January 30, 2020 • 38 mins
The market is whatever the market is. We can put our blood, sweat, and tears into a property and it not do anything differently. In order to play the rental game, you must understand the market trends in order to make a profit.
Recorded:
Recorded January 30 2020
Host:
Kassandra Taggart
Dave Stohr
Links:
The Landlord's Almanac
Facebook Page
Website
Property Management
Donations
Sponsor the club
Book: Pain or Profit
Sponsor:
Real Property Management Last Frontier
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dave Stohr (00:00):
Morning and welcome right now are you thinking about
making a major decisionconcerning your finances?
Is it time to grow and build alasting legacy?
Well, if today is that day, whenyou decided to invest in real
estate rental properties, thenlet me introduce you to someone
who'd like to join you.
On the journey, every step ofthe way to success.
Kassandra Taggart is thepresident of Real Property
(00:20):
Management Last Frontier aproperty management company here
in Anchorage.
She is also the president of theLandlords Almanac, one of the
largest landlord clubs in thecountry dedicated to networking,
supporting, and trainingprofessional landlords.
And she is the author of thepopular book, Pain or Profit
Secrets of profitable rentalproperty investors.
She is here with us in thestudio.
(00:41):
Good morning.
Yeah.
And welcome.
Kassandra Taggart (00:42):
Thank you.
very much.
Dave Stohr (00:43):
Have come to learn that you pull absolutely no
punches.
So we are not wasting anyone'stime and are talking the truth
today about getting your homerented quickly and while it may
seem very simple, there aredefinite ways.
One can go about it successfullyto win in the long run of your
investment.
Kassandra, what is a propertymanager's absolute top priority
(01:04):
when it comes to their client'sinvestment?
Kassandra Taggart (01:06):
Consistently receiving the rent.
Dave Stohr (01:08):
Oh, there we go.
Bottom line.
Kassandra Taggart (01:11):
Yes and it's actually much harder than it
sounds because a lot of peoplejust think property managers,
the only job we do is collect arent check, but basically you're
in a situation where the tenantswant to want to sit there and
say, All these storiessituations, or may lose her job,
whatever had a car wreck orwhatever, and they don't pay the
(01:31):
rent.
So you have to follow screeningto be able to make sure they can
pay the rent.
You have to follow what's goingon in their day world right now
to see what they can do to paytheir rent.
You have to be able to havesystems in place for like
collections and provide manyways for tenants to pay rent.
Basically that's the hardestpart, even though it sounds like
the easiest part, because yeah,if you just have to take a check
(01:52):
to the bank, that's obviouslythe easy part, but actually
having the hard conversations ofwhat the rules are and getting
the money.
That's the hardest part.
Dave Stohr (02:01):
I know you're not afraid to have those
conversations when renting yourhome quickly and turning a
profit is the number one goal.
How important is consistencyuse?
Talk about it in your book.
Kassandra Taggart (02:11):
Consistency is huge because what happens is
if you let things slide and ifyou don't have enough discipline
in sticking to the regimen ofthe rules, that you've set in
your, how you're going toperform as a property manager or
landlord things will start toslide.
A great example is I was talkingto a landlord about two weeks
ago and the rent kept sliding.
(02:32):
The rate kept sliding and therent went from well, they were
paying on the first now they'repaying on the fifth now they're
paying on the 10th.
Now they're paying on the 15thnotice.
That's typically around aFriday.
So they were probably gettingpaid on a weekly basis.
But because the landlord neverposted notices and gave them the
rules and charged the late feeand actually enforced the rules
and held the tenant accountableevery single time they were
(02:55):
late, the tenant just thoughtthey could get away with it.
And then it became a trend ofalways paying yeah.
On the 15th.
Well, your mortgage is due onthe first, so.
Dave Stohr (03:05):
You know, I've heard this many times.
I think I've even said it.
This house is my baby.
It really is.
Does a property owner whobelieves that their home is
unique and special have to letit go to the rental market and
that the price will ultimatelybe paid there.
Kassandra Taggart (03:18):
The market determines the rent price, not
you.
It sucks because you're sittingthere going.
I remember when I painted thatwall, you know, and you're very
proud of your wall, where youtextured it and you had to learn
how to fix a hole.
And you put your sweat and yourenergy and your weekend.
Well, I'm sorry.
(03:38):
The market just expects the wallto be painted.
They don't expect to pay foryour sweat and your tears while
you were painting the wall.
Dave Stohr (03:47):
What are some of the circumstances in a market that
will make rental prices,fluctuate
Kassandra Taggar (03:52):
circumstances.
So this can be like right now inAnchorage.
We'll talk about that number.
We have the, the Anchorage jobmarket dropped like 3%, right?
Since, since this last turnoverof paper this morning.
And when that happens, it'schanging the number of people
that are rental property,therefore your supply and demand
(04:12):
has changed, which then willchange the type of tenants
you're going to get.
It's going to change the numberof tenants.
That'll qualify.
It's going to change the theprice because the supply and
demand has now changed.
So therefore you might have toto relook at your strategy of
requirements before a person canrent the property.
Dave Stohr (04:30):
Let's talk about tongue.
Does time play any role at allas to how you price the property
for rental?
Kassandra Taggart (04:34):
Yeah.
A great example of that.
One is timing around thesnowfall, right?
So something that we do at ourcompany is that we, we.
Have a lot of stats in innerstats will determine what type
of property is best to rent atwhat time of the year.
So that way we can max the rent.
Cause obviously we're paid oncommission.
I want to max that rent out justlike you do.
(04:57):
So we want to time when thoselease renewals will happen.
So that way you were maxing, therent for the lease renewals are
a maxing, the capability ofgetting it rented at the fastest
time.
So for example, if you're aperson who has a townhome or a
house.
That came vacant aroundThanksgiving.
You might still be vacant rightnow.
(05:17):
Especially if you didn't priceit, right.
Because people don't like movingin negative 20 temps.
Dave Stohr (05:22):
No, they don't.
E specially
Kassandra Taggart (05:24):
when it's a house.
That means it's probably, youknow, a few people.
Not, not just, you know, a guywith a truck, right.
So you may be attracted towardsa family in that particular
house, for example, and theydon't want to move in the winter
and negative 20 so therefore youwant to price it or make it to
where it'll always be rentableduring peak season.
(05:44):
and you have to decide what thatpeak season is for your
property.
Dave Stohr (05:47):
Where do you go to find quality tenants, as opposed
to just tenants
Kassandra Taggart (05:51):
today, we're in a digital world where it's
different, right?
So we have upper-classproperties, which will, you
would call a properties.
Then we have BC and then the Dproperties.
Every tenant in those bracketsshop a different way right now,
a rentals.
Isn't a place where you can justgo to one website and get all
the details.
You have to go to many differentwebsites, many different avenues
(06:14):
to try to grab that tenant wherethey're shopping for your type
of property.
So for example, the, aproperties will tend to be on
Zillow and Zillow is coming outwhere you now have to pay to
advertise there, it's cromingacross the country.
It's already in several Statesnow.
So it's going to, it's a matterof days, months before it's
going to be here too.
Dave Stohr (06:33):
So if you place an ad in zillow, you're going to
have to pay for that.
Kassandra Taggart (06:35):
They're going to have to pay now that's coming
up, whereas with us, becausewe're already got volume, we
already have it within oursystem.
You don't have to pay extra forit.
Then like, The middle markettenants, they care about speed
because they're working theirnine to fives and then some of
them are working second jobs.
They're very, very busy.
They can't just leave atlunchtime to go view a rental.
(06:56):
Right.
Dave Stohr (06:56):
Right.
Kassandra Taggart (06:57):
So those guys care very much about it.
Sweet.
So having technology where theycan look at the property, click
a video to see the property andbe able to click a button, to
schedule an appointment withouthaving to call you is a big deal
to them.
So those guys will advertise orgrab them from like Facebook,
oodle, hot pads, all these othervarious random syndicated
(07:17):
websites or whatever app they'reon.
A lot of those guys run throughvarious apps.
So you gotta be on thoseplatforms.
And then the CD tenants tend tostill be on the Craigslist ADN
or.
Flyers at Freddy's and stufflike that.
Dave Stohr (07:30):
I've seen those.
What are some of the tendenciesof quality tenants that stand
out regularly?
You have dealt with thousands ofpeople over the last decade.
Kassandra Taggart (07:37):
What a lot of people don't understand is in
the leasing world versus let'ssay you're working with people
that qualify for houses, peoplethat qualify for houses tend to
have better credit, very stable,very can qualify all day long
for homes, right?
People in the tenant world.
Depending on the type ofproperty you have, you're going
to get a lot of people thathave.
(07:57):
A lower credit score.
But what you don't understand iswatching the behaviors of the
credit score and understandingthe differentiators between good
tenants and bad tenants based onhow they use their credit, how,
what they decide to pay and notpay is a big indicator of if
they're going to be able to paytheir rent or not a great
example.
I hate to say, I say this, butit's the truth of today's
(08:19):
reality
Dave Stohr (08:20):
and we're talking the truth.
Kassandra Taggart (08:21):
Yeah.
Lots of tenants have studentdebt, lots of them, and you'd be
surprised how many don't paythem because the payments on
them are so high now.
And they're just starting, theirlives are starting.
They're leasing, they'restarting their cars.
They're you mean they'rebuilding up their, their life
right after college or whatever.
(08:41):
And that stage of life happensat any age, by the way.
Those guys have poor creditbecause they're not paying their
student loans, but they payeverything else.
So you might have to make surethat when you're making your
credit right criteria or yourtenant screening criteria for
you as a landlord to decidewhich collections allowed or
not.
(09:02):
Because some collections likerecently payments on a car show
that they may not pay forshelter.
But people who have low creditbecause they didn't pay their
student loans.
We'll probably pay their shelterand their car.
