Unlocking Seattle’s Real Estate Secrets: Landlord-Tenant Insights Revealed

Dylan Silver (00:00.785)
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. Our guest today is a prominent real estate attorney in the Seattle area, guiding landlords of all sizes through the market’s unique challenges, as well as investors buying and selling. Please welcome the president and founder of illuminate law group, Brian Muchinsky.

Brian Muchinsky (00:20.012)
Hey Dylan, thanks for having me.

Dylan Silver (00:21.465)
Absolutely. Brian, thanks for coming on the show. And I always start off at the top with how folks got into the real estate space.

Brian Muchinsky (00:31.458)
Sure, well, I went straight through college, no time off between undergrad and law school. I did buy a house with some help from my parents. I still remember reading that purchase and sale agreement, being mystified by it at age 21 or whatever it was.

And just by good fortune, the first job that I got out of law school was at a firm that did a lot of landlord-tenant, primarily on the commercial side. But it’s just been a part of the DNA of my practice from day one, representing mostly landlords, but tenants as well, and buyers and sellers. And so it’s just the luck of the draw, I guess, how we all find ourselves wherever we are, that real estate’s big part of my life.

Dylan Silver (01:20.887)
Brian, are you a lifelong Washington native?

Brian Muchinsky (01:24.886)
No, thanks for asking. I was born and raised in Ames, Iowa. Go cyclones. I spent my entire childhood there. I went to Syracuse for my undergrad. I thought I might be in your seat someday, broadcast journalism major kind of thing.

Dylan Silver (01:28.957)
Brian Muchinsky (01:42.254)
Then instead of, I did stand-up comedy. I thought I wanted to be an entertainer for a while. I chickened out like many do and took the LSATs and pulled the parachute cord and found myself in law. But I went to law school in Seattle and I’ve been here ever since.

Dylan Silver (01:58.343)
I could dive into both cities. I’m from New Jersey in a town called Caldwell, or West Caldwell, which is really close to Montclair. If people don’t know Montclair, it’s Hoboken or Newark, right? And so I have a very fond place in my heart for Syracuse because Carmelo Anthony was on their team and I believe they either won or progressed very far into the March Madness tournament, which of course we’re seeing right now.

Brian Muchinsky (02:20.238)
2003, Carmelo, Jerry McNamara led him to the title. One of the highlights of certainly my sports life and probably embarrassingly pretty high in my career, life highlights in general. But yeah, know Syracuse, Jim Beheim for decades built a real legacy there. So yeah, yeah, a lot of my classmates were from Jersey. yeah, kindred spirits.

Dylan Silver (02:46.203)
And Brian, being in the Seattle area, how did you land out there in Seattle?

Brian Muchinsky (02:52.302)
I met my first wife at Syracuse. She was from Seattle. So she spoke very highly of the area. And so after we both graduated at the same time from Syracuse, we both got into different programs at the grad school out here at University of Washington. Huskies. And yeah, yeah, I three years of law school and landed that job I told you about and been doing real estate law and general civil practice ever since.

Dylan Silver (03:20.559)
I it’s interesting because I’m out here in Texas by happenstance for a relationship in the past and as they say my exes quite literally live in Texas. I think about going back home to New Jersey, I tell people I miss Italian people and Italian food of which I’m not Italian but I do miss it quite dearly because out here Italian is like Olive Garden. But I have been to Seattle and every time I think I’ve been a

Brian Muchinsky (03:30.222)
All of them?

Dylan Silver (03:49.249)
twice and both times that I went I was shocked with how much there was tech out there. This was in the mid 2000s, 2010s. How much tech there was and how rainy it was but I said wow this is a really nice city so I can kind of imagine you know a life out there and starting out in a career and then building a career and calling that home.

Brian Muchinsky (04:12.514)
Very blessed. Seattle is fabulous. We try to upsell the rain to keep people from moving here. But I guess from a real estate perspective, move here. Drive up the prices. Come join us.

