Ep026: Tracking the Metrics that Matter in Property Management

Chris McAllister: welcome to the Landlord Profitability Playbook Podcast, where it’s our mission to create and coach business opportunities and strategies that support residential real estate investors. I’m Chris McAllister, and I’m here today with my marketing partner, Laci LeBlanc, and our Director of Property Management, Gretchen Mitchell.

Good morning, ladies. 

Laci LeBlanc: Good morning. Hello. Morning. 

Chris McAllister: Today we’re gonna talk about probably nobody’s favorite thing. We’re gonna talk about metrics, we’re gonna talk about numbers, and specifically we’re gonna talk about the metrics that our property management team here at ROOST Real Estate Company use to track and manage our business on a monthly, weekly.

And some cases it’s a, it’s a daily basis. And I don’t want to just talk about the metrics that look good on a dashboard or in a social media post. You know, we’re, we’re gonna talk about metrics that actually drive landlord profitability. And in our experience, property management companies that track, what I’ve seen is, and I don’t mean this to sound mean or caddy or [00:01:00] anything. But you know, a lot of property management companies track metrics that are easy, right? That are actually easy to find the numbers for, that are easy to track. And it’s not necessarily that they’re tracking the metrics that matter. And in so many cases, you know, many of us, and we’ve been down this road too, we track the metrics that our software vendors, you know, tell us that we’re supposed to track.

And that may or may not be relevant to what you know, is gonna enhance owner profitability at all. You know, and a lot of traditional metrics that property management industry uses, you know, they sort of lump everything together. And the fact is, owner decisions, portfolio strategy, market cycles, timing. A lot of times these traditional metrics just sort of treat everything the same and there’s no nuance for what’s actually happening.

And often that result is you got information that looks pretty cool, looks precise, looks great in the social media post, but it’s often not useful. And bad information [00:02:00] like that, or less than useful information often leads to poor decisions or no decisions being made at all when you know some tough decisions actually need to be made.

So I like to think, and Gretchen, if you’re gonna help me prove this thesis, is that we’ve taken a different approach at our company. You know, we track metrics that reflect reality. I’d like to think it’s not fantasy. And more importantly, we strive to constantly be tracking metrics that directly shape the daily work of our team so that we are doing the right things that affect positively, that give, give our owners.

Positive outcomes and more profitability. So that’s a whole lot of word salad and I apologize for that. But we are gonna go kind of deep today and, uh, we’ll see how that goes. So any first thoughts on this ladies? 

Laci LeBlanc: Well, it sounds like I might be the only one who’s excited about this, but data and metrics and spreadsheets and pivot tables and [00:03:00] all the things are, are what gives me life.

Uh, that’s like you said, how we make all of our decisions. Gretchen, you have any initial thoughts before, before we dig in? 

Gretchen Mitchell: I think I’m really excited to talk about mostly the things that a lot of owners think matters, but really dive deeper into it so that they understand more of the bigger picture.

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, that’s a great way to start. So before we get into the individual metrics that we track, can we talk about what we mean by metrics in the context of property management? 

Chris McAllister: Well, when we talk about metrics, you know, from a, I guess a, a business context is we’re talking about measurements that guide decisions and behavior.

So good metrics, they tell the truth about what’s happening and they help focus the team’s attention on the work that actually needs to get done, right? We’re not talking about metrics that, that make any particular person for certainly look good or bad, [00:04:00] but great metrics actually, at the end of the day, they create clarity and that clarity can result in, in a picture that maybe not as good as we’d like from time to time.

But again, you can’t, you can’t fix anything that, that, that you can’t measure. And if you don’t measure it, you don’t have a chance. So that’s kind of in a nutshell, the Webster’s, uh, definition of metrics. 

Laci LeBlanc: Metrics equal truth is where like, that’s my simplification. The metrics are the truth about what’s happening regardless of how, you know, we feel or how it may look anecdotally or, you know, again, those pretty graphs that we see on social media metrics are, are the truth.

So, two terms that come up a lot when we’re talking particularly to owners, but also to, you know, vendors and, and software producers, is owner churn and unit churn. Can you explain the difference in those and how we look at them? 

Chris McAllister: Owner churn is, is honestly, I, I think Gretchen, you would agree it’s the most important metric that we watch.

You know, we’ve got a [00:05:00] spreadsheet where we show, you know, all of our you know, the number of owners we have where we have owners, you know, we track how many doors owners have. I mean, there’s a lot of things that, that we track internally that help us run our business. But owner churn is the most important at risk because it’s about relationship.

So owner churn measures. How many owners start or end their relationship with us or with any property management company over a given period of time. Right? So, you know, we may just decide that we’re gonna track that for all of 2026 and, and with the idea that we’re gonna compare that to whatever happened in 2025.

Right? So we’re looking, we’re, we’re checking ourselves against past performance so that we have a benchmark so we can get better. But, owner churn is, is interesting because owners, you know, may leave a company for a lot of different reasons, right? Sometimes. Let me just say this. [00:06:00] My anxiety goes through the roof.

Anytime we lose an owner, right, and in turn, you know, Gretchen feels it, everybody feels it. We, we just don’t like to lose an owner, right? We’ve had owners that have been with us for 10 plus years, and, you know, that’s, that’s the greatest thing that you can have in a business like this. But the fact is, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for owners leaving as often as, as, as I beat us up for it.

But, you know, they, they leave for a lot of reasons. Maybe they’re retiring, maybe they need to rebalance their portfolio. Maybe they’ve got. A particular property that has just always been a problem for them, for whatever reason, and it makes sense to sell it. Maybe they’re upgrading their properties, you know, maybe they’ve got, you know, three or four single family houses and they want to turn those into a down payment on a small, a small apartment building.

Sometimes it’s a estate planning, and then god forbid people die. Right? It’s, there’s a lot of things that ha that, that fall into that owner churn number that don’t have really anything to do with the [00:07:00] management company’s performance, right? The only time owner churn becomes a problem is when we let them down, right?

Mm-hmm. When somebody leaves because their expectations weren’t met. So you gotta track it, right? So the first one is owner churn, where we talk about churning relationships. And the second big number that you hear a lot about, and this is a critical number for us as well, it’s unit churn. So some, sometimes unit churn or door churn.

It’s simply about the property, and it is the property, right? So door churn is about how many units are added or removed from management over the course of a given period of time. And units can come and go, even when the owner relationship stays intact. And that’s especially, you know, common for owners with larger portfolios.

So, you know, you’ll hear a lot of property management companies talk about, you know, their churn is, is very, very low and so forth. And that very well may be the [00:08:00] case. But what you don’t understand in that number is regardless of how big or small the number is, how much of, of that churn. Was about the positive experience that the owner was experiencing with that company, right?