So how they spend their money ismore of an indicator of if
they're going to pay rent andtheir trends of who they are as
a tenant, then what their creditscore is.
Dave Stohr (09:23):
Are people generally surprised that you actually
check a credit score just torent a house?
Kassandra Taggart (09:28):
That's a huge surprise.
Dave Stohr (09:30):
You're going to what you're going to look at my
credit just to rent thisapartment.
Kassandra Taggart (09:35):
So what's interesting is Five years ago,
10 years ago, a lot of landlordshad hard time just having access
to being able to run thosethings.
Now their software technologyand access to be able to
actually run the backgroundchecks and the credit checks and
figure out the full story toprove that they are who they say
(09:55):
they are.
In, in with our company becauseof us being in a franchise
nationwide, we're able to pullreports for nationwide to grab
those that are travelers.
Whereas the landlord who's justusing on one-off program may not
have access to that.
So technology is a huge part ofactually how much information
you're going to get, but it'salso a huge indicator of if
(10:15):
you're even using it at all.
Here's a story is that most.
Do it yourself landlords, whichis about 80% of this town.
The bad tenants will go towardsthe, do it yourself, landlords,
because most do it yourselflandlord, or do not actually run
the background check oranything.
We did a survey in the latestlandlords Almanac class, and we
(10:38):
asked in the room who doesbackground checks, only half the
room answered they raised theirhand.
Then we asked him again and wesaid all of the ones that say
they do their background check.
Do you just do courtview or doyou do the full background
check?
And it went all the way down toonly three hands, did the full
background check.
And because of that trend, allthe bad tenants go to you.
Whereas with us, we hardly getthe bad tenants because they
(11:01):
know we're going to confirm.
Dave Stohr (11:04):
I was going to ask, does a property owner need to be
stringent or even tough when itcomes to picking quality
tenants?
Are you known as a tough person?
When you try to match a tenantwith the property,
Kassandra Taggart (11:15):
have to be you have to have set rules and,
and you have to be comfortablewith saying yes and no to
people.
We're human.
Right?
We all want to say yes.
And we all want to be acommunity.
We all want to like shake handsand dance and have a good time.
Right.
But the reality is, is whenyou're trying to protect your
investment, you have to makedecisions and you have to make
(11:36):
the right decisions to not losemoney.
So if you were to know meoutside of work, I'm this
awesome fun person and can hangout over dinner.
But in work I have to say, yes,I have to say no, and I have to
create roles and I have to lookStringent hard core and cold
sometimes.
But the reality is, is you haveto set criteria is to make
(11:57):
profit and you have to followbusiness.
Dave Stohr (12:00):
Somebody doesn't qualify for a property.
Do you tell them the truth?
This is why you didn't get in.
Kassandra Taggart (12:06):
No, actually, I can't completely say
everything.
So there's federal requirementsactually regarding doing
background checks and creditchecks on people and you have a
certain requirement of how youtell them.
Yes and no.
For example, when we're doingbackground checks of tenants,
sometimes landlords want to havea copy of the background check.
(12:28):
We actually can't provide itbecause of privacy laws.
So we have to protect theirsocial.
We have to protect their date ofbirth.
We have to protect theinformation and simply say, they
got points for this.
This is so they qualify for yourproperty.
We can't use a whole lot ofother criteria because of, well,
I feel this because fair housingtexts, protected class passes,
(12:52):
and you can't make your ruleslook like you are persuading one
class protected class overanother class.
So where I'm getting to.
Is that yes, you do have arequirement of saying approved
or decline and under decline,you have a few ways to
articulate your declined forincome ratio or your declined
for background check.
(13:13):
You don't have to go into thefine, fine details of why.
And you better have rules inplace to say and support if they
file an audit against you
Dave Stohr (13:21):
You have made professional property
management, your life.
What are you an expert at whenyou're trying to maximize your
rental rate and then minimize.
You're big vacancy time.
I like to say I'm a connector ofdots and, and I always go back
to my little story of you'remaking a pot of soup and you got
to mix all these things togetherto make a decision and what one
(13:45):
person's decision is going to bea different from a different
person's decision.
But what I can say is experienceand know how and seeing trends
and facts and how trained we aremakes the difference.
Kassandra Taggart (13:56):
I'll give you an example.
Did you know, in 20, yeah, 2019,where we ran over nine 950
applications.
Dave Stohr (14:04):
I did not know that
Kassandra Taggart (14:05):
because of that, you can see, trends very
clearly and the 950 applicationswe can say, Oh, this, this
trends coming through, or thistrends leaving right.
But when you are only doing oneapplication or two applications,
every two years, you were notgoing to see the trends, a great
trend.
I'll give you some stories thatare going on right now is
(14:26):
tenants will put down a phonenumber saying, that's my prior
landlord call them for areference check.
You call them and they're not alandlord.
It's just a friend's cell phonenumber.
Oh yeah, Johnny's great.
Of course.
They're going to say Johnny'sgreat.
It's your friend.
So you have to combination itwith a whole bunch of other
stuff to make the decisions.
Dave Stohr (14:43):
And from your experience when you're trying to
rent a property quickly, whathappens when that rental rate
let's say is just too high?
Kassandra Taggart (14:50):
If it's too high, you're going to get the
wrong crowd, actually.
When you have too high of a rentyou're going to have the wrong
type of people wanting to applybecause the bad tenants know
that if we overpay for rentyou'll look the other way on
their background.
Right.
We have a story.
And this was kind of aninteresting story.
There's an there's a landlordwho called call me up and said,
(15:11):
I want you to rent to thesepeople.
We said, okay, well, we're notrenting unless we do a
background check.
He goes, no, no, no rent today.
You're just trying to hold it upto where I don't get my rent
check.
I said, I don't let any tenantsmove in to any of our properties
that we manage unless we do abackground check.
We did a background check andfound six evictions, one
pending.
And we called him up and said,well, we would never approve
this particular tenant based onthe criteria.
(15:32):
Well, you're just trying to bedifficult and you're not trying
to get it rented.
So, so I want you to prove themanyways.
I said, sir, I need you to putin writing that you're okay to
rent to a tenant that has sixevictions, one pending, and know
that the likelihood of yougetting.
$400 over the market rent pricefor your place.
Probably not going to get it.
You're going to move them in,give them Keystone property, and
(15:53):
they're not going to be able topay rent.
The risk is high.
If you want to sign off on it,here's a letter you're going to
sign it, not me and then hedidn't sign.
So we were able to put it backkeep it on the market.
And we found a good tenant.
That's still there today andthey paid market rent.
Not overpriced.
Dave Stohr (16:08):
And what if the tenant qualifications are just
too low,
Kassandra Taggart (16:11):
if they're too low, your eviction rates are
going to start increasing inyour property.
The dollar amount of damages inyour property is going to go up
and your maintenance bills areactually going to go up because
bad, tenants that don't care.
For example, they don't reportthe wash machine is leaking
water underneath the goodtenants that care about building
their future and building theirlives.
(16:32):
They're going to reporteverything in anything.
Sometimes it might be a littleannoying because they're
reporting everything in anythingbut they will report.
So you can make a decision ofhow to keep your property
maintain, but bad tenants,everything goes.
Dave Stohr (16:44):
I was going to say, what's been your overall
experience with high-risktenants is it just a problem?
Kassandra Taggart (16:50):
There is ways to work with tenants that went
through a rough patch.
Like for example, they just wentthrough a divorce and their
background shows.
The, the result of a divorcecause of divorce.
Everyone destroys everyone,right?
Yes.
But there are other bad tennis.
That's just not a fit for them.
So when you have a bad tenantgoing into a property it's just
(17:11):
expensive.
Do you realize that an evictionjust on the legal fees typically
costs anywhere from$400 to$2,000all day long?
Dave Stohr (17:19):
That's amazing.
Kassandra Taggart (17:20):
And you're up to 30 days of sitting there
waiting for them to get kicked.
Because you got your court, youreviction, you, then you gotta
get your troopers to come inthere and remove them during
that time.
They're just ruining your placeand ruining your place.
Dave Stohr (17:31):
I was going to say, who rents to this group of
people who obviously need ahome, but whose behavior is
constantly,
Kassandra Taggart (17:38):
the people that don't do checks they, they
don't do background checks.
They, they don't know that thesetenants are the bad ones.
They just, they just let themin.
When you hand keys.
He had signed up for it.
Dave Stohr (17:49):
And when you encounter high-risk tenants, is
the industry alerted to them ordoes every property manager find
out for themselves sooner orlater?
Kassandra Taggart (17:57):
They do find out for themselves sooner or
later.
There's a, there's a thing inthis town with a, what I call
tenant hopping.
So a tenant will find somebodythat doesn't do background
checks or find somebody who is asucker and really wants their
place rented and get so eager.
Well happen is that tenant willmove in and let's say, let's say
you let them move into yourplace.
(18:19):
Right?
They move into your place andyou don't pay the first month's
rent and you're like, Oh, thisjust happened.
Then they don't pay the secondmonth's rent.
Oh, this just happened.
But because you're a newlandlord, you don't know, you
should have already startedposting.
You should have started alreadydoing late fees.
You should already startevictions.
And because you're busy withwork, you just go, ah, let it
slide there, go people.
(18:39):
They just moved in.
Well, By the time you decide tofinally post on them before,
right before you start to do thecourt process, they'll leave.
They'll leave your place withthe truck because they have just
enough to fill up a pickup truckand then they'll go pick on the
next person.
And I have a friend who has akid that's probably now sitting
around 10 months.
I'm not having to pay rentbecause they're hopping from
(19:00):
landlord to landlord, tolandlord.
Dave Stohr (19:02):
Y ou mentioned the word systems quite a bit.
How do systems play intoproperty management success?
