Unfiltered by PropertyManagement.com
00:25:33 · Josh Sterling
[00:25:33] S0: Oh, it's it's it's all we try. I mean, it's it's what we care about. It's not great. So so here's why. It's such a simple... I'm surprised more people don't don't talk about it this way. But, obviously, when a unit goes vacant, to us, it's emergency. Right? I mean, you're gonna have... It's like having a seven Eleven and locking your doors for... If it takes you two weeks to turn that unit. There's zero chance you're gonna make money. So we need to get that unit turned right away. But more important than that is why are we having a turnover? So the industry average, you guys are... With the tech and data you have could probably, you know, quote this exactly, but the industry average from from the data I have is typically between 4555% turnover is is is about what most operators are gonna see. Right? So we tracked 18.2% for 2025 as a whole. Woah. And that's my goal. And and here's why. So if you look at your expense side of the equation, I talked about efficiency. Right? Yeah. We can drive our cost down on our landlord tenant, or we can drive our cost down on repairs as efficient as as we can be. Right? We can drive our cost down on utilities by auditing water bills, things like that. And we do all those things, but a turnover is gonna cost you minimum $3,000 by the vacancy time, the new lease up cost. The... Even if the unit's in good shape, you gotta fix things that probably aren't... You know, if you moved everything out of that room you're sitting in right now, looks looks like a nice room. You probably have to paint some areas of that room. Right? Or it would look smudged or there'd be nail holes or maybe that doorknob's loose. And so all that work, it's gonna cost you $34,000. It might cost you 10,000 or 15,000 if you gotta do a heavy, heavy turn, right, or a rehab. So the more we can minimize that that number, everything else on the expense side pales in comparison. Right? If I cannot have that $3.04, $5,000 massive expense because nobody moved out, like I talked about, I think that that first unit I ever bought where someone was there for years. So how do we do that? For us, it's so simple. It's the nicest property in the markets. We're gonna do great, nice, high end rehabs, we're gonna maintain it at a fair market rent with the most professional management. And that's the one that's hard to get.
00:27:30 · Josh Sterling
And so the way we do that is we call it the Epic Advantage. It's on our website or the owner section. But, like, our office is open seven days a week until 7PM every night. Like, just, like, to give you an idea of how much we care. We've got a fleet of, you know, 40 brand new vehicles with uniformed staff that shows up. There's... You know, they're trained. They're... Whether it's fair housing laws or maintenance procedures or what either. It's like walking into a 300 unit building at that little 24 unit or that single family or maybe that, you know, larger building we run. So... And there's a ton of stuff we do, but to make that professional in, cause people to not want to move. So for me, that's what... When we talk about turnover, of course, once we do have one, I need to get that unit turned as quickly as possible as far as software comes in. But the operation is built to minimize turnover because I can crush it. I'm an investor at heart. Right? And all of our clients are investors, whether they chose to be or accidental. So if I can improve your bottom line, and the best way I can do that is by not turning over your unit or turning it over as little as possible. We're gonna be any... I don't care how efficient somebody else is at any other line item. It doesn't even come close.
00:28:34 · Dylan Scroggins, Josh Sterling
[00:28:34] S1: Yeah. I love that. Because a lot of people talk about even the job descriptions that I'm doing on the recruiting side, they talk about a KPI being like turnover speed where you're kinda like, hey. Let's not focus on turnover speed. Let's just focus on never having a turnover. Then we don't have to worry about the speed. [00:28:50] S0: That's Yeah. You know, people are gonna move for life events. Right? That's gonna have a job change, divorce, marriage, whatever. Right? But but if we can minimize that, and and I think our data speaks to that. You know? It's just we're doing things that our competitors don't do. [00:29:02] S1: Yeah. I love that. I had... We had a Steven Glover on recently out of Peak PropertyManagement in Virginia, and he mentioned almost the same thing you mentioned about the details even in what your team wears to the site of having, like, nice branded... It sounds like y'all have some wraps. I'm sure they have it as well. But, that just gives this feeling of, hey. I'm being taken care of. And you do see it a lot in multifamily, but you don't see it as much in single family. And those little things are just massive signals, whether it's pest control, home services, whatever, that professionalism resonates and just has a strong first impression.
00:29:02 · Dylan Scroggins, Josh Sterling
[00:29:02] S1: Yeah. I love that. I had... We had a Steven Glover on recently out of Peak PropertyManagement in Virginia, and he mentioned almost the same thing you mentioned about the details even in what your team wears to the site of having, like, nice branded... It sounds like y'all have some wraps. I'm sure they have it as well. But, that just gives this feeling of, hey. I'm being taken care of. And you do see it a lot in multifamily, but you don't see it as much in single family. And those little things are just massive signals, whether it's pest control, home services, whatever, that professionalism resonates and just has a strong first impression. [00:29:38] S0: Right. So if you're in an apartment or a house that is beautiful, it's got granite and stainless, it's as nice as anything you could ever find, nicer than anything in the market, your rent's fair, and your management team is the utmost professionalism, you're not gonna move unless you have and that's our goal. And the competition that we're up against, they're closing at 04:30 on a Friday and not to answer the phone again till Monday, and they show up in a rusted up pickup truck with a dude who's two Bud Lights deep and a plumber's crack trying to fix your sink. It just doesn't work. So we're getting out out of that stereotypical small operator, even though we're operating properties that are typically, you know, accustomed to that type of operator. I think that's really the difference.
00:29:38 · Josh Sterling, Dylan Scroggins
[00:29:38] S0: Right. So if you're in an apartment or a house that is beautiful, it's got granite and stainless, it's as nice as anything you could ever find, nicer than anything in the market, your rent's fair, and your management team is the utmost professionalism, you're not gonna move unless you have and that's our goal. And the competition that we're up against, they're closing at 04:30 on a Friday and not to answer the phone again till Monday, and they show up in a rusted up pickup truck with a dude who's two Bud Lights deep and a plumber's crack trying to fix your sink. It just doesn't work. So we're getting out out of that stereotypical small operator, even though we're operating properties that are typically, you know, accustomed to that type of operator. I think that's really the difference. [00:30:16] S1: Well, it goes back to a common theme of property management business model and just a software as a service business model are so similar. Is that once you get those customers, you just wanna keep them because churn is what kills you. Yes. And even if the client acquisition cost is higher, get the customer and just keep them forever.
00:30:16 · Dylan Scroggins, Josh Sterling
[00:30:16] S1: Well, it goes back to a common theme of property management business model and just a software as a service business model are so similar. Is that once you get those customers, you just wanna keep them because churn is what kills you. Yes. And even if the client acquisition cost is higher, get the customer and just keep them forever. [00:30:33] S0: And, you know, for our model and if, you know, if if I had to go pitch this to an owner, right, what I would tell them is, look, I'm my primary client, so you're bringing your property on here at Epic, it's treated as if it was our own. We don't have a differentiator in our systems for for our own wholly owned units. Yeah. And our goal is to make money with the property. So this is how you do it. You have the most professional management. We minimize that turnover. And if we do have one, we're tracking efficiency of that turn and and the speed at which we can do it. Right? So we... That's how every owner gets treated because that's how we treat our own properties. [00:31:03] S1: They love that too. This has been awesome. I thought we should talk for about another forty five minutes here, but let's start landing the plane here just a little bit. In regards to just the industry as a whole, we've already touched on AI. Is there anything else that you feel like people should be paying attention to that may or may not be getting blasted on LinkedIn right now?