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Specializing in seller financing, Dawn is a visionary real estate professional who gets families into (or out of) homes and investments in a way that empowers and enriches them, as well as the communities in which they live… with or without banks and regardless of market conditions. Dawn is the antidote to America’s addiction to Wall Street’s financial opium. She makes the powerful, non-bank, strategies usually reserved for sophisticated investors accessible to everyday people, making or saving them thousands and instilling hope as she illuminates hidden opportunities. As a seasoned note investor intimate with seller financing and the secondary market for private mortgage notes, she provides mission-critical expertise that is extremely rare in today’s marketplace. Sellers: know what your note will be worth before you create it. "Landlord Liberation", "Buyers: The Seller is Your Bank" and "Note Investing for Newbies" are key gateway books for those wishing to engage with The Realm. Visit www.NoteQueen.com.
Okay. Well, welcome, everybody. This is another Note Queen podcast brought to you by Dawn Rickabaugh. Today, I am so pleased to have Lindsey Jensen with me. I found out about her, I wanna say, maybe twelve to eighteen months ago.
Dawn:Actually, Jim Ingersoll sent out, the deal dealmaker guys, and you should connect with him if you wanna Google that. But, she was given a presentation to for Jim's group, and that's where I heard her. And I said, you know, I need to figure out this master leasing thing because I'd been hearing about it, and I knew that people were having trouble getting owner finance terms as much as they wanted, but they were having some success with the master leasing. And I thought, gee. Okay.
Dawn:I'm already really busy, but let me add one more thing that I should add to my palate of of how I can close real estate deals. So I bought her course. And, also, just as an aside, right now, she has your membership that you've just created, and there's kind of a I think for some people, there's special pricing. But even if it's not special pricing, the the community that she's putting together right now, it's a onetime fee for lifetime access. And look.
Dawn:She's young. She's not dying anytime soon.
Lindsey:Right? Yeah. So I've been selling courses for a long time now and five or six years. And the thing that I started putting with them was as bonuses, a certain number of q and a's that people got after they went through my courses. And the neat thing that I saw with that was that because they had those q and a course or q and a calls after a certain period of time
Dawn:Mhmm.
Lindsey:Before actually going through the courses instead of putting it off, And then they were progressing from one q and a call to another because they had feedback from somebody who's been there before. And I started really thinking about what made me successful, and I had a mentor who I could call in those just with simple questions. You know what I mean? In between the times when we were meeting. And so I thought long and hard about how I could create that in a way that not only supports my life because, one, I wanna teach people that this doesn't have to take over your life.
Lindsey:You can actually have a life and Mhmm. Be with your kids and have another job if you need to to begin with. So I wanna teach that and also live it. But how do I do that and also provide people with the answers to the to the questions when they
Dawn:need them?
Lindsey:So that's what I've just recently launched. Yes. I am giving one time pricing for my past students because some of them have all my have some of my courses already. And so for anyone new who doesn't have them, it's still onetime pricing. I cannot keep it onetime with no monthly fee forever, so this is only gonna be for a certain number of people in the community.
Lindsey:But I'm gonna try to keep the monthly pricing as low as humanly possible for people because I I just want it to be enough so that I can keep everything going and make it as as powerful as possible for everyone in the group.
Dawn:Right. Okay. Yeah. So you're you're offering, I know we're kind of doing the cart before the horse, but I wanna make peep sure people hear this. If they you don't listen to the whole podcast, You gotta know that there's a huge amount of value happening here.
Dawn:So there's an option for a onetime fee, and then you're working on a monthly a monthly subscription or yearly subscription or something like that.
Lindsey:After a certain number of people have joined, then we'll go to the subscription because I feel like when we have that and there's an interview process too because I want good people to be in there. So once we have that set number of good people, it's gonna be so valuable. I think that the monthly fee is not, it's not gonna be hundreds of dollars a month. I don't want that for people. I want people to be able to come in here, be able to build their portfolio that will allow them to retire, and whatever fee there is is it's not even a thought in their brain.
Lindsey:Do you know what I mean?
Dawn:So Oh, yeah. You know, I've struggled with it so hard over the last twenty years ish that I've been, you know, around this. Like, what do I charge? How do I structure it? How do I make sure I don't overcommit and burn out, which I have before?
Dawn:But and then how do I value my time? And I'm like, oh, like, well, people can bring me deals, I wanna support them. But, you know, you can waste a lot sorry. You you know, a lot of people sometimes that doesn't pan out for a return on investment. But so I'm currently I'm just building a a free community, and a lot of you people, that are watching this probably probably already know.
Dawn:I have a Citizens of the Realm. It goes with the Noteween brand. And, it's free for now because it's just I just started it about six months ago or eight months ago, something like that. And I just wanna get some some traction, and everyone who's in there will be grandfathered in. Then after that, at some point, it will likely because I do want like you're saying, Lindsay, I wanna create more value for people, but I need some exchange, for my time and effort.
