Episode 41: "Lessons from the Landlady" with Wendy Myers
Summary
Wendy Myers is a professional real estate investor and landlady of over 400 rental units. She knows her business! In today's episode, I interview Wendy about her newly published book entitled "Lessons from the Landlady". We talk not only about how Wendy got into the business, but also about the millions of folks who are going to be thrown into the rental business as the baby boomers pass on. She gives advice, funny and cringeworthy stories, all the while showing her passion as a landlady. Join me as we learn more from the Landlady!
Enjoy today's conversation? Please leave us a review below – even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening and tag us on Facebook or LinkedIn at @mylifeasalandlord so we can thank you personally!
Listen to full episode :
Full Episode Transcription
Welcome to my life as a landlord where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If you're
looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the right
show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it.
Welcome to my life as a landlord, where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If you're looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the right show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it. Hello. Hello and welcome to my life as a landlord. Today is episode number 41 and this is a landlord perspective and am so excited to welcome my first guest, Wendy Myers. Yay! Welcome, Wendy. So excited to have you on the show. This your first podcast. I'm so happy
I'm excited. I've been following you and listening to you and you had such a great voice, so it's great to see you.
Thank you. I know this actually. We've been emailing for quite some time. This is the first time that we've actually talked and seen each other, which is really kind of fun. So I am so happy to hear that your book is launched. There's all kinds of things in motion for you we're going to talk about, but there we go. Lessons from the landlady. That's good. Right. Um, I know that you are. You're based in Eastern Standard Time, though. You're in the Eastern time zone. Where are you? Yes, Ohio. Everybody through at some point. But here I am. Yes.
Nice. Perfect. No. No. That was one of the issues, was time zones, because we are normally based in Hawaii and but we're during the summer we're in Canada. So I'm in Canada. I'm in Pacific time zone at the moment. But you know, the joy of remote landlord at this point if you've got your systems down. But yeah was just curious
Yeah. You do quite a bit of traveling. Yes.
Yes we do. Yeah. Especially now we're empty nesters. And now that like you said, we've been doing this 20 years, so we got our systems in place and we can take off and go places and try some new projects.
There you go. What? How did you get started? You're 20 years into it. What started
it? It started actually on accident. We bought a piece of land. Well, actually, we bought some a duplex that was on some land. Thinking we might expand in a future where my husband's office was or the parking lot was cheap, and we actually had a plan to build a building and it kind of all went south. But meanwhile I had tenants, right? And I had to figure out what to do. I had never done this. I was an English major. I was teaching English. That's what my true passion and love is. But this was just a little side gig and we found out we kind of liked it, and it just kind of snowballed from there. It just, you know, so we started with one duplex and we now have 400 units. So that's. That's what happened
Now you say you've got 400 units. I'm guessing they're not all in Ohio, and they're not all in your backyard.
Correct? Yes. Actually, most of them are in Ohio, but they we we, you know, we kept, like, once we got that one duplex, it kind of gets addicting. You know, I'll get another triplex or duplex and word starts to get out. And I kept saying we're done 23. We're done 40, we're done 100. That's a good number. But then we did a big leap right during the housing bubble, which was fortuitous for us because once we bought these five big complexes, nobody moved. And it started because there was a 75 unit that we admired in our town. We were talking to the guy and he said, oh, yeah, I'd like to unload that. But if you take that, you've got to take four more buildings. And guess what? A hundred of the units are three hours away from you. And, you know, so it was just a leap. I mean, just a that was our big jump. And it was. Yeah. And I remember laying awake at night, you know, and I'd be like, okay, I need $85,000 every month to make this work, you know, and I'm, I'm like, tut, the numbers aren't working. And he's like, we already made a decision, you know, has to work. And it did. It worked. You know we had done our homework. It's just we all have that panic moment. And you know that's the beauty of having your own business. You will work it out. You will make it work. And if you have a mistake, you'll fix it and you'll move on and you'll do it again and move on. And when you work for yourself, it's your money that's on the line. So you make it work. So that's that's what happened there. So we ended up with and we do have some we have a triplex in West Virginia too. Yeah. So it is interesting where you I hear you talking about that your difference between Hawaii and Canada, a whole nother country. And, and so those of us landlords that have landladies of places everywhere, you got to look at those laws and all different places, which is a little bit of a complication, but at times.
