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Landlord Video Tips – Advertising Your Vacant Rental Properties Online

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Advertise Online For Better Exposure!

With more and more people connected to the internet, advertising your vacant properties online has become a necessity. This quick video talks about some online options and even tells you how to find the best online sites to advertise your property at by simply thinking like a tenant!

This was video number three in my series, I hope you’ve been enjoying them so far, if you have questions that I could answer in a two minute video feel free to leave a comment below or email me and I’ll see if I can video reply to you!

It’s becoming more important for landlords to remember they are running a business and they need to think strategically about their landlord business. Hopefully these quick landlord tips are providing the advice that helps your business run smoothly.

Landlord Video Tips – Screening Your Tenants

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Screening Your Tenants –
Make It a Priority!

Once you let a tenant into your property, you could be stuck with them for better or worse. So why not make sure it’s for better?

Diligently screening your tenants can make the difference between months of late payments and arguments or having the best possible tenants out there.

This quick video gives you some reminders and pointers to watch out for!

Are you screening your tenants? Are you screening them well?

It’s one of the biggest challenges new landlords run into. They don’t know the tricks bad tenants use to fool landlords, the tricks they use to get great referrals (fake referrals that is) and they have no clue where to find, how to read or what to do about credit reports.

Yet mastering that should probably be their first priority.

If you can master finding good tenants who will make your property better, with fewer headaches, less problems and typically stay longer, wouldn’t you make that a priority?

That’s where a good screening process comes into play and is what I talk about in the video.

It’s also why I created my How To Screen Tenants Like An Educated Landlord Course. I used to offer this as a simple five email course, but I decided to ramp it up a couple years ago to make it a simple step by step process to help more landlords get good tenants.

And that meant more than just the basics.

With my course I start teaching you about screening your tenants by showing you how to write ads that attract the best tenants, that do some of your screening for you to make your job easier and to help stop deadbeat tenants from even bothering to call.

Then I teach you what to ask and why. This is part of the 7 Questions That Landlords Need To Ask guide, just much more in depth.

From there you go all the way through the paperwork process, secrets about releasing keys and even what to do with applicants who you’ve rejected.

If you’re a landlord who’s ever had problems finding good tenants, this course will make you wonder why you didn’t know about it sooner.

If you want to learn the best methods of screening your tenants, follow this link and get started educating yourself today,

How To Screen Tenants Like an Educated Landlord

Screening your tenants properly can reduce headaches significantly

Welcome to our Video Tips For Landlords!

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Video Tips For Landlords

After what seems like forever, I’ve finally started recording some of my short video tips for landlords. Here’s the introduction video to get you started and to explain a bit more. Oh and watch for more shortly.

I’ll have more coming that will go over areas such as renovations, advertising your rentals and even more, so if you don’t want to miss any of them, be sure to register on the site and I’ll update you as I finish and post them!

Also, you can always find me on YouTube at The Educated Landlord On YouTube

If you’re not sure where to register, just follow this link:

Register Me For The Videos And Other Updates

Don’t forget to like the video and leave me any comments you may have. If you have questions about landlording you would like to see a video about, be sure to leave me a comment below!

Need To Evict A Tenant?

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Basic Steps When You Need To Evict A Tenant

Learn the basic eviction steps to avoid tenant frustrationYou’ve concluded that it’s time to evict your tenant, now what? First, in just about every jurisdiction in North America tenants have rights. As an educated landlord, it’s important you understand the basics of those local landlord and tenant rights.

These basics become even more important when it comes to evicting a tenant. This becomes the how and why of an eviction. Do you need to provide tenants with a 14 day eviction notice? Or is it 30 days? Does it even need to be written or does a verbal notice count?

Perhaps more importantly, are you even allowed to evict them for the reason you intend? Some regions are so biased towards protecting tenants that what you believe is grounds for eviction could get you sued for an illegal eviction attempt.

I’m all for protecting tenants rights, but the rules should be fair to both sides, and sometimes when you look closely, this may not be the case. This is even more reason for you to know the local eviction legislation before you have to need it.

As some quick absurd examples, some regions make it illegal to evict tenants in the winter. You still have to make your mortgage payments, but bad tenants get to stay on until it’s warm outside.

Other areas make it illegal to evict tenants for having pets, even if it’s against the lease or it was decided before they moved into the one bedroom apartment that you couldn’t accept their Great Dane. Some of the tenant legislation out there simply protects tenants from their own stupidity. I don’t think I can put it any other way.

You also have to understand what you cannot do to help tenants along. This ranges from threatening your tenants, which is a big no no just about everywhere, to disconnecting utilities. I’ve even heard of landlords  taking away front doors “for repair” and having this take several days to complete. I don’t know anywhere where this is legal and in many places it could result in substantial fines and charges against the landlord.

