The Property Management Show

Summary: Over the last few months, there’s been a new development at the National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM). The Women’s Leadership Council has been formed, and it’s growing. This group is still new and a work in progress, but their first event is coming up, and we asked Kellie Tollifson (NARPM President) and Chrissy Wade (Wellspring Property Management) to join us and talk about why this group is so necessary and what it aims to achieve. Key Takeaways: The Women’s Leadership Council is a group that was formed with the intention of providing women in property management with more confidence and strong public speaking skills Kellie & Chrissy are hoping to eventually host quarterly events and make this organization a new committee at NARPM. This is a new group that is in the process of growing and evolving. The founders’ goal is to make this group as inclusive as possible. Their first event is “Elevate your Game & Take the Fear Out of Public Speaking” on November 12, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. PST and 2:00 pm. EST Meeting a Need in Property Management Leadership Women often don’t feel represented at industry events, and that’s not unique to the property management industry. When Chrissy began talking to other women about this, the response was incredible. She received a lot of feedback and private messages from women who wanted to do more and expressed a desire to be speakers at different events and conferences. One of the problems that Chrissy ran into was that many of these women who wanted to speak, didn’t have a huge portfolio of past speaking engagements or leadership roles. So the first step seemed to be to prepare women for those public speaking engagements. Chrissy felt strongly about not putting an inexperienced woman on a major stage if she’s never had that experience. So, Chrissy and Kellie began talking and recognized the interest in and importance of building confidence and developing public speaking skills for women in the property management industry. A lack of experience in public speaking is a huge barrier to leadership positions for women. The group’s first event is aimed at removing a lot of the fear and uncertainty about speaking in public and sharing your voice. Encouraging Women to Speak Up The first event is called Elevate your Game & Take the Fear Out of Public Speaking. The keynote speaker is Dr. Michelle Mazur, who runs Communication Rebel and has made a business out of developing speakers. She’s going to talk about removing a lot of the barriers that women feel, which will empower them to have their voices heard, whether that’s in the boardroom, in small group meetings, or in large conferences. Participants will come away with tools to fortify their ability to speak up. Our society has set up and reinforced expectations of women that make it difficult for them to feel safe and confident speaking their mind. There will be practical tips on preparing to speak and accessing the confidence needed to move forward professionally and personally. Historically, women haven’t been encouraged to speak up. Women have been raised for generations to be supportive and nurturing — and quiet. Women need the tools to trust themselves and navigate an industry that historically has favored men’s voices over women’s. A lot of women in leadership know that one of the first steps in taking the initiative in the business world is accessing confidence in their own thoughts and ideas. Communication is where everything starts. Events like this will give women with diverse backgrounds extra tools and resources to lead them towards communication, leadership, and success. Empowering Everyone to Do New Things This event encourages participation from all genders. The panel will include men and women speakers and there is a broad spectrum of topics. The main goal of the event is to empower people to do something that they felt like they couldn’t do before. The current working name is the Women’s Leadership Council, but this group isn’t only for women. The council was formed with the idea that every voice matters. It’s open to all genders. The idea is that everyone can learn from one another and elevate the property management industry and each other. Anyone who wants to be a better business person is invited to participate. Want some advice for feeling confident with being on camera in your video blogs? Check out our marketing manager Marie’s 5 tips for being on camera. NARPM and The Women’s Leadership Council The Executive Committee and Board of NARPM had been thinking about building roles for more women and putting together a group that focuses on women’s challenges and concerns when Chrissy approached the organization with this idea. In December, this concept will go to the Board of Directors and be proposed as a new committee at NARPM. For the last few years, NARPM has been doing leadership training in local chapters. It’s a two-day event where chapter leaders come together and spend time talking about how to lead a local chapter. It’s been very effective, and developing leaders within NARPM has been an ongoing priority. Kellie has been working to bring the Leadership University to NARPM, as a leadership series where people can develop their own skills. The Women’s Leadership Council fits into this beautifully. There are different purposes, missions, and visions, but talking about leadership issues unique to women is something that the entire NARPM leadership series can embrace. Gender Obstacles in Property Management In addition to offering concrete tools and resources, this group aims to give women a chance to share the obstacles that they’ve overcome. Kellie shared that she still has owners who prefer to talk to her husband instead of her. When Chrissy was managing a commercial building, she was fired because they thought a man could do it better. It’s inspired both of them to educate others about this type of bias in the industry and encourage other women to share their experiences. Often, a woman’s expression of something is given a different label than a man’s expression of something, even when they are expressing the same thing. Women who are confident when they speak are often labeled ‘aggressive’ while confident men are labeled ‘assertive.’ Leveling the playing field starts with sharing these experiences and acknowledging the gender biases and prejudices at play. Learning to see and identify this kind of bias paves the way for dismantling it and creating a truly inclusive industry where every voice is heard. Another obstacle is the way women have to carefully present their thoughts and opinions in the workplace in order to avoid the judgements coming from the gender biases we mentioned above. Women expressing too much emotion can be labeled as “hysterical” while expressing too little may come off as “cold.” Kellie talked about feeling emotional during the awards ceremony at the recent NARPM convention. As she was giving out awards to people who had worked really hard, she kept telling herself not to cry. It felt embarrassing, but having feelings in a professional environment is okay. She spent a lot of time thinking about that, and then realized that most men probably wouldn’t spend that much time agonizing over a few minutes of human, emotional connection. In order to “fit in” and succeed in a male-dominated industry like property management, women often feel forced to confine themselves to gender stereotypes and/or become “one of the boys.” Pigeon-holing women in this way is a detriment to the industry as a whole. It silences valuable insights, experience, and ideas that could propel the industry to new heights. Being vulnerable, and bringing your whole self to the table, is a vital part of being a leader. Inclusivity and Growing Diversity Change is a slow process. It happens over time, and it requires intentional steps and education. The Women’s Leadership Council is brand new, but it’s already thinking about what it can do better. For example, everyone on the panel at the upcoming event identifies as white. This isn’t by design, but it’s an outcome from working quickly to get people who were able to jump on board right away. Endless panels of white men and women is not where the group plans to go. Every voice matters, and incorporating women of color, people with disabilities, members of other genders and identities is a huge part of the future. There’s a strong desire to have a more diverse group. One of the best ways to increase diversity is to spread the word. Chrissy and Kellie are asking everyone to talk to their business contacts and professional partners to grow this group. The Call to Action here is pretty simple: Share your experience. Get involved. If you ever felt like your voice didn’t matter, or it seemed like you weren’t represented in your industry, contact this council. The first event is “Elevate your Game & Take the Fear Out of Public Speaking” on November 12, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. PST and 2:00 pm. EST. It’s free to NARPM members and $25 for anyone outside of NARPM who would like to join. If you have any questions, contact us at Fourandhalf and we’ll put you in touch with the right people. The post Introducing the NARPM Women’s Leadership Council appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: Dave Spooner from Innago joins The Property Management Show to talk about rent payments, whether delinquencies are as bad as we expected them to be in a time of COVID, and what the pandemic has meant for the rental property market and accelerating the embrace of property management technology. Key Takeaways: The number of delinquent rent payments during the pandemic isn’t as high as expected. Occupancy is down in most major cities. Worst case scenario is a spike in COVID-19 cases and another shut down of the economy coupled with no relief package from the government. Best case scenario is existing trends continue and digital property management tech integration accelerates. There are fewer barriers to setting up an online rent payment system & now is the time for property managers to implement it. The Rental Property Market: Rent Payments and COVID-19 To gain insight on the current rental property market, we invited Dave Spooner to join us on the show. Dave is with Innago, a property management software company that helps with the automation of functions like communication and rental payments so property managers can focus on the more complex parts of their business. Despite what nearly everyone in the property management field predicted, the data coming from Innago and other sources show that nationwide, the number of delinquent rent payments isn’t as high as expected. For the most part, rent is getting paid, and it’s getting paid on time. People are suffering economically from the pandemic and the shutdowns, so what’s happening to allow for this? Two things, according to Dave: owner concessions and government help. Why The Rent Delinquency Rate Isn’t As High As Expected Owner Concessions: First, landlords and property managers have chosen to make a lot of concessions. It has become important to collect whatever rent they can. There’s an eviction moratorium in place nationwide through the CDC, which views evictions as a public health crisis. Landlords know they don’t have a lot of recourse, so they’re collecting whatever they can and working with tenants to avoid larger problems. Some owners have reduced the total rent that tenants are paying or spreading out the missed payments over the next several months or offering credits. Landlords and property managers are working together with tenants to get some rent coming in. Net rent may be down, which means the total amount that’s collected is likely lower than it was last year. But, it’s not as bad as everyone feared. The delinquencies are not up in any meaningful way. The market has adapted rapidly to this. Property managers have largely initiated the concessions that are necessary to keep rent coming in. Good managers have been able to successfully navigate their owners through these unchartered waters. If you caught our podcast with Anna Myers on using data to navigate delinquency and economic uncertainty, her tips are an excellent resource. Government Help: Second, government aid has contributed to helping people pay their rent. Payments are still coming in because those programs have worked. Most renters received a $1,200 stimulus. Those who lost their jobs were eligible for unemployment and received a bonus. Those programs did assist with living costs and rent payments. Those landlords who took action to try and offset the economic challenges of their tenants and had renters receiving those supports are in good shape. Geographic Nuances with COVID and Rent Payments Real estate is a local business and each market is unique. Some areas in the rental property market are more impacted by COVID-19 than others. Large cities have traditionally been magnets for people seeking employment, but cities were the hardest hit. Their COVID numbers have been much higher than other markets. Occupancy is down about five percent, which is significant in a market like San Jose, San Francisco, Boston or New York. Why spend money on an expensive apartment in the city if there’s no demand to go into the city-based office? The shift to working from home has driven renters to seek less expensive housing outside of larger cities. Younger people who don’t have partners or children may be moving in with parents or friends, which is also contributing to a lower occupancy rate. Renters may break leases or not renew their leases during the pandemic. From an occupancy standpoint, the larger and more expensive markets are seeing decreases. Renters are finding other places to live for six to 12 months. For a thorough look at property management market trends, check out our conversation with Jeff Hacker. Tenant Retention While Occupancy Falls Ongoing concessions are necessary to avoid vacancies in the rental property market right now. Not a lot of renters are trying to move into a new place during the pandemic. Of the folks that are moving, very few of them want to attend multiple showings or hire movers to come into their homes. There’s a trend towards avoiding that exposure. There’s less transition right now, and most people are staying put. Data from a recent Transunion conference shows that there’s a sharp reduction in the number of showings that are going on, but a higher percentage in lease signings after a showing. This tells us people are seeing fewer apartments and signing a lease as soon as they see something they like. Tenants only want to see one or two homes and they’ll take what they like. They’re not going to shop around as much and they’ve reduced the amount of searching they’re willing to do. Showing software has become more popular and more necessary than ever before. More property managers are beginning to invest in technology that allows for digital showings and 3-D tours. There’s less physical interaction, and the landscape has shifted dramatically in this way. One of the main takeaways from the pandemic is that shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic will accelerate trends. Things have to happen faster in order to keep up with the running of your business. Digital showing software always existed, but now it’s being sought by landlords and property managers who may have hesitated before the pandemic. Predictions for the 2020/2021 Rental Property Market Worst case is that COVID rears up in a significant way and the economy shuts down and people get hurt economically all over again, even before they’ve fully recovered. That, coupled with no relief package from the government will make things very difficult for renters and the people who own their properties. We weathered this storm because of the relief package and if there isn’t more help but there is more virus, a sharp increase in delinquencies is certainly possible and eventually – evictions. That’s the worst case scenario. Best case scenario is that the positive trends continue to accelerate. Digital showings and digital software for lease signings and online rental payments and tenant screenings can help. There’s an upward trend in that direction, which is exciting. If we can get the market back to normal in terms of dollars and cents and then accelerate the digital revolution, we’ll be in good shape. Unfortunately, aggressive concessions may be the only way to keep rent coming in right now. Landlords and real estate investors didn’t get a lot of direct assistance with the CARES Act. They received indirect help because their tenants were able to pay all or some of their rent. What owners are likely figuring out now is how low they can go before they start to feel real cash flow problems. Property Management Lessons Learned Property managers have a lot to learn from the COVID experience and smart managers are taking this opportunity to grow their businesses more intelligently in the future. Here are the takeaways as we see them: Know your bottom line. Don’t take on a door just because it’s a door. You don’t want to work with owners who are over-leveraged and unwilling to make concessions when necessary. Embrace that ideal client – the one who earns you the most money for the least amount of stress. This will protect you when huge events like a pandemic occur. Move everything online. Moving everything online is ideal, especially when you’re trying to make your entire process as contact-free as possible. We know a lot of property managers worry about the cost of upgrading all their technology to meet these demands. But Dave