Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Everything We Offer Our Clients
6 Plays11 days ago
🎧 Welcome to Thoughts For Rent — the podcast where real estate gets real (and local)!
Hosted by Jenni McKenna, a Las Vegas born and raised seasoned broker, and Owner of McKenna Property Management, this show is your inside look at what’s really happening in the Vegas property management and real estate world. With over 20 years of experience herself - Jenni brings not just knowledge, but heart to the conversation.
Whether we’re talking market trends, property tips, community happenings, or just the everyday quirks of Vegas living, this podcast is all about keeping you in the know.
💬 Real talk. Local stories. Professional insight – provided from a company who has their boots on the ground and hearts in the community.
In this episode, we’re covering everything a property manager offers you. You may think it's just rent collection and 10-99 but it is so much more then than that!
McKenna Property Management, proudly managing Las Vegas homes since 2005 (and loving every minute of it).
Hit subscribe and comment down below to join the conversation! 💛
✨ Stay connected with us!
Instagram: @mckennapropertymanagement
Facebook: McKenna Property Management
TikTok: @TheMcKennaTeam
Website: McKennaPropertyManagement.com
Phone: 702-434-HOME (4663)
Owner/Broker: Jenni McKenna B.29819
#ThoughtsForRent #McKennaTeam #LasVegasRealEstate #JenniMcKenna #PropertyManagement #MarketTrends #PropertyTips #Community
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:20
Irelynn Zurflueh
Well, welcome. You have come across Thoughts for Rent, Realtors Keeping It Real podcast, and we are so glad that you have joined us today. i am Jenny McKenna, owner-broker of McKenna Property Management, also veteran realtor since 1993, and next to me is... Ireland Zerfloo, veteran realtor since 2021, and soon to be...
00:00:43
Irelynn Zurflueh
and soon to be ah Well, I guess just still a veteran realtor. i actually knew my license i I actually was going to say expert in all things property management. That's what I was going to add to your title. Oh, thank you. Because i like going to Ireland when there's a problem and she is awesome at finding out what a solution can be and how we can either solve the solution or put a procedure in place to make sure that doesn't happen again.
00:01:12
Irelynn Zurflueh
So she's got superpowers that way. I like to solve If I can't do a puzzle, then I can at least solve a problem.
Year-End Reflections and Challenges
00:01:19
Irelynn Zurflueh
There you go. I love it. Hey, so Ireland, we ah we've gone through 2025 now.
00:01:25
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yes. And i sent out a fun little owner um email at the end of the year. And I liked to kind of reference it like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.
00:01:39
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yes, because we were just there for um her birthday. She's a little December baby. So we were all doing the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. 55. you for saying I don't look a day over 54. And then the big the big controversy of this podcast will be, do you say Caribbean or Caribbean? Oh, um I don't know. I've always done it from the movie. so i do I do Caribbean, I think, but a lot of people will be like, it's car it's Caribbean. Yeah, because the movies always came out as like Caribbean. Yeah.
Navigating 2025's Rental Market
00:02:10
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah. So I don't know. Well, the fun thing about it is property management was fun in 2025. You, we started the year and it was just like that ride where, remember, you're going through the Blue Bayou restaurant, there's fireflies and you're just floating along in your little raft.
00:02:27
Irelynn Zurflueh
And then all of a sudden you have a big old dip. And that dip happened, I feel like, right before the summer. cause everything was going great. And then right before the summer, there was just a mass amount of rentals that got on the market all at the same time. And so we were hovering around 3,800 available rentals, which makes it tough. Even when there's a strong demand, there's just a lot of inventory. So you had to be very good at how you price something, very good at the condition of what the rental looked like. and make sure that you were competitive. Absolutely. And then I felt like we pivoted, we navigated, we were doing good. We didn't get splashed too much. Hair was still looking good on the parts of the Caribbean. And then there was another dip, an unexpected dip, one that catches you off
Understanding AB 121 and Its Impact
00:03:17
Irelynn Zurflueh
guard. And what was that one, Hyerlyn?
00:03:19
Irelynn Zurflueh
That was, I would say AB 121. Absolutely. So for those of you that may not be in the legislation part of property management, Or potentially not in Nevada because this is a state law.
