Jason Hartman discusses some recent headlines including news on lumber prices. He discusses how commodities affect the price of new construction homes and what it means to an existing home. In the interview section of the show, Jason hosts Jonathan Martis, CEO, and Co-Founder of Kleard. They go into the topic of self-management. In addition, they discuss real estate technology and how open houses can be seen from anywhere in the world along with pre-qualifying information. How does this affect the short-term rental market?
Announcer 0:02
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multimillionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it on now. here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 0:53
Welcome to Episode 1536 1536 I want to thank our client Bruce, I alluded to the newsletter he sent me before on lumber prices, the ingredients for all those properties you own or will soon own. If you go to Jason hartman.com. And take a look. Anyway, he sent me this great newsletter. Thank you so much, Bruce. We really appreciate that. And I found the actual email that he sent to Sarah, his investment counselor, and it said please forward this article to Jason. This is a weekly report that we get on the lumber market prices have gone through the roof on Southern yellow pine. This is the material that goes into building homes in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, etc. By the way, those are busy markets for us. And for many of you listening, I know you’re you’re buying properties there so congratulations. We have seen steep increases over the past few weeks, and it’s getting worse. In my business we buy directly from the mills. Sell to trust companies and treaters that sell to builders and Home Depot and Lowe’s as well. So, folks, I’ll keep reading in a moment. But this is really the key. Remember a long time ago during the Great Recession, that I was talking to you about something that we dubbed regression to replacement cost. In other words, I had said this many times when a piece of wood is worth what it costs for a piece of wood again, meaning that properties were undervalued at the time, because the ingredients of the property were actually more expensive than the property itself. Plus you get free land. Now, what’s interesting about this article that our plan Bruce sent is that now what you’re seeing is you’re seeing, not a regression to replace placement costs, but you’re seeing the replacement cost of the property being pulled up by increases in the price of its commodities, or its ingredients. Remember over the years, for the last 1617 years I’ve been teaching you about packaged commodities investing. I also call it sometimes assembled commodities investing, where we are buying the ingredients of our houses, and our buildings. And these ingredients, we’re getting them packaged or assembled in the form of a house. So now you see what is happening to certain ingredients. And of course, they’re never even they’re always uneven. You know, some go up more than others in a depressed market. Some go down more than others. But when you balance it all out, you have essentially your house. So I want you I want you to look at it this way. The houses you own, the houses you invest in are essentially index funds for commodities. So if you were to buy the Dow Jones, or the s&p 500, that’s an index fund for stocks, right. And of course, there are index funds for commodities. I don’t know the names of them off the top of my head because I don’t buy commodities directly. Well, I don’t say I never do because I do have some precious metals and so forth. And, you know, owned by some of my companies, but not much of it. You know, again, you know, I’m not a gold bug, right. I like real estate. I like packaged commodities investing. But when you have a house, you have essentially an index fund for all those commodities that are the ingredients that packaged commodities or the assembled commodities that make up that house plus you have land, plus you have labor, right? All of those are the ingredients and so that’s part of your index fund. Okay? So look at it that way. You have this index fund. And so when we talk about a major component of that index being lumber, right, you know it. So going on with with Bruce’s email, he says some of the companies that we are dealing with are forced to shut down and wait for prices to drop, because they cannot pass the price is on to the customers, parentheses builders fast enough. So they have to wait until a new price equilibrium is discovered. And we cannot project when that will happen. Maybe Labor Day, maybe longer now, hey, Labor Day is right around the corner, obviously at the time of this recording, but he wrote this hack on August 7. Okay. He goes on to say housing demand in Florida, which is our main market now I don’t know if he means as you know, one of our investor clients through our group, or if he means that’s the main market they sell lumber to. I think maybe he means both because he has A bit of an insider’s view on to Florida he says housing market demand in Florida which is our main market is through the roof. This demand with low interest rates and low supply production from the mills is creating the perfect storm for lumber to rise to unprecedented prices. My father has been selling lumber for 43 years and says he has never seen anything like this before. Not even close note that if you read the article they talk about price increase 50 or $100. They are talking about price per thousand board feet of lumber. That’s just