HI 169: Buy It, Rent It, Profit! Make Money As A Landlord In ANY Real Estate Market by Bryan Chavis

Welcome to Meet the Masters of Income Property Investing. I am your host, Jason Hartman.

The 2019 Meet the Masters of Income property March 23rd and 24th in Newport Beach, California.

What is the sort of the one trick, the hack, the secret that really empowers people to success? Income Property, the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. Register today@jasonhartman.com Masters early bird pricing ends Friday, February 1st. Let's break this down and look at some of the strengths of Income Property as an asset class. I found that this event is really.

Helpful because I'm totally a newbie to real estate investment and so I picked up so much information.

One of the great things about it is that it's so fragmented. Right? Embrace the fragmentation. Jasonhartman.com Masters.

Welcome to the Heroic Investing Show.

As first responders, we risk our lives every day.

Our financial security is under attack.

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A single on duty incident can alter or erase our earning potential instantly and forever. We are the heroes of society.

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To take care of our own financial future. The Heroic Investing show is our toolkit of business and investing tactics on our mission to financial freedom.

Welcome to the Heroic Investing Show, a podcast for first responders, members of the military, veterans and anyone looking to improve their financial future and gain some freedom with their time. We teach America's heroes and how to build passive income, build their startup business and safely grow wealth through real estate and other alternative investments. We help current and prior first responders put protections, systems and a team in place to help them build a life where they can focus on their passion, that service or product that they are uniquely gifted to share with others, making the world a better place for all of us. My name is Gary Pinkerton and I co host this show with Jason Hartman. Today's episode is Heroic Investing 169. 169. So on this episode, Jason peeks behind the curtain of one of the Venture Alliance Mastermind events and talks to a bunch of us. I had the pleasure of being at that event and really it just gets into why you would do a mastermind. Just big takeaways from the weekend, you know, to give you an idea of his specific mastermind. But really why you would do a mastermind at all or an accountability group. Then we jump in with Brian Chavez and Brian Chavez is an author of a couple of books that are talking about property management. Right. So whether it's small apartments or single family homes, like where to look for Properties, how to succeed as a landlord. And I thought it was really interesting and timely. As inventory starts to shrink up here around America, you know, we're looking for the best markets and markets that maybe are still moving in the right direction with properties that are still affordable and will cash flow. So I think you'll really enjoy this and let's get at it. Let's hear in or listen in as first, Jason talks with us at the Venture Alliance Mastermind, and then we jump into this very accomplished author, Brian Chaves.

One of the unique strategies I implemented a few years ago fit with my ten commandments of successful investing, especially number eight, thou shalt borrow to accelerate wealth and reduce risk. And number 10, thou thou shalt only invest in tax favored assets. So my money grows tax free and I can leverage down payments. My friend Pat Donahoe's team at Paradigm Life got me started and I have a few accounts with them now. Check out this perpetual wealth strategy@beyourbank.com.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is your host, Jason Hartman with episode number 897. And I am standing in Palm Springs, California. Beautiful Palm Springs, California, in the middle of our Venture Alliance Mastermind room in the U shaped table. I'm just trying to give you an image here. Coco, the cutest dog in the world is on the floor there cleaning herself. Coco, stop doing that. Anyway, okay. And we just got done with a long brunch with many Bloody Marys and then we rode around on the Petal Pub. That's Mary Ellen. Thank you for giving me the actual name of that. The Pedal Pub. You've seen those things probably in your town, folks. You know, where you get on the bike and it's like this sort of bike car hybrid thingy, jig, and they play loud music and you drive up and down the street from bar to bar. Anyway, it was kind of fun. So we're back here at our meeting room and I just asked some of our attendees. Not all of them were willing, but some were to volunteer to be on the podcast today. So first we have our venture alliance member, Mr. John Christensen. John, welcome.

Thanks, Jason. Yeah, we had a great weekend here and it was a lot of fun hanging out with everybody and some great takeaways.

So what did you learn? We had Brian Smith, the founder of Ugg Boots, speak to us and hang out with us yesterday. I think a lot of people enjoyed that, but the hot seats were really good. And what do you think?