00:03:31
Irelynn Zurflueh
You are so smart about that. But as a state law, they decided to get their legislation, decided to get their fingers in the mix of property management, which I'm never a big fan of because they only hear half the story is what I always feel like. And then they create a law that's not quite equal or fair for everyone. But basically, want to tell everybody what AB 121 was. AB 121 is just saying that now the way that you market your investment or your property, you have to show all of the monthly commitments within that marketing price. So I think that for a lot of single family or maybe not like apartment-based companies, we were pretty much already doing that. The only thing that we would say is instead of putting the trash and like water reimbursement in the marketing, we would just say in the description, resident to put trash and reimburse for trash and sewer. But I did see a lot of people, at least online, saying that apartment complexes have amenity costs, parking costs.
00:04:35
Irelynn Zurflueh
My friend who currently lives in apartment complex, it's $49 to pay your rent online. and She doesn't bring it into the clubhouse. And so a lot of people were saying that when you live in an apartment or in kind of a luxury apartment situation, the advertised rent, there's like a $400, $500 difference to what you're actually paying every single month. And so I think that AB 121 really helped with those specific complexes because it stopped those additional random charges.
00:05:03
Irelynn Zurflueh
But for us, I think that it just made it a little bit more complicated in that we had to adjust all these things. Now everybody else has to do it. So it all works out in the end because basically now what Vegas is supposed to see is they're supposed to see exactly what their monthly commitment is every single month. um on their advertised rents. But for anyone who didn't know about AB 121, they're probably looking at at all these rents going, why'd they just go up?
00:05:31
Irelynn Zurflueh
you know, $50, $100, $200 and not understanding why it's because of that new law that passed. Or even like the rent will be advertised. Normally you'd see like in $50 increments or $25 increments, like 1225 for your rent. But now you see 1237.50 or whatever. And that's because you must advertise total rent in order to stay in, in, accordance with the AB 121. But the thing that does bother me is this AB 121 was brought on because of those apartments. And guess who's not honoring it?
00:06:07
Irelynn Zurflueh
Probably the apartments. The darn apartments. And that really pisses me off. I mean, there's not a lot I
Legislative Changes and Property Management
00:06:13
Irelynn Zurflueh
can do about it. um Again, we're going to say that kind of the metaphor of the Pirates of the Caribbean We got that secondary dip and thank goodness, I thought it was going to splash us, but it really didn't. It wasn't really that big of a dip. It just, it makes it to where you explain a little bit more to the potential applicant. And once they realized that they were going to get, they were going have to pay trash and they were going to pay sewer anyways, They were already calculating what their total rent was going to be. yeah But we do need those apartments to step in line.
00:06:45
Irelynn Zurflueh
Somebody needs to go out there and make sure that they are following AB 121. Yeah. If you're applying to an apartment, make sure you take screenshots of their yeah advertised rents and make sure that it is the same once you sign your lease, because that is a Nevada law.
00:07:00
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah. And if you go in there and they've advertised, let's say $2,000 for the rent, and then they start tacking on parking and this and paying and then you can say oh time out ab 121 baby no no no no i want to sign my lease for exactly what your total advertised rent is maybe we'll help somebody out there with that we've also seen a lot of i feel like i've seen a lot of changes in 2025 with the court system we were on a little bit of a stay because of the government shutdown so that was playing a little bit of a factor vegas at least here in nevada they're all trying to get on one kind of
00:07:36
Irelynn Zurflueh
form like document to submit so i've probably gotten seven or eight revised documents throughout the year and i'm like which which one do i use now um but i think that that's also kind of gone through a lot of changes but also with 121 there's a difference now between fixed rent and base rent those are like formal terms being used and so the courts are trying to decide Are you reporting base rent? Are you reporting fixed rent? And I still don't think they have an answer for that. So there's also some changes and some divots within the the court system as well, which I think we're going to continue to see evolution of in 2026. Exactly what I said earlier, Ireland. They put together a law and they don't think all the way through. What they might have wanted to do is talk to a property manager and the property manager would have said, okay, if we're going to call this total rent, make sure that it goes through the court system and what that's going to look like. And then how are you going to attach on late fees? Because it's late fees on the base rent or it's late fees on the total advertised rent.
00:08:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
it It can be hairy when you start changing things, but they're real fast on putting something through legislation and getting it passed and then promoting how great they did as far as a politician is concerned, but they don't always think about the ins and outs. But the good news is we were able to take that dip and not get splashed and move on. And we ended our year very successfully, which I feel good about.
