A Podcast | Ashley Kehr

Pete Neubig: [00:00:17] Welcome back, everybody. And, uh, I have my I have investor extraordinaire and a friend of mine, Ashley Kerr. Ashley, thank you so much for being here today.

Ashley Kehr: [00:00:28] Yes. Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Neubig: [00:00:31] So Ashley and I met through, uh, through my old business partner, Steve Rosenberg. And, uh, she's a big wig with, uh, bigger pockets. And she has been investing in real estate for a long time. So, actually, tell us a little bit about your journey into investing in real estate. And then what we want to do is kind of pivot that and talk to you about how can our how can property managers work with investors and vice versa.

Ashley Kehr: [00:00:55] Yeah, sure. So to start off, I actually graduated college as an accountant and I was going to become a CPA. Well, I started working for an accountant and I quit within six months. I could not sit at a desk. I hated it so.

Pete Neubig: [00:01:11] So poor, poor ROI on that. On that investment, huh?

Ashley Kehr: [00:01:14] Yes. So as much as to my parents disappointment, I quit my job and I started working for a real estate investor who was actually the father of a childhood friend. And the job description was, I need you to help me get organized. And what I didn't understand was that meant he needed me to manage a 40 unit apartment complex. So for some reason, the fact that I had an accounting background translated to he believed that I could manage this apartment complex. So the first day I walk in and it's a the office is a small room, no windows, there's a little bathroom attached, there's no heat or air conditioning actually going to this room and it's inside an apartment complex?

Pete Neubig: [00:01:58] And where is it located?

Ashley Kehr: [00:02:00] What's that?

Pete Neubig: [00:02:01] And it's located where?

Ashley Kehr: [00:02:02] Inside of the apartment complex.

Pete Neubig: [00:02:04] But it's located in Buffalo. Right. Aren't you?

Ashley Kehr: [00:02:06] Yes.

Pete Neubig: [00:02:06] In Buffalo, New York.

Ashley Kehr: [00:02:07] Yep. So in Buffalo. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:02:08] So no heat in Buffalo, New York. That's got to be fun in January and February.

Ashley Kehr: [00:02:12] So in this little office I walk in and there's just boxes of the lease agreements. And the lease agreements were one page long. There was a drawer that had keys in it, some labeled, some not. And this was my first impression of property management. So I started tackling with what I knew and that was the bookkeeping. So okay, I at least know how to enter the rent checks and make the deposits and how to pay the bills, okay.

Pete Neubig: [00:02:40] See who's not paying rent. And see who's not paying.

Ashley Kehr: [00:02:43] Yep.

Pete Neubig: [00:02:43] Right.

Ashley Kehr: [00:02:44] So from there, it took me a really about three years to find out about property management software, because also on the desk, the person who had been managing it previously literally had taken a piece of paper, a ruler and a marker and made grid lines.

Pete Neubig: [00:03:00] Made their own Excel spreadsheet.

Ashley Kehr: [00:03:02] Horizontal and vertical grid lines with the ruler and put each tenant's name for 40 tenants. And there was also 40 garages too, and would mark and check at the box and read if they paid rent or not.

Pete Neubig: [00:03:14] Wasn't this is like 1960?

Ashley Kehr: [00:03:16] This was in 2012 or 2013.

Pete Neubig: [00:03:22] Oh, my goodness.

Ashley Kehr: [00:03:23] Yeah. So this investor, he had a bunch of other businesses and these were just kind of investments his brother had helped him get into, and he didn't really ever do anything with them. And so when I went in, I had to really learn everything about property management. But I started helping him with some of his other business stuff, and he was trying to acquire a new business. And I saw how he took this apartment complex. He did a cash out Refinance, pulled his money out and used that to buy his new business that he was getting into. And right there was like a light bulb moment for me as to like, wow, this is the power of real estate. And that's when I started buying real estate on my own and developing my portfolio. But I continued to manage for him until the beginning of 2020, which and then I handed it off to a third party property management company. They managed it for three years, and now I've brought the management back in-house as of May 2023. But this time I'm not managing. I'm not doing all the day to day. I've actually built out a team in-house who's handling everything, and then I just oversee everything as it goes.

Pete Neubig: [00:04:40] So did you bring it in-house because they weren't doing a good job? Or did you bring it in-house because you saw an opportunity where you can actually create your own management firm?

