What can be done collectively to improve our businesses, save costs or generate additional revenue?
I will post my in-depth thoughts on these topics over the next week or so as time permits me to clean my notes into coherent sentences. If any of the topics interest you comment here or email me at: Tim@ApartmentsMilwaukee.com
- Reduce Maintenance Costs
- Become better at sharing our collective knowledge
- Group purchase of a distressed block or two
- IT meets real estate
Reduce Maintenance Costs
Improve supply sourcing: ‘How can we use our collective shopping experiences and buying power to improve our bottom-line on a daily basis in 2013?’ More thoughts on better material sourcing.
More effective Maintenance Labor/Contractors/Services The ability to have skilled, cost effective maintenance available on demand is typically a missing element for most small to medium sized owners. Read more on effective maintenance labor solutions that could change our industry.
Become better at sharing our collective knowledge
The ApartmentAssoc@YahooGroups.com is good beginning. But the idea could be greatly expanded upon. Perhaps a Wikipedia style “Best Practices” Guide* for Milwaukee rental owners. It would include everything that a property manager may run into.
Similarly a Mastermind Group could reap benefits if the right people were involved. Here is an overview of the Mastermind concept.
Also look at what groups like StartUpMKE are doing in the tech field. Read my thoughts on increasing the sharing of knowledge.
Group purchase of a distressed block or two
Choose a very small geo area of Milwaukee. Think something on the terms of both sides of a block or two maybe three at the max. It should be depressed, as in make Detroit look like a nice place to live, depressed.
Apologizes to Detroit, but many people know of Detroit’s challenges and fewer of the challenges of Milwaukee.
Yes, unfortunately, there are many areas like this in Milwaukee and the numbers are increasing as foreclosures work their way through the system.
The plan would be to assemble a group of investors and turn the area for fun and profit. My expanded thoughts on group purchasing of a distressed block.
Tech meets real estate
There certainly huge opportunities for software/web solutions to things that cause frustrations for owners and perhaps tenants.
Some ideas:
- Setting rents to market. How much are you losing because your rents are too low or how much have you lost due to your rents being too high and your vacancies languish? Me, too. ;-(
- Property acquisition tools Look at what sites like http://www.spotproperty.com/ are doing elsewhere, but not here.
- Vacancy filling Craig’s List used to work, but now there is too much spam and fraud. What about a system where the tenants need to prequalify before actually applying. While pre qualifying by an individual owner may be problematic from a fair housing standpoint, a proper third party system could work.
- Custom Management tools My company’s secret sauce is our highly customized management software. Nearly every task is one or two clicks and the computer makes many mundane management decisions on its own.
- Put your solution here
You can read my thoughts on tech and real estate here
Conclusion
What? This is not enough ideas for one year? Then post yours on the comments!
Shy, then email directly at: Tim@ApartmentsMilwaukee.com either for my review only or to repost anonymously as you direct.
[…] January 1st I posted a list of ideas that I had that some of us could consider to collaboratively work on. I intend to pursue one or two of the ideas presented and may entertain partnering with the right […]