Landlording Through Personal Challenges

In our 100th episode of Your Landlord Resource, Stacie shares a deeply personal story of grief, caregiving, and loss—and how she and Kevin continued to self-manage their rental properties through one of the most difficult periods of their lives.

We’re not just talking about landlord tips today—we’re talking about how to stay grounded, motivated, and operational when life knocks you down. From caring for aging parents to managing tenant issues and unexpected emergencies, this episode is all about perseverance, preparation, and learning to keep your rental business running—even when your world feels like it’s falling apart.

If you’ve ever felt like walking away from it all, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

Stacie: 0:00

I think part of it for me was that I had been through really hard times before. Like for years, when my first husband was ill and I was trying to raise three boys. So I knew while all this tough stuff was happening, one after the other, that it would be okay. If you're struggling right now, no matter what, it will be okay. It may not be what you wanted or it may not be what you've planned. But if you can learn to pivot and accept change, lean on those who are there for you, and just keep creating action by doing what needs to be done. You'll come out on the other side of things okay.

0:44

Welcome to Your Landlord Resource podcast. Many moons ago when I started as a landlord, I was as green as it gets. I may have had my real estate license, but I lack confidence and the hands-on experience needed when it came to dealing with tenants, leases, maintenance, and bookkeeping after many failed attempts. Fast forward to today, Kevin and I have doubled our doors and created an organized. Professionally operated rental property business. Want to go from overwhelm to confident if you're an ambitious landlord or maybe one in the making. Join us as we provide strategies and teach actionable steps to help you reach your goals and the lifestyle you desire. All well building is streamlined and profitable rental property business. This is your landlord resource podcast.

Stacie: 1:32

Well, hello landlords. Welcome back to the Your Landlord Resource Podcast. I'm your host, Stacie Casella, and I'm here with my co-host Kevin Kilroy.

Kevin: 1:41

Happy to be here.

Stacie: 1:43

We are very excited because this is our 100th episode, and I'll tell you when we started back in March of 2023. We had no idea what we were doing for the podcast part, not the landlord stuff.

Kevin: 1:57

I was gonna say, Hey, wait a minute.

Stacie: 1:59

Yeah, no. We had no idea what it meant to be podcasters, and we didn't even know if we would have enough content to make it a year, much less two. But here we are and we're working hard for all of you guys. It takes a lot of time and research to make sure what we want to discuss is presented in a way that you guys can understand and relate to.

Kevin: 2:22

Yeah, I will say that Stacie does a lot of the research and writing, and and I'm more on the production side. So I get to sit with my headphones on after we have recorded and edit each episode and make sure it gets posted. My job is fairly easy compared to Stacie's, but we do sit and have discussions about each episode and what we need to cover so you can all learn something. Our goal is for you to learn one new landlord tip on each episode, so hopefully that's happening. And we do get a lot of our ideas and content from you all as well, so keep emailing us ideas for subjects you'd like to learn more about.

Stacie: 3:05

So 100 episodes. Oh, and before I forget, make sure you listen to the end. We're doing a giveaway and we'll tell you all about it when we wrap up this episode here. But yeah, we have shared mistakes made, wins celebrated, and lessons learned. You know, landlord life isn't always easy, and what we want to focus on today is how to stay motivated when life gets hard. And this is not just landlord life, this is life in general. For us as soon as we get our plates full on the personal home front, something goes wrong with one of the properties. As soon as we think, all right, we can relax a little, let's plan a vacation. Something comes up that we need to handle with one of the rentals. It never fails. And we might have told you this story before, but Kevin and I were working a lot on the Sacramento sixplex a few years ago, and I'll never forget this. It was August and we had recently moved the youngest back to college in South Carolina. The other two boys had either moved out or were away at college as well. But we were driving back from Sacramento and it was late like 9:00 PM. We were just getting ready to cross the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, and I said to Kevin, ah, Sac is done and we have nothing that we need to worry about for a while. And I said something to Kevin along the lines of, it feels so good to finally be able to have some free time. We were thrilled to have this wide open schedule. Because Lord knows that we needed to work on our own home a little bit here. And this was in 2020. August of 2020. And I know this because it was right before my 50th birthday. And I kid you not, five minutes later after I said that, the phone rings and it's my mom. Dad's in the hospital, she says, he's having surgery first thing in the morning. And I was like, what are you talking about? We just saw him a few days ago, he was perfectly fine. Well, long story short, a few years prior he was body surfing on Maui on our family vacation and a big wave tossed him around and threw him on the sea floor, which resulted in a broken shoulder. The shoulder healed and he was doing great, but his shoulder had metal plates, and somehow he ingested a rare bacteria that is found in soil. Now, he's an avid gardener, and an infection had formed at the site of the broken shoulder where those metal plates were. Of course, my dad, who for several days, saw the redness and felt the heat on his skin, ignored it until he was nearly septic.

