Keyless Property Management

John Harcar (00:01.011)
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Madeline Felix, and we’re going to talk about Keyless Property Management. Remember, guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and I mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 5X their business. And that’s by providing tools and resources to help you build the business you want to build and live the life that you want to live. So, Madeline, welcome to our show.

Madelyn (00:27.512)
Thank you so much for having me.

John Harcar (00:29.429)
You’re welcome. I’m super excited to talk about this, know, having rentals and, obviously, you know, with our investors having rentals, this is maybe something new, the whole keyless thing. But before we get into all that, right, before we get into the weeds, tell our audience a little bit about, you know, Madeline, you where you come from, what you do, how you got into real estate, why real estate, you know, how you got here.

Madelyn (00:52.622)
Well, I started in real estate right out of high school. I was actually in real estate school to get my license while I was still in high school. So I obtained my real estate license at the age of 18 and started as a traditional real estate broker. Three years after obtaining my license, I…

John Harcar (00:56.437)
Hmm.

John Harcar (01:02.322)
Wow.

John Harcar (01:13.877)
Mm-hmm.

Madelyn (01:19.416)
kind of felt a sweet spot for investors and and fighting investment properties. And I just found that it made sense to me because I could.

John Harcar (01:24.573)
Okay.

Madelyn (01:33.92)
I could build relationships with investors that were buying 10 to 20 properties a year and I didn’t have to find a new buyer or a new family to sell a home to when they were ready to move every five to 10 years. And I was interested in investments myself. And so after spending some time with some mentors, I just went solely into focusing on working with real estate investors.

John Harcar (01:50.974)
Okay.

John Harcar (02:02.549)
Okay.

Madelyn (02:03.23)
with wholesale, with fix and flips, with rentals. Started out with single family and then worked my way up to multi-family.

John Harcar (02:11.797)
Awesome. Now, I mean, let’s go back for a quick second because I think that’s kind of unique. high schoolers, seniors aren’t really taught thinking about their career right away, right? A lot of them are thinking about, hey, what made you decide that real estate was the avenue or the vehicle that you wanted to get into?

Madelyn (02:32.524)
Yeah, well, mean, don’t think there are very many of us that are sitting in high school necessarily dreaming about being a real estate broker. Real estate for me was a way to make a better living quicker than it would have taken eight years in college.

for me and I figured out earlier on that sitting in a cubicle or you know in one place for any length of time just wasn’t it wasn’t something that I was ever going to be able to really acclimate to not in an authentic way so

John Harcar (03:15.901)
or enjoy? Sure. Did you have any real estate influence in your life? Families, friends, did you know people that were doing, that were successful doing it?

Madelyn (03:26.702)
I had my aunt had been in real estate for many years in Denver, Colorado. And I used to go out with her on appointments when I was a kid. And I even had my own little briefcase that I would bring. And that’s when we used MLS books, know, the big books. And now I’m dating myself.

John Harcar (03:41.054)
how cool. Mm-hmm. Yep.

John Harcar (03:51.253)
You

Madelyn (03:52.014)
So I saw that earlier on and then I had a lot of family that also were into heavy highway construction and I got into helping them acquire water rights, mineral rights and land to help them with their business as they were pursuing various state jobs and highway jobs. it was kind of a natural, you know, low-hanging fruit for me, I suppose.

John Harcar (04:14.581)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (04:21.437)
Sure, sure. And you mentioned too that you found a mentor or mentors. Why was it important for you to go, you know, to make sure you sought out a mentor or someone to guide you?

Madelyn (04:21.808)
Peace.

Madelyn (04:35.896)
There aren’t really a lot of real estate agents that are experienced with investments. They’ll volunteer to find you investment properties, but I found that unless they’ve invested themselves.

They weren’t really bringing properties that were really of any value to investors without understanding the costs, the time involved, the hard money financing, an exit, what that looks like A to Z. And so one of my mentors was actually a Broncos player. I’ll keep that.

John Harcar (05:04.48)
huh.

John Harcar (05:15.91)
Madelyn (05:19.126)
Maybe I’ll let him tell it later. But I was fortunate enough to sort of have him take me on as a mentor. think, you you saw…

you know, that I could be successful and I was willing to do the grunt work and knock on doors and those things. And so, yeah, I’m just grateful that I did find the mentors because the real estate brokerage that I started with, there weren’t really a lot of investor focused agents. And so that’s, that’s what I had to do. And in order to really be able to see that through, I had to be working with somebody who was actually doing the investments active in the field and, and had successful.

John Harcar (05:34.613)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (06:00.168)
Mm-hmm.

Madelyn (06:02.795)
Exit.

