In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, Kathy Portley, the President of Tulsa REIA, joins Mat Zalk to educate investors on the local housing market. Kathy explains her vision for scaling Tulsa REIA, the barriers to local real estate investing, and Tulsa REIA’s resources for new investors.
Reclaiming the Real Estate Investors’ Market
Kathy Portley is the President of the Tulsa Real Estate Investors Association (REIA), a premier networking group for real estate investors in Oklahoma. As a licensed real estate agent and investor, she also works with eXp Realty, where she represents traditional consumers and investors in real estate transactions. With almost two decades of experience in the real estate industry, Kathy is a trusted coach and mentor, helping investors achieve their goals.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How Kathy Portley became the President of Tulsa REIA — and how she scaled the network
- Tulsa REIA’s resources for burgeoning real estate investors
- Kathy’s vision for Tulsa REIA’s growth
- The problems associated with building code enforcement methods
- Strategies for averting institutional buyers
- What does affordable housing mean to various stakeholders?
- Resolving deferred payments
- Kathy talks about her passion for real estate coaching
In this episode…
As the real estate market surges, institutionalized and corporate buyers purchase homes above the market rate in affordable cities like Tulsa, Oklahoma. This creates an opportunity for out-of-state investors to redefine affordable and workforce housing criteria, creating disparaged communities. How can you incentivize local investors to rebuild the market?
According to real estate coach Kathy Portley, institutional buyers drive out local investors and landlords by paying inflated prices for real estate in cities like Tulsa. Over time, this practice can dramatically increase the property costs for traditional and local investors and make homes less affordable, causing them to raise rental rates. With rent going up, tenants may be forced into deferring payment. As a result, investors find it hard to afford to keep the property, so they sell to the highest bidder — the institutional buyer. This cylindrical cycle continues to escalate the market and affect affordable housing availability. Real estate investor networks like Tulsa REIA clarify notions of affordable housing by educating the market on tenant retaliation laws and landlord rights. Kathy also recommends instructing local investors and homeowners on the consequences of selling properties to corporate investors.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
- Keyrenter Property Management
- Keyrenter Property Management Tulsa
- Keyrenter Property Management Oklahoma City
- Keyrenter Property Management Arkansas
- Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
- Chris Lile State Farm
- Chris Lile’s phone number: 918-878-7771
- Kathy Portley on LinkedIn
- Kathy Portley: Email: [email protected] | Phone number: 918-237-2701
- Tulsa REIA: Website | Facebook
- “Navigating the Obstacles of Launching Your Big Idea” with Vondell Burns on The Same Day Podcast
- “The Elements of a Profitable Real Estate Investment Firm” with Will Karstetter on The Same Day Podcast
- “Revitalizing Neighborhoods With Refurbished Apartment Spaces” with Adam Rosenberg on The Same Day Podcast
Sponsor for this episode…
Chris Lile at State Farm Insurance:
This episode is brought to you by Chris Lile at State Farm Insurance.
Chris Lile at State Farm helps you protect your most precious assets and investments, including home and auto.
To learn more about how you can save double digits on all your insurance needs, visit dialliale.com or call Chris’ office at 918-878-7771.
Keyrenter Property Management:
This episode is also brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.
Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.
The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.
That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need.
To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:05
Welcome to The Same Day Podcast where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.
Mat Zalk 0:20
Mat Zalk here on the host of The Same Day Podcast where I connect with top business experts and real estate leaders. past guests include Will Karstetter discussing multiple years of buying 100 Plus doors per year very impressive. Adam Rosenberg discussing redeveloping attainable apartments for all walks of life. Today’s episode is brought to you by Chris Lile State Farm Chris Lile State Farm helps you protect your most precious assets and investments whether it’s your home and auto investment rental properties or other valuables call Chris Lile State Farm for a quick and painless phone call to potentially save you double digits on all of your insurance needs. Visit diallile.com That’s diallile.com or call his office at 918-878-7771 Today’s episode is also brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management. I Keyrenter Property Management we are a full service property management company helping our clients buy, renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management. So no matter what rental you have a single family home condo townhome, we have the management solutions, you need to go to keyrenterpmc.com. Org. Email us at [email protected]. Today’s guest is Kathleen Portley. Kathy Portley is the president of the Tulsa Real Estate Investors Association as the REIA Tulsa REIA. And she is a licensed real estate agent for eXp right here in Tulsa. She has been in real estate for nearly two decades and has a passion for educating and empowering young adults in the Tulsa community. And she is a masterful connector of people. Cathy portly, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on. How are you?
