Because the landlord verification process is so cumbersome, a surprising number of landlords and property managers take it lightly—or don’t bother with it at all! But what if there was a quick and easy way to verify a prospective tenant’s rental history?
Sherry McKillop is the Chief Operating Officer at LandLord Verification Online. Today, she joins Bob to explain why it’s crucial to complete a thorough landlord verification and walk us through the process of using her team’s service.
Listen in to understand what’s included in LandLord Verification Online’s 14-item questionnaire for past landlords, how the team addresses Fair Housing concerns, and what insights a receiving landlord can glean from the LLVO report.
A time-stamped transcript of the episode is below.
Topics Covered
[2:26] How Sherry’s experience with poor tenants inspired LandLord Verification Online
[5:16] The turnaround time for landlord responses with Sherry’s service
[6:05] The process of using LandLord Verification Online
[8:30] The 14 fact-based questions landlords answer + how they certify that the information is accurate
[11:25] The turnaround time for landlord verification the old-fashioned way
[13:19] Why so many landlords and property managers don’t complete a thorough landlord verification
[14:33] How revealing landlord verification can be in learning about an applicant
[17:35] How to avoid Fair Housing concerns in the landlord verification process
[18:34] How LLVO handles unresponsive landlords
[21:10] What LLVO does to ensure that landlord references are legitimate
[24:38] How Sherry’s team generated the 14-item questionnaire
[27:13] How LLVO is available to individual landlords and property management companies
[28:50] The correlation between verification reports and the tenant experience
[30:18] Why it’s risky to rely solely on a prospective tenant’s credit score
[31:36] Sherry’s personal story about her dad and Dictionary Safari
[34:27] The benefits of using LandLord Verification Online
Connect with Sherry
LandLord Verification FAQs
Connect with Bob
Email info@ncpropertygroup.com
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Bob Preston: 01:10 At my company North County Property Group. We work with people moving in or moving out of properties all the time. We recommend boxengine.com for all moving supplies using the link provided in the show notes. This will hook our referrals up with free shipping on affordable moving kits and services. Give it a look today and discover boxengine.com.
Bob Preston: 01:35 Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Property Management Brainstorm show. I'm Bob Preston, your host, broadcasting from our studio at North County Property Group in Del Mar, California. If you're new here, please subscribe so you have ongoing access to all our great episodes and if you like what you hear, please pay it forward with a positive review. One thing that all of us should be doing as landlords before approving a new tenant application is checking with the previous landlords who leased to that same applicant. The typical process for landlord verification, however, is often time consuming and cumbersome. I have with me today as a guest on the show, Sherry McKillop of Landlord Verification Online to tell us about an innovative process her company offers for taking the pain out of landlord verification. Hey Sherry, welcome to the show today.
Sherry McKillop: 02:22 Bob, thank you so much for having me. I've really been looking forward to this.
Bob Preston: 02:26 Oh, we're glad you're here and perhaps place to start is simply by telling us about yourself, your background, and what Landlord Verification Online is all about.
Sherry McKillop: 02:34 Well that's a, that's a great question. Rather than bore you with my entire life history, I kind of like to focus on my relevant background regarding the real estate industry. So, where that started, it got started about nine years ago. I was the proud owner of one single family residential rental, and it expanded to 39 single family rentals in four states. I had property managers doing the majority of the work, especially those out of state. And what we were finding it was we were continuously getting bad tenants and we were well mortified would be the word. What we found out was that people, our property managers weren't doing a particularly thorough job, or they weren't doing it at all. The landlord verification or the tenant’s Poway rental history. So, what we decided was that we like to call it the missing link. We kind of joked about it, that the landlord verification was the missing link. And we set out to really identify what is the problem. And in our research, what we found out was that the current landlord verification process is really time consuming and difficult. Not only that, but it's stuck in the 1980's because it involves phone tag, emails, printing people were filling forms out by hand.
Bob Preston: 04:03 Faxing, faxing. We have, we have some landlords say, well you've got to fax us a form. We're like, really? You know?
