Building a Team: A must for rental property owners - Part 1
One thing I learned the hard way (a few times) that I am just now getting the hang of is 
the importance of building a solid team when owning investment rental properties.
Let me ask you a question or two first…
- Do you own a rental property?
- Do you do all of the work, maintenance, book keeping, property management, etc?
- Is your property within 15 minutes of your house?
You’re doing way too much work and stressing yourself out… most likely.
First, let me tell you my story and where I have come to.
As you probably know, I purchased my first rental property (4 plex) when I was 21 years old. Of course, at a young age I thought, “I can do everything myself and don’t need any help.”
For about a year or two it worked out okay. I…
- Collected rent checks (I still do this today)
- Paid the bills (I still do this today)
- Mowed the lawns
- Filled the vacancies
- Did my taxes
- Made repairs
- Painted
- and on and on and on….
There is a heck of a lot more things that I did also… but I don’t want to bore you any more than I already have 
You see, what I have learned in life, business… and especially real estate is that you can’t go it all alone. That is one of the most difficult things that I have had to learn because I have always been used to doing everything… and if I didn’t know how to do it I would learn it.
To illustrate the craziness that I realized I was putting myself through… here’s a little graphic that I created that may bring it a bit closer to home…
If you can’t already tell what point I’m trying to make…
See that little blue box in the middle that says “You”? Well… that’s you. And all of those colored boxes around you are tasks and jobs that you have given yourself when being a landlord…
…. and the funny thing is that I could have gone for another 30 minutes putting boxes in there… but I think the picture above illustrates an excellent point.
HOW IN THE WORLD do you think that you will get everything done as well as it can get done… and still grow your business toward your goals?
>> YOU CAN’T <<
Believe me, I tried to be the little blue box in the middle for a couple years before I smartened up and realized how stupid it was… and how little progress I was making toward my goals in real estate investing.
So, what do you need to do as a real estate investor who owns rental property?
First off, you need to banish the word LANDLORD from your vocabulary and begin thinking of yourself as an “income property investor”.
Next, you need to build a team around you that can take the everyday tasks off of your shoulders so you can focus on the reason you invest in rental properties in the first place.
For me, I invest in rental properties because I like the passive income and wealth accumulation that they provide. After a while of trying to do everything myself… I quickly realized that this income was no longer “passive”… it was actually very active because I was constantly thinking about the properties and spending time doing little tasks to take care of things.
It had simply turned into a JOB that frankly didn’t pay all that well.
So, what’s next?
Well, the next step for all of you “landlords” out there is to get away from the landlord trap and begin being an income property investor. The first step toward becoming an income property investor is to systematize things so you can begin to spend more time on the money making activities… rather than the money and time draining activities.
Now, if you are the little blue box in the diagram above, hopefully you realize how silly you are and how much money you are leaving on the table.
In Part 2 of this lesson, I’ll go over specifically how to build a rock solid team around you (I’m not talking hiring employees) to take care of the tasks that are creating another JOB for yourself… so those people can take care of the small stuff… while you concentrate on increasing your income and building more wealth with real estate.
So, bookmark our home page and check back frequently… because I’m going to post part 2 and part 3 of this “Building Your Income Property Team” series.
Hey… if you have any stories on your experiences as a landlord… post them in the comments area below. I’d love to hear them… as would the rest of the readers.
Cheers
Hey, my name is Trevor and I'm the founder of The REI Brain and a real estate investor since the age of 21. Right now, my focus in real estate investing is multi-family income properties and I have plans on moving more into the commercial real estate investment world in 2008 and beyond. 
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