A Podcast | Tracy Streich

Pete Neubig: Welcome back everybody. As promised. Got my good buddy Tracy Streich on there from Renters Place. Tracy, thanks so much for being here, brother.

Tracy Streich: Thanks, Pete. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to come on and just visit with you, and maybe something good comes of it. If not, we talked for 30 minutes and that works too.

Pete Neubig: Well, before we dive into it, you have given back to NARPM. You're now the RVP, uh, of 2025. You'll be an RVP. And you're also on the committee for Broker/Owner. Is that correct?

Tracy Streich: That's correct. Yes.

Pete Neubig: And why do you why give back to NARPM? Like, what's in it for you, I guess?

Tracy Streich: Well, man, I'll show you. Where is it? I don't even know where I put it. I got this nice plaque from them that said, 2024 volunteer of the year. And, I mean, if you're not working for a plaque, you're just. You're not working for anything. No. So really, I you know, when I found NARPM, I was I was just starting out in property management, and I didn't know my, you know, my head from a hole in the wall kind of deal. It's like I didn't know what I was doing, and I googled, and I thought I got to figure out how to do this property management thing. And I found NARPM and they were doing a conference where a Broker/Owner conference in Vegas, and it was like 45 days away. And I was like, I guess I'm going to Vegas. And I didn't know. I didn't know anybody in NARPM, and I really didn't even know what NARPM was about. But I saw their agenda and I thought, well, I could learn from just about every session that's on there because I don't know what I'm doing. So I really feel like NARPM took me from kind of an idea of property management to actually how to implement property management in a real way that I could come back from that and like, okay, I need to do A, B, and C, and I need to do those right now because I've been doing it way wrong. And so that to me was kind of a launching point in 2011 at my first Broker/Owner conference. And then I went to conferences for years, the Broker/Owner, NARPM National, didn't miss him unless they just had something going on, developed some relationships, and then got asked to get involved. Scott Brady asked me if I would be on his committee for Broker/Owner. And I said, yeah, I think I can do that. And then he followed it up with, oh, by the way, your vice chair, which means your chairman next year, things got to go. And he hung up the phone and I was like, what just happened here? But that's that's kind of what got me really involved is one just being willing to do it. And then somebody asking, um, and.

Pete Neubig: They call it, uh, in NARPM, we call it Voluntold.

Tracy Streich: Yes. I was definitely voluntold by Scott. And it was it was great. I really enjoyed my time on the Broker/Owner committee and putting the conference together and just like I really liked it. And then I got asked to be an RVP and coming on in on in that capacity in January for the central region. Best region in the US since that is the actual region that I live in. So I'm looking forward to to being on the board and serving for another couple of years.

Pete Neubig: I concur, it is the best region because I was the RVP of that region a few years back, and I live in that region as well. So all right, so we were at Broker/Owner this past year, and we're having a drink, and you kind of make some kind of like some like second hand comment, like, oh, yeah, I'm selling a house. And my ears perked up. And I'm like, what do you mean you're selling the house? Like you got a rental? He's like, yeah. And you said, yeah, I got a rental property. And about 45 days later I own that house. Right. And so what I realized is talking to a lot of property managers, and this was me, actually, I used to be an investor. Then I started my management firm, didn't buy a damn property for nine years, and then I sold the property management firm. And now I'm back in and I bought some more properties. And there are so many property managers out there that are too busy to buy property, or they or they see all these deals come through, but they don't really even have opportunities to take advantage of them. So I know you have built an incredible portfolio of properties. You and Derrick, your business partner. Tell us a little bit about how that got started, and then tell me how you really kind of flywheel it and how you got it bigger. And, and I would love to get, you know, if somebody's listening to this and they want to get into this stuff, how do they go about it?

Tracy Streich: Well, so when you were happened to be listening, I don't know even who I was talking to. It just kind of proved my theory that there's a sucker around every corner. So I, we, I maybe there's a house there, Pete. Maybe there isn't. No, I'm just kidding.

Pete Neubig: I've seen photos, but I have not been there, so that doesn't mean that is the house. That is true.