how we sell it. Please forward this on to Jason. I think he will really like to know about this and Bruce I do and all of our listeners do. So thank you for contributing to the show. Now, what’s interesting as a tie in for this and by the way, today’s guest will be talking about a nother yet another fantastic A self management tool. And by the way, I recorded a an episode yesterday. That may not actually be an episode, I think it’s going to be a webinar for us because or maybe even a zoom meeting, because it’s really in depth. And it’s about another fantastic software tool that really, really can help you manage your managers or self manage your properties. You’re going to love it. So that’s coming up look for an announcement about that in the near future here. And also about more announcements about the empowered investor network. By the way, speaking of announcements on that, as we’ll take a quick, quick break here to announce a few housekeeping items. Number one, remember our meet the Masters VIP ticket holders, they are invited to the second of the two VIP follow on sessions or implementation meetings. We had a fantastic one last Thursday night and this Thursday. We We’ll have that second meeting. So we sent you an email and a text message with the secret link for that. So be sure you’re looking out for that VIP ticket holders, to our meet the Masters event a few weeks back. These are your follow up sessions and we have another one on Thursday night. And then also empowered investor network members. And I know many of you are asking who didn’t attend meet the Masters, don’t worry. We’re going to have a special event for you soon. And we’re going to invite you into the group. We just started with kind of a soft launch work out the bugs, and you know, sort of get the group going with some inner circle members, and then we will invite everybody to it. So a lot of you have been asking and thank you for your interest. It’s coming. But for the people who already joined the inner circle, we will be sending you an email inviting you to pick your sub markets. And again, we are starting with just two markets. Memphis in Indianapolis, and drew Baker is going to be contributing a lot of value as well as our other members there, where we are going to help you find the best handyman, the best contractors, the best real estate agents to do walkthroughs for you to do lease ups for you, all of the vendors, you need all of the services you need the best flooring contractors, the best hpac people, the best roofers, the best painters, everything. This is like Angie’s List on steroids, okay. It is a really good version of it and the best property managers and property managers have not been invited to the group. So you can talk about them behind their back. And, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly. And by the way, this group is just becoming already even though we didn’t even dive into the sub markets yet. Which is where we get Really granular, and really help people manage their managers or do self management. It’s already becoming really valuable. And interesting post, by the way, just the other day. So we’ve had a whole bunch of really interesting posts and really enjoying the interaction with all of our, our wonderful clients and customers in there. And Sarah posted a survey or investment counselor, Sarah, post this survey for fun. What was the interest rate on the very first property you purchase? Yes, it can, you can count your primary residence. And so this was an interesting survey to hear those those interest rates. And Scott posted something fantastic. He said, when I lived overseas, get this folks. I had a 42% interest on a mortgage that lasted about a year at that rate and then dropped to 28%. So he still has this overseas. business, but realize he was basically working for the bank. He got creative and finally got a US based loan. And he said, great question that allowed me to think about what I have been and where I am now with all that I’ve learned from Jason. So I made a comment on that. And I said, I said, Oh, my God, what country? And what year was that? He said, 1994 to 1995. In Honduras, so in Central America, right? Well, immediately, what I did is I went and did some research, because I just love this kind of stuff. And I said, fascinating. Let’s ask my famous question, compared to what? In this case, let’s compare your interest rate to their meaning Honduras. Honduras has inflation rate at the time. Well, I looked it up and check this out. The Honduran inflation rate peaked in about nine tene, 90 at 33.95% inflation. Can you imagine that? And it gets much worse than that. I mean, they’re historically sandbar boy Weimer, Republic hungry, you know many others, there are many examples of much higher inflation rates than that, but, but it got down it went down to only 29.43% inflation. By the time Scott had this mortgage that he was paying a 43% interest rate on, can you emit a 42% interest rate? So, there what you have to realize about this is that the banks the lenders are also asking my question, they are asking compared to what So, compared to the inflation rate, in other words, if they loan money to a borrower, they are getting eaten alive by inflation. So they need to have a healthy margin over the inflation rate to compensate them for their loss in the present value of money or the time value of money. And what you see here is that their margin, basically, they probably had priced that loan based on the interest rate just a couple of years earlier when it was 33.95% inflation. So