CW 711 - Client Case Studies, Property Management Best Practices, Increasing Occupancy Rates, Phoenix Event with Oliver & Jason

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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 listeners from around the world. This is your host, Jason Hartman, coming to you from a very stormy and rainy Scottsdale, Arizona today. God is putting on a big show for us. You know, as much as nobody really loves summer in Arizona, I gotta tell you, I love monsoon season because we have some of the coolest, swankiest storms ever and the cloud formations are just awesome. I'm just a huge fan of weather. I don't know if anybody else out there agrees with me, but I love weather phenomena. It's just really interesting to me for some odd reason. So if you didn't in the last 710 episodes, know that about your host now you know. Anyway, this is your host, Jason hartman, episode number 711. And I've got Oliver here with me coming to you from San Diego, California. Oliver, how you doing?

Hey everyone, doing great. Thank you. Jason, I've got to say, there's no monsoons going on here in San Diego.

Boring, boring, boring. All you have there is high taxes and crowded places. Well, you do have the ocean.

You can add in the beautiful beaches, the oceans and everything that comes along with that.

I've been there, done that, but okay, I do agree with you. Listen, when I lived in La Jolla for, for my seven month stint to get my tax break, I would go and try to watch the sunset every day I could and they were, they were beautiful many times. Although interest Arizona has, is considered to have the most beautiful sunsets. And I don't know exactly why that is. I read an article about it, but can't remember. It's just really interesting sunsets here in the desert. You know, the desert has interesting skies. You get that once in a while in California. And when you do it, spectacular, because it's over the ocean especially. But it's really interesting. So, yeah, we're getting some water here and we need it badly. In fact, water. You know, there are a few documentaries about this that are interesting. And as you probably know about your host, folks, I love documentaries. I'm a Netflix documentary addict and I'm constantly watching them. There's some interesting ones about water and, you know, water may well be the next gold. They call it blue gold. It's a big deal and obvious. Obviously, the entire human race needs it. But the problem is, if you're thinking about, well, should I invest in water? The problem is you have to invest in a company that has something to do with it and, and you leave yourself susceptible to violating commandment number three, which is thou shalt maintain control. And the three primary problems there are, you might be investing with a crook or you might be investing with an idiot. And assuming they're honest and competent, they take a huge management fee off the top for managing the deal. So maintain control. Be an income property investor, and that is how you can best control your financial future. Don't relinquish control to somebody else. Be a direct investor. And speaking of which, before we get into some of the meatier content of today's show, come to our event upcoming in Phoenix. Brittany is going to absolutely hit me over the head if I forget to announce that we have a raffle. Folks, we have a nice little raffle and we've done this before on prior events. We'll give away a few free tickets and all you need to do is go and enter. It's super easy, is go to jasonhartman.com raffle jason hartman.com raffle and just enter. And a whole bunch of you have already purchased tickets. If you've already purchased a ticket and you win, we will refund your money. Did I say refunction without a D? I think I did. It's refund with a D. Thank you. Maybe I need another cup of coffee still this morning. But we will refund your money. And if you haven't purchased a ticket yet, you might just win. So Jason hartman.com raffle it takes a whopping 30 seconds to enter. And for a bonus entry, if you tweet your entry on your Twitter account, you'll get two entries. So there you go. Pretty cool Jason hartman.com raffle and we'll we've got to announce and congratulate some of our direct investors who are not relinquishing control of their Financial future to some guy that went to a great school who's wearing a nice suit in a beautiful class A office building that, by the way, is probably owned by an insurance company. Just so you know, insurance companies love to invest in real estate. That's their primary investment, I'd say. And so you're not gonna give your money to that guy wearing the nice suit at Merril or at Ameriprise or Charles Schwab or whatever in that beautiful office. You are a direct investor. You're going to be in control. And we help you maintain control in a better, more systematized way. So Mary Ellen and Guy, now these are just Oliver's clients. We've got several other investment counselors, as you know, but we're just talking about Oliver's clients behind their back on the show today.

They're going to hear this pretty soon.

I think they'll hear it. I bet they will. They're regular listeners. So congratulations to Mary Ellen and Guy. Purchased nine properties. Tell us about them, Oliver.

Yeah, they purchased nine properties from us. They started with us only about nine months ago.

They came on nine properties in nine months.

You got it.

