January 31, 2024
Last Updated
In this week’s podcast, Andrew Schultz discusses tenants that like to break the no smoking clause that is clearly laid out in your lease agreement.
Find out how to do a final walkthrough with a tenant and how to use a move-out checklist while doing so.
And, last, but not least, discover how much of a premium you can add to a rental if it’s fully furnished with high-quality furniture.
Show Notes
Andrew Schultz (00:00:08):
Hi everybody. Welcome to the January, what is it, January 20, 24, <laugh>.
Josh Ungaro (00:00:20):
Yeah. 2024 baby.
Andrew Schultz (00:00:21):
We made it to 2024. I wasn’t sure if that was gonna happen or not, but we we, we managed to find our way through. It’s it’s been an eventful start to the year too, I would say.
Josh Ungaro (00:00:33):
Yeah. No kidding. We lemme
Andrew Schultz (00:00:36):
Just changing my screen around here a little bit. So Josh and I are up in, Josh is with me. Josh Ongaro is the marketing manager at Rent Prep. Yeah. Josh, thanks for joining me today.
Josh Ungaro (00:00:45):
Yeah, no problem. I’m excited. I didn’t have to you weren’t the solo starter for this. I was right on the screen to start the thing. I didn’t have to slide in. I love it. Right.
Andrew Schultz (00:00:55):
<Laugh>. Maybe we’ll start doing that going forward. So I love it. We’ll get to questions and stuff in a couple minutes. We got a bunch of good questions today, but like Josh and I were talking for a couple minutes before the start of the show and like, we’re in Buffalo. We’re in Buffalo, New York. For anybody who’s not aware, if anybody hasn’t turned on the news in the last couple of a couple of days, Buffalo has been hit by massive amounts of snow. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So like I am in a suburb of Buffalo. I’m just east of Buffalo in my office in cheek Dawaa. Josh is north of the city. You’re at home, right? Yep,
Josh Ungaro (00:01:31):
I’m at home.
Andrew Schultz (00:01:32):
And then the rent prep office is east of my office by a couple miles.
Josh Ungaro (00:01:38):
Yeah,
Andrew Schultz (00:01:39):
We have, and my house is like two miles south of, not even two miles south from my office. So even between like my house, we have like four and a half foot of snow at our house, and our office has probably three foot, like, just that little bit of drive. There was that much of a difference in the, in the snow band, the
Josh Ungaro (00:01:58):
Snow bands
Andrew Schultz (00:01:58):
Were, and that you got like nothing. Right?
Josh Ungaro (00:02:01):
Yeah. Originally. So I think, what was it, Monday or no, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week. The, I think the office was getting just pounded, which is, I mean, that’s only 10 minutes south. It’s, it’s 15 minutes for me to get to the office. Right. And it’s a little bit east and a little bit south. Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:02:19):
Like, like as, as the crow flies your house to your house to my office is probably like 10 miles. Directionally. Yeah. Like you’re and north you’re like northwest of me.
Josh Ungaro (00:02:29):
But yeah. And, and it was crazy because, I mean, we were looking out, we were looking out our window here, and I, I didn’t, everyone’s like, oh, I’ve been out to snow blow three times. Like, you know, how’s it there? And I’m, I’m showing ’em pictures out the window. You can still see my driveway. But Right. With that being said, last night and, and throughout the day yesterday we did start to it, it did pick up a little bit, so Oh yeah. You never, you never know. And they’re I know that the, for the Buffalo Bills game, they’re already asking for Shovelers to come come help out on Saturday morning, just to clear off the seats and all that for the, for the game on Sunday, but
Andrew Schultz (00:03:03):
For our playoff game,
Josh Ungaro (00:03:05):
Yeah. 10 minutes can make a difference here, you know, a couple miles you could miss it or, or get it and, you know.
Andrew Schultz (00:03:11):
Yeah, absolutely. That’s
Josh Ungaro (00:03:11):
True. A lot of areas in, in the us
Andrew Schultz (00:03:14):
So we had, we had driving bands and stuff like that in different areas over the course of the last few days as the snow was coming down and stuff like that. Yesterday I made the trek up the throughway to Clarence, which is not too far from like the rent prep offices and the roads were kind of garbage on the way out there. And then on the way back, I was literally driving in white out conditions. It was, and now today there’s like, it’s finally done snowing. It’s supposed to stop snowing today. Yeah. It’s supposed to warm up a little bit beginning of next week, and then it’s supposed to start raining. So <laugh>, we’re gonna go right from dealing with snow to dealing with floods. I think, but so
Josh Ungaro (00:03:52):
Yeah, man, it, and I was thinking about it kind of this morning just because I knew we had the a MA today Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. I was thinking about just the difference in, in what a year, thinking about last year during like the holidays and during all that stuff, just like how crazy the weather was and how it affected everything. And this year we didn’t have snow on the ground at all for or
Andrew Schultz (00:04:12):
For
Josh Ungaro (00:04:13):
Christmas. So last year, and then
Andrew Schultz (00:04:13):
We get hit with
Josh Ungaro (00:04:14):
This week,
Andrew Schultz (00:04:15):
Last year, last year we had the two big events. Honestly, we really didn’t have a lot of snow other than the two big events last year. We had the five foot, or at least I had five foot at my place, which was right around Thanksgiving. And then right around Christmas, like, I think it was the day of, or day before Christmas or something. Like we, I, again, I had seven foot at my house at that point. <Laugh> like, I gotta move out of the snow band is really what it boils down to. <Laugh>.
Josh Ungaro (00:04:40):
I know. You either gotta get really north, you gotta get really north. They’re normally Okay, <laugh>.
Andrew Schultz (00:04:44):
I know I miss living in Amherst. It might be time to reconsider my my residence location. But I mean we did the I don’t think it’s been published yet, but I did that piece of content on a day in the life of a property manager. And one of the things that I touched on in that video was snow and how we’d actually been having a pretty good snow season thus far. Like there wasn’t really much snow on the ground when I filmed that video. I should literally film a follow-up or should have been filming a follow-up these last few days as we’ve been running around and dealing with the snow situations and like, how do we look at things and whatever. Maybe down the road we’ll do it if we get another event, but yeah, I remember mentioning in that, in that video that we hadn’t had much snow yet this year and we’re, we’re paying for it now. For sure.
Josh Ungaro (00:05:27):
Yeah. You shouldn’t have said that <laugh>.
Andrew Schultz (00:05:29):
I know. It’s all my fault. <Laugh>,
Josh Ungaro (00:05:31):
You put that content out there, that’s when it, when it hit.
Andrew Schultz (00:05:33):
That’s what, Hey, I it’s not published yet. We can, we can just make it go away.
Josh Ungaro (00:05:38):
So Yeah. I wanted to ask you, did you just during the, the storm and anything like, like the last couple weeks, have you had any issues with any of the properties that you, you guys manage or has there been any, any,
Andrew Schultz (00:05:50):
Yeah, we’ve had some crazy
Josh Ungaro (00:05:51):
Situations.
Andrew Schultz (00:05:52):
We’ve had some, so not a ton of problems. The, most of the problems that we’ve been been having have been with our vendors, like our snow care vendors. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, getting them out in a timely fashion, getting things cleaned up and cleared up. And I literally have my maintenance guys chasing behind the snow crews because they can’t keep caught up. Like, and again, I am trying not to beat anybody over the head because these last few days have been hell on, on earth for everybody here in Buffalo. And I know that these guys are running, I talked to one of my plow guys yesterday, bumped into him at a property. I was like, first question I asked him, I’m like, how many hours have you been awake? He’s like, definitely more than 24. I think I’m approaching 36. Oh, wow. So like, these guys are out there busting it, just trying to stay caught up. And when the snow’s falling at multiple inches per hour, it’s just impossible. So it’s it’s always an interesting adventure during the winter months here in Buffalo because you, it’s tough to make plans even like Mm-Hmm.