has some good news: there are fewer barriers to entry now. Removing Barriers to Online Rental Payment Tech The market is shifting, and adopting automated technology for your property management business doesn’t require the same investment that it once did. Giants like Appfolio and Yardi are great programs that work really well, and in the past they were very expensive. Not only did you have to dedicate a lot of dollars – you had to dedicate a lot of time integrating those systems with your own. Now, the digital revolution in rental management software has made it less difficult. You don’t have to worry about the resources and the barriers to entry that were once real hindrances to upgrading technology. A very small investment is required to see a pretty huge return. You can also think about passing some costs onto tenants. Charging them a $5 fee to pay rent online, for example, will offset what you have to pay as a property manager. It can easily be rolled into the rent you charge when you have a new tenant signing a lease. With existing tenants, this might be a concession you make. You can offer the online payment and tell them you’ll be covering the $5 monthly fee for the first six months. After those six months, they’ll see the value in online rental payments, and they’ll be willing to absorb that $5 fee for the convenience of paying online. Final Thoughts We covered a lot in this podcast, and hopefully you’re taking away the importance of staying diligent about your business. Stay focused and creative during these strange times and remember the people on the other side of your business decisions. Tenants are stressed. Your empathy will help you get through this pandemic and whatever comes next. Property managers were typically hired by landlords to be the “bad guy.” You don’t have to be the “bad guy.” Be warm and empathetic while remaining consistent and on your path towards better business. If you have any questions about what we’ve discussed with Dave, or about the state of the rental property market, please contact us at Fourandhalf. The post The State of the Rental Property Market appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Summary: In this week’s episode of “The Property Management Show,” Marie and Brittany sit down with Faizan Ali Khan, the CEO and Founder of LetHub, to learn more about what artificial intelligence (AI) really is, and what property managers should know about its applications in their industry. Key Takeaways: Artificial Intelligence can automate communication between renters and landlords and property managers. There are three main types of AI – Narrow, General and Super, and we are still developing General AI. AI can be used by property managers to answer common questions from renters, automatically send emails, save money on utility bills, process maintenance requests and more. There are two ways that AI can learn: Supervised and Self-Learning. Property managers are encouraged to use Supervised AI, in which their AI system has been trained by a company like LetHub. Implementing AI doesn’t have to remove the “human touch” from property management – it is meant to streamline operations and save time on monotonous tasks. If you’re a property manager interested in integrating AI, do your research to know what kind of AI you are signing up for and how much it will actually save you time. Transcript: Marie Liamzon-Tepman (00:00): Welcome to The Property Management Show brought to you by Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers. Brittany Stephens (00:05): Today’s topic is artificial intelligence and how to properly use it in the world of property management. Our guest is going to go over some key concepts of AI so that property managers can make better technology decisions for their business. Marie Liamzon-Tepman (00:21): That guest is none other than Faizan Khan, who is the CEO and founder of LetHub, an AI platform for property management companies. Happy listening! Meet Your Artificial Intelligence Guide, Faizan Ali Khan Marie Liamzon-Tepman (00:38): Faizan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. Since it’s your first time ever on the show, can you please let our audience know who you are and what’s your relationship to the property management industry? Faizan Khan (00:53): Yeah, thanks for giving me the time and the opportunity to share what we’re doing. So I’m the founder at LetHub. Lethub is an AI communications platform for rental property managers that automates the communication between renters and landlords and property managers. So nobody has to pick up the phone and, you know, pre-qualify people and book tours. So that’s all handled by River, which is our AI. And it’s in a constant learning phase where it improves with time, just like humans. What is Artificial Intelligence? Brittany Stephens (01:27): Awesome. So to start off, could you define AI, define Artificial Intelligence for us common folk? Faizan Khan (01:42): Sure. So I think to put it in a nutshell, because it’s a very complex field and I guess the media portrays it in a very different way, anything that automates any kind of task that humans perform in a faster way or better way, that can be considered artificial intelligence. Brittany Stephens (02:14): So if we’re talking about different stages of AI, what are some of those? Faizan Khan (02:20): So again, it’s very complex. There are seven different different stages of AI, but to put it in simple terms, we can classify it in three stages. So there’s Narrow AI and then there’s General AI, and then there’s Super Intelligent. Narrow AI is something that has very limited sort of memory and that can outperform humans in some robotic tasks. And then General AI, I would say is just your general intelligence which is not really good these days. We’re not there yet. It’s something that understands a lot of the things that we do in everyday life. So a domain-specific AI would only understand a few things that they’re really good with. General AI just understands everything because it learns really fast. And then the last one is Super Intelligence AI, that’s the AI that produces other AI’s. The bot that can make other bots. Marie Liamzon-Tepman (03:39): That’s gonna take over the world. Yeah. Faizan Khan (03:42): If you’ve seen the Avenger movies, that’s what we’re talking about. How Can Artificial Intelligence Be Used In The Property Management Industry? Marie Liamzon-Tepman (03:47): And so given that General AI is where we are right now, and even then we haven’t even mastered it, right? What kinds of applications of artificial intelligence can we see in the property management industry? Faizan Khan (04:01): Yeah, no, that’s a good question. Any task that you can automate, that can definitely be done by AI because if you can train a machine to do a certain job, then you can implement AI in that piece. So an example is, if you don’t really want to communicate with renters and there’s a pattern to you communicating with renters, that pattern can be picked up by the AI and then sort of mimic what you would do. It’s as simple as a bot or it could be a smarter bot that could respond to inquiries or share information that you would. There’s different levels to it. So another example would be, you can tell people to do a few steps, like complete a few steps, and then, and that’s like a simple bot, but then you can also build something conversational that actually understands how you type or how you chat with people. It learns your style. So that’s one – Yeah. So it’s like when it learns your stuff – Marie Liamzon-Tepman (05:30): So if I’m a slow typer, it can mimic like that slow typing. Brittany Stephens (05:35): Or if you say ‘like’ every five minutes, like me, it’s gonna probably put a bunch of ‘likes’ and a bunch of ‘hella’s’ in there somewhere and smiley faces, if you’re a super smiley face writer. A concept like this is really intriguing to me when I think of not necessarily like the day to day operations of a property management business, but if you can have a BDM or a salesperson, not having to write their own emails to follow up with a person, like, how cool is that? Or if you have a chat box on your website that can act like it is a sales person, but be AI that would obviously save time, but give you more time to spend on other things like face to face things. [If you’d like to learn more about property management and automation, check out our podcast episode with Propertyware’s Inaas Arabi.] AI, Emails and Utility Bills Faizan Khan (06:23): Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s what we’re trying to do as well, right? So we’re trying to cut that time. If you look at an average property management shop, they get hundreds of emails, right? So if they have 10 vacant properties on average, they get 10 to 15 emails a day. So their leasing team has 150, 200 emails in their inbox. And then if they spend a couple of minutes for every email, they’re spending like hours writing emails. Once someone has found the place, and they’ve moved in, I think a lot of companies are doing it, but AI can also be used in terms of lowering your bills, right. Your utility bills, whether it’s your internet bills or any kind of other things that you think are too high, AI can sort of only switch it on and off when you’re using it just by learning by your habits. AI and Chatbots Marie Liamzon-Tepman (07:32): When we talk about artificial intelligence for property management the first thing that comes to mind in terms of application would be the chat bot. Right? Cause we’ve seen a surge of all these chat bots in the industry. And so you’re saying that like, yeah, that’s definitely a low hanging fruit, but then there are other applications of AI within the industry. Faizan Khan (07:55): Yeah. Yeah. I think in terms of chatbots, there’s different types. We’re talking about rule-based chatbots that are just, you feed them a bunch of information. It’s just like a form, but in a chat format. And then there’s a bunch of hybrid – I don’t know if hybrid is the right word, but that’s the word that comes to my mind – there’s a few hybrid bots that use both a combination of a rule-based approach and some pre-made questions that can be answered. So I can go inside and feed some questions into the bot that I think renters would ask. And then there’s the true AI approach – which is what we’re trying to do with River, our AI – whenever there’s an opportunity to learn about what people are asking, it will be taught to the AI in a very supervised fashion. So in simple terms, what that means is if I say, “Are pets allowed?” Or something like that. And then, you know, there’s a response, “No pets are not allowed in this apartment building” or whatever. But then I, as a human, I’ll just say, “Hey, well, a small dog, be okay?” Like, you know, just to see if it would respond. Then the second question is based on the first question, which is called context building. So you as a human would understand that, but a dumb bot or a rule-based bot will not understand that. But a bot that is built on AI would understand that the next statement is based on the previous question. It will learn with time. It would understand the difference between a discount and an offer, it would understand any kind of marketing material that you’re trying to push so that it can push it to people. It would understand differences between different synonyms. Sometimes, you know, when you type something wrong on Google, it says, “Do you mean..” You know, when it says that, the reason it says that is because it knows that this type of mistake is done by other humans as well, and those humans clicked on this particular link, they meant this thing. The more renters interact with it, the better it gets, the better it will respond and improve with time. Marie Liamzon-Tepman (10:58): So basically there are two layers that you’re talking about, right. The first is like, you can automate the question and answer portion of communication with renters. So if they ask legit the question, “Are pets allowed in this address?” A simple bot you can automate the answer to, you know, if it says anywhere “pets allowed,” then the bot knows to say, “No pets allowed” or like, “Yes, pets are allowed up to like this weight,” Brittany Stephens (11:25): Almost like a script. Brittany Stephens (11:26): Yeah. But the second layer is – so that automation is just like the base layer, right? And then the second layer is if you have a machine learning component, if I were to ask the question as like, “I have a Pitbull, is that cool?” Faizan Khan (11:44): Yeah. Marie Liamzon-Tepman (11:46): An automated like question and answer technology wouldn’t understand them asking about a pet ’cause I never said “pet”, but machine-learning type of technology would understand like, “Oh, the context is like, this person has a pet and wants to know if pets are allowed.” Who Feeds The Property Management Data to the AI? So if you’re saying that it’s like learning, right, from a set of data, who’s in charge of pulling that data? Do you have to feed it the data or do you, you know, put it in your software and it learns everything you’ve ever sent in the past five years? Like, how does it work? Faizan Khan (12:32): There’s two ways: there’s supervised learning, and then there’s self-learning. Just like how Tesla is, Tesla is self-learning, right? So if you’re driving a Tesla, if you crash it, it’s going to learn that next time I’m not gonna do that. So that’s, self-learning. Supervised learning is, I feed the data to the AI and I would either crowdsource it or my team would do it. We will tell the the AI that, yes, this is a particular object or a question, or it means this. Let’s say, if you look at a guitar and a ukulele, but the AI cannot understand what’s a guitar because it pretty much looks the same, it’s the size that’s different. So the AI would ask me, “Hey, is this a guitar? Yes or no?” I’ll say no. “Is this a guitar?” Yes. So when I say yes, it will associate that “yes” with that particular instrument, if that makes sense. Brittany Stephens (13:37): Interesting. The self-learning versus what did you call it? Controlled learning, supervised learning. I feel like, especially in our industry, I mean, it sounds like supervised learning at least right now is the way to go especially for property management. Cause when it comes to fair housing and things like that, I feel like if you have self learning AI, it could just learn to give the answers that people want. Or I don’t know, it could go rogue, anything like that. I feel like the self-learning would be super beneficial. It’s like, “is this a pet? Is this a dog that’s allowed?” Like, I really liked that. Faizan Khan (14:25): Yeah. Yeah. And I think to your point about pre-qualification, it has to be very customized. We could have built it in a way where we just don’t let you put the questions in. We’ll let the AI ask the questions. But the problem with that is if it’s self-learning, then it will only ask questions that it thinks helps you make decisions better. And then it will disqualify people who it thinks did not qualify in the past. If you know what I mean, like it will recognize patterns that you only like certain kind of people. And then the human rights problem comes in and it will only qualify people who are within that criteria. And that is scary. And that’s why there’s a human element involved where you set your criteria first. You just tell the AI to ask these questions and don’t let the AI ask questions because it will ask some strange questions. Yeah, yeah. Marie Liamzon-Tepman (15:43): Yeah. Especially when we’re talking about law, right. Especially for fair housing, fair housing regulation. Fair housing law, it’s created by humans, right? And so a lot of times there are sections there that’s kind of up to interpretation and as human beings, there’s this concept of following the spirit of the law. And it’s kind of scary to trust a machine to know what the spirit of the law is. I’m not sure if we’re there yet. So I feel like it makes sense for the property management industry, if property managers are using artificial intelligence they need to make sure that the owners or the operators are holding the reins of their machine. And so wouldn’t you say that on one hand you are automating things to make things better, but the fact that someone always has to have their hands on the reins is still work. So like, doesn’t it just cancel out? Cause now this person who used to be able to just answer the questions that the renters ask and everything, now has to learn a new way of working, which is figuring out how to interact with this machine and make sure it’s not saying weird stuff to the renters? Faizan Khan (17:07): I don’t know about other other ones, but ours is very simple. Like you just set it and you forget it. There’s no involvement of the staff to teach anything to it. It’s already trained. So if there’s any involvement of training in AI, I would advise people to have a deep look into it, ’cause it’s not AI then. Brittany Stephens (17:36): If we’re talking about AI and supervised learning, it wouldn’t be like, if we’re talking about a property management company, it’s not like the property manager or the leasing agent or whoever, is supervising that learning. They’re creating, they might provide the list of initial criteria, but the company that is the AI is the one that’s going to be controlling and supervising that a little bit more. I think that’s kind of what you’re referring to Marie, right? Marie Liamzon-Tepman (18:05): Yeah. Faizan Khan (18:06): Yeah. Essentially. Yes. Because if you have to do the job, then why are you like – you’re