Specifically yours f
Kassandra Taggart (19:10):
or me systems make it to where and keep
emotions out.
That that's my biggest still.
And it also makes it to where Ican scale.
And it's where I can manageprofits.
Systems keeps you out of troublewith the federal rules and the
state rules systems make it towhere you can create speed.
Systems is basically the coreproperty management and
(19:31):
landlording a lot of peopledon't realize.
How important that is because inthe rental world, like the story
we just gave, you were soexcited.
You want to get that placerented.
So you can Pat yourself on theback and say, I got it written
in three days and I'm gettingrent.
Well, you're not actuallygetting rent cause they haven't
paid rent in two months.
And you didn't have systems inplace to figure out how to
charge them the late fee or howto give them options to swipe
(19:52):
their credit card because theydon't have the cash or you don't
have systems in place toenforce.
And when you're missing any ofthose systems, you get emotional
and you get scared and you'rewriting the check for the
mortgage and the utilities, notthem.
So then you're like now I don'thave money for my own place.
Dave Stohr (20:07):
Right?
Kassandra Taggart (20:08):
So it's a cycle of bad decisions.
Dave Stohr (20:10):
And ultimately, what will the right system produce
for a property manager, aproperty manager and the real
estate investor.
Kassandra Taggart (20:17):
Profits.
Everybody wants profit.
Everyone wants it's cash.
Everyone sits there.
Cash is King.
I mean, it really is cash Kingand if you don't have recurring
revenue coming in consistently,then that means your systems are
flawed or your ability to makedecisions.
A lot and you need to get out ofthe business or put somebody in
(20:38):
charge of the business to helpyou get that flow going.
You, if you miss that profit,you're not buying more rentals.
You're you're I mean, thinkabout it.
This is like your retirementaccount.
You don't put your money in thestock market and go, Oh, it went
negative this month and lookaway.
Oh, at it went negative again,this month, we're going to look
out away.
Its 30 year, whole 10 year holdsright long holds.
(20:59):
But if it's negative longenough, wouldn't you just take
the money out and move it.
Dave Stohr (21:02):
Sounds good.
Kassandra Taggart (21:03):
I mean, you put systems in place to watch
that.
So why aren't we putting asystems in place to manage your
multiple hundreds of thousandsdollar investment?
Dave Stohr (21:12):
The conversation's unlimited with Kassandra
Taggart, the president of realproperty management of Anchorage
and the author of the book painor profit secrets of profitable
rental property investors.
I'm Dave stohr time now forquestions and answers that we've
collected in anticipation oftoday's conversation.
Kassandra, I'm sure the havecome across your desk before.
I'm sure you'll have qualifiedanswers for all of these.
(21:33):
Here's your first question?
How do you have well, or Ishould say, how do you have
water tested for minerals?
Kassandra Taggart (21:41):
So there are specialists in town that a lot
of people don't realize thatwell has well septic tanks and
all that stuff have many.
Specialties and facets to it.
Like you got an electrician thatcan make the pumps work, you got
people that know how to test thewaters.
Then you got people who installthe Wells.
You got people who cleaned theWells.
You've got people who know howto find the leaks and the lines
(22:02):
between the house and the well,and then you've got pumps that
deal with the well to filter andclean it.
So there are specialties forthose items you can call a lot
of contractors and they'realready connected to them
because a lot of people don'tknow their direct numbers or
know that they're licensed,bonded, insured, and that their
specialty is actually certifiedin Wells.
So you definitely want toresearch before you just hire
(22:24):
somebody off of Google.
Dave Stohr (22:25):
As a property manager, do you go outside your
own business?
Outside your own building andlook for qualified contractors
and water testers.
Do you go into the community andlook for those people?
Kassandra Taggart (22:35):
Yeah, lot of people don't realize that when
you're working with vendors youhave to have a lot of vendors.
So for example we are preparing1099, 1099 is something you have
to send to your vendors whenyou're using them for work,
because the IRS wants to makesure they track the dollars.
Right.
For 2019, we did over 237, 1099for vendors that we paid over
(23:00):
$600 for that's how many vendorsI had to use to get work done.
So you don't just have one guy,you need to have like a list of
all kinds of guys.
And then you have to have oneguy on your list that is
connected or knows a lot of theother.
Guys that can get things done.
Example was yesterday I wastalking to a good friend or two
days ago, and she didn't realizethat when your place freezes you
(23:23):
don't call plumber, you call afar.
I never thought about that.
Yeah.
You have to call a guy who hasspecial equipment to D frost,
all the pipes.
Then you have to have a plumberat the same time, ready to fix
those pipes, turn on and off thewater and fix those pipes when
they discover them.
So you actually have to have twovendors to fix frozen pipes and
potentially a third for a guywho knows how to pick up the
(23:45):
water.
And if.
The pipe that broke.
If it's a class, depending onthe class of water you may need
somebody who is sanitized, whocan do sanitation, because it
could be a septic sewer thatbroke or dirty water that broke.
So you may need four or fiveparticular vendors to take care
of it.
One freeze
Dave Stohr (24:02):
and you need them right now.
So they must be on a master listof contractors.
Kassandra Taggart (24:07):
They must, and to make an even more
complicated.
It, and unfortunately it'sbusiness this way.
It is because of how the volumethat I have as a property
manager versus the volume ofwhat you might have as a
landlord, your.
Your speed dial list might bethe same speed dial list as us,
but because of my volume,they're going to pick my
property and come to service usbefore they service you.
(24:30):
And they're also going to giveme a special rate versus you.
And I don't mean to be rude, butit's business.
I have volume.
I have the ability to callsomebody up and say, I want you
here by this time.
Like every day, this week.
4:58.
We've had pipe breaks, pipefreezes and everything.
Cause we're in the cold tempsright now.
Right.
And the vendors were therewithin 30 minutes to an hour for
(24:52):
all of our properties.
I don't think they were therethat way for my friend.
She said it took two hoursbefore she finally got help.
And most of them was because theonly response she got that help
is because she called a friendof a friend who knew a person
who worked there to try to pullfavors because that's how it
works in business.
Dave Stohr (25:09):
Absolutely.
You have led me to my next twoquestions who pays for frozen
pipes, the landlord, or thetenant.
Kassandra Taggart (25:15):
The landlord.
Dave Stohr (25:16):
Okay.
It goes back to that person.
Kassandra Taggart (25:18):
The seldom will go on the tenant.
There are some stories where itcan go on the tenant but most of
the time it's the landlord.
So to give everyone some updateson numbers right now, most of
our pipe break situations arerunning between$1500 and$5,000.
That is how fast it goes and howmuch damage it goes when it goes
bad.
Dave Stohr (25:37):
Yeah.
Incidentally, the, what theweather is going to warm up by
next Wednesday.
We're going to see temperaturesin the middle.
Thirties.
I saw that on the weatherchannel this morning.
My next question.
And it's one you just talkedabout.
What is the dollar limit?
I have to 10 99, a contractor.
One of our listeners wants toknow
Kassandra Taggart (25:51):
it's actually $600.
And if it's an entity thatdoesn't require a 1099.
So for example, enstar would notneed a 1099 for you paying your
utility bills.
Because they're a corporation,they filed their own, but LLCs
contractors.
So until they changed the taxcode, you're supposed to send a
10 99 to your vendor for$600.
(26:11):
I also want to give you oneextra bit of information is that
the IRS they'll do these auditsand they'll say, Oh, this vendor
didn't pay their taxes, but yousaid that they exist.
So I'm going to come to you andtry to find them.
And in because you're supposedto have your paperwork in order,
I'm going to give you a hundreddollars fine per vendor that you
(26:32):
mess up for not having yourpaperwork in order because that
guy didn't file their taxes andI can't find him.
So I'm going to come to you totry to find them.
So you should have yourpaperwork in order.
To find him.
Right.
Dave Stohr (26:42):
Right.
Kassandra Taggart (26:43):
So you should have your W9 in place for this
person.
You should make sure thatthey're licensed bonded
insurances on file, because younever know when the permitting
office is going to come afteryou for that.
And you need to have all yourpaperwork in order for every
vendor you hire.
Sounds like a lot of work.
Dave Stohr (26:58):
It really does.
That's why you're a professionalproperty manager.
I'm on the radio.
Here's an interesting question.
Does not having a dishwashermake a big difference in rental
value or quality?
Kassandra Taggart (27:09):
I think it does.
It is possible to have like astudio apartment.
That may not have a dishwasher,but has a, a way to wash dishes.
But I don't recommend it.
I don't even think I have asingle property in our database
that doesn't have a dishwasher.
I understand dishwashers arepainful.
They, they break, they, theydon't make them like they used
(27:29):
to usually have to replace themevery seven to 10 years.
Now it seems like but.
They're like 200, 300 bucks nowto put in a new one rather than
service it.
And when the, when the, thepipes in the back disconnect or
get clogged, then you got to fixthat.
That's like$150 service workorder.
So it gets annoying and it getsexpensive.
(27:49):
And unfortunately, that's thecost of doing business at this
time,
Dave Stohr (27:52):
you're going to have to ask.
Kassandra Taggart (27:54):
As we head in where we're in the 21st century,
when you look at the newappliances, the smart appliances
appliances that talk to you,appliances that produce things.
Are you stymied by thetechnology that is now going
into washers and dryers,dishwashers, refrigerators.
I mean, it's just not open thedoor and close it anymore.
And the cost of the repair,those things must be, it is
(28:15):
that's a very good perspective.
A lot of people forget thisthought because when you make it
your home, you want all this.
Fancy technology.
Do you want that those nestthermostats hookup to the wifi
you want, you want the fridge togo shopping list, add eggs?
You know, you want those thingswhen it's your home, here's the
problem when they break.
(28:37):
So first of all, the concern is,is that you got to have a
technician that understands theelectronic side of the
appliances enough to know whatpart broke.