Josh Ungaro (00:06:46):
<Affirmative>. Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:06:47):
It’s tough to make plans because you don’t know what the weather’s gonna be a week down the road, two weeks down the road. So it can be a real headache here some days.
Josh Ungaro (00:06:55):
Oh, I know, I know. Flights have been crazy canceled. I, my neighbor had my neighbor had some, some, I think it was his his son-in-Law in town, and his, his flight got canceled four times within a week. So <laugh>, it’s, that’s crazy. I mean, it, yeah, it definitely messes with things. I know. It definitely messes with tenants. A friend of mine last year was without heat during the mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> without heat during the storm. And it was like 52 in the, we had, yeah, 52 in the apartment. And it was a, it was a property management group and, and they had been submitting just requests and trying to call the helpline and getting anybody they could to get out there, give ’em a space heater or anything like that. And they were pretty bogged down. But yeah, it can be tough.
Andrew Schultz (00:07:40):
Yeah. We had, so we did have one during the, the span where we were in the middle of the driving ban. We did have two incidents that we couldn’t respond to. ’cause There was a driving man, we had a, a no heat call, which the tenant had electric thankfully. So he was able to, I don’t think he had any space heaters, but he had an electric stove. So I told him for the time being, just go ahead and throw a big pot of water on the stove to act as a radiator. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. ’cause It’s probably gonna be a day before I can even get someone to you and I don’t know if we need to get a part, how long it’s gonna be. And that worked out. He was able to keep himself warm and keep the pipes from freezing for, we were able to get there the next day, the driving band lifted.
Andrew Schultz (00:08:19):
So we were able to get over there. And thankfully it was just a pressure switch and the, the vendor had one on the truck. So that was a good repair. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And then now that we have all of the snow, obviously snow’s heavy. Like I don’t think people understand just how much weight snow puts on structures unless you deal with snow. And especially here in Buffalo, we get what’s called lake effect snow, which is essentially all of the moisture coming off the lake turns into snow and then dumps on the ground. So it’s incredibly heavy. And I don’t think people understand just how much weight that puts on structures, roofs and things like that. So we do have another property where we have a, a ceiling that’s dripping basically, and it’s, it’s because there’s so much snow load on the roof that it’s got icicles and everything else, like it’s a little ice damming. So we’re trying to get there to get to it. But again, I mean, that’s a, a second story roof with icicles hanging off of it, like
Josh Ungaro (00:09:13):
Oh yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:09:14):
And there’s snow all the way around it. So you just trying to get to it, to throw a ladder to knock down icicles or try to clear the ice dam is Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, you’ve gotta work for two hours before you can work on the actual job. It’s crazy. So we’ve had a few things that have popped up, but we’re, we’re working through it. It hasn’t been too bad. Could have been a lot worse.
Josh Ungaro (00:09:32):
Worse, yeah, for sure. For sure. There’s always, I’m sure once it’s all over, there’ll be even more stories that come out of it. That’s, that’s what happens. So. Well, and prior to,
Andrew Schultz (00:09:41):
Prior to the snow, we had the wind. So like we were just starting to get out and look at all the properties for wind damage when the snow started. So like it’s, the weather here has been crazy the last couple weeks.
Josh Ungaro (00:09:54):
Oh, I know, I know. And then who knows, like you said, like it’s supposed to rain. It might, it might rain in a couple in a week or so. They’re
Andrew Schultz (00:10:01):
Talking Monday. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:10:03):
Crazy. But, all right. We got we did our little 10 minute, 10 minute snow intro. Yeah. Buffalo, the buffalo blues. But yeah. Right. Let’s, let’s jump in. Let’s jump into some questions. Let’s, let’s start right off with, with one of the form submission questions. And this question is from Jill. Though the least prohibits smoking the tenant smokes in the unit. I’m just reminded, I’ve just reminded her that there’s no smoking. What are my recourses? I’m in Massachusetts,
Andrew Schultz (00:10:35):
So I don’t know. Sorry, my headphone just got caught on the back of my chair. I’m not entirely sure what the laws are in Massachusetts with regards to like issuing tenant violation letters and things of that nature, but that would be the first thing I would do. Yeah. especially if you have like photographic evidence, like that’s the kind of thing that’s incredibly useful. Like, you have a picture of the ashtray sitting on a table in the apartment Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> or, you know it’s tough to prove smells like you can’t take a smell to court. Right. and, and prove it, but you can take pictures. So if you have proof that they’re smoking in the unit beyond just the smell that would be what I would do. I would issue the lease violation letter and let them know, Hey, you’re in violation of your lease.
Andrew Schultz (00:11:21):
We know that you’re smoking in the unit. I would include the pictures of the evidence that we have and basically say, this needs to stop. And if it doesn’t, you’re gonna be evicted. Right. depending on the state you’re in, it can be very, very difficult to evict people for habitation issues, rule violations, things of that nature. Some states are better than others. I know in New York state you can terminate a tenancy you can terminate a tenancy, but like to get someone evicted on noise violations or even getting someone evicted for dealing drugs. Like we’ve had situations where we’ve had buildings with a tenant that’s been dealing drugs out of the building. Even with police intervention, even with multiple police reports, like it’s a challenge to get an emergency eviction granted in, in New York State. So maybe it’s different in Massachusetts, but it’s a real challenge to get that done here.
Josh Ungaro (00:12:13):
Yeah, no, no, for sure. And I know, I know I’ve, I almo I did a walkthrough. I was a, I was a tenant perspective tenant. I was doing a, just a walkthrough of a, of a property that I was looking to rent. And I noticed that there was a smell of, there was a smell of smoke in there. And you, I feel like like cigarette
Andrew Schultz (00:12:35):
Smoke or
Josh Ungaro (00:12:38):
Kind of like cigarette smoke, I just know just from, just from that experience and, and stuff like that. Like I, I know how hard once there’s smoke in the unit it’s hard to get it out. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I feel like it, it’s not all that easy. I know there’s some different products and, and some things that, that you can use like I don’t know, what are they, scent bombs, stuff like that, that you can drop that have, have chemicals in ’em, but, but ultimately I feel like that’s, that’s, you really don’t want that happening to your property.
Andrew Schultz (00:13:06):
No, you’re right. We’re, we’re getting ready to rehab a, an apartment right now in, it’s in a, it’s in Clarence, it’s in a multi-unit building. It’s in like an eight unit apartment building. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And the previous tenant lived in the apartment for like 20 years and was a smoker the entire time. And we are literally bringing in a professional remediation company to, you basically have to spray everything to try to draw the tar and nicotine and everything out of the walls. And you can see it like it’s on every wall. You can tell where every picture was hung and everything else, but it’s thousands of dollars. Like, if I remember correctly, we’re spending something like $3,000 plus to have this unit treated. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that’s before you actually do anything in the unit.
Josh Ungaro (00:13:49):
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:13:50):
And like that’s before you do any actual work to repair the unit that’s just pre repair. Not to mention it’s a forced air furnace and forced air cycle through. So yeah, we’re probably going to have to at the very least, have all of the duct work and vents cleaned. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and the furnace cleaned. But we may even have to go further than that and replace some stuff if it can’t be cleaned and, and sanitized. ’cause The second, yeah, like we kicked the, I was at the unit yesterday with one of my maintenance crew and the property owner and we’re walking through and like I turned the furnace on when I got there and it’s just pumping that smoke smell through the whole, through the whole place. So like, we know it’s gonna be an issue. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So yeah, smoking is a major, major problem in apartments. It’s something that if you know that a tenant is smoking in their apartment, you really have to get after it immediately because it has the possibility of turning into a real nasty situation over the course of time.
