Podcasts about rently

In this episode we are joined by Prak Swamy, Product Marketing Manager at Rently, to talk about all things market research. We discuss how she got her start as a Market Research Analyst and how she made the natural pivot into to product marketing. We also chat about how PMMs can get started with market research, its importance, and the many different forms that it can take. Thank you to our sponsor Product Marketing Alliance for partnering with us for season 3 of the podcast. You can use the code newtopmm for 10% off PMA's Product Marketing Certified Core course (and all other PMA courses).And thank you to The Compete Network for producing the New to PMM pod. Check out other great Compete Network shows here.Follow Prak. Follow Maggie. 

Leasing is one of the hardest aspects of property management. What if you had a way to offload some or all of your tasks related to leasing? Today, property management growth expert Jason Hull chats with Ben from Sunroom. This service allows property managers to offload leasing to leasing professionals who care about property managers, owners, and tenants. You'll Learn… [01:26] Offloading Leasing: What is Sunroom? [09:01] ShowMojo, Tenant Turner, vs. Sunroom, oh my! [016:35] Better ways to do Property Showings [020:23] How Sunroom Vets Tenants Better [24:21] Integrating with Other PM Software  [31:30] Net Promoter Scores for Property Management and Leasing [37:12] Learning to LET GO as a PM Entrepreneur Tweetables “Some of y'all entrepreneurs are control freaks. Let's be real, and you need to let go of some of this stuff and let somebody else do it a little bit better.” “We have a lot of egos as entrepreneurs. We think our way is the best way all the time, and we need to see that maybe somebody else could do this better.” “Property managers tend to do best if they just convince owners to do pets. You're going to get more tenants, you're going to get more money.” “One of the biggest time sucks for a property management company is dealing with prospective tenants.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Ben: So what we do is we partner with property management companies and become their leasing arm. So if you're a newer property management company, you're focused on growing doors and you just mainly want to focus on that, right? One of the most important things is you got to get leasing. If you don't get leasing, you're not going to lease the doors quickly, which then your owner investors are not going to be happy about that.   [00:00:22] Jason Hull: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the # DoorGrowShow. So if you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you're interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not bebecause you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.    [00:01:19] Jason Hull: All right. Ben, welcome to the #DoorGrowShow.    [00:01:24] Ben: Thanks for having me, Jason.    [00:01:26] Jason Hull: Good to have you. So Ben, why don't we start by you giving us a little bit of your background, qualify yourself. You've done some cool stuff and I'm in the market where you did some of this cool stuff. We just realized in the green room that we're practically neighbors in Austin, market downtown, and I'm up in Round Rock. Ben, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into the, I guess technology space.   [00:01:49] Ben: Yeah, sure. Yeah, definitely. First of all, I mean we-- me and my co-founder Zach, we started working on Sunroom in right around 2017. And, the way that we had originally had the idea was, just being a renter for a decade and having a lot of interesting experiences trying to look for a place to lease. But prior to starting Sunroom, Zach and I had started a company called Favor Delivery, which is a small little delivery company here in Texas that grew to become the market leader in delivery. And we sold to H-E-B in early 2018.    [00:02:27] Jason Hull: And for people that aren't familiar with H-E-B, because I moved from California just before the pandemic because I wanted to get away from California and the taxes and it's poor political culture. But anyway, so I moved here, Austin and H-E-B was all over the place. I'm like, what a weird name. What is this place? But it's one of the, like America's top grocery chains. It's consistently rated as like one of the biggest and the best. So for those that are not in Texas, they are probably not familiar with H-E-B, but H-E-B is the, like one of the leading grocery stores, and it dominates everything.    [00:03:05] Jason Hull: Yeah.   [00:03:06] Jason Hull: I'm sure in grocery sales, it beats out Walmart, like it beats out any of the stuff that I'd heard about before and I'd never heard of H-E-B. And they offer delivery service.    [00:03:15] Ben: Yeah. H-E-B is an impressive company. And the crazy thing is they've been around for 115 years.   [00:03:21] Ben: Wow.    [00:03:21] Ben: They are the top employer in Texas. And when they acquired us, it was the only acquisition they've ever had in their history as a company. And even crazier than that, when we combined workforces at the time, we had the largest workforce of independent contractors. We grew to, now they're at a hundred thousand delivery drivers in Texas.    [00:03:44] Ben: Oh, wow.    [00:03:44] Ben: And H-E-B had a similar amount of employees. So when we combined workforces, it just became this really massive workforce supporting grocery and delivery of all foods. So yeah, it was a cool marriage that we had there.   [00:04:00] Jason Hull: Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. That's interesting history. So I've seen the Favor name when I'm doing delivery from H-E-B, so I was like what's this relationship?    [00:04:11] Ben: Yeah. So I can elaborate a little bit more too about, how we picked Sunroom. We had, like I said, I mean my co-founder Zach and I, we're actually best friends from high school and so we go way back. I think what you were saying about you wanting to support property manager entrepreneurs, I think that's a good mission because I just tip my hat off to any entrepreneurs who get any businesses working because we definitely know how hard that is. But anyways, our journey towards Sunroom was just having a lot of, I would call interesting experiences as a renter. And then we started calling-- once we were interested in the rental space-- we started making a lot of phone calls to, different rental listings. And we started asking the agents and property managers, "Hey, why are you doing this?" "why are you doing these leases?" And, we kept hearing the same thing, which was like, "oh, we don't-- I don't really want to be doing this lease. I'm just doing this lease. I'm helping this investor client buy more homes and so now I'm looped into to renting this place." And every once in a while you'd come across a property manager who really loved leasing, but a lot of the property managers we talked to too would be like, "yeah, I'm really focused on growing my door count. And these things are just something we have to do to get more properties in the door." And Zach and I saw that as an opportunity of: wow. No wonder why the experience is not that great for renters. A lot of the folks who are doing these leasing are not that excited about doing it. And so then that's how we started working on Sunroom.    [00:05:29] Jason Hull: Cool. So let's talk about then what-- you talked about the problem that you saw in the marketplace and experience wasn't super good, but a lot of owners and maybe even property managers aren't even super excited about taking care of the tenant experience. So it's not like their highest priority. Like, "I want to get more doors, I want to have more properties managed," so they're like, "what's my competitive advantage?" So when they're picking tools and software, they're usually-- they're trying to figure out: "how do I get some sort of leg up on the competition," so to speak, or "how can this lower my operational cost?" and these kind of things. One of the biggest time sucks for a property management company is dealing with prospective tenants.    [00:06:13] Jason Hull: Yeah.    [00:06:14] Jason Hull: These are not people that are paying them and they call them the most, and--   [00:06:17] Jason Hull: yeah.   [00:06:18] Jason Hull: --This is like the "garbage of phone calls," I've heard one of my guests call it.   [00:06:21] Jason Hull: Yeah.    [00:06:22] Jason Hull: So tell me about what does Sunroom do and how does it do it, and what's the benefit.    [00:06:27] Ben: Yeah, sure. So what we do is we partner with property management companies and become their leasing arm. So if you're a newer property management company, you're focused on growing doors and you just mainly want to focus on that, right? One of the most important things is you got to get leasing. If you don't get leasing, you're not going to lease the doors quickly, which then your owner investors are not going to be happy about that. And also I would argue equally as important is that renter does have a great experience because, that is really the beginning of your relationship with them, and what we've noticed of working with a lot of different property managers is that, when the renter goes into the home and they're really happy with their experience that led up to that point, they're a lot more-- how do I put this? They're a lot more quiet when they get into the home, right? They're just happy overall, which is going to reduce your maintenance requests and honestly going to make it more likely that they renew the next year, right? because that is just really first, and I would just say first impressions are, everything in life a lot of times.    [00:07:27] Ben: And so I think, leasing really is that first impression for that property manager. To come back around to what we do, yeah, we partner with the property management companies and make it so that they don't even need to have any leasing agents on staff. And we can really do the entire process of getting the home leased. But at the same time, we give the property manager the power over key decisions, right? Things like actually approving the applications, that's still going to be up to the property manager to make sure they choose the right applicant. And obviously if they want to use their lease that they prefer, there's all different ways that we allow them to customize what they want their leasing experience to be like. But at the end of the day, we're really doing the legwork for them and we have a combination of people and tech to do that.    [00:08:12] Ben: Got it. So    [00:08:14] Jason Hull: this combination of people and tech... are you able to do this in every market or is this like a local thing that needs to be done    [00:08:21] Ben: locally?    [00:08:23] Ben: Yeah, great question.   [00:08:24] Ben: So we started out just doing this in Austin and have partnered with several different property managers here. In town. But now we're expanding across the us. And I believe we're up to seven different markets at the moment. But pretty rapidly expanding to cover more markets.   [00:08:41] Ben: Got it. What's    [00:08:42] Jason Hull: the biggest limitation in expansion for those that you don't cover yet?    [00:08:46] Ben: We call ourselves a leasing only brokerage, so we're actually-- we're a real estate brokerage in each of these states. And so that's a blocker to getting set up in a lot of these places is actually establishing our brokerage in each one of these states.   [00:08:59] Ben: Got it.    [00:09:00] Jason Hull: Okay. Cool. I think a lot of property managers, they're aware of certain pools like ShowMojo and Tenant Turner and Rently and Knock Rentals and Turbo Tenant, so how does Sunroom differentiate from all these tools and these systems are already out there?   [00:09:20] Ben: Yeah, so some of those systems and tools you mentioned, I do think those-- they do improve the renter experience and at the same time. They do make it so that it's a little less work for the property manager to lease those properties. But at the end of the day, if you're a property management owner you're still going to need a leasing agent on your team. Or you're going to have to overextend the property manager that you have in order to use those, utilize those tools. Sunroom just takes it the next step where we have similar tools and systems. Obviously I'm biased, but I would argue they're better than those, but--   [00:09:55] Ben: You should argue that.    [00:09:57] Ben: We take it a step further. You don't even really need to have a leasing agent on staff in order to really execute everything you need to do for leasing. Whereas all these other tools or systems they're definitely completely reliant on still having somebody there behind the scenes catching the errors or all all the holes in those systems. And, if anybody has tried to. Integrate those different systems and tools, what they'll find is that they were built in a way that they had a focused goal. And there's a lot of different holes in that system. And I'm sure as operators see that, I think that's a big difference with what we're building, is that what we build, we actually use to operate. And so we're able to see all the different gaps and holes that those systems leave. And really between our systems and our team, we're able to fill in the gaps that those systems leave out.   [00:10:46] Jason Hull: All right. So I think people listening by now are like, "the wheels are turning a little bit," and they're like, "okay, how's this actually play out?" So could you walk us through step by step what-- how this process works with the property manager and the tenant from beginning to    [00:11:01] Ben: finish? Yeah, sure. So it usually starts within one of the property managers, property management softwares, right?   [00:11:09] Ben: We see commonly property managers are using App Folio or Buildium, so let's use App Folio for example. You have a property manager on your team that you have a home where the renter didn't renew. And it's a property that you're going to need to get leased. At that moment, if you were partnered with us, you would open up the Sunroom portal. We would already essentially have that home synced within our system. Because we're able to really pull data from App Folio and the Buildiums of the world. From there, they just really submit the property to us and say, "Hey, this home's coming up for lease." we would normally already have all of their settings. As a part of our onboarding, we're going to get them all set up in our system. So things like knowing what their tenant criteria is. Things like knowing when is this home actually available? When would you like us to touch the property? And then as soon as they submit the property to us, we actually will go out and touch the property. So we have boots on the ground. Those boots on the ground are going to get professional photography. They're going to set up a self showing lock system if that's what the property manager would like to. And then we're going to actually install a yard sign as well. And, we take pictures to really document everything that we do there. And then, we'll take it a step further, we'll get the marketing description written and then we'll get it listed online, and we do that entire process in an average about 48 hours.    [00:12:28] Ben: Nice.    [00:12:29] Jason Hull: Awesome. Yeah, that's very cool. So you actually have people come out-- swarm of people, and they get all this stuff done, right? In the description, getting it listed, doing all this stuff. Okay.    [00:12:39] Jason Hull: Yeah,    [00:12:40] Ben: and that's where our background in Favor obviously comes into play is that, I think if you think about Favor, there's a great consumer experience where the customer can order food, but then there's all these boots on the ground that actually go get the food and make sure that all happens in a timely manner. Leasing is similar in the sense that you need to have a great consumer experience for the renter to be able to see what they're shopping for and do the things they they need to do to see if they want to, lease that property. But then you're going to need boots on the ground to actually, handle the listing side of things.   [00:13:09] Ben: Very cool.    [00:13:10] Jason Hull: So is this totally Uber-like in that you're just pulling anybody in, or I'm sure you have criteria for the photographers and for all these different people that you're bringing in to do these    [00:13:22] Ben: little pieces.    [00:13:23] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. We don't just hire any random person. I'd say it's definitely not Uber-like in that I think, we use-- it's technology enabled so that we can do those things quickly and can measure how fast we do them, right? I think just the fact that we know we get those properties set up in an average of 48 hours, I think is...    [00:13:42] Ben: Yeah.   [00:13:42] Ben: ...more than your average property manager would know, but we know that the tasks we're doing are tech enabled, but no we care a lot about those people that we choose and we try to find folks that have a lot of experience with real estate photography and then we teach them the other aspects of what we're trying to get done at that property.   [00:14:00] Jason Hull: Awesome. Yeah. Very cool. When a property is going to become vacant, are they able to leverage a system or does it have to be totally empty and rent ready and everything    [00:14:11] Ben: else?    [00:14:12] Ben: No. So yeah, no, they're able to use the system. It sounds like you're asking about pre-leasing.    [00:14:19] Ben: Yeah.   [00:14:20] Ben: Okay. Yes, pre-leasing can be really important I think in some markets. Yeah, that's definitely something we support. And let's say it's tenant occupied and we need to act and do an escorted showing, we have different agents on the ground that we partner with that are some of the most active in the area touring homes and renters. And so we'll tap into that network to do some.   [00:14:40] Jason Hull: Got it. Okay. Now what if they want get the property listed, they want to get photos, but there's a bunch of ugly furniture in there and ugly stuff. Do you guys let maybe-- BoxBrownie I've had on the show before-- digital editors and they're like, removing all this    [00:14:55] Ben: stuff?   [00:14:55] Ben: Yeah.    [00:14:56] Ben: Take the photos.   [00:14:56] Ben: Yeah, we do have digital editing in that regard, but depending on the degree of how much that home is messed up. That's also something that we do is that if we go out to a home and we think it's not show ready we'll document that and share it back with the property manager. And I think we've seen property managers really love that aspect of what we do because oftentimes they have a tough time holding the make ready folks accountable or let's say they're doing a renovation on the property. In particular, I can't tell you how many times that a property manager said, "Oh yeah, this was supposed to be done. And then when we went out there we were able to collect evidence that it wasn't right. That's also part of our system is that if the home is not actually ready to be marketed, and then, we're going to gather that information, share it back with the property manager, and then essentially remind them until that's resolved and as soon as it's resolved, then we can make the listing active. But it's a pretty valuable system and checks and balances that we have in place there.    [00:15:55] Jason Hull: Got it. So you'll communicate with them. Then the property manager can send out maintenance, get things taken care of, dealt with, and then report back to you and you're checking in with them, "Hey, is this ready yet? Is this ready yet?" And then they're like, "we got it ready." And then...    [00:16:08] Jason Hull: exactly.    [00:16:08] Jason Hull: Proceed.    [00:16:10] Jason Hull: Exactly.    [00:16:10] Jason Hull: So you've sent up the people, you've got the photos, you got like maybe a lockbox on, you got the yard sign, you've got the description. It's posted online. It's probably pushed out to multiple channels.   [00:16:19] Jason Hull: That's right.    [00:16:20] Jason Hull: Then next come the showings, right? And scheduling and all this. So how does that work and are you doing one-off showings? Are you doing open house model? What would it be found to be the most efficient? What comes next?    [00:16:35] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. So what we do is we usually set these properties up with a self showing system, and then renters are able to go tour the properties seven days a week from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM and, we also have, a support team available those same hours, so 84 hours, we're ready to quickly text back any renters or answer any phone calls if, folks are having a tough time actually, accessing the home for any particular reason. Our system is really good. I'd say renters have a really good experience touring homes. Like any system, we're dealing with real world stuff. Sometimes maybe it could be a really humid day and maybe the maybe the door frame swells a bit or something, right? So maybe the door gets a little stuck. So the renter needs a little help to understand how to get in. Those are all things that I think us, having support team there available to talk to them and actually pick up the phone. I think is a really important thing. So that's just one of the many ways that we support tours. But I'd say one of the most important pieces of tours is actually collecting that tour feedback and sharing it with the owner after the fact. And so we have a really great system in place for that as well where a lot of renters will leave feedback just right within the place that they tour. And then we're actually able to take that feedback and then give it to display it on a webpage where then the property manager is able to share that webpage directly with their owner so they can actually watch the tours that are coming in and the tour feedback in real time. And we white label that for them. So you can imagine as a property manager, you just share this white label page with your logo and the owner's able to get a bird's eye view of how their home is performing on the market.    [00:18:21] Ben: Got it.    [00:18:22] Jason Hull: So could this be a scenario that the owner says, "I don't need to do this," and like the property manager says, "you need to do this. Like it'll get you more rent. People will have an issue with this place if you don't fix this or change this," and the owner's like, "no." And then they say, "look at the page, here's the white label page. It's got our brand, our logo, XYZ property management, and it says like, consistently feedback. Like the floor is too gross, or whatever."   [00:18:47] Ben: Yeah, "I would rent this home, but does it come with a fridge?" Just one way I've seen owners trying to cut some costs is like not putting refrigerators in the home. And then they see, three out of the five renters that tour the home mentioned "Hey, there's no fridge."    [00:19:00] Ben: "have to buy a fridge and I'll go somewhere else."   [00:19:03] Ben: Yeah, exactly. And that page really helps the property manager make their case to the owner and also show to them like, "Hey, we really are showing this property and this really is what the renters are saying.   [00:19:14] Ben: Cool.    [00:19:15] Jason Hull: Yeah, that's really cool. I like the feedback loops. So then, what's the next steps? You're doing showings, you're doing tours. Then I guess people are being pushed to apply when they're doing these tours by the system?    [00:19:27] Ben: Yeah, so we have a system, both to pre-qualify renters and to actually have them apply. As soon as they apply we're able to display those applications to the property manager. And we use the same page that we use to display tour feedback and also tracking the tours and the leads and everything. We use that same page then to actually show the applications to the property managers and to their owners. Because I know every property manager seems to have a different deal with each owner, right? Some of 'em, they want to run the application past their owner beforehand, or sometimes they're just the ones reviewing it. But either way, we display that information there so that both the property manager and the owner, are able to review the application before they decide to approve or not.   [00:20:14] Ben: Got it. So    [00:20:14] Jason Hull: they can either show this white label page that has the list of all the applicants or could they just say, "here's the one we recommend," and show that person's information?   [00:20:22] Jason Hull: Yeah.    [00:20:23] Ben: Yeah. It's usually the latter. Because it's trying to make it simpler. Yeah. It's usually just showing the one that they recommend. And at that point, we would've already done all of the vetting for that application. Even the manual steps of doing a verification of rental history, for example or a verification of employment. And we've actually seen just our application processing service. We've seen that to be so popular that we actually broke that out as something that a property manager could partner with us just on application processing, and that's also cool because we have a lot of tech to catch fraudulent renters. I'm sure you've probably heard about how fraud is on the rise especially with us entering recession. And I think it's just more likely that renters are going to try to fake pay stubs. Even some go as far as trying to fake their identity in different ways to try to get approved for a home that really are beyond their means. And so we've really, we've invested a lot into our application processing system. Doing things like being able to get their pay stubs directly from their payroll provider instead of having a way for them to upload their pay stubs, which could be photoshopped or something like that.    [00:21:35] Ben: Yeah.    [00:21:35] Ben: And then let's say a renter doesn't even have a job, or let's say a renter's, a self-employed or something, we have a way of actually pulling bank statements directly from their bank, instead of just receiving those bank statements and getting it uploaded. All that tech helps to really reduce the amount of fraud. And as for property managers as well, it's less work to actually investigate all those documents.   [00:21:59] Jason Hull: That's just technology and stuff a property manager can't do directly. They don't have the ability to pull directly from the bank their pay stubs, and it's not going to say, "here, let me give you my login to my bank account," and to pull directly from the employer. They don't usually have that ability really effectively either. There needs to be technology involved.   [00:22:18] Ben: Yeah.    [00:22:19] Ben: So we--   [00:22:20] Ben: --so what    [00:22:20] Jason Hull: about--    [00:22:20] Ben: oh, go ahead.    [00:22:20] Ben: I was just going to say, yeah, we recognize that you know most of what we've been talking about here is called our full service leasing, right? Where we actually become the leasing arm. But let's say, you've got leasing agents on your team and you think they're rock stars. You're happy with what's going on with your leasing. We could plug in and just do the application processing. We call that service, we call that Sunscreen, is what we call it. The idea is the quirky tagline that I came up with is, "Don't get burned by bad renters."   [00:22:47] Jason Hull: I like it. Little bit of sunscreen.    [00:22:51] Ben: Yeah, exactly.   [00:22:52] Ben: Okay.    [00:22:53] Jason Hull: So one of the questions I think some people will be asking is, what about pets? It's like a whole nother beast. Outside, inside pets and running pets and having pets, all this kind of stuff. Property managers tend to do best if they just convince owners to do pets. You're going to get more tenants, you're going to get more money. How do you deal with the pet side of    [00:23:11] Ben: things?    [00:23:12] Ben: Yeah, so at this point I'm sure most property managers have heard of pet screening.com. I think they're a great company. And so we actually integrate their data into our system. So if you're already signed up for pet screening.com. You can provide the pet screening.com login, and then we're able to pull that information into the application packet. So it's something that the owner and the property manager can consider as a part of the overall application. And, obviously pet screening.com does a really good job verifying things like our emotional support animal documentation. Is that legit? There's fraud around ESA documents. And that's just one of the pieces that they do. But yeah, that's something that we recommend whenever anyone is accepting pets.   [00:23:57] Ben: Very    [00:23:58] Jason Hull: cool. I like pet screening.com that I've had them on the show. I had another company that may be interesting to integrate with too on the show called our pet policy.com and they take things a step further on the protection side of things after the screening. So they go step beyond. So that might be interesting for you to take a look at integrating with as well.    [00:24:20] Jason Hull: Yeah.   [00:24:20] Jason Hull: Ourpetpolicy.com, they seem like a good group of people over there as well. So real quick, going back, you had mentioned AppFolio, Buildium, do you integrate with Rent Manager? Do you integrate with I don't know, there's some other things and some of these tools    [00:24:35] that    [00:24:35] Ben: people are using?   [00:24:37] Ben: Yeah. Great question. So it's pretty easy for us to get key information plugged into these softwares. And the reason is when someone partners with us, if you think about it, we really need to touch that property management software right when the home is when the home's coming up for lease, right? It needs to be listed. And then once the home gets leased, that's when that information needs to get back in the property management software again. So usually the way that our structure is, it doesn't really matter too much, which property management software you're. The system would be the same, where you would essentially create a user for us.   [00:25:15] Ben: So then once the home is getting leased, we know who's signing the lease. We're going to get their information set up within whatever property management software you use and make sure that it's set up for ongoing rent payments and things like that. It essentially, if you're using a property management software, but then you're going to use someone for leasing. But then once the home gets leased, it's going to be as if you had leased it through those other systems. And it's seamless in that way.    [00:25:39] Ben: Yeah. Very cool. So    [00:25:40] Jason Hull: you're PM    [00:25:41] Ben: software agnostic.    [00:25:42] Ben: Exactly. Yes. That's a much more succinct way of saying it. Thanks.   [00:25:47] Jason Hull: So that just means I've been doing this probably a long time. All right. So you've, you mentioned your solution. You've got the sunscreen that can be, pulled out just separately or if they're using the full leasing service. You've done the pre-qualification, you've got the applicant they can send over the white label thing to the owner. If the owner's like, "I really need to see what info you got." And you've tested out their pay stubs and their bank--   [00:26:11] Jason Hull: right    [00:26:12] Jason Hull: --stuff, and you've maybe connected the pet screening.com. What happens next? You've got    [00:26:17] Ben: a good applic--    [00:26:18] Ben: Yes. Yeah, so the property manager, the owner accepts the application. And at that point, we're going to reach out to the renter, say, "congrats, you've been accepted. Please now pay the security deposit." And as soon as they pay security deposit, then the owner or the property manager is able to connect their bank account, and that money will just automatically get deposited in whatever account that you specify. And then from a lease perspective, from really from the beginning of the process, we would've asked that you provide the preferred lease that you would like for us to use. We're going to get that lease drafted up and we're going to send it over to both the renter and the property manager. For some property managers, they like to review one last time before it gets sent to the renter. So we can fulfill that ask. And then the lease is going to get signed. And as soon as the lease gets signed, we will then dispatch our people back out to the property, do one final walkthrough, and also remove our yard sign and remove any other things that we had, any lock boxes or things like that we got setup. But we do one thing where we will leave a combo lockbox out at the property so that we can facilitate the renter actually moving in. So that's really the final and last step for our system, is facilitating to the renter actually getting the keys so that they have a smooth move in. And then the last step after all of that is we're going to survey the renter and make sure they had a great experience through the whole the whole leasing process.   [00:27:51] Jason Hull: And what's-- before we move on, because I'm curious like what difference you're noticing with these surveys, but let's say they don't accept somebody. What's the process? What happens to the rejects, so to speak? The tenants that didn't pass because a lot of times they're following up and bugging the property manager, "Hey, did you accept me? What's going on?" This sort of thing. What do you do?    [00:28:11] Ben: Yeah. So first of all, we shield the property manager from having to deal with all of that stuff. And I think for the position we're in, I think the natural thing is I think we would do what any other good property manager would do. We'd see if there's any other listings within that property manager that the renter would qualify for. First and foremost, we're going to recommend that of " There are these other listings for the same property manager" or, " do you like that?" And if the renter is not interested in any of those homes, then I think we would look broader to other listings that that are amongst our partners and say, "Hey, renter, maybe it would be better if you lease this property."   [00:28:48] Jason Hull: Yeah. That helps get the other properties filled. That's great.    [00:28:53] Ben: Yeah.    [00:28:53] Ben: Okay.    [00:28:53] Ben: And the renter's really happy too, because they don't have to pay an application fee again, so they're able to reuse their application.    [00:29:00] Jason Hull: Nice. Now what if you have two property managers in the same market and you get an applicant for one, are they completely segregated from being able to apply it to the other, or if they're in the Sunroom system,    [00:29:13] Ben: they can...   [00:29:14] Ben: Great question. Yeah. So we don't want to restrict where renters can apply, right? because that just doesn't make sense. But we have come across the scenario, it's been rare where renters have applied to multiple properties. And so what's really cool about our system is that we have a little disclaimer for the property manager where they can see, "hey, this renter's actually applied for multiple properties," and that way it's clear to them of " Hey, look, this renter is serious about your property, they are, they're hedging their bets," which, that's a common scenario especially in a hot market is if property managers are collecting multiple applicants on a single property, you can bet that the renters-- they know that. And so they're also applying to multiple properties. So I think we do our best to try to mitigate those scenarios. And I think one of the best ways to mitigate those scenarios is really just processing applications quickly and then, and working to get the renter and answer quickly around if they're accepted or denied. And, in most cases, I think renters are willing to tell you which one's their first choice. And so if you're able to process the application really quickly and drive it to decision, it doesn't happen too often where the owner comes back and wants to accept the renter and they've already decided to go somewhere else. It does occasionally, we try to mitigate that.    [00:30:28] Ben: Got it.    [00:30:28] Jason Hull: Okay, cool. So going back to the other path, I'm actually drawing this all out. I've got like a flow    [00:30:34] Ben: chart going on here.    [00:30:36] Ben: Sounds good. Keep    [00:30:37] Jason Hull: track.    [00:30:38] Jason Hull: So you surveyed the renter at the end, like you've got somebody in the property.    [00:30:43] Jason Hull: Yeah.   [00:30:43] Jason Hull: They've got a lockbox there. I think that's very cool. They can just go and "Can I move in on this day?" "Yep, here's the lockbox. You've got a code or however it works." And they can go get in.    [00:30:52] Jason Hull: Yeah.   [00:30:52] Jason Hull: And you don't have to show up. They can be there with their new U-Haul when they need to be there. That's super annoying, I think for property managers sometimes. And then afterwards you survey the renter. So I'm curious about the results of this. What's been the shift that people have noticed in the experience? This is why you started this in the beginning. You weren't having a great experience. Some people probably were like, "Drive to our office and you might get a key." Some people are like, "we can meet you maybe this day." It was like a mess. So what sort of feedback are you seeing on these surveys and what sort of shift are property management companies that are working with you noticing with your process versus trying to do this on their    [00:31:30] Ben: own?   [00:31:30] Ben: Yeah, great question. We collect what I would I consider a very important metric and I'm curious if it's come up before in this podcast. It's something called a net promoter score. Yeah. Have you discussed that before? I'm happy to--   [00:31:44] Ben: we    [00:31:44] Jason Hull: haven't really focused on that. But yeah, I think a lot of people are familiar. So net promoter score is when it says "on a scale of maybe zero to 10 or one to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company?" So a lot of people see this, the quick survey on software, different things like this.    [00:32:00] Ben: Yeah, that's right. And so when the net promoter score rank actually comes out, the scale is actually a minus a hundred to a plus 100. You could Google about how that works, but you're right. As a renter, what we would be asking them is, "how likely are you to recommend leasing a property to a friend through Sunroom or through x property management company?" And what we found is we just have a really good net promoter score. So if you could google this around, but the average net promoter score amongst property managers is a seven. And that's not on the zero to 10 scale. That's on the minus a hundred to the plus 100 scale, and. For the renters who lease a property through us, we have a 52 net promoter score.    [00:32:42] Ben: Nice.    [00:32:43] Ben: Yeah. So it's like what I said at the very beginning these renters are just a lot happier when they get in the home. For the property managers, they're seeing less really noisy renters when they first move in. I think that's a common thing that property managers are used to is that when a renter first moves in, that can be when they're talking the most or they're the noisiest. And so I think just anecdotally, property managers have said that, "Hey, these renters are just happier. They're just not causing as much commotion when they first move. And some of that has to do with our process too, right? Allowing renters to even self tour homes, it's a no pressure thing where they're able to really understand what they're buying before they move in. So I believe that helps as well.    [00:33:24] Jason Hull: This is the nerd in me coming out. So there's this really book called _Innovating Analytics_. And they put out this idea, basically the idea of the next generation of net promoter. They have used a lot of data to showcase and it's a little dry, but there's a lot of data to showcase the fundamental flaws of net promoter score, which is, has advantages over doing nothing, right? But then they talk about a new sort of score, which is the word of mouth index. And so we've incorporated that a bit into our business. It basically asks a second question, "how likely are you to discourage others from utilizing that?" Because what they found, just because somebody is not a true promoter, as they categorize them on the high end, like they choose like maybe a seven, eight, or nine or something, does not mean they're actually going to go hurt your business. And so a lot of big companies, they found were spending a lot of money to try and mitigate the people and pay attention to people and help the people they thought were detractors or people that would hurt their business when most of them really wouldn't. Just because it was a two or a three. They found that does not necessarily mean they're actually going to go actively try and destroy your business or hurt you. They just aren't going to tell people about it, because some people just don't want to talk about other businesses. Right? . So then asking a secondary question, how likely are you to tell others not to use this business or whatever. Then it gives you the true people to focus on mitigating or solving challenges for. Really interesting idea, but then they talk about the challenge of mainlining, where if they answer one question one way, first question, they'll answer it the same way, but it's backwards. Because they're just in the mode of answering questions like a zombie and they'll do it the wrong way or read it the wrong way. We've even seen this, so you have to put some questions in between and so it just complicates. But it's a really interesting book. You and I can geek out sometime and show you how I built this out so that it would work effectively, but it helps us identify which people are actually detractors that we need to take care of and focus on, and which people, they never rate anything positively and they're just, but they're quiet, which is fine.    [00:35:25] Jason Hull: Oh that's    [00:35:25] Ben: fascinating. I'll have to check that out.   [00:35:28] Jason Hull: I know, it's pretty nerdy. So_ Innovating Analytics_ is by Larry Freed F R E E D which is an interesting book. Cool. We've asked a lot of questions. You've explained the process. I think we've covered how it works unless we missed anything. But what else do people, property managers coming to you, what other concerns or things could we address here on the podcast before we wrap that they might have? Or what are the big FAQ questions that they ask before they're willing to explore giving up the leasing arm their business?    [00:36:00] Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of the questions just evolve around how they can still control the process. And so we've invested an incredible amount into giving them those controls, right? Like I think the key is, the way we look at it is look like we're going to be the best at doing this leasing legwork. It's all we do. And we've built technology to really hold ourselves accountable to really high standards. But at the end of the day, like we still want you to have control over who's the right tenant for this property? Or, "how would you like the that application process to go?" For example. And I think we've worked hard to streamline the areas and that, we just realized, hey, this is the best way to do this. But also we recognize that hey, these property managers, they have pride to process for a reason, right, for their particular market that might be the right thing to do. And so we've invested a lot in creating different settings and things like that, that can make it so that they get to use it the way they would like.    [00:37:03] Ben: Cool. So it's    [00:37:04] Jason Hull: really a lot of the big concerns are just about the flexibility. "Do I have to go all in and use everything that you offer?"   [00:37:10] Jason Hull: Right.   [00:37:11] Jason Hull: "Or can I do, some of this and maybe I'll give up pieces later--" because some of y'all entrepreneurs are control freaks. Let's be real.    [00:37:18] Jason Hull: Yes.    [00:37:18] Jason Hull: And you need to let go of some of this stuff and let somebody else do it a little bit better. We have a lot of egos, entrepreneurs. We think our way is the best way all the time and we need to see that maybe somebody else could do this    [00:37:31] Ben: better.    [00:37:31] Ben: But we've also, from    [00:37:32] Jason Hull: experience--   [00:37:33] Jason Hull: I'm guessing you're going to say that Sunroom probably does it better than what most property managers are doing.    [00:37:39] Ben: Better NPS scores?    [00:37:41] Ben: Yeah. I would just say that, some of the property managers that we've seen are the most excited to partner with us are definitely probably the ones listening to your podcast or it's the ones that want to grow. And, we have some great examples of that, right? There's one property manager that we started working with in Austin a couple years ago, and they started with 300 doors. And now I believe they're up to 800 doors. And so by them being able to just, focus on other things, they were able to grow pretty quickly. And because we recognize this and we're starting to set up in these new markets, we actually just this week launched a new program specifically for trying to find these property management companies that are really focused on growth. And so we actually launched this new growth program. That we just put on our website where property managers can apply for the program. And essentially this program if we accept them will actually give them-- and they partner with us-- we'll give them $10,000 to grow their business. And they can, they could use that money for-- or I'd say up to 10,000-- they can use that money for helping them grow. And really the only terms of it is that you're willing to partner with us on leasing to do that. And so we have different ideas of really how to use that money to grow. I know a lot of entrepreneurs already have those ideas and so that's why we yeah, we set up this new program.   [00:39:02] Jason Hull: Awesome. We should chat because we're really good at growing property management companies and yeah, I think there would be a good-- there. We'll chat later. We've also negotiated with most of the top vendors where we've got a hit list, but a lot of the top vendors we're negotiating best in class discounts just for our mastermind members.   [00:39:21] Ben: There you go.    [00:39:21] Jason Hull: So maybe that's something you and I can do with the Sunroom as well. So    [00:39:25] Jason Hull: Yeah .   [00:39:26] Jason Hull: If you're open, that's--   [00:39:27] Jason Hull: yeah. Cool.    [00:39:28] Jason Hull: We've got some big players on board already for some of these things, but I think it'd be really cool to see this is something new and I think it's innovative and it seems really exciting. So we'll we'll chat afterwards, cool. Is there anything else you want people to know before we go and if The last thing maybe is how do they find you? And how do they get in touch and how do they start working with Sunroom?    [00:39:49] Ben: Yeah. Just go to our website, Sunroomleasing.com. Fill out a little form. Be happy to have, someone from our sales team reach out and have a conversation and kind of explain more of these details about what we do. I'm an engineer at heart, so I think for some people, maybe I went into too much detail. But at the same time, knowing I've talked to a lot of property managers they love the details. If you want even more details yeah, go to our website, sunroomleasing.com. Reach out to us and someone from our sales team would love to dig into those details with you.    [00:40:18] Jason Hull: Perfect. I think the last big question everybody would have is be, is going to be what does it cost? Is this affordable? Can we do this? That sort of question. So--   [00:40:29] Jason Hull: yeah.   [00:40:29] Jason Hull: Anything to say about that?    [00:40:31] Ben: Yeah, so we're going to charge, similar to what I would say like other leasing agents would. So we're going to charge like a percentage of first month's rent. That percentage of first month's rent that we charge. It's going to be different depending on the market and depending on what kind of volume that you have. Normally, the way we are setting this up is that we usually make it so that the property manager can still make good money on leasing while still utilizing us for all of it. Property managers can charge a percentage of first month's rent to their owners. That could be different by market. We're usually going to charge, call it 10- 20% less than that so that they're able to still make money on the leasing, but still know that they have a best in class service for that happening. And so that's just for full service. For Sunscreen, that's actually free for property managers to use. And we just charge the renter an application fee. And so that's really the easiest way. If we said a lot of stuff today, people are like, "wow that's a little scary to adopt that big of a, have a company owning leasing." a great way to start to just build a relationship with us and start seeing what we could do would be to start utilizing our application processing system, which, really, it's going to be a really a low risk thing. Even if want to test out having us do one application on one listing or something, we'd be happy to do that.   [00:41:48] Ben: That's the    [00:41:49] Jason Hull: gateway drug. A little bit of Sunscreen, and then you're going to be like, "I want a whole room. I want the Sunroom now."   [00:41:54] Jason Hull: There you go. There you go.    [00:41:55] Jason Hull: "I don't want to deal with this anymore. I'm tired of putting the Sunscreen on. Yeah. Okay.    [00:41:59] Jason Hull: There you go.    [00:42:00] Jason Hull: Cool.    [00:42:01] Jason Hull: Yeah.    [00:42:01] Jason Hull: All right. Ben, it's been great having you on the show. Check out Sunroomleasing.com and then if you come up with some major developments or big shifts or changes, we'd love to have you back on the show. So thanks for being    [00:42:12] Ben: here.    [00:42:13] Ben: Thanks so much, Jason. And yeah, we'll have to meet up in Austin sometime.    [00:42:16] Ben: All right.    [00:42:18] Jason Hull: All right. Cool. Thanks, Ben.    [00:42:20] Jason Hull: Alright. Everybody, if you've been listening to this, we appreciate you listening to our podcast. We would really appreciate it if you left us a review in exchange. If you got value from this, that would mean a lot to us at DoorGrow and my team. We have been innovating and creating a lot of new stuff at DoorGrow. We've got some really cool stuff coming out. So if you have not been familiar with DoorGrow for a while, we've got some really cool things coming down that we are working on. You should get connected to do a sales call. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Reach out to us. You can reach out to us on any social media. And we would love to connect with you and share with you. We just released the DoorGrow Code, which is the first roadmap that really showcases how to go from zero to a thousand doors in as short of time period as possible. It shows you which things you need to do at which stage, at which door levels, and what questions you have, what major problems you have at each stage, and what you need to do in order to do things in the right order to get to the next level.   [00:43:22] Jason Hull: So if you've been at a similar door count for the last year or maybe two years or three years, maybe even kind feeling stuck or maybe even backsliding a little bit because of property selling off or whatever. We have clients that are adding a lot of doors. Andrew Rocha just chimed in on one of our mastermind calls. He's one of our clients. He added like 50 doors in the last month. We've got clients. One of our clients added 310 doors in a year. We've got another client that added a hundred in gosh, they've doubled their doors. Like we've got clients that are growing really rapidly and they're not spending any money on advertising. I want you to be clear, like our methods are not focused on SEO, pay per click, content marketing, pay-per-lead lead services, social media marketing. Our methods are what really work in the marketplace, and most of them are zero cost, like they cost nothing. It just costs time and effort, and it actually takes less time and less effort than doing cold lead marketing like seo, pay per click, content marketing, social media marketing, or pay per lead services that exist in the property management space. So I highly recommend you check this out if you're wanting to grow. And we are now helping really significantly. We've built out the best systems and processes and we've been stacking the best coaches in the industry. If you've heard of certain coaches in the industry, we might have them on as experts in our program. We'll be announcing more of that later, but we've got some of the best in the industry that we've brought on as coaches. So it's not the Jason Show. I've got an amazing team of people coaching and we have systems for operations. We have systems for process. We have systems for sales, and our clients are crushing it. Nobody in the marketplace is doing all that DoorGrow's doing or can compete with us. And so if you think you know DoorGrow and you've looked at us or judged us in the past, it might be time to take a new look because your competitors might be working with us or they might work with us, and you're going to wish that it had been you.   [00:45:33] Jason Hull: So until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.    [00:45:37] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!    [00:46:05] Jason Hull: At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Multifamily Leadership is an Events, News, and Media Platform.It's where Multifamily Innovation, Technology, Investments, and Leaders converge.As part of our Multifamily Women® Summit, we share time with innovative brands as part of our “Meet the Sponsors” series that showcases those brands that are supporting the platform to advance not only technology and innovation, but the women who are making all of that possible.If you haven't registered for the Multifamily Women® Summit yet, now is the time. Go here to grab your ticket.Rently is a smart home and self-guided touring hardware and software provider.Rently's all-in-one solution allows real estate operators to provide touring and living experiences for their current and future residents while optimizing their leasing efficiency and expanding revenue opportunities.In this episode, we covered:The journey Rently has been on since 2011 and how they survived the pandemic with their innovative solutionsWhy Karissa is so excited to be working with Rently and how they're helping the multifamily industry every dayThe challenges and obstacles Rently is helping solve with multifamily residents, owners, operators, and investorsProduct specifics and the multifamily markets and asset classes Rently is servingWhy Karissa is excited to attend the Multifamily Women® SummitWant your company featured on the Multifamily Women® Podcast? Click here to sponsor.Connect with Karissa Reardon on LinkedInVice President, Strategic Sales at Rently

