Podcast 317: Big Announcement

Facebook has recently changed their ad platform to make it difficult for landlords to discriminate in ads on the platform, Boston is proposing a new rule for landlords and you might have money sitting on the roof of your rental.

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Show Transcription:

Eric Worral: (00:00)
Hey, everybody! Welcome back to another episode of RentPrep for Landlords. This is episode #316. We got some big news on the podcast today, which we’ll get to after the start of this, but we’ve got a guest on, it’s going to be familiar to a lot of you guys have been following the podcast and the different content we’ve retrieved, just producing for awhile. Again. Andrew Schultz here. How are you doing today? Andrew?

Andrew Shultz: (00:21)
Doing great. How are you today?

Eric Worral: (00:23)
Good, good. I’m excited to get to the big news, but you know, we’ll do that little awkward segue. I always do. We’ll get to that right after this.

Eric Worral: (00:34)
Welcome to the RentPrep for Landlords podcast. And now your host, Eric Worral. Yeah, the segue, that’s the awkward thing I just tried to started doing and just kept it. But you know, I like to be authentic with the podcast and be awkward on the podcast. Cause that’s the way it is in real life, you know? No, absolutely. Yeah. So if a lot of you guys remember Andrew, you put it on the podcast, at least I would guess maybe five times probably. Has it been that many? I know you came in for when Jamie Michelle came in talking about animal addendums and then I know that we recorded another one without her. And I feel like you just like little segments too. I think I’ve had John. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, but the big news, I don’t know maybe our podcast editor, Luka can do like a drum roll or something here for us.

Snare roll SFX

Eric Worral: (01:22)
But we are going to be transitioning the podcast. So I’m phasing out and you are phasing in as the host of the RentPrep for Landlords podcast, which I’m super excited about because I think it’s cool watching all the content that you’ve been creating. I, you know, I know you do ask property managers still on your own Facebook channel and your different vibe pages, and it’s been cool to see you kind of get control and a good vibe for doing this content. So I’m excited to see what you do with the podcast.

Andrew Shultz: (01:48)
Yeah. I’m super pumped to you know, back in 2017 when you and I were doing the Ask a Property Manager segment originally, that was always a lot of fun with the two of us doing that. And then I kind of brought that back to life here at the beginning of 2020 on our company page. And it’s been growing pretty steadily since we started doing it. We just had our 25th episode today. I believe it was so starting to get some episodes under our belt there. And you know, it is kind of reminiscent of what you and I had put together back in the day. And now with having the ability to do the RentPrep Podcast as well, it’ll be a great way to extend our social media content.

Eric Worral: (02:25)
Yeah. Yeah. And I’m pretty excited about it. Just for like context for people wondering what’s going on, I’m actually moving on from RentPrep. I’m transitioning right now into my side hustle as the kids say under my full-time hustle done a lot of stuff on YouTube, creating content on YouTube and working with different marketing partners. They’re kind of on affiliate stuff and going to be doing that full time going forward. So there’s a lot, a lot of transitions going on right now, but I think it’s all for the good, so I’m going to be excited cause I’ll be listening and checking in and seeing how things are going and watching the podcasts change. And that’s actually a good thing to talk about because not only will we hear a different voice in the podcast next week, but we’re also going to be changing up the format if you want to kind of talk about that a little bit.

Andrew Shultz: (03:09)
Sure. Yeah. We’ve been kind of working in the background on this for a little while now and we’ve come up with a new format for the podcast. So it’ll be more of a series of several segments. So, you know, we’ll still have in the news, which has always been popular with everybody who listens. And I know that that’s one of the segments that you’ve been big on over the course of the years we’ll still have in the news. And then I know we have a couple of other segments out there as well. I’m struggling to remember the names of them off the top of my head. I don’t have one.

Eric Worral: (03:38)
You gotta, you gotta remember Forum Quorum.

Andrew Shultz: (03:41)
Forum Quorum.