Dawn:Absolutely. Yeah. But it's a thing I'm not good. I haven't been traditionally good at, but, you know, old dogs can learn new tricks. So, but, anyway, my my background, as a lot of you guys know, is the owner financing and node investing.
Dawn:Right? Buying and selling property with owner financing and buying notes that other people have created through their seller finance transactions. Because historically, I'm like, I don't wanna manage a bunch of rentals. You know? Because it sounded like just too much work and too much brain damage.
Dawn:So I go, I'd rather invest in the notes because I sit back. Yes. I have note servicing software, and I've gotta deal with my my borrowers and my investor relations people, the people that invest with me. When we have a climate right now where sellers are let's just say they're they have a very high opinion of what their properties are worth in a lot of areas, and they're like, well, if I don't get my price, I'm not selling. Mhmm.
Dawn:Or if, they they have a tax liability. There's a lot of different reasons, but I when I heard Lindsay, present to the dealmaker people, and I said, wow. This is great. And, I've gotta learn this skill, and I've got to get over my, reticence to deal because I do have a small portfolio of rentals, not big, and one of them is an Airbnb, but my daughter the two doors are Airbnbs. My daughter runs that for me.
Dawn:If I had to do it, would shoot myself in the head. I wouldn't be very nice. I'd be grumpy to the people. You don't like it? Yeah.
Dawn:Don't book my place. And so the it's good that she's in charge of it because, I don't have, you know, that. But I think that the way that you teach the landlording and you learned from your your people, like the old guys
Lindsey:David Tilney
Dawn:and Tilney. Yeah. And, you know, I met him once, but I never took his course. It was sort of at the end of my investing stretch, and then COVID happened when I when I met him, and I stopped going anywhere. You know?
Dawn:Basically, hid under a rock for a while. Yep. But I think the things that the way you approach it, you have much different results so that it takes out the headache and the stress of being a property manager. Can you talk a little more about that and also just wrap in your real estate journey? Because I'm coming to master leasing farther near the end of you know, relatively speaking, the end, this is a late stage add on.
Dawn:Sure. And I hope it's not a cancer or a tumor of some sort, but
Lindsey:I think it's just another tool in your tool belt on. Yeah. It can solve more problems for people, especially the ones that are popping up in today's market. Master leasing, I think, is one of the safest ways for people to start in real estate right now because they can earn while they learn. They can learn pricing of houses, rents, prices of repairs, all of these things very quickly without laying a bunch of their own money on the line.
Lindsey:Now what's cool about that is instead of putting up a whole bunch of your own money into your first property and taking a chance and going, oh, this may be a good deal, may not be, when you learn this way through master leasing and controlling properties that you don't own, you learn very quickly what houses are worth, what the issues are, what to look for, and it makes making purchase decisions, smart purchase decisions much easier. So not only that, but we've talked before about how it gets your foot in the door, and you're the first one to know when sellers are ready to sell. So all of those reasons, I think it's a very safe way for newbies to get into the into the space. Another thing I've discussed a lot recently with educators is there's so many people out there right now teaching acquisition. Acquisition, acquisition, acquisition.
Lindsey:Nobody teaches what to do afterwards. Some of them don't even teach what to do, like, in the middle of the process. You know, I'm hearing all kinds of stuff of wholesaling deals gone wrong. Do you know what I mean? Because they teach the very upfront paperwork and nothing afterwards, and that's a problem.
Lindsey:So one of the things I'm known for is teaching what to do after the acquisition. So to kinda start with my journey is I started very strong into creative finance, getting me into the properties because I did not have a lot of money when I got started.
Dawn:Mhmm. My husband and
Lindsey:I were broke. We were, you know, young and trying to get started, so I learned subject to lease purchases. Master leasing also came later in the game for me when COVID changed a bunch of things. So I added that in later, but the landlording started from the very beginning, and I really credit understanding that skill and having that skill to all of my success in real estate. So I know a lot of people feel like, oh my god.
Lindsey:That's like a you know, I'm gonna be chained to my desk or that's a life sentence for things, but it's not if you have systems. And that was the other thing that I'm known for is my systems. So creating really good systems that happen over and over again that can be implemented with other people. So it you can free yourself.
Dawn:Mhmm. Yeah. I think you were mentioning that, you know, on a platform as simple as Trello, you're you're managing, and having other people help you manage a bunch of rentals. Yes. Like, you're not even going with the expensive bells and whistles thing.
Dawn:Like so to me, what you're doing is making it so accessible that even I'm willing to try it on. Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. So other times on on this channel, you guys have heard me interview and talk to a lot of people who they started with a master lease because it was nonthreatening.
Dawn:It wasn't, like, a subject to it wasn't violating the due on clause, you know, setting you up for a potential acceleration even though that's relatively, uncommon, but there's you know, it's it's a stickier, messier process clear you know, clearly. They end up selling to you anyway because now they trust you because they're you're taking good care of their property. You've they're already used to receiving payments from you. So if they're ever gonna do seller financing, you're the one that they're gonna sell or finance to. And and maybe with a smaller down payment than they would otherwise wanna collect from someone else, right, that they don't know.
