First Rental Property

Hi Everyone,

I hope that you are all doing well.

It is the Labour Day long weekend here in Ontario, Canada.

This of course is the last weekend, before kids go back to school, and many people return to work from their summer vacation.

With this extra day off, I had some time to stop by and visit with my property manager, Dan of ADP Property Management.  (I work with Donna also at ADP Property Management and she is great.  However, in this post, for simplicity, I will be referring only to Dan.)

Dan and I were going over some details of the renovations that were completed on my recent rental property purchase in Hamilton, Ontario.

This recent property purchase was my fifth rental property purchase. As well, it was the fourth property purchase within less than two years. The new acquisition did however come with some anxiety.

The anxiety I experienced was around the topic of property management. I knew that with this purchase, I was reaching the point in which more time would be required from myself in order to properly manage these properties.

You see, up until today, I have always self managed all of my rental properties. I have referred to Dan as my property manager before in previous blog posts. He was working as my property manager to locate tenants for the properties and to look after repairs that I had brought to his attention.

So in essence, he was not completely the property manager. I was self managing the properties, and I would contact him for his expertise on an ad hoc basis.

Today however this changed, as I finally accepted the fact that I need to leverage more on my property manager and the expertise that he provides.

As such, we are going to make him the full time property manager of the newest rental property purchase in Hamilton.

So how did I finally come to this decision and why is it such a big deal?

I decided to make the decision of using a full time property manager, simply because I have been listening to the advice of smarter, more successful real estate investors.  Real Estate investors that hold a number of properties, usually well over 3 (some of them hold properties in the double digits and even triple digits), had been giving me advice to use a property manager on a full time basis, after I exceeded 3 properties.

When I had 3 properties, things were manageable.  I could deal with anything that came up, no problem.

Even now, if I wanted to, I could deal with managing 5 properties.  However, my key realization was that just because I can do something, doesn’t mean that I should.

Let me repeat myself here…

“My key realization was that just because I can do something, doesn’t mean that I should.”

As you continue to grow as a real estate investor, you need to leverage on the strengths of the people on your real estate team.

• As an individual, and as an investor, when you learn to focus on the things that you are really good at, things become a lot easier.

My decision to have Dan manage this property on a full time basis simply came down to the question of….’What do I want to be doing with my time?”

I could be focusing my time on actively managing a portfolio of rental properties, or I could be focusing my time on growing my real estate portfolio by attracting and working with joint venture partners.  Currently my focus is on the later, so I need to free up my time so that I can focus on that priority — the priority of growing my real estate portfolio by working with joint venture partners.

As a new investor looking to buy your first rental property, you need to be aware that you cannot do everything yourself.  There comes a time in which you have to leverage upon people on your real estate team who have a different skill set from you.

I often see that real estate investors sometimes try to hold onto everything and do everything themselves.  This often happens to investors that hold between 3 and 8 properties.  Investors who hold these many properties are still at a stage in which, perhaps they are still able to balance things, and continue self managing their units…

There does come a time though in which you have to learn to let go.

The cool thing is that many of the super successful real estate investors completely embrace this concept.

This being the concept of learning to let go, and leveraging on the strengths of the people on your real estate team.

Only focus on what you are great at!

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Best Regards,

Neil Uttamsingh.