They came on now, folks. Hey, hey. Let me interrupt you for a moment, Oliver. Look at, folks. Think about it. You could have a baby in nine months and that kid will cost you about $250,000. Or you could buy nine properties, and that'll probably cost you about $250,000 too. So you decide. But if you have a kid, buy those nine properties because, hey, that'll pay for their college education. It'll, it'll. It'll be a great, you know, create a legacy here. We're not doing this stuff necessarily just for ourselves, although we're gonna get, you know, a comfortable life out of it. We're doing it to create a legacy as well. So. Yeah, Oliver, go ahead.

It definitely will create a bit more of a legacy for you. And I think this is probably the only podcast online where we'll hear the comparison between nine months of having a baby or nine months and birthing or owning nine houses.

Yeah, well, you know, we make odd comparisons. We take the financial world and bring it into the real world.

Put a twist on it.

Yeah, put a. Put a funny twist on it.

So Mary Ellen and Guy started with us about nine months ago. They came onto our first Florida property property tour back in. I think that was September of last year out in the Orlando area.

We were in Orlando.

Yeah, they started there. They had listened to the podcast, went on to the property Tour bought three homes right away. Then they came to our Meet the Masters event in January in San Diego, got another actually shortly after the event they actually went out to Memphis, took a tour there, went out to Little Rock, bought another bunch of properties out that way. And now they're actually, they've already purchased their tickets amongst one of the first ones to buy their tickets for our next Phoenix event. So this just goes to show how being involved and how really getting to some of these events, meeting our providers, meeting us, getting in contact with some of our other investors really does make a difference in terms of giving you momentum and moving forward.

Yeah. And you know what, that's why I would say, listeners, you've got to come to some live events and come and there is just a whole nother dimension that occurs if you're just sitting back listening to the podcast. Hey, we appreciate you listening, but come to live events. We have had people come from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, England, different places in Europe, Canada. Canada. Give me a break. That's not that far away. Hey, listen, we have people at this event that we are having in Phoenix. We have people coming from, Yep, Phoenix too. So wherever you live, get to some of our live events, really meet other people, other clients of ours. So you know that we are the real deal. We've been doing this a long time. We've got thousands of clients and we're going to take good care of our clients as always. And by the way, we're going to talk about a little rent back challenge here or not rent back, but rent ready challenge and how, you know, in this case we can't rent, take credit. The client kind of took care of themselves. But I want to tell you all about it so you can, you can understand how to do it for yourself too. You know, just meet our clients, shake hands with people, have some private conversations with them. You know, of course you'll hear us up there giving the presentation and so forth, teaching you about going through the mechanics of property investing, teaching you about using software to evaluate and manage your investments, all of these best practices as a real estate investor. And by the way, this is September 10th and 11th, coming right up just a little more than a month away. We'll do all that for you. But one of the big benefits is you're going to get to talk over lunch or at the break or you know, whenever to other people who are actually doing it investing with us. And you know, we are trying to be just as transparent as we possibly can. We want you to hear the good, the Bad and the ugly. This is not perfect, but it's just better than everything else. At least everything else I know of. Income property, the most historically proven asset class in the world. So, yeah, come to a live event. And I think also like Oliver says, for your own motivation, it will give you a lot of motivation when you see other people doing it. You get to meet them in person and hear their stories. That will really add a whole new dimension to your investing. So.

Exactly. Hear their stories and also hear about some of their strategies that they're implementing. I mean, sometimes I've got, you know, a couple, the husband's working full time, the wife is at home and she's taking care of the kids. And granted, that is a full time job in itself.

Oh, that's a more than full time.

Job, I've got to say. We're coming up with strategies on how to get them qualified in order to start putting properties in their name. So that way both individuals can actually acquire their full nine or ten properties conventionally financed in their name.

The reason you say nine is because they might already own a home in which they live. So 10 each.

Exactly, 10 each.

But yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so that there's some good strategies and you will learn. We learn tons of stuff from our clients and we try to share some of it here on the podcast, of course, and definitely at our live events too, because we have our clients share and talk to the audience and, and also just through their questions. So. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. Okay, so they're coming to the Phoenix event, so you can meet Mary Ellen and Guy there. They've got four properties in Memphis, one in Little Rock and one in Mississippi as well. And good stuff. Okay, so what about Scott Oliver? Eight properties in the last one and a half months. Scott, congratulations. You are jamming eight properties in one and a half months. Wow. In a month and a half.

