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We educate investors and potential investors on the in's and out's of investing in rental property. We focus on residential and multifamily investing, but include commerical, storage, mobile home parks, and more. We interview industry experts on tax strategies, property management, vendor selection, syndications, capex, and more.
Wanna get into property management, do it the right way. Go work for a company. Go learn the trade. Go learn what you're doing, and then move forward from there. And if you wanna start your own company, you can go off at that point.
Jim Rostel:But Yeah. But I would advise to do it the way I did it. It worked out for me. I was able to make my way through it, but it was definitely difficult.
Nicholas Cook:Hey, investors. Welcome to the Retire on Rentals podcast. I'm your host, Nicholas Cook. And in this show, we explore how to optimize real estate investing, create passive income, discuss operational tactics in ways you and your family can retire on rental income. If you wanna invest in real estate or currently do, then this podcast is for you.
Nicholas Cook:Today's guest is Jim Rostel. He is the COO of Anchor Northwest Property Group. Jim, thanks for joining us today. We're excited to talk to you about all the different projects you're working on and learn a little bit more about you.
Jim Rostel:Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah, excellent. Jim, you've been in the real estate industry for a long time. So you've got a lot of experience, you've worn a lot of different hats. Maybe you can talk a little bit about just kind of out the gate, give some context for how you got into real estate.
Jim Rostel:So initially, my first job in real estate was in the mortgage side of things. And that lasted a while, I left that for a couple reasons. One, everybody's product is the same for the most part, you're selling money. I like to be able to differentiate my product a little bit and go from there. That led me into getting my real estate license in 02/2002.
Jim Rostel:Okay. And in 2005, I started my own company about as soon as I could, as soon as I get my principal broker's license.
Nicholas Cook:Got it.
Jim Rostel:And things were going good. I was I was just your your average residential realtor. And then the market crashed 2008. Yeah. And and and I looked at it, and I was like, gosh.
Jim Rostel:The short sales was the big thing at the time. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense for my clients. Like, I would rather do a strategic foreclosure at the time than do a short sale. Because either way, your credit's gonna be messed up. Right?
Jim Rostel:So so I I I had a client ask me if if he didn't need to sell his house. He was underwater. He couldn't sell it. He says, can you rent it for me? And I said, yeah.
Jim Rostel:Let me have a go at that. And at this point, I had really no property management experience. Did my research, had my license, was was good to go, and so I took on a client. Well, that one house turned into almost a hundred homes. Wow.
Jim Rostel:And and then I was selling real estate at the same time and and and got busy. And then I got recruited to Anchor as a consultant. So I kept my property management business going and started working with Anchor. And it it to some extent, somewhere in 02/2015, '2 thousand '16, the I guess spread just too thin. And it just couldn't give the attention to my single family residence as much, and Anchor was able to give me an opportunity to really kind of play on a bigger playing field.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. So just quick, you know, there's a lot of agents, brokers who, you know, when times are slow, they wanna pivot into property management. And, you know, it's a really different business. Right? It's it's not the same.
Nicholas Cook:Your clients are different. What you need to know is different. How was that experience for you in terms of do you feel like there was a steep learning curve? Or how how did that go?
Jim Rostel:Yeah. No. A %. It was a very, it probably wasn't the smartest move of my life, although it worked out for me.
Nicholas Cook:Sure.
Jim Rostel:There was a lot of a lot of headaches that went through that, a lot of learning, and a lot of stuff that just, you know, it it was difficult. And, you know, fortunately, I had some I hired some good people, and we were able to make things work, and we were able to grow our business, and we got a lot of referrals, and we got into we got into the intel crowd and and and got a lot of referrals within that that community. And And like I said, the regulatory environment today versus twenty ten, twenty eleven is so much more difficult to operate in that don't know that I would advise anybody to just go into it like I did, just flying blind. Like if you want to get into property management, do it the right way. Go work for a company, go learn the trade, go learn what you're doing, and then move forward from there.
Jim Rostel:If you want to start your own company, can go off at that point. I would advise to do it the way I did it. It worked out for me. I was able to make my way through it, but it was definitely difficult.
Nicholas Cook:Got it. Got it. And then so when you moved over to Anchor, it sounds like maybe you were pivoting from more single family to multifamily. Is that the case, or were you doing single family when you first got involved?
Jim Rostel:Well, with Anchor, was all multifamily at that point.
Nicholas Cook:Got
Jim Rostel:it. You know? And and Anchor has a kind of a unique backstory, but for me, by the time I got to Anchor, it was just multifamily. I think we had 14 properties and 800 doors at that at that point in time.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. That's good stuff.
Jim Rostel:36 properties now and 2,200 doors 2,200 plus doors.
Nicholas Cook:Great growth.
Jim Rostel:Yeah. No. It was great. It was a great opportunity. Like I said, it was an opportunity to play on a bigger playing field.
Jim Rostel:Mhmm. And it was something that I really enjoyed more so than the the single family and and quite frankly, would the variability, the variance that is associated with just real estate in general on a smaller level was I lost my taste for that.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. That makes sense. And, you know, when you're moving over to the multifamily, I mean, of the things that's unique, I think, I mean, there's probably a lot of different things that you guys do that that are pretty unique. But one thing is is that your your multifamily is, you know, scattered site in the sense that you don't have on-site staff at the buildings. Right.
Nicholas Cook:And can you maybe talk a little bit about the sizes of the buildings that that you're operating that that that are operating without, you know, onsites present?
Jim Rostel:Yeah. So we have all urban infill type properties. And I think our smallest property is 30 units, but our largest property is a 46 units. Average size is size is probably right in that seventy, seventy five range. And so
Nicholas Cook:That's unique. A lot of people, you kind of I've always heard, once you get past 50 units, you gotta have somebody there. And you're saying that's not the case?
Jim Rostel:I don't think so. And I think as we move forward in the future across the nation, you're gonna see a lot of companies going to this type of a model where you don't have on-site staff. And and and the reality is I think that I think that economically, efficiency wise, that is the best approach from a management standpoint.
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm. So with having out, you know, basically when you've got multifamily, you've got maybe some common areas. Obviously, if you're, you know, coming from the standpoint that these are gonna be, managed from afar, a centralized location as opposed to at the building, you might have some design concepts in mind that help support that. But one of the challenges is you've got somebody's got a dog and they pee in the elevator something like that. And it's like, okay, there's no one on-site to address that.