Is it a programming issue or isit the control board?
So let's just say it's a controlboard.
On LG appliances, most controlboards are 800 to$1,200 for me
to get fit brought in fromwherever it's made.
(28:59):
Cause they don't have them.
Ready-made ship them here, whichis another week.
And then they finally get hereand then you've got to get on
the tech schedule to get theminstalled.
So you're looking at an easy$1,500, which is the cost of a
basic GE Whirlpool typeappliance that you could have
just installed, made the tenanthappy in a week.
Dave Stohr (29:18):
You know, I'm running into.
Old-school appliance repairmanwho are S are struggling with
the technology as it comes intothe marketplace, they just don't
have the training.
The training.
Kassandra Taggart (29:28):
There is not really any certified training
for these guys.
It's usually a whole bunch oflike, Guys that don't want to be
handymans cause it's hard ontheir bodies and they don't want
to work for union.
So it's these, this type oftechnician is who typically
picks up these jobs
Dave Stohr (29:43):
independent.
Kassandra Taggart (29:44):
Yes.
The little independence guys andbe careful.
There's a lot of Craigslistfraud guys that claim they can
do or repairs and they can't.
Because, but, but the issue toois, is that.
To pay them a healthy wage andto make them qualified for
licensed bond insurance and allthis stuff.
Their call-out fee is a minimum75, 90 bucks minimum.
(30:04):
That's just a show up.
And then if they have to domultiple trips, fix it in
because we're in Alaska.
Some most parts have to beordered.
Unless you can get it at therehab store stuff.
So you're looking at 150 bucks,easy all day long to fix the
dishwasher that only costs 300bucks.
Did you know that if you just.
Invested and decided, you knowwhat, instead of paying$150 for
(30:27):
a service call, we're just goingto replace it.
You then get to go into theworld of depreciation and taxes
and all those other topics.
So sometimes it might be betterjust to replace.
Dave Stohr (30:38):
You mentioned thermostats.
Here's a, I didn't even knowthese existed.
I want to get limitingthermostats on my unit.
Your thoughts.
Kassandra Taggart (30:46):
We have lots of landlords who want this.
Yeah.
Why here's what the, therethere's various landlord
thermostats, you can get them onAmazon.
You can get them from I believecentral plumbing has them.
Now.
There's a couple other placesthat have them, so you can get
at them.
Yeah.
They're, they're not too tooexpensive to get them and then
(31:07):
install them.
It's just like hooking up.
Any other thermostat andthermostats right now need to be
upgraded in most propertiesbecause when their little
mercury thing starts going outor batteries or wiring goes bad,
you need to upgrade themanyways.
So a lot of landlords aresaying, well, I'm going to take
this opportunity for the upgradeto do the landlord thermostats,
landlord thermostats.
What it does is it regulates theheat in a property
automatically.
(31:28):
So, whether they're there topress up or down on their heat,
it automatically keeps the tempat a certain temperature.
So if a tenant wants to keep itat 80 in their house, they're
not going to be able to.
They literally, depending onwhich stat you buy, it literally
rely re regulate the temperaturein that unit from more between
like 65 and 75 and never let thetemp never let the tenant
(31:49):
override the stat.
So it, it can reduce the heatbill.
I'll be honest.
It can there's a couple oflandlords that's in our
portfolio that has done thework.
And it did reduce their heatbill.
I would say somewhere between 15and 25%, which sounds like a
significant difference.
So you're talking maybe 25, 50bucks per month in the winter
(32:10):
time, it dropped it dependingon, you know, you're building
everything.
But here's what it did do thateverybody forgot.
Tenants are people, tenants arehuman.
They pay a lot of money to havetheir space and their space
their way.
When you start restricting them,when you start messing with
their space, when you startdoing what they feel is taking
(32:30):
away their freedom and theirright you're gonna lose your
good tenants.
And the second one of thelandlords had done that.
They lost three really solid,good paying on time tenants.
And we ended up with not payingtenants.
So, and then you end up with thecost of turning over the unit in
(32:51):
turnovers, typically costs$1,500than your rent as well.
So you're losing, you know, easyto$2,000 in one shot.
So.
Saving about 50 bucks a month onyour utility versus having a
turnover of$2,000 easily.
The math doesn't make sense
Dave Stohr (33:08):
while we're talking about temperature.
Should I prohibit the use ofspace heaters in my properties?
Kassandra Taggart (33:14):
You definitely want to consider that
as a conversation, especiallydepending on who pays the
utilities, what kind of spacetheaters there are tenants still
to this day that have lack ofknowledge about the different
types of space heaters, liketheir space heaters that have
the trip.
Feature.
So if it trips or gets clogged,it'll turn off, those are safe.
Right.
But the other ones, there aretenants.
(33:35):
Like we had to have aconversation just last week with
a tenant saying you aren'tsupposed to use space heaters
that are propane filled, oilfilled all this kind of stuff.
Those are dangerous.
Right.
And if they aren't home, whenthey're running there's a lot of
complications with spaceheaters, space heaters are
needed.
For the purposes of when youhave a no heat, we gotta.
Put in space heaters to keepthings going until we fix
(33:56):
things.
But it's, it's a liability.
It's, it's a, it's a concern.
Dave Stohr (34:02):
One of our listeners wants to know, should I take a
credit card payment for rent?
Kassandra Taggart (34:07):
So that's an interesting debate because.
Credit cards, costs money toprocess and credit cards.
For some people that money is anemotional thing for a lot of
people, right?
So they think if I allow atenant to pay with a credit
card, that means they ran out ofmoney and they're living on
credit.
How do they have that kind ofbudget?
They must be bad tenants.
(34:27):
Some landlords take it as.
Well, if they don't have thecash and something happened with
her car this weekend, at leastthey could swipe a card and I
still get paid.
And then there's the debate ofwho pays the fees for processing
of credit cards.
So there's that concern as well.
We took the approach ofcontinuously trying to receive
money.
So we have 86% of our tenantspay online.
(34:51):
And out of that percentage, Ithink it's around 5% do use
credit cards because they getpoints and they don't mind
paying the fees to get theirpoints.
It's not that they're badtenants.
So we do accept credit cards andwe do have a system set up to
where it's safe and secure.
Just know that credit cards docome with other problems that
you don't get with cash.
For example, they can Mark thatthe.
(35:13):
Credit card swipe is fraud andmake it reverse.
And then you're out the rent,
Dave Stohr (35:19):
you know, all the stories don't you, you know, all
the tricks is a risk to creditcards.
Kassandra Taggart (35:24):
You will get your money, but it's possible
that they may play a game with acredit card to make you fight,
to keep that money up to a fewmonths.
Dave Stohr (35:32):
And while we're talking about money, do you
chase down tenants?
One of our listeners wants toknow that owe you money, or just
let it go and just get a newtenant.
Kassandra Taggart (35:42):
That's a, that's always an interesting
debate because the debate reallyis about how much money do you
want to spend going after it?
How much time do you want tospend going after it and time's
money.
So if you're a landlord whodon't pay yourself a wage for
doing property management thenyou may not be one of those
landlords that pay yourself awage to go stand in the court
(36:02):
lines to go.
File all these writs ofjudgments and writs of
executions and run around bankto bank doing bank sweeps.
You, you could be that landlordthat does all that.
That's fine.
If you want to be one of thosethe, the, when you make a
mistake and place a bad tenant.
Sometimes you place bad tenantsthat just get in a fight and
there's issues.
But when you make a mistake,that actually is a bad tenant.
(36:24):
Going after them, the likelihoodof you getting your money is
very slim.
What you can do is you cancontract with a collection
company and the collectioncompany will take a percent of
whatever they collect.
They're allowed to negotiate thebalance.
So you may go all the way from.
They owe me a thousand to youonly get 200 bucks, but they'll
do all the legwork.
(36:45):
So it's a good option.
Dave Stohr (36:47):
How much does the tenant balance need to be before
you consider filing an eviction?
Kassandra Taggart (36:52):
Everybody has a different threshold.
Here's what I can say in, in,in, you should have your own
threshold that you'recomfortable with.
The cost of a court just to fileis around 400, 500 bucks.
Right?
Then you got the stress of themyelling and being mad.
Then they open work orders.
Then they do all this otherstuff to you.
And then you have a bad taste inyour tongue.
(37:12):
So if you're filing for aeviction and willing to pay$600,
because the tenant didn't pay,let's say a hundred bucks.
You're not making the bestbusiness decision with money and
you're being shortsighted andemotional.
So we'd like to say, needs to beat least above 300.
Before we start filing courtproceedings, we will do payment
arrangements it on certaincircumstances because they've
(37:34):
been good and then just had anoopsie because of a job transfer
or something.
So you need to make a businessdecision that works for you.
Shall waste money.
Dave Stohr (37:42):
I'm Dave store with the president of real property
management of Anchorage and theauthor of the book, painter
profit secrets of profitablerental property investors.
Kassandra, how can investorsfind out more about joining the
landlords club,
Kassandra Taggart (37:54):
the landlord's club and the fastest
way to get everything you needis to actually go to the
website, which is the.
It's almanac.com there you'llsee a place where you can post
questions and forums andthoughts that you have, or be
supportive of other landlordsthat are here in Anchorage, the
databases over 2,500 landlords.
Sitting there chatting andhelping each other out is
amazing.
Dave Stohr (38:13):
You're a very busy person do you make yourself
available to mentor newinvestors
Kassandra Taggart (38:18):
all the time?
So just say just attend theclasses and if you can't get the
direction that you need a callin and we'll schedule some times
to guide you either on how tostep up, how to buy the right
property, then.
That's you we'll help you instrategically handling the
maintenance there.
We have so many differentpackages with property
management that we can help youjust ask and say, this is what I
(38:40):
need.
Dave Stohr (38:40):
That is so easy.