Dylan Silver (04:23.567)
Yeah, exactly. And Brian, you know, I think for folks who are listening, real estate, of course, we live in a litigious society, it’s becoming increasingly so. But specifically in real estate, with the advent of all this information publicly available, you have people who are really for lack of a better term,

Using the cards in their hand to maybe take advantage of of the system you see it with Airbnb I don’t even know if this is legitimate or not, but I’ve heard stories about people squatting and Airbnb’s I don’t know how that is possible And and you know all of this can seem overwhelming and certainly concerning Are these stories valid you can only speak to Washington, but does this type of thing actually happen?

Brian Muchinsky (05:12.46)
Yes, I can’t speak to every story and you you listen to 10 stories on the internet.

One eight of them might not be true, but what I can tell you definitely is that yes, if you want to start with a warning to Airbnb investors, yes, you enter into a contract that certainly in Washington, it may vary state to state. It’s a contract that gives a right of possession to someone else. And when you endow someone with a right of possession to your real estate, all things equal, if they don’t leave, you don’t get the remedy of what we

we call self-help, where you grab them by the scruff of the neck or the shirt and you throw them out. The law of eviction evolved to prevent the violence that ensues when people attempt to engage in self-help remedies. And so, yes, there was one particular case, a colleague of mine was involved. I talked to the man himself.

about possibly joining in the representation. I want him not doing it, but I think he was known colloquially around here as Van Guy. He rented out his house to an Airbnb. didn’t leave, and so he wound up living in his van outside his house. And the Odyssey through the King County court system was long and painful. And so, yes, there’s no doubt that that is a risk.

Dylan Silver (06:47.613)
And so for folks who are listening and for me myself, I’m in Texas, right? And before we hopped on, I was mentioning to you, you my mentor kind of steers clear of Dallas specifically, but he’s very active in other areas. Now going to Washington, are there similarly specific areas of Washington which may be significantly favorable to landlords and investors, or is it in a way similar all throughout the state?

Brian Muchinsky (07:17.143)
That’s a great question. Seattle itself is particularly

protective of tenants rights. There’s a just cause, Seattle ordinance that applies. so generally speaking, landlord practitioners out here have to be aware of regulations at the city, county, and state level. And more direct answer to your question, Washington is actually geographically largely a rural state. You have essentially a tri-county area here on the west side of the state that’s very

urban, but most of the state is relatively rural and thanks to Zoom courts post-COVID, most courts have stayed with the Zoom system so I actually can practice in basically any county in the state and the more rural the area is, generally speaking, your mileage may vary.

the less hostile they are to property owner rights. And the more rural, or the more urban you are, excuse me, the more hostile they are to property owner rights.

Dylan Silver (08:29.405)
Now on a theory level, of course we have to stick to Washington because that’s where you’re located out of. I’ve seen this throughout the country and this is just, I have no legal background, right? I’m just an outsider looking in, just like many of our listeners. As you go closer to these metropolises, to these cities, it does seem to get more protective of tenants’ rights. Is there a general reason why that is or is that just kind of how it’s always been?

Brian Muchinsky (08:58.03)
I can’t speak to always, but certainly since COVID, big cities have, again, certainly Seattle, the homelessness crisis in Seattle, which is perfectly valid, by the way, there is a homelessness crisis in this region. And so the politics centers around that. And essentially,

my own editorial opinion is that certain people in certain positions of power in my area have decided they’re helping to solve the homelessness crisis by making the courts as inhospitable as possible for property owners, be they billion dollar REITs or a mom and pop who work their butt off to buy a second house and they rent out the house they used to live in and then, know,

forbid they get one of these bad apples who slides in and doesn’t want to leave.

