Tips for Keeping Your Multifamily Home Profitable

Market News, Real Estate Investments

Multifamily homes are great for investors because they provide multiple, cash-flowing units and can help you build a strong real estate portfolio quickly. These properties are also much easier to manage than multiple homes in different locations. They may even be able to provide you tax savings, among their many other benefits. If you’re invested in multifamily real estate, or are considering a multifamily home for the first time, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing everything you can to keep the property’s cash flowing in the right direction. In this post, we go over a few of the things that you can do to help keep your investment profitable.

Tip #1: Make sure the units are appropriately priced

First and foremost, you need to make sure you’re charging the right amount in rent for each unit. In order to do this, you’ll have to do a little bit of research on your own. Look into rents for multifamily units that are like the ones in your property. That mostly means units that are of a similar size and age, although keep in mind that certain renovations/amenities can affect that price. The location of the property and the neighborhood it’s in can also be a factor. If you’re having trouble finding a tenant after a while, you may actually be overcharging, so don’t be afraid to lower the price a bit until the unit is filled.

Tip #2: Keep the units occupied, but also screen your tenants

Of course, in order to get the most profit from your multifamily home you need to make sure every unit is occupied and producing rental income. That doesn’t mean that you should rush to fill every unit though, and that can actually come back to bite you. You don’t have to look far to find horror stories of awful tenants and costly evictions. To avoid such a situation, you’ll need to spend some time screening your tenants. Most landlords will recommend you run a credit check, since it helps you get an idea of the tenant’s ability to pay you in a timely manner, and some suggest a background check as well. Although it will likely take more time to find the right tenant, these actions can save you money, or maybe even more importantly peace of mind, in the long run.

Tip #3: Stick to practical renovations

If you want to increase the rental income of a particular unit or property, the simplest and most cost efficient way would be to Refresh it instead of doing a complete renovation. You should take care not to overspend, and instead you should focus on Carpet Cleaning, Painting, Janitorial, and Refinishing the bathrooms and kitchens – all of which Refresh can do for you with one call! Essentially, that means avoiding style choices that may not fit everyone’s tastes. A fresh coat of paint, new lighting fixtures, and deep cleaning flooring are some of the most effective ways to update a unit and increase its value, while not costing you too much. If you are planning major renovations, try and focus on high traffic areas like the Kitchen, Bathroom, and living areas. Remember, your goal is to add as much value to the property as possible while minimizing the financial hit you will take.

Tip #4: Maintain the property regularly to avoid future complications

This next tip is actually great advice for all sorts of real estate investors. You should have any property you’re investing in inspected to uncover any major issues that may need costly repairs. On top of that, regular maintenance and inspection of a property will make sure any problems that do occur don’t spiral into larger, more complicated issues. As for multifamily properties, the units will experience regular wear as they’re occupied, so you should conduct move-in and move-out inspections to uncover any items that may need attention. Not only will this prevent more costly repairs down the line, but it also means you’ll have an easier time filling any vacancies, since great units will attract more tenants.

Connect with Refresh today to supplement your regular maintenance or to get those make ready’s turned faster and more cost effectively!

Tips for Success to Motivate Property Managers

A property manager’s main role is as a tenant concierge. Their job is multi-faceted but breaks down to the following:

Maintaining a safe and profitable asset

Safety is a concern of every good property manager. How do you keep your tenants safe? The first step is keeping your property maintained and clean. Dryer vents is a good example of this.

About five years ago, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) co-funded a study to measure how many fires in the United States begin with clothes dryers or washing machines. They looked at most major forms of housing: single family, multifamily, duplexes, condominiums, townhouses, apartments, and row housing, and what they found, in a nutshell, was the following:

The leading items first ignited in clothes dryer fires were dust, fiber, or lint (27%) and clothing (26%). In washing machine fires, the leading items first ignited were electrical wire or cable insulation (26%) and appliance housing or casing (24%).
Most of these home fires involved clothes dryers (92%).
The leading cause (31%) of home clothes dryer and washer fires was failure to clean.Refresh can make sure those dryer vents are clean so you can keep your properties safe and profitable. Refresh also offers janitorial services including a porter service to help with general cleanliness and safety. No one wants to deal with slip and fall law suits when you are trying to keep your properties profitable.

