Meet Independence Property Management (10/12)

Hey everyone, Danielyn here with Freedom Family Investments. In this video we're going to be talking to you about our property management company called Independence Property Management. I encourage you to stay until the end so that you can hear some real stories from real estate investors who have been working with us over the years, sharing their stories with you. Hey everyone, Danielyn here with Freedom Family Investments. And in this video, we're going to be talking about property management. So our property management company is called Independence Property Management. We always have that freedom theme going because we love our freedom. So I want to talk to you about the fees that there are in property management. This is a question that we actually get a lot. So lease up fee, how much is the lease up fee? And that is when the property is vacant and independent property management is going to place a new resident in your property. We are going to charge zero lease up fee, tenant placement fee, same thing. Property is vacant, we are going to place a resident in that property for you. How much? Again, zero dollars. Now, we use both of this language because different property management companies call them different things. Some say that lease up fee is for paying for the marketing. Some say the tenant placement fee is for the actual person who is going out there and showing the property, the licensed individual or the employee of the property management company. So we have neither of these fees. Management management fee is 10%. Okay. What we do have is renewal fees. Why did we do that? We did that. So, and this renewal fee is $250. We did this because we wanted to align our interests with you, the investor. Why is this important? Because I'm a customer of Independence Property Management. I am a client of theirs. They manage my properties. They manage properties for our team members, other team members who have investment properties. Independence Property Management is managing for all of us. And so we always provide feedback on what we like and what we don't like because we are clients ourselves. And so one of the things I loved about this is that when my property is vacant and I have a turn cost, I don't want to add insult to energy to injury and have a lease up fee and a tenant placement fee. Many times this lease up fee could be 250, $500. Many times this tenant placement fee can be anywhere from 50 to 100% of one month's rent. So if your rent is $1,200, you may have $600 to $1,200 as a charge to sometimes in addition to a lease up fee for the marketing in order to get your property rented. Well, that's I've got no money coming in. I'm having to pay for the turned costs and now I've got to pay for this too. I don't like it. It's not aligned. The property management is making money when I'm not. So what we did is we are charging renewal fees instead. Renewal fees means the property management company is now incentivized to keep that resident in the property, keep them happy, to make sure all the work orders are taken care of, make sure that they are taken care of, make sure they love living where they're living. Because that's how the property management company makes more money by renewing that lease every single year for $250. Now our interests are aligned. So for anybody who's looking for a property management company in the Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio area, this is what you're going to see. No lease up fees, no tenant placement fees and a 10% management fee. And when we keep the residence in your property and don't have a vacancy and don't have turn cost to you, we are going to have a $250 lease renewal fee once a year. Now, for anybody who buys a turnkey property from Freedom Family Investments, you have additional guarantees that fall under the Freedom Guarantee program. Okay? So these additional guarantees are mortgage coverage. That means if during the time we are managing a property, if your property does go vacant, if we don't have it turned and then leased up again within 60 days, on day 61, we are going to start covering your mortgage. So day 61, we pay your mortgage until we get that property leased up. Okay? Then you, your first year with us, after buying a turnkey property, you are going to have one year of free property management. That means no 10% property management fee. You also, for the very first year with us, after you buy a turnkey property, you're going to have a one year warranty. This warranty covers anything that the renovation team fixed, rehabbed, renovated, anything that they essentially touched that's in the scope of work. We place a one year warranty on that. We are a vertically integrated, integrated company. So it's our renovation and project management company who is overseeing the rehab. And therefore if something goes wrong within the first year, we feel like it's on us to go ahead and fix that for you at no cost. Again, it has to be on the scope of work. It has to be something we touched. If the tenant damaged the property, then it is a tenant responsibility, the fee. So that would be different. Just so you know, so get more Clarification, beyond this video, this is just high level information. Other thing under the Freedom guarantee is instant cash flow. What does that mean? When you buy a turnkey property from us, if it is not already rented and cash flowing, then as of the day of closing, we pay the rent until we get that tenant into the property or that resident. We like to call our tenants residents. We say residents pay, tenants don't. And so we like to treat our residents well, make sure that they are happy, make sure that they are paying their rent so that you are getting the cash flow that you want. So that's the Freedom Guarantee. Again, there are questions you probably have about this. You need to call the team, you need to be asking those questions. Don't take this video as the end all be all of this program. I just wanted to give you some high level information on what we have done with our property management company to set ourselves apart and to align our interests with the investors. Because again, we are clients ourselves. And so that is important to us that our property management company is winning when we, the investor are winning. Some other things I wanted to mention to you about our property management company is we have grown to over 700 doors now. So the reason why we have a property management company is because we personally outsource to five different companies in the local Dayton and Cincinnati area, all of which failed to meet our expectations in very, very big ways. So we said, you know what, we're just going to do it ourselves. We may not be perfect, but at least we can fix the problem when there is a problem. And that's really kind of who we are at our core. We're very, very authentic and transparent about the struggles of building all the companies that we have built. We have always said we are human, but if you let us know that something is going wrong, we are going to find a way to fix it. So we want to earn your trust, earn your business. We want to get better every day. So we thank you for just being a part of our lives, being a part of our company and growing with us. So we have over 700 doors now. We also have established departments for financial work orders, maintenance, leasing and customer experience. So these are all now separate departments. So as we grow, we're able to bring on staff to be able to meet your needs and make sure that you are having the customer experience that we want you to have. Also we have added a resident benefit package. This is for the residents. So when you're a property management company, you're trying to, you have two clients you have the resident you're trying to make happy. You have the owner that you're trying to make happy. It isn't always easy to do both, but we are doing our very best and we are improving every single day. So our resident benefit package, it's actually allowing the residents to pay rent when they pay it on time. It's posted to the credit bureaus. So this is actually improving their credit. So it incentivizes them to pay on time because they know that it's improving their credit. Also, we deliver furnace filters twice a year. This actually helps you, the owner, because one of the most expensive things is to fix is the H Vac. Continually have it serviced because the residents are not changing those filters. So there is furnace filter delivery to your properties twice a year so that the residents can change those filters and keep your H Vac in good condition. And then we send birthday cards. They also get gift cards for good payment history. So have we. We are just incentivizing the right things to help keep our residents happy and help keep our owners happy too. So if you'd like to learn more about Independence property management, please just give us a call or shoot us an email. We'll have that information here in the description of the video or on the screen. And we look forward to working with you. I hope all of this answered your questions. If you would like to ask more questions that I haven't answered in this video, please feel free to go to chatwithfreedom.com scroll down to talk to our investor relations team, jump on one of their calendars, and they will be happy to answer any questions that you have. Well, I hope you enjoyed the video. Now it's time to get real. We're going to share with you some stories from real investors who are going to share their experiences with you so that these examples can come to life.