Yeah, my favorite part was probably Brian's talk with us. He talked about how every product and every business really has a story behind it. And with every business, there are always struggles. So his message was in business, I think his message was, you don't give birth to adults. You know, there's always a toddler stage, adolescent stage, and then the product or the business matures. So it's okay to go through those struggles.

Yeah, that's a great point. I'm so glad you brought that up, because as real estate investors, everybody listening, you know, you're in business for yourself. Okay? You are an entrepreneur. You're a real estate entrepreneur. You know, you've been buying a lot of properties since you came to Meet the Masters in January, and you're building your portfolio, but it's like managing a business, Right. And one of the things that Brian talked about about the toddler is, you know, you do a lot of work, right? You change diapers. Yeah. You do all this stuff. You get up in the middle of the night and maybe you get a giggle out of it once in a while and it's fulfilling, but it's not. There's not that much reward until it gets a little older. Right. And then the business really starts rewarding you back, you know? That was interesting point.

Yep, exactly, Jason.

Yeah.

And that's been my experience, really, with real estate. Yeah. I've been involved with platinum properties for about a year now. But even before then, you know, I did some investing on my own and didn't really pay too much attention to it. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's really paying dividends now. So it is interesting how you can just leave it alone and let it work its magic.

You gotta get your investment up to the teenage years and to adulthood ultimately. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Hey, just tell the listeners what your business is.

Well, my business right now is we're working on opening a new fast casual restaurant in San Diego. It's a franchise based out of Toronto, and it's called Freshy. So keep your eyes open for Freshy in San Diego when you're at Meet the Masters.

Yeah. We might just have you cater it, so we're looking forward to that. And Freshy is healthy, fast casual food. So that's great. Hey, Mike Zlotnik over here. Thank you, John. By the way, Mike, what was your takeaway from the weekend? Thanks, Jason. Loved networking with folks here. It's a phenomenal group. It's probably the best element of the whole meeting is the networking. In addition, I also enjoyed Brian Smith's presentation, and I've learned that you don't Advertise the product but you advertise the benefits people will get. So that's one of the takeaways as well. Yeah, that's good. And he talked about that in the context of Ugg boots. Like his original magazine ads back in the day were a big picture of the boots and a small picture of the people and he flipp that around and made it more about a lifestyle and then, then it really caught on and took off. I, I really enjoyed that presentation. Yeah, that's an amazing company because you know, Ugg boots is a billion dollar plus brand now and phenomenal success story. Started from scratch. So. Yeah. Mike. Hey, what's your business? I run number of funds. It's temple funding dot com. I'm fund manager and that's my core business. And that's basically hard money lending and real estate investment funds, right? Yes, it's that. So we do hard money lending on fix and flip projects. We also invest in long term multifamily self storage and other great real estate deals. Good stuff. Thanks. Hey Kerry, you want to talk too? Oh, you're looking at me like. No, I'm not talking. Guy and Mary Ellen, I know you're not talking. Oliver, you want to say hi? Hey everyone. Fantastic to be here in Palm Springs.

Great to see so many people with us this weekend.

I had some of my personal clients attend this time.

Mariel and Guy and Sepin and Michelle. And it's great that the group continues to grow.

Good stuff. Well, thanks. And Sepon, you were on before, but you're not going to say anything this time or you are? No, this was a fantastic event. This is my first time here. One of the highlights that I really liked was the hot seat thing.

And that's where you get to tell.

Your story and have the masterminds around you give you some solutions to your problems. So that's an awesome feature of the venture alliance meetings. And the first night, Friday night, Sapon was the only one who wore a tie. We almost made him cut his tie off. Yeah, that was kind of funny. You know, he dressed up really nicely, looked great, and all the rest of us looked like, you know, a bunch of casual slobs. But anyway, not really. But yeah. And then late Friday evening, as we were watching people play pool at one of the bars here in the hotel, you were doing the qui. Is that what we called that? Questioning while intoxicated or something?

