Rental Property Remodeling: Durable Kitchens, Floors & Landlord Tips with Wendy Glaister

It was in this big rhino cage.

They put white carpet down and put the rhinoceroses in there for months and then pulled the carpet out and used hot water extraction and got it back to white again.

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Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining me today.

We have another great episode coming up here for you.

We got the one and only incredible Wendy Joyster interior.

Welcome back to around the House.

Hi Eric, it's so nice to see you.

Thanks for having me again.

It is always so fun.

You and I always have a blast on here.

And I think we got a great subject today for people out there because there's one thing that I know and with the, with the housings out there, sales going on, everything's down, interest rates are up, a lot of people are kind of sticking around versus maybe I won't sell that house.

Maybe I'm going to, well rent it out for a bit and you got to get it dialed in.

I thought what not a great subject to dive into about, well, designing a kitchen for the rental economy, not for your primary house.

And I think there's a lot of mistakes that people make when they're putting something on the market for renting.

And that can be an expensive one to do.

It can, because it can get ruined in a day.

You want to be really mindful.

There was a day when I was living in Seattle and me and my partner, she had a bunch of rentals and we were managing a six plex and two single family homes.

And people can be hard on things.

And I learned a lot of lessons going in and saying, okay, we're going to rehab.

This unit was built in the 70s.

You jump in and then when you go check on things a month later just to make sure after people have moved in that things are dialed in and you go, that was a huge mistake.

And I've made those mistakes of sometimes you want durable over pretty.

I think it's.

Well, especially in a rental market.

Definitely.

I think it's just, I don't know what it is.

Maybe it's like the HGTV revolution, but everybody sees everything so pretty and Instagram and pinterest and everyone has these great ideas and everyone wants to provide whomever's renting from them a beautiful home and experience and life there.

It can be done with really durable materials so that you don't wind up in the hole, so to speak.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

One of the biggest ones that I learned out there was this isn't the place to put in the kitchen.

Maybe the delicate painted finishes, maybe just a good old fashioned maple or oak or something that's a hardwood, will be your most durable.

And you have to take that personal.

I'm doing a kitchen.

I want it to look beautiful, like it's my own house.

That's not the best investment advice because if you put in that beautiful white painted kitchen the first time that maybe their dog starts scratching on something or the kids are bouncing toys off of it.

Any painted surface to me on a cabin, especially when it gets dented, it looks like the scratch in your new Mercedes or your Dodge pickup.

It's just one of those things that it shows.

And Mother Nature, it seems, does a great job with wood grains to kind of hide some of that.

And those little pens that you can buy on Amazon where you can color in all the little chips and no one will ever know.

I agree.

Something that I actually one of the processes.

When I was doing a lot of kitchens, I had trained my contractors to find a good furniture mobile repair person.

And before we handed the kitchen off to the homeowner, they spent three or four hundred bucks on them to go through and touch everything up.

And oh my gosh, that was one of those things that they could be a lifesaver.

I had a homeowner that would have absolutely freaked out if they would have known that the contractor drilled a hole for the hardware in the wrong spot on cherry cabinets.

Now they came in and bought me about four weeks to get a replacement door because it was just that time over the holidays, they came in, filled it up, painted over it, airbrushed it, it looked perfect.

Now, we knew that wasn't probably going to age well, so because the cherry was going to change.

So it gave me time to order another door without them staring at the scratch on their new car each week.

And that was one of those things that worked really well.

And you can really do some great touch up work with people out there.

So that's a trick for renters out there as well and for landlords.

If you need to have that stuff touched up, just have one of those people come in before you start refinishing and doing crazy stuff.

You could probably get it repaired cheaper than you could buy another one.

And if you've already got a rental deposit coming out of it anyway, well, it's a good place to get the touch up done and make it look like it was brand new again.

I worked on several rentals for clients and it's a very different experience than working on their home versus working in their rentals.

And of course they want it to be nice and a good space to live and raise your family.

But.

Sure,.

The level is very different.

So like in a custom home we might use a karasan nylon rug at $10 a square foot.

