BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 83: Profitable Landlording with Integrity with Marcia Maynard

Episode Date: August 14, 2014

Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast we are excited to sit down with Marcia Maynard, a hands-on landlord who hails from Vancouver, Washington. Marcia got her start in real estate by marrying into “the family business” that already had an existing portfolio, but continued on the tradition to help fund her own future retirement. On today’s show, she goes into detail on how you can invest part-time for retirement while making a HUGE impact on the community in the process! This show covers the importance of integrity in a landlord’s life and is filled with actionable tips for dealing with tenants in an ethical – yet profitable – way. This is a great show, let’s get into it! In This Show We Cover… How to invest with family The importance of setting up your business structure and what happens when you don’t! Insurance – Do you need an umbrella policy? The awesome path of buying rental properties slowly Personal Finance 101 How to love your job and invest in real estate on the side The benefits of a mission statement The importance of coaching your tenants to have more integrity How to handle conflicts with tenants An awesome alternative to evictions!  The importance of a calling up prior landlords Red flags of bad tenants, Actionable items for vetting tenants over the phone Using court records to look up potential tenants And a whole lot more! Links Mentioned in The Show: The NYC Real Estate Investor Meetup with Brandon BiggerPockets Keyword Alerts Marcia’s exact Tenant Screening Interview questions A Slow, Boring, Incredibly Awesome Strategy for Building Wealth Through Passive Real Estate Investing by Brandon Turner Padmapper.com Books Mentioned in the Show: Landlording by Leigh Robinson Your Best Year Yet by Jinny S. Ditzler Tweetable Topics: “Start with a dream, make goals, take action, then reflect and improve…” (Tweet This!) “Landlording is like a game of chess.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Marcia’s: Marcia’s BiggerPocket Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 83. 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 Dorkin. host of the Bigger Pockets podcast, here with the man wearing the Frank the Tank t-shirt.

It's Brandon Turner. What's up, Brandon? Hey, Josh. Not much. How you doing? I'm doing okay. That's my favorite shirt. I love that shirt. It's my favorite. Franks tank. Yeah, when you wear that thing, it makes me happy. It's like every other day. Yeah, pretty much. That's the benefit of working out. You know why I am happy. I'm happy because you're not here in the office with me, stinking it up. Good. Yeah, I stink up my own office. Thanks. There you go. Yeah. How are things? Things are good. I just went to a meetup of investors that organized kind of from Bigger Pockets up in Seattle last week.

And that was amazing. And I got another one in New York next week I'm going to. So, yeah, I love those meetups where, you know, BiggerPockets members get together and talk and hang out and share and stuff. So if you're not a part of that, people, make sure you set up your keyword alerts at biggerpockets.com slash alerts and get a part of that because it's amazing. And they would set up an alert for like their local area. Yeah, like New York or Seattle. or whatever, and then you know when those things are happening. So do it. Awesome. Yeah, no, that's great. That's great. Cool, man.

Well, all as well on this front, we're just working away, trying to hire a couple people and build the Bigger Pockets team out and trying to make that happen. It's very exciting watching this place grow. But with that, we've got an interesting show today. And before we go there, why don't we get to today's quick tip? All right, today's quick tip. Create a mission statement for your real estate business. In this show, we're going to talk about how and why, and our guest is going to share her exact mission statement, and I think you're going to love it. That's all we got. So today's quick tip is get out there and make sure to create a mission statement for your business. It'll help you,

at least in my estimation, have some kind of purpose for what you do. Yeah, she has some good insight on that today. So we'll talk about it. Today's pro benefit of the week is a reminder to jump into the marketplace. I know we've said this before, but if you are a pro and you are not using the marketplace, you're missing out. So it could be funding, deals, partners, whatever it is you need, go post an ad for it this week and just see if you get any bites. So if you're not a pro, you can become one. If you go to biggerpockets.com forward slash get pro, G-E-T-P-R-O, and make sure you check out Josh and my video there. It's kind of cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Well, with that, let's get to the show. Today, we've got Marcia Maynard. So Marcia and her husband, Jim Fisher, owned 15 residential rental units, a mixture of houses and duplexes. and I believe there's a fourplex or an aplex in there in Vancouver. That's Vancouver, Washington. If you didn't know, you just learned. Yeah, there's a Vancouver, Washington.

Today we're going to talk a lot about landlording with integrity and instituting a slow but steady and powerful strategy for using real estate to help fund your retirement. Cool, cool. All right. The last thing I want to point out before we get to the show is actually in this show, Marcia, I mean, she has a ton of good tips and stuff, But one of the things that I thought was the coolest,

she actually talks about the questions that she asked tenants on the phone. Before showing them a unit, she goes through a list of questions. And she talks about that in the show. And then after the show, she said, well, yeah, Brandon, do you want me just to send you those questions? I'm like, sure. And then Josh was like, hey, can we put them on the show notes? So anyway, if you're listening to the show and you want to download those, head over to BiggerPockets.com slash show 83.

There'll be a link there to download the exact questions that Marcia walks her potential tenants through. So I think you're going to love that. It'll come in pretty handy for you in your landlording business. Yeah, yeah, and you'll learn a lot more about it as you listen on. So enough of the chit-chat. Why don't we get to this? Okay, we're going to shift gears for a minute to cover something important, especially for new landlords.

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The job of a property manager is protecting and growing your operating income and earning your trust while they do it. And that comes down to three numbers, occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score. If those numbers slip, your income slips. and your trust slips too. And most PMs don't hold themselves to performance standards. They focus on activity, not outcomes. Mind is different.

They obsess over the metrics that actually grow your cash flow. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get a month of management for free. Because if you're going to hire a property manager, hire one that manages your investment like an investment. All right, Marsha, welcome to the show. It is awesome to have you here with us. Thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure.

Great. Yeah, this is actually our second interview within like a month of somebody from the same town of Vancouver, Washington. I think people are going to think that I'm only picking my, you know, local favorites. Yeah, you're stacking the deck a little bit. I actually didn't know. I thought it was Longview. Oh, you're right. It was Longview. And those are, how far away is that? Like, it's an hour. Okay. Okay. So there's a little bit of difference. Or less. Yeah. Do you guys want to just do your own show? We might. Yeah. Go take a nap or something, Josh. Now, Vancouver is right down near Portland, correct? You're pretty close to Portland, Oregon. Right, right. Vancouver, Washington State, not to be confused with Vancouver, BC.

Yes, which is really frustrating when I tell people one of the other. I don't know. I'm sure it's more frustrating for you. You have to always say that. But I don't know. Well, Vancouver, Washington, we are the first Vancouver. Okay, yeah. So, yeah. So somebody definitely should. We're not the biggest. That's for sure. Somebody needs to call up Canada and tell them to give us our city name back. But with that, let's get to our interview today. We're going to talk about landlording.

We're going to talk about kind of your story, how you got started, what you're doing. So maybe we'll start there. Why did you get into real estate? What was your beginning? Okay. Well, I rather married into it. I got married in July. And afterwards, my father-in-law said, well, welcome to the family business.

And I said, what family business? And he said, Fisher Properties. I said, cool, because I'd always had an interest in real estate. and I had had some experience in Seattle when I lived in a house share situation and I had gotten into the situation. I realized that there was no rental agreement. The elderly gentleman who owned the house had made all this rental agreements on handshakes. I convinced him to get a rental agreement. That would be a good idea. And there were four rooms. And I quickly learned that you really can only have two nesters in a house in a house share situation.

