Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be able to leave your 9-5 and live off the income from rental properties?Not sure where to start or what steps to take?I've got you covered.
I'm Kirby Atwell, former US Army officer turned full-time rental property investor
And I wish I could say the transition from full-time job in the military to living off rentals was an easy one, but there were lots of twists, turns, and roadblocks along the way.
In this podcast, I talk to all sorts of rental property experts who will help you avoid some of the same mistakes I made when I was getting started and ultimately equip you with the tools you need to live off rentals.
George, welcome to Living Off Rentals.
I'm so happy to be here.Thanks so much, Kirby.
Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to have you here.And today's topic is one that we've never really discussed on this show before, but it's become a big enough of a problem for anyone who owns property that you really should understand this topic.
And that's the topic of squatters and how to deal with them.
Yeah, so my guest today is George McCleary, and he's a squatter and title theft expert.He's been a real estate investor for two decades, and he posted a video called I Stole a House, which exposed how effortless it can be to have a house stolen.
And this amassed millions of views on multiple social media channels. and he's appeared on many different TV news programs to discuss this sort of squatting epidemic that we're facing in America today.
So I want to start off with sort of what led you to be an expert on squatters, and I'm assuming this expertise was sort of born out of some pain that you experienced personally in this arena.
Yeah, if you're going to be a real estate investor, if you're going to be living off rentals in Portland, Oregon, or anywhere in a major market on the West Coast, then you're gonna have to contend with some bad actors.
That would be bad tenants and squatters as well.And unfortunately, squatters have really upped the ante recently.There's been a lot more of them.
And I haven't been, I've had squatters kind of low level, like homeless people that have passed out in my projects, my flips or new bills.
never had anybody who's really been leaning into the scam in a ways of like faking leases and all the ways that we're going to discuss.But nonetheless, I know a lot of my colleagues that had been victimized.
And so I made a video about it, and it totally blew up, it got politicized, it got twisted, it got got me a ton of attention.And
It really just led to a big journey of learning all about the crime, why there isn't good information out there, why people feel so helpless when they have squatters or get their title stolen.
And over the course of several months, just talked to as many people as I could and got myself like a PhD in it.
Interesting.Interesting.Yeah.And I think people, when they hear squatters, like everyone has their own idea of what that means and how prevalent it is and that sort of thing.
So I want to talk through this since you are a subject matter expert on it and can kind of break through all the headlines and the clickbait stuff, um, and get to the real, real information.
But I'm curious, like, why has this become so much more prevalent in the U S you think?
The short answer to why it has become so prevalent is that it's a very low risk, high reward crime.And the reason it's low risk is that what squatters are doing is they're getting themselves, they're affording themselves the rights of tenants.
And by way of deception and basically just holes in the law, state to state, they're getting the rights that are normally afforded to tenants under landlord-tenant law.And there's landlord-tenant law in every single state.
And so when they're not tried criminally and they're only tried civilly, and plus they just don't have any money to go after, then they're not paying the price for the crime and they're able to extract more money.This is the high reward part.
They're able to extract months and months of free rent, rent out places to their friends, extract money from the property in the multiple tens of thousands of dollars.In fact,
the range that of all the cases that I studied over several months, talking to people who had been like in newspaper articles, tracking down said, Hey, what did this end up actually cost you?
Because I read the headline, like, hey, you've got squatters, not that was super messed up.But what did it end up costing you?
And they they said, Well, all in, it cost me $70,000, or $90,000, or $45,000, it really fell into the range of about 50 to $100,000. per incident.And this to me was just completely shocking.
Yeah.I'm curious, like, why this is even a thing.
Like, you know, if you show up to someone's house and say, now I live here, I feel like it's sort of common sense that you just could throw them out or you could call the police and they should be able to be removed from the house.
Like, why would someone be allowed to just take up residency in a house they don't own?
Great question.And the reason for this is it's complicated, but it's fairly simple.And the short answer is it's deception.
Because when somebody invades a vacant house and does so without any signs of forced entry, and they can do that by either picking a lock, there's videos on YouTube, going through a window, a back door, whatever, getting established, moving in furniture, moving in friends, having their car in the driveway, they're mowing the lawn and waving to the neighbors.
they're establishing some level of permanence undetected to the owner, because there's a lot of owners who don't go buy their rentals more than once a week, once a month, or never.
And they'll sit vacant, and that gives the squatters the opportunity to move in.So then, as soon as they're discovered, of course the first thing that you do is you call the police and say, This guy is in my rental property.I got to get him out.
