HI 81 - The Landlord Chronicles: How to Find & Keep Great Tenants with Barb Getty

Welcome to the Heroic Investing Show. As first responders, we risk our lives every day. Our financial security is under attack, our pensions are in a state of emergency. A single on duty incident can alter or erase our earning potential instantly and forever. We are the heroes of society. We are self reliant and we need 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.

Hello and welcome to episode 81 of the Heroic Investing show where we focus on the unique challenges faced by members of the armed services and first responders. But these topics are also common to the challenges that all investors face. We provide the tools that enable our listeners to secure their family, their future and their retirement. And most importantly, sometimes we help them put in place a solid plan to replace that W2 job and get back their time so they can focus on their own unique genius. Focus on what you best can provide the rest of the world and have that passive income from real estate and from your personal banking system in the foundation below it, supporting your life and sharing what you do best and what you most enjoy doing. It's I think most people's vision and goal to be able to have work be the same as play, you know. I had our Uber driver as we were headed back to the airport after the Meet the Masters event, asked was this a trip to California for business or pleasure? And I was like both because it is. Sue and I have designed our lives so that business is the same thing as pleasure we enjoy. We've created a business doing what we enjoy to do, so that should be everyone's goal and I feel like we've gotten there finally. It's been quite a journey. In today's episode, Jason talks with Barb Getty. Barb is a property manager, author, speaker and real estate investor from Gary, Indiana. This episode ran back a few years ago and it's as relevant today as it was then. This is one of those I had to search for it because I remember it well. I was listening to it on a bus while I was at a Navy function. It was really just kind of one of those pivotal moments for me because I was in this situation where I kind of had fallen into becoming a self manager doing some self management with my first property that I owned and I was really questioning whether that was a good idea or not. And I heard Barb's discussion about how she similarly had some big challenges in her life and very tragic events, but it resulted in her being a landlord and also doing some self management. But she found eventually that, you know, that niche, that was the one that she works best with and that fits her well and she actually enjoys it very much now. So kind of the same path I was on. But she gives some incredible pearls of wisdom in this conversation about things to do, things not to do. Now listen, she is hardcore self manager and she also now runs kind of a high, higher end property management service for people who have properties in her area. But her discussion about not divulging who the owner of the property is, about holding tenants to what they said they were going to do about not letting people modify your property. All super, super important conversations. And if you haven't heard these and you're, and even if you're not self managing, you're going to have these discussions with your property manager at some point. So it's important to have thought through, you know, the consequences of what may sound like a good idea at the beginning. So I think Barb gives some great advice. And again, I remember years ago when I first heard this, about two, maybe three years ago I first heard this and I played it two or three times. It was, it was pretty inspirational for me. The other thing I want to mention is thank you for hanging in there with me through a couple of speed bumps here. The first speed bump is that I was finally able to get the little thumbnail and the description for Heroic Investing show on itunes to show up correctly. And my producer Adam and Jason Hartman both helped tremendously in that and but the result of that was if you were subscribed like I was, it gave you all 36 recent episodes because it kind of triggered it to start over. So you have to go in and delete those. And it's not very hard to do, but it is a bit annoying when it first happens. So please hang in there. The new ones, if you're listening to this one, then you successfully hung in there, I guess. And then the other speed bump is that I've spent a lot of time preparing for Meet the Masters and doing some promotions and rerunning stuff that was on Jason's creating, wealth showing and even having come back from that, we had a 10th episode and then this one here is Jason's turn because it's Friday. So I'm back on Wednesday with some really good original content from some veterans, first responders, most of which I met or had a chance to be face to face with at Meet the Masters. But I think that their story, their ability to kind of shine the light on the path that all Investors and veterans and active duty military I believe should take, I think their ability to shine that path, that light on the path is pretty important. This isn't a hard job but or hard investing path but it takes some perspective to keep everything on the right track. And I think hearing things like Barb Getty's story, but more importantly that other busy first responders, public servants, active duty military can do this and how they did it through deployments and through long work hours, pretty important I think. And so that's why I continue to bring individuals with that message. And I'll offer, you know, again, please reach out anytime that you have questions about, you know, my experience with Jason's network, my experience with working at Paradigm as a client and now as, as an agent and wealth strategist. Would absolutely love to, to talk with you about that. And again I will have here eventually when it shows up in the queue, I will have my presentation from Meet the Masters as one of the audio files that we run as a repeat podcast. You know, I think you'll really enjoy this discussion with Barb Getty. Her message is very similar to the ones that we all heard at Meet the Masters and Adventure Alliance Mastermind the next day from Jason's aunt Joan and from his mom Joyce. And both of them have been local do it yourself investors and property managers and owners for about four decades and they have a lot of really good lessons. Well, Barb I don't think has been doing it quite that long, but she has some similar lessons. Things like, hey, you just have to stick to it through some tough times, you're being tested early in your career and that rents are about business. You have an agreement, you need to uphold the agreement. Don't listen to the sob stories. I'm not saying being steel hearted or cold hearted, but you know, it's an arrangement, right? So the tenant has to make decisions about not getting the nice thing that they wanted to get kind of the doodad or the consumer item or not paying the car payment and walking or not paying their rent. Well, if they can not pay rent and still get the doodad or not pay rent and be able to afford the bigger car instead of trading it in for something more appropriate, they're going to keep doing that. So you have to not train them with bad habits, but train them with good habits. And that's what I openly explain to my property managers and what I explained to the tenants when I'm doing self management. I'm not going to say it's not personal, it's business because generally what that means is I'm trying to justify that I'm kind of screwing you over if it will, you know, in a business arrangement that's. That's not the approach I take. The approach I take is that we should respect each other and let's figure out a way to make this win win. And it's not win win if the tenant is taking advantage of you, the owner, because eventually you'll stop providing quality, safe housing for people because you'll take your ball and go home. You'll say, this is not for me, so let's not get in that situation. Let's be proactive, figure out a way to make it win win. Don't bend to every whim of the tenant, but explain to them that you know this. Like having a car to drive and like having food to eat is an important basic necessity. And not meeting your end of the bargain will result in you not having that. So, yeah, keep it business, but don't become inhuman along the path would be my recommendation. So this is a little bit of a long win here with Barb Getty. I think you're truly going to enjoy it. And I will be back next week with some original content. Thanks so much and enjoy this discussion between Jason and Barb.

