the trouble to even kind of have a dialogue. And in that I always ask three questions and there are many more that you could, the pre screening questions which get you set up to figure out on both sides whether or not this is a fit. And I keep it simple. Do you smoke? Do you have pets and do you human? You make a multiple. I use two and a half times the, the rent, you know, each month after any large debt service, basically, you know, obligations. So if I, if I do those things, I then have narrowed down the, the pool significantly to the people who, who are willing to do it and can answer those questions in the way that I want to. So that's a, that's another step. I also really value meeting the tenants, ideally in person.

But again, you're talking local management.

Well, that's true.

We're talking nationwide management. So, you know, I'm glad you brought that up because I tell you folks, meet them on Zoom. Yeah, just jump on Zoom with your tenant and record it. Okay. So you have, you know what these people look like. Okay. And this is not for an applicant because that'll just take way too long once you've chosen someone. I mean you could do it for applicants, but God forbid, if you get like a criminal, right. You know, you got them on video, right. So that's good, right? If you ever need that, which I can't imagine you would. But you never know in this business could, something could happen. But you know, you get them on there, you have like a talk with them, you have an understanding. And because it's a face to face, even on Zoom, meeting sometimes is much more effective. Actually on Zoom, you really are setting the stage for the way that relationship is going to work.

I have done that a couple times. The pandemic led me to do that. But it even more common it has been the scenario where a renter is moving from out of state. And they just can't coordinate being, being there to look at in person. So I've done video tours with, with prospective tenants and you know, an upside to that is that especially somebody who's relocating, they gotta move and it's a little harder for them to find a place. So if I, if I make it easy for them, they're more likely to want to rent from me.

Right.

And you really, you're right, you. That you really can get a pretty good feel for, for people. And that falls under the category of meeting, meeting the tenants.

Yeah, I agree, I agree. And you know, if you meet them on Zoom, unlike in person, I mean, here's an advantage of the virtual meeting, right? You're probably going to get to see their house. Is their house a disaster area? Is it a total mess? You know, do they have a meth lab operating in the background?

Right.

Yeah, yeah. So you might be better off meeting them on Zoom than in person. See?

Yeah, yeah.

I remember one landlord, you know, this was in the old, old days when everybody thought of it as a local business. And you know, I mean, this was when I was like 19 years old. And I remember one investor talking from stage at a conference I was at. He said, always walk out with them to their car and see how they keep their car. Is it unwashed, dented up mess with fast food wrappers strewn all over, or is it a car that's like in, you know, presentable cond. Right. That's probably how they're going to keep your house. But I will tell you that my own mother does not care about her car in the least. Her house is impeccable. So I don't know.

You can't, you can't.

Nothing is foolproof, you know.

Right, yeah. That actually goes along with that little bit of email dialog that I was mentioning before that if, if you find somebody who can write and complete sentences.

And, and doesn't type in all caps like they're yelling at you.

Yeah, yeah. A little bit of punctuation, you know, and it, it just says a lot in my, in my mind.

Right, Yep. Good stuff. Okay, so, you know, you're talking there more about screening or setting the tone once you've accepted a tenant.

Right.

And the application's accepted. Just setting that up. What about ongoing management repair issues? A lot of landlords have said that they have good success with, with basically making the tenant responsible for all, like, minor maintenance. And then they, you know, they just never get any calls, which, you know, that's what every landlord Wants. Right. What do you do? What are your practices there?

I've moved in that direction. As I mentioned to you, I've got a, you know, background in construction, so I just, by hearing about what's, what's going on, I can kind of diagnose. But what I do mostly at this point is to put my tenants in contact with the, with the vendors. And most of them are willing to do that. They want, they want that, that I agree. Work around their schedule. And it, it keeps from having to triangulate, you know, that agree three, three different people. That's a benefit of some of the property management software platforms is that there's a rental module or a maintenance module effectively where you can bring in you provider as well. So you're all, you're all talking together in this basically, you know, chat area. But Right.

You know, what else is really good for that? And I was so pleasantly surprised to find that on Yelp last time I hired an H vac air conditioning person on Yelp. They have a whole interface for that now.

Interesting.

And it really just makes it very easy to hire these people remotely. Now of course you can use some great tools are thumbtack, taskrabbit, Yelp, we have Angie's List. You know, we have all these great tools nowadays that make it so easy to remotely manage your properties. And the amazing thing that I found is when I started self managing the first time, my first long distance self management experience was about 14, I guess 14 years ago now. Yeah, it happened by accident. And I found that the tenants are like your best resource. They will find vendors, they will shop vendors, they will read their reviews. You know, they. Most tenants are good people, right?

Yeah.

We've all heard the stories of the bad apples, but the vast majority of, you know, 98% of them are just great people that just want a nice place to live.

Right.

And they're our customer. Right. We have to remember that. Right. This is our customer.

Okay.

