Landlord Chat with Jess Basnet

Transcript

Jonathan Forisha:

I’m Jonathan and I’m here with a landlord and TurboTenant user, Jess Basnett. Alright. Thanks for joining me. Thanks, thanks for having me. Awesome. So to start off, how long have you been a landlord?

Jess Basnet:

So it’s been about 10 years now. I’m trying to think a little bit. I’ve been a little bit longer. What happened was, in my previous career, I was teaching English in Mexico, which is random, but my dad, that was right around when the economy changed. So he jumped into the market and sort of purchasing properties after 2008, surprise, surprise.

And when I came back from Mexico, he was looking for some help to manage those properties. So that’s kind of when I got into it. So it’s been probably since 2010. So I don’t know, maybe it’s been longer than that, man, 13 years. Sorry, I’m like 10 years. That’s a couple extra, but I guess it took us a couple years to get going. So I’ll say 10 solid years.

Jonathan Forisha:

10 solid years. That’s pretty good. And how many rentals do you own right now?

Jess Basnet:

So we have 25. My dad has 24. And then I have my own personal rental that we just, I mean, my husband who started our own little side biz that we’re going to hopefully continue doing.

Jonathan Forisha:

Awesome. And is the plan, is dad going to get out of the business? You’re going to take those over?

Jess Basnet:

Yeah. So that’s a great question. Yes. That is the plan for right now. And he’s still, he’s retired. So that’s kind of his retirement thing. And he likes to kind of have these rental properties. He checks them out. He drives by them all the time.

They’re all in the Denver area, more or less, metro area. And then, yes, he has groomed me to be able to take over for him. There’s also the option, I have three siblings. There’s four of us. So they are all obviously aware of the company, but I don’t think they want to rent it. So it might be me continuing running that.

Jonathan Forisha:

We had it. We heard that a lot from users, you know, older users, especially who are like, I’ve built this rental business and now my kids aren’t really interested. It’s always interesting how people choose to carry on or not carry on.

Jess Basnet:

Right. And that’s interesting too, because that is why I got my real estate license. I am a licensed realtor in Colorado, but I got it to help my dad start buying because he had bought some. He actually started fixing and flipping at the beginning. So I was more watching that. And it was really lucrative at the beginning, but then it kind of, the market switched and so did he. So, I mean, there’s still people who do that in Denver. But I don’t feel like that’s maybe the number one way to leverage your money.

Jonathan Forisha:

I’m sure that’s gotten a lot less lucrative as our housing prices have skyrocketed.

Jess Basnet:

Right. Although I have noticed a slight turn of, I’ve seen more foreclosures popping up lately and shore sales, which is interesting. So who knows? And maybe that was just a fluke, but we’ve been seeing some of those pop up lately. That’s interesting. I know. So, yeah.

Jonathan Forisha:

So I was going to ask you about your realtor experience. So you got your license specifically to help your dad buy properties? Correct.

Jess Basnet:

Help him buy and just to manage to. I think she had his license as well, but he’s kind of faded out. And so just to be able to do that, I wanted to kind of keep. And the good thing is with continuing, just kind of staying up on top of what’s going on with the laws of Colorado and Denver specifically. And so that’s also kind of the plus of me keeping that license, licensure while we have our rental properties. So, yeah.

Jonathan Forisha:

That makes sense. I know a lot of people who get into real estate investing, they wonder, should I get my real estate license? Obviously, it helps to avoid that fee, the commission fee, right? But would you recommend it otherwise?

Jess Basnet:

Actually, I don’t know if I would. You are held to a higher standard as a realtor and that’s fine. But I also think my dad letting his license go and stuff, he’s not held to this higher of a standard, which I’m not trying to say, try to get out of stuff.

But you got to really stay on your, your continuing ed and really got to stay on Colorado law or wherever whatever state you’re at, you need to stay on that if you’re going to do it. So I’m not saying it’s a no-no. You save money on some ways, but it’s also now you’re expecting you have to have certain bank accounts and things like that as a realtor that to be careful about. So, yeah.

Jonathan Forisha:

And how has it been as a realtor, especially like this last year? I mean, things are slow, right?

Jess Basnet:

Right. It was a wild ride. It is definitely slower. What’s hard is there is definitely buyers who still want to buy in the Denver area. I know every market’s unique, but just that affordability is really tough right now. So I have encouraged a lot more of my, a lot more of my clients to, that, that can afford to buy rental properties. It’s actually been a really great, you know, I helped a lot of investors this year is when I should say that’s more what I ended up doing, which is crazy.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah, we’ve heard a lot about the, you know, they call it golden handcuffs. Oh, yeah. Like you’re, you’ve got this super low interest rate on your house, but you’ve outgrown the house for whatever reason. So hanging onto that, making that a rental.