It's my pleasure to welcome Barb Getty to the show. She is the author of the Landlord Chronicles, and she is an investor herself and owns about 27 units of her own in Indianapolis, one of our markets that we've. We've been doing in the business in for many, many years. And it's just a pleasure to welcome her to the show. Barb, how are you?

I'm good. How are you doing?

Fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to write the book.

Well, I kind of backed into this career. I was the mother of three teenagers, and we had moved to Indianapolis in 1980, and then in 1992, when my son was 17 and my daughters were 16 and 14, my son was killed in a car accident.

That's just awful. I read that in your bio, boy.

Yeah, yeah. And I. It was just a devastating event, of course, for all of us. And so I needed to find a home for myself and my girls because my husband, we ended up splitting up about eight months after Todd died. And so I found a little house here in our suburb and needed some work. So.

One of my daughters, she was 16 then said she took one look at it before we bought it, and she said, oh, my God, you mean you have to live here.

I just, you know, tried to get through it. And after this rehab was done, you know, my friends started saying, barb, you should do this for a living. So anyway, I ended up buying my first duplex shortly thereafter. And so I've just kept on going. And today I've got 27 units, like I said, and I do property management. And I ended up writing this book because when I started out in this business, I mean, I read the books, I read a lot of books and I tried to do networking, but what I found was the books just didn't really tell you everything you needed to know. And having been an English major at Purdue, I thought, you know what, I can write this book. So I just did a very simple start to finish. It's a how to and also a how not to because it's got some hilarious stories in it that were my own screw ups as I started out in this business. But it just pretty much goes through all of the phases of finding properties, deciding what you want to do, you know, what's your niche, finding good tenants. And then there's a big section on, you know, managing your property, fix ups, tools, techniques, and then, you know, there's a section on exit strategies. So I put a lot of my own forms that I use in there. So it's just an overall written in conversational tone. There's a lot of humor in it, but it's packed with information.

There's a lot of misinformation out there. Of course, the most expensive seminar is the life seminar where you learn from your firsthand experience.

