How He Generates $150K/Month in Property Management Fees | Nik Boone

Nik Boone (00:00)

Another one is, when the business was super young, I had opened it with the intention of being like a brokerage, like a Coldwell Banker or a Watson, having realtors under me and doing all this. And then one one morning all I had like half a dozen realtors. They all left at the same time, went to the same place and kind of just left me with this fat lease payment. Cause I had this nice office and I was like twenty two. And so was like, I’m screwed. I ended up selling a I had a street bike. I sold that to pay for the lease and rent for my house.

Joseph Crooms (01:58)

Hey everybody, welcome to Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast. And today I am your host, Joseph Crooms. But today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with. His name is Nik Boone. What a name. Smooth name. Nik is here.

He’s gonna talk about his real estate experience. he’s been in business since 2010. So I know he has something to say to us. So let’s jump right into it. So Nik, say hello to everybody.

Nik Boone (02:28)

What’s going on?

Joseph Crooms (02:29)

All right, man. So Nik, let’s dive in. Tell me about the your business. What markets are you operating?

Nik Boone (02:35)

So I’m in Bakersfield, California. Kern County is is the county. we’re pretty small city, about four hundred and thirty thousand people. County’s about a million people. small for California. So if you’re listening in, some little state, then maybe that sounds a little bit larger, but for our area, pretty small. we have I have an office of about thirty-four employees right now. We manage just under 2,000 rental units, mostly single family duplexes, stuff like that.

and then I still personally do fifty to sixty real estate sales a year, along with investing in my own rentals, flips, stuff like that. So small but mighty office.

Joseph Crooms (03:11)

Gotcha. So Nik, what has been the your biggest challenge and and getting an office that size? That’s a pretty nice size in the in the city. How how do you how do you how do you get your workers? What do you look for?

Nik Boone (03:24)

I mean, we’re we’re no different than anybody. Labor’s tough to find. but when we find a good one we we try to promote fast. the other thing that I do is if we find a bad one, we try to get rid of them fast as well. So I don’t I don’t like to keep people around that we know that there are gonna be, a few months of of rough times and then we’re gonna get rid of which, has led to lawsuits, wrongful termination, stuff like that. But

I can focus my time more getting somebody else in, trained faster and more efficient, and then worry about everything else later. So, none of the lawsuits we’ve had have stuck or have any teeth in them, but we’re in California. So

Joseph Crooms (03:57)

Gotcha. Nik, what is your niche?

Nik Boone (03:59)

We’re pretty heavy property management. So a lot I have about nine hundred clients that are investors that own, close to two thousand units just here in in our county. So, if I send a deal out off market, I’m sending it to nine hundred active investors that have investments. So that’s that’s really our our niche right now. we doubled down on that in last two to three years and it’s been really like

We’re the go to company here for for investors or property management, sales, stuff like that.

Joseph Crooms (04:29)

what do you do with property management?

Nik Boone (04:30)

What are we doing?

Joseph Crooms (04:31)

Yeah, do you do your do you manage all the properties that you’re commercial and real estate? do you have a division that does that as well?

Nik Boone (04:38)

Yeah, mostly residential. So tons of single family homes, a lot of apartments, forty units, eighty units, stuff like that. but a lot of single family homes. Like I said, we have nine hundred owners, like eight sixty, so they own just under two thousand. So really our average investor is one and a half, two units, two and a half units, something like that.

Joseph Crooms (04:59)

And what does that translate in a month or on monthly basis on volume or revenue?

Nik Boone (05:05)

Just the property management, we get a hundred and fifty thousand a month in management fees, plus we have leasing fees, application fees, we have sales, and then we have a whole arm of construction and handyman, because we’re licensed contractor as well. So that’s a whole separate arm that makes just as much, if not more, than the property management itself.

Joseph Crooms (05:26)

Thanks for sharing that, Nik. So I see that you have a complex business. tell me about the construction division. How long have you had that? And what do you do? Is it mostly renovation or what?

Nik Boone (05:38)

Yeah, so we that department of that that’s part of the thirty-four as well. So they I think we have twelve or fifteen over there. that’s maintenance technicians, schedulers, quoters, supervisors. we have trucks and trailers and snakes for toilets and you name it, we have it. but that’s a big branch too. We get on tenant occupied properties, we get about eight thousand work orders a year. And on tenant moveouts we get

roughly six hundred to seven hundred per year that needs some renovation, paint, flooring, fixes, stuff like that. So that department very, very busy.

