VREP #2 | Maximizing Your Rental Income with Sarah Penman

Sarah Penman bought her first condo when she was 21 years old. She is now the owner/operator of a leading property management company, located in Yaletown, and oversees approximately 150 rental units in Greater Vancouver. We discuss everything to do with revenue, including hot rental areas, characteristics of a good revenue property, furnished rentals vs. unfurnished rentals, screening tenants and a property manager’s worst nightmare…

Sarah Penman

Find Sarah Penman at http://www.penmanproperties.com or call 604-230-6755.

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Episode Transcript

Announcer: Get ready for Vancouver’s Premier Real Estate Podcast; your source for buying, selling and investing in Vancouver’s real estate market. With your hosts, two guys with faces for radio, Adam and Matt Scalena.

Adam: You know what I was thinking about it though? The cheesy intro makes us hopefully sound a little bit less cheesy.

Matt: Nice contrast.

Adam: Yeah, absolutely. So welcome back to Vancouver Real Estate Podcast. I‘m your       host, Adam Scalena.

Matt: And I’m your other host, Matt Scalena.

Adam: And we have an excellent episode today.

Matt: Yeah, I think it’s a really exciting one.

Adam: We have Sarah Penman from Penman Properties, a very successful property management team in Vancouver.

Matt: Right.

Adam: Based out of Yaletown. And yeah, so it’s pretty exciting for me. I just actually went through renting a whole—

Matt: Well yeah, you just rented a place out.

Adam: I’m not a property manager but I’ve got my own—I’ve got an apartment that I rent out, and last week, we were looking at applicants for potential tenants and we put it on, you know a couple of different websites at a price that we thought was fair. I knew this market has been incredibly busy for, and very challenging for tenants. We ended up with thirty six applicants on our property.

Matt: Which is just pretty mind boggling, right?

Adam: Almost everybody that came through to see the place applied, which to me, it was you know, obviously, it was bittersweet because we were excited to get the place rented.

Matt:  But the screening process then becomes—

Adam: Very challenging.

Matt: How many days were you at it?

Adam: And also, there’s a lot of people that are quite desperate for a rental and you have to let a lot people down which is not fun as well and you know.

Matt: Yeah, well imagine that sifting through the number of qualified applicants alone would be—

Adam: That’s just the thing though. I was really impressed with the quality of applicants and I think that almost the majority would have been an excellent fit. You know, and that said, even after doing it myself and being—I think we’ve been fairly successful at it. After speaking to Sarah, I realized, you know what, I know this business really well and there were several things I didn’t think to do that I probably should have. And actually, I learned a lot from our interview.

Matt: And we’re talking to property managers all the time, investors all the time and if you’re missing things—

Adam: Yeah, exactly. So I mean, there’s definitely a lot of benefits to using a property manager and I think that, you know, people will take something away from this interview. Yeah, so without further ado, here’s our interview with Sarah Penman, property manager extraordinaire, with her team, Penman Properties, based out of Yaletown.

Matt: Enjoy!

(Music Break)

Matt: Okay, so we’re here in Yaletown with Sarah Penman from Penman Properties, a property management company here in Vancouver. Okay, Sarah, how are you doing?

Sarah: I’m doing well. How are you guys?

Adam: Excellent. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do?

Sarah: So, I’m the owner-operator of the company but I’m also a licensed property manager. So I don’t carry a real estate license, I don’t buy and sell, I manage the rentals for owners. Individual owners, not full buildings.

Adam: Okay, so how did you get into property management?

Sarah: It’s kind of a funny story. I have my—I bought my first condo when I was twenty one.

Matt: Wow, holy—here?

Sarah: Here in Vancouver yeah, in the west end, I still own it, actually.

Adam: Good for you.

Sarah: Yeah. I was just—I don’t know where—one of my friends in university, her parents gave her a down payment and the idea of paying somebody else’s mortgage no longer made sense.

Adam: Right.