Nicholas Cook:How much time goes by before those? Like, so what kind of challenges are you running into with this model?
Jim Rostel:Well, that's certainly the the big challenge is you don't have eyes there, you know, but that that same scenario could happen in a with a company that has an on-site management at 08:00 at night. Yeah. You know? And then it doesn't happen till the next day. Communication's key, obviously, and we have people in the field.
Jim Rostel:They're just not tethered to the properties. So I've got 25 maintenance vans going from property to property every day. I've got cleaners out there every day. I've got leasing agents that are in and out. So those things get reported to us quickly, and we're able to get on top of those and and take care of those issues.
Nicholas Cook:Okay. Yeah. No. That's great. It seems like at least and correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of Anchor's kind of portfolio is this is stuff that has been built.
Nicholas Cook:This is not stuff that's been acquired where you've So that's an interesting strategy, right? That takes a lot of different skill sets. And it's just kind of not the same path that most people take. Most people are like, Hey, I'm gonna buy something that's already built. Maybe it's class A, maybe they're gonna buy something that they feel like they can do a value add project to.
Nicholas Cook:But what made you go down that path or at least Anchor's decision to go down the path of building versus just buying what's there?
Jim Rostel:So the background, the owner Dennis, he was a home builder. And so when the market crashed, he had a friend that had a piece of property up on Hancock in the Irvington district, and it was it was they were planning on putting condominiums on there. And, of course, nobody was buying at the time. He bought it from the friend to help him out, and he was in a tough situation. And he looked at it, he's like, we can put apartments here.
Jim Rostel:People are still renting. You don't have to sell them. And so he went out to get financing. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough room to put apartments and parking. It was an urban infill type deal.
Jim Rostel:Right? And and every lender out there said, you can't do multifamily without parking. And he said, you know what? Everybody in Portland rides bikes. I think we can.
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm.
Jim Rostel:And so he he built the property out of his own pocket, used his own money, no bank was there. Once he got it built, we were able to lease it up. Once it was leased up, we could refinance it and pull our money out and go on to the next project. So that was project one. It was just kind of helping a buddy out and we fell into it.
Jim Rostel:We realized this is a good option. Yeah. And like I said, we started construction on that in 2011 and here we are with 36 now properties in 2025.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. I mean, that's substantial growth. One of things that you've done a really good job of is securing really good sites in terms of locations. That can be competitive, right? When you're trying to get land from sellers a lot of times, especially as the market kind of heats up, they have some awareness about the value of that and what can be done.
Nicholas Cook:Have you had a strategy around that or what has been kind of your approach?
Jim Rostel:I think, you know, for the most part, the company has had people come to us because, you know, we're in a position to purchase and we're not leveraged like some of the other developers are. And so we did get we did get some opportunities there that maybe other people didn't have, and we passed on some opportunities as well. But for the most part, it's just been beating the pavement, you know, finding those deals, figuring out if it can pencil out and put a performer together and if it looks good, we move forward.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. That makes sense. And one of the things too, it seems like geographically you've stayed somewhat within the Tri County's urban growth boundary. I'm sure you've done that intentionally. Is that for basically being able to have a reasonable radius of where your techs and your leasing agents can go or what was it kind of just coincidence or drove that?
Jim Rostel:I think, well, part of it is it was an area we knew. You know? We knew the Portland market. We knew where we were at. We knew the the building codes.
Jim Rostel:We knew what we could and couldn't do. So it was easier for us when we saw a site to to understand what that permitting process was gonna look like, what kind of costs we were gonna be required to to to pay to get that up, you know, in terms of system development fees and that type of thing. Mhmm. So it was a lot easier for us because we knew it. Yeah.
Jim Rostel:Right? And so that that was that was probably the biggest driving factor. And then, obviously, there were some things on the back end that that that worked out for us in terms of managing these and managing them from essential locations opposed to on-site and having them close together so that you you didn't have to have maintenance guys tethered to a property.
Nicholas Cook:Got it. Got it. That's interesting. And so obviously there's different models you can go to even within that area. Potentially, know Portland availability of land is somewhat limited, but there are people that have done things that I think maybe are more maybe less dense.
Nicholas Cook:They're more kind of garden style. I mean, your guys could have looked at places, you know, the suburbs, maybe like Beaverton or places like that to put things up. Did you, I mean, really what kind of drove the decision or the density model that you guys have been operating?
Jim Rostel:Well, we did build some garden style and we sold them.
Nicholas Cook:Oh, okay.
Jim Rostel:So we've had some out in Hillsborough and such and we sold those, we flipped those. But the stuff that we built in terms of the urban infill, it made sense to us. It was easy for us to manage, like like I said. And the financials on it in the in the market, you know, for a long time, that Downtown Portland market and that the the close in East Side market was very, very strong. And so it made it easy for those those projects to pencil out.
Jim Rostel:Things have changed quite a bit since then, obviously, and and you're gonna go through these ups and downs, and the city of Portland hasn't hasn't really done us a whole lot of favors in terms of that. But we're hopeful that that that's gonna get changed around as we move forward in the future. Yeah. Yeah.
Nicholas Cook:Did inclusionary zoning change the way that you guys build or change your perspective on, you know, continuing to build?
Jim Rostel:If you look at that so inclusionary zoning came in with mayor Hales. Right? That was his his his kind of partying thing that was gonna be the savior. Mhmm. About that time, they this is 02/2015.
Jim Rostel:I think it was February. They implemented the state of emergency, housing emergency in the city of Portland, giving the city council and the city additional powers that they wouldn't normally have in terms of regulating housing and that type of stuff. Yeah. We're now ten years into that state of it's been a perpetual, every three years, perpetual state of emergency. They just, maybe a week or two ago, I wanna say, they just extended it another three years.
Jim Rostel:Right? And the interesting thing about that, Nicholas, is we have the fewest amount of permits, new construction coming in right now in terms of units
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm.
Jim Rostel:Than we've had in over a decade. Right? And that's a decade into a state of emergency where everything you're doing should be focused towards increasing supply, increasing the opportunity, preventing you know, making sure you have enough housing for the people that you have. Yeah. And everything they have done has been counterproductive.
Jim Rostel:Not everything, but a lot of what they've done has been counterproductive towards those ends. And so it's an interesting time, and we'll see what happens as we go forward, but I'm optimistic.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah.
