What the cap actually does
We manage 25 homes. When someone calls about a 26th, we usually have to say no. People sometimes find that hard to believe — like we're playing hard to get, or running some kind of artificial-scarcity routine. We're not. The cap is the only way the rest of what we promise stays true.
At 25 homes, Maren and Theo can each be inside half the portfolio every quarter. We can keep a relationship with every owner without delegating it to staff who don't know the buildings. We can have Rosewood Trades on a first-name basis at every house we manage — they know the boilers, they know which homes still have galvanized supply lines, they know which owners want to be called before any work over $300.
At 50 homes, almost none of that survives. The work gets handed to people who haven't been in the houses. Vendor relationships get more transactional. Owners stop being individuals and start being accounts.
What we do when we say no
When we turn someone down, we try to send them somewhere good. We've built a short list of other small Portland firms that operate the way we do — Three Trees, Holladay & Co., a couple of one-person operators we trust. If your home is in our neighborhoods and we don't have room, we'll usually call one of them on your behalf.
The trade-off, honestly
The cap means we can't grow much. Cedar will probably never have more than four or five staff total. We won't open a Vancouver office. We won't expand to Beaverton. The economics of staying small are not the economics of building a big firm; they're the economics of doing one thing well and being paid fairly for it.
That suits us. It also suits the kind of owners we work with — most of whom found us through a friend, a contractor, or a renter who used to live in one of our homes and wouldn't shut up about it. The cap and the referral pattern reinforce each other. Long may both continue.