Kassandra, thank you for yourknowledge, your passion and your
guidance over this last hour.
You are, as I'm sure ourlisteners now know an invaluable
resource and it.
Experienced advisor for thosewho are investing in real estate
and taking their first steptowards success, have a good
day.
Morning and welcome right now are you thinking about
making a major decisionconcerning your finances?
Is it time to grow and build alasting legacy?
Well, if today is that day, whenyou decided to invest in real
estate rental properties, thenlet me introduce you to someone
who'd like to join you.
On the journey, every step ofthe way to success.
Kassandra Taggart is thepresident of Real Property
(00:20):
Management Last Frontier aproperty management company here
in Anchorage.
She is also the president of theLandlords Almanac, one of the
largest landlord clubs in thecountry dedicated to networking,
supporting, and trainingprofessional landlords.
And she is the author of thepopular book, Pain or Profit
Secrets of profitable rentalproperty investors.
She is here with us in thestudio.
(00:41):
Good morning.
Yeah.
And welcome.
Kassandra Taggart (00:42):
Thank you.
very much.
Dave Stohr (00:43):
Have come to learn that you pull absolutely no
punches.
So we are not wasting anyone'stime and are talking the truth
today about getting your homerented quickly and while it may
seem very simple, there aredefinite ways.
One can go about it successfullyto win in the long run of your
investment.
Kassandra, what is a propertymanager's absolute top priority
(01:04):
when it comes to their client'sinvestment?
Kassandra Taggart (01:06):
Consistently receiving the rent.
Dave Stohr (01:08):
Oh, there we go.
Bottom line.
Kassandra Taggart (01:11):
Yes and it's actually much harder than it
sounds because a lot of peoplejust think property managers,
the only job we do is collect arent check, but basically you're
in a situation where the tenantswant to want to sit there and
say, All these storiessituations, or may lose her job,
whatever had a car wreck orwhatever, and they don't pay the
(01:31):
rent.
So you have to follow screeningto be able to make sure they can
pay the rent.
You have to follow what's goingon in their day world right now
to see what they can do to paytheir rent.
You have to be able to havesystems in place for like
collections and provide manyways for tenants to pay rent.
Basically that's the hardestpart, even though it sounds like
the easiest part, because yeah,if you just have to take a check
(01:52):
to the bank, that's obviouslythe easy part, but actually
having the hard conversations ofwhat the rules are and getting
the money.
That's the hardest part.
Dave Stohr (02:01):
I know you're not afraid to have those
conversations when renting yourhome quickly and turning a
profit is the number one goal.
How important is consistencyuse?
Talk about it in your book.
Kassandra Taggart (02:11):
Consistency is huge because what happens is
if you let things slide and ifyou don't have enough discipline
in sticking to the regimen ofthe rules, that you've set in
your, how you're going toperform as a property manager or
landlord things will start toslide.
A great example is I was talkingto a landlord about two weeks
ago and the rent kept sliding.
(02:32):
The rate kept sliding and therent went from well, they were
paying on the first now they'repaying on the fifth now they're
paying on the 10th.
Now they're paying on the 15thnotice.
That's typically around aFriday.
So they were probably gettingpaid on a weekly basis.
But because the landlord neverposted notices and gave them the
rules and charged the late feeand actually enforced the rules
and held the tenant accountableevery single time they were
(02:55):
late, the tenant just thoughtthey could get away with it.
And then it became a trend ofalways paying yeah.
On the 15th.
Well, your mortgage is due onthe first, so.
Dave Stohr (03:05):
You know, I've heard this many times.
I think I've even said it.
This house is my baby.
It really is.
Does a property owner whobelieves that their home is
unique and special have to letit go to the rental market and
that the price will ultimatelybe paid there.
Kassandra Taggart (03:18):
The market determines the rent price, not
you.
It sucks because you're sittingthere going.
I remember when I painted thatwall, you know, and you're very
proud of your wall, where youtextured it and you had to learn
how to fix a hole.
And you put your sweat and yourenergy and your weekend.
Well, I'm sorry.
(03:38):
The market just expects the wallto be painted.
They don't expect to pay foryour sweat and your tears while
you were painting the wall.
Dave Stohr (03:47):
What are some of the circumstances in a market that
will make rental prices,fluctuate
Kassandra Taggar (03:52):
circumstances.
So this can be like right now inAnchorage.
We'll talk about that number.
We have the, the Anchorage jobmarket dropped like 3%, right?
Since, since this last turnoverof paper this morning.
And when that happens, it'schanging the number of people
that are rental property,therefore your supply and demand
(04:12):
has changed, which then willchange the type of tenants
you're going to get.
It's going to change the numberof tenants.
That'll qualify.
It's going to change the theprice because the supply and
demand has now changed.
So therefore you might have toto relook at your strategy of
requirements before a person canrent the property.
Dave Stohr (04:30):
Let's talk about tongue.
Does time play any role at allas to how you price the property
for rental?
Kassandra Taggart (04:34):
Yeah.
A great example of that.
One is timing around thesnowfall, right?
So something that we do at ourcompany is that we, we.
Have a lot of stats in innerstats will determine what type
of property is best to rent atwhat time of the year.
So that way we can max the rent.
Cause obviously we're paid oncommission.
I want to max that rent out justlike you do.
(04:57):
So we want to time when thoselease renewals will happen.
So that way you were maxing, therent for the lease renewals are
a maxing, the capability ofgetting it rented at the fastest
time.
So for example, if you're aperson who has a townhome or a
house.
That came vacant aroundThanksgiving.
You might still be vacant rightnow.
(05:17):
Especially if you didn't priceit, right.
Because people don't like movingin negative 20 temps.
Dave Stohr (05:22):
No, they don't.
E specially
Kassandra Taggart (05:24):
when it's a house.
That means it's probably, youknow, a few people.
Not, not just, you know, a guywith a truck, right.
So you may be attracted towardsa family in that particular
house, for example, and theydon't want to move in the winter
and negative 20 so therefore youwant to price it or make it to
where it'll always be rentableduring peak season.
(05:44):
and you have to decide what thatpeak season is for your
property.
Dave Stohr (05:47):
Where do you go to find quality tenants, as opposed
to just tenants
Kassandra Taggart (05:51):
today, we're in a digital world where it's
different, right?
So we have upper-classproperties, which will, you
would call a properties.
Then we have BC and then the Dproperties.
Every tenant in those bracketsshop a different way right now,
a rentals.
Isn't a place where you can justgo to one website and get all
the details.
You have to go to many differentwebsites, many different avenues
(06:14):
to try to grab that tenant wherethey're shopping for your type
of property.
So for example, the, aproperties will tend to be on
Zillow and Zillow is coming outwhere you now have to pay to
advertise there, it's cromingacross the country.
It's already in several Statesnow.
So it's going to, it's a matterof days, months before it's
going to be here too.
Dave Stohr (06:33):
So if you place an ad in zillow, you're going to
have to pay for that.
Kassandra Taggart (06:35):
They're going to have to pay now that's coming
up, whereas with us, becausewe're already got volume, we
already have it within oursystem.
You don't have to pay extra forit.
Then like, The middle markettenants, they care about speed
because they're working theirnine to fives and then some of
them are working second jobs.
They're very, very busy.
They can't just leave atlunchtime to go view a rental.
(06:56):
Right.
Dave Stohr (06:56):
Right.
Kassandra Taggart (06:57):
So those guys care very much about it.
Sweet.
So having technology where theycan look at the property, click
a video to see the property andbe able to click a button, to
schedule an appointment withouthaving to call you is a big deal
to them.
So those guys will advertise orgrab them from like Facebook,
oodle, hot pads, all these othervarious random syndicated
(07:17):
websites or whatever app they'reon.
A lot of those guys run throughvarious apps.
So you gotta be on thoseplatforms.
And then the CD tenants tend tostill be on the Craigslist ADN
or.
Flyers at Freddy's and stufflike that.
Dave Stohr (07:30):
I've seen those.
What are some of the tendenciesof quality tenants that stand
out regularly?
You have dealt with thousands ofpeople over the last decade.
Kassandra Taggart (07:37):
What a lot of people don't understand is in
the leasing world versus let'ssay you're working with people
that qualify for houses, peoplethat qualify for houses tend to
have better credit, very stable,very can qualify all day long
for homes, right?
People in the tenant world.
Depending on the type ofproperty you have, you're going
to get a lot of people thathave.
(07:57):
A lower credit score.
But what you don't understand iswatching the behaviors of the
credit score and understandingthe differentiators between good
tenants and bad tenants based onhow they use their credit, how,
what they decide to pay and notpay is a big indicator of if
they're going to be able to paytheir rent or not a great
example.
I hate to say, I say this, butit's the truth of today's
(08:19):
reality
Dave Stohr (08:20):
and we're talking the truth.
Kassandra Taggart (08:21):
Yeah.
Lots of tenants have studentdebt, lots of them, and you'd be
surprised how many don't paythem because the payments on
them are so high now.
And they're just starting, theirlives are starting.
They're leasing, they'restarting their cars.
They're you mean they'rebuilding up their, their life
right after college or whatever.
(08:41):
And that stage of life happensat any age, by the way.
Those guys have poor creditbecause they're not paying their
student loans, but they payeverything else.
So you might have to make surethat when you're making your
credit right criteria or yourtenant screening criteria for
you as a landlord to decidewhich collections allowed or
not.
(09:02):
Because some collections likerecently payments on a car show
that they may not pay forshelter.
But people who have low creditbecause they didn't pay their
student loans.
We'll probably pay their shelterand their car.
So how they spend their money ismore of an indicator of if
they're going to pay rent andtheir trends of who they are as
a tenant, then what their creditscore is.
Dave Stohr (09:23):
Are people generally surprised that you actually
check a credit score just torent a house?
