The Property Management Show

Summary: Ethan Lieber from Latchel is our guest on The Property Management Show, and in this podcast we’ll talk about these behemoth venture-backed companies that seem to be entering the property management space in record numbers right now. We want to know why they’re here, what motivates them, and how smaller property management companies can compete. Key Takeaways: Venture Capital companies are interested in the business opportunities available in the property management industry, but the industry is difficult to dominate because of its fragmentation. Local property management companies have a competitive advantage over VC-backed companies because of the trust they hold with their community. Ethan believes that only three out of ten self-managing landlords are ever going to become your customer. Understanding this concept can help you narrow your focus when it comes to going after leads. Why Is Property Management Attractive to Venture Capital Companies? At PM Grow 2021, Ethan delivered a fireside chat on the topic of competing with these VC companies. Before we can get into strategies for competing, a lot of property managers may be wondering why. Why do these VC companies want to be in property management at all? The obvious answer is this: money. There’s a lot of money in property management. It’s a huge business opportunity. Traditional management services generate hundreds of billions of dollars. When you add in the ancillary services companies can provide, we’re looking at trillions of dollars. Typically, local businesses have captured most of the market share. Look at a national scale, and you’ll see where the venture-backed companies began in property management. They funded industry-specific endeavors like Appfolio and Yardley and Buildium and similar platforms. The entrepreneurs that backed those initiatives now want some of the market share that property management companies themselves have been earning. Here’s an interesting statistic: the top 15 management companies only own 7 percent of multi-family properties in the U.S. No other industry behaves like this. When you take a look at retail, huge companies like Walmart and Amazon can come in and eat everything up. It’s easy. But, property management is one of the remaining industries where it’s hard for VC companies to dominate. That’s because the business is so fragmented. Winner-Take-All Thinking Isn’t Part of Property Management Generally, venture-backed companies have been drawn to industries with a winner-takes-all playing field. If you figure out what an industry needs, you can dominate the market. Microsoft figured that out early on and the government had to force them to break up and allow competitors. A lot of VC companies have the goal of getting so big you’re a monopoly. But you don’t want to look like a monopoly because you don’t want to attract the government’s attention. With property management, it’s hard to see a situation where someone is a monopoly and a winner that takes all. Zillow is never going to become a monopoly where there’s no room for anyone else, for example. Property management is one of the few industries that this will not happen. The VC companies want in because the industry is so big. They don’t need to take it all. They know that just a fraction of the market will make them a lot of money. So, they want to eat up a lot of the market share, but local property management companies have a lot of competitive advantages. You’re probably not even competing for the same type of business as these VC companies. Property Management and Industry Disruption Another thing that VC companies look for is this – how ripe is an industry for disruption? Property management is very much a legacy industry. Historically, it’s been very inefficient. There’s a low use of technology and automation and AI. So it creates a space for companies to come in and leverage their technology and software platforms. Meaningfully higher margins are earned. When you’re competitive, your business is more sustainable and fast growing, even if your acquisition cost is higher than your competitors. You may spend more money to get your next customer, but that customer is also going to be far more profitable. That creates a new playing field in property management. If your margin is 30 or 40 percent while everyone else is at 6 percent because you can acquire customers at five times the cost they do, you’re going to grow faster. Does it work for VC companies? The challenge in property management is that acquisition costs are much higher for national companies. When you want to scale quickly, you have to be willing to pay that higher acquisition cost. If you’re spending $4,000 to acquire one landlord, you need to be sure about your ROI. The payback period will be more than a year. This means client retention is more important than ever. Losing money in the first year is a given, but if you hold that client for six years or more, you’re going to see a massive lifetime value. Greg Crabtree is an excellent resource for getting a better understanding of your property management costs & cash flow. Check out our episode with him on “Managing Hits to Your Property Management Cashflow During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” as well as his presentation at PM Grow 2021. VC Companies and Management Company Acquisition Acquiring one door at a time is expensive. So, these VC companies have calculated their growth and decided to acquire property management companies instead of doors. They’re paying a premium to acquire an entire company, but they’re making five times the profits that the local company was earning. The payback period is often a more efficient way to grow. To make this effective, a lot of capital is needed. You need cash to buy up management companies. But, if it’s done in the right way, big profits are available. Only VC companies have the capital to compete this way. The good news is this: local property management companies aren’t competing this way. You don’t want to buy management companies. You want to grow your business by acquiring additional owners, units, and doors. Trends and Tricks for Local Property Management Companies One trend we are seeing is that smaller property management companies are pooling their resources and consolidating. They believe they need to be bigger to compete. It looks like a typical David vs. Goliath story. The key factor here is that local property managers are nimble. You also have local knowledge that cannot be replicated. Some companies will want to consolidate or build some co-branding opportunities. You can join a franchise. So you’ll maybe struggle to maintain operations, but you’ll have the name recognition of the franchise. If you only manage five doors, people aren’t going to care (or even know) because they’ll see that recognizable name with your property management company. A healthy market is not a monopoly market. Here are some of the things a local property management company has working in its favor. You’ve earned customer trust already. People are investing in homes from out-of-state more than ever in this new economy. That means they’re more likely to look for local experts in the market where their investment property is located. You can improve your operations with a playbook on how to automate a lot of what you do. You can capitalize on collaboration with other property management companies and real estate professionals in your area. Automation is really your secret weapon. Find better ways to operate because ultimately, it may be the only way you can compete. Using Tech & Community Trust to Stay Independent Smaller companies who want to stay independent can use technology to intentionally create efficient margins. Technology leads to cash flow. Then, you’ll be able to invest the cash or capital you earned to generate more income and grow the way you want to grow. Here’s the best opportunity you have to compete with VC companies: You have the opportunity to become a pillar in your community. Maybe you belong to NARPM and other professional organizations. Maybe you’re in a leadership role in the local Chamber of Commerce. This is going to provide a better reputation than anyone in a VC-backed management company that works in your market but isn’t really in your market. There might be a huge competitor buying companies in your area. But, they could be so far separated or removed from the community itself that they don’t know the trends and the way of life. You, however, know the business owners and the residents and you can build a sense of community that actually goes beyond the work you do. Property management is still a relationship business, and it’s impossible for a VC company to replicate this. Customer Service and Targeting the Right Landlords At Latchel, Ethan says customer obsession is an important part of the way they do business. You’re building a service, which means you have to respond to what the customer wants. It’s an effort, but starting backwards can help you define your customer. A lot of people miss this. Here’s an idea that Ethan has been working with lately, and he knows that some people may find it controversial. There’s a specific psychographic when it comes to the business you target. Out of 10 self-managing landlords, only three of them will ever be a customer. Here’s what he means: When you’re trying to attract new owners, you’re advertising to all 10 of those landlords, but only three are going to be receptive to your marketing. Those three fall into one of these categories: The accidental landlord who is not experienced and eager to work with a property manager. Landlords who are unhappy with their current property manager and want to look elsewhere. Investors who just bought a property in the area and they don’t know the market. Institutional investors will also be looking for management services, but a lot of VC companies focus on institutional investors, so maybe you won’t want to compete for that business. Work backwards. What does each of these customers want? The value you offer is that they don’t have to collect rent. They don’t have to spend a single second thinking about how their property is being leased. That’s a higher value you’re providing, and you want to look for the landlord who wants to not think about their asset. (for more on this, check out our interview with Steve Crossland on The Practice of Property Management Profitability.) Narrow Your Target, Improve Retention, and Compete With VC’s Most of you already know that the owners who think too much about their property are your worst customers. You want someone who trusts you to do it for them. The owners you attract must match the way you operate. Otherwise, you turn them away. Optimize your marketing and your services for those owners who are simply looking for peace of mind. Retention is insanely important when it comes to growth and staying competitive. Keep your tenants and keep your owners. There’s less operational work. If you cannot retain your property owners, you’re probably not doing things right. Everyone has turnover from time to time, but if you’re spending more money to bring in new clients and then you’re losing them, it’s going to be difficult to stay competitive. VC companies have to deal with turnover and lost clients more than local property management companies. You can plug those leaks faster, and you can also be there to pick up the customers VC companies are losing because you provide a different experience. There’s so much more to talk about surrounding this issue, and we’d be happy to welcome you into the conversation. Contact us at Fourandhalf for all of your questions around property management marketing. The post How to Compete with Venture-Backed Property Management Companies appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: You may recognize today’s guest on The Property Management Show podcast. Steve Crossland is joining us, and he gave a speech at PM Grow Summit 2021 about the ABCs of property selection and portfolio selection. (by the way – if you’d like to watch that talk, and the rest of the recorded content from PM Grow 2021, head over to 2021.pmgrowsummit.com) Today, he’s talking about the practices, mindsets, and habits that property managers should have to ensure their business is profitable. Key Takeaways: Property management profitability is a mindset and  a practice, you can cultivate as a property manager Profitability practice starts with knowing your Financial Freedom Finish Line Stick to your practice, trust in the strategy you’ve laid out to get to your goal, and live within your means as your wealth grows over time Steve’s profitability practice is to limit owner decision-making in order to provide better service to his tenants Property Management Profitability as a Practice Property management profitability is more of a practice than an end result. It’s similar to nutrition in that it has to be part of your day-to-day lifestyle and mindset. We asked Steve to speak about what profitability as a practice means for the property management industry. It starts with a personal financial goal. Ask yourself where you want to be in five years, 10 years, or 20 years. At what point do you want to cross what Steve calls the Financial Freedom Finish Line? The Financial Freedom Finish Line is the point at which you have enough assets and money and rental income to quit working forever and not run out of money. It’s the point where your wealth produces the income you need to live. Everyone should start with that. You’re starting with the end in mind, and that’s often a big jump for people. But, if you’re 25 years old and you know you want to retire at the age of 55, with a net worth of $3 million in today’s dollars, you’ll have to do some math. Compute out into time with inflation what that number needs to be when you’re 55 (or whatever age you pick). Work backwards to figure out how much you have today and how much you have to add each year so that when you do reach the finish line, you’ve done what you set out to do on your financial journey. That’s where you start. For Steve, the practice of building wealth is just doing some numbers. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, he first wrote those numbers out for himself on the back of a napkin. This strategy has informed his property management business. It’s why he never wanted to be a 2,000-door company or a 1,000-door company or even a 500-door company. At 100 doors, he got what he needed to be on that path he had set for himself. If you’re feeling a financial bottleneck that’s preventing your company from becoming profitable, check out our episode with Daniel Craig about Bottlenecks to Property Management Profitability. Establishing an Ideology of Profitability Steve remembers listening to a finance guy on AM radio every Saturday when he was younger and driving around, and he absorbed a lot of what the expert said. Steve doesn’t remember who it was, but there was one thing in particular that stuck out. The finance expert said never borrow money to purchase a depreciating asset. That idea essentially means: it’s a bad idea to borrow money for things like furniture and cars. If you can help it, those things should be paid for in cash. It’s okay to borrow money for things that increase in value, however, namely real estate. Steve moved forward with this philosophy and never bought a car that wasn’t at least 10 years old and affordable with a cash payment. If you adopt a belief or a principle that informs how you’re going to handle your money, and then you start doing it without breaking your own rules, you’re going to create an ideology for yourself that helps you achieve your property management profitability goals. A big mistake Steve sees a lot in real estate is people increasing their lifestyle as they increase their income. He never did that. His happiness came from seeing the progress of the wealth he was building over time. You have to be patient because the growth is slow. Steven never questioned that he could be prosperous and happy. Financial independence simply required a roadmap and a commitment to the property management profitability practice he had laid out for himself. You can compare this to eating right. There’s no magic bullet or big secret. You know what you have to do to be healthy. The problem is in the execution. The Gap Between the Practice and the Action When it comes to making your property management business profitable, sometimes you have to reconcile what you know you should do (the practice) with what you’re actually doing (the action). That can be a struggle. We know what’s good for us, but it’s easy to sabotage ourselves by acting differently. How can property managers work through that? Steve says we all have to look for whatever it is that lights our fire and motivates us. What gives you those small moments of delight? It’s going to be different for everyone, but Steve finds delight in simplicity. He references a TedTalk that’s called The Paradox of Choice. The takeaway of that talk is that the more choices we have in life, the less happy we are. Here’s how that translates into real estate: Austin, TX is a strong seller’s market, just like many cities across the country. If you list a house today for $695,000, there will likely be 20 to 40 offers on that house, and it will likely sell for $800,000 or more. The buyer who gets that house will have paid more than it’s worth, but he or she will be a happier buyer than the one who bought a home below market in 2010 when the market was dead and there were hundreds of homes to choose from. Why? Because when you have a lot of choices, you’re always not getting something. A buyer with a lot of choices may be paying less, but by acquiring one choice, a lot of other choices are given up. This may sound silly, but it has merit. Pay attention to what makes you happy and why. Steve likes minimalism. He likes straight, uncomplicated decisions. He ran his property management business that way because it aligned with his happiness. Since he only managed a certain kind of property in a certain kind of neighborhood, his tenants were fairly homogenous. Owners accepted that they had to be hands-off if they were going to work with him. Simplicity. Personal happiness was transferred into business happiness. Attracting Owners that Make You Happy Steve didn’t want to work with any owners who insisted on playing a major part in the decision-making and management of their properties. So, in order to attract owners that aligned with his property management profitability practice, he communicated his practice using stories that supported his values. One of his clients was a young couple who were hoping to rent out the home they owned while they moved to Seattle. In Seattle, they planned to rent a home instead of buying one. Steve asked them to think about what would happen if they were in their rental property and the heat went out. Would they want to wait five days to have that heat repaired while their property manager went back and forth with the property owner, collecting bids and getting permission to do the work? Or would they want the heat fixed right away? They agreed that the heat should be fixed right away. Steve told them that’s the service he provides. This is a good example of how property managers can translate their profitability practice into collecting more of the types of owner clients they want. When Steve came across owners who wanted to be involved and make even the smallest decisions, he wouldn’t take on the property. It was easy to say no. These types of owners didn’t fit with his profitability practice. There are other property managers who allow their owners to be more involved, and they’re better suited to owners who are looking for that. The discipline (or the practice, if you will) was in describing the scenario so the owners understood why he worked the way he did. It allowed him to choose only the owners and properties that were aligned with that business model. If you’d like to hear more about how to attract more of your ideal client, check out our blog on property management marketing ideas to get the right owner leads. The Fear of Losing Owner Leads If you’re a property manager who is reading this, you may feel some anxiety about losing potential owners. But, if you know your numbers and your Financial Freedom Finish Line, and you know how many doors you need to manage to produce the income you need to stay on track, you don’t have to feel desperate for another door. Keep yourself at the right cruising altitude, and there shouldn’t be any anxiety about not having enough doors. There’s a drumbeat in the property management industry that’s focused on growing, growing, and growing some more. You should know how many properties you want to manage. If you’re short and you need to add more, then growth is important. But, decide what’s non-negotiable in your practice and stick to it. You can grow your income and your wealth without increasing the number of bad doors you’re managing. Never show up feeling desperate to win the account. That’s when you start making concessions to your own belief system and practice. You take properties you know you shouldn’t take. You work with home warranties when you know that impedes your business. For Steve, home warranties are deal breakers and out of alignment with his property management profitability practice. If you’re trying to grow, there has to be a rational reason for it. If you don’t know how many more doors you want, you simply know that you want more doors, you’re not going to have a very focused strategy for your property management business. You need an end goal, otherwise your plan is incomplete. Profitability as a Practice: Changing the Way You Do Business Are you a property manager who feels their business suffers from owner over-involvement? Some people think that’s good service, but if you’ve trained and conditioned your owners to be in the loop on everything that happens, it can be too much information and result in poor service to your tenants. You’re creating more work for yourself. If this feels true to your experience, the disadvantages are plain and clear. But there’s good news! You can adjust your current business practice with one letter. Send a letter to all your owners and say “Effective immediately, here’s how maintenance will be handled: For ordinary and expected repairs, there will be no notification or involvement, it will simply be taken care of. For larger and more expensive urgent repairs such as water heater replacements or air conditioning breakdowns, you’ll initiate what needs to be done immediately.” Let your owners know that you’ll communicate with them about the decisions you’re making, but there will no longer be any back and forth, in order to provide your tenants with the best possible service. Send that letter out and hit the reset button. Steve did this, sending that letter to 100 owners and none of them quit. It was, as he calls it, a big Nothing Burger. Property managers often have a harder time with it than their owners. They’re scared, and that goes back to mindset. It’s easy to fall back into old patterns. You have to practice doing the scary things. The COVID pandemic creates an opportunity to make this change. People are really living in their homes like never before. They’re working from home and schooling kids from home. They really depend on the home to function and operate. That’s going to cause extra maintenance. Previously, they may have run the dishwasher twice a week. Now, with everyone home all day and no one going out to eat as much, the dishwasher might run twice a day. Even the thermostat is set differently. For property managers, this means that a tenant who may have been okay with a three-day turnaround in the past might need a speedy fix otherwise it’s really a negative impact. Service matters. It’s really important to give good service to your tenants. The most valuable asset you have in your rental property is a good landlord-tenant relationship. If you can get an owner to align with that, the owner will have no reason to be upset with your new way of working. Re-Directing Owners to the Big Picture Re-directing owners to see the big picture can help you manage those conversations that might be difficult after a decision has been made that they weren’t expecting. For example, you might have to replace an air conditioning unit for $6,800. That means the next month’s $1,800 in rent will be used to cover that invoice, and the owner will have to write a check for $5,000 to cover the balance. Ouch. But, always tell the owner the good news. The good news is, since you sold that owner the property 10 years ago, it’s already doubled in value. That gets the owner out of their scarcity mindset and shows them that their wealth is growing. It’s a big expense, but the property is doing well and money has already been earned. This isn’t a deflection. It’s a method for keeping the owner focused on their own Financial Freedom Finish Line. Owners who struggle with expenses haven’t been told the truth about what’s required in owning rental property. Always ask a potential owner how they’re doing on money before you agree to manage their property. Ask if they have six months of rent sitting aside to cover vacancy. Find out if they have access to the cash they may need to make big repairs. If the owner doesn’t have the money that’s needed, start talking about other options. It might be better to sell the property. You don’t want a client who is anxious about money. It’s not serving an owner to promise that you’ll keep expenses down. There may be some very large expenses and if they don’t have the money to cover those, everyone is going to have a problem. Keeping Your Property Management Profitability Practice on Track If you’re trying to eat better or exercise more, you likely have an app that you use to track your progress. Maybe you write down what you eat and how you move in a diary or a notebook. There’s no such system when it comes to managing properties for profitability, but everything starts with clarity. You may be managing unprofitable properties because you have no way of looking at how unprofitable they actually are. Here’s what Steve suggests: Create a spreadsheet with all the doors you manage. Put in your revenue from each door and give it an effort score. Maybe the A units get a 1 and a B unit gets a 2 and a C unit is a 3. You’ll easily be able to compare the amount of money you’re earning as it relates to the effort you’re making. When Steve did this, he immediately dumped 100 doors. If you’re spending 80 percent of your effort managing doors that only earn 17 percent of your income, you’re not managing for profitability. This may be a Day of Reckoning. Hold yourself accountable. Keep track of your conversion rate on your leads as well. How many of the people you talk to are ready to hire a property manager? What percentage are you converting? If it’s not 70 percent, start figuring out why. You can get yourself to your Financial Freedom Finish Line once you know what it is. Then, you can: Send a letter to your owners letting them know you’ll be managing with less input going forward. Put all your units in a spreadsheet and decide which are profitable and which are not. Stop managing the unprofitable units. This is a reliable way to increase your income and decrease your effort. Property management is a hard business but it’s a great business. If you’re sharpening your saw and reducing your effort while your income goes up and you know your targets and unit counts, you’ll be more confident in what you need to do each day. Steve loves talking about this, so contact him if you have any questions about increasing your own profitability. If you need help with property management marketing, you can always contact us at Fourandhalf. The post The Practice of Property Management Profitability appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: During this time of moratorium madness, it’s becoming more and more difficult to enforce leases and do your job as a property manager. Our guests, Tracy Minick and Katherine Swanberg from Real Estate Gladiators know your pain. In this episode of The Property Management Show, we’ll discuss the way property management’s role has changed over the last year of this pandemic and how to navigate around ever-moving targets, laws, and