Podcasts about HotPads

In this episode, we sit down with Douglas Pope who not only restored the Broadgauge building, but he also is a co-founder of HotPads and is VP of Rentals Engineering at Zillow. You are not going to want to miss this conversation. Listen on your favorite platform: itbpodcast.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ootboxmedia/support

Spencer Rascoff is the co-found and former CEO of Zillow Group where he oversaw the company's portfolio of real estate and home-related brands, including Zillow, Trulia, StreetEasy, HotPads and Naked Apartments. Spencer is the co-author of the New York Times' bestselling book Zillow Talk: Rewriting the Rules of Real Estate. Spencer is also the host of “Office Hours,” a monthly podcast featuring candid conversations between prominent executives on leadership and management topics.

George Meyers was born and raised in Savannah. During his years as a business owner, George learned a lot about business and the inner workings of the business. Today he prides himself in helping new and existing entrepreneurs make educated decisions that will help their businesses be more successful. In years past George has owned and sold numerous personal properties that include commercial, residential, and investment. This personal, commercial, investment, and business experience helps him better understand his client's needs. Today George is a full-time professional Realtor and the founder and principal of Mia Madison Properties LLC. He is a member of the National Association of Realtors, Georgia Association of Realtors, Realtors Commercial Alliance of Savannah/Hilton Past president of the Savannah Landlord and Real Estate Investors Association. Savannah, Georgia was the beneficiary of rapid growth in the first part of last year but settled into a more sustainable pace that we have become familiar within today's economy. That said, the city has undergone a considerable amount of growth in the past 18 months. Tourism, port activity, business services, and above all – the housing market –set the stage for above-average employment and economic growth. Today, George talks about investing in Savannah, Georgia: market trends, neighborhoods, price to rent ratio, economic drivers, geographic considerations, and more. Episode Links: https://www.miamadisonrealtygroup.com/george-meyers/  --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by George Meyers, who's our Roofstock certified agent out in the Savannah Georgia market and today George is gonna be talking to us about everything we need to know if we're considering investing out in that market. So let's get into it.   Everyone, just a quick shout out to the Rootstock Academy before we get started with the episode. Rootstock Academy is your one stop shop for real estate education, whether you're just starting out, or a seasoned investor, or just looking to learn more about real estate investing as a whole, we've got something for you. Over 50 hours of automated lecture access to one on one coaching private slack forums and more, come check us out a roofstockacademy.com. Look forward to seeing you in there. Happy investing.   George, what's going on, man. Thanks so much, take the time to hang out with me. I appreciate you coming on.   George: Michael, thanks for having me. I really appreciate you having me on.   Michael: Oh, of course. My pleasure, so right out the gates, give me your elevator sales pitch on why should people be investing in Savannah, Georgia?   George: Savannah is a man is one of the best markets are the best one. What we have in our areas is a lot of different drivers for investment. One would be military, we have a lot of military that come into the area which make our rental market really, really good. The great thing with that is it's a good economy and bad economy doesn't matter if we have a high economy or low economy we have renter's because of military. We also have a lot of manufacturing plants that produce no matter where there's a high income or low income situations. You know, for rentals, we also have the ports, we were one of the largest ports in the country, and we just deepened our harbors. So we're growing even more and they're saying that will probably be the number one in the next couple of years. Then you got other drivers around us a lot of colleges. So even in a bad economy or a good economy, everybody's going to school. So you got a lot of that going on around us we have some of the biggest colleges in the state here in our area. You know, the other thing that we have is a good amount of influx of people coming in that are transient. So if you want to do short term vacation rental with us, or if you want to do long term, we have a little bit of everything in order   Michael: Right on, well I'm so we can just call this episode a wrap and go home and you know, that's awesome, George. So let's definitely unpack a lot of what you just said. But I would first love if you could share with our listeners a little bit about who you are, where you come from, and what is it that you're doing in real estate.   George: Okay, so my name is George Meyers. I am the owner and a realtor at Lea Madison properties. Our company opened in 2002. It's named after my daughter's view as my youngest daughter, Madison's my oldest daughter. We're a full service brokerage. So we do a little bit of everything. We have commercial residential, we do property management, association management for commercial properties. And we have a high on investment department. So in our investment department, we do everything from single family to multifamily. You know, we've been doing it for so long that we work with a lot of subcontractors and stuff as well to help us be the industry. So we're here to help you through a little bit of everything that you can. So me personally, I was born and raised here in Savannah, Georgia. I'm 42 years old, a family man of three, an entrepreneur and a full time realtor he just loves it loves investing.   Michael: Right on and George, I'm always curious to know with a lot of our partner agents, do you invest yourself?   George: I do invest myself. So I'm short term vacation rental, I own commercial rentals, and long term, long term rentals as well.   Michael: Right on. Okay, well, here's a question for you. What do you say to the folks that think that having their property manager also own rentals, there's a conflict of interest there. Because if I own property and you own property, and we both got a vacancy, we all kind of know who's is probably going to get filled first.   George: Yeah, so we run into that question a lot. You know, in my case, I'm kind of like the Hair Club for Men. I'm not only the President, I'm also a client. So in my case, you know, there is no competition. And the reason there's no competition is because I placed my properties into a property management department, which as I'm the owner, yes, but I have a person who runs my company for me, because I'm a day to day Realtor in a day to day investor myself as well. But in that particular case, there is no priority for my property or another property. The other great thing is in the Savannah market, we are social and housing that industry comes through, I have to worry about my property before their property, because there's probably a waiting list. I mean, and to give you a good example. I mean, we had an announcement yesterday that Hyundai is going to come to you what we call our mega site, which is an industrial park that we have. It was built a number of years ago, and it's been filling up with some great manufacturers and some great warehousing facilities. but Hyundai has announced that they're gonna be coming in there in the coming months and they're saying I think they're gonna bring, like 1100 jobs to the area or something like that it could be a little job number. But the crazy thing is we don't have the housing for it. I mean, when it comes to both purchasing or renting, we were already in the shortage prior to that announcement and that's just one announcement of many that are coming to this area, I mean, Amazon's gonna be opening a facility. They're not calling an Amazon facility, but it is an Amazon facility that's opening in the area that does distribution, and a few other logistic companies are going to be opening that are large providers of employer. So when it comes down to that question, what I can say is, as I said a little while ago, I don't think there's any competition between my property or priority, because we don't have enough properties. I mean, if you were to go to our property management website, and even from the purchase side for investments, our struggle is inventory. I mean, we typically prior to prior to 2019, we average 30 properties on our website for rent, as good as availability. Okay, currently, we have five properties on the site at any given time, because we're renting them before people even walk out the door.   Michael: Oh, my gosh, that's wild. We've been hearing the same thing in so many markets throughout the country.   George: Yeah, it is. Wow, it is scary. I mean, you know, the funny thing is everybody in this market, and you've probably heard this from other realtors, everybody thinks that we're just getting rich right now we're making all this money. It's just amazing. Well, the fact of the matter is, I mean, I can be honest with you, I didn't want a business in the recession that I did now, because there was inventory. You know, now we're in a place where we're not selling as many properties I mean, yes, we're making a little bit more money, because the cost of homes are more so organically, you can sell a little bit less inventory, and still make just as much money. But the fact of the matter is, we're not we're not shooting over the moon, because we don't have the inventory to sell. I mean, if we did, and we'd be amazing, and we would all be absolutely rich as realtors, but most realtors are still probably about the same place, they are making a little bit more money, except for that one that top one percentile who who's doing, you know, a high volume of stuff.   Michael: Yeah, I wonder too, how many realtors decided to get their license during the pandemic, because they saw how frothy the market was and so there's all this new inventory of people fighting for the same number of deals.   George: It's absolutely crazy. I mean, I've got a couple of friends who own real estate companies and they also schools, you know, that do pre licensing to become realtors and they said they could probably add four or five more classes, it doesn't matter where they are, it doesn't matter if they're here, if they're in Charleston, if they're in Texas, or if they're in California, when I talk to these friends, they say I can add five more classes a month, and still not have enough to let people come in. You know, and I heard a statistic the other day that there were some there are some real estate markets where the associations and the MLS is are adding approximately 50 agents a month onto the roster. Now, of what I understand, I didn't get into the market until 2008. I started in the business in 2007, and was an investor prior to that, and I owned another business before I got into this and I was told that back then it was the same way that they had where they were adding tons and tons of people and then a recession occurred or they figured out they weren't going to make the money that they thought they were going to make and you just have a bunch of licensed individuals, but they're not good realtors and not to say they couldn't be good realtors, they're just not in it full time. They're doing it part time. They're working a full time job during the day, and then they're doing something else in the evening, which is real estate. It's their side hustle, I guess you would say.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. Okay, interesting. Well, George, you touched on it a little bit, as you were kind of gearing up and talking about the Savannah market. But who are some of the biggest employers, if someone is thinking about investing in the market? Who should they be looking to be kind of bolstering and supporting the economy?   George: Yeah, so we've got a number of large, large employers in the area. So first of all, we got the military and the government, as we talked about, you know, we have one of the largest air strips in the country. So that's Hunter Army Airfield, within close proximity, about 45 minutes from here in Huntsville, we have forged Stewart, which for Stewart is one of the major bases when most things start to occur for a war or something overseas, typically, everything starts to move first at Fort Stewart and Hunter before it does anywhere else in the country based on my experience over the years. So you got a lot of military there. You've also got a lot of government facilities and government civilian jobs that are supporting both of those bases and all the things going on.   So then, if you move on to the private sector, you've got Gulfstream so Gulfstream aerospace, which is owned by General Dynamics, we all know Gulfstream planes, we all wish we could afford one, especially when you live here, and you see him flying over every day in the drought biome, you know, so we got gold stream, their huge employer. The great thing about Gulfstream is over the last few years, they've started to bring a lot of their manufacturing of additional parts from their subcontractors in house. So they're doing a lot of that and a lot of expansion in our area. They've built I think two or three extra facilities at the airport over the last probably five to 10 years. So they've really increased employment, a lot of logistics and warehouse we've had the largest logistics and warehousing boom we've ever seen over the last three to four years, especially in the last few years. I mean, a lot of areas that were desolate country sides, and down two lane highways are now six, four and six lane highways and now on both sides of those roads, where the train tracks on the other side is nothing but logistics warehouses, and I'm talking massive logistics warehouses, hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of square feet of logistics warehousing, laid out in yards in the same way. So a lot of truck drivers, you know, a lot of people working within these within these facilities to do all the different things and as you can imagine, by building those facilities, you've got construction companies that have been popping up everywhere, they're doing all of the infrastructure, and that kind of stuff, then we go to the ports authority. So the ports authority, as I mentioned, at the beginning, were one of the largest ports in the country, I think we're either the second or first largest port on the East Coast. Actually, I think New York is right ahead of us still. But at that particular case, I think they just said they were gonna bring another 500 to 1000 jobs over the next year, just for the ports authority and what you have to realize that we've noticed there our research is over the last couple of years, what we started to see is the majority of people, even if they're going to buy a home, they come and rent for the first one to three years because they want to learn the city, they want to learn the market and the thing about our city is lots of places you have just the inner city itself. So for us, the majority of the stuff is going to be an outlying suburbs that are growing really quickly, like cooler, Port Wentworth, Reagan Gaiden and like, for example, cooler and cooler is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, by both population by economic standard, and by growth rate of pure property, meaning the property they're building for retail for warehousing and those kinds of things. So all of the surrounding cities that surround our city, they're all having growth troubles themselves. So what's happening is they're actually doing research and studies to figure out how they're going to control this growth to make sure that they don't outpace themselves, and they can support the infrastructure and everything that's coming on. All of those things bring us back to what we're here for is which is investing. I mean, it brings us back to where it's a very solid state for investors, because they can guarantee that they're gonna have tenants, even if it's for the short term, meaning one to three years.   Michael: That's incredible.   George: It is you know, and you have a bunch of other businesses and we could go on and on about a bunch of a bunch of other businesses that are in the area, large companies, large manufacturers, as I mentioned, we've got a mega site. We're, we're going to Tri County area, so not a tourist city here but a Tri County area, so Brian Chatham and Effingham counties are going to be the main focus of where the investors are going to want to look okay, and in this case is there's different types of properties we have depends on what you want to invest in how you want to invest what your rate of return is, or what you want your rate of return to be and those different properties are going to gonna be in those different areas. But each of those areas is growing at the same pace meaning that they're all putting in logistics and all putting in manufacturing but some of the major manufacturing Daniel defenses in our area Daniel offense if you don't know who they are, they're a gun in arms manufacturer. They do a lot of the military stuff they're nationally known. I would say they're probably the Remington of today's world. You know everybody wants one of their guns. You know you've got Kia who is moving in which is Hyundai, like as I mentioned earlier, Hyundai is doing a subsidiary there begin to build a Kia Evie vehicle here is was what I read. Okay, got Kita you got Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi a few years ago and I say a few years ago, time flies probably five or six years ago, they opened a generator plant here. So they build a generator motors here on site at the mega site and then there's a couple of other manufacturers that are right outside of the city like arm, or a foul. If you don't know where a file is oral file makes any of the stickers that you see lots of times if you see a vehicle, it's been wrapped, or if you see stickers on the front of a retail store, that material that they use to make that is produced very largely here at one of our facilities. So those are just a handful of companies. Like I said I could go on and on and on about who else could support the economy.   Michael: How great Well George, let's do this. Let's pull up a map of Savannah, Pierre, if you want to give us a hand with that, and I would love if you could kind of take us on a tour around the market as a whole and give folks some insights into some neighborhoods that you're really excited about.   George: So if we start your little column, you know, the downtown area is always great. You know, if we look at downtown Savannah, it's going to be broken into a couple of districts so we'll be looking at Savannah itself has resumed in here, you're gonna have the closer you get to the Savannah River, which is where the red dot if you see the red dot on the screen of the map. So right there appears got the browser you're gonna see or got the cursor, you're gonna see that's the Savannah River. So all of that area right there is going to be tourism. If you go a little bit to the left on my screen, you know, you'll see up the river you're gonna see all the ports and everything else. But in the lower section of that from the red dot, you're going to ended up in an area that's an historic district, the historic district runs to about from what we call Bay Street, which is the main road that runs through the city or River Street, which is where all the tourists want to go all the way back to somewhere around, I would say 37/3 victory. 37th is really probably the cut off of where you get into your historic district. But all the way back to victory is probably about what we would call it downtown and that area, what you're going to end up with is properties of all different genres. So you're going to end up with a lot of older properties, meaning that they were built as early as the 1890s and there is new as 2022. But there's a lot of historic property there and a lot of them will be redone. So what you're gonna run into in this area in the downtown area is you're gonna run into a weird situation and the weird situation being that there's not a good side of the street, or excuse me, a good side of the tracks on the bad side of the tracks, like lots of times you hear people say, I don't have an RC, there's a good side of the track and a bad side of track, once you run into in downtown Savannah is a good side of the street and a bad side of the street and the reason for that is because of the previous recession. In the previous recession, investors came in and we started to purchase a lot of streets and we were buying entire blocks at a time with multiple investors, then what occurred is the recession came and when the recession came, it left a lot of properties undone. It left half the blocks done or half the streets done and those kinds of things.   Okay, so that's why you end up with good sides of the streets, bad sides of the street, but now we're starting to see a lot of those properties picked up. The other thing you'll run into in downtown Savannah is a big mix of the type of properties, you're gonna run into anything from a single family bungalow, that's probably only several 100 square feet and depending on where it's located, it can be anywhere from, you know, $400,000, all the way down to $30,000. It just really depends on its location and proximity to the historic district or parks or, or areas that have grown and that kind of stuff. But then you'll run into things like quad plexus, or duplexes or large multifamily developments that were built, you know, sometime anywhere from probably the early 70s, maybe even the 60s, all the way into 2022. Okay, I'm the type of let's talk about for a minute, the type of tenant you're going to receive in this type of area, it's going to be a little of everything, it's really, really cool, what you're going to end up with this short term vacation rentals in this area. Now, what I will say is any investor looking for short term vacation rentals in this area, it can be very, very tricky and the tricky part of it is that we have a cap on the number and percentages based on which area they're in. Some of the areas may be called boards, some may be called districts, but depending on where they are in that district or in that ward, they are limited to a certain percentage. So we always want to check and make sure that we have the ability to be able to get them or certificate or transfer them or certificate otherwise they just purchased a property that can't be used for anything short term vacation rental. Okay. So that's one thing you're gonna run into is a lot of tourists, a lot of tourism students, there's a lot of students in this area. So you've probably heard of SCAD Savannah College of Art and Design. SCAD is one of the largest art schools in the country. SCAD is based in Savannah. SCAD has redeveloped and owns a lot of downtown Savannah and without them a lot of downtown Savannah probably wouldn't be what it is today, because they've done a lot of redevelopment and a lot of restoration in that area. So you're gonna end up with a lot of students. The great thing about SCAD students is they come from all over the world. It's not a situation where you know, a lot of schools you run into and you see around the country, as I've talked to people is a lot of these people come from, let's just say Wyoming to go to school here. Now, you're gonna run into people from China, you're gonna run into people from England, you're gonna run to people from Amsterdam, you're gonna run into people from States where I which is right outside Savannah, so it's just a big poll of people into this area and they too, are also a big a big employer in our area, not just an employer directly, but they also employ a lot of subcontractors, who then then create jobs as well.   So you're gonna get those people, young professionals, young professionals love to be in downtown Savannah over the past five years, young professionals that flocked from all over the country, especially during COVID to work remotely in our area, because one of the great things, you can walk us anywhere downtown with an open container. As long as you're not driving. We're one of I think three cities in the country that allows you to walk out of a bar, and you can have a beer can in your hand and when you do as long as you put it in a cup, you can walk with an open container. So everybody loves us for that. Some people judge us for that, but some people love us for that. So you're gonna run into young professionals, you're gonna run into families because there are still a lot of families who live in the downtown area, and that kind of stuff and then as far as income levels, you're gonna go for everything from low income all the way to high income. You're gonna get everything from high income mansion homes, all the way down to subsidized housing and low income section eight housing. So downtown Savannah has got a plethora. The city has done very well and is working very well with investors to be able to make all of these areas and festival investor friendly. There's even been some tax incentives depending on where you are and what you're doing and the city has also been really good about keeping a mix and what I mean by that is they even offered some pro grants to where they can keep families and individuals in the downtown area by giving down payment assistance.   Okay, Pierre, if you zoom out a little bit more for me, if you come to the south side go further away from the from the downtown. If you come to the south side, what you'll do on the map is you'll kind of cross over victory drive, and you'll come into an area which we'll call Midtown, Midtown is going to be congregated, largely Park, the houses typically run anywhere from the 1930s up until there's some homes that were built in the last couple of years. In the Midtown area, great investment area, you're gonna pay a little bit more money for the homes. Those homes are typically pretty well maintained. These are going to be what I call porch neighborhoods, porch neighborhoods, meaning that they all have front porches, the neighbors still sit on the front porch and talk to you next door. They're very, they're the epitome of the Southern home in my opinion, a lot of these homes are probably three to four bedroom bungalows, maybe even down to two bedroom bungalows, there will be some mix in me there's duplexes and quad plexus that are mixed into this middle midtown area, a lot to do a lot of activities, there's a big park in that area, which is called Delphin Park, you're going to end up with good shopping, you know, you're gonna end up with our ball filters there. I don't know if you've heard of Savannah, bananas, but everybody across the country has been talking about them. Grayson Stadium, which is one of the oldest stadiums in the country, is one of our ball stadiums and that's where they play at and that's in Midtown, all walking distance from a lot of these Midtown locations. There again, really good for investors. The great thing about investing in these Midtown homes is that the draw on the is how cute they are. They've got a really good cute walking and look. So every investor, if they if they buy one of these properties with these front porches and they maintain them, they do a good job with them. Just a drive by they want it no questions asked. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of character to these homes, as you see. I mean, there's a lot of characters, you look at a lot of these homes going through this area.   Michael: And George, before we move on just curious, what would a three, two kind of run of the mill three two in Midtown costs and what would you think of it rent for?   George: So it depends on it depends on what part of town you're in. But let's just say you're in, let's just say the Ardsley park or a park side, which are two neighborhoods in that area. If you were in Parkside, right now, a three two is probably going to cost you somewhere in the mid three, rents are going to be somewhere probably anywhere from about 2000 to as high as probably $3,200 a month. Depending on the upgrades you have on the home and everything else. The one issue that we've seen in the Savannah area is because we have so many tenants in place already, and they can't find places to go, they're holding the rents down a little bit. So the one thing that I want to really explain here is using I don't want to pick on anybody particular but we all go to certain, you know websites, we're going to go to a Zillow or HotPads, or something like that and I'm not picking on Zillow, I'm not picking on HotPads, because we understand how they get their data and algorithm they use and it kind of makes sense. But at the same time, when you're in a place like Midtown, the issue runs into that you could have a two bedroom, one bath next to a four bedroom, four bath and so those two don't compare. So when you see one rent for 2001 rent for 4000, the system gets thrown off. So as an investor listening to this podcast, what I want you to do is don't trust what you're finding online, I want you to pick up the phone and call me call my team. You know, and if you if you don't take that route, the call me or my team or the Roofstock team, then call somebody who's a professional who can truly tell you what's going on. Because what I can tell you is that a lot of the rents are staying stagnant to the lower prices. Because the landlord's we don't have like New York, they got price, you know, I don't know what they call it rent protection is what I'll call it, I forgot what it's actually called. But we don't have that here, we're not held to we have to charge a certain amount of rent, we can't raise a certain amount. But a lot of landlords, they bought the homes a lot cheaper, they bought the homes in 2008, nine and 10 when the homes were 50-60-70-80 $150,000. So they can charge a lot less rent and they've got quality tenants who are there. So watching that tenant out to raise the rent at 3000 and get a tenant who may not be there as long as this tenant is going to stay there losing that longevity and guarantee. So what you run into is when you go into some of these websites, they're still showing what I'll call 2018 and 2019 rent numbers. Whereas if you're buying a property that someone's moving out of, and we ended up buying the property as an investor for you as your investment real estate company, and through Roofstock, we are then going to raise those prices anywhere from probably 100 to $1,000, depending on the property. You know, and we have this issue on a call to issue. We had this conversation in this scenario with one of the investors who we started working with last week the rootstock. They call it and said hey, can you give me some information? I don't think your numbers accurate I think that in this particular property, what I'm looking at online, is the rents going to be 1500 to 2000. But you're telling me that on this property, it's going to be 2000 to 3000. So why is the number such a far swing, and the swing was exactly that this particular property that they were looking at was already under contract, unfortunately. But in that particular case, what it was is, there was a person who lived in the house for seven and a half years, that landlord decided that I wasn't going to rent the property again, because I had so much equity from buying it in 2008, or nine, that I'm going to cash out on my equity, and the next investor, whoever purchases that if it's not a family, what are they going to do, they're going to raise the price or market rent, you know. So you're going to want to talk with a good property manager, a good realtor like ourselves and the Roofstock team, so that we can really get you the true numbers in a market. So don't take the face value of what you're seeing online for what the market is truly doing. Let us know, let us help you through it. There's no additional cost for us to do that. That's what we're here for. That's what Roofstock here for and that's what all of our teams are here to kind of do and push you through.   Michael: That's such a great tip and something that I'm always encouraging folks to do, that are in our academy is hey, go talk to the people that are actually doing it. Zillow is a machine, it's a computer, they're not the ones actually listing the homes and renting the home, so I love it.   George: If you're in a neighborhood where all the homes are exactly the same and I want every investor to keep this in mind and even some realtors I mean even some realtors, you're like we were talking about earlier getting in. I hope that there's some realtors that are listening to this and they're taking the information that you're giving them, and the information that we're giving them and they're growing their business with it. But when you run into a situation where there's a neighborhood that's brand new, or 10 or 15 years old, and every home was built almost the same, there was only three four plans. The square footage only varies by a couple 100 square feet, the beds and baths don't vary at all, then yeah, the Zillow or any other company use using an algorithm or an AI system is going to be absolutely the cry, right. But when you put them into a downtown area or a midtown or an older neighborhood area where they're building new neighborhoods next to old neighborhoods, and new homes next to older homes or apartments, or there's condos right next to residential, single family detached, the problem you run into is the numbers get so skewed. I mean, they're trying to compare a detached condo that's two bedrooms, three baths with no garage and new lands to a house next door in a neighborhood behind it that was just built in 2021. That's got three bedrooms, two baths, a quarter acre lane and two car garage. Their system doesn't know the difference within reason of that because they're in such close proximity because of mileage. You know, it's done by radius.   Michael: Right, right. Now, it makes a ton of sense. Well, George, give us a couple more markets that you're interested in and then I want to transition here shortly.   George: Yeah, so going outside, or let's stay within the city with a warmer area. So the South side of town, you're going to end up with a little bit older neighborhoods, those neighborhoods were probably built sometime between the 60s and the 90s and those areas are really good places to find, you can typically because everybody's wanting something newer at something fixed up, you can typically find some inventory of properties of these areas that are popping up, that give you the ability to do a little bit of a little bit of repairs into them and still get really good rents with the higher purchase prices that are occurring in today's market. If we want to move outside the market, a few places that I want everybody to really key in on would be Richmond Hill, Port Wentworth and Pooler, as I mentioned earlier, Bryan county is where effing Bryan county is where Richmond Hill is. Richmond Hill is a very fast growing city. They're bringing in a lot of industry, making a lot of changes. There's all kinds of homes you're gonna find single family dwellings that are like condos, townhomes, you're gonna find larger homes and gated communities in that area and you're also going to find family dwellings and more spec type neighborhoods as well that are great for investment and Pooler. Pooler, as I mentioned earlier, is one of the if not the fastest growing city in the country right now, based on what I understand based on economic growth, based on pure size of growth of, of the actual city itself with the neighborhoods and their building with the retail and logistics and all that this area has both old and new and when I say old and new that everything from probably the 50s and 60s, all the way up to 2022 and you can find a little bit of everything from condos to townhomes to multifamily to single family detached. So those will be your hotspots. So again, Southside Savannah is going to be a really get hot spot. Midtown if you can get some but Midtown is so hot and it's very difficult to beat out a family, they're willing to pay more than US investors are willing to pay on stuff like that. Southside of Savannah, pooler, Port Wentworth, Richmond Hill, those are going to be kind of your hotspots and we're really looking at right now. It's a fine property.   Michael: That is great, George and super helpful. So let's shift gears here just a little bit and talk about what are some things that out of state investors need to be aware of if they're considering the Savannah market like in California, for instance, termites are pretty common, we see a little bit of termite damage, that's not a red flag, but to someone that's not familiar with it, it's like, whoa, why want nothing to do with that property. So what's unique to Savannah that people need to be aware of.   George: So I would say, just like you mentioned termites in our area, it's not if it's when you're gonna get termites. So you want to really make sure when we're doing this process, that we're doing inspections, we're making sure we're getting what we call a WTO letter, which is a wood destroying organism letter, to ensure that there are no termites, no powder post beetles, those kinds of things that are going to cause those types of issues. Moisture is a huge issue, we have high humidity. So for us in the summertime, especially coming into where we are now, you know, it's a situation where you take a shower, you dry off, you get dressed, just like every day, you walk outside, and it feels like you're back in the shower, and you're sweating to death, and it's just humid. Right, if you haven't experienced that felt the humidity, I mean, dry heat is one thing, and you can extend it up to 120 degrees, but 120 degrees with 90% humidity here, you feel like you're in a swimming pool walking down the street. So moisture is a big issue. So anytime you've had a house has been sitting vacant for a little bit of time, we really want to make sure we check to make sure there's no mold or mildew issues, we want to make sure that ventilation is good. HVAC is are huge. So we want to look at ages of HVAC, we want to look at the quality of the HVAC to make sure everything is operational. So home inspections are going to be very, very big in our area. Now the great thing is with Roofstock, scheduling those and everything else, they take really, really good inspectors and those inspectors will work with us on a regular basis. So they know exactly what to look for. They know exactly what an investor is looking for those kinds of things and the last thing is we go through a pretty heavy rain season, you know, we as we come into the screen, which we just came out of, we have a lot of rain, rainy days, when we get into the end of summer, we come into hurricanes and storms, afternoon thunderstorms. So we're going to want to make sure that all these properties have good sealed roofs, you know, good windows, those kinds of things and good drainage around the property and drainage around the property is horribly important. Because any of those rainstorms would we get these afternoon thunderstorms that we get, they're basically heat flashes, what we get, and in those cases, we may get one to three inches of rain in a matter of 45 minutes. So we want to make sure that there is no flooding or anything going on around the properties, even on the streets and everything else, you know. So it's those are some of the big key factors that I would tell the investors to really, really look at, you know, the other thing is, you know, what we try to encourage the investors to do is we try to encourage the investor to do a FaceTime or a video with us, you know, if they can't do a FaceTime with us, because you're, you're an international client or national client, or you're busy at work and, you know, just like with this, I mean, I think on the west coast or east coast, you know, there's a time difference. So it can be very difficult for us and for you at times. But if we can't do a FaceTime video live, like we're doing right here, then we definitely want to do some sort of recorded video and try to send that to you so that you can see everything in the home. Because there's one thing that I can tell you that realtors are really good at if they're good at nothing else and that is perception. They are good at taking pictures, and they are going to have photographers make things look, they make ugly things look absolutely beautiful, we were really, really good at that.   Michael: It's a gift really.   George: It really is a gift and I don't know if it's us as the realtors, or if it is, if it's the photographers. The other thing we're good at is the creative literature that we use to come up with the descriptions to say that, you know, there's 200 square foot bungalow that is falling down, it has termites is absolutely positively amazing. You know, we just we just have a way of doing that. So if you're 100 miles, 300 miles, 3000 miles away, it can be very difficult. So you definitely want to do video, because that video, you can't have stuff in his videos, you can't hide things, you're gonna see different things and you can stop and pause those pictures are one thing, but videos or another. So I encourage everybody to really no matter what market you're shopping in to really encourage the agent you're working with, to get you some sort of video or something like that.   Michael: It's a great tip, George, talk to everybody about property taxes and how those work in the Tri County area. How should they be thinking about them? Is there a good ballpark rule for folks to estimate what their taxes are gonna look like post once they purchase a property?   George: So the good thing is most of the sites that we mentioned earlier, most of them produce pretty accurate tax numbers. So really, in my opinion, you shouldn't be estimating taxes number one, and you should be asking both the realtor and the Roofstock team what the taxes actually are typically, number two, you know, if you're looking at those taxes on those sites, they're usually pretty accurate. But there are a couple anomalies that I really like to mention. So in some areas with our for example city of Savannah, city of Savannah sits within Chatham County, okay, if you're in the incorporated sea, okay. You actually have two tax bills. You have the city tax bill, and you have the county tax bill and the other thing that gets thrown off is those tax bills are due twice a year. They build those taxes in the beginning of the year. I think it's around this time of year which is March or April and then what they do is they build them again in November. Okay, now here's the funny thing about it. They say that the first bill is due You, I believe the first bill is due sometime June. But it's actually not the there's no lazy that is that is the municipalities way of producing pre income so that they can run their business. So you're better off to keep that money in your bank account, draw your interest and then pay the full bill in November because there's no penalty to do that. Okay, however, if you're in the city of Savannah, you have two tax bills and what happens sometimes is on the websites, they only show one of the tax bills, not both of the tax bills. So if you ever go on there, and you see some really cheap taxes, and you've got city and county, you're going to need to ask that question, because it's probably a situation where they put the first part of the year's taxes, but not the second year's taxes. So let's just say if the 1500 bucks, you're like, man, that's really cheap. Well, no, it's probably 3500 bucks, because there's two bills that year.   You know, if you're in the unincorporated markets, like outside of Chatham County, where you're not in the city limits, there's only there's still two bills, but there's only the bill for the county, you're not paying city and county taxes. So in some cases, you may want to make your make your investment market outside the city because you're paying less taxes. It really depends on what you're doing. The other counties in the same way, Bryan County and Effingham County, which the tri counties are what make up the Tri County areas, they are the same way they typically build twice a year. But there are some cities in those areas that you do not pay city taxes, for example, there's a city called Garden City that is between Savannah and between pooler, it's right against the ports, a lot of ports, workers live in that area, a lot of ports, families work in that area, you can actually see the ports from them as anywhere that you can see the port cranes in that location, they do not have some Texas, their city taxes are wrapped into the county taxes and somehow the county and the city work together to cover those costs throughout the year. So you're only paying taxes on one side, not both sides, even though you're in a municipality, inside of the county. So we'll want to look at those on a case by case basis. But I would say that the majority of websites that I see, they're producing, you know, pretty good numbers. But for us, it's so easy for us to get it. I don't see why anybody should assume they should just make the phone call or send me an email and say, hey, do your job, Mr. George, give me this information and I think that's a big misconception is a is investors feeling like they're overworking the realtor? Well, no, I mean, that's what we do every day. I mean, that's what we're here for and that's what we have teams for and if you're working with a realtor who's not willing to do those things, then you should probably find a different realtor, you know, and so the other part of that is, you know, you also have to be respectful of what they have going on, you have to understand that, yes, I wish you were my only investor, but we do have other people we're working with. So you may have to give me a reasonable amount of time to get you that information on my team and get you that information. But my opinion is, don't assume those numbers, let's really sit down and talk about those numbers and the good thing is, in most of our areas, the numbers are very consistent. So if you're in like we were talking about earlier, Midtown, if you're in a certain square footage, and the average price is, you know, $350,000, the taxes are probably somewhere around $3,000, maybe 2800 bucks, and almost every house in that area is going to be very, very similar. So you can kind of use that as a good, you know, good way to do it.   You know, the other thing, when we're, when you're talking about just taxes, you're talking about what they can account for, I mean, there's other things they should be accounting for. I mean, I think every investor should be counted for reserve, I've run into so many investors, even Roofstock investors that we're working with, who they're not accounting for reserves are not putting any reserve money away. So when that day comes to do a repair, they're gonna have to come out of pocket, so why not have it into a reserve account, where it's still money you can use if you need it for something else, but we know that AC is going to break, we know the roof is going to need to be replaced, we know that we may have a termite issue. So why not be prepared by putting a couple of percent into a bank account for that, instead of waiting when it comes down the road and as we all know, the repair always comes in the wrong time it comes with the kids tuition is due, or whatever it may be whenever you have to fix your car. So you know, those are just some tips that I can give and then make sure you're definitely accounting for, you know, your property management fees and those kinds of things as well.   Michael: Such great tips, George, we got to get started wrapping up here. Any final tips, tricks, thoughts, advice for folks as they're thinking contemplating and researching the Savannah market?   George: I mean, oh, I think like I said, I think they should check out these different markets, I think they should determine what areas they want to be in. I think the other big thing is, you know, really determine what you want your rate of return to be or be realistic about it, what we run into more than anything, and I'm sure there's other realtors who are going to be listening as they're shaking their head like this, you know, come into the city and come into any city in any investment situation, knowing a realistic rate of return. The hardest part we have is rushing out and putting offers on place, places to realize that we wasted your time, my time and Roofstocks time at the very end to realize that you wanted a much higher rate of return that was never realistic in this market at all. So I would say coming into the Savannah market. If you're going to invest in Savannah Want to get let's set up a meeting? Let's have a conversation, let's really delve into things. Let me tell you what our costs are going to be as far as property management fees, you know, annual cost of termite bonds, maintenance plans, preventative maintenance on the HVAC systems, and then also talk about, you know, what are realistic rents are, and then at that point, we can talk about what a realistic rate of return is, or what you believe is realistic and we can tell you if that's actually a realistic number. I think coming into our market is just like anybody else's market. You know, we got to, we're struggling for inventory. So come in patient, understanding that we're trying to find inventory, and I will say we're doing some things. I mean, we're, you know, it's unfortunate that we haven't been able to produce as much inventory personally as we want to do, because we have investors waiting in line. But the situation is we're contacting other property management companies who don't do real estate, we're trying to get them to, to do a referral program to where we pay them a referral fee. If they do, give us a listing or get us properties that one of their investors may want to sell. You know, we're even doing a lot of mailers, we've gone back to a lot of traditional mailers to where we're driving for dollars and what we mean by driving for dollars is, you know, our team is getting the vehicle and driving around and every vacant property we see or every property we see deteriorate, and it doesn't have a for sale sign in it. We're sending letters and we're saying, hey, do you want to sell this property, we noticed that the front doors fallen down, we noticed the shutters are falling off, can you not afford this property, and then we delve in to try to start to find those investments. So that we can stop competing, like we're doing, we're competing, when a property goes on the market, we're all competing for it, you know, along with other investors and other places all over and other realtors. So if we can find these off market properties, and starting to bring them in. But the other part of that goes back to the beginning of this part of the conversation as we're closing out. If we don't know what a realistic return rate of return is for the investor, it's very difficult for us to even start negotiating to say if we shouldn't send in a letter to this property, because we don't know if it's gonna match what they need or not. You know, so I would say coming into any market, but especially our market, let's have the conversation. Let's talk about real returns. Let's talk about what you want and what you want for yourself, your family and your future and then we can help you build that I mean, between us and what Roofstock provides us and here we can build that, this is not a problem.   Michael: George, this has been so, so great, man. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you if they have questions want to reach out want to learn more?   George: So they can call me or text message me. I mean, they can call me or text message at  9123132424 that is my direct cell phone number. So know that sometimes, like I was saying early, be really earlier, be realistic that sometimes in the evenings and stuff, it may be a little slower with family and all that kind of stuff. You can also reach me by email. My email is: george@miamadisonproperties.com and I'm always happy to help. So let's schedule an appointment. Let's get on the phone, let's get on FaceTime, let's get on a Google meet. Let's figure out what you want your future to be and what your what your investment would be and what you want your rate of return to be. Let's do this. I mean, we're ready for you.   Michael: Awesome. Well, George, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. This was awesome.   George: It was great, Michael, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I look forward to next time.   Michael: You got it, take care.   Thanks, all right, everyone. That was our episode a big thank you to George for hanging out with me and educating all of us about the Savannah market. Super, super interesting stuff he was talking about and sounds like a lot of growth going into the market. As always, if you liked the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review. They are really helpful for us, gave a great weekend and we look forward to the next one. Happy investing…