He's not leaving.So the cops show up and they've got one guy saying, hey, this guy doesn't belong here.He has no lease.And then they got the other guy saying, well, sorry, officer, but I do have a lease.As you can see, I've moved in all of my stuff.
And I've got my friend living here.I've been here forever.In fact, I've got this lease right here, which of course is fake.And so the cop right there has a choice.
Either he can drag somebody who may have the right to be there out of their home and run the risk of being wrong,
Or he can say, all right, you two, sounds like we got a he said, she said right here, you guys have to go to court, and you got to sort this out.
And if the guy in the house is like a known bad actor, he's like a rap sheet a mile long, and the cop is confident that they can they can rip them out of the house, it's no big deal, then that's one thing.
But more often than not, these are regular people, that's not desperate drug addicts anymore.It's really there's white collar squatters out there. And the cop knows that it takes a lot under the law to take somebody out of their house to arrest them.
And so that's the essence of the scam.It's that type of deception.
Wow.And so, what if you, like, personally remove them?
You know, like, it seems like you could make it very unpleasant for either, either physically you could remove them from the house, drag them out, or you could make it unpleasant for them to live there.
Like, could you, you know, take the doors off, cut the electricity?Like, I've got a couple beehives out here with about 100,000 bees that if they found their way into a house, I'm guessing somebody wouldn't stick around very long, you know?
Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to think of, like, ways to make it uncomfortable, you know?Totally, yeah.
So all of these methods, we'll just call them, you know, there's calling a lawyer, there's calling the cops, there's, you know, filling the house with bees.I heard all the anecdotes, all the stories of all the crazy things that people have tried.
And the results, they vary from massively successful all the way up to the absolutely tragic, like resulting in the death of the homeowner, the worst of the worst.
And of course, you know, after I made that viral video, a bunch of people commented like, hey, I would just, you know, point a gun at them and get them out of the house.And yes, you can do that.
But the thing is, castle doctrine laws don't apply in rental properties, they only apply where you live.And so pointing a gun at somebody and taking and taking some somewhere at gunpoint,
is you're entering not only dangerous ground, but also very shaky legal ground.And there were stories about, that sounds like Kirby, you've got the bees.Other people had roaches, or rats, or snakes was another one of my favorites.
Pouring snakes down the chimney and filling the house with snakes. Making the whole experience extremely uncomfortable for them actually is a viable solution.
The way that you do it has to be very nuanced though because you don't want to put yourself in danger, but you also want to make their experience as unpleasant as possible so that they will figure, okay, the jig is up and I've got to leave.
And that's the type of stuff I teach in the Squatter Defender course.
Interesting.Okay.Well, if you need a guest speaker on beekeeping or just bees in general, I'm happy to come on.
I mean, I've had him for about a year now.You know, maybe in a V2 of Squatter Defender, I'll talk about, okay, let's talk about the bees. I don't know if that even worked, but you know, I'm just trying to think.It's only one way to find out Kirby.
That's right.But in terms of, so realistically, say we did sick 100,000 bees on a squatter and the squatter dies.This has happened and the homeowner has faced criminal liability for this.
So there's only certain circumstances upon which you can, you know, kill a guy, basically, and or attack them.And so you want to make sure that you're staying within the limits.
There is some gray area that I talk about in the course, and I can never like fully endorse a lot of these methods.I can never say like, hey, go get go get the bees.However, you know, there is an element of that to it.
Yeah.Yeah.It just seems like such a slippery slope.Like the more it's allowed and the squatter is protected, the more it's going to encourage it and the more popular this is going to become.So yeah, it just, uh, there's so much gray area.
It seems like, you know, I, I'm not a political person.I hate politics, but it seems like local policy obviously has a big impact on how prevalent this is.
I mean, you mentioned the West Coast.Do you think this is a national problem that everyone should be concerned with or is it mostly just isolated to certain areas?
It's really national because that conundrum that that police officer faced that we were talking about before where he's got one guy saying one thing and the other guy saying the other thing, that can happen anywhere.
If you've got a small town and the bad actors are well-known by like the four cops who run the city, then yeah, there's a smaller chance that something bad is going to happen.
And also, there's a greater chance that something's going to happen if you're within a very liberal jurisdiction that's, you know, not backing their police force, very hypercritical of anything they do, and then also has very robust landlord-tenant laws that gives rise to attorneys
who prey on landlords that are either not crafting their contracts correctly or doing something that violates the landlord-tenant law in that area, which in the case of Portland, the landlord-tenant law is very robust.It's a mile long.
and it very much favors the tenants.And in this case, if you've got a squatter, then you have a de facto tenant in a lot of cases.
And so that's why you've got, that's why you've got cases on the West Coast and some more liberal jurisdictions that are a whole lot worse as well.
