RENT TO WIN

WELCOME

Hey, y’all I am back and I am tired. Oh, my stars and stripes, I love Las Vegas so much, but every time I fly home and see the Atlanta skyline I’m always a little relieved. Is it possible to have too much fun? If so, I may have had it.

Anyway, I want to build on the discussion we started last week. I didn’t share the whole story when I was talking about the female buyer. So today I’m going to fill in the blanks and speak from firsthand experience of what can happen when you buy a home to rent. And for those who aren’t yet investing in real estate, take this as your sign that it’s time to start!

STORYTIME WITH GLENNDA

Your First Rental Property Is Probably Closer Than You Think

I want to continue the conversation we started last week about women buying homes, because I didn’t tell y’all my part of the story. (I think I was too excited thinking about heading to Vegas.)

Anyway, everybody assumes that when a woman gets divorced, the fight is about the who gets to keep the house. I’m talking about the marital house with the fancy address and the Christmas card staircase. People think that's the prize, for so many people, it is. But when I got divorced, I understood something very quickly: the house I shared with my ex was not the asset. No, ma’am. Our rental properties were.

My ex-husband wanted the optics of hanging onto the big house. To him, staying in that house represented winning. He was looking for the outward-facing symbol that he had come out on top in a divorce where I spent five-figures on attorney fees just to keep a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of Adirondack chairs. (But that’s another story.)

The thing is, I was sitting there looking at the long game. I wasn’t wrapped up in the notion of impressing people. I cared about the income and security that came from owning a rental home. I wanted to hold onto what was going to keep paying me long after everybody stopped caring who got what in the divorce. And that is why I fought for—and won—the rentals.

I believe that this mindset is exactly why women are becoming some of the smartest real estate buyers in America right now. I've been talking for months about how the most motivated buyer in today's market is the single woman. That includes divorced women, widows, empty nesters, women starting over, women leveling up, women who are tired of waiting for permission to build a life they actually want. What’s so exciting to me is that many of these women aren’t just buying homes to live in. Nope. Instead, they're starting to think like investors.

I’m talking about women buying a townhouse because they know they can rent it later. Women buying condos for their kids in college instead of paying four years of rent to somebody else. Women keeping the first house after they move because the interest rate is too good to lose. Women inheriting property from parents and realizing maybe they should hold it instead of selling it immediately. In each case, it’s women investing in themselves.

Now, the thing I need y'all to understand is that most of these people do not think of themselves as "real estate investors." There’s a real misconception that real estate investing is for people with giant portfolios, with thirty-seven doors scattered across three counties. They assume owning rental property means they have to shell out a ton of money to some expensive property management company taking 10% of your revenue. Plus, there’s the maintenance staff, as well as some finance bro named Chad handling spreadsheets in a WeWork.

The hard and fast truth is that most investors start with one property. One. That's it.

I feel like social media and HGTV have completely distorted what ownership looks like. Everybody thinks you either own nothing or you own a hundred units. However, the vast majority of landlords in this country are regular people with regular jobs and they own one or two rentals as part of building long-term wealth.

That's where something like TurboTenant comes in, because the biggest thing holding people back from owning rental property isn't usually money. Hell, they’ll spend five figures on a pre-owned handbag from The Real Real instead of putting that money to work for them. They don’t invest in real estate because of the intimidation factor. People think, "Well, I don't know how to screen tenants," or "I don't know how to collect rent online," or "How in the hell do I write a lease?" Meanwhile, technology has completely changed the game and made the whole process simple as can be.

TurboTenant is built specifically for independent landlords because that's exactly who most landlords actually are. We're not talking about giant apartment companies. These are people managing one house, one condo, one duplex, maybe a handful of properties. They’re people who still have full-time jobs and kids and travel baseball and every other thing real life throws at them.

What I love about the TurboTenant platform is that it removes a lot of the chaos that scares people away from investing in the first place. You can list your property across dozens of rental sites like Apartments.com and Redfin, screen tenants with detailed credit and background checks, create state-specific leases, collect rent online with autopay, track maintenance requests, and organize your bookkeeping… all in one place. The best part is that you can use most of these features for free. Forever. Not a trial. Actually free, OMS! For a lot of first-time landlords, having systems like this matters more than anything else because I always preach that systems create confidence.

I see this especially with women. Women are incredibly efficient decision-makers once they decide to move. They do the research. They think through maintenance. They think through taxes. They think through cash flow. They think through what happens five years from now. (Are you seeing a pattern here?) Men very often buy based on status or future fantasy. Women buy based on sustainability. That's one of the reasons I think women make such strong long-term investors, which is why it’s so exciting that there’s a platform like TurboTenant that can help them!

By the way, those rentals helped me launch into my whole second act and I am so glad that I wanted to win at life, and not just win a fight.

GLENNDA’S GURU

Welcome, Andrew Jevin!

I am so very excited to bring y’all this episode of Glennda’s Guru with the one and only Andrew Jevin! Andrew understands something a lot of agents still don’t: people don’t hire you because you sold a house once. They hire you because they feel like they know you. Based in Los Angeles and with more than $150 million in sales over the past decade, he’s built a real estate business by showing up exactly himself. He’s been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Inman News, but what really makes him stand out is the way he teaches agents to stop hiding behind polished marketing and start connecting with people for real. So let’s get to our chat!

Thanks, Andrew!

GLENNDAISM

Today’s Words of Wisdom

GLENNDA BAKER & ASSOCIATES

This Is the One

Now, if I were looking for a home to buy as a rental property, this one at 1649 Beecher Street SW in Atlanta, GA, would be at the tippy top of my list.

This is exactly the kind of house smart buyers wish they’d snapped up five years earlier. This bungalow at Beecher Street gives you the charm everybody wants: original hardwoods, screened porch mornings, and mature trees. But this home does it without the terrifying “old house surprise” budget hanging over your head. The kitchen and baths are already updated, the big-ticket systems are handled, and the layout actually works for modern life.

The true magic here is the location. Westview and the West End are absolutely exploding with energy right now, and this house drops you right in the middle of it all, from the BeltLine to Lee + White to everything still coming down the pipeline. This feels like the kind of neighborhood where your life (or your tenant’s) actually happens, and those are always the smartest places to buy!