Inside PetScreening: Growth, Compliance & Pet Issues with Jennifer Stoops

If you have a company that has a significant HOA business and maybe your property management business is smaller, you probably want somebody to take on your company unless you wanna split it up that can do both of those things. So I think it's important to think about what your company looks like and what does that company look like? What are their goals? What's the endgame for them? How are you and/or your team going to be treated? What is, what does that look like? And when I say treated, what's the culture like? Because if you're growing in this dynamic, you're going from an office where you're probably all in the same place all the time to more of a corporate structure. And a lot of PMCs, I wasn't, I was not familiar with what corporate structure looked like. So that was a huge, I learned a ton, but it was a huge, huge learning point for me. And you know, there could be periods of time where you're, you and your team feel like you're a little bit on an island. So developing a culture as a more nationwide company is really important so that everybody feels like they're, they're, they're a part of something. Because otherwise it can feel very lonely.

Welcome to Season 5 of Peter Lohmann's Podcast. This podcast is a show about all things residential property management, from property operations to sales and marketing to growing and managing your team. I'm your host, Peter Lohmann, co-founder of RL Property Management. For season 5, I have an exciting new guest each week. We go deep into conversation about problems facing professional property managers and the best ways to overcome them. Thanks for listening. Now let's go. Welcome back to Peter Lohmann's podcast. Today I am here with Jennifer Stoops, SVP of Industry Relations at PetScreening. Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate the invite. I'm, I'm excited to be here today.

Yeah, I'm really thrilled to have you and excited to get into conversation. You've got a, a storied history. In our industry and, uh, you have a lot of wisdom and experience to share. So let me just start though by, for anyone who isn't familiar, just take 1 to 2 minutes, share your background and, and story of how you got to your current role at PetScreening.

Sure. I, I, uh, I don't know about the wisdom part, but I definitely have the experience part. So, so I've been in the industry now for almost 2 decades. I met John Bradford back in early 2007, and at that time You know, people were still running little newspaper ads. So there was a local publication that we had that, you know, had a classified section. I had just moved to North Carolina. I was finishing real estate school and he was looking for real estate agents. He was just getting ready to open Park Avenue Properties. And so I applied, I was, I think I was scheduled in 2 or 3 weeks to take my state exam. I had just passed my class and my class exam. And so I remember he said, okay, you know, great, I'll happy to hire you. So when you pass, call and let me know. And so I did, I called him, walked outta class that day, or, you know, state test that day, passed, gave him a call. And we still chuckle about it cuz he says, no one ever called me back. He's like, I had no choice but to hire you. One person that actually did what you said you were gonna do.

Yep.

And so started at Park Avenue as, you know, at ground level as, as basically the first property manager there. Worked my way up to ultimately running and operating the business, you know, as John left to both pursue a career in politics. As well as started PetScreening, which I think the political career started in 2015. So I, I was already being groomed to take over the business a few years earlier than that. I worked my way up to different managerial positions and, and things like that to ultimately running it until we ended up, you know, selling to Pure. And then I worked at Pure Property Management for 4, looked, this was about 4 years and did mergers and acquisitions there, which I really enjoyed. And then decided, you know, I felt like I had worked my way out of a job and there's only so much acquiring you can do. And then you kind of focus on organic growth and, you know, smaller rollups. And so it was just time for me to make a change. And there was an opportunity that opened up at PetScreening. And of course, you know, I've known Jon for almost 2 decades and, and there was an opportunity to foster relationships, do industry growth, you know, and so the opportunity to be the SVP of industry relations opened and I interviewed for it and decided that was a good next move. And it's been very interesting to take operator experience and shift it over to the vendor side of the world. You know, we don't often get to do something like that. And it's, it's, people here have really enjoyed that of me because a lot of folks have always been on the vendor side. And so they've really picked my brain a lot as an operator of nearly 2 decades in understanding.

Huge advantage.

Yeah.

It's a big deal.

It's, it's, It's been amazing. I've really, I've been really enjoying, I've been here for a little over a year and I've been really enjoying taking that experience and being able to utilize it in a way I never expected to have happen.

Yeah, that's great. So, so PetScreening, I know most people probably are familiar, but PetScreening is a service that helps property managers handle pets. And if you're a property manager, you know that pets are a little bit of a wrinkle in the screening and lease signing process, especially as it relates to service animals and emotional support animals, ESAs. PetScreening basically streamlines that whole thing, makes it really easy, and helps you qualify pets and charge pet fees and pet rent and kind of outsources the problem. Is that a good summary?

Yeah. You know, I was the first user of PetScreening and—

You were the first user?

The very—

well, I guess that makes sense because you were working for John at Park and he was the co-founder.

Yeah.

Or the founder.

And actually, personally, other than probably his own immediate family, as we were testing it before Park Avenue even used it, I got to do my own pet profile for my dogs at the time. Nice. And, and so it was, it was pretty cool to, to be in that phase of it and kind of watch it be built out. But, you know, to your point, it, this was interesting because it was, it was created by a property manager for the property management industry. Yeah. And there's something to be said for that because as operators, and you get this too, we see different things that we need that the industry tries to go create for us. But unless you've been sitting in our seat, in our shoes, and gone through some of the things, and how he ended up deciding to do this was because we picked up some assets from another company. I think we had managed for 3 days on this one particular property and there was an unreported pet in the property. And it bit somebody. And, and so of course now 3 days into this, we have no idea. We haven't even been able to get our arms around all of the inventory that we just ingested 3 days before. We now are faced with this dog bite situation. Looked at the lease, no pet reported on there. And that of course got John's wheels turning. And if you know him at all, his brain is constantly like that. And so, you know, that was the genesis of how the thought came behind this industry does not have a good way for property managers to, to have a way to be pet friendly because you didn't figure this, this company was started a little over 8 years ago. And at that time there weren't, I mean, I think we all tried to do our best, but you could ask, and Peter would probably would say this today too, you could ask any property manager how they're doing certain things. We're all doing a lot of the same stuff, but we're all still doing it differently. There's, there's, you know, there's no unified way. There's no great playbook. Playbook out there. And so pet screening is one of those tools that it's free to property managers, which is awesome. And it does, it, it helps you create compliance cuz you're treating everybody the same. But it's important to make sure that you're utilizing it for everybody. So there's the pet profile, but I find that a lot of PM companies are using it specifically either only for pets or for pets and assistance or support animals, but they're not utilizing the no pet profile, which is just as if not more important than any of the others because unreported pets are huge out there.

Yeah.

So pet screening helps complete, you know, create compliance, true pet policy and process. It helps mitigate risk and of course, you know, bonus, it helps also generate revenue, you know, for property management companies.

Yeah. Every time I see photos of the office, there's dogs there. And yeah, I wanted to ask you how many dogs actually are at the office every day, you know, on a regular, I would tell you weekday on any given day.

And so we have kind of a hybrid schedule, but on the days we are in the office, you'll see anywhere between probably 25 and 35 dogs in the office.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

There's a lot.

There's a lot.

That's like, I think I came in, so we have 3, we have, you know, 3 kind of different sections of this building that we rent out. So different teams are in different buildings and each building you go into, there's dogs in every single one of our 3 different buildings.

And do these dogs all get along? Are they just kind of running around like a pack at the office? Or do they all, everyone keep 'em like by their cubes or how's it work? Yeah.