Sherry McKillop: 04:09 Faxing. And then, and then having to return them. And the real interesting part when we looked at that was that when the transaction was done, the information gets buried in someone's file and the next time you get a request, the process starts all over again. So, you know, here we are in the 21st century and we're still operating in the 1980's so what we decided was necessary was to take the process online. And so, what we're doing is we're making it easy for tenants to request verification reports from current and past landlords and then get them directly to the property managers. So, the leasing agents don't have to do any more annoying follow up. Our system actually does all the work for you and we can get into that in a little bit. But what we're really trying to do is make it easy for the landlord also to complete the reports online and at that place in on our site, they're going to accumulate and basically create a long-term record. And the records are accessible 24/7 so the process has become fast and efficient.
Bob Preston: 05:16 Terrific. How long does it take typically to turn it around? I mean like from beginning to end.
Sherry McKillop: 05:20 Yeah, so we usually find that a landlord responds within 24 hours. We did a lot of research too into preferred methods. How do people respond to communication in this day and age? And we found that people, especially landlords, private landlords, they, anybody, but they just don't answer a call from someone whose number they don't recognize. So, then it goes into voicemail and you're like, me, I'm busy. And sometimes I just forget to check voicemail it, you know, it just doesn't happen. It could be a few days and I'm going, Oh my gosh, I have voicemail. So, what we realize is that email is the most preferred method and its part of everyone's kind of to do list to go through the emails. And so that's why we decided to communicate that way.
Bob Preston: 06:05 Okay, terrific. It makes so much sense because we have our tenants apply online that parts, you know, kind of systematize and online we have them screen their pets online, we have them pay their rent online, you know, why not this process, right. And make this part online.
Sherry McKillop: 06:22 Exactly. That is so that's exactly where we were coming from. And you know, the process is actually really easy. It's kind of a little bit two pronged and one is, is that if a landlord or property manager wants to take this time-consuming pain out of their life, they've can just simply go onto the landlordverification.com website. We call it landlordv.com to make it easy and they just register for a free account and they can create a personalized link that they can then use to send their perspective tenants or rental applicants back to our site to complete the rental verification process. So, the tenant clicks that link, it goes back to our site, they register, they request, authorize and then pay for the report. And then the landlord verification website takes care of the rest and the tenants can request a report from up to three past Poway landlords. So, you can have your current landlord and then the immediate past two landlords. And once that information is entered, the system takes over. An email is sent to each landlord with a link back to the site for them to complete the report. And we also know that people are busy. So, uh, or they may be out of town who knows what the issues are, but we send an email reminder out every 18 hours until the report is completed. So, they keep getting that reminder. It doesn't fall to the bottom of the email list. They want to keep popping up. So again, they can click on the link, it takes them right to the site, they register again for free. Um, they click the report and within a, you know, it takes less than a minute really. Well, I mean it depends on how much information you need to look up, but it's a very quick process. And then once the report is completed, the tenant and the receiving landlord receive an email notification that the report is complete and then they can access it online on the site. So, it's again, very efficient and we've designed it to work with the way people communicate today.
Bob Preston: 08:31 Okay. So, let me just get this process straight. Maybe in the, from a context of North County Property Group, my company, right. So, if we open an account, we will tell the tenant, a prospective tenant, Hey, go to this link, register, invite your previous landlords to participate. They would get an automated email. Those previous landlords would complete. Is it a form? Is it a, what is it?
Sherry McKillop: 08:54 It’s actually a 14 standardized yes or no legal to ask data-based or fact-based questions. And we've designed the questions so that they are informative and revealing without including any opinion because it's opinions that get people into trouble. Right?
Bob Preston: 09:13 Right. Yeah. Okay, terrific. And then once that's completed, does the previous landlord or the reference to the kind of sign an affidavit or do they do an electronic signature or what is it that triggers then?
Sherry McKillop: 09:28 Yeah, so that's a really good point. And we've, we did this, we're very redundant about the authorization aspect on our website. So, when people are registering, they are authorizing a in a variety of ways that they're submitting true and accurate information. They are representing that they actually were the property manager at the time the tenant was in the rental, but actually at every step. So, they do that when they first register and then when they submit a report, they have to read that again and, and click it and again certify that they have the authorization to do that.
Bob Preston: 10:05 Okay. And then by sending it to the previous landlord, I'm assuming that the prospective tenant has also authorized that individual to provide the information. That's kind of part of the process. Okay.
