Steve Welty Issue# 66 September 2025 Happy Saturday, Housing Heroes, If you’ve ever found yourself crossing your fingers and hoping your next tenant is “the one,” this one’s for you. We’ve managed thousands of rentals over the years at Good Life, and I want to share exactly how we screen tenants to avoid drama, protect your investment, and make landlording a whole lot easier. First Things First: Put It in Writing Starting 2025, AB 2493 says that if you charge a screening fee, you’ve got to...
11 days ago • 3 min read
Steve Welty Issue# 65 August 2025 Happy Saturday, Housing Heroes, One of the most common questions I get from clients is: “What can I actually use the security deposit for, and what counts as normal wear versus damage?” It’s a great question and one that gets trickier in California with our strict deposit laws and the new requirements under AB 2493. The short answer is: you can absolutely recover real costs from a deposit, but you need to be fair, consistent, and have good documentation....
18 days ago • 3 min read
Steve Welty Issue# 64 August 2025 Happy Saturday, Housing Heroes, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the rental market and this summer has me noticing something interesting. Usually, summer is our busiest season - phones ringing nonstop, applications pouring in, and homes getting snatched up in days. But this year? It feels like things have slowed just a touch. What We’re Seeing At Good Life, we’ve got 77 properties on the market right now. And here’s the surprising part: more than 15 of them...
25 days ago • 2 min read
Steve Welty Issue# 63 August 2025 Happy Saturday, Housing Heroes, A wealthy investor once told me: “Never sell a home you live in. When you move out, turn it into a rental. Rinse and repeat.” At first, it sounded too simple to be powerful. But over time, both the data and my own experience have proven him right. Take the condo I used to live in. I sold it for about $235,000. Today, it’s worth over $535,000. That stings. Just recently, my wife and I started talking about whether we should sell...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Steve Welty Issue# 62 August 2025 Happy Saturday, Housing Heroes, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about self-showing lockboxes. 99.99% of the time, our self-showings go perfectly. This is the story of the 0.01% - and how it made our system even stronger. We’ve been using them for years, and they’ve completely changed the game for how quickly we can rent a property. They cut vacancy time, let people tour when it works for them, and honestly make for a way better experience than a rushed...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Steve Welty Issue# 61 August 2025 Happy Saturday, Housing Heroes, This past Tuesday, we hosted our very first Client Connect webinar! We connected with clients from a portfolio led by Kevin (who’s now being promoted to Regional Manager), and introduced Gioel Enriquez as the new Property Manager for the portfolio. We also shared updates to the leasing department, with more improvements on the way. What made this session special? It addressed the #1 frustration we hear: “I don’t even know who’s...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Steve Welty Issue# 60 July 2025 Happy Saturday, Housing Heroes, If you’ve ever looked at your rental and thought: “I’m just breaking even - what’s the point?” You’re not alone. We’ve worked with hundreds of homeowners in Southern California, and this is one of the most common positions we see: a property that’s slightly negative or just breakeven on cash flow. And it raises a good question: Why hold a rental property that’s not “making money”? Maybe you're holding it to move back in one day....
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Steve Welty Issue# 59 July 2025 Happy Saturday, Housing Heroes, We’ve been having some powerful conversations lately on our team, with clients, even inside the newsletter. What’s emerged is this simple truth:Success with your property manager doesn’t just come from what they do.It comes from how you show up, too. The Owner/Manager Relationship Isn’t One-Sided At Good Life, our mission is simple:Make owning rental property easy. But “easy” means something different depending on who you are....
2 months ago • 2 min read
Steve Welty Issue# 57 July 2025 Happy Saturday, Housing Heroes, A few days ago, our VP Natalia Vanni sent out an email to the team with some unexpected (but super helpful) tips about home insurance. She had just bought a new house (huge congrats, Natalia! 🎉) and wanted to share what she learned while trying to lower her insurance premium. Spoiler: she didn’t just call her agent she went full research mode. ChatGPT, articles, deep dives... and then she passed the gold nuggets on to us. It got...
2 months ago • 2 min read