So we have, it's really cool. I'll have to, you know, at some point we'll, we'll, we'll do a, uh, a tour around and I'll send you in a little video, but we have what we call yards. And so, you know, most folks, when you have cubes, if you will, you have big open spaces and you turn them into cubes, you kind of have those, those walls that are metal and then have fabric. And well, ours are actually 4-foot privacy fence yards. And so that's how they're cubed out. And, and then everybody that brings their pet in has a little, almost like a baby gate. And if you don't have one, we actually supply them. They're hanging at the end of each row. And so you can put like these baby gates at the end, you know, on the, on the entrance to your cube so your pet can be in there with you. Now there are some, there's teams. In one of the offices that the dogs are in there so frequently together, it's almost like doggy daycare. That whole row has dogs. It's got to be 6 or 7 in this row. And so they just block off the ends of the row and all the dogs are just in the middle of that row all day long.

That's so fun.

It's amazing.

It is.

It's a lot of fun. And it's, it's, it's just, it just brings people such joy.

Yeah. I think for people who like dogs, which I love dogs, that would be like an enormous perk of working at that company. Like huge.

I mean, think about that. And one, you get to have your pet with you, which who doesn't love that? I mean, if you have a pet, you love your pet, right? Two, it's a huge money saver because otherwise you're paying somebody to have to come let them out. Yeah. Or you're having to constantly leave to go do that. And in a lot of instances, you know, Charlotte is, we look at it like a mini Atlanta. There's a lot of traffic on the interstate. And so it's not terribly convenient all the time.

Sure.

For a lot of folks to just zip out and go back home. So it's a huge benefit in so many ways and everybody loves it. And for those that don't necessarily, and I gotta be honest with you, I, There's gotta be 80-some-odd people that are in the office on any given day when we're here. I have not yet met anybody that doesn't love dogs, and if they don't, they just don't walk down the rows 'cause there's ways around. Well, yeah.

And it's like, you know, when they come in for an interview, I mean, if you hated dogs, presumably you would keep looking.

Right. You're not, probably not one to come work here.

Yeah. Now what about cats? Do people bring cats to the office or are they just kind of stay at home?

So they've been in the office. So one of the things that we do is we, uh, a few times a year we have a team in marketing that does photos, videos, or stuff like that. And so they'll do professional headshots for your pets. We've had baby goats in here. We've had the Komodo dragons. We've had cats, we've had hamsters. The baby goat was something I gotta tell you. But 9 times outta 10, when you're walking around, you're gonna see the dogs.

Yeah.

Most people tend, I think the cats get a little bit more skittish. So you usually, I mean, I, I, yeah, every once in a while you'll see a different animal like the Komodo dragons, but generally you're seeing the dogs.

All right. So I was checking out the website to prep for the call. I noticed something that was new to me, and maybe it's been around a long time, but it's called incident tracking. And it looks like this is something where if there's an issue with a dog, you know, unauthorized dog or dog bite or dog waste issue, it looks like the property manager can kind of report that to a database. And then if that prop— if that same tenant applies to a different property manager's home or apartment, if that company's also using PetScreening, they're going to be able to see this kind of history. Tell me a little more about that because that, you know, property managers have dreamed of something like that, not for pets, but for actually tenants. And we've never been able to get anything off the ground with it that's, you know, used by more than a handful of people. So I'm curious, you know, what is this thing and how does it work?

Yeah. So it's actually been around since the inception of pet screening, but I think that we have not done a great job of discussing it. I think there were so many other advantages to pet screening that as it was first coming out, you know, those types of things, helping people get pet policies in place, compliance, things like that took precedence over incident reporting. But we've been around for a while now and we're realizing we've got tools that people aren't even aware of that we have, incident reporting being one of them. We've been collecting this data since the beginning of pet screening. And remember, this was created by a property manager for a property manager, and, and one of the big triggers was this dog bite incident, right? So, John, we are the only tool like this of its kind, to your point. And pets are not a protected class. And so it is important for a property manager to be able to go in, and you simply go in the profile and click report an incident. It is a one-way, so it's only seen on the operator end, the property managers, you know, it is not living on the end of the pet owner, you know, but it is attached to the profile on our view, on our, on our side. And it does, it follows in perpetuity. And so, you know, even if somebody had a dog bite today, in 5 years from now they have a different dog, it's still important because behaviors of an animal are not just because of a breed or it's, it's pet parent ownership too, right? So, and most dog bite incidents happen from either a visiting pet or a pet that's off leash. Those tend to be the most common ways. And so, you know, pet damage, and those are typically most pet damage is from an unreported pet. And so you have two things that you wanna report that you wanna report that somebody didn't report their pet to you. So they, you know, it's important to know if somebody's being honest or not. And it's also important to report that they had damage from that pet. And these are one of those, this is one of those things to your point that It is something you wish you could do for residents as well, but it's, that's just to your point, it hasn't been lifted, but this is, and, and you know, it's, you just simply go to the pro profile and click create incident and, and it's there and it does, it follows them. And if there is a dog bite situation, whether it's the PM, they can pick up the phone and call the previous property management company to learn a little bit more about it to help make an educated decision there. But at least they have the information in front of them. To help them understand what to do next.

Got it. Okay. That sounds really interesting. And I, I love the idea here and maybe we could start to expand, you know, from pet incidents to other tenant violations using the, that same database. Cuz that's, that could start to become really valuable. What's the deal with, I, I, I've heard sort of conflicting thoughts and ideas around when the owner's insurance, like when their homeowner's or landlord insurance policy disallows certain breeds, like some areas have like outlawed that or— but I never really know what the latest guidance is here. If you have certain restrictions supposedly put in place by an insurance company, but then there could actually be conflicting laws that say you can't do that. And so what, what do you tell property managers these days?

So, and even I used to do this because I can remember when we even first started using PetScreening, one of the things that we did right away, we thought that our E&O insurance for, uh, for our company did not allow particular breeds. 'Cause everybody's known for years and years and years, it's been talked about this, this restricted breed list, right?

Yeah.

And when we called our E&O insurance, it turns out that didn't, we didn't have restrictions. But it's one of those things, it's almost like the telephone game. It was talked about, talked about, talked about. I'm not saying there's zero insurances that don't have something like that, but we learned to start telling other property managers, even when I was still on the operator side, I would always tell folks, call and make sure that your company insurance or even the homeowner, that their insurance actually has that block. Because in many instances they assume that it does, but it actually doesn't.

Okay.

And to your point, the guidance changes, all this stuff changes so much, it's hard to track it. Best piece of advice is to pick up the phone and call because in a lot of instances that's not actually there. And so it's important to check on that. And it, and then, and conversely, they can actually help you put a rider in place so you are able to accept pets. And it's dollars. It's, it's not this huge expense to allow you to do that. And then you get yourself protected. So always make that phone call to your insurance and find out.