We would never do that in a rental because it's likely just going to be taken out anyway.

Yeah, yeah.

And so you don't want to put good money after bad.

Like I work with a gal who helps me with real high end things in flooring and then things for the rental market.

And so we usually find a nice rug and put in a good pad and it's maybe with the rug and the pad 299 a foot top because we know we're going to take it out and do it over again.

And I think it's been interesting too because I've watched my parents, they have a rental property.

They had both my parents, my grandparents places and then they bought another one after they sold their commercial building.

It was hard for them to adjust to rental versus home or rental versus their business or their commercial location because.

It's a money.

It was a tough change for them to make.

So I again I tried to help and just say oh well this is great.

And then where in other places you'd walk in if you were going to maybe flip a house, that's a different thing too.

You would put in new counters, you would do this, that and the other.

But in a rental home, if the tile counter is in great shape, maybe you just leave that there for a while, you know.

No question.

On the carpet.

My secret there is I've used for the last over a decade I've used the smart strand carpet because that stuff is so darn durable.

You could put white carpet in and get in a red wine fight in the living room on it and it will come right up with hot water extraction, no problem.

Wow.

So it's really good on the durability where if you had somebody in the rental there for two years, you can probably, as long as you don't have pets in there that are digging holes in it and stuff, you should probably get five or six years out of it.

Easy With a warren.

Because I love the way they rolled that out.

And they've got a new version of it now that they've got coming out that has antimicrobial in it, where it's actually eating up the allergens in there.

So it's got.

It's almost like a probiotic built into it where it actually breaks down the allergens in it.

But what I like about it is that they.

How they rolled this out is they went in, I think it was in the New York Zoo and it was in the rhino.

It was in this big rhino cage.

They put white carpet down and put the rhinoceroses in there for months and then pulled the carpet out and used hot water extraction and got it back to white again.

And it's like, okay, that is the perfect rental carpet.

Oh, my goodness.

With a waterproof pad and you can clean it up.

You just call your carpet cleaner person to come in and never rent those things from the grocery stores.

Just have the right people come in.

Don't get the little rug doctor.

Sorry, rug doctor, but not my thing.

Get the professional come in with the truck mounted cleaner.

Get it cleaned up.

It's going to look like brand new again.

And off you go.

Oh, I love that.

Next time, I'm going to look for the smart street for sure.

Yeah,.

The floors are hard.

Yeah, it's tough.

But on cabinetry, this is where I think people make mistakes.

Let's say that needs a new kitchen.

And this is one of those ones that I did a whole story on it in Designer magazine on this.

So I'll put that up with the show on the podcast notes.

But this is one of those things that when you go in, you want to have the durable stuff.

So many people go, oh, I'm going to go down to the import knockdown cabinet place.

And there's some serious issues with that.

When three years, you need to buy replacement parts.

For instance, if you've got an American brand that has Blume or grass or any one of the major hardwares that are part of that, you can get those replacement pieces easy.

But I tell you what, I've had more people over the years that went down to the import knockdown.

I need to put it together like a Kia kind of place.

Yeah.

And the hardware's knocked off, so it doesn't really fit.

So if you have a hinge that breaks or a drawer glide, that's messed up.

They might not even be in business.

And now you're trying to be a professional woodworker and remake Drawer boxes to see if I can make this new glide work.

And was that really worth the $700 savings?

Probably not.

That is true.

I think overall, over and above any other consideration, you want to think about maintenance.

So.

And simplicity.

Yeah.

So it's just how easy can you make it for someone to live there comfortably?

And how can you build in things as you go along and you renovate the space to make it extraordinary.

Extremely durable and low maintenance.

Like when it comes to the toilets, you probably don't want to go to Lowe's and get the least expensive toilet because that is not the thing that you want to get a call back for.

As a manager of a rental, you do not.

I mean, it might be worth the Kohler toilet.

It's just because you don't want to get.

You don't want to get that call.

So true.

I see people go down and they get the house brand toilet.

Let's say that place is.

And it's just gonna plug up.

And so you want that toilet that's got the large opening that it's finished all the way through.