Ashley Kehr: [00:04:51] It was more because they weren't doing a good job, and I felt like there was more stress and more involvement on my side than I had expected, and just so many things going wrong that I knew that I could do a better job. But I also knew I didn't want to go back to that girl who was staying up super late, who was crying because the tenant was being mean. You know, ripping my hair out with stress of different things happening. So I knew that I had to do it different this time. And that's where I really started to build out the systems and processes. And I actually hired virtual assistants who run everything that can be done through the property management software. And then I have one guy who's the boots on the ground that does the showings, and he does the maintenance, but we don't take on any clients. Um, just for anyone that I'm a business partner with, if they have additional units outside of us, I will bring them on. And then it's just my units too. So altogether we have about 130 commercial and residential units, and then we have 51 garages that we do too, storage units.

Pete Neubig: [00:06:00] Interesting. Okay. So you're so in theory, you're not really third party managing for for anybody.

Ashley Kehr: [00:06:06] Right.

Pete Neubig: [00:06:07] Because you're managing for all the owners and the partners. Um, and so do you find that, you know, an apartment complex versus a garage versus commercial? They're they're similar, but they're different. Right. You have to have a different...

Ashley Kehr: [00:06:19] Oh, very different. And I think that was a huge mistake. When I was hiring this third party property management company, I did not ask how many actual apartment complexes they had. Like I did not. And there I found out later on that their majority of their portfolio that they were managing was single family or very small multifamily. We were the only we had two large complexes, 40 units each, and we were the only ones that they were managing that large for, and they really struggled with how different it is from managing a single family home.

Pete Neubig: [00:06:55] Yeah, I've always thought when I talk to property managers, I always tell them like, you know, be be super focused, be like like a sniper. Not you know, not not a shotgun. And, um, Steve and I say we make we make a pizza. It's a cheese pizza. And that's all we make. And so we stay with single family. As much as Steve tried to get me to do multifamily, we stayed with single family because they're really. I think they're they're may be in the same classification like it's property management. But to us, because I had run smaller, you know, 50 and 100 unit apartment complexes, I knew it was completely different. As far as one.

Ashley Kehr: [00:07:30] Of the biggest things that drove me crazy was disputes between tenants. That was literally the thing that drove me insane with being a manager is like, I am not your mom. I am not the police. Like coming to me with every little thing. It was just that was so aggravating. And when you're doing single family, usually that's the only family in the unit or the only person in there. So you're not dealing with a lot of that other stuff too. And common areas, you know, disputes over common areas or, you know, keeping it clean, different things like that was definitely a big headache.

Pete Neubig: [00:08:05] My first place I bought was a duplex, and literally I get handed the keys, I buy it and like the next day both tenants are calling me up like, I don't know anything about anything. And they're calling me up and they're they're basically, you know, upset with each other about the use of the yard. And I'm like, wait, what? I'm like, that was my first like literally like my my first like, uh, foray into property management or to owning investment properties. And I'm like, oh man. And I didn't know anything about property management at the time. I didn't even know that there was an industry for property management, or else I probably would have found somebody a lot quicker. Back then that was like 2001. So showing my age there. So all right, so a couple of things that, that, uh, that, uh, that you touched on. And so one of the big things is you said that the that they weren't doing a good job. And so as an investor, I know and you know, you're on you have your own podcast and you work with a lot of, uh, newbie investors and seasoned investors, uh, both with single family and multifamily, uh, I right. Do you do just multifamily or do you have some single family people that you kind of poach along?

Ashley Kehr: [00:09:09] I have a couple single family, too.

Pete Neubig: [00:09:12] When when investors are looking for a property manager, what do you see are, like, the most important traits that a property management company have to make sure that that that relationship is successful right from the get go and stay successful.

Ashley Kehr: [00:09:25] Yeah. I think the biggest thing is, um, not necessarily their traits, but like is finding out their systems and processes. You need to sit down and write a list of like different scenarios or different things that can come up and ask the property manager how they handled this. Like even something, as my tenant calls you that their dishwasher isn't working. What is the process? So one thing with this property management company is their departments didn't communicate. They had this like break in the chain, like, you know, that somebody would move out, leasing would move the person out, but then it never got sent to maintenance for the turnover. And then the apartment just sat and nobody realized it. Nobody said anything. And leasing thought maintenance was taking care of the turnover, and it was just taking a long time. So I think understanding what their systems and processes are and understanding like, okay, do they have an actual system in place that works? Um, that really was like a thing that I wish I would have looked more into, of how things are handed off and and gone through the line, but then also communication.

Pete Neubig: [00:10:37] I was just going to bring up the deadly C word. Yes communication.