It's kind of ironic because, you know, in a lot of these areas, there's this cry for more affordable housing, but yet as an investor, just looking at it objectively across the U.S.
and saying, you know, where does it make the most sense to spend my money and invest in fixing up properties and renting properties? it's not gonna be in areas where people are gonna move in and just take over the property.
And so it just feeds that, or fuels that fire of not having enough housing.It's gonna just continue as sort of a downward spiral.
It's an additional impediment to development.That's one reason why things cost as much as they do on the West Coast versus other areas, because not only is it, it is still a desirable place to live in Portland,
LA, the weather's great, there's stuff to do.
If you've got a limited supply and that supply is limited by impediments to development, additional charges for permits, SDCs, things like that, that's going to constrict the supply and that's going to raise prices.
And if you, on top of that, you've got landlord-tenant law that's particularly oppressive, that's also going to limit the supply because you've got people that are less inclined to construct new units because they've got the headache
of the local landlord tenant laws that's much more heavily in favor of the tenants and they're just not going to get out of bed because there's additional costs associated with that and headaches.
Yeah.Are there specific factors, I guess, that need to be in place for a squatter to be considered established?
It varies state to state, but in some cases, if a squatter is inside of a property for 30 days, there's a famous case in New York where the squatters had been there and could prove it for over 30 days, they had established themselves rights as tenants.
And so what the homeowner did Once she discovered that they were there, she went over to the place and she busted in and she changed the locks.
Then the squatters called the police, proved that they were tenants because they'd been there for 30 days, and they arrested the homeowner for changing the locks. didn't point the gun at them and escort them out.
Those squatters were eventually tried and convicted because of all the media attention that got on this case.So that actually ended up having a little bit more of a happy ending.
But for every one of those, there's 100 that don't make the news because they don't always make the news.Not everybody calls the media or has a compelling story. There always has to be a hook, you know, the homeowner getting arrested.
There's one in Seattle with a stripper pole that was installed.There's other ones where people have used those methods I was talking about to extract the squatters and, you know, that'll make the local news.
But yeah, that's, but there are, to answer your question, yes, there are some cases where tenancy is established just because they've been there for long enough.
Yeah.Yeah.And we invest in short term rentals and we help other people buy their first short term rental as well, you know, from an Airbnb standpoint.So if a guest just decides to be a squatter, how does that work?Is it the same rules?
Generally, the same thing, the same and the same rules apply.So if you're making your case basically to a cop who's standing at your doorstep, And you're saying, hey, this is an Airbnb, you know, as you can see, it's right here.
And then you've got a guy saying like, no, this stuff is all mine.And then once again, it's at the discretion of the police officer, you can involve, you know, the DA or whoever you want.But the reality is,
Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and when you've got a shirt on your back, it's presumed to be yours unless somebody can prove otherwise, unless somebody can prove that it's not your shirt.
And if somebody is in possession of a place, it's difficult to get it back from them unless you can prove it's yours and that they don't have the lawful right to possess it, and this includes housing, and there's additional laws for that.
So I can't tell you definitively whether or not if someone stays in your short-term rental that you can easily or not easily extract them, but I will tell you there has been a ton of squatting cases involving just that, involving Airbnbs.
And there's some of really just the most egregious because they don't even have to pull up a moving truck.All the stuff is already in there now.
They're not only taking over the property, but they're, they're using the coffee maker and the, and the, uh, the couches and the cushions and, you know, trashing the place that's just ready made for them.
And they might, you might even have their information through Airbnb.You might not, but it's happened a ton.
Yeah.Yeah.Yeah.And I advise, you know, everything that I've researched, their case gets a lot stronger if they've been there over 30 days, like all of a sudden the tenant laws kick in, like you mentioned, in New York.
So, you know, if we're going to accept a guest over 30 days, we are doing a heavy screening, signing a lease, like, taking a deposit, checking all the boxes, because if you're gonna get the tenant rights, you better earn them up front.
Don't just book with anyone longer term like that.What else can people do to protect themselves?If they're doing a flip and a property's vacant or they have a short-term rental that there's vacancies in between and there's opportunity for this.
The simplest thing is, it's a real no-brainer for squatter prevention.So there's a whole section in the Squatter Defender course all about squatter prevention.
There's a whole lot of little things you can do, and as we all know, Kirby, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
But my favorite, by far, and the biggest thing that you can do, is just to get a very simple, portable alarm system that sends a notification to your phone.
And in the Squatter Defender course, we give you 50% off anything that you get from SimpliSafe.I don't work for them or have an affiliation, but I get a good deal from them.And it's what I use personally in all my unoccupied units.