Wow. Oh my goodness. You have so much going on. So. Yes. Now do you self-manage? Do you have property managers? Do you have help in these locations? How do you manage all this?
Yeah, I have help and I've fantastic people. You're only as good as your people, right. And but for many years, I did it myself. That's what I did. It was just a side hustle. I was teaching classes. I had three kids running around, you know, I'd be at a soccer match. I'd be like, yeah, I have a two bedroom. It's 650 a month. And, you know, just everywhere I'd be playing Chutes and Ladders with the kids and saying, you'd better pay your rent or you're getting or get out. And it wasn't always pretty at times. My kids really, you know, I apologize to them in my book because there were times that, you know, that the business was everything. It was the baby. And, you know, the elephant in the room that we all had to take care of. But I learned pretty quickly, and I talk about this in my book, too, the importance of finding people who do things better than you do and letting them do that and delegating and taking that piece, oh, I'm not really good at this. They need to do that. And and working at what your strengths are and that type of thing because it's fun. You know, I loved, you know, collect the rent and look at it and play with it and put it in the system. But anybody can do that really. Right. I got to be doing more other things. And so I had to learn to let go. And so I do have two property managers, one up in canton, Ohio, and then one locally. And, and they manage all of that. And then, you know, some maintenance workers and ancillary services, the usual what we collect as landladies here.
I'm so inspired by listening to you mean I don't have anywhere near your portfolio, but I'm excited to talk to you today. And one of the questions I have is when you grow up as a child. It's like, okay. Want to be a ballerina? I want to be an astronaut. I want to be a veterinarian. Nobody grows up and says, I want to be a landlady. What did you want to be growing up?
No, I wanted to be a librarian. Love bug. I want to just read books. And that's what I wanted to do. But nobody, you know. And I was an English major, and. And then I got a master's in English, and and then I had somebody to pay the bills, somebody to get a job. And then I got an MBA because they would pay for business classes. And I'm kind of like you. I know you have a background where you've collected a lot of degrees in education, and that's always been very important to me. I was on the school board for ten years. I love, love, love education. I love doing that. And so but doing this on the side was kind of fun too. And I like people. I like to hear their stories and, and I think I had, you know, you have to kind of have a thick skin to be in this business. And, and I'm surprised myself over the years, you know, thick skin. What do you what do you mean? Tell me what you mean.
Well, you know, you're going to show you're going to like, you fix up this apartment and you've painted it and you've done all this work, and somebody comes in like, yeah, now this is not what I'm looking for. You know, you you've got to be used to criticism of your places, right? As somebody will be like, oh, that's terrible. And you're like, oh, I put all this into it. And then you're going to have unruly tenants. I mean, I have 400 units. You're going to have some people that, you know, they don't. You're not always going to be on the same page, even though you talk a lot about this, too, about trying to develop good relationships and treating people the way you want to be treated. And and I think we all strive to do that. But at the end of the day, sometimes people just aren't going to say, they're going to say, well, why can't I say here for free? Or why? Why can't I have three pitbulls in my apartment? And so you have to be willing and able to deal with those situations at times, or find somebody as part of your team that can do that part.
Right? Right
So yeah, but I didn't grow up saying, yeah, I want to be a landlady. I can't wait to evict people. And and I didn't know my English degree. Right. The first several, you know, first 20 years I'd be just writing a get out, you know, please pay rent or 2s or you need to pick up your trash. You know, those were the letters that I had. I got the right in the beginning. So right now I have great systems. And so it's never personal. Everybody's treated the same. Here's the policy. All you have to do is say, oh, remember this, here's your lease, right? Right. Right here.
