REAL TALK RENTALS

How Do I Market My Property?

BEN: Coming up on this episode of Real Talk Rentals, we're going to talk marketing your property. Welcome to Reel Talk Rentals, a podcast brought to you by on Q Property Management. We're here to give you a behind the scenes look at owning a rental property, all the tips, tricks and secrets that go into owning an investment. I'm Ben and I'll be your host. And with me, as always, is Mr. Eric Dixon, the go to expert on all things property management and real estate. So today what we're going to be talking about is marketing. And by that I mean you got your home rent ready. You're ready. Tenants have paid the deposit or haven't paid the deposit. You're looking for tenants. You need to put it on the market. What happens now? So, Eric, I'm going to throw this to you. How do you market a rental property?

ERIC: Well, dude, I should be asking you, Ben is our Ben's our marketing guru from the from the company perspective. But yeah, I guess today we'll be talking more about rent marketing. Just the rentals.

BEN: Yeah, just the home.

ERIC: So it's funny because somebody it's been asked before, you know, Hey, what do you guys do to market my house? That's a common question that prospective clients or even current clients are asking because in their mind they're thinking all you guys do is take pictures on your iPhone and throw them up on Zillow. Right?

BEN: Right.

ERIC: And so what what what do you guys do that that other people do or don't do? So I took some notes because you kind of gave me a give me a heads up on some of this, but because I wanted to make sure not to miss a few things. So the beginning of marketing a home actually starts prior to that because it will help you determine what you need to do to market it. So it starts on whether you live there and you're going to rent it out or your tenant lives there. It's the rent ready inspection and rent ready work process that you got to. You've got to think about. The reason I say that is because you have to decide, am I going to replace the carpet, Am I going to repaint or am I going to put in a new backyard or am I just going to Band-Aid and lipstick a pig on this thing to try to get it rented as soon as possible? Because depending on what you choose is going to determine how you're going to market it. If you're just going to kind of get by with the minimum effort possible, the minimum amount of money possible, then you're going to market it at a lower value, a lower price, and try and give somebody a value rental. And that's going to be a different marketing strategy than, hey, I'm going to do granite countertops, new sinks, new appliances, new backyard, and I'm going to demand top, top, top rent. Right? So my whole point is it's not as easy as just like, Hey, Ben, what are you going to list my house for? It's like, well, let's discuss the condition, your upgrades and the surrounding market real quick before I answer your you know, your question, right? And a lot of people are like, Oh, dude, you're just trying to sell me now. And it's like, no, it's just it's more than taking pictures on my phone and throwing them up on Zillow.

BEN: Right?

ERIC: So. So and then the last thing was just the you know, you look at your immediate market, so whether you live in a subdivision, maybe an HOA subdivision, master plan, community type thing, what are they renting for in this this subdivision? And then what is my competition outside the subdivision? Because they may be looking at, oh, I'd love to live there, but I can live a mile away and save $300 a month for a year, like.

BEN: Across the city line. And all of a sudden.

ERIC: Oh, yeah, no, there's there's a lot of that. I'm going to throw in some numbers because. So we're recording this in what is it, late September 2022. So the reason that's relative is because I just looked at some rental stats because the market is quickly changing and saturating here in the market. The sky is not falling, the market's still great, but it is correcting a little bit. One of the things that you want to look at when you're marketing a rental is what has the data looked like the last 1 to 2 years? And so I'm just going to throw a couple of cities out there because it's astonishing how many more rentals there are now than there was two years ago. And this is also going to speak to, if you're an investor that owns or wants to own rentals by rentals as soon and as often as you can, because the data just shows that there is still high demand for rentals in some of our outlying cities, whether it's Stanton Valley, Maricopa, Buckeye, Avondale, there are between five and ten times more rentals available in those cities than there was two years ago.

BEN: That's insane.

