HOW I LOVE TO USE VIDEO CAMERAS at all of My Real Estate

You got to check local laws or laws within the rental site that you're using if you're doing airbnb or that kind of thing. I'm a big fan of cameras. I love them and I like to use the arlo pros. As a general rule I use the arlo product. It's wireless and has a good software interface. The batteries charge every couple months or if you're going to hard wiring, if you don't have the ability to change them. So cameras on a rental property I think is a great idea as long as you disclose it to the owner. So if you have an exterior camera that hits the front door or the driveway and then you have an exterior camera that hits the backyard area, those are fair game because they're open to the public. basically in a sense where everyone can see now whether or not someone will rent a property based on the fact that you have a camera.

Cameras are pretty common nowadays. I think they're everywhere and so that eye in the sky is watching us all, we've become used to it. So if you can use a camera on a rental property at least to pick up exterior & interior, I would almost recommend it. I think it's a great idea to mitigate your risk. We use cameras all the time. We use them in airbnbs, we use them for construction, I have a 24/ 7 camera monitoring team. So in our system all of our clients, all their properties are monitored, and the beautiful thing about cameras is we use them for everything. From tracking contractors to see how long it's taken them to get a job done, to when they show up or when they leave. That's all critical data, as to hey i'm going to be there in five minutes and they show up three hours later or I worked 10 hours when really they only work three. So there's all kinds of reasons that cameras make a lot of sense from the construction side of things. They also make sense from the security side of things.

I have a septic system in my yard and recently I went out to fix it. And the inspector came out and said your yard is bubbling up, so I went out and looked at it undug the hole and found that there was a two foot section of pipe that was missing on my septic system on the main feed line. There's no possible way that that could be happening because someone accidentally hit a pipe or somehow there was someone who did something to that system.

And it could be that the fence was just built there and it's a foundational issue, or some other ulterior motives that someone might have. I'll give those as a few examples. but let's say a guy went in and went to build the fence, dug a hole, hit my septic line and then later on buried up everything and walked away from it. Well if I had a camera on the side yard or over on my septic system area, then I would have been able to pick it up.

In this case I've now set up a camera in my side yard specifically to monitor the septic system. It's great for air conditioning systems, I like putting the camera on your ac unit. There's people that will steal an ac unit especially if the house is unattended or not occupied, so cameras have a lot of value based on that type of risk. The other thing i really like about them is i have some contractors who hate my cameras, and to them i say; don't come on my jobs, don't do them for me because my jobs, they're all monitored 24/ 7. If you're an honest contractor you're gonna do your work right. I also set up what's called material staging areas, so when i go in to do a renovation on a project, i'll set up a camera in the garage and then make sure that all material that's delivered to the site is put in the staging area. And then we're monitoring 24/ 7 so I can see when that material is picked up and applied to the house, or when it walks off. Example you buy 30 boxes of flooring it only takes 20, and the guy slides the other 10 boxes into his van from the garage, with my camera watching them,those types of things.

It's extremely valuable to watch your monitor, your shrinkage on your products that are on site, your shrinkage via labor or bad labor, those are very valuable concepts. The other thing is, I put exterior cameras on my airbnbs. What I do is, I set up the cameras outside so that it picks up the driveway and the front entry and it watches if people come in and out of the house. Oftentimes what people will do on an airbnb is we have no smoking in our houses. So what will happen is someone will walk outside light up a cigarette, then someone will call them from the inside and they'll walk inside with the cigarette, and start smoking in the house. My cameras are set up so that they actually see inside the front door. I don't have cameras on the interior of an airbnb, but i'm sure this hack happened on the outside.

So if i see someone walk from the outside into the house with the cigarette, then i can basically bust them and charge them for the damage they created via the smoke, because that is proof they did. In this case I set up a camera on a tree as an example, that picks up the front entry in the driveway and looks into a window or a door where I think there may be activity that would be considered bad or not justifiable. They do have smoke detectors out there that will detect cigarette smoke, they are few and far between in my case. I've learned that with airbnbs, people go in and out of the house. They start smoking on the exterior and then enter into the house from a different direction, unless they're just blatantly violating your rules and smoking pots or cigarettes. At that point your only way to do that is to have an alarm that sets off or sends you signals to your computer to monitor it. Cameras come in extremely valuable in those types of circumstances.

For me I also use them on airbnbs, whenever someone tries to throw a party, the minute I see a party, bam! I'm there at the house saying, what are you doing? I'm picking up the phone saying what's going on? And so I have it in the garage, when the cars pull in. I have it at the doors through the garage, the doors to the exterior ,and the doors to the front. Because what they'll do is come in and say, “oh we exited or entered into a different side, you didn't see us we left.” And so you get people where there's 50 in the house, and they say there weren't really 50 people. Because they all went out a side door that I didn't have monitored, that's not going to happen on my watch. I'm a big proponent and fan of cameras, the other area it's good is on showings. Now there are federal laws and state and mls laws that govern the reporting of an individual in a home when you're showing it. So first of all you need to understand what your laws are, In most cases you would have to literally or physically protect yourself.

You could monitor a showing on the Interior, but what you would do is to protect yourself, as you would have everyone sign a document saying that they're aware that the video and the sound are rolling at the time of the showing. So you have to maybe go to that extent to check your local laws as well as federal laws on that kind of thing. I looked at the cameras the other day where someone came in and looked at the house. When they exit, most likely they’re going to talk about what they think about that home. So if I have an exterior camera there is no expectation of privacy, So I can listen to the conversation and hear them say; “ you know we really love this house, let's bring mom and pop to see it. It's what we got to have. How much can we offer 290 or 300?”. You can catch all kinds of conversations that are happening out in the open area. Where there are no expectations of privacy that can give you a huge leg up on the showing of a home.

So cameras are huge from my perspective on numerous realms or levels hands down all the way through so much so that we have a 24/ 7 camera monitoring team for all of our clients.