John Harcar (06:03.741)
And how did you find this guy? mean, how did you seek out your mentors or look for mentors? Did you just go to Ria’s? Did you go to groups? What did you do?

Madelyn (06:12.386)
It sort of an accident because they also owned a mortgage company here in Denver, Colorado. And so in talks with them, trying to get other buyers pre-qualified is how that introduction was made. And then I just sort of, I asked, I liked, would hear about what they were doing and I wanted to be involved. And so I just asked if I could.

John Harcar (06:28.713)
Got it.

Madelyn (06:41.686)
tag along and told them that I wanted to learn and I think they just appreciated the ask.

John Harcar (06:46.651)
Well, yeah, I mean, because a lot of people don’t. I mean, that shows the drive that shows that, you know, the, you know, the willingness to do whatever you have to do to learn. And that’s awesome. You know, not like I No, no, I say not many people would be a lot people be afraid to go do that, right? They’d be afraid of the rejection, but you didn’t. You faced it. And that’s awesome.

Madelyn (06:57.346)
Yeah, and that’s, I’m sorry.

Madelyn (07:06.658)
Yeah. All they could have said was no.

John Harcar (07:10.421)
Yeah, exactly. And then what happens? Nothing. You’re in the same position you were before you asked. Okay, so what do you think are some of your bigger challenges as far as when you’re getting, and I know you were into real estate, but like on the investment side, like what do you think were some of the biggest challenges to whether either finding investor clients, investor properties? mean, what was your biggest roadblocks?

Madelyn (07:14.284)
Yeah.

Madelyn (07:33.836)
I think, well, I’ve found out that investors are easy to find. They’re everywhere. Or people that are trying to get into investing. The most challenge, the biggest challenge was finding the right properties.

John Harcar (07:39.196)
Mm-hmm.

Madelyn (07:53.622)
you know, I, through advertising and referral networks and a lot of out of state referral networks online, most of my deals personally and deals that I’ve wholesaled were estate sales or people that were just one life event, you know, and they were, they just wanted to get rid of these properties and, and there I was. And I was able to either buy them myself or

John Harcar (08:18.186)
Yeah.

Madelyn (08:23.626)
help other investors acquire them. that worked well, but I figured out also that it’s very transactional with rehab investments. And I’m not even sure why we call ourselves real estate investors when we’re flipping houses because it’s really, it’s a paycheck.

It’s a big paycheck and there’s a lot of risks that a lot of people don’t see and if you’re not doing it right, it can be really expensive and you can find yourself upside down pretty fast too on a rehab project. And I can go through a few stories because I like to learn things the hard way.

John Harcar (09:06.663)
Well, I share one. I love to have folks share mistakes that they might have made to, obviously, know, prevent our audience from making this at once.

Madelyn (09:16.78)
Well, I would say, you know, one of the most painful ones for me was a project where we were, we were probably about 80 % to completion. And this was a full rehab. We were about 80 % to completion and our, the painter and that being a woman GC has its own unique set of challenges, but the,

John Harcar (09:31.253)
Okay.

John Harcar (09:43.241)
That’s another podcast.

Madelyn (09:44.66)
Yeah, but the so the painter approached me and and was demanding to get paid but he wasn’t done yet and So I said well, why don’t you just finish? What I contracted you to do and I’m happy to pay you and His position was, you know Pay me or I’m gonna make things difficult for you and I don’t care if I’m done or not

And so I told him, well, why don’t we just figure out what’s fair for what you have completed? I’ll pay you that. You can move on. We could both move on. And he didn’t like that either. And so he called the city of Wheatridge. That’s where the property was located. And told them that I was completing work without a permit. And they showed up.

John Harcar (10:13.876)
Hmm.

John Harcar (10:23.316)
Yeah.

John Harcar (10:31.241)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (10:37.756)
You

Madelyn (10:39.508)
And they shut the project down for four months. For four months. on top of that, some of the other work that was done was not done correctly. It resulted in an environmental spill.

John Harcar (10:44.085)
Really?

John Harcar (10:59.509)
Oof.

Madelyn (11:01.938)
And so, yeah, it quickly became, you know, a easy $50,000 setback. And then at that point, the city of Wheat Ridge was already so upset. They weren’t in a hurry to help me with anything. And so since then, you know, from that pain and not wanting to duplicate it, I…

John Harcar (11:02.548)
Yeah.

John Harcar (11:17.205)
Mm-hmm.

Madelyn (11:28.406)
made sure that things were done with permits going forward that way. I wouldn’t find myself in that situation again. So that’s one.

John Harcar (11:38.46)
Yeah, yeah.

Madelyn (11:42.54)
That’s one of them.

