RentPrep Community Manager, Andrew Schultz, chats with Co-Founder & CMO, David Bitton, of DoorLoop about how landlords can market themselves to find new tenants.
We’ll even touch on the possibility of creating a website for your investment properties to find better tenants and gain more visibility.
Plus, find out how Bitton started in the industry and became a visionary behind a well-known rental property management software.
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Andrew Schultz (00:00:14):
Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Rent Prep for Landlords podcast. I’m Andrew Schultz, community manager here at Rent Prep. I’m also a licensed real estate broker in the state of New York with over 14 years of experience in the rental property and property management industries. Today is a very, very special episode of the podcast because we have a special guest with us, Mr. David Bitten. He is the C m O and Co-founder of Door Loop. David, how are you today?
David Bitton (00:00:39):
I am doing great. Excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Andrew Schultz (00:00:41):
Thanks for joining me. I’m really excited to have you. It’s, it’s nice to get really good guests and I’m really excited about the questions that we’ve got lined up for you today. See you. If you could tell us a couple, a little bit about what Door Loop is and how you kind of fell into Door Loop or you’re the co-founder, so how did it kind of come around?
David Bitton (00:00:58):
Yeah, yeah. So I’ve always been involved in, you know, startups, entrepreneurial SaaS businesses, and we’re always usually solving a problem for ourselves and a passion that we have. So we have five co-founders, and two of us had, or three of us even had a very similar issue where we started investing in real estate rentals. And it was mostly the co main co founder and c e o Ori, who was investing in real estate rentals, trying to manage them, collect rent, find tenants, that sort of thing. Accounting mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And he looked at all the different programs and he couldn’t find one that was easy enough to use, affordable, simple to get started same day right away. So I remember, I’ll never forget that day, he came into our old company office and he is like, we need to build this software. There must be a better way. Like literally out, out of Shark Tank, I was like, I agree, but not right now. So when we exited that company, that idea always stuck with us. And one day he called all of us and he is like, are you guys all in? We’re like, yeah, we’re in, let’s do it.
Andrew Schultz (00:01:51):
And Door Loop is, correct me if I’m wrong, it’s a property management software, correct?
David Bitton (00:01:55):
Correct. Property management software for landlords and property managers worldwide. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> for anyone that manages any unit with a door. So it could be residential, commercial, really anything. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And pretty much the goal is to automate as much as the tedious processes and backend admin work as possible. So automate the accounting, finding new tenants on Zillow, Trulia, collecting rent, sending invoices, doing background checks, renewals, maintenance requests, tenant portal, literally everything. A to Z for landlord and property manager.
Andrew Schultz (00:02:23):
No, that’s awesome. It’s when you get into this business, you don’t realize how much time every little aspect of the business takes until you actually have to go through and do every little aspect of the business and anything that you can do to make yourself, you know, make your life easier, whether it be a property management software. Yes. Something that automates some process that you have inside your business. Anything that you can do to kind of take a step forward in your business is critical. And we’ve talked about correct property management softwares quite a bit actually on the podcast and stuff like that over the years. Now for Door Loop, is this something that’s more meant for like smaller portfolios, larger portfolios, kinda where’s the the best place for somebody to jump into this?
David Bitton (00:03:05):
Yeah, great question. So, pretty much any portfolio size can use Door Loop. What we’d really cater to right now are the, I would say one to a thousand is our suite spot right now. So anyone either getting started or ramping up their portfolio. So any landlord with like one to a hundred units or property managers, property management companies from 50 to a thousand units is mm-hmm. <Affirmative> right there. Our bread and butter residential commercial. And then we’re also expanding it to h O a very soon in the us No, that’s awesome. And also abroad.
Andrew Schultz (00:03:35):
That’s awesome. It sounds like you guys covered pretty much every aspect of, of property management, at least from the software end of things.
David Bitton (00:03:41):
Yeah, de definitely eventually going more up market to some of the bigger players, but right now everyone’s really happy with our core offering right now.
Andrew Schultz (00:03:49):
No, that’s awesome. Glad to hear it. Thank you. So how long have you been in the tech industry?
David Bitton (00:03:55):
Wow. So I mean, I’ve I’ve been involved in technology and computers ever since I was, I think five years old. Wow. my dad got me my first computer, 72 megahertz <laugh> when I was like five years old. So I’ve always one
Andrew Schultz (00:04:09):
Of one of the early pens. Right. Early,
David Bitton (00:04:11):
Early. I had the first CD burner, the first D v D burner, mini disc, you know, we’re going, we’re, we’re dating ourselves now. But yeah, I was always very much into it. And then, you know, when I graduated college, I wasn’t really sure what path I would take, where I would go. And then I found my first job, luckily at a software SaaS startup company, fell in love. I’m like, what am I even thinking? This is what I love, like computer software. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So that was wow. Like, yeah, maybe 15 years ago now, so, yeah. So it’s been a while. It’s been
Andrew Schultz (00:04:40):
A fun ride. No, it’s, it’s, it’s funny you mentioned that. I’m pretty sure my first computer was like a 75 megahertz penem. Yeah. And my brothers were, they’re older than I am. They were actually running around on a Commodore 64 back in the days. So <laugh>,
David Bitton (00:04:54):
I don’t even know what that is. It must be that,
Andrew Schultz (00:04:57):
That old Oh man. So old school. So old school. Yeah. So, yeah. How did your career in tech end up leading you towards real estate investing?
David Bitton (00:05:05):
So, interestingly enough my father got me involved in real estate investing before I even got into the tech, the tech world, or started even working mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I think when I was 20. He’s always been into real estate, always a big real estate investor. So he brought me in, I think at my early age of 20, I think in college. And I would make like some money in the side or side hustling or some job that I had, and I was at every dollar in it into real estate investing. So he kinda got me started very early. And then that sort of transformed and shifted by the age of 23, 24 when I got more into tech, I started doing some real estate investments online. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So I started getting into, so before it was historically syndications funds, portfolios that would invest in as like limited partner. Sure. And then I ended up getting into crowdfunding. So I still today invest with fundrise.com, which we could talk about mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And then I also got involved in REITs. So real estate investment trusts like index funds specifically V N Q and V N Q I for us and, and international.
Andrew Schultz (00:06:04):
Gotcha. Gotcha. We kind of already answered this next one already, but the, the catalyst that led to the creation of Door Loop, you were kind of talking about just the fact that there wasn’t a good solution out there. And honestly, I can speak to that too because we’ve been through a couple different property management software solutions over the years, and I’m not even happy with the one that I have now. <Laugh>. So like every property management we used software. Yeah.
David Bitton (00:06:28):
<Laugh>,
Andrew Schultz (00:06:28):
Every property management software seems to do like one or two things really, really well, and they seem to be really, really bad at a lot of the other stuff. Yeah. What was it that, was there something that you saw that other companies were not doing or not offering in the marketplace that you felt door Loop could kind of slide in there and, and fit that Yeah. Offering?
David Bitton (00:06:46):
Yeah, definitely. So as far as features, the, there’s a lot of companies, I like to call ’em legacy companies. They’ve been around for 20 years. They have every feature under the sun. You’re not gonna differentiate based on features. We have the same features, everyone has the same features. Fine. For us, it was two things that really were key factors. One was ease of use mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So when we tried signing up for our own software, just to see the software, free trial, watch a video, get a demo, right. It was impossible. You know, we set, we submitted contact forms to all of our competitors, now we want a demo. Some never got back to us. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, some got back to us two weeks later. It was like, this is crazy. So that was, I think the first thing when we actually got into the software, we’re like, whoa, this looks like it was built 20 years ago.
David Bitton (00:07:23):
Like, this is not user friendly, it’s not easy. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And they’re like, oh, yeah, but, but don’t worry. We, we train you and it takes 50 hours and it’s gonna cost you $5,000. We’re like, isn’t there a software that I don’t need training that’s easy enough to use, or I could figure it out. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So that was the second thing. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And then I think third was just the support overall. So, you know, my father-in-law use use a different software, and what we kept hearing was, when you need support, a lot of these companies just aren’t there for you. It takes 45 minutes whole time and stuff like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, so we said the two biggest differentiators for us is gonna be the ease of use, and you can get started right away within minutes. Right. And the second thing was gonna be our support. So right now, our average time to get a response from our chat team or email team is five minutes. And that’s just like, no one does that. So
Andrew Schultz (00:08:06):
No, no, you’re right. I, i, I don’t know how long it took the last support request to be answered by our current property management software provider, but I know it was a lot longer than five minutes <laugh>. Yeah.
David Bitton (00:08:16):
Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:08:17):
That’s crazy. Well, and it’s good because like you said, those are major sticky points with a lot of people, whether it be small landlords, mom and pop style shops, or, you know, I’m, what I would consider probably a small to medium sized property management company, but there are a lot of people out there that are much bigger players than I am. Yeah. And the more you grow, the harder it is to leave a software solution because there’s just so much data that you have in place and things of that nature. So it’s important to get that decision. Right. Almost, almost critical, I would say, to get that decision right the first time, because otherwise moving data from one place to another turns into a gigantic headache. And I think that having the strong support is going to make you a much stickier organization over the course of time, because people are gonna know that they can get that support when they need it.
