Podcast 240: Dan Lane Shares His Experience (episode 153 revisited)

Dan shares his top 10 tips on managing rental properties that he has learned from interviewing over 100 guests on his podcast.

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Show Transcription:

Eric Worral: 00:00 Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of RentPrep for landlords. This is episode number 240 and like last week we are doing a replay. I just wanted to make a custom intro cause I care about you guys, but the truth is the, well that’s not true. I do care about you guys. I appreciate all our listeners. Um, it’s been awesome going through this journey of creating this podcast and uh, I jumped on board halfway with Steve, Steve been on since the beginning, um, and it’s continuing to evolve. Uh, and I think we got some big changes coming up here in 2019, but for this week what we’re going to be doing is replaying one of my favorite episodes. This is episode number 150, or excuse me, episode number one, 153 with Dan Lane.

Eric Worral: 00:41 So he’s the host of the rental income podcast. Dan has a portfolio of rentals himself and he shares his experiences. He interviews a ton of people and he does a great job interviewing people to. He puts a lot of effort into it because we’ve been on his podcast. So I’ve experienced that. And, uh, I really liked this episode because Dan just kind of goes through quickly his top 10 things he has learned from interviewing all these people that own rental properties. So these are gonna be tips on managing your rental properties, how to, you know, keep your stress low and your revenues high. So without further ado, I give you a replay of episode one, 153.

Dan Lane: 01:18 It’s not like they bought their first property and everything just clicked on. A lot of them had real difficult times at first as they were kind of figuring out how to deal with tenants and what good properties would be for rentals and kind of figuring out the numbers.

Music: 01:33 12 1,2,3,4 ya ya ya…. Welcome to the RentPrep for landlords podcast. And now your host, Steve White and Eric Worral.

Eric Worral: 01:36 How are you doing here today, Steve? We got Dan lane from the rental income podcast.

Steve White: 01:48 I’m super excited to talk to Dan today. Just talking with him before we jumped on the recording here. Uh, Dan is going to be a wealth of knowledge here today. He’s learned so much interviewing so many landlords and uh, and what a great way to learn just talking to so many people that have been there and done that. And so Dan has agreed to come on the show and share some of his, uh, most helpful insights that he’s learned in over 100 interviews with landlords and his podcast. Welcome to the show, Dan,

Dan Lane: 02:18 Eric and Steve. Thank you so much for having me on. I’m excited to talk to you today.

Steve White: 02:22 What really impressed me, Dan, was that you started your podcast around the same time that you got your first rental and it was really kind of out of necessity, right? You were looking for answers and you thought, what’s the best way to find these answers? Then go and talk to landlords, put this podcast together and it’s been a learning experience for the most part.

Dan Lane: 02:45 Yeah, that’s exactly right. I, my wife and I decided we were going to buy a new house and we were going to rent that. Our old house and I had a million questions and I didn’t know any landlords. I didn’t really know where to turn and um, I love listening to podcasts and I thought, you know, this would be an interesting show to talk to landlords and selfishly I wanted to ask the questions that I wanted to know the answers to, but it ended up being a great resource for anyone that’s interested in getting started or anyone that has any rentals that wants to learn more.

Steve White: 03:19 Yeah. It’s so interesting because when, you know, the idea for our own podcast kind of came about from a similar concept that I had talked to so many landlords over the years. Mostly dealing with screening issues, you know, for background checks and stuff. And started coming up with the knowledge that the idea of that I’ve now crowdsourced so many answers and I’ve talked to so many different landlords to get their take on how they’re doing things or what works and what doesn’t and what better way to learn from other people’s experiences and to hopefully sidestep a couple of landmines. But, you know, also just to, uh, to have your finger on the pulse in the industry and to know what’s going on, what’s relevant. So I would say you’re the guy to, you know, that’s on the street, Dan, that’s picking up exactly what’s happening in this industry.

Dan Lane: 04:09 It’s really awesome. I mean, I can’t imagine living in a different time, you know, it’s like if we were 20 years younger and trying to do this, I know I probably wouldn’t have been able to figure it out. But the Internet is just such an awesome thing that there’s so much information that’s so readily available that it’s, it’s really just a great time that we live in.