Kathy Portley 1:53
Great. How are you?
Mat Zalk 1:55
I’m good. I’m so excited to have you on. I wanted to start with kind of your journey into the real estate industry. And then how you became president of the Tulsa REIA. And also, maybe this is a long question, but how the Tulsa REIA kind of got its original foundings and how it’s progressed to where it is today?
Kathy Portley 2:16
Yeah, thanks. So how I came along, I was in the manufactured home industry, I didn’t think that I knew anything about real estate, the company that I work for said that I was a manufactured home salesperson, okay. But turns out I did project management and, and planning and land use, you know, did everything also I showed that house, you know, so there was just a lot of, of education that came along with that I was in that for altogether, almost 18 years of my life. Fast forward, the pandemic had happened. I had two young guys living with my sons here in our house, and I helped get him through to stabilize for certificates, driver’s license and all that. They kept asking other friends to come to my house and you know, Hey, Miss Kathy can help you, my mom can help you, too. For two years, I had 15 young men ages 17 to 24 in my house every Sunday, and I teach them life skills and Think and Grow Rich, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, somebody wanted to learn stock, somebody wanted to learn real estate, somebody wanted to learn, you know, various different things. So I got mentors, and each of those areas, I reached out to someone that I knew that was in real estate. You just it was a different animal than when I knew it to be. Again, I just didn’t realize I was in real estate. But they pointed me in the Tulsa REIA. And the exchange was, hey, you teach me about real estate, I’ll do some admin tasks. And over time, it was hey, I I know that I know that. I’ve had a railroad, you know, abandon and Ally reinstated. And you know that I was way more into real estate than I knew. So now I have my real estate license. I, I I sell real estate, buy real estate. I’ve helped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people buy and sell over time over the last 24 years or almost that. Yeah, that’s I came along to it.
Mat Zalk 4:11
And then how did you so you progress through some initial this kind of bartering program with the Tulsa REIA, and then decided, You know what, I should take this thing on and really run with it.
Kathy Portley 4:21
Absolutely. So had a little meeting with the persons who were running it at the time and like, you know, at this, there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be more formal. There’s a whole lot more need than then what they were serving. So I just kind of took it on and there we go, who was running it at the time. That was there were three people that Mark Ruiz Josh Clark and Anthony Augustina were were in place whenever I came along. Just over time that you know, we we each grew in different ways and this was the area that I grew up with. And you know, just when I first came along, they were about 20. Or well ran out 2000 People just under 2000 people. And over the two and a half years that I’ve been working on this, then we’re over 10,000 now. Wow.
Mat Zalk 5:18
Holy moly. Yeah. So what what has what has caused that just more like more frequent events and more value to the events that are being that are taking place? And what else is going on that allows you to five quintuple the size of the membership? Yeah, it
Kathy Portley 5:33
was quite a surprise. But you know, really, it was just listening to people, you know, I I’m very, very, I’m a big proponent for networking and building relationships. So, you know, I would reach out to somebody that I knew did wholesaling, or fix and flips or whatever it was area that they were in, and ask, what is it that you’re working on? What are you needing? What are you missing in community, and so really just tried to pull in some, some resources for each of those different people on their journey. You know, what I’ve learned over the past two and a half years is that there are I can’t think of two people that have had the same entry point, performance and strategy, you know, exit strategy, they are all different, there are so many different ways to be involved in real estate and, and to make a model that works for one’s own self resources, family, you know, whatever the needs are. So you just as the leader of the organization, you know, I tried to provide those resources to help anyone along their journey, whether they’re brand new or haven’t gotten started yet, all the way up to accredited.
Mat Zalk 6:45
I have two questions. One, is there anybody in the group right now that does private money that focuses on private money? Wow, that’s something I definitely would love to learn more about how to actually set that whole thing up. So I’m gonna come back to you on that, too. For people that are just getting started on their, on their real estate journey, what are the resources, the community events, the education events, etc, that that are helpful to them, or that the Tulsa REIA provides for those folks?
Kathy Portley 7:16
Yeah, so we have several different things, you know, one, you know, their Facebook pages, you know, just has a lot of resources in it, you know, oh, my
Mat Zalk 7:24
gosh, I just, I just watched the one on this old house or whatever, and had a nail down your squeaky floorboards? That thing is awesome. It was. Yeah, I was like that, that is a brilliant video. And I did do that. And some of the rooms in my house.