That is huge. It's a. He's purchased a lot of properties with us here in a very short period of time. He, he's, he's living in the Birmingham area. He's already got a couple of rentals there. He heard about us, went on a quick property tour and went ahead and purchased four properties at, on that property tour alone.

Fantastic.

And then we decided to start diversifying a bit. He picked up another property in our new Port Richey area and then another two in Memphis.

Fantastic. Good, good stuff, Scott. And then we've got Tomas, who I met with, with you just about a, I don't know, a month, month and a half ago. And, you know, I wonder if he would mind if I share that Chicago story he shared with me.

I don't know if I remember the Chicago story right now.

It was about being carjacked.

Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah.

He goes on to tell me this. This has nothing to do with real estate directly, but he goes on to tell me about this story about how he was in Chicago and got, well, not carjacked, but motorcycle jacked. Right. And someone in this bad area came up to him and the person he was riding with, you know, on motorcycles with a gun and said, hey, give me all your money. Right. And I told him that he was making that story up. That was impossible. It could not have possibly happened because guns are illegal in Chicago.

I think the story may have occurred 20 or 30 years ago, too.

Did you all get what I'm saying? No. Doesn't matter. Very strict gun control laws. The point being that criminals don't obey the law. That's my punchline. Okay. Anyway, I think that went over kind of like a lead balloon, you know, in the whole gun control argument.

But, yeah, yeah, a little bit. Let's go ahead and congratulate Tomas. He's. He's purchased seven homes in the. The Memphis market recently. He's got a fairly diversified portfolio already as is, so he wants to go ahead and focus on one of the nice midwestern areas. He's got some fantastic, really nice B plus A properties out in that. That market. And he's just looking at acquiring some more there and also expanding to a new market here, probably sometime soon.

When I saw the expression on his face when I said that that could have never happened. It was like, meant for a movie. I mean, it was such a great expression. I just loved it. And he just cracked up after I said that. So that was an awesome story. He's working on another. A big multi home purchase, at least last I checked. You, of course, have a more recent update than I do, Oliver. But yeah, he's doing a great job investing and he's a very successful entrepreneur, so. But, you know, again, the idea is, look, if you have that awesome corporate job, or maybe not so awesome, but at least you're earning a lot of money. We'll put it that way. And if you have a situation where you've got a business and that business is kicking out money, folks, you've got to diversify. Don't have all your eggs in the basket of your business. A lot of entrepreneurs make this mistake, okay? So you've got to diversify outside of your Business into a more stable asset class. Your business may be awesome. If you stick another 50 or $100,000 into your business, you may see a really quick return on that because businesses typically will give you a more instant gratification. But the thing you pay for that, the risk you take with the business side of it, is that businesses are obviously far more volatile. So they're great in some ways, but in other ways they're not as good as. So you want to get some of your chips off the table and outside of your business into a different investment. And obviously Tomas, with his situation, he's just doing an awesome job of that. So he's going to be a big time real estate investor and I'm very impressed. So good job. Tm. What about Margaret?

Margaret, she's relatively new on the scene and she's been listening to our podcast. She actually told me when we first started chatting about six months ago, hey, Oliver, I'm starting at, I think it was podcast number 200 and I'm working my way up. I was like, oh, wow, that is fantastic news. She told me she's essentially done, you know, about a 50 or 75 in two or three months. I said, wow, that's, you know, that's amazing. I said, probably be worth those starting from where we're at right now and sort of working your way back that way. Just so that way she's got some of the more relevant information because otherwise she was asking about some of the property tours that we have in Phoenix and I was like, no, no, we're not in that area right now anyways.

I cannot believe that. So starting at episode 200, going to episode at the time probably, I don't know, where were we at the time? Maybe 660 or something like that. Just kind of guessing. And Margaret, you deserve an award because you're still listening to me. So thank you very much for listening. I'm sure I have offended you many times by now and I've said a lot of stupid things and you're still listening. So you certainly deserve an award for putting up with me. But definitely.

And we actually got a chance to meet with Margaret as well. She came onto our Ohio property tour about a month and a half ago. She loved our provider. She put a property under contract right away and just been sort of working with her in terms of implementing some of that strategy and getting some property properties in her name to apply and get more conventional financing.