they were essentially charging a 9% margin. Now on adjustable rate loans. Remember, I’ve taught you this before in a prior episode about the index plus margin equals the rate, right? Well, you can also look at it that way as inflation being the index. So the index plus the margin equals the lenders interest rate that they’ve got to charge because they’ve got to have a healthy margin over the inflation rate except in the United States. Why is that? It’s because we have this crazy, dysfunctional, subsidized pseudo governmental mortgage market with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And it makes no sense. It’s illogical. So take advantage of it. That is to your benefit. Dear investors, dear listeners, that is to your benefit. So take advantage of the fact that mortgages are artificially cheap in the United States. The example we talked about about Honduras, that’s logical. That’s normal, Scott’s example. Right? the inflation rate was exceptionally high. So they had to charge a higher interest rate to have a margin over the inflation rate, but in the US, we don’t do that in real terms. Anyway, another article back to the lumber subject, and then we’ll get to our guest here because of course, we’re doing what I love. too, it runs long. Right? Okay, let’s get back to our guest. Just one more thing about the lumber. Okay. This is from the National Association of homebuilders, the nhp. We’ve quoted them off and I’m pretty sure we’ve had them on the show before. Okay. This article that Evan posted you hadn’t heard of it on the show many times he says it says, according to nhps standard estimates of lumber used to build the average home. The recent spike in softwood lumber prices has caused the price of an average new single family home to increase. Are you ready?
Jonathan Martis 15:38
Oh, you ready?
Jason Hartman 15:43
Are you ready for this? Okay, stop that. You know, whenever you have a sound effect machine, the problem is You can’t turn it off when you want. You push the button and it just goes on. So listen to this, folks, this is stocking. You ready for this? Since April 17. That’s what just over four months ago, since April 17. The average new single family home has increased in price by $14,116. Just because of the lumber price increase. That means that all of your properties just went up in value. Similarly, the article goes on to say, the market value of the average multifamily home has increased by 50 $322 over the same period Due to the surge in lumber prices, skipping several paragraphs here, the article goes on to say the bottom line is that the spike in lumber prices that occurred between April 17 and August 14 2020 caused the price increase to increase by those numbers I mentioned $14,116. Now, what do I think about this? Well, I think this is a little bit radical. I think it’s a, I think it’s basically true, and I think it will basically hold. However, I think there are some anomalies in the system right now, due to COVID shutdowns, causing that shortage to be more radical than before. And I do think it will loosen up kind of compared to the toilet paper shortage, okay. Now, you can buy toilet paper, so you know, but but the price is so much higher. In fact, the price of all groceries has just gone up radically It’s much higher than it was. So the inflation really is there. I do think that will, that will soften a bit. Okay, I don’t think it’s going to hold to that extent. It’s still definitely there. But I just want to soften that point a little bit in that respect. Okay. So a lot of you have asked about the asset protection estate planning webinar that is available for you, Jason hartman.com, slash asset. We’ve got others available for different markets where we have properties and such, check with our team about that through Jason hartman.com, or by calling one 800 Hartman if you’re in the US, and without further ado, let’s talk about yet another great self management tool. Let’s talk more about providing access electronic locks and that’s what we will do with our guests right now. It’s my pleasure to welcome Jonathan Martin. He is co founder and CEO of cleared and cleared now that’s spelled with a K, by the way. And you know, we’re always looking at great technology. And it is truly an amazing time in the tech world that can help you self manage your properties, or help you empower your property managers to do a better job before you in managing your properties, making them more available to a larger pool of tenants, making them more accessible to maintenance personnel when need be. And we wanted to demonstrate clear today, we have this on video on our YouTube channel. But also if you’re listening to audio only, we’ll try and explain it to you so that so that you’re not missing out on too much not seeing it visually because sometimes it can’t be in front of a screen. So what we’re looking at now and Jonathan, welcome By the way, thank you. What we’re looking at now is we’ve got a screen of a smartphone. And then we’ve also got a web browser open, showing a couple of different entry systems. One is a lockbox in electronic lockbox, and I assume Jonathan’s can demonstrate how the app opens this lockbox, and the other is an actual deadbolt lock for a door and a time of publication here. The deadbolt is selling for $159. And the smart key box or lockbox is $139. And Jonathan, tell us about cleared and quickly just how it came about. I think these technologies are really phenomenal and cannot make make the whole process of leasing properties. A lot more frictionless or reduce friction, I