Sarah: So I literally worked five jobs through university and built up the money to, or saved up the money to put the down payment so I got in early and lived in it for a year to avoid, you know, payment, extra, tax—

Adam: Capital gains.

Sarah: Capital gains.

Adam: Okay.

Sarah: And then decided to start renting it out. So I got into it on my own, I got my second condo a two years later, and my friends had started buying condos and they were horrible at picking tenants so I was like, “You guys, what are you doing wrong?”

Matt: You had to advise them?

Sarah: Yeah. So I had to advise them, and then I started just doing it for them, and then I knew—I used to be a personal trainer, I have a Kinesiology degree so that’s what I did for twelve years and I was looking for a change; and basically because in the end, I wanna be the mom I wanna be.

Adam: Right.

Sarah: I wanna be able to work from home, not necessarily in a gym away from my kids. So I knew I wanted a change and I couldn’t figure it out. And then my friends, whose places I’ve managed for free, at that point, were like, “Why don’t you do what you’re doing?”

Matt: Lucky friends.

Sarah: So that’s I how came into it. I feel like I fell into it, but it’s just right up my alley and there’s a huge demand in Vancouver. It’s always gonna be a rental market because it’s so expensive to buy here. There’s always gonna be renters.

Matt: Right, right.

Sarah: Somebody’s got to be their voice, right?

Adam: So you manage a team, so you have your own team in Vancouver.

Sarah: I do, yeah. So it’s myself and then there’s four of us—four other members of the team; full time in [05:08 – inaudible] and one other licensee and two assistants.

Adam: Okay, so there’s four of you and so how many properties do you actually manage?

Sarah: We—it varies because we do have some short term and long term rent, and they’re different. Sometimes they are part-time like the owners live in the units part time and so they come available and unavailable. But we are over a hundred, a hundred and six to a hundred and twenty if you include the ones that vary.

Matt: Wow! So over a hundred units and that’s primarily in Vancouver or—

Sarah: It is. We do span all the way from Langley up to Pemberton but we are—I’d say about 80% of our properties are in the Vancouver proper area.

Matt: Okay, and so do you specialize in a type of property?

Sarah: Uhm, not really. We have everything from houses, laneway houses, to tiny studio apartments to three bedroom penthouses. We have a bit of everything. I definitely have something that I prefer.

Adam: I was just gonna say, “So this is actually in Vancouver, what do you prefer and why?”

Sarah: If— houses are tricky. Houses have a lot to deal with it to start. But houses will bring in more money so it’s dependent on your—what you’re willing to put forward at the beginning. Because anytime I take on a new house rental, it’s a heck load of work at the beginning. But, in the end, they are easy. They are just as easy as condos. Condos are definitely more of what I prefer just because of the work load I have at the moment. And I don’t—the reason I believe that a lot of property management companies in Vancouver fail is because they sell themselves too thin. So you have to be very careful.

Adam: And the amount of work for a house, what are those? The issues that you’re not—

Sarah: It’s little things like there’s a lot more things you need to check like furnace and electrical work. There’s a lot of things that when a sale goes through, every—I don’t know if anybody in their right mind would buy a house without an inspection but sometimes people do, and then things come up.

Adam: In this market, they do.

Matt: Yeah, definitely.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. So things, there’s just more that comes up because in a building, you have a strata that’s maintaining the age fact and all of that.

Matt: A lot more moving parts that sound like—so are there advantages when you’re an investor buying a condo?

Sarah: There are because your strata is your team, basically. So age fact, things that are under the umbrella of the strata you don’t have to deal with. But that being said, strata can also be a big pain in my butt because they wanna do the things their way and they don’t wanna cooperate with people.

Matt: Right, gotcha.

Sarah: So it’s like you’ve got pros and cons on all sides.

Adam: Right. Somebody comes to you and they say, “Hey, we’re looking to buy a place. We want a sure thing, have renters very quickly, great renters, top rent, what’s the best type of property?”