Ashley Kehr: [00:10:40] Like, how are they communicating to you? It got to the point where this. With this property management company, I had to only send emails. I literally refused to get on the phone with them because I wanted everything in writing. And I think that is great advice just to keep, even if you have a great property manager, is that you always have record of everything. And even with my contractor, I just finished up a flip house. There's been three times where I had to scroll back and text messages, and I sent him a screenshot saying like, no, you said you were doing this or whatever, and you'd be like, oh yeah, sorry, I'll get it done today. So everything in writing, but how were they going to communicate to you where you're at, you know, when are you getting the owner's statements? Um, how are they updating you on? You know, what the vacancy rate is? You know how many open work orders? So the company is Buildium and from my end I could not see any outstanding work orders. I couldn't see, you know what? Who was waiting. And that was really the hardest part is we had no idea of customer satisfaction as the owners of the property where in Buildium you can send a tenant survey, but the survey gets back to the property managers. So I actually set up my own survey in Google forms and asked them to send it all out. And then I was the only one that received the responses from the survey too. But I think understanding how they will communicate to you, what's the best way for you to communicate with them, and just remembering that you're still an asset manager? Even when you hand something over to a property manager, you're still the asset manager too.

Pete Neubig: [00:12:26] Do you find that most investors want to be kind of more hands on than what the property managers would like? Or do you find that they only are hands on in the very beginning. And then when they build that trust, they kind of go, hands off. What are your what are your thoughts? Because I know as a property manager, I flip and hated when those when those investor owners or any owner wanted to be in the middle of things and like, no, call my brother-in-law. He's a great plumber. Like, you know, he's not licensed, he doesn't have insurance, but he's a great plumber like you got to call it like. So where's the balance on that, do you think?

Ashley Kehr: [00:12:59] And that's the exact reason why I'm not taking on other people as clients because I can't. I would not be able to handle that.

Pete Neubig: [00:13:07] Third party management is a tough job.

Ashley Kehr: [00:13:09] Right now. Like if there is a I make a mistake. I'm responsible to myself and my other partners. I've made them so much money that if I make a mistake right now, like not a huge deal to them. But if it was somebody who's paying me and has hired me to do this job for them and I made a mistake, or they disagreed. And even though I felt like I was right, that would, you know, just make me really upset and I couldn't handle it. So I think that there needs to be clear expectations up front. So as the property manager, you need to say like up front. These are, you know, the guidelines you have to follow. This is what we expect from you.

Pete Neubig: [00:13:49] The rules of the game.

Ashley Kehr: [00:13:49] So one thing could be is if a maintenance request comes in and our minimum is say $500, we need a response from you as the owner within 24 hours, because that is how we are going to schedule it on time. We're going to get it fixed on time, and then it needs to be upfront as to, you know, as the owner, here are the things we allow you to be involved in. So it is vendor selection and you have to send us your list, submit it. Um, you know, whether you have some kind of procedure where, you know, as the property manager and we're hiring them, we need to do some kind of vetting to add them to our list. We need to make sure they're insured to protect ourselves, too, along with you. So I think having that list of here's things you are allowed to be involved in, other than that, you are in breach of contract as our client trying to get involved into that. And I think if you have those clear expectations, you also show confidence that you know that you are confident in these tasks and these roles that you can do.

Pete Neubig: [00:14:54] Right. I'm the professional. I'm the professional property manager. You're the real estate investor. You found the property. You found a great deal. I'm going to go ahead and manage that deal. I'm the asset manager. The property manager, you're the investor, right?

Ashley Kehr: [00:15:08] Yup.

Pete Neubig: [00:15:08] Yeah. And I also do believe that, um, I like that approach, actually. You know, where you say, hey, these are the things where you're involved in. These are the things you're not. If you want vendors. This is this is our approval approval process, right? I love the investor that, um, tells me like, hey, send me all the applications, I want to approve them. You know? And I'm like, yeah, no, you're not for us, I think. Or you try to train them. Right. So so a lot of training how you do business on the front end. And um, once they build that trust, then they kind of let you do your thing is what is what I found. Is that what you see on your side as well?

Ashley Kehr: [00:15:49] Well, I never developed that trust with my property manager, but, I think that what what happened in the beginning was I was the opposite. In the beginning, I was like wow.

Pete Neubig: [00:16:02] Hands off.

Ashley Kehr: [00:16:02] This is such a relief off my shoulders. Like, this is great. You guys take charge. I don't have to do anything. I felt like I was on vacation, it felt so good. But the problem was I was too hands off. I wasn't looking into things enough. I was letting things slide. Because you know what? Like they just got the properties, things like that. So that time period really was a weakness of mine that I actually should have been paying more attention to, like my expectations to the property manager were kind of set loosey goosey because I let so many things go in the beginning, because I was just enjoying not having to manage the properties anymore.

