BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 101: From Real Estate Agent to Profitable Landlord with Dawn Brenengen

Episode Date: December 18, 2014

Ever wonder what real estate investing looks like from a real estate agent’s perspective? On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we sit down with Dawn Brenengen, a real estate agent-turned-landlord and discuss how she made the transition into the investing world, as well as her tricks and tips for success as a landlord. Along with important insight into the real estate licensing process, Dawn covers property management, house hacking, and a whole lot more! Listen for advice on finding a great property, handling everyday rental issues and finding that elusive “ideal” tenant. And in case you were wondering when it’s appropriate to bend the “2% Rule” — this episode explores that, too! Whether you have experience as a real estate agent or not, don’t miss this inspiring show! In This Show We Cover: How Dawn got started in real estate Thoughts on being a licensed real estate agent The qualities that make a successful agent A real estate agent’s perspective on what investors are looking for The 2% rule — and how to know when to bend it Importance characteristics of a great property The process of “house hacking“ What you need to know about property management How to handle tenant issues with grace The process of qualifying tenants Different perspectives on owning a home The ins and outs of establishing relationships with property managers The pros and cons of self management versus hiring the job out Tenant red flags and finding the ideal tenant Plus MUCH more! Links From the Show: The Real Estate Agent’s Ultimate Guide to Working with Investors Brandon’s article on House Hacking Podcast Episode with Chris Clothier BP Podcast Show 100 Resident Research List Hub Zillow Trulia CraigsList BiggerPockets Forum ActiveRain Be a Guest on the Podcast Books Mentioned in the Show Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This by Kate White Connect with Dawn Dawn’s BiggerPockets Profile Dawn’s Facebook Dawn’s LinkedIn Dawn’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 101. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dork and hosts.

to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, Brandon? Not a whole lot. Josh Dorkin, how are you? It's good to have you as a co-host once again instead of as my, you know,

inquisitor, my inquisitor. My inquisitioner. What's the word? I don't even know what you're talking about. Last year. Master. Uh, boss. What?

Really? Yeah. Yeah. I wondered how that rumor got started that I worked for you. And I think I'm starting to get it. it now. Nice. I don't know, but it could be the fact that I put that on my bigger pockets profile and my Facebook page, Twitter, you know, that's how I roll. All right. So anyway, today, we are show 101, which coincidentally is also the name of the highway by my house. So I think that's a sign.

A sign of what, Brandon? I have a sign that our goal, check out this transition to quick tip. Yeah, let's see how you parlay this. Our goal for Bigger Pockets. for the year of 2014 is to hit 1,0001 ratings, which is kind of like 101. What does that have to do with the highway? I don't know. I'm grasping out straws here. So our quick tip for today is trying to reach 1,0001 ratings and reviews in iTunes. We're at 950 right now. So that is our quick tip today.

A quick tip is jump on the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 101. And we will have a link there to a post that will show you exactly how to go on iTunes and leave us a rating and review. And you guys, that stuff really does help us out. If you're a fan of the show and want to give back, a great way of doing that is literally taking the three minutes it takes to go to iTunes, say, hey, the show is great or we hate Josh. Don't do that. There's enough of those. But leave a rating and a review for us, and they do really help us.

Yeah. We do need 50 more. 51 more. For a thousand. Come on. We got to get there by the end of the year. You have like not much time, like a couple weeks. So do it.

All right, moving on. Again, yeah, biggerpockets.coms, I show 101. There are instructions there on exactly how to leave us a review or rating in iTunes. That's what we need it. So, all right. So today's guest is Don Brennigan. Don is a real estate investor and property manager in the, it's not Fayetteville. It's the, oh, goodness.

Raleigh. Raleigh. Raleigh. Rale. Raleigh. Rale. Raleigh. Rale.

Rale. Yeah, Raleigh. in North Carolina. And she's got some really great insight into working with property managers, finding property managers, just generalized great tips and information. Don got her real estate license, which was kind of her beginning into the industry and worked with a new home builders. So she's got kind of a cool story.

She's done a lot of things. And we definitely encourage you to stick around and check it out. Okay. We're going to shift gears for a minute to cover something important. especially for new landlords. The shows often talk about getting stuck doing everything ourselves and the cost of sweat equity. The key question is simple.

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And they're approved in 47 different states. So your next big deal could be just around the corner. Ready to unlock your property's true potential? Visit hostfinancial.com. Don't let old school lending hold you back another day. That's hostfinancial.com. So why don't we bring Dawn in and get started on the interview. So, Dawn, welcome to the show.

It's good to have you here. Thanks, Josh. Hi, Brandon. Hi, Josh. Hi, Dawn. Welcome. Oh, she said hi to you too. I know. It's impressive. That's good. Well, thank you. Well, all right. So today we're going to talk to you about a lot of stuff, your journey, a little bit about property management, dealing with tenants, stuff like that. So, but we will begin the way we always do. How did you get started in real estate? Well, I was a psych major in college. And after I graduated, I worked for a therapeutic foster care agency. And I was helping the HR lady go through a lot of the employee records. And I was being nosy. And I looked to see how much everybody in the company made. And people with master's degree made

no more than $36,000. Only the top person at the company made any more than that. So I was like, man, I got to get out of here. And so I talked to my dad that night and I was telling him what I'd found out. And he said, well, you should get into real estate. And it's something he's always been interested in. He had his license for about two minutes. And, you know, he just kind of said, well, maybe you should get your license. And I said, you know, that's not a bad idea. I like looking at houses. Why not? So I spent the next couple of months working on my license and took it from there. So I got my license at the end of 2002. And once I had that, I just started applying to different real estate related jobs. That was back when the newspaper still had classified ads. So, you know,

I'd circle the classifieds every Sunday and apply to everything real estate related. And I finally got a job. working in a new homes neighborhood. So sitting out on site in the office. So they have a model home and you sit out there. And as people come out, you sell them new construction. So that's how I got my start. Nice. So you started as an agent before you bought any rental properties.

That's right, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. So maybe we can touch on that before we get into the investment side of things, is talk about, I guess, do you recommend that strategy for new investors getting started? Being an agent, is that the right way to get started?

It definitely lends itself to learning a lot about the legalities of being in real estate. I will say depending on what you're going to do in real estate, having a license does hold you up to a hair standard. So if you're trying to be very, very creative, I would maybe skip that part or maybe go through the classes and not actually get licensed. So it can be very helpful. If you think you're going to be doing a lot of buying and selling, I would get my license just because you save so much money by earning your own commissions. Nice. I want to ask about the new home construction stuff. We don't really talk a lot about, you know, what it's like the whole builder space, the builder industry. So, you know, while I've got a second, I thought I'd ask you about that. So this would be one of the big national builders or even a local builder who's, you know, who's got plans to build, you know, X number of plots. And you basically, your job is to sit there, show them the model home and kind of work with them on the different options that are possible. Okay. So what are your thoughts on that as an investor? Not the development side. Obviously, that's a great pathway, but buying new development properties as an investor. Do you think that's a good decision, bad decision, or based upon your own experience? Well, it depends on what year you bought it in. I noticed that I was selling new construction from 2003 to I quit doing it in probably 2010.