Sherry McKillop: 10:16 And that is registering, they are giving their permission to pass future and past landlords to receive this information. And again, you know, people will start a process or let's just say this happened. Sometimes people apply to one place and they don't get that rental and they kind of, they have to start the process again. So, when they go back, they can edit to whom they send the referrals or the landlord verification's and again they have to submit, the industry calls it a click wrap agreement. And so, they, they do that and off it goes again. By the way, this is an important note, I think it's beneficial. We really believe in providing value and we do not like, no one likes paying for something that they don't get a benefit from. And so, there are times when it may have been a long time since you rented, or someone may have gotten out of the industry of past landlord and they never reply to the verification request. And if that happens, the tenant is not charged. So, if they don't get a result, then their credit card does not get charged.
Bob Preston: 11:26 Interesting. Okay. So, you know, this seems pretty seamless pretty quick. If everything goes well, I mean a turnaround on this could be within a matter of hours it sounds like. I mean from registration to getting it in the hands of a previous landlord to that landlord responding. What about the old-fashioned way? Do you have any, like when you started this business, did you study that? Like on average, you know it sticky notes, a fax machines, maybe PDF forms, phone calls, how long would it take typically kind of before if you're doing it the old school way?
Sherry McKillop: 11:58 Well that's a great question too and it was an important one for us when we were designing. And so how we went about conducting the research was we attended various industry trade shows and everyone who came by answered our survey and the average time that people spent tracking down rental histories or landlord verification's was one hour per applicant. So, it's, it takes a lot of time doing it the old-fashioned way. And again, part of that is just phone tag faxing, filling out by hand, getting interrupted. Cause then you have to take the phone call, you know, whatever's happening in your office at that time. There's a lot of stuff that's going on.
Bob Preston: 12:41 That one hour must be aggregate too because there's, there's real time, which is the number of, cause you know, sometimes it can take, even though maybe it's only taken you an hour of your time out of your workflow, maybe it's taken a day or two to collect all the information. You know what I'm saying?
Sherry McKillop: 12:57 Yes. That's exactly right. Yeah. We were basically asking the actual amount of time you spend on the process, not the amount of time that lapses between when you start it and when it's completed.
Bob Preston: 13:09 Right. So, you've taken an application and if it takes two days to get a previous Poway landlord verification, I mean that can be a huge delay. In the meantime, you know, that tenant may have gone and rented someplace else. I mean that's right. You've got this. So, okay. Because of the cumbersome time and and the various moving parts involved in this. It seems like sometimes this process for landlord verification, I don't want to say it's ignored, but perhaps it's viewed as kind of a check box or kind of a rubber stamp like yeah, we did a, we did a verification. I mean I've had employee verification's like that too before where employers would call me about a previous employee. Had he worked for you? Yes. You know, okay, stamp, you know, boom onto the next one. Right. And you hear that and that seems like kind of a bad idea to treat this process so lightly.
Sherry McKillop: 13:52 Well, we have firsthand experience and we didn't realize it, but the state that we had the majority of our houses in, we had a property manager and we found out after we'd fired them because we found that we ran into his leasing agent who had also since quit, that he actually, not only did he not do criminal histories, he never reached out to do a landlord verification. And that's why we were having so many problems. You know, again, from talking to people, a lot of landlords roll their eyes, they know it's a necessary process and they really hate doing it because it's so cumbersome.
Bob Preston: 14:32 It's a pain. Let's face it, it is a little bit of a pain, but it's super important. Well, one thing that we found is that the application itself can sometimes have omissions. I don't want to say people lie on their application. I don't think that's normal and I would never accuse anybody of that. But they sometimes fail to leave out pertinent information. Well, and often times that can be about how they were with their previous Poway landlord or perhaps what happened with their previous lease. And so, I think those kinds of things are pretty important. I mean in your experience, how revealing can a thorough landlord verification be about learning more about that particular applicant?