Questioning under the influence? Yeah. Q U I. Yeah. And so he was questioning me about LLCs and all this stuff. And we mostly address that better on Saturday, I think, than at that time. So. Yeah, thanks for the question, Sapon. And what do you do? Oh, I practice medicine.

I'm a family practitioner and I do.

I started doing investing in properties about nine months ago. Good stuff, Good stuff. There's a doctor in the house. That's great. Hey, Gary, what do you think?

This was an amazing event for me. I won't repeat everything about Brian Smith. I actually was. I had lower standards than I probably should have. When Brian, when I knew Brian Smith, you know, a very successful serial entrepreneur was going to come join us. But I just didn't think he had a lot of a huge message for me. But I'm hoping now that you had.

Lower expectations is what you mean, right? Yeah. You didn't expect a lot.

Yes, whatever. I said, that's what I meant.

We're very casual here, folks. Don't even edit that. We don't edit stuff.

So. But, but he blew me away with the personal message that he had for me about how to succeed as an entrepreneur and just how kind he was just to talk about his failures and his successes. So I won't go over the specific details that the other two guys have already mentioned, but it was really, really good for me. For me, though, my biggest takeaway actually was not Brian, it was just the group. And every time I come to one of these, I get some. I just get fast forwarded in my own personal business and development and growth. And an example of that here was when our members Keith and Brandon talked about kind of biohacking and personal development, the importance of light and other fitness things. And it was really, really important for me to just accelerate life because what I've learned is that if you want to do a lot in life, you need to get moving. And I started at 48 after my Navy career and being a submarine captain.

You didn't get a lot of light down there. That's true, that's true.

And the circadian rhythm.

Gary has a moon tan, right? Fluorescent light tan.

And the circadian rhythm was a little bit messed up, but, you know, so I just want to like, hack time. That's really my thing is, if you want my catchphrase, it's hacking time. Like figure out how to do things faster and more effectively the first time. And being around people who can help me do that faster is really important.

Yeah, I totally agree. And you know, a long time ago, as I mentioned to you guys this morning, I read a book called Light the Medicine of the Future. And I remember what was it 89, I guess because the Soviet Union was collapsing. I was watching it on TV as I was reading this book in Snowmass, Colorado, near Aspen. You know, I think that's like the easiest hack you can make in your life is just manage light. And I'm not kidding about this, folks. I mean, you guys listening are out of the context of this conversation. But just the point being sleep is so important and just get in harmony with nature. You know, get sleepy when it gets dark out and wake up when it's light. If you do nothing else. Right. That will accelerate your sense of well being and your fitness and your health a lot because it regulates hormones and it's just a huge, huge thing. So really important. So manage light and it's an easy hack. You know, it's like most people like, oh, they got to give up this, they got to do that. Exercising is too hard, you know, eating, it's too hard. But just manage light. It's like pretty easy hack, right?

Yeah, I completely agree. And you know, it's a worn out saying that you're the sum total of five people you spend the most time around. Jim Rohn, which is an awesome saying, but it's like step one. So I would say step two is if you're, if you know 10% of what the people in the room around, you know, you're in the wrong room still. You know, just get in a place where you feel like you feel unworthy to be in the room because everybody around you so impressive. So that that's what I try to do.

Yeah. So people that'll pull you up and make you do more in life. That's good stuff. You know, none of you guys are going to have to listen to the podcast tomorrow. Well, you'll have to listen to the guest portion, but not the, not the intro. You can skip that because we're doing it now. Brandon, what do you think?

Yeah. So I really enjoyed the weekend.

Thanks, Gary. I'm glad that you got something out. Hope everyone else got something out of my discussion. It's a little bit off the topic of real estate investing, but honestly, I think this group is so powerful because we come from many diverse backgrounds, we have different skills and different knowledge base to where we can help in any way possible. And this is one of the most supportive groups I've ever been a part of. You know, you tell someone your goals and the other person receiving it as, okay, that's great, how can I help? Instead of immediate criticism, which in the negative world that's kind of what you get.