And I used to say Toto was the one that did that.

But now you've got more companies out there that have really kind of knocked off what they did with toilet technology 10 years ago and are finally caught up.

But you're right, you go down and buy the more expensive one there's.

And you're not going to be paying the plumber to come out because Murphy's law just says that even if that rental is in your town, you're on a cruise, you're out of the country, you're doing something, when that's plugged up,.

It's gonna.

That's when it's gonna happen,.

Right?

Yep, exactly.

I think too, even something that, I mean, you might not even consider this when you're putting together your kitchen.

But the garbage disposal is a big deal.

You want the biggest horsepower, the toughest.

Anything.

Associated with a drain.

Just buy the best one.

Yeah.

I'll be honest.

If you're gonna put in that garbage disposal, you're dead on.

I actually, in a entry or mid level, I would just pull it out because it's just gonna cause problems.

So many people get in there and put everything down there because they don't want to have to go out to the garbage.

And it's just like, okay, that's excessive.

My favorite garbage disposal brand is not the one you get in the home centers.

I go with Rocky Mountain Plumbing.

Those guys have the best.

It will grind up Anything you put down there, including silverware or anything else.

But.

Yeah,.

Generally speaking, unless it's a high end one, take the thing out and then if you're on a septic system or something like that, because you're not on city, there's no reason to have it there.

I would just pull it.

It's just going to cause your problems as a landlord and problems cost you money.

So it's going to be that.

Yeah, I know.

I.

My husband, his brother has, gosh, like 10 rentals and an apartment building and it really consumes his life, but he enjoys it, so he doesn't mind.

But it's interesting to watch him and the choices that he makes.

And I've helped him on flips and I've helped him with rentals.

And those are very different stories in terms of what you put in the house,.

100%.

And, and I think the other thing that, that, that really comes in there as well is making sure that you've got really good bath fans.

And they're on seriously.

No, you're right.

Because the mold, because of the mold,.

It destroys those bathrooms.

And I'm sorry, there are people out there that are renters that are going to keep that place beautiful and then there's the rest of them that don't care because they drive it like they stole it.

It's a rental.

Who cares?

Or.

Even people that just don't turn.

If you can put that exhaust fan on occupancy.

Yes.

And like hide the switch or something so they can't turn it off.

Because I know a lot of people in rental situations, they just don't like the sound of the fan so they won't turn them on.

But even like the whisper quiet fan, it's really not that loud.

But if you put it on occupancy, then at least your purple board or your green board gets to do its job.

Yeah.

And then.

Agreed.

Yeah.

And then really good paint.

And this is where I think people make a mistake.

We had a paint line here that was in Portland that was a pet project they did and I liked.

It was one of those things that was beautiful on paper.

We're gonna take all the old used paint out there, we're gonna call it.

It was so green and it went in by the pallet load and they mixed it up and made like 12 colors out of it.

And it was called Metro Paint because Metro is our big government agency that runs everything from the zoo to buses to recycling to trash to everything else in Portland.

It's kind of all three counties here that do that.

But the long story short with that is this paint was just this massive.

Could be old paint, it could be new paint, it could be spoiled paint.

It had this smell that,.

That you need the exhaust fan for.

And it got so bad that I was getting emails in from the local affiliate station here in Portland that carries the show on the radio, kxl.

And I was getting listeners going, I bought this stuff and why does it smell so bad?

And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

Well they shut the program down I think because there was a mix of stuff coming in because who knows what somebody put in there.

Maybe that was.

They cleaned out the brushes and there were other chemicals in there and there wasn't really any way for them to check that.

And so that program got discontinued this last year.

But it was half.

I'm.

Shocked.

Right.

And so if you go in and put in a good, maybe eggshell, stay away from the mats, it's going to mark up.

But if you get into some eggshells and things like that, that's a really good durable paint.

I think the most expensive mistake you can make outside of the kitchen is using cheap painting.

Having to put two or three times of it on where you can't just wipe it down and clean it.

Agreed.

Well and I think the major paint brands have paint specifically for that purpose.