You know, it, an owner is going to reposition their portfolio, buy more, you know, trade up whatever, if they’re making money and if they feel good about their property management relationship. So again, we track both. We, we track owner churn because relationships are the business and, and we track the unit churn, the door churn, because those are the, those properties are the assets that are within those relationships.

Does that make sense? 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. I think we track both and we track the context around both. Right? 

Gretchen Mitchell: Right. 

Laci LeBlanc: So again, owner churn. Uh, both of these owner churn, unit churn are, I think, imply they have a negative connotation, right? But that’s just not always the case. I think that’s a really important distinction to make.

Um, Gretchen I [00:09:00] think this one’s for you because you mentioned it right at the beginning, but, um, let’s talk about why the wrong metrics can cause can be damaging. So what is the danger for landlords and investors specifically when they are relying on the wrong metrics? 

Gretchen Mitchell: So sometimes they can be focusing on the wrong things if they do this.

A lot of times owners will chase occupancy instead of cashflow. They pressure managers on the vacancy. Sometimes it’s outside of the manager’s control, whether it’s the time of year, whatever it may be. But over time it will lead to frustration. But we try to show owners the bigger picture of their portfolio.

Yes, this is vacant, but hey, we got them to this person to sign a renewal and we increase the rent for you. And we are advertising this one. So if they do only focus on the vacant unit, sometimes they can neglect other things that are going on in their portfolio. Sometimes it’s really their main focus. 

Chris McAllister: I mean, a bad, a bad number, a [00:10:00] bad metric can cause you to focus on things that aren’t going to improve your overall profitability.

Right? Now granted we’re talking about owners that have, you know, tend to have more than one property and, but nevertheless, depending on what you’re focusing on, obviously a vacancy can be caused by a lot of different things, including an owner decision, right? Whereas when it comes down to actually collecting rent and making sure that property performs over the course of, of, uh, the lease period and beyond, I think that’s far more of the manager’s.

You know, the, the, the manager can affect that, right? The, the tenant relations can affect that. But you know, as a. As an owner out there, when you are focusing on, you know, quote the wrong metrics, you run the risk of, it demoralizes the property manager because I don’t, I, I, I have yet to meet a property manager who isn’t doing the best they can.

But when they’re playing the game that they can’t win. And, and there, you know, there’s rules that just flat out don’t [00:11:00] apply to this situation. I think it’s why we actually see as much churn amongst property managers in our businesses, as we do amongst owners and doors. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. How does that relate to how we think about churn at ROOST?

Chris McAllister: You know, I, we are always willing to be measured on churned, right? As long as it’s attributed. Properly. And, and you know, I I, I, I wanna define churn. I wanna get it out there in the world, but I also don’t want to come off as overly defensive either. You know, we fully own churn, caused by mistakes.

Dissatisfaction, owner alignment, right? Misalignment. E even if it turns out that we’re not well aligned either early on or, or several weeks, months, years on with an owner, we still own that, right? We are the ones that, that, that signed that PMA, you know, as much as the, uh, as much as the owner did. And so we will fully own churn trust by, you know, anything that we do wrong, we’ll fall on our sword, we’ll admit it in [00:12:00] public, you know, we’re very transparent in that regard, probably more so than, than honestly that we should be.

But we don’t believe it’s fair or useful, you know, to treat portfolio sales or planned extras as, as failures. And that gets back to the whole difference between, door churn, unit churn, and, uh, and owner churn. It, it, it, it’s crushing for us to lose an owner. You know, we, we, we do value the relationship.

You know, we want to do the best we can for ’em, but, you know, sometimes things happen, but, you know, it’s not something we take lightly. 

Laci LeBlanc: I feel like it’s kind of like, measuring the performance of, um, like a, a funeral home based on churn, right? If that’s part of the plan all along, if it’s built in, I mean, we, we help people manage their portfolios, right?

We help people see that with their futures. This is not just about property management. You know, Ruth prides itself on portfolio management, so eventually that person, you know, [00:13:00] if they wanna retire, if they wanna move, if they wanna pass it on. Eventually that portfolio there is gonna be a planned exit. So if that’s part of the service, then I can see how we don’t want to attribute that as a failure.

We wanna see it as a success. So, um, 

Chris McAllister: that’s interesting that you brought that up and, and this is an aside that, you know, we will get into probably in another podcast, past podcast episode, but you know, the, the end goals, right? What a, uh, a portfolio owner, somebody that may have twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred fifty properties, what their exit strategy is, what their end game looks like, what they want to have that.

Folio be maximized for over the next five to 10 years Is night and day from what, you know, a a single unit owner or somebody who has a handful of properties, is it, it, it, and again, that gets back to how, you know, we set up different metrics. We hold ourselves accountable for different metrics for single unit owners [00:14:00] than, than we do for portfolio type owners.

So I guess what it comes down to is one size does not fit all at the end of the day.

Laci LeBlanc: So that, I mean, that pretty much sums up ROOST in general that we’re, we’re operating for shared success. We’re not just saying like, we could push. Portfolio owners to hold onto their properties with that.

If that’s not aligned with their long-term goals, no. Then we’re not doing our job right. So 

Chris McAllister: That’s exactly right. Whatever their long-term goals are, you know, that’s what we’re charged with, with helping to facilitate. And if somebody comes to us with goals that, you know, we can’t help, don’t know how to help, then that’s probably, you know, somebody that, uh, that’s not a good fit for us and we’re not a good fit for them.

So we just have to make sure that we are absolutely aligned with whatever that individual owner’s goals are. 

Laci LeBlanc: So while we are managing their property, we talk a lot about vacancy and vacancy rates and occupancy and occupancy rates. Before we talk about kind of those as metrics, can you define for us how vacancy and occupancy are actually calculated?[00:15:00] 

Chris McAllister: All right. Here’s a little bit more arithmetic. Right. So vacancy and occupancy are pretty simple when it’s all said and done, but they’re often applied in ways that create. A lot of confusion. So vacancy, vacancy percentage, or a vacancy rate is the percentage of units that are currently not occupied.

Whereas occupancy is the inverse of that. It’s the percentage of units that are occupied. So if you have a hundred units under management, 90 of them are occupied, you’re at 90% occupancy. Right? The problem isn’t the math. The the, the problem is, is which is it the numerator, denominator, I guess it’s the number that’s in the denominator.

