Loop It In
Loop It In
26 - Tips and Tricks for Property Management with Becky Emmons
Join Becky Emmons, owner of Holstein Homes, as she shares valuable insights and practical tips on managing rental properties.
Here are a few things she will cover:
- Screening tenants
- Maintenance requests
- Finding the right lenders
With a blend of personal experiences and advice from connections in the industry, Becky guides you through the complexities of being a successful landlord. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned pro, tune in to learn from Becky’s journey.
What's up, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Loop It In, the Door Loop podcast, where we pick the brains of experts in property management, real estate, and investing. Tech, we cover it. Marketing, that too. So whether you want actionable tips or the insider scoop from top performers in their industries, this is one show you won't want to miss. Be sure to subscribe so you won't miss out on any future episode. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Loop It In podcast. Today, I'm joined with Becky Emmons. Now, she and her husband started in real estate in 2019, and they have a successful business right now, highly diversified, and I can't wait to learn more from her today. So without further ado, welcome, Becky.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome. Yes, very exciting. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to chatting today.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. So I know I gave a little bit of an introduction there, but I think that doesn't do it justice at all. We'd love to know more about how how you got started. And what interests you in real estate in the first place?
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. We like to say we think we're big, but we're really not. We're pretty small potatoes, but we're learning and we're growing each day. So my husband and I are from the same town in Chardon, born and raised in the same area in Chardon, Ohio. And we went to high school together and known each other for a long time. He is a dairy farmer by trade. So that's his back story. So a little different than real estate, I would say. He has a degree in dairy science and I am in was in health care business with a local hospital here in town. And we we're just really just kind of trying to diversify and see what's, what we could do. And really in the, in the agricultural field, he was getting a bit burned out. I just got my, um, finished my MBA, um, in 2019, actually, right before we started the business, I had my, um, I thank you. I finished my MBA and he was getting a little burnt out and he said, what if we, we started listening to a couple of different podcasts, actually, um, things for financial independence, um, Bigger Pockets is a big one. A lot of people utilize in the space and just trying to figure out what our next step was. We were married, no children at the time. So we were able to be a little bit flexible. We sold our forever home and we're actually living in the upstairs of a barn at the time. And it was a legit apartment. And we just decided, let's jump in and buy our first duplex. So we bought our first duplex in 2019 in a local town, one county over. And we house hacked, if you've heard that term, is you live next to your tenant and kind of started the business. He left his job in 2019 to start it. And I was still working full time at that time. And we just kind of jumped in and started, really just started looking to see what kind of opportunity were to come up. 2019 was a little bit easier. We could still buy some properties on the MLS. And so that summer we scaled and bought three small condos locally after that. So 2019, we bought four properties that we kept as rentals and a little bit of work on them, not a ton, and all the time kind of living in a duplex next to our tenants. So that's how we started. And we've tried to scale since then.
SPEAKER_00:That's a pretty impressive scale. story. I mean, seeing as how you guys didn't necessarily have any real estate background, did you have any family that were in the business or any friends that could help you out along the way? Because that's pretty scary to get started out in.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I mean, to this day, there's not a person that we don't encounter, friend, family, acquaintance that comes up to us and says that they haven't considered or wanted to start, at least have one or two rental properties in their portfolio, in their investment portfolio. And everyone Everyone always says it's a great business to get started and it's not the easiest. It's not that it's difficult by any means. We do have great tenants and we're really happy with the ones that we do have. it's you have to be able to be flexible and you have to be able to work every single day and constantly talk about the business and reinvest into the business. And so that's what we've been trying to do. And so, I mean, we knew one family friend who was a previous landlord years and years and years ago, and we sat down with them early on. And they're more of like an acquaintance than they are that close. And
SPEAKER_00:this was before you got started, before you got the first property.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, not at all. Not at all. We actually acquired. No. Yeah. We actually acquired our tenant. That was the first property we ever had. They were there before us. So they lived there longer than we did. And they just stayed and we just adopted their, their lease and, and, and we just kept them on and they're still there. And great, great family. But yeah, so we met, you know, we knew a couple that had done it years and years ago and they had a lease packet and they walked through us what kind of information they've learned along the way. And we kind of adapted and looked at what was in their lease packet and what makes sense to today. I mean, of course, what they did back then was a lot of paper and a lot of cash and checks. And so kind of bringing a little bit to today's times, we've adopted a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00:Could you tell me a little bit more about that, how you adapted to modernize the business a little bit?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:yeah. Why was that necessary? Why not just keep doing things the way that they were?