It's scrubbable paint and it comes off, it's like this performance paint essentially.

And I know Benjamin Moore has a line and Sherwin Williams have.

Has a line as well.

But it really does.

And you're right about the sheen because I am such a sheen snob.

Same.

But I realize that just it doesn't work in all applications.

I mean I do not like shine.

I do not.

And unless it's, I don't know, a diamond, let's say that, that I can go for.

But I just, I know if I'm doing a rental it has got to be eggshell or greater satin.

And like trim, it lasts a lot longer.

If you do semi gloss, it's a lot harder to chip.

So I think it's worth it in those instances.

It's just you won't be living there but you don't want to spend your living on fixing it up either.

Over and over.

One other trick that I would do too when you're, if you're like, hey, I'm going to put this into a rental, I'm going to sell it.

Maybe, maybe it's your parents house that you can't get on the market.

And get it sold for what you want.

So you guys are going to keep it on the rental market for a year or two.

The other thing I would do would be to put in some smart humidity sensors and some air sensors in there.

Now you can take a look and just let them know that privacy wise, hey, I've got air quality sensors in here.

So I want to make sure that it's going to be first off, make sure that doesn't break any local rental laws, because that can get kind of crazy.

But I think having some sensors in there to go, hey, this house is way over 60% humidity.

I might have a problem.

And having something for you just to be able to log in and look at it to see if the sensors are solid doesn't need to be a privacy thing.

But I think just making sure that you've got good indoor air quality in there is a huge deal, because you can get in there and be, let's say you're going to go inspect the property every six months.

There's a lot that can go on if they're not using the bath fans or they're.

They've turned them off or they're whatever other issues you've got going on.

And some simple smart sensors can really tell you that, hey, this building's in better shape than what it could be.

Because at least I know that I'm not above 60% where mold's growing.

That.

And one has this one wonderful system.

You put a sensor at each inlet, each water inlet location, and if there's any hint of a leak, it shuts off water to the entire house.

So it won't flood.

Yep, absolutely.

So, like if a little person goes in there and flushes something down the toilet that they shouldn't, even if it is a good quality toilet, you'll know and you can do something about it and not have thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damage.

Yeah, and the other thing too, and that's a great one, that's that.

That matches that right there.

As far as the smart home stuff, we'll talk about this when we get into smart homes.

But also having electricity sensor like Ting Fire, those actually plug into your outlet and it will tell you if there's any shorts in the house.

So if you've got an outlet that maybe is shorting out or something going on or low voltage, that will tell you what's going on.

And most insurance companies will actually pay for that.

So it's a $300 piece that the insurance company will pay you for and probably Reduce your rates because you're not likely to have an electrical fire there.

So that's another one of those.

You go, okay, this could be.

Very helpful.

Yeah.

Yes, yes.

Countertops.

This is a huge one.

And I think this is one of those things in the kitchen where many mistakes have been made.

Yes.

There's an argument for, for low end homes to have or entry level homes to have laminate.

There's also an argument if you want to spend the money and you did a new kitchen, maybe putting something in like a slab porcelain or something like that's going to be super durable might be a better long term option.

So you don't have to worry about as much issues with caulking and water damage because if you ever get the water under the laminate, it's all coming apart.

Yeah.

And I think everyone has a different level of housekeeping habits.

And I have clients who wipe down their sink in their counter every time they use the faucet.

And I have clients who pay someone once every two weeks to do that and otherwise it doesn't get touched.

And I think in a rental situation or anywhere else really, I mean if you use granite is really hard to kill.

I mean porcelain is a little more tricky to install.

You have to have different equipment to do that and you have to be prepared for that.

So sometimes the install is a little more expensive.

And if you do get a lot of water stain on that, it's not like you can buff that out that's there.

Yeah.

If you use granites, you seal it the first time and then let's say they never ever wipe the water off.

Once that property turns over, you can recondition that top and reseal it and it will be fine.

Quartzite is just such.

It's a beautiful stone, but it's pretty pricey.

And I don't know if that's really rental house appropriate and even courts man made.