Kassandra Taggart (09:28):
That's a huge surprise.
Dave Stohr (09:30):
You're going to what you're going to look at my
credit just to rent thisapartment.
Kassandra Taggart (09:35):
So what's interesting is Five years ago,
10 years ago, a lot of landlordshad hard time just having access
to being able to run thosethings.
Now their software technologyand access to be able to
actually run the backgroundchecks and the credit checks and
figure out the full story toprove that they are who they say
(09:55):
they are.
In, in with our company becauseof us being in a franchise
nationwide, we're able to pullreports for nationwide to grab
those that are travelers.
Whereas the landlord who's justusing on one-off program may not
have access to that.
So technology is a huge part ofactually how much information
you're going to get, but it'salso a huge indicator of if
(10:15):
you're even using it at all.
Here's a story is that most.
Do it yourself landlords, whichis about 80% of this town.
The bad tenants will go towardsthe, do it yourself, landlords,
because most do it yourselflandlord, or do not actually run
the background check oranything.
We did a survey in the latestlandlords Almanac class, and we
(10:38):
asked in the room who doesbackground checks, only half the
room answered they raised theirhand.
Then we asked him again and wesaid all of the ones that say
they do their background check.
Do you just do courtview or doyou do the full background
check?
And it went all the way down toonly three hands, did the full
background check.
And because of that trend, allthe bad tenants go to you.
Whereas with us, we hardly getthe bad tenants because they
(11:01):
know we're going to confirm.
Dave Stohr (11:04):
I was going to ask, does a property owner need to be
stringent or even tough when itcomes to picking quality
tenants?
Are you known as a tough person?
When you try to match a tenantwith the property,
Kassandra Taggart (11:15):
have to be you have to have set rules and,
and you have to be comfortablewith saying yes and no to
people.
We're human.
Right?
We all want to say yes.
And we all want to be acommunity.
We all want to like shake handsand dance and have a good time.
Right.
But the reality is, is whenyou're trying to protect your
investment, you have to makedecisions and you have to make
(11:36):
the right decisions to not losemoney.
So if you were to know meoutside of work, I'm this
awesome fun person and can hangout over dinner.
But in work I have to say, yes,I have to say no, and I have to
create roles and I have to lookStringent hard core and cold
sometimes.
But the reality is, is you haveto set criteria is to make
(11:57):
profit and you have to followbusiness.
Dave Stohr (12:00):
Somebody doesn't qualify for a property.
Do you tell them the truth?
This is why you didn't get in.
Kassandra Taggart (12:06):
No, actually, I can't completely say
everything.
So there's federal requirementsactually regarding doing
background checks and creditchecks on people and you have a
certain requirement of how youtell them.
Yes and no.
For example, when we're doingbackground checks of tenants,
sometimes landlords want to havea copy of the background check.
(12:28):
We actually can't provide itbecause of privacy laws.
So we have to protect theirsocial.
We have to protect their date ofbirth.
We have to protect theinformation and simply say, they
got points for this.
This is so they qualify for yourproperty.
We can't use a whole lot ofother criteria because of, well,
I feel this because fair housingtexts, protected class passes,
(12:52):
and you can't make your ruleslook like you are persuading one
class protected class overanother class.
So where I'm getting to.
Is that yes, you do have arequirement of saying approved
or decline and under decline,you have a few ways to
articulate your declined forincome ratio or your declined
for background check.
(13:13):
You don't have to go into thefine, fine details of why.
And you better have rules inplace to say and support if they
file an audit against you
Dave Stohr (13:21):
You have made professional property
management, your life.
What are you an expert at whenyou're trying to maximize your
rental rate and then minimize.
You're big vacancy time.
I like to say I'm a connector ofdots and, and I always go back
to my little story of you'remaking a pot of soup and you got
to mix all these things togetherto make a decision and what one
(13:45):
person's decision is going to bea different from a different
person's decision.
But what I can say is experienceand know how and seeing trends
and facts and how trained we aremakes the difference.
Kassandra Taggart (13:56):
I'll give you an example.
Did you know, in 20, yeah, 2019,where we ran over nine 950
applications.
Dave Stohr (14:04):
I did not know that
Kassandra Taggart (14:05):
because of that, you can see, trends very
clearly and the 950 applicationswe can say, Oh, this, this
trends coming through, or thistrends leaving right.
But when you are only doing oneapplication or two applications,
every two years, you were notgoing to see the trends, a great
trend.
I'll give you some stories thatare going on right now is
(14:26):
tenants will put down a phonenumber saying, that's my prior
landlord call them for areference check.
You call them and they're not alandlord.
It's just a friend's cell phonenumber.
Oh yeah, Johnny's great.
Of course.
They're going to say Johnny'sgreat.
It's your friend.
So you have to combination itwith a whole bunch of other
stuff to make the decisions.
Dave Stohr (14:43):
And from your experience when you're trying to
rent a property quickly, whathappens when that rental rate
let's say is just too high?
Kassandra Taggart (14:50):
If it's too high, you're going to get the
wrong crowd, actually.
When you have too high of a rentyou're going to have the wrong
type of people wanting to applybecause the bad tenants know
that if we overpay for rentyou'll look the other way on
their background.
Right.
We have a story.
And this was kind of aninteresting story.
There's an there's a landlordwho called call me up and said,
(15:11):
I want you to rent to thesepeople.
We said, okay, well, we're notrenting unless we do a
background check.
He goes, no, no, no rent today.
You're just trying to hold it upto where I don't get my rent
check.
I said, I don't let any tenantsmove in to any of our properties
that we manage unless we do abackground check.
We did a background check andfound six evictions, one
pending.
And we called him up and said,well, we would never approve
this particular tenant based onthe criteria.
(15:32):
Well, you're just trying to bedifficult and you're not trying
to get it rented.
So, so I want you to prove themanyways.
I said, sir, I need you to putin writing that you're okay to
rent to a tenant that has sixevictions, one pending, and know
that the likelihood of yougetting.
$400 over the market rent pricefor your place.
Probably not going to get it.
You're going to move them in,give them Keystone property, and
(15:53):
they're not going to be able topay rent.
The risk is high.
If you want to sign off on it,here's a letter you're going to
sign it, not me and then hedidn't sign.
So we were able to put it backkeep it on the market.
And we found a good tenant.
That's still there today andthey paid market rent.
Not overpriced.
Dave Stohr (16:08):
And what if the tenant qualifications are just
too low,
Kassandra Taggart (16:11):
if they're too low, your eviction rates are
going to start increasing inyour property.
The dollar amount of damages inyour property is going to go up
and your maintenance bills areactually going to go up because
bad, tenants that don't care.
For example, they don't reportthe wash machine is leaking
water underneath the goodtenants that care about building
their future and building theirlives.
(16:32):
They're going to reporteverything in anything.
Sometimes it might be a littleannoying because they're
reporting everything in anythingbut they will report.
So you can make a decision ofhow to keep your property
maintain, but bad tenants,everything goes.
Dave Stohr (16:44):
I was going to say, what's been your overall
experience with high-risktenants is it just a problem?
Kassandra Taggart (16:50):
There is ways to work with tenants that went
through a rough patch.
Like for example, they just wentthrough a divorce and their
background shows.
The, the result of a divorcecause of divorce.
Everyone destroys everyone,right?
Yes.
But there are other bad tennis.
That's just not a fit for them.
So when you have a bad tenantgoing into a property it's just
(17:11):
expensive.
Do you realize that an evictionjust on the legal fees typically
costs anywhere from$400 to$2,000all day long?
Dave Stohr (17:19):
That's amazing.
Kassandra Taggart (17:20):
And you're up to 30 days of sitting there
waiting for them to get kicked.
Because you got your court, youreviction, you, then you gotta
get your troopers to come inthere and remove them during
that time.
They're just ruining your placeand ruining your place.
Dave Stohr (17:31):
I was going to say, who rents to this group of
people who obviously need ahome, but whose behavior is
constantly,
Kassandra Taggart (17:38):
the people that don't do checks they, they
don't do background checks.
They, they don't know that thesetenants are the bad ones.
They just, they just let themin.
When you hand keys.
He had signed up for it.
Dave Stohr (17:49):
And when you encounter high-risk tenants, is
the industry alerted to them ordoes every property manager find
out for themselves sooner orlater?
Kassandra Taggart (17:57):
They do find out for themselves sooner or
later.
There's a, there's a thing inthis town with a, what I call
tenant hopping.
So a tenant will find somebodythat doesn't do background
checks or find somebody who is asucker and really wants their
place rented and get so eager.
Well happen is that tenant willmove in and let's say, let's say
you let them move into yourplace.
(18:19):
Right?
They move into your place andyou don't pay the first month's
rent and you're like, Oh, thisjust happened.
Then they don't pay the secondmonth's rent.
Oh, this just happened.
But because you're a newlandlord, you don't know, you
should have already startedposting.
You should have started alreadydoing late fees.
You should already startevictions.
And because you're busy withwork, you just go, ah, let it
slide there, go people.
(18:39):
They just moved in.
Well, By the time you decide tofinally post on them before,
right before you start to do thecourt process, they'll leave.
They'll leave your place withthe truck because they have just
enough to fill up a pickup truckand then they'll go pick on the
next person.
And I have a friend who has akid that's probably now sitting
around 10 months.
I'm not having to pay rentbecause they're hopping from
(19:00):
landlord to landlord, tolandlord.
Dave Stohr (19:02):
Y ou mentioned the word systems quite a bit.
How do systems play intoproperty management success?
Specifically yours f
Kassandra Taggart (19:10):
or me systems make it to where and keep
emotions out.
That that's my biggest still.
And it also makes it to where Ican scale.
And it's where I can manageprofits.
Systems keeps you out of troublewith the federal rules and the
state rules systems make it towhere you can create speed.
