Let's go back to some of the best guest conversations from last year in the “Best of Brainstorm 2021”, soundbites and highlights from leaders in the property management industry.
Topics Covered
[3:28] Episode 61 featured Mark Scott of Encore Realty in Bonita, CA and Daniel Rogers of All Seasons LLC in Colorado Springs, sharing their thoughts on moving away from the term "landlord" with a preference for "housing provider".
[6:40] In Episode 51, our guest was Niv Davidovich, of Davidovich Stein Law Group, who gave us an update on eviction law and squatters rights in California.
[9:58] One of my fellow NARPM Regional Vice Presidents joined me on Episode 54, AJ Shepard of Uptown Property Management in Portland, to talk about the ins and outs of real estate syndication.
[11:34] Three guests joined the show on Episode 59, Understanding Section 8 and the Housing Choice Voucher Program: Tyler Craddock, Governmental Affairs Director for NARPM, Patti Robertson of PMI Virginia, and Amanda Han of Cornerstone Properties in Hawaii.
[15:18] Episode 53 featured Brad Larsen, of RentWerx San Antonio discussing opportunities that exist for property management companies in this amazing industry.
[18:08] Joe Easton from Rent Manager joined us on Episode 52 to talk about Property Management Software, the various players, and where Rent Manager fits into the mix. .
[19:54] Episode 60 featured Liz Cleyman of Grace Property Management in Thorton CO, Kellie Tollifson of T-Square Properties in Bothell WA, and Kathleen Richards of PM Made Easy and The Property Management Coach from Santa Cruz, CA. We discussed the importance of taking time away on vacation, and the benefit that results from having that down time.
[22:40] Listen up to a clip from Episode 62: Tax Considerations for Real Estate Investors. Richard Hart covered tax related topics, from 1099s to 1031 exchanges. .
We can’t wait to keep it going in 2022 to bring you more valuable property management content!
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Property Management San Diego
https://www.ncpropertygroup.com/
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Bob Preston: 01:06 Hey, hello, brainstormers this is Bob Preston, your host of the show 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 of our great episodes. And if you like what you hear, please pay it forward with the positive review. I am so excited to be podcasting in 2022 with a refreshed slate of guests coming up and renewed personal enthusiasm in the new year. Before we jump into all the new episodes which I have planned for the year, I wanted to go back to some of the best podcast guest conversations I had in the year 2021. So, on today's episode, which I'm calling the best of brainstorm 2021, this is going to be fun. I did this last year, hence this is sort of a best of brainstorm volume two, if you will, here are some other fun facts and stats about our past year of podcasting. First of all, we published over 15 hours of content in 2021, that totals about 900 minutes for your listing. And in total, we had over 30,000 downloads for the year. San Diego continues to be our largest listening audience. I guess that makes sense because that's where North County Property Group is located. My company in North America is where 91% of our listeners reside, but we also had listeners from all over the world in regions and continents across the globe. Our most popular episode this year was number 62 about tax considerations for real estate investors. And that featured my friend, Richard Hart of Hart Associates, was downloaded more than 1200 times. And we will hear a brief snippet of Richard coming up in a few minutes here. Our most popular five-minute Friday was number 53, top eight list of landlord responsibilities that was downloaded 487 times. Fans of brainstorm mostly listened on apple podcasts. 53% of them did. And 72% of the time it was on an apple iOS device and 88% of the time on a mobile device of some kind, probably in the car on your morning commute or on the treadmill at the gym working out. So yeah, just a fun look back and, uh, report on the year, right? So, let's get into the show and start sharing some best of brainstorm for the year 2021, by the way, all of these guests were amazing and we're so kind to come on the show. There's no particular order here sharing these clips. So, it's not like a countdown to get to our number one or anything. I'm just sharing them, uh, along the way as top shows throughout the year. Episode 61 this year was titled Changing the Narrative and it included two great guests, Mark Scott of Encore Realty in Bonita, California, and Daniel Rogers of All Seasons LLC in Colorado Springs. Both Mark and Daniel shared their thoughts on why we need to rethink our terminology to move away from the term landlord with a preference for the term housing provider, have a listen to this informative clip.
Bob Preston: 03:56 Mark, you wrote an article in the June, 2021 put magazine, which is called residential resource. And the name of that article was changing the narrative. So, I saw it and it caught my eye right away. And, uh, kind of, I wonder where he's going with this. And it was specifically pertaining to the use of the term housing provider as an alternative or in lieu of the term landlord, sort of an interesting perspective. So, let's start with you. What was it that the inspired you to write that article? And can you just kind of share your opening thoughts on this topic?
