Do you ever wonder what the world would be like if everyone loved what they did for a living? What if each of us had a job that we were perfectly suited for and felt happy at the end of the day because we fulfilled a valuable purpose? That’s how I feel about real estate. I love the look and feel of a building and gauging its potential. Not just the building itself, but also getting to know the area a little bit to see whether or not it's a place that will take the improvements we want to make. For starters, we buy properties in places people want to live. Most people, when looking to relocate would say they value safety, a clean well kept building, proper management organization, and a reasonable commute to work and shopping.
I also love the business side of making improvements that will increase the value for both residents and investors. St. Louis is a great place to do business! We have a good demand for tenants year round, good rent-to-value ratios and the inspectors in each municipality are good people who are easy to work with.
As a general rule when homes go vacant, we will have the unit ready for a new tenant within two weeks and a new tenant is moving in within 30 days. My job within Frontier is overseeing the day-to-day operations, keeping apartments and homes filled to 100%, collecting 100% of the rent, and seeing that service requests for maintenance occur within 24-48 hours and that they don’t exceed 8-10% of our revenue.
Homes and apartments should be comfortable, they serve a basic human need. It’s a place where people enjoy life with their family and friends. Providing quick, quality work gives us access to reach people where they are, when we're doing maintenance on their home, or when we're going to call with questions about the lease agreement. It also gives them an opportunity to have access to us. This open communication and trust create a win-win for everyone. Our team is very much a values-driven organization from the corporate office to the maintenance team and everywhere in between.
My motto is for each working member of our company to think of themselves as good stewards of the job, time, and resources they have to work with. Essentially providing excellent customer service and a well-maintained property creates an impeccably run enterprise.
Over the past 4-5 years I've become interested in syndicating the business. I'd go to conferences and learn about it when I could but I’d always get kind of busy with my current operations. In order to expand in the way I’d like would mean slowing way down and that’s not something I was prepared to do.
With the goal of becoming the best and largest real estate operator in the Midwest, I knew I would need to acquire a strong network of capital to support our growth. With this in mind, I identified RMQ to help expand our business. Together we have become Frontier Equity Partners which is specifically focused on finding capital sources and creating a portfolio of investments to fund that expansion. My immediate goal is 10,000 units fully occupied. RJ, Michael, and Quentin are well-equipped for this task and I am confident that we can successfully reach our goal.