In this week’s podcast, Andrew Schultz discusses some of the top property manager pet peeves when it comes to rental properties.
Should everyone in a household be listed on a lease if the rent is only coming from one person? Find out now.
And, last, but not least, annual inspections. What happens when you and a tenant agree on a fix to the property, but they have yet to take action? Listen to this week’s podcast.
Show Notes
Andrew Schultz (00:00:00):
Welcome everybody to the April, 2020 4:00 AM a. I’m Andrew Schultz, community manager here at Rent Prep. We also have Josh Ungaro, the marketing director, manager.
Josh Ungaro (00:00:11):
Now the product I, I’ve changed titles recently, but it doesn’t change really what I’m, doesn’t change. I’m doing all too much. Just more product centric. So product marketing manager, marketing manager, whatever you want to call me marketing guy. That’s fine.
Andrew Schultz (00:00:25):
The guy I report to, the guy I, the guy <laugh> guy I, the guy I deal with at Rent Prep <laugh>.
Josh Ungaro (00:00:31):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But how, how’s it going, Andrew?
Andrew Schultz (00:00:34):
Not bad. Actually, today’s been pretty hectic. So it’s, I mean, I’m sure you were experiencing the winds just the same as we are last night. And we have one flooded property right now that our plumber’s at dealing with the basement situation. There, there was a couple inches of water in the basement there. That’s the only, like, major thing that’s popped up so far today as a result of the storm. But, Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. It’s just the way it is. Whenever we get these severe weather events we usually wind up with one or two maintenance calls as a result. So,
Josh Ungaro (00:01:06):
Yeah, I just last night, just waking up during the night and just hearing, hearing kind of the wind going mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> like we were talking about it before we jumped on here, but we’ve had a typical kind of buffalo spring here. We’ve gone from 70 degrees, we’re back down to 40 degrees today. Yesterday I was hitting
Andrew Schultz (00:01:23):
Golf. Yeah. Yesterday was 70. I was
Josh Ungaro (00:01:25):
Hitting in golf balls out back into, into a net that I had in the backyard. And then I woke up middle of the night and I heard the wind and I go, oh, crap. Like, I, I hope I staked that thing back down.
Andrew Schultz (00:01:35):
I was gonna say, did you leave the net or No, I
Josh Ungaro (00:01:37):
Woke. I woke up and I, I did, I had it staked down and the wind hadn’t, hadn’t blown. It’s a pretty big net too, so nice. Yeah. Typical, typical buffalo spring for us. And we’re just moving through. I’ve got a little bit of a cold, so excuse the nasally nasally voice today.
Andrew Schultz (00:01:55):
Yeah. We’ll try to go easy on you. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:01:58):
And I’ve got the master’s background on today, so shout out. I see that the Masters golf tournament, Augusta, Georgia. We’ll shout out that it’s the second round today. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. We just had, we got a lot of crazy things. We had the eclipse on yeah, eclipse was on Monday.
Andrew Schultz (00:02:13):
What did you guys wind up doing for the eclipse? Was, was rent prep open or? No,
Josh Ungaro (00:02:17):
Rent prep was open. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. We did have, we had some time to just, obviously we, I think we were closed for 15 minutes during the the main point of the eclipse, but it was, it was cool. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. I was kind of at first I was like, ah, I’m not getting all hyped like that. They were right. Putting signs all over saying It’s gonna be crazy busy, whatever. And then I was like, ah, all right, well, I’ll, I’ll watch it. I gotta watch it. So we went out there and it was cool. I’m, yeah, I’m glad I did. I would’ve been mad, well, if I didn’t.
Andrew Schultz (00:02:49):
So for people not in our area, we’re in, we’re in Buffalo, New York, which was like right on the line of totality. 100% coverage. Yeah. Which kind of went right across our region, the whole Buffalo Niagara region. And there was a large expectation that we were going to have a huge influx of people. And like, to put it in perspective, in the Erie Niagara County region, Buffalo Niagara region, we have about a million residents. And they were telling us to expect somewhere between another like 500,000 to one and a half million people. And that did not wind up materializing here just because the weather wasn’t cooperative. Like we didn’t really get to see much of the eclipse. I don’t know if you guys got to see totality or not other than just the darkness. But yeah, we didn’t get to see any of the, I saw just a sliver before and a sliver after, but we missed the actual totality event.
Andrew Schultz (00:03:36):
Obviously it got dark, which was still pretty cool. But we did not get to see the actual eclipse here. We actually closed our office. We were kind of anticipating that, ’cause our office is right on Harlem, which is a major thoroughfare here, we were kind of anticipating that we were not gonna be able to get around the area based on what we were being told. And we decided to just, I worked from home for a few hours that morning, and then we took the afternoon off. But yeah, definitely did not get nearly the amount of people that we were expecting, which is honestly probably a good thing. But I would’ve liked to have seen the people. I think it would’ve been awesome to see that many people come back to Buffalo. But it is what it is.
Josh Ungaro (00:04:13):
Yeah. Yeah. And I actually, weirdly enough, I was in Toronto this weekend, the past
Andrew Schultz (00:04:19):
Oh yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:04:19):
Weekend. So I, and we had scheduled this. We went to go see a concert. We were in Toronto and then I remembered, I go, oh crap. Like we’re coming back Sunday. That’s probably gonna be when a lot of people come. ’cause For anybody, yeah. Who doesn’t know. Toronto’s only about two hours you know, two hours from Buffalo, let’s say. Not far at all. So yeah, a lot of people figured a lot of people would be coming right over the border. But we got up, I think we were on the road by nine and Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, no traffic. I think it was a seven minute wait at the border. So,
Andrew Schultz (00:04:52):
Yeah. That’s not bad. I kind of anticipated, ’cause we were talking about it in the marketing meeting last week, I kind of figured that you were gonna get screwed coming back on a Sunday. I was pretty <laugh> I was pretty laughing,
Josh Ungaro (00:05:01):
But Yeah. Yeah. It wasn’t
Andrew Schultz (00:05:03):
Really as bad as what they thought it was gonna be, but didn’t
Josh Ungaro (00:05:05):
Pan out, but, all right. Well, yeah, a lot of, I feel like we haven’t had an a MA in a while, but
Andrew Schultz (00:05:12):
It’s been about a, it been less than a month, actually. Actually no, I’m sorry. It’s been a little bit more, ’cause we did the March one early in the month, and we had to push this one back because of the eclipse.
Josh Ungaro (00:05:21):
Yeah. Right. So, yeah. So let’s you know same deal, deal as usual. Here. We’ve got Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, we’ve got a lot of form submission questions that got submitted by guys, guys,
Andrew Schultz (00:05:33):
Some questions this month. I’m excited for this one.