So most traditional calculations include every unit under management, regardless of whether that unit is available to lease or not, right? Mm-hmm. And this is where we get into the difference between, occupancy or vacancy and rent collected. But. So traditionally, a lot of times these metrics, they, they factor [00:16:00] in things that, again, are beyond the, the control of, if not the manager or the owner as well.

So, units that are under rehab or units that are intentionally held vacant or awaiting owner decisions or being repositioned. Again, traditionally all of these things that may be happening within an individual owner’s, uh, home or group of homes traditionally get lumped into a big number that, that the property manager is supposed to own.

Right? And often that number looks really precise, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect the property management’s performance. So, you know, when you’re out there interviewing property management companies, I, I just hope that you kind of keep this in mind and, and hopefully this whole thing helps you ask the right question.

You know, we, we focus on vacancy. An occupancy for units that are actually available to lease, right? That keeps the metric tied to what our team, the leasing team, the management team can actually influence and what matters operationally. When we work with owners who have multiple [00:17:00] properties, you know, we’ll compare vacancy rates within their portfolio against similar portfolio and, and company-wide trends.

But you’re never gonna see us put one giant number out there celebrating the fact that at this one moment in time, you know, we were at 99% occupancy or 0.1% vacancy. I guess if that, I feel like I’m making this a little bit too complicated as I start to talk through it, but, you know, it’s something that it, it, it matters to us, it matters to our owners, and I just think it’s important that we get, get how we think about this out there in the world.

Laci LeBlanc: I think one of this is one of those that somebody could argue, right? That well, tracking it this way, right, could, the way ROOST does, it could make it look better than it is. Uh, but I think the context is important when you place the emphasis on the fact that we are making decisions based on these numbers.

And just like comparing vacancy rates from portfolio to portfolio, that’s hugely valuable for the owner because then [00:18:00] you can see, okay, is there something going on in this portfolio that’s not happening in the other that’s either improving or, you know, reducing our vacancy rates? I think that’s really important.

So why tell, talk to me more about why that distinction matters so much for the owners. When you talk about vacancy and occupancy. 

Chris McAllister: I honestly think it’s still, it comes down to that when you don’t have context and you’re focusing on just one number, it just can lead to bad conclusions. That in turn, lead to bad decisions.

Or again, no decisions at all. You know, you may have a number, you know, for one set of owners or something that, that may reflect a problem, right? Or, or, or it may not. So again, context is everything. And then to take that number as the be all, end all and start to pressure managers on that outcome, I guarantee you that manager will start managing for that number.

There’s a good chance that managing for that number is not gonna be the, the what you want them focused on. If you’re [00:19:00] interested in, in long-term profitability and, and, and an appreciating asset. You know, vacancy should tell a story. I think more so about leasing performance and, and, and tenant retention.

And, and it’s just really easy to, to get that all messed up and lumped in with, you know, uh, various owners’, portfolio strategies or timing or, you know, whatever that is. Again, context, I think is the best word here.

Laci LeBlanc: So we also track days on market in a very specific way. Um, Gretchen, how, tell, talk to me about how we define, uh, days on market and why we do it that way. 

Gretchen Mitchell: I really like the way we do this. So days on market is just what it sounds like, how many days it’s been on the market. But days on market, it’s actually what’s a avail available for rent.

So the clock starts when a unit is truly rent ready and available for leasing, not when it becomes just vacant. We’re not gonna count the time it takes to turn it waiting decisions from an [00:20:00] owner or a contractor. It’s actually when it’s rent ready, ready to be moved in, put out there for everyone to view.

Um, we start the clock then, and then at 21 days we have to maybe reevaluate things if it’s not rented in 21 days. Do we need to go look at it? Do we need to talk about a price reduction? Do we need to, um, think about a move in special? But 21 days is kind of our mark of, Hey, this isn’t renting. What’s going on, and how can we get this rented sooner?

Chris McAllister: Yeah, and I think it’s, it’s fair to, this is probably the most. Unambiguous metric. I think that we look at, every weekly meeting that Gretchen has with the team, you know, everybody’s got a copy of the, of the report from, um, you know, tenant Turner and, and, she and her team go down the list one by one.

What’s happening with this and what’s happening with this and what’s happening with this one. And I, I embarrassed to say, I don’t know what our actual average is on what, what the report [00:21:00] looks like this week. It does seem that, uh, this holiday season was probably a little weaker than the last two or three holiday seasons have been for us.

And and January isn’t as quick, I think as a rule, you know, we’re usually in there, you know, once a sign goes, you know, in the window or you know, hits the website, I’m gonna guess here, we have to go back and verify this, but it’s probably 11 to 14 days and that’s why we really start to get a little nervous between 14 and 21 days.

And that’s the beauty of actually having that meeting every Thursday. But it also, it does feel like it’s a little bit softer, you know, these first few weeks of, uh, 2026. But as in every year we’ve got high hopes for tax return season. So for us, February, March and April are usually fantastic leasing months.

So hopefully our owners and, and we’re all well positioned to take advantage of that as it comes up here. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. Is there anything else that days on market tells you operationally? We’ve talked about what happens, um, if within 21 days, [00:22:00] you know, it’s, it’s not rented. What else does it tell you kind of operationally about how we’re promoting or marketing a property?

Chris McAllister: You know, we use Tenant Turner as our, our, as our leasing platform. And you know, it’s interesting. Tenant Turner is a system, right? And honestly, our leasing manager’s job is to make sure that system runs flawlessly. Where I think the property manager, the local property man manager, whether it’s uh, Taylor or Tina or, or Gretchen having to get involved is when that system is working beautifully and we’re hitting that 14 to 21 day period and we still haven’t surfaced a qualified applicant, right?

So operationally. That report tells us if the system is working, if our workflows are adequate, if, if things are going to plan. But at the end of the day, what we’re looking for is the exception. And for us that exception is damnit what happened if we, if we haven’t hit that 14, you know, day mark, what do we need to do?

And, is the sign up it, you know, recheck the listing, you know, and Zillow and every place [00:23:00] else and take another walk through the property and call the people who have scheduled showings and, and, and get their feedback if they didn’t already give us feedback. Right. If nothing else that, that triggers a, a conversation.

But like Gretchen said, you know, we come back to review again, pricing condition. Are the photos any good? Right? Is it the time of year? It, you know, there’s a lot of different things. But that goes back to we have to use these metrics as a way to drill down to the individual door. That’s the issue. And that we believe is the best way to.

To use metrics and work metrics is to actually use them to figure out what the exception is so we can fix it. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. And big picture wise, right? It tells you a lot about kind of the current market conditions. So if you start to see trends there, I mean, markets change constantly. Normally it’s slow, right?