Kevin: 5:44

And we've talked about our parents before. Both our parents are, uh, let's say older, I guess elderly, but for the most part, they're pretty much self-sufficient. So I hate to use the term elderly because you know, that sounds like they're dilapidated and just sitting around all day and that is not the case at all. And at the time this happened, Stacie's dad was 80 years old. He was still climbing ladders and painting his house, caring for a big, beautiful landscape garden on a property that's just shy of an acre.

Stacie: 6:21

Yeah. I mean it's, it's all pretty impressive. In August, all his veggies already and he is out there for hours every day tending to them. Nonetheless, he had to have major surgery and Kevin and I, you know, we're their people. The ones that they turn to when they need help, which up until then was pretty rare. He came through surgery fine, but he had a very long road of recovery. He had to have a drain, which a nurse had to come daily to tend to, he had a pic line put in and needed to get antibiotic injections twice a day for six weeks. By me because my mom was not comfortable doing it. So I spent my days, the days that, for those five precious minutes, I was so excited about being able to have time to do what I wanted, making meals and driving back and forth to my parents' home, which was about a 25 minute drive one way, and that was to care for my parents. Dad couldn't drive, so doctor appointments, et cetera, they were all on me to get them around where they needed to be. My dad could not use his arm and had to rest, so Kevin stepped in and helped around the house where he could. Uh, Kevin also picked up the slack with the rentals. My sole job and concern was taking care of my parents. And don't misunderstand me, I would do it all over again. When my late husband was ill, my parents stepped in and took over everything for me. They helped with my boys, helped around the house, helped with my duties in the business that we were all running. You know, this was my turn. And for us, that's what you do for family. And by the time my dad was on the mend in mid-October, my brother had taken a turn for the worse and I had to pivot and step up my care for him. And unfortunately he passed that following November, and I have no idea what the holidays even looked like that year. It was all a blur. I know is that Kevin and I have not slowed down at all, nor have we had that feeling of, ah, unless we force it upon ourselves with a vacation. 2021 and 22 were filled with a lot of change, some good, some not so great. And you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to give it all up. I just wanted to sell it all and walk away. Even the simplest of a maintenance request became such a hassle because I had no patience to handle it.

Kevin: 8:42

And one thing Stacie is skipping over is that in 2021, after her brother passed his home, which was a rental under their family LLC, was broken into several times and these guys robbed him blind and nearly burned the house down using an acetylene torch to burn a hole in the gun safe. So here she is grieving over her brother and at the same time trying to empty out a 3000 square foot home as fast as humanly possible. It was an absolute mess.

Stacie: 9:16

Yeah. And then in January of 2021, 6 weeks after my brother passed, we lost my best friend's husband suddenly. And this guy was the best man in my first wedding, and basically an uncle to my kids and kid. Two, spent a lot of time with him after losing his own dad. As a matter of fact, he was waiting for him in their hunting blind when I had to call and tell him that his uncle had passed during the night. It was just a nightmare. So when I'm trying to handle all of this that has been thrown at me or us over several months, the last thing I wanted to do was deal with our rental properties. How do we stay motivated to keep going and not just sell it all off and invest our capital in the stock market? We waited, we reflected and when motivation never really came, we had to just take action in order to keep the business going. We called on our team, specifically our contractor, Jim, to deal with all the maintenance issues. Because I have standard operating procedures in place, I was able to hand work off to Kevin to handle. The stuff I always took care of myself, like tenant screening, he had to handle that now. And I know you may think you have it all together, but you really need to ask yourself when the shit hits the fan are you covered? We, and when I say we, I mean mostly Kevin because he had to show up and take action. He had to do things he was not familiar with and make decisions he never had to make before. Because honestly, I could care less. It was a bad year for me, you guys. I was all excited about turning 50 and having the kids outta the house for the first time. And you know, God had another plan for me.

