One of the big questions we’re always hearing is, “Chris, where do you like to invest? And where do you see the best opportunities right now in property investment?” In this episode, you’re going to get those answers. Tune in to find out what property investments Chris Miles is focusing on to make most of his real estate income.
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Fire Your Property Manager And Keep More Profits Doing This With Ryan Barone
Welcome to the show that’s for those of you that work so hard for your money. You want your money to start working harder for you right now. You want that freedom and cashflow today, not 30 or 40 bazillion years from now. You want that cashflow today so you can live that life that you love with those that you love. Most importantly, it’s not about getting rich. It’s about living a rich life because as you are blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to create a ripple effect in the lives of others.
Thank you for letting me be a part of your day-to-day. Thank you for allowing me to create that ripple effect through you. I appreciate you tuning in and bingeing. Most importantly, you’ve been applying the things you have to get real results real fast. Thank you so much for doing so. As always, if you haven’t done this already, you can go to MoneyRipples.com and check out our stuff, or go to YouTube and subscribe to our channel, the Money Ripples page.
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I get the question all the time even from some of my own clients as they start to build this rental portfolio, “How do I manage this? Not just property manage it, but how do I financially manage it? How do I track all these things? How do I keep track of all the income, rent roll, and expenses going out? Especially at tax time when my CPA says, ‘You better have all those numbers ready.’” They don’t know what to do.
Funny enough, I was perusing BiggerPockets. As I joined the premium membership, I see this RentRedi software that’s on there. As I started to see it, I said, “This is exactly something our audience needs to know about. I’m super excited because I’m bringing on our guest, Ryan Barone who’s a Co-founder and CEO of RentRedi.
After working with RentRedi and doing this for many years, he started to build out this platform that not only has helped thousands of people but managing hundreds of thousands of rentals. He is able to help them build their portfolio and self-manage it. Especially if you’re the person that likes to do it yourself when it comes to real estate, this is something you should pay attention to. I’m super excited to have Ryan on. I even heard he’s a big basketball fan, not to mention also a huge musician. We might have to ask him about that as well. Ryan, welcome to our show.
Thank you for having me on, Chris. I’m excited to be here.
Tell us a little bit more about your background. How did you even get down into this rabbit hole of real estate, software development, and everything?
Surprisingly, I started back when I was in college. I was going to school here in New York City. I got my first internship down here, which meant I was moving out of dorms and getting my first apartment. I was all excited. It’s an exciting moment to start renting on your own and moving out of dorms or back home. I went and viewed an apartment and quickly realized, I wasn’t ready to rent that apartment. They needed a bunch of documents I didn’t have ready and information I wasn’t prepped for.
I started on the journey initially building an iOS and android app for myself and my friends to apply to units more easily. I quickly realized along the way with my Co-Founder Ed, that a lot of the landlords we were talking to just so happened to be independent investors and landlords that were owning and operating their own properties themselves. They didn’t have complex software that they were using. A lot of times, they were doing it all on pen and paper and spreadsheets. I was seeing the trickle-down effect of that.
Over the course of the past six years, the team has grown quite a lot along the way. We’ve been able to collectively build what started as an application-focused, more on this end-to-end solution for landlords and tenants that solves a lot of pain points along the way that came from individual stories of landlords and investors on the platform saying, “Can you fix this particular communication issue I have with tenants on maintenance or another one on rent?” Each one of those built up on the platform over the years across the tens of thousands of landlords using it. It got us to where we are today where it helps you do pretty much everything from the day one lease ends to the next.
That’s an important point. I’m glad you brought that up because I mentioned the financial side of things, which is already hard enough. When you’re dealing with the actual management, communication with the tenants, and things of that nature, you created not just a tracking and management software, but this is also a communication tool. This is almost like QuickBooks and CRM all put in one.
To your point and for those who are trying to grow that portfolio, it’s important to strike a balance between how do I keep enough of the profit that I’m getting from these units or the revenue that these units are generating from me, and at the same time, how do I not drown myself at work? That’s a difficult balance to strike. We’ve tried to be that answer for landlords. A big part of our goal is to create a way that these investors and landlords can strike that harmony between, “I can automate the things that I don’t manually need to do myself. I have a process. I just need something that runs it for me. I do need to have that oversight and I need to control that, but I need it not to take up too much of my time or take away too much of my revenue along the way.”
What have you heard people saying as a user of the software? What’s the response to it?