And the people that bought in 2005, 2006, I had a lot of out-of-state investors buying properties here and then turning around and using them for rental properties. Sure. And in new construction, the prices were going up a lot faster than homes that were already sitting, built, resales. And the people who bought those homes probably today could not sell them for what they paid for them. So they've lost the money there. But they do have less maintenance costs. I think if you buy right, any house can really be a good investment. whether or not it's new or resale.

Gotcha. When you said here, where is here? Where do you live for those people? Raleigh, North Carolina. Okay, cool. So you're a big Duke fan. I'm a big UNC fan, Josh. Oh, I'm sorry.

Did I get it wrong? So sorry. A little wrong. They're like mortal enemies. They hate each other. So I thought it'd be fun to rib Don a little bit. All right, Don. So your real estate agent, you know, you've got your license.

What would you say? What quality? make for a good agent? And I'll add to that, sorry, what qualities make for a good agent and what qualities make for a good agent that work, that's going to work on investment properties? Sure.

Well, a good agent in general can handle rejection well who is not afraid to put themselves out there. You know, you're going to get a lot of nose in this industry. You're going to get a lot of your friends, your very good friends, turn around and buy a house with somebody else. And you just have to understand that everybody has their own. reasons for why they choose to work with you and why they don't. So you can't take any of that kind of stuff personally. If you don't have a thick skin in that sense, you will not do well.

Working with investors particularly, investors, you know, are typically very all about the numbers, not very emotionally involved in the homes. And it's actually a lot like working with builders when we, you know, when I used to sell homes in new construction, people would come in, you know, obviously the people buying it are doing it on an emotional basis. But the builder is just looking at, hey, can I sell this and still make a profit and not hurt the values in the neighborhood for in the next house I'm going to sell. And, you know, so when people get all up in arms about, you know, what the response is when they put in an offer and stuff, you know, I just let them know it's a very black

and white situation. And investors are like that too. So investors obviously will probably put out a lot of offers before anything goes to contract. So you have to be a very patient person with investors. For me, who, you know, somebody like me who's been in the business for a long, time. If I'm going to work with an investor, I want to know that they have their financing in order. They're not just kicking tires and stuff. So I'm happy to give somebody who's new to the

business and education, but only to a certain extent. Gotcha. Gotcha. You know, we actually wrote a guide. I don't know if you've seen it. It's the ultimate agent's guide for working with investors. I have seen it. And, you know, if you're listening and you're an agent and you have not seen it, or you know an agent, or you work with an agent, which is pretty much everybody listening. You got to get this guide and you got to give it to people. We'll link to it in the show notes at BiggerPockets.com slash show 101. It's the ultimate agent's guide for working with investors. And it's great. And it talks, you know, about what investors are looking for. It teaches them how to, how to evaluate properties, gives them kind of the basics that they need. You know, you said something about

taking the emotion out of it and and, you know, what happens when your friends use some other agent. It's funny. I never thought about that, you know, and that is a big thing, and I know it happens because I've got a lot of friends who are agents and I always go and, you know, I'll use, you know, hey, let me use somebody else or recommend somebody else for this or this. And, you know, you definitely need some thick skin to be able to deal with that. I do know some people who have gotten in assaulted when other friends of ours have used other agents. And you know, you're not going to last long if that's the attitude you've got. For sure. Definitely not. Yeah. Interesting. Well, so I guess my follow-up would be, you know, what else should a new investor have prepped or

what do they need to know when contacting an agent? And let's take it from, you know, I'm brand new. I want to get into real estate investing. I get in touch with you. Do I need to do any diligence, do I need to know anything, or can I just come out to you, you know, with nothing and say, hey, agent, you know, I want to be a real estate investor, you know, hold my hand, or should I go and do the work and, you know, find out a little bit. Well, an agent can be definitely a good resource for taking that first step and figuring out what it is you need to do next. You know, any agent that is used to working with investors can give you an idea of, you know, what your market is like, what you can expect out of an investment.

You know, when people come to Raleigh and they're like looking for a 2% rule, that's, you know, it just doesn't exist here in Raleigh. So I think, you know, providing somebody who's new that education so they can figure out if this is the market for them is really the first step. But that being said, after you kind of figured that out, you want to get that financing in order. You know, any agent who's worth their salt is going to want to know that if they find you a property that you're willing and ready to move on the property and you can close on it without too much problems. Yeah.

Yeah. That makes sense. Hey, you mentioned the 2% rule. First of all, for those people who don't know, can you kind of explain a little bit what that is? And then you say you can't get that in your area. Does that mean you don't invest there? Or is it okay to invest without hitting that rule?

Well, it's not a rule so much as a guideline. So the 2% rule just kind of means that if you find a house that rents for 2% of the sales price per month, then it is likely to be a good investment. But it's not the reverse that says it's a bad investment if it doesn't hit that rule. Right. So do you invest in properties that hit the 2% rule that don't? Okay. So it's a very different. So this is something that I think we should talk on because, and I'm sure we'll get to that with your individual properties. But, you know, a lot of investors, you know, they say that. They come on the forums and they say, I can't find a deal. That meets the 2% rule in my area. Should I just stop investing? You know, I should. Yeah. Okay. So

so maybe you can talk about that for a minute. Sure. So the properties I have are for the most part around a 0.8%. And I would say a good guideline is trying to hit that 1%. And in other markets, you know, I know you can go to Ohio and Tennessee and stuff, find places that where, you know, you can find that 2% rule. But for me, I don't want to be an out-of-state investor. So I'm flipped to my local market where I can keep an eye on things and do my management and stuff like that.

So for me... I forgot Detroit, by the way. Brandon's favorite place, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You get like the 10% rule there. If the house doesn't get stolen.

I wonder if that's actually happened. I could see that happened in Detroit. Somebody just puts it on a truck and drives off. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I've seen it happen to new construction. It wasn't stolen, but I've seen whole houses be moved on a back of a trigular. Shut up. Are you serious?

Yeah, they just lift it literally right off the foundation. Go build a new foundation somewhere else and they drop it right back on. No way. Wow. Wow, that's crazy. My parents, or actually my in-laws house was moved back. I mean, it was built back in like the teens or whatever. And then somewhere in the 40s or 50s, they picked it up and moved it a mile.

I don't know how, I mean, it's a fairly good-sized house. It's not like a modular home. I mean, it's a square house. Like it's probably 1,800 square feet. It blows my mind that in the 40s, they could move a house that big, like without cutting and a half. They just moved it like a mile. It blows my mind that that can be done.

I don't know. We should get somebody on a show sometime that does that. We landed a man. landed a man on the moon in the 60s and, you know, we can't do it today, right? I heard the other day that the technology that NASA had to land a guy on the moon is less than the technology we have in our, like, iPhone or a smartphone. Like, this is more powerful than the entire NASA computers back in the 60s and 70s. Yeah, crazy.