essentially crowdsourcing – like, it doesn’t make sense for a property company to train it. It has to come pre-trained. Brittany Stephens (18:21): So you need to partner with a company that understands the property management industry that can help pre-train their machine so you don’t have to worry about all of – I mean, that makes sense. Does Adding Artificial Intelligence Remove the “Human Touch” from Property Management? Marie Liamzon-Tepman (18:35): If a property management company were to use artificial intelligence for the the process of selecting tenants, how does it work? Like when does the ‘gut feel’ come? Does it just pre-screen and give the human being a short list of the pre-qualified renters and then the property management company team members never see the rest of the applications? At what point does the human element come back in? Cause right now in a traditional property management company, it’s all about the human connection. And so when you insert the machine, like how much of it can be taken over by a machine and how much of it stays through the human being? Faizan Khan (19:25): Right. I think what the AI should do is speed up the process. Any AI that can speed up the process of questions, booking a tour and get people to the door, that’s what it should be doing. The goal is to take in as many leads as you can, pre-qualify them, and get the best people to the door. Now, the ones who get disqualified, the ones that you were talking about, that are never seen, I think they should get to see them. Because every person who has a certain credit score or a certain budget, or if they like pets and, you know, they couldn’t find that there, those people should be kept in your database, and then be contacted whenever something matching their criteria is available. And I think that’s the part where it’s going to be easily automated without AI. We don’t even need AI for that. If you have a database and if you have a matching criteria, and if you have some sort of tech person on your team, ask them to build a matching platform and send out an email saying, “Hey, we have a new apartment available. It has pets and it’s within your budget, please book a tour.” So again, we’re not taking or anything, we’re speeding up the process. And a lot of these leads that are after hours or on weekends and when you don’t have staff or you have to hire a virtual assistant, AI can definitely do that. How AI Has Been Misrepresented Brittany Stephens (21:06): What about, you know, it obviously depends on your communication style or maybe the generation you’re a part of or maybe the technology itself, but I don’t like talking to people on the phone. I definitely just want to submit a form or fill out whatever. But then you have these frustrations with chat boxes or automated phone systems, things like that, that probably give AI a bad rep. There are other platforms out there that use the system. And like you talked about earlier they don’t understand the questions that you’re asking. And I feel like that’s a lot of people’s experience with these types of automations. So how do we move on from that type of perception to actually get people excited about these types of tools? Faizan Khan (22:11): Yeah. I think in the next five years, you’ll see a lot of improvement in this sector. The unfortunate thing about AI is that, not just in property management, but in other industries, there was never an actual true AI built by startups. Maybe I shouldn’t say never, but very unlikely. A lot of it is like tech jargon or like some kind of jargon to get customers excited. And then once they signed up, they were disappointed. And that is what’s harming companies who are actually working on making that thing happen. And that’s just unfortunate. Brittany Stephens (23:08): It’s misrepresentation in the past a little bit, like as a marketing tactic, probably like, “Oh, we have AI,” but really they’re just calling it AI to make it seem more appealing. Faizan Khan (23:20): Yeah. Yeah. Because AI is like, it’s so vast that you can implement a simple step in your code, in your tech stack, and you can call it AI because there’s some small element of AI that is involved. I can give you an example, if type a sentence saying “Hey, can I have I can have a pizza with fries.” A decent coder can train the engine or any engine to understand that someone’s asking for a pizza with fries. And then they can call it AI. But what happens is, a smart AI would be, “Do you want pizza with fries as a side, or fries on top?” Brittany Stephens (24:26): Right. Faizan Khan (24:26): So now comes the part where like, okay, now we’re talking. Right? Same thing with any other thing. I’m just, I was just trying to give you an example. Brittany Stephens (24:39): That totally makes sense. Cause it’s going back to what you said about making it a conversation instead of just like an auto response, because a lot of these systems do kind of feel like a copied and pasted response that might not really be the answer I was looking for, or the guidance I was looking for. So to have it provide a response actually in context. Faizan Khan (25:07): Yeah. Very few AI’s have actually passed the Turing tests. What that means is that you will be unable to tell if it’s a human or a bot. We’re not there yet. So it’s always going to feel a bit robotic. I’ll be honest with you, even River feels robotic, but it does the job, right. As long as it does the job and answers those questions, it’s good enough for the property management industry. AI: The Future of Property Management Tech Marie Liamzon-Tepman (25:32): Yeah. It’s an exciting time for the property management industry, because there is a lot of attention now in this industry that used to be kind of like set aside. Right? And so now there’s like new technologies coming in, you know, and AI is here, it’s not there yet, but it is starting. And so to your point, right? Like, because AI is so vast it’s hard to wrap your head around it, which is why we have you here to kind of help our listeners and help us understand what does make sense in terms of AI for the industry and like you mentioned, it’s like a life cycle, there’s infancy, then preteen, you know, adults and so on, so forth. And like you said, you can call a thing AI but it could be like the embryo type of AI versus, you know, preteen AI. I feel like the lesson here is that if a property management company owner is looking for some kind of AI solution for the company to really do their research, right? And make sure they know what they’re going to get, and that actually matches the need for the company. Brittany Stephens (26:39): Yeah. And understand that it’s not going to be perfect or 100%. Faizan Khan (26:44): I mean, yeah. At the end of the day, if it does the job, whether it’s AI or not AI, if it’s saving your team four hours a day, and if it’s driving those big vacancy rates down, you should definitely look into it rather than staying away. Like try it, test it, see if it works, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, but there’s different ways to make it work. And I think this is going to be the new wave of technology in property management. [To learn more about property management technology innovations, check out our podcast episode with Home365.] Artificial Intelligence & Property Management Maintenance Marie Liamzon-Tepman (27:18): You know maintenance is another big area in property management that could benefit from implementation of AI. Faizan Khan (27:27): But you cannot give it solely to AI, very similar to the leasing process. Right? There’s still a human element. Cause I can totally see a situation where if it’s all text based and the tenant goes like, “Hey, my heater’s broken.” And the AI is like, let me send, you know, the HVAC person or the heating person, and then turns out it’s the water heater, Faizan Khan (27:49): The water heater – yeah. Marie Liamzon-Tepman (27:53): But a more intelligent kind of system would ask follow up questions like, “Hey, is it your heating, like air? Or is it your water?” Faizan Khan (28:03): And you know, all that information needs to be learned by the AI. And it’s going to take at least a million to 2 million data points. What I mean is that you need to train it, to understand those things. And 2 million data points takes a lot of time. It’s going to take some time for someone to do it. Maybe we will be the ones to do it. I don’t know. But if it’s a high demand and people keep emailing me, then I’m happy to dedicate a team member to work on that one. Yeah. Advice From Faizan for Property Managers Interested in Artificial Intelligence Brittany Stephens (28:40): Well Faizan do you have any other like final pieces of information that you think are really important to mention that you want to share with our viewers, listeners? Faizan Khan (28:52): Just my general advice to people is that don’t be scared of AI. I think the media has overplayed it. There’s multiple different applications of AI and and it’s not taking over anything. At the end of the day, it’s helping you be better at your business. It’s a simple tool that works like a human would do and it learns like a human does. So yeah, I would recommend people, you know, reading more about it and what sort of companies are out there. They’re trying to help you be more efficient and be more profitable. Right? At the end of the day, everyone wants to be profitable and keep their owners happy. And there’s tons of smarter ways to do that rather than just doing it manually. Yeah. That’s my message to people. Brittany Stephens (29:49): Well, thank you so much for joining us. Marie, did you have anything else that you wanted to say? Marie Liamzon-Tepman (29:54): No. I’m good. I think I’ve asked all my questions. Faizan Khan (30:01): All right. Thank you. Thanks for your time. I appreciate you taking the time and the amazing questions. If you have any questions about this topic or about property management marketing in general, give us a call. The Property Management Show is brought to you by Fourandhalf. We help property managers strategize and implement marketing plans that bring in owner leads. Click the image below to get a free marketing assessment and find out how to start getting better clients into your portfolio. The post Understanding Artificial Intelligence in Property Management appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

What Property Management Business Plan is Best? Property management business plans and systems are more important than ever, whether you’re trying to grow your company or simply manage the new normal of this pandemic. But which one is best for your business? On today’s Property Management Show podcast, we’re talking to Deb Newell and Andy Moore about their expertise in both property management and coaching/consulting. We’re discussing property management business plans and systems and how to choose a path to better operations within your own company. Introducing Deb and Andy Deb Newell owns a property management company and has also grown her own consulting business. Real-Time Consulting Services is based in St. Paul, Minnesota. She helps her property management clients focus on three core principles established for businesses: People, Process, and Technology. The mission of Deb’s company is to help businesses see the deficits they have and to find ways to fix some of the gaps and miscommunications. Basically, she dives in as a company’s temporary COO to look at the operations and make them more efficient. She works with companies that are just starting out and have been in business for many years. Andy Moore owns Gulf Coast Property Management in Sarasota, Florida. As a property management business owner, he realized where the operational challenges were coming from in his own company and in the industry, so he became involved in business consulting. Now he works part time with property management companies to reorganize and focus. Often, Andy has seen professionals in the property management world start off as technicians. Maybe they were property managers or real estate agents or maybe they worked in maintenance, and then they came into the management or ownership of a company without any real idea for how to run the business. In these scenarios, business plans and systems can give people a better idea of how to properly run a business and guide them through key concepts like hiring, firing, and managing. It helps entrepreneurs set expectations and deliver a quality service. Note: Andy Moore is no longer an EOS Implementer® as of July 6, 2020. For information about the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) or to find an official EOS Implementer®, please visit www.eosworldwide.com. Six Sigma and Other Management Frameworks Deb’s approach in consulting is taking elements from various management frameworks like Six Sigma to help her clients. Her focus is on the lean management side and the idea of eliminating the defects within a business. Her process is to go through the core principles and evaluate the business in such a way that the company can focus on the customer. By understanding how everything really works, looking at processes and how they flow, concentrating on the value of the business, and removing any blocks or defects, the company is brought to a better result. An important part of the work is also getting buy-in from the team throughout the process. Every effort has to be systematic where a roadmap is presented. You might think one employee is an issue to your company’s success, but you have to dig deeper. Maybe that employee is struggling because of a lack of training or the absence of clear expectations. There’s always a root cause, and to execute any plan in the right manner, those root causes have to be identified and solved efficiently. Different Management Systems Fit Different Companies Deb likes to use her company as a sandbox for her clients; owning her own property management business allows her to test things out. But, it’s important to remember that there’s no one right way to implement a management system. There’s no wrong way to do things. Everyone runs their business differently. There are many variables, from size to region to property type. You cannot completely copy one successful model that you see elsewhere. It might not work for you. Andy says he runs into the same challenge. He has to make an effort not to impose his management style and the way he is structured on the others that he coaches. Every business is nuanced, and the dynamics from company to company always change. He has learned to put up guardrails to guide other property management entrepreneurs rather than simply telling a them how he himself would solve a problem in his own business. There is always a temptation to copy what successful property management companies do. But, if you’re in a different market and you don’t understand why the company you want to copy is doing what they’re doing, you may be missing some key insights. There’s always a new shiny concept or idea that promises to change everything. There are visionaries in the field, but not everyone is going to be able to implement those visions. Find the change agent in your company to drive what you want. If there’s not a person ready to do that, think about how to develop someone who can lead the path towards the larger goals. How to Choose a Management Framework for Your Property Management Company There are two things to keep in mind when choosing a management framework for your company: Are you big enough in terms of staff, revenue, or doors managed? Does your company operate using a portfolio structure rather than a departmental structure? In Andy’s personal experience, there are systems that tend to not work for a portfolio-based company where one property manager is performing all of the tasks associated with a property. In a portfolio-based company, the doors tend to slam shut when it comes to accountability and communication, which can render some systems ineffective. Meanwhile, being too small of a company could mean you don’t have enough resources and staff to create necessary boundaries critical to the system you are trying to implement. Simply deciding to adopt a new process, a new plan, or a new system is not going to magically fix your company either. Some property management businesses have larger problems that need to be solved first before turning to any system. Hiring a consultant or implementing a management system will not erase some of the root problems or the lack of foundation that may be holding you back. It’s not a light switch. Management systems require work – hard work – and they also require a commitment. You’ll be working within their framework for years and once you reach your initial goals, it will be time to set new goals, and that will require additional change management. Problems take time to solve. As a property manager, you likely have new clients calling when they need a tenant evicted. They’re in emergency mode and they just want to hand off their problem and let it be your problem. But, with change management, you have to be invested yourself, and you have to be committed to the process. For more about standardized systems in property management, check out our two-part series with Dave Gorham. Portfolio vs Departmental Property Management Systems The difference in department-based management companies and portfolio-based companies is often regional. And, companies shift. They go back and forth between the two models depending on where they are and where they’re going. The best system and structure depends on your company. It depends on how you manage owners and how accountability is