Maintaining every lease and the tenants’ satisfaction

Refresh can help here too! We can help you stay profitable and maintain leases and grow your retention without breaking the bank by refinishing your outdated countertops and cabinets, and repairing and refinishing your bat tubs and showers. We also do paint and Carpet cleaning as well, and you can schedule it all with one call, so you don’t have to spend all day trying to work with different service companies to get your make ready apartment turn list checked off. In fact, you can schedule it all online today in less than 5 minutes, and the turn around for job completion is faster than most make ready services as well, because we are able to create a work flow that makes sense and saves you time and money.

Maintaining accurate budgets for the building owners.

One more reason to hire Refresh, is we can do all of your apartment turn services through one company, so keeping track of the paperwork is a breeze. You can always access your billing history through our online portal and all your makeready services for each unit can be on one bill instead of hundreds of bills. We want to make your job easier, call us today!

Growing Your Property Management Business: How to Set Goals to Help You Grow Your Property Portfolio

Ambition is a beautiful thing, but realism is also extremely valuable. As you’re setting your company goals, you need to consider how much you should expect to grow and what it will take to reach that goal. Why is setting goals important? Your growth goals and your business plans need to be aligned, providing a framework that shows how your company can succeed. When you know your business goals, you can create a focused property marketing campaign to move toward them.

Your Business Contract

What is your company striving to achieve? According to the Houston Chronicle, “goals are resolutions to achieve a desired result.” When you’re thinking about your company goals, you need to consider your company’s capacity to serve both your owners and your tenants. Your best property management marketing tool is word of mouth. As you develop your business in new directions, you need to make sure that you continue to serve everyone well.

One of the most important goals to reach is to develop a lasting and mutually understanding relationship with your property owners. These owners entrust you with their properties. They may live in another area and be unable to manage their properties themselves, or simply prefer and appreciate the depth of service that a management company can provide. Often, they trust your business to take care of both broad issues and the smaller details.

To ensure that you meet your goal to meet the needs of your property owners, you need to be able to effectively communicate with these owners. Utilize property management software that allows you to develop an owner portal and communicate with your owners over time, allowing them to set common goals regarding their properties.

Set ongoing maintenance and inspection regimes to meet your property goals.

Set Property Standards

What do you want prospective tenants, owners, or the neighbors to see when they visit the properties you manage? When you’re marketing your properties, you want them to look good from the curb all of the way into the home. Well-cared-for properties are a huge selling point for potential tenants. When a prospective tenant sees that you care about maintenance, this builds trust in your management company.

Set goals for the ways in which you manage your property maintenance and repairs. Create an inspection protocol that includes photo and video documentation so that you can benchmark the state of each property. Manage your maintenance schedules and property records in a common location so that when there are questions about when a specific type of maintenance is happening next, you can give an easy answer. Develop long term connections with contractors and maintain those contacts with an online system. Staying on top of your property inspections and maintenance will help your property management business achieve its goal of keeping tenants and owners happy.

Balance Growth and Service

What structures do you have in place to support your business growth? Do you have ways of managing your information and promoting your property management business through a thoughtful marketing plan? As your business grows, you need to discover your own unique balance of growth and support.

According to Inc.com, “establishing business goals involves a fair amount of introspection into what makes your business tick, and what you want its future to be.” This process is also worthwhile because it gives your property management company sound insight into what you’re doing, why, and how. Develop a plan for strategic growth, and consider how you’ll muster the resources you need to move in that direction. You might decide that even though you’d like to expand to a new state, you don’t have the employees, funding, or technology to make this happen. If that expansion is a priority, you’ll need to consider how to make it occur without compromising your existing customer service.

growing your property business