Dawn:Mhmm. You know? If they can Yeah. Right?
Lindsey:Yep. Absolutely.
Dawn:So would you say it's a gateway drug to owner financing? Yeah. Absolutely. And it's Slip right slope.
Lindsey:It is. It's fun because so I built a $12,000,000 portfolio in my first eight years. Wow. And this was during a time I was running an SEO company from home as well, plus my two kids. So in the very, very beginning, like, I have a ton of pictures of my kids at these houses with me.
Lindsey:They just came with me. They thought it was an adventure. I got to keep my kids with me while I was working. So, I don't want anyone to think that this was me just being able to work this full time, which is why I want people to understand. I had my two kids at home.
Lindsey:They didn't my son didn't even start day care till he was two. And when we did start day care, was only two days a week. So I was operating this around, two days a week of free time and so Wow. Free time. We'll put it that way.
Lindsey:So
Dawn:My mom my mom never has free time.
Lindsey:Yeah. So because I still run the household, so we'll just say that. But it it built very quickly. Again, even acquisitions goes with systems. In 2020, when I started the master leasing, I was also working with another investor who wanted me to help him systematize his flips.
Lindsey:I said yes to that because they were offering compensation that was pretty decent for that. And so we were I used a Trello board to automate systems that brought in VAs, realtors, and contractors all into a system that they could understand. Like, it Trello is that easy for people to log in to and just understand what they're supposed to do. Mhmm. And it's very easy to set up, but we were running anywhere from eight to 16 flips per month using that board.
Lindsey:And I was only a part of pieces of it even though I was the central person running it, but that's because the systems within that ran so
Dawn:well. Nice. Yeah. Now is that is that something you that was an add on to, you know, what you've brought to the whole space, do you think? I mean, you know, we all have our mentors.
Dawn:Nobody made this up on their own. Right? But we sometimes then add our little flair and our little gifts to the industry or to the processes.
Lindsey:Yeah. Documenting processes is something I did on my own. That is not something that was taught to me. So that is one thing that I'm kinda known for is the systems and automating stuff. Yep.
Dawn:Yeah. And as I've, you know, I wasn't sure if I was gonna wind things down after COVID, but then when I when I came out from under a rock, I go, no. I'm actually gonna scale up. And, like, well, then I gotta clean up some messes, and I gotta get some systems. So, that's one of the things I'm really excited about learning from you because that's been a weak point.
Dawn:You know? If it's fine if I wanna stay relatively small and just do a deal here, a deal there. But if I want to do more and have more impact and help other people to do more, I've gotta have the systems in place. So there's just there's just no substitute for that no matter what business you're running. Right?
Lindsey:Yeah. Absolutely.
Dawn:Knowing knowing your numbers and things like that. So right now right now, you were telling me the other day that in your local market, prices have actually softened up about, 10% or so. Yeah. It I got some something the other day
Lindsey:that said Colorado's gone down by 2% is as far as sales pricing goes. I don't know if that's all it is. It sure feels like more than that. But, across the nation, we in Colorado, we have, according to this report, the worst deflation as far as prices goes, out of anywhere. So that's interesting.
Lindsey:But there's a lot of things I can do with master leasing to help people in that in that area. So
Dawn:Yeah. So, I'm I'm surprised that you got those numbers. You you had mentioned that when you went to sell your mom's property that you had done the comps, but it still sold, like, 10% or so below what you expected, what reasonable bay based on the comps.
Lindsey:Yep.
Dawn:But I was just looking at reports from, someone else, just yesterday that Florida's is the worst for price reductions. Florida, Texas, South Carolina. Oh, I think that was for foreclosure starts foreclosure starts. But, I mean, like, I can't imagine you guys are worse than Austin or Houston right now that
Lindsey:Who knows where all these reports are pulled from? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So many.
Lindsey:I don't know what they're all looking at specifically. But, yeah, I mean, we are in one of the worst areas and one of the worst areas for affordability.
Dawn:Right. Okay. So then in in the case where prices are dropping, what's the typical mindset of the people that you're going after for a master leasing or owner financing?
Lindsey:So I'm gonna go after tired landlords for sure, people who wanted to sell but maybe pulled it off because they couldn't. I mean, we live in a high military town, so a lot of these people move in. They don't put anything down, and then within one to two years need to move. You know, the military is moving them. They don't really have a choice.
Lindsey:So there's no equity in those, especially if the market's going down and not up. Right. So there has to be another solution there, and a lot of people do not want to rent their properties at that point. With master leasing, I can offer to make nothing but, you know, pay them a 100% of what I'm bringing in. But then say, in in exchange for this, I either want a note on the property and I want double what I would have made when you sell, or I want an ownership, a percentage.
