A Few Words

About Us

WE’RE LOCAL EXPERTS

Whether it’s Rapid City, Sturgis or Spearfish, our property managers understand the unique challenges of our market and work to provide the most up to date real estate data in the local market!

EXPERIENCE YOU CAN COUNT ON

Our founder understands the challenges of property management, having bought, managed, and sold rental properties in the Black Hills Area.

EASY ACCESS

With 24/7 online portals available to our clients and tenants, it’s easy to connect with our team and monitor a property’s health around the clock.

WHY PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

WHAT ARE YOU SEARCHING FOR? TIME, MONEY, OR PEACE?

In today’s world we are constantly performing a balancing act. If you’re reading this it’s because you’re attempting to balance the triangle of Time, Money, and Stress/Peace. When you change any one side it increases or decreases the other two.
Here is how BPM can help in those three areas.

FOR OWNERS:

• Time: When you hire BPM we take care of everything. No more finding tenants, fielding calls, going to their house for repairs, checking on those repairs, collecting rent, depositing the checks at the bank, and every other way rentals steal your time away.
• Stress/Peace: When you trust the people you work with you can relax and forget about your rentals. We offer the ability to see your rentals financial data 24/7 through your personal portal, your property managers cell phone number not just an office number, and most of all our honor code. We would rather live with honor then make a profit. As the owner I would rather go out of business then sell our values.
• Money: We help spend your money in this equation.. Okay so not always, we are an expense item on the properties however there are times when we actually help you make more money even after our expenses. Increased Rent is the first way, we have the best research in the Rapid City market of any company and that data lets us know exactly how much you can get for your property not just by a random number pulled out of the air. Decreased Maintenance costs, we work with other vendors to negotiate lower prices then they offer to the public. We also inspect your property and do scheduled maintenance (like an oil change for your car, they tend to get expensive if you skip a few…)

FOR TENANTS:

• Time: We save you time by meeting at times when it’s convenient for you, using electronic signatures, applications and rent payments online all so you can do it on your own time and not during “business” hours.
• Stress/Peace: When you rent from us we promise fast repairs, fast responses, and to never make you dread calling us.
• Money: We do our research and you won’t overpay for any of our properties.  We waive one late fee each year and take as few deductions out of your deposit as possible.

Team Introduction

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE COMPANY

Bear

Co Founder

I am a Pure blooded German Shepherd Husky. I live for bones, steak, and belly rubs. I’ve been hanging out with this family since I was 2 weeks old..
I love working on job sites and riding in the work truck, I’ve never met a stranger. Follow me at Bear Properties Facebook Page to see my adventures with property management.

Nathan Derksen

Owner & NR-Paramedic

I grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota working for my dad’s construction company. After graduating high school in 2006 I went to college in Arizona and became a Paramedic. After working as a paramedic for a few years down there I moved back to the Hills and haven’t looked back since.
In 2014, I bought my first Duplex and house hacked it. From that moment on I have loved the real estate game and though I sold that first Duplex I currently own over a dozen properties. When I was smaller I was growing my paramedic career and working full time construction so I tried having someone else manage my properties but it never turned out the way they said. I hated calling my property manager, talking to three people who didn’t know anything about my properties and never hearing back from the guy who “knew” about them.

Jackie Derksen

Project Coordinator, BBA

Jackie is an artist, organizer, a lover of real estate and doer. Jackie was born in Philadelphia and then at age 12 moved to Beulah,WY, so she understands extremes. She graduated from BHSU with a Bachelors in Business Administration: Econ and Management. She didn’t go the normal route, instead she worked full time to help pay for college. it took her two extra semesters but she graduated with less then 1/2 the normal debt!!


During her time at BHSU she had her paintings featured in the BHSU art gallery, and was asked to speak regularly at events by the Dean of Business. She loves her Shar Pei Moose, her husbands german shepherd husky and her small studio home that she designed. Sip n Paint, Yoga, and Backpacking are her favorite hobbies and she always has time to hang out with her friends. She married Nate in 2016 and ever since she has been Nate’s right hand. Her primary role is to take care of the coordination between owners, tenants, contractors and our team. This means if you have a problem you often will talk to her first.
She is also our in house designer and her growing portfolio has some incredible properties that she remodeled from the ground up. That is her passion, everything else is to occupy time in between her design projects. One of her main inspirations would be Joanna Gaines, she loves not only her designs but her moral compass as well. One of the most admirable things about Jackie is she is willing to go against the crowd to do the right thing regardless of how unpopular it makes her.

BEAR PROPERTY MANAGEMENT IS A VALUES FIRST COMPANY.

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour … If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

Here at BPM we believe everything can be boiled down to two things, Honorable and Dishonorable to our Code of Honor.  Honor is hard to define and if I were to try here this article would be a book. In order to have some definition our code of honor starts with the rule that EVERYTHING is either right or wrong. We define right and wrong by the laws, guidelines, and rules set forth in the Bible. There is no in between to us, it is sometimes hard to see the line but if you search for it you will find it.

Our role model in this come from various sources but one we think most people would understand is the ancient Samurai.  The ancient Samurai lived with the belief it was better to die with honor then to live dishonored. We believe the same thing. How that applies to you is that we intend to run our business honorably, Period, especially when it isn’t convenient or profitable. If we can’t keep our honor then we don’t want to be in business. For some great reading material about honor we highly recommend this page.

Our mission is to do the right thing morally, ethically, and legally the first time. We want to own our mistakes and prevent them from happening again. We want our tenants to feel valued for choosing us, to be taken care of and to have dignity. We want our owners to know how honored we are they chose us to manage such an important asset, to make great money, and have no stress from their real estate investments.

You may note that we are big on making people feel appreciated, in the medical field I was given some advice that has always stuck with me and it resonated with my code. I believe that emotions are what memories truly are and we want your memories working with us to be full of good emotions.

“People will forget the words you said and the actions you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

HOW WE HELP YOU BECOME SUCCESSFUL:

This at first seems like an impossibility, as depending on if you are the Tenant or the Property Owner your goals seem to conflict. A tenant wants to have the cheapest, nicest property to call home. They want any repairs to be made right away, to feel valued, and to be treated with dignity and respect. As an owner you want to maximize your profit, minimize expenses and be hands off.

HOW DO YOU FIND A COMPROMISE BETWEEN THOSE TWO?

We think those goals can be met by providing both. We require any property we rent to be a unit that we ourselves would live in. We research the entire area and keep records of the rental price to know what is a fair price both for the landlord and the tenant. By charging the tenant the full current market rent we then require that the landlord repairs anything that needs repair as quickly as possible. We minimize the repair costs by performing inspections of the properties annually, performing preventive maintenance, and getting discounts on the work that is performed. By performing all the repairs, inspections, and scheduling with tenants and contractors we are able to provide the stress free portion for our landlords as well. We think we are able to meet the needs for both parties.