What's up, YouTube, this is Matt from the DeRosa Group.
I wanna talk to you guys about an interesting conversation, and this
is something that either if you are someone that's considering landlording,
if you're an existing landlord, it's a matter of fact and it's called crime.
And crime happens in the world, what happens everywhere and
unfortunately, and as a landlord, It can happen at your property.
When you're a landlord, you kind of get full spectrum of everything in
society, and that includes crime.
I've been a landlord for 17 years.
My company DER group's, been around for that long.
That's how long we've been active in Landlording rental properties.
I've been a hands-on landlord myself, and crime happens.
It does happen.
It's unfortunate, but it is something as a landlord you have to deal with.
And so today's video is.
What to do if you have crime at your rental property, or even how to prevent
crime happening at your rental property if it's something that you want to prevent
or you want to take preventative action now to stop from happening in the future.
So let's see if you can visualize it this way.
Crime occurs in an area and your rental property is in that area.
And the question you have to ask yourself, you have to find this out, is the crime.
At your rental property or is it happening in the area around it?
So is it happening at the corner store across the street?
Is it happening down the road?
Whatever it is.
And you can look at crime reports, you can talk to the local police, you can
look at police reports to see where the crime is occurring, because if
it's happening at your property, that's one conversation we're gonna have.
But it's happening around the.
Then you need to identify what this source of the crime is.
If the crime is occurring in the area around your property,
this is what you have to do.
You have to find the, the source of it, and then go and talk
to the owner of that property.
Hey, we have a problem, and that problem we have is my property is
experiencing crime that appears to be coming from your property.
Here's some police reports that are backing that up, and you obviously, as
an owner of this property, you can't, shouldn't be happy about that as well.
You have crime as well, unless of course the person you're talking to
is the source of the crime themselves, which is where you go to plan B, which
is to go to the police and say, Hey, that property right there is generating
crime, which is affecting my property, and it's obviously something that my
tenants are unhappy about, I'm unhappy about, and that's something that we need
to do something about collectively and perhaps owner of that property as well,
unless they are the source of the crime.
As I said, here are.
Three steps you can do if the crime is coming from your property, meaning there
are folks that are causing crime issues or that are bad actors, or that are doing
bad stuff at the property that you own.
Crime does not like to be seen.
Crime likes to hide, such as anything from drugs or folks
misbehaving or whatever it is.
The first thing you can do.
Is if you look at your rental property, if it's got trees that are drooping
around that are trees that are, trees are a great thing to hide crime, right?
And crime tends to happen at things that at places where it
can kind of hide in the shadows.
So if you can look at your property at night, right, and see that there
are lots of trees drooping around this property, trim up those.
It's called limb them up.
Remove some of the limbs that are drooping down around the property
to make it to where the property's very, very clearly seen during the
daytime and also during the nighttime, make the property super visible.
Second thing is, has to do with seeing that crime as well light it up, right?
And there are very affordable l e D lights you can put all around the property.
And this applies on a single-family home, a duplex or a hundred unit apartment
building, or anywhere in between.
You can put good lighting systems that are just on at night,
turn them off during the day.
You can put in systems like that.
Even put in motion sensors too, if you like to turn the lights
on when they see something and turn them off when they don't.
Crime does not like to be seen, and so if you limb up your trees and light up
your property nice and bright at night, then crime will dissipate just for that.
It'll find somewhere else to go.
And that also applies that the crime's coming from across the street.
It's not gonna go to your property anymore if your property's super well
lit, cuz it doesn't want to be seen.
The third thing that you can do, and this applies more if you have a
larger property, you can do it on a smaller property as well, but it may
cost you a few more dollars, and that is you contact the local police and
you work at an arrangement with them.
We did this at one of our larger properties where the local police would
go and walk and patrol the property and they would look for issues.
They'd look for things that were suspicious and they would
shine the flashlight arounds and patrol maybe once or twice a.
Crime doesn't like attention, as I said, but it also really,
really doesn't like police.
And so if you bring the police out, you pay them, uh, and you can pay them.
There are arrangements we've done with local police to pay them a
certain amount of money per hour to walk around our properties
and patrol when they're off duty.
Every police department we've talked to allows their officers when they're
off duty to walk right into your pro.
Maybe after they're done their.
Go walk around your property, do a one hour patrol.
If you pay 'em enough money, they'll be, they're willing to do it and the
police are bought in on this because it helps keep their neighborhood safe
and helps identify crime issues cuz the police don't want that around either.
If you want to go next level, here's the next thing you can do.
You can offer up one of your apartments for rent to a local police
officer, to have a local police officer live in that apartment and
you could offer it up at a discount.
You know, that's what we've had to do and it encourages them to wanna live there.
And we required that they bring their, their police cruiser home every day.
So the other tenants would see, visit a police cruiser sitting in front of that.
Every day.
And that in itself dissipates crime again.
Crime doesn't want the police around, and if they see that they're
gonna not stick around because they don't want to get caught.
They want to go do their business in the dark and elsewhere
where no one else can see it.
Those are some ways that you can deal with crime.
Whether this applies for large apartment complexes or smaller,
this is ways you can deal with it.
And the result that we.
In dealing with crime at our properties is that those that remain
at the property don't care as much about there being policed there.
They may be welcome that because if they're not causing crime themselves,
it's a good thing to them that there's, oh, great, there's police here that'll
keep the bad apples out and allow me to have quiet enjoyment in my properties.
The long-term result is that more families.
More people that are comfortable with properties that have lower crime are going
to come into your property, and that in itself stabilizes things even further.
And the good tenants that are not causing crime, Are not gonna
tolerate crime coming in as well.
So those good tenants become the best police that you have, cuz they're
gonna let you know and also let the police know if crime even starts
to creep back into your property.
So that's the end result.
That property tends to keep crime out on its own.
You know, you can eventually not have to have the police out because
those properties maintain themselves and keep themselves safe because
you've built yourself a great c.
As you guys can tell, I'm not a fan of crime.
I am big advocate for removing it.
I don't tolerate it at our, any of our rental properties because our mantra
is the transform lives to real estate.
And one way that we can do that is providing safe, secure places for our
tenants to live and enjoy their lives.
That they can call home and they can call something home and raise
their families there if they know that they're gonna be safe.
And I as a landlord can help provide that to them through removing crime at the.
That's what I got guys.
Hope you guys enjoyed this.
If you like this video, please, please, please smash that subscribe button to
this channel and like this video, leave a comment below if you've got other tips for
removing crime at your rental properties.
We'd love to hear what you guys have to say too.
Appreciate you guys as always.
Have a great profitable week.