Allan and Peg Miller purchased their first investment property two years after graduating from college. Today, they own a small property management company that includes 12 different units in three different buildings in the city. Surprisingly, they credit the success of their small company to outsourcing!
"We bought our first rental property when we first got married," recalled Allan. "It was a pretty run-down, over/under residential duplex. We lived in the upper unit and renovated it ourselves. Then, we rented the remodeled upstairs unit, moved downstairs and began all over. It was fun and provided us with a way to make some money on the side." Peg smiled and said, "We sold that after about a year and bought a fourplex. We did the same thing, updating one unit at a time. Pretty soon we were able to buy a second building, and then a third. By that time, things were getting a little out of control."
"It had always been a fun hobby for us; we never really planned on running our own business. We'd both always found our jobs rewarding and weren't really interested in leaving our careers to become full-time landlords," said Allan. "By the time we had eleven tenants, we were really getting stressed. It seemed like the property management was taking over everything else. Whenever a tenant had a service issue, we were on call."
"I told Allan it was time to sell," said Peg. "But neither one of us really wanted to do that. On the other hand, one of us was going to have to run the business full-time if we were going to keep the buildings. It was a really hard time for us." Fortunately for the Millers, a coworker told Peg about the 24 hour service hotline that responded to service calls for her own apartment. Initially, Peg dismissed the idea thinking that it would be impossible for her to hire and manage staff to answer the calls. Then, she discovered how outsourcing could make a difference.
"I was amazed that you could just hand off your calls – all those headaches, to someone else. Best of all, you could hand them off to trained professionals who could do more than just take the calls. Working with the staff, we developed a plan to take all the tenants' service calls any time of day or night. Then, Allan and I negotiated service contracts with some mechanical contractors – one plumber and one electrician, to take the service calls tenants might have. The service not only takes the calls, but dispatches the contractors! I was amazed."
Peg and Allan both agree that outsourcing was a turning point for their business. "It was time to make a serious change. The phone calls for maintenance were enough to handle. Plus, back then we were performing most of the maintenance ourselves. It was just too much," said Allan. "Today, our tenants are happy, we are much happier, and the service our tenants are getting from our contractors is outstanding," said Peg. "This has just made a tremendous difference in our lives."
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