Sarah: A condo?.

Adam: Yeah! And a one bed, two bed; do you see a difference or—

Sarah: That would vary over time. Right now, I wouldn’t recommend a one bedroom because there’s a million of them.

Matt: Really?

Sarah: If you got a two bedroom, there’s a lot less of those. It’s all about supply and demand.

Matt: Sure.

Sarah: Everything about the rental market is about supply and demand. Every change that happens in our market is from supply and demand. So right now, there’s tons of one bedrooms because that’s what people can afford to buy. So there’s tons of investors that are buying one bedrooms but there’s not as many that buy two bedrooms or up because it’s so much more to get in. So you have higher break points.

Matt: Right, right; and what about studios? Because we have people who ask us all the time about studios.

Sarah: Studios are great.

Adam: Studios are great.

Sarah: Yeah. I have studios that do just as well as one bedrooms and they cost less to get in.

Adam: Really?

Sarah: So you have a lot lower of a carrying cost.

Adam: So for your personal portfolio, do you tend to carry more furnished rentals, unfurnished rentals?

Sarah: The furnished rental, unfurnished market, that’s a huge area of discussion these days because it’s changing drastically because of AirBnB. So before you used to see much higher rental rates for furnished.

Adam: Sorry, maybe we should just break down what AirBnB is in case—

Sarah: Sure. So AirBnB is a free site similar to VRBO which is a Vacation Rental by Owner. So its people that are wanting to use their spaces as vacation rentals and Airbnb is simply free. So its bed and breakfast but I don’t know why they named it Air; but Air Bed and Breakfast; and it’s basically vacation rentals but it’s free exposure for the unit. So they can list it for free and AirBnB does take a percentage, the company takes a percentage. It’s small; I believe it’s 3%, and the guests have a different rate than a host but it does give you free exposure so a lot of people are doing that.

Adam: And so it allows people to rent their places out for a very short period of time for a lot of money essentially, right?

Sarah: Yeah, exactly.

Adam: Okay, so that’s changed the landscape then in terms of the types of rental that people are getting up and running.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Because the amount of money you can make from doing vacation rentals is huge. The profits, like we—people are blown away by the numbers that we have for our properties that we do as vacation rentals. But they—people are on to it. They know how much money they can make so everybody that used to rent their one bedrooms or whatever as an unfurnished, they’ve now furnished them, and they’re doing short term rentals. So there’s a lot less supply of unfurnished property.

Adam: Do you guys—do you handle AirBnB?

Sarah: We do, yeah.

Adam: Really?

Sarah: We have over thirty listings on AirBnB.

Adam: Wow. And so is it—do you find that the demand is there for AirBnB for furnished rentals?

Sarah: It is. It’s starting to become saturated in the one bedroom department.

Adam: Okay.

Sarah: So that’s again, that’s what people can afford to get in on.

Adam: And one of the things we’re seeing at least in the buy and sell area are stratas clamping down on AirBnB.

Sarah: Oh big time.

Adam: Do you guys see that?

Sarah: All the time.

Adam: That’s one of the risks I guess.

Sarah: You gotta be careful. It’s a risk. There’s gray zones, it’s tricky, I’m never gonna tell somebody there’s no risks, ever.

Adam: Yeah.

Sarah: Stratas—my business model is you don’t piss off the strata. If you don’t bother them, they do not bother you.

Adam: Right.

Sarah: So it’s all about you vet guests, it’s about making sure that they are following rules of the building. You have to do that.

Adam: Right. Okay, so speaking about furnished rentals, do you have any advice for people looking to do a furnished rental or an unfurnished rental, if they can’t decide which way they wanna go?

Sarah: Yeah, I’m always happy to advice, and I do often because it’s a tricky thing to do. You gotta keep in mind the wear and tear on the furniture and, you know, you gotta furnish it.

Adam: Right.

Sarah: It’s more costs from the beginning.