Lindsey:I want sub two when you're done or when we can get the rent to cover the mortgage or whatever the case may be. I want something in return. But there's so many ways to make their pain go away right now.
Dawn:Yeah. Can you flush it out? Why don't you give us a vignette, take a one real life deal with the real numbers, and just flush out that idea. Like, what? You mean I'm gonna management's bad enough, but I gotta do it for nothing?
Dawn:Show Right. Show us how that makes sense.
Lindsey:Yeah. Okay. So I'll talk about the deal that you and I were discussing last week on the call. And this guy, I am master leasing his home, so I'm making $210 a month just taking care of it, basically. And it's I know that sounds like not a huge chunk of money, but when you have 40 properties paying that, I mean, that's a significant chunk of money that comes in every single month.
Lindsey:And I'm not out there marketing and trying to kill it and meeting with sellers all the time. Like, this is just recurring revenue that comes in. It is nice not having to go out there and hustle all the time.
Dawn:Right.
Lindsey:So he calls me, probably a week before you and I were talking, and he says, know you have first right of refusal to buy the house. Do you wanna buy it? Are you interested? I said, I absolutely am. So we discussed what that might look like.
Lindsey:Right now, his payment is as much as the rent that's coming in, which means he's losing a little over $210 a month. If there's a repair, he's gonna lose more per month.
Dawn:Right.
Lindsey:So if I just x name my man it's not a management fee, but my spread of the $210, if I take that away and pay him a 100% of what I'm bringing in, his immediate pain of that loss is gone. Right? So I can solve that like this. And then let's say he has maybe some equity, but he would have to he would make nothing if he sold or he would have to pay if he sold. Right?
Lindsey:That doesn't bother me if I get long term terms. So I can say, that's fine. I will basically buy this from you. I won't take a spread anymore. I wanna buy it subject to the loan, and so I will pay out a 100% of what I bring in.
Lindsey:And you could put a stop loss on that. Like, so let's say three years down the line, you're making another $300. Right? You could say you could make it a fixed master lease saying, I will pay you $2,100 or whatever his mortgage is to clear that pain out and say, I will buy it from you at a fixed rate of 2,100, but I wanna subject to the loan three years from now.
Dawn:Does that make sense? So you're gonna you're going to lease it for three years, then it converts into owner financing. Mhmm. Too long later. So you And
Lindsey:that's that's just one way of doing it.
Dawn:Right.
Lindsey:You kinda have to chat with the owner about what's gonna work, but the other way I could do this, let's say he has I'm just gonna kinda go down a couple different rabbit holes here. So let's say he does have some equity, but he's not gonna sell it for what he wants and he wants to wait three years to sell it. But he still wants that pain of losing that $250 a month to go away. I say, okay. That's fine.
Lindsey:That goes away. I will quit taking my spread. I'm gonna put a note on your house. You're planning on selling it in three years. So I add up what I would have made over that three years.
Lindsey:K?
Dawn:Mhmm.
Lindsey:And then I'm gonna double it for waiting on my money.
Dawn:Alright.
Lindsey:Note on his house that he owes me double the amount once he sells, but that's fine with him because he's not hurting by $150 a month. Not everyone has $250 a month to lose, but they're willing to give up some on the back end if they can make it to the point to sell it for what they want.
Dawn:Right. And then if, hypothetically, if in three years the house is worth less, what's your what's your move at that point?
Lindsey:Well, we just extend. I mean Yeah.
Dawn:Right. It's not a big deal. Yeah. I mean, just like with an if you're holding a note and you have a maturity date and they can't do it, a lot of times you just extend the note terms. Right?
Dawn:So it's it's not a a do or die sort of thing because your perspective is that you're in it for the long haul similar to buying a long term note. Yep. Right? I have notes that, will go past no. I'm still young enough while I'll still be alive.
Dawn:But, you know, at some point, I'll buy notes that go past my, my expiration date, probably. Right? But who cares? It's it's the thing. I'm leaving cash flow to to my heirs and beneficiaries, and, hopefully, your kids or somebody close to you will learn this system and decide that, hey.
Dawn:It's a pretty good gig for a part time.
Lindsey:A 100%. Yeah. And you can collect all these things that are coming into you that are just I mean, how many people when they're marketing want to be that first call? And not only the first call, but usually the only call. Right?
Dawn:Right.
Lindsey:So that helps a ton. There's a million different options of how you can to me, master leasing is like buying with different paperwork.
Dawn:Yeah. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. So, you know, master leasing versus property management. Pitch us on why if someone's gonna just rent their property out, why don't they just get a property management company? And what's this whole master leasing thing?
Dawn:You know? What's the benefit of doing that? Besides, what you demonstrated with this story. One benefit, no property manager's gonna do it for free for a long term benefit.
Lindsey:No. No. We provide way more solutions. The benefit to the mass releaser is the experience you get in the space so that you understand when you start purchasing properties what you're doing, and you can make much better educated decisions. So for an example, just on this one, I wanted to start trying to buy some properties down in Pueblo, Colorado.