But the durability there, it's not what we thought it was.

So I think if you can find just a nice prefab quartz countertop somewhere and stick it in there, it's gonna be great because you can wipe it off clean.

You can put 409 on it if you want.

Nothing's going to kill that thing.

And then if it needs to be rehabbed, it can be.

Yeah.

The only thing I've run into with quartz, with man made quartz versus quartzite is that somebody pulling that hot stove off the pan off the stove and dropping it on the countertop.

I've seen some scorching on quartz.

Where?

Oh yeah,.

There with.

And I don't recommend this but you could literally sit there on your kitchen island with.

With barbecue briquettes and light them on fire on the slab porcelain or the sintered stone and you don't hurt it.

I mean you can.

That is so non porous and that's what I liked about.

I did my outdoor kitchen with that my last house.

And sometimes I would get driving rain.

I have pictures of that countertop having an inch and a half of freezing rain wrapped around it.

And then I had it where one summer with heat coming on with before I built the COVID on it it was 120 degrees because of the sun hitting it because it was kind of a black and so I like that it could take anything I threw at it versus UV and everything else versus slab quartz.

That is getting quite the bad rap out there right now.

We talked about that in last weekend's show.

But potential of them banning it because of the silica dust.

But I don't know.

Porcelain is way more expensive than a higher end rental.

I get it.

That would make a lot of sense.

But I'm kind of where you are on that.

The laminate or just a good old fan of fashion granite with a natural.

A natural pattern to it.

Don't go putting the marble in the white stuff but get something that's going to be dark but it'll take whatever you throw at it.

Reason which is good.

Yeah, agreed.

And there's all kinds of pretty ones, all kinds of different colors and leathered or honed or.

I mean I have leathered absolute black granite at my cabin and I love it and it's pretty much indestructible.

So yeah.

I say people to work on too is because it's just a maintenance nightmare trying to figure out your hard water issues because you've got water quality issues with minerals or iron or whatever else.

Deal with that early on with as low maintenance of a way you can probably expecting a renter to drop in bags of salt every.

Every month is probably going to be a lot.

If you can do something that's more maintenance filter oriented where you could go back and flush out a filter system every six months.

When you're over there working on it, that's one thing.

But man, that hard water just chews up faucets, toilets, sinks, shower doors, all of that.

It does.

Getting.

That under control can be really nice and keep things a lot better off because I tell you what, I've seen so much damage from just hard water in appliances Ice makers, washing machines go down the list.

I know we live now on this ranch and the water is so hard.

Yes.

And we have the filter, we have the Culligan thing, all of it.

And it's, it's not changing a thing.

But I've noticed too, even your hardware in the house, faucets and things, if you're doing a rental, chrome cleans up so well.

It does.

And I know people have a thing about chrome, but there's something I just love about a really clean faucet.

It makes me so happy.

And if you get a really nice quality chrome faucet, it'll last a long time and you just go in and buff it out and you're good.

Whereas brushed nickel, if people don't maintain it, you get spots on it.

And black is.

Oh my gosh.

And oil for a bronze is.

Yeah,.

It's never going to look like that again.

So.

No, no, that's one there too.

The other thing too is pay attention on that sink.

If you're doing an under mount sink, get us thick and heavy one as you can afford.

Because especially if you're doing a stone or slab countertop because that thing is going to be there for the life of it.

So make sure you get something like a franchise or something, a decent brand that's got the sound deadening on the back that is thick.

So that way if somebody drops something in there, it's not a big dent.

Just trying to retrofit a kitchen sink into a pre cut stone countertop is a nightmare.

Yeah, it probably won't work.

It just won't.

It just won't.

I mean it'd be fun to tell you that it will, but that's just not truthful.

No, it's just not the same thing of putting slab countertops over old cabinetry.

It's the same thing.

Don't do it.

Just go in.

If you're doing the countertops and the cabinets are on their last half of life, spend a little more money and put something nice and just get it dialed in.

Because all it takes is that first water damage and now you're trying to make those things work.

And that's I think back to cabinetry real quick.

I wanted to touch on this.

