Rent Protection Insurance for Ontario Landlords: How RenterCare Works

Welcome: Protection Against Unpaid Rent

[00:00:08] Kevin Breitner: Hey landlords, welcome back to another episode of CRESI’s Ontario Landlord Series Podcast, where we talk to experts, professionals, investors, people like Naresh who we have today gonna talk about his product. But we’re here to work for and educate you guys, the landlords, because there’s so much miss and disinformation that floats around in the landlord and tenant world that on this show we try to keep you up to date, informed for everything that landlords need to know in Ontario. This episode here, like I said, we’re gonna talking to a colleague, a friend. A partner now, Naresh, who is from RenterCare, which is an insurance program that now allows us as landlords to have the financial protection, the coverage, if we have to deal with the eviction of non-payment of rent. So I said this many times and we all know that that as landlords is our biggest fear, right? Having to front and pay for two mortgages or having a tenant not pay us. And without any further ado, Naresh say hi. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

[00:01:08] Naresh Vyas: Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate this time and I really appreciate being involved with your company. It’s a great start. We’ve had some wonderful, wonderful meetings and I think we’re on to a good thing here. I think we really are.

[00:01:27] Kevin Breitner: I 100% agree. From the first time you and I had a conversation months ago discussing how we could put something together and what we could do here. I’ve been excited to get to today where we could release it and tell everybody out there about what we’re now able to offer them. For what it costs to park your car downtown, right? that’s absolutely amazing to protect our assets. So we’ll go through this a little bit. We don’t wanna just jump down our listeners’ throats here. We want to explain this program a little bit. So Naresh, let’s let’s break it down. What is RenterCare? What’s the point of it? How does it help landlords?

What RenterCare Is and the Gap It Fills

[00:02:01] Naresh Vyas: Okay. So let me let me start by introducing our company. We’re registered insurance brokers and we’re a large brokerage. We’re based in Ontario, but we have offices throughout Canada, except Quebec. And we deal with people’s assets and part of our business is dealing with landlords, landlords’ businesses, landlords’ buildings, their properties. We also do a lot of tenants insurance. But while working with landlords and working with tenants, you know, we see a gap. We saw a gap in the industry and we came up with this product which is available in the US. They do really a lot of programs such as this and in some parts of Europe. And we call it Rental Deposits Now, that’s the name of the company, and the product is called RenterCare. And what it does is it actually tries to fill in the gap between the landlord insurance, which is the property insurance, and the tenant insurance, by providing the landlord with the protection for the financial loss that they would suffer in the event of a tenant default.

[00:03:18] Kevin Breitner: Exactly what you’re saying there, Naresh. This is going to be a great thing to fill that gap to help take care of things when the unexpected happens, right? We definitely don’t want to think that our tenant’s going to default. You know, a lot of things can happen in a tenant’s life and things can change, and all of a sudden, you know, they do what’s best for them and they tighten up on the rent because now there’s not really that big of a punishment. It’s gonna change over the next couple of years, how we’re attaching it to their credit bureau and everything like that, so that’ll follow them around. It’s not going to be as excusable and forgive, I don’t know if forgivable is the word, but it wasn’t punishable or actionable by the landlords, and tenants were getting away with it. And that’s starting to change. This is a great start. Everything coming along with Equifax and stuff like that’s going to help too. So we know that is a benefit obviously for the landlord to protect them there. When we’re thinking about on the tenant side, is there a benefit for them to be involved with this as well?

Benefits for Tenants and Relocation Costs

[00:04:15] Naresh Vyas: Yes, the tenant does get some benefits. So what we do is we try and try and keep it a little bit fair. We give a tenant, for example, if they need if they need to move, relocate for a month, we will help them with the relocation cost. We will help them with the deductible on their particular insurance, the tenant’s insurance. And if they their pet damaged the unit for some reason and they needed some help, like a five hundred dollar pet damage waiver, we would cover that for them as well. So there are a number of smaller things for the tenant, but predominantly this is a landlord protection—

[00:04:57] Kevin Breitner: You mentioned there about having to relocate a tenant. So for example, I guess if something was happening in the unit, like sewage backup or something like that, where the tenant has to be relocated, this will now cover their hotel. Cause we have it all the time where the landlord’s insurance is calling, the tenant’s insurance is calling, and both of them are arguing, saying, No, that’s not us. We don’t want to do that. And then it falls to the landlord to have to cover that absolutely Airbnb or hotel or whatever they need. So yeah. We have that here now too.

