In this under‑six‑minute weekly podcast, Peter Lohmann, newsletter author for 20,000 property managers, delivers three key updates. First, he notes that while the bipartisan Housing for the 21st Century Act passed, it omitted the previously proposed ban on institutional landlords buying single‑family homes, leaving the issue unresolved. Second, he reports a Florida HOA manager accused of stealing over $1 million from condo associations, using forged checks and misusing insurance settlements, and stresses that basic internal‑control safeguards—segregation of duties, multiple approvals, and transparent banking—could have prevented the fraud. Third, he highlights findings from AppFolio’s 2026 Property Management Benchmark Report: the industry faces higher vacancy rates and operating costs; 86 % of managers are prioritizing resident experience; more than half have seen a rise in application fraud; and 44 % are already using AI, with those users expecting faster portfolio growth. Lohmann links to the full report and his newsletter for further details.
Chapters
There's just been a major update in the effort to ban institutional landlords from buying homes. AppFolio just released a new benchmarking report, and a property manager has been accused of stealing over $1 million. My name is Peter Lohmann. I write a newsletter for 20,000 property managers, and this is your property management news for the week in under 6 minutes. House Republicans and Democrats just passed the Housing for the 21st Century Act. You may have heard about this. It's mostly a build more housing faster package. Clears unnecessary regulation and delays for new construction, tries to cut like federal review delays and legalizes and permits more of like the missing middle type of housing and small multifamily. It's all great stuff. It's got some practical things in here too. Faster voucher lease-ups by reducing duplicate inspections. They've got some stuff in here for manufactured housing, some small mortgage stuff. So a lot of regulatory clearing, which is great for more housing, which overall is gonna drive rents down or keep them from rising as quickly and control home prices. But important to note here is that the ban on institutional landlords and institutional commercial huge companies from purchasing single-family homes, basically houses, was not included. So left out of the final bill. Don't know the reasons why. Some folks aren't happy about this, but That's what you need to know. Next up, Florida HOA manager is accused of turning condo associations into his personal ATM. Police are saying he stole up to $1 million or more between 2021 and 2025, including at least $600,000 from one community by forging checks and documents and abusing insurance settlement money. The biggest takeaway for property managers, this is a controls issue. One person had too much access and not enough oversight. Basic guardrails that a lot of you probably already have in place would've stopped this. Like multiple people approving disbursements, separating out operating and reserve accounts, sending bank statements directly to board members. A lot of the stuff that is kind of common sense, but for whatever reason wasn't in place at this management company and the associations that he was working for. Lastly for today, AppFolio's 2026 Property Management Benchmark Report was just released. This is brand new and a couple key findings here I want to highlight for you. They found that the industry's biggest two challenges right now are higher vacancy and higher operating costs. Let me know if that resonates with you. In response, 86% of property managers are prioritizing the resident experience, mostly around communication, trying to reduce movement friction, a lot of the stuff that we're all working on. The report also talks a lot about fraud. We're seeing this go mainstream. More than half of respondents saw an increase in application fraud last year. That's huge. We're noticing this as well at my management company, and they're saying it's hurting performance. No surprise. So screening and verification are really hot topics with property managers right now. And of course, AI, they had some really interesting questions about AI. You should go check out the full report. Basically, 44% of respondents are using it now, and those users are expecting faster portfolio growth than people who aren't using AI. Kind of an interesting finding there. You can find the full report on their website or in my newsletter. I'm going to link to it in the next issue. That's all the news I have for you this week. Have a good one.
