Have you ever uncovered something on a move-in/out that completely changed the way you do business? Do you have the proper processes in place to achieve property awareness triple wins?
This recording of the final TWL of 2022 is all about Property Awareness and features celebrity guest host Phil Owen (OnSight PROS) as he talks with Bess Wozniak (McCreary Realty Management), Brad Randall (Welch Randall Real Estate), and Joni Wolfswinkel (Real Property Management Preferred). Listen as they share real examples of strategies and practices that create new experiences for residents, investors, and management teams.
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Hosted by Laura MacMinn and Phil Owen
Featuring Bess Wozniak, Brad Randall, and Joni Wolfswinkel
Produced by Andrew Smallwood, Laura Mac, and Carol Housel
Edited by Isaac Balachandran
Episode Transcript:
Phil Owen
So now you talk about turning it into a Triple Win. And this is a hard thing to do. How do tenants win in terms of a Triple Win? But you did that through a policy shift that not only provided a win for you and for the landlord, but also for the tenants. Tell us a little bit about how you changed things as a result of this situation and how that has been a win for all three entities.
Laura MacMinn
All right. Welcome, everyone. This is a special edition of Triple Win Live. If you don't know me, my name is Laura MacMinn. I'm on the second major team. I work as a vent for Nader and work around Triple Win. So today it is going to be my pleasure to introduce a very special guest and a very important topic. And before I bring Phil up, I just want to take a moment to thank everyone here for your time. Our goal over the next hour is going to be to provide you with massive value and connect you with insights from your peers and fellow industry leaders as Andrew likes to say. We take many things lightly, and your time is certainly not one of them. So thank you for being here today. And without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce our first ever Triple Win celebrity host, Phil Owen, and he is here today to share stories and Triple Wins from some awesome property managers around property awareness. So OnSight PROS is a property awareness company, which you'll learn more about what that means. So Phil, for many reasons, was our first choice to speak about this space on this topic. So Phil, I want to thank you for being here, Your generosity and your time and your thoughts. And Phil is an OnSight PROS. Just real quick, you guys are your kindred spirits. The Second Nature team and I have enjoyed getting to know you over the years. You are generous, and you are heart-led. You have a massive passion, passion for the industry and developing others' learning. You're truly just a joy to be around, and you put people at ease the minute they meet you, so if you don't know Phil, it is my absolute honor to introduce him to you today and Phil, with that, I'll invite you to take it away.
Phil Owen
So much. Laura And we feel very much the same about our friends at Second Nature. And I appreciate you guys allowing me the opportunity to host and thanks for promoting me as a celebrity host that the impact to my ego was enormous and my wife will never be able to get past. I just keep reminding myself. Well, dear, I'm a celebrity, so I have different privileges now. So. Well, today we're going to talk about winning through property awareness and Triple Winning through property awareness. So what is property awareness? Let's start with that. Property awareness is exactly what it sounds like. It's being aware of what's happening at your properties through whatever means, whether you use a third party like OnSight PROS or whether you send your own team to the property or however you maintain that being able to maintain a high level of property awareness is one of the huge things that we do in this industry that you do for your clients. So often when we talk about the topic of property awareness, we we do it framing it in terms of property awareness failures, the things that go wrong, right, the the the meth houses or, you know, the fires that happen or just all the crazy things that that go wrong through a failure of property awareness. But that's not the second nature ethos. That's not the Triple Win ethos. This, this doesn't exist. The Triple Win Live podcast is not built around a culture of failures, but a culture of successes. It's not built around losing, but winning and doing so in the Triple Win fashion. So because this podcast is designed to be aspirational. We're not going to allow ourselves to focus today in our storytelling on the negative. Today, we're going to be talking about Triple Wins in property awareness. How does property awareness allow you to create wins for the tenant for your property management company, for the landlord or investor? And you know, second, nature and the Triple Win mindset are all about separating professional property managers from do it yourselfers or a real estate agent with a portfolio. You know, they're talking about how we elevate property management, the profession of property management, to be a truly professional entity. So today we're going to avoid the doom and gloom. There are plenty of salacious stories. I'm sure you've all heard them. You've probably experienced them, or at least laid awake at night, staring at the ceiling, waiting for your opportunity to experience them. And that day will come. But today we're going to be exploring stories of property awareness gone right. How if property managers effectively use property awareness to create wins for investors themselves, and sometimes even residents, even though oftentimes residents are kind of on the losing end of the property awareness component. We're going to hear some stories today about how there have been true Triple Wins in property awareness. Specifically, we're going to talk today about how great property awareness can help property management professionals be proactive, not reactive. And so to do that. To that end, we're going to be introducing you to some of the very best of the best in the industry that you can hear some great stories about winning through property awareness. And we're just going to have story time for a few minutes here and we're going to invite some friends up so we'll light the Christmas fire and sit around with our chestnuts and and we're just going to tell some Triple Winning property awareness stories today at the conclusion of story time. We want to invite those of you who are in attendance. I'm looking at the list of names and I'm like, I just want to be with all of these people, like just some incredible people and property managers in this room. And we want to invite you to come in and share some stories of your own, whether they be wins or failures. There can be some great and fun stories that I'm sure with the people in this room. You guys have got a great list of all of those. So listen to these stories and let it perhaps remind you of some of your own winning or losing property awareness stories. And we would love to hear from you towards the conclusion of the event today. So I want to start with one of my very good friends in this industry. She is from Atlanta, Georgia. She is a fourth generation property manager. She's been in property management since 2010. A trained actor and educator with a bachelor's degree in theater. She got her CPM from IREM and RPM from NARPM. She volunteers with multiple committees through an arc on that local and national level and is currently on the board serving as a member of the Board of Directors with the Atlanta chapter of NARPM, as well as being an ambassador for the Southeastern region. Help me welcome Bess Wozniacki. Bess Come up. Bess, it is always so good to see you. And I can tell you, spending time with you and your dad and the whole team at McCreary Realty is always so much fun and you guys always have such great stories. Perhaps that's tied to your theatrical background. I don't know. Is that.
