NARPM's Next Chapter: Money, Politics, and AI with Tracy Streich

Kind of the overarching question is, as property managers, do your expectations with AI align with property owners' expectations of AI? I'll just do a little, one, one little tease on it right now.

Yeah, give us a little tease.

I got it. How likely are you as an owner to shift to self-management if AI made it easier? So as a PM, as a PM, What do I think? Will my clients leave me and use AI? Property managers said 36% of my clients said likely or very likely. Owners, if AI made it easier for you, would you leave your property management company? Likely or unlikely? 79%.

Holy cow.

Our perception is not aligning with the owner's reality.

Welcome to Peter Lohmann's Podcast. You're listening to season 7, brought to you by AppFolio, our presenting partner. Thanks again to AppFolio for sponsoring this season. More on them later. Now let's get into today's episode. Welcome back, listeners, to Peter Lohmann's Podcast. Today I'm here with returning guest Tracy Strike. Tracy, how you doing today?

Good, Peter. Thanks for, uh, thanks for having me on. Looking forward to this.

That's great. So you and I actually did a rare live recording of the Peter Lohmann Podcast. a couple years ago at NARPM Broker Owner, I think it was.

Yes.

So 2 and a half years ago or so, and it's great to have you back on the show. A lot of, a lot of things have changed or a lot has happened since then. And for those of you who don't know Tracy, he's the owner and broker of Renters Place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he's also the incoming president-elect of NARPM. So for 2027, You are going to be in the role of president-elect, and then you'll be president for the year of 2028.

Did I get all that right? I think that's right. Yeah. Unless they run me out before then, that's the plan.

Yeah. Now, are you on the board right now?

Yes.

Is that how that works? Okay.

Yes. Yes. Okay, cool. The way it's written is you would need to be on the board for at least a year before you can move up into leadership. So currently I'm the treasurer of NARPM, and then next year I'll be president-elect.

Okay, cool. So we're going to spend a good bit of time today talking about NARPM because a lot is going on and there's changes that have already happened and there's changes that are coming. So why don't we kick off by just give me your perspective on all of this. What is the, what is the feeling within the leadership of NARPM about what's been going on? Specifically, why don't we start with the change of the management company from OMG to MCI, which took place earlier this year, or I guess technically is maybe still in transition and still happening.

Yes, yes, we're, we're definitely in transition. So OMG has been managing NARPM for 18, 19, 20 years. I mean, it's been a while. It's, it's been a long while. And the board, after kind of evaluating it, we hired an outside consultant to come in and look at everything. And they said, what we kind of thought is it's time for a change. You guys, OMG did a great job of getting you to where you are today, but that's not going to be who can take Narpom to the next level and into the future. So we did a very in-depth process of interviewing management companies and You know, I think for the average NARPM member, they don't even know we have a management company, right? But the board is 100% volunteer. So you don't want me as a volunteer trying to run Renters Place and trying to run NARPM because then both Renters Place is going to suffer and NARPM is going to suffer because I can't give my full-time attention to either. So the board is there to kind of set the direction. And then the management company is who goes out and implements. Like, here's our strategic plan. You tell us what we need to do to make this happen. Bring it back to us and say, okay, here's the plan. It's gonna cost X or Y, or we need to hire somebody to do this. And then we make the decision and implement that. So OMG's done a great job for us for the past 20 years. We did make a decision to go in a different direction and we've hired MCI. Their contract officially starts January 1st, but we did contract with them separately to run NARPM National, which is coming up in a couple weeks. Maybe, I don't know when this gets released, but that'll be October 12th, and that's 3 weeks away. So they've been doing all the planning, all the sales, laying out the vendor floor. I mean, there's so much that goes into putting on an event or doing anything that we roll out that it's, you know, when I was in high school, I had a friend who raised pigs. And he told me how They made hot dogs. And since then, I think I've eaten like 2 hot dogs. And it's kind of that way for NARPM. Like, you don't know how the sausage is made until you get in here and see the sausage and you're like, oh my gosh, that's a lot of work going into this.

Yeah.

Which I never really— I mean, I assumed it, but when you were a member just showing up at a conference, you're like, hey, this is great. There's a lot of work that goes in behind it. And MCI is doing a good job with little knowledge of how we do things. of getting this one pulled off for, for National this year.

Well, that's awesome. So this will be, this will be interesting, right? Because this will be the first conference that MCI has been kind of fully over. Is that right?

Yes.

Yes. Okay. So really curious to see what that looks like at NARPM National. Not that I think there were any big problems with how the conferences have been run. I think the conferences have been pretty good, but it, It's always interesting to see like when fresh blood comes in. And of course they know all eyes are on them for this first big event. So my guess is they're going to pull out all the stops, make sure that everything is going smoothly. Should be a really great experience for members. That's, that's really great. I don't think I'm going to be at National this year, unfortunately. I'm— the fall conference schedule is crazy. I don't know why we can't spread these out a little more and have some of these in November, early November. They all seem to want to do it in October.

There's a lot of conferences out there now, that's for sure.

Yeah, there are a lot more now too, so that it's tough to not overlap anything.

I, I call this their— and just so you know, Peter, I call this one their practice run. Like, literally, we start planning— we're already planning for Broker Owner in April, right? So you, you really start planning these 12 to 9 months out. And just because of the way we had to transition into selecting a new management company and, and that timing, they've really only had about 75 days of run-up on this. And I think people are going to be pleased with what they've done. But I think by the time we get to Broker Owner next year, that's when like, hey, gloves are off. They know what to do. They've got a full run-up and it's going to be— I think that's the one that's going to really shine. I don't want to discourage anybody from coming to National this year because I think it's going to be great as well. We've got some great speakers lined up, including, you know, Barbara Corcoran, one of the Sharks. And I think that's going to be Interesting to hear.

Are you able to say, or do we even know where NARPM National is going to be next year?

Yes. So what we have on the schedule right now is we've got a broker-owner next year in April is going to be back in Vegas.

Yep.

We don't love to do back-to-back Vegas, but it was supposed to be in Tucson and we had to cancel that contract because we outgrew the facility.

And we're too good. We're too great.

And then next year, NARPM National is in Arlington, Texas. at the Lowe's in Arlington, which is, I mean, a lot of people here aren't Dallas Cowboys fans, but it's like right there, the Rangers Stadium, Cowboys Stadium is all right there. So, and beyond that, we, we're, we're working on, we're working on spots that can fit us.

