Épisodes

  • Building an AI-Native Property Management Company

    Building an AI-Native Property Management Company
    Sep 30 2026
    Building an AI-Native Property Management Company How can property managers implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make their companies more successful and efficient? The last time you joined us on The Property Management Show, we heard how Ping Hsu from Spotted Properties almost lost his business, but then transformed his role from being a property manager to a trusted advisor in the minds of his owners. In this episode, we’re shifting the conversation to how he has also built an AI-native property management company in the process. Ping Hsu – Bio Ping Hsu is the owner of Spotted Properties, an 800-unit property management company in Hamilton, Ontario, and founder of Acel Cortex Solutions (https://acelcortex.ai/), where he builds AI agents that run the back-end operations of property management businesses — from accounting to maintenance coordination. Using this system, Ping now runs Spotted Properties with a team of just three people while pushing the company’s profitability from under 20% to over 32%. He’s now helping other property management companies put the same AI-driven approach to work in their own operations.Marie Tepman – Bio Marie Tepman is Director of Marketing at Fourandhalf, a full-service digital marketing agency that helps residential property management companies attract more property owner leads — covering everything from websites, SEO, and paid ads to content marketing, online reputation management, lead nurturing, marketing strategy/consulting, and AI-driven search. With over a decade in owner-focused marketing, she’s spoken at industry conferences and written extensively on marketing for property managers. She’s also co-host of The Property Management Show — the longest-running podcast in the industry. Outside of work, she’s a mom of two and an enthusiastic home cook for her toughest food critics. How Can AI Be Effectively Implemented in a Property Management Company? Using AI to take phone calls did not work for Ping and his team. But what he did realize is that the time-consuming data transfers and paperwork did not need to be done by a team member. A Property Management System (PMS) cannot be contained in a single software. You have likely noticed this in your own operations. Ping says he uses several different platforms for several different things: DocuSign. With all of his student leases, DocuSign can help collect electronic signatures on a lease agreement from six or seven tenants.Google Calendar. This is where meetings and schedules are kept.QBO. Company financials are easily organized here. AI was built to coordinate the transfer of data, settling into accounting and administrative functions. Can You Trust AI with Your Company’s Money? Ping said that was a scary thought in the beginning. They started by implementing the AI tool Claude to run the administrative functions. But, it would never make decisions for the company. Decisions come from humans. But now, AI can be instructed to do any number of things without a human team member logging into whichever platform manages that part of the business. What does this do for the organization? Saves time.Bumps up efficiency. Before handing over any of the accounting, Ping ran a lot of tests. He was also willing to make a lot of mistakes. What Does This AI Agent Actually Look Like in Practice for a Property Management Company? Take a look at Ping’s screen, and you’ll see a pretty well-organized work flow. Here’s what the maintenance process looks like. It begins with a dashboard.A tenant makes a maintenance request.A diagnosis of the problem is made.A vendor is selected and assigned.The work is scheduledIf the owner wants multiple quotes to approve, those are provided.Tenants confirm the work is done.The invoice comes in and it’s turned into a bill.The invoice is paid.The cost shows up on the owner’s rental statement. These AI-driven work flows are available for maintenance, accounting, and leasing, and Ping says the amount of work his team has to do has been reduced. With what they have now, 55% of their work has been reduced with the AI they’re using. And, he’s still working on making it even more effective. There is no longer a human team member needed to participate in each step. How much time is actually saved? Ping says that in the past, he could not ask his team for any help on Thursdays because Thursdays were when invoices were processed. They were manually combining several tasks and charges were being added and everything was being coordinated. It took a full day. Now, the team members are basically checking the statements once, and a virtual assistant is making sure no invoices were missed. They spend two hours a week on invoices. Two hours instead of a full work day. His chatbots have also turned several hours of work into a single click when information needs to be collected and shared with tenants or owners. Emails in the company’s own tone have been created and sent. ...