Eric Worral: 04:30 As I say, even just the idea of buying a rental home before the Internet because I never did that before the Internet. And like I think about it sometimes and I’m like, wow, that, that would just be so frustrating. You, you really would be like calling your really are all the time.

Dan Lane: 04:43 Oh yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how people did it back then, but it’s um, yeah, well we’re just lucky. But we live in a great time.

Steve White: 04:49 Well, we thought would be really interesting for the show would be to take 10 things that you’ve learned in doing over 100 interviews with different landlords all over the place and uh, and kind of share what you would say are the 10 most relevant, uh, insightful, uh, sort of pieces that you’ve gathered from landlords over this time.

Dan Lane: 05:14 Sounds good.

Eric Worral: 05:15 Yeah. And just start, I know you gave us this list here and some of them look familiar to me, but some of them I kind of wanted some more clarity on. So we’ll kind of go one by one. And the, uh, the first thing on your list here, Dan, uh, you talk about treating the rentals as a business. Can you kinda go into a little bit more in depth on that?

Dan Lane: 05:33 I think the problem that a lot of people have when they want to get started with this is they just buy a property and they just kind of wing it and they just kind of figure everything out and that’s just a really bad strategy. There is so many landmines and there’s so many things that can go wrong that you really need to treat it like a business, you to have systems and you’ve got to kind of have procedures, kind of thought out, you know, one thing that that comes to mind is if a tenant is going to be late on rent and the tenant says to you, Hey, I had car problems, can I pay you a couple of days late? Like you need to have thought out what you’re going to do in that situation. So for me, I don’t want to train my tenants that it’s okay to pay late. I want them to pay before the fifth of the month and so I have a late fee and that late fee isn’t negotiable. If they pay on the six, there’s that, that late fee that automatically kicks in and there’s nothing I can do to waive it. And once you kind of train your tenants, it’s gonna make your life a lot easier.

Steve White: 06:44 Yeah, I love this one, Dan, because, uh, it’s something that we constantly say here. And um, I think it also helps landlords sort of remove a lot of emotional aspects of the, of the job, right? You know, if you’re looking at it from a personal perspective and an emotional perspective, you’re probably going to be likely to say, oh, I get it, you know, you had car problems and landlords know you’re opening the can of worms there because what’s going to happen is now your rent takes less priority than other things that do get a late fee, like their car payments or you know, a credit card, they’re charging a late fee. So there is some conditioning there. And I think changing that mindset is super important. So I love that one. Treated as a business.

Dan Lane: 07:29 Yeah.

Steve White: 07:29 Get into that mindset to save yourself from having to rationalize a lot of things and just have hard set policies and systems, like you said, have those in place. So the second thing on your list here is to decide if you’re a landlord or an investor. And I loved that one too. So take us into that and why you picked that as number two.

Dan Lane: 07:49 Yeah. So there’s no right answer on this, like some people want to manage their own properties, they want to be involved, that they, maybe they’re handy and they can get out there and fix stuff when it goes wrong. They want to, they, they kind of look at this as a job. Maybe they want to leave there, they want to leave their job, they want to get enough properties that and that can kind of become their job where other people look at it as I’m an investor and I want to be hands off and I’m going to outsource the day to day management. And that’s the category that I’ve decided that I want to be in. I don’t want to manage properties, I don’t want to deal with tenants. I don’t want to be the one telling them that their rent is due on the first. So I, I think you’ve got to decide what you want to be and where you want to be.

Eric Worral: 08:39 I’m curious, Dan did, you kind of started out more as a landlord and then, you know, get to a certain point, like a breaking point, so to speak. We were like, Nah, we just want to be an investor.

Dan Lane: 08:48 So what happened is, again, with our first property, I did self manage that and it really wasn’t that work. I mean, it really, it really isn’t working. It, this was a nice property in a nice neighborhood and we had professional tenants and those properties generally are pretty easy to manage. But, uh, I just looked at this as, as my goal, I want to generate passive income that and I don’t have to work for it. So, um, so my, my longterm plan is to have enough rentals that my wife and I cannot work, you know, would that, that we’re gonna we’re gonna live off the rental income. And so I, I figured building that out. I wanted to, to kind of start that way at the beginning. So as we bought more properties, I’ve had property managers take over the new property.

