7 Essential Tips for New Landlords

I went from owning zero rental properties and knowing nothing about real estate to owning 25 in a year, quitting my job, and sharing all of that through Instagram. I got started investing in 2020 during the pandemic, and it changed my entire life. I was graduating college and going into a commission-based job in commercial real estate — that's when I was really uncertain. Nobody was leasing office space, so I decided to build some passive income by buying rental properties, and I didn't realize it would change everything.

During the pandemic everybody was looking for connection, looking for community, and so was I. As I documented the whole journey, everybody was wondering how I did it. I was just a normal person — no one special, don't come from a family with money or a bunch of real estate investor family members. I think I was just representative of a lot of people and they saw themselves in me, wanting to know if I could do it, how could they do it. I was always willing to share the things I learned along the way. I'm still learning, still growing, still buying rental properties, and I'm really thankful I've had the platform to give back and share with people how they can buy their first rental property.

For me it was the tangible aspect of real estate. When thinking about different investment options, you think about stocks, which a lot of people invest in — maybe it's just the thing that everyone does — but it's very intangible. I just didn't understand why they go up, why they go down. It seems random, so emotional. I can't call the CEO and ask them why stocks are going up or down. But with real estate you can touch it, you can feel it, it makes sense, you can control it. That's why I gravitated toward investing in real estate.

Find a good community of other investors to share resources with, because it is very overwhelming at first. You need an attorney, you need an insurance agent, you need a lender — so many people. Sometimes it feels like finding a needle in a haystack to find the right ones. But if you're in a good community and talking to other investors, you're able to say, "Hey, from experience I use Steadily, I recommend them." It helps cut through all the noise and saves a lot of trial and error when you get recommendations from people who have been through it.

I'm based in the Bay Area, California, where homes are a million dollars plus for just a little tiny shoebox. When I was getting started I was 22 and I just didn't have any money or didn't qualify to invest here locally, so I had to start looking out of state in more affordable markets. I had a friend I met through work who mentioned casually that he had a couple of rental properties in Cincinnati, Ohio. When I was racking my brain thinking about where I could possibly invest, I remembered how affordable his rental properties were — they were $100,000 and cash flowing. So I called him up and asked him to show me through the market and introduce me to realtors, agents, and contractors.

In general, when you're trying to find a market to invest in, I like to say go where you have a very strong competitive advantage, and that advantage usually revolves around the people you know. It's the same as creating a community and asking for referrals — find a market where you know other investors who can introduce you to their team so your learning curve is a lot faster and you're getting direct-source referrals instead of going through multiple agents or contractors to find the best one.

We launched in September of last year and have just over 400 members. We're really geared toward helping people who live in higher cost-of-living areas — or just people who can't afford to invest in their own backyard — and teaching them how to access more affordable markets across the country. We teach people how to pick a market, how to analyze deals, what makes a good deal. We're also very big on introducing people to our members' network. Something that was really big for me when starting out was having the support of my Instagram community where I could ask any question at any time and people were willing to provide referrals to different contractors and agents. But I realize that's such a big blessing that not everybody has — a lot of people don't want to build a public Instagram audience. So having a forum where people get full education on how to do everything from start to finish in a very actionable way, plus that community component where you can network with other investors who are actively investing across the country, ask for referrals, and get questions answered as you're buying that rental property — that's really valuable.

It's really important to have people who are focused on investors — I'll just say that as a blanket statement across all your team members. You'll talk to a lot of insurance agents who are very used to helping homeowners, and it's a very different experience from talking to a company specifically geared toward helping investors, understanding how numbers work, and understanding how it fits into the larger picture of owning a rental property or portfolio, and how umbrella insurance works. Having someone geared toward investing is vital with all your team members — insurance included, as well as lenders and others. You're wanting to protect your asset, and that's where insurance comes in — protection for worst-case scenarios. You hope hail never hits your roof, but the reality is that in a lot of places there are floods, there are wildfires, things you need to protect against. Whether you have investors or banks on the properties, you need a way to insure those assets.

I've passed the majority of my rental properties over to property managers. I used to be a self-manager — reviewing credit reports, looking through income sources, calling past landlord references to ask about the quality of the tenant. If you're in that phase, it's really important to do your due diligence. A lot of people will ask for landlord references but then get scared and never actually call them, so part of due diligence is making sure you can figure out as much as possible upfront to have the best chance of getting the best tenant inside your property.

For people who are specifically out of state, I think a really good option is just to hire a property manager. It's typically not super expensive — maybe 8 to 10% of your gross rent — but as an out-of-state owner I'm not driving by my property every day. I don't know if there are sticks in my gutters that Google Maps isn't showing me. Having boots on the ground to look at the property, understand where deferred maintenance could be coming, and get ahead of it is a very important part of owning rental properties and keeping them in good shape for your tenants.

We're currently under contract on a boutique hotel, so we're expanding into a new asset class while still buying long-term rental and midterm rental properties in the Midwest. I also wanted to find something that pushed me creatively and is a little closer to home. It's in Palm Springs, so for the first time I may not only be an out-of-state investor. I'm really excited to explore a new type of asset class and build a more experiential, hospitality-based company.

The best place to find me is on Instagram at lattes_and_leases, or if you want to hear more about the academy you can find it on Instagram at out-of-state investor academy or at outofstateinvestoracademy.com.