Mark Scott: 04:24 Yeah, so a couple of things first, um, Daniel and I sit on the, uh, local government, uh, uh, issues committee and she started using housing provider and speaking about it. And then, um, I'm a member of the Southern CA California rental housing association. They've started incorporating the term and they kind of happened at the same time and meeting with elected officials, uh, especially here, uh, in California, they seem to hate landlords, but no one hates housing providers. We all need our housing provider. Our resident love us and we take care of their maintenance issues. So, um, we took a what, what historically maybe has been a negative term and turned it into a positive one, which is housing provider. So, um, Danielle helped inspire me. Um, I called her to, um, ask some questions about, uh, more about how she came up with housing provider, uh, and then also meeting with, um, the Southern California rental housing association and, uh, incorporating it into our local association of realtors. So, they all kind of happened in and around the same time and just kind of a fortuitous, um, events there.
Bob Preston: 05:40 So Daniel, how about you, it sounds like you started using the term housing provider. What was the inspiration or the, what precipitated that?
Daniel Rogers: 05:46 Well, and I can't take full credit of it because I heard it from the attorney for the Colorado association of realtors, said it first in a meeting that I was attending, but it really struck me because, um, throughout the pandemic, one thing that was resonating with me was the negativity surrounding landlords, um, in media and just on social media. And, um, it frustrates me because we're human people doing a job and, um, and we're being villainized and stereotyped. And so it was, it was just very discouraging. And when I heard, um, that phrase of housing provider and changing, you know, the, kind of the idea of changing the narrative of how, uh, society looks at us, um, I really took that to heart and said that, you know, that's something that, that we need to do and that's something that I can get behind. And so, I just started trying to spread that message whenever I, uh, speak to groups of people
Bob Preston: 06:41 About a year ago on episode 51 Niv Davidovich of Davidovich Stein law group gave us an update on eviction law and squatter's rights in the state of California. This was another one of our most downloaded episodes packed with information. And here is a sound bite. Let me start just by asking in the normal flow of process and for reasons other than COVID, let's set COVID aside just here for a minute. What are the conditions under which a landlord might consider evicting a tenant?
Niv Davidovich: 07:11 So if we're setting COVID aside and we're basically saying, let's pretend COVID didn't exist, you have a few basic reasons that you can and evict the tenant. Uh, I'll start with the, I I'll say the main three, um, which are described in COVID civil procedure, 11 61, 2, 3, and four. Two is the very simple one tenant doesn't pay their rent. Yeah. Um, even prior to, I mean, even during COVID and certainly prior to COVID, that's the vast majority of evictions that we get, um, 11 61, 3 is a cure or quit. That means that a tenant is violating some provision of their lease other than failure to pay their rent. And that would be an example. Examples of that would be things like they have more people in their unit than are allowed to 11 61, 3 would be like, okay, they changed the locks and didn't give, didn't give the keys back to you. Um, if, if they have an obligation to pay the utilities and they didn't pay the utilities, which would be an 11 61, 3 issue, another 11 61, 3 issue that most people don't know about is if they fail to pay late fees, you cannot put that on an 11 61, 2 failures to pay notice. So, if there are monetary obligations, other than the base rent, you have to do that as a cure or quit, not as a pay or quit cure or quit being the 11 61, 3 mm-hmm 11 61, 4 is special because that is not a pay or quit or cure or quit. There is no option in an 1161. It's just, you got to go. It's just a notice to quit. Now, there are obviously limited circumstances when you can use one of those. Um, one of them being nuisance, uh, there are a lot of nuisances that are either not curable, or you don't have to, or you don't have to provide a cure. So, most of the time we do 11 61, 4 is when tenants are just being unruly or just straight up insane or crazy once they've done that. And it's not an isolated incident, you don't use an 11 61, 3. You can, if you want to, but you don't have, uh, the other, the other instances where you can use an 11 61, 4 are an illegal assignment or sublet or waste is virtually never used waste means that they have done something to the property, which is permanent causes, permanent loss of value. So, it's just almost impossible to see situations where, where that's a case, especially with residential tenants, conceivably could happen if they burned the place down, but short of something pretty severe, we very rarely use waste. It's almost always nuisance or assign or illegal assignment sublet, which we actually get, uh, a fair amount.