Lindsey:It's about an hour south of me. I had nothing there, didn't know the market, had no contractors, nothing. And I had a couple people call me and say, hey. Would you master lease my properties in Pueblo? Within a couple months, I had about 10 down there.
Lindsey:So after a couple months of that, I understood what rents were. I understood the different areas of Pueblo. I under I had some contractors under my belt at that point. I knew pricing. All of those things made buying down there much easier.
Lindsey:And within the next year, I owned three properties down there that were smart decisions. Does that make sense? Yeah. That makes a
Dawn:lot of sense.
Lindsey:Uh-huh. That is a huge benefit to the master lease, sir. As far as to owners, well, and you. So I go from a tenant to a tenant with no downtime, which means one tenant hands the next tenant the keys. I do repairs while people are in the property, or sometimes there's a week or two where someone has to move out early, but they know they're paying for the full month.
Lindsey:They that's just what a lease is. So they move out early, and if I need to replace carpet, I do it during the time that they're they're out. And so even if there's a small amount of vacancy, it's still covered by rent. Very, very rarely do I have a property that doesn't get covered by rent 100% of the time. So as the owner, if you're taking care of your own properties, that is a huge benefit.
Lindsey:Most people put in there at least 10% for vacancy. Right? So you're saving yourself 10% a year on that.
Dawn:Yeah. I mean, the property manager is gonna take a lot longer Yes. Not back around. Right?
Lindsey:They'll They don't care.
Dawn:Yeah. They'll let the person move out, spend a month fixing things, getting around to it, then start marketing and then going through the process, and maybe you're down forty five days, sixty days before you have it turned back around. Yep. Right? Yep.
Dawn:And you have you've cut that in more than half.
Lindsey:Yep. So and the way that with the systems and the way we treat our tenants, they end up treating our properties better. So there is way less maintenance and way less damage. I'm not gonna say that I've never had it happen, but over twenty years, we're talking once or twice. And most of the time, I get my money back from those people.
Lindsey:So just the way I deal with people and sometimes you can screen all you want to, but things change during the time that they're in the property. And so, again and that's still only happened a handful of times. Now I do have a couple people who just life happened to them. You know what I mean? They lost their jobs.
Lindsey:And so instead of I said, look. Instead of me hurting your credit and sending you to collections and doing all these things, sign this promissory note, and you can pay me back on a payment plan that you and I come up with together. And they do. And so a lot of times, that's I I end up getting that money back in full afterwards. And if they don't, I always have collections as a as a backup for that.
Lindsey:But it doesn't Interesting.
Dawn:Happen often. So you're in in those rare situations where where you do have someone that gets behind, you end up collecting that by an unsecured promissory note after the fact. Yep. And most of the time, they just pay. Yep.
Dawn:That's amazing.
Lindsey:And if they don't, I have it documented in more ways than one.
Dawn:Mhmm.
Lindsey:And I can send them to collections. So it's just not that big of a deal. But they've already not only did they promise to pay it when they signed the lease, but then they've repromised that they owe that amount on move out in an unsecured promissory note. To me, it just makes it easier to collect. And I think there's something mental that happens when they sign that where they're like, oh, I really need to pay this, or she has something that she can take somewhere.
Lindsey:Do you know what I mean? So they end up more committed to paying.
Dawn:Got it. Got it. So what makes and just in case people we we didn't just define what master leasing is, it's where if you're gonna be a master leaser, alright Yes. You you're the first landlord, and you get an under under or the first tenant, and you get an underling tenant under you. Similar to the note business where if I buy a note and then I sell off I bring an investor and sell off a partial, I'm just keeping the spread on top.
Dawn:I'm the one in charge. Anything goes bad, it's on me. I'll fix it. Right? Similar type of Yeah.
Lindsey:I I rent from the owner, and I sublease to the occupant. That easy.
Dawn:Yep. Yep. So that's what that means. So it's a way it's a low cost way, low stress way to to get your foot in real estate investing at a time when buying for cash at these prices with the type of bank terms that you would normally get, it doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.
Lindsey:No. It doesn't. It's a lot harder around here right now.
Dawn:Yeah. And and here in Northwest Nevada, we've still got Californians pouring in in a left and right. So our days are
Lindsey:more than what they're worth, probably.
Dawn:Yeah. And, you know, things are well, people are having to do price reductions. Right? So the average listing price, I'm just gonna take Reno. It's the biggest one that's close here.
Dawn:The average listing price might be something like $6.25, $6.50, but by the end of the day, the average median price is down at $5.75. So people are having to do price reductions in general, but they're only forty forty four days on market was the average. So if anybody's relatively, realistic, they're they're in escrow in forty five days. So and then but then you've got people that also especially in a little bit higher price points, well, the million dollar properties are are, you know, flying off like hotcakes, the the new build builders up in Reno. But, you know, you've got that 800,000 to 3,000,000, and those people sometimes just are just pulling their properties off the market because they couldn't get what they wanted.