Adam: How much would it cost for someone to furnish a—

Sarah: We use a—we actually use—I have an interior designer that’s in—that I work with quite often; Kendall Ansell Interiors. She won the Best Booth at the home show last year and she’s done very well for herself and she furnishes almost all of our short term rental units for our owners. And it costs between—you know, you can go cheap but you’re gonna see cheap in your price points.

Matt: Right.

Sarah: But if you furnish it nicely and make it unique, it does double what the cheaply done place will get. And that’s just simply because people want quality.

Matt: So furniture is a huge factor.

Sarah: Furniture is a huge thing. I highly recommend using an interior designer if you’re gonna do that.

Adam: Okay, so you’ve got the wear and tear costs, so what else would you—?

Sarah: Well with furnished versus unfurnished, you’ve gotta look at what your break point is. So if your mortgage is going to be what? Let’s say eighteen hundred, and you need to make eighteen hundred, you gotta remember how much rent you can get in. Is it worth furnishing it? Is it worth the potential wear and tear? The thing that furnished would give you is the ability to fill gaps for short term rentals. So let’s say for example somebody decides to break a lease, it’s the worst time of year, and you wanna do some little things here and there but that means those little things are gonna take a couple of days and then you’re not having any income for the rest of the month. That rest of the month is dependent on strata bylaws in the building. You could fill it with short term vacation states if it’s furnished. It gives you a little bit more flexibility; but at the same time, you have to furnish the unit. So it’s money upfront; can you afford that?

Matt: Right.

Sarah: Unfurnished price points are coming up because they’re so little now. So sometimes, if you’re tight for cash, it doesn’t make sense to furnish it. If you want to be able to stay in it sometimes, if you wanna be able to offer it to your friends or family when they come to visit, those are reasons to do furnished.

Matt: Right.

Sarah: You have to balance it out, and you gotta look at the building. Is the building so sticky on short term rentals? You know, you gotta look at that.

Adam: And increasingly that’s the case.

Sarah: Increasingly that’s the way in Vancouver unfortunately, but you know, they’re gonna do something. Whether it’s implementing a hotel tax or something, because there’s too many people that wanna do it, you know.

Adam: And it often doesn’t come out in the documents, whether or not a building is sticky. So one advantage, I guess, of using your services is you’re an excellent property manager.

Sarah: We know.

Adam: You know which buildings are gonna be a challenge, right?

Sarah: Exactly, yeah. And there’s buildings that we, like I said, don’t like to piss off stratas. That’s not really in my business model but at the same time, there’s buildings that don’t have regulations but there’s people in buildings that don’t like them. You also gotta be conscious of that, when you’re looking to do that in the building. There’s no rental restrictions, great, but your neighbor might hate you for it and that’s gonna cause problems.

Matt: Yeah.

Sarah: We give our card to every neighbor anyway because I don’t want anybody treating any home wrong. So if I—if the neighbor has a card and somebody to call, they are often a lot nicer to you and your tenants.

Adam: So in terms of an area, can you talk to, you know, what basically the characteristics are that make a good area for renting.

Sarah: You wanna make sure that—it depends if you’re doing furnished or unfurnished again. If you’re looking to do a furnished rental, you wanna make sure that you’re in the areas that bring people to those areas. So like around anywhere that where conferences are held, games. Sobc plays GM plays the Rogers, whatever the heck it’s called now.

Matt: Right.

Sarah: Can you tell I don’t go to a lot of hockey games? Those areas are gonna bring people to the area, so they wanna stay close to what they’re going to. Same with shows and concerts at BC place, right?

Adam: Right, it’s transportation a huge factor?

Sarah: Definitely.

Adam: So being close to the Sky Train—

Sarah: Accessibility yeah, walkability is huge as well because they want, especially people wanting to explore Vancouver. They wanna be able to walk from their place. They want to always have to use a rent a car.

Adam: Right.

Matt: So it sounds like downtown and False Creek.

