The Property Management Show

The Property Management Show
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  • MANAGEMENT
The Property Management Show

The goal of the Property Management Show podcast is to deconstruct business success into its key components and invite subject matter experts to help you improve every facet of your property management business. The topics covered here range from property management marketing, industry innovations, success stories, all the way to general best practices on how to run a successful business enterprise. The podcast creators are Brittany Jones and Marie Liamzon-Tepman from Fourandhalf, Inc - a marketing company that works exclusively with fee-based Property Management companies. Fourandhalf Marketing Agency was established in 2012 and has the best and longest track record for helping property management companies grow. They help with both marketing strategy as well as implementation. Their services include property management website design and SEO, content creation to attract and nurture leads, reputation management, online ads, you name it. Visit fourandhalf.com to learn more.

  1. JAN 22

    Residential Property Maintenance Metrics and Improving NOI (with Ray Hespen)

    Ray Hespen, who is a frequent flier on The Property Management Show, joined us again to discuss maintenance metrics and how measurement improves resident satisfaction and owner NOI. The last time he was on the podcast, in late 2023, his team was just beginning to establish this concept of maintenance analytics. He was investigating what it would look like if property managers looked at maintenance from a data-driven standpoint. He was beginning to collect all the necessary data. It’s been more than a year now, and we brought him back to talk about what he’s seen since then. The Evolution of Data-Driven Maintenance If you get good measurements, you never lose. Property management has been in this black hole of information and according to Ray, that’s because we relied so much on having exceptional people run our business. It’s a super-high trust game. But, you can’t move what you can’t measure. So in order to scale, Ray and his team at Property Meld released a product that’s the best industry representation of the real world. Insights and Insights Pro are basically ways to understand your own property management business against a ladder of maintenance excellence. It’s a deep diving into: * Vendor efficiency * Technician efficiency * Coordinator efficiency * Benchmarking * Finances You know what the performance actually is instead of trusting someone’s gut. Ray says it’s been surprising to see how the market has wrestled with some of this. There are some components of the data that people don’t like. They’d rather not look. Then, there are some customers where the metrics are so good, but they still want to get better. Essentially, providing access to all of this data and insights has opened Pandora’s Box. There’s no going back. It’s possible to measure leading and lagging indicators. And now, it’s possible to consider how to move those numbers. Knowing they exist is one thing. Using them to improve performance is what comes next. Geographical Insights in Maintenance Performance The most interesting data gathered from maintenance requests and responses is geographical. Ray says what’s most important in the information that’s been gathered is that property managers can see their performance against geographical regions and areas. It’s clear to see that property management companies in the southern states, which have warmer summers, have a high speed of repairs and increasing maintenance costs in May. So, it would be unfair to compare yourself to a property management company in Minnesota that does not have air conditioning repair costs until July or August. The geographical impact to maintenance in weather regions is important. Property managers don’t want to think they’re killing it or falling behind when the data is geographical. That’s what Ray calls a “big a-ha.” Customer Satisfaction and Its Impact on Retention Customer satisfaction has become a much-discussed part of property management, and that covers the satisfaction of residents and owners. It’s important to remember that resident satisfaction also affects owner satisfaction. Technically, property managers have multiple customers, but there’s also a hierarchy. Would you rather lose 50 percent of your owners or 50 percent of your tenants? Exactly. So, the hierarchy starts at the investor. Property managers do not have a business if they don’t have an investor customer. But, if property managers can make the resident happy, it’s much easier to hang onto those investor clients. So, one of the indicators of investor satisfaction is resident retention. One of the reasons that tenants leave is that they hate the maintenance. In the macro environment today, no one wants a rental on the market. Avoiding that as much as possible is important. Also, maintenance costs are growing 8 percent year o...