Josh Ungaro (00:05:35):
I know there’s,
Andrew Schultz (00:05:37):
While you’re digging that up, I’m just gonna go over what we’ve, what we’ve produced lately. Oh, yeah. As far as new videos that are out on the Facebook page, or I’m sorry, on the YouTube channel, they’re probably on the Facebook page as well. We did just release a video on tenant screening tips. And it’s not just your typical tenant screening tips, you know, it’s, it’s a little bit more in depth. It’s coming from my experiences as a property manager. I think think that’s a good one to watch. And then we also released a video on when and why you should hire a property manager. And Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, spoiler alert, you don’t always need a property manager. That’s one of the first things I mentioned in the video. But if you’re at a point where you’re struggling managing your portfolio of rentals and you’re thinking about a property manager, that’s a good video to take a look at. Just to think, okay, do I really need a manager or is there something else that I can be doing before we’d make that decision? And I think that’s gonna be a pretty, a pretty good piece of content as well. And then upcoming, oh, go ahead. I,
Josh Ungaro (00:06:27):
I think I think also there is an article if you just go to the REM prep site and you kind of search you know, property manage manager or anything like that, that search term we do, I think have an article up there that kind of weighs and kind of guides you through just, you know, when is it necessary for you to, to have a property manager or leverage one, and when is it really not, not worth it. So that is,
Andrew Schultz (00:06:50):
Well, and it’s there, it’s kind of a weird window because I work in third party property management. We manage property on behalf of other people. So like you have the self-managing landlord that slowly grows out of the point where he can continue to manage it himself. And then you have this period of time where they have a manager in place, like a third party company like us. Then eventually, if that investor keeps investing, they reach a point where it’s time to start bringing all of that stuff back in house. So, Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, it’s not always the case where someone will bring in bring the management in-house that sometimes they just don’t want the extra liability and extra expensive managing the asset. But I see a lot of investors kind of go through this phase of self-management, then third party management, and then back to first party management Yeah. With having on, on staff management and things like that, on staff maintenance. So that’s a pretty interesting one.
Josh Ungaro (00:07:39):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, for sure. Well, I think is if we wanna jump right in, the first question that we, we had pertains to, to kind of property management here and if I’m pronouncing this wrong, apologies, but rant.
Andrew Schultz (00:07:56):
I think it’s Ranjit
Josh Ungaro (00:07:58):
Ranjit,
Andrew Schultz (00:07:58):
Let’s go with that. I might be pronouncing it wrong too. I probably am. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:08:02):
All right. Well, Ranjit had asked what are your biggest frustrations as a property manager?
Andrew Schultz (00:08:08):
Oh, man. I was thinking about this one because I wanted to have a really good answer for this question specifically. I think my biggest frustration as a property manager, I’m gonna answer this twice, once it’s a property manager and once it’s a small business owner my biggest frustration as a property manager has to be people that don’t read <laugh> for lack of a better, like, we have policies and procedures and stuff like that in place, starting with our application process even before that, starting with the rental listing. Like there are so many things that people can find out just by reading the rental listing or going to our website and everybody seems to think that the rules don’t apply to them in 2024, and that they can bypass the procedure and this and that. And the other thing, which we simply put, don’t allow.
Andrew Schultz (00:08:53):
Like we have these policies and procedures for a reason, and that’s why our clients trust us to do our job <laugh>. So that’s, yeah, that’s stemming from a couple of incidents earlier this week. But I would say that’s my biggest frustration as a property manager right now. Today, my biggest frustration as a small business owner lately has been never having enough time. Mm-Hmm. Time management is one of the most critical skills that you can have as a small business owner in my opinion. And I try to manage my time as diligently as I can, but there’s always stuff left on my to-do list at the end of the day, no matter how many items I put on it, I never get to all the items on my to-do list in any given day, which is a source of major frustration for me because I like to knock things out and keep moving forward. And I feel like when I don’t get to the bottom of my to-do list that I’m kind of holding everybody else up. So really time management and delegation are the two biggest things that I’ve been working on as a small business owner in the last, well, really since 2024 kicked off because we’ve been kind of in growth mode over here.
Josh Ungaro (00:09:51):
Yeah. That, that’s understandable. And obviously the frustrations of, of being a property manager with with tenants or even people you’re working with that that just don’t read whether it’s, whether it’s leases, whether it’s other contracts, different things like that. Like that’s,
Andrew Schultz (00:10:10):
You know, that would
Josh Ungaro (00:10:11):
Be a huge source of frustration.
Andrew Schultz (00:10:13):
And it’s, it’s funny that you mention contracts because it’s not limited to leases. It’s, we have clients that don’t read their property management agreements fully. Right. And then, then come to us asking questions about where, where did this charge come from? Or why did you, you know, do this? Or how did this get approved without my, without my, okay. And more often than not, the response is, did you read your agreement? And more often than not, it’s Oh, I didn’t notice that part. Or, or whatever. And our agreements are not complicated. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, they’re very straightforward. They’re written in plain English, our lease and our property management agreement. Yeah. And it just boils down to people don’t spend the time to read. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And that’s actually, I brought that up a couple times in the video on hiring a property manager, is make sure that you read and understand the property management agreement that you’re signing read. Yeah. And understand. And that’s, that seems to be the biggest problem is everybody’s in such a hurry nowadays that nobody takes the time to really pay attention.
Josh Ungaro (00:11:09):
Well, and I, and I think if, if you just took the time to actually read through it, you can avoid a lot of issues just down the road of ’em as far as just conflicts and things you’re not on the same page about. You can ask questions about stuff initially, and it’s just better just
Andrew Schultz (00:11:23):
Read. Absolutely. Yeah. For sure. Just read, just read. Alright. And read all the time, by the way. Like, just read, read all the time. You should always be. I I talk about that all the time too. You should always be trying to learn something new every day. Read. It’s important. The number of people that don’t ever pick up a book after they leave school, like high school or college is obscene to me. Like, I read probably, I don’t read enough books, but I probably get 20 or so books a year in, in different, you know, whether it be business books or fiction or whatever. Yeah. The number of people that just never pick up a book after they get outta school is crazy to me. Like, I don’t know, it just doesn’t make sense.
Josh Ungaro (00:12:01):
Yeah. I’m, I’m not as much in, into just books, I guess. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, if I do, if I do read it’s nonfiction and like, history kind of kind of books. But I do read a lot of, obviously we’re subscribed just being in this industry. Right. A lot of newsletters Yeah. And stuff like that. So I do get my fair share of reading in and mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> just like to stay informed and obviously
Andrew Schultz (00:12:21):
No, absolutely.
Josh Ungaro (00:12:22):
Our Facebook group, great opportunity to read just kind of what what’s going on there in the rev prep for landlords Facebook group.
Andrew Schultz (00:12:28):
Yeah. There’s always something new to learn and I honestly, I learn stuff from the group all the time too.
Josh Ungaro (00:12:33):
Yeah, for sure. Alright, I’m gonna flip down to question eight on the sheet. Andrew it’s a question from Yuki. They’re asking about some tenant screening and background check stuff.
Andrew Schultz (00:12:44):
This one’s all good.
Josh Ungaro (00:12:46):
Yeah. Yuki ask, can I use a REM prep background check? If so, the information put in would be the tenant’s name and info. How do I ask them to pay? Thank you. Yeah. So you can use a rent prep background check for, for your tenants. We have two different packages available for the regular kind of landlords, the TransUnion product, which will, in certain states you can have renter pay in other states it’s just, it’ll be landlord pay, it just depends on, on where you’re located. And that one, you only only need to put in an email address of the tenant for the TransUnion background check, the rent prep background check, which is, which is our product here at REM Prep. That one will be landlord pay. So you’ll be paying for that one up front. And that one’s gonna ask for first name, last name, date of birth, phone.
Josh Ungaro (00:13:38):
You’ll need the SSN. And I believe the street address, the current city state and zip will be, will be just kind of the information that you need there. And the rent prep background check. If you’re, if you’re looking for more information on criminal or, or more kind of that data on your tenant, that is, that would be the one that I recommend. And if you are looking for more of a, like a full credit check or a, a more credit based information, the TransUnion product is, is one that you can use for that.