SPEAKER_01:The first few properties that we bought, there were, I would say, two of the four properties. We had tenants that were already there, and we bought the properties with them. And one of them, they were doing checks. Actually, both of them were sending checks. And the other was, and then we asked them, can you start doing that Just to like do something different a little bit to make it a little bit easier for them. And one of them was just like, check seems to be simple, but the problem is, is that they had to mail it out in time before the first of the month. And then if the post office was delayed, then that was an issue or we'd have to go pick it up. Or, I mean, there was just always something that came up, not that they weren't paying, but it was just, it was a complexity of trying to receive the cash. and how to set that up. And even when we first started, I mean, I think I was accepting Venmo into like my personal Venmo. Cause like, I didn't know, should we create a separate business one, you know? And so we're just receiving this income, not really knowing how the whole process. And so we, you know, try to figure out, okay, what is the next thing do we do? We create a business Venmo. Okay, we create a tax ID. We have to create, I mean, we have to get registered with the state. I mean, there was, we did this kind of all after the fact because we didn't really know how big we were going to scale at that time or what our next step was going to be.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I do wonder, like, if you knew how much was going to go into it and how complicated it was going to be, would you have still gone for it? Or do you think that not knowing enough about it would, like, that kind of helped?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. Well, we're entrepreneurs by like nature. Like we've always been like, how can we, like when my husband was a farmer, we bought like, we brought farm implements like tractors and sprayers and stuff to like, if you know that world to like, okay, so if we buy this and then the farm paid us for this, could we like partner with them in the future? You know? And then when I got my MBA, the whole preface was, what is our next step with that? Can we create another business venture that we can do alongside our W-2 incomes? And so we're always just trying to think of a thing. When I said we lived in a barn, we sold what was our forever home and we lived in the upstairs of a barn because we said, Let's try to buy a farm and it didn't work out. And that's where we landed for another year. And we were able to diversify and able to be a little bit easy because it was just the two of us at the time. And so, you know, what is the next thing for us to do? But yeah, we're definitely always business mindset. And so for us, I think we still would have for sure tried it. At least, I mean, the worst thing is it doesn't work and you go back to working a nine to five.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. You know, I hear you keep bringing up you and your husband and the partnership that you have together. How important is that? And because for some people, maybe working with, you know, a relative, a family member, a close friend, it can have like its ups and downs. But you guys seem to have done very well with that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I mean, well, we've been we've known each other since high school. And I think we were married for over 10 years before we started the business. And so we really knew kind of what our mindset was going into it. Um, like I said, we just really are business minded. And so, you He's where I'm like the business behind it, trying to, you know, make sure all the I's are done and the T's are crossed. He's like he's the dreamer by nature. I mean, he constantly is thinking like, what's the next thing? What's the next avenue we can take? And I'm like, OK, hold on. Let's make sure we're set up for that before we do it. OK, do we have the right
SPEAKER_02:account?
