I’m Laila Janik, CEO of MYS Real Estate, and I work with institutional investors who hold 50+ units. Here’s an insider look at how they manage all those properties as easily as if it were one building, and how you can apply these principles even if you have a growing portfolio.
Centralized Property Management: Big players centralize tasks. Instead of treating 50 apartments as 50 separate jobs, they often hire one property management company to handle all units. This means one team fields tenant calls, arranges maintenance, collects rent, etc., across the portfolio. For example, one of our institutional clients has 80 units with one management firm – the firm has a dedicated manager for their account who knows their portfolio inside out. Issues are tracked in one system, tenants have one contact number. As an owner, the investor gets one consolidated report monthly. It’s essentially like owning an 80-unit building, even though the units are spread across different towers. Efficiency comes from standardizing processes – a single lease template for all tenants (with slight adjustments per building if needed), one bank account for all rent collection (then our accounting sorts which unit paid what, but the owner sees one inflow). This streamlines communication and oversight – much easier than dealing with 80 different agents or DIY with 80 tenants. If you’re a smaller investor scaling up, consider partnering with a good property manager once you hit a handful of units – they can usually give a volume discount on fees too (maybe 5% instead of the standard 7-8% of rent once you have say 5+ properties). It takes a load off you and keeps things uniform.
Economies of Scale in Maintenance: When you manage at scale, you can also achieve cost savings per unit. Many institutional landlords negotiate annual maintenance contracts. For instance, they might have a deal with an HVAC company to service all AC units in all their apartments quarterly at a bulk rate (ensuring efficient ACs and fewer breakdowns). Or they might buy appliances in bulk (10 fridges at a time) and keep a couple spare – so if one breaks, the property manager swaps it out immediately and deals with repair off-line, meaning virtually no downtime for the tenant. Because they’re dealing in volume, contractors value their business and prioritize their work. I’ve seen how a single call from a big portfolio manager gets faster service than an individual landlord calling – sad but true in any industry. Large landlords also often keep a “maintenance float” – a budget set aside and perhaps a handyman on retainer who can do minor fixes across units daily. One institutional client employs a handyman full-time who rotates through their properties doing small repairs, painting between tenancies, touching up grout, etc., preemptively. This keeps units in top shape and prevents little issues from turning into costly big ones. The cost per unit for this proactive upkeep is low when spread out. So, more units = more negotiating power + ability to justify dedicated resources, which leadsto smoother operations and happier tenants. If you have, say, 5-10 units, you can emulate this by forming a good relationship with one reliable handyman service – give them regular work and they’ll give you priority and maybe a better hourly rate.
Tenant Pooling and Rotation: Institutions sometimes leverage having multiple units in different locations to keep good tenants in their “ecosystem.” For example, if a tenant outgrows a one-bedroom and wants a two-bedroom, a large landlord might have a two-bed vacancy in another building – they can offer it and retain that tenant (reducing turnover costs). Or if a corporate tenant needs 10 units for staff, an institutional landlord can supply across several buildings under one agreement. This ability to reallocate tenants internally is a perk of scale.
It keeps occupancy high. On a smaller scale, even if you have 3-4 units, you can benefit – say a great tenant’s job moves them from Marina to Business Bay; if you own in both, you could move them from your Marina unit to your Business Bay unit, keeping a quality tenant under your roof, so to speak. Big landlords do this to minimize downtime and keep trusted tenants rather than losing them to another landlord. It’s a portfolio mindset: maximize overall occupancy and income, even if it means shuffling tenants between your assets.
Automated and Data-Driven Systems: Institutions managing many units use property management software to track leases, rent due dates, maintenance logs, etc. This reduces human error and ensures nothing slips through cracks. Reminders for lease renewals go out automatically to tenants 90 days in advance, for example, with proposed renewal terms (often tied to RERA’s rental index nikoliers-global.com). If tenant accept, great; if not, they know to plan listing that unit for new tenant. All documents and payments are digitized, making audit and analysis easy. They can quickly run a report of, say, “units with rent >10 days late” and have their manager follow up accordingly – but often, late rents are lower with professional oversight anyway because tenants treat a corporate landlord with the same promptness they’d treat, say, their DEWA bill. Some big landlords even have an online tenant portal for service requests and rent payments (direct debit or credit card). These systems sound fancy, but versions of them are accessible to smaller investors too.
There’s off-the-shelf software (like Yardi Breeze, Propertyware, etc.) that a portfolio of 5 or 10 units can use at low cost, giving you near-institutional efficiency in tracking. As you add units, you just input them – the software scales.
Single Portfolio View: Perhaps one of the biggest management advantages is being able to look at the forest, not just the trees. Institutions manage by portfolio performance metrics – overall occupancy %, total rental yield, average maintenance cost per unit, etc. They’re not emotionally tied to any one property; if one underperforms (constant maintenance issues, difficult HOA, under-market rent growth), they’ll sell it and reinvest in a better one. This analytical approach keeps their portfolio optimized. As an individual scaling investor, adopting this mindset early helps – you make data-driven decisions on keep vs sell or where to buy next.
With multiple units, you can compare and learn: “Hmm, my unit in that building has much lower service charges than this one but rents similar – maybe my next purchase should be more likethat.” You start acting like a mini institution, fine-tuning your holdings for max returns. And because you have the info organized (via that software or manager reports), it’s easy to assess.
Conclusion: Don’t fear growth – with the right structure and partners, managing 5 or 50 one-bed apartments can actually be efficient and systematic. Many tasks consolidate, and the incremental effort for each new unit drops significantly. In fact, bigger portfolios often achieve higher profit margins due to scale efficiencies, as we’ve discussed.
If you’re growing your portfolio and worried about managing it all, let me share how we help our institutional and multi-unit clients keep things simple. Contact me for a consultation on setting up an efficient property management game plan – from selecting a good management firm (or software if you DIY) to creating standardized processes as you add units.
Think of it like building your own real estate “company” – a bit of work to set up, but then it can run like clockwork even as it expands. You focus on strategic decisions while the day-to-day runs smoothly. I’m here to help you make that leap with confidence, ensuring you enjoy the rewards of scale without the chaos. ⚙🏢👍
