New Property Manager

[Matthew K.]

I am looking to start a property management company and could use some help with a few questions: how many doors are reasonable the first year, what are some good ways to acquire customers, are there any good ways of targeting investing rather than managing properties? 

[Steve Maginnis]

Hello @Matthew K..  My company has been in business for over 20 years.  However, I went to work with another management company for about six years and just started my own back up in August of 2018.  Starting again with no properties, it has taken me right at two years to acquire the 115 doors we currently manage.  Note that of these, 78 are apartments owned by three different entities.  So, we still only have about 30 owners we have attained.  Put that in perspective: 30 customers in 24 months.  Does not seem very productive. However, for only one person, I have my hands full and am perfectly happy with the income generated, at least until I'm ready to expand. 

I have done many creative things to try and pick up new business. Attending/joining local Meetups, REIA's, etc. and networking with Realtors who sell investment quality properties. Networking with commercial RE companies that sell investment properties. Posting a lot on BP with helpful advice helped a lot. I even used to go to eviction court and do some "ambulance chasing" by following individual owners out of the courtroom who just lost an eviction because they did not know what they were doing I have marketed on Yelp, Google Ads, etc. I have paid upwards of $1000 per month to an SEO company who promised my rankings would go from page 10 to page one within six months (never happened. I still rank around page 4 after two years).

I started in 2018 with over $30k in savings to keep afloat and build the business.  Boy, was I underestimating what was required.  It took about 8 months to generate about $60K annually, and cost about that much to cover my expenses up to that point.  However, this was my tipping point, where I started generating income over my expenses.  

By far, the number one method of generating business leads is Google Ads!!!  I would not waste time with anything else again.  If you want to move up your rankings on Google, you just have to pay them.  I did find a catch though.  I initially was set a budget of $500 monthly and had a pretty creative way of setting up my ads.  It was very  effective.  I had ads showing on the first page of search results right away.  After several months, I noticed my ads slipping.  Eventually, I did not see the ads at all. Google essentially told me that if I want to maintain the same results, I would have to pay a lot more.  I had to compete financially with the biggest management companies in town.  They would not give me a number, but I got the feeling I needed to pay at least four times what my current budget was.  What a scam!!!   I stopped marketing altogether at that point.  Fortunately, my efforts at this point had paid off, and now I get solid interest from my organic search results, BP and other website referrals.  I think the reason my website moved up so much was because we had several low income apartments for rent.  With the affordable housing shortage, we had so many inquiries.  Probably 40-50 per day.  I decided to direct them to our website for additional information, and these increased clicks helped move me up the rankings. 

At any rate, sorry for the long post, but this has been my most recent experience in starting back up.  Granted, I had done it before 20 years ago, and had a LOT of experience when I started back up, but I feel the premise is pretty solid.  Best of luck.