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    36 min
  • From Property Manager to Trusted Advisor: How Ping Hsu Nearly Lost His Business and What He Learned

    From Property Manager to Trusted Advisor: How Ping Hsu Nearly Lost His Business and What He Learned
    Sep 3 2026
    How can nearly losing your business help you shift from one mindset to another? Welcome back to The Property Management Show, where we deep dive into the world of property management, marketing, and entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Marie Tepman from Fourandhalf Marketing Agency. Today, we are joined by Ping Hsu, who has built something really incredible that a lot of people are striving to build. We’re talking about how he got there and what mistakes were made along the way so that we can learn from those for ourselves. PUT TABLE HERE What Did Ping Hsu Think He Was Building? In 2019, when Spotted Properties began working with Fourandhalf, it was a much smaller company. Ping had begun as a real estate investor, and after considering a career in engineering decided that real estate is what he wanted to do long-term. Property management was something that he did on occasion, and he saw it as a way to expand his network. When he could not find the right property manager for his own properties, he combined the real estate and the property management and things grew from there. The recurring income in property management was especially attractive. Spotted Properties grew from about 130 doors in 2019 to around 800 doors today. What happened during that journey? How Can Marketing and Opportunity Help a Property Management Company Expand? Ping says that working with Fourandhalf allowed the company to build a good foundation for marketing. They were ranking in the top three on Google, and their social presence really exploded, which created a lot of demand. Add to that the fact that a few property management companies in Hamilton failed, so new clients were being on-boarded pretty quickly. This led to a larger payroll and a desire to run a more passive business as an owner. As the expansion really took off, it was impossible not to see all the opportunities for mini-businesses. Because Ping was dealing with so many vendors and watching money come in and out, he began to wonder why he was constantly paying all these people. Painting, for example, was something he always had to hire people to do.There was a lot of money spent on waste management.And pest control.Real estate agents. So many of these basic services seemed to be costing him a lot of money, and he wondered if that was money he could earn instead. So Spotted Properties began to internalize those systems. Eventually, sixteen or seventeen employees were on board, as well as a real estate team and a marketing budget, and this is how Ping realized it’s possible to scale a company too fast. He could see that they were spread too thin. When Is It Time to Start Saying No and Focus on Your Core Business? It’s tempting to want to continue adding lines of business. If you have a friend who can spray for pests, it seems easy enough to take on the pest control right? It seems like it’s going to make you more money than paying an outsider. Exiting does not have to be difficult and it does not have to jeopardize your business. Ping began to notice: He was paying technicians to do the work he did not want to pay outside vendors to do, but they did not have full schedules. Yet, he still had to pay them.The math makes sense when those employees are busy all the time (or even 75% of the time). It’s still extra payroll when you’re trying to keep up with three or four businesses and you need to develop ways to keep your employees busy. This was the time to look at the company’s core area of expertise and stick to what they did best. Another temptation? Virtual assistants. Here are the challenges that Ping discovered with VAs: It was hard to find a good fit, especially given the general difference in time zones.It was easy to delegate the things he didn’t want to do, like phone calls and vendor coordination.Quality dropped and everyone got frustrated. Ping stopped and asked himself what his core business was. What was his profession? The answer was pretty simple: property management. He began integrating up instead of integrating down. What does that mean? For Ping and his business, it meant focusing on asset management and doing more than what typically property management companies did. The real estate sales raised capital for the long-term holds. The company began focusing on property management again, but they created an entire ecosystem that fed into the core property management base. How Can Property Managers Position Themselves as Asset Managers and Advisors? In today’s market, it can feel like basic property management is a commodity. Ping says one of the most important things his company did was to stop seeing themselves as property managers. Once he removed that label, the real growth began. Here’s what he did: Began a YouTube channel called Property Hustlers. He talked about how to invest in real estate, which during COVID a lot of people were interested in, thanks to a strong market.Provided education through video on how ...
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    Moins d'une minute
  • Portfolio vs. Departmental: Which One is a Better Property Management Team Structure?

    Portfolio vs. Departmental: Which One is a Better Property Management Team Structure?
