All Forum Posts by: Rene G.

I have a Lease/Addenda example where I help DIY landlords and I highlight stuff many landlords forget, but it’s irrelevant if you use a PM.

PMs will have their own Lease and it’s doubtful you’d be able to get them to alter their stuff.

Some of the perks as a DIY landlord self-managing is that you have control and can implement unique flexibility and hands-off systems into your Lease.

PM companies have internal policies and rules/regs. They do what’s best for their business and not necessarily what’s best for you as the landlord.

Last thing I’ll say is no one will ever care more about your livelihood than you. Middleman PMs are just doing a job and don’t have any ownership of  real stake in your business— motivated differently with little overlap—if they fail there’s a huge gap in the consequences faced compared to your consequences as the landlord if you fail. 

Take extra care to ensure your success and don’t trust middlemen, master your trade and verify they know what they’re doing!

Set standards and stick to them. If someone called and asked if you hold units, what is your standard?

Treat everyone the exact same and you’ll never be at fault for showing favoritism or discrimination.

This is just my 2 cents. Take it or leave it, but all I do is help DIY landlords for a business and from my experience too many mom and pop landlords lack systems and SOPs. Treat this as if you’re training your replacement, what would you tell an employee? Now do that yourself. lol At least until you can hire someone and then you’ll already have training materials to give them to do the job right, the same way, every time. The trick is breaking down every aspect of the business into standard checklist and SOPs!

"Forever All In!"

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4Δ 𝓡𝓮𝓷𝓮 💪

The Forever Landlord

Everyone is overlooking the main issue. You should self-manage. 

This is the typical landlord/property management dilemma: problems happen then the landlord wants to question everything because they’re not in control. 

No middleman PM will ever care more than you; this is your livelihood, but it’s just a job to them. 

Why are people using AI so much around here!?

I built my own “Ideal Rental Checklist” and in that process I was challenged to really critically think and figure out on my own…

IMO you’ll need to do a similar exercise or just learn your lesson from trial and error. lol

4Δ 𝓡𝓮𝓷𝓮 💪

I alway go for two-year term leases. It’s how I fully pay off rentals. I just had a tenant leave after staying with me 10 years and I increased the rents their entire stay.

I hate it when I hear DIY landlords say they don’t increase rents on “good” tenants—that’s a cop out!

I have an entire process that’s too much to go into here. You’ll figure your own path out because I can tell you have the right frame of mind.

4Δ 𝓡𝓮𝓷𝓮 💪

How old is it?

Just wait (you said next year you're planning on house hacking). House hack a duplex and self-manage the other side of the duplex.

This is a simple decision. In the mean time start learning about self-management. It's really not hard, especially if you build out the hands-off system of DIY property management.

I do something I call "self-service" property management. It's how I've been able to self-manage my rentals from Baghdad, Iraq for 10 years. I'd be on the other side of the world, no cellphone, crappy internet working 12-hours shift, and when tenants had problems, I trained them to fix their own problems. There's much more to it then that, but that's the down and dirty.

You got this bro!

Rene 💪

Just self-manage, it's your livelihood. You can do way better than any middleman PM that is just doing a job. What is holing you back from going DIY? Too busy? Well, guess what? It takes effort either way: you either have to manage the PM or go DIY.

IMO too many newbies think they have to hire PMs because that's what all the big REI peeps do. No! If you're a small mom and pop landlord it's best to go DIY to learn the ropes and if you scale beyond 10 rentals then maybe hire a PM later, but at least you'll "really know" the ins and outs (only if you go DIY 1st).

Tell me. What do you think? Did you notice the distinct difference between my comment (as a DIY Landlord) and the PM comments you got?

Why do you ask?

Everyone here will give you their opinion in search for more upvotes. It's always best to do your own experiments and in your case you have a two-year successful case study.

Not sure if you self-manage, but either way, did you get into real estate investing to get a second job with more to-do tasks, or did you get into this for cashflow?

In my case, as a DIY landlord, I'm in this for Cashflow Forever and Real Freedom. That's why I've developed "self-service" property management to simplify my rental management...to make it so easy my kids can take over (and won't sell everything when I die)!

NO! Don't use AI to write your rental listing descriptions... unless you want to miss the mark. Your target audience is renters; they are not homebuyers. If you use ChatGPT you'll get steered into writing a novel about the area they're already interested in with a bunch of fluff.

Think of it this way: the more words in your rental listing, the less likely people will read it.

Why waste time writing about the area when they're already sold on the area (that's why they are looking there)?

Why waste time writing about stuff that GOOD photos SHOULD tell about your property?

Why do you waste time answering the same questions over and over again?

Because you probably have a bad rental listing with bad photos, and the prospects aren't even reading it!

This is why I teach the mom-and-pop landlords in my skool community not to listen to what people say on the forms online. Most people are winging it 😑🫤😐