Kathy Portley 7:36
Exactly. Yeah. So you know, just a ton of resources. You know, just little things. I mean, whenever you’re looking for whether it’s, you know, you’re you’re servicing notes, or you’re into commercial, you’re or you’re growing into the next phase of whatever your journey is, you know, or even learning what other people are doing during trying times, you know, how are they pivoting? How should you know, maybe, you know, come up with some ideas. So, just even being in the organization on the Facebook page is a tremendous amount of, of, of education. We hold a second Tuesday meeting every cleverly second Tuesday of the month, I bring in a speaker over a topic that’s relevant to investors, sometimes it’s over wholesaling. And sometimes it’s over, you know, commercial or whatever. So those are some ways, definitely the networking events. Recently, I brought on a lunch and learn event. So every third Wednesday of the month, which is coming up this week, we actually have a lunch and learn that’s coming up. And those are more of our local topics. Last month, we had firehouse dryer vent cleaning service come in, and they were talking about some of the protocols the city was
Mat Zalk 8:53
that we use firehouse a lot in the business. Yeah, like those guys. Yeah. What’s the topic of tomorrow’s conversation for Wednesday? Lunch and Learn? Yeah, so
Kathy Portley 9:02
we have a Braden Anderson is a an investor, and he’s a home inspector. So he’s going to be talking about what home inspectors are looking for, for traditional housing and for investing, you know, I know a lot of people think that, you know, you shouldn’t skip that. And maybe if you got the experience, and that can make some sense, but you know, a lot of investors are brand new, they don’t know what they’re looking for. And it can be very, very costly to not have that, that service. So, you know, we’re just having somebody that that can show what the what the what the,
Mat Zalk 9:35
what they can provide, what
Kathy Portley 9:37
they can provide. There you go.
Mat Zalk 9:38
What sort of attendance with 10,000 members, what sort of attendance are you having at the at the weekly lunch and learn at the reset third, Wednesday, tomorrow, whatever Wednesday, on
Kathy Portley 9:48
the Lunch and Learn? Yeah, about 20 People 2030 People over lunch period, and we have a networking event, you know, toward the end of the month, and it’s been on hiatus for a little bit. We’ve got that, you know, back and you know, we we visited with you guys last August in September. So, you know, between 40 and 100 people that, you know, on any one of our given events, middle of the week, I was super
Mat Zalk 10:14
impressed with the number of people that came and attended the networking event that we did, which was venture in real estate investing kind of two, two spheres of asset classes. In terms of in terms of in your vision for the growth and development of the Tulsa area over the next couple of years, where do you see the the organization going?
Kathy Portley 10:36
We Well, I’ve partnered with quite a few brands that investors use deal machine bigger pockets at Rent prep, you know, there’s some larger resources that are coming online, some of that is going to be a membership base. So if somebody buys a memberships to the Tulsa area, then they get some of these deals and services that we’ve negotiated in. And others have it, you know, we’ll put out front for people to go ahead and select, we probably have about maybe 15 or 20 options right now that the investors can really use in their business. Besides that, that’s, that’s a great question. You know, I just haven’t listened to the feedback really, you know, it, you know, real estate, what’s happening right now and six months, that may not be the trajectory that we take. So just really kind of listen to what each person in that sector, you know, a representation of that of each of those sectors, you know, what are they needing, you know, what wholesaling is needing is different than what the industrial investor is needing right now.
Mat Zalk 11:48
Sure. Love that. Let’s talk for a second about your membership that 10,000 What portion of those people do you think are local, that are investing locally? And what portion of those are outside of Tulsa? Oklahoma? Investing locally?
Kathy Portley 12:01
Yeah, we probably have about 5000 active local investors, that is they live in Tulsa, Waso, Bartlesville, even, you know, right here in the green country area, that actively our investors, there’s a quite a few of them that are contractors, maybe they’re contractors and investors, or they are surprised providers to the real estate investors.
Mat Zalk 12:27
Yeah. What’s the importance in your mind of, of local real estate investing?