[00:05:26] Naresh Vyas: Yeah, just to add to it. A landlord has the obligation to move that tenant as soon as possible. Let’s say it’s a water damage claim, pipes burst and it’s got nothing to do with the tenant. It may not even be their fault. But the onus is that you’ve gotta move that tenant as soon as possible to a dry habitable location where they can actually live, you know, and have a home that they had before and for the cost falls down onto the landlord and then the landlord has to then go to its own insurance company and then make the claim and try and to get that money back. Hopefully they win and if they don’t, well it doesn’t matter because we’ll cover that for you anyway.

What Happens When a Tenant Leaves Early

[00:06:10] Kevin Breitner: No, I think that’s another great thing for this program. There’s the major things that we all know that we’re gonna talk about, but there’s a couple of little ones like that one there that I think is a nice little add on. And really what this is all about, we don’t want to have the insurance expecting our tenant to default, right? It’s like car insurance. I have car insurance so that I get into a car accident, I’m covered, but I definitely don’t plan on getting into a car accident or expect to get into a car accident, right? It’s just there to make sure. But if the worst thing happens, I don’t have to worry about being out of pocket for anything. Let’s keep talking about these little add ons to this program as well that I think are great as well. So I’ll let you dive in. What if a tenant leaves early? How does that work?

[00:06:52] Naresh Vyas: Okay, so let’s say there’s a lease break, we call it a lease break. The tenant leaves. The landlord now has, you know, loss of income. They need to find a new tenant. So what we will do is we will cover that landlord for a month so that they can actually start advertising, get a new tenant in, start the screening process and hopefully if the if tenant works out to be a good tenant, we can actually qualify them. And get them to the position where we can get a lease signed probably by the end of that month so we can get a tenant in so that they can continue the tenancy with a new tenant.

[00:07:31] Kevin Breitner: Yeah. So just I’m gonna try to clarify you let me know if I’m right when I say this, but if a tenant then gives you thirty five days or forty days notice instead of the standard minimum of sixty, they’re going to get one month’s coverage to make sure during that downtime they’re not stressed out. I think that’s it.

[00:07:49] Naresh Vyas: And remember Kevin, a lot of tenants may not actually give you notice. They may just tell you they’re leaving and they leave.

[00:07:58] Kevin Breitner: Yep. I yeah, I would say probably about eighty to eighty five percent of our tenancies end with the tenant providing us less than sixty days notice. Sometimes it’s exactly what you say, a week’s notice. I’m out and I don’t care and they just go. They leave their last month’s deposit. But anyways, that’s another great one. So when this came about, right? Like you said it came into the States first. Now it’s in Canada. We’re new to Canada, new to Ontario, and we’re excited to get this word out. Is there much of a difference between what it started with to what it is today? Have you changed? Have you guys adapted to think what you guys started with this idea to the program now, or is this pretty much what it was when you came out with it and it’s been great ever since?

How the Product Adapted to Everyday Landlords

[00:08:46] Naresh Vyas: No, no, we’ve had to adapt it to current needs. Let’s face it, the LTB and the time taken for a claim to now actually get paid through, it’s just gone up to six months, up to eight months. The landlord, if they didn’t have this product, the landlord would be then covering the mortgage. They cover all the other costs, they may have to cover, you know, the taxes. They may have to pay for a paralegal or a lawyer to help them with the claim. And when they finally do evict the tenant, of course there’s the damage and all the other stuff that goes with it. So the product itself has changed. Before we made it into a traditional landlord product, we designed it actually for the very large organizations like the REITs, the big, you know, thousand door property managers so that we could actually provide them more of a financial product which was speaking to maintaining the ROI. We were talking about cap rates and we were talking about dealing with really big organizations. But we found out that big organizations have ways of protecting themselves. But the landlord, the guy on the street, the guy who’s actually got one or two units or maybe ten units. You know, he’s saved up a lot of money. He’s using his own money and they’re the ones who need this product. So we’ve shifted gears and we’ve designed it for those guys.