What do you mean by that? People who really root in and they bring their stuff and they want to have design ideas as to what to do with everything in the house. So if you have too many nesters in a house share situation, it doesn't work. And so I decided to rent out rooms and subletting. I didn't know that's what it was called at the time. The owner was fine with it. And I put up an ad on the bulletin board at the University of Washington Medical

student in school. And I had medical school students coming in and staying for three months at a time. And it was great. I met a lot of great people from around the country. And it was pretty exciting. But I think that I was actually all along primed for real estate investing because one of the first words I learned to spell was monopoly. Because I went to the family game cabinet and I had just learned my letters. And there was M-O-N-O-P-O-L-Y. And I kept saying that over and over and over again. And when I got to school, the teacher asked, do we know any words already, how to spell them? And I raised my hand, and I said, Monopoly. And she was so surprised. I love that game. And then when I graduated from college, I asked my brother, my older brother, who happens to be a real estate

attorney. I said, oh, do you have any advice for the new graduate? And he looked at me and he said, real estate, not plastics. Now, if you ever saw the graduate movie with Dustin Hoffman, of course. And they're convincing him what field to go in. And one guy says one word, plastics. My brother said one word, real estate. I guess it's actually two words. Brandon doesn't quite understand what the graduate is. I've never seen the graduate, you know. That's back in the 60s. Okay. So when was this a time frame that you got into this?

Like when was the Seattle renting out the subletting? When was that? Eight years in Seattle, beginning in 83, 1980. Married in 1995. And that was when I married into the business. And so I've been actively landlording with our own rental property for 19 years. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

So, and just a really quick kind of bit of background. How did your in-laws end up getting into the business? Or were they born into it or married into it? Well, my father-in-law was a pastor at a church, and he had left the church, well, not left the church, but he had stopped doing that kind of work. And he got his real estate license, and he tried a real estate for a little while, didn't like it. And so he got a job at the city's assessor's office. So his job was going around assessing buildings. And he came across a duplex that he liked, that some of the city's.

somebody said, hey, there's a good deal on it, and he decided to buy it. And later, he sold it to my husband and his brother for each put a thousand dollar investment in it. And dad took the note. And that note's been paid off now, but it's been great. I notice really quick, and that's the kind of thing that I think happens up in the podunk. You know, you buy it and your sister and your sister's sister buys it and you're renting to your cousin. Is that, I mean, I'm just, I'm just saying, I don't know. I don't know. Can you tell me? Is that Brandon? I don't know what you're talking about, John. I'm just kidding. I'm curious, though, about that actually, on the family thing. I mean, what are your thoughts on invest? I mean, clearly,

you worked, at least you worked close with your family. Maybe you still do. I'm not sure. But what are your thoughts on working close with family like that, having a family business? Well, it's important to get along with your family. That's for sure. And I, um, married into a great family. And there was a lot of sweat equity. They kept talking about sweat equity, and it took me a while to get my wrap my head around what that meant. And I just didn't really like that idea of sweat equity. I sort of like the idea of equity itself. But we have been, you know, quite fortunate in the years that we've owned the properties. Unfortunately, in 1996, my brother-in-law died suddenly of a heart attack. And we had been talking about getting our business into an LLC and getting it

set up for things. And we had delayed doing that. And we found out that it was not good to own real estate with other people if you didn't have a really strong business structure because then the process after death was much more difficult to go through. So we immediately got our LLCs in place. And we, you know, just shored up and it remained really strong. Now, my mother in father-in-law, they're in their 80s now, so they're not actively involved in working with the properties and the management and running of all the real estate business comes down to my husband and I now. So I've got a question on that, and I hope I don't mean to stoke on a tragedy, but I guess

I think it might be helpful to other folks who are listening. You said that setting up a business structure is going to be more helpful. So I wonder if you could possibly share with us. what are the challenges that you might face if you do a deal with somebody where somebody passes away and you don't have a business entity? What kind of challenges did you actually go through? Well, you know, we had to do all the properties through the probate process. And one of the things that happened is my brother and sister-in-law lived in Oregon and we lived in Washington. I mean, we're sister cities.

We're right here in the same community. But there are different laws that do come into play. and whether you're working in a community property state or not, that makes a difference. And then how do properties pass on at time of death? Or actually, even if it's not a time of death, if one partner wants out of the partnership, what kinds of steps must one take? And, you know, there's a lot of structure for that. And so we got our LLCs.

I mean, of course, there was the idea of limited liability protection, but we really look towards our insurance for that, not so much our LLC, and we have a, you know, strong umbrella policy. But going to an attorney who specialized in setting up these kinds of business structures, she sat the whole family down and asked really good questions of us so that we could outline exactly how our business ran and look at all the scenarios of what could happen and then what would happen. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, to anybody listening, obviously, Marcia is not an attorney or an accountant. And so obviously, we urge you to, you know, talk to your own on these things. But yeah, I think that's really, really good advice. And I guess you get two ends of the spectrum. You get one end of the spectrum where you have new people who are like, oh, well, I can't invest because I got to set up an LLC and I got to do this and I got to do this. And then they get all, you know, they get crazy with what they need to do and they never do anything. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you get people who say, Well, I'm ready to go and they're gunning and they're gunning and they don't think about these things. So, you know, hopefully there's a happy medium somewhere in there where, you know, get the ball moving. And as you do, you know, start getting, you know, your entities figured out and set up and, you know, start protecting yourself. But you'd mention an umbrella policy.

I wanted to quickly hit upon that. Can you explain just, you know, I know you're not an insurance person either? But what's an umbrella policy and why do you have one? Okay. Before you can buy an umbrella policy, you need to have other insurance. policies in place. And different insurance companies as well as different states might call them different things. You might have a landlord policy, a rental policy, a fire policy, whatever it is on the structure itself. And oftentimes those insurance policies come with a bit of liability insurance as well.

But it's usually not enough, especially if you're in this business and you're, you have multiple holdings. And then you want to have a bigger policy and an umbrella policy for we, hold a $1 million policy for umbrella. And it's very inexpensive considering the amount of value you get from it. You just never know when something might happen on your property or if somebody might accuse you of something happening that didn't happen. You want to have as much protections in place as possible. Gotcha.

Gotcha. Yeah. And you can actually do that as a non-investor too. So if you have your car policy and your house policy and you think, hey, you know, I just want to kind of get a little bit of extra protection. for whatever reason, you can also do that. So I think umbrella policies are great. I think, I think they're a good idea. Absolutely. So right on, right on. Yeah. Well, hey, let's go back to your story a little bit and talk about you guys, you said you got married and what was it, 1995. Is that

right? Right. Right. And how did, I guess, when did you buy your first investment property, whether it was you or you and your husband? Right. Well, 1995 is when I sort of came into the properties of one house and two duplexes. And then in year 2000, we just happened, somebody at our church was, son was moving out of town and wanted to sell his house and we piqued our interest and we asked about it, wasn't even on the market, and we bought a house like that. We got a little mortgage on it. We still have that house, have a good mortgage rate on it and rented it out. And then in 2005, my husband just out of the blue thought, we should buy this apex, I see. So, So we ended up buying an eightplex, you know.

Nice. And it was really four duplexes together. Yeah. You know, it's funny. I love having conversations with investors, whether it's Brandon and I just chatting and him saying, yeah, I just, you know, I don't know, everything was okay. I was hanging out last night. Now I have another house.

Or, you know, I mean, I've had the conversation with a lot of, you know, active investors who are kind of out there doing their own thing. You always seem to hear that exact same thing. you know, we were just talking to somebody and he had a house and we ended up buying it and it just kind of fell in our lap. And I know we've talked about this a few times, particularly we covered it in a recent show with Michael Quarles, but part of you guys actually buying that house or quote, falling into that house, you didn't fall into the house. I mean, you tell people what you do, right? People know that you're a real estate investor and that's part of your own kind of

marketing, isn't it? I don't think we've talked as much about our real estate investment enterprise at that time as we do now. Now we're much more open about. Now we actively let people know. But I think the most interesting purchase we made, and it seems like we're buying a house or a duplex or an eightplex every five years. That seems to be our time frame. And so we're like already looking. We're, you know, like looking for 2015. Here's comes another one. But in 2010, that was the most interesting purchase we made because there was a vacant house across the street from our 8plex. And there was some homeless people hanging out on the front porch. And one had broken into one of our units at one time.