Property management growth expert, Jason Hull, has coached and helped hundreds of property management entrepreneurs change their businesses and lives. After all this time observing the industry, he offers an outside perspective on the kinds of software every PM entrepreneur needs.  In this episode, Jason Hull describes the ultimate stack of software for property management entrepreneurs, from the back office and maintenance to process documentation and hiring. You'll Learn… [03:00] The Best Back Office PM Software [05:26] Managing Maintenence Requests  [08:11] Doing Showings with Tenant Turner, ShowMojo, and Rently [10:00] Inspection Software and Sales CRMs [12:08] What you Need for Processes, Task Management, and Hiring [18:26] Why to Use the Profit First System Tweetables “I don't use property management software because I don't actually manage rental properties, right? But I have talked to thousands of property managers, and so I am kind of like the magic fly on the wall.” “Leads are really only good for about the first five minutes.” “I want to be able to pick the best tools because software's way cheaper than people.” “Shift away from one-off showings to open houses. This is going to be significant in collapsing time there. It creates a sense of false scarcity.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] I want to be able to pick the best tools because software's way cheaper than people, so even some of the most expensive software might only cost you maybe a thousand or 2000 bucks a month, right, if it were really expensive. People usually cost you more than a thousand or 2000 bucks a month. [00:00:14] Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships and residual income. [00:00:51] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show.  [00:01:14] So we're going to talk about the ultimate property management software stack. I get this question all the time, property management software, "what's the ultimate stack?" Or "what software should I use?" Or "I've heard about this," or "we're using this, is this the best?" And I don't use property management software, right? I don't use property management software because I don't actually manage rental properties, right? But I have talked to thousands of property managers, and so I am kind of like the magic fly on the wall that's gotten more info and I don't think there's any other coach, anybody else out there that has the insight or the views or knowledge that I have. And so let me share with you just based on the feedback that I've gotten from property management business owners, my nerdiness related to software (I'm kind of nerdy.) This is what if I were starting property management company, this is the stack that I would use. And I don't think I have relationships with any of these, so they're not paying me to say this. One of the vendors might give me some sort of incentive or something if I send them business, but I don't even know if they're sending me stuff. I don't pay attention to it.  [00:02:25] So, here's kind of the ultimate stack based on what I know right now. And somebody may be watching this and they might think, "there's something better, Jason." If you know that there's something better, comment what you love and what you use and what you think is the ultimate stack. If you're a software geek, if you're a research geek, if you put in a lot of time and energy into this, I'd love to hear from you because I'm always looking for what's best for my clients and for everybody in the industry at large. So for single family, residential property management companies, which is largely the target audience that I focus on, this is the ultimate stack. [00:03:00] So first, basic, you need some sort of back office property management software. This is going to help you with the accounting piece and keeping track of all your rental properties. This is going to be the main sort of foundational piece in your business software- wise. , Usually I would recommend rentmanager.com. So Rent Manager... I just, I hear the most positive feedback on Rent Manager. And so I recommend that you take a look at that software. Now, I know it's really hard to switch software, so if you are using AppFolio or Buildium or Rentec Direct or Propertyware, or-- gosh, what else is out there? I don't know-- any of these tools, I'm not telling you, you should go switch software. Yeah. You know, it's hard. It's really hard to switch software, and usually people spend a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy to switch software only to notice the other software is missing some things that they liked in the previous one or has some other problems. [00:04:03] And so that's not generally super effective to do that. So the reason I like Rent Manager, let me explain this and maybe a little bit about why I don't like some of the others, right. Some of the challenges. One of the most common is AppFolio. So one of the reasons I wouldn't choose AppFolio is because AppFolio does not have an open API. Now granted, they have a lot of tools, right? So maybe you don't need it is the justification, but I like to pick the best tools. I don't want one Jack of all trades master of none, maybe master of some, maybe master of a few. I want to build the ultimate stack, and if I'm going to build the ultimate stack, that means I need to be able to pick and choose and create my ultimate Swiss army knife, my ultimate multi-tool, the ultimate thing that I want. And so I want to be able to pick the best tools because software's way cheaper than people, so if I can pick a software, even if it's more expensive or it's additional, instead of translating or transferring that cost onto the shoulders of humans and staffing costs, and I can just mitigate a little bit of staffing costs, it's totally worth it to me. So even though some of the most expensive software might only cost you maybe a thousand or 2000 bucks a month, right, if it were really expensive, people usually cost you more than a thousand or 2000 bucks a month, unless you're getting part-time people or people in the Philippines or something.  [00:05:26] Then usually you need something on the maintenance side, and this is usually maybe once you're at maybe 50 to maybe 150 doors, somewhere in that range. But at some point, you want some leverage when it comes to maintenance coordination. I hear great feedback from Property Meld. Now, these guys, when I did a podcast episode with them, we set up some sort of thing. I think it's still active. It'll send them a lead. They might give me a kickback on it. I can't remember. Property Meld, if you're listening, you should be giving me kickback for this still, but I don't even pay attention to it. But if you go to doorgrow.com/maintenance, long time ago, I set up a quiz. So if you go to this website, I set up a little quiz that you can take, and it will give you, I believe a 10% discount if you fill that out with Property Meld. But Property Meld, what's really cool about Property Meld is basically it's a three-way text message system between you, the tenant, and the vendor.  [00:06:26] And so this allows all three of you to be communicating, and it allows you to see the communication between the tenant and the vendor, which them communicating directly speeds things up like dramatically. There's that transparency that you can see how they're doing and see how it's going. So that's on the maintenance side. Now with Property Meld, they have a relationship, I believe still that if you get their full service, then also that's pairing it with EZ-- spelled E and then Z, which is sort of a cute, clever name that they probably should rebrand, but EZ Repair Hotline. I don't know if it's ezrepair.com or easyrepairhotline.com. Hopefully my team could figure that out when they do the show notes, (it's https://www.ezrepairhotlinellc.com) but EZ Repair and if you talk to Property Meld and get their full service, I guess that's who they use and that's what's included--  [00:07:18] EZ Repair is a call center service. It was founded by Andy Shin. He's been on the podcast before. He used to manage the call center for AAA, so he knows what he's doing. His team's based out of Vegas. And my understanding is they've really improved since he started the business, and they were a lot more affordable than Night Tenders, which became Super Tenders, which I think became Abodea or something like that. So my understanding is that they're are a lot more affordable, and they're comparable. They're pretty decent and pretty good at what they do, and that they made a lot of strides to get even better over time. So I would check out EZ Repair along with that, and what they do is they handle the calls. So they handle your maintenance calls. So then you'll have that for your maintenance calls, and that's going to take a load off of your plate as well. So, that's on the maintenance side. [00:08:11] The other tool in my ultimate stack if I were making a property management business is: I would get Tenant Turner, and that is just at tenantturner.com. You've got some competitors in this space. You've got Rently, you've got ShowMojo. I've heard good feedback recently on ShowMojo from some people. It seems like they do a pretty decent job. They've also got a call center where they'll field, I think the phone calls, I don't know, related to the rental properties, but Tenant Turner is probably the tool that I would go with as of right now. I've met some of the principals at that business. I like them. I feel like they're stand up guys and ethical. I believe I've had them on my podcast, but I like Tenant Turner, and that's probably what I would go with. So, that would be on the leasing side, and the smart thing to do on the leasing side, quick bone I'll throw out to everybody there is to shift away from one-off showings to open houses. [00:09:05] This is going to be significant in collapsing time there. It creates a sense of false scarcity, I guess, you know, lots of tenants coming at the same time. Do a 30 minute window. Just do it one weekday in the evening and one weekend day, and do it for a 30 minute window for each and everybody that wants to see that property goes to that, and Tenant Turner can help make sure people are reminded, they show, it can pre-screen, um, allows people to book that time and that sort of stuff, so I would go with Tenant Turner.  [00:09:38] Let me think if there's anything else I would use. I mean, this is kind of the core stack. You've got the main leasing side thing, which would be Tenant Turner and then you've got the maintenance, which are the two big sort of wings of the property management business or challenges. And then you've got your PM back office, which would be Rent Manager. So that would be kind of the core what I would do. Then you need some sort of inspection software. I don't get a lot of feedback on that, but I know there's zInspector I've heard good things about. There's Happy Inspector. There's Inspect & Cloud, and I'm sure all of those integrate with Rent Manager and probably all the other software out there, so I would pick one of those. I would take a look at those, and I would probably have some sort of inspection software as well. And that's going to be a pretty good stack for your business.  [00:10:27] Oh, there's one other software here I would probably recommend as of right now, that would be a sales CRM. As of right now, that would be LeadSimple. So LeadSimple is, as far as I know, the only property management sales CRM. There might be some others that can pull in leads and are okay, but LeadSimple's claim to fame is that if a lead comes in through your web form or your website, you can set up to parse the email, pull the phone number, out and initiate a phone call right away, because leads are really only good for about the first five minutes really, maybe the first 10, but you need to follow up within the first five minutes and then people are impressed. The lead's still hot, it's fresh, and it's not gone stale, to give you some other analogies here, but you want to follow up right away because otherwise, they're going to move on to the next company, and the first property manager that they talk to or that talks to them is more likely to get the deal.  [00:11:19] So, And if you're spending money on lead generation, which I don't recommend, but if you're spending money on like advertising, which I don't recommend there's better ways to grow your business, but if you're spending a bunch of money on advertising, you are wasting a massive amount of money into a leaky sales funnel if you don't have something like LeadSimple, or you aren't following up on leads within the first five to 10 minutes. So that can be effective as well. I send them so much business, they should be sending me some sort of kickback. So LeadSimple, if you hear this, you should be sending me some money, people, 'cause I send you a lot of business. All right. But yeah, I would check out LeadSimple. They have also a workflow built into their platform. That's kind of a, I guess, a competitor to Process Street. Personally, I don't know, Lead Simple's tools, so I can't recommend it, but internally we use Process Street. [00:12:08] I really like Process Street for processes. This is their website: it's process.st. I've had them on the podcast as well, but I really like Process Street. We use it internally. It's great for creating process documentation, but also for using as a checklist to run through that process, and it records an instance for each checklist every time somebody runs through that and uses that process. And so it's like having a clipboard with check boxes they have to go through each time they do that particular task. Except it's not a clipboard, it's digital. So I like Process Street a lot. You can get really complex with it or you can get really simple. And so we use Process Street internally. I highly recommend it. I like it. Now, I'm hearing some really good feedback lately.  [00:12:55] You also need some sort of task management system just for one off tasks. So there's a lot of people that will use something like Asana. Now, some people are, instead of using Process Street, which is really robust. They'll use something that's maybe not as robust, but has similar functionality to that and Asana, and that's Monday. So I'm hearing some really great things about monday.com for basically largely task management and maybe repetitive processes. Okay, so you may want to check out monday.com for your internal processes. Asana does have repeating tasks and has templates, so you can have sort of formulas of things, but I don't think it has the functionality of people following through a process and being able to show like screen recordings and screen captures and screenshots and steps and Process Street, you can build all that stuff in.  [00:13:49] I don't know if Monday can do that also, but Monday does allow you to kind of see where things are in a stage in a workflow and have stages and stuff. So for you know, really large pools of processes that are being worked on, like maybe you have like 20 properties you're onboarding, you can have an instance of Monday of each, similar in Process Street. In Asana, you would just build out like clone templates, probably. So these are these are some of the tools that I would be taking a look at seriously. If I were to start a property management biz.  [00:14:23] And now the other thing that I would recommend that a property management business is eventually once you have a team, you're going to need some sort of planning system, and we've built what I believe is the ultimate software planning system. We call that DoorGrow OS. OS stands for 'operating systems.' So there's a lot of talk about like EOS which is from like Traction or Rocket Fuel, these books. And, these are good books. It's a good system. These are good ideas. I really feel though that the flaw in this is It's built too much around the entrepreneur is what they claim, but it's not actually built around the entrepreneur. EOS is really built around the idea of the integrator, and the integrator is like the most critical piece in this system. And an integrator really is a glorified operations person that they're also putting over and it should be running your cadence and running your planning, but they're putting over sales and marketing and usually operators should not be over sales and marketing. It's a big tactical mistake in business. And it also is a very top-down system instead of the team kind of, it's, it it plays into the ego of most entrepreneurs thinking they're the visionary and everybody has to do things that they want. And it's very top down.  [00:15:45] DoorGrow OS is more bottom up. It allows you to have your entire team focused on the goals of the business based on what the biggest needs of the business are and the biggest needs of the entrepreneur are. And so, DoorGrow OS is really entrepreneur centric, visionary centric, which it's your business, and then we build the ultimate team and planning and cadence around you so you're going to have a business that actually gives you more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support the bigger it gets instead of the reverse. There's some other flaws with EOS, like I don't like their accountability chart where they've got visionary and then integrator, and then the entire team answers to the integrator. I think that's the most dangerous business model ever. You're putting somebody in a position of power in which the entire team are loyal and connected to them. And they're probably not good at being over all of these different department. They basically, if they were or could be, they don't need you. 'Cause they could just chop off that top layer off the accountability chart, which is just a fancy word for an org chart in EOS and eliminate you and they can start their own business, right, if they really are that good.  [00:16:50] So you need a really good planning system. I recommend DoorGrow OS it's really cool system. And then the other thing is you need eventually if you're really wanting to scale and grow your business and you're growing quickly, like a lot of our clients do, you will need an ATS or an applicant tracking system. And so we have our system, which is DoorGrow ATS. And so, this is the ultimate hiring system for a business. We have some really cool stuff coming related to this, but this allows you to basically get really great people and get what I call the three fits, which is having the ultimate hire where they match all three fits, where they're a culture fit, skill fit, and personality fit for your team, and usually the most important of those three is cultural fit. Most people hire just based on what the business needs and based on skill that is needed, so they get a skill fit. But they're not the right personality sometimes for the position, so they're not going to actually be great at it.  [00:17:51] They're maybe not a good culture fit, which means they don't share your values and won't do things in a way that you would feel safe with. And so you'll never fully trust them. And so right now, if you have a team member that's just not great, I guarantee, they're probably not a culture fit or they're probably not a personality fit. Skill fit or intelligence, they just, maybe they're too dumb to do it. Most likely not. They might just not be the right personality and might not be the right cultural fit. So DoorGrow ATS is another system that would need to be built out in the business. And there's several other systems I've talked about on previous episodes that a business might need in the business.  [00:18:26] And I'll throw out one other system that we use in our business that I'm a big fan of, and that is Profit First. We have some other tools like my CEO metrics and some other stuff that my team report in, but I really like, you know, as a basic level, really healthy accounting system, I like the Profit First system. I've had mike Michalowicz the author of the book Profit First on a previous podcast episode. I recommend you check that out if you're running into cashflow issues, if you're having trouble paying your team, if you've run into any of these problems that are very typical in early stage businesses or with entrepreneurs. I've been there. You've probably been there. I highly recommend implementing the Profit First system in your business. It's really simple to implement. It's just getting some additional bank accounts set up and then as money comes in, divvying it up into these different bank accounts based on percentages and making sure that you're taking out a percentage for profits so that you are profitable first and then what's left over one of those will be expenses. And so I recommend taking a look at that. So these are some of the systems that I think would help too.  [00:19:31] If I were building the ultimate stack for the ultimate problem management business, these are the things that I would take a look at. And then really, it's about getting really great people and building a really great team so that you have awesome team members. Yeah. So that's going to create the ultimate business and that we want to build the ultimate business around you. So if you're struggling or trying to figure out how to grow your business, you are running into the bottleneck where you feel like you are the biggest bottleneck in the business, you feel like you're always having to micromanage your team, you're trying to get them motivated, trying to get them to do the right things. I really think you could use our scale program in our DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind, and we would love to talk with you. We easily will help pay for the program just by helping you to cut costs, increase the efficiency of your team. Usually, I can get people three times the output from their team or cut their staffing costs in half or by a third, depending on what your goal is, we can increase that. And then we also want to increase your level of what I call the four reasons. You're getting more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support. [00:20:36] So we will realign the business around you and realign the team. So anyway, reach out to us at DoorGrow. Check us out at doorgrow.com and until next time everybody to our mutual growth. I hope you crush it. Take care, everyone. [00:20:49] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay per lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:21:16] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Andre Jordan is the COO of Rently, a platform that delivers a self-guided touring platform and smart-homes in the Single and Multifamily industries. During this episode of the Apartment Rebels Podcast, Andre takes us through