Pete Neubig: [00:16:42] Yup. And then all of a sudden, six months later, you're like, Holy cow, this is not producing anything that that produced when I was running it.

Ashley Kehr: [00:16:50] Yeah. And I think one thing that the my property management company tried to do was they tried to set up like a meeting and, you know, like, okay, let's go over what's wrong with, you know, different things like that where I think I would have preferred if it was more proactive, like especially first with onboarding is to like reach out to me and ask me, like, how is everything going? Here are your numbers. Here's what you're at for vacancy rate. Here's what you know. We've calculated your cash flow to be for these properties. Here's the maintenance we expect to be, you know, coming up on the property, different things like that. And they actually which would almost classify as like an asset management meeting. And that's kind of what I do with my partners now is to like we, I do these meetings with them where it's like, okay, here's everything, here's where we're at, you know? And that gives chance. Not that they ever really give any feedback because they have no idea about real estate investing. But, you know, it kind of gives them some insight where if a property management company did that to me, I would feel like I had more control over it because they were actually giving me a lot more information than just sending me an owner's report every month, and me having no idea of how many work orders actually came in. How quickly is the work getting completed, things like that. And especially if you are a property manager that does a great job of that, like showcase that, tell your owners like brag about that and then also like if there is something that isn't working, why isn't it working? And explain that to the owner and say, you know, this is what we're doing. But one of the best ways to if you have a problem, and like maybe a tenant isn't allowing you access or whatever, is come up with three solutions and then give it to the owner to decide as to like, here's our three solutions. This is a unique scenario. We want to give you the option do we give 48 hours notice and we force our way in and tell the the tenant like Perla, we can come in to make this repair. Would you like us to try to contact them one more time, or should we just forget about the repair and not make it, whatever those solutions may be? But I don't like it when someone comes to me with a problem without any idea of a solution.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:11] Right.

Ashley Kehr: [00:19:11] And I think as a property manager, like when you are presenting a problem, it's going to be stressful for the owner. They're going to think about like even though they don't have to actually communicate and talk to the person like they're thinking about, oh, what's this going to cost me? Things like that. So if you can have a problem, maybe have three quotes already present it. Those are just a couple different little random things that you could do to make your owner feel more secure and more involved without them actually having to be involved.

Pete Neubig: [00:19:40] Yeah. You touched on a couple of things, right? So like what I found is every time, um, especially if I'm not a proactive and I'm a reactive company, every time I reach out to the owner, it was always bad news, right? Every time the owner would see my email on my phone, he'd be like, oh my God, either they're trying to sell me something or it's true. Or like I have like a stomach ache because it's bad news. And so you said like, you know, when you do something good, you should really let, let let you let your client know, right? Like pat yourself on the back, give yourself accolades. And I think not enough property management companies do that. Right. Because they sometimes we do a lot of good work and we don't even let the owner know. Right? Sometimes it might be, you know, a work order comes in and it was cosmetic and we denied it. Or a work order comes in and we were able to troubleshoot over the phone and we saved the owner, you know, a trip charge or whatever. And those just get done. And that like no one's even telling the owner any of that stuff or so you know, there's a balance, though, of like too much communication, not enough communication, what type what type of communication. And I don't know if anybody has the right answer on, on any of this stuff because like, the last thing you want to do is send your an owner and an investor client an email every time you do anything. Hey, I just took a poop. Like, here's an email. Like, you know.

Ashley Kehr: [00:20:54] I think like that's a perfect opportunity to hire a virtual assistant. Where is if an owner, like, does have questions or a property manager does something great is you have that virtual assistant to communicate that information to the tenant. So it's not bogging down the time of your property management, or it's just like a standard monthly thing that you are sending out. Like, here's the highlights of your portfolio. Here are the low points of this. Like we actually had to do like a $300 plumbing repair in this property. It was under the minimum. But here's what happened. Whatever. And a VA you that would be easy for them to go into each owner's portal. Look at each thing and, you know, send it off. But, still, time consuming.

Pete Neubig: [00:21:36] And if they're not sure how to how to write an email they can also use ChatGPT and like.

Ashley Kehr: [00:21:41] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:21:42] And you know, we have our our remote team use ChatGPT all the time now to come up with responses. So you said you use a lot of virtual assistants. I did not put you on here for virtual assistants, although everybody knows that I run a VA company. But tell me some of the things that your virtual assistants did for you when you first created your property management firm.

