EP #240: Eyal Mehaber with Coastline Management Group
May 06, 2024
Jeremy Wolf
Discover the transformative power behind turning dilapidated apartments into dream homes with Eyal Mehaber of Coastline Management Group. In our enlightening conversation, we peel back the layers of real estate investment and property management, revealing how a commitment to community revitalization can breathe new life into neighborhoods across Florida. Eyal provides a fascinating look at the acquisition process, the pivotal role brokers play, and the strategies implemented to foster a positive relationship between landlords and tenants, while I open up about the day-to-day trials faced by my property management company, offering listeners a raw glimpse into the world of maintaining properties and navigating tenant dynamics.
Strap in for a candid exploration of the hurdles that come with property management, including the intricacies of condo board politics and the collective decision-making that affects every owner. I'll share my personal experiences dealing with maintenance dilemmas and the unexpected twists the COVID-19 pandemic introduced, such as tenants' inability to pay rent. Learn about force majeure, the legal concept that came to the forefront during the crisis, and how some property owners sought forbearance from lenders as a lifeline. This episode isn't just a look into real estate management; it's a treasure trove of innovative solutions for the myriad challenges that landlords and investors face.
Discover the transformative power behind turning dilapidated apartments into dream homes with Eyal Mehaber of Coastline Management Group. In our enlightening conversation, we peel back the layers of real estate investment and property management, revealing how a commitment to community revitalization can breathe new life into neighborhoods across Florida. Eyal provides a fascinating look at the acquisition process, the pivotal role brokers play, and the strategies implemented to foster a positive relationship between landlords and tenants, while I open up about the day-to-day trials faced by my property management company, offering listeners a raw glimpse into the world of maintaining properties and navigating tenant dynamics.
Strap in for a candid exploration of the hurdles that come with property management, including the intricacies of condo board politics and the collective decision-making that affects every owner. I'll share my personal experiences dealing with maintenance dilemmas and the unexpected twists the COVID-19 pandemic introduced, such as tenants' inability to pay rent. Learn about force majeure, the legal concept that came to the forefront during the crisis, and how some property owners sought forbearance from lenders as a lifeline. This episode isn't just a look into real estate management; it's a treasure trove of innovative solutions for the myriad challenges that landlords and investors face.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, jeremy Wolf. Hello, hello, friends, family universe. Welcome back to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, jeremy Wolf, and today I am joined by I'm going to get this right. It's Eyal Mahaber. Yes, yes, yes, and Eyal joins us from Coastline Management Group, and I'm actually excited to get into this. I believe Coastline Management Group is a property management group. I've yet to have a property management company on the podcast and I'm currently going through it with my property management company where I live, so I'm interested to get some behind the scenes. Look at what's going on here. So, eyal, thanks for joining us today. Brother, thank you, yeah, yeah, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in to learn more about our great community and the businesses that serve us. So, Eyal, without further ado, tell everyone a little bit about what you guys do over at Coastline Management Group.
Speaker 2:
So what we do? We buy our own properties, our own portfolio. Only apartment building, only apartments, yes, yes. And we go into a community that a landlord may have neglected the property. If I may and did not, I don't want to say doesn't care about the tenant, but the property ran down, it ran down and it looks like it needs a major rehab, a value add. That's our niche. We go in, we close the property, we do cover pill. You know location, location, location, property management. We say cover pill, cover pill, cover pill. And of course we take care of the inside of the unit. For example, we do new kitchens, new bathrooms, new cabinet, new flooring. We give a feeling of a condo living, if I may, condo living, correct for the potential tenant. They love it. They just love it because they have good amenities. They come into beautiful, fresh, newly apartment. It's not new but the renovation.
Speaker 1:
After you get in there it's as good as new right it is.
Speaker 2:
It's really beautiful and we just we're able to make them. We wanna give the tenant a feeling of we care about you, someone cares about you. Landlords sometimes have a bad name. We don't like that.
Speaker 1:
We want to change that. So, yael, are you going in there? Is this a per-unit basis? Are you going in there and buying individual apartments, or are you buying the entire apartment complex from someone and managing that, or is it? You do both things?
Speaker 2:
So we like to buy communities 200 plus.
Speaker 1:
Okay, yeah, so you're not going in there and buying individual units?
Speaker 2:
No, we do, If I do that I can do the Kerberpil If I buy a candle, a fraction candle.
Speaker 1:
That's what I thought. I misunderstood you a little bit. So how are you typically finding these properties? Is this something that you're doing specifically here to South Florida, all of Florida, all over the country? How do you locate properties?
Speaker 2:
Right, so it's mostly Florida, anywhere from South Florida to Orlando to Gainesville.