Looking for a system that will help you automate the entire residential leasing process? Today's guest is Abi Wasserman from ShowMojo, a complete leasing automation platform that handles scheduling coordination and showings. Abi explains ShowMojo as automating everything that happens in the pre-leasing experience, from the moment a property is available and hits the market to the moment a prospective renter is moving forward with an application. You'll Learn... [02:24] ShowMojo: What it is, what it does, and how it's different from other options. [04:14] Touch Points: Automated communication confirms, follows up leasing process.  [05:22] Property managers fit business needs and leasing processes into one platform.  [05:50] Other Options: Some companies do showings or open houses differently. [06:29] Independent Experience: Know calendar availability for each team member.  [07:58] COVID Pandemic Hold: Starting to get back to first normal, busy leasing season.  [08:48] Walk the Talk: What to do when renting property to somebody site unseen.  [10:21] With so many property management tools, why choose ShowMojo? [13:30] FAQ: Focus on syndication, customers, security, and platform comparisons. [17:00] Determining Factor: ShowMojo's success is because of relationships.  [18:40] Pros and cons of occupant, self, and accompanied showings. [23:54] Common Problems: Time wasting calls? Use the automated ShowMojo phone. Tweetables “Your platform should allow you to be able to customize your needs, stack appointments up together, calculate drive time, and take that into account in between showings.” “That's going to turn into maintenance nightmares for you down the road or a tenant nightmare for you down the road because they haven't seen the property.” “The first place that somebody sees a difference with the way that ShowMojo operates, is really in that prospective renter experience.” “That prospective renter experience is important for them, but it's also important for you.” Resources ShowMojo Abi Wasserman's Email Abi Wasserman on LinkedIn Rently Tenant Turner TurboTenant Apartments.com Zillow Rentals.com Zumper DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow on Instagram DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow Hackers, to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. My guest today is Abi Wasserman. Welcome, Abi. Abi: Hey Jason. How are you? Jason: I'm fantastic. I'm doing really well. How are you? Abi: I am good. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Jason: I've been wanting to get ShowMojo on the show forever. They've been on my hit list for a long time and I finally just gave up. Then suddenly, you showed up on my calendar, which is awesome. I'm glad you came. Abi: I have a magic touch. It's like we have mojo or something, I don't know. It might be in our name. Jason: Yeah, maybe. Some ShowMojo. Abi, maybe give us a little bit of background on ShowMojo, if you could. Then maybe we can chat about what it is, what it does, and how it's different from the other options on the market. Abi: ShowMojo is the leasing automation platform. We have been around for over 10 years. My understanding of how DoorGrow got started originated out of this need for the property management industry, started from an entrepreneur and an entrepreneurial mindset. Our founder and his wife who owned property management units saw this need for automation to exist in their life. To stop them from taking away from their day-to-day life and what time was getting spent with the kids or at family dinners, those tasks, those phone calls, those emails, that coordination that typically comes with the leasing process, that pre-leasing process. What was bothering them and not conducive to that family time, it ended up turning into ShowMojo and this scheduling coordination. Eventually, self show as well but the entire leasing automation platform that is ShowMojo. Jason: Got it. I think ShowMojo really pioneered on the market the scheduling sort of aspect. Then it looks like Rently copied that. They had the lock boxes and now ShowMojo's got the lock boxes, too. Then you've got Tenant Turner and they seem to have a similar product. Why don't you explain for people that have no idea what ShowMojo is? They aren't aware of these. What it is and then maybe we can get into the differences. Abi: I like to explain ShowMojo as thinking about automating everything that happens in that pre-leasing experience, from the moment that a property is available and hits the market, to the moment that that prospective renter is moving forward with an application. What our platform and what ShowMojo does is it empowers that prospective renter to really self-drive their way through a prospect-driven leasing process. It allows them to really empower that process from start to finish, giving them that immediate touch, that immediate response that they crave when they're trying to schedule a showing. Giving them that automated communication throughout the process. Making sure that they have confirmed the showings or giving them the ability to automatically reschedule a showing. Giving them automated communication on the back end of that. Following-up after a showing. Following-up with the application process after the showing. Really making sure that there are just all of those touch points, and giving property managers that customizable platform in it where they can fit it their business needs, their processes, how they do leasing and not making a property management company have to fix their processes to a platform mix, if that makes sense. Jason: Yes. Could you give us some examples of how companies might do it a bit differently maybe? Abi: Some property management companies, for instance, will do great showings especially as we move more out of this pandemic, there are property management companies that will do great showings or open houses. Maybe they'll do clustered individual showings where you only want to go out to a property maybe once a day and you want to cluster your showings together where you've got five back-to-back showings. Your platform should allow you to be able to customize your needs, stack appointments up together, calculate drive time and take that into account in between showings. Know what calendar availability is there for each one of your team members, crosscheck maybe a third-party calendar like Google or Outlook, be able to send those invites back and forth between those calendars easily, and make sure that each one of your team members can also have that independent experience. If you and I were working together and you were showing a few of the properties and I was showing a few of the properties, we have independent schedules. Maybe we even both show one property and our times overlap, but the platform can still take that into account. Jason: I love the idea of group showings because it really would collapse time for the property manager. It could put so much work on their plate, but the tenants are often willing to move around your schedule and to do things that you want them to do because they're really trying to get into a place. If you can get 10 or 20 people to show up to a particular unit, even if you're just having them—if they're pandemic-scared—go through one at a time and they're waiting outside, that allows you to increase the perception of demand, it allows you to just get a bunch of applicants right away, and then you can go through screen and figure out who we should put into this place. I know property managers that they do one open house, one showing. They get plenty of applicants and then they get the thing rented out. Abi: And that is the case. I think one of the things that I've seen most recently as we've come out of this pandemic hold, which I think we've been in for a good 16 months of this, I don't know what's going to happen with my vacancy because of the pandemic. Now, we're coming out of that holding pattern where moratoriums are lifting and things are starting to get back to our first normal leasing season, busy leasing season. Now, what property managers are seen all over the country (I think) is that they're putting a property on the market and they are getting immediate applications, site unseen, where they will put a property on the market and they'll get 10 applications for it. I also have those conversations with property managers who want somebody to walk that property. You don't often want to rent to somebody that hasn't looked at that property because that's going to turn into maintenance nightmares for you down the road or a tenant nightmare for you down the road because they haven't seen the property. I didn't know that this was here. I didn't know you expected me to change my filter. I don't know where to change my filter. I never saw that. There's so many things that come up. Even with the market being the way that it is where you've got 10 applications coming through, then how do you set up the showings so that at least you're getting your top five applicants through that property and down the line through your application process? Jason: Right. It's Russian roulette, you're playing a dangerous game if you don't have people view the property. How does the ShowMojo compare, because I know there's a lot of tools out there. I see this question pop up in the DoorGrowClub, our Facebook group constantly. People are asking it on our mastermind all the time. Which tool are you using and why? Everybody has different opinions. How can you help people make the decision to choose ShowMojo over something like TurboTenant, Tenant Turner, Rently, all these different tools that exist out there? Abi: You know me and you know I've been around a really long time. I've got friends that work at other companies. Whenever I'm asked these questions, whenever I've been asked at a different company and against a competitive company there, my goal is never to sling mud. My goal is always to just talk about the differences or where I feel we have an advantage or how we do it and I like the way you do it. I will say that the first place that somebody sees a difference with the way that ShowMojo operates, is really in that prospective renter experience. With ShowMojo, when a prospective renter goes to schedule a showing, the experience for them whether it's on a desktop, whether it's on their mobile phone, it is all happening on one screen. They don't have to sign up for an account with ShowMojo. They don't have to pay a fee. Even if they're validating their identity with a credit or debit card, we're not charging them a fee for an account with us. They don't have to remember a username or password. I don't say this because I think that it's a bad user experience to do that. There are a lot of sites that I will sign up for recurring business. But when I'm renting, I don't really want to do that until I'm filling out an application and logging into a portal. I don't want to give anybody but that property manager my contact, like login details. I'll give you my contact details, but I don't want to do that. That's my preference as a renter because I have been one for too long because I can't do the math right now. As I get closer to my 35th birthday, I can't do math on the spot. I know you and I both have one coming up, if I remember that correctly about us both, we have one in I think the same week. But that prospective renter experience is important. Making it as easy for them to actually schedule that showing is critical. You also, for the property manager, if I'm a property manager, I want to own that rental lead. I don't want them signing up for an account with the service that I'm working with and then owning that data. I want to own that rental lead. I want them to be my rental lead. I don't want them seeing properties for somebody else's company. I want them being cross marketed properties that I have on the market. If something changes within my portfolio, I want them to be notified of it. I don't want them being dripped with other properties from other property management companies. I worked very hard to get those people over to my website or to get them to my listing. I want to own that data. That prospective renter experience is important for them but it's also important for you. Jason: I'm curious about what are some of the questions that prospective users of ShowMojo tend to have when they're coming to you during the sales conversation? Abi: A lot of the questions will circle around the syndication network that we have, whether if they are new customers, will it compare to what I'm doing with my software provider? If they are switching over from a different platform, does it compare or does it exceed what I already have? Oftentimes, it exceeds what they already have or it is an even match for. Jason: Let's explain syndication for those that don't know what it means. Abi: When we have listings through ShowMojo, what we do is we will push them out to internet listing sites. Things like apartments.com, Zillow if a customer is paying for it, rentals.com same thing as Zillow, realtor.com, Zumper, those kinds of ILS or the listing sites to get additional visibility and rental leads back in for our customers. With ShowMojo, we automatically respond to those leads pushing them over to get them to schedule a showing, but it's typically the same as or greater visibility than wherever they may have been coming from before. Jason: Got it. One of the strengths of ShowMojo is really good syndication. Abi: Yes and the email response and the communication afterwards. Jason: What are some of the other questions that people have when they're curious and vetting ShowMojo as a provider for them? Abi: I would say it probably will come in where the lock boxes and self-show is concerned and how do we handle security, how do we handle preparing for fraud because it doesn't happen frequently. It's going to happen in the property management industry. It's a factor of doing self-show and doing lock box showings. It's more of those questions of how do we prepare for it, so outside of the normal tech things that our team does by searching and preparing and preventing known scammers from being able to schedule, we don't advertise any of our listings as self-show or lock box showings. We don't distribute codes until the showing has been confirmed with that prospect or we have the additional step where they have to actually confirm their location is at the property. They have to use location enablement on their cell phones. We also follow up after every showing to make sure that that prospective renter has locked up and left the keys at the property. If they don't then we notify our customer of that. We have multiple different checkpoints in place for our customers on that side. Jason: Got it. Now, is that different from other providers when it comes to lock boxes? Abi: There are some providers that are very forthright about how much self-show they do, even advertising through video the entire self-show process on their customers' websites. I'm not sure where that checkpoints are in terms of checking back up with a prospective renter, so I'm not sure where the follow up process is necessarily with other companies. Jason: What do you think is the determining factor for people to go with ShowMojo then? How are you closing these deals, Abi? Abi: I would say number one, because of relationships, like I always do. At the end of the day, it is a more customizable platform to fit property managers' needs. It is cost effective, and we have a lot more bells and whistles to really be able to, so it ties back in with that customization but we have more bells and whistles to really fit it to the existing process. Customizing it from that first moment that they interact with the listing to the moment before moving forward with an application. Without going through a full demo, it's everything from cost to benefit and that value and between. Jason: Cool. ShowMojo sounds like a really awesome tool for property managers. Some are a little bit nervous about the lock boxes and self-showings, so what's your perception on who decides to do that and who decides not to? Because it seems like there's two solid camps there. I could never do that. It's too risky, and I love it and it's amazing. It seems very polarizing, I notice, whether or not to do lock boxes. Abi: I would say we are definitely fans of in-person showings because there are questions that you're not going to be able to… Number one, the first thing is that you're not going to be able to show occupied units. You're never going to be able to show occupied units on a lock box showing. The obvious benefit to doing a company showing says that you can stay pre-leased, and show occupied units, get them leased before they even go vacant. You can also answer questions that you're not going to be able to answer during a self-show. You can get a feel for those prospective renters. There are a lot of benefits to an accompanied showing. Jason: I'm curious about the pre-lease situation, how to ShowMojo handle the existing residents of the property and make sure that's communicated, because that's usually seems to be one of the most difficult sticking points with trying to do showing. Sometimes they're really resistant to having people come into their place. The communication back and forth. Then you're trying to negotiate times with them and with prospective renters. That communication gets a little cumbersome. Does ShowMojo try to facilitate that? Abi: A couple of things. One and I've had this conversation recently, so that's why I say a couple of things. I would have ordinarily just started with showing acceptance, which is where you can put in the residence information and they have to accept the show times or reject them. But the reason I say a couple is because I've had this conversation twice in the last couple of weeks. The response from the property manager was the same. That won't work. They will reject it every time. I said okay. Then in my brain, the way that I creatively think about this, is it goes back to the way that calendars are set up and ShowMojo. There is a way to set up a specific time window for each property. That is the only time that that property can be shown. I said, okay, well then, great. If they will reject every time, then you don't necessarily need to do showing acceptance with them. What you need to do is you need to say I will be showing your property, because you've given notice. Tell me what day of the week and what time frame will work for you for the next 60 days or 30 days or whatever notice they've had to give. Block it out for that recurring week notice. Maybe it's Friday from 2:00–5:00 are their window that you are allowed to show their unit. Then that way that is the only time that the showings will get booked for that property. Either way there is an option in ShowMojo. Chances are there's a way to accommodate it. There's the showing acceptance where you can put in the residence information or the owners, if its owner occupied. You can put in the owner acceptance too. You can put in there showing acceptance or you can block out the certain time windows for the property, so either way. Jason: Sometimes it's easier to tell people that it's going to happen, instead of asking for permission. Abi: Exactly. Jason: I like that. But the showing acceptance thing, that's pretty cool. This software has been around for a while. It really was I believe the first on the market that really did the scheduled showings model. It sounds like they've been optimizing and innovating since then and adding features. I think that is the niche that it's quite customizable which I think is appealing to property managers. It sounds like you have really good syndication. You also have the lock boxes thing. Anything else anybody should know about ShowMojo? Abi: If you've got questions, if you're thinking that it could do something, I wonder if it does this, odds are it does. We've worked with real estate listings. There's ways to do maintenance checkups. We use ShowMojo for our own demo scheduling platform. When somebody comes on our website to schedule a demo, we use ShowMojo for that. The way that it can be customized to fit whatever needs you have, it is endless. We just rolled out occupant-led showings. If you're actually having a tenant do a showing for you, a renter, with some of the people that may have been under more lock down restrictions. I know that sometimes you move towards the things that you have to do. I can sit here and rant and rave about ShowMojo for a while. Jason: That occupant-led showing is an interesting idea. I talked to the property manager and he had (I think) 1000 tours or more at a conference. He said that his company never did showings. He said, we just pay the occupants to show the property and we give them some sort of kickback if it gets rented. They're incentivized to sell the place. Abi: That's a great idea. Jason: The biggest complaint or challenge that you hear in leasing is just the time wasting phone calls. This is just such a time suck for property managers. You have people calling up and saying what's the square footage on this listing that I'm looking at right now, that has the square footage on it. Stuff like that. Does ShowMojo facilitate phone calls or work well with the solution that does? Abi: We do. We have our ShowMojo phone which is automated, that's included with all of the way that we do things which allows prospective renters to always get schedule a showing link or view all of the available listings and a gallery. It also will determine if somebody's running late for a showing and cancel it if they're running too late and follow up to reschedule. But we also have live answers available to our customers that are additional, but very affordable, very cost-effective. They can turn it on or off at any time but it's with our call team and they will answer basic questions just like you mentioned if it's something that they missed in the listing detail, they can schedule showings. If somebody calls to follow up on an application, they can answer that question. If it's a potential owner, they can answer those questions. They can take messages and forward them over to the team. It's something that they can turn on outside of office hours if they want to have their team handle it during office hours and have somebody else answer outside of office hours. We do have the ability to help with that. Jason: Where's the call center team based out of? Abi: We have virtual call centers, but they're both US and out of the US space. Odds are, if you call during daylight/evening hours, you're going to get somebody in the US and then outside of that, 2:00 AM, you may not get somebody in California. Jason: It's a 24-hour thing. Abi: Yeah. Jason: All right, any questions I missed? Abi: I don't think so. I don't like to control the flow. I feel like we had a good chat. I feel like it was good. Jason: Cool. How can people find out more about ShowMojo? Abi: You can always come to showmojo.com and connect with us there. If you want to send me an email, you can also always reach me at abbey.wasserman@showmojo.com. You can reach us on our website. Find us on LinkedIn and all that fun stuff. Jason: Cool. Well Abi, I appreciate you coming on the DoorGrowShow. We finally got ShowMojo in the books. Abi: Thanks for having us. Jason: Now I can point people to a podcast episode when they ask me about ShowMojo. Abi; There we go. Jason: All right. I appreciate you being on and I'll let you go. Abi: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Jason: All right. Property managers, if you are a property management entrepreneur and you want to add doors, you're wanting to grow your business, reach out to DoorGrow. We've got this new mastermind that we started towards the end of last year, which has been really awesome. That's probably why you're wondering why I haven't been doing very many podcast episodes. I've been really enjoying coaching clients and helping them grow. It's what I'm passionate about. We've got about 54 businesses in our mastermind as of today. Our goal was to hit 50 by the end of June, so we hit our target and we've got some really awesome clients, really awesome businesses in the program. One of our clients, a really hard worker, put in 3–5 hours a day using one of the strategies that I gave them. It cost them zero dollars, it's just time, and he's added 125 doors in six months. He was stuck at about 80 units before coming to us. He tried SEO and some other things. We've got clients that are showing up. One of our clients in the last weekly checking call said that they're adding 100 doors from one owner. The week before that, 21 doors. We've got another client that's been with us in the mastermind for coming up on maybe about a year, but at a previous call checked in adding a 25-unit complex, a 35-unit complex and these are by doing zero dollars in advertising. One thing I want to point out is if you want to grow your business fast, right now, the largest companies in property management are losing more doors than they're getting on. They're spending thousands of dollars a month on internet marketing. If you want to shift away from internet marketing, which isn't even working for the biggest companies, and getting cold leads that are time-wasters, tire-kickers, and have a low close rate, let me share with you and teach you how to grow your business rapidly by going after the blue ocean using that strategy. The 70% that are self-managing, creating warmer lead opportunities. Warm leads have a 90% close rate or higher typically for most property managers. I'm going to teach you how to facilitate that, how to make that work really well in your favor. You have other people feeding you more business, you're getting more from online reviews, and you're able to target groups, things that are high leverage that will feed you warm leads. Check us out at DoorGrow, schedule a call with us, and chat with us about the new DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. Our guarantee in the mastermind is that within the first 30 days, the very latest by the end of the first 60, we will have double offset the monthly cost of the masterminds. You're making twice as much money in residual income. Otherwise, I'll continue to coach you for free. We've not yet had to have anybody use that guarantee. That's if you're willing to keep our three commitments, which means one hour strategic time in the morning, being a business owner instead of saying I'll work on my business tonight or on the weekend like a lot of business owners tend to do which doesn't generally happen. That's the garbage scraps of your time. Second commitment that's required is two hours a day, a tactical time to work on growing the business and implementing the strategies that I give you. That's less time than it would take to deal with cold leads. You're going to get a much bigger return and result. Then the third commitment is to show up to one of our two weekly group coaching calls that we have on Zoom. Those are on Wednesdays at 11:00 Central Time, noon Eastern. 9:00 Pacific, 10:00 Mountain. Those are on Wednesdays and Fridays. Wednesdays, we focus on adding doors, growth, sales, referrals, reputation, prospecting methods. We talk about websites, et cetera. On Fridays, we get into operations DoorGrow OS, which is better than EOS retraction. We've had several come from that sort of camp. It's the ultimate operating system for property management business. We get into DoorGrow ATS—applicant tracking system and hiring system. My goal is to build rapidly companies that can handle rapid growth, quickly hiring, off-loading in making sure that the business gets more and more in alignment for you, giving you the business owner more freedom, more fulfillment, more contribution, and more support so that it becomes more fun the bigger your business get. I'm really good at helping business ownership towards that. If you're frustrated, stuck in the operation side or in the growth side, talk to my team and let's get you maybe on board with the DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind. I appreciate everybody that's tuned into this or that's been paying attention to us on iTunes or on YouTube. Be sure to like, subscribe, give us positive reviews. We love all that kind of stuff if you got value from this. Until next time, everyone, to our mutual growth. Bye everybody.

