All Forum Posts by: David Panzera

It's a new year, and time to reevaluate what's working in your real estate business and what's not. If you're shopping for a new property manager, we invite you to visit our website today at www.PanzeraRealty.com. We've been doing residential property management for investors in Columbus, Ohio for 20 years. 

Call or visit us today!

Welcome to BP, @Amanda Roderick. We invest and manage here in Columbus, too. Feel free to reach out to me if you ever have any questions, and best of luck to you!

- David Panzera

Welcome to BP, @Mike Roberts! There are a lot of great resources here. We are Columbus agents and investors as well, so feel free to send me a message with questions anytime.

- David Panzera

Hi, @Steve Rozenberg, 

Funny you should ask that because I just read an article online about that question from an owner: "How much do you charge and what do I get for it?" It talks about how when an owner is asking it usually means they have a problem and need it fixed, and your answer should include how you'll help fix the problem. A lot of investors ask the question because they're upset with their current company for being non-responsive. We always make sure they know that their fee buys our responsiveness -- we try to answers calls and emails from owners within 24 hours -- worst case, 48. I read a thread on here recently that said a PM took 5 days to get back to them. That's ridiculous.

Anyway, our management fee is a percentage of gross monthly rent per unit. It covers all the admin fees for landlording -- taking calls from tenants, processing work orders, handling rent payments (we do not pick up rent in person from tenants), and dealing with all tenant issues, and tracking and logging all income to owners' online accounts; it covers our driving by and/or walking the properties a few times a month (we do that whenever we're in the area for work on a nearby unit) and letting the owners know if there are any issues that aren't standard that need addressing; etc. We have a separate rental fee that's tiered off which covers all costs we incur to put a tenant in a unit.

Our management fee also buys an investor time, so they can invest, and not have to worry about being the landlord. 

Hope that helps!

-David Panzera   

Hi, @John Thedford. I think it's interesting that in your class they suggested opening and running a PM company as an "excellent" source of new business for listings and purchasing rentals from owners. It can be a good source of those things, but I hope they also told you that running a PM company is, like being an agent, a full time job. So when you do them both, you have TWO full-time jobs. 

To answer your question about people working as agents and then opening a PM company later, I can speak to where I run my PM company in Columbus, OH. When the market tanked and sales and purchasing dried up, a lot of agents here and even a lot of full brokerages opened up PM companies or new branches of their business to get by for awhile, since of course people still needed management. That happened all over the country. And then when things got better and the agents realized that they could make commissions again, they dropped the PM parts of the business. Here in Columbus we watched those new PMs come and then go, because opening and operating a PM business requires everything you have. So the moral of the story is that you need to perform your due diligence, have a plan, have enough qualified people to help you implement the plan, and realize that it will be just like opening up any other new business you might open. Sure, it's related, and sure, you'll meet some new investors who might use you to sell their current properties or buy new ones, but it's still its own beast. And remember, you have to actually go out and FIND those investors whose properties you're going to manage. Believe me, and you can ask my marketing manager, that you will work just as hard to market yourself and find THOSE clients as you do to find investors or owner-occupied clients looking for you just as a straight sales agent.

Look at the idea like you would if you were looking to purchase an investment property: sure, it might cash flow, like you said, but you should factor in all of the teeny variables that are going to chip away at that cash flow and be FULLY prepared for it if you launch the business.

My last thought is regarding the second thread piece you wrote: my advice would be to not take every property you're offered for management. Make it part of that plan I talked about above to figure out which areas you'll manage in, and why, and then work only in those areas. It's always better to specialize in a few things than try to do it all. 

Sorry to be so long-winded! I've been doing property management and working with investors for this for a long time and I get a little carried away.

Good luck!

David Panzera

Panzera Realty is offering a chance to win a $100 Lowe's gift card to real estate investors who follow us this week on LinkedIn!

By following us, you'll get regular, valuable property management content and information about real estate investing from our perspective as an investment brokerage and property management company in Columbus, OH. And your follow will equal dollars that we're giving to charity at the holidays.

Check out the details at this link on our website, and follow us on LinkedIn today:

http://panzerarealty.com/if-you-follow-we-will-giv...

Happy Holidays!

David Panzera, Panzera Realty

Thanks, Kevin. That's helpful information.

Hi, everyone,

We are running a holiday giving campaign this week on our company page on LinkedIn to try to grow our network for our real estate investment brokerage and PM firm in Columbus, OH. 

What we're wondering now that we're in the thick of it is, is that the best place for us to be building a network of followers?

We picked LinkedIn to run the promotion on because we thought professionals with full time corporate jobs might invest on the side and find us there for answers to their investing and PM questions, but now we're not so sure. And since BP doesn't have a "connections" link to LinkedIn (but it does to all the others) on the profile page, we're really confused.

As an investor, where do you hang out online besides BP to meet other like-minded investors? Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+? Where do you get great RE investing and PM information besides BP (which of course is awesome)? We want to go where people hang out to build a network to push out the great RE investing and PM content we put on our website.

We appreciate your comments and thoughts!

David Panzera, @Panzera Realty

Are you looking for off-market deals? Or trying to meet investor-specific agents? We belong to a local real estate investors' group called COREE, Central Ohio Real Estate Entrepreneurs (centralohioreia.com), which can be a good place to find off-market deals if you want to spend time networking. Also, to piggyback on what Rob said, you might want to start by figuring out which zip codes you want to invest in and which you'd rather stay out of. That's what we start with when we work with investors. Good luck!

David Panzera

Welcome, @Sam Smith!

You've picked a good market to research...investing here in Columbus is a great option for investment portfolio growth. We'd be happy to talk with you any time. Partnering with out-of-state investors to be their "boots on the ground" as you say is exactly what we do. We work with a lot of BP investors and would be happy to help you assess properties before you buy. We also help our investors with rehab. I will send you a PM, so you can connect if you'd like to talk.

Good luck! I think you'll be happy with Columbus as an investment market.

David Panzera