Peter Lohmann's Podcast
00:37:08 · Matt Luke, Peter Lohmann
[00:37:08] S1: Yeah. If you talk to my wife, she's gonna maybe have a different opinion, but I I am a a nerd for organization and and creating systems and being optimized. I don't know. For whatever reason, it's some sort of passion, weird hobby for me. So as I was building the property management side, I thought, you know what? I can take that weird hobby [00:37:32] S0: Give it an outlet. [00:37:33] S1: Over to a business. Yeah. Then I I get to spend my time doing that instead of reorganizing the spice drawer at home Yes. And having my wife getting annoyed with my OCD habits. So, yeah, it's given me a good outlet, like you said, to be able to flex those brain muscles and try to [00:37:50] S0: eat the best thing. I find it to be really fun. [00:37:53] S1: Yeah. And and most people don't get it. They don't understand it. But, like, what are you doing? I'm like, this. And, like, oh, that's boring. [00:38:01] S0: Move [00:38:01] S1: on. Next topic. [00:38:02] S0: Yeah. I think you would find some friends inside Crane. There's a cohort of us who are quite nerdy in that way. [00:38:08] S1: So Oh, that's great. [00:38:10] S0: On the financial side for a moment, if you're comfortable sharing, like, I have to imagine your margins are pretty good. Are you able to share, like, your... Let's pretend... I don't know what you pay yourself. Let's pretend you pay yourself a $100,000 a year. Once you back that out, what would be, like, your net margins percentage wise?
00:38:10 · Peter Lohmann, Matt Luke
[00:38:10] S0: On the financial side for a moment, if you're comfortable sharing, like, I have to imagine your margins are pretty good. Are you able to share, like, your... Let's pretend... I don't know what you pay yourself. Let's pretend you pay yourself a $100,000 a year. Once you back that out, what would be, like, your net margins percentage wise? [00:38:28] S1: Sure. So we we do have a separate property management LLC for the property management outside of the properties we own ourselves. [00:38:37] S0: Mhmm. [00:38:38] S1: And that that is how we also work with our investors and owners as well too. So we are paying ourselves a property management fee even for properties that we own. [00:38:47] S0: Got it. [00:38:48] S1: And that goes into that bank account. And from there, I forgot to mention, but I also own a marketing and advertising agency that I started in 2002. Wow. So I did that for income. That was my income for many years as I was building up the real estate business, and I still have that business. But from an income standpoint, I don't pay myself anything out of the property management side. So I am able to use a lot of legal tax write offs with the property management side to keep my income low. [00:39:26] S0: Mhmm.
00:39:26 · Peter Lohmann, Matt Luke
[00:39:26] S0: Mhmm. [00:39:26] S1: And we just keep that money in investments and bank accounts and reuse it to invest into more properties. So I'm not actually pulling any wages from the business, but the margins are very good. We could talk about that. We do have a resident benefits package. And what I have done is I've created a spreadsheet to keep track of the cost of goods sold on per unit. So I know what we're spending on either outsourced vendors or software per unit. Yep. And that actually comes out to less than what we charge for the resident benefit package. [00:40:01] S0: Wow. Okay. So that would be, like, all your hard costs, like your software and your benefit package and your, you know, contractors who are doing leasing and all that stuff. Your haven.ai, all that. Yeah. [00:40:15] S1: Yep. So all of the charges we have for managing a property, including the software, the vendors, the leasing, the photoshoots, end up per unit less than the cost of the resident benefit package. [00:40:31] S0: Wow. That's amazing. So the rest is gravy. Correct. Yeah. The actual management fees. Got it. Okay. How about note, like, posting notices and going to court for evictions and stuff like that?
00:40:31 · Peter Lohmann, Matt Luke
[00:40:31] S0: Wow. That's amazing. So the rest is gravy. Correct. Yeah. The actual management fees. Got it. Okay. How about note, like, posting notices and going to court for evictions and stuff like that? [00:40:45] S1: Yeah. So what we do is with our delinquency process and LeadSimple, we actually connect our work with the local attorney. At day five, they receive an email that says we need to start a three day quit or vacate with the tenant. So then they take that entire process from off our plate after day five. If the tenant does make a payment, then I have LeadSimple trigger an email back to the attorney to say, hey. They've made the payment. You can take this one off of your off your plate. [00:41:19] S0: Okay. And so they'll actually post the notices for you? [00:41:22] S1: Yep. They they hire the process server for us. Correct. Yep. [00:41:26] S0: I love that. [00:41:26] S1: Okay. And if we get all the way to the eviction stage, then they have the phone number for our vendor that does the lockout and meets the sheriff. So if they get that to that point, fortunately, it doesn't happen very often, but if they get to that point, they'll contact our vendor directly to coordinate that lockout. [00:41:46] S0: This must be like a small town thing or something because no eviction attorney in Columbus would do any of that for us. [00:41:52] S1: Well, actually, the sheriff calls the vendor, to be honest. [00:41:55] S0: So Wow. That's great. [00:41:57] S1: I think they they know each other by now.
00:41:57 · Matt Luke, Peter Lohmann
[00:41:57] S1: I think they they know each other by now. [00:41:59] S0: But Okay. Do you personally have, like, any type of an assistant or, like, anything like that? [00:42:07] S1: No. I don't. Just Yeah. Other than my AI agents on marvelism, that's it. [00:42:13] S0: Yeah. You're just keeping it simple. Okay. Yep. I'm interested in understanding your turn process a little more. Mhmm. A high high value activity that we do as property managers is walking the unit and preparing the turn scope and estimate, getting that to the owner, and communicating with them about exactly what's gonna be done during the turn and how much it will cost. Curious how you're handling all of that. [00:42:37] S1: Yep. So on our our turn process, about two days before the tenant is out, we have a task come up in LeadSimple to create a project in Property Meld. And in that project, you're able to assign multiple vendors [00:42:53] S0: to
00:42:53 · Peter Lohmann, Matt Luke
[00:42:53] S0: to [00:42:53] S1: one specific unit. So that's gonna include carpet cleaning, maintenance work that might need to be done, cleaning, paint touch ups, whatever. Yeah. I think those are the main categories. And so then that triggers that project in Property Meld and all of the vendors get a work order at one time. It also includes a work order to our vendor who does the inspections. So the vendor does the inspections in the work order. I remind him to try to get there in about a day or two from the time that he received the work order. And then he goes and take... Then he'll take pictures of the property to document the condition when the tenant moved out. Around day nine, that vendor also has a separate work order that asks him to go back and take pictures after the vendors are done so that we have pictures of the post work and then pictures archived for the new tenant moving in. [00:43:52] S0: Okay. So is that vendor also, like, calling the owners to talk to them about the scope? [00:43:58] S1: You know, we don't actually do that. [00:44:00] S0: You just [00:44:00] S1: We just just take care of it. We have very few that would go beyond the limit where the deposit doesn't cover the turnover. So we don't have to reach out to the owner because the tenant is covering the cost of that turnover. [00:44:19] S0: So the deposit... So you're saying you have very few turns that exceed the amount withheld from the deposit? Correct. Wow. That's really surprising.