Speaker 1:
Can I ask you too, my alma mater, gainesville, good old Gainesville, yes.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, we're doing a project on that. But people know about us. Broker knows about us. We love to buy off-market deals, but that's wishful thinking. So basically we are in touch with a couple of brokers, a few brokers, top brokers in the Florida area and every time there is something good they'll come in and present to us.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so you're going in there buying these 200 plus unit communities. You go and you give it an entire facelift, renovation. You get people in there. Then, after that, you're now the property management company for that, or do you move on to another project? How does that work?
Speaker 2:
No, so once we do that, we are the property management for that particular property, and once it's stabilized we continue.
Speaker 1:
Yes, yeah. How did you get into this business? I'm assuming that you come from a real estate background.
Speaker 2:
No, we were my wife and I, for that matter brokers Okay, Actually, realtor working for a company. We're going back before 2001, 1997, 1996. And my, my niche back then was cold calling. I would go back every night and call people that time, by the way, there wasn't the do not call list and most of the property, most of the owners, were like mom and pop, not like big companies. Sure, I'm not saying it was easier, it was difficult. We had to go through. You have to make the phone call and get the other party interested in what you have to say to them. So I became a top agent in the company.
Speaker 2:
We sold a lot of property for other people and as a broker, at some point around 2001, 2000, 2002, 2001, we decided that it's time to switch, to become a principal. I love brokers, by the way, don't get me wrong. We need brokers. They are very necessary and I love to pay them commission. By the way, we pay them commission for, let's say, let's say, 300 units, $40 million, $50 million commission. We don't mind paying because they bring in value. We need them. However, at that time I felt like I had a calling to start doing our own property management and by doing that, we had to start buying one property Our own portfolio Make sense yeah, and so this was back you said 2001, 2002.
Speaker 1:
And that was when Coastline was born, or did that happen? Yeah, that same time Interesting. So I wanted to. I was hoping you could clear up some I don't know if they're I don't know if they're misconceptions that I have, but I'm currently going through it, like I said at the top of the show, with my property management company. I've had some challenging experiences with this particular management company in terms of getting things approved. I'm trying to replace the roof and we're having all sorts of issues with communication. And is that something that is standard across the board for this industry or is that specific to, I guess, certain companies? Because I've heard I don't know. This is just my experience in the past dealing with property management companies has been a little bit difficult. Can you speak to that?
Speaker 2:
So yeah, so property management sometimes don't have the best name because you can't satisfy everybody. You do the best you can within reason. For example, let's say someone decided yeah, I want to get new flooring, it will just change last year. You can't, you know, you just don't. You don't just jump to the need because it's first of all, first come, first serve. Because of the priority, like I said emergency walkover, number one, number two if again for the new roof, absolutely. If there is a leak and tenants keep complaining about the roof, it's our responsibility to make sure either to get the roof tight or to replace it. Our job is to get the rent coming in at the beginning of the month, the first five days of the month, and in order for us to do that, I need to make sure my tenants are comfortable, they're happy, they want to continue living there.
Speaker 1:
Make sense. Any work order that needs to be done needs to be done in a timely manner, so I think we might be talking about two things here. So you're talking about as the property management company and they're all tenants renting from, I guess, your entity. Right, I actually own the property I live in and there's-.
Speaker 2:
That's different. It's very different, not to be confused with property management.
Speaker 1:
Okay, yeah Well, since you're somewhat in the space in the sphere, anything you could recommend to me? Again, I've been at this now for many months with the roofing company trying to get approval, and I have one contact at property management company. They keep going back to the board for approval and they keep telling me we need new items and it just nothing happens and I can't agree with anybody.
Speaker 2:
So listen, it's a lot of politics. I myself live in a condo and I don't want to be involved with that, because you can never satisfy that people are never happy. Condo management is extremely, very different than prompt management.
Speaker 1:
I'm in a townhome, but I don't know if that's the same or different than a condo you're in what a townhouse there are a bunch of people that are going to decide your future.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'd love to hear it. Oh, yeah, too much, too much. So okay, going back, you've been doing this for quite some time now Correct, some time now. Is there any instance that you've gone through any experience in this business that you'd like to share with our listeners, something that maybe is a little bit out of the ordinary, or some crazy case that you dealt with, or some hardships?
Speaker 2:
or challenges or something Absolutely. I have quite a few, but I'll share one important one during COVID.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
During COVID, as you know, rents aren't coming in, people are not paying the rent. What do you do? So right? So? So that's what they call a force majeure. When you have a situation like COVID covered, it's not no one caused it, meaning they are. It's not, it's not to me, or to end is not coming, not because of me, because of the environment. Okay, so what you want to do? You want to go? You want to go and talk to lender and see if you can go get a forbearance? Okay, wait, they can defer. You still owe the money every month, but it can be.