Andrew Schultz (00:14:11):
Nice. That was a lot. Sorry. It is a lot. There’s a lot going on. Like re re prep has a ton of different products available. Yeah. It really depends on what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. Right. And that’s just,
Josh Ungaro (00:14:22):
And then also
Andrew Schultz (00:14:22):
Laws, like that’s the other part of it is, like, for instance, in New York, we can’t look at eviction data. Right. Which is kind of problematic in my opinion, but it’s what it is. There’s not much you can do about that. We are not laws here. So
Josh Ungaro (00:14:36):
Yeah. And if you those are obviously our, our smaller landlords, those are really the, the good packages for them. And if you are somebody who happens to be a property manager with just higher volume mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> we do have enterprise solutions available where you can, can kind of dive into a different, you know, different types of packages and stuff like that. But those are the two basic ones. If you’re just looking to run, you know, a couple, couple tenants you know, a year.
Andrew Schultz (00:15:01):
Yeah. On the enterprise side, we’ve been using the enterprise side for, I don’t know, a long time. I know I’ve been a rent prep customer for over a decade, but I migrated over to the enterprise side maybe a few years ago. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, we love it. Like we use it for our rental application, we use it for our credit and background checks. It’s made our life tremendously easier. So if you are looking for tenant screening, definitely check out the resources that are available over at rent prep.
Josh Ungaro (00:15:25):
Yeah. That is, that is a cool side. It does allow you to kind of merge, mix and match a little bit more so that you can get, you know, even more complete data on your, on your tenants, just, just by the nature of how the product’s kind of built out. So Mm-Hmm. Yeah, we we love having you as a client, Andrew <laugh>. You’re great. I love what you call,
Andrew Schultz (00:15:44):
Appreciate that <laugh>. Well, and that’s actually, that’s worth noting too. Like, I call the rent prep offices. I, I, so I, the podcast and stuff I do for rent prep, but I’m not ever in the rent prep offices. I have an office, you know, of my own that I operate out of for our property management and construction companies. And I’m very seldom over in the rent prep offices. So I call all the time and ask questions about, Hey, this report, you know, I don’t understand something on this report or whatever. And the screening staff is always willing to answer questions. So definitely use that resource. If you see a report or you see something that doesn’t make sense, it’s worth calling just to get that explanation. And there’s no extra charge for that or anything. And the, the screening staff is more than willing to answer whatever questions you might have.
Josh Ungaro (00:16:26):
Yeah. I mean, that’s, that is one of the benefits of, of being REM prep and having those FCRA certified human screeners that go through months and months of a additional training. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> to, to just be able to understand and actually answer, answer those questions more in depth for you and just Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> understand the reports a lot better that we’re, that we’re getting back. So,
Andrew Schultz (00:16:47):
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and actually that’s a good time to, we’re gonna actually have a video coming out. We had that tenant screening tip video coming out, but we’re also gonna have a video coming out about weird tenant screening laws in different areas of the country. ’cause I know that I included a couple of those in that video, but there’s a bunch of ’em. And it’s worth, you know, taking a look at that when it comes out just to see if there’s anything that impacts your screening in your area. The one I can remember off the top of my head was Miami-Dade County, if I remember correctly, you have to screen everything else before you screen criminal. Like you have to approve and then run the, is it the criminal? Oh,
Josh Ungaro (00:17:20):
Wow. Yeah. I don’t,
Andrew Schultz (00:17:23):
I’d have to double check. Don’t take my word for it. Go watch the video. ’cause That’s much more accurate.
Josh Ungaro (00:17:27):
<Laugh>,
Andrew Schultz (00:17:27):
That’s
Josh Ungaro (00:17:28):
Research. Exactly. That’s
Andrew Schultz (00:17:30):
And scripted. I my script in front of me.
Josh Ungaro (00:17:36):
Oh, let’s let’s hop into the next one here. Let’s, let’s run another form submission here. A lot of from what I had saw a lot of like questions about pests and stuff like that. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> coming up. And obviously it, it makes sense with kind of just, at least in our area with Spring coming along and, and mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> when they’re kind of going away. I have started to see, I’ve seen some ants around. I’ve seen, you know, be, I’ve even seen bees. Bees and all that kind of stuff out there. So Linda asks responsibilities if a rat gets in the building other than bait and trap by an exterminator. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> also the cleanup of the tenant’s possessions in the basement. Is this two different, you think this is two different questions? Or are they saying that we’ll
Andrew Schultz (00:18:24):
Answer both
Josh Ungaro (00:18:25):
The tenant because the tenant has maybe trash in the basement, or, or, Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> some dirt in the basement. It’s attracting the pests. Maybe I,
Andrew Schultz (00:18:34):
Maybe well, so let’s start with responsibilities. So as far as the responsibilities go if a rack gets into the building, obviously you want to get the rat out as quickly as possible. If you’re doing baits and traps and stuff like that, I think you’re moving in the right direction. That said, it’s typically never just one. So once you catch one, you have to reset those traps or those baits or whatever. Yeah. And it’s kind of an ongoing thing. The biggest thing that you can do is figure out where they’re entering the home. Maybe you have some gaps in your foundation. Maybe you have a dryer vent that’s not hooked up, but the louvers have come off. So they’re coming in through the dryer vent and then down into the basement. I’ve seen them come in through chimneys. We actually had one, oh man, we got a phone call from a tenant one morning at like five 30 in the morning. She’s getting up to go to work, and a rat had actually come down the front vent pipe of her sewer line through the sewer underground and up the sewer line, and it drowned in the, the trap of her toilet.
Josh Ungaro (00:19:34):
Oh, wow.
Andrew Schultz (00:19:35):
I’ve never, like, there’s, that’s one of those things that only has happened one time, the entire time I’ve been in this industry, which is 15 years now. It was the craziest thing. And I’m like, there’s no way that that happened. But that’s exactly how it happened. There’s no other, there’s no other explanation for it <laugh>. Like the toilet lid was closed. Like, it’s not like the, the rack like opened the lid and climbed in and drowned or whatever like it, that was crazy. But the biggest thing you can do outside of baiting and trapping is making sure that you’re doing the exclusionary me measures is what they call ’em to prevent the rats from getting into the building. That’s gonna be honestly the number one thing. As far as the tenant stuff in the basement, if they’re storing a bunch of garbage down there, I would say send them a letter telling them they have however many days in your state to get the junk out of the basement. Because it is attracting rats. It’s also probably a good idea to walk through the apartment and make sure that they don’t have a lot of debris and stuff hanging out in the apartment or food left out in the kitchen. You know, pizza boxes or something like that. Anything that smells good, a rat’s going to be attracted to Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and anything anywhere where they can find a source of water they’re going to be attracted to. So those are the two main things that you’re gonna be trying to eliminate inside the property.
Josh Ungaro (00:20:48):
Yeah. No, that’s good. Yeah, I had, I for sure had I’m not sure if my, my landlord took care of it, but we Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, we definitely had my first apartment ever. We had, we had a lot of rats and we were in the city of, we were in the city of Rochester, which it’s, you know, cities, cities definitely have a lot more of, of that kind of stuff. So
Andrew Schultz (00:21:10):
Did you go to U of R?