Dawn:Yep. And so, normally, my conversation to them would just be, alright. If you don't wanna drop your price, then you gotta offer terms.
Lindsey:Mhmm.
Dawn:Okay. But then they're going, well, I don't trust this owner financing thing. Okay. Well, then this is where master leasing comes into, like, a plan b or a plan a, depending. You know?
Dawn:It's either one. You wanna own or finance it, and you don't have the problems. You wanna master lease it. Either way, you're solving the problem, and I can imagine going after expired listings. I'm assuming you do that as well.
Dawn:I haven't made it through all of your material. You know, people that say, brag it. I'm just gonna keep it. I'll just I'll just run it out. And they have no idea.
Dawn:They're accidental landlords, really, and they think it's glorious, and then they find out that it's not.
Lindsey:Yeah. Or if you're in a state where you have to be really careful being a landlord like Colorado, they're wiping away like, a lot of places have laws where if you have five or less properties, you don't have to follow all these little rules. Right? Colorado is doing away with that. Like, if you're renting, you better know the laws.
Lindsey:And so the cool thing about that is it makes my services require a lot more. People are more scared of doing it themselves, so that's a plus for me. But the other cool thing is, technically, I'm a tenant too, so I can use those tenant laws to my advantage as well.
Dawn:Right. So so besides the besides the fact that you can customize a solution for the owner and they don't have to sell it if they're not comfortable selling, they they wanna hang on to it. Maybe they think property's gonna appreciate significantly, that we're just kinda down, you know, having a rough time right now, or they're not comfortable with subject to. You know, you can get in with the master lease. So besides those, what are the other benefits of what you do over property manager?
Dawn:Oh, and the quick turnaround. So reduced vacancies, greatly reduced vacancies. What else? What else? Why would someone go with a master leaser over a property?
Lindsey:Talking about the owner placement? Owners from the owners' home.
Dawn:I can So I can see all day long the benefits of being the one who's,
Lindsey:you know Doing it?
Dawn:Yeah. Uh-huh.
Lindsey:Yeah. So with owners, one of the things I tell them is vicarious liability, which means when you hire a property manager to work on your behalf, if they make a mistake, you can still get sued because you have hired them to basically work for you, negotiate for you. I am not for hire. I work for myself. They are leasing to me.
Lindsey:So it's a different set of rules there where my mistakes should stop with me. So that's a huge benefit for them. Another thing is, obviously, all the extra income for them. So I don't charge when a place is vacant because I don't charge anything at all. Mine is a percentage of the income.
Lindsey:So if there's no income coming in, I don't make anything. To me, that's much more aligned with an owner than a property manager who charges when it's vacant no matter what.
Dawn:Right. And
Lindsey:not all of them do that, but there's a good amount that do. I do take an extra 10% spread when we sign a new lease. Most property managers do half a month to a full month every time there's a new lease. So there's a significant savings there.
Dawn:But, like, it's a year to year leases? Or so and do you Well,
Lindsey:if it's a renewal and they're not putting someone new in, it's gonna be less. But when there's a brand new person, like, you're actually screening for new tenants, yeah, it's a lot less money.
Dawn:10% of one month's rent or 10% of the whole lease? 10% of one month. Of one month. Okay. Because, usually, they'll take 6% of the entire lease.
Dawn:Like, if it's a three year lease, they get right?
Lindsey:I think that's more commercial.
Dawn:Oh, okay.
Lindsey:I think that's more aligned with, like, a commercial lease. But if you're doing residential, it's gonna be half a month to a full month's rent is the cost. Right. Which is that's significant. Especially if a property manager has just had your house vacant for a month.
Lindsey:Right? So plus you've had to pay for repairs, then you have to give up a whole other month because of placing a new tenant. You're looking to get close to three months' worth of rent there Yeah. Depending on how much repairs are. That is that's a quarter of the year.
Lindsey:And if that happens once a year, that's insane. So with me, you think about that in a good master leaser, I don't have vacancy. I go from a tenant to a tenant. That takes care of that one. My cost to place a new tenant is not a full month, so there goes that one.
Lindsey:And then the repairs are significantly less because, first of all, my tenants tend to stay for a long time because I take care of them. They love my systems. They they just love the houses because we give them better houses. They're kept up on. So what's funny is I'm also harder on my tenants.
Lindsey:I tell them what I expect from the front end, and I expect more than most property managers do, and yet they love it. Why? Probably because I tell them what's expected from the beginning, but they love that we take care of them. So, anyway, so those repairs are much less. So they you know, a typical homeowner goes from a potential three month loss of rent to almost none Yeah.
Lindsey:In between tenants.
Dawn:Yeah. All those three different areas. Talk about, if you will, whatever you're willing to share, about your perspective, how you think about your tenants and some of the things that you do to take care of them. You know, the way you were describing it is, like, you're probably that way with your kids. Like Yeah.