And what has been your experience? Because I know you've worked really closely with them in a couple different ways. What has been your experience working with MCI? Like, Do you, 'cause I've had a limited interaction with them in, in a specific context and I've been impressed, honestly. So I'm curious if that's carrying over into the other dimensions that you're working with them in.

I think it really is. One of the reasons we felt like we needed to make a move was getting us from so much volunteer focus over to more of a staff focus. And the staffing and the people behind it has just been, I mean, really unbelievable. And the resources that we're putting behind some of the things now, for instance, when we were with OMG, we had an event planner and then everybody else at OMG just kind of helped out and they would be at the conference even though maybe it was somebody who was just in charge of chapters or just in charge of publishing the magazine. They would all kind of show up and help at the event. We have 7.5 equivalent full-time employees just working now on our conferences and working with vendors and getting that set up. And then when we're on site, we'll have, I mean, we'll have 15 to 20 staff on site.

Really?

Wow. So, and I don't know if you've been to Mandalay Bay before, but you've got to have people just to, I mean, Mandalay Bay is massive. So you have to have people just for helping with wayfinding. Like, if I'm in the casino, where is this convention center? And you better put on your walking shoes. It's not like it was at Broker-Owner where you get off the elevator in New Orleans and there's the conference. I mean, Vegas, you got to walk in Vegas.

Yeah, sure.

But just getting this transition to where we are not totally reliant on volunteers. We need volunteers, and volunteers and volunteerism will always be an important part of NARPM and our structure. But we don't need volunteers running day-to-day stuff, which would include helping Peter find his way from the casino to the conference center and then getting him registered and things like that. That's what we pay people for.

Yeah, I mean, especially at the national conference, you kind of want all the members to be able to participate in the conference and not— you can pay anyone to stand with a sign and say conference this way.

I think that's what we're doing. Yeah.

Okay, good. Okay, cool. As Narwhal's treasurer, I want to ask you a few questions, and please forgive me if these are kind of a—

Oh, do I need to pull out my spreadsheet to start answering these?

I don't know what all is supposed to be public and what isn't, but Narwhal, like, is doing pretty well from what I saw from some financials recently. Do you agree? Do you feel like Narwhal's in a great place financially? Why don't we start there?

Narwhal is in a great place financially, and If you want to have one takeaway of what OMG did well, that, I mean, that's top of the list. They, they did a great job in monitoring our finances, helping us save money, put money away. Literally, when OMG came on with us, we had $0, and that was one of their mandates. Like, zero.

I think the property— Because there's a lot more than zero in the bank account.

Well, I think the, I think the company before maybe had even stolen some money from NARPM. So that was like a big, like, focus of what the board was looking for and a mandate. And they've done a great job. I mean, we, we have a lot of money in the bank. We have great vendors, right? Like, and I tell people all the time that our conferences, the things we do, could not happen without vendors. They, they support us. They want to get involved. They spend money that— and they're spending money to the benefit of our members, and that really helps us. So we don't have to, you know, if you come to a conference and pay $900 to come to the conference, we don't have to use every last dollar of that setting things up. The vendors are like, hey, what can we do? We want to, because they want their name out there, right? So they're like, well, what can I do to get my name out there? I want to sponsor the first-time attendees. So, you know, they want to spend money because they want to get their name out there, and we couldn't do it without the vendors.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, Most people don't know this. We don't do a great job of putting it out, but most property management companies have like a Home Depot Pro account, right? That they use. When our members link their NARPM account to their Home Depot account, Home Depot pays us royalties. And I'm not talking a couple of dollars. Like the last royalty check we got for this quarter was just a little less than $300,000. So yeah, that's—

I had no idea.

And, and, you know, I've heard you say, Peter, like one of the main things that we do as— that NARPM does that other groups can't do, like even, like even CRANE, I'll just say CRANE, is the political action stuff. And let me tell you, that's not cheap. Like we've got to have, we've got to have money to fund that. I mean, our budget right now is I mean, for a couple of full-time lobbyists and everything that goes along with that, office space, train rides, all that good stuff, I mean, just that without even giving a dime to political action campaigns is just a little under half a million dollars. We've got a specialist that's working with our EPA project, and that's $60,000 a year. These are all— and I'm not saying we're spending too much money on that. We've got to spend money on this stuff. You know, just the stuff from the Home Depot. I'm like, that's, that's free money for NARPO. The more people we get to, yeah, you know, to sign up on that. So.

Yeah, we're, we're a Lowe's shop over here just because of where all the stores are around where we're, you know, driving in neighborhoods where we manage properties. But yeah, definitely. I mean, anyone who's listening, because you get a discount too. I think you get 5% off. Yes. As a member, if you go and register through, through the Lowe's thing with NARPO, right?

Yes.

Yeah. So NARPM is a nonprofit, right?

Yes.

So there, is it 501 or whatever it is?

No, I think that's like a charity nonprofit. Oh, but yeah, we, I mean, we have a nonprofit status, whatever. It's a 50-something-something with the IRS. I won't even try to guess. Now we do have, NARPM does have a 501 within it. So, you know, every year we do our past president's charity. So if Peter Lohmann wanted to support that, he would give that— you're given $100, you give that to NARPM, and it goes into that 501. And at the end of the year, all that money gets— I mean, we keep $500 in it kind of at the end of the year to keep it maintained, but all the money that comes in, boop, gets pushed out to the charity that year. Sure. And it just resets the next year.

This episode is brought to you by AppFolio, our presenting partner for this season of the show. Here's something we're sitting with. Yesterday's property management software was built to help you finish tasks faster, but faster busywork was never the goal. Building a business that performs is. That's the idea behind AppFolio Performance Platform. It's not just another tool bolted onto your stack. It's an AI-native platform built to close the gap between the outcomes you're chasing and the tech that's supposed to get you there. Inside it, AppFolio RealmX Performers work alongside your team. It's true agentic AI that handles leasing follow-ups, maintenance coordination, and resident communication in real time, always with your team in the loop. That means less busywork for your staff, faster answers for your residents, and more time for the decisions only you can make. This isn't about doing the same work faster. It's about building a business that actually performs. If you're ready to see what that looks like for your portfolio, head to appfolio.com/performance. That's appfolio.com/performance-platform. Thanks again to AppFolio for sponsoring this season of the podcast. So just staying on the finances for another moment, NARPM has a bunch of money saved up. I mean, it's millions of dollars that they have. I think it's public. I, yeah, my understanding, since it's a nonprofit, you can dig into the details if you want, but what should we do with that money? Because it seems to me like it's great that we have it, and I know that it's I think some of it's invested or something, so we're getting a return on it. But, you know, NARFM doesn't really exist to be a bank. Like, it seems to me that the money should be put to work in the industry on behalf of members. Not all of it. Let's keep some for a rainy day. But yeah, what should or could we be doing with that in your opinion?