Bob Preston: 09:58 One of my fellow NARPM regional vice presidents, AJ Shepherd of Uptown Property Management in Portland joined me as a guest on episode 54, to talk about the ins and outs of real estate syndication. AJ had a lot of great information on this episode about investing and getting others to invest in your syndication. Here we go to listen to some of AJ's quick insights. Hey, I gave a brief description of the concept during the episode introduction here, but how about for our listeners who might not be familiar with that term we're thrown around real estate syndication, I think is the term. Can you give a definition from your perspective? I mean, you seem to know a lot about it, you know what you're doing, be really great if you could define it for our audience.
AJ Shepard: 10:41 Yeah. So there's, there's two different types of syndication out there. Uh, the, the first one that, that we do is project based. So, we, we go out and we find a project and then we, everything is applicable towards that project. And it, it, they, they come up intermittently in time. Uh, the other type is a fund, uh, and a, and a fund. They, you can raise capital and capital can kind of move in and out of the fund. And then they use that some of 'em do like hard money lending. Some of 'em do notes, some of 'em do, you know, smaller single-family homes and then, uh, kind of rinse and repeat, and they do both to pull assets. So, we're, we're focused on like a single asset Sy syndication. Um, and generally syndication is like the pooling of money to buy a, uh, asset.
Bob Preston: 11:33 Another one of our top episodes was number 59, understanding section eight and the housing choice voucher program on this show, we had three guests, Tyler Cradock, who is the government affairs director for NARPM Patty Robertson of PMI, Virginia, and Amanda H of cornerstone properties in Hawaii. I learned so much on this episode and I still refer many of our owners to it who want to understand section eight and how it might be handled in regard to their rental property. You'll find this interesting Tyler in your capacity with NARPM, you might be best prepared to explain the overall housing and voucher program policies. And maybe if there are some changes that might happily coming into the fold in 2021 and beyond.
Tyler Craddock: 12:15 Sure. Happy to do it. Uh, in a nutshell housing choice voucher for those who who've not worked with them in essence of replacement for public housing, we built buildings, we built large towers and, and different parts of cities. And, and that's how we housed people. The way the housing choice voucher program, uh, developed was, was as a way that, that, that same consumer, right, can take that voucher to a participating landlord and live in a community of their choice.
Bob Preston: 12:39 Patty and Amanda, any comments on that? I mean, what do you, what are your thoughts about that? Obviously, there's some new, there's some reform being introduced, which Tyler's reviewed. What are your thoughts on that?
Patti Robertson: 12:49 I think you’re exactly right. Um, the whole premise of the program is housing choice voucher with choice being the operative word. That means tenants should be able to take that voucher and get into a better neighborhood, a better school system, a school system, where they have more resources. But the reality is these are always low income, um, households and low-income households. They do have to have, have some kind of income to be in the program. So, if they're, if they don't have disability in social security, that means they have to work. And most of them have children. And if you work and have children, that means you have to have childcare. And childcare is very, very expensive. There are very few resources available, uh, for childcare, even though they do have resources available for rent and, you know, food stamps and that, and some, some other things. So, while they can take their voucher and live any place, they want transportation is all, oftentimes some an issue they don't have a car. So, they're using public transportation, or they have UN dependable transportation, or just the budget of gas every week is a significant, uh, budget. I, them in, you know, a low-income household. So, the real, while they can take their voucher, any place they want, the reality is they end up wanting to stay in your family members so that they have some help with childcare. So those pockets of poverty, where they came from, they end up in my vantage point in my world, going back and choosing to live in those, in those neighborhoods because they need live near their aunt, near their grandma, near their mother, their sister, so that they can have some help with childcare.
Bob Preston: 14:21 Now those are really, really good points. Amanda, how about you in your experience in Hawaii? What are you seeing?
Amanda Han: 14:26 Sure. So, in Hawaii we have, you know, different people helping us, whether they're section eight, the state, or whether they're through the county, you know, it's a, like everything works a little bit differently depending on who we're working with. So, there's not much consistency there. Every time we are helping the section eight tenant, we're not exactly sure how it's going to go and that's always makes it really difficult. And we're professional property managers, right? So, a lot, our biggest competition here in Hawaii, you know, for clients is actually the mom-and-pop owners who are managing it themselves. And it's like, if we can't figure out how to work with section eight program, how are they going to figure it out? Right. So, it's very daunting, for most people. So, I think here, the biggest problem is that it's just working with section eight.
