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This week, we bring you something different with a collection scary real estate stories from some friends of the show. Join Chad Carson, Gary Beasley, Jim Barker, Tom Schneider a Michael Zuber for some creepy stories for the Halloween season.  --- Transcript   Emil: Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Remote real estate investor podcast. On today's episode, we have something really special for you guys. In the theme of Halloween, we wanted to go out and collect a bunch of horror stories very, very spooky real estate investing stories. And so we asked a couple friends of the podcast to share some stories they've had along the way. Some of them funny, some of them a little scary, some of them real spooky. So we have a total of five people speaking given their stories today, and that includes author and coach, Chad Carson, Roofstock CEO, Gary Beasley, Jim Barker, who is the VP of construction at Roofstock, our very own Tom Schneider, you guys know from this show, and author and good friend of the show, Michael Zuber. So without further ado, let's hop into their stories.   Emil: So first up, we have author Chad Carson. So let's hear from Chad.   Chad Carson: It was actually an investor friend who tried to get me to take over his property and manage it for him. And we went and looked at it. It's like, Yeah, I got this tenant who's not really paying that well. And that's okay. Yeah, we'll see how that goes. And it was a big is a brick house with a huge basement. And I said, Well, I'm gonna have to go visit the house. I'm not gonna take it over before looking at it. And so we walked to the house, we were walked inside, and we could just tell the tenant was really not at ease. Like he was just kind of nervous about something and kind of watching us too closely. And I noticed he got really uneasy when I started going towards the door to the basement.   And I said, Oh, okay, I guess I better go the basement, open the top of the door, the basement. And all I heard was thousands sounded like of wheels going squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, like lots and lots of little wheels and little sound like little feet, you know, little rodent feet running on these wheels. And so I kind of went to flick on the light and I looked at the bottom of the stairs, and there's like two red eyes, kind of looking up at me in the dark, and I flipped the lights on. And there are, there's there's one whole room in this basement with just tons of tons of rat cages or mice cages too.   But that was only one part of this basement operation this guy had going on, there was all the reptiles and the other part of the basement that were the they're eating all of the rodents that he was raising, so he had big huge snakes. He had turtles and these big bats. He had I don't think I saw any alligators, but it's turtles and iguanas. And so it's like an exotic pet operation going on this guy's basement. This is one particular horror story. I was glad it wasn't my property and I told the guy as we walked out I said I'm not managing this property until you get rid of this tenant.   The final part of the story I'll try to make fast is that he did get the tenant notice the tenant had to leave it was like 60-90 days later when he finally got it out and we went back to the house with the same friend and we're like we walk in the front door the same front door it looks it looks empty oh okay and not so bad and we're walking down the hallway the same hallway that had the basement door and all of a sudden this massive like big you know kind of dark brown mouse rat thing like comes charging down the hallway right so we both for the living room and take off is this mouse like was not scared of us at all like runs around the corner right when that happened I was right before he said Ah not so bad.   There's this looks not so bad is this mouse comes charging down and after the mouse comes charging down we're getting ready to leave because I'm like let's just get out of this place. And I look over at my friend he's got this big huge roach crawling out of his shirt that must have dropped down from the ceiling somewhere. So long story short you know that if you get a bad tenant and that's the moral of this story was he didn't screen his tenet he didn't inspect it he didn't pay attention to what's going on and things can get out of control if you're not paying attention so that's that's the lesson there.   Michael: Holy Smokes. I thought you're gonna say yeah, you decided to take it over and have him cut you in on the business and get 10% commission for all the animals and sales.   Chad Carson: Oh man. I didn't touch that property I was I helped them advise them I you know from a distance so I didn't get any more roaches or or my shoes.   Emil: Right Next up, we have Gary Beasley so roofstock co as many of you know, he has a really spooky story to share with you guys. So let's hear from Gary.   Gary Beasley: When I was in the hotel business, this would have been back around 1997. I was in the midst of acquiring a very old hotel in Claremont Berkeley hills called the Claremont Resort and Spa. So this is right on the border of Berkeley in Oakland. It sits on top of the Hayward Fault. The really creepy thing we found out right before closing The general manager of the hotel came over the grab behind the diligence room took me in his office and said, Gary, I got to share something with you. Like, okay, what is this is the building have termites or something, he says, he hands me this file doesn't say anything. I opened it up. And it's a thick file full of handwritten notes.   