Speaking in fact. Right. Yes. So I know you and I talked a little bit before and obviously can see you're passionate about your rental properties. I know. Watched your YouTube video earlier today about the money aspect of the rental. You know, having a rental portfolio. But I know that it's more than just the money. Tell me some of the benefits that you've had that you've personally had you personally had over over the years.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, I mean, there's when you go into real estate, a lot of people go into it. They say, oh yeah, it's great to own something and rent it out. And they just kind of jump in. It is an investment, just like anything else. But I mean, I don't have all don't nobody should have all their eggs in one basket. You know, not everything's in real estate. We have our you know, you have your 401 K raise. I have some simple plans. You have some dividend stocks, things going on. This is just one part of our portfolio where it worked well for us is my I became a real estate professional. If there's certain people out there who are high wage earners and they're paying a lot of taxes in the US here, they should be buying rental property and getting somebody in their family to be that real estate professional, because the tax benefits with depreciation is can be huge. So that's a part of it. And then real estate on average goes up 4% a year. So you have kind of that built in there and somebody's paying your bills. So that's all good. But the real beauty I think is just building something of yourself. If you have a job and you're working for someone else, you're always working for someone else. You're making somebody else's business bigger and better. And there's a lot of pride in that. I work for people many years. My husband has two, but this was something that was our own that you get to make the decisions and you get to watch it grow. And, you know, and I just remember the first time there was this duplex we have and the first time that we got a little extra money and we said, we're going to make that porch nice. We're going to put up some vinyl stuff. We'll never look at it. So now every time I walk by or walk by that I'm like, we did that. You know, we made that nicer. So there's the beauty of that. And then getting to the point where you've got your systems in place and policies and some good people, and the fact that we are able to travel, we have two kids up in Pennsylvania and one over in Colorado, and now we can, you know, kind of be anywhere and manage this business, which is I mean, gosh, now that we have, you know, I can face time with my managers and all this technology really has transformed the ability to be a landlady and landlord anywhere, literally anywhere.
Well, and it's interesting that we, we talk about this mean technology. It's. Some of the statistics say that technology doubles every two years, which is amazing when you think about it. And just two years ago, we were in the absolute heart of Covid. Right here we are, you and having a zoom interview that I'm going to put on both YouTube and on on, you know, podcast mediums, it's it's pretty incredible. And as as time progresses, I can only imagine where we're going to be in not just two years, but ten or even 20. Looking ahead, we've got quite a bit of assets in general, the greatest wealth transfer of our planet is in motion right now with the baby boomers exiting, and they're passing down their rental properties and the rental portfolios to younger generations who may or may not have ever been involved in business. They've they may or may not, you know, they they it doesn't matter. Their physical age does not matter in this instance. So my question to you, especially with your brand new book. These newbie landlords are just getting thrown into this with little or no help. Except for people like you and me
Right. What else?
can we do to help them?
Absolutely. And that's kind of where the book started, because I always have people saying, I got this house or I got divorced, I end up with this house and I'm going to rent it out, and I don't know what to do or yeah, my mom passed away and I got these two properties and do I, you know, should I sell them, should I, what should I do? And so that's where I'm like, I can help you, but, you know, on the fly when you're just talking to somebody, you're like, you need a lot more help than I can give you. Just write in five, ten minutes. Like I say, you should do it. But, you know, there's some things to consider. So it is it's a it's a it's definitely a process. You have to want to learn and seek out the knowledge. And but right now is the obviously the best time to be a landlord or landlady, because you can go right online and find out what are what what are the laws here. You can go on your Facebook groups and say, I don't know what to do. How do I advertise my property? You know, and there's so much information and dialogue. It's just my. And so that's as another educator to another, the main thing is to seek out the education. If you end up taking over these or wanting to jump into it, that's the best thing you could do and just talk to everybody. And I feel like most landlords and landladies want to help each other. They want to see everybody succeed because, you know, there is that, oh, you're a slumlord or oh, you know, we we police our I mean, we if if we're all up here, we're all up here. And that means our tenants will come up here too, right? Because we're all doing great work. So that's the goal every time. So education with me.