expectations. Key Takeaways: Due to Federal and local eviction moratoriums put in place by the pandemic, large parts of property manager’s lease agreements are unenforceable. This has dramatically changed property manager’s job descriptions. Property managers like the Real Estate Gladiators are communicating with owners and tenants more, assisting tenants with unemployment & helping tenants seek financial support so that they can afford to pay rent. Property managers are more valuable to owners than ever. It’s vital that property managers communicate the way that their job has changed to their owners, and demonstrate the amount of work they’re doing to keep their owners compliant. Property Management During Moratorium Madness The Real Estate Gladiators team has been fighting even harder for their owner clients than they ever did before. We asked Tracy and Katherine to talk about how they’re using this experience to showcase their true value as professional property managers, even though their hands are in many cases tied because of laws and moratoriums. COVID Legislation and Eviction Moratoriums Current legislation is under consideration to extend the eviction moratorium and to implement other laws that will impact both tenants and owners. While Tracy and Katherine primarily manage homes in Snohomish County, Kings County, and Pierce County in Washington State, they’ve learned that anything done in Seattle usually spreads throughout the state. Often, it motivates other states across the country to enact similar laws. The legislative session in Washington State will include a tremendous number of bills that will impact business owners and property managers and landlords in many different ways. We could see some huge changes coming. It’s been almost a year since we began living with COVID. Moratoriums enforced on property managers and owners have required a pivot in the way everything is handled, from late fees to notices to evictions. Most of us likely believed that this was simply a response to a temporary situation. Now, it’s looking like the laws and restrictions put in place could become an additional two-year plan. You should check out our episode about cashflow during the COVID-19 pandemic if that’s another layer that you’re dealing with right now. Looking at the Washington State Eviction Moratorium Like many places in the country, Washington State has had an eviction moratorium for a full year. There’s a national moratorium and then there are local extensions of that moratorium. This provides another blanket of restrictions and rules that hold back the eviction process. In Washington, there are laws in place that impact Real Estate Gladiator’s ability to: Collect past due rent Terminate tenancies Increase rent Charge late rent fees Charge penalties or NSF fees Essentially, large parts of their lease agreements are no longer enforceable. Even asking tenants to pay rent or providing an invoice for the rent that’s due is not allowed. Property managers and owners in and around Seattle and throughout the state of Washington have been encouraged to ask tenants to pay what they can when they can. Payment plans are also encouraged. This has dramatically changed the job of a property manager. Before last year, owners would hire a property manager to enforce a contract. Now, owners are relying on property managers to increase the level of communication and negotiation with tenants to an all-time high. Property managers are communicating with tenants 10 times more than they were a year ago. They’re also communicating with owners more frequently. To be a successful property manager, you have to understand the situation that each tenant is in and how they’re impacted by COVID hardships. Tracy and Katherine have been providing resources to tenants to help them access any support that’s available to them. This is a different job description than it once was. Coordinating COVID Resources for Tenants and Owners Real Estate Gladiators were always providing resources to their tenants. Now, however, those resources include help in applying for unemployment. They’re educating residents on where to go for help and how to initiate an unemployment claim. In Washington State, you do not have to prove a COVID hardship in order to be protected from eviction. Tenants are simply not required to pay rent right now. That doesn’t mean they won’t be accountable for it at some point. Communication with tenants has been about support. Tracy and Katherine are working hard to help people and to show them that they understand and care about what they’re going through. They cannot go as far as applying for assistance on behalf of their tenants. The CARES Act funding does not allow for it. It’s up to the tenants to make the phone calls and go through the interviews and fill out the questionnaires. Determining what part of the stimulus they can qualify for is the first step and then there is follow-up required with various agencies and funding sources. Coordinating all of this has become a part-time job for the entire Real Estate Gladiators office. There’s also support that’s needed for landlords and property owners. They are in a situation where they have ongoing property expenses that accrue whether the tenant is communicating and working with their property managers or not. Additional expenses are also sometimes unavoidable. Under the moratorium, if a tenant is not paying rent but the hot water heater goes out, owners are still obligated to provide them with hot water. They have to replace the heater. But if that owner hasn’t received rent in maybe six months and they have to pay for this maintenance issue, it’s very frustrating. Communication with the owners has helped them to understand how proactive they’ve been with their tenants. It’s helpful. Advocating for Property Management During the Moratorium Crisis Tracy and Katherine have had some clients who left in order to self-manage their properties during the moratorium. They believe that if their property managers cannot collect rent for them, there’s no sense in paying for those services. It’s an understandable reflex. However, property managers are working harder than they’ve ever worked before to make their owners whole during the moratorium. There’s more work in managing delinquencies and defaults than there is in posting a 14-Day Notice to Pay or Vacate. Self-managing landlords are dealing with different dynamics than they were a year ago. Treading water is not easy. The tenant and landlord laws are moving targets and the goal posts are now changing quarterly. There are city ordinances and county ordinances and state laws in addition to the federal moratorium. Owners who don’t know what all of those mean for them and their properties are going to expose themselves to a lot of liability. There is more value than ever in paying for professional property management. Your owners need to understand that their property managers are plugged into the state agencies and organizations that can provide the most information and help. Property managers understand the legislation and they can share tips with owners about how to advocate for themselves at city hall and in the statehouse. Most owners would not even know about the changes happening on a regular basis with the laws. If you’re not communicating your value to your owners, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Owners can’t see how drastically things are happening on a daily basis. Tell your owners everything you can because you’ll always have more information than they do. Check out this episode on how you can use data to guide and communicate to your property owners for more support. If you aren’t actively engaged in your local real estate associations, you’re missing out on a lot of good and necessary information. It’s not static. The changes are very dynamic and you have to pay attention daily. Most associations have lobbyists with seats at the decision-making tables. They know the state laws and the pending bills and they understand how these pieces of legislation will impact you as a business owner. Your business will likely never look the same. Current Legislative Session Concerns Testimony right now involves the eviction moratorium and the possibility of extending it. Lawmakers are deciding what that extension might mean for people with unpaid rent balances for 10 of the last 12 months. No one thinks it’s a good idea for landlords to pay for a person’s housing expenses for the duration of this moratorium. So, how can they recover their properties? These are the current concerns. Seattle is floating an idea that once the national moratorium is determined to be over, they will then extend it for two years beyond the end of COVID. That’s a little nebulous. When is COVID over? When is that date? It’s hard to help people forecast what they’ll be able to do with their properties. If an owner can’t give a notice of termination and renewing a lease is required, what are your real available options? No one wants to see mass evictions, but in order to have a rental housing market, you need landlords. The relief cannot be so one-sided. There have also been discussions about a rent break. In such a situation, rent might be reduced by $500 for six months, and then after those six months, the rental amount returns to its original level. Incentive programs like this can help people pay and it doesn’t leave the landlords completely empty-handed. Helping tenants and landlords begins with understanding the tenant’s situation. What you know about your tenant is probably different now than what’s on the application. They might have been qualified when they applied, but circumstances have likely changed. Property managers need to be creative in encouraging people to pay what they can. There is currently no opportunity to go to court for an eviction. Even when the courts do open up, there’s going to be some kind of arbitration required before you can actually evict a tenant and it’s hard to imagine what that waiting list will look like. No one has painted a clear picture of what it will look like when owners want to regain possession of their property. Currently, there are two options: owners can provide a 60 Day Notice because they’re selling the property or they can take the residence back in order to move into it themselves. But, those two options are only available if the lease term has come to an end. Bringing in New Property Management Business How do you bring in new business when you can’t enforce your lease agreement? Tracy recently spoke with a new owner who has had a vacant property for two years. It’s in an HOA that has strict regulations on condo rentals. So, she hasn’t had a tenant in two years and has no idea what’s going on in the market. She didn’t know about any of the moratoriums or restrictions. Tracy shared her sincere desire to qualify tenants to the best of her ability and to increase the level of employment verification and proof of income verification so the best possible tenants will be placed. A lot of regular property management services haven’t stopped, including periodic inspections. If there’s a new roof needed or gutters in need of cleaning, there’s a way to participate in maintaining the home. Owners appreciate this. They know that property managers are still their boots on the ground, even if collecting rent has become impossible thanks to the eviction moratoriums. New owners looking for property management understand their own limitations. If a landlord calls the tenant to harass them for rent, they’re going to get in trouble. So, property managers can offer themselves as a separation between landlord and tenant. Owners don’t have to worry about the over-communication that’s currently necessary. The best advice for property managers right now? Highlight the invisible things you do. Shine through communication. Refocus on the things you can do and that you do all the time. You probably never got credit for them in the past, and it’s about time you do. As frustrating as the moratoriums are, this is the time to prove to owners that they’re better off with you instead of navigating all of this on their own. If you have any questions about what you heard on this podcast with Tracy and Katherine, please contact us at Fourandhalf. The post Property Management During Moratorium Madness appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: We’re talking about Realtor referral programs on The Property Management Show today, specifically, why they fail and what is required to make them successful. Vitaliy Merkulov from Renter, Inc. has joined us to share what he’s learned about referral programs and how to ensure property managers are making the most of these tools. Key Takeaways: A Realtor referral program is a tool or system that a property management company uses to collect leads based on referrals from Realtors. Realtor referral programs can be a great source of generating leads. To make yours successful, you need to be willing to put time into maintaining and managing your program, and your relationships with Realtors. Realtor referral programs are the most successful when supported by a holistic property management marketing strategy. Basics of a Realtor Referral Program Everyone has a different idea about what a Realtor referral program is and how it should work. At its most basic, the program is a tool or a system that a property management company sets up to help them with the marketing of their leads. There are typically multiple components involved: A website or a web page that explains the program. This site should include information about the referral bonus paid to eligible Realtors who refer clients to the property manager and a list of benefits that the Realtor will enjoy by working with the property manager. An automated marketing system where social media outreach is done or a Business Development Manager calls Realtors on a consistent basis. Online form asking for referrals These are the typical components, but that’s not everything your referral program should include. Creating the Realtor referral program is your first step. Then, you have to make it work for you. That requires marketing and managing your program. There are multiple