Hey, I just wanted to give everybody an update on Crane. So Crane is the paid private community that I co-founded with Wolfgang Kroski a couple of years ago, and we recently closed our fall 2025 application window. We only open up for new members twice a year. And so I first wanted to say welcome to all the new Crane members. If you're listening to this and you're a member of Crane, especially if you're a new member, I just want to say thank you and welcome to the community. Wolf and I are thrilled to have, um, all of you wonderful folks joining us inside the community and participating in our masterminds and showing up for our Crane dinners and Crane events that we host all around the country. If you're curious to learn more about Crane, or if you missed the application window, I wanted to start providing some information about kind of what you can do in the meantime while you wait for the new application window to open. First thing I really want to encourage you to do is join the waitlist if you haven't done that already. You can go to joincrane.co, and if you just click join the waitlist, you just put in your name and your email and like one or two other pieces of information, and that way you're going to be notified as soon as we open up, uh, for new members. And something we're going to do differently in the spring is we're actually going to give the waitlist members early access to jump the line and apply first, uh, and Wolf and I will be reviewing those applications before we even open up for the general public. We did recently finalize the application dates, just if you wanted to mark your calendar. We're gonna be opening up the application window officially on April 3rd, and it will run for about 10 to 12 days there, uh, before we close up for another 6 months. And so if you join the waitlist, you can expect to get an email from us probably that last week of March or so. So really encourage you to learn more about Crane if you don't know much about it. It's been growing really quickly. We've been overwhelmed, frankly, with all of the interest and positive response from all around the community. We have industry leaders joining Crane every time we open for new members, and it's just been an outstanding experience, and I'm really honored and grateful to be a part of it. So go to joincrane.co if you want to learn more, and I look forward to seeing you inside the community. Yeah. And we've never done the breed restriction thing. We've always allowed just— we've actually never done breed or weight restrictions because my opinion was always like, listen, I'm not a veterinarian. I can't— what are we going to bring the dog in and I'm going to do an exam and put them on a scale? Like, what are we doing here? So I've never really understood how property managers are discriminating by certain breeds and weights and how are they just going off of what the tenant says?

I mean, and probably, I mean, think about when we did it back then. I mean, yeah, I, I would, I would have to say that's probably the case. And you know, it's interesting because I've been around, I've several friends that are very into rescuing pit bulls and that's obviously a huge one that most people wanna turn away. They are probably some of the sweetest dogs I have ever come across. They are, they are cuddlebugs, they are lap dogs, but you know, a Chihuahua is actually the ruled as one of the most aggressive dogs, the tiny little, but it's such a little yipper dog and it's so small. It has, you know, short man syndrome, but it's really more the pet parents and how it's, it's kind of like kids that write with crayon on the wall. Most kids are not doing that, but kids that are unsupervised or maybe don't have, you know, certain rules in place, it's, it, it operates the same way with pets.

Mm-hmm. And I know that majority of Americans have pets. Is that right? Do we know the latest? Statistics.

It is slightly over 70% of them— of U.S. households have a pet. And it's actually not even a pet, it's like 1.6 pets per property.

I also heard a data point that Americans spend more on their pets than kids overall.

Yes. And in 2024, there were more pets adopted than children born by almost a million. Yeah, mind-blowing, isn't it? Yeah, that, that stat blew my mind. And in our industry, only 33% of pets are reported to you, especially if you're not utilizing tools that can help mitigate that risk.

So two-thirds—

and it's not usually about the pet fees. I mean, most people that have a pet know they're gonna have to pay for their pet to be with them, and they're okay with that. It's usually those that have breeds that they think will not be accepted.

Yeah. So two-thirds of pets are unreported. Is that— wow.

Yep.

Yeah, that's wild.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, I think most listeners know that your best chance of leasing up a property is to allow pets. We have those conversations with property owners all the time. There's lots of different ways you can accommodate pets. You can charge a pet fee, you can charge a pet rent, you can do a deposit, you can— and of course we'll, we're going to skip over the whole ESA thing because that's been talked about to death. Oh yeah. ESAs are not pets. You can't charge a pet fee, although there was a recent ruling that maybe it could get interesting.

Super confusing right now.

Yeah. So I want to turn back the hands of time a little bit and take us back to your property management days. Now that we're sort of caught up in what you're doing now, and you were highly involved in Park Avenue Properties coming all the way up through the ranks to run the company, as you mentioned.

Mm-hmm.

And in listening and kind of preparing for the show and just kind of being around in the industry for a while, I mean, Park Avenue got to be really big. What was the unit count? Where did it kind of top out at, or where is it today? I don't know if it's still separately.

At one point in time, well, today it's part of Pure, but at one point in time we had about 3,600 doors, which, wow. You know, back then for our industry, you know, independently owned,, you know, it's small little companies. I mean, when you look at whether it's NARPM or just PMCs in general that are not, you know, these larger conglomerates, average company size is 4 to 450 doors, you know, kind of at its max.

I think it's smaller than that.

The average size, I'd say they're probably more 3, 350. Yeah. I don't, yeah. But yeah, you know, if you look at our NARPM friends, we're probably somewhere around 300-ish. So yeah, it's, it's, we were a, a, a small but mighty, you know, a big fish in a little pond at that time.

I mean, that's big. I mean, for an independently owned property, third-party, you know, scattered type property management company, that is very big. I can tell you because I've been collecting data and statistics on largest property management companies and that is very sizable. So I love talking to operators who have worked at scale in that way. One of the episodes I was listening to, you got into a really interesting discussion about running the company as a pod versus departmental. This was years ago that you recorded this episode, and at the time you had, I think, recently made a switch from departmental to pod and you were kind of talking about that. Now that more time has passed and even since you recorded that, what's kind of your latest thinking on how to organize a larger property management company?

It's kind of what we did at Park Avenue towards the end, and I, and I believe that even Pure still operates this way today. There are a lot of companies that either run fully departmental or portfolio-based, and we were a hybrid. We did have pods, but we did have departments as well. And so, you know, as you look to scale, if you take a company to 500 doors and you want to go to 1,000+ doors, you know, it's not just about more properties, it's about scale. And how do you scale that to be most effective portfolio and one property manager doing all the things? Heck, even if you're at, you know, 500 doors, one property manager managing a portfolio of properties is, is probably not the answer. They need help, you know, because they can't be out in the field. And I, I don't even think a lot of people realize that in most instances you probably have people that are out in the field doing certain things. You probably have people that are answering your phones. You probably have, you know, whether it's tech or otherwise running your, application screening, and this data is coming back into a property manager. But one of the things that we had learned, and even when I had switched to the, to the pods back then, in order to scale and create economies of scale, it's not always about throwing people at a problem. It's reevaluating how you're gonna go run that business. And so if you would take a property manager, and this was something I think all of us have experienced, whether it was ourselves, because as you start a company, you're probably doing a lot of those things on your own until you get to a certain growth point, and then you go hire somebody to help. You go away on a vacation for a week, take a property manager that works for you, and they're stressed out if they're managing a portfolio on their own because when they come back, there's a tremendous amount of work. The volume of emails and things that come in any given day to their email inbox is overwhelming. And your other team, most of us tend to run pretty lean on staff. You know, most don't have a lot of ability to say, I can take on Julie's portfolio while she's away and handle everything that's coming in. What they do is handle what Julie's emergencies are while Julie's away. And then Julie has to go take care of all the stuff that she missed while she was gone and all the stuff still coming in on any given day. And that's just not feasible. That doesn't create a positive experience for the people that work for you. And that creates tremendous burnout and that creates tremendous turnover over time. And so we wanted to help eliminate that. And it also creates friction If that person leaves or takes a different role in your company, because then the owners are stressed out because they now have somebody new that they have to speak to. And that takes a minute to get that up and going again. And so the pods for us was really a game changer and, and created kind of where we went next because it allowed us to have two people. They had their own personal inboxes, but they shared an inbox that was a team inbox where residents and our homeowners were all sending everything into the same inbox.. And so you had a property manager and a property manager assistant. That was what we called it internally. To the outside world, it was a resident relationship manager and a client relationship manager. And the emails had both of their signatures on it. And so there was redundancy there. And so if somebody was out, there was two people on that team. So the other person knew how to do the other's job. And it was great too because it allowed for upward scale. If a property manager assistant ultimately wanted to become a property manager, they were learning while working in this, in this pod arrangement. And it was great because for owners, they got used to two people, seeing two names. Every now and again, a resident manager would have to speak to an owner if somebody else was out. And so if somebody left or changed roles, it wasn't so dramatic and, and creating so much friction as it did otherwise. But then we got to a point where, and you know, and prior to Pure, we started doing this, but then Pure does it as well, there are certain aspects that are within departments that communicate back. And so you have folks that handle a lot of the maintenance requests that come in. You have folks that are doing all the phone calls and lease renewals, and you're helping with certain aspects of it, but they're going and doing a lot of the admin legwork because what you want to do is allow your property managers to get back to good old-fashioned customer service and relationship building. And I think our industry is finally starting to get to a point, because I think you would agree with this, In some instances they still are, but I think it's gotten so much better. They were so technology averse. Nobody wanted to embrace technology, and tech can't do what people can do when we're service-based business at the end of the day. But take the minutia off of the teams wherever you can and get back to good old-fashioned customer service. Because if you don't build that relationship, they're going to the next guy down the street. Even if he costs more than you, there's gonna be something that pulls them that way if they don't have a trusted relationship with you. And we are a reactive industry.. And so creating sort of these abilities and this scalability, you know, it, it allows for you to get back to building relationships because that they need that. Yeah. These, these owners, they want to hear from you in general. We had created, we called them our, I think it was our friendly, it was our friendly quarter. This was internally, we called it our friendly quarterly say hello phone call basically. Mm-hmm. But once every quarter. Each property manager was to reach out to every single homeowner in their portfolio just to check in. Yep. Because that helped build the relationship. They weren't calling with any bad news. They weren't, they were just calling to check in. How are things going? What's going on? Here's what's happening in the market. Giving them just kind of an update on their property. And that started to build a rapport. So then when they did have to relay, oh, by the way, you know, your tenant just reached out to us and there's, you know, this maintenance issue going on, they trusted you that you were getting the costs that were going to be, you know, cost-effective for them. You were doing what was in their best interest.