Zillow Forecast: Top 10 Hottest Residential Real Estate Marketings for 2022 Based on a blend of factors, such as job and home price growth, Zillow expects housing markets in the Sun Belt to be the most competitive in the U.S. - The Sun Belt dominates Zillow's list of hottest housing markets for the second year in a row. Tampa, Jacksonville, Raleigh, San Antonio and Charlotte top Zillow's rankings. - Six of the 10 markets on Zillow's list have added more jobs than new homes over the past two years, adding competition for available homes. - New York, Milwaukee and San Francisco should be the coolest housing markets in 2022, but sellers will have the upper hand even in cooler markets. SEATTLE, Jan. 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The hottest housing market of 2022 will be Tampa, according to a new Zillow® analysis. Rounding out the top five are Jacksonville, Raleigh, San Antonio and Charlotte in what is anticipated to be another hot year for housing across the Sun Belt. Zillow economists expect the housing market to back off just a bit from a record-breaking pace in 2021, but home shoppers looking in the 10 hottest markets are likely to face strong competition, rising prices and limited inventory that will be snatched off the market quickly. Tampa tops Zillow's list of hottest housing markets due to a combination of strong forecasted home value growth, a thriving job market, relatively scarce and fast-moving inventory, and demographics that indicate a good number of potential buyers. "Home buyers are attracted to markets in the Sun Belt that offer relative affordability, fast-growing economies and weather that allows them to enjoy the outdoors year-round," says Zillow economist Alexandra Lee. "Across the board, sellers will remain in the driver's seat, but especially so in the hottest markets. Buyers should be ready for strong competition for homes, which means bidding wars and homes flying off the market only days after they are listed." Zillow's 10 hottest housing markets of 2022: [Zillow Economists Expectations] 1. Tampa 2. Jacksonville 3. Raleigh 4. San Antonio 5. Charlotte 6. Nashville 7. Atlanta 8. Phoenix 9. Orlando 10. Austin With the huge millennial generation's pent-up desire to move now being fulfilled as it ages into its peak home-buying years, together with the wave of baby boomers entering retirement amid the "Great Resignation," Zillow economists expect incredibly strong price appreciation and sales volume to continue into next year — forecasting 14.3% national home value growth through November 2022. Each of the top 10 hottest metros are anticipated to exceed that, with Tampa home values predicted to grow 24.6% during that time. Work will play a key role in moving decisions next year — for remote and on-site workers alike — and a strong labor market has factored into Zillow's hottest markets list, as well. With more flexible work opportunities and a recovering labor market, many areas experiencing high demand for housing are also seeing increased local job growth. Six of the 10 markets on Zillow's list have added more jobs than new homes over the past two years, intensifying the competition expected in these markets. Last year's hottest market, Austin, fell to No. 10 this year, while Denver, last year's fifth-hottest market, fell to 15th. Outside of the Sun Belt, the hottest markets are expected to be in the Midwest. Salt Lake City (13th overall), Kansas City (14th), Oklahoma City (16th) — which is sometimes considered a Sun Belt city depending on where the border is drawn — Columbus (17th) and Indianapolis (18th) just missed making the list. The coolest markets out of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas are expected to be New York, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Chicago and San Jose. But in today's supercharged housing market, buyers shouldn't necessarily expect screaming deals in even these cooler markets. Home values are forecasted to grow by at least 10% over the next 12 months in all metros except San Francisco (9.9%). Research methodology Zillow analyzed the 50 largest U.S. metro areas to forecast the hottest, or most competitive, housing markets of 2022. The analysis incorporates expected home value appreciation from November 2021 to November 2022, the anticipated change in home value appreciation from 2021, the flow of for-sale inventory, an estimate of the net new number of home-owning households based on current demographic trends and new jobs per new housing unit permitted. About Zillow Group Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: Z and ZG) is reimagining real estate to make it easier to unlock life's next chapter. As the most visited real estate website in the United States, Zillow® and its affiliates offer customers an on-demand experience for selling, buying, renting or financing with transparency and ease. Zillow Group's affiliates and subsidiaries include Zillow®, Zillow Offers®, Zillow Premier Agent®, Zillow Home Loans™, Zillow Closing Services™, Zillow Homes, Inc., Trulia®, Out East®, ShowingTime®, Bridge Interactive®, dotloop®, StreetEasy® and HotPads®. Zillow Home Loans, LLC is an Equal Housing Lender, NMLS #10287 (www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org). SOURCE: Zillow via PR Newswire