Education. Wonderful. Okay. All you newbie landlords out there, make sure you listen to Wendy because she's giving you some good, good advice here and get her book. But let's talk about some of the let's talk about the other end of the spectrum. What's the hardest aspect of being a landlady?
The hardest part is, well, for me and I think it varies for different people and it ebbs and flows at some point in time, it's like I got to refinance these buildings, so, oh, just having to talk to banks and stuff is difficult, but across the board is just that. You're dealing with human beings and you're dealing with something very personal to them, which is the place where they live. And and for us, you know, it's easy to say, oh, it's, you know, it's not personal, it's just business. But for them, it's personal. When you're sitting in that apartment and you know, your kid's sick and transmission goes out in the car and you, you know, have somebody calling and trying to give you rent, it becomes personal. And so that can be difficult. And that's where we know all the community resources that we have, all the churches that can help, all the different things. But at the end of the day, I have an obligation to to unfortunately, the bank, you know, the insurance company, the lawyers and definitely my, my employees, I want to keep them employed and the other tenants because if I let all this stuff go, then I can't put new carpeting down in the hallways. And so it's it's a snowball effect there. But the fact that you're dealing with people and there's some difficult situations and there can be at times things can get contentious and and in fact, I know a lot of landlords and ladies who have been in some actual dangerous situations. And I do have some and, you know, some inner city areas that can be a little more tricky. So and, and especially during going through Covid when emotions were running high, that was something that we had to try to de-escalate and try to keep everyone calm. And so that's probably the hardest part, is just dealing with people because human got it.
Well, there's a question going around quite a bit in Facebook and LinkedIn, landlord groups that are it's an ongoing question, and I'm going to do a podcast coming up here, but I want to get your take on short term rentals versus long term rentals. Very different business model. What's your take?
Absolutely. I prefer the long term because I'm a holder and that's what I do. I don't you know, I don't flip places, I don't sell. I'm holding on to my units and trying to improve them and trying to raise the rents. And and I love tenants that stay right because then you have that less turnover. But there is the opposite end of the spectrum. And I think there's definitely money to be made. And depending on where you live on those short term rentals, because you have people coming in for three months, I know some people that only market to traveling nurses, right? That's their niche. And so it's great because they they can cater to them, you know, free Wi-Fi, all the utilities included and and work that I'm in a smaller, more rural part of the country. So what works for me or families that are going to stay long term. And then their kids grow up and move out and then they rent the place next door. So that's my model and what works for me. I don't think that would fly in my area. We actually did have like a little oil and gas boom. Supposedly they were going to come in and do fracking. And you know, a lot of the local property, you know, managers. And everybody was like, oh, we're going to jack up the rents. And I didn't I made a conscious effort to not throw out my tenants stayed where we're at. And then when it all fizzled, there's my tenants. They're still there, they're still paying. And I like that where I don't have to, you know, every three months go in and touch up, paint and clean. And that's another consideration you have to have. You know, again, I'm in a smaller rural area. If you're in a bigger city and you have access to a lot of labor, then that's great. Go for it. You know, because you're going to be, you know, one month you're going to have to clean one. You're going to have to do a lot of switching around and and stuff. I prefer to be long term.
