How Smart Investors Avoid Bad Rental Properties with Better Property Management

Kent- RPM Legend (00:00)
The biggest thing I would give to investors is if they have the opportunity to speak with a property manager or another residential rental expert, do so before you purchase a property. I see people go out and buy properties because they think they’ve gotten a great deal on them or something like that. And then they’re disappointed after the fact when the comps

for what it will rent for don’t line up with what they thought it was going to be.

Michelle Kesil (01:59)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Kent Lindloff of RPM Property Management, helping manage properties in the Dallas-Forth Worth area. So excited to have you here today, Kent.

Kent- RPM Legend (02:18)
Michelle, thanks. I’m glad to be here.

Michelle Kesil (02:20)
Let’s dive in. First off, for those not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Kent- RPM Legend (02:27)
Absolutely. Our main focus is residential property management. ⁓ What that means is we take single-family homes that are vacant, either intentionally vacant by the owners or unintentionally, whether it’s potentially a loved one has passed away or maybe the divorce has happened and there’s a home that neither party wants to continue living in, but they’re not ready to sell or they don’t want to sell because they see the opportunity investment. We take those homes and we manage them. We find great tenants. We do a thorough screening.

and background for income, credit, criminal, and then we place those tenants in the property under a lease. Typically one-year terms, but sometimes we do midterms depending on the situation and what’s best for the client. Once they’re in place, we enforce the lease and handle all of that. We look at reactive maintenance and we sort of take a turn to sort of keep the owner prized of proactive maintenance that comes along.

when it’s time to paint your home, that shouldn’t ever be a surprise. You should have a plan in place for looking at painting your home every five to 10 years, depending on location, weather, type of paint, amount of, and things of that nature.

And that’s kind of what we do. We also kind of want to help them treat it like an asset and show them the numbers behind just collecting rent. Understanding that while cash is king, cash flow is important, there’s a lot of other benefits to having a rental property. the appreciation of the home year over year, that’s where your real wealth comes from. Rarely is it just the cash flow itself.

There’s depreciation, which is a great lever that you can use to sort of offset any income that’s actually coming in from the property above and beyond the writing off through property taxes and your interest and things of that nature. And we can really help you sort of generate and see what that performance looks like five, 10, 15 years out and help you make an honest assessment on when the right time to sell is or whether we continue renting it for a while and what makes the most sense for you in your currency.

situation.

Michelle Kesil (04:35)
Yeah, amazing. And what would you say have been some of the main keys that have allowed your business to grow and run successfully?

Kent- RPM Legend (05:32)
One of the biggest keys is, there’s two I would say, first and foremost communication.

These are not short-term transactional issues. We are essentially asset managers. In the same way that you have a financial advisor, you have a long-term relationship with us on your home. And communicating on a regular basis, keeping owners up to date with what’s going on with their property, with their asset.

is important. one of the things that we feel we do great within the market that a lot of times we, owners who have come to us from other places have keyed on as being a source of concern and a source of problem. So that’s one of the things we really do well.

We also have a very robust team in place where everybody’s got defined roles and processes to follow, which has taken time to build. But having that in place allows us to everybody to move quickly and smoothly and efficiently as we do our work.

Michelle Kesil (06:27)
Yeah, amazing. And how do you find both like the investors, landlords that you’re supporting and the tenants?

Kent- RPM Legend (06:38)
⁓ you know, marketing is always a key thing. There’s a lot of different ways to do it. You know, we, we market online, you know, through Google ads and things of that nature. We also have a nice referral business. Fortunately, because we have developed a positive reputation in our community, we get a lot of referral business from realtors, from other investors, that we’re actively working with, who have had a positive experience. so we see a lot of that. There’s, you know, there’s also display campaigns.

things like that. So it’s all sorts, you know, it’s all over the place. The ones we find the best is our referrals, working with our realtor partners, working with other investors through their referrals. That’s what really drives the strongest proportion of our business because they already have a good feel for what we do because they’ve been referred to, we’ve been referred to by somebody else who has a positive experience working with us.

Michelle Kesil (07:32)
Yeah, is there any sort of parameters you have for the type of buildings that you work with?

Kent- RPM Legend (07:38)
⁓ Primarily, as I said before, we focus on single-family residences which are standalone homes, three bedrooms, four bedrooms, know, backyards, fenced in. So that’s sort of the dominant…

property type that we manage. We also do manage duplexes and condos and individual units. Any place primarily that’s a residence, whether it’s a high-rise condo or mid-rise condo or you know a quad. But again, our primary is single-family residences.