ERIC: And it's insane, right? And it's kind of like, Well, Eric, why would I buy then if there's that many rentals? You know, two years ago it was kind of during the pandemic and stuff like that. It was artificially low and now it's kind of catching up with itself. And rents got out of control there for a little bit and now they're kind of kind of leveling off. But the reason I mentioned that is because if one of my friends just says, Hey Eric, what would you do to market my home? And it's like, Well, where is it? Yeah, it's in Stanton Valley that has ten times more rentals than two years ago. We're going to market this a heck of a lot different than if I picked some place in Scottsdale that has the same amount of rentals as they had two years ago.

BEN: Sure. And Santana. To your point. For people that don't know the area, like two years ago, it was kind of considered out there, like so far away, there was no grocery store. You were, you know, driving a long distance and now it's booming.

ERIC: Yeah. And they've opened a new freeway out there. They've all this commercial's getting built. Tons of homes are getting built. And so it's not a negative stat to say there are ten times more rentals available in Stanton Valley.

BEN: Just the.

ERIC: Market. It's just the market's different. So you need to adjust. And so and some people are getting hurt because they bought a brand new home at the top of the market expecting top, top, top rent. And now rents are not as high, but they pay top dollar and it's okay for the next 1 to 3 years. You might have to take a haircut, but long term this is going to going to pay for itself. Stanton Valley Yeah, it used to be, man, that is so far. And now it's like, Oh yeah, I want to meet for lunch in Stanton Valley.

BEN: Half our office lives there now.

ERIC: And so I won't, I won't bore anybody else with more stats and stuff like that. It's more just realizing that location, location, location totally matters when you're marketing. And then the last thing is, as you're determining those things, right, you're looking at the the immediate market, the subdivision, the condition, the upgrades, and then you determine what kind of incentives you're going to offer. You know, if we're listing a house in a neighborhood that you're the only rental, you don't need to offer all these incentives. If there are ten times more rentals in the neighborhood than there was two years ago, you need to stand out. You need to offer two weeks free rent. You need to offer, you know, pay the security deposit over two or three months. You need to maybe go $200 less than what you thought you were going to get, whatever it is.

BEN: And then some of these new subdivisions, especially the homes, kind of are interchangeable, you know, So if someone comes to your neighborhood and they're like, well, that one's 100 bucks cheaper, these are the same model and floor plan.

ERIC: It's the same floor plan, but the garage is on the other side and it's $100 less a month. Guess which one they're going to take? Exactly. So that's kind of what it is. From there, then you're doing pictures, lockbox sign, digital marketing, syndicating on all the websites and stuff. But keep in mind, I answered your question as far as how do you market it? And it's not even on the market yet, Right? You know, this is all pre marketing. You've got to have these discussions and the landlord needs to commit. What am I going to do before we take pictures? They'll ask us, Eric, is it worth it to replace the carpet? And I always tell people, if you're asking yourself the question, the answer is yes, right? Hey, these holes in the walls, should I patch these up or. No, It's like you ask the question because you know that somebody's going to ask, Man, that looks really bad. Yeah. And so, hey, Eric, should I landscape the backyard or just keep it dirt? Yeah, It's like I'm going to let you repeat that to yourself.

BEN: And it's like, before I go out with my wife, I come up and I say, Does this match? Yeah. She's like, The fact that you don't know should tell you, right? Yeah. It does not match your answer.

ERIC: Your question is the answer.

BEN: Exactly. Well, I think to that point that was going to be my second question, which is, you know, how long does it take to get a print? We hear that all the time, especially on the marketing. Our business sales side. People say, okay, I'm going to sign with you. How long until my rental is on the market and ready to go?

ERIC: Yeah. And so speaking from I'll go from kind of two perspectives. One is if you're self managing, it's how fast we'll determine on how much time you have, because the truth is, once it's on the market, if it's priced right, pictures are great. The conditions, good leads are going to start coming in. You've got to work the leads. You can't just answer the phone and it rents. Especially now. It's like the market is more competitive. You've got to sell them and it's like, you know, say, Ben's self managing his property gets a lead on jumper or something to his cell phone while he's at work. And it's like, Hey, can you show the house in an hour? And you're like, Oh crap, I got a I'm going to take a late lunch. I'm going to be late for my kid's soccer game tonight. Whatever. You know, you just have to determine how much time you're willing to put into it. If you hire a management company, they should be, at least during business hours, should be answering the phone, and then they should have some sort of solution after hours or some self showing technology or something where they can actually work the.

