Property Management Lead Generation

[Devan Mcclish]

Hello Property Managers,

I run a property management company in Nashville. I wanted to see how everyone is generating leads for their business. For us, it is a lot of referral base, which is great but I would like to develop a more solid way to have weekly lead generation. 

We have tried facebook leads, seo / website, and it returns very minimal for us.

How do other property managers find their leads?

[Nathan Schiess]

@Devan Mcclish I have worked with several property management companies and I think the common denominator for success is connections. In all the years I've managed properties the companies that I have seen do the best are the ones that A) own (fully or partially) a large portion of what they manage and B) have lots of connections with people "in authority". Here are a couple of ways I've seen owners of property management companies significantly grow their businesses: get in with say a fund manager who manages a fund that purchases large numbers of SFH in an area (or one that is looking to purchase and needs a management company to work with), put together a syndication to purchase a significant number of units and have your company be one who will manage the property(ies), purchase management contracts from other management companies in the area (lets be honest most management companies are not awesome and there may be a company in your area that is ready to throw in the towel or unload some properties that they can't handle anymore). I know these are pretty high level strategies and maybe you just want to keep the business relatively small (in which case just ignore this post) but these are just the strategies that I've seen successful PM companies use. I personally do not believe you can end up managing 10k units if you try to find them 1 by 1 or even 10 by 10. That being said, companies that build a business one SFH management contract at a time can benefit from tons of other simultaneous synergistic strategies that do not require 10k units (or even 1k units for that matter). For example: in-house maintenance companies to handle work orders, "in-house" real estate brokerages to refer business back and forth, "in-house" Capital investment and advisory services with which to organize the owners you manage for to then purchase more and larger deals together (that you will manage) and I think you see where this is going. It all feeds off itself and your businesses grow together, thousands of units under management not required. So either keep doing what you are doing with your online marketing (also attending local REIAs can be effective getting one off management deals) and utilize some other business vehicle in tandem or start connecting and swing for the fence! Hope that helps in some small way Devan, good luck!