Ashley Kehr: [00:22:00] Yeah. So actually my first one was from your company, Divina. She is amazing. And she enters all the rent checks for me and also enters all the payables, gets them ready for me to hit pay. So every month we use a virtual mailbox post mail scan. I think it is. And so all of our mail is sent to this mailbox and they scan it in for us. Davina goes in and she sorts and separates the mail. So anything that needs to get filed gets filed into our Google Drive. Anything that is a payable gets uploaded. We use Appfolio for our software, upload it into there, and then she goes through and she enters every payable that needs to be paid. And then the same with the rent checks. The rent checks also get sent and scanned in. So she's able to see the rent checks, she's able to enter them in. And then the rent checks actually get forwarded to our boots on the ground guy who actually takes them and deposits them at the bank. But we have very few people who actually pay by check or money order anymore. Most are online, so that's nice, but.

Pete Neubig: [00:23:02] It's a beautiful thing.

Ashley Kehr: [00:23:03] That's what she does. Um, that side of things. So that's like wonderful. I can't stand clutter. I can't stand mail. So having a virtual mailbox has been amazing and everything is right there. So I can go in at any time and I can check and I can view the mail. Okay. What's coming in? You know what needs to be taken care of. But she's done an amazing job. But I can always go back and review it where if you're getting paper mail, I have if I'm. Especially if someone else is receiving that mail, I have no checks and balances where at least it's saved into this post mail scan and I can go through it and you know, delete it eventually when they start charging me for storage. But that I love that checks and balance because I always used to open the mail, I'd read through it, and then I would have somebody that was helping me, um, actually go and pay the bills and stuff like that. But that still was so time consuming of having to physically open the mail, sort the paper, and then paying someone to scan it in and then do everything else. So I love this process. It's probably my favorite process that we have. And then I have another.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:12] And more and more people are going to virtual. So give us that one more time that company that you're using.

Ashley Kehr: [00:24:18] Uh, VPM.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:19] No, no, I'm sorry for the for the mail. For the mail. You're funny.

Ashley Kehr: [00:24:21] Oh, I thought you were just trying to get me to promote you again.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:24] No no no. For for the mail. I think that's really interesting.

Ashley Kehr: [00:24:29] It's post mail scan.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:31] Post mail scan. Okay. I think that sounds more and more people going.

Ashley Kehr: [00:24:34] Or maybe it's post scan mail. One of those. Yeah. It's a virtual mailbox.

Pete Neubig: [00:24:36] But more and more people are going to virtual offices. So I think that's a really unique idea.

Ashley Kehr: [00:24:42] And also the place that it's actually sent is there's different locations everywhere that you can select. So it's actually just a 20-minute drive from my house. So like if there was anything that I actually needed...But then most, they'll shred things for you if you want, um, they'll recycle things, so it's great.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:08] All right. Um, I think we lost you there for a quick second. Ashley.

Ashley Kehr: [00:25:12] Oh. You did?

Pete Neubig: [00:25:12] Okay, so just talk about...

Ashley Kehr: [00:25:14] Let me just say that again

Pete Neubig: [00:25:15] Yeah. So, like, there are about 20 minutes away.

Ashley Kehr: [00:25:17] Yeah. Okay.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:18] All right.

Ashley Kehr: [00:25:18] So you can pick the location. And the one that I picked is about 20 minutes away where they actually receive the mail and scan it in. So especially with my tenants, when they're sending in a check, they're sending it to a local mailbox number so it doesn't, you know, take forever. Their mail isn't going across the country or anything like that. And they realize it's local which gives them more of a sense of security. But then with that, if there's ever a package or anything else that I need to actually physically get, they'll either forward it to my house and I get it next day, or I can physically go there and pick something up too. So I love that aspect of it, that you have those options.

Pete Neubig: [00:25:59] That's very cool. It's something that we just popped up in our conversation. We didn't we hadn't talked about this this idea beforehand.

Ashley Kehr: [00:26:06] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:06] All right let's pivot. Let's pivot a little bit. You wrote a book called The Real Estate Rookie. 90 days to your first investment. Um, so tell us just a little bit, like, maybe like, high level, like, what are some of the investment strategies that you go over in the book and then think of like a PM? We deal with a lot of reluctant landlords. We deal with a lot of people that may or may not want to get into real estate, but then they somehow get into real estate, whether it's like, you know, they have to get they have to move or whatever it is and they don't want to sell the house. How can we leverage that? And how can we leverage our knowledge as property managers into, you know, helping our clients invest and buy more properties?

