The Landlord Lens - Grow Your Property Investor Network

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Looking to grow your property investor network and connect with like-minded individuals? The new TurboTenant Better Landlords Forum is the perfect place to start! Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, this forum provides a space for landlords to share experiences, ask questions, and learn from one another. By joining, you’ll gain valuable insights into industry trends, discover new strategies for managing your properties, and build relationships with other property investors. Don't miss out on the chance to level up your landlord game and expand your network—sign up today!

I'm Krista and this is Jonathan and we're here to help you be a better landlord. Now Jonathan, we have been working on something very exciting here at TurboTenet, really centered on the idea of community. So could you please define community in your own words? I think of a community as somewhere where you can share your expertise, you can learn from other people's expertise. And you're right, we have been hard at work on this. The reason we decided to build it was that a lot of landlords tell us that they're kind of lonely.

We've covered before the negative perception of landlords, and I think, you know, we don't need to dive into that necessarily, but it can be a little bit lonely to be a landlord and to rent out property because people just assume the worst about you. It's true. It's true. And so having a group of like-minded people with similar goals could help flesh out what you want to do and get you the help that you need. So what are we launching here at TurboTenet to that end? We're launching the Better Landlords Forum, which is our forum on turbosenter.com. It is integrated right into everything else that we offer already. A totally free form.

People can join. People can post. People can comment. And they can just have a great time learning from other investors. We love to see it. Now, you are an aficionado of online communities. Do you have any stories about how an online community has positively impacted you or your business? Yes.

Yes, I do. I'm going to, once again, talk about the Dex subreddit. Are you ready? I'm holding on it. I know that I've actually talked about this in a previous be a better landlord. So I'm back. All right. So why is this cool?

Well, Reddit, if you're not familiar, it's just basically a giant complicated forum where you can sign up for subredits. Each subreddit is its own niche, its own topic. Some of them are super esoteric. Some of them are extremely specific. Decks, I would say is pretty specific. It's just about building decks. And I'm talking about like the deck, you know, behind your house or what I know. The reason I love it so much is because a deck seems so simple, right?

It's just a wood thing. You screw a bunch of wood together. You stand on it. You put chairs on it. You're off to the races. You're barbecuing on it. You can do anything on a deck. Exactly.

You can do anything on a deck. It seems simple. But then you look at what other people are making. There's crazy. You can do mitered corners. You have to have specific kinds of joists, specific joist hangers. There's a lot that goes into it. And I say this as a person who just built a deck.

and mine was very simple, but seeing other people's complicated decks and the conversations that arose actually helped a lot. That's amazing. And I think it so nicely translates into what we're hoping to build with the better landlords community. So my next question for you is, what should an inexperienced landlord expect to get out of joining our community? Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, as I said at the top, our hope with building this community is really for people to give their own thoughts and to absorb others' thoughts. So this is absolutely a place for beginners, just as well as it is for experienced landlords. We really want people to be able to say, hey, I've got this issue. Anyone have any feedback? Any experience? Has anyone else been here?

Because I guarantee they have. Here at TurboTenet, we have over 700,000 users using our software. That's a lot of people. I guarantee whatever issue that you as a landlord are facing, it's been faced by one of our many, many users, and hopefully this will be a great place for them to chime in and say, here's how I overcame it and offer some options. Absolutely. I think anytime you can bring together people's knowledge bases, everyone benefits. But I would say, what if I'm a more experienced landlord? And I'm thinking, what do I gain out of this forum? Can you speak to that person? Yeah, yeah. So experienced landlords, we want them in there too. They're the ones who will be imparting this wisdom, right? A lot of it is a hard-earned wisdom.

We know there are battles, there are trials and tribulations and real estate investing just like there are anything, any other endeavors. And hopefully this will be a great place for them to come in and say, here's how I did it. Here's how you should do it. And also just get a sense of community. You know, some of these landlords who've been at it a long time, we've seen from some user calls that they're kind of like, I don't know where to go now. I don't know what's next for me, right? And they may be looking at some of these more complicated topics and some other topics that we've covered. like self-directed IRAs or even estate planning. I know you did a webinar on that a few months ago.