Learn The Local Landlord Tenant Laws

So what can a landlord do? Well as I mentioned, first step is to learn the basic eviction laws in your area. Often you can find this out through a quick Google search for “landlord tenant rules” or “landlord tenant bylaws” and by adding your local city, town, state or province.

With any luck, there is a local government number you can call for information or at least a website or two that provides the basic information. This can put you on the right track and get you started.

Depending on where you are, this could lead to a tribunal system where they have hearings to determine whether tenants should be evicted or provided extra time. Or it might involve a much simpler system of just providing written notice that you are terminating a lease and need to include why. At this point, it’s your job to understand your options.

What Did The Tenant Say?

The next piece of advice that has become invaluable for me when evicting a tenant is to document everything. I’m not just talking about the eviction part either. I try to document all the interactions I have with my tenants. For the ultra organized, this might involve keeping files for each rental property/tenant you have.

My preference is to use email to follow up on conversations. I can recap verbal conversations in the email and any decisions that came about and send it off to the tenant. Now I have a written record I can fall back on which can be very handy if problems pop up later.

By having everything documented, it prevents an eviction turning into a he said/she said situation, especially when you can provide an email string showing everyone was aware of what was happening.

So there you have it. That is the basics of evicting a tenant. Learn the local landlord tenant legislation and document everything. If you can spend some time in advance learning the rules, it can help you avoid many problems before they even come up, but better late than never. As for documenting everything, this can be a good idea for just about anything.

Why It’s Not An Investment Property, It’s A Long Shot

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Don’t Speculate on Investment Property, Invest In It

Quick,what’s the economic forecast for the region surrounding your “investment property”?

Do you know?

If you do and that’s why you bought in that area great, if you don’t it’s not an investment, it’s a long shot.

Without understanding the basics of what is going on in the area you are leaving yourself wide open and this is something an educated Real Estate investor would never do. By understanding what drives the market and the long term viability you can ensure your investment becomes successful.

So here’s a quick primer. If your investment area is dependent on one driving force, what is the long term forecast for that force?

As an example, you can buy a house in Detroit for almost nothing, the driving force in the area has been auto manufacturing and the prognosis for the near future simply isn’t that good.

So neither is the housing market and buying there is a long shot. Long shots aren’t a sound investment strategy.

On the other end of the scale is an area like Dallas, which is heavy on energy related industries, but also has aerospace, electronics and pharmaceutical industries to help carry it along.

This has created a strong job market, which attracts workers which further helps grow the economy locally which leads to good long term investment opportunities in that Real Estate market.

When you are committing serious amounts of cash into an investment, you need to do your homework. Lot’s and lots of homework!

If it’s going to be truly an investment, why wouldn’t you want it to be successful and success begins with understanding the local economy. That’s what will separates an investment property and a professional landlord from a speculator and a speculative investment.

Updating Your Rental Property – It’s All In The Details

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Details Spruce Up Your Rental Property

renovating your rental propertyAre you hands on with your rental property? Do you end up going in, doing some painting, changing light fixtures and doing other minor repairs? If you do, then you’re just like me, if you don’t, then you might just be smarter than me!

Just to explain that, if you’re not careful, your rental properties can have you working for at only a couple dollars per hour and if that’s the case, you might be wasting your time and your money! I’m going a bit off topic with this, but it’s important, we’ll get to the details in a minute.

Story Time – Flashback To Our Early Days

When my wife and I first started out in Real Estate many years ago, we started as rehabbers, or flippers. We were both fairly handy and like many others out there who were doing the same thing, we rationalized that if we did the majority of the labour and renovations ourselves, we could save thousands in labor costs. We also both tended to pay a lot of attention to the details as we wanted to get the property just right and obviously, the details help spruce up the property. This just made things worse.

The problem with our math is, we didn’t take into account the time factor. It actually took another mentor friend of ours to point out the obvious. Any money we saved in labour costs was quickly eaten up with our extended carrying costs because it took us longer to get projects done. what could have been completed in a week or two by having three separate teams in to do everything (a painting crew, a flooring crew and a general handymen crew), we did it on our own in two months, and sometimes longer! But boy did it look good!

Time is money when it comes to flipping properties and that extra month meant another large mortgage/carrying payment before we could start selling it. It was early lessons like this that we also carried over to the rental side of our business. The big factor being time versus money saved.

So while we still do many of the updates ourselves, we also now take into consideration the time involved. If a project would take us a week to get done due to all of our other commitments, if we can get someone else in to get it done in a day or two, it’s worth the expense. However, it still doesn’t leave us out when it comes to catching the details, which brings us full circle back to the point of this article.