measured and respected in your team. If you’re going to move from a portfolio based system to a departmental system, it’s going to involve more than shuffling around boxes on your organizational chart. While a departmental system may make sense, most owners you work with will prefer to talk to one person. They don’t want to call five different people to get a report on their property. At Andy’s property management company, things have evolved from portfolio to departmental to a hybrid where he has realized the value of an account manager who serves as that one contact person that owners can go to. They’re in charge of the portfolio, but they’re supported by different departments within the company. You can only get to a structure like that with experience and systems. If you own a property management company, you’re probably managing more than properties. You’re managing people. It’s easy to forget that you have to manage people as well as real estate. There’s an owner and a tenant and employees. When you establish a property management company, your job is to manage many people. Not everyone is equipped to do that. You can get yourself familiar with structuring your organization with our 3-part series on workflows. Blind Spots When Managing Your Company Budgeting can be a big blind spot. Maintenance is as well. Most property managers would agree it’s the bane of their existence. Maintenance is something that has to be addressed and taken care of and if you don’t – that will be your company’s demise. The lack of any operational systems will always be a blind spot. There’s training and strategic planning – all blind spots. Those blind spots impact reputation. It’s hard enough to maintain a positive reputation in property management. This is a difficult profession to be in – property managers are required to be experts in several different things in order to successfully and effectively manage a rental property. There’s little recognition. A number of tools are now available in the industry that can help companies avoid and manage those blind spots. But, those tools aren’t free. Property managers aren’t charging enough for the work that they do. This is true. It’s also true that owners think property managers charge too much money. Deb uses a babysitting analogy. The two most important and valuable assets people have are real estate and their children. Why are the services associated with real estate and children so devalued? No one wants to pay property managers more than $100 a month and no one wants to pay babysitters more than $10 an hour. It doesn’t make sense. With companies and individuals entering the property management marketplace and offering to do the work for almost nothing, it further devalues the work that real professionals are doing. But, it doesn’t take long for those low-cost management structures to crumble. Pandemic Property Management: How to Survive The world has changed, and property management companies have been required to change, too. No one saw this pandemic coming. But, it’s easy to see which companies were prepared to pivot in a way that they had to and which companies are still scrambling to make it work. Andy says his company hasn’t missed a beat because remote workers, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and clear expectations have always been in place. Policies and procedures are not sexy. They’re not fun. But they’re important, especially when it comes to managing staff and properties through this pandemic. You may have staff members who are working from home, and you’ll have to be flexible. They may be homeschooling their children. They may be balancing work and home, and parenting with spouses or partners who are also working remotely. Companies will survive if plans are in place. Companies that were struggling with organization and systems before the pandemic are going to find themselves in trouble. Good things can come out of this, and if you’re interested in talking to Andy or Deb about their coaching and consulting businesses or you want to learn more about how our structured marketing plans can help your business, contact us at Fourandhalf. The Property Management Show is brought to you by Fourandhalf. We help property managers strategize and implement marketing plans that bring in owner leads. Click the image below to get a free marketing assessment and find out how to start getting better clients into your portfolio. The post A Conversation with Two Experts in Property Management Business Plans appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

How do you build successful referral relationships in property management? Your property management company depends on relationships, and on today’s episode of The Property Management Show, we’ve asked Paul Boudier and Terri Alcala to join us. They have a unique professional relationship in place, and they’ve been referring business to each other for years. Today, we’re diving into how their relationship was built and how they manage to sustain it so that each of them can attract more business. Introducing Paul and Terri Paul (BRE# 01179722) heads the Paul Boudier Team at Keller Williams Realty in Placer County. He’s lived in California for more than 50 years, and he’s been a Realtor for 25 of those years. He feels passionate about his opportunity to help thousands of families in the tri-county area find a home or an investment property that works for them. Terri Alcala (DRE# 01168555) is a property manager who owns Action Properties in Roseville. She’s been managing properties for 30 years, and Action has been in business for 20 years. Terri’s mother gets the credit for introducing the two. She was a real estate agent working with Paul in 1994, and she immediately grew to appreciate Paul’s work ethic and the way he presented himself. Since Action Properties is one of the few management companies in the market that doesn’t also do real estate sales, the partnership has been invaluable. Paul and Terri agree that their relationship works because they make each other look good to their clients. That’s the foundation of a strong referral relationship program. Referral Relationships in Property Management Use Your Network Terri and Paul were introduced to one another, and you also have a network of people who can introduce you to partners that may help you build a stronger property management business. Look for people you can work with and build relationships with. It’s difficult to call a random Realtor or property manager who you don’t know, so focus on the relationships that are already in place and see what else they can do for you. With a relationship like the one Terri and Paul have, they refer new business to each other first. But they have other referral sources, too. Terri specializes in specific parts of Sacramento, for example, so when Paul has a client who is in an outlying area, he relies on other relationships in those regions. Building additional relationships is its own form of lead generation. Trust Drives Business Neither Terri nor Paul rely on formal contracts when it comes to working with each other or with any other professionals in real estate and property management. They trust the people they partner with – which may seem old school, but is vital in their industries. Terri says she still trusts that people will do what they say. There’s an understanding, and the people she works with are committed to that. For Paul, communication works hand in hand with trust. He uses client experience to know that each party is holding up their own end of the bargain. When his clients are happy with the services Terri is providing, he knows the relationship is working. Every agent and property manager handles their referral relationships differently. A lot of property managers also sell real estate, and, in that case, it’s important to track who is referring business to you. You’ll want to take care of the management of that property and then offer the business back to the referring agent when the client wants to buy or sell. This is all based on trust. Property managers and real estate agents who are focused on good customer service will end up winning business and building both trust and relationships. Seeking Out the Experts Instead of sheltering in and keeping all the business you possibly can to yourself, rely on the expertise of others in your network. The relationships you build will bring in better business. Terri shares an example of 1031 exchanges. As a property manager, she knows enough about 1031 exchanges to be able to have a conversation with a client. But, when a client wants to sell a property and perform a 1031 exchange, she calls Paul. She knows he is an expert in this area and can help her client get a better result. This is about educating your clients and making connections. Terri probably could have fumbled her way through a 1031 exchange, but why do that? Connecting her clients with Paul makes her look good. It demonstrates her commitment to service and to people. At Fourandhalf, we’re always struggling against the idea that people are afraid to share information for free. They don’t want to educate people because they’re afraid those people won’t need them. That’s not true at all. You’re building trust, and you’re building a relationship when you educate and share information and make referrals. Even if the person you’re helping doesn’t use you in that moment, they will likely come back to you in the future because they’ll remember how helpful and resourceful you were. Challenges in Referral Relationships Terri establishes personal relationships with the people she works for and with. Creating partnerships and relationships feels very natural. Her clients have known her for decades and they send birthday cards to her kids. There are a lot of success stories. There are challenges, too. While Terri and Paul have not run into any issues in their own relationship, Terri has had some issues with expectations while sharing clients. An agent had referred a client to her for property management, and when that client was about to close on an investment property, Terri conducted an inspection of the property. It was not in rent-ready condition, and she knew that the owner would have to spend at least $6,000 or $7,000 on paint and carpet cleaning and other repairs. The referring Realtor took these comments to be negative and suggested she mind her own business. People are going to get defensive and they’re going to misinterpret what you do. This is why working with experts is so critical. The real estate agent probably had an idea of what a rent-ready property would look like, but didn’t have the expertise to know that the home they were about to close on was not ready to be rented. Knowing a little bit about something doesn’t cut it. Reaching out for help is good business because it serves your clients better and it helps you develop and strengthen relationships and partnerships. Referral Culture and Focusing on a Good Fit When we’re talking about referral relationships in property management, the burden of networking doesn’t fall on you alone. Neither Terri nor Paul are sole proprietors. They have teams, and it’s important that their teams are on board with building their referral relationships in property management and beyond. Terri has trained her staff to provide clients with two or three agent names when they want to sell or buy property. The team recommends their clients call each of the agents to talk and see if their personalities fit. A good fit is important to you and your clients. Even when people call Terri looking for property management, she recommends they call at least two other management companies. Feeling comfortable is important when you enter into a relationship with a property manager or a real estate agent. She works with people who want everything to be automated and she works with people who don’t own a computer. She works with owners who live overseas and haven’t seen their properties in years. She works with local owners who want to get inside and look around during every turnover. In order to have good referral relationships, you have to have good client relationships. Paul has found that earning respect through good experiences has helped build business. He knows that when a client needs painting done or gutters cleaned, Terri will have a great list of vendors. She has resources and contacts, and that provides a big opportunity. The opportunity is more than providing good service to existing clients. It’s about broadening the relationship net. When Terri refers a contractor, Paul has served the needs of his client. He has also been given the opportunity to create a new relationship with that contractor. When he refers that contractor to 12 people throughout a year, it’s not unreasonable to believe he’ll get at least two referrals of his own from the contractor. They’re working together and helping each other grow their businesses. It’s a conversation Paul calls “The Promise”. When a client of his is happy because they’ve found the right home, Paul wants that client to be a raving fan. To Paul, this means that the client had a good experience and can refer at least two people who are thinking about real-estate. Terri knows that doing good work for an owner or a tenant can circle back around years later. She had a former tenant refer a co-worker to her management company two years after the tenant moved out. These relationships matter. How to Grow Your Referral Network This is something you’ve heard before – every business owner is in the lead generation business. You’re making contact with people every day, and every person you meet is a potential lead. Paul has an ambitious goal, which is to make 20 new contacts every day. He leads a team of five agents and every morning they have a huddle where each agent shares: What they did the day before What they’re focusing on today What their affirmation for the day will be Terri tries to make one or two new contacts a day. It’s often more, and it happens organically. She’ll be talking to her painter, and the painter will know someone renting out a house. Some days, she makes five or six or seven new contacts and other days she doesn’t make any. Her goal is to reach 15 to 20 new leads every month. We covered getting more owner referrals in a previous blog, but even if you’re not setting out to consciously earn new business, the number of contacts you make and relationships you begin will average out over the course of a month. You’re doing it all the time, even if you don’t realize it. Paul’s positive energy every morning in his huddle sets a tone for the day, and Terri has learned from that. When her team comes to work every morning, there’s already a lot of negativity because they’ll have after-hours phone calls and maintenance issues to deal with. She brings in Paul’s tactics and also reminds her team to smile when they’re on the phone. People can sense the negativity during a conversation. If you’re looking for rules to live by while developing your referral relationships in property management, this team has some: Get involved with NARPM. Stick with the industry standards and go to meetings. Network with everyone, from plumbers to staff to family and friends. Sustain curiosity and don’t judge. You never know who needs you. Dig deeper and learn more when you’re talking to people. Get to know their pain points. Read some of these books: A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan, and Dave Jenks If you have any questions, Terri and Paul would be happy to talk to you. We can help too, so contact us at Fourandhalf. The Property Management Show is brought to you by Fourandhalf. We help property managers strategize and implement marketing plans that bring in owner leads. Click the image below to get a free marketing assessment and find out how to start getting better clients into your portfolio. The post Building & Maintaining Successful Referral Relationships in Property Management appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