So anyway, okay, so 2% rule. You don't think that necessarily you have to, you don't have to hit that. And, I mean, it's a kind of a different way of looking at it, right? So I have one property that meets the 1% rule. I mean, it's, I owe like 80 something on it. It rents for about 800 bucks a month. I lose money on that property all the time. And here's why it's because I bought, I have a 1% rule property in a bad neighborhood,

which means every single year I've got at least a month empty. The property was old and kind of crappy. And so it constantly needs new work. I mean, constantly. Pipes are freezing, exploding, things like that happen all the time. So like I put so much money into this property and it meets the 1% rule, but I lose money all the time on it. And so that's different from a 1% rule that you're dealing with.

I'm guessing that yours probably wasn't built in 1907 or whatever. No. So, I mean, yeah, I like that illustration that the 1% rule, the 2% rule, I mean, like you said, guidelines. There's so much difference there. I mean, a 1% rule in your neighborhood is completely different than a 1% in mine. Oh, absolutely. I mean, if your air conditioning unit gets stolen every year and, you know, there goes another $3,000 a year. I mean, you've got to take that kind of situation into account when you're considering

markets in different places. So I just prefer to be in a good area. not have to worry about that kind of stuff. So maybe we can talk, maybe we can talk about your area then. I mean, before we get into your individual properties and your first property, but what does a typical purchase price look like there? And then what does something might, what might something rent for? Sure.

So I'm invested kind of near NC State University, but it's not necessarily a college neighborhood. So I get a lot of young professionals, people who went to NC State who are now, you know, working in the area. They're just familiar with that area. So they don't necessarily want to move away. It's really, it's got great. access to highways and jobs and stuff. So it's a good area to live in general. But being so close to NC State really does kind of mean that it will always stay rented. So my vacancy rate is maybe

three days every other year, just enough time for me to get, you know, paint and cleaned and stuff for the next person to go in. Sounds rough. You've got it really hard over there. Really hard. I picked that for, you know, a particular reason. Well, and that's brilliant. I mean, versus Brandon, right? I mean, you know, we've talked about where where you're at in Podunk, where, you know, There's no jobs and, you know, a lot of unemployment, right? And a challenging place to find renters. So, you know, what would you say to somebody who's new to real estate, you know, when they're looking for markets?

Like, hey, you know, what kind of advice can you give to somebody to help them find a neighborhood like yours where turnover is less, you know, I mean, areas like that. So what tips do you have? Yeah, well, I would definitely say if you were bringing. new to real estate investing. Start with something easier. Don't pick that Detroit market if you're not a seasoned investor who can deal with those kinds of things and, you know, take it all in stride. If some, you know, if a broken water heater is going to ruin your day, you know, you really need to invest in the easier areas. So for me, you know, a college town obviously was was a good pick for

me. Centers of employment areas that are growing. The great thing about Raleigh is that it's such a growing area and lots of businesses are moving here. You know, so not only do we experience it's very low vacancy, but it should be experiencing some appreciation eventually too. Yes. And what's your theory on that, you know, investing for appreciation? Do you consider that for your own investments or is it kind of a happy bonus if it happens? Well, I don't plan on ever selling the home. So I don't think that I'll ever get to realize the appreciation. Maybe my kids will someday. But for me, appreciation kind of means more of having options and exit strategies with the house. You know, if I were to sell any of these houses,

I could either sell them to another investor or I could sell them to a retail buyer. So there's a few exit strategies with that house or those houses. Gotcha. All right. So let's talk about your own personal investing. What was your first deal? How soon did it come after you got your license? And what was the impetus for you actually starting to do your own deals versus just being

another real estate agent that never actually gets started? because, you know, I think most real estate agents I knew when I was an agent, they dreamed of being investors and they never did it. And to this day, most of them never did. And most, I'd say most agents probably never do. Yeah. Well, I know a lot of real estate agents who rent. So, and that was actually my foray into buying a house was I became a real estate agent. And I was still renting at the time. I was young. I was 23. And I thought, well, gosh, I'm a real estate agent, but I'm renting. So I should probably buy something. thing. That's what we do, right? So at the time, I had a boyfriend, and we bought a house together, a townhome over near NC State, and he was still going to school there. And we broke up, as boyfriends and girlfriends tend to do. And he didn't have any money, so I kept the house. And I lived there for a little while and ended up basically house hacking, you know, accidentally.

I got a couple of roommates and they, you know, were paying the lion's share of the mortgage for me. And eventually, I just decided I wanted a yard and a garage and stuff. So I moved out of that townhouse and into a single family house and brought my roommates with me. And I turned in, I turned the first property into a rental property at that point. So that was my first rental. Well, that wasn't my first. That was my first house that I turned into a rental in 2006. But I actually bought two rental properties with my parents in 2004.

So we had bought two single family homes in a very close by neighborhood to where I was currently living. My parents had sold a property in Fayetteville and they said, we have a whole bunch of cash. and can you help us find a rental property? And of course, I was still new to being an agent. And I was like, okay. I had no idea what I was doing. I just picked two houses close to NC State and got lucky. That's cool.

So what, I mean, you said you got lucky, but I mean, what attracted to do to those houses? Did you know anything? Did they just, I mean, out of a hat? I literally knew nothing about real estate investing at the time. I just knew that since I was currently living in that area, I knew that a lot of my friends, my boyfriend's friends at the times and stuff were renting. And some of them had rented houses in that area. You know, I'd seen the insides of a lot of them. I was like, oh, this is a great place for students to live. And, you know, so when they said they wanted to buy two rental properties, so then, well, why not find two here? So I did.

Yeah. So do you rent to the students or to professionals? It's a mix of both, but I would say it's mostly young professionals. I don't rent to a ton of students, but if I do, they're typically older. They're not, you know, freshmen's right out of their parents' house. They're juniors and seniors, maybe grad students. Okay, okay. And you also do property management, correct? Yes. Okay. So let's just really quickly talk about the renting to students thing,

because I think it's something a lot of people are afraid of. You know, there's a lot of risk in renting to a bunch of 18, 20, 22-year-olds who, you know, are free for the first time. So, you know, what don't you fill us in on A, you know, maybe like what's some of the worst stuff you've seen kids do? And I'm sure we could all imagine it. And then B. How can you as a landlord protect yourself against a destroyed property and, you know, getting screwed, basically?

Well, this is a really good place to take the emotion out of your real estate investing. For me, the houses that we own are literally balls, carpet, paint. And that's it. You know, I don't have any personal attachment to these properties by any means. My mom, on the other hand, those two properties that, you know, I owned with her, we used to get together when there was turnover and she'd come up and clean. and, you know, my dad would do repairs and stuff like that and I would help paint. And my mom would just the whole time walk around going, gosh, how do people live like this? Look how dirty the toilet is? And I'm just like, you know, so you clean it. No big deal.

So after my dad passed, the next time we had turnover, I said, mom, just let me take care of it. Don't even bother coming up. I'm really tired of hearing it. So, you know, I'll just deal with it. So, you know, now I just hire my painter, my carpet cleaner, my cleaners to come in. And it's a new property when it's all of a sudden done. They have never really torn up a property, but they're just not the cleanest of people. So really what I do for my students versus professionals is not really that much different. So even high-end homes, we still send the cleaners and the carpet cleaners and have some basic repairs and stuff. But there's no holes in the wall.

