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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Erika speaks with Guerrio Anilus, founder of Get Covered, about innovative solutions in property management, particularly focusing on rent guarantees. Guerrio shares insights on how his company aims to alleviate stress for landlords and tenants alike by ensuring timely rent payments and providing coverage during eviction processes. The conversation also delves into sustainable growth strategies, risk management in tenant screening, and proactive measures landlords can take to avoid vacancies.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Guerrio Anilus (00:00)
Yes, of course. ⁓ you know, rent guarantees are going to be the biggest thing in the rental market and real estate. What it really means is that it guarantees rent, make sure landlords get paid ⁓ regardless whether tenants pay or not. you know, similar to, ⁓ you know, insurance products, this is, know, not an insurance product. It’s not going to take you forever to get paid, ⁓ you know, with covered, you’ll be guaranteed. And, you know, the goal of, you know, what we’relooking
to do is to make rent day stressless. know, no stress for landlords, you know, when it’s time to, you know, receive rent. And also, ⁓ it makes it easier for tenants ⁓ on their side as well to get approved.
Erika (02:17)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Erika and today I’m excited to be chatting with Guerrio Anilus He’s been shaking things up with his company Get Covered. Guerrio Anilus, I’m so glad to have you on the show today.Guerrio Anilus (02:33)
Yes.Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it, Erika. I really appreciate you having me on. Hi, everyone. I want to introduce myself. I’m Guerrio Anilus started off as a real estate agent in Massachusetts doing sales and rentals. And I kind of learned a lot about what landlords are dealing with and what tenants kind of have to go through looking to get approved dealing with a rental agent. And then I moved into property management where I actually
seen the behind the scenes of tenants having to miss rent, landlord stressing. At this point, I kind of put two and two together and we kind of, me and my partner, we’re thinking of different solutions that we can actually do to be able to help the landlord and the tenant on both angles. And that’s where we created Covered.
Erika (03:21)
Yeah, and what you guys are offering is very unique. You told me before you call it rent guaranteed. So can you share more about that?Guerrio Anilus (03:31)
Yes.Yes, of course. ⁓ you know, rent guarantees are going to be the biggest thing in the rental market and real estate. What it really means is that it guarantees rent, make sure landlords get paid ⁓ regardless whether tenants pay or not. you know, similar to, ⁓ you know, insurance products, this is, know, not an insurance product. It’s not going to take you forever to get paid, ⁓ you know, with covered, you’ll be guaranteed. And, you know, the goal of, you know, what we’re
looking
to do is to make rent day stressless. know, no stress for landlords, you know, when it’s time to, you know, receive rent. And also, ⁓ it makes it easier for tenants ⁓ on their side as well to get approved.
Erika (04:18)
That’s really interesting. it’s a win-win scenario then.Guerrio Anilus (05:09)
Yes, yes, it’s a very one- scenario and you know rent guarantees ⁓ and the way we’re dealing with it, it’s affordable, it’s affordable on both ends, know compared to what’s out there right now we’re kind of you know in the sweet spot where landlords you know will get the best pricing and also tenants you know they’ll be able to get qualified without paying ⁓ you know large amounts to sign with a guarantor.Erika (05:35)
can you walk through that process a little bit more for how that funding happens and how the landlord’s income is protected?Guerrio Anilus (05:46)
Yeah, so the landlord’s income, so to go into that, we go into pricing as well. ⁓ So we have a base model where landlords pay $50 a year per unit and then tenants pay a small fee of two to 3 % of the rent monthly. ⁓ So you know.On the landlord side, this is super affordable. then tenants kind of take on more of the costs. And it actually benefits them at the same time because it helps them get approved. And then it also helps get them in the apartment as well as landlords have protection. yeah, landlords will be able to have a tenant in the apartment.
It’ll expand their application pool. It’ll help them have less vacancies. And there are different strategic reasons why LINGU would use covered as well. It’s not just one size. You can kind of use it strategically. People that have strong income, but they might not have established credit or… ⁓
Students they might have a they might have a shaky co-signer or internationals that you don’t have strong income, but they might not have you know Established credit as well as a tent that’s currently in a landlord’s apartment that has been making late payments, but
When it’s time for renewal, the landlord might be a little skeptical of renewing them and covered is kind of a solution that a landlord can use on the renewal pretty much where it can kind of guarantee them rent because I’ve, in the past, I’ve dealt with landlords who had tenants pay on time for the first two years and then all of sudden on the third year, tenants kind of fall behind and then now the landlord’s, know.
lost five months rent and they’re looking to get the tenant out.