Systems is basically the coreproperty management and
(19:31):
landlording a lot of peopledon't realize.
How important that is because inthe rental world, like the story
we just gave, you were soexcited.
You want to get that placerented.
So you can Pat yourself on theback and say, I got it written
in three days and I'm gettingrent.
Well, you're not actuallygetting rent cause they haven't
paid rent in two months.
And you didn't have systems inplace to figure out how to
charge them the late fee or howto give them options to swipe
(19:52):
their credit card because theydon't have the cash or you don't
have systems in place toenforce.
And when you're missing any ofthose systems, you get emotional
and you get scared and you'rewriting the check for the
mortgage and the utilities, notthem.
So then you're like now I don'thave money for my own place.
Dave Stohr (20:07):
Right?
Kassandra Taggart (20:08):
So it's a cycle of bad decisions.
Dave Stohr (20:10):
And ultimately, what will the right system produce
for a property manager, aproperty manager and the real
estate investor.
Kassandra Taggart (20:17):
Profits.
Everybody wants profit.
Everyone wants it's cash.
Everyone sits there.
Cash is King.
I mean, it really is cash Kingand if you don't have recurring
revenue coming in consistently,then that means your systems are
flawed or your ability to makedecisions.
A lot and you need to get out ofthe business or put somebody in
(20:38):
charge of the business to helpyou get that flow going.
You, if you miss that profit,you're not buying more rentals.
You're you're I mean, thinkabout it.
This is like your retirementaccount.
You don't put your money in thestock market and go, Oh, it went
negative this month and lookaway.
Oh, at it went negative again,this month, we're going to look
out away.
Its 30 year, whole 10 year holdsright long holds.
(20:59):
But if it's negative longenough, wouldn't you just take
the money out and move it.
Dave Stohr (21:02):
Sounds good.
Kassandra Taggart (21:03):
I mean, you put systems in place to watch
that.
So why aren't we putting asystems in place to manage your
multiple hundreds of thousandsdollar investment?
Dave Stohr (21:12):
The conversation's unlimited with Kassandra
Taggart, the president of realproperty management of Anchorage
and the author of the book painor profit secrets of profitable
rental property investors.
I'm Dave stohr time now forquestions and answers that we've
collected in anticipation oftoday's conversation.
Kassandra, I'm sure the havecome across your desk before.
I'm sure you'll have qualifiedanswers for all of these.
(21:33):
Here's your first question?
How do you have well, or Ishould say, how do you have
water tested for minerals?
Kassandra Taggart (21:41):
So there are specialists in town that a lot
of people don't realize thatwell has well septic tanks and
all that stuff have many.
Specialties and facets to it.
Like you got an electrician thatcan make the pumps work, you got
people that know how to test thewaters.
Then you got people who installthe Wells.
You got people who cleaned theWells.
You've got people who know howto find the leaks and the lines
(22:02):
between the house and the well,and then you've got pumps that
deal with the well to filter andclean it.
So there are specialties forthose items you can call a lot
of contractors and they'realready connected to them
because a lot of people don'tknow their direct numbers or
know that they're licensed,bonded, insured, and that their
specialty is actually certifiedin Wells.
So you definitely want toresearch before you just hire
(22:24):
somebody off of Google.
Dave Stohr (22:25):
As a property manager, do you go outside your
own business?
Outside your own building andlook for qualified contractors
and water testers.
Do you go into the community andlook for those people?
Kassandra Taggart (22:35):
Yeah, lot of people don't realize that when
you're working with vendors youhave to have a lot of vendors.
So for example we are preparing1099, 1099 is something you have
to send to your vendors whenyou're using them for work,
because the IRS wants to makesure they track the dollars.
Right.
For 2019, we did over 237, 1099for vendors that we paid over
(23:00):
$600 for that's how many vendorsI had to use to get work done.
So you don't just have one guy,you need to have like a list of
all kinds of guys.
And then you have to have oneguy on your list that is
connected or knows a lot of theother.
Guys that can get things done.
Example was yesterday I wastalking to a good friend or two
days ago, and she didn't realizethat when your place freezes you
(23:23):
don't call plumber, you call afar.
I never thought about that.
Yeah.
You have to call a guy who hasspecial equipment to D frost,
all the pipes.
Then you have to have a plumberat the same time, ready to fix
those pipes, turn on and off thewater and fix those pipes when
they discover them.
So you actually have to have twovendors to fix frozen pipes and
potentially a third for a guywho knows how to pick up the
(23:45):
water.
And if.
The pipe that broke.
If it's a class, depending onthe class of water you may need
somebody who is sanitized, whocan do sanitation, because it
could be a septic sewer thatbroke or dirty water that broke.
So you may need four or fiveparticular vendors to take care
of it.
One freeze
Dave Stohr (24:02):
and you need them right now.
So they must be on a master listof contractors.
Kassandra Taggart (24:07):
They must, and to make an even more
complicated.
It, and unfortunately it'sbusiness this way.
It is because of how the volumethat I have as a property
manager versus the volume ofwhat you might have as a
landlord, your.
Your speed dial list might bethe same speed dial list as us,
but because of my volume,they're going to pick my
property and come to service usbefore they service you.
(24:30):
And they're also going to giveme a special rate versus you.
And I don't mean to be rude, butit's business.
I have volume.
I have the ability to callsomebody up and say, I want you
here by this time.
Like every day, this week.
4:58.
We've had pipe breaks, pipefreezes and everything.
Cause we're in the cold tempsright now.
Right.
And the vendors were therewithin 30 minutes to an hour for
(24:52):
all of our properties.
I don't think they were therethat way for my friend.
She said it took two hoursbefore she finally got help.
And most of them was because theonly response she got that help
is because she called a friendof a friend who knew a person
who worked there to try to pullfavors because that's how it
works in business.
Dave Stohr (25:09):
Absolutely.
You have led me to my next twoquestions who pays for frozen
pipes, the landlord, or thetenant.
Kassandra Taggart (25:15):
The landlord.
Dave Stohr (25:16):
Okay.
It goes back to that person.
Kassandra Taggart (25:18):
The seldom will go on the tenant.
There are some stories where itcan go on the tenant but most of
the time it's the landlord.
So to give everyone some updateson numbers right now, most of
our pipe break situations arerunning between$1500 and$5,000.
That is how fast it goes and howmuch damage it goes when it goes
bad.
Dave Stohr (25:37):
Yeah.
Incidentally, the, what theweather is going to warm up by
next Wednesday.
We're going to see temperaturesin the middle.
Thirties.
I saw that on the weatherchannel this morning.
My next question.
And it's one you just talkedabout.
What is the dollar limit?
I have to 10 99, a contractor.
One of our listeners wants toknow
Kassandra Taggart (25:51):
it's actually $600.
And if it's an entity thatdoesn't require a 1099.
So for example, enstar would notneed a 1099 for you paying your
utility bills.
Because they're a corporation,they filed their own, but LLCs
contractors.
So until they changed the taxcode, you're supposed to send a
10 99 to your vendor for$600.
(26:11):
I also want to give you oneextra bit of information is that
the IRS they'll do these auditsand they'll say, Oh, this vendor
didn't pay their taxes, but yousaid that they exist.
So I'm going to come to you andtry to find them.
And in because you're supposedto have your paperwork in order,
I'm going to give you a hundreddollars fine per vendor that you
(26:32):
mess up for not having yourpaperwork in order because that
guy didn't file their taxes andI can't find him.
So I'm going to come to you totry to find them.
So you should have yourpaperwork in order.
To find him.
Right.
Dave Stohr (26:42):
Right.
Kassandra Taggart (26:43):
So you should have your W9 in place for this
person.
You should make sure thatthey're licensed bonded
insurances on file, because younever know when the permitting
office is going to come afteryou for that.
And you need to have all yourpaperwork in order for every
vendor you hire.
Sounds like a lot of work.
Dave Stohr (26:58):
It really does.
That's why you're a professionalproperty manager.
I'm on the radio.
Here's an interesting question.
Does not having a dishwashermake a big difference in rental
value or quality?
Kassandra Taggart (27:09):
I think it does.
It is possible to have like astudio apartment.
That may not have a dishwasher,but has a, a way to wash dishes.
But I don't recommend it.
I don't even think I have asingle property in our database
that doesn't have a dishwasher.
I understand dishwashers arepainful.
They, they break, they, theydon't make them like they used
(27:29):
to usually have to replace themevery seven to 10 years.
Now it seems like but.
They're like 200, 300 bucks nowto put in a new one rather than
service it.
And when the, when the, thepipes in the back disconnect or
get clogged, then you got to fixthat.
That's like$150 service workorder.
So it gets annoying and it getsexpensive.
(27:49):
And unfortunately, that's thecost of doing business at this
time,
Dave Stohr (27:52):
you're going to have to ask.
Kassandra Taggart (27:54):
As we head in where we're in the 21st century,
when you look at the newappliances, the smart appliances
appliances that talk to you,appliances that produce things.
Are you stymied by thetechnology that is now going
into washers and dryers,dishwashers, refrigerators.
I mean, it's just not open thedoor and close it anymore.
And the cost of the repair,those things must be, it is
(28:15):
that's a very good perspective.
A lot of people forget thisthought because when you make it
your home, you want all this.
Fancy technology.
Do you want that those nestthermostats hookup to the wifi
you want, you want the fridge togo shopping list, add eggs?
You know, you want those thingswhen it's your home, here's the
problem when they break.
(28:37):
So first of all, the concern is,is that you got to have a
technician that understands theelectronic side of the
appliances enough to know whatpart broke.
Is it a programming issue or isit the control board?
So let's just say it's a controlboard.
On LG appliances, most controlboards are 800 to$1,200 for me
to get fit brought in fromwherever it's made.
(28:59):
Cause they don't have them.
Ready-made ship them here, whichis another week.