And I was afraid that some squatting was going to occur. So I got on the phone. I looked up real estate records. I knew how to do all that by this time because I'd been buying properties. But I looked up and my phone calls took me from Vancouver to the Seattle Air. back to Vancouver and finally I was talking to an estate attorney. I was looking for the person who had control the property just so they could put a no trespass sign on it. And he says, well, the couple who lived there both have died. The houses in foreclosure with two banks and it's on a

short sale. And we've just turned it over to get it listed with a realtor. You want to buy it. And those were the magic words. You want to buy it. And I thought, well, well, we weren't looking for a property right now, but why not? Let's take a look. So we called up the real estate agent, the listing agent, happened to be an old friend of one of my husband's buddies. And she says, well, I'm going to go put the sign up in the yard today. Meet me at noon. We went there at noon. There was one other couple there looking at the house. We took a look at the house. Within a half hour, we made a cash offer for the asking price, which was $100,000. And that particular house now the real market value is somewhere between 160 to 180,000.

Gotcha. And it's rented. And so we have no mortgage on it, which is nice. And we put in about 15,000 rehabbing it because it was really, really in poor shape. Smokers, you know, big dogs, all the damage that can come from both of those. Gotcha. Gotcha. So let's talk about that all of it.

So there's a couple things that come to my mind. First, on the cash offer. So you make the cash offer, put $100,000 down, you buy the property, it's now worth $160. But from the sounds of it, you have not taken anything out of that property, correct? In other words, you don't have a note on the property. Correct. Oh, so I assume you took some cash out, or is that not what you did? No, that's not what we did.

In fact, our whole strategy is buy and hold. And one of the things that we love to do is pay off properties and have a lot of cash flow coming in and then buying more properties with that cash flow. And of all of our properties, we own 15 rental units, but they're in the form of three houses, two standalone duplexes, and then the eightplex. And only the eightplexes on two tax lots. So we have two mortgages there and one of the houses.

We have a mortgage, but everything else has paid off. So we have a strong cash flow at this point. We like that. That's cool. You know, one thing that I think is interesting about that, A couple weeks back, I wrote a post called like a slow, boring, awesome way to invest in real estate or something like that. And I'll link to that in the show notes. But the idea was kind of that same strategy you're talking about is buying rental properties, you know, paying them off as quickly as possible, using the cash flow of them to buy more.

So I'm wondering, so it's kind of cool that we're talking to you and I just wrote that post. But why is that the strategy you chose? I mean, a lot of people we interview on the podcast are like, you know, they're buying dozens of houses every month and they're flipping and they're wholesaling and they're doing all this stuff. and there's working so hard. Why do you choose to kind of take it more easily and buy them slower once every five years, pay them off? Well, you know, we don't do real estate investing full time. My husband is a professional pianist entertainer, and I am a professional sign language interpreter. We absolutely love our careers.

And we have the real estate, and we absolutely love our real estate, and we love working it together. And it comes to a matter of where we put our interoperate. and efforts. And we like to keep all of our rental properties close to our home. We like to own and manage our own properties. We enjoy working with people. We enjoy the concept of landlording. And it works for us. We also, you know, are in our 50s now, our late 50s, I might say. And so, you know, that has something to do with it, too, you know, because in terms of the security of certain investments. And we're building our portfolio for our retirement cash flow. Yeah.

I like that. I like that. I really do. I mean, I think people get so caught up in the idea of all these cool strategies that we talk about and that are possible. Right. I mean, there's hundreds of ways to make money in real estate and people just get so excited about that. But in reality, like what you're doing is amazing. It's awesome, right?

It's just building wealth slowly, one house, one property at a time. And I think that's great. And let me add to that. I mean, I think something else comes into play here. Marcia said that she and her husband both love their jobs. which you'll find a lot of people. In fact, the front page of Bigger Pockets is this lady trying to escape out of a cubicle. A lot of people hate their jobs, but there are a lot of people who love it.

So those folks sit and say, well, can I not be an investor? Of course you can. There's a way to do it. There's a way to love your job and go out and buy it. And maybe you're not going to be as aggressive. And so I think it's fantastic that you take it piece by piece, little by little, and grow. And, you know, you're ultimately, I'm going to say, delicately. You're closer to retirement than I am. So, so, you know, and some people might say,

hey, well, when you're closer to retirement, shouldn't you be accelerating? And presumably you guys have been, you know, financially responsible and have been putting money away. So, you know, it looks like you're not in a rush to do anything. So, you know, ultimately your strategy should be reflective of where you are and what you're trying to do. So, yeah. Yeah. All my life, I have always made more money than I spent. And I love that. And I am not one to hold debt. We maintain FICA scores at around 800, which allows us to get really good rates when we do go out for loans and to get really good prices on things that we're buying. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, you know, it's funny this morning, Brandon and I were having a conversation about that very post that he had written. And he had talked

about some of the comments that he had gotten. And a fair amount of the comments were people talking about, well, I have a, you know, we're a family of four. How do we put money away? That's impossible. You just can't possibly do that. And Brandon and I were talking about it. And, you know, I've got three kids. So I'm a, you know, we're a family of five. It's not easy. It's not easy. But, you know, I think ultimately, and listen, you know, some folks who are really making minimum wage, you know, it would be challenging on a minimum wage job for one person. You know, you'd probably have to do some kind of side jobs and other things. But I think, and I believe we had talked about it is the richest man in Babylon, right,

Brandon, that they talk about the first dollar that you make should go towards paying yourself and paying yourself means putting money away for savings. And so I've always followed that planned myself. And, you know, sometimes it makes for skinny months. I'm not spending money on Starbucks like Brandon. But I think, you know, I think if we all you know, stop and look at our financial pictures, I'd say the vast majority of people can probably find a way, even if you're in minimum wage, put away $10 a month. You know, just something so that you start training yourself to put money away and put that first dollar away and start to build up that savings. That's all you have to do. And an emergency fund is critical. And I would say before you

invest in real estate, make sure you have your emergency fund in place. And different, you know, people have different ideas of what that might look like. Some say, oh, six months income, some say eight months income, some say 10 months income. Whatever it is, have an emergency plan in place. And when you're in real estate investing, you have to have those resources available for anything that comes up as well. Yeah, that's excellent, excellent advice. Yeah, I think, I guess this is the Marcia's show, not the Brandon show, but if I could just offer my advice out here real quick, this is what I tell people all the time, is that going back to what we talked about a few minutes ago about, you know, you're investing on the side. It's part-time. This isn't your full-time

gig and you love your job. So I would recommend people do a job that you absolutely love. If that job happens to be flipping, if it happens to be wholesaling, if it happens to be creative real estate investing, then do that. But invest in real estate on the side, no matter what you do. So you could be flipping houses and investing in real estate on the side because you could be wholesaling and investing in real estate on the side. You could be a sign language interpreter and rental properties are investing on the side. So do something that you love to do. make decent money at it, and then just live frugally or at least live smart like you're doing. And yeah, you can do amazing things.