Most people when you tell them a big goal, they say you're crazy. Yeah. And sometimes that's a motivator though, right? Sometimes when someone tells you you can't do something that'll really motivate you to go do, you know, but not always. Sometimes it'll discourage you too, so. Yeah, good point. Any big takeaways from the weekend?

No, I think everybody covered most. Sorry.

I think everybody covered most everything. I, I'm actually kind of. I'm excited about this podcast with Brian Chavis because management is a big interest of mine and he's going to be talking about that, I think, you know, regardless of where you are on the spectrum, whether you own a management company, you, you know, you're self managing your properties remotely or you're, you know, like me and you have professional management, you're managing your managers. Exactly. Management is still a part of your portfolio. And I'm constantly looking for new systems and techniques to improve workflow and profits.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And all of us who have properties, whether we self manage or have managers, and we're managing the managers, we all own a management company in essence. Right. And so I think that's a really good takeaway. Good point. I remember when I was in Israel with my church at the time, many years ago, from Orange County, California, Mariners Church. I met this one guy who's now my friend Mark. And, and you know, we're all, you know, the typical question, hey, you know, where are you from? What do you do? You know, and he says, oh, I'm in property management. And I think, oh, that's no big deal. And you know, I hate to be so judgmental, but then I learned he owns like 700 apartment units, you know, so, yeah, property management, it may sound like a humble thing, but it's a big deal, you know, that's the, the whole thing lives or dies on property management. And anybody who's invested knows this by now. Right. So, Elizabeth, last but not least, you've got the video camera, so hand it to Oliver.

Awesome.

And then we will get to our guest here after Elizabeth.

So the, the thing that I thought was the most valuable for me for this mastermind, because I've been to all of them and I was delighted with the fact that we had a number of women that participated in this one. It creates a more diverse environment, it creates a different perspective and it brings in a lot of, I mean, we had some serious women entrepreneurs that had an opportunity to share a little bit about Their business. It was just a really good opportunity to grow the group and to interact with different people in a new place.

Give us some context for your comment. You host the.

Yes, I host the Women Investing Network where we help women win in investing and in life. It's been a podcast that it has been a lot of fun getting to interact with a lot of these badass women and starting to see some of them in real life, like, you know, interacting face to face, you know, people that own their own Amazon stores and are doing tens of thousands of dollars of business and, you know, just the broad range of the people that we've been interacting with in this group, it's pretty exciting.

Good stuff. Good stuff. And Brandon, we didn't say what you did, so just give us your occupation.

Oh, yeah, sure. I'm a flight instructor in the Navy and single family home investor.

And you're the only person I know that's ever broken the sound barrier because you fly fighter jets. Yeah. That's cool. And Gary, of course, we know you're the only person I know that knows how to operate a nuclear reactor. So I think we got everybody else's business down. Carrie, you want to say anything, just say hi.

Hi.

No, it was a wonderful. You know I never let you talk when we do a podcast, right? Why are you letting me talk now?

No, it was a great weekend. Can't say enough about Brian Smith.

Going to lunch with him, really getting.

To know him on a personal level and being so humble as he is as a billionaire. He's just like us.

Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. He was a super nice, casual guy. And of course, Kerry and Oliver, we didn't say our investment counselors with us. So anyway, thank you all for sharing this weekend's activities a little bit and doing the intro portion of the podcast with me. Let's get to our guest today and let's talk to Brian Chavis about property management and some best practices.

It's my pleasure to welcome Brian Chavis to the show. He is the founder of the Landlord Academy and author of Buy It, Rent It, Profit, Make Money as a Landlord in Any Real Estate Market and the new book, the Landlord Entrepreneur. Brian, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing well. Thank you for having me, Chavis.

Good. It's good to have you on the show and it was good to talk to you before we started. Let's drill down and jump in to some property management techniques. You own, I believe, 60 apartment units and you also teach other people how to be better landlords. Is that Correct, Correct. Fantastic. Well, where would you like to start? I guess maybe attracting tenants is probably a good place to start and, you know, making one's property attractive and doing marketing to get tenants and so forth. And again, even if our listeners aren't doing this stuff themselves, if they're kind of managing a property manager, it's good to know what the property manager should be doing to be a better property manager. There's no shortage of bad ones out there, is there, Brian?