John Harcar (11:42.675)
Let’s talk about a win. Let’s talk about a big success you had. You learned from your mistakes. Let’s talk about something that you maybe came across in situations, but once you knew what to do now, and it turned out good.

Madelyn (11:54.924)
Yeah, that was a win actually. I think there’s a silver lining in everything and everything because I learned working pretty close with a licensed general contractor to get that whole project reset in a way that allowed me to work in the way that I needed to to make sure that everything was in compliance. So that was a win.

John Harcar (11:58.696)
in everything.

John Harcar (12:21.663)
Mm-hmm.

Madelyn (12:22.254)
is expensive way to learn it, but that was a silver lining. And I’ve had a lot of wins. I’ve invested in properties out of state, locally in Denver, and a lot of my projects. I even have a…

John Harcar (12:24.553)
Ha ha ha ha ha

Madelyn (12:42.954)
One of one of the, one of the recognitions, if you will, was from a hard money lender that gave me a letter saying that I had achieved the quickest turn from acquisition to exit in the whole, the history of.

of anyone that had worked with them. inside of, yeah, inside of 50 days, I bought the property, did a full rehab and was closing with the end buyer. So yeah, yeah.

John Harcar (13:13.737)
Wow, congratulations!

John Harcar (13:22.225)
awesome let’s go let’s go you got it dialed in and it sounds like that you are extremely knowledgeable in all sides of the real estate right because you mentioned you were you know female GC you’re on the realty side you’re buying properties you’re negotiating properties if you had to kind of guide someone to say you know or something that maybe wants to get into any of this I mean what are your kind of overall what’s your first advice that you would give

Madelyn (13:49.688)
Find a mentor. Find somebody that’s really gonna help you. When I started, I was 18 years old and I joined a real estate brokerage that had a big name. And so I thought that, you know, automatically there was gonna be mentorship, there was gonna be training and somebody was gonna be there to help me, you know, make sure that I got traction. Cause I was all in. I didn’t have…

John Harcar (14:13.532)
huh. Sure.

Madelyn (14:18.382)
you know, I didn’t have people willing to pay my way. I was, and I was working at night and doing real estate during the day, so I needed to get traction fast. And so my advice is to not just look for the big company name, but see what their real promise is as far as helping you A to Z, make sure that you’re not just another.

John Harcar (14:40.213)
Mm-hmm.

Madelyn (14:46.914)
broker, another number.

in their office and later years when I had my own brokerage, I’ve sold it now. When I had my own brokerage, I was always for my agents, my new agents who I needed when I started. And I would say at least 90 % of the agents that I helped were closing deals in their first two or three months. So that’s the difference is getting with a team that is actually has an action plan to help agents get out of the blocks quickly.

John Harcar (15:03.039)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (15:10.087)
Wow, that’s awesome.

Madelyn (15:18.8)
for traditional sales, but for investments, know, that really is a different animal. And what I’ve found in later years, I’ve built and successfully exited two property management companies.

John Harcar (15:19.615)
Got it.

John Harcar (15:35.624)
Okay.

Madelyn (15:36.402)
and I’ve invested in ton of multifamily and rental properties to date. And more recently, I specialize in buying multifamily, building up the income and flipping them for the income value.

John Harcar (15:55.793)
Okay, so you buy like what like three to four, five units rehabbing and selling?

Madelyn (16:01.898)
Yeah, for the most part on average I would say maybe up to 10 units just for a quicker turn. If you get into the larger ones that have 100 plus units it takes a while.

John Harcar (16:10.708)
Okay. Sure.

John Harcar (16:16.533)
Yeah How many of those are you doing a month a year? Like do you have a set amount that you’re doing give a bullet run hit?

Madelyn (16:24.974)
I’ve kind of slowed down right now on that as a focus to spend more time on a cause that I felt that was more…

that would be a bigger contribution to our investor community. I’m the founder and CEO of Tenant Guided Tours plus Access. And it’s a software solution that is taking property management key lists with access management and automated rental showings to do away with hard copy keys.

John Harcar (16:39.829)
Okay.

John Harcar (16:55.412)
Huh.

Madelyn (17:04.318)
I feel that maintaining the status quo and chasing keys is inefficient.

John Harcar (17:09.366)
huh.

Is that the basis as to why you started or what kind of a cause? mean, obviously, once again, it sounds like you’ve had great success. I mean, and I do want to ask one thing is, you know, we know how the real estate market markets go and how the business is. It’s brutal and it beats you up. One thing I like to ask folks when I’m talking to them is what kind of mindset helped you get through the tough times that gosh, is this going to work or dang, this deal is going to kill me or whatever. Like what mindset did you use to

pushing forward because you seem to have just keep plugging through and killed everything.

