Multi-family dwellings provide a sounder basis for real estate investors

 The popular adage goes that when the going gets tough the tough get going but I much prefer a variation of it that goes when the going gets tough the tough get smart. Success in real estate investment as a career depends on your ability to work smarter rather than just harder and for that you need to have a clear focus on what you are doing and why.

 

Having spent the best part of a decade building a personal fortune that’s given me over a million dollars in the bank and more than 4,000 apartments spread across six states I have a predilection for clear focus and smart planning which I will explain now.

 

When you deal in real estate you essentially invest your time and effort (and I am not even going to talk about the money involved in this here) and you have a right to expect in return to make money from that. Each deal is there to provide you either with a profit from the sale (whether you renovate and upsell or simply flip a property for a quick profit is irrelevant here) or a parallel income stream which will become the basis of a growing income from your real estate investment activities.

 

Because the ‘investment’ you put in each real estate deal is roughly equal (particularly difficult and time-consuming projects either have a higher pay-off as compensation or are simply the result of error of judgement on your part) the smart element of planning goes into picking projects which will give you a maximum return for your investment.

 

In plain speak this means that if you focus on single-family dwellings you need to concentrate on the high-end of the market where the money is big or else you need to focus on multi-family dwellings as a way of setting up parallel income streams that will give you money and keep on giving you money month after month with minimum risks (because the risks usually associated with tenancy are spread amongst a large number of tenants as opposed to just one).

 

Multi-family dwellings also allow you to achieve savings in other ways. They create an economy of scale which works in your favour when it comes to finding a supply firm for materials necessary for repairs and upgrades. They create an economy of scale which allows you to negotiate good deals when it comes to finding a management company which will deal with your tenants for you so you never have to even see or talk to a single tenant in your life.

 

Multi-family dwellings allow you to create a sounder basis for your investments and because the effort involved in closing a deal is approximately the same as that involved in a single-family dwelling, they are a much better return for your time.

 

 

 

 

David Lindahl, also known as the “Apartment King” has been successfully investing in single-family homes and apartments for the last eight years. He is the author of four popular, money making home study courses “Apartment House Riches”, “How To Estimate And Renovate House For Huge Profits” “Managing For Maximum Profits” and “The Real Estate Investors Marketing Tool Kit”. He can be reached at dave@real-estate-fortune.com and www.rementor.com.

How to make a million dollars investing in real estate

As a real estate investor with more than 4,000 properties to my name and a million dollars in the bank you could argue that I am a little more qualified than most to give advice on how to make it big in real estate.

When I was starting out in my career there were no courses, no help and no advice I could really tap into and, as a result, I ended up making almost every mistake in the book and learnt from each one and this is one of the reasons I decided to run courses and give workshops to real estate investors ready to take their career to a new level.

I know that in order to make a million dollars in real estate you have to be in for the long haul rather than a fast stake in and out kind of deal and this is exactly where the professionals from the amateurs really stand out.

In order to make that million dollars in real estate you need to get into it with a vision and a coherent strategy. I know that this is news to you because when I first got in I too was in there chasing almost every deal I could and the result was that I used to get fragmented ways of working and was finding it difficult to make much headway in anything.

I learnt the hard way by falling down and picking myself up that you need to have that focussed strategy so that when an unexpected deal does come along you are very clear in your head why you are taking it and where it is going to get you.

Most of those who come to my real estate investment workshops know that I favour multi-family dwellings as a means of creating robust, parallel income streams, minimising risks and achieving economies of scale which then make it easier for me to automate some of the processes such as the day-to-day running of more than 4,000 apartments which would otherwise be crippling.

This does not mean I do not deal in single-family properties however. Quite the contrary, but I do deal with them in a way that fits within my real estate investment strategy, takes my plans further and helps me to further my goals of building a robust real estate portfolio and continuing to be financially independent.