David Bitton (00:09:00):
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. And then, and also for everyone listening that has their own businesses or rentals, you know, for us it was always, you know, go above and beyond. So how can you go above and beyond in your business? How could you be a better landlord than anyone else they’ve ever met with, ever in their life? So for us mm-hmm. <Affirmative> above and beyond means, you know, if someone has a question about accounting that really isn’t, we’re not supposed to answer those questions. We’re not supposed to give accounting advice. Right. We will spend five hours with someone teaching ’em about accounting, property management, accounting, chart of accounts, balance sheets, all that fun stuff. So we just go above and beyond. And that’s, I think, also a key differentiator.
Andrew Schultz (00:09:32):
That’s awesome. It’s so nice to, it’s refreshing to see that there are still software companies out there that offer support rather than just send an email, we’ll get back to you in four to six weeks if you’re lucky. Yeah. <Laugh>. Yeah. You had talked about, briefly, you talked about what it takes to present yourself strong as a, on the landlord side of the house. What do you feel is the most important thing that a landlord, whether it be an individual or a small property man, or even a large property management company, what is the most important thing when you’re talking about building a personal brand or a small business brand or something like that, when it’s, when you’re talking about marketing yourself to tenants, potential, potential tenants, potential clients?
David Bitton (00:10:10):
Yeah. So I think for landlords and property managers, your brand is generally you or the people that, that work with you. So for, for me, there’s a few things. Obviously, trust and communication is probably a big one. So landlords have to put themselves, and it’s hard. They have to put themselves in the shoes of the tenant mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and understand if I was a tenant and my toilet didn’t work, or my AC was broken, or my FID was broken, and I have three kids, right?
Andrew Schultz (00:10:38):
Like,
David Bitton (00:10:39):
Wow. Like my life is upside down. This is my home. It’s not just an investment for me. So as a landlord, you have to realize and understand, wow, someone’s family and livelihood is at stake. Now they, they don’t have food on the table, they don’t have air condition mm-hmm. In Miami, Florida. Like, it’s, it’s devastating for their family. So just put yourself in their shoes and try to be as commun communicative as possible. The number one reason that we see people not renewing leases is just a bad experience with their landlords or property managers, usually with communication. So they’ll call a landlord or up and say, Hey, this happened, this broke a maintenance request, and it just falls through the cracks. People are too busy, they don’t get to it. Right. And that’s a big deal for ’em, so they don’t renew their leases. So I think that
Andrew Schultz (00:11:16):
Makes sense. For me.
David Bitton (00:11:17):
It’s you know, you’re all about your reputation, your trust, your communication, be empathetic for the tenants and just put yourself in their shoes more than anything.
Andrew Schultz (00:11:24):
And it’s, it’s interesting that you framed it in that way because I was almost thinking of this as, you know, how do you market yourself when you’re putting up a listing or something like that. But as you were talking, I kind of came to the realization marketing doesn’t stop just because you placed a tenant. Yeah. That tenant is gonna talk about their nasty landlord on Facebook if their toilet is backed up for three days because they called it on Friday and the landlord’s not sending a plumber until Monday or whatever. Right. Like, marketing doesn’t ever really stop. It’s one of those things that it’s with you no matter what. It’s with you whenever you’re interacting with a tenant. I mean, I have a customized plate on my car that says Own Buffalo, which is the name of our company. Like, people see me driving my car. That’s a representation of that probably wasn’t the best idea. I should probably swap that back to a regular road rage. Oh, dude. <Laugh>.
Andrew Schultz (00:12:12):
It’s so bad. Yeah. But you’re, you’re right, though, marketing doesn’t necessarily stop just because you placed a tenant, because that tenant has the ability to have an impact on your ability to find future tenants. And the more properties you have, and the more often you have something that is out there on the market, the more opportunity there is for somebody to pop up on a, a Facebook post for your apartment and say, oh yeah, this guy’s a terrible landlord. He doesn’t fix anything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that’s something that, honestly, I hadn’t even thought of it that way until you brought it up. It’s, it’s, yeah, definitely a unique way of looking at things. Well,
David Bitton (00:12:43):
I’ll, I’ll tell you, I also look at things and the full funnel perspective, so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, it’s, it’s all connected. So someone might find your listing or your website or your property on Zillow, for example, and we could talk about branding and like, what photos should have videos. Sure. We could talk about that. But then they submit a contact form request, Hey, I’m interested in your property, I want to see it. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Okay. So then you can say, okay, now it goes to sales. But really you’re, you’re, you’re probably doing everything yourself. So you, you are the salesperson, the marketer, you’re everything. Right. So for me, the next step is in the funnel. Okay. You, you received a lead, you received a new tenant request. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, you need to contact them as soon as possible. Ideally within minutes,
Andrew Schultz (00:13:19):
15 minutes.
David Bitton (00:13:20):
Yep. Minutes. Minutes. You know, even after four minutes, it’s already too long. Because when you put yourself in the tenant’s shoes, for example mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, they’re looking for an apartment or, or a unit right now to rent out, or maybe it’s commercial, whatever. Right. And then they are probably clicking that submit contact form to numerous people in the next few minutes. Oh,
Andrew Schultz (00:13:36):
Absolutely.
David Bitton (00:13:37):
It’s just a game of who can get back to them first. And if you get back to them right away within a minutes, they’re like, whoa, okay, number one, that’s impressive. Number two, this is probably the level of service and communication I can expect as a tenant.
Andrew Schultz (00:13:48):
Yeah. And it’s interesting you mention that because we, I do a lot of apartment listings on Facebook marketplace. That’s where a lot of our leads have been coming through lately. And on the tenant side, it’s very easy to go on Facebook marketplace and find five apartments and just click interested, interested, interested, interested, interested, without really even spending the time to read the description or even flip through the photos. It’s very easy for the tenant to make several contact requests all at once. And it’s up to you as the landlord or the property owner to actually go through and respond and, you know, kind of weed out the responses that kinda read out the, the people that are just tire kicking or whatever the case may be. And it’s, it, you’re right, it’s a matter of minutes. Like a lead goes cold within a matter of minutes.
Andrew Schultz (00:14:31):
So we actually have like an auto response set up for most of our listings that automatically sends them to our website, which has more photos, gets them into a situation contact form, like you said, go ahead and schedule your showing and kind of getting the ball rolling before a live person actually needs to touch the lead. We usually don’t even have to touch it until they’ve requested a showing time. And then we’re basically fitting it into the calendar and going from there. Yeah. But it’s, it is a race from the moment that that person says that they’re interested to the moment that they’re actually contacted, the faster you can get to them, the more likely you are to be able to actually convert that lead to a showing, convert that showing into an application, convert that application into an a lease in an actual tenant. There’s a whole process there. You’re exactly right.
David Bitton (00:15:15):
A thousand percent. I mean, that was exactly the thing I was gonna tell you. You know, as soon as if you’re getting that many leads in, amazing, you figured out a great way mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but you definitely wouldn’t wanna waste time looking at every single one. So if you could have some automated way to get back to them, then maybe send ’em a form to screen them and filter them even further. That’s, that’s ideal.
Andrew Schultz (00:15:30):
Well, and it’s, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was driving home from Rochester to Buffalo one day. I was out there looking at a foreclosure, ’cause we do some foreclosure work for banks as well. And I had just listed an apartment prior to going out to Rochester, and this was a couple years back before I had somebody that was handling the, the listing of stuff. But I had like 85 messages waiting for me on Facebook. And I was like, what? Wow. I don’t have time to answer all these. So it basically just turned into a copy and paste response. And that’s kind of Yes. Yes. Now it’s become, you know, first, the first time it happens, it’s what do I do? And the second time it happens, it’s okay, what did I do last time? And the third time it’s okay, now I have a system for this. Exactly. So it works out a little bit better, but you have to get something in place almost immediately, because once you put an apartment up, especially in today’s day and age, with the housing market being what it is, it’s fast and furious, the number of people that are reaching out, looking to get in to see that unit.
David Bitton (00:16:22):
Yeah. A hundred percent.
Andrew Schultz (00:16:24):
So kind of in that same vein, we’re talking about marketing and things of that nature. What would you say are some of the things that landlords absolutely have to put into their ads or on their websites or things of that nature to put their best foot forward when they’re trying to attract a new tenant?
David Bitton (00:16:39):
Yeah, so I mean, as a marketer, I’m, I’m a very visual, creative person. So for me it’s a lot of the, the visual aspects I’m gonna give you, so mm-hmm. <Affirmative> number one by far is pictures. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> picture, sell pictures, a good picture tells a thousand words as they say. Yep. And not just any pictures, professional pictures. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> is so important. I don’t have the exact study or data here, but with Airbnb specifically, short-term rentals, they saw, I think it was like a 37% lift in people that book departments, if they had professional pictures Yeah. Versus non-professional. So Airbnb absolutely ended up becoming almost like a photo company and started sending out professional photographers to every listing mm-hmm. To increase their revenue and your revenue. So it’s the same thing for long-term rentals. Professional pictures sell all day long, but only professional pictures. Make sure you show all the pictures. Right. Every, every room, the bedrooms, the kitchen, I mean, everything show everything’s right. And one step further, it’s not just maybe your unit, maybe also show the common areas. If it’s a building, if it’s a community mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, if it’s a park next door or whatev, whatever it is, show the areas around it, you’re, you’re assuming that everyone applying knows the exact area and maybe they’re from outta town, maybe they don’t know the area at all. Right?
Andrew Schultz (00:17:52):
Right.
