Moses Kagan

This is your periodic reminder to be nice to the brokers who cold-call you.

These guys & gals are out in the market trying to put deals together.

You want them to like you!

(Acknowledge this isn't always easy... this is a note to myself as much as everyone reading!)

Most important skills in prop mgmt are the soft ones, like:

How to handle getting yelled at by a tenant for something that wasn't your fault, w/o taking it personally or losing your empathy for the next tenant who calls.

(For this reason, we’ve had success hiring waiters & bartenders into PM.)

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Here's the link to register to join us for this free webinar:

airtable.com/appWp4T9yhTK...

Excited for our 2nd LA multifamily webinar, focused on ground up development.

We'll discuss new opportunities, $$ raising, permitting, construction costs & timelines, regulatory impacts, leasing & more.

To join us on 2/27 at 10am PST, pls apply via the link below.

As someone who has made a career fishing in an over-fished pond, having to develop increasingly sophisticated techniques to try to ensure we and our partners get enough to eat, take my advice:

Go find a pond with fewer fishermen.

Tapeworm: A product or service you build your business around, giving the owner of the tapeworm the power to raise her prices faster than inflation, eating your margin.

Where possible, you want *own* tapeworms, not invite them onto your P&L.

The two best questions I've used in interviews lately:

1. If, 20 years from now, you look back on this decision to join us as a great one, what will have been the main reason?

2. If joining us turns out to have been a mistake, what do you think the reason will be?

Growing up, my brother & I lived under threat of death if we failed to write down the name & telephone number of prospective tenants who called while our parents were out.

*That* is the appropriate level of urgency around vacancy in a property management organization.

It's very possible to break in without rich parents... but it requires a lot of hustle and charm

Whenever I write about starting as a real estate operator, someone notes it's unfair that raising $ is easier for richer, better connected people.

They're right; it's unfair.

But, if you want to change your family's trajectory, you're going to have to smash thru some barriers.

This is the 1st.

As a kid, I inwardly scoffed at posters in our wrestling room with messages like "pain is temporary, pride is forever" and at coaches who said things like "are you hurt or are you injured?"

Now I think my kids & their peers would benefit from a dose of that kind of "anti-fragility culture".

From a mental health perspective, the single best part of being an entrepreneur:

Am paid, to the penny, exactly what I am worth.

Get out of poverty hack:

Find an old-school property manager offering a free apt for a resident mngr, w no 1099 (these positions are out there, just not w our company!).

One person takes that job; other works full-time for outside the home.

W no rent & a frugal lifestyle, can save ~$1k+ / month

Small business is just saying, "We'll get to this once things settle down," and never getting to it, bc things never settle down.

Good reason to help young people starting their careers (besides, you know, common decency):

They don't stay young. They grow in professional stature, power, & influence.

And then *your* kids grow up & need help & the cycle starts again.

There is a 500 unit apartment building in LA where tenants haven't been able to receive mail since it opened in ~March, because the Postal Service hasn't got around to installing mailbox locks.

When naming a real estate firm:

Remember that, if all goes well, you’ll probably be spelling the name to brokers over the phone (“A, as in apple…”) for the next 30 years.

Choose wisely.

Came out of college with what I now understand was insufferable, fake confidence.

Then life knocked me around some.

And then I learned, slowly & painfully, how to create enough value to feed my family.

That’s when & how I replaced fake confidence with the real thing.

I don't even think this is enough... I think you need block and blocks of all resi buildings around each block with mixed use

Otherwise, there's just not enough foot traffic for the retailers to succeed w bad parking

The retail really only works if there is a *lot* of density to support it

When negotiating with prospective partners, remember:

Given a sufficiently long time-horizon, unsustainable arrangements will not be sustained.

Something newer real estate investors sometimes struggle with:

There really are mispricings.

That is to say: If you've done all the homework, and the numbers are still coming up good, what you're looking at likely *is* a good deal & you should buy it.

For a long & successful career in property management:

You need to take problems seriously, without taking them personally

One of the under-appreciated factors inhibiting heavy value-add strategies right now:

Opportunity cost to investors of having $$ tied up in the deal without getting any yield (while the rehab is going on), is much, much higher than it was in the late, lamented Low Rate Era

The most trustworthy foundation guy I know brags about having sold a customer a $100k retaining wall that cost him like $6k to build.

Very annoying that many of the most interesting properties for re-positioning (single story, high ceiling, plenty of excess land, large openings, etc.) are currently auto-related uses that come with material environmental risk.

Word

Love this idea

Something I wish every legislator, regulator & housing court in the country would internalize:

The harder you make evicting a tenant who dishonors his lease, the harder it is for owners to justify renting to marginal applicants.

Reminder: Today is the last day for Reconvene Repeaters to take advantage of discounted pricing.

Thereafter, we'll open spots to the waitlist.

If you think you might want to join our group of real estate operators and passive investors in SoCal in September, apply here:

reconvene.com/waitlist