Josh Ungaro (00:21:12):
I went to St. John Fisher. So where
Andrew Schultz (00:21:15):
The bills where the bills have their training camp
Josh Ungaro (00:21:17):
Have their training camp. So I was, I was there, but that, this was in grad school, so this was a little bit after that. And I was, you know, in my first apartment and stuff like that, so I was off campus. Yeah. So it was fun. Yeah. It was
Andrew Schultz (00:21:30):
Well, the nice thing, so we just changed exterminators earlier this year and actually, I guess it was the end of last year, we changed exterminators and we’re really liking this new company that we’re working with because they barcode all of their boxes, like their bait boxes. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, they barcode ’em all. And when they go out to service on a weekly or biweekly basis, they scan the barcode, it pops up in their app, and then they can take a picture of the inside of the trap, how much of the bait has been eaten. They can make marks, you know, in the, in the app. And then we get a report after every service telling us, Hey, we’re still seeing rat activity in these areas, but the bait in the back of the house hasn’t been touched or whatever. So we’re making progress or we’re not making progress. And that’s really, really useful information to have, especially when you’re dealing with a, a bigger infestation, which, I mean, it’s pretty common in the city of Buffalo to find rats. It’s a big problem in city. So,
Josh Ungaro (00:22:20):
Yeah. No, that’s, that’s cool. I’ve never, I’ve never even heard of that for that exterminator company with the all the QR codes and stuff like that. That’s Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>
Andrew Schultz (00:22:29):
That’s cool. Yeah. I’ll give you the name off the air.
Josh Ungaro (00:22:31):
Cool. alright. Let’s skip down to Facebook question. Let’s do Kimberly. Kimberly asks, getting ready to do the dreaded annual inspection today. If I’ve told the tenant to cure something verbally and it’s not cured, do I do a formal notice or have it done? And bill ’em Also, as a side note, what does a professional inspector charge? How thorough have you found ’em to be and where have you found them?
Andrew Schultz (00:23:02):
Let’s start with a professional inspector part first. I don’t know. So, in some states, there are services that will actually come out and do like your inspections and stuff for you. I think Texas has a company called Onsite Pros or something like that, that does that sort of work. I’ve also heard of some landlords hiring a property like a home inspector to go through and do an inspection and maybe they can work out some kind of a reduced rate because they’re not asking for necessarily a full inspection. They’re just asking for Right. More of a walkthrough type of a thing, looking for leaks and whatnot. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. But honestly, this is something that you should be able to do as the, as the property owner. Yeah. Have a, have a pretty good checklist that you wanna walk through with and make sure that make sure you’re following your checklist.
Andrew Schultz (00:23:46):
If you follow your checklist from top to bottom, you’re not gonna miss any of the things that you wanted to take a look at. Right. Make sure you’re getting a ton of photos when you do your inspections, as many as you can. ’cause That’s gonna help you to kind of determine how things are going in the unit. You can compare your move-ins to your periodic inspections to your move out and kind of see how things have been progressing. Yeah. If you have told them to cure something verbally and it still isn’t cured, I would file the formal notice. Do whatever you need to do in your state to issue a notice to the tenant telling them that they have however many days your state allows to cure that issue. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and do this for anything that you want cured. Don’t do a verbal notice to cure because they’re not worth anything. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> do it in writing. And then that way you’re, you’re at least if they don’t cure now you’re in a position where you can say, you haven’t cured, we’re going to terminate your lease, or we’re going to pursue an eviction because you’re not upholding the lease, or whatever the case may be. Anytime you’re talking about something like that where it’s a formal communication always make sure you get it in writing and always make sure that you have it served in whatever capacity your state requires you to.
Josh Ungaro (00:24:53):
Right. Good. I just, I saw another one down here about about pests. So let’s do this question from Janice. Help bugs are waking up. Any recommendation or any recommended ant control sprays do it yourself.
Andrew Schultz (00:25:13):
Lemme see if I can get the Home Depot website up here real quick. We actually use the ant trap,
Josh Ungaro (00:25:21):
Who I, what have I used?
Andrew Schultz (00:25:24):
I can’t remember the brand of them, but they’re just basically like an ant trap. The tarot brand, liquid ant baits. Let me grab the page. There’s a bunch of different ones out there. And let’s see, share screen. There we go. This is what we use. And there’s a bunch of different varieties of them out there, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. But we’ve had pretty good luck with these. I use these in my own home. And then obviously there’s a ton of different over the counter stuff that you can purchase. Of course now my website doesn’t want to go forward again. There we go. There you go. There’s, there’s spray cans that you can buy. There’s, you know, the traps and whatever. There’s foggers if you really have a, a nasty situation. But honestly, for the most part, what we use is those tarot liquid ant baits. They seem to work pretty well.
Josh Ungaro (00:26:13):
Yeah,
Andrew Schultz (00:26:13):
The thing I like about ’em is they’re very easy to deploy. Like, I can buy a box of those at Home Depot on my way to a property and throw ’em all over the place when I get there. Yeah. They’re pet safe. As long as the pets aren’t chewing on them, their kid’s safe, as long as the kids aren’t chewing on them and they do kill ants, so they, they get the job done.
Josh Ungaro (00:26:32):
Yeah. No, we I know with I was talking about it with yeah, spring Spring kind of coming. We’ve, we’ve seen a little bit of the answer starting to kind of get in, get in the house in certain places and stuff like that. Nothing crazy. Not like, not like a ton of ’em, but definitely, you know, they’re, they’re out and about and starting to, to get more active, at least in, in the areas around where we are.
Andrew Schultz (00:26:56):
Yeah. I haven’t seen any inside the house yet, thankfully, but I know it’s coming ’cause it happens every single year.
Josh Ungaro (00:27:02):
Yeah. We did the old girlfriend, we, we pulled the couches out, wiped everything. It was a crazy mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> prompted us to, prompted us to do some cleaning
Andrew Schultz (00:27:13):
Some spring cleaning. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:27:14):
Just for some peace of mind which was overdue, so, Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> peace of mind and, and just getting ready for the spring anyway.
Andrew Schultz (00:27:22):
Yeah. And obviously making sure that you don’t have, again, like with food sitting out and stuff like that, that’s gonna be a huge attractant to any sort of an or anything like that. So anytime you’re trying to eliminate pests, whether it be a bug or a critter get rid of water sources, get rid of food sources. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, make sure that you seal up the outside of the building and that’s gonna solve your problem 95% of the time.
Josh Ungaro (00:27:45):
Yeah. All right. Form submission question, question from let’s do this one from Henderson. There’s a lot of talk about every adult staying in a rental listed in the lease. My question is, what advantage is it to an owner that every adult staying in the rental is listed on the lease? If the rent is coming from one person, I can understand with multiple people, if the rent is coming from one person, I can understand with multiple people listed in the lease that the owner has more people to pursue for damages. But in this case where one person has the money, wouldn’t an eviction become complicated by adding non-financial name in the lease?
Andrew Schultz (00:28:34):
It can. So we have basically two different classes that we put people in on our leases. They’re either at the top of the lease as a responsible party or responsible tenant, or they’re an additional occupant, which is generally speaking, going to be the minors. Or maybe you have a, an older family member who’s living with you for care purposes or something like that, that they’re not contributing financially to the property. From a property management perspective, you want as many people you wanna know everybody that’s living in the unit because there’s a liability associated with not knowing who’s living in your buildings. And on top of that, it’s one of those situations where you wanna make sure that you’re not dealing with overcrowding situations or too many people living in the unit or whatever the case may be. And secondary to that is jointly and severally liable and responsible.
Andrew Schultz (00:29:26):
So if you have one person, say you have a couple that’s living in the apartment, but only one of them is on the lease, well, if that other person has financial means, even if they can’t support the apartment on their own, they should be listed as a responsible party on the lease as well, because that gives you the ability to go after everyone, both jointly and separately when you go into a court situation, whether it be eviction or small claims or whatever. Yeah. As far as it becoming a complication by adding extra people to the lease, I have not found that to be the case here in at least our region of New York because when we do our eviction paperwork, we list all of the known occupants. Mi we don’t list the minors. Yeah. But we list all of the known occupants over the age of 18 and all other occupants known and unknown. So that covers your John and Jane Doe and all of that. So that’s, that’s how we file our paperwork up here. When we do our five and 14 days, when we do our eviction petitions and stuff like that, everybody that we know living in the unit gets named and all other occupants. Yeah. But this is definitely something that’s a state by state basis thing. You really need to understand what the laws are in your area.