The investors and landlords that we help, their idea of financial freedom to some extent is to put their kids through college, retire early, go on extra vacations, or spend more time with family. The biggest compliment that we’ve gotten and the most exciting part for me is when people come back to us 2, 3, or 4 months into the platform and say, “I can’t tell you how much time and effort I’m saving.” You’re not pulling my hair out trying to do everything on spreadsheets anymore. You’re getting to spend time with the people who are the reason you invested in real estate in the first place in order to generate that additional income. That is to me the most exciting outcome that we hear from people that end up using the platforms and switching over from something like spreadsheets.
Imagine getting to spend time with the people who are the reason you invested in real estate in the first place. That is the most exciting outcome people got from using automated platforms. Click To TweetI agree. What would you recommend? I’m in a different situation. I like to use turnkey properties. I’m more of managing the property managers. I’m out of the day-to-day, but you get more profit if you don’t have to pay that property management fee. At what point do you see people usually wanting to have the software? Is it at two properties? Is it one even or is it more?
We have a lot of landlords on the platform at one single-family. We’ve built the platform intentionally from the perspective of making it affordable and accessible even to someone that just acquired their very first property. Even if it’s a single unit, they can use the platform and derive value from it. Our sweet spot for the most part is about 1 to 100 units. When you start getting much more beyond that, you’re maybe getting into a more professional property management head space.
We have landlords on the platform that does it. I won’t say that we don’t. The largest on the platforms is around 2,600 units. You can then say, “If it makes a great experience for my tenants, I want to do it. I’m more than happy to have them use it,” but our bread and butter or what we’ve built the platform for is the smallest one single-family home get to about 100 units. That’s the segment that we’re trying to help the most. It’s frankly the one that I feel is the most underserved too.
I totally agree. Think of it this way. You do the simple math of it. If you’re getting paid $1,200 a month from that tenant and you had a property manager on that, you’re easily paying probably at least $100 a month on that $1,200 a year. In using your platform, it’s a small fraction of that cost even for just one property. We’re not even talking about having multiple properties. It’s not just a time saver, but also a big money saver too.
A fraction of much less than 1%. It’s a $9 total subscription fee for a landlord to use, even if they’re coming in with one single-family unit. It’s less than a pizza or a Spotify subscription equivalent. They can run their entire property management operations and streamline a lot of the manual work they’ve maybe already been doing.
For the price of a YouTube membership, you could pretty much have your own property management system in place and skip the property manager. That’s incredible. I was going to ask you that next question. You said there’s no limit to it, although this is more meant for those that are doing onesie-twosie types of investments. As you said, there are people managing hundreds with the software too.
Yes, there are. It stems from the standpoint of the segment or the group that we started with and tried to have the most conversations with. It’s that 1 to 100 range, but a lot of the core functionality of what we’ve built along the way translates. We’ve built a platform that helps the manager, whether you’re an independent investor or scaling up to run your own full operations as well as the tenant.
On the flip side of that, you ultimately want someone to rent your unit and enjoy living there. We’ve built out a lot of tools, letting them report their rent to a credit bureau so that they can build credit, assuming they pay you on time to encourage them to do that or make it easier for them to get renter’s insurance or set up auto-pays. They don’t even have to think about paying rent and it just happens.
As a result, that creates a great experience for you. Maybe when you do even get out of that sweet spot for us, even if you are getting into the 200 or 300 range, you might still say, “It’s automating a lot of my process for me. It’s making good communication with my tenants. It’s eliminating a lot of that manual work. It gives me the oversight I need without any of the work I don’t want to do.”
I love that too. I’m glad you brought that up. It even creates an experience for the tenant. It can make their lives easier too, which makes everybody’s lives easier. If your life is easier and their lives are easier, and everybody is happy, they stay in longer. It makes it systematic and automated.
We try to build the platform with smart defaults along the way. As we are learning as a platform, you have this collective knowledge of everyone using it in different areas. Even if you’re an experienced investor, but you’re acquiring a property in a different area or different size property than you’ve done before, we’ve likely had other investors on the platform that have gone through purchasing a property of that size in that area, or similar qualities. We can build things in to make it easy for you to learn from others’ experiences rather than have to go through the wringer yourself.
For things like late fees, when you’re setting them up on our platform, you can automate that process. We’ll build in by asking you, “Do you want to set up a maximum late fee?” In certain states, you don’t need it, and in others, you do need it. Sometimes it’s a fixed dollar amount and other times it’s a percentage fee, but even being able to have that question prompt can lead you to say, “Maybe I need to think about this and make sure I’m covered in this sense.”