Eric Worral: 09:43 Moving on to the next point you have here on the list and I really liked where you were saying too as far as the landlord investor, because I’ve thought that myself some days too where I’m like, you know what, maybe I should get a property manager for a couple rentals I have, but maybe some day. But um, yeah. The third thing you have in the list here, as you say, it’s okay to fail. Can you go into that more detail please?

Dan Lane: 10:04 Sure. you know, it’s interesting. A lot of the investors in some of the bigger investors we’ve had on the show that they weren’t successful from day one. It, it’s not like they bought their first property and everything just clicked on. A lot of them had real difficult times at first as they were kind of figuring out how to deal with tenants and what good properties would be for rentals and kind of figuring out the numbers that they needed to hit. And you know, a lot of them had really, really rough starts, but they stuck with it and now they’re super successful. So I think if someone’s new and they’re just starting out and maybe they have a bad property or a bad tenant, the advice I would give them is don’t give up. I just keep on plugging away and see if you can get better at this. But yeah, I guess it’s like anything else, the more you practice, the better you’re going to be.

Steve White: 11:01 Sure. Well definitely a, you know, as a business. I think every business sort of deals with this at some point. We’ve definitely had our failures. If we would have just turned tail and said that’s it. We’re packing it up. Um, you know, we, we wouldn’t have had any of the successes that we’ve had, uh, over time or seen some of the ideas that we had that maybe the first iteration didn’t go right or whatever. But, you know, you get to see it, you know, you follow it through and get to see it through and then have that, that feeling of, wow, you know, we’ve made it, we’ve made, we’ve made it out of the woods here. And we’re good. And I think for landlords, it’s a lot the same, you know, you’re going to take your bumps and bruises, but you’ve got to keep getting back up, right?

Dan Lane: 11:44 Yeah. Just keep at it and, and um, it, things will get better. You definitely will get better at it the more you practice.

Steve White: 11:51 Yes. So number four on your list here is knowing your numbers. So take us in a little bit of that.

Dan Lane: 11:59 So I know I talked to a lot of investors that are new and just getting started and they, they’ll tell me, hey, I found this great deal. I can rent this property out for a thousand dollars a month and my mortgage payment is 800 bucks. So I have $200 a month cashflow and you really don’t like that kind of deal. Hey, you might make $200 for a few months, but at, at some point there’s going to be some maintenance or some vacancy or something’s going to happen and it’s going to eat into that. So you’ve got to kind of figure out how much money you need to be setting aside for vacancy and maintenance. And Cap Ex, and I think a lot of investors kind of a lot of newer investors kind miss that, that part that, uh, you know, this is a business and there’s gonna be expenses and so you’ve got to make sure that you really know your numbers before you buy a property.

Steve White: 12:58 So tell me if this has ever happened to you, Dan, you’re at a family function or some place where somebody strikes a conversation and finds out what you do and you’re starting to go down that path, talking about investment and landlording and that type of thing. And then they spring this idea that they have or this house that they looked at and you can tell immediately that the numbers are horrible. Has that ever happened where somebody said, oh, there’s this house and the mortgage is going to be this and I would charge this for rent. And immediately in the back of your head you’re thinking those numbers aren’t gonna work. Don’t do this, you know, or whatever. Yeah, it’s, it seems to happen to me, which seems to happen to me with family a lot. I’m usually the bearer of bad news like that. That’s a terrible idea. Don’t do this.

Eric Worral: 13:42 Well, it’s okay to fail. Steve. Number three on the list. Yeah.

Steve White: 13:45 But yeah, but you gotta you gotta make good decisions too on top of it. You can’t, you can’t. Uh, yeah, yeah.

Dan Lane: 13:52 I mean that happens all the time and it’s, it’s like, um, you know, sometimes you gotta let people figure stuff out on their own. Like you don’t want to be that guy that’s putting down their ideas, but at the same time it is hard because I do want to just shake them and tell them don’t do this. Like this is not gonna end. Well for you. So it, it’s um, yeah, it’s a fine line.