So, man, there's so many things, Peter. So part of, as treasurer this year, I, I made some decisions along with the board. I made recommendations and the board decided, and we've moved some of that money around. We have within our policy and bylaws an investment strategy. As I started looking at some of the money, I didn't think that it was like, I was like, is this lined up with this? Is it not? We had it at 2 different places. We had a ton of money in CDs because we're like, oh, it's got to be FDIC insured. I'm like, Yeah, kind of, but not really. I mean, so we moved everything over to one investment firm with an advisor over at Morgan Stanley and making what I would consider some broader, like, decisions on how this money's invested, how much of it's maintained in cash, what do we need it for, can we access it immediately. We do have some reserve requirements. We've got way more than we need in reserves. So, so the, the question that goes back to, like, how do we need to use it? That was kind of part of the strategic plan last year. I think in the past we've operated under this scarcity mentality, like we can't spend it because then we won't have money to spend when we need it. And I'm like, I mean, that doesn't make sense. We've got plenty of money. We don't want to blow it. That's where I'm like, we've got to— the board has a fiduciary responsibility to its members to spend this money wisely. So as we started breaking down the strategic plan last year, it's like, okay, what are areas that we need to spend this on. And I'll tell you some of the things on the strategic plan that money is getting spent on and is allocated for now is new branding. You're going to see a new brand come out from NARPM. As I said, you know, I got— this ages me, Peter, but I got married way back in the 1900s.

Yeah.

Um, and when I got married, hunter green and burgundy were like, those were the colors. You'd go register at Dillard's, And you would get your hunter green and burgundy towels and, you know, same thing on your bedspread and all that. And when you look at the NARPM logo, that's what it looks like. It looks like 1994, right?

It does. I have to agree. Yeah.

So I, I was just— before we got on this call, I was looking at some of the mockups that they're presenting. MCI is working on this marketing and rebranding campaign for us. So cool. New logo that transitions into a new website. I mean, our website—

New merch store. Let's get a new merch store going.

Merch, like everything. So there's a lot of projects that we haven't allocated for right now that were actually in the budget this year that frankly we've had to pause on a little bit because turns out when you're transitioning to a new management company, that like moves up to the top of everything.

Yeah.

And then you start looking at things in light of, well, we could do this, but how would MCI want us to do this? So we've had to hit the pause button on a couple of them, and I'm a move fast person. We've had to hit the pause button on a couple things. But we are, I would say this, we are ready and poised to spend some of that money on projects that are going to help NARPM grow and provide benefits to our members.

That all makes sense to me. Let me throw something out there. And because I'm not on the board, and we don't even have a local chapter here. You know, I don't know who all hears this at NARPM, but at least you'll hear it and you can tell me what you think about this. So everything you just described, the rebranding, the new website, all that. Okay. Take $100 Gs off the top of the $5 million or whatever we have in the bank. Still leaves a lot. And when you're like, okay, well, we need these things for like a rainy day or for an emergency. We're in an emergency.

It's raining.

Have you seen what's going on with our laws?

Yes.

We're in an emergency. That's my opinion. Okay? We are in an emergency as a group of property managers and landlords and rental owners from, you know, maybe not so much federally. We've been getting some help there, but state by state and city by city, it's emergency status in my opinion. Like it is, I don't wanna say it's like an existential threat, but it's really bad. And what I think we should do with some of that money is take a stand on some of these legal cases that are working their way through certain coastal states and cities and fight them all of the— all the way up to the Supreme Court if necessary to get some of this absolutely ridiculous law, laws and case laws overturned. And because a lot of what is happening, a lot of the laws that are being passed in these cities and even in these states are, are unconstitutional. Like On the face of it, they're illegal taking, they're freedom of speech issues. They're, you know, I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but there are constitutional issues with these laws. And what's happening is it's so expensive to fight these things and your chances of winning are not 100%. So for any individual landlord or property manager, it makes zero sense for them to fight one of these cases. Like, they're just going to comply with the law and move on about their day. I get it.

Right.

I don't blame anyone for doing that. But what is going on in California and Washington and New York City and some of these other cities and states is absolutely insane, Tracy. It's insane.

It's crazy.

And I feel like if there's ever a time to spend some of this money and at least try, at least try, like, maybe we lose, but let's take the battle to them. Let's start getting laws passed in the other direction. Like, let's get pro-landlord laws on the books. I mean, Ohio recently, like within the last couple years, got a law passed at the state level that makes rent control illegal. It's illegal in Ohio now. Let's get more of that going. And I don't know if we need to partner with NAR, I don't know if we need to partner with NAA, but we gotta do something, man. Like, this is, it's crazy. It's crazy. And I see, I think in my position because of the newsletter and stuff, I see all of the state and city stuff. Crane also has like this local legislation tracker that members can subscribe to where they get notified of any changes in any of the jurisdictions that they manage. You can set up like a search where you get an email digest once a week. So I'm seeing like so much more of it than I ever did before because people send them to me. They're like, did you see this thing that happened in Massachusetts? I'm like, oh my God, I'm ready to— This is crazy. So what do you think about that? Like, I—

Yeah, I would, I would agree. I'll, I'll say it's hard from— and we have strategic planning next week and this will probably come up because one of the things that we were working on was some legal stuff. And, you know, we, we now have the legal hotline with Monica Gilroy.

Yeah, that's so cool.

It's a service to members. And I was shocked like the first month that we rolled it out, how many people had already called in. So we're tracking those numbers. We can see that there's a need for this. How does that filter down to the state and local level? It's a little bit harder for us to figure out, but I think we do have to figure it out. And maybe that's partnering with Monica on figuring some of this out. And frankly, we've been doing some stuff in DC with IRAM and NAR and partnering with— it's kind of like what shocked me the most about NARPA the first time I went to a conference was how open everybody was.