I think you don't have to flip houses or wholesale just to, you know, make it someday and wealthy. But some jobs, admittedly, some jobs that people love to do don't pay anything. Yeah. Yeah, but it's true. But I really think, like, I don't know, this goes back to the, what's that game called Cashflow 101, the game by Robert Kiyosaki, you made that game. Anyway, in that board game, like you start out as a character. You can pick a janitor. You can pick a, like you get a character at random and you make a certain amount of income. And almost all the time, the janitor making like 20 something thousand a year at the beginning of

the game can retire or win the game just as easily, if not easier than lawyer can who's making five times more. It's not about how much you make. It's about how much you keep or in how smart you are in handling it. That's my two cents. I don't know. Marsha, what do you think? Well, and that is absolutely true. Money management matters, and it means matters in that it's important, and money management matters in terms of all the things that you have to do. And if you don't put some effort and resources in honing a system and organization, a way of keeping track of your money, a way of investing it wisely, then you're going to folly at some point.

And I think that the whole idea of what our approach is, not only are we doing real estate investing, but we are providing homes for people to live in. And we do have a mission statement, and that is we strive to provide safe, clean, affordable, comfortable, and quiet housing for responsible renters in the neighborhoods of West Vancouver. And so we have a real people focus in our business, and we partner with community partners, such as the local housing, law enforcement, you know, a number of missions in the area where we live so that we're part of this community fabric. And that's real important to us too. Can you talk about that mission statement a little bit more? Is that something that you guys had

up front or did that develop over time? Do you recommend a new investor create a mission statement? What are your thoughts on the whole thing? Absolutely. I think you should have a mission statement. I think you, What happened is that after I married into the business and we started talking as a family, and then my husband and I decided to do some investing on our own, we decided to take a marketing class. And that was a very good thing to do. And in the marketing class, they helped us focus on who is our ideal client and how are we going to market to that individual. And then what would be the one thing that we can say?

I have it on my business cards. I tell people, oh, yes, I invest in real estate. this is what we do. When we first came up with our mission statement, we strive to provide. At first, we had said, we provide. And someone in my local rental association said, well, you can't guarantee safety. I thought, you're right. And then my husband and I, and we love to travel, and we're on the plane. And there the president of one of the airlines comes up and says, we strive for safety. And I think, okay, great, that's the word that used, because that's what we're, we're striving to provide safe, clean, affordable, comfortable, and quiet housing.

And we strive to that. And then all of our policies and procedures then develop around those particular values we have. And when we go out and market, when we talk to people in the tenant screening phase, then we say, do you share our values? You know, how do you feel about this and this? And that gets into a real good conversation. And we're able to have much more success in picking good renters, renters that are appreciative of being where they are, who we appreciate having there. Yeah, I really like that. I love that idea of having a mission statement that says, here's what we stand for, here's what we believe. Do you share those values with us? And I think that's awesome. And on a larger scale, I mean, if you're going to expand, if somebody's listening

to the show who maybe has a lot of rentals or wants to get a lot of rentals, the nice thing about that is that you get that mission statement up front and then all your employees and all your contractors and all your everyone, they understand that this is what we care about. This is what matters to us. We don't care about. It's not, we strive, we strive to give cheap, low class, you know, dirty properties because that's the cheapest way to, you know, like, like, that's, like, I've, I've dealt with handymen in the past who that's what they believe that we're, oh, we're a landlord. We want cheap. We want ugly. We want whatever's going to get us the quickest, you know, fix for now. You know, grab,

some duct tape around that pipe because that's going to $10 instead of 50. So the idea of having a mission statement that you put out there into the universe, so to speak, it lets everyone know this is what we stand for. And I think that is an amazing tip. So yeah, thank you for sharing that. That's great.

Well, everyone needs to start with a dream. Yeah. And then after that, you visualize your dream, you set up measurable goals, and then you take action, you know,

and a lot of people aren't taking the action that they need to. And then you need to reflect upon that action that you've taken. And then you need to improve upon that. And our mission statement will change over time. If we decided to expand beyond the neighborhoods of West Vancouver, of course, then we'd have to expand our mission statement. And that might come in sometime. That's cool.

Hey, just to repeat what you said there, because I love that. I just want to make sure I have this right. You said, number one, you dream. And then you said you set goals. And that was the third one. Do you remember what you said? You take action. Take action. Yeah, I love that. And then reflect. And then reflect. And then you have to have that moment of reflection. And what's key to all of this is that you have to do it with such integrity. You have to landlord with integrity. You have to be honest with yourself. And you have to be honest with those that you work with. And you need to go forward. And if something's not working, you know, or if you don't have the resources to do something, then face that back and then do something about it. And then that's the moment of reality, that reality check, where then you can step forward

and improve upon what you're doing. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so I'm going to write that down again, dream goals, action, reflection, and improve. Definitely, I love that. And I am going to put that in the show notes as well. So people make sure you check out the show notes and kind of get those five action steps down. I really, really like that a lot. So cool.

Well, one thing you mentioned I loved also is landlording with integrity. I think we should spend a little bit of time talking about that because landlords in our industry have a really bad name, a bad impression people have with us. So what do you mean by landlording with integrity and how does that work? Well, this is a people business. For me, it is. People are so important and the relationships that you establish. And starting out with integrity means that you yourself have a quality of being honest and you have a quality of having some strong moral principles that you stand behind. Honest, you're fair, you're ethical in how you're sincere, you're truthful, you're scrupulous. And then those are the, that's what you value,

that's what you bring to it. And then your actions have to show that. So you have to have a consistency of carrying through from your values into your actions and your interactions with all people that you're working with. And it's not just in working with the tenants. It's also working with your business partners, working with your vendors, working with the community leaders, going out, you know, working with law enforcement in your area, working with the housing programs in your area, working with your neighborhood associations. And you carry that through in everything that you do and it becomes part of the fabric of who you are and how you operate. And then you make decisions that are in alignment with that.

That's cool. And I'm assuming then as a result of that, you get tenants, hopefully, that are the same way. They're tenants with integrity. I mean, that's the hope, hope, right? Well, one of the things that we do is we specialize in low-income housing, as well as mid-income housing. We do both. And not all of our tenants have been raised in a family of integrity. Not all of our tenants have been raised to understand how to be a tenant and how to be a good tenant. And so then part of what I do is I put forth, okay, these are our expectations. This is how you can meet our expectations. If they deviate from that, then bring them back into an alignment. In 19 years with 15 rental units, we've only had to do two evictions. And that's pretty

good odds for that. And both of those, you know, it was a very heart-wrenching process to go through. however we followed through on what we said we were going to do and we stood with integrity and both of those tenants you know interacted with us even through the eviction process in a very positive way yeah and that is so important i know as a landlord i oftentimes get really you know i don't want to be the good guy the nice guy when dealing with those kind of emotional issues and a tenant's trying to screw me over because they do and and when they like i just want to like you know i just want to be a jerk to them uh but at least if i can hold up the integrity on my side of things. You know, I can't, I can't do anything about what they're

going to do. They're going to do whatever they're going to do for the most part. But if I, if I can keep my hands clean on my side, then at least they can never come back to me and say it was my fault that anything of this happened. And it all comes down to it. It's all about choices. And we bring that to our tenants. We'll say, you know, you have some options. You can choose this or you can choose that. And if you don't want to choose this, then maybe the choice you're making is to find another place to live. This isn't working for us, you know, or if you're asking for these things from us and this is not what we have set out to provide, then, you know, maybe you need to make different choices. And it's amazing how many times when you give back to the tenants and you say, listen,

I'm going to be open and honest with you. I'm going to treat you with respect. I'm going to be fair in my dealings with you. I'm going to do things that will help, you know, share. You know, show you that I value you. And you can choose to accept that or not, your choice. And most people are, you know, do choose to work with us and work very well with us in that process. Some of the things that I've learned in talking with tenants about different things, if they ask me to do something, even in the interview process for the application process, or after they're one of our tenants, they asked me to do something that I don't want to do,

that it's not in our line of doing, or I've decided not to. I might say that would be very difficult for me. It would be very difficult for me to do that. I rarely ever say no. And I learned that from some cultural things that I learned about Japanese culture, about never saying no.

