Got A Property That You're Ready To Rent?! WATCH THIS FIRST!

In today's video, we're going to talk about this recent purchase from one of my clients, and I was discussing it at one of my meetups in Lake Forest. This place is in San Clemente. It's a 3-bedroom, 2-bath condominium. When you get a chance, he's going to turn around and show you the view of the golf course, and we're literally 2 blocks away from the beach. And the purchase price on the MLS, believe it or not, was $700,000. It was reduced to $650,000 within a few days with the tagline on the agent comment area, which nobody sees unless you're an agent, motivated seller. Well, to me that means, hey, come and offer. Okay. So my clients called, said, hey, go take a look at it. I literally rushed out that day that they sent me the lead. I looked at it, I called the agent, I said, how motivated are they? She says, well, you know, they're really motivated. They've got some properties in LA they're going to be closing on. They need the money from here to transfer over there. We're going to do a 1031 exchange. How's $600,000 sound, Joe? And I go, yeah, it sounds good to me. So I went back to my clients. My clients, I've been working with them for probably close to 20 years now. So they know how I work, and so they said, well, Joe, if you can get it $600,000 without a problem, let's put an offer in for $590,000. I said, oh geez, I'm going to lose this and you're going to lose a great deal. We're $100,000 under market. So I put an offer in, $590,000. Literally waited an hour and I get a response, it's accepted. We just closed on this property a couple days ago. It was in great shape. Not have to do anything to it. In fact, if we wanted to actually put it back on the market and sell it for $700,000, I'm sure I could get that very easily. So they could literally walk away with $110,000 minus, you know, commissions and closing costs again. So, you know, they could, they can make some substantial money now, but they're long-term investors. They're doctors, and so they have sufficient funds carry this. So anyways, we're here today because yesterday I put it on the market for lease. We're leasing it for $3,200. I've got people literally calling me left and right. Had a couple of kids— I call them kids because I'm older— a couple of young adults come by and take a look at it and they loved it. And I've got some more people coming as well. So $3,200, 3-bedroom, 2-bath. Literally here, very close to the beach. And anyway, we're going to walk through this and I'm going to tell you what I look for in leasing a place and what you should look for in leasing a place. Okay, so if he'll turn around to kind of show you a little bit what's going on here. Okay, so we're going to go in through this slider and this is kind of like the living room. The dining room is The next slider over, and then the master also has a slider. You're literally right out at the pool. I mean, you literally put your chairs here. It's— I want to say it's about, uh, maybe 80 degrees right now. Inland is probably 90, maybe even 95, depending on how far inland you go. If you get into like the mountains, Riverside, San Bernardino, it's probably 100 out there right now. But This is one nice thing about being at the beach. So come on in, take a look. So I'm very appreciative of the agent that I worked with on this deal that sold it. Not only one, that she was able to convince her seller to drop the price so low. Yay! Number 2, she actually left this place in really clean condition. Okay, they had recently put vinyl flooring in. Now you have your typical white paint on the walls. This is, this is really rent— I call it renter-grade paint. This is something that I would not do if I was going to flip the property. I'd put a color on here to make it look more appealing. Front door, you've got some tile, ceramic tile on the entryway here. I personally, I would have gone with the vinyl all the way, but You know, that's, that's just every— everybody's choice. The dining room area, again, you have a slider out here. This is pretty much— these mirrors are pretty much '70s, '80s, old-fashioned. Not something that I would leave in here, but again, this is a rental. I'm renting it in the condition it's in. There's nothing wrong with it. It's clean, it's presentable. If you turn around, this is kind of, um, I don't know what you would call it, breakfast nook area. And then you have the kitchen, and this is an all-electric home, so everything in here is electric, and that's the only utility that you pay for as a renter in here. There's no gas. The water is paid for by the association, and the owner of the property pays his HOA dues, and that goes towards paying the water. So all that's basically taken care of. If you're going to move in as a tenant, it's going to be electricity only. It's got its own little laundry facility here. The washer and dryer do come with it. It's a newer washer and dryer. This is the guest bathroom, and, you know, as you can see, it's, you know, nice and clean. The tiles are older, but it's not like I need to rush in and replace any of this stuff. This is all good, what I would call rentable grade. If I was going to sell it, then yeah, I'd probably do some more upgrades. We've got a bedroom to the left, carpeting, and this was recently cleaned. And I like to see that there's lines in the carpet from the vacuum, and this kind of tells people as they come over to look at it that, oh look, it was just recently cleaned. So they feel a little bit better when they see something like that. So you'll see it again in bedroom number 2. And then in the master, you're going to see it as well. You can see the vacuum lines. And then here is the slider that goes out to the pool area. You know, what a spot. You put your bed in the right place and you wake up every morning to this view. And hi! You wake up every morning to this view and, um, in the pool area. And who's in the pool, especially on the weekend? This one has a master bath as well. Let me turn the light on and I'll let you go in there. It's got 2 closets. So it's got 2 closets. It's got one closet here, and then that's the her closet, and then this is the his closet. You can see the size, hers and his. And then I'll let you walk into the master bath area there so you can see it. When you're renting a place, it's really, really important that you clean the place and make it absolutely presentable for the next person, because that is the first thing people ask is, When was the last time it was cleaned? Was it professionally cleaned? And vice versa on the other end, you have to tell them the same thing. You're getting a place that's totally clean, it was professionally cleaned, okay, not like you or your wife cleaning it. I need somebody that does it professionally, the carpets and everything else. And I also need a receipt because again, They ask you, okay, has this place been professionally cleaned? Yes, it has. Here's the receipt. Here's the people that did it. On the other end, when you move out, I want a receipt that it was done professionally