Yeah.

Right? It's like, hey, we're all the same. We're all on the same team. You could be in Columbus, I can be in Tulsa, and we got the same issues. Let's talk through. And starting to get to a level of that with other organizations like our IRAM, NAA, NAR, and not seeing us as competitors, but using our, our power.

Yeah.

And, and how big we are together to go make some changes. And I think that's, that's something that's going to have to happen in the future. And like you said, sooner rather than later. I mean, we had, we had something with the city council in Tulsa last week that was like, how can you even do this?

This doesn't make sense.

Is that legal? That was my question. Is that even legal?

The lobbying stuff is great, but what I'm envisioning here is like, what we really need is, let's say Tulsa passes some law that you think is illegal, right? Okay. So what we need to have happen then is You don't comply with it. Not you, but I mean, maybe you, you don't comply with it. Okay. So maybe they say you can't charge application fees at all. Maybe that's the law. Let's just make it up. You continue charging application fees. Okay. And you coordinate with NARPM and maybe some of these other organizations and you're like, okay, here's the plan, guys. I'm not gonna comply with this law because I believe it's unconstitutional. And then What if, if and when I get sued, you all agree to defend me, right? Okay. So then you go out in there in the marketplace, you're like, yep, we're still charging application fees. You wanna live here? You gotta pay. Some tenant finds this or some group is like, what the hell? Did you see these guys are still charging application? And they file a lawsuit. Great. The plan is working. Yes. Okay. So they file a lawsuit and you're like, let's, let's effing go, right?

Yeah.

So then we bring in An unbelievable army of lawyers, like the number one in the country that we can find, and they're probably billing at $2,000 an hour. Great. That's who I want. Right? And then NARPM and NAA and me and Crane and whoever we can find is like, we're taking this to the Supreme Court. We are not settling. We are, we're fighting to the death.

Yeah.

And ideally what happens then is it goes all the way to the state Supreme Court. And hopefully we win there, and then that law gets overturned for all the other cities in your state. Or maybe it has to go to the Supreme Court for that to happen. I don't know. I don't— I'm not a lawyer. But that's what I'm talking about. We need like perfect cases where NARPA members are on the defendant side, and we need agreement between members like, we are all funding the defense of this because it's for the benefit of all.

Yeah.

And yeah, maybe we have to go state by state and do this. I don't know. But I just feel like right now it feels like we're not doing anything. And I know that's not true. Like, I know we have lots of lobbyists and I know that things like, I know what's happening. Like I was picking on the Columbus Apartment Association the other day, and I know that due to their work, the laws that are being passed are not as extreme as they could be. And that's great. But I think we need to go on the offensive.

Mm-hmm.

Like, I think what needs to be happening is Their lawyers and their advocacy groups need to be talking about how the pro-landlord laws that got passed weren't as bad as they could have been. That's what we want. That's what it looks like to be on the offensive. We're on the defensive.

Right.

And it's just the whole posture is one of like, we're scared, we're running, we're on the defensive. Well, it's not as bad as it could have been. Look at this other city. F that. Let's go on the offensive. Let's take back what we've lost in the last 20, 30 years as property owners.

Peter, I love these ideas. And I'll say, like, literally, I mean, you know, we have the NARPM Accounting Standards. That was an idea brought by a member to the board. I would say, write something up on this and say, hey, board of directors, here's my proposal. What would it take to get this done? I mean, we're here to serve our members, not just to go in and, you know, make crap up to fill out a board meeting. So, I mean, I'd love to hear a proposal on this that we could like legitimately say, hey, this is what some of our members are proposing. How can we make this happen? What would it cost? Who would we call? And the great thing is, in January, we can give that project to our new management company and say, can you go put this together? Yeah, go to work. Can you go put this together and get us a real proposal? Because If you're saying, Tracy, you're on the board, can you make this happen? I'm like, I don't have time to do that. Yeah, I've got crap happening in Tulsa.

Yeah.

So I think, I mean, I love, I love feedback like this. And I think we do have the money to do something like this. And especially if we say we can put money behind it, NAR can put money behind it, IREM can put money behind it, NAA can put money behind it, all of a sudden We don't just have a little bit of money, we got a lot of money.

Yep.

And it's just a matter of who's, who's heading it up. And at that point, I don't know that we care. I mean, if, I mean, if Iron said we, we'd like to take the lead on this, like, great, do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's pause on NARPM for a moment. I want to hear a little bit about what's new in your world, specifically Renters Place. How's it going with your own management company? Bring us up to speed on what you guys are into. Anything new and exciting? Any growth, any acquisitions, anything like that?

We've had some pretty significant growth. We're, we're just shy of 1,000 doors now. I would, I would really like to punch through that ceiling.

Yeah, let's go.

Um, not, not for any reason of not like, hey, if we, if we get 20 more doors and we're over 1,000, we're gonna, you know, suddenly be billionaires. It's just like, it's one of those, like, it's one of those things that in the back of my mind I'm like, I'd like that.

Yeah, yeah, that's a big deal to hit 4-digit unit count.

Yeah, so we're, we're pushing towards that. You know, we had— we hung out at 7, 7.25 forever, and then all of a sudden we just—

Hello, that's me. That's where I'm stuck.

And we're— I mean, rental market from investors is slow. Like, we don't have a bunch of investors calling up like we did 3 years ago. Like, hey, I'm from California, I want to buy a house. Okay, let's help you buy a house. Let's manage it. We're not getting a bunch of that, but somehow we're— I feel like we're getting more leads than we did back then. And I'm not sure if this is just like owners who are suddenly like, you know what, I was doing this myself and it's just getting too hard and I don't want to do it myself anymore. I, you know, if I, if I'm making up my avatar, the self-manager converting to us managing is probably not anywhere on that avatar list because they bring a lot of baggage. The tenants still know how to get ahold of them. Their tenants call and say, they won't answer the phone at Renters Place. And Like, maybe we didn't answer the phone, but I think we do a pretty good job of answering the phone. They may have, you know, let it ring twice and hung up because they, they're mad that they, you know, have to pay on time now and they have to go through the portal. And, you know, they call the owner and the owner calls us and says, my tenant says this. I'm like, since when is your tenant not lying? Like, because they're dealing with us now and not directly with you. So that's, you know, I think that's the frustrating part of growth. You know, I, I saw Mark Cunningham recently did on his podcast talking about AI with tenants responding to all security deposit disputes. And I literally had 3 of 'em yesterday that were just straight AI. I mean, you could tell, I mean, they send it and I'm like, one, I don't think you use these words, Mr. Resident. But you know, they're just throwing it in there and it, do we end up giving 'em more money back? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But it's more of a time suck than anything that you have to go through the process to do it.