Sarah: Yaletown—False Creek does well. It’s newer than—it hasn’t really blown up yet, like what I always say to people, I’m always open for realtors to—they contact me often to say what do you think about this? And I’m always very black and white. If it’s got—if you want to be able to do a short term vacation rental, you have to be able to bring in money in the slow season.

Adam: Yeah.

Sarah: You don’t want an owner to have to pay their own mortgage. So doing—bring in people to areas where more concerts and Canucks games happen and BC lines games happen, that’s the best area to be in. Around the stadiums, otherwise, you wanna be around conference areas.

Matt: Right, okay. And do you have a favorite area personally?

Sarah: Well, our office is right here, same as your office. So we are in Yaletown and it’s—we probably have forty units within a two block radius.

Adam: Is that right? And do you find Yaletown as—

Sarah: Yeah, Yaletown is very in demand. Olympic Village is even hotter.

Matt: Really?

Sarah: Yeah, because everybody that used to live in Yaletown now wants to live in Olympic Village.

Matt: You know, it’s the same for both—

Sarah: It’s like I wanna go swimming across the way. I don’t know why.

Adam: That’s confirmation on what we’re seeing at the moment.

Sarah: Yeah.

Matt: One area I see a lot of people kind of investors targeting is over close to BC Place so think of Chinatown, Gastown; are you finding that rents are comparable to Yaletown?

Sarah: No. There—it depends. It’s got to be a cool space in Gastown. Like it’s got to have a—it’s got to stand out. The area deters from the price point because it’s still not as clean—

Adam:  Right

Matt: Polarizing, right? Definitely polarizing.

Sarah: Exactly. So it’s got—if somebody is going to get just as much rent as Yaletown, you gotta subtract what it’s gonna take away because it’s not a nice—it’s not always looking nice outside. So it’s gotta—you gotta add that to the unique character of the place that you’re gonna rent.

Adam: Right.

Sarah: There’s got to be a neat factor.

Adam: If you were to advice somebody on buying a investment property right now, generic or unique?

Sarah: Unique.

Matt/Adam: Really?

Sarah: You have to stand out. You definitely have to stand out. And again, unfurnished, furnished is a factor because there’s so many furnished rentals now, the unfurnished price point is almost matching it because there’s a lot less.

Adam: Wow, that’s very interesting.

Sarah: And that’s unheard of. It doesn’t usually happen but—

Adam: So you’re saying rents climb at a higher price per square foot in the unfurnished rental market.

Sarah: Exactly because there’s very few out there.

Adam: Right, interesting.

Sarah: And people ask us to unfurnished, furnished rentals a lot.

Adam: Wow.

Matt: And they are easier to manage, right? Then you get a long term tenant in if you vet them properly.

Sarah: Yeah, furnished rentals, they have more turnover because people don’t have to move their stuff.

Adam: Sure.

Sarah: The pain of moving things, it—people don’t wanna move.

Adam: Right.

Matt: Tell me about it.

Adam: Just out of curiosity, is there a particular industry that you find that you’re seeing a lot of these tenants in? Like are they working in the film industry? Are they—

Sarah: We see everything.

Adam: Everything.

Sarah: We try—like in my world, you have to be a bit judgmental; like I don’t have time for bad tenants. I just won’t put up with it. So you have to be kind of judgmental, but we see everything.

Adam: Okay.

Sarah: And there’s people that are in professions that you would never think would be bad tenant but they can be. You have to be—you have to listen to your gut. Every time I have not listened to my gut, it’s bitten me in the butt.

Adam: Right.

Sarah: Every time.

Adam: And this is a perfect segue. So any red flags that you can suggest when you’re screening potential tenants.

Matt: Yeah, what do you look for?