Jonathan Martis 20:47
guess I should say, yeah, no thanks, Jason, for the intro and cleared came about just from a need. I was a real estate agent and I was hosting open houses regularly and I realized that I couldn’t verify the information that was written on a on a sheet that people would write on when they came in. And so I got along with two, I got two other co founders and we built an app that would verify the buyers information when they came in. And that could also be done before a showing for increased safety. So we kind of addressed it from two sides, knowing who the agents working with where they were, and at what time the different safety tools built in but also so that the agent could have verified information for the buyer for better or lead
Jason Hartman 21:29
follow up and really when we’re when you when you say agent, it’s almost synonymous with owner or manager or investor many times not completely, because you do have an interface for agents, which is a little bit different. But you know, it brings up an interesting point, Jonathan, if an owner wants to show a property directly, or say they want to show a property where the tenant is home, and they want to do this remotely, that safety feature could probably be used. Because, you know, most of our investors listening to this are thinking about virtual showings, if they own a property that’s 2000 miles away, and they want and they’re self managing. And they want to be able to give tenants greater access prospective tenants greater access to the property. And you know, of course they’ve got some boots on the ground, put on the lockbox and do all that kind of stuff. But the the safety features kind of interesting because maybe canoes that like if the tenant is home and you send someone over there, even though I’m just thinking out loud here.
Jonathan Martis 22:32
Yeah, I mean, the way we developed it was specifically for open houses and showings when the agent would meet with the buyer. But the idea evolved into the point where to the point where we thought we could utilize some of this technology for self tours and allowing buyers or in this case, renters to tour properties. And the way we’ve developed it is we added more layers of verification. So forensic Wanted to tour a property. Our app handles different verification steps. So we would verify the email of the buyer sorry, the renter the cell phone number, we verify the renters driver’s license, we would scan the front and back of the driver’s license. And we would also require a selfie photo of that renter. And we use a form of facial recognition technology that makes sure that it’s an actual person and not a picture of the wall or the grass. So we do a lot of this verification work, or the property management property manager or landlord so that they know more about this individual or that they’ve been verified before request comes in. And the landlord or property manager can approve this request via the app from anywhere in the world. Because the way we’ve developed it is it works with the app in conjunction with these different smart locks. Hmm, okay, so let’s
Jason Hartman 23:57
just take a kind of an example of how this might happen. A prospective tenant sees a property listing on Zillow or postlets, or, you know, even Craigslist, which is not as much of a thing, but you know, it’s still out there. And they see a property listing. And they think, Oh, I want to go look at that property, then what?
Jonathan Martis 24:21
Yeah, so the great thing is our app called clear now would allow the renter to find properties that are for rent on our app just like they would on other apps. And then through partnerships we plan on getting into with different rental platforms in the future. You may even be able to do it from those websites, or those apps. But for example, on ours, let’s say you find this property here. This one is for sale, but the same would apply for a property that’s for rent. And we have different signs that a landlord or property manager could purchase so that when it says for rent, it can actually say self taught as well which increases its appeal. Once it gets to the house. The wrench. could tap on the property, see the property and the details. And it shows that they can self tour the property between 7am and 8pm. Now they’ll have to go through those verification steps I mentioned previously. And also it’ll ask them questions about their credit history or if they have pets, when they’re looking to rent, we pre qualify them for the landlord or property manager before request is even coming through to self toward the property. And this is very safe and secure and a much better way to handle it.
Jason Hartman 25:33
Once that renters. In the posting, like where they see online, they see that this property is available. Do they have a link in there or what instructs them to go through the self showing process? You said there was a sign?
Jonathan Martis 25:49
Yeah, so the landlord or property manager can buy a actual sign that they attach to the directional that says for rent or even in the yard where they put the sign so people know itself tour enabled, but even on the app on the app, you can even designate which properties are self tour enabled by enabling this option here at the top. So if they see rentals, but they want to only see the ones that are self tour enabled, you can enable that option for them to see those only. And that’s one way you can filter
Jason Hartman 26:18
right but that’s, that’s through your app, not through say, Zillow or something, right?