Isn't that the truth?

Yeah, it sure is. It sure is. So it's a lot cheaper to get education from other people and learn from their experiences. But, but you know, you got to be careful because there's just a lot of people hawking a lot of junk out there that's just not really true and not really the real thing. But tell us a little bit about how people can be better landlords, what, what advice they can follow to do that. And you know, I want you to talk from in two ways if you would. Number one, how people can be their own landlord. But number two, and I think you'll be qualified to talk about this as well, how people can better work with a property manager if they're using a property manager, how they can do a better job of not managing their property directly, but managing their manager. Give us some of the tips from the book, if you would.

Okay. That your second, the second part. That is a great Question. You know, working with a property manager, I mean, first of all, you have to really check out the property manager or the property management company, make sure they're well qualified, honest, that they have integrity and get their references, talk to people who have used them and then from that point on, trust them, let them manage your property. I mean, good property managers do not need to be micromanaged.

Get everything set up with them and let them do it. I mean, that's what you are paying them for. And a good property manager, I mean, I say to my clients, you know, you don't even have to know that you own this property. I mean, a good property management company should take care of all facets or whatever the owner wants to have taken care of. And if you're paying someone to manage your property, you should have total trust and peace of mind and just get that money coming in. That's my comment about hiring a property manager. And the other thing is there aren't a lot of people who have the personality to manage their own properties. I had someone ask me one time, so Barb, what does it take to be a property manager? I said, well, you have to be really organized and really laid back. And they just started laughing. They just said, okay. Those two qualities do not appear very often in the same person. And that's true, I mean, because a lot of people who are organized are not laid back. They're very type A. And a lot of people who are laid back are totally disorganized. So you know, there's got to be a balance there in your personality. And another thing is you cannot worry about the stuff you can't control because if you do, you will drive yourself and everyone around you crazy. So you look, I mean, stuff happens, people lose their jobs, they move out sometimes they move out in the middle of the night, sometimes they're not very clean. I mean, you need to protect yourself of course in your lease with that and do apartment checks. But there's so much that happens repair wise and tenant management wise that you can't control. So just don't get upset about it, just take care of it and move on. And you know, after you've been in the business for a few years, every problem you face is just really a variation of a problem that you've already faced before. So it just, it continues to get easier and easier. And I also, I really talk to people a lot about having an airtight lease. Protect yourself in that lease so that you have the ability to evict for a myriad of reasons. When things start going downhill. And lastly, I mean, you can have the best lease in the world, but if you don't adhere to it, why even have a lease? I mean, I know other property managers who, and also people who manage for themselves who have somebody in their place and they haven't paid for two months. And I'm just thinking, oh my God, this is an income producing business. What are you doing? You know, you've got to get those people out and you know, get that thing turned around quickly so that you can be making money again. So, you know, you've got to have a really good lease and you have to adhere to it.

Well, you mentioned that you had some funny stories about some of your screw ups when you started out. Experience is the best teacher. The problem is you got to have the experience to get the lesson, unfortunately, and the experience isn't always a positive one. But tell us about some of your funny screw ups. And even if they're not so funny, I think people can learn from them. So they'd love to hear.

Oh my God. Well, okay, here's one. I had this guy who was in his early 40s and he lived by himself and he wanted, he asked me if he could paint his apartment. He's a great guy, paid his rent on time. And I said, well, I don't know Robert, you know, what kind of painter are you? He goes, I used to help my dad in his painting company, you know, when I was young. He said, trust me, I'm great. So he called me when he was done and I went over there to check it out. I mean, he was thrilled and I was appalled. I mean, he had painted the living room a bright blue and he had bumped the ceiling several times with the roller. There were drips down onto the baseboards. The kitchen was bright yellow with a rooster adorned wallpaper border that was pasted haphazardly along the ceiling. I mean, it was just awful. And the bedroom was a dark muddy brown and then the dining room was turquoise.

Okay.

He was so proud.

So the guy was colorblind and he.

Was a terrible painter. I mean, but he was just so proud. And so, you know, I just let it be. And I thought, okay, Barb, you are to never ever allow anyone to paint their apartment again.

