BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 62: Managing Tenants For Maximum Profit & Minimal Stress with Phil Dwyer

Episode Date: March 20, 2014

Managing tenants can be a real pain. Trust me. However, on this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcastwe sit down with a full time property manager to talk about the business of managing tenants – and discover ways to make it easier and more profitable for YOU. Today Phil Dwyer from the Las Vegas area shares with us his story of becoming a real estate appraiser and transitioning to a successful property manager. In addition, we also discuss the best strategies for finding and managing the best property managers. If you have any rental properties – or ever plan to – this is a “don’t miss” episode! In This Show, We Cover: Dealing with FHA buyers Where to buy – appreciating areas vs. declining areas Finding a great property manager Why Phil chose Vegas to build his business Getting started by working a job in real estate  The most difficult part of investment property management? How to know if you are getting ripped off from your management company. The #1 best way to know how your tenant will act for you “What Would You Do” questions for Phil Red flags for tenants Dealing with pets in a rental Single family vs. Multifamily Investments What property management software Phil uses And so much more!  Links from the Show BiggerPockets Show 61 on YouTube BP Podcast 007: Making Appraisals Work For You with Ryan Lundquist FHA Home Inspection Checklist Property Manager Interview Checklist Books Mentioned in the Show Landlording on Autopilot by Mike Butler The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder Connect with Phillip Phillip’s BiggerPockets Profile Phillip’s Website: VegasDigs.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 62. 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 height, 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 Dorkin, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here. with Brandon Turner. What's up, Brandon?

What up, Josh? How are you? Sick, aren't you? I'm sick. Oh, want-wah. I feel terrible, man. My family's been sick for weeks. I'm really not feeling. I'm not feeling good, man. But I'm here. You're here. And we are going to do this anyway. We are going to allow through. It's a good interview. It's a good interview. And I think people will like this one a lot. Yeah, a lot of good information for those folks thinking about hiring property managers.

folks looking for more information about appraisals. And our guest today is Phil Dwyer, Philip Dwyer. And he's a professional property manager in the Las Vegas area formerly in Detroit. And he's also a real estate agent and an appraiser. So, yeah, the guy's got a lot of knowledge, a lot of skills. And hopefully you will chime in and check it out. Yeah. And we talk a lot about people who just manage their own properties.

Like if you ever want to get into rental property and you want to manage tenants. Me and Philip give a lot of examples. And you too, Josh, like we talk a lot about the ins and outs of actually dealing with nasty tenants. And good ones too. But, you know, there's us. Well, you don't have to deal with good tenants.

Yeah, you don't. Exactly. Yeah, they're the ones who you never hear from. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And anyway, so before we get into the show, this is show 62. We've got show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 62. You could jump on there. We point to

things that we talk about. You can ask questions there, and I definitely recommend that. Otherwise, today's quick tip is show 61. We're trying something new, and we actually did a recording, a video recording of it. That was our interview with Ben Labovich. And we're going to have that up on YouTube for those of you who are interested in actually seeing the process, I guess, or checking it out on YouTube. So go check out our channel where we have lots of really good videos at YouTube.com

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Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NREG.com slash BP pod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-P pod. With that, let's get this thing going. Philip Dwyer, welcome to the show, man. Good to have you here. Thanks for having me, guys. I'm excited to be here. Awesome, us too.

us too. Well, you are a property manager and an appraiser, and you do all sorts of fun stuff with real estate. So I think we're going to dig into all that stuff today. But why don't we start where we always do before real estate? What were you doing? And how did you get into real estate in the first place? Well, that's interesting. Growing up my grandfather, he was a teacher, and he had a bunch of rental properties. So that was my first exposure, but I didn't realize that that was something I wanted to do. It just looked like a bunch of work. So went to college, did my thing,

and a buddy of mine was a real estate appraiser and just kept talking about how much he liked it. And he had an opportunity with the company that he was with to take over a branch in Miami and asked if I wanted to jump in and learn the ropes with him. So who wouldn't want to go to Miami, right? Yeah. So, yeah, I said, sign me up.

Let's do it. And then he called two weeks later and said the Miami plan changed and they were going to give him the branch office in Detroit. Nice. Nice. Somehow I talked my wife into going out there. Anyway, that's how we got started back in 2003 learning appraisals in Detroit. Wow, she must really love you. I don't get it either.

That's funny. How was that? I mean, we make fun of Detroit for low property prices all the time. I mean, did you find that the same, or what was it like to be an appraiser in Detroit? Well, at that time, that was 2003. So the whole country was going through the boom cycle. But Detroit is unique in that, that market, you have basically the one of the poorest cities in the country right next to one of the wealthiest counties in the country. I think at that time, Oakland County was like third wealthiest county in the country.

So parts of the metro were going crazy, the new construction, you know, all over the place. And then in the city, you had foreclosures all over the place. So it was an interesting dynamic. I mean, I remember one day I appraised the house for $500. And then... It costs $500 to appraise the house or the appraisal value of the house was $500? The value was $500.

Wow. And the same day, I was at a multi-million dollar house, you know, a half hour away. Can I ask, what does a $500 house look like? I mean, is it like, you know, is it made of sticks and, you know, like the wolf can blow it down? Or what are we talking about here? You're talking, you know, a place in the city that basically, they're probably bulldozing now. it's something that needed to be tore down. But those are the kind of houses that you'll see, you know,

these people put up online saying, oh yeah, you know, you can get in for 500 bucks and you're going to make millions and people really need to do their homework. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I'm glad, I'm glad we've got you. And as everybody knows, yes, I rip on Detroit. And I'm sure you would agree that for many reasons Detroit should be ripped upon. But I do so again,

because I think it's important that people understand that just because the property is 500 bucks and seems like a steal doesn't mean you know you want to own that property. In fact, like I wouldn't take that $500 property from you because it's going to cost me more than $500 and I'm not going to make anything off it. Yeah. I mean, you know, you have, you know, whatever, $500,000, $5,000, whatever. If you don't have anybody that wants to rent it, what are you going to do with it? You know, and nobody else is going to want to buy it from you if you fix it up.

It's going to, all the stuff will be stolen before you're done. Yeah. It just doesn't make sense. Do you think there's any value in, like, I mean, I know today you, maybe you can't buy them for 500. Maybe you can. I don't know. But is there any value, do you think, in buying these properties for extremely

low prices? Just hoping that in 10 years from now, you'll be worth 100. You know, if Detroit ever turns around, which it seems to be. Is that a valuable? Are you saying like to build bulldoze like by 20 properties for a couple thousand bucks a piece bulldoze the property

because they're probably dilapidated. I'm guessing a 500 or a $5,000 or $2,000 property is not going to be in condition you want to keep. It's probably better off bulldozed and then you get the land and then all of a sudden in 10 years

your taxes on that are pretty minimal. There's some value. That would be my strategy on it. I was thinking whether you bulldozed them or not just owning property for that cheap? Is it, I mean, what are your thoughts on that? I don't know. I mean, there's still risk, right?

