How McCaw Property Management Scaled Past 1,000 Doors

Kyle McCaw scaled McCaw Property Management in Dallas Fort Worth past 1,000 properties in under 12 years. He tracked every ad dollar to a signed client, reinvested at the 100-door mark instead of living off it, handed leads to business development managers, and organized staff by function rather than doors per manager. Virtual assistants in Mexico now handle much of the desk work.

Key takeaways

• McCaw Property Management's early Google Ads math was $50 per owner lead and at least one client for every three leads, so every $150 of ad spend brought in a client.
• Kyle sees 100 doors as the common ceiling because owners live off that revenue instead of hiring, and he made his first hire at that mark so the work continued while he was out selling.
• He accepted that a new business development manager might close 25% of leads against his own 50%, kept feeding her leads anyway, and her close rate is now significantly higher than when she started.
• McCaw runs more than 1,000 properties with 27 on payroll by organizing staff by function, such as maintenance coordination and applications, instead of adding a property manager per block of doors.
• Four virtual assistants in Mexico, each of whom lived in the US for more than 10 years, handle nearly everything at McCaw that doesn't require a site visit, from owner statements to social media.

The numbers

• $50: Kyle's early Google Ads spend to generate one owner lead.
• $150: Kyle's early ad spend per new management client, at one client for every three leads.
• 100: The door count where Kyle says most managers stall, and where he made his first hire.
• 300 mark, maybe 400: Kyle's estimate of his door count when he hired his first business development manager.
• 50%: The owner close rate Kyle used in his example of handing leads to a new hire.
• 25: The close rate, in percent, Kyle used for a new business development manager in the same example.
• 60 more doors: The growth Kyle needed to afford another business development manager.
• 27: McCaw Property Management's current payroll headcount, including maintenance and contracting staff.
• $400,000: What Kyle paid one outside vendor in a year before bringing that work in-house.
• 2500: Services a year that McCaw's third-party HVAC company performs for it.

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What we cover in the video

• 0:00 Cold open: the client who found him in a closet office. A caller from California finds McCaw Property Management online while Kyle is still working out of a closet office in Texas.
• 0:27 Introducing Kyle McCaw and McCaw Property Management. The host introduces Kyle and McCaw Property Management, which serves the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex and grew past a thousand properties in under 12 years.
• 1:12 From hobby landlord to full-time business after the 2009 crash. Kyle explains how losing his financial services job around 2009 turned managing his own rentals into a business built on recurring revenue.
• 3:00 Why he never limited himself to a 30 minute service radius. Why he took properties in Hurst, Frisco and beyond while other managers limited themselves to a 15 or 30 minute drive.
• 5:09 Standing out by owning rentals and thinking like an investor. How owning rentals gave him a high close rate, taught him where to push back on vendor invoices, and led him to treat tenants as the revenue source.
• 7:10 The first 100 doors: Google Ads math and bought leads. The spreadsheet behind his first 100 doors: $50 per Google Ads lead, one client per three leads, and bought leads on the side.
• 9:31 Websites, SEO and reviews built for out-of-state owners. Why his website needed SEO and content aimed at owners in other states and countries, and how Google reviews built authority.
• 12:49 Scaling hurdles at 100, 300 and 400 doors. The hires that came at 100 doors, in-house maintenance at several hundred, and his first business development manager around 300 to 400.
• 17:49 Departmentalizing staff instead of doors per manager. Why he organizes staff by function instead of hiring a property manager for every 75 or 100 doors.
• 19:52 Hiring Jeff, the COO who changed everything. How a former boss from a consulting project started on handyman work and became the COO who runs much of the business.
• 22:07 27 on payroll and the one-stop investor shop. How 27 people cover property management, in-house maintenance, rehab and roofing crews, and why a vendor doing 2,500 services a year answers his calls first.
• 25:15 His biggest regret: not using virtual assistants sooner. Why he wishes he had hired virtual assistants in Mexico sooner and what his four assistants handle day to day.
• 29:50 Advice for owners under 500 doors: be professional and care. His advice for owners under 500 doors: build a culture of professionalism and care, down to a mailed custom folder after sales calls.
• 33:11 Where to connect with McCaw Property Management. Where to find McCaw Property Management online, on LinkedIn, and on his podcast, How Real Estate Changed My Life.

The detail from this episode I keep replaying is a closet.

Kyle, who runs McCaw Property Management in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, was working out of "a little bitty closet of an office" when a caller from California phoned to say they'd found him online. "They never would have found me if I didn't put forth this uber professional image online," he said. "I was working out of a closet, but they didn't know that."

That caller became a client who did a lot of business with him. So did an Arizona investor who kept buying houses and sending them over.

I've spent 30 years in marketing, almost none of it in property management, so I watch episodes like this one on our channel for what the industry takes for granted. Kyle got past 1,000 properties mostly on arithmetic. He redid the math at 100 doors, again around 300, and again every time he wanted another hire.