Sherry McKillop: 15:12 Well, I think the place for us, and I think most people is it tells you how is this tenant going to be in my rental? Not only are they going to pay the rent on time, are they the kind of tenant who complains about every little thing? Although that wouldn't necessarily show up on a verification report. Again, we really worked very hard to make our information factual and leave out the opinion. So, we look at things like, you know, did they pay their rent-on time, did they damage the property? Things that can have a big impact on turnaround and you know, non-performance of a property that all matters.
Bob Preston: 15:56 Right. And you know, those kinds of things are important. Like just I think, you know, one thing I always like about getting a landlord verification is that there's some indication of, okay, what was the relationship like? I mean, do they, they pay on time? Yes. Do they, you know, how are they, would you rent the big question? Would you rent to them again? I assume you answered pass that question right. And that's always the big one. Like, okay, yeah, they're a little annoying, but yet they were great tenants would rent to them again. Okay. Then some of that other stuff we can overlook.
Sherry McKillop: 16:21 Does that specific question and I’ll just give you, uh, an example from my own portfolio, I have a tenant, had a tenant. She actually recently left, but she was with me for almost four years and every month I had to, what can, I felt like I had to beg her for the rent, but the rent always got paid with the late fee. So, in actuality, I was ahead every month, but it was, you know, I had to go ask for it and kind of track her down. So, you know, when it comes time for me to answer that question, I was really undecided. I mean I had a great of a tenant who paid but never on time. And so, I really couldn't say for myself, would I rent to this tenant again? So, we have the option for people to stay on. I'm really undecided about that right now.
Bob Preston: 17:06 That's interesting. Okay. So, you can sort of say, Hm, not sure. I mean, to me that would be almost like saying, well I don't, I don't think I would, but you know, I get it now. I think it's important.
Sherry McKillop: 17:14 When you look at that question with the rest of the questions on the form, you can kind of draw your own inference from the answers. So, in this case you would see that she paid late consistently, but she did not owe any money at the time she left. So those are some things that you can weigh in the balance. If that makes sense.
Bob Preston: 17:36 Yes, absolutely. Now I'm going to assume, and I, you know, you can confirm this, that you've sort of covered any privacy infringement issues or fair housing considerations in your list of questions in regard to the verification process. And are there any things there that you know our listeners should be aware of?
Sherry McKillop: 17:54 You know, the fair housing laws are really based on the prohibition of discrimination based on, and there's a whole list and it starts with race, color, religion, creed, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression. It depends on what state you're in, how many additional elements there are to this, but marital status, national origin, ancestry, all of those things. And we do not ask any questions that relate to any of those. So, there is no way that we could, or you could be violating their rights by answering the questions on our form.
Bob Preston: 18:36 Well, the nice thing about it too, with your services, that you take that out of the hands of somebody who might be doing kind of one of those quick and slam dunk reference checks we talked about before. Right? The checkbox rubber stamp one where they might slip and ask some question the wrong way. That could be interpreted as a fair housing violation by the person who's being asked or the way it gets answered. So that's an important, uh, aspect of your service as well. Hey, do you find that the former landlords are responsive? I mean, I guess that's the one thing, like, do they, oh gosh, you know, maybe I shouldn't give a response on this particular tenant because it went so bad. Or, you know, what happens if they simply never, never respond or never complete the report?
Sherry McKillop: 19:19 Well, uh, you know, that does happen occasionally. Our experience has been more that the reason for non-response is that the email that was given was incorrect. So, they actually never got the request. Or number two, they're out of the industry and they just couldn't be bothered anymore. They just, you know, they just don't even want to go there. And so, the question, what happens, you know, those people don't fill out a report, which is also why we give tenants the opportunity to request up to three verification reports from three past Poway landlords. So at least one of them will fill out a form. That's been our experience.
Bob Preston: 20:01 Okay. And is the new landlord given the information on the references so that if they wanted to step in, like say two, three days goes by, if they wanted to step in and actually make a phone call to that person, do they have access to that? Their, their contact information?
Sherry McKillop: 20:15 You know, they, they actually do not. However, we also encourage property managers to reach out to us to be proactive. We recommend that and we often do ourselves, once we receive the verification requests, we will just go ahead and call that property management company or the past landlord to let them know that an email is coming and so that they're expecting it, they're looking for it and they can get right to it. And obviously we let them know that it's time sensitive.