Ashley Kehr: [00:26:44] Yeah, that's a great question. And first of all, you could read my book, Real Estate Rookie. You could give it out to your clients so..

Pete Neubig: [00:26:51] That's a great idea.

Ashley Kehr: [00:26:52] If you have a client that has a first property, you can give them my book.

Pete Neubig: [00:26:55] That's a great. Idea. Yeah. We actually did that.

Ashley Kehr: [00:26:57] You can actually use the code Ashley for 10% off. It might be Ashley10 or Ashley@Biggerpockets.com too...

Pete Neubig: [00:27:03] It's a-s-h-l-e-y. Right?

Ashley Kehr: [00:27:05] Yes yes, yes. But, yeah. So I think, like offering education to your landlords, even if it is a landlord that has a bunch of properties and maybe they've been doing it for 20 years. The laws change over time, and especially if they were a DIY landlord, they might not actually know. So offering resources and the more informative your owners are, you know, the less they're going to give you pushback if you are a good property manager because they're going to understand what the laws, what the rules are. So like in New York, you have to give a 14 day notice. If you're if your owner doesn't know that they're going to be frustrated, like, why haven't I gotten the eviction paperwork? You know, stuff like that. It's been ten days, blah, blah, blah. In Buffalo, where I invest, there's two organizations, Home and Why and Belmont. So Belmont is the one that gives out section eight vouchers and home NY is just like a home resource for all different kinds of housing. A housing organization. They both offer free or very low cost classes. So what I would suggest to a PM is having these resources available and send out if you send out a newsletter to your owners, whatever, say, hey, here's a free class you can take to understand the the tenant landlord laws. And you know, if an owner could say, well, that's what I hire you for to understand that. And yeah, that's fine. But like if you're going to go and purchase more property, don't you want to understand as to like what you're getting into when you're purchasing that property? You know, like right now in New York State, we went through a change with commissions where now, if you want to do a showing, you have to sign a paper with the agent that shows you the apartment, saying that you will pay them a commission if you buy this house.

Pete Neubig: [00:28:57] That's not just New York, and that's national.

Ashley Kehr: [00:29:00] It's everywhere?

Pete Neubig: [00:29:00] Yeah. It's national.

Ashley Kehr: [00:29:01] So by buyers Right now are nobody's going to showings. Nobody is going because they don't understand because they're not they don't. Nobody wants to sign that paper. Like, even if like we put in one of our listings that just got listed yesterday that we will pay it, but they that person still has to sign that paper to get in. So like under educating the everyone about what these changes are to, you know, buying houses to selling houses to managing houses to tenant landlord law, all of that I think is such a great value to help your client understand, but also providing market research, the market analysis. With ChatGPT, it is so easy to analyze a market, sending out updates to your, you know, clients saying, here's what's going on in our market right now. That is such a valuable information, especially if you're in niche areas like niche, niche, down to neighborhoods, things like that. That's so easy to collect that information and to give it out, but not everyone knows how to get that information.

Pete Neubig: [00:30:05] I think those are two great ideas. I like the newsletter idea a lot. Um, having a newsletter with the information, um, giving out books. So we actually, um, before you wrote your book, we used to give out a book named by a guy named by John Burley. I'm not sure if you know his name, but John Burley had written a book, you know, like intro to Real Estate. So I think that's a great idea. So, um, we actually did that, bought a whole bunch of his books. So I think people should buy a whole bunch of your books and give those out.

Ashley Kehr: [00:30:33] Just make sure they are a rookie investor, because I feel like if you give this some to some old veteran that's investing for 30 years, a rookie book is going to take offense.

Pete Neubig: [00:30:41] Yeah. And throw back at you, I hate you. Yeah. You know another thing that that I like that you said like I never even thought of it, but become the expert in your market. And the number one way to do that is, is with the data.

Ashley Kehr: [00:30:54] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:30:55] Right. And so that market analysis I think is really golden. And, um, we used to have, uh, monthly or, I don't know, quarterly or monthly, I forget, but we used to have, like, we used to call them owner education seminar series. And like, you can come to our office back in the day. Now, now you can do it through zoom. But, you know, that's another idea is, you know, going and doing a monthly zoom call with all of your owners and just going over market and just data or just investing in general. Right. Because we are the experts in property management, not just. And we also know the market. We know what they lease for. Like one of the things I used to drive me nuts was when one of our clients would buy a property through some other agent, the agent would tell them that it would rent for $2,000. We get the property and we would lease it and we'd be like, yeah, it's a $1,600 rental. And then the owner would get upset with us because the agent said it was $2,000. Meanwhile, I'm like, yeah, the agent told you that so they can sell you the property. Um, you know, we're we're telling you like it's real, you know? So I think...