BEN: Leads or returning calls or.

ERIC: Returning calls and all that stuff. So I would say, how long does it take? Depends on three things. Price, obviously. I mean it's like, yeah, if you under market, it price wise, it's going to rent immediately. If you're too high, it's going to take too long. The second would be condition is it look good and smell good. And I tell owners, it's like, does it look good? Yeah, it looks awesome. Does it smell good? Does it smell like your pets? Yeah. Or does it smell like smoke or does it smell like what you ate for dinner last night? Yeah. You know, and then upgrades is a is a big one. So how is it original? Built in the eighties. Nothing's ever been replaced. Or is it a complete fix and flip? It looks great. It's moving. Ready Or is it a brand new construction home? Yeah. Ironically, brand new does not necessarily mean upgrades and condition are the best, right? They're missing blinds. They're missing a backyard. They have no fans. Appliances. Didn't buy with the house. Yeah, and these owners are like, it's a brand new house built in 2022. What are you saying? I need. Need more? It's like, dude, there's no fridge, there's no washer dryer, there's no blinds, there's no fans, there's no backyard. Yeah. And you want top, top rent.

ERIC: Yeah. And so a lot of this is just educating them. And then it actually brings me to this point. So I actually watched this on, on Instagram. I was scrolling through some real estate reels and stuff. I love wasting time doing that late at night where my wife and I laying in bed just looking at hilarious stuff we'll send back and forth. And one there was a contractor that said, This is how you sell, you know, it's actually a popular like real, but it's like, hey, this is how you sell your service. It's like you can either do it. There's three things. I either can do it fast, I can do it cheap or I can do it good. But you only can have two of those three things, right? Right. So you can have it fast and good. Well, it's not going to be cheap. Well, I want it fast and cheap. They ain't going to be good, you know? Yeah, he kind of goes through that. And so as I related that to our team recently with Renting Your Home, it's the exact same thing. So all owners want three things, right? They want the fastest lease time. They want it to lease overnight. Surprise. Yeah, they want the most qualified tenant. 800 credit score makes 300 grand a year. No debt.

BEN: So how is a renter.

ERIC: Sometimes somehow is renting retired from Boeing. You know, whatever they want the most qualified applicant and then they want the highest rental rate to. I mean, just to top it all off, I want the highest rate. So then say fastest lease time, most qualified applicant and I want top rent. But we we have to educate our owners and say if you can get one or two of those, you have to be thrilled. Yeah. So just go through say say, hey Ben, you can have two of those. I want the fastest lease time and the highest rent. Okay, well, it's not going to be the most qualified applicant. Yeah, because you have to open the net wider. You have to say, well, I'm going to go lower on FICO score. Maybe I'm not as concerned about an eviction. Maybe I'm not as concerned about that. Say, no, no, no, I want the most qualified app. So you know what? I want the most qualified app and as fast as possible. All right, then you got to lower your rental rate. Yeah.

BEN: Or give them a reason to choose you and of somebody else.

ERIC: And it's like, hey, undercut the other guy by 100 bucks a month. Yeah, it's a half a million dollar asset. If you're dying over $100 a month, you need to get out of the rental business, dude.

BEN: Right?

ERIC: Or I want the fastest least time and the most qualified applicant. Now, that's the one We said.

BEN: Yeah, let's do time in heist. Oh, no.

ERIC: Dude, I'm reading off paper and I screw this up. So then it's the fastest lease time and the highest rent we talked about. You've got to make a lower quality.

BEN: Yeah. Or the most qualified applicant and.