Sarah: Yeah, definitely. I, well first off, I do a minimal amount of showings when I’m renting a unit. Too many people, they run into problems because the first person to the door looks great, their application comes in great. But you never know that the sixth person would have been a better tenant. You have—it’s written in our contracts. We do a minimum of ten to fifteen people through the door and applications in. And we do that because we wanna make sure we’re picking the best tenant. And how I decipher between, we run credit checks, criminal records check and reference checks of course. But, after that, I take my gut feeling and my team’s gut impression. I also look at what areas they’ve lived in before, why are they moving out, their attire when they come in, how they present themselves. You know like you really have to judge them.

Adam: It’s essentially like a job interview or something.

Sarah: Yeah, and you know like, I used to work in the restaurant industry for years, and you know, it’s unfortunately, people in the restaurant industry sometimes get the poop end of the stick because people think they’re gonna be up all night and they’re gonna you know, be drinking their faces off. It’s not always true. And lawyers can seem like a great person but also be stressed at work; they don’t take care of the home. You just have to keep in mind professions. You gotta be—you have to be judgmental. You have to look for tidiness—OCD is a great thing to see in a tenant.

Adam: Yeah. So don’t judge a book by its cover.

Sarah: Yeah, you—

Adam: Or judge a person by his job.

Sarah: Yeah, don’t judge book by or don’t judge a person by their job, and definitely judge them by their cover like if they come in looking like they haven’t slept, they probably haven’t.

Matt: I would not get many jobs—

Adam: Stop it, you look great.

Matt: Do you have a favorite story; maybe a funny story, or a terrifying story that you can share with us?

Sarah: Yeah, we have quite a few of them. One that comes to mind though is, it was my first horror house; it was a one bedroom apartment in North Vancouver and the owner, she’s an older lady, owns juice store, and she’s, she has problems with her legs and that. So she, her tenant had given notice, had been in there for five years and she said, “Sarah, I just can’t find a new tenant. Can you do it for me?” And I said, “Of course I can. So when was the last time you were at the condo?” She said, “Five years ago.” And I said, “Oh God.” I didn’t wanna scare her but you know, you have to check a new tenant. She said, “No, no, no. She’s a great tenant, she always pays.” I said, “Okay.” Did she take a damage deposit? “No, because I don’t think that young people have money,” she said. And she said, “It seems stupid that it just—I have hold of their money.” I said, “So you didn’t take a damage deposit?” “No.” I said, “Oh God. First thing is book a time to go see it.” And you know I was kind of hoping that my gut was wrong and that it’s gonna be well taken care of and that. So I brought my photographer along who’s at that point, she was in North Vancouver so it wasn’t gonna cost me if it didn’t work out that day, thankfully. And we went, walked in and I am OCD clean. Like it’s embarrassing how annoying I am but you know, my anxiety level went through the roof as we opened the door. You couldn’t even put your coffee cup down. There was a bed in the living room, there are three kayaks there despite having the storage locker down below, and there was mold everywhere. Everywhere. We had to gut the entire place.

Matt: Oh, wow.

Adam: Oh my God.

Sarah: Yeah, it was about—it cost the owner about ten thousand dollars.

Adam: So what would you recommend to avoid a situation like that?

Sarah: Do inspections. We, as accompany, have it in our contracts. We do inspections every three months.

Adam: Wow.

Sarah: Insurance actually makes you do that. Most people don’t read their insurance policies thoroughly and they won’t pay out if you haven’t done inspections, some policies. You need to read it, and we do inspections anyways.

Adam: So physically being there and actually having the inspection done.

Sarah: And not on paper; it has to be signed for.

Adam: Wow.

Sarah: So a lot of people don’t know that, and then, like let’s say something happened to the unit?

Adam: Would you have to, just so I’m clear, would you have to have signed for? Every three months, a signed inspection?

Sarah: Yeah, you have to.

Matt: For some insurance policy

Sarah: Some policies. Your insurance won’t tell you that because they want to be able to not pay out. Insurance companies can be so great.

Adam: Right.

Sarah: But you—yeah, some policies, you have to have proof that you’ve inspected the unit.

Adam: Right.

Sarah: Throughout the lease term.