Madelyn (17:47.168)
I think,

You know, there’s been a lot of times where I’ve spun out, you know, where I hit something that’s discouraging. But I think one of my strengths is my ability to recover quickly and keep moving. Because if you don’t move, you drown. What are you going to do?

John Harcar (18:11.679)
Yep.

Madelyn (18:14.218)
And after being in the same vein in real estate for so long and getting it so close to being maybe at an expert level, it doesn’t make sense to start all over and chase another shiny object. And so there’s always an angle. And what I learned especially during the last crash in 2008 is there’s an opportunity in every market. You just need to be on the right side of it.

John Harcar (18:24.637)
Yeah. Yeah.

John Harcar (18:36.371)
Always.

Yeah, awesome.

Madelyn (18:41.288)
And Last Crash did a lot of work with REO, with banks, and killed it while other people were filing for bankruptcy. it was, I should have moved quicker than I did, honestly, when that happened. But if you remember, it happened pretty fast.

John Harcar (18:52.045)
yeah.

John Harcar (18:57.684)
rounding.

John Harcar (19:06.739)
It did very fast.

Madelyn (19:08.106)
It was a matter of months and so pivoting to REO really is what saved me from having to go get a real job.

John Harcar (19:22.229)
So now let’s talk about this keyless thing again, right? That’s what let’s really talk about the topic Where did you see the need or why did you see the need? I mean now you mentioned chasing around keys and stuff But what you know, what was it was there something specific that said hey, this is what I’m going to do

Madelyn (19:41.08)
I have been thinking about it for a long time. in showing, you know, when you’re properties or your team is showing properties, they’re meeting strangers at vacant houses. And there’s people walking in one after the next.

John Harcar (19:59.369)
Yeah.

Madelyn (19:59.67)
And sometimes you have a crowd standing behind you. And as a leasing agent on my team, sometimes I could see how that would be a nerving. And then also in other situations, we were allowing self-guided tours. We would get a copy of their ID. If somebody couldn’t be there, we didn’t want to tell them they couldn’t see the property. In our client’s best interest, we’re trying to lease the property as quickly as possible, not when it’s convenient for us. And so in some cases we were collecting their ID.

John Harcar (20:19.796)
Right.

John Harcar (20:25.781)
Mm-hmm.

Madelyn (20:29.584)
and allowing the self-guided tours, but we’re giving them the lockbox code to do that. so, and at the same time, we have clients that are trusting us as property managers to keep their properties secure, not give strangers access. If somebody from your field couldn’t go back to the property that day and change the access code, and they came back that night, you know, what’s…

John Harcar (20:36.329)
Yeah.

John Harcar (20:54.677)
Man, became squatters.

Madelyn (20:56.686)
that or property damage or theft and things like that. so, and then also with kind of one-off maintenance vendors, have your HVAC guy is busy on everything else and you have another work order that comes up. Sometimes you got to pull from outside of your normal folks to make sure that you’re getting it resolved and you’re giving them the lockbox code.

John Harcar (21:25.727)
Yeah.

Madelyn (21:26.954)
So I just, and you know, as somebody that as a rental investor and as a property manager, you really, it just feels like it was going to be a matter of time before something did happen. And, and then that, or if you’re really secure about it with the access,

John Harcar (21:38.76)
Yeah, something.

Madelyn (21:48.15)
It’s not efficient to pay another team member to drive around from property to property for different sides of town for showings and letting people in. You would really need somebody full time just running keys. so, and it makes it difficult to scale when you…

John Harcar (22:00.648)
Yeah

Madelyn (22:08.332)
you have somebody that’s just running around delivering keys and you know, there’s a liability there too for your company to have somebody driving around because you asked them to and we’re burning gas. just it’s it’s yeah, it’s a status quo that I like it just it’s inefficient and so it was something I thought about for years and just it was a thought and finally I just decided to

John Harcar (22:12.063)
Yeah.

John Harcar (22:18.655)
Yep.

John Harcar (22:22.803)
Now I get it.

Madelyn (22:38.572)
find a developer and get it going because it’s going to help me and my business, the other investors in my network. And it’s a big problem to solve. Like electronic signature software was before it came along. And with my handwriting,

John Harcar (22:50.389)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (22:58.015)
bright shirt.

Madelyn (23:02.412)
But so I just felt like it was a problem that needed to be solved that can help a lot of people help us as property managers be more efficient, keep our properties secure, allow us to scale faster and to do it with peace of mind.

John Harcar (23:08.423)
Yeah.