Bess Wozniak
Probably. Yeah. Yeah. We're natural storytellers.
Phil Owen
That's fair. That's fair. So now you have a story about using property awareness to be a proactive property manager. And had everything gone according to plan, this would have been a Triple Win. But things didn't go according to plan in your story, did they know?
Bess Wozniak
They did not.
Phil Owen
Tell us about it.
Bess Wozniak
Yeah. So we several years back, probably about seven years or so ago, we had a string of water heaters that were starting to fail and it was at various properties. And we got with our plumber, who we've worked with for decades and said, What's going on? Why are all these water heaters failing? He said, Well, they're just aging out and water heaters nowadays are only lasting between ten and 12 years. And we said, all right, we're implementing a policy. If it's between that ten and 12 year mark, we are requiring that the tenant or the owners replace the water heaters. And so we started at our annual property condition reviews, looking at the water heater labels and looking up the age of water heaters. Sometimes it's really obvious on those labels, sometimes it's not. You have to do research with the serial number, but you can pretty easily find it with Google. Google is our friend and we had our property condition review done actually in Cyprus. We had just started partnering with you guys at the time and you took a picture of the label. We looked it up. We said, Oh, it is like right past the ten year mark, so it's just over ten years old. And we said to the owner, Here's a quote to replace it. This is why we recommend replacing it to prevent further damage to your property and further costs. This is a preventative maintenance item. And they said, okay, we definitely understand the reasoning behind it. Can we wait about six months? I don't remember why. The reason that they wanted to wait six months, but they wanted to wait six months. And I said, well, that's still within the 10 to 12 year time frame. So I guess we can go ahead and wait, just letting you know it's not on us if it bottoms out. Well, sure enough, three months later, it bottomed out, flooded the INS, and luckily this one was inside a garage, not actually inside the home, but it flooded the entire garage and actually did cause some damage to the kitchen and laundry room that backed up to it. Lots of flooring had to be replaced. It pardoned me, baseboards, drywall, plus all of the water mitigation. So it was an additional cost. It ended up costing them around $6,000 when it would have just cost them about 12 to 1500 dollars to replace the water heater. And they did call me up and said, well, I guess I should've listened to you. And the good thing about it, though, is anytime I have pushback from an owner now is I tell them that story. I say, I mean, you can wait, but you're put in your property and your wallet at risk. And also it inconveniences the tenants at that time.
Phil Owen
So I'm going to make an educated guess. I'm going to make an educated guess here. That owner has probably never deferred recommended maintenance after that time. Is that fair?
Bess Wozniak
They have not. And they're still with us. They originally were an accidental investor. They didn't plan to be a landlord and they are still with us today and they could have sold multiple times. But they are actually enjoying being an investor now.
Phil Owen
So the beauty of that is in sorry, there's a siren going by my office right now. But the beauty of that is you guys were able to establish yourselves as the professional in the relationship and show that you had expertise, that you knew what needed to be done. You were maintaining the property awareness to see when items fell into the category of needing to have the maintenance on the timeline that you recommended. And it could have been a Triple Win. And the crazy part about that story is if it had been a Triple Win, no one would have known that it was a Triple Win because Triple Winning and property awareness is all about the things that don't happen. It's the stories that you don't get to tell, right?
Bess Wozniak
Absolutely.
Phil Owen
You proactively maintain the property. But as it were, I would call this the single. I would call because you guys came away looking so professional to your client and with a story to tell that changes the dynamic that you're able to use in all your future engagements. So what what now? Have you had a water heater fail since then, or have you been able to maintain it and keep away from that with the policies that you put in place?
Bess Wozniak
I will say it's fewer and far between because of the preventative nature of of going ahead and proactively replacing and most of our owners listening to it, the ones that have happened, we actually had one happened very recently just a couple of weeks ago, was a brand new property that we took on and and we had not looked at the water heater label yet. Honestly, that's really what it was. We just hadn't looked at it yet. And it failed right. As the tenants were moving in, flooded the entire floor.
Phil Owen
As it goes right. Yep. Good old Murphy coming into effect there.
