Naming your company...what's yours and why?
Wilmington, DE · Member since 2014 · 9 posts · 6 votes
Hey everyone...I hope this finds you well.
I'm currently trying to come up with a name for my company. On the one hand, I want it to be classy and professional so something like XYZ HOMES or XYZ INVESTMENTS. On the other hand, a creative name that also helps explain the services you provide may help with marketing so something like XYZ PROPERTY SOLUTIONS or CASH FOR HOMES.
Is one option proven to be better than the other? What are your thoughts on these I've presented? My preference is XYZ PROPERTY SOLUTIONS, but I don't know.
What did you name your company and why?
Waste of time to worry about naming your business. Along with choosing an entity, setting up your "team", building a website, etc. Go make offers on houses.
I agree with Bryan! And...
My company name is Front Range Home Buyers, it took me about 30 seconds to come up with that. Rational; I live in a region of Colorado known as "the front range" (it's a mountains thing), and I buy houses. Pretty simple. The hard part is making the name. I made my business name now I have to make a name for my business.
I generally agree with the above posters.
I'm not sure what your REI goals are, but when buying homes, I've never run into a motivated seller who has walked away from an offer due to a company name. In a similar manner, tenants just need to know who to pay. You won't get any more money from them based on the name you choose. Finally, if you are rehabbing or selling, the buyer's seldom know who owns the home until they write the contract. So, again the name doesn't matter.
Here's the caveat. If you want to build a brand in your area for quality of work, type of home, etc. a little thought might be appropriate. The benefit being that you will build a reputation particularly among Buyer's Agents. This requires focused effort though. If you are just getting started, pick a name and get on with activities that will make you money. You can open a second company later if need be.
Good Luck!
As a former ad guy, my eyes are burning reading these posts. I just went through this exercise for my own new company and the temptation was there to just say oh it's a REI company and nobody cares about the name or will ever know the name.
Imagine yourself in a networking situation - will you be proud to say the same of your company or will you say the name of the company and then offer an excuse as to why it's so boring? Your name drives all of your marketing collateral, business card, URL, email, etc.
I too was tempted to develop a quick and dirty name just to get it over with, but I paused and reflected on my time in the ad business and started developing a list of 50 potential names. I also developed a wish list as to the characteristics of the name - have meaning for me, have meaning for my renters, end in "properties", it could not be confused with other areas or businesses, it could not be tied to my current location (Denver), it needed to allow for expansion and change and a few more. More than anything, I wanted it to have meaning for not only me but for my renters.
There are loads of naming resources online that you can tap into for ideas. One thing to remember is that when you are naming a company, it's best not to tie it to your own name. What if you bring on a partner or sell the business or want to expand so that you do less day to day work? Your name will limit this. Also, when you develop a name, try to think about not just the present but where your business could go in the future. If you call your business Delaware Rentals LLC and you decide to expand out of rentals into wholesaling or expand into Maryland, NJ or PA, then your name is no longer appropriate.
If you want to speak more about this over the phone, please message me and I will provide my #. Also, I lived in DE for 12 years and used to own 6 properties there. It would be enjoyable to have a chat. Hope this helps.
I simply named my companies to reflect family ownership and function of the business.
TKS Management Group LLC (Holding Co and Manages assets of subsidiaries)
CAS Property Investing LLC (Operating arm, buys and sells)
AMS Property Renovations (Renovates)
In the future, I will create a property management company and separate LLCs for rentals.
What if you bring on a partner or sell the business or want to expand so that you do less day to day work? Your name will limit this. Also, when you develop a name, try to think about not just the present but where your business could go in the future. If you call your business Delaware Rentals LLC and you decide to expand out of rentals into wholesaling or expand into Maryland, NJ or PA, then your name is no longer appropriate.
I think you're making this too complicated. If you're planning to expand into other types of investing or other states, you should seriously consider starting separate business entities for those ventures, both from a tax and liability standpoint. Likewise if you take on partners.
In addition, there's little that can't be accomplished using a DBA or trade name, or even multiple DBAs/trade names.
I have a half-dozen business entities that I operate out of for real estate, and wouldn't even know which one to put on my business cards these days. So, I don't put a business name on my cards.
I agree there is a time when branding and business name recognition is important -- and if someone were to start a retail brand, an online brand or a franchise brand, it would certainly be important from the outset -- but for most real estate investors who are starting out and plan to wholesale, rehab and rent properties, that time is not yet upon them.
Just my $.02...
