Why rent control won’t lower rents, and what we should do instead.

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There’s been a lot of talk about rent control recently, and the Culinary Union even introduced a ballot initiative to implement rent control in North Las Vegas. The issue with rent control is that while it sounds good, the places that enact it end up having the highest rents in the country. Rent control tends to stifle supply. 

People who want rent control really want affordable housing, which we also want. Rents have gone up so much that many don’t have the jobs to support the payments anymore. The rental market has reached a standstill, but the answer isn’t rent control. The way to create affordable housing is to increase the housing supply. 

"While rent control sounds good, it only ends up stifling supply."

However, Nevada has a problem with just building more housing. We have the highest percentage of federally owned land of any state in the country. Clark County is almost 90% federally-owned land. We have to buy that land back at an exorbitant price and then somehow still build affordable housing on it.

It will take a lot of negotiating, navigating bureaucracy, and working with our federal representatives to get that land back at a cost that lets us build the housing we desperately need. It’s a big problem, and we’d like to take it on, but we need the right people in place to help find a reasonable solution.

If you’d like to talk more about this issue, feel free to call or email me. I’d love to hear from you.

Watch me impartially choose the name of our Tidy House winner for March!

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Though this blog is coming out a bit late, it’s time for March’s tidy house drawing! Watch the video above to see me fairly choose a winner from our Guardian Realty bucket. Drum roll please… and the winner is Charne from Rawhide Court—congratulations! It’s such a pleasure to be able to reward our tenants who are taking excellent care of our houses. 

If you ever have any questions or want to learn more about our benefits program, please give us a call or send an email. We’d love to help you.

Is rent control as good as some legislators say? Here are my thoughts.

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Rents have skyrocketed across the United States, and Nevada is no exception. I’ve been raising rents at a much higher rate than I ever have in the 10 years that I’ve rented out properties. The idea of rent control is altruistic, but the reasons that we’re in this so-called rent bubble are inflation and continued government interference in a market that should be left to work itself out.

Rent control has the opposite effect of what legislators intended. Places where rent control has been implemented, like San Francisco and New York, have the highest rents in the country—and it’s because of rent control. Fewer people move into these areas because the people who got a great deal on rent decades ago have no motivation to move, which reduces the supply of available properties. That, in turn, increases demand.

"Rent control has the opposite effect of what legislators intended."

That has the effect of drastically increasing the prices of those properties that do end up on the market. When I lived in San Francisco, a little studio apartment that might just have a kitchenette and bathroom could cost as much as $5,000 or $6,000!

Hopefully this has inspired you to do your research on the effects of rent control. If you have any questions or would like to talk about this in more detail, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to having an open and honest dialogue with you.

Here’s the drawing for the February winner of the Tidy House drawing.

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It’s time for another Tidy House drawing! Before I choose February’s winner, I have some really cool news to share about our tenant rewards program.

Today I got an email from Piñata, the rewards company we use, saying that one of our tenants also won their drawing and will be issued $1,000 today. Just know that when you're a tenant of ours, we take good care of you. We’re happy to reward tenants who are taking care of our properties and paying their rents on time.

Without further ado, the Tidy House winner for February is Robert at Park City. Congratulations, Robert! You have a $250 gift card on the way.

If you have any questions about our rewards program or anything else, don’t hesitate to reach out via phone or email. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Our tidy house drawing encourages tenants to maintain the property.

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A few years ago, my husband and I sat down to solve a problem. Every six months, we would visit all the rental properties we manage and do preventative maintenance, but the tenets weren’t always complying with the scheduling. We realized that they didn’t have any incentive to schedule a time to change out the air filter, spray for bugs, check the smoke detectors, etc. 

We came up with the tidy house drawing. When we see a house, it is entered into the drawing if it meets the six criteria for a tidy house. Those criteria use the same verbiage as our lease agreement on what is expected to maintain the property. Every month, we hold a drawing, and a tenant will win $250. The tenets now pay a small fee toward preventative maintenance to essentially fund this rewards program.

We started doing this before COVID, but it was harder to get into the houses safely during the pandemic. We started looking into other ways to reward the tenants, like encouraging them to pay the rent on time. We signed up with a company called Piñata. They get a monthly report that lets them know which tenants have paid on time, and those tenants get points on their app. As they build up their points, they can get gift cards to Target, Walmart, restaurants, and all sorts of other places.

After each drawing, we usually tell the owner that their tenant won. We’ll also call the tenant, post the drawing results on our Facebook, and set up a time to bring them their gift card. Coming out in person gives us more time to talk with the tenant and walk the house in a more leisurely fashion and see if there’s anything that needs a little more attention. 

The winner for January is David at Red Oak Canyon. Congratulations, David! This drawing is always one of the best parts of my job. I love being able to reward people for just being good tenants. If you have any questions, feel free to call or email us. We would love to hear from you.

A story that proves why you need to be careful when working with vendors.

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I manage a couple of high rises, and they require a certain amount of insurance, particularly for plumbing because if it’s not done right, it can flood multiple units. There are many plumbers out there who like to gouge people with their prices. 

The other day, I had a plumber that I worked with a couple of years ago come out to a high rise to replace a garbage disposal. He quoted me $450, which is a little high for a garbage disposal, but you sometimes have to take what you can get for a high rise. However, last night he sent over the invoice that now says it’ll be $635, which is beyond what I’m allowed to spend without owner approval. 

