2 Simple Rules to Follow for Successful Property Management

Dana Dunford from Hemlane Property Management joins us again with some practical tips to ensure the best outcomes with your rental properties.  --- Transcript Michael: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the real estate investor. My name is Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by my co host,   Tom: Tom Schneider.   Michael: And we have a very special guest with us. Dana Dunford, CEO of Hemlane is going to be joining us again for another episode. And she's going to be talking to us today about some of the tips and considerations we need to be cognizant of and thinking about if we're going to be remote landlording. So let's get into it.   Michael: Hey, Dana Dunford, welcome back to the show. Real pleasure to have you back on.   Dana: Great. Thanks for having me, Michael. Thanks, Tom.   Michael: Absolutely. So Tom doesn't get any credit!   So today, Dana, you're going to be talking to us today about a couple different rules that landlords should be mindful of, if they want to get into remote landlording. So I am just going to kick it off to you to start out. And if you could start with rule number one walking us through what people need to know about before they become a remote landlord?   Dana: Yeah, so a lot of people just so you know, the background is a lot of people do self manage their properties, right? 73% do. And many of those are remote. And so a lot of people ask us, you know, how do I manage my property from a distance, there are a couple of key rules that you have to set up.   And very first one is setting yourself up as a professional and as a property management operation. And not considering yourself just a landlord of a single individual working with the tenants, your local service professionals, a leasing agent, really making sure that you're set up professionally from an operations perspective.   So Mike, if you want, I'm happy to go through some of those details. And some examples,   Michael: That'd be great. I'm just curious, you say that 73% of remote landlords self manage?   Dana: 73% of landlords in general self manage their properties. And so the Census Bureau did a study on…   Michael: Wow, I didn't realize that was so high.   Dana: Yeah, majority do self manage majority do not use full service property manager. And and you have to think about it, Mike, when you're buying a physical asset, right? It's a lot different than stocks that are very passive, where it's not a physical asset, or a REIT where you put money into something to real estate, but you never see it. It does become emotional. You know, if you think about it, you go on roofstock, you see this property? And you're like, Oh, I would change those carpets and put hardwood floors and at some time, Oh, those sinks, I need to change those, right? That's a real estate investor. When it's physical, like   Michael: That paint color!   Dana: Yeah, the paint color, why would they choose that horrible green color? You know, I want to change it from puke green to gray or whatever, you know, off white color that real estate investors want these days. But yeah, so it does become much more of something where you take a little bit more ownership. But that doesn't mean that real estate investors want to do everything. Like they don't want to do the showings, they don't want to go and fix the toilet. You know, all of that stuff they don't want to do but they definitely want to be more hands on. And so that's why I do see a lot of investors come up with much more creative ways to manage their properties. And then how they tap into that is is what we're here to discuss today.   Michael: Awesome.   Tom: Yeah. And I guess to that point, you know, that statistic around 70 some odd percent, I bet you historically, a lot of landlords have come into landlording. More like accidentally, I think probably the vast, vast majority of our listeners are more kind of on offense of building not letting rental properties come to them. So anyways, I love point number one show that you are professionals. Let's let's jump into some of the examples on that.   Dana: So the biggest thing to talk about when you first get a rental property is are you going to set up an entity, right, and that's either saying I'm going to set it up under an LLC, right to protect your personal assets, or you can also get a landlord insurance for it. A lot of folks with 1-2-3 rental properties will put it in their personal name. Of course, I think you guys are on the same side as me of, Hey, you're looking to build passive income through real estate investing. It's better to set it up in a legal entity and LLC. Get that out all out of the way. And then there are strategic ways you can work with a real estate attorney with your accounting team to make sure that the reporting is easy as you add more properties series LLC is all of that.   But it really the the first part is setting up that entity. why I say that so important is two things. The first reason it's so important to set up an LLC is because you will then suddenly take out that personal emotional aspect of property management off your plane.   