Are you considering self-managing your midterm rental property? Watch this video as BiggerPockets Author, Amelia McGee, discusses the pros and cons of property management, and get valuable insights into the MTR landlord process. Whether you're a seasoned property manager or a beginner, this video will provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision about managing your midterm rental property, tenant screening questions, deposit free options and valuable investment insights.
Welcome back to The Landlord Diaries! Amelia McGee, a real estate mogul with over 40 rental properties and co-author of The Self-Managing Landlord, a Bigger Pockets favorite. Amelia shares her journey from partnerships in business to managing a diversified portfolio of long-term, short-term, and midterm rentals (MTRs). Learn how she uses tools like Furnished Finder to achieve nearly 100% midterm rental occupancy, boost cash flow by $500/unit monthly, and maintain quality control as a self-managing landlord.
Episode Highlights:
0:00 Introduction to The Landlord Diaries
2:30 From HGTV-inspired flip to 45 rental doors
3:50 The cash flow addiction: scaling with mid-term and short-term rentals
4:05 The biggest hurdle most investors face
8:30 Transforming her business with self-management systems
11:30 Why midterm rentals outperform long-term rentals
15:50 The benefits of self-managing MTRs: better cash flow & control
24:10 Tenant screening tips to secure quality tenants and renewals
32:40 How to screen tenants without a U.S. Social Security Number
36:20 Handling service animals and emotional support pets professionally
38:55 Overcoming challenges in self-management: tenant disputes & contractors
Amelia’s insights will inspire landlords to rethink their approach to property management. Learn how the self-managing landlord model can maximize your passive income, improve tenant satisfaction, and minimize stress.
Episode 129 Transcript
I think a lot of people don't realize what an asset or what a strength it is to be a good self-managing landlord, and it's something that a lot of people are attracted to because when you're looking for partners, at least in my case, a lot of times I'm partnering with people that have the money, but don't necessarily have the time or the wherewithal or the bandwidth or whatever the case may be, to actually be the boots on the ground.
By me bringing my strength of self-management to the partnership, that's a huge benefit. And I think we undersell ourselves a lot of times as self-managing landlords. Welcome to The Landlord Diaries, where we talk about midterm rentals and the opportunities behind them. We'll share landlord stories, talk about maximizing investment potential, and discuss how to live the very best landlord life.
This podcast is proudly brought to you by Furnished Finder, the leader and largest online marketplace for midterm rentals. Remember to like and subscribe if you enjoy our content. Welcome back. Amelia McGee, real estate entrepreneur with 40 over 40 rentals. Author, coach, and co-founder of WIIRE Women Invest in Real Estate, the WIIRE Ladies, Amelia and Grace, were featured on one of our top 10 episodes, which is titled Three Steps to Launch an MTR Start Housing Travel Nurses, and Double Your Rental Income, and that's episode 62.
If you haven't caught it. Today we will discuss their BiggerPockets book, the Self-Managing Landlord, and in this book, Amelia and Grace say there are two traditional approaches to property management. The first one is the DIY reactive landlord that is fueled by the idea of passive real estate and wants to put as little time and effort into their properties as possible.
The second avatar is the property manager approach that normally results in considerably less profit and less attention to what your property needs. The WIIRE ladies have added a third management option that can be summed up in this quote from their book. The self-managing landlord is armed with systems and processes that maximize cash flow, minimize stress and time, and provide a better quality home for your tenants.
I'm sure everybody's excited right now. How? How are you today, Amelia? I'm super excited to be back. Thank you so much for having me again. Yes. We always have love having the WIIRE ladies on and with new fresh content every time. So let's start off with a reminder. Maybe take a minute or two of remind everyone how you got started in your real estate journey and how you are successfully managing your portfolio today.
Yeah, so I started. In real estate back in 2019, I purchased a flip property after watching all of the HGTV shows and thought, how hard is it guys do it right? And so I decided to do that. And when I was done with that flip, I realized that was a whole lot of work that I wasn't really into.
I was still working a full-time job at that time, so I was flipping on nights and weekends, and the flip was an hour away from me. So there was also commuting time in there. Some point during that journey, I stumbled across BiggerPockets and learned about passive income through owning rental properties.