I mean, even vacant land has risk. For 500 bucks, you could go put that on roulette table or you could put that in a piece of property. But I think there's more risk on the piece of property in that situation. Unless you know that it's going to be redeveloped or it's part of some master plan to, you know, new hospitals going down the street or something like that, then I could see doing that. But just as a whole, just to say I'm going to buy this house just because it's this dollar amount

and hope that later it's something more, it just seems risky to me. Yeah. That makes sense. Particularly, I guess, in an area that still hasn't really turned around. And it seems, you know, well, I guess that's not necessarily true. There have been a lot of signs of Detroit starting to turn. And that's great. But, you know, there's a lot of challenges to be faced before things really start to turn.

I'm guessing you would agree from your appraiser year, right? Well, you know, I still have a lot of close friends that are there that are doing very well investing in that market. And I think why they've been successful is because they've paid attention to where people are moving from, where they're escaping from in the city that's bad, that isn't going to get. fixed and where they're relocating to within that market and buying houses there. Just as you would, maybe in another part of the country, you know, following where the population is going to go, getting in front of it and taking advantage of that situation. Gotcha.

All right. So, you know, let's talk about the appraising thing a little bit. So you're an appraiser. How many appraisals have you done? I mean, you know, have you done, I'm guessing thousands over your career? Yeah, I don't, I guess I don't know. I kept track for the first few years, but once you get all the credentials you need, you kind of just forget about it. I've probably done 3,000 or so, I don't know. So what do you know today that you didn't know after appraisal 100, for example? Like, you know, what have you gotten better at and what kind of tips can you share with the listeners in terms of, you know, valuating properties and figuring out what something's worth?

You know, is there other any cool insights that you can share? Yeah, you know, I think where it all came together is when I actually decided to get a real estate license. and practiced helping people to buy houses. And as an appraiser, you have the data. You get really good at analyzing the data, but you're missing the piece of what consumers actually want, what they're talking about when they go inside of a house, what they're picking out that are ups and downs at,

sometimes the data itself doesn't reflect. And so when I started helping people buy houses, houses, you know, stuff sort of started coming together. And I think it's made me better at both now because I'm a better appraiser now that I have that insight. But I think I'm become a better agent as I, you know, continue to do appraisals too. You just look at more pieces of the puzzle, I guess. Well, it's interesting. I never actually met a appraiser who was also an agent, I don't think. I mean, like, that's kind of a cool combination. It's like big foot. Yeah, I've heard of these things that they're mysterious. I think that's kind of cool. So you are no longer in Detroit,

though, right? That's right. I'm in sunny Las Vegas. Nice. So how did you get there? What did that, like, what took you there? Snow drove me from Detroit. I've been all over the Midwest growing up in college and then Detroit. Nice. And we finally decided, you know, if we're going to start our business, let's go someplace where we want to be away from the snow where it's going to be nice, where people want to come and visit us, and where long-term business prospects look good. So we looked at several places before we decided on Vegas. We looked at Phoenix, Southern California, and Vegas had at the time, booming economy. Demographically, if you look at census info, the whole southwest region from Denver to L.A.

has, you know, is trending towards mass migration here. And the barrier to entry for business, starting up a business here, seemed to be the easiest. So a combination of all those things is why ended up here. Yeah, for sure. So Phil, so now you've picked up property management, right? Your kind of career path, you've got the appraisal, you've got the agency side, and then you decided to go into the property management business, yeah?

Yeah, so, you know, full disclosure, I don't own any rental properties right now, but it's on my to-do list. And I think everybody has to, you know, you have these goals that you want to attain in life, and then you have to figure out your path to get there. For me, the path, you know, I didn't have capital to go invest into properties, and I didn't have the connections that would give me the capital. So you have to start thinking of, well, what can I bring to the table to make this happen? You know, I had the appraisal experience and that continues to be great, you know, resource for me. But I didn't have any experience managing rental properties or knowing enough about that. I have several friends that do it, but until you in it, you don't pick that stuff up. So my thought was, okay, why not reach out to the clients I've been working with these investors

and tell them what I want to do and see if they would give me the opportunity to manage some of their property and grow with them. And so, yeah, I stuck my toe in the water and three years later, here I'm enjoying it and I'm learning a ton. and when I finally build up to where I need to be to buy my own or the market changes when there's an opportunity there, then I'll be ready. Well, that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because even though you're not currently an investor, you're doing what I always recommend people do, is you know where you want to be and you went and worked in the field to get there. And I think that's just awesome.

So when you actually get your first purchase or whatever, you'll already be leaps and bounds ahead of most other people. So that's really why I wanted to talk to you today because I want to encourage other people to do that. And obviously, you're a professional at property management. And that is a part of the business that I think a lot of people struggle at. And a lot of people are really bad at. And it took a long time for me to get, you know, halfway decent at it. So why don't we move to that? Why don't we talk about management? So why don't I start out with what is the most difficult part of single family or just in general property management? Actually, let me guess you go back then.

What are you managing? Is it single family, multifamily? What do you do? Almost all single family detached houses. I have a couple of condo units thrown in there as well. But, I mean, it's mostly just single family stuff. Okay. So what would you say then is the most difficult part of managing?

It's not the property. It's the people. Both, you know, because I'm not an investor, this is a little different. I'm managing two different sets of people. I'm managing the owners and the tenants. And the reason that the owner side there's management there is a lot of my clients are accidental landlords for whatever reason. They either inherited a property, you know, mom or dad passed away in this retirement community and now what do I do with this house? or someone that's in a situation while they're doing better now and they want to move up and

buy a bigger house, but they don't want to or can't sell the smaller one. Situations like that. So they have absolutely zero experience going in, and therefore either their idea on how it should work is skewed or they don't know how it should work. So it's my job to both coach them, give them information, And when things inevitably go wrong as they do in rental properties, you know, one prepping them for that, but then, you know, delivering the message. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, one of the things that I had the hardest time with was finding good property managers. And as you sit here nodding your head and Brandon, I'm sure, is nodding his and most of our folks listening are nodding theirs. Yeah, you had said something about, being a partnership. You know, when I first started hunting for property managers, what I discovered was they talked to me like, you know, I owed them something. You know, they're the boss. They're in charge and they're going to tell me how it is. And, you know, I didn't know any better. And so,

you know, I said, okay, great, you know, cool, you tell me how it is. And I found that that didn't work very, very, very quickly. Realized that it was a partnership. And I needed somebody who needed who was going to look at the properties the same way I looked at them, who had a similar philosophy in management, had a similar philosophy and how to deal with evictions and screening and that kind of stuff. So, you know, I think people need to realize that just because, you know, I don't know, I think a lot of new investors have this idea that, you know, the property manager is going to interview them about their properties.

But it's just as important, if not more, that you do the exact same to them. And we actually put together a manager, property manager interview checklist where it's got a list. And Brandon, I'll link to it. We'll link to it in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 62. Seashells by the seashore. Exactly. Thank you. I'm having a hard time.