ERIC: The highest rent. Well, dude, it's going to take forever. So if you're like, I want top, top rent and I want top, top tier applicant, they're out there. They're just rare, right? So you got to wait. It's going to take longer time and we'll get into it a little bit later. But it's like least time on market is where people lose the most money. So most people are like do you know what? At the end of the day, I need to lease as soon as possible. I don't want to over compromise on quality or rent rate, but I do want it to lease as fast as possible. And that's actually again, this is not a plug just for on cue, but for a lot of great property management companies. You want to rent properties fast to very qualified tenants, you know, And so it's like sometimes that means the rental rate is not going to be top, top, top and we're not going to rent it. But it's actually one of our taglines. It's like better tenants faster and it's going to be because we'll have hard conversations with you and say, Hey, Ben, I know we told you 2300 a month ago, but because of X, Y, Z, here's the comps, here's what's going on. You got to lower it to 21. I'm sorry, it's less than you thought, but blah, blah, blah. Then we get it rented for $200 less to an awesome applicant. They stay for three years, they don't damage the house. And they're like, Do you know what? That was the right move.

BEN: So yeah, yeah. Well, I think that flows perfectly into my next question, which is what are the costs of advertising or rental property? We're talking about dollar amounts now. So what are the costs that go into marketing for a rental property?

ERIC: Yeah. So and again, appealing to those of you listening that are self managing. So a lot, a lot of a lot of you guys are like, well, it's not worth it to pay Property manager, whatever. I don't believe that, but hey, we're biased, right? But for a self manager it could be just nickel and dime stuff here and there. Like you're going to list it on websites. I know Zillow has a free tool for the first time. You market it, but the next time it costs money, if you want it to be on the premium listing, which we use it, you pay per day or per week. Sure, there's going to be app fees. If you have somebody do an application and to screen them release preparation, there's going to be little software services. However, you're collecting rent. Hopefully you're not using Cash App or Zelle or Venmo for rent collection. Yeah, because you want some way to actually have a. Tenant ledger. So if you if you're doing it through Zelle or Venmo or whatever, you know, I would legitimize it a little bit. Yes, you'll pay a little fee for some sort of third party software, but I would definitely consider that if you were going that route or just hire us to manage it. But most importantly, if you're self managing, the highest cost is your time. And it sounds cliche, it's like, well, it doesn't take that much time until you get a text that your tenants having issues while you're at church with your family on Sunday morning or you're on vacation or you're at your work where you're supposed to be on top of your job. Yeah. And you're texting and stressing about your tenants. Yeah. So I would say the most cost is time. So just calculate what is my time worth. And sometimes it's like, well, I make X amount an hour at my job. I could do better at my job and make more money than I'm going to save.

BEN: Not drive down to let people in time. They want to see the home or something, you know?

ERIC: Yeah. And I can tell you it's not everybody, but when I was signing up owners for for us for years and years and years, I got to rub shoulders with people that realized that their time is worth more than dealing with the issues with their rentals. And it's not because they weren't capable. I mean, dude, these are amazing men and women who bought rentals investors, some of them accidental landlords. And they sat down and said, Dude, my time is worth way more than X, right? I just cannot justify it. And then in addition to that, management fees and stuff are tax deductible anyway. So sure, I would say is your self managing your cost to advertise or market is time, everything else is ancillary and you'll figure it out If you hire a management company and we won't go through our fee structure, but it's more you're going to have some sort of fee to put it on the market and lease it, right? I mean, whether it's one fee might be one month's rent, half months rent, flat fees, whatever it is, you're going to have some sort of fee for pictures, lockbox signs, screening, background checks, credit checks, sex offender check, conviction history, landlord history, you know, lease prep, move in, driving to the property to and from moving inspections. All that stuff is usually combined into one or two fees. And so you're just going to want to figure that out. And then another fee could be an mlw's co broke, they call it. So cooperating brokerage commission. If let's say a Remax agent shows our house rents it, we owe him a co operating commission. So those are kind of the biggest, the biggest fees. And so it's really just ask yourself, what's your time worth.

BEN: Yeah.

ERIC: I'm trying to think you and I talked about a couple of things here.

BEN: Well, I think you touched on it in the last question, which is the biggest cost is just not having tenants in there.

