How To Efficiently Manage Multiple Real Estate Projects

The Pharaohs built the Pyramids around the year 2500 B.C.E and archaeological studies reveal that it took around 20 years for the entire project to finish. How did such a mammoth project in a primitive setup come to fruition? That is a riddle that humanity has been trying to solve since ages.

Fast forward to today where we inhabit a world rapidly transforming through constant innovation. The expansion of technological infrastructure and automation across industries has reshaped how the modern workforce operates.

From the Pharaohs to the modern entrepreneur, we’ve come a long way when it comes to managing projects. However, despite the tremendous changes the end goal remains the same, creating an efficient workflow and preventing setbacks that might potentially hamper growth.

Running a real estate project successfully

Running successful real estate projects is a mix between having the right mindset, knowledge, and the capability to handle multiple processes simultaneously.

As a budding real estate sponsor, the most important aspect of running successful real estate projects is attracting capital.

Without financing, projects will not get actualized no matter how prepared you are. Therefore, generating interest as well as confidence among potential investors is key to acquiring the right financing for the success of your projects.

Managing projects whether it’s IT, the financial sector, or even real estate involves planning and a certain degree of cross-collaboration between multiple departments.

As a real estate sponsor, you have to manage multiple stakeholders which can be daunting. Keeping track of investors, choosing the right allocation strategy, managing all communications with investors and leads and providing project updates is no easy task.

For a very long time, this entire process was done manually which led developers to waste a lot of time that they could’ve been spending on actualizing deals. For new sponsors, streamlining this process gets even more difficult due to lack of resources and the right set of tools.

As a budding sponsor, managing your real estate projects requires effective time management as well as a deep understanding of all the different pieces that are present in the process.

With the rise of automation in many aspects of project management across industries, the real estate industry is not too far behind. If you are someone who plans to manage multiple investors across different real estate projects, then enabling technology to streamline all the processes can significantly reduce your workload.

Before we delve into the possible solutions, let’s first understand the entire process. As a sponsor, in order to take care of your investors and their needs, you will have to figure out the right approach to tackle these key areas:

Project Tracking

If you are an individual sponsor or if you have capital partners or co-sponsors, your first and foremost task is to establish a robust project tracking system. This involves keeping up-to-date with every aspect of the real estate projects that are a part of your business.

If you are developing properties from the ground up then you need to be able to showcase the progress for each and every property to your investors.

These are some of the questions that investors could pose.

• What phase of the development is the property undergoing right now?
• What kind of renovations or redevelopments are required or planned for the property? Are there any potential threats to such requirements?
• What kind of permits or approvals are required from official authorities or relevant parties for the project?

Having a tool to facilitate project tracking for your investors so that they can be a part of the entire process helps bolster their trust and confidence in you.

Additionally, your investors need to have access to information about the property regarding its location, surrounding neighbourhood, statistics on development, crime rate, income level of the area.

All this information about a project needs to be presented clearly to ensure that investors are entering a transparent and trustworthy investment environment.

Report Generation

As a sponsor, your next task involves generating reports that focus on the financial aspects of the project. Investors would want to receive information regarding their investments in the projects they are a part of.

Income statements and balance sheets that depict profit and loss statements for a property form the crux of the most important financial statements that are required to be shared with your investors.

Creating a streamlined process for generating and sharing such reports becomes crucial. As a sponsor, you need to be effective when it comes to meeting the expectations of your investors.

Effective Communication

Good communication skills are key to success in life, work, and relationships. This holds true even for your relationship with your investors. Your ability to manage multiple stakeholders and making sure everybody is on the same page when it comes to the projects can significantly grow your business.

Your communication with your investors should move beyond disclosure obligations. No one’s alien to the fact that real estate has a communication problem. The problem with modern day real estate investment businesses is that they see investor relations in B2C or B2B formats. What most sponsors forget that business, in all its essence, is a Human to Human relationship.

Being able to forge strong investor relations hinges a lot on how comfortable they feel with you as their partner in a project. And effective communication is a crucial step towards building that comfort level.

Prompt messaging through emails, direct messaging, and even calls are some of the best ways to showcase your attentiveness towards your investors. As a sponsor, your goal should be to make your investors feel involved in the projects they are a part of.

One of the biggest mistakes sponsors make is that once they raise the amount of capital they are looking for, they pay less attention to regular communication with their investors. While bombarding them with emails and messages is not the answer, going silent once you’ve reached your fundraising goals is not the way to go either.

One way to build an effective communication process is to have regular follow-ups with your investors where you can discuss key performance metrics as well as any major changes that are being considered for the project.

Communicating regularly will not only strengthen your relationship with your investors, but it can also function as a means to discuss strategy in terms of how the project is being run. The level of comfort you and your investors have when it comes to bouncing ideas off each other can go a long way in solidifying your relationships.

SaaS as a solution

The modern-day real estate developer has a plethora of options to choose from when it comes to picking the right investor management tool. However, a lot of these tools either do not offer a comprehensive solution or are so ridiculously priced that your revenue starts taking a hit without any long-term solution in sight.

Before, jumping into a subscription and tying yourself with such a tool, it is therefore extremely important to understand your business requirements and how a particular investor management software is helping you scale your business. Considering these key areas is really important:

• Project Tracking: Is the tool able to showcase and track your projects? Does the tool allow you to showcase multiple projects in one place and help track potential leads or interested parties for your projects?
• Reporting And Documentation Sharing: Are you able to report important proceedings about the project to your investors? How intuitive is document management within the tool? Does it allow you to easily share relevant documents with your partners and investors?
• Communication: Can you easily communicate with your investors? Does the tool allow communication beyond traditional routes and offer greater personalization? Can you provide real time updates for active as well as potential investors?
• Networking: Does the tool allow you to network efficiently with active and passive investors? Does it have a direct messaging system in place? Does it allow users to create a profile and share their background? Does it have social media integrations?
• Integrations: Does the tool integrate with common programs like Google Drive or even other file sharing networks? Does it offer seamless syncing with third party applications that you already use?

If you handle a sizeable volume of investors, it becomes crucial to invest in a software that helps you manage them efficiently and allow you to create a disciplined approach to creating a successful real estate project management strategy.

Understanding the capabilities of a tool by measuring its offerings based on these questions will help you land on the best application for your investor management process.

What tools do you currently use to achieve your targets?