    48 min

  2. JAN 16

    AI’s Role in Attracting Owner Leads for Property Managers

    Fourandhalf’s Marie Tepman, Interviewed by Marc Cunningham on the PM Build Property Management Business Podcast Marc Cunningham, from Grace Property Management and PM Build, invited Marie onto his podcast to talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in property management marketing. Specifically, the discussion revolved around getting more owner leads for property managers. In an environment where budgets are shrinking and a lot of property managers are still unsure about AI, this discussion provides some clarity. Here’s what was discussed. Property Management Marketing and Gaining Owner Leads One of the biggest challenges all property management companies deal with is bringing new owner client leads into the company. How do you drive more leads into your company? The big catchphrase now is AI. Should property management companies use AI? How can these tools be used? It’s a big umbrella in property management marketing, but first, let’s talk about the simple fact of how to get more owner leads. What’s the big picture? Leads are online. So, property management companies need a good presence online. This starts with a website. And while some companies build business through referrals, online marketing is the next step. To really get started attracting owner leads to your property management company, you need a website and you need content. Marc remembers saying “no thanks” to a company that tried to sell them on a website in the early 1990s. He though as long as he had his Yellow Pages ad, he’d be fine. Things have changed. A property management company’s website and content serve reputation. Reputation is important because you want people to vouch for you. Before buying a product or service, consumers are going to look at reviews. They’re going to want to see how many stars are on your Google rating. If you don’t have any testimonials or reviews, people might think that’s suss (suspicious, for the over-45 crowd). If a prospective owner finds your website but no one online is talking about you, there may be hesitation. You have to show that you’re trustworthy. After you have established your website and your reputation, you need content. Content and Property Management Marketing for Owner Leads The literal meaning of content is anything with words on your website. At Fourandhalf, we’re more interested in quality content. When someone who has just inherited a home needs help renting that home out, they’re not going to go online and search for a property management company. A lot of them might not even know that property management is a service that’s provided professionally. Instead, they’re going to go online and search how to find a tenant or how much rent to charge. Property management content is not selling your business. It’s not telling anyone how long you’ve been in business, and it’s not bragging about how great you are. It’s showing prospective owners that you can be trusted. It’s showing value. Any company can say they’re great. It doesn’t mean anything to your prospect. They have a problem and they want to solve it. When you’re a problem solver, you’re providing quality content. The hero of the story is the always the customer. When you show up to offer solutions, you want to make it obvious to the owner that this is why your service can help. That allows the owner to remain the hero. As the property management expert, you’re the helper getting them what they need. Don’t be the hero. Be the helper. That’s a big concept that needs to be adopted when it comes to content. Serve, don’t show off. When an owner clicks on the how-to content, they’ll find it helpful. It’s educational. So, when they get to the end of what they’ve read or watched, they’ll see who provided the content. Trust is established. Should You Just Use AI to Create Content?

    51 min

  3. 12/31/2024

    PART 2: Why the Vendor Bidding Process Is Broken (and What It’s Costing Property Managers)

    Can vendor bidding solutions like RoDevia Brigham’s Proposabid create more transparency and detect fraud? That’s where we left off during Part 1 of this discussion on The Property Management Show. Let’s pick up the conversation about how the bidding process is broken, and how property managers can avoid wasting time and money. Here’s Part 2. How has Proposabid Contributed to Fraud Detection? When RoDevia was talking with her partner, they discussed how a lot of vendors would inflate pricing or maybe there would be work that was needed but didn’t really have to be done in the particular way that a vendor believed, or at a higher price point. There are a couple of specific cases that she was able to detect, and she cautions owners and property managers that things like this could be happening without them knowing about it: * On-site staff may claim that work is necessary, or they’ll be billing you for work that may not be completed or required. If you’re an owner in Arizona with properties in Tennessee, you may not know that what you’re being told isn’t true. If your manager is overstretched and has 76 different properties to manage, she may not know that 34 doors need to be replaced in a specific way at one property. * There could also be a conflict of interest or some self-dealing going on. Staff or property managers may use companies they own. In San Francisco, we had a cleaning company that got a $15,000 per month contract at one property for 150 doors. It was on-site staff that was registered and had an EIN. Family members worked at this company, and they managed to claim contracts across other properties for almost $500,000 over three years without the owner knowing. There was no bidding process at all. If you have a third party that doesn’t have a dog in the fight and can source bids for you in timely fashion and has comparables for you, the process is fully transparent. Proposabid also posts their bids online so other vendors can compare. Any number of issues can crop up when a company is just assigning someone to source bids who isn’t qualified to do it or is too busy to give it the necessary attention. Challenges for Property Managers in Analyzing and Comparing Bids Let’s say a property manager does manage to get some bids. Now it’s time to analyze and compare them. What are some of the challenges and issues would a company face at that point in time? First, RoDevia would be wondering if you have enough bids. When you do, you have to ask if the bids have expired to the point where they’re no longer viable. One of the main things she has noticed is that property managers won’t necessarily know what the vendor does not offer. For example, there was a hazmat fentanyl situation at a property, and the building had to be closed down. Police were involved. To get bids for the cleaning, you also have to think about what the vendors are not offering in those bids. Proposabid needed to analyze that particular piece. What all five vendors didn’t offer was to post drug testing. Can you post it once it’s clean? Also, what about repairs and renovations after the cleaning. It might be necessary to tear into a wall. Asbestos and lead testing might be necessary depending on what’s found when you do open up the wall. Always consider whether you know what you need beyond the bids themselves. This is the most challenging part. Another challenge can be the number of hands in the pot. If you have a board or an HOA, there could be some extra time needed. One HOA client had three good bids, but they wanted more. That’s fine, but the three best bids are still going to be the three best bids. So, who is making the decision? Can you get in touch with the right people at the right time? The person receiving the bid probably cannot sign off on the awarding of that bid. Often,