Eric Worral: (03:41)
Yeah, well basically Forum Quorum is like being sourced the Internet for kind of just funny or insightful forums that you see posts up, whether it’s in the RentPrep for landlords Facebook group, BiggerPockets, Reddit threads, wherever it may be, but I’m sure you guys have come across some where there’s a good heated debate on something. And then we had talked about the landlord water cooler, where I think it’ll be experts coming on. And you know, whether it be attorneys, property managers, anybody who is involved with real estate really given some quick expert advice. And that one of the things I like too is you know, I know that I’ve had the fortune of droning on a little bit sometimes with the podcast. It was just me. These are gonna be kinda quick-hitting segments. And then what was it, Feet on the Street, right? Andrew.

Andrew Shultz: (04:24)
Yeah. Feet on the Street, real stories from real property managers, or from industry professionals or something like that. I know the one segment is geared more towards like property management as a whole. And then the other one of the other segments are geared more toward real estate as an industry so that you’re getting a few different perspectives in every episode.

Eric Worral: (04:42)
Yeah. And I think the cool thing is going to be is that somebody can listen to these episodes 15, 20 minutes. I can keep up on current news that affects landlords and real estate investors, but also kind of get some of these just kind of more social aspects of what’s going around on the Internet, involved as well. And speaking of recent news I know I just actually covered this on a previous podcast, but one of the things that’s interesting too is like, you know Ithaca, New York, I covered last week talking about them going to cancel the rent. But I, a lot of people who are listening, even if you don’t live in Ithaca we had talked about how these things start like a precedent and it may be something that affects you in the future. So that’s why it’s always good. I think, to just keep up on the recent news and events because you kind of get an idea of what might be coming down a pipe in your area.

Eric Worral: (05:26)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and with everything that’s going on in the world right now, things are changing at such a rapid pace. I know that you know, obviously things were a little bit slow in our office during the quarantine and everything. And we were every single day, it seemed like there was a new piece of legislation that was being considered or voted on that would have a substantial impact on property owners and landlords nationwide. And it was one of those situations where even might like me as an industry professional, trying to stay on top of it. It became overwhelming. So for someone that maybe only has one duplex property or something like that, it’s almost impossible to stay on top of. So it’s, it’s good to have a resource that you can tie into and say, okay, well at least if I listened to this 20-minute podcast, maybe I’ll hear about what’s going on in the world. What’s changing in legislation and things like that on a national level. Or like you said, even with Ithaca, you know, once something happens, New York, Washington, California seemed to be the one of the first three. Once it happens, there it’ll happen everywhere. So it’s a, it’s good to kind of keep track of what’s happening in other States, even though it might not have a direct impact on your day to day operation, it might very well have an impact before you know, it because of the way that these things tend to snowball.

Eric Worral: (06:40)
The and speaking of things changing. And that we did get an email from somebody who was listening to the podcast. His name was Ken, and I told him, I would ask you this, cause I thought you’d be a great guest for this. But he was just asking about with all the recent events, like if it has changed the way that you or has it affected your tenant screening process or the ways that you’re doing a tenant screening or getting a new tenant into a property.

Andrew Shultz: (07:02)
So I would say it hasn’t really changed our screening criteria at all. We have a really good set of written screening criteria that we operate from every single time that we screen a tenant. And that criteria haven’t changed as a result of this. We’re still looking for those same criteria. We’re still looking for the same income. We’re still looking for a good landlord reference. We’re still looking for a, you know, the criminal background checks to come back. Things like that. Our criteria really haven’t changed. Has the situation changed for a lot of people? Yes. But that’s something that you’re going to pull out, you know, as you’re doing your screening, you’re going to kind of decipher, okay, this person is deeply impacted by what’s going on. Maybe they’re unemployed and only have unemployment coming in. How does that impact their, their income qualification, things like that? It’s, it’s definitely a very dynamic situation from that regard, but having that set of written criteria that you go back to every single time and making sure that criteria are fair, housing compliant goes a long way in protecting you and your assets.

Eric Worral: (08:02)
And one of the things I think that’s interesting too, about what’s going on right now is it’s one of those few times that you can actually see the oncoming issues like, and you actually know the data, right? Cause you’re like, well, this is when most people went on unemployment. This is how long the government funding a portion of it’s going to last, right. Or you might be expecting like where rents are going to stop getting paid. You know, it’s just interesting to be able to see that kind of already before it happens and know that realistically it’s going to happen for a lot of people.

