The first report you need is the Profit and Loss statement.  This is a standard report of income from the previous month and expenses so you can see your NOI.  You should be sure that is in your hands no later than the 10th of each month.

The second thing you need to review is the check register.  You want to see what checks were written from the previous month.  If you can see where the checks are going, you can get a better idea of the cash flow and see who is getting paid what.

You also get an idea of whom the vendors are and you can question things that you do not recognize.  The check register can also alert to you any other problems with the property.  For instance, if you see an increase in the number of checks written to the plumber, you need to determine what the reason for that is.

An occupancy and traffic report can help you analyze where your tenants are coming from and what marketing campaigns are most effective.  This report can alert you to which units are empty, rent ready and which ones are not.  The worst thing to have happen is to have vacancies that are not rent ready and someone shows up who is ready to move in that weekend.

You can create the occupancy and traffic report in an Excel spreadsheet.  Your onsite manager then fills it out on a daily basis.  Each row is a day of the month and each column includes number of calls, number of showings, number of applications sent out, leases signed, follow ups, referrals, leads from ad sheets, leads from signage, leads from walk-ins, and leads from merchant coupons.

By looking at this report, you can see the relative amount of activity.  If you are getting activity but not converting, then you need to find out why.  That tells you that you need to re-evaluate your process.

The fourth report is the maintenance, or work order, report.  When a tenant calls in with a maintenance problem there should be a work order to complete and a progression of steps.  A work order summary log should include all of this information.  The maintenance work order log lets you know that your tenants are being taken care of.

Whoever is managing your property needs to have a work order log.  You want to see how long it takes for a work request to be filled.  You do not want the turn around time to be a week.  Customer service must be a priority with your tenants.

These four reports help you to monitor the overall health of your multifamily property.  Good property management is the backbone of retaining tenants and keeping your property managers accountable is crucial to your multifamily property being a money-maker for you.

There is a property that has low occupancy and is need of $50,000 of moderate rehabilitation.  The rent needs to be increased but it cannot be increased until some cosmetic work is done.  The owner is out-of-state and is not really in touch with what is going on.

So you have an opportunity.  Yes, it needs $50,000 of capital and you could come in and buy this property.  Because they property has been allowed to deteriorate, it is worth less than what the owner owes on it.

What you want to do is gain control of this property.  You are not going to buy it; you are not going to own it; you are going to get control of it.  This is done by putting in place a five-year triple-net master lease which stipulates that you are the master tenant.

As the master tenant, you get to operate the property.  You can make all of the repairs and you run the property.  You sublet it to the tenants that you choose and it is for five years so you can turn the property around.

At the same time as when you put in the lease, you are going to put an option in place to buy the property.  Let us say that your option to buy was for $1 million.  What you do to rehab the property is going to make the property worth more than $1 million and if it is worth $1.3 million that means your option is now worth $300,000.

You are going to reposition the property which means you are going to rehab it, raise the rents and raise the occupancy.  You are going to raise the income and increase the value to $1.3 million.  You then have the choice of buying the $1.3 million property for $1 million and have $300,000 in equity.

Only at that point in time would you own the property.  The rest of the time you just control it.  You own nothing other than your option but you control everything.  You are the master tenant and you have the option.

The multifamily property arena has many opportunities for many different types of players.  Working with multifamily property deals is not limited to owning the property.  The “Own Nothing, Control Everything” strategy can allow you to take advantage of the great investment opportunities available to you in multifamily properties.