Jason Hartman does a client case study with Drew. Drew started self-managing 6 homes in the Indianapolis market. He talks about the extra cash flow as a result. Drew also explains how great his landlord-tenant relations have been since self-managing. He goes into the software he uses and talks about how much time he spends managing each property.
Investor 0:00
Give some other people who might be on the fence out there, it took me a while to, to buy into the concept of buying out of state. And that’s really one of the things that I really attribute to you guys, you know, you all the podcasts and then working with all over extensively in the beginning just kind of working through that and how the numbers worked and the comfort level of it. But you know, one of the things that I think Oliver did the best for me is after talking extensively with him, I think he might have paired me up with you know, like almost like a match calm, like he paired me up with the perfect local market specialist to fit my personality and my my investment philosophy. And so I kind of attribute it to him, but I’m very, very happy with the way the transactions go and the way the interactions kind of all fluidly occur with you know, with me and Oliver and the local market specialist and just you know, it really has been a pretty seamless process.
Announcer 0:59
Welcome To the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman you’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it on now. here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 1:49
Hey, welcome, and thank you so much for joining me today. This is your host Jason Hartman with Episode 1051 1051. I’ve got a returning guest today one of our clients Who has been very faithful guinea pig for you. And for all the rest of us. He’s a guinea pig for me. And we appreciate him conducting his own laboratory experiment just for us. And that is Drew Baker. Welcome back. Drew. How are you? Hey, Jason, thanks for having me back. It’s good to have you on and now that you’re on again, you will probably receive a nasty email from my troll. And he’s gonna tell you what a bad person I am. But the thing is, you already know what a bad person I am. So probably nothing new. Right? Yeah,
Drew Baker 2:33
he might call me a guinea pig.
Jason Hartman 2:35
Yeah. That’s right. a guinea pig. Exactly. All right. Well, hey, you have been telling me the exciting story of your self management experience with your properties. And I’m really glad you took this on. I think you are. You’re kind of the perfect person to really test it now. Did you convert your whole portfolio to self management or do you still have managers on any of your property at all,
Drew Baker 3:00
no. So I only converted one of my markets, which is the market of Indianapolis that has the most majority of my real estate holdings. Okay, other market? I haven’t pulled the plug yet
Jason Hartman 3:11
because you also you also Memphis, right? Yeah. Well, I haven’t I haven’t decided that just because I don’t have a local real estate agent there. I haven’t dug in and tried to find somebody. So basically, once I have the proof in the pudding here in the market, I’ve gotten running, I will then jump over once these are all coming along, you know. So, basically, if you looked at my portfolio, I was having trouble with getting these leases renewed getting rents raised just basic things, which is a struggle, right, right. And that should not be a struggle. This basic stuff should be simple. And you know, once again, sometimes when you put a third party in the middle, things get harder, not easier. The third party to my thinking is supposed to make your life They’re supposed to serve you, you’re paying them. But it doesn’t always work that way. And sometimes it’s not even because that third party in the middle, in this case, the property manager is bad. It’s just the nature of the way things sort of work. So now tell us more.
Drew Baker 4:16
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the other thing, too, that was interesting is, you know, when they’re managing, you know, hundreds or thousands of properties, and you’re managing six, you know, you just can obviously pay way more attention. But I think the problem is, is that a lot of my tenants were upset because the property management company wasn’t following the lease agreement terms. And they weren’t doing their part. And on my end, they weren’t following their obligations in terms of like, stuff that was going to go month to month. I was supposed to get more money if it went month to month because they didn’t bother to renew the leases. And I wasn’t getting any more and they weren’t following their own lease on either side of contracts. And both of us were frustrated for different reasons. And one example I’ll give you is one of my tenants had a back door that was rotting out and was causing a draft in their house. And they were frustrated. And the property manager said, this is a cosmetic issue, we’re not going to deal with it. So I got a picture of the door and I’m like, come on, this is not a cosmetic issue. So I went in there and basically spent I decided all these properties I’ve had for, I don’t know, eight years or so they all kind of need a facelift. And I can go in there and with a tenant thinks I’m a hero, and I’m doing a rent ready basically with them still in place, and able to go in there and give them what they want. And so basically, I approached it from two ways, like I want to do the mandatory repairs that are needed. And then hey, you know what this house is getting to be 18 years old or something. It needs a little bit of a facelift. Why don’t we put $500 in new lights, new fans new you know basic stuff. I mean, what’s that’s kind of the approach that I took. And what was nice about it is like Costco, calm Amazon. All that stuff now is like, super so treated. Yeah. Right. It’s so cheap. Yeah. So that’s kind of the way I approached it. And by spending, you know, an extra 500 bucks, hey, look, this remote on the fan is really nice, we can turn the light off without having to get up or you know, whatever. So that’s kind of how I approached it to start.