I'm sick today, guys. So, you know. Oh, what, what, well. All right. So the whole point is, how does somebody go about finding a good manager that's going to work with them? Beyond the interview spreadsheet, I mean, do you just go and talk to everybody in town and see who's got a good fit? Or is there any kind of tip that you have? It probably depends on a couple of factors.

One, are the properties in your backyard or are they across? the country. So if they're in your hometown or wherever it is you live, you probably have some resources in your own personal network that you can use to help vet the prospects on your list or at least come up with prospects, whether that's investors that you hang out with or real estate agents that you know or attorneys that you know. You start asking the people you trust. if you have a CPA, maybe ask them. The likelihood is your CPA probably has some investment property, and they probably have somebody manage it

because they're too busy doing the CPA stuff. So that's one way I would go about it on a local level. I wonder if asking contractors also would be a good idea, like who's paid you on time, who's been the best to work with. I mean, that would probably tell quite a bit about a property manager based on how they treat their vendors. I think so. And then, you know, calling on the signs that you see in the neighborhood

where you have that's a great idea see how they answer the phones I call the I call the property management company this morning because I saw listing online and I just wanted to know what they're more about the house because it's comparable to one of mine anyway they answered the phone with hello like that was the that was the answer hello and now this is like the third largest in my town property management company yeah hello yeah terrible

moving on hello hello Josh, this is your mother. That's my New York accent. Real nice, man. Anyway, yeah, so, yeah. Okay, so that's pretty good advice. In terms of your property management company specifically, let's kind of cover that a little bit and we'll go from there.

How many tenants are you currently managing now? I have under, well, our office is kind of unique in the way we're set up and maybe it's not unique, but I found in our market we have a couple different types of property management companies. Some companies are set up just to be property management. That's all they do.

They don't do sales or anything or even manage their own properties. The brokerage where I'm at is a full-service brokerage. So there's salespeople here. there's also property managers. In Nevada, we have to have a real estate license to be a property manager, and then you get a property manager permit. So anybody who says that they're doing property management at least needs to have those licenses.

Anyway, so at the brokerage where I'm at, we have, I think, 10 property managers managing roughly 500 properties. of those I have 50. And I try to concentrate in one part of town so that I'm not all over the place, but the nature of the business is you get one in one part of town and you do a good job, then they're going to refer you to other people and you tend to do stuff all over. Hey, do you have a number that's pretty typical? This is a tough question, but that's how many property managers that take to manage X amount of tenants? Is it typically one to 50, one manager, you know, one employee versus 50 tenants, or is that just too general of a question?

I think it depends on the setup of the company. At our office, we have an internalized bookkeeping staff. Okay. So that takes a lot off our plate. And then I have an assistant who is well overqualified as my wife. Nice. So that takes a lot off my plate, too, to handle the stuff that I need to be doing. I like to go out on a regular basis and visit properties.

So it gets me out of the office a lot. But to answer your question, yeah, it depends. I'd say that the hardest part in property management is scaling up and making sure that you're staffed appropriately to handle that growth. It's easy to take on, you know, tomorrow I could get a client that has, you know, 20 properties, and all of a sudden, you know, that's a big influx in business. And, you know, being able to have the right people in place to handle that is important, obviously. So I don't know. I guess it depends on the structure. What does that look like? I mean, team-wise. So right now it's you and your wife.

You guys are part of, you're managing one section of this overall brokerages management team. But do you guys, as part of your own team, have any other folks involved? I mean, I'm presuming I believe you've got the vendors that you deal with. Anyone else? So we have a, you know, we pick our own vendors. They get approved on our vendor panel that any of the managers can use. But I've been handpicking those. And once you have a relationship established, you know,

that we outsource all of that stuff to those vendors, regardless of what the repairs are. I mean, if I'm at a property and all I have to do is push a reset button on the garbage disposal, sure, I'm going to do that. But for the most part, I'm not swinging hammers. I leave that to the people that know what they're doing. Well, so, you know, speaking of the vendors, that, you know, that's another thing that I think a lot of people are curious about the, I was with a property manager who required you, this was

like my first or second property manager, they required us to use one vendor that they had. And I didn't know any better. And they're like, this is the guy, this is our internal, you know, whatever you want to call it, our internal contractor, you guys have. to use them. And, you know, again, big mistake on my part, not asking, not saying, well, that's crazy. You know, I need options, but you live, you learn. So I would say, you know, you definitely, A, won't to avoid anyone who's doing that. You know, the worry is that there's kickbacks and you're not necessarily going to get the best contractor. How would somebody know that, you know, the people on your list are legit? You know, I want to take your word for it, but how do I know

you're not getting kickbacks. Is that a question? Is it something that they can ask? Is it, you know, is it even viable? Is it something that matters? Well, I think you definitely ask that question. And the tone of the response might in itself give you the answer you need. But, you know, a couple of things you can do when you're working with the manager is, you know, ask for monthly statements and then have those reconciled against invoice. that they give you copies of. And, you know, depending on the scope of the work, and I mean, if it's a garbage disposal or a microwave,

those are pretty easy things to figure out, you know, if you're getting ripped off on or not. The larger the project or more complicated it becomes, then it may be harder and you have to use your judgment. But at that point, you should have also gotten multiple bids on the front end to help mitigate some of that. Do you have an issue with folks working with saying,

listen, this is a guy that I know, this is my contractor, he's not on your list. Is that going to be an issue for you specifically? If an owner has a client or a vendor that they like. I'll use them, but I vet them first. I require that anybody we use for repairs that require a license, be licensed and insured.

I think that's great. Yeah, yeah, of course. That's fantastic. You know, one of my biggest fears of using property management and one of the largest reasons I haven't, and maybe you can just kind of calm my fears here is... Control freak. Well, partially that, but I'm afraid of it being the garbage disposal didn't work. All it was was a button.

Instead, they went and replaced the garbage disposal. And while they were there, they, you know, like, cleaned up under the sink. And I get a bill for $750. Like, that's my biggest fear. And when I know it was a button, because I feel like I know more than most contractors in my town, like those. handymen guys, you know, because I don't trust them. I guess what can I do about that? Is that just a matter of getting the right property manager? You could test them, man.

