New Goal: Purchase 400 units this year

[Chris Shepard]

Hey all, 

My brother and I own and operate a small property management and construction company in Portland, Oregon.  We've been in business about 5 years.  We are also a licensed plumbing company and a licensed contractors.  We own a brewpub with 2 locations as well.  We have a lot of irons in the fire.

After reading "the one thing" and watching a few webinars, I realized that most of the effort I am putting into our real estate business is scattered.  I run payroll for all my companies, I do the taxes for all my companies, I handle 80% of the book keeping as well.  It's a lot of work.  Time to focus on one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary.

I wanted to invite you all to join me on our journey of commercial real estate investment in the Portland Metro Area.  My brother and I have decided to take on a financial freedom goal of earning $160,000 a month in passive income (working less than 10 hours a week each) by the end of 2016.  I will be doing posts 2x a month on our journey with updates.

To accomplish this goal I realize that we need to own, manage, and be the preferred contractor on 400 units by the end of 2016.   Right now we own 19 units, we manage about 80, and manage construction on those 80.

We have made an offer to purchase another 14 units 2 weeks ago and the owner of those units will let us know about that shortly.

We have secured a team of investors to move forward on any properties over 50 units that we deem a reasonable deal and we have about $500,000 in liquid funds for capital on those ventures.

I could use help in a few areas if you guys have any advice.

• First off, I am setting up our direct mail campaign in the metro area and other desirable areas.  I plan to hit it pretty hard with a list of about 800 apartment owners.  I am thinking about starting off with a postcard and a newspaper ad and AM radio spots.  I think that hits our target market of older apartment owners who are ready to let someone else either purchase the complex or let a management company manage it. We will be aggressively marketing to these owners with a mailing every three weeks until the Christmas holidays.
• I will also be working on networking with property managers, accountants, lawyers, and commercial real estate brokers.  Any tips here would be great.  We are currently involved with IREM, NARPM, Letip, and ULI.
• Another thing I need to dial in for when the right deal comes along is a joint venture agreement between our investors and us.  If anyone has an agreement or important items to include in that agreement I would be very grateful on advice there.
• We also need to amend our property management contract to focus solely on multifamily.  Does anyone out there own a larger building and have a contract with a management company that they like or they thing is a good example?

Thank you in advance for all your help!  I am looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on the direction that we've chosen as well as other's experiences in similar ventures.

Cheers,

Chris Shepard

[Jason Bott]

@Chris Shepard I have to agree with @Brad Chandler and his marketing advice. 

Do you already have a list of 800 landlords?  If not, hopefully my marketing grunt work can help you out. 

I looked for lists of landlords, called list companies and could not find a good list.   All the lists only had class A monster apartment complexes owned by syndicates or private equity.  Not saying you don't want those, but you mentioned older owners looking to relinquish the day to day or the entire property.

So I created a list by having one of my assistants call the top 50 municipalities assessor offices in WI and ask for lists of 4 units or greater.  80% had them, of those, half were free, and the other half was $10 - $75. Every municipality had a different file/spreadsheet (after all, it is the government).  Once we combine the lists, removing duplicates, we researched the entities to get the phone #'s.

I have done a lot of cold calling and have had cold callers work for me over the last 20 years, and that list was one of the most responsive lists we ever used.  Hopefully this gives you some perspective when finalizing your marketing. 

Good luck and Ill be following along.