Jim Rostel:I don't know why, but I am.
Nicholas Cook:I mean, at some point, you think they're gonna hit a wall and they're just gonna run out of excuses for not loosening some of these rules and regulations because at the end of the day it's an outcome that they're trying to achieve which is more supply but they're doing it in a way that as you mentioned is really the complete opposite and not only from a building standpoint with the building regulations that they've imposed but also from ownership and operation standpoint. You could build something all day long but if there's no buyer for it, then you're gonna have a problem and you've gotta have a landlord who's willing to absorb and take on that regulatory environment. You guys, it sounds like you're building and then you're self managing your assets.
Jim Rostel:Yes. We're owner operator all the way, so we're not looking to build to sell, but at the same time, that still's got a pencil out for us or anybody else if we were to sell. And so it's definitely an interesting situation. Back to your original point on inclusionary zoning, that has probably been the single biggest driving factor preventing new new construction and preventing housing starts for any any buildings. You'll see we saw an increase in the number of projects that were less than 20 units because you're not included in the inclusionary zoning at that point.
Jim Rostel:Right? But greater than 20 units has slowed down quite a bit. I think I heard someone say that it's like a tax on the the developer, on the building, on the housing provider, so to speak. And and that's, you know, that's the difference between a project penciling and a project not penciling sometimes.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. Well, that's the financial part that I think a lot of people, at least who are making these rules either don't want to acknowledge or don't know. It's from the standpoint of, you've got obviously the supply component, right? So it's like, let's say the supply is being built. In some ways it's gonna affect affordability.
Nicholas Cook:Theoretically you've got more supply it's gonna improve But the challenge is that at least at this stage seemingly where we're at is that in order to get a building to make sense the rents have to be so high and the other units have to subsidize the affordable units that, to your point, they may not pencil at that time.
Jim Rostel:You're spot on. I mean, that's exactly what we're dealing with. It does, it has a, you know if you look at the top, I don't wanna say, 25 highest rents markets in the nation, San Francisco, New York, the one thing that 90% of those have in common is rent control. Yeah. And and that's, you know, and and it leads to a lower supply.
Jim Rostel:Lower supply means you got more people fighting for a depleted resource Mhmm. Which is just gonna drive prices up inherently. Now there's people that benefit from that. The people that are in and stay in, they benefit, right? Their rent's not going up.
Jim Rostel:But for everybody that's coming into those markets, they're gonna pay a higher rate because of it.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. Yeah, and that's obviously not serving anybody. It's not serving the market at all. So I think that's probably one of the things where Portland and even Oregon at large tends to get in its own way, right? Mean, of success because years ago, ten years ago, I mean, was one of the top markets to invest in and to build in and now we're almost dead last.
Jim Rostel:We're eightieth out of 81.
Nicholas Cook:What what was that?
Jim Rostel:Eightieth out of 81. Two thousand 15, prior to the state of emergency, we were the top 80%. So we were we were we were the top 20% of markets. It was attractive to developers, real estate investors, that type of thing. We're second to last now.
Jim Rostel:I don't know if it's last, but we're second to last.
Nicholas Cook:Fair enough. You know, in some ways, and this is more of just a slight tangent from this impact on supply and everything like that. You mentioned people who if they get in the game and they stay in the game, it can be fine because over time you can weather some of these issues. Mean, the government's kind of killing your competition for you in some ways, but what are your thoughts on that? I mean, do you think, I mean, long term, is this something that you wanna see change or do you feel like it's fortifying your position?
Jim Rostel:You know, on the one hand, things like rent control, that type of stuff, in some ways benefit the existing inventory because it does prevent competition. It also prevents people from moving out. And so turnover is one of your biggest expenses in terms of managing properties. So you limit your turnover. You're not having to lease up.
Jim Rostel:You don't have the lease up costs, those types of things. So to some extent, it does, but it doesn't create a healthy market either.
Nicholas Cook:Right? Sure.
Jim Rostel:I think we all just wanna compete in a healthy market.
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm.
Jim Rostel:And and certainly, any types of rent control are not going to produce a healthy market. And so and that's bad for the tenant. That's bad for the whole housing provider. You know, there's no real winners there with the exception of the people that just stay in their properties. You know, I hear stories in San Francisco of people that are paying $500 for rent for an apartment that would, on the open market, would rent for 7 to $8,000 a month.
Jim Rostel:They're paying but they've been rent they can't afford to move out of that. They just keep releasing that. Even they they may not even live there. Yeah. Right?
Jim Rostel:They just have that there. So
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. That makes sense. And I think, you know, one of the things about this inclusionary zoning that has clearly had an impact on what people are building and how much people are building is that if somebody in the city of Portland, land is scarce, Certainly land that you could build a multifamily structure on. The problem is if somebody does acquire a piece of land and they decide to build something smaller because they don't want to comply with IZ, you've now got this essentially permanent building there for the next fifty to one hundred years that is really going to prevent that land from being utilized at its highest and best use. And that is something that I don't think was considered in that, okay, now we've got these buildings that are locked into these, you know, finite pieces of land and they're now they're not gonna yield anything for a while because you can't just I mean, prices would have to really sky high, you know, for you to justify tearing down a newer building.
Jim Rostel:Yeah.
Nicholas Cook:Right?
Jim Rostel:It's hard to it's even hard to make those smaller projects pencil in the first place. You're right. They're there, they're there, and now that land's no longer available. So it's unintended consequences. A lot of these policies, they had good intentions in mind, but the unintended consequences make them bad ideas.
Jim Rostel:Yeah. I
Nicholas Cook:think I've been pretty engaged in the political process with housing for some time. I remember at the beginning of this, when we started to see, I think 02/2009 was when we really first started to see some changes in landlord tenant law. And then as we move forward, you started to see changes in some of the development rules and everything like that. And then the landlord tenant laws got more and more complex and in some cases more complicated. We can thank Chloe Udaly for some of that stuff.
Nicholas Cook:But it's one of those things that at first the narrative was we need to educate the legislature because they just don't know any better. And then it kind of over time went from I think they actually know. We've done the education and they're still ignoring it. And seems to be a major consequence of having a state that's, candidly, just it's one party rule, right? There's no check and balance to ideas.