    26 min

  4. 12/19/2024

    PART 1: Why the Vendor Bidding Process Is Broken (and What It’s Costing Property Managers)

    It’s been a long time since we put out an episode of The Property Management Show and today we’re excited to talk with RoDevia Brigham, the founder and CEO of Proposabid. The vendor bidding process is an entire industry on its own, and this is a topic we have not covered before on the podcast. Introducing RoDevia and Proposabid Proposabid does bids and estimations for properties and repairs across US. Their niche client base is property management companies, real estate investors, and mom-and-pop investors. They work with people who do not know how to go about sourcing bids for work. The idea for this company came from a shower moment. RoDevia’s background is in computer science and IT, specifically cyber security. She has an approach to her work that follows an “if this, then that” process. She’s always thinking about how to automate things. While in the shower, she asked her partner an important question: What could she automate if she could automate anything in her day as a property manager? The answer was: bidding. She said if she could just get good bids that reflected apples for apples, and those bids came in on time, and vendors would pick up the phone and submit things relevant to the work that needs to be done, then she could submit those to her property owners who could make financially responsible decisions. That, she said, would be great. RoDevia took all of that seriously, knowing it was an everyday problem for her partner’s clients. Four years later, Proposabid is doing the work that needs to be done. Property Management’s Vendor Bidding Problem The vendor bidding process in property management is essentially broken RoDevia believes. While it seems like most property managers know their vendors and have good relationships in place, why would bidding be necessary at all? RoDevia and her company focus on projects that need three bids, minimum. The process at a high level looks like this: * A property manager has to contact the three companies * Three different prices are submitted * Proposals have to be gathered * The lowest bidder is selected But in that process, there are some key items that a property management company’s staff might not be familiar with or cannot do. The phone calls and the emails go back and forth. Then, there’s the hurry up and wait while those bids come in. This can be immediate, but usually it takes a couple of weeks. Sometimes, you won’t get the bids in at all. When those do bids come in, you have to compare them: * Are they apples for apples? * Do they come with the right warranty? * Are they offering considerations or concessions? * Is scope of work correct for the price? * Are the vendors even qualified? * Are they in a database for licensing and insurance? Then, you may need to make corrections to the bid, and that could include going back to the phone calls and the emails. Bids are re-submitted and reconsidered. Once you have something everyone agrees on, a property manager will go ahead and submit those bids to your property owner or the landlord, and together you might decide on the vendor. That process alone can take a couple of weeks or months or in some cases, it may not even get done. Someone has to be responsible for this process. It could be a director or an asset manager or an office manager. Maybe you have in-house maintenance folks who are taking all of these bids and working on the information. This can add up to 10 hours a week, which might cost 400 to 520 hours per year. All of that labor comes with no guarantee that those bids are even getting done, and those are hours that can be utilized elsewhere in your business. Financially, the costs of a broken bidding process can be $30,000 to $40,000 lost purely on bid management.