That's fantastic. Well, good stuff. Good stuff. Margaret, congratulations and thank you for listening to the Show. There you go. Little sound effect there. Okay, what about Nick and Denise?

Nick and Denise, yes. They've. They've purchased about four properties with us already. One in the Columbus market, a couple in Memphis, and then they use their self directed IRA to buy one in Chicago.

Fantastic. Yeah, self directed IRA is the way to. I absolutely love my self directed IRA before I did that many years ago. I can't believe the difference. I mean, getting control of your retirement funds is just a major advance for any investor. You've got to have a self directed IRA for sure. And we can help you set one up. We can refer you to different providers who do that. So yeah, that's absolutely a must. Good stuff. Congratulations.

And for those of you out there that don't know this yet, you can get financing through your self directed ira. So just ask us, ask me, ask your investment counselor about how we can help you with that.

Great. Absolutely great. Nick and Denise, fantastic. And then Michelle, who is a client, but she is also teaching part of the program coming up, our software weekend that's coming up in Phoenix that we talked about September 10th and 11th. Michelle is great. She's actually a professor, so she knows how to teach, whereas I just get up there and ramble, you know, tangent alert. And so she's been building a fantastic portfolio. And what's the latest with her?

Yeah, she's in the Bay Area. She went ahead and did a refi on her home. She's got that all taken care of. And now we've got a number of properties under contract with her in Memphis. We also got some going on in, in the Chicago market as well. So we're really looking forward to closing on all of those here soon and probably getting involved with maybe another market or if not, we're sort of gonna wait and see once these close and then sort of strategize from there as to where to move forward.

Good stuff. And Michelle, of course was on the podcast about maybe, I don't know, I want to say 10, 15 episodes ago, she came on the show and shared her story. So fantastic, Michelle, congratulations and good for you. Good job. What about Michael?

Yeah, Michael. Michael and Michelle, they actually came to our Meet the Masters event in January and I've been working with them. They started with their first purchase in March and since then it's almost been a one a month type of thing. So since March they've put one property under contract almost every month. So now they've totaled about five properties with us. And we're just again using that same sort of strategy, putting X, number of properties in Michael's name, Y property, number of properties in Michelle's name, and just really utilizing the financing right now at these super low rates. It's amazing.

Good stuff. That's a great way to do it. You know, mortgage sequencing and mortgage planning is a very important part of this, and we've done several episodes talking about that before. Of course, we can help you with that directly. Any of our investment counselors can help you with that. So good stuff. Let's just wrap up here, talk about Adam, Dave and Greg. Greg is doing a fantastic job. He's been on before. Oliver, give us an overview of that, and then we gotta dive into some content here.

All right, Adam, been working with them for about a month now. He's already put four homes under contract. So congratulations, Adam. David, we've been working together now for about, I think, six months. He's already. When he's already purchased about five houses, and he's looking at expanding his portfolio here quickly. And Greg, we've had him on the podcast before. He's the one that went from just about $0 to about $4,000 in passive cash flow in about seven months, which is amazing.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Good, Good stuff. Well, congratulations to all of you and all of our other clients. You're just doing phenomenal for things out there. We are so impressed with you. We appreciate your business and we also love to learn from you and love to get you on the show. We've had many of our clients on the show over the years. We just thank you so much. So that's. That's great news. Good job. Good job to our clients.

Congratulations, guys.

Congratulations. Okay, Oliver, let's talk. Oh, well, a little bit on the event. Just note that that room block is almost sold out. So what happens is when you go to jason hartman.com events and you register for the event, you are emailed the hotel information. We've got a room block at a special rate, only 1, 29 per night. And this is a resort. Okay. And so, you know, it's a. If you want to bring your family to one of our events, this would be a pretty fitting event for it because there's lots to do. There's a big, you know, big, huge pool area. I think there's water slides and stuff.

There's water slides, there's mini golf. There's even a lazy river. And for those of you that are thinking, oh, my God, this is a resort, is there going to be a 50 resort fee per night? The answer Is no, we've already got that taken care of and it's included in that 129 per night rate.

