Rookie Reply: How to Screen Tenants for Free & When to Cash-Out Refinance

Ashley:
Today we’re going to get your questions answered. I’m Ashley Care and I’m here with Tony j Robinson

Tony :
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. And today we’re going back into the BiggerPockets forums to get your questions answered. Now guys, the forms is the best place to go and post your questions and get responses from real estate investing experts. And today we’re going to discuss how can you build a pool of potential tenants for free? What to do when a sheriff comes to evict your tenants, whether or not you can live in your garage and rent out your house, and would you cash out refinance or should you cash out refinance in this current market?

Ashley:
Okay, so Tony, I want to start off in just general Landlording discussions. So let’s go to the forums on biggerpockets.com into that one.

Tony :
I’ve got one from Bezo here, and here’s his question. He says, I’ve been finding tenants through Facebook marketplace and I’ve been lucky so far, but my plan is to buy more properties and manage them myself. So the question is how do I find and screen these tenants more professionally without having to pay anyone?

Ashley:
That’s a good question.

Tony :
Yeah, I guess, and maybe I’m off base here, but I think the first thing that jumps out to me is why would you not want to pay someone, right? If we’re signing a lease that’s whatever, 12, 24 or 36 months and you got someone going into your property, I feel like it would make sense to be spend a little bit of money to properly screen that person so you can feel confident that you’re not letting the wrong person into your home. But I don’t know, you have more experience on this side than I do. What are your thoughts on that?

Ashley:
Well, the going rate for paying someone to lease your apartment is one month’s rent, so that can add up quickly and that’s a huge chunk. One month’s rent could be your cashflow for three months. So yeah, it’s definitely expensive to hire someone professionally to come in and in lease your apartment. But I think what you meant more is paying for a service to screen

Tony :
Screening. Yeah, exactly. So

Ashley:
There is definitely software that you can use to screen that is very low cost and most of them are integrated right into property management software. So Rent Ready is an amazing one for starting out. When you are just starting to build your portfolio, it’s really inexpensive and if you are a BiggerPockets Pro member, I think you get it for a dollar. So go to biggerpockets.com and check that out. But there’s other different softwares. There’s a avail. Zillow is building out its own property management software. So there’s different resources available through property management software and usually one of those resources is a screening software. So it’s usually a third party software that they integrate with where you’ll have somebody submit an application online. So the property manage software will give you a template for an application, you can tailor it, sometimes you can’t tailor it, and then every time someone applies online for your unit, they will fill out that application and then they will be asked to do the screening criteria.

Ashley:
So there’s many different types of screening. So make sure you understand what’s available and just know if you’re doing one of these, it’s probably not good enough. So the first one is doing a credit check on somebody. So you want to have their credit run, so you want to see what their credit score is. You want to see how many judgements are against them, if they’re delinquent, how much debt they have. There’s other things I take into consideration too. If they have a lot of debt that is medical bills or student loans, I don’t put as much weight onto those as if those were credit card debt and they’ve just maxed out credit cards. So checking for their credit is the first thing. The next thing could be criminal record because if you have a four unit you have families, you probably want to check and make sure that there’s not a violent person coming in that has a violent history that maybe went to prison, has a felony for robbing their neighbor in the past, armed robbery to their neighbor, whatever it may be.

Ashley:
But be very careful with this because depending on your state laws, there are some things that you cannot deny someone for. So make sure you understand what that criteria is in your state as to what you can deny someone for as far as criminal activity and things you cannot deny them for where they’re actually protected under fair housing law. And also make sure with your screening criteria that you have the metrics set. So as I go through each of these different screens have a criteria and stick to that criteria because or else you’re discriminating and you are not following fair housing laws by picking and choosing what it is. So say for example, you’re renting apartment A and one person has a 700 credit credit score and the other person has a 600 and use, the 700 application was submitted second, the 600 was submitted first, and you say, no, I’m sorry, I’m going to deny the 600 because you have to have at least a six 50 to rent our unit.

Ashley:
They get denied and you accept the second application with 700 credit score. Then you’re renting out apartment B, apartment B, you get somebody who has a five 50 credit score, but you’re not really getting anyone else to apply. They show you a bank statement that shows they have a ton of money. You’re like, oh, you know what, I’ll go ahead and I’ll rent to them. Well, now this person who wanted the apartment in apartment B says, or apartment A says, Hey, I had a 600 credit score. I also had a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, but you never asked me and I could have given you proof and you denied me because my credit score wasn’t this, but you let this person in and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay? So follow your criteria and follow your metrics. There are exceptions that can be made, but make sure you’re documenting why you’re making an exception in this case compared to why you wanted have in another case. So document, document, document. Okay.