Dawn:Direct you know, clear boundaries, direct nurturing. That's all the healthy relationships come down to. Right? So you you are harder. You your no is your no.
Dawn:Absolutely not. You know? That is the boundary. You were not crossing the boundary, and I love you so much. And still thrive in that.
Dawn:But whatever you're willing to say just about how you treat them, things that make them happy when to, when you say jump, they say how high?
Lindsey:So from the very beginning, I spend an hour with them, like, reading through the lease and telling them what everything means. And that hour, some people are like, oh my god. That's awful. Again, my leases don't come up for new people. They aren't moving out every single year.
Lindsey:So I do this a couple times a year. It's not that big of a deal. But when I do it, I sit down with them for an hour, and this sets the precedent. It means a lot to them because they understand how I expect them to take care of the house. They understand what we're willing to do, and I let them know upfront we're not slumlords.
Lindsey:We will take care of the small things because we don't want them to turn into big things. That my biggest thing is communication. So if something's going wrong, you need to communicate with me. If you want me to be soft, there needs to be communication. If you're ignoring me, there is not gonna be any forgiveness.
Lindsey:Right? So that gets them to know, okay. We have to communicate with her no matter what. The other thing I do is I I have a a part of my lease that says, look. We know life happens.
Lindsey:If you have to leave before the lease is up, don't ghost me. Help me figure something out. Help me re rent the property, and I'll still give you a performance bonus. So instead of, like, hurting their credit, charging them extra, I'm like, return it to me in perfect condition, find a new tenant by the time you leave. I'll give you a performance bonus and everything, and no harm, no foul.
Lindsey:And people love that. So instead of getting ghosted like a lot of people do at the end of a at the if they have to move out early or something like that, people call me and actually help me. Yeah. People and actually help me.
Dawn:That is so powerful right there. So does the performance bonus mean they get their security deposit back as well? Plus
Lindsey:I don't do a security deposit. So we do we do what's called a rent lock, and this is hard for people to grasp just by talking about it. But when they move in, we do a rent lock, which is an option. They are purchasing an option to stay in the property for more than one year. They basically get first right of refusal to stay again as long as they've done everything that they promised promised in the lease.
Lindsey:And then I promise not to raise the rent on them more than 5%. But I tell them, if you've done everything you said you'll do, very often, I don't even do that. But there's a promise there because a lot of people like to raise it five to 10% per year depending on where
Dawn:they're at. Okay. I can afford this, but who knows? You know? It's gonna get tighter and tighter.
Lindsey:Well, people's biggest thing, especially as they found out during COVID, was I want to stay somewhere and build a home. But people were getting kicked out after a year of staying somewhere, or the rents were being raised so much that they had to leave after a year. So this is a huge thing for people. And I tell them, I'm like, I do not do regular inspections. I want you to take care of the house.
Lindsey:If I have a feeling something's not going well, I will do an inspection, but I don't wanna have to. I want you guys to build a home and take care of it as if it was yours. So the fact that I give them that privacy, it allows them to build a home, and I get people that stay seven to ten years and think of the how much less wear and tear on the house that is.
Dawn:Absolutely. Wow. That's brilliant. And I can't, I can't wait to actually get through that part. I got through the mounts most of the master leasing, but I haven't even touched the landlord, course in there.
Dawn:And and just there's other things in there too, Lindsay, because, if people haven't whether you're a landlord or a seller right now, you should be hearing this. If you're a buyer, you should be hearing this. If you're an investor, right, even if you're a note investor I don't know. For me, because I want more impact in my local community, I have to wear more hats because this isn't a giant metropolis, and that's why I'm here. I moved out of LA for a reason.
Dawn:Right? So I just need to wear more hats and solve more problems for people. And I just think this is fabulous, and I'm really excited about connecting with you and learning from you. And, like, go ahead and give more of a broad overview what you've got in your, community package if people come in, all at once or later on when you're doing it by monthly subscription or whatever you decide.
Lindsey:So they would go through an interview with me, and we just make sure that it's right for them at this point in time. And because I want people that are committed. I don't just want people to come in and just sit. I want people that are really committed and ready to go because we have an infrastructure that's ready to help them grow. So what they get is I have six classes that I've had out there and people have purchased for years.
Lindsey:I teach them all the creative acquisitions, marketing. And so there's subject to lease purchases, master leasing, landlording, and then they get my systems courses as well. And then twice a week, q and a calls, which is a huge deal because that's how people are really gonna be able to grow. So they have the infrastructure of having the courses and learning those things and all the documents, but then they have the support there when they need it. When an actual deal is in front of them, they recognize where to go with it, but they're like, oh, I just have this one little question.
Lindsey:They can come in and get that answered.
Dawn:Yeah. That's phenomenal. And and that's a big commitment for you for you as well, but one that's calculated given your motherhood and what whatever else you're doing. But you're like, yeah. I can show up for that.
Dawn:Right?