Nicholas Cook:People are just kind of endorsing everyone's rules. That's been really problematic for the environment of housing here. I don't think it's, there's nothing they've done that's made it more appealing. That's a point of frustration for me, for our clients, for ourselves and just as somebody who's grown up and lived in Portland. So it's kind of pushed me to start looking at different markets, maybe going into different states, different cities, places that are going to be easier to operate in.
Nicholas Cook:Obviously you're operating in the same environment we're operating in. Have you considered looking at markets outside of this immediate area?
Jim Rostel:We have, but not seriously at this point. We've looked at what would the Boise market look like, what would the Seattle market look like, and Seattle's much of the same Portland.
Nicholas Cook:Sure.
Jim Rostel:Yeah. But, you know, and and then you get, you know, the way we're operating, being a family owned company, and we all live here, we all have kids and grandkids and and that type of thing, you know, I don't know that that's necessarily in the cards for us per se, but I certainly I certainly think that the people that are gonna have a big impact, institutional investors, those types of people are gonna look at Portland and go, you know what? There's better options out there. Yeah. Right?
Jim Rostel:And that's I think that's what what the powers to be, the the city council, the state are underestimating is if you've got money to invest, you don't have to invest in Portland Yeah. Or Oregon for that matter. Right? Sure. You're gonna go to the place that's gonna give you the best opportunity to succeed and get the best return on your investment.
Jim Rostel:And what they've done in Portland is they have increased your risk significantly but then capped your return. And so why do I want to take on all this additional risk? Can I make money? Yeah, I can make money. But at what risk and how much money I'm making for the risk that I'm taking?
Jim Rostel:So the greater the risk, the greater the return's got to be. And you can't continue to increase risk and minimize return. People are just not gonna build. And that's what we're seeing. Like I said, we're at the lowest point in terms of housing starts that we've been in over a decade.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. And I think that's, you know, one of the fundamental I mean, there's, I think, several flaws, but one of the fundamental flaws about rent control and things like that are really at the end of the day, are, as you mentioned, you're capping someone's upside, but you're not equally capping their downside. You're not, they're not stepping in and making your mortgage payment for the building, servicing the debt or helping out with expenses when you've got high vacancy or you've got a substantial expense that maybe you weren't expecting. Especially in a building that might be twenty, thirty years old, these things happen all the time. So it's very one-sided and at some point it's gonna compress down to, there's not gonna be a margin there.
Jim Rostel:Yeah, no, the margins have shrunk significantly and it's definitely an issue for us for sure.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. So, again, going back to how you guys operate, which is really unique. I actually am not familiar with anybody who manages anywhere near the number of units that you guys manage. And certainly in multifamily that does that scattered site, maybe you can talk a little bit about some of the kind of core aspects of how you guys operate.
Jim Rostel:Well, we have we have no on-site property managers. So we have no on-site teams. We have people that work on-site, but they're not tethered to a specific property. So we go. We have a maintenance you know, 25 maintenance vans out there, and they're going from property to property based on need.
Jim Rostel:We have, you know, five leasing agents that manage that that are responsible for keeping 36 properties full. Yeah. Everything that we don't have to do on-site, so processing applications, receiving phone calls, renewals, contracts, all of that's done out of a central location. Right? And and it gives us a lot more control, quality control, gives us a lot more we get people that are very specialized in their positions.
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm.
Jim Rostel:So not only they get better at their jobs, but people that are better at their jobs and enjoy what they do tend to stick around longer. So Sure. You know, our attrition rate is very, very low from from from a turnover standpoint, employee turnover standpoint. And and that that has been, for us, a way for us to kind of absorb some of the negative impacts of the legislation, regulatory environment that's been put on us.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. Mean, employee retention and property management is one of the big challenges, especially for people who are on the front end, front lines you might say, dealing with residents. It's not so much that any given situation is difficult or taxing, it's just the accumulation of that. Also, the property management industry, it largely can be a thankless industry, right? You're doing all these things that can be difficult and demanding and urgent and there's not a lot of high fives or pats on the back from the customers you might say.
Nicholas Cook:But obviously that varies a little bit when you're on the ownership side versus third party versus.
Jim Rostel:Yeah. No, it's definitely a difficult situation nationally. I heard a statistic recently that's the the turnover rate for property management on a national level is 60%. That's right. Out of 10, you're losing every year, you're losing six out of 10 of your employees.
Jim Rostel:It's crazy. Absolutely crazy. And it's hard. It's hard to keep good people, and it's hard to get people to even know what they're doing. Then you you you take a complex regulatory environment and throw that on top of jobs that you really, it's hard to push income on those jobs and get the higher qualified people that can handle that regulatory mean because your margins are so thin.
Jim Rostel:And so you've only got so much you can spend on your employee overhead to manage these properties, and so that's going to dictate the quality and the level of people you're going to be able to bring in. We've been fortunate. We've gotten some really good people, they've stuck with us, and we've been able to, because of our system, we have fewer heads per bed, per door, so to speak, than the standard in the industry, and allows us to pay a little bit more to our employees and and help retain those employees on that level. But yeah, it's definitely an issue.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. Well, no. I I definitely would say that's a major competitive advantage to be able to to retain people and, you know, you you get that institutional knowledge within your building. You guys can go deeper on what you know. And the customer experience is stronger because you know that's one of the things as you mentioned, I think a lot of operators are you know, they're running into the same situation where the margins are being compressed, you know, which makes it difficult to have a sufficient labor force.
Nicholas Cook:And then, you know, resident experience suffers, residents get upset, they complain to, regulators. Regulators turn around and say, Oh, you need to do this in this amount of time. And it's like, Woah, you're actually compounding the problem. So it's definitely a different situation. What would you say, I mean obviously a lot of your background has been in some form or another of scattered site property management.
Nicholas Cook:But just in the last five plus years or so, managing multifamily, managing scattered site, what are some things that have like some moments that happened kind of along the way of like, oh, we can do this and this is gonna create a major improvement or maybe something that kind of surprised you that didn't work that you thought would?
Jim Rostel:Well, that's a good question. I think in terms of, you know, I don't know that we had, like, these major moments, but we've been able to build on things. Right? And and one of the the great things about our system and the way we've done things and and being unique is that we've we've been fortunate to have some of the prop property tech prop tech providers come to us and say, look. We feel like this is a direction that the industry is gonna go in terms of centralized management.
Jim Rostel:And so they've come in, and they're starting to build their software based off of our operating model, which helps us because now we've got software that works for what we do as opposed to a traditional model where you've got on-site staffing and that type of thing. So that's that's been a nice advantage to us.
