CW 598 - Lucas Hall Swanky Self Management Tools, Landlordology & Cozy

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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 the Creating wealth show. This is episode number 598. 598. And this is your host, Jason Hartman. Thank you so much for joining me today as we are coming up on a very important day. You know, it's been said, and I think it is very true, that you cannot be successful in life without first being grateful for what you already have. And I think that brings to mind the affirmation I talked to you about several episodes ago. What is that affirmation? Remember I told you when I spoke to my second largest audience ever, 2,000 people, a couple weeks ago in Las Vegas, I would ask the audience, what time is it? And the answer would be, it's an amazing time to be alive. So I ask you that, what time is it? It's an amazing time to be alive. Yay. Okay, so Thanksgiving is coming up. Of course, that's the day, the one day of the year when hopefully we, you know, kind of refle a little bit and count our blessings and do that. So I just want to remind you of that. We got one more episode before Thanksgiving and today our guest will be Lucas Hall. We're going to talk about some swanky. Yes, Swanky. You know, that's a really cool word. It's not a cool word. It's a swanky word. Anyway. Some swanky self management tools. He's with Landlordology and cozy. And we've talked about cozy on the show before. We've got some in depth stuff coming up about their fantastic product or service. Before we get into that, I just want to super quickly because I don't want to keep you in suspense too long. Cover one more of those slides. Okay. One more on the Income, investment strength versus deflation. Last time we talked about income and investment strength versus inflation. But what if we have deflation? Right? We divided them up into three categories, low, medium, and high. And so in this one, our worst performers in the deflationary environment will be gold or any precious metals, your mortgage. Because remember, if you owe money and. And the money actually goes up in value, and that's what happens in a deflationary environment. Dollars or euros or whatever currency we're talking about, increase in value due to deflation. See, when we have inflation, of course inflation is that hideous hidden tax that robs the money right out of our wallet. Our bank account, our stock portfolio, and our bond portfolio. But deflation actually makes the value of those things go up. Why? Because they're denominated in the currency. They're denominated in this case, in dollars. Now, I know we have listeners from 164 countries around the world, and that's awesome, but, you know, most of you are pretty familiar with the good old dollar. As mismanaged as it is. It's comparatively not that bad. But that isn't saying much and it shouldn't say much. So how do these different classes perform versus deflation, and what is their strength like? Well, cash goes up in value, bonds go up in value, pension income goes up in value, retirement plans and so forth. Taxes go up in value in a way, because if you have tax liability, what happens when your liability denominated in dollars? But now, now this is really interesting. And you know what? Lest I go off on another tangent, as I so often do, this could take a long time. You know, this one, this one is complex because think about it. What if you earn your money the year before, as we all do, right? You earn your money the year before, whether it be investment income or income from your job or business, and then you pay taxes on it about a year later. So say you earn income in January of. We'll just take a hypothetical. We'll take 2015. You earn the income in January of 2015 and say you have a great month and you make a lot of money. And the taxes in the US are due April 15th of the following year, but really you can extend them out and you don't have to pay them till October 15 or so of the following year.

So.

So really, almost two years has gone by. And if we have some real deflation or inflation in that two years, what happens to your tax liability? Well, let me see. Let's think about this. You're paying the tax bill in either inflated or deflated dollars almost two years later. And that could be pretty significant because if we have deflation, then it makes your tax liability act very differently than if we have inflation. Right? So that's one to ponder. And it's a little complicated. I actually like to talk to you about that for a half hour. Maybe we'll do that in the future. But guess what? We have. You won't believe this is the most ever. Last night I took the time to plan out our next, what, 18 shows? Yes, 18 shows ahead. We've never been that far ahead. By the way, if you can hear that noise in the background, my wonderful housekeepers are steam cleaning the floor. So I apologize, but at least Coco isn't barking. So, yeah, that's pretty significant. We really should talk about that one. But we've got up to episode 615 all planned out for you already. And wow, have we got some great shows coming up. Okay, back on track here, Jason. Yes, I know it's tough to keep you on track. So medium, what acts in a medium way in terms of strength versus deflation? The income from your job, your rental income on your properties, or dividend income on stocks or the value of your stock portfolio, the capital value of it. And what is low? What has low strength versus deflation? Well, precious metals, gold, you know, silver, platinum, palladium, whatever. Right, your mortgage. Because. And this one's interesting, too. We could talk for a half hour about this one quite easily. Just like the liability one, it's sort of interesting to ponder and scratch your head against this one, because mortgage liability actually increases. Right. If you, you know, part of my big strategy is what I call inflation induced debt destruction. Inflation induced debt destruction. So the likelihood is over time, we're definitely going to have inflation. Right? I mean, that's at least historically what we've had. And given the amount of debt and the unfunded liabilities coming at us, not just in the U.S. but around the world over the next 15, 20 years, it's pretty much insane. And inflation is probably in the cards. Maybe severe inflation, maybe hyperinflation. And there's no academic definition for hyperinflation, remember? But, you know, most people would consider hyperinflation to be 50.

