And at the end guys, stick around for the pro tip because I'm dropping a pro tip that is going to save your life. Trust me. Save their life? That's a little intense. Well, you have your life and then you have your pocket life.
That's true. Okay. And identity fraud. Is more rampant than it's ever been it's easier to do it than it's ever been Just because of all the Photoshop and even like AI that we have now people can impersonate other people's voices It's crazy. Right?
I would say really of all the things that we look at on Applications. This is probably the the thing that I still see the most prevalent it's the most prevalent that people are still trying to mess with it. They're still trying to lie about it, essentially.
Trying to get around it. I would layer this as well, guys. And this is more in the relational because sometimes I've seen this happen over and over again. Landlords want to trust their gut.
Like, no. Right, no, don't do that. They wanted, they said that, you know, they move from this state to this state.
Like, they come up with multiple excuses. Landlords, don't believe the story. Trust the process. Remove your emotions from the process.
Yeah. Listen, I'm an instinct person as well. I like to trust my gut. I lead from my gut. However, one of the things we've learned from running 20,000 applications is let them fill out the application and remove yourself from any communication while you go through this process.
Identify those yellow flags so that you can address them. Okay, that's extremely important. Hey guys, this is episode three of the Navigate Property Management Show. Welcome. We're excited you're here.
Landlords, landladies. Yeah. Realtors.
Brokers. And everything in between. Right. Honestly, there's a lot of information that we're jamming.
A lot of free education, which is extremely important. Right, Judy? It is.
So I want to dive right in. Okay. To the...
the topic for today, which is running an application or the application process. Yes. Okay. Before we jump in that, I want to highlight some numbers here just so that we want to make this painless for landlords and we want people to learn from our mistakes and also learn from our wins.
Yeah, absolutely. So over the years, we have done a lot of property management. We've done a lot of leasing. We've done a lot of turnovers.
started to count up some of the numbers and it surprised us how many of these different items we've done over the years. But Ernesto, tell us how many turnovers have you done in your career? In my career, 5,000, over 5,000 turnovers, just to have a good round number.
Yeah. Over 5,000 turnovers in my career, which is absolutely insane. So 5,000 turnovers, right? We've managed over 2,500 properties.
That's a lot of houses. Over... 2,500 properties, single family homes and small multifamily homes. You've typically you're over a lot of the leasing stuff. Yeah.
Over 7,000 leases. 7,000 leases, which means how many applications. And for the record, I still look at most of our applications before we finally pull the trigger.
Yes. So I've looked at this many applications. Over 20,000 applications.
That's a lot of applications. Right. Either direct. Directly ran through you or the individuals who are under you have trained and multiplied the process, right? Yeah.
I do want to highlight one property that we managed in Dallas, Texas. Okay. As just a quick recap, a young lady who stole her mother's identity, her mother who was in a mental institution, unfortunately.
Yes. Obviously, these individuals will remain nameless. Do you know which property I'm talking about?
I do. Okay. So take us through the process of when you first ran that application. Yeah.
So I'm going to sit back like a fan and just listen. All right. So I oftentimes think about applications and application processes and seeing all the information kind of like similar to, you know, what do they say about people who can identify fraudulent money?
Right. They don't study the fake stuff. They just study the real thing so much that they know when they see something that's fake. There's inconsistencies, there's something off here, it doesn't seem quite right there.
And really the application process is a lot the same. Okay. So when we start the process of an application and we start talking to somebody, if there's inconsistencies, something doesn't seem right, everything doesn't line up, you can start to get... idea pretty quickly this young lady she had a down because it was her mother who she had cared for for years and years she did and they also had very similar names remember and and they looked a lot alike yes and they were not that different in age yes so this was one of those things that the young woman who actually lived in the house used all of her mother's information signed the lease Lived in the house. And Ernesto, tell us finally when we found out.
I'll never forget this moment. When we found out that the person living there was not the person who had signed the lease. Yeah, so it happened while I was sitting in court waiting to hear from the justice of peace, the judge, during the eviction hearing.