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm.
Jim Rostel:You know, I think at the end of the day, the more that the more that we see technology helping us, I think I look at AI, for example. I'm talking about that's everybody's getting big. Everybody wants to come out and say, let's let's have AI be outward facing. We can talk to your customers. We can do your sales process.
Jim Rostel:We can do all that. And I don't think that's where the value is. I think the value is inward looking, analyzing my data, giving me actionable information where I can make better decisions moving forward. Right? You know?
Jim Rostel:What's what's working? What's not working? Down to things like, you know and I talk about this all the time with our people. We're a sales organization. We're not really a management organization.
Jim Rostel:We're here to drive revenue. There's two ways we drive revenue. The number one way is renewals. Turnover's the biggest cancer for your revenue. It just does not, it's not good for anybody.
Nicholas Cook:Sure.
Jim Rostel:And I'll talk more about that with the whole rent control thing in a bit. But Okay.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah.
Jim Rostel:That and then the leasing piece. Right? And those are your two those those are the two everything we do when we clean our buildings, when we, you know, respond to work orders, we do that. It's all because we want you to renew. Right?
Nicholas Cook:Yeah.
Jim Rostel:That's that's our main goal, everything we do. Right? And then second area is we we know we're gonna have turnover. Right? People buy houses, people move out of state, that type of stuff.
Jim Rostel:So for those people, we wanna make sure we have nice properties, clean assets so that when people are touring and leasing, they choose us over the competition. Yeah. Those are the the the two big issues. Now everything else we do funnels up into that and and why we do it.
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm. Got it. And do you, I mean it sounds like you've got a lot of techs out in the field. You said 25. So you guys are staying busy.
Nicholas Cook:Have you had to educate your residents who are maybe used to living in a large multi family where the maintenance guy's on-site every day and they can just talk to them? Big thing with scattered sites that can be challenging is basically turnaround time on the maintenance request. It comes in, how long does it take to get done and closed out? So have you found a lot of success in being able to do that in a way that meets the expectations of the residents, or do you feel like that's a pain point?
Jim Rostel:No. I think for us, actually, it's a strength. Like, we sell our maintenance as a as an amenity to our buildings. We are we respond to our our work orders within twenty four hours. All of our work orders come to essential locations.
Jim Rostel:There's someone here all day, every day, that all they do is field the work orders, triage them, and schedule them out.
Nicholas Cook:Got it.
Jim Rostel:Right? And so we're able to and because we've got so many guys in Vance who are going from building to building and because we have the density we have in terms of being able to get from our furthest North property to our furthest South property in a half hour, we can be responsive, much more responsive than a traditional guy who's maybe you've got a 300 unit complex and you've got one maintenance guy Mhmm. And he's got 10 work orders to get to. Well, he may take him a week or two to get through all those 10 work orders. Whereas we always have somebody who's available to go and do a work order.
Jim Rostel:We just send them to the right place. We schedule it out. And then, again, obviously, triaging those and understanding what's important, what has to be done today, what can wait. Sure. Yeah.
Jim Rostel:That type of thing. So I think we have an advantage in our system in that way that you wouldn't have if you just had one guy tethered to a site.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. Yeah. I imagine you've probably done some standardization with appliances or colors or maybe flooring, or is that
Jim Rostel:Well, flooring, yes. I mean, being the the fact that we built all of our properties, we we try and stay with the same types of countertops, cabinets, flooring, that type of stuff. It's not always the same. It changes from building to building. And then, of course, the flooring industries, they're not dumb.
Jim Rostel:They they change. They discontinue the flooring every two or three years. So eventually, you can't get that anymore, so you gotta change anyway. So Yeah. You know, we've got that.
Jim Rostel:You know, we've gotta replace carpet, and and and they don't make it anymore. So, you know, we got those carpet squares so we can place one or two without having to do an entire, you know, hallway.
Nicholas Cook:That's game changing.
Jim Rostel:Yeah, which is great as long as they're still making it, right? So if they don't, then you can't do that. So, yeah, it's been good for us.
Nicholas Cook:Great, great. Well, we're gonna take a quick break from our sponsor, but we'll be right back. This show is sponsored by Sleep Sound Property Management, one of Portland's largest and top rated management companies that specializes in multifamily and residential real estate. They can help you acquire, operate, protect, and sell or exchange your properties. If you want to invest in real estate, give them a call or visit them online @sleepsoundpm.com.
Nicholas Cook:That's sleepsoundpm.com. Okay. We are back here. Jim, it's been great talking with you so far. At some point, wanna touch base on you had talked about having a building that had some water pipes break.
Jim Rostel:Yeah.
Nicholas Cook:I'd like to hear a little bit about that kind of event, what that experience was like, what you maybe learned from it. Those are obviously things that most people aren't prepared for.
Jim Rostel:Yeah. No. We weren't. It was, you know, the ice storm a year ago, basically, just over a year ago. This was the big we know we've had we've had some some minor issues, right, you know, throughout the years.
Jim Rostel:If you you know, with us and the way our buildings are built, we never really have a lot of fire damage. We all have floods. Right? So as soon as the fire hits that sprinkler head, it's 60 gallons of water a minute until the fire department gets ready to turn it off. So typically, there's more water damage than fire damage.
Nicholas Cook:Sure. Yeah.
Jim Rostel:We had to move all 50 people out within twenty four hours.
Nicholas Cook:Wow.
Jim Rostel:And it was it was quite an event.
Nicholas Cook:That's wild. Yeah. I can imagine the chaos and just the intensity of that. And, you know, it wasn't until I got into property management that I looked at the weather in a totally different way. So, you know, I I I like sunny weather obviously because it's enjoyable, but it also means we're less likely to run into a lot of issues.
Nicholas Cook:Although you can have cooling systems go out and things like that too, but usually not as intense as floods or things like that.
Jim Rostel:Floods, fires, it's gonna happen. Right? It's multifamily. It's gonna happen. Yeah.
Jim Rostel:We've got one now where we had a fire in November, and it was one unit, not much damage from fire, but it kicked two sprinkler heads this time. So we got a 20 gallons a minute for twenty, twenty five minutes before the fire department got there and turned the water off, and it took out 36 units of a seven, eight unit building. Yeah. And and we're still dealing with that. And and, not anything we could do.