Bess Wozniak
But I mean that was just a you know, and so now that's part of our onboarding is okay, we missed this. We didn't look at it when we took the property. We need to make sure that that's a part of our checklist. The onboarding checklist whenever we take on a new property is to take a look at the water heater label.
Phil Owen
So I know and this has been a passion of your dad's for y'all too, who don't know. Michael McCreary is Bess's dad and just one of the the brightest and best guys in the industry. But I know like water heaters has been a passion of his like that's like you know but what other things do you guys look for in terms of the proactive property awareness? I know water heaters are a thing, but what else do you look at and go back with recommendations when you get eyes on the property? Are there other items that you're similarly proactive with?
Bess Wozniak
Yeah. So I mean, with pretty much any appliance in the home we're looking at, Okay, what age, what's the current condition of it. Are some of them seeing more maintenance requests coming in for certain things? And if that's the case, then how can we proactively prevent this from becoming a much larger issue? And then one thing that we are looking at on the exterior is we're looking at the condition of, as best as we can see it, obviously from the ground is the roof and gutters. Those are at the end, like the fashions off it is those are things that tenants aren't going to be looking at. So we want to make sure we're keeping an eye on it. And if we start to see some wood rot forming or some of the gutters pulling away from the house or rusting in any way, shape or form, we go ahead and proactively get that taken care of before it becomes a major water issue inside the house.
Phil Owen
Got it. So well, Bess, thanks so much for coming and sharing your story. Always appreciate hearing from you and seeing you because can you guys just give Bess a little love on her way out and and thank her for being here.
Bess Wozniak
Thank you so much for having me.
Phil Owen
Thank you for being here. Well, my next guest is a gentleman that I just have such a tremendous amount of respect for and one of the best and nicest guys in the industry, somebody that just absolutely loves spending time with you. He is the owner of Welch Randall Property Management in Salt Lake City, Utah. He manages around 400 single family doors and just over 4000 units. So let's just go ahead and stop and say a little prayer. And if you have any leftover antidepressants or anxiety meds, if you can go ahead and get those packaged up to send out at the conclusion of this event. Former Norfolk, Utah Chapter president and current chair for the Utah Apartment Association. A trail runner, a marathoner, a lover of all things travel. And I can tell you, Brad and I are in a World Golf League together. And Brad, you make me feel good about myself watching watching you whirl. And I appreciate that about you. But let me let me welcome Brad Randall. You guys give give Brad some some love as he comes to the stage. Well, Brad, thanks for being here now. You're in Utah now.
Brad Randall
Yes, sir. Okay. So just we're waiting we're waiting for a couple of inches of snow tonight.
Phil Owen
Now, have you guys had your first snow? You're right. Like how many snows if you had so far?
Brad Randall
So the resorts have a base of right around 50 to 60 inches right now. So it's a good start to the season, which we need. Anybody out West knows. All of us out west need water. So, Wolf is nodding. He gets it. If you live west of the Mississippi, any water is good water for us right now.
Phil Owen
Yeah. Now, a lot of our guests here I see are from Texas. Can you explain to them what snow is? I'm just kidding. So. Well, you had a story that really is a true Triple Win and yours is unique and that it started as a double win. But because of your proactive property management, you turned it into a double into a triple. And that's what Brad Randall does. So you had a move out report that exposed an unpleasant surprise. Tell us tell us about that story.
Brad Randall
Yeah. Thank you so much for letting me share and appreciate all you do. Phil and the Triple Win team. So we had to move out in June of this year and we had been in this single family home about 3000 square feet. We had been in the home just under three months prior to the move out. So the last walk through happened three months later. The tenant has moved out. They provided their notice, everything like that. And when we went into the property, there were cans of paint splattered on the walls. The carpet was missing in a bunch of the rooms. I mean, it looked nothing like our last quarterly walk through and to the point where it was like tens of thousands. It was a lot of money to get this thing back. And it was an owner that has multiple properties with us. And the hard thing for us initially was we had followed our checklist that we had with regards to getting in the property and seeing it. The tenant had provided notice, but the tenant had let somebody without us knowing the last month move in. And it's this person that caused all the damage.
Phil Owen
So does that happen in this industry? I wasn't aware that was a thing.
Brad Randall
Yeah, I mean, none of you can relate. I'm sure, because we've never had an experience like that. But it was just one of those move outs like we all have periodically, that it's just like that nightmare scenario where and of course it happens to one of your best owners, you know, that you're like, Oh, I hate giving this type of news to this owner.
Phil Owen
So you had to deliver that news to tell us a little bit how that conversation went.
Brad Randall
Yeah. So, I mean, we didn't beat around the bush with it. We just said, you know, we're going to upload a report to your software portal. We want you to see what's happening and we want you to to know what the next steps are that we're doing. You know, this is what we're going to do to try to get it ready as quickly as possible. This is what we recommend as far as going after the tenant and seeing, you know, what questions you have for us. So he was very understanding overall. He was frustrated at first, but we gave him all the details that I just provided, plus the reports so that he could know. And that's kind of where the process started of how we could turn this into a Triple Win.