Josh Ungaro (00:30:36):
Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. okay. Question from Karen. How to discuss, how to discuss a large black spot and larger beige bay spot on hardwood floor disguise. Is that, is that what they’re trying to say there? How to maybe disguise a large
Andrew Schultz (00:31:00):
<Crosstalk>? Oh, no, no. They wanna discuss that. It’s the, it’s the, it’s a tenant issue.
Josh Ungaro (00:31:05):
Oh. How to discuss a large black spot and large beige spot on hardwood floors from dog with from dog with a lawyer tenant. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> says later is water that stained. Don’t believe them.
Andrew Schultz (00:31:19):
So hopefully you have some photos from the move-in showing what the condition of the floors was at that time. And you can literally take those pictures and show them to the attorney and say, Hey, this is what it looked like when you moved in. This is what it looks like. Now there’s a discrepancy here and it’s obviously been caused by something in your apartment. I wouldn’t even necessarily say that it was caused by the dog. I would just say since you’ve moved in Yeah. Damage has occurred in the apartment. You are responsible, damage has occurred beyond reasonable wear and tear in the apartment and you were responsible for those damages. Whether you want to pursue it now or pursue it at the end of the tenancy is kind of up to you. If I find damages, I like to try to pursue them as soon as I see them.
Andrew Schultz (00:32:02):
Yeah. To try to keep the security deposit intact whenever possible. Hopefully this tenant is of some means and is able to pay for the repairs and kind of go from there. Yeah. It’s interesting that, so keep in mind, not every attorney practices real estate or landlord tenant law. There’s a lot of criminal defense attorneys out there that don’t know the first thing about leases, you know, and it’s Mm-Hmm. Just because a tenant is an attorney does not necessarily mean that they know what they’re talking about. So don’t put yourself in a situation where you are responding emotionally. If they wanna sit there and scream, let ’em sit there and scream and then send them the writing and notice and move on. Or have them contact your attorney if you need to hire one to pursue the eviction or whatever the case may be.
Josh Ungaro (00:32:49):
Yeah. There’s a lot of,
Andrew Schultz (00:32:50):
I think that first won’t rent to attorneys for reasons exactly like this, because they don’t wanna get into illegal argument with somebody that knows more about the legal system than they do. And in some areas you can do that, and in some areas you just can’t. It really just depends on, I just found out, ’cause we don’t operate in New York City, we’re on the other end of the state. Dan in the Facebook group, one of our moderators had commented on a different question that I had marked out on this about can you refuse to rent to a lawyer? And in New York City, lawful occupation is a protected class as well as lawful source of income. Yeah. But outside of New York City, as far as I know, I’m not an attorney, so don’t quote me on this. I don’t know of any legislation stating that lawful occupation is a protected class, lawful source of income is protected. But I don’t think that lawful occupation is protected in the rest of the state. I could see it coming down the pipeline for sure. Once it gets added one place, it’s, it’s usually pretty common to see it getting added in more places. But as of right now, that’s the lay of the land as I understand it here in, in our region. So that’s definitely something that’s interesting and I think that it’s going to become more of an issue as time goes on.
Josh Ungaro (00:34:00):
Yeah. I think, and I, for some reason I thought I added that, I thought I added that to this a MA that question about
Andrew Schultz (00:34:07):
You did, I marked it out because I answered it in the Facebook group
Josh Ungaro (00:34:11):
<Laugh>.
Andrew Schultz (00:34:12):
Okay. But we just covered it anyway.
Josh Ungaro (00:34:14):
I’m glad, I’m glad I was like I, I, I saw that question somewhere and I thought I threw it in here. So yeah, thanks Andrew for knocking it out. But I’m glad that we had a question that led us back to, back to discussing it. I just, that is interesting. I don’t think we’ve ever had that kind of come up on this, whether you Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> can you can refuse to rent to, to a certain occupation or, or whatnot.
Andrew Schultz (00:34:34):
And that’s the first time I’ve heard of lawful source, or I’m sorry, lawful occupation being a protected class. I don’t know as though that’s a super, super commonplace thing throughout the country yet. Honestly, when Dan mentioned it on Facebook today, that was the first that I’d heard of it. Yeah. Which was kind of, and I went back and I did a little Google searching on it and yeah. He was right. Like I had no idea. That’s, that’s a downstate thing.
Josh Ungaro (00:34:56):
Oh wow. Yeah. That’s interesting. But I think, you know, as far as that question goes, like just goes back to, I feel like the last, last couple months we’ve had this come up. But, you know, take your, do your due diligence, take your photos. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> do get every documentation that you possibly can get. So when the time comes, the facts are the facts. I mean, you have the photo, it’s, you know, it’s timestamped, it’s whatever, whatever you wanna do with it.
Andrew Schultz (00:35:19):
It’s very, very hard to argue when you have time and date stamp photos. Let me run over to the rent prep YouTube page ’cause I wanna plug another video. We might as well, since we’re here, we do have a great video series. I think it’s two or three videos that I did back when, back when Eric was still working in the marketing department. Let’s see. Move in and move out photos. If you go over to the rent prep Facebook page and type move in, in the search box, you can find, no, I don’t wanna present a video file. I wanna present a screen. Gotta love it. Technology. so yeah, so if you go over to the rent prep YouTube page, which is just youtube.com/rent prep, you can find these videos that are out there, how to do a move inspection is the, make sure that they didn’t oof a little loud.
Andrew Schultz (00:36:09):
That’s the first one we actually have. It’s a series of three videos. Wow. I looked way younger in that too. How long, how long ago was that? Oh, six years. All right. I’m done <laugh>. Yeah, we’re done with that segment. But go check those videos out. There’s still even being six years old, that’s evergreen content. There’s nothing that’s changed on how to take good photos of an apartment before a move in. And that’s your best opportunity to record the data that you’re gonna want at the time of move out. So if you do your due diligence on the front end and make sure you get really good photos, it gives you a lot more ammo on the backend when it’s time to justify those security deposit dispositions.
Josh Ungaro (00:36:46):
Yeah. for sure. And we’ve got I just took a look. We’ve got about 630 videos that are, that are in that REM prep for or REM prep YouTube channel, which is just at REM Prep. So we’re, I mean, we’re getting up there and Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and a lot of ’em you know, there’s a lot of good stuff in there. So we’ve got, we’ve got a decent amount of subscribers. We’ve got a lot of people that comment on the videos and Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, there’s some engagement there. So yeah. Anytime anybody’s looking for, for any information, just see if we, we might have a video on it. And if you don’t find that we have a video on it, yeah. We are more than happy to take suggestions as far as, you know, what kind of content we’re putting out. And
Andrew Schultz (00:37:29):
Yeah, keep in mind we’re pushing, we push out two videos a month. We push out a podcast and we push out the a MA as both a video and a a podcast piece. So we’re constantly looking for new ideas for videos constantly. So if there’s something that you’re looking to understand or you don’t have a good grasp of and you’re trying to find some information on it, let us do the research for you. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, submit your, submit your idea. And more than, more likely than not, it’ll wind up on the list to be honest with you. ’cause I know that we’re, we’re currently in a position where we have the next couple months scheduled out, but we’re always looking for video ideas, so certainly keep us in mind.