    Jul 20 2026
    Which structure works best for a property management business: Departmental or Portfolio? This is a topic that can be pretty polarizing in the industry. Welcome back to The Property Management Show, where we deep dive into the world of property management, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Today, we’re talking with two prominent property management business owners in Central Florida. Welcome to Maryann Hoffman and Andrew Dougill of Hoffman Realty and David and Stacy Wilson of Wilson Management Group. These experts are talking about the structures they’ve adopted and offering some advice to property management owners who have not yet decided on how they want to organize their businesses. Podcast Summary Each type of management structure has its pros and cons.For property management companies that are about to build out their own structure, they need to think about the things they like to do and don’t like to do.Deciding what works best will require flexibility.Processes and systems are often more foundational than how a property management company is organized. Guest Bios:Hoffman Realty Andrew and MaryAnn Hoffman are the founders and principals of Hoffman Realty, bringing decades of leadership and experience to the Tampa Bay property management industry.MaryAnn, a licensed real estate broker, entered the industry in 1983 and established Hoffman Realty in 1988 with a clear vision: to deliver personalized, high-quality service to small residential investors.In 2000, Andrew, then Vice President of Engineering at TECO Energy, joined the firm to lead business operations, aligning his background as a long-time real estate investor and landlord with the company’s mission.Together, they have built a 38+ year track record of supporting residential investors throughout the Tampa Bay area and currently oversee a portfolio of approximately 450 managed properties. Hoffman Realty’s continued success is rooted in a disciplined operational approach and a strong commitment to client service, with MaryAnn remaining actively involved in day-to-day oversight to ensure every client receives personal attention, and no property owner is overlooked.Both Andrew and MaryAnn are deeply engaged in the professional community. Andrew is an active member of Suncoast Tampa Area Realtors (STAR), the Bay Area Apartment Association, and the Tampa Bay Chapter of NARPM. He has served as Property Management Chair for Greater Tampa REALTORS®, is a member of the STAR Government Affairs and Property Management Committees, a former Tampa Bay NARPM Board member, and currently serves as Tampa Bay NARPM Legislative Chair—advocating for landlord-tenant policy at both the state and national levels. Wilson Management Group Wilson Management Group was founded in Orlando in 1986 and has been family-owned and operated ever since.David Wilson obtained his Real Estate Salesperson’s license in 1993 and began working for WMG as a property manager. In 2005, he obtained his Real Estate Broker’s license and gradually transitioned into overseeing all day-to-day business operations.David, and his wife, Stacy, purchased the business from his parents in 2014, and they run it together with their fantastic team. They are active members of NARPM (National Association of Residential Property Managers). David has been a member since the Orlando/Central Florida chapter was formed in 1995.They are passionate about keeping Florida a landlord-friendly state, for the benefit of their current and future clients. They participate every year with NARPM in annual legislative summits both in Tallahassee, FL and Washington, DC, advocating for the rights of landlords here in Florida. What Do Successful Central Florida Property Management Companies Look Like? Let’s take a look at who we’re talking to today: Hoffman Realty is based in the Tampa Bay Area. They serve communities as far north as State Route 54 and as far south as Apollo Beach and Wimauma. They’re a departmental structure and have about 450 companies under management.Wilson Management Group is in Orlando. They’re a portfolio style management company and serve all of Orange and Seminole Counties, with part of Lake County, Volusia County, and Osceola County within their scope. They also manage about 450 doors. How Do These Structures Differ? At the NARPM Broker/Owner Conference this year, Matthew Tringali of BetterWho presented a framework called The Team Structure Checklist, which highlighted the fundamental differences between each business structure. Here’s what Maryann reported from that event: Departmental Structure. Most people are in the office and available for phone calls, answering questions, and serving more specialized areas of expertise. There’s one person managing inspections for all properties and another person managing the accounting or the leasing. One point of contact takes care of customer service. There are property management departments.Portfolio structures would have one...