Eric Worral: 14:14 So then moving further down the list a halfway here, the fifth point you had, and I think I had said something to you when you emailed this across from me earlier in the week, um, is don’t be the owner but be the manager. Can you describe what you mean by that?

Dan Lane: 14:28 I think this is the greatest quick little trick out there. So I had this guy on the podcast and he pretends like he’s the property manager, he owns a whole bunch of properties, but he doesn’t tell us 10 inside. He’s the owner. So when his tenants come to him with a crazy request, like maybe they want to paint the house pink or something like, instead of being owner that says that that’s a crazy idea, don’t paint the house pink and then causing friction with the tenant. He, he’ll play like, like he’s just a guy that works for the landlord and he’ll say, well, you know, that’s a great idea. I think the house would look great. Pink, but the, the lease specifically says that you can’t do this, but let me talk to the owner, let me see if I can talk him into it. And then he’ll let a couple of days go by and then call the tenant back and say, you know, I talked to the owner and he just wasn’t crazy about the idea, uh, you know, I really fought for you, but you know, he just wasn’t flexible on this. So I’ll tell you what, why don’t we look at this and a couple of months, maybe we’ll ask them again in six months and see if he reconsiders and then just kind of hope the problem goes away. But that’s a great way to, I think, maintain a good relationship with your tenant, without you to kind of have someone else to blame it on. The owner is the enemy. Not, not you, you’re just the property manager.

Steve White: 15:52 I love this strategy and I’ve seen so many landlords use it effectively. I agree with you. It’s so many case scenarios where this really works out. But I think for a lot of landlords, you know, a little self reflection too. If you’re the type of person that has a really hard time with saying no or confrontation or any of those things, consider this strategy because what better place to be then? Not that guy, not the bad guy, right? That’s saying no all the time. You’re, you’re the middle person. I’ve seen, um, landlords do it where it’s a husband, wife thing and they’ll say, ah, my wife makes all the decisions or my husband makes all the decision and I’ve definitely seen cases where they are just completely removed as the owner and I’m the manager. I’m, you know, I’m the go between. Um, and I think that’s just such a smart strategy. It really is.

Eric Worral: 16:41 I feel like this one , you could kind of just rename it to a don’t shoot the Messenger. Yeah. Basically what the strategy is. Right, exactly.

Steve White: 16:48 I wish we can, let’s just slide on the, on the late fees, but the owner’s not going to be all right with that. Yeah. Right.

Dan Lane: 16:54 Yeah, it’s really great. I love it. I mean I almost wished that I manage my own properties because I definitely would be doing that.

Steve White: 17:00 Yeah, the great strategy there. So number six on your list here is a, something pretty near and dear to eric I know is collecting rent electronically. So any personal lessons learned there or is this something that you’ve learned from all the landlords that you’ve spoken to?

Dan Lane: 17:16 Mainly from, from other landlords, and to be honest, in 2017, I can’t believe we’re even talking about this, but the idea of chasing tenants down to collect rent and then taking cash or meeting them to get a check is just ridiculous. Um, there’s so many great services where your tenants can pay online or you could even give them your bank account number and have them deposit the money directly into your account at the bank. Um, but yeah, like don’t get involved picking up your rent. It’s, it’s a huge time suck and it’s um, yeah, it’s just not something that, that’s a good use of your time. Yeah, a lot of landlines. Lords do it. It, it’s amazing to me how many landlords are collecting cash. Like it’s really just crazy.

Eric Worral: 18:08 Yeah, I completely agree. And I mean I’ve spoken about it a couple of times on our podcast and uh, I switched over not too recently ago, uh, to using venmo and I mean just seeing like a little text notification come up with my phone that so and so has paid rent. It’s just a, it’s a great feeling. I’m like, wow, I didn’t have to worry about it. I didn’t send out an even a text reminder. I didn’t do anything, you know, so I really, I really liked that too.

Dan Lane: 18:32 Yeah, Venmo is a great way to do it. Yeah, I would recommend that there’s a ton of services out there that, that are either free or very low cost and it will make your life so much easier.

