Click here for Tip #1: Refer a Friend The practice of offering prospective residents a move-in special or incentive is a tried and true method to increase interest in your apartment vacancies.   Offering a free month’s rent with a year lease can be very enticing to prospects that are on a budget (and let’s face […]

One of the most difficult and time consuming aspects of owning and managing an investment property is the act of trying to fill vacancies with qualified renters.  For every day that a units sits vacant, it is money out of the owner’s pocket.  This certainly creates a sense of urgency, however not ANY applicant can […]

The recent reports of the decline in national homeownership have sparked much debate and buzz in the property management and multifamily industry. Has the up-and-coming generation forever shied away from homeownership and placed its faith in “permanently renting”? Or is the current adversity to home buying simply another phase of the current real estate cycle? […]

Los Angeles, Ca

The housing market will remain depressed, with record high foreclosure levels, rising mortgage rates and a glut of distressed properties dampening the market for years to come, industry experts predicted on Tuesday.

For those of us looking to place money in the money in the multifamily market, rest assured that we have not missed the boat. In GlobeSt.com yesterday, there is a nice, QUICK, break down of the state of the apartment market in Los Angeles.

Property management is an upscale, highly sophisticated babysitting industry. And property managers are the babysitters your always wished you could find for your child. We babysit, take care of, tutor and nurture your child (aka your investment property – whatever that may be). As property managers we will love it for you; educate it for you; make sure nothing bad is happening to it; we inform you when it is misbehaving; we reward it when it is doing well; and give you detailed reports and suggestions on its progress. When a property management company is

An apartment building of 10+ units will generally benefit from having an on site laundry facility. Residents enjoy the convenience of doing laundry in their own buildings and owners enjoy the extra revenue. The downside, of course, is the repair cost, which can add up once the machines fall out of warranty. Service technicians for a washer or dryer can be in excess of $200+ per incident, never mind the lost revenue if a machine is out-of-order and waiting for new parts.

This is article that I found on The Real Estate Channel’s website seemingly creates a set of mixed emotions for the multifamily and residential rental industry. While we, as property managers and investment property owners want rental demand to increase in our apartment buildings, we do not necessarily want this increase to be at the expense of our single family home investments – or do we? If our portfolios are weighted more towards multifamily, then perhaps this article is good news… What are you thoughts? Are we seeing the first signs of a multifamily dominated real estate market?
-Trevor Henson

My latest post on Property Management 2.0 discusses the feasibility of installing electrical sub meters on a master metered apartment building in the midst of a recession. Do the numbers make sense? Will there be resident turn over? Check out blog.firstlightpropertymanagement.com for the full article.