And that's really important. I've really become clear that property owners don't want to call their property management company. They want to call their property manager.

Yes.

And it's a subtle distinction, but it's worlds apart in terms of how the owner relates to the business relationship and the willingness they are to extend some grace when a mistake is made, or the willingness that they have to make a recommendation. You know, if you think back to the various companies and services that you interact with, when you have a great experience with a specific person and someone asks for a recommendation like, oh, you got to talk to my guy Johnny, like, he's so good, he'll take care of you. Like, no problem. Like, let me give you his cell phone number. Whereas like you may have had a great experience with XYZ company, but if you don't have a personal relationship with someone there, you're much less likely to like, because this human nature is like, you want to help your guy who's great to you with that. You know, you want to get him more or her more business. So there's something really interesting about this idea of having a personal relationship at a business versus just like, oh yeah, send an email to info@rlpmg.com and somebody will take care of you. Yeah. So we're, we're right on the cusp of making some changes along these lines at my company, which is why I'm kind of selfishly, uh, prosecuting this line of inquiry. How many units would that 2-person pod be able to handle, or how many owners?

It depends on what else you've taken off their plate, you know, and it can kind of a hybrid situation. I mean, I think we were to a point at, at Pure, the target was to get up to about 500 per pod, but that's because there were a bunch of other lease renewals for the most part, the, the, the PM would pull the comms, but then a lot of the back and forth and a lot of that other interaction and the actual admin type, you know, sort of the, the, the, the paperwork, if you will, that was done, you know, on the backend from somebody else. Yeah. And so it is, if you set it up right, it is truly scalable. It can be whatever you want it to be. I think once you get beyond 5, that can get a little tricky. I think 500, you know, is probably a good number when you have very particular things. That they are not doing. They're not handling every single maintenance request that comes in, the everyday work order type stuff, but they do have their fingerprint on turns to an extent, right? That's the communication where they're going back and forth with the owner, but they may have folks in the background that are helping get all of the bids for the turn work to be done. And so that data's coming into them, which saves them so much time, which allows them the ability to, to be communicating effectively with the client, which is ultimately what you want because Maintenance, turn, vacancy. Those are our 3 areas where we know if, if someone's gonna leave you and get frustrated with you and it's cause for them to want to leave you, those are the reasons. 'Cause that costs them a fortune. And, you know, for us, you know, one of the things that kind of sticks in my head, you know, when you're growing and you're kind of getting to that next step to create scalability, you know, it, it, it's, it's about maturing and scaling from being a great operator to being a great leader in your business, because that's really important. And, and you stop chasing growth and you start managing it. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's a really important thing. You know, we, we've seen it where a lot of companies, they're still working in the business instead of on it. And you've, you've, you've gotta trust the people that you have to go and do those things. So you could be seeing, what do I have to go do next? Poke holes in it. If you think you have it right, keep poking holes because This industry's changing all the time. And so you constantly have to be looking for the next way to do the next thing, or what else could I add, or how else could we do better? Because I do think we are in, even for a tech company sitting here as an operator now in a tech company, even tech companies tend to be more hands-off. And even we've realized we have to be more hands-on and be in front of our clients more because competition is real out there for even for us as property managers, it's always there. And so how do you make yourself better where there's a relationship built there?

Yeah. Were, were you at Park Avenue, were you guys across multiple markets?

Mm-hmm. We were, we were, we operated in North Carolina at one point. We were in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and Indiana. Okay. Wow. Yeah. And then in the end, we had sold off portfolios in some of those other markets we were in. Oh, and we were in Tennessee also. In our stage going into Pure, we were in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Hey, Peter here. I want to share with you guys a new tool that we're using at my management company for leasing. It's called RentEngine. You may have heard of them. They're a newer product in the marketplace and they facilitate self-showings and agent showings at all the properties that we manage. We typically have anywhere from 25 to 40 rental listings live at any given time. And since making the switch to RentEngine in, I think it was springtime of this year, our leasing timelines have dropped significantly. Not only that, but we're actually saving a bunch of money compared to the solution we were using beforehand. My team absolutely raves about RentEngine. We've used a couple other solutions, but ever since we made the switch, my team just can't shut up about how much they love using RentEngine. I've been recommending them a lot recently to other property managers. Heard nothing but good things. Basically, this is a sort of AI-first leasing platform. It's kind of the first of a new generation of software that's just coming available for property managers. You can actually go into the software and see the AI responding to all the tenant inquiries, both over text message and email as well as voice calls. So I've been really impressed with what they're doing, and the proof is in the numbers. Our leasing timelines are better than ever. Our days on market is lower, and our owners are really happy because frankly, we're just getting their properties leased out really fast. The team also has talked about how much they really like their lockboxes. They're incredibly tough. They're basically unbreakable. And with the company we were using before, we were having a lot of problems with battery life. And people breaking them open or having trouble getting them open even when they were trying to legitimately use them. So I encourage you to check them out. I'll drop a link in the description where you can book a demo with their team. Now, that's something I have no experience with, this kind of multi-market operations. So what are your— what's your guidance for a property manager who might be thinking about opening up their second location or going multi-market? Because I can think of a lot of advantages. I can think a lot of risks. I've heard horror stories. We've got companies now operating in 50+ markets across the US. So really curious to hear your take on this.

