Last week, Latchel founders sat down with Peter McKenzie of Rincon Property Management to dive into both the challenges and successes involved in starting and growing a property management company. Peter grew Rincon Property Management to an excess of 100 units while working in another career as a firefighter.
Rincon Property Management is based in Ventura, California with a portfolio mostly made of single-family units, and a handful of multifamily or small commercial spaces.
In the session, Peter lays out his biggest mistakes, biggest successes, and advice for others growing their company.
You can watch the full session in the video below some of these main takeaways:
Property Management Biggest Mistake
-
Undercutting the market on pricing when first starting out- the company grew quickly, but with the wrong type of clients that were a huge headache to deal with.
Biggest Successes
Outsourcing operational tasks so he could spend more time on growth tasks.
-
Sourcing and hiring an executive assistant through a third party that matched Peter with an ideal assistant based on decision making principles and work style – this freed up 50 – 60% of his time that he would spend in operational and organizational tasks.
-
Bringing on Latchel to coordinate maintenance – it was hard for Peter to work on things like lead generation, marketing, and sales when he was bogged down in maintenance operations. This freed him from dealing with work orders, vendor sourcing, coordinating with tenants, and handling emergency maintenance at odd hours.
Best Advice
-
Join all of the industry groups – local NARPM chapters, online forums/communities, etc. and learn from others in the industry.
-
Don’t be afraid of outsourcing – many third party providers have mastered certain parts of the business, and if you can trust them with the process you can save yourself a lot of time.
Resources Mentioned:
Getting paired with the right executive assistant – GreatAssistant.com
The Goal: The Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman
About Latchel:
At Latchel we take over property maintenance coordination giving property managers the time to focus on more important things.
We do this through our 3 core products:
-
Our after hours emergency service, which ensures you are never woken up in the middle of the night for a maintenance call again;
-
Our 24/7 emergency service, night or day, all day, every day, we’ve got you covered;
-
Our premium service, which is an all encompassing maintenance coordination product.
Across our reviews, we boast a 4.7 out of 5 stars for tenant satisfaction. Property managers who have switched to Latchel, on average, have reduced their time spent on maintenance to only 15 mins per day for every 100 units.
We improve the maintenance experience for everyone because at Latchel, we truly believe that you cannot get better by staying the same.