It’s funny when you brought that up because it brought me back to my very first rental. I remember putting in the agreement or contract, “There’s a late fee if you go beyond this day. If you don’t pay this, then this happens.” I didn’t enforce any of it because I was scared to. I was like, “They gave me a good sob story. Maybe I’ll let it slide this time,” and then that led to this horrible avalanche of crap.
It was a miserable experience because then they kept pushing those boundaries to the point where finally I had to evict them, which was not fun to get to that point. Had it been enforced and had I had something automated to do it, then my own emotions and my heart wouldn’t get in the way? It would even give them the warning saying, “If you don’t pay it two days from now, this fee is going to get tacked on.” It’s going to give them that little extra push
We’ll automate those notifications too, even if you have a custom structure where you say, “I want them to be notified two days before, five days before, or every day for the week leading up to it.” You can change that so you have that configuration in the way that you want. Ultimately, it comes down to good communication, making it easier for you, taking things off your plate, but still doing it the way you want them done.
That sounds like a dream come true. Who would you say this is not for?
We haven’t built it for the massive property managers. There are some massive 10,000-unit portfolios. They have some great software that’s great for them. What we saw was that there is an underserved market of investors that are on the smaller end of that scale. We wanted to help them. It’s honestly an exciting group to help. Going back to your emotional point, on the flip side of that, when things work well, it feels great to help that group. That’s who we’ve built it for. It is a little bit less for the extremely large property management organizations, rather than individuals that are looking to manage their own properties efficiently, take things off their plate, not dilute too much of their revenue along the way, and be able to scale their personal operations a bit.
That might exclude 1 or 2 people in this episode right now. That’s good to know. If somebody wanted to learn more about this and find this, where would be the best place they go?
It’s RentRedi.com. We’re a startup. We have to spell something wrong along the way, but you can go there. We have live chat on the website. We have it in the app once you get in there. It’s the same thing for your tenants too. They can always message in. We’re big on communication. We’re not just making it better for you and your tenant, but also with you talking with us. It’s pretty much how we’ve built everything on the platform today. You can always reach out to us and ask questions. We’re more than happy to talk to anybody.
That’s why I have you on because I reached out to somebody and said, “How does this apply to my situation?” I was impressed. It was way bigger and better than I ever expected it to be.
I appreciate it.
You mentioned that you are not just a huge basketball fan but you are also a musician. You played three instruments, is that correct?
Some are better than others, I’ll be honest. Yes, I played drums, piano, and guitar.
You are a one-man band is what you’re saying.
There are certain people in my family that are probably better at some of those instruments than me, but I can get away with putting something together.
Did you have a musical family growing up then?
One of my sisters is a killer at the piano. My mom played some piano and so did my dad a little bit. Some of my cousins too are pretty good musicians.
That’s pretty impressive. I was telling my kids this the other day. I was listening to some Christmas music and there were different horns that came on and it brought back memories. “That’s a French horn. I played that for three months.” I probably couldn’t even do it today. Right after that, a trumpet came on. “I did trumpet for three years too,” but don’t ask me to play that today. I tried to play the trumpet a few years ago, and it was horrible. I don’t know how I can’t even play those today. I’m pretty impressed that you can do that and you’re managing software too.
I haven’t picked up my own podcast.
Ryan, I appreciate you being on. It’s been a pleasure to have you on. For everybody else, I encourage you to check out RentRedi.com, especially if you’re looking to manage your own properties. Whether in the near future or you’re already managing properties, or have a property manager you’re thinking about firing, this might be the solution for you to be able to get past that and keep your profits higher, especially as interest rates have gone up. This might be the very thing that you’ve been needing as well. Be sure to check that out. Make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We’ll see you later.
Important Links
- Money Ripples – YouTube
- Apple Podcast – Money Ripples Podcast
- BiggerPockets
- RentRedi
About Ryan Barone
Ryan Barone is Co-Founder and CEO of RentRedi. After working to build RentRedi while managing a full-time job & college courses, Ryan began building what is now a modern, end-to-end property management software that helps landlords go mobile and manage rentals from wherever, whenever.
RentRedi has raised over $17M in total funding. The platform has added more than 15,000 actively subscribed landlords who manage 100,000+ units and plans to continue building a powerhouse software taking over the PropTech space.