In this article, I’d like to shift gears just a little bit from some of the other topics I’ve been presenting and talk about team building to help build your apartment empire. Having a good professional team is recommended for any kind of real estate investing so I’m not exactly going out on a limb here. Good business ownership is in part founded upon the premise that you don’t need to do everything yourself and real estate is no different.
Real estate is both a valuable and sometimes complex commodity so, as you might expect, there are both technical and legal aspects to working with it as an investment. As such, it is both prudent and logical to consider working with dedicated professionals for the different phases of your business, instead of you leaving things to chance or, worse yet, trying to do things yourself that you aren’t qualified to do.
A professional real estate team can include quite a few different people and professions but some of the essential team members that you’ll want to have in place include:
- A real estate agent or agents
- A commercial mortgage broker
- A banker (one or more)
- A title company or closing attorney
- A real estate attorney
- An SEC attorney (if part of your business includes securing private funding)
- An accountant or CPA
- Property management companies
- Contractors
I might be leaving a few things out but these are essential for most real estate investors and especially critical if you want to work in commercial real estate such as apartments. I’ll be discussing the list of team members above over a pair of follow up articles to this one so, now that you understand why a team is so important and see who it might contain, we’re ready to discuss the individual components of your own team.
As solid team is a solid foundation for building your real estate empire. Do you want to do so one brick at a time or with the support of others? I think a team is a no-brainer. Not only are they there to help you and keep you from doing everything yourself, but they can also provide the kind of expertise that can keep you out of hot water too. Which way do you prefer?
