 Good evening and welcome to episode 401 of the Private Property Pupcast. I'm your host, for example, I don't want to call my law. It's the Thursday edition of the Private Property Pupcast. If you're on us for the first time, welcome to the family. You're tuned in to the only daily property show in South Africa. And as of yesterday, we're also the only property show in Southern Africa to have reached 400 episodes and beyond. Thank you so much to all of you at home who continue to watch us across our social media platforms. And of course, those who listen to us on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And talking about social media, remember that you can follow us across our social media platforms and run exciting competitions and certainly give you incredible content that you can look forward to. And on our Facebook page, we're running a great competition where you can stand a chance of walking away with 500 rounds in cash every single evening. And all you have to do is to go to the pinned post on our Facebook page and share with us some of the great property advice that you have picked up from watching the show. And if we pick up your name, then you have to be watching us live on the show in order to win that prize. And of course, if you claim it, the money is all yours. In the event that we don't get somebody who picks up their hand and claims their prize, the money goes back into the money bag and the money bag just keeps getting bigger and bigger. That's some of the ways that you can certainly win prizes here. Yesterday, we had a nice spot prize giveaway, the property guide, and that went to Tehran Kovudu. Congratulations to you. And I think we do that every so often. So you do have different competitions, even on other platforms. So you do want to make sure that you follow us across those platforms in order to see those great opportunities. You can follow myself at someone doing an underscored pay on Instagram as well as on Twitter. Now, one of the other great things that you're going to see on our social media features is that they also have great shows that you can look forward to every single weekday at 8pm. As it is a Thursday, you can catch Umbalinoca on the following podcast tackling all things agriculture. It is also on Tuesday at the same time. Mondays and Fridays, you can catch Chad on the Home Shopper Show. He takes us through incredible properties that you can find on www.privateproperty.co.za. And on Wednesdays, Isti Kallstein brings you the first time homebuyer show, which is always in conversation with people who've not only walked that first time homebuying and joining, but have certainly gone to grow their property portfolios from stream to stream. Well, those are the great shows that you can look forward to across our social media pages. So do make sure that you set those alarms and of course, engage with the other great presenters at 8pm. Well, this evening, we're having a great conversation. Yes, there's also the competition. And of course, you can look forward to later on, but we're having a great conversation with somebody that we absolutely love having on the show. David Beach is a founder and director at Corus Property Group. We're looking at how can landlords prepare for the new year? Of course, David is also the author of The Expert Landlord. David, good evening, and thank you so much for joining us. It's great to be on again, and it's wonderful to see you. And congratulations to you and your team on 400 shows. Thank you so much, David. And thank you as well. I mean, you've been on the show a couple of times and it's always such a pleasure to have you with us and of course tackle different aspects of being a landlord and getting it right and getting it doing it properly, ethically, getting it right and of course making money because nobody does it just for the sake of it. You certainly do want to make a profit along the way. So we really are grateful to you as well. Now, David, this one, before we even look at how we can prepare for the new year, and I've been doing this with a lot of guests that we've had this week and certainly the same thing with next week. I want us to reflect a little bit about the year that was in terms of landlords. I think it's been tumultuous year for all of us. I don't think there's anybody in any industry who would say that this is not being tumultuous in the one way or the other. Perhaps let's reflect a little bit about the year that was in a sense there that was for landlords and perhaps some of the key learnings when it comes to the instability and the volatility that we experienced and the landlords we just learned from even when it comes to bettering their systems. Look, I mean, I think last year, this year it's all about being recovering from the trauma of 2020. It was surely a tough year and you would see in the figures in May, in March, April 2020, the rent figures drastically reduced and that was very unpleasant for many landlords. Many landlords had to come to the party with tenants for many months during the middle of last year and this year, well, and then after that, obviously they had to tighten ship a lot to then get those rents collections back on par. Obviously, the economy has been kind of funny because people have lost jobs, it's been very tough for the average citizen and then there's been lockdowns and then opening up again and then lockdowns again. So there's just been a fair bit of uncertainty. But in the main, I think landlords have done well just to consolidate this year. They've done well to get to a level on occupancies and collections at a much higher level than they would have got for the middle of 2020. They're probably looking at can be expected levels similar to or just below the levels that they were having at COVID, prior to COVID. Very much the rents in many of the kind of the upper areas, even for example, Santa have landlords now having to, well, now getting used to or have gotten used to the much lower rentals and they would have been used to in the past. And I think landlords that have adapted and have continued to run their business professionally, I think they're consolidating really well and some of them are flying like they were before. Obviously, the average landlord, the costs have gone up, the margins have reduced. For example, a great landlord of mine, the rents have had to be reduced to keep his occupancy levels there. At the same time, his levies have increased, his rates have increased. So he's now thinking, a fair amount of landlords are thinking, should they rather sell than go through the hassle of having a property? Of course, we know from a property investment perspective, it's best to keep a long-term perspective. And I think if one holds that and rides the storms, I think in the long-term it's still a wonderful investment. Right now, it's been some rough days and rough seas. And it certainly has been rough, David. And I want us to perhaps look at, have you observed any mistakes that landlords have made? And perhaps even some of the things that landlords did do right. So just a quick reflection of what we got right as landlords and perhaps what we didn't get right. That's a great question. What, in our experience, what some landlords have gotten wrong is then not well...