    31 min

  5. 05/02/2024

    Preparing Your Property Management Company for a Profitable Sale with Scott Duke of OpnRoad

    Welcome back to The Property Management Show. On today’s episode, we’re talking to an expert on mergers and acquisitions, who has specific experience in property management. We’re talking to Scott Duke, of OpnRoad. He’s talking about the things that make a difference in the sale of a property management company. Your buyer and your profit will depend a lot on your contracts, your efficiency, and your team. Introducing Scott Duke Scott and his wife bought and ran a property management company in Revenstoke, Canada. They grew their company for seven years and then sold it for 10 times the amount of what they bought it for. The company was sold to Western Trust, a private equity company out of Utah. Before that, he worked at a property management company in Ontario. He has experience working with three-person companies and those that have a staff of 25. His story of buying and selling that Canadian property management company is a bit of a cautionary tale. When they bought the company, there were 30 properties under management. Out of those 30 properties, only six had proper contracts with the owners. It wasn’t a sellable asset when they took it over. But, what they really wanted to buy were the brand and the website, and otherwise it felt like they were starting from scratch. It was not a massive acquisition. Scott realized that he thought property management meant taking care of people’s properties, but really, he was managing finances. It’s a cash in – cash out business model, and he had to make sure his owners had the money they needed for their mortgage payments. One specific event triggered his desire to sell that company. It was Christmas Day in 2016 or 2017, and he was under a trailer, defrosting pipes so the family living there could have water on Christmas. That’s when he realized he didn’t want to own the company anymore. When the owner is under a trailer with frozen pipes, you know that the company relies too heavily on that owner. So, he spent three years making it an acquirable asset. Scott wanted the company to be something that someone would want to buy. The starting point? Making the business less dependent on Scott. Making a Property Management Company Less Owner-Dependent Scott says it’s all mindset. At OpnRoad, Scott and his team sell businesses. They work within all industries, but a lot of businesses they sell are property management companies. They all have to get to a certain size before they can be sold. So, he’s talking about owner dependency all the time. How do you remove yourself from that dependency? Scott says you will be trapped in your business until the business cracks through the million or two million revenue mark. Until that point, there’s just not enough cash in the business to pay to replace yourself. You are buying your time and you’re buying your freedom. You want to focus on yourself as a business owner, not a business operator. A lot of owners get hung up on the idea that no one can do what they do as well as they do it. Scott tells entrepreneurs to embrace that. It’s true. But, it won’t be that way forever. The person you hire isn’t going to be as good as you on Day One. The training and the investment into that person makes them as good as you. His slogan is this: Every Day a Step Away. You’re getting a further step away from operating your business every single day. How to Avoid Hiring Bad Apples A lot of business owners worry about investing time and training into someone who may not work out. Having hired across 11 companies with a total of more than 200 staff, Scott understands that bad apples do get into the bunch once in a while. He has a specific model: * Be a good leader: Make yourself better. The people you attract to your company will be 70 percent as good as you are.