I guess. Mess up, mess up your garbage disposal so it's just a button. You set them up. You have them show up. And if they try and charge you, then make sure you got a video of that sucker. And once they try and do that, you bust them and you report them to the local news station. I want that on BP. That would be awesome. Then you do it again and again and again until you find the one honest property manager in town. Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea. But yeah, that is my fear. You know, sometimes you just have to let go on certain things. I'm sure there's always a risk you could get taken. Hopefully, you've built some rapport with the company or a person that you choose. And that's why you've given them that job to then have them take care of these things. But there's always that chance that something could happen like that. I think, though, I mean, if you're worried that they're going to to screw you over on a garbage disposal, you probably shouldn't have hired them to begin with. Yeah. Well, I tell you what, I mean, as somebody who's been ripped off by multiple property

managers, I am hesitant to ever trust a property management company. You know, even like somebody like you, like who I know I feel comfortable with, like, I would be really skeptical. No, no offense. Like personally, I think you're a good guy. You know, I trust you. You're on BP. You spend a lot of time. You give great feedback. And but like, you know, there's that, there's that fear. and I get where Brandon is. It's that level of, there's a lot of shady managers out there. And it sucks. I think it's one of the things that we like to do at BP, as you know, is we speak about investors

and about the good that they do, right? Real estate investors get a bad rap in the press. There are a lot of bad investors out there. But as a percentage, it's pretty tiny to the overall picture of, of real estate investors. And I'm guessing the same is probably true with property managers. And ultimately at some point, though,

I think your industry, the management industry, probably needs to do a better job of vetting their own. And basically working together, having the good property managers, you know, kind of make the good guys stand out

and the bad guys, you know, basically look like lepers. I think you're right. any industry in real estate related has that, you know, realtors have that issue, appraisers have that issue, contractors have that issue. And that's why there's licensing in place. But licensing doesn't necessarily mean they're good. It means they figure out how to pass a test to say that they are the expert when, you know, they might just be, you know, Well, in my state, and I know a lot of states, like, you don't, there is no test to become, like, I was a contractor for a while, like a licensed bonded insured contractor.

That was my, like, I was going to start a contracting company. And like, there was no test. There was no nothing. It was I paid a $200 fee and they gave me my license. And I thought, that seems really shady that they didn't even ask me if I knew what a hammer was before they'd be, I became a general contractor that could build houses. Like, I thought that was insane. But, and I don't know if other states are like that as well, but Washington is. So, yeah, definitely, definitely you have to vet these people because of that because you have no idea what they actually know.

One of the biggest things, real quick, people need to ask for references, but then they actually need to follow through and call those references. I don't know how many times people have asked me for references. I give them and then I'll follow up with the people to see if anybody ever called them. No, no, we never received a call. Well, you need to, rather you're hiring a plumber or you're hiring a property manager, find out who they're doing business with, and would those people do business with them again. Yep. And I could turn that around as well to landlords who don't call previous tenants landlords.

Right. So, like, I own, you know, almost 50 units now. And, you know, we have a lot of people coming in and out moving all the time. in the last seven years, I've had three or four phone calls from other property management companies or landlord's calling to ask about a former tenant. I mean, I've had hundreds of tenants in and out of my control, and I've had like three or four phone calls. It's completely insane how few. It's scary. Yeah, it's completely scary because that is the number one best way to know how good of a tenant is going to be is based on how they've been.

And if you don't take the five minutes to call their previous landlord and just ask them what kind of tenant they were, I had my worst tenant ever. Somebody just last week, they called, and it was my worst tenant ever. And for some reason, they put us down as a reference. And it was really nice to be able to say they were terrible. Don't touch them with a 10-foot pole. Well, and I wonder, you know, in hiring the real world outside of like tenants, you know, if you call a reference on a job app, you know, there's very specific questions that you can ask.

You know, as a reference, I don't know. the exact laws, but I mean, you can't say they were terrible. They'll come after you. They'll sue you, right? Yeah, we parsed it very, very carefully. Would you rent to them again? No. But, you know, in terms of the calling and following up, I think one of the fears that people have is that they're just putting down a friend. And, you know, I think part of dealing with that is looking up the landlord, you know, vetting the land. You know, vetting the landlord, the previous landlord. I mean, you got to do work. You got to do work to screen people. Somebody gave a tip on that early in one of our first show is where they said, if you call

the reference, first call from your cell phone and just ask, hey, I'm just wondering if you guys have any rentals available. If the person says, what are you talking about? Then you know it's probably a friend. But if they say, no, you know, we're all full right now, then you can know that they're legit. It's a good tip. I don't remember who said that. I don't remember who said that. I don't remember that on the show. Yeah, that was like one of our like first five shows, one of way back in the day. You know, that was a long time ago, man. It was over a year. I might add that to my list. That's a good one. Yeah, I like it a lot. So great idea. Anyway, well, cool. Well, um, all right, so let's move on to some details on actually managing properties because most people listening to the show are probably, you know,

they've got some rentals of their own. They're not using a property manager. So let's talk about specifics on how you actually deal with them. So first of all, what are some red flags that you look for when a prospective tenant applies to rent from you. Oh, there's a lot. My favorite is when somebody brought a eight-week puppy, or I don't even know it was that old, but they brought that to the showing and didn't tell me on the front end.

So I don't know. I mean, we do several things when we screen. So you need to be looking for, all right, can they fill out the application? Is it filled out completely? name. They can't, or if they chose not to fill out certain parts, it's usually a pretty good indicator that there's something going on there.

On our application, we ask how many evictions have been filed on you. We don't ask how many evictions you have, or do you have any evictions? That's easy to lie. I would say how many evictions have been filed on you. And people leave a blank and then it's a huge red flag. Like, oh, because they can't just say no, it's easy to lie. But to actually write the word none or zero, people feel too uncomfortable doing that, I think. So they just leave a blank.

Anyway, that's my story. Go on. Bread flags. We, you know, obviously we run credit on everybody. Sorry, I just interrupted, but go ahead. And I, you know, you guys have that tool through bigger pockets for, I can't remember which credit reporting agency. The smart move, the tenants. Yeah.

Yeah. That's something you need to do because it's more than just the number you need to read through the actual things that are in the credit report, both for what types of issues they have. And it may help you confirm some other things that you have going on there. It should tell you whether they've been evicted or not. but sometimes the local whoever is in charge of your evictions, the courts or whatever, may not have reported yet to them. So one thing I recommend that landlords do is both on the screening side when you're running the credit and eviction history, also look up on your local court record system.

Most of them are electronic now where you can reverse look up their name and find out if they're in the process of being evicted at their current. resident. Yeah, no, that's great advice. You know, one of the challenges with that, and the screening tool I said was Smart Move, and we've got a link to that. We'll have that in the show notes,

the link to our tenant screening. And in fact, I'm going to just really quick on top of that, say that we, Brandon put together a really, really amazing guide for screening tenants. Oh, thank you. The ultimate guide for screening tenants, which will also link to on there. But in terms of

the evictions. One of the problems is that people, you know, there may be one or two people in your county with the same name. So getting these, the false positives is kind of tough to vet. And so in terms of that, how do you deal with that? You know, if you see an eviction and it's the wrong guy, how do you, how do you know, how does the poor, poor guy who's sharing a name with somebody that has been evicted in their perfect tenant deal with that? We're lucky in that. We're lucky in that. We're if I remember correctly, the other parties to that case are listed on the court system. So you can use that information then to go and cross-reference that with ownership data and things like that. So it helps you eliminate the false positive.

Sure, there may be one occasionally. And I just ask people, okay, so we found this on the eviction records, can you explain this and see what they say? Yeah, just stop talking to let them talk. And that shows a lot of stuff. Hey, also, do you rent then to people who have evictions? Like, would you rent to somebody who had an eviction? If so, when, how long did it have to be? What's your...

