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This is the fifth and final part in the mini-series between 'Two Smart Buddies', Rupal Patel and myself. This time, we talk about some of the crazy things that have happened to us in our property businesses...and what we have learned from them.
We have had a death, a fire, rogue builders, trolls and even an offer of 'payment in kind' would you believe? We have learned that everything is fixable and virtually nothing is insurmountable. Crazy things WILL happen, as it just part of the process. However, we will grow, develop resilience, understand not to take everything personally and that it's all worth it in the end. Well, most of it is!
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Transcription of the show
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Property Voice podcast. My name is Richard Brown and as always, it’s a pleasure to have you join me on the show again today.
This is the fifth and final part in the mini-series between 'Two Smart Buddies', Rupal Patel and myself. This time, we talk about some of the crazy things that have happened to us in our property businesses...and what we have learned from them.
We have had a death, a fire, rogue builders, trolls and even an offer of 'payment in kind' would you believe? We have learned that everything is fixable and virtually nothing is insurmountable. Crazy things WILL happen, as it just part of the process. However, we will grow, develop resilience, understand not to take everything personally and that it's all worth it in the end. Well, most of it is!
Property Chatter
Transcription of the Show
- I just reached out to him.
- Rupal, hi again.
- Hey, hello again.
- We're in a different place.
- Yeah, totally different.
- Yeah.
- Totally different day as well.
- I'm just gonna address the camera quickly. So here we are Two Smart Buddies, Rupal and myself Richard. And we're gonna talk in this session about crazy things that have happened and what we've learned from it. So, crazy stuff, Rupal have you got anything like that?
- Oh my gosh, you know I think as property investors somebody needs to do like an anthology of all of the crazy stories 'cause sometimes I think I've had crazy things happen and then I hear from other people, and like, what how is that even possible? So, I'll give you one of my favorite examples. Our first, no, second refurb project, the first project where we actually outsourced the refurbishment to somebody else and didn't do it ourselves. We basically got stuck with a terrible builder. It didn't really become apparent until we were too far along in the relationship and in the refurb to sort of you know walk it back. But basically long story short he screwed up everything that he did in that entire project and it was a big project. But my favorite crazy thing that happened was one of the things we asked him to do was to add new plug sockets in all of the rooms. Because they only had one and we needed a few in all of them, additional ones. Anyway, as I was going around and testing everything after he had done his work a bunch of them just didn't work and so we had to obviously at this point hire in proper professionals to come unscrew up everything that he had screwed up. And the electrician was like, "Rupal, there's no wiring!" He just took the plastic boxes and mounted those to the skirting boards.
- They looked good right?
- I mean who does that? The amount of time and effort it takes to do that you may as well not even have gone through the effort to begin with. Like, it was just so stupid! And I guess the crazy thing, you know the whole project was crazy that's just one of my favorite sort of data points from it. But the thing that I learned from that horrible experience is that one, everything is fixable. It was exhausting and draining and so infuriating that he had screwed us over and not done what he was supposed to do. And not done it properly but everything can be fixed. It's just having that mindset of like not admiring the problem and starting to look for a solution but yeah that's one of the crazy things that happened to me. How about you?
- Well, yeah funny, well I was just thinking as you were talking that I should do sort of a mini-series on my podcast.
- Oh okay.
- Called, Horror Stories, Property Horror Stories.
- Oh okay.
- And I believe that if my memory serves me correctly I think there are seven different categories. So I just refer people to that, first of all. But again just maybe have a bit of content here that we can talk about. And something that happened to me recently. We started chatting about it before we went on camera actually. Is I had a fire in a property.
- Oh yes.
- Yes, I had a fire in a property and it was pretty serious. There was someone actually occupying the property. It was arson and they were pretty determined because they set fire to it three times before it fully burned down.
- That's persistence.
- That's very persistent. And you know fortunately I had adequate insurance. I mean obviously, when I had the call, you know that call my first thought was to the occupants, the tenants.
- Yeah.
- Were they okay and did they get out? And thank God they did. So that was my first thought, the second thought is: where's my insurance policy.
- Is this covered?
- I need to make sure I'm covered.
- Yeah.
- And as I mentioned to you before, I guess what I learned is, have the right level of insurance. It's a boring topic, insurance. But have the right level of insurance with a reputable company. I managed to get out of that one. So, fortunately the tenants managed to get out without literally being burned. And I got out without being burned financially because I had insurance, so I just recommend people have, you know adequate insurance. I know it's boring but there you have it. You may have another one?
- Well, I guess sort of there are lots of small little anecdotal things, you know shower screens spontaneously shattering. Unfortunately, once it happened while the tenant was in the shower. You know, just stupid stuff happening but I guess without going into too much detail 'cause obviously folks can listen to your other podcast. I think again the key lesson is that crazy stuff will happen, it is just part of the process. And you're not being singularly targeted or you're not uniquely unqualified to invest because these things happen to you. Or you're not cursed if crazy things do happen. It just is part of the process and the more it happens, the more you get used to it the more you realize that everything has a solution, everything can be fixed. Sometimes, it takes obviously a bit more money to fix things but you know nothing is, very little in life is insurmountable.
- Yeah, that's a good one in fact that reminds me of probably another one. I've had tenants die on me.
- Oh my gosh.
- Yeah, you know sad, natural causes. I've had prostitutes staying in my properties.
- Yikes.
- I've had people calling me to change light bulbs. You know, just you know I've had a lot of different things you know going on. I don't was to push this one too far but I think there was say an offer on the table, yeah that maybe, I won't go any further you know where I'm going with that.
- Wow, well that was, interesting.