Joseph Crooms (06:09)

Let’s talk about the real estate and now because you said you have some personal property as well. what are your what do you what is your niche there? Is your flip are you flipping homes or you’re finding investors for new homes or or a combination of all?

Nik Boone (06:20)

Combination of all. I I get the I get the cream of the crop. I get to know who’s selling first. when somebody goes to sell who they’re gonna tell first, their property manager. Sure. And we offer that to sell it on the market. We offer them a cash offer. so it really just depends on what they want to do. If they want a quick sale and they want cash and they know they’re selling it, at a reduced rate to just get it sold and done, we’ll give them an offer. If they say, No, I don’t

I want maximum, get me on the market rate. We’ll do that too. So really just depends on, where each person’s at and we kinda take it from there. But I mean, that’s a whole that that’s a lead generation all in and of itself.

Joseph Crooms (06:56)

first of all for people who may not be familiar with your world and and this is the I think you’ll understand this question. How do how would you describe your business in totality and in one or two sentences?

Nik Boone (07:09)

Man. Tough. I think that we are very large for the area that we’re in because of how tough it is to do what we do.

I think that we are really a strategic partner for our clients to maximize profits and and asset value while also staying in compliance with California laws for landlords, which is a it’s an unquantifiable value that we give to landlords.

What I think that was four sentences.

Joseph Crooms (07:39)

But

that’s okay. It was thoroughly. you talk about over in the East Coast we have similar problems, especially in the big cities. How do you help?

relationships with landlord tenants.

Nik Boone (08:44)

I mean, we we try to be really fair. So, when you sell houses as like a traditional realtor, there’s a saying that you learn right when you get in, and it’s buyers are liars and sellers are worse. In the property management world, it’s tenants are liars and owners are worse. So we try to be the really fair bridge between owners and tenants because everybody’s like I would never own a rental in California. Tenants are crazy.

Landlords that we have have done crazier things. Just they do it less frequently, but when they do something, it’s like, you can’t do that. Whereas tenants are, have the habitual like they’re laid or they’re, they have pets and they should stuff like that. That’s that’s easy one of the mill stuff. But I’ve had owners walk into properties while tenants are having dinner with their family and just walk in unannounced. Wow.

They think that they it’s their property and they have the right to do that. I’ve had owners filming tenants without their permission. I I mean wild stuff.

Joseph Crooms (09:37)

That is wild, Nik. Nik, how many of your tenants have you helped become owners, if any?

Nik Boone (09:43)

We do offer that. that’s nobody’s ever brought that up. so we offer that to all tenants that we have. And the way that we do that is kind of unique. If they are buying the property that they live in, they can use the deposit that they gave us as their down payment for the house. So if they move in with a twenty five hundred dollar deposit, I don’t need to walk through it again and deduct anything from the deposit because they’re gonna own the home.

So that twenty five hundred dollars gets to be used as a down payment. And then obviously we can help with commissions and and get them into home ownership. We’ve done that a handful of times, not not as often as I’d like to, but the tenants that do it have one bought the property that they reside in as a tenant and they own that one, or they’ve moved out and then bought a new property that they now own and have home ownership for. So really cool stories. We’ve we have some that

have been really fun and really cool and they’ve just been over the moon thankful. Those are really cool stories. I love those. And I never get to talk about that. That’s I appreciate you bringing that up.

Joseph Crooms (10:42)

Talk about one of them. Tell me, about one of them.

Nik Boone (10:44)

we had one home. This was like ten years ago. I’m still friends with these the family. The husband and wife were great. They rented it for like ten years before we even had the management. We had it for a few years. They were interested in buying. We sent them to our lender. They got pre qualified with a down payment assistance and we used their deposit. I ended up helping with on my commission to to help get them to own the home too. The owner really was helpful in like

taking care of some repairs and helping with closing costs. All of the parties really came together and let them own the home that they’d lived in for like 15, 20 years. And so it was a really like, I mean, they were they cried and they were over the moon and their kids got to to stay living there. And that was the home their kids grew up in. So it was that was one that was like, and that was, 10, 12 years ago. And that one is really, really cool for us.