Yeah.

But I think for me, that's, that's kind of where we are on the cusp of where does, what is AI going to do for us? How are we going to use it? And do we use it?

Yeah.

Do we use it to the level we could or should? No. And we've been talking to some companies about building some stuff for us. And, you know, I'm not the guy that's going to build it. That's not, I'm not a software engineer. I'm not an engineer. I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night even. So I, you know, I can get in chat and do some prompts and some stuff that I needed to do, but I don't know how to make a bot that goes in and does it automatically. So we're talking to people about what that looks like. What are some of the basic things? What's our line in the sand of we'll let it do it right up to this? But I think that's not unique to me. I think that's every property manager right now. So it's very interesting. Well, cool.

That's good to get an update. And I think People love that. I mean, it's great that Narpm is, is being led by people who own property management businesses, right? It's, it's truly the operators who are in the leadership roles and they're still super connected to the day-to-day experience of members because that's their day-to-day experience.

Right.

That's, it's very like authentic. Feels, it feels very appropriate for our industry. which is real kind of like salt of the earth people that are just in it every day trying to make their communities better, trying to do right by tenants and owners. And yeah, we like to let loose a little bit when we travel for events, but mostly these are, you know, kind of pillars of their community.

Yeah. There's not, when it comes to the big, there's not a lot of Evernest, Roam, Pure Home Rivers. Like those are the, those are the exceptions.

Yeah.

I, you know, I think most of, most of the NARPA members are, my size and smaller, if you're, if you're getting down to it. So it's— that's it. We're, we're small business entrepreneurs that would, you know, love to grow by 100 doors, not, not I would love to grow by 10,000 doors.

Yep.

So, you know, that's—

And I'm the same, frankly.

Yeah. And that's what I like about NARPM.

It's—

I mean, you, you show up at the conference and you meet people and they're like, oh, these are kind of people just like me. So that's That's what, again, what I love about going to the conferences. On kind of a separate note, when we're talking about AI, I'm at National, I'm co-presenting with AppFolio. They did a research project with NARPM and surveyed like 750 property managers and another 650 property owners. And the question, kind of the overarching question is, as property managers, Do your expectations with AI align with property owners' expectations of AI?

Yep.

And the tease for that is it's not even close. So I'll just do a little, one little tease on it.

Yeah, give us a little tease. Because I've got it.

How likely are you as an owner to shift from, to self-management if AI made it easier? So as a PM, as a PM, how, what do I think? Will my clients leave me and use AI? Likely or very likely? Property managers said 36% of my clients, likely or very likely. Owners, if AI made it easier for you, would you leave your property management company? Likely or unlikely? 79%.

Holy cow.

Yeah. So it doesn't— our perception is not aligning with the owner's reality.

This episode is sponsored by Haven AI. I've been hearing a lot of great things about Haven AI recently. A couple weeks ago, I was on a webinar panel about AI and property management, and Evernest talked about how Haven's AI agent transformed their leasing operation, handling most of their top-of-funnel leasing interactions across text and email. And you might have heard Haven mentioned on a recent episode of my podcast where one of their customers, Matt Luke, told me about how he's managing 350 doors with no W-2 employees. That's not a typo or a misspeak. Zero W-2s. He's using Haven's AI agents for maintenance and leasing to make that work. There's no shortage of AI hype in property management right now. Everybody's got an AI something, but what caught my attention with Haven is that it's not just a chatbot bolted onto your website. It's a platform of configurable AI agents that plugs into your existing software and actually takes action. We're talking creating work orders, dispatching vendors from your preferred vendor list, triaging emergencies, qualifying leads, scheduling tours, and following up with prospects across phone, text, and email around the They're Y Combinator backed and were just named one of the top 50 AI startups in real estate. The operators I've talked to who are using it seem genuinely impressed, which in our industry is not easy to earn. If you want to see what the buzz is about, book a demo at usehaven.ai. And thanks again to Haven AI for sponsoring this episode.

And that's just, that's just one little data point on here. And there's a lot, there's a lot like that. That's really interesting.

I'm looking forward to that.

What they expect is, What they expect us to be using AI for and what we're really using it for. I mean, but I think most, I think it's something like only 7% of property managers use agentic AI.

Mm-hmm.

And so we think we're using AI because I'm, you know, throwing my email into Claude and saying, make this sound professional and don't make me sound like a jerk when I tell this tenant I'm not doing this or that. That's the baseline. They're expecting us to do that. Like if you're not doing that, you're not even at the baseline. Yeah. It's what are you doing beyond that? And what most property managers think they should be doing does not align with the expectations of the owners on what they think we should be doing with AI for them.

Very interesting. And you know, it, I've been pounding this drum all year about as much as we take advantage of AI as business owners, our customers also are, are going to do that and are doing that. In the way, in the same way that we are looking to offset our labor costs and offset our technology costs, our property owners are looking to do the same thing, which means they're looking at our line item on their expenses and thinking about those things. And, you know, I had a really, I just like, there's a disruption theory component to this where an AI-powered software that's designed to help self-managing landlords do more than they could before. Like it used to be, you either self-managed or you turned everything over to a property manager. And I think what's going to happen, what it is happening is software like TurboTenant with their autopilot thing and software like Hemlane services that they provide is giving a third option to rental owners, which is now you can self-manage, but you can use superpowered AI-native software Which makes it easier than ever. And these companies have the ability to bolt on some services that solve some of the boots on the ground problem.

Right.

That we used to think only professional property managers with a full suite of services could solve.

Right.

So that aligns closely with what I've been saying this year and what I've been talking about. And I'm, I'm in a way glad to see it confirmed, but also terrified. for myself and my fellow property managers. So very interesting.