- And I was like if you just pay the rent I'm really cool.
- Yes, payment in kind is not acceptable, thank you.
- So as far as as these stories, you were talking about something that happened. And I think one I wanted to come back to was the very first property that, I became an accidental landlord in the mid 90's.
- Okay.
- Because I got relocated for work. And so I decided, you know to rent out my home 'cause I was living hundreds of miles away. And I rented out my home. What do you think happened? I'll tell you what happened.
- Okay, 'cause what's the worst case scenario?
- Well, first thing's within a month or two the hot water tank exploded, literally and it caused a flood and basically wiped out a whole, my first years worth of rent
- Of course, yeah.
- to fix that, which, I was a long way from overseas.
- Oh my word.
- It was hard for me. And the second thing that happened is those tenants, remember I told you wanted to stay for a long time?
- Yeah.
- Guess what?
- Two months in they're out.
- After the first six months' renewal they were gone. So, this is my first property investing experience. And what I did is I sold that property at that point in time 'cause I thought this is really hard.
- Yeah, it's not worth it.
- I sold that property and you know what, Rupal every time I want to look at, if I want to beat myself up, I go and look at Lamb Registry,
- Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.
- Yeah, and I see what it's worth now. And if I hadn't of sold, you know then I would have been in much better shape. So, to pick up a little bit on your point, I think is, things happen but you know we have to have as investors, you know sort of a tough skin.
- Yeah definitely.
- Some resilience and to push through these pain barriers because it's worth it in the end.
- Yes, and the thing with the resiliency I am glad you said that, 'cause it's something that comes up a lot especially amongst newer investors. It's not that you have resilience and then you build a successful business. It's as you are building a successful business and at every step overcome a challenge or a crazy thing or a strange offer that you build the resilience. And so you have to just do it in order to get the skills and then it reinforces at every step. So, the key is to just not give up and to not only have the resilience but also to look at things from a more, a longer term view as well as a business perspective. To try to take the emotion out of it. And just say, does this make sense for my business, from a business perspective, a commercial perspective. Then you know it takes some of the, yeah it just takes some of the craziness and the irrationality but also the emotion out of it and it makes it a little bit easier to handle the ups and downs.
- We talked about we grow basically. And it reminded me I was, I went to see a property recently.
- Okay.
- That I taken a mortgage, I'm gonna do a development in this conversion actually. And this gentleman walked up to me and said, Oh, I'm one of your neighbors and so I was absolutely, you know, nice to meet you, etcetera. And he said, what are you doing? And I said, I don't know, we're looking at the property and we're just trying to figure it out. You don't want to tell me then? I said, no it's not that I don't want to tell you, it's I don't really know, we've got some options we're thinking about. You know, it was a couple questions like that. Anyway, so I just reached out to him. And I just said, really nice to meet you and I'm sorry but I need to be at another appointment right now. And then he said, you don't want to tell me any information do you? I said, I'm just, I'm sorry I'm just, for one I don't know yet and two I'm a little bit busy I'm afraid, so thank you and I started walking away. But he started heckling me, yeah he said, are you a millionaire then, you're a millionaire are ya? And he started to make a note in my number page and everything.
- Oh my gosh.
- So, that was kind of my first experience of that in person trying, and I don't know
- Yeah, yeah yeah.
- Unless we progress and we probably don't realize perhaps people's impressions of us. I mean, you know, you've thought of me in a certain way. We have to be a little bit
- Tough. tougher to deal with that, so I don't know if you have anything of those stories.
- Yeah, well definitely. So, one of the things that I do is I have a newsletter that I send around once a week to property investors and it's all about property investing tips, or mindset tips, or you know, thoughts on success, achievement a lot of the things that we've been talking about.
- I get your newsletter.
- Thank you, a lot of the things we've been talking about in these videos. And I get some weird, there's no other way to describe it other than like sort of quasi-hate mail. So, people instead of just unsubscribing from the newsletter, feel that it's worth their time to tell me how much they hate something. So, it's like, you know calling me names, telling me that they're going to bad-mouth me to their professional network, and to never do business with us, and I'm like, dude it's an email, just unsubscribe. You know what I mean? Like if you didn't get value from it, just delete it. Like that's another easy solution.
- Not all of this keyboard bashing, just unsubscribe.
- Yeah, it's just, it's just weird and then the first couple of times it happens it sort of, it feels really personal. And you're like, gosh what'd I do wrong? Like should I not send out emails to people? Look my intention is genuinely just to add value and to give people food for thought. And for every single, so this is happened to me now I think probably just a handful of times. But for every time something like that has happened I get an infinite number more of like, wow that's been really great, thank you so much for sharing, this is a great idea, this is a you know a tip that I've been able to implement. So, it's just again, it's part of the process. Don't take it personally.
- I'm just gonna look at the camera again. So I think some parting comments really are, its worth it in the end.
- Yeah
- We're gonna grow but as we grow and as we develop perhaps, you know, people's impressions towards us also changes.
- Yeah.
- So just, you know be tough.
- Don't take it personally.
- Don't take it personally. So, crazy things happen but you know we can learn from it and it's worth it in the end.
- Yeah.
- Thanks very much for watching. Two Smart Buddies talking again.
- We keep getting traffic now.
- We keep getting, I know.
- Yeah, what are we talking about?
That's all from me this week, remember if you want to talk about anything from today’s show, or just talk property investing more generally, email me at podcast@thepropertyvoice.net, I would be happy to hear from you! The show notes can be found at our website www.thepropertyvoice.net
Thanks very much for listening again this week, so all that left to say is ciao ciao!