So that's when I decided I'm not gonna do this flip thing anymore. I'm gonna take the money that I made from that flip and buy. Multifamily properties with it. So I purchased a triplex in small town Iowa in my hometown for $78,000. Nice. Yes, you can really buy properties for that cheap here in small town Iowa, I think it initially cash flowed around seven or $800 a month, so I was ecstatic with that.
And once that. Monthly income started coming in. I was totally addicted to owning rental properties and just continued to scale from there. So since then I have scaled to 45 doors, which are a mixture of long-term, midterm and short term, and that's where I'm at today. Alright. Let's talk about some of your growing pains and challenges and just some highlight success stories along the way because that's quite the journey to go from zero to 45.
Yes. So I think the biggest thing, the biggest hurdle that I faced so far, and I think most investors run into this, is what do I do once I run out of my own money? Definitely that hit me very quickly. I purchased a triplex and then I purchased a quadplex. So I had seven doors within three or four months, and I was completely out of my own money at that point.
So then I turned back to my parents or friends and family in your case maybe. And they were like, oh, I see you're doing this rental thing. Like we're getting ready to retire and we want some extra income. Maybe we should get in on this. So we started purchasing properties together 50 50, and I think we purchased 15 doors within the next year.
So I quickly grew my portfolio from there. And then I also partnered with. A couple that I met through Instagram who were private money lenders on an 11 unit apartment building that I own. So definitely had to learn how to raise funds very quickly, which I never in a million years would've expected was part of the job within real estate investing.
But that's definitely one hurdle that I can think of right off the top of my head that you'll probably encounter too at some point. And I think you started as a self-managing landlord. I don't think you ever brought a property manager on or anything like that. So when you're presenting this as a new investor saying, Hey, you wanna partner with me on this, what are some quick tips that people could use in securing those partnership deals?
Just getting started as a self-managing landlord. That's a good question. And honestly, I never even realized when I was first starting out that hiring a property management company was an option. Like I was so green in real estate investing that I just thought. Oh, you own properties and then you're a landlord.
I didn't realize that other people could manage it for you. And I'm actually really thankful for that because I love self-managing and I think a lot of people don't realize what an asset or what a strength it is to be a good self-managing landlord. And it's something that a lot of people are attracted to because when you're looking for partners, at least in my case, a lot of times.
I'm partnering with people that have the money, but don't necessarily have the time or the wherewithal or the bandwidth or whatever the case may be, to actually be the boots on the ground. So by me bringing my strength of self-management to the partnership, that's a huge benefit. And I think we undersell ourselves a lot of times as self-managing landlords, and really it's a huge benefit to be a self-managing landlord.
Yeah. I think especially for a lot of our audience, a lot of our audience on Furnished Finder, our landlords don't necessarily have 45 doors like you guys. We do have some landlords who have multiple properties, but we have a lot of landlords that just have a handful, or they maybe have one or two, but it's.
Still important that you manage efficiently and you manage effectively because you don't wanna just be running around handling things that come up last minute all of the time. So maybe let's speak to like when this became a light bulb for you that like, okay, I need to step up my game a little bit as.
A self-managing landlord and make these processes and procedures a little bit more official and efficient because even if you do have one or two properties, it's still really important that you make these things work for you so that the property is not running your life. This is such a great question, and grace and I always refer to this as running a business instead of just owning rental properties.
A lot of times we think as rental property owners we're just flying by the seat of their pa our pants. We're coming up with answers to questions as they come up. We're repeating, we're reinventing the wheel every single time. We have to do the same task over again instead of documenting and writing these systems and processes down.
So they're easily repeatable. We don't have to think about it. We can just go through our checklist and be done with it. For me, when I came when the light bulb happened was. I had scaled to, I think around 26 doors at this point, and I was completely overwhelmed. I was, like I said, flying by the seat of my pants.
I had scaled so quickly that I wasn't focused on documenting my processes, doing everything the same each time. I was just all over the place. I was just scale scale, and so I had to stop buying for an entire year, which. With the trajectory that I was on, that was pretty much a hard stop for me. I didn't buy anything for 12 months and I completely just worked on overhauling my business during that time, and I think a huge part of this was.