Tracy Streich: Yeah. So, um, you know, I, I'm kind of biased when it comes to rental properties. I think the Midwest is one of the best places to buy rental properties because you can still get good. What? And don't think I'm saying affordable housing from a the words that are going around like we have an affordable housing stock, you can actually buy a house that is affordable in the Midwest specifically for us in Tulsa, Oklahoma City. Um, that you can buy. And it makes sense when you when you actually run the numbers. Our taxes aren't super high. I mean, I've got I own properties where the annual property tax is $450, and that just kind of blows people away. Like, how is that even possible? I even ask myself that sometimes. Uh, but, you know, we've just kind of identified some areas of town that we like to invest in, and we own a lot of properties there. And occasionally I have like you bought that one from us. It was one that was in our portfolio. Uh, we were kind of we had built up our portfolio quite a bit over like the last 5 or 6 years. Um, really kind of prior to Covid. Um, and, I mean, I bought my first rental in 1999, and I had a handful of rentals, about 11 going into when I opened my property management business. But then we got really aggressive on buying stuff and really ballooned that up. And, and I, I mean, people always ask, you know, it's been a we've got these aggregators in our markets like, you know, mine and Pure and Home River Group and Evanesce that want to buy your property management company. And everybody's always wondering, you know, what's my company really worth and how much could I sell it for? And, and as I was telling you, it's like my property portfolio that I own is worth five times as much as my property management company. So I don't feel like I need to even worry about selling my property management company right now, because I've got this other portfolio of homes that's really my, if you want to call it my retirement plan. It's got I mean, it's it is kicking off income, too, but I'm not really tapping into that at this point because I don't need to, but we grew that up to about, you know, just under 100 homes. Um, and then we just kind of started paring some of them off, like the one I sold to you. And I sold one to your friend Vinny that you referred to me. And we've got quite a few out of state people that I'll call and say, hey, I'm looking for something. I need a place, some money, and we help them find something. Sometimes it's one of ours and some, sometimes it's not. Like our portfolio now is where I. I'm not planning on selling anything else out of it. Now, if somebody came along and offered me something stupid, I would. But, um, you know, our our portfolio is set down somewhere around. I think it's like 68 homes at this point. And that's kind of where we want to be. I like what the debt is on it. I like what the interest rate is on it. And we're just kind of like going to hang out there for a while occasionally I have to I have to talk myself out of buying property at this point. So.

Pete Neubig: So let's talk about how you use the property management company to leverage and finding those deals, partnering with other investors. So how do you, you know, do you find all those, you know, are you able to use the use the property manager company to help build your portfolio of properties.

Tracy Streich: Absolutely. You know, I think as a property manager, I mean, you're in a key spot to know a couple of things. One, if somebody wants to sell a property, they if it's in our portfolio, they're coming to us and saying, hey, I'm thinking about selling. That's they're kind of saying, what are my options? Um, two, you know, we we know that we want to grow that part of our business. I train my staff. Then if somebody says, hey, I may want to sell, then they're going to come in and say, hey, I talked to Mr. Robinson. He's thinking about selling his property. You need to give him a call. Well, then I can go in to our software and look at the history of the house. I have a very intimate knowledge of this house. Like I can look at what work has actually been done. Has it had a roof leak every spring when it. When it rains? Or is this a solid house? Is it a solid investment? And we've got a lot of history on that house that I wouldn't necessarily have if I was just out on the MLS looking to expand my portfolio. So you can see.

Pete Neubig: How quickly does it lease up what is you know, are we getting an asking price on the lease?

Tracy Streich: Yeah. What's the what's the history of that rent been over the past 4 or 5 years? Um, what kind of tenants in there are they paying on time just because it's got a tenant in there? Is it one that's like, oh, we're always chasing this tenant. Uh, where are they? So, you know, we can get a lot of history on that. And then three, we've got a relationship with that property owner. Right. So I, I can then go to them and say, all right, here's here's what I think, just so you know. And I tell them I may want to buy your house, I may not I may not be the right buyer for your house, but I'm a buyer for your house. And then we walk through it. So I say, here's what your house. I mean, you've already looked at Zillow. Zillow says your house is worth. And I'm just going to use easy numbers for us to do math with. Zillow says your house is worth $200,000. And I said, but that's if it's on the open market. We've got a tenant in there that's got six months left on their lease. So are you willing to wait? That's factor number one. No. All right. You want to sell it with a tenant in place? All right. Now we're looking at what's the rent. Because that's what an investor is going to look at. How much work does it need to be done. And I kind of go through this list of questions with them. Why? Why do you need to sell. That's usually my first why do you need to sell. Do you need a big lump of cash or do you just need to get rid of it?

Pete Neubig: Yeah. What are the range of answers you get when you ask them that? Typically.

Tracy Streich: Well, so I'll tell you. Here's a specific one. This this guy, he was stay at home dad. His wife had a really great job. They had three rental properties 100% paid for. And they were bringing in about $1,000 a piece. So $3,000 a month. And she lost her job. And he's, like $3,000 a month is not enough for us to live on. We need cash, and we need cash now. Like, okay, that's their answer. Sometimes it's man, you've got so much deferred maintenance on your house and you've got peeling paint, you've got a roof leak. And I'm talking to one right now. We had a big storm come through. It was already an older roof. They had huge trees around it. So some tree limbs fell, hit and punctured the roof and a big trunk laid in on the corner of the house and broke the corner of the house. So now we've got a broken roof, siding ripped off holes in the roof, and they've got no money. They're like, we don't have money. And the tenants in there going, you got to fix my roof. And obviously we're not going to fix it. I can't spend my money on his roof. So he's in a bind, right. So so what do you do? He he needs to sell because he doesn't have money to maintain the house. So there's a various various reasons. I had another lady, older lady. She and her husband had owned them for years. Husband passed away. And she's like, Tracy, I just don't want to mess with him anymore. But I'm really worried about the tax implications. So I was like, okay, how about I how about you own or carry it? Would you be interested in that? I will buy it from you and give you X amount of cash down and I'll just, you know, carry it and you pay I'll pay you every month and you don't have to worry about anything. She's like, that sounds great. And we ended up buying five from her and she loves it. So everybody it's definitely not one of those things that you can just plug into your system and plug it into LeadSimple or APTLY and it just boom, boom, boom. And it works like that. It's every situation is different, but you have to be able to take the time and talk to the owner, find out what they need, find out what their they want and then offer them like. And that's typically what I do. It's like here's three scenarios. You can do A, B or C and I'm not your answer on A. And I'm I'm your answer on B and I can maybe be your answer on C. I mean, just set it up to where I mean, what I want him to do is say, yeah, you're the easy button and I'll do that, but I want them to know what the other options are as well.