Kathy Portley 12:34
You know, I’m saddened by some of the, the situations that I’ve seen lately, so last year or so, at a hedge fund out of Texas had reached out to me and said, Hey, can you take some photographs? I said, Sure. You know, I go in, and I’m doing a, you know, kind of a inspection overview for them, you know, doing taking all the pictures and, you know, finding out why there’s a leak and you know, all that kind of stuff, write the report, why not? A lot of work over some time.
Mat Zalk 13:00
Was that a lot of work? It sounds like, oh, it
Kathy Portley 13:03
was it was that I mean, I learned so much I tell you, there’s nobody has had a bigger, better education, about real estate investing than me, I’ve gotten to see so much. I’ve gotten to talk to so many people that are experts in their field, and just, you know, putting my hands on certain things. And this is one, I wouldn’t have known this and I think a lot of people don’t realize this. After working with a hedge fund for about six months, I thought, you know, they bought 75 houses out of our market, anything $200,000 Less, they’re just buying it sight unseen, they, you know, just need this little formality of a report and then they, they buy it, they scoop it up. And so what we’re seeing is, you know, those, those hedge funds that are, you know, Oklahoma, Tulsa, it’s a low cost of living state. So everybody who’s an investing has their eye on areas just like ours, it’s, it’s rising in, you know, in terms of growth for, you know, retail and population and whatnot, it’s a fantastic place to invest. It’s exactly the gym that you’re looking for. Unfortunately, those of us who live here are seeing that, you know, being eroded away by some of those, those people that have starry eyes, whether it’s, you know, out of state investors singly or in incorporation, we are seeing a lot of our low cost housing is flying right off the shelf. And here’s the thing about hedge funds is that once they’re in the hedge fund model, they do not come back to the traditional market. The only model that can make sense for a hedge fund is for them to sell it to another hedge fund who needs to park money those houses never come back. And so what we’re doing is you know, as we you know, I get it you know, as sellers and as investors we want to get the highest possible cost, your highest possible price but you know, when Selling up a property or selling them off to hedge funds, and they never come back and we’re doing it in droves. You know, right now the the, the floor is 200,000. You know what, what happens when it’s 300,400 1000? Now we start looking like Washington State or California or Colorado or some of these other places that were in that same position, and did that same thing. And we will have the same results if we’re not careful.
Mat Zalk 15:27
And how, what can we do to prevent massive, very capitalized institutional buyers from coming in and buying all of our real estate?
Kathy Portley 15:39
You know, that’s, that’s a great question. You know, right now, the city has some practices that they put in place, I think that what they think is happening is that, you know, the their slumlords, right, and sure enough, there’s probably some investors that don’t take care of their properties and don’t take care of the tenants the way that one would expect. Most of the investors that I know, or don’t practice like that, but you know, there are some high profile cases Shadow Mountain, of course, being one of those high profile opportunities for for improvement. And so the city, I think it’s taking some some, what they think is proactive action and putting into some place, they’re just, they, they think that they’re just enforcing the ISO 9000 Building Code. I think they’re overcorrecting on that, because what’s happening is that when when those when those inspections turn up that you know that there’s a correction that has to be made, instead of asking a, let’s say, an inspector to come and take a look at the property, they’ll overcorrect and ask a structural engineer to come take a look at the property. So you know, the costs are, you know, beginning to climb on some of the local investors who otherwise do take care of their properties just as maybe there’s a crack in the sidewalk or, or maybe there’s a you know, small patch of rust on the stairs that doesn’t require an a structural engineer to ensure the safety of that. But those are, you know, a couple of examples that we’ve got, you know, we’ve had quite a few is
Mat Zalk 17:15
that the new legislation that the city is enforcing through working in neighborhoods, code enforcement is saying now that any unit over for any any complex over four units has to be inspected annually or semi annually or something like that for
Kathy Portley 17:27
healthy. That’s correct. And the city’s actually told me it’s two units, like duplexes and higher and so what they intend is that they’re going to, to inspect those once a year, every year. They’ve got some federal funds and whatnot. And they they are, they’re headlong on some of that. I don’t know what the qualification of the inspectors is, you know, are they inspectors are they, you know, what, what is their qualification for deeming these things? I don’t know that I do understand that. There are investors, like I said, you know, that that have been underperforming as far as taking care of their, their properties or their tenants. And so I get that, your question was, you know, what do we do about some of these hedge funds, whatnot, I’m not sure that that’s the right direction. But here’s, here’s something that I’m not sure is the right direction, either. If we asked the city to come into your property that belongs to some of these out of state hedge funds that that are, you know, causing our properties on on a large scale to be dilapidated, whether it’s Shadow Mountain, or its promenade mall, or it’s 52 houses along one block, you know, whatever it is, then, you know, what we are asking for the city to do is have the ability to come in and take property from anyone. Yeah. So do we want to do that either. So you know, what, what is the right thing to do, I think is really to educate the local investor, even the local traditional market, the homeowner, and you know, just really make the that that lead that you’ll we’ve we give away our community to the highest bidder, we will get what what that, you know, those prizes get?