If you saw our recent blog post and video on ADA compliance myths, you know that ‘website accessibility’ is a big buzzword these days. But, what is it and how you can you prevent one of those lawsuits aimed at your property management company, accusing your website of not being accessible? Kris Rivenburgh is an attorney and founder of Accessible.org. He’s here to talk with us about what accessibility really means for your website and how you can avoid getting a demand letter from an attorney who claims you’re violating the law. Introduction to Kris Rivenburgh Kris is an attorney who became interested in website accessibility when he noticed people were being sued. It’s a brand new area for many lawyers, and as he began researching what these lawsuits were about, he developed a specialty in a subject that many lawyers and other professionals hadn’t encountered before. Everything written on the subject was vague and ambiguous. None of the information he could find was helpful to people targeted by a lawsuit. He continued his research and began writing about it. Now, he’s a resource for people who need help distilling the legal and technical jargon that keeps them from really understanding website accessibility. Website Accessibility: An Explanation You want to make sure that everyone visiting your property management website gets the information they need. That’s website accessibility in its most basic form; you’re making your website flexible enough that everyone can access and engage with the content. You run into accessibility issues when the code and the structure is inflexible. Potential Accessibility Issues on Your Website There are several things happening on your website that you may not even think could be potential issues for people with disabilities. Kris provided a couple of examples: Images. You need alternative text to describe any meaningful images on your website because someone using a screen reader won’t know what the images are. Form fields. These need to be labeled correctly or not everyone will understand what information the fields are requesting. Fair Housing Act and Americans with Disabilities Act: Places of Access There’s a reason that the surge in lawsuits is especially targeted to the property management and real estate industries. Fair housing laws have to be followed. While the ADA was a civil rights law that was written before websites were even a part of doing business, the law addresses all physical places of access. Websites aren’t physical, but they are high traffic places. Title III in the ADA is where this issue lands when we talk about website accessibility. Places of public accommodation, according to the law, have typically included hotels, restaurants, gyms, and schools. Websites are different, and the courts have come to see that websites are an integral part of daily life. Some judges see them as a nexus with a physical place and others believe that websites stand alone as a place of public accommodation. Technically, the ADA does not talk about websites but you don’t want to argue that technicality in court. If you’ve received a demand letter, you’ve already lost your lawsuit. The Fair Housing Act requires that everything is accessible, including advertisements. That’s how it applies to your property management or real estate website. Everyone needs access to the properties being advertised on your site. Lawsuits are Driven by Serial Litigants and Plaintiff Attorneys Something to consider is that 98 percent of these lawsuits are being driven by serial litigants in law firms that are looking for opportunities. There isn’t always a plaintiff who genuinely wants to file a lawsuit because your site and your content could not be accessed. It’s often because there’s an attorney who is testing your website and making claims over and over again when they find sites they believe are non-compliant. This has nothing to do with actual accessibility or someone being prohibited from reaching content. There are a lot of great advocates for people who have disabilities. They’re doing good, legitimate work trying to help more people access more information online. Those advocates are not likely to serve you with a lawsuit. Instead, you’re hearing from a lawyer who is making a money grab. They know that it costs money for a company to defend against a lawsuit. So, they’ll send a demand letter pointing to a particular part of your lawsuit that they can prove is inaccessible. You’ll be offered a settlement that’s less than the cost of your defense. Businesses settle to save time and money. The plaintiff attorneys have nothing to lose. If you receive a demand letter, you’ll lose a few thousand dollars in attorney fees and settlements. Avoiding Lawsuits: Is ADA Compliance Really What this Is? There’s a lot of confusion over who is regulating what and how to follow the law. Many people are calling website accessibility ‘ADA compliance’, but that’s not entirely what we’re talking about. While we’re looking to the courts to determine what makes a website accessible, we need to pay attention to the web content accessibility guidelines, or WCAG. These are the technical standards from the World Wide Web Consortium. They’ve developed a web accessibility initiative. Within those guidelines, the WCAG 2.0 is commonly referenced by the courts. There are 38 different bullet points with which you want to conform. WCAG 2.1 is an update and includes 12 additional bullet points. Theoretically, if you can put all those bullet points into place on your website, you can be comfortable knowing your website is accessible. This is the best way to prevent lawsuits. Most of the serial litigants who are sending demand letters are using an automated scan to find the easy areas in which your website is not accessible. When you are meeting the WCAG requirements, the scan will leave your site alone. Website Accessibility: Start with the Basics The easiest way to tip off an automated scan is by not having alternative text available with your images, keyboard navigability, and accessible form fields. All images on your site need to have alt text included with them. Avoid decorative images that don’t have meaning – focus on only using images that support the content on your site. If an attorney finds images on your website without alt text, this is called a gateway claim because it’s an easy violation for them to get a grip on. Then, they’ll start looking for other things throughout your site. A user must be able to navigate a website with a keyboard only. A mouse should not be required. Form fields have to be accessible for screen readers and all the headings have to be in order and easy to spot, with adequate color contrast. Make sure you have a navigation bar. Focus indicators are needed for anything interactive, including links, controls, buttons, etc. Stay away from slide shows. They are often great for marketing and you can add more content to them, but from an accessibility standpoint, they can be a problem. Simple is better. Avoid what you don’t need on your website. A lot of problems arise with third party widgets and scripts. The social feed widget that you downloaded may not be accessible. Pop-ups are huge problems from an accessibility standpoint. They’re also annoying for all your users. Leave them out. The plaintiff attorneys are looking for easy cases. They aren’t going to send a demand letter if there’s one color contrast issue in a footer. They’re looking for the obvious. We still don’t know their methodology or their formula, but we know they aren’t going to send a lawsuit over something that can be argued. It has to be obvious and it has to lead them to look for other accessibility issues. Train Yourself to Upload and Update Content with Accessibility in Mind This may leave you worried about how you make changes to your website. Will adding a blog post throw off your website accessibility? Kris says no. As long as you’re making an effort and being proactive, you’ll be okay with a blog post. You can train yourself to upload content accessibly. The danger comes in constantly reinventing your website because that means you’re always going to have to check for accessibility issues. In a blog post, you need to be aware of your headings and any ambiguous links that might be there. Make sure video and audio content can be opened easily by everyone on the site. Don’t Fall for the Free Website Check Yes, there are automatic tools that claim to scan your website, catch any red flags, and instantly make your site accessible. Maybe you’ve received an offer from a company that will perform this scan for you and give you an idea of how accessible your site is. Kris doesn’t recommend you use them. They promise to fix your site accessibility with a line of code which an icon on your site. When the icon is clicked, it will add an overlay that mimics a screen reader, and they claim this will instantly make your site accessible. This might make you feel better, but it doesn’t mean your website is actually accessible. Instead, it asks people with disabilities to use an overlay to get to your content. That’s not accessibility. It’s forcing users to do something different and it’s insufficient. Your website cannot be made accessible simply and overnight. You aren’t actually reducing your risk of a lawsuit. Accessibility is a process. It doesn’t have to be a big ugly thing that’s too hard to do and it doesn’t come with an endless cost. But, you do have to make an effort. It has to be addressed and it has to be monitored. Be wary of anything or anyone that offers immediate accessibility. You can either risk a lawsuit or do the work. The demand letters will keep going out with or without your action. Be Proactive With Your Property Management Website In the real estate and property management community, you are especially at risk for receiving one of these demand letters. If you’re hearing about colleagues who have received them, you can safely assume that you’re next. Take down the things you don’t need on your website right now and work on making it accessible. Be proactive and be aware. The website owner is always ultimately responsible for the website. You are responsible for what you own and control. You can blame your developers and designers, but this is still new and the industry is still working through best practices and defenses. The nice looking website you paid for five years ago needs some things changed. Be prepared for that. What’s most frustrating is that there are no explicit laws or mandates that say private businesses must have accessible websites. There was no notice that this would be coming. The government and regulators need to step up because no one is against accessibility, but companies shouldn’t be held accountable to laws that they didn’t know would pertain to their sites. Don’t wait for the government or the regulatory agencies, however. Take the necessary steps now. You can reach Kris at Accessible.org and if you have any questions about how to make your website more accessible, you can always contact us at Fourandhalf. The Property Management Show is brought to you by Fourandhalf. We help property managers strategize and implement marketing plans that bring in owner leads. Click the image below to get a free marketing assessment and find out how to start getting better clients into your portfolio. The post Website Accessibility 101 for Property Managers with Attorney Kris Rivenburgh appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

What if we told you that the property management sales process starts long before you make a pitch? And what if we told you that you’re already selling even before you realize that you’re doing it? This revelation is why we’ve titled today’s episode “How We Sell…” instead of “How To Sell…”. Today on The Property Management Show, we’ve invited Todd Cohen to tell us what this means and how you can use this knowledge to change the way your team thinks about sales. Introducing Todd Cohen Todd Cohen is a keynote speaker and a workshop leader who is passionate beyond words about showing people how every one of us are in sales every day. He works hard to dispel the negative stereotypes that are often attached to the idea of sales. Those stereotypes hold us back professionally and personally. Since leaving his last corporate job 12 years ago, spreading the word about sales has been Todd’s mission. Before COVID, he was doing 90 appearances a year, and he’s still delivering online speeches and workshops about his thesis that everyone, no matter who they are and what they do, is in sales. Your Sales Process Starts Before You Say a Word In traditional sales training, there is a nuts and bolts methodology that says the first sales call is the most important moment in the process. It leads to getting the contract signed and the product delivered. That’s a very 1990s way to think about sales. Really, property management sales, and all sales, begin before you even say a word. We are all consumers. We all make decisions the minute we see something or somebody. When you encounter a human, you immediately form an opinion. Either you will feel good and you will feel like you’re in the right place, or something about the situation or the person will tell you that this isn’t the right place for you. It depends on how the person doing the selling shows up. This is what most people miss, and it’s to the detriment of organizations. Today, people have shorter attention spans and they’re making decisions quickly. Humans are disconnected from each other and busy with their phones and computers and moving on to the next thing. There’s a narrow window to start the sales process. Missing that window makes everything harder. The moment you show up to a person is where the sales process starts. It’s the most important moment. Readers form opinions. Podcast listeners make decisions. There’s an inherent bias that comes with your buying decisions, and that has to inform how you show up and how your team approaches every interaction with current and potential customers. The reality is that people make a buying decision initially and in a split second. If you’ve read the Malcolm Gladwell book, “Blink,” you know that there’s a moment when the buyer unconsciously realizes that they need to buy something. Everyone sells in all interactions. Sales People: Born or Bred? Trained or Talented? Are property management sales people are born or bred? Do they fall into those roles naturally or is it a product of their experience and mentors? Todd says yes and yes. More important is the question of how we define sales people. Some people chose a profession in sales. And then there’s the rest of us. Everyone has to sell themselves and make a decision about how to show up. We try to sell ourselves so people will build relationships with us. We try to influence others. Every human being does that. Choosing sales as a profession is a little different, and it’s not for everyone. People have a sense of not wanting to be in sales because they fear rejection or they have a hard time asking for things. There’s no such thing as rejection. It’s a myth. Rejection is personal, and in sales it doesn’t happen that often. Proposing to a spouse is one of the hardest sales calls in the world. So is convincing your toddler to eat peas or asking someone to move their car because you’re blocked in. All of those situations involve sales. The stereotype of selling is negative, and self-identifying sales people deal with it every day. Words to Never Say: “I’m Just The…” “I’m just the ____” are the three most damaging words to an organization or a career. Don’t say this to a tenant or a client or an employer. Explaining why you can’t help or be responsive because you’re just the receptionist or just the assistant is going to shut down the sales process very quickly. It sends two negative messages: The person asking for help should go elsewhere. The person responding doesn’t value themselves. People would rather do anything than understand they’re selling. Everything is sales, and everything influences how people think. Decide how you want to show up. Property Management Sales Process The Business Development Manager at your property management company is the initial point of contact and the professional who first speaks to a property owner about why they should hire your company to manage an investment. The property manager who receives that new client once the deal is signed is also selling, and it’s very important that your property managers realize that. Sales is a mindset. Sales is a behavior. When you look at sales as a mindset and a behavior, you can train people in your organization to understand that when they’re engaging with anyone, they’re selling. They don’t have to do anything differently, but they do have to think differently about what they’re doing. It will impact the next email that’s sent and the next greeting they make. Training your people in good customer service isn’t enough. You have to make sure that every employee is looking at every interaction as meaningful. It has a systemic and profound downstream effect on a prospective client signing a deal and staying with you at renewal time. It has an impact on how that client will react when they get upset during the lease period. Consumers make buying decisions based on interactions, and then all future sales process validate their decision. If everyone on your property management team doesn’t embrace the notion that they’re in sales every day, and they don’t see that how they show up matters, there will be a crack in your culture, potentially a leak in your sales funnel, and someone will send a message that tells a customer they’re in the wrong place. That’s the essence of your sales culture. It takes a lot of courage to think differently about each interaction. Not every company is up to it. You don’t have to change the processes or the manuals; you have to change the mindset. Then, the actions will follow. Recovering from the COVID Climate: All Hands on Deck When you’re thinking about how to strengthen your property management sales process post-COVID, the message to adopt is that everyone’s in sales. You need all hands on deck if you want to recover and move forward. Todd believes this has never meant more than it does now. People are terrified from the economic fallout of this pandemic. They’re worried they may have overextended themselves on their lease. Companies aren’t sure if they have the right people in place. You can’t miss a single opportunity. The profound mindset shift is not optional; it’s more important than ever. Having the right people will make a difference in your organization. One of the critical points Todd makes in his keynotes and presentations is that it no longer matters what you charge or what your services are or how efficiently you deliver those services. People are looking for the difference maker. When you’re looking to hire a new team member, ask this question during the interview: Tell me about something that you’ve sold in your life. If they can’t tell you that they’ve influenced someone to achieve a goal, then this is not someone you want to hire. They should at least be able to recognize that they are selling themselves in that moment, at the interview. Everyone is in sales. It’s a mindset, and it’s mandatory. It’s also a critical