The Educated Landlord

Making Landlording Easier

You are here: Home / Articles

Landlord Video Tip – Do Condo Make Good Rental Properties?

By

Condos As Rentals

Do condos make good rentals?When I first started in the landlord business a decade ago, we started looking at condos to use for rental properties. They were cheaper than single family homes, they were low maintenance as I didn’t have to deal with snow, lawn or building maintenance and they were in high demand as rents were a bit lower than renting a house. Also many buildings offered rental pools making my job even easier.

Fast forward a few years and I had a few more insights into the positives and negatives of condominiums as rental properties. That’s where today’s video comes in.

If you’ve just started reading the Educated Landlord, this video is off my normal beaten track. Typically my articles revolve around being a landlord, but recently people have been indicating they’re considering picking up additional properties.

I’ve been there, I’ve made some mistakes and I’ve made some great decisions. So rather than you finding out about the mistake part on your own, I’ve created a few videos addressing what to look for with picking up another property and what to watch out for.

But don’t worry, I still have plenty of additional landlord tips coming too, so watch for them as well. So check out the video below and don’t forget to share it with other landlord or potential landlord friends!

Did the video help? Did it give you a different perspective on using condos as rentals? And would you like more videos along this vein?

As always, leave me a comment if you have one (or can make one up). Let me know if you find the videos helpful, or what else you want to know about and I will do my best to get more info out to you!

Also, if you were paying attention, I’m just about ready to release my new E-course on screening tenants. It’s a short five day course that will prepare you for screening your first or your fiftieth tenant and it’s going to be absolutely FREE!!!

My “beta” reviewers have already been giving some hugely positive feedback and I’m pretty excited to hear form everyone once it’s live. If you’re not currently registered on the site, please take a moment and register on the bottom of this page with your name and email so you can be among the first to find out when it’s released.

Thanks for joining us here at The Educated Landlord. FYI, the picture at the beginning is the building where we bought our first condo(s) back in 2004 and this was one of our advertising photos when we rented them out. And that is why you turn the date stamp off on your advertising photos!

Landlord Video Tip – Saving Time With Future Ads

By

Rental Ad Time Saver

Inevitably you end up with a vacancy and suddenly you have to fill that vacant property again. Now you’ve got to try and find all those old pictures, remember what you wrote about in your last ad and then compile it all together again so you can start filling up your space.

Does this sound familiar? If you have multiple properties the problem compounds as you try to keep them all straight. Fortunately I have a solution for you, actually a couple solutions.

In the following video, I’ll go through how to save your time later by taking some action and being pro-active now. then after you’ve watched the video, I have an additional tip to help you out below.

As always, I love to hear any feedback you have and I also appreciate it if you can like and share the video and the post with other landlords you know. So here’s today’s video,

Was that helpful? Is it something you can implement today to help your landlord business in the future?

I talked about the creation of folders on computer as well and this is one of the best tips I can recommend to you. We have folders for each of our properties, folders for our rental forms and folders for almost every stage and type of form we use.

A quick review shows folders for each company, for rental forms, for purchase forms, for our shared accommodation properties and even for faxes/notices.  All logically broken out so we can find them quickly. Well logically to us at least.

Anyway, as per the video, when we write up our ads, we store copies of them in the appropriate folder and also the images we use for our ads. We don’t just limit it to a couple images, but keep adding as tenants and the look of the property changes so we have a range of pictures we can use.

So again I ask, have you already done something like this, or is it something you can start? My plan for the next few months is to try and add one new either video tip or post for you per week. Looking forward to any feedback you may have!

Landlord Video Tip – Is Your Property Actually A Good Rental Property?

By

What Makes A Good Rental Property?

In this video I’m going to be talking about where your property is located and how it can affect filling your vacancies. This is the type of landlord advice that can help your landlord business thrive or can turn it into more of a challenge. Thanks to Lisa and Tim for providing the inspiration for this one.

Also, sorry for the extended delay in videos, things have been incredibly hectic the last little while, but I’m back, at least partially, on track. I’ve also picked up a new camera, so going through some learning curves at the moment and changing some things up.

If you have questions you’d like answered in a video format or as an article be sure to leave me a comment below or email me and I will do my best to get back to you. And, be sure to share, like, thumbs up etc the video so more people can see it as well.

Landlord Video Tips – Set Your Rents Higher to Avoid Headaches

By

Tired of getting stuck with problem tenants? Want to make sure you have more quality applicants for your vacant rental rather than trying to weed through quantity?