Yeah, it's, uh, I think it'll be eye-opening. I mean, I was reading over it in depth yesterday just trying to make notes. I was like, oh my gosh, every time I turn the page, it's like, this can't be right. But it's, it's here. And if we're— if you're either on the train or you're gonna get left behind, that's, that's kind of where I am. And, you know, we, we need to be ahead of the curve on showing our owners Hey, yeah, we're using it. I mean, you, I don't think you have to hide it. Like, we're using AI and this is helping you because A, B, and C.

Yeah. And we, that, you know, we touched on this with the PM Trends 2026 survey that we introduced at Broker Owner. You can get it online for free if you missed that. We asked rental owners about their comfort level with us using AI across like 8 or 10 different dimensions. And they were overwhelmingly comfortable, overwhelmingly positive. So I agree with you, it's not something we need to hide. I think it's expected at this point. Like, yeah, why would you guys not be using AI to help, you know, respond to emails and, you know, coordinate showings and maintenance and things like that? I would expect you to be doing that. So it's great.

Yeah.

What are your plans as the incoming eventual president? I know it's, you know, a year and change away at this point, but You'll be president-elect here in a couple months. What are your expectations? What are your goals? And what are some of the things that are on your mind as you come into that hot seat?

So I would say next year is going to be— and I'm glad Angela's president next year and not me. The transition, I told her, I said, you get to do all the transition year and then I get to have the benefit in my year in 2028. So I'm Mm-hmm. I think really it's, let's get everything transitioned and then really start cranking out. And again, I'm a fast mover. I do not like to move slow. So if something's important enough for us to take 2 days and meet with the entire board and other members, meaning we've got vendors in this strategic planning, we've got other members in the strategic planning, If it's worth us getting in this room and discussing this and saying, this is the direction we need to go, we shouldn't be looking back 2 years from now going, well, we accomplished 15% of that. To me, that's not acceptable. If we say this is on the strategic plan, you need to tell me why we shouldn't be going full speed ahead on every one of those at the same time.

Yeah.

Because we have the staff to do it now. And frankly, we have the money to do it now. So it's time for us to spend some of the money in our war chest for these things and do it quickly so that people feel it right now. So that, to me, that's, that's what it looks like going forward.

Yeah.

And frankly, and also getting the word out about NARPOM, getting the word out about our designations, making them valuable, so to speak, you know, to others in the industry. And to owners. And just, I mean, you'll go to— you're going to Futures next week. I guarantee you, you're going to run across somebody that manages 1,800 doors, and you're going to ask them about Narco, and they're like, they're going to say, who? Like, that's our fault. Like, how do— if you're managing 1,800 doors in today's digital age, we should be able to find you, and we should be showing up on your screen somewhere so that you at least go, Hmm. What's NARPM? At least you've heard of it, even if you didn't click through on the link to see it. But people need to know who we are and we need to become more relevant in the industry.

Yeah. Well, that's great. And I think, you know, when I think about what can, what can NARPM do that nobody else can do, to me, those are the things to really focus on. Political advocacy is obviously a huge one. Um, the conferences is obviously a huge one. Nobody does a conference like NARPM. They're the biggest, they're the most relevant, they have the most vendors. They're the most consistent. You know, we've had conferences come and go, you know, the designation thing. I, I like have two minds about that. I know that people who get them are very proud of them and rightfully so. Like they should be recognized by their fellow property managers because NARPM, I think, what's the one that's like super hard to get for the company?

CRMC.

I think you just got that, didn't you?

I did. We got that this year.

Congrats, man. That's, I, I read through those requirements one day. years ago. And I, I think it's a great thing, even if you don't care about the designation, pull down that like application or whatever it is. Mm-hmm. And just use it as a checklist to go through for your own company because there's tons of good stuff in there. The thing is like, to be real for a minute, the property owners are never gonna know or care about the designations.

Right.

Like they're just not. And so I think focusing on broadening the membership base as like, what's the value of a NARPA membership? I think like deemphasizing the designations and emphasizing some of the other stuff that only Narpm can do, like that Home Depot thing is a great example.

Mm-hmm.

I think there's lots of other group buying opportunities that Narpm could take advantage of on behalf of members. I've seen some of that with Crane. And then there's one other thing I was, that was on my mind as far as like, oh yeah, only Narpm can do this. I mean, Yeah, there's just, there should, there just needs to exist something that everybody who's in a certain profession should join. And that's clearly NARPM. So I'm, I'm a fan of making it as easy as possible to join and stay a member, as easy as possible to add a company with different team members and let all of them participate and expand. I think expanding the chapters is important too. We still don't have a NARPM in Ohio anyway.

We don't have one in Oklahoma. Yeah.

So there's a lot of opportunities there. I think you and I had an interesting discussion right before we hit record about like, how can we increase the NARPM membership? So I released some research recently showing there's about 31,000 NARPM-qualified property management companies. I think current membership's around 5,000 companies or something like that. What could NARPM do or should NARPM do to get the word out? What are our options?

Yeah, and I would say, you know, 31,000 companies, those are just companies. Most of those probably have more than one person working for them, maybe more than one property manager. So how many property managers are there out there? I don't know, 75,000, 100,000. So we, I feel like we just barely have this little sliver. And part of it is getting the word out. And, you know, in our contract with MCI, and we've never had this before, I mean, we've got specific KPIs for them for earnouts on growth. And I think they will be a valuable partner in pushing this out. But what I was saying to you, I mean, it's very common in our industry for a property management company to have a business development manager. And it's, I know we will have a new executive director hopefully here in a couple weeks, but your executive director is, that's not their job. Now, their job is to be the— their job is to be the face. And if somebody says, you know, IMN says, hey, we want your executive director to come speak at our conference, great. That's, you know, they're out there promoting NARPM, talking about NARPM. They're the, they're the head baby kisser, right? They're out there shaking hands and kissing babies, and that's what you want them to do. But we need a BDM. We need a— at IMN conference, at at Folio, at Rentvine, at Rent Manager, and all these other conferences. We need a, we need a booth. Yes. And you need somebody standing in there going, what's Narpo? Let me tell you what Narpo is.

Well, let me tell you. Yeah, exactly. I couldn't agree more. And that's, that's a layup.

And I, you know, I think that's probably in our future. But the other problem is we've got so many layers of things that are like, it's like we're plugging holes on this ship right now. So it may take us another 12 months to get there, but I think that's on the that's on the horizon is let's get, let's get people out there that their job is to be the champion of NARPM and tell everybody they can, they come in contact with.