Bob Preston: 20:48 Okay, so, so perhaps the info, you got the information elsewhere, like maybe on a rental application or something. Is that kind of what you're saying or,
Sherry McKillop: 20:55 well because it's our website, we have access to all of the aspects of,
Bob Preston: 21:00 I see. Okay. I, I'm sorry, I sort of took it as a, we speaking like you're the landlord from a lamp or per speed try from company perspective, you give them a heads up in advance that it's coming. That's wonderful. Okay. So, okay, cool. So how, I guess at the end of the day, do you really know that the person that the applicant provided as a Poway landlord reference is really someone that they read from and not their uncle or their father-in-law or something like that?
Sherry McKillop: 21:25 Boy, isn't that the question? Well, we have a nationwide database of over 3000 verified landlords and property managers and it's growing every day. But when we see a verification report requests going to any kind of a nonprofessional email address, we are hot on the trail to make sure that that person in particular is a validated landlord. And just to share a story about that. This happened last week when a tenant requested a verification, and so it was a Gmail account, or it was something that was unprofessional. So, we reached out to that person. They gave a glowing report. The gal said that she owns several rentals and that she was a traveling nurse and, and we felt pretty good about it. And then we reached back out to the receiving landlord, the person who received the applicant, and she mentioned that there were two people applying for the rental and one of the people was the name that was listed as a past landlord.
Bob Preston: 22:40 Oh my gosh. Okay.
Sherry McKillop: 22:43 So you know, it's, it's unfortunate that we're living in a day and age where people lie and that's just, we, we just have to take it as a fact nowadays. So, everything that we do, we are at the first part trying to be proactive to make sure that we have an accurate database of people that are already verified. And as I mentioned, that's growing every day. But we also go the extra mile that when we see something that does not look legit, we do everything in our power to verify that it is a legit or we immediately call the receiving Poway property manager or landlord and let them know what we've found and we let them come to their own conclusion.
Bob Preston: 23:25 Okay, so you are looking for red flags. I mean I think that's the most important thing is going through this process. You want to look for those kinds of things, those, the consistencies or maybe a slight bending of the truth that gives you a heads up that Hey, maybe something's not quite right with this person.
Sherry McKillop: 23:38 Yeah, absolutely. And I think at least on ours rental app, it basically says that if we find that anything that's been written on our application is false, then that automatically disqualifies you from renting from us.
Bob Preston: 23:53 Okay. Terrific.
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Bob Preston: 24:41 So if I'm now the, I'm North County Property Group and one of my tenants has gone in, sent request to their previous landlords, I'm getting out what I'm getting a report. Right, which has answers to the various 14 questions I think that are on your questionnaire to that landlord, that previous landlord. Is that right? So, where do those questions come from? I mean, is there kind of an industry standard list of 14 or did you, did you again do some research on what those 14 questions should be?
Sherry McKillop: 25:10 Well, we started with our own experience again and what was the information that we would want to know and what kind of factual information could we get that would tell the story about how the tenant behaved as a tenant. And so those were the questions. And one of the things that we came up against was that the evictions often get started but they don't get completed. And if they don't get completed, they do not get recorded. So, there is a huge piece of information that's really valuable that doesn't show up in any public records. And so, we wanted to include that in our questionnaire. We also found it valuable to find out if there was a forced move out. And so, if there's a forced move out that doesn't show up on a public record necessarily. And then oftentimes some people are just happy to give cash, I'll give you cash or you're going to ease, and you get the heck out of my rental. And so, we ask that question as well. Questions like, did the rent require trash or furniture haul out? That really demonstrates, you know, how did this person treat the rental when they left? Were they interested in getting their security deposit back? We've had three of our rentals burn due to tenant behavior and so we asked the question, was there fire damage? Was there water damage, was there other damage to property? And we allow people to using a checklist indicate what kinds of damaged carpet, appliances. We actually had tenants steal our appliances and then you can upload up to six photos documenting the damage. So not only we do, do we allow you to indicate what type of damage, but give photographs of it.
Bob Preston: 27:07 Wow. Much more thorough than your typical, I think you know, kind of in-house verification for sure. Okay. Okay. Well we talked about the format that the information comes back, it's in, it's in the form of a report with, I assume that the photos would be attached and things like that. Do you offer your service to individual landlords or just to property management companies like North County Property Group?