ERIC: Oh yeah. So what we'd like to call these is hidden costs, right? So these are the, you know, when people always call, like what are the hidden fees, what are the things you're not telling us? And it's like, well, the biggest hidden fee. Is actually not in our agreement because it's not one of our fees, It's not in the lease, it's not in the our property management agreement. It's vacancy free. It kills you, freakin kills you, you know, So let's just use an example. It's 2000 a month. You know what we're going to do? 3000 because I suck at math. So 3000 a month. That's $100 a day of of rental income. That's an amazing asset. Right. But every day that that is vacant, it's costing you $100. Yes. You're not writing a check out to somebody for 100, but you're not cashing a check from somebody. Right. For 100 bucks. And so that's just one. So it's rental rate, right? While it's on the market, you have the utilities on in Arizona. It's a killer. You can't keep the AC off in the summer if you keep it at 85, which is not habitable, it's going to cost you at least a couple hundred bucks a month. And AC electric bill, if you have a pool, you have pool service. Everybody has landscaping. So you got landscape service. Yeah. And if it sits longer than a month or two, you're you're going to have pest control, right? So if that property sits vacant for 90 days, you've got 9000 missed rent, you've got 5 to $800 of utility bills and that's just electricity. You've got water, sewer, trash, electricity, gas. Then then you've got recurring services, so pest control, pool service and landscaping. So it's like if this sits vacant, you'll lose over 10,000 men or lower the rent to 2700, and we'll rent it in two weeks.

BEN: Yeah. And then in that same time span, you would be down 900 of what you thought you were going to make. But you've got a quality tenant and you're not paying all those ancillary costs.

ERIC: Yeah. And so you'd be shocked like we have that we have a list of homes that are on the market for over 40 days. And these are people that we're telling every week, multiple times a week, Lower the rent. Here's why, Lower the rent, here's why. Let me educate you on this. And they're like, No, I bought this house. My realtor told me it was going to rent for 3000. And you're like, Well, we're in the property management business. We lease houses and that is way too high. Yeah, but but then they realize eventually they listen and they lower the price and they lease. And then you look back and you're like, Dude, let's calculate this. You just didn't. You just lost out on 6000. 4000. This isn't.

BEN: Just to save 100.

ERIC: Bucks, to save 100 bucks, you know. And so those are the hidden costs, right? Yes. You save if you're even if you're self managing. Yeah. You save the leasing fee. You save the marketing fee, but you under rented your house by $200 a month. Yeah. Because you didn't know how to market it correctly. Well, then let's say $200 a month for a year, you lost out on 20 $400 of potential rent because you wanted to save $700 paying your manager to lease it out. Right. So it's just I mean, we say it verbally and it's just like it sounds so stupid. Really. Yeah.

BEN: But. But if you don't know, you don't know.

ERIC: If you don't know, you don't know. So it's not even saying hey, if you self manage your stupid. That wasn't the right word. It's really just like you don't know what you don't know. Yeah. Hire an expert who can get you the best qualified tenant for the highest rent amount as fast as possible. You know that balance? Yeah. And then the last hidden cost we talk about all the time with our salespeople is expertise. And so what you're paying for when you're paying your management company a percentage or a flat fee or whatever you're paying, you're paying for their time and their service, whatever. But really what you're paying for is their expertise. All of our property managers have been through evictions. All of them have collected late rents, all of them have done a move out that's been absolutely atrocious. But they've also done move outs that are great and they've have 800 credit score tenants and they have wonderful, wonderful families that we manage for tenants and owners. And it's it's the 10000 hours of experience in managing property versus you've owned a rental for three months, right. You've put like 9 hours into it. Yeah.

BEN: And it's funny too because, you know, you hear from our property managers and they're like, you know, I'm trying to tell them this tenant's got a little bit of a lower credit score, but they should take it. And it's like, you know, we they don't want to place a bad tenant. They're the ones who are going to have to be dealing with it, you know? So if they're coming to you saying, yeah, hey, you know, I think this is the way to go, like it's not in our best interest.