We just take the tower, the motion sensor, and the camera, and that 50% off coupon that I give you with Squatter Defender, it also includes a free camera.
And you throw it in the rental, there's no professional installation, costs like, I don't know, 120 bucks or something all in, maybe less than that. If somebody goes inside the property, you look at them and you see if it's someone you know.
If it's the plumber and he's a day early, okay, you're good.
But if he's setting off the alarm, or if he's triggering the motion sensor, or you're looking at the camera, or you have the camera pointed at the door and there's a bunch of packages piling up that someone forgot to pick up or something, you know about it.
And that's really the crux of this.The squatters need time.Time is not on your side when it comes to squatting. If you have a squatter who's in there for a week, a month or longer, you're dead meat.
You're going to, you're going to have a serious problem.
But if a guy comes in and busts the door down or picks the lock or whatever, and you're like, okay, I don't recognize this guy, and you're on it within the first hour, first 24 hours, there's not gonna be much of a chance that you're gonna have trouble convincing a cop.
I've personally sent, I'll say, hey, I've got an issue here and I've got a video.The cop will be like, all right, text it to this number.You can send videos to the cops that are investigating and be like, all right, here's the guy
busting in my door or picking the lock, clearly doesn't have a key, doesn't live there, like he doesn't have any furniture, get rid of this guy.You're making this decision easy for the police officer.
And so if you don't have a squatter, make sure that you know who's coming in and out of your unit.And the easiest way to do that is with a simple burglar alarm and get 50% off of it.And if you buy my course, that's the short answer.
We try to make our properties the higher hanging fruit, you know, so that if somebody is going to choose, they're going to go to the one that's not well lit, doesn't have the video camera out front, doesn't have the security alarm sign in the front yard.
So we try to do all those to prevent it.But yeah, I suppose, you know, anything can still happen.
Anything can happen, but if you got the camera and you got the security alarm, these people are looking for free housing.They're looking for, just like you're saying, Kirby, they're looking for the low-hanging fruit.
They're looking for an easy scam, somebody who's going to be easily victimized.And if you got, just like you're saying, Kirby, low light, no cameras, no alarm, they're thinking, okay. You know, plus there's not a lot of bookings on this place.
Yeah, I could go.There's not another, another booking until the middle of April.Hmm.Yeah.I got two weeks.I'll move all my buddies in there.I'm going to throw a big party and it'll be rad.They won't even know about it.
And they're case in these places.They're not just like, you know, oh yeah, that one over there.No, they're going about it carefully.
Yeah.So if I showed up to a property and I found that a squatter's in there, what's like the first few steps that I can take to handle this situation?
Well, the first thing you do is you say, who are you?Get the heck out of here.
And so you got to basically kind of size up your situation because sometimes you've got somebody who's maybe like just confused or then you've got a person who's faking confusion, obviously.
And then you've got somebody who's like, all right, this guy is on the path to willful deceit.He says, what are you talking about?I have a lease.So you're sizing up like the squatter and the situation.
So you're asking him questions, see if you can get his name. see if you can figure out what's going on.But then, your first course of action, most of the time, is to just call the police.
But if you've got a situation, there's one case study that I really loved, where a guy went up to his property, there was a guy in there, and he says, who are you?And he's like, what are you doing here?
And he'd been there for a while, he'd already moved in his friends, his furniture, it was all established. And the guy says, well, I live here.Yeah.And so you knew right away that he had himself, you know, a squatter situation.
And he looked and looked at the door.There's no sign of forced entry or anything.So what does the guy do?What does the owner do?The squatter slams the door in his face.
And so what he's do, he kicks in the door, smashes it right off the hinges and calmly just walks back to his car and says,
Officer, you're not going to believe this, but, um, a guy like broke into my house and, uh, there's, um, yeah, he moved a bunch of stuff in and got to get rid of them.
But what he did is he basically made a sign of forced entry so that when the cop came, you know, yeah, he's got signs of forced entry.He's got a dirt bag living there.Exactly.Yeah.You really, you're kind of turning the tables on them.
So, so that's what, that's one of many things, uh, examples that I give in my squatter defender courses.Like, yeah, if, if you, if you encounter a squatter, here's, here's what you do.
Uh, but it's very situationally dependent depending on, you know, what type of person it is, how long they've been there.
And, you know, if you've got a guy who's immediately like, you know, pointed a gun at you or something like that, saying like, Hey, get the heck out of here. you got to get the heck out of there.
The whole point of all these laws that are causing this problem is to prevent violent altercations.