You know, they'll just do that work for you, like get bids and recommend the best vendor. And you know, they tell me like their impressions. I get an email. You know, I met with three air conditioning contractors that came by yesterday and I really think this one's the most professional. I looked up the reviews on Yelp. I mean, I couldn't believe it. This is more than my property manager would have done. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's real research. Which my only quibble with, you know, the Angie's List and those types of platforms is that there's some unknown quantities so somebody who will use a platform like that but then take the extra step is really invaluable. I had a tenant who would collect the quarters, you know, from, from the laundry machine because it was three hours away and the laundry machine was always filling up with quarters, and then it stopped working. So I'd have him do that.

That.

And I've also found that if I find the right Andy person that I can get them to cover, you know, when I'm off on vacation.

Yeah.

And I make it. I make it good for them and it's win, win. You know, tenants get to know them as well and, and, you know, it's a. It just goes smoothly.

Right, right. You know, tenants like to have a sense of ownership. Like the good ones are happy to take on some responsibilities. Okay. And do some of this stuff. So. Yeah, that's great. Talk to us about some other best practices, if you would.

Yeah. Well, just based on what you just said, I have one. One comment, and that is that I have a lot of tenants who say that they really like dealing with me a lot more than the management companies that they've dealt with in the past because it's so impersonal. And that doesn't mean I'm perfect every time. It just means that they have a. They have a contact to go to one person and the same person every time. And I think that may go into what you're saying about how they're willing to do the work to help out, you know, and get. And get it done on their schedule, you know, to some extent. Extent too.

But. Yeah. Right.

Another best practice would be when you're writing up a lease. Yeah. I guess I'll just comment a little bit on. On our market. I really believe in belonging to the local rental housing association.

Yeah, like, like the Apartment Owners association or rental Landlords Association. And you're in these local communities and you know, you can join those from across the country. Oh, yeah, that's something that we have found. A lot of our people have done that. You know, they'll live in California and they'll own property in Florida and they'll join the Florida Landlord Association. Right.

Yeah.

And you. It's 40 bucks a year or something like that. And that'll just be a nice resource for them because they'll have eviction attorneys, resources, networking, all kinds of contractors and service providers and education too.

Yeah. I just found a paving contractor recently. But on the, on the forum on the local rental housing association, which is great here, and one of the things they do for Us is they keep the lease documents is absolutely up to date because the laws are changing. So those are the very best lease documents that we can get for this, this location. So yeah, like you said, there's a lot of value to that. They do seminars, references, documents, you know, that, that, that really is a benefit, I think. And you're supporting an advocacy group as well. They do a lot of lobbying and you know.

Right. That are, they're lobbying your, your local government or your state laws passed in your favor. One more thing I want to comment on something you said a moment ago, Eli, and that is about how the tenants like dealing with you. And most people hear that and they think, oh my God, that's the last thing I want to do is talk to tenants. Right. I would really encourage you to re examine that belief and here's why. Like I said before, most tenants are, are great people. They are, the vast majority of them are wonderful. Okay. And when they have that social pressure of maintaining a relationship with you, their landlord, they don't ask for a lot of stuff. When they have some amorphous property management company, you know, and they see an ant in the house, they're going to, you know, send a thing or call them up and say, hey, send an exterminator. Oh my gosh, you know.

Right.

Which I wouldn't do. Right. You know, but when they're maintaining that relationship with you, a person.

Yeah.

They tend to just take care of stuff themselves much more often than not because they have that social pressure of making sure that relationship is a good one. And with a management company, it's not this way. It's, it's just a different, it's a different avenue. And so many of our clients, and definitely myself, have been surprised that it actually takes less time to self manage a property than it does to have a property manager. Can you comment on that?

I can, I can. I have some experience with hiring property managers as well. And if nothing else, I think the contact, you know, a maintenance request for, for example, there, there are more steps to it. You know, I can, I can resolve an issue with a tenant if I've got the, the tenant who's willing to, could cooperate with me, help out, you know, on timing, you know, maybe con. Contacting a vendor. And I've, you know, ideally it'd be nice if I had the vendor there already. I can, I can put the three, the three of us together really quickly and get, and get it done. Whereas I find that I often want more information from the property manager before I Give the go ahead on it, on repair. Because I want to understand it.

It. Yeah, right, right. There are times in life when a middleman is beneficial and there are times when it's not. And in the property management world, a lot of times it's just better to be directly dealing with the tenant. Okay. It depends. In some things it's better to have a middleman. Right. You know, like it just depends what it is in life.

But brokers, you know, you need people who, who know the field really well and are all set up.

But yeah, but it's not just that. It's the ability to like take for example, a broker. Right. If you have a real estate broker in a deal, you know, that broker can follow up with a potential buyer if you're a seller or the other way around without appearing anxious. Right. And giving away your negotiating position, giving away your cards because they're just anxious to make their commission. Right. And everybody understands that that doesn't sort of give away how motivated is the buyer or seller in the deal. Right. But if you're dealing directly, then the counterparty is going to know like how anxious you are. Right. And hey, I got to do this deal, you know, okay, well, we'll raise the price, you know, so that's helpful too. So it just depends. It's different with different things in life. Isn't.