Meet Jim Murray, a twisted individual crazy enough to actually enjoy property management. No, it’s true. His journey starts back in 2012 when he purchased his first House Hack, a four-unit property in Rhode Island. At the time, he was working full time for Fidelity Investments and was self-managing his property. Since then, he has jumped around to do some wholesaling, some flipping, to where he is today—a full time property manager and real estate investor. The unfulfilment with Corporate America had been building for some time since Jim made his first investment and one bad review too many, he did what most folks could only dream of and started his own company. So what makes Jim crazy enough to do the one thing most investors dread as it pertains to real estate? Simple, he says. He’s a systems-oriented guy who enjoys helping people succeed. Up to date, Jim manages over 600 rental units, owns and operates Lyon Property Management, and hosts The Cash Flow Kings Podcast. Going forward, he plans to continue to scale up his personal portfolio, transition more into the multi-family realm, and help more people grow their wealth. Our takeaways from our conversation with Jim:   1) Systems is the name of the game. Invest in technology that increases profitability. By having the right systems & processes in place, you attract and get to serve the right clients. And fortunately for us, business technology has never been easier to acquire and implement. So whether you self-manage or manage other people’s units, there’s technology out there that exists to help you out. (Find suggestion list down below.) However, understand this: Technology is meant to enhance, not replace. If you fail to develop & implement the proper processes first, investing in technology will do you or your business no good, and will probably only run you and your business dry of cash flow. 2) Fire bad clients. When starting out, you’ll be tempted to accept any and all business that comes your way. And that’s not really your fault. You won’t know what separates a good client from a bad one. But once you build your business to a respectable size, that’s when it’s time to visit our good friend, Pareto (80/20 Rule). Scale your respectable business into a sustainable one. Get rid of problem clients and double down your efforts on the good ones. Good clients (tenants, customers, etc.) are worth keeping around if you want to operate a sustainable business. But more importantly, bad clients are worth getting rid of in order to keep the good ones around. 3) Set expectations and practice accountability. This is the culture that Jim cultivates within his own company that has allowed him to make a business and career in taking over distressed properties. From the very beginning, let tenants (or clients) know what you are all about and what you will do for them. You must make your tenants know it is a privilege to rent from you, and at the same time, you must treat it as such—a privilege. That means holding yourself, your tenants, and all other parties up to the standard that you set. And when the bar is not met, someone needs to be held accountable for their actions. In doing this, you will weed out bad tenants and keep the good ones happy. 4) Image influences perception. As Jim explains in his story, when talking to contractors while wearing scrappy jeans and work boots as opposed to a suit and tie, he was quoted for a lower price for the same work being done. And it’s understandable as this is a natural human bias. So why not use this bias to your advantage? Here’s the point: It’s not always best to look like you’re made of money. While this goes without saying to look appropriate, hygienic, and professional, you don’t always need to look super polished. Rather, fit the profession you’re playing. While there are times that call for formal attire, wearing so in casual settings tends to make others perceive you as willing to pay more for something or are just flat out bougie. If Jim could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Buy more real estate in 2009.” In other words, take advantage of the real estate cycles and buy real estate sooner! An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Jim said, was the opportunity to live with time, location, and financial freedom. A piece of advice Jim would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Listen to other people.” Use the free content and information available to you online, whether it be other real estate & business podcasts, websites like BiggerPockets, or the thousands of educational real estate videos on YouTube. Jim recommends using zInspector to help you create and store tenant condition statements. This comes in handy during any tenant-related litigation, as well as have as an additional layer of legal protection for your business. Honorable mentions: For high-end scaled operations: AppFolio; Buildium; Rent Manager. For low-end (DIY-level) scaled operations: Cozy; Avail; Zillow Rental Manager. For rental unit showings: Tenant Turner; Show Mojo; Rently. Jim recommends reading The Wealthy Gardener: Lessons on Prosperity Between Father and Son by John Soforic to help you grasp important financial concepts found in many of the popular financial/business books around. Honorable mentions: The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field by Mike Michalowicz. The Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason. If you’d like to get in touch with Jim, follow him on Instagram @thecashflowkings

In this episode, Tom and Michael chat with Matthew Whitaker from GK Houses about what it takes to have effective property management and how investors can set themselves up for successful relationships with their PMs.   --- Transcript   Michael: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum. And today I'm joined by Tom Schneider and Matthew Whitaker with GK Houses, Matt and GK Houses is one of our preferred property management partners at Roofstock. And so we're going to be talking to Matt today about what it's like to be a property manager. What are some things that we as investors can do to make their lives easier? And give us a little bit of insight into what a day in the life of a PM looks like. So let's get into it.   Theme Song   Michael: Matt Whitaker. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really, really appreciate you taking the time to be with us. How are you doing?   Matthew: Yeah, I'm doing great. I'm excited to be here and excited to do this with you.   Michael: Awesome. And you're down in the Southeast, right?   Matthew: I am. Yeah. I'm in Birmingham, Alabama. That's where our corporate office is and we're in eight different markets. So we're in three markets in Colorado and then we are also in Birmingham, Nashville, Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Little Rock.   Michael: Awesome. Awesome. And for those of our guests who might not know you, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself on GK houses, help everyone get to know you a bit?   Matthew: Yeah. I'd love to some, the CEO of GK houses. I started it about 13 years ago during the last recession. And during that kind of, 07, 08, 09 time when the market crashed, I owned about 30 rental houses at the time and had a hard time selling those once the market crashed. Most of those were in the low to moderate income world and the ability to sell that went away. And I started a property management company, converted all those 30 over into rentals and was able to get some of my investor buddies to also let me manage them. So I got up to about 70 houses pretty quickly, and that was kind of how I lasted through that recession through 08, 09, 2010 was by managing homes in about, we also were selling homes. So we were doing some turnkey stuff at the time, kind of original before it was very popular. And, but in 2013 we really started off focusing on the management business. And we decided at that point we managed about 250 homes right here in Birmingham. And at that point we decided that we wanted to get to 25,000 houses under management. And so we've been growing that ever since 2013. And today we manage somewhere around 26, 2,700 homes in those eight markets that I talked about earlier.   Michael: Great. And did you have any personal management experience in the real estate arena or did you go straight from owner to manager?   Matthew: I always swore I would never be a property manager or a real estate agent…   Michael: You're in good company.   Matthew: And a lot of companies did that same thing. Yeah. And so never, never say that to yourself, but now I'm a real estate agent and a property manager. And so I managed my own homes. So I had been doing it ever since I first got started, even my first house I ever bought, I still own, and I have rented it ever since. And that was a disaster story. So it's amazing that I'm in the property management business. So yes, I did have a little bit of management experience. I had been in the buying and selling business for about seven or eight years. So I was very familiar with what a manager did. I had some other third party managers that manage some homes for me for some time and found all the things that I didn't like about a property manager. And so I decided to just do it ourselves, with GK Houses.   Michael: That's great. I love that. You've got that personal experience that you did it for yourself and then went into business, helping other people do it because it just shows that you understand the business kind of from the ground up, which I think is so huge. And you're able to treat the rentals as if they were your own.   Matthew: Yeah. There's nothing that replaces knowing what it's like to have a $500 bill come through, or a $2,000 air conditioning, a replacement come through where you're expecting that cashflow to pay the mortgage. And now all of a sudden you've got to figure out some other way to pay that mortgage. So it definitely gives us empathy for our owners. And that's something that we've tried to communicate and teach to the team members that work for us is, you know, and I'll often say to them, what if on Friday you found out that I was going to pay you $500 less with your paycheck. And they, you know, that would be disappointing to them if it was a surprise. And that is the same surprise that we were calling up from time to time. And unfortunately having to deliver bad news to owners because inevitably things are going to break when an owner buys a rental house they're in business and you're going to have expenses for that business. And so we've learned a lot over the years about having reserves and making sure that you can afford to pay for the lumpy expenses that are in this business, but it still requires a bunch of empathy from our team members when they're communicating with owners and having deliver, you know, have tough conversations.   Michael: That's great.   Tom: You touched on reserves. I'd love your thoughts, Matt, on, you know, what do you think an appropriate like reserve level is?   Matthew: Yeah. If I was in new person getting into the business and I bought a foot, let's call it a fully renovated home. I would probably stay about. And obviously depending on the age or the vintage of the house, I would stay about $3,000 out. So I would keep at least $3,000 available at all times. And then as I got to a bigger portfolio, obviously the per house number would come down because you could dilute that across the portfolio. But getting started, I would say somewhere around two to $3,000, just available to make sure that it doesn't affect your lifestyle. And if you do have one of those expenses that comes through   Michael: And in that same vein, most lenders are going to require a cash reserve amount for PITI. Would you consider that a couple thousand dollars to be that same pool of the reserve bucket? Are you saying above and beyond this? The reserve?   Matthew: Yeah. I'm just talking about expenses and then capitalizable type items. I mean, I may even start as you started to build a portfolio and this is one of the reasons I always tell people don't buy one rental house. I mean, certainly try it on dip your toe in the water, but it's way easier to own 10 rental homes than it is to own one because you all these expenses start to get diluted amongst your cashflow of your portfolio. And then it doesn't become as big of a deal when you have a $500 bill come through. If you have a rental house, a $500 bill comes through, you're literally writing a check out of your back pocket. Sometimes if you have 10 rental houses and a $500 bill comes through, it's just another number on your statement. And you're just calculating your return based on that. So I think of that in excess of that, I'm just thinking of, in terms of repairs and maintenance,   Michael: Tom like you always say peanut butter spreading that across.   Tom: Peanut butter spread the risk. I love that quote yeah, 10 properties, a lot easier than one property.   Matthew: It is, and absolutely if you're not having to manage all of them, any, even if you are, obviously you're spreading that risk across multiple residents with different jobs and different industries. And if somebody invests through you, they can even do it across different markets. So 10 seems to be the magic number in my opinion.   Michael: Great   Tom: perfect segue talking about, you know, as long as you're not managing it, and let's talk in a little bit about the roles and responsibility of a third party property manager that you would hire, what are the different things that services that they would provide in the process?   Matthew: I really think the services of a property manager fall into two buckets. There is the accounting bucket and the communication bucket. And obviously under that communication comes execution, but let's talk about accounting first. Part of our operations is accounting for our homeowners. We want to make sure that the money comes in on time, that the resident's abiding by what the lease term says in terms of money paid. And so we're going to kind of hold the resident to making sure financially that house is getting taken care of. And then we're going to account for all the dollars that come in and of course paying any expenses that we need to pay out of that money that comes in. And then the other side is just operations and communication around those operations. We're obviously going to make sure that the house is taken care of. One of the interesting things, especially around small multifamily and single family.   There's a lot of logistics involved in that. I always say it's a communication challenge and a logistics problem. So it's about, you know, having a one house, one owner or one vendor, you're always communicating with somebody. So you need to be really good at communicating. And our property managers become more like air traffic controllers. They're making sure the vendor knows where to go. What time to be there has the resident's information. The resident knows that the vendor's coming. The owner knows that there's a problem at the house if it exceeds a certain amount of money. And so you're having to keep all of these people in the loop and make sure that the planes aren't running into each other while you're that. And so, again, it just boils really down to accounting and making sure that I's are dotted and T's are crossed and then operations and communications.   Michael: Matt, you said something that I want to circle back to that the owner knows if there's a problem, if it's above a certain dollar amount. So from folks who have never purchased a property, what do you mean by that? And why is that important to highlight?   Matthew: Yes. So you hire a private manager to basically take care of the problems and you don't want to know that something small has happened at your house. That's not really going to affect your lifestyle. It's just kind of brain damage for somebody to call you over a hundred dollar issue. So we have, what's called a $500 kind of threshold. And if one of our maintenance guys goes out there and he sees that this thing's going to exceed over $500, we're going to contact the owner before we do anything and provide them an estimate. But if it's below that $500, we're generally just going to take care of that issue. And then the owner's going to see that happen. You know, see that payment on their statement. You hire a property manager and you will be circled in on all the big issues, but we want to handle all the small issues. That's why we feel like you hire us is for a turnkey solution, not to have to sweat the small stuff.   Michael: Awesome. Thanks for clarifying and Matt, in your opinion, you know what separates the good from the great property managers?   Matthew: Yeah. We go back to accounting and communication again, getting the numbers right. Is so incredibly important and you'd be surprised at how many property managers get that wrong. The other, again, communicating, it's so hard in our business to communicate and trying to make sure as an owner. And of course I was in this position. So I know exactly how they feel. If you don't know what's going on, it's not like you expect the best is happening. And so you want to make sure that you're clearly in the loop and you have the confidence and the trust of your property manager, that if something bad is happening, that you're going to be well aware of it. And also communicated with what we call uncomfortable transparency, which means I'm not going to withhold information from you to make it easier to tell you or more palatable or, you know, easier on me really, because I don't want you to get mad at me.   So we want to make sure that we're giving our owners the truth. And we call that also entering into the danger and telling them, being willing to tell them exactly what's going on with their house so that they, if it is a big issue, they can make the best decision for themselves. And also try to remain as objective as possible when we're communicating, because money can be very emotional for people. And if we can kind of steer them towards the best solution, then we want to make sure that we're doing that based on our experience as a property manager, you know, we do have the benefit of, and especially in the South right now, it's getting really hot and air conditioners are breaking well. We have the benefit of knowing that air conditioners break and things we've done in the past and mistakes that we've made in the past. So, you know, when it becomes a, should I spend 600 or $700 to fix this air conditioner and it may last another couple of years or a $2,000 replacement or a $2,500 replacement. Well, we can give them kind of some objective advice based on what we've seen in the past. And then the owner can make their own decision based on that information.   Tom: That's a great example of being proactive in informing the most decision and using some of the information that you guys have as an investor. We want to get the top dollar. We want to manage the least amount of vacancy as possible. What were some things that you would advise that the owner, the investor can help achieve those?   Matthew: Yeah, the biggest expense and investor's going to have is turnover. You know, you can have a picky tenant that calls in a lot of maintenance work orders, or it feels like they're calling in a lot of maintenance work orders, but truly turnover in my opinion is the biggest expense you have. I think of it and you played football, Tom. It is like going in to score a touchdown. And instead of you throw an interception on as you're about to score, and then they run it back for a touchdown, it's like a 14 point swing that somebody moves out because, and the reason I say that is not only do you have loss of rent, so you're not having money come in, but you're also having to pay money out on deferred expenses when that happens. And so it's very important that you keep residents in homes and the way you do that is you do it through good communication with the residents.   You do that through handling maintenance work orders. One of the things we found was our residents started staying longer when we internalize maintenance because our maintenance team is not out there just fixing a problem. Our maintenance team is tasked with making the resident happy because they're a GK team member. And so if you think about kind of the change in that, if a maintenance team member thinks his job is to just fix something, well, that's a problem if ultimately in the owner's best interest is that resident staying alone time. But if the maintenance team member is out there with the idea, I want to make this resonant as happy as possible, then it makes the resident happy. It's in the owner's best interest because the resident stays a whole lot longer.   Michael: That's great.   Tom: Oftentimes decisions, especially those big decisions that you'll make with an investor it's the repair or replace, or do we want to focus on vacancy or rent growth? And I don't know, I guess one of you just elaborate a little bit on those two important decision points that can make or break deals.   Matthew: Let's talk a little bit about rent growth, because I think what I've always thought of it, the way I mentally look at it is staying a little bit behind the curve. Like I don't want to be on the bleeding edge and I don't think investors want to be on the bleeding edge of pushing grants. And I know there's some institutions out there that will actually do that for us, I think. And I like to stay a little bit behind the curve because I think it's so important that that a doesn't move out. I don't want that resident to feel like they can get a better deal somewhere else. And so what I like to do is stay a little bit behind, but definitely be in tune with rent growth and be focused on it. In our leases, we have some rent growth built in, but that also gives us the ability to go to the resident and say, Hey, you know, the owners being very generous, wants you to stay another year and has decided only to raise it 1% instead of the three to 5%, which may be in our lease or even better, they've decided not to raise rent. And because, you know, they think you're an awesome resident and normally they would raise it 5%, but they're not going to raise it at all. So it gives us the ability to even if you only raise it 1%, it gives us the ability to basically say, Hey, the owner's doing you a favor because you signed up for three or 5%.   Michael: That's great. I think, yeah, like you mentioned Tom investors where they want top dollar and you know, as much as we can push the envelope, we'd like to, but that's really great advice. Cause I think something that I chat a lot about with Academy members is when it comes to pushing rent is do the calculation, do the math for if this tenant leaves and you've got three weeks of vacancy, what does that cost versus what do you stand to make with the 10, 15, 20 bucks a month? You're going to increase the rent. The math kind of works itself out pretty clearly.   Matthew: Yeah. I would think if I'm an investor and I am on a number of rental homes, I think in terms of seven to 10 years, how can I maximize the most amount of money over that seven to 10 years? Not now. And this gets into having reserves too, because if an owner is making short term decisions is going to affect his or her longterm seven to 10 year plan then, and that's a problem. If you have reserves, you can make clear objective decisions based on how much, what the best longterm getting the most money in over that seven to 10 years. And so I think as your clients and investors operate, they need to be thinking longterm because this is a, this is not a get rich quick game. It is a consistently make good decisions over the long period so that they can over the course of owning that rental home, whether it's seven to 15 years, then they end up in a much better place.   Michael: Tom, Matt set you up so nicely for your T-ball swing. What do you like to say? Be what?   Tom: Oh, longterm greedy, be longterm greedu.   Matthew: Yeah, that's great.   Michael: Matt, I want to ask you a question about property management fees specifically around vacancy. And I get the question a lot in the Academy that says, Hey, you know what? It seems like property managers, aren't incentivized to actually keep tenants in place because of the new tenant placement fee being 50% or 75% or a hundred percent of one month's rent versus a lease renewal is typically less. So what would you say to someone that had that question?   Matthew: Yeah, I think it's a great question. You definitely don't want to incentivize your property manager to do something that's not in your best interest. And so when you're thinking about property management fees, what I would tell somebody is make sure that the fees are in line as well as you can with your incentives or with the incentives of the property manager, because you just don't want anybody to have to make this kind of moral decision that affects their income. And so what I would say is the way we look at it is we do need to make money when we're leasing, because we do a lot of work. The way we look at GK Houses is we want it to be an annuity business for our owners and for us. And the way to do that is to keep residents in homes. And that allows us to do certainly we're doing a lot of work while the residents in the house, but as soon as that resident moves out, I mean, it's like a full time job trying to get that home back on the market as quickly as possible. And so we often talk about, and we've structured our fees so that we don't want people moving out. We want to build this big annuity snowball. And so to me, you need to make sure that your property managers fees align with your interests and your interest of being an annuity. So I would say incentivize the manager to renew the lease over a leasing fee. Now the leasing fee may be higher, but what kind of work did they have to do to earn that? I would much rather earn a couple hundred dollars, 200 $5,300 renewal fee that is, that, you know, requires two to three hours worth of work versus the, you know, maybe 20 plus hours of work. I would pour it into a turn.   Michael: And can you give somebody who's listening a real high level overview of what work does go into a turn because I think that's such a great point is there is so much work that goes on into placing a new tenant, but that goes on behind the scenes. Most folks don't have any idea.   Tom: The Duck's legs under the water. That's another episode where we riffed on that for a minute. So, sorry. Yeah, go ahead.   Matthew: Well, we think about this about 60 to 90 days out. So we're trying to renew the resident almost, you know, six to eight months into their lease. We're trying to do it as quickly as possible. And so when they submit their notice and they start to move, you know, we start communication. So we communicate with the unit or, Hey, your resident is submitted. Notice just wants you to know. And then we give them an idea of what we're going to do when they move out. When the resident finally does turn in keys and moves out, we're going to do, depending on the market, we're in, we're going to do a walkthrough. And generally that happens not the same day, but within 24 or 48 business hours of that resident moving out. And we do a full writeup with pictures and it is amazing how many pictures we take, but we really feel like this is part of taking pictures, is communication with the owner.   They can see the pictures and kind of feel what the house looks like. And then one of the things that owners forget is we also have a requirement with the resident to account for their security deposit. So we have all these logistics going on and all this communication with the resident and communication with the owner, we send out a statement or an estimate, the owner that basically dumps all the expenses into three categories. One is these are the expenses we want to charge the resident for anything above normal wear and tear. So, you know, if the carpet has been lived on you can't really charge a resident for that because you expect the carpet to be lived on. But if there's a hole in the wall for some sort of misuse, or you can tell that the home has been misused there, we're going to charge that resonant for that.   And then there's a column that we say are required repairs. And so required repairs are, there's a hole in the wall and we need to fix this before the next resident moves in. You just can't leave a hole. Nobody's going to rent a house with a big hole in the wall, or then the next column is recommended. So maybe there's a room that is kind of in between. It's kind of in a gray area. May if you paint this room, it's going to run faster or you're going to rent it for more money. But if you don't paint it, then it's not going to keep us from renting. So we divide our estimate into those three columns and we'll send it to the homeowner and the homeowner will either approve the required or add on the recommended on top of that, and then approve whether the resident's security deposit. They're happy with how we account for that.   Then we have to basically do the accounting of the resident security deposit and then mail that to the resident. Now, oftentimes sometimes the resident disagrees with how we accounted for that. And the resident obviously did a move in when they, when they, and we did a move in before. So there's some time there's some kind of go back and forth between them and us on it. Was this a definitely misuse or was this like this when you moved in? And so sometimes when we inherit leases, we deal with some issues with that, but we do a really good job of a moving walk through. So we have pictures of the house before it moves in and we can easily compare those to the move out, walk through. Then once we we're done with the resident and everybody's happy there simultaneously, we're going back and forth with the owner on the work that needs to be done to get the house on the market.   And to me, owners love speed. And so that's one of the things we try to do is there is an anxiety that happens with an owner as soon as that resident moves out, that money stopped coming in and the expenses start, but it also makes an owner feel better if it gets done very quickly. So we're trying to renovate that house, turn that house as quickly as possible, and then put it back out on the market as fast as possible. And so, you know, depending on how long it takes to do the work, you know, our goal is to get that house back on the market, just literally as quickly as possible. And the only downtime being the time it takes to get the work done. We also start pre-marketing. So we try to start building some excitement. Some of our markets, we actually pre-market even when the residents about to move out, I just kinda made it hard recently with the pandemic, but you know, kind of a normal world will pre-market and we've been leasing a lot of homes.   We're starting to use some video tours. We're using a Matterport camera and we've been pre-leasing homes without people actually even walking through them. We've done a really good job with these Matterport cameras. And then again, getting it out on the market and getting as many people through it. One of the things that we found though, is if you take somebody through and the work's not done, sometimes there is a misunderstanding of what work needs to be done or what work is going to get done. And there's some disappointment from time to time. So we like to get the work done first, build the excitement, and then generally your first people through are your best opportunities to rent that house. Cause there's a, they feel that sense of urgency. And then we signed the lease and hopefully they move in as quickly as possible so that we get the rent coming back in and stop the expenses from flowing out.   Tom: I had like two questions I was going to, but you kept hitting him. I was, you know, I was gonna ask, Oh, you know, what changes have you guys made with the pandemic? And that's cool. So you guys are doing video tours and   Matthew: Yeah, we're using a Matterport camera now, which is basically you set it up in the middle of the room and it allows somebody to virtually walk through the house and it is really cool and it shows it's got a fish eye on it, fisheye camera on. It allows people to really see what it's like to live in that room. And the other thing is it's really a touchless and we're not using leasing agents as much as we did any more. Now, some areas are starting to let some leasing agents back. Colorado's allowing us to use leasing agents again, but it's still a opened the door. Let somebody go through and kind of obviously socially distancing the whole time. But we also use Rently a lot boxes on our homes, which allows a resident to check themselves in with a credit card and their ID. And they can go through the home by themselves without us having to be there.   There's some, obviously some accountability and the fact that we have a credit card and we have their ID and we know who they are, we have their cell phone number, but then we're proactively following up. So one of the things that we found in the past, we went a little too automated where we wanted somebody just never to talk to us to the point where they just leased our house without ever talking to us. But now we've found that proactively reaching out and talking to somebody on the phone, right after a showing, is that great way to get somebody comfortable enough to submit an app. And we're receiving right now, somewhere around three in some markets and somewhere around five times as many applications, part of that is pandemic driven. I think there's a move right now from multifamily to single family, just cause people don't want to be on top of everybody, but in part of it is the summer, but we're more occupied right now than we've ever been before.   Tom: That's really interesting.   Michael: Yeah. Very interesting. Matt a question. I get a lot in the Academy, especially of folks who are looking at Roofstock inspections is I've got all this repair work that needs to get done. Is this something that I have to do that I have to coordinate? Or is that going to fall on the shoulders of the PM? Are they able to assist in helping coordinate that work repair work to be done?   Matthew: I can't speak for all PMs, but I love it when we do the work in full transparency. So we do make money when we do the work as the general contractor of that work. But when I can control the process for the owner and I can control the communication and I can control what gets done and I have vendors that know how I work and I can get them in and get them out. I always think of it again, it says value and speed. I can get it done so quickly and there's not a lot of coordination and communication. If you're in a market, you could certainly try to do that because you may have the time, the drive over there. And it makes sure that the contractor is getting the work done. The biggest challenge we have is contractors and relationships with contractors. So for somebody to remotely hire a contractor and get the work done for not only cheaper, but on time and all their work done appropriately to me is just too big of a risk to take.   And what ends up happening is they end up putting the burden on the property manager to go make sure that we're gets done. So then it ends up costing them more because we're going to charge them for some of that oversight. So we just say, look, just let us handle it. And we're happy to give people an estimate to get that work done. And then we'll contract it out to the people that are vetted vendors that are insured. And if somebody falls off the proverbial roof, then they're not going to Sue you. And so we just think it's in the owner's best interest to let the PM handle that.   Michael: Great. And what would you say the most difficult part of being a property manager is what do you wake up everyday and go, Oh man,   Matthew: Not to use another football reference, but I am going to, there is no Superbowl in our world. There's no, we won the super bowl and now we can take two or three weeks off when the 31st hits and we collect a hundred percent of our rent. The first comes the next day and then all our rent's due again. And owners need to know this too. It is a thankless business. The whole point of the job is to deal with problems. And so when you're communicating with your property manager, you need to know that they are doing nothing but dealing with the exceptions, all the problems that have happened that day. And so I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for my team because it is hard. You have to keep them excited and it's hard not to get burned out. And so when an owner gets mad or a resident gets mad at them, obviously that takes an emotional toll.   And generally our PMs are not the ones that made the mistake or when something happens and listen, we're people, we're human. We try to execute as well as we can, but we are going to make mistakes. But when an owner kind of takes that out on a PM, because that's the person they see as kind of the face of the company, you know, that takes an emotional toll on people. So the whole, and when you're communicating with a resonant about not paying rent, you're talking to them about their home and the money, you know, money it's, everything emotionally is tied into this one thing that we're doing. So we have a lot of hard conversations. And so that's, what's so hard about being a PM. And I would say, that's, what's so hard about self managing too, you have the ability to be objective in an emotional situation?   Going back to the first rental house that I bought, I had a six month kind of agreement with an insurance company on a house that had burned down or somebody's house had burned down and they moved in for six months. The insurance company paid me additional money over above what I was asking. Well, the house person was living in the house. Couldn't afford the house normally. And when their house wasn't ready, they'd never moved out of my house. And so here I am self managing I'm 23 years old, and I need that money. I am very emotional about needing that money. And so I was probably the worst person to be dealing with that situation because I was overly emotional making bad decisions. Here I am. This is my first rental house I got paid for six months. Everything was great. I thought I was a real estate guru. And all of a sudden, now my resident's not paying, I'm paying a mortgage and it's not like I just have tons of money left over every month. And so I was just in an emotional place. And what I would say is, if you can't be objective, you can't treat that relationship like a business or even worse. Maybe you do have a lot of money or the ability to float things. And you allow things to go on too long because a resident may tell you a story. You know, it becomes very hard to be objective in those situations because either you're emotional about your own finances or you become emotional about the resident situation. And it really is like running a business. Well, listen, we do have a lot of sympathy and empathy for our tenants. We're very resident friendly, cause we know we want them to stay a long time. We want good residents to stay a long time, but you also have to be very objective when you're dealing with them. And, and so if somebody can't separate themselves from the situation, it becomes a lot of conflict. You know, personally, you're not going to do the right thing consistently to self manage.   Michael: I think that's such great insight into property manager, being a thankless business. You know, I personally am going to make this admission on the podcast. I don't think I've ever called my property manager wants to thank them for a full rent collection month, but I know I've called them and asked why the rent was late. So less than to everybody listening go, thank your property managers for the good stuff. Don't just highlight the bad stuff.   Matthew: And we do have some owners that are kind enough to thank us. And we do have some really great owners, but you're right. I mean, the expectation of the owner is full rent collection and no expenses. So as long as that happens,   Michael: Right, right.   Matthew: The bar is at a hundred percent.   Tom: Everybody's good.   Matthew: So anything below that is us not meeting expectations, even though, you know, it's not our house. If the toilet breaks, I've never used that toilet. Right. It wasn't you. Right. But I do understand too, that it's kind of funny, like an owner may move out of the house and then a new resident moves in and immediately owners because they are emotional about, especially a house that they lived in and owner will become very well that toll, it never broke when I was there. And I'm like, well, I don't know what to tell you.   Michael: I don't know what to tell you! Tom, You got any more questions?   Tom: Yeah. I guess, you know, kind of continuing on this theme of, you know, helping this thankless job, how would you say investors could help put their property manager in a better position to be successful?   Matthew: One of the things I would say is around communication is a lot of people want, expect like an email to go out and then an immediate email to come back and we do have RPMs or full time communicating. So we do have the ability to do that, but there are times when they need to be a little flexible about how fast we get back to people, because we do have other fires that are raging from time to time that a PM may be very focused on getting another owner's property fixed. So just having a, you know, not an unrealistic expectation around how fast we're able to get back with people. And look, we that's. One of the things that we measure is we do measure how fast we get back with people.   So we are getting back with people fairly quickly. The other thing is, again, having reserves really helps us out because it gets us into a situation where we're doing the right thing. We're playing the odds. We're placing good bets with these homes and allowing us to help you manage for the long term. So those are two things an owner can do. And then also when they do communicate with us, I know you're going to get frustrated when something happens bad and look, we're frustrated too, but know, it's every bit as hard to make that phone conversation and make that phone call and just know that the PM has been dreading calling you and telling you that there's this $500 expense or whatever it is. And so just having some empathy for that person that is making that phone call is helpful and being problem solvers together. Let's Hey, we're on the same team. We didn't cause this problem, but we're going to both fix it as teammates   Tom: Love it.   Michael: It's such a good point about around the communication timing. I was chatting with a student in the Academy. I won't say from where I was just say it rhymes with smooshmork. And they said, you know, I can't deal with this property manager. I said, what happened? He goes, well, I emailed them 20 minutes ago and have her back. I said, well, that, that might be how you're used to communicating, understand that it's different around the country. And so what I was recommending folks is just ask, when you're chatting with property managers, vetting property managers, ask them what their communication style is and ask them what a reasonable response time is, because the expectation should be set on the front end.   Matthew: Other thing I would add around communication. If you start to get up to, let's say five to 10 rental properties, what you need to is set up a regular monthly call with your property manager. We have found these calls to be so helpful. Again, getting back into being objective. You really solve problems together for the longterm. There's no emotion around it. There's no surprises when you have five to 10 rental properties and it's worth the manager spending an hour with you and kind of making sure that you're on the same page on a regular basis. It would be hard to have those calls for anybody below five houses let's say. But if you're starting to get up into five and continuing to grow, it makes sense for you to have a regular monthly call. And if you get to a point where you have 20 to 25 houses, it may be a weekly call that you would want to have. But I can't tell you how these regular calls have really helped us with our communication with owners, because you're not just hearing about the bad problems. You're also hearing, Hey, we collected this. We collected that. And you're starting to kind of get a better picture of what your portfolio is doing.   Michael: I've got to go set up weekly call. That's a really great idea.   Tom: I know. I love that as a takeaway from today's session... Yeah, I love that. That is a great idea. I really like that.   Michael: Tom, you got anything else?   Tom: That's good for me. Yeah. That's super insightful.   Michael: Love it. Awesome. Well, Matt, we've got some quick fire questions. We'd like to end our episodes with, if you don't mind, it's kind of a yes, no one answer to the other.   Matthew: All right, I'll do it. Alright.   Michael: So high rent growth or low vacancy?   Matthew: Low vacancy.   Michael: Angry resident or angry investor?   Matthew: Ooh, Whats C?. Yeah, definitely angry resident. Although none of those are fun.   Michael: Cashflow or appreciation?   Matthew: I am a cashflow guy.   Michael: Concentration or diversification?   Matthew: I am a concentration guy and I think this is an important thing too, is probably a good nugget for the people that are going to be listening to this, become an expert in an area. First, in my opinion, before you try to diversify too much, I have found that when you become an expert in one area like a Birmingham or even a neighborhood in Birmingham, then you are way more successful at buying than trying to diversify and not being an expert in one area. Sorry. That was more than one word, but..   Michael: No, that's super great insight. Super great insight. Local or remote investing?   Matthew: I think you can do both with technology today. I mean, I would hate to say one over the other because I think if you have access to all the technology that I have living in Birmingham, so it makes no sense for you living in California or in New York or wherever you're living, not to invest in Birmingham because I have the access to the exact same information as you do.   Michael: Great. Single family or multifamily.   Matthew: I'm a single family guy. I think, I think the best opportunities and the biggest opportunities to exploit what is still incredibly inefficient market is in the single family world. I think your points about like the pandemic people wanting a little bit more breathing room, like single family, really great way to go. I'm telling you, Tom we're at over 98% occupied. I've never been on. I've been doing this now almost 13 years. Never been that high and never gotten the amount of applications that were getting approved residents. Great residents are moving into our homes. It is really a good time to be in the single family world. Great turnkey or massive project. Definitely turnkey. Okay. Text message or email. I'm a text message guy. My emails, I forgot like 50,000 unread emails. That's a true story. I can, I can show you.   Michael: That's great. Last one. Olive oil or butter?   Matthew: I'm an olive oil guy.   Tom: Love it. Awesome.   Michael: Awesome. Well, Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to view with us today. If folks want to reach out to you at GK houses, you know, what's the best way someone can get in touch with you or someone on your staff?   Matthew: Yeah. I would say email me, but obviously…   Tom: The jig is up!   Michael: 50,001, right?   Matthew: Listen. The best email to email is support@gkhouses.com and we are monitoring that through a help desk type system. And then that'll get assigned to the right person in our office that can handle that. You can also look us up online and call any one of our offices. So we're a Roofstock preferred vendor in Atlanta and in Birmingham. And am I allowed to say the other two coming down?   Tom: Of course, growing markets all the time.   Matthew: So Little Rock, y'all are in Little Rock now and we're also a property manager there. And then we had a conversation with one of your team members this week about y'all are opening up in Denver, which is super exciting. So glad we're going to be a preferred vendor there too. So just y'all are growing and allowing us to grow right alongside of you. So we appreciate you so much.   Tom: Onward and upward.   Matthew: Yeah.   Tom: Thank you so much for coming on Matt.   Matthew: Yeah. Thank you for having me.   Michael: You got it, take care.   Michael: Okay. Everyone. That was our episode. Thank you so much to Matt Whitaker for coming on today. Really, really appreciate it. If y'all liked the episode, feel free to give us a rating or review wherever it is you listen to your podcast and we look forward to seeing you on the next one.  