Josh Ungaro (00:14:43):
Yeah. And I think I told the story maybe a few times back, but I had, my dad has a friend and he just recently purchased a property out in Rochester and the property was, I think it was up for foreclosure or whatever. And it, it was a pretty rough, it was in rough shape. And one of the issues with the property was it had pet, pet feces, urine. Yeah. Every, everything you could think of. They had, there was multiple cats that had been, had been living there. Yeah. And they were just allowing, and I think a couple dogs too, but they were just allowing them to kind of roam around this it, I think it’s a, it was a condo. Yeah. and just kind of do whatever, do whatever
Andrew Schultz (00:15:20):
They wanna do. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:15:21):
Do whatever they wanna do. So my dad was surprised when he was talking to, talking to his buddy and he was like, man, you, he, I go, he goes, how much, how much do you think you, you would end up dumping into that? And, and he couldn’t even, he said he didn’t even when he purchased it, he still didn’t, can’t believe how much money he was up to and, and just repairs and just trying to do anything he could to get the unit to not smell like capus. Yeah. And that just reminded me ’cause we have another question here. Question from Lisa. It’s a Facebook question, how, how to get rid of pet pet urine smell from original wood flooring.
Andrew Schultz (00:16:00):
I’m trying to find that one so I can pull it up on screen here. ’cause I remember that question. There it is. Yeah. Yeah. And actually that’s a good question to lead into because it gives me an opportunity to talk about odor removal. And actually we covered this in a podcast recently. I don’t remember the episode number, but there was a pretty lengthy episode lengthy topic segment on like getting smells out of apartments and stuff like that. Yeah. and in a situation like this where you’re dealing with original wood flooring, there are products out there. Is it Ban is the name of the one,
Josh Ungaro (00:16:35):
I
Andrew Schultz (00:16:36):
Think, I’ll be honest, I’ve yet to find something over the counter that can come close to what the professionals can do. Like, when you’re really trying to remediate. So an example, very similar to the situation that you were just talking about with the condo. We had an apartment that it was a single family that they had a dog and a cat. And the animals were just using the basement to go to the bathroom. And we brought in a company that does professional remediation and whatever the chemical or enzyme or whatever that they were using, like they spray it on the floor of the they spray it on the floor of the basement and it was literally bubbling the waste out of the floor. Like the urea and the, and the, the animal waste and everything was literally bubbling out of the concrete. Like Yeah. There’s no over the counter product that’s going to be able to touch what the professionals can do. At least that I’ve found. If anybody knows of a product that can do stuff like that, let me know. ’cause I’m certainly interested, we do a lot of pet remediations and things of that nature. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:17:37):
I would be, I’d be interested too. That’s fine. I know, I know that when I purchased my property and my just the, the house that I live in now, the it, it was an older house. So the, the basement though, there was no real water damage that was, that was visible down there. There’s still that musty kind of musty smell that you get from, from the basements. And I, I’m trying to think of the product. It was, it was almost like it was a little ball, like a, a bomb. It was almost like a like a mildew kind of bomb that we had. We had let off in the basement. You had to wait such and such hours for it to, to, to go through. But I can’t remember the brand on that. I actually did, I did enjoy that. So if I can find that, I will, I’ll comment that when we post this video, I can comment that to the video in the on YouTube and in the Facebook group.
Andrew Schultz (00:18:24):
Okay. Yeah. And it’s, there’s a lot of different products out there. Some of them are better than others. The, the fact of the matter is you’re not gonna get rid of the smell until you get rid of the pet urine. Right. So until you get that extracted from the floor using some method, you’re going to continue to have those issues. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. That’s step one is get rid of the urine so that you can get rid of the smell. It’s gonna be a challenge. I mean, you’re probably gonna wind up either really going heavy on the DIY products to try to, to try to get that, that urine smell out, or you’re gonna have to bring in a professional. Yeah. Another thing that I’ve found that works very, very well when you’re dealing with just an odor, like once the actual urine itself is gone, obviously I’d recommend running the ozone generator or doing the charcoal bag.
Andrew Schultz (00:19:09):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> charcoal bag works really, really well for that as well. Yeah. And when you’re doing charcoal, like you don’t have to go buy the special, you know, like they make those one foot by one foot charcoal bags that you can get at Home Depot. Just go buy a bag of lump charcoal. Like don’t buy the Kingsford stuff with the chemicals in it. Buy a bag of just natural lump charcoal, throw a tarp down on the floor and open the charcoal up onto the tarp and it’ll sit and absorb all of the foul order odors out of the house. It’s basically activated charcoal at that point. So there’s options out there, but you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be spending some time and some money on it, unfortunately. That’s a tough one.
Josh Ungaro (00:19:46):
Yeah. And that’s, I mean, I think that speaks to just landlords also being, being diligent when you do your, your final walkthroughs and your checks and all that kind of stuff. Because another example here, I was in an apartment a few years back and one of my buddies had a cat, and the cat had been I had moved outta the apartment, but when they, it was their turn to move out, the cat had been going to the bathroom next to where the litter box was. It had, yeah, for some reason found like a different area that had it had like to go and it had, it was, it was urinating all over the floor and it ended up traveling up sort of the wall too. So Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:20:23):
Castle spray. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:20:24):
There was a huge black Oh yeah. It was, it was sprayed. And my one roommate, my other roommate was actually, he does flooring for a living. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So he was like they had moved out, the landlord let them let them go. They hadn’t run it by ’em, he didn’t notice it the first time. Finally found the, found the issue, the floor was destroyed. And my, my buddy was like, well, we’ll, we do it for you. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> <affirmative>. And by that time, the landlord, the lease had ended, everything was done. And they, they were, they were released from that, at that, at that time. So yeah. I think it’s just, I know, I know that it’s very easy to smell cat urine. Yeah. So when you’re doing your walkthroughs, this happened to be a landlord that wasn’t from the area. They were out, they had moved to Florida, they had somebody just coming by and just kind of doing their checks and balances like a property manager, but Right. But yeah, do do your due diligence when you’re, when you’re doing your walkthroughs on damage.
Andrew Schultz (00:21:17):
No, absolutely. Well, and we have, actually, there’s a couple related questions. We have this one from Lisa on how do you do a walkthrough with a tenant in place? And then further down the list, I just passed it. Where was it? Let’s see here.
Josh Ungaro (00:21:34):
Let’s, is it a Facebook question?
Andrew Schultz (00:21:36):
It was I’m trying to find it. It was, there we go. Katie had a tenant move out this morning, discovered a really extensive and long running water leak. And there was more to that one, Josh, if you wanna pull it up.
Josh Ungaro (00:21:48):
Y yeah, I gotcha. So Katie asks, excuse me, had a tenant move out this morning and discovered a really extensive long running water leak. The water had been running behind the sh behind the shower surround and the drywall is soaked in moldy. When I asked them what had happened, they got extremely defensive and said that it was my fault. Tenant is claiming that the leak was there when they moved in and they thought I had left it on purpose. They put water tape on it, AKA Teflon tape and let it run for a year. They don’t think they should have to pay for the damage. What are your thoughts?
Andrew Schultz (00:22:28):
My thoughts are that both parties are at fault there, in my opinion. And then we have that one, and then we had that other question with Lisa about the walkthrough. I’ll just leave that one up on the screen. So, in Katie’s situation, I think that there’s probably a little bit of fault on both sides there. You should be doing a walkthrough inspection on your units at least once every six months or so, just to make sure that everything is going the way that it’s supposed to. Checking for things like extra occupants, extra animals damages being done to various fixtures. You know, check under the sinks to make sure that you don’t have leaky pipes under your sinks that are routing things out. Check your toilets to make sure that they’re not running. A big thing here in Buffalo is making sure that we don’t have overloaded outlets, because we have a lot of properties that have older electric in them.