No one ever talks about being a business owner when you own rental properties. And that's what our book is all about. It doesn't just go into how to self-manage, how to sign leases, how to do all that stuff. It goes into how do you set yourself up for success? How do you get organized? How do you document your processes?
And this is just a shameless plug, but I think the book is like $15. And I'm gonna tell you what it's. Gonna be the best $15 you ever spend in your life because it's such a quick and easy read, and you can highlight. I guarantee you're gonna get your value out of this book if you purchase it.
Yeah. So Amelia and Grace co-wrote this book for BiggerPockets, which is like such a huge honor and just goes to show how much like they have really professionalized themselves and they have just, they really have grown from these like grassroots investors, like young females from the Midwest, which just speaks to my heart and I love it so much as a little Midwest girl myself.
But they're like. You guys are so great, and I think so many people have so much respect for you as they should. So kudos on that book. And you guys, if you haven't checked it out, check it out. Of course you can get it where you buy books. But like this it's huge because it doesn't matter if you have one property or if you have 45, these things can get as simple and comp, like simple or complicated as you want.
I shouldn't say complicated, complex, really, but it's you have a business, even if you're renting out one room in your house. Now, that doesn't have to mean where you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't want a business. I just wanted to rent a room for a little bit of extra income. It just means that you need to take things seriously and you wanna put some of these procedures and official things in place so that, like Amelia said, it's not running your life and that you have that, that, foresight into it. Yeah. And before we get too far, all of you podcasters that maybe prefer audio, they have it in audio version as well. So get the self-managing landlord, an audio version, which is of course how I listened to it. And it was a great read. Definitely worth purchasing as Amelia was saying.
So before we get. Into the heart of pros and cons of self-managing. Let's do a pulse check on midterm rentals and Furnished Finder. Amelia, how many midterm rentals do you have in that portfolio? What do your numbers look like? What's your occupancy rate? All that kind of stuff. Yeah, so I currently have eight full-time midterm rentals, and then I have two short-term rentals that transition into midterm rentals in the off season.
Here in Iowa, it's very seasonal in lake towns to be heavily geared towards summer traffic as opposed to winter. So 10 total, but two of them are flexible. My occupancy rate stays very close to a hundred percent. For my midterm rentals specifically, although I have noticed a slowdown, it's winter here in Iowa, so we have to try a little bit harder to get those leads coming in.
But it's still a great market for midterm rentals. I still love my midterm rentals my cash flow. From my midterm rentals. Just to give you a little heads up on that, I make around $500 more per month per unit by running midterm versus long-term. However, I still have over 30 long-term rentals that I love self-managing, and I think everything in the book that's talked about can really be applied to midterm and long term.
And I won't talk about the book too much more, but while I'm thinking about it. I think it's applicable to everyone. Short-term rental owners, maybe a little bit, but definitely midterm and long-term. You can take a lot of stuff out of this book and implement it in your business. And how about Furnished Finder?
How, what percentage of your bookings would you say come from Furnished Finder? Do you only need Furnished Finder and Airbnb? What does that part of midterm rentals look like? Yes, this is a great point. I haven't calculated the numbers recently, but I just, off the top of my head, these aren't exact figures, but I would say between 70 and 80% of all of our bookings, maybe even 80 to 90%.
Come from Furnished Finder. So we're really heavily geared towards traveling nurses in my market specifically because my units are smaller, meant for usually just one or two people and they're within one mile of a hospital. So we're really targeting traveling nurses, which. Usually you're hanging out on Furnished Finder.
So I, I absolutely love and use the platform on a daily basis. And then I would say, I do have it listed on Airbnb. I do have all my units cross listed 'cause I want leads coming in from wherever is possible, right? So about 10% maybe come from there. And then I also cross list on free Facebook groups, which I actually know there's a Furnished Finder Facebook group that I post all of my units in, and I've probably gotten a handful of leads from there as well.
So if you think that, just posting on one platform or the other is. Good enough. It's usually not, especially if you live in a seasonal market, you're gonna have to get a little bit scrappy and post as many places as you can. Today's episode is proudly sponsored by Furnished Finder, the ultimate platform for hassle-free midterm rentals.
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Hey guys, that's like. Furnished Finder doesn't have to be your only place, right? We are just like posted everywhere and anywhere you want to, but we will bring you like, we're gonna be an important part of your puzzle. And you're gonna make your ROI back so fast from the flat fee. And literally one booking especially.