When we first did it, and I will say one thing with Park Avenue, and a lot of this attributes to John and how his, his mind works, we were very good about being leading edge on a lot of things. We embraced technology very early on. I remember when we had leasing agents out in the field, iPads had just come out and we equipped everybody in the field with an iPad. So when they were showing a property, they could have someone do a rental application right there, spot on, spot, you know, and just get it done. We had— we did lease signings the same way, you know, and this was, of course, before things advanced to the lockbox systems that we have now where you can do self-showings. Those weren't a thing at that point in time, you know. And so, so we always tried to be on the very cutting edge. And John did have a vision with our company being more of a, a regional player and figuring out how do you go and scale and do it right by going into other markets. So the first thing that we did was we had an operator that we knew was gonna be moving to South Carolina, to Myrtle Beach in fact. And while he was still with us in Charlotte, we treated him as though he had already moved and didn't, you know, he came into the office maybe once a month, but we didn't want him coming in anymore. We, we were trying to organize this in a way to understand what this model could look like. So we we kind of created a hub and spoke model. And so we didn't want to have to have brick and mortar at every location. And most people don't wanna do that. And of course now that's advanced even more. You're talking, this was, you know, probably 15 years ago that we attempted to do this. And, and, and you know, there were some hurdles that we had to try to overcome. And of course, big things that, that are very important is understanding licensing.

Yeah.

Because in some states licensing is, and now it's probably truthfully the biggest hurdle. The, the way that we structured it got easier, uh, because if it didn't work this way, you pivoted and did it that way. But it was the licensing because some have county licensing, municipality licensing, you know, of course they all pretty much have state licensing. So it was just this combination of trying to figure out what was needed from that perspective. But we had hub, you know, sort of because we were located in Charlotte, it was at the backend was in Charlotte. So all calls, all those things, they all came into Charlotte. And then you had somebody boots on the ground that worked from their home that went and did the boots on the ground phase. And that was at the time you were still doing your own showings. It's become a lot easier now with technology as it is. You do still, I feel like you just still want boots on the ground, at least a person that's a true employee of the company, you know, that you work at.

You have to. I can't imagine you could be successful in the long run without that.

No, I've seen companies try to do it that way because yes, you can make relationships with third-party vendors and a lot of us, most of our maintenance business is run that way. But I do believe very strongly that you have to have one W-2 focused employee that works for the company directly. 100%. That helps roll all of those things together. And, and, and they have this whole backend team. It doesn't really matter if you're sitting at your house at 123 Jones Street and not reporting to an office, or if you're in, you know, Myrtle Beach or Raleigh or, you know, Memphis, Tennessee, several hours away from us. And it's gotten a lot easier today with virtual meetings and, you know, all of that. Yeah, it's licensing was probably the biggest hurdle and I believe would still be the biggest hurdle today.

Yeah, that, that part hasn't gotten easier. And like in Ohio, for example, you can only be the broker for one company. So I get people all the time who are thinking about expanding into Ohio and they're like, oh, would you be the broker for me? I'm like, no, I can't. I'm not allowed. I can't.

Yeah.

So you got to go find some retired realtor broker who doesn't mind, you know, letting you hang your business under their license.

I think most states actually operate that way. 'Cause even in North Carolina, you could only be a broker of one, but you can be dual affiliated. So you can hang your license as an agent with another firm under another, you know, broker in charge, but you could only be a broker in charge of one.

Okay. Yep. Interesting. Yeah, the, the, the multi-market thing. I mean, there's a lot of different ways you can do this, and the amount of centralization is really the, the thing that's in tension here. How much do you let happen at the corporate office, which supposedly is going to be more efficient and more standardized? There's opportunities for cost savings. And how much do you let happen at the local office where now you're running into potentially people doing different things different ways? It's going to be more expensive. But the advantage is for the tenants and the owners in that market, they like knowing that things are happening here. My people are here. I can come to the office. And that I don't feel like we've really solved sort of the best or the right model when it relates to what do you centralize and what do you leave at the local office.

Yeah, I think, you know, what I had learned worked well for us was there were a couple things. In some instances, if you could find a relatively cost-effective small office, we did go and get that. But in, in a lot of cases we did sort of the Regis office where you had space there, you had a little pod there. And so if you had clients coming into town, they had a, a place to come and meet you and things like that. So that also worked well. But the experience of knowing the local market, well, that was key. Yeah. Knowing where the advertising made the most sense because market to market, The marketing is different in Charlotte, for example, rental properties are very heavy in the MLS in Charlotte, but in many other areas, advertising marketing in the MLS is not a huge factor when it comes to rental properties. In some markets, you know, Zillow is stronger than others. And so you need that person to understand the market. And that is where a lot of people have not yet realized, well, you don't necessarily need BD in every single market. I feel like you do because they know that market better than anybody else does. And that brings a trust factor to the clients you're trying to onboard. And so I, I think that that's, those are the parts you can't have somebody in another market pulling your comps for you in this market because there's factors you don't know. It's close to a school that the bell rings every 10 minutes and that's gonna drive that rental property crazy. So, you know, I mean, there's just certain factors. You can hear the interstate right behind your house.

You know, and it turns out real estate is a local business.

I mean, who could have guessed, you know? Yeah, exactly. So you can't, you know, you can't do away with people things on certain things, but can somebody on the back end after you've provided them with comps and you've communicated with the resident what that, you know, lease renewal will look like, can somebody on the back end internally go and take care of that paperwork for you? Absolutely. Yeah. Can somebody internally, when you give them all the factors, put it into the place for you for marketing? Absolutely. You know, can they help you with the rental application and the screening process and making sure pet screening is done and all those things? Absolutely. But when it comes to the market and, and then handing it over to your property management team, that's, that local knowledge is key. And without that, I, I think you'd struggle with success. We've seen it both ways and, and we've tried it both ways. It is highly, for us was not nearly as successful. When you don't have boots on the ground that is familiar with the market.

Would you call that like a lesson learned? Like, hey, we tried this, we tried that. That was that a, was that a lesson learned?

Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, we did, we did, we were firm believers of having boots on the ground, but I think initially there were certain aspects of the backend that we tried to help do that we realized it, it was not as effective. So yeah, taking certain things off and making other things very much market-focused were key. And that for sure. I mean, That's the whole point of trying things, right? You can't be afraid to try. You just got to learn from it and pivot and do whatever is the next appropriate thing to try and do. Exactly. That's how you learn. Yeah, that's the only way we're going to learn.

There is no playbook for this stuff. And the speed of that iteration is basically going to define the trajectory of your success. It's not necessarily about getting it right the first time. It's about— that's right— making the decision quickly with the information you have available. Evaluating whether that decision was right or wrong within some reasonable length of time, course correcting if it was wrong, doubling down if it was right, and then making the next decision. I think that's exactly right. Yeah. The people I've seen grow huge companies, multiple companies, they operate that way. They don't— they're not waiting for a perfect answer. They're not sitting in a cube somewhere crunching numbers for 3 weeks to like model it out perfectly. They operate on instinct. They make— they take big swings. They don't work out. But they are quick to make those decisions and then allow the feedback to inform their next move. Yeah.

A lot of our, of companies, and you've seen this too, I mean, you know, you can't be hasty necessarily in your decisions, but don't paralyze yourself by analyzing, analyzing, analyze. At some point, just do. Because there's not a whole lot that, that in our industry that you do that if it's a mistake or it's an oops, you can fix it. Yeah. I mean, there's very little that we can't go fix in what we do. This is not rocket science, not brain surgery.

Just don't operate without a license or steal trust account money.

Yeah. That, that would not be—

Those are some fatal mistakes. Good gosh. Yeah.

