7 Insider Tips to Get The Most Out of Your Property Manager

In this episode, Tom and Michael chat with Matthew Whitaker from GK Houses about what it takes to have effective property management and how investors can set themselves up for successful relationships with their PMs.   --- Transcript   Michael: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum. And today I'm joined by Tom Schneider and Matthew Whitaker with GK Houses, Matt and GK Houses is one of our preferred property management partners at Roofstock. And so we're going to be talking to Matt today about what it's like to be a property manager. What are some things that we as investors can do to make their lives easier? And give us a little bit of insight into what a day in the life of a PM looks like. So let's get into it.   Theme Song   Michael: Matt Whitaker. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really, really appreciate you taking the time to be with us. How are you doing?   Matthew: Yeah, I'm doing great. I'm excited to be here and excited to do this with you.   Michael: Awesome. And you're down in the Southeast, right?   Matthew: I am. Yeah. I'm in Birmingham, Alabama. That's where our corporate office is and we're in eight different markets. So we're in three markets in Colorado and then we are also in Birmingham, Nashville, Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Little Rock.   Michael: Awesome. Awesome. And for those of our guests who might not know you, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself on GK houses, help everyone get to know you a bit?   Matthew: Yeah. I'd love to some, the CEO of GK houses. I started it about 13 years ago during the last recession. And during that kind of, 07, 08, 09 time when the market crashed, I owned about 30 rental houses at the time and had a hard time selling those once the market crashed. Most of those were in the low to moderate income world and the ability to sell that went away. And I started a property management company, converted all those 30 over into rentals and was able to get some of my investor buddies to also let me manage them. So I got up to about 70 houses pretty quickly, and that was kind of how I lasted through that recession through 08, 09, 2010 was by managing homes in about, we also were selling homes. So we were doing some turnkey stuff at the time, kind of original before it was very popular. And, but in 2013 we really started off focusing on the management business. And we decided at that point we managed about 250 homes right here in Birmingham. And at that point we decided that we wanted to get to 25,000 houses under management. And so we've been growing that ever since 2013. And today we manage somewhere around 26, 2,700 homes in those eight markets that I talked about earlier.   Michael: Great. And did you have any personal management experience in the real estate arena or did you go straight from owner to manager?   Matthew: I always swore I would never be a property manager or a real estate agent…   Michael: You’re in good company.   Matthew: And a lot of companies did that same thing. Yeah. And so never, never say that to yourself, but now I'm a real estate agent and a property manager. And so I managed my own homes. So I had been doing it ever since I first got started, even my first house I ever bought, I still own, and I have rented it ever since. And that was a disaster story. So it's amazing that I'm in the property management business. So yes, I did have a little bit of management experience. I had been in the buying and selling business for about seven or eight years. So I was very familiar with what a manager did. I had some other third party managers that manage some homes for me for some time and found all the things that I didn't like about a property manager. And so I decided to just do it ourselves, with GK Houses.   Michael: That's great. I love that. You've got that personal experience that you did it for yourself and then went into business, helping other people do it becau