David Bitton (00:17:53):
So educate them, show them what’s in the area. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> not only with pictures, but also, hey, these are the top schools in the area. These are the top parks in the area, these are the top jobs in the area. What, whatever it may be. So you know, hey, the year’s highway is four minutes away, you know, whatever it is. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So I would do that. And then probably next I would go with a floor plan or blue blueprint. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. ’cause Pictures are one thing, but it’s also so hard for some people to visualize what does it look like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So I think a floor plan blueprint helps some people. You kinda wanna give everything to everyone. If people like floor plans, they get a floor plan. If they like photos, they get a photo. And lastly, if they like a video, right? Here’s a video walkthrough. And that doesn’t have to be super professional, unless it’s like a very expensive high-end apartment or, or whatever unit you can just take your phone ideally, possibly in horizontal mode and just walk around.
Andrew Schultz (00:18:37):
Yes. I was gonna mention that
David Bitton (00:18:38):
Exactly. Most of the phones have active stabilization now mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and just walk around and just show what the unit looks like. Mm-Hmm. So they can kind of feel like they’re walking through it. Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:18:47):
We actually just did a video on the rent prep YouTube page, maybe a month or two ago, talking about how to film and upload a video of an apartment. And it’s very basic, just a simple walkthrough video. Yep. How do you upload it to YouTube? How do you put a description on there if anybody’s looking for that, that’s available on the rent prep YouTube page, which is youtube.com/rent prep. But yeah, absolutely. People skip the walkthrough video and it’s so easy in today’s day and age to be able to take a quick walkthrough video on your phone. Like you said, make sure you’re shooting horizontally and not vertically. Same thing if you’re using your phone for apartment photos shoot ’em horizontally and not vertically. And the one thing I will mention, if somebody doesn’t want to go through and have professional photos done, sometimes it doesn’t make sense if you’re on the lower end of a market or something like that.
Andrew Schultz (00:19:31):
There’s a lot that can be said for taking photos on your cell phone, using the phone horizontally. Yep. Then going to a service like box brownie or someplace like that, that can help you professionally edit the photos and retouch and brighten them up and things of that nature. You can a lot of times take a not so great cell phone and turn it into a pretty decent, you know, final photo that you can then turn around and upload to your listing hundred. You, you mentioned photos, you mention video, what about 360 virtual tours? Do you guys get into that at all?
David Bitton (00:19:59):
Yeah, that’s, that’s another level. If you could do that, that’s also phenomenal. So in general, you wanna one up your competition and you want to think of every other apartment on there, whatever you’re listing as your competition. Absolutely. So what can you do to stand up? There’s an amazing book called Purple Cow by Seth Co in one of the Legends of marketing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And you need to be that purple cow. The purple cow is different. It’s unique. No one’s seen it before. What can you do that no one else is doing? And maybe that’s virtual showings or 360. Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:20:27):
Well and it’s funny because when Covid first hit we were one of the only brokerages in Western New York that had really embraced 360 virtual tours for apartments. And at the time you couldn’t go out and show an apartment. It was strictly forbidden in New York State. Like you could not go show apartments to people. So the only way that you were getting anything shown, whether it be residential real estate, commercial real estate, an apartment, whatever it may be, the only way that you were going to get a showing <laugh> was a 360 virtual tour or photos or video or a virtual Zoom call or something like that. So we actually found that we were ahead of the market at that time. And it’s funny because a couple of agents had reached out to us to say, can you do three sixties for us for some of our listings?
Andrew Schultz (00:21:10):
And we helped ’em out ’cause that worked out well for us. Yep, yep. Filled some gaps in our schedule, but we’ve noticed that since Covid has kind of backed off, nobody’s doing ’em anymore. At least not in the residential apartment market and we’re still doing ’em it makes it that much easier for somebody, like you said, that’s not in town or something like that, to get a feel for what the place actually looks like before they send a friend to look at it before they come into town to look at it themselves, whatever the case may be. So I think 360 are nice. They’re starting to come down in price. If you don’t have a 360 camera yourself, honestly, if it’s something where you’ve got multiple units, you might might as well just go buy one. There are only a few hundred bucks at this point. Yep. It’s worth doing it. It’s probably easier to do that at this point than it is to do a floor plan. And a lot of the softwares when you upload the three sixty’s will automatically build out your floor plan now. So Wow. It’s kind of a nice, kind of a nice touch that way. But I would say, like you said, at a minimum, great photos and a video. Absolute musts.
David Bitton (00:22:07):
Yeah. You know, I like to make things as easy as possible for every person. So if it’s a tenant, like I said, some want floor plan, slum run blueprint, some wants mm-hmm. <Affirmative> a virtual walkthrough, some wants an in-person walkthrough, give them all the options. Absolutely. And they will self elect which option is best for them. Mm-Hmm.
Andrew Schultz (00:22:22):
<Affirmative>. No, that makes a lot of sense actually. What do you think about, and this is kind of off topic, what do you think about self showings where tenants can, or prospective tenants can log in, schedule a showing, upload a copy of their id, and now they can go through and take a look at it without anyone being present? Obviously there’s some pros and cons. There’s a risk to letting someone have access to a building that no one else is in. Yeah. But it also on the pro side means that you can have, let’s say you give one hour blocks for your showings, which is probably too large. That’s, you know, let’s say a 12 hours in the day, 12 hours a daylight, you can have 12 different people see that apartment as opposed to maybe only one or two can make it at the time that you wanna show it. Yep. So, I don’t know if that’s anything that you’re seeing in your markets or anything of that nature. We’re starting to see it more here and I think it’s gonna become more prevalent as time goes on.
David Bitton (00:23:09):
I haven’t seen it too much here or heard about it too much, but I love it. I mean, I, I personally, if I was looking for somewhere to rent and I had that option, I would take that option. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, because personally I don’t love, you know, having, dealing with other people and, and you’re late, I’m late, whatever. Just, okay, this, this time works. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, no pressure. Go show up, here’s a lockbox code. Sure. Yeah. I think for, for you, you obviously need to make sure that you’re screening the people correctly. Make sure you trust them, have a security camera, maybe have an alarm, maybe, whatever it is mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and obviously you don’t have, don’t have valuables in there that someone could walk away with. Right. So if you have all that and you, you know, check everything off, why not? It’s just an extra once, once again, one more thing you could offer that someone else isn’t offering.
Andrew Schultz (00:23:47):
No, you’re exactly right. And it’s what you said earlier, anything that you can do to set yourself apart from the competition. When there are hundreds of apartments that are going up on the market, it’s like you said, whatever you can do to differentiate yourself. Actually, a couple things, I’m gonna pull that question back up on screen here for just a second. ’cause There were a couple things that we put in our listings that you didn’t necessarily mention, and I think it might help anybody who’s listening. Yep. Yep. We always make sure to include a list of all of the rooms as well as the dimensions of the rooms. And then our listing description always includes what utilities are included trash service, if it’s included appliances that are included, gas or electric stove, washers, dryers, things of that nature. Just making sure that you include what is available in the apartment, what the amenities are, things of that nature.
Andrew Schultz (00:24:32):
Room dimensions really seem to help a lot too. People really seem to like it when you throw the room dimensions on there. And the other thing that we always make sure to add in there is the basic qualification criteria. So if we require, say, for instance, a 600 credit score and an income of three times the rent, we’re making sure that we put that on our ads as well, so that when people are hopefully reading the ad they have that information and they can kind of self-select if they know that they’re not gonna qualify. Yeah, I love that. So,
David Bitton (00:24:59):
And add in talking,
Andrew Schultz (00:25:00):
Just
David Bitton (00:25:00):
Add one more, one more to that. You know, I, I’m a huge believer and a big fan of frequently asked questions. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, the more answers you could put everywhere in the listings, the better. So people are gonna contact you and they’re gonna ask you a million questions. Do you want to answer that same question 50 times? No. Mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, just put, put the most frequently asked questions and answers in the listing or your website and people will just take care of it on their, on their own self-serve.
Andrew Schultz (00:25:22):
And I think that as, as things progress with AI and things of that nature, I think we’re gonna see more responsive chat bots, chat bots that can kind of take what you’re asking them and kind of parse it against a frequently asked questions database and hopefully bring the information right to you in a, in a chat bot format, which I think is gonna become much more popular as time goes on as well. Yep.
David Bitton (00:25:44):
A hundred percent agree.
Andrew Schultz (00:25:45):
Now, in terms of individual landlords, small business owners, even large business owners, what are the key elements that you think that landlords need to have on their websites? Or do you think that it’s even important for small landlords, for instance, to have a website? Or can they get by simply with listing their apartments where you would typically find them? Zillow, Trulia, a HotPads Facebook, or is that mobile website like a, a requirement at this point in 2023?
David Bitton (00:26:11):
So it’s definitely not a requirement. You know, people can still obviously do things the normal way. I don’t even, I, I’m afraid to say old school, but the normal way. Right. And you know, you could definitely find tenants on Zillow, truly hot pads wherever. So I think having a website will never hurt you. It will always improve your brand. I mean, that is your brand. Now, if you only have one-up unit, you don’t really care as much, that’s fine. But once you start becoming a more established company mm-hmm. <Affirmative> multiple properties for rent, and maybe someone can come to your website and see all your listings you have available. Right. Then I think it’s really important to have a website. Your website is your brand. Mm-Hmm. It’s your company. You might not have an office. People dunno who you are. So they also wanna trust they’re renting from someone reputable that everything will go fine.
