Property Management

Tips for Investing in Multi-Family Properties Investing in multi-family properties is a great way to boost your income while simultaneously reducing vacancy rates. Since you can house more than one family, you are bound to find tenants quickly and even have the option of staying there yourself until you find tenants to occupy the entire building.  If you are used to renting out single-family homes, you may have a bit of a learning curve while renting out a multi-family home. Getting started with your rental property investment can be frustrating at times. However, it is a lucrative and achievable investment plan for anyone willing to invest the time and put in the work. If you are well-established in single-family property investments, consider branching out and investing in a multi-family home.  If you are just starting in real estate, it may seem a little intimidating to start with a multi-family property. After all, it is more expensive to purchase and finance, but that shouldn’t leave you discouraged.  You are bound to generate more monthly income with rental payments coming from multiple tenants. Along with that, it’s a generally safe investment, considering there is always a need for rental housing units.  What Is A Multi-Family Property? A multi-family property is a property that can house more than one family or household. They typically contain two or more housing units, each having its own kitchen, bathroom, and living quarters. Some examples of these properties include: Townhomes Apartment complexes Duplexes Condominiums Quadruplexes  Multi-family properties can pro......

To be truly pet-friendly, apartment owners and operators should consider reducing or even entirely eliminating their breed and weight restrictions.  That was one of the major takeaways of How Do Your Residents Feel about Pets … and What Does that Mean for Ancillary Revenue?, a presentation by PetScreening CEO and Founder John Bradford during the recent AIM Reinvent digital conference.  To start with, prospects and residents aren't demanding these restrictions. Citing a joint PetScreening-J Turner Research study, Bradford noted only one in four apartment residents supports breed restrictions while just one in five is in favor of weight restrictions. In addition, many insurance companies have removed pet breed restrictions from their general liability policies.  Add it all up, and "it’s clear that old-school pet policies with breed or weight restrictions could benefit from some fine-tuning," Bradford said. "Reconsider your blanket pet-related restrictions." Reviewing individual pets and their owners on a case-by-case basis during the screening process will allow apartment communities to boost revenue and demand because they are opening their doors to more pet owners.  Atlanta-based apartment operator The Management Group has dropped all breed and weight restrictions across its portfolio and seen striking results.  "After this policy change, 80% of their pet-owning residents have renewed their lease," Bradford explained. "While their competitors reject pets based on weight and breed, their communities warmly welcome all pets, attract more applicants, increase resident satisfaction and improve their bottom lines."  To attract and retain pet-owning renters, it's also important to have the right amenities in ......

The antiquated pet policies of previous decades can be forgiven. After all, apartment operators didn’t always have a bevy of data at their fingertips to help steer them toward more intuitive property procedures.  But that’s no longer an excuse, as newfound pet data has made a compelling case for operators to overhaul their outdated, antediluvian policies in favor of much more pet-friendly measures.  Various operators at the Talk Data to Me: Pet Research to Improve NOI session at Apartmentalize 2021 discussed ways they’ve leveraged pet data to create the most pet-friendly, pet-responsible experience at their communities. Moderator John Bradford, founder and chief executive officer of PetScreening, relayed an abundance of pet metrics that underscored the reasons why it makes sense for operators to modernize their policies. For instance, the Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative report by Michelson Found Animals and the Human Animal Bond Research Institute indicates that residents stay 21% longer in pet-friendly housing. Additionally, 83% of apartment owners say pet-friendly vacancies fill faster.  “When we see data like this, it’s our residents guiding us toward what to do,” said Angie Lombardi, vice president of marketing for The Franklin Johnston Group.  The data also shows that pet ownership isn’t going to taper anytime soon. According to the Multifamily Pet Policies and Amenities Survey released earlier this year by PetScreening and J. Turner Research, 26% of residents said they acquired a pet during the pandemic and 19% of non-pet owning residents planned to get one in 2021. As pet ownership continues to increase, many communit......

Over the past decade or so, the multifamily industry has undeniably become more pet-friendly. Go to industry conferences, and you'll see pet-focused sessions with panelists who have reaped the benefits of relaxing or even eliminating weight and breed restrictions. Visit apartment communities, and you'll likely see an array of amenities – such as fenced dog parks and pet-washing stations – designed to attract and retain pet-owning residents. New data validates these general observations. According to the 2021 Pet-Inclusive Housing Initiative Report, 76% of owner/operators identify their properties as allowing some pets, which reflects a willingness to accommodate pets by a large majority of property owners and operators. But the same report also shows that residents often don't find rental housing as pet-inclusive as they'd like it to be. For example, according to the PIHI report: 72% of surveyed residents say pet-friendly housing is hard to find. 59% say pet-friendly housing is too expensive. 24% say their pet has been a reason for needing to move. 14% have surrendered their pet as a result of their housing situation. Clearly, apartment owners and operators have to be careful and strategic when crafting their pet policies. They have to strike the right balance of welcoming pet-owning residents with  helping non pet-owners feel comfortable, as well as protecting the community’s assets. However, the PIHI report provides a solid general blueprint for how multifamily communities can become more pet inclusive in ways that drive good business results. Among its recommendations for operators: Consider reducing or eliminating dog w......

Online shopping has gone through the roof since COVID. Online sales rose by 74% when Lockdown first started back in March 2020, compared to the same month in 2019,   and despite the easing of restrictions, most people have not returned to traditional shopping on the High Street. Why should they? The High Street is losing retail outlets and with household names such as Debenhams moving online, the average town centre is no longer such a happy place as the retailer exodus continues. This means that parcel delivery is also rising. It was estimated that it would reach 200 billion parcels delivered by 2025, but with the increase in online shopping , we are likely to reach this figure far sooner than anticipated. It is easy to see why. Online shopping appeals to all demographics. Elderly people, who were initially reluctant to embrace technology, have taken to it like a duck to water during the pandemic and have stuck with it. Younger people too find the convenience of online shopping is hard to beat.  Although this is good news for online retailers and parcel delivery companies; the high volume of all these parcel deliveries is causing major issues at the end of journey, especially in high occupancy dwellings such as apartment blocks and housing complexes. Parcel- Geddon is already upon us For property managers this is already at crisis point. Property managers are now struggling under a Parcel - Geddon of deliveries which arrive at all times of the day (up......