Eric Worral: 18:42 Absolutely. So, uh, moving further down the list here, uh, the seventh tip from Dan Lane of the rental income podcast. Nice little plug in the middle for you. The seventh tip is….

Dan Lane: 18:55 I appreciate that

Eric Worral: 18:55 No problem. The seventh tip that you have on here is confirmed showings.

Dan Lane: 19:00 Yeah. So it seems like, I don’t know if you guys have seen this, but it seems like maybe 20, 25 percent of people that make an appointment to see a property when it’s a vacant are just not going to show up that they’ll make an appointment and they’ll know show. Do you guys see that a lot?

Steve White: 19:18 Uh, yeah. And we hear a lot about it. It’s a pretty hot topic in our, uh, in our landlord group and different strategies and how to combat this. So definitely curious on, uh, on what you’re doing or what you’ve heard is a good strategy.

Dan Lane: 19:30 So the best strategy that I’ve heard of is this one landlord, he, he’ll, he’ll make an appointment and he’ll tell the applicant, hey, we are gonna meet Tuesday at 2:00 at the property. I need you to call me at 1:00 to confirm that you’re going to be there and if, if you don’t call me, I’m not going to show. So you need to make sure you call me at 1:00. And sometimes they call, sometimes they don’t, but he’s not wasting his time going over there because you can, you can waste an hour or two if you have to drive across town and then maybe you wait 15, 20 minutes and realize they’re not going to show up and then, and then you leave. So I, I think this is a great way to, to avoid that.

Eric Worral: 20:14 Yeah, Super Simple, nice and easy call call ahead of time and you know, never hurts to put a little responsibility in their lab to see how they handle that,

Dan Lane: 20:25 right? Yeah. Because if they don’t call you or they ended up calling you, they were supposed to call one, but they ended up calling you at four, you know, that tells you a lot about a person, you know, if, if they don’t follow through on that commitment, how are they going to be as a tenant?

Eric Worral: 20:39 I love the idea of setting up these little trip wires where you know, it’s something so simple, but you’re as the landlord, you’re calculating everything, you know, this is all playing into the bigger picture of, of judging a person’s character because you get very little time in and you have to set up these things to have a system in place to say, okay, they met this, this and this. They hit everything good. They seem responsible, responsive. Great. We’re on the right track of it.

Steve White: 21:15 So that brings us a pretty nicely to number eight here in. This one’s pretty near and dear to my heart. I know, uh, you have prescreen before you’re showing, so take us into that.

Dan Lane: 21:28 So, Say you have a property that you’re renting $4,000 a month and you want the people to make $3,000 a month as, um, as the minimum income will instead of going over there and showing the property, like tell them upfront, hey, that the rent is a thousand dollars a month and you need to qualify. You need to make at least $3,000 a month. Are you going to qualify? Do you have pay stubs to show that you make, make the minimum income? And that’s a great way to weed people out because a lot of times tenants don’t know what they can afford. Or if you have a, a property where you’re not going to accept pets, you can ask them, Hey, do you have any pets? And if they’re like, yeah, I have a dog and two cats, but you can say, well, you know, we don’t accept pets at this property. So I, I think it, it’ll just save you a lot of time showing properties to people that you’re not going to be able to, to rent to anyway.

Steve White: 22:23 Yeah. I love that one. And I’ll just add a little to it to from the background check perspective, you know, we often say, I’m just making applicant’s aware that there’s going to be a background check and there’s some criteria that’s usually the best screening tool you might not even need to run a background check because once they know that and they know you’re serious, if they have a handful of evictions, you’re hoping that they’re not going to waste your time. Or if they’re. if you tell them, here’s my minimum credit score that I’m requiring or whatever it is that your personal criteria is, you’re hoping that they’re going to get that and say, okay, cool. I get it. I’m not going to waste my time. I’m not gonna. Waste your time. Thanks. Have a great day. And everyone could move on because the worst thing right is to show up to a showing and find out they do have a pet or they just were evicted or you know, uh, they’ve got this, . felony criminal record that they’ve got a really good explanation for, but you know, you just don’t know until you got to let them know ahead of time.