If you want to go Rambo, there's ways you can do that and not run as many risks, but I really highly encourage people to not do stuff like that because there's people that if you kick in their door, they will, you know, they will attack you.
And you don't want that.No matter if you're a big strong dude, or a little doesn't matter, like a gun knows no size.So, or a pew pew, I don't want to get you demonetized.
But anyway, basically, you got to use you got to use discretion in pretty much every situation.And I teach a little bit of that in the course.
Yeah.And is it ever smart to negotiate with one of these individuals?Like if you start offering cash for keys or something, or does that typically backfire?
I mean, I absolutely, I detest cash for keys, but with that said, it is a viable solution in a lot of situations because a lot of people don't want to go the routes where they're going to be doing any of the, I guess we'll call them alternative methods to getting rid of a squatter, the unconventional methods.
And I teach those in the squatter defender course.And I basically just put a big asterisk saying like, yeah, you can do this, but you know, that's your risk.
They're going to be going through the court system and they're going to be doing it in that way of just removing them as a tenant.
They've given them the rights as a tenant and they're going to be removing them over the course of several months and that is court costs, paying your lawyer.The other lawyer might find holes in what you've done if you enter the property.
without being authorized, things like that.
These things can cost you money, and if you're staring down the barrel of 30, 40 grand in court costs, lawyer's fees, and the guy says, hey man, I'll leave if you just give me like five grand, you're gonna be thinking, oh boy, I mean, you're emboldening the squatter, you're encouraging them, they're just gonna find another victim, but what's the point here?
What are you trying to do?You're trying to reclaim your property, for as little money as possible.
And if you've got a way to do that without having to resort to any methods that could get you or anybody else in trouble, and all it's going to cost you is five grand, nine times out of 10, I actually do encourage people to go ahead and do that.
Even though it emboldens them and all the bad reasons, At the end of the day, there is no cheap solution to getting rid of a squatter.
That's all, it's all expensive, whether you're hiring contractors to squat on them on squat on the squatter, or whether you're hiring a lawyer, or even if you're doing it yourself, you've got danger, but you know, it's a there's no cheap way.
Yeah, and it feels just like the principle of the matter, it would be so hard to hand over $5,000 to get somebody who doesn't own your property out of your property, who's literally lying to your face.
But I totally get what you're saying, that sometimes you gotta bite the bullet to get somebody out of there.
It's ludicrous, but if you stick around in real estate investing long enough, sooner or later you're going to have to pay off somebody who really doesn't deserve it.
And I've had to do it a few times in my career and I have not liked any single one of them.But, you know, it's only money.You suck it up and you move on.
Yeah.You also kind of specialize in indeed fraud.How is this different than a squatter situation?
So, I didn't even know what that was, and a lot of people don't know what it is, but it really got my attention when I was doing this research, just because of how incredibly easy and insidious this crime is.Deep fraud, aka title fraud.
So, what happened was I was doing research on all these squatting cases, just trying to make sense of it, like trying to get some sort of playbook so that I could help people out, because a ton of people had contacted me asking for help.
with squatter situations, don't know where to turn to.And a couple cases I started looking into involved deed fraud.
And what that is, is it's when somebody forges the deed, that's just the single piece of paper that's notarized and has the grantor and grantee, files it with the county and takes the name out of Kirby Atwell LLC and puts it into Title Fraudster LLC or Title Fraudster.
So after the deed is transferred, it's in the criminal's name or More often than not these days, it's in a fake ID that they've stolen.
They've stolen the identity of somebody online, they've gotten their social, they got all their stuff, and just taken an ID that has their picture on it, that has the scammer's signature, so that when they contact a wholesaler or a realtor to sell the property, that they've researched like has all the equity, no debt or very little debt.
So I think the average home equity now is like 300 grand in like every house in America. on average.So that's how much they stand to make.So they sell the house really quickly.
The title company pulls it up, says, all right, well, it looks like this just traded like four weeks ago.All right.It looks like he's selling it for five grand more.Sounds good.Let's send a notary out to this guy.
The signature on the license, the picture is a perfect match.
And the guy who originally owned the house, Kirby, your house, if it got stolen, you don't know about it because it sold four weeks ago and you don't check your title online really like nobody does.
And if you and if you don't go through title and escrow, which of course, if you're stealing the title and forging the deed, you don't go through title and escrow.So they're not going to notify you.
And the county, they move at the speed of molasses in January, if they even notified you to begin with.So by the time you find out about it, your title has been stolen and your equity is completely gone.
And then we call up your title insurance company. they're gonna tell you that you have an ALTA owner's policy.That's the most common policy that you get for title insurance.
