Current Challenges Facing Rental Property Owners

As a real estate investor myself, I understand your perspective. I’ve shared with you some of the common challenges and pitfalls most owners and investors who are looking into real estate as an addition to their portfolio – by accident or on purpose – face. 

One of the biggest challenges is a good thing, but it means you have to adopt strategic thinking to be successful. When I advise people to look for opportunities, I do so knowing that there are lots of shiny objects out there to consider. There is a wealth of opportunity in real estate investing. 

Where are you going to put your focus?

A lot of the common challenges rental property owners face can be overcome with a smart strategy and putting that plan into action. 

As you’re thinking about your investment strategy, I invite you to keep these areas in mind:

• Watch your numbers. Be realistic about what’s possible, and what things cost. Stick to the budget you’ve made. 
• Don’t forget your time horizon. With time, all things are possible. If you stay the course, you could have a fantastic investment in 20 or 30 years.  
• Do small things right every month. Execution is critical. Start every month as if it’s day one, and don’t cut corners. 
• Focus on what you do best. For most of our clients, real estate investment is another notch in their portfolio – it’s a way to expand. Don’t jeopardize your career and future success in what you’ve built by distracting yourself with real estate investments. Let your property manager and other professionals do what they do best. If you’re not a builder, don’t be one. Hire one instead.

We want to help you develop your real estate investment strategy because landlord profitability is a major priority for us. We win when you win. Whether your goal is long-term wealth for your family, a little extra mailbox money to help you fund your retirement, or anything else, we can use our expertise in all areas of the market to help you devise a plan that will work and pay off. 

Our team at ROOST helps owners acquire properties intelligently, and that’s a huge advantage in this bustling, highly competitive, ever-changing industry. 

If you’re a professional landlord, we can help connect you with people who will help you maximize the equity you have and invest confidently, whether that’s connections with sellers, buyers, lenders, brokers, managers, or anyone else you need. If you’re an accidental landlord who inherited a second home and never wants to buy another one, we can help you maximize the profits you receive and make sure your property is cared for so it will last for generations. 

We want to help people at every stage, too. If you want to make this a business but aren’t sure where to start, we can get you there. If you’re trying to expand your empire, we’ll connect you to new opportunities that maybe you hadn’t considered, or help you branch into markets we know very well. 

Ultimately, I believe now is the best time to invest in real estate. Whatever your goals are, there’s a way to be successful here as long as you have a plan and don’t overextend yourself beyond your means. I want our owners to have an annuity they can count on in good times and bad ones. I’ve personally gone through the highs and lows of this industry, and I’ve learned the tough lessons so, hopefully, you don’t have to – and it’s a benefit for you because we can help you learn your why. 

Why are you here? Why do you want to be in this business? From there, it’s just a matter of how we can help.

Why We Created Invest With ROOST

For the longest time, ROOST marketed ourselves as property managers – and we still do that. However, our relationship with clients who are owner-investors continued to grow and turn into successful partnerships. We’ve always been experts at helping people identify and evaluate potential rental properties as they try to expand and diversify their portfolios in an attempt to continue building empires. Naturally, a lot of our clients came to us because we sold them investment properties. 

A lot of our investment property sales come from people who own properties we manage. If you’ve got a good management situation, you’re making consistent mailbox money, you might feel good about risking your capital by going out and buying another property. 

• Invest with ROOST encompasses all we do for our residential real estate investors. 

However, the way I like to think about the business is that we’re all in the shelter business. When I started ROOST in 2014, I wanted to create a business that was capable of serving 100% of the people in a given market who needed a roof over their heads. I didn’t want to only serve the 50-60% of people who own the roofs. 

When you shift into that mindset, it changes how you view the whole situation. It gives you a fantastic vantage point of the bigger picture, which is that we shelter people. Being in the shelter business means that we work with tenants just like we work with investors and owners. We’re trying to find a way to help our clients put their hard-earned money to work in a way that will benefit them in the long run, but we also want to make sure our tenants are happy and cared for, and that they have safe, clean properties to live in. That’s a huge part of our company’s value system. 

Now, of course, it is a business. Perhaps selfishly, one cool thing for us is making money by budgeting for every month in the property management business. Since we work on every element of residential real estate – from helping people buy and sell to managing those properties to aiding our investors in acquiring new properties – our bases are covered. I like to view that as the money that helps pay our overhead so we can take care of our hardworking professionals and continue to have good people in place to serve our clients. 

The fact that we can be part of the shelter business on such a substantial level is why ROOST is so important to me – and why serving people is at the core of everything we do. 

Final Thoughts

Real estate investments – while absolutely a great decision – aren’t always an easy one. It’s true that you can choose your level of involvement and, to some extent, you have a greater amount of control over this type of investment than other types. However, there’s always a downside; you have to be aware of the issues that arise with property ownership and have a plan in place for mitigating them before they go overboard. 

Budgets can be maxed out, repairs can be needlessly costly, you can cut corners on tenant screenings and end up with a less-than-desirable renter, and you may even struggle to manage the day-to-day issues that arise with tenant/landlord relationships. Having a good property manager or property management team can be one advantage to help you take some of these duties off your plate, especially if you need to free up some time and be more minimally involved. 

No matter how you came into this business, you need to be realistic about the difficulties you may face and develop problem-solving skills – by yourself or with a property manager – to make your life a little easier. When you have peace of mind and a profitable investment, that’s when your decision starts to pay off.