Making it big in real estate is not easy but it is achievable, as my case proves, and the only way to achieve your dreams and become successful is to make sure that, just as in life, you have clearly stated goals, a philosophy you can stick to and a strategy that fits in with the way you work and allows you to make the right decisions.

David Lindahl, also known as the “Apartment King” has been successfully investing in single-family homes and apartments for the last eight years. He is the author of four popular, money making home study courses “Apartment House Riches”, “How To Estimate And Renovate House For Huge Profits” “Managing For Maximum Profits” and “The Real Estate Investors Marketing Tool Kit”. He can be reached at dave@real-estate-fortune.com and www.rementor.com.

Special Interest Considerations

Take the special interests of your customers into consideration.  You can do this as you set up the property.  Or, you can make plans to include your residents’ interests after your property has been in business for years.

Getting the younger crowd into apartments or condos can be a real challenge.  They have very distinct ideas of what they want.  Besides this, most of them are on a somewhat limited budget.

You can cater to this crowd by furnishing your model from a discount warehouse.  This could be Ikea or any other place where they can get cheap furniture and linens.  Somewhere that is popular with them is ideal, but you would have to find out what that is.

The idea is to get them to see that the apartment does not have to be done up with the finest furniture and lamps.  It can be a home that is more suited to them, and to their budget.  That is appealing to them on many levels.

The younger people also like to communicate in different ways than those of us who are older.  Their special interests in this area tend to center around their phones.  Many of them have had cell phones since they were in Jr. High.

It is so much a part of them that you can hardly separate them from their cell phones for a moment.  What they like to do is send pictures and text messages.  If your staff can find ways to communicate with them in these ways, they will excite the young people about the property and the staff.

On the other hand, you cannot overlook the limitations of the older crowd.  They may not be able to adjust to text messaging, either physically or emotionally.  Their special interests lie in more nostalgic areas.  They mostly like using their computers, but they may need a larger font.

Yet, this group of people, the group around fifty or so, do like to take care of themselves.  They like to go jogging and work out.  Your clubhouse can help out with this immensely.  You can have all the weight machines, exercise bikes and work out machines you want.  You might even go so far as to hire a personal trainer.

If they need a place to jog, you can set up jogging trails with mile markers.  You might even put in benches at different places along the trails for people who are just starting to get into shape.

Environmental issues are special interests with many people these days.  Both the young and the old are concerned about the planet.  Make any concession you can make to the ecology of the property and its grounds you can.  This will create good will among those who care about the earth.

Special interest considerations often have to do with age.  One generation has its toys and another generation is happy with something else.  Some issues are cross-generational.  No matter what the special interest is, if you find a way to feed it, you will make friends for life.

If you are serious about making money through the inevitable “thick and thin” of real estate investing then you need to start to think about multiple income streams and a wider distribution of the potential risk factors which go with every investment.

 

The secrets of successful real estate investing were not taught to me by a guru and did not come to me in a moment of enlightenment. Instead I gleamed each one through trial and error and hard-earned experience gained through actually making mistakes and learning from them.

 

That’s right! In the path I took I had some luck along the way but most of the time I made mistakes and learnt from them and applied what I learnt to the way I was investing. In order to do that I left nothing to chance. I did an incredible amount of research and learning about how properties are rehabilitated, how repairs are costed, how property financing works and how deals are closed. Anything and everything that had to do with buying houses, selling houses, buying and renting apartments and developing an apartment portfolio.

 

The reason I put in so much hard work is because, all the while, I knew I was working towards very specific targets and very specific ideas and I was learning where the shortcuts were and what I should be looking out for each time I closed a deal.

 

What I realised, quite early on, is that if you handle them properly, are careful in what you invest in and know how to set up a remote management network so that you do not have to deal with a single tenant, ever, multi-family properties can fast-track you on your road to financial success.