On Ep. 63 of iPullRank's Rankable Podcast, Garrett Sussman hosts John Doherty, Founder and CEO of Credo, to discuss the topic “The Hiring Equation for Marketing”John has almost a decade of experience in SEO and online marketing. Before starting Credo, he ran marketing/growth for HotPads and Trulia Rentals, part of the Zillow Group family of real estate brands.He now connects businesses with marketing agencies and understands the key ingredients that make for a successful marketing hire.We also discuss:What analytics and business metrics that you need to understand before hiring for marketingHow to create a hiring funnel (much like a marketing funnel)The cadence for testing new marketing channelsKey tactics for agency lead generation and success

Credo was founded and is run by John Doherty. John has almost a decade of experience in SEO and online marketing. Before starting Credo, he ran marketing/growth for HotPads and Trulia Rentals, part of the Zillow Group family of real estate brands. Before that he was a consultant at Distilled, where he was the most senior consultant and a founding member of the New York City office. During his time there he consulted with everyone from small VC-backed startups (who closed rounds of funding because of his work) to large international hotel chains with multiple brands and brand needs. He lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife Courtney and their very large black labrador Butterbean.

Glen Meakem is the founder & CEO of a permanent cloud photo storage and sharing company called Forever. He previously took his first technology startup, FreeMarkets, public in late-1999.   FreeMarkets grew up during the height of the Dotcom Bubble and reached a peak valuation of over $10 billion. While the spectacular highs of the bubble could not last, underneath the market Glen was tripling revenues each year and operating.   After selling FreeMarkets to Ariba in 2004, Glen started angel and venture investing. Some of his most successful investments include Kiva Systems (sold to Amazon), HotPads (sold to Zillow), and Niche.com.   After wrapping up a successful venture career, Glen returned to being an entrepreneurial operator. Forever was built because Glen was frustrated by the short-term business models and incentives offered from other cloud storage providers.   In this podcast interview, you’ll hear Glen and Aaron discuss timeless leadership principles, how to recognize a business opportunity, and stories from the tech bubble. Pittsburgh’s best conference to Expand your Mind & Fill your Heart happens once a year.   Glen Meakem’s Challenge; Don’t sit on the sidelines. Get in the game and take action. Walk through the door. Be ethical. Be kind.   Connect with Glen Meakem Linkedin Forever.com   If you liked this interview, check out episode 303 with Luke Skurman where we discuss founding Niche, recruiting engineering talent, and why follow-through is so important. Underwritten by Piper Creative Piper Creative creates podcasts, vlogs, and videos for companies.    Our clients become better storytellers.    How? Click here and Learn more.   We work with Fortune 500s, medium-sized companies, and entrepreneurs.   Follow Piper as we grow YouTube TikTok Instagram Subscribe on iTunes | Stitcher | Overcast | Spotify 

