We are four years since the start of C-19 and a couple years of beyond much of the madness. Some of things that we, as landlords considered norms have changed.

What systems have you implemented or system that you have changed to react to the new norms. How are these landlord norms impacting your business model?

1) Marketing - I used to use more blanket marketing using meta crawlers to syndicate my rental listing. Since the requirement for screening leads is that much more important, I am using more targeting marketing instead of marketing to the masses. Many of the masses, don't qualify so it didn't make sense. I needed one good tenant not 50 people who are interested.

2) Smarter marketing to find owner to that vacant house that I am looking to buy.

Ray, what is an examnple of how or where you are target marketing?

My tenants have filled more of my past openings with their recommendations than I have. The ones I've gotten have busy lives and make enough that offering a finders fee wouldn't interest them.

We've been doing contactless "showings" for years with lockboxes so that was the same.

We started pushing the online application and stopped putting paper apps in a pouch on each yard sign.

Just the website on signs, no phone number.

Did the 2 Minute In Home Visits by Facetime rather than in person. Did many with still shots and trust.

Set up remote computer access for my helpers.

We sign leases by Docusign.

They deliver the initial move in funds IN CASH to my DEPOSIT ONLY account at my bank.

Once paid and signed, swap the lock cylinders and put the new keys in the lockbox with a new secret code.

More text follow up to make sure everyone is happy.

I believe people LIKE these contactless methods, even after pandemic.

BRAD

New purchases for long term hold are exclusively commercial. I will still buy and flip residential, but we all got a wake up call in C-19: Govt CAN and WILL force you to house people for free for an indefinite period of time. They have the power to bankrupt you and have showed they will use it without a second though to buy votes with your wealth.

I tend to like tenants with jobs and that don't smoke.

The college and hospital are both non-smoking and pay well. So make sure the HR department knows when I have a nice place available. Just bring a dozen doughnuts and a dozen fliers/property information sheets.

There are a couple different software suits you can use but each of them cost you a monthly fee to keep you account open. They mentioned them multiple times during last years convention. One will need to actually use these systems to get the phone to ring though. Not everyone thinks that way. Just being a member for example of the Chamber does not get your phone to rind. It only gets you a frameable certificate. The magic occurs with the networking and talking. It takes time to build though relationships and landlords in general try to take the path of least resistance.

Not much has changed for us. We weren't all that affected by c 19, we had other health issues in the past few years that were much worse.

Our big changes are preparing to die, long-term. Teaching the kids how to run the biz: how to screen, how to interview tenants and how to replace a water heater (determined to be the #1 thing we can save money doing ourselves over calling a trade based on our records.)

We were already automated but we consolidated that hodge-podge of homegrown automation pieces into pretty much one commercial program.

Tenants are the same. A few more tats, some pink hair tints, one or two might fly a rainbow flag as they always have but all pay their rent and work with us as partners, really, in taking care of their homes. A (planned) move-out this weekend left us a bottle of wine, on purpose LOL (we passed it off to the guy moving in.)

It seems that since the given time frame I have changed so much it is amazing.

*I now have online apps and leases.

*I put lockboxes on the empties so people that I feel are a good fit can go see the places.

*I got a little wimpy website which I know needs work but at least it is there.

*All non-contact calls go to voicemail which has saved me so much time and energy.

*Annual rent increases which are explained in the lease as well, even though I still do MTM.

*Stopped putting signs in the yard and on the side streets. Rented with Zillow and will try that to see if I get better results.

Next plan is to have signs printed up that just have the website and maybe for rent on them. At present I do not give out the actual addy until the person has been vetted a little. This will make sure they know it's the right place and possibly add a little credibility when I put one in the window.

I'm with NE, I'm not sure some of this is C-19 as much as societal decay.

I have automated some of my applicant processes. Before I was spending about 2 minutes on each non-qualified candidate. I now have that down to less than 10 seconds. That really makes a big time saver when you receive 100+ applicants per day the first 2-3 days it's listed.

After doing prequalification, I have expanded the income checks because of the increase in fake checks. I now get check stubs and bank statements so that I can verify income from check stub into bank statement out to rent payment against what the listed on their app and what they said in their prequalification questions. It makes it much more difficult for them to spoof income when you compare across documents.

I bounced through the shortage of craftsmen with little impact. Having long-term relationships with my plumber, electrician, roofer, and cleaners kept me at the front of their line. The one exception was handyman, those rates went through the roof, $100 per hour. I moved sewer snaking back to the plumber and minor electrical back to the electrician because they are cheaper now. That is softening so I have a bead on a couple of new handyman that may fix that.

I have been selling SFH's off to my son and carrying the notes. Good for him and gets me out of worrying about toilets. I've moved more money into more hands off investments such as oil and gas leases, and unimproved land, and the stock market. I've looked at several REIT's but frankly, the returns are so low I've passed, commercial is the same way. Investing with CAP rates at 5% doesn't interest me.

