In this video, I highlight two ideas for real estate investors. These ideas are as follows:
1. If at all possible, spend time at your rental properties. Roll up your sleeves and be involved. For many years, I was completely hands off with my investment properties. Looking back, I left a lot of money on the table with each property, because I wasn’t active in the property. In fact, we left tens of thousands of dollars on the table with the apartment complex in the video, as several vacancies went unfilled for long periods of time. Today, I am very active with every property. I know all of my tenants and have my finger on the pulse of each and every property.
2. For effective time management, try and group as many activities as possible when you do visit your rental properties. On day of this rooftop video, my partners and I took care of the following activities:
– Met a contractor to install a new cook-top oven in one of the apartments.
– Inspected a recently renovated vacant apartment.
– Handled a few electrical repairs.
– Changed furnace/air conditioning filters in many units.
– Inspected each apartment in one building for water leaks. Found two and made repairs the same day.
– Insulated 16 roof top air conditioner condensing lines.
– Cleared the rooftops and drains on two apartment buildings.
– Trimmed landscaping and treated weeds the landscaper didn’t handle.
– Repaired a garage door.
– Posted a 3-day notice.
We obviously could have outsourced all of these jobs. We could have sent the 3-day notice via certified mail, too. Instead we just blocked a day and took care of it all ourselves. It wasn’t glamorous, but it IS effective. Throughout the day, we talked with several of our tenants improving our relationship with each one of them. More importantly, we are paying attention and what you pay attention to definitely improves.
Before I wrap up this article, I also wanted to share one other suggestion that some may not want to hear…
This suggestion is to take responsibility for things in your business, or your investments, that aren’t going well. This apartment complex was managed for several years by a property management company. Due to the poor performance of this property management company, we started setting up regular meetings with them to discuss the property. At these meetings, they would agree to various action steps to improve the property. Unfortunately, these steps were never implemented and the property’s performance never improved.
We finally decided to take over the management and this is because it was our property and our responsibility. If something isn’t going right, we had to step up and do whatever was needed. This meant we had to accept responsibility, roll our sleeves up and be the change we wanted to see.
On the surface, this doesn’t sound like any great advice. However, the majority of people I encounter do not seem to take any responsibility for anything. They either ignore problems hoping they’ll disappear, or they’ll blame someone else for their lack of results. I can promise you that problems will not disappear. They’ll actually get a lot worse.
Is there something in your life you’re not taking responsibility for? This could be in your business, your investments, or in your relationships.
If so, you’re life will NEVER improve until you do step up and accept responsibility.
Once you accept responsibility, take action and get shit done.