There's no, you know, you might find a couple of beer bottles out in the yard, but that's about it. Yeah. What do you do in terms of like co-signers and that kind of stuff? So generally if they don't qualify on their own, which is rare for the properties I have. Like I said, most of them at this point are working themselves. You know, it's a roommate situation. So between the three kids, they usually make enough money to cover it. But in case they don't, I do have a form that their parents can co-sign for them.

Yeah. Okay. Does each of them sign a lease or are they all on the single lease? They are all on one lease. So if one person doesn't pay, they are all still responsible for that. Okay. I have a question on this because it's something I'm dealing with this week. And I dealt with this back like six months ago.

So I've got a property with two students living in it right now, and one of them wants to leave. What do you do in that kind of situation? They're both on the lease, but one of them is moving or whatever. He wants to leave. Yeah, I've had that happen with boyfriend, girlfriend situations and things like that. If the person left cannot qualify on their own, I either still make that person who wants to leave responsible. I do give the person who's staying an opportunity to find another roommate. But if they don't find another roommate and can't find somebody to help them in that regard,

but then the person who's leaving is still responsible. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's kind of how we run it as well. So, all right. Well, let's talk about maybe your next deal. I mean, like, so you got the primary house you lived in and then you moved into another property.

Is that the one you live in now? Nope. I actually did that one more time. I moved again. Cool. And kept that one as a rental property also. Cool. So, you know, a lot of times, you know, we're kind of making that phrase, you know, house hacking

a thing. We talk a lot about it. But when most people think about house hacking, they think. of the idea of living in a duplex or triplex. But when I originally kind of wrote that article on house hacking back a year and a half ago, you know, there's several different facets of it. And that's one of them is the idea of living just a single family house, rented it up, maybe to roommates, or maybe just with the idea that you're going to rent it someday. Like the house I live in today, you know, it's my primary residence. I live alone, you know,

my wife and three cats and dog. But I will move eventually. And this house will become a great rental for me. And I bought it the date, I mean, I bought it knowing that five, ten years down the line it would be. So anyway, that's just another way to house hack that people oftentimes don't think about. And you get the benefits potentially of appreciation with that too, because the multifamilies don't always appreciate as well as the single family. So it's just another way for people can look at stuff. I guess do you have any tips for people that are in that same situation that are looking to buy their first house to actually live in? Well, I think it's a fantastic idea to buy it with the intention of potentially renting it someday because one,

your rates on your mortgage will be better. You may not have to put as much money down. to qualify for the loan. So there's a lot of good financial reasons to do it, for sure. Just today, or yesterday, I think it was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced that they're going to be dropping the required down payment down to 3%. Not even FHA, but yeah, so. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, so that's interesting. I mean, I don't know, you know, people can already do the FHA, which is 3.5%. But, you know, that should probably, you know, make some kind of effect, especially for flippers who selling to first-time home buyers that probably should open up quite a bit more. Yeah, I'm not sure what the PMI issue is going to be with

the new 3% down. The only problem I have with FHA loan right now is the PMI is high and it's forever until you refinance. You know, maybe we should just give houses away to people for free. I mean, you know, it's not going to lead to another bubble or anything. We did it once before. Why not? Yeah, I mean, we did this. It worked out really, really well. So I, you know, I applaud the effort to get everybody to own a home, even people who shouldn't own a home. And I think everybody should have the ability to own a home at some point. But when you're not financially ready to do it. You're not financially ready to do it. And this kind of stuff really stirs me up. I mean, I think we're just asking for potential trouble again. Yeah. Oh, for sure.

The first house I bought that first town home. I mean, I bought it no money down. You know, the builder had paid some of the closing costs. I mean, I think we literally moved in with $800. And that's pretty much all I had to my name. I just got lucky that we were not in a market that experienced a big crash and, you know, and that I had other plans for this house. But I can see how it could not go well. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. All right. Well, I was going to say that said about the 3% thing. So even though like that does seem shockingly low, I guess the official rule has been 5% for the past while. So they only dropped at 2%. Most banks still won't go that low. They're just, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac is given the option we still will buy your loan if you do

three instead of five. Yeah, we'll do 1% soon. Yeah, we'll just go no money down. So it's no money down. There you go. It'll happen. All right. Well, cool. Let's shift gears a little bit here and go to managing properties a little bit. Maybe we can talk about, I guess, kind of you're a property manager. How many properties do you currently manage? My company manages about 60 and out of that 50 of them are probably mine. What do you mean? What do you mean by? And this is your company being you're the creator, the owner, the founder of this company. Yes. Yes. Yep. Yep. Realty is the name of the company. It was just me for the longest time, but then I hired two other agents to work with me not too long ago.

Okay. And when you say 50 them are yours, you mean you own them or those are your management? Yeah, those are my clients, right? We kind of have our individual portfolios that we work with. Okay. Maybe we can talk about that a little bit, like how you structure that. Because, I mean, the first thing to comes in mind is when we had, I think it was Chris Clothier on the show back, you know, a long time ago, a year or a year and a half

ago, he said there's like a break-even point that he's found with property management. It's like 300 houses or something like that under management. It's hard to cash or it's hard to profit if you have less than that. But you have 60 houses that you're controlling. So, I mean, is that, have you found that true in your experience? No, but I guess it depends on how much overhead you have. I work from home. You know, I'm not paying assistance.

My agents are paid commission-based. So it's not, you know, I'm not paying a whole lot of money out every month. So I can't, yeah, pretty much everything's profit. So. Yeah. Yeah. So last show, which was episode 100 featuring Waugh, you know, I, you know, I, I ranted and raved a lot about property management.

I had some, you know, really bad experiences with people who did not do well by me. I guess my first question to you is somebody who's looking for a property manager. You know, what's your take? What do they need to be asking these property managers in their process and their interview process? Well, you really need to understand the process. I mean, what do you expect out of your property manager? What do you expect them to do on a day-to-day basis? A big thing is communication.

Most people really have no issue with how you run your company and what you charge as long as they're told ahead of time. You know, most people don't like to get a big bill after the fact without knowing what's going on. And I think on the property management side, I mean, I understand how things can get very hectic and busy and things can fall through the cracks and stuff. But if you really make that communication a priority with your clients, that they will appreciate that for sure. Okay. So communication is one thing you would want. What's your take on property managers managing their own properties versus, do you see that as a conflict of interest or as a benefit? They're so, they're never available at the same time as other clients' properties.

And they all feel so quickly. It's not like there's ever a situation where I go, okay, I've got a choice between putting a tenant into my own house versus my client's house down the road. They're just always available at different times. People are looking for different things. and there's so many people out there looking, at least in my area, that everything gets filled very quickly. So that has not been an issue, but I can see how it could be. Yeah. So how could somebody avoid that? I mean, what would they do if they're shopping? I mean, how would they know that this property manager?