And they're gonna say, all right, Kirby, bad news, your equity is gone because we don't cover from the date of the policy forward, we cover from the date backwards in time.
So if there's like a painter that got stiffed, you know, seven years ago, yeah, we'll pay him off because, you know, we missed that.But in this case, this is fraud and impersonation, and it's after the policy date.
And the standard Ulta owner's policy does not cover this.So you are in a world of hurt.There's people who have their entire net worth, their life savings essentially is in their home equity.
You grow old, get a reverse mortgage with your 300 grand of home equity, and that's what you live off of.So these cases really got my attention because I was thinking, Yo, forging a deed is so freaking easy.
It's a free, it's a piece of paper and a stamp.This is like, is this the perfect crime?This is a, this is mind boggling to me.So I, so I tracked down like the preeminent deed fraud lawyer in the country and I got him on the phone.I was, I was like,
Dude, is this real?Get real, because if you Google deed fraud, you get a lot of articles about it happening, but then you've also got a lot of discussion.It's not fake, but it almost never happens.
Most of those articles are kind of old, but it's one of those things where there was 2,000 cases four years ago, then there's 4,000, there's 8,000, now there's 10,000 per year. It's getting, it's growing in popularity because it's such a viable scam.
And so I was like, well, so what do people do about this?
And the guy told me, I was going to say, it feels like it would happen all the time because the way you described it, it's like, there's no prevention.
Yeah, you got to be a little sophisticated, like, you know, identity theft, you know, you can steal someone's credit card or their social security number online on the dark web pretty easily.So you got that.
But then you got to have some working knowledge or some sort of playbook on how you go about forging a deed.What does a deed look like, you know, and how do you file it with the county and all that stuff?
So it requires like some level of specialized knowledge, but not a lot.It's like an afternoon of like Internet research. basically, which is pretty wild.So how do people prevent this from occurring all the time?So that's just the thing.
As of right now, you can't prevent it from happening.But why is it bad?It's bad because you lose your home equity, right?That part doesn't happen until like weeks or months after your title is stolen.
So the way that you prevent your equity from being stolen is you get an alert that your title has changed.
And unless you're sitting there refreshing your browser every morning, like, okay, yep, still in my name, still in the name of Kirby, still in the name of Kirby every day.Nobody wants to do that.
So there's a service that I provide called Title Fraud Defender.And if you sign up, it's just a few bucks a month. If your title changes, I let you know right away.And then you check on it and you're like, Oh, that one just sold it.No big deal.
And then you can swap in another property.But if something's wrong, you're like, Wait a second.No, that's that was that's not me.Then you can file an affidavit, you call your title company, you make sure that this guy is not going to
take loans out against it, and he's not going to sell it.So your equity is safe.That's what you do.And then from there, you got to fix it.We tell you how to fix it, and so you got to go through a process.
But it's not quite as simple as calling up the registrar and being like, hey, yo, that was a fraudulent deed. there's it's a chain of titles.So you got to get like you have to have like legal action to change it.
And that part sucks and takes a minute, but it's not anywhere near as bad as losing your equity.
Yeah, no kidding.And I kind of just assumed we had enough checks and balances in place to prevent this. I spent some time in Kenya, and when you drive around there, you see not-for-sale signs.So here, we have for-sale signs.
There, they put signs in their front yard saying not-for-sale, because they don't have a good title process.
And so it's like, that's how they protect themselves, by just letting the public know that they're not selling, even though somebody might be trying to say that they're selling this house.It was really interesting.Wow.
So yeah, and we also had a property that we were selling one time that was listed on the market and someone reached out to us and said, I was just about to send over the deposit for this rental, but just want to, you know, check with you one last time or something like that.
We're like, what are you talking about rental?
And they sent us this whole listing, this rental listing that was created off of our property that we had just rehabbed and we're listing on the market that somebody overseas just created a rental listing and said, hey, you know, send me the deposit money.
And they listed super cheap.So people were just, you know, in line to rent this house and they didn't even own it or control it.So I know that's everywhere these days.Yeah.
Yeah, it's it's really, I mean, the extent of these, these scams is just, it's kind of mind boggling.
It's pretty mind boggling.Someone will make off with, you know, like a few grand of somebody's money in that way.And that's messed up.And that's, and that's, and that's really bad.
So, you know, the way you prevent against that is, you know, you just got to watch really, really closely, like who's going in and out of your house, just like the squatters.And if
If someone's going to rent a house, chances are they're going to want to take a look at it inside.People rent places sight unseen, for sure.That definitely happens.
But losing a few grand and having to have to tell somebody, hey, sorry, but you can't be here, that's one thing.But if you get your title stolen and then sold out from underneath you, that's actually irreparable, terrible damage.