These were from guests, and from people who worked at hotel, and was all very, very similar. And it all happened on the fourth floor of the Claremont hotel. So the guy's name was Henry Feldman, I could remember it like it was yesterday. And he looked at me and he really wanted to watch my reaction as I opened through and started reading some of these notes. But there were dozens and dozens of accounts of people seeing a woman in a long white flowing dress, and either hearing or seeing one or two small children. And sometimes they would look out their window and see them in the Rose Garden. And like her tending to the roses, and sometimes she'd be kind of floating the hallways and like Oh, come on is this I'm looking around for a camera. He's like, no, read more there. This is no joke. And a lot of these are pretty recent.   And then a number of things would happen in the rooms. One, sometimes the lights would go on and off unexplainably. tv would go on in the middle of the night, really blaring loud. Water would be on in the bathroom when they clearly had not been in the bathroom. drawers won't open in the dressers. And then one that was pretty freaky was a lot of people complained that they tried is when they tried to exit their hotel room, the door handle was hot, it was really hot, and it wouldn't, then they couldn't turn it. And so like this is really odd. And also, the other thing that was very common was people being awakened by someone thumping on their chest when they're sleeping, like bam. And no one's in the room.   It's like what is going on. And in fact, I heard this from when I was getting my haircut one day there. But the guy who used to cut my hair was telling the story that it just happened at someone who's the hotel, this was a few years ago, and she like, moved to a different floor or whatever. So I'm trying to say I asked him what's the commonality of all this stuff? Because you know, I have no idea. But none of these people know anything about any of the other stories. Oh, there's one more and then I'll tell you the kind of the genesis of it. And what puts the theory. There's an NBA team that used to stay there when the warriors have people in the LA Times will stay there. There was an A famous NBA player. I think you can even find this online somewhere, who was there and he was complaining about the noise in the next room, the little kids playing. And he called downstairs and they said Sir, there's no one in the room next to you. It's vacant. It's not been booked.   He's like, no, there is you could come up here right now. And so they come up open the door. Sure enough room, no one in the room, totally vacant, nothing touched. He freaks out. And I think he actually checked out of the hotel. I don't think he went to a different floor. So all this crazy, crazy stuff, right? And so I said, well, Henry, you know, what do you think that the genesis of it was? He goes well, there was a woman who lived here with her small children. Before it was a hotel, on the property. It was just a house. And she and her children died in a fire on the property   Michael: That's wild.   Tom: It's like all the different mediums to it's like the electrical, the water the…   Gary Beasley: Exactly, exactly. So he said, I'm not telling you, you know not to buy the hotel. I don't know if any of its true. But I was told by my lawyers, you know, this is the kind of thing we have to let everybody know about. And he said, we've never had anybody hurt or anything like that. So if there is anything there, it's not a malevolent thing. But he said I started very much a skeptic, but with all of these things happening that are so similar, because I don't know.   Michael: Wow, how many how many stories is that hotel here?   Gary Beasley: It's the top floor, the fourth floor.   Michael: The fourth floor? Okay.   Gary Beasley: Yeah. And then there's a tower as well, that goes up. There's a bell tower. So there's one room that actually connects to the bell tower where there's been a bunch of stuff. It's kind of centers around that whole part of the hotel   Michael: That is so wild.   Tom: If you haven't seen the hotel, just google Claremont hotel, and you'll immediately go Yeah, that's probably haunted.   Gary Beasley: Yeah, it’s probably the largest wood frame structure this side of the Mississippi. So another bit of trivia with this hotel, so it was owned by this great guy named Harold Schnitzer. For probably 50 years before we bought it from him back in the late 90s. And he was one of only I think three owners and the hotel was built after the 1906 earthquake. But the land for that hotel, reportedly was one in a checkers game. Back in the around the turn of the century. So there's a lot of really, really interesting colorful history around the hotel.   Pierre: So you guys still ended up buying it?   Gary Beasley: We did end up buying it.   Michael: Wow.   Pierre: Have you received reports of this kind of stuff happening since you've bought it?   Gary Beasley: So you know, it never has been something that's been that widely reported or talked about obviously, this kind of stuff is still happening because I heard it from my the guy who was cutting my hair there probably five years ago, because I used to go there just to kind of stay connected and and all the people who work there like oh, yeah, it's just like common knowledge that this stuff happens. But But yeah, so I think if there's if there you know, there's something if there was something going on before we bought it, it's still going on.   