I have tightened screening. Better empty than wrong is an old saying that really applied during the pandemic, court shutdowns, federal mandates that superseded state law.

I shouldn't admit this, but I don't even check employment anymore. Jobs are falling off the trees here - if they have a job today they could change it tomorrow really easily, like a pair of pants. I do require they provide check stubs and statements uploaded with their app, but I don't check them with any due diligence. I do care about criminal and financial history.

Okay Ally

You believe other people believe you are wealthier For the most part, all people who own real estate are wealthier the past few years.

What are YOU doing differently based on what you perceive?

Mike,

If you are honestly considering jumping into the commercial market place, you should be able to get a solid 8-10% cap rate locally. Now if you are looking for a national name that fills that space, your Cap Rate does get heavily compressed.

Where we are at today, I would tend to steer someone away from those huge names. The trend is those Cap rates have not only stopped being compressed, but they are actually easing upward.

I know my NNN was bought at 6.6 Cap, was compressed down to about 5.7% and is back towards 6.4%. Now to the lay person those number don't mean that much but since you are dealing in seven figure properties, the difference in price is six figures. This is what happens when the fed raises the cost of money.

If you do believe the rates will continue to go up, placing that property into a land trust makes sense so you can sell it subject to existing financing. That NNN place with 11 more years of guaranteed income and options to renew for another 15 years (with increases), has a 4.12% interest rate. With it being in a land trust, that loan can be assumable. What is the value of having access to lots of money at 4.12%?

Mike... I only use CAP rate as a good apples to apples comparison tool, just like the 1% Rule (or better, 2% Rule) for broad analysis of properties, but with commercial there's so much room for creativity it doesn't tell the whole story. Don't let "sub-par" 5% scare you away.

In other words, what if you could own a building that throws off only 6% cash ROI, but it's worth $2 million and goes up in value 3% per year and you NEVER get a call from a tenant... ever. The only communication you ever get from them is an electronic deposit into your account.

* 6% cash = $120,000 per year money in the pocket income.

* 3% appreciation = $60,000 per year for doing nothing.

* And even with 39 year depreciation cycles, you're still writing off $52,000 per year of depreciation, making roughly 1/3 of your cash income tax free.

With NNN, the tenant handles all the taxes, insurance, utilities, repairs, and if you agree to it in your lease they also must replace any old equipment that wears out. This scenario can last for 10-20 years. You can not only "take the tools out of your trunk", but also you can take the plumber's, HVAC contractor's, and electrician's phone numbers out of your phone. You'll never need to talk to them, and they'll be retired by the time your lease expires.

$180,000 per year while a top-rated business pays for your building and takes care of it for you is a pretty sweet spot to be! It's landlording at it's purest form other than raw land.

P.S. Once your 20 year lease expires, sell the building for $5 million and call it good.

P.P.S. If that still doesn't interest you, let's talk self-storage units. AKA "money printing machines"

Years back I had a boss that decided to use some of his commercial property for storage units. We discussed it a lot. Even though I was his employee and at the time only had my own personal residence he talked about how he was doing things.

Such as he owned the building that we worked out of but leased it to the company. Took me a while to fathom that.

But the storage units were insane. His ROI was something like 1-1/2 years.

Had a buddy in Michigan that was partner in a decent sized storage unit setup. It was pretty turn key even back then. Electronic gates and keypads. Pay online. It was wonderful.

He did get a couple calls from the police requesting to enter the area. Some funny stories came out of it.

Every time I think the area is too saturated with storage units a new set shows up. I swear it is like all the DG stores.

Oreo,

To clarify...

We only did a handful of Facetime In Home Visits during the beginning, intense time of C-19.

People don't know how to hold a phone still - too jiggly.

Distancing was the new word so we just did masks and 6 feet. The people who wanted to move REALLY wanted to move so they agreed to visits.

Looking back we had fewer vacancies as people stayed in place.

MikeA,

I stopped doing pre-qual and just took full apps for a fee. This did not slow down the number of apps AND I get paid for those seconds to review. (Actually I pay my helper to review them and keep the profit. He can review to deny for $5 and I keep the remaining $20)

Oreo,

To clarify...

We only did a handful of Facetime In Home Visits during the beginning, intense time of C-19.

People don't know how to hold a phone still - too jiggly.

Distancing was the new word so we just did masks and 6 feet. The people who wanted to move REALLY wanted to move so they agreed to visits.

Looking back we had fewer vacancies as people stayed in place.

MikeA,

I stopped doing pre-qual and just took full apps for a fee. This did not slow down the number of apps AND I get paid for those seconds to review. (Actually I pay my helper to review them and keep the profit. He can review to deny for $5 and I keep the remaining $20)

100 apps x $20 = $2000 income for doing what you are already doing.

Whats different today? Looking at saying good bye to the residential units and go more commercial. 23 yrs of renters nonsense needs to come to an end. Covid just took the level of nonsense to a whole new level...

Otherwise, not much different. Use docusign for leases...had zelle/venmo/pay at the bank options before covid. More people use zelle and venmo now.