I guess if that's important to you, you would want to know from your property manager, do you have your own properties? I think it's great if a property manager has their own properties because then they're going to know where you're coming from when you know, you're talking about expenses and things like that. You know, they're going to be on the investors. you know, they're going to understand where they're coming from. So I think it's great if they have their own properties. If now, you know, they have their own properties and it's taking away from managing properties for others, you know, that might be something you might want to look into is how

many properties do they own themselves? Where are these properties and how much time are they taking out of their property management business to manage their own stuff? Let me ask you this question because this is something that I talked about on the last show. And we're only recording this one day after we recorded the last show. So I haven't actually made any progress in this yet. But as I mentioned last week, fire, fire. So as I mentioned last week, my property manager that I hired, she's only got two of my properties.

I have to like tell her to do everything. Like, hey, I need you to do this next. And then this. And like I call her, did you serve a three day notice set? Oh, no. I can do that. Well, okay. The tenants are a week late on rent.

Go ahead. Okay, great. And then they'll do it. So I sent an email to him last night and haven't heard back yet this morning. But I mean, what do you advise in that? I mean, is that her, is that my job to tell her these things? How much should I direct her onto what to do and how much does she do on her own? Well, if your tenant hasn't paid rent, she should be on that for sure.

So she should be contacting you and keeping those lines of communication open to see, you know, what do you want me to do? I mean, some of my owners don't necessarily want me to, here in Raleigh, you know, rent is due on the first. It's late after the fifth. So we start charging late fees on the sixth. My personal thoughts are if they haven't paid by the 15th, I would go ahead and start that eviction process. some of my owners or, you know, they don't want to spend them any on an eviction price. They want to see if their tenant's going to pay. And maybe this tenant usually does pay.

So, you know, not everything's black and white, but your property manager should know that about you is what do you want. You know, and I definitely think that, you know, it should be on her to contact you and say, okay, they still haven't paid. What is the next step? How do you want me to proceed? You know, obviously she needs that direction from you, but she should be proactive in getting it. I agree. One of the things that irks me a lot, too, maybe this is just like a personal pride issue. Like, I know that I would be her biggest client if I gave her all my properties.

I mean, hands down, I'd be, I'm probably the, you know, one of the largest property owners in our area. So like, and I told her straight up that I would love to get rid of all my properties over to property management. So the fact that she doesn't like communicate whatsoever with me. She'd fire her. I know. So like, it's, it's frustrated.

Like, I mean, if I was in her share that big, wow, he would, you know, like, add 20% to my portfolio if I got his properties. I should probably treat him with a little bit more, you know. I don't know. But it's the same thing, listen, it's the same thing that most people have with contractors. Think about it. I mean, how many contractors have you gone through, Brandon? Yeah.

They know that you've got, you know, X number of properties. They know you're looking to buy more. You know, if you're a contractor, you do good by every investor because they're going to bring you a ton of business. The same goes for agents. I mean, it's just, I think, you know, you got to find the good people, you know, people who don't get it. You know, I'm going to just say it. They're stupid. I mean, straight up, they're stupid.

it because they're losing so much possible business, potential future business by doing bad by you. It makes no sense. So, you know, if you want to be successful in this industry in any way, just do a good job. It's not hard. Show up, right? If you show up, you're going to get referrals. You're going to get more business. It's not hard.

Preach it, Josh. I'm telling it. I'm telling it. I mean, do you disagree? I mean, Dawn. Well, I think it's funny. Yeah. how you say just show up. I do have the same issue with some contractors too. I'm like, gosh,

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Yeah. So what are your thoughts on starting your own management company? You know, we've got Brandon here who's got X number of units. He's starting to use, you know, this bobblehead who doesn't do the job for him. And, you know, he better fire them stat. But there's one other property manager in town. And that's it. And they're probably not that good either from what it sounds like. So, you know, what do you do? You're an investor. Do you go and create your own management company to manage your own properties? How much of a pain is that? You know, is there any more entailed than just managing your own... Sure. Well, this varies by state,

but in North Carolina, you have to have a broker's license to manage properties for others. Now, you can open up your own management company, manage just your properties. You can hire an employee to work just on your own stuff and still be within the law, but if you ever wanted to do it for other people,

you now have to have a broker's license, and that entails getting your license and then working underneath somebody else for a couple of years, and then you can go out and hang your own shingle. Yeah. I think that's pretty much how it is here. And we've had our own company for the last, you know, five, six years now. And my goal was to get out of that because I don't like managing an employee, even though, like, that employee is my, like, mother-in-law. Like, she's like the lady who answers phones.

It's fine. But I'm still involved. And I don't want to be involved that much. And so it's like, I need somebody I can trust. And I might not just have any other options other than, yeah, I don't know. Well, why should somebody self-manage versus hiring somebody? I mean, you know, I think that's probably a question a lot of people are sitting and asking, you know, should I manage my own or hire you for 8, 10, 12 percent, whatever you charge? Well, partly I think it depends on personality. If you can take that hard line with your tenants and say, okay, rent was due the state, you're late, you know, charge those late fees, you know, process the evictions when you need to and, you know, send letters out and stuff when you need to.

I think some people have a tendency to be a little too nice when it comes to people they're interacting with face-to-face. And they need, you know, somebody to just kind of be that buffer between, you know, them and their tenants and stuff. I mean, I think it's actually pretty easy to self-manage. Obviously, I've been managing my own properties before I ever became a property manager and, you know, doing it for other people and stuff. But I'm kind of that same way. I'm too nice with my own properties.

But with my client's properties, I'm now, you know, I can say, well, the owner said this and, you know, I can always have that other person, you know, it's not me. The owner of the property needs their rent right now. So I should probably hire a property manager for my own properties and then continue on for my clients. Well, and I was going to ask, you know, you had said earlier that, you know, you tend to wait to the 15th before you process, you know, an eviction, even though rents due on the 5th and you, you kind of give some wiggle room, you know, if a client came up to you and said, hey, I want you to manage my properties. And what's your policy? And you said that. And they say, well, you know, I, I've been nice before I've been burned.

I want, you know, the three, you know, five day notice put out on the 5th. And, you know, as soon as we get the eviction notice out. by law, we're going to put that out. And that kind of, you know, is a little different than what you've been currently doing. Is that something you'd be willing to do? Oh, absolutely. And that's actually something I would recommend to the owners to do. You know, the 15th is somewhat of just a personal preference for myself just to see if people are going to get back on track. In North Carolina, you know, it costs a little bit of money to go down and file that eviction. But part of it kind of depends, like, okay, if you know that the tenants pay periods or maybe just off from when their rents do, or, you know, if you kind of know that they're going to come up,

with it within a few days, then that's one thing. But, you know, come the 15th, if they still haven't come up with it, that's kind of where my hard line is. Yeah. For my owners, I usually actually recommend doing it sooner rather than later, for sure. Good, good, good, gotcha, gotcha. Cool. So do you turn down owners? You know, somebody comes in, they have a dozen properties and say, hey, I want you to manage. Would you say no to somebody? Yeah, absolutely, for sure. So, So, you know, my own properties are class A, B properties, and I have learned that managing a very inexpensive property is definitely not easier than managing a more expensive property. And I make more on the more expensive property.