[00:10:25] Kevin Breitner: I love it. That that’s exactly what we did here and how we started everything with our Landlord Protection Program. We built that for the everyday landlord, right? I say all the time everyone should invest in real estate, but not everyone should be a landlord. That’s why we’re here to help manage and stuff like this. And same thing with our program and what we do. Hopefully our listeners already know this, but for anybody new, CRESI is an acronym for complete real estate solutions investments. And it’s all about becoming your complete solution for your real estate and investment needs. We’re constantly always trying to improve and make our solution more complete for our landlords, which is how this all came about and what we were trying to do. And there’s other companies that have been out there that have talked about something like this. But this program, the cost for this, the coverage, the tenant screening with facial recognition, we can talk about that too later. It’s all next level, in my opinion. And again, the cost to park downtown is pretty much what the cost of this is going to be on a monthly basis for their average rental property. And I’ll give an example later just to break it all down numbers wise so that people can understand it, to kind of see what this is going to do. But like any insurance prop product, there’s specifics and differences between each property, each tenant, and Naresh and the team can customize to what you want to do and how you’re going to do it for those little tweaks. But this is an unbelievable program and yeah, happy to share it all with you. So let’s let’s get back to you know, obviously cost is a big one that people are gonna want to know about, but we’ll give that example in a second. Let’s let’s give them some more teasers. Let’s talk about what you think is the best part of this program as somebody that’s been involved with it. Like when you’re first mentioning this to somebody, what is your go to opening line that knocks their socks off to get their attention?

The Three Parts: Screening, Insurance and Electronic Lease

[00:12:19] Naresh Vyas: Okay, so this is a really interesting question. There are actually three parts to this product. The first part is the screening, and we you talked a little bit about the screening. We have a really good, very, very high-level screening system. And it’s designed to underwrite the tenant, do all the due diligence on the tenant so that we know that it’s the right tenant for the right property. And it’s done in such a way that it provides the landlord all the information so they don’t have to go out and do the tenant screening to the level that we do. And it’s not just effective for the landlord, it’s effective for people like yourself, the property managers, realtors, and let’s face it, the current market, the real estate market is in a bit of a slow mode and a lot of the realtors are going to help. Landlords with providing tenancies. So we’re also aiming to help those guys. The second part of it is the actual insurance, which we’ve spoken of very briefly. But the thing that makes our product absolutely perfect is the actual process of getting the tenant, talking to the tenant about the application, going through the process of screening, having everything on a dashboard so that Kevin can go online. Log into it and see where things stand, see how far along the way we’ve got the screening done. And if there’s any issues, flags will be there. The results of all the different types of screening is shown on there. And all of that can be compiled into one report. We can then finalize the application process for you and finally take that application process, make the lease document. Now we use a the standard Ontario lease so it keeps everything sort of complimentary and keep it simple for everyone. And then what we would do is we would fill in as much detail on the lease as we possibly can, would leave blanks for the landlord to actually go through it and add on any additions that they may want to add on. The landlord can then sign it, or he could send the lease to the tenant. Tenant signs it, sends the lease back all electronically. And the landlord can then say, yes, everything looks good. They sign the lease and the tenants now set. Everything’s good. You’ve now got yourself a tenant, the tenancy is in place. All of that can be done seamlessly through our electronic system. And we’ve set it up so that we can actually work with a system, a similar system that you would use for managing your tenants and or property, property management system, and we can actually set it up so that we can send you all the documentation and you could then have your filing done the same way we would have the process set up within our system. So it keeps things uniform for all of us and we make sure that all the documentation is kept in place and everybody then has access to it.