Jim Rostel:Tenants that's gonna happen with tenants sometimes. This was gal who had a speaker, like a little JBL type speaker, had it plugged in, and the lithium battery blew up. Oh, it's wild. So not our fault. What's wild about that is all of a sudden, some of these things like relocation fees and that type of stuff starts coming into play.
Jim Rostel:Yeah. And you're like, wait a minute, man. This is this is no fault of ours. Yeah. We got
Nicholas Cook:This is not habitable.
Jim Rostel:Yeah. You know? And and so, you know, then you got legal fees. Like, are we responsible for under the the Fair Act in Portland and the different things that impact us? And so now we're in conversations and running up attorney bills, trying to figure out what can we do to help our tenants and what are we actually responsible for?
Nicholas Cook:Yeah, what's your obligation? And
Jim Rostel:so we got through that, it's been good. We're still working on repairing that building. But yeah, it happens.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah, we had a fire in the building that we were building and it was actually during construction. It was basically almost done and from what I gathered, there was somebody who was working one of the units had set their tool bag on top of the stove and somehow a burner got turned on and then they left. And I mean, it caught that whole bag on fire and then, I mean, it it it damaged three units. Yeah. It was pretty substantial.
Nicholas Cook:Fortunately, it didn't, you know, go through the roof of the building or anything like that. But yeah, I mean those units were down for four or five months, which a lot of that's insurance and stuff like that. But I mean, it's just crazy the things that happened. And there was another one where I think a bulb burst when it was basically more roughed in construction and there was a fire there too. This building had two fires and it's a brand new building.
Nicholas Cook:Which is crazy to think. I mean, don't usually think fires are gonna happen. I mean, obviously they do, but they're a lot easier and more likely than I think people realize.
Jim Rostel:It happens. I mean, and again, it's just part of the gig. We know it's gonna happen again. We know at some point somebody's gonna do something, fortunately for us, we're sprinkler all our buildings are sprinkler. They're all really good.
Jim Rostel:So we typically like I said, we typically don't have the the fire issue and the damage and the threat that poses to human life and everything else, but we do have a lot of water typically, and and that can permeate the walls, the insulation, the flooring, everything.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. Definitely. So Well, you know, you've always been active in the industry. I mean, that's how I got to to know you as you've been active and think you're testifying at City Council for something and that's where we actually connected the first time. But you're also involved in the industry from another standpoint.
Nicholas Cook:I know that you had done some speaking at multifamily innovation and you had touched on earlier some of the kind of AI stuff and that's a huge conversation. I mean, I think there are people who are thinking about it from, as you mentioned, there's a huge focus on external facing tools, but then there's also the internal side which is analyzing maintenance requests and different things like that. Are there things or technologies that you've seen that maybe you haven't quite adopted yet are catching your eye that you think are gonna be game changers potentially?
Jim Rostel:I think there's a lot of game changers out there. And I think, you know, initially, and I'm, you know, maybe I'm a little old school in terms of the human touch and that's why I don't like the outward facing stuff. You know, I want to have a human on the phone. You don't want AI answering the phone for me. Yeah.
Jim Rostel:I wanna have people that they can build a relationship with and know who they are, that type of stuff. Yeah. But it's the inward facing stuff. There's so much data, right, that it's almost impossible or it's certainly not pragmatic for someone like me to go in and try and sort through that data and figure stuff out. Right?
Jim Rostel:But AI, they could tell you your best renewing units are on the Third Floor on the corner. Your worst renewing units are these. And so you start to understand how your units are performing, not only based on things like one bedroom, two bedroom studio, but also building location, north facing, south facing, east facing, you know, those types of things, average length of tenant stay. And and the list is is endless in terms of the different factors and different correlated factors you can you can you can provide analysis on Mhmm. In just a blink of the eye.
Jim Rostel:Right? It would take you and I months and months and months of digging through things and tons of spreadsheets to try and come up with that type of information. And all that stuff can be actionable information that you can make decisions on moving forward.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. Definitely. You know, one of the things that you mentioned also earlier that stood out is that, know, the end of the day, first and foremost, you're a sales organization, right? Yeah. And so you've got that component kind of married with, know, being able to build a relationship with people, talk to people on the phone rather than, you know, a machine.
Nicholas Cook:But you've also got kind of this overlay of technology that exists which is has been out for a little while but people especially in multifamily haven't been as quick to adopt it which is kind of like self tours, right? People being able to go to a property, tour it on their own. Is that something that you've adopted? Is it something that you've kind of shied away from because of your perspective on the sales experience?
Jim Rostel:Yeah. No. I think anytime you're in a competitive situation, you're better off having an actual leasing agent or salesperson there to understand the needs of the customer. Right? So we have this thing.
Jim Rostel:People buy when value exceeds price. Right? So you've got two things you can do. You can build value or you can drop price, like, if you wanna make a sale.
Nicholas Cook:Right?
Jim Rostel:Yeah. So we wanna build value. But the tough thing there is what builds value for you as a tenant or a prospect may be different than what builds value for me. Mhmm. And on the surface, you may not see that.
Jim Rostel:Right? Yeah. If you're sound sensitive, right, you can tour my apartment on your own and not understand that we have acoustomatic flooring in there to block sound from both above and sound going below you. You know, shear walls of blown insulation, blown insulation, how that how that sound protection works for you. All kinds of different little things that may build value for you that may not build value for somebody else.
Jim Rostel:But we've got to identify that upfront and understand where you're at. If I just say, here's the keys, go look at it. Right now I'm commoditizing my product. Apartment's an apartment's apartment. I think there's a place for that in the industry.
Jim Rostel:I think in affordable where you have waiting lists and you have people that probably don't need to be sold. They're buying on price at that point, right? I have an $800 2 bedroom. Well, you got a waiting list of 10 people.
Nicholas Cook:Sure.
Jim Rostel:I'm not gonna pay someone to go show you that apartment. I'll do self guided tours in those situations. We don't have those. Yeah. We're all market rate.
Jim Rostel:When you have a choice between my apartment and somebody else's apartment, I wanna have I wanna have a dog in the fight. I wanna have somebody there that's gonna understand you and make sure that's a good good apartment for you. In addition to that, we've got 2,000 units in Portland. Right? And if you're a prospect for one of my apartments, you're a prospect for probably any of them for that matter.