Mat Zalk 19:07
Yeah, unfortunately, when you when a homeowner is selling something that’s 200,000 or less than somebody comes in with an all cash offer with no inspection contingency that looks very attractive. And I don’t know,
Kathy Portley 19:19
yeah, sight unseen at 150 times the price. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s and this happens all day, because what’s happening, you know, out in some of the western states with the high cost of living states, and, you know, besides the hedge fund, that, you know, some of these investors maybe they’re pulling equity out of their home or they’ve got some money that they need to deploy and so then they you know, deploy it here in Tulsa or cities like Tulsa, and you know, they are sight unseen and they you know, are overpriced, and they still think they got a good deal. Yeah, comparatively to what they’re paying Sure, but what it’s doing to us is taking our knees out from our bottom and then raising the top so high You know, two, three years ago a house that was, you know, that is currently five 600,000 was maybe 250. Yeah, you know, and so we’ve we’ve tripled our prices in in not as many years. And that’s the Tourette’s trajectory with that. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 20:18
The other thing that you would likely expect to happen if hedge funds are coming in or any of these institutional buyers are coming in and buying property for above, what we believe the market to be is that rents would naturally need to come up to support the investment. So let’s talk for a second about what workforce housing or affordable housing means to our local consumers, to our investors to government bodies, and potentially in the investors category, we can discuss what that looks like to the hedge funds, because parts of the institutional buyers because I guess they’re hedge funds or private equity shops, they’re, they’re just local, you know, not local. They’re, they’re national, potentially, you know, corporations that are coming in and just buying buying up real estate. So we call them hedge funds, but they’re really all sorts of different institutional level companies that are well capitalized buying stuff. What does it mean, historically, when we talked about workforce housing, we talked about it in terms of, I think, if my memory serves like 800 to $1,100, it’s kind of workforce housing. What do you think of when you think of affordable housing?
Kathy Portley 21:24
Yeah, so the term affordable housing is actually it has three definitions to it. So if, if you’re talking to show the regular guy, he thinks affordable housing means cheap rent, that means that you know what, whatever he is that he wants to pay, so he can still go and you know, have, you know, a boating weekend and, you know, cubs games, or whatever it is, you know, he still wants to be able to, to have a cheap rent or a cheap mortgage or whatever. So affordable housing is what that means to him to a, a government of, let’s say, it’s a city, they have affordable housing programs. So some of these programs would look like, instead of incentivizing a builder or developer, maybe it is now the state of investor, that as long as they have X number of properties that qualify for for HUD rent, you know, or Tulsa housing authority or whatever it is assistance, then, you know, if they meet that criteria, that property is considered a, an affordable housing complex. Rents might be $2,200, in in that one bedroom flat downtown salsa. But if they’ve got 5% of them that are this, quote, affordable housing, meaning that they take housing vouchers for 5%, that entire property is an affordable housing community. Interesting. Third, you have the government that, you know, considers you know, this would be like your rental assistance programs, or, you know, the federal government is 25 to 45%. of one’s income. So when your
Mat Zalk 23:09
income would be a lot, that’s wild, okay. Yeah.
Kathy Portley 23:12
So but if you take somebody that own or that, you know, gets paid $400 a month, or somebody that gets paid $6,000 a month, that affordable housing is a very different number, when you look at that range of what what affordable housing means. So whenever, whenever I hear the word affordable housing, and I implore other people to consider the same when you are hearing that you really need to define what does affordable housing mean, in this situation? And are we all talking about the same animal? Very often we’re not. And so then we see a lot of cat fighting, you know, between tenants and, and landlords, or governments and landlords or so on? You know, because we’re not talking about the same thing.
Mat Zalk 23:53
Do we have any idea? I mean, what what does? How do you come up with a definition of affordability? When you have so many disparate stakeholders that are each coming from it from their own perspective?