Michael: Wow, you just in about four and a half minutes convinced me to never stay at the Claremont   Tom: Just avoid the fourth floor.   Gary Beasley: Some people pay a premium and ask to stay on the fourth floor. Like I said, No one's ever been hurt. I mean, you might be a little spooked.   Michael: Yeah, yeah.   Gary Beasley: But this way if the TV comes on or whatever, you know what to do. It's just nothing to worry about. Just go probably turn it off. Make sure the waters not running in the bathroom. Calmly Go back to sleep calmly Go back to sleep.     Pierre: Put a pillow on your chest.   Gary Beasley: Yeah, no. So the whole theory is she's trying to wake up or kids or wake up whoever's there and get out of here. Yeah. Happy Halloween boys.   Emil: Okay, next up, we have our very own Jim Barker. Jim's got another pretty spooky story for you guys. So let's hear from Jim.   Jim Barker: There's a lot of weird stories out there and I thought seeing a giant pipe organ built into a home was really up there, that was in Long Beach California but, but this one was a trip out to Indianapolis and we had a group of houses there for the firm that I was working with that that were really in need of a lot of renovation they had purchased these sort of sight unseen really low purchase prices knowing that they needed some rehab but didn't know exactly how much they needed and and when we got into this house, I think my first experience was walking into the home it didn't have the utilities on the walls were sweating. And being a Southern California native and and at the time kind of living in Florida and going out throughout the southeast. I didn't really think about it but that was like oh, it's got a basement and I kind of went to go walk in the basement I think I was using my my cell phone flashlight and it almost stepped into like a about five feet of water their water is just full of water in this basement.   So kind of quickly realized we needed to get a waterproofing company out there and they did a good job they they pumped the water out of the basement and identified Yeah, we had this long term issue there with this house and created a plan for us to waterproof the basement with some excavation around the outside and some sump pumps and rock Okay, this is a it's already a scary rehab house but it wasn't truly scary at this point, just a little odd, but when they got the basement dry and then the next step was sort of remediate all the water damage in the basement.   And they said okay, well take us a couple days and then you can come take a look at it really scope out this house after we're done. So in the process, they they stripped this entire basement of the drywall that was around the basement walls, and let it dry out had some fans in there. And then and that's really when when I got the call from this vendor saying Hey, you got to come back. This is something weird going on at this house. And yeah, I'd seen a lot of things probably you know, a couple thousand SFR houses that had been at this point and nothing really fazed me whether it was a hoarder house or or anything else that you might run into but when I got back to this house, he's like yeah, I just you know, it's so strange you just got to go in and experience it for yourself and so this house was odd enough already man had been stripped of drywall and didn't have cabinets or anything in the kitchen. So it just kind of looked like this old creepy space.   And as you went down in the basement, it was just kind of like a split level. So as you walk down the stairs and kind of went down there like what what does he guide me into I really didn't know and like, get to the bottom and you see this like, weird, creepy. Two foot by two foot hole that's been cut in this cinderblock wall of this basement. Like, what is that and go in there and like, what were they tunneling outside of this basement for I have no idea and stick your head in the little hole and you're like this doesn't even seem safe. But sure enough, they tunneled out and kind of created this maybe six foot by four foot little room that couldn't have been more than in two or two and a half feet tall, underground, and it had nothing in it, but a foam rubber mattress and some old like 1970s floral cushions from couch cushions and like what was going on in this house if it wasn't visible? Who decides to randomly tunnel outside of their house? And what could they have possibly been hiding in here?   You know, is that their escape room? makeshift escape room? Was it a, something where somebody was being smuggled, like I really didn't know. So it's just like, I don't know what to do with it other than like, we've got to get rid of it. And so luckily, we didn't ever find out anything bad happened here. But it was a scene out of Saw or something where you look down in this basement and everything is torn up. And there's this hole in the, in the side of the foundation wall. And so we quickly just crushed it from the outside, made sure that room was gone back-filled, the dirt and patched up that basement wall, and the house turned around. But there was a lot of speculation with me and my coworkers at the time and some of the neighbors, what the house might have been used for. And the the old man that used to live there. And I think one of the neighbors speculated that he had two wives and maybe he only ever saw one of them at any given time.   