Jess Basnet:

Correct. Yep. And that’s actually how we got our first, my husband and I got our first rental. We kept our old house moved into a new one. And again, both interest rates are quite low and we don’t feel like we want to get rid of them. So we’re just like, all right. And then moving up, you know, we’ve talked about, oh, do we want to move to different part of Denver or something? And we’re like, maybe we’ll just wait. Yeah. The price to move is more expensive. So, yeah. And that’s a lot of buyers or sellers, I would say right now.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah. Well, let me ask the super annoying question that I’m sure you get all the time. Sure. Uh, our rates going to come down. What do you think?

Jess Basnet:

Um, I do, I do think, I mean, they’ve already come down, which is so great. We’re, um, six and a half. And even my lender has been able to get under that, which is great. Yeah. And I do think it’ll continue. I personally think it’ll continue to go down. Will, I don’t think we’ll see sub fours ever again.

I don’t even know if we’ll see sub fives in my personal opinion, but I don’t know. And I do see these next six months will be really telling. And I just feel like personally, our market, like our actual economy has still got another six months to go of really fine tuning what’s going on. So, yeah, um, I would say hang in there. And honestly, I do feel like for buyers, I would, I would still, if you can afford buy, because I don’t think prices are going to be going down in Denver. So that seems to be a continual trend. I’ve not seen them go down in the 10 years I’ve had my license.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah. Yeah. And at least you have a lower competition right now. Correct.

Jess Basnet:

And that is a really great reason to get in. Yeah. And that’s why you can actually get some negotiating done. You can get lower pricing with your, um, you know, you don’t have to come in at asking price things like that, which is great. Or get things fixed in the home, which is not an option in the past.

Jonathan Forisha:

Well, are you planning on buying any more rental properties in the near future?

Jess Basnet:

Well, yeah, actually. So when we’ve kind of noticed this stuff going on, I’ve been keeping an eye out and kind of keeping an eye in certain areas of Denver and stuff. And so I do see my husband and I are still kind of thinking about or my dad, kind of all three of us are kind of chatting about, um, still leaning into wanting to maybe grab a couple more properties just because we’re kind of seeing things turn over.

And, um, with the slower market, we kind of have more negotiating power. So we have kind of been looking into that. So, um, yeah, we are, we kind of have our eyes out and we’re looking for specific properties that my dad likes certain stuff, which is great. And so just keeping an eye out for it.

Jonathan Forisha:

Is he looking for different things than you are?

Jess Basnet:

I think so. Yes. I, um, my dad has this, he has his own formula. It doesn’t. And I’m not saying you, there’s really no reason why he just has certain things where he likes like a three bedroom, two bath is his sweet spot. He loves that.

And it is good, but I would be more open to, I’m not, I don’t have a problem with the two bedroom, two bath or something bigger or small, you know, so he’s very like, I like three, two, and we have properties that are not fitting in all of that, but that’s like kind of where his, so he looks for something really specific in that way. Um, so that’s interesting. And, um, yeah. So I think those are kind of some of the things that he kind of likes to, there’s location wise. He likes, he likes West side.

Those are more pricey. I like, honestly, I love the Aurora area lately. It’s been really great, especially South Aurora. I kind of like some of that area. So yeah, just depends.

Jonathan Forisha:

How do you decide, I mean, looking at even three twos, again, just looking at the Denver Metro, three twos are, they very wildly, right? There’s some areas that were built like post World War II, where it’s like a thousand square feet, but it’s a three two. Right. And then there are newer homes that are maybe 2000 square feet, but still a three two. Right.

Jess Basnet:

And that’s so funny. He, I don’t think he’s as picky to be honest. I mean, he does lay out what stuff kind of matters, but like if it was a ranch, three, two with those six by 10 foot rooms, he’s like, that’s all right. We have a couple of those. We have one in kind of a little bit Southern South Denver kind of area. And it is, it’s, well, it’s a four or two and it’s, we finished out the basement. So it’s got the two bedrooms up, two bedrooms down, but there you can’t fit a king in any of the bedrooms. So I’m like, that’s interesting, but he thinks it’s great. Honestly, for roommates, it’s a great house. They don’t get king sized beds, but it has been a really great house and the location’s great and things like that.

But it’s just funny. Some of those old little like bungalow homes. I think you’re right. Personally, for me, I wouldn’t, I’d be like, I’d rather have, you know, a bigger room or, you know, something that’s more attracting to tenants. Renting, but he doesn’t seem to mind that as much.

Jonathan Forisha:

All right. So you’ve mentioned education a few times. Yeah. You used to teach English in Mexico, which sounds awesome. Yeah. But you also mentioned like the education as a requirement of real estate licensure. What about education as a landlord? How did you, how did you learn everything you know?

