THE BLOG

Always use the right ‘Rental Agreement’ that will protect you #51

Hi! It’s Lou Brown. I am back with another one of my 101 cash flow accelerators. And this is number 51. Always use the right rental agreement that will protect you. Well, I’ll tell you what, over the years I’ve definitely learned that paperwork matters. And if you’re serious about this business, you’ve got to understand that you are in a contract-related business. That you’re going to contract with sellers, you’ve got to contract with buyers, you’re going to contract with occupants of your property. Sometimes they’re renters, sometimes they’re buyers. And having the right paperwork is an absolutely critical step in the process. And by that I mean that you have to have paperwork that protects you, that negotiates for you, and that covers your assets. When things get a little wonky, as they sometimes do with crazy people, that might move into your property. So what happens is that we give you the tools to be able to do that.

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April 29, 2020, By Lou Brown

Charge extra person fees #52

Welcome back! It’s Lou Brown with another of my amazing 101 Street Smart cash flow accelerators. I’ve been in this business over 40 years buying, holding and selling property and I’ve learned a lot of valuable things. And one of the things I talked about in number 51 was the use of profit centers and adding in profit centers into your agreement because people are number one, willing to pay them if you’re willing to offer certain things. And now number 52 is Charge Extra Person Fees, extra charges when people move in. Now what this means is let’s say that somebody is applied for your property and there’s two adults and two children and then you find out later that there’s additional people living in the property. Now that only happens a lot. So, I want you to be aware of that. That in the agreement we actually have built into our Standard Rental Agreement an amazing additional profit center for you that says if you’re going to move in additional people, then you’re going to pay $100 per person.

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April 29, 2020, By Lou Brown

Charge Pet Fees #53

Welcome! It’s Lou Brown with another one of my 101 Street Smart cash flow accelerators. And in this one, in this series I’ve been talking about when managing property and having the right agreement and in that agreement can be certain things that definitely will put you in a position of success. And this one is Charge Pet Fees. Listen, when people have animals, they love those animals in some cases more than they love their children. The animal comes to them, they wag their tail, they love that animal. The animal loves the person and everything is so cool. And so people are willing to pay for these animals. Now imagine that when someone discloses on their application that they have animals, we will allow upto two. Now we’re mainly focused in the single family business. We do have multi-families. I’ve done many, many multi-families in the past and we definitely also want to attract people that want to stay.

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April 29, 2020, By Lou Brown

Charge Pet Rent #54

Hi! It’s Lou Brown. I’m back with another of my 101 Street Smart cash flow accelerators and I’ve got one for you number 54 charge pet rent. Yeah baby. So not only, and I’ve been talking about in this series of managing your properties and additional profit centers that you can earn. We’ve identified over 25 different profit centers or additional income you can earn over and above what your regular mortgage versus the rent is. That little profit right there, but this is over and above money that you can make in your great real estate business. And we’ve developed these over 40 years of being in this business. It is great because people don’t resist you on these things. They love you. You’re giving them an opportunity. One of the things that we do is we offer our path to Home Ownership Program to our potential buyers and it’s so exciting because they’re gearing towards ownership of a property and we want them to treat that property like it was theirs.

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April 29, 2020, By Lou Brown

Charge Additional Rent not Late Charges #55

Hi, it’s Lou Brown. Welcome back to another of my 101 cash flow generators. You know, I love this business. I’ve been buying, holding and selling property for over 40 years. I’ve learned some amazing things during this time and one of them is how we deal with collecting our money. You know, when someone doesn’t pay as agreed, what happens is that you have to take them to court and you have to create an eviction and unfortunately sometimes you have to actually set people out of your properties and when you get to court, sometimes the judges want to take your money and give it to the resident. And they do that in a form of late charges. Even though late charges may be a part of your contract, and in fact they are, what the judges will often do is strike through the late charges and not give them to you in the judgment.

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April 29, 2020, By Lou Brown

Rent Discount Encourages On-Time Rental Payments #56

Hey! It’s Lou Brown. I’m back with another of my 101 cash flow generators. I hope you love this. This one is about the discounted rent. Now, years ago I invented this idea and the thought was, Hey, if we set the rent at a certain amount and then we Mark it up, say $100 per month, then when they pay on time they earn a discount down to the amount that we would actually like to collect. And if they don’t pay on time, then what happens is they pay the higher rent, they didn’t earn their discount, so it’s an earned discount and the way they earn their discount is agreeing to pay on time. And so when they pay on time and they pay the lower amount of rent, which is actually the amount of rent that you would like to get for that property, and when they don’t realize that you’re going to have to spend time, energy, you may have to even spend resources to collect that.

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April 27, 2020, By Lou Brown

Exclude appliances from the Rent #57

Hey everybody! It’s Lou Brown. Welcome back to another of 101 additional profits. Since there’s ways that you can increase the amount of money that you’re receiving on every property that you do. And one of the ways that we’ve discovered that we can do that is the deal with the appliances. You know, I discovered years ago that appliances were one of the biggest headaches you can ever have. It was amazing to me. I had a whole bunch of apartments and people would have a tiny little refrigerator with a tiny little freezer and if the refrigerator went out, they would say that they had lost $400 worth of meat because the freezer went out and they lost $400 worth of valuable meat. I discovered that being in the appliance business was not a business I wanted to be in. And so years ago I started just carving out and disappearing appliances. So now if the home had a dishwasher, it still has one.

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April 27, 2020, By Lou Brown

Do not collect rent on the first of the month collect before the first #58

Hey! It’s Lou Brown. I’m back with another of my 101 profit centers to help you build and sustain a wonderful real estate investing business. And one of the things I discovered over time was that when we connect with our residents, we want them to be responsible around what they’re doing with our property. Most of your residents have a lot of different bills due on the first of the month. So I rolled that back and I said, what if we got paid out of the middle of the month check instead of the first of the month check. So I rolled it back to the 25th, now I found out that there’s about 13 different benefits from collecting the rent early before the first of the month. One of them is that everybody else is following they’re dispossessories later after the first of the month, they usually wait five days before they file dispossessories.

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April 27, 2020, By Lou Brown

Don’t collect Security Deposits collect Move in Fees #59

Hi, it’s Lou Brown! And I am back with some more information. Having been a landlord now for over 40 years, I know what it’s like to buy and hold property and I know what it’s like to do everything you can do to be able to collect your money and to be able to use your money. You know, one of the challenges I learned early on is that most States have security deposits and most landlords collect the security deposit. Well, one of the things you got know about a security deposit is it’s not your money. It is the residents money and that money in many States, you have to put that into a separate bank account and you have to hold it there. And in some States you have to tell them what bank it’s in, what the account number is. And in some States you even have to pay interest on the money.

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April 27, 2020, By Lou Brown

Build in your rental increases #60

Hi, it’s Lou Brown. I am back with another of our 101 cash flow accelerators. It’s so exciting to share with you things that I’ve learned over being in this business for over 40 years. And one of the things I’ve discovered is to build into your rental agreement rental increases. Now what that means is that you’re telling your resident in advance that the rent may increase by X percent annually. So what that means is that you now can, can prescribe in advance that the rent may go up, say 10% and then what that means is now we tell the resident at what we call the signing ceremony. This is when we meet and we go over that document. This is when we train them to be a good resident. This is when we tell them everything that they need to know about becoming a good resident and being a good resident in good standing with us.

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April 27, 2020, By Lou Brown