Phil Owen
That's beautiful. So now you talk about turning it into a Triple Win and that this is a hard thing to do. How do tenants win in terms of a Triple Win? But you did that through a policy shift that not only provided a win for you and for the landlord, but also for the tenants. Tell us a little bit about how you changed things as a result of this situation and how that has been a win for all three entities.
Brad Randall
Yeah, So I feel like all of us get into scenarios where you're in a cluster of something that's happened and it causes you to kind of rethink. It's like, okay, is there something that we could have been more proactive on? Is there a way we could do this differently? Because now the biggest thing that we were hurting at the time is it was getting contractors in. And I don't think I'm alone in that. You know, if you have a move out that you don't really know what it's going to look like and you get in there and instead of cleaning carpets and handymen, you suddenly have like six other contractors that you've got to get. It was a lot of headaches. So at our next team meeting about a week later, we kind of just dumped all this information out. And we said, what do we want to change? And the policy that changed that has just been awesome is in our new tenant procedures. Now when they sign a lease with us, they pay a lease initiation fee. And in that lease initiation fee we have added what's called the move out pre assessment. And so what we do now is when they give their 30 day notice, we have someone go over and do a not a full walkthrough, but basically a 30 minute walk through and they indicate the main things that would be deemed on a security deposit walk through after. And then we have our tenants acknowledge that the walk through happened. So the tenant has to acknowledge that we have given them forewarning. But also now what we're finding is we're able to see in advance if there's big stuff coming ahead. So if you are struggling to get a contract out because of timing, we can start to schedule contractors a month out to try to decrease the vacancy time in between. And so how we feel this is turning into a Triple Win is for the owner they love they love the fact that we're getting in sooner. They love the fact that we're being proactive because it's decreasing the time in between. It's increasing their cash flow. And this is where it's a win for us because when they win on all of those, it's like we win as well. You know, it saves us time, everything like that. Now, if you can't charge for this, I still think it's worth it. And there is a question that comes in that says, When do you charge for this? And we do it in our least initiation. But I still think it's worthwhile doing because we lost almost 20 days waiting for vendors because they were on top of each other. And it is worth your time to spend half an hour to get an OnSight PROS or one of your team members out to do a quick assessment and and where it's a Triple Win for the tenant is our phrasing with the tenant is we want you to get the most deposit back as possible. And so in order to do that, we want to show you the types of things that we're going to, you know, that we're going to be looking for when we come through. And they acknowledge that. And they've actually been super appreciative of the fact that we are doing this and it could help them get their deposit back faster and in more, you know, with greater money. So that's how it's been a Triple Win for us.
Phil Owen
I love this story, Brad. I love the way that you were able to leverage this. And in your original story, you told us about how the owner came back and it became a win for you because they recognized that you had done your due diligence. And so there was a barrier there for you because you had maintained property awareness and you had just been out there a few months prior and they knew you had done your job and you were also able to hold the tenant accountable, which tells us how that's going. What is it looking like in terms of being able to go after the tenant for damages? What, what , what's that process?
Brad Randall
I'll say this. It's looking better in Utah than it does in California. Yeah.
Phil Owen
Yeah, I'm seeing it in the chad. There are some folks who are jealous of Utah 's ability.
Brad Randall
We cannot, we're not Idaho, Idaho and Wyoming. It's like, bring a gun and they'll figure it out. But in Utah, we do have more tenants or landlord friendly laws. But right now we're garnishing wages. So to have this paid back. So it's not happening immediately, but the owner is being paid back over time. And for the owner, you know, he just got it rented and everything. But next time we don't have to lose that same number of days because as all of us know, days on the market kill everybody. It just hurts everybody. And so for us, the win, the biggest win for us is decreasing the days on the market because that's a KPI that we can go to an owner and say this policy change has decreased our time on the market, this percent or whatever, and that's a big deal for us.
Phil Owen
Yeah, well that's maybe what I love most about this story and just about you as a property manager is that a lot of folks would look at it and go, okay, well, we didn't get hit with anything. The property owner was satisfied that we had done our due diligence. And so we're okay. We're doing what we need to do, but not Brad Randall. Brad Randall looks at it and goes, okay, we got off without getting hit or getting fussed by a landlord, but how can we still become more proactive? How can we change a policy? How can we take what we learned from this and be even more proactive? I love that I love you and appreciate who you are and the way that you represent this industry. And you just are a terrific guy and a terrific property manager. Thanks so much for coming and sharing your story with us. Brad. Thanks for spending time.
Brad Randall
Love to everybody.