Yeah, I can't stand when hotels do these resort fees. You know, it's a little extra nickel and dime charge. So yeah, good stuff. And then you also, in addition to getting in on the room block rate, you also get early bird pricing. So hurry because that is going through fast and the price will escalate very soon. So get in that. Jason hartman.com events let's talk about make readies when you change tenants. Now. You know, one of the practice a lot of our investors like to do is number one, minimize tenant turnover. Because of course tenant turnover is costly. You want to keep your tenants for a long time, but at the same time you don't want to be too soft on the rent. You've got got to raise your rents. Okay, so this is a fine line. It's a balance. A lot of our investors are doing two year leases. Sometimes they're doing a two year lease at the same price or sometimes they're doing a two year lease with an escalation built in for the second year. And mostly with a tenant. This is not very hard to get by because the tenant, their mindset is what do I have to pay now versus what do I have to pay in, you know, 13 months from now? Right. And so if you do a $1,000 a month lease, for example, on year one and then the second year you say, well, the lease will be $1,030 a month. So you do a 3% increase in that example, the tenant will probably agree to it, no problem, maybe even, and I've given you this target before, but of course it depends on the economy. It depends on everything. Depends on interest rates, depends on housing supply, depends on a lot of factors that we've talked about in prior episodes. But I always say the target is see if you can raise it 4% annually. So that would be a $40 increase. You want to raise it enough to where you can get a good yield out of your property, but not too much where it really incentivizes the tenant to move. So what I'm saying is if you do a two year lease, I think you can be softer on those escalations, whereas you might do that to your lease at a 2.5% or a 3% increase, 25, $30 rather than $40 or 4% in that example, because you're not going to have any turnover, you're not going to have a make ready in between tenants, you're not going to have a month or more of vacancy and it's going to be a lot easier. You're not going to have any lease up fees and things like that. Minimizing tenant turnover is very important. On the other side of that equation, though, you hear some investors and some of our local market specialists, I think, wrongly brag about how low their vacancy rates are. And Oliver, you know what I'm going to say here, don't you? If your vacancy rate is too low, meaning your properties are just occupied all the time, you're not raising the rent enough, okay? The vacancy rate should be a target number. It should not be, you know, puffing up your chest and bragging about how you've got 100% occupancy and you never have a vacancy. Well, the reason for that is probably because you're not raising your rents like you should. Okay? So the best practice here is to have a target vacancy rate. So if you have a portfolio of 10 or 100 properties and you have a vacancy rate of somewhere around 6 to 8%, meaning your occupancy rate is 92 to 94%, you're doing pretty darn good. Now what you don't want is you don't want a vacancy rate where it's what's called an economic vacancy where tenants just aren't paying you, or on the other hand, or you have that vacancy rate where you're just not being a good manager or your manager's not being a good manager, your property manager. And sometimes we self manage, sometimes we manage our managers. And you want them to market your properties well, you want to maintain your properties well, so you minimize vacancy rates. Okay, so this is all a balance, right? It's all a balance.

Jason, that's some great advice that you just provided there. And I'll just add on a couple little things here. Investors, when you're looking at your properties, pay attention to when that lease is. The lease end date is going to be, and I'd say at least a month, or if not even two months before then speak to your property management company, make sure that they're touching base with the tenants, see where the tenant's at. And to touch on Jason's two year lease. People love options. Including tenants, they love options. I'd say ask the property manager, provide the tenant with two options. Either an option one, which would be for example, like a 4 or 5%, let's say a 4% increase in rent if they only want to renew for one year or if the option two, which would be a two year lease where you essentially just raise the rent 2% per year.

So that would be a really soft income increase.

That'd be a soft increase. But also.