And so you kind of have your finger on the pulse, but I feel like, um, you know, when these things start to change, when you start to see more trends that can really help keep your [00:24:00] finger on the pulse of the market condition, the market itself, um, when it comes to rentals as well. 

Chris McAllister: Um, and we’re doing some o other things too to sort of enhance the whole experience.

You know, we’re, we’re starting to use a company called Plan Matic to get professional pictures taken on, on all of our. Listings and so forth. And I, I guess, I think that’s really cool. I think it’s, it, it, it’s in good, great service to the owners. It’s in great service to the, the prospective applicants.

It, it’s more transparent, it tells a better story, et cetera, et cetera. But I have no illusions that matic is suddenly going to make everything rent, seven days faster, right? On average, you know, no matter how well we improve, you know, the marketing or, you know, the showcasing of individual properties for rent, at the end of the day, it still comes down to managing that leasing process.

Having that partnership with the owner, you know, where we can have an honest conversation about what the, you know, current rent rates are. You know, how [00:25:00] that, how that, uh, house stacks up to the neighborhood standards, et cetera. You know, it, the me’s important. It forces us to drill down, but at the end of the day, it’s what we do as a team to get that property rented.

That matters. Nothing else does. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, you’re gonna know. ROOST is gonna know if adding better pictures magically improves or speeds up the rental process, right? Not counting on it, but if it happens, I take comfort in the fact that as a property management company, you’re gonna know because you keep an eye on this every single week you have a meeting.

Um, so we talked about days on market doesn’t include time to turn. So let’s define time to turn and talk about what that includes. 

Chris McAllister: Gretchen, you take this one, huh? 

Gretchen Mitchell: The time to turn is the period between a tenant moving out to being rent ready again. So that includes the initial walkthrough and inspection, the lock change, getting the scope, talking with contractors, getting it all approved, and then getting the work actually [00:26:00] done.

So it does sometimes take a while to turn. You would be surprised that the size of the scope does matter. Contract availability always matters. Getting it scheduled. Um, sometimes we can do it in-house, sometimes we do have to contract it out. A lot of times owners seem to think that a smaller bid will actually make it quicker to get done back on the market, but sometimes that means the contractors sometimes focus on the bigger turns that will make them a little bit more money.

So they put the smaller ones back on the back burner. And the larger ones, the higher quality bids tend to move quickly because you have a different contractor with a different mindset of let’s go in, let’s get this done, let’s make it pretty, I’m gonna make a lot of money on this. They have a different mindset of a smaller one versus a bigger one.

So sometimes it does move a little bit quicker when we’re doing more work, and then ultimately that makes it rent faster, makes it more appealing to [00:27:00] people. 

Chris McAllister: So that whole time to turn piece that TTT. It, it, that, that is just as critical from, Brad Owens, our, our, we have a maintenance manager.

That number is just as critical to him as it is to our property managers and the phase on market number, you know, once we get owner approval to get something fixed corrected, whatever, that’s really when the time to turn starts. You know, hopefully we can get owner approval within, gosh, best case, I would say three to four days even of having a tenant move out.

And obviously a large turn that, that needs paint and a bunch of other stuff is gonna take longer than just a quick cleanup and so forth. And that all affects the numbers. But again. It’s all about context, right? You know, we have owners with a lot of older housing stock, you know, where we operate. And those houses, you know, they always need some upgrading.

They, they, they always need some preventive maintenance done and so forth. It just, it completely depends on the owner’s [00:28:00] goals the condition of the portfolio and, and so forth. So it comes down to that whole individual owners goals. What can we do to help them and, and the context. But Gretchen, walk us through, how you and Brad somehow touch every single vacant property that we have in the portfolio every week.

Gretchen Mitchell: This is another report that we talk about once a week at our team meetings. It’s called, um, it’s AppFolio ISS Unit vacancy detail report. So it’ll pull everything that’s vacant, whether it’s rent ready or it just got moved out of. But we will pull that report and go through every single unit that’s vacant and we talk about, where are we at with this one?

Okay, well, we just went through and change the locks, working on the scope. Great. And then we make a note, follow up with it next week. Hey, last week we were at here, where are we at here? But we talk about who is doing the turn, is the owner doing it themselves? Is it small enough or quick enough for us to do in-house with our [00:29:00] maintenance people?

Or is it a third party? Um, but we discuss each one and maybe some of the owners are holding it and, you know, maybe they wanna tackle it in the spring. So it’s winterized. But we talk about every single one. And not only do we talk about what’s being turned right now, but what’s almost ready to go. That way our property manager can reach out to the owner and start talking about the marketing details while it’s in its final stages.

So it cuts that time a little bit from rent ready to actually on the market. 

Chris McAllister: Yeah, 

Laci LeBlanc: it’s a big part of the week. Yeah. So we talked about how, um, some smaller projects or smaller trends could be completed by the in-house team. So I wanna talk a little bit about that in-house team and how maintenance in occupied homes, which is their main, like their main job, right?

How does maintenance in occupied homes tie into profitability? 

Gretchen Mitchell: So when you have a happy, cheerful maintenance person who’s [00:30:00] very skilled and they go right in there and take care of a maintenance issue it directly affects the tenant’s happiness, right? I mean if you, they call a work order in and someone comes in, they get it taken care of right away, their happy, and it does eventually lead to potentially having that tenant sign a lease renewal.

You know, if they’re happy, they’re gonna stay. And sometimes we talk to owners about, and I’m kind of getting into lease renewals now, but if the maintenance person will go in and put a new ceiling fan in, it makes the tenant happy and they’re more likely to sign there. And it kind of justifies that rent increase because that tenant knows that they’re being taken care of.

They’re not just a number. They’re actually important. 

Chris McAllister: Property mail. It’s who we use for our maintenance platform, property mail.com. And, you know, they will tell you, I don’t have the exact statistics, but they actually have been able to show [00:31:00] the how much, and it’s significant, how much a, a, a tenant who is satisfied with the maintenance team and have, and have been happy with how their problems and concerns were addressed, that they absolutely will stay in the property longer.

Mm-hmm. You know, whether it’s signing an additional year or whatever lease, or it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, a month to month fee and staying month to month. But that in-house maintenance thing is. It’s, it’s made a huge difference in our business since we started working with Property mailed a couple years ago.

And thank goodness, you know, our maintenance guys are the most skilled, happiest, friendliest bunch we’ve we’ve ever had. I mean, they’re the reason, and we’ll get to this as our last metric, why, you know, our Google reviews are, are such as, as they are, it’s, it’s because they, they have that one-on-one, personal interaction with owners on a daily basis and they’re sending a, a terrific me message.