Well, okay, but here's the thing. I mean, just on balance, Barb, I mean that's a funny story, but on balance, the rule always is they've got to restore it to the original condition. So really, I mean, other than sort of emotionally, who cares, right? Or I mean, did he not restore it to the original condition or. Oh, no, he didn't. Okay. So when I see something like that, I might tell the tenant they got to give me a higher deposit right then on the spot. Like, yeah, if they want to do, if they want to do painting, they got to increase the deposit maybe.

And you know, really with some of my higher income properties, I will trust the people. And I still do make a lot. I still do make exceptions and allow people to paint occasionally, but for the most part, I mean, my places are painted very. I mean, I do all my own painting. They're painted very nicely, and that's just something they don't need to do. I mean, I'll let them put up a border or, you know, something like that, but I just try to stay away from, try to stay away from that.

So.

Yeah. Okay, well, other stories.

Oh, gosh. Okay. I had a guy who, very nice guy, but his life started falling apart. And he was also a hoarder and he would like to work on electronics and stuff. And so his whole apartment was filled with all kinds of little gadgets and tools. And so, you know, I ended up having to file eviction on him. And when I went back in there, I mean, I opened the door and the smell just hit me. He had had his electricity turned off, which I didn't know. And there were open bags of garbage just sitting in his kitchen. I opened the refrigerator door and there was a gallon of milk that was dated six months earlier. You can imagine how that smelled. And there were some, you know, containers of just weird looking stuff in there that had green fuzz on it.

And this, Barb, is why they say you never really know somebody until you marry them or rent to them.

Exactly.

But I really see employing them is even more difficult than renting to them.

I bet it is sometimes.

Yeah, it certainly is.

But, you know, after, after that incident, I just, I really started doing more frequent apartment checks and I allowed for that in my lease. And when people aren't keeping their apartment up, I pretty much tell them, okay, I'm going to come back next week. This, this and this, and I document everything. And if they can't hold up their end of the bargain, I just, they have to leave. And I never let people know that I'm the owner of the property, which is a wonderful ploy because it protects me. You know, when someone's being evicted or when they're asking for something, you know, for an upgrade or something ludicrous or whatever, you know, I can say you know, let me talk to the owner about it and I'll get back with you. And that has been a really good thing that I've implemented over the past probably 10 years. And it's just, you know, it keeps you as a middle person and the tenant then does not get angry or resentful towards you. And when they're behind in their rent and you know that they have to go, you know, I mean, I can just come back to them and say, you know, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to file eviction on you. Well, did you talk to the owner? I said yes, yes. But, you know, he's just not willing to let this go any longer. I'm so sorry. And then I usually just try to.

Bribe them out, and they usually figure out. A lot of times they figure out a way to pay. You know, a lot of. That's sort of a game of chicken, frankly. Yeah, they think the owner's not going to really do anything. So that's what, that's why as a landlord, you got to be strict. The rules are the rules. Your mortgage company, they want their payment no matter what. You got to collect your rent no matter what. But I find it interesting, Barb, that in chapter three of your book, the Landlord Chronicles, you've got a chapter about the F word, and the F word is financing. I wanted to ask you about private loans. You know, I have a chapter about being creative with private loans because a lot of our clients, they have more than 10 properties, they can't get any more Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac mortgages, so they're looking for more creative alternatives. Anything you'd like to share with private lending there.

I just know that when you get to know people in the business, there are people like yourself, other people similar to me who have been in the business for a long time, and they end up sort of moving out of the owning properties into becoming lenders for people, for people like us.

Yeah, And I do a lot of lending, by the way. Let me just mention that you said people like yourself. And so I do a lot of private lending, and I find our clients are doing a lot of private lending nowadays. And I do like it. I like owning the property the best. I think it's. There's much more upside in owning the actual property. But for simplicity sake, the private lending isn't bad. It's not bad. But. But owning the property by far is, you know, a better investment.

That's. Yeah, I, That's. I totally agree with that. And that, you know, My, my investment goal from day one was to buy these properties for income and long term investment. And so I've just kind of stuck with that. And you know, there are so many different ways you can go in this, in this business. And you know, I find, I find that there are some investors who say, oh, that sounds good, I'm going to try that. I'm going to try that too. I'm going to do this.