'cause when you get that booking, like we're not taking a commission, we're not taking a booking fee. So that's just like a side note. But we're never gonna be here and be like, we're the only place that you should list. You should never list anywhere else. We get it. Put your property everywhere you want, but just know that like you're gonna, if you have the quality listing and then like you're following the procedures and everything, Furnished Finder should work out great for you.
Alright, I wanna dive into the meat as much as I could sit here and chit chat with you all day, Amelia, because I feel like you and I like, and Kelly, like we just have so many of the same fundamentals and we could just keep going on and on. Let's get to the meat. Talk about some of the perks of self-managing.
So self-managing, we're talking about when you are managing your own properties. It's really common in midterm rentals. I would say it's very uncommon in midterm rentals that you outsource your management to like, a property manager or a realtor. It totally can be done, it's just not as traditional.
So let's talk about some of these perks. The first perk is what you alluded to, where there's more cash in your pocket. So how. Has managing your own properties helped your cash flow? Yeah, such a great question. Great point. Especially as it pertains to midterm rentals because, let me give you an example.
Let's say the average rent is a thousand dollars a month. A property manager for a long-term rental, a property manager is gonna usually charge you around 10% on average, and that's just. Right off the top that comes out every single month, whether or not they have to respond to anything or do anything else.
Then on top of that, they're also charging other fees. A lot of them will charge a tenant placement fee, or they'll charge lease renewal fees. There's lots of different fees that. You might not necessarily be aware of, but you're getting charged for, and then turn that into a midterm rental. To hire a midterm rental property manager, which like you said is very uncommon.
They're charging between 15 and 20%, maybe even 25% these days. So when you think about that's a huge chunk of your monthly cash flow. That's just right off the top, going to a property manager and. Like I said, that's whether or not they get any service calls. So if you think you have even maybe just an hour, extra hour a week that you could spend towards self-managing, I guarantee that's gonna be a great ROI for you and your portfolio.
Yeah. Yeah. Realistically, I don't know about, how about you guys, but unless something like totally out of the blue happens, I would say we spend about an hour a month managing each unit we have. So obviously that's gonna scale as you increase, but like when we had one or two units. We would forget they existed.
'cause these tenants come in and they're like, they live there. They take care of things. They don't expect the same like Airbnb type management where the host is literally waiting on their phone to reply. It's. Really manageable. So to give that up and outsource it, like you're just losing a huge chunk of your cash flow.
Yeah. And Amelia, in the book you emphasize there's not only monetary differences between self-managing and hiring a property manager, but there's also some non-monetary impacts of someone else managing your property. You wanna le you wanna share those a little bit? Yeah, so actually at BP Con Grace and I did a session on all about self-managing landlords, and the first question that we asked pulled the audience on was, how many of you are currently using a property management company or have used one in the past?
The hands go up and the next question we asked was. How many of you love your property management company and every single hand went down. So I just think that goes to show that property, and this is not a hate on property management companies. There's a lot of good ones out there, but with the right systems and processes, you can absolutely self-manage and do everything yourself.
I will say another non-monetary benefit is just the quality control. Property management companies, they're incentivized to get people in quickly because again they're making that placement fee. They only get paid if someone's in the unit. They wanna get that 10% every single month. So people that might not necessarily meet your standards could possibly be getting placed in the property.
And if you think about it, these companies are managing hundreds of properties. So little old you with two or three properties is very small fish in their very big pool. So you're probably not gonna get the attention that you want or you deserve. And when you're managing your own property, I mean at least for.
My properties are the biggest assets that I own in my entire life. I really wanna take good quality care of them and make sure everything's functioning correctly. Maintenance requests are getting filled on in a timely manner, and so I just like that extra aspect of control that I have over my properties to make sure they're staying in great shape and there are great tenants being placed every single month.
If you're listening right now and you're thinking, yeah, no, self-managing is not for me. Reminder, we have lots of playlists in our landlord diaries channel on YouTube, and one of those is co-hosts, property managers. So while there are still great property managers and co-hosts out there, and we've built some midterm rental, port a, a portfolio of midterm rental operators that can coincide with you and make that possible. So go check out that playlist on YouTube if you're interested. So pros and cons of self-managing building valuable management skills for future partnerships. I love that part in the book. Why don't you emphasize how valuable that can be, which I think you already shared a little bit in your own story.