to present to the new tenants coming in. So very important. Also very important, everything needs to work. So the sliders need to slide properly. The screen door needs to slide properly. All the appliances need to work. Okay, they— you just, you know, can't throw somebody in here. You can, but the problem is that they're going to be calling you every 5 minutes with, hey Joe, this doesn't work, or that doesn't work. I like to literally come through and make sure everything's working. Okay, and then I avoid a lot of calls that way. So that's awesome. The other thing, and we'll walk back this way. The other thing I want to mention is when we purchased this place, and when you purchase a place, they're going to ask you, do you want a home warranty? I always say yes. My clients, because I do property management as well, have a home warranty on all their properties, and they continue to renew that, which makes it really easy for me If there's some issue that I can't personally take care of, I literally get on the phone with the home warranty company and call them, and they come out and take care of it. In this case, I believe it was about $800 that we spent. Not we, but yeah, technically we. The seller supplies the home warranty. That comes out of their side of the, of the budget. And the reason I asked for $800 is because it really basically covers everything. I also threw the refrigerator in there and the washer and dryer in there as well, so that brings up the price. And when I negotiated the contract, I always negotiate high so that I know that I can add those items in. It's not going to cost my client any more money at the end of the day. So this place is fully taken care of by the home warranty company. Any issues arise, you know, any of the appliances go bad, I just literally get on the phone and call them. Any plumbing problems, they come out and take care of that. This place does not have air conditioning, but it does have a heater. So if they use the heater and that goes out, then they literally come out and take care of that. There is a, I think it's like a $75 service call fee. Okay. Which is really inexpensive. I've had them come out recently and replace a whole air conditioning unit with $4,000 or $5,000, and that was because we had the home warranty in place. So that's something that you might consider for your purchases and your properties, especially if you're not handy and you don't have contractors lined up. I, I do, but my clients don't, and so it's easier for me to manage their properties if I have that home warranty in place. So please remember the home warranty. Anyways, this is basically, you know, what I look for in a rent— in a rental. I do have a realtor lockbox on the front door so other realtors can come over and take a look at it. It is on the MLS. From the MLS, it sends it out to everybody else, usually Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow. I also put it on Zumper, and Zumper, I use that because I send the application link to my potential tenants, and it also runs their credit check. It also runs a criminal history background, and most important, it runs to find out if they've ever been evicted from a place because If you've ever been evicted, you may as well not put an application in to anything I'm renting, because if you, if you, you know, did that once, I know there's a big potential for you to do it again. So that, that application goes, you know, out this— out the wayside here, goes basically in a trash can. So Zumper Pro will do all of those. As a real estate agent, there's no fee for me. As a tenant, there's laws in California you can only charge a certain amount, and I believe that's $35 right now. So you'll get all the information nicely typed up and everything, and then I send that package over to my landlord, my client, and then my landlord makes the final decision upon my recommendation as well. The other thing I want to talk about is tenants. I like to meet tenants. And I like to meet them face to face. I just had a couple of young men, like I said, come through here and literally just talking to people, finding out, you know, what their situation is, maybe some buzzwords. I'll talk to somebody and they'll walk in, they'll go, Joe, are you okay with a 550 FICO score? You know, it's like, okay, there goes another one, you know. And it's like, yeah, I was evicted once, but that was like 30 years ago, Joe. Are you good with that? Yeah, no, that one's not. So for me, talking to them and interviewing them to find out really personally how good of a tenant they're going to be. Again, I've been doing this for over 40 years, so I've talked to a lot of people. This guy came in and I said, well, how long? He goes, how long is the lease for? And I go, a year. And I go, Well, how long are you going to stay? He's a young man, okay. He goes, well, obviously a year, but I don't know after that. Well, that kind of goes a little bit down on my scale because I'm kind of looking for long-term tenants. So I usually just do a year with the hopes that they're going to do multiple years after that. So that's kind of what I'm listening for and trying to hear from people. You'd be amazed at the stories that people come in with, just absolutely amazed. And it's like, really? Yeah, I mean, you're going to tell me all this and, you know, you want to rent this place from me? Especially nowadays, you know, here we are just basically getting out of COVID In California, we're still under moratorium until the end of September. So I have to be totally careful and diligent that whoever I pick is going to stay in here for the year. In fact, what I do, what no other real estate agent does that I know of, is I guarantee to my clients, okay, the owners of this property, that whomever at the end of the day I pick and they approve will stay for a year. If they don't stay for that year, I will re-rent it for them at no charge. Okay, so again, I have to be really, really sure that they're going to stay for that year. Okay, so those are kind of different things that I do that maybe other agents don't do, and if you do, I'm sorry, I apologize, you know, good for you that you do things like that, but you, especially now, you have to be really diligent on who you put into the property. Okay, so anyways, if there's any questions, make sure you hit that like button, okay, and make sure you subscribe to the channel. I'll be here to answer your questions. I have been getting recently lots of questions on different things, so please make sure that you ask questions. If you want to look at an eviction video that I did, just check right here and I'll link to— I'll give you a link to that eviction video. And that one, that one actually was a lot of fun. We were sneaking up on the place and I've got the eviction papers and I'm knocking on the door and I ended up posting them on the door because there was no answer. So that one's a great one if you want it. Again, link right here and you can take a look at that one. So anyway, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it and have a great day.