When I questioned him about it, he said that there’s a diagnostic fee of $185, but when I broke down the math with him, the disposal costs $100, the diagnostic fee is $185, which means he’s charging me $450 for his labor. His labor took less than half an hour, which means he’s making two times “per hour” more than an anesthesiologist, who makes $198 per hour. I told him I’d be paying him $450 since that’s what he originally quoted me, and we would no longer be doing business together. I have to find another plumber who is willing to work on high rises. 

The lesson to take away from my story is that it’s crucial to ask plumbers what the full cost will be (even though I did ask that), to ensure they don’t add extra fees. If I hadn’t asked that originally, I may not have known how much I was being gouged by this plumber. It’s also critical to have a professional property manager working for you who understands the cost of materials, knows the time it takes to repair things, and can navigate vendors and push back if needed so you’re not taken advantage of in any situation. 

Feel free to contact me via phone or email if you have any questions or concerns about this topic. I would love to speak with you.

From our team to your family, we want to wish you a happy holiday season.

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Happy holidays to you!

The holiday season has officially arrived. We hope you enjoy this wonderful time of year and make some fantastic memories.

We wanted to take a moment to thank you for your continued support. We love helping people make their real estate dreams come true, so thank you for working with us and supporting our business.

This may be a busy time of year, but we are always here to help you and answer any questions you may have. Give us a call or reply to this email; we’d love to help you. 

In case we don’t hear from you until 2022, have a happy New Year!

How has inflation affected the property management industry?

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When we go to the gas station or the grocery store, it’s easy to notice that inflation is causing prices to increase, but we tend not to think about the fact that inflation affects every part of our lives. That includes investors and their repair costs. Our vendors are experiencing the same thing, as the cost of materials like paint, garbage disposals, and wood have risen.

So what can be done about it? Sadly, there’s not much I can do about inflation, no matter how much I wish I could! However, one of the ways we’re combatting it is through rental increases. Bear in mind that there’s a fine line between increasing the rent and ensuring that our tenants stay in place. We’ve been evaluating every rental to see what we could get away with in terms of increasing the rents so that it could help cover the cost of materials and repairs while also ensuring that the tenants stay.

It has been an interesting balancing act, but many tenants understand what’s going on. We’ve been able to get increases on anywhere between 100 and 250 tenant’s properties without much pushback. 

Here at Guardian, we look at the big picture. We’re doing everything that we can to protect your investment and help you deal with this new economy of inflation. If you have questions or need any assistance, feel free to give us a call or send an email. We’d love to hear from you.

Here are the latest numbers on delinquency rates and the eviction moratorium.

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Yesterday, Chanel 3 here in Las Vegas reported that mom-and-pop landlords have a 56% delinquency rate since the eviction moratorium ended. Today I want to discuss this report and find out what’s happening. 

When this report first appeared, it had a lot of property managers upset because it didn’t seem to reflect their reality. Today I was able to read a study commissioned by the Nevada Association of Realtors on delinquency rates that tracked the stat from March 2020 to February 2021. This time frame is important because most property managers haven’t seen any rental assistance money until the last few months. 

The total number of self-managed landlords in this study was 22, while the total number of property managers was 118. The landlords represented 1,144 units while the property managers represented a little under 21,000. These two groups were then broken up into different groups by size. Out of the landlords that qualified as mom-and-pop’s, there were only six units. 

This means that the 56% delinquency rate number we keep on hearing is coming from only six units. We can see that self-managed landlords with over 100 units only had a 9.7% delinquency rate. The numbers are even lower for property managers.

The takeaway is this: When you have professionals managing your units, you have better tenets, you’re more prepared for changing mandates, you’re more prepared to receive rental assistance, you’re better educated on your properties, and you can get everything organized sooner. These numbers prove it. 

So yes, small mom-and-pop landlords have been greatly affected by the pandemic and eviction moratorium. However, the number of evictions since the moratorium was lifted has only been 3.3%. It looks like landlords and property managers have handled the situation well considering the circumstances. 

Today’s topic was pretty complicated, so if you have any questions, please reach out to me. I would be happy to answer any of your concerns. 

Here’s what’s currently going on with AB 486.

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Something interesting happened recently with AB 486, so today I’d like to explain what exactly is going on. In my last video, I talked about how landlords must accept CHAPS and cannot evict tenants for two months after receiving CHAPS money. We’ve filed evictions and asked for mediation to get tenants connected to CHAPS money faster, but we’ve found that many tenants had nearly used all 12 months of their allotted rental assistance. So, some tenants are six months behind and already got 10 months of rental assistance, and now they only qualify for two months.

So, if landlords must accept CHAPS and cannot evict for two months after receiving it, when does the clock start? I’ve asked several judges, the Department of Social Services, and legal counsel, but nobody knows. I read through the CHAPS guidelines and it appears to state you can evict two months after the last date that rent is covered. However, I’m still not sure whether AB 486 changes this.

It’s an example of how legislators take zero time to understand programs, rules, and guidelines before making laws. Essentially, the federal government offered 12 months of assistance but state legislators extended the eviction moratorium beyond what assistance will cover. 

I’m going to court on August 9 to see if I can get a judge to make a ruling and interpret the law. I’m doing this to make sure my landlords and I are protected and won’t have any illegal evictions coming our way. I’ll let you know the results as soon as I do.

If you have any questions or would like more information, feel free to reach out to me. I look forward to hearing from you soon.