Dylan Silver (09:59.133)
You know, it seems interesting, because I lived in Boston for six years. I also am from New Jersey, right? And now I’m in Texas, right? So of course, living in the greater DFW Metro, real estate prices are still higher than they are, you know, in the boonies in Texas, far away from any Metro. But if you compare it to Boston or Hoboken, New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey, or for sure New York City, it’s lower in price. However,

I do notice that it’s interesting that you have higher prices in cities, but also unfavorable regulations and procedures for landlords. So it’s almost a double-edged sword as a real estate investor because you want to have your properties, those that you’re gonna rent out and not flip, in an area where they can command a high rent. But at the same point in time,

If you’re in these areas, you can speak specifically to Seattle, you have to be very careful of your strategy because the eviction process can be very long and tenuous and very costly. as an investor yourself, how do you feel about kind of judging? Do I go into the city where there’s increased regulation versus do I go away from the city where maybe I might not be able to command as much in rent?

Brian Muchinsky (11:24.044)
I’m a big baseball fan, so maybe this is a tortured analogy, but out in the rural areas, they got the single A teams and the double A teams, you get fastball and maybe a curveball. Or you can try to play in the show, and the show is in the big cities. Far more upside in the cities and far more risk and far more competition.

My suggestion is that you go deal by deal. And certainly in this age, with information ubiquitous, you don’t have to pick one or the other. So it really is opportunity by opportunity. But all things equal, yeah. If you want to play in the big city, be prepared for stiffer competition and greater risk.

Dylan Silver (12:11.645)
In the Seattle area, Brian, are you seeing a push against the short-term rental space as far as has there been any movement to maybe even make it so that people cannot do Airbnbs in Seattle?

Brian Muchinsky (12:26.526)
Not to my knowledge. mean, Washington State Legislature is currently considering further reforms to landlord-tenant law to align us more with New York City. So you can imagine which way politically these potential reforms would lean. perhaps well-intentioned, almost certainly well-intentioned, but anytime they change the rules,

whether they’re trying to make it easier on landlords, trying to make it harder, it’s good for my industry because what it definitely does is make things more confusing. And so it makes it even harder for a non-lawyer to try to navigate the real estate space in particular, based on what we’re talking.

Dylan Silver (13:14.897)
Yeah, it’s incredible because I took the real estate license exam in Texas, right? Different state, but similar experience here. And the whole exam seemed like, here’s all the law, you’re never allowed to use it, but you have to know everything. And so it was a very, very difficult exam. Texas.

Brian Muchinsky (13:34.892)
Learn it all, but don’t share any of it with anybody else.

Dylan Silver (13:37.701)
Yeah, you can’t do a single thing, but you have to know about every single agency and act and what you, you know, the limits of your purview, if you will, and agency, my goodness. But I digress, you know, I think when people are hearing about just how difficult it can be, it does scare some people away. At the same point in time, to your point, Brian, it is the big leagues, right? So if you’re going to be an investor,

that is probably the destination if you’re in Washington, right? And so as a general rule of thumb, are there kind of a standard SOP that a newer investor who’s looking into the short-term rental space in Seattle should follow if this is their first short-term rental?

Brian Muchinsky (14:25.294)
I’ll speak to potential buyers, I guess. And I don’t know, I’m not trying to sidestep your question, but I don’t have a fountain of wisdom for Airbnb owners other than, yeah, be careful and expect, know, essentially.

My philosophy is most people try to do the right thing. They pay their rent, they try to do their best, but X percent of people are just bad actors who are gonna try to work the system. so my personal view, which may not be very popular with your listeners, they might all just turn it off and listen to something else, is if you rent to 10 people, you might be fine. If you rent to 100 people, I don’t know, you rent to 1,000 people, you’re going to

run into some of these bad actors who can drain the return on your investment with remarkable and startling efficiency. And so to me, maybe you look at it as sort of the zero on the roulette wheel, but yeah, just be careful and expect the worst to happen sooner or later is the best I have there.