Dan Lane: 23:22 Right. It’s just an enormous waste of time for everybody to, to show that property when when you’re not going to be able to rent to them anyway. So it’s. Yeah, I think that’s a great, a great little trick.

Eric Worral: 23:33 Yeah. And I also think it’s important to where, um, you might think just because you put something in your rental listing on Zillow or craigslist, that people read it and that doesn’t mean they necessarily read it. So it’s good on that prescreening phone call now when you’re talking to them, just kind of reiterate the things that you have, if you do list some of your screening criteria and that listing.

Dan Lane: 23:53 Right. and one other thing, just to give you guys a little bonus, it was with the pets to um, to be careful because, um, if the person has a seeing eye dog or some kind of service animal that you can’t discriminate against that, that’s not considered a pet. So you’ve got to, I guess, make a distinction between a service animal and a pet.

Steve White: 24:16 Yeah, we’re a, that’s a, that’s a whole new topic. Ended up itself Dan that is such a, that is such a hot topic right now. And landlords are feeling the frustration of, of, you know, this new movement of people having emotional support animals. And yet there’s, a lot of landlords will tell you it’s bold. There’s a lot of people who tell you it’s absolutely not bull. This is a real thing. And I, you know, I, this dog helps me with my ptsd or whatever it is or my anxiety or whatever. Uh, it’s just in the industry. We’re just seeing a lot of growing pains are these uncomfortable change pains, right? Because it’s just becoming a thing and so many people are relying on it and using it and it is a minefield for landlords because like you just mentioned, you can’t discriminate against them. You can’t say no pets, um, when it’s not a pet. So that is a great piece of advice there for sure.

Eric Worral: 25:12 Yeah. And it’s also good to remember too, if you end up do having somebody into your rental property, uh, you can’t charge like a pet or a pet cleaning fee or some sort of security deposit, uh, just for the pat being in there because it’s not a pet in that instance. So..

Steve White: 25:25 Which is a really great segway to number nine here.

Eric Worral: 25:28 Yeah, right. A number nine on the list here is knowing your laws. It’s pretty self explanatory, but it should be on this list. So I, if you want to tell us, uh, you know, your experience with this,…

Eric Worral: 25:40 there are so many laws. Every state has their own laws and then a lot of jurisdictions have laws on top of that and it can really vary. And you really just got to take some time to research what the laws are in, in some areas for older properties that the state’s going to want to come in and do a, a lead paint inspection, and if you don’t do that, you can get in big trouble or you might need a rental license. So just finding out what those local laws are I think is really important and something that everyone should take the time to do. It just takes a little bit of time. But it’s gonna save you a lot of hassle down the road.

Steve White: 26:24 Yeah. I want to give a really good example. We just spoke with a landlord not too long ago, uh, in Massachusetts and they said, uh, you know, that they used to charge an application fee and now they’re reading online that they can’t charge an application fee. And so we did a little dig in for them and come to find out there was a court case that was decided in 2015 that changed the laws in Massachusetts that you couldn’t no longer charge an application fee or any upfront fees for that matter. Based on this court’s decision, so not only is important to know your laws, but also to kind of keep up with them too and you know, because things change, things change. It’s kind of ever changing. And in a state by state, you know?

Dan Lane: 27:10 Yeah. And another one or are late fees that uh, the most states have a maximum that you can charge. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re compliant with that. You know, it’s like if you have in your lease that it’s 20 hours a day, the tenant might agree to that, but if you ever went to court, you’re going to lose because if the state has a maximum late fee of $50, that’s it. It doesn’t matter what you have in your lease.

Eric Worral: 27:35 Yeah. The worst thing is a landlord that shows up to court with awesome documentation and they’re still wrong. You know, so you want to make, you want to make sure that you’re on the right side of the law and you have great documentation. Then you’re in good shape. But if your documentation just proves that you’re breaking the law, it’s not going to help you. Obviously

Steve White: 27:52 not at all

Eric Worral: 27:54 Uh, so that brings us to our last one here, Dan. number 10 is a talk to a real estate attorney, which is great advice, but take us through what you’ve learned and why that’s some great insight?