ERIC: Oh, yeah. No. And I mean, you're saying you hear it all the time, but will I get calls that are like. Eric I'll just use credit score because it's so relatable, right? All of us know. Well, if you're listening to this, you should probably know what your credit score is ish, right? But some of our owners, they own rentals, right? They're investors. They have good, good income, whatever. Most of them have great credit. And so we get somebody that I'm not going to say a score, but let's say it's below average. Sure. Whatever. And they're like, I can't believe we're renting to somebody with that credit score. And I'm like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I've been in this industry a long time over a decade. That's a great credit score, not just for a tenant, but like, dude, that's they've tried really hard to achieve this score. It's above our minimum criteria. You cannot deny them for having that score. And. They're just like, Oh, I would never let my daughter marry somebody with that credit score. I'm like, literally had people say that. I'm like, okay, what we need to do is you're paying us to be the expert, right? I'm telling you as the expert that this credit score is far and beyond what what the minimum should be, Right? Yeah. The the other thing you're paying for in expertise is the stuff to protect you. Liability wise, know fair housing laws in Arizona, the Arizona state laws, they change they have different statutes that update and stuff and you're paying us to know that stuff so that you're not stuck on your heels when a tenant sues you and you're like, Man, I didn't even know that was a law like that. You're totally messed.

BEN: Up. Well, that was going to be my my last question is, are there when it comes to marketing, are there laws about marketing rentals and the ways you can do it?

ERIC: Yeah. Yeah. So the I'd say the simplest version or the simplest way to say it is you have to be fair. So there's the federal fair housing laws, you have the seven protected classes and then depending on your city and this is where it's like you pay for the expertise, right? A lot of people don't realize that in the city of Mesa and we're in Phoenix and a suburb is Mesa, one of the biggest actually suburbs of any metropolitan area, has its own fair housing laws in addition to the federal fair housing laws. Right. So they have more protected classes in Mesa than we do in Gilbert.

BEN: And they're right next to each other.

ERIC: And you could drive we drive to lunch to go to Mesa all the time.

BEN: Right? Right.

ERIC: A mile away. Right. And so a lot of people wouldn't realize that. So they self manage a house in Mesa. Maybe they live in Mesa, too. Oh, did you know that this protected class is actually this is protected in Mesa? Whereas in Gilbert, it's not like a lot of these self managers are breaking laws there. Yeah. With fair housing in Tucson, you know, 2 hours south of here we have another office and the federal fair. There's the federal and then there's the city of Tucson has more protected classes than the federal level. And it's like most people don't know that.

BEN: Yeah, why would you?

ERIC: So I'd say fair housing is a big one. I mean, yes, you can learn it on your own. You can Google it, you can look in your city, you can make sure to stay fair, equal. Ultimately, you just have to be fair and equal to all applicants, right? So you can't say things like, hey, we only want to rent to a family. And I know in theory you're like, Oh yeah, I just want a mom and a dad and some kids and a dog and I want them to walk.

BEN: I raised my family in this house and it was great.

ERIC: But it's like, yeah, you can't put that. You'll go on Zillow to self managers and it will literally say like no kids. And you're like, Oh yeah. And so we'll take over some of these, right? They're not renting, so they hire us to manage it. We look at the ad and we're like, Hey so-and-so, we want your business. But let let's talk real quick. You're okay with us not doing this right? Because you definitely can't say no.

BEN: Kids because this is straight up illegal.

ERIC: Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. No. Did we have some that Did they say no service animals? It's like, yeah, that's illegal. Yeah. Just right off the bat. Just illegal. And so part of that again is we talked about it a few episodes ago about intentional and unintentional break.

BEN: Absolutely.