Yeah, you're absolutely correct. It's probably, you know, unfortunately for the industry. Yeah, there's probably more that. And I wouldn't say bad out of, you know, you know, from the position of the intently mismanaging the assets. It's just sometimes, you know, individuals, they don't know. And the idea is that, you know, you want to work with a property manager who has some type of certification or training or in fact, even own and operate properties themselves.

Yeah, absolutely. So attracting tenants. Let's just go through a few basics on that and then move on to some of the other points.

Absolutely. The fundamentals, what's attracting tenants starts from the acquisition. And I know we're not talking about the purchasing of property right now, but I'd be remiss to say that I can't. You can't talk about tenants because my tenant selection actually happens before I actually even purchase of property. Because I study demographics and psychographics of an area before I make an acquisition. So at that time, I strongly. I have a very strong position on who the targeted demographic and psychographic is, what they like, where they work, you know, their income, their employment, the average household size, drive, time to work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of information I know about these individuals, and this information I gather from what I call a strategic evaluation of a target area. And so when I enter into a deal or a property or have a property, I pretty much already know who I need to cater my units to, which is considered my product. And so that reduces the vacancies on my end because I really know more about the individuals than I do anything else. So once I buy the property, I buy the property based on the needs of the individuals in that particular targeted area. So that drastically, for me, reduces evictions, and it drastically reduces, you know, units sitting on the market for an extended period of time and me not really understanding what these individuals need.

Okay, super. So can you give us an example of that? I mean, you're identifying that kind of the target tenant, and then Looking for the property to match that target tenant to some extent. Right? Correct.

Yeah. I mean, you hit it right on the head. The idea is to understand the demographic first. The demographics tells you who they are and the psychographics tells you the why. Why they choose this versus that, this color versus. I mean, I try to get as detailed as possible understanding they like tile floor, stainless steel, what is it that they're looking for. Then when I understand them, then I stock my shelves with the products that they need. No different from a Walmart or any other major, you know, retail provider, you know, of course.

Yep. Find a need and fill it. Same same idea. Yeah, the, the old, the old business adage, find a need and fill it.

Funny how everything old is everything fundamental, isn't it?

It's all new. Hey, they're like they say in Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun.

Right?

Amen.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, good. So some of the basic components of lease, you cover this. I mean, you know, there's the obvious. The term of the lease, the amount of the rent, you know, when the, when the lease begins, when it ends, etc. Tell us about some other components that are important to think about.

Renewals, you know, rules and regulations. For me, you know, some of the mistakes I feel a lot of individuals make is they stack their rules and regulations within the lease. I like for my lease to be short and sweet. You know, it also helps with the. If there is an eviction, you know, so there's no, you know, what I didn't understand coming from the tenant. So I tried to tell the lease says, hey, look, you know, we're going to give you some basic fundamental rules, but the majority of the rules are on another document. And then I have those individuals sign that document. The amount of late fees, you know, I kind of, you know, see a lot of individuals make mistakes with absorbing amount of late fees are, you know, $50 one day and then $2 every day after. I try to keep that clean, I try to really keep it straightforward and easy to add because you never want to go to court. And then the individual says, well, I didn't quite understand. And then, you know, it has to go before a judge to hear both parties. It's a stall tactic. So as clean as the lease can be, you know, you want it and you also want your lease to be in alignment with your local state law. So you don't necessarily want to be even reading my book, you can get an idea of a clean and solid lease as a template but you still need to have that lease checked with a local landlord tenant eviction attorney in your area.

Okay, good. Yeah. You know, it's not what the contract says only. It's also the spirit and intent of the contract and the understanding of the contract. So if you want to get the judge angry with you, if they think you're trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes or, you know, have an overly complex contract, you know, a lot of judges will just say, look, that's not enforceable. Too bad.

Right? Throw it right out.

Yeah, yeah, The. The. The amateur thinks it's all about what's in the type, you know, but that there's more to it than that. There really is. You know, it's. It's just never that simple.