Sure.

The brand that you see in like the home centers.

And I say this because I was a craft made dealer for a long time and if I needed five years later to order a replacement door, it was going to show up and it was going to look pretty good.

Now the color might be slightly different because of wood aging, but finish wise, it's dead on.

And if you do that with a custom shop, that can be pretty tough.

So the nice thing with the larger cabinet manufacturers for rentals is those parts are readily available.

They're used to getting a seven year old order out of the archives and pulling out and going okay, yep, that's what this is.

That's a great point.

Yes,.

They're good at that.

Yeah.

Designers so often rely on their custom cabinet shops that sometimes it's just sort of like a default setting.

But I can see an ex the excellent point that you're making about that for sure.

In custom cabinet shops.

I would say out of the custom cabinet shops out there in my 35 years in the cabinet industry.

Sure.

Something that I've learned because right now I'm actually a member of this Facebook group called Ask a cabinet maker and there's 60, 70,000 people in this group.

95% Of the problems that are coming in on there are finishes and custom shops because they don't have standards.

And there are some beautiful custom cabinet makers.

There are also plenty out there in each little market town, wherever else that are people that want to be cabinet makers that are calling themselves custom, that have a table saw and a sucraless saw and they're trying to make cabinetry and it can be a little rough sometimes.

That's a nice way to say that, Eric.

Yeah,.

I have.

Well, I mean I love kitchens and bathrooms.

I love all of those technical parts of the house.

I mean I love of course to decorate a room.

That's really fun too.

But the stories I have of cabinet people and their, I don't know, philosophy and how it impacts the outcome of the job.

Yes.

Is.

It can just be maddening process especially.

I mean I'm very fortunate to have been in this industry for a long time and I have seen the highs and lows of cabinet people.

And when they're really fantastic, they're really fantastic.

And when they're not, it's.

I mean you lose years off your life, honestly.

And I once had a client say Wendy, after a meeting with a guy who had not met the standard or the deadline, she said, I didn't even know you could get that angry.

She's I didn't think you had it in you, but they can bring you that point.

So yeah, the safer bet is something like a nice national brand that you can get that has standard pieces for rentals.

That's very, that's.

Very clever.

Just get it coming.

And that's the Great part about this full on customer service.

That's a big one.

The other one that I see people make mistakes on is ventilation in the kitchen.

So that vent hood, making sure there's a good one in there, spending the time to make sure that you show how these things work when they move in.

That's part of it.

So many people don't do a walkthrough of how am I going to make sure that everything works correctly.

If you spend the time as you're handing over the keys and say anytime this cooktop turns on, turn the hood vent on.

It can really make that a lot easier to clean up in there.

Because sometimes I have gone into kitchens and maybe they ethnically like to fry a lot of food.

It's a grease bomb in there.

And that can be a huge issue when you're going in there.

Or even putting a microwave over the stove top is not really my favorite look.

And I also don't think it really works very well because it just sucks it up and then kicks it out the top of the microwave.

I.

Call those forehead dusters.

Those are forehead dusters because they just blow face.

It doesn't help at all.

And you're just gonna have Ikyo stuff caked all over your special craft made cabinets and you're gonna want to cry.

It's terrible.

And I just.

But something too.

I think to that point it you could do little like room by room videos and have a little YouTube private channel just for that address.

And then anytime a renter has a question, they can just go to that room and push the little YouTube channel and they can see you explaining, hey, just in case you forgot about this or that.

And this is the tip.

And here's what we recommend.

And even giving them like a little.

We're so happy you're going to enjoy this home.

And we wish you all the best while you're here.

And here's your cleaning kit to get started for each thing.

And that way things are taken care of the right way.

That's smart.

The other thing that I want to bring up here before we run out of time liability.

Yes.

These are not good things for rentals.

When you have things like that, you gotta have the right coefficient.

Now there are products out there that they can come in and treat those polished surfaces with that add that slip coefficient back to them.

And so that's kind of cool that they can come in and Wipe on nano coatings now and make those things not slippery anymore.

So you don't always have to rip out that.