So there are a lot of topics that for the beginning landlord, beginning investor, they may look at it and be like, ah, maybe I'm a ways off from that. I don't really need to cover that yet. But we've covered those already. We already have that stuff in place. I think veterans can learn a lot of these more complicated topics just like the newbies can. And again, it's a place for everyone. So a place for them to come in, to commiserate to we even have a section called anonymous venting. You just need to get something off your chest. You can post in there about that horrible thing that happened to you one time. And others can say, oh, that's rough.

That's pretty horrible. Yeah, I think one of my favorite features is the successes thread, a place for people to celebrate the things that are going well and to talk about what got them there. Do you have a favorite thread or topic in the forum? I would say immediate advice. I like that one a lot. I think that that is really going to be the most useful probably for a lot of our users where we know from landlording experience that when things happen, they happen fast.

So it might be, hey, what do I do? My tenants, ceiling is falling in or something else bad is happening, right? The neighbors keep complaining. They keep making noise complaints. How do I tackle this right now? And a lot of the things that they will bring up, it's going to be very obvious for us to say, call a handyman, call the police, hopefully not. but you never know. But that one, I think, will give a lot of peace of mind to investors, especially new ones who, you know, they went into it for the cash flow and they weren't ready for a problem tenant. That's where I think that this can help a lot. Absolutely. I'm quite excited to see what kind of conversation flourish. Also, spoiler alert, Jonathan and I are active in that forum. So if you've ever wanted to chat with us about anything, that is the place to go. We accept compliments, questions, and general feedback that is constructive. and kind. So please. But mostly the compliment. But mostly compliment. And it is actually us.

Yeah. We have tried, you know, the team behind the scenes has tried to make AI versions of us. It's just not the same. They don't capture any of our humor. None of our timing. It's a mess. It's just us. Just us. I'm really thrilled about the forum. So do you want to tell the people when it launches and how they can sign up? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, if you're watching this, it is live. Wow. So head over to servicenter.com slash community. that will get you onto the homepage. You can log in, you can make an account if you don't yet have a TurboTenant account,

but if you are an existing user, it's gonna be the exact same credentials to log you into the forum that it is to log you into all the awesome tools that TurboTenant already offers. So sign up, start checking it out. You can post, you can comment, you can say, hey, Krista, how's it going?

And she will respond. Yes, I will, and I won't use any swears. My final question for you for now, If you had to describe the forum in three words, what three words would you use? Cool and useful. That is three with conjunction. Yeah. And I even kind of wasted one of the words.

You did. Yeah. Wow. Jonathan, I know you've been grinding away at this project. I'm so excited to get users in there. Any final thoughts that you want to offer about the better landlords forum? Yes. So I would say one of the questions that came up early on in this project is why?

this, right? There's no shortage of forums. You've probably seen them out there. Some of them are super complicated. Some of them are, they get a little messy. There's been drama on Reddit. If you're a Reddit user, you know some of the mod drama over the last few years. But anyway, why would we create our own? And really, it's taking that Turbosent experience and just adding on to it. We've got all of the education that Krista and I and the rest of our team puts out. We also, of course, have all of our awesome tools that is the core of TurboTenant. And this is really rounding out that package. TurboTenant provides the easy all-in-one landlord software that 700,000 people across America enjoy every day. And now this makes a really cohesive place for all of those users and new

users to come in, explore what it is to be a landlord and to learn from others who have already done it. It's going to be thrilling. So please, come hop over turbotenet.com slash community. community. Jonathan, thank you for putting this together. Very exciting stuff. If you have any questions about our forum, feel free to drop them in the comments below or better yet, come ask them in the forum. Don't forget to like and subscribe. TurboTenant is the all-in-one platform for landlords to manage their rental properties. From vacancy to tenancy, we have you covered with industry-leading tools and expert advice. Landlord better from anywhere for free. at turbotenant.com.