3 Tips for New Investors Renting for BRRRR During COVID-19

Continuing our series of tips for new investors to implement the BRRRR strategy, let’s talk about the “rent” aspect. I mentioned in one of the earlier posts that we have rented out five units all within one week of the listings going up, and we have collected 95% of our rents.

Having an engineering background with experience in systems and processes, I have always been fascinated by automation and efficiency. Add two small children to the mix and it stopped being a fascination and became a necessity. I have come to learn that profitability lies behind the unexpected and the unglamorous—being able to effectively run the business with the least amount of work.

Early on in the business, each time I had to do something more than once, I started thinking whether I could:

automate,
eliminate, or
delegate.

And traditional property management had a lot of room for automation. We had incorporated some of the automation features before COVID and it helped to have the infrastructure in place for them. But there were a few things I recommend you consider specifically due to the pandemic.

3 Real Estate Renting Tips During COVID-19

1. Self-showings

When you first learn about self-showings, it is natural to be skeptical. Would you be comfortable letting a potential tenant into your property without being there yourself?

During the pandemic, it became a necessity for everyone’s safety. This feature alone allowed us to rent out properties while others waited. We provided instructions on safely entering the properties, created systems for lockboxes where the codes would change every 15 minutes, did a soft background check for potential tenants before letting them in, and lastly, made sure that each appointment was long enough so two parties never ended up at a showing at the same time.

Each point I mentioned above probably deserves its own post. But this allows you to get started.

2. Set a great foundation

The biggest question our community members ask us is how our rent collection is going. We are currently reaping the benefits of a great foundation. This foundation is two-fold:

a robust screening process in place, and
a great track record of treating our tenants well.

With these two in place, we have had great relationship with our tenants who are now paying us rent on time.

Additionally, you consider Section 8. Section 8 allows you to help a family in need while keeping your profitability intact and a major portion of your rent certain each month.

3. Go paperless

When we had three properties, I decided I was going to invest time and money into setting our business up to handle 30 properties without too much additional manpower. Call it foresight, ESP, or a crazy idea, it worked really well to keep growing pains at bay when we grew dramatically in the past couple of years. The one I highly recommend is going paperless.

One component of going paperless is a great property management software which includes virtual rent collection, maintenance management, and lease signing. This one thing alone has had the biggest impact on our property management process during the pandemic, allowing us to run operations smoothly allowing us to focus on acquisitions.