Interesting. You know, it's very, that would be very difficult for me. Or I'm not prepared. to do that. But what I am prepared to do is this and whatever it is. And you negotiate. Everything's negotiable. And then if somebody wants to work with you, great. If they don't, you know, it is what it is. And you move on. Yeah. I like that. Funny me and Josh were just talking about this morning about kids when you're, when you tell kids no flat out. It's oftentimes very difficult where if you can give them, we'll hear your options, you know, choose A, B, or C. And you may mention

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You also mentioned, you know, not all tenants are raised understanding how to be a good tenant, understanding how to be even like a productive member of society. Sometimes I notice some people, they just, they weren't raised that way. How do you as a landlord? Are there any specific things you can help, like, you know, help people with on how do we train a tenant to become a better, you know, do you sit down with them and walk them through some kind of like rent talk or anything like that? Or just what's your process? Well, one of the things that I did is I volunteered down at our local housing authority and teaching some classes to people who've screwed up their rental history, you know, people who did the wrong thing. And it was called a Second Steps program.

getting a second chance at housing. And I taught a class on money management matters, but the two most popular classes were the initial inquiry and interview, how to present yourself when you're out looking for rental, you know, how to evaluate what would be a good home for you, what kind of questions to ask, and what kind of information to share with the landlord being truthful about your past history if it wasn't so good. Some of the people in the class had felonies on their records or had evictions on their records or other very undesirable things, how to present that in a way so that you can move forward and put that in your past. And then I also taught a class in the local program on how to establish and maintain good landlord-tenant relationships. While I was teaching this class,

it just struck me how many people there had never ever learned how to be a good tenant. And they didn't realize that they as a tenant are as valuable as to the landlord as the landlord is to them, you know, that both need each other. I as a landlord need good tenants. Tenants need good landlords. Yeah, yeah. I think part of the hard part is as a landlord were vilified. And I think it's rightly so in many cases.

some cases. But, you know, I also think that there's this, yeah, man, this is going to go the wrong place. But, you know, there's a lot of entitlement in society and things like that. And I, I absolutely agree that the job of a landlord is to provide a good, safe, clean place for their tenants to live. And the people who don't do that, do an injustice to everybody. However, there's also those professional tenants and bad tenants who, you know, you can provide them the cleanest, safe is, best property to live in. And no matter what you do, no matter how much you respect them, they're not going to respect you.

And, you know, it creates just this, there's problems. And it's never going to be a perfect system for anyone. I would say you always need to take the high road, even when you're faced with that type of individual. Yeah. And realize that your tenant screening process, of course, I know many, many people have talked about that. And it's essential.

That's where it all be. begins and is with a really good tenant screening. And we have three phases to our tenant screening. One is the telephone interview where we do the screening and the interview. The second is the showing of the property where we do our observations. We're observing. We're getting a lot that way of more knowledge about the person who's interested in our property. And also we're having conversations. And then the third part is the written application and all the background checks and really being thorough in that. And when you shortchange yourself in any of those steps,

then you can get into a situation where you have an undesirable person living there, undesirable because they're not following the property rules. They're not following the terms of the agreement. And at that point, you know, the deal is off because we start with an agreement and if we bring people back to the agreement again and again until they get it right. and if they don't get it right, they're on their way. Now, I've mentioned that we've only had two evictions in 19 years, but there have been many times when I've just said to the person, it looks like it's not working out for you and it's not working out for us either. Let's sit down and work out a

move-out plan. Yep. I think that. And then we go from there. I think that's an awesome, awesome idea. That's one of the reasons that I originally did only month-a-month leases. Now I do, you know, I'm starting to do more annual, but I did that because I wanted the ability just to say, hey look buddy this isn't working out let's talk about ending your lease and having you move out um i paid people to move before that hurts the pride a little bit but i've you know it saved me a lot of money and lawyer fees and wrecked houses and um yeah i mean it works out and then and then i'm also not you know when you go through an eviction like eviction is the very last thing i ever want to do for something not yeah not just because it costs me a lot of money but because it wrecks their future

for a long time so like that's the last case scenario i try to do everything i can before that and maybe that just drives me a little crazy, but I think that comes back to the integrity, landlording with integrity thing is don't always, yeah, I mean, we are in a position of power as landlords, and we are in a position to help people, and we're obviously further along in financial, I don't know what you'd call it, a stability, so maybe there's something that we can help them with, and I think that's maybe not our job, but maybe it's a society responsibility. I don't know. So going back to- And really quick, I mean, I agree for the most part.

I do as somebody who has seen the absolute worst in people in tenants that I've dealt with, you know, I get that there are folks in a position that deserve a second chance. Absolutely. Yeah. And at the same time, you know, there are also those folks who are out there looking to take advantage of landlords. And their mission is to get away with what they can get away with. And, you know, there's no answer to that problem, unfortunately. I think the only answer is good screening and good screening, good screening,

and talking to previous landlords and, frankly, you know, doing your diligence. And the only way to stop those people from doing what they do is to get them, to evict them, and to, you know, shout and scream from the top of your lungs to anybody who calls and asks how this guy was as a tenant and let them know exactly how they were. because I don't know. I mean, otherwise, who's the next victim? Who's the next victim? And then ultimately, you know, does that person end up homeless?

No, at some point, somebody's going to rent to them. And at some point, again, they're probably going to take advantage of them. And I guess the key is, as a real estate investor, making sure you're not that person. Absolutely, yes. And being open and honest with other landlords as well who call you for references, I can't tell you how many times we rent to people and they move on somewhere else and nobody calls us for a reference. None. None at all. And I'm thinking what's going on here? Even our good tenants, you know, people aren't calling for references, which makes me think that there are a lot of landlords who aren't doing all their due diligence. Yeah, I said this before on a recent podcast. I think it was, I think in my eight years of doing this with, you know, 50, 40 some rentals now.

I've gotten like four phone calls in eight years from references asking about, I mean, like, it's insane. I mean, I've been through hundreds of tenants now and I've had four phone calls. Yeah, that's crazy. It just shows that 96% of landlords are not doing references, which is the number one probably most important part of the entire screening process. It, you know, arguably is the number one most important thing is how have they been because that's how they're going to be. And that's why you're finding and buying cheap properties because they're out of the business. Yep. And because those are the properties that people, they can't, they don't stay landlords because they can't. And those are the folks who, you know, not to turn this into a big fat ad,

but those, I mean, those are the people who we as a community need to be bringing on to bigger pockets and get them tuning into this show, you know, to learn these things so that they can learn to help themselves. Because I really do think it's a shame. You know, you find so many people or like accidental landlords or, you know, hobby landlords. I was one of them when I started, you know, I mean, I thought I knew what I knew. And that's why we have bigger pockets, thank God. But, but, you know, there's so many people who are in a position where, you know, they're getting burned left and right, or they don't know what they're doing,

or they just don't have the time or energy to figure it out. And, you know, sadly, they're the ones who are getting taken advantage of or who are making really bad financial decisions. I wish somebody could go and do a survey, and maybe that's us at some point, to find out what percentage of landlords are maybe happy landlords. Not that they're happy in life or what they do, but they're not just hating what they do because they're lost. And I bet you, if more people kind of took the approach that you take, Marsha, which is treat people well, and I, and, you know, just be careful. Just be careful.