Yeah. That is going back to what I talked about at the beginning of the episode, is just what a marketable skill being a self-managing landlord is, especially if you're scrappy and you're willing to be the boots on the ground and really willing to work hard to make money when you run out of your own, is specifically when what I'm thinking about.
But I would not have been able to scale. I'm specifically thinking of about 26 doors that I was able to scale because. I was a self-managing landlord, and people saw the value in that, and I think a lot of times you don't realize, like I was saying, what a skill that is. So don't cut yourself short.
This is a huge benefit, especially if you can be a great self-managing landlord with systems and processes, documented procedures, and be an organized self-managing landlord. I will say that the other thing that you're, what I'm hearing is okay, we figure out our systems, we figure out our processes, we make all of these things like really airtight For me, also what I think about is the day, when the day comes where I wanna have a virtual assistant or an intern or my 12-year-old like step in and help me.
It's not that I'm gonna be completely hands off, it's just gonna be more that like I'm delegating and I have more of a team member that can help with that. But I've set up all of the controls, like I've set up the control board and they're just flipping the switches, and that feels like a really practical way that I can keep control of how I want my business and my rentals to be run without just saying.
Okay, other property manager, whatever, like just figure it out and do what you want. This way, like I still get to know that things are being done the way that I want them to be done. Yeah, I think that's also a common myth about being a self-manager or owning rental properties is even if you have a property management company, you're still gonna have to manage them.
Like you're always gonna have to have a hand in the management of owning properties. So why not? Just do it yourself with how you want it done, and then you can eventually delegate to a VA or someone within your team that you have more control over. Yeah. One of the things that I really love about midterm rentals, and especially with furnace, grinders, that you get to have that control all the way through, right?
You get to do the tenant screenings, you get to have a damaged waiver if you want. You get to make your own lease, and part of that is making sure that you're fully involved in the process, and if you're not, you're at least documenting how you want it to be done when you get help. Yeah, that's a perfect segue, Katie, because now we'll jump into some of those midterm rental processes that are part of the pros and cons.
And one of the pros is you can attract quality tenants and set yourself up for renewals by personally handing. Handling the placements. So in the second part of this interview, we talk with Grace who is Amelia's co-founder of WIIRE and co-author in the self-managing landlord book, and we jump in with her talking about midterm rental leases, some of those addendums.
What do fees look like for midterm rentals guest. Communication house rules, and then standard operating procedures to really set you up for success. So don't miss part two of this interview, but the ability to be able to place tenants that you trust. One of the, that's one of the best things about midterm rentals is your tenant pool is the best tenant pool available in real estate in.
Like many of our if you talk to midterm rental hosts, that's most of our opinions. You rarely ever hear of evictions, but you still wanna set yourself up for success. So what does your process look like, Amelia when you're going through that tenant screening process, looking at the credit scores and analyzing them, and then applying those fair housing rules.
Yeah, such a good question. We do talk all about that in the book, but for me, it's not as cut and dry with midterm rentals as long-term rentals because for me. Midterm rental guests are moving a lot more frequently. They don't necessarily wanna get charged $40 every time they have to move. So for my processes, I'm usually paying for the background check.
I just find that I'm trying to. Add a little bit of value there and go above and beyond what other midterm rental hosts might do. So I'm paying for the background check for my guests to apply, and that's after I've already had conversations with them. They've seen the property, they've answered any questions that they might have, and by seeing the property, I mean through photos and video, they're generally not doing in-person walkthroughs, although I'm not opposed.
To that if someone's not staying there and it's not gonna be a huge inconvenience. But when I pay for that background check, it's checking that their credit score is at least six 20 or above. All of my midterm rentals are in multifamily properties, so I very much have to guarantee that neighbors are gonna.
Good, friendly neighbors to the other people within the building. So that's huge for me. And then I typically also ask to see their contract because again, I'm servicing mostly traveling nurses. I get a few construction workers and some other people here and there, but that's typically who I'm servicing.