Lindsey:It is so much easier than traveling around the country, to be completely honest. I'd rather show up for an hour twice a week and answer questions than spend days and days away from my family. It's it's and it's I enjoy it, like, answering people's questions and watching them grow and make get their houses. That part, I love.
Dawn:Yeah. I I do too. I like I mentioned in in the community that I've built over on the the GoHigh level platform because I'm slowly getting everything over to there so I can operate just from that, hopefully. I've just done a little bit of one on one, and that's, where I really love that too, and I give them the the Voxer thing where, hey. You know?
Dawn:This is your you can you can message me anytime, and I'll get back to you within twenty four hours. But there's only a few certain few people that can, you know, afford that sort of a thing, and I won't take very many. I won't take very many at a time. But the way you're doing it with your group, you can provide a lot of value because twice twice a week is plenty time for people to get questions in, no matter, you know, the stage of their investing career. Have you ever bought a note before we end?
Lindsey:I haven't. No. And I'm excited. I was gonna say that's one of the reasons I'm excited to be in connection with you because you do all kinds of cool stuff that I've never done. And I think that also shows the power of the community because you're in the community.
Lindsey:I'm my goal is to build this to have the best people in it, so I don't I don't want me to be the center of it. I want the entire community to be the center and the brilliance behind it. So I'm excited to also learn from you in there. You know what I mean? I think the community is gonna feed itself.
Dawn:Yeah. Well, I'm excited for it. Yeah. And I I told you when we first got on the call, the first time, I said, you know, I had someone someone who she said she got kind of a psychic hit that she had sort of a dream, and this was back in January of this year. And this is someone I was who I was connected with.
Dawn:Does marketing, holds her own women's groups things, and she said, you know, I I had this dream about you, and and it's something about a community and a cat. So weird. She goes, do you know what that means? I said, yeah. Well, I'm starting a fledgling fledgling citizens of the realm, but the cat yeah.
Dawn:I go I go Lindsey Jensen with her clever kitty thing. That's that's the cat. That's the collaboration that really makes a lot of sense because between the two of us, I I don't think there's anything we are don't have covered in this No. Creative, solutions for real estate, and cash flow for people, retirement solutions. Yes.
Dawn:Non nonbank housing and non Wall Street retirement solutions, you know, so that we make communities more self sufficient, more economically resilient, individuals have better outcomes. I I'm so touched actually by the way that you talk about your tenants. Like, it feels like family. Like They are. They like they're good that way.
Dawn:Yeah. Yeah. I just really love that. So thank you so much.
Lindsey:Oh, thank you.
Dawn:It's really always such a pleasure to spend time with you. And if you don't wanna be the center of attention, you shouldn't look like a celebrity. It's your own damn fault. Oh. You're just an absolutely beautiful person.
Dawn:Well, thank you. But, anyway, can you is there anything you wanna give people, your contact information that will and I will follow-up with this for anyone who's listening. It's gonna be down below in the description. Or if you're on my email list, you will get this, but you're on. How do you
Lindsey:Yeah. They could go to cleverkittyinvesting.com to see what I'm doing, sign up for newsletters, get, pretty soon within the this month, I should have a free ebook on there that talks about no money down purchases that I've done to give people an idea on that. So they can go through any of those, and then my handle at any of, like, TikTok, Instagram, all of those things is at clever kitty. So you can find me on Facebook or any of those if you search clever kitty investing. So
Dawn:Okay. And I actually should ask this. And I have to explain where Note Queen came from because it's such an ostentatious sort of name, and it came because of a joke. Where did you get Clever Kitty?
Lindsey:I know the same thing, actually. It's funny because I used to do direct sales jewelry, and the girls like, it's funny because these girls were so amazing. It is still my core group of friends is the funny thing about this. But the way these girls trained is they kinda categorized us as either a clever kitty or a fluffy bunny. Fluffy bunnies just grew because they were so excitable and so much fun.
Lindsey:People just wanted to be around them, and they would grow. And people would have parties for them because of that. And clever kitties got theirs because they were very systematized, dotted their i's, crossed their t's. And so I was taking one of my girlfriends to a bunch of these trainings with me for real estate, and she looked at me and goes, you've always been a clever kitty. And I was like, that's what I've been naming my company.
Lindsey:So kind of the same thing. It's funny.
Dawn:That's that's great. Okay. Well, thanks a lot, and, look forward to seeing you on the q and a calls, Lindsey.
Lindsey:Alright. Thanks, Dawn. Have a great day. Alright. Bye bye.
Lindsey:Bye.
Dawn:Thank you for engaging with my content. If you'd like to hear the rest of the replay, please go over to citizensoftherealm.com and join our free community. If you'd like to participate live, be sure to subscribe at notequeen.com. And if you have a situation where you could use some one on one help, check out notequeendeepdive.com and schedule a private consultation. I guarantee that one hour with me will either make or save you thousands.
Dawn:Take this information and go out there and create financial solutions just one mom and pop to another. See you next time. Take care everybody.