Peter Lohmann's Podcast
00:56:29 · Peter Lohmann
[00:56:29] S1: Yeah. The media business has kinda turned into a going concern sneakily. Started with just the podcast and shortly thereafter, the newsletter. Both of those started mostly just for fun. Then discovered I was able to sell sponsorships, and now I've ramped up the podcast. It's now a year round show, and we have video, and the newsletter has now gone twice a week. And I'm scattering in these various reports and surveys and things that I'm putting out, like the top 40 largest property management companies, And I just love it. It's it's... Some of my favorite work that I do is using the platform that I've got to move the industry forward and help operators. The the filter that I use for everything that I publish is, would this help a property management business owner to know this, to learn this, to see this, to hear this? If the answer is no, then, generally, I won't publish it because either not relevant or it's essentially gossip. And so now sometimes things are kinda like right on that line where it's like, you know, AppFolio is involved with such and such a lawsuit. Does it help the average property manager know that? I I think so. There's maybe an argument to be made that it's kinda like not relevant or I'm just trying to get views or whatever. But I do think it... You know, it's important that people know what's happening in the industry with some of the larger players. And there was no one really doing that work. Like, no one is... Has, like, court reporter with keywords getting notified and, like, you know, I've been able to break some stories, which has been extremely professionally rewarding and help property managers know what's going on. So, yeah, it's really fun, and I love doing it. I'm glad that I've gotten the management company to the point where I actually have time to do this stuff because it requires a lot of research and writing. And AI is, of course, helping a lot with that. I've also been bringing in reporters to help. I am actually... I sent a reporter to broker owner in the spring. I'm sending another reporter to Zillow's conference coming up here in the fall. They have a... Something called Zillow Rentals Unlocked that is a pretty new event, but it's, like, two or three days, I think, in Scottsdale. I... I'm not able to go, but I'm sending a reporter.
00:58:38 · Peter Lohmann, Adam Willis
She's gonna attend everything and write up a bunch of stories, and we're all gonna find out together what Zillow's up to, what they're thinking, what, know, what moves are they making. That's the type of thing that I love being able to do. So it's it's really been fun. [00:58:54] S0: It's it's really interesting. And thank you for being, like, a voice of SFR stuff and being a friend to so many, you know... I'm gonna say NARPM members, but I think your breadth is even expanding beyond that. Now I'm really curious to know, like, where do you think owners, operators like myself... Like, this is totally self preservation question is, like, where do you think we're susceptible for, like, massive disruption or catastrophic ruin? Or do you think we are? I mean, I I get text messages from a friend every day of, like, fear mongering posts, oh my gosh. Mhmm. The world's gonna end. Where... But where do you think, like, distilled down, where do you think we have problems?
00:59:31 · Peter Lohmann
[00:59:31] S1: Two two attack vectors are possible for property management business owners. First, I think that, you know, I don't know if this is good or bad, but people who are our age... I'm I'm 41. I think are fine. Like, we have another ten, twenty years. You know, we're gonna... We have this established base of clients. We have our network. We have a lot of built up reputation, whether it's our domain or our local presence in an area, meaning meaning, like, actual humans know your name and know your business and what you do. We're gonna be fine. I think for people who are listening to this and are, like, under 40, I think there's two attack vectors to really watch for. One is we talked earlier about how AI is being used against us in these court filings. There's another way that AI can be used against us, which is all the things that we're using AI for to make our business smoother, more efficient, save costs, get work done for us, there's no reason that property owners can't do that too. So property owners can and are using AI to do things that they previously would have hired a full service property manager to do. And software like TurboTenant, which just acquired TenantCloud, are supercharging that ability with just, first of all, a nice platform that can do all the things you would expect, like collect rent online, maintenance requests, and all that. But now supercharging it with AI and bringing in local services in certain markets to supplement the things that landlords really don't wanna do, like showings and maintenance coordination and things like that. So I think software that's aimed at self managing landlords, supercharged by AI, and and augmented with local services, local a la carte services, like boots on the ground, go take pictures, go turn this valve, go post this notice, that is a real disruptive threat to professional property managers. 100%. It's something I'm... I've been reporting on and watching carefully for years now, and AI is is really speeding it up. The other attack vector is going to be the twenty five year olds who are growing up in an AI native world and are able to build and scale a property management company with an insanely lean staff. Like, there's some people in our industry who are our age, who who have an incredibly high DLERs, like, run very lean.
01:01:54 · Peter Lohmann
And it's gonna make those guys look like the most bloated management company you've ever seen. I'm talking a thousand doors with two people level of efficiency by taking advantage of AI, vibe coded software, and everything else. And so what does that mean? It means they can charge almost nothing. Right? Imagine this... The full suite of service that your customers are accustomed to, but at 10% of the cost. That is a that is a threat. And, again, I think this is this is a threat because... Kind of, like, in the same way that you and I came up and we took advantage of, like, all my rent payments, owner portals, owner knowledge base. Like, a lot of the stuff that you and I did early on got us a little foothold and got us to grow and scale much faster than companies that had been in our markets for many, many decades, the same thing's gonna happen to us or to those who are a little below us. And AI is just gonna accelerate it even more. So those are the two vectors that I think about to answer your question.
01:02:57 · Adam Willis, Peter Lohmann
[01:02:57] S0: I love it. I love it. I... The differentiators... I... Do you think, like, you know, someone who comes in and and has these... A thousand doors with two people and a whole slew of AI agents, do you think they immediately race to the bottom and undercut us? Or do they take care of... Do they bite off some of that and margin and maintain that for a while? But they... If in the event of a race to the bottom, or do you think they go, hey, this is going to be a large scale play. I'm gonna be a low cost leader, and I'm gonna grab market share in a significant way, and then boil the frog and find... You know, get into the black or find some margin that way. I wonder what the play is. [01:03:37] S1: Well, I think the early... The people who who jump on this early will probably just charge half of what you charge, and the the rest will be margin. But the problem is once you get two of these AI powered groups in a market, now they're gonna race to the bottom, and they'll they'll, you know, eat away at each other's margins till they're barely profitable. And maybe there'll be some VC backed, you know, player trying to trying to go, you know, roll up across the country with with a model like this. But, yeah, it's... You know, now, will it be successful? Will people accept it? Can you truly scale, or is this just too much of a personal relationship boots on the ground business where it will be resistant to this type of an attack? Time will tell, but I'm sure people are going to try.
01:04:18 · Adam Willis
[01:04:18] S0: Yeah. And I think the way I always just... When my team is like, we're all doomed, you know, or or my friends from the industry, we're doomed. I'm like, you know, nobody's going to court. No no AI bot is gonna be able to go to court. Well, apparently, I'm go... I'm going to court for free. You know? Like, I didn't I didn't even know. Like, I'm just showing up for my client. Like, there are those things that are differentiator. Is there is there any way where you see, like, we could get, like, really big big wins or, you know, kind of Wayne Gretzky, like, skating to where the puck is going? Like, where do you help out operators? Right? Because a lot of this was built around, like, hey. You know, Peter's a voice for the people and aggregating information and bringing news stories. Like, where are you seeing, like, this is, a tangible win that I need to share? Is there anything that you're sitting on that you wanna share?