At some point, you have to break away and, you know, make a better decision for your business. So that's what we decided to start with, Independence Property Management. Because again, that control piece that gives you more control when you're actually doing the things instead of outsourcing it. There is a place for outsourcing for sure. But, you know, because of our past experience with all the different property management companies, we just decided, okay, let's just do this. And in true Danny fashion, right? So it was a little bit, I guess the biggest challenge in the very beginning was getting everything transferred from the last property manager into our systems and into and learning like, okay, which software? Okay, which, you know, and and the nitty gritty the day to day. And to some point we're still doing that because as we're growing so quickly, it, what worked yesterday doesn't always necessarily work today. So speaking to your point of we're human. Absolutely. But we're also a culture of okay, if it's not working, let's figure out what will make it better. We're very solution oriented and we're very quick to say, hey, this isn't working. So we're gonna, we're gonna put this in a place to mitigate that. And we have shared with our team members as well, like always, you know, if you have suggestions that we're very open, it's very open communication because especially the people on the front lines who are dealing with the things from that we don't necessarily see all the time. And if they're just in this particular role, then they're going to have that experience to pull from to make smart suggestions. And I want everybody to feel like they have a voice and not feel like, oh, I'm afraid if I say this or oh, I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, like we're not doing it right or something like that. No, like we want to foster that open communication because you always want to be better. And but you mentioned there are so many pieces in property management, for sure, probably the most complicated piece of our business because it's the most public facing business and it has so many voices, you know, coming in and giving their opinion or having all these needs and things that we need to service and cater to, which is what we signed up for, which, which is what we try every day to do and to provide. And because we have, because we have that internal culture of let's figure out if it's not working, how can we help. Very service oriented, but also very smart in the choices. So based on all of the experiences and all the things that may not have worked out. So I think that is the main crux of it. And with anything you're going to have some bad experiences. But the key is if something is a bad experience, it's a total waste from it. So if you learn from it, then it was well worth what happened. It may not feel like it in the moment, but it was well worth it in the moment. Just as a side note, like I'm kind of reorganizing, reworking some of the processes in IPM and I'm excited about it because it's like we mentioned, the biggest, the one of the biggest Companies with the most team members. And I feel like as we grow, some of the challenges that IPM is facing now, which are unique to them, to the other departments, is because of how many team members are in there. So I'm excited because I feel like the other ones, as they grow, they're going to get to that point, but we're going to always already have it figured out.

Yes.

Yes. So that's, that's where we are, that's where we're coming from. As far as property management, it's not perfect. It's a lot of movement, especially because our portfolio has grown so much and they are from hither to yawn. They are far. Like if you took the one furthest away to the first, whoa, it's a lot of area to cover. But it's because I think people are coming to us because they feel like, okay, they may not be perfect, but they get it most of the time and they really care and they want to try to be better every day is what. So that's what, that's what we're about and that's what we're trying to do.

I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective with the world. I think it's going to be incredibly helpful.

My name is CJ and I just wanted to do a quick review of my experience with Independence Property Management Management. So I'm an active investor in the Dayton, Ohio region and had been utilizing another property manager for some of my assets, but was entering into a partnership with a duplex and I wanted to try out IPM or Independence Property Management and had a fantastic experience. Compared to my other property manager, there were two things that really stood out to me and that was organization and communication. So they were extremely organized in onboarding me through the process and just continuing to keep me updated with the renovation and the asset itself. And I think that really came through in their monthly reports. So in their monthly reports, every single receipt was added for any expense that I was incurring, which was a lot more detailed than my other property manager experiences. And then secondly, from a communication standpoint, they were always very communicative if there was a maintenance issue that they were handling it and what the options for the repair repair were, whether it was to replace with new, how much that would cost or try to simply do a repair on whatever that potential capex issue was. So overall, had a fantastic experience with ipm. I think they are a great property manager for the out of state investor who wants to know what is going on with their property. They're not someone who's just going to send you a monthly report and you're never going to hear from them. They want you to be engaged and know what's going on with the property, which I think a lot of investors, especially newer investors, really value. And I think it's a great place to have your rental properties or your assets managed.