The flavor of the month is a dangerous philosophy.

Oh my gosh, yes. Find your niche. Find out what suits your personality and your lifestyle and the amount of time you have and stick with that. I think it's a pretty simple formula to do.

I agree. The people that are always chasing the end of the rainbow never seem to find it.

No.

Now that I'm a little older, I've known those people for 20 years and they still haven't found the end of the rainbow, so.

But they're still chasing it, aren't they?

They're still chasing it because they're delusional, frankly.

Yeah, yeah, they're sure it's just around the corner.

They really are. What do you have to say about. Well, first of all, on private lending, have you been able to get any longer term private financing or was that always short term type stuff?

For myself, I, what I did was I, I bought my first property for 19,000 bucks. It was a duplex with cash that I received from my divorce and I came back and.

What year, what year was that?

What year that was in 95.

1995. Okay, so about 17 years ago. Okay, go ahead.

And, and I had to, I had to pay cash because I had no credit. I mean, I had never thought of getting a credit card in my own name. I had no accounts in my own name so the banks wouldn't touch me. So, so I had to pay cash for that property. And then, so I just started building credit for myself. And then I sold that Property after about 15 months for about.

Almost 3 times what I paid for it. And then I turned around and I bought two more properties and then, you know, I just kept going like that. And then I got a home equity line on the house that I own and so I bought properties that way. Then I, then I bought a couple more and then I fixed them up and then I mortgaged them. So I got three mortgages. So. And that is all that I have done as far as the lending route. I've continued to buy and I've, and I have flipped a few properties along the way, maybe just two, but Basically, I've just bought and held.

Yeah. And I find that that's really the ultimate strategy. Buy and hold. Tell us about insurance and liability. What have you learned there?

Oh, well, you have to really protect yourself. I mean, I. I had a major fire at one of my places one time, and I was sitting here on my couch having a glass of wine with one of my friends and got a phone call, and I heard sirens in the background, and it was my tenant saying, barb, the house is on fire. So I went and, I mean, one of the units was totally destroyed. And thank God I had it, well insured because, you know, everything was paid for. And also, like, with liability, I mean, I've never even been threatened with a lawsuit in these 17 years, but.

And you know what? I just want to make a comment on that, folks. Same with me. I tell you, there are too many lawyers and there are too many promoters out there that are promoting. And they're not even law firms. They're these firms that are promoting all these entities. They'll sell you $15,000, $20,000 worth of LLC and corporations and trusts and all this junk. I can't say that's bad, but I can say a lot of these companies are bad. Because, you know, I have. I have been in litigation in my businesses, but I have never litigated over, like, a landlord tenant thing that I find that that liability is easy to insure around. It's totally overplayed. People talk about the slip on the banana peel. I don't know anyone that's ever happened to. And by the way, I. I had a. I had a small fire in one of my properties recently. And, you know, it's no big deal that now the tenant caused that one. So, I don't know. Was yours. Did you have any responsibility for that fire or did the tenant cause it?

Well, I had evicted a person out of that unit, and he had a space heater in there that was faulty, and so it started with the space heater.

So was that your fault? Did someone determine your fault?

No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't my fault. But, you know, I never saw that kid again. He left, you know, he just left. And so my insurance people just took care of it.

Yeah. Okay, good. So have good insurance. Anything you want to meant more you want to mention on having good insurance.

I totally agree with you. I mean, really, if you treat your tenants with respect to. Which I always do, even when they don't deserve it. Some of my tenants, you know, have been less than stellar but if you treat your tenants with respect, no one is going to sue you. So you just get, you know, like you said, you protect your properties, make sure that they are well maintained, and you're going to be fine.

We'll be back in just a minute.

What's great about the shows you'll find on jasonhartman.com is that if you want to learn about industries investing in and managing income properties for college students, there's a show for that. If you want to learn how to get noticed online and in social media, there's a show for that. If you want to know how to save on life's largest expense, there's a show for that. And if you'd like to know about America's crime of the century, there's even a show for that. Yep, there's a show for just about anything only from jasonhartman.com or type in Jason Hartman in the itunes store.