Josh Ungaro (00:38:06):
Yeah. Even with all the, all the crazy changes every, every day. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> just within the industry. I think that’s kind of cool. Maybe we’ll start, maybe we’ll start that as just something I, maybe I can pop into the Facebook group and take do like a poll every once in a while and try to get some more content ideas and I’m sure mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, everybody’s got different thoughts about what’s going on. So it might be something we just we just don’t end up talking about and then we’ll, we can grab it and, you know, turn it into a video. So I think
Andrew Schultz (00:38:32):
Absolutely.
Josh Ungaro (00:38:33):
That’s a cool idea. I will definitely gonna throw, maybe I’ll throw a poll in there next week just to see how we’re doing. Alright, so that one’s good. We, let’s bounce back to a Facebook group question.
Andrew Schultz (00:38:51):
While you’re pulling that up, just in case anybody’s not familiar, you can actually, we post the AMAs in the Facebook group generally a week or so in advance so that we can start collecting questions. I kinda screwed up and didn’t get it posted until like yesterday night this week. But you know, generally speaking, you’ll have more than ample time to get some questions submitted. And we do pull from the Facebook questions or questions from the Facebook group as well as direct submittals from the website and stuff like that. That’s where these questions come from. They’re all coming from Yeah. People asking questions. None of these are made up scenarios or anything like that, so we constantly have questions <laugh>.
Josh Ungaro (00:39:26):
Yeah. Yeah. It might seem like some of these are made up. They’re not, they’re a hundred percent not made up. They’re, they’re being stripped right from there. So. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Yeah. I will maybe I’ll put a, a Google form together and I’ll throw it in the Facebook community here and there and we’ll get some more content ideas. We’ll start to work on some stuff.
Andrew Schultz (00:39:43):
Yeah, for sure.
Josh Ungaro (00:39:44):
All right, let’s do question from Dwayne in the Facebook questions. Dwayne says, looking for advice, have a nice couple that would like to renew their lease, but want a new refrigerator. Ice maker does not work. And they said two shelves that need to be replaced. It’s eight years old and costs around $1,500. They also want a new dishwasher. It works, but it’s all, I think 15 years plus or 15 plus years. Wow. I will for sure replace it. So he looks, looks like Dwayne’s gonna replace the refrigerator re
Andrew Schultz (00:40:18):
Or the dish? No, I think he’s replacing the dishwasher regardless.
Josh Ungaro (00:40:21):
Dishwasher regardless. But the refrigerator he maybe doesn’t, not
Andrew Schultz (00:40:28):
Sure on that one
Josh Ungaro (00:40:29):
Don’t necessarily. And I know did, I think it was maybe a year ago, maybe a little bit less, but I was talking about just having my, I had that new refrigerator that had the ice maker in it and I was having all the issues with the ice maker. And I know the recommendation I think that we had given was to try to at least avoid the if you’re gonna buy a refrigerator, at least avoid the ice maker unless you are willing to kind of put up with, with some of the baggage that it comes with. But,
Andrew Schultz (00:41:00):
And, and it boils down to it’s a cost benefit analysis. So in a situation like this, if you have a high end rental where you have a fridge that it’s probably going to be expected that there’s a water and ice dispenser on it, then you’re probably going to have to do that. Right. In this instance, you rented an apartment with a refrigerator that had a water or well at least an ice maker. And that ice maker has stopped working. So if you can’t fix the ice maker, it’s time to replace the refrigerator. Right. Same thing with the shelves. You can hop on appliance parts pros.com, type in the model number and see if you can get, get, you know, parts and pieces. Or you can call an appliance repair technician. But honestly, on lower end appliances, 15 hundred’s, fairly high end for a refrigerator.
Andrew Schultz (00:41:42):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But on lower end appliances, like we put in a lot of 18 cubic foot Frigidaire top freezer, bottom fridge, yeah. Basic units. And there’s really not much to go wrong with ’em ’cause there’s no ice maker. Yeah. You can crack a, a shelf or you can crack a drawer or something like that. But we can get parts pretty much universally for those and we use a lot of ’em. Yeah. The, if you rent an apartment that has an appliance that has features that work at the time that the tenant moves in, those features need to be working the entire time that the tenant lives in the unit. So if you have a refrigerator that you rented with a working ice maker and it stopped working, you need to fix that ice maker or you need to replace the refrigerator. Like for like, so if it had an ice maker, you should be putting one in that has an ice maker now.
Andrew Schultz (00:42:29):
Yeah. I would say that there be, would be an exception to that if you can get the tenant to agree to a refrigerator of a lesser quality. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I would say make sure you get them to sign off on it because that is making, at least in my opinion, and again, I’m not an attorney at least in my opinion, you’re making a substantial change to the unit by changing the appliance package within in the unit, which some people literally rent appli or apartments because it has the glass top stove or because it has the freezer with the ice maker and stuff like that. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. So it is, you know, it’s not something that you can just gloss over. You have to replace like for like whenever possible. Yeah. Unless the tenant does agree to a lesser appliance. And again, I would say make sure that you get them to sign off on that.
Josh Ungaro (00:43:12):
Yeah. I had I, I never really thought about that, but I had, I had a friend that had, they had a gas stove and the gas stove had gone and, and went and they were only used to cooking on the gas and they replaced it with an electric stove.
Andrew Schultz (00:43:28):
Yeah. That’s a huge change. It was huge. Big change. Absolutely. People absolutely will rent apartments based on gas versus electric stoves. I’ve had it happen Yeah. Multiple times.
Josh Ungaro (00:43:37):
I, and I’ve always had gas. I don’t think I’ve ever had a place with, with electric and Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> getting used to even doing that. I mean the amount of just times that burned food, smoke the place up <laugh> like it took forever to get used to, even when I’d go over there and, and help them like do stuff like Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> it’s a whole different game. So, yeah. I mean, I could definitely understand. And
Andrew Schultz (00:44:00):
Electric is getting better. Like Yeah. It’s not, it’s not as bad as it used to be with the great big thick coils that took forever to heat up and forever to cool down. Oh yeah. My grandmother, now you’ve got much thinner coils that, that kind of adjust temperature faster. Or even like the induction top stoves, like that’s almost as immediate as gas. Oh
Josh Ungaro (00:44:17):
Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:44:18):
So there’s a lot that you can do. But if you have a gas stove, you gotta replace it with like
Josh Ungaro (00:44:24):
Yeah. No, that makes, that makes perfect sense. Alright, let’s go let’s do this one. I’m a little curious what you, you might have to say, let’s do this question from Alfie. It’s a Facebook question. What’s the longest you have had a vacancy for? I’m a little over two months. Never had that long before. And it seems like just by the punctuation in there that they are a little starting to get a
Andrew Schultz (00:44:52):
Little
Josh Ungaro (00:44:52):
Concerned. Yeah. Quey quey about not being able to fill the fill the unit.
Andrew Schultz (00:44:57):
I, I did not get a chance to check and see what our longest vacancy has been. I will say that I would rather let an apartment sit vacant. And this is something I tell every single one of my clients. Even, even as early on as like the first sales call when we’re explaining our services. I will tell a client flat out, I will let your place sit vacant until I find the right tenant to put in your apartment. Because it’s so much less expensive to sit for a month of vacancy than it is to Yeah. Place a bad tenant. Because now you’re dealing with lost rent, you’re dealing with property damage, you’re dealing with legal fees. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> you’re dealing with. There’s all sorts of things. So the, the alternative to a long vacancy is a is potentially a bad tenant. So if you’re using a good set of screening criteria, stick to your criteria and wait until the right tenant comes along. Don’t just drop a warm body in there because you need to collect that rent check this month. ’cause Chances are you’re not gonna collect it next month or the month after that or the month after that. And I will say that here in New York, we used to be able to do an eviction soup to nuts in about 60 to 75 days. That process is now four to six months.