 

The reason for this lies in what I like to call the income development curve. With any single-family dwelling that curve depends upon a number of variables that rely on the single family living there. The moment you consider multiple-family dwellings you begin to spread the risk of stagnating. I will give you an example: suppose you are letting out a single-family dwelling and the family moves or are suddenly unable to pay the rent? A couple of months’ inaction plus the cost of finding a new tenant are enough to wipe out your profit margin. Suppose, in a slightly different scenario, that you need to carry out repairs to the property and the tenant cannot afford to contribute their maintenance fee for that property? You are forced to either evict the tenant and risk losing more money or pay for the repairs yourself and try to work out an agreement to get your money back. All of this is a nightmare initiated by what I call a linear chain of action where you and the tenant are engaged in what might at times look like a tag of war between you and the tenant.

 

What experience has taught me is that when you are dealing with multi-family dwellings you no longer have to engage in this linear action. You have multiple interests, which represent the group of tenants, pooling their resources together to meet repairs, and maintenance. Add to this fact that when a tenant leaves the others are still paying their rent while you find a new one and you realise that in terms of making money multi-family dwellings maximise the opportunities and minimise the risks.

 

Of course the ‘formula’ as such is more complicated than that and I cover a lot of this in the real estate success workshops I offer. The million dollar question, always, is are you really ready to learn how to invest properly and are you determined enough not to give up at the first obstacle?

 

 

 

 

David Lindahl, also known as the “Apartment King” has been successfully investing in single-family homes and apartments for the last eight years. He is the author of four popular, money making home study courses “Apartment House Riches”, “How To Estimate And Renovate House For Huge Profits” “Managing For Maximum Profits” and “The Real Estate Investors Marketing Tool Kit”. He can be reached at dave@real-estate-fortune.com and www.rementor.com.

3 Things to Market for in Multifamily Investing

The most important part of commercial property investing is
finding the deals.  The person who controls the deals holds
the “keys to the kingdom”.  Every business has two core
elements:  marketing and innovation.  With commercial
apartments, you are always marketing for three things:
deals, money and tenants.

Finding deals is the biggest part of real estate.  It is
simple but it is not necessarily easy.  It does require
work and if you do it right, it actually becomes boring to
use the system.  You will have to sift through many chunks
of coal to find your diamond in the rough.  In many ways,
it is a numbers game but you do not want to waste too much
of your time evaluating the chunks of coal.

You need to nail down what specifically you are looking
for.  The number one thing you are looking for is a
motivated seller.  You are looking for an owner who is
ready to move his property on very advantageous terms.  You
are looking for deals that have value play.

Value play is increasing NOI, increasing occupancy, and
creating equity.  The property you are looking at is under
market and you can create quick value with it.  You will
find out that multifamily properties are owned by entities
such as LLC’s or limited partnerships.

Even if there are a number of people involved in the
partnership, there is probably one person that is doing the
most to tell the other partners to get out of the
partnership and sell.  That is the person that you want to
get to.  The vital thing is not to be consumed with why
somebody would sell at a discount.

Some reasons why somebody might sell at a discount are
landlord burnout, a need for cash or poor property
management by a third party.  Again, the “why” does not
matter; it has no bearing on the situation.  Your job is to
find people who are eager to sell at a discount.

The second thing you market for when pursuing multifamily
deals is tenants.  Marketing for tenants is what your
property manager will take care of for you.  But you have
to be aware that if you do not keep those places full, you
are not creating value.  If your property manager is doing
his or her job effectively, then your occupancy rate should
reflect that.

The third thing you market for is, of course, money.  There
can be cash in the deal but it is an investor’s cash and
not yours.   Or there may be no cash in the deal when a
seller does all of the financing.

Your ability to market for deals, tenants and cash, will
greatly affect the types of deals you find and affect your
ability to move properties.  Do not neglect the importance
of marketing in your multifamily investing business.

