First hire for a small management shop, leasing or maintenance?
I've got signed agreements on three small apartment buildings, 22, 34 and 41 units, all in the same submarket about twelve minutes apart. Fees come to roughly $9,100 a month at 6% of collections. That supports one hire and not two, and I've been going back and forth for a month.
The leasing case: 97 units means somewhere around 45 to 55 move-ins a year if turnover runs where it has been. Right now I'm showing units myself in the evenings and I'm slow, my average days vacant is 31 across the three, and every extra day is about $43 of the owner's money. A dedicated leasing person who also handles renewals could plausibly take that to the high teens, and the renewal calls alone are worth having someone own.
The maintenance case: I'm subbing everything and paying $95 to $135 an hour for work a $28-an-hour tech does. Last quarter I ran $19,400 of vendor invoices across the three buildings and I'd guess 60% of it was work order stuff a tech handles from a van. A tech also means turns stop waiting on a plumber's schedule, which is where most of my 31 days actually goes.
So they argue against each other. The leasing hire fixes the front of the funnel, the tech hire fixes the reason the funnel is slow. And a tech is billable to owners in a way a leasing salary usually isn't, which matters when my whole margin is thin.
What did you hire first, and did you regret it?
97 units across three buildings, $9,100 a month in fees, one hire. Which?
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