Erika (07:38)
Yeah, wow. How does that work when, let’s say, you have a tenant that isn’t paying rent and you need to go through the eviction process? What kind of coverage do you get in that scenario as you’re looking to fill that vacancy?Guerrio Anilus (07:54)
Yeah.Yeah, so the great thing about what we do, ⁓ so with the different plans, Atlanta will be protected regardless. So with the premium plan, and…
First things first too, we handle rent collection as well. So we know immediately when a tenant misses a payment, we send out reminders. ⁓ And then, we eventually ⁓ send out reminders and if needed, we’ll send out a notice to quit and begin the eviction process. So with us knowing exactly when a tenant pays, ⁓ we can kind of hop on the issue as soon as possible and begin the process of finding the solution, ⁓ either recovering the rent or
of
starting that addiction process, of course. But yeah, so as far as coverage goes, so now, 10 doesn’t pay rent. Let’s say by the 10th of the month, we send out a notice to quit.
If they don’t pay, know, a 14 day notice to quit, Massachusetts, we have the 14 day notice to quit. by the, you know, let’s say by the 24th of 10, it doesn’t pay, you know, we can file a summary in court. So it’d be a $300 deposit for a landlord. And we cover up to $3,000 in the eviction fees, including, you know, court fees and, you know, the court filings. So $3,000, you know, up to $3,000. And then it would just be a $300 deductible for the landlord.
Erika (09:12)
That’s a really great offer with the way that’s set up.Guerrio Anilus (09:50)
Yeah, yeah, and you know, the goal is to definitely be sustainable. You we’d love to, you know, be able to offer this, you know, like I said, the prices that we do offer are the best, you know, as far as like different competitors in the market. So, you we do offer great pricing, but you know.We do need to be sustainable at the same time to be able to provide the service for landlords. yeah, know, $300 that gets you up to $3,000 in coverage. So, and then we also, like I said, we, you know, we’ll help manage that eviction process as well. The goal will be to definitely get the tenant out, you know, you know, as soon as possible or recover the lost rent as soon as possible.
Erika (10:30)
with your business funnel being set up the way that it is, what is your plan for responsible growth and not spreading yourself too thin?Guerrio Anilus (10:42)
Yeah, so right now, the goal is definitely to be sustainable. So we’re going to start off with a pilot in Massachusetts. We’ll start off with a small group of landlords. And the goal is to approve the model. typically, it’s about a 2 to 3 % amount of tenants end up needing to be evicted. So sort of like the rental insurance model, where everyone signed up, butyou know, there’s really a small instance where a tenant will actually need to use that renter’s insurance policy. So, you know, the goal is to definitely, you know, on our end, as far as the rental, rental guarantees, to be able to get, you know, the income back from the tenant, you know, as soon as possible, or, you know, start the eviction process. the goal is to definitely be able to, ⁓ you know, so qualify the tenant, you know, you know, officially pretty much
Knowing, so we’re not gonna accept completely everyone. We’ll definitely be able to screen them. ⁓ So we have an AI model where we know exactly, we’re gonna know exactly how risky a tenant is. knowing in advance how risky the tenant is, we’ll be able to actually understand what we’re getting ourselves into. And we definitely don’t wanna cover a tenant we know is gonna be super duper risky. So the goal is definitely risk management and.
Yeah, the first step is to make sure whoever’s coming in the door is not gonna be a major liability. ⁓ And then after they’re in the door, being able to cap the, stop the damage as soon as possible for the landlord and for us at the same time, because we’ll cover up to 12 months of missed rent. So whether they end up paying the rent or whether we ⁓ have to end up evicting them,
the process will be very efficient according to law pretty much to be able to stop the damage on both sides. yeah, I would say the goal is to, right now we’re gonna start off with a small group of landlords, we’re gonna approve the model and then after that, we’re gonna start to nationwide and then we’ll be able to get larger funding to sustain.
you know, larger pool of tenants and landlords.