levels to its success, and it requires ongoing attention. Check out our step by step guide to creating your own referral program makers Successful Programs vs. Those That Fail Why do some Realtor referral programs work and others do not? Vitaliy says it really comes down to effort. As with any program, you have to put in a lot of work to get the results you want. With referral programs, it’s easy to get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results. But, you have to realize that building successful referral relationships takes time. Programs fail because property managers don’t make the effort. They don’t spend time networking with real estate agents and marketing their services and value. If a lot of traction isn’t made right away, it’s easy to lose interest in the program and begin focusing on other things. This is a mistake. Referral programs aren’t easy. Earning those referrals requires time and effort, and it’s not going to happen right away. Everyone knows that property managers are busy. There’s a lot of talk about property managers working in their business instead of on their business. A referral program sounds like a great idea but it starts with a website and relationships and marketing. Before too long, something else will grab your attention and you’ll go back to getting lost in the day-to-day business needs. If you want your program to work, you have to focus on implementing that program and jumping on Zoom calls and meetings with Realtors. You need to share your expertise and your knowledge while promoting your services. That’s what will bring you the success you’re hoping for with a referral program. In the property management industry, no two days are ever the same. Things are always coming up. Property managers in Texas, for example, never imagined they’d have to deal with frozen pipes in their properties and mass power outages. You need a plan to push through the daily work and the craziness you encounter from tenants and owners to make time for your referral program. Research and Statistics: How are Realtor Referrals Used? A lot of research has been done on referral programs and one particular study looked at over 600 professionals across North America. Here are some of the interesting things that were found: 84 percent of decision makers start with a referral. 82 percent of respondents said referrals are their biggest leads. Those are big numbers. The best leads come from referrals because they convert at a higher rate. It’s cost effective, too. You’ll close deals faster which means you can spend your marketing dollars elsewhere. Another important statistic: Only 30 percent of companies have a formalized referral program. When you call a lead that you got off a Google Ads campaign, the conversation is going to be more challenging than the lead you call from a referral. We know referrals are an excellent source of marketing leads. So, why do only 30 percent of companies have a formal program? Out of the 30 percent of companies that use referral programs, 86 percent of those companies have grown in last two years. We know they work. How Can You Make Your Realtor Referral Program Work? Different markets are going to have different results. For many of the most successful Realtor referral programs, five to seven leads per week is the result. Some companies can get up to 10 or 15 per week. These numbers are above average. If you can go from 0 referral leads to 60 referral leads in one year, you’ve got a successful program. One or two referrals a week are going to increase your business and set you up to grow. Give yourself some time for the program to yield results. When your program and your marketing are in place and your BDM is building relationships with Realtors, you may not have any new business today. But, in six months, you may see leads start to come in. You have to keep yourself and your company in front of those Realtors. Maybe you’ll present your program to a meeting of real estate agents and they’ll send you a referral that they happen to have, collect their referral fee, and then forget that you’re available. You have to keep reminding them of who you are and what you can provide. You have to keep asking for referrals. It’s an important part of maintaining your value and your relationship. Here are some other things to remember: Make sure you have a property management website set up that specifically speaks to your referral program. If people can’t find you or don’t know about the program, they’re not going to make referrals. Don’t just dangle the fees in front of Realtors and expect them to respond. $200 or $300 isn’t a lot of money when you consider the commissions that real estate agents earn on sales. Focus less on the fee and more on the value of your program. Incentivize your referral. Realtors care about ongoing business more than they care about a one-time referral fee. Talk about how you return the clients to them and help them grow their own business. Introduce a contract and the details that limit their risk. Most real estate agents will worry you’re going to steal their client. Be specific about the details of your program, and be transparent so everyone feels better. This is not a transaction. This is a relationship-building program with long term benefits. Setting Yourself Apart from Other Property Management Companies How do you keep your property management brand on the minds of Realtors when so many other companies are doing the same thing? Competing for attention is nothing new to property managers. You have to be in front of Realtors when one of their clients is looking for property management. The study we referenced earlier showed that 91 percent of people are willing to give a referral but only 29 percent do. We need to figure out how to get that number up. People are willing to refer business to you. You have to make sure it’s easy for them to remember you. Keep your company in front of Realtors who may refer business to you. There are a couple of good ways to do that: Automated online marketing programs can ensure Realtors are aware of who you are and what you do. Social media posts can be routinely made to demonstrate successful results. Your BDM can call Realtors every Friday. The marketing needs to be intentional. Instead of calling every Friday to ask for referrals, contact your agents to find out if there’s anything they need. Maybe you can share a new law with them and what it means for their clients. Talk about eviction updates. There are a lot of things they should know but probably don’t. If you’re an educational resource, they’ll know who to call when they need help. Relationships aren’t only about referrals. They’re about sharing information. They’re about building trust. Talk to Realtors about the help you can provide when their clients are looking to buy an investment property. If you can help them choose between a fourplex and a single-family home or you can provide a rental analysis or some ideas for improvements that will make the property cash flow better, you’re going to earn that investor’s business when management services are needed. Present yourself as a partner. Tracking Your Realtor Referrals Your system has to include tracking. It’s very easy to get disorganized when referrals start rolling in. It should be more than making a note that a particular Realtor referred the new client. You want to track every step of the referral process. Note when the referral was contacted, when you scheduled a meeting, when you evaluated the property, when the management contract was signed, when you listed the home, when it was leased, etc. Track the movement of your referred client and communicate the steps to the agent who made the referral. Some people think there can be too much communication and you should keep your business to yourself. But, those who communicate more often have better results. Keep your referring agent informed. It helps you retain their trust. No one will want to refer a client to a company that can’t keep track of where their clients are coming from. PM Referral App Vitaliy and his team at Renter, Inc. developed a unique tool that property managers can use to manage their referral program. The PM Referral App is a tracking system for property management companies to gather all their referrals. The system has a web dashboard and it integrates with your CRM, whether that’s Lead Simple or something else. More importantly, there’s a mobile app that’s branded to your property management company. You can give that app to the Realtors who can submit referrals through the app. With a simple swipe, they can ask you for a rental analysis or send you a client’s information. You get a notification right away that there’s a referral waiting. Both you and the referring agent can see each stage of the process. You can also provide content on the app. This is a great way to demonstrate your expertise in the local property management industry and the rental market. This tool helps property managers automate their communication. But the tool isn’t going to magically deliver referrals. You have to use it to make it successful, and providing quality content will help. Before you can get Realtors to download your app, you have to get them interested in your company and your services. Explain the benefits and how you can help. Once you’ve established that communication, you can set up your automated marketing system or your drip campaign. This provides you with a regular method for providing information and asking for referrals. You get to deliver informative and interesting content, and Realtors have an easy way to get in touch with you. The system alone isn’t going to increase referrals. Your job as a property manager is to engage with Realtors and keep yourself at the top of their minds. If you have any questions about referral programs or how companies like Vitaliy’s can help you, please contact us at Fourandhalf. The post Why Your Realtor Referral Program Isn’t Working (& How to Make it Work) appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: In Part 1 and Part 2 of our Property Management Marketing series, we discussed various aspects of property management tenant marketing. Today, we’ve invited our own John Bykowski, CEO at Fourandhalf to discuss some of the big changes he’s seen in owner marketing. We’re talking about how property management companies can keep up with the times and attract more property owner clients. Key Takeaways: Internet marketing has exploded in the last nine years for the property management industry. Google Ads, websites and content marketing are crucial for owner marketing these days. Changes in consumer behavior are affecting owner marketing strategies. There are more things vying for our attention these days – your job is to capture owner’s attention, and provide value to them once you have it. Catch our full Property Management Marketing series: Property Management Marketing | Part 1 | The Rise of Zumper & Facebook Marketplace Property Management Marketing | Part 2 | Building Waitlists & Pre-Marketing Remembering Property Management Owner Marketing in 2012 John started in internet marketing about nine years ago, when it wasn’t really a thing. There were websites and homepages, but they were little more than a placeholder or calling card. Think of a glorified Yellow Pages ad for a company, with the addition of a few pages. Most property managers were getting their websites from their software companies. It was still more common to spend marketing dollars on print ads in the Yellow Pages or on billboards or bus seats. Maybe a property manager would purchase a radio ad or a television ad if there was money and ability. The internet was not the primary marketing platform for property managers when John got started and Fourandhalf was arriving. He remembers his first NARPM National meeting, which was in Washington, D.C. in 2012, and he had to explain to people that you can get business from the internet. Some people understood this but a lot had not thought about it. Leading an Industry Towards Different Thinking The world at large began to change and a huge part of life moved online. YouTube was around and that’s where people went to watch videos. Netflix had just started streaming but it wasn’t very popular yet. More information could be found online and eventually, there was no reason to explain to property managers that it was a good idea to advertise on the internet. The number of ways to advertise had grown more sophisticated. When Fourandhalf started, content marketing and video blogs were very new. The best ways to market your property management services to owners were through content marketing, social media marketing, and reputation management. These were the products Fourandhalf focused on and they looked nothing like they look today. With reputation management for example, John was simply teaching people how to respond to reviews. There were no automated systems in place and Yelp was far more popular than Google. In some markets, Yelp wasn’t even used yet. Now, things have evolved and Google stars are far more important than Yelp reviews. As marketing moved online, banner ads were available but it didn’t take long for marketers to realize that no one was clicking on banner ads. Pop up ads weren’t working either. It was time to learn how to leverage the data that could be gathered by a person’s online presence. Valuable Owner Marketing Tools Today AdWords AdWords started slowly and before everyone started using it, you could launch an AdWords campaign for cheap. Now, we’re at the point where so many people are using it that it’s actually an auction site. The price keeps going up and that’s not going to stop. Early in the AdWords days, a Bay Area property management company could spend $2 per click. Now, it’s about $65 per click in the same market. There was also a huge gap in knowledge about how to use AdWords. We encountered a lot of property managers who hired a generic AdWords company that didn’t understand the difference between owner clicks and tenant clicks. Our industry has gotten smarter and property managers are careful not to waste money. We’ve learned how to track return on the marketing dollars that are spent. AdWords