Importance of Documentation in Property Management
00:09:05
Irelynn Zurflueh
And I think that there are always so many ins and outs in property management. And I think that's one of the big things that we wanted to talk about today is we actually had just recently received some feedback from one of our owners, and they said, all I do is I just pay you to collect rent and give me a tax form at the end of the year. yeah and That didn't go over very well with me, by the way. And so after having looked at the year-end review and thought about all these ins and outs, and then also getting that feedback, what we kind of want to talk about is all the tiny things that go into property management, all the small things or tiny details that maybe you don't think of that your property manager is taking care of for you. I think the very first one that comes to mind is being an out-of-state investor, which I think is so important if you live.
00:09:56
Irelynn Zurflueh
I just think being an out-of-state investor is important. Look and find the right market that works for you. If you're an out-of-state investor, your property management is just in-state. Like that's that's the first thing. They are going to be your- They're your boots on the ground and your eyes to the property. And they are so much more than just collecting rent and dispersing it to you every month. Yeah. There's a lot of places that lot of states that have a certain law or certain wording that require that you provide an in-person drop off for rents. So that also helps. Like a property manager, if you're an out-of-state investor, they have the opportunity to have a brick and mortar location to go to for rent payments if that's something that the state requires.
00:10:41
Irelynn Zurflueh
If you have a vacancy or a turnover, they're the ones who are going to get you the photos. They're the ones who are going to be able to assist you with that. And then even if you are in-state homeowner, because there's obviously a bunch of Vegas locals who are still investors, your property manager, given the vacancy example I'm giving, probably have some kind of system where it's a time-stamped photo. And it's the tiniest little details. But those time-stamped photos are the only photos that will hold up in court because it needs to be documented date and time. So that's a small detail.
00:11:21
Irelynn Zurflueh
Part of the security deposit transmittal, you're required to show receipts for all the work that you're charging the resident. Those receipts, that's vital. that's That's the only way that you keep a security deposit transmittal accurate. It's the law. It's the law. And if you don't give your security deposit transmittal within 30 days of receiving possession, that's not the lease termination date. That's receiving possession of the property.
The Misconception of Rent Collection Only
00:11:45
Irelynn Zurflueh
You are now out of law you will be, you could automatically get charged or fined three times whatever the security deposit was. So most of our security deposits are $15,000, $17,000, $2,000.
00:11:57
Irelynn Zurflueh
seventeen two thousand dollars You're talking about a $6,000 fine. That's a lot if somebody knew the law and if you broke it. So yeah speaking of that, I actually just went to small claims court a couple weeks ago and got the verdict that we won. Yay! um So one of the things is obviously a lot of residents that move out, one of their biggest gripes is that we take too much money from their security deposit. And and I get it. I mean, i'm not I'm not completely against what they say because they've lived in the property. They don't see that the marks on the wall are as bad as they are. They got used to it. You know, they probably hired some company to come in and try and steam clean the carpet, but we all know a bad carpet cleaner is not going to do a good job, and then we're left having to to do a good job. so the so the owner can re-rent the property. So in this case, the resident took us to small claims court and basically said that we were not justified in what we were charging.
00:12:59
Irelynn Zurflueh
And what was interesting is the resident who is the burden of proof because they're taking us to court, she did not supply any photos.
00:13:10
Irelynn Zurflueh
And then it came my turn and I had plenty of photos from the walkthrough and the judge actually said to the plaintiff, he said, this is what you should be doing to document when you move out. Look, they're time stamped. they're They're very clear. There's multiple angles. He kind of did a little lesson to her, um which I've never really see a judge do. But then basically we won because the burden of proof was not proven. And that's because if you are going to move out of a property, protect yourself.
00:13:44
Irelynn Zurflueh
Get a site evaluator maybe over to the property and take a bunch of photos so that's a third party documenting. Or take the photos but make sure they're time stamped. Because if they're not time stamped and you submit a bunch of photos to the judge, how's the judge going to know that that's what it looked like when you moved out?
00:14:02
Irelynn Zurflueh
Oh, yeah. Especially when the property management company has time stamped photos that don't look like the ones that you submitted. So, yeah, you want to make sure that you're protecting yourself. And I think property management companies are all about documentation too, right? we We actually just a couple months ago had an owner who was curious why they were paying for pest treatment at their property. And they had actually been paying for patch treatment at their property for three years. And they don't ask me why they were asking the question three years later, but they were.