Keep it simple, but always remember the judge that your case is not the only case. I know we like to think that our case is the only one up for eviction, but at the end of the day, that judge probably has to hear about 60 cases that day. So you coming in with a Perry Mason lease, you know, six or seven pages long, probably, you know, not going to, you know, play out to be the most, you know, the most favorable for you. So you want to keep it lean. Now, when I say that I don't want any of your readers to misinterpret that as, you know, have a junk lease and just, you know, no, you want a good, solid lease. I'm just saying I've seen leases get to a little. Just too lengthy. So you want to keep it short. You want to make sure that it also coincides, more importantly, more important than anything, with your particular local, state laws.

Good. So what are some of the most common tenant issues and how can people solve those?

The main thing that I see is again, where, you know, landlords, our investors, they. They're not treating their investments like a business. And that, to me, is the biggest mistake that I see all the way across the board. No matter where I'm speaking, no matter what state or what country I'm in, when I'm on a job as a consultant, I see a lot of individuals, they just really do not take the time to understand, to create a business model. I always approach every project as if I was going to franchise that business, which means I can duplicate it. If your business cannot be duplicated, if you cannot step outside your business for more than two or three days without it, you coming back to a nightmare, then you don't really have a business. So you want to make sure that you're running your properties like a business, meaning you have the operating systems in place and there are two main operating systems you need to focus on. Property management software, the technology systems and the hard systems, which are the day to day operational systems. And those direct the user up on, you know, what, what needs to be done and then tell the user, you know, how to go about performing that work. So I'll say that again. The operating systems that an individual uses day to day, a good manual operating system will tell the user what needs to be done and then show that user how to go about performing that work in a consistent basis. And there, there lies the key. You know, when you can, when you, when you have those systems in place, you know, it relieves a lot of stress and you cannot get, you know, there's very difficult for anyone to pull the wolves over my eye when it comes to my properties if I have a manager on site, when I know their systems in place and checklists. So you know, it's very important.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, good, good. So have a model. You know, I had Michael Gerber on the show, he wrote the E Myth series of books and he talks all about that, that franchise prototype concept. And I think even for a small investor that just, you know, that owns six houses, I think they really should start thinking. I mean all this requires is thinking. It doesn't require much else other than just thinking about it. Just the way you perceive your business as a real estate investor and you really do have a business. So make sure you think of it like a business and, and think what am I going to say to my tenant or my property manager when this happens, when that happens, instead of making it up off the cuff, you know, or at least if you don't know exactly what you're going to say or do at least have a core set of principles. It's kind of a philosophy, if you will, toward landlording. And that philosophy or that sort of core set of principles can guide you. If you, you don't have to have an exact script, you know, it doesn't need to be that complex, but just some guiding principles will, will see you through. So, so good point. Okay, any, any other tenant issues that you want to talk about there outside.

Of non payment destruction of property? Yeah, I would say that, you know, the other mistakes that I see is the, are the move in process. So you want to make sure that a lot of your fundamentals are taken care of during the move and a lot of this is taken care of the day they take possession of the rental Unit. A lot of people just hand the keys, accept the money, and then it's like, call me if you need me. And, you know, you have to set the rules, and you have to set the foundation on the day that the tenant actually moves. And that's why we have what we call a move in meeting. We're going over the rules and regulations. We're going over the expectation of both the tenant and the property manager at that time. And, you know, those are areas where I see a lot of individuals make a mistake. They just hand them the keys, accept the money, and then they're on to the next project.

Mm. Okay. Okay, good. How about moving tenants out? How about ending the lease?

