Show notes
Keith shares the top amenities tenants want in rental units, based on a survey by GreyStar with over 90,000 responses. He's joined by long-time friends of the show, Terry and Liz to discuss investment strategies, emphasizing the importance of buying properties in the "sweet spot" and the benefits of allowing pets, which can lead to longer tenant stays. They also touch on: Trade-offs Between Buying Multiple Cheap Properties vs. One Expensive Property Quality of Properties and Tenant Demographics Screening Tenants and Handling Pets New Construction vs. Renovated Properties Investor Life Cycle and Exit Strategies Resources: Visit MidSouthHomeBuyers.com and explore their investment opportunities. Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/540 GRE Free Investment Coaching:GREmarketplace.com/Coach For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments. You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review" For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text 'GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript: Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai Keith Weinhold 0:01 Welcome to GRE! I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. What are the features that tenants want in their rental units today, and what amenities are most profitable for real estate investors? Bedroom, count, bathroom, count, cover, parking, pet policy and more, what matters what doesn't, and how do you optimize operations to maximize your profit? It's a conversation with me and two terrific real estate pro guests today on get rich education. Speaker 1 0:31 Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, who delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests and key top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki, get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast or visit get rich education.com Corey Coates 1:17 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education. Keith Weinhold 1:33 Welcome to GRE from Tacoma, Washington to the took pony Palmyra bridge spanning the Delaware out of Philadelphia and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and this is get rich education, the voice of real estate investing Since 2014 I'm grateful for your faithful listenership. If you're new around here, join in at GRE we do this one big headline show every week, never more, never fewer, and truly, every single week for more than 10 years now, let's talk about amenities that tenants want in apartments today, before we pivot to discussing properties in general and single family homes in our conversation coming shortly. Now, you might have heard of GrayStar before they are international real estate developers and managers, well, they received more than 90,000 survey responses from apartment tenants on their most preferred features and amenities. So we've got a good sample size here, and Gray star compiled the top 20. Let's just hit the top five. This is important, because your tenant is your customer, and when you serve them, you're not only making them happy, you yourself are positioned to be more profitable long term. Here we go. The number one preferred feature is, do you have any guess what tenants want? It's the walk in closet. 51% of apartment tenants said that they are interested in this feature, and 37% would not rent an apartment without it. On average, they're willing to pay a $75 a month premium, and the survey shows that this is particularly important in Dallas and Miami, where over half said that they would not rent without it. The second most important amenity to apartment tenants is large windows with abundant natural light. 56% that they're interested in this feature. 31% would not rent an apartment without it, and on average, they're willing to pay an $80 a month premium for the large windows. When you think about how more tenants work from home today than five years ago? Well, big windows make more sense. Third most important is fresh air ventilation. 69% said that they're interested in it, and on average, they're willing to pay a $79 per month premium. The highest demand for fresh air ventilation is in Seattle, San Francisco and San Jose. We're talking about the top five amenities that apartment tenants want today in order, the fourth most important one is covered parking or a garage. 52% said that they're interested in this feature. Fully a third would not rent an apartment without it, and on average, they're willing to pay a $75 a month premium, and this is most important in urban areas with a covered parking or garage, where 42% will not rent a unit without it, in those urban areas. And then the fifth one is high efficiency appliances, 71% said they're interested in this feature. On average, they're willing to pay a $79 a month premium, and this, this high efficiency appliance thing, is more important for the high income tenant segment. So there they are, the top five features and amenities that. Apartment tenants want today. So to review, in order, it's a walk in closet, big windows, fresh air, ventilation, covered parking or a garage, and finally, high efficiency appliances. And listen in as I'll have a robust discussion with two season real estate pros. We're going to go beyond apartments about the features that tenants and real estate investors alike want today, and at times, they will talk about their home markets of Memphis, Tennessee and Little Rock, Arkansas, which are some of the most investor advantaged markets anywhere. And you'll have to calibrate some of these numbers to your market, because in these places, the typical single family rental purchase is just 100 to 200k and rent is between$900 and 1600 and at other times, we will talk more nationally and globally. Hey, well, I'd like to welcome in long time friends of the show, with the emphasis on long time since they were first here with us, more than 10 years ago on episode nine in 2014 those ever steady quality property providers from Memphis, Tennessee, mid south homebuyers, it's the return of their principal, Terry Kerr and investor relations lead, Liz Nalen, Terry and Liz, welcome back. Terry Kerr 6:25 Thank you, Keith. It's great to be here. Thanks so much, Keith, great to be back. Keith Weinhold 6:28 Yes, it's beginning to feel like a high school class reunion or something. I anticipate my high school class reunions just like I anticipate our discussion today. Let's talk about your individual takes on investment philosophy, common investor mistakes, and is some investor conventional wisdom true, or is it not? Because there's probably some of that that we have to debunk, I think a common one. And I know you get that question in there from investors and our listeners, you had that conversation it was it better to buy two cheap properties or one expensive property talk to us about some of those trade offs. Liz Nowlin 7:07 It's such an interesting thing, and there's so many factors you can look at. I broke it down for myself personally. Probably 12 years ago, I was asking myself that question as an investor and I ran 2 $50,000 houses, I'm dating myself against $100,000 house, and even when I manipulated the appreciation for the $100,000 house at the higher rate. And actually, we've been talking about