Land investors in particular have been hit by this.A guy told me that in Florida, he does land investing in Florida, and he says that it's growing like crazy down there because there's no house.It's not like you got to get an appraiser to go
check it out, maybe you'll drive by it, but it's not the same as if you're selling the place, or selling a house, that is.
Yeah, that's interesting.Yeah, yeah, I can see that.That makes sense.
I'm kind of curious, personally, for you, like, what made you post that video that titled, I Stole a House, you know, that got, you know, millions of views, and then how did that change your life after that went viral?
Good question, man.Like, it definitely changed things for me.
I'd been posting content on social media, just sort of like real estate related, but then like, you know, a little hint of politics here and there, because politically, I'm very like straight down the middle.
But I live in a place that's very liberal in Portland.So that makes me like, you know, like a Republican, even though I'm like, I'm neither, I'm nothing.Politically homeless, I like to call myself.
But I was getting a little, had been a little fed up with a lot of just the policies around where I live.And it's everything from like drug policy.
I went, that's what I talked about in part when I went on Dr. Phil is just how nonsensical a lot of the policies that have been passed in Portland have been.And I was just really fed up.And so when I made the video, I pretended to be the squatter.
I said, Hey, this is how I stole a house.And I'm really just kind of satirizing just how absurd it is that this could happen.And this does happen.So that's really what drove me to it and why the whole thing is like tongue in cheek.
That's just my style.I'm always, I've been very like, kind of like irreverent with my, with my humor.And That's just kind of my style.
And then once, you know, news organizations started calling, once the comments start rolling in, I just can't help but react.And so I'm like, you know, I've got people on the left wing saying like, oh, hey, screw you for being a landlord in general.
Like, you know, it sounds like this guy's a developer.I'll screw him.And then also left wing people saying like, yeah, this guy's awesome.Like his squatters are amazing because they just didn't get the joke.
And then I got the right wing people saying like, oh, I would shoot this guy.We're going to find this guy.And then,
other people saying like uh you know guys this is a this guy's a developer like look at his profile but thing is it got shared across so many different profiles like it actually got deleted from meta from instagram and from tiktok but then like reinstated it on meta but then taken down again like but people had downloaded it and just
re-uploaded it themselves without tagging me.So there wasn't always like a profile to link back to be like, okay, yeah, this guy's a developer, like he's satirizing this whole thing.But it really did, it changed my life.
You really don't know what it's like to have everybody have something to say about you until it's happening to you.And some of those things were, 90% of them were great.Like I got great feedback.
Anybody I'd ever met was like texting, calling, emailing me.And that felt really great.Like attention feels good. Most people agree on that.But then there's a lot of people that were just saying really mean horrible things about me.
People like dug into my background and like, you know, we're saying things like, you know, like, oh, like this charity that I run, like, you know, look at him, like doing this turkey charity because he thinks he's a good guy when it's all bullshit or something.
I'm like, dude like my turkey charity like that's what you're going after today like how did you even find that out like so yeah it's so it it changed the way how i look at you know oh social media you know public's perception going viral
But I saw in it an opportunity to help people, to educate them, because there was just no one good source of information about two really harmful, really terrible crimes, and that's squatting and defraud.
So I was like, okay, I'm going to be that guy.I have the ability, just because I'm a lightning rod for this right now, I have the ability to get information better than maybe anybody on the planet right now on these subjects in particular.
So let's get it, let's put it in a box, and let's help people.
Yeah, I think a lot of people fantasize about going viral.They think it's gonna, well, if I just went viral on social media, then all my problems would be solved.But I think it's, to live through that, there's definitely cons to it as well.
So that's really interesting.
a lot of times it goes away pretty quick.Like it lasted about two, like there was really a hectic for about like two weeks.
And then, you know, then people started, you know, I reposted it after a couple of weeks and it stayed up just because it wasn't getting much attention and still get, you know, some more hits, but it was only really, um,
crazy for just a couple of weeks.But people have recognized me.My mail carrier came up to me and was handing me a certified letter.And he's just like, Hey man, did you steal this house?And I'm like, what?And I'm like, Oh my God. you saw the video.
He's like, yeah, man, like I recognize the house from the video.I was like, oh yeah, no, it's mine.That's actually a little factoid.The house in the video is mine because I was at home and I was like, well, I got to fill my house.How about this one?
And so, um, so I was like, yeah, no, no, that was, uh, that was fake.I was just, um, like pretending to do it too.And I told him what I told you and he's like, oh, okay, well, that's good.Cause this is a nice neighborhood.
Like I live in a nice neighborhood.So like stealing a house would be really bad.