Pete Neubig: Right.

Tracy Streich: Because selling it full retail may be the best option for them. And if it is, we want to help them do that.

Pete Neubig: I think the first thing you said, which was really important, is you have to train your team, and your team should know that if somebody is looking to sell that, they should funnel that up to, to you, uh, for, for, um, to review it, right, to see if that's an option. And uh, a lot of people, a lot of us property managers, when you're a solopreneur, you actually buy properties because you're talking to the owners all the time. And then when you throw that layer of property management in there, you're not talking to the owners, and then you typically can lose potential deals, uh, because your team's not not trained or they don't have the, the, the relationship with that owner client. And then the owner just calls and tells them, hey, I sold, right? That's the worst thing can happen is. Right. That's. I sold 123 Elm Street. Like. Wait, what? You didn't even know you were selling 123 .

Tracy Streich: So there's that. That call comes in three ways. It's one like that. That call. Hey, we've sold the property. You're like, what? Like you should have given us a heads up or something too. And then. And the other one is two, I want to sell my property. And that comes in two factions. I want to sell my property. And what we just talked about. Tell me. Tell me what I need to consider. Tell me what I need to do or I want to sell my property. I've already listed it with a with another agent. With another agent. Right. And you're like, what? Yeah. And you're like, you know, we can do that. And they're like, oh, well, I had no idea. And like, did you really not? Or did I do that bad of a job of telling you or you just didn't listen? I don't know what the answer is.

Pete Neubig: My company name was Empire Property Management and Realty, and you'll be surprised at how many people never got past Empire Property Management. And they were just just didn't even know that we can list the homes for them now. We can buy the homes that we can like that. We we didn't. They had no idea. And that is extremely frustrating. So yes, because that's on us as property managers. Like we're not getting word out 100%. So have you done some deals with some of your clients as well where you've created a fund or you've you've kind of partnered up anything like that?

Tracy Streich: Uh, yes. So we've done we've done five syndications over the years. We don't have any active right now. So we've we've raised money.

Pete Neubig: So explain the syndication to folks in case they...

Tracy Streich: So we identified a need. Um, you know, a lot of, a lot of times the syndication comes like an apartment complex. So you've got 52 units right there, and then I go and call my friends. Hey, Pete, we got a 52 unit deal. Do you want to buy in? The minimum is 50,000. And you say, yeah, yeah, I want to do that. I'll put 100,000 towards that. We raise enough money to kind of cover the down payment, some operating operation costs, and then we go out and, finance it with a local bank. Right. So you would be a limited investor on that kind of deal and I would be, me and Derrick, or we'd be the primary investors there and we'd be running the show, so to speak. So you just got your money in? The only thing at risk for you is your money. The the loan is in our company name kind of thing. So, you know, we pay out dividends and we sell it based on your shares. That's what your profit is. And we did that. We've done that about five times over the years. I don't know that the interest rate environment is that great to do something like that right now. A lot of syndicators are going back. Hey, Pete, I know you gave me 100, but we need another 20. Uh, and Pete's saying, what? What do you mean you need another 20? Well, those interest rates have reset and payments are going up. Rents are leveling off.

Pete Neubig: So, yeah, especially because, uh, most of them are buying on a commercial loan, which usually resets after about 4 or 5 years. Right?

Tracy Streich: Right.

Pete Neubig: So something in 2020 at the incredible 3% interest rate, now they're there 7%. And you can't sell that property.

Tracy Streich: Right.

Pete Neubig: Your interest rate, you have to go and refinance the note, right?

Tracy Streich: Right. And that's what we did. And that's for I don't know if you call it prognostication or or I just got lucky, but kind of right before rates took off on their run, I kind of was I looked at our overall portfolio when we were trying to decide what we wanted to keep and what we wanted to sell, and we, I, we went out and basically locked in some longer term rates on all of our stuff because, I mean, we have 80, 60 to 80 homes. You don't have, you know, 60 to 80 Fannie Mae loans, right? I mean, those are commercial loans, but we we lock those in at a at a pretty low rate on a ten year fixed term. So now I'm feeling really good about where we are. Like I can just set them there on the shelf and not worry about them. Um, but I think that for Syndications now that's, that's really the rate environment is tough. But we, we had all all five of those have been from raise money, purchase property and resell the property all investors get. Money back and profit. So we've taken five of those.