@Bill Coleman @Bill Welker - When I first started in this business about 10 years ago, I picked out a name for my business - Freedom Properties. I was also becoming a Realtor. My main purpose with naming the business was so that I could keep it separate from the Realtor business, mostly for book-keeping, accounting, check-book, etc. I set up an email address for Freedom Properties and made business cards. Again, the email address was really just to keep things separate from the Realtor stuff. And the truth is that none of this stuff really mattered in relation to finding and buying good deals. Read that last sentence again. A very effective, time-proven marketing campaign is to simply state "I Buy Houses", or "I Want To Buy Your House". You can put this on yellow letters, Craigslist ads, bandit signs, etc. For that matter, most investors with a lot of experience with bandit signs advise AGAINST putting any kind of branding on the sign. I'll have to say that my business name has had absolutely zero impact on my business. I eventually stopped using the name all together.
Now, flash forward a few years. Within the last year I did set up some marketing materials and changed my business name to: Upper Cumberland Investors Group. But again, all this is secondary by far to looking at properties and making offers. It's really not necessary. One can be very successful in this biz with no "business name" at all. When you find a motivated seller, all they care about is one thing (well three) - can you get them out of their problem, how fast can you do it, and will you really follow through and do it.
People who have gone to business school like to talk about how import a "brand" is. That's bull-crap. I don't buy Coke over Pepsi because of Coke's "brand". I buy Coke because it tastes better than Pepsi. Product is much more important than brand. In our business, "product" is what we do - making offers, buying houses, and selling houses. And a lot of newbies get so hung up on the "branding" stuff and the "business" stuff and never even make an offer on a house. Just my humble opinion.
@Bill Welker Taking the time to choose a name for your company doesn't take that much away from your business. Personally I have 3 names
1. Our LLC is Parlay Investments, LLC - "Parlay": definition: to increase or otherwise transform into something of much greater value.
2. Construction Company is 1st American Construction.- Reason, I am a 1st genration American on my fathers side, and a proud American.
3. Real Estate - The Margrave Group. Reason, we are 3 people with the name Margrave. (In northern California we were River City Properties because we lived in a city with the Sacramento River running through it)
I agree with others that the name is not that important. One piece of advice that I will give is to see if the name that you pick has a website available as well. Most of the good names are taken. When I started my real estate brokerage, I wanted a good name to go on the signs, but the hard part was finding a name where the website was available. I almost named it Easy Street Real Estate, but my wife HATED that name. I chose something more professional.
When I started an LLC name for my rehab business, I didn't care about the name and just went with my two daughters' middle names followed by Properties. They both have common first names, but very uncommon middle names. I've only had one or two people ask where the business name came from. Most people don't even care what the name is. They just want to be able to differentiate you from other companies.
@Rob K. I'm with you on that one! At first we named the real estate business Orange Coast Real Estate Group, and bought the domain name. then I realized it was just too long of a name to type in so wanted to get OCREG, well it was taken! So we changed course and went with the margrave group, and I bought both the margrave group, and margrave group. Lesson learned!
As others have mentioned, aside from making sure you can get the domain name, you should focus on actually DOING deals rather than getting everything set up perfectly.
Every successful start up, no matter the industry, shares a few things in common.
The time you spend focusing on finding the perfect name, setting up the perfect website and building the perfect brand is completely wasted if you never buy a property.
Thank you everyone for sharing your experience and opinion. You've all brought up great points and touched on my motivation for posing the question.
I get that priority should be given to making offers and for that, I don't think name is that important. However, in my situation, I don't have the resources to start acquiring properties, so I'm probably going to kick things off by focusing on wholesaling. That way, I can continue to learn the business, build my network, and still make some money. I'd like to start rehabbing as soon as possible since that is my passion, but until I make the connections with private lenders or potential 50/50 partners, I won't be able to start there.
So, when you consider wholesaling, I think to key to success will be effective marketing to find the deals and that's when I think the name could be very importent. Maybe not on bandit signs, but for business cards, mailers, etc I'd think a more professional presentation would help a potential seller take that first step than the alternative. I know when I see those bandit signs, my gut reaction is "shady" , risky, and lacking credibility. However, it seems that the name can be a tool to help establish credibility that ultimately helps convince someone to take that first step and call.
Hopefully, this doesn't come across as too off-base.
My property company is called WASP, the first two owners used the first 2 letters of their names. Luckily I did not get in until later or it would have been called WISP, that just doesn't have the same sound.