This young lady walks into the courtroom and she says, hey, are you an advocate? And I said, yeah. I'm with Navigate.
And she's like, okay, hey, you know, I'm trying to figure out how to pay. And I said, well, that's wonderful. Yeah, but we're here. What are you trying to do?
And as she talked, as she... Talking with me, I decide, let me just pull up her information and I pull up the ID. I pull up the driver's license and it's not the person who I'm talking to. That's what he said. He's like texting the team on the background and he was like, I don't think this is her.
Guys, please verify what I'm looking at. And unfortunately, we found out. So not only did she lie to us, she also, this was the second time we were in the hearing.
Yeah. Because the judge had postponed it. it and um she had lied under oath oh that's right and the second time was when she finally was like well my mom couldn't be here yeah i'm here on her behalf um so it was sad thankfully we we were rewarded judgment um and we were able to gain back possession of the property yeah so the way we found out it was her daughter was was ernesto texted us in the background and i don't think that the person The person that's on this lease is the person sitting here in court. So finally, at that point, when you were in court for the second time, she admitted that she wasn't the person on the lease.
Yes. Very gracious justice of peace. It was crazy.
Who said, hey, that's not good. You shouldn't do that. Still let her off the hook, which is understandable.
Listen, individuals struggle. There are seasons where individuals struggle financially. And we'll talk about those things in another segment. Right. But today there are three things that we want to highlight, right?
From situations just like this, the mother-daughter identity crisis, right? So we want to make sure that we're doing these three things to verify and protect, right? Because what are some of the things you suffer during an identity crisis type of situation or identity fraud?
Yeah. Well, if you haven't heard, if you don't see it all the time. identity, identity fraud, identity theft, identity fraud.
I'm going to create a new word, identity fraud. So identity, put in big letter fraud right here. And identity fraud, um, is more rampant than it's ever been.
It's easier to do it than it's ever been. Um, just because of all the Photoshop and even like AI that we have now, people can impersonate other people's voices. Um, it's crazy, right? Um, so as far as identity theft and fraud goes, um, we've really narrowed it down to, to three things that we feel like if you, if you can see these three things, um, when it comes to our consistency and these three things, when it comes to looking at an application, um, you're probably going to be okay. Yeah.
Right now going through these three things that there may be times that you have to verify and double verify. verify to confirm that you're good to go on these three things. So Ernesto, give us number one.
The first one is property debt, right? And let's just, before we even dive into the three things, let's just obviously preface this by saying, we're assuming you're using some sort of software. You're not just saying, Hey, do you have any property debt? Right. So let's just assume use a legitimate software company.
We can make some recommendations and add them to the description. But for now. Just make sure that you're looking at that property debt. What's what's it? What does it mean?
What is property debt and what does it look like? What are you looking for? How does that show up? Yeah. So property debt is essentially any time you either haven't paid your rent, there were damages when you left that you owed that you didn't pay.
Now, that type of thing doesn't always show up on a credit report. Right. So one of the things that we do just to make sure at least most recently they didn't leave somebody with damages or money owed for the rent is we require a landlord verification which we're going to talk about more later but if we get anything back from the most recent landlord that says you know they left it's kind of a mess they haven't paid me what they owed yet that's an automatic disqualification.
The other two things that we look at are the credit report If there's any creditors that you can trace back to being a property management company or an individual, right? Because some individual landlords will also report property debt. That's a disqualification. That's not a good look.
And then, of course, anything on a credit report that has to do with a property management company, they will sometimes report as well. And then finally, evictions. Any kinds of evictions.
any kinds of foreclosures, bankruptcies, anything like that. We just pass over those because the reality is, and again, remember guys, we've done this a lot. It's a hard habit to break.
Yes, that's really, really good and I appreciate you kind of ironing. that out for us and obviously with the plethora of experience i'm sure you've seen it all we've shared one story of many the second point uh is the landlord verification now we've seen a lot of different things happen during this time where you have landlords um who, you know, it's their friends. They're like, hey.