But as far as the metrics right, you know, we [00:32:00] get a whole slate of metrics that the maintenance team and, and Gretchen go over that meeting happens to be on Monday mornings Right? With the, with the maintenance team. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yep. 

Chris McAllister: And you know, the metrics include. You know the completed repairs overall, but it’s also not just for the entire team, it’s by the individual maintenance tech, right?

And we get individual tenant satisfaction ratings for each maintenance tech through property mill. And those get plastered for all, what is it, eight guys I’m looking at on the wall. Right? You know, if somebody drops below a four, you know they’re gonna hear about it from everybody else in the room. 

Gretchen Mitchell: Oh, it, it’s such a conversation.

Monday morning. So before we get into everything, we look at the board, you know, Brad will put the numbers up. I’m looking at ’em, and Don has been going strong. 4.44 for the last three weeks, he dropped down to a 4.34 and the guys will never let him hear the end of it. And William bumped up by a whole, he went from three to a [00:33:00] 1.47.

And then the fun part about it is yes, they’ll give each other a hard time and they’ll congratulate each other, but the winner always gets to pick what special treat I bring in for them on Monday during the meeting. It is a long meeting, and if we have cookies or a snack, it’s much easier. The winner always gets to pick.

So they love it. I mean, it’s a competition between them and it’s, it’s nice to see them. They really care about it. 

Chris McAllister: We have metrics that drive the treat selections. See, we have metrics for everybody. 

Laci LeBlanc: There are metrics for everything. I think it’s, that’s a really fun point. But, and I think it’s important because I think I mentioned in a, in another podcast or recorded Chris, about how when I came for Christmas with ROOST for the first time, I got to meet kind of the maintenance team and how happy they all were and how engaged and how like invested in ROOST they were.

They were like, it’s like a family up there. And I said, I, we talk about how, you know, higher renewal rates, fewer escalations. You know, maintenance is really a retention strategy for owners. You know, for, for [00:34:00] the property manager ROOST, we really emphasize maintenance and it helps with Google reviews.

And so that’s advantageous to us. But I’ve never heard anybody talk about, you know. Maintenance technician retention. But I imagine that by tracking some of these metrics and by incentivizing them and by rewarding them and even probably by, you know, making fun of people who are, who’ve dropped down a 10th of a point, uh, each week, that you’re really creating kind of an environment for, uh, maintenance technicians to thrive too.

And that probably really impacts, you know, retention of those folks. Um, which has benefits obviously for re but for the owners and for the tenants. I mean, what tenant doesn’t wanna see the same guy that they raved about on Google last time, show up to fix the next thing. So I think that’s a really interesting point that you make.

But we talked about leasing, right? So let’s go back to the leasing activity. Um, can you explain what Tenant Turner does when it comes to the leasing activity? Data? 

Gretchen Mitchell: Tenant Turner will [00:35:00] give us real time visibility. Of leasing so we can see how many leads we had. We can see how many showings we had.

If they didn’t show up for the showings feedback, they can provide, you know, a one out of five rating and then they can leave comments of the people who saw it. That’s when they also automatically get an application. So it’s, it’s pretty automated, but a lot of the times we go into and we, you know, talk with them, how can we make this better?

Or, Hey, we reduce the price, we can do this. But a lot of the metrics on there come from, there’s a report you can pull of, again, how many leads, how many showings, how many no-shows, how many applications were sent. So we can see all those numbers in real time. 

Chris McAllister: We can see how it’s performing online. You know, we can see how the tenant Turner boxes are working.

We can, it’s, this property mill has been a change for our business. Tenant Turner was the second biggest change for our business, honestly, over the past three years or so, that we [00:36:00] really started to understand how to use it and, and how to, how to watch the metrics, right, so that we can make better decisions in a more timely matter, I guess.

Right? I think that’s probably it, but you know, instead of waiting weeks to see whether something, worked, we get immediate feedback from the market. So, you know, that means that you and Taylor and and Tina get to adjust the pricing, you know, the messaging, the description, being, having somebody who’s looking at, at those numbers, those reports, those metrics on a daily basis.

Definitely allows us to find and attract qualified applicants and get them approved, within that 14, 14 day window. And, and we’re, we’re so deep into that on a daily basis. That’s why it is such a red flag for us. If something hits that 14 to 21 day spot where, okay, this didn’t work. We’ve got an exception, what do we gotta do to make this, get this thing rented?

So [00:37:00] 

Laci LeBlanc: it’s another one of those, um, tools, you know, the, the technology that if you work with a, a property manager, then you have access to, that’s probably a little, um, cost prohibitive for folks. I would say just managing a few properties to have on their own. So why, what does it do for the owners? You talked about how tenant Turner changed things for risk, but why is that important for owners?

Chris McAllister: I think one of the coolest things, Gretchen, and maybe I’m missing something, but you know, we’ve got it set that every, I think it’s Sunday night, every owner who has a vacancy gets a recap that comes straight from tenant Turner Unfiltered, you know, about how their property performed over the course of the previous week.

So, you know, hopefully that. We know it creates transparency. It, it, it creates a sense of urgency on our part. And you know, sometimes that sense of urgency comes from the owners. We like to think that we get more excited before they do, but there’s no question, uh, it, it, I I think it shows that we’re truly partners.

We’re not trying to hide [00:38:00] anything. You know, we want them to know that, you know, we treat these properties as if they’re our own. And, and, you know, somebody who’s in charge of that particular process is gonna be all over it. And Gretchen and Brad and me and Tina are gonna make sure that they are. I don’t know.

I, I think at the end of the game, that’s, that’s really what’s in it for our owners, quite frankly. 

Gretchen Mitchell: Right. It’s not just posted and forgotten. 

Chris McAllister: That’s right. Posted and forgotten. We don’t want that. We 

Gretchen Mitchell: don’t want that.

Laci LeBlanc: So we’ve talked, we’ve mentioned a few times, um, rent collection is another metric, right? And arguably that matters more than occupancy. Can you expand on that a little bit? 

Chris McAllister: I think we’ve beat occupancy and vacancy till it’s pretty well dead for this podcast, but, you know, occupancy is a snapshot in time.

Rent collection is a financial reality, right? If a unit can be occupied and still not producing income, right? If, if you’ve got somebody in a unit and, and they’re delinquent and they’re not paying, [00:39:00] that’s, that honestly is a, a far bigger problem than having a vacant unit that, that, you know, where nobody’s supposed to be paying the rent.

You know, from an owner’s perspective, and I speak from an owner and a ROOST client, the only thing that matters is any given month is how much rent is actually collected. And that’s why we track, you know, rent due versus rent collected. You know, we, and this is where we get. This is where our study of metrics and our use of metrics becomes very, very, very old school.

