Landlord Resources For Landlords

Are you a new landlord? A reluctant landlord? Or perhaps just an accidental landlord? Just starting out as a landlord or worse being thrown into the position of being a landlord can be rather eye opening.

Often new landlords get lulled into the business by it’s apparent simplicity. At first glance it’s just collecting rent and reaping profits.

Trust me, it’s not that easy!

After being in the business of being a landlord (note I said business!), since 2003 I’ve learned a lot. Some of the lessons I learned have been rather painful and some rather costly, but throughout these experiences I’ve learned to make the experience easier and less painful as I go.

Spending $$$’s to Save $$$’s

When I started out I knew I had to get up to speed fast.  I knew there was a ton to learn and since I’m an action taker, I didn’t want to drag it out.

To speed up the process, my wife and I spent thousands of dollars on training for just about everything under the Real Estate sun, including how to be landlords.

Much of the information we learned made a huge difference to how we ran our business (again that word business) and by putting money directly into our landlord education we were able to fast track everything.

However, some of the information and training we took was just a gateway for marketers to sell us more training we didn’t need. These bright shiny training courses often ended up being a distraction, a waste of time, or worse yet a stack of expensive binders and CD’s collecting dust on my book shelf.

Helping Landlords Learn The Rental Business

Again that word business, obviously it’s time to explain why I call it a business and this is lesson one! The first thing I try to explain to new landlords is they have to treat landlording as a business.

Landlords who don’t treat running their rental properties as a business often make painful and expensive mistakes that business owners don’t.

By treating your operation as a business it’s easier to take the emotions out of it and this was one of my first lessons as a landlord. You see, I had to evict my very first tenants, because I let emotions rule my decisions rather than following business rules. Worse yet, I evicted them just before Christmas. Aren’t I a Grinch?

Avoid Being The Grinch

It sucked having to kick them out, but when you have to make payments to the bank each month and the tenants aren’t paying, it comes directly out of your pocket. And that made Christmas around our house rather Grinchlike as well.

You see, money we had earmarked to spend on our kids for Christmas instead went into paying mortgages. By dealing with my landlording business emotionally it cost my kids the Christmas they should have had.

If that isn’t a costly lesson I don’t know what is.

How I Screwed Up

So where exactly did I go wrong? Oh where should I begin!

First off, when we let these tenants in, we felt bad for them as they had a really sad story. They were having problems finding a place, they had young kids and the mom was doing part time sewing work to help them get by. Life was tough for them and we could help them out.

How can you not want to help? We’ve since learned having systems and processes we follow help us make business decisions and not expensive heart felt decisions.

Second, we didn’t do all of our diligence on them before they moved in. If we would have called all their references, checked all of their details and looked into their history a bit more we would have found out why they were having problems finding places to live.

It was because other landlords were following screening systems and checking references and avoiding them like we should have. We’ve since implemented a very thorough screening system that we follow and problems like this have evaporated.

Third, we didn’t take immediate action when they missed a payment in October. We tried to help them because of the issues they previously had. Fast forward to December and they ended up with three months of free rent at my expense. Never mind the week over Christmas it took me to repaint the entire suite, to repair the damages and to replace everything that was broken (they only moved in during the summer!).

If we had taken action immediately and made it clear to the tenants that rent had to be paid, or they had to leave, I would have saved several thousand dollars and likely much of my time that was spent revitalizing my beautiful property.

How YOU Can Avoid Screwing Up

I don’t want anyone to have to go through some of the mistakes I made as a new landlord, which is where this site comes in. What I’m attempting to do is create a resource for all the aspiring landlords out there.

It doesn’t matter if you intended to become a landlord or are a reluctant landlord because you are stuck owning two properties, there will be tips you can learn and apply immediately on this site. Tips that will help you avoid mistakes, tips that will help curb expenses and tips that will make managing your properties easier.

Many of these tips will even help you become more profitable landlords, if you’re ok with that. From free training webinars to beginning landlord email courses, there will be many areas for you to learn to be an Educated Landlord.

To see an example of one of our free training sessions, why don’t you start by viewing our How to Screen Tenants recorded webinar. Just click on the underlined link to go take a look. Properly screening tenants is one of the key areas to make life as a landlord easier and we give you the keys to the city on this tactic.

Helpful Landlord Tips

It doesn’t just end there, you’ll find more tips throughout the site to help provide solutions to landlords in various areas. These include information on dealing with tenants, the business of property management and even renovations to maximize your rental property.

So go take a look around at the various categories listed on the right side and take a look around. If you have any questions, visit our Contact Us page and leave us a comment!