About the Author:

Think you need big cash and experience to do apartments?
Well, Lance Edwards is living proof that you can start with
multifamily investing – just like he did and using none of
his own money. Utilizing the multifamily apartment
strategies he now teaches and writes about, Lance retired
from his job in July, 2005. For more information on how you
can achieve financial freedom using other people’s money,
visit http://www.ApartmentWealthMachine.com

Selling Your Customer on an Apartment or Condo

 

The leasing agent’s main jog is selling the customer on an apartment or condo.  It takes a certain flair, and not everyone has the ability.  Nonetheless, even tried and true salespersons can benefit from new ideas. 

 

Before even meeting the customer, marketing is a big factor.  This is not just the realm of the leasing agent, either.  Executives may also get into the act.  Or, the job may be assigned to a particular office worker who has shown promise. 

 

The first thing to do is be aware of new marketing ideas at all times.  There are many ways to do this.  There are magazines that focus on this area that you can subscribe to.  Even more important, there are internet articles about all sorts of articles.  You just need to find the directory of them to peruse them.  If you find a particularly helpful one, print or otherwise save it. 

 

You might be surprised to discover it, but people still like to get catalogs.  If you send out advertising in catalogs, you will get a surprising response.  All you need to do is provide your website information.  Soon you will be getting traffic to your site that originates from those catalogs. 

 

Sometimes you can make that sale if only you can help the customer imagine what their things will look like in the abode.  It starts out looking like a somewhat sterile environment.  Even if you have the model well made up, it is not their home without their things. 

 

You can remedy that in a couple of ways.  First, you can use a tool that shows floor plans on a magnetic surface.  You use magnetic furniture that they can arrange to show how their stuff will fit in.  Or, you can use the same concept in an electronic version you get from the internet.  You can even buy fake, cardboard furniture to set up in the rooms. 

 

You might offer some very special services when selling your customer on a place.  You can offer moving and packing services.  You can send a cleaning service to ready their former home for final inspection.  A greeting party can be arranged of all their neighbors on the day they arrive. 

 

This is quite a lot of trouble to go to for one resident, if you want to look at it that way.  If you choose to, though, you can consider it the appropriate beginning to a long and fruitful relationship.  Besides, it costs less than you might think.

 

Finally, you can offer gifts as a welcome to your new residents.  These can only serve to sweeten the deal.  A year’s subscription to NetFlix or some other service is appreciated by most new residents.  They can watch them when they have evenings in their homes.  Or, they can invite other residents to join them once the get to know their neighbors. 

 

Your leasing agents do a lot of things, both little and not so little in selling your customer on your property.  They are each vital in making up that all important impression that carries the customer from being a visitor to being a renter.

 

For more from Dave Lindahl, click here.

Multi-family dwellings: your road to instant wealth

 

It’s a fact that those who travel down the real estate investor path have one ultimate aim in mind: total financial independence. Bu while this is the common uniting thread in the way they do pretty much anything, different real estate investors have different ideas about how to get there. This is why many tend to either take a really long time to get rich, or simply stop as they are getting there because the going is too tough.

 

As a real estate investor who has become rich by practising what he preaches I can both understand the problems involved and the mental set that causes them. Investors of any kind are naturally cautious and quite rightly so and real estate investors are even more cautious than the rest.

 

Over the course of my career, as I chased my target, I invested in both single and multi-family dwellings, looking at holding a diversified portfolio that included homes as well as apartments. This strategy has given me almost a unique perspective in the real estate industry as I was ideally situated to make direct comparisons between the two and see which one works best.

 

Now I now that most people reading this will be in one of two camps and will want me to pronounce for one or the other but, realistically, that’s not how real estate investing works. Certainly, in the journey towards my target, multi-family dwellings made more sense. They made it easy to spread the risks of unoccupied properties, provided liquidity when I needed it and allowed me to have what every investor loves most: a breathing space which provided peace of mind when things got tough.

 

I have, as you can imagine, bought houses, flipped them quickly and used the money to buy apartments but I have also held onto single-family properties when it made good sense. The obstacles that most real estate investors put in place when they consider which path to take in their careers come from false perceptions and they can easily be dispelled.