They create a fake Gmail account. Right. They have a fake number, a fake voicemail.
I mean, they're jumping through some hoops. They're thinking about this process. Right. So.
Tell us about what we're looking for here. I would say really of all the things that we look at on applications, this is probably the thing that I still see the most prevalent. It's the most prevalent that people are still trying to mess with it.
They're still trying to lie about it, essentially, trying to get around it. There's two things that we look for when it comes to a landlord verification. It either needs to be a professional email, judy at nmcpropertymanagement.com, right? And it goes directly to them.
It needs to be a phone number for a professional management company that if you reverse search that phone number in Google, you're going to see, oh, that lady is with Navigate Management Company and that is the number for their company. Yes. Right?
Or if it is an individual landlord, they say, hey, this is the guy. He's selling the house, but he was my landlord. what we will do is go look at tax records and see who owns this house. Does Bob Smith own this house? If he doesn't, and that's the name of the person they put on the application, we start to ask some additional questions.
Tax records are open. Or if it's owned by an LLC, you can also see who owns the LLC. So that's how we verify that. And we must have a positive landlord verification in order to move on email and phone number someone we can actually.
actually get a hold of. And this is the hardest part because a lot of private landlords are out there. So you're reaching out to somebody who's is, it doesn't have a letterhead and doesn't have a business email.
So those are the type of indicators you want to be just kind of treat them as yellow flags that can turn into a red flag. But again, these are just tips to help you kind of weed through the process. Right. Yeah.
I mean, when it comes to looking at applications, again, the best thing, if you haven't looked at over 20,000, thousand applications throughout your lifetime. Just be curious, right? Don't look at it as like you're assuming someone's lying.
Like be good hearted, but be curious. Yes. I would layer this as well, guys. And this is more in the relational because sometimes I've seen this happen over and over again.
Landlords want to trust their gut. Like, no, they wanted, they said that, you know, they move from this state to this state. Like they come up with multiple excuses. Landlords don't believe the story, trust the process. remove your emotions from the process yeah listen i'm i'm an instinct person as well i like to trust my gut i leave from my gut however one of the things we've learned from running 20 000 applications is let them fill out the application and remove yourself from any communication while you go through this process identify those yellow flags um so that you can address them okay that's extremely important and at the end guys stick around for the pro tip because i'm dropping a pro tip that is going to save your life life trust me no seriously life that's a little intense well you have your life and then you have your pocket life that's true okay okay so you know let's just keep that in mind the third one is verify income obviously what's the process look like for verifying income yes and also what can you tell us about software tools out there that help us Okay, so this is another one.
We have something in place, I'll tell you about it in a second, that really helps us skip over any sort of fake pay stubs or, again, call my friend, that's my employer type thing. However, if you are an individual landlord, and you don't have access to extra, extra types of checks, at least when you're verifying income, ask for two different sorts of proof of income. That could be a tax return and their most recent pay stubs. That could be their most recent pay stubs, as well as a phone number to the HR department. Okay.
Now, if you call the HR department and the answer you get is, hello. Hi, this is Judy. I was calling for income verification. And then the voice on the other side of the line says, oh, of course.
Who are you calling about? Hey, listen, just to be clear, it's 2023. Customer service has dipped. That's true.
So you may. You may still get somebody who's like, hello. That's true.
But you can ask your own questions too. I'm sorry, what company is this? And if they don't immediately know what company they're working for, that could be a problem. So anyway, get a couple of verifications of income, not just one.
You could also ask for bank statements. They are welcome to line out their address or any personal information. But I would always get two. Yes. Yeah.
That's really good. Yeah. It's so easy to... to fix anything these days with PDF and after that and all that stuff.
So, so that would be my recommendation. If you don't have access to additional, additional companies or options for running credit checks and also verification incomes. Yes. There, there are some things that you can pay for as an individual.