When you're a managing member, so let's take a tom let's take as an example here, if it's Tom with Great Rift Valley, LLC, you're just a managing member who's signing on behalf of the LLC. But you know, you're, you're not making the decisions, right? It's the LLC making the decisions, you have the property under that entity. It's much better than, you know, Tom saying, I own this property, my tenant comes to me and says that they wanted, you know, a garbage disposal. And you, Tom, as the landlord have said, no, that suddenly becomes emotional of Tom versus his tenants. So if you are going to remotely manage your property, still, obviously, with local support, but if you are going to it, it is really important to think about that, and how that will set you up for success of having that LLC, because now suddenly, you're a managing member of the LLC. And that emotion of me against anyone else on it, it's not that it's, here's how the LLC is structured. Here's what we have set up as the rules and the lease contract. And it makes it actually for both the tenants and for you a much more professional experience. Because they get it it's it's a professional LLC running the property.   Just so you guys know, just some stats there. 72% of landlords have properties in their own name, and 20% in LLC or trust, then obviously, there's other types of vehicles that people use, but majority don't have properties and LLCs. And really, if you're going to set up yourself for success, I definitely recommend going the LLC route and being ahead of the game from that perspective.   Mihcael: Dana that's super interesting statistic. So for me personally, when I first bought, my very first rental property was in Southern California, and there was just not enough cash flow generated from the property to justify having an LLC. So what I opted to do is just get high liability insurance limits on the policy itself, and then go for an umbrella. But there are so many different options out there. Like you mentioned, your LLC S corp series, LLC, is how should folks be thinking about what type of entity is going to be a good fit for them? And then also, where should they be setting up these entities? And at what point in their investing journey should they be setting up these entities? But there's just seems like so many unknowns? Can you speak to that a little bit?   Dana: There's different ways you can structure but two things. One, California your first year, it's free, they waive that $800? Just so you know, the other thing is people do set up those entities and other states. And that's why I recommend talking to a real estate attorney of am I going to do it in Montana or Delaware or whatever? And how can I structure this based on where the property is? And where I'm located? How can I structure this to make it beneficial from that perspective?   And you are right, there are certain cases where a real estate attorney will say and also your plan, how many properties are you planning to purchase on Roofstock? Right? What is your plan? Are you purchasing three this year? Are you purchasing two? Are you going to do a series LLC, you know, there's some school of thought from Real Estate Attorneys that there's not enough case law on series LLC is and maybe you shouldn't do it. And so getting those opinions are super important. But I think a lot of it depends on where your property is located, where you're located, how many additional properties are you're acquiring and what that structure should be. Because you might also be told to put it into a trust instead, right?   It will become personal exactly what is best for you. But having that those introductory calls, to understand what your options are, and putting them all on paper is definitely beneficial. And you're right, I don't recommend just doing a free resource and going online and setting up a California entity and say, Oh, you Well, my first year is, is free. And that $800 is wave two, because to your point, Mike, the second year is going to get expensive. And if you have one property and you're cash flowing it but you know, your cash every single month is, you know, maybe it's 250 $300, whatever it is, depending on where the property is, suddenly that does eat into your cash flow. And so something definitely for you to consider.   Michael: So something that I've ran into Dana is that I've got a California entity registered in California. I mean, it doesn't own property in California and Ohio and Kentucky properties. So I had to register it. And it was formulated or formed in Ohio. But I had registered in California as a foreign entity just because of the fact that I live in California, and I'm the sole member of the LLC. So what's your structure look like?   Dana: As a foreign entity? Yes. So we have a structure, I can talk to my husband about it as well. We have a structure where and we're managing co managing members with folks in Idaho, on the property so we semi get around it for our entities and just ours in general, like personally, we've gotten around it that way. And so that's why there are some creative things that you can do from that perspective. We have actually a pretty good real estate attorney who's in Idaho who helps us with all of that. However, there's other ones like Scott Smith down in I'm sure you've heard of him down in Texas. A lot of people use on the real estate and a lot of our California residents, I know use ham, so I'd be curious to see what he sets up. And if there's a way around.   Tom: It be a good person to talk to future episode.   Dana: Yeah, yeah, he would be great for you.   Tom: So I was just going through the exercise of getting my documents in a row for property taxes, and you go to the county and you pull up and I have a bunch of properties in my own name, when you look at those tax records, because it has all your information. So I definitely understand the value of having that sort of buffer by just putting in an entity and not having your like home address on your property. Anyways, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense.   