Tony :
Yeah, let me ask some follow up on that because I think that’s a really important point around the legality of screening tenants. What have you found, say that you’re going into maybe I’m sure New York Fair Housing law and all those things really well, but say I dropped you into Indiana and you’ve got no experience in Indiana, who are you going to talk to educate you on what is legal and what is not legal as a landlord?

Ashley:
So first of all, in almost every town hall, city hall, they have little booklets or pamphlets that are either tenants rights guide or a landlord’s guide to renting. And you want to grab both of those and that is going to be a breakdown of what the rules and the regulations are. So most cities have housing associations. So in New York, the two in Buffalo are Belmont, which actually gives out Section eight housing vouchers. And then the other one is home NY and that they’re both nonprofit organizations, but they both host landlord classes and some of them even niche down, like they’ll do maybe one week of what you need to know about ESA, like emotional support animals, you can sign up for this class and sometimes they’re free, sometimes they’re 10 bucks, but they always do one almost once a month. That is as a landlord, here’s the laws and regulations you need to know in New York state.

Ashley:
So that right there is a great starting point and a lot of classes since after covid are done virtually now, so you don’t even have to go anywhere to take the classes. So finding those housing organizations in your market that you want to invest in and taking those classes is just a really great starting point. And then just going on the state website and searching landlord laws, and you’ll usually get a breakdown of, usually there’s a super user friendly guide that you can read, but also if you go to a veil.co, that’s a property management software, but they also have a really great guide with links to every state and what the major tenant landlord laws are in those states too. So you can go ahead and look and click by state as to what those are.

Tony :
And I think it’s super important to call that out because for a lot of rickeys they might just assume, Hey, I can put whatever I want into my lease, but now they’re actual laws you have to follow, and I’ve shared this on the podcast before, but one of my jobs out of college was I was a leasing agent for a big apartment owner down here and one of the very first classes they put us through, it wasn’t on sales strategies for leasing up apartment units, it was the legal side of things and we had to sit through a day of training that was just about like, Hey, here are the things you can and can’t say when you’re showing an apartment to someone. Here are the things that we can and can’t put into a lease or when we’re screening applicants. And they took it so far as the software that they used, I can’t remember what it was called, but the screening software that they used, it made all the decisions about who could get an apartment and who couldn’t. We just input the information and we had no say over whether or not someone got approved. And that’s how they kept it very black and white for the tenants who were applying for these apartment complexes.

Ashley:
That is how it is on AppFolio to the software that we use for property management is leasing. We set our criteria in the software and then it spews out that this is approved denied. And then we also have some things set for manual review, like if someone doesn’t complete the income verification, and the reason is it’s because it’s an 8-year-old woman who doesn’t have email, doesn’t have online banking to link her bank account to show the income verification. There’s different things like that we do have the manual review for, but it’s the same thing. You set your criteria and then also too, if you are manually reviewing, you are documenting right into the software as to what that change was and why you did it. But back real quick and we’ll go on to the next question, but I want to finish the different types of screens that you should do.

Ashley:
So we had the credit screen and then we did the background check and then also the income verification you want to do. So that can be integrated right in where what they’re doing is, the way our software does it, Lisa, we use through AppFolio is they actually have the person link their bank account and it will check their bank account to see their deposits that are made from their pay stubs and verify it that way. Then you can also do employer verification and this you could do manually was like they say their employer is this place and you just call the place or you have a VA do it, call the place and just say, I need to verify that. So-and-so works here, when did you start? Is he current? And in good standing as an employee is going to be having a shop you can do that too.

Ashley:
So there are different ways to screen and then you can do credit references and personal references. I really don’t a lot of weight to those because you can put down whoever’s number you want. Even the same with checking on the previous landlord calling too as to calling their previous landlord. They can put down anyone to vouch for them and saying, oh yeah, I’m their landlord. I own this. And I mean you could go to the extent of looking up the property on the GIS mapping system and seeing if the name they gave you actually matches the person on it or maybe it’s a property management company and you Google make sure that’s the number for the property management office or whatever for the property and then call and verify that way. But some other places that you can use, if you don’t want property management software that has it integrated is tenant reports.com is one that you can use.