Kathy Portley 24:07
Great question. I don’t think anybody has found the answer to that yet. And that’s why we have a lot of this, this incongruency and in thinking of what does it even mean, you know, we have buzzwords and affordable housing and, and workforce housing, and yet a lot of those words are being passed around right now. And I think, you know, there are there are some political opportunities to use words that that cause people to, to maybe feel and act upon or voted in a certain way. And so then they’re used in an emotional setting, you know, to to somebody who thinks more logically or or two letter of law, then you know, those those words are very, very defined. Yeah. What,
Mat Zalk 24:54
what does the Tulsa REIA do in terms of this? The The advocacy work in our communities and locally at a state level, potentially even for helping this the understanding of the challenges that we face as local investors, or even as tenants potentially. Yeah, so,
Kathy Portley 25:15
you know, what we do behind the scenes, you know, one of the things that, that teleserye does is, you know, we work with the city, and, you know, tried to convey the position of investors, we don’t want to be the bad landlord, we don’t want to be the, the, you know, the fall guy, the bad guy, or anything else, you know, but we do want to have a seat at the table to say, hey, the way that you’re looking at it is not the best informed, or the outcomes that you’re asking to happen, are going to have some unintended consequences that you’re not going to want. They, they come along with it. And so, you know, we work with the city, we work with other boards, you know, GTR, the apartment, housing community, you know, some other entities that, you know, to kind of try to get on the same page or, or near same page. As far as the state goes, they there are some, some of our senators, some of our city council, some of our even county government that are I’m not sure what the right word is to say, you know, in a nice way anyway, you know, but there are some that are politically motivated to, to, to cause certain actions. And so, you know, some of these laws are, you know, there’s some tenant retaliation laws. Well, you know, we, as a as an industry, you know, we have some standards, you know, we don’t we just some expectations, we don’t do, you know, and I’m not sure tenant retaliation is really the thing. If you’re also punitive, you punitively harming the landlords and their ability, I mean, you have properties, right? You know, if you can’t make your mortgage, what happens to your property? They foreclose so, so is, is punishing a landlord for, for, you know, some bad actor or some some political ideology? Is that, is that the right thing to harm another citizen?
Mat Zalk 27:17
Yeah, so it’s, it seems like, historically, out of state investors and local investors both have liked the market in Tulsa, because we’ve been fairly landlord friendly. That is to say, tenants can’t just not pay rent for six months, and you know, and then we owe them money for moving out of the house, like there are in some of the western states, it’s easy to do evictions for the most part for non payment of rent, it’s easy to to, you know, to buy property, it’s easy to sell property, etc. And yet, when there are some bad actors, and you mentioned Shadow Mountain, or other plenty of other people that, that don’t behave to the standards that you and I would like in, in dealing with tenants, etc. When there are some bad actors, the city tends to overly correct on being punitive to landlords without understanding fully the consequence, as as it falls as it trickles down. It could be that, you know, now it’s, it’s, it’s harder to evict a tenant that’s not paying, you have to do mediation. And the mediation is good for people when it is a bad actor, I guess. And you know, somebody’s not paying rent, because they’ve got a gaping hole in their ceiling, and it’s leaking rainwater, and the, the landlord doesn’t want to fix it. But realistically, that doesn’t happen very often. Now, we have to jump through a bunch of hoops. And we’ve got to do all sorts of stuff, when the truth is that the tenants just not paying rent, because they don’t want to pay rent there, they spent their money at the casino, or they did something else. So I have also found that like the working communities, initiative to, you know, inspect all houses, we tend to build bureaucracy, we tend to build, you know, more regulation, when it probably could be solved in a simpler way. And something that’s put back in the hands of the individual landlords, rather than or in a, in a community organization like the Tulsa REIA, rather than, you know, forcing all landlords 99% of whom are acting pretty, you know, in an ideal state or 95, of acting in an ideal state. You know, rather than forcing everybody to comply with these new regulations that make it way more cumbersome and burdensome to actually own rental properties, and the result is what the result is just that the the cost gets passed on to the tenant, if it costs me a whole bunch of extra money to, you know, engage in these inspections and, and jump through hoops, that everyone has a price for their time, you can’t say that you don’t. So if you have to spend a bunch more time doing it, you have to raise the rent to ultimately cover those costs. And, you know, they’re learning about rent
Kathy Portley 29:49
your write, but that’s still the only cost. So some of the other costs are that whenever investors are spending so much money and particularly when they can’t recoup it, they are forced to sell where they gonna sell to the next highest bidder because they’ve got to recover some of the costs and those, those are hedge funds. And then now we’ve got that problem that’s, you know, on that cycle. The other problem is that, you know, if when they over penalize, and it passes along to the the tenants, well, then landlords are looking to, not as a pivot their model, but there certainly are, or are considering what what else they could do. And that is that, you get a little bit more scrutinizing on who you allow to be your tenant. Yeah, so some of these tenants that have needed some second chances, or, you know, whatever, whatever their reason might have been, you know, for eviction history, or, you know, prison or or rehab, or whatever it is, they aren’t going to get those same opportunities. So now we’ve got three different ways that you know that there are unintended consequences, I’m probably not thinking of some other ones, that,
Mat Zalk 30:58
then we go back to the city level, and somebody raises the point that we have unhoused people and homelessness is growing, and we’ve got the shelters that are filling up, and now we have to do something else to deal with those people, when we should have just not done the first, you know, bit of whatever solution that the city came up with, it’s really a challenge.