So, you know, just kind of as a business decision, I've decided to really focus on the higher end rental market in my area, the stuff that I know is going to be easy for me to handle, you know, and do well for the owners versus some of the stuff that is in the, less desirable part of town. I'm a small, young female. I don't necessarily want to be out in the rougher parts of town, you know, managing property. So I would definitely turn down people for sure. That makes sense. I always thought that was funny about property management, how it's based on, you know, the month that comes in. And so, you know, if I've got my property that rents for $500 a month over in a shady area and the property manager takes 10%, they make 50 bucks a month,

right? And then you got the guy who rents to a doctor for $2,500 a month. I mean, they're making so much more and it's so much easier. It seems like a weird system. You figured it out, Brandon. Yeah, you'd think somebody, I don't know, it seems like they would figure out, I don't know, there's no better way I guess to do it. But yeah, if I was going to be a problem, nobody should manage low-income problems. We just don't want to tell them, we don't want more than to figure out what you figured out and what I'm figuring out. Yeah, it's a funny system.

Well, I think, you know, when people complain about having a hard time finding property management in different areas that they're out-of-state investors, this is why it's because people know that the lower, you know, if you're buying a $15,000-dollar house, it's probably going to be a tough property to manage. So, you know, if you're charging 10%, I mean, for me, you know, yeah, if it rents for $500, yeah, it's definitely not worth $50 to manage in those areas. And it's a good point. You know, if you think about what you're getting for your money. So you go and let's use Detroit, right? You buy a bunch of like, you know, $1.50 houses in Detroit that are renting for, you know, $100 a month. And you're pulling in $10 a month, you know, you go and get a drink of coffee, a coffee,

cost you a 10 bucks. I mean, you know, how much work are you as a property manager going to put in to take care of that property for your owner? I mean, even though, you know, that's your job, you know, you're not going to get the five-star white glove service from somebody who's managing properties that are renting for $100, $200, $300, $300, you know, it's just there's no way to do it. Because you can be out of business. As an investor, you definitely have to understand the product that you are offering to people and, you know, how other people are going to view your desire as a client. Right, right. So, you know, I mean, I think in the end, those lower income properties tend to be poorly managed, I'd say, or, you know, it ends up a case where the investor needs to

really do their own work. Right. And I think those lower income properties can definitely be cash cows in a lot of situations, but it really takes, I personally think, an investor who's hands on doing their own management, you know, taking care of the houses themselves. because they're the ones that are, you know, going to be on the front lines. It's going to be hard to find somebody in that price range who cares about your property as much as you do. So take somebody who's out of state. Take a guy in California, New York.

They look and they say, hey, in St. Louis and Detroit and Rochester, I can go and buy, you know, properties that, you know, are dirt cheap and rent for, you know, 350 bucks a month, you know, for half a duplex. And, you know, I pay 30 grand for it or whatever. or 20 grand. Is that something, do you recommend that to people? I mean, do you think that's a bad idea for newer investors? Usually.

The first thing I would say is find the property management company first and, you know, get that squirled away and, you know, have that, have a good property management and then have a good backup property management company in case that one doesn't work out. Get recommendations from people who invest in that area because I think what you'll find is that you'll have a hard time finding somebody willing to do. take it on who's going to also do a good job. Gotcha. So do that first before you buy anything and then, you know, then you can worry about acquisition

after that. Yeah. So if you could find a good quality property manager that comes highly recommended, who focuses on those low-end rentals, and then you can find a backup and you know that there's at least a couple options, maybe think about it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay. Perfect.

Perfect. Let's talk about some specifics with your property management and landlording in general. For example, what, I mean, what are some tenant red flags? Like, what worries you when you talk to a tenant maybe on the phone or you show you in it? Well, I'll tell you in a showing that something I kind of figured out right away being in my area that is so close to NC State is if you've got a group of kids or, you know, young adults walking through the house and they're, you know, talk about how great the deck is because they can put the keg over here in this corner. You might not want to rent to them. You know, they're going to be the party animal types. You're kegist.

Hey, I love a good keg, just not in my rental property. There you go. The tweetable topic right there. You know, so you really want to listen to what people say as they go through the house. You know, if you're getting the idea that maybe they have a lot more people living with them than you originally thought. Or, you know, just there's lots of different things that people can say. And I definitely recommend either doing your own showings if you don't have a property manager who you really trust to do very good tenants. screening to be kind of looking out for those little red flags and stuff.

You know, people say look in their car to see if their car is a mess. I don't know. Don't look in my car because my car is a disaster. I've got two toddlers that ride around with me. The car is full of Cheerios and milk spatters everywhere. So you, you know, I don't know that that's necessarily a good indicator. I'd like to think I would keep a nice house. But there are definitely things that you can watch out for. I get a test for you, Don't.

I see the bookshelves behind you. neatly arranged. Oh, I cleaned it. I cleaned it. It's just, I'll show you the rest of the office because everything's on the floor and pushed against the wall. Have you seen that commercial? There's a commercial. I think it's like a paint commercial and they've got this kitchen. Like the moms are out of town and dad is like, you know, doing breakfast with the kids. And you see this picture and everything looks clean and nice. And the camera zooms out. And it's just a disaster. Everything is just destroyed. That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny. All right, so tenant red flags. What about screening? What does your process look like? Somebody, you know, you put out an application, you know, you say, hey, we've got this house available. Now what?

So, you know, it all starts with a phone call. I try to ask questions, do you have pets? You know, what do you do for a living and stuff like that? And just start a conversation really just to see more how they interact with me than anything. And then if they kind of pass an initial phone call and do the showings and, yes, seeing if If they're, you know, pointing out things about the house that maybe, you know, would not make them great tenants. You know, what might those things be? You know, the party calls.

Well, one thing, and the reason I kind of harp on that a little bit is in our area, we have an ordinance called prop. And I can't tell you right now what it stands for. But it's basically a landlord registration program. And you can get citations if people throw loud parties. There's lots of other nuisance things. But in our area, it's mostly loud party calls. And if the cops come to your house enough, they can actually keep you from renting your property. Now, that happens very, very little, but it is a possibility.

So if I know that you are still kind of in party mode as a student, I'm not going to rent to you, just because I don't want that to ever be an issue in one of my properties because of that. So, you know, there is, yeah. I don't want to rent from you anyway. It's a good thing you're not in rolling. Are you a keg standard, Josh? I have, I think I've done one or two in my day. I don't really remember.

I think so. I'm glad there's not photographs. That's funny. Well, okay, so getting away from the keg stand conversation. Brandon, about you? I've never done a keg stand now. Never. I don't even think of every.

Yeah, all right. So, screening, I guess, do you look for, I mean, do you do background check, criminal check, credit check, all that stuff as well, right? Absolutely. So I've started using a third-party screening company called Resident Research, and they're great because the tenant fills out the application online. They pay the application fee online. The information goes straight to the screening company. And they spend the next three days gathering their credit, criminal background, evictions. They call their current landlords for me. They verify the employment for me. And then when it's all done, they send it to me in a nice little PDF package that I can review. And I also have all the application information. So if I have follow-up, questions, you know, let's say for a previous landlord, I can always go back and call them myself and get more information. What does that service cost you?