cultural shift for your company’s recovery post-COVID. It doesn’t cost anything to change your team’s mindset. It simply requires your time to point out to people that what they do matters. Looking at Everything through a Sales Lens People can feel you smiling when you answer the phone. You’re selling just by doing the things you do every day. It’s about taking the time to appear the right way and send the right message. Getting your people on board with this type of thinking is the secret sauce of Todd’s workshops and keynotes. He says you can’t make it a gigantic mountain to scale. It can be as simple as pointing out examples of how what people do every day is essentially sales. Consider the HR person who has a property manager come to the office and ask to hire a new landscaping contractor. When the HR person writes a better job description and gets the right person hired faster, that sales function quickly makes its way down the road through the company. It led to better candidates and quicker decisions, which will later lead to better marketing and tenant placements because when prospects come to the building and see a well-landscaped community, they want to live there. By hiring a landscaper, the HR person did not think they were selling anything. But, it was part of the sales process. It’s big thinking and it’s a huge concept. You don’t have to provide sales training. You don’t have to teach your employees how to sell. Instead, you have to show them how what they’re doing right now is sales. They’re already doing it. Everyone’s in Sales – So Every Team Member Matters No one wakes up in the morning saying they’re proud to be overhead. No one wants to feel like they don’t matter at their job. When you can show people that the things they do every day leads to revenue coming in the doors, they’ll see themselves as part of the sales team. People want to make a difference. Encourage your staff to create relationships. Make your team members feel like advocates. Todd had an experience living in a planned community where he owned a home and had a great experience with the maintenance staff there. The maintenance chief greeted him by name every time they spoke, and this is a sales tool. Using a person’s name demonstrates for one second that the person you’re addressing is important. It creates buying decisions. The maintenance chief in this community was responsive when he didn’t need to be. Todd’s water heater exploded and he couldn’t find a plumber. Within five minutes, the maintenance person was at the door with a bucket and a mop. It was a priority. If Todd had told this person that he was a great sales person, the maintenance chief would have argued that he wasn’t in sales – he was just the maintenance chief. But, he’s actually in sales too because he influenced Todd’s behavior and reinforced that he made a good decision by buying a home in the community. Typically, when anyone thinks about the property management sales process, it looks like a straight line. It starts and ends. But, with a recurring revenue businesses, you’re making a sale every month that someone pays. That buying decision has to be reinforced over and over again. How Approachability Affects Sales Todd suggests looking at the Boeing Company because this sales mindset applies to small companies and large corporations. When all those plane crashes were occurring and Boeing was called to Congress, the company did not do itself any favors. The CEO showed up and did a terrible job. He missed the opportunity to sell his company. People were holding up signs saying their kids were killed in plane crashes. There was a lot of hurt and anger. At that point, Boeing should have begun with vulnerability and humility and humanity. Those are all sales tools available to everyone, regardless of the industry. If you’re approachable then you’re profitable. Showing humanity now is especially important. There’s a lot of chaos, and people aren’t at their best. The lesson Todd says we’re learning with COVID is that there’s a recovery mindset, which is actually the same as the sales mindset. First and foremost, you have to shut up and listen. People want to share their pain, and it’s a good way to build a relationship. It’s also a selling tool. No one wants to hear push back. People need you to understand where they are and how they feel. Those who understand that will do a great job with sales. Listening is something so many people just don’t value. But the first thing you should do as part of any process is listen. Listen to the people talking to you. Todd shared that between March 19 and March 23, he lost 80 percent of his business. All his events were canceled and the work just evaporated. He had a choice. Todd could have been difficult with the people who had booked him. He could have insisted on collecting cancelation fees and anything else that was in the contract, or he could have been a jerk, but it’s not to anyone’s benefit to be a jerk. The first thing he said to the people who called him was that he was sorry. He was sorry for what they were going through, and he knew it must have been a difficult call for them to make. This created longer and deeper conversations that were more meaningful. Todd knows that most of this business at some point will come back. He also knows that customers aren’t going to like you if they feel your desperation. It scares people off. The Takeaways for Property Managers The main takeaway that property managers and their teams can gain from this podcast is: Never waste an interaction. Everyone is in sales. Not because we’re knocking on doors and selling products and services. Adopt the mindset that every interaction leaves a mark. It leads people towards buying your property management services or renting a home from you. This is a huge topic, and if you’d like to learn more about Todd and his workshops, check out his two books: “Everyone’s In Sales” and “Stop Apologizing and Start Selling.” You can also visit his website at toddcohen.com. You can always contact us at Fourandhalf as well. Thanks for joining us. The Property Management Show is brought to you by Fourandhalf. We help property managers strategize and implement marketing plans that bring in owner leads. Get a free marketing assessment to find out how to start getting better clients into your portfolio. The post How Property Managers Sell Before Saying a Word appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

Bob Abbott from Alarca Realty in North Carolina used to be a work-from-home skeptic. Now, he’s an advocate, and we asked him to join The Property Management Show to talk about how to establish a virtual property management team and what you can do to keep your team members productive and accountable. We asked him to talk about the tools he uses to make this work for him and his company. Introducing Bob Abbott and Alarca Realty Alarca Realty handles properties in the Charlotte, North Carolina market. They’ve been in business since 2005, and Bob got started in real estate because he wanted to flip houses. Then, he moved into property management and was comfortably building that business when the last economic storm arrived. He and his company have been focused on property management since 2010. Transition from Brick and Mortar Office to Virtual Property Management Team Turning your property management company into a remote business doesn’t happen overnight. Baby steps are best. Bob started by talking to people at conferences. He planned and mapped this out three years before taking any concrete steps. Then, he turned some of his invoicing over to a company that provided virtual assistants. It was working well, so he hired another company called Virtually Incredible to help with processing applications. As this continued to work, he began to hire virtual assistants on his own, without the help of a third-party company. Remote assistants and virtual team members began doing marketing and now they also talk to clients and tenants. Cost was a factor in this decision; remote labor is cheaper. But for Bob, even more important was keeping his core team happy. His local employees were feeling overwhelmed, and as he slowly began to take things off their plates and advertise for the jobs they didn’t want to do, everybody began doing better work. It was a win for the company, the current team members, and the new remote workers. This began in 2014, when Alarca Realty had three full-time employees and about 140 doors under management. So: how remote can you take your property management business? For Bob, anyone who needs to set foot on the property obviously has to be a local employee. Everything else is done remotely. Bob has a separate maintenance company and the maintenance crews handling repairs and turnovers need to be in the local area. Keeping the Company at a Comfortable Size With his virtual property management team making growth easy, the company grew to managing 250 properties. Then, there was an epiphany about work/life balance, and Alarca Realty slowly began to shed the clients who weren’t fun to work with. Bob focused on keeping the happy clients and culling those who were never happy or who were difficult for the team to manage. If you’re like most property managers, you probably remember the early days of signing every owner who wanted to hire you. It doesn’t have to be that way. Alarca Realty is in a place where it’s okay to be selective, and they’re managing about 150 doors. The upside for Bob, he says, is that he can spend his summers with his family while working two to four hours a day. Working with clients who align with the company’s vision has made a big difference, just as remote workers have. Any owner who didn’t want to perform necessary maintenance on their property was cut. Any owner who was abrasive and rude to Alarca’s team members was also cut. There was a bit of a financial hit initially, but the company is more productive now, and happier. Checklists and Workflows and Process: More Important than Ever It’s easy to think you’ve thought out an entire process before you implement it. The basics can easily get lost when you’re planning to move your entire team remote. For example, new remote workers had to be trained on logging into PropertyWare. The training has to be specific, and Bob put together checklists and made videos. He also used a tool called Screen CastOMatic, where he could film himself doing something. He’d share that link with his virtual assistants so they could see exactly how things were done. It’s an ongoing process because software changes and so do technologies. As you grow, more people are using your checklists, and you have to begin relying on those team members to update the checklists. They don’t always do that. Bob’s solution is pretty brilliant. In his market, the slowest months of the year are November and December. So, every Wednesday in November and December, the company closes for process improvement days. No one answers the phone or handles regular business. Instead, they focus on tightening up checklists and improving workflows and procedures. It takes this part of the process out of the day-to-day work for Bob’s virtual property management company. It’s not an interruption. Accountability: Helping Team Members Own the Process All accountability starts at the top. If you are being asked questions, you have to answer them. But, that only trains your employees to keep coming back to you with questions. When one of Bob’s team members asks him a question, he answers by: Asking what the checklist says. Asking whether what the checklist says is wrong, and why. Asking the employee’s suggestions for changing the checklist. This has minimized the questions that his team asks. They solve the problems on their own and they can usually find their answers in those checklists. They no longer need the validation from the company’s owner that they’re doing the right thing. The daily huddle is another way that everyone stays accountable and on task. If you have a traditional office, you can show up in the morning and people are grabbing coffee and talking intrinsically about what’s happening in the day. So for a remote team, you may need a 15-minute chat about the red flags for the day. Cover what’s going on during the day so the whole team is aware of any potential issues. Maintaining Morale with Remote Team Members When you are working remotely, maintaining positive morale is important. The daily huddle helps with this as well. Bob’s team uses Slack, where people post random photos from their weekends or share jokes and conversations. This is a good way for Bob to give his team personal attention. The online community that’s established allows him to show his team members that they’re important and valued. Listen to your virtual assistants when you’re looking for ways to improve morale. Most of them have done remote work for other companies. They can tell you what works and what doesn’t. It’s hard to find a downside to remote workers, particularly in this environment. Alarca Realty’s business has not missed a beat during this crisis. Everything is moving along the same way that it always has. It takes time to establish the right systems, and you have to have the right personality to manage this successfully. You also need great documentation. This is the opportunity many property management company owners have been waiting for; it’s a chance to let go of the tasks they don’t want to do. It optimizes your team. Remember also that you don’t have to create full time jobs for every remote worker you hire. If you have 20 hours of work a week and you can outsource to Planet Synergy, that’s a great way to start. This won’t work for everyone. Some people love going to the office. They like going in and being with their employees. They like to see their team and have their tenants come in and pay rent. Shared work spaces are still used by Bob and Alarca. If a tenant wants to see a human face or hand over a rent check, they can do that. He’s also using a mailing service where the company’s mail is picked up and opened, then scanned. It goes to one of the virtual assistants and no one even has to open any mail. It’s called Anytime Mailbox, and not only is this a time saver, it also eliminates junk mail. Productivity and Accountability: Setting Standards Bob was once skeptical of people working remotely because he expected they’d screw off all day and get no work done. You have to trust people. You know that there are people who don’t pull their weight; most company owners know who those people are, and you’re going to have them whether you’ve got a remote team or an in-person office staff. There’s a tool called Time Doctor, which takes a screen shot every nine minutes that reflects what the team members are doing. They also have to record what they’re working on. The keystrokes of the mouse are recorded as well, so it’s easy to see what each employee is doing. It tracks productivity. This may sound invasive and terrifying, but it’s not meant to be something that you’re watching all day long. Bob uses it only to verify any suspicions he has about a team member who may not be working the way they should be. He doesn’t monitor his team and reprimand them for watching a YouTube video once in a while. Remote workers are accustomed to this. It’s not uncommon. Hiring Remote Workers for Specific Jobs Bob hires very specifically. He has one person who is a client service representative, and her job is to talk to everyone. She’s not doing any marketing or work orders; she’s talking to owners and tenants. Her job description is to pretend she’s the client so she can be responsive and provide an excellent service. If your bookkeeper leaves your property management company, you can probably hire two or three remote workers for what you were paying your bookkeeper. That allows them to work better and to focus on specific parts of the bookkeeping job. It’s specialization that leads to better service. Culture is every bit as important with your remote team. You have to hire for the right fit and position. No two people are in the same place at the same time. You’re still a team. When COVID first hit the country, Alarca Realty sent out a bulk email to all tenants inviting them to get in touch if they needed help or if they were struggling with rent payments. The remote team was nervous about calling the tenants; they didn’t know what to expect from people who were stressed and financially unstable. So, Bob made the first four calls. He recorded himself talking to those tenants, and the team could use those videos as trainings. Now, they know how to handle these calls. When you’re training people, it’s tempting to teach one instance. But, there are always going to be unique situations and stipulations. Providing multiple examples is extremely helpful. Bob is quick to admit that employee onboarding is not his strongest skill. He’s working on getting the first 30 days really lined up for his new hires. Nick Cook in Portland did a fantastic job on his onboarding manual. He has quizzes and links to videos and articles, and Bob has realized he can take those videos he made for the phone calls and make it part of his onboarding process. Bob’s Four-Hour Remote Work Day Bob’s work day is dramatically different than it once was. He does the huddles every day for both Alarca and his maintenance company. Then, he puts in about four hours a day. He can work more if he wants; there’s always something to do. But, the day-to-day tasks are in the capable hands of his remote team. Two team members have been with the company for over three years. They have access to credit cards and are able to pay the bills. They pay utility bills and reconcile bank accounts. With remote work, the opportunity for fraud has actually disappeared. There are no paper checks and nothing to steal. The risk is low. As the owner of a virtual property management company, Bob’s day now is spent managing and troubleshooting. He uses Help Scout, which is an email box that everyone can access to see what’s going on and what needs to be done. It shows previous emails and provides a summary that helps Bob with process improvement and business development. He’s also doing business development and talking to potential owners. The next hire will likely be a BDM and an onboarding specialist. Tools and Checklists for Virtual Property Management Teams In addition to implementing EOS, the best tools Bob is using to keep his remote team accountable and productive are: Daily huddles Process improvement days Slack Google Hangouts Time Doctor Help Scout Process Street Tenant Turner Anytime Mailbox Transferwise These things can help you keep a culture and a team together even while everyone is apart. The checklist system will be your most important asset, and Process Street is a good place to start. A remote showing service like Tenant Turner or Rently is critical. Allow tenants to pay rent in cash at Walmart with a Rent Money or a Pay Near Me system. Treat your remote workers like your team. They’re not different because they’re elsewhere. We’re happy Bob was able to talk with us about his virtual property management team today. If you have any questions, contact him at Alarca Realty, or get in touch with our team at Fourandhalf. The Property Management Show is brought to you by Fourandhalf. We help property managers strategize and implement marketing plans that bring in owner leads. Get a free marketing assessment to find out how to start getting better clients into your portfolio. The post How to Keep a Virtual Property Management Team Accountable and Productive appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