    44 min

  6. 04/18/2024

    Persuasive Copywriting in the Age of AI

    Amy Harrison is a sales and marketing copywriter from the U.K. and an expert in storytelling. After hearing her speak at a marketing conference and finding the information invaluable, we invited her onto The Property Management Show to talk about the evolution of marketing content and copywriting and how AI can help with persuasive copy, as long as you’re finessing the message with the information that only you have. Amy Harrison’s Background Amy thought she wanted to be a screenwriter for film and television, but quickly burned out at a young age and decided to pursue other things for a while. Then, she found her way back to writing and began working for a private investment firm that bought and sold online businesses. She describes it as flipping businesses, and that’s what brought her back into content writing and copywriting. When she discovered the psychology around sales copywriting, she knew she wanted to help businesses tell stories and build credibility. Amy says that her training as a screenwriter helped with her sales copywriting because it’s always important to write for the reader. If someone does not want to keep reading, you’ve lost them. You need to make sure they’ll read beyond the headline. Tracking the Evolution of Sales and Marketing Copywriting Amy remembers the early days of copywriting, when everything was very SEO-driven and it seemed like her job was to cram every page full of keywords. The idea was to reach people and to provide as much information as possible. It was more of a transactional exchange. People found there were better ways to have a sales conversation, and the content improved. Businesses have realized that not all content needs to sound like sales and marketing content. There’s a lot more awareness of what marketing and copywriting can do. The struggle, though, has not evolved much. Amy says that large companies with million dollar marketing budgets have the same desire as the freelance photographer with no marketing budget: to sell themselves and to stand out. The process has evolved, but the problem sales copywriters are trying to solve is the same. Umbrella Terms versus Storytelling with Copy and Content How is it done well? While trying to talk about what makes them different, a lot of companies will end up sounding like every other business. They’ll use generic words, and they’ll try to talk about everything they do all at once. Amy calls those umbrella terms, and she advises companies to be bold and to expand their comfort zones outside of those same words and phrases that are always used. The fear factor will sometime set in. You want to stand apart from your competition, but do you really want to be different? Storytelling can be powerful, but it’s harder to write a story than it is to create a list of benefits. You have to earn the right to get someone’s attention. How do you do that? Amy asks us to think about it from the first piece of content – whether it’s a headline or the first few seconds of your video or the introduction in your email. Speak directly to the person you’re trying to reach. Think of yourself in a crowded room at a party. You’ll hear lots of conversations, and you’re not tuned into any of them. But if you hear your name, that will immediately get your attention. You cannot call your customers by their name in your content, but you can work harder to make the content more relevant. You want them to feel like you’re talking directly to them. Think about how to write the conversation that your customer is having in their mind right now. What are they thinking about in that moment as they approach your blog or your email? Here are a couple of examples: * If you’re trying to attract a client who is moving, your headline might be “Should You Sell Or Rent Your Home?” It’s not a dramatic title,

    48 min

  7. 04/04/2024

    Rental MLS: A Threat or a Tool to Help Property Managers?

    PJ Clay, the Director of Client and Partner Services at Rental Beast, joins us on The Property Management Show to discuss the company’s role as the rental MLS, and how they provide back-end technology to MLS associations across the United States and Canada. We also discussed whether this type of technology can help or hurt property managers. PJ says it helps. Introducing Rental Beast Rental Beast calls itself the rental MLS. It provides back-end technology to MLS associations in certain markets throughout the U.S. and Canada. The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is highly customizable, but also built for the For Sale side of the real estate industry. Rental Beast knows that rentals are different. The process of renting is different from the process of buying and selling. So, they built the technology that can integrate rental listings. MLS members can add or search for rental listings. The second piece of this technology is a productivity suite of tools making it easier for property managers and real estate agents to access lead generation, lead qualification, and rental applications. At the core of this technology is a very large database of rental listings. Members of Rental Beast have access to 12 million active listings in the U.S. and Canada at any given time. Putting all the rental listings into one database is the central part of our technology. Members can get as close as possible to reaching 100 percent of their market. Accessing Reliable Data and Listings for Rental Markets Rental Beast is currently working with MLS associations in cities like Boston, where they’re based, Chicago, Raleigh, Miami, Colorado Springs, Toronto, and other markets. They’re actively growing, too, because the demand for this platform has increased. With home sales still out of reach and unaffordable for so much of the market, people are renting. Having the technology for real estate professionals to make the rental process easier has driven that growth. So, where does the data come from? Where do they gather their listings? The rental market is fragmented. On the general MLS, you have 80 or 90 percent of available homes for sale on that site. Not all rental listings go onto the MLS, however. Some cities will include rentals on the MLS, but even then you’re only getting about 40 percent of the rental market listed. Rentals come onto the database from a lot of different sources. The Rental Beast database integrates with property management software. So, platforms like Appfolio, Yardi, RentTech, and Buildium can use Rental Beast as a syndication destination. Any listings on those software sites can be shared with Rental Beast. The other piece is more difficult and labor intensive. These are rental listings that aren’t found on the MLS or on any property management software sites. Staff at Rental Beast must find the listings and then make actual phone calls to owners and property managers to verify them. PJ says it took 10 years to build the process the right way. They’re calling any listing that doesn’t come from the MLS or property management software. It’s a huge undertaking, but it’s necessary to avoid scams. There are also a lot of details that are confirmed for those listings; they ask if there’s an agent compensation fee, what the showing instructions are, and how a tenant can access an application. These listings have to be updated every week or two, depending on the location. If they cannot get a verbal confirmation that the listing is active, it gets dropped from the database. Are These Listings Professionally Managed? The majority of listings on Rental Beast are not managed by professional managers or real estate professionals. They’re managed by the property owners themselves. PJ believes this is hyper-local. He says that in Boston, property management firms aren’t as recognized or understood as they ar...