Jason Hartman 6:28
Okay, so your tenants are now happier. They look at you as the hero, the man on the white horse, so to speak, and you’ve come in and you’ve given them a better lifestyle. So the tenants are happy. But is this only because you are spending more money and reducing your return on investment? I mean, admittedly, though, spending more money sometimes is the best return on investment because you know, you’re making capital improvements and so forth. But in this case, you’re actually still ahead financially. I believe that’s kind of what you were alluding to when you mentioned that to me, but tell us the story about the money side.
Drew Baker 7:05
Yeah, I mean, I guess I see the tenant as my customer. And if I’m not doing anything to make the place nicer, I feel really awkward about asking for a rent increase when it comes time to renew. So if there’s ways to make the players feel safer, they’ll want to stay longer. And, you know, I had a tenant that stayed for just a few months and then broke the lease because they wanted to buy a house. And still to like, just get the place rent ready was really costly. I mean, even though you know, they had four people or four kids and you know, to adults, but just keeping people in there is really important. One of the places that I had a neighborhood boy had broken into a couple of homes in the neighborhood, and they just felt unsafe. So I said, Hey, why don’t I put a motion light in the backyard? That’s LED and it can be, you know, cost me $35 right Yeah, it’s not a huge deal. And this is something that’s, you know, a crusty fixture that was there before that was really rusted out and look nasty. And to me, I see this by putting the money into the house. I see it taking money out of my left pocket and putting it in my right. Yeah. Okay, good, like impacting my cat. Got it.
Jason Hartman 8:20
Got it. Got it. Okay, but tell us about the money. So you save when you switched and got rid of all your property managers, you you saved the money on the management fees. So yeah,
Drew Baker 8:33
yeah. Alright. So when these people last, when the property management company was was like, Oh, I approached all the tenants who were must a month that hadn’t had rent increases for a while and I told them I was taking over. I was going to do some improvements. I needed to get them on a lease. And since they hadn’t renewed for several years or had an increase, there was going to be an increase. So I went across the board to have the properties already had. I’m talking about six properties. Just see No. So two of the properties were locked in a lease, I couldn’t do anything as far as a rent increase. But that was fine. Because those people had been there for a while. And we’re going to be there for a couple more years. So I was able to raise the rent on on four of the places. And so it’s pretty dramatic, because between all four places, I raised the rent $425. Okay, between four places? And if so,
Jason Hartman 9:25
wait, wait, wait. So more than $100 a piece on average $425 increase on on just four properties use it?
Drew Baker 9:34
Yes. Well, the thing is, is that my property manager was kept dropping the rent to try to get someone in there. And the problem was, is they just weren’t following up with people. So it was just like the most persistent person was getting the property. And they were just lowering the rents on my end because they weren’t following up with these people. The combination of that and the fact that rents have gone up in the area that I’m in so if you take that $425 and then between six of my properties, I’d say probably one or two every month are coming in a couple days late on rent. Somebody got injured in the house and they are they’re struggling to just make ends meet. And so you don’t you don’t mean they got injured in the house like liability? No, no, no, no, no, no, I’m saying like they got injured at work, or they’re, they’re on maternity leave or something that some life circumstance Yeah, good. Good distinction. So if you combined the late fees that I would otherwise have to relinquish or maybe keep 50% of. Now I’m up to $600.