ERIC: Yeah. I think you said something that maybe is about families or kids. Yeah. And you're like, no, they literally just they'd love to have a family there, but they don't want to break the law, so they have to choose. They're like, No, I don't want to break the law. Dude on cue can handle my stuff. Yeah, but it was an unintentional fair housing violation to say no. Eric, we want we want two or more kids. It's a neighborhood. It's a family friendly neighborhood. Yeah. And we're like, Yeah, can't do that. So I would say rules wise, there's those. Those are the laws right now, the unwritten rules within the industry to be a professional in the industry or a professional self managing landlord is make sure your house is clean, you know, make sure it's presentable. It passes the sniff test. You know, it's kind of and I say unwritten rule because it's not illegal to list a property that's dirty. Yeah. But it's like, don't waste everybody's time. Don't you know? And I know we even got we've gotten some feedback that's like, Hey, your house isn't clean. It's like, oh my gosh, the cleaners didn't go where we had it scheduled. And there are things that happen.

BEN: Or it's been on the market for 60 days. People have been going in and out of there.

ERIC: Oh yeah, No, we recently had an owner, I think it was over 90 days and we are battling him on price, man. It was just like they thought it was. They actually bought this brand new build and we're told by the sales people, hey, they rent for I think it was like 2700, it ended up renting for 21. Significant. Right. And they're going to be negative cash flow for years. It's an unfortunate situation, but they were upset because we did them move in inspection and we're like, hey, it needs a deep cleaning before these people move in on Tuesday. Like, you know, there's been 35 showings over 90 days. They've used the toilets. Unfortunately, they whatever, there's weeds in the backyard, there's dust and they're just like beside themselves. I bought this house brand new blah, blah, blah. And so part of the unwritten rule is like, no, it's not against the law, but start this rental right on the on the right foot. Right. Get it cleaned. They're going to walk in and say, Man on cue. And this owner love this property. I'm so excited to be a tenant.

BEN: Nice. Yeah. And I know we talked about this earlier, but like. Honestly representing the property. Like I remember when I moved to Arizona from out of state, I was coming. I had a limited time. My wife and I are coming. We've got four kids were lined up, five rentals, took a look at and we're doing it all in line. We can't we don't know these neighborhoods. We don't know anything and we pick ones. Okay, Kids will love this one. This one looks great. One of them had this beautiful, big backyard and we're like, perfect. The kids will love it. We go to visit it and it's just rocks in the backyard because the landlord, when he decided to put it up for rent, was like, Well, I don't want to pay for landscaping. I don't want to worry about the plants dying. So he ripped everything out and it was like we would not have come and looked at this house if you if.

ERIC: You had this lush green, green grass with trees.

BEN: Yeah. I mean, it looked beautiful and then it was just rock, no patio, nothing. Just you walk out the door under rock.

ERIC: It's like we have owners all the time. Hey, can you use these pictures? I used him last time I rented it. Yeah, Yeah. Let's. Let's check. You know, we're going to take our own, but let's look. And it's like, Oh, did the colors of the walls aren't even this color anymore? Yeah. Or the backyard. Yeah, it used to be grass. Or I actually bought a property that the tax records still show. It has a pool. The previous listing has a pool. And then I went to go look at it and I'm like, Where's the pool? And it's buried, you know? And I was like, Oh, dude, I thought this property had a pool. Yeah, this whole time, if you go to Zillow, previous pictures, it had a pool. Yeah. And the owner was like, Oh yeah, the last tenant I rented it to, they're complaining about the pool. So we just buried it.

BEN: Yeah. I'm like, probably should disclose that. Yeah.

ERIC: Yeah. Dude. Like it's a pool man.

BEN: Yeah.

ERIC: 50,000 pool. You just put underground.

BEN: Yeah, well, great. I feel like we've gone through all the ins and outs and covered it pretty well, so.

ERIC: Well, dude, I felt like I did all the talking, so, you know, I'll talk about rental marketing all day.

BEN: You're the expert on it.

ERIC: Yeah. Later, we'll talk about marketing our property management company we can talk to. There we.

BEN: Go. We can talk about building websites or something, and I can talk for an hour about that. So that's it for us at this time. Make sure to leave a review. Five stars really helps us out wherever you're listening. And if you can follow, subscribe to the podcast, that'd be awesome. And we'll see you next time.