You can actually.

Crema Marville.

Absolutely.

Love it.

Actually.

It's back.

I just spent two days in San Francisco going through the design center and Creva Marfil, limestone and travertine are all back in force.

That is not travertine, is not a tile that I would ever use in a shower.

I saw somebody that had high water pressure and we were in there and they had demanded to use travertine.

This was 20 plus years ago in their shower.

The problem was is that shower head, when somebody wasn't standing on it, was going right for the shower wall.

That water tore through where you were starting to see the back backing of the tile where the mesh was because it had cut through from the water hitting that on the wall.

And so it literally had eroded the.

The travertine in that area.

And they were trying to find some pieces of that so they could swap it out.

That had somewhat of a color match.

No.

Yeah.

I think that's one of the hardest things as a designer is when clients bring you pictures of things and you know that is going to fall apart.

And whoever thought that was a great idea didn't care about how it was going to wear, didn't care how the family would experience it.

Just really just specified all these things for their final photos and then they were leave.

It's just.

I just think that's so irresponsible and really unfair because it's thousands and thousands of dollars.

And if you've been in this industry for any amount of time, you know it's going to fall apart.

Limestone.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

But I mean, it's beautiful and you can use it, but you want to be smart about where you put it in.

I mean, 10 years down the line, after I finish a home for a client, I want them to say, oh, that was such a great experience with Wendy.

And we still really love our home.

Not gosh darn, that girl.

She was the worst.

She didn't care about me at all by virtue of how this house is worn.

Yeah.

But the other thing goes too, and this is something that I'm noticing because I'm hearing it more and more from our audience, is that, for instance, people are moving into apartment apartments or condos or whatever.

They're renting, single family home, whatever.

The problem is they use metal feet on them with no pads.

And so they'll set it down on the LVP flooring and it gets moved around and it flexes and.

And all it does is dig into the floor.

So if you're using one of these products that's vinyl or not wood or anything else, have a few extra boxes put away of that product, because you're going to need it when someone damages that floor with their TEMU couch or whatever it is.

Because I've seen it more often than not.

I've had so many pictures come across.

How do I fix this?

The couch did this.

And it's like you should have started out with buying a decent couch to begin with, but there's the problems.

Yeah, it's always good to have a little extra.

Yeah,.

For sure.

A little extra everything.

Have it put away.

Don't put it in the attic where the heat's going to destroy it, but put it away someplace that it's going to be.

Under the bed or something under.

The bed someplace.

Put it under the crawl space.

If it's out of the weather, do something with it so it's.

It's in a decent place that you can keep it dry and in a temperate climate in there.

But, oh, my gosh, save those pieces.

I promise you, you're gonna need them.

Agreed.

Agreed.

The last one I want to talk about, Wendy, before we go is appliances, because that can be another issue.

And just because it was on closeout doesn't mean that was the smart call I have seen.

There are brands out there, if you do your research, that are known for reliability, and there are ones that aren't.

And with appliances, if you order something that has all the bells and whistles, just like cars, you have now given yourself a thousand more reasons to have the repair person come out.

Yeah, just go simple.

Yep,.

Simple.

Maybe not even an ice speaker.

You can get a bag of ice at the grocery store.

But, I mean, the more pared down you can be, the better.

Agreed.

Yeah.

The bane of my existence in my house right now is I'm going to replace the fridge.

I have a Samsung ice maker in this that came with the house.

And that ice maker is a weekly science project getting it to work.

And the price to replace it is more than what a new refrigerator would cost.

So it's.

Usually, yes,.

One of these days I'm going to change from a different brand, but there's Thousands of hours of videos of people on YouTube trying to fix that ice maker.

And you just need to get a new fridge.

So be careful with things like that because you can spend way too much money trying to get things repaired and sometimes it's just better to get a new piece out there because that's the other thing.

What is your time worth in all of this?

Do you have a handyman?

Do you have a person?

Do you have a plumber and electrician lined up?

Or who's your flood person if you're out of town?

What happens when you're out at your niece's graduation and something happens?

Who are you going to call when you're more than two hours away?