Jason Hartman 10:38
Yeah, what is it? Okay, more per property. Okay, so wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let’s talk about this. So one of the things I proposed and you people that have been listening to me for a long time, the brilliant ones among you, thank you. One of the things I proposed at our meet the Masters event several years ago, and it was not adopted by any property manager that I Whereas they might have done it and mine I’m I might not be aware of it, but I doubt they did I think I know is I proposed this idea of the flat fee management. So there is a serious alignment of interest between the property manager and the owner. And the property manager does not become predatory on the tenants. See, one of the reasons, I believe, I mean, this is not new information for regular listeners, but you know, anybody that’s new or doesn’t remember me saying this, one of the reasons I believe your turnover rate is higher than it should be. Possibly, this doesn’t apply to all of you. But if you think your turnover rate on your properties is higher than it should be, examine that the property manager may be charging that tenant late fees a lot. And the idea that the property manager would keep the late fees or keep any part of the late fees beyond just a small percentage of eight to 10%, for example, makes the management predatory on the tenant. And that doesn’t make for a good relationship. Okay. Look, the tenant again, like you said, Drew, thank you for saying it again. The tenants are our customers, they are our customers. We want to make our customers happy. We don’t want to treat them like babies. We don’t want to take advantage of them. We want to keep them happy. We want to make the relationship Win win. And yeah, you know, I hear many investors, the way they talk about their tenants is like degrading. I mean, do you think any store talks about their customers that way? No, these attempts are our customers. We got to treat them like customers, right? Yeah,
Drew Baker 12:37
yeah. And I mean, the way I approached it is when I took over the portfolio, the first couple months, anyone that hadn’t paid on time, as a courtesy, you know, one or two days before late fee was going to kick in, I would say, Hey, I’m not going to like ride you or anything but just want to give you a courtesy that you know the system is going to charge you a late fee on in the next day. If the rents not received Yeah, and most of the tenants were happy about that. And I made it clear to them. I don’t want the late fee. I mean, for their sake, just because I think that it is predatory, but it’s there to protect
Jason Hartman 13:10
gotta protect. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll protect the landlord. But wait, when you say you told them that, how did you do it? Did you email them? Did you call them what I mean, these properties 2000 miles from where you live. So
Drew Baker 13:21
the mode of conversation between basically all of my tenants is by text message, that kind of how it’s come. And not that I picked that by choice, because I actually became familiar with a portal system to use. But I think it was easier for tenants to text me photos of maintenance stuff they need to know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we have done email and other stuff. But that’s been the primary mode of communication. But now that I’ve established to them like, hey, he sent me reminders just early on. I’m not going to do it every month, but that I’ve basically established that I’m not trying to take advantage of them. I think it’s now It’s something where it’s their responsibility, so I’m not gonna babysit them. But that’s the way I approached it. And, you know, one of the tenants called me and said, after I had reminders and said, Hey, you know, my, this life circumstance happened, we’ll pay part now and part in the middle of the month, and we’ll still pay the late fee, but they were very sincere, I’d built a rapport with them. They were very transparent about what was going on with them. And I was okay with whatever, you know, we had come to the agreement of but
Jason Hartman 14:28
as long as you don’t like that a regular occurrence, you know, you do like a one time thing. I mean, look, every everybody listening has been late on paying some bill at some point in their life, right. I know, I certainly have, you know, when you call that creditor, if you were out of town, and you didn’t pay your credit card or your, you know, electric or your mortgage or whatever, they will waive a late fee as a courtesy one or maybe two times. Okay. So yeah, they’ll tell you, they’ll tell you where to walk. One time thing, you know, we did, we’re not going to do it again. So just understand there are boundaries, right?