can still work today, but plan to spend some money. There aren’t any magic bullets when it comes to owner marketing for property managers. In the past, implementing a marketing strategy would put you ahead of your competitors. Now, everyone is using those strategies so not implementing them will put you well behind other management companies in your market. Websites Websites are more important than they were even a few years ago. This has become the base of internet marketing. Your website is a lead source, not just a place to post information about who you are. Everyone is researching everything online. Before a new owner gets in touch with you, that lead is going to be pretty well-educated thanks to what they’ve found online. Consumers hardly have to interview people and companies anymore. You don’t have to call and talk to 10 people before you make a buying decision. You can go online and look at reviews. You can see how many times tenants have complained. Your website is powerful. It’s more than where you are and what you do. Think about Coca Cola. That brand has created an image for itself based on emotion. Their website says nothing about what it’s like to drink sugary carbonated water. Instead, it’s telling a story about how it feels to enjoy a Coke and it’s inviting visitors to engage with the brand. This has to happen for smaller companies, too. People are going to expect to see why you’re a property manager and why they should work with you. Content Marketing Content marketing is now all about targeting pain points. When a potential owner goes online, they’re not typing ‘property manager Richmond’ into the search box. They’re typing how do I find a good tenant or how do I maintain my rental property. Instead of looking for a service online, they’re trying to solve a problem using online resources. Consumer Behavior Changes and What it Means for Marketing Big changes in consumer behavior are requiring property management companies to catch up. No one is calling or faxing or looking for plumbers in the Yellow Pages. Google My Business has taken the place of the Yellow Pages. It’s where people can go to look up general information about a company. You need to make sure it’s accurate. Make sure your hours reflect your opening and closing times because people are using that and if you’re not open when you say you’re open, you can probably expect a complaint or a negative review. Social media has changed to reflect the same trends in consumer behavior. Facebook was around in 2012, but people weren’t interfacing with it in the same way they are now. What you can and cannot do with Facebook is different, and that’s largely due to the general backlash against privacy invasions. Cambridge Analytics did some shady things with the data it collected on people, and when Facebook pulled away from that, limits were put into place on the kind of data you could use to target people. Previously, a real estate agent could create a campaign that targeted people who were six months away from buying a house. There was data gathered based on a person’s online activity that told us they were six months away from that purchasing decision. Now, there’s a larger push for re-marketing and re-targeting. Think about those banner ads people hated. While no one ever clicked on them, people were still seeing them. The same concept is being used now. Facebook might not know you’re going to buy a house in six months anymore. But, if you visit my real estate sales page on my website, it’s going to trigger Google ads and social media sites to put real estate advertising content in front of you. No one expects you to click on it. But, you’re going to see it. The image and the information is there. Competitive Owner Marketing Property managers have to know the competitive alternatives to what they’re currently doing. Competition now includes doing nothing. Or, it means an owner is managing on their own. So when you advertise your property management services to owners, don’t just compare yourself to the company down the road. You also have to make a case for why property management is needed. This is a problem that not all industries have. On your website, it’s important to include messages to different audiences who show up for different reasons. In the past, people would get to the homepage first. Now, there are better search options. You can direct people to subpages, which are more specific to what a person is searching for. With the right website content, you can have an answer for each competitive alternative. You’ll tailor your pages to the problems of particular consumers. Google is now a verb. I’m going to Google ____. It has shifted the way we live and when you can Google anything, there’s a sense that professional help may not be needed. You’re targeting property owners who can Google how to find a tenant. You’re targeting property owners who can Google how to fix a toilet. Self-management has always been a fact. But now, people may find they are more emboldened to manage on their own because of all the information that’s so easy to find. Your job is to reinforce the fact that property management is more than collecting rent and fixing toilets. Twenty years ago, property owners didn’t even know property management existed. John owned a home in Las Vegas and when he moved to Silicon Valley, he rented out the property to a friend and had his Dad take care of anything the house needed. If he had known he could hire a property manager to take care of everything, he might still have that investment property today. Eventually he sold it because managing from out of state was just too much. Industry education now means explaining to rental property owners why professional management is valuable. Owner Marketing Plans for 2021 and Beyond When it comes to property management marketing and your plans to attract more owners, things have changed and they will continue changing. https://fourandhalf.com/property-management-marketing/Here’s what you can do to keep up: You need a systematic reputation management process in place. Good reviews aren’t just nice to have – they’re necessary. Not all of your reviews are going to be good of course, but you need to work on increasing your stars on Google. Be attentive to that. It’s what people are looking at. We have a process for reputation management at Fourandhalf, and you can also do it manually. One way or another, make sure you’re not avoiding your online reputation. You can have 50 five-star reviews, but you still have to stay on top of it. Make your website more than it was. Once upon a time, you could rank just for being a property management company and having a page dedicated to services. Now, you need content that will attract visitors and keep them on your site. Google is always changing its algorithms. Now, it’s looking at your content. Be suspicious of SEO companies. No one knows exactly what kind of magic Google is using to rank sites. SEO companies can lead you to bad decisions. People who spammed keyword tags and backlinks are now suffering. Don’t take shady shortcuts. Adding content to your site will increase your ranking. There are no shortcuts. Look at what you’re doing and make sure it’s working. Marketing changes don’t happen on a monthly basis, so don’t check your numbers month to month. Remember, too, that property management is a seasonal industry. You’re going to have fewer people looking for you in January than you do in the late spring. Don’t make immediate changes because it looks like your marketing plans aren’t delivering any action right now. Look at how much business you’re doing this year compared to last year. Make changes based on that kind of timeline. Some of the metrics you should use include: How many leads do I have? What are the quality of those leads? How long does it take me to close a lead? What am I doing to convert the most leads? Attention Management is Part of Property Management Owner Marketing Everyone is familiar with terms like multitasking and time management. Now, attention management is the thing you need to focus on. There are so many things competing for your attention. Your phones and your tablets and your Apple Watch are trying to steal your attention. Every time you subscribe to something and start getting notifications – you’re giving away your attention. When you’re marketing your services to owners, your job is to get their attention. Once you have that attention, you need to know what to do with it. You can’t give them a blurb or a sales pitch. You have to make a connection. This is what we can boil it all down to. The biggest change in marketing is that there are more forces trying to steal your attention online. Tik Tok videos. Pinterest pictures. So much is happening out there, that you have to show your value once you have someone’s attention. Get them to your website and start interacting. People are interested in what you will mean to them. Luckily, you can share this message better online now than you could before. If you have any questions about what John had to say on today’s podcast, please contact us at Fourandhalf, a marketing agency for property management companies. The post Property Management Marketing | Part 3 | How Owner Marketing Has Changed appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: On today’s episode of The Property Management Show, we’ve asked the experts in property management and HOA banking to join us. Allison DiSarro and Ken Carteron from Enterprise Bank and Trust, formerly Seacoast Commerce Bank, are on the podcast to talk about the differences in banking for property managers and banking for HOAs. Whether you’re already doing both property management and HOA management or you’re thinking about expanding into one or the other, today’s episode is for you. Introducing Ken and Allison – The Faces of HOA and Property Management Banking Ken Carteron has been an HOA banking professional since 1992, and he’s been in the general banking industry since 1980. His 40th anniversary in the field has come and gone, and one association manager he works with once said that Ken has forgotten more about HOA banking than anyone else will learn in their lifetime. It’s what he does and he’s good at it. His clients would agree. Allison DiSarro has been with us on The Property Management Show before (check out Property Management Banking & Trust Accounts). She’s an expert in property management banking and introduced to us the concept of analysis credits for property managers before Seacoast joined Enterprise Bank and Trust. Allison says she was skeptical of the merger at first, but now she’s excited about the growth of opportunity available for the property managers she works with. The Merger: Seacoast Commerce Bank Joins Enterprise Bank and Trust If you’re not already aware of the merger between Seacoast Commerce Bank and Enterprise Bank and Trust, we want to talk about what that will mean for customers of the bank. Prior to the change, Seacoast had been successful in becoming the face of property management banking. Growth was never a problem, but there were some things missing. The benefits were the analysis credit program, the high rates, and the compliance. Those were always the driving factors. What was missing, however, was a solid product provider. The online capabilities and flexibility of the bank was hampered by the system they were using, and investing in a new software system wasn’t possible. Customers of Seacoast needed the tools and support to do online banking more effectively. Relationship managers were advocating for that, and the system that Enterprise Bank and Trust uses is exactly the one they wanted. What Seacoast Clients Can Expect with the Merger Property managers who have been working with Seacoast will notice a positive impact. The system is sophisticated and easy to use. On February 12, everything will convert to the online banking system used by Enterprise. Beyond the new technology, everything property managers loved about their relationship with Seacoast is the same. The merger has felt less like being absorbed into another company and more like a collaborative move forward. Most importantly, the specialty deposit team is getting what has been needed. Ken has been in banking for a long time, and this is hardly his first merger. He says he’s been through some terrible ones, and is impressed that this has been handled so well. Enterprise has been good about coming to Seacoast for guidance in moving forward. That doesn’t usually happen. Another major benefit to the merger is the flexibility that comes with having onsite programmers. They can build integrations into existing software programs and expand the product that’s already provided. There’s also a larger lending product for HOAs. The lending limits with Enterprise Bank and Trust are a lot different than they were before Seacoast merged. Ken can now present a package on behalf of an HOA client who needs a $10 million loan and expect it to be accepted. That allows him to provide more value to his clients. One thing they both mourn is the loss of the Seacoast Commerce name. It was a security blanket that’s hard to let go of, even if it’s a normal process. But this is a new bank with a new executive team and new owners. There’s been a merger into a bigger bank and it’s creating new opportunities for property manager and HOA clients. How Has HOA Banking Changed? Long ago, an HOA would have a trust account. That’s not the case any longer, and in the reserve accounts that are used instead, Ken works with HOA management companies to set up insured money market accounts. Here’s why that matters: The FDIC covers $250,000 per Tax ID number. An HOA will have two accounts; an operating account and a reserve account. To keep that money safe, those accounts should not go over the $250,000 limit. But they can and they do because operating funds go up and down throughout the month. It’s Ken’s job to find a place for the rest of the funds – those that exceed the $250,000 limit. Many HOAs will have millions of dollars, and that money needs to be scattered into different accounts so they can maintain FDIC protection. The ICS program helps them. It allows Ken to place all excess funds into one set