You better have that lined up and have a relationship there.

So you got somebody to fall back on.

Yes.

And as you listed all of these potentialities, I could just do raising.

Yeah,.

Because it is.

I mean, you're responsible for another family's life and quality of life and you really better know what you're doing.

I mean, and I think.

More landlord 20 that have gone in and had silica dust issues, lead paint issues, asbestos issues, and they try to DIY all this stuff.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, liability wise, you can't touch it.

And when you're done, I hope you've got air testing and everything else showing that you're proving it safe because that could come on you and you could lose everything if you play this game wrong of trying to be a landlord.

And what can be an innocent mistake could get somebody hurt or worse and expose you to liability like you've never seen before.

Yeah, I think that's something that is important is in anything, like in your career, in your relationship choices and anything, you really have to go in with your eyes wide open and understand.

Business deal.

Yes.

And any amount of business, believe it or not, is going to take some level of energy and effort and time and you really have to think hard about whether or not you want to devote that to this.

And also, I would say take out a pad of paper and a pencil and do the work yourself because you process things so much better when you're writing all this research shows.

Oh, actually writing everything down is very smart.

Not just relying on, I don't know, asana or whatever, but really figure out what's your property tax, what's your mortgage, what is basic monthly maintenance, do you have a pool, do you have a gardener, do you have this, that and the other, how often do you need to repaint, when do you have to do all these repairs and plan it out and amortized over time.

What do you need to charge in order to even just break even on this rental.

And let.

Alone.

Months of nobody in there when you switch it over, when somebody moves out and somebody comes back in, that's your time to do all those maintenance and projects.

And whether that's in the middle of when you are going to be going on vacation or not, there's going to be weeks there that it's probably going to be empty.

You're not going to keep that thing all dialed in.

So you've got to really have a plan of okay, what happens if I don't have two or three months of a rental income coming in on this?

The expenses are still there.

You're still paying a mortgage.

You're still doing the doing those things.

You're still paying a power bill.

So who's taking care of that?

So.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Well and too I mean we saw this a lot in the last recession.

People you had to evict them before they'd leave because they knew that they could buy months and months of living there for free.

And are you financially prepared to be able to cover that?

Here's the problem.

That's there.

Are nature like my state that I would not want to be a landlord in here in Oregon.

I wouldn't.

I mean only if we were going to be buying a house and we couldn't sell the one we had.

What I think about it.

But oh my gosh, as a landlord you are so your hands are tied behind your back and you could have somebody there for six months but by the time it goes through the system and there's and.

They're not going to leave it in good shape.

Yeah.

And you're going to need a sheriff.

It's not good.

You've gone through the court process so you need an attorney.

You got to have the sheriff.

You got to have all these different things.

And one thing that I used to learn and here's one last quick tip before we go out.

Join your local landlord rental group.

There's trade organizations regionally out there.

So it could be whatever your town is that ever that that landlord group.

And you will see whether it's statewide or regionally or whatever it is they usually have all the state forms that you need to have and you can meetings and.

Compliance.

Learn what's going on and learn where those holes are that you should be watching for because that can be really expensive.

And so if you can learn from someone else's mistakes.

Please do.

Okay,.

Agree.

And I've seen them and.

Sure.

And just have great insurance and do the best you can to be a good person and get people through it.

We need to have landlords out there.

It's just some areas are making it super hard for people to do that.

Yes, very true.

A lot of that on the.

West Coast.

Someone wants to hire you to work on their place.

Before we go out, we.

We got to give a little plug for you.

How do people.

Oh, thank you, Wendy.

Glacier Interiors and Glacier, spelled G L A I S T E R. You can find us on the web and on Instagram.

Thanks again, Eric.

You got it, Wendy.

It's always fun.

It's always great to have these debates on here talking about these things, because we really haven't talked much about here on the show.

So for people out there that are going, hey, I'm gonna get a bunch of rentals.

Here's some things you need to think about.

Yeah, exactly,.

Wendy.

Thanks again.

I'm Eric Cheap.

You've been listening to around the House.

No.