Is pre-screening tenant leads the most time-consuming part of your business? What you need is an online system that advertises, generates and pre-screens leads, automates showings, and turns leads into applications at a reasonable price.  Today, I am talking to Cliff Hayden of ShowMeTheRental, a time-saving tool for automating and screening rental leads. ShowMeTheRental handles the B.S. part of management between prospective tenants and property managers/owners.  You’ll Learn... [03:05] From Lineman to Realtor: Longest suspension in AT&T history to do real estate. [04:00] Poor Priorities: Money was goal. Financial success wrecked family/homelife. [05:15] ShowMeTheRental: System put in place to automate lead screening for tenants. [06:12] Fulfilling Family Priorities: Money is a tool, now; not a goal.  [07:25] Happy vs. Frustrated Customers: Set expectations of what you expect from them and what they expect from you via questions that filter qualified leads. [11:25] Where is ShowMeTheRental advertised? All major Websites, including Zillow, Facebook Marketplace, and HotPads. [15:18] See something you like? Try ShowMeTheRental today to save time and money. Tweetables Working all the time costs you family and friends. Money is a tool, not the goal. You can buy time, but you can’t get your time back.  Resources Cliff Hayden’s Email Cliff Hayden’s Phone: 502-641-8781 ShowMeTheRental  Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki CASHFLOW Game Kentuckiana Real Estate Investors Association (KREIA) Section 8 Housing Buildium Zillow HotPads Google Trends DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and expand your rent roll, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to grow property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, expand the market, and help the best property managers win. So, if you enjoy this episode, do me a favor. Open up iTunes, find the DoorGrowShow, subscribe, and then give us a real review. Thank you for helping us with that vision. I’m your host, property management growth hacker, Jason Hull, the founder of OpenPotion, GatherKudos, ThunderLocal, and of course DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. My guest today is, Cliff Hayden. Cliff is from a tool called... what's your tool called, Cliff? Cliff: showmetherental.com Jason: ShowMeTheRental. All right Cliff, let's get into your background. Tell us a little bit about how you got into this so people get familiar with you a little bit. Cliff: I got into ShowMeTheRental to save my marriage, actually, and my family life. I worked at AT&T, my real job, when I first started this business. I was an outside plant technician, which is a fancy word for a line man. [...] bucket trucks and put up telephone lines everywhere. I always wanted something more, so,I got into real estate. You've heard of Robert Kiyosaki? Rich Dad, Poor Dad. My brother-in-law was in, and my sister came back from Iraq. They brought home a game called CASHFLOW. I can remember sitting at the dining room table playing CASHFLOW. I didn't understand that you can buy assets and buy rental houses, and people will pay you and you can make money off of it. That's how green I was when I first started. I knew absolutely nothing. From playing that game, I actually signed up for a mentorship through Robert Kiyosaki. They helped me buy my first duplex. End up being a horrible deal, it was bad, but it all worked out because in that whole process of getting a loan on it and learning what I was doing, I found our local real estate club called Cria. I started going to local meetings and I met a mentor, a guy named Mike Butler. He took me under his wing, showed me the road to real estate, and made sure I didn't fall on my face. He was a big part of my success. From there, I worked a full time job and started buying rentals on the side. Long story short, I just started making enough money to quit my job. Now, cool story that I like to tell is, I do hold the longest suspension in AT&T history. I come from a lower middle class family. I didn't want to quit my job and do real estate full-time. It was a very high paying job for us and a very good job for my family. I just didn't want to up and quit, so got suspended on purpose. As a lineman, you have to have a CDL license, and they random drug test you. They did pop me a random drug test. I decided I wouldn't take it, which is an automatic fail. Then they suspended me. I took that suspension and turned it into four-and-a-half months. In the meantime, in the first month of my suspension, I made my whole salary at AT&T doing real estate full-time. I kind of drag it out and then I decided to quit my job and do real estate full-time, which was awesome, because I was my own boss. I had a lot of fun in the beginning, but my priorities were all mixed up. When I first started, my priority was money was the goal. The problems that I had was all I focused on was money, buying houses, and doing everything I could to get money because I thought that was going to make me happy. What it did is, I became financially successful, but my home life was a wreck. I'm happily married with five children. I would work all day, come home, and continue to work. I couldn't turn it off and it's causing a lot of problems at home. The biggest problems at home is, when I would come home and eat dinner, I would get text messages, phone calls, emails, because at any given time we would have three or four empty rental houses. All these leads would start coming in and my wife would just get, I call it superman vision. She had that look on me where she could shoot lasers out of her eyes. She would. It caused a lot of friction at home and a lot of problems. I decided there’s got to be a system I could start putting in place to make this more fun, to make this job smoother, and to get my life back, because I was just working all the time. I didn't see my family, I didn't see my friends, I didn't have anymore friends because I was doing nothing but working all the time. I went out and started putting systems together. One of the systems I wanted was lead screening for tenants because it was our biggest headache. When we get empty houses in our town, nothing to get a hundred phone calls and emails a day. There's no possible way to keep up with those without a system in place. When I tried to find a system, I couldn't find anything I like or anything with a good price point that I like. That's where we created ShowMeTheRental.  What we did with ShowMeTheRental is we took all the problems we were having, created a system for it, and then automated it. What ShowMeTheRental does is, it's an online system that advertises, generates leads, prescreens those leads, automates the showings, and turns those leads into applications. We do all these automatically, with a few clicks of a button, and at a price point that I think is incredible. For $49, you can put it in our system and it's on there until it's rented. That's how I got into real estate. Over the last six or seven years, I started changing my priorities to live a more abundant life. Now, money is a tool and not the goal. That's the biggest change I've had over the last several years. Now, I don’t miss any field trips. We switched our whole business around and put systems in place so I can be mobile. That's our new goal now. With the technology that's out there now, and the systems in place, if you just take the time to do it, it's not very hard to do. Now, with all our kids, we travel every summer. This year we went to Colorado for a month, then stopped to St. Louis from Branson, Missouri, and we just get back from Pigeon Forge. We have systems in place now to run our company, so we can be mobile and I can do what's important, which is making sure my kids are good, happy, and productive citizens. That's my quick story. Jason: Tell us more about ShowMeTheRental. It sounds like a lot of your clients are individual investors. A lot of investors can use this. They can put in their one property when they need to make sure it gets rented. It deals with all these tenant leads, help systemize the process so they're not overwhelmed in it, and filters out some of the riff-raff and time wasting. Cliff: Correct. Jason: Maybe you could explain the process of once somebody gets into your system, they sign up. Take us through what's going to happen. Cliff: I'll tell you our situation. Our situation was, when we would have leads coming in, we would always find ourselves asking the same questions over and over, which were, “Are you on Section 8? Will you sign a three-year lease? How much money is in your bank account? How long have you been on your job?” Simple questions we wanted answered to qualify, to go see our houses, or to rent our houses. What we did is, we generated a list of around 40 questions that we use and that we think other property managers like you all would use to kind of this thing about big funnel. Take a big funnel people and just get them down to that. Take that 100 or 200, get it down to that 15 or 20 really qualified leads that get access to view your house, so you're not wasting your time. More importantly, what we learned is tenants get pretty upset going to look at houses they're not qualified to go see. They fall in love with the house, only to find out they don't qualify income-wise. “You don't take Section 8. They don't want to sign a three-year lease.” We set it up for them also, so they'll have a system where they know that if they don't lie on their question and tell the truth, they’ll have a great opportunity to get this house. It could be theirs. We mesh that together so everybody can be happy. Jason: So really, it reverses the issue. A lot of times, what happens is tenants apply for a bunch of properties, renters will apply for a bunch of properties, and hope that they'll get one. They aren't taking a look at the income requirements. None of these things were filtered when you're looking at Zillow rentals or wherever they're looking to find a property. They're just going, “Oh, I like this one. This looks great.” They're not really aware of what they would qualify for. They're getting frustrated. They're wasting a lot of time. Really, it doesn't take a whole lot for somebody to get frustrated. You see, you go look at a couple of properties that you like, and find out you don't qualify. You'll start to get pretty upset and annoyed, I'm sure as a renter. It would be really challenging. Cliff: Yes, and there are customers. I call them customers. Just like any business, you want your customers to be happy. You don't want to start them off on the wrong foot. I want to set the expectations upfront about our policies and procedures, so we go into what we expect from them and what they expect from us. It just streamed on that system so much better than what we did before. This way, we're not wasting our time and we're collecting all their information. We can go into that. It's hard to go over on a podcast, but we can. For guests who want to check out showmetherental.com, it shows you we collect all the lead information and we actually have a cross-reference database, that if they don't qualify for my property but you're in our system, they qualify for your property, Jason, it will send them over to you. We have a system where, when properties pop in our system that they qualify for, it will automatically send it to them. I know based on their profile they filled out and the prescreening questions they answered, that they're qualified to go see that house. I think that's important and the tenants really like it, because you said it best, it's just such a headache to go to 20 houses and know you're only qualified to rent two of them. I think a lot of people miss that because I think we need to take care of our customers because they're our business. If we don't take care of them, we don't really have a business. If we can get those good customers in there, spread that word of mouth, and get them to know about us, it makes our lives a lot easier. Jason: What are some of the common questions that a homeowner, or an investor, or maybe even a property manager usually ask you about ShowMeTheRental? Cliff: I don't know the common questions. The biggest one we get is what websites do we advertise on? We do all the major websites. Zillow, which is always number one, Facebook Marketplace, we just syndicated with Zumper, Trulia, HotPads, Rent Leads, all the major websites. We advertise on every major website. How this system works is, when you put in on the website through our system, it goes into our system. Instead of them contacting you, they're going to contact our system. They can contact us via phone, via email, and via phone number. Each specific city has their own phone number and how will they contact us. Usually, 90% is through email. When they go in Zillow and to your property, when they look at it, they'll inquire about it and then we will send them, through ShowMeTheRental, a link to your prescreening questions. From there, they'll answer those questions and if they answer those questions correctly, we will then send them showing instructions based on your preference. We have five different ways to show the property. Once they looked at the property, we will send them a link for an online application. We provide one, but we recommend if you have your own, you can just put your own application link in our system and it will send them to your application. We use a software company called Buildium. I want everything in Buildium, so I'll have all the stuff already entered. From there, we have our screening service. We screen, we don't offer the service we have in our in-house. We then screen the tenant, get all the information we need from them, and we take it from there. Jason: Okay. You're not just helping prescreening, but you're also fielding the phone calls. You really are this barrier between the prospective tenants and the homeowner property manager. Cliff: To me, we're the BS part. We help fix the problem, the BS part of management which is prescreening and leads. I think that is the most cumbersome, time consuming part of our business. Jason: Yeah. It's a huge time waste. Cliff: Yes, A huge time waste. Jason: It just cost a business money. It doesn't make an investor or property manager money. In general, it’s the garbage of phone calls. “How many square feet are on this property that I'm looking at right now?” where it says the square feet on the property. You know, these kind of calls. You guys will handle the phone calls? Cliff: The system does, correct. Jason: Or emails, or all that kind of stuff? Cliff: Everything, yes. It's all automated.  Jason: Okay, cool. You do it on a per property basis. What bout a property manager that has a lot of properties, or an investor that has a lot of properties? Cliff: What do you consider a lot? To me, a lot is a couple of hundred. If you have multiple properties, we’ll work out discount prices for you. I guess there's no grey area. There is no setup fee, but if you have multiple properties on there, multiple times we’ll work out deals with you. Most of the time it's people like me, who have 30 something properties. We have pretty nice properties. We sold off all our pain in the ass houses. We might have, out of those properties, every year we have two, maybe three turnovers. I like it. This is more built towards smaller amount of pop we do. Of course, we do take on all the bigger ones, but it's more of, you got two or three rentals a year. If you do have multiple ones, then we'll work with you on prices and make sure everybody is happy. My big goal is to get people their time back. I know it changed my life when I started living life more and stopped worrying about all the money all the time and just started being home and being present with my family, with my kids, and being more involved. That's our big goal, is just to help. You can't get your time back. That's what I tell everybody. Jason: Right. You can buy time thought. Cliff: You can. Jason: The residents experience going through this, what's their experience? Cliff: What they'll do when they log on to the site, their view is a map of whatever city they're in, it will show different properties. What we try to do, when we market, when they go in, they got to sign up with their phone number, email, and name. Then, we're going to try to get them a profile filled out before they even go into a house. We're going to get a profile filled out of all the questions we have and then we're going to match it up the properties. If they don't go that route and say, they find it on Zillow like I said earlier, then from there, they'll just get on Zillow, find a house, inquire about, and they'll answer the prescreening questions from there. If they qualify, they get to see the house. If they don't, it just tells them they're not qualified to go see the house. Jason: Got it. So just kind of kills it there.  Cliff: It kills it there so you don’t have to talk to them. You seem like a nice guy like I am. I don't know how many times you've been on the phone and you have to tell them, talk to them for 15 or 20 minutes and they go on for 15 or 20 minutes, and you don't want to hang up because you want to be nice. It’s just a headache. It takes care of that headache. Managers had that conversation, I know all of them have. All those conversations are gone, which is a big blessing. Jason: One phone call is probably 10-15 minutes, because you have a nice intro on the call, you have to be cordial, they're going to have some questions, you want to answer those questions, and then you need to figure out how to end and get off this call in a nice fashion. Yeah, it eats up a huge chunk of time. Cliff: Yeah, huge chunk. Jason: If it's a nice property, it's in a nice area, and it's priced appropriately, you're going to get a lot of these phone calls. It can be pretty cumbersome and overwhelming if you're trying to just enjoy your day, have a day job, or do something. Besides, I have this part time business of managing a property. Cliff: Yes, correct. Jason: This one property. If you have multiple, it becomes even more crazy real quickly. This is something that maybe property managers could use. I mean really, it’s a piecemeal service. It's like “Hey, I need it for this property, maybe not for this one.” They can use it as needed, maybe something supplemental to the other stuff they have going on, like through Buildium or [...]. Cliff: Correct. Definitely. Jason: Ok cool. Cliff, is there anything else people should know about ShowMeTheRental before I let you go? If not, tell us how everybody can get in touch with you and find out more. Cliff: The only thing I ask is just give it a try. Check it out. Hopefully, you’ll like it. It's been a huge game changer for us. Like I said earlier, when I come home from work, I'm actually home now, I'm not working all the time, I'm not answering phone calls. I just say, give it a try to see if you'll like it. I think you will. As far as contacting me, you can reach me anytime. My email is cliff@showmetherental.com and you call me if you have any questions, if I can help you. I do answer my phone only between 12:00 and 1:00, and 4:00 and 5:00. If you call outside of that, I’ll try to call you back the next day. You can reach me at (502) 641-8781. Jason: Perfect. Cliff, I appreciate you coming on the DoorGrow Show, it's great to have you, and everybody, check out showmetherental.com Cliff: Jason, I appreciate your help. Thank you, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Jason: Alright, cool. I appreciate Cliff coming on the show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to grow your business, one thing you may want to take a look at, that I will mention a little bit is take a look at your website. If your website has been around for 2-3 years or longer, that's the typical lifespan of a website or a design. It maybe starting to look stale, which creates a perception about your business. Once it's get about 5 years old, it starts to get a little bit painful. It's a little bit embarrassing. It looks probably outdated.  The reality is, most of our competitors, when it comes to website design, a lot of their designs were designed 2-3 years ago. The challenge is, you're getting websites, sometimes out of the box, that's already design-wise, behind and outdated. So make sure to go and test out your website by going to doorgrow.com/quiz. You go to doorgrow.com/quiz, test your property management website, take the quiz. It will help you see how effective it is at creating leads, generating business, capturing and creating trust, and capturing and converting people that are visiting on the site. It's really all about trust, instead of just trying to manipulate Google and get to the top of Google. I'll just point out that the reality that search volume for property management according to Google Trends—you can go to trends.google.com and put in property management, back date it, filter it for the US, back date it to 2004 to the present—is low. It's small. You can compare it to any other term and see this. It really hasn't grown since 2004. In fact, it slightly peaked in 2011, around July, the summer, when property management search volume peaks each summer, but it's been on a steady decline since 2011. There's less people searching. Not only that, but competition has gone through the roof since 2011. Competition has been increasing. Everybody’s pushing everyone to do. This was the game everybody’s playing. It's trying to manipulate SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Pay-per click, and Google Ads. The reality is, search volume has been on a decline. It's going down, while competition is going up. It created this false scarcity in the industry. I'd love for you to escape that. There's no scarcity in property management, 70% are self-managing their own properties right now. There’s tons of blue ocean. They have problems, they have stress, but they're not looking on Google, in general. If you can identify them, capture them, you have a website that creates and builds trust, and your sales processes optimize for trust, you are going to be the company that they work with.  We want to help you optimize trust in your business, clean up, and short all the leaks in your sales pipeline. Reach out to DoorGrow. We can help you with the website and we can help you with your sales process, your pricing strategy, all the things that affects your ability to close deals. We can help you clean all that up and make your business far more effective at capturing business and going after that blue ocean where 70% are self-managing. Check us out at doorgrow.com. So, until next time everybody to our mutual growth. Bye everybody.  You've just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