Pete Neubig: Did you do that with apartments or did you do that with single families? Multiple single families. How how did you guys... What did you buy?

Tracy Streich: Um, three of them were multiple single families, and two of them were duplex communities.

Pete Neubig: Duplex communities. So, like. Like multiple duplexes?

Tracy Streich: Yeah. Multiple duplexes where you got 3 or 4 streets worth of duplexes and you've got, you know, 36, 40 units total just right there, geographically close. The others were more of a geographic, you know, river to the west, this street to the east, north south boundaries. And we're buying within a specific, uh, geographic area as a target.

Pete Neubig: So all right, let's talk about the houses. Right. So you decide to buy 3 or 4 houses and you're like, okay, we want to go ahead and do this with our with a syndication. What's the first step? Did you reach out to your clients and ask if they want to invest in these properties that you build a pro forma? Like, here's what they could. Here's what we can buy them for. Here's what we can rent them for. Here's what when we're going to sell them. Like we're going to do a five year kind of blah blah blah. Take me through the process.

Tracy Streich: So I think the the first thing we did was we kind of floated the idea out there like, hey, if we did this, would you be interested? And we got enough people to say, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Uh, and then it's then it's putting together the proforma and the paperwork and that's. Listen, I am not a paperwork person. Um, I had to leave. Derrick. Derrick. Derrick. Um. But that's also in this case, it's like you're hiring an attorney, and you're getting 15 to $20,000 worth of legal documents put together to make sure it's done right, because, I mean, if you're out raising money and getting people to contribute, you know, millions of dollars to your fund, you got to make sure the T's are crossed and the i's are dotted and all that stuff. But it's it's what's the need, right. In this specific. So let's say on the single family side, we kind of identified this area of town that was I don't want to say it's up and coming because it's been up and coming forever if you live in Tulsa. Yeah. Well, but I mean, if you live in Tulsa, you know this neighborhood, right? It's it's very well sought after. But we kind of thought, you know, what we feel like it's got another like it's it's been going up. We feel like it's got another rise. If we catch it right here, we can catch the next rise. Um, and so it had a little it was a little sexy in that standpoint from the, from the area. But what I found out is, you know, when your proforma says, hey, we're going to go buy these and it's not 2 to 3 homes. I mean, we're buying like 30 to 40 homes. But when you limit yourself geographically like that, especially on that one, was a pretty small geographical area.

Pete Neubig: It's hard to find 30 or 40 homes, isn't it?

Tracy Streich: If we had every home in the in the area under contract in three weeks, right. And then you're like, okay, now. Now what? Right. So, um, it was a little longer buildup to get them all bought. Whereas our next one we call.

Pete Neubig: That's the reason why most syndications go after like one apartment building, right?

Tracy Streich: Right. So yeah, if you go through, if you go to apartment building or if I've got those dude, that duplex community, I'm like, I've got 18 duplexes right here, right now. And you can close them in one transaction. And that's why the Syndications like to go after the multifamily stuff. There's a lot more transactional stuff to do. A single family syndication, unless you bought somebody's single family portfolio.

Pete Neubig: Right, right. That makes sense. So in your single family deals, you were buying 20 or 30 homes. So were you doing the same deal? Were you just getting enough money to put the 20, 30% down with some operating cost?

Tracy Streich: Yeah, basically we went to the bank, said, hey, here's what we're doing, here's the documents. We need a guidance line of credit. And they said, okay, as long as you are sticking to what you're saying you're doing, you're buying with these streets, this geographical area, Graphically, you're basically pre-approved at that point. You don't have to come and get every house approved with us. You're so we had $1 million in cash sitting in the bank, and we had $3 million in a line of credit. So the whole deal was going to be $4 million.

Pete Neubig: How long did you have that million dollars in cash in the bank? Like, because, you know, you're floating the idea to people, they're sending you, they're giving you money, and then you're going out and getting the properties, or are you going out and getting the properties under contract while you're getting the money? Like, is it is it like that choreographed like?

Tracy Streich: Yeah, it's a little bit of both. So as we're as documents, as people are saying, yes, I'm doing it and documents are about to get signed, we're starting to contract properties because you still have a 30 to 45 day close window after you put it under contract. So I think our what we did is we waited until we had like 25% of the cash already on hand, because what we would do in that instance is we would just make cash offers on everything, um, because we had the cash sitting there and say, hey, well, you know, we and we could. It allowed us to be pretty aggressive on some of them too. So we can make some low ball offers and say it's cash, we can close in a week kind of deal.

Pete Neubig: And if it's not, we'll do it. We'll put a note if you're going to buy, if you allow me to buy it at this price, I'll buy cash. If it's this price, then I'll do a note. Right. 45 days.