Kathy Portley 31:19
You’re right. And already the state is, you know, they’ve had had some anti landlord laws or pro tenant laws, or, you know, depending on what side of the fence you’re standing on, you know, you might describe it, you know, one way or another. But there are some, some actions in the state right now, we’ve had a series of bills that have been passed through and then failed, passed or failed. And there’s something on the floor right now that to cap the the late rent, or to cap the, you know, the ability for a landlord to recover money. So if you got somebody, like you said, you know, we’ve had some pretty landlord friendly laws in that you can’t just sit in a house that you don’t own and not pay the bill. But this does incentivize people to do that, you know, knowing that there’s a cap, and you can only charge up to 60 bucks. Okay, I’ll just sit here for 60 extra bucks.
Mat Zalk 32:10
Are they making? They’re setting a specific dollar threshold for him? They’re trying in legislation right now. Wow, that’s scary. Because if you have somebody in a $300,000 house and you’re you’re late payment for for not paying the mortgage is, you know, a percentage of your of the total mortgage out there. Any mortgage value could be well in excess of $60? And if you can’t pay it, because there’s not paying you rent
Kathy Portley 32:33
$60 Seems like a pretty low cap. Yeah. And then and then what are you going to do as that property owner, you’re going to get yourself out of the situation, you’re gonna have to sell it, you’re gonna have to sell it to guess who comes in, you know, another hedge fund. And so I really think that, you know, if it seems to me like there are some of the city council that are sensitive to our our concerns, there are others who don’t have that concern on their agenda at all. Same way with with some of the state representatives are some that are a little bit more willing to listen, although they don’t have a good solution, either. What I’m surprised at is that neither the city nor the state have asked the investor association to come to the table for some of these things that, you know, we represent landlords directly. So you’re not even asking the organization to come to the table, we really had to find our way to be there. But
Mat Zalk 33:31
thank God, you are fighting your way to be there, because there’d be no representative of us that are, that should have a seat at the table. Let’s share for a second besides the Tulsa real estate, the Tulsa REIA and besides your role at eXp doing real estate sales and purchases on behalf of your clients, what are some community projects or other initiatives that you’re passionate about are actively involved in?
