Founder of Grocapitus Investments and MultifamilyU, Neal Bawa, joins Jonathan on this episode of Real Estate Launchpad. Have you ever wanted to know how to increase revenue in your multifamily investments? Neal is a master of adding value to apartment communities by optimizing leasing revenue, using his L-A-S-A-L process! You don’t want to miss his explanation of his system and how to start applying it to your own multifamily investments today. Be sure to listen!
The L-A-S-A-L system
The L-A-S-A-L system is a free system of best practices and metrics. It incorporates the ecosystem of leasing from start to finish. The most important thing an asset manager can do is not cutting expenses but driving top-line revenue. L-A-S-A-L teaches you how to increase revenue by managing ratios between each of the following below:
L – eads
A- ppointments
S – howings
A – pplications
L – eases
Be sure to listen to hear Neal give examples of how implementing this system can double leasing velocity in apartments!
How these ratios increase revenue
In the L-A-S-A-L system, there are ways at each step to increase performance ratios. Neal shares that the ratio increases from leads to appointments when the customer is contacted quickly. He goes so far as to say that call-backs within 5 minutes as gold leads, but a lead that has not been nurtured for a whole day is dead. Longer business hours and working during peak hours allow this contact to happen more! From the appointment to showing, the ratio increases based on the manager’s sales ability. From showing to application, the ratio depends on the cleanliness of a unit. Neal never shows a home that is not completely wiped down. This ratio is also dependent on how well the customer was screened on the phone. You don’t want a client to show up who simply cannot move forward. Lastly, the ratio between applications and leases is simply depending on processing time. The quicker the turn-around, the less time a client can get cold feet and walk away. Be sure to listen to hear Neal explain all of these ratios in more detail, and how increasing lease velocity can account for a 3 million difference in income in ONE year!
How to add value to a property and increase revenue
Neal turns to numbers to increase revenue and add value to a rental property. He is constantly measuring and benchmarking his own properties against one another to see what can be doing better. He believes in hiring the best photographer in the market to capture his properties because the difference in a cheap photographer and the best can be extremely different and result in more leases signed. Neal finds creative ways such as adding cameras not for security but to track whether tenants are not paying pet rent. This can account for an increase of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, so it is a simple way to increase revenue.
Key factors to building a great real estate syndication business
Not only does Neal have processes to increase revenue in multifamily investments, but he also has a large team of investors that he works with. Neal believes that outreach is the best way to grow a syndication business, which is why he teaches a large number of free courses. He helps others learn which cities and neighborhoods are the best to invest in. He speaks at 25 conferences annually and teaches locally once a week. Through his MultifamilyU platform, he provides 100 free webinars a year that are simply educations – no pitch involved. Neal says his “secret sauce” to building a team of investors is by creating a vast education network.
In This Episode Neal Bawa says…
- [1:51] Who he is and what he does
- [8:58] How he got into real estate
- [13:49] Problems real estate investors were having and how he helped solve them
- [18:33] The L-A-S-A-L system
- [20:30] How this system helps with property management
- [25:28] How leasing velocity adds to the top line
- [28:06] Reasons other ratios improve
- [39:24] What Neal does to add value to a property and increase returns
- [48:41] How he great his syndication business