Anything on physical space. In chapter six of your book, you talk about the physical space of the property and the physical attributes. One of the things that I think is an extremely simple tip that everyone listening should follow is when you have the first chance to repaint any of your properties, paint all the walls with eggshell or low sheen paint because it is so much more durable than that junky flat paint that, you know scratches and scuffs all the time. Yes, yes, but that's just a real simple one. Of course, there are more complex things than that. But do you have any advice on baseboards or walls and ceilings, windows, doors, kitchens, bathrooms, floors, locks, keys, you know, any of that kind of stuff?

I do have a really good tip on keys. Now, when I started out, you know, when you just have one property or two, it's no big deal. But when you get up in numbers in your properties, you're juggling all these different keys. And so I went with a master key system whereby like, if my place had a front door and a back door, I would have a set of tenant keys and I would take the locks off of the front door, take them to my locksmith and tell him to master it to this other key. So I have one master key on my key ring that lets me into the front door of every single property that I own and I give that master. I have a copy of my master key that I have given to my H Vac guy, my plumber, my carpet guy, and that way I don't have to go down there and meet them for anything.

Okay, now I do want to mention, I do want to I do want to mention something on that though, that could create some liability for you. So you got to be careful of that one. So number one is those people, you really had better trust them, know that they're insured, bonded, et cetera, because you don't want to be giving keys out to your tenant's house, just anybody.

Right? Right. My carpet guy's been with me for 15 years. My furnace guy's been with me for 15 years. Yeah, I would never give it out to anyone that I didn't really know, you know, very well. So. But yeah, that's. It's so much easier to just have one key that lets you into all of your properties as far as space, you know. A comment on flooring. I prefer carpeting in the main rooms, aside from the kitchen and bath, because it is quiet, it's warm. I prefer that over wood or laminates just because of the noise factor.

Now, are these two story apartments you're talking about?

A lot of mine are two story. I do have some one story, but.

You have a different tenant below than you do above. Right. And so if you had a wood floor above, that would. Or tile, it would make a lot of noise below. Unless you have a really newer, high quality construction type building or.

Right, exactly, exactly. I just had one. I just had one of my kitchens. I had ceramic put in there. And I mean, that of course is very durable, but it's kind of costly to put in. A lot of my kitchens have just vinyl. I also used. Early on, I used a lot of the peel and sticks on some of my lower end places and they looked good and they were easy to maintain. And now I notice the peel and sticks. There are some that actually have a beveled edge, so they actually look like ceramic. And those are very easy to use too.

You have a chapter on accounting and tell us a little bit about some of the things people can do to better organize their business. And what do you mean when you say confessions of a 70s girl?

Well, I mean, accounting and all the numbers stuff is just not my deal. I struggled through geometry in school and, you know, I just was not a math person. And so tackling that part of the business was kind of a dread of mine. And when I started out, I started keeping everything, all my properties on 13 column ledger sheets. And so when I finally got into the computer, more into the computer stuff, now I keep them on Excel spreadsheets. I don't. Some of my friends do Quicken or Quickbooks, but I've not taken the time to Buy one of those programs and get up and running with it. Because these spreadsheets have been so easy for me to use and, you know, I just send them to a hard drive. I file my monthly receipts at the end of every month, and it's been very easy for me to do. So I just, I really like to keep things simple in my life as much as I can, and that's been a simple thing for me. So I think everybody needs to find out, you know, find what their easiest way is, you know, for the accounting stuff. But, you know, I file all of my, you know, you have to file all your receipts, you know, for each individual property. And, you know, just, you've got to keep really good and tight records. So I can't stress that enough.

Yep, you sure do. What would you say about real estate investing and what some of the benefits are? We've talked about, certainly about a lot of the problems, but what are some of the benefits and what do you think about where we are right now in the market cycle?

You know, I keep hearing in the media how, oh, you know, the housing depressive time is done. You know, we're totally in recovery. And I'm thinking, I don't think so. I mean, I think, I still think that we're kind of in the middle of it. What do you think?