Did you hear me? I didn't say 15%. I said 5,0% annually or more. Now, certainly we've seen hyperinflation much higher than this. But can you imagine if you have $1 million worth of mortgages and in one, in just one year, you have 55, 0% inflation literally inflation pays off half of that liability. It's unbelievable. But what if you have deflation? Then the value of the debt actually increases because remember, debt transfers wealth from lenders to borrowers. The lenders get poorer and the borrowers get richer in an inflationary environment because they pay the debt back in cheaper dollars, ever debased dollars. But if it goes the other way around and we have deflation, the debt becomes more burdensome. However, remember, you always have that implicit option, that backdoor option, maybe you want to even call it the nuclear option. And that is to get a loan modification, to default, to walk away. I had the founders of a company called youwalkaway.com on my show before and we did that as a flashback Friday. Again, remember, this is not uncommon. Just in the last several years, you know, tens of millions. Well, I don't know if I want to say tens of millions, but well over 10 million people have done this. So it is by no means some kind of rarity, okay? Lots of people do it. And frankly, why wouldn't they? Look, the lenders, when they called to get their loan modification or to do a short sale or a workout or a deed in lieu of foreclosure, the lenders pretty much all said to them, look, if you want a favor from us, you can't be paying your mortgage, you gotta stop paying. Why would we negotiate with you if you're paying? Why would we do you any favors if you continue to pay? So you know, what gets rewarded gets repeated, right? You know, that's the, the old saying I talked about from that great book the Greatest Management Principle in the World world by Michael LeBeau or Michael LeBouf. However you say it, what gets rewarded gets repeated. Just look around the world and you'll notice that that is most definitely true. So the mortgage is interesting. It's something we could talk about in much greater depth. But you get the idea, right? If we have deflation, the debt becomes more burdensome. And so long as they don't have debtors prisons and you can do a workout, a loan mod, a walk away, a deed in lieu of foreclosure. I mean, you've got options, right? You've got implicit backdoor options, right? Well, the value of your real estate, what happens then with deflation? Well, it's bad news because it deflates in value, but interestingly, your rental income is kind of medium because you can adjust that. And if the real estate deflates in value, that actually will give you more strength and power to negotiate with your lender for Loan modification. And that's really what happened during the financial crisis just a few years ago, right? Real estate deflated in value in most places. The debt became more burdensome. And well over 10 million people just in the US alone, but certainly all around the world too, got favors. They got a bailout. You know, hey, look, if, if Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and Merrill lynch and bank of America and Countrywide and all these disgusting scumbags, the banksters, if they're going to get their bailout, why shouldn't we? You know, I mean, everybody, I joked about it and I said, look, for those people who got loan modifications and got favors from their banks, you know, tack good upstate standing taxpaying citizens. I mean, it's basically like they just got some of their TARP money back. I mean, you know, the Hank Paulson, our Treasury secretary at the time, and, and George Bush, who right at the end of his tenure dealt with this. You know, they just, they. They gave almost a trillion dollars to these criminals. You know, Wall street is the modern version of organized crime, so they gave them almost a trillion dollars. And whose money was that? It was yours. It was not just, just your tax money, but when they create money out of thin air that causes inflation and it steals the money right out of your pocket. The insidious hidden tax. So all I say always is align your interests with the powers that be. We're not going to change it. They're too powerful. The most powerful entities the human race has ever known. Governments and central banks. That's it. Why are they so powerful? Well, they happen to have militaries and armies behind them, so, you know, that makes them really powerful. Okay, so let's get to our guest. Hey, look, folks, I did that in only 13 minutes. That's amazing, right? Could have been two hours easily, but I went through it pretty quick. Okay, so if you've got questions, go to Jason hartman.com, use the voicemail feature and send me a voicemail. I gotta ask you a favor. Be concise. Think about what you're gonna say. Talk quickly, talk fast. Because when we play your message on the air, you know, we don't want to wait too long. Listeners become impatient. Right. So speed it up a little bit. Just jot down a couple bullet points that you want to talk about, questions you want to ask, and fire away. And we'd love to take your questions on the air and also go to jasonharpin.com register for our meet the Masters event coming up fast. And also go to venture alliancemastermind.com to check out the Venture alliance, our high level mastermind group. We're headed to Dubai. Beautiful, incredible Dubai. Venturaliancemastermind.com and jasonhartman.com in the event section. Okay, here's our guest. You're going to hear about some great tools for self management. You're going to learn a lot from this episode. So please help me welcome Lucas Hall. Here we go.