Phil Owen
Always good to see you, my friend. So, man, I love to hear those kinds of stories about that level of professionalism in this industry and just the way that that people like Brad are raising the bar for all of us, not just as property managers, just as entrepreneurs and people who are trying to do good things in the business and not being satisfied with good enough. But really taking that next step to go, well, we've got a double win here. How can this become a Triple Win? How can we make this better for everyone in the process? I love that so. Well, I have one final guest before we open it up and get to some time that I want to hear your stories as well. But I want to next bring up my friend Joni Wolfswinkel. And Joni is the owner of two RPM Real Property Management franchises. She is the owner of a turnkey construction company, a virtual assistant supplier firm. She manages over 1700 units in the Houston, Texas, and the Albuquerque New Mexico markets. The author of a recent book called The Choice Is Yours Balancing Success as a Wife, Mom and Entrepreneur, co-host of a popular podcast with her husband called Inside the What's It In Her Her property management company was just featured as as the the franchise of the year for their outstanding business practices, beating out 400 other franchise owners in North America. She was named Woman of Influence by Housing Wire magazine. She is also a former wrestler, bodybuilder and a green thumb gardener. So the trivia that you don't know about Joni Wolfswinkel, if you don't know Joni Wolfswinkel, you will because this gal right here is doing some great things and making some waves. Joni It exhausts me to read about the things that you're doing. How in the world are you surviving day to day with all of these things on your plate?
Joni Wolfswinkel
Honestly, I think everybody on this call can say a great team, right? Nothing can happen without a great team. So it's not me guys. It's my team that actually does all of this. And I get to hear all the stories and kind of help them through it and pour. Phil He's like, Man, Joe is giving me like 10 million stories. Okay, you need to stop now.
Phil Owen
No, I love it. Joni had these stories and she was like, Why don't you take this and narrow it down to the best one or two? And I was like, No, I want them all because they were such good stories. And so we narrowed it down to three. It's just for the sake of time. But what I love about it is Joni, you're a baseball fan, a big, big Astros down, right? So today, Joni is going to hit the property awareness cycle with a single when a double win and a Triple Win. And let's start with the single win. You encountered a situation recently where you proactively discovered a lease violation that potentially shielded your investor and yourself from significant liability. Tell us tell us a little bit about that.
Joni Wolfswinkel
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it actually turned into a Triple Win. That was the newest thing this week.
Phil Owen
So you can't start changing the game on me now. This was supposed to be the single Joni.
Joni Wolfswinkel
I know. However, it's good. Yeah. And so it actually started with the periodic inspection with OnSight PROS showing up to the property. The tenant answered the door, was surprised that we were there. She had no idea we were going to be inspecting the property. And in fact, your guide thought that we were at the wrong house. So he's looking to make sure that we're at the right property.
Phil Owen
Just to be clear, we scheduled with someone I don't know that it was her, but we scheduled the.
Joni Wolfswinkel
Morning was not her. Was it? Yeah. And so bottom line, they were actually using the property as an Airbnb property. And so the time we got to the property, the tenant was just upset at her landlord, who was a tenant on the lease, just cussing him out, saying that he's not doing any repairs and that she tried calling him and he was charging her like 5000 a month. I mean, this is a lot of property that's probably, you know, 1300 a month. Right. And so quickly, your guy was like, all right, I'm just going to take my notes and be out of here. And, you know, he kind of called our office and so we investigated it. Sure enough, it's on an Airbnb site. And so we went ahead and actually called the tenant and said, hey, look like you're in violation. You know, we need you to surrender this lease. Basically, I can threaten him a little bit. He was also an agent. I found that out, so.
Phil Owen
I kind of threatened them a little bit. I love that kind.
Joni Wolfswinkel
A little bit. So it went out a few days and finally he's like, Look, okay, I'll give you back the property. And so he did give us back the property. And then I actually called the tenant, the one I was leasing Airbnb, and I kind of told her what was going on. I apologized to her and I said, But look, we would love to lease to you if you like the property, you want to stay. And she's like, You know what? Like I'm here for the long road, so I would like to stay. And so did her credit check, background check, all that. Turns out great. And we ended up leasing the property to her. So yeah.
Phil Owen
So now we know the Paul Harvey rest of the story. That's beautiful. So that this ended up, you know, property awareness ended up protecting the landlord, the property manager and got you an awesome new tenant who is legally there as opposed to being on a sublease. That's terrific.
Joni Wolfswinkel
And the owner was happy because we were proactive with it and, you know, we didn't have to file eviction and go through that whole process. So yeah, everybody was happy.
Phil Owen
Well, you completely rendered useless my single double. Triple. I know, right? But what a great Triple Win. I love that. And you pulled a Brad Randall and took a single and stretched it into a triple. That's, that's, that's pretty strong right there. So. Well let's talk about your double all right. So you had a double win. We're getting eyes on the property, preventing a tenant from being able to feed you and the homeowner with some bull, a pit bull, to be exact. Tell us the story.
Joni Wolfswinkel
Yeah.
Phil Owen
Not literally trying to feed you a pit bull. That's not right. But yeah, tell us the story.
Joni Wolfswinkel
Yeah. So leased the property to a tenant. Of course. They had no pets, nothing on their application, although they signed the pet addendum with pet spraying all that good stuff. Right. And then a couple of months go down and BHO calls us and says, Hey, by the way, I'm getting a lot of complaints from neighbors of your rental property stating that there are three pit bulls roaming around in the neighborhood and they're scaring the children and you need to know. I'm like, okay, well let me investigate this first and then we will go from there. So I looked at the application, no pets, nothing like that. And so we did a periodic inspection and sure enough, we got to the door, we heard a bunch of dogs barking. And actually the tenant opened the door and he actually allowed us to go in the property. He made sure that obviously the pets were right, went inside and I mean, he had only been there a couple of months. So there was not a lot of damage. I think there were some scratches on the door, that kind of thing. But after that, we sent him a notice to go ahead and remove the pets. He did not want to do that. And so we ended up filing eviction on him and so went to court, got him evicted. And funny story, the judge was when he went to court, though, he told the judge that he pulled the emotional support animal on that, saying that they were for his emotional support. My husband actually, because who.
