I actually started my professional career as an insurance agent, helping insure investment properties open my eyes to all of the liabilities and potential lawsuits landlords face when owning a property, as exciting as the insurance industry is I had always been a salesman. My first sale my parents remember is when I rented out a buggie board at the age of 5 to another kid on the beach.. I guess I learned at a young a get that if you have an asset and it is in demand you can rent it.
From insurance I helped build my family’s mortgage division. This was in the heyday of subprime loans where anyone and everyone could get a mortgage and buy a home, this lead to many foreclosures,short sales and people who should have never been a landlord.
As the mortgage industry sizzled out, I realized that the Boston apartment rental market was a constant, people were paying one month’s rent to agents to help them find a unit that they would stay in for perhaps one year and then move again and again.
The business seemed to easy, open doors, do some paperwork, collect one month’s rent. To a certain degree it can be easy, however you need to ask the right questions, qualify and most importantly have the supply to match the demand. With over 50% of the apartments in Boston potentially turning over each year, it is a great recurring business.
As a result of helping many landlords rent their properties, many landlords asked me to help manage their properties, from the basics of collecting rents and finding tenants it snowballed into helping them do repairs which lead me to develop my construction division.
Construction is a different world from the white collar world of insurance and real estate, you need to be able to negotiate, think ahead and understand that watching costs is one of the most important parts to being a landlord. I have learned from construction division that it is essential to understand how to keep a property updated, safe and your tenants happy.Within the construction division we branched into landscaping,cleaning and snow removal, all aspects necessary to maintain a property.
With all of these real estate related positions I have held, I put together this EBOOK to share my knowledge and stories in hopes of helping more people become profitable,happy, and well balanced (if you don’t understand this you have just begun) landlord.