They say that it’s all in the amenities. However, certain amenities have a more profound impact than others. And while the traditional amenities you would think are important to prospects and residents may still be on their list, it’s the pet-related amenities that are becoming increasingly more of a necessity. According to the 2020 Pet Policies and Amenities in Multifamily report by PetScreening and J Turner Research, pet owners said that where they choose to live is significantly based upon the types of pet amenities that a community offers its residents.  When pet-owning residents, or those intending to get a pet within the next year, were asked on a scale from 0 to 10 how important pet-related amenities are when considering renewing a lease or moving into a community, the average rating was an impressive 7.11 out of 10.  Knowing that pet-related amenities are so important to a resident’s decision when choosing to renew their lease or to a prospect who is considering moving-in, it’s critical that apartment communities have the pet-related features that truly matter to renters.  While many operators might fear that introducing such amenities in their community will be expensive, that isn’t the case with the three most desired pet-related features. The three most-desired pet-related amenities found in the survey, which features the feedback of more than 22,000 apartment residents, were: Pet-waste Stations: These came in at number one with 65% of respondents saying this was a top amenity for them.  A fully stocked waste station will ensure that, oth......

There is no way to consistently build relationships with every multifamily broker in every market you cover without systematizing the process using customer relationship management (CRM) software.

The process in theory is easy, but carrying out the process does require a lot of work. This is a good thing, it ensures few will do it right for a long period of time but those that do earn tremendous success in their investment careers.

1. Buy a CRM license. There are lots of them out there. I use and love RealNex (http://info.realnex.com/lead_demo-0). This will be the platform that you do all your networking with brokers on.
2. Search for every multifamily broker in every market you cover and save their contact info into the CRM.
3. Save their contact info to your CRM.
4. Schedule regular, out of the blue calls.
5. Make introductory calls for new contacts.
6. As you continue to make calls and develop relationships, learn about them.

Watch the video, read the details in the video description for more specific details.

 

 

Should I Consult A Fair Housing Attorney? If you had a specific medical problem, you would want a specialist in that field. It stands to reason then that if you have questions regarding The Fair Housing Act, you would want to reach out to a lawyer that specializes in this.  This article takes a look at when you should consult a fair housing attorney. How this may look will depend on the size of your company and most importantly the advantages of doing so. A Fair Housing Specialist is Irreplaceable Many companies fall into a false sense of security that they have had enough fair housing training that they do not need to consult an attorney when a problem arises. Or perhaps your company is looking for a way to cut costs and wants to avoid attorney fees.  The fact is that fair housing laws are ever-evolving. Along with that, consider the cost of just one fair housing complaint. Consulting a fair housing attorney is an unavoidable part of this industry but it serves as a protection.  Updating Fair Housing Company Policies Consider one scenario that should always be reviewed by an attorney:  updating your company’s fair housing policies. As stated above, fair housing laws are constantly changing and your policies will have to change with them. Your policies not only need to be internally reviewed annually, they also need to be reviewed by a fair housing attorney at least every three to five years.  Keep in mind that if any c......

As a multifamily real estate agent I've witnessed numerous times how empathy has earned real estate investors a big win not just in the deal they are working on, but on future transactions. All too often in the real estate investment world buyers and sellers are only looking out for themselves. Others notice that way of operating and tend to shy away from future transactions with those real estate investors. The amateur investor criticizes the other party's actions or decisions without ever considering what their needs are or reasons for their actions. The Elite Investors ask questions. They don't pass judgment. They look deeper to understand what the buyer or seller's true concerns are in order to create a win-win for both parties. When both parties feel like they are being heard and that the other side is truly trying to accommodate one's concerns or goals, it not only makes that transaction smooth, it dramatically increases the probability that one of three things will happen: 1. either those two parties will want to transact again, 2. they will tell others about how wonderful it was to deal with the other side, or 3) both 1 and 2 above. This isn't rocket science information to understand, but the implementation of it consistently over a long period of time is a rarity. Take it from a real estate agent with over 20 years of experience and hundreds of transactions under my belt. I'll conclude with this, 79% of my closings (and probably a......

Any other Dunder Mifflin fans out there? If so, let’s play some flonkerton later, visit Schrute Farms and chat about all things office.  Let’s meet in the conference room in five…… There are many names for the reimagined essential home office: zoom room, pocket office and my fave new term “cloffice.”  Are you accommodating this macro-trend in your models or units? Whether your customers are renting or buying they need a dedicated space to work from home. Or if there are school aged children in the home this can be a virtual classroom as well.  A few things to keep in mind are that it doesn’t have to be in a spare room. Great if you have the space then problem solved! However, you can retro closets, alcoves, or storage rooms to achieve the cloffice (closet + office.) Things to consider in there: a petite desk work surface, a lamp, shelving for storage and a cozy chair. I would add as a flooring professional that the quietest surface to use underfoot is carpet. It absorbs sound with the best IIC rating in independent testing. It’s softer and cozier underfoot. It has a great insulation R Value too. And in today’s styles, colors and patterns you can’t go wrong.    If the space already has hard surface down you have options too. Throw down a bound area rug or look for new peel and stick soft surface planks to create your own rug. I have this in my own cloffice and love the feel on my toes......