It would take most landlords way longer than 12-16 hours a week to do both management and maintenance on dozens of rentals. Here we have grass, trees, shrubs, flowers, fences, plus all the buildings to maintain. Propertymanager must have very low-maintenance buildings on concrete lots or it would not be remotely possible.
I think that management is the most over-paid profession on the planet. What is really involved?
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Answering the phone - I have a bluetooth so I can continue whatever I’m doing while I talk to people. Net effect on my day - ZERO!
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Showing apartments to potential tenants. I phone screen all callers and usually show two or three rental per day. At 10 minutes each, that’s maybe 20 minutes per day.
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Schedule maintenance. Since I do the maintenance myself - again ZERO impact on my day. I just say to myself, “hey, I better go fix that leaking faucet later this week”.
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Collecting rent - I do this the 1st through 4th of each month. Nothing to do the rest of the month.
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Bookkeeping and paperwork - I pay bills once a week, a lot of them on-line. That accounts for 2-3 hours per week.
Then there’s the maintenance. I have mostly older houses, many more than 100 years old. However, even with older buildings what is there really to fix? Most of the calls I get are for little things like a leaking faucet or some other little thing. Time to fix a leaking faucet - 15 minutes. The vast majority of my time is spent rehabbing units when we first take them over and when they are vacant. A lot of that time is spent patching drywall, painting, and laying carpet. There’s just not that much to do. One of the bigger projects I’m doing this summer is painting my new apartment building. I do that whenever it’s sunny and when I don’t have something else to do. It may take me all summer to paint this building, but who cares? I’m not in a hurry, am I?
We do have grass here in Ohio also. The tenants mow the grass in my SFHs and side-by-side duplexes. I mow the grass in my apartment buildings. However, most of these buildings have very little grass. I don’t have more than 15 minutes worth of mowing at any building and some of them have less than 5 minutes. Total time spent mowing: maybe 2 house every 10 to 14 days. I don’t have ANY FLOWERS or shrubs at multi-unit buildings unless the tenants plant them and take care of them. If my rentals have them when I buy them, I cut them down. I’m not sure what you do with the trees, but the only thing I do with trees is cut them down. If I had my way, I would cut every tree down on every one of my properties. I’m working on it.
I still can't understand that more people aren't interested in doing furnished upscale rentals. There is so much more money to be made if your area can handle it.
I don’t think that people aren’t interested. As I said in one of my early replies to your threads, I would do it in a minute if it would generate significantly more income per unit for me. I am not married to any one business model, my goal is to MAKE MONEY! Unfortunately, my market simply won’t support the “furnished” model that you use. I have looked at this issue from every angle and talked to other investors here that have furnished rentals, and the numbers simply won’t work here. Yes, you can get two to three times the rent, but you must furnish everything and pay the utilities. Utilities can be very expensive, especially when the tenant has no reason to conserve and when the utility prices are rapidly increasing. Without a steady supply of traveling professionals like you have, I would be stuck with normal tenants of furnished units. They would be the same lower and lower-middle income tenants that I have now, but they would just have more of my stuff to destroy and steal. It’s not that every tenant is bad, in fact quite the opposite (most are good). However, the small percentage of bad tenants are enough to offset a lot of good tenants.
In addition, we have a significant supply of bed and breakfast facilites in our area which are basically the step between motels and rentals. They are doing the fully furnished, short term business model in our area.
I think you’ve got a great niche going, but the question is whether it will work outside your niche market. I think that’s why you are not seeing significant interest.
Mike