Dana: Yeah. I mean, Mike had Great Rift Valley. And hey, let me get back to you on this, whether or not we're going to do that, or maybe we'll upgrade it in, you know, six months during your next lease renewal should you decide to renew with us, all of that, if it's Mike with Great Rift Valley, LLC, it suddenly sounds a lot better than it's just you making that decision. Um, so definitely sets it up. At the same time, I think email addresses and phone numbers are also super important. So I've seen ones where, you know, people come on to Hemlane, and it's Jake's [email protected]. Or like, you know, even just so bad is like, you know, [email protected], birdguide24, it's like we were talking about, we need to get this changed, right. And so setting up a Gmail, I mean, there's free, you can set it up there anything doesn't necessarily have to be Gmail, but you can route that email to your main email account, or you know, any phone will allow you to have multiple emails on it, but essentially setting it up where that's the email they use.   And so if we take that same example, it's Great Rift Valley, [email protected]. It's not your name, surfer [email protected]. So I think that's really important. And also to Tom's point about mailing addresses, write them having your address, having someone look up your address, it's not like you're going to get in a bad situation, like in most cases, at least what we deal with tenants are very great, you know, you treat them really well and follow the lease terms and do repairs with five star service, and they love you, right.   But it's never to say that there won't come a day where you have someone who's a little bit more difficult, or, you know, just had a bad tenant that a lemon that you accidentally selected and did something wrong in that selection process. And in that case, you'll be really lucky to have that stuff set up because suddenly that emotion goes away of are they going to knock on my door or put my number out there, or my name or address, you know, all of that is is taken out of the equation.   And so the same thing comes with a Google Voice number. The reason I say Google Voice is you don't really want to go and set up a whole new phone bill, but a Google Voice can route to your phone, also free. And something like that, where you have a personalized voicemail of this is Great Rift Valley, LLC, our hours of operation are eight to five for emergencies or maintenance requests, please call this number. Otherwise, leave a message and we'll get back to you within business hours, that just suddenly makes it where you don't feel like you have your phone on you. 24 seven, right, you don't want to have your phone on you. 24 seven, of course, you need someone available, whether it's us at home lane or another team available 24 seven to take your emergency repair calls, you definitely need that. But you yourself don't want to be 24 hours of the day.   And so I think it's really helpful when you're setting up your process that this stuff is definitely part of the checklist. And you have to have it from setting up standard hours of when you'll hear from us back all the way to having an email that's not your personal one I'm really separating business from personal is, is crucial.   And even if you don't have an LLC, which totally get some real estate investors don't as long as you have an email, that's the [email protected] even something like that helps make it where it's like, oh, this is professional, they actually have an email for this. Right rather than I'm messaging the landlord from that perspective. So the emotion I think when people first purchase their properties, right, majority of people either own under four properties or over eight properties, it's very difficult to find someone in the middle. And I think it's because of that leap. If you set up all of this kind of stuff, you're setting yourself up, whether you're using a full service manager and they're you know, talking to your LLC or not, you're setting yourself up to get an eight plus rental or households by setting up all these processes that make it feel much more like a business.   Tom: Love it so any other aspects within rule number one we're gonna touch on we talked about entity address and phone numbers just setting yourself up to be professional in that way?   Dana: Yeah, I think once you have that you take the emotion suddenly out of the property management right and some things I'm thinking of a tenant comes to you and says hey, I want to get a pitbull for my property right and it most likely landlord insurance won't cover that. So it's It has nothing to do with you personally not liking pixels, it has to do with, hey, here's suddenly a financial liability, where if anything goes wrong, my insurance won't cover it. And I personally am going to have to cover it or my LLC, right.   And so from that perspective, when you're thinking about it, it's much easier to respond and say, Hey, Tom, with Great Rift Valley, LLC, I'd love for you to have a pit bull. But like the insurance for the LLC doesn't cover it. And so I'm so sorry, you can't get one because of that, and they're not going to approve it, the LLC just won't approve. And suddenly, it takes that emotional part out of it. Same thing with you know, rent increases chargebacks, on repairs, any kind of difficult conversation, obviously, you address those upfront, by making sure that people understand when chargebacks happen or policies with rent increases, that it's actually preferable for them to stay versus move, because you've given a reduction for market rate.   