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    41 min
  • Google Ads for Property Managers: Expert Insights from Maddie Lushington

    Google Ads for Property Managers: Expert Insights from Maddie Lushington
    Oct 9 2025
    Google Ads can be a powerful growth engine for residential property management marketing. But for many business owners, it’s also a source of frustration. Misconceptions, unrealistic expectations, and the complexity of campaign management often leave property managers saying, “Google Ads just doesn’t work for me.” On The Property Management Show podcast, Google Ads expert Maddie Lushington shared candid insights from her five years of running Google Ads campaigns for property managers across North America. Her stories reveal why some campaigns fail, what realistic success looks like, and how property managers can avoid common pitfalls when marketing to property owners. Why Property Managers Struggle with Google Ads Many property managers walk into Google Ads expecting instant results: a certain number of leads, a specific cost per door, or guaranteed outcomes based on what a peer mentioned at a conference. Maddie has seen this play out countless times. I also recalled overhearing property managers comparing results over lunch at an industry event. One person bragged about generating dozens of leads in Florida, while another lamented that ads never worked for them in a smaller market. On the surface, these conversations sound like benchmarks. In reality, they’re stories shaped by geography, competition, and budget. Comparing success in Florida to a rural town in Arkansas is like comparing apples to oranges. The market dictates what’s possible. This misconception — that performance can be copy-pasted from one market to another — is one of the biggest reasons property managers feel let down by ads. What Defines Success in Google Ads Campaigns for Property Managers Beyond Cost Per Lead Leads and cost per lead remain the metrics everyone talks about, but Maddie encouraged property managers to widen their definition of success. Impressions and clicks reveal whether your brand is showing up consistently. More importantly, looking closely at the type of clicks matters just as much as the number. Owner Leads vs. Tenant Clicks This is where nuance comes in. Owners and tenants often use almost identical search terms. That means even the most carefully crafted campaigns will capture some tenant clicks. Maddie was quick to point out that this isn’t a failure — it’s simply the nature of how search works. Her team’s role is to constantly refine campaigns to keep the balance tilted toward owner leads. She stressed the importance of daily click volume as a leading indicator. If a campaign generates five to ten clicks a day, we know we’re creating enough opportunities for owner leads to come through. Not every click will be perfect, but the math starts working in your favor. Can You Trust AI Tools for Google Ads in Property Management? Automation and AI sound appealing. Google has rolled out tools that promise to “optimize” campaigns with little human input. But Maddie and I both warned against over-reliance on AI in property management marketing, and here’s why: The Nuance Problem You Can’t Ignore I put it plainly during the interview: “Google has now shifted from purely keywords to intent.” That sounds great until you remember that intent is slippery. Intent is a very nuanced thing, which robots find it hard to master. In property management, that nuance cuts deep. Owners and tenants search with similar phrases. Maddie sees this daily: “Tenants and owners actually search very similarly…[and] the AI isn’t nuanced enough to… know the difference… between the owner that we want and the tenant that we don’t.” Google’s shift from keywords to intent has been one of the biggest changes in recent years. If you want a deeper dive into how Google’s constant updates affect property management marketing, check out our blog on what property managers need to know about Google’s latest updates. When AI Goes Wrong in Google Ads Maddie shared a story that perfectly illustrates why human oversight matters. During a routine review of a campaign, she noticed something bizarre: Google’s AI tools had injected Latin placeholder text — lorem ipsum — into live ad copy. In another case, the AI mistakenly expanded a campaign targeting vacation property management into keywords for vacation activities. This meant ads meant to capture property owners would start showing up for people searching “things to do on a trip.” Without human intervention, those wasted clicks could have drained hundreds of dollars from a campaign. The lesson? Automation can support you, but it cannot replace human strategy — especially in an industry as nuanced as property management marketing. Google Ads Budget for Property Managers: A Reality Check Perhaps the most sobering part of Maddie’s interview was her explanation of budget math. Many property managers believe that $500 a month should guarantee a couple of new doors. The truth is far less straightforward. Breaking Down the Numbers A $500 monthly...