Ashley:
And I think it’s maybe, but there’s different plans I think you can get where real base level maybe 20 bucks and I think probably goes up to $50 as to how you want to screen. But there’s different websites like that where you can go to and just have all the screening done and what they’ll do is they’ll actually email your applicant and have your applicant input all their information. So instead of them giving you their social, their bank account information, their pay stubs, things like that, they will get all of that directly from the tenant themselves, which I think is a really nice or the applicant a really nice feature that you don’t have to handle and be responsible for their financial information that the third party is handling that for you.

Tony :
Well, a lot of great breakdown or really great breakdown there Ash, for what folks should look for is their screening those tenants. So Ricky, stay tuned because you’re going to hear as we help first a Ricky investor decide to do a cash out refinance with current rates and if you can live in your garage and rent out your house. But first we’re going to hear a quick word from today’s share sponsors. Alright guys, welcome back. So Ashley, how about you? Is there a question that sticks out to you in the forms that we should maybe go through next?

Ashley:
Yeah, I’m in the house hacking discussions and I found one from Fisher. He said, can I live in my garage and rent out the rooms in my house? So use a little background on me. I’m 22 and bought my first house hack two years ago. It was a home run and I’m ready to do it again. Interest rates are making deals a lot harder to come by, but I’m looking for a creative solution. I can’t seem to find a clear answer on this. I understand that you cannot rent out a garage as a living space to someone else unless properly finished and reproved by the city. But could I live in it theoretically if I did enough work so that it fits my needs and lived in it as my primary, would I be violating any laws or aspects of an owner occupied loan? I love this kid already.

Tony :
Yeah, no, first congratulations, right? I mean 22 years old. He bought it two years ago, so he was 20 when he bought it. That’s amazing. And

Ashley:
Ready to move on to the next deal. I love it. After holding it for two years. Okay, so I don’t know these answers for sure. Well this I know for sure is like you mentioned, he would get it enough to fit his needs If you’re going to be doing any plumbing, electrical work, things like that, then that’s where I would go into, yes, you need permits, you need to go to the city and have permits to get that done that that would be violating your city regulations that you’re doing plumbing and electrical work without getting permits for those. So that would be the first thing. If you’re just going to be, you got a bathroom already in the house, you don’t need to put a bathroom in there, you don’t need to. Maybe there’s already running water in there, maybe there’s already a washer sink that’s sitting out there or something like that, a slop sink. But so you’ll have water for a little kitchenette, whatever it may be. I don’t see a reason that you as the homeowner can’t sleep in your garage. I mean I feel like people put their kids out in the garage, make a bedroom for their kid. I dunno. So what are your thoughts on this?

Tony :
Yeah, I mean I feel the same. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be an issue, but I know I’ve also seen some weird things in city ordinances around occupancy and what that actually looks like. And every city might have something different, especially if you live in an HOA, I know our HOA states even how we can use our garage. So there are certain limitations to what we can do and what we can put inside of our garage based on our HOA guidelines. So at a high level, I don’t see why it would be an issue, but I would maybe just reach out just to confirm and say like, Hey, I just want to put a bed in my garage and sleep in there. Is there any issues with that? And if there is, I’m sure the city would walk you through that.

Ashley:
Yeah, I’m more of a person that’s like, nobody needs to know where I’m sleeping on my property and I can sleep wherever I want on my property.

Tony :
I agree, I agree and I don’t see why it would be an issue, but we’re big brother and big sister to this 22-year-old kids. I just want to make sure we’re giving ’em all the ins and outs.

Ashley:
It really will depend on your wording of how you word this as to can I turn my garage into a bedroom? Then that’s where they’re going to say, okay, well you will need to permit it to add an extra bedroom onto your property if you’re just going to move in. So you also have to think about the resale on this property too. So if you do go in and you do these changes, but it’s not going to be permitted as a bedroom, but you used it as a bedroom, but maybe you’ve built in a closet and things like that, don’t expect that when you go to sell it that you can list it as now a five bedroom compared to a four bedroom because you did these little things to make it a bedroom because it’s not going to be permitted a permitted bedroom, which would cause issues when you go to actually sell the property. If you’re trying to list it as an additional bedroom too on the property.

Tony :
The only thing I would think about is heating and cooling. I don’t know where you’re at or what the weather’s like, but I know my garage gets hot as all get out during the summer months. So just something to consider there as well.

Ashley:
Actually by us, a lot of people have heated garages, not usually cooled, but mostly everybody has one of those hanging heaters up in the garage or in our garage. We have the in floor heat in the garage. But I think a split unit could easily be put into the garage and it may not be questioned as to why are you putting a split unit in your garage great to cool and keep warm.