But no matter what, with it all, it does help with that emotional part. And that's where, you know, we really want everyone to go from eight plus properties, right, and really have that passive cash flow. And the only way to do it is one, obviously, save your money and invest in more properties on Roofstock. And then second, obviously, on the management side, being really prudent that you aren't emotional with the management and it doesn't get difficult, because if you are trying to self manage your properties, or do certain aspects of it, if you don't set yourself up for success, you'll you'll fail, and you'll never get past those eight properties.   Tom: It's not Tom, this is a wolf cola policy, where we do not allow this certain type of dog, we have a rent increase. So the kind of parallels that you know, in setting up this sort of like business entity, you know, you have that liability reduction, and then you have that kind of personal like, you know, separation. So love it very good.   All right, time for Rule number two?   Dana: Great Rule number two is you must always stay on top of it with your operations. If you are someone who just cannot project manage things, I don't recommend ever trying to remotely manage your properties, I actually recommend just getting a full service manager. And the reason for that is you're going to leave money on the table if you're not on top of things.   And so it starts with education. It starts with understanding what are the key things I need to know in the rental lifecycle, it doesn't take that long, you can figure it out in five hours with the right resources, but having the education in place and some examples of that is like understanding fair housing. Right? I mean, here in California, you can't right? No, section eight on your rental properties, right? So understanding Hey, what is legal what is not legal with the tenant selection process, making sure you know how to objectively qualify tenants, what is a good tenant, what is a bad tenant? Do I have all the data to accurately figure out whether or not I should accept this tenant? Those are certainly examples of it.   And really where I see things go wrong is during the process of I just need to speed things up and get things done. So I'm not going to follow the right process or educate myself on it, I'm just going to select this tenant because it's been on the market for 30 days, that's really going to hurt yourself.   So you do need to stay on top of it. It's not time people always ask me they say does it take a lot of time to do this? It's like no, if you have the right tools in place, if you have the right processes in place, it's actually pretty quick. But you do need to make sure that you know what you're doing. And one example with that is lease renewals. And that's one where I see people mess up so frequently, where they say, Oh, well, the property down the street is renting for 1600 a month, and my rent is at 1500 a month. So I'm going to raise the tenants rent directly to the $1600 a month and tell them it's a year long renewal at 1600, you have a risk that that tenant might move out. And you'll lose way more in monthly rent by having turnover costs of vacancy, using a leasing agent to flip your property, all of that.   And so an example like that is where if you educated yourself and you knew you could give two options a month to month versus an annual, the annual is a little bit lower to incentivize them to do an annual contract. And it shows that you're trying to give them a reduced rate suddenly that that makes it look a lot better for them.   So I do definitely think if you are going to manage your properties, you do need to stay on top of those things. It doesn't mean you have to be 24 seven, it just means you know, once a week, you need to look in there and make sure you have everything done and then obviously have a 24-7 team for emergency support. But otherwise, make sure you have those processes in there.   Michael: That makes so much sense. I'm curious to get your thoughts around lease renewal or tenant renewal and you know, you let the tenant go month to month or do you change them try to get the renewal as soon as possible. Can you speak a little bit about that?   Dana: If you suddenly say the month to month option is much higher significantly higher. They feel like they're getting a great deal when they lock into another annual lease right on but a lot of property managers don't do that. It's actually more so landlords don't do that. And they leave some money on the table by either having too much turnover, or they leave money on the table by not raising it as much as they could, because they're worried what the tenant will say versus putting it into perspective, what's a month month?   Tom: All right, Dana. So on point number two on being on top of it, I know for myself, and it's probably similar for a lot of investors is you could try to boil the ocean in monitoring metrics around your portfolio. I'd love to hear I don't want you. So the point is not to boil the ocean, what would you say top, I don't know, five or four metrics that you would categorize as being important to being on top of it within Rule number two?   