Andrew Shultz: (08:30)
No, absolutely. And it’s, it’s a situation where, you know, we monitor our delinquency percentages on a monthly basis and we have a pretty decent target that we usually stick within on a, on a monthly basis, as far as what were collected and delinquent. You know what I would, but I don’t have the data in front of me. I can give you some round numbers. I can tell you that typically by the 10th of the month or thereabouts, which is when we do our end of month accounting for our property owners, we’re typically in the 87 to 90% collected range, which is pretty good. And speaking in the Buffalo market, keep in mind that I’m not running just a class, a portfolio, most of the properties that we manage our B and C level properties. So to be at a, at a 90 ish percent collection rate in that portfolio type is pretty good.

Andrew Shultz: (09:16)
Yeah. I can tell you, we’ve been about 5% under pace for the last few months, basically, since everything started kicked off here, we’ve been running about 5% under pace. We’ve been running in the low to mid 80 range when it comes to rents collected by that 10th of the month. And the problem we’re seeing now is the tenants that didn’t pay in April and didn’t pay in May, didn’t pay in June. So now we’re starting to see that that delinquent growing it’s starting to snowball. Exactly. So that is causing our percentages to look worse than they actually are, because it’s the same tenants that are non-paying. But the balances are getting bigger. And when you factor that over the course of what our total monthly rent roll is, which is how we figure that percentage out, that’s where we’re running into the to the headaches there. So our, our percentages are starting to starting to show that downward trend. And I think that that’s going to continue once we get to the end of July and the the pandemic unemployment assistance and that extra $600 a week, unless there’s some kind of an extension thereof or what have you.

Eric Worral: (10:18)
Yeah. And who knows, you know, there might be probably by the time somebody listens to this, like, Oh, that’s not even a thing anymore.

Andrew Shultz: (10:25)
Well, yeah. Right. That’s the funny part about, about doing social media stuff right now is, you know, I published videos in March and April, end of March, beginning of April, that if somebody went back and watched them now, they’d be like, you’re completely wrong and blah, blah, blah. So it’s not just understanding what you’re, what you’re learning. It’s also understanding it in the context of how old is this information and is it still valid? And that’s, I mean, even things with regards to, you know, like evictions and stuff like that, like the economy, everything keeps moving like all of the goalposts keep moving. We just rendered we’re in phase three in Western New York now finally, but like downstate New York city, they are in, are they in phase one yet? I think we are in phase one now. Yeah. It’s just crazy. Yeah. It’s definitely, definitely an interesting time to be in real estate.

Eric Worral: (11:15)
Yeah. So you know, we’re probably getting close to the end of the episode here. Do you have any kind of insights for people as far as well? I probably should have done a better intro just for the people who aren’t familiar with you, property manager, you know, they’re like, thanks for this. At the end of the episode, Eric, this is why I’m leaving, you know, can’t do this stuff. But your property manager which is probably not the technical term, you go buy, right? So get your associate broker, right?

Andrew Shultz: (11:40)
No, not anymore. I’m a big boy now. No. When we moved over to when we were doing the asker property management segment back before I was an associate broker with Realty edge. And then as of December 20, I opened my own company under the name owned Buffalo, inc. And I’m a fully licensed real estate broker here in New York state. And property management is the main focus of our business, but we also do a lot of like foreclosure listings and sales REO is what they tend to call it. So we do a lot of REO listings and sales and we do, you know, investment, property listings and sales. I’m not super interested in the single-family unless it’s friends and family or something like that. But yeah, investment property is kind of the niche that we operate in inside of our company with I’m sorry. Did I say investment property or property management? Investment property managers, investment property is, is, is kind of our niche. And then property management is, is more or less our main source of revenue.

Eric Worral: (12:39)
How many units are you a managing style?

Andrew Shultz: (12:42)
Oh, about 120 issue units. We’ve got some stuff in the pipeline that might grow that a little bit. We’re pretty excited about those opportunities, but yeah, we’re right in that kind of timeframe there.