How Did McCaw Property Management Win Its First 100 Doors?

McCaw Property Management won its first 100 doors with Google Ads and a spreadsheet. Kyle worked out that every $50 in ad spend produced an owner lead and every three leads produced at least one client, so each new client cost him $150 or less. He then spent his savings against that number.

He built the plan in the recliner in his living room, with a laptop and an Excel spreadsheet, after the 2009 crash cost him his corporate job in financial services. He had kids to feed and mortgages to pay. So he worked backward from his monthly bills to an ad budget, at a time when Google Ads leads were, in his words, "super easy" to get. He bought leads from a lead marketplace too, until its model "really skewed not into my favor after a few years."

At $150 a client, marketing became a purchase. He knew the price before he spent the dollar.

Owning Rentals Closed the Deals

Kyle closed a high share of those leads because he owned rentals himself. He could talk to owners as someone who had paid too much for a water heater and dealt with a bad tenant, and he knew where to push back on a vendor's invoice.

He'd also been on the owner's side of the desk. A third-party manager handling his out-of-state properties "raked me over the coals." So his rule became: "I'm looking at tenants as the ATM. That's where we're getting money from." An owner whose income is protected tends to buy more properties and bring them to you.

Ignoring the 30-Minute Radius

This was the rule I understood least as an outsider. New managers are taught to stay within 15 or 30 minutes of the office. When a manager who only worked Plano and Frisco offered Kyle two Hurst houses from a client's eight, he said he'd take all eight. Local vendors handle maintenance. Nobody needs to drive past the house every week.

Why Should a Property Management Website Target Out-of-State Owners?

A property management website should target out-of-state owners because an owner may live nowhere near the rental. Kyle's point is that sites built for gas stations, tire shops or pest control chase local map searches, while his clients "could be sitting in five states" or another country. His SEO has to reach them there.

Generic web vendors tune everything for the Google map, as if every customer lived down the street. Kyle needed enough content to rank for owners who aren't local, plus a steady stream of Google reviews, because "the more Google reviews I have, the more authority you have." That is the thinking behind our work on SEO for property management companies.

McCaw Property Management added 143 new doors under management in 16 months through its SEO, Google Ads and consulting program with Upkeep Media, with 200+ page 1 rankings and a 102% organic traffic increase. Kyle's explanation is simple. He saw the online presence pay back, kept investing, and went further than some of his competitors did. Our guide to property management websites covers what an owner-facing site needs.

Why Do Property Management Companies Stall at 100 Doors?

Property management companies often stall at 100 doors because the owner is living off the revenue from those 100 doors instead of reinvesting it in staff. Kyle saw 100 as the common cap. His answer was to hire help at that mark so someone handled the work while he was out bringing in accounts.

"They're living off that 100, the revenue off that 100, so they can't afford to invest in other staff," he said. He thinks technology has raised that ceiling since. The trap hasn't moved. When you're out selling, nobody is doing the work.

His sequence, as he described it in the episode:

1. Hire help at around 100 doors, in the office or as a virtual assistant, so maintenance and owner statements get handled while you're out.
2. Build dependable vendors at several hundred doors. For McCaw that meant in-house maintenance staff, which Kyle called "the biggest frustration and the biggest blessing at the same time," because it gave him control over schedules, quality, background checks and workers' comp.
3. Hire a business development manager around 300 or 400 doors to answer leads and sign accounts.
4. Set a door target that pays for the next hire. Kyle's was 60 more doors to afford another business development manager.
5. Keep enough cash flow to absorb a hire that doesn't work out. More units, he said, let you make "more calculated bets."

Our longer guide on how to grow a property management company covers the stages around this plateau.

When Should You Hire a Business Development Manager?

A property management company can hire a business development manager once lead volume outgrows the owner, which for McCaw Property Management was around 300 or 400 doors. Kyle accepted that a new hire might close 25% of leads against his 50%, and kept handing over leads because that close rate improves with time.

A business development manager is the person whose whole job is turning owner leads into signed management agreements. Kyle's first one is still with him, and her close rate is now "significantly higher" than when she started. "She's a rock star," he said.

He has two now. Both work inbound leads only, and both run onboarding: paperwork, rental comps, marketing and ordering photos, until the office staff takes over. Inbound volume keeps them busy enough that outbound prospecting isn't on the list.

A rule of thumb we share on our channel fits here. Hire someone who can do a task at 80% of your capacity, because with 100% of their time on it, they tend to pass you. Kyle's version is about return: a hire is a good bet as long as more than a dollar comes back for every dollar invested.

Should You Assign Doors per Property Manager or Departmentalize?

McCaw Property Management departmentalizes, organizing staff by function, such as maintenance coordination or applications, instead of assigning each property manager a block of doors. Kyle built it that way after years in corporate, consulting and financial firms, where two specialists got more done than two people each trying to do both jobs.

