All Forum Posts by: Noah Scott

Welcome from over near the Philadelphia area, Kesha!

Unless you're going into a brokerage that pays agents a salary (Redfin, Rex, Houwzer,  etc.), your money (as a solo independent agent) comes from closing on deals. Whether that is on the buy side, listing, leasing, it does not matter. You are earning a commission-based income. In regards to Graham Stephan and his big push for agents to be working on rentals/leases, he lives in the LA area which can support someone just doing leases...places like NYC can do the same. It's not all bad advice...when you're just getting started you should be working with everyone you can in order to gain experience. Think of your first year as just continuously gaining experience.

If you want to join a team there may be opportunities for you to be an ISA (inside sales agent) where you get paid an hourly rate hammering the phones making calls or paid by appointment set. Here you would hone your skills on the phone, which you could later leverage into your own business.

Maybe there is an agent in your office that is looking for a showing agent? Someone who will bring their buyer clients to homes. You may be paid here per property shown, per day, etc.

Hope this helps.

@James Wise Thanks for the reply. I understand the model and it does make sense. The move into property management will be an experiment in trying our model, focused on a higher % fee and performing repairs at cost. Thankfully it is not a necessity that this is a huge profit center for us, but instead a synergistic part under a larger real estate umbrella. I'll certainly update this thread as time goes on to give back our results - good or bad. 

I'm all for using proven models and using what others have done before us to shorten the success cycle, but every now and then it can be good to try out something new(ish) to see what results may come about.

@Jay Hinrichs I appreciate you getting back to me! I like the take on managing the managers, taking yourself out of the tenant-facing aspects of the business. I'm not currently in a position to make that play, but as time moves on should we be fortunate enough to have the business grow, I will definitely leverage myself out of those day-to-day aspects of the business. Again, thanks for the insight!

@Jay Hinrichs Thank you for the reply! It would seem like Chris has quite the resume, I appreciate the recommendation. Throughout your career in RE have you ever worn the hat as a property manager?

@James Wise I appreciate the reply! I've seen you post a lot throughout my time lurking on the forums and know you've got years of valuable experience in your corner. I'm curious about your thoughts on the current model of PM, where many times you'll see companies going towards lower rates and then making their buck on marking up maintenance. Do you feel that is a model that serves both the investor client and tenant?

Hey everyone,

I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to help start a property management company between myself and a mentor of mine. I have previous experience indirectly related to the field as a real estate agent in the state we will be operating in. The opportunity came about organically and we have been working together to get things off the ground over the next few months.

We have the who/where/what we are targeting, currently getting all of the proper licensing/business structure/paperwork in place, and the roles that will be in place. We will be small by design with no plans to grow into a major organization. Both of us have our expectations set for the business, this will not be a cash cow for us and intend to make it a helpful piece under the umbrella of RE we work in.

My question(s) for those of you who have/had experience working as a PM: What would you do differently?  If you were going back to yourself towards the beginning and had to set a plan in place would there be a few key pieces of information you'd share?

Thank you in advance for your input. I like to believe that I have my expectations well set. I understand that PM is not a glamorous business; however, I am lucky that I am young enough to gain experience in an area inside of real estate that will help me further on throughout my REI journey.

I remember reading an article that predicted something similar a handful of months back (I believe it was on Inman, I'll have to check). We will continue to see the landscape of the traditional RE sales business disrupted in various ways. Looking forward to finding the way to niche down and create a lane that operates well for the little guy.

@Sean Rooks great breakdown. Seems like the lessons you learned will pay you back multiple times. Certain appraisers will use different valuation models, and it helps to learn what may be considered the "norm" for your area so that the next time you're that much more prepared.

Are you looking to stay primarily in the small multifamily space for your BRRRR deals?

@Maximilian Marck sorry this hasn't gotten much traction. Hopefully getting a bit of conversation going inside the post can get that going. From a generalized PoV I would say your 20% will be appointments (with sellers set), appointments attended, offers made (&accepted).

To break it down a bit further, KPIs would be how many (insert lead generation tool here. Example: mailers) result in 1 lead, then how many leads result in 1 direct conversation with a seller, further on to how many conversations do you need to have to set an appointment, how many appointments attended to 1 offer, then how many offers made to an accepted offer.

In the end, the business is not unlike others in that it is a game of marketing, and then selling your product. So, to find your 20% EVERYTHING should be measured, whether that is in an excel sheet you keep updated, your CRM, or somewhere else. Unless you run your business like a business, it will be really difficult to truly determine a good 80/20 rule 

I agree with what you have to say. My goal is to do exactly as you said, build up one block at a time. My goal is to build sustainable and scalable wealth. I will be doing exactly as you mentioned, going after the more sweat equity options. I'm grateful that I've had experience in dealing with both buyers and sellers on the retail side, so being in person is not a huge dilemma.

Thanks for the guidance and advice my friend!

Hey @Austin Hughes, thanks for sharing up to the current point in your continued journey. It's great to see for those of us just starting out. I'm switching over from a career in retail RE sales and the path that I've envisioned for myself looks somewhat similar to your own. 

When you were bootstrapping things on the wholesale side what were your first few lead gen sources? Right now, I'm focusing on sweat equity work (mainly driving for dollars). I'd be really interested to hear what your plan for execution was on the first few steps and how you progressed.

I love seeing the progression that people have. It makes the continued steps in the journey seem much more accessible.