One real-estate investor explains how she's planning to optimize her portfolio and improve her returns without buying more property in 2025

• Dana Bull plans to optimize her real estate portfolio in 2025 rather than acquiring more properties.
• She aims to increase revenue by focusing on insurance, taxes, and renovation costs.
• With insurance costs on the rise, any investor can benefit from shopping around.

Dana Bull isn't looking to acquire any more properties in 2025.

The experienced investor built wealth by buying primarily multi-family properties in Massachusetts. She's also a real-estate agent and consultant, and a mother of four. Between her various work projects and renovating her primary residence, she says she has plenty to keep her busy in 2025.

While she's not expanding her doors, she still expects to grow her revenue in the new year.

Any investor can benefit from optimizing what they already own, said Bull: "If you're not going to buy right now — for personal reasons or you just don't like the interest rates or whatever is going on — this could be a good year to just focus on your business, your expenses, and tighten up what you already have."

Specifically, she's looking to optimize in three categories, which could improve her returns significantly.

1. Insurance

Like many investors and homeowners, Bull has seen her insurance rates rise over the past couple of years.

The general trend is that "insurance is harder to get and it's more expensive," she said. "That cost for me has just jumped. It's a big line item. I have had the same provider for the past 10 years, and I need to just go out there and procure quotes and make sure that I'm not getting overcharged for what's being covered."

It can be time-consuming to keep track of each policy and its changes, especially if you own a lot of properties.

"I feel like it's the wild, wild west," said Bull of navigating the insurance world. "Many times, a program that we have a property covered by will just be dropped, or they'll no longer cover that property for reason X, Y, or Z, so it's like this revolving door of making sure that the properties all have coverage — and the right coverage."

She says she's been more "passive" about optimizing insurance in the past, but now that prices are soaring, she plans to shop around and do her due diligence in 2025.

2. Taxes

In addition to insurance, her property taxes have gone up.

"The tax rate has not gone up, but the value of the properties has gone up so significantly that you're just paying thousands more a year for taxes," explained Bull. One of her properties, for example, will cost an extra $2,000 a year. "If I multiply that across my whole portfolio, that's a lot of money."

If you think your property is overvalued, you can appeal your property assessment.

"I think I have a few properties that are overvalued," said Bull. "Some aren't, so obviously there's nothing to do there. But if I can make a case and bring in comps and show them this is an overvaluation and now I'm being taxed higher than I probably should, I have found in the past that if you're just a squeaky wheel, they'll work with you."

3. Renovation costs

Bull has seen the availability and cost of hiring contractors vary dramatically over her investing career.

"When I first started in real estate, which was at the tail end of the recession, contractors were out of work, and they needed work, so the pricing was way different 10 years ago than it is today," she said. "And then during the pandemic, everybody was renovating their home and contractors had such a surplus of work that they could basically charge whatever they wanted, and you were going to pay it because you were desperate."

Heading into 2025, "the tides are kind of turning," she said, in that contractors won't be able to pick their price.

It's worth it to shop around, said Bull, adding that you may be surprised by the varying prices you receive. For example, she had to replace three roofs for one of her multi-family properties: "One quote came in at $30,000, another came in at $21,000, and then another came in at $12,000. And I'm reviewing the quotes and pretty much everything is the same. The product is the same."

While meeting with multiple contractors can be "a pain in the butt," she acknowledged, it could mean tens of thousands of dollars in savings.