In property management, eliminate no-shows and days on the market. Don’t waste time on administrative work. Make it more profitable. The ultimate goal is to get the place rented.  Today, I am talking to Zee Bhimji and Asif Hussain of ShowingHero, which is property management software built by property managers because they understand the challenges you face daily—dealing with tenants, leasing, and maintenance. You’ll Learn... [04:15] What is ShowingHero? Automation of entire leasing process—from lead to lease.  [07:42] How is ShowingHero different? Customization, full access to improve efficiency. [08:40] Piecemeal Process and Missing Pieces: Some piecemeal solutions sometimes work, but they're not a one-stop solution. [10:40] Showing Process: Contact, communicate, pre-screen, and schedule time.  [14:45] People and Technology: Most expensive operational cost for a business is staff. Reduce expense through automation. [19:05] Customer Experience: Specific service level expected. Automation doesn’t take away personal touch. [21:15] Good property management companies provide consistency, follow laws, and do things in a timely manner. [23:10] Toilet Therapist: Focus on what’s important. Customer service is when it matters. [27:50] Pain Points: Look at problems from property manager’s perspective.  [33:20] Little Things Make a Big Difference: Listen and understand to keep a business moving toward benefiting customers. [36:50] Feature-centric Validation Process: Actionable data/insight to run your business the correct way.  Tweetables ShowingHero: From lead to lease, it helps get everything done. All you want to do is reduce the days in market and make it profitable. The most expensive thing in business is staff. It's the most expensive operational cost. It is people.  The less tactical work you have, the better. Leverage tools, software, and systems. Resources ShowingHero Tenant Turner Rently Knock Rentals ShowMojo Calendly DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives and you are interested in growing your business and life and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. My guests today are Zee Bhimji and Asif Hussain. I got everyone's names right, right?  Zee: You really throw up my name though. Jason: Perfect. Let everybody know who you are and what your role is. I want to get into your background and how you got connected to the property management industry. We'll start with you, Zee. Zee: Yeah, absolutely. Zee Bhimji. I am the co-founder of ShowingHero. I have actually been in the industry for about 10 years now. I tell people this a lot of times. I couldn't spell property management where I started. I have a property management company also (Real Property Management) in the Chicagoland area. We've been around 10 years now. Like I said, I still couldn't spell property management when I started. I'm a finance and accounting major. It was a process. That's where ShowingHero came around, where we saw that there is a void in the market.I decided to work with my very good friend here, Asif. We decided to take down this very big challenge and a very fun project. Jason: Cool. Asif, why don't you tell everybody about yourself? Asif: Yeah. My background a little unique. I'm not a property manager, but I was a landlord and do-it-yourself landlord. I have managed a few properties and doors on my own. I was familiar with some of the issues and some of the pain points in the property management world—dealing with tenants, leasing, maintenance, the whole nine yards. My background is actually in marketing and finance. I worked for Discover Financial Services. I actually went ahead and got my Masters in Education in London. I went over to mentorship and educational leadership. Zee and I had actually met together. We were talking about some of the struggles. I actually just went up to Zee to figure out, "Hey. Either some of the struggles that I'm having with my landlords and with my tenants, what are some things that we could do?"  In exchanging ideas and learning from each other, this is where the idea of ShowingHero came from. There wasn't a solution in the market that was available to us, so that's where that spirit and that’s where it started, the beginning of our journey actually from. Jason: Got it. Gentlemen, why don't you explain to everyone what is ShowingHero?  Zee: ShowingHero is an automation of the entire leasing process. It's the easiest way to put it. What we would say is from lead to lease. One of the biggest challenges that I face as a property manager, we managed over a thousand doors, and it's a very good problem to have. Well it’s a problem and it's hard to do. We actually received an award from the Chicago Association of Realtors back in 2015 where we were the platinum leaders in the entire Chicago land market. It's definitely something we're very proud of. That's the time we started realizing we're facing a lot of problems and there are no solutions for them. There are piecemeal solutions. You guys have seen that. Jason, you've seen so many piecemeal solutions. I've seen that you are putting together a full solution because everyone has noticed piecemeal solutions are hard to do and customers don't prefer that.  As a property manager, one of the biggest things that I had was I don't want my employees to go to five different software to get their work done. That's where ShowingHero comes in. ShowingHero comes in and helps from the time a lead comes in to closing out the entire lease. What you want to do is you want to eliminate days in market. You want to make it more profitable. You want to avoid all the redundant stuff, all the administrative stuff. That's where ShowingHero comes in.  It will contact the lead. It'll scheduled the showing. It will use artificial intelligence or machine learning to contact people that are interested in the property, get them to schedule a showing as quickly as possible. This is something that's really cool. You can get a price drop on your property. Instead of having to go and communicate this to so many people, five minutes after you drop your price, you have people scheduled showings. That's incredible when it comes to automation coming in and doing their job. That's where ShowingHero comes in. It helps get everything done.  We come into self showings, which I would like us to talk about because that's something I'm very, very excited about. We do it differently and we do it more encompassing. Asif, I'm going to let you take the stage. Jason: Before you get into that, I wanted to touch on this. People are really looking for a result. They're not looking for pieces. When they're looking for pieces, they're hoping to magically put together a solution to get to a result. You really focus your tool on delivering front to end the result of automating the whole leasing process. You said from lead to lease. Most people listening to this have some solution in place. They may be using Tenant Turner. They're using Rently. I've seen Knock rentals on their ShowMojo. There's all these different tools out there. Maybe for the listeners, I'd love to hear about your processes, what you guys do, maybe how you stand out, or how you're different. Everybody listening is wondering how do you guys fit in the marketplace. Asif: I wanted to add one thing. One of the things that separates us from the market is that the idea of customizations and the full access on the platform. One of the things that Zee had mentioned is when you look at piecemeal solutions, you're looking at being able to solve something. People don't realize the amount of hours that are dedicated into doing that.  The example that Zee had mentioned in terms of price-reduced setting. You can manually go ahead and text or email, and say, "Hey look. That's a solution that works." People aren't realizing that for those smaller solutions that they're thinking that just works, they're not just being efficient. Not being efficient had the opportunity cost that you need to be able to understand that it's not necessarily in terms of dollars but its terms of hours. That adds up, which eventually does translate to dollars. Jason: This piecemeal idea you've mentioned a few times. Give us an example of a piecemeal process that you feel like has these gaps or is broken. Just so people are really clear on this. Asif: I've had clients that have said, "Look. I just use Calendly to schedule my showings. It works. I put out my show times there and I'll get notified." What they're not doing is, what does the reporting look like? Do you understand how many days your properties have been on the market? Are you getting the data that you need in terms of where the lead is coming from? What happens to the lead? Has a lead been able to provide you any feedback either if it's the assisted showing? Have they been able to provide you feedback on the agent or on the property? Are you able to see have they applied on? They clicked on the application link. What is the life cycle of that prospect? Are you able to understand those different points?  You could use Calendly. You might say, "Okay. I'm able to schedule," but you're missing out on those other solutions. You might say, "Hey, look. I'm using a lockbox and I'm allowing people to enter the property." But do you understand who's entering your property? When they've entered? If they've left the property? Are you able to follow-up on all of those different missing pieces? Sometimes these piecemeal solutions work. I had one client who said that they just text message (mass text message) to confirm a showing, which is great, but that does take an amount of time for someone to go get all those text messages, send that, see who replied, see who that person is. Those solutions work but they're not a one-stop solution. That's where ShowingHero tries to differentiate itself and say, "Look. We want you to be efficient and running on all gears." Jason: Cool. Explain the process of how the showing side work. Zee: One of the things to add to what Asif was saying and to clarify, we have piecemeal. The idea of piecemeal is just simply the fact that when a lead is interested in a property (we call our property management terms one, two, three, example stream), the first thing we're doing is we're saying, "Let's contact the lead." It's as simple as that. We just need to respond to them. Communicate, speak to them, pre-screen them, try to schedule time. Schedule time really takes three or four attempts. You're going back and forth. You're leaving voicemails, you're sending emails. From there, you're scheduling your time next week, Wednesday, 1:00 PM. Sounds good. Everything is great. From there, the next thing is a diligent agent or property manager is going to call in again and remind them about their showing the day before. Then, they're going to try and confirm the showing on the day about four hours prior. Jason: The goal behind that is to eliminate no-shows, to not waste time, to make sure that you're doing your best to get these people engaged so they show up, so you can get the property lease as quick as possible. The whole goal is just to get the place rented. Zee: Right. All you want to do is reduce the days in market and make it profitable. Yes, you can have ten agents for ten properties. You're not going to be profitable. That's what we had. We had four agents showing eighty properties. Yes, it worked for us. It made a lot of money but it was tough. I had a call center with three people full-time taking calls all the time. All they're doing is taking calls. That was 8:30-5:30. That's all I was making available and it wasn't enough. We're still getting a lot of calls, a lot of voicemails, a lot of emails outside of business hours. We were making it work. It was working. We pre-screen them on the phone, schedule a showing. We tried to be a little smart about it. We tried to be a little efficient about it. That's where ShowingHero comes in. ShowingHero takes 90% of all that administrative work. All you're doing is like going to your assistant and saying, "Hey. I want to show properties in the north side of town on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9:00-1:00. Can you please schedule a whole bunch of showings for me, but make sure that the people are pre-qualified? Then, make sure you follow-up with every single person to find out if they're going to show up on time. Remind them and confirm the showing." That's ShowingHero. ShowingHero is your personal assistant that is doing all those things but you don't have to remind them. Jason: Okay. The situation you're describing sounds like pretty normal. The problem situation, it sounds pretty normal. Most management companies, if they're smaller, the property managers are the one handling this. They're leveraging maybe one or two tools to try and systemize things. They've got one system that's putting the properties out to the market and feed allowing the system that's handling some of the showing stuff.  That sounds pretty normal. They're going to have a handful of people that are going out or maybe themselves. They're trying to do this. At your level of scale, you started to see gaps and the problem. It sounds like for smaller guys, something like ShowingHero could allow them some freedom from the leasing side of the business that they're tied up in.  Zee: Yeah. I want to put up the 100 emoji right now because that's what it is. It's all about having a bold solution. Jason: Okay. Let me point this out. My listeners have heard this multiple times. The most expensive thing in business is staff. It's the most expensive operational cost that we have. It is people. We're spending thousands, tens of thousands of dollars even on a team every month. If you can reduce that even slightly through some automation, through technology, through some process, through systems, through less communication needing to happen, then even eliminating phone calls being necessary between two people, or any step that is reduced adds up to a lot of cost savings. It scales once you get to 1000 doors like your size. It's pretty obvious. It's really obvious. it's difficult for people that are at a smaller door account to pay attention to all these little leaks that exist in their business. The challenge ends up being they just feel like they're spinning their wheels and they're not moving forward. They feel like they're just living paycheck-to-paycheck. They feel like the business isn't progressing. It's because they're not dedicating time towards strategic time in working on the business. They're focused on all the tactical things they need to do in the business. They have the business that they can do instead of the business that they should be doing, the business that they really want to have in which they're able to focus on strategic time, focus on planning on the future, on growth, on ideas. Instead they're handling leasing, maintenance, phone calls, their team, managing, trying to do accounting, and like all these kind of stuff.  The less tactical work they have on their plate, the better. If you can free up tactical work by leveraging a technology tool or system, you're going to dramatically reduce your cost. It doesn't matter if a tool is hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month. Team members are thousands of dollars a month. That's where people miss the boat. I hear people so often they say, "Oh that software is so expensive." They're starting out and they're like, "I can't get the better property management accounting solution because it's hundreds of dollars a month." I'm like, "Are you kidding?" Your first team member is going to be thousands of dollars a month. Start with the solution you can live with forever because it's gonna be painful to switch. I wanted to point that out. Asif: Absolutely. What you were mentioning is key. People don't realize that payroll is expensive. It's one of the largest expense items out there. Doing it manually and not looking at a software solution because you think, "Oh. This upfront cost might be too much," you're not realizing how much you're spending in paying someone to do that manual because the work has to get done. It's not that you're not reaching out to these individuals. It's not that you're not following-up if somebody’s doing this and you're not realizing the cost. The other thing that's also important to think about is the prospect experience. Most prospects that we've looked at are scheduling during weeknights or weekends. Jason: Right. That's when they're not working. Asif: Exactly. How are you able to respond to them? I just read a stat somewhere that said when most prospects are looking at homes, they're not only looking at your listings. They're looking at multiple listings in that area. If they don't get a response within a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days, and you don't get back to them, they're going to move on to the next one. They're not waiting for somebody in your office to respond back to them. That's what's ShowingHero does. With our tenant portal, we create a richer experience. The moment that somebody is interested in a property, they get information about the property that the property management company puts out. There's the picture, the details, what schools are nearby, what's the walk score. What are the important factors that allow me to make a decision about this property and then be able to have a response to instantly say, "Hey, this is when I can schedule a showing and that am I qualified?" The pre-screening also allows us to gather more information and that creates a richer experience on both ends. Making sure that the prospect feels that they're getting responded to and that allows them to hopefully sign that lease and sign on the dotted line quicker. Jason: You mentioned experience and you mentioned the service level that people expect. The customer experience is what I'm talking about. You get two camps of property managers. You get some that fear automation. They're like, "Oh. I can never use this AI tool or I can never use this automation because you're cutting out people." They pride themselves. It's like this badge of honor that they wear on their shirt sleeve that they're so personal. They do everything themselves. They think that that means they're providing a higher level of service. "Oh well, I'm going to deal with every tenant directly. I want to see them, know them, taste them, and smell them. I'm doing the best thing for my owners. I'm so connected." They wear this badge of honor. It's not scalable. There's this myth that that means it's better that they're able to provide better experience. Asif: It's not consistent. Automation doesn't take away the personal touch right. ShowingHero allows you to customize everything. I'm going to let Zee talk about how it helped his company grow with that because that was an issue that him and I discussed in detail and saying, "Are we taking away the human touch?"  Both of us thought that automation doesn't take it. It allows you to standardize and make that process simpler and more efficient. You're not going to know how your agent goes and respond to every message and email. You can't control that. You can create culture, obviously, and that takes time. But what about if I can be able to put that in an email or in a message or in my branding that then gets the same process goes out to every prospect every time? Jason: [...]. I know that every renter that's rented at least a handful of times or even maybe once has had a bad experience in renting. They've had difficulties with showings. They've had people not calling them back. They've had difficulties and maintenance. They've all had bad experiences.  When I moved to a new area and I asked around, it's pretty obvious when you ask people. They know which management companies are good and bad. They talk about them. I don't think people realize that the tenants are screening management companies as well. A lot of them will look for a good management company because they dealt directly with an owner that was terrible, wasn't attentive, was busy working, not available, wasn't following laws, wasn't on the up-and-up on things, or was shady. A good management company provide consistency. They follow the law. They do things in a timely fashion if they're healthy. They have good a good service experience. I know from my own experience, I appreciated not having to talk to a person in order to get things done that I wanted to do. I just wanted it done. I wanted it quick. I wanted to get in and see the property quickly. I wanted to get maintenance requests done quickly. I didn't need to talk to somebody, do all the niceties, and go through these. I just wanted stuff taken care of. Sometimes we may focus a little bit too much on customer experience when really the experience they want is just to get [...] done fast. That's it. Get it done and let me get on with my day. "I don't need a friend right now. I need my toilet fixed. I need to see this probably because I need to find a place." Zee: Jason, I especially agree with that because we have multiple things happening at the same time. One of the big items is if you can exaggerate something. Many people who wear this badge of honor are saying that we care about customer service. I fully agree. I don't call myself a property management company. ShowingHero doesn't call itself a tech company. We call ourselves a customer service company. It's where the customer service is required.  I'm not going to call you, Jason, and say, "Hey. I'm so sorry about your toilet not working. This is so upsetting. You want to talk about it?" No. That's not when you need a call. When you need a call is when you're frustrated. When the property owner is saying, "Hey, listen. I need to replace my sub-zero fridge. That's going to cost me $13,000. Can you guys give me a good option? Tell me something that's important." Not when it's $200, not when we need to schedule a showing. When you're trying to schedule a showing you want to automate that. Then you can focus on the things that really matter. Customer service is where when it matters. That's what ShowingHero is allowing you to do. Just like you had mentioned, you want to scale. One thing that I got lucky (and I say this very many times) is that I was fortunate. I was able to hear from people like you, Jason, who said, "Zee, don't work in your business, work on it." That made a really big difference because at that time I was a fresh graduate. I just got out of school and I said, "I'm going to start a business."  I did really well in school and I was like, "You know what? I'm gonna try and listen to people because I know nothing about property management." I didn't come in with any of my old ways of doing things. I was like, "I just need a try." From day one. I got to hear people like you, Jason, who said, "Listen, skill. Focus on growth. Don't focus on saving a few dollars by going and doing showings. One of the first things I did when nobody was doing it was I got epayments. I got esignatures for leasing. Many prospects would be confused and then they would call in. We would get reviews that, "Last time I signed a lease, I had to meet the person there, and we were there for three hours. This time it took 30 seconds." Now, esignatures are commonplace. Everyone is doing it.  But the guy who wears that badge that says, "Hey, listen. You know I want customer service. I want to sit there and explain the lease." No, that's not what you need. You need to be able to answer the questions that they have. Figure it out. Get the maintenance done in a timely manner. That's what's showing here does.  What we have done is also with cost. We've made it very customizable. One thing our clients do is they're saying that, “Hey. All the automation really helps us because then when we go to a showing we can focus and say, ‘Hey, which one?’ We have open houses. The prospect is going to go with it. We're going to get multiple prospects coined for one showing.” If you have six or seven people at the same time, you want to pick who is the correct person. That's where customer service comes in. I feel like that's where you should spend time. Jason: Going back to my earlier question (because everybody listening is wondering), how does this compare or how is it different than Tenant Turner, ShowMojo, or Rently? These are the three tools that have been in the marketplace for a while. A lot of people are using it. I've heard the most about those. What do you feel is different about ShowingHero? Asif: Zee, feel free to jump in. One of the things that I feel that we have, that is the most unique is building on our founders experience and those on our board. Zee, we also have Sean, who's also on the board, bring over almost two decades of property management experience.  Both of them have been very successful. Zee have been able to scale from where we were. I was in the beginning a few doors to 1000–1500 plus doors. I went in as part of the largest franchisee and has been able to establish himself. To be able to use that knowledge and expertise, we can all appreciate that that value is innumerable. Using his experience allows us to understand the pain points for scalability. That's one of the leverages. Because of his network, we've been able to look at different integrations. We've been able to look at different features that we've launched and to really figure out what's the next trend. Luckily (or unluckily) for him, we also do a lot of testing on his property management company. We're like," Hey. We have this view feature. Let's push it out to him." Jason: Zee's the guinea pig. Zee: Yeah. In this scenario, it's a happy guinea pig because these are things that many people will come up to us and say, "Hey, we need to do this. Is this something that you guys can do?" We're looking at it and we say, "That sounds amazing." We can vet a proposal much faster because I'm looking and I'm like, "That makes perfect sense. I've dealt with that." Property managers deal with that every day. We're not fixing things. It's not a novelty solution. When we look at a problem, we're looking at it from the property manager’s eyes. Many of our clients say that they appreciate the fact that we're a property management software that's built by property managers. We feel their pain. We understand their pain fully. I have been in the trenches (I'm still in the trenches). It makes a really big difference. One of the things that we have is the fact that we try to build a system that's customizable. We have vendor portals. We have very many features, Jason. A lot of our customers are ecstatic about the fact that we're feature-rich, but we're agile. We're an agile software which means that we can move quickly. One of the things that I thought was a major disadvantage for us is it's obviously an advantage also but we were the new shiny product out there. How can people trust it if they have no one else that has tried it. That's where we got a little lucky. We got a little fortunate because my network of people were like, "Zee, you know what? If you've built something, we're happy to see what it's about."  Sean Kingman said, "Hey. Let's try this," and that's how it caught on fire. We just started. We're a 2017-2018 product. We've only been around for a very short time. The reason why we're many times being added to conversations is because our customers see it as client success is very important to us and we know property management. That's a very big differentiator. When it comes to features, Asif could talk for like six hours. Jason, you might get a little bored. You might think some of these things are really cool but six hours, I don't think we have.  Jason: Maybe we'll get into a few features that Asif thinks are really cool. Before we do that, I just want to touch on what you said that there's fundamentally the intention from the ground up of what a company is involved in significantly changes all of the outcomes and the product that they create. If people start a product because they think, "Hey. We're really nerdy and we're really cool tech people. Let's make something really nerdy and see if we can make some money off these property managers." That's very different than having an intention from the ground-up saying, "Hey, we need to solve this problem for ourselves. Let's see if we can do this towards scaling the business."  Your focus from the ground-up was, “How can we focus on scaling this? How can we lower operational costs? How can we systemize things and reduce time? How can we speed up the process? How can we focus on the customer service aspect so that we're getting a high level of positivity throughout the experience for the customer?” That's a very different focus than I'm just focusing on being really tech-savvy and making something really nerdy and cool, and throwing a bunch of features at it. The whole goal to grow in scale is significant.  Just like in DoorGrow, our intention, our fundamental mission (like client-centric mission statement) is that we want to change and transform this industry, and have an impact. We get to do that through hundreds of clients that we have and create that ripple effect. I really do believe that good property management can change the world. You can have a significant impact on hundreds of thousands of families lives, home, money, property, and investments. This is fundamental to your owners and the tenants lives. That drives our mission and our vision, and we want to have a real impact with our clients. We've done things that, probably from a business standpoint, makes sense for us but it was towards our vision and our purpose. It's not always about the bottom line or about the dollar. I'm sure with you guys, you've made little changes and little differences between what you do. Maybe some of the others isn't on squeezing a dollar out of a person or just implementing some cool piece of technology. It's just like driving down the road. It's the little adjustments that you make to the steering wheel. You end up in a very different place. You stay on the road. But if the steering was just slightly off from the very beginning and you don't adjust it or if you're flying an airplane, you will end up in a very different place. You'll be off the road. You'll be in a different city if you're flying. It's the little things that end up making a big difference especially later on down the road. Vision and purpose is what keeps a business in alignment and keeps it moving towards benefiting the consumer and benefiting the target audience that you want to serve. You are your own target audience which is interesting. Asif: That really does help. I was just going to add. Zee and I both agree with you on this point. one of the most important things that I've learned in this journey is to listen. To listen and understand. Zee and I had a vision and said, "Okay, look. These are the problems that we're facing. Let's understand and how do we solve them." We've solved a solution and I said, "Look, I want to make sure that customer service is really important to me." Perhaps, it's a millennial thing. I want to get something, get it done fast, and I want to be treated well while doing it. For Zee, it was customizations that were really important. He said, "Look. I need this but I know that someone in my network has a different profile and might not want this. I want to customize this for myself." Even though we have both of those pillars to guide us, we listen to each of our clients to understand, "What is it that you need?" While we're driving to this destination in the car, for example, are we checking to make sure that we're headed towards that way? Are we checking our blind spots? Are we checking our biases to understand where that is? Then also, looking ahead 5-10 years, what are the integrations and technologies that we want to start implementing today to make sure that we collectively push property management to the next level?  Whether that's looking at virtual reality, whether that's looking at AI, looking at learning, looking at voice, what are these tools that we can start leveraging and using to help push property management to the next level while also understanding the realities of today? And then learning from the best practices. That's both from Zee and then from our clients. That's where that mixture has to happen and that's where that perfect blend is. Jason: You also said you have two camps when it comes to software creation. You have those that are more of the camp of, "We're going to create things the best way and everybody else needs to do it our way. Our way is the way they need to fit their business into our model or we're just not a fit for you." Then you've got, "We're going to allow this to be flexible for their business and listen to our consumers and we're going to make adjustments for this." I'm not saying either one is better than the other. They're just different. Somebody may create the ultimate solution and somebody may create something. It sounds like your focus is on customization. It's something that can be adapted to their business model. Can you explain some of the differences between some of your customers that might show up in your software, feature-wise? Zee: One of the things that I could be able to say is just like you said. We have this idea of saying that we have a product it's going to help you in many ways. But we want to customize it. People run their businesses differently. We're still going to provide best practices. We have our client success team. We have our senior consultants who are saying, "Here's how many of our customers are doing this but here are options." When we're doing customer check-ins our customers are like, "I'm thinking about doing something like this. How can you help me?" I'll give you an example of a feature that really differentiates us but it makes us proud. I'll tell you this that many times our customers are saying, "You're giving me a lot of good data." Once you have over 300 listings, 300 properties under your portfolio, you need data to run your business, so getting a lot of data. But sometimes it's not actionable data. You want to say, "Okay. Yes, cool. I'm getting a lot of showings. I'm getting a lot of leads."  What we've started doing is because our customer came up to us, we did a beta across around 30 different customers, and said, "Is this something that you guys care for?" We were looking at and we said this is something important and it's simply performance alerts. Something that comes in, gives you actionable data, and says, "Don't tell me how many showings I have. Tell me how many properties are not getting showings." "Instead of me going through 70 of my active listings, tell me what's actionable data." They tell me, "Here's where my problems are. This is a list of problems." You can ask that you receive this performance alerts on a weekly basis, on a daily basis, on a monthly basis. You're getting this information that says, "Here are all your listings that have less than X number of photos. Here are all your properties that have had less than five showings." This is such simple stuff and we looked at it and we're like, "This is a no-brainer but this helps a company."  Now, we get reviews. We get thank you emails. Asif was just showing me a thank you email yesterday. He was like, "This is a customer saying that this has made their life easy because the leasing manager in the office says, “Now I don't have to go in and look for the needle in the haystack. You guys are making the needle have a halo all around it."  Jason: Yeah. It's helping them see gaps. It's helping them see blind spots in these properties that they're leasing because the more properties you have, the more common those blind spots and leaks probably occur. "Oh, no. We didn't get enough photos on this one." "These small handful of properties are not renting very quickly over in this market." These challenges. It helps you make different business decisions. You may decide not to take on properties in a certain geographic area. They're just not leasing or whatever. Zee: Actionable insight is very important. It helps you run your business the correct way. When we're looking at something like the number of leads, yeah the number of leads are great. On average, our customers receive around 2700 leads on a monthly basis. It just might be something that you know and it's very common, but many small customers don't know this. They don't know how many leads they receive on it together because they contact the 15 leads they receive during the day. But how about the leads that came in on the weekends? How about the leads that came in via voicemail? Or missed calls? 2700 leads is a lot of leads. The problem is that even though you're getting 2700 leads, where's the actionable insight? How do I know which property is not getting the leads? I don't need to work on all the properties and getting a lot of leads. I want to know which property I should be focusing on. That's where ShowingHero comes in.  We have a tenant portal which makes a very big difference because like Asif and you were both talking about, you want a rich experience for the customer. We want to go get prospects to move through the lead pipeline faster and make it easy for them to do this. At the same time, you don't want to have too much work for your leasing staff, calling, making phone calls, asking. We have the prospect scheduling your showing, going and seeing the property within an hour of scheduling the showing, of submitting a lead on Zillow. That's how quick our turnaround can be. They can just go to the property, validate themselves, securely validate themselves. They're not sending a picture of themselves. They're going through a validation process. This is something that our customers find very important. They're like, "Listen. I don't want to just send pictures. I don't want to receive pictures. How do I know whose picture I received? How is that going to help me?" That's one more step. For us, what we're doing is we're going through the validation process. The prospect goes to see the property and once they're done with the showing we're going through more validation to go and say, "Did the person leave?" If everything is working, you're good. If the person doesn't confirm that they have left the property, we inform someone. The most important thing for a large company is to provide actionable data, actionable insight, so that people can move when they need to move. Otherwise, they can focus on other things. That's something that you know helps our clients and is our mantra for us.  Jason: Instead of people having to dig and react—they're always having to go to the data and find, they have to question, ask things, and figure it out, then they're gonna react to these things—your tool will say, “This needs to be dealt with. Somebody checked in this property. They never checked out somebody should go figure this out.” It's letting them know actionable things that they need to be doing instead of expecting the leasing manager to just dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. Asif: Right. There is data that you can pull and then there's data that's being pushed out. To be honest, we're continuously working on that. It's an ongoing journey for us in being able to understand which data is important, when should it be sent out, how much is too much data, and which one is the most valuable. As Zee mentioned, 2,700 leads means nothing unless you put it into context. How many properties? Where are these leads coming from? How many are qualified? How many are actually showing up to the property? How many are following through? What are my percentage over application over leads that came in? Is it coming from Zillow? Is it coming from voicemail? Is it coming through another third-party site? Data without context doesn't help. That's what Zee was trying to infer to is providing those actionable items in a context that's valuable to the end-user. Jason: Perfect. Maybe we should start wrapping this up. Are there any features and frequently asked questions that clients ask that you want to showcase here while we have you about ShowingHero? Asif: One of the things I do want to mention is that we have a special promotion going on where you can test out the software. I left to look at the marketing team a bit and there's like three or five active listings.  Probably, property management companies that are thinking, "I might not be able to do this," or "I'm not sure this is what it is." I understand that a switch or trying something new is difficult. I understand that there are a hundred questions that you have until we've made it where our first package is entirely free, where you get to test out the software, all of its features, and be able to see that power in being able to make sure that it's the right fit for you. That's one of the things that we pride ourselves and saying, "We're going to make sure that ShowingHero works for you. If not, we'll try to make sure that we can try to get it there and figure out a solution." There is always a solution to be had. Let's have that conversation to figure it out. That's one thing I wanted your listeners to know that there is a free understanding of that which is low risk for them. Also, keep in touch with ShowingHero. We're going to be launching some really, really, cool features and integrations, looking at some technology in the AI and the voice space, looking at more creative self solutions that are out there, and all of this should hopefully come to us by the end of this, or Q4, or early Q1 next year. We're continuously trying to grow and listen to the market, and hopefully, we'll be able to respond with some really great integrations. Jason: It sounds really cool. Someday we'll have to have you come back and [...] what some of these things are.  Zee: We have some cool announcements coming up. I'm gonna add one thing to what Asif was saying. A big thing our customers are saying, customers who have signed up with us around 90 days in, we try to get some feedback and say, "How are things going? What's going on?" One thing that we're hearing from a lot of our customers is that we wish we had pulled the trigger a little earlier and that's why Asif came up with this idea of saying, "Listen. Let's make it a little easier. Let's make it a no-brainer for them." If a customer is having a hard time making a decision because they don't know the value right away, let them try it. That's where our free tier is. We're 100% okay with, "Hey, come on in." I don't mean to brag, Jason, but I will tell you that as the new shiny product—I say this is pride, I'm going to put up the humble brags hashtag, but I will say this—one thing we're seeing is that when we're bringing these shiny objects out, setting a little bit of a trend in the industry where some of the other people you've mentioned are also adding those, we're really proud of the fact that competition is making the current product base. I have to put my property management hat on every once in a while and I have to say, "Just when a new product comes around, that means my other offerings become better because they need to compete." I'll give you a very, very simple example, very, very simple stuff. Our pricing model is being copied across many. I don't want to say copied, but I want to say that I feel that people are noticing that property managers respond to our pricing model. Maybe we should offer a similar pricing model. We have our property pages. We're showing extra data that may not be very easy to pull but we're pulling in the walk score, the bike score, the neighborhood score, neighborhood schools. This is all important information to prospects. Maybe it's not very easy to pull but we're doing it because we feel it's important.  Now, I have noticed that others are also trying to pull a little more information. Maybe not getting as much information as we provide, but it's cool and I like the fact that maybe we're making a little bit of an impact to the industry. Jason: Perfect. It is fun and it's nice to be able to see the impact. At DoorGrow, I feel like we get to have an impact. I get to have it through the podcast, I get to have it indirectly through my clients, and I can see the industry changing in ways that I didn't expect, but it was our goal. I didn't expect it to happen this soon. The momentum is building and it's really exciting to see your vision come to life. I'll take a tiny bit of credit to that and you can, too, so humble brag for both of us. Zee: Jason, I'll say this. One of your customers had come by us on in Nashville. They were just crazy about you. They're crazy about [...]. I just have to put this out there that you guys are providing information and help that is very beneficial. I would tell you guys, everyone listening is probably already a customer of yours, but when they're not, they should start talking to you very soon. Jason: I appreciate that a lot. We have thousands of listeners. I doubt that they're all customers. We have hundreds of customers but 1000. If you're listening, listen to Zee and come talk to me. Zee: Talk to Jason. Jason: I love it. Alright. I appreciate you plugging my business and coming on the show. Anyway, it sounds really cool you guys are doing. I resonate with your your ideology and your philosophy behind what you're doing. I'm excited to hear feedback from some of my customers and listeners on your tool. You people can check it out for free, which is bold of you guys. If somebody has something they can say to their leasing coordinator or to themselves, they can say, "Let's just try out one or two doors. Let’s try a handful of properties on this. Let's just see how it differs. Let's see how it works." That's where maybe you'll start to see some brilliance and maybe get really excited about working with ShowingHero. I look forward to hearing some feedback. Those of you who are you listening, make sure you're inside the DoorGrow Club Facebook group, our community for the podcast. You get to by going to doorgrowclub.com. People post really real and raw feedback in there about different services and tools. I'd love to hear it. Cool. I appreciate you guys coming on the show. How can people get in touch with ShowingHero and try this out? Asif: We have a demo page that you can just request a demo out there and then I can share my information to you as well. They can get in touch with me directly in that way through our contact page. What I'm showing here, there's a couple of ways that you can get in touch with us. You can get through our chat box, emailing us, just checking out our website. There's a couple of mediums that you can look at. Jason: And the website is showinghero.com? Asif: Yup. Jason: All right, real simple. Everybody check out showinghero.com. Asif and Zee, I appreciate you guys coming on the DoorGrow Show and contributing to our property management community. Zee: Thank you for having us. Asif: Thanks for the chat, appreciate it. Jason: All right, we'll let you guys go.  There you go. Check out showinghero.com. If you guys are interested in growing your business, if you feel like you are doing it all on your own as an entrepreneur, you feel like you don't have support, you feel like nobody's in your corner, who's in your corner? Sometimes it's not even our spouse. Who's in your corner? Who do you feel is challenging you and helping you level up in what you're doing? If you feel like you want some support like that, you want to be part of something, you are aligned with our vision of changing and transforming this industry, then connect with DoorGrow. Reach out. We would love to help you see some of the blind spots that may exist in your sales pipeline. Our vision and purpose at DoorGrow, what we really do is we help align your business towards warm lead generation. We help align your business towards greater trust by shoring up the trust leaks that exist in your front end of your business, the sales pipeline. Because trust is what closes deals. Trust is what gets you contracts. People aren't looking to buy property management. What they buy is safety and certainty. What they're buying is trust. We can help you showcase trust throughout your sales pipeline and we can eliminate the leaks that scare them off, or that create a lack of trust, or create less trust than maybe one of your competitors, then we can facilitate you growing and adding more doors without even changing your lead sources a lot of times.  Reach out to us. We would love to see if we could help you out show you some of the leaks that may exist in your business. If you reach out, we'll send you access to a 1 hour and 45 minute training called DoorGrow Secrets that will help you see the gaps and the problems that exist in your business. You can to that by going to doorgrow.com/opt-in. That will take you to a page, it gives you a bunch of case studies, testimonials, and it will allow you to get access to that training. Maybe you'll be a client of ours if you get really excited about what we have to offer.  Hopefully we'll be talking soon. Until next time, everybody. To our mutual growth. Bye, everyone. You just listened to the DoorGrow Show. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet, in the DoorGrow Club. Join your fellow DoorGrow hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead, content, social, direct mail, and they still struggle to grow. At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today’s episode on our blog at doorgrow.com. To get notified of future events and news, subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow hacking your business and your life.