Dan Lane: 28:07 It kinda goes back to number eight and number nine, it’s, there’s so many simple things out there that, that you can do that can get you in big trouble and talking to an attorney. I think a lot of investors are afraid or they think it’s going to be really expensive, but to sit down with a real estate attorney for our might cost you 200 bucks, 300 bucks. So it’s really not that expensive. But if that can save you thousands of dollars down the road, I think it’s a great investment. Um, uh, a good real estate attorney can just make sure that you’re doing things right, you’re going in the right direction. And then having that contact is good in having that relationship so that when you do run into an issue down the road, you have someone you can go to that, that knows you to. It’ll just make things a lot smoother.

Steve White: 28:56 That’s a great point and I’ll, I’ll add a little to it and just make sure it is a real estate attorney because I’ve talked a lot of landlords that they choose their family attorney and then they ended up paying for their family attorney to basically learn, uh, what it is that they’re asking them or something specific. Whereas you go to a real estate attorney, he knows it all. This is his area of practice. You know, it’s great that they’re family attorneys willing to take on something new form, but in the end, at the end, you’re going to pay for that. So go to an expert, someone that knows your local laws in and out deals with a daily, it’d be a great idea to find somebody that’s, that knows the eviction laws pretty well too. That way. Like, like you said, that you’ve got that relationship established. Should you need it come you know, down the road

Dan Lane: 29:43 Because odds are you’re probably, if you do this long enough, something eventually it’s going to come up where you’re going to need it. So it, it’s, it’s as good to have someone on your side.

Steve White: 29:53 Yeah. I think if you talk to any landlord that’s been doing this for any length of time, they’ll tell you, pay the attorney it is not worth trying to figure it out yourself or go it alone or you know, learn on the fly, pay, get a professional, an expert that can help you, genuinely help you. Um, and there’s probably no, no better example of where to not cut a corner, you know, when you’re dealing with a legal issue.

Dan Lane: 30:19 Yep.

Eric Worral: 30:19 Well that takes us through the 10 tips here from Dan Lane and, uh, Dan, for any our listeners that are listening right now, what is the easiest way that they can find your podcast?

Dan Lane: 30:30 My website is rental income podcast.com, or wherever you’re listening to this show. You can probably find it on there too. Well, we’re on basically =anywhere where you can find a podcast. My show is, is there. So again, it’s called rental income podcast.

Eric Worral: 30:46 Yeah, it’s a, it’s a really great show. I’ve listened to as several episodes in the, uh, I, I haven’t had a chance to listen to one of your neuro ones yet that I thought looked really interesting. I know you’re getting into airbnb and running out single rooms and it just seems like you have a pretty diverse group of people on there that you kind of interview and get to get a lot of information from clearly. So

Speaker 2: 31:05 yeah, we like to cover everything from, you know, big landlords that have 100 properties to people that are just getting started. So yeah, we, we, we talk about at all

Steve White: 31:13 and it’s great that we live in this, uh, this technology age where like you were just mentioning 20 years ago, maybe you wouldn’t have started as a landlord or whatever, but 20 years ago if you were starting as a landlord, the first place you would go is to either a landlord association or an investment group and you would do exactly what you’re doing on your show, which is ask a lot of questions to people who know and crowdsource their answer is find out what they’re saying. Um, you know, find out what’s happening on the streets and what’s going on in the industry and that’s why I love your show. I think it’s awesome that you get these guests on there. I know that booking landlords is not always the easiest thing to do. We kind of take the easy road sometimes and, and book a professionals in industries that are, you know, uh, looking to plug something. Landlords don’t have anything in it other than just sharing knowledge, which is awesome. You know, they’re all doing, they’re doing it for the greater good of anyone else who’s a chew in the same dirt as them. Right?

Dan Lane: 32:13 Yeah. And that’s what I love about real estate investors. Real estate investors really are the coolest people that they’re willing to come on the podcast and just share their knowledge and you know, there’s nothing in it for them, but they, willing to, to get out there and help people out. And I, I think most real estate investors are just really down to earth cool people.

Steve White: 32:35 We definitely appreciate you coming on the show. Dan and any of our listeners definitely check out Dan’s podcasts. What a wealth of knowledge it is over there.