 

A lot, for instance, think that getting into apartments means a lot of trouble with tenants and running different blocks. As the owner of over four thousand apartments in more states than I care to remember I can say that none of this needs to happen. I outsource all the hard work, getting competitive bids from specialist companies because I can offer economies of scale and a growing opportunity to do more business as my portfolio of apartments grows and expands.

 

This means I can get a better deal in caretaking and even repairs and I do not have to talk to or see a single tenant. If you are ready to make the same journey I have to total financial independence then what you really need is to take a step back and think big, you will then find the rest tends to follow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Lindahl, also known as the “Apartment King” has been successfully investing in single-family homes and apartments for the last eight years. He is the author of four popular, money making home study courses “Apartment House Riches”, “How To Estimate And Renovate House For Huge Profits” “Managing For Maximum Profits” and “The Real Estate Investors Marketing Tool Kit”. He can be reached at dave@real-estate-fortune.com and www.rementor.com.

Become financially free through multi-family dwelling

 

When it comes to taking advice it is always better to listen to those who have actually experienced the things they talk about directly. This was something which I learnt quite early on in my real estate career and it’s a principle I totally believe in and apply in my courses.

 

Over a real estate career that’s span the best part of a decade I have bought single-family dwellings, sold them, flipped and held on to them. I have put money in multi-family dwellings, set up multiple income streams, bought more multiple-family dwellings, sold some of those, kept many and managed to create a property portfolio that reduces my exposure to market and tenant vagaries, gives me a recession-proof source of income and has few or none of the drawbacks that are traditionally associated with owning multi-family dwellings.

 

That’s right. You heard right. I own over 4,000 apartments in six or more states and I do not see a single tenant, do not come into contact with a single tenant and do not have to field emails, letters or phonecalls from any of those living there.

 

I have achieved this because I learnt, early in my career, that real estate is as subject to economies of scale as everything else in our economy and can be made to increase profit margins by squeezing the operational costs thought the correct leveraging of volume.

 

A professional apartment management company runs everything on my behalf and I am free to close more deals, work to expand my portfolio and live the life I want. It is not magic and it does not require constant hard work but it does require smart work and the smart money, these days, is into properties that house more than a single family for the very simple fact that the work required to run them and the operating costs are about the same while the returns and the safeguards you have are a lot more attractive.

 

The secret to all this of course is knowing exactly what kind of strategic thinking you can apply to all this, when and how and this is just the kind of experience-based, insider knowledge I cover in many of the home study courses and workshops I run. My approach to these is that I provide exactly the kind of knowledge I wish I had had access to when I was starting out in my real estate investing career and learning through mistakes.

 

This way I know that those I work with are fully prepared to make their dream of total financial freedom a reality.

 

 

 

David Lindahl, also known as the “Apartment King” has been successfully investing in single-family homes and apartments for the last eight years. He is the author of four popular, money making home study courses “Apartment House Riches”, “How To Estimate And Renovate House For Huge Profits” “Managing For Maximum Profits” and “The Real Estate Investors Marketing Tool Kit”. He can be reached at http://www.thecoachingclub.com/event-archives/brain-pick-a-pro/apartment-houses/dave-lindahl/.

Best No Money Down Ways to Buy Real Estate

By Scott Taylor

 

If you’ve been reading articles or books on Creative Real Estate Investing, you’ve doubtless heard many, many different ways to buy houses, condos, townhouse and any other real estate you can think of. These include:

Lease/Options (more correctly Sandwich Lease / Options)
Master Lease / Option for multi-unit properties
Contract for Deed (A.K.A. All Inclusive Trust Deed, or Installment Land Contract)
Subject – To
Owner Carry
Wraparound Mortgage
Traditional Purchase

Confused yet? I know that the first time I heard many of these terms I certainly was. So let’s break these down briefly, and I’ll explain what I like and don’t like about them.