Michelle Kesil (08:09)
Yeah, what have been some of the biggest challenges and obstacles that you’ve faced in your role?

Kent- RPM Legend (08:16)
I mean, at the end of the day, the challenges are always staying persistent and true to what you’re doing and executing even on the days you don’t necessarily feel it when you’re trying to grow. At the end of the day, we are all humans too, and we have our ups and downs. understanding that our challenge is to keep focused and stay consistent for our owners is one of the things that we…

know, been challenged by and constantly work to make sure that we provide.

Michelle Kesil (08:47)
Yeah, and what are you most focused on solving right now?

Kent- RPM Legend (08:52)
Right now it’s twofold. We a trying to we’re seeing an opportunity where the the market is sort of taking a I’ll say it’s the activity is increasing. So we want to take advantage of that to help build our pipeline

of new owners coming in. So that’s one thing that we’re focused on. While the other thing is, you know, trying to make sure that as we bring in more properties and grow, that we keep our processes ⁓ and our operations smooth. You know, if we outgrow our infrastructure, then that just impacts our performance. So finding that perfect balance between growth and maintaining our processes is really key. So we continue to deliver that

that white glove service that we’re proud of.

Michelle Kesil (10:14)
So how does it work if someone wants to partner with you?

Kent- RPM Legend (10:19)
⁓ If you want to partner with us, we would just reach out. You can find us on our website at www.rpmlegend.com and fill out a quick evaluation request. Then we can set up a call. We’ll run some initial comps and evaluation on your property based on general data. Then we’ll set up a time to come out and have a meeting on property to walk it with you.

and get a more detailed evaluation of what it is. And this all happens after initial discovery call. We really just want to understand what your needs are.

We have some owners that are going to be out of country for three years on assignment, but they want to come back to their home. you know, their concerns for having their home, you know, maintained in a certain way are different than somebody who is, you know, purchased a home specifically as an asset or, you know, has converted an old home into an asset. And they anticipate that being an asset and rented out for, you know, five, 10, 15 years.

understanding each client’s needs is really, really important and helps us better understand their motivations and how we can best serve them.

Michelle Kesil (11:29)
Yeah, and would you say most of your clients are investors that are expanding their portfolio or what does the mix of clients look like?

Kent- RPM Legend (11:38)
⁓ It’s a pretty good mix. We’ve seen, you I would still say most of our investors are intentional. They’ve made this plan, this expectation to either convert their primary residence into an investment property or they’ve purchased a residence specifically for the purpose of being an investment home.

I would say that’s probably 70 to 80 percent. We still have about 20 or 30 percent, which they’re accidental. You know, they bought a house three years ago. They thought they were going to live in for a long time. And then…

an opportunity, an assignment, a promotion has come up and now they’re moving. Well, if you bought a home two or three years ago, odds are you’re not going to be able to sell it for what you purchased it for in the DFW market without taking a bit of a loss. So, you know, it makes sense to rent it out for two to three years and try to avoid losing that money. So we see a lot of that. I’ve got a gentleman now that we’re working with. They’re relocating to

Eastern Europe for three to five years. And when they’re done there, they’re not even sure if they’ll be back in the DFW area, but they have a beautiful home that they love and they’re just not ready to sell it. They want to rent it out for a while.

Michelle Kesil (12:45)
Yeah, amazing. And how is the market in the area? Are the occupancy rates looking good right now?

Kent- RPM Legend (12:52)
Actually, yes, about three or four. It was definitely slow in 2025. I think there was a lot of trepidation, a lot of concern in the market. People weren’t moving. But over the last four to five months, we’ve definitely seen the market returning a bit to normal. We are seeing people move. We’re seeing properties coming on market and go off market far more quickly than they have in most of 2025 in the last part of 2024. So I would say the market is definitely

up and days on market are trending down which is great for our investors.

Michelle Kesil (13:28)
Yeah, amazing. And what are you most excited about or see as a big opportunity for you in the business this year?

Kent- RPM Legend (13:35)
Big opportunities for us are going to be looking at obviously portfolio growth. Another thing we are really looking at from an opportunity standpoint is working with AI to help augment our human team. you know, if we can add a few things, can strategically with our existing.

employees, know, if, you know, certain AI applications that are out there can help augment and improve their performance and make them more efficient and make them more capable to take on larger roles without overtaxing them. That’s a great opportunity for us to continue growing in an effective manner, which helps us, you know, increase our portfolio without increasing overhead, which allows us to run and stay in a competitive market.