But if you get the security as a land exactly in advance, it's worth doing softer increases. Okay, so these, these are all things that you just have to weigh out. Each property is different, each tenant is different. Everything is an individual circumstance. And that's why real estate does not lend itself real well to statistics. Which is what we actually also wanted to talk about today. But we've run out of time, so we're going to have to save that for a future episode. Because what we're going to talk about, Oliver, we're going to get you back on the show real soon here. It's not going to be far away. And we're going to talk about market indexes, these indices like Case Shiller or the Federal, the various government indexes for real estate prices and rents and vacancy rates and whether there's appreciation or depreciation, all important stuff which we will definitely get to on a future episode. But Oliver, we can come back to that vacancy rate issue a little more in just a second. But let's talk about the make ready issue. Look, folks, your job as a real estate investor is to either self manage your properties, okay? Which you know, we've taught you how to do in many past episodes. And in our members section@jason hartman.com we actually have some private members calls just about that topic about self management from a distance, which is a, can be a great practice. But if not, you need to manage your managers and don't take everything they say as the gospel. Question them. You know, it's like those bumper stickers used to see on really cheap crappy cars in the hippie generation in the 70s and a little bit in the 80s. You know, it was question authority, right? And, and you do need to do that because just, just recently with one of our clients and this is the kind of stuff we want to feed back to you. So we so appreciate clients sharing their stories with us so we can share them with everybody else and we can raise the bar in terms of best practices for management. And in this example, the manager that they were between tenants and the manager wanted to charge them a bunch of money for a make ready. Well, the client actually went to the property and got this make ready done for about one third of what the manager wanted to charge. And most of that, well, really the vast majority of it came from the tenant's security deposit. So here's another thing I want to explain, and this is one of the reasons I do like self management, because although, you know, a good manager is worth their weight in gold, as I've said many times before, but one of the advantages of self management is you don't have this inherent conflict of interest that you get with a property management and they can't help it. It's not the property manager's fault, it's just the way the system is. So property managers have to serve two masters, if you will. They have to serve the tenant and try to keep them happy, and they have to serve the owner, the investor and try and keep them happy, right? So a lot of times the manager does not want the tenant to get upset with them and go online and start writing bad things on Yelp about them or whatever, right? And so in this case, they try to keep the tenants happy and sometimes that's at the expense of the owner, the investor. And they'll say, do this, pay for that, don't take anything out of their security deposit when you really should be taking stuff out of their security deposit. So what I'm saying is I'm not giving you any hard and fast rule of yes or no, this or that. I'm just saying question authority, run it by us. Don't take everything as the gospel from your manager, okay? And don't be a doormat. Okay? Now our local market specialists are going to hate me saying this, right? Because it's contrary to their interest. But look, I know who my customer is and my customer is you, the investor who's listening to me right now. It's not the manager. So Oliver, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, definitely. If something seems out of line, especially in a make ready or even in a maintenance or repair item, if something seems absolutely insane, and in this case it was, the client messaged me, he emailed me, he's like, oliver, how does this look to you? And I was like, this, this is not.

It's ridiculous.

It's totally ridiculous. I had no idea. So I definitely got involved. And what I would say to you guys out there to investors, speak with your investment counselor, ask them, just ask them for their opinion on if something looks absurd. Because chances are, if you think so, it is. And then once they see that, once the property manager sees that we're now or there's some oversight going on, they're probably going to maybe take a second look at what it is that they sent your way.

They're going to, you want to make your property. You know, it's like writing a home. Horse. I remember when I was a kid and I was at summer camp in Malibu, I wasn't rich, but I did go to summer camp in Malibu a couple times.

Well, that is definitely a bit more of a privilege thing.