Property management businesses always want and need products and services to be profitable and grow doors. That’s why many of them choose the user-friendly residential rental property management software for single-family properties called, Propertyware. Today, I am talking to Inaas Arabi, Vice President (VP) of Single Family Rental and General Manager (GM) of Propertyware. He understands the importance of developing new and innovative ways to help property managers attain profitability and growth. You’ll Learn... [04:37] Past and Present Perception of Propertyware: Before becoming GM, Inaas was a customer because of ability to customize system based on business models. [06:38] Who uses Propertyware? Typically, larger companies wanting to scale and grow. [07:45] Room to Grow: Never buy a solution for where your business is today; always buy a solution for where you want it to be. [09:50] Directions for Growth:  Add units by differentiating services via customization and special offers. Increase revenue per door by offering add-on products and services.  Reduce expenses via automation for manual and repetitive tasks.  [20:33] Propertyware stands behind its platform; serves as business advisor, not only technology provider, to solve pain points. [23:54] Facilitating Future Integrations: Freedom to connect with third-party tools, vendors, and services. [27:40] API Connections and Challenges: Propertyware provides two-way data exchange that’s maintained in one system. [34:50] Status of Property Management Industry: Advocate, educate, and train others on legislation and awareness to protect tenants and landlords. [45:38] Should you switch software? Break up dysfunctional system to experience freedom by having good data, building relationships, and improving processes. Tweetables Never buy software for where you’re at today; always buy software for where you want to be. Pick property management software that you can live with for the long-term to grow. Automate mundane tasks performed by property managers via software. Kiss of death is double entry and manual input. Resources Inaas Arabi on LinkedIn Propertyware HubSpot Zapier Tenant Turner Property Meld Renter, Inc. Rent Manager ShowMojo Rently Rentec AppFolio Buildium DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrow Website Score Quiz Transcript Jason: Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it, you think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change the perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let's get into the show. Today's guest, I'm hanging out with, Inaas Arabi. Inaas: Yes. Jason: Did I say it right? Inaas: Yes, you sure did. Thank you. Jason: All right. Inaas, I'm excited to have you on the show. We have not yet had Propertyware on the show and Inaas is from Propertyware. Inaas: Yes I am. Jason: Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into the space of property manager first and then let's get into maybe Propertyware a bit and talk about growth. Inaas: Awesome. I do want to first of all say that I'm a door hacker as well, so thank you for having me on, I'm excited. I came in mostly from the operational background. I started a company from scratch, operated and built it a little bit to over 1700 doors and then I sold it to a national player, then I went to work for the second largest owner and operator in the single family industry, American Homes for Rent. I worked for them for a while. I was their Midwest regional director of ops. We've done a lot of great things there. We took the company public. I left that and went to work for a company called the Altisource, which deals with banks and REITs and does a very similar thing to third party property management or property managers but on a different scale mostly for the banks and the financial industry. Operated a very large portfolio over 35 states and after that I got recruited by RealPage to be able to become the single family vice-president for them as well as general manager for Propertyware. Now, the reason why I think Propertyware would be a great choice for somebody like me and for a lot of operators is because you're able to take somebody like me with my experience and put him into the seats where we can make decisions that would actually help the property managers with their day-to-day lives. That's the difference that we're trying to go after compared to some of the other systems, is that we really want to build things that would be usable and would make an impact for people's businesses. I know we are going to talk about growth here in a little bit, but that is really the approach that we're going with Propertyware since I came in. We are building enhancements that allows people to grow in multiple different ways. They grow by adding units, which is what you talked about as far as being a door hacker. Number two, you grow by increasing your revenue by making more money per door. Then number three, you also went to grow financially by reducing expenses while keeping everything the same, so that would allow you to be able to have a much better financials or higher NOI’s for your property, since you're an owner or operator. That's really the goal. That's the approach that we're taking upon with Propertyware since I've started to them. I started Propertyware late January of this year. Jason: Okay. This is kind of new for you, the Propertyware thing. Inaas: Yes, it is. I mean, you can say it's new. I've been there since January so depending on how you take a look at it. Jason: You're halfway through… Inaas: Yeah, you're right. I'm definitely halfway through a year, yes, but I'm not new… Jason: You're 0.5 years at Propertyware right now. Inaas: Yes, it is. Jason: I mean that's two quarters. That's enough time to… Inaas: Make a change, yes. Jason: Make some changes. So, what was your perception of Propertyware before you came in versus now? Inaas: I was a customer of Propertyware when I was working with Altisource. We ran a set of very complicated and very large portfolio, a little over 10,000 units over 35 states, and we did it through Propertyware. One thing that I always appreciated about Propertyware was the ability to customize and the ability to be able to build unique or redo the system around your uniqueness as a business model. Now, I think that also causes people to be more afraid of the technology because there is not a very easy systematic streamlined way of doing things on Propertyware. You have multiple ways of doing things. It's built as such to be able to allow people the ability to customize based on the business model. Having that I've been working for Propertyware, before I found it to be a very interesting point as a customer, it was very good for me, but when I moved in to being in the seat of making changes, I didn't realize that this is an intentional thing that we're doing where we are able to keep the business and keep the platform customizable by the business model. Now, I would also say that that will make some people be very hesitant into looking into Propertyware because they're afraid of how customizable the system could be. That could also take you into a lot of what I would call rabbit holes, meaning, if you've got 20 ways to be able to do something, sometimes you give way too many options for some people that would allow you to take out the simplicity aspect of it or the easiness aspect of it. Overall, really what I appreciate the most as customization, if I want to have to sum it up down to one thing. Jason: The perception that I've always had about Propertyware is I've noticed that a lot of the larger companies, the companies that really are folks on scale, that they tend to use Propertyware. Propertyware seems to be very scalable. It seems much more of an enterprise solution than a lot of the other property management software out there. That's kind of the perception that I've noticed. I have lots of clients that have used Propertyware. I noticed usually the guys with thousands of doors are using Propertyware. Inaas: We do have people from different levels of where they're at. Now, to your point, sometimes it's very difficult and I struggle with this myself as well, it's really very difficult to be able to equate the number of units for your business to how complicated of a process you’re running. We come across some people that they maybe only running 200 units, but they have some of the most complex processes that I've seen and the opposite is very true. It's really more about how customizable are you ready to look in to be able to build for your business. The one thing that I would always say, you never buy software for where you at today, you should always be buying software to where you want to be. It's almost like when you're talking to trainers that they always say, “You don't want to be the guy or the person who's playing today. You really want to be playing to what you want yourself to look like after you win or at the winning table,” and that's really where it comes in to be. If you're thinking you want to grow and you want to have a system that grows with you, scales with you, that allows you to be able to do different things in many different ways, Propertyware certainly will be it. Now, I would also say, you do have to be willing to take on this opportunity to be able to build things that will be customizable for you, so you can get the best advantage. Jason: This is the feedback that I've noticed about Propertyware. What he says is absolutely true. If you're going to pick a property management software solution or any solution for your business, you want to pick a solution that is going to give you room to grow into for whatever size you imagine because it's not easy to switch property management software. Anybody that's done it that switched from one to the other because they thought the grass would be greener on the other side, usually regrets it and it's not been so comfortable. I agree, pick a software that you feel like you can live with in the long term. Inaas: What you're saying is absolutely true. It’s really about jumping from one system to the next is not an easy task. I do recognize that you do have to put in a lot of effort into that, but you do need to find something that would scale with you for the long term, not for where you are today. That's the beauty about finding that system and being able to grow with it as you go. We've seen a lot of great companies have grown with us over the years and have done wonderful things as far as that goes. Jason:: Let's get into growth. The topic is growth via Propertyware. How does Propertyware help somebody grow or what are we chatting about here? Inaas: Like I said, the approach for us since I've got into Propertyware is the fact that we're building enhancements that would allow people to grow in all of those three directions. I'm going to give you specific examples because I know you like that. Number one. Growth, in my opinion, is adding units. How do you add units? You help PMCs differentiate their services and do things where they can go out there and put themselves in front of the right people that they're looking for their services. As an example, I know you guys offer wonderful websites offering, which is great. One way that we can help is we do provide our clients what we call a listing widget that they can plug in anywhere on the website. This way, you as a website provider don't have to build it for them. It defeats all the information directly from the Propertyware property management software. All of the vacancies, the rent price, the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, pictures and all that are all within that listing widget. Then we make it so customizable to the point where people are able to do some awesome things with it. An awesome thing would be, for example, you can add on banners at their specific workflow. For example, you can put in a banner that says, “Only make that banner available over the weekend to make a weekend offer,” so you can say, “Come take a look at my house that I have for rent and you're going to get $100 off if you look at it between Friday and Sunday,” or “If you look at it between the 1st and the 15th.” You can do things like, “We're looking for awesome owners like yourselves. Click on this link to be able to see our offering.” You could do things like the workflow, like once a property has an approved applicant for it, then you would automatically take it off the listing so this way you don't have to do anything with that manually. You could also do it where you can add a lot of information in the description for that property and one thing I teach people to do and I'm sure you’d like that, Jason, is the fact that for every listing that you put in out there for rent at the bottom of the description for that listing, you should take a couple of lines and you should type in information about your services with the link to the website that will take people on to a full offering of those services. Because we know when people go out to look for properties, rental properties on the market, majority of them will be renters, but some are not necessarily renters. Some of them might be owners that they're looking to comp out their property to figure out what the other properties in the area are renting for or they might be asset managers that [...] ability to put yourself in front of those guys while they're searching for properties. It's very unique. It doesn't cost you any extra. It's part of the listing widget that allows you to plug and play and do it as you go. This is one example of an enhancement that does help for the unit growth. There is plenty more, I don't think I have enough time to be able to share all of them because I want to talk about other items that are important. The second element we talked about, which is adding revenue or increasing your revenue, making it where instead of making $1000 per door, you go up to $1500 per door, you go up to $2000, $3000, whatever you feel like it's the right level that you want to go to. How do we do that? We do that by offering ancillary products that could make sense for the property managers but they're also integrated within the system so this way, they don't have to do anything offsite the system. The beauty about that is you get the beauty of getting something that is offered, make some money on it without adding too much expenses on your end from an HR or an employee perspective. Some examples with that would be asset protection or our renter's insurance. I know some other software do offer that. The reason why I mentioned it is because between Propertyware and some of the other systems is the fact that we really want to make sure that it’s fully integrated within our system. The tenant will have a very seamless experience when they're selecting the process or selecting the product and they were going through it, and then also the PMC will have a very seamless experience. Last but not the least, if there is an owner involved, that owner will also have a very seamless experience. As an example of the asset protection, it's a checkbox and then you can select whether it's paid for by the owner or paid for by the tenant. You can put in whatever extra fee that you would want to add on as a PMC as your profit margin, and then you can apply either to a tenant ledger or to an owner ledger depending on who's paying for it, and you do all of that very seamlessly with a couple of clicks. If you do enough of those, you start seeing a little bit of an increase of revenue in per door that you're having. Some of the other products that were also migrating or integrating within our system would be things like utility management which is I think we're one of the only system that I know of that offer something like that. Utility management in single family has not been a revenue center for a long time, but I think that is changing with all of the legalities where it's forcing either the owner or the property management company to keep a lot of utilities in their names so you don't have any off and on for all the tenants when they leave or when you have a new tenant moving in. If you are a PMC and you're going to have to manage that for the owner, we believe you do it with ease, but you should charge a fee to be able to do that and you can apply for that again either on the tenant ledger or on the owner ledger—depending on who's paying for it—and you make a little bit of money on it. That's the examples of how do we help increase revenue for our PMCs. The last type of growth that I want to talk about which is very near and dear to my heart is the profit growth by reducing your expenses. In my opinion, you reduce your expenses by doing automation. Now automation, certainly I'm not suggesting that you exchange relationships or conversations with owners and tenants with technology, but what you do, if you take a look at a lot of repetitive elements that we do every day in property management, you should automate those or you should look into making them systematic, so this way you're not spending a lot of time doing what [...] specific example here. Since I came in to Propertyware, we sat down and we looked at all the processes that our PMCs go through. From renewals, to leasing, to signing of a lease, to maintenance, to all of the big processes. Our goal was to be able to build or educate our PMCs on the best automated way to be able to do a process from A-Z, for the best results, for the cheapest cost as far as HR, and for the highest profit margin. I can tell you, we've gotten rave reviews from our clients when they've seen what we've put together. We have what we call road shows which is more of events that we put out in some certain cities in the United States and we invite our clients and prospects to come out to see us and see what we have going and what we're working on. We share with them for example the renewal process that we build together for them. Now, the beauty about why this is important, why I talk about it, we actually talk about both sides of the spectrum here. We talk about the setup, how you can setup Propertyware for full automation, as well as the actual process of how you run it from a systematic perspective and from an operational perspective. By the time you leave, if you have been a little bit hesitant about how do I work Propertyware to my advantage, you already know how you set it up, and you already know how to work the process itself. We've had customers where they came back and they reported that their renewal rate was at 60%-70%, now they are close to 80%. As a matter of fact, I was talking to a client a little bit earlier today and they quoted 79.83% renewal rate from, I think it was close to 71% or 72%. That's a huge movement. Now, why that's important for PMCs, that's a differentiator for you as well as a service. When you go talk to owners and you say, “I am able to get 80% of people to renew, that speaks volumes to the owners and allows them to see the benefit of working with you compared to working with somebody else who does not have a high renewal rate. Did I explain it to you well as far as all the different types of growth and how we calculate what kind of enhancements we use for each one of them? Jason: Yeah, absolutely. All of these things make sense and I love the idea that you're taking a look at the challenges that the property managers are facing internally when it comes to their operations to facilitate that with the software, to make that faster, to make that more simple versus all the manual stuff. Property managers do a lot of manual stuff. Inaas: They sure do. Jason: The more that you can pull into that software, the better. A lot of people a lot of times, they're turning to lots of different systems to try and systemize their business outside of their accounting solution and that can get cumbersome at times. Inaas: Yeah and the renewal process that we put together for full automation, we've got a little over 20 contact steps, where if you're doing this manually, you would need about 20, a little bit over 20 steps to be able to go through the entire process. We're talking steps from talking to the tenants and making sure that they want to renew, then again talking to the owner is making sure you agree on pricing, making sure you come back and you talk to the tenant and you send them a lease and you follow up on the lease and you do all of that back and forth. We changed that down to the point where we're able to do the entire thing with about six or seven touches. Six to seven touches in my opinion compared to over 20, does saves you so much time and so much effort that allows you to really concentrate on building the relationship instead of losing the time doing mundane task that you should be automating. In my opinion, that's how you grow, you grow by taking all of those mundane tasks, automate them, take those out of your way, and then concentrate on building the relationship, whether it's with the owners or with tenants themselves. Jason: Yeah, makes sense. All right, cool. Is there anything else that you want people to know about Propertyware while I've got you here? Inaas: Absolutely. There is a lot of things that I want to people to know about Propertyware but few things come to mind right off the bat. One, that we do stand behind all of our clients and we do appreciate the relationships that we have with them. Also, if you can imagine, we're taking a different approach by becoming more of our business advisors to our PMCs, not just a technology provider. A lot of times, you come across a lot of great technologies, but if you don't know how to take that technology and apply it into your day-to-day operations, that technology really failed because it's not really allowing you to get what you’d want out of it. Think about text messaging when it came out, for example. If people didn't try it, didn’t perfected it, didn’t figure out what to do with it, we wouldn't have had such a great success with it today. The same effort would be with our platform. We wanted to educate people. We want to make a business partnership with them, to be able to tell him how to do it, what do they do with it, and how they can use it to be able to get best results from all the aspects that we talked about. That's one. Number two, I also want them to know that we are property managers, building stuff for property managers. We’re not technologists, we're just building things in a vacuum, and really building it from the perspective of we know where their pain points are, we've been through it, whether it's myself or somebody on my staff, we know what your folks, the people that’s hearing us today are going through and because of that, my goal is to be able to build things to solve those issues for them, to solve those pain points. Now, sometimes we have to take them in steps, but at the end of the day we are solving those pain points. For example, we rolled out our text messaging feature earlier this year and for fairness sake it was what I would call the basic features of being able to communicate back and forth via text messaging. In order for us to take that to the next level, we're also working on enhancements now that would allow us to do the multi-level, the multimedia, as well as the group texting, and things like categorize station for all of the text. This way, our PMCs could take a text and apply it toward somebody specific, whether it's an owner or tenant. They can also do group texting. They can also do multimedia, so they can send a picture, send a file, and do all of that all within one centralized communication command, if you call it that, within the system, so it's not anywhere off the system. Then, last but not least, I think we’ve talked very greatly about growth, but what I really want people to know, your listeners, is that if you're looking for a scalable system that has a lot of potential for you, that would allow you to be able to do a lot of customization for your business based on your business needs, then you should look into Propertyware and you should evaluate it as an opportunity as an option for you. Now, it may fit then that's fantastic, it may not and that's okay, but at the end of the day you should really evaluate it to figure out if it's a good fit for you or not. Jason: You're talking about what you guys are doing internally. One of the big questions I know a lot of my clients have, a lot of listeners have that's really hot on the tip of the tongue of most property managers nowadays is integrations. That’s freedom to connect with third party tools, vendors, different services. Maybe you can touch on an API, what you guys have maybe going on there, and how you guys are kind of facilitating integrations with third parties. Inaas: Yeah. That's such a fantastic point, I'm so glad that you actually brought that up. Propertyware’s current approach is that we are offering a two-way data exchange [...] an API that allows people to be able to connect to their property management software. They can connect almost anything and everything that they would like to do. In my view, we want to provide people the opportunities to make a choice or pick the right option that fits for their business model. There is a lot of great things that we offer. If it fits your business model, if it fits your needs fantastic, use it. If you have something else that you'd like to use, connect it to property management software so you don't have to double entry anything. To me, the kiss of death is double entry and the kiss of death is any manual input that you put into either your staff or yourself, because somebody's going to make a mistake with that manual entry and somebody's going to cause you havoc later, even if it's not happening today. That's as far as the API. Now, I know on other webcast, Jason, you did ask about things like I think the place was, remind me again, was HubSpot or something like that, where you're able to connect Propertyware to everything else that it's out there as far as softwares… Jason: That was Zapier. Inaas: …yes, Zapier, thank you. I appreciate that. We actually looked into that and we're talking to them now about getting our platform on their site to be able to have full integrations with everything that they've done. You could do this yourself today, meaning if you have access to the API, you can take API, you can plug it into whatever other software that you'd want to plug it into, whether it’s CRM, whether it's an inspection product, whether it's a [...] product, typically anything and everything that has got API, you can connect it to do. Jason: If you're nerdy enough or you pay enough money to get somebody nerdy enough to do it. Inaas: True. I mean, you do have to have a developer to be able to take a look at it. This is not something that's geared toward a property manager to be doing it themselves, that's for sure. Jason: That’s why there's Zapier. The Zapier is very cool because it allows a somewhat normal person—you have to be a little bit nerdy, let's be honest—to do it without having to know code. You can create connections between tools and systems, so if you guys are working on that, I'll be really excited to hear when you guys have that ready. Inaas: Yeah, absolutely. You're definitely correct, it does need a little bit of development resources to be able to do the API, that's for sure, but remember though, Jason, once you do it once, you've got it, meaning you don’t have… Jason: You don’t have to do it over again. Inaas: Exactly. You don't have to go do connection every day, meaning if you've got five products that you're working on plus your property management software, you connect them all at once and you're done. You may have to do maintenance every once in awhile like if something is changed on your property management software or if you change your business model, if you do different things, you make maintenance changes, but it's not as big of a change once you've done it once. It's really more of an initial step and once you go through that initial step, you're good to go. However, I would also say, we're also one of the very few systems that offer two-way data exchange. Some other systems would offer data out and they call that API, but that's really not an API. An API should be a two-way data exchange, where you can take data out of your system and you can put data back into your system. If you can't do that, you can't really call it API but that's again [...] view at this point. I have seen some of our customers do some awesome things with the API connections. Those API's might have where they take information out of Propertyware, they go do something else with it and then go back and feed it back into Propertyware to be able to have one system through which is Propertyware for them. At the end of the day, you would want to connect everything you're working on with your property management software, so you're not having to enter anything manually. Jason: One of the challenges with API's is that you've got two pieces a software there communicating and if either one of them makes changes it can break that connection like something happens, that's what's I think is really important for the different vendors and property management software to create relationships where somebody's maintaining this. For example, if Tenant Turner was working with Propertyware or if Property Meld was working the Propertyware, if one of these vendors a lot of people are really enjoying, if they're helping to maintain that connection, then the business owner doesn't have to keep that working or make sure that it’s working. Inaas: It’s also fair and I'm again [...] and we have a list of companies that we’re actually working with to be able to have direct integrations with, you've mentioned Property Meld for example, that's one of our success stories with the API. We have a full integration with them, they'll tell you the same thing as well. The beauty about that is somebody could do the maintenance within Property Meld and then they can make the payment out of their Propertyware system with ease without any complications. It also allows you to do back and forth between the two systems, so if you have a work order that came in from a tenant, you can feed into Property Meld and vice versa as well. Having that we have the API, that's what allowed us to be able to do that. There is a list of companies that we're going through to be able to do direct integration with. I think RentersInc is one of the people here, they're putting in chats. We've been working with them on a direct integration of the API. I think they're almost there, they're about 95% there to it. To me, it's all about providing opportunities for our PMCs to be able to take advantage of what the technology could do for them. That's what we're embarking upon. That's what we are going to do. And if you stay tuned, you’re going to get a lot of great news about us connected with a lot of different vendors that does different things for our PMCs. The idea is, again to your point, we maintain the connection, so the PMC doesn't have to. If they wanted to go elsewhere like for example somebody wants to go to a different maintenance provider Property Meld is not what they want to use, they can still use the API to be able to make the exact same connection the Property Meld is made with Propertyware, if they have an access to the API. Jason: Yeah, makes sense. I love the idea of direct integrations. I love the idea of having an open API. I love the idea of you helping them to systemize your business internally, leveraging your software. These are all powerful tools for them. One of the main things you have mentioned at the beginning, is to lower expenses and all of these things is going to lower the level of communication, which lessens the amount of time in man-hours and manual stuff that has to happen. That's the biggest expense in property management is staff, it's people, it's those resources and that allows them greater leverage so that they can get more done without having to throw money at bodies constantly in order to get everything done. Property management is not a cheap business to run for a lot of people, so margins matter quite a bit. Inaas: It was quite interesting to me once I came on to work for Propertyware because I went out and talked to a lot of clients and again I'm an operator, so I understand what people are going through and I remember when I ran my own company, it was really more throwing bodies at it all the time. The difference though in today's world that is very different than when I ran my own company, is today you have options for technologies that could fulfill those tasks that people were doing for you before. Back when I ran my own company, those options were not even available. For example, if you recall back in the day when we were doing inspections on pen and paper or via pen and paper, everybody would take a piece of paper and a list of items or questions and you just fill amount while you're going through the property doing inspection. Today, you do most of your inspections via mobile technology on mobile devices and with mobile templates. The beauty about that is that saved you the ability or the need to have someone that is actually sitting down and writing down information on a piece of paper and they're transcribing them back into your property management software. If you have the integration correctly, you go from mobile inspection tool to the inspection report directly into your property management. We're working on something that we're just actually going to roll out here tomorrow, which is enhancements for our evaluation module. It allows people to be able to do multiple inspections and then match them column by column for every time you've done inspection. Think of when you go out and you do a move in inspection, you do a midyear inspection, you do a move out inspection, and then you're seeing all of those inspections in front of you matched line item by line item, so you know what the kitchen looked like when you did the move-in, you know what the kitchen looks like when you did a midyear inspection and you absolutely you know what the kitchen looks like when somebody moved out If you can show some damages that the tenant have caused that home, there is never a question anymore about who caused it because you have such an access to data and information that is beyond anyone's ability to be able to dispute it in court. Again, that's the beauty about the technology and the use of technology in today's market compared to what was before. Jason: Yeah. Technology certainly is changing quite a bit. I think here in the US, we’re in the forefront of what's happening technologically in property management, even if we are maybe behind other countries in terms of how well-developed or how familiar people are with property management. It's exciting to see what you guys are doing. Before we wrap this up is there anything else anybody should know about Propertyware and how can they get in touch with you guys? Inaas: I appreciate that. What I would like to do though is I do want to talk a little bit about the industry in general because I want to take this platform as a way for us to be able to educate and train. I do believe that our industry and to your point earlier some other countries have this property management business defined a little bit better and it's a little bit more integrated within day in and day out lives of people, so it's looked at a very different. Jason: There's probably two things, maybe just more legislation surrounding it and maybe just more awareness in those markets. Inaas: Awareness is really a good word. Thank you. The reason why I mentioned that is I truly believe that our industry has been under attack this year and is probably going to be continuing on ongoing under attack from almost everywhere. Whether it states that they're changing the rules, whether it's businesses that they're changing the rules, whether it's somebody else is changing the rules. The problem with it is I think we're so defragmented to the point that we lost the ability to stand up for ourselves as an industry. [...] I can give you of states changing the rules on the fly and make it miserable for our PMCs to be able to operate. Not to single them out, but I'm going to make an example of the State of New York. They just rolled out a brand new law about that the tenant protection law, that's what they call it. The effect of those things that they put into the… Jason: Protecting the tenants from the big bad evil landlord. Inaas: Yes, exactly. Part of it, for example, you can't charge more than $20 for application fee. You can't even call it an application fee, you have to call it something else. If the customer or if the tenant brings you a copy of an old credit report, you typically have to accept it and not charge him anything if you're going to go screen them through your ways. You can imagine the complexity that this is putting on our PMCs in the State of New York and they're not the only state. I know some other states and they're changing things, changing rules. The reason why I say all of this is I do have an ask for all of us as property managers and the ask is, let's really get together. Let's support the organizations that support us. I don’t want to make this a pitch for any specific organizations that are very well known in our industry, that are usually a couple, two or three, but let's support them to be able to have a voice, so they can stand on our behalf against some of these things that are happening to our industry. Let's really truly do a good job making sure that we're providing the utmost best customer experience, the best customer service that we can provide, because that is the only savior for us to where the public is going to realize that we have value and what we do has value and they're going to continue on working with us and our business is going to continue to grow. That's as far as the industry. I really wanted to make sure that I put that plug in there. You asked me about Propertyware, I think we've talked… Jason: To touch on that I want to agree with you on that. Property management is really in its infancy I think here in the US in terms of awareness and perception. Every property management business owner is either an advocate for the industry or they're hurting the industry. We all need to be advocates for the industry and we also need to educate. We need to educate because I think if a lot of these laws wouldn’t exist or they would be very different if property managers had input, because they know what works in the real world. They know what needs to happen. They do want to protect the interests of the tenant and the owner. When things get skewed, when the pendulum swings all the way away from the owner’s interests or the landlord’s interest just towards what serves the needs and interests of the tenants, eventually it's not really going to end up serving the needs of the tenants. It creates some sort of imbalance that is going to hurt tenants in the long run. That's generally just always going to be true when something isn't right, or isn't fair, or isn’t just. Inaas: I totally agree 100% and I think you hit the nail on its head with the education. I do also feel that we should educate everybody that we come across with. Whether it's our tenants, whether it's our owners, whether it's somebody else that we're dealing with our vendors. One thing that I was very advocate for when I ran either of my company or other companies, is the fact that you have to have an onboarding experience for everybody you’re dealing with. An onboarding experience with your tenant, an onboarding experience with your owner, an onboarding experience for your vendor. And guess what? Also an onboarding experience for the HOAs that you're dealing with, an onboarding experience for the politicians that are responsible for your area as well because if you don't educate all of those people on what we and how we do it well, there is also not going to be something you're going to like. To your point, Jason, I think if the property managers were involved in some of these laws that they were written, I'm sure they would have been written differently. It's not because we don't want to protect the public. We actually have the utmost respect for the public, but we know what works, and we know what works well. If the idea is to make sure that a tenant has the opportunity to not being overly charged for a particular application fee or something like that, you could have written that in as a rule but a little bit differently than just making it where it’s mandated, it's one fee, and you're minimizing the ability for somebody to be able to do the right screening for their tenant and putting the right people in place. Jason: Even in contracts and everything else, we need a little bit of educated language to explain the why behind things. Inaas: Yes, absolutely, 100%. Jason: It’s like that spoonful of sugar that Mary Poppins says makes the medicine go down. There needs to be a little bit of education added to some of the stuff rather than just throwing out, “This is how we're going to do it,” and you have to just take it. Inaas: Agreed. Now, you did ask me about property. I do want to say a couple things here. It is a system that I'd like people to take a look into as an opportunity for them to understand what the system could do for them, what are we doing as far as these processes, these automations, the opportunities for the two-way API for them to be able to connect their system to everything else that they're working on. We understand that people have to have options and we're supporting that and we’re going to go with it. I just want people to take a look at what we've got to offer and if it's fitting to what they need and what their business model is, fantastic. We can work together. If it's not, it's no big deal. We will continue on staying part of the same industry and we’ll support each other, but I do feel that people are missing quite a lot by not checking out what the opportunities look like and what the options are with Propertyware. As far as connecting with us what I would recommend, if people go on to our website Propertyware.com, we've just finalized a new experience for what I'm going to call here the free trial where you can go in, login, take a look at a little bit of the system, figure out what's going on. You're certainly not going to be able to do every single thing in the system. I'm not going to allow you to be able to take a payment in the system or put a tenant in there and kind of have them pay you through it, but the beauty of that is at least, it gives you an insider look of what we have available to you. I would also invite you to have a conversation with our sales staff to really truly understand what we have to offer and then go through a demo. If it works, great. If it doesn't, no big deal. Jason: I want to point this out because I'm an advocate for the industry. I'm not a property manager. I want to see the industry shift towards more openness, more freedom. I love what you're saying. We've had other property management software on the past and the general message of one of the big players out there who I won't mention by name was just, we're going to just create everything internally. We're going to just try and give our customers everything that they need rather than giving them what they really are asking for. The general feedback I hear from everybody is they want freedom. They want freaking freedom to be able to make choices, to make the best choices for the business, to choose the best tools and vendors. They want freedom. As entrepreneurs, that's why we are doing what we are doing. We don't give up the 9-5 job so that we can work even more hours a lot of times initially and have a lot more stress and a lot more pain just because we're crazy. We do it because we want more freedom. We want to be choosing what we're doing. What you're saying I think is in alignment with entrepreneurs. It’s in alignment with entrepreneurs that are running these property management businesses. They want the freedom to be able to choose the vendors, choose the third party tools that they're going to be using, and they want that stuff to work with their property management software. I appreciate that that is a focus of what Propertyware is doing. I wanted to point that out because I think it's important to highlight those in the industry that are doing that. I see you guys doing it. I see Rent Manager doing that, the open API thing. One thing I've also always appreciated about Propertyware since we started doing websites at DoorGrow back in the day, the very first website I did were websites for Propertyware clients and customers. I've always had that really good integration for the widget. In the first, I have a JavaScript widget, it would populate the data, it wasn't just a cheesy iframe thing that we were putting into the page, and that's always been nice. It's always been nice to have that reduced double data entry. People are putting in their properties into their websites and then doing that just back in the day. We've come a long way since then, every everybody has. Now they're using tools like maybe Tenant Turner, ShowMojo, or Rently, and some of these sorts of integrations. I've always appreciated those aspects of Propertyware. Question. Most people have a property management software. I would imagine most people listening to this show are not just startups that are like, “Which software should I pick?” Say they're using AppFolio, they're using Buildium, they're using Rent Manager, they're using Rentec Direct, they're using something already. What would you say as far as switching? We mentioned already. It’s painful usually to switch. How do you help facilitate this if you're going to get customers on? They're going to have to make the switch. Right now, they're probably not even listening because they're like, “There's no way I can switch. I'm married and I'm married for eternity.” I'm going to give you an opportunity to help them break up that marriage if it's dysfunctional. Inaas: I am so appreciative of you bringing this on as well. I do want to go back though. Freedom, I love that. I'm actually going to use it because you are correct in making sure that you highlight the fact that it's all about freedom. Yes, we do have offerings. Yes, we do have products, but at the same token, I am personally a believer. In Propertyware, we're believing that we have to provide options for people. You pick whatever makes sense for you as a property management company, if you have a different vendor that is offering something that is more unique to your business model and you like to use that versus using something that we have, great. Go for it. Now as far as the implementation—obviously you can use the API two-way data exchange to be able to connect them so you don't have to double entry anything—the implementation is such an important piece. When you talk to technologist and you talk to them about implementation, they just don't realize the amount of hassles that a PMC will have to go through when they're jumping from one system to another system. To them, it's more of a 1+1=2. Once I came in to Propertyware, the first thing that I have to tackle was our implementation. What we did with it is a couple of folds. One, we broke it down to where we provide now tools for ability to be able to have clean data that gets into your system. Having clean data is half the battle for your implementation because if you have a good, clean data coming into your system, it makes your life so much easier to be able to operate. What we found, a lot of PMCs may not have realized some of the, I'm going to use the word “garbage” that they may have had in their systems. When we go through our checks, we come back to our PMCs and we say, “You told us you managed 200, 300, 1000 doors but when we're looking at your data here, we're seeing 1033, so what's going on with those additional 33 units? Are they truly for rent? Are they truly something you don't use? What's going on with them?” and they're coming back saying, “You know what? You're right. Those are people that we lost two years ago and the person who was working on the system never deactivated the units.” Having good data is half the battle. Second is the partnership between the PMCs as well as a good implementation team that allows them to go through the experience one step at a time. What that means, when they're coming in to us to be able to work with Propertyware, they're going to be assigned a particular team with one project manager who is driving the entire implementation from A-Z. They have calls, they have specific asks, there is a specific journey that they're going through step-by-step. Data is usually number one issue that we all come across. Number two would be all your accounting setups. Number three would be all you process setups. Number four would be more of your training and your customization. Number five kind of bringing it all together with KPIs, reports, and dashboards. Now, after you've done all of this implementation, then you're also going to get the training team to come in and do full training with you for all these processes. That training is part of the implementation. It's not something specific that you got to pay for. It also allows you to be able to customize to what your business model needs. Let's say you have a specific way of doing move-ins, that trainer is going to learn that from you before they come out to train you and your staff. When they come out to train you and your staff, they're training you on the system to the best business model, to the best business process that you told him you want to do for that move-in. They're not going to tell you, “Propertyware does it this way,” they're going to say, “This is how you told me you want to do move-ins and this is how you could do the same thing in Propertyware for the best of all the results, whether it's for you or for us.” Last but not the least, what I would also mention is the fact that we provide our PMCs timelines for their integration. We point it out. We basically say you have, I think the timeline is about 90 days for you to be able to be integrated. You’re not paying for the systems during those 90 days until you fully integrated. Once you are fully integrated, then you start paying for it. That allows us to both be on the same footing saying, “We're going to work with you to be able to get you implemented because you're not paying us, so we're not making any money. At the same token, it's in our best interest to help you through this process so we can get you to that finalized implementation piece so you can start using your system.” Now, what we've seen is a huge reduction in the days of implementation for Propertyware in particular. We've also seen a very high number of what I would say happy customers that they came on our new plan for implementation. We’ve also seen a lot less issues with data when data comes in through the system and we're finding a lot of ahas from our clients similar to what I described to you saying, “Hey, I didn’t know that I had 1033 units. I thought I was only managing 1000 so now I got to deal with those 33 units,” or, “I didn't know that I could do move-ins this way or move-outs that way, or do a process of secure deposit, and refunds this way to be able to make it easier for me and more streamlined.” It's less touches, less communications, less points of friction between the teams, and then obviously what gives you the best results at the end of the day. We've seen very good results from our new approach with the implementation. Jason: People are a little frustrated with their existing property management software. It sounds like you guys have made a lot of changes, as well as the API stuff you’ve been talking about, direct integrations. It's probably worth to them to take a new fresh look at Propertyware. Inaas: Absolutely, yes. If you looked at it before, I do invite you to take a look at it again. I promise you, we've made a lot of changes. And we are continually making changes. We do this every day. When I say changes, it's really more of enhancements that really makes sense for all of what we talked about. You've mentioned the listing, how easy it is. One thing we just rolled out recently is the watermarking for photos in listing widget. It's a small thing but it's an awesome thing to have. Jason: It protects the photos. Inaas: It protects the photos. Especially if you're in areas where you're hit a lot by scams. When I went operating, I'm not singling them out but just a case of the matter. Florida was one of those states that had a lot of scams. By watermarking your photos at ease without a lot of work, it helps you to be able to protect them and making sure that no one is going to steal those photos to be able to scam you or your owners out of the property. Again, we're making enhancements that make sense and we're making enhancements that is allowing people to grow. Either by adding units, increasing their revenue, and/or reducing their expenses, and increasing their profits. Jason: Cool. Inaas, I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing some ideas about Propertyware, letting us know where everything's at with it. Again, people can get in touch by going to propertyware.com and check you guys out. Inaas: I appreciate that. Thank you very much, Jason. I'm really glad that I got a chance to be on the webcast with you. Thank you very much. You guys do a fine job. Please continue on these webcasts. Please continue educating our PMCs and just know that we're going to be supporting you all the way. If there is anything we can do for you and your listeners to be able to support them in their businesses, and in their endeavors, please reach out to us. We’d love to be your business partners. Jason: Awesome. Yeah, I would love to. That would be great. It would be cool. Maybe we'll do something to your audience at some point. That will be fun. Inaas: Absolutely. We welcome that. Jason: All right, cool. I love sharing the message that we share. I'll let you go Inaas. Thanks again for being on the show. Inaas: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Jason: As everybody knows, I love sharing the message that I think property management, there is a bigger vision for property managers than just getting mired in toilets, tenants, and termites. I do believe good property management can change the world. There is a massive ripple effect. There are thousands and thousands of families that can be affected by good management. There's a lot of situations in which families should be underneath good management instead of a crappy landlord situation. I do believe good property management can have a massive ripple effect that can change the world and hopefully that all of you get a little bit inspired or excited about that. You are having an impact. You get to make a difference. I am honored that through you my listeners, through our clients that we get to work with, that we’re able to get that message out, and that we’re able to have some small impact in the industry and have a ripple effect. I appreciate Inaas pointing that out. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, then please reach out. We’d love to have you and maybe work with you, and see if you’d be a good fit for the type of client that we're looking to work with, and make a difference in this industry. Check us out at doorgrow.com. Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.