Joseph Crooms (11:33)

thanks for sharing that Nik. Nik, so let’s stay on the subject. What’s been the key to keeping your machine running smoothly?

Nik Boone (11:40)

I would say culture for our office. we’re pretty big on culture, so I have a mint, sorry, I have a cough here in California. I for my employees, the way I do things is, I I do employees first, client second, profit third. So I take care of my employees and I have their back no matter what. If they do something egregious or just totally like illegal or wrong, obviously not, but

For the most part, like they know that I have their back at all times. I keep a fully stocked fridge for them. They get their birthdays off every year. We do PTO, health insurance, 401k for a small business here in California. It’s it’s very expensive to do all that. But we do all that. And the people that come and do great work here love working here. We promote quickly. We have a lot of room for upward growth. we’re only 12 years old, so I tell all my people all the time we’re at just under 2,000 units.

And I say, I don’t want to be at just under two thousand units in a year. So they know the trajectory is up, they know there’s room to grow, to make more money, to get more sales, like all of that is there with them too. So

Joseph Crooms (12:39)

Nik, let me ask you this. You explained your culture. What’s been the buy-in from your employees?

Nik Boone (12:44)

They love it. I have them trying to take care of the company so much sometimes that I will have to say, Hey, let’s give a discount or let’s let’s do this for the client or hey, let’s fold a little bit and I know that you’re looking out for the company’s best interest, but we also have to, help some of these people out too because you hear investor and you think, they’re a millionaire. Some of the people we work with bought a house.

moved into a new house and use that one as a rental. They’re not cash flowing hundreds of thousands a month. They’re struggling to get two mortgages paid and, so we gotta take that into consideration a lot of times too. And so, yeah, I mean the the employees, like they breathe and live and die Ascend.

Joseph Crooms (14:04)

Nik, what is what is your title? Is it CEO or business manager? What is your title there?

Nik Boone (14:09)

It changes on how cool I wanna be.

Joseph Crooms (14:12)

huh.

Nik Boone (14:12)

I love it. CEO is like my go to broker, owner, one of those.

Joseph Crooms (14:17)

Okay. So okay, so we got all the positive stuff out front. Let’s get something in the middle. So

Nik Boone (14:22)

There’s no negatives. Being being a property manager is so easy. I wish there was a negative.

Joseph Crooms (14:26)

We

we can go back we can go back in the past. Something that may have happened early. So every operator know has the moment when things got real. Maybe a deal that was sideways, that they had to pivot. You mind sharing one of those to us with us?

Nik Boone (14:39)

yeah, I mean, really early on, I mean, there were two really big moments. One was COVID. Obviously, we we were not immune to COVID. in California, the tenants didn’t have to pay rent, which for a property manager is how we make money. They weren’t allowing people inside the house, which for our construction department is how we make money. And houses weren’t selling, which is also how we make money. So we were not making money.

but we vowed to to keep all the employees through COVID, kind of we just said, Hey, we’re gonna take the brunt of this, we’re gonna cover all the payrolls and we had it saved enough that we could do all of that for like six months. And thankfully when it came back, it came ripping back. And so we were in a good position when we got to the other side. But that was one that was brutal. another one is, when the business was super young, I had

opened it with the intention of being like a brokerage, like a Coldwell Banker or a Watson, having realtors under me and doing all this. And then one one morning all I had like half a dozen realtors. They all left at the same time, went to the same place and kind of just left me with this fat lease payment. Cause I had this nice office and I was like twenty two. And so was like, I’m screwed. I ended up selling a I had a street bike. I sold that to pay for the lease and rent for my house. And I mean there were there were several times where my wife and I had a conversation

hey, do we need to bring employees to our garage and have computers there? And that’s where we work out of for, a year or two. Thankfully we didn’t have to, but it was it was tough times.

Joseph Crooms (15:57)

Yeah, that’s the kind of stuff that people don’t normally talk about. it separates for those who are dabbling from those that are staying in the game long term. Thank you for sharing that for our listening audience. let me ask you this. What’s your focus on s on solving or scaling next or even building from whatever may already be? Anyway, what’s your next real goal?