SPEAKER_01:Do we have the account for it? can I make this work before we dive into the next project? And so, I mean, we're still doing that today. It's only, like I said, it's only been 2019, so it's not been many years, but we're constantly thinking, okay, what's the next avenue we can take with the business? We know how to be landlords. We started flipping houses recently. Okay, why don't we look into short-term rentals? How do we partner with other people? What's our long-term goal? And I mean, it changes day to And I think that's the whole, that's the beauty of this business is that you have the ability to think outside the box and come up with new ideas and structure it differently and be able to be okay with the change.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, that's one thing I like about the approach that you guys have as well. You know, you're willing to try different things and experiment and go into other avenues of the business, find other ways of making money. Yeah. Whereas a lot of other people, they might find something that works or that they're good at and they'll double down on that. So where do you think that comes from? The desire to try other avenues, like you said, residential, being a landlord, flipping houses. Now you want to try short term. Could you speak a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_01:Right. No, absolutely. I think that wasn't our intention really going into it. We really thought we would stay with the rental business and just keep adding properties to our portfolio. And along the way, I mean, obviously, as we know, the interest rates started increasing and we were kind of going with that. If you've heard of the BRRRR method, that's what we were doing, buying and then rehabbing and refinancing and renting. Well, Little hard to do the refinancing aspect of it when your appraisals aren't coming back and the interest rates are high. And so we really had to diversify a little bit at that time and think, okay, not our first idea was to sell properties, any of them, because we just love the idea of adding new. I mean, they're like our little babies. Like at this point, I mean, maybe someday down the road, we won't know them so personally. But right now they are. And so it was hard for us to kind of release some of them out of our portfolio. But in order to kind of remain flexible and stay with the times, we had to. And so we sold a property in 21. We sold a property in 22. And this year, all of our properties we've been selling. I hate to say that we're landlords and flippers sometimes because they have such a negative connotation whenever I go to like whenever I go to like business meetings or chamber events there I'm always like yeah we're landlords and flippers in town but we're not like you're standard landlord and flipper, you know, cause I'm, you
SPEAKER_00:have to qualify it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Like get to know us, know that we're really, we, we want to stay local and reinvest into the community that we grew up in. It's really important to us. And we are only covering two counties at this time. The kind that we live in and the County right next door. And we haven't added on from that at this point, haven't needed to maybe down the road, but we're just really proud of being local and staying local and so being flexible and being adaptable and being okay with changing your model. And so now I think to going back to changing the model, it's okay, now that we know how to landlord and we know how to update and rehab homes. why don't we look into this short-term rental business? Why don't we consider any sort of additional partnerships with other businesses locally? And so that's what we're trying to do to just kind of diversify our portfolio even more.
SPEAKER_00:Amazing. Let's see, you spoke a little bit about needing to find reliable tenants and how like the tenants that you took on in the beginning,
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:They were already in the property. I think it was two of the properties, right? Already had tenants. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:There actually have a couple, but yes.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Okay. So how do you go about finding good tenants? Because I remember when we spoke earlier before this podcast, you know, our introduction call, you told me that for the most part, you've had very low turnover, right? Right. So how do you go about securing that? Because I know a lot of tenants, they'll deal with a difficult or a lot of landlords will deal with a difficult tenant.
UNKNOWN:Right.
SPEAKER_00:They'll come in, it'll be hard to get them out. Maybe they're not paying rent, not taking care of the property.
SPEAKER_01:So what steps do you have in place to make sure that that doesn't happen? So, so a few of our properties, we still have the original tenants that we bought the property with, which is, which is fantastic. And we appreciate it. With the turnover that we've had or the new properties we've added, just really being upfront. A lot of, I think locally, I mean, there's such a shortage of rentals, I think around here locally so that when you find a good one at a decent price I I mean, we get multiple applications. There's actually times when I don't even actually have to list them because I already have someone who knows somebody that's looking and they qualify, which is fabulous. And we love that because it gives us the opportunity to put someone in that knows somebody. And that's already one line of kind of, yeah, like screening them at that point. But we... We're really upfront when we list, let's say we do an open house or whatever for a new property that's coming available. We're upfront that this is our family business and that we're local to the area. And if it's not me, I'm the one that's gonna answer the phone and take your call if there's an issue. And it's my husband that's gonna show up and fix whatever the issue is. And if he can't fix it, he's really a jack of all trades, so he usually can. But if he can't, then, you know, he will call somebody to have come in and fix it. And so I think our tenants really appreciate that, that we're very upfront with them and that it's not a, you know, an out of state investor or someone that can't, or a property management company. You know, we property manage our own properties. We take, you know, and we just take a lot of pride in being, you know, responsive and having a nice quality home. I mean, really at the end of the day, you know, just having something that they can raise their family in, and then they want to stay. And then the other thing is, when we keep when we start their tenancy with us, we always ask for a one year lease upfront. But we tell them upfront, if as long as you guys are paying rent for a year, and all's going well, and the house is looking good, and, and you're happy with everything, you know, we'll put you on a month to month after a year, some of them want to do that. And some of them want to, you know, secure another full year.