How can you reduce the number of times you show a property? Virtual tours. It’s time to weed out unnecessary in-person showings with time wasters and tire kickers.  Today, I am talking to James Barrett of Tenant Turner, a leading property management tool and resource that lets property managers manage tenant leads, schedule showings, and automate the leasing process.  You’ll Learn... [02:59] Goal of Virtual Tours: Educate potential tenants before choosing to visit property. [03:27] Customer-Centric Concept: Virtual tours evolved from quality images to videos. [04:20] ROI: Reduced costs for video camera equipment make virtual tours possible. [07:40] Lack of competition makes virtual tours core to growth and promotion.  [08:28] Direct correlation between virtual tours, time on market, vacancy, and showings. [08:53] Quality over Quantity: Maximize exposure to increase good-fit tenant leads. [13:37] Virtual tours take time and money. Are they worth it? Promoted? Required? [16:29] Record moves, maintenance, and inspections for marketing and leasing metrics. [21:08] Options and Recommendations: Zillow’s 3D Home, zInspector, and Ricoh; or outsource and offload to PlanOmatic, VirtuallyinCredible, and HomeJab. Tweetables Listings with virtual tours increase interest by 250% and generate 49% more leads. One-third of Tenant Turner’s customers do virtual tours; 11% of its listings include them. Do virtual tours. If you do, you’ll be different, reduce vacancy, and make more money. About 45% of millennial renters seek virtual tour technology before making a decision. Resources Tenant Turner James Barrett’s Email Matterport Zillow zInspector Apartments.com VirtuallyinCredible Ricoh National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM) PlanOmatic HomeJab DGS 45: Automate Tenant Lead Management with James Barrett and Calvin Davis of Tenant Turner DGS 78: Automating Property Showings with Michael Sanz of Neesh Property DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.  At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today's guest is my buddy James Barrett. James, how are you? James: Doing well, sir. Good to be back on the show. Jason: James and I were just in Nashville, at the Southern States Conference. We got to hang out afterwards and we went dancing. We went out on the town and it was crazy, wasn't it? James: It was a great time. Jason: It was a great time. James: Dance floors everywhere. Jason: The musicians and the talent. Yeah, it was crazy. It was a lot of fun. James: That’s what I tell people about Nashville all the time, the worst musician in Nashville is better than every musician everywhere else, it seems like. Jason: I'm doing open mic night tomorrow night and everyone in Nashville’s better than me, that's for sure. I'm taking the risk, I'm getting on stage. James: That’s right, go out there. You can get a lot of practice behind the mic doing this podcast so it'll… Jason: I don't know if that's the same as singing with the guitar, but yeah. James: We'll see. Jason: We'll see. James, you've been on the show before, welcome back. I'm glad to have you here. In case anybody who’s listening doesn't know James and they can't see his shirt because they're listening, he is part of a company called Tenant Turner, which consistently has been one of the top performing companies for vendors. In our Facebook group, we get a lot of positive feedback from clients on Tenant Turner. I'm glad to have you back on the show. Today, we’re going to be talking about virtual tour technologies, what is that? James: For those of you who might be questioning, “Why is James from a scheduling software, where they do lock boxes and in person showing, why is he talking about virtual tours?” With virtual tours, the real goal is how can you reduce the number of showings that are happening because people are being educated before physically having to go to the property. Jason, as you alluded to with how highly we’re rated within the Facebook group and what not, we are a very customer centric, customer driven organization.  It is something that's come up, particularly more recently, is just the concept of virtual tours. Seeing the evolution of quality images, which was kind of the norm 5-10 years ago. Making sure you have quality, high definition images on your listings, to then moving more to a model of video tours, which is a form of virtual tours but really just the gateway of virtual tours where you're taking a video walking through the home. Now, more and more, we see customers who are adopting these 3D virtual tours like those that are provided by like Matterport. It's becoming very important within the industry because people are investing in this amount of time and effort into these virtual tours and they need to make sure they're seeing an ROI on that. Jason: Are they always seeing an ROI or is that a problem? James: It's been a problem largely because of the investment has always been so high, because one of the big companies that really got into the real estate market was Matterport, one that's very highly rated, but their cameras are $4000. Every property management company in the world might want to do a virtual tour, but at that price point, it's limited.  What we’ve seen more recently is there's now lower cost 360 cameras that are used by not only Matterport, but companies like zInspector which are used by a lot of property managers for inspection software. Really, I think one of the big tipping points is Zillow, who recently came out with their own app that allows you to take a 360 virtual tours utilizing just an iPhone. You're starting to see that barrier to entry drop down pretty significantly but it's still early on in its adoption phases here. Jason: We've had some really great episodes for those listening, if they look at like that so we do with Michael Sanz. He talked a lot about how he's leveraged some of these cheaper cameras and took to offload and to reduce the number of showing significantly. Let's dig in, so how does this apply to Tenant Turner? James: One of the things we have is we have a nice, unique data set that tells us how many people are starting to adopt these types of virtual tours and put them in their listings. We started to see a nice little increase of such tours to date. Right now, it's only about 11% of our active listings, but just a couple years ago, sub 1%, sub 2%. It was really just in its infancy. We started to see faster adoption of virtual tours and one of the things that's also really interesting is 11% of our active rentals have virtual tours associated with them, but now a full third of our customers had at least one virtual tour. Companies in general are starting to adopt more and more of the virtual tours and basically building it to their process. Jason: Let's point this out, people that are using Tenant Turner are probably the more tech savvy, maybe more forthcoming property manager, I mean they're a little more forward thinking, is what I mean. They're early adopters and using your technology. You may have 11% and maybe 33% or whatever a third or have at least one but I would imagine outside Tenant Turner, the number has got to be way lower.  This is still a huge differentiating factor for a management company that say, “Hey, we do these tours.” It's probably really rare that people are going to bump into any competitors that are doing this yet. Even the people that are savvy enough to be using a scheduling software and showing software like Tenant Turner, only 11% of the properties it’s really being used for. James: Yeah, and I think where there's a huge opportunity within the property management space, is now that some of these barriers have been brought down, making it core to your growth model being able to promote the fact that you do this. You actually have an artifact that is created that you can then share with the property owner, that's part of the whole thing, it's part of the inspection process. It's part of your now marketing material where you can say, “Look at these beautiful virtual tours that we're providing,” that really nobody else in your market may be doing. Jason: Yeah and I'm sure there's a direct correlation between virtual tours, and time on the market, and vacancy, and not having to do showings and all of this. James: It's really interesting, there's a lot of similarities between Tenant Turner and our goals and what virtual tours do. With Tenant Turner, we want to make the process as streamlined as possible. On one hand we're generating more leads because we want to make sure we maximize our customer’s exposure, but on the other hand, we want to eliminate anyone who's not a good fit. On the one side, we’re a 24/7 service that can respond to the leads instantly, but on the other side, we have a pre qualification scoring tool that weeds out people who aren’t a good fit. These virtual tours are kind of the same thing but for the other side of the market. With virtual tours, because you have a virtual tour on your listing, statistically it's going to get more page views. It's going to get more clicks.  Apartments.com, they actually did a nice little study on this and it's something that they've started offering through their website is highlighting listings that have virtual tours. There's a 250% increase in time on page for a listing that has a virtual tour versus one that does not Jason: Okay, you said 250%? James: 250%, yep. You got to think too, a lot of these listing sites, they're very vanilla, you can go to Zillow or HotPads or apartments.com and it's pretty cookie cutter in a lot of ways. If you are able to provide a virtual tour and it gets pushed out to those different sites and they can put a little tag or icon next to it, it can go a long way into generating more clicks. Similar to Tenant Turner, they're trying to increase leads with virtual tours and we see more time on page. They’ve also seen a 49% increase in the number of leads. That's one of the goals of virtual tours is how can we get more leads into the top end of the funnel. At the same time, just like Tenant Turner, how we like to weed out people who aren’t a good fit, the virtual tours are helping prospective tenants weed themselves out if they think that the place is a good fit for them. Jason: Right. Yeah, makes sense. James: More leads on one hand but at the same time better fit leads, so that way when it does get time for a showing, you'll ultimately have fewer showings at a particular property but it will be more people who are qualified… Jason: More relevant. James:…exactly, exactly. It's a quality over quantity type solution. Jason: Yeah, I mean relevancy is the crux of everything. It doesn't matter how great the property is or how many tenants you have going through it, if the showings aren't relevant or they're not interested. It allows them to filter it out. They can see the kitchen and say, “No, that's too small,” or they can see the backyard, “That's not what I was hoping for.” They just get a better feel for what it would like to be in it without having actually go and do it. If there is a virtual tour and somebody scheduled to showing they're probably fairly legit interested. They’re probably seriously considering putting an application in on this place. They're probably ready to move. Whereas, instead of getting a whole host of tire kickers and time wasters. James: That's right. What we’re seeing, the big thing right now in our industry is the movement to support self access viewings and whatnot. Within Tenant Turner, only a third of our properties are enabled for self access, because if you have an occupied property, if the owner won’t allow self access to the particular property, if the price point’s too low, you're still going to show and if the price points too high, you're still going to show it. This is a huge tool to help weed out unnecessary in-person showings. If you have your showing agent, like you said, driving around town interacting with all these different tire kickers who would’ve weeded themselves out of the process if they actually saw what it looked like from the curb, if they actually had an opportunity to see the size of the backyard and wouldn’t fit their two or three dogs. If they saw the layout of it and they know they want an open floor plan, but then as soon as they walk in they see it's not an open floor plan, they're going to walk right back out. It is a huge opportunity to generate more leads because you've got people who are going to be more engaged with your listing, but then also allow them to self identify that it's really not a good fit for them based upon what they're seeing in the virtual tour. Jason: Yeah, I mean it's really difficult when you're just looking at a bunch of photos where you’re just seeing an angle from one corner of a room, and that's all you see of each room. It's really hard to get perspective as a renter and you have no idea how these rooms kind of fit together, how that works and what the flow of the place would be like, so all that makes sense. How is Tenant Turner allowing people to get the virtual showings into the listings? James: Yeah, it was kind of a surprising thing that we saw come through our enhancements requests and whatnot, it was just really people—they're spending a lot of money. Whether they own their own Matterport camera or they're putting a lot of time into it and these virtual tours can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to record. Some people like to go in at Matterport and do video editing or maybe they pay a service like VirtuallyinCredible to do virtual tour, where they stitch together the images for you and stuff like that. They're either putting in a lot of time or putting in a lot of money or effort or both.  One of the downsides with a lot of these listing sites,and even with Tenant Turner for awhile was that you couldn't really put links in the description that were clickable that enabled that to be highlighted element. They came through in our enhancement request, just making sure that those things are being promoted appropriately that got Tenant Turner now their own section where people can watch tours. It highlights the fact that that particular listing has a tour versus the ones that do not. The links are in the descriptions, hyperlinks and clickable, which then engages a new window for them to be able to watch the tours before they go through and schedule a showing. Some of our customers, they even have custom questions built into the Tenant Turner Questionnaire that asks if they have viewed the tour. Jason: I was going to say, can they require in order to schedule a showing or even to do a self access, can you require them to confirm that they have seen the virtual tour so no time’s wasted? James: Yeah and that's a huge thing. We've seen that in past questions that customers created. It was really like, “Have you driven through the neighborhood?” was kind of the beginning part of it, because they didn’t want to meet somebody at a home that the person has no idea what the neighborhood is like, if it’s going to be a good fit for them, have they driven by and seen the outside. Now we’re starting to see more people do that with the virtual tours and say, “Have you watched the virtual tour?” If not, draw attention to it before they schedule an appointment, because if they're not satisfied with the virtual tour, they're not going to be satisfied with an in-person tour once they get to the property. Jason; Right. Very clever. What are some other ways that people are leveraging these or making sure that it's all tied together? You're at the forefront of seeing how people are reaching this stuff. I think that's a clever hack to require the virtual tour in some way or fashion. Are there any other things like that that you're noticing people are doing to facilitate this? James: Yes. I think one thing that's really interesting and really smart is particularly the cost of these cameras is dropping and there are more options for property managers than there's ever been before. As you're doing your move outs and some of the homes obviously, they're going to need some maintenance as you turn them over, and maybe a new coat of paint, a new carpet, whatever, but as you do your next move-in inspection, if you have a 360 camera for using the Zillow 3D Home app, if you're using your own iPhone in order to record your pictures and whatnot, use that next move-in inspection as an opportunity to not only record what the status of the home is before the new tenant moves in, but then use that as an opportunity for your marketing material too. A lot of these tools like Matterport for example if you use one of their cameras, it'll take all the pictures panoramic pictures for you, and then you can even take out specific 2D images and use those for your marketing materials too. Basically, if you have the right equipment and your budget allows for it, put the camera on the tripod, put it inside each room, it'll take stance of the entire room, it’ll create a 3D floor plan, it'll create a dollhouse view of the home, and it will create all the individual images that you would need for your listings and for your inspection. Take that as an opportunity to combine the maintenance and loop-in element with the marketing elements so that you can have that 3D tour for that home in the future. Jason: Right. Then when your tenant puts a notice, you can start marketing the property right away, you can put it out there, you can put out the tour and everything else before, and you may be able to get the place rented before it's even vacant. James: Absolutely. That's another big benefit that some property managers are realizing with high quality virtual tours is that they can get the properties rented, sight unseen. If the virtual tour is good enough whether the person lives in town or not, if the property’s occupied and they want to put it out there in the market, there's a higher likelihood that they'll have the home rented sight unseen with a high quality virtual tour. I think that's the goal.  With Tenant Turner, we're trying to manage the leads and schedule the appointments to get people into the home, but ultimately what we're trying to do is streamline the leasing process. If we can help minimize the number of showings to help minimize the amount of back and forth that goes on with these virtual tours, maybe even prevent somebody from going to a property altogether, it's a win-win. Jason: The property managers that are not doing this stuff, if they're tracking their metrics, and they're tracking their average time to get things rented out, their time on market, some of these variables, and then they start using maybe Tenant Turner to start using maybe self access, maybe start using virtual 360 cameras and tours, and all this, they probably will see a dramatic difference. To be able to say in a sales presentation to a prospective owner, “Hey, this is where we were before, like all the companies out there, and here's where we're at now, and what we've noticed,” it's such a huge differentiator in selling point. Even a month of vacancy, even a couple weeks of vacancy can be pretty expensive. In some markets, that could be thousands of dollars depending on the property. James: Yeah. It’s just another kind of tool in the tool belt. I think a big thing is some of the concepts from virtual tours and I think something like Matterport too, just because the cost has been so high, you can get into doing virtual tours relatively easier now because of the Zillow’s 3D home app, you can do it now just with the quality of phones being able to take your own panoramic pictures. I know a lot of people out there, they're using tools like zInspector already for their home inspections, but they also offer a virtual tour tool. There's a lot more out there now than there's ever been before and I think the property managers who are willing to take that leap into putting a little bit of extra effort into it, and putting a little bit of extra time in it, they're going to be the ones to receive the biggest returns by reducing their vacancy, reducing their rent loss to vacancy, but then also like you said, being able to inject those core metrics back into their value prop to their customers. Jason: Between you and me, because it's just you and me right now, just us, if you're hanging out with one of your buddies that runs a property management company and they're like, “Hey, what should I use? What camera should I get? I've got your system Tenant Turner.” What would your go to recommendation be right now? James: I think the Zillow thing is really intriguing because it's free, but for all of us in the industry, Zillow, they're kind of a… Jason: It makes everyone scared. We’re all afraid of Zillow. James: Exactly. Jason: We’re all watching Zillow, but we’re all a little bit afraid. James: With Zillow, I mean they own and control your data because you're recording it in their app, you're uploading it to their servers, and I know a lot of people in this industry, they're thinking at the back of their mind, “It's just a matter of time before I've uploaded this to their servers for free and then they're going to take me out of the process completely because now they have my virtual tour.”  I would say, the Zillow one is appealing because of the cost, it costs nothing to do it, but I do think for property managers who are a bit more sophisticated and a bit more in the know in the industry, and maybe have some fears of Zillow and for good reason, there's a couple of hundred dollar camera, a RICOH camera which is a reputable brand. It works with zInspector, it works with Matterport, you can use it with either one of those products and probably a couple of others, and that's a great place to be able to create these beautiful 360 panoramic vantage points of the rental property.  This is what we saw in the data that we looked at, a third of our customers are doing virtual tours, but only 11% of our listings have virtual tours. The higher end properties or maybe some of your smaller multifamily that you can reuse the layout or use a virtual tour across multiple units, that's where you're also going to get the most bang for your buck. I think as time goes on, maybe we're not quite there yet where this is going to be a ubiquitous part of everybody's process, you can use it as an upsell to an owner, you can use it as something particular for those higher end listings. You tell somebody and say, “Hey, you have a top tier property, you have a beautiful space, and I want to be the property manager for you, and this is how I'm going to do it.” That's part of a way you can help win that management agreement. I don't think it has to be something that's used all the time by every property out there. I think that's a good way to overcome it. If you don't have a camera and you want to test the waters, the RICOH cameras, and there are a couple of them out there, but they're more like $400 versus the Matterport’s $4000. It's a good way to test it out and see if it's a good fit for your organization. To your point earlier is it going to positively impact your key metrics, are you going to see a reduction in your days vacant, are you going to see a reduction of your time on market, are you going to see an increase in either maybe an additional fee or more management contracts because you offer this, and nobody else in your market does. Jason: Say you've got a $20 an hour employee that's helping do some of this stuff, whatever. If it's a $400 camera and if it saves you 20 hours ever at $20 an hour, you’ve broken even on the camera. I would imagine, what is that, 20 showings maybe, or trips out to a place, or whatever. I think it's a no brainer. You could probably justify the $4000 camera if you needed two guys or gals, but $400 is pretty easy to start with. James: Exactly. We have seen with some of the bigger groups, particularly property managers who are tied into larger real estate offices that primarily focus on sales, they tend to have access to the Matterport cameras because these Matterport cameras have taken off more on the for sale side. That's another thing. Whether it's within the NARPM world or within your just local real estate group, you may have a friend that has one. Whether or not they let you borrow their $4000 camera... Jason: Rent it. James: Rent it, that's an option. There are services too, depending upon what you think your choke point is, but there's tools out there or services out there. PlanOmatic is one, Zillow also offers their own network of professional photographers that have access to the 3D tour technology. PlanOmatic is in partnership with Matterport. HomeJab is another new one that has 50 offices nationwide. If your issue is getting somebody to go to the property, take pictures and do the editing, PlanOmatic, HomeJab, those tools are in place. Those services are offered. Jason: You can offload it. James: Exactly. Think about what's the most appropriate part of the process to potentially outsource. VirtuallyinCredible, they do a good job in creating virtual tours that can then be promoted through your various listings, and websites, and whatnot. If you have an editing, if that's where your constraint is, you don't feel like you have the time or talent to do it, there's another place where you can offload and outsource that component to it. You should be doing it, and if you do it, you will differentiate yourself to make more money and reduce your days vacant, so it makes sense to do it, but if you have hesitancies around buying a camera, then borrow one, or use one of these services, or go the Zillow route. If you can overcome that hurdle and your concern is really around editing, and formatting, and getting it to the appropriate level, you can use another one of those services like VirtuallyinCredible who can piece it all together for you, but any stage of the game where you think you have hesitancy or you're resistant to taking it on, there are opportunities to buy equipment or utilize an existing service who’s an expert in it. Jason: Perfect. I think you’ve sold people on the idea of virtual tour technologies. Anything else that that they should know about this that you're seeing from your 30-foot view with all the different property management companies that you're helping them with the leasing side? James: Yeah. I would say one thing to add is that some people might be listening to this saying, “We don't really need to do that, the technology is not there yet,” at least be thinking about this, whether you look at strategic components every quarter, or every year, or whatever, because one of the big statistics that came out of some of the research done by apartments.com and Zillow is, about 45% of millennial renters are really leaning into virtual tours before they make a decision. If you don't think the stats are compelling, if you don't want to try it, just know that the largest group of renters that continues to expand within the markets that we serve, they are looking for this type of technology. Again, it's something that you can use to help sell to your owners, but as you look at quality tenants, this is something that those folks are going to be looking for, and they'll look past your listings eventually if this is not going to be there. Be ready. Jason: I would wager to say there might be a correlation between the most tech savvy of renters and the safest ones to be placing into properties. It might help you attract better tenants. Maybe. James: Yeah, I agree. Jason: Psychologically, it seems sound to me, but who knows. James, it was really cool to have you here again. I don't know when the next conference is but we'll have to go dancing again. James: That's right. Jason: With all our homies. To be clear, it’s not just Jason and I dancing. Jason: No, we’re not dancing together. James: Good times. Jason: You're married, but I'm single again, so I can pick up… James: I could be your wingman. Jason: You’ll be my wingman, I could use a wingman. James: I got you covered. Jason: Alright, well hey, it's really good to see you again. James, it’s really good to see you again. I love what you guys are doing at Tenant Turner. I appreciate you coming on the show and how could people get in touch with Tenant Turner? James: Yeah, if you guys ever need any help with your showings, software, lock boxes, or locks, or ever just a resource to chat with as you can tell, we're really into the data, we’re really into the industry, and we want to be of service to folks. You can reach me at james@tenantturner.com. Definitely come to our website. We’ve got a live chat feature. Anytime you want to speak with somebody, we have folks standing by all US based who would love to hear from you. Come on through. Jason: I saw your Instagram. I'm going to let you get another quick plug here. You have some new lock boxes that you guys are doing now? James: That's right, yes. One of the big and exciting things that we've been rolling out, we've been doing it in a slow launch and actually Calvin, he owns his own property management company, Keyrenter Richmond. He was one of our guinea pig customers. We put new lock boxes on his property. They're SentriLock lock boxes, SentriLock’s a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Association of Realtors. It is an extremely high quality lock box with the six year warranty. For anybody who has had a desire to experiment with self access but maybe was hesitant because of the lock boxes, what we have now is top tier and will last you a good long time and help prevent you from having to go to those properties showings yourself. Jason: Perfect, awesome. Alright, cool. Well James, thanks again for coming on and I will let you go. James: Cool, thank you, Jason, it was a pleasure. Jason: Alright, so great to see him again and have him on the show. Check out Tenant Turner at tenantturner.com and if you are [...] business feel free to reach out. Test your website at doorgrow.com/quiz. Test your website out. See if it's effective, and if not, you maybe want to talk with us and that might help you realize there's that leak, but you probably have several other leaks that we can help you with in your sales pipeline. Our goal is to show up trust, show up those leaks because trust is the speed in which you're able to get clients on close deals and grow your company. That's what we specialize in is helping maximize trust and organic growth and we’re on lead generation at DoorGrow. With that I will let everybody have an awesome day, let everybody go and until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