Phil Owen
Doesn't need three pit bulls for emotion. That's some big emotional support right there.
Joni Wolfswinkel
What was funny is that my husband actually went to court on that one. And when he's telling the story to the judge, he says, well, Your Honor, if he really needed them, why aren't they in the courtroom today?
Phil Owen
Touché.
Joni Wolfswinkel
And this is in Texas, only happens in Texas. He's like, he turns to me and he says, well, I would have shot them myself. Basically what he said, Oh, my, oh, my God. Anyway, he ended up getting the ten he got evicted. So bottom line, the owner was happy we got the property back and prevented it from biting a child maybe, or now also damaging the property. So, yeah.
Phil Owen
No, I love it. So. All right, well, and let's get to your triple and this is this is a good triple. And, you know, none of these stories are from any of our guests. Are these big? Oh, my gosh, I can't believe this happened. Like, that's not the nature of winning with property awareness. It's not the shock value that happens with a property management failure. It's the small things that have such big impacts and consequences. And it's the shock value stories that you don't get to tell that happen as a result of great property awareness. So you had another story where an equipment malfunction resulted in unreported maintenance that posed a danger to the tenant and a liability to you and the investor. Tell us a little bit about what happened.
Joni Wolfswinkel
So in this situation. So it actually was also discovered on a periodic inspection and in fact, the tenant ran into the garage door. And so when our inspector got there, I mean, the garage door was pretty much bashed in. You know, it was pretty much just hanging there. And really, I think the tenant was just scared, number one, that they might get evicted for it. And also they didn't have any money to repair it, so they didn't report it. And so we quickly got on with that, went ahead and replaced it or charged it to the tenant, and we helped the tenant with that as well. They couldn't pay it all at once, so we made a payment plan with them to get them back on their feet and potentially save some liability as well if that garage door would have fell on the tenant or their children, that could have been an issue.
Phil Owen
Yeah, that can be a real big problem. And for, you know, water ingress and I mean all kinds of things that can cause damage to the property and damage to the tenant's belongings and long term issues that have to be remedied. Yeah, that can be a really, really bad situation. Yeah. So good deal. Well, Joanie, thanks so much for being here. I know you've got a billion things on your plate. Thanks for taking time. Let's give Joanie a hand and appreciate her. Joanie, thanks so much for all you do. You bet. Absolutely. So. Well, and thanks to all three of our guests, terrific people, terrific property managers, people that you should get to know and learn from. But this isn't meant to be a one way conversation. This is meant to be an interactive podcast. And I see some great property managers in this room who I know have some incredible stories of their own, or maybe you have questions and things that you want to do run by me, or even lessons and suggestions for best practices that you would be willing to share with the group. So at this point, we're going to we're going to pull the chestnuts out of the fire and just go to a roundtable conversation and go out of Spotlight view and pull it into the to the community, because this is the time that we just want to open up the floor or stories for questions, for ideas, for suggestions, for best practices. What do you say to Triple Win live podcast attendees? What did you get?
Laura MacMinn
I’ll bring up Tal first and then bring up Sam.
Tal Kramer
Let's do it. You know, it's listening to bass about the water eaters. You know there's no Triple Win single double or single. It's more about just doing the preventative stuff. And like you said earlier, Phil, you never know when you help somebody out by telling them these things. But I think a lot of us like Brad's example, you learn, you learn by mistakes, you learn by experience. So now we've gotten to the point that we have annual gutter cleaning, we have chimney flue cleaning every three years. We do dry air vent cleaning because there's such a big cause of house fires every three years and one that I know a lot because we also offer an insurance product to the landlords. And I shopped and compared a lot of them. I don't know if it's helped anybody, but I'm always reminding them that almost all of their insurance policies take your roof from full replacement cost value, what's called RCV to ACV actual cost value when they get to 15 years. So, you know, most people don't look, yeah, I've learned over time, most people, if you offer them something, they don't tend to take it. They don't respond. If you say we're doing this unless you opt out, then it happens all the time, you know? And so it's like it's like it's like they're in the gutter cleaning. I mean, how many times do we offer people would you like your gutters clean? No, You know, nobody responds to you. And then you go ahead and say, we're cleaning your gutters unless you respond, Guess what? We clean 95% of them. But the same thing here we recommend each year. You know, if your roof's 15, getting close to 15 years, do you want a roof inspection? We tell them with the insurance consequences, you know, to people say, yeah, look at my roof. But, you know, those are the kinds of things you could have a real win when you catch them for somebody.
Phil Owen
And golly, there are few people in this industry who pay close attention to things as tall. Kramer Tall. You do a tremendous job with not only property awareness, but your policies and procedures surrounding that love, love watching the way you manage properties.