So, when you consider wholesaling, I think to key to success will be effective marketing to find the deals and that's when I think the name could be very importent. Maybe not on bandit signs, but for business cards, mailers, etc I'd think a more professional presentation would help a potential seller take that first step than the alternative. I know when I see those bandit signs, my gut reaction is "shady" , risky, and lacking credibility. However, it seems that the name can be a tool to help establish credibility that ultimately helps convince someone to take that first step and call.
I'm not a big wholesaler, but from talking to those who do it full-time (and in the limited experience I've had with direct marketing), it seems to me that less polished and less "businessey" is far superior to polished and professional.
Most wholesalers I know hand-write their bandit signs and direct mail -- not because they can't afford polished materials but because polished materials are less effective.
The best response rate we've gotten on direct mail were the pieces that indicated that my wife was a stay-at-home home looking for a way to make extra income to support the family (all technically true, btw!). It didn't have a business name on the letter or a logo or anything to indicate that we were anything but a couple of ordinary people looking to help out our family with some real estate deals.
Hi Bill, here is some off the top of my head.
WholesaleDelaware.com
DelawareWholesaler.com
CrazyHouseBuyer.com
InsaneHomeBuyer.com
MassiveCashForHomes.com
CashForYourCasa.com
WeBuyDelaware.com
WeBuyDelawareHomes.com
WeLoveUglyHomes.com
You can also modify to .us .net .biz .info .org
Thanks,
Matt
WholesaleDelaware.com
DelawareWholesaler.com
CrazyHouseBuyer.com
InsaneHomeBuyer.com
MassiveCashForHomes.com
CashForYourCasa.com
WeBuyDelaware.com
WeBuyDelawareHomes.com
WeLoveUglyHomes.com
Most of those are actually already registered domains...
It won't surprise you that I am a big believer in BRANDING, which may or may not be your business NAME. Service-related brands help people to recognize you, remember you, and recall you at a later date when a need arises. A strong brand extends the value and effectiveness of your marketing.
Now, many people put a HUGE amount of time into what they name their company. In most cases, it's a huge waste. Unless you plan to invest a LOT of marketing dollars into establishing your name AS a brand, it really doesn't matter what you call your business. If you can't get to a point where people will RECALL your name - unassisted (no ad or suggestion) - your leads will only be driven by paid advertising (vs. word-of-mouth, referrals, etc.), and in that scenario, the name is probably not that important - use something you like that makes you feel that you are building something special.
There's so many newbies here on BP wanting to name their business, set up an entity, establish their "team" - there must obviously be a guru out there teaching this somewhere. Probably a guru who never turned a deal.
While I agree that most clients don't care what your company name is, the thing about a creative or descriptive name is that it helps start a conversation. If I walk around saying I'm Micki M, Real Estate Broker people's eyes glaze over just like they do when you say you sell insurance or are a financial adviser. But when I say I'm Micki M with 33 Zen Lane, people want to know what I do and what my company name means. I can then launch into the story about it being a song lyric and how it embodies the way I want my clients to feel about their property purchase.
FYI I really wanted to start a company called "Punk Rock Properties" to appeal to the less mainstream clients that I love. @Ali Boone could chime in, Hipster Investments is one of the best names I've seen in a long while.
Thanks @Micki M.
I toyed with my company name for a while because when you pick a 'less professional' name, there is a lot of room to go wrong with it. Like if someone clicked on my website after seeing that name and it was cheesy or cheaply put together, that would be the fastest way for me to tank myself and never make a penny. Plus everyone I asked their opinions on it told me no way, I'd be stupid to do that. But I ended up going with it, why? Because people click on it. If you have a super professional boring name, you may have a great reputation but it's not going to trigger random people to click all that much. When people see Hipster's name, their immediate reaction is "what in the world?" so they click, and once they get there (not to toot my own horn) they see a really cool legit site so they keep going. For my business model, that is exactly what I need to happen.
For wholesaling however, I absolutely think the name needs to suggest exactly what it is you (whereas Hipster doesn't even leave you room to guess, really). For my business, people care about what I do, how I do it, who I am, the service I provide them, etc. So my company name has to encompass several aspects for business rather than just one, like wholesaling and buying houses. Since a wholesaler only needs to let people know you will buy their house, and that's all they care about (who gives a sh** how nice you are, if you are willing to take their house off their hands, you are their hero regardless of your service or personality, or the reverse... a flipper could care less how nice of a wholesaler you are if you consistently get them good deals!), then all you need to convey in a name is that you will buy houses. I love some of the suggestions given already, especially the one from @Matt R.. That will get people's attention, immediately let them know what you do, and with no b.s.
Have fun!