Tracy Streich: Got it. Yeah. And if we bought it in cash, we just bought it, closed on it, refinanced it with our line of credit, you know, put part of that cash back in the cash account and just kept buying until the cash is gone. Right. And so it was a range of like, hey, this could be 28 houses, this could be 38 houses. It kind of depends on, uh, where it all falls out with what we're buying.

Pete Neubig: Okay. So then, let's let's fast forward. So you you close, you get the money, you close on the houses, obviously that's like 20 or 30, like walkthroughs and contracts and dealing with different agents and, dealing with all the different commissions that's got. That had to be super fun.

Tracy Streich: Right. It was it was a it was a lot more work than from from the beginning, from the paperwork to the purchasing to the even after we're closed, just the paperwork on the backside of reporting to all the investors was a lot.

Pete Neubig: And when you write when you wrote the paperwork, how much did you guys take? Did you guys take. Typically it's like 20% of the deal. Do you guys take 2,025% of the deal?

Tracy Streich: And I think our deal on those was 15. I doing it again. We would have taken more. But it's kind of like when you're first time around you gotta... You don't know what else is involved.

Pete Neubig: You give it away. You get it all. You give a great deal the first time around because there's going to be eggs to break to make the omelet, so to speak.

Tracy Streich: That's a that's it. And we didn't realize the work involved with it either. Like again, after the transactional side wasn't horrible because, you know, it was really the same contract just over and over again. And we got to make the commission on that. So there was a little bit of like, oh, that's nice because we we got something right there. But once it's once it's closed and it's different than sending out an owner report through rent buying. Right. Like, hey, here's your owner report. I mean, you had to then take all of those.

Pete Neubig: All the properties.

Tracy Streich: All the properties and it's not your typical owner report. They don't.

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

Tracy Streich: I didn't need to send them that. We repaired the garbage disposal. They don't want that. They don't care. Right. So it's a total different report. It's how much money is in the bank. How much money came in. What's your return. What's your cash on cash return. And you're doing that every 90 days, which is what we agreed to up front. I would never do that again. We would be doing annual reporting and annual distributions rather than quarterly. We were doing quarterly distributions and that was..

Pete Neubig: That quarter finished quick.

Tracy Streich: Yeah. You finished one and you're on to the next. It's like here it is. So.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. The lease up and all that was that. I mean, that's just like if you brought on 30 homes to your to your business, right.

Tracy Streich: Oh, that was. Yeah, that was just regular. We just plugged that into the property management and it went into the machine and that's why we did it. Honestly, it's like, what can we do? It was a growth option for us, right? Like why how can we get 30 new homes into our property management business? Well, we could be part owner on these homes and do the syndication and bring them in. So that was kind of the main driver.

Pete Neubig: Are you guys still holding these homes, or did you end up turning around and selling a portion of the of the deal?

Tracy Streich: I would say of those, probably 80% have been sold off to people we no longer manage for.

Pete Neubig: Oh, really? Okay. So you're not managing homes anymore, huh?

Tracy Streich: No. So some of them, when we started selling off, some of our owners bought them. We bought 1 or 2. I mean, there's so there's still some of them dispersed throughout the portfolio. but you know, the duplex communities you get. I mean, you don't want to sell those one at a time, right? That's like you do on the single family. So we want to sell the whole thing, and you have some out of state investors buy those.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So the one thing that I, I worry about is, like, if I had clients, they end up getting into this syndication. The syndication doesn't give the return that we anticipated that could affect your relationship with them and the other homes that you're managing.

Tracy Streich: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Did you have to deal with any of that or you guys actually doing pretty good on terms?

Tracy Streich: We made money on all of them, so that didn't at that time. But that was always in the back of our mind. Like that's it. That's an additional stressor going into it that you're not thinking about because typically it's not like a Wall Street deal, right? Where I can just get online, I'm going to buy some Walmart stock or something. And then if Walmart loses money, they lose money and they're not worried about me. Um, they're worried about Walmart. Whereas, you know, if Pete's going out and raising money, you're the first people you're calling are people you know. Right. So there's that added stress of I do not want to lose my friend's money. My brother's money, family money. Whatever. So it adds a little bit more stress on there that you're not really. Again, I don't know that you're prepared for that going into it, but it's real.

Pete Neubig: I had a deal. My first deal I did was an apartment complex deal. And I ended up losing the apartment complex. And I was a passive investor. And, but I brought my mom in on the deal. And the only thing worse than losing your money is losing your mom's money.

Tracy Streich: Yes. That's it. That's what you're worried about the whole time. You're definitely worried about that.

Pete Neubig: Yep. Alright, so we got a few minutes here before we before we wrap up, and I want to talk to you a little bit about, so I am now a client of Renters Place and because I bought that property in Tulsa. So I was going to like, say thanks, Tracy, do you know anybody else besides you? So you do manage my property there. And the one thing that I thought was really just super streamlined because I don't know anything about Oklahoma or Tulsa, I didn't have I didn't have an insurance agent over there. And you're like, don't worry about it, Pete. We have insurance taken care of. If you want to opt in. And it was actually pretty cheap. It's actually cheaper than obviously my properties in Houston because you guys have tornadoes, we have floods, ice, and everything going down here. So, tell me a little bit about how you guys set that up. And do you get a lot of positive feedback. Is that able to do? Are you able to market that? Like do you actually get clients because of that like things of that nature? Just talk a little bit about how you structured that.