of accounts which are split up into $250,000 increments, but deposited and consolidated onto one bank statement. This allows the management company, when they’re doing their financials, to deal with one statement only. Other banks use products similar to this. It blends everything together and acts like a normal money market account and the funds are still easy to access. It acts as a broker account, with all the funds in one location but split up into several different accounts to stay insured. Imagine that you’re a banker with $750,000 for one HOA. At the bank, you’ll hold $250,000, and then you’ll disperse the rest into two other accounts. Those accounts will be at other banks, but the initial bank will manage those accounts through the ICS program. HOA vs. Property Management Banking Banking as a property manager and as an HOA management company is different. As a property management company dealing with residential homes, funds are held in trust and insured to $250,000, as long as your bank has set up your accounts correctly. Each beneficiary in that account is insured up to $250,000. With an HOA, however, homeowners are not considered trustees. Property managers aren’t going to use the ICS product because they don’t have the same concerns as an HOA. It’s rare that one account will hold over $250,000 for a single owner. A lot of property management companies are thinking about getting into HOA management. You have to understand the big differences in the way funds are managed for each. You aren’t going to put HOA funds into a trust account. It’s also important to remember that each state has its own laws when it comes to HOAs. For example, in California and Nevada, property managers cannot be designated signers for reserve accounts. They can’t even be secondary signers. It has to be an association board member. Often, board members serve only one term. With annual turnover, it can be difficult to get those signature cards done every time there’s a transition. Don’t open your HOA reserve account and forget about it. A lot of education is necessary. If you’re a property manager who is thinking about HOA management, make sure you talk to your banking manager so you know what to expect. How to Choose a Property Management or HOA Bank It’s common to choose a bank based on the rates they offer. The industry is rate sensitive, especially for HOAs. But, you want to look past the introductory rates when you’re choosing your banking partner. Analysis accounts give you credits, not interest, so you have to do your homework. That one percent rate may sound great when we’re talking about interest. But for analysis accounts, your credits first need to offset your transaction fees, which can vary from $100 to $1,000 depending on the bank. So what does that mean for you? Gross rate doesn’t matter as much as what you’ll net at the end of every month. So make sure the bank analyzes your transactions and is able to give you a realistic idea of your net return before you make a decision. Banks are known to offer very good rates when they need an influx of deposits. Those high rates aren’t always sustainable, and while the rate you’re receiving is an important thing to consider, overall it’s always better to choose a banker who specializes in your industry. You’ll have an experienced professional who understands your needs and your compliance structure. Take a look at the associations that the bank belongs to. The HOA industry and the property management industry has specific professional organizations that every management company belongs to. The bank offering you a great rate may not be a member of that organization, which means they’re not going to know the products and services you really need. Branch Banking vs. Remote Banking for HOAs and Property Managers Historically, homeowners association managers have preferred banking with a local bank where they can walk right into a branch and talk to someone who knows them and do their business. That may have been necessary when daily deposits had to be made, but it’s not so critical anymore. While it’s nice to see a familiar face, you want to know you’re working with someone who can do a lot more than small talk. You should be aware that the people you know at your local bank can’t make a lot of decisions for you. You may have a polite relationship, but the level of expertise and the direct access to decisions is more important. You might know one of the tellers at your local Wells Fargo branch, but you probably don’t know the branch manager or the bankers. When it comes to specialized needs of businesses like property management and homeowners association (HOA) management, you likely won’t get efficiency or expertise in the local branch of your big bank. HOA Lockbox Services Lockboxes are a big part of HOA banking. With a lockbox, you don’t have to go through the hassle of going into the bank. You do everything electronically or remotely. Payments are mailed to the lock box and they can also accept credit cards, debit cards, and electronic payments. It’s safer and more secure than dropping off a check in a local bank branch office. Ask Allison & Ken Your Questions at PM Grow Summit 2021 Enterprise Bank & Trust is the conference partner for the upcoming Virtual PM Grow Summit. Allison and Ken will be there, and this will be the first time that the HOA division is introduced to our property managers and partners. You’ll want to make sure you drop in and say hello. We hope to see you there, too. If you have any questions about today’s podcast, be sure to contact us at Fourandhalf. Get These Exclusive Fourandhalf Coupons ONLY at PM Grow! The following coupons will only be valid for PM Grow attendees between January 20th – 22nd: 50% off set up fees for any marketing product! 100% off set up fees for a Scale Website when you sign up for any marketing package! Click here to learn more and register for PM Grow Summit 2021 The post HOA vs. Property Management Banking appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: Jordan Bennett is from the National Automated Clearinghouse Association, which is most easily identifiable to us as ACH. We’re talking about the role of the association and why it’s necessary to follow the carefully curated best practices that they’ve put together. Property management companies are often third-party senders, since you collect rent and pay it to your owners.property We asked Jordan to join us on The Property Management Show to talk about how Nacha affects property management companies and what you need to know. Key Takeaways: Nacha is the National Automated Clearinghouse Association, which oversees the ACH Network, the backbone for the electronic movement of money and data in the U.S. Property managers have responsibilities and can be held liable as third-party senders. Property managers can undergo Nacha Certification, which establishes them as a trustworthy company that has taken steps to ensure money is handled correctly. Understanding the National Automated Clearinghouse Association Nacha essentially manages the ACH network. The association makes the rules and educates all participants. When property managers collect rent from tenants and pay that rent to owners, it means they’re participating. There are responsibilities that come with that participation, and understanding the different roles will help keep everyone happy. Nacha has direct members, which are banks and other financial institutions. There are also third-party senders, and those are payment providers. Most property managers fall into this classification. Nacha has rules in place that benefit everyone who participates. They help banks work with third-party senders. They maintain the high level of trust that’s necessary when payments are made and received electronically. The money has to continue flowing properly. All of the direct members and third party senders on the ACH network are subject to the large rulebook that Nacha keeps to detail and interpret all the rules. They can break down what each rule means and how they are defined. Property Management Companies as Third-Party Senders Property managers wear many hats. Being a payment provider or a third-party sender in the ACH network is only one of your roles. You probably don’t give it a lot of thought. But, you need the protections that are in place when your tenant originates a payment and that money comes to you and then you pay your owners using your own financial institution. You expect things to go smoothly – but will they always? Many property management companies handle their rent collections and disbursements through their property management software. This doesn’t release you from the responsibilities of a third-party sender, however. You’re still the one collecting account numbers and routing numbers and banking information. If you’re collecting rent and paying owners without involving your own bank, the property management software would qualify as the third-party sender. But most property management companies do have money moving in and out of their accounts. The flow of payments is your responsibility. What Can Happen During the Payment Flow? Something that has happened more than once is a property management company going bankrupt. If tenants pay rent before the property management declares bankruptcy but those rents aren’t paid to the owners because of the bankruptcy, there’s going to be a wild disconnect. The funds will be held in different ways depending on the bankruptcy laws in your state. The ACH rules are in place to protect the incomplete transaction. There will be a lot of owners who are upset and a lot of tenants who are insisting they did pay their rent, and the commotion will be messy. Consumers – or tenants and owners – are not going to know the ACH process. There are protections in place for them, but it’s going to be complicated. Fraud is another issue that can cause problems for property managers as third-party senders. If you’re not following good quality control and you don’t have strict processes in place, it’s easy to be a victim of fraud. Someone could call you claiming to be one of your owners. He could say he’d like to change his bank account information so that all future payments are routed into the new account. Are you going to take his word for it and make the change over the phone, or do you have controls in place where you’ll call him back at the number you have on file to verify the request? As a property manager, you can think you’re providing great customer service while at the same time handing over rents to a fraudster. You need risk management and checks and balances. Property managers can think of Nacha standards the same way they think of NARPM standards. Nacha has a certification program, which can be beneficial to property management companies. Nacha Certified The Nacha Certified program lays out compliance expectations for third-party senders such as property managers. The program was designed to try and help providers do what they’re supposed to do. It’s a place for best practices, recommendations, and process reviews. There’s a full rulebook that’s condensed into a single document, which is thorough. Property managers can access that document at nachacertified.org. As a third-party sender, the Nacha Certified program will recommend an audit. A risk assessment can be a critical and important tool. It’s simple in concept and you don’t have to pay for it within this program. You can evaluate your risks and decide where most of your challenges currently exist. Maybe you create a payment file and send it off without having dual controls. Will two people look at something before it’s changed? This audit or risk assessment tool is a good example of how the certification program can provide extra protection and risk management. Why Property Managers Should Get Nacha Certified The Nacha certification will establish you as a trustworthy company that has taken steps to ensure money is handled correctly. Banks and auditors you already work with may find this information helpful. In some states, property managers are required to apply for money transmitter licenses. This certification will help you prepare for that. When you demonstrate your commitment to protecting consumers, you increase your credibility. Property management companies can also look for software that’s Nacha Certified. They currently have nine companies that have achieved certification and they’re looking to add more. Some of them do payments processing for rental properties and property managers. Companies such as banks who look at a Nacha Certified business know that a lot of their own criteria have already been met. They’ll do their own due diligence, but moving through their screening process will be a lot easier for a company that’s already been certified by Nacha. The list of companies who are certified can be found at Nachacertified.org. And if you have any questions on this process, you can get in touch with Jordan at jbennett@nacha.org. Follow them on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. If you have any questions about the podcast, contact our team at Fourandhalf. The post Why Property Managers Should Know About Nacha appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: Jeremy Tallman is the President and Managing Broker for T&H Realty Services in Indianapolis. He is talking with us on The Property Management Show today about pre-marketing and the success he’s had in building waitlists for properties that are soon to be available in his portfolio of rental homes. While this isn’t a new concept in the property management and real estate industries, it has come to mean different things to different people. We’re looking at how it impacts the industry and what it might mean for you in limiting vacancy rates and marketing your rental homes more efficiently. Key Takeaways: Pre-marketing is the process of marketing a rental home and generating interest before it is officially available for showings. Property managers should take advantage of software that allows them to build waitlists with interested tenants Pre-marketing & building waitlists can save property managers time and money, but only if you have the proper internal processes in