Nik Boone (16:18)

really just being more efficient. when you get 34 people, it’s not the same little company that I started. And so there’s processes I don’t even know how to do anymore, which is, anxiety ridden in and of itself. But there the staff members are better at their job than I am at this point. And so I really try to stay out of my own way and let them do their thing, but then also increase efficiencies with everybody talking. so on a deal.

something we do is if a property needs repairs, we’ll we can move the tenant out, fix the property up, get the property on the market, get it sold, and then bill escrow for all the repairs. So sometimes I mean a a remodel could be 50 grand. So we’re sitting on 50 grand worth of debt for, however long the property sells to help the clients out. So getting the construction side to talk to the sales side to talk to the property management side.

Because on one property there’s a tenant, there’s repairs, there’s offers, there’s inspections, there’s so much with one small deal and everybody needs to be on the same page and and so that’s been really tricky. Making those more efficient, I think, helps us grow more too.

Joseph Crooms (17:20)

Thanks for sharing that. now, now, what’s been the key to building relationships, especially with three different industries in your business? your investment side, the managed property management side, and the construction side. What’s been the biggest difference to you in building network relationships and growing your network?

Nik Boone (17:41)

we’re at we’re at a point now where I get to really focus on the community, giving back, networking, stuff like that. So, I’m not going to BNI groups and y trying to get pitches and having people use me. we’re doing more community outreach and, how can we help the next generation get into home ownership or get into a rental or move out on their own? Or how do they get their credit up or

things like that. We also we partner with certain organizations where, we’ll have a an elderly person that owns a home. They’ve owned it for forty years free and clear, but they have no money for repairs because they’re on a fixed income. So we’ll partner with them and and spend a day going out to their properties and just making repairs for them. Cause even though they own the home free and clear, they don’t have money to do repairs. And so they’re living in, fairly dilapidated properties.

‘Cause can’t afford to fix they can’t afford to move. so we we do a lot of that stuff to kinda help our our county and our city.

Joseph Crooms (18:35)

Man, Nik, that’s that that’s awesome work, man, that you’re doing. I I really feel that your sincerity comes through. and thank you so much. So we covered a lot. wish we had more time. Before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out to you, especially in your area, connect with you, may collaborate, learn more of what you’re doing. What’s the best way to reach out to you, Nik?

Nik Boone (18:55)

Usually email. So just nikboone@gmail.com you can send an email to there and I’m pretty responsive. I’ve helped people in Oklahoma, Tennessee, I’ve had on different podcasts I’ve done, I had people reach out and just pick my brain. Happy to help anybody coming up or that has issues or problems or just wants somebody to chat about. Cause when you’re in this world, especially at scale, it’s tough to talk to other people that aren’t at scale and have the same issues.

Because if you’re, you’re a smaller investor, you’re just starting out, your your issue is I need more deals. For somebody that doesn’t necessarily need more deals, they have a totally separate set of issues that you don’t want to complain to somebody about, but they’re issues. So yeah, happy to help.

Joseph Crooms (19:36)

Thank you, Nik. Nik, is there anything else that you want to say? Cause I I really love what you’re saying. I’ll give you the next thirty seconds to say anything that you would like to say to our listening audience.

Nik Boone (19:46)

think I’ve said most of it. I’m here to help. And so if somebody’s in the sales world, the property management world, the construction world, flipping, where we’re with wholesalers. I mean, we haven’t we went through everything pretty quickly, but with our business there’s so much that we do. And so if there’s an issue, I probably have gone through it and have a solution or at least can be a a listening ear.

Joseph Crooms (20:06)

Thanks, Nik. Thank you so very much. Perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story, your perspective, and and your mission. I believe it’s a mission within you, Nik. So I’ll put it that way. We need more people who are doing it the right way. Thanks again for being here, Nik. Of course. And yep, and for for those of you tuning in, I know you got value from this discussion that I had with Nik today. So remember

his name is Nik Boone Contact him. He showed you how. Make sure you subscribe to our channel. We got more conversations coming from operators just like Nik Boone, who are out there building real businesses, helping real community, helping people move to the next level. So we’ll see you at the next episode. Nik, tell everybody box before I get my clothes feel.

Nik Boone (20:51)

See you guys.

Joseph Crooms (20:52)

All right, he said peace. And we’ll see you also at our next episode of Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast.

Peace, guys.