Drew Baker 15:05
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And in this particular circumstance, it was a legitimate thing. And I did not waive the late fee. But you know, if it’s like a day late, I mean, the way I do it is I’ve set up this portfolio, you know, portal system. That’s what I wanted to ask you about. So you’re using what, William right. Yeah, I’m using building and so I basically called them and they helped train me and how to use the system. I put all the properties in there and what the lease dates were and, you know, whether they were month to month, and then if a new lease is executed, let me let me talk about this for a moment because we did have when we had you on the show before you said you were using that
Jason Hartman 15:41
now, listeners, building them is a property management software system that is usually used by property managers, okay, not by sort of mom and pop property owners, okay. It’s a system that, you know, you could have thousands of properties in in the billions system and it has a web based portal where the tenants can interact with it on the internet. Can they pay their rent on bill Diem Drew, I know they can cozy and we’ve had a few times
Drew Baker 16:12
you make a one time to enroll in their e pay they call it I think it’s like $99 as a one time fee and then every time someone pays by the AC h transfer for the you know, through their bank account, there’s a 50 cent charge and they allow as a convenience fee they allow the landlord to charge any convenience fee amount they want. I think mine is like $1 95 Well, you could
Jason Hartman 16:39
make that a little bit of a profit center. You know, I bet a lot of tenants would be more than happy to pay 16 bucks
Drew Baker 16:46
for that convenience. No, I’ve seen I’ve seen some that are three some that are five. So I think it I don’t know what the average is, but I don’t want to gouge them and I actually let them pay through like four different methods. So you know either by depositing the funds in my bank account by going to the branch by sending a cashier’s check right? or pain through zelly which is or I believe psalms l e LL. It’s an interbank transfer system that all major banks have adopted to transfer instantly between all of them, right. So that one and then pay through the portal. And then what’s nice is it keeps track of all the accounting. So if I have to add in utility bills that I pay and pass on to them, because sometimes like with water, when the bills attached to the home, I don’t want to let it get crazy if they don’t pay it, and then there’s a lien so it kind of gives me a pulse on it. So like I manage that side, and then I’ll build onto them, and I can classify it as a utility income. So it really makes the accounting side a lot easier, just at the end and see who’s outstanding, and try to keep track of it on some crazy spreadsheet right now.
Jason Hartman 17:53
What everybody’s probably wondering, is has this become your day job, you know, managing these six months properties as a self manager, and you’ve got more properties, but you’re only doing six on self management so far, or is this pretty easy? I mean, you know, how much time are you spending on this. And what I want you to really speak to, though, is this is the way to truly compare something, the results you have now, versus the results you had with property managers, and the Delta, the difference between the amount of time they’re spending on each, for example, you know, if you spent four hours a month dealing with the management of the properties when you had property managers, and you spend six hours a month now, the delta is two hours more is that’s what you’re spending. So I don’t know, maybe you’re spending less time oddly, in counter-intuitively, like I’ve mentioned, I find that some of the self managed properties actually take a less time than having a manager because you don’t have any conflicts of interest. You just clean it right up.
Drew Baker 18:57
Yeah, I mean, it’s probably a combination of both Some properties are easier, some are more difficult. And it really depends on what state they were left in. And I don’t really consider me getting everything running in terms of just getting everything up to snuff that’s set as a indication for how it’s going to be in the future. I don’t see that I think of it more right now that I’m kind of cleaning up the room that was given to me. So, but I mean, the numbers don’t lie. I mentioned to you that my increase in rents was $425 a month six properties, you know, I’m keeping close to $180 a month in late fees. And then if you talk about what my target rent is, and how much I’m saving compared to 8%, that I would normally be paying a manager, that’s $750 that I’m saving every month, that when you combined all three of those totals, you’re talking 1300 and $50, which is okay, so you
Jason Hartman 19:53
have you have literally increased your cash flow on each property by over $200 dollars a month by self managing, wow.
Drew Baker 20:03
Yeah. And if you add the median of all what’s nice too is that added, like, if you take whatever my average rents are, let’s say it’s about 1200 dollars 1350, I’m getting more in money between these six rentals than an additional rental property thing. That’s the thing that’s funny about it is this is a rental property quote, unquote, if you want to think of it that way that has no expenses. So that increase in income is just something that’s sitting there, you know, untouched, I don’t have to pay property taxes or anything like that extra amount of money that I’m getting, it’s just free flowing cash flow.
Jason Hartman 20:39
So basically, you have increased your income by the same amount as owning like being given for free. Actually, more more than that. Yeah. On our typical
Drew Baker 20:52
like to rental property if,
Jason Hartman 20:54
yeah, if someone gave you for free, a rental property, and it was free and clear. That’s how much you’ve increased your income by becoming a self manager of only half of your portfolio.