That saves me a ton of time. I think it's about $40 per person. Yeah. Interesting. And the tenant pays it, so. So they pay the whole fee. Yeah. That's cool.

I like that. I mean, I was just thinking that's a nice way to outsource. I mean, we obviously, you know, hire out our background checks and stuff like that, but we still do all our own calling. I thought, I mean, that would actually save, you know, a decent amount of time every month is having somebody else do. Absolutely. all that stuff because that's the biggest, I mean, one of the biggest time sucks of being a landlord is waiting for people to call you back. Like I call an employer and they don't call back right away or, oh, they need this form fax. I can't release information. And then I got to go find a fax machine to send them it. And there's just so many hassles involved with that whole process. So it's funny. One reason I chose this company is because I was, you know, as a previous landlord for some of the people that they were doing checks on, I would get calls from them. I'd get a call in the morning. Another call two hours later. Another call three hours. You know, so I finally, I'm just like, okay, I'll give you the information.

you want. And I knew they did a really good job of following up on the people that they were trying to contact. So, you know, when I decided to outsource that, I called them first. Cool. Nice. I like it. Nice. And then how do you find tenants? I mean, are you using Craigslist newspaper? Well, I'm a real estate agent, so I list an MLS. Once we list something in MLS, there's a service called List Hub and it syndicates out to all of the other real estate websites like Zillow and Trulia and all that. You do have to separately post on Craigslist, which I do some of, you know, If I have the time or if I'm having a hard time renting a property, I'll also get it on Craigslist. But usually between the major real estate websites, that's typically where the inquiries come in.

Of course, there's a sign on the yard, sometimes a Facebook post. Nice, nice. And what makes, we talked about what are you avoiding? What makes the perfect tenant? Somebody who pays their rent on time, who calls me about maintenance issues, but not trivial issues. What's a trivial issue versus a non-trivial? issue. You know, light bulbs being out. I had a lady call the other day who was freaked out because she saw a mouse run through the house, which, you know, I would want to know about,

but she's texting me at almost midnight that night, text after text, oh my God, there's a mouse. And, you know, I'm just picturing this woman freaked out standing on her kitchen countertops. And so, you know, stuff like that, you know, can wait. I have people call about spiders sometimes. Like, I found a spider in my kitchen. I've been called about spiders before. What am I? That's not an exterminator. Spider-Man. Good job.

All right. All right. We'll keep going about the ideal tenant, though. Yeah. You know, somebody who has a steady job. I love it when it's a two-income family, and that way, you know, somebody loses a job. Hopefully you have a little bit of cushion there with the other person working.

Ideally, no pets, but I'm completely open to people renting with pets. I have no problem with that. And that's about it, really. Just nice people. Love nice people. Cool. So, you know, is there a connection between people who are nice and people who are good tenants? No, but they just make my life a little bit more pleasant.

Gotcha. Gotcha. There are some nice backstabbing SOBs. There are. There are. Yeah. All right. What about contractors? How do you, you know, do you have your own contractors that you use for clients? Or do you have your clients bring their own contractors in? I have my own contractors that I use for clients. If somebody has somebody in particular that they want me to work with, You know, they have a favorite plumber or something. I'm happy to go there first if I remember to call that person. You know, and I'm always on the lookout for good contractors. I have a good handful that I use now, but, you know, sometimes people aren't available.

It's always nice to have a backup person or two or three, you know, and then sometimes you'll have a great contractor who's great for months, and then they just disappear on you and you're not really sure what happened. So, and both of you are looking at me very knowingly right now. It's like the Bermuda Triangle. I don't understand. It's so bizarre. You were so fabulous. And then one day they just don't show.

Yeah. Maybe they get kidnapped. Maybe. Maybe. That's funny. That's funny. Well, where do you see yourself going in the future? Yeah.

What is tomorrow going to bring for you? Yeah. So I'm actually, well, tomorrow I'm closing on a house. So hopefully. Oh, nice. Congratulations. Thanks. My mom sold her house in Fayetteville and she is moving into my neighborhood.

So I bought a house for her so that she can be a little bit closer to me in, in the little toddlers that she helps with. And, you know, so that is pretty much sucking up all my money for probably the next few years. Nice. Nice. Cool. Gotcha. Right on.

Let's move on. Slowly starting to wrap this up. Let's go on to the fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right. These questions all come from the Bigger Pockets forums, which listeners can get to and should go check out at biggerpockets.com slash forums. And I know Don is on there all the time.

I see your answering questions and stuff. So, you know, there's good, smart people like Don. So, all right, here we go. So you probably have seen these questions before. But first of all, how do you tell if a location is like an A or B type location? Well, if you're not familiar with the market, if you're investing from out of state, you probably can't, not without talking to people who are local to the area. For me, an A location means something that is convenient to places of employment or other places that people are going to want to be like NC State for me. places that are probably going to appreciate, places where your HVAC won't get stolen if you have a vacancy.

So those are great AE areas. Okay. Nice. Nice. I take it you've experienced these stolen HVAC before? You know, it has happened. Not often, but it has happened. And what do you do in that case?

Do you put cages in? I'm just curious. So it's actually only happened to me once, and that was a property that I was just getting. And I went to go check out the property and called the owner. I said, I don't know if you know this or not, but you don't have an air conditioner. And he did not. So we just put a new one in. It was actually a pretty AB location.

So we weren't really worried about it happening over and over again. But I think somebody just realized that the house was vacant and did that. So I've looked at plenty of properties for investors where the copper has been ripped out and the HVACs gone. And yeah, the appliances are missing. That's never fun. The cages do help. I've had to buy quite a few of them. Oh, yeah.

Yes. Well, see, that's how you know you're not in a area. Yes, that's a great sign. Bars on windows. Good sign. Not a good area. Yes, yes. All right, cool.

So what about the pros and cons of a short sale? And I don't quite know who asked that question because we don't have it today, but next time we'll do that. Well, actually, the house that I'm closing on tomorrow for my mom is a short sale. Nice. The pros are typically you can get a decent deal. We're buying this house for $215,000. And there was a retail sale that closed just a couple of weeks ago for 250, very similar floor plan, square footage and stuff. So that's a good comp for it.

It probably needs about $5,000 worth of work. So it's not, you know, so there's a decent spread when you're buying that for your own personal residence. And what are the downsides of the short sale? They can take a long time to happen. So we in our area have a couple of law firms that help expedite the process in a short sale. So here the short sales have not typically been too bad. if you don't have an attorney helping expedite this process, it can take forever, months even. All right. So, you know, the expedited short sale, how long does that take?

It took about three weeks for us to get the approval from the seller's bank that they were going to eat about $100,000. Yeah. And let's see. So it took another probably three weeks after that for us to get everything closed. So six weeks total from start to finish. That is not bad. Oh, it's not bad at all. Yeah. Wow. Wow, unbelievable. Cool. Cool. All right, next question. What have you found to be the most difficult in managing multiple properties?