Erika (13:03)
Yeah, you touched on something there that I actually kind of wanted to talk about, which is, you you mentioned the risk management and, you know, making sure that you screen your tenants and you are, you do property management as well. you, you, you know, you see this for firsthand. What would you say for our listeners that are some other steps that they can take to help with the risk that’s involved?Guerrio Anilus (13:16)
Yeah.Yeah, so the risk ⁓ of screening tenants, of getting the right tenant in there pretty much. Yeah, so yeah, the main thing is doing proper screening, verifying, doing landlord references. You wanna be able to speak to their previous landlord. You wanna be able to verify their income. ⁓ A lot of ⁓
Erika (14:16)
Yeah, getting the right tenet.Guerrio Anilus (14:40)
not a lot of landlords, but some landlords deal with professional tenants that end up moving in the apartment. then eventually they noticed that maybe the tenant that moved in isn’t actually the correct person that filed the paperwork pretty much. So they might have someone that probably gave them false paperwork to get into the apartment. So the goal is to, I say verify, you wanna verify, use programs like, snapped. Snapped is a tool that landlords can use to verify pay stubs.You can verify certain financial documents that a landlord can use to give them more peace of mind. So I’d say verify, of course, do your credit check, of course, do your landlord references, and then verify that the pay stubs and offer letters are actually real. Verify their ID, do everything you need to give yourself peace of mind. Because the last thing you want to do is ⁓ rush the process.
And rushing is typically the main issue that gets landlords in a bad position ⁓ later on, I would say.
Erika (15:46)
and they’re rushing because they don’t want to have any vacancies, right? So from your experience, how can someone be proactive and help that issue instead of rushing with the wrong tonnage?Guerrio Anilus (15:51)
Yes, yeah, exactly.Yeah, so, you know, be patient. ⁓ I would say, you know, as far as, know, be patient and pricing. You wanna make sure that you might not be pricing your apartment too high of a market value. You wanna make sure that it’s priced properly so that you have a nice pool of applicants and prospects to come by so you can kind of filter and choose the right one. ⁓ You know, if you have to wait,
you if you have to wait a little bit, you know, a month or so to get the right tenant and to not rush, you know, it would be, it would be amazing. And that’s kind of why, you know, we built covered at the same time so that landlords, you know, don’t have to wait too long. They, you know, they can, you know, have an applicant come in and, ⁓ you know, they have strong income, but they might not have, you know, established credit. ⁓ and that’s where we kick in, you know, our goal is to be able to, ⁓ you know, help a landlord fill the vacancy faster. ⁓ so, you know, we’d,
we’d be able to guarantee the landlord rent. With the premium plan, it’d be guaranteed rent on the first of the month, regardless. And the standard plan, it’s a safety net, super low cost. A landlord can have ⁓ assurance. They know in the background that, worst case scenario, that if a tenant starts paying, ⁓ they’ll be protected regardless. And yeah, that is kind of tough. That is the biggest thing.
you know, trying to get a tenant in ASAP to fill vacancies. And that’s literally why, you know, we built Covered to be able to, you know, stop that issue and kind of, ⁓ you know, get landlords, you know, cash flowing a lot faster.
Erika (17:44)
Absolutely, well what you guys have to offer is really exciting, Guerrio. If someone wants to reach out, connect, if they’re interested in your services, what’s the best way for them to reach you?Guerrio Anilus (17:57)
So they want to go to getcovered.com. ⁓ So right now we have the interest list. ⁓ Getcovered.com, that website breaks down lot of details. ⁓ We have a blog up there. We’re publishing blogs, we’re educating landlords. getcovered.com will be the website and they can join the wait list and when they join that, they’ll be pretty much front in line to be able to get… ⁓new, you know, all the details on, you know, when let’s say, you know, we might be coming to their city and they’ll be able to get first access to, you know, to the pilot program or just be informed on the next steps that we’re heading towards.
Erika (18:39)
That’s exciting. Guerrio, thank you so much for being on the show, sharing your story, your expertise and your perspectives on property management.Guerrio Anilus (18:48)
Yeah, thank you. I’m definitely glad to be on here and the goal is to definitely make rent a stress fee for landlords. I’m happy to be able to that news for everybody, honestly.Erika (19:02)
I love it. And ⁓ thanks for being here. And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ve got more conversations coming up with pros like Guerrio who are out there building fantastic real estate businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.
