All Forum Posts by: Eric Claxton

Hey everyone! I wanted to take a moment to pick everyone's brain about property management marketing avenues that have worked best for your businesses. We are family owned & operated with over a century of real estate experience here in the southeast. We have recently began managing assets for other owners -gained 7 new commercial multifamily contracts in last two months.. But we are really looking to really ramp it up with our marketing. So far, we have worked our connections to gain our contracts but in two weeks we are launching an online marketing campaign using google Adwords to tread number 1 in all of our active markets. But beyond that I would really love to hear how everyone else has grown their businesses!

We always send registered letter to our tenants, followed up by a phone call. This covers all the basis from the owner stand point.

Joe,

Great question- Our company does this a good bit (loaning a new operation cash from one of our existing companies). We have had no problems structuring our loans in the fashion that you are discussing. Assuming that you are loaning your own money to an LLC that is also yours.

I would assume that you would simply have your note say that payments are not due to begin for 24-36 months, and continue there after for X number of months.

Hey guys, I have just found out that we have much less equity in one of our assets than we originally thought - only about 7-8%. The development cash flows well but we owe / have too too much in it . I am looking at doing a D4 on the project to raise the value of the project. Or, we were considering selling the asset to our 501 (3) c , take back a note for the sales price. I know that under some programs nonprofit buyers can get higher LTV than we can . Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Originally posted by Johnny P.:

Hey Eric,

This is an easy question! You need to meet all of the multifamily agents in your area. Almost all of the buyers & owners I work with ask me for management companies that I would recommend. Let me tell you who I send them -

I send them the agents who will tell my buyers that they can keep the buildings full, confidence goes a long way!

I once referred a potential buyer to a local property manager who told them "I wont even work in this area, its too hard to keep the units full and collect rents". Guess who never got another referral from us!!! They obviously weren't hungry enough to get out there and work.

Make friends with the agents and you should get plenty of referral business. With your experience it seems like you will run the properties well and agents would love to refer you!

Hi Johnny, Yep this is exactly what we have done this past week or so- we have signed two new clients (only about 50 units each) through our brokers network that knows our family.

We are looking at using prospectnow software, to allow our staff to cold call some of the building owners in Atlanta metro... I am wondering how this will seem from an owner prospective. I know that we can keep the assets full, we actually just started talking with a building owner in south beach (miami), you are correct- that is all he wanted to hear from us- that we would use our skills to keep his development full, expenses reduced, and that we would protect his investment.. We are thinking that the property management division is going to do very well, not just in Georgia, but we are already very used to managing our own assets on a national basis. .. Thanks for your input!

Bryan & doug, thanks for the tips-- both sound great and we will look into both of them.

Bryan, what would be the most efficient way to reach out to syndicators?

Hey Bigger Pockets!

Im not sure if this is the right spot for this question- but our company recently begun managing other commercial assets outside our own portfolio (we gained 6 new commercial clients in last 45 days using out contacts,).. but i was wondering, if anyone had any marketing tips to reach other commercial contacts to gain more clients for our rosters?

We have over generations of experience managing our own multifamily portfolio, so we think that doing ir for other owners is a logical additional revenue source for our firm.

We have the ability to market on a sizeable scale, but we are trying to decide in what manner is the best way to do so... emailing our contacts, Print campaign, etc..

Would love to hear everyone's ideas!

Brandon, actually HUD 223F will only allow for an 83.5% leverage, and they will allow a second is most situations, but not for a total purchase price of the transaction.

Josh,
Hi- I am glad I could help. Please feel free to message me to discuss.

Originally posted by Josh Prince:

Ryan Kurth, Joel Owens - thank you very much for your replies - good links and information.

Eric Claxton- That is exactly the information I am looking for. Very interesting to read about your endeavors. I am on a much smaller scale, with about $1.5M worth of property that has around $1m equity. Since they are smaller properties, I am hoping to be able to exchange out of them into one larger property that will qualify for an agency loan like you described. I will take a look at HUD rather than Fannie Mae, but it sounds like in any case, I may need some form of short term financing in order to acquire the property given the time line of having the HUD loan approved. Do you normally just buy all cash and then finance out?

Do you think Grey Stone would entertain business from someone on a much lower economic tier, like me, as opposed to a frequent customer like yourself? Appreciate all your help.

Thanks,

Josh

Jay- when you say you assembled the parcels, do you control them via ownersip, contract, or RE option?..

If not, then I would say you would be limited to a market standard brokerage fee. Just my 2 cents i suppose.