Jim Rostel:Right? And so the other thing that we try to do is understand your needs and then get you in the right apartment. Just because you responded to an ad on a specific apartment, once I understand a little bit more about you, I may think, you know what? I've got an apartment over here in a different building. Let's go look at that.
Jim Rostel:It may better meet your needs. Because at the end of the day, like I said earlier, we're here to get renewals. And it's easier to renew someone in an apartment that better fits their needs than someone that gets an apartment that kind of fits their needs. Yeah. Right?
Jim Rostel:So that's our philosophy at least, and it's worked for us.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. Well, mostly, I mean, you bring up a good point. I mean, noise management in apartments is kind of the number one thing. And especially in the last, I think, ten years, primarily because I think you've got a lot of people out there who are building with the intention to sell. Right?
Nicholas Cook:So the way that they design and the materials they use are not gonna be the same as somebody who might build for holding long term. Right? You know, there's some buildings that, know, when we put a bar building, we put in mini splits because we wanted to have cooling in the units. There's a lot of stuff that's been built without cooling. And while it's true historically you could probably get away with that, we have seen a temperature pattern change in the Northwest.
Nicholas Cook:So it becomes more necessary. But if you're building to sell, that might not be a factor you're considering. But it sounds like you guys are really honing in on those details.
Jim Rostel:Yeah. We have one building with many splits. I'm not sure I would do it again. You have to service those every six months.
Nicholas Cook:That's true. And
Jim Rostel:it becomes, you know, and we don't put air conditioning in our units. We put it in the buildings. We don't put it in individual units. We do port them for our portable standup air Yeah,
Nicholas Cook:the window one.
Jim Rostel:So they have, well, not windows, we actually put a port, it's a hole in the wall so that you can take the standup ones with the hose and hook it up to that, then you can close it and put it away in the winter so you have more room, that type of thing. So we have those options for you, and to some extent, temperatures have gotten warmer in Portland, so it plays into it, but it hasn't impacted us. It's usually one or two weeks, and you'll get a few complaints here and there, but for the most part, I think people are good with it. And those details are things that may differentiate an apartment from one person to the next. We're not everything for everybody, and that's what I tell them.
Jim Rostel:There's gonna be people that are not a good fit for us, and that's fine. Right? Yeah. If you want on-site gyms and virtual reality rooms, we're probably not the best option for you, but there's people out there. If you want an $800 2 bedroom, we probably don't have anything for you.
Jim Rostel:Right?
Nicholas Cook:But for what we
Jim Rostel:do, there's a demographic out there that our value proposition resonates with, and those are the people we're looking for.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. No, that makes sense. Obviously in any market, you're always navigating the environment and what's going on and so your challenges kind of evolve over time. What are the current things that are on your radar or current fears you have in terms of what's happening that you're really keeping an eye on or the things that you're concerned about?
Jim Rostel:I think one of the biggest issues we're dealing with right now, and I wanna be wanna be careful how I put this.
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm.
Jim Rostel:The general political feeling towards solving the homeless crisis is to try and get these people into housing, which I think is fine. I think on the surface is great. The problem, what's getting missed, is that many of these people don't have the living skill set to be successful in a multifamily environment.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah.
Jim Rostel:Right? If you're driving down the road and you see these homeless camps and you see the garbage spread and you see the the issues that that that are inherent with those those camps, When you just take someone from one of those camps and you put them in without giving them a skill set of how to to live in an apartment in that type of a setting Mhmm. They fail. Yeah. And we've seen it over and over again.
Jim Rostel:And not only do they fail, it's not just for them where it becomes a negative, but you may share four walls with people. You have four different families around you Yeah. That are all gonna be impacted by that. And and that's a that's that's an issue. I think that that that we definitely need to do something about the homeless issue that's plaguing our city, but I think more needs to be given towards giving people the resources and the skill sets they need to be successful in the living environment they're in and not just forcing them into, know, years just to get them off the street, to make things look better.
Jim Rostel:We've housed so many people. Well, the success rate of those people is very, very low.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah, 100%. And the thing is, is that it's, sadly, from my perspective what I seem to think has been happening is the government's come in and said we have this huge problem. We don't have the time, resources or capability of solving it. So we're going to shift as much of this as we can to the private sector and kind of make them take on some of the burden of this. The problem is is that the level and the challenges of issues that people in those circumstances are dealing with exceed what property management professionals can address.
Nicholas Cook:It's and then when you like you said, when you're in a multi family environment, you know, that affects everyone in the building. And it's not fair to the people who are trying to get up and go to work and get a night's sleep and live in a safe and quiet environment to have that kind of disruption is really destabilizing. And so whether you liked it or not, kind of potentially light at the end of the tunnel when they implemented this new homeless tax. It was like, oh, we're gonna raise all this money and we're gonna provide these things that we're talking about. These social services to kind of complement the housing component.
Nicholas Cook:And they raised all this money and not only did they not really spend it, the problem's gotten worse. Yeah. And so it's just kind of like one of those things where it's like, you know, what do we do? You know, this seems like a very, you know, difficult issue that really is not the private sector is not really the place or the solution for for this type of issue.
Jim Rostel:No. I agree with you a %. And and, you know, we know what doesn't work, and that's what they've been doing. Yeah. Right?
Jim Rostel:And so they've gotta change course. They've gotta course correct on this and somehow find a way to get to the root cause. Right? I mean, and and some of this is some of these people on this that that are experiencing homelessness are victims of circumstance.
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm.
Jim Rostel:And give those people the support they need. Other people have mental illness and are self medicating with drugs and fentanyl and that type of And that's a whole different issue. Right? And so it's not a one size fits all. We've got a housing crisis because the homeless population is growing, and so we're just gonna find a way to put this on the housing providers and say, you gotta solve this, right?
Jim Rostel:You gotta find a way. You've got inclusionary zoning. You've got all this other stuff that you have to do in order to help us with this, and I don't think that's the solution. I don't think it's worked, and I think all we've seen in ten years of a housing emergency is more of a problem and not less.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah, I would agree. Well, I've got one last formal question and then I've got three just kind of fun questions just to get to know you, Jim, a little bit better. But, you know, we're kind of at the beginning of, q one or I guess, you know, beginning of the year, q one's '2 thirds the way over, but here in 2025. Is there anything that you're looking forward to this year? Anything that you're excited about?
Nicholas Cook:Stuff that maybe you wanna share?