So once all of that's complete, I have them sign the lease through. Tenant Cloud is the software that I use, although you could use what Furnished Finder provides and collect the deposit and go from there, but. My screening process isn't over complicated. I'm typically going off of how do they interact with me during the initial period of asking questions and inquiring about the property, and then how does their credit check and their background come back?
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One thing I wanted to make sure to emphasize that I love what Amelia said there is, as a midterm rental host, you can choose whether you want to pay for the tenant screening or have the guest pay for the tenant screening. And it's an, when you're using the Furnished Finder, a suite of midterm rental booking tools through key check.
It's an easy toggle. You just decide. I want the guest to pay it or you toggle it and you choose to pay for it yourself. I look at it as that's their buy-in for me. So I have the guests pay it, because that's, to me, that's them saying, yes, I definitely wanna move forward with your property. And in my case, I've had people follow through every time they went ahead and paid for that tenant screening.
I hadn't had anyone that backed out after paying for tenant screening. So that's my check to make sure that they're really serious. And I send all my midterm rental booking steps at that same time. And then on your Furnished Finder listing, there's an additional fee section and you can go ahead and add the tenant screening there If you wanted to, you can add your deposit or you could even add our worry free waiver right there in the fee section as well to show that your competitive landlord and able to have no deposit on your properties.
Actually. I never thought about like the having the tenant pay because that means that they're interested. I've never had anyone really abuse it on my side of things, but I could totally see how that could become a thing. It's usually when they're very serious and I'm like, okay, there's one more step.
I'm gonna run this. And I let them know I'm looking for a minimum of six 20. So if you're not gonna hit that let me know now. But I was gonna add, I talked to a lot of newer investors a lot of times who ask me. Do you pay Forche background checks or, what's your process on that? And a lot of times they're like it's 30 or $40, it's maybe a lot of money.
And I'm like, if it's gonna make you sleep better at night, if it's gonna make you feel good. What is 30 or 40 extra dollars for that peace of mind? Like to me, I'm just thinking, if 30 or $40 is gonna break the bank for you, like one call to the plumber is likely gonna blow up your whole portfolio.
So I just think about it in that way that like, if that's what's gonna help you feel good, it's worth it to just pay it. I think it's really important to know too, that with midterm rentals, you're getting a lot of professionals, right? Amelia's targeting traveling nurses. Traveling nurses are fantastic and they are vetted by their staffing agencies.
They're vetted by the hospitals. However, they are looking for different things, okay? They're not gonna care as much about a credit score or an eviction history as us as landlords are. So a lot of these professionals will say, Hey, I'm already thoroughly vetted by my my staffer or my contractor.
And I'm always like, that is completely fine. I totally understand. But this is a part of my rental process because I'm looking for things specific for tenants. And that for me is an eviction history, which I love that key check. And the Furnished Finder tenant screening allows you to have, I'm sure other ones do as well.
It's just the one that I find the most convenient in the Furnished Finder process. But it's just important that you make sure that, like Amelia said, you are comfortable with the processes and the expectations that you set, right? Because it's when you get in these zones where you're like, oh, I don't really like this, but maybe I should do it anyway.
That's when it's set your rules, set your standards, and your minimum scores, or your minimum qualifications. And stick to them. There's nothing wrong with that. And I actually like that you guys handle the tenant screening payment differently. I like to have the tenants pay his way.
I always explain it as this is like an application fee if you were to go to an apartment complex, but I don't see any harm in doing it either way. And I think it's, it just shows that. You can run your business however it works for you. You just wanna be consistent and like figure out what works for you, right?
How are you gonna do these things? Last two of the tenant screening portion that I think a lot of people don't think about till they get there is what if they don't have a US social security number? What are those additional checks that you do? Have you come across that Amelia, or not yet in your. In your journey?
Yes, I have not for my midterm rentals. And how did you vet them? Yeah really at that point it's, so these are for long-term rentals, so the screening process is slightly different. I am verifying their employment, so I'm calling their employer. I'm not calling the number that they gave me for their employer.
I'm googling their employer and then calling that number directly. So verifying that they are employed, that they have a good outlook to continue being employed. And then sometimes they'll tell you like if they're within a certain pay range, and sometimes they won't. So just depends on that. And then also landlord references.
