Hi
@JonJLA,
Great memories of working with you for so many years. Palermo Uno is awesome. I sold all 4 of my apartments there back in 2017. I wish I kept one of them as I think that location is the best for rentals. I'm glad you still own and you must be close to retiring now. You told me long ago a few more years so hopefully you are close to moving to BA.
You nailed it
@FuturoBA. I started the first short-term rental apartment rental in BA and I had such tremendous demand 20 years ago. I was buying properties every week. But in the early years, I was looking to add on as many properties as I could because we had such tremendous demand. Remember Airbnb didn't exist and I started 6 years before they did. They didn't start until 2008 and even then no one used them. I had the Founders of Airbnb calling me each month to get all my apartments on their platform. But I resisted because I knew that everyone would just go to that platform so I didn't but I would talk to Brian and Joe every 6 months or so.
In the beginning I wanted tons of properties but then The Economist did a story on my company and then we were flooded with investors wanting to hire us. And also we started getting competition and many were buying apartments and doing short-term as well. I did agree to work with a few owners but mostly they were a total pain in the ass or they weren't ethical and honest. We had the unique situation of having 2 sets of clients. 1) we had the property owners who purchased and owned the properties; 2) we had rental guests that were renting the properties. And each are equally as important. And we had to be fair with both sets of clients.
But what I found was many locals would want to get paid ASAP the check-in day. And once we paid them, if there was some issue or problem they wouldn't refund the money. So it was just problematic. So very quickly I decided that we would ONLY manage a property where someone hired us. Because it was a good opportunity to cultivate a working relationship with an investor. 99.99999% of them were awesome to work with. But in 23 years I only had to "fire" a client twice. Where they were just a total pain in the ass. They were impossible to deal with. And I just gave them back a complete refund and told them they were better off just finding someone else.
Also, as we quickly grew, I didn't want to cannibalize income for owners. I wanted to control growth and although the company would have made more money the more properties we took on, I didn't think that would be fair to investors that entrusted me and my firm. It was the smart decision because every property that I managed, I have an excellent relationship with the owner. In fact, most of the owners have become friends of mine even after 20+ years. Most end up hiring us to buy another property. I considered that an honor.
But as
@FuturoBA mentioned, another was that it is almost impossible to find really quality employees. My initial goal when I made my business plan was to buy and manage 100 properties. But then when we got there it moved to 200 and then 250, then 300 and so on. You need a LOT of employees to manage that many properties. And finding quality employees in a country like Argentina is very difficult. Keep in mind at my peak I had 27 maids working full time. We had 8 handymen in house full-time. We had to stay open 365 days a year. I was paying a full-time salary just for a 24/7 around the clock emergency person to help out.
Things were different back then. I wasn't competing with cheap apartment rentals. I always looked at my competition as the 5 star hotels and that is who I competed with. Today, I operate different. I don't really want to fully compete with the 5 star hotels. Gone are 24/7 - 365 day employees. But I do still go after people that would typically stay in a 5 star hotel. We get the best mattresses etc.
So yes it is crazy not to take on as many properties as possible at 25% management fees. But life isn't just about making money. I've already done that once building up a huge company. And then selling it and then Airbnb buying it. I love real estate and I love Buenos Aires. So I consider it an honor continuing to do what I love and working with amazing investors.
If I wanted, I could immediately start another property management company and grow to 1,000 properties probably within 1 year. But I don't want to do that. I just work with select investors and we only manage those properties. So FuturoBA nailed it. My ultimate goal is still probably to build my own high end building and turn the entire building into a boutique apartment hotel. That will be much easier to manage having all properties under one roof. I have enough investors to build my own building. I just don't have the land. It's tough finding the perfect property to do this.