Jess Basnet:

That is great. It was a lot of trial and error, which is not, that’s kind of why I think teaching or having TurboTenet is awesome because I just, it’s nice to learn something without having to learn it like firsthand. You got to get the information second hand.

Someone’s already gone through it, can share that wisdom with you so you can avoid some of that stuff. So I would say, I started off with just kind of. So, I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think

Jonathan Forisha:

that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point.

Jess Basnet:

I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. Certified is the word to teach a Landlord 101 class. For realtor’s, I can provide a CE credit, which is nice. I also provide it for a lot of my clients and friends just so they can learn about it. That’s awesome. They can also have CE if they want. But I don’t know if it helps them very much if they don’t have a life.

Jonathan Forisha:

Is that only in Colorado?

Jess Basnet:

Only in Colorado, you’re right. I only do it for Colorado, mainly. Because I know Colorado Law.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah. How do you stay up to date on state specific laws?

Jess Basnet:

Yeah, that’s great. So part of that just being a realtor we have through, you know, my local title company or through the real estate companies that are in Denver. I usually stay up, you know, follow that. There’s NAR, the National Association of Realtors. It’s gotten a bad rap in the last year or so.

Not having a good time right now. Not doing so great, but they have offered, they do a lot of CE and classes as well as, who is the correct color of real estate, certification. Anyways, there’s a bunch of Colorado kind of, I mean, it’s like clubs, organizations that kind of offer these classes or and then I honestly try to stay at like, you know, city of Denver website, I hop on there and just kind of read up on it as often and kind of even watching the news. I know it’s kind of random, but yeah, once you kind of catch with a wind of something, you’re like, uh-oh, like Denver has this started this, you know, landlord licensure program. I was like, oh, better learn about that. So just calling people trying to get as much information as possible is kind of how I go about it.

Jonathan Forisha:

So you work with a lot of new landlords. What are some of the biggest tips you have for somebody who’s just getting into this?

Jess Basnet:

Oh, I do think you should be educated. So talk to a landlord that you, someone that is a landlord already, just ask them, you know, what are the pros and cons?

What have you noticed, you know, kind of doing this because I don’t think it’s for everybody. And that doesn’t mean you can’t have a rental property. It might just mean you should have it managed by someone else because you know, you are on call 24-7. So I got phone calls. The favorite time is holidays, weekends, especially Sundays are really popular time to get phone calls.

I don’t know if why that is, but it’s a bummer if you want a normal nine to five, it’s kind of not what you do is for you. So just kind of being aware you’re going to get phone calls whenever you know, and you have to be available. And the other thing is I would usually never be more than an hour away from my rental property if I’m going to manage it just because if something does go awry, you need to be able to get there. So yeah, I think that’s kind of my first little starting tips I’d probably say. Actually, one more I’m going to throw in there. I would also have some money in reserves.

So things break all the time. I used to say 5,000, but I feel like with the change in inflation, I might bump that up to 10,000. You’ll have at least 10 grand in your pocket to be able to fix stuff with the rental property. So I think some people don’t think about that and then they’ve got this great property, but they’re kind of barely making ends meet so that can be really tough.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, let’s talk about TurboDen and your experiences on our platform. How long have you used this?

Jess Basnet:

It’s been maybe five years now, maybe halfway through. I could say that four or five years. Yeah. I think that sounds about right. We definitely, I started using you personally a little bit sooner and I had another realtor recommended you or recommended your company to me. So I had seen it and kind of been messing around at the before, but then we kind of moved my dad’s whole company onto it probably right before COVID. And we didn’t really know. We were just like, oh, let’s just do a software because before we were, everything was like literally paper, pens. It was very old school. Yeah, we said a lot.

I don’t recommend that way of doing it, but I was just kind of like, dad, we got to do something else. This is killing us just because we were missing a ton. And it was just really tough. And so when I saw it, I was like, so it was more convincing of my dad to be like, let’s try this.

So I would like bring one property and put it on there and be like, what do you think? So it took me a little while. So probably took about two years to get everybody on there. But I just slowly was siphoning and then once after two years, and then COVID was perfect because then we had a contactless way to pay because people were mailing checks or dropping off in person. And so that was the other huge benefit of TurboTenet is offering a way for people to pay. So that was really the huge, that’s kind of what got the final push to the last property.

So like dad, now people, you know, we can’t see people COVID’s going on. So yeah, that made it official like by 2020, whatever, middle of the year, we were like, all ready to go.

Jonathan Forisha:

So when you were moving people over, did you wait until the lease was up? Or did you do at mid lease with some of them?