An easy answer for you. No. Okay. That's good. I mean, a lot of people, like, I've had arguments online, but people are like, yeah, but you've got to give people a second chance and they try. And, you know, it's so hard for those people. And I just always kind of look at it as I'll let somebody else take that chance and give them a second chance. There's enough landlords. There's plenty that aren't doing any tenant

screening whatsoever. So I'll let them go to them, but on my properties, I ain't going to risk it. Yeah, I think that's good. I mean, I've evicted a lot of people from my properties. And, you know, I wish I, again, I wish I had the guide to screening tenants back in the day because, you know, unfortunately, again, and I think that's where investors really, really need to press upon with their their property managers, figure out what their exact criteria are for selecting the tenants. Because if they're loose in the least, you're going to end up with bad tenants. And so creating your own and basically in your interview with the property managers, you don't want to tell them what yours is, but you want to figure out what theirs is.

And if theirs is kind of half-cocked, you know, I don't think going in and saying, you know, hey, okay, well, you screen for A, B and C, but what? What about D-EF-N-G that you're missing? I kind of feel like if they're not already doing that, they're probably not prepared to be managing your properties. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, there's some basics. I mean, we're supposed to be professionals doing this, right?

So we should have more screening tools than someone who is managing their own by virtue of that's what we do every day. So that makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah, right on. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of the smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly.

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Plus, you get to share your place with someone traveling to your area while you're off making memories somewhere else. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Well, let's talk about real estate problems. So, you know, we put together a couple scenarios and, you know, thought it'd be fun to throw them at you and let you tell us what you would do in the situation. Uh-oh. All right. So a tenant calls and says they were sick, and they're going to be a week late with their rent.

Depends. If there's someone I have a relationship with, they've been renting to me for five years and they've paid on time for the last five years and never had an issue. They don't call and complain. They pay rent on time. The house is in great shape. I'm likely to believe them at that point that that's an issue and we'll work with them in that scenario. But for everybody else, it's a, it's not tricky, but you have to. approach it delicately. I always say, you know, hey, I understand you're in a tough spot, but I have to protect the owner. So here's what's going to happen. When the first comes, we'll be filing the five-day payer quit. And you'll have five days to pay us the rent. And if you get it to us before then, then everything's fine. But otherwise, you know, know that we have to proceed with eviction. Yeah. And, you know, so you, you show empathy, but you have to

enforce the lease. Go ahead, Brandon. Oh, let me just tell a quick story in this. Okay, I admit, I picked that question because this exact thing happened to me this month. So real quick, the story. So we have a family who's been with us for four years now, and they've been good. They've paid on time pretty much every month. I think they had one, like, a few days late a few years ago.

But, I mean, like, really good, solid family have been paying on time. Well, they didn't pay this month. And I was like, oh, you know, they always pay on time. So I kind of let it go a couple days late. You know, we have two on the first, late on the fifth. go a couple days. And finally, I was over at the place picking up some tools or something like that. So I was like, well, I'm just going to go knock on her door because her cell phone didn't work anymore. Go knock on her door and she answers and it was, oh, I was sick. I'm, you know, I'm going to be a couple days late.

I get paid again on Friday. That's when my paycheck because my last one was too small. So on Friday, we wait for the rent. I never got anything. Didn't call. She didn't call. She didn't call. Apparently, her phone's still broken. Anyway, so we finally gave her a three-day notice. We have three-day in Washington. gave her a three-day pair quit on Tuesday and that was last Tuesday. Today is Tuesday again that we're recording this and we have still not heard from her or anything.

So now today we're filing for eviction on her. And the moral of my story is like every time I bend my rules, every time I bend my rules is when I get screwed every time. And it's like even though she's been with us for four or five years, I still gave them the benefit of the debt.

out. I let emotion get in because I like them. They're nice people rather than giving them the three day on the fifth. And it's going to, I'm going to lose three weeks behind on my eviction because of it. And today's the 18th. So why did you wait after three days, X amount of days before you filed the eviction? I mean, you filed the three day, then three days passed, and then you still waited a bunch more days, you know, just to kind of see if she would give you, she would bring it in, right? Yeah, yeah, I just kept, yeah, correct. I just kept giving her a little bit more thinking, you know, we'll deal with it tomorrow. I think she's going to be fine. Now, granted, when they moved in, I don't remember why, but I think he was in a transitional job. So we got a double

security deposit for them, which I always get if I'm even halfway hesitant. And so he was like, he was a landscaper and it was winter and he had low work. I think that's why. Anyway, so we have a double security deposit for them. But still, I'm going to lose money on this in the end. So don't be brand and listeners. I mean, seriously. Follow your rules. Follow your rules. Follow your rules, follow your rules. Because if you're not training, if you're training your tenants, I mean, that's the whole key is you want to train these tenants. And if this guy, this tenant tells the other people that they know that are renting from you, that you let them pass, you know, the inmates are in charge of the prison. I agree. I think training people up front

before you even get done with the lease signing and how you're going to handle late payments, is key. If you lay the foundation of this is how you can expect to do business with us, and you can make that positive too, it doesn't have to be, you know, you have this heavy fist that we're waving over them. It's that, you know, here's our expectations of how you need to perform, and here's what we're going to do if something breaks so they can feel good about the relationship, but that they know that you're in this to be a business person and not for a hobby.

Yeah, that's great. Definitely. All right. Well, let's move on to the second question. Okay, I'm just going to admit it. Every one of these questions came from things that happened to me in the last week or two. All right. So, a tenant calls about their toilet being backed up.

I just want to know what you would do in comparison to what I did. So attendant calls with their toilet is backed up. It's plugged. What do you do? Is it overflowing? No. It just, they can't use it because it's plugged. Do you fix it or do you make them fix it because it's their fault?

I tell them, well, I mean, the first thing is, hey, get a plunger. You know, there's some simple steps you can do here on your own to get rid of this situation. And then in our, I don't know how you guys do it in Washington. And I'm curious, we have in our lease here that tenants are responsible for repairs up to a certain dollar amount. And ours, I think, are typically anywhere from 75 to 100 bucks, depending on the price range of the property. That seems to cover most service calls. And so I usually tell them, okay, you can fix this yourself or I can call somebody and then bill you back for the service call. You decide which way you want to do it.

Unless it's something that, you know, if there's running water, then we're, you know, we're going to get out there right away and see what's going on. I don't know if that's legal in Washington or not. I'll look into that. I mean, I don't. Right now I say if you cause a problem, you fix your own problem. Like, it's in the lease. If they cause their toilet to plug, you have to fix it. And that's what I told them and they went and got a plunger and it worked.