As a property manager, you are likely communicating with owners and real estate investors more than usual, and your clients are probably more than a little nervous during this time of economic uncertainty. How should you guide owners through rent delinquency? To answer this question, we’ve asked Anna Myers, the Vice President and Asset Manager at Grocapitus Investment to talk to us today about how you can work with your property owners and your residents during a crisis like COVID. While this isn’t a housing crisis, it is a public health crisis, and it’s affecting almost everyone nationwide. Anna is in a unique position to tell us how she’s using data to plan for economic shifts and new housing trends. Introducing Anna Myers and Grocapitus Grocapitus is a syndication company based in the San Francisco area. The company has acquired 13 properties across the United States in the last 18 months, which includes 1,800 units. These are mostly multifamily residential units, and they are now getting into self-storage properties. Anna and the company invests alongside their investors. Her team finds the deals, sources the deals, and lines them up for purchase. Then, the properties are co-purchased through a syndication, and Grocapitus manages the project. This makes Anna the asset manager who works closely with property managers at each building to execute the business plan associated with that deal. These investment properties are spread throughout the United States, which means they’re working with property managers in different states and cities. Anna isn’t a property manager herself, but as the asset manager of these buildings, she’s been able to experience a lot of different property management styles. It’s given her a unique insight into how the industry works and what’s required to succeed, and it’s why we turned to her for advice on guiding rental property owners and investors through delinquency and economic uncertainty. Asset Management vs. Property Management As an asset manager, Anna is concerned with her investors and the residents living inside her units. The property managers she works with are her boots on the ground. They facilitate all engagement and communication with residents, and they make sure local laws and regulations are followed. Those property managers are showing the apartments and executing the business plan that’s in place. The business plan is what dictates the action of each property manager. Maybe there’s a plan in place for a building constructed in 1985. It may need some renovations and updates and the business plan will reflect those intentions and project the money that’s spent and the returns that are earned. These things can’t happen from Anna’s office in California; she counts on her property managers to execute the plan. Using Data for Property Management Decisions Grocapitus is very data-oriented. Their background is in technology and they apply data science to real estate. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and the company uses specific spreadsheets called Trackers. The property managers working with them fill those Trackers out every week so that asset managers can stay on top of the data. The Trackers expose trends and inform decisions. It’s an easy and all-inclusive way of looking across the portfolio to recognize trends and see where things are going right and wrong. Two Trackers in particular are essential to how property managers and asset managers work together: Monday Morning Report. This is a specific sheet that’s related to occupancy and rental collections. It tracks economic data and leads that are coming in that influence occupancy. They track notices to vacate and tenants who are moving. They project their exposure four weeks down the line. The report reflects collections and delinquencies, bad debt, and eviction numbers. It’s a Tracker that the team is watching all the time. Capex Tracker. The Capex Tracker follows the renovations that are ongoing at their value added properties. There is data that reflects classic turns (basic turnovers that often include cleaning the carpet and touching up the paint) all the way to premium turns (improvements that push the property to the top of the market). This report also tracks every turn in between the classic and the premium. Premium renovations can only be done if rent is going to be pushed up by $250 or more. These reports show whether the budget in the business plan was accurate. They can check the rent bumps against the expenditures and have discussions about where they are spending too much and where they might want to invest more. Data is numbers and numbers tell the truth. Guiding Owners Through Rent Delinquency It’s early in May, and as a property manager during COVID-19, you may not have collected as much rent as you normally do. Anna’s data shows that rent collection depends on property class and communication. In the early days of the pandemic, Anna asked her property managers for a list of their tenants’ employers. This was done to determine what type of exposure they’d be facing if businesses started to close. They categorized the tenants according to business type, whether it was retail or service or medical. This is an important data point because understanding where your tenants work can tell you what kind of impact the virus will have on them economically. If you’re in a metro area like Las Vegas or Reno, rent collection is going to be tough. Those are a lot of service industry tenants. So the challenge will be different than in other parts of the country and economy. Shifts in Rent Collection and How to Handle Delinquencies Tenants in Class C properties are having a harder time than tenants in Class A properties. Most of the tenants in those Class A units have reserves and they haven’t had much of a slowdown in terms of income. Those tenants in Class C units are more impacted by layoffs and business closures. As a property manager, you have to consider this when you’re collecting rent. Higher delinquencies will be normal, but things may not be as bad as you expected – at least not right now. The stimulus checks and the unemployment benefits are helping people come through with their rental payments when they can. For those who are struggling, Anna and her property managers have worked out a promise-to-pay program. Communication between property managers and residents has been critical. A lot of tenants may have been thinking that they don’t have to pay rent because they can’t be evicted. It’s important that managers provide clear and accurate information. For Anna, in order to work out a promise-to-pay agreement, tenants have to document that they have been impacted economically by the coronavirus. If a tenant’s employment situation has not changed, rent is still due. A lot of communication is important right now, as most property managers know. There’s some misinformation in the media and online, which means it’s up to you to communicate accurately and openly to your residents. Providing local resources is another way to ensure your tenants remain solvent and able to continue paying rent. Provide a document with all the tools and resources and funding streams that can be accessed in your local, county, state, and federal agencies. Property managers can provide resources for food and utility help. Provide a full list with URLs so you can help your tenants get their needs met. Messaging and Incentives When Collecting Rent The National Multifamily Housing Council has put out some great content about how to talk to tenants, and they even provided downloadable templates and other documents. Anna sent some of this information to the property managers she works with, and trusted them to tailor the wording and the message in a way that made sense for each community. Every community is different, and as a property manager you know your tenants better than your owners do. You’ll know whether incentives are going to work in getting rent paid on time. You know how they’ll react to an offer of assistance. Last month, some of the property managers Anna works with gave a $50 gift card to every tenant who paid rent on or before April 1. This was super-effective in certain buildings. In other buildings, it wasn’t necessary to give out gift cards to everyone and instead, people who paid on time had their names put into a drawing for the gift cards. You have to know your audience. In one building, 100 percent of the rent was collected without any incentives. Zero delinquency is difficult to achieve even when there isn’t an economic downturn. It reflects the relationship that the property manager has with her tenants. She has been working at the building and with those residents for 20 years. Whether you’re using incentives or not, communication is the key to getting rent paid. Especially now. There should be a continuous discussion these days to get a handle on collections. Know where your tenants are financially. Find out if anyone is sick. You need to know what kinds of problems your residents are having. Sharing Data with Rental Property Owners and Investors Anna and her company have the benefit of having their property managers’ complete attention. She has each property manager on-site at the buildings, allowing her unfettered access. Those managers are completely focused on the community. If you’re a property manager working with 50 or 250 owners, you have a lot of phone calls to field and communications to manage. When it comes to guiding your owners through the possibility of rent delinquency, you have some valuable information to share. If you’re gathering data like Anna does, you can bring those numbers to your owners. This doesn’t have to be an individual note, but it can be a mass email to all your owners that shows rent collection trends and other important information. This will validate the trust they’ve put into you to manage their assets through this crisis. As the asset manager and co-owner, Anna has to communicate with her investors as well as her property managers. They want to know how the property is running, how many units have turned, what the occupancy rates look like, and how the special projects are turning out. She provides a monthly investor update and with the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a lot of extra communication, including additional videos and information on risks in each market. The normal market update has been expanded. There’s also a quarterly webinar where investors can ask questions. It requires a lot of preparation, but it’s extremely important in keeping everyone informed. When there’s a crisis like this one, communicating more frequently with investors than you normally do is critical. If things are potentially getting worse, you don’t want to pull back and avoid communicating the bad news. You want to provide more information instead of less. Transparency leads to trust. People are calmer when there is regular communication. That’s the truth for investors, property managers, and tenants. Facing Economic Uncertainty: What Property Managers Should be Doing Rents generally aren’t being raised right now. The job for Anna and her team now is not so much to create wealth for investors but instead to focus on capital preservation. That’s your job as a property manager, too. When you’re communicating with and guiding owners through a crisis, keep in mind that no one knows what’s around the corner. Many investors are cutting expenses and delaying distributions. Investors want to hold onto capital so the mortgages can keep getting paid. The forbearance program is really sticky. No one wants to take advantage of that if they don’t have to because it’s not a friendly situation for consumers and borrowers. It’s a hard position to be in if you own investment property. Tenants aren’t paying rent, but you do want to pay your mortgage. Your job as a property manager has changed during this crisis, just like Anna’s job as an asset manager has changed. Hopefully, you have applied for the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), and followed the recommendations made in our managing cash-flow during COVID-19 episode. It’s a process, but it’s worth it to access those PPP funds. You’ll have eight weeks of payroll covered, and that will be helpful if there’s less rent coming in for May and June. Anna’s team needs the property management staffing to stay in place. These aren’t her employees, they are employees of the management company that she uses. So, the PPP has been instrumental in keeping her properties managed. Mitigating the Worst-Case-Scenario Risk It’s easier to mitigate risk when you’re tracking data and staying on trend. That’s how property managers can best avoid the risk. During a crisis like this, you should look at the data from the last time you faced a worst case scenario. In 2008, for example, the recession brought a vacancy high of 8.1 percent to multifamily properties. That’s not good news, but it’s also not devastating. There’s no need to expect a 50 percent vacancy in every building. You can plan for your risk based on data. Rent growth will probably decrease. You can expect rents to go down 5.5 to 6.5 percent, based on the data that’s available. It’s not good news, but it’s something you can plan for. You know that rent growth will be negative, but it won’t be negative by 25 percent. Look at the data to prepare for the worst. Think about other ways to succeed when you’re planning on a loss. For example, can you increase your occupancy? This is where Anna has found some stabilizing success during the crisis. Leads are still coming in, and she’s running advertisements to get new units renting. With the help of virtual assistants, hundreds of ads are being placed on different platforms right now. They’re using SEO techniques to keep those ads on the top of every page, and their virtual team is booking virtual appointments and showings to bring more leases into each building. This is contributing to a better bottom line for investors, even when rents are stalled and dropping. It’s hard to know what to expect. Anna says that she’s seen projections the GDP could contract another 30 percent. That’s a huge number. There may be a protracted recession through the end of 2021. The Silver Lining When Communicating with Owners About Rent Delinquency The silver lining is that investing in real estate is once again proving to be much safer and more risk-averse than other types of investments. The stock market is not a great place to be right now. Owning hotels also isn’t lucrative. You may have lost some money, but you’re not going to lose your asset. People will always need a place to live. That’s not going to change, no matter what the crisis. The next few months will be scary, but as an investor and a property manager, remember that this is happening nationwide. All other industries aside, property management and real estate will always be here. A lot of business owners have been turned upside down. If our biggest problem is less rent growth, that’s going to be okay. We’re here to talk more about the things Anna has discussed, so contact us at Fourandhalf if you have any questions about guiding owners through rent delinquency and economic uncertainty, or if you want to talk through any problems you’re having during the COVID-19 crisis. The Property Management Show is a podcast brought to you by Fourandhalf. We help property managers strategize and implement marketing plans that bring in owner leads. Get a free marketing assessment to find out how to start getting better clients into your portfolio. The post Using Data to Guide Property Owners Through Delinquency & Economic Uncertainty appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.