Well, now that I've kind of got everything systematized, you know, I think at the beginning when I'm doing my own background checks and I'm, you know, doing my own showings and everything, it can be a lot of running around and just trying to keep schedules, you know, going steady and stuff. And now that I've got everything systematized where, you know, rent can be paid online, lots of stuff can be done online. You know, I put something in the MLS and it syndicies out. everywhere. I'm not having to do all this manual labor to get information out there and to get

information back. That's been a big help. Cool. Nice. Nice. Have you ever had any issues with tenants subletting? And is that a problem? Not without telling me. I've not walked into it in a house and been like, hey, who are these people? So yeah, it's always been upfront and told to me. So I haven't had to choose. Is that something that would be welcome if you had a rent- I always had the new people just sign a new lease. I don't necessarily allow for subletting, but I'll let somebody out of their lease if they've got so many new coming in

who also passes all the background screening. Okay. That makes sense. That's good to know. Cool. Cool. Okay. Moving on.

Let's go to our Famous Four. All right, Famous Four. These are the questions we ask everyone. And I know you've listened to all 100 shows or so. You probably haven't listened to show 100 yet because obviously it hasn't come out when we're recording this.

But that's all right. 99 is good and you'll listen. I'm sure to Josh's show. Number one, what is your favorite real estate book? So I know you guys hate this answer. So I decided that even though I'm going to say it, Rich Dad is the favorite one. I wanted to recommend a real estate website. Actually, there's a website that I'm on a lot. It's called Active Brain. It's a good community-based website for real estate agents, property managers. It's basically a lot of amateur bloggers. But you learn a lot about different markets and different ways that people do business on the site. So it's been really helpful for me and it kills a lot of time while I'm bored. Nice. Nice. Cool. Josh. Oh, right. What is your favorite business book? All right. So I picked two.

And again, you know, I have the same favorites that everyone else has. But two that I've read recently that I did really enjoy were Lean in by Cheryl Sandberg. And I shouldn't be telling you this by Kate White. So these are two good books for women in business. They're very good books for women to, I think, take a second look on how they raise families and do business as part of an overall picture and kind of empowering women a lot. Nice. Nice. I'm going to violate the famous four and ask your question, non-famous four. Why are there not more women in real estate investing? You know, I think a lot of women see it as just kind of a man's world or a man's interest, even. you're dealing with contractors and, you know, you're dealing with numbers and, you know,

finances and stuff. And I think some women are not comfortable with, you know, with doing all that. For me, you know, I'm, you know, in my household, I'm actively the one handling the finances. I'm actively the one making decisions about, you know, how we spend money and stuff. So it's just something I enjoy. Right on. Right on. No, it's interesting. In the early days, we used to get a lot of grief from people like, hey, you don't have enough women investors on the show. And we're like, we're trying. We're trying. But they're not coming. They're not answering our call to come on. They don't, you know, they're not responding. And when we do get them, you know, it's, there's a lot of, you know,

I don't know, we try, we do it. It's great. Yeah, I think women can be, you know, sometimes can be passive. And, you know, I think it does kind of take sometimes a strong personality when you're dealing with lots of different personalities with tenants. And for me, you know, dealing with owners and then contractors and stuff like that, you know, you have to deal with a lot of incoming information. Hey, listen, some of the best people I've met in the business have been female, I recommend all. That's just, yeah. Women are great at it. I don't know why, you know, a lot of women, I think, shy away from it, but it tends to play to women's strengths of being good people, people, and good multitaskers. Just to add to that a couple weeks ago on the, I think it was in our quick tip at the beginning. We talked about if you want to be on the Bigger Pockets podcast, you can go to biggerpockets.com slash guest and you can actually sign up, you know, apply to be on the show. And we've got, you know, we had over 100 people, I think at this point, apply to be on the show, which is great.

Out of them, though, I think three were women. So, again, when people ask, why don't we have more women on the show, we had three people apply that were women. And I think you might have even been one of them. I was one. Yeah. And so we have a real, I mean, like, again, that just goes back. If you're a lady who does real estate, you don't have to be, you know, have done this for 20 years. But I want to see more women.

Because I don't know. I love that. So anyway, biggerpockets.com slash guest. do what Don did. Nice. Awesome. Don, hobbies, besides cleaning up milk off the back seat of your henny van, which is something

that I do every weekend. I know, well, gosh, pre-kids, I did lots of stuff for fun. I, you know, I played tennis in high school. I, you know, used to go downtown with my friends and, you know, try out new restaurants and stuff. Post kids, it's a lot of play dates and going to the park and,

you know, trying to find a restaurant that, you know, is kid-friendly. I just try to exercise regularly. I just hired a personal trainer, which is interesting. I've been meaning to do that lately. Yeah, I'm going to Hawaii in like six weeks. I've got to be in shape. Oh, nice. Yeah, trying to get beach body ready. There you go. There you go. All right. My final question is, what do you believe sets apart the successful real estate investors out there from those who give up, fail, or never get started? Sure. You definitely have to be ready to take some action. You know, if you just sit on the sidelines all the time, I think a lot of people are great at information gathering, and I'm probably like this, too, where, you know, I can spend days and days researching something and never, ever take that step to move forward. So I think if you spend a little bit less time research, I mean, obviously you want to make good decisions and not do something blindly, but if you spend too much time researching and just, you know, analysis, paralysis and never, you know, just never ever take that step forward. You're going to, well, you're just never going to do anything.

Yep, yeah, agreed. Yeah, for sure. All right. Don, Don, well, listen. It's definitely been a pleasure. Where can people find out more about you? I know they can find you on bigger pockets, yes? Absolutely on bigger pockets. So I'm all over the internet. I'm a real estate agent, so I advertise a lot. So I'm on Facebook.

You can find my personal page. It's Facebook.com slash goheels, but instead of an O, it's a zero. Or slash Trailwood Realty, which is my business page, which I do not keep as updated as I should. I'm on active rain. I'm also on LinkedIn. LinkedIn slash Don Brennigan. It's D-A-W-N-B-R-E-N-E-N-G-E-N.

Gotcha. Awesome. Well, Dawn, thanks again, and we'll see you around the site. Yes, you will. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Brandon. Pleasure.

Thank you. This was fun. Yep. Yep, same here. All right. Bye. Bye. All right, guys, that was Dawn Brennigan for show 101 on the Bigger Pockets podcast.

You can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 101. Big thanks again to Dawn for coming on board talking to us and for being active in the community. We definitely appreciate it. Otherwise, thanks again to all of our listeners, you know, 101 episodes. Fantastic. Definitely appreciate it. And I'll put out a follow-up pledge to you guys from our quick tip.

We are trying to reach a thousand ratings slash reviews in iTunes. We're at 950 or so right now or when we recorded this. and we definitely want to get there. So if you're a listener, please, you know, help us out, take three minutes, jump on iTunes and leave us a rating review. And if you don't know how to do that, jump on our show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 101. And we've got a link to a little tutorial that will show you how to do that.

So thank you, thank you. Otherwise, thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of our world. Like I said, in my interview last week on Show 100, if you're not active, if you just have a profile on our site, you're missing out big time. jump on, jump in, get active, connect, communicate, go on those unanswered posts and help people out who have questions that haven't been answered. Spread the word about bigger pockets and about what we're doing trying to help people out. So that's all I got for you. I'm Josh Dorkin.

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