Do you know the ‘right way’ to communicate with other investors?
It’s important to know how to respect your fellow investors and make them feel that they are an important part of your team.
Hey Moguls, Chris Urso here to go over some of the ways that my team and I communicate with our investors. We have a rule in our office that we never want our investors to wonder what’s going on with their investment. It’s our goal to take the institutional feel out of investing in the larger commercial real estate projects and make it more mainstream.
We aim to make it more relationship-driven.
We want our investors to know us, to have access to information and to be able to ask questions. We want them to learn about their investments as we go along. We pride ourselves on being sure that our investors are educated. We don’t insist that our investors just take our word for something… but rather that they understand exactly what they’re investing in.
Here’s a look at some of the ways we do all of this. You can do this in your business whether you have dozens of investors (as we do), or have only a few.
Phone
We have over 150 investors across all our projects, and we make sure each one is personally contacted by phone at least twice a year.
That call will be initiated either by me or one of our staff members.
Email
We send out emails to our investors on a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on the type of project it is.
If it’s a very extensive reposition, in the first 12 to 18 months, we might send out more frequent updates to show the progress. It may just be a photo of the new pool being installed or that we renovated 10 apartments this month.
These are the ways we keep investors engaged and informed. (And happy!)
Webinars
On a quarterly basis, we do webinars and reports; this is done across all of our deals. No matter how many deals we have going, every quarter we lock down for a few days and prepare a detailed update for our investors. It’s a summary of operations and key points from the core of operations.
And, we provide a report in addition to the live webinar. We walk through the progress of that particular project over the past 3 months. This gives investors listening to the webinar the opportunity to ask questions.
For those who can’t attend, we email a copy of the recording.
Investor Portal
This is my company’s private site where we house all our documents. Every investor is given access with a special login.
Investors can log in and review all their legal documents from anywhere there is internet access.
Investor Appreciation Party
This is a must.
It’s our annual event where we meet one another, get to know one another and have fun. We make it a special night.
Private Site Visits
Also, on an annual basis, we invite a few of our investors (10 or 15 at a time), to join us in one of our markets.
The investors are our guests for a couple of days to walk the properties and get a sense of what’s going on.
Quarterly Update
Quarterly updates contain an executive summary in addition to several key indicators. This will include:
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Trending Occupancy
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Average Rents
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Number of Move Ins
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Number of Move Outs
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Number of Renewals
And so forth...
We also give an explanation of each one. The most important number is the NOI – net operating income. The investors will see how the numbers match up with the first-of-the-year budget projections. There will also be a summary of the capital projects.
If we are in the midst of a large renovation, we show detailed photos so investors can actually see the progress.
We don’t share only the good news but also include challenges that may have come up. That’s a reality of this business.
Summing Up
We feel it’s worth our time and effort to continually connect with all our investors. We allow them to be as active or as passive in the projects as they would like to be.
As we show them respect and attention, they feel they are part of the team, and as a result, they want to stay with us for the long term. Win-win.
Your Turn
What steps do you take to ensure that investors know what’s going on and have all their questions answered? Let us know in the comments below.
Be aware that investors are working with you by choice – honor that choice.
List several steps you can take to honor those investors to show your appreciation.
Break down the list to annual, quarterly and monthly events and communications.
Assign to one of your staff members the task of investor relations.
Christopher Urso
is the founder of URS Capital Partners and National REIS. Chris has been investing in real estate since 2001. Over the years he has been involved in all aspects of real estate, from single-family fix and flips, buy and hold cash flow houses, and finally to apartment buildings. His real estate investment career only took off when he purchased his first apartment building 3.5 years ago. He now controls over $15,000,000 of apartments and has raised over $8,000,000 of private money in just over 3 years. He now structures investment partnerships to acquire large apartment complexes and also private coaches investors helping them purchase their own apartment buildings.