Adam: Right.

Sarah: We demand tenant policies that you—my tenants have to have to rent from us. I highly recommend that. That’s just a safeguarding, it’s another safeguard for the owner. So the BC tenancy law like, I understand why it is the way it is but its tenant oriented because there’s unfortunately some landlords that wanna take advantage of tenants. I totally agree, but because of that, it doesn’t protect owners very well.

Adam: Gotcha.

Sarah: So we run a thirty three clause addendum that we use on all our properties. And it’s not to take away rights from the tenant; it’s just to protect the owner.

Adam: Just to protect the owner.

Sarah: To protect the property.

Matt: So one of the many reasons to use a property manager, it sounds like.

Sarah: Yeah, definitely. Like, you know some people I’m—although I could sell a broken pen, I’m not a seller. I believe I got into this because I care; I’m a caring about people kind of person. I wanna help everyone, almost to a fault; because I put people before me too much. But you know, when you use a property manager, not only do we get a you higher price point in rent because of our reach and our exposure, and what we do; we also take the stress away. Tenants can be really annoying and really stressful. And for an owner to not have to deal it and only see us deposit money into their account every month, that’s where—that’s why you use a property manager. We know the tricks that tenants pull, we know what to look for, and we—that’s our job. So the owners have their own jobs. It’s a full time job to take care of tenants you know. And it’s possible. You can do it; but when you have multiple units, or you’re a very busy person, I don’t recommend it.

Adam: You just don’t want the headache. I mean it sounds like it can be—there’s always, you always people that have had great experiences, but more often than not, you hear people that own an arrow.

Sarah: And the reason they’re having bad is because they’re thinking they can do it when they know they don’t have the time and what we try to do in price points, like I researched. I started my own company as opposed to working for another one because I couldn’t find a property management company that was highly recommended. I—through the restaurant industry, I knew lots of realtors because they always sit in restaurants. So you get to know them. So I know lots of realtors and none of them could recommend to me a property management company that they spoke highly of.

Adam: They all knew a real good realtor though.

Sarah: Yeah, of course, definitely. So that’s why I started my own, and when I set those price points, I set them so if I couldn’t find why they were charging prices, I didn’t charge them. I think that if I do my job well, my price points cover it and I’m not here to take money from owners. That’s not the point. The point is to build my cause into the increased amount of rent I’m gonna get you. That’s how my price structure is set up. If I do my job correctly, there should be enough for us, and this makes sense for you guys to use us.

Matt: Wow, all set.

Adam: Hey, and on that note, where—how can people reach you Sarah?

Sarah: We—you can go to our website. It’s www.penmanproperties.com. And Penman is spelled like a pen that you write with and a man that you two are and I’m not. And then my phone number is 6042306755.

Adam: Okay, excellent. Well thanks again.

Matt: Yeah, thanks very much Sarah.

Sarah: Yeah, no problem. Any time.

Adam: Okay.

(Music Break)

Matt: So there you have it folks, our interview with Sarah Penman from Penman Properties.

Adam: She’s such an interesting person and yeah.

Matt: Absolutely, and fantastic points on how to manage your property here in Vancouver and I think that you should take away something from that.

Adam: Well, yeah. The take away for me is that use Sarah Penman as a property manager.

Matt: The other take away for me is that it’s good to have somebody who’s got actually a good voice for radio to break up the monotony of the Scalena brothers but anyways—

Adam: That’s us!

Matt: Anyways, thanks for tuning in and if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to call us at 7788664574.

Adam: Or 7788472854 or check us out at scalenarealastate.com.

Matt: And please do us a favor if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please rate on us iTunes and share it with your friends. We’d really appreciate it.

Adam: Have a great week and talk to you soon.

Matt: Take care.

Announcer: This has been the Vancouver Real Estate Podcast with Adam and Matt Scalena. Contact us anytime at 7788664574 or 7788472854 or online at www.scalenarealestate.com. Subscribe today.

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