Tweaking a logo, tweaking a company
Published on: Wednesday, June 24th, 2015
Today we’ve made another step in an overall change of direction of the company (notice the new logo?). Of course we will continue offer the quality residential management services, but we are moving into new territory. For years now, since our birth in 2006, we have foregone making any money by offering sales services. The rationale was very good and it’s not something we regret at all, but it is time for us to move forward.
When we were starting out in the industry we would run into management companies that seemed to be more focused on providing their company with a pipeline of potential future sales than earning money doing the very important management piece in operating a building. The management services were 2nd to sales, seemingly, and to us anyway, it seemed the resources they’d spent on disposing of “investment” properties for an owner could have been reallocated to actually make the property perform.
In one case we saw a property cycle through the sales process 7 times with the same management company in 15 year. So, to put that into perspective the $350K property paid out $20K 7 times or $200K in commissions during that time. And it is not possible that the property was appreciating that quickly, no, in fact it was deteriorating so quickly that the performance of the building urged the sale time after time. The management company brought no value except to aid in acquisitions and then promote their ability to get rid of the asset, all the while earning a pretty penny in the process.
All this to not only warn a reader about one of the pitfalls of selecting the wrong property manager, and to make sure you are working with a reputable management company (as opposed to a good salesman), but to let you know we are going to offer sales to our clients. WHAT?!?! Seems like odd timing, eh?
So let me explain. Our policy has been to focus all of our resources on being a quality management company, to be self sustaining and NOT have to have sales to subsidize our management services. That focus remains. However, we have reached a point that we are confident our management’s quality speaks for itself and our integrity is built into our processes, procedures and employees. We are a management company first and foremost.
Our sales activity will be offered to current and future management clients to enhance their investment portfolio. It’s a tool we can use to help property investors make the right decisions AND do so as inexpensively as possible. The approach we will take is to actively try to kill deals. Hear me out. When it comes to acquiring a property it’s just about as easy as making a call and doing some due diligence. But the due diligence needs to be taken very seriously and each approach needs to be done with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you aren’t trying to talk yourself out of it you aren’t doing a quality job of making sure you are buying the right property to meet your financial objectives. You may have fallen in love with the property and can’t wait to own it.
That’s where our services can save you money and hassle. Deploying our sales services will add to our fiduciary responsibility, taking it to a new level.
Another reason we’ve made this decision is to be able to market to a whole new group of potential investors. Whether we like it or not the fact of the matter is that the decision about who is going to manage a property is made during the sales cycle. Historically we’ve disallowed ourselves to even sit at that table, albeit for the right reason. Nonetheless we will not be giving up our integrity by implementing this change. In fact it will help us to be a more integral part of the decision-making process which will help clients out to an even greater extent. And just like the logo it isn’t earth-shatteringly different, it’s just tweaking things to be a little bit better.