Andrew Schultz (00:23:17):
And if you sit and run a bunch of space heaters or run a space heater off of a an extension cord or run a space heater off of a power strip, you’re creating a big fire hazard. So that’s stuff that we look at on our inspections as well. But realistically, I think that if Katie had been doing her inspections on a, on a, at least every six month basis or so, she probably would’ve caught that problem before it had an opportunity to really get worse. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. That being said, though, the tenant should have reported the problem. Like they should have said, Hey, there’s a water leak here. The tenant is probably going to be considered at fault for this and they should be paying for the repair. But by the same token, Katie has an obligation as a landlord to make sure that her property is being taken care of, as well as making sure that she’s dealing with the repairs that she needs to deal with. It sounds to me like this probably a a situation where the water was getting in around the flange, like they hadn’t caulked around the, the discussion plates and stuff like that on the shower. And I think that’s probably where the water was fighting its way into the wall. You’re gutting it, you’re gutting that water, or you’re gutting that wall at a minimum and redoing it. You’re probably gonna have to pull the other two walls of the shower as well. Maybe even pull the tub if it’s a tub. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:24:34):
I mean, that, that’s pretty crazy that I, I’m, I agree with you. I think, I think ter at at fault here, but still pretty crazy from, from just a tenant perspective. From the tenant perspective to not say anything. Just allowing it Yeah. You know that the landlord is responsible. Well, you sh I mean, you should know that the landlord’s responsible for those fixes before it gets worse. Right. Just bring it up and if anything, you’re landlord’s thankful that, or appreciative that you, that you’ve brought it up.
Andrew Schultz (00:25:00):
Yeah, exactly. Well, and that’s, that’s something that I think some tenants don’t understand is, and it’s actually especially important when you have tenants that are under market because they don’t want to complain because they don’t wanna rock the boat and either have the rent go up or be told that they need to move. And a lot of times they’ll let repairs slide and they let them slide and slide and slide. And that $25 quick fix is now a $250 bigger job or a several thousand dollars water damage, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So it’s, yeah. That’s something that you really have to make sure that you emphasize to tenants when you’re onboarding them, when you’re doing your lease signing and doing the move in is, Hey, we want to fix your house. Like, unless you’re a slumlord, you’re gonna want to make sure that your asset is taken care of. Right. So like, we want to fix your house. The only way we can do that is if you tell us something’s broken.
Josh Ungaro (00:25:51):
Yeah. No, that’s <laugh> That’s true. It’s in, it’s in the landlord’s best interest as well. It’s, it’s not just mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> the landlord’s not purposely doing it to you. More than likely they’re purposely, they’re not purposely doing it to you and leaving something unfixed. It’s, you know, it’s something that maybe just, just slipped by. But, you know, landlords’ responsibility to
Andrew Schultz (00:26:14):
Things on every single turnover. Like, there’s always, I can’t remember the last time we had a tenant move in that we didn’t have at least a small work order within the first couple weeks of move in, Hey, you know, this hinge is loose. Or, Hey, this, you know, whatever happens, like we hit all of the major stuff every single time. We’re really good about that, but you’re never gonna be a hundred percent perfect. And we always give our tenants, we tell them when they move in that they have seven days from the time that they move in to let us know if there’s any additional damage that they uncover, because it’s tough to find everything in a quick inspection. We already have our photo set from when they moved in. So if they report damages to us, we say, okay, send us pictures of it. And then we compare our photos to their photos and see if they caused it during move in or if it was something that was there that we didn’t, didn’t get a good picture of, or whatever the case may be. So that seems to work pretty well for us.
Josh Ungaro (00:27:06):
Yeah. Makes sense. Okay. all right. What should we do form submission? Or should we do Facebook question? Let’s do another Facebook question here.
Andrew Schultz (00:27:20):
Okay.
Josh Ungaro (00:27:21):
Let’s do one of I feel like we touch on this one each time, but maybe something to quickly go over. Let’s do this question from Darnell. Darnell asked, wanna be able to travel out of the country without 2:00 AM calls? What property management software can step in up while I’m gone and deal with tenant repairs with no, no. De minimal involvement on my end?
Andrew Schultz (00:27:51):
There it is. I was trying to find it on my screen. I didn’t add his name unfortunately, but I actually commented on this thread. I don’t think he needs a property management software. He probably does. I mean, if you feel you need a property management software, then by all means get one. They’re, they’re wonderful to help you stay organized. But when you’re talking about 2:00 AM phone calls, your property management software is not gonna help you with that. You need an answering service, right. Is what you need. And I shouldn’t say that your property management service is not gonna help with that. ’cause I think that there are some softwares out there that offer like maintenance call center type services. But the one company in particular that I’m thinking of that offers that service does an incredibly poor job of it. Like they need to stick to their core focus, which is property management software.
Andrew Schultz (00:28:36):
And they’re not even that good at that. So I had basically this exact same situation. Same situation as Darnell. I wanted to, I was on vacation. I was at Disney and I was getting phone calls for work. And at the time it was a very small company. It was literally just me. And I felt that I couldn’t cut away. I felt like I couldn’t take a break because my business was following me around Magic Kingdom, like <laugh>. It was, it was a problem. When I got back to Buffalo, I hired an answering service. And the way I set up the answering service was initially for just evenings and weekends after 5:00 PM and weekends and holidays, pick up my calls for me. If it’s an emergency, you have my cell phone number. And I gave ’em a list of, these are emergencies, fire, flood, blood, whatever.
Andrew Schultz (00:29:27):
These are non-emergencies. Take a message, I’ll call them back the next day. So they, and they knew they could connect somebody, like directly patch ’em to my cell phone. If there was an emergency, they would say, Hey, we have so and so on the line, they have an emergency. The problem is blah, do you want this call? Or do you want to take a message? And then they would connect it and it’s, I never look back. It’s been a lifesaver for us. Not having to, not having to answer the phone twenty four seven, like property management and rental properties is a 24 7 business. And I don’t think everybody understands that. But not having to answer the phone twenty four seven is kind of a nice reprieve.
Josh Ungaro (00:30:05):
Yeah. <laugh> for sure, answering for sure
Andrew Schultz (00:30:07):
Are not terribly expensive either. I think our answering service runs us less than, less than $200 a month. Oh,
Josh Ungaro (00:30:14):
That’s not bad.
Andrew Schultz (00:30:15):
It’s not bad. It’s totally worth it. It was so worth it. And we’ve actually increased what they do for us now. Like, so they will take our overflow calls if we’re in the office and we’re both on calls or, you know, if we’re in the office and just can’t answer the phone because we’re in a meeting or something like that, they pick up our calls during the workday too, and they can direct it to the appropriate person. So if it’s a message somebody’s trying to get ahold of my office manager, it’ll be sent directly to that email. If they’re trying to get ahold of maintenance, it’ll go directly to the maintenance email. It’s getting directed to the proper person. So they’re actually kind of the first step in our process now. Like they’re the ones who are kind of directing, who should be responsible for this issue based on the criteria that we gave them.
