In this instructional video, Christian Osgood of Multifamily Strategy walks new property owners through the essential actions to take during the first 30 days after closing on a rental building. He begins with day‑one tasks: posting an introductory tenant letter, a maintenance request form, and a tenant contact sheet on each unit’s door, and ensuring all utilities are transferred to the new owner’s name. He stresses immediate organization of closing documents—both physical and cloud‑based—such as the HUD settlement statement, operating agreement, banking information, and EIN letter. Osgood recommends dedicating the closing day to these administrative steps. The video then shifts to the first week, emphasizing rapid deployment of any pre‑approved value‑add projects, addressing maintenance requests promptly, and using visible repairs to build tenant goodwill before implementing rent increases. He advises a strategic, cash‑flow‑aware approach to rent bumps, suggesting staggered increases if reserves are limited, or a full‑building increase if cash flow permits. Finally, Osgood outlines automation goals: moving all tenants to online payment portals, incentivizing adoption with small gift‑card rewards, and establishing consistent communication to reduce turnover and improve collections. Throughout, he frames these actions as the foundation for a landlord’s reputation, operational efficiency, and long‑term profitability.
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We've bought hundreds of rental properties starting with no money, millions and millions of dollars of real estate, and we've never talked about the first things that you do once you close. We talk a lot about how to buy them, how to find them, how to finance them. I've never gone through what do you do in the first 30 days. So we're going to do a quick run through here on this video. If you just closed on a property, congratulations. If you're wondering what happens and you're currently looking for your first property, follow along, like, subscribe. We talk about how to buy these, find them, fund them all the time here. This is what you do as soon as you close. Property. So number 1, let's talk about some day 1 things, practical application. You've closed, you got the final closing number. So it's recorded in your county. It is recognized, hey, you are now the new owner. Day 1, any of your new tenants need to get a notice posted that gives them contact info for you or your new manager, where to pay rent, any pertinent details that they need. They need that form. So a basic intro letter that says, hello, this property has changed hands. This is where you're going to pay. Who you're going to make checks out to, where you're going to pay online. All of those details need to be in your intro letter. Second document you're going to put on the door, you're going to put a maintenance request list. This is going to play into our next few weeks, but you want to ask people, are there any line items that you need repaired? Now, even if you ask this during due diligence or any part of, through any part of your deal, you're going to find that this question is going to almost invariably bring up a bunch of little things. A stove is busted, a burner needs to be replaced. There's been a leak that's been going on for 2 years that they forgot to mention. You need to know, one, the maintenance items that you're going to be fighting, but two, you want to be able to address these in the first month. It's going to massively help, especially if you're doing rent increases or anything else with the property to stabilize. You're going to need to know this. So you're going to put a rental maintenance request form. So basically just, here is how you contact us. Please let us know if there's any maintenance issues that we can work on for you. Third, and very, very important, you want to put a tenant contact sheet there. You want to know everyone who's living in the unit, their names, their phone numbers, the best email to contact them at. Even when you bought the property and you do due diligence, you may not have either the accurate information for them, or there may be more people living in your building— this is very common— than are actually on the leases. If you do not already have contact for every single person, you need to request that up front. On almost every acquisition I've done, I found new names, a better email to reach someone,. But if you have clear communication with your tenants, these are all critical. These are day one tasks. So 3 things to post: an intro letter for who you are, where to pay, who to make checks out to, who to send maintenance requests to. You want to actually put a maintenance request form on the door. So anything that they have, they can either mail it to you or reach out through their online portal. And 3, a tenant contact form. Take these 3 forms, post all on the door, give them a knock if they happen to be available. It's nice to actually get to meet your tenants. You can introduce yourself as the owner or as the manager. It doesn't really matter. It depends on how you're running your property. But this is something that you or your team needs to do on day one. In addition, day one, all utilities, city water, electric, gas, internet, any systems that have third-party billings that you are paying for, for your building or your tenants are paying for, you need to make sure that you have contacted those entities. Let them know that you are the new owner. Even if you have tenants paying utilities. So say they're paying water, sewer, gas, I'm still going to reach out and let the city know I am the new owner. If we have a move out, I need these utilities to revert back to me. And here is the account that we're going to revert to. That way, if someone moves out, we don't end up in the awkward position where we hire contractors to come in and turn the unit and they have no power because the power got shut off. This happens to me more than I'd like to admit, which is why this is part of your day one checklist. You need to make sure that all utilities are swapped. Third, your documentation. And we're on day one, we haven't gone through the whole month yet. On day one, you're going to get your final settlement statement signed. That is called the HUD. But your— all your closing papers, you want to put that in a file. Both physical and online, in either Dropbox, Google Drive, but somewhere online where it lives in the cloud. You're going to want to save that along with your operating agreement, along with your banking information, along with your EIN letter. You need to have all these things saved when you get to tax time, or if you have a partnership buy-in or buy-out or any real material change to your entity, you're going to need those docs, especially when you get to CPA time. So we're going to put those all in a file the day we close. We're not going to delay. We're not going to celebrate and go, oh yeah, I'm going to get to it next week. You won't. Just do all the things. Recommendation. Any day that you have a close, even if it's on a small building, I recommend taking that day off work. If you have a 9 to 5, dedicate your day towards— this is closing day. We're going to make sure notice posting goes well. We're going to make sure we have a smooth transition. We're going to make sure