And I have to say, I’m damn proud of it, right? So the best way that we can actually track whether or not the rent is collected or not is to focus on how many people didn’t pay on time, right? Mm-hmm. How many three day notices did we have to go out and post this month? And how many of those people were we not able to chase down and cajole and, and so forth to, to get them to at least pay by the end of the month?

Those very simple metrics [00:40:00] and that there’s, there’s really no technology that we’ve seen that substitutes for, for actually running, seeing, printing. And counting those three day notices. Gretchen, why don’t you I’m outta my pay grade here. I know, but why don’t you just kind of talk about that for a little bit, 

Gretchen Mitchell: the rent collection.

So, um, we will, like you said, we’ll print off those eviction notices. There’s also a delinquency report in AppFolio, which will track not only rent, but other fees that are due, whether it’s a month, month fee, a late fee, a pet fee, whatever it may be. Uh, but we try to track those down. I mean, we go knocking on doors.

We will call and text and get all of those together. But I will say we’ve seen there is certain times of the year that. More people have trouble paying. You know, around Christmas [00:41:00] time is always tougher, but again, like we said, tax return time, everything kind of evens out. So we do our best to work with people that we can, but we do really, really track down.

We really do work hard to get all that rent for the owner, and that is the most important thing for them. 

Chris McAllister: Well, and, and you know, for, for me, you know, and, and, and, and Gretchen, she’s actually in there deep knowing exactly which house is which. But if I go back to my scorecard that I keep for us, and, and I look at how many three day notices we had to post last month, and let’s say that number was 40.

And you know, I say, how are we doing this month? Because, you know, our first check run is the 10th, and that’s the biggest check run. That’s when our owners get paid. That’s when we get paid. And and I say to Gretchen, okay, how many three days did we have today? You know, my first thing I’m gonna do is gonna go back and I’m gonna look and see how were we last month, how were we the previous month?

How were we in in February of last year? Because if something’s out of line from a seasonal perspective, we’re gonna have to dig deeper [00:42:00] and find out why is it out of line? Where are we missing? And so forth. And, and we we’re really lucky to have a couple of really great tenant relations specialists that, that are in our offices, Shannon and Marcy, and their primary focus from, you know, basically the 11th or 12th of the month all the way through till that last day.

And that last check run of the month is following up. 

Controlling, talking, trying to figure out what’s, what’s happening with the rent, what’s happening with the rent, and just as important, right? If, if for whatever reason we can’t collect, then it’s the sense of urgency on our part is.

Okay, Mr. Owner, this has happened before. I think it’s time that, you know, we suggest you cut your losses and, and let’s go ahead and let this person leave or mm-hmm. File the eviction if we need to file the eviction so that we can get somebody in there that’s gonna pay on time and, and even out your cash flow and help these sleep nights.

But [00:43:00] hopefully. If somebody hasn’t paid by the 10th, it’s always a surprise to us. It tends to be a surprise to the, to the owner. But if we get to the point where we’re, you know, we still haven’t gotten paid by the 20th, and we think that that person’s truly gonna have to go, that means it’s a phone call for Taylor, Tina or Gretchen with that owner to talk through.

You know, this is probably the time to you know, actually file the court papers and, and evict this person. The point is, if we’re not all over those three day notices, if we’re not all over delinquencies and so forth, it’s super easy for somebody who hasn’t paid to slip through another month. Right.

And our goal is if we’re gonna file the eviction, we wanna get it filed this month so that we can get custody of that house back as fast as we possibly can and not lose another month’s rent because we were three or four days late on the calendar. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I think that’s an excellent example of how, you know, the occupancy rate can be misleading and how it could give false confidence, right?

And if you have a hundred percent occupancy rate, but nobody’s paying, [00:44:00] then that’s, you really shouldn’t feel great about that, right? So it changes the way we behave on behalf of the owners. So, um, on the other side of the coin, we have renewals and forward planning. So RU starts renewal discussions pretty early.

Talk to me about why we do that. 

Chris McAllister: Well, you know, before we do that, we, there is a metric to this, right? And the metric is for whatever given period of time, whether it’s a month or the year. What percentage of the tenants, there’s, there’s actually a couple of different metrics. It’s how, what percentage of them move out and go month to month, what percentage of ’em sign another lease?

And, and what percentage of them leave, right? So there’s really three possibilities at the end of a lease term. And we have metrics for, for each one. But what I really want Gretchen to kind of walk us through is, you know, part of those reports that we get these numbers on, you know, we, we can sort of look ahead and when it comes to renewals, [00:45:00] which leads to, you know, what should the rent be going forward and, and how do we help an owner, plan for managing their portfolio, what they can expect over the next months, 2, 3, 4, 5 years.

This kind of gets me excited and it’s gonna bore everybody to death. So, Gretchen, tell us why do we start the renewal process so early? 

Gretchen Mitchell: So we, our goal is about 120 days out. And we do that because a lot of owners would like us and we need to too, walk the units. Are, is it being taken care of? Are there things that we need to do to justify a rent increase?

Do we need to research the market? Are we at market rent now? Do we need to increase it a little bit? Can we offer one two year lease, whatever it may be. A lot of it though, I think, like I said before, is if maintenance goes in there, you know, walks the property, yes, they’re taking care of it, it’s great, but they send, you know, this door, you know, leaks, air, da, da, da, whatever it may be.

And if [00:46:00] that tenant is taken care of with the maintenance issue in 20 days or so, when they get that renewal, they’re more likely to sign it and feel better about a rent adjustment because they know they’re taking care of. So it gives us time to kind of get those things in order. 

Chris McAllister: The other thing that 120 days does is, and again this is, really important I think for owners that have multiple properties, is I think it gives you Tina Taylor time to schedule quality one-on-one with that owner.

Gretchen Mitchell: Yeah. 

Chris McAllister: And if they have more than one property, look at the calendar. When does the next renewal come up for this property? This property, and this property. And sometimes it’s nice to be able to look ahead and make sure that we are aligned with the owner expectations. Right. You know, if the owner, thinks that you know this property, it can go both ways, right?

Maybe they think the property is worth more than what the market will dictate, but maybe they think less. And you know, just to be able to go [00:47:00] through and say, well here’s where the market is on this one. We think you should push this one up. And sometimes it’s a conversation of, well, you know, if you had a brand new tenant, you know, you might be able to get X, but this tenant’s been great for the past three years.