Absolutely. And, you know, in my background, I had worked 14 years in hospital management and in the risk management department and in patient relations department, as well as in for 10 years for a national sporting goods company in their customer service department. And what you learn, what I bring to my landlording skills is that knowledge of, I can see through people pretty well, you know, and I know what questions to ask in order to ferret out the people who are trying to snow me in some way. Yeah. And I'll catch them right in there, but I'll do it in a, you know, I'll still have a smile on my face and I'll say, well, you know, it's just not going to work for us. Good luck. Oh, that's your situation. Hey, have you seen this website? There might be somebody out there

who will have something for you, you know, looking, you know, you know, sort of give them other resources to to follow. But those customer service skills are really, really important to, um, to roll out in every case. I've mentioned that before that I'm always blown away at the lack of customer service skills at every property management, uh, you know, company in my town. Like, they'll answer the phone just, what? Like, it's just like angry phone go. Yeah. What do you want? How you're doing? You're bothering me. Yeah. So, do you have any, do you have any good, like, man, good. what are some red flags that you see in those tenants? What stands out to you when a tenant calls you that you go,

oh, this is going to be one of those tenants that I'm going to have to refer to someone else? What stands out to you? Well, I have a pretty thorough telephone screening and an interview process. And then when I pick up on something, I'll ask a question a little bit different way to ferret out more information. And mostly you just ask one open-ended question. and you let them talk. And a lot of people will dig themselves in.

It's hard to come up with, you know, just all the different kinds of red flags that I see. If you look in a lot of real estate books, they have a lot of red flags. A lot of people on Bigger Pockets talk about red flags. But what I'm looking for, are they communicating with me in a respectful manner? Are they communicating me in an honest manner? And I don't know if they're being honest or not at that point, but I do let them know that I am very good at doing my background checks. And you'd be surprised how many people just drop out right then. Yeah.

And I put it out there. But, you know, that customer service piece is even, I've had a tenant yell in my face that I was evil. I was a witch, you know. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, you know. And you just let it roll. you'd be flexible and you say, yeah, I had to call the police because I were concerned for the health and well-being of your children.

Yeah. You know? And I'm the witch, right? And I'm the witch. And then when the police arrived and they went after her, you know, I mean, her children were in endangerment, you know. And so you put it all into perspective and you say, you know what? You know, I care about you.

I care about your children. and the reason that I do the things that I do is for us to have, you know, a safe situation here as much as can be. And, you know, it's not easy. I mean, I've gotten real frustrated with some tenants before and I just have to take a time out, just calm down and learn how to. Can you teach my kids that skill? Not react. Yeah. Yeah.

And to do as much preparation in advance and sort of think through after a lot of experience, you get to be able to. anticipate the moves and the counter moves. I look at it like much like a chess game. Every move that you make, there's going to be a counter move. And you need to be prepared for that. And you need to be looking, you know, three, four, five steps ahead as to this move is going to bring this counter move. And understanding human nature, understanding tenant mentality. And even in working with people who get public entitlements, you know, and I don't really like that word in time entitlement. I use like they get public benefits of some sort. Okay. So there are people who abuse that system, no doubt. But there are a lot of really well deserving people who are dependent on that system

and do contribute in their own way to the health of the community. Yeah. Agree. Hey, I'm wondering, I know we got to, you know, slowly set to wrap this up, but I'm wondering, going back to what you talked about you have the three-step process basically that you have a phone interview you have the in-person observation and then you have the actual you know application background checks all that kind of thing i'm wondering uh just because this is a pain point for me as a landlord when i get a phone call from a tenant or from a prospective tenant they call me and they want to go look at a property and i go show it to them first of all half the time they don't show up and then the people who do show up half the time, they're clearly not qualified, despite me telling my qualification records,

requirements over the phone. Do you have any good tips on how to not waste time as a landlord showing units that should have never been shown in the first place or getting through the screening process and wasting your time? Like, how do you handle those phone calls? Well, my five-minute screening usually eliminates a lot of people, but first off, I put up on my online ads as much information I can about a rental criteria, but I don't have it all. But I do have that rental criteria available at the showing in its full, you know, form. However, in the telephone screening, I will ask enough questions. And the key areas, I'm going to ask about a little bit about who they are, why they're looking now, what kind of features they're looking for to see if it's going to be a good

match for them and a good match for us. And then I'm going to go into a little bit about rental history. and about income and about credit history and about legal history. And I don't shy away from any of my questions, and I ask three or four questions in each of those categories. And I am honest with people, you know, and I say, you know, that's going to be a deal breaker for us. I'll just say it just like that. Well, hmm, that's going to be a deal breaker for us because we don't rent to smokers, for example. Or that's going to be a deal breaker for us, you know, whatever.

And then I'll say, however, I, you know, I know somebody who does, you know, rent to people who have horses or whatever it is, you know. But is that a protected class now? Yeah. Horse owners, right? But in that whole process. And I don't usually show the place to somebody who doesn't pass our telephone screening. Sometimes there'll be somebody who insists. But that got scary one time for me.

Because there was a person, because while I'm telephone screening, I must mention, I'm at my office with my computer. And I'm already looking them up on the legal records in my area. And I can pull up all sorts of information. I have an unlawful detainer booklet for our county that goes back seven years and I'm lawful detainers. So as I'm talking and doing the telephone screening, I will be bringing up information. And then if I see something, I might just sort of ask them this question, well, can you tell me about, you know, this, you know, and usually it is them. Sometimes it's somebody with a similar name, so you have to be careful there. But then I'll sort of bring it up right at that point. Well, one time there was a person who was really, really pushy, who wanted to see one of our houses. Well, I pulled up the legal record and she had had personal injury claims history on a whole lot of people. including some management companies for some property owners. And I knew that if she even came to my place, just to see it.

It was just to see it. There might be a possibility that she would claim an injury. And even if it was unfounded and all of the cases I was reading about were unfounded, then I would still have to go through a legal process that I just did not want to do. That's scary. And that's a really, really good warning. So let's just really, really quickly repeat to people who are listening. You're going through the unlawful detainer record.

That's not where you're finding the information on the personal injury, though, is it? No, I'm looking up at some court information. Okay. And where is there a specific website? Certain states have easier access to court information than others. So there isn't anything I could say that would apply to the audience of bigger pockets. But generally. You're looking county courts or state courts?

I'll start out with. Yeah, I'll start out with Washington State Courts. Okay. And it won't give me everything on that site. And they've closed down a lot of things that used to be more open. But even if I, certain court records are available for viewing of the public if you go down to the courthouse. Hopefully, you don't have to get to that point. Yeah.

But it's just that, you know, when people start asking me questions in a way that start shooting off multiple red flags, and then I'm seeing just how many times that they were, you know, either a defendant or a plaintiff in Superior Court, then that's going to sort of clue me in that I need to dig deeper. Okay, so I can dig deeper, you know, in terms of my interview on the phone. And it gets really touchy because, you know, some people say, well, you can't discriminate. You can't, you know, you have to allow everybody to have an application. You have to allow everybody to see your property. and I haven't bought into that.