This week we take a deep dive into unattended access. We mentioned it briefly on episode 62, but there were a slew of follow-up questions. We talk about set-up options, pros and cons, how to make it work, and what it means for the future of real estate. Plus… we have been trying to shorten the Story Time segment but it's hard when there are so many interesting tangents. Weigh in on if we should cut or keep Story Time in the Market Proof Marketing Facebook group. Story Time (1:12) Kevin talks brand preference. He chooses which brands can serve him ads on Facebook; plus, what he plans on doing with his new Apple Card. Andrew compares authentic vs. inauthentic brand experience. Becca is selling her old house and wishes she had an electronic lockbox. Plus, how her listing was duplicated on a different site at a different price. News: (18:04) Everybody Calm Down! This is NOT 2008 (KeepingCurrentMatters.com) Facebook confirms it is considering removing “Like” counts (MarketingLand.com) 360 Topic of the Week – Unattended Access (25:57) What is unattended access and is this even the right term to use? Set-up options: NterNow.com Use.Rently.com DIY: Cloud cameras + smart lock Zillow, Open Door options – NOT CONFIRMED! Unattended Access in the News The low-down on self-showings: Do the benefits outweigh the risks? (Buildium.com) Why Rental Property Owners Should Stop Being Afraid of Self-Showings (BiggerPockets.com) Self-Showing Lockboxes: What's the Risk? (ThinkRealty.com) DYC team discussion/debate Humans vs. No Humans On Demand Showings vs. Schedule a Tour Final Thoughts + Insight from Chris Hartley Question of the Week: (1:04:25) Last Week's: At what stage of construction do you put your homes in the MLS, and why? This Week: Should we kill story time or keep it? To answer the Question of the Week, be sure to join us in the Market Proof Marketing Facebook Group. Subscribe on iTunes —> https://now.doyouconvert.com/mpm-itunes Subscribe on Google Play —> https://now.doyouconvert.com/mpm-gplay A weekly new home marketing podcast for home builders and developers. Each week Kevin Oakley, Andrew Peek, and others from Do You Convert will break down the headlines, share best-practices and stories from the front line, and perform a deep dive on a relevant marketing topic. We're here to help you – not to sell you! The post Ep 66: Unattended Access – The Good, The Bad, The Future? appeared first on Online Sales and Marketing for Home Builders - DYC. The post Ep 66: Unattended Access – The Good, The Bad, The Future? appeared first on Online Sales and Marketing for Home Builders - DYC.