So I'm trying to call at least two of their past landlords, their current landlord and their landlord before their current landlord because their current landlord could be incentivized to get them out of their property. So they may tell you anything you wanna hear, right? So always check with.
Previous landlord before their current landlord as well, and just verifying that they were a good tenant, paid rent on time and left the unit in good condition. So for me, those are the extra steps that I took. There might be a way more advanced option out there, but the towns that I'm investing in, it's very uncommon.
So I don't spend a lot of time worrying about things that aren't very likely to happen. Yeah and the probably 50 or so stays that I've had over in a new feature or one that I discovered recently on Furnished Finder. If you wanna see how long you've been a host on Furnished Finder, we have your tenure now posted on your landlord profile at the bottom of your listing.
So I've been saying on this show that I've been host. For about two to three years, but my furnish funder account told me I've actually been hosting four years and three months. So that was exciting to see. And with that, all the stays that we've had, yeah, we've only had. I think once we had a guest from Canada that didn't have the US Social Security and they were great guests and I think the key check customer service team actually has some of those tips.
So if you, so last part of this section and we'll keep it short so that we can. Hit a couple of the cons of self-managing is if you have someone say, I have an emotional support animal and you're not currently pet friendly how should you go about handling, emotional support animals or service animals?
'cause y'all cover that in your book. Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is to refer back to your state laws. I actually know Iowa just changed theirs on what actually can, is considered an emotional support animal and how they can get them certified. But for me. I typically just try to like I said, I just follow the laws in Iowa.
It's not worth it for me to get into legal trouble over denying an emotional support animal or a service animal. So I just abide by what the law says. I would recommend that if you're ever on the fence, you reach out to an attorney within your state. I really think that's worth the $250 you're gonna have to pay for a 30 minute or hour long phone call.
To just verify what they're, what you're telling tenants or what you're hearing online is accurate. I like your underlying message of, I, I'm not gonna lose a tenant over a pet. I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna put protections in place. This is the reason, like I, I love our new worry-free waiver because it covers for pet damage, which is like everybody's biggest fear about a pet is what damage can it do?
I do not want to lose a tenant over the fact that they have a cat or the fact that they have, a chocolate lab that they're traveling with or. A golden doodle because everybody and their mother has a golden doodle, right? I don't wanna lose that tenant. And honestly, a lot of these midterm tenants, they have pets they travel with, and they're fantastic tenants.
But if I were traveling the country 13 weeks at a time as a travel nurse, you can bet yourself that I would have some sort of companion animal, or I would be so incredibly lonely. So some, a lot of the tenants I've had, like they have people that come and walk their dogs or they go to doggy daycare, like they're some of the most responsible pet owners ever.
Now obviously you're gonna have your instances here or there where there's damage, but that's what that waiver's for, right? And it like covers you and it's like a little security blanket. But like my first. First thing I check for one of the first things if I, a landlord comes up to me is at an event and they're like, Hey, I'm not getting booking requests.
I'm not getting messages. I'm like, oh your deposit's too high. Your photos need work, or you need to take pets, right? Like midterm tenants, there's 30, 40% of them that are traveling with pets. You don't wanna instantly eliminate yourself from that part of the pool. It's crazy. Yeah, and I think we could probably all say that we've had so many successful pet stays.
Like I haven't had any damage from pets yet. I think you have a million, and we've talked about that on a previous episode, but it's it's pretty rare to hear of pet damage in midterm rentals. I would say I've hosted hundreds of. MTR guests at this point, and I've had two instances where there's been what I would consider minor damage.
No no, none have tore up the walls or anything. I would just say, if you're gonna be pet friendly, maybe you have couch covers and maybe you just consider that you're probably gonna have to replace the sheets or maybe some other things in between each tenant. Just keep that in mind.
It's a price that comes with getting 30 to 40% more eyes on your property. So it's, those are some fees that I'm willing to incur as a MTR owner. All right, so as we wrap up this episode, we're gonna talk about the cons of self-managing. And the great news is there's more pros than cons, but we wanna, make sure we're educating you on what some of those things to be ready for in self-managing.
Could be. So managing tenants, we've already covered that. Like mismanaging tenants can be a con that results in disputes and vacancies. Potential legal issues, which they cover very well in the book. But if you are screening your tenants well, you're addressing their concerns you're ensuring rent is paid then you can really have a very successful midterm rental stay.