Sandwich Lease / Option

This is where you (rather your company) signs a lease with an option to purchase a property. The agreement gives you the right to sublease to another. You’re the middleman leasing for a low monthly cost with a low purchase price and a long term from the homeowner, then you lease it back out for just above market rent and a future appreciated price to a potential buyer. You make monthly cash flow, and when (IF) they buy you get the difference in price. You also get a decent upfront option payment that you get to keep if your tenant / buyer moves out.

Easy, huh? Well, yes and no. This is probably the easiest way of presenting a creative purchase to the homeowner, and the easiest to explain. However, sometimes the legal aspects of a lease / option are shaky, and if you have a homeowner that won’t work with you, you could be in for issues. The key here is you have to protect yourself with the right agreements and escrow documents.

The other side is you have to know your landlord / tenant laws and make sure you follow them and that your contracts follow them. You could be in trouble if you don’t.

Given the warnings above, I’d recommend this method over anything else to someone just getting started. While there is a bit of paperwork to use to protect yourself, it’s the easiest to manage. And there can be great profits in lease / options.

Master Lease / Option

Same as the Lease / Option but with a master lease agreement that lets you rent out individual units in a multi-unit apartment building.

Contract for Deed

This is known by different names in different states. Here in Colorado, it’s an Installment Land Contract. Other places it’s an All-Inclusive Trust Deed, or a Contract for Deed. All the same, just different names.

A Contract for Deed is just what the name says. It’s a contract for the deed to a property. The contract usually involves making payments to the owner and after a period of time you guarantee to purchase the property. Whereas a lease / option gives you the right, but not the obligation to purchase, a Contract for Deed obligates you to buy.

This one’s a bit more complicated, but essentially the same as the Lease / Option. You buy it on the contract, then rent it out to a Tenant / Buyer. They usually won’t buy so you get their monthly rent, and keep the option deposit if they don’t buy.

This is my second choice for people just beginning. It’s easy to explain to the homeowner, it makes them feel like they still have some control, and they like the sound of it. Also, most title companies understand the Contract for Deed, and will do the closing for you.

Subject To

This is a much more difficult deal to get. This is the one deal where the homeowner will tell you how to buy instead of the other way around. I never have signed up a Subject-To by suggesting it. The homeowner has ALWAYS told me “just take the house – I’ll sign it over to you”.

It’s honestly sad to see people so desperate, but the sense of relief you see in their eyes when you say “okay” is phenomenal. Some people think that real estate investors are sharks, but I’ve never hugged a shark after they’ve had their way with me. I have, however, received a hug or a hearty handshake almost every time I’ve taken a house over subject-to. People are in such a bind that having someone help them out really does wonders for them.

A subject-to is pretty basic on the surface. A homeowner in financial trouble signs a deed to his or her house over to you. The loan stays in their name, and you make the payments. Under the hood, though, there are a number of things you need to do to make sure you’re protected. Putting the property in a land trust, signing the deed to the land trust, then naming your company as the beneficiary is just one of the things you need to do to protect yourself. Before you do this type of deal, make sure you have the right education and paperwork.

This is by far my favorite way to sign up houses. But it’s not for beginners. I recommend this after you’ve been investing for a year or two. Not because of the legal issues with this, but because I truly believe that you’re very obligated to follow through on this deal. If it goes sour, you’re stuck. Maybe not legally, but morally and ethically. You have to make the payments no matter what.

Owner Carry

Yet another great way to buy. However there’s one drawback – the owner almost always wants a down payment. If you’ve been investing for awhile and have the money that’s great, but if you’re just starting out and you don’t it’s probably not for you.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. You buy the house and the owner carries a mortgage. Generally this is a property that has no existing mortgage, so the owner is allowed to write you a mortgage without worrying about the due on sale clause.

Again, this is a great way to buy a property as the mortgage doesn’t show up on your credit. But you need to have the cash for the down payment.