    34 min

  8. 03/21/2024

    Legacy Planning for a Property Management Business

    Two guests are joining The Property Management Show today, and they are Scott Brady and Garrett Brady from Progressive Property Management in southern California. Scott has been on the show before, and tends to talk about forward-looking topics that involve challenging the status quo. Garrett is his son, and a big part of the company’s future. The topic today is legacy planning, which can be rather difficult for property management companies. Scott and Garrett are sharing their journey and where they are. Progressive Property Management Then and Now Scott has a story that’s similar to many property management company owners. He began as a real estate agent and had a brokerage business. The recession arrived in 2010, and he wanted to be prepared for the next recession. So, he started Progressive Property Management in 2012. It became incorporated in 2015. The company grew organically through marketing and relationships. Over the last 12 years, they’ve grown to about 1,000 doors under management. Garrett joined the residential side in 2018. The business model is unique. It’s a virtual company that hires real estate agents to be property managers. Three years ago, they began an association management department, and now manage around 130 associations with about 7,000 owners, total. They use the same business model; people are hired to be off-site property managers for these communities. The team at Progressive takes care of all back office operations. About three years ago, Scott was diagnosed with cancer, and he realized the company was not prepared to be sold or handed off. Decisions were made, and a choice had to be made: did Scott want to prepare the company to be sold, did he want to hire someone to run it while he lived off the cash flow, or did he want someone in the family to take it over? He’s made a decision, and he and Garrett have been busy structuring their legacy plan over the last three years. Garrett says the company – and the entire industry – was old school in 2018. There wasn’t a lot of technology, and everything was very regional. He’s been able to see the industry move from the stone ages to embracing modern technology. It’s a more appealing industry to join. So while it was a family business that he was happy to join, he now sees the value of real estate and how it interacts with so many other business sectors. Legacy Planning: Starting the Discussion The diagnosis spurred the discussion around legacy planning. Scott hired a consultant outside of the property management industry and the first thing he recommended was to have Garrett go to graduate school. This did not make sense at first, but it was pretty transformative. He earned his position with his education and his experience, not because of nepotism. The next step was to invite Garrett to earn some controlling interest in the company. Every year that he’s worked for the company, he’s earned 2.5 percent ownership in that company. By now, he’s up to 15 percent. The idea was to have Scott maintain the controlling interest, but to give Garrett a path towards more ownership. Garrett has skills that Scott doesn’t have, and they both recognize that. Scott excels at sales and marketing while Garrett is all operations. Scott said he knew the future was in the company’s operations. With 130 associations under management, they need good systems. Garrett does all the hiring of remote team members and he trains them, too. The company now has 13 remote team members and 13 full-time employees. The future isn’t expanding full-time payroll, but in hiring remote contractors. Understanding his own skill set allowed Scott to bring Garrett in, and together they sit down and look for the next opportunities while ensuring everything is running properly. Marc Cunningham mentioned to Garrett that he had to do a buy...

    47 min
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4.5
out of 5
41 Ratings

About

The goal of the Property Management Show podcast is to deconstruct business success into its key components and invite subject matter experts to help you improve every facet of your property management business. The topics covered here range from property management marketing, industry innovations, success stories, all the way to general best practices on how to run a successful business enterprise. The podcast creators are Brittany Jones and Marie Liamzon-Tepman from Fourandhalf, Inc - a marketing company that works exclusively with fee-based Property Management companies. Fourandhalf Marketing Agency was established in 2012 and has the best and longest track record for helping property management companies grow. They help with both marketing strategy as well as implementation. Their services include property management website design and SEO, content creation to attract and nurture leads, reputation management, online ads, you name it. Visit fourandhalf.com to learn more.

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