It's my pleasure to welcome Lucas hall to the show. He is a successful landlord, investor and IT consultant for the last 10 years. He has dozens of tenants and a profitable income property portfolio. He's founder of Landlordology and the chief landlordologist. I love that. At Cozy, which provides free online rent collection, screening tools and training for landlords and managers, Lucas counsels thousands of managers every year, teaching them how to successfully manage rentals, build wealth and keep their tenants happy. We had Lucas's partner in Cozy on the show before. You may have heard that episode. We're going to talk about kind of a different angle on the business and talk about how you can better manage your properties and actually self manage your properties. As I've told you the story before on prior episodes, I never thought it would be possible years ago to self manage properties that I have never seen with tenants I have never met from 2,000 miles away. And I and many of my clients are doing just that. So you know you got a good manager. Hey, they're great. Keep them. If you don't have a great manager, self management is another option. But you got to know what you're doing and that's what we're going to talk about today. Lucas, welcome. How are you?

Hi Jason. I'm well. Thanks for having me on the show.

Good to have you. So I just wanted to preface that whole self management thing a little bit and maybe ask you since I led with that, do you talk about helping people manage their property managers or on your end of the spectrum, is it just direct management of your own properties?

Correct. So personally, in my own life I manage five properties and dozens of tenants myself that I own with my wife and I. But what I do with Landlordology and Cozy is I teach Landers manager, excuse me, teach landlords how to manage their own properties. And if they do have a property manager, then I usually try to educate them as best I can on the things that need to happen so that they could do it themselves. But while they're still in that contract, that management contract, what to expect from a property manager and what kind of reports you should be getting and how involved the Owner should be so that eventually they could pick it up and take it on themselves and potentially save 10% a month in profit.

Yeah, okay. Okay, good. So let's talk about what we can learn about how to be a better manager. Here's sort of a broad stroke. We've all heard the horror stories about bad tenants and stuff, so forth, but to me, this is surprisingly easy. I mean, I don't know, maybe it's easy because I've been doing it for a long time, but it's just not that hard, is it? Or is it?

No, it's really not. It's really, really not. You don't need a degree to manage a property, and in many states, you don't need any sort of certification or business license. You just, you know, as long as you own it yourself, you can do kind of whatever you want within the housing laws. So it's fairly simple. And there's so many great resources out there, and landlordology is definitely one of them. Just to teach you how to be better. For sure.

Let's kind of. We'll do this in chronological order, I guess. We'll talk about tenant screening, and then we're going to talk about some other things on rent collection and so forth. But do you, by the way, before we even do tenant screening, before that is marketing. Do you talk on any of that topic of how to market your properties and so forth?

I sure do, and I think that's.

Why don't we talk about that first?

