Allan the Engineer
Trouble Selling His Family House
Recently, I was talking with an engineer who bought a house 7 years ago on the street I grew up on. It's still an area parents dream of raising their kids in.
His name was Allan and his company was moving him 500 miles north to work in a more prosperous division. This meant having to sell his beloved family home...and sell it quickly...or lose his livelihood.
Can you imagine being told you must uproot your family or else lose your job? His kids went to the same grade school I did just down the street. He was married in the church two doors down. He had spent years making improvements...
and now had to sell.
When I met Allan, he was trying to sell the house himself (a typical choice in this economy). Unfortunately for him, the real estate market has totally tanked.
Houses here are taking as long as three years to sell.
And the houses that are selling, the owners are losing EVERYTHING they put into them.
Allan was facing a direct loss of tens of thousands...
... never mind the fifty grand in renovations he put into making his house a home.
So what choices did he have?
- Lose ALL his equity?
- Let it sit empty running up bills?
- Or rent it with confidence and wait until the market rebounds?
After looking around, I proposed the idea of renting his house out and riding-out the storm...
...just as I did with my own house.
Yeah, he had heard every rental nightmare from real estate agents trying to scare him into a listing -- but he was very open to renting his house out himself.
However, Allan had no idea how to rent a house, manage it...nothing -- especially when he was going to be five-hundred miles away and busy with his new job and moving his family into new quarters.
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He began to ask me very specific questions:
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"How much rent can I realistically get for my house?"
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"What are the steps I should take?"
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"What rental forms do I need?"
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"Do I need a Lawyer?"
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"How do I find good tenants?"
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"How do I properly screen potential tenants?"
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"If I get bad tenants, how do I get rid of them quickly?"
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"Do I need a real estate agent to rent it for me?"
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I told him about a rental package I had just compiled titled How To Rent Your House Now - Property Rental Secrets Revealed and how it can specifically benefit him.
It's packed with 16 Rental Forms that he could easily fill-out while renting his place and manage it.
These forms include:
| Rental Forms |
Legal Forms |
Short Rental Application
Full Rental Application
Rental Receipt
Rent Roll
Monthly Expense Ledger
Maintenance Log
Calls/Visits Log |
Lease Agreement
Rental Agreement
Agreement to Lease with the Option to Purchase
Eviction Consequences Letter
Notice to Quit or Pay - 1
Notice to Quit or Pay - Sample
Notice to End Tenancy - Sample
Court Filing Sample
Board Filing Sample |
I showed him this sample rental form - Lease Agreement.

I also explained to Allan the forms alone cost as much as this package at Staples.
He also would have access to the digital versions of these forms and can customize them to his needs (which I recommended he do once he understood the meaning of each critical clause as explained in the package).
I continued showing him the package...
How To Rent Your Own House - Property Rental Secrets Revealed also contains 18 Proven Checklists to expertly guide him through the rental process, just as if an expert rental agent was standing there showing him how to rent out his house.
These checklists included:
Checklists |
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Rental Checklist
Rental Value Worksheet
Yard Checklist
Cleaning Checklist
Small Repairs Checklist
Marketing Checklist
Online Ad Template
Sign Specs
Phone Screener |
Showing Checklist
Screening Checklist
Leasing Checklist
Move-in Checklist
Property Move-in Condition Checklist
Property Move-Out Condition Checklist
Eviction Checklist - US
Eviction Checklist - Canada
Ongoing Maintenance Checklist |
I showed him this sample checklist (Screening Checklist):