Hey. Great. Yeah. This is always a constant thing. Um, especially with our, you know, we're based in Maui, and right where, you know, where the wildfires are, where they have affected and made a housing crisis even worse. Oh, good. And we're, you know, our big project that we just built is literally right next to short term rentals. And people have come up and, you know, board members have come up to see what we built. And they're saying, I wish that we didn't have short term rentals because vacationers. And that's what I call the visitors that stay in short term rentals. Vacationers have a very different mindset than a tenant who is digging in, who is putting their pictures on the walls. And so it's very different. And but I've done I've tried short term rentals in the past but wanted to get your take. So let's switch gears for a second. I am so excited about your book. How long did it take you to write a book? What made you decide to write it? Well, it's I remember I'm an English major. I've always wanted to be a writer and had a lot of books along the way. And so it's funny because my husband kind of challenged me. We were, you know, our youngest just went off to college, and so I have a little more time and, you know, you can only work on your business so much. And also through Covid, we all kind of got tired. And he said, you know, you said you were going to write that book. And so I pulled it up. I looked at it, it was like nine years ago I started and I said, I should, I should do this. Okay? I was just in the right frame of mind. Finally it came through and I said, I need to do this. And so it didn't take long because I'm an English major and there was all this 20 years worth of knowledge up there. So I started in January. It's done by March, but it's gone through a lot of like, you know, edits. And even now I pick it up and I'm like, oh, I should have added more there and I could do more there. But that's why of my YouTube channel two, to kind of get that stuff out there. So it's just time to do it. And what's good about it, just like anything else is it made me more reinvigorated about my own business because it happens as a landlady or landlord. Sometimes for other days I fire myself. I'm like, I'm done with this.
so it's good to kind of remember all the good things and what you did accomplish and how you got through it. And then again, I like to educate. So my system, my the way I structured the book was lessons from the landlord. Like, here's the mistake I made, here's how I fixed it. And I hope, you know, maybe you won't do that. Repeat that. Maybe this will help you not make that mistake. So. That's excellent. Wendy, am so excited to finally meet you on electronically. I'm so happy about it, and I'd love to have you back on the show. Maybe you know, in the future. Don't know what that looks like, but but get to a point
where I know I'm stuck and that's when I'll. I'll give you a call.
Yeah. We'll talk about real estate. Love it. Yeah, yeah.
Because there's all kinds of different aspects of a landlord that goes into it. It's not just about working with tenants. You and I both know there's a lot more to it. And you alluded to some of that as well. Property improvements, the money aspect as an investor, I mean there's there's a lot to landlord and and I'm super happy to have met you. And I'm so happy that you've provided the world this great resource. Where can people get your book if they want to buy it? Yes.
Thank you for asking. It is lessons from the landlady and it is available on Amazon and hardback. This is paperback and hardback and also a digital version for those of us that need our reading glasses. So we have to make it bigger on our our iPad. And then I'm also selling it from my website as well, which is Ask the Landlady and you can see my YouTube channel from there and, and everything about me.
Well, all you newbie landlords and all you pickle landlords. These are landlords that are experienced but have gotten themselves into a pickle. You've got more resources available to you. And as Wendy says, make sure you educate yourself. For all my listeners out there, just wanted to let you know. Next week is a tenant based episode and bet Wendy's has seen this where if you're a tenant and you want an impossible rental, if you're in a group area like Victoria, for example, where you can almost never get a rental. Next week's podcast is how to up your chances of getting it. I've got a pretty incredible layout that if you're a tenant, you want to listen to next week's podcast. Wendy, thanks so much for joining us. I'm so happy to have you, and we will have you on again soon by Wendy's.
Great. Thanks! Bye. Thank you
Thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes
and all the links mentioned in today's episode, visit our website at www.mylifeasalandlord.com. If you're
looking for educational resources for getting into real estate investing, becoming a landlord, or even a
better tenant, then I have a page on my website to get you started looking for a solution to the pickle that
you're in. I have suggestions for that too. You can throw your situation on My Facebook Group My Life
as a Landlord and let our community help you with solutions. Also, before you go, make sure you
subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they're released. You can to
subscribe right now in the app you're listening to this podcast on or you can sign up at www.mylifeasalandlord.com.
Thank you again for joining me, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury in this episode of My Life as a Landlord. I'll see you next time.