Tracy Streich: Yeah. So again, it was kind of something we started for ourselves because we had a big group of properties that we wanted to get insured. My business partner, Derrick has an insurance background, as you know. He was a farmers agent for 22 years. But when I'm like in the Facebook groups locally and people ask insurance questions, my quick and easy answer is for rental property. If your insurance company has a commercial on Sunday during the NFL football games, they're probably not the right company to insure your rental. Right? They may be great for your personal property and auto and stuff like that, but rental is really one of those sub categories where you really need a specific rental property insurance policy. So we got a master policy in place. Um, and I compared it to like high risk health insurance. If you go to the doctor, just pay the doctor for the doctor's visit. But if you go to the hospital, you've got coverage. So and that's kind of what I explained these as. So we like to carry a higher deductible like on my personal properties we carry a $10,000 deductible. I think we've got a master that's got a $5,000 and a $10,000 deductible. So you've got a little bit of choice. I'm not sure which one you were on, Pete. I'd have to look it up. But if I've got a water leak and something busts under the sink, I don't need to file an insurance claim to dry out the carpet, pull it back, dry it out, do all that stuff. We've got handymen, people who can do that for cheaper than it is. Probably for my deductible even.

Pete Neubig: But if you got a fire and it burns the whole damn thing down, now we got coverage.

Tracy Streich: I've got coverage. Right. So it's a stated value with a minimum versus a this is what you're insuring it for. So you call Allstate and they go okay, well that's a 1250 square foot house. And you've got to insure it for X amount of square foot. And it's got this. And they ask you all these questions. And next thing you know you're like, okay, I paid $185,000 for this house. But Allstate's telling me I have to have a $325,000 policy on this house.

Pete Neubig: Right.

Tracy Streich: Because that's what they say. Well, on ours, you can just say, okay, it's 1000ft² and it's a $1/five square foot or whatever, and that's your insured value. So you can insure it for whatever you want to insure it for. And now if you've got a loan on it, that obviously you got to at least insure it for your for your loan amount, but then it's nice and easy. They don't. I mean, you were in property management. How many times did you get a call from an owner that says, hey, my insurance company needs a photo of the front, the back and the electrical panel.

Pete Neubig: Yup.

Tracy Streich: And I'm like, well, yeah. How about you tell your, uh, insurance agent to do his job and get on out there and take those pictures? Like, that's not my job to do, right?

Pete Neubig: Right.

Tracy Streich: But we don't have to. With the master policy, we don't have to deal with any of that stuff. We just say, all right, Pete, here's the formula. Bam! Here's the premium. Do you want it? Yes. Bam! We bind it and then we just pay that for our owners every month. Just take it out of your rent. We pay it. And for us it's kind of a retention tool because we have had clients go, well, you know, I'm thinking about going to another property manager. I'm taking my two houses. You know, they're going to save me, you know, $0.12 a month. You know how these owners are.

Pete Neubig: Oh yeah.

Tracy Streich: Oh, well, great. But you know, you can't be on our master policy anymore, So you've got to get new insurance and it'll cancel the day you cancel your contract. You know, they're like, what? Well, that insurance was, you know, two thirds less than what I was going to be paying. You're like, yeah, that's you know, that's part of the deal. I mean, that's part of the service that you get. Yeah. It's a value that you get for being a client of ours. So that, you know, it's caused some people to pause and rethink. Some people say, well, forget it, I'm leaving anyway. But they've got a they don't get to be on our master policy if they're not our client.

Pete Neubig: Do you use that in your marketing as well? So you use it as a retention tool. So you make so you've trained the team to let them know, you're leaving this is this is something that you have to think through, right?

Tracy Streich: Yeah. Part of the offboarding process for sure.

Pete Neubig: Yep. And then as far as marketing are you guys are you guys leveraging this in marketing at all?

Tracy Streich: So I wouldn't say that we like market it. Market it. No, our BDM does discuss it when somebody calls in.

Pete Neubig: A sales call. It's sales but not marketing.

Tracy Streich: Yeah. Right.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. What's the minimum number of properties you have to have before you can have an umbrella coverage like that?

Tracy Streich: Yeah. So if you're just a regular investor and you want to have your own master policy, some companies will do it with as little as 10 and some, some people want 20. So this gives our owners the option to be a part of our bigger master policy, even if they only have one like you.

Pete Neubig: How did you... So you guys were able to leverage your own properties because you had the minimum amount.