A common model adds a property manager every 75 or 100 doors. Kyle's response: "not necessarily."

Specialists need backup, so he cross-trains a few people to cover the bumps. His COO came the same way: a former boss from a consulting project who started on handyman work, stepped in when the bookkeeper quit, and became what Kyle called the biggest turning point in the business.

How 27 People Cover 1,000-Plus Properties

McCaw has 27 on payroll, and that count includes an in-house maintenance company, a general contracting company that rehabs houses for investor clients, and roofing crews for Dallas Fort Worth hail. The contracting arm started with a line on his P&L. "I paid that punk $400,000 last year," he said. He brought the work in-house and turned an expense into a profit center.

HVAC stays with a third-party company, which now does 2,500 services a year for McCaw. At 30 or 40 houses, an HVAC company would slot him in next Thursday. Now, he said, "they will be at a tenant's house fixing a problem before I get into my office that morning."

How Can Virtual Assistants Help a Property Management Company Scale?

Virtual assistants can handle almost every property management task that doesn't need someone on site. McCaw Property Management has four in Mexico covering owner statements, maintenance coordination, showing schedules, basic phone calls, Facebook and tenant insurance audits. Asked what he'd change about his early years, Kyle said he'd have used virtual assistants sooner.

I expected this section to be about cost. Kyle spent most of it on loyalty.

All four of his assistants lived in the United States for more than 10 years. One grew up in the city next to Kyle's, held a green card, chose to live in Mexico, and has referred business from people he went to school with. Kyle pays them more than they'd earn locally and says that even at a local hire's rate, they'd still be the better deal for the quality of their work. More than once, they've had McCaw shirts and hats made on their own dime.

"Throw those stigmas out the window, because that's not the way it is," he said. The one thing they can't do is put lockboxes on houses. For a company sitting at the 100-door plateau, a virtual assistant may be the most affordable version of that first hire.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to get a property management client through Google Ads?

It depends on the market and the year. McCaw Property Management's early numbers, from around 2009 and 2010, were $50 per lead and at least one client for every three leads, or $150 per client. Kyle said leads were far easier to get then, so run the same math on your own current numbers before assuming his figures still hold.

How many employees does it take to manage 1,000 doors?

There's no standard figure, and McCaw Property Management's is hard to compare. It has 27 on payroll for more than 1,000 properties, but that count includes an in-house maintenance company, a general contracting company and roofing crews. Its staff are organized by function, which Kyle says gets more done with fewer people.

Can a property management company manage homes outside its local area?

Yes, if it has reliable local vendors for maintenance. McCaw Property Management, based in Dallas Fort Worth, takes properties outside DFW regularly and manages homes two or three hours away. Kyle's view is that nobody needs to drive by a rental every week to service it well.

Do property managers need to own rental properties?

It isn't required, but Kyle argues it wins business. Owning rentals gave him a high close rate at McCaw Property Management because he could talk to owners as an investor and knew which vendor charges to push back on. He compares it to hiring a stockbroker who doesn't own any stocks.

Are virtual assistants cheaper than local hires for property managers?

Often, though cost isn't McCaw Property Management's main reason for using them. Kyle pays his four assistants in Mexico more than they'd earn locally. He says that even at a local hire's rate they'd still be the better deal because of their work quality and loyalty.

What should a property manager send after a sales call with an owner?

Something the owner can hold. After a call with McCaw Property Management's business development staff, owners get a follow-up, texts and a customized folder in the mail describing its services. Kyle's point is that care during the sale signals how well the company will manage the property.

Is it worth bringing maintenance in-house?

It can be, once volume supports it. Kyle calls McCaw Property Management's in-house maintenance staff the biggest frustration and the biggest blessing at the same time, because it's harder to run but gives control over scheduling, quality, background checks and workers' comp. He still uses a third-party HVAC company because it's very good at the job.

How long does it take to grow a property management company to 1,000 doors?

There's no standard timeline, and results vary by market. The episode introduces McCaw Property Management as having scaled past a thousand properties in under 12 years, starting from Kyle managing his own rentals. His growth came from reinvesting at 100 doors, hiring business development managers and building a referral base.

Final Thoughts

Kyle's advice for owners under 500 doors was about culture. Anyone who deals with McCaw, from field crews to the office, should come away saying "they're professional and they care about what they do."

After a sales call, owners get a follow-up, texts and a customized folder in the mail. His reasoning is that the care a company shows while winning a client tells the owner how it will manage the property. He also thinks managers should own rentals, the same way you'd want a stockbroker who owns stock.

The last channel he mentioned was his podcast, How Real Estate Changed My Life. It has brought him clients with money who don't own a rental yet, because someone referred them to the show.

If you're past 100 doors, run Kyle's math on your own numbers, then get your free growth plan.