Ending the lease. That's a really good. You know, of course, you know, anytime there's something major moving them in, moving them out, you want to make sure that, you know, you're following your system. So when it comes to a move out, you know, I want to make sure that the tenant is fully moved out. They put in writing that they. That they've moved out. Not none of this verbal. Or let me text you or email you, because right now, most state laws do not recognize emails or text messages as of yet. Now, if your state does, awesome, you're ahead of the game, but most do not. So you want to make sure you get something in writing that the tenant has vacated once they vacated. You know, sometimes tenants leave possessions behind. You got to be really careful about just grabbing those possessions and throwing them away and getting the unit rent made ready again for another rental. So you want to make sure you're following your state laws on how to. If a tenant leaves something behind. Because I know I've been sue personally, because my guys have been a little bit, you know, handsy and grabbing things and during or after an eviction, and, you know, the eviction, we hadn't received the writ of possession, which means the law or the state recognizes that I have taken back possession of the unit, and my maintenance guys have gone in and taken items, and, you know, I've had to pay for those. So, you know, you want to make sure to make sure that you fully have possession of the rental unit before you go in and start taking things or that the tenant has actually signed in writing that they vacated anything that they've left behind. You know, they're basically considering it trash. So, you know, you just want to make sure that you're. You're following your systems. And again, I keep falling back on systems. At the end of the day, if you have your Systems in place. You know, they're going to help keep you organized and keep you consistent, because at the end of the day, consistency is key.

Good, good point. Good point. Maintenance and inspections.

Maintenance. I have a whole section called inspect what you expect. So when it comes down to maintenance, it's pretty simple. You know, you inspect what you expect. So you want to be in there. For me, I try to get into our rental units on a monthly basis for filter, clean and ac. I live in Florida. Most of my properties, you know, are in Florida. It's a great market. You know, we're looking in Houston and areas like that. But. But even in the Texas area, you know, you need to change your AC filters. So I'm in there changing filters, making sure that our coils are cleaned, and then we kind of just do a routine check every quarter. But, you know, again, you have to inspect what you expect. You cannot just move a tenant in and then when they move out, expect, you know, to handle maintenance issues or only handle maintenance issues when they call, because most tenants are not going to call you when there's a leak under the faucet or the vanity. You're gonna find out once they moved out, and there's a huge, you know, you know, hole under the vanity or whatever, there's water damage. So, you know, and then I hear a lot of property managers complain. But my thing is, well, did you inspect the unit? I mean, you can't necessarily depend on these tenants to show you everything. These are your investments. This is your. Your livelihood that we're talking about. So you need to make sure, again, that you inspect what you expect.

So don't have all these unannounced expectations of your tenants. Let's talk about a little technology. Any apps or pieces of software that you like. I mean, the smartphone has obviously revolutionized the world. What are you using that's helping you be a better property manager?

I'll tell you exactly what I'm using. And also, you know, I'm documenting this entire acquisition process, and I'm going to show people how I implement the systems and the technology that I'm actually using as we acquired this new property in downtown St. Pete. So you'll be able to see firsthand on these YouTube videos and our Facebook channels. But some of the technology that I like right now that's making my life a heck of a lot easier are apps like our economy. R E O N O M Y. And I'm not quite sure how they like to pronounce it, but I say rr.

But it's a useful app for.

Providing investment property. And then Real page.

Okay, and that, that, and that's, that's geared for commercial real estate. Okay, so, and what's the other one? Real page.

Real page. And they also provide some excellent data, you know, and when it was investment, it can be, you know, anything. Duplexes, quads, small apartment buildings, office buildings. I can, you know, even if I had a residential portfolio, I've still pulled this information just to get an idea what the rent schedules are in the area. They give you a lot of demographics and psychographics information. So I don't want people to say your viewers go, he's only talking about apartment buildings. This is, I invest in residential homes. This doesn't, is not applicable to me. I'm going to tell you this, it's more applicable to you then than it is to a guy buying commercial. Because with a commercial deal I can hide a lot of mistakes based on the economies of scale. When you have a residential home, you can't hide a lot of mistakes. One, one vacancy, you're 100% vacant, you know, so at the end of the day you're losing income. So you really need to know this information. And then RealPage, they also provide that information. And my website provides a ton of free information. Landlordacademy.com and that's landlordacademy.com and there you can click on tools and most things that I'm mentioning you can find right there at our website.

Okay, good, good stuff. Okay. Any other apps you talk about the smartphone. So are these, are these aren't apps that you mentioned? Do you have any specific like apps, actual phone apps that you wanted to mention too?

