Keeping your property as you step into your next home is a fantastic way to start building your rental portfolio. Most likely you have a great interest rate compared to if you were going to try to purchase an investment property in the future. This will help you stay cash flow positive while continuing to gain equity. If you are reading this, most likely you are in Southern California, which historically experiences greater property appreciation than the rest of the country. This allows you to pay down your mortgage, obtain cash flow and increase your net worth all at the same time! Adding residential real estate to your investment portfolio is a fantastic way to diversify your investments and protect your net worth at the same time. 

Maybe your property has been a rental and now your tenant is leaving after many years and you are starting to think about selling. The thought of going through the process of getting the home freshened up, putting a new tenant in and starting all over can be a headache,  right?  Completely wrong. This is where I come in to help for a very nominal fee. I go through my clients home to provide them with a proposed punch list to get the property rent ready again to obtain maximum return on investment. I coordinate any repairs that you choose to move forward with with my vendors, I list the property on all of the internet websites that tenants are looking on, I schedule all of the appointments with interested renters, I collect all the applications, do the background checks, credit screening and help go over the applications with you so that you can make an informed decision on your next tenant. Then, once you've chosen your tenant I draw up the official lease and perform the move in inspection for you. All of this so you don't have to! 

If your property was a rental property in the past and you were managing it yourself, odds are you weren't very active on keeping up with the rest of the market by issuing rental increases with your annual lease renewals. If it's been a few years, you may be shocked to see what the current rental rate would be for your property. If you choose to move forward with property management with me, that's one of the services that I provide. I will update you with the most recent market analysis when it's time to renew your tenants lease. This way you can be informed about your investment at all times. I will help you start treating your home like the business that it is. 

So you are still leaning on selling rather than keeping your investment and letting it grow. That's fine! Just make sure you are fully analyzing things like capital gains and other tax ramifications with your realtor and CPA. What are you going to be doing with those funds? Are you going to park them in the bank just to have their purchasing power be chipped away by inflation? Will you be investing them into something as historically safe that will be giving you a higher return on investment than what your rental property would have garnered? Don't be that investor that looks back in 5-10 years that says "I wish I would have kept that home".  I'm here to help you analyze and give you the numbers on your property so that you can make the informed decision that you are actively searching for! Reach out anytime. 

While I'd love to be a resource for you with ALL of the above questions, I'm going to work backwards today. Filling you in on the best course of action once you've found that ever elusive "PERFECT" investment property. Perfect is subjective in real estate. Some buy strictly for cash flow, some for proximity to where they live, some have a property thrown in their lap due to an inheritance and some quite simply because they love the home! 

Through trial and error once I started acquiring rental properties I figured to start shopping around for the best company to manage my rentals. Initially you want to start with a name brand! Well with Property management unfortunately there aren't any national brands with a catchy jingle with a daytime commercial that's been running since childhood to recall from. So I figured I would do the next big thing and start calling around to find out which company was managing the MOST rental properties that I could find!

This happens to be a mistake. While initially they sounded extremely professional and catered to my every question, I soon realized that I had initially just contacted the sales call center who was trained at being overly friendly and answering all of my questions from a thoroughly practiced script. Once the onboarding process was complete and I had my first call into the company I found that I was just a number to them. Zero customer service. Very little knowledge of my property. Then from the tenants point of view there was no sense of urgency to get their issue handled. The big company turned out to be a company that was just a soulless machine to collect their fee each month. 

The next property I decided to change gears. I decided to use a local Real Estate Agent. Sure she didn't have the mega machine behind her but I felt she would want to try hard to keep me happy to earn future business in the shape of more real estate transactions when I bought future investment properties. She said she had managed a few properties in the past, she was licensed, did a good job during the transaction and wanted to keep me happy. This should be great right? Nope. Plumbing issue arose within the 1st month. She asks ME who to use for the plumber? When I said I didn't have anyone, she decided to use Angie's list, but put in MY contact number. Now I'M the one screening the repair men? Fine. A year goes by. Then out of sight and out of mind, a year and a half. What aren't the tenants only on a year lease? I call to check in with my "Property Manager". Her response was that she thought I would tell her if I wanted to lock them in for another year. Not only that, I had now missed 6 months of not having the market annalized to see if I should do a rent increase. It was in fact overdue and I lost out on $600 for the 6 months. 

I knew there had to be a better way... but in my area there just wasn't. There were three very large property management companies each with over 300 properties under management or several local agents that tout about doing property management but only have 2-10 properties that they manage. Where was the inbetween? Well if there is a void in the market, why not fill it. Shortly after getting my own Real Estate license I created Modern Edge Property Management to fix all of the problems that I had come across being an investor myself. 

The first order of business was to compile the best vendors list possible. That sweet spot on a graph where the mix of affordability and professionalism is aligned in the perfect ratio. Now get a first option and second option for everyone from the Electrician to the housekeeper. Next, ONLY take on properties that are within a 15 mile radius of myself, my staff and my vendors. I want my company to be deeply involved in each property and be able to check on them periodically throughout the year. They can't and won't get lost in the mix of other properties because I will only take on a manageable number of properties that my staff and I know each tenant and homeowner. I learned early on that a HAPPY tenant becomes a LONG TERM tenant. That is the goal. Lower turn over means lower vacancy and more money in my investors pocket. Speaking of more money, I make sure to analyze the rental market for each property personally over two months before the tenants lease is up to make sure the owner knows if a rental increase is called for. That service, along with serving the rental increase is FREE. 

In conclusion, since I only take on properties within 15 miles of Rancho Cucamonga California odds are you are going to have to find a different property manager than myself so you're going to have to shop around. When looking for the property manager in your area try to find an actual property management company, not JUST a Real Estate agent who you may have worked with. Ask to see some of their marketing material for properties that they have listed for rent. The photos should blow you away just as they should if they are trying to sell a property. Marketing your property to the best of their ability should be the most important aspect to them because that increases their chances of getting you the perfect tenant and maximizing your ROI at the same time. Hopefully you can talk to the owner of the company so you know they will be hands-on with the property, but they should typically have some sort of staff to help out so they aren't spread too thin. Try to ask them about THEIR investment portfolio so in the future if you want to add to your investments they can be a resource to you to help you analyze any potential properties. I pride myself on being a huge asset for my clients in this regard. I want to see them succeed in their real estate investments. Make sure they are local and their service providers are local and that they will simply let you know what the problem is when one arises and be able to promptly provide you with an estimate for approval. If you ARE local near Rancho Cucamonga reach out anytime! You will speak with me directly and I would love to be a resource for you and your investment property.