Allan was scared -- but knew he had to take action...and went after the knowledge he needed to rent his place out.
Let me tell you another story...
Alexandra - The Librarian Landlord
Tenant Difficulties
I was returning a library book about rental property recently.
While scanning it in, Alexandra, the librarian, asked me if I was a Landlord.
"Of course!" I quickly answered.
"Not only that but I also helped many others; in fact I've rented over 150 places." (I never miss an opportunity to talk and absorb knowledge from fellow Landlords.)
After a little more conversation I learned Alexandra and her husband were willed a rental property by her dad.
She said it was a charming country home that she had always made a small profit on...
...until now!
She tried to sell it with a local real estate agent but the listing expired without offers.
In fact she only had one showing in 6 months.
Alexandra was very interested in what I did for a living.
Just like Allan, she had many questions -- even though she was a semi-experienced Landlord.
She was having trouble collecting rent. Her tenants lost their jobs and were 2 months behind. The 3rd month was fast approaching.
She asked me:
- "What can I do to collect my money?"
- "Should I evict my tenants?"
- "How do I evict them? What are the steps?"
- "Do I need a Lawyer?"
- "Are there any other options that work?"
- "How would I find more tenants?"
- "How do I prevent this from happening again?"
- "Am I alone in this economy?"
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Her biggest fear that kept her awake at night was if she kicked the non-paying tenants out, it would be difficult to re-rent it (or 'flip it' as I call it).
First thing I did was tell her "The house is a business and you need to run it as such.
You need to take charge of it and quickly remove the current tenants or continue to lose money."
In other words, she needed to realize she was...
...'In command of the ship'
The ship was sinking FAST and the non-paying tenant is equal to a treasonous shipmate that was the continuing cause of the disaster!
"Make him walk the plank or watch your ship sink.", I told her.
Second thing I preached to her was she could rent her house out FAST -- we are in a fantastic house for rent market.
She was very interested how I knew all this stuff and I told her I had collected the rental secrets of hundred of Landlords I have helped and worked side-by-side on their properties, including my own.
In fact, I documented over 61 rental secrets.
So I showed her the 'How To Rent Your House Now' package and she was amazed at the secrets I had mentioned. Even though she has been a Landlord for a few years, she never really knew the following secret:

We are in the largest house-for-rent real estate market in history. Agents do not want you to know you can rent your house out faster and cheaper than they can. The typical real estate fee for renting your house out is one month's rent. So on a house that rents for fifteen-hundred bucks/mn, you have to pay that amount AS SOON AS IT'S RENTED.
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In fact, that one secret alone will…
...Save Alexandra Eight-Hundred Bucks!
I told her other ways the rental secrets in my package would help:
- It will grab the attention of 89% of the qualified tenants looking at her ads.
- She can use recession-proof marketing that is FREE and effective.
- How to Rocket her house to the top of a tenant’s must see list.
- They will have a stream of qualified tenants looking at her property.
- She can better screen her tenants using proven techniques.
- It will give her one secret question to make a hot-prospect decide to rent now.
I told her every last one of these ‘for rent secrets’ has rented property quickly which once sat empty, making their owners money…over and over again.
In fact, they are the exact same secrets that rented 150+ properties making almost one million in income per year for their landlords. |
She asked me specifically, "Am I alone with these rental and tenant troubles?"
I told her, "No way! Check out the Case Studies in my book. Each will show you what to expect and I certainly know where you are coming from."

At the end of our conversation, Alexandra
looked very seriously at me and said, "Thank you! I know what I have to do now.".
This last story involves my meetings with a local company that owned multiple properties including:
Houses
Apartment buildings
Commercial units
David - Real Estate Investment Manager
We Need New Rental Marketing Ideas.
David manages a large group of properties his family owned for decades.
The family has successfully made profits from real estate for almost 30 years in my city.
He approached me because he noticed how I was marketing quite differently than other places in town and because it was catching the eye of the local press.
We began a conversation about the general state of the city's economy -- the same city his family had made a good living building up.
He had a look of concern on his face and I asked him what was wrong.
After the usually questions, he eventually admitted how bad the market was affecting them -- their properties were up to 35% empty and costing them millions in lost rent.
I had trouble emotionally handling the possible loss of my own property...
...let alone an empire of properties.
Can you imagine David's stress?
He asked me to visit the properties and give him a proposal of how I could help.
After a couple visits and reviewing their current advertising strategies I told him 3 major reasons their marketing was not working.
- No signage or incorrect signage.
- They were advertising in the newspaper and not reaching their target audience even though there are FREE methods that REACH THEIR TARGET TENANTS.
- They were using the same strategies they used for 30 years but didn't realize most do not apply or work anymore.
I sat down with a calmer David and said I can solve your problems with a very cheap solution even though I usually charge thousands for each tenant placed.
As you can guess, he was smiling and interested!
I showed him the How To Rent Your House Now - Property Rental Secrets Revealed Package and the extensive 27 page section on marketing rentals. It includes:
- Proven AD templates that will put his building ahead of 90% of his competition.
- Secrets of modern rental advertising.
- A 'FOR RENT' sign design that has proven itself by helping to rent over a hundred properties.
- I told David he could also learn in one night:
- The Two Most Powerful Words in Rentals.
- How $25 can mean the difference between attracting a good tenant — or a constant stream of bad ones.
- How changing one thing about his property can rent it 10 times faster.
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I told him to study my materials which contains the answers to these rental questions, plus many more. What interested him was that this same information works even in this bad economy. |