Tal Kramer
I love to learn and there's a lot of great people in this industry.
Phil Owen
Good stuff. Sam, You said you had something.
Sam Eddinger
I got a couple quick ones. We're in the northeast and we have a lot of oil furnaces, and so that's one that we like to do preventively is to service the furnace because you know, when there's more load on it because it's really cold is when the furnace finally doesn't, it isn't able to keep up. And so then you're preventing an emergency maintenance call. A lot of times all they're going to do is get started again. You still have some other issues. It's either not clean or you need something else. So trying to do what we do is about October or November. We send out a message asking everyone to turn on their heating systems, make sure they're working. Of course, not everyone does that, but at least we can try to get some kind of going before it gets really cold. So that's one thing that we do. That's I think, you know, maybe it's a double. The other thing that I wanted to bring up, which happens to us, it's happened to me a couple of times, and this goes back to kind of what Brad talks about with some preventative maintenance. A lot of our we do a lot of sewer systems and sewer lines. And what we know for some reason is that when we have drought, persistent drought for four months to five months to six months, we seem to have situations where now roots from trees are starting to look for water and they actually go into the sewer lines and they actually clog it up. And then you can have a really bad backup. At no fault to the tenant. It's not flushable wipes in this one instance. Right. And so what we're trying to do now is every two years, pretty much whether we feel like we should or not, we preventively rooter it. We get a report to say whether or not there were actually any roots that were taken out while you were doing it. And then we found that too. We're going to implement that. So I have a reminder on it to make a list of the ones that we need to worry about and then to do it every two years or so because, you know, if you can preemptively router it for 300 bucks as opposed to full backup, which needs, you know, remediation of the gray water, Blackwater, like it's it's thousands. So that's one that we're also doing that's you know preventative. And so those are the ones that I wanted to share.
Phil Owen
That's great stuff. Really great stuff. Yeah. Tell us flushable Wipes is an oxymoron with emphasis on more.
Sam Eddinger
And I wonder on that one if we can all collectively sue the flushable wipes companies because there should be a lawsuit on that one. Even though municipalities don't like them ultimately. So they're clogging up all sorts of plumbing systems.
Phil Owen
Yeah. So in the chat, Brad Randall has asked if anyone has a great preventative maintenance checklist that they love for things like both Talon Sam are talking about. So if anybody's got that put in the chad or maybe we can crowdsource that a little bit. But Aaron Jordan, it just makes me happy to see you here. What did you get here?
Karen Jordan
Talking about plumbing and sewer lines along the lines of Sam. We started doing a pod move. Outs are in between vacancies. We started doing a planning check, so the plumber goes in and does a full on plumbing. So at this point, we can enter. We can find out if there's any types of clogs in the drain. So has a tenant moved out? Did they leave a bunch of hair that they shouldn't have? We can charge for that. And we also know that when the new family moves in, all the plumbing has been checked. So if I get a call later on saying, Hey, this is clogged, well, I have certainty that it was not given to that condition. So that's been a really, really good thing for us. And that's in between vacancies.
Phil Owen
That's terrific. And they let you do that in California, too, huh?
Karen Jordan
Yeah, I got away with that one. You know what I don't have in California? I don't have you.
Phil Owen
We're trying. I promise. I promise. We're working on that. That's coming. That's coming. So no timeline, but we're working towards that. But thank you for sharing that. So while we wait for anyone else to pipe in, I'll share a couple of quick things. One of the great ways to be proactive with property awareness is with smoke alarms. And one of the guests that I hope to have here today and he had to back out because of some things that happened he had to attend to, but was a guy named Mike Brock in Pensacola, Florida, and I sent you a picture. I don't know if you have it that you could bring it up, Laura Mac. But we actually went and did a periodic report for Mike. And one of the things that that we always check and I would recommend that you guys check when when you go to the properties is the manufacture date of smoke alarms so that you know you know a ten year old alarm is considered expired and is a significant liability for you and the owner, Laura, did you get that photo?
Laura MacMinn
I am pulling it up right now. Yep.
Phil Owen
Want to show you guys a photo of an alarm that we found at one of Mike's properties the first time that we ever visited it. And I'll spoil the punchline. It was from 1976. That alarm was born before I was. The remarkable thing is we always test with smoke. Can we spray the smoke? Yeah. There it is. January of 1976. It is when that was back before they shortened manufactured from mfgr to just mfg. That's how old that alarm is. But we sprayed it with smoking and it still worked which is the the old they don't make them like they used to adage I think but still functional but quite a liability but testing the smoke alarms, checking the manufacturers dates, those are great ways that you can be the professional and keep people out of the soup without them even realizing that that's something that they need from you and you get to be the professional, educate them. And I see Jim with his hand up, which just makes me smile because I see a little silhouette of a man. Jim, you have the floor.