Screening in Practice: The Flagged Pay Stub

[00:15:35] Kevin Breitner: Yeah. No. A as I mentioned right off the top, this is new to us. It’s a new product. So we have just started to use it with our clients and with our landlords and everybody. So for this month of September here. So it’s been a few times we’ve screened some tenants already. It’s impressive. They have to do facial recognition. There’s a link that gets sent to them. We still do our front lobby checks. They do a full credit, criminal and everything. So we haven’t stopped doing that. This is just another layer of protection for our landlords where they’re going to get it at the end. So a link gets sent out to the potential tenants, then they have to go through everything, they fill it out, and then we get to see everything afterwards. Something that I thought was very cool when we did it one of these times was I got a report back saying that one of the pay stubs had actually been tampered with according to one of the systems inside their tenant screening. I don’t understand all the technical side, but basically it came back saying that their pay stub was edited and figured and fooled around with through iLovePDF was the app they used. Even broke it down to that, which I thought was great. We ended up going through more and more and more about it, going back to the employer. And it just so happened that it wasn’t tampered with. They didn’t change their wage or anything like that. But the system is so good, it just knew that they had loaded it into this PDF. Like I guess they downloaded it that way before they sent it to us. And that’s how they caught it. And that’s how the system tracked it, being through this app. But anyways, how awesome is that, that we know that it was loaded into a PDF app that allows you to modify different images and documents. I thought that was great. It cost a little more work and a little bit of stress at first where people thought that, my goodness, this isn’t someone that we thought they—

[00:17:27] Naresh Vyas: Came up as a red flag, remember? And you know, that’s all we said. This is a red flag for us. But we looked into it and you’re absolutely right. What it was is that the way their document was put into the system, they couldn’t then upload it to anybody else’s system. They had to go through and put it into a PDF format. But the funny thing, as you said, is that we were able to identify which application they used to do this and come back and say to you, yeah, look, this was the application they used. And that speaks volumes because that says, you know, we go really deep into our verification system.

Coverage Walkthrough on $2,500 Rent

[00:18:08] Kevin Breitner: Yeah, no, again, I was highly impressed with it. And again, I’d rather know that there could be an issue than not know about that issue at all. Again, it’s a little more work, it’s a little more due diligence and digging, but at least the tenant also knew that we weren’t just joking around and doing things either, right? They saw how serious and how good our screening process was. What I’ll do now is I’ll describe how I described it to our landlord so far that I’ve shared this program so that everybody out there can kinda break it down and understand a little bit about how much this is going to cover for them as a benefit and how little the cost is. And again, all this is a business expense. It’s a write-off, folks. When you’re a landlord, you are a business owner. I’ve said this many times before. These are expenses that allow you to live your life the way it should be and have your investment be as passive as possible. Especially when you have us taking care of the property or another person out there helping you. Or even yourself we can get you connected with Naresh and you can take advantage of this program. Obviously going through us, there’s benefits and then we take care of everything as well. So let me just explain a little bit to you. And if I make a mistake here in Naresh, please stop me and correct me. But we’re gonna give an example of a single family condo apartment unit where the tenant is paying $2,500 a month rent. So with that amount what’s gonna happen here is You’re gonna pay. Actually, you know what? I’m not gonna do it that way. We’re gonna go the other way. I’m gonna tell you how much it’s gonna cost you, the landlord, at the end. And we can maybe have people guess and write in amounts that they think this is gonna cost. Good idea. For a rental coverage of twenty five hundred dollars a month rent. If you get into the eviction of non-payment of rent, you serve the N4 notice, okay, you’re gonna get two thousand dollars in coverage for your paralegal help. Through us again, our Paralegal that you all know, Rob Di Lisi at Stonegate Legal Services. He’s represents all of our clients. So he’d be taking care of you on our end to make sure. So that is out of pocket expense covered by the $2,000 from this program. You’re also gonna then get six months of rent coverage. So that would be $2,500 for six months, which is fifteen thousand dollars. Okay. Now again, I say six months because If everything’s done properly and the way the board is right now, plus a GTA sheriff eviction, you should be done at six months at the most, you know, five months, six months. It could take a little bit longer. So Naresh is able to tinker and tweak it from six months to eight months or a year if you really want that much protection. It’s up to you, the landlord. As I say all the time, we’re as individual as our fingerprints, right? So I’m gonna recap. $2,500 a month rent gets you six months coverage. Okay, if you were collecting twenty five hundred dollars a month in rent, you will get six months of that rental coverage. So twenty five hundred times six, fifteen grand, two thousand dollars towards your paralegal cost. You will also get up to ten thousand dollars in repair, damage cost for any holes, appliance breaking, hoarding, things that we gotta throw out that they left behind, whatever it is, ten thousand dollars to clean up the mess that the tenants left when they were evicted. That is pretty much it for the non-eviction coverage. The other ones that I talk about are for any tenant move out. So on a regular tenant move out, if there’s pet damage, there’s $500 in coverage there for pet damage, you know, screens being cut by the dog’s nails or chewing at a baseboard or whatever it is that we have to fix. You’re gonna get $500 there for pet coverage. The other one that we mentioned before is if a tenant leaves early, right? Imagine the tenant doesn’t give you 60 days notice. Come on, landlords. I know you can’t tell me every tenant gives you 60 days notice. Some do, most don’t. So right there, you are going to get that premium back, basically. And just when your tenant leaves, you’re gonna have that month of vacancy coverage. So you’re not out of pocket while we’re trying to get your replacement tenant in. So am I missing anything right there before I go to the cost?

