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.

Increase apartment rental rates in a recession? Preposterous, you say! Yes, it is – IF you have not been keeping up with the maintenance needs of your tenants and over all customer service.

I had the pleasure of attending Multifamily Insider's webinar yesterday on resident retention in apartment buildings.  The presentation was full of very useful research, facts and suggestions for the property management industry.  In particular, I feel that the information in regards to maintenance requests and how they correlate to tenant satisfaction is very useful to […]

A friend of mine recently bought an apartment building here in Los Angeles and asked me “How do I know when/if I need property manager?”  To which I told him there were several reasons to hire – or at least consult with – a management company.  I then proceeded to rattled off my top ten […]

This post is recognize one of our best team members for her work as Property Manager in the San Diego area.  Julie truly cares for her residents and her communities, which is evident in the letters we receive from current and departing tenants (see below).  It gives us great pride as a property management company […]

Once an apartment building has been located, you will want to asses the potential value that can be unlocked from it. Creating value in multifamily apartment buildings in Los Angeles (or any other city for that matter) can be accomplished by asking on question: “what about this building can I change to make it better?” This post shares 10 ways that may help to increase your property’s value.

In my last two posts, I talked about how and why to create an apartment leasing video. Now lets spend a final moment talking about where this video lives in your online apartment marketing scheme.

As the economy keeps doing what it is doing (no need for explanation here, I am quite sure), property manager relationships and trust within business circles become more and more critical. Investors need – more than ever – to be able trust in their broker’s ability to navigate them through the daunting world of short sales, […]

Many of us in the property management field are seeing our