I mean, I think outlining in your lease, you know, the things that you're going to deal with and the things you're not going to deal with is probably the most important thing. Right. So you step up your toilet. And literally in the lease, you know, we're not going to come in if you fill it if you stuff your toilet. you got to figure that out. Yeah, yeah, you did the business, now handle it, right? And I think if you have those rules set in the beginning, and I'm curious about this, how you guys do it, Philip, is, you know,

do you go through the lease with prospective tenants and go through point by point and have them, you know, signature initial, you do? Yeah, I think that's really important. Yeah. You know, obviously I tell them I'm not an attorney and if they have, questions. They need to have their attorney, you know, help them with that. But I want everybody to be on the same page. If everything's out and open now and they have a concern now, that might be a red flag to me too, that, okay, they have an issue with this part of the lease. Maybe I don't want to

rent to them. You know, even after you've gone through the whole approval process, you get down to the table and you're writing a lease, that may be an indicator that this isn't a good fit. But if it's something that's workable with an explanation or an addendum to make everybody, you know, comfortable, then let's take care of it now versus six months from now when an issue comes up and everybody's emotional about it. So here's something that's not on this little list of ours. How do you deal with tenant conflict? Because, you know, that seems to be one of the most challenging things for property managers and owners to deal with, you know, in multifamilies. You've got two people who are, you know, one's got their music blasting a night or, you know, one's fighting or whatever it is.

You know, how do you deal with that stuff? Is it just stick to the least? You can't have music past 8 o'clock. I mean, is your release, are your leases that programmatic down to the detail, the nitty-gritty? Or is it just, you know, dealing with chaos and trying to work the personalities out or potentially even getting somebody evicted? Well, one, I'm lucky and I don't have any multifamily properties to have to juggle those personalities when you have side-by-side units. I guess the most similar thing I have to that are some condo units. And in those situations, they're agreeing on the front end to abide by the HOA rules and regs.

So it's not likely I'm going to get a call from a neighbor. However, I do, and this is something I actually recommend to owners who manage their own property as well. I'm going to go off on a side tangent here. Do it. If you have a business card, whether you're a property manager or just you have your own landlording business, go around and knock on the doors of the neighbors and give them your card. I had a situation last week where we just had a tenant move in over the weekend. And before that, I had knocked around them the doors of the neighbors, giving my card out.

and said, hey, if you see anything screwy happening or anything, here's my card, give me a call. Or if you know somebody that friend that wants to live in the neighborhood, give me a call. So this tenant moves in. Monday morning, I get a call from the neighbor and he says, hey, I haven't had a chance to meet the tenant yet. And there's water rushing out the front of the garage. You might want to get over here. So I called the tenant on my way to the property and let myself in and turn the water. water off and all that stuff and luckily saved all of her stuff that she just moved into the garage.

But as an owner, this is one easy thing that can help save you a lot of money. I mean, if that water would have ran all day and nobody had a way to get a hold of anybody, who knows how much damage that could have cost. That's an awesome, awesome tip. Hey, by the way, this is great. I just got a text message right now from my wife saying, hey, the tenant who didn't pay rent just paid. So what do you know? I don't have to do an eviction. But guess what? Next month I'm going to have to do. I know.

Next month you don't get paid on the first. Yeah. So next month, what's going to happen is on the fifth when she doesn't pay because they got to pay by the fifth. So, well, maybe on the morning of the six, she'll get a three-day notice from me immediately because now she's lost her. Yeah. And on the ninth, she gets an eviction.

Yep. So, yeah. Next month we'll deal with it. Do it. Anyway, okay, cool. Well, by the way, I hate that part of the job, too, is the daycare part. of like they parked in my spot. I deal with that all the time.

I actually took away parking spots in my apartment complex, like defined ones. They were defined ahead of time. Finally, I just got so tired of those phone calls of this person's parked here. And yeah,

now I just say park where you want. And if you have a problem, go yell at your neighbor. So anyway, you actually did remove that question. So the whole comment for the listeners about babysitting parking spots.

No, because you mentioned tenant, you mentioned a minute ago, you mentioned a minute ago, I was referencing your technical content content. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

I definitely think with most of these things, you know, it's tricky. In emails, they can often be misinterpreted for whatever reason. But I prefer, you know, a multi-communication situation where you're calling a tenant to explain the situation so that you're on the same page. But then following that up or preempting it with either or an email. so you have something in writing. And you don't need to write a novel.

I actually think you need to do just very simple one or two sentences. Here's the situation. Here's what we agreed to. That's it. If you write more, you tend to get yourself into trouble. Yep.

Good, good. All right. Nice question. Somebody applies to rent a property from you. It's a $600 a month house and they only make $1,300 a month. But it's on a fixed income. They're an old guy or something.

Do you rent to them? Nope. All right. You don't, you don't. What are your income requirements? Yeah, you don't bend it all. Three times monthly rent. Yep.

And I, you know, I've tried that making that work by, I think somebody made 2.7 times monthly rent. And every time I've bent that rule, it's come back to bite me. So, you know, you get burned a couple times and you figure out that, you know, don't do that anymore. So ours is strictly three months. In our town, we have a lot of undocumented income here because of the types of industry that's here. A lot of tip earners, people paid in cash. Dollar bills? Yeah, we're dollar bills.

Sorry, I could. That's funny. We require it, if you can't show me a pay stub, I need tax returns or something. We need to have proof that you make what you're. say you make. And if they can't produce that or balk at that, then it's not a good fit. So here's what I've heard from this show. For me, the takeaway is create a set of rules and regs and define them. And if you can't figure it out on your own, you know, turn to bigger pockets, go to the forums, ask questions, ask other landlords, you know, what their rules are.

And don't ever, ever bend them. Because the second you bend them, it bites you in the backside. I've experienced it. Brandon's experience it and you've experienced it. I'm sure most other experienced landlords have also experienced it. Yeah. It's hard, right? Because you want to help these people. You want to be a nice, you want to be reasonable.

And so you do. But whenever you do, it hurts you. But are you being reasonable by doing that? You know, the rules are defined so that they create order. And if you're kind of, you know, well, being quote unquote lenient due to circumstance, I mean, are you helping them or hurting them? Now, look, somebody's wife passes away. You know, it's a really tough circumstance, right?

You know, somebody's dead or somebody's in the hospital legitimately. They lose a job. You know, it's really hard to kind of enforce, but you have to because in the end, especially for Philip, he has to, his job is to protect the owners of the property. And if they're not collecting the income that they're supposed to be collecting, then they're going to lose their property and then they're going to go into foreclosure. And, you know, if it's you, Brandon, the landlord bans your rules, you know, you end up getting screwed on your own properties.

And it's hard. And I think this is one of the biggest challenges of our industry is where is the line between charity and running a business? And I think a lot of people have this mentality that you, have to help everybody. You've got to be there and be a good person. And I think most landlords by nature really do care. But I think when you get burned once, twice, five times, and you start losing money, in the end, it's killer be killed in many ways. If I'm not getting paid, I'm going to, my family is going to suffer. So is there any kind of balance somewhere in between that?