place to support your pre-marketing system. Catch our full Property Management Marketing series: Property Management Marketing | Part 1 | The Rise of Zumper & Facebook Marketplace Property Management Marketing | Part 3 | How Owner Marketing Has Changed Pre-Marketing in Property Management: The Baseline Jeremy does not show any homes while tenants are still living there. This was something he did before embracing the pre-marketing platform he currently uses, but now all showings commence after a property is turned and made ready. The right systems must be in place for effective pre-marketing. Technology plays a big role. What pre-marketing means to Jeremy is giving the property the best chance to be leased quickly as soon as showings can occur. Rently is a valuable tool in this process. Like other showing services and lockbox resources, it provides a waitlist that helps with pre-marketing. Previously, if a home was coming onto the rental market sometime in the future, you could simply say “Coming Soon.” A lot of property managers found that difficult to manage, however. People would call about availability and information. That’s hard to administer and scale. Keeping track of all the follow up can be overwhelming. With Rently, Jeremy and his team put homes in waitlist mode. This is the pre-marketing and pre-leasing sweet spot. People can register for the waitlist and they’re immediately informed when it’s live and ready to be seen. Staying on top of expectations is a big part of this. If you say your property will be available on October 15, people on that waitlist will expect it to be ready for viewings on October 15. Otherwise, you can create a lot of frustration. The software allows property managers and marketing professionals to see who is on the waitlist. They know how many people are interested and they know when those prospective tenants joined the waitlist. The data is valuable in setting a final rental price, collecting applications, and scheduling showings. What Does the Waitlist Show Renters? On the waitlist, prospective renters have access to the same pictures and descriptions that they’d see on any normal listing. With brand new properties that have never been leased and are occupied by an inherited tenant, Jeremy’s team will have to get whatever pictures they can, at least of the property’s exterior. If the home has been marketed in the past, those older photos will be used so people can get a general sense of what it looks like inside. When the listing goes live, there’s an accurate portrayal of the home. New photos can be taken with any updates that have been made during the turnover. As most property managers know, turnovers can take two days or two months, depending on the work that’s done. Sometimes, the floors have to be replaced and the walls re-painted. Other times, it’s a simple cleaning and lock change. Internal Property Management Processes Required for Pre-Marketing It’s not just having access to great technology – it’s how you use it. Internally, you need processes in place to ensure the availability date is accurate. Technology is often slow moving in property management, and a lot of different people are trying a lot of different things. Some of the new technology is exciting and some of it is cumbersome. Rently and products like it are some of the biggest game changers the industry has seen in years, Jeremy believes. The Challenges Pre-Marketing Can Solve Before adopting this strategy of pre-marketing, sales managers at Jeremy’s company were responsible for visiting rental homes as soon as a tenant gave notice that they were leaving. They’d take a look around and determine whether the property could be shown in its current condition. Showing occupied homes was difficult due to all the scheduling that had to be done around the existing tenant. Today, it would be impossible with COVID. Even before the pandemic, it was a frustrating process for future tenants, current tenants, and property managers. No one wants to see other people’s furniture in the home they’re hoping to rent. Expectations were also hard to meet. Prospective tenants didn’t know what Jeremy’s team was planning to do during the turnover. They’d ask about new paint and clean carpet and whether the blinds would be replaced. Promising those things required that the management company delivered. The New Challenges Pre-Marketing Creates With the pre-marketing strategy, expectations are clear and easy to meet. When a tenant goes in to see the property, they do it on their own schedule and they know that this is the home they’re going to get. The end result is minimal vacancy times, even while waiting until the property is empty. The new challenge is making sure the property is available on the date that it has been advertised as available. Jeremy is careful to include a couple of weeks of lead time to ensure he doesn’t list an availability date that’s too soon. The two-week window has worked well. Property managers are responsible for the turnovers, so they’re in place, at the property, coordinating with owners and contractors. Property management is a push and pull industry. Every day of vacancy costs money and communication has to be tight. Tighter Systems and Fewer Days on Market Days on market are extremely important, and most property managers closely watch that data. It’s difficult to know whether the pre-marketing system and the waitlist has any impact the number of days a home is listed on the market. That’s because the market in central Indiana has changed so dramatically over the last few years. There’s a lot more supply but not a huge difference in demand. Typically, the rental season in Indianapolis begins in January and ends in July, when schools are preparing to go back. However, COVID has changed that. There’s no question that Jeremy’s pre-marketing plans have impacted the daily marketing. However, the market is always going to drive how many days a home is on the market. Currently, there’s an average of five days that a home Jeremy is leasing is on the market. He can’t say that’s because of the pre-marketing because everything is so different now. The real benefit has been to his staff and his ability to meet the needs of prospective tenants. Homes can be shown seven days a week and 12 hours a day now. He’s gone from managing six full-time rental agents to one full-time rental marketing manager. Staffing is leaner and there’s a lot less frustration for his team members. Syndication and Rental Property Marketing Zillow is a hot topic lately, and a lot of property managers who once loved marketing homes through Zillow now hate it because it’s gone from a free platform to one in which property managers have to pay for listings. Jeremy isn’t a hater. Zillow and their network of rental sites, he says, has always been the best marketing channel he uses. Even with the volume Jeremy has in their system and the costs that they’re now incurring, it still makes sense. He wasn’t going to take away the best marketing platform for his owners. No one is happy that a once-free product is now charging for its services. But, you have to remember they provide an excellent service. Property managers are paying for something they need and benefit from. Using a paid service requires more strategic marketing. Jeremy says paying to list on Zillow has required his company to become smarter with how they syndicate. When it costs nothing, it’s easy to market everything everywhere. When you’re paying, you want to be careful with timing. You want to be intentional about when you release your listing for syndication. With the waitlist he has in place, he’ll go to full syndication with a property when he sees it gaining traction. This is to drive interest before it goes live. Jeremy knows that a lot of his competitors did not stick with Zillow, and they’re noticing a big difference in traction and interaction. Those property managers will probably come back to the Zillow suite of rental sites. It’s going to be difficult to market a property without them. Know Your Numbers: Pre-Marketing Takeaways Every property management company is different, but if you know your numbers you know whether cutting off Zillow will hurt more than it helps. Knowing your numbers allows you to be flexible when it comes to pre-marketing a property. It allows you to know how many people on a property’s waitlist means you can probably raise the rental price. You’re helping your owners rent properties faster, and you’re helping your staff work with less stress and more efficiency. Self-service is what every consumer is looking for today, including renters. No one wants to call on the phone to schedule a showing. We order our food online and we do our shopping online. We should also be able to register for showings and join a waitlist online when we find a property we like. The pre-marketing concept is an excellent selling point when Jeremy is talking to prospective clients. It’s a differentiator for his company. With Jeremy’s help, we’ve learned the basics of starting a pre-marketing system. If you’re not already focused on getting your rental properties onto the market at the right time, you might want to study this way of creating waitlists and generating interest. If you have any questions about this podcast or anything pertaining to property management marketing, contact us at Fourandhalf. P.S. Be sure to catch our full Property Management Marketing series: Property Management Marketing Pt. 1: The Rise of Zumper & Facebook Marketplace Property Management Marketing Pt. 2: Building Waitlists & Pre-Marketing The post Property Management Marketing | Part 2 | Building Waitlists & Pre-Marketing appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: Advertising your vacant rental units online has changed, and that’s due to some acquisitions and partnerships that we’re discussing today with James Barrett, CEO and Director of Business Development at Tenant Turner. On this episode of The Property Management Show, we’re taking a look at property management marketing and how the online marketplace has shifted. Key Takeaways: Market consolidation of rental advertising platforms has driven big changes in the industry. You need both Zumper/Facebook Marketplace and Zillow to reach the largest pool of tenants. Use these two KPI’s to make rental advertising spending decisions: the number of leads you’re getting from each source and which of those leads get signed. Property managers should leverage automation and technology wherever possible. Catch our full Property Management Marketing series: Property Management Marketing | Part 2 | Building Waitlists & Pre-Marketing Property Management Marketing | Part 3 | How Owner Marketing Has Changed Craigslist is Out and Market Consolidations are In Generally, there’s been a transition away from Craigslist. Back in the day, anyone who ever advertised a home for rent in any market had probably used Craigslist. It was free and easy. When Zillow came along, it was a better alternative, especially once they acquired HotPads and Trulia. New features were available for marketing your properties, and individual landlords joined property managers in spending more time advertising their homes on those platforms. The latest Craigslist killer is Facebook Marketplace, which has partnered with Zumper and Apartment List. The rental feeds on those sites have been directly integrated onto Facebook Marketplace, which is a huge disrupter in the industry. Market consolidation has driven a lot of changes. Rent Path is a key player. They own Rentals.com and RentalHouses.com. Recently, they were acquired by CoStar, a huge company that’s further bulking up to compete with Zillow and Zumper. These are the players who will shape the rental advertising industry over the next few years. Some of these consolidations are financially motivated. CoStar has a lot of money and a large collection of commercial data assets. Taking over a company like Rent Path which was struggling to maintain their competitive edge makes sense. For more on the state of the rental property market, check out our conversation with Dave Spooner. Platform Usability: The Costs to Market Rental Properties What does this mean for usability? Through market aggregation there are fewer players, which means less competition. Zillow’s inclusion model said that if you were renting out a single-family home or a condo or any residential rental property with no more than 50 units, you didn’t have to pay to advertise on their platform. That was a Utopian time, and it no longer exists. Zillow realized that to compete with these new consolidations, they’d have to start charging. Each player is looking for dominance and exclusivity. Everyone wants to be the Amazon of rental advertising, and with Facebook getting involved, it’s going to be easy for them to emerge as a major force. They’re a tech company and they already have a lot of eyeballs coming to their site. Another benefit to the Zumper/Facebook Marketplace partnership is credibility. Facebook Marketplace might seem like a dubious place where people go to sell their Harry Potter DVDs. It’s not that. There’s now a serious interface for rental properties, and it’s generating a lot of leads and a lot of leases. There’s a big difference between individually contributed content and the feed that’s integrated from professional rental advertising domains. Facebook, as we know now, has a lot of scammers. Not every account on Facebook is real. But, the filter comes with the Zumper partnership. Everything that’s contributed has already been verified. You’re getting polished, professional rental listings. Which Platform Provides More Rental Leads? Tenant Turner has collected some data on the volume of rental leads coming in from both Zumper and Zillow. This is the million dollar question for landlords and property managers who are wondering where to advertise their rental properties, especially now that Zillow is charging for the privilege. Zillow was on top for a long time and would account for 75 percent of leads through Tenant Turner. Remember that when we talk about Zillow, we’re including Trulia and HotPads and all the smaller sites that are syndicated. This Zillow platform represented three out of