SPEAKER_00:Going off that, I'd like to know what are the biggest red flags that you would look for that would make you turn away a potential tenant?
SPEAKER_01:One of the things we adopted, and I will have to plug DoorLoop here. One of the things we adopted is that we started all of our applications when we added DoorLoop into our process. We really wanted to start systematizing how we were receiving rent, how were we billing out utilities if we were, how we were accepting applications and most recently using the eSign platform, which has been really great for lease renewals. But we really wanted a place where the tenants could apply, have their security deposit put in pay their rent and it was like a one-stop shop and what we find too when i am showing a new property um if i let one of our ten uh prospective tenant know that the application is online and it's there's a fee to process it because it runs the background check and credit report if they text you or email you and ask for the application and then fill it out in a timely fashion. That's your first screening that you know that you have like a quality tenant to review their application. And then we're upfront, review our qualifications on the front end. And then we always take the first qualified applicant. I mean, we tell them upfront, that that's what we're going to do and it's it's worked out just fine for us but really it's that application process if you know that they are if they ask for the application which is and this is through door loop and it's online and they fill it out in a timely fashion you know that they're someone um that you want to consider even further
SPEAKER_00:yeah i think little Little indicators like that are so powerful. Like, I remember my brother was working in a company where he had to hire people. And in the application, he put a little math problem. And it was, like, something super simple anyone could solve. And, like, a lot of people ignored it, wouldn't even read it. And that's how we knew those people weren't really paying attention. They're not detail-oriented. And they didn't necessarily really want to work in the company. So that was another, like, qualifier that... You know, it's a little unconventional, but it works.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, I totally agree. And even furthermore, when we're showing the properties, I'm the one that's showing them. So I'm meeting them. So really, I mean, the application obviously is great because it gets the information that you need. But really, all that information is from me having a conversation with the prospective tenant while I'm showing it. And you learn a lot about them. And so that's a whole other screening process. It's just by getting to know them. You know, are they... Are they showing up on time to their appointments? Are they talking about the property? Are they looking at the property? Are they asking questions? Those are all screening again to get a qualified tenant.
SPEAKER_00:Amazing. And then another question I wanted to ask, you don't have to share this if you don't want to, but have you had a very difficult tenant or a situation that was really hard to solve? Maybe you had to evict someone? What's your horror story with a tenant?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so we have had one eviction, in all honesty. And we gave this person every opportunity in the world to kind of make right on the rent. And I think that goes again to the qualifying the applicant at the beginning, because at this point right now, we have, I don't know, just under 20 tenants that everyone is staying. Everyone's happy to stay, continuing to stay. And so we really don't have horror stories. The one eviction was... Again, we gave him every opportunity and it was kind of like the last straw and it worked out fine. And the property he left in a great situation, which is exactly what you want. It's not, it doesn't happen all the time. I mean, certainly with an eviction, you run the risk of, you know, what's the property going to look like when they leave.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We've had some properties where tenants have moved out and we've had to like kind of deep clean. I guess it doesn't happen to us, but the stories of like the toilet bursting in the middle of the night. Now, first of all, who's toilet bursts, but like that kind of stuff that doesn't happen. Like it didn't, it has not happened for us. We've had where a toilet, overflowed and we've gone in, but it was like at 9 PM and we handled it. And because we're local, it's right around, all of our properties are within like 30 minutes of us. So we're the ones that are going to respond and take a look at it and then see what's next to be done.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting. Yeah. I mean, we did host a podcast episode here where we talked about some horror stories and some of these are almost too ridiculous to believe.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. We lived in two of our properties in duplexes near our tenants. So We like them. I mean, if you can live next to a tenant, I mean, then that means that you actually appreciate them and like them. So I think we don't live next to a tenant now. We do live in one of our rentals. So we aren't in the forever home yet. But again, we're still growing and we're still new to the business. And our accountant just said recently that he thinks that we might be out of that startup phase, which is really exciting for us. Congratulations. Which means I think we're kind of going over that hump a little bit about what's next. But, you know, we're still learning and growing, and I think you need to be, like I said from the beginning, you've got to be adaptable, and you've got to find what's the next avenue to take.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, over 20 doors within just a couple years, it's really impressive. And even just the timing of when you guys started, you know, like in 2019– Pandemic is just around the corner. What was that like for you guys?