Sherry McKillop: 27:28 We offer it to anyone who owns a rental and receives rental applications. So, there's no restrictions on who can use the site.
Bob Preston: 27:39 That's terrific. We have a lot of our listeners are individual kind of self-managed landlords, not just Poway property management companies. So, I think those, those are the types of people that could really benefit hugely from your service to kind of take this off their plate and let it be done through kind of an automated approach.
Sherry McKillop: 27:56 And you know, that's so true. And it's, it's actually kind of a cathartic process. We, we might get to this in a little bit, but it's a very cathartic experience to fill out a verification report and individual property managers or landlords can do that proactively. They don't have to wait until someone asks. As soon as a tenant moves out, they can go onto the site and fill out that verification report and it's in the system. So, whenever a tenant in the future applies and that next property manager is using Landlord Verification Online, that report's going to show up whether the tenant requested it or not. It's part of their history.
Bob Preston: 28:37 Oh, now that's interesting. So part of being a registered landlord in your system, you could kind of go in and proactively fill out a verification report on the tenant that just moved out and then it's kind of there for anybody who wanted to look at it in the future. Is that what you're saying?
Sherry McKillop: 28:53 That's exactly right.
Bob Preston: 28:55 Okay, so being, I think you alluded to this earlier, kind of in some of your description of the question is being a good tenant involves much more than just pay. I paid rent on time every month. I mean, do you find, this may be an obvious question, but I think it's a good one. Anyway. There's a correlation between the verification reports that come back and what you can expect the tenant experience to be if you were to actually lease to that individual?
Sherry McKillop: 29:15 Yes. As a matter of fact, a lot of people find that it's more important and more valuable than the credit check or the criminal history is. Matter of fact, I pulled some comments off a website that I'm a participant in and I'd just like to read it. This one gal wrote, she said, background, a background check is so important, but it should not be annoying. She says, I'm thinking about going to their homes as part of the background and references chat just to see how their apartment looks now. She wrote it. I think this is even more to the point. She said, I had a guy with good credit and excellent income. I found his landlord; he didn't give me the right number and the landlord said he was in eviction and owed two months’ rent. She said, it's totally worth the time to do the research, and this was for a high-end home. So it is, again, very revealing. It's a very revealing part of a tenant history and in my opinion and in the opinion of a lot of people, it should not be overlooked.
Bob Preston: 30:23 Well, that was one of my other questions is kind of similarly, is there a correlation between credit score and what you might expect the verification report to come back with? Right. Do you find that like somebody who has a good credit score, maybe they have an 800 or something that there's a correlation between that and how they necessarily might treat a property or treat their landlord?
Sherry McKillop: 30:45 I would have to say that on the face of it, yes. But there's always the exception and yeah, and I know none of us want to be the person who gets the exception. And I've spoken with Poway property management companies who deal exclusively with high-end homes and the only thing they do is a credit check and they; they base all have their decisions on that credit score. The vast majority of people who are in the rental space though aren't in the high-end market. And so, it's just, it's a risky proposition to not do this. And when the tenant is paying for it and, and entering all of the past landlord data, it doesn't take you any time at all. So, it's a good insurance policy we're looking out for you on this end to again, verify that the people who are responding are actually legitimate.
Bob Preston: 31:40 Well sure. And our rich rockstar might have a wonderful credit score. But then you know, you've heard of rockstar parties, you know, treated property just horrible. You never know. Right? Even in a high-end, even in a high-end property. Hey, I always like to ask my guests to tell a brief story about themselves and just to share with us a bit, hopefully you're up for this today. It could be something personal in your life that either impacted you greatly at either personal or professional and you know, Hey, can we get you to tell us one of your stories?
Sherry McKillop: 32:08 Yeah. You know, this is such a coincidence that this is happening today. So, today's December 3rd, 2019 and nine years ago, my beloved father passed away and he was such a huge influence in my life and just a dearly loved and he was a California State Park Ranger and we often lived in remote areas. And one of the areas that we lived when I was, Oh, let me see, I think I was six when we moved there and about 12 we left. There was no TV reception. We did not have a TV for five years of my, you know, from, what did I say, six to 12? That's six years. That was in California. It was on the, a was an area North of Santa Barbara called Gaviota.