Drew Baker 21:07
Wow. It’s even more dramatic than that, because I found it I don’t you might have different a different feeling of that is if you have a house, it’s paid off in cash. When you take all the fees and maintenance and everything I think about 50% goes to property taxes, you know, agents, just 50% goes and flies out just for upkeep, right? If you own the home and you don’t have a note on it, so Well, I don’t think it’s 5050 waiver 60% of what I don’t it’s not that high 50% 50% of your of your monthly rent, I think goes to maintenance and repairs and in property taxes. And, you know,
Jason Hartman 21:47
if you’re if you’re in really high property tax areas, that could be true, but I don’t think that’s normally true, you know, normal tax area. Like if you’re in Texas where you’ve got really high property taxes for example, but No, Texas has other benefits for sure. Then what I
Drew Baker 22:04
want to talk about, I think this is my thought on it. Okay. I think by on average two months of your rent that you get, I know it varies per area, but about two months of the annual rent will go towards property taxes, I find that’s usually fairly accurate. Now, if you buy in Texas or you buy in California, not that you would ever do that, but that might vary. But by and large, about two months ago to the property taxes, I figure about one month goes to maintenance, which I’m obviously not, I’m having more control over. Maybe one month goes to like, a rent ready repair and then one month might be vacancy, and then the next month might be having the 8% in the management fee or like or a lease renewal or a contract
Jason Hartman 22:51
you know, I don’t know that is you know, that’s kind of complicated. You just look at go to Jason Hartman calm and look at the performance you know, that’s it depends where the property is. And we could get in the weeds on that one. But I don’t want to confuse the issue. But the real issue here is though, the self management, okay, so if you take out the setup, the initial sort of setup of getting your portfolio organized, setting up the building software, by the way, and you probably mentioned this before, when you talked about it on the show previously, but how much does the building software cost? Because you’re like a little tiny customer for them. They have big giant customers that are big property management companies. What does that cost you? Do they have a little?
Drew Baker 23:31
I think it’s $45 a month, it’s very inexpensive.
Jason Hartman 23:35
Okay, so $45 a month for the building. Okay. And how did you choose that one? Why did you choose building? Well, you know, I looked at all the other property management software companies such as like AppFolio and property where I think we’re a couple of them.
Drew Baker 23:52
Yeah, and those required a lot more upfront cost. And, you know, they kind of wanted to target somebody that was big. than me. So I thought this was the right fit, in terms of it was accomplishing what I wanted to, and there was no upfront fees really. And it was very simple to set up, you know, and by the way, you know, you get all this training, they want to help you catch up to speed. I talked to one of the training people there who, like, you know, help you through showing you how it works. And I said, like, hey, how am I doing? It’s been one month, and they said, Oh, it takes usually people two or three months to kind of get everything down. But I think it took me about a month to just be comfortable and have it be churning, and I’m not somebody that’s gonna go in there and do all my own accounting and all that stuff. I thought it was very simple setup. Anybody could really do it if you just gave it a little bit of time and you know, they’ll hold your hand.
Jason Hartman 24:47
Okay, so the question remains, take out the setup if you can, and just talk about the normal monthly ongoing self management of your properties. Once you’re set up with Bill Diem and I mean, you really did it professionally, Drew, I gotta compliment you. You know, using building is something that most people won’t do. And by the way, I know everybody listening is probably thinking, well, Jason, you recommend property tracker? Well, property tracker doesn’t do all of the stuff building him does. Property tracker will evaluate the investment quality, okay? And it will track a lot of things. But it doesn’t do rent collection, it doesn’t do some of the things this does, it doesn’t manage, like repair requests and things like that. This does a lot more. This does, like real management, whereas property tracker is more like just keeping track of it. Okay, so anyway, there’s a little difference there. But
Drew Baker 25:41
let’s talk a little bit. The thing is, it’s a little bit daunting, if you want to try to do everything it does. I mean, I certainly just you don’t narrow scope everything. Yeah. No, I mean, I, you know, I think most of it is pretty narrow, narrowly defined on what I’m doing, but it’s not. It can do as much as you really want it to Do so that’s what’s nice. Okay.