Dylan Silver (15:40.551)
You know, this is interesting. I spoke with a gentleman yesterday or the day before who’s in the midterm rental space, which I had never thought too much about, but effectively he is providing housing, corporate housing as he calls it, for nurses or for traveling business people who need some type of in-between between, you know, they can’t do a year-to-year lease and they can’t do a super short term, right? And so this seems to kind of be

a way to hedge against that type of risk. Are you seeing in Seattle specifically less injury to landlords who are in the midterm space or is there still risk even in that space, although maybe less?

Brian Muchinsky (16:27.054)
That’s a fair question. I have sort of a limited sample size, right? Ask a dentist how many people have toothaches and they’ll say everybody because that’s all I see. I will tell you I have not had any clients come to me in the mid-market space, the corporate housing space as you…

describe it and I’ve heard that term as well. you have anecdotal evidence of sample size of me that yes, that is a way that keeps you clear of the courts. And I guess another one to lay on that real quick, sorry to cut you off. If the nurse works for a company, so imagine corporate housing. You have an employer paying the rent for an employee.

Dylan Silver (16:58.685)
And so, yeah.

Brian Muchinsky (17:12.174)
you don’t just have the landlord tenant leverage over that person. You have the employer employee leverage. So yeah, the employee could theoretically chain themselves to the radiator and put the landlord through hell, but landlord, or excuse me, employer won’t tolerate that at all. And so it makes sense to me that there is this added layer of protection for landlords in a space where

an employer writes the check and the employee uses the fridge.

Dylan Silver (17:43.953)
Demographically and population wise, are we seeing mass influx into Seattle right now or are seeing tech go to other areas of the country like your Texas’s, your Florida’s?

Brian Muchinsky (17:56.558)
We lose some, but in general, Seattle is still a massive hotbed for technology. I’m speaking in hearsay, as my people like to say, but from what I understand, when Amazon was going to open their big office in New York City and there was a huge cry and a big announcement and then everybody…

Many people objected, blah, blah, blah. They quietly essentially moved to Bellevue, Bellevue, Washington, which is a suburb across Lake Washington from Seattle. And so we’ve had a massive influx in Bellevue alone of Amazon workers. We still have a lot of Microsoft and we have Google here. yeah, from where I’m sitting,

Seattle is still a vastly growing area in tech which has fueled, I’m not going to wood here, sustainable increases in real estate prices.

Dylan Silver (19:02.183)
You know, Brian, you’re my first guest from Seattle specifically. I may have had one other guest from Washington or from that general area, but this is good feedback to have. And I think folks who are thinking which area of the country to invest in, especially right now with technology and in the next year, year and a half, two years, we’re gonna see even more of this. There’s many investors who are able to do it remotely or almost remotely to the point where I even.

was speaking to a gentleman who’s in Miami and all he does is manage the communications for Airbnb hosts. He doesn’t do the cleaning, he doesn’t have the deeds in his name, but he manages the communications. He does it in the United States, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, and Belize. And so, this is for folks who are in other areas of the country, they may hear this and think, well, maybe I should look into Seattle.

But follow up to that, with Airbnb specifically, you hear these horror stories like we alluded to earlier on in the show here of someone coming in and squatting. As an outsider, this is a basic question, how are they able to do that without representation? Are they showing up to court themselves and effectively the landlord has an attorney and they’re paying lots of money?

and the tenant is representing themselves.

Brian Muchinsky (20:27.566)
Great question, no. In Seattle in particular, there are free lawyers for tenants through a project called the Housing Justice Project. And so in eviction proceedings, not only are you not doing battle with a pro se, an unrepresented person, but a lot of them have a free lawyer.

and in the COVID and early post-COVID era.

opinion here obviously, they were having massive success with arguments that did not ring from my biased ears as landing in good faith. Hyper-technical defenses, real and imagined, stymieing landlords seemingly at every turn. And so Van Guy, who I mentioned earlier, had

had just a couple setbacks, but they sent him back months and months and months and months. And so, yeah, yeah, if you come to Seattle and you wanna own real estate and rent it out and you wind up having to sue someone for eviction, expect them to have a free lawyer.