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it wasn't actually bad. But what happened is I was still working full time at the beginning of the pandemic. And And at the end of, so that was really like 2020, we were living, we were still, we were starting to scale. We kept our tenants. There wasn't a single tenant that paid late because of it. We just kept, we were up front with them and said, let us know if something goes on and we'll start, we'll try to figure it out together. And everyone just appreciated that from the beginning. And then I think we actually enjoyed it. We actually enjoyed the fact that we like could go work on these properties. We could get out of the house and we were going to work at another house and we weren't like exposing ourselves to anyone or anything, but we were working on properties, um, in the middle of it and, and growing our portfolio. Um, and, and so it worked out, it worked out fine for us. Um, but at the end of 21, I decided to leave my W2 job full time. So now we're both full time in the business. I'm not sure if we mentioned that at this point, but. We're both full-time in the business, have been for almost two years now. And, you know, again, it's not easy, especially not easy when you go for like a financing or you have to be creative because not many banks like the non-W2 person come into them. And so we're, you know, and even commercial lenders, you know, we're not, we're not old enough or seasoned enough to be able to dabble into some of those opportunities at this point. So we're just kind of learning as we go and hence why we're changing our model constantly.
SPEAKER_00:So how did you go about receiving your lending opportunities with the challenges that you face?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, when we first started, of course, I was working full time. So we were able to like our first few properties, they were just like like residential investment properties, you know, different, different, little bit higher interest rates or down payments, but they were just standard investment loans. And then once we both kind of left the world, we just kind of, learned or met other people within the business and got hooked up with different commercial lenders that take really the the value of the property into consideration. Sure, you're guaranteeing the property at the end of the day, your businesses. But what they're doing is they're looking at the just the after repair value and the initial investments as the collateral for the loan. But one thing that kind of hit us and I mentioned that when we decided to sell One of our properties last summer was when we really didn't want to was because we weren't getting our appraisals for those refinances. And so so after much discussion and even discussion of like who's going back to work full time and, you know, this the scariness of, oh, maybe this wasn't a good idea for both of us to quit at this point. I mean, we had some long discussions about that. We decided, okay, who do we know that does, who does creative financing and private lending? And so we started reaching out to different private lenders that we knew locally and kind of asked what their models are and tried to adopt a structure that would make sense for us. And we were able to secure one of those almost a year ago. And it's been great because now we can really position ourselves even more marketable when going to make offers on properties because we have the cash behind it to buy the property. So not at all. how we thought we would do it from the beginning. And we had to learn that. We had no idea how that process worked. I mean, and so like, it was scary. It was scary up front. Like, okay, how do you go to a title company and say you have a private lender backing your loan? Like, where's my appraisal? Where's my, you know? So like, it was just a very different process for us to do, but it's worked out. And after that property, we had to sell thinking who's going back to work. We were able to buy three more properties right after that and add them to our portfolio. One day you're thinking... who's going back to work full time and how are we going to make the credit card payment and buy groceries for the house. And then next day you're going, should we, we can probably add another property, right? We can probably buy another one. So, I
SPEAKER_00:mean, cause it's a lot less predictable than, than just having a stable income.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, down one day. Like you have no idea.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, for sure. And then even like things like, you know, even when you're going to like file your taxes, like I'm, I have no idea how that works. And with like, with just business income, I mean, gosh, how do we, how do you position your, your business income to, to a lender to say, oh yeah, we like, you know, there's deductions and stuff and we put, we reinvest back into the business and oh yeah, it looks like we make nothing, you know, like, and, I'm still learning. I still don't even know how to read those. And so we've actually had to have a few different accountants and some worked and some didn't. And now we've had one for almost two years now. And so It's really just trying to find what's the avenue that makes the most sense. And again, we're happy to learn. We're happy to try something different. We're excited to try something different because you never know what the next opportunity is going to come up if you just kind of put yourself out there a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And I think that humility is so important. You know, be willing to learn, be willing to say that you don't know how something works. But trying it anyways. Also, I really like how you shared the difficult time that you guys went through where you're trying to decide if someone has to go back to work. I think that vulnerability is important, especially to show people that if they're struggling, so are other people. It's not as easy as it looks from the outside. You hear about all the successes, but not necessarily the parts where things could have gone wrong. Would you say that was probably the hardest time that you guys faced in starting this business?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's been different roadblocks along the way and things that have come up. But for us, I mean, that was one that we said, wait a second. Maybe just keeping the ad properties in our portfolio isn't... isn't the way we need to go. Okay. So now what do we do? Do we just break even on a house and just get our initial investment out of it and then, and just break even, like that's what we have to do. And I remember sitting on the floor of the, of our office a year ago last summer. And what was that in 22 and going, okay, so if I have to go back to work, How is that going to work? And let me remind you, or I didn't even say this at the time I was pregnant also with our second kid. So, um, I was like, okay, so if I go back to work even part-time, how am I going to be able to go back out on maternity leave? Like a couple months later.