Jim Rostel:I think we're gonna see to some extent the market rebounding a little bit for multifamily. I think I'm forecasting stronger occupancy rates this year than we had last year, and we're starting to see that a little bit. Mhmm. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited to see what the new mayor does.
Nicholas Cook:I
Jim Rostel:don't know a ton about him. I haven't had an opportunity to speak with him yet. I hope you get that opportunity. But I'm excited to see what he does because the the previous administration was just not they just didn't seem to to have any success with their policies.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what they do, and we've got this new city council format which is gonna be another issue. But I think long term term I'm bullish on Portland simply just because geographically where we're located, you've got the mountains, the beach, you've got forest, desert.
Nicholas Cook:We've obviously got a really high quality of life here in in a lot of ways whether it's restaurants or, you know, essentially just just the environment that we have that's so lush. So, I am I would I would agree that, I hope things change and we start to see some some improvement.
Jim Rostel:I think it's gonna move in that direction, and I'm hopeful. I'm I'm hopeful that, of course, correct with some of the tax burden and and and what's going on with the the pop I mean, Multnomah County is shrinking. We're losing people. Right? We're not only losing people.
Jim Rostel:We're losing wealth from the county. Like, it's the average median income of people moving into Multnomah County, I think, is 73,000 compared to Clark County, which is, like, a hundred and 5,000. Yeah. It's a 30% difference there. Really, what's the difference?
Jim Rostel:Your marginal tax rate in Multnomah County in the city of Portland is almost 60%. And so where are you gonna go? And so many people now can work from home or they can telecommune, and so they have options. Yeah. You know?
Jim Rostel:And so I hopefully, Multnomah County gets gets a hold of that and and and they're able to course correct on on those issues.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. I agree. I agree. Okay. So we're gonna do a little pivot here.
Nicholas Cook:Like I said, I've got three questions for you just to help to get to know you a little bit more. If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would it be?
Jim Rostel:Goodness. I think I've been asked this question. I lost my dad thirty five years ago. It would be interesting to be able to sit down with him and what's happened since he passed away and that type of thing. I think that's probably what a lot of people would, a loved one like that.
Jim Rostel:And I think a close second would be Jesus.
Nicholas Cook:Oh, there you go. Good lineup.
Jim Rostel:I got all kinds of questions. I got all kinds of questions. So that'd be number two.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. So yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. If you had to choose whiskey or wine, which one would you would you choose?
Jim Rostel:Oh, goodness. That's a tough one because I like my whiskey, but I also like my wine. I would probably choose wine. Yeah. Like, I I think wine's something that I have with dinner on a regular basis and that type of thing, but I don't have whiskey on a regular basis, although I have I I do enjoy a nice whiskey for sure.
Nicholas Cook:Do have a favorite?
Jim Rostel:Oh, goodness. My go to, just drinkable every day, Angel's Envy. I like Red Breast. I like a Macallan 12 or 18. Eighteen's nice, but it's not an everyday drinker.
Jim Rostel:Sure. So yeah, I feel from in there.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. So you kinda like the whole kind of range. Had a bourbon or Irish and and Scotch and
Jim Rostel:there's You must be a whiskey guy because he's
Nicholas Cook:I I I've actually been collecting whiskey, more specifically bourbon for about ten years. I've got probably 150 bottles of stuff.
Jim Rostel:Had my first You
Nicholas Cook:should probably enjoy some bourbon together sometimes. Yeah, no,
Jim Rostel:I had my first Pappy not too long ago and it was phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's yeah. For sure.
Jim Rostel:I mean, Blanton's there's just a lot out there for me.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. No. There definitely there's more and more, but yeah, there's a lot of good selection. And you know, you think that there wouldn't be a lot of nuance in it because it's like, oh, it's kind of just it's whiskey, it's whiskey. But and even if you're just talking about within bourbon, mean, you get into obviously, you get into different proofs, different mash bills, and you get into different char levels of the barrels and different aging time.
Nicholas Cook:It just it's not as complex as wine, but it's got its own lane.
Jim Rostel:Oh, for sure. For sure. It's interesting. My oldest stepson is, he's probably pretty close to your age, and he's got a palate where you can hand him a nice whiskey and he'll tell you what it is. Wow.
Jim Rostel:It's amazing. It's freakish.
Nicholas Cook:Yeah. It's kinda like a Psalm, but for whiskey.
Jim Rostel:Yeah, no, he is. He's, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah.
Nicholas Cook:Kind of my final question here is, being a leader can be difficult at times. It's a hard job. What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a great leader?
Jim Rostel:Well, that's a great question. It's a great question. I think the first thing you have to be to be a great leader is be very, very self aware and be very centered in yourself and understand that you're gonna make mistakes, and you're gonna make the wrong call sometimes. It doesn't make you a bad leader. It just means you made a mistake, like you learn from your mistakes.
Jim Rostel:And then the other thing I think all great leaders do is they're great listeners. You gotta be able to hear what people are thinking. You've gotta understand where they're at and understand what they're dealing with. And in order for someone to follow you, they've gotta know that you care about them and you truly want the best for them as well. And I think if they do, if you get that kind of relationship, it becomes very, very easy.
Jim Rostel:And it may be leadership may be both the easiest and hardest thing you can do. Right?
Nicholas Cook:Mhmm.
Jim Rostel:And so that's what I would say. Understand yourself. Understand where you're at. Be self aware and listen to what your people say.
Nicholas Cook:That's a great response. That's a lot of wisdom in that. Yeah.
Jim Rostel:I've been around for a while. That's good.
Nicholas Cook:Well, Jim, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to join us and talk to the audience and share what you know. Is there any kind of final words that you'd like to to share?
Jim Rostel:You know what? I appreciate the opportunity to be heard and and, you know, I think in in general, real estate is a great market to be involved in, and it is probably the truest wealth builder that we have in terms of long term wealth. And you don't need to get in on the deep end. You can dip your toes in and start working your way up and and and and learn as you go. So I I think it's a great opportunity.
Nicholas Cook:Absolutely. Perfect. Well, thank you, Jim.
Jim Rostel:Thank you, Nicholas. Appreciate it.
Nicholas Cook:And that concludes today's episode of retire on rentals. But we do have a quick favor to ask before you jump off. If you haven't already, please go ahead and like and subscribe. More engagement means better content and more excellent guests. And we look forward to joining you on your real estate journey.
Nicholas Cook:Now remember, stay focused, stay driven, so you can retire on rentals.