Details Make Your Rental Property Stand Out

The inspiration for this bit of information was actually my mother-in-law. We are actually just putting the finishing touches on a rental property we just had painted and we stopped in to work on some of the details and since mom was along for the ride, she pitched in.

sprucing up your rental property to fill vacancies fasterWe had just had the property painted from top to bottom and it had been a couple days since the painting was done, so now it was time to put the electrical covers back on. This was a perfect task for her and incredibly helpful for us, so away she went putting the plates back up and the screws in to hold them in place.

This is where the details show up and it will be interesting to find out how many of you are aware of this next part, as my mother in law wasn’t. You probably don’t pay much attention to this, but do you know what direction the screw heads line up on an electrical cover, or a switch on the wall? Did you even notice the screws? We do and that’s part of the details. It’s also why you will want to go check the switches around you now.

If you guessed the screws heads line up in a line from top to bottom, you win (look closely at the top picture to see what I mean). Now there are a couple reasons for this, first aesthetically it just looks nicer. When the screws are lined up it just flows a bit better versus having them at all different angles. Secondly, it makes them easier to keep clean. If they were lined up horizontally, dust would collect on the flat edge and build up much quicker.

It’s knowing the little details like this that can help set your property out from the crowd. When I glanced over at the plates that mom had already installed, they were at various angles and to my eye, it looked disjointed. After a quick explanation and a few adjustments, the screws were all properly lined up and it just looked right.

Learning little tips and tricks like this can help set your rental property apart from the competition. Do you have any handy tips you can share with landlords? If so leave us a comment below. Also, let us know if you knew about the cover screws!

3 Steps To Successfully Investing In Real Estate

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Must Have Advice For When You Invest in Real Estate

invest in real estate successfullyWhen I started to invest in Real Estate and created what eventually became my landlord business, I had a clear goal. That was to own enough property that I could generate an income to replace my job, to create a nest egg that would continue to increase in value over time and to get to a position where I had more free time for my family.

The problem was, I knew where I wanted to end up, I just hadn’t taken the time to create a map. Over time, I realized that map would have saved me many trips I took down the wrong fork of the road, often forcing me to double back and costing me extra time and perhaps even allow me to travel with different companions along the way.

While there are great things to be said about doing something on your own (there is a certain positive vibe to being able to say someone is self made), the reality is we need people to help us along the way if we want to get there quicker and to help us avoid some wrong and potentially expensive turns.

This leads me to three steps I learned along the way, that helped me create a successful landlord business and to successfully invest in Real Estate and I feel any beginning landlord must be aware of to help them succeed as quickly as possible.

Step 1, Create a Network

To help you succeed the quickest, you need a network of friends, contractors, supporters and professionals to help you get there. By creating a trusted network you have people coming along on your journey who you can go to for advice, support and even guidance. This tip alone can streamline years off your journey.

Our network includes lawyers, mortgage brokers, realtors, accountants, contractors and fellow landlords we have met over the years, the majority of these people are also in the landlord business. This group of knowledgeable professionals gives us insights and resources to get questions answered quickly and accurately and has saved us tens of thousands of dollars over the years along with shaving years off our progress.

Step 2, Don’t Stop Learning

To stay on top of your business as a landlord you need to continually educate yourself about being a landlord, about local laws and legislation regarding being a landlord and owning Real Estate, about mortgages and finances and even requires and understanding of the basics of the local economics.

Training in landlord and tenant legislation can help you deal with potential tenant problems easier and gives you confidence in your decisions. Understanding the basics of Real Estate transactions and local bylaws pertaining to Real Estate can help you avoid costly mistakes such as purchasing in improperly zoned areas. Knowing the basics of finances and mortgages can help you make better business decisions and make planning for the future easier. Having an understanding of the basics of economics can give you an edge when it comes to determining what areas may be better suited for additional properties and it can make you aware of trends others don’t see until it’s too late.

Some of these areas appear to remain quite static, but if you don’t pay attention and keep up, suddenly rules can change on you. Whether it’s changes in rules for secondary suites, a huge new employer coming to your area creating jobs or even changes in mortgage requirements, they all affect you either directly or indirectly, so stay aware of what’s happening. Once you think you know it all, you start falling behind quickly, so never stop getting educated.

Step 3, Build Up Reserves

No matter how well you plan or who well things appear, you never know when the wheels will fall off. The big example of this currently is to look back at the worldwide recession that recently hit us. For many individuals, it wiped them completely out, for those that had reserves built up and extra cash to cover them during the toughest times, it gave them an extra life (or two) to survive and then to prosper as the environment started turning around.

As tempting as it may be to pull all the profits out and buy a shiny new sports car or to pump them directly back into a new property, take a few minutes and make sure you have adequate reserves in case the situation changes. This single step can often be the biggest difference between long term success and quick failure.

Obviously there is much more than just these three steps to successfully invest in Real Estate, but if you start by paying attention to these areas, create a network of trusted friends and advisors, don’t stop learning about the landlord business and build up your reserves, you will find your path to being a successful landlord a much straighter and less arduous affair.