Jonathan Martis 26:24
Not yet, but in the future. We do plan on, you know, building partnerships. That’d
Jason Hartman 26:28
be a great deal for you if that happens, and I wish you luck. I hope it does. That’s gonna be excellent. But right now, I just want to work and see how it works in the real world. The owner has placed in a posting an ad for the property online. There’s no signage, the tenants Not in front of the property. It’s just strictly an online posting for the property. What do they do they write in there? Hey, self showing or self tour is available. go to this link. How do they do that? How The instructor
Jonathan Martis 27:01
can do is in the description for the property, they can simply say self taught enabled home, download the clear now app to request access, and they’re going to find the property on the map here. And then they can request access after they’ve gone through those steps. So that’s a simple way for them to do it. If they don’t have any signage or anything, letting them know off here, because
Jason Hartman 27:23
signage is rare nowadays, okay, that’s sort of the exception, almost not the norm anymore. But what does the owner see if they’ve got this posting up for a property? Do they see that, you know, they log into your app, or they get an email or text notification saying, hey, they’ve got 10 people that want to see this property? Do they need to approve them? Is the approval automatic, because the tenant has to sort of pre qualified to look at the property, their identity has got to be verified? And I’m assuming some of those qualifications need to be verified, but I’m not sure you can tell us.
Jonathan Martis 27:56
Yeah, so what our system does is handles the verification process. And steps before request can even go through. And we do plan on partnering with some platforms that are already focused on the rental space to make the whole process more seamless for what a landlord would want or property manager. But once they go through all those steps, the renter here would tap self toward this home, that button down there. And there’s different terms and conditions, they’d have to agree to just for liability purposes. And once they agree to that, here, you see the COVID-19 safety pop up that mentions you know, for them to stay safe and try to limit how many people are in the group. And so once they agree to that as well, then the request goes through. And so this is what the renter is saying that they’re requesting access. They see the landlord or property managers info, they can call email or text them, or they can cancel their request. But now the landlord property manager gets the notification up here you see that a request is coming through and now they see the request coming through with the Name, they can see the details for that renter. And for what property it is, we don’t show the photo of the renter only after approval is given to prevent discrimination. But once that landlord or property manager approves it, what happens is you now see the buyer photo, you can see more details about the renter or the person wanting to rent the property. You can call email or text them and you can see the answers to the questions that they needed to answer here, it’s for a buyer but for the renter would be the questions that would relate to kind of what a renter would need to submit now as a renter and at the property, it says they’ve been granted access and now they can unlock the door that’s compatible with cleared now. So you’ll see it says Access granted, they tap Continue. Now it says showing some progress. They have a timer here on the upper left for 15 minutes to encourage them to go through. They’re showing at a brisk pace so that they’re not holding other people up if they’re wanting to work. And now they tap unlock to unlock the door. And now they can go and tour the property.
Jason Hartman 30:02
So So let’s talk about that for a moment. So basically, they’ve, they’ve been approved, and then they, they need to go to the property. So say that they’re, you know, in the morning, they’re looking at all the listings online. They’re sort of figuring out which ones they want to see, they get approved. And then, I mean, they can look later in the day, right? At the property, I’m sure or the next
Jonathan Martis 30:25
day. Yeah, so they can answer a lot of these questions beforehand. And they can get verified and do all that beforehand. Okay. But they need to be at the property when they request access, because our app specifically does away with the scheduling we actually don’t want the scheduling aspect because we feel like it causes too much bottleneck and so when you’re at the property and you want to tour the property, only one group the tour it out of time, so if you were to go to the property Jason and you’re in the house, I can’t even get access until you’re done and the showing because That’s how the app was built. And that’s how we help encourage safety and also kind of not a ton of people in the house at one time. Got it. Got it. So they walk up to the door, and they’re either going to see a lockbox or they’re going to see a smart deadbolt installed on the door. And what do they do hold their phone up next to it or no, I guess their phone generates a one time use code and then they type the code in right to the lockbox or the smart deadbolt? Well actually we do it one step further, we take it to where they don’t even have to enter in the key code they just have unlocked on their device as you can see here on the left on the phone. Okay, so the key a key code can be used if needed as a backup but we built it for a better user experience to where they see the lock you can see it on the circle their official deadbolt box and then they just tap unlock and then they’re good to go.