Yeah, I think the recovery is a fake recovery. I think it's sort of a recovery in a way, but it's a fake one. And here's what I mean by that. If you look at the alleged, which is of course, totally understated rate of inflation, they put it around 2%. If you look at the GDP, that's around 2%. So basically the economy is not growing at all. It's just stagnant. But if you take real inflation at, I believe, about 10%, and you compare that the economy is actually shrinking by about 8%. And my listeners, and I hate to be political, my listeners will know, well, that I'm no fan of Obama. And one of the things I just learned today. I hear you. Okay, well, you agree every. Everybody in business who actually.

Yeah.

There's very rarely an Obama fan in business, so I feel pretty safe saying that. But I know there are a few out there, so I apologize in advance. But. But here's one of the things I just learned, actually. And this is kind of an amazing statistic for every job created under the Obama administration. Not necessarily giving them credit, but, you know, it's. The economy has created these jobs, right. 75 people went on food Stamps at the same time. So I think overall, yeah, I mean, isn't that unbelievable? For each job, 75 more food stamp recipients. And, you know, of course, that's a way to build in your permanent voting block of people stuff, but I mean, it's. I think, I think the population is getting poorer, and I think we ain't seen nothing yet. I think. I think the population is going to get a lot poorer. But the. The deception is going to be this. It will feel like there's a recovery, just like it does now, because the stock market could even go up or at least hold its own, which it's not lately, obviously, but, you know, it might. And real estate prices could go up. But the question to ask oneself is, are those prices in real dollars or nominal dollars? Are they adjusted for inflation? And if inflation is higher than appreciation, stocks or, you know, what other investments are paying or gdp, People are getting poorer. The economy is getting smaller. And I think that's happening. And so I think what we're going to see, and you may have seen this already over the last 17 years in owning your real estate, but I think we're gonna see it a lot more. And it's this. We're gonna see a lot more people moving down. We're gonna see a lot lower homeownership rate. If you talk to your tenant five years from now, this tenant of the future, it's 2017, say you have a conversation with your tenant, I guarantee you, you could have a lot of conversations like this. Oh, yeah, you know, what's your story? Ask them about their past and they'll say, oh, yeah, we used to live in a house that was twice this size in a nicer neighborhood, and we owned it. Now we rent it from you, it's half the size. And it's not as nice a neighborhood, but that's the way people are going to slide down the economic ladder, in my opinion. And I think it's just happening all around us, right.

And that. And they will just try to make it work. They're just going to try to make it work for themselves because they're probably fearful and they do have less spendable income. And I think that's going to continue. I mean, it's good for those of us who are investing in real estate.

It's great for landlords.

Yeah, rentals are going to abound, and rental prices have continued to go up. So it's great for us, but not so great for our country.

You know, it's not so great for the country, but I'LL tell you the other big thing that's actually great for us and that is the student loan debt crisis. I mean, student loan debt now is over $1 trillion with a T1 trillion. And it's never been so high. And let me tell you something, these Gen Y kids that are coming right into their prime renting years, they're not going to be able to buy a house for a long, long time. And they're going to be renters and they're going to be renting from us. And especially if you own single family homes, I think that's kind of of a really unique opportunity. And I own both. I have apartment buildings and single family. But the single family is kind of unique because when someone wants to feel like they own a home, they're going to want to rent a single family home.

Yes. And they will take good care of it.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think homeownership is going to be long put off by this generation and it's not going to be by choice. But at least we're here as landlords to serve them and that's, that's what we do.

And there are good landlords and bad landlords, of course. But yeah, I think the future is really strong for those of us who are investing, especially in the single family homes. Like you said, I do too.

No question about it. Well, hey, Barb, people can get the book, of course, on Amazon.com and you have a blog as well. Do you want to give out your blog web address?

Sure. The blog address is www.chronicles1word lowercase.com thelandlordchronicles.com and they can buy my book through my blog. And my blog just has a bunch of posts on it that are of value to people who are investing or people who are landlords themselves.

Yep. Great. And on Amazon, it's available on the Kindle format as well. So I commend you for doing that. The book, the full title is the Landlord Chronicles Investing in Low and Middle Income Rentals. Barb Getty, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much, Jason.

Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show's specific website and our general website, hartman media.com for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guest opinions are their own. And if you, if you require specific legal or tax advice or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to itunes or Stitcher radio or whatever platform you're using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to to seeing you on the next episode.