Tracy Streich: Mhm. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: If I was a property manager, let's say I'm managing 50 doors or 100 doors, but I only own like 1 or 2. What would you recommend that they do? Like do I just send an email out to all my owners. Do I make a phone call? Do I, you know, do I say that's the policy here. Like what? What's the what do you think the steps should be?

Tracy Streich: So I would say if somebody's interested they should call Derrick because, I mean, we also had this all the time. Well, I've got my my Allstate agent in my market wants to do this for him. Like that's it's just not the way it works. It's not it's not a policy that they're going to have. These are carriers that are not, as a regular property manager, will never come across a carrier like this. So your insurance agent already has to have.

Pete Neubig: You have been at the event you don't think some of these insurance guys?

Tracy Streich: Some of those may, right? But there's there's very few carriers. I mean, there's probably like three carriers in all the US that are going to do this. Wow. So so those guys I mean, you see a guy at table A and A table B and a table C in there, you know, Bob's insurance and Mike's insurance and Jerry's insurance, they're all going to the same carrier for that product because they are very specific products that it's not. They're called non-admitted products in states. So an admitted product would be State Farm Allstate all that. They they go to your insurance commission and say, hey, we're going to do home and auto Otto and all this, and everybody can bundle. And that's what those are, the insurance for the masses, so to speak. So a non-admitted product would be something like this or something that property managers already use, like tenant liability insurance. It's a very small niche. So it's not regulated like that at the state level, like an admitted line would be.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. The insurance guys that are out there like, RIS Solutions and ShoreVest or things like that, do they have a is and I'm actually asking because I don't really know. Do they have.

Tracy Streich: I don't.

Pete Neubig: Or do, you know?

Tracy Streich: I don't know if they have a master property policy or not.

Pete Neubig: Okay.

Tracy Streich: Yeah. Because most of those, most of those at the at the conferences are targeted towards tenant coverages or an owner protection coverage but not necessarily property protection.

Pete Neubig: Got it. All right. Sorry, Tracy. We are up against it. I'm going to take a quick break here, and then we're going to come back for the lightning round.

Tracy Streich: All right.

Pete Neubig: We need NARPM to buy me some, uh, some lightning. Uh, lightning. You know, uh, whatever emojis or whatever.

Tracy Streich: Some sound effects. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Sound effects. There you go. All right. We'll be right back, everybody.

Pete Neubig: All right, welcome back, everybody. We got Tracy Strike, the NARPM Volunteer of the year. And RVP 2025, the central region on the Lightning round. Hot seat. Are you ready, brother?

Tracy Streich: I'm ready. And just so everybody knows, I have not been prepped for any of these questions.

Pete Neubig: That's right. But because you're a long time listener, you probably know some of the questions.

Tracy Streich: I may know some of them, but I think you change them up a little bit.

Pete Neubig: I try to. Alright. What PM software do you use?

Tracy Streich: Rentvine.

Pete Neubig: What is your org structure?

Tracy Streich: Oh, just, uh, you define what you mean? Like at our company portfolio...

Pete Neubig: Portfolio or hybrid?

Tracy Streich: We're kind of a I would say we're a hybrid. Hybrid. Um, but we are very departmental leaning.

Pete Neubig: Are you moving that way? As you grow the business. Are you moving to departmental?

Tracy Streich: Yeah. I mean, that's where we are right now. But we do have some crossover. That's why I say we're a little bit of a hybrid.

Pete Neubig: Got it. Do you use virtual assistants?

Tracy Streich: Yes. Okay.

Pete Neubig: What? Just a couple of. What are you using for a couple of just 1 or 2, like little jobs?

Tracy Streich: Uh, so they we have them do a lot of invoicing. Specifically utility bill invoicing. I don't know about a lot of property managers, but we'll get a stack every week that's, you know, three inches thick and pop it in there, scan them, make sure they get to the right account. We do a lot of project based stuff if we've got. All right, we need this done. We'll assign it assign it to one of our remote team members. We just hired a maintenance coordinator as our most recent hire. We use this, uh, company. I don't remember what their name is. VPM Solutions or something. They did a they did a great job.

Pete Neubig: Thank you.

Tracy Streich: Yeah,

Pete Neubig: I didn't even know. I'm guessing you worked with Leon.

Tracy Streich: We worked with Leon. We did the full Gold Glove. And you didn't ask me to pitch this, but I just want to say that was the easiest process that I've ever had. And I loved it because I. I looked at all the thousands of people that I could go through. And I was like, how about you just tell me the top five? And he did that and we got it down to two really quick and one really fast after that. And it was it was a great and easy, smooth process. Leon did a great job.

Pete Neubig: Thank you for that. Do you use BDMs?

Tracy Streich: Yes. I have one one full time BDM, and then I'm the backup.

Pete Neubig: The backup still?

Tracy Streich: Yeah.