Jason Hartman 31:50
Okay. Now the lockbox and the smart deadbolt. So those have both of those products have batteries in them, right. Of course they do. Yeah, yeah. And they’re I assume they’re communicating with the phone through Bluetooth. And they’re not connected to any sort of Wi Fi, right?
Jonathan Martis 32:07
Correct. They do not need Wi Fi. And the batteries last up to a year, okay, and they’re double a double A or triple A batteries, depending on the Loctite.
Jason Hartman 32:15
Oh, so they’re not like special batteries. Okay? Then what happens? Okay, so now they’re in the property, they’re touring it,
Jonathan Martis 32:21
right? Once they’re in the property, and they’re looking at it anytime during that showing, they can call email or text the landlord or property manager with those icons, you see up the upper right, they can still see details about the property while they’re touring. And when they’re finished, they can go ahead and tap and showing when they’re all done. And we show them a pop up that says please confirm all doors are locked, you must leave feedback and four you can end the showing, and that’s so that the landlord or property manager can get better insights into what the buyer or sorry what the renter thinks about the property. And this is kind of us doing a lot of the work for the landlord or property manager. Manager all within our app. So once this renter is done and they tap Continue to end the showing, they then have to answer questions regarding Did you like the property? Yes or no by tapping the smiley face or sad face. Once they do that a tap what they liked. And they enter in more details, you know, whatever they prefer love the area. Here it says interested in submitting an offer because it’s for the homes for sale, but for the rentals, it would say, Are you interested in submitting an application, and we do that process for them. And now they’re all done, and they can see all their self tours here on the app. And then as the landlord, you would be notified that they finished and you can see the details for that tour on the sell to request tab. Okay, this is great.
Jason Hartman 33:43
So every landlord is thinking how much does it cost? So the landlord has to either have the smart deadbolt on the property which is a permanent installation or they have to buy a lockbox for $139. So 159 or 139 and then is there a Ongoing subscription fee. Is it a one time fee? How does that
Jonathan Martis 34:04
work? Yeah, so we’ve made it really simple to get going, you buy the lock, and then once you receive the lock to pair the lock to a property, it would be a $99 fee. So we don’t charge any monthly fee pass that’s $99 for each list for each property, you activate a lock with so if you had a lockbox and you had on one property, and then you had another rental come up after this first one was rented out, you can put on the other one too, but you’d have to pay the $99 each time to allow this property to be on the clear now app to be self toward. Okay, there’s no
Jason Hartman 34:38
charge for the rent, right? Okay, so it’s going so every time you have a property come up for lease, basically, you’re going to have to pay $100 assuming you already own the hardware, correct. Okay. Now what about when that property comes up for lease again next year do they have to pay $100 again,
Jonathan Martis 34:56
it’s each time it’s activated on the app for people to self tour. Okay, so the ones that executed, right, like once it’s rented out, and let’s say five months later, they want to rent it out again, because the tenants moved out, they would need to pay to activate that, that self tour ability on the app.
Jason Hartman 35:16
So once basically what happens at the end of the process, then is there reporting the property is leased, and turning off the self tour. I mean, I suppose they could just never turn it off, right and leave it on indefinitely.
Jonathan Martis 35:29
Yeah, they can make the property inactive or if they remove it from the app. Either way, disabling it from the app means that it’s no longer able to be self taught. So we’ll have an option here for them to mark the property as leased or rented out. And it will no longer be on the app and we will consider it completes. if they wanted to. A few months later activated again, they would need to pay the fee of $99.
Jason Hartman 35:55
Okay, all right. So I don’t love that but it’s a lot less expensive than paying a property Manager at least something I’ll tell you that. So not bad.
Jonathan Martis 36:03
Okay, yeah, ideally they wouldn’t have to use it every few months, they can use that maybe every year if their leases
Jason Hartman 36:10
would be every couple of years. I mean, for single family home, yeah, single family home, your tendency should stay a couple of years, at least sometimes way longer. So what else do you want us to know? Any anything we haven’t covered?