In today’s digital age, scams have become increasingly common. Today, I’d like to shed light on one type of scam, in particular, that has been plaguing our real estate market: rental scams.  Anyone can fall victim to these scams if they aren’t careful. In fact, I once received a call from a would-be tenant who was interested in a property of mine that they had seen listed online for $1,500. The catch is that I had actually listed this property at $2,000. When I asked this person where they’d seen the listing, they told me they had found it on Craigslist. Unfortunately, I had to inform this person they had been the target of a scam. Scammers will often take legitimate listings, that may or may not be currently available, and place fake advertisements for them on websites like Craigslist—usually at a vastly diminished price. Then, once they trick people into paying a deposit, they take the money and vanish.  To avoid these kinds of scams, renters are far better off looking to reputable websites like Zillow, Rent.com, HotPads, and Trulia, which actually pull from the MLS.  “Anyone can fall victim to these scams if they aren’t careful.” Another good way to identify scams is if you’ve been asked to write a deposit check out to someone other than the owner.  But what about landlords? How can those who own rental properties avoid scams? For one thing, make sure all rental applications are properly filled out and come along with all the necessary paperwork, including a driver’s license, bank statement copies, and the applicant’s credit score and credit report, to name a few. If the applicant has chosen to communicate with you through their own agent, this agent will typically be the one to gather these documents.  However, things can go awry even when everything appears to be in order. I was once about to take on a tenant whose agent had given me all the necessary documentation, but upon attempting to run their deposit check, it bounced. I then decided to run their credit on my own and came to discover two things: First, their credit was horrible, and second, the tenant was actually a professional scammer.  This is why it’s always important for landlords to do some due diligence of their own. Contacting a tenant’s employer, running their credit, and verifying the validity of all provided documents are all good ways to protect yourself against fraud. If you have any other questions or would like more information, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