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

Tracy Streich: If they're just starting out? I would say join NARPM and if you've got a local chapter, get involved. If not, get to some of the conferences and develop relationships. I mean, if you go to a conference, you can't help not develop relationships. I mean, you'll be sitting at a table with people at lunch, during sessions, going to evening festivities. You will just get to know some people, and it's great to have somebody specifically for me. I loved having some people that were not in my backyard that I could call, like, I could call Pete, or I could call somebody in California, I could call somebody in Florida. I call Trent Ratliff all the time and say, hey, what do you think of this? And just to have other people to bounce ideas off of.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. And agreed. And, you know, we connected years ago and I actually flew to Tulsa and checked out your conference. If you remember that?

Tracy Streich: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: When I was just getting started, so. And I appreciate you for that. What was your first job?

Tracy Streich: Oh, I mean, my first, like, job that's not really a job was mowing yards. And then I as I moved into high school, I worked for a guy in construction company. Um, and then I still remember my first, what I call real man job was after my freshman year in college, my buddy came by and said, hey, they're laying a gas line out by the lake and they're hiring. Do you want to go out and see if we can get on it and see? And this was the kicker. He goes, they're paying $6 an hour, which back then was like, whoa, $6 an hour. So we went out there and got on the, uh, the gas line laying crew and, uh, my buddy, my buddy Carrie and I were the only. And there were probably, like, 35 people. We were the only two that hadn't been in jail, uh, at that. So I was like, man, this is a different.

Pete Neubig: He was still young. He was still young.

Tracy Streich: Yeah, we still had have time. We still had time. But, yeah, it was a it was an interesting experience.

Pete Neubig: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Tracy Streich: No.

Pete Neubig: If you had to. What's your go to for fast food?

Tracy Streich: Chick fil-a?

Pete Neubig: Yeah, man. After my own heart. Both answers.

Tracy Streich: I love Chick fil-A.

Pete Neubig: Uh, what is something that most people don't know about you?

Tracy Streich: Oh, what do people not know about me? I have a master's degree in social work.

Pete Neubig: For real?

Tracy Streich: Yeah. There you go.

Pete Neubig: I didn't know that.

Tracy Streich: Shocking. I think most people don't know that now that I'm a business person, I know my own business and property management company deep in real estate. But I have a master's degree in social work. I thought I was going to save the world and be, you know. And, Pete, how does that make you feel? You know, I was going to be doing this.

Pete Neubig: We're going to end this. Real quick right now. Uh, what's, uh what's a book that has impacted your business or life?

Tracy Streich: Well, I'll say this. I think most business books that I read all sound the same, and after three chapters I get bored with them. Um, so this is kind of a weird. Nobody's probably ever said this. Um, it's called the Incredible Story of Blondy Baruti.

Pete Neubig: Okay.

Tracy Streich: Have you ever heard of it?

Pete Neubig: I have not.

Tracy Streich: And it's about a kid who grew up.

Pete Neubig: Is fun, though.

Tracy Streich: Grew. Grew up in the Congo. And, like with his mom, was running from the genocide to escape to another country. And he was very tall and very athletic. Started playing basketball and would walk, you know, like 12 miles to practice every day. Finally made it over to the United States, played college basketball and then wanted to be in movies and film and ended up in one of the Avengers movies. Just a great story of overcoming. Incredible. Not like us. Overcoming difficulties. Like what? What difficulty have I overcome today? Like I awaited the Chick fil-A line was really long and I had to wait nine minutes instead of six minutes, right? Like real like life and death things that he had to overcome to make it to where he is now. It's just very inspiring.

Pete Neubig: That is awesome, man. Um, all right, last question. Dogs or cats?

Tracy Streich: Dogs. 100%. Sorry to my son who has two cats, though.

Pete Neubig: All right. You're out of the lightning round, man.

Tracy Streich: Whew. Made it!

Pete Neubig: If any of the members or anybody listening wanted to pick your brain on anything that we chatted about, what's the best way to contact you?

Tracy Streich: They probably get me on one of the various platforms of Twitter, YouTube, X, just. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not on any of those.

Pete Neubig: I was like, wait a second.

Tracy Streich: You can send me an email. Tracy. tracy@rentersplace.com or Facebook. I mean, I'm on Facebook, but I'm not on a bunch of the other stuff. More than, like once every three months. I kind of like, oh, what's going on over here? But I'm not a big social media guy.

Pete Neubig: Same here. That's funny. Yeah. Actually, uh, I just found, like, a LinkedIn message because I haven't gone on LinkedIn in, like, a week and a half, and somebody, like, emailed me 2 or 3 times like, hey, I need help. Oh, sorry.

Tracy Streich: Uh, yeah. I sent you a message on Myspace. Have you got that yet?

Pete Neubig: No, I don't. Send me a message on Myspace. That account, that that account never got created. All right, well, listen, everybody, if you are thinking of joining NARPM, please go to narpm.org or give them a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you want the Gold Glove experience like Tracy got and you're looking at virtual assistants, you can browse over 38,000 virtual assistants. We can also help you with that. Go to vpmsolutions.com or email me at pete@vpmsolutions.com. Tracy, thanks so much for being here, buddy.

Tracy Streich: Pete I appreciate it.