I can't believe that stuff even still happens, but it does.

It does. 'Cause I, I keep an eye on, like, I try to stay friendly with the Ohio Division of Real Estate in case I'm ever down there for some horrible reason, which I've never been, but I want them to at least know who I am. So I keep an eye on like the cases that they're hearing and stuff.

Yep.

Once in a while I'll do like, I don't know if maybe people don't, maybe don't know this, but if, if you keep an eye on some of like the case hearings that happen at your division of real estate, and you see one related to somebody you know, or, you know, it's related to property management, you can typically submit an open records request and say, hey, can you send me what's available for this case? And they'll send you like— that's interesting. They'll send you the settlement agreement or whatever, you know, the original complaint. And so you can learn a lot about how your division is currently thinking about various property management issues by reading their reports and their settlement agreements and the complaints and how they're handled and did they get their hand slapped or was this a serious— So it's actually kind of fun.

Those are a great learning tool. And similar to you, I had always— and actually I still am— I was always involved in our Realtor Association. So I started by North Carolina has— of course we have NARPM chapters here, but we had a property management division. So a lot of states in their Realtor division have either a property management division or a property management council, they may call it. And so I was involved in that for a long time. We always paid attention. The, the bulletin comes out, we call it the bulletin. It comes out once a month and we would always look at the cases that were going on. Yeah. Or, you know, the, and, and then to your point, sort of what the, the punishment or the resolution was to those, that was always very helpful to kind of understand what they're watching. And it ebbs and flows on when property management companies are targeted. You could tell when that happens because it's, it's, you'll see most of the cases are property management related and not necessarily realtor related anymore. And it ebbs and flows based on, I think at least what I've seen in my experience is where the market is. If, if, you know, if the rental market is strong and the, and the real estate market is slower, you tend to see more coming at the property managers. And of course during COVID we got targeted a lot in our industry. We were the bad guys. And you know, it was, it was very interesting to watch and I served actually in North Carolina as the state chair for the Realtor Association for the legislative affairs. So like you, I've, I've tried to keep my pulse on that and I'm still involved with the, with the state association today because it's important for the laws to always understand, you know, what's going on there. I still carry my license despite being, you know, a vendor now in the industry. You don't wanna lose all of that experience and all that you've worked towards. And interestingly enough, We actually used to— years ago, there were a lot of companies that they would end up with their license revoked. And so these are now going to be clients that have nowhere to go. And so we would reach out to those property management companies and say, look, we can help you. You've got a lot of glass on the floor here. We'll help go sweep it up. Let us come and help you. And so that was a way that we could go And we became good friends with some of these folks where they understood they got themselves into trouble. We don't judge you for that, but you now have a company and a bunch of clients that don't have anywhere to go. Yeah. And they have 30 days or less to go find someone to manage their asset. And these people are in panic mode. And so we would reach out and work together with them. And the real estate commission loved that we did that because they didn't have an answer for that side of it. Yeah. They just knew they had to, you know, have a resolution to the problem at hand. And here's what the losses and here's what the real estate rules are. And so now, now what happens next? There's really no answer for that. These, these owners have to go find somewhere else to go. So we actually started doing that. And the commission actually, you know, really appreciated that our firm was one that was out there trying to— I mean, selfishly, it was also a way for us to grow.

Yeah, but it did help solve a problem too. Totally. That's great. So Park Avenue Properties sold to Pure. And you stayed along and actually continued working at Pier for years. Having gone through that transition full cycle, you know, a lot of the folks I speak to on a regular basis are being approached by acquirers. There's many, many, many companies, some that are familiar names, some that aren't, who are looking to buy up operators and management companies. What would be your advice to somebody like that who was considering a sale to either a larger rollup group or a local group? What are the considerations and what would be your guidance now having kind of seen this full cycle?

Yeah. And interestingly enough, we had been approached multiple times from different companies prior to Pure. And for, I think what our mindset was, and I'm happy to share that Pure was the best fit for us at the time that we chose to do what we did. And everybody's why will be a little bit different. So there's, to me, each person has to sit and sort of think about the factors. We wanted to join a company that we could help go build. I like to go build things. John, even though he was not involved in our day-to-day anymore, in fact, really at all, I, I think, you know, we would invite him to activities at the office when we were doing something fun because, you know, he was just busy with legislation and, and in his role in the legislature. And then of course with, you know, building PetScreening. But I think there's a variety of things, you know. If you are, are you looking to do the next thing in your career? So if you are somebody that's not looking for an exit because you're looking to exit the business to go into doing whatever is next for you or to retire, there's different factors that you're gonna wanna look at that are more important to you that maybe wouldn't be to somebody like you or me doing it today. I wanted to potentially stay on to go to whatever was next, and I didn't wanna do that at a company that was already well established because I didn't really know where I would fit in for something like that. And so if I was going to stay on and go do the next thing, for me, it was going to be with a company that I could help go build again, because I do enjoy that, that part of it. I enjoy the build side of it. Would I want to go do it again on my own? No. Done that twice now, and I'm good. But, but I do love going and building something new. But if I'm looking to retire, there's different factors, you know, that I would look at. What's going to happen to my team and how are they taken care of? Which parts of my team want to stay and want to go? What, what does that look like for them? If I'm staying on, what roles are available? What does that look like? And look, there's no guarantees because it's like interviewing for a job. You still have to perform. And I think that's what a lot of people forget. If you stay on with the next company, it's not a guarantee that you're gonna have a job there forever and ever. You should interview for that job and understand what that job requires of you, because I have seen where folks come on board and from both sides, either The company acquiring is not clear on what the next role is gonna look like. So if you're that person that's going over to the next company, make sure you understand what that looks like and what the expectations are of you. Because if you don't, that's a recipe for disaster for both parties. Yeah. And, and that can lead to, to, to disconnect there. So what, what's the outcome of what you want to have happen to your company, to your staff, to yourself? What's the reason for the exit? Is it a retirement? Is it to go help build the next thing? Those things are important. Do you have a company that has HOA? Because, you know, if you have a company that has a significant HOA business and maybe your property management business is smaller, you probably want somebody to take on your company unless you wanna split it up that can do both of those things. So I think it's important to think about what your company looks like and what does that company look like? What are their goals? What's the end game for them? How are you and/or your team going to be treated? What is, what does that look like? And when I say treated, What's the culture like? Because if you're growing in this dynamic, you're going from an office where you're probably all in the same place all the time to more of a corporate structure. And a lot of PMCs, I wasn't, I was not familiar with what corporate structure looked like. So that was a huge, I learned a ton, but it was a huge, huge learning point for me. And you know, there could be periods of time where you're, you and your team feel like you're a little bit on an island. So developing a culture As a more nationwide company, it's really important so that everybody feels like they're, they're, they're a part of something because otherwise it can feel very lonely.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. Assuming that you get clarity on some of these factors, you know, the culture, what's going to happen with your team, what you're going to be doing in your role if you want to have one at potential acquirer, what are some of the non-obvious things that crop up or that could make the outcome be not what you thought it was going to be? Because frankly, I've talked to friends who have sold or acquaintances who have sold to all different companies and the sort of, it's not been a universally positive experience. I'll just say that. So, what could I do to increase the odds of it being a positive experience?