Andrew Schultz (00:26:57):
Somebody that actually exists. Exactly.
David Bitton (00:26:59):
So website is very important in that sense. And then as far as the question on, on mobile, everything is mobile today. Absolutely. More than, than your visitors will come for mobile. So your, so your website has to be mobile friendly, even more than desktop friendly today. And people just want ease of use convenience, where in like the now economy, everyone wants things now. They want an easy, convenient app, they want an easy, convenient website. They want to be able to, to submit maintenance requests online, pay, rent, online, everything. Oh, absolutely. Everything depending on your demographic, they want everything online. So I think a mobile friendly website is, is number one, and you’re building a website. It has to be mobile friendly.
Andrew Schultz (00:27:31):
We went through and updated our leasing procedure from STEM to Stern earlier this year. And part of that was going through and updating the application process, the lease itself, kind of looking at the entire process from beginning to end and how it works. And one of the things that we realized that we needed to start doing was posting certain things inside the units. There were some state forms that needed to be posted by, by state law and things of that nature. But the other thing we did was we made sure that our application is all online and can be done from a cell phone. And we actually, I have one, I don’t, can’t turn my camera to see it unfortunately, but I actually have a, like a little eight by 12 sheet of paper that goes on the wall with a QR code on it that you point your phone at that QR code, it takes you right to our rental application website.
Andrew Schultz (00:28:16):
Wow. Which is awesome because we can point people at that before they even walk out the door. The number of times that I’ve shown someone an apartment, and by the time I’ve made it back to my office, they’ve already completed their rental application. Wow. Is staggering. Wow. Like, when people are really, really interested, kind of goes back to that top of the fall thing. If you’ve got five people that look at an apartment, they’re all at the top of the funnel. They want to get that apartment before anybody else has an opportunity to, to get their application in as well. So yeah, it’s, it’s really helped to increase the speed with which we see apartments get applied for. And usually it also results in a much faster turnaround time on rentals as well.
David Bitton (00:28:52):
Yeah. I think that’s probably one of the eye openers when you first go into the digital world online, at least for me, I remember this years ago, I was sending contracts out for a different reason and historically contracts or lease agreements mm-hmm. <Affirmative> here, here you go. Print it out. Right. Fill it out. Hopefully I can read your handwriting, scan it or fax it back. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I’m like, this is just cr and this is how it is today still. Yeah. So the fact that it’s online, I I, I’ll never forget it took me on average, I don’t know, 18 hours to get a contract signed. Then I, I got it back in eight minutes. I was like, wait, wait, wait, what? <Laugh>? Yeah. Yeah. And, and that like, like you said, you’re like, wait, what applications are coming in in minutes now? Right. It’s, it’s a total game changer.
Andrew Schultz (00:29:27):
Well, and even like our lease signing process is fully digital. I just had somebody in the office today to do a, a paper lease signing for the first time since pre covid. Like, we haven’t done a a paper lease signing in years. We’ve just been, we were doing most, most of our lease signings digitally, pre covid anyway. But since then, like no one has asked to do a paper lease signing. So we set it up in, I think we’re using Athena sign Yep. Out the door. It goes, it comes back to us when the tenant is done signing off on it and everything is there. And as long as you’re making sure that you’re good about putting the, the initials and the signatures where they need to go, there’s no such thing as a missed signature, a missed initial, something like that. Because they literally can’t close out of the document and say that they finished signing it until they’ve hit all the points.
Andrew Schultz (00:30:12):
Correct. So it reduces errors in a lot of ways too, to go with a fully digital route. And it’s not that hard to convert a lease into a format. Most people have it as a doc on their computer anyway, to convert it to a P D F, to upload to DocuSign or Authentic Sign or any of those other softwares really doesn’t take much. And again, it just means that much more speed, speed to lead, if you will. It just makes it that much faster for the entire process to kind of work its way through from the point where you’re putting the place on the market to the point where you’re taking the place off the market. And that’s really what we all want. At the end of the day.
David Bitton (00:30:44):
Gosh, I feel like you do so many of these podcasts, you, you get so many tips, you just apply all of them to your own business. Mm-Hmm. It’s amazing.
Andrew Schultz (00:30:51):
Well, and I’m constantly engrossed in what’s going on in the property management and the real estate world. Right. So if there’s something that’s going on, you know, I’m usually learning about it either from talking to someone like you or doing research for a podcast segment or whatever the case may be. Plus I have the perfect sandbox to test the things that I see, like Yep. It works out really, really well. When you basically have a sandbox of apartments and because of the number of units that we’re managing, we can often test things very quickly and get a decent sample size versus somebody that only has one or two doors, they’re only turning those one or two doors once a year. Correct. We’re turning apartments every single month. We’re doing applications every single day. We’re doing stuff like this on a more frequent basis so we can kind of churn and burn through and figure out what works great and what doesn’t work really, really fast.
David Bitton (00:31:42):
Wow. That’s amazing. You should have just like a long guide or resource or white paper with all of your tips. I would love to see that.
Andrew Schultz (00:31:49):
I would love someone to just take all of the old podcast and video content that we’ve done and like strip all of it out with AI and be able to take all of that and convert it into a usable database, because like, it’s a daunting task to think about. I know there’s a ton of info there, but that’s a daunting task to think about.
David Bitton (00:32:06):
Yeah. Yeah. Well if, if anyone’s listening and wants to take that project on, let let us know. Yeah. Right. <Laugh>,
Andrew Schultz (00:32:13):
So in addition to working in the tech industry and being involved in real estate from that aspect, you’re also an active real estate investor in addition to everything else that you have going on outside of work and real estate and everything else. How do you go about actually finding and sourcing your real estate deals?
David Bitton (00:32:30):
Yeah, so today, because I don’t have that much time to be more of an active investor mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I’m more of the passive investor approach, meaning that most of the deals that I invest in today are from syndication funds, portfolios, where I’m a limited partner, maybe like half percent in the deal, or 3%, whatever it is. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So luckily for me, I have a lot of the networking connections already that the deals come to me mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, so I’m fielding deals and I’m analyzing them myself. So I actually also have a entire questionnaire of analyzing deals, specifically these syndication funds, really. So if you’re interested in it also. Yeah. I believe I have it on my website. It’s a different website. It’s david’s guides.com. It’s like my personal site with all my guides, and there’s a section there for like business or real estate. And you, you could find my questionnaire there. So I, I use that. And otherwise besides that, I will generally invest in something that’s either automatic, which is called dollar cost averaging. You’re just automatically, let’s just say a hundred dollars a month automatically investing. Oh, there you go. Yeah, there you go. So is there a, let’s, let’s see where it is. Let’s is a section on money and investing.
Andrew Schultz (00:33:38):
Money and investing.
David Bitton (00:33:39):
Got it. And then you have number 12, how to evaluate a real estate investment. But this is more for syndications and funds. If someone’s trying to pitch you like, Hey, we’re building this building and we want you give us, I don’t know, $50,000 to, to invest in it, how do you actually evaluate it? So there’s 34 questions here, and I run all these through my analysis, my due diligence before I make any type of investment, basically.
Andrew Schultz (00:34:05):
This is very, very thorough. If anybody’s watching, or I’m sorry if anybody’s listening to the podcast only and not watching the video version of this, the website was davids guides.com. David’s with an Ss, guides with an ss.com, and you can pull this information up, and then if you’re watching obviously the video, you’ll see that we have the website pulled up. But yeah, there’s a ton of great information on that, on that guide and 34 questions just to go through and vet a Yeah. Potential deal before you even put dollar one into it. That’s, that’s pretty extensive. There’s a lot of people that don’t do anywhere near that level of research and then wind up in, in pretty sticky situations because they didn’t take the time to actually do the research and do the analysis on their deals. All that being said, you’ve obviously done a few deals. What would you say your favorite deal is that you’ve done?
David Bitton (00:34:53):
So favorite deal. Wow.
Andrew Schultz (00:34:57):
Or least favorite deal, if you’ve ever had one that maybe blew up on you.
David Bitton (00:35:01):
So it’s funny, I actually have one in mine that was my favorite and my, and my least favorite at the same time. <Laugh>. Okay. Oh,
Andrew Schultz (00:35:08):
This is gonna be a good one.