Yeah. Okay, great. So the key is to really get your property listing or your ad out there, right? I mean, you want to catch as many tenants as you can to see, you know, to get a bigger pool of applicants. And so you're casting the broadest net. And I think that's a challenge for a lot of people because maybe you're not so tech savvy, or maybe you're not comfortable with advanced listing sites, or maybe there's just a ton of them. So the tools that I often recommend and that I use personally in my own life is Craigslist is still huge in my city, which I'm in the D.C. metro area, and I get 90% of my applicants from Craigslist. But the other tool that I highly recommend is something called Postlets, and it's P O S T L e t s postlets.com, which is a little.

That's owned by Zillow. Sure.

Correct. Yep, owned by Zillow. And the thing I love about them is that they actually will let you formulate A listing, and then it will syndicate it out to all the major listings sites. And so it's kind of like hitting 12 birds with one stone, I should say.

It's great. We love postlets.

Yeah. And something that we do at Cozy is we have a listings capability, too. So any property that you might have there listed with Cozy that you're using to screen tenants will also show up in, you know, another listing site. So it's. It's really great. It's really easy to get your.

Get your property out there before you even use postlets. Here's one thing every landlord needs to do. You got. You know, you've heard the old saying, a picture says a thousand words, right? You gotta get some good photos of your property and keep those on file, because you might be using them once a year or once every other year. You know, have. If the lawn looks crappy, get that photo photoshopped. If you don't know how to use these photo editing programs yourself to adjust the lighting, don't have the sun behind the house, have the sun in front so the shadows aren't bad. You know, get these photos. Look it. It's worth hiring even a professional real estate photographer. Real estate photography is a specialty, okay? And there are all kinds of real estate photographers out there that call on realtors all the time, and they say, look, for 100 bucks, 150 bucks, we'll go take photos of your listings. All you. You only need to do this once, okay? Just get some good, you know, have. Have five or six good photos of your property done. You know, have them retouched so they look good, and you can use those over and over again on Craigslist, postlets, everything. Right. I mean, would you agree?

Absolutely. I have a bunch of folders on my computer where I go back to these same pictures over and over again every time I need to release the apartment.

One thing that I think is worth saying is that it's so wise to take incredible pictures up front, but it's also wise to go back every few years and do it again, because if you don't, you and the property sees a lot of wear and tear through some rough tenants. Or maybe it had, you know, maybe it really got destroyed one time, and then the next group comes in there and the paint's changed, maybe the furnishings are gone, and, you know, the outdoor yard doesn't look at all like it used to, you know, and they're basically approaching a completely different property than what's displayed in the pictures. Then. Then you'll have A problem because it just feels like false advertising. Feels like you're pulling the wool over their eyes. And that's never a good feeling.

Fair enough. Of course. But if your property doesn't have any major changes, you can just reuse these things, you know, which is great. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Okay, tell us more.

Okay, great. So as you said, pictures are worth a thousand words. I also like to put my contact information in there. I know that's silly, but it's worth saying that I actually put my phone number in the listings, which a lot of landlords don't. And I actually invite people to text me so, you know, as many barriers as I can remove to help me connect with that potential applicant, then I'm going to get showings better and faster than the landlord down the street.

Now, I think you're crazy, but okay, go ahead.

And just so you know, my mom does it this way too. God, I think I hate texting. It's literally the worst form of communication ever invented. But she just takes the calls all the time. And I, I just think you could automate that a little bit by having one of these voicemail services that will let them talk to you. But first just plays some standard information and says, you know, here's the property address. Feel free to go look at it. You know, and you gotta use some, obviously some savvy about that. You know, here's the deal, here's what I need, security deposit, et cetera. Just explain it all to them on tape so that you don't have to keep answering calls. And of course, long distance investors. You're probably not going to do this, okay? You're going to have an agent do the lease up of your property. But, you know, you can layer. What we do is we layer on top of what that agent or property manager does and it really gets the property leased a lot faster. You know, we. And it also holds them accountable. And you know, if you control that asset advertising funnel, you can say, hey look, I saw that we got, you know, 16 people interested in the property last week. What's going on with them? And the agent's gonna say, oh, well, I guess they know what's going on. I better, you know I'm being held accountable here.