Dana: I break it down into two different categories, Tom, the first one is leasing. And the second one is management. And I treat them differently. However, when you build a large enough portfolio, they probably get combined together, because you're looking at the total portfolio. Well, let's say you only own three or four homes, you're just starting out, right? The first one on the on the leasing side is days on market, that's the number one you should never have anything on market that is over 30 days, if you have something on market, over 30 days, you have a problem, or you have a luxury property you probably should have never invested in is something you know, outside the norm.   But as far as that is concerned, days on market is crucial. So if and there's a secondary with that, to understand if that days on market is going to hit 30 days, and that is right, when you advertise the property, how many leads are you getting? Right?   If you're getting, let's say 10 leads a day, Tom. And so 10 inquiries of common of tenants who are interested in seeing your place, and you're not getting any showings, right, like no one signed up for showing there's something wrong with your leasing agent, right, they're not responding fast enough, or maybe they're responding and every tenant is not qualified. And so they're not showing the place and you need to put those qualifications of no evictions, you must have a 580 credit score, whatever your criteria are for your investment property.   But that's number one, his days on market, if you can watch that, and look at the leads, and how far those leads convert, that is going to help you crucially. So I mean, the main metric there is days on market, how do you shorten that and get a tenant in there faster? And a more qualified tenant, right? Because I mean, everyone knows, I would rather not have two days on market. With a tenant with that’s had four evictions, I'd rather have it on market for 20 days, and get a stellar tenant that's going to be in there for 10 years type thing, right? That's much, much better situation, much better outcome that's always paying rent on time. And so that's the first thing.   And then the devils in the details. So always, when you're looking at numbers, always look at that, like number one metric you're looking for, and then drill into the details. If you say, Oh, it's getting close to that, then it's why is it a problem with the quality of the inquiries? Is it a problem with my agent, and they're not converting it? And like, I have to say, I've been on calls where I sit there and a leasing agent that I've had I asked them I say, you know, I've had you've shown the property to 20 people, why haven't any of them converted?   If the agent can't tell you? It's because the bedrooms were too small. Or and maybe we consider one in office, right? Or if they say you know that none of them are converting because your criteria is too high. No one has the qualifications for that, or whatever it may be, are you too strict, you don't allow pets and everyone who come in has pets. And if they can't tell you a reason, then that's a problem with your operational process. But again, you can use that metric of days on market to understand it. And that coupled with number of inquiries will help you get to that first step to make sure that you can shorten that period of time.   Tom: So like let's say you have it up for one day, and you get like 30 inquiries. 40. Do you ever, like change the rent? Or is it like, Oh, I missed out? You know, I'm saying like, you clearly put the rent at too low. I'd love it. I don't know, do you guys ever have those? I'm kind of digressing from my original question. But I'm always so interested to hear your feedback. So have you ever had that type of a situation where you listed you get just a wild amount of interest? And it's like, we missed the rental amount?   Dana: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we've definitely seen that come up. Remember, it's only the legally binding contract that counts right that someone can bring to court. And so from that perspective, I've have seen people increase that and usually you want to be with how you're increasing it. You want to make sure that you are very transparent and it doesn't look like you are sketchy by any means of increasing it.   What you know from that perspective, if you have 30 people and one comes to Tom and says, you listed the property for 1600 in monthly rent, I'm offering 1800 and my rent, you might then from a marketing perspective, it's much better not to just raise it to 1800 and a tenant be like, wait, it was just at 1600? Are you gonna raise it to 2000? It's much better to tell the other folks who have inquired all other 29 people, just as a heads up, we have an offer for 1800. We want to be fair across the board, because these people have not put in an application, we want to follow fair housing first application in first one qualified, so we're raising it to 1800 for everyone, but we want to let you know that we want to be fair across the board that we do have this offer on the table and we want to give everyone a fair shot.   That is fine. What's not okay is your lease contract says something like you know that you offer a washer and dryer and suddenly you don't right, but that's legally binding contract on the marketing side. It's more of making sure you're communicating and making sure tenants understand why you're doing things the way you are.   Tom: Okay, so we covered the leasing metrics days on market being number one being the indicator, the canary in the coal mine leading to the extra why's what other metrics are we looking at leasing or into after leasing into occupancy?   