So the stories is just got more and more wild as we went along. But I don't think there was much truth in any of those specular stories, but it sure was a strange room and we never did quite figure out what was really used for but it no longer exists. And now it's a perfectly functioning SFR rental house and, and yielding well for the current owner.     Tom: Oh my gosh, just Yeah. Just perform an exorcism on that part of the house. How scary Jeez.   Jim Barker: Yeah, just Who knows? And maybe just a little hiding room or playroom for some kids. But yeah, when when you find it like that your imagination shirt runs wild.   Emil: I was trying to think in the background of something not ridiculous that could have gone on there. And I'm drawing a complete blank, like I can have it couldn't have been anything legitimate and had to have been something just, I don't know, really not safe or legal. Or…   Jim Barker: I'm convinced that the weirdest stuff happens in basements. And maybe it's just a myth from not growing up having a basement but now in my experience, I'd like a whatever weird happens. It's always in a basement.   Emil: All right, next up is our very own co host, Tom Schneider. Tom has another great, great story for you guys. Let's listen to this one.   Tom: So I was at the time this is, I don't know 10-15 years ago, I was working in acquisitions. And there was a property that I was looking to buy. This is for a company that eventually went public but we were in major buy time. And this property was located in this area called the Iron Triangle in Richmond and you guys are familiar anyways, I go to this property with my construction manager that I work with and the property is listed as vacant per the MLS listing so vacant. We go there I have my super key so I'm able to unlock the door and me and the contractor opened the door and you know I couldn't put it into words but it was so obvious this home was not vacant. There was nothing visually you can see that really spoke to someone was there but I don't know call it intuition as soon as you open the door and stepped inside you we're not the only ones in this room.   So we continue you know we look at each other and I think he felt it as well and we are walking you know through the house I think it's like a three bedroom one bath doing our our standard process right. First we go over to the kitchen estimated costs, pretty standard, you know and still have that kind of sinking feeling that this is not we're not on our own in here. So looking through the kitchen testing the water, you know a little bit of brown spurts out of the water just like a not a good omen. You know some rust or whatnot. Anyways, continuing working our way through one bedroom, another bedroom until we finally get to the master bedroom. And, I mean, we both just looked at each other. And in the corner of the room, there was this closet. And it was just slightly opened a little bit. And, you know, we had to know, is this house empty? Or is it not.   So I walk slowly over to the closet and I, it's dark out to, you know, not a lot of windows and I open the closet door. And looking in there. And I see, in the back of the closet, this is a weird deep closet, I see two eyes looking right back at me. And I turn around at the construction manager, we got to get out of here! So we sprint out of the door. I think we forgot to put the super key on and we were just spooked called the listing agent, that house is not vacant, you got to go and take care of that and made it out alive. No major issues. But man, it's it you got to trust your intuition. If you you feel the energy of somebody or you know something, I still don't know today could have been a bear. I don't know. You got to trust that, that intuition and double check with the listing agent that your house is vacant.   Emil: Next up, we have Michael Zuber who many of you know he's been on the show a couple times. I actually remember hearing this story on Michael's YouTube channel. And we had to invite him on to recount it here. So here it is.   Michael: Yeah, so let me set it up. Because again, so we were probably in year eight or year nine of our investing journey, we probably had 100 doors by this point, we had probably had 500 tenants by this point. And again, while this story is truly just truly nasty, I do want to say that most tenants are just awesome people. So I don't want this one horrible event to scare anyone away. But it is it is pretty bad. So this starts in a very unusual manner. Somebody comes in to pay rent, my property manager takes the check, tries to apply the check to the unit and says innocently enough name on check doesn't match tenant in house, what's going on? Right? Not thinking any of it.   The tenant at this point, I don't know. The first error or honesty or whatever you want to call it says oh, by the way, so and so I've already forgot their name, the other tenants left. And I moved in and I want to pay the rent that he was paying. So we're like, Okay, cool. We're not going to take your rent, we have to put all tenants through an application process, right? But good news is you have the money. So you're good, good sign. We think we're gonna get through this okay. So he fills out an application right there. He again tries to pay before he leaves and we say no, right? You're not an approved tenant yet. We can't take your money. But we should have an answer in 24. Worst case, 48 hours, right process is smooth.   