David Bitton (00:35:09):
It’s gonna be a good story. I know. So it was my first and only, and probably last ever real estate investment in, outta the country out of the us mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and it was in Canada. Okay. And it was from a referral connection, someone that we knew. So we trusted them. We did the same due diligence, like I just showed you mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and it was a good deal. Sure. And they were basically renovating, I think it was like 20 units that were gonna renovate them and then re-rent them out at a higher end, and then eventually sell them, refinance and sell. Sure. So that was my favorite one, because not only the returns, the returns were phenomenal. I think it was like 35% i r r when it was all said and done. It’s not
Andrew Schultz (00:35:42):
Bad, but
David Bitton (00:35:43):
It, it was, it was good. But the fund manager mm-hmm. <Affirmative> was the most impressive to me. So communication, transparency, the trust that we had throughout the process. He was filling us in and all the good things that were happening, but also on the bad things that were happening, we were always up to date with what, what was happening with the, with our money, with our investment. Right. And then secondly, it was like, oh, here’s how the renovation’s going. Here’s the pictures of the renovation. I’ve never gotten that before mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I was like, and I emailed him. I was like, wow, I’m part of many of these deals. I’ve never gotten this level of detail and professionalism and pictures. He’s, and he was like, really? No one else is doing that. I’m like, no, you’re the only one. So I think that was the reason it was my favorite, the returns, but also the fund manager, that himself was really, really good. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then I would say least favorite because it was such a pain investing internationally. And I was like, all right, let me try this out. Let’s see how it goes. And it was an, for us and for them, it was a total nightmare. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> in accounting, legal taxes, so many issues when working internationally. Investing internationally. So I think that’s probably my last, regardless of how good it was also. ’cause It was just, it was just too much of a pain internationally. It
Andrew Schultz (00:36:49):
Seems to be easier for Canadian investors to invest in the United States than it is for investors in the United States to invest in Canada. And I have some experience in that because we have several Canadian clients that, that work with our management company here. And it just seems like the entire process is way easier. Like it seems like anytime you want to take money to Canada, they want nothing to do with it. They don’t want anything to do with you. They kind of, they, they kind of throw their hands up and they’re like, whoa, keep your, keep your dirty American money in America. <Laugh>, <laugh>, this gets crazy. But it’s, I even heard it’s so easy to bring money from Canada to the state side because like with some of the banks over there, you can literally open a US money account right. Through your Canadian bank and everything is right there. You just move money from one to the other and it’s accessible in the states.
David Bitton (00:37:35):
Well now, now we realize why the US is so successful and their G D P keeps growing. ’cause You know, it’s all about, you know bringing business into the country. Right. So I, I even think that Canada has stopped allowing, or in certain provinces, maybe it was Quebec stopped allowing international or US investors to buy a properties. Right. I think they were just killing the valuations, paying too much mm-hmm. <Affirmative> destroying the local market. So, so I think I heard that recently also, don’t quote me, but I think I heard that recently also.
Andrew Schultz (00:38:00):
I, I feel like I heard that recently about the Toronto market, to be honest with you. I could be wrong. Yeah. but I feel like that’s, I feel like that’s more of a widespread concern in Canada. I mean, they’ve talked about it here stateside too, but Canada actually did something about it, which is Yep. Surprising because there’s a lot of lip service that gets paid to stuff like that. But as long as, as long as the right people are making money, nothing really ever seems to come of it. And it’s interesting to see that Canada actually stepped in and said, we have to stop this because the cost of housing is getting outta control. We can’t even house our own citizens anymore. Correct. So there are also a lot of people who think that that’s happening stateside too, which in some markets I think it probably is. But I think that there are a lot of markets where you’re not seeing the impact of outside investment nearly as much as people claim that you are. And it’s just one of those things. I don’t think it’s as big of a problem stateside as what it is in Canada based on, just based on the news stories, I guess. I don’t have any proof one way or the other. It’s just
David Bitton (00:38:56):
Well, I can, I can tell you and attest that Miami mm-hmm. <Affirmative> is one of those reasons, one of those issues. So since Covid happened, everyone flocked to Miami, the state just opened up. Yeah. No lockdowns, everything is open. Right. Come to come to Florida. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So Miami specifically, we had so many people move specifically from New York and California mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And they were like, oh, these are bargains compared to what we used to pay. Oh, no more personal tax, say taxes. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Wow. So they, they doubled the price of places to buy and rent. So it really hurt the locals. I believe that really hurt us locals. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> they, I mean, if you, if you owned or if you were a landlord, it was great for you. ’cause They also raised the price of everything. But for the locals tr local tenant trying to rent or buy it was very difficult.
Andrew Schultz (00:39:44):
I believe that. ’cause I looked the, we looked at a property just before Covid kicked off in my hometown. Actually. It was right across the street from the house that I grew up in. It was a monster house. It was like 2,400 square foot in the house across two floors. And then it had another 2200 square foot, two story barn that could have been set up as living space as well. Wow. Beautiful home. Beautiful home, great location. And I ended up getting outbid. It was a foreclosure auction. I ended up getting outbid by someone in California who way overpaid for the property. Exactly. Because they didn’t know any better. Exactly. But could also afford to, because they just sold something in California. And we’re now coming to rural New York where the property values were negligible. I drive, I still drive by that house every, every so often. I drive by that house and see that they are still working on it. And it frustrates me every single time. But it’s also kind of a blessing in disguise because that happened, that happened literally like the month before Covid kicked off. So we would’ve been fighting all of the material price increases and trying to get materials and labor and everything else. It probably worked out for the best in the long run. Yeah. But I really wanted that house. So it still kind of burns me <laugh>. I know,
David Bitton (00:40:52):
I know. Well, hopefully you have like m l s Zillow alerts if it comes available again,
Andrew Schultz (00:40:57):
I’ve actually, believe it or not, approached them. Last time I was in my hometown, they were outside doing some yard work. I’m like, listen, I wanna buy this house as is. Where is you guys outbid me? I told ’em flat out. I’m like, you guys outbid me when you bought it the first time. If you guys are ever in a situation where you wanna sell, I would love to have <laugh> the ability to buy. That’s awesome. Awesome. And I ’em my business card and hopefully they call me back one day because I, I love that house. I always have. I, I see that they’re doing a nice job on the rehab and I’m hoping that one day that we’ll be able to, to swing back out there. So
David Bitton (00:41:27):
Yeah. They’re they’re gonna triple the price before they sell it to you though.
Andrew Schultz (00:41:29):
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. They already put a steel roof or a, a metal roof on the place. Oh yeah. And everything else. And I’m like, oh man. ’cause I know what a metal roof on that place was gonna cost. And I’m like, oh gosh. So expensive. Yeah. But what are you gonna do? It is what it is. So. I know, I know. They’ll do well on it
David Bitton (00:41:44):
Though. Your dream home one day. Yeah,
Andrew Schultz (00:41:46):
Absolutely. So, well, I talked about one of my real estate deals that fell apart. You talked about one of your real estate deals that worked really, really well. Who would you say the top five people are in your Rolodex? You’ve got a deep Rolodex when you go to look at an investment property, who are the five people that you consult?
David Bitton (00:42:03):
Oh boy. Okay. So there might be more than five, but I would definitely say first would probably be myself. Yeah. Consulting myself. How comfortable do I feel with the deal, going through my list,
Andrew Schultz (00:42:16):
Doing a deal analysis,
David Bitton (00:42:17):
Deal analysis going through those 34 questions. Part of those questions would also be to ask experts in that local area. So let’s say the deals in New York, I have a lot of friends in New York, in real estate, I will call them up for sure. Sure, sure. As the area has location, what do you think about this deal? Are you interested in coming in this deal also? And if they are, wow, that’s, that’s a really good sign. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Then third would probably be some very close friends I have that are very good financial advisors, investors. So I’d also question them. So I have like a little network of friends and mentors that I kind of, I go to. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I would also, I also always consult my accountant and financial advisor. What do they think? If there is legality, so like in Canada, there was a lot of that. Or like a, a, a new agreement that isn’t really so standard. Right. I would ask how I would consult my attorney for sure. And then last and most important would be any guesses?
Andrew Schultz (00:43:09):
Property manager. My wife, real real estate broker. Oh, the wife, the boss. The wife.
David Bitton (00:43:13):
<Laugh>
Speaker 5 (00:43:14):
<Laugh>.
David Bitton (00:43:17):
She’s the final say. It
Andrew Schultz (00:43:18):
Makes sense. Happy wife, happy life.
David Bitton (00:43:20):
And she’s more the final say. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, because I mean, she, she doesn’t really know so much about this or couldn’t care anyways, but she’s more of the final say. ’cause Like I’ll have all of my, you know, you know, due diligence that I’ve built out and maybe Right. I’m also struggling, like, should I do it or not? So I’ll present the full case to her mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And she kind of helps me work that out and like, should we do it? Should we not do it? And it’s very important, you know? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, you know my wife
Andrew Schultz (00:43:43):
Gotta have that buy-in for sure.
David Bitton (00:43:44):
A hundred percent. Yeah. It’s also her investment too, so I need to, I need to make sure we’re on the same page so that, that’s the final one. I, I would say, just
Andrew Schultz (00:43:51):
Outta curiosity, does she have any issue involved in the real estate industry or any, like the financial industry or anything like that? Or is it more just from a relationship perspective to keep that relationship? Right. You sit down and make sure that everyone’s on the same page before you sign on the dotted line.
David Bitton (00:44:06):
So a few things. Number one, relationship, you know, the money’s hers too. It’s also her money that’s getting invested. So it’s also important that, that she knows what’s happening that she approves of it. Also. Number two, it’s more just to kind of run everything in my head out to someone I can trust that will gimme non-biased. Good feedback. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then third she happens to be an attorney, so that’s also very helpful.
Andrew Schultz (00:44:28):
Ah, very helpful.
David Bitton (00:44:29):
<Laugh>. Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:44:30):
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah,
David Bitton (00:44:32):
So she definitely sees things in a different light and will give me, and will ask me certain questions no one else asks from a legal protection point of view as well.
Andrew Schultz (00:44:39):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, it’s nice to have literally an attorney by your side Yes. Whenever you’re walking into something like that. And for sure, you’re exactly right. Like making sure that everybody’s on the same page because everybody needs to know where the money’s going and why. It’s, it’s critical. It really is. And honestly, I, I can’t imagine going out and buying a piece of real estate without at least consulting the person that you lay next to every single night. ’cause That could get real dicey real, real quick.