In today’s video tip I explain a tip that has helped us get better quality tenants who not only take better care of our properties for us, but also tend to stay longer. Two qualities than can definitely make your life as a landlord easier.

 

As always, i love to hear any feedback ou may have, so leave a comment and don’t forget to share these tips with other landlords you may know. And if you have questions, send them in and I’ll see if I can answer them in a video for you!

Landlord Video Tips – How To Get Great Photos For Rental Ads

By

Photos of your rental propertyIn this video I have a handy tip to help you get great looking photos for use in your advertising.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and when it comes to making your rental property stand out, having a great picture in your ad can make all the difference. The problem is, how do you make an empty living room stand out?

That’s where today’s tip comes into play. In fairness, this won’t always work for you, and it won’t always work in all properties. It depends on your tenants, the properties condition and your tenants cooperation. Hopefully by now you’re looking forward to the video, so go take a look!

Oh and don’t forget, leave us some feedback, if you like the video, be sure to like it and share it with other landlords and if you have questions you’d like me to answer in a video, just leave it in the comment section below! Happy Landlording!

If you haven’t registered, how will you know when the next video is ready? If you’re not registered, scroll up to the top and fill in your name and email on the top right of the screen and I’ll update you when I have the next video up, plus you’ll get more articles, tips and ideas on how to be a more profitable and better educated landlord.

Landlord Video Tips – Good Tenants, Bad Tenants and The Eviction Spiral

By

Dealing With Good & Bad Tenants

I'm caught in an eviction spiral?I’ve mentioned this previously, and you may have heard part of this before if you’ve been following me for a while, but good tenants are incredibly valuable to a landlord.

They make your job so much easier it’s like having an assistant to take the workload off of you. Hopefully you’ve experienced this already, but if you haven’t these are the tenants who call immediately when there is a problem with an appliance, something with the property or if there is any type of issue.

They don’t call to complain, they call to make you aware, That can be a very distinguishing factor. They don’t make demands and often they have already dealt with the issue, they just wanted to make sure you were aware.

An example I have of this is a tenant who called me after the fact to tell me the smoke detector quit working. They tried changing the battery, but it still didn’t work right, so they simply went and bought another one and replaced it and then told me about it. They didn’t demand money for the smoke detector, they didn’t demand I run up and change the battery, they didn’t even imply I should pay for the smoke detector, but I did!

Good tenants like that need to be rewarded and if it involves covering costs, even when they don’t request it, it’s worth it in the long run. But that’s not where it ends. I go over a few other options you can do to keep a great relationship in the following video.

I also go over the issue of bad tenants and how they can drag you into what I call the eviction spiral, so hopefully you get some value out of the information. As always, please leave me a comment if you can, I love to hear your feedback, answer your questions and it also is an incredible incentive to me to know people are actually watching them! Enjoy!

Did you find this helpful? If so, be sure to register on the side of the page to get updates about new articles, new videos and everything else going on at The Educated Landlord.com

Landlord Video Tips – Common Landlord Mistakes I Made!

By

Learn From My Landlord Mistakes!

We can’t start off knowing everything about being a landlord and sometimes what you don’t know can hurt you. I know I suffered through many landlord mistakes. It’s part of learning.

When you’re growing up and first start to walk you get bumps and bruises from falling down, but soon enough you master it and your parents can barely keep up to you. Then when you’re older, you get that first bike and soon enough you’re zipping up and down the streets, flying over bumps and jumps and showing off to your friends.

Well, it’s a similar situation when you become a landlord. When you start off, there are opportunities for you to fall down, there are times you can injure your pride and your pocketbook and as an experienced landlord, I’ve done both.

Whether it’s being duped by a tenant for a couple month’s rent or its being deceived by partners who walked away with all the profits, I’ve been there. I’ve even had the economy rough me up, but during every incident, I’ve tried to take something away from it. I’ve tried to learn a lesson that I can apply to make my business stronger, to make my portfolio of properties more secure and to make sure I’m smarter for the experience.

My hope is that you too can learn from your lessons, and also from my lessons. That’s where the following video comes into play. It’s much longer than my normal short tips and I go a bit further into depth with examples of problems and mistakes I have run into during my tenure as a landlord.

As you can tell by my attire it’s even more casual than normal, so I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful. As always, I appreciate any feedback you have for me. I have several other videos recorded, I just need to make some time to edit them and get them uploaded, so watch for more coming in the near future.

As I mentioned previously, I want to get to around 20 videos and see how the overall response is, so if you like them and find them helpful, let me know. With that, hope you enjoy the video!

One more thing! If you know any other landlords, could you please let them know about this site? Hopefully it can help them too!