Bob Preston: 15:18 Episode 53, featured my friend and guest Brad Larsen of Rent Work's in San Antonio. This was early last year, and we got into opportunities that were popping up and presenting themselves that existed for management companies in this amazing industry of ours. Brad is a well-known guy in the industry and has a couple of his own podcasts. So always great to hear what Brad has to say last year. Uh, 2020 was pretty much a time war. Very strange year. I know at my business, we had tons of plans, growth plans. We wanted to start some new initiatives and had lots of goals, many of which had to be tabled for a period of time, right, because of the COVID crisis. So here we are 2021 we're chomping at the bet to get going. Right. We wanted to see what we can do, what opportunities are out there that we can work on. You talked to a lot of people in, in the industry. Is that a common theme you're hearing out there?
Brad Larsen: 16:10 Oh, absolutely. We're a lot of, it's the fact that regroup and kind of start over because you get going into that mid-March April timeframe and all of a sudden bam hit you in the face. So all those initiatives that you had put together toward 2020, all got put, put to the back burner and then it all became about PPP money and making sure you can survive and okay, there's an eviction moratorium going on and not, I can't charge late fees and I can't evict people and, and all these government dictates were coming down, who included having to work from home and, and all these different things that, that really kind of hit some of us, uh, square the jaw in a big comprise. Now a lot of us came out probably better than they went in. Yeah. And so, if you want to think about that side, I mean, I know it's bad. We have a half million debts. It's never a good thing. Of course, I can't understate that cause that's, that's really bad, but the other side of this is, uh, as a positive person, I always got to look for the positive thing in this. And, you know, we were able to make and use good use of that PPP money and reorganize the visits and compensate our employee and keep everybody on. But we all also all in the industry sort of, kind of learn how to work from home, how to work remotely, how to do things without having to be there in person, such as all of a sudden, everybody wanted to do online applications. Yeah. And all of a sudden all wanted to do online payments and, you know, they had all these different things. They all of a sudden wanted to do, uh, like zero touch leasing is another one. Mm-hmm, they want to do it that to where, you know, a year prior they're like, no, I'll just do my way. And that's it. I'm good with that. But when fourth two, it really did start to change the industry. It had made a lot of people step into a different era of doing business. So, we're seeing that as a whole to where, uh, it's, it's elevating the industry as, you know, as a conglomerate to make it look better and act better and, but just a better fit into place. And that, that's kind of a neat thing that came out of that whole deal. If you have to look for at least one positive.
Bob Preston: 18:07 Another one of my guests who has his own podcast was Joe Easton from the company Rent Manager. Joe also had me on his podcast. So that was kind of fun too. On our brainstorm episode, we talked about property management software, the various players, and where the software he represents rent manager fits into the mix, have a listen fast forward today. There's lots of platforms out there. And it seems like, I don't know, maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but they could almost be positioned on a spectrum, right. At one end of the spectrum, you have lower end platforms like cozy, you know, kind of intended maybe for self-managing landlords. And then you got the ultra-high end, the Yardi Voyager, which is extreme high end asset managers with thousands and thousands of properties. And there is several property management software companies’ kind of maybe in between, if you agree with that, where does rent manager fall on that spectrum?
Joe Easton: 18:55 Yeah, there definitely is a spectrum. Um, right. We're all positioned uniquely theoretically to help specific types of customers. So, uh, I would say we're kind of different in the fact that we really kind of help a wide range of customers. Um, we work with a lot of smaller operators with dozens or hundreds of units all the way up to large operators with tens of thousands of units. Um, and I think we're a little unique there in the fact that our product and we use the same platform for all of our customers is able to really be customized. And it's flexible in a way matter, how large or small you are, you can find value there. Um, I would typically say that we are pretty forward and upfront. You know, mid-market is really kind of where we fall. You know, high hundreds to several thousands of units are probably the type of customers that can leverage our software the best, but really no matter how large or small you are, we probably have a good fit for you.
Bob Preston: 19:53 On episode 60, we had some of my favorite people in the NARPM organization as guests, Liz Cleyman from Grace Property Management in Thornton, Colorado. And she's also this year's NARPM President. Kelly Tolleson of T Square Properties in Washington. And she's one of our NARPM past presidents and Kathleen Richards of PM Made Easy and The Property Management Coach from Santa Cruz, California. All three of these wonderful guests gave their reasons why we all need to take a step back from time to time as property managers have some time away on vacation and the benefit that results from having that downtime enjoy this snippet. So, Kathleen, how about we start with you on that one?