Bob Preston: 32:57 Oh my goodness. I know that area. Well, I just climbed Gaviota peak about two weeks ago. Incredible.
Sherry McKillop: 33:03 Well, I have climbed out myself, uh, with a, uh, sheep in tow on Christmas day.
Bob Preston: 33:09 Okay.
Sherry McKillop: 33:11 But my dad bought this giant dictionary when we were living there. And a few times in the evening he would pull me up on his lap and we would do something. I ended up naming dictionary Safari and my dad would pick out certain words. And I think it's just so profound that he picked out certain words like perseverance and we would read what the definition of perseverance is. And those words had a huge impact in my life and also my love for words and love for writing. And that words have precise meanings and that we need to use the correct words and in language. And I've taken that and, and I can say that that goes into how we created this service as well, that that words, the words that we use are specific and they mean specific things. And it's not really something that you can interpret, but that's my story. And, and today's the ninth anniversary of my father's passing. And how cool is it that I get to share it?
Bob Preston: 34:15 I love it very, very, very much heartfelt. And I liked, I got the impression that some of the words he chose for you are ones where you've been able to also extract some kind of life lessons for yourself, perseverance, things like that. And this is really terrific.
Sherry McKillop: 34:29 Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Bob Preston: 34:32 Hey Sherry, this has been great content today and I think our listeners will find it very interesting and very usable. So, any last thoughts or comments before we wrap up the show today?
Sherry McKillop: 34:42 Well, yeah, let's, let's see. Um, I guess I'd like to say that landlord verification online is just one more layer of verification and it's free. It's free to property managers and landlords. And the benefits really are that it reduces fraud and it saves you time and money. Our system does the follow up for you. I call it the annoying follow up. Our reports accumulate online. So, you're creating a long-term record. Again, right now it's transactional, the information gets buried. No one ever gets to see it. So, we're bringing it to light. And the uh, forms, the reports are stored online. They're available 24/7 and the tenant is the one who authorizes and pays. And uh, I like to mention more than once. It's free to property managers and landlords.
Bob Preston: 35:37 Yeah. What's wrong with that picture? I mean, there's no reason not to not to try it, you know, I mean, go for it. So, yeah. So, if someone wanted to get in touch with Landlord Verification, how would they, what's the best way to do that? How would they way to do with this?
Sherry McKillop: 35:48 Just get on the site and find this. They're a landlordv.com and I'd love to invite all of your listeners to join the rental history revolution, which is our initiative to what I call challenge the process of how landlord verification's get done. So, in addition to all the things we've already covered, the one action that all property managers and landlords can do for the benefit of their peers, the rest of us is to create a verification report as a tenant leaves. I recommend that people add it to their off-boarding checklist. All the information is fresh, it's right in front of you and it just takes a couple of minutes to fill out the report and then when you get the call from that next property manager or landlord, all you have to do is tell them to send their tenant to the site and boom, I say you're done. So, uh.
Bob Preston: 36:42 It kind of helps pay it forward. Yeah, it’s kind of helps pay it forward to other landlords if you do that as well.
Sherry McKillop: 36:49 Absolutely.
Bob Preston: 36:50 Hey, you have a great FAQ page on your website too. I'll publish both your website and the link to the FAQ in our episode notes so people can just click on that to find you. Hey Sherry, thank you. Thank you so much for being here today. Really enjoyed having you on the show.
Sherry McKillop: 37:04 Well thanks Bob. Been a real pleasure and we thank you for your generosity of your time and providing this service to so many people who are out there in this challenging. It can be challenging sometimes the challenging space of rentals.
Bob Preston: 37:18 Absolutely. Okay. As we wrap up today, I'd like to make another quick plug to our listeners to please click on the subscribe button and give us a like also to pay it forward with a positive review to help encourage more great guests like Sherry to come onto our show and provide you with great information. And that concludes today's episode. Thank you for joining the Property Management Brainstorm show. Until next time, we will be in the field working hard for our clients to maximize their property value and rental income and maintain top tenant relations. We'll catch you next time.
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