On this week’s episode of The Property Management Show, we have invited the co-founder and CEO of Property Meld to talk to us about the subject everyone’s talking about – COVID-19. Ray Hespen is specifically discussing what’s happening with property management maintenance right now and what we can expect and prepare for once this pandemic is contained and we are all moving on. Property Management Maintenance During and After a Crisis: Introducing Ray Hespen and Property Meld Property Meld is focused on property management maintenance. The company provides a platform to automate a lot of steps that help property managers follow-up with maintenance work, verify what’s been done, and communicate with residents, owners, and vendors. Ray and his team work with management companies to improve quality, create efficiency, and keep costs down. Since the entire industry is in a weird situation right now, he’s the obvious expert to talk about what this means for maintaining rental properties. He’s also going to shed some light on what property managers can expect maintenance to look like after this crisis passes. Rental Property Maintenance and COVID-19: The Big Picture Property Meld has analyzed data to look for changes in behavior. They’ve found a few key things: Renters are concerned about submitting repair issues and having people come into their homes. Not all landlords and management companies want to send techs out to complete repair issues. There have been some big shifts in behavior. The drop-off has actually been about 25 percent fewer maintenance requests than the normal curve this time of year. That’s pretty significant. An Absence of Repair Requests Leads to Ghost Issues This is the “COVID effect” on maintenance. When renters don’t submit the requests for repairs that are needed, ghost service issues are created. These are things that exist, but as a property manager, you don’t know about them. People are at home more, so a higher number of repair requests would normally be expected. But, the 25 percent drop tells us that a lot of repairs are needed but not noted. Some property management companies have told tenants that if the repair is not an emergency, they shouldn’t submit it. That’s one way to do it. But, as more information has come out, the better recommendation may be to encourage your tenants to submit the repair request, and then prioritize what really needs to be done. That will reduce the number of ghost service issues that are floating around out there. If you don’t have tenants submitting their necessary repairs, you’re not going to be able to prepare for what you need to fix. After the crisis subsides, there’s going to be a huge influx of maintenance work that needs to be done. It will likely be overwhelming for property managers and their maintenance teams. So, you need to have a sense of what kind of work you’ll be looking at. Property management companies are generally taking the requests that they currently have and prioritizing those that absolutely need to be done. The completion rate is 56 percent lower than the normal completion rate. This tells you that only half the work is getting done. With these two contributing elements and a backlog that’s growing every day, there’s going to be some deferred maintenance. The work that’s needed will pile up. Assuming that the social distancing requirements ease up a bit in May, there’s still going to be a large backlog that takes you right into summer, which is the busiest time of the year for most property managers and their maintenance teams. Renters aren’t submitting but they will at some point. Their property issues are not going to fix themselves. When people are comfortable submitting maintenance requests again, things may get a bit chaotic. Examples of Cautious Renters There may be a tenant who has a broken refrigerator. That’s an emergency since no one is going out to eat. The tenant needs a working fridge, and vendors who are sent into that home will need to be careful and sanitize everything. It’s about balancing the need of the tenant with the safety of the tenant and the repair worker. Marie shared two examples of work that she has recently needed done in her rental property. First, there was a window that started leaking during heavy rain. She did everything she could to minimize the damage by using towels and keeping the area dry. She let her management company know that the window was leaking, but she also instructed them not to make the repair if they didn’t have to, because she didn’t want anyone in her home. This is pretty typical of how most tenants are feeling right now. Marie’s second repair need involved a garbage disposal. She tried her best to fix it and troubleshoot it herself. When she couldn’t, she submitted the request and removed the disposal herself, leaving it outside her door for the repair person to fix. Then, she re-installed it herself. That’s probably over-cautious, and Marie says she knew there were a lot of risks involved in this strategy. But, those risks were tolerable compared to the risk of having someone come into her home and possibly increase the risk of exposure to the virus. The Automatic Pause Before Submitting a Repair Request These anecdotes highlight the automatic pause renters experience about whether to submit or not submit a repair request. A good way for property managers to help tenants feel more at east is to send an automatic notification when a repair request is submitted. You can tell tenants how you are preventatively protecting them and the vendors and service technicians. As a property manager, you can advise tenants not to be in the home when the workers arrive. You can assure them that masks, gloves, booties, and other protective equipment is being worn, and that everything will be wiped down. The alternative is this hesitancy, which is creating the ghost service issues. Removing the mystery of how repairs are handled will help tenants feel safe about reporting them. The Property Meld feature that sends an automatic notice of procedures can help tenants feel supported. In other industries, you see a lot of talk about how they’re ensuring people are kept safe. The property management industry can do the same. If you tell tenants exactly what you’re doing during a repair to prevent exposure, you’re a step ahead of most other property management companies. Communication and Over-Communication Regarding Maintenance Communication is always important, but it’s more important now. In fact, you should be over-communicating with everyone – tenants, vendors, owners. Focus on positive communication. It’s the only thing that will allow you to manage going forward. Don’t share any kind of negativity or fear because a lot of this crisis is out of your control. It’s also very tactical to communicate. People need to feel comfortable to submit service requests, and you’re not going to lead them to comfort if you’re not communicating your process and your safeguards. As the property manager, you want to be in control. Property managers should decide what’s critical and what isn’t when it comes to repairs. You don’t want the renters deciding what needs to be done. Encourage them to make the request and allow the property manager to decide. It’s important. Property Managers and Their Vendor Relationships The Property Meld data has shown that most property management companies are maximizing the use of their in-house maintenance teams and minimizing the work they send over to outside vendors and contractors. As you probably know, vendors only get paid when they’re doing work. They may be anxious to accept new work and potentially less cautious. If you send a vendor to a property, make sure you know what they’re doing to protect their workers and your tenants. Ray has heard that rubber gloves are standard, as are masks and booties. Most technicians are trained to stay six feet from other people. Many companies are using goggles as well. There’s a strong sense that this is not business as usual. Financial Stress for Property Management Companies As a property manager, you’re now aware of the ghost issues that may be lurking and you know you’re going to have a huge backlog of maintenance requests to work through once the stay-at-home orders are lifted. What other risks are out there? The obvious risk is financial. If you run a maintenance company as part of your property management company, you’ve likely seen a huge drop in service requests. That could be half of your income as a company, and you may be wondering how long you can survive. It creates serious financial stress, but it also puts you in a competitive position going forward. It will be even harder than it is now to find good vendors. Property Meld has done some math on what the backlog will actually look like. If things get back to some version of normal, and you can increase your maintenance output by 20 percent in June, it would still take you until October to clean up all the backlog. This is going to impact resident retention and client satisfaction. It’s going to get complicated. This makes it even more critical to empower your techs and vendors to get the work done. The further away completion rates become, the more massive your backlog. This will cause serious problems for property management and maintenance companies. Maintenance is a huge part of tenant retention. Just improving the time it takes to complete a maintenance request is a big part of a company’s online reputation. The industry is in a weird spot where online reputations are on hold because reviews can be submitted but won’t be posted right away. The sense is that Google reviews will start showing up again as soon as businesses like restaurants can open, but we don’t know what will happen to the reviews that are being written now, but not posted. Set Expectations with Communication Setting expectations is the only way to protect your reputation and keep your tenants happy even while maintenance may take longer. Ray talked about a cabinet he ordered for a kitchen remodel. They apologized and told him it would take nine to 12 weeks to be delivered. Normally, this would only be a two-week delivery window. There’s a difference between knowing it may take 12 weeks and not being told about the delay. If the company had not communicated about the delay, Ray would have been waiting and angry by week three. But, he knows now what to expect, and that makes the wait tolerable. Communication is absolutely critical, and so is working through those backlogs systematically. Here is your to-do list as a property management company: Empower the tenants to submit requests. Empower the vendors and technicians to fulfill any requests they can safely. Prioritize the service issues. Communicate to everyone. During all this, don’t forget empathy. Everyone is going through something pretty traumatic right now. You’re running a business, and you can come out winning by being empathetic and transparent. This is an opportunity for smart property managers to up the game and elevate the industry. You can separate yourself from those terrible landlords who give owners and property managers a really bad name. It’s an excellent opportunity to tell the story of WHY people need a property manager like you. Shifting Towards Property Management Technology There’s going to be a massive shift towards technology when this is over. People who have been planning to upgrade their tech in a year or so are finding a new sense of urgency now. Five-year plans have become one-week plans. The technology in the property management industry will be more important than ever. That’s one of the biggest shifts Ray sees for the future. Technology is a lasting trend, not a temporary fix. It’s easy to worry about whether or not you can afford technology. There’s an investment of time and money to learn a new platform or incorporate a new system. Each business has to survive, but remember that technology exists to solve problems. That’s its purpose. We have new problems, and we need new technology to solve them. Being a problem solver is the only way you can sell your services, especially now. Landlords are wondering who they can turn to, to navigate the legalities of eviction moratoriums. That’s a new problem. As a property management company, you need to be there with a solution. If you can meet the challenge and be a solution, you can keep selling – even during a global crisis. Key Takeaways from Property Management Maintenance During and After a Crisis: Your final insights are probably the same as Ray’s: Find a way to get your renters to submit service requests. Come up with systematic ways to address and prioritize those issues. Over-communicate with everyone. If you do these three things right, you’ll be at the top of the property management and maintenance food chain. Thanks to Ray and Property Meld for talking about property management maintenance during and after a crisis today. If you have any questions about what you’ve heard, please contact us at Fourandhalf. The Property Management Show is brought to you by Fourandhalf. We help property managers strategize and implement marketing plans that bring in owner leads. Get a free marketing assessment to find out how to start getting better clients into your portfolio. The post Handling Property Management Maintenance During and After a Crisis appeared first on Fourandhalf Marketing Agency for Property Managers.