So lo and behold, that evening, I get a call. And I start to hear this story. Right? Because I have at this point, they're not bothering me, the owner, I'm probably somewhere in Europe or Japan or somewhere. But they call me go we got we got a problem. I'm like, Oh, crap, what problem we're going to talk about today. So they go through it much like I have with you. And now they tell me that the application that the gentleman filled out, everything is wrong on it except his name. He's lied about everything. Where he works. Past references didn't check out. Just nothing is right. Other than his name, and the only reason they think his name is right is because it matched the check. That's that's all they know, at this point. And they're like, what do you want to do? Because he's already moved in. He was already going to pay rent. And they're just not sure.   And I'm like, well, you're my property manager. What's, what do you think the process is, this is this is not an approvable tenant. Right? So call him up. See if he has a legitimate excuse, which I don't know what it'd be, but check. So, my intention is okay, the guy's got to go, right, 30 day notice, you know, get out we'll you know, we'll Park friends but you're not approved right seems to set it makes sense. So long, behold, he calls me they call and now it turns tense. He is clearly upset. Which at which point the property manager the owner of the company gets involved because he is just berating my property manager, right my point of contact and he makes a call that Okay, you've got to get out in three days, you know, just three days to pay to quit and At which point he really doesn't like it.   We think nothing of it. He's just a grouchy tenant at this point, he tried to cheat the system and get out. Lo and behold, about two or three in the morning, my property manager gets a phone call from the police. I find this out the next day at like 6am or 7am. But apparently this individual sent out a mass communication on his social media, advertising a hammer party. So you know what, I grew up in the 90s. I'm thinking MC Hammer, right? I'm like, okay, he wants to throw a big bash. Before He Leaves. I'm like, in my, my property manager goes, No. He goes, he threw a hammer party. I'm like, all right, I give up. It's not MC Hammer. What is it, he told his entire social media staff to bring a hammer to his unit. And they started putting little holes in the drywall. Right, just smashing the drywall smashing the toilet smashing the tubs with hammers.   So much so that he almost broke into the unit next door, at which point the police were called, and people were arrested, because there were people on parole that shouldn't have been there. And lo and behold, we spent, I don't know something like $20,000 because again, right, once you start putting holes in drywall, you know, stuffs got to go. And, you know, toilets got to go and sinks got to go and countertops got to go and cabinet doors were just bashed off. They were demoing a relatively nice unit. And this all started from a guy who wanted to pay rent. That's the terrible thing of this story.   Tom: I'm never gonna hear hammer-time Just think of it and not think of that story again.   Michael Zuber: Yeah, it was a, it was not a good experience. And I just I think about it all the time. All he wanted to do is pay rent. He I'm sure he thought he was doing the right thing. But then you start lying on your application and your job doesn't check out. And yeah, I mean, it's just like, who knows what was going on? We never had a chance to dig into that. Because he just went from, you know, trying to sneak through to I'm going to be mean, And oh, by the way, he went to jail. He went to jail that night. And we're talking,   Emil: You and I we're joking before we started recording. But I mentioned I feel like if you've been doing this long enough, everyone who's been doing this decade or two, like they have a crazy story like that. It's impossible not to have one.   Michael Zuber: Yeah. You will. You're in the people business. I mean, I didn't understand that for years. Right. I thought it was spreadsheets, I thought it was sticks and bricks. I thought it was stuff. It's not stuff. If you're a landlord, and you're a long term landlord, you're dealing with people, people go through life. Sometimes you're winning in life, and sometimes you're losing sometimes. You know, it's it comes up aces, and sometimes it's deuces and Damn, I mean, it's you can run into people that are having pretty bad days. And I'm sure they don't mean maliciously, maliciously, but he was angry. And he destroyed a unit and ultimately, frankly, paid the price with his freedom because he went to jail.   Emil: Alright, thanks, everyone. Hope you didn't get too spooked out during all this. But hope you all have a great Halloween. I know it's going to be a little bit different of a year, but hope you all enjoy it. Anyway. One other quick thing to tell you guys about before you head out. We're running another Roofstock Academy promotion this month for all of our podcast listeners. And if you're not familiar with rootstock Academy, that is our online on demand training and coaching program where you can get one on one coaching with myself, Michael Tom, also in our private slack community. And we have tons and tons of hours of on demand lectures for you guys to go through to really, really power up your knowledge of real estate investing. And that code if you go to roofstockacademy.com and check out just enter the code HALLOWEEN, you'll get $151 off enrollments. So again, roofstockacademy.com, and apply the code HALLOWEEN at checkout before October 31 to get $151 off enrollment. All right, we'll check you out on the next episode. Happy investing