Companies to Watch: Arthur Kowitz Realty

Why eye it: The success of Arthur Kowitz Realty suggests that real estate investors appreciate a company that focuses specifically on their needs, a company that doesn’t treat their relatively small segment of the market as a sideline or peripheral business.

By focusing on the two sides of investment activities—acquisition and management—broker-owner Arthur Kowitz provides investor insight other practitioners can’t.

“I'm in the trenches,” he says. “When I look at a property for an investor, I see it with the eyes of someone who's going to have to manage it—to live with it—after closing. I inspect to see how the lighting will have to be redone to accommodate certain tenants or whether the traffic patterns work for the type of business tenants that might move in.”

Everything Kowitz does is geared to total efficiency. An investor need deal with only this one company to find and purchase an investment property (Kowitz handles all the buyer's agent duties); find tenants (part of Kowitz's management division); manage the property (Kowitz also has a full-time maintenance staff); and sell it when the investor wants out (through top producer Ted Cox).

“We provide everything an investor requires and do it right,” Kowitz says, “because that’s all we do.”

The result: Since opening in 1990, the company has grown by 15 percent to 20 percent every year—all without a stitch of advertising, because Kowitz “didn’t want to grow faster than I could handle.”

Currently, the team of two (Kowitz and Cox) brings in revenues of roughly $55,000 per month (not including rents collected and passed on to the owners of the properties Kowitz manages). In April the fruit of his ingenuity took the form of a new suite of offices for his company, in its own 15,000-square-foot building, complete with a new computer network, phone system, and furnishings.

What’s next: Kowitz says he's ready to loosen the reins of growth and see what happens; he may even start advertising his services.

“We've designed our new offices with growth in mind, with rooms for new associates and assistants,” he says. “There's a real need in the marketplace for investment and management specialists.”

Kowitz's advice for other brokers: If you're going to get into the real estate investment business, “do it all the way, or don’t do it at all.”

That means having salespeople dedicated to working solely with investors; having maintenance people, if not on staff, at least obliged to give your calls priority; and giving the investment division its own marketing material that distinguishes it from the rest of the company.

“Investors want to know they’re not just a sideline.”