You know, everybody has a right to seek out housing, you know, and then I have a right to say, well, this is my minimum criteria to rent. And if you share something with me that off the bat shows that you're not going to meet our minimum criteria, you know, I don't have to get out of my office and go down and show me my place. Yeah, and as long as you're just, you know, following all not discriminating against protection. classes and anything else, then you have a right to screen how you see fit as long as it's within the law. And I don't see an issue doing what you do whatsoever. In fact, I think it's probably a smart and safe way to go. And if there's any lawyers out there who would care to prove that that's not true, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it. But the key is to ask the same questions

of every single person who inquires. Yep. I think, you know, I think you hit it really well. I mean, I'm going to have my wife and my, you know, the lady who answers all our phone calls both listen to this interview just because I want, like, you know, they do the majority of the answering the phones. And I know we waste a lot of time with tenants that we should never show properties to. So I like your idea of, you know, spending a lot more time digging in on the initial phone call. You know, I think what we do a lot more of is, you know, well, here is the property. Here's a description. Here is our qualifications. Three times monthly rent, no felonies. You know, would you like to see the property? But I think.

a little bit deeper digging in the beginning also would help probably weed out those who are just tire kickers. You know, like they don't want to waste their time on a five-minute phone call call if they're calling 30, you know, ad or phone numbers in the newspaper. So that's great, really great. Yeah. Cool. Last question from me and then we'll probably move on. Do you, I'm wondering how you advertise your vacancies. I mean, are you doing Craigslist or newspaper? Oh, we've done a number of things over the years. You know, in the old days, we used to, you know, put a sign up, then the internet. I mean, we started doing rental property before the internet, too, on my in-law side.

And they used to use the newspapers, but of course, that's not used anymore. Everything's online these days, it seems. And we find that one of my favorite, favorite websites is Padmapper, P-A-D-M-A-P-E-R.com, Padmapper. And I refer a lot of people who are seeking housing to Padmapper because it takes its listings from Craigslist. from Padlister, from for rent, from housing connections, from a number of online sources. And that's a great thing. So I might list on Padlister, which is related to Padmapper, or most often in my area, Craigslist works. But Craigslist is a place you have to be very, very careful because there's a lot of scammers

that work Craigslist. And so if you go that route, however, I used to put out signs as well each time. but usually the people who saw the signs, they didn't know anything about the property because they hadn't looked at the ad. And if I did have a sign, I'd have to say, please look at the ad first

so that before you talk to me. But now I found this last time I had two vacancies, I put an ad up at 8.30 p.m. on a Sunday on Craigslist and said to only call between 8 and 8 p.m. and 8 p.m. The next day the phone rang. I had two days of phone calls. Then Tuesday I showed it.

And Wednesday, I had three applications. And Thursday, I was doing the background checks and made the offers on Friday. And I had somebody move in on Saturday morning. Oh, cool. And it just happens that quick. But there were, for those ads, there were probably over 100 phone calls that came in. And so you have to dedicate yourself. to be ready to answer the phone.

Once you put the ad out, you have to be ready, and you have to be streamlined enough to go through the calls really quick. Yeah, that's great. Awesome. Well, I think it's great, and I think there's a lot of great info that folks can learn.

I think I want to reiterate something that you said that I think was extremely important, which is make sure that you screen everybody uniformly. That way nobody's got any excuse or reason why they can say, oh, well, these are the six questions I got, and they seem pretty, you know, pretty weird. And suddenly, you know, they go and find out that you're asking varying questions to varying people. And arguably, somebody can go up and say that you're trying to discriminate for whatever reason. And clearly you're not. So, you know, just kind of wanted to reiterate that.

And otherwise, you know, again, I think just being careful, you know, we, I try as much as possible to tell people to be safe. There really are a lot of scammers out there. And finding a way to make sure that those folks don't show up in your properties is really, really important. And make sure also when you go show the property that someone else knows that you're going to show the property and who you're showing the property to and have that information. I had one time when I was showing a property and the person started to get. a little out of hand while I was showing it and started yelling at me because I was asking too many questions and this and that and she was just totally going off base. Well, the gal who helps us with

our properties was nearby in ear range and she immediately came up the door. Everything all right? You know, knocked on the door, everything all right? I said, we were just leaving and left out. And I said, you know what, I'm going to give you your application and your application money back because we're not going to process this application. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Good stuff.

Good stuff. Well, I think it's. It's time for the fire round. All right, the fire round, these questions all come from the Bigger Pockets Forum. So I'm going to fire match you and see what you say. Number one, somebody calls you from out of state and wants to pay the full lease in advance. Are you comfortable with that? And what would you do?

Two words, Pacific Heights. Absolutely no. Funny thing I've never actually seen Pacific Heights, even though everyone tells me I need to. But is that what happens on there? Well, he pays way in advance and, yeah. So somebody calls from out of state. Okay, let me back up.

Come on. Tell us the story. We're too young. No, no, no. You can get it on DVD. You can download it on the Internet, I'm sure. It's a great show. It's a thriller.

It's a landlording thriller. And you've got to see it if you work with in the realm of landlording. If a person calls from out of state and you're saying that they want to see the property, they want to pay down property unseen. Is that what I heard? They want to pay in advance. Yeah, yeah, exactly. A year in advance, yeah.

Well, one thing, we only do month-to-month rental agreements. Okay. For two, if I did enter into a longer, lease arrangement, I would still have them pay the monies month to month and not in advance. And if they're from out of state and I haven't been able to properly vet them and go through the, I can, I have rented to people who moved in from out of state. I have no problem with that. But if they're out of state, they need to go through my application process. And my application process does require me to meet them at the property as well as have them fill out all the

applications and for me to check their ID and all of that. But if they called from out of state, I'd do the interview with them on the phone. And I'd say, when will you be in town? And go from there. That's great. That's great. What's your best landlording tip for turning a rental unit over? This is a good one because we just finished a turnover in two weeks.

And we usually take more like two months. So, yeah, we have not been so good in our history of turning properties over real quick. And my husband is a professional P&S entertainer, as I told you, and I'm a professional sign language interpreter, so our hands and fingers are very important to us. So we do not try to get into anything that can damage us and our hands, the tools of our trade. And so the best tip is to get a really good team in place. and bring them in to have a process. You have to have a process of, you know, you trash out and then you, you know,

you do certain things in a certain order. Yeah, yeah. And that works best. And you have a timeline too. And we recently read an article in one of our local landlord newspapers about how to turn a place in three days. So we posted it up in our mirrors, you know, in our, we're brushing our teeth. We're going to, okay, we're going to do it in three days.

time. Well, we couldn't because we had to replace floor covering and everything. But you have to stay on it and have a good team in place. Yeah. No, that's great. And I'm glad you came across that article because I didn't wrote it. No, I didn't write it. I'm just kidding. No, I'm glad you came across that article because I, you know, when I hear two weeks, I start having palpitations. That, you know, unless there's floor covering or something, I mean, you know, a pretty extreme. I think that's a, even two weeks is a pretty long time for a turnover. Well, and part of it is because it depends on the extent of if it's just a turnover or is it a rehab turnover. There's a difference.

No, I agreed, agreed. The apartment we just finished needed all new paint, ceiling, walls, all new floor covering all new countertops, etc. Yeah. So it's certainly going to take longer. Yeah. I'm probably like an average of a week, probably a turnover unit. I'm guessing beginning and end. If it needs like new carpet and stuff, maybe two weeks, you gotta wait for the carpet guy.

But anyway, that's cool. All right, question number three, if you wanted to raise rents on your tenants, how do you inform them? Do you have any good tips on informing tenants? Their rent is going up? Yeah, I just use a standard form that I filled out called a rent raise letter. And in it, I tried not to say too much because you don't need to say too much. Simplicity is good in this case. tenants don't really want to know all your reasons why you're feeling the need to raise the rent.

And then I time it so that if I like to do most of my rent raises in May, effective May 1, I just sort of like May Day, you know, I like that. And if people decide that they don't want to go along with it, it's easier to rent at that time of year. If I need to turn the apartment over. But I don't raise rent every year. and that's the one. My longest term tenant is with us 26 years. Wow.

And that's good. And we have a number of other tenants who've been over 10 years with us. And their rents are not way below market, but they might not be right at market. They're like $30 off market right now, which is not much. And so we have raised. When I do do a rent raise, I usually combine it with some kind of upgrade in their apartment at the same time. something that I've already been thinking about doing.