I think truly getting in writing. I think where I personally have seen a lot of folks have maybe a, a disconnect, it's not over the negotiations of what the value of the business is. Those things are usually easy. The numbers part of it is actually easy. It's truly expectations. Mm-hmm. It's truly about who, who are you reporting to somebody? And if so, who is that? Are people reporting to you? How long is your role going to be? So you may want to get things in writing that say, you know, I mean, if you're not looking to exit the business for another 2 years, unless your performance is bad, you know, make sure you've got some securities there. What I've noticed with people is they think they want to do job X, and they may not be really great at job X, but nobody realizes that until they get into that role in the new company. And recognize that is not where their core strength is. And that then creates either there isn't a spot for them within that business, or try to put them in a different role. And that may or may not work out. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it's just a matter of, I mean, we've all had that happen with our own companies. You're just in the wrong seat on the bus. Mm-hmm. And that can sometimes be an easy fix. But I truly think that a lot of people get so fixed on where they want their numbers to be. That they don't ask a lot of the underlying questions that are important. What does vacation look like? We've been owner-operators for all these years. They're, what do you mean vacation time, right? We don't, there is no such thing. When you go, you go, but you're still connected, right? What are those expectations? What does that look like? Because you do go from having the freedom to say and do whatever you want, when and how you wanna do it, and leave and come and go. And that may not be the same. And those little things, those are the incidentals that I don't think people think of. You know, what does that look like? Because now I am reporting to somebody. I don't own this business anymore. I may be an owner of this business, but I'm not the owner of this business. And so I probably have somebody I'm reporting to. So I probably have either a PTO schedule or I probably have requirements of when I need to be in the office and how that looks. I can't just come and go as I please. And those are quality of life potential game changers that you have to understand I think that's a lot of the incidental things that you're talking about that I've seen people make mistakes on.

Yeah. So that, that's really interesting. And I, a lot of that's just like self-awareness, like knowing what's important to you and making sure you're communicating that right up front and, and even potentially getting it in writing.

So really good insight. Yeah. I even remember for myself, I, I, I did make sure because I didn't have, I, I didn't have PTO. I, I mean, because of my role and I think a lot of owner-operators are like this in general. When you're away, you're still connected to a point. You typically have a good team in the background, but if they need you, you're accessible. Yeah. And you are used to that. But again, you're coming and going as you please. And so the idea of, and you know, some people it doesn't bother them, the idea of somebody saying, okay, well now you have 2 or 3 weeks vacation on an annual basis. You're kind of like, what in the world? You know, I typically go to see my kids or my family or, you know, 6, 7 times a year for a week at a time, whatever that may be. And that's— those are kind of game-changing things where people are like, huh, because you don't make those decisions anymore and you just forget.

Like, you may have either— you may have never been an employer, or you— or maybe you were 10, 20 years ago and you just forget what it's like to, you know, be— not be kind of the man, so to speak, anymore.

Yeah, you don't make your own rules anymore.

It's important to understand what those look like. Very interesting. Now on the other side, and you worked at Pure, I, I think in M&A for a while, you were really involved in helping them with that. What would be your advice to a, a group, and I talk to these guys all the time who want to start rolling up management companies and start acquiring, what would be your advice to them on considerations here in 2025 that you should be taking seriously if you have a dream like you, say you have a nice little management company that you either bought or started, and now you have a dream of, of rolling up and acquiring other companies.

Look at the books. It's important, you know, I mean, they, I, I felt for people because, you know, I had the privilege of working with some of the best folks in the industry. And I think for me, when I went over to Pure, one of the reasons they wanted me to do M&A, it's not because I'm the smartest person in the room, it's just 'cause I know a lot of people. And having gotten to know so many people within the industry, and I know you do too, we have conversations. And so there were several people I knew almost immediately were looking to either retire, to go to the next level with their business, but didn't know how to go do that on their own and were looking for something different. And so in my view of the world, these were people that I felt like at least having a conversation with. And there were some that we weren't the right fit because perhaps they had more of an HOA presence than a property management presence. And so Pure was not the right fit for something like that. But so on our end, you know, and even Park Avenue, we did some small local acquisitions over our time and it was looking at things like, is the contract transferable?

That's huge.

The PMA. Yeah. That's something. Yes. The PMA, if it's not transferable to the next person, that's a struggle.

Like that's, that, because then you're going one by one getting owner approval. Whereas if it's assignable or transferable, you can just, Give them written notice typically.

That's exactly right. Because if it is not assignable to whomever takes it over next, now you're in a situation where you have to go one by one. And typically the operator that wants out is going to help you do that. 'Cause if they want out, then they're incentivized to want to help you get these new contracts. But it also potentially gives the client a reason to want to terminate. Yep. Because now you're bringing something to light, whereas if it's transferable and you send out you know, information from the previous owner, introducing the new owner, it can be very exciting and it's, hey, this is great and these are all the advantages. And but if you're being called, well, we got to get you a new contract. And 9 times out of 10, that new contract isn't the same as the old contract. And so now you're just curious. So that, that was probably the number one, even when I was doing it with Park Avenue, that I would say was a really difficult challenge to overcome. Books are easier to go fix. People being overstaffed is easier to go fix. It stinks, but that's easier to do than contracts that are not assignable, property management agreements that are not assignable.

That's a hard one. Got it. And how about like for a, for an acquirer, how should they— I guess sort of two related things. One, what's the right approach when you go to another owner of a management company I mean, I get a lot of cold emails from people I've never heard of, very impersonal. And I get other people that are inviting me to dinner at every conference and have done for 3 years, 5 years even, and everything in between. And then sort of related to that is, I guess it's like the, as an acquirer, what would be your advice around the culture at a company like that who's, who is specifically intending to grow through acquisition?

I think when you're talking to folks that you as an acquirer and you're talking to companies, you're looking at going acquiring, it's not just about door count. What is their staff like? How happy are their staff there? Because if their staff already isn't happy now, if their team is not happy now, they're not gonna be happy probably with you either. Because once in this industry, there can be high burnout and they don't know you. So, you know, at least where they are, it's, it's kind of the devil, you know? Mm-hmm. And then you're going over here and the unknown, and if you bring, You know, I always used to say it takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch, right? And so it's, it's kind of like a cancer in an organization, and that negativity spreads like kudzu. The positivity, there could be 10 people that are super positive and one that's super negative. And for whatever reason, that tends to spread harder and faster than the, than the 90% that are positive. So interview the staff, understand what you're dealing with there, understand what their rules are, understand. You know, what makes them happy in their job today? Just get a sense. You're not trying to put them on notice. You're actually— you want to position it in a way where you're getting to know them and to understand what are the things you enjoy about your job? What are the things that are a challenge for you in your job? If you could do it differently and have other things, you know, put into place to help make your job easier, what does that look like? How long have you worked in this space? You know, What, what is it like working for the company you're working for today? You're not trying to encourage them to talk negatively about anybody or anything, but you're trying to understand where their heads are at. Because most of the time, in some instances you're not, but I, I know in my experience, most of the time you are keeping some, if not all of that staff. And so if you bring negative mindsets over to the new organization, that staff will not stay. You won't want them to stay. And then that looks difficult as an acquirer. If all of a sudden you bring 5 people over and 4 of those 5 people are now gone, that doesn't look good to others within. Why did that happen? What went wrong? And, and so it just creates, so I think understanding what the contracts look like, property management agreements, understanding where their staff side is at, that's even more important. And if you are bringing the operator on as well, if you're not doing a rollup and you're looking to bring the operator on as well, Same thing. I mean, you really need to understand. So I think interviewing the team that works for them is almost more important than interviewing the operator first. I mean, you, you know a little about the operator and their company 'cause you've probably done some homework. So understanding where their staff head is at, because that gives you some insight to what the operator's like.