Right? Yeah. Tools like Google Voice will let you set up that, like a fake phone number that you could forward to anybody else and then leave that recording as you described. So that's. I'm glad you brought that up. That's a fantastic idea.

The outgoing message, right? So at least they hear that first they get the details and then if they have further questions or interest, they can be connected with you. Yeah, good.

And to touch on the whole picture idea that you had mentioned earlier, one of my favorite companies and little tools is called Circle Pix P I X and they're a national company and what I love about them is I think you can hire, they'll hire a local photographer, a professional photographer for you and they'll come take even 360 degree photos of some of your rooms. And it's like 100 bucks. I mean it's really cheap. And then they'll even host the picture.

It is, it's so inexpensive. Yeah, right.

I've used them a couple of times and been very pleased. So. Okay, so once the listings out there and you start getting phone calls or emails or you know, your property manager is collecting those and you're keeping them accountable, the next step is to really set up showings for these people who actually want to see more and they might be good candidates. And so when I'm taking and when I'm screening these people, I will have an initial phone call with them and it sounds like the property manager could do the same. Just to go through the general requirements so that we don't waste any time going to a property if it's not going to work out. Things like if the property is a no pet policy, then it's worth asking even if it is clearly stated in the ad. Then if everything checks out, tell them what your income requirements are and tell them what kind of a lease you're looking for is really important. I think that a lot of times people just assume, especially tenants, they just assume they can get whatever lease they want, but if that doesn't match up with the schedule that the owner has, you know, then it, it may not work. So I've wasted many hours that way where it sounds like I have a good candidate and then they say, oh, I'm looking for a three month lease. And I said, oh shoot, it's, you know, it's only a year minimum is the requirement and we go our separate ways.

Yeah, or got three months, who wants that? You know, what do you think about two year leases? I think two year leases are pretty good.

You know, I love them. I will always offer a two year lease to somebody when I'm talking to them, but I'll say a year is the minimum and then I typically won't actually reduce my rent price for a two year lease because I think it provides extra security. I think there's a Benefit for the, for the tenant as well to have a two year lease. And so they're getting that extra benefit, but.

Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, by the way, just Lucas, to mention on that, we actually try to increase them where we say, you know, here's the rent, you know, it's a $1500 or whatever the first year, but the second year it goes to 1540 or 1550 or something like that. So we build that rent increase in there just for inflation protection.

Sure, that's a great idea. And actually I like that because it gives them a heads up a year in advance when their rent's going to go up.

Yeah. And then you don't have to argue about it either. You know, it's already, it's already spelled out. And usually the way the human mind works, you know, that people think about today, instant gratification. Very few people think about the future in a cogent way, you know, and so the tenant will usually just agree, hey, look, you know, that's not for 13 months. I don't have to think about that now, you know, so they'll, they'll just usually agree to it.

Yeah. So after that initial inspection or conversation that I have with them and it looks like it's going to work out, I'll usually invite them to, you know, join me at the property so we could go through and check it out and they can get a warm fuzzy about it. So what I typically do is I do something called a landlord's open house. I don't know if I've coined that term or if I made up or if I heard it somewhere. But basically it's similar to a real estate open house for a sale of a property. But the difference is that I'll schedule back to back showings with people who have been interested all that week and I'll set it up from 1 o' clock to 4 o' clock on a Saturday and I can just tell my existing tenants who are there, hey, listen, you know, you don't have to leave, but I'd really appreciate it if you did, you know, go catch a movie, go get a long lunch, you know, for these three hours. And I'm going to show the place to like six different groups of people. And what happens when that open house happens is that though they can't really just show up, it's all by appointment only, it does create a sense of urgency because people will inevitably show up as other tenants are leaving. And then there's this buzz around the property and they always ask the question you know, hey, has anybody else applied or. Oh, I really like it. How quick do I have to move on it? And then I can quickly tell them, oh, listen, I had six showings today. You know, it just creates this sense of desire for the unit, especially if it shows really well. So that tactic has helped me many times on many properties collect multiple, you know, holding deposit checks from tenants that day. So oftentimes I'll spent three hours and ended up with three different groups who are interested and have gone home to go apply. So it's worked well for me and allowed me to secure qualified applicants in like three hours.