Andrew Schultz (00:30:58):
And it’s worked out really, really well. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So that would be my recommendation. I don’t know, as though a property management software is going to be the solution that you need here. I think if you’re trying to get away from having your phone ring at two o’clock in the morning, but still wanna make sure that your phone gets answered every single time. That was my thing. That was the thing. I didn’t want it to go to a voicemail. Yeah. I want a live human every single time. ’cause It’s important to me. So that was the route that we ended up going was the answering service. We still get the live human every single time. The tenants still able to get emergency maintenance services if they need it. And if it’s not an emergency, they know that they were at least heard and their message was recorded and sent to the proper person. So yeah, that’s my recommendation. Get a get an answering service. There’s several of them out there. There are also some that are specialized specifically for like the real estate and property management industries. Just do some research. You’ll find one that’ll work out well for you. And honestly, it’s the best couple hundred dollars a month we spend. I I love paying that bill every month because I know that it gives me the freedom to stop answering my phone at 5:00 PM
Josh Ungaro (00:31:59):
Yeah, no, that for sure. For sure. All right. Let’s do another Facebook question. Question from Alan. A tenant presents a doctor’s note to you that states she is unable to work. Tenant says, if I can’t work, I can’t pay the rent. What is a judge likely to say to the, that
Andrew Schultz (00:32:17):
<Laugh>? I mean, I can’t imagine that a judge is gonna be like, oh yeah, you can stay here just ’cause you have a, a a note. Like, it, it, it doesn’t work. Like paying rent is, is literally like the main thing that you’re supposed to do when you’re living in an apartment, right? If you’re not going to pay your rent, they’re not going to let you stay in the apartment. Yeah. You may have to jump through some hoops if this person has some sort of a disability that’s going to be ongoing or something like that. It might not be quite as easy as a standard eviction process. But if it’s literally just a situation where this person is out of work for like a short-term type situation, or even a long-term type situation, the rent’s still due on a month by month basis.
Andrew Schultz (00:33:01):
It doesn’t stop being due simply because someone gets injured or their life circumstances change or whatever the case may be. Like, people have to take some responsibility for themselves and understand that, you know? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> things happen. That said though, like if this tenant is really in a situation where they can’t pay rent start the process of getting the tenant out immediately. And I’m not trying to say that to be a jerk, like approach them and say, Hey, do you want to move out before we go through the eviction process? We would rather do that and not run you through the eviction process and cause harm to your credit. Yeah. And your background and everything else. Maybe offer a cash for key scenario. I know that that’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s still way cheaper and way faster than an eviction. Right. If you go all the way through to court, you will be granted an eviction eventually. You will. I guarantee it. It might take time. You’ll get your eviction, but no judge is going to say, yes, you can stay in this house simply because you have a, a note that says that you’re unable to work. It doesn’t work that way.
Josh Ungaro (00:33:59):
Yeah. No, for sure. All right. Kind of with that a little bit different, but let’s go right into this question from Sam. Sam asks, it’s a Facebook question. Sam asks, I received the following email from my tenant yesterday. What would you do in this scenario? Any red flags? Would you require an application or increased rent? Her cousin is probably 17 years old, according to her date of birth. Here’s the email. Good morning, Mr. Sam. This Christmas break has been difficult for my family. One of my younger cousins will be needing to stay with me for a few months. Your date of birth is 1220 8,006. I’m attaching the power of attorney’s information. If you have any questions or need additional information, please give me a call. So it looks like it’s just, it looks like there’s maybe came across some hard times during Christmas break here, and now there’s an additional tenant that this current tenant is trying to, trying to add on to the lease.
Andrew Schultz (00:34:56):
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because the tenant is technically, they’re, they’re trying to add a minor onto the lease. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. It’s not, I don’t think that a cousin would be considered direct relation.
Josh Ungaro (00:35:11):
Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:35:11):
So I’m not sure on that. Would you require an application or increased rent? Well, she’s 17. I’m assuming it’s a, she, I thought it said she in there. Being a minor, there’s really not running an application, getting a credit and background, you’re not gonna get any credit. I don’t think you’re gonna get any background back on somebody that’s under 18, because I would think that those records would not be available. So I don’t know if the application’s really going to do anything or not. We don’t typically have people under the age of 18 do applications anyway. So I think in this scenario, what I would probably do would just do be an add-on to the existing lease for the, for the minor as a, an additional occupant. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, but not as a responsible party. The one thing that is worth noting is that this tenant will turn, sorry, this occupant will turn 18 at the end of this year. And at that point, it’s probably worth going through and having them fill out the application and get all of the documentation and stuff on file. But as it sits right now, honestly, in this scenario, not knowing all the details, I think it’s the situation where we would just be using like an ad form to add them onto our lease.
Josh Ungaro (00:36:21):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, do they, would you, would you increase, would you increase the rent?
Andrew Schultz (00:36:28):
I mean, if they’re in a lease term, I
Speaker 1 (00:36:32):
<Affirmative>,
Andrew Schultz (00:36:34):
Would I increase the rent?
Andrew Schultz (00:36:39):
No, probably not, because I base the rent off the unit, not off the number of occupants. So if I, if I have a two bedroom apartment, I’m basing my rent off two bedrooms worth of usage, two bedrooms worth of wear and tear, two bedrooms worth of utilities, things of that nature. So, no, I don’t think that there would be an increase in rent, at least on the initial, but rent goes up on a year by year basis. So you can guarantee that next year there would be, or whenever the lease comes up for renewal, there would be a jump in the rent at that point.
Josh Ungaro (00:37:08):
Yeah. Is there ever ever a scenario where you’ve, you’ve you’ve just done it based on the occupant, the occupants within the, the dwelling? Just because, say for example, I mean, I, I don’t know if this ever happens, but there’s two bedrooms, but maybe three people in the, in the unit, one, two of them are sharing a room, but technically you still have three people using the appliances, using the, using the shower, using the, using all the different, the electric, well, the electricity, but that’s being paid. But you know, you’re still having three, I guess, wear and tear. Yeah. I don’t, you know, people on your, on your property. So, Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>?
Andrew Schultz (00:37:47):
I, I guess, no, not really, because we look at it from, like, when we go to do market comps for an apartment, we look at, okay, how many beds, how many baths, what are the amenities? And then we compare to other units that are of similar condition. And we know that based on the number of bedrooms we can expect to have, you know, even in a two bedroom scenario, we’re gonna assume there’s gonna be three people. There’s going to be a couple of adults and probably a child or something along those lines. So, Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. I’ve seen people, I’ve seen situations where you get four people in a two bedroom apartment, like two couples sharing an apartment. I mean, you might have more wear and tear and you might have a little extra water usage and stuff like that in those scenarios. But I think that you have to base your rent off of the, off of the unit. Like when you start trying to base rent off of the number of people living in the unit, you could very easily be moving into a fair housing type of situation. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:38:38):
Gotcha. No, that makes sense. Okay. Also pause for identification here. Look at my new, anybody who’s watching the video, look at my new background. <Laugh>, I finally, I finally have the official rent prep background. Anybody who’s listening, it’s, I’ve now got a fancy background
Andrew Schultz (00:38:58):
Hold. There’s another one of those too. And I’m trying to find it in my, my rent prep folder here. I thought that we had a second background that we were using. Maybe not. Maybe it is just the one background and I’m,
Josh Ungaro (00:39:11):
I think it’s making me look younger. <Laugh>. It’s making me look
Andrew Schultz (00:39:16):
Mean. It’s like you’re, it’s not like you’re old <laugh>.
Josh Ungaro (00:39:19):
I’m feeling pretty youthful today, now that I have
Andrew Schultz (00:39:23):
Background. I found it. Hang on. I’m gonna change my background. Yeah, there you go. Let’s see here. Now I gotta remember how to do it. It’s been so long.
Josh Ungaro (00:39:31):
Oh man. Oh,
Andrew Schultz (00:39:37):
There we go. Sorry about that.
Josh Ungaro (00:39:38):
You popped off for a second there.
Andrew Schultz (00:39:40):
Yeah, I don’t remember how to change my background now.
Josh Ungaro (00:39:44):
No, I think it’s in settings in the, in the image. But let me let me dive into, either way. No, let me pull, we’ll be ready for next, next time we’ll have new backgrounds. Let me, let’s go back to the form submission questions. We haven’t, we’ve been in the Facebooks for a little bit. Let’s jump back here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this One question from John. How much of a premium would you add on the rental onto the rental to have it fully furnished with higher quality furniture? And I know this is gonna be a relevant, or it’s gonna be a relevancy based on what type of, you know, what actual type of furniture you’re putting in there. But I guess, have you ever, have you ever rented out units that are fully furnished?