Jim Smith
To kind of piggyback on what you were just talking about. We use another company, he's a vendor with NARPM. Used to be called Mr. Ricky Now I think is called Ricky America or something to that effect where the Triple Win comes in in Texas, we are required to require property in between tenancy and that's at a landlord's expense. Any other time we require, if it's because of a tenant's negligence, that's the tenant's expense. But when they go in there to do the Ricky, we follow a process. Number one the Ricky by Texas law has to be done within seven days of occupancy. It can be done beforehand. However, what we do is we set it up to where they make an appointment with the new tenant. And the reason we do that is that way the tenant is present, first of all, so they can get the keys. Number two, they see that it's actually being done, not having to take somebody's word for it that has been done. And then while they are out there, the key company goes through and they have several things that they do. They go through the property to make sure it's all updated as per the Texas Property Code, which means there has to be keyless locking devices on each exterior door. There has to be some type of a viewing portal on each exterior door. That doesn't mean just because there's a side window on the front door does not necessarily meet the criteria. It has to be very clear. You can see the full porch, though, they go through and they check all of the smoke alarms and the seal alarms. If the smoke alarms, we have it in our policy. The smoke alarm is eight years of age or older. They are automatically replaced. I know the law is ten years, but heck, we got tenants who are going to be. Most of our tenants are staying at properties now for four or five years, so that's why we do the eight year mark. If there's not a CO2 detector that is not required by law and most of the areas we manage, we still put in. And because as I tell the owners, it's very inexpensive, insurance may as well have the steel alarm. It's going to cost you a couple of bucks. It's a lot cheaper than getting your name on the headline, tomorrow's paper. And so, you know, so they go through, they check all that stuff and they will even go through and just check the filters for the AC filter to confirm that we have the correct filter sizes for our filter program. So these are all things that we do that are beneficial to everybody involved. And it's a nominal expense to get it all taken care of.
Phil Owen
Love that. And that is one of the great things that you can do from preventative maintenance is check those filters and Sam put in the chat. A great piece of feedback and I completely agree is when you have the opportunity to change those smoke alarms to the tenure tamper proof that have the lithium ion batteries. It's amazing to me how many times we find a battery or an alarm that has no battery, not a dead battery, but no battery. And then it's like, oh, yeah, it's in my remote control over here because they're remote and they're like, I'd rather have a remote control than a working smoke alarm. So switching to those ten year lithium ions is a really good, good practice to go down that path. So to Jim's point, I'll tell one more story. Mark Ennis, who was here earlier actually at a house and we always check the air filters when we're at the house, which is something I highly recommend that you guys get eyes on the property and use second nature. Of course, but make sure that the tenant is actually changing to make sure that they're putting them in. And Mark got to a house one time and he asked the tenant, he said, Hey, where is your air filter? And the tenant said, Oh, I don't know. And he said, Oh, does your property manager come change it for you? Or And he's like, I don't think so. And he said, Well, how long have you lived here? I said, Seven years. Seven years? That filter hadn't been changed. It was just cardboard around the edge. And man, when you when you're not. Now the amazing thing is that the heating air was still working. So whatever, whatever that was, I want one of those in my house. But, you know, getting those eyes on the property and just doing those little things, like making sure that the air filters are being changed effectively. And there, you know, it has the current date on them as printed by second nature. Right. That they're they're abiding by by what is is being provided for them and periodically getting eyes on the property to to verify that trust but verify right in that the thing but very good and Laura Mac said she has no idea had no idea that you actually supposed to change the air filter before she started working at second nature. That's amazing to me. But but I mean, this is this is the I mean, these are the tenants that live in our houses and they don't all know. I mean, it's just part of it. And so those are great best practices. So. Well, thanks again so much to our guests today. Thanks to all of you who contributed and shared stories and shared ideas and best practices. Thanks so much to Second Nature for having me as a guest celebrity host. It has been a pleasure to be with you guys today. I hope you're able to take some things from it and be inspired to go and do great things and proactively manage your properties and get some of those Triple Wins through proactive property awareness. I'll turn it back over to you Laura.
Laura MacMinn
You’re a master Phil. Thank you so much for your time and your energy and just great vibes that you and all of the amazing guests that you brought in to share their stories brought in. It was phenomenal. The hour went by way too fast. I can't believe that it was 60 Minutes. Thank you all for your time.
Andrew Smallwood
That's all for today's Triple Win Property management podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for sharing a piece of your life with us. We do not take it for granted. I also want to give a shout out to Carol Housel for everything she and her team does to make these possible. It's crazy to think about, over 5000 professional property managers have pressed play on episodes and season one and season two now, and we really want to encourage you to keep giving feedback because more and more people are listening. It's getting better and better and better thanks to everything that you're sharing with us. If you liked this enough to listen, I want to encourage you to share it with other people. You can give us feedback directly on the social media channels, Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever you're hanging out. You can also send us an email at TripleWin@SecondNature.com. And we just want to give more! There's no sales pitch here, just want to offer more resources that help you find and stack your next Triple Win and become a Triple Win driven property manager. So where can you find that? You can find a private Facebook group. You can find our blog, you can find our newsletters to find more resources all at RBP.SecondNature.com to search for what you're looking for there. And every time we see you, we want to see a better version of you and your business. To that end, keep it going, feel inspired. Take our encouragement and we'll see you next time.
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