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    29 min
  • Maximize Property Management Revenue Part 3: Educating Owners and the Misuse of AI

    Maximize Property Management Revenue Part 3: Educating Owners and the Misuse of AI
    Jun 26 2025
    The Property Management Show returns with Part 3 of Marie Tepman’s discussion with Todd Ortscheid, which builds off the earlier discussions of fee-maxing and choosing the right revenue model. In the conclusion of this series, we focus on the importance of education when it comes to property management marketing, and how to use AI to boost productivity without losing the human touch. Property Management Marketing Starts with Content Marketing To someone who does not know the property management industry, the idea that a company like Fourandhalf would market exclusively to property management companies seems incredibly niche. But, the industry is big. And, the majority of rentals in America are not even managed professionally. Marie was shocked to learn that 10 years ago when she first got started in property management marketing, and perhaps even more shocking is that this is still true today. Ten years later, many rentals are still not professionally managed. This tells us that education continues to be necessary. It has to come first. Property managers can educate landlords that there’s value in hiring a professional management team for their rentals. Not only does it save time and prevent errors, they can make more money. A lot of self-managing landlords, as you know, don’t want to pay someone a percentage of their rent. But, that’s because they often don’t realize that a professional will help them earn more money, not only when it comes to rental pricing, but also with expertise and even the ancillary fees we’ve been discussing. Education is an under-rated part of marketing. It’s not just having a well-trafficked website and running digital ads. Those strategies help to capture the bottom of the sales funnel by reaching the people who already know what a property manager does. They’re making decisions based on prices, services, and other specifics. They know what they’re looking for. But what about the landlords and the property owners who don’t know? There’s an opportunity to capture the people who are looking for solutions. They might be having a tough time managing their own property. They’re looking for help, for answers, and for other options. Those are the customers who will make decisions based on the criteria your educational marketing has taught them to use. Investing in the Marketing that Matters Todd understands the need for educational marketing and has become so successful at it that he went on to bigger and better automation programs. He outgrew the basic marketing principles that he learned when Fourandhalf was helping him make marketing videos 10 years ago. He has some advice to the property managers who are small and strapped for cash and maybe afraid to spend money on marketing. Todd also works with a lot of clients who don’t have $10,000 a month to spend on marketing. He tells those clients that the educational component works. It was true 10 years ago when everyone was talking about content marketing and the benefit of education. And, it’s true today. Look at Marc Cunningham and his company, Grace Property Management. There is video after video after video on that website, and they spend 1 percent of their budget on marketing. That’s it. Anyone can do that. Once you start getting all that educational material out there, you’ve become the trusted source. When someone in your market looks for an answer to a question, you’re there providing it. Todd says a blog he wrote 10 years ago on screening pets is still one of the most-viewed pieces of content on the website. This blog gets tons of traffic. Why? Because there’s always going to be a landlord in Atlanta who had a bad experience with a tenant’s pet, so they will go looking for information on how to screen pets. And, Todd’s website pops up.The site provides educational information to the person who needs help, and they get value out of it. And once they’re there, they are likely to see other videos and other educational content.All of this leads to trust. They trust the information and the expert providing that information. This means that even if they don’t pull the trigger today, when a tenant leaves at the end of the year and that owner doesn’t want to go through the whole leasing and marketing and screening process again, they’ll come back to that great video they watched and they’ll find the source. Spending just a little money gets you to the point that you’re building revenue. Then, when you have the budget to spend $10,000 a month on marketing, you can do other things. Content marketing gets you to the point where you can spend more on marketing later. It Was Video Then. And It’s Video Now. Ten years ago, we were talking about videos and how important they were to content marketing. Fourandhalf was writing blogs on the power of content and education. It’s all still true today, and it’s all still important today. The difference is that 10 years ago, not everyone was...