Ashley Kehr: [00:31:57] And I think that right there is like a, a wonderful point as far as like you acting as the, the agent for the sales for purchase or dispose of a property on the property management side and like talking about those advantages. So when I heard my property management company, I knew they had a brokerage and sold real estate, but I did. That was one thing that was amazing about them was that the agent, I used their agent to sell a couple of my properties. I didn't have to do anything. They coordinated with the property manager to set up showings to do everything. It was the most hands off experience I've ever had selling a house that was occupied with tenants. It was great and I think highlighting some of those things, but also having a marketplace or some kind of process for your owners that want to sell their properties and owners that want to buy properties, like somehow showcasing that that you have, you know, you have the ability to get first dibs on properties that are owners are selling, you know, so that I think is a especially if you're a larger property management company that is such a great advantage to your owners is knowing that they could have first look or first dibs to.

Pete Neubig: [00:33:13] Yeah, they could. They might save thousands and thousands of dollars in in purchasing. So this way when you do make a mistake because we all make mistakes, they realize, okay, you cost me 500 here, but you made me 5000 on on a purchase.

Ashley Kehr: [00:33:26] Right, right. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:33:28] All right, so, uh, we're running out of time. So the last question I'm going to ask you before we hit our commercial break real quick, and then. And then the lightning round. Um, you know, a lot of property management companies are looking to grow, and obviously, there's there's 2 or 3 buckets, right? And the main bucket is the investor bucket. How can property managers link up with investors. Like where Like where do the investors hang out? So if I'm a property manager, like, you know, like we have NARPM, so when I sell the property managers, I just go to NARPM and there's a bunch of property managers, and I can sell to them. But, you know, as a property manager, you just can't go somewhere like, oh, here, I'm going to put a booth out and I'm going to hang out with all these investors. So what would you recommend or ways ways property managers can find investors. Um, that to, you know, for potential clients?

Ashley Kehr: [00:34:16] Okay. So I got two resources right off the top of my head. And the first one is biggerpockets.com/teams. So they actually are implementing a property manager marketplace where people who belong, I mean, there's over a million subscribers to  BiggerPockets that they can go onto there. And they can search for property managers in your market. So you'll be able to have your contact information on there, you know, tell a little bit about your company, things like that. And people will be able to go in and actually contact you and find you going into the Bigger Pockets forums and looking setting up there. You can set up keyword searches. So anytime somebody searches property management in, you know, Buffalo or just Buffalo, New York in general, you'll get a, you know, something will bring it up. And even if you it's not anyone asking even about finding a property manager, you get involved by answering questions. There's this guy, his last name is Irish Jones and he's from Buffalo, and he has a property management company here and I've never met him. I don't know anything about him except that I've seen his name all over the  BiggerPockets forums, responding to questions about Buffalo, giving you know, and he's not just saying, hey, hire me. You know, he's going in and giving advice to people, which I think gives him so much more credibility and networking. The second thing I would say is going to conferenceconnect.com. So this is a website where you can go on and you can find conferences across the world.

Pete Neubig: [00:35:53] Easy for you to say.

Ashley Kehr: [00:35:54] And yeah. So and you'll just type in what kind of conference you're looking for and you can search, you know, real estate conference. So obviously the bigger pockets BPcon is a huge conference. There's um, limitless. You know, Brandon Turner does a Better Life Tribe conference that is specific to real estate investing. The Rei summit, I think it's called, uh, so I think, you know, going to that website and just searching and also, if, you know, a couple like key people in the real estate investment side such as Brandon Turner, search Brandon Turner as a speaker, because there's speaker profiles on that website, too, and you can see which conferences he is speaking at. And if he's speaking at a conference, you can kind of look at it and see, okay, this one...Is uh, yeah, for investors and I think attending conferences and networking. But as far as like if you want to get more focused into your specific niche, is attending the real estate meetups. So  BiggerPockets has a page where you can look at meetups in your area. In Buffalo, there's one I think it's every second Wednesday of the month and going to those meetups for real estate investors as the property manager.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:05] I love it. Those are some great ideas. Awesome. All right. We're going to be right back. And I'm going to put you on the lightning round. All right everybody. We'll be right back after this.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:16] All right. We're back with Ashley. Ashley Kehr out of Buffalo, New York, everybody. I'm from New York, but not Buffalo. Is like eight hours from where I'm from originally. All right. Um, and Ashley gets lots of snow around November through June.

Ashley Kehr: [00:37:34] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:37] All right. So a couple of these you already answered here. So what PM software do you use?