And I do that upgrade and then I do the rent raise. And for some reason, the tenant seems to equate, well, I am getting something better, you know, and it makes sense that I have to pay more now. Yeah, cool. Right on. All right. Your tenant pulls up and parks his 18-foot boat in the front of your property. What do you do?

We have in our rental agreement rules about parking. and about things that can fit in a standard parking space or not. Yeah. And if the vehicle is brought onto the premises, then they'd be in violation of our rental agreement. And they would get what we call a parking violation. A move it or lose it warning. A little form that I have that I put out and I talk to them about it. And I say, so you're going to need to find another place for your boat.

Now, one of our tenants happens to be a long-distance truck driver. And he parks his 18-wheeler on a side street where he's allowed to by in our city in this particular spot, not all places. But the person parked the boat in front of the property and they were in violation of the city ordinance. Then they would also be in violation of our rental agreement because in our rental agreement we have a term that they have to be in compliance with all city ordinances. And so we would inform them of the city ordinance. and we talk to them about moving it. There you go. Cool.

Right on. All right, good deal. Well, let's wrap this thing up and get to our favorite section of the show, which we affectionately call the... Famous Four. All right, the Famous Four. These questions we ask everyone, and I know you listen to our show,

so you know what's coming up. First question we have for you. What is your favorite real estate book? Landlording by Lee Robinson. And its subtitle is A Handy Manual for Scrupulous landlords and landladys who do it themselves. That was the very first book I ever had. It's had many editions.

And it is the tried and true one that I go back to more often than any other. Cool. I have not read that one yet. So I'll check it out. And there's another book that I found in the library that I liked. It's called The Landlords Handbook. Okay. And that is by Daniel Goodman and Richard Rustorf.

And its subtitle is a complete guide to managing small residential properties. Nice. Never heard of that one other. Yeah. Cool. Fabulous. All right. What about business books? Any favorite business books pop out? Well, the one that I have been reading this past year that I really like is called Your Best Year Yet. And it's by Ginny Ditzler. What's the premise? And its subtitle is the 10 questions that will change your life forever. Gotcha. And it has a lot about goals and goal setting. A lot of information there. on that. Another one I like is called the customer rules, and it's by Lee Cockerel, and it's subtitled the 39 essential rules for delivering sensational service. Nice. Nice. And then the last

one, oh, the list goes on. For everything for life is enthusiasm makes the difference by Norman Vincent Peel. Right on. Good choices. I have not heard of really any of those. I heard of a couple of them, but I've never read any of them. So I love new, new book recommendations. Always good. Right on, right on. What about hobbies? What do you do for fun, Marcia? Well, I like to travel. My husband is an employee with a cruise line, and he plays in there. I was wondering that earlier when you said he played piano and his entertainment. I thought, yeah, he's the piano bar entertainer for a major cruise line, so we get to go a lot of places. He's been doing that for over 10 years as well as locally. And I like outdoor human-powered sports.

I like yoga and meditation. And I like crossword puzzles and scrabble and chess and reading. But I mainly read for information, not novels. Right on. Oh, cool. You and I should play chess someday. We'll have fun. Oh, I love that.

I'm actually not very good at all. Actually, scrabbles my forte. I would take you on and scrabble. I'll never get at that either. but I have fun with it. All right, last question of the famous four. What do you believe sets apart successful landlords from those who fail? Belief in oneself, a supportive family and friends. And if you're not born into a supportive family and friends, you can quickly find a supportive family on bigger pockets. Let me tell you, when I discovered bigger pockets six months ago, I wondered what took me so long,

You know, and I have just been, I've been in the forum so much. I haven't even explored the depth of the website and all that you guys have set up for us. Really having integrity, being truthful and honest to yourself, knowing, when you go forth, know that you can do this and be honest with yourself. And if you're lacking something, go seek out what you're lacking. Nice. the information's out there. I like that. I like that,

especially the compliment on bigger pockets. I mean, I mean, we really, it really is kind of a family. You know, you got the guys who like to, you know,

yell and scream. You got the, you know, the drunken uncle. You got, you know, Brandon over there and you got all these.

Well, I'll tell you, my husband and I both work late and I sometimes get home before he does. Yeah. And when he comes in the house, he'll come back to my office and he goes, oh, are you on the computer with your bigger pocket friends again?

I go, yep. And when he goes out on the ship and we talk to each other, you know, every day when he's out on the ship, he'll be gone for, you know, 30 to 45 days at the time. And I will be at home running all the rental property business when he's gone. But we talk every day and then I'll share with him things I learned on bigger pockets. And then at one point, I found out he joined Pigger Pockets in order to watch what I was doing. Oh, he thinks you're cheating on him. He's not active. He's not active other than he reads Bigger Pockets.

He doesn't post, but he joined Bigger Pockets so he could see not to watch out on because we have a great, strong, trust. Just kidding, of course. But he was excited by what I was sharing with him. That's great. All right, Marsha, so before we let you go, where can people find out more information about you? You got a website or? I don't have a website. I don't have much of an online presence, but you can find me on bigger pockets.

And I'm very active in the landlord forum. That's great. And we do thank you for that. We do indeed. Yeah, you offer some really great advice. That's what stood out. That's why we asked you to be on the show because I know you offer a lot of great advice. Right on. Well, thanks so much, Marsha. We really, really do appreciate you being here today. And we also appreciate you getting involved in being active on the site. And we'll look forward to hearing about that next purchase in about a year.

Uh-huh. Well, we're already looking, we're already looking at properties now. Right on. 2015, then 2020. 2015, yeah, yeah. We might bump it up. Who knows? It's just the year that we buy. One time we bought an 8plex, who knows what we're going to buy next year. Yeah, go crazy. Go crazy. All right, Marcia. All right.

Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, bye. All right, guys, that was our interview with Marsha Maynard here on the Bigger Pockets podcast. You know, it's people like Marcia that make, I really do think that make Bigger Pockets a special place that it is. I love that she called it a family because I think a lot of us feel the same way. I know one of our previous guests called Bigger Pockets his mistress. So that was Michael Quarles.

Anyway, yeah, it makes me happy to hear that people feel that way and I appreciate it. Anyway, there's tons of great tips in today's show. And I definitely appreciate you guys having a listen. Yeah. And like we said in the introduction, I said earlier, if you want to download that exact questionnaire that Marcia uses to screen all of our tenants on the phone, just go to BiggerPockets.com slash show. 83 and I will put a link there so you can go download it. So definitely, definitely download that today.

Right on. Right on. And finally, if you're not following us on Facebook, Twitter Gplus, LinkedIn, YouTube, YouTube, that's right. Follow us on YouTube. Please do. Also, if you have not yet left us a rating on iTunes, we would really, really, really love it if you did that. We've got tens of thousands of listeners for each of our shows. And we're still under a thousand reviews on iTunes for the podcast. We'd definitely love to get that crunk up a little bit. So, again, if you have not yet done so, please do. Finally, and most importantly, if you walk away and do anything after listening to the show, please jump in, get active on bigger pockets. Don't be the black sheep of our family who sits on the outside. Yes, I'm talking to you. Yeah, yeah, feel guilty? Yeah, you should because you're not doing anything. Black sheep. Black sheep. Black sheep?

No. Listen, make an effort. Join the conversation. Start networking, learning, growing your business, engage. And it's not going to happen overnight, but by getting involved, he'll certainly reap the benefits. So don't just sit there with an empty profile. Have a profile that's filled out.

That's full of a cool conversation with people. Yep. That's it. Let's get out of here. This was episode 83 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. and I am your host, signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.

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