[00:22:19] Naresh Vyas: No, let me just add two things to it. You mentioned a really good point and I want to reiterate that point you made. This is insurance. Guys, this is not only is it tax deductible, you use the word tax deductible, this is exactly like getting your building covered. If anything happens to your building, it’s the biggest asset that you would have. A landlord’s assets are the bricks and mortar. You’re gonna pay thousands of dollars to get that building covered. The tenant has its own insurance, but This is something that is more likely to happen than the place fall down or go in flames or have water damage. There’s more likelihood of a tenant going to default than there is of you having a claim where an insurance company has to step in. So it doesn’t make sense not to have that one thing covered. And as you rightly well, I’m not going to go into the numbers. We got to save that to the end. But I think people are gonna be surprised.

What It Costs: About $60 a Month

[00:23:19] Kevin Breitner: Yeah. So right there, let’s let’s talk about what I just mentioned. I’ll recap it again just so we can get you guessing about how much you think this is gonna cost on a monthly basis. Okay. So you get six months coverage of twenty five hundred dollars rent, which is fifteen thousand dollars, up to ten thousand dollars in repair damage, getting rid of junk, whatever that is. Sure. Paralegal cost of two thousand dollars. All for the non eviction of tenants right there. That’s what you’re getting at that point. The other stuff is on any move out, the pet damages as well as the early exit. So take some guesses, throw some numbers in the chat. I’d like to hear what people are thinking about this. Because I’ll tell you, I didn’t I didn’t think it was gonna be this low. We went to the Blue Jays game at the end of the season there and I paid forty five dollars to park my car. Right? Crazy. But anyway.

[00:24:11] Naresh Vyas: So did I. I was there with you, remember?

