Somebody wants to pay me $2,500 a month to "handle investor relations"

Question

A sponsor with two apartment deals and roughly 60 LPs floated about $2,500 a month for me to handle investor relations. When I asked what that means in hours he said quarterly updates, the portal, and answering emails. Two things are confusing me. One post I read said anybody who communicates with investors about a deal needs a Series 7 through a broker-dealer. Another said investor relations is just capital raising with a nicer name and the fee should be a slice of the raise. Those can't both describe the same job. What does the work actually consist of month to month, and does this normally get quoted flat, hourly, or per investor?

dpatel_re · Answer

The line I'd care about is whether your pay moves with dollars raised. Writing a quarterly update for people who are already in and running the portal is administrative work. Fielding calls from prospects about a live offering and getting paid on what shows up is a different activity, and where the securities rules actually bite on your specific arrangement is a question for a securities attorney rather than a forum. On price: $2,500 across 60 LPs is about $42 per investor per month, which is rich for pure reporting and cheap if you're also doing onboarding and chasing signatures on subscription docs.

monica_tran3 · Answer

60 LPs is quiet ten months of the year. Then K-1s go out and you'll answer 40 emails in two weeks, half of them some version of "my accountant says this box is wrong." Price K-1 season separately or cap it at a stated number of hours, otherwise you'll do it for free every year!

dmitri_v6 · Answer

Before you sign, read the operating agreement and the PPM for who is authorized to communicate with members and what the notice provisions require. Distribution notices reference the waterfall, so if you're the one writing them you need the actual tiers in front of you rather than the summary in the deck. And ask whether you'll be given the investor schedule with commitment amounts and unreturned capital per investor, because you can't reconcile a distribution notice without it.

tonyv88 · Answer

Your update is only as fast as the property manager's month end close. If their T-12 lands on the 20th you can't promise LPs a letter on the 10th.

diane_kowalski · Answer

What I read for in an update is occupancy and the debt maturity date. Photos of the new dog park tell me nothing about a rate cap that expires in 14 months, and I've stopped opening the ones that lead with photos.

ryanmck27 · Answer

My licensing course was explicit that it covers nothing on the securities side, and the instructor said syndications don't appear on the exam at all. So whatever license you'd get for showing houses does nothing for this job in either direction.

angela_burke · Answer

I'd quote it per investor per month with a floor. One person on my team can carry maybe 150 investor relationships when the update template is fixed and the data arrives clean, and closer to 80 when every letter gets written from scratch. At 60 LPs you're a fraction of a seat, so a flat $2,500 is really you selling availability. Decide now what response time you're promising, because same day and two business days are different products at different prices.

karen_whitfield · Answer

The sponsors I stay with are the ones who deliver bad news in the same tone as good news. Whatever you build for him, don't smooth that out.

Somebody wants to pay me $2,500 a month to "handle investor relations"

8 replies