Investments in Rental Property Neighborhoods Pay Off

If you watch wealthy people, the most successful one have a definite pattern of giving…  giving of their time and their resources.  The ones I have had the privilege to know, who are the happiest, give from the heart and do for others just because they want to and because they can.

Over the last several years, I have been active in a couple of neighborhood associations where we live and own rental properties.  It isn’t just the wealthy or those with a lot of property to protect who are involved…  sometimes it is just the widow with her own home or a cranky old guy, divorced and living alone with a dog, who want to run off drug dealers… and then, of course, there is the real estate investor who wants to make sure he gets his property rezoned… mostly just average folks who care about the neighborhood.

The point I want to make here is to get involved in some way in the neighborhoods and areas where you own rental property.  It doesn’t have to be lots of hours or huge sums of money, but you should know the people who live there and know who to call if something needs to be done… give back where you are investing.

There is an independent community center, not city funded, in the area where a lot of our rental properties are located.  Last summer they started a new program called Extreme Community Makeover.  It is a program that coordinates Christian college service groups to do cleanup projects in several areas of the city.  They started by asking elderly and disabled residents if they could clean up their yards, paint and plant flowers. It has been amazingly successful with hundreds of volunteers.

During the winter Extreme Community Makeover (ECM) needed storage space.  When they called to see if I had garage space, I said that I had to clean out a garage and then could loan them space for several months.  The community center director said that he would send a team to help clean the garage. What a fun time we had with six college kids on a Saturday cleaning my garage filled with miscellaneous building materials.

When there was graffiti on one of my garages recently, ECM volunteers showed up and cleaned it… and mowed the lawn while they were there!

A semi-retired friend of mine, a quiet artist with limited financial resources, tends and cares for a flower bed in a neighborhood park.  The city didn’t have funds to plant and maintain a flower bed.  The neighborhood association got donations of plants and my friend keeps it beautiful. One person is making a difference.

For the last five years, I have had the opportunity to be a part of a neighborhood cleanup day.  In advance, volunteers solicit donations of t-shirts (usually corporate sponsor can be found, frequently a realty agency), trash bags (a Home Depot donation), food to feed volunteers (coffee from a well-known national chain, breakfast burritos from a local restaurant and lunch is prepared and served by volunteers from a large neighborhood church) and funds are donated to provide entertainment for the party afterward (a band, games for the children and adults.)  We live close to INVESCO Field at Mile High, home of the Denver Broncos, and they always make a donation and send volunteers.  This is an amazing community day where 100 people show up to clean up and fill a huge roll-off with debris and by early afternoon three hundred neighborhood residents have shown up for the party in the park. Volunteers and donations make this happen.

Of course, if you have the resources to make donations… do whatever you can.  And remember to keep good records for your tax records.  Talk to your accountant about a good plan for how much you can donate annually…  I usually plan to give ten percent or more.

Investing of yourself, and your resources, in the areas where you live, invest and work pays off in many ways… your tenants will respect you for your contributions and you will just feel good about what you are doing and who you are.

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Art of Being a Landlord by admin