David Bitton (00:45:04):
Yep. Well, I mean, let me ask you, if your wife was investing, I don’t know, 50 grand some somewhere, wouldn’t you like to know where it was?
Andrew Schultz (00:45:09):
Yeah. It would probably be a good idea to know what’s going on and where the money’s going and stuff like that.
David Bitton (00:45:14):
<Laugh>. Exactly.
Andrew Schultz (00:45:16):
That’s awesome. It’s good to see, like, I I, I think that there are a lot of people that don’t necessarily take that same approach and it probably winds up resulting in a lot of, a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of very, very difficult conversations. But like, the most important thing to draw from that I think is just make sure you’re doing your deal analysis, whether you’re doing Yeah. A simple spreadsheet, deal analysis, like what we do with our investment sheet or going through the 34 questions that you have on your sheet. Spending the time to do the due diligence is really what sets a good deal apart from a bad one. And it highlights a bad deal before you make the mistake of signing on the dotted line. And then you have to try to work your way back out of it. So it’s really important that all five of the people in your top five people in your Rolodex are aligned with your goals and understand what your goals are. So that’s awesome.
David Bitton (00:46:04):
And I’ll add one more thing. There’s a great book by Malcolm Gladwell. I love all of his books, but one, this one was called Blink. And pretty much the whole premise of the book is trust your initial gut instinct. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, if something feels off, if it smells off, if you’re, you know, you, you can’t put your finger on it, it probably is, it probably is off. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So no deal is worth not sleeping over at night. And if something just doesn’t feel right, just don’t do it.
Andrew Schultz (00:46:28):
I think Tim Ferriss said, I think it was Tim Ferriss that said, if it’s not, if it’s not an immediate yes, it’s a hell no. Or something along those lines, I’m paraphrasing. Yeah, yeah. If it’s not an immediate yes, it’s a hell no. And that can apply in so many ways, whether it be a real estate deal or someone asks you to do something that’s kind of outside of your core skillset that you don’t want to get involved in or whatever the case may be. Time is our most limiting factor, and sometimes it has to be a hell no. Even when you want it to be a yes. And I think that that’s important to, to kind of decipher between the two as well.
David Bitton (00:47:00):
You know, it’s funny you mentioned Tim because I thought of you maybe 15 minutes ago because Tim has a great book called Tools of Titans. Have you heard of it?
Andrew Schultz (00:47:08):
I’ve read that, yep. Yeah, I’ve read parts of it. I kind of flip around with that one.
David Bitton (00:47:12):
Yeah. One of my favorite books. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So basically every, so basically he has a podcast similar to yours mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And he took his best episode and he distilled them into each chapter was an episode. Exactly. And they’re only seven pages long with the best advice. So I would love if you made a tools of Titans for real estate <laugh> as a podcast, the three pages, the top tips from every presenter.
Andrew Schultz (00:47:31):
That’s not a bad idea. Let me, I’m gonna talk to the marketing team about that and see if that’s something that we can kind of, ’cause we do a blog post for every one of these, so it’d be very easy for us to say, Hey, these are the highlights from this, or Here are the three quotes that you need to hear from this podcast, or whatever. I think that that’s a very easy thing to accomplish for sure.
David Bitton (00:47:48):
Yeah. I wrote a book and very similar idea. We took 15 experts, 15 industry experts, and we put it up on Amazon and it became like a bestselling book in the category. Wow. Very quickly. Wow. That’s awesome. So it’s easy to do once you know, if you have all the script and the bullet points mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it’s, it’s not bad. It’s
Andrew Schultz (00:48:03):
Already, there’s just a matter of reformatting. I
David Bitton (00:48:05):
Wanna be on the cover <laugh> for
Andrew Schultz (00:48:07):
That <laugh> in the, in the front page acknowledgements. Right. Exactly.
David Bitton (00:48:10):
Exactly. And 10% of all sales.
Andrew Schultz (00:48:12):
<Laugh> kidding. Oh yeah. You gotta get the gotta get the of course. Yeah, of course. Gotta get the the money in there too. Yeah. Let’s see. We still have a few more questions and we still have a few more minutes here ahead. This is actually one that I think is probably the most intriguing to me in my role to, to ask somebody who works at a high level in the real estate industry from a data standpoint. Yeah. How do you see the role of the landlord changing over the next 12 months? Or what is something that you think will blindside landlords in the next 12 months? There’s two different questions there. You can answer one, you can answer both, but I think they kind of both run in the same, the same vein there.
David Bitton (00:48:53):
Okay. I’ll answer the first one. You know, role of landlord changing the next 12 months. I don’t know if there’s gonna be such immediate near term changes in the next 12 months. I think a lot of it has already changed thanks to Covid. It moved a lot of things online. Yeah. So a lot of landlords, maybe they’re 50 plus. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> not so tech savvy. And they were forced to do virtual showings. They were forced to find tenants online. They were forced to collect rent online, and they were forced not to collect rent by check or collection person anymore. So I think the last three years just kind of pushed so much forward. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I think in the next 5, 10, 20 years, you know, everyone in the, you know, gen Z, millennial generation that are becoming landlords, they’ve grown up like me mm-hmm. <Affirmative> five years old with a computer in our hands.
David Bitton (00:49:35):
Right. So everything will go online, everything will become automated. I don’t know if checks will be around that much longer for collecting rent, you know, like CDs are gone, videos are gone, DVDs are pretty much gone. I don’t know if Yeah. You know, and now everything’s going digital currency and Bitcoin, which we could talk about next time. Sure. But I don’t even know if checks will be around in the future one day. Like, just the fact that you have to go knock on doors, collect the check mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, go to a bank, deposit the check, like it’s so tedious. So I think that might be gone in, in, in coming years. And I just think everything’s just gonna be automated. It’s gonna be much easier to find tenants, to screen tenants, to automate everything, to automate rent collection. It already exists today, but I think not enough people are taking advantage of the tools and technology they have available to them today. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And it’s okay if, if you’re a small operation, but if you do want to grow or refinance or, or just, you know, buy more properties, I think it’s gonna be a must for you to start moving to that technical world,
Andrew Schultz (00:50:26):
Moving to that, that digital footprint type of a situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think there are some landlords that still try to avoid it, simply because they don’t want the, I think there’s a certain inherent fear there with some older landlords who haven’t been accustomed to using the technology side of things. And I think that there’s also, I mean, I know a landlord that’s still everything is paper and pen, all of their like accounting ledgers and everything else. And the reason they do it is because they don’t want the government looking over their shoulder. They want the ability to make the numbers look like whatever they want the numbers to look like. And I’m like, this is the absolute stupidest possible scenario because eventually you’re gonna wanna sell this property and the numbers aren’t gonna make any sense when you go to do that because they’re gonna try to verify the p and l statements and everything that you’re giving them versus the rent roll versus the leases versus what you actually reported to the I r s.
Andrew Schultz (00:51:14):
And that’s where you’re going to wind up falling apart essentially. That’s where your deal’s gonna fall apart, because people are gonna realize there’s red flags all over the place because you’re not reporting your true income and expenses. And I think that as we move more into a digital world, it’s going to be harder and harder and harder for people to kind of make things disappear and good, bad or indifferent. It’s gonna happen. Like, yeah, not for nothing. There’s a reason that you now get a 10 99 anytime you send more than send or receive more than $600 through PayPal or Venmo, Venmo or Cash app or a missing one. I can’t think of the last one. Zelle, there we go. Like there’s a reason that they’re reporting that stuff and it’s because like people understand that, oh, I mean, maybe we can make it look like this money never came in or whatever.
Andrew Schultz (00:52:06):
But I think that you’re right. I think that, I mean, most people don’t carry large sums of cash on them. Most people don’t make rent payments in cash anymore. Most people don’t make rent payments with check the number of people that we have paying with like a physical piece of paper versus being online with the routing and account number. I wanna say we’re at like, 85% of our tenants are making online rent payments now. And that’s phenomenal. I mean, even just a few years ago even, you know, we were still pretty good pre covid, we were probably sitting somewhere in the 70% range, but Oh wow. That technology adoption is, is just getting faster and faster. And as kinda like you had said with with younger people entering the rental market and things of that nature, there’s an expectation when you’ve grown up with a cell phone in your hand that you’re going to be able to access everything from your cell phone, including your landlord, including your maintenance team and things of that nature.
David Bitton (00:52:54):
Yeah. Well, I mean, once again, you’re also going to offer a better service to your tenants. So at the end of the day mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it’s one more thing that can help you differentiate and stand it from everyone else where you have a website with an online portal mm-hmm. <Affirmative> where they can submit a maintenance requests by their, by their phone. They don’t have to bother you. Right. Or text you or call you or harass you. They can do it through this organize system. They can mm-hmm. <Affirmative> pay rent online automatically. And you know, I think the biggest thing that, that’s a shock to some people like my father-in-law, for example, he had to go every Sunday, collect rent manually, physically. It was, it was, it was really painful. Right. And now, and I’ll never forget the first time I, I got him onto the autopay, he was like, oh my gosh, 95%
Andrew Schultz (00:53:32):
Of people
David Bitton (00:53:32):
Paid on the first of the
Andrew Schultz (00:53:33):
Month. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It’s a beautiful thing. It really is. It was
David Bitton (00:53:36):
Incredible. But then the second thing was the 5% or 10% that didn’t pay mm-hmm. <Affirmative> before would be this awkward dance where like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I should charge him a late fee. I can charge him a late fee, but ah, it’s like, it’s, it feels weird, but now it’s, it’s not me, it’s the system. It’s automatic
Andrew Schultz (00:53:53):
The system. System. It’s automatic, automatic. I’m sorry, I can’t, I can’t wa it. Yeah. You’ve already used your one late fee waiver for the year and now you have to pay the late fee or whatever the case may be. And Yeah, you’re right, it’s automated. It’s, it’s sometimes it’s a little bit easier to hide behind the technology in that, in that regard, I think.