John Harcar (23:17.493)
So does it reset the code like every time someone goes in and out? It’s like this. And with the advancements in technologies, I mean, this just seems like this should have been here by now anyways. But I get the self-guided tour parts, but I didn’t take that into account that that doesn’t reset, but yours does. So it’s kind of a layer of peace of mind.

Madelyn (23:26.764)
Yeah.

Madelyn (23:35.66)
It does. Yeah, so whenever access is granted, like for showing, and that showing appointment is 10 or 15 minutes, that code is only good for that 15 minutes. So as soon as that door closes, that code is done, and then the next person’s coming in. And our software works with doorbell cameras.

John Harcar (23:50.591)
Right.

John Harcar (23:55.101)
Smart. Smart.

Madelyn (24:00.202)
So you can make sure that whoever’s coming in is the person on the ID that was uploaded in our system. Make sure it’s the same person. And then also for monitoring vacant properties.

They’re motion activated so you get an alert if somebody’s there at one in the morning or obviously outside of hours or any time. You get an alert to look at the cameras to see who’s there, maybe even prevent something from happening if something is going to happen. Because you can talk through the doorbell cameras also. You can talk to whoever is there.

John Harcar (24:13.897)
Yeah.

John Harcar (24:40.359)
Sure, who was there?

Madelyn (24:43.798)
integration and that’s also an upgrade that tenants enjoy. mean having smart properties. So after the property is leased, we’re using smart locks and we’re also financing them to make them affordable because when you’re putting together the cost of a good smart lock like Schlagg, the ENCODE and the Wi-Fi enabled smart locks, the smart locks, the cameras,

John Harcar (24:55.381)
huh.

John Harcar (25:07.415)
huh.

Madelyn (25:13.648)
the modems and the digital locks for your other doors to keep them keyless. It comes out to about $600 a door. And so if you’ve got a large portfolio and you’re, know, so we’ve, we’re financing them to make that affordable. And then tenants are moving into a home that’s, they’re able to, that’s already a smart house. It’s got the camera. We have the Echo Dot is part of the package also for the chime on the doorbell. They get to use that. So there’s benefits for

John Harcar (25:21.333)
Mmm.

John Harcar (25:28.597)
Okay.

John Harcar (25:42.165)
Mm-hmm.

Madelyn (25:43.52)
for them as well and during their tenancy if they have guests that they want to let in with the one-time passcode, a pet sitter, somebody watching their house while they’re gone or cleaners, what have you, they have access to the same benefits also for the one-time passcodes.

John Harcar (25:52.947)
Hmm, okay.

John Harcar (26:03.605)
It were great too for situations like me. Like I have a son that comes over and he has a key. Uh, he can get in anytime, but with that, I don’t have to let him in because he won’t have the code. Um, well that’s awesome. mean, but, but I like the fact how it does. It has so many different features and functions. You know I mean? It’s not just that one key.

Madelyn (26:12.62)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Madelyn (26:22.158)
Thank

John Harcar (26:25.831)
You know, it’s got other things that it could do. How are you marketing and advertising? How are you bringing your clients out? Are you just doing social media?

Madelyn (26:26.636)
Yeah. Yeah.

Madelyn (26:33.198)
We are launching officially next week Yeah, we weren’t it is brand new. We’re in testing right now. We have a patent that’s getting filed today Thank you and and then we have a actually

John Harcar (26:36.359)
okay, so this is brand new. How exciting.

John Harcar (26:46.057)
Congratulations. That is awesome.

Madelyn (26:54.67)
pretty large marketing campaign that is going to be launching in tandem of our software and they’re ready. So I’m excited.

John Harcar (27:05.749)
Excited yeah, no that seems like this is exciting time for you and your business and you know I’m super happy that you came on here to Share your story shared, you know this new venture that you’re doing if folks want to get a hold of you and kind of maybe find out a little bit more about it after they watch this How do they how do they reach out to you?

Madelyn (27:24.43)
Our website is tenantguidedtours.com to reach out to for any questions or sales regarding the service or my email address is madelyn at tenantguidedtours.com or you can find me on investorfuel.

John Harcar (27:46.835)
Yep, there you go. And we’re gonna put all the links down at the bottom of the show notes. So guys, any, you you’ll have all the contact to get a hold of her. And man, I hope you guys enjoyed the show like I did today. A lot of good nuggets. Thank you for sharing your story. I love your new venture. I think it sounds great, especially for, you know, portfolio owners. I mean, can save a lot of money and save a lot of headache. So guys, hope you enjoyed this show. We look forward to seeing you on the next one. Bye bye.

Madelyn (28:09.218)
Yes.

Madelyn (28:14.35)
Thank you so much. Bye.