Dana; Yeah, so I think if you've done the leasing correctly, you've reduced the days on market and you have a qualified tenant. And why I say that's important is you have evictions, then you have a problem with qualifications and leasing. And that's a metric. And then the biggest thing is looking at your cash return, that is the most important metric, in my opinion to look at. And that's really making sure you're tracking all of your financials and how is my property doing.   You have to be patient with it right. And so expenses, say your first month, you have a repair cost, or some sort of capital expense that you're depreciating over three years, or the lifespan or whatever, you do have to be patient, you have to look at it over time, not just within one month, but after a year, you should be looking at that cash on cash return and checking to see how is this investment doing?   A lot of that also goes back to your original real estate pro forma that you put together. You want to make sure you're really good investor, right? Like if you're going to buy a I always get worried when I hear investors who are like, I just bought 10 properties, and it's my first time going into real estate investing, I get a little bit nervous because how do they know that their processes working with anything like you try something? You see it starts working, and then you just keep pouring money into it. Right? And so for me, it's you check their cash on cash return, you check, how am I doing? Great, this is working for me, let me put more properties in it.   Or you might say, hey, this area is not working. We've seen investors sell properties, 1031 them and go toss that into a different area. So being able to check what's working, and what's not working is really helpful. And real estate investing is not a get rich, quick scheme. Despite some people thinking that building the passive income through years, it takes time, and it takes patience. But as long as you're looking at those numbers, you're checking to make sure that you've set your operations up for success, then you can really look at those numbers and say this property is performing better than this one. Let me go ahead and go purchase another investment right in that area, because that one is performing much better than the others. Or a property that's like that property because I see that one's performing better.   And so that's what I would say you always the devils in the details, right? And so if something isn't working, or you are seeing your numbers low drill down into why what was the expense that threw you off? Or you're not receiving income? For some reason on the property? What could you have done better? Is this a fault of yours? Or is this just something to do with the property and you need to get rid of it and go invest in another property.   So that's where I think it is really helpful to look at that. I know you guys also have some great numbers online as well. And it's good for, like with cap rates and return on investment. And there's so many different numbers you can pull kind of looking at, Hey, what happened when I purchased the property, what was I expecting What am I actually getting, comparing it to other properties in your portfolio, as well as comparing it to what was the scenario when I purchased the property and staying honest to that?   Michael: I think it's such a good point in doing, you know, an annual post-mortem, so to speak on, Hey, how are we actually performing as compared to how I thought I was going to be doing just like you mentioned, is so important. And it doesn't take a forensic accountant to do this kind of math or do this kind of accounting to figure out okay, how did I perform as compared to how did I think I was going to perform? And I know a lot of investors are just scared. They're scared of the answer because they feel like they had a bad year and they have to face the music that hey, maybe this year wasn't that great of a year.   But like you mentioned, it's not a get rich quick scheme. So if we can forecast out 5,10,15 years, yeah, you're gonna have up years, you're gonna have down years. So we might just be looking at the one down here. But it is so important to track them each and every year, I would argue so you know, where you stand I can benchmark against Are you improving? Or are you doing worse than you were previously?   Dana: Yep. And that's also where I think the education comes in to, because if you know of other investors in the area, or you've networked with other investors on Roofstock, who have purchased properties in that area are doing better. Maybe you can find out why maybe it's like, oh, well, they charge pet rent of $35 per pet. And there's two paths in the property. And you didn't do that, right? or whatever it may be like, it could be on the income side, it could be on the expense side. But you can compare what they're doing. And then look at those numbers. Oh, wow, all of it had to do with leasing my property was on market for over 60 days, that's not going to happen again, I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen, then you're right, you can forecast that out for your 10 years, Mike and make sure that you are getting the numbers you wanted.   Michael: Yeah. And then the other piece of that is maybe they just bought it wrong. Maybe they paid too much. Maybe they financed it wrong. Because as we talk a lot about in the academy, how you buy something can have a massive impact on the performance of it. So if you buy all cash, Tom uses 50%. Leverage is 20%. Leverage will have the exact same income and expenses, but vastly different performances and cash from cash returns. So we need to face facts and really do a post mortem again and make sure okay, well, does the financing even work on this day? Do we need to dump the thing? Maybe we bought a lemon and didn't even know it?   