Wraparound Mortgage

This is basically an Owner-Carry, but there is an existing mortgage on the property. The owner “wraps” a new mortgage around that and sells the house to you with the new mortgage. The only drawback of this is you have to make sure to write your paperwork so that the due on sale clause isn’t triggered. You can do this similar to the Subject-to, by putting it into a Land Trust.

Traditional Purchase

Please, Please, PLEASE don’t buy houses retail unless it’s a really great, smokin’ hot deal! Please?

Here’s how I like to buy traditionally. Buy a wreck of a house from a bank, from HUD, or from a wholesaler. Make sure that the price of the house, plus all the costs fixing it up don’t go over 80% of the fixed up value of the house.

Buy the house, fix it up, then refinance it, pull all the money out that you put in buying it and fixing it, then rent it out or do a rent-to-own. When you’ve refinance and pulled your money out, do it again. A good investor can do four or more houses a year this way. The only fly in the ointment here is that eventually the mortgage companies will cut you off and you won’t be able to buy any more. Then you’ll have to resort to the above methods. But by then you should have enough cash flow that you can pretty much sit on your butt all day if you’d like.

So to sum up:

As you’re just getting started, concentrate on Lease / Options first. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet and understand what a good deal vs. a bad deal is, move on to Contract for Deed, then finally to Subject-To. Throw in some Owner Carry and Traditional purchases and in ten years you can retire and NEVER have to worry about money again.

 

Scott Taylor is a successful Real Estate Investor, trainer and Web Entrepreneur. He has taught hundreds of students to become wealthy through Real Estate. Mr. Taylor also runs successful website businesses, and reviews Internet businesses.

Employee Training

 Employee training is a subject that all property managers have to address.  Without it, employees go their own way.  Things tend towards chaos in the absence of the order that employee training lays down.  Spend some time on the aspect of the business and you will see good results from it. 

 

Ethics training is not only required.  It also gives employees a framework around which to build their job concept.  If managers know the accepted practices relating to employment, they will deal with workers fairly.  If executives know the ins and outs of advertising and marketing ethics, they will attract suitable customers to their properties. 

 

Everyone employed in your enterprise should know how to handle a conflict of interest situation.  Environmental issues affect every worker from the CEO to the person who cleans the clubhouse.  The ethics you encourage can only be expected if they are taught in a constructive way. 

 

Add humor to your employee training sessions.  This makes the day more pleasant and memorable.  You can get CD’s of silly songs about training that will break the ice.  In the days ahead, you will hear your employees humming these songs, or even singing as they work.  All that means is that your employee training has gone over well and your workers and leasing agents will remember it for a long time to come. 

 

If you want to really shake things up, you can have a corporate retreat.  At this function, you can spend time on training.  You can make it unforgettable by hiring an improve group to entertain in a way that blends in with your training theme. 

 

There is a company called Trainers Warehouse that provides training products to use in your sessions.  One thing you can get from them is music.  The music you get there will be legal to use at your function without paying any royalties.  This can add a nice soundtrack to your training meeting. 

 

It is always important to teach employees to take pride in the property.  You can tell them this all day long.  Until you find a way to make it real to them, they just will not get it.  You may have to make a game of it to spark their enthusiasm. 

 

Competition often drives people to find something in themselves that they never knew was there before that.  Models always have to be available for customers to view.  The hope is that they will be spotless and leave a good impression.  This is not always the case. 

 

If your leasing agents are losing interest in the appearance of the model apartment or condo, do something to liven them up.  Make a contest.  Do this by having a manager go through the model and mess up as many things as possible. 

 

Send in the agents to find the problems.  The person who finds the most wins.  By the time you all clean up the apartment to be shown again, your agents are excited about it again. 

 

After all, getting your agents and other employees excited is a part of what employee training is all about.  When they know how to handle complex situations, your properties will prosper.  Consider what you can do to make employee training better. 

 

Learn more at http://www.thecoachingclub.com/event-archives/brain-pick-a-pro/apartment-houses/dave-lindahl/