Yeah. And again you can find most of these on our website. Landlordacademy.com But I like Sign Easy, you know Doc sign.

That's like a DocuSign.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of that for all of our leases. I like Box. If you're a smaller Dropbox is awesome. You can hold all your, your files. Of course the new iPhone is replacing a lot of these apps where you can scan and do things. But I like Cam scan. But if you have an the new iPhone, it actually has in your notes a built in scanner. So that kind of, you know, eliminates that. But camscan is free.

I use camscan too. I don't know about the built in scanner. Tell me about that. I thought I knew everything about my phone. How do you use that? Just out of curiosity. I think, think the listeners will be very interested.

The new iOS 11 for, for Apple.

Yep, I just got it yesterday.

Okay. So yeah, your scanner will be in your notes, so it should be on your, on your home page and it's actually go through the tutorial and it goes, it'll take you through. Actually, I posted on my Facebook, it says document camera.

Yeah, yeah. If you open on the iPhone, if you open notes, it has the document camera, they call it easily scanned documents directly into notes. I wonder if you're able to move those around though, because I don't necessarily want the document inside of notes. But. Yeah, yeah, no, you can move it.

You can move it. No, you can move it to box, you can move it to cams, you can move it anywhere you want there. The new iPhone is trying to replace a lot of the, a lot of apps that we're currently using. So I mean, it's a great, it's a great product. All my managers have it that in tablets. We do all of our leases on tablets and things of that nature just because we're trying to go paperless. I got one more that I think is important for your listeners. Notability. Notability for the smaller and startup investor. Notability allows you to have the camera, the video, the note taking, the recorder all in one place. And that's really good for move ins and move out to be able to present in court or in general to have and save those wav files or however you save the file. But it allows you to have the recorder, it allows you to have the camera, allows you to do the video, all these various different things that allows you to have those things in one place, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I've seen notability before. I don't use it, but. But it's nice that they're not all in separate things like let me find the photo, let me find the video, let me find the, you know, the notes, let me find a copy of the lease, you know, so, yeah, you can mark up PDFs and slides and stuff like that right there inside of notability. Great, good stuff. Well, the last thing I want to close with is protecting yourself from a legal perspective because I think in using things like notability and the other things you mentioned, that's one of the elements of that. But any legal protection issues you just want to mention before we go?

Yeah, I mean, of course, you know, we, you know, for me personally, and this is just personal, sit with your tax advisor, sit with your attorney and speak with your attorney. But for me personally, you try to not own any investment property in your own name. You want to create a corporation, and I'm sure most people already know that. However, I usually go one step further and I create a property management entity, usually an llc, and I have it taxed as an S corp. And I create another property management entity to do all of the operations out of. So if a tenant sues, they're not suing the entity that owns the property, they're suing the management company. Then I have a small insurance policy for that. So I. I'm not really risking anything other than those apps that I just talked about and maybe one or two computers. But really that's all the property owns or, I'm sorry, the management company owns. And that's what the actual tenant sued.

Right. You put that other layer in there. But the tenant can. The tenant can pass the management company and sue the owner as well. But, you know, it's. Again, it's a barrier. So I totally get what you're saying. Yeah, good stuff.

Well, it's. Yeah, at the end of the day, they can sue.

They can sue anybody.

At the end of the day. There you go. You can be. You can sue anybody. You can sue anyone for anything. But the idea is, where did the actual mishap happen? And I'm failing the judge or the jury or the creditor to have the mishap management company. The building didn't trip and, you know, the building itself didn't stick its foot out and trip the tenant. These issues happened under the management. So very difficult to make it stick with the actual ownership itself as far as negligibility is concerned. But again, like you said, anybody can be sued. It's just an added bit of protection.

Sure. Absolutely. Good stuff. Well, hey, Brian, thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate these tips. People can check out the books on Amazon. You gave out your website already. And that's Brian Chavis. Thank you very much for joining us and happy investing.

Thank you, sir. Take care. Be blessed.

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