I don't know. I think it's just comes back to being proactive again and setting expectations. patience. You know, if you rush through the lease and you rush through everything on the front end and you just throw the keys at them and say, have at it, you know, enjoy the house, and then there's a problem later and they say, well, I don't remember that. Well, it's your fault as the owner at that point. Sure, they signed a piece of paper and they said they were going to pay rent, but I don't think you did a good job explaining, you know, how you're going to to handle business. And if you do that on the front end, it's going to prevent so many of these problems. And when it doesn't and something happens, you know, you can feel good that you explained

to them on the front end the way it was going to work. And that's where you feel good about it. Don't feel good by giving them too many chances and, you know, basically having months of collections. That's not how you want to feel good about it. You want to feel good by you did it right at the beginning. you told them how you were going to do it and you followed through. Yeah, right on. All right. Last question in this section. Tenant has three cats.

Do you rent to them? And by the way, my answer is no. Brandon, are you moving to Vegas? Okay, yes. 30 cats. I put this question in because I have three cats. Would you rent to me? No.

You know, that's the, I leave the pet thing up to the owners. And we talk about that at the front end before I even take. over management. I have pets, but I know how my pets are. Do you have real pets or do you have cats? I mean, you have like, you have like, you know, you have like a dog, like a real, like I have a real dog. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, so you don't have these, these, you know, dirt, dirty like things that, you know, poop in the house and. In the box. Yeah, it's disgusting. I mean. It's kind of gross. That's horrible. I have a dog right now also that poops all over the floor.

So I would take my litter box. lost all of our cat people. Yep, they just left. No, they're on my side. They're team Brandon today. So you would leave it up to the owners then? Well, I give them my recommendations. I mean, you know, I have some owners that are cat people.

And if they want to have cat people in their house, then that's, you know, we go for it. And I explain the downsides and if they want to do it anyway. It's sort of like the whole, you know, do you allow smokers or not allow smokers? I mean, I guess if you're an owner, you lived in this house for five years and you smoke 10 packs a day and there, you don't care if a smoker moves into the house. But for the most part, the owners that I have, they usually don't want any pets. And we end up compromising and say, we'll consider a small pet on a case-by-case basis. For those curious of what I do, just because I like to share my opinion. So my theory is this.

If I have a hard time renting a property, even remotely, if I think it's going to sit too long, a single family, I will never rent in a multifamily. I'll never rent pets. But in a single family, I will do it if I think the market's soft or I need some kind of advantage. And I'll charge $2 to $300 a pet fee for that. It just kind of offsets my risk. And I've never really been, I've never really had a problem with it yet. I mean, nobody's real. I mean, I've had a few people like wreck houses with pets, but I've never allowed the pet in the first place.

knock the pet in and then they wreck the house. But the ones I've allowed in and I've done it correctly and I've screened them really thoroughly, I never have a problem with them. And I'd say the two categories for me have always been cats and big dogs. Big dogs, not necessarily for the insurance reasons, but because the nails will just scratch the hell out of the hardwood. And that's not inexpensive to fix up. Yeah.

And the cats because they're disgusting. Creatures. All right, it's time to move on. It's time for the fire round. There you go. There you go. All right, the fire round. These questions all come from the bigger pockets forums, not from my past week experience like the last questions did.

All right, bring it. All right. Number one, what do you think is the best property for a new investor to get into, a single family or multifamily? I think it depends on your market. market. In our market, I don't like the two to four plexes for anybody. So if your city has quality properties in either one of those classes, I'd say single family to me seems the easiest. You have one set of tenants. You have one set of plumbing, or I guess however many

bathrooms you have, but the cost should be less. I know the counter argument to that is you can hedge your vacancy over four units versus one. But in my mind, you know, it's also hard. I think the turnover is more on a multi-than single unit. Wouldn't you agree? Definitely. Yeah. My multi-families leave twice as fast as my single families. Well, they're more. But the single families take twice as much. The single families take twice or three times or four times as much to fix up afterwards to turn over as my multis do. So to my opinion, they kind of cancel each other out. But anyway. Hey, hey on quick, quick, really, really quick question as an aside, do you guys, I'm curious for both of you, do you guys have, in your single families, do you have the tenants take care of things like

lawn service or is that something that you typically take care of? Because I know some owners who have nice lawns, you know, the last thing you want to see is your lawn get destroyed and relying on the tenant to pay a lawn service or do the lawn work is a risky factor. So I'm just curious what both you guys do. Keep in mind, I live in the desert. That's true. That's an irrelevant question to Philip. I live in the rainforest. We have green grass 24-7. What the hell, man. But conversely, you know, we have a lot of pools

here, right? Yeah. So we usually, I guess, depending on the price level of the home. I do a lot of stuff in the suburbs and I guess our average rent, 1700 right around there of the properties that I manage.

But on stuff with pools, we require that the tenants pay for pool service. Or no, I take it back. That's built into the rent, but the owners have a contractor and we don't let the tenant

do it on their own. I don't want, that's a huge investment. I don't want that to go south. So you build it into the lease and you build it into them. Yeah, that's great. That's great. And I do, I do make my tenants do their own lawn mowing, but I don't worry about them wrecking it because you can't wreck the grass out here. Well, what if they don't mow it and it's, you know, 16 inches tall? Then we usually hire it out. We even actually had that, but we would hire it out and build them, but... There you go. Okay, cool. All right, how important do you think it is to provide laundry hookups in an SFR? and what about providing of the actual machines themselves? This, again, I think, depends on your market, right?

So knowing what your competition is doing is very important. If everybody in your little market is providing washers and dryers, and you're not in expecting to get the same amount of rent or get it rented as fast as they did, I think you'll have an uphill battle. the flip side of that is if everybody's not, maybe there's an opportunity for you to do something that other people aren't that will help attract better tenants. So I think you have to weigh both of those things.

In our market, it's, I'd say 50-50 on the washer dryer situation, but most of the properties I manage, we provide those appliances. Okay. All right. Next one. What are your thoughts on investors buying from out of state in the Las Vegas market? Is that a good idea or a bad idea? Well, depending when you buy, if you would have bought at the bottom of the market a few years back,

it was like shooting fish in a barrel, and it was easy returns and a lot of fun. But I think the question you're asking more is just the geographical one and whether or not someone should buy out of state. And Vegas is one of those flashy cities, right? people buy here for all kinds of reasons that don't necessarily equate to sound investment strategies. It's, I want to tell all my friends that I want a house in Vegas or whatever.

That doesn't necessarily meaning that investing here is bad. I think it's like any other market you need to figure out what are your goals, what are your risk tolerances? do you have people on the ground locally that can help you achieve those goals and help you feel good about the risk you're taking? And if, depending on your answers to those, that would be what my suggestion would be. So, you know, here in Vegas, at least 30% of my clients are out-of-state investors. A lot of California. Well, I was going to say probably mostly SoCal folks.

Yep. Yeah. That's easy. It's close. And it's also within that driving distance, that proximity where you can go and check in your properties, you know, three and a half hours away from L.A. is easy. Is that all it is? I didn't realize that. That's what? It's like 250 miles, right? Something like that.

