Increasing Landlord Revenue

Many Landlords can maximize revenues by some of these useful tips by James Davis, Property Manager for Bell Properties in San Francisco and Los Angeles

Here are some of the things, not an exhaustive list, that James and Bell Properties does for their Landlords.

1. Use of Ratio Utility Billing Service (RUBS) to pass along utility expenses to the tenants.

Many water bills are typically not metered or not metered separately. One example Davis cited is a  4plex. “There is no way to perfectly separate out the water utility charges the same way separate electric meters are used.   They are more costly to set up with individual meters”

James says that Rubs take the entire bill and divides and the most common way is by occupancy.

If there are four units and one occupant each, then a $100 bill is charged $25 to each tenant. 

If one unit has three occupants and one unit has two occupants, that bill is now divided by 5 and the amount would be $40 per occupant, as an illustrative example of just one way this can be done.

According to James, other non-metered expenses, such as trash and security cameras, can also be layered onto the RUGS system.

2. Application fee review

According to James, Application fees should be reviewed to see how they align with the market

3. Improving Vacancy

If vacancy is high, a property manager will review advertising.

4. Rent Roll Review

A property manager reviews the current Rent Roll and sees how it compares to the current market.

5. Rent collection

According to James, many landlords are behind on collecting rent and recommends the following:

Review non paid units and not evicted

Look at reminders for rent payments.

Late fees- are they being charged?

6. Additional Add Ons

Laundry and vending machines are two examples of revenue add ons

7. Maintenance and Service Contract Review

Careful Review and Auditing of Services, such as garbage collection fees

James cited an example of a 500 unit complex that the garbage collection company was charging for all 500 units, but the building was being vacated to be torn down and only had 250 occupied units. James and Bell Properties had the garbage company modify its billing to save that landlord a huge amount of excess billing.

Consolidating vendors is another tip James provided.

“Utilizing the same vendor across multiple properties allows us to negotiate a better rate, for example, we can get discounted rates for a single provider for trash, lawn or maintenance services.