David Bitton (00:54:07):
Yeah. Well, well a big thing people say is like, well, it’s $49 a month, I don’t know, it’s not really worth it, but, you know, just one, it’s worth it. One late fee a month that covers your whole cost. So they don’t even realize these things and, you know, you’re, you’re making up the cost very quickly and there, and there’s mm-hmm. <Affirmative> many more things you’re making up. So I think that was question one. What was your second question? Blindside?
Andrew Schultz (00:54:25):
The second one was, what do you think is something that will blindside landlords in the next 12 months?
David Bitton (00:54:30):
Ah, okay. So, you know, I don’t wanna, you know, sand the warning bells oh eight recession. But how we got into trouble back then was, what were they called? Ninja loans. Like no income, no job, no assets, here’s your loan. Yeah. And it ended up blowing up.
Andrew Schultz (00:54:45):
Yeah. Low doc and no doc loans.
David Bitton (00:54:47):
That’s a long story. But you know what, what, what scares me is that a lot of people financed or refinanced or got mortgages or loans during c O d when the rates were literally 2%, 3% it was mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it was just crazy. And then what’s happening now, I don’t know, the rates are probably 6% now. About
Andrew Schultz (00:55:04):
Seven and a half. Yeah.
David Bitton (00:55:05):
Seven and a half. There you go. Yeah. And just going up and up and up and up. Maybe you’ll go down, hopefully, but who knows? I mean, it’s, it’s even been 15, 20% historically, so it, there’s Right, there’s no stopping it. So I think what’s scary is that many people might not have realized, but maybe they’ve locked in an arm, which is like an adjustable rate mortgage mm-hmm. <Affirmative> for five years, 7, 3, 5, 7, 10 years. So I think when that starts getting due, you know, it’s already been almost three years since Covid. Sure. Actually it has been three years since Covid. So maybe in the next two years, those adjustable rates will start kicking in and all of a sudden your 3% rate might jump to 8%, nine, 10%. And oh my gosh, I can’t afford that anymore. And then, oh my gosh, rents are starting to come back down.
David Bitton (00:55:43):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. ’cause They’re super high in some parts of the country. So I would hate to see that perfect storm where rents go up, but then your interest rates, I mean, rents go down, but interest rates go up. Right. You might have some foreclosure. So I hope we don’t see that. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So that was probably the first thing I would say. And then number two, I’m not so sure how it is anymore, but like you said, you’re lucky that you didn’t renovate during that time. ’cause The cost of supplies, the cost goods and renovations, everything just went up dramatically. I’m trying to get a new roof and it went up by 50% in three years. Like, it’s just, yeah. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. Insurance went up by 50%. Nothing makes sense anymore, at least in Miami. So mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, we might be seeing more of that in the next 12 months. We’ll see.
Andrew Schultz (00:56:19):
Yeah. And I would say that that’s something that it’s, I mean, it’s a big issue here in Buffalo because the cost of everything has gone up. Like you said, the cost of the roof went up 50% over the course of three years. And I don’t know if it’s quite that much of a jump here, but I was just talking to my roofer recently as, as recent as this week, and he was telling me what he was charging now versus what he was charging a couple years ago. And it was a substantial increase on a, on a per square basis for that roofing material installed. Yeah. And it’s not going down any, anytime soon. I think that I don’t think people realize just how few new people are going into the trades and how much of an exodus there’s been from the trades in the past few years.
Andrew Schultz (00:56:57):
Yeah. You are losing a lot of knowledge. You’re losing a lot of institutional knowledge in these tradies that have been around for 10, 15, 20, 25 years that are now retiring or getting out of the trades or whatever the, the case may be. And we’re not backfilling those positions at nearly a fast enough pace to be able to make up for the number of people we’re losing. It’s going to become an even bigger issue. Younger people today seem to be more interested in streaming on Twitch than fixing the, the plumbing under the sink. And every time you flush the toilet, the waste has to go somewhere. There’s always gonna be an need for people who are willing to do that work. And if there are fewer and fewer, fewer people going into that field, it’s gonna get more and more and more expensive every time you have to call a plumber.
Andrew Schultz (00:57:46):
And I think that, I think that a lot of people are either being willfully ignorant to that fact or just don’t wanna accept it or whatever the case may be. There’s always gonna be work in the trades and not for nothing. The, the, the dollar cost on any job that we’ve done in the past year has been significantly higher than the year before that and the year before that. So, yep. If you’re a younger person and you’re watching this, don’t hesitate to consider the trades, is what I’m saying. If you are someone who’s been in the trades for a long time, take a look at your rates and see how you compare to others in your market, because you may find that everybody else has jacked their rates up and you haven’t done that yourself yet, and there might be an opportunity for you to, to, to bump up a little bit without harming the community at large.
David Bitton (00:58:32):
Yeah. Correct. And I mean, I’ve gotten numerous letters from, from tradespeople and just like, Hey, look, this is a letter for my supplier, cost by 15%, I must increase by 15%. And what can I say to that? You know, of course I understand. But, but yes, my roof did go up by 15% and not only did it go by 50%, there’s a six month waiting list for the materials. It’s just crazy.
Andrew Schultz (00:58:52):
Yeah. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I can remember actually talking about my roofer when Covid first kicked off. He was like, I can only get one color of shingle <laugh>
Speaker 6 (00:59:00):
<Laugh>.
Andrew Schultz (00:59:02):
Yep. He’s like, if anybody wants anything that’s not charcoal, they’re, they’re on a waiting list for months and months and months, which is crazy. Yep. Crazy. It really is. Yeah. The one thing that I’ll bring up that I think landlords are gonna continue to be blindsided is legislative changes. I think that there are a lot of legislative changes in the work in pretty much every state on a variety of different topics, whether it be rent control or eviction procedures, fair housing law, whatever the case may be. There are a lot of legislative changes that have pushed through in the past couple years. And I think we’re gonna continue to see that probably over the next three to five years, where there are a lot of states that are gonna be updating their landlord tenant law because there’s such a push on the tenant side of the house to adjust the laws in such a way that they rebalance things, whether it’s more fair for the tenants or more fair for the landlords.
Andrew Schultz (00:59:52):
However, it ends up at the end of the day, I can say that in 2019, New York State pushed a major update to landlord tenant law that a lot of it was very poorly thought out and very poorly executed. I’m hoping other states don’t fall the same traps that New York does. I hope they don’t necessarily emulate the exact same legislation without looking at both the pros and the cons of what that legislation led to after it was enacted. But I would say that, that the legislative landscape is gonna change pretty severely over the next few years.
David Bitton (01:00:21):
Yeah. I, I would strongly agree. And I’ve written maybe hundreds of blog posts on, on landlord handle laws, eviction law, security deposit laws. If you go to Door loop.com, not to plug, but door loop.com/laws, we don’t sell anything here. It’s just like resources, tons of laws you ever wanted to know for your state. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and our tenants security deposit, rent control laws, eviction laws, we go through everything. And now we’re also starting to bring on attorneys, real estate attorneys to these blog posts, do webinars. Right. I did one recently with Colorado, and it was just so many changes since Covid. It was unreal. Yeah. In Colorado. So you just need to check everything all the time. Always be on top.
Andrew Schultz (01:00:57):
You’re, you’re exactly right. Well, and as somebody, like, if you only have one or two units, there’s, it’s very easy that there are major changes that happen between the start of a lease and the end of a lease that you don’t understand or don’t recognize. Like New York State for instance, there was nothing codified into law as to how quickly you needed to return a deposit. It just said a reasonable amount of time, which was man, broadly anticip interpreted to be in interpreted Wow. To be three days <laugh>. It’s,
David Bitton (01:01:25):
It’s, it’s, we hit the hour mark, that’s what happens.
Andrew Schultz (01:01:27):
Right. You’re exactly right. We’re at an hour and one minute. But now it’s actually been written into code. It’s now codified into law that you have 14 days from the time you move that or that tenant moves out to refund that deposit. And there’s some other rules that go along with it. But if you didn’t know that and you started and ended a lease and didn’t realize that there’d been changes during the course of that lease, you could really wind up and hot water just by not following the, the procedure that you need to by law. Yep.
David Bitton (01:01:52):
A hundred percent.
Andrew Schultz (01:01:54):
What would you say is the biggest curve ball that you have faced so far to date, whether it be in your tech career, your investing career, wherever it could be, even in your personal life? And did you, did you hit the curve ball out of the ballpark or did you strike out?