I guess people at the end of the day right now with inflation and everything is going on, price is still important.

Michelle Kesil (14:24)
Yeah, absolutely. there any advice you would give to investors right now?

Kent- RPM Legend (14:30)
The biggest thing I would give to investors is if they have the opportunity to speak with a property manager or another residential rental expert, do so before you purchase a property. I see people go out and buy properties because they think they’ve gotten a great deal on them or something like that. And then they’re disappointed after the fact when the comps

for what it will rent for don’t line up with what they thought it was going to be.

One big one with an owner we had is he bought a condo actually very close to here only about five or six minutes away and working with the sales agent they ran some what they call quick comps on it and he said oh yeah 13 to 14 hundred dollars a month for one bedroom condo that’s great. The problem was they didn’t dig into the details of it.

the condo that they purchased didn’t have.

You know, the comps they were looking at were newer apartment complexes in the area and newer builds that had like gyms and pools and things like that in there. And they were more modern finishes. And obviously that’s fetched as a higher rate. This is an older condo unit. It did have a small pool on site, but the biggest takeaway for that particular unit is it didn’t have in-home laundry facilities. So you had to go to a laundromat. That’s a huge impact for somebody

you know single living on their own. And that had a very significant impact on his rent expectations. But because they didn’t do that due diligence before they purchased it, ⁓ they were stuck with a home that was gonna underperform for a while.

Michelle Kesil (16:50)
Yeah, that makes sense. And what are you most focused on scaling to next?

Kent- RPM Legend (16:58)
growth in general, we are trying to scale up, you know, and we’re trying to focus, refocus on, you know, get back to our focus on single family homes in the North Texas, Collin County area. You know, our goal is to continue to grow to the point where we’re allowed to add.

several other layers and other offerings, including potentially jumping into larger multifamily homes like 24, 25 unit apartment complexes. We just wanna make sure that we are built in a way where we can take that on smoothly without having any impact.

Michelle Kesil (17:29)
Yeah, definitely.

And what is the biggest lesson that you’ve taken away in your role?

Kent- RPM Legend (17:36)
Biggest lesson? I would say the biggest lesson is really just to make sure you’re staying consistent and true to your goals. Be clear about culture you want to set. Be willing to stand by what makes sense for you.

and don’t be afraid to push back if you have to because sometimes it’s important to, you know.

Sometimes it’s important to keep with your processes and stay true to what you’re doing and what your product is. If you’re jumping through a bunch of different hoops and trying 15 different things, it’s very difficult to become good at any one thing if you’re bouncing around to a lot of different attempts. So figure out what you want to focus on and try to stay true to that to the best of your ability.

Michelle Kesil (18:20)
Yeah, and what would you say that is for your business?

Kent- RPM Legend (18:25)
Residential property management, know, long-term residential vacant homes. You know, in the beginning we’ve tried doing, you know, transient homes like pad splits and other offerings, but they became challenging to manage when you have so many people moving in and out. ⁓ you know, for a while we were doing some shorter term.

Airbnb type offerings, but the cycle was very consistent and challenging and really understanding what that looked like for the owner. A lot of times if the market swings and there’s a lot less demand than you have a property that sits there vacant for a long time, that can be frustrating. And it also requires a certain extra level of manpower and labor because you’re doing so many cycles and turnovers.

And we found out what we really are good at and what we really want to focus on is people looking to focus on long-term passive investment in real estate. And that is primarily in single-family homes, duplexes, quads, things of that nature.

Michelle Kesil (19:28)
amazing. Thank you for sharing.

Kent- RPM Legend (19:29)
Sure.

Michelle Kesil (19:30)
And before we begin wrapping up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you and connect with you?

Kent- RPM Legend (19:33)
you

You can find us on our website at www.rpmlegend.com. You can also reach out to our office at 214-227-2404 or just send a quick email to leasing at rpmlegend.com. [email protected]

Michelle Kesil (19:57)
We’ll appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Kent- RPM Legend (20:00)
Absolutely, thank you very much. Have a great day.

Michelle Kesil (20:03)
And for those tuning into the show, you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Kent who are building real businesses and we will see you all on our next episode.