Tony :
Yeah, I love that. Well, best of luck to you Fisher. I just love the hustle, right? He’s turning this house act to even a better house act the second time around. He said, I’m not even going to be inside the house this time, right? I’m going to give up the whole house. You

Ashley:
Know what, just build a tree fort out back. Let’s

Tony :
Take

Ashley:
It to the extreme. Come on Fisher, take it a step further, man.

Tony :
But I guess just one last thing, and you kind of did touch on this, right? But it’s like depending on your city, it might make sense actually to, if it’s not too cost prohibitive, maybe to convert that garage into an actual A DU because now when you do go to sell that house or even say you keep it, at least now you can legally rent out the a DU once you move out and now there’s another option for you there. So things to consider.

Ashley:
So he did say he cannot rent out a garage as a living space, so maybe he did try that route, but maybe that was because it was as a garage but didn’t actually check to make it into an official A DU. Okay, so you guys know we love talking about real estate and we love answering your questions. So if you have a question, please head over to the BiggerPockets forums and leave your question there. Maybe we’ll pick it to be on the next show. And then if also you could do us a big favor, if you really love the show, if you could go to your podcast app that you’re listening on and hit the follow button, it really helps other people find the show and the show progress and we’d really, really appreciate it. Okay, Tony, so let’s go back to the forums. What section are you in right now?

Tony :
So right now I am in the bird discussion and there’s a question here from Victor. And Victor says, should I cash out refinance? So Victor says, I bought my first house, which is a duplex last January. My interest rate is 6.625%. I was planning on combining three strategies, which are Burr house hacking and the sneaky rental strategy. I don’t know what the sneaky rental strategy is, so hopefully you can educate us somewhat what that means. He says, I’m currently to buy my next primary residence to house hack. I was thinking of using the 9,000 that I can get out of this refinance for the duplex for the down payment slash renovations on my next house. The only problem is the new rate will be 8% on the duplex. Does it make sense to take the higher rates to pull out the nine k? I should also mention that I can’t wait until rates come down to refinance because I’ll only be able to take out a loan for 70% of the value as opposed to 75% that I can get while it’s my primary. So it sounds like the basic premise of Victor’s question here is I’m at a 6.625, it doesn’t make sense to refinance that rate up to an 8% to get $9,000 in cash back. What are your thoughts on hearing that, Ashley?

Ashley:
Well, I am assuming that by he means sneaky rental strategy as in he just bought the duplex last January, which is not a year away and he’s looking to rent out his unit before the year is up is what I’m thinking maybe is the sneaky rental strategy. So most mortgages require you to live in the property for one year before you vacate the property unless you have a job relocation or there is a circumstance that allows you to move from the property like relocating, you’re called into service, different things like that that allow for it. But most of the time you are required to live there for one year in that property. So most people would live there for a year, then go and buy their next property, turning the previous one into a rental. Okay, so what’s the actual question?

Tony :
So should he do a cash out refinance and increase that rate from 6.625 up to an 8% to get that 9,000 bucks? No, that was a quick and confident no,

Ashley:
Because he’s not even considering closing cost into that I don’t think, unless that’s net after closing cost. But you are going to be increasing what your mortgage is if you’re wrapping closing costs in, I would say that. And plus you’re increasing your interest rate by, what is it? Two,

Tony :
Almost 2%.

Ashley:
Yeah, 2%.

Tony :
I disagree with you, right? I think nine k, I don’t think it’s a big enough chunk of cash to do a refinance given where your current interest rate is and where it’s going to go.

Ashley:
Yeah, that’s what I said. Are you disagreeing with me?

Tony :
No, no, no. I said I agree with you.

Ashley:
Oh, I thought you said I’m going to disagree with you.

Tony :
No, no. I 100% agree with you. We recently did a refinance on one of our properties and I think our rate was like four and we refinance up to seven, but we were able to pull out I think like $120,000 on that refinance. So that was a big chunk of cash for us. So we could honestly we’re reinvesting a big chunk of it back into that property to renovate it and make it nicer. But that was enough cash for us to feel confident in what we were doing. But nine KA little slim to, like Ashley said, half those closing costs and to increase your mortgage payment by whatever that change ends up being.