Andrew Schultz (00:40:29):
We have, yeah. And I’m actually trying to grab that question so I can pull it up on screen here.
Josh Ungaro (00:40:34):
It’s like the fifth one down on I don’t know if it’s in your, how it’s in your queue. The fifth one
Andrew Schultz (00:40:40):
Down. Yeah. Yeah. I, I basically pull ’em over the same way that you or line ’em up. Yeah. So we’ve had situations like this in the past where we’ve done it. I can think of a couple situations where we’ve, we’ve jumped into these furnished rentals. We’ve had, let me think here. The two that I can think of off the top of my head. One was an insurance placement after a house fire. This family had a house fire, and it was gonna be probably six, eight months before their home was ready to move back into Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So the insurance company contacted us and the first question was, do you wanna work with us? And we said, yeah, we can do that. It makes sense. We screened the tenants just the same as we would any other tenant, but we knew that the insurance company was gonna be the company making the payouts on it, basically.
Andrew Schultz (00:41:24):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So we did our screening like normal, and then the insurance company approached us and said, these guys lost everything, all their furnishings and everything else. Can this be a furnished rental? And I said, sure. So I made a call to a company out in Rochester that this is, what they do is rent furniture and like kitchen suites and stuff like that. So I figured out what the cost was gonna be to deck this house out. And when I say deck this house out, I mean everything, the beds, the dressers I think they included linens. I know they included towels every kitchen, utensil, forks, knife, spoon, spatulas, pots, pans, cups, plates, dishes, everything, TVs Wow. Living room furniture. They set the whole house up, essentially. And they had a monthly charge that they charged us. We took that monthly charge and just charged it back to the, the tenant as part of the gross rent.
Andrew Schultz (00:42:19):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And it worked really, really well. We did that exact same scenario for a company. They were sending an executive up here that they were developing an apartment complex. And this guy was the project manager for the apartment complex. And same situation. He basically was leaving one project to start this project, leaving on a Friday, starting the new project on Monday. And they called us and they said, listen, here’s the deal. This needs to be move in ready. This guy needs to be able to show up on Sunday night and be at the office on Monday morning. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And same thing. We contacted that same company. They were able to work with us to set up the entire house with everything that he needed, right down to the appliances and the utensils and everything. And it worked out really, really well. So
Josh Ungaro (00:43:01):
How does that work with damage to the what if the, have you ever had a long-term rental
Andrew Schultz (00:43:08):
In
Josh Ungaro (00:43:09):
One of those <crosstalk>? Yeah. The, the guy,
Andrew Schultz (00:43:10):
The guy who the project manager was here for two years with us. Oh, okay. It was definitely a long term. Okay. The,
Josh Ungaro (00:43:17):
How do they handle depreciation on that deposit? Yeah,
Andrew Schultz (00:43:19):
So we paid a security deposit on the items. And I don’t think there were any damages. I don’t think they charged us for any damages. I would assume that some stuff they just know it has a useful life and it’s gonna depreciate. And, you know, I mean, it’s not like they were buying like ultra high-end. Like the blender was just your standard, you know, blender. It wasn’t like a, a ninja or a food bul bullet or whatever those things are called. Like they were good appliances. They were fine, but they weren’t like above and beyond type things. And at some point you have to understand that the $25 blender, you bought’s not gonna last forever. So I think that if there had been like items that were damaged or dishes that were broken or whatever, we probably would’ve been charged for that stuff. But no, we didn’t have any damages to deal with on that. We got our deposit back in full. We actually added that to the deposit for the tenant too. Like, because we had added everything as part of the base rent, we were able to make the security deposit include the deposit for all of the stuff that they had in the home. So it worked out really, really well. The one thing I will mention though, is we had a when we did the move in and move out, you have to be so much more detailed when you have all of that stuff. Like
Josh Ungaro (00:44:33):
Mm-Hmm.
Andrew Schultz (00:44:33):
<Affirmative>, if you have four cups, you need to know that you have four cups and that they don’t have cracks and stuff like that in them. It’s a lot more detailed. Oh,
Josh Ungaro (00:44:39):
Yeah. I mean, think about all the, all the additional, all the additional items that would go on your, on your checklist if you No, absolutely. The couch checking a futon, checking a chair, checking Mm-hmm, <affirmative> four cup this quantity. Right. You know, all that
Andrew Schultz (00:44:52):
Stuff. Well, and even, even on a couch, like, okay, so you have a couch, but a couch has a front, a back, a left or right. Yeah. Okay. And then you have cushions that should probably be looked at as well. Like you can really spend a lot of time on a move-in inspection, depending on how detailed you want to get.
Josh Ungaro (00:45:07):
Oh yeah, no, for
Andrew Schultz (00:45:09):
Sure. But as far as, as far as John’s question, how much of a premium would you add onto the rental? You really have to look at your market, find some other furnished rentals and see what the delta is between a furnished and an unfurnished rental and decide if it would be worthwhile. Because unless you have furniture or you plan on going out and buying all of your own furniture, set those monthly charges for renting that stuff, it adds up quickly. Like, I wanna say we were paying, this was several years ago, we were paying like $800 a month. So you figure 800 over the course of that year, that’s $9,600 that we paid to rent furniture.
Josh Ungaro (00:45:41):
That’s like 20. Yeah. Holy cow. Yeah. You’re passing that on to, you’re passing that on to the, the tenant.
Andrew Schultz (00:45:49):
Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:45:50):
I mean, after what, they were there for two years. So you’re up to, you said 9,600. So you’re, you’re up, you’re talking 20 grand. 20 grand of just having furniture. Wow.
Andrew Schultz (00:45:58):
Right. And can you, I mean, we didn’t know that he was gonna stay for two years, but you know, like, we’re also not gonna go and drop 20 grand on furnishing an entire house in a situation like that. So, no,
Josh Ungaro (00:46:09):
That’s cool. That’s unique. I’ve never, I’ve thought about I, I’m, I knew there was places like that, but I’ve never seen it actually in practice. That’s Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. That’s pretty cool. It
Andrew Schultz (00:46:19):
Was pretty cool. I it was, it was neat to set that up. Yeah, it’s really cool to see a whole truck full of lit. Literally everything show up and they just start unloading it into the house. It’s like a moving truck without actually having all your own crap in it.
Josh Ungaro (00:46:33):
I know, that’s, yeah. Not having to move it yourself. Probably. all right. What do we got? What do we got next here? Here’s an interesting one. I, I thought I took a look at this. I thought I knew right away that the answer to this, but let’s do this question from car Carlos. Carlos, if I’m pronouncing that wrong, I apologize. Carl Carlisle. I think it’s, yeah, it was, I’m sorry if I’m mispronouncing that. Can a landlord I’m actually doing, oh, that was his, we can do that
Andrew Schultz (00:47:08):
First. Did you have more though? Doing
Josh Ungaro (00:47:09):
A different, yeah, I’m doing, can a landlord, can a landlord ban a portable dishwasher slash laundry? And my initial thought was, well, if it’s in lease, yes they can, of course they can ban it. But then the thought came in my head, well, what if the unit, what if the unit does not have laundry or dishwasher? And I guess the tenant’s doing it for a convenience factor, can that still be banned on the, on the lease?