David Bitton (01:02:09):
Wow. Okay. So there’s so many answers I can give you for this, but I think I’m gonna choose C O V I D ’cause that was one that was what, what do they call it? A black swan event. It’s an unknown unknown. You could never predicted like oh eight. And generally every 10 years we have this sort of crash or correction, 2000, 2008, 2022 2020. So I think that was for sure the biggest curve ball in my life, my career, my investment career, everything. So for that, there were so many issues with so many of my real estate investments. Specifically also the ones, I mean yeah, for sure. Everyone, everyone I think that had, that had a real estate went, went through that mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, tenants can’t pay rent, you can’t evict tenants. There were so many protections, so many issues for everyone.
David Bitton (01:02:51):
You couldn’t, you couldn’t pay your mortgage. There were just so many issues across the board for my syndication funds. No distributions were coming in anymore. Right. No more. No. You know even, oh, we had what was it, capital calls. Mm. You had to invest more money now that you never thought you were gonna invest. There was that. So I think on that front, we just sort of survived. We were like in survival mode for two years mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and some of those, some of those deals are still coming outta survival mode. And then I think as far as hitting it out of the park, there was, I was very lucky to have some like firepower, ammunition, cash sitting on the sidelines, so to speak. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I started investing it into REITs and also index funds. I’m very big into SS and P 500 also mm-hmm.
David Bitton (01:03:30):
<Affirmative>. And I got very, very, very lucky where I had automating trades, just sitting, waiting to trade. Right. And somehow the market tanked one day to 33% down and all of them executed. Mm-Hmm. And I just pretty much locked in the bottom and it never went. Oh, that’s so nice. Never went lower. I know. So I just got very lucky, locked at the bottom, bottom of the covid crash mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and four months later we hit all time highs and doubled the money in in two years. It was just, that was very lucky that that’s like a once in a lifetime or once a decade Right. Opportunity that comes around.
Andrew Schultz (01:04:00):
No, that makes a lot of sense. And it’s, it’s funny you mentioned early covid as like, what do you do when people stop paying rent? Like, is this a thing that’s gonna be a real problem? And Yeah. I can remember during early Covid, like we were literally, I would have to watch the press conference in the morning to find out what, how to run my business in the afternoon. It was literally that crazy here in New York, we would literally have to watch Cuomo’s press conference in the morning Yep. To know what the changes were before we started operating again in the afternoon. Yep. And I had to turn and look at my partner and basically say, Hey, I don’t know if people stop paying rent three months down the road. I don’t know if this is a viable business anymore. Like we might be in a real nasty situation.
Andrew Schultz (01:04:41):
And fortunately we made it through the other side and we’re, we’re back on a growth trajectory again. But it was scary to have to look at just the same as you were talking about, you know, talking with your wife before you make a real estate investment decision, having to talk to your wife about, Hey, is this business gonna be viable three months down the road, or do we need to start panicking now? Is exactly, is kind of scary. Exactly. Exactly. That’s very valid, very valid curve ball that you brought up with, with early Covid because no one knew you were right. It was a Black Swan event and fortunately we’re through it at this point for the most part, but lucky not everybody was Yeah. Not everybody was as lucky as, as the two of us are by the sounds of things.
David Bitton (01:05:22):
For sure. For sure. I mean, the government did as much as they can do. Some people might think they didn’t do as much as they could do, but it’s tough, you know? Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, we just, yeah. Yeah. These, these, these events are impossible to predict when they’re gonna happen, what’s gonna happen after that. So yeah. You gotta, you gotta ride it out and figure it out and innovate like you did. You need to innovate and, and roll with the changes and roll with the times and
Andrew Schultz (01:05:42):
Right. Make hay while the sun shines, basically
David Bitton (01:05:44):
Virtual. Exactly. Exactly. And, and it’s gonna happen again. We don’t learn from our lessons, unfortunately. History repeats itself. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, and generally what I’ve found so far is every 10 years something like this happens, unfortunately. But yeah, you, you know, you gotta be prepared as much as you can and innovate and try to take advantage of it if you can. Yeah,
Andrew Schultz (01:06:00):
Absolutely. Mark your calendars we’ll, we’ll say that. <Laugh> 2030. Exactly. Everybody be ready for 20, for 2030 <laugh>. Yeah,
David Bitton (01:06:07):
Exactly.
Andrew Schultz (01:06:09):
Oh, that’s awesome. David, thank you so much for joining me today. Obviously you have a pretty widespread career here. What’s next for you?
David Bitton (01:06:18):
What’s next for me? I mean, I’m just enjoying the ride that I’m on right now, just loving what I’m doing every day. Enjoying helping out, you know, our customers landlords, property managers for us, I think the, the very exciting thing in the near future for us as a business is, you know, expanding to different verticals, different property types mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and just kind of offering more features and more benefits to continue saving people time, automating their rental portfolio, making them more money and helping them grow. That’s kind of our big mission, is helping them grow and save time and be being the central go-to hub for all things property management. So we always say, come on over door loop.com/resources and you’ll find everything, laws, resources, white papers, calculators, guides, whatever you need. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, we’re trying to be that central go-to hub for all things property management. So that’s what gets me excited. And also with the advent of ai, I’m very bullish on ai. We’re using it for a lot of ways in our business. So I think in the next few years you’re gonna see a lot of good changes that AI will bring to this industry as well.
Andrew Schultz (01:07:14):
No, that’s awesome. We’re actually just starting to scratch the surface of using AI as well for things like listing descriptions and Yep. Helping with like tenant violation letters and stuff like that. We did a video on the rent prep page about that as well. And I think that that’s gonna be something that really, really starts to influence how people work on a day-to-day basis as time goes on.
David Bitton (01:07:34):
Yeah. We have this cool, I dunno if you could pull it up or if it’s even live yet, but door loop.com/looper-ai. So we got a lot of questions on our website and our blog of how do I write this letter, how do I evict someone? All these, all these questions people are searching for, and a lot of people have heard of Chat G B T and heard of ai, but they don’t know how to use it. They don’t know how to create a free account. Right. So we literally built chat GBT realestate AI bot into our website. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, that’s free, free for use. You can go in and do whatever you want. Just mm-hmm. <Affirmative> dot com slash loop dash ai.
Andrew Schultz (01:08:05):
So that was door loop.com/looper. L o o p E r.
David Bitton (01:08:10):
Yep. Dash ai slash
Andrew Schultz (01:08:11):
Ai. Oh dash ai dash
David Bitton (01:08:13):
Ai. Yeah. We should probably shorten that url, but looper
Andrew Schultz (01:08:16):
Ai okay. Gimme one. Oh, it is life. It, I was trying to get the trying to get it to pop up here. Alright, perfect. And now we can share it on the, on the stream as well, just so that people could take a look at it. So that’s the website on that is door loop.com/looper hyphen ai. We’ll go ahead and it’s on screen now so people can take a look at it. That’s pretty awesome. It’s good to see that you guys are already jumping, jumping ahead and, and getting into the to the AI side of things. That’s awesome. Yeah,
David Bitton (01:08:43):
It’s fun. Any other way we can give back, we, we usually do. But thank you again for having me. It’s been fun. Wow. The, the hour flew by over here. Thank you. I know. It’s awesome.
Andrew Schultz (01:08:50):
Thank you for joining me. I really do appreciate it. And thank everybody else for, for watching or listening to this episode. These are actually some of the most fun episodes for us to do. So if there is a situation or if you’re in a, if you have some sort of a question that you’re trying to get answered that we haven’t answered here today, the best way to find the answer to that question, if you’re looking for something from Rent Prep, is to head on over to the Facebook group, which is facebook.com/group/rent prep. Go ahead and let us know how you found the rent prep Facebook group whether it be from the podcast, from a video, whatever that helps us to try to track where people are coming in from. And then obviously, David, you have a ton of information available on the Door Loop website, door loop.com/resources, I believe you said, correct. And then David’s guides.com, D a V I d ss G u i d e s.com. That’s where you can find that 34 question deal analysis survey as well as a ton of other information. David, thank you so much for joining me today. I truly do appreciate it.
David Bitton (01:09:46):
Oh, thank you again for having me. I appreciate it. And next time, we’ll, we’ll come back, we’ll talk about AI or in 2030, the next thing that happens.
Andrew Schultz (01:09:52):
Exactly. I’m looking forward to it. That pretty much wraps up this episode of the Rent Prep for Landlords podcast. Thank you all so much for listening. We truly do appreciate it. Our goal with the podcast is to help as many people as possible make educated decisions when it comes to real estate, and you can help us to reach our goal. If you heard anything in this week’s episode or any other episode that will help someone you know, please do us a favor and share it with them. If you’re looking to get in contact with me, I can be reached over at what’s drew up to.com. From there, you’ll find links to everything going on with me over at Own Buffalo, as well as other projects that we’re working on. Grab a copy of our free deal analysis tool today over at what’s drew up to.com.
Andrew Schultz (01:10:32):
There’s no obligation, and it comes with a companion video showing you how to use it. If you’re looking for top tier tenant screening services, head on over to rent prep.com. There are multiple products to choose from, including a tenant paid option. And if you’re over 50 doors, ask us about the enterprise level programs and pricing. I’ve been an enterprise user of Rent Prep for over a decade now, and it’s definitely changed the way that we screen our tenants. Check that out today over@rentprep.com. Again, thank you all so much for listening. We’ll be back in two weeks with an all new episode that you won’t wanna miss. Until then, I’m Andrew Schultz with own buffalo.com for rent prep.com, and we’ll talk to you soon.