00:14:35
Irelynn Zurflueh
And we had owner statements, we had receipts, we had invoices to help track that. And I think that happens a lot with certain repairs. There'll be an owner who will call up and they swore on their life that, you know,
00:14:49
Irelynn Zurflueh
six years ago, they replaced something and they want us to double check. And because we have all of that documentation from when they were with us, we can look it. And sometimes they're right. And I can say, oh, yep, you did replace the washer five years ago. We'll look into that for you. Here's, you know, the brand we use, whatever. Or sometimes I'll say, I'm looking at your owner statement. I can even send you a copy of your owner statement. I see no charge in the last four years of any kind of repair of that nature. And so it's, it's those little tiny things of like, you are having your property manager kind of be your memory box. yeah And if you call up and you say, I have a question there, they have that knowledge. They should have that information.
00:15:31
Irelynn Zurflueh
My emails, my personal emails look nothing compared to my work emails. And I think anyone out in the world ever would say that because at work, it's your job to keep a record and keep a history and keep documentation If I was trying to hold on to the documentation on my own as an investor, it would be a lot. It would be very overwhelming because you don't have the softwares, you don't have those tools to help you, but your property manager does. Well, and the thing is, is it's great that you buy a property even in the same city that you live in. But remember, you're probably working to make money in doing something else. Even if you're in entrepreneurship, you're you're working on something so that you can make the money to go buy more investment properties.
00:16:15
Irelynn Zurflueh
Why do you want to add property management to that plate? Because what you ultimately will do is exactly what Ireland just said. You'll put all of your personal stuff on that rental property to the side. You'll, oh, I'll take care of it later. Oh, I'll put that, you know, appropriate email somewhere and you don't do it. And then tax time comes and all of these little things that you could have written off, you can't find the pieces of paper to justify it.
00:16:41
Irelynn Zurflueh
But it is really nice. When a property management company sends you, cause that's what we'll be doing in January, sends you every single thing that was charged on that property for the entire year. And that right there is worth it. And so why when that guy said to us his feedback, oh yeah, I just hired you because I wanted you to collect the rent and then give me a 1099. What are you saying?
00:17:06
Irelynn Zurflueh
what are you saying we, we Don't just
Lease Management and Client Retention
00:17:10
Irelynn Zurflueh
do that. That is the easiest part of our job. Everything else that is, that you can think of is the hard stuff. That's the behind the curtains kind of stuff. Yeah. Even thinking about renewals, i part of the final newsletter that Jenny had written for all the owners where we use the Pirates of the Caribbean metaphor, she wrote that she has always and will always believe that the goal to property management is client retention, not
00:17:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
McKenna property management's clients, which are the owners, but the owner's clients, which are the residents, not having to deal with yearly turnover, being able to keep your property rented out is so important. And like imagine if you were a private investor or running your own property companies and you forget a renewal. Oh yeah. Or you forget to sign another lease. And then you have these people blowing you up like three days before their lease expires, wondering where their renewal is.
00:18:07
Irelynn Zurflueh
Or imagine if you don't want to give, continue to work with them, or you do want to give notice because you're thinking about selling and then you forget to give notice because you need to give them at least three days and sometimes 60 if they're older and then you just forgot. And then Like it's so.
00:18:22
Irelynn Zurflueh
c do you even Do you even know what the paperwork is to give that notice? Like
Defending Professionalism in Property Management
00:18:27
Irelynn Zurflueh
what? Because there's requirements through the law that you have to make sure that you give certain notifications within that paperwork that tells that individual you are not planning on renewing that lease. Yeah. It's a lot. And so when, oh, I just get so mad when the guy was like, oh I just hired you to collect my rent and give me a 1099 at the end of the year.