Right, okay, sounds good. Tell us more, you know, and move on anytime to rent collection if you want, rather than the screening process. But more on screening.

Sure, yeah. More on screen. How about if I do find somebody?

How about using Cozy and doing the background checks and all that good stuff too?

Great. If there is someone who does want to apply, then what I'll tell them to do is go to my application, my online application, and I'll provide them the link. Or it's usually in the ad anyway, so they can always go back to the listing and click on it from there. And then this online profile, this online application is on Cozy. It's hosted with Cozy and it's public. And they can go to it from their phone. They can go to it from any laptop or iPad or whatever, and they can just fill it out. And so sometimes my tenants or my applicants will be at the property during the showing and want to jump on it, and they will literally just walk out to their car and fill out the application on their phone. And the beauty of that is one of the features that Cozy offers is it lets a landlord or manager require a credit report and a background check as part of the submission of that application. So by the time I ever see any real application from that person, it has a full Experian background check with credit score, credit data, credit lines, debt, everything. And a full background check which includes evictions, criminal, sex offender database, terrorist watch list, all that stuff. And it's all bundled together. So the first time I ever have to really deal with an applicant on paper, the data is already there. Everything's there. It makes it super easy just to look at it.

Everything's there in one place. So we did a show on more with a lot more on Cozy. But just explain to us how that works, if you would. People can go to the Cozy website, C O z y and it's.it's not com. What is it? It's co. Yeah, cozy. Co. Okay. They can go there and they can set up an account, what, as a landlord. Right. And is there any charge for that? What does the account do? You have your own portal and everything, right? Tell us more about it.

That's correct. So Cozy is a full end to end property management software platform for landlords and managers. And so they go to Cozy, go set up a landlord account, and instantly you'll be prompt with, hey, tell us about one of your properties and you can fill it all in and then you can start collecting applications on that property or that unit. And so we'll provide you with that URL to send your applicants to and that URL that you can put into all your listings. And then the tenant, you know, it's really easy for the tenant to just log in or go to that URL, create a tenant account with Cozy, and then go through an identity verification process and fill out the application and can submit the whole application, including a credit report and score in about five or six minutes. So it's extremely easy for a landlord to just kind of get up and running in a few minutes and then have a way to collect these screening reports in the application. And so, you know, I think that's critical just to make it super easy.

So basically what you do is you go to Cozy, you set up an account saying that you're a landlord. Now if you have multiple properties, how do you do that? Are you setting up, you know, one account for each property or do you have one account and say I have all these properties?

No, each manager or landlord would set up one, just a single account and then they would, they could add as many properties or units as they want to. So Cozy is completely free for, I mean there's nothing, there's no charge to the landlord or tenants. The only, the only tool out there that'll let you screen tenants and collect rent for free. So it's, it's easy.

And then when a tenant applies for your property on Elm street, they go there and there's a portal for Elm Street. Right. And they can, they can apply and it'll, it'll just automatically get their credit report. Now there, it charges the tenants for credit reports, right?

That's correct. So each tenant would pay about $19 or $34 for the two reports.

Now many landlords that self manage actually, you know, it's a minor detail, it's not even worth the time, frankly. But they do have the credit report and background check is a little bit of a profit center, frankly. You know, they'll charge $25 for an application. It only cost them 10 to process. So if they use Cozy, they're not going to be able to do that, right?

That's correct. We've actually tried to purposely eliminate that application fee and just charge the tenant directly.

Yeah. Okay. That's no big deal. It's fine. And then once this tenant is approved, the tenant has a profile inside of Cozy, and then you can do the rent collection right through the software, Right at no charge each month.

That's correct. It's really easy. Yeah.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I love it. Okay, what else should we know?

Well, one of the perks that I love about the way Cozy handles credit reports is that, you know, I used to have to struggle whenever I collected a credit report from somebody, and then I denied them based on something on their credit. You know, the federal regulation says that I actually have to give the tenant either a copy of their report or help them figure out how to get that report so that they can correct it in case there's an error or something. Maybe they're being.