I love that idea.

Now, we as members can do that too, but, you know, sometimes I just want to go to a conference and talk to people about, you know, Peter, what's, what's the thing this year that's made the biggest difference at RL Property Management? Not talk about NARPM and legislative issues. I mean, Now, as a member of the board in my position, I do talk about that a lot, but sometimes you just want to talk about your business and let somebody else take care of NARPM. So that's why I'm really looking forward to our new executive director coming in and taking the reins.

Yeah, let's talk about that. So I want to sort of prepare the listeners for what to expect. So to set the scene, we talked about OMG, Organizational Management Group, who was NARPM's, it's the awkward, there's like awkward naming here. It was their association management partner, which is funny because, you know, a lot of our members do association management, but that's a totally different thing. So NARPM, the association, the trade group hired OMG as their management partner to help execute the vision of the board. And in, in OMG, we had Gail and Gail was a part owner of OMG and she was also the CEO of NARPM. which just meant that she was the head person at OMG who was accountable to the board for executing on their vision. And, and, but she was not an employee of Narpom. She did not work for Narpom directly. So now OMG is out, which means Gail is out. We have MCI coming in. We only work with 3-letter acronym companies. That's a requirement. It's in the bylaws. And what, what, so what, what we should be expecting then is like, oh, we're going to get a new Narpom CEO. First of all, that's wild and crazy in the first place because so many people knew Gail and she was such a, she was really was the face of Narwham. And the other, so, so that's coming. So let's talk about how that person is being selected. And then let's also highlight the fact that we're not going to be calling the new person a CEO anymore. They're going to be the executive director, which from my understanding, I think you told me this is like the more traditional title for that role. Did I get all that right? Yeah.

That's it. Yeah.

Okay.

So there was a little bit of debate on the semantics there. Like, is it a CEO? Is it an executive director? And MCI basically told us, like, in the industry, this position is called the executive director.

And that makes more sense to me, I think.

Right.

Yeah.

Right. So we're like, great. So we're looking for a new executive director. MCI did a nationwide search. You know, we had Troy was here for a quick cup of coffee after Gail. As soon as we announced that we were going to MCI, Troy was actively looking for another job, found another position, which I, we're— I was fine with. Like, and I told him when we talked about, you know, we were going with MCI, it's like, I, I would expect you're out looking for a position because—

I don't know that I would've, uh, granted him that license, but, uh, good for you. I, I applaud you. I would've said, no, dude, you need to stick around till we're, till we're ready.

But okay. But I just, I knew that wasn't happening, so. So now MCI does a nationwide search for, you know, they're like, here's what we think the job description should be. We look at the job description. Yes, it looks good. We put together a task force, which, I mean, we'll just full disclosure, I'm on that task force. Peter's on that task force.

Yeah.

We've got a couple of board members, we've got a couple of members at large, we have past president, and MCI goes out and does the search and puts We had, what did she say? Do you remember, Peter, how many applications they had? It was, it was not a few.

I want to say it was in the hundreds. I mean, yeah, there was a lot that they sifted through.

Right. They sifted through a lot of applications, narrowed it down to 10 to 15, ran those through the wringer as part of their vetting process, and then brought us 2 that they said, we feel like these are the top 2. We would like you to consider these 2. which the task force then has interviewed and scored. We're not at the point where we've made a decision yet, but I think we're very close. But it's a pretty rigorous process to get to this point for those particular candidates. And I was shocked at how good both candidates were. I kind of felt like on the first one, I was like, well, this is a home run. And then the second one, I was like, well, this is a home run too. We just have to choose which home run you want. I mean, they're both Yeah. I mean, knocked it out of the park. And I think our members, when we make the final selection, are gonna really love the new executive director, whichever one we choose. But, uh, that's kind of the, the way that leadership has come down. And then MCI as a whole then has different departments that are hiring people specifically for jobs that we need. Like, I talked to the director of marketing last week and she's in the process of inter— process of interviewing. to get it down to 2 marketing people that their job, even though they are MCI employees, their job will be to do marketing full-time for NARPA.

Beautiful.

So, and the executive director still will be an employee of MCI. So, yep. And I asked these candidates, like, who do you work for? And they gave the right answer, like, we work for the board, right? Even though they're an employee of MCI, their job is to take the vision and the direction that the board gives them, and then take it back to staff and implement that.

Great. That was an excellent summary. Thank you. And by the way, if I came off sounding intelligent about everything we've talked about for the last hour, that's all thanks to Tracy, who kind of has brought me up to speed on all of these things over the last year or so. So thank you, Tracy. Yeah, I'll echo your comments. I think I was— I've been very pleased with my interaction with MCI as a participant on the task force. To select the new executive director. And I was very impressed with both candidates that we interviewed. I was prepared to be very disappointed cuz I have really high standards when it comes to hiring and interviews and stuff like that. But I was, I was pretty blown away. So hopefully the quality extends not just through the interview, but in, in, in, in seat in the role.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, great. Let's discuss, just to close the, so Narwhal's political advocacy work. I want to just get clarity for members on— because there's like 2 ways you can contribute to NARPM when it comes to political advocacy work. And it's like one of them's tax deductible, one of them isn't. One of them can be used directly to endorse specific candidates, one of them can't. Can you like clarify that? Just because I know it was confusing for me for a long time.

It's still confusing to me, Peter. I'm gonna be honest with you. I always have to call Tyler and say, can you clarify for me? So we have a political action fund. That one has very strict guidelines from the government, how the money can come in, can't be commingled with anything else, how it can be spent, how it can go out. So that would be, you know, Tracy Streich, the representative from Oklahoma. NARPM thinks that maybe I'm the chair of some committee and we want to give $5,000 to his political action committee. So what that really doesn't buy us votes, it buys us access, right? So, oh, Narpo wants to come by and visit with you. They gave us $5,000, put them on the schedule, right? And it's crazy.

First of all, they can, they can come to this fundraiser that I'm doing. It's crazy that that's how things still work. You would think that like, oh no, you can't like donate directly because it's like— but no, like literally, like that's how it works. Like you give money. Yeah. They're like, yeah, I'll take a meeting.

Right.