Jonathan Martis 36:21
Yeah, I mean, if you look at the process now on renting a property, it’s very difficult at times to see the property. So you have to schedule the tour. But at times, there’s only certain days you can see it. And rentals Of course, Go quickly. And that does. That’s not usually a problem for most people at certain times of the year. But if you can get properties rented out more quickly, move on to your next property that you have to handle and allow us to help you with that process. We’re creating a more efficient way for you to operate your business and as a landlord or property manager. We’re creating more safety in the process by not requiring someone to be there with someone maybe they don’t know. No, and we’re doing a lot of the pre screening for you. So we’re creating a more efficient way for you to do your business. And so for a small fee, we think that’s definitely gonna be helpful. And it’s gonna allow this landlord or property management company or whoever’s handling that rental to be able to stand out from the other companies because they’re offering something unique and something the renters are already wants. I mean, there’s there’s property management companies that continuously get asked, Do you offer self tours and they don’t. And the reason why a lot of property management companies or landlords don’t use it is because maybe there’s some systems there already that are have a monthly fee and requires different types of these because they offer a huge, huge platform of features that maybe they don’t really need. What we do is we provide a turnkey solution that has a reasonable price and it’s a safe and more secure way to handle it so often, and folks, realize that you can do this from anywhere you In the world, I assume that the landlord can operate everything from their phone just like the prospective tenant can, right? Exactly. So if you’re on vacation in Hawaii, and you have people wanting to for that property, you’re the one designated to receive those requests to approve. As long as you have cell phone service. And that request comes in, you can give approval, which that renter would then get access into the property by tapping unlocked. So that’s the great thing about it. You can be in two places at once and grow your business more quickly, in our view.
Jason Hartman 38:31
Excellent. You know, I am curious about one thing. I guess you don’t have an application for the short term rental market, it seems like this would be a really good fit for short term rentals. You’d have to sort of work through the model a little differently. But what about that?
Jonathan Martis 38:45
I’m sure you thought we’re open to you know, suggestions from those in the industry. We do our best to do research and development. We like to talk to our customers and see what they preferred that might work better. So that is something we are looking into. We do plan on Moving into the vacation rental space for a safer and secure way to access these properties without needing to exchange keys. So that is something we thought of. And we will be revising the business model for those different industries or use cases based on, you know, what works best for our customers,
Jason Hartman 39:17
give our investors a little bit of insight as to what’s next in the industry. I mean, the Smart Home is really so fascinating. And you know, you can control everything, lighting hpac you know, water monitoring, carbon monoxide, smoke detectors, just everything, you know, locks on multiple doors. I mean, just, you know, any any insight into what’s what’s next for either for you guys, or just the industry in general.
Jonathan Martis 39:45
Yeah. So what’s exciting for us is we have a, we have some big partnerships that will be coming. We’re talking to some partners now that build smart home devices. So we don’t build the products, the physical products, we build the software, but there’s Some companies we’re talking to that build, that have security cameras that have motion sensors, door sensors, water sensors, you know, carbon monoxide. So we have all these different possibilities. What we want to do is build a platform that’s easy to use focuses on user experience and safety and security and making the ability for a landlord or property manager to more easily do their job but but in a safe, secure way with one app, and there’s so many different products out there. But we want to kind of bring that all together through our strategic partnerships, so that we can help facilitate that for our customers. So in coming years, we think it’s going to become much more automated in the rental industry. And I think the tenants will love the opportunities to see more properties but also have these new technologies built in through the flow so that it’s a safe secure way for also the landlords and property managers.
Jason Hartman 40:57
Excellent. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining Send listeners, just remember all of this technology just means a few great things for you. Number one, it makes you the empowered investor, you’ve got the control at your fingertips, no longer can a property manager pull the wool over your eyes and tell you what’s going on when it’s not or something, you know, inaccurate, you know, directly with and without the need to delegate because the technology does that for you. It makes it really easy. And it reduces friction increases the market size increases the number of tenants that can become interested in a property. So it’s a great thing. And of course, you have the links in the show notes. And Jonathan, thanks again for joining us.
Jonathan Martis 41:43
Thank you, Jason. I appreciate it.
Jason Hartman 41:50
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