Andrew Schultz (00:47:35):
Yeah, absolutely. Especially if the landlord is the one taking the water charges on and you’re using appliances that are gonna sit and run through a bunch of water, which a dishwasher or a closed washer certainly would. And I’ve used those units before. I’ve used both personal or portable dishwashers and portable washers. They actually do a pretty good job, but they, they come with a certain amount of risk. Like if you screw up and have something in your, typically they discharge into your kitchen sink. They like clip onto the faucet for the water, and then you discharge into the sink. So if you have something in the sink blocking the drain, guess what? You just flooded your house. Like <laugh>, <laugh>. They do have some risks. You have to, you can’t be an idiot when it boils down. Especially,
Josh Ungaro (00:48:19):
Especially in an upper unit. Exactly. You have the water pouring down the water, pouring down the stairs.
Andrew Schultz (00:48:25):
<Laugh>. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, as a, as a landlord, you can certainly ban something like that from being used, especially if it’s going to be a situation where you’re paying for the utilities and it’s gonna cause extra usage in the unit. Kind of like what we’re talking about previously. But yeah, you can definitely ban portable dishwashers, portable laundry. It’s just the same thing as saying, you know, no, no pets or something like that. Yeah. As long as you’re stipulating it from the onset, I don’t think it’ll be a problem if you’d find out that your tenant brought in a portable dishwasher and then you say, no, you can’t have that, then I think you’re gonna have more of a headache, a more of an uphill battle.
Josh Ungaro (00:49:01):
Yeah. I just didn’t, I, I got tripped up there ’cause I didn’t know if, if, because it was like, it’s not a, it’s a necessity to wash your clothes or, I, I didn’t know if there was anything there tricky that, that said like, ah, well, you know, you can’t really ban ’em. But then you brought up a good point about the water bill. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and all those, those additional things. So
Andrew Schultz (00:49:23):
Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything, I mean, it might be state by state. I can’t think of anything here in New York. I’m not an attorney. I should probably preface by saying
Josh Ungaro (00:49:31):
Neither, neither am I
Andrew Schultz (00:49:32):
<Laugh>. Neither of us are attorneys. We’re just guys on the internet <laugh>. Yeah, I don’t think that there’s anything that would stop you from putting a clause like that into your lease. I know that we actually had a portable dishwasher in an apartment that we rented when I was way younger. And it was not in the lease that we couldn’t have a portable dishwasher the first year that we lived in the apartment, but was certainly in the lease the second year we lived in the apartment. So, yeah. Yeah. It’s one of those situations that you probably don’t have that in your lease by default. Maybe you should double check your lease to, to look for that, but yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:50:11):
Yeah. No, that, yep. All right. Let’s do this question from Tariq. I think it’s a Facebook question. Tariq asks, I’ve seen YouTube videos about having a rental binder with your property info and list of comparable rentals available in the area. Has anyone found it useful at lease renewal time?
Andrew Schultz (00:50:36):
I think it’s a waste of time to be honest with you. Josh, can you still hear me? I
Josh Ungaro (00:50:41):
Got you now. Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:50:43):
Yes or no? Yep.
Josh Ungaro (00:50:45):
Gotcha.
Andrew Schultz (00:50:46):
Gimme one second. I lost my my audio, but I can respond while I’m looking for my plugin. I think it’s a waste of time at the end of the day because if a tenant is thinking about moving to a different apartment, they are already doing that research and they’re going to know, you know, if there’s a if your rent is going up substantially, they’re going to know whether or not they want to pay that new rent just based off of the fact that they are doing that research on their own behalf. So you don’t really need to do it for them. And honestly, I think it’s kind of a waste of time if you feel like you wanna raise your rent, raise it based on market conditions, and raise it based on whatever the laws happen to be in your area. Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:51:29):
But I think taking the time to put all of your rental comps and stuff into a binder and send it to your tenant and say, we’re gonna increase your rent by $50 this year, but everybody else is way higher. They’re gonna figure that out as soon as they go to look for a department. That’s, that’s not research that you need to provide to them. Yeah, I think it’s kind of a waste of time. You could do it if you want, but I don’t think it really has any, any beneficial value to, to you. I think it’s a waste of your time as the landlord. And I think it, the tenant probably doesn’t care because they’re doing that research on their own anyway.
Josh Ungaro (00:51:57):
I think it could be beneficial for just internal, not, not even necessarily a binder, but just know, know what your properties in your area that are comparable to your property are, are being rented for.
Andrew Schultz (00:52:08):
Well, I mean, and we have, when we have a lease that comes up for renewal, we go on typically Zillow ’cause it has a really nice map feature and go to where the property is and look to see what other rentals in the neighborhood are renting for. Yeah. Are we at above below market? Yeah. And then we’ll look at Facebook marketplace a lot too, ’cause that has some pretty good data to, to go through. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And then we make our determinations from there. And obviously New York State has laws as to rent increases and things like that. But yeah, I mean I think that, I think that most tenants at this point are capable of going out and finding the property that they think is gonna be the right fit for them at the price point that they are comfortable with. The one thing I will mention though, is I feel like tenants are, if you have an income requirement for your tenant screening criteria, which you absolutely should, I think that you are going to find that tenants think that they can afford a lot more apartment than what you might think that they can afford, depending on what your criteria is.
Andrew Schultz (00:53:06):
So for instance, if you’re using, you know, three x net is your income requirement, you may have a tenant that applies for the apartment and they don’t qualify under your guidelines, but they think that they might qualify under their own guidelines. So that’s kind of the battle that I see more often than not is tenants thinking that they’re going to be able to afford more home than what they would technically qualify for based on your, your rental income guidelines.
Josh Ungaro (00:53:33):
Hmm. Gotcha. All right. What we are at 1 54 Eastern Time. What’s we got time for? One more here. Let’s do one
Andrew Schultz (00:53:44):
More.
Josh Ungaro (00:53:45):
Let’s do one more. Alright, well let’s let’s finish this off with a question from Martha. This is a Facebook question. I have a 10 screening question if you want to deny an application based on a negative review from a previous landlord. Is this also covered with an adverse action letter? Which, what should be included? I just rent one property and I’m the owner.
Andrew Schultz (00:54:12):
All right. I’m gonna see if I can grab my adverse action letter. ’cause I, I feel like I pull this up quite a bit when we’re doing our yeah, there we go. Got it. Let me do a screen share here real quick.
Josh Ungaro (00:54:25):
You got it.
Andrew Schultz (00:54:27):
Let’s see. Share screen. There we go. So this is our adverse action letter. This is the letter that we send out for own Buffalo. This is the letter that we send out anytime we deny an application. Doesn’t matter if it’s been denied because of a credit and background issue. Doesn’t matter if it’s been denied because of an income issue, everybody gets the same letter. The only thing that changes is if we ran a credit and background. We check this box. This letter is about as simple as you can make it. We don’t specify a reason for anything because we’re not required to in this state. So you need to understand what the requirements are for disclosure in your state. You may be able to use a very generic letter like this, or you may need to use something more specific. We used to use a much more in-depth letter that specified the reasons for the denial.
Andrew Schultz (00:55:15):
And we found that all it did was create arguments. We would get people calling us and complaining that, you know, we weren’t we looked at something improperly or whatever the everybody wanted to argue because everybody thought that they were right in that situation. And to eliminate that, we just stopped providing the reason we give the requirement that we have to by state and federal law to be compliant with our tenant screening guidelines as well as compliant with the credit and background check screening guidelines that we have to comply with. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And that’s it. Like, that’s it. Thank you for your recent rental application. After review of the provided information, we find that we are unable to accept your application at this time if checked. This decision was based in whole or in part on the information provided to us in a consumer report or investigative consumer report prepared for a consum prepared for us by a consumer reporting agency.