Kevin: 10:59

Thankfully you leaned on people. I mean, you're a very strong minded and independent person. And man, I know it was hard for you to let someone else step in and handle the business when you couldn't. But if anything good came from those tough, really tough years, it was that you and I learned a lot about ourselves and the business too. If I'm being honest, it's because all that stuff happening one after the other for over a year, nearly two, that's when Your Landlord Resource came about. A lot of our professional friends and friends in property management were like, how the hell did you do that? Because you know, most rental property owners and self-managing landlords fly by the seat of their pants. They do not have systems in place, business plan, reserves, budgets to follow, financial goals to meet, or a solid team to lean on. And thank goodness you had the wherewithal to have that business running like a well oiled machine when all this happened. You literally were able to hand me the quote unquote Bible to your business and let me handle stuff. Did this mean I just took over? No way. Come on now, if, if you know Stacie well enough, you should know she still had her hands in there. She was able to take a back seat and let me drive for a few months, but I'll tell you, she was still in the car and giving me directions. And thankfully, as she mentioned earlier, we had just finished a huge project on the sixplex and the units were all occupied.

Stacie: 12:39

Well, until that one tenant had the fruit fly infestation and we had to ask him to leave, those were fun times.

Kevin: 12:44

Oh, right. That, that happened that year too, didn't it?

Stacie: 12:47

Yep. And then the flood in Chico in October of 21.

Kevin: 12:51

Holy crap. That was a bad couple of years. And for all of you who are like, wow, that's tough. When 2022 came along, being optimistic, we were like. Okay, it's a new year, time to start over. Kid two had just moved to Idaho the previous summer to live with his college buddies who had moved there after graduation. He reached, what, four, maybe five months of living there, and he just loved it. I mean, he's the outdoorsman, so the mountains were perfect for him to go hiking and mountain biking, all things outdoors. So now it was time for him to buy his first home. So we were back there, I believe it was early February, driving around and looking at single family homes that he had picked out, and the phone rings. It's Stacie's mom. All right, her dad was fine, but she had gone to the doctor and had just been told she had breast cancer. I mean, talk about the world stopping. We helped kid two decide on his first home purchase and finished out the trip so we could get back home as soon as possible to do the parent health thing all over again. I mean, Stacie did not miss one appointment and to this day she still doesn't. To say our world was centered around the situation for the next three to six months is an understatement. And her mom was very lucky. They caught the cancer early, were able to do surgery and she did not have to do any chemo or radiation. But the surgery was a big challenge and we are grateful it ended with that.

Stacie: 14:31

Yeah. So for all our female listeners, my mom was 84 when she got her breast cancer diagnosis. Please get your annual mammograms and don't stop just because you think you're too old to get it. And although we had some challenges since that time, they were nothing near as scary or emergent that took us out for months. And I'll tell you, I know that good and bad times ebb and flow through all of our lives. But this couple of years was tough. Thankfully, I was able to keep my head above water. I think part of it for me was that I had been through really hard times before. Like for years, when my first husband was ill and I was trying to raise three boys. So I knew while all this tough stuff was happening, one after the other, that it would be okay. If you're struggling right now, no matter what, it will be okay. It may not be what you wanted or it may not be what you've planned. But if you can learn to pivot and accept change, lean on those who are there for you and just keep creating action by doing what needs to be done. You'll come out on the other side of things okay. If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to not make any big decisions until you are through with whatever hard time you're going through. I mean, how many times did I tell you I just wanted to sell it all?

Kevin: 16:00

Many times. I mean, many, many times. You even went so far as to work out a plan on what it would look like, and if I recall, the plan was not what you had hoped.