00:18:47
Irelynn Zurflueh
Like, you know what, buddy? Here's my letter of resignation. i don't need to manage your property, by the way, if that's all you think I'm good for. Because that's a complete insult, at least to any property management company that's worth their salt. yeah And McKenna Property Management, we bust our butt on a daily basis. to make sure that we are compliant with the law, that we are good of communication, that residents know that they can reach out if there's something wrong. I mean, and and for somebody to just kind of say, that's all you do. i was like, oh, well so mad. And I know the saying of no news is good news. And I do feel like that applies to property management where you're not hearing from us. It means that everything's going smoothly. And I think when people don't hear from us, they start to think, oh, well, maybe I can do it because I'm like not hearing from them as often as I thought they would. I'm not having as many issues. But then I even think to myself, well, maybe you're not having any issues because you have a good renter in there. How did you get that good renter right from your property management company screening them? right We have people who want to put in their family or their friends or their coworker or whoever in certain properties, And again, your decision, you can do whatever you want, but we will run those apps sometimes and we will go back to that owner and we will say they do not qualify based off of our credentials. This person, this family friend, this emotional bias person that you want to put in this property would not qualify for one of our renters, rentals. And they know that and they understand that. And I, again, when you think it's easy, it's easy because you had help. Yep. And when it's hard, it's not
Pitfalls of Self-Managing Properties
00:20:33
Irelynn Zurflueh
as hard as it could be because you have help. Correct. And if you get rid of the help, I just think that you're in for a world trouble. Well, and i I just took a call the other day from someone, which this is going to blow your mind because I don't i didn't even tell you, Ireland, but they have not received rent for six months. They just got the resident out. Okay. Self-managing allowed a real estate agent to market the property in the um MLS, but just only as marketing. And then um they went ahead and supposedly vetted this person. This person got into the property and never made another rent payment again. And then from that point, they they we did you know I guess the individual started the seven-day pay or quit in the eviction, but then she took it to a higher court and kept appealing it and appealing it and appealing it. six months of no rent, trashed house, had to hire an attorney because it went to a higher court. I mean, that's the nightmare that you want to avoid, right? Those are the scary stories that you hear, but they don't happen when you hire
Fraud Prevention and Tenant Screening
00:21:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
a professional property manager. Yeah.
00:21:41
Irelynn Zurflueh
And I know right now there is a lot of fraudulent vetting, meaning there are a lot of places that you can get fake W2s, you can get fake bank statements. yeah I mean, there's a lot that if you do not know what you're looking for, or you don't have, you haven't partnered with a team that knows what they're looking for, you could get really messed up on that.
00:22:05
Irelynn Zurflueh
Absolutely. and And, and nobody is perfect. Obviously you're still, the help is still people, you know, But we're people who see it every single day. yep Our applications person is seeing apps every single day. Our leasing person is writing leases every day. Our renewal specialist, all she's doing is just trying to get good renewals at solid market prices. And that's what you have hired us to do. So we are going to do it to the best of our abilities. I think i think Jenny's going to love this. I just finished watching the Taylor Swift documentary. Oh, I love that documentary. And something that she had said in the documentary is she said, every single person that I've hired is a perfectionist or a professional. And so I know that they're not going to make the mistake. So if there's ever a mistake that happens, it's because I've made it. yeah And because I've hired somebody that good, know I'm going to hold myself accountable to also not make any mistakes because I know they're not making mistakes. And I love that mindset. And I think McKenna tries to embody that mindset as well, which is we are not, we are going to do everything in our power to not be the one that makes any mistakes. So then that way everything can just go perfect and can go
Commitment to Expertise and Precision
00:23:18
Irelynn Zurflueh
smoothly. And what all we hope is that you as the owner also have that same match that level. I agree that I know. i love that too, because I, the we the way, the way we set McKenna property management is in departments. So that exactly what Ireland said, it's not just a hundred applications our leasing department looks at in a year. It's thousands, thousands of applications. You get so frigging good at what you do when you do it repetitively so often. It's just about hours on the event. There's a book out there that talks about you know how you can become the level of an athlete and a concert pianist and all these kinds of things. Right. And it's really about time on task. And that is exactly what we developed at McKenna property management is the time on task makes you a master at what you do.
00:24:13
Irelynn Zurflueh
So the fact that that guy said what he said, well, you know what up his, he's no longer
Engaging the Audience and Conclusion
00:24:18
Irelynn Zurflueh
going to be a client of McKenna property managed by my choice. He can manage his own property and figure out how hard it can be sometimes. And if you guys have any questions about what,
00:24:29
Irelynn Zurflueh
a PM does or the qualifications or if that is something your property manager should or shouldn't be doing, feel free to leave a comment or send us a question. We'd be happy to answer it. We love getting your guys' questions. And I think the big thing is we're all just a big team here. And if we can continue to be a good team, then your man your property is going to be well managed. Yep, I agree. And we are definitely worth what our management fee is for sure. Whatever that percentage is throughout the world. i mean
00:25:01
Irelynn Zurflueh
property management is definitely worth what they do for protecting your asset. So if you like this podcast and you want to send it to somebody, please do. If you want to subscribe so you can always hear interesting information that Ireland, myself or Max wants to talk about as far as in the property management world or the real estate world, we would love to have you subscribe.
00:25:24
Irelynn Zurflueh
Awesome. All right. We are gonna lay out and out. See you guys next time. Bye.