[00:24:13] Kevin Breitner: Yes. Right? Forty five dollars to park the cars. And this program here, I think I’ve given you guys enough time to throw out some numbers and guess. It’s only sixty dollars a month, guys. Like, that’s unreal to me to have your biggest asset protected and not have to worry about any out-of-pocket expense. If the worst did happen, I think that’s great. Like imagine your car insurance covered, at well, I guess it kind of does, right? You shouldn’t have any out of pocket expense in a car crash too. Same thing with this. We’re not expecting that, we’re not wanting that. But it’s there for your coverage. And again, it’s a tax deductible expense. And when I first started talking to Naresh, I said, this is going to be a great add-on to our program. We’re going to offer our regular program and say, if you want, we’ll offer you this. Well, we changed our minds very, very quickly once we decided this. This is now a part of our program. We’ve changed our program to include this. And if the tenants or the landlords sorry then say they don’t want that coverage, then we can go back and we can revert it out. But We’re no longer looking at as an add-on. We’re looking at as a must-have for our clients. Because again, it’s just got everything that you need. So you don’t have to worry about something. You know, one of the things that we tried to do with CRESI Property Management is make this real estate landlording gig for you guys as passive as it possibly can be. Right. At the end of the day, it can’t be completely passive. But it can be way more passive than what it is for most land most landlords. And we’re here to help and make that even better again. I keep shaking the screen so I hope nobody is bothered by that. Sorry, Naresh.

Appliance Theft and the Midnight Flip

[00:25:47] Naresh Vyas: Well I have a question for you. I have a question for you. Okay? You you’ve given a great, really great explanation. Let me ask you a question. How much does a normal fridge cost?

[00:26:00] Kevin Breitner: A normal what?

[00:26:01] Naresh Vyas: Fridge that you would normally put in an average fridge. Refriger. Something like that.

[00:26:06] Kevin Breitner: Seven, eight hundred bucks. Maybe a thousand four hundred.

[00:26:11] Naresh Vyas: Okay. How much would washer dryer or a stove cost?

[00:26:17] Kevin Breitner: Depending on your model, you know, you can get washer and dryers for anywhere again, six hundred dollars lower than that for a an older model like not an older model, but a top load model or whatever. Not a fancy one. But they can be anywhere to a few thousand dollars as well.

[00:26:29] Naresh Vyas: Right. So we will cover theft of appliances. Now now you probably experienced this. Tenant does a midnight flip, they take the fridge with them because it’s reasonably new fridge, it’s a nice fridge, and they want to take the fridge. They will take the fridge. If they want to human beings are such creatures that if we want to do something, they will do it. And now we look at the cost of replacing that appliance. It’s covered. And I’m not gonna go into numbers again, but just think about the cost and that would be part of our claim, not an issue.

Wrap-Up and How to Reach CRESI

[00:27:09] Kevin Breitner: Again, I continue to say it and this is the only way this is a game changer for landlords. One of the things is this is the biggest fear of landlords. And now we’ve solved that problem, right? the Landlord Protection Program that we built for our landlords across Ontario was missing one thing, and that was the financial protection if something like this happened. And now we have that. I’m super excited about it for all the landlords out there. I’m sure there’s questions if you have any. Feel free to email us or comment on this. The best email to use would be propertymanagement@cresi.ca again, just like it’s spelt no spaces, no underscores, no periods. Propertymanagement@cresi.ca. Reach out, let us know how we can help. If you know a landlord, share this podcast with them. We’re only trying to help everybody out there. And thanks so much for watching. Naresh, do you have any last words, something you want to leave them with?

[00:28:01] Naresh Vyas: No, what I wanted to do is just to say thank you very much for having us on the show. I really appreciate the time. And I’m looking forward to answering any other questions. I’m sure you’ll be getting back to me on that and really excited to start this incredible project with you.

[00:28:20] Kevin Breitner: Yeah, no, we’ve already had some clients reaching out and connected them with you, and there’s gonna be more coming, especially as this all starts to get rolled out. So super exciting. Happy to be promoting this program and Rental Deposits Now and RenterCare. Again, any questions, reach out. Thanks so much for watching. I’m Kevin Breitner with CRESI Property Management and we’ll see you next time. Bye for now.

[00:28:41] Naresh Vyas: Take care, bye bye.

[00:28:43] Kevin Breitner: Hey everybody, thanks so much for joining us this week. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you’re finding it informative and useful, make sure to like, subscribe, share with a friend so that we can keep getting the information out there to Ontario landlords. And keep on joining us. We’ll see you next time.

Please remember, while we are professionals, this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The advice shared may not apply to your unique situation. Always seek personalized advice from a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.