Stacie: 16:12

Right. I mean, you know, we were, we, we are older, we are established with a home and a family around us. We have people who depend on us. And sure, we could have sold it all and paid a ridiculous amount of money in capital gains taxes. We could have moved to Hawaii or Florida, lived in the little hut for all I cared. I wanted to get rid of all the responsibility, but it would've just followed me. And let's be real. I need to have something going on. I can only sit around for so long before I start needing stuff to do.

Kevin: 16:44

Well, kid two in his new duplex is a perfect example of that. That started what, back in January. He texted about the property and we helped him run the numbers and even flew out there to walk it with him in February. By the end of March, the property had closed and we were raring to go to get back there and work alongside him to fix it up and get it ready to rent. You had spreadsheets and to-do lists and a file folder that's a foot tall with all the stuff needed to help him in that property.

Stacie: 17:17

And I love it. And that's what I mean. I want to be able to do these things with my kids. Regardless if it's rental properties or weddings or changing careers or moving away from us. I want to be their biggest cheerleader.

Kevin: 17:31

You've been following that Instagram account sailing with Phoenix lately, and for those of you unfamiliar with this account, there's this guy, he's young, I don't know, maybe early thirties. He received a diagnosis where he has a degenerative spine disease. I'm, I'm not quite sure what it's called, but he had a job and decided to just up and sell everything he had. Depleted his 401k and buy a sailboat to sail around the world, just him and his cat.

Stacie: 18:01

I, I am a bit obsessed with that guy. And there's a little part of me that wishes I, we had the guts to do something like that.

Kevin: 18:11

What if one of the kids wanted to do it?

Stacie: 18:14

Well, I'd be worried, of course, but man, do it. I want'em to go live their lives the way they want. Because before they know it, they're gonna have a wife and kids. And yeah, people can live a nomad life with kids too, but as long as they're smart and have some investments to fall back on, I'd support my kids sail around the world with their cat.

Kevin: 18:35

I, I think by the time this episode airs, he will have made it from Oregon to Hawaii then he plans to live in Hawaii for a while to get his boat repaired and all set up for the next leg of his world tour. It is kind of a trip watching the videos of him all alone in the ocean. I mean, I'd be fine, I think, but I believe you'd go stir crazy.

Stacie: 18:56

I, I would have to have something to do, like write a book or something to pass the time. But the point of this episode is to share how we continued on with our journey as landlords when times were challenging. You know, the mindset that is needed now in order to push through and stay motivated if a time comes along where you feel you want to throw in the towel. And let me tell you the two things that saved my butt were that I had systems in place and I had someone to hand the work off to. It really is as simple as that. You know, it's kind of like, um, a living trust for your business. I mean, except if you pass your partner or heirs can obviously do whatever they want with the business, but you know what I mean. When I say have systems in place, I mean, it can be as simple as making a list that you use and you go off of every day or every week, month, or year on what needs to be done. Now, this period of time was not a situation where I was completely removed. It was certainly not a time when nothing got done, but it was a time when scheduled projects were pushed back, and that was because other projects like repairing my brother's broken windows and doors and fire damaged house had to take priority. Our tenants had no idea that any of this was going on. Inspections still took place, repairs were made, renewals were done on time, all those things. And this is because for inspections and renewals, I have reminders on my phone. So we do inspections every spring and every fall, typically in May and November. In late September, my phone pops up with a notification to plan a day in November for inspections. That reminder keeps popping up weekly until I have the date set and can cancel that notification. I do this because I like to have six weeks to plan that one day. One because we're busy, we travel. Like this November kid one is getting married in Mexico and we're gonna be gone for a week. We come back and it's Thanksgiving. So I know that this year I need to do that inspection day early in the month, or even move it back to late November. During this time, I have my nephew getting married out of state. We have homes in the mountains that need to be winterized, and that takes a few days in early November as well. So we need to plan that date well in advance around all the other things that we have going on. Two weeks before that inspection, we email the tenants to let them know that the date has been set and ask if there are any maintenance issues that they need remedied. Doing this allows us plenty of time to schedule the necessary repair people for that day. We do each property inspection in one day so we can have Jim on site to check for leaks, et cetera. Our HVAC guy is on site to check the heaters or in the spring he's checking the AC units. And then anyone else, like this last spring inspection, we had fiber optic installed to every unit. If we need to access someone's unit, we try to do everything we need to do in one day so we don't inconvenience them any more than we have to.