SPEAKER_00:So, um,
SPEAKER_01:And so, I
SPEAKER_00:mean, it
SPEAKER_01:was a whole nother challenge. But at the same time, it made more, it would have made more sense for me to go back because if it's not him working on the property every single day, and he is actually doing the manual labor on these properties, like just, yeah. He's insane. I mean, the things that he can do, I'm not going to do that. I don't know the different Makita tools that he has. I don't know what those things are. I mean, he tells me what they are all the time, but I don't use them. So it would have to have been me that went back to work. And so I think just being able to be vulnerable and go, okay, so if we just like extend ourselves a little bit more on our credit for this month, which is a very tough thing to say, And then we start talking to some other people in the area that know about creative financing options. Let's see if we can think of a new way to structure these. Because obviously just refinancing isn't going to be the way that we're going to do it. And let's just take our licks and like sell the house. And we did. And it worked out. And it worked out just fine. And then we said, oh, wait, selling houses isn't that bad. Let's add this opportunity. Let's add this into the mix of things that we do. So let's not just be landlords. Let's sell a few. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Amazing. Yeah, I mean, and the success that you guys have, I feel like it keeps coming back to the, that you guys are part of the community. You're upfront, you're honest. You try to build trust. You know, you get to know the tenants on a personal level, which I think is amazing. know for some landlords they may be apprehensive about doing that like i've heard cases where and i'm sure it's pretty common where the landlord uh they might pretend that they're not really the owner whenever they go visit the property they pretend that there's like you know they want to add like a little bit of a buffer in place um but you guys haven't done that at all and it seems like it's worked out well for you
SPEAKER_01:yeah we haven't and and And I hear that, so I go to a lot of like real estate meetings or chamber events and certainly know other people within the field now. We've grown a good relationship and network with other investors. And I mean, everyone does it a little bit differently. And I think we have opportunity to learn from each other. I really think that we should be working together as opposed to being competition because we all need to learn what this business is, especially the people that are trying to invest into the, you know, really invest into the community. But I think it's just... we've learned and I've heard don't, you know, don't get so close to your tenants. And I wouldn't say like, we're not best friends. Like we're not hanging out with them on the weekends or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00:There's some boundaries in place.
SPEAKER_01:There is some boundaries. There are definitely
SPEAKER_00:boundaries,
SPEAKER_01:but like, you know, some of our tenants, like, no, we have children and we'll ask how they are. Some of them don't, you know, it just kind of depends, um, you know, on, on the situation and, and, uh, but I think just the fact that they want Whenever I say show a new property and I say we are the owners. Yes, that might create a different level of complexity of, oh, OK, so you own the property and you're the landlord. But I think I think really it's been the other way where they go, oh, thank God. I mean, like they just appreciate the fact that they have a face to the name. Though, you know, our business is Holstein Homes and people call us Mr. and Mrs. Holstein all the time. That's not our last name. And so we have a buffer there because our last name isn't in our business
SPEAKER_00:name. So that was intentional. That was
SPEAKER_01:intentional. That's intentional.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, wow. I love it. Okay. So, you know, I think we've learned a lot here, but I wanna ask you if there's any advice that you'd give someone who's maybe just starting out, maybe they've got a few rental properties, they've been struggling to grow, and that could be for a lot of reasons, right? It's hard to find the time to look for opportunities or whatever the struggle is. What advice would you give them? You know, you've grown pretty fast in a very short amount of time.