Ashley:
So figure if you bought it in January, there’s not that much, say it was a 30 year fixed rate mortgage, there’s not that much principal pay down in the beginning of the loan. You’re paying more interest than you’re paying principal. So in this scenario I just said he was buying, he had a mortgage of $500,000 and maybe paid down a little bit of principal. He’s increasing his mortgage payment, most likely probably hasn’t paid off $9,000 yet over the last seven months. So the mortgage is probably going to actually going to be a little bit higher. But I did the math. So on his first property here, lemme go back to where I saved that. So if he had the 6.625%, if he did get a $500,000 mortgage, his monthly payment was be $3,200 a month. Okay, so say he’s pulling out the exact, getting a mortgage again refinancing for 500,000, but at 8% his mortgage is now 3,668, actually $466 his mortgage increased by. So if you take 9,000 divided by 400 and what I say 66, so 19 months to be stuck into an interest rate at 8% only to get $9,000 19 months sooner. Plus we’re not even factoring closing costs of doing the refinance either too. So I would say no, that’s a huge jump in your monthly mortgage payment by $650 just for $9,000.

Tony :
Totally agree. Couldn’t agree with you more Ash way to break out the calculator and run us through it all.

Ashley:
Okay, so we’re going to take our second ad break right here, but when we get back we do have a question on an eviction and what do you actually do when the sheriff shows up to evict your tenant? We’ll be right back.

Tony :
Alright guys, welcome back. So Ash, I’m looking at the general landlording discussions and this question comes from deer at him. He says, after a few months of paperwork, my lawyer has finally confirmed that the sheriff will be going to the property to evict my tenant for a non-payment of rent. I’m being asked by the sheriff to be at the property at a certain time with a locksmith once they get the tenant out while I’m there, do I make him take his stuff? Do I have to sit there and watch until he’s all cleared out? If not, do I have to go back with the tenant at another date and time to get his stuff out? What am I supposed to do when the sheriff removes the tenant and watch the whole thing? Does anyone have any experience on this matter? It would be greatly appreciated for your input. So Ashley, obviously as a landlord, one of the things we all dread is the idea of having to evict a tenant. It’s not a fun experience for any of the parties involved, but sometimes it is a necessary thing that we have to do. So dear asked a lot of questions here, but maybe if we can break ’em down one by one, but here’s the first one. Do I make the tenant take all of his stuff at that time? So the times you’ve had to evict are the tenants taking everything with him?

Ashley:
So first of all, this depends on your state laws. So in New York State, you have to hold your tenant’s property for 30 days and you can’t sell it. You have to trash it or give it away or whatever. You can’t sell their stuff to recoup any of your costs and you have to hold it for 30 days. Make them take their stuff, try as much as you can to make them so you’re not stuck with it for 30 days. So that really depends on the situation first with that kind of piece of it is when you are going, it really depends on how prepared they are that the marshals are showing up. So I’ve had the marshals come and the person’s gone. They’ve already packed up their stuff, they vacated, they’re gone. But I also had it where the sheriff showed up and they didn’t have a single thing packed.

Ashley:
The girl was at work and her elderly grandfather that lived with her was in and horrific living conditions. And we found him there alone and we actually had to call family social services to come and get him, but she just was so unaware that this was actually going to happen, that not a thing was packed. So you also have to be, I guess, work with the sheriffs too. So if the sheriffs are there and they tell them they have to vacate, the sheriffs are only going to stay there for so long while they pack up their stuff. So you could say, go ahead sheriffs, I’m going to let them stay longer, get their stuff out or whatever. But then you’re kind of stuck if they go back and squat in the house and they don’t actually leave. So I always ask for the sheriffs to stay as long as they can while they’re pulling stuff out. And this has only happened to me twice where people have actually moved out while the sheriff was standing there. And the sheriffs were great both times, but so it depends on the sheriff’s too, how long they will wait and if you want them to wait

Tony :
Ash, do you have to store that in storage? Do you have to leave it at the property? Can I take it out of the property at least and store it somewhere?

Ashley:
So you can do both things and you can leave it in the property and then you have to meet them and accommodate for them to give them access to the unit. So it’s a very gray area, at least in New York, but you have to allow them access to get their stuff within 30 days. It just has to be reasonable. You can’t say, oh, I can only meet you at 4:00 AM for 15 minutes and you got to get all your stuff out. It has to be reasonable, and it could be multiple times if reasonable, whatever, but you want them to get as much stuff as possible so you don’t have to deal with it. So you want to be accommodating. You can put their stuff in a storage unit, but you have to hire professional moving company to move their stuff into the storage unit and you have to pay for the movers and the storage unit for 30 days. And plus when their stuff is there, it makes it a lot harder to actually go through and renovate the property too. So you got to kind of weigh the cost benefit. Are you going to have it vacant for a month and then can you start some of the renovations with their stuff in there? Do you have to wait until it’s all gone? There’s so much stuff. So that’s another issue.