Jason Hartman 26:02
All right. Okay, so how much time?
Drew Baker 26:04
How much time does it take? Oh, I would say probably each property is an hour a month or less?
Jason Hartman 26:10
And that’s, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s what I’ve been saying for 14 years, allow one hour per month per property. Most people don’t even spend that much. But as soon as they have a problem, they think, Oh, my God, I’m spending all this time, you know, blah, blah, blah, but an hour a month per property on average, I think is a very realistic estimate. And that’s self managing. Right?
Drew Baker 26:32
Yeah. And I will say that the one difference in time would be if I have a vacancy, so if somebody’s leaving, and I have to get the place around ready, I would say to do that whole process. And I know it’s probably depends on how the property is but you know, maybe five hours would be my guess and coordinating, you know, having the AC maintenance done and just kind of just calling companies and you know, trying to get things down to But the agreement that I have with my agent is that she’ll go through the property, she’ll make a checklist. I hand that over to the maintenance person. He tells me everything you can and can’t do anything he can’t do. I’ll call the eight track company or a lot of it to it, just like the ducks were really dusty in the homes. They hadn’t been cleaned in 20 years. And so I basically whenever I maintenance guy goes there, I say, hey, look at the docks, you know if they’re just disgusting. It’s going to be a maintenance issue down the road. Of course, talking about air ducts, not duck stick quack. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so stuff like that, like a property manager would never Yeah, that’s
Jason Hartman 27:40
right. Yeah, you’re providing a better quality home to your tenants. And that means that long term, you’re gonna have less turnover, you’re gonna have higher rents, you’re gonna have happier tenants. And life is going to be wonderful. So yeah,
Drew Baker 27:56
good, good stuff. I mean, well, the thing is, is that I mean with this recent property that came vacant, my agent, the tenant left before the end of the month. And then in 10 and 10 days, I was able to get the unit rent ready and rented with zero vacancy loss. Yeah, well, I mean, it’s a well oiled machine. Yeah, compared to this bureaucratic, I feel guilty checking in once a week to see if anything’s changed. And I mean, to the point that when I was calling the property management companies, I felt like they were using the same emails that I sent the week before. And it was right. It was just the checks in the mail version of we’re doing something but you know, everything seemed through the filter of their best case scenario because they’re presenting information.
Jason Hartman 28:42
Yep. The other thing we haven’t mentioned this time, although we’ve talked about it before, is that the tenant does a lot of the work for you in maintaining your property. They will meet the repair people they will meet the maintenance people they will do the maintenance themselves, like my mom has talked about with her property. She always likes to get a tenant, that’s handy, you know, and can fix things. And a lot of times they just improve your house for you. They view it as like this pride of ownership and that the distinction is and it’s not the property managers fault that it’s this way, it’s just the nature of the way the dynamics of the human relationship work. Right. You know, when they have a relationship with you, they know, hey, it’s, it’s drew and Katie on this house, it’s those are real people to me, right? If I’m your tenant, versus some institutional company that every time you know, they see a little ant crawl across the kitchen counter, they call and say send an exterminator, you know, it’s, yeah,
Drew Baker 29:40
yeah, the perfect way to describe it is if you go to your friend’s house and use the bathroom, you’re probably going to treat it a little bit different than if you go to a public park and try to use a community, you know, bathroom, right, it’s a mess. So by having it have some personal touch to it, and not have it be this impersonal, you know, thing that you’re just basically Feeding money to, there’s nothing there for the tenant to want to treat it as with respect, but if it’s yours, they’re going to be a little bit more, you know, willing and things that the tenants asked for, like 110 and asked for some screens on the house because none of the properties, not the property didn’t have screens. And after I’d gone in there and done a few things for them, they said, You know what, don’t worry about the screens. We don’t need those, you know. And so it’s like when it became personal, and they saw that it was going to cost me money to do they’re like, Don’t Don’t worry about it.