Absolutely is. And by you. Before we started, you mentioned that finding a realtor to, to help out in, in a local market, you know, when you're across the country, can be a great asset. And I agree with that. Like I said, if you have a handy person as well, that's great. If you got two of those, you're really set to have a pretty smooth, you know, ownership, I think.

Yeah, you definitely are. And I love how you keep saying the politically correct handy person. And I'm in Seattle, hired a lot of handy people in my life. I've never had a woman come. It's always a man. I'm just pointing out the reality. It doesn't seem like women want to do that crappy job.

There may be something to that.

Yeah, they'd rather work in a nice office with a Keurig coffee machine. I think.

I won't come.

Yeah. But anyway, the hybrid approach to self management, you alluded to that just now when you talked about having a realtor in that local market. And this is the exact strategy we recommend. So when we recommend self management, as we were talking about before we started today, we recommend that you have a realtor or even a Property manager, but a property manager offering a la carte services.

Yeah.

Where all they do is handle the tenant turn. Okay, so your tenant gives notice, they say they're moving. You call up your realtor or email your realtor in that local market. They, you introduce them to the tenant, they go over there, they inspect the property, they manage the move out dates, you know, they, they manage the access to the property. Once that tenant is out, they do the walk through, they send you a bunch of pictures, they tell you, you know, you should really charge them for this, that and the other thing. And then you know, you can send that email to the tenant notifying them of what the deductions are going to be from their security deposit. They'll line up the contractors and the workers to do whatever needs to be done. They'll advertise the property and market it. They'll screen the tenant if you want them to, or the advertising and marketing you can do remotely now with the software, it's really quite easy to do it as you mentioned, and I agree with you. And then they'll do the walk through for that tenant before moving them in. And then throughout the year, the next two years, as long as that tenant stays, they'll be a local contact for you if something comes up, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and like you said, you only pay for what you need in that, in that case you're paying, you know, a la carte when you have it, when you have a need. And we've used that model even where we'll do the, the advertising and then so the, the person, you know, the local person is opening the door and showing the tenants around, you know, now you can just send the interested party a link to apply online and pay that pay themselves for the screening. There's no, no application fees, which here in Seattle are illegal. And you can take as much or as little of it as you want. And at this point you can do a lot of it remotely. And one thing that we find that people like is a visibility into the operation. Even if they want to leave a lot of the responsibility with the local person to write leases or screen or any of that type of thing. You now can use the same piece of software and be able to see what's happening, who the applicant is, what their reports look like. And all your maintenance is on a platform as well. Then you can see that, you see the pictures come in that get submitted.

Yeah, it's great. Some of these platforms are very handy and I really do think they are displacing the property management managers, which is either going to get some of these bad property managers out of the business, as it should be, or it's going to make them up their game and offer a different suite of services because really it's a very enabling tool and you can do this remotely and it's just really quite easy, folks, I'm telling you, I've done it myself. I do it myself now and it's great. So I really recommend it. Eli, wrap it up for us with just anything else. Any questions I didn't ask you any things you want to share that we didn't talk about.

The one thing that came up in terms of best practice is that I believe in calling references and it doesn't have to be you who does it. To your point, you know, you can find people that, that will do it, but we, we always recommend calling at least one employment reference, excuse me, and one residential reference. And again, when you ask for those contacts for it may weed out the people who know that they don't have people that will say nice things about them. And I keep the questions really simple. I've got a, I've got a list of the questions and emails.

Tell us what some of your questions are.

Well, they have to be pretty simple. Now a lot of property managers, if you contact them, they could pretty well just say the yes or no. So they have to be simple questions, but so I verify the basic information. Did this person live at this address from this period to that period? Did the rent amount that they cited agree with what they were actually paying? Was that, you know, is it true? Did they make payments on time? Did they meet their obligations otherwise on time and satisfactorily and did they cause any disruptions to other tenants or neighbors?

Right.

So there, I think I have a few more on my list, but that covers it and it's easy for people to reply and they generally do.

So here's another technique that I hear. Sometimes some landlords will say, if you're going to call references, don't call the current landlord, call the one before that. Because the current landlord, if they're bad, they may want to get rid of them. They may say good things, things just so you'll take them. What do you think about it? Same with employment, by the way, folks, it's the same thing with, well, that's truth.

Yeah, I, I try to contact as many as I can and, and that all it will include, you know, current landlords and employers. But I go back as far as, you know, two or three of each employment and residential and you may get a mixed bag. And that's telling as well.

Well, yeah, Good stuff. All right, well, give out your website and tell people where they can learn more.

Yeah, we're@LandlordGurus.com no punctuation or anything fancy. LandlordGurus.com and you know, we got contact form there. If you got questions, you know, get in touch. We're pretty accessible.

Good stuff. Eli, thanks for joining us.

Absolutely. Jason, pleasure to be here.

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