Multifamily Strategies and Brainstorming for additional income

[Steve Potash]

Hi Everyone, I'm Steve and I'm new to BP, but have been investing in multi-family for 24 years. I'm looking for other seasoned multi-family investors to brainstorm on how they generate additional income streams.  As everyone knows, if we can create value added products (for ex: laundry, vending machines, etc are the basic ones) that saves the tenant money and also generates additional income for us, that revenue stream can be huge when we multiply it by the number of tenants..plus it gives us an advantage over our competition.  I'm very creative and have several, but thought it would be great if several of us can provide examples of what they're doing, because if all of us come away with one additional revenue stream idea, that's easy money for us... who's interested??? 

Alright... I'll start.... I originally upgraded some of my units to stainless steel appliances.  I charged $25 more per month.  It cost me $750 for a stove, refrig and range hood and I sold my old stove and refrig for $100, so the net cost was $650.  It will take 2 years and 2 months to re-coup my initial investment of $650 and then I generate $25 per month.  In addition, my turnover was less in these apts, so I saved on turnover costs.... plus my ad says Stainless Steel Appliances, so I'm beating my competition.  I now have purchased stainless steel appliances for all of my units.  It's been over 2 years since I did this, so I'm now generating a decent income stream and have re-paid the initial re-investment.