Maybe you want, x minus Y, you know, whatever. Maybe you want to make a bit of a concession to optimum market rate in order to keep this tenant in place and avoid lost rent and the potential turn, et cetera, et cetera. So having, getting enough time out to have a calm, you know, thoughtful conversation with an owner about where that property’s gonna be or all their properties.

Could conceivably be rent wise over the course of the next year and what they may have to invest to get to those numbers. That’s the, that to me is the magic of, of starting renewal processes 120 days out because I think that shows where we really are a partner in that owner’s success. And it’s just so easy to get caught up in the day to day to day.

And then suddenly you’ve got, uh, the end of a lease coming up [00:48:00] next week. And it, I gotta talk to you about getting the rent raised you lot of time. Nobody likes that. We don’t like that the owner hates that, you know, it doesn’t feel like a partnership. It feels like a, a task and you know, we just wanna avoid that.

So, you know that, that report that shows. What’s coming up for renewal over the next few months. And then, you know, being able to calculate, you know exactly what the percentages are so we can advise owners accordingly. You know, in this market, in this price range, you know, a third of the people will go month to month.

A third of the people will sign a new lease and a third of the people will move out. I’m throwing that out there. I’m probably close, but I’m throwing that out there. But to know that by market and to be able to have that discussion and, and to help lead the owner to making the decision that’s right for them, that that really is our job.

You know, we, we can’t just be, you know, quote property managers. We’ve gotta be partners with, with those owners and, and asset managers. In some cases, in portfolio management, when they have multiple properties. 

Laci LeBlanc: I think [00:49:00] this is a really, this is where you can see a really big difference between self-managing and working with a property manage manager.

I think a lot from my experience, um, Nana, uh, I just think that it’s more of an innocent until proven guilty scenario with renewals, like they’re gonna renew until they don’t. And so then what happens? Then you’re put into this, like, renewal might not be the best thing for your tenant. It might not be the best thing for, um, you know, the property owner themselves.

So having time to work through that and just knowing that it’s part of the overall strategy, that somebody’s paying attention to it before it just happens, um, because then you know you’re stuck. I know that my family’s had to make a lot of decisions at the very last minute because somebody moved out when they just assumed that they were gonna renew.

They didn’t really talk to ’em about it beforehand. And then you’re stuck with a vacant property and decisions to make about whether you’re gonna. You know, rehab it, whether you’re just gonna do a quick turn, are there any contractors available to do the rehab you had planned to do between tenants? And then you’re stuck figuring out what the rent should be based on all of this math.

Um, so I [00:50:00] think that just working with somebody who has a strategy around renewals and treats it as a, a smaller part of a much bigger picture is huge. And I see a big difference for people who are self-managing versus working with a property manager who also has that bigger picture data. Right? So one of the things that’s really becoming clear to me about this is when you work with data and metrics, sample size matters, right?

If you have 10 properties, that’s great. You can compare what this property is doing to that property. But if you work with a property manager that has hundreds of properties, then they’re far more likely to see those trends earlier. They’re far more likely to identify, you know, based on what is happening with other properties, they can apply that to your properties.

How they’re able to rent them faster or save money on turns or, you know, get more renewals or, you know, the whole nine. So that’s really what’s kind of become clear to me throughout this conversation is that sample size matters and, and kind of working with a property [00:51:00] manager helps to you know, speed up some of these I won’t wanna say mistakes, but some of these processes and to apply other successes to your properties.

As you know, those things come up with your properties is huge. But let’s talk, we mentioned earlier about Google reviews and culture and you know, a lot of companies I don’t think include these type of culture metrics in their overall metrics that they share with folks. Why does ROOST focus so intently on that and why do we track Google reviews as a core metric?

Chris McAllister: I guess I’ll start off. It, it’s and I’ll preface this by saying, and we’ve talked about this before in previous podcasts, you know, there were years and years and years where I paid no attention to Google reviews and, and that was just dumb. And it was just in the last couple of years, Laci, with your help, that we kind of got a handle on what was happening there and how it worked and how it met.

But Google reviews matter, and we prefer Google reviews to any other, because Google isn’t pay for play, right? It’s not like, uh, Yelp or [00:52:00] Business Better Business, better Business Bureau, where you pay money, you know, to the platform and so forth. Google just is what it is. Aflex lived experience. It captures how residents and owners actually feel about communication, maintenance, and service.

And, and that is a powerful accountability tool. Now, do we have maybe one, 2% on a bad month of people who are just out to. Lash out hurt us or hurt anybody. Yes. But that does not in any way diminish the fact that, you know, 99% of, of, of what happens on Google reviews is valid and again, reflects lived experience.

So, for us it’s, it’s a critical part of, of, of how we’ve learned to run the business the past two or three years. 

Laci LeBlanc: We ask a very specific question at the end of interactions in order to kind of gauge where we are and, and hopefully before a Google review, but we asked, have I earned a five star review today?

Why do we ask [00:53:00] it in that very specific way? 

Chris McAllister: Because otherwise we would not get a five star review. 

Gretchen Mitchell: Hey, can I a three star review today, 

Chris McAllister: did I have a three star review? I 

Laci LeBlanc: don’t about the service I provided for the review and they gave you four stars because we talked about how four stars used to be like the Max Stars.

It was like two thumbs up. You don’t have more than two thumbs. And like back when Four Stars was like a great review, but like he got a four star review instead of five because you didn’t specifically ask for it. And they were thrilled. Their, their Google review was, we are thrilled with the service.

It’s fantastic. But somehow it was only four stars. 

Chris McAllister: Well, I mean we, we, we always ask the question, you know, and we, we ask all of our folks, have I into five Star review today? You know, it frames the service as intentional. It reminds the team that every interaction matters. But that’s also why, you know, when you go check us out on Google, you know, I think we’re running a four seven or a four eight.

I think Columbus might be a four. Seven or four, eight and [00:54:00] Springfield might be the other one. But what you’re gonna see is, is tons and tons and tons of five star reviews, and then a smattering of one star reviews. I don’t believe we have ever had maybe a handful of reviews that were two or three. You know, it, it’s, it’s, it’s, it tends to be five or one thumbs up or thumb down, but that’s where you really have to go in because, and again, this goes back to the, the quality and the orientation of the maintenance guys.

There’s always words next to those, you know, five star reviews, right? And, and they’ll say something nice or what they appreciated and that’s valid feedback regardless. But. You know, Gretchen hates it when we get a, a one star review because I can’t handle it. It just, it freaks me out, and, and when we do receive negative reviews or a one star review, you know, we do the best we possibly can to respond quickly and Absolutely.

