One of the things I learned early in this business is that the best thing to seen as by tenants is as a capable yet non-threatening entity. I actually learned it from my experiences as a tenant myself, in college and grad-school rental housing. There nothing more annoying than a landlord who doesn't follow the well-known "covenant of quiet enjoyment," which means that under normal circumstances a landlord should always give a tenant 24 hours of notice before he shows up and bangs on the door. Add to that a landlord who shows up driving a flashy car and dressed to the nines, and you have a clear starter recipe for rental nonpayment problems and a bag of concrete flushed down the toilet as a parting gift by an evicted tenant. The disrespectful, uncaring, arrogant, and contemptuous landlord always gets his in the end, one way or another.

So early on in my rental property business, I formulated "Jim's Law," and I have lived by it successfully since. If you are anywhere that your tenants could possibly see you out and about, you must never out-dress, out-drive, or out-crib them. Living in a very modest home compared to your net worth is more important in some places than others, I suppose, but I live within four or five miles of almost all my tenants and my county's website clearly gives the location of where their tax and sewer bills are sent, so unless I invest in a post office box and an LLC, I shouldn't live in a McMansion with a lawyer foyer, a garage mahal, and a turret.

If you want to wear nice shoes, designer clothing, or lots of jewelry, go on vacation in another country. Rent a hot car at their airport. Tell everyone you own four times more rentals than you do and they're eight times more profitable than they actually are. Hell, everyone else is doing it.

But my question to the community today has to do with e-bikes and bicycles. I've found myself absolutely intrigued by the idea of getting around this town on an ebike. Has anyone ever tried this and had it backfire on them?

@Scott Trench, the former CEO of this website, tells an amazing story of riding his bike to work and being accosted by a Ford F-150 driver who automatically assumes Trench is poor because he's on a bike. Has anyone else had things like this happen to them, especially as a landlord/property manager working with tenants? I'd love to hear your stories.