Josh Ungaro (00:46:12):
Oh yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:46:13):
Baseline, like we’ve seen some go longer than that. I just read a thi a thread on Reddit the other night from a landlord who’s been trying to evict these tenants for two plus years. Two plus years. Oh my. So it definitely, definitely benefits you to wait for the right tenant. Don’t just place any tenant.
Josh Ungaro (00:46:35):
Yeah. I’m gonna try to do something way fancy for my own my own normal capabilities. I’m trying to share a screen here.
Andrew Schultz (00:46:44):
Let’s
Josh Ungaro (00:46:45):
See. Don’t follow these. Oh wait, here we go. Alright. So we do have, and like Andrew was kind of talking about, and this is, there is a disclaimer on here. It’s not a hundred percent accurate. There are obviously each state is a little bit different, but we do have on our, under our resources tab on the site, we do have just a eviction cost calculator that at least gets you somewhat of a idea of the cost that you’re, that you may endure just with having to evict a 10 tenant. So all it asks you to do, and there’s other factors, but all we ask you to do is put in just a monthly rental amount that you’d be, you’d be grabbing and it’ll pop up a couple different areas here. Estimated legal fees, the months to evict cost, months to turn unpaid month rent, and it’ll kind of spit out how much exactly you truly will be, you know, will be at cost for if, if you have to go through this. And you know, it’s not a hundred percent accurate, you can read the disclaimers there, but it does at least show you, you know, ’cause each state’s legal fees, they’re different and that kind of stuff. Yeah, of course it does give you at least a ballpark idea of what you could be, you know, what you could be up for. So totally agree with your point, Andrew.
Andrew Schultz (00:48:01):
From a, from a management perspective, I don’t disagree with the legal fees might be a little bit light. Yeah. But everything that’s a factor there is absolutely a factor when talking about eviction, right? You’ve got the estimated legal fees, the unpaid month of rent, the months that it’s gonna cost you to evict them, which honestly, that’s probably the part that’s lightest on this entire screen. And then that turnover, I don’t know if, does that turn over the months to turn, does that take into account a month of rent and the cost of damages? Because that might even be kinda light too, depending on how much damage is done to the unit.
Josh Ungaro (00:48:31):
Yeah. That, that may be a little, that may be a little bit low. ’cause It wouldn’t cost repair property for new renters, including, yeah. Yeah. That, that’s, that’s probably a little bit low with the damage costs. I think. I can’t remember what was figured into it, but we kind of looked at like, industry kind of looked at statewide, like averages Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> and tried to figure it out, but, you know, yeah. It might be a little bit low.
Andrew Schultz (00:48:53):
Yeah. But I mean, that’s still, that’s a very, very nice calculator just to like, even for a baseline to understand understanding the cost of landlording is one of the things that I think a lot of new investors completely ignore. Not necessarily completely ignore, but don’t give enough credence to yeah. An eviction is a very, very costly situation. So scroll back up. Oh, you closed it. Nevermind. No, you’re fine. Say the, the, the goal, I think you’ve typed 1500 in for rent to collect that dollars and then lose almost $11,000. Yeah. Had tenant placement. That’s a rough spot to find yourself in
Josh Ungaro (00:49:29):
<Laugh>. Yeah. <Laugh>. Well, it goes back to your point, like, I will leave the, I will leave the unit vacant until we find the right fit just because of
Andrew Schultz (00:49:36):
That. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I know right now I have some units that have been vacant for, I’m not gonna say how long, but I will say extended periods of time. And it’s because they are, they’re a certain type of unit that we want to get the best possible tenant for because it’s more of a luxury type thing. And until we find somebody that meets the criteria that had been specified, we’re not gonna place that, that tenant in that. ’cause We don’t wanna take that risk and the property owner understands that’s a conversation we had with them on the front end. We told them, you almost need to treat this luxury. ’cause Again, Buffalo’s not a rich market. You almost have to treat this luxury listing the same as you would a commercial listing and wait until the right person comes along.
Josh Ungaro (00:50:17):
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, exactly. And that goes, I mean, obviously REM Prep is a tenant screening company and that’s, that’s obviously our goal is to, to help you find the most most accurate information on, on your tenants so that you can try to avoid that. That’s Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, that’s our goal here, so. Cool. and that Yep. If you, if anyone’s looking for that eviction cost calculator, just go to the rem prep.com site under resources. I think it’s the third or fourth third or fourth option there for you to, to click on.
Andrew Schultz (00:50:51):
Nice.
Josh Ungaro (00:50:52):
All right. 1 52 Eastern Time is what I’ve got. So I think we’ve got some time for a couple more. We’ll try to do like a little rapid fire here.
Andrew Schultz (00:51:02):
Let’s do Marjorie. I want to answer that one.
Josh Ungaro (00:51:04):
All right. Where is Marjorie? Is that a she’s
Andrew Schultz (00:51:06):
Up forum or she’s up at the top.
Josh Ungaro (00:51:09):
Okay. why don’t I, why don’t I have that one
Andrew Schultz (00:51:17):
Between Alfie and Janice? You want me to read it? I got,
Josh Ungaro (00:51:24):
Yep, go for it.
Andrew Schultz (00:51:25):
<Laugh> question from, oh, I got, I got it. I got it. I got it. Oh, there you go.
Josh Ungaro (00:51:28):
I’ll do it. I’ll do it. You said the top. This is the Facebook question one. All this is a Facebook question from Mar. I went all the way up to the top.
Andrew Schultz (00:51:39):
Sorry about that.
Josh Ungaro (00:51:40):
All Marjorie, she, she says, I found a tenant and we’ll be sending a lease via DocuSign. What is the best way to accept the security deposit? I’ll need it before I sign tenants live out of state. So check would need to be overnighted thinking Zelle,
Andrew Schultz (00:51:58):
I would do, first I would go watch the video that we put out on yeah. Accepting payments using payment apps, because some of those payment apps can be reversed. And I don’t remember, there’s one of them that cannot be reversed under like any circumstance, and I can’t remember which one it was. So go find that video on our YouTube page. It’s well worth the watch, which
Josh Ungaro (00:52:16):
Is, which is one of our highest viewed videos, I believe.
Andrew Schultz (00:52:19):
Is it good? Because that was a, I was proud of that one if I’m being honest about it, so, yep, for sure. I was very happy with that one. Sure. Short of using a payment app, in your situation where you have somebody living out state, I would require a certified check and I would require it to be it’s not necessarily overnighted if you have time, but I would definitely say it needs to be certified funds in some capacity and it needs to be needs to be paid to you well before you sign that lease. Yeah.
Josh Ungaro (00:52:46):
Yeah. That’s good. All right. Took us longer to find the question than it took us to
Andrew Schultz (00:52:50):
Answer, than it took us to answer.
Josh Ungaro (00:52:53):
All right. Let’s do any other ones that you saw on here that you wanted
Andrew Schultz (00:53:01):
To Let’s do, let’s do the next one. Let’s do Lisa.
Josh Ungaro (00:53:03):
All right. Lisa says, sent tenant message reminding her that for grace period ends today to pay rent to avoid any late fees. Tenant said she is moving and cannot afford to pay the month’s rent, but will be out May 3rd. Although I’m glad she’s leaving. I’m not going to give her a free month of worth of rent. What actions am I supposed to do to take at this point,
Andrew Schultz (00:53:26):
Start the eviction process? Whatever the eviction process in your state is, start it. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> it may, you may not get to a point where you’re in a courtroom before they move out on May 3rd, but at this point you have a nonpayment on your hands. The chances of them actually moving out on May 3rd are slim to none. Yeah. Start the eviction process.