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    19 min
  • Maximize Property Management Revenue Part 2: Churn, Lifetime Value, and Legislation

    Maximize Property Management Revenue Part 2: Churn, Lifetime Value, and Legislation
    Jun 12 2025
    Most property-management owners focus on adding new doors, or, they’re just concerned with reputation management and they don’t feel like they need to grow their business. But, they ignore the cause of lost revenue and lower customer lifetime values: annual churn that quietly erodes 20–25 % of portfolios. You probably don’t realize just how big your churn rate is. Welcome to Part 2 of our conversation with Todd Ortscheid, CEO of Revolution Rental Management. In this part of our series, we are talking about real world churn rates for property managers, how boosting your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) can elevate your property management company and give you the budget necessary to effectively market your services, and some of the most threatening legislation and regulation around fee-maxing. How Much Are You Really Losing? Getting Honest About Churn Any industry report you read will show you that property managers can expect to lose doors every month and every year. Even if you’re doing a perfect job, your owners are going to sell their properties. They’re going to die. They might change their minds. Todd says that when asked to estimate churn, many managers guess that their churn rate is around five percent. But really, most property managers are losing 20–25 % of their doors every year. The latest NARPM® benchmarking guide says the average churn is at 20%, and Todd says that property management companies that can bring that loss down to around 10% can feel really good about what they’re achieving. Some property managers might think that they’re not losing money on churn because they’ve helped one of their owners sell a property. That’s great. There are commission earnings to be made. But, they’ve lost the recurring revenue. Never underestimate what you’re losing to churn, and even though it’s surprisingly difficult, try to bring that churn rate a bit lower. When sales are intense, churn rates will jump. Be prepared. Increasing Customer Lifetime Value When you have responsible ancillary fees in place, you’re earning extra cash to invest into better services. Better services reduce your churn and increase your customer lifetime value. Where should those extra earnings be spent? We discussed this a bit in part one of our conversation: Marketing. Each new door now yields twice the ROI, making pay-per-click (PPC) or content marketing an easy investment.Better services. Upgrade what you can provide. This might be a 24/7 maintenance line, leasing automation, and a resident-benefit package (RBP). These things are increasingly expected by tenants. Fee-Maxing Myths and The Triple-Win Model Fee-maxing means charging more money from tenants. Won’t that lead to tenant churn? If you’re taking more money from residents, the property manager and the owner have better returns, but won’t residents leave, thus increasing an owner’s vacancy rate? That’s a fear not a fact. Properly structured fees don’t drive tenants away. Most ancillary charges are behavior-based or have opt-in requirements. Late fees and bounced check fees and credit-contingency fees are behavior-based. Only the tenant can prevent those fees.Pet fees are completely optional. No one will charge a tenant a pet fee if they’re not moving in with a pet. Todd has a client in Washington State who is the only property manager in his market to allow pets everywhere. He rents every listing faster while collecting a pet fee for the owner. The result is a much lower vacancy rate, happier owners, and grateful residents who couldn’t find pet-friendly homes elsewhere. Tenants who have lower credit might not like that they have to pay a bit more in rent every month, but they’ll be grateful that they can rent a place, even with that low credit score. Those residents are grateful that someone is willing to work with them. Second Nature is the company that manages Resident Benefits Packages. They have a model that they call Triple Win. The owner wins. The tenant wins. The property manager wins. That’s what happens with these ancillary fees, whether we’re talking about renters insurance that’s offered to tenants at a cheaper rate than they’d find on their own or a rising credit score that’s occurring because their on-time rental payments are being reported to the credit bureau. It’s a better deal for residents. Those tenants aren’t going to leave. They’re getting benefits. Fee-Maxing and Regulatory Reactions Fee-maxing quickly got the attention of regulators and legislators, and they began to see it the same way they might see Ticketmaster charging “junk fees.” But it’s not the same. The airline industry has done a good job of convincing the government that their ancillary fees are necessary in keeping ticket costs down. The property management industry needs to make the same case. Our industry has advanced. We want to fund technology and new benefits for tenants, and if we cannot provide that through ...