Yeah, that's. That's white privilege, actually. Yeah, yeah, that's what the Democrats would say, white privilege. But what you didn't hear is that I was living in a one bedroom apartment where my mom was sleeping on a convertible sofa in Mar Vista, which was a terrible area at the time. I hear that it's gotten a lot better now because it's gentrified, but at the time I lived there, it was pretty rough. So here's the thing. I want to give you another best practice for your properties. And this is going to cost you a little bit more money. Not much, a little bit. But I want you to think about making your properties bulletproof. Now, I don't really mean bulletproof, okay? But what I mean is make your properties durable. And here are two great ways you can do that. Number one, when you repaint any of your properties, or if you're involved in the initial painting of them, where you're. I mean, you're not painting yourself. I'm just saying you're hiring the painter. You're instructing the property manager as to what to do. I want you to put either eggshell or low sheen paint on all the walls. For the cheap way to do this, everybody will just use flat paint. Okay? Now, these are not. Eggshell is not a color, by the way. It's a finish. Okay. And it's a very durable enamel, like, finish. Now, in the olden days, you would only put this type of paint on your. Like the enamel paint they called it back when. I don't even know if they call it that anymore. But that would be in the kitchens and bathrooms only, because it's, you know, it's waterproof. Right? But now you put eggshell paint or low sheen paint on all the walls, not just on the baseboards and the doors and the woodwork or the kitchen and bathroom. You put it everywhere, okay. And your painter might charge you a little bit more for it. It's a little bit more expensive. Not much at all. But I'm telling you, that stuff is so durable, you know, you get a scuff or a scrape on it, you just wipe it off. Okay. And fingerprints. You don't have to do repainting and touch up painting. One of my houses, eggshell paint. Looked beautiful for like eight years. Okay. On one of these houses, it's a great investment. So eggshell or low sheen paint finish throughout. I mean, you don't need it on the ceilings. Okay. But everywhere else. All right, that's one rule. And then if you come to the place where you ever have to do a new flooring or recarpet, I want you to consider spending a little more money to put in the vinyl plank wood looking flooring. Okay. Because this stuff, it just makes your house durable. Everything is moving away from carpet. Carpet is an old fashioned concept. You want hard surface floors in your houses because they will last and last and last. And if you on the reason people, a lot of investors like this wood plank style. And by the way, I would not do the dark colors. Okay. That's a personal preference. But a lot of people do this dark wood and it looks dusty very easily. And I think it makes the house look too small. Okay. I just wouldn't do the dark color, but that's my opinion. But you do this wood and if part of it needs to be replaced, they can literally come in with an X acto knife and cut that piece of vinyl out. Okay. Or whatever it's made of. It's not exactly vinyl, maybe. And, and just lay a new piece in there with glue instead of replacing the whole floor. It's just a really easy repair. And it just goes in like a, like a board, like a piece of wood would be if it were really a wood floor. So do those two things make your properties more bulletproof in the long run? That's going to save you a lot of money. Okay. It really, really is.

Yeah, it definitely will. And for those of you that have properties under contract, if you know that they're, they're currently rehabbing them, they're under renovation. I would just, I mean, if you're open to spending a little bit more money. Ask the provider. Ask your. That's a local market specialist. Hey, how much would it cost if I were to put in plank vinyl and get that estimate? I think it'd definitely be worth it.

Yeah. And you can do that throughout. You know, a lot of people are doing the hard surface in all of the rooms except the bedrooms. I would just do it everywhere. Just do it everywhere. And try not to have multiple different things like tile in the kitchen and the plank vinyl looking stuff through in the other rooms. Try and just have one type of flooring throughout. It makes your house look a lot larger. Okay, so just a couple tips for you there. And the other Thing I'd like to say on that, since we are talking about it, I would not be too scared of throwing in an accent color on a wall. Okay. You know, if you take one wall and I used to use in. In some of my houses that I personally lived in and some of the offices, we used to have this Ralph Lauren eggshell finish. I think it was called Malaya or Malena Red. Oh, my God, that was gorgeous. That color was. It was like art on the wall. Okay. It was beautiful. And it doesn't have to be the actual Ralph Lauren paint, which of course will cost you a fortune. They just mimic the color in any paint brand. Sherwin Williams, whatever. But Ralph Lauren, Malena or Malaya, forgive me, I can't remember red. And I think you can do an accent wall. You know, it doesn't have to be that color. That's just an example I've done and every, many, many compliments on it. But then if you're a feng shui person, they say don't do red in the bedroom because it makes you awake. Okay. Bedrooms are for sleeping and. Well, one other thing, this is a family friendly show. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Listening to the podcast, that's the other thing you should do in the bedroom. Yes, absolutely. But you don't want red in there. But in a living room or kitchen area or something that can really jazz up a house, I think it's nice. And one of the services I want to remind you about that we had on a as a guest on a prior podcast is the service called Wego look wegolook.com for 69 bucks, they'll go and take a look and make sure your property's done the way your manager or whoever told you it was done. Okay. For 69 bucks. So if you're not sure that they really put in the paint, first of all, make sure it's on the quote. You know, it's written in there. So you, you know what you're getting and you can just have Wego look go out or the home inspector, if you're dealing with a home inspector in the process of a rehab. So lot of different best practices there. Just wanted to share them with you. Oliver, thank you so much for joining us today. Everybody go to jasonhartman.comevents and register for our upcoming event in Phoenix. If you want to win a ticket, you can try that@jasonhartman.com raffle and win a ticket as well. Thanks for joining us, everyone. Happy investing.

Thank you, everyone.

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Want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month. Just like a banker. Jason's Creating Wealth Encyclopedia series is for you. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email mediaartmanmedia.com Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network Inc. Exclusively.