Kathleen Richards: 20:34 Yeah, Thanks for having me. This is such a great topic and happy to be here with you. Um, so my husband wind surfs up at the Columbia River Gorge. And back in the day, I couldn't be away from the office. I would like to fly up for a three-day weekend. And um, this year I went for a full month and did no work. I'm not going to lie. It was hard as an entrepreneur. Um, it felt really, really, really uncomfortable to not kind of be working and doing something.
Bob Preston: 21:05 But let's pop over to, uh, uh, Liz. Why don't you tell us about yourself and about your most recent vacation?
Liz Cleyman: 21:10 Yes, absolutely. Uh, this summer we had the pleasure, my husband and I travel a good bit. We try to travel three weeks out of the year, um, every year religiously. So, this summer we went to Cancun, Mexico for a week. Wow. To celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary, it was fantastic. It was relaxing. And I cannot say I did not work. I actually did work while I was there. I even had a closing on a Trix. So that's kind of the give and take of traveling a good bit. Being able to keep up with my duties while I am away. And of course, keeping the, um, everything going in a forward motion.
Bob Preston: 21:43 Absolutely. Kelly, how about you?
Kelli Tollifson: 21:45 Thanks Bob. It's great. Being here with you as far as vacations, you know, we've had Tom and I, my husband and I own the company together and we have not taken a true vacation probably since we've owned the company as far as completely disengaging. And we struggle together. I really work hard to dis engage every weekend. Um, and that gives me, uh, the energy to come back and give it all on the weekdays. So, the weekends really work for me. But what I will say is that he likes that blended lifestyle, that work life integration, everything can operate while I'm gone, but it gives me a better opportunity to relax. When I know everything's kind of smoothly running, which I know it is. They know how to reach me if it's not, but that's never happened.
Bob Preston: 22:40 I mentioned earlier that Richard Hart was one of our top episodes in terms of listens and downloads. So, pay attention here and listen up to a clip from episode 62 tax considerations for real estate investors. Richard covered a bunch of topics. All of them could have been their own episodes from 1099’s to 1031 exchanges. Here's a clip tax advisor and preparer. I mean, you specialize in real estate, property managers, investors. What would you say is the most common mistake or maybe a misconception that you encounter when working with these types of companies, you know, property managers, investors, or Real Estate?
Richard Hart: 23:15 The most common mistake is people tend to be reactionary as opposed to being proactive. What I mean by that is they wait until they're ready to file their taxes. And then they realize all the, the, of things, the options that they could have had during the, the prior year. So reactionary, they find out they owe X amount of dollars and now they're in a panic or they need to hit the bar. That's reactionary. Proactive is you make a plan for the upcoming year to align with your goals so that you can take advantage of a lot of, uh, tax deductions that are available to you. And also, so that you know exactly okay, I'm going to owe X amount of dollars during tax time. Sure. Cause that's another problem is by the time it's tax time, all the money's been spent and now you don't have the money to pay the taxes. And now you're behind the eight ball and it's extremely hard to get, get ahead of that once you get into that position. So, I would say that's the biggest problem that people are, uh, reactionary as opposed to being proactive. And a part of that too, is tax preparers and tax account. It's a wide field. So, what do I mean by that? If you go to the doctor and you have a hard problem, you're not going to go to a podiatrist, right? They're both good, good, good doctors, maybe the best in the field, but you're going to go to the one who specializes in your issue. Likewise, with accounting and tax repairers, there are a lot of good tax repairers out. There are a lot of good accountants out there, but you need to find someone who specialize in real estate because otherwise you're going to miss a lot of opportunities. And again, a good tax preparer or account that specializes in real estate is going to be proactive in help helping to ask you the questions that you didn't even think about and setting up a strategy for the upcoming year for, you know, for you and your business.
Bob Preston: 25:07 Wow, that was super fun going back and listening to these snippets. I hope you enjoyed it too. This group of guests represent some of the top leaders and influencers in the property management industry. If you've not listened to the full episodes yet, I would encourage you all to go back and have a listen to the individual episodes because most of these guests had so much to say and they share some fantastic acknowledge. I know 20, 22 is going to be another robust year on property management brainstorm. And I can't wait to keep it going to bring you some more valuable content. As we wrap up today, I'd like to make another quick plug to our listeners, to click on the subscribe button and give us a like also please pay it forward with a positive review to help encourage more great, get us to come on the show. And that concludes today's episode of the property management brainstorm. Thank you for joining today. Until next time we will be in the field, working hard for our clients to maximize their rental income and property value while maintaining top tenant relations. We'll catch you next time.
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