With that not being a con, it's most of the time a pro. And I think we all have stories of guests that have enhanced our properties in some way. Like Katie and I are both like, oh, that's new. Oh, I would've never thought of that. Looks great. Thanks. And they just add it to your home because it's something that they saw there was a need for.
That's the cool thing. So if you wanna add anything that to, to that, Amelia, please do. But otherwise, I'd like you to address the managing contractors side which can be challenging. How have you successfully kept your properties in great shape and worked with contractors yes. So I think the biggest thing with contractors is having everything written down and having everything in a great scope of work.
So anything that's not on that scope of work that they either do or don't do, that's an issue. And I think just being very upfront with them when you first have conversations. I would also highly encourage you. Unless you really know your contractors, to not pay them in full upfront, that's could be a big issue.
I would say. They either need a small deposit upfront and then they get paid once the work is complete. But really it's setting expectations, following up when they don't hit those x. Expectations, having everything in writing, including any changes that are going to happen from whatever the original scope of work was, and then just confirming that everything is complete prior to paying in full.
Those are my biggest tips. And just realizing. As a self-managing landlord and as a property owner, things are gonna break. Things are gonna go wrong. Maintenance requests are gonna come in, take a five minute break or take an hour to collect yourself. If that kind of thing, works you up or gets you excited and then just handle the problem like a business owner would handle a problem.
So just know it's gonna happen, but you can get through it. Every other landlord that's ever existed. Did. That's a good landlord has done it and you can definitely do it too. I think that's gonna be my last question for the episode. Then Katie, you wrap us up with a fun one. Whatever you'd like.
What does your tenant process look like when emergency happens? Give us an example of something that's come up that was big and you're like, oh crap. Am I gonna have to pay for a hotel for this guest? Or how can I solve this right now? 'cause that would be some of the cons, right? Of how to make quick decisions.
What's one of your examples you could give us? Oh, that's such a good question because at this point my tenants don't even have my phone number. What they have access to is an emergency hotline. That's a VA company. I can't even remember the company name off the top of my head, but that company has instructions for all of my properties in case.
An emergency comes up. So let's take for example the PA pipe breaks. This could happen in Iowa in the winter. It gets very cold here. So if a pipe breaks, they have instructions on where the water shutoff is. They have instructions on who emergency plumbers in town would be. So my tenant would call into the VA company.
The VA company would have all of that information and would be able to help them and service them. But really, I also let my tenants know that, hey. An emergency. The first step is call the police, call the fire department, call whoever. If it's a pipe that breaks or it's something like that's a me thing.
But anything else, your first step should be to call the appropriate services. I'm very much a landlord and I think you need to be as a self-managing landlord with 45 units. I'm not a hand holder and I'm a straight shooter, right? I'm not here to solve every little problem for you. An emergency is a major issue that you need to address immediately.
Little things, those aren't emergencies. Don't call me. I'm not gonna answer for it. So I just wanna be very upfront with that. You can set those expectations, but. If you don't wanna be tied to your phone twenty four seven, you wanna sleep with your phone on Do Not Disturb. Highly recommend looking into a VA company that can handle emergency calls.
The fee is very low per month and it's totally worth the investment. Yeah, I think that's great. And you guys, I just think I would remind everybody to adapt everything Amelia is saying to as big or small as you are or as you want to be, but always set up your processes and your property managing bigger than you think you are.
If you have one room or one unit, you can still take a few days, a few weeks. It's not gonna take that long. But we all know how life gets. Like maybe you pick away at it 10 minutes at a time. And you can make these things set up where it's really future, you will thank you. No matter how big your business is.
Amelia, you guys' book, it's fantastic. It's chock full of so much information, which is my favorite type of book is one where it's like. Okay. This is so much. That's the best. 'cause there's just so much value in there. Yeah, I, this was fantastic and was so great connecting with you again and we can't see, we can't wait to see how you grow your portfolio next.
Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. Everyone. Don't forget to subscribe, share it with a friend. And if you're on YouTube, check every once in a while your subscribed settings because there's ways you can get notifications. So if you wanna know every new episode coming in, change that notification to all and then you can get every New Landlord Diaries episode.