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    25 min
  • Maximize Property Management Revenue Part 1: The Truth Behind Fee-Maxing

    Maximize Property Management Revenue Part 1: The Truth Behind Fee-Maxing
    May 28 2025
    Welcome back to The Property Management Show! Today kicks off a special three-part discussion on fee-maxing with Todd Ortscheid. In Part One of this important conversation, we will take a look at what responsible fee-maxing looks like, how it can double your revenue, improve your services, and ultimately increase customer lifetime value. When done right, it can also keep residents on your side. Expect to unpack some juicy math. Todd Ortscheid: Automation Addict and Fee-Maxing Evangelist It’s great to welcome Todd back to our podcast. He has worn nearly every hat in the property management industry. He’s a business owner and advocate, an industry consultant, and currently the chapter president of NARPM Atlanta. He’s also the CEO of Revolution Rental Management and co-founder of PM Assist. A bit of time has passed since Todd was last here, so let’s review who he is and where he comes from: Todd has been in property management for about 13 years.He started in the industry in 2012 and before that, he was an airline pilot for 14 years.Todd’s father was in the property management business, so as he got involved in that business and grew the company, Todd also became more involved in consulting for other property managers.He started and later sold a maintenance company.He did government affairs work for NARPM. Todd is still consulting, and he’s also a self-proclaimed automation addict and fee-maxing evangelist. That’s what we’re interested in talking about today. The A-Ha Moment for Fee-Maxing Todd began thinking about involving ancillary fees in his own property management business at a NARPM Owner/Broker conference in 2014 or 2015, where he heard Marc Cunningham talk about the ancillary fees that were available for property management businesses. It made sense because that’s exactly how airlines work. They make most of their money not on the plane tickets but on the extras. Later, he heard Alex Osenenko and Darren Hunter talk about this topic right here on The Property Management Show several years ago. By 2020, everyone was worried about revenue, so he put together an entire course on fee-maxing and leveraging ancillary services and fees. It’s been a passion of his for years, and when Lead Simple introduced what was possible with automation, he became really involved in that as well. Fee-Maxing Can Be Polarizing (But It Shouldn’t Be) When the topic of fee-maxing comes up, it can be polarizing. Like just about everything these days, there’s a camp that’s very much for it, and a camp that’s very much against it. Some property managers hear fee-maxing and they imagine that a property manager or an owner is nickel-and-diming a resident to death. We’ve heard the term junk fees thrown around. So, what does responsible fee-maxing look like? The first thing Todd wants to point out is this is not hoarding money or being greedy. Some people get that idea, but all you have to do is gather the math and run the numbers to realize these fees are necessary in order to provide good service. When Todd and his team first started running numbers for property managers, they found the average property management company had a single digit profit margin. It was 5 or 6 percent. That’s barely skating by, and it caused a lot of companies to struggle financially. Fee-maxing is not about trying to be greedy. It’s about making your business sustainable. You shouldn’t be struggling to provide the bare minimum. As a property manager, you’re trying to provide good service to owners and residents. You’re trying to hire and train better staff. You want to invest in better technology and increase your marketing efforts. To do that, you need the revenue that’s created by ancillary fees. The primary goal of fee-maxing is to improve the service you’re offering. Investing Ancillary Fees to Improve Property Management That’s an important distinction. If you can invest more money into your business, you can run not only a more profitable business, but also a more excellent one. You’ll improve the overall experience. Think about what property management looked like 10 years ago. How many companies had the technology we have today? There were no resident benefit packages. It was rare to find a 24-hour maintenance hotline. Now, everyone has these things. We’ve been able to radically improve the nature of the services we’re offering in this industry, and Todd says that’s due in part to fee-maxing and ancillary services. The boost in revenue has led to these services. If everyone providing property management has a 5 percent profit margin, you can’t do anything except collect rent and file evictions. Staffing maintenance services would be impossible. Fee-maxing is an invitation to move beyond the basics. Impact on Customer Lifetime Value In the spirit of unlocking better margins for property managers through fee-maxing, it’s also easier to increase or amplify the customer lifetime value for...
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    20 min
  • Residential Property Maintenance Metrics and Improving NOI (with Ray Hespen)

    Residential Property Maintenance Metrics and Improving NOI (with Ray Hespen)
    Jan 22 2025

    Discover how data-driven maintenance metrics can boost resident satisfaction and improve NOI. Learn from Ray Hespen about benchmarking, AI triage, and the latest trends in property maintenance analytics. Transform your property management strategy with actionable insights!

    e70I3glN4DJYkIiiK6Fd
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    48 min