Yeah, depending on which day you decide to drive out here, if you're trying to make it on a Friday night. Good luck. A good idea. Yeah. Yeah. I used to live in L.A., so I made that commute quite a few times. So it's a nice trip. It's a nice trip. All right. Should people be worried about another bubble in Vegas anytime in the near future? You know, I think that it could happen in a lot of our southwestern markets right now. It seemed to have really just went crazy the last year and a half, two years. And, you know, I can't speak to the other cities because I don't do business there.

But our market has a lot of really cool things happening on a positive side. but we also have a lot of inputs that are controlled not by the market, but by government agencies or whatnot, in terms of foreclosure laws and things like that that have changed over the last couple of years that have, well, many people think have drove down inventory. And I bought into that sum, but nationally inventory is, from what I understand, or at least in the southwest, has gone down, which is partially why, prices have been going up so crazy as they have been. I can tell you, prices have gone up a ton, but rents sure haven't.

So that is a little scary. Interesting. Interesting. All right. Final question of the fire round. What property management software do you guys use to manage your properties? We use Appfolio. Okay. All right, yeah.

I've been talking to them recently a little bit. We might start using them as well. I'm not sure. But cool. Actually, that's why I wanted to know that question. Another self-interested question from Brandon Turner. That's what the show is, right? I know.

Now people know why I do this show. It's just, I can make my life better. All right, finally, moving on to the last segment of the show. This is the... It's not the quick tip. Oh, man. You know I'm sick when. Yeah. I do miss you guys singing that, by the way.

We can do it right now just for the fun of it. Famous for... All right, the famous... Four, these are questions we ask everyone so you know what's coming because I know you listen to our show. So number one, what is your favorite real estate book? The last one I've read, and right now it's my favorite, is landlording on autopilot. Yeah, by Mike Butler.

Yeah, you know, it's obviously it's written for owners of properties, but I gleaned a lot that I can use in my property management business. And I just really liked the way he presented the data. and his thoughts on things. Yeah, it is a phenomenal, phenomenal book. What about your favorite business book? I had to think about this one, but I've got a new one for you, The Snowball. Never heard of it.

Although I do have a microphone called The Snowball. It's the Snowball, Warren Buffett and the Business of Life. Interesting. So is it by Buffett or is it about Buffett? It's a biography, I guess. Okay. Gotcha. Oh, cool.

Should be good. Should be good. All right. What about hobbies? What do you do for fun? Besides, I don't know. Gamble? What do you do?

Don't gamble. Well, I shouldn't say that. One of my hobbies, before I had kids, was poker. But now with two little kids running around. Get you and Jay Scott together. Yeah. And I still believe that if we ever have a bigger meetup of some kind of. I agree.

We need to have a nice big. Or we just have a, let's just have a, meet in Denver for a poker game. Either one. You know what? We might have to do that. That might be fun. But besides that, we've got a lot of cool nature stuff around here. You know, Vegas is known for the

casinos, but we have Red Rock, Valley of Fire, Lake Mead. So part of what I like to do is go hiking with friends and the kids. Oh, nice. Very cool. Very cool. I did to spend some time in Vegas. I was only there for a couple days

one time, just downtown, and that's all I saw. There's no reason to go, man. Well, according to Philip, there is. All right, final question. What do you believe sets apart successful investors from those who give up or those who fail? And you can kind of frame this within what you do and what you notice. I think this could be applied to life in general, but action items with specific purpose. So, you know, we all know that goals are important.

but a lot of people don't break it down into things that they need to actually be doing every day with purpose to get there. And some people just say, okay, well, I want to own 100 houses by whatever. But they never actually think, well, how am I going to get there? What's my path? And then breaking it down into these small pieces that you can check off the list. That's what I've found. And then the other one, and this applies a lot to my profession, on the real estate side of things is just no excuses.

I hear a lot of people, you know, you've got those that will walk around the office and say, well, man, you know, when the new president gets in here, my business is really going to take off. Or, wow, when it quits snowing, you know, we've had such a horrible winter. I haven't been able to do anything. The economy's been bad.

There's always something, and they're waiting for this next perfect time to happen that never gets there because the next excuse comes in. That's great advice. I think it's that. Very cool, very cool. All right, well, I guess a final question from us for the day is where can people find out more about you? Well, I'm trolling the forums constantly.

I think that's how you guys found me. Otherwise, you can find me at Vegas digs.com. That's V-E-G-A-S-D-I-G-S dot com. Sounds like an archaeology site. Nice. It is. Nice. Awesome.

All right. All right, Philip, well, listen, yeah, thank you very much. We appreciate the time and insight. And anyone who has questions for Philip can jump on the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 62. And otherwise, be sure to jump on the forums. He's active there and always offering some good insight. Hopefully you've enjoyed the show. Hey, and I just want to jump in here real quick.

And because you mentioned forums, Josh, that's actually how we pick most of our guests. for the Bigger Pockets podcast. We pick people who are active in the forums and Phil is very active in the forums and so that's why we wanted him to be on the show. So if you want to be on the show, jump into the forums, get involved, start answering questions and show what you know.

So anyway, Josh, you want to take us out? All right, Phil. Thanks again, man. Take it easy. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Philip. All right, everybody. That was Show 62 with Phil Dwyer. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the show. Lots of great feedback.

of tidbits to take away. So thank you very much for listening. And of course, thanks to Phil for taking the time and being here with us. Ask any questions you've got on the show notes. And beyond that, ask any questions you've got in real estate in general on biggerpockets.com. Just go to the forums of biggerpockets.com slash forums and ask away. If you're not participating, if you're not engaging, you are definitely missing out. I cannot tell you. I got to chime in here. I talk to business people all the time. They, they, they kind of contact us and say, hey, you know, Bigger Pockets, you guys are doing great. You know, what's in it for me? And, you know, I can't tell you how important it is to engage. Yeah. And in terms of engaging,

that doesn't mean posting stuff every day, all day being addicted or anything like that. And that's okay too. But, you know, if you jump on once a week and take 10 minutes a week to participate and set up some keyword alerts at BiggerPockets.com slash alerts, to let you know about keywords that are of interest to you, you're going to be, you're going to start to be active, you're going to start to see more and more visitors to your profile. And if you've got a business in particular, you're going to start to see more and more people come and visit and express interest in you. If not, if you're just an investor, then the opportunities for you like the opportunity to

meet people to finance your next deals, the opportunity to meet partners are all going to increase. It's all about engaging. The more visible you are, the better the site's going to be for you. So, you know, hopefully if you're listening and by show 61, you haven't taken the time to create a profile and get involved. Hopefully that'll help encourage that. Otherwise, check us out on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Gplus, on Pinterest. We're all over the place. Connect with us. And that's it. We appreciate your listenership. Hopefully you guys will tell your friends about us. And we'll see you next week on show 63. I'm Josh Dorkin.

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