Kathy Portley 33:57
You know, for me, real estate, this kind of goes back to that mentorship of young young men specifically has been where my passion is, is, you know, what I want my real estate journey to look like is I want to have some, I’d love to have a youth academy, you know, that, you know, after that 18 year old and before that 25 year old period where, you know, young men can go in and get the, the resources that they need, they can get the mentorship they need, they can get the you know, start the business or you know, just hear a different voice than maybe they have had I I’m a I’m a midlife woman, and I know lots of young guys that are in the 18 to 25 range that are homeless, you know, and it just breaks my heart 30 I can call them by name. Well, I’m not going to look for them. I just happen to know that there are a lot of our young population particular our young male population that are are not stable, and I really feel like they are Our population, you know, our longevity of a stable society has to do with, you know, how our young men see their lives and how they, you know, come into their, their, their early adulthood. And I want to be a part of that solution. And I would love to have that that youth academy kind of kind of what I did here at after house, you know, really just trying to change these young guys lives. So that’s my pleasure. Yeah,
Mat Zalk 35:27
good, good mission to have the, the education system today doesn’t seem to teach financial literacy in any capacity. And that’s scary, we get applicants all the time, that have no credit at 25 years old. And, you know, whereas my parents, you know, I had a credit card from the age of 12, or 15, or something that was very strictly monitored, but was built was given to me so that I could build credit so that when I was 18, or 21, or, or whenever I wanted to buy my first house, I would have something to fall back on that said, you have good credit history, because all we are in the end is credit, right? We’re a credit risk. And you have to have something but I see so many people that have no credit, like talk to them and say, I ran your credit shows Na, you don’t even have a credit card. Now I have a debit card, you don’t have a you have never had the foresight to take out any sort of debt that you can pay back religiously to just prove that you have that you’re a good risk from a credit perspective now. And that just seems to me to be a, you know, such a crime, then all of a sudden, they’re paying two or three times security deposit. They could be great people, their former landlord says, Oh, they’re great. They always pay on time, but I have no clue. I can’t see anything that speaks to that. So really a financial literacy program. And I know Vondell Burns has been involved with financial literacy for some underrepresented classes. I’ve had it on the show before and she talked about it. But just having a simple book that says this is financial literacy one on one, this is how you build credit. This is how you, you know, spend less than you make this is, you know, all of the components would be such a beneficial thing to have in our Tulsa public schools.
Kathy Portley 36:56
Yeah, so I think, Gosh, I don’t know maybe it was five or 10 years ago. I’m not sure exactly. But my my kids have gone to union, my youngest one is in her junior year there. And all of them have had to go through their financial literacy program. I think they call it foolproof. You know, and maybe it’s state state required. Maybe it’s district required? I’m not sure exactly. But it is. It’s sad. To me, it’s, it’s sad that, you know, these kids think that they’ve got this, this financial education they’ve got ninth grade is when they they are required to start working on it, they gotta finish it before they graduate. So in four years, they’ve got to do like 12 modules or 30 modules. I don’t even know how many it is. But I do know that, that there are more than one students that that I can recall that not only didn’t do the program, they paid somebody else to do the program for them. That I’m not sure that that’s the that’s what they expected. How did that program, but you know, really, there’s, there’s such little oversight, you know, some of the young men that I was, you know, that I was mentoring here, you know, just they didn’t have bank accounts, they were using the cash, money normally on the go, you know, card, or whatever. Yeah, whatever it is that their their work employer gave them, you know, they think that that’s a debit card, it’s not, they’ll take like 4% of their paycheck just to access the money, you know, or take it down to the local liquor store to cash the check, or whatever it is. And so really just, there’s such little education over finances, it’s abysmal, I’m really concerned about what that next generation is going to look like.
Mat Zalk 38:43
I mean, that’s it’s goes back to the perspective of our tenants, because so many of our tenants are, are this way, there are very few of our owners that have no credit and buy everything on, you know, buy a house cash or five or 10 houses cash, and you know, with zero access to credit, so it means that if you have no access to if you if you’ve not established yourself as a positive credit risk, then you just will never be a homeowner, you’ll always be a tenant in the property, which is really, which is a sad way to be and, you know, certainly if you have the means to get out of that cycle, it’s important to do it. Kathy had people reach you if they want to become involved, if they want to volunteer their time if they want to pursue any of the educational community oriented activities of Tulsa REIA does or if they want to buy a house with you or sell a house?
Kathy Portley 39:36
Yeah, so I would love that if if I would just be honored to be able to, to represent somebody in buying or selling as a real estate agent. And as you know, just a representative for whatever their journey is, you know, I love connecting with people like that. So they can reach Tulsa REIA on Facebook. We do have a Facebook page and a Facebook group. Have all of the activity and the magic happens in the group. So make sure you join both. You can email me at [email protected]. That’s Kathy spelled with a Kathy. And then you can of course reach me. You know, if you want to buy or sell a house, you can reach me that way to my phone number 918-237-2701. Awesome.
Mat Zalk 40:25
Kathy Portley is the president of the Tulsa Real Estate Investor Association. The REIA REIA is a licensed real estate agent for eXp right here in Tulsa. She has been in the real estate industry for nearly two decades has a passion for educating and empowering young adults in the Tulsa community. And she’s a masterful connector of people and I can attest to that directly. Kathy, thank you for being on the show. We really appreciate this conversation with you. All right, thank you so much.
Outro 40:53
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