Tony :
I did look it up for California. Now, side note, or maybe take this with a grain of salt. I use chat GPT to get the answer to this. So for what it is, but it says that in California, if a tenant leaves something behind, you do have to also provide them with the notice. And basically they have 18 days if you deliver that notice in person to them to collect their things. And they have 23 days if they’re notified by mail and you have to store their stuff somewhere. It says you can choose to place your location, but it just has to be secure. And then you can also charge them a reasonable amount for the storage and for the moving, which is good to know, but

Ashley:
Will you actually get that?

Tony :
Will you get anything? Right? Who knows, right? But it says the value is less than 700. You can keep sell or dispose if the value is more than 700, you must sell the items at a public auction. So interesting. Right? So you actually have to sell it. If it’s over a certain amount in California,

Ashley:
Then do you have to give the money to the tenants?

Tony :
It doesn’t save. I would hope not. That’s really

Ashley:
How is it? California, you probably have to pay for the auction and take the time to sell their stuff and then you have to actually send them the proceeds.

Tony :
Yeah, I would not be surprised. But it seems very similar to what you laid out for New York, right? Where hey, there’s a little bit of a wiggle room there for both you and the 10 around what to do if things get left behind.

Ashley:
And then there was the other question too is do I sit there and watch until it’s cleared out? So your main priority, and it doesn’t have to be you, it could be somebody else is getting the locks changed. That’s really what you’re showing up for is getting the locks changed on the property. So right when the sheriff’s knock and say you’ve got to go, it really will depend on how cooperative the person is to actually leave the property. And if they are saying, wait, let me get my stuff out. If they’re giving the sheriffs a hard time, the sheriffs may just say, no, you got to leave the property, you’re out of control or whatever, and then you change the locks and everybody leaves. So yeah. But basically yes, if they’re going to start moving out that day, you kind of just hang around and you can sit in your car and go on your phone I guess and scroll, but you’re kind of stuck there waiting.

Ashley:
And that’s something to talk to the sheriffs about too, because when the sheriffs leave, you have no obligation to really stay there. When the sheriffs are gone before they leave, you should say, okay, now I’m locking the property. We can accommodate another time for you to come back and to get your things. And the sheriffs won’t be with you at that time to do that. So that’s what you have to kind of, I guess, balance as to how much time do you want to give them that day. And compared to taking the time to come back again for their stuff too, I would highly recommend if they’re literally just loading their little tiny two door, Pontiac Cavalier a car I had. By the way, you’re going to know they’re not going to get a lot of stuff. Let ’em pack whatever they can. But then say when you have confirmation of a moving truck or something like that, let me know and I will come back and let you in to get the rest of your stuff.

Ashley:
But you don’t want to be in a position where you’re meeting them every day for them to get a few things to pack into their car too. But make sure you bring a lock set. Bring a lock set and bring the tools with you to change the locks and to make sure you know how to change the lock. Because the one time, the one with the elderly grandfather, I was really struggling with getting the lock change. It was just something with the door. I’ve changed a ton of locks and it was before now we just changed the core. All the handles stay the same. We’re just changing the core to our master lock. But before that, we were just changing the whole handle and I just couldn’t get it to work. And one sheriff was so nice, and I have actually talked about him before on the podcast because he told me how when he was in college, he used to work for a property manager.

Ashley:
He would get all his maintenance requests slips in the morning and in between his classes he would run and go do maintenance requests at this landlord’s properties. And he said that he always wishes that he had invested in real estate, but the sheriff’s side of seeing the evictions kind of him off from it. But he had to help me do the lock and I think he probably just felt so bad for me this helpful as a woman couldn’t figure out how to get the lock to work. And if you have a question that you would like to ask us, make sure you go to biggerpockets.com and go into the forums to ask your question and also see if there’s some questions you can answer too. Thank you so much for joining us for this week’s rookie reply. We really appreciate you guys listening in. And I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. And we’ll see you guys on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie.

Tony :
This BiggerPockets podcast is produced by Daniel Otti, edited by Exodus Media Copywriting by Calico content.

Ashley:
I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and you have been listening to Real Estate Rookie.

Tony :
And if you want your questions answered on the show, go to biggerpockets.com/reply.