How to Be a Rockstar Landlord: 6 Tips for Success

by Brandon

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How to Be a Rockstar Landlord: 6 Tips for Success

How would you like to work 168 hours a week, never travel anywhere, and spend your days dealing with the ungrateful, entitled, lowest common denominator of public society?

No?

OK good, me neither. So, today I want to share with you my top tips for AVOIDING that lifestyle while still owning rental properties.

That’s right. You can be a rockstar landlord without being a slumlord — and today, I want to offer six tips for doing just that.

Let’s get to it.

1. Treat Landlording as a Business

Look, you don’t see Howard Shultz making lattes, Mark Cuban playing one-on-one with Shaq, or Donald Trump swinging a hammer.

Why?

Because these people run businesses. And if you own rental properties, you run a business too.

So start acting like it!

Take it seriously.

Build processes and systems that you can follow. Be consistent. Hire stuff out. Be organized. Know your numbers. Stop getting so emotional about everything.

It’s a business — and it’s time you started acting like it.

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2. Provide a Great Home

If you want to attract weird tenants, provide a weird home.

But if you want great tenants, provide a great home. Fix the property up right before a tenant moves in. In the words of my friend and fellow landlord Darren Sager, make your home “tenant-proof” by using materials that won’t break down quickly.

Related: The 9 Things I Hate the Most About Being a Landlord

Your property doesn’t need to look like Buckingham palace, but it should be clean, durable, and better than average — because that’s exactly the kind of tenant you want to attract.

3. Get to Know Your Fair Housing Laws

If you really enjoy lawsuits and paying big bucks to bad tenants, ignore this tip.

But if you want to remain legal and avoid being called a lot of terrible names in the paper, listen up.

You need to learn what your Fair Housing Laws are.

Fair Housing Laws exist on federal, state, and local levels and are designed to make sure discrimination doesn’t take place against a “protected class.”

Protected classes include race, color, religion, sex, familial status, handicap, national origin, and potentially more depending on your local laws.

While it seems pretty obvious on the surface, sometimes it can be easy to discriminate and not even notice. For example,

“Yeah, this property is on the second floor, so probably not ideal since you have a wheelchair.”

or

“You know, I have another property that might suit you a little better since this is a high-crime area and you are a single woman.”

or

“It’s a small studio apartment, so we can’t allow seven kids.”

Each of these could get you in hot water, so be sure to review your local, state, and federal Fair Housing Laws.

(Click to read on BiggerPockets…) With Video!

About Brandon

has written 199 Awesome posts in this blog.

Brandon Turner (G+) is the BiggerPockets.com Senior Editor and Community Director and owner of RealEstateInYourTwenties.com. He is also an Active Real Estate Investor (Flips, Apartments, and Buy-and-Hold), Entrepreneur, World Traveler, Third-Person Speaker, and Husband. Come hang out with him on Twitter!

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

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