Ashley Kehr: [00:37:42] Appfolio.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:43] Mhm. Um, and do you use virtual assistants?

Ashley Kehr: [00:37:46] Yep. So I use the one I talked about from VPM. And then I've also used Scale Virtually. That's where my full time virtual assistant is that does all the tenant communication stuff like that.

Pete Neubig: [00:37:56] What is one piece of advice you would give someone just starting out in the PM business?

Ashley Kehr: [00:38:02] That's a great question. I would say the first thing is, is to build out your systems and processes, know the logistics of your business. That's the biggest thing of and keeping track as things come up, make sure you're documenting how you handle that so you never have to do the same thing again without having some kind of checklist or some kind of process. And that way you're set up to continuously start starting to outsource, too.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:29] What's your favorite fast food restaurant?

Ashley Kehr: [00:38:32] Mm. I honestly don't eat fast food. Really. Like...

Pete Neubig: [00:38:36] Most people don't they? They never.. no one wants to claim they like fast food, but if you are hungover one day, and you ever and you had to have a go to and you had.

Ashley Kehr: [00:38:45] I mean, does Chipotle count?

Pete Neubig: [00:38:47] We won't let it count for this.

Ashley Kehr: [00:38:48] I, or chick fil A? I got that I do eat chick fil-A chicken sometimes.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:52] Chick fil-a. Alright.

Ashley Kehr: [00:38:52] Yes. So there.

Pete Neubig: [00:38:54] All right. Um, what was your first job?

Ashley Kehr: [00:38:57] My first job was a hostess at the restaurant, the Boston Hotel.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:03] Nice. What's your ideal vacation?

Ashley Kehr: [00:39:07] Um, I really want to take my kids on a trip to...one child. Wants to go to Italy, and one child wants to go to Greece because he is learning about, um, lots of Greece and stuff, and. But for me, my dream would. I would never, ever. Sorry.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:30] I think we lost you for a second.

Ashley Kehr: [00:39:32] Oh. You did. Oh, I'll just say it real quick. That my dream would be to take the kids on an African safari.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:37] Oh, I like that one a lot.

Ashley Kehr: [00:39:39] Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:40] Uh, what is one thing that most people don't know about you?

Ashley Kehr: [00:39:45] Um. I went to the World championships for archery when I was younger.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:51] No way. Oh, that's really cool. As a spectator or as a participant?

Ashley Kehr: [00:39:56] No, I was participating.

Pete Neubig: [00:39:58] Nice. Alright.

Ashley Kehr: [00:39:59] That would be funny if I always said that. And then I actually was just there. So I definitely didn't place, but I qualified and I went.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:08] That's amazing. Yeah. Um, what is, uh, what is one book that you're currently reading or one that's impacted your business or life that you would recommend?

Ashley Kehr: [00:40:18] So a book that I'm currently reading is my first fiction book that I've probably read in 15 years, and it's called The Perfect Son, as recommended by my sister, but it's pretty good so far. I made it to super far into it, but a business that, uh. Or a book that has impacted my business the most was, I would say, like very recently is, um, Buy Back Your Time.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:44] Okay. That's, uh, Dan Martell, right?

Ashley Kehr: [00:40:46] Yep. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: [00:40:47] Okay. Nice. Uh, what is one challenge you're currently facing in your business?

Ashley Kehr: [00:40:53] One challenge would probably be, I'm redefining my processes for lease renewals. That would be, like, the biggest thing I'm working on right now.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:07] All right. And, uh, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you or wanted to purchase your book, um, what's the best way to get in touch with you or to find your book?

Ashley Kehr: [00:41:17] Okay. You can go to Biggerpockets.com/bookstore, or it's on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble, and then you can also find me on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube at Wealth from Rentals. And then I also have a website, Ashleykehr.com.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:33] And that's k-e-h-r, right? 

Ashley Kehr: [00:41:35] Yep.

Pete Neubig: [00:41:36] Right. Ashleykehr.com. And if you are listening to this and you're not a member of NARPM, shame on you. Join NARPM. Go to narpm.org or call them at (800) 782-3452. And if you want to be cool like Ashley and have virtual assistants, virtual team members, go to VPMSolutions.com. We have over 30,000 profiles on the platform, over 30 free training courses and certifications that they can take, and it's free for you. And the way VPM makes money is they charge the virtual assistant 10% and you can find them, and you can interview them and you can onboard them, train them and pay them all through the platform. Ashley, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate you.

Ashley Kehr: [00:42:27] Thank you for having me.