Again, we'll link those so you can see them. But what we use is Experian. Experian has what's called an income verification and job work check. Okay, so this is actually very similar to or basically the same thing that a mortgage lender will use to pre-approve someone for a mortgage loan. So we put this at the beginning of all of our applications.
So we're not surprising anyone that we're going to ask you for your bank account information, but we don't see it. And if someone is not willing to go through this process, unfortunately they can't. can't apply with navigate anymore um we just have seen too much across the board um so essentially what happens they start the application process they still have to send us their pay stubs have to put their bank account information in and then experian tells us how much they make now what they've historically made what they're going to make in the future and also where those deposits come from the verified income extremely important it really right for us and that experian thing is powerful thank you for sharing that yeah now as we kind of head over to the wrap up of this video there's a major red flag guys that i do want to tell the landlords is this the pro tip this is not the pro tip this is a red flag okay okay i'm gonna give you a red flag and i'm gonna give you a pro tip as we wrap up double bonus round this video so um hit that like button subscribe because there's a lot of information coming here but here is the big big red flag if someone wants to split their security deposit over two Two to three months. Do not let it happen. Don't do it.
Those are red flags, guys. Do not put yourself in that situation. Stay focused on the process.
Stick to your process. And it will help you. This is really important.
This is how we coach our property managers. Right? Yes.
Process and protocol first. Judgment third. Essentially, if you go through your process and you work your protocol and you hit a wall, Then move into your judgment, right? That's how we're training our property managers. They're leaders and they're managers.
And we need to be able to trust their judgment. So protocol, process, judgment. Your judgment should be the last.
Last thing that comes into play. And then here's our pro tip. Pro tip. Here it is. I don't even know what this is.
Maybe I'm going to learn something. Do not let your residents pay their first month's rent and their security deposit with a credit card. Oh.
No credit card because part of this whole process of fraud is people who are running fraud through the credit card. Guys, we just learned this. When did this happen to us for the first time? Maybe a year ago?
Yeah, a year and a half ago. This was awful. Oh, sorry. Yeah, no, go ahead.
Great pro tip. Well, she wants to take my pro tip. That's fine. No, no, no, it's fine.
Take my pro tip. I was so amazed that someone would do this. Well, here's what you need to learn next time, okay? Okay.
When you're coming to record. Yeah. You make sure you jot down your own pro tip. Do not try to hijack my pro tip. Listen, all my tips are pro tips.
So just listen to the pro. What was the pro tip in the first one? Don't fall for the price tag.
Oh yeah. The price tag trap. Yeah.
That was my pro tip. Yeah. No.
So, okay, guys, this person paid for months. What? Four months?
Five months of their rent with a credit card. Yes. I would do no credit cards, period, which is. some software allows you to do that some don't so just make sure i don't know what you're using right certified funds is always the best option personal check don't do it right you want to try to eliminate all those we didn't tell them what happened with the credit card though so they paid for months of the rent with the credit card then called the credit card company and claimed fraud and skipped well it could it could have been a stolen credit card at any point in time we don't even know we don't know if they actually called and oh yeah that's true right yeah we don't know what they call but they stole they could have stole the credit card and been using it.
And finally the person that they stole it from called it in as fraud. So they throw, obviously if you're using a credit card, you have that, that option where the credit card would dispute it, freeze it, and you're not getting any of those funds. So that happened while they were, while they were living in the house. But we're saying from the get go, when they're applying, don't let them use the credit card for security deposit in the first month's rent. Boom.
That is our episode three of the navigate show. Like, Subscribe, share, comment, submit questions. We will have a Q&A segment because obviously there's so many questions.
But there are unique experiences that you guys may have gone through. And we'd love to be able to unpack those for you during one of our episodes. Yeah. Okay.
So stick around because we'll drop another video here that you can just click on. Here, here. I don't even know where it shows up. But it's going to show up. It's going to be all kinds of fun things.
Yes.