Dylan Silver (21:52.647)
So this is news to me. I didn’t realize that outside of criminal, which am I wrong in saying this is not criminal? Is it?

Brian Muchinsky (22:02.382)
You’re exactly right, this is not criminal. Sometimes tenants engage in criminal behavior, which is a basis to evict, but what we’re talking about by definition, when you’re talking to me, is a court proceeding that governs possession to real property, not whether they get thrown in jail.

Dylan Silver (22:20.157)
Yeah, I was totally unfamiliar that anywhere in the country, and this is my ignorance, that people are being represented effectively pro bono. In my mind, I’m thinking that these eviction proceedings have to be happening with some regularity, specifically during COVID, but of course continuing till today. So when someone is being represented or requests this representation from this pro bono group, will that then push out the proceedings until someone is available or is there an abundance of these pro bono attorneys who are able to help?

Brian Muchinsky (22:49.87)
You’re asking great questions. Yeah, it depends. Sometimes they show up right away and immediately demand continuances or requests, which are initially granted as a matter of course. But yes, sometimes the tenant will say, hey, they haven’t gotten to me yet. Please give me more time. And so you can.

Dylan Silver (22:52.21)
Ha

Brian Muchinsky (23:15.148)
you can confront arguments for delay in all kinds of scenarios and ultimately from the landlord’s perspective.

know, justice delayed is justice denied is a tired cliche, but every day that a tenant lives rent free on your property is a day that costs you money. so, yeah, winning an eviction case 14 months after it’s filed is a win, but the losses, especially for these mom and pop investors, can be catastrophic.

Dylan Silver (23:49.761)
I mean, I’m only imagining that if someone’s squatting, it’s due to financial hardship, emotional distress, a combination. So then if you’re able to evict them, you you’ve still lost 14 months. I mean, that sounds like tens of thousands of dollars, potentially. What recourse will a landlord have against a tenant if they, you don’t have the ability to even pay the rent?

Brian Muchinsky (24:15.822)
your recourse is through the courts. And so, you know, why do people squat? Back to my personal hypothesis that most people are good people.

let’s drill down a level on that. Most people who don’t pay their rent and don’t leave, you know, job loss, know, some legitimate basis that they simply can’t meet their obligations. And then you’ve got that subset who are just maliciously using the system. I there were a couple examples. This is here to say, not my particular clients, but high rise, high rent.

Guy said, hey, you know, I realized that you don’t get to charge me interest based on blah, blah, blah. So I’m not gonna pay my rent for a year. I’m gonna go invest that money in the market, make 12%, and then I’ll pay you when I have to and not before. And so, yeah, you just have some people who exploit a gap in our system for financial gain.

Dylan Silver (25:24.189)
So in the case, Brian, where someone has squatted for that period of time, court proceedings take some time. Landlord wins, tenant is evicted. Is the landlord then able to somehow recoup any of the rents that they missed, or is it just they’re evicted and the landlord has to take the losses and lick their wounds?

Brian Muchinsky (25:45.678)
Great question again. I will come out of an eviction proceeding. You hire me to evict a tenant. They don’t pay rent unless we negotiate something else for any reasons that we might. I will come out of that proceeding not only with possession, but a money judgment for the unpaid rent. let’s say, myriad examples of this. I now have a judgment against the squatter tenant for $30,000.

How do I collect that? And so in general, very broad terms, a bit off topic, but the most common way you can effectively collect money, in my experience, is through people who own.

real estate because you can attach a judgment to realty and then whenever they want to buy, refinance, the escrow agent types in and they find your judgment and my favorite calls of all are when my phone rings and says, I’m with blah, blah, blah escrow. We’ve got this judgment that you filed six years ago against blah, blah, blah. And so can you get me a payoff quote? And then I get to get out my calculator and calculate 12 % interest for six years.

and send a nice big, you know, nice email to the escrow company. But the problem in my experience is when you’re dealing with people who are evicted, it is by definition a self-selected group of essentially judgment-proof people. They certainly don’t own a place where that’s where they’d have been squatting. And so once in a great while, for people who just like do tens of thousands of like damage, it isn’t just unpaid rent, but just malice and…

I will be tasked with attempting to collect against someone and I can do garnishments and that kind of thing. And occasionally you can get some pennies in the door. But because these judgments are so generally uncollectible.