Eric Worral: (12:51)
Cool. Yeah, I think that’s going to be awesome for the listeners because you’ll have so many more insights from managing that many rentals. Hopefully most of them good insights, but I’m sure it’s funny stuff will pop up too, that you can share.

Andrew Shultz: (13:01)
Yeah. I mean, it always does. It’s, it’s one of those things where you, you learn by a fireman. And we’ve made just about every mistake there is to make out there. So if somebody can can learn from our mistakes and not make the same ones themselves, they’ll probably going to save themselves a whole lot of headache and they’re definitely gonna save themselves a whole lot of money. So learn from my mistakes, don’t make the same ones and you’ll be on the right path for sure.

Eric Worral: (13:25)
Very cool. I love it. Well, looking forward to tuning in and keeping up on what’s going on and definitely be excited. People should be excited for the next episode. I think it’s going to be pretty cool with the new segments. So I’m sure there’ll be some growing pains as we figure it out, but I think it’s going to be awesome. You’re gonna do great with it.

Andrew Shultz: (13:41)
Yeah. I appreciate the opportunity. We’re super pumped to be a, to be working with everybody at rent prep. Again, you know, it’s, it’s a very natural thing for us to do because we’ve worked with you guys in the past. And I think that this is a really great opportunity for both for own Buffalo and for, for rent prep to have basically an industry pro at, at their disposal at any time. So it’s a, it’s a good, a good way to be.

Eric Worral: (14:01)
Yeah, it’s going to be great. And I was just looking up here. I jumped on the podcast episode, #136 back in January of 2017. So coming up just a, what, three and a half years about doing the podcast. So it’s been a good run. I appreciate everybody who’s listened. I know some of you guys reach out some of you don’t, but doesn’t mean, you know, you’re not listening every week. It’s kinda weird doing it goodbye. Cause it’s like, like I, I haven’t met a lot of new people and I don’t know who you are when you say nice things. Most of the time when you do reach out via email and other channels.

Andrew Shultz: (14:34)
Yeah. I mean, and there’s definitely a huge community when it comes to the RentPrep group as well. Like the Facebook group, the RentPrep for Landlord’s Facebook group. Last time I looked there’s like 12,000 members on that group. Yeah. It’s huge. I mean, it’s grown by leaps and bounds since even I came on board and was working with you guys back during the early Ask a Property Manager days, it’s just the amount of members has grown drastically and it’s, it’s become its own little community in and of itself. Like there are people that I recognize their names every time I go in there. So it’ll be great to be able to connect with everybody on another level as well.

Eric Worral: (15:09)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I wish he had nothing but the best sign and Andrew I’m excited to tune in and see how it goes. And I’m sure we’ll be dropping you a line here or there so

Andrew Shultz: (15:18)
Well, nothing to the best for you as well, Eric, I mean, it’s pretty exciting to be able to, to walk away from what you’ve done here at RentPrep and be able to focus on your YouTube channel and continue to grow. You know, other things that I know that you’ve got going on that are more or less, you know, behind closed doors at the moment, but it’s super exciting to see that you’ve been able to grow a YouTube channel to the, to the stage where it can actually support you and the family and everything else. That’s incredible. It’s amazing. It’s super awesome.

Eric Worral: (15:46)
Yeah. It’s weird. Like it’s one of those things where like, I’m almost like ashamed to tell somebody about it, cause you’re like, Oh cool. You’re on YouTube.

Eric Worral: (15:54)
Oh YouTuber, man.

Eric Worral: (15:55)
You eat like cupcakes while you’re Instagramming yourself now kind of thing. It’s like, nah, I don’t do that. But, well, yeah, I appreciate that. And we’re, you know, excited a little scared, nervous, but at the same time, just more so excited about where I’m gonna take that and be able to grow that with my full-time focus. So for sure. All right, cool. Well to you, good luck to Luka my editor forever. I appreciate all the work that you’ve put in on the podcast for me as well, please, please leave this a compliment in the episode, you know, nice little sendoff and yeah, I wish you guys nothing but the best. Awesome. Thank you so much, Eric. All right guys. One last time until next week. Take care.