investor conventional wisdom, and that is actually a piece of conventional wisdom I've not seen hold true as much, but that a higher end neighborhood is going to appreciate a more rapid pace than a more blue collar neighborhood. So that, as a side note, is a piece of conventional wisdom that I've seen a bit debunked, but it really ramping up the appreciation on the $100,000 house. I think I put it at reselling at like 180 or 190 down the line, and I put my $50,000 houses at maybe 90. You know, not as aggressive for me. Two houses beat one, every kind of way that I shook it out. And of course, the 50,000s had lower individual cash flows, but still, I think matching or higher than the 100. And the one thing I'm not sure that I put in there is two water heaters versus one water heater, two furnaces versus one, but running the same maintenance in general for them. Terry, what do you think Terry Kerr 8:32 I started out buying houses a little bit lower than I should and what I mean a little bit lower like and a little bit lower quality neighborhoods, and quickly learned that you can't buy too low, you know, you got to buy them, you know, in the sweet spot. So I bought in the A class areas. I bought in the areas that were a little too low, and then found the sweet spot. And then within the sweet spot, I've got a bunch of houses that are in the mid range where we typically operate, and personally, I've also got a bunch of duplexes. I like duplexes. So whether that's duplexes or a little bit upper or a little bit lower, personally, I like a mix of them. And I'm a buy and hold guy. So the stuff that I buy and hold I'm holding for the extra long time, initially, right out of the gate, you've got to look at things like cost segregation, closing costs and all that kind of deal. So really, everyone kind of needs to run their own numbers, because what might make sense for one person just might not make sense for someone else. And again, I'm kind of all over the board. You factor in how much you're going to spend in closing costs, how long do you intend to hold the property? What's it going to cost to sell the property in 1015, 20 years. But again, the cost segregation and just everyone needs to kind of run their own numbers. I think. Speaker 2 9:47 closing costs times two versus times one is an interesting point. Paying to mow a yard is paying to mow a yard. But then you get into another rub that I think I put them I don't think I did a square footage variation, but I like smaller Homes. It's less on paint. It's less on vacant utilities. The lower your rent is to a degree, the more people can afford to rent it, and the more recession proof you are, in my opinion. And I wasn't running through that as well, but in my antique valuation from 2012 that $100,000 house is going to be bigger often than the littler guys for the rent. Not you know, you can have a play between neighborhood quality and size of house with rents, which is a determining price. But Keith, what do you think two or one? Keith Weinhold 10:33 Yeah, the two thing versus one thing has a lot of trade offs. As an investor, I think about the advantages of where one is going to have less management, even though I use a property manager, but with respect to the size of the property, I think a lot of us know, and the new investor doesn't know, say, a 1500 square foot unit versus a 3000 square foot rental unit. Well, with the 3000 you often have twice the maintenance, but you only get a little more in rent income. So depending on the market you're in, typically something more like a 1500 square foot rental unit is going to work out better. Terry Kerr 11:06 Yep, I agree. And then also, another one of the things that I found out is buying houses a little too far up market going to be renting to folks that are more apt to buy a house, right? And so you might have more turnover and a more expensive house just because it's in, you're renting in an area where folks may just not stay as long. And one of the things that that, of course, we like about Memphis is it's predominantly a rental market, so we're able to kind of have the best of both worlds there. But Liz Nowlin 11:32 kind of, going back to investor conventional wisdom, I think a common mistake, or maybe a mistake isn't the right word, but I hear investors say that they would not buy a house that they would not live in, and I find that they tend to be very expansive times of their life. They often have young children are possibly planning to do it. And one of the best renters I ever had was a little old lady on Social Security, on a fixed income. She lived in my house for seven years. She paid on time like crazy. She added a garden that my home didn't have, and she would have never paid the extra $25 a month that a second bathroom would have called for from that property. And people forget that you'd people downsize as much as they upsize. There's divorce or just retirement, there's empty nesters. Families shift down as much as they shift up. Because investors are often they're talking to me from their four bedroom, two bath house, and they couldn't conceive of renting a smaller thing long term. They just kind of missed that aspect. Keith Weinhold 12:38 Right for me, it's definitely not a criterion. Would I live in the property myself? And that makes it eligible to hold as a rental? No, it's just the opposite. Really. I don't think any of my rentals are ones that I would prefer to live in, because it wouldn't upgrade my lifestyle. Yet, it's still doing the clean, safe, affordable, functional housing thing. We're talking about the quality of properties here. Class A, properties are deemed the best class, D, the worst. What are your thoughts? Is B class better than C class? And is a really the best of all? I mean, for example, do you get better renters in a class, or are they finicky and then they have the means to move out and go buy their own place, if they have a 790 credit score and they're living in a class a unit, what are your thoughts here? Terry Kerr 13:22 I think c plus to b minus is the sweet spot. You get into the a plus. Like you said, there's going to be more turnover, because folks are going to be buying houses, and then you've got expensive appliances that you're going to be responsible for fixing in and a lot of A plus neighborhoods, but the C minus, and I can only really truly speak to Memphis and Little Rock, but the C minus the B plus I feel is the sweet spot that's for the size of the property, as well as the typical length of rentership. Liz Nowlin 13:52 I managed a class for about a decade before I came to work for Terry in 2009 and we ran a great ship, and we had a great, beautiful high rise, but a year was really the average stay a class renters are more litigious. I was operating a building next to a law school, and I had young lawyers and law students, but that's going to be true in any kind of a class area. When you're paying a rent of that amount you are going to call in a work order because the doorknob is slightly loose, a lot of it. And very interestingly, I think we still had some collection issues, even renting to nurses, lawyers, just a small percentage. It's the dark side of property man…
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