Why do Michigan SFH investors reinvent the wheel everytime?

[Bao Nguyen]

I don't know about everyone else, but I got into real estate to be an investor: to buy/sell/rent. 

I don't want to burn my Saturdays running around unlocking doors for prospective buyers/tenants or meeting up with contractors to pay them or sitting in front of the computer on a Sunday night to make sure I get the craigslist ads posted, and then turn my phone volume on max loud to make sure I don't miss any calls about my properties. 

I don't want to spend time looking for good and honest contractors, and then burn more of my time to manage them and the job. I'm basically paying people to take up my time to watch them - it's such an absurd concept, but every investor does this, AND think it's normal and logical!

As a single-family-home investor, I find myself doing all the tasks from beginning to end on the real estate business-cycle:

1) Looking for the good deals/analyzing leads

2) The purchase

3) Rehab

4) Look for good contractors, buying materials, managing contractors/jobs

5) utility turn on/off

6) Advertising on Craig's List/Zillow/etc for rent/sale

7) Answering calls/email responses to my ads, unlocking doors and showing properties

8) creating/printing lease agreements, collecting rent, etc...

That's a lot of tasks to go from getting the house to getting cash in your pockets - and that's not even all the tasks! I got into real estate thinking it's a passive income stream - was I ever wrong! I bought myself a job. I really don't want another job, but I've got it now.

Specialization:

Why don't SFH investors learn from Henry Ford with the assembly line concept? Instead of each investor building the car from start to finish, why don't investors actually team up, specialize in some tasks, and train $8/hr hires to do the other mundane tasks?

Whatever tasks you do in the real estate business cycle, if you think you're good, imagine how good you'd be if that's all you did all the time? Imagine if that person is available for hire at $8/hr - split between your group of investors, it come out to $0.10/hr cost to you personally.  Is your time worth $0.10/hr?  

Synergy:

In my area, I know that if all the local SFH investors pooled their resources, we'd have over 500 SFH homes in Lansing, East Lansing, Holt, Grand Ledge, Haslett, Dewitt, Mason, Okemos and surrounding areas! We'd be the biggest land owner second only to the government! Anyone and everyone who's interested in lease with option to purchase, land contracts, or any other creative financing strategies would go to this group's combined website before the MLS and Craigslist!

Not to mention some investors are also licensed Realtors, public notaries, licensed builders, licensed plumbers, etc. If everyone teamed up to form a single group/entity, that group would have nearly every certification and license required by any law to do anything real estate related. Break down each task to be as simple as possible, and hire an $8/hr person to do it: answering calls and emails using a specific template made by investors, unlocking doors, printing contract templates with correct addresses/dates/names, craigslist posting...etc

If such a group existed in Lansing, MI, I sure would be willing to pay a few bucks/month for this service so I can free up my time to do what I really like to do: finding the good deals and making the purchase, and then setting the selling/rent price, and collecting the proceeds!

Why don't investors take advantage of synergy? Why do we all operate like there are no other investors doing what we do?  

If you're interested in freeing up more of your time from doing mundane real estate tasks, get in touch with me to start such an entity in the Lansing, MI area - I have some ideas.