It just, I don't know, it still doesn't seem right, but hey, I guess that's how the world works.

And then we have an advocacy fund, which is separate than that. And that's so we've got a lot more leeway on how we can spend that money, what we can spend that money on. For instance, our EPA consultant that we've hired, that would be paid out of the advocacy fund. Um, so we can use that for projects that we're working on, things of that nature. But the political action committee stuff is very like rigid and governed hardcore, but for the reason you were just talking about. It's like it doesn't even seem like you should be able to do that, but they at least monitor that and there's some limits and things like that. So yeah. And we always want people to give to that. And, you know, I know you're a major donor. We appreciate that. I'm a major donor. I mean, like, that's the one thing that we can do. And I'll say this, we give away our membership at NARPM. I— we're, we're paying the same dues as when I joined in 2012, right? It's so cheap to be a member of NARPM. So since it's so cheap, join NARPM and then give a little money to the, to the advocacy funds.

Yeah, so let me speak about that for a moment. I'll get on my soapbox one more time for this episode. You said I'm a major donor, and if you're listening to this, you're probably thinking, well, this guy's a big hotshot. Let me tell you, the major donors category begins, I think, at $1,000.

$1,000.

For the year.

Okay. Right. You don't have to be, it's not that major to be a major donor.

Don't get the wrong idea about my commitments to NARPM, financial commitments, that is. Now, I do support NARPM and I want to give more in the future. And I wrote an email about this. I can't forget if I forget if I sent it to you or somebody else, but like when we get these emails from NARPM about the, about donating, it's like, The biggest image in the email and the biggest text is talking about for the cost of a cup of coffee, you can support Narpo. Okay. And like, I get that. And I, at a certain way, that kind of makes sense. You're sort of reminding people like, hey, it's not that expensive to contribute. The problem that I have with that is it anchors people at $2.50. And there's a lot of psychological research around this idea of anchoring with, with specifically with dollar amounts. Right. And on, we do this on our pricing page on our website for our management company.

Mm-hmm.

We have bronze, silver, gold, and the gold plan is intentionally kind of ridiculously high priced as like an anchoring. So the silver then looks, you know, much more affordable. Right, right, right. So anchoring is powerful. And I think, you know, NARPM's like statuses, you said major donor, there's like this donor, that donor, medium level, high, and it's like $0, $200, $400, and then $1,000. Might be $2,000 across, or, you know, for if you only do one of them. My opinion, those numbers, add a zero to all of them. Okay? Yeah. It starts at $1,000. That's like the minimum you can give. And then it's $5,000 and then it's $10,000 and it's $50,000 and then it's $100,000 and then it's $500,000. Yeah. Let, and let's not anchor against the cup of coffee. Forget the cup of coffee stuff. The members of NARPM, especially those who have been in business for a number of years, are wealthy. Let's be real. Like they likely own multiple properties. They own at least one business. They can give, like I can give, you can give, we have money for this type of thing, especially that's important to our industry. And they want to give and they want to see things make a difference. So let's treat them like the big boys and girls that they are. And let's add a zero on those amounts. And I think you would be shocked at the increases in the donations that we'd be getting. Now, alongside that, I think 2 things need to happen. One, you need to make the rewards for giving, so to speak, Much more exciting and interesting. And what I think, if you look again, if you look at the psychological research of why people donate, there's a status thing affiliated with it.

Right.

Right. And so if you give people special pins or special flags or special badges online, or like, I could brainstorm 50 different things here to where they get to show off, so to speak, that they were a quote major donor. Now I'm talking 6-figure donor. People will do that because they want to They wanna show their buddies at NARPOM at the conferences that, hey, I'm a big shot, I'm a big supporter. And it's so, it's not, it's impossible to do that right now. There's no way to quote show that off. And maybe that's cynical of me to think of it in those terms, but I think like a—

No, no, I like where you're going there. Maybe we should give 'em a special jacket, kinda like the—

Special jacket, exactly. Like the Masters. Stuff like that.

Like, yeah.

You know, they get a VIP experience at the conferences or I don't know, you, again, you could brainstorm 100 ideas here. And the other thing I think we need to do is, You could hire a full-time fundraiser. You were talking about a BDM to sell memberships. You could hire a BDM or a fundraiser to whose whole job was commissioned on donations to these funds. And that person should be calling the major donors. Like I was a major donor last year. I never got a single call or email about it.

I tried to call you. I tried to call you. You didn't pick up. I blocked it.

Yeah. I blocked your number. Like number one rule in donation, like in fundraising is If someone gave a lot of money once, they're likely to do it again. Call them with a sweet voice and a nice message and a warm tone. Ask about their kids and their baseball, whatever. And you say, hey, what are your plans for this year? Blah, blah, blah, right? You could drum up so much money with so little effort with this tactic. Like, I guarantee there's people who were big shots in NARPM 10, 20, 30 years ago who have sold their companies, are in retirement. And if they got a call from a nice person at NARPM talking about a specific case, right? That's how you get people. Hey, I don't know if you've heard about this case going on in California. We're gearing up to fight it. Let me tell you about some of the details. You get 'em all riled up and, and, and then you like, okay, so let's talk about your checkbook, right? So yeah, there's like, there's so much opportunity here. So I don't know, end rant. Sorry about that.

Uh, but Peter's back. Okay. Yeah, I agree. We, there's, There's just ways, and that's why I'm, again, this isn't something specifically on MCI's radar, right? But we've just done things the same way for so long and it just worked and we were on autopilot. And that's why I'm looking forward to this transition and the ability to bring ideas like this and not hear a, no, we don't do it that way.

Sure. Well, great, Tracy. It's exciting, the changes that are coming. I'm excited for your presidency in '27, and it's great that you're on the board. We really appreciate, I know you're doing a ton of work that we didn't even get to talk about on behalf of members. So I want to just thank you personally and professionally for everything that you're doing and for coming on the show. For people who want to follow along with you, connect with you, where would be the best place to do that?

rentersplace.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn, just, just like you spell my name. Nothing fancy. Tracy Strike. And it's S-T-R-E-I-C-H for those of you who fanatically were going to spell it. Yeah.

They'll see it on the YouTube link. All right. Well, thanks again, Tracy. Appreciate you.

All right. Thanks for having me, Peter.

I hope you have enjoyed this episode. 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, Peter Lohmann dot 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.