Penalized for something that's not true, and then they can fix it for next time. So the thing with Cozy is that because the tenant is participating in this process, they get a copy of all these reports at the same time the landlord does.

So they never have to. The landlord never has to worry about following up with that tenant that they deny and working with them and then, you know, having to hassle that so it's instantly compliant with the regulations. It's really just easy.

Yeah. Excellent. That just makes it a lot simpler. Okay, what else should we know? Do you want to talk about rent collection? I mean, you know, we know Cozy does that, but you teach people about rent collection in general. What tips do you have there?

Absolutely. So rent collection is probably the biggest pain point for all managers and landlords. It's difficult. I mean, I've heard landlords tell me horror stories. And probably the craziest type of rent collection I've ever seen was or heard of was I was speaking with this person at a conference, and they said they do the ice cream truck policy. And I looked at her and I said, well, what do you mean, ice cream truck? And she goes, well, you know, you have a couple houses in a neighborhood, and you literally drive through, roll down your window and, like, yell out the window, it's time to pay your rent. And then people come walking out of their doors with cash, wads of cash and checks and all that, and collected that way. And I just looked at her and said, that's horrible. That's a huge pain point. And she goes, oh, yeah, I hate doing it. So I encourage her, well, why don't you try to do something that's automatic and online and helps people to.

Pay their rent online? Because they already pay everything else online. And with the tools that you have in today's modern society, you just, there's just no excuse for having to write a check. There's no excuse for paying with cash. It's really just kind of an old school way of doing it. With rent collection, I think the three big key components to really high quality rent collection and making sure that you always get paid on time is first, it starts with tenant screening. You make sure that you collect high quality tenants that have a history of paying their rent on time. But then two, make sure that you set up.

Your consequences in the lease. And so make sure you get that written lease. And then tell them what's going to happen if they fail to meet these requirements. One, they're going to get a late fee. Two, they may even get a daily late fee if they're really late, if it depends on your state laws. Three, you could terminate the lease. Four, you could file an eviction and then win a judgment and then even go after them, win collections. And, you know, you can lay this out so that they understand this is what's going to happen if I don't pay my rent. So I think that's important because I think a lot of times tenants will pay their rent late or not at all because they think they can get away with it.

Right, I think that's a good point. They don't understand the consequences. And, you know, unfortunately, less educated people, usually at the lower end of the economic specific spectrum, you know, they, they don't think of these consequences. You know, they don't really, you know, that's why so many people have bad credit and, you know, they got to pay ridiculous usurious interest rates. Part of that is, of course, the vast bankster conspiracy, which did that to people on purpose, you know, in the last meltdown. But that subject would take 45 minutes to discuss. So, you know, and I have a feeling you might even agree with me, you know, but that notwithstanding just generally being responsible and paying your bills, you know, people don't understand, look, this is going to haunt me, you know, it's going to. And if you lay that out for people, you know, most of them are going to want to do what's going to protect their future.

Right, right, right, exactly. So if you can get past those two points, you can pick quality tenants and then make sure that they understand the consequences. And you have to be able to back them up. So like, you can't just like blab this off. You have to know, okay, this is how I would file an eviction. And you have to be familiar with those, those rules in your county. But then I think the third and.

The most important method before you move on, though. Sorry to interrupt you before you get to that last one. Does Cosi help with any of that filing evictions or anything there?

Oh, filing eviction. No, each county rule is different.

It's different.

Different, yeah, they have different processes and every state has rules and then each county has their own rules. And so it's just, it's a beast to try to get into. Sure.