four tenant leads in Tenant Turner. This has steadily declined, and the number of leads increasing through Zumper is directly related to the partnership with Facebook Marketplace. Zumper has been around for a long time. They’re established, but they never had the market share they needed and wanted until they got together with Facebook. Now, Zumper is neck and neck with Zillow in terms of leads. That happened over two years. Zumper also benefited from a lot of venture capital money. The return is starting to pay off now. There’s a huge acceptance rate with Zumper. Those leads are turning into leases pretty reliably. If you’re a property manager who isn’t yet leveraging this tool, it’s time to jump on board. This doesn’t mean you should turn off Zillow and throw everything at Zumper. You need both. Probability impacts priority. Property managers want to advertise on both platforms. Zumper is still free right now, so that might make sense as your starting point. But, don’t let Zillow go completely. Key Performance Indicators for Rental Advertising James recommends two specific KPIs for property managers when they’re making advertising spending decisions. Track the number of leads you’re getting from each lead source. Track which of those leads ultimately results in a signed lease. It doesn’t make sense to pay Zillow for a bunch of leads if those leads don’t convert. However, if you only get a few leads but every single one of those leads does convert to a lease – you should make the investment. Here are the numbers from Tenant Turner. Remember – these are nationwide numbers and each market is different. Number of Tenant Turner leads through Zillow Group: 28 percent Number of Tenant Turner leads through Zumper/FB: 26 percent The quality of leads are about similar, too. You might be concerned that Facebook Marketplace attracts a different demographic than Zillow. That may be true, but they end up converting the same number of leases. This was surprising, and it’s always hard to quantify the seriousness of leads. However, both platforms are successfully converting. This data is a tool that property managers need to decide how and where to market their rentals. The Move to Self Showings in 2020 To say there have been a lot of changes this year would be a dramatic understatement. The pandemic has led to more virtual showings and contactless move-in processes. Technology is being adopted faster than ever before. For Tenant Turner, all these self-showings and electronic lockboxes have required them to emphasize scam prevention. A lot of people moved quickly into a self-showing model without being prepared for it. Tenant Turner has always embraced self-showing technology because it’s effective. However, if you’re a property manager who never used it before and didn’t entirely understand it, you might have opened yourself up to problems and liability. Contactless entry showing systems require protections. At Tenant Turner, there’s been a lot of work with machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). There’s been accelerated learning about scammer behavior. It’s easy to identify and then, once a scam has been noticed, the AI at Tenant Turner follows what they’re doing so they can learn from it. Monitoring systems are critical. Getting an owner on board with self-showings is usually the first impediment for property managers. The pandemic has helped them become more comfortable with the concept. No one wants to wander around an open house with 10 other people right now. James says he expects a lot of this technology to stick around even once the pandemic passes, but that the Tenant Turner data shows that half of all showings are still being done in person. For a while, in the height of the pandemic, contactless showings were up to 80 percent. Now that people have started to get back to some version of their normal lives, in-person showings are back. Some people simply prefer having someone there to show the home. The biggest piece of advice James has for 2021 is to leverage automation wherever possible. Posting manually on Facebook Marketplace is cumbersome and it will work better if it’s automated. People are leaning into technology, and that’s ultimately going to be good for the property management industry. If you have any questions about this podcast or how to automate the marketing of your vacant rental homes, contact us at Fourandhalf. The post Property Management Marketing | Part 1 | The Rise of Zumper & Facebook Marketing appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Today’s guest speaks Danish, is an adventurous wine-drinker, and has 29 years of experience within the tradeshow industry. He also happens to be the CEO of Fourandhalf and PM Grow Summit. That’s right, it’s our very own John Bykowski! John joins Marie and Brittany today on the Property Management Show podcast to discuss PM Grow Summit 2021, which will take place January 20th – 22nd. They talk about this year’s concept and theme for the Summit, the decision to go virtual for 2021, and why this virtual conference is unlike any other you’ve attended. Lean forward, listen in, and get excited — we can’t wait to unveil what we’ve been planning. What’s PM Grow Summit? PM Grow Summit is a property management conference designed from the beginning to focus on how property managers can run their business more effectively. NARPM is a great resource for getting the nuts and bolts of property management, but if you want to get exposed to the latest innovations and ideas on running and growing a business, you want to be at PM Grow. PM Grow brings in the best ideas for business growth from outside property management, and then teaches business owners, marketers and sales teams how to leverage those ideas within the industry. In the first year of PM Grow, using video content in your marketing was a new and novel idea, so that became the focus of the conference that year. In later years, PM Grow tackled company structure and the importance of hiring a BDM for your business. PM Grow also helped put EOS into the mainstream within the property management industry. For 2021, PM Grow’s theme is: Removing Barriers to Growth. There’s been feedback from previous years that some property managers have trouble implementing all the ideas that they get from PM Grow. Learning the latest trends in the industry won’t help your business grow if you can’t implement them. Between this feedback and the obvious barriers to growth being presented from COVID-19 this year, “removing barriers to growth” felt like an extremely relevant and timely topic. You may be wondering what some of these barriers are that will be covered at the conference? Here are our main Keynote Speakers: Keynote Speaker – Greg Crabtree: Will speak about financial barriers to growth, with a Q&A to follow. Keynote Speaker – Libby Gill: Will speak about how to overcome mindset as a barrier to growth and how you can lead people through change, challenge and chaos. Keynote Speaker – Chuck Blakeman: Will speak about how to get off the treadmill and how to overcome time as a barrier to business growth and making money. There will also be a variety of workshops you can attend to get more individualized attention and answers to your questions. Visit the website for more information. To Go Virtual or Not to Go Virtual? John says there isn’t a 100% satisfying replacement for in-person conferences. The energy, the hugs, the atmosphere: those things will never be replaced in a virtual platform. But John still felt that PM Grow had value to offer property managers, especially in a world dramatically altered by COVID-19. The best way to overcome the hurdles that property managers are facing right now is for the industry to come together and share ideas with each other. So, PM Grow was definitely happening. But with COVID cases rising and laws prohibiting large gatherings, an in-person conference was impossible. A survey sent out to property managers had mixed reactions — the overwhelming majority wanted PM Grow to happen, but many were concerned about the health risks of an in-person event. Frequently Asked Questions About the Virtual PM Grow Summit All these factors meant that PM Grow had to go virtual. But there were several concerns about putting on a virtual conference. We’ll tackle them one by one. Do I have to be on a screen for three full days? Nope, you won’t be forced to be in front of a screen for three full days. The conference will have a mixture of on-demand content and live events, so that you have flexibility to juggle both the conference content and your day to day responsibilities. We did this because we understand that screen fatigue is very real. You are free to log in to the virtual world outside conference hours to catch up on on-demand content you missed during the day. The recorded content will also be available to all attendees after the conference. We want you to be able to maximize your time during conference hours engaging with other people, attending live sessions, and connecting with fellow property managers as well as vendors. Is this amounting to a glorified Zoom meeting? Definitely not! When you log on to the online platform, you will create a personal avatar that you’ll control, and who will serve as your “virtual representative” as you walk the 3D world of the conference. You will see and be able to interact with other attendees’ avatars — shake hands, talk to people as you approach them, play games, ride speedboats with your friends, etc. John said it felt like playing a video game, in some respects! When you want to talk to someone and see their actual face rather than their avatar, you’ll also have the ability to connect your camera to designated screens within the virtual world. Choose your own adventure so to speak! One of my favorite parts of PM Grow is getting to network and hang out with people. Will I still be able to do that? Absolutely! This is one of our favorite parts of the platform. As your avatar wanders the conference, let’s say, the Exhibit Hall for example, you’ll pass by other attendees’ avatars. If they’re engaged in conversation, you’ll hear their audio get louder as you approach, and softer as you walk by them, just like in real life! You can even pause to listen in, and ask to join the conversation. If you want to have a private conversation with someone, look for the blue halos circling groups of tables and chairs. When you step inside one of those blue halos, your conversation becomes private. No one walking by will be able to hear what you’re saying. My computer isn’t built for fancy technology. Will I still be able to experience the conference? Yes! You do not need to have a high-powered computer in order to attend the conference. However, we do recommend that you log in on a desktop computer or a laptop, rather than a tablet or cell phone. The virtual platform runs smoothest on a computer setting. I’m not tech-savvy. Am I going to be overwhelmed by learning a new piece of technology? Not at all, because you’re in good hands. Staff from both Fourandhalf and from the virtual platform provider will be on-call during the conference in case you have any questions or concerns. When you first log on to the virtual space, you will be greeted by a staff member who is there to help you get familiar with the software and answer any questions. We can say from experience that the software is extremely user-friendly and intuitive to use. If you’re comfortable using your keyboard arrows to move your avatar, you can do that. If not, you can use your mouse to walk around by clicking on where you want your avatar to go. There will also be a menu on the left which will allow you to instantly go to certain rooms/areas without having to walk all the way from point A to point B. We’ll also be opening up the platform a little early before the conference begins, so that you have time to get acquainted with the software. What happens if I miss an event? No biggie. If you miss one of the live events, it will be recorded and made available to you to watch on your own time once the conference is over. Attending a conference from home will be difficult because I have kids / responsibilities I need to attend to. Is it worth it for me to attend if I can only be available for short periods of time? Absolutely. You can tailor your experience of the conference to whatever your at-home needs are. Feel free to pick and choose the live events that you’re most interested in, tune in for those, and watch the recordings of the ones you missed. Or, if you want to use conference time to catch up with old friends or make new acquaintances, use the conference to expand your network. We want this to be as accessible to you as possible. How much does it cost to attend the virtual PM Grow Summit 2021 conference? The virtual PM Grow Summit 2021 is just $450 per person. That’s more than half off the regular in-person price! We’re so excited for the possibilities this opens up. Smaller property management companies that may not have been able to afford attending the in-person conference may be able to attend the virtual one. If you’re accustomed to sending just one or two members of your team, perhaps this is the year that the entire team is able to come, and reap the benefits of being in a room with like-minded entrepreneurs. As a bonus, we’re giving away free copies of Chuck Blakeman’s much-awaited book titled “Rehumanizing The Workplace By Giving Everybody Their Brain Back” to the first two hundred (200) people to register for our virtual property management conference. How do I register for PM Grow Summit 2021? Learn more and get tickets at pmgrowsummit.com. The Future of PM Grow Summit Is PM Grow Summit going to be virtual forever? No, definitely not. We all miss in-person events, and just because our current circumstances have necessitated a virtual platform for this year’s event, doesn’t mean that PM Grow won’t be back in full swing sometime in the future. So stay healthy, stay tuned, and get registered for PM Grow Summit 2021! The conference is January 20th through the 22nd. We can’t wait to see you in our virtual world. The post PM Grow Summit 2021: A Whole New (Virtual) World appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.