SPEAKER_01:So, I mean, we want to learn from you as well. So what do you know? So teach me if you're new to the game and you have some ideas I want to know. So feel free to reach out to me. But really, I think. trying to systematize your process the best you can makes the most sense. So when we started going back to our lease packet, have a standard lease. Obviously, it changes a little bit based on the property, but know who pays the utilities for each of them, have it set up the right way, and know that packet really, really well because they're going to hold you to that should something go awry. So know that very well. Systematize, if you can, the way that you collect rent. We've been very fortunate utilizing door loop for us. It's made sense. Our tenants all appreciate it just because it's just like a one place that they can they know they can either set it up automatically. They can go in per month and they feel and they're very comfortable. I mean, a lot of people pay things through online platforms at this point. So it's not like it's weird or scary for them. But systematizing, however you choose to do that, whether it's Venmo, whether it's checks, whether it's a software, have some sort of standard process of how you do it and use that throughout all of your properties. I get some sort of bookkeeping for sure. As you add additional properties, it gets complex. So I think adding some sort of standard bookkeeping and a good accountant that understands what you're trying to do, an accountant that actually understands real estate is really important as well. And then learn to be adaptable and be comfortable with the uncomfortable because you will be very uncomfortable, especially when you get a call that says, hey, the, you know, the washer's not working or can you replace it? Or, you know, I mean, The horror stories don't usually happen all the time. I mean, sure there are, but I think they're
SPEAKER_00:more minimal. There's no exploding toilets every week.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they're more minimal than you think, but be comfortable with trying new ideas and new things and meeting people in the business. It's important to gain those contacts and those relationships because they're your teachers. Tenants that are historic tenants know a ton about the business, probably more than you will ever know because they've just been tenants for a really long time. So if you can learn from others that have done it in the past and take their advice, you'll go a long way with it. It's not the easiest business. Sure, you can add real estate to your portfolio of investments. Absolutely. It makes sense. Real estate is a fabulous investment tool. But if you're going to go full bore and do it like we have, Just learn to be adaptable and be comfortable with the uncomfortable because there's going to be times you're sitting on your office floor going, okay, who's going back to work full time? And then it turns out and it works just fine. So
SPEAKER_00:yeah, nothing to worry about. Amazing. I love how you summed everything up there. You mentioned you were pregnant at the time during the, you know, whatever you had to make this huge decision. Was it a boy or a girl?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay. So of course I love talking about my children. It was a boy. So we have two, we have two children. So we have our daughter and we have a son. So two and almost one. So they're very close in age. But I mean, another thing, we grew a family during starting a business. And so it can be done. It can be done. But
SPEAKER_00:they love-
SPEAKER_01:We love bringing our children around our business, you know, and certainly they're young right now and they don't understand it, of course, at this point. But the fact that we can be flexible with our time, be able to wake them up in the morning and put them in bed at night, that on the weekends we are visiting properties that we're visiting properties that we're working on or ones that are in transition. And they know them. I mean, our daughter mentions like knows the names of the properties. properties that we're going to. So we just build that into our weekend and it's super fun.
SPEAKER_00:She'll be helping out with the accounting in no time.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, she's
SPEAKER_00:going to be marketing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:She'll be marketing. I'm not sure. He'll probably be the one like swinging the hammer for sure. And using all those tools that I don't know what they are.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, I think before we wrap up here, do you have any final thoughts or anything else you'd like to share?
SPEAKER_01:Feel free to reach out. We're on Facebook and Instagram. This is a great opportunity to be collaborative versus being competitive.
SPEAKER_00:Amazing. Well, I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing your story, giving us your valuable time and telling us all the advice that you have. You know, I'm sure you're going to keep learning and growing along the way. And now that you're out of that startup phase, you know, who knows what can happen? The sky's the limit.
SPEAKER_01:You never know.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Well, thank you, everyone, for watching. Tune in next time for another episode of Loop It In. We'll see you soon. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. Don't forget to give us a good rating on whatever platform you're tuning in from. And we'll be back soon with another new episode. We hope to see you there. And until next time, this has been Poop It In.