And then they finally get hereand then you've got to get on
the tech schedule to get theminstalled.
So you're looking at an easy$1,500, which is the cost of a
basic GE Whirlpool typeappliance that you could have
just installed, made the tenanthappy in a week.
Dave Stohr (29:18):
You know, I'm running into.
Old-school appliance repairmanwho are S are struggling with
the technology as it comes intothe marketplace, they just don't
have the training.
The training.
Kassandra Taggart (29:28):
There is not really any certified training
for these guys.
It's usually a whole bunch oflike, Guys that don't want to be
handymans cause it's hard ontheir bodies and they don't want
to work for union.
So it's these, this type oftechnician is who typically
picks up these jobs
Dave Stohr (29:43):
independent.
Kassandra Taggart (29:44):
Yes.
The little independence guys andbe careful.
There's a lot of Craigslistfraud guys that claim they can
do or repairs and they can't.
Because, but, but the issue toois, is that.
To pay them a healthy wage andto make them qualified for
licensed bond insurance and allthis stuff.
Their call-out fee is a minimum75, 90 bucks minimum.
(30:04):
That's just a show up.
And then if they have to domultiple trips, fix it in
because we're in Alaska.
Some most parts have to beordered.
Unless you can get it at therehab store stuff.
So you're looking at 150 bucks,easy all day long to fix the
dishwasher that only costs 300bucks.
Did you know that if you just.
Invested and decided, you knowwhat, instead of paying$150 for
(30:27):
a service call, we're just goingto replace it.
You then get to go into theworld of depreciation and taxes
and all those other topics.
So sometimes it might be betterjust to replace.
Dave Stohr (30:38):
You mentioned thermostats.
Here's a, I didn't even knowthese existed.
I want to get limitingthermostats on my unit.
Your thoughts.
Kassandra Taggart (30:46):
We have lots of landlords who want this.
Yeah.
Why here's what the, therethere's various landlord
thermostats, you can get them onAmazon.
You can get them from I believecentral plumbing has them.
Now.
There's a couple other placesthat have them, so you can get
at them.
Yeah.
They're, they're not too tooexpensive to get them and then
(31:07):
install them.
It's just like hooking up.
Any other thermostat andthermostats right now need to be
upgraded in most propertiesbecause when their little
mercury thing starts going outor batteries or wiring goes bad,
you need to upgrade themanyways.
So a lot of landlords aresaying, well, I'm going to take
this opportunity for the upgradeto do the landlord thermostats,
landlord thermostats.
What it does is it regulates theheat in a property
automatically.
(31:28):
So, whether they're there topress up or down on their heat,
it automatically keeps the tempat a certain temperature.
So if a tenant wants to keep itat 80 in their house, they're
not going to be able to.
They literally, depending onwhich stat you buy, it literally
rely re regulate the temperaturein that unit from more between
like 65 and 75 and never let thetemp never let the tenant
(31:49):
override the stat.
So it, it can reduce the heatbill.
I'll be honest.
It can there's a couple oflandlords that's in our
portfolio that has done thework.
And it did reduce their heatbill.
I would say somewhere between 15and 25%, which sounds like a
significant difference.
So you're talking maybe 25, 50bucks per month in the winter
(32:10):
time, it dropped it dependingon, you know, you're building
everything.
But here's what it did do thateverybody forgot.
Tenants are people, tenants arehuman.
They pay a lot of money to havetheir space and their space
their way.
When you start restricting them,when you start messing with
their space, when you startdoing what they feel is taking
(32:30):
away their freedom and theirright you're gonna lose your
good tenants.
And the second one of thelandlords had done that.
They lost three really solid,good paying on time tenants.
And we ended up with not payingtenants.
So, and then you end up with thecost of turning over the unit in
(32:51):
turnovers, typically costs$1,500than your rent as well.
So you're losing, you know, easyto$2,000 in one shot.
So.
Saving about 50 bucks a month onyour utility versus having a
turnover of$2,000 easily.
The math doesn't make sense
Dave Stohr (33:08):
while we're talking about temperature.
Should I prohibit the use ofspace heaters in my properties?
Kassandra Taggart (33:14):
You definitely want to consider that
as a conversation, especiallydepending on who pays the
utilities, what kind of spacetheaters there are tenants still
to this day that have lack ofknowledge about the different
types of space heaters, liketheir space heaters that have
the trip.
Feature.
So if it trips or gets clogged,it'll turn off, those are safe.
Right.
But the other ones, there aretenants.
(33:35):
Like we had to have aconversation just last week with
a tenant saying you aren'tsupposed to use space heaters
that are propane filled, oilfilled all this kind of stuff.
Those are dangerous.
Right.
And if they aren't home, whenthey're running there's a lot of
complications with spaceheaters, space heaters are
needed.
For the purposes of when youhave a no heat, we gotta.
Put in space heaters to keepthings going until we fix
(33:56):
things.
But it's, it's a liability.
It's, it's a, it's a concern.
Dave Stohr (34:02):
One of our listeners wants to know, should I take a
credit card payment for rent?
Kassandra Taggart (34:07):
So that's an interesting debate because.
Credit cards, costs money toprocess and credit cards.
For some people that money is anemotional thing for a lot of
people, right?
So they think if I allow atenant to pay with a credit
card, that means they ran out ofmoney and they're living on
credit.
How do they have that kind ofbudget?
They must be bad tenants.
(34:27):
Some landlords take it as.
Well, if they don't have thecash and something happened with
her car this weekend, at leastthey could swipe a card and I
still get paid.
And then there's the debate ofwho pays the fees for processing
of credit cards.
So there's that concern as well.
We took the approach ofcontinuously trying to receive
money.
So we have 86% of our tenantspay online.
(34:51):
And out of that percentage, Ithink it's around 5% do use
credit cards because they getpoints and they don't mind
paying the fees to get theirpoints.
It's not that they're badtenants.
So we do accept credit cards andwe do have a system set up to
where it's safe and secure.
Just know that credit cards docome with other problems that
you don't get with cash.
For example, they can Mark thatthe.
(35:13):
Credit card swipe is fraud andmake it reverse.
And then you're out the rent,
Dave Stohr (35:19):
you know, all the stories don't you, you know, all
the tricks is a risk to creditcards.
Kassandra Taggart (35:24):
You will get your money, but it's possible
that they may play a game with acredit card to make you fight,
to keep that money up to a fewmonths.
Dave Stohr (35:32):
And while we're talking about money, do you
chase down tenants?
One of our listeners wants toknow that owe you money, or just
let it go and just get a newtenant.
Kassandra Taggart (35:42):
That's a, that's always an interesting
debate because the debate reallyis about how much money do you
want to spend going after it?
How much time do you want tospend going after it and time's
money.
So if you're a landlord whodon't pay yourself a wage for
doing property management thenyou may not be one of those
landlords that pay yourself awage to go stand in the court
(36:02):
lines to go.
File all these writs ofjudgments and writs of
executions and run around bankto bank doing bank sweeps.
You, you could be that landlordthat does all that.
That's fine.
If you want to be one of thosethe, the, when you make a
mistake and place a bad tenant.
Sometimes you place bad tenantsthat just get in a fight and
there's issues.
But when you make a mistake,that actually is a bad tenant.
(36:24):
Going after them, the likelihoodof you getting your money is
very slim.
What you can do is you cancontract with a collection
company and the collectioncompany will take a percent of
whatever they collect.
They're allowed to negotiate thebalance.
So you may go all the way from.
They owe me a thousand to youonly get 200 bucks, but they'll
do all the legwork.
(36:45):
So it's a good option.
Dave Stohr (36:47):
How much does the tenant balance need to be before
you consider filing an eviction?
Kassandra Taggart (36:52):
Everybody has a different threshold.
Here's what I can say in, in,in, you should have your own
threshold that you'recomfortable with.
The cost of a court just to fileis around 400, 500 bucks.
Right?
Then you got the stress of themyelling and being mad.
Then they open work orders.
Then they do all this otherstuff to you.
And then you have a bad taste inyour tongue.
(37:12):
So if you're filing for aeviction and willing to pay$600,
because the tenant didn't pay,let's say a hundred bucks.
You're not making the bestbusiness decision with money and
you're being shortsighted andemotional.
So we'd like to say, needs to beat least above 300.
Before we start filing courtproceedings, we will do payment
arrangements it on certaincircumstances because they've
(37:34):
been good and then just had anoopsie because of a job transfer
or something.
So you need to make a businessdecision that works for you.
Shall waste money.
Dave Stohr (37:42):
I'm Dave store with the president of real property
management of Anchorage and theauthor of the book, painter
profit secrets of profitablerental property investors.
Kassandra, how can investorsfind out more about joining the
landlords club,
Kassandra Taggart (37:54):
the landlord's club and the fastest
way to get everything you needis to actually go to the
website, which is the.
It's almanac.com there you'llsee a place where you can post
questions and forums andthoughts that you have, or be
supportive of other landlordsthat are here in Anchorage, the
databases over 2,500 landlords.
Sitting there chatting andhelping each other out is
amazing.
Dave Stohr (38:13):
You're a very busy person do you make yourself
available to mentor newinvestors
Kassandra Taggart (38:18):
all the time?
So just say just attend theclasses and if you can't get the
direction that you need a callin and we'll schedule some times
to guide you either on how tostep up, how to buy the right
property, then.
That's you we'll help you instrategically handling the
maintenance there.
We have so many differentpackages with property
management that we can help youjust ask and say, this is what I
(38:40):
need.
Dave Stohr (38:40):
That is so easy.
Kassandra, thank you for yourknowledge, your passion and your
guidance over this last hour.
You are, as I'm sure ourlisteners now know an invaluable
resource and it.
Experienced advisor for thosewho are investing in real estate
and taking their first steptowards success, have a good
day.
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