Property Management Success
00:47:10 · Casey Howe
[00:47:10] S2: Yes. I first of all, I'd say strategically, it could be a matter of life and death. And I don't want to be all doomsday, but I do think that the the ability of an owner, let's say an owner has a portfolio of 50 units to run everything on their own out of state through AI and automation and all that stuff, and just have like one local 1099 here is easier now than it's ever been. And you're seeing Zillow and all these other platforms offer these things. And I realize we think we like to think we add all this value, but like that becomes more and more attractive, not less attractive as time goes on, right? Yeah. And so as a matter of survival, I think that as property management companies, good ones, need to have boots on the ground because you can't replace that. Okay, so so strategically, for us, it's not a question of done, you know, do we make money this month? It's I don't think we're gonna be a viable business in five years if we don't do that. That's how strongly I feel about it. Secondarily, it's really hard to do. And that was an area where we certainly took some missteps. So not having things like utilization dialed in and direct, you know, labor efficiency ratio and how much you're gonna charge for things, there is a much smaller margin of error with maintenance because maintenance people are expensive, trucks are expensive, tools are expensive, their time is expensive, all that stuff's very expensive. If you make a misstep on the property management side of the house, it's easy. You know, you you can carry a couple extra remote team members for a couple months as you rebuild, but you you you can't carry extra maintenance tax when you lose 300 units. And so it's a much harder thing to do right, I think. But I think the the risk of not doing it, tactically, you provide a worse service to your client, you're leaving money on the table and you have less control. Strategically, I think you're setting yourself up for a situation where you could lose half or all of your customers in five years because you know, collecting rent um and following up on late rent is I don't know, like it's gonna there's gonna be price compression at the very least. It's gonna be a race to the bottom of companies that are based in Vegas that charge 3% flat rate um or a hundred dollars, you know, fifty dollar flat rate.
00:49:16 · Casey Howe, Tony Cline
And and then you have a local manager here that does everything else. That's that's a real competitor for us, I think. [00:49:23] S0: Yeah. I've been in this business long enough that that I remember when Zillow first hit the scene and everybody was excited about Zillow and and look, they'll advertise your properties for free. And then once they got everybody hooked on it, then they started slicing away on the things that they would do. And, you know, I uh ever since that started happening, I always said that a company doesn't have to be able to do everything you do to put you out of business. They just have to slice off enough of the profits that it no longer makes sense for you to continue to be in business. And I think that's what you're talking about here with as they start doing the price compression, as AI starts being able to dispatch and call vendors and follow up and send out uh late notices and all this stuff that could happen automatically. Where are we going to figure out how to add slices of profit back on? And that maintenance piece, if you can figure it out, is is a gold mine there because properties, no matter what you do with AI, properties are gonna continue to deteriorate, tenants are gonna continue to break things. And so there is this need for the physical component of property management. I think you're right. Yep. All right, Casey, I'm gonna give you the last word. Anything that you uh thought we would gonna talk about that we didn't, or anything that's top of mind you wanted to circle back with, leave us with something here.
00:50:42 · Casey Howe, Tony Cline
[00:50:42] S2: No, I mean this has been a really good call. You know, I think I I I want to emphasize that, you know, I I I did come in, I think, a bit um sort of arrogant. I I've learned a ton from other managers in the industry. You know, Profit Coach has been really helpful, just understanding, you know, profitability and how to build a business that's profitable. It took me too long to learn that lesson. Um, so I appreciate the feedback I've gotten from others on that. I would encourage other managers to make sure that we're listening to customers and clients as much or more than we're listening to each other. And um, that's usually gonna guide us to the things that we need to do in our business. I think if we can do both those things well, we can build profitable businesses that grow. I think if we just do one of those things well, we're we're gonna lose one way or the other. [00:51:30] S0: Well said. Casey, thanks. Yeah. Yeah, we'll wrap up. Uh I I could talk to you for another hour or two and just keep the conversation flowing. So uh let's have you back on again in the future, but let's wrap this up here. Really appreciate you joining and and sharing a little bit about your story. [00:51:47] S2: All right, Tony.
00:51:47 · Casey Howe, Tony Cline
[00:51:47] S2: All right, Tony. [00:51:47] S0: Thanks for having me. I very much enjoyed it. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for tuning in to the Property Management Success Podcast. We'll be back with another value packed episode to help you level up your property management game. If you've got something valuable out of today's episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review so you never miss out on future insights and strategies and tactics. Until next time, it's your success.