Andrew Schultz (00:56:10):
Their mailing address and phone number are listed below. And then obviously that is the the rent prep offices there. So like this is the letter that we send out. It’s nothing more, you know, nothing fancier than that. We specify the least amount that we legally have to because it prevents us from having more and more and more discussions with every single tenant who’s been denied. And honestly, if you go through our application process and you’ve been denied, you should be able to figure out why, because you have to sign off on our criteria before you even start your application. And you have to submit all your documentation to us before we can process it. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, so you either didn’t read the application criteria, didn’t submit a document that you were supposed to submit or just didn’t qualify because you didn’t read the criteria. It’s pretty straightforward.
Josh Ungaro (00:57:01):
Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:57:03):
I would recommend, I don’t think it’s a legal requirement, Josh. You might be able to to, to clarify. I know it is if you do the credit and background check, but I don’t know as though it’s necessarily a requirement that you have to send an adverse if you don’t run a credit and background. I don’t, our policy is that we do it anyway. Every tenant that every applicant that applies gets an adverse action letter if they don’t wind up moving into an apartment. And that’s more of a, just because we are treating everybody the same across the board situation.
Josh Ungaro (00:57:34):
Yeah. I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s necessarily mandated if the, if the credit and the background’s not ran. But yeah. No, I i, I agree with what you’re, what you’re saying here too, though, just doing it the same across the board and also wi also just giving the information that you need to give and not opening a can of worms. I mean, that’s, that’s really there, there’s no need to do that. ’cause Like you said, you’re jumping into arguments and back and forth and it’s just,
Andrew Schultz (00:58:05):
It’s just not. I’ll tell you that when we changed our adverse action letter to the format that we’re using now, and by the way, that letter’s available on the rent prep website. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it’s just a copy from their website that I put our, our company info at the top of. Yep. And actually I think my previous one was a rent prep form as well. I don’t even know if that one’s available. The one that had all the the reasons specified on it.
Josh Ungaro (00:58:27):
I’d have to look back. We’ve updated them since and yeah, I know that like Andrew was saying, if you go to our website, I think rent prep.com, there’s a tab at the top that says resources. And you can get landlord forms through that dropdown and there’s over I think you just need to put your email in and you’ll get over. It’s, it’s 62 templates just to be clear, their templates. So please reach out to your local, local authorities and, and legal advice to update them to, to what you need for your area. But yeah, there’s over 62 different forms that I think we offer through that for free on the website. Yeah. So, yeah,
Andrew Schultz (00:59:06):
Which, I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I use several of them in our property management company or modified versions thereof. Like, it’s a nice form. It’s, it’s a good place to start if you’re a new landlord. Right. It’s a good place for fresh ideas if you’re an existing landlord. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and it’s, it’s free, so you can’t really beat the price.
Josh Ungaro (00:59:24):
Yeah. We just wanna get you started. They are, like I said, they are templates, but always they’re editable. So you can go in there and, and change any any information that you need and they can be electronically filled out as well. So yeah, they’re compatible with that. So download, download the forms. Download the forms today.
Andrew Schultz (00:59:43):
Download your form pack today.
Josh Ungaro (00:59:44):
Download your form. That’s my little plug for the day. There you go. The form bundle. Before
Andrew Schultz (00:59:50):
We before we wrap up, I did wanna mention just a, from a, a scheduling standpoint, we’re gonna start moving the AMAs to earlier in the month just for content purposes basically, because we want to use the a both as a video and also use the audio as one of our podcast episodes later in the month. And in order to accomplish that, we need to move these earlier in the month so we have time for editing and stuff like that. So, yep. Going forward in 2024, we’re gonna have the AMAs earlier in the month, probably in the first couple weeks of the month as opposed to the last couple weeks of the month. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And the other thing that I wanted to mention is that we’re looking to do a lot more interview style content this year. So if there’s anybody who you feel that we would be who would be an interesting interview, let us know and we’ll reach out to them and see if we can get an interview scheduled because those are, those are a lot of fun for me as well. It’s, it’s fun for me. I almost look at the interviews as a, a form of selfishness because I get to ask the questions that I want to ask to the people that I want to ask them to. So I do enjoy the the interviews quite a bit. So I think we’re gonna try to do more of the interview style content this year.
Josh Ungaro (01:00:56):
Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (01:00:57):
And then obviously the AMAs will be moving to the early part of the month. Yeah,
Josh Ungaro (01:01:01):
The interviews are nice ’cause you get a little, you definitely get a different spin on a variety of experts and across, across the industry and different industries. You know, it, it’s definitely, it’s nice and refreshing. So yeah, we definitely wanna put a little bit more focus on Yeah. On those this year.
Andrew Schultz (01:01:19):
Well, and I think the other thing that we had kind of talked about, and actually you just mentioned it, is there’s a lot of different industries that obviously rent prep is a residential tenant screening service tenant and credit background screening service. But like, there’s no reason that we can’t go and talk to an owner operator of a self-storage facility if that’s something that somebody’s interested in or there’s, in fact, there’s a building, a historic renovation out in Medina that I want to go interview the owner of because he did a really nice job of putting retail on the first floor, his law office on the second floor and the third floor is used as mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> like a bed and breakfast. So like, there’s a lot of really cool stuff out there. Yeah,
Josh Ungaro (01:01:58):
That’s worth, sometimes you don’t, you don’t think about it, but yeah, even think about like, I don’t know, a pest control expert or, or somebody, you know, in that field that, that has that knowledge. Waste management, water, electric, you know, anybody that, there’s a million things that relate to your, your home, your dwelling, your, your rental unit. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> you just, sometimes we just, we think in that little bubble, but yeah. There’s, everything ties into it.
Andrew Schultz (01:02:23):
No, absolutely. Absolutely. So
Josh Ungaro (01:02:25):
Yeah, I’m excited for that kind of stuff.
Andrew Schultz (01:02:27):
I am too, actually. I think 2024 is gonna be an interesting year. Content and marketing wise.
Josh Ungaro (01:02:32):
Yeah. So, and with this, with this new filter, I look a year younger, so it look like <laugh>. I didn’t even age in 2023, even with almost two storms, two storms to, to get me through. But
Andrew Schultz (01:02:44):
Gotta love it. Gotta love it. Alright, we’re gonna go ahead and end things off there. I think. Josh, thanks for joining me again this month. It’s always fun doing these with you. It’s good to have somebody to banter back and forth with. It’s yeah, man, it’s a lot doing ’em solo. I’m not gonna lie. It’s been great. This, this last little while here having at least one other person with me, if not too would Carlos or Ke Yeah. Or whoever else wants to hop on.
Josh Ungaro (01:03:05):
Yeah. I can’t imagine doing ’em. I’m, you know, doing ’em alone. So I yeah. You know, I’m here whenever I, whenever I can be here and I be here and I, I love doing them.
Andrew Schultz (01:03:15):
Awesome. Well thank you everybody for watching or listening. We will be back next month with another ama. In the meantime, if you are looking to find us, you can find us on Facebook at rent prep.com/groups/rent prep. You can find us@rentprep.com if you’re looking for tenant screening, tenant screening, and credit and background checks. I think that’s everything I needed to cover. Josh, do you have anything?
Josh Ungaro (01:03:40):
No. happy well, we’re almost, almost, we’re getting close on the end of Feb or January. We’re almost in February already. <Laugh>, the years almost done, but crazy.
Andrew Schultz (01:03:52):
Gotta
Josh Ungaro (01:03:52):
Love it. Go, go. Bills go. Any any listeners that have teams in the playoffs go, go them. Besides Kansas City.
Andrew Schultz (01:03:59):
Except for Kansas City.
Josh Ungaro (01:04:01):
Except for Kansas City, but yeah, everybody
Andrew Schultz (01:04:03):
Except Casey.
Josh Ungaro (01:04:05):
Everybody everybody be safe out there and we’ll see you. We’ll see you next month.
Andrew Schultz (01:04:11):
Have a good one, everybody. Okay.