Origins

Back in the late 90’s, a high school Social Studies teacher in Prince George’s County Public School System began his real estate career by purchasing his first home, a 4 unit apartment building, in Southeast, DC. Immediately thereafter, he became a full-time Realtor and real estate investor. His 1st four years as a realtor, he sold investment properties (4 family apartment houses in particular) to 1st time home buyers. He left the classroom, but not teaching altogether because he had the responsibility of nurturing these new investors until they were able to navigate on their own.

A few years later …

More purchases followed and the challenges associated with traditional property management were as follows:

  • HIGH FEES.  Owners are paying up to 10% in management fees just to collect rent each month.
  • CONFLICT OF INTEREST. Vendors go out and diagnose the repair request, but what prevents them from inflating the scope of work? And if you get 3 estimates, can you affirm that the cheapest estimate was the best decision (short and long term)?
  • QUALITY. Phone conversations aren’t recorded and there isn’t any paper trail until you get a bill and they take it out of your rent money. And suppose it’s your word versus one of the property management company’s staff members on what should have taken place and there is a lot at stake, YOU are probably the one who will get thrown under the bus.

After personal experiences and discussions with other Owners who were going through throes with property management companies just about everywhere, we Owners collectively submitted …

              Owners should get some form of kickback or discount on high management fees, since we oftentimes have to manage our property managers in order to keep our costs down.

The seed was planted …

We carefully examined the inner-workings of property management and discovered that 20% of property management duties make up 80% of what is typically done. These services collectively, this 20%, is as follows:

  • Preferred pricing with service providers
  • Problem-solving with objective being management auto-pilot
  • Online owner portal with 24/7 access to current reports
  • Online payments plus electronic funds transfer
  • Online document storage and management
  • Delinquent email alerts and monthly letters sent out each month
  • Proactive property inspections

These bundled property services are included in our completely flexible Property Management Plans for $20, $40 and $60 per month. So if you take traditional property management and remove it’s high fees, add a little more automation, a well-defined streamlined process with heavy quality assurance built into each and every service with just a sprinkle of timed rules then … you see what HUM is doing to create value for its Owners.

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