Dana: Yep, exactly. And also think from that perspective with that, doing the research in the area, right, and really getting to understand as much as you can. I always love the macro trends within an area. And I know Roofstock already does this for you. But it's always good as an investor to like, do it as well, where you're like, Is this where I'm buying a property? Is the population growing? Right? If it's not growing, don't invest in that place. Right?   Okay, great. What about job growth? Okay, great. Is it all in one industry? Or is it multiple industries? I don't want it all in one industry. Because if that industry like oil collapses, I'm screwed. Or maybe I do want it all in that one industry knowing that if it does collapse, I'm going to lose, right? It's it's a risk.   So really understanding I think the macro trends and that upfront, what you're getting into is really going to be helpful.   Tom: Awesome. So the last little bit of time that we have you here for today, just kind of rounding out our second rule on being on top of it. We talked about education, education, project management skills, any other aspects to kind of round up being on top of it?   Dana: Yeah. So I think the biggest thing is setting guidelines upfront, right? Again, property management actually doesn't take that long, you'd actually be surprised with it as long as you set things up upfront, because usually when there's property management when it comes up, it's usually because something went wrong, and you're cleaning up, right, it's like a reactive instead of a proactive approach.   They didn't pay rent, I need to chase down the tenant, well, that's reactive, maybe we should have qualified them upfront to reduce that risk, right. And so there's a couple of things you do want to get set up. First is things that simple as a moving guide. Hey, where do they set up their utilities with single family homes, like the great part is the tenant pays the landscaping, the tenant pays the utilities like all this stuff, right? You don't have to manage. And so setting that up and making it easy for them.   Here's the moving guide, here's who used to do the landscaping, you're responsible for it for the lease agreement, we highly recommend you know, this company, but you could use someone else if you want to. Inspections letting the tenants know we do inspections every six months, every year. This is when we're gonna do it and follow up with you on it. What's an emergency, a tenant thinks everything's an emergency, right? They think a faucet dripping is an emergency. But if you tell them here are the emergencies, this is when to call for an emergency. All of these other things are not emergencies. It's going to make sure that they know what those expectations are.   What are your hours, what hours do you work? When should they hear back from you? Will they hear back from you on Sunday at 9pm? Nope, our Great Rift Valley LLC office is closed at that time, right? And then also maintenance on systems. So on the repair side, people always ask about capital expenses and stuff like that. Have a plan in place just like you do for your primary residence. Hey, when is my roof gonna have to be replaced? How old's the water heater? When am I expecting to replace that as long as you have all of that stuff set up, you're going to reduce that risk of having surprises. You're also going to be able to forecast better and then you're also going to make sure that your management the time spent on it is reduced.   Michael: Such great tips.   Tom: That's great, playing offense not playing defense setting up systems. It's love it love it. Love it. Awesome. Michael, do you have any other questions?   Michael: No, this was awesome. And I've been a remote landlord for almost a decade, but I was never managing my any my own properties. But I'm definitely going to be implementing some of these for the one property I do self manage. And then for pushing a lot of this stuff onto my property managers, because there's a lot of really great things that can be done here, and none of which are overly complicated. So I think it's, it's simplistic, it's easy, just got to do it.   Dana: One thing I was gonna say is that even if you have a property manager, you're still managing, right? Like you're either managing the tenant in the property or you're managing the property manager. So these numbers we mentioned about cash on cash return days on market, even if you have a property manager, you're going to want to look at these. And if something looks off, or you think the numbers could be better, you're going to jump on a call with them and drill down into those same details that you would drill down even if you were remotely managing.   Michael: No makes total sense. makes total sense, Tom, and I've got some homework cut out for us.   Tom: Love it. Awesome. Well, Dana, thank you so much for jumping on and we’re looking forward to our next segment.   Dana: Great. Thanks so much for having me.   Michael: Take care Dana.   Alrighty, everybody that was our episode a big big, big thank you to Dana for coming on. Again. Always a pleasure to have her on and we look forward to doing our next segment on the show where we have her back on. As always, if you liked this episode, please please please feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is using your podcasts. And as always, if you have topic suggestions, ideas, something you want to hear about an episode. Leave us a note in the comment section. We look forward to seeing in the next one. Happy investing