we make all of our necessary phone calls. And we're going to go ahead and make sure that all the documentation from the transaction is correctly documented, both in the cloud and in physical hard copy. If you do all of these things, I promise you, you'll be a million times better as a landlord. Now, Let's talk about the things that we do next. If you have a value-add project, so say your rent increases are part of your strategy, or maintenance and contracts are part of your strategy, you want to get the ball rolling immediately. Every day lost is money lost. You have a mission to make your property— first purchase it. So we've, we've done the build phase. Now we're going to stabilize and then optimize. And eventually one day I recommend you roll off all the debt, but we're not even close to that yet. Right now we're on stabilize. Anything that needs to be done needs to be worked on immediately. So in your first week, Contractors are moving through the buildings. Quotes that you already got before you closed are being finalized and work is getting scheduled to be done if it's not already. You're going through and you're looking through your tenant's maintenance request. Here's what you do. If you want to increase rent, do not make that the absolute first thing you do. You do it very quickly. But if rent bumps are part of your project, it is a give and take. You are going to get all those maintenance requests done for the things that are simple enough to do. I had a tenant who hadn't had a toilet seat for 2 years. I'm not kidding. Now, a normal person would just go out and buy them. They're like, my landlord's not giving me a toilet seat. It was crazy. I'm like, so you just haven't had one? They're like, yep, I haven't had one. They got a new toilet seat. We changed, I think on the 38-plex, I think we changed out 6 stoves and a handful of fridges. We want all of our tenants to know that we care. And I do want them to physically see all the fridges and all the stoves and all the contractors show up around the same time on the same day. So all of a sudden there's trucks coming in, they're watching all these different appliances come off the trucks, go into units. What it tells your tenants is, one, you care. Two, the quality of life is going up there. Three, if they have a request, you're going to respond because you've already got them communication things. What's going to happen next? You're going to get a second wave of maintenance requests. This happens almost every time. The rest of your tenants see, oh, wait a second, ownership actually responds. I actually do have some issues. They bring them up. Once you get through that first two waves, and we're talking basic stuff, fix a burner, replace a toilet seat, change a light fixture, basic stuff, leaky sink, any of those basic handyman items, we're knocking all of them out. And then when a rent bump comes into place, instead of most of your tenants freaking out, what I have found is a majority of them go, okay, I am living in a nicer place. My money is going towards repairing the property. And it really does. Cut turnover down a ton. So that's why that maintenance checklist is so important. You want to get on that in your first month. Any of your other repairs, say if you had larger projects, you want to make sure those are underway because time kills deals. Get all those projects going. Make sure your paperwork is tight. Your tenants have been communicated with at the very end of that month. If you're doing imminent rent bumps, that is when you post that after you've done your maintenance pieces. You may, may be advisable to wait till day 60 to do that. Depends on your project. General rule, if you're trying to do rent increases, don't rock the boat unless you can afford to be wet. If you are going to do rent increases on everyone, you may have higher turnover and have negative cash flow. I've seen this happen before. You may lose a lot of income to turn the project faster. It is almost always worth it unless you cannot float the negative, which case, if you don't have the reserves for that or the income to backstop it, you're going to do it in segments where you're going to do rent increases on maybe a quarter of your building and then the next month, quarter, next month, quarter to cut down on overall turnover. Try to keep it occupied, keep occupancy up while you work on all your projects. It very much depends on your reserves and cash on hand. If you're like me starting with no money, you may need to stagger your rent increases. If you can afford to do it all at once, I recommend ripping that bandaid right off and starting your project. You will make more money more quickly just because of general velocity. If you can get your teams in there, you're good to go. As far as closing goes, those are the main things for day of close and your first 30 days. A lot of it is setting the tone for how you're going to be as an owner. Do you care about the new tenants? There's a maximum amount of uncertainty. You are trying to add certainty to them. Those notices that you post show, okay, they're on it. I have these forms. We have a little back and forth. We have communication handled. It's also going to make it astronomically easier for them to get into automated systems. I'm going to end on this with automations. To the extent that it is humanly possible, you want all of your tenants paying online. Now, most states, you can't mandate that. You usually have to accept other types of payment. Money orders, check. You do not have to accept cash, by the way. You can just say we're not a cash company, but you would have to accept a money order or check or online payment. There's multiple ways to pay. I want to incentivize everyone to go online. One of the first things I'm doing in that intro letter is here's how you pay and set up your online portal. Then about a week in, I send an online portal, a second online portal request to every single tenant with the contact information that they gave me. I send the request. At week 3, Anyone who is not already signed up for the online payments, I reach out and I post, hey, if you have already done this, thank you. Here is a $10 Starbucks gift card. Everyone else, if you would like a $10 Starbucks gift card, please opt in to online payments. What I found is a bunch of people who went, hey, I just don't have the technology for this. I can't figure this out. Magically, for a $10 gift card, they figured out it's going to make your accounting easier. It's going to make your collections better. They can put things on autopay. Highly recommend that you try to get everyone onto that. That is a first 30 days project. After your automations and your notice postings and your maintenance requests, that is pretty much all you're focused on in the first 30 days. I hope this was helpful. We've never shared this on this channel. I realized that was a bit of an oversight. We talk so much about getting the deals that we haven't really talked about what do you do once you have them. If you guys have questions about this, additional things you want clarity on, post below in the comments. Otherwise, like, subscribe, share this with a friend. It really helps me get this channel out to more people. We appreciate you. This is Christian Osgood with Multifamily Strategy. I will see you on the next episode.
