CrestCore Realty’s Douglas Skipworth Pre-Conference Interview

Often times, when we speak with property management clients on their ideal client, they are investors who own multiple rental properties. It’s an attractive customer type to keep in your portfolio as investors usually:

• Are more hands-off
• Have more money to spend
• And detach themselves emotionally from their property.

For today’s interview, we have the pleasure in bringing in Douglas Skipworth, CPA, CFA, and Broker/Owner of CrestCore Realty in Memphis. Douglas owns hundreds of rentals and CrestCore manages thousands more. He’ll be speaking at the Property Management Grow Summit in January of 2017, where he’ll talk extensively on how to attract more real estate investor clients to your property management business.

But right now, Douglas will share with us three key strategies, so property managers can start thinking about what they need to do to attract investors.

First Strategy: Education

Providing education is the first step in attracting investor clients. When you provide education, investors will see you as the go-to for any rental property news and will trust your word over the advice of others.

This includes general content creation through:

• Social media
• Blog posts
• Articles
• Videos
• Or live demonstrations.

CrestCore takes advantage of every opportunity to be a thought leader and put information out there by hosting basic investor classes. The classes are free and investors can learn some general high-level introductory topics on investing, and it works well for the novice or the expert.

CrestCore embraced the idea of a “mastermind group” that enables them to share ideas and push education and it has helped them in attracting real estate investor clients.

Second Strategy: Consultation

According to Douglas, you can impress from afar, but you influence from up close and that is what we get with our second strategy, consultation. This is where you roll up your sleeves and work with individual investors on their needs.

Your strategy here will depend on the investor’s specific properties, what they’re looking for, and whether they are a new buyer or they already own one or more properties. Most of the time, investors need reassurance and guidance in addition to property management. Be prepared to work with a real estate investor and counsel them how to finance a rental properly for maximum return – so it does help if you have a bit of a financial background.

Another thing you can provide as a property manager is leveraging your contacts, and introducing your investors to reputable lawyers, vendors, and bank contacts. CrestCore appeals property taxes and does anything they can to make properties cash flow for the investor on an individual basis.

Third Strategy: Validation

The last strategy is to provide validation. If you are a property manager and you are looking to genuinely improve yourself in your trade, you need to invest in property yourself. This will allow you to be able to walk in the investor’s shoes. You need to have the empathy, camaraderie, and the knowledge of what investors are going through. You can talk about your experiences dealing with bad tenants in your own properties, or what you’ve had to do as a landlord when a water heater went out or a tree fell on your roof.

The validation of being investors yourselves attracts more and more investors to your management company. They know you’re an expert. Most of the property managers CrestCore comes across are not investors. So this is something that will set you apart.

As Douglas says, “We are better property managers because we’re investors, and we are better investors because we’re property managers.”

To attract more investor clients to your property management business, you need education, consultation, and validation. This is just a preview of what Douglas will be sharing with us at the Property Management Grow Summit, where he will give you the complete roadmap on being the company of choice for investor leads in your community.