Sahil Farooqi, head of customer care & safety at Rently, shares how his innovative startup builds a hybrid fraud-fighting solution that combines the efficiency of machine learning with the nuance of the human eye.

Are you a renter struggling to find a place? Feeling frustrated? Or are you a property manager/owner who would like to be able to manage, monitor, and show your properties without having to manage, monitor, and show your properties? No problem, you just need self-showing technology. Today, I am talking with Pini Lackner and Edward Gonzales of Rently, which allows prospects to visit rentals themselves when it’s a convenient time for them by using self-showing technology. Rently’s technology helps optimize and systemize the showing process to lower operational costs. You'll Learn... [05:18] Statistics show that 70-80% of people looking online for places to rent tend to be window shoppers; can be frustrating and time consuming for managers to reach them. [06:08] Property management involves building/keeping relationships with prospects. [06:48] After self-showings, Rently performs an application follow up to get feedback on a property without having to rely on an agent. [07:23] Some are concerned that there’s too much risk involved; fear factor fades because of Rently’s reputation and self-policing system based on info from prospects. [10:22] Those interested in Rently’s technology have a growth mentality; there’s no better way to grow your business geographically. [11:17] Benefits include lower operational/staffing costs and shorter lease cycle. [12:05] Considering Rently as best way to optimize business operations while lowering expenses and not losing touch with properties. [12:42] Self-showings are its backbone, but Rently is a fully encompassing platform - not just a bunch of lockboxes. [13:50] Rently Keyless addresses the increased prevalent use of smart homes. [18:02] Regaining control restricting access is instant via Rently after a tenant leaves. [18:55] Rently provides homeowner reporting, metrics, and analytics to know what’s going on with properties. [21:07] Initial reluctance to self-showings has eased, so managers who don’t use it now will lose their competitive edge. Tweetables About 70-80% of people looking online for places to rent are window shoppers. Self-showings create positive pressure to report things. Self-showings are its backbone, but Rently is a platform - not just a lockbox. Resources Rently Rently Keyless Pini Lackner’s Phone Number: 323-375-5773 Pini Lackner’s Email How Technology Is Changing The Real Estate Market NARPM DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrow Live

Today's Quick Start is from Creating Wealth episode 729, originally published in September 2016. Today's panel discusses self-management options for your income properties. The experts agree, a great property management company is worth their weight in gold but it is also important to be educated about your self-management options. The panel shares information about companies who use technology to save you time and money through automating tedious tasks, best practices to improve home interiors without spending a fortune and what types of tenants are the best types of tenants to have. Key Takeaways: [9:19] Kwikset Kevo bluetooth locks make it easier for self-management of income properties. [16:57] Jason recommends adding a little color to the interior walls of your income properties. Self-Management Panel: [20:33] Is self-management easier than having a property manager? [23:27] The road to self-management and maintaining a good relationship with your tenants.   [28:00] The flat rate fee system makes self-managing properties easier. [32:47] Property managers are reluctant to take legitimate fees out of a tenant’s security deposit. [37:06] Ask your property managers to lower their costs if you are realizing the value. [40:11] Using Cozy makes rent collection and viewing tenant profiles easy. [44:35] Disintermediation is getting rid of the middle man.   [49:10] Rently allows tenants to do their own showings with only a credit card. Mentioned in This Episode: Jason Hartman Real Estate Tools Venture Alliance Mastermind Hartman Education Cozy Rently

Today's Flash Back Friday comes from Episode 815, originally published in April 2017. It's a wonderful time to be alive, especially if you are an income property investor. New technologies allow investors to self-manage properties all over the U.S. no matter where in the world they are located. Jason speaks with Merrick Lackner the Co-founder of Rently and Rently Keyless. Merrick describes the mechanics behind turning your rental properties into smart homes to give you more control over showings, energy consumption costs and the general well-being of your properties as well as the cost of installation and maintenance. Key Takeaways: [03:07] Changes in property management and increased returns from investments. [04:34] Do you know which billionaire lives in a trailer park? Merrick Lackner Guest Interview: [09:21] Merrick saw the need to improve on the showing of rental properties. [12:57] Merrick describes the different options Rently offers. [20:48] How the Rently process is coordinated for the renter and the landlord. [25:30] The smart matching program includes a background check. [26:58] Rently Keyless Entry gives real estate investors more control over their properties. [30:10] How much does Rently Keyless cost to install and maintain? [33:02] Rently offers different access for renters and owners to reduce liabilities and provide privacy. Mentioned in This Episode: Jason Hartman Jason Hartman University Zappos Real Estate Tools Rently Rently Keyless

Quite often real estate investors start out by managing their own properties and once they acquire a certain number of units they decide to hire a Third-Party Professional Property Management Company to looks after their portfolio.  My guest today decided to go in the opposite direction. After working with several property management companies, Ben Blake figured that he could save himself money and headaches by taking control of the property management on his 12-unit portfolio in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Today we talk about how he went about doing that and the improvement in his cashflow as a result. Ben also shares how one of his celebrity teammates from his College Football days helped him get started in real estate investing, and the influence he had on his early career.  Ben also shares some of the early mistakes he made in screening tenants and the problems he encountered because of those mistakes. If you're going to manage your own properties you need to make sure you have the right team and technology in place.  Ben shares how he uses Buildium, Rently, and Quickbooks to keep his business running smoothly.  He also shares how he works with his tenants and handles maintenance to control expenses. I know you're going to enjoy this episode.  Ben has a lot of great wisdom and experience to share, as well as tools that can save you time and money.  You can contact Ben through email at:  ben@ivygr.com Enjoy!

Today's Flash Back Friday comes from Episode 729, originally published in September 2016. Jason, Fernando and Oliver make up today's expert panel. They are discussing self-management options for your income properties. The experts agree, a great property management company is worth their weight in gold but it is also important to be educated about your self-management options. The panel shares information about companies who use technology to save you time and money through automating tedious tasks, best practices to improve home interiors without spending a fortune and what types of tenants are the best types of tenants to have. Key Takeaways: [3:40] Jason and Fernando discuss the flooring options available at an income property expo in Mesa, Arizona. [9:19] Kwikset Kevo bluetooth locks make it easier for self-management of income properties. [16:57] Jason recommends adding a little color to the interior walls of your income properties. Self-Management Panel: [20:33] Is self-management easier than having a property manager? [23:27] The road to self-management and maintaining a good relationship with your tenants.   [28:00] The flat rate fee system makes self-managing properties easier. [32:47] Property managers are reluctant to take legitimate fees out of a tenant's security deposit. [37:06] Ask your property managers to lower their costs if you are realizing the value. [40:11] Using Cozy makes rent collection and viewing tenant profiles easy. [44:35] Disintermediation is getting rid of the middle man.   [49:10] Rently allows tenants to do their own showings with only a credit card. Mentioned in This Episode: Jason Hartman Real Estate Tools Venture Alliance Mastermind Hartman Education Cozy Rently

Today's Flash Back Friday comes from Episode 746, originally published in November 2016. This episode focuses on the opportunities which exist when self-managing an income property. First, Jason reviews a Business Insider article regarding dwindling investment property inventories. And later in the podcast, Jason is joined by Bill, who helps manage Fernando's Atlanta and Texas properties. Bill discusses the steps necessary when self-managing income properties.  He shares how to show a property using software tools, leasing a property to a new tenant and how to have tenants facilitate repairs and maintenance issues. Key Takeaways: [3:00] Unpacking the Business Insider Article: Pending Home Sales Jump Despite Painfully Tight Housing Market by Bob Bryan. [4:08] If you are on the fence about increasing your income property portfolio do it in hybrid markets.   [7:29] Real estate is a game of staying power. [18:00] The ways Jason is working to empower his investors and arm with them with exceptional management tools. [19:26] Bill's work history makes him uniquely qualified to handle Fernando's property management requirements. [22:51] How to use Rently lockboxes when self-managing properties. [27:14] Making a property rent-ready and contacting contractors through handiman websites. [28:56] Tenants have a vested interest  when working with contractors to fix or maintain properties. [31:53] When a property is self-managed tenants to take more responsibility for the property. [35:42] Property Management Software does most of the back-office work for you.   [37:12] What is required when leasing a property to a tenant? Mentioned in This Episode: Jason Hartman Venture Alliance Rently Lockboxes Appfolio

Jason, Fernando and Oliver make up today's expert panel. They are discussing self-management options for your income properties. The experts agree, a great property management company is worth their weight in gold but it is also important to be educated about your self-management options. The panel shares information about companies who use technology to save you time and money through automating tedious tasks, best practices to improve home interiors without spending a fortune and what types of tenants are the best types of tenants to have. Key Takeaways: [2:50] Gary's attempting to set up a mini-family office where each part only has one customer to service Jason Property Management Panel: [6:33] Is self-management easier than having a property manager? [9:27] The road to self-management and maintaining a good relationship with your tenants [14:00] The flat rate fee system makes self-managing properties easier [18:47] Property managers are reluctant to take legitimate fees out of a tenant's security deposit [23:06] Ask your property managers to lower their costs if you are realizing the value [26:11] Using Cozy makes rent collection and viewing tenant profiles easy [30:35] Disintermediation is getting rid of the middle man [35:10] Rently allows tenants to do their own showings with only a credit card. Websites: www.RealEstateTools.com www.Cozy.co Rently

In this episode, I am talking to Todd Breen of Virtually Incredible about how to spend less time leasing to make more money and grow your business. Todd manages a property management company and opened an outsourcing solution called Virtually Incredible. It was designed to help property managers spend less time leasing and spend money on a good marketing campaign, business development manager (BDM), and call center to begin the customer journey on the right foot. You'll Learn... [02:27] Business owners devote too much time and resources to leasing properties. [02:47] Putting less effort into leasing and more into listing can free up energy to grow your company. [03:54] Analyze and monetize your leasing process. [04:33] What would a customer’s experience be with your company and what do you need to do to improve? [05:00] Using the traditional model, business owners tend to charge an owner a tenant placement fee and share some of that with a commissioned leasing agent. [05:51] The traditional model is inefficient and expensive. [06:41] If answering a call isn’t your top priority, and booking/showing isn’t something you enjoy doing, then learn how to efficiently monetize leasing calls or inquiries. [07:17] Utilize mystery shopping to gain data about your customer’s journey. [09:05] Companies do not grow because they’re not answering their phones, or they’re preoccupied when they do. [09:19] Specialize your outsourcings and upgrade your technology for your showing process to devote more energy to answering new owner calls. [10:33] Employees who answer your leasing lines should be Fair Housing trained and certified to properly respond to questions. [11:45] The most significant benefits to offloading leasing calls include a quiet office. [13:26] Be good at hiring, training, supervising, managing, and motivating staff. [14:33] Look at how much it costs you to lease a house. Add up commissions, staff hours to answer phones, mileage expenses, and hours spent showing houses. [15:05] Do the same analysis on your customer acquisition cost in getting a new customer to manage their house. [15:38] Are you doing your best job leasing? Can you improve that to free up time and resources to grow your business? [17:42] Cut the number of days to market to rent faster, do a great job renting, and have higher client retention. [18:35] Staff that complies with Fair Housing lowers legal liability and provides a greater peace of mind as a business owner. [19:23] Don’t be afraid to outsource tasks to an outside team. [20:32] Answer after-hours calls to increase your efficiency and reduce days on the market. [22:10] Whatever you’re spending in money on leasing, spent that on marketing for new owners and hiring a BDM. Reallocate funds toward growing your business. [22:52] You should have software to facilitate calls and showings, such as Tenant Turner, Rently, ShowMojo, or Mock Rentals. [23:55] Make sure the call center you select is as good as you hoped. Get a dedicated leasing hotline. [25:22] Publish your rental standards in each rental listing. Describe what is needed to rent from you. [27:24] Have leasing agents who have the listings, but also a leasing director that serves as the leader. [29:00] People who are 35 and younger don’t call. They book their showing online. If you don’t have an online showing option, get one. [29:45] There’s got to be a way to reach out to the people who want customer service and a way to reach out to people who want technology. [30:21] Shift your focus, time, energy, resources, and staff toward growing your business. [30:58] Utilize videos to accelerate your marketing process, reduce your days on market, reduce phone calls, and reduce your showings. Tweetables Don’t be afraid to outsource tasks to an outside team. That’s the real benefit, spend less time leasing and more time listing. Reach out to people who want customer service and who want technology. Resources Virtually Incredible Website Virtually Incredible email Virtually Incredible phone number: (561) 693-2648 Tenant Turner Rently ShowMojo Buildium DoorGrow Club

I love offering listeners fantastic benefits, such as some great discounts for products. These include the PM Grow Summit, website production through Property Managed Website, showing services through Tenant Turner, and more, with new offers coming all the time! You can see a complete list of the current offers at propertymanagementmastermind.com. For all of these offers, use the discount code “Brad” to secure your discount. Before we dive into this episode, I want to take a moment to give you a quick update. On both of our websites, we’re adding a couple of new tabs. One of these tabs will highlight all the upcoming seminars and conferences through various organizations. The other tab will direct you to our property management mastermind listserv on Google. It’s a great no-holds-barred listserv where anything goes. Check out both of these new tabs to explore more of what we can offer! My guest today is Scott Brady, a property manager from Southern California. Scott has been in the real estate business for over two decades, and jumped into the property management side of things about six years ago. As he’ll explain in our conversation today, he changed the slant of his company to attract self-managing property owners once he learned that a shockingly high percentage of people self-manage their properties. Scott will also talk about some fascinating things that he’s doing in his marketplace that are a bit outside the norm. He veers away from the generic cookie-cutter thinking of many property management companies and doesn’t hesitate to think outside the box. As a result, he’s generating several different revenue streams for his business, of which property management is only one. We’re fortunate enough that Scott isn’t shy to talk about the nitty gritty details and exact numbers. If you’ve been wondering exactly how the financial aspects of these things work, this is the episode for you. Scott will go into detail about how much (or how little) he makes in property management, how he compensates his agents and employees, and much more.   Here’s where you can find Scott: Progressive Property Management Scott Brady at Progressive Property Management Scott Brady on LinkedIn Show Notes [03:09] - Scott gives us a quick introduction to who he is and how he got into property management. He explains that when he got started, he had no idea that 80% of people manage their own properties. [06:16] - Brad backs up a bit to talk about several concepts, including the points of distribution (POD) technique, licensing, and franchising, and points out that what Scott has been describing is a hybrid of all three. [07:23] - Whether we like it or not, property management is still a hyper-local business, Scott points out. [09:54] - Scott tells his branch managers that every door they manage is a door they’re going to sell down the road. [10:34] - We hear how Scott compensates his employees. [11:40] - How much overhead and support does Scott have to give his employees to earn the 35% that he gets from them? [12:43] - We learn how Scott finds realtors who want to work within his system. [15:05] - In general, real estate is about meeting people. If you meet a lot of people, you’ll be successful, Brad explains. [16:42] - Scott found out early on that most of his agents don’t want to spend their own money, so he spends the money on marketing and then sells the door. [18:12] - Brad explains that one of the things he put in place when he did the portfolio model was putting the portfolio managers on a very bad split. Scott then addresses the question of whether his agents might be pushing the owners to sell. [19:55] - How successful has Scott been in scaling up his model? [21:42] - Brad and Scott dig into the topic of direct mail targeting, including discussing how far Scott generally goes in the process. [26:13] - What’s the coolest implementation that Scott has done in the last six months to a year? [27:58] - Brad responds to Scott’s mention of Rently. [29:48] - Scott basically breaks even on property management, he reveals. He then talks about his other streams of income. [31:58] - The biggest barrier to investing in real estate in Southern California is coming up with the down payment. [33:32] - Brad talks about an upcoming seminar that he wants to go to in Dallas. [35:38] - Scott talks about a program that he offers to local self-managing property owners. [38:41] - We hear more about exactly what is included in the seminar in a box that Scott and Brad have created together. [40:08] - What seminars does Scott have lined up for the California area? [44:16] - If you’re interested in what Scott has been saying and want to get in touch with him or learn more, you can find him on Brad’s website or send him an email. [47:09] - Scott has noticed a fundamental shift in the general perspective on property management.   Links and Resources: Progressive Property Management Scott Brady at Progressive Property Management Scott Brady on LinkedIn NARPM Rently Tenant Turner Grant Cardone BiggerPockets BRRRR Strategy (and BRRRR calculator) Local Landlord Seminar NARPM Broker/Owner Conference

Today’s show is sponsored by LeadSimple and Fourandahalf. Together, they’ve come up with one of the best conferences for property managers, called the PM Grow Summit. This event is laser-focused on growth strategies and brings together some remarkable thought leaders from around the country. I attended last year and was thoroughly impressed all around -- and that was just their first year! The next conference will be in San Diego in 2018, and I’ve already booked my spot. Go to pmgrowsummit.com to learn more, and enter promo code “Brad” to get a $100 discount on your ticket!   We’re also sponsored by Marc Cunningham of Grace Property Management. Marc has created some amazing products for property management companies, which we can say firsthand as we’ve implemented his systems here. Visit their website and try out their products! To get a 10% discount on any of Marc’s products, use the promo code “Brad”!   On the show today, I’m joined by Angela Gonzales and Erin Landis from Moxie Property Management out of Fort Worth (near the Dallas, Texas area). Erin and Angela started the company just a couple years ago, so it’s still in its infancy time-wise, but they’ve already accomplished some remarkable things. As they put it, the company actually operates in dog years!   One of the reasons I wanted to have Angela and Erin on the show is that they’re doing some different things that you might not have seen in other property management companies. They don’t hesitate to think outside the box, as you’ll hear in our conversation today. For example, part of Moxie involves doing consulting work for other companies and helping them manage their properties, meaning that they’re far more than just a strict property management company.   In addition to talking about their consulting services and how they seamlessly blend these with their own property management, Erin and Angela discuss topics such as how they’ve grown their company so quickly, how they got started, why they realized they don’t need a third partner, their roles in NARPM, and the tools they use to stay in communication with each other, their clients, and their tenants.   Here’s where you can find Angela and Erin: Moxie Property Management Angela Gonzales on the Greater Fort Worth Association of REALTORS Angela Gonzales on LinkedIn Angela Gonzales on Facebook Erin Landis on Facebook Erin Landis on LinkedIn Moxie Property Management on Facebook   Show Notes   [02:36] - Erin and Angela start things off by introducing themselves. [03:06] - We hear about how Moxie has grown so large in such a relatively short time, with Angela explaining how she and Erin met and got started.[06:52] - What were some of the challenges that Erin and Angela came upon when they decided to step out and doing everything themselves? [08:06] - Erin is doing some coaching for AppFolio soon, partly because she has been using the software since 2009. Angela then talks about how difficult the business would be to run without Erin on the financial side. [10:03] - Brad shifts to a tangent about something he learned on the NARPM listserv about full-month accounting. He, Angela, and Erin then discuss how this type of accounting works along with its pros and cons. [14:16] - Angela discusses the consulting side of the business. [16:15] - The places we’ve been hearing about are in outlier areas, we learn, with Angela describing what they do as a “if you build it, they will come” scenario. [17:26] - We take a deeper dive into the consultancy side of Moxie, learning what exactly that entails and how that side functions. [19:40] - Angela and Erin use Evernote, we learn. It’s also helpful for communicating with their clients. [20:27] - We hear about the division of labor at Moxie. [22:45] - Part of hiring really great people is that they have ambition above the position they’re hired at. [24:04] - Erin explains more about the details of how their consultancy works, and the ways in which it was like entering into a marriage. [25:51] - Brad dives into the topic of the service items offered by Moxie. We hear about what it takes to add a consulting aspect to your property management business. [27:35] - Erin points out that a big part of what they do is cleaning up old accounting, which is something they could take nationwide. [30:04] - A lot of what Erin does is just auditing what a company has done up until now, she explains. [31:21] - Brad is developing an annual business health report. [34:19] - It’s not so much that good members of NARPM are perfect so much as that many others do lots of things wrong, Brad points out. [35:52] - If Angela and Erin could do everything all over again with Moxie, what would they do differently the second time around? [39:08] - Erin is the treasurer of the greater Fort Worth area NARPM branch, and Angela is working with the organization on the state level. Erin and Angela then discuss work-life balance and the experience of having careers as women. [42:32] - While Angela’s son is a teenager now, Erin’s family is younger. She describes what it’s like to work from home under these circumstances. [44:30] - Brad talks about his “good idea fairy” concept, then shares a cool concept he has recently implemented with listeners. [46:49] - Moxie has been using Rently for almost two years now, and have been finding that it results in better tenants overall. [49:24] - We learn that Brad got rid of his dropbox when he moved to the new office. [50:09] - Erin talks about how one of their older residents (who is over 80 years old) took some extra coaching to make electronic payments instead of dropping off a money order or other paper payment. [52:01] - Brad discusses the role of virtual assistants and how it’s changing in the industry as time goes on. [52:49] - Do Angela and Erin have any other “good idea fairies” that they want to share with the audience? [54:56] - Moxie’s application fees are nonrefundable, but they are transferrable to other properties, we learn. [56:38] - The mortgage industry took in 36% fewer applications for mortgages this year than last year, Brad reveals. This means that more people are going to be renting.   Links and Resources:   Moxie Property Management Angela Gonzales on the Greater Fort Worth Association of REALTORS Angela Gonzales on LinkedIn Angela Gonzales on Facebook Erin Landis on Facebook Erin Landis on LinkedIn Moxie Property Management on Facebook LeadSimple Fourandahalf PM Grow Summit AppFolio NARPM Evernote Basecamp SharePoint Bob Walters Leading Property Managers of Australia Tenant Turner Rently

Rekeying locks on your properties, after the tenant leaves, can get tedious and expensive, inspiring too many property managers to skip the rekeying process entirely, opening themselves up to an uncomfortable amount of liability. Enter Prempoint: A comprehensive messaging, access control, and automation software that allows property managers to manage and grant access to their properties remotely. In this episode we're chatting with Matt Hartley co-founder and CEO of Prempoint about the newest technology in property management-keyless access. You'll learn what the Prempoint technology is, how it works, and why you absolutely can't run your business without it! You'll Learn... [2:20] All about Matt Hartley’s background and his work with Prempoint [4:40] The evolution of Prempoint as a company and their mission [7:35] What Prempoint is and why you absolutely need it for your properties [11:05] The interaction between tenants and Prempoint [13:25] How affordable is Prempoint? [16:00] Subscribing to Prempoint "points" [18:15] Discussing security concerns with Prempoint [22:25] How keyless access can build (or destroy) trust with your tenant [26:35] Being software agnostic: Why Prempoint outdoes the Rently competition [30:10] Software integrations [31:45] Why Matt Hartley doesn't worry about copycats [34:20] Are you in danger of being automated out of your job? [37:00] Understanding the devices and technology that Prempoint requires [40:20] Does Prempoint replace Sentrilock for relators that double as property managers? [44:35] Prempoint's launch date for managers with 1000s of doors [49:55] Benefits of keyless access for tenants [57:10] More from Matt Hartley [58:30] Connecting with the Home app on iPhone Tweetables If you’ve ever used Facebook, then you can definitely use Prempoint Prempoint is a software company. We are hardware agnostic Resources Want to talk to Matt personally? Send him an email: matthew.hartley@prempoint.com

It's a wonderful time to be alive, especially if you are an income property investor. New technologies allow investors to self-manage properties all over the U.S. no matter where in the world they are located. Jason speaks with Merrick Lackner the Co-founder of Rently and Rently Keyless. Merrick describes the mechanics behind turning your rental properties into smart homes to give you more control over showings, energy consumption costs and the general well-being of your properties as well as the cost of installation and maintenance. Key Takeaways: [03:07] Changes in property management and increased returns from investments. [04:34] Do you know which billionaire lives in a trailer park?   Merrick Lackner Guest Interview: [09:21] Merrick saw the need to improve on the showing of rental properties. [12:57] Merrick describes the different options Rently offers. [20:48] How the Rently process is coordinated for the renter and the landlord. [25:30] The smart matching program includes a background check. [26:58] Rently Keyless Entry gives real estate investors more control over their properties. [30:10] How much does Rently Keyless cost to install and maintain? [33:02] Rently offers different access for renters and owners to reduce liabilities and provide privacy. Mentioned in This Episode: Jason Hartman Jason Hartman University Zappos Real Estate Tools Rently Rently Keyless

This episode focuses on the opportunities which exist when self-managing an income property. First, Jason reviews a Business Insider article regarding dwindling investment property inventories. And later in the podcast, Jason is joined by Bill, who helps manage Fernandos Atlanta and Texas properties. Bill discusses the steps necessary when self-managing income properties.  He shares how to show a property using software tools, leasing a property to a new tenant and how to have tenants facilitate repairs and maintenance issues. Key Takeaways: [3:00] Unpacking the Business Insider Article: Pending Home Sales Jump Despite Painfully Tight Housing Market by Bob Bryan. [4:08] If you are on the fence about increasing your income property portfolio do it in hybrid markets.   [7:29] Real estate is a game of staying power. [18:00] The ways Jason is working to empower his investors and arm with them with exceptional management tools. [19:26] Bill's work history makes him uniquely qualified to handle Fernando's property management requirements. [22:51] How to use Rently lockboxes when self-managing properties. [27:14] Making a property rent-ready and contacting contractors through handiman websites. [28:56] Tenants have a vested interest  when working with contractors to fix or maintain properties. [31:53] When a property is self-managed tenants to take more responsibility for the property. [35:42] Property Management Software does most of the back-office work for you.   [37:12] What is required when leasing a property to a tenant? Mentioned in This Episode: Jason Hartman Venture Alliance Rently Lockboxes Appfolio

Jason, Fernando and Oliver make up today's expert panel. They are discussing self-management options for your income properties. The experts agree, a great property management company is worth their weight in gold but it is also important to be educated about your self-management options. The panel shares information about companies who use technology to save you time and money through automating tedious tasks, best practices to improve home interiors without spending a fortune and what types of tenants are the best types of tenants to have.   Key Takeaways: [3:40] Jason and Fernando discuss the flooring options available at an income property expo in Mesa, Arizona. [9:19] Kwikset Kevo bluetooth locks make it easier for self-management of income properties. [16:57] Jason recommends adding a little color to the interior walls of your income properties. Self-Management Panel: [20:33] Is self-management easier than having a property manager? [23:27] The road to self-management and maintaining a good relationship with your tenants.   [28:00] The flat rate fee system makes self-managing properties easier. [32:47] Property managers are reluctant to take legitimate fees out of a tenant's security deposit. [37:06] Ask your property managers to lower their costs if you are realizing the value. [40:11] Using Cozy makes rent collection and viewing tenant profiles easy. [44:35] Disintermediation is getting rid of the middle man.   [49:10] Rently allows tenants to do their own showings with only a credit card. Mentioned in This Episode: Jason Hartman Real Estate Tools Venture Alliance Mastermind Hartman Education Cozy Rently