Honestly, honest. And, usually the, the team [00:55:00] knows who the disgruntled tenants are, you know, for whatever reason. In many cases it’s because they haven’t paid the rent and they’re hearing from us about when they’re gonna pay, or maybe they’ve already had an eviction filed or, it could be any number of reasons.

But if there is any place, any grain of truth, and that’s not even the right word, if there’s any sense in any less than five star review that we didn’t live up to our obligation to that owner or tenant. I really believe that we do the best we possibly can when we’re wrong, to say we’re wrong and say how we either already fixed it or we’re going to fix it.

You know, if the review is inaccurate, we’re gonna explain why it’s inaccurate. You know, we’re not gonna just say, yeah, we’re sorry we screwed up if we didn’t screw up. You know? And, and again, sometimes you have people you don’t know what’s going on in their lives and so forth, but they lash out. The other thing that we’ve had happen is sometimes the one star reviews are not [00:56:00] coming from anybody who’s on the lease.

But, you know, which is a whole nother issue in and of itself. But if that’s the case and we don’t have any history with this person, or even with the person who’s on the lease, we’re gonna respond and say that. So if we did something wrong, you’re gonna see it. We’re gonna say exactly what we need to do about it.

We’re gonna give them every, encourage them to, to call, Gretchen directly, if that’s where it needs to go. And you know, we’re, we’re gonna be transparent. We’re gonna be embarrassed, we’re going to get it out there, but we’re never ever gonna let a single star or a less than than five star review go unanswered.

And I think focusing on that metric, that 4, 7, 4 8, and actually in Florida, I think we’ve got like 40, 40 or 55 star reviews now for Reno, which is just fantastic. But, you know, we get super excited when we get to Five Stars, but there’s a five alarm, fire drill when, when a one star comes through. And, uh, Gretchen sadly, is always on the other end of that conversation.

Gretchen Mitchell: But you’re right, most of the time we know [00:57:00] exactly the situation and we just respond appropriately. Either we’re wrong or. We, you’re 

Chris McAllister: wrong. 

Gretchen Mitchell: Explain what happened. Yeah, I was gonna say it like that, but yeah. You know, you’re wrong or we’re wrong. 

Chris McAllister: Well, it’s not even so much you’re wrong, but we do use an opportunity to say what we did.

Right? Because we want any owner who’s checking us out, current or future owner to say, oh, well that makes perfect sense. I don’t know what else I would’ve done, you know, if I was doing this myself, that’s what I would’ve done. Yeah. Transparency. That’s a lot of math. Well, a lot of numbers. Well, that 

Laci LeBlanc: transparency builds trust over time, right?

So just being transparent with folks and letting people know good, bad, or otherwise that you’re gonna tell the truth about it and, and be upfront about it, um, I think is what builds trust. I think this is also another scenario where it’s a kind of a chicken and egg where we talked about, um, you know, the maintenance technicians and how having those metrics impacts their performance.

I think, you know, knowing that you’re gonna come into the office or go out into the field and do your job and then ask, have I earned a five star review today? Sets the mindset and the tone and you know, your [00:58:00] intentions for the job that you’re about to do. So I think that’s a really important part of the process.

And it, the data at that point kind of impacts the data in a very cyclical way. 

Chris McAllister: Yeah. 

Laci LeBlanc: So I think that’s, that’s something that not everybody has. 

Chris McAllister: And the Google reviews are independent of the property mill reviews. So if a, if a maintenance tech goes in and it didn’t go well, right? Or they couldn’t fix it, or the tenant was very upset or whatever, they’re probably not gonna ask that tenant for a five star review.

But that tenant is still going to get a text message asking them to rate the performance of that tech. You know, Google reviews are a completely separate metric that tells in some, uh, much larger story really than, uh, even the property mail, uh, numbers do. So anyway. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of companies, and maybe there was some of this initially, Chris, before we got Google reviews set up it, there’s a fear there, what are people gonna say?

And then you can’t change it. Right. Like that. This is a very. Transparent process that [00:59:00] Google has, can’t make Google reviews go away, can away make it go away? No, you can’t change it. So the what ifs can be overwhelming, I think if you have a fear of how your technicians or your people on the phone or your leasing managers are performing.

Um, so I think that just having it in place and putting such an emphasis on it says a lot about the confidence that you have in ROOST that we all have in our processes and our services and the intentions of everybody and capabilities of everyone who, who works at ROOST. Um, we’re not afraid to ask the question.

We’re not afraid to put that out there. We want people to see, um, because we’ve worked really hard to make this an enjoyable experience for everyone involved and, and we’re happy to show that. 

Chris McAllister: Well, let’s, uh, let’s tie this up today. So when you step back and you look at all of this together, the point is not that Bruce tracks more metrics than any other property management company ’cause I guarantee you we don’t.

But har the point is that we strive to track the right metrics consistently day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. We don’t have any [01:00:00] metrics of the moment, right? If it’s not something that, uh, there’s a number that’s going to, uh, assist with profitability for the next 25 years, then we’re likely not gonna count it.

Metrics should always help owners and managers make better decisions. So they should create clarity, not confusion. They should separate what can be influenced. From what cannot, and they should reflect how real portfolios actually operate in the real world. When metrics ignore context, everybody loses owners don’t.

Owners will start to get misleading information. Managers will get evaluated on outcomes. They can’t control. Decisions get delayed or made for the wrong reasons. And this erodes trust and it erodes landlord profitability. So we really strive to look at metrics that, you know, do the opposite of that. Our hopefully focus on, you know, attention on the leasing performance, the maintenance execution.

You know, we look at cash flow, we look at renewal, planning, communication, everything that we look at, it’s, [01:01:00] it always consciously is aligned with what our long term outcomes are for our owners and in turn our company. And that makes that partnership between the owner and our, our company, hopefully visible, measurable, and, and, and show some attention.

So. Whether somebody has a single property, 50 properties, 150 property, I think the same principles apply. It just means that the metrics might be a little different for each group. So anything that we might have missed today? Gretchen, Laci, we hit a lot today. This is a long, we hit a lot. 

Gretchen Mitchell: I think we got it.

Laci LeBlanc: As the resident nerd who loves all of this, I think we did a great job.

Chris McAllister: Well, if anybody listening out there wants a full breakdown of the metrics we track and why we publish the, we’re about to publish a detailed post that, uh, will be in the show notes after we get this podcast out to the world that walks through everything we discuss today. So again, that link will be in the show note notes, and if you’re evaluating a, a property management partner and what one that measures what matters and, and manages with [01:02:00] intention and you happen to be in Ohio or Florida, we would love to talk to you.

So that’s my shameless plug for the day, ladies. All right. Thank you very much and thanks for listening. We appreciate it.