All Forum Posts by: Casey Howe

I would also be open to looping at gateway cities / towns.  Brockton, Taunton, New Bedford, Stoughton, etc.  There are really good value add plays in some of these areas and reasonable entry points.  Keep in mind, everyone needs a place to live in landlords provide a service of providing those places and keeping them in good shape, updating it, etc.  so just because you would not want to live in a specific town for various reasons does not mean they aren't attractive to others and good investment opportunities.

Hi Ashley, 

We have found what works well for us, as well as our clients is to ask them during the on boarding process if they have any preferred contractors.  We then reach out to those contractors and onboard them like any other contractor - so we ensure insurance is up to date, workers comp in place, licensed etc.   and if the client would prefer, for example, a specific plumber, that's fine as long as they meet our criteria, which 9 times out of 10 they do.  We can't risk a client sending an unlicensed or non-qualified contractor into the property as we share liability for that.  We've seen cases for example where clients want to send their brother or cousin to do electrical work that they aren't licensed for.

What I don't think would work is to have a ticket come in, and then reach out to a client so they can shop around for plumbers. If your property management company is good and has built an internal maintenance team which has set rates and had strong relationship relationships with licensed contractor which should keep costs in control, you should never need to shop contractors on your own I wouldn't think.

So in short, our policy is give us your preferred contractors upfront if you have them, but then we work all tickets to resolution including dispatch, and payment of invoices.

This is of course for operational expenses. For larger CapEx jobs, we're fine with a client getting their own quotes, in fact, sometimes this is preferable. If you want to quote out high efficiency boilers for six Tripple deckers for example requiring installation of separate gas, meters etc. etc. - that might be a situation where you would want to work with a contractor directly because you would have lots of different options with widely varying costs.

Tough hit, great attitude.  As it relates to lease end dates I've seen two things work here. 1) You can stagger end dates as mentioned above or 2) you can optimize for summer - this works better for us in areas where you see students or families with school age children moving to align with the summmer months.

Separately, this is a great argument against month-to-month leases.  I hear a lot of landlords tout tenancy at will (m2m) because they think it will be easier to evict a tenant if things go south.  In my experience that's not actually the case at least in legitimate evictions for non-payment of rent or breach of another part of the lease.  

If a landlord plans to hold the property for a while, we always recommend an annual lease, ending to align with the summer leading lesson, or staggered with their other leases depending on the situation.

I would also have an attorney send a demand letter. 

I would recommend Joe Athas company - PMI Indianpolis. Find a real management company, not an agent that calls themselves a property manager and does this on the side. You want a professional company, with a staff.

https://www.ironsideig.com/about-us/

We use Joe at Ironside Insurance.

Good luck with this!   Building our PM company has been the most rewarding experience of my career.  I think you ask a good question.  In short, by listening to your clients and providing a great service, you will make a profit.  Some things to think about:

1. Get really good at putting yourself in the shoes of the investor.  

2. Think of yourself of an asset manager, not a maintenance provider or lease-up specialist (but do those well too).

3. Manage the entire P&L for your clients as if it's your own money.

4. Centralize your back office / use remote employees / VA where appropriate to cut costs and improve service levels / responsiveness.

5. Leverage technology to reduce your labor costs where appropriate.

6. Implement documented repeatable processes to reduce errors and improve service levels.

By being efficient, and cutting some of your costs you can hire better talent with the leftover cash.  You can 100% provide a great service, AND be profitable.   

Highly recommend @Lien Vuong she commented below and has helped a lot of our clients start of expand their investment property portfolio.  Just a good person too if you want to bounce any ideas off her.  Good luck with the house hack!

I love this story.  With technology and the right culture property management companies can be successful with a mix of local and remote team members.  Much of our back office is centralized / remote based, while our boots on the ground are local to the market / properties.  Good luck to you!