Which would be hard to do unless you're kind of already under contract. I mean, like personally, I'm, I'm not, I'm not gonna let an acquirer come and interview my staff like just 'cause they're interested.

No, you're gonna get to a point. That's right. No, no, you're gonna get to a point where you're under NDA and, and you wanna have further discussions. The acquirers, I think a lot of people tend to look solely at door count. I look at revenue, you know, how well is their business? You can have a 100-door business that's making more money and producing more revenue than a 300-door business for a variety of reasons. And the number one reason I saw that people were revenue, you know, not as positive as they should be. Mm-hmm. Staffing. People always think that throwing more people at a problem is the answer. And I will tell you, there were so many webs of companies that I would look at their team and you would ask them what they do. There was so much redundancy that they didn't realize. And then this person would say they were overwhelmed, but they couldn't even articulate why they were overwhelmed. And then you'd talk to this other person who was doing almost the exact same things as this person was doing.. And so the reason for some things not getting done at all is because this person thought that person was doing it. Yeah. Because they both do the same stuff. Yeah. It, it was just kind of crazy. And so tho— those are the types of things that get a little bit confusing. I think understanding too, when you're talking to an operator before, of course, you can even get to the staffing point, what are they involved in? Are they involved? Do they have— how well are they ingrained in their community, in their area? How well do people know their business? What do their reviews look like? I mean, it's, it's a big deal to see what people have to say about them. And look, I look more at what a homeowner has to say than residents, 'cause we're pissing residents off all the time. Mm-hmm. But you tend to not make your clients angry 'cause she, you know, if they go, I mean, residents come and go and you're not, nobody's trying to make residents angry. But if you don't give somebody back their full deposit, you're gonna hear about it. Yeah. Whether it's warranted or not, you know? And so, while you do, I don't think they're invalid by any stretch of the means, but most of the time we see more against a property management company from a resident, a former resident, than you do from a client. Yeah, you know, client reviews are important. How, how is their perception of what's going on? And then understanding how their business operates, you know, talking to an operator and understanding, do you know what's the relationship like with your clients? Do you know what types of things do you do to build those relationships? You know, the software that they use. Why are you departmental? Are you portfolio? Just understanding how that operates, because the reality is you have to now go and take whatever they're doing today and ingrain that into whatever you are trying to do today. How different is that? Because if there's a huge differentiator in how you are doing it versus how they're doing it, that can get really tricky. Yeah. Both for the staff and the clients and residents. Yeah. Big changes.

Yeah. Big changes. Well, thank you for sharing that, and I can't believe it's been an hour already, Jennifer.

Me either. That's, that's, this has been really fun. I've enjoyed the conversation.

We'll have to do this again, even offline. Yeah. I really enjoyed hearing some of your stories and, and learning from you, uh, having run a much bigger operation than my own. For folks who wanna kind of follow along with what you're up to at PetScreening, keep up with you, uh, where'd be the best place for them to do that?

I do post a lot of what's going on at PetScreening and stuff at LinkedIn, on, on my LinkedIn.. And then also PetScreening has their own LinkedIn, everything. Like we just had, uh, you would've loved this. We just had people that brought their pets in for Halloween. They had costume contests. My, my dog was here. Oh yeah. He had a little, he had a little, you know, cowboy saddle on with a rodeo rider on it. Every time he walked, the little hat would shake back and forth.

So it was awesome. I definitely need more of that in my LinkedIn feed for sure.

Oh my gosh. It's amazing. Yeah, it's great. It's amazing. And two last things I wanted to share with you, you know, so one thing that I've really enjoyed coming over to to PetScreening as an operator coming over to PetScreening and utilizing that. I think a lot of people, myself included, prior to coming here and recognizing where PetScreening is wanting to grow, they utilize PetScreening at the beginning of the lease and they don't think to do it at renewal. And they also don't realize that you can use it throughout the lease. We help with pet audits free. It's also free. And so what we do is You can send us a list of, you know, and there's, it's still a, a little bit of a work in progress, but one of the things we do is we can take all the, the households that say they have no pet and run an audit against it to determine what the probability is that they may actually have a pet. So that's during your lease. So we're at the beginning of the lease, we're during the lease. You can take the pet profiles and put them in your work orders so that, you know, you're, because look, in our industry, We send vendors out to properties all the time. They're not necessarily equipped unless we're telling them with what they're looking at on the other side. Sure. And you know, you may have someone that has a fear of dogs, you may have someone that has a terrible allergy to, you know, dogs or dander or cats or whatever that may be. And so helping them understand and also, so it's for their safety, but conversely, it's also a way to report back to you during the, the tenancy, whether or not there's pets there or not there. So that's, you know, a way to utilize, you know, pet compliance. In pet screening within, you know, adding these profiles to, to your work orders. And then of course at the move out, the incident reporting. If at renewal, you can renew again. But pet screening also has two fundamental things that I think are so different. We have what's called FIDO Tabby Alert. Have you heard about this yet? Mm-mm. So fidoalert.com is for dogs, Tabby Alert is for cats. And basically if you are a pet screening user and you can sign up without being a pet screening user, if you're just if you know somebody that's out there, a homeowner, for example, and you have dogs or cats, you can certainly sign up for it for free. But it is our Amber Alert for pets. And so it is a free service. You get a pet ID tag. And unlike microchipping, which we still encourage people to do microchipping, but if you find somebody's dog and they're microchipped, you may not be inclined to put them in your car and take them to the vet and get them scanned. And what if it's a weekend that a vet isn't open and So this is a scan on this tag with their name on it that alerts your local area. So if you're on vacation even and your pet gets out, it alerts within a 5-mile radius of where your pet was found and it creates this pet flyer. It's an amazing tool and we've helped over, I think it's close to 50 million pets find their way home at this point. It uses texting feature. It's amazing. So that's, that's one thing that PetScreening has in addition to, you know, obviously being a tool for property management companies, for compliance and revenue. And then we have a philanthropic initiative and it's called Down for Pets. And John has always been very involved in the Down syndrome community. When he worked in the legislature, his interns were from the Down syndrome community, and we've continued that initiative here. And we offer grant programs where we pay for all the pet adoption fees for families. They just have to apply. So if you or anybody that you know any of your residents, this is something you can share out with the universe that if they have an individual within their family that is affected with Down syndrome, they can apply for the grant and we help them get a support animal for their household.

That's awesome.

I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So we, you know, this is, so that's what I loved about coming here. And yes, we are a tech company, but we are pet lovers. We love our community. We love the property management industry. And, you know, we, we wanted to have ways to give back too. And I couldn't imagine, you know, if my dog got out, like, and you, you had mentioned too, you're a dog lover. It's like, it's, it's losing a member of your family. Yeah, absolutely. So knowing that there's an Amber Alert out there for my dog, you know, that brings me a sense of comfort in knowing I'm doing one more thing that helps me get him back home if he gets out.

That's awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that. I love what you've been up to and what— Thank you. Pet screening's been up to in the industry as well. So thank you again for coming on today, Jennifer, and I hope to see you at an industry conference. I know we haven't— Absolutely. —cross paths in the real world much, but we'll change that next year.

We sure will.

Good to talk to you, Peter. Have a great day. You too. If you like the show and want to get connected to the community, you can follow me on Twitter @PSLohmann and subscribe to my email newsletter on my website, peterlohmann.com. I try to share as much valuable property management content as I can on a regular basis.

Thanks again for listening and have a great week.