Jess Basnet:

At first, when I first started, I was waiting till leases were up mainly because I was like, I don’t know how to do this. But then I was like, oh, I don’t have to wait anymore.

I can upload the lease. And everyone gets a copy, which was great. My dad was giving out paper copies. It was terrible.

And people were losing them and stuff like that. And then the other thing I would do is, yeah, I realized it was it was almost simpler to while they were already tenants, just to kind of create an account. Not that having someone apply and do all that was hard, but it was just even easier for me to just create the tenants, add their information and add the leases and everything. So once I figured it out, we got it moving a lot quicker. Nice.

Jonathan Forisha:

And so favorite features sounds like rent payments was kind of the catalyst.

Jess Basnet:

That was yeah. So I do, I love the rent payments. I love that you have options too for rent payments. If someone needs to use a credit card, great. Yes, there’s a fee, but love that that’s an option. And so that was the catalyst, I think, or one of the main reasons. But the marketing piece is awesome. And the and the application, that was the other reason the big push is that I was doing applications like literally, I guess we had an, we have a website that’s very terrible for my dad’s business.

Truly terrible. The only thing that’s kind of nice about it is that there’s no login or anything. So if your information were to get lost, it would go nowhere, I guess, but that’s not great. But anyways, you would apply and he would ask for like social security numbers, things like that. And then sometimes it wouldn’t go through, but it would just not go anywhere.

Or paying rent, it just wouldn’t go through or just stay in your account and things like that. So it was just he had a very archaic, not great system. So having your system of doing the background check, which we didn’t do, I would call like multiple references. It was just way more work. I still call references, but I only call one reference now.

I used to call three to four. So I just, it was very, I mean, we, we vetted them very well, I would think, but it was just a lot more work. So a lot of work. Yeah.

Yeah. And the fact that tenants can apply within minutes, everything, all the information’s in your hands was huge. Whereas I was like gathering like a paper application and then going through it and I’m like, Oh, you didn’t fill out this part. Sorry. Come back with this part filled out, you know, so it was wild. It was, I don’t recommend.

Yeah. So I think those were the two main things that I really liked, but if I could add to that, I think things that were little bonuses that I was like, Oh, this is great. The education piece, the thing that Turbo tenant offers some great education or just even the articles you guys sent out are so fun. I’m like, Oh, I don’t know about that. So I’ll click and learn more about it. Or I do know about that.

What do they have to say? So I think that part is huge. We always had our own leases that we had created, but I loved looking at yours and being like, Oh, we didn’t have that in ours. So I would, you know, add things in and be like, Oh, all right. So I think that stuff was also really helpful. So yeah.

Jonathan Forisha:

Awesome. If you had to describe Turbo tenant to a fellow landlord, how would you?

Jess Basnet:

Yes, which I do describe in my class often. So I just say it’s, it’s a, I guess, software is the right word. I don’t know my terminology, great, but or a website that is free for landlords to use, although you can pay a minimal fee pretty much in my mind to get some extra perks. But basically, to market your property, process, you know, people applying to your property and then help them pay their rent. So those are kind of the three main things that I think are huge that Turbo tenant does.

So that to take care of all that without having to create your own paperwork or your own process or hiring a lawyer or this, that and the other. It’s like, it’s pretty sweet. I don’t know if we would have been as successful or been able to grow as big as we had without it. So it’s pretty helpful tool.

Jonathan Forisha:

So March is Women’s History Month. Do you have any advice for women looking at becoming real estate investors?

Jess Basnet:

Oh man, I think this is a really great job for women. And actually, the majority of the landlords I talked to are usually women, which is interesting. Not always. I mean, there are men too. But the reason I really like it for women is just it’s kind of a fun way it’s so flexible in a sense.

So yes, you get the phone call midnight, but also you get no phone calls for weeks, right, or whatever. So I think that makes it really nice. I do like, you know, you’re working with people, I like doing that, you’re working with families or, you know, whoever, maybe I mean, we have a lot of students, I have some students from some, you know, universities and stuff in some of our properties. And I love, I love the different kind of demographics and different people that I work with. I also speak fluent Spanish. So I love to work with tenants that speak a different language or things like that. So it’s kind of a fun way for me to just get to know people in Denver, to be honest.

Jonathan Forisha:

Awesome. Well, if people want to learn more about you, or to check out your class, if they are in Colorado, how could they find you?

Jess Basnet:

I feel like Instagram is probably the best way to kind of that’s where I kind of connect with a lot of people. And then it kind of connects to my website and everything there. So it’s at realtor.jesu. J-E-S-S-V-E-S-N-V-U-K. So that’s it. Excellent.

Jonathan Forisha:

Yeah. Well, thanks for joining me, Jess. Sure. Thanks so much.