That's interesting.Wow.Very cool.And why did the social media platforms take it down?What was the rationale around that?
So TikTok is the most, I'd say, strict in terms of their content rules.And I'd had videos taken down before because I can't even remember what it was, but it was some sort of like kind of ticky tacky thing.
Like, okay, well, I guess that's bad, but they took it down within like 15 minutes of me posting it because they said it was like crimes or like encouraging crime or something like that, because they thought that I was actually doing the crime.
But that was actually the first platform that I uploaded it to. And it was actually during the Superbowl that I uploaded it.
And I uploaded it and started watching the game, checked my phone, like 20 minutes later, it was lit up with notifications I've never seen before in my entire life.And I was like, whoa, okay, this, this went really big.And so I couldn't help myself.
I kept like refreshing it like during the game, and it was just like repopulate with a crazy stream of like, of red, like all the notifications. And then in all of an instant, it stopped.I'm like, well, that's weird.What happened?
And so then it takes me to this page, like, sorry, we took down your video.It's encouraging crime, and we can't have that.So I was like, all right, well, that's dumb.But man, easy come, easy go, I guess.So I was like, I'll try meta now.
Meta kept it up for, um, oh boy, like several days and then they took it down and then they put it back up again because I said like dispute, push the little dispute button and then it went back up.So yeah, no.
And then they took, then they took it down again, even though it didn't change at all.
So, yeah. Well, you'd think TikTok would have more of a sense of humor with all the videos that are posted there.They'd understand satire, but I guess not.
Nope.I guess not.I mean, I figure it's all AI algorithm, you know, whether somebody in China actually took a look at it and actually, you know, push the disabled, push the delete button.I doubt it.
Yeah. Yeah, interesting.Well, you have a course that you mentioned a couple times that you where you kind of walk people through this process of protecting themselves against some of this fraud.What is that?Who's that for?
And I guess what should somebody expect to get out of it?
So there's two things.There's the Squatter Defender course and then the Title Fraud Defender software.So the Squatter Defender course, it's a course that you can complete in an afternoon.
It's priced at $199, but listeners to this program can get a 20% discount using the keyword or the promo code Kirby. That's K-I-R-B-Y, and that's at squatterdefender.com.
And they basically, you get out of the course, what you get out of the course is squatter prevention, detection, and ejection.You learn how to keep squatters away, how to detect them if they're there, and how to get rid of them.
And you can complete the course in an afternoon, take the quiz, get your certificate, put it on your email, and show everybody that you know what you're doing when it comes to squatters.
And the odds of you actually having to contend with one go from, you know, chances of actually having one in your entire career, I mean, boy, you're looking at, you know, a decent chance of that happening, down to like, you know, 1% or less if you take the course.
And then the other one is, also has that promo code with Kirby, is the squatter, Sorry, the title fraud defender software and that's where you put in your property addresses and if any of them change, you get a notification.
And you're asking before Kirby, who's this is for?Investors is probably the biggest clientele that I've received just in the short time that we've launched this.I think we launched it like a week ago and
Just in that short time, I think it's investors because all the users are signing up multiple properties.They're signing up like 2, 4, 10, 15 properties and a couple people have swapped them out.
Like the one will be deactivated, it'll be sold and then they'll just insert another one back in there because, you know, they don't get charged anymore.It's just the spot.
that they've paid money for and it knocks it down to like $2.12 a month or something if you do a long-term contract.So it's really cheap and the market leader in this space, Home Title Lock, they're like 20 bucks a month per property.
And so this is a much more efficient, much more low cost, much more investor friendly way to monitor your titles.So I encourage you to go check out squatterdefender.com, titlefrauddefender.com and protect yourself.
Yeah, excellent.Yeah, yeah.A lot of people have credit locks or credit monitoring turned on their credit.This sounds like sort of an extension of that.Sounds like pretty good investment for that amount of money.So for sure.
Yeah, it's the same thing.
Yeah, cool.Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing all this knowledge, because again, like you see headlines and you don't know what's what.So it's great to hear somebody who's who's studied this and really knows the ins and outs.
Yeah, I contacted all the people from those headlines and said, Hey, man, like what really happened?And I tell you, I tell you what, man, it was friggin harrowing.And so that's, that's why I just had to do something.
So I appreciate you giving me a platform, letting me talk to your audience, because It's really important information.So I'm very grateful for you giving me the opportunity.
Thanks again.All right.Thanks so much, man.
Hey, thanks again for joining us.If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a positive review on iTunes and also head over to Facebook and join the Living Off Rentals Facebook group where the conversation will continue.Thanks again.
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