This (9th) Episode of the [... and Landlord] Rental Real Estate Investing Podcast is titled "Rental Property Advertising - How To Make Your Rental Home Stand Out From The Crowd". So in this episode, I go into things such as posting enticing pictures (lots of them), and making sure that your main exterior and kitchen (or kitchen and living-room) pictures are amazing. These can be taken with a SmartPhone, but you need to know what you're doing and have proper lighting - otherwise, go pro and just pay to have it done right. You can stage the home with some furniture and decor, or showcase your wide-open space - but the pictures have got to be on point. I continue to say a word on your words... Yes, a picture is worth a thousand, but you still need some, and they need to paint a compelling picture. So I give an example of how to tell a story with your listing text, instead of just citing bland facts and figures - like all the other rental listings on Zillow and other sites. And I mention Zillow, Trulia, HotPads, CraigsList, Realtor.com - and other sites, including GoSection8.com. Have you considered Section 8? In this Episode I go into a bit of detail as to why you should, including some stats on the program for Durham County, NC. But I don't tell the full story on Section 8 here (only how it relates to making your rental listing stand out from the crowd) - so in a coming Episode, I will go into more detail on the pros and cons of making your rental homes available for persons with Section 8 vouchers and the process for doing so. I also provide an example of how to conduct market research on Zillow to learn what the competition is like in your area. And how to use the information presented on Zillow to identify how best to stand out among others listed. And even what your target rent should be as suggested by Zillow, CraigsList and Rentometer.com - but possibly adjusted to target Section 8. Upgrades? Lastly, I speak on how you can make your rental home stand out from the crowd by making upgrades. Why have fermica counters when you can have granite? Why carpet when it can be "luxury" vinyl plank? Why have white appliances when they can be stainless steel for not much more? Why not add fans in the bedrooms and living areas, upgrade light fixtures, add a backslash in the kitchen, tile the shower, etc...? If you can make people say "WOW!" when they see your listing, and feel a sense of disbelief that it is available within their rent range... You'll get the best tenants; who remain for years; while gladly accepting annual rent increases; and having pride in the home - of which they take great care. This 9th Episode ("Rental Property Advertising - How To Make Your Rental Home Stand Out From The Crowd") is a deep(er) dive into the rental advertising aspects of last week's: Ep. #8 | Don't Let Vacancy Kill Your Rental Cashflow. So as mentioned in Episode #8, your rental listing advertising is a critical element of keeping vacancy to a minimum. Now learn how to make your rental home stand out from the crowd, like your house has a spotlight shinning on it from above.

PREVIOUSLY RECORDED What you will learn on this Podcast How to afford anything and travel the world The importance of paying yourself when operating your properties What’s Air B&B all about and is it a good strategy to add to your portfolio Why you need to make outsourcing a priority and how to do it How to quit your full time job and to start living life to the fullest What’s your most valuable asset and how to get more of it Money doesn’t buy stuff it buys choices How Real Estate investing can break the chains of your 9-5 job How to properly prioritize and why it’s so important Bio Paula Pant is a podcast host, writer, speaker, and media commentator on financial independence and real estate investing. She is the creator and host of the Afford Anything podcast, which has more than 5 million downloads and is regularly ranked as one of the Top 50 Business podcasts by Apple Podcasts. She is the founder of AffordAnything.com, a personal finance website that draws 2.5 million pageviews per year and holds more than 52,000 email subscribers. She is frequently quoted in financial media including Forbes, Kiplinger, Lifehacker, The New York Times, PBS, Marketplace Money, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, Inc Magazine, Yahoo! Finance, Business Insider, The Simple Dollar, Get Rich Slowly, AssetBuilder, Wisebread, the Huffington Post and many more. Her articles have appeared on dozens of major websites, including MSN Money, AOL DailyFinance, AARP Bulletin, Franklin Templeton, Bankrate, Hotpads, Trulia, Huffington Post, AOL Real Estate, H&R Block, The Balance and the Motley Fool. Contact Paula Pant Website www.affordanything.com/  To learn more about Gary Hibbert visit www.smarthomechoice.ca

John Doherty gets around. Educated in Virginia before living in Switzerland. Made a name for himself at Distilled in New York City, before doing the SEO real estate rounds from HotPads to Trulia and Zillow in San Francisco, before settling in as enterprise SEO for-hire. Oh, and also the founder of marketing marketplace, Credo. (Phew. I’m exhausted just writing that.) Here’s how John got started in the SEO biz, how the transition from small-site SEO to enterprise stuff differs, how to solve those unique challenges, and why business strategy should dictate content strategy.Support the show (https://copyweekly.com/)

John Doherty is an SEO powerhouse with over a decade of experience in the game. He has alsoled marketing and growth on marketplaces with over 10 million+ visitors a month and was formerly the lead growth manager at Trulia Rentals, head of marketing at HotPads, and head of and senior consultant at Distilled NYC. On this episode John talks about SEO competitor analysis, hiring, and staying ahead of changes in the SEO industry.

John Doherty is the founder of Credo, a platform for connecting great businesses with the best vetted digital marketing consultants and agencies. He took a side project that started as a spreadsheet from a $50 dollar referral commission to a SaaS marketplace that has tripled its annual run rate. Before diving into a startup of his own, John worked at Distilled in NYC, and later joined Zillow. There he focused on growing Hotpads into their #2 brand. Starting off with a team of 1 - John quickly grew his organization to 8 people in just 12 months, increasing their listings’ visibility by 200%. John joins us to share his story, what it was like running a nimble team inside a larger real estate company, some challenges to rapidly growing a team, how he took Credo from a spreadsheet to a full time company, some of the biggest challenges he had to face over the last 3 years as the business model evolved, and much more.

www.rentalutions.com. If you are just starting out you may want to consider Rentalutions! Super simple and it markets your property listing to Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, Apartments.com, with one click. Do you have tech to share? Share it go to this link ask.savvylandlord.me or go to www.savvyradioshow.com and leave a voicemail.

We use some tools for showing homes to tenants that make the whole experience easier and more efficient for everyone involved.Are you looking for a home in the Greater Phoenix Area? Start your search hereLooking to sell your Greater Phoenix Area home? Get a free home evaluation here We use a fantastic tool called Codeboxes to rent our vacant units. In fact, one of these boxes got us 21 showings on a home in just four days for one of our clients.I really like how secure these boxes are. The tenants get a single-use code that only works during the scheduled day and time of their appointment. We also get their driver's license so that we know exactly who was in the property and at what time. It's a nice additional bit of security.ShowMojo is more convenient and cuts down on wasted time. The service ShowMojo lets tenants schedule showings at a time that works best for them, which is incredibly convenient and reduces time wasted on coordinating showings or no-shows. It even reminds them of their showing with an email or text message.Another great feature of ShowMojo is its ability to send rental listings to more than 50 websites, including Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, Realtor.com, and many others.If you have any questions about Codeboxes and how we utilize them or you're thinking of buying or selling a property, don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I'm happy to help.

Free traffic from Google through SEO can be a pillar of success for your Shopify store. Unfortunately, SEO advice is often general, not actionable, and sometimes wrong. As a result, it's tough to find 'real' experts. Today we're talking with John Doherty about ecommerce-specific tactics to grow your organic search traffic. John is the founder of GetCredo.com, a company that connects great companies with the right marketing expert for their needs. He's also a freelance digital marketing consultant. In the past, he ran growth marketing at Trulia Rentals, marketing for HotPads.com, and worked for SEO agency Distilled in New York City. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS Join The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group — Learn: The highest-leverage things ecommerce stores can do for SEO (that many get wrong) How long does SEO take to work? The right way to think about SEO when getting a new project/site off the ground How to compete against the big players like Amazon and Zappos When you should hire out for SEO? Links: Ecommerce Marketing Guide GetCredo.com for Shopify How long does SEO take to work? KeywordTool.io Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

John Doherty’s experience spans across everything from working in house managing SEO at Distilled NYC, to working within the Zillow group doing SEO for HotPads and now as a founder – of Credo – a marketplace for marketing companies. Because of this he has a wealth of knowledge to share. We get into a TON […] The post 034: Growing A Subscription Business, Advise For Newbie SEOs w/John Doherty appeared first on Evolving SEO.