Brian Muchinsky (27:39.096)
The advice that I give landlords most of the time is if they will give you the keys sooner, you walk away from the right to the money. Just recoup your losses, cut your losses as quickly as you can, get the keys back, get it turned over to a tenant who can pay.

Dylan Silver (27:56.645)
I’m of course totally ignorant to in many ways the foreclosure proceedings here in Texas as a new agent, but certainly in other states. But my general feedback from living here is that it’s not what it is in other states and that specifically some areas of Texas, you could have someone out in 90 days. And I’m probably butchering the explanation here. Again, this is not legal advice. not an attorney, right?

You it seems like you give them a 30 day notice, you know, you go to the courts and then there’s an official eviction proceeding, right? And then sometimes it can be, you know, a relatively quicker turnaround. But I hear these stories like from other states, Washington, New York, my home state of New Jersey, California, and it seems like people can potentially squat there. Not I don’t want to say easily, but with.

without significant hindrance for easily months on end, half a year, is that kind of the case in Seattle where there’s really nothing preventing someone from squatting if they’re a tenant on a 12 month lease?

Brian Muchinsky (29:09.676)
Yes, that’s right. And so maybe people use the, I’m not giving legal advice either by the way. I hope that’s your language somewhere. But.

Dylan Silver (29:15.866)
Ha

Brian Muchinsky (29:18.926)
We might be thinking of different things when we both use the word squatter. To me, a squatter is someone who is occupying someone else’s land and choosing not to leave and not to pay rent. That makes them a squatter. Now, squatters can also be homeless people who break into an unoccupied house, for example. But in general, if you accept my definition, then absolutely, by definition,

a landlord who realizes, my tenant is now a month behind in rent. If at that moment they proactively choose to hire a lawyer and pursue eviction, you will not get possession of that property in King County. Things have gotten better, I should say, but at best for four months, probably closer to six.

Dylan Silver (30:11.741)
You know, as I’m hearing all this, you know, it’s interesting because again, what we talked about earlier, like, do you want to play in the big leagues or do you want to be in double A, triple A, know, single A? And it does come with, with its fair share of perils. And I think that’s why having a real estate attorney, everyone in the real estate space who’s an investor for sure needs to have one. But, you know, I’ve spoken before I got my real estate license, I spoke with an attorney to say, can I even wholesale properties

do assignable contracts in texas because i was going to a school and fort worth which was you know lovely school but they really but we’re very much saying you know stay away from from wholesale so i wanted to get that perspective before i before i became a licensed agent so folks you know if you’re in the seattle area looking for a real estate attorney i would just say reach out to brian

and I think he could be a trusted resource there for you. Brian, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get ahold of you?

Brian Muchinsky (31:15.086)
Thanks again for having me. This has been really great. My law firm’s website is www.illuminatelg.com. So illuminatelag.com. And then my last name is spelled M-U-C-H-I-N-S-K-Y. You can find me through…

search of my name. But yeah, we’re a five attorney firm. I consider us a full service boutique civil practice. And so we also do trust and estates litigation, which actually overlays with real estate in some fascinating ways we obviously won’t get to today. But my real estate skills come in pretty handy in the trust and estates litigation world too. But yeah, if you’re having any, I consider myself a problem solver by trade. And so if

got a problem and you’re near me reach out and we’ll see if can help you. pleasure. Have a great day. Bye.

Dylan Silver (32:11.677)
Brian, thanks for coming on the show.

Dylan Silver (32:17.371)
All right.