Kevin: 22:11

And I wanna jump in here and say that we will be doing an episode on why we installed that fiber optic and what that experience was like. It's mostly for multi-family complexes, but we actually learned a lot and want to share what we did and why as well as if we would recommend it.

Stacie: 22:29

Yeah, we had a lot of aha moments with that internet installation.

Kevin: 22:34

Yeah. It's not as cut and dried as you'd think. So, uh, keep an eye out for that episode. It should be the next one or the one following. To continue what Stacie was discussing. She has notes in her phone, reminders on her phone, like to set the inspection date and a paper calendar that we use where we plan our weeks out a couple of weeks at a time. If something happens that uproot our lives and her or my focus comes off the day-to-day tasks, when we are then able to come back, even if it's only for an hour here and there, we can look at what we have coming up and go, yes, let's move forward with that, or nope that's not a priority now let's table that for a later date. We did an episode early on about standard operating procedures. It was in our top five most listened to episodes until recently, but I think it's definitely still in our top 10 most popular. If you want to give it a listen, you can go to landlord resource.com/episode 6. We break down why they are important and what we do. We will link it in the show notes as well. You know, the point of this episode was really to discuss how to stay motivated when you're not getting the results you want. It seems we took a turn and are focusing more on how to work through your business during personal challenging times.

Stacie: 23:57

Yeah. I can see we did go on a tangent about our tough couple years. But I guess my point is, is that we want to let you all know that even for us landlord life is sometimes hard. It's not because the business itself, it's because of life itself. You know, thank goodness we are in a position with these rentals to be able to have the time we needed to care for my family in their time of need. Owning rentals gave us that freedom. Listen, we're gonna table the information we wanted to talk about until next episode. We will cover how to handle when you feel your rental property business itself is not working out as you'd hoped or planned. Because we have had those issues as well.

Kevin: 24:40

Right? I mean, we're working to it right now with the Idaho property and it's not fun times you guys. Listen, we know a lot about being property managers, but we certainly don't know at all, and we absolutely are always learning. And that's what we wanted to discuss, so let's focus that on the next episode.

Stacie: 25:02

All right, well then let's talk about our giveaway. Kevin and I have decided to start doing a little landlord or property management coaching on the side. To kick this off, we're giving away one free hour of coaching, which is valued at around a hundred bucks. Get it? A hundred dollars gift for our hundredth episode. To enter, there is a link in the show notes, or you can go to your landlord resource.com/contest 100. You can enter there and for a bonus entry, you can leave us a kind review for the podcast. Just make sure that we're able to align your review with your online entry.

Kevin: 25:41

Don't make it anonymous review. Make sure it has a way for us to connect them together so you get proper credit. Like use your first name and initial of your last name. The link to leave the review is in the show notes. We will also be announcing this contest on Instagram and Facebook and offering bonus entries for those as well. So you'll have multiple ways to grab those bonus entries.

Stacie: 26:06

Yeah, we're running this contest through the month of June, that's in 2025. Ends at midnight Pacific Standard time June 30th, 2025. So if you're listening to this episode in the future, you can still sign up for coaching, just not the contest for a free session. All right. Well thanks for tuning in. I hope this helped you to know that it's not always wine and roses as landlords. Even with our experience, we still struggle to handle everything professionally. If you enjoyed this episode, follow or subscribe to the podcast so that each week the episodes are downloaded right to your favorite podcast platform. We would love to stay in contact with you. In the show notes, you can find links to all the free downloads that we offer, ways to sign up for our free newsletter, and the wait list for our upcoming course on tenant screening. There's also links to our private Facebook group that's just for landlords and our social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook, as well as YouTube, where we share informative and detailed tips and tricks for landlords. So go check those out. I think that's about it. Thanks again for tuning in, and until next time, you've got this landlords.