Josh Ungaro (00:53:44):
Exactly.
Andrew Schultz (00:53:46):
There we go. Good. Rapid fire,
Josh Ungaro (00:53:47):
Rapid fire mode. Here we go. How about this one, we, we kind of already covered this. I I will do this one now. Question, question from Dylan. How do other landlords and property managers assess hardwood floor scratches to a tenant tenant’s damage deposit? Actually, we didn’t really, well, I guess we
Andrew Schultz (00:54:08):
Kind, we can touch on it. I can give you the, the abbreviated version of this one. Yeah. So again, this goes back to having photos showing what it looked like before and what it looks like now. And if you can prove that it’s damage beyond reasonable tear reasonable wear and tear, then it needs to be back charged to the tenant. Yep. In a situation like this, I would probably bill, based on the square footage of the damage versus the square footage of the area that needs to have refinishing done to it, you’re not gonna be able to bill them for the entire thing more than likely, but you could absolutely bill them for a portion of it.
Josh Ungaro (00:54:40):
Got it.
Andrew Schultz (00:54:43):
And actually while you’re gonna, the next one, I’ll mention that there’s a lot of different like the marker pens and the wax pens and stuff that you can pick up at hardware stores to try to blend scratches in. You can probably get by with something like that if you don’t absolutely need to refinish the entire floor. You could probably get by with something like that until it is time to refinish the entire floor, depending on how deep the gouges and stuff are.
Josh Ungaro (00:55:07):
Yeah. alright. Let’s see this, let’s see, this last one. This will be the last one question from Yasmin, which is I think 12 on the form submission. I own a multi-unit property with a commercial unit in Pennsylvania. The commercial lease is coming to an end. Is it normal to charge the tenant of the commercial unit for the maintenance and repairs of the furnace water heater AC unit?
Andrew Schultz (00:55:37):
That would depend on your lease with the tenant. Yeah. Commercial leases are very, very broad spectrum. Everything is up for negotiation in a commercial lease. Things like common area maintenance charges, things like who’s handling the repairs of the various building systems. All of that is kind of written into the lease on the front end so that everybody knows who’s responsible for it on the back end. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, if you don’t have that written into your lease and you’re taking unit back and you find out that the tenant has caused damage to the caused damage to the unit or caused damage to the, the furnace, the water heater, the AC unit just from either negligence or not using them properly that is something that I would think would be back billable to the tenant, but it’s really gonna depend on how your lease is written and who’s responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of those units. If, if you are responsible for main maintaining the furnace, a rooftop unit, but you’re not sending technicians out to change the filters and check the blower motors and stuff like that at least every six months, then you are the one at fault in my opinion. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, because you’re not the, you’re not maintaining the units and that’s not something that your land or your, your tenant should have to absorb the cost of.
Josh Ungaro (00:56:44):
Right. Right, right. All right. Well 1 58 I think, I think we will, we will wrap it up there for the, for the April a MA. Sure.
Andrew Schultz (00:56:58):
Let’s plug, let’s plug a couple upcoming videos real quick ’cause we got some good content in the pipeline. Yeah.
Andrew Schultz (00:57:05):
I mentioned the weird tenant screening laws. I think that’s gonna be the next video after the a MA gets posted. Yeah. We also have an interesting video coming out on what happens when a property manager screws up. And that one is gonna be an interesting one. You’re gonna get to see what happens when a property manager screws up in a big way and it has a major impact on a building. It has a major impact on a client. So that’ll be a fun one. <Laugh>, you’ll definitely wanna tune into that. Yeah. And then I don’t think I told you, Josh, we, when we were talking in the marketing meeting last week, I was in the process of bidding that job, that sizable job for multiple unit renovation and we ended up getting it. Yeah. Oh. So that’s gonna turn into probably several pieces of content over the course of the next quarter or so as we’re going through and working on that building. So we’re very excited about that, both internally here at Own Buffalo and also externally for what we can use it for in terms of content for the rent prep side of things. So we’re pretty excited about that.
Josh Ungaro (00:58:04):
Yeah, no, very, that’s very cool. I know from a, from a blog perspective, we’ve got a couple new articles coming out. Just to, just to update, you know, how one of ’em is, how does an eviction work is one of the topics for, for one of our next blog articles. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and then how many lease violations before an eviction will be another topic that we kind of cover. And those will be coming out it looks like towards the middle to end of April is, is when those will be up there. So yeah, check the check the blog section of, of the rent prep website. You’ll be able to sort by different topics that you’re looking for there, or just search in the search bar. The YouTube channel is,
Andrew Schultz (00:58:49):
Go ahead. Yeah,
Josh Ungaro (00:58:49):
No, the YouTube channel is just rent prep is all you gotta look for. Subscribe to us on there. In the podcast you can watch on, on a multiple different or listen or, or watch on multiple different platforms. I think Spotify, iTune or Apple slash iTunes. Apple
Andrew Schultz (00:59:06):
Podcast. Yeah. Apple
Josh Ungaro (00:59:07):
Podcast, whatever it is now.
Andrew Schultz (00:59:09):
Pretty much anywhere you
Josh Ungaro (00:59:10):
And right on the and right on the Ramp up site too. You can stream it right off there if you, if you go to our podcast section. Mm-Hmm.
Andrew Schultz (00:59:17):
<Affirmative>. Yeah, I was gonna mention how often, like, it’s a funny coincidence how often I go to do research when I’m getting ready to work on an episode or whatever. I mean, obviously we have a, we own a management company, we understand how things work, but you go and do research on any topic before you put a video out on it. There are so many topics that I’ll go to start doing research on, and rent prep is in like the top two or three search results. So there’s a lot of really great information on that website, including the tenant screening 1 0 1 section, which is, which is something that I’ve been highlighting lately.
Josh Ungaro (00:59:46):
Yeah. And, and it’s, it’s really cool because we do have we do have our tenant screeners, our, our physical FCRA certified screeners will help us contribute to updating, updating articles. So we do have, we do have industry knowledge experts helping us go through and review some of the content that’s on there just to keep it, keep it relevant as we, as we move forward, just ’cause things change all the time. So
Andrew Schultz (01:00:11):
Absolutely. And that’s, that’s critical is constantly being up to date.
Josh Ungaro (01:00:14):
Yeah, for sure.
Andrew Schultz (01:00:16):
Very cool. Cool. Let’s wrap things up. Thank you everyone for joining us for the April, 2020 4:00 AM a. This was a pretty good one we got through. I didn’t count how many questions we got through on this one, but I don’t think last, last month we made it through 21 questions and I have no idea how <laugh>, but that’s our current high score. That’s our, our record to beat is 21, and I don’t think we did it this, this month, but we,
Josh Ungaro (01:00:41):
We only
Andrew Schultz (01:00:42):
A lot of great answers out there.
Josh Ungaro (01:00:43):
We only did 12 this month, but I, I think there was a lot of valuable, valuable conversation. There was a couple of questions that kind of blended together, so, you know, I would put us at I’d give us like 16. I think there was some duplicate questions that were kind of asked. So Yeah. Not our, not our, not our best point <laugh>. I’m trying to make myself feel a little bit better here.
Andrew Schultz (01:01:04):
Right.
Josh Ungaro (01:01:05):
But alright. So
Andrew Schultz (01:01:07):
All right Josh, thank you for joining me and we will see you next month.
Josh Ungaro (01:01:10):
Beautiful. Thanks Andrew.