Jason Hartman 30:30
You might be surprised when that tenant moves out. You might have screens that they paid for you. You’ll be surprised. I mean, you really will. Yeah, absolutely. Drew, we’ve got to wrap it up. Thank you for sharing your story. listeners, I really encourage you to consider self management some many times it’s actually easier than having a property manager. And if you have like I always say if you have a great property manager, just leave it alone. That’s great. But if you have a mediocre or bad property manager, try self made Management, you know, as long as you’re not brand new at this and you have a little experience and, and maybe you, you went on online and you bought a book called property management for dummies, okay? Or one of the Nolo press books, you know we’ve had them on the show, you know what I’m not saying the dummies book is the right one, I’m just making an example. But maybe you bought a book on property management and you you know, you thumb through it, you don’t have to read it and cure your insomnia with it, okay? Because probably pretty boring, but just have it as a reference and look at it, you know, just thumb through it and familiarize yourself you’re just going to be a better person a better investor. If you want to be considered a real estate professional, which is the holy grail of tax benefits that the IRS can bestow upon you. Then self management is really the thing to do because it will help you qualifying to be considered a real estate professional, a professional investor in the eyes of the IRS. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just go to Jason Hartman calm you. Type real estate professional in the search bar. And I’ve interviewed CPAs on that over the years. And hey, but Drew, I want to mention something before we wrap it up and then leave you with a last word. Okay, first off, be sure to come to our Hawaii events, profits in Paradise, and our venture Alliance retreat in Hawaii first week in November. Those are really going to be awesome events, brand new content, brand new events. We’re going to talk more about short term rentals and compare them to long term rentals at that event. And we’re going to do a bunch of other stuff. We’re going to have some of our local market specialists there with properties you can by also be sure you have added our Alexa skill to your Alexa device. So you can hear the Jason Hartman update every single day on your Alexa device or the Alexa app on your smartphone. And then lastly, the property cast where you can get properties delivered to via RSS feed to your smartphone or computer As soon as they become available, and those are actual property performers, so I like having the hot sheet right there as soon as the properties are posted on our website. So in a inventory, tight, restricted market, like we have, a lot of people really love that property cast. And so that’s just another podcast, whatever podcast platform you’re using, just type Jason Hartman’s property cast, and you’ll find it and make sure you subscribe, and please rate and review it as well, as well as the show too. We’d appreciate that. Drew any last words on self management or anything else you want to talk about?
Drew Baker 33:36
Yeah, I guess one distinction I would make here is when I’m saying all these property managers, I’m talking about them in like guys talking about ex girlfriends or something. I mean, if you have a, if you have a good marriage, don’t change anything, right? But if it’s a mess, just try a change. And the thing that I’ve kind of realized and is foolish is I always felt like if I make To change, it’s going to be so hard to go back or whatever. But change is good. And so I think I would encourage people is that you know, you’re the customer too. And if you leave, there’s plenty of people that want your business. And so if you want to just use that month, just say, hey, let me try it for a month. Yeah, probably manager, I have a mess. Let me try it for a month doesn’t work out. It’s not a big deal. handed over. Yeah, yeah, you can
Jason Hartman 34:25
always go back to a new property manager or the old one. So it’s not like a forever commitment. Just if you don’t like it now, stop self managing.
Drew Baker 34:36
Yeah. And you know, it might be that a couple of properties are real easy to manage. And two of them are hassle and they’re always the same two and maybe you pick which ones you want to self manage, just to kind of learn that skill, and keep your foot you know, dipped in the water. I mean, so like with me, I’m trying to get more involved now in helping with writing the leases so that I know what the terms are and I have some control over that and I don’t have to pay for these renewals because I can write them myself. You know, I build the template and just go off of that. So another way to kind of save a little bit more money and learn a skill and get more involved. So that’s kind of what I’ve been trying to get involved more in now.
Jason Hartman 35:15
Yeah. Good, good stuff. Well, hey, thanks so much for sharing your story. Happy investing to you and all of our listeners. We appreciate everybody and we will talk to you on the next episode. Thanks again, Drew. Sure. Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show’s specific website and our general website heart and Mediacom
Jason Hartman 35:38
for appropriate disclaimers and Terms of Service. Remember that guest opinions are their own. And if you require specific legal or tax advice, or advice and any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional and we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to iTunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you’re using and write a review for the show we would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.
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