So, so here's the thing. I do want though, that in every area there are attorneys that operate like a mill, okay, an assembly line, and they process, you know, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of these, you know, unlawful detainers, they're called forcible entries or eviction notices, whatever, you know, in, in all these different counties around the US So that's really, it's not that expensive. You just go to one of these attorneys that does it as an assembly line, as a mill, and it'll be anywhere from, you know, three to six hundred dollars probably. And they just do the whole thing. They'll even get the judgment for you. And this is what kills me. I find that so many landlords, they don't pursue the judgment, the post eviction judgment. They just, they, they let them go. They say things like, oh, well, you know, they're just a deadbeat. They don't have any money. You know, you can't get blood out of a turnip. Well, you know what, Folks wake up because that turn up won't always be a turnip, okay? They're going to come into money in their life at some point probably, and they're going to have the money to pay you. And just because they're, you know, they're, they're broke today doesn't mean they're going to be that way in five years or 10 years. Okay. And you can renew these judgments indefinitely. I think that may be change in jurisdictions a little bit, but I'm pretty sure you can just keep renewing them. You know, as soon as they're going to want to buy a car and get an auto loan or get a home loan and buy a house or maybe even rent Another property, you know, that. That lender is going to say, hey, you got to clear up your. Your judgment before I'm gonna. Before I'm gonna loan to you. You know, that happens all the time. And you'll suddenly get paid off with interest, with really nice interest, by the way.

Right. And one of the things that's always been a real incentive when explaining it to tenants is if I tell them that, hey, listen, even if I can't collect on you now because you don't have a stable job or the money, it's good for a long time, and I will get an order to garnish your wages. That's your next real employer. So that whole aspect of them getting a new job with a new employer and they're trying to impress this new person and work their way up, and then I come in with some sort of an order saying they have to, you know, I'm garnishing the wages, and they have to pay me first every month. That's an embarrassment to them. And they don't. You know, they don't care about the car representative at the Toyota dealership, but they do care about their employer, knowing that they don't have a good handle on their finances. So usually if I threaten that, they get really worried, and then it's just like, okay, well, here's your money. You know, they come up with this somehow, and then the judgment's over. So that, to me, has always been the most successful in terms of incentivizing them to pay.

Okay, all right. Good, good. What else? Anything else? We got to wrap up here, Lucas, but just, you know, a couple final points.

Okay. I think the third and final point to Flawless Rent Collection is just to make it automatic, you know, put it online, use something like cozy, or use cozy. And Cozy is completely free to process rent. So basically, you have. You've got your Cozy landlord account, and you tell us where you want the money to go to, and then the tenant tells us where they want the money to come out of, and it just gets processed like clockwork every month. There's.

No extra fees involved. There's no worry about things being late because they can set up recurring automatic payments. And if you do that, most tenants will actually thank you because they don't have to think about rent. That'll blow your mind, right? If a tenant comes up to you and says, hey, thanks for taking my money.

Yeah, right, exactly. Just make it easy for them, number one. So that's. That's good. Good stuff. What websites do you want to give Out. We talked about cozy, of course. Do you want to give out landlordology?

Sure. It's landlordology.com and that's the site that I founded. Has a tremendous amount of information and resources available. It's all free. We don't make any money off it. It's our way to give back to the community in which we belong. You know, we were talking about evictions earlier and one company that I like and I don't have any affiliate relationship with or anything, but it's called clicknotices.com I've talked with their CEO a while and what they do is you can sign up for an account with them and if you need to file an eviction, you do it through their website and they have partnerships with all of these eviction mill attorneys that you were describing and they will literally file it through one of them and they'll represent you in court. You could file an eviction and get it all handled through the site for a small amount of money and you never would have to show up. You could just get it all done and it tracks that process. Kind of like getting a mortgage. You can see the process going through. So that's one of the more tech savvy ways to file an eviction. And luckily I've not had to use it.

Will they literally just go and post the three day notice on the door for you and stuff like that?

You'd have to look at their website. I'm not sure. Like I said, I haven't used it, but I know that they will file that eviction from start to finish once probably once the lease has been terminated. So I don't, I don't think they actually post the notice because that's. They start kind of after that process.

But it just seems like an easy, you know, kind of Web 2.0 modern technology way to do it.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. You know, it is, I always like to say it's an amazing time to be alive because of technology. It's just. It really is an amazing time to be alive, but it's an amazing time to be a landlord too. There are some really great tools out there and thank you for being behind one of them. We really like your tool. So keep up the good work and thanks for being on the show, Lucas.

Thank you, Jason. It was a pleasure.

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