What the Future of Property Management Looks Like

This episode is an in-depth look at what the future of property management will look like. The world is shifting towards a digital platform, and many times, this comes with big changes to the way we operate. In this video, we speak with Krickett about her experience and how to handle these changes.

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What The Future Of Property Management Looks Like With Krickett Alexander

On this show, we have Krickett Alexander, a partner at Onward Property Management. I'm very excited to bring Krickett to this show because Krickett represents to me what the future of property management looks like for property management firms. Many founders know that when you are trying to grow your business, you need to find those early adopters. It's notoriously difficult in a field like real estate. She represents one of those property managers who loves trying out new technology and manages some of my portfolios. Krickett, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Zain. What a great introduction. I'm glad to be here.

It's great to have you. Walk us through your background. How did you end up in property management? Give us a very quick summary of your path to where you are now.

My first property management job was in Thousand Oaks, California, at the young age of nineteen. I moved out to California to chase some other dreams. Life had a different course for me to take. I had started at this particular apartment complex to answer phones. Phones are an age-old problem. There are never enough people on time in the day to answer phones. That very same day, they said, "Can you go show an apartment?"

They gave me the golf cart keys and a site map to this 500-unit complex. I leased my first apartment that day. That was my introduction to property management. I became a mother at twenty. My life took a little bit of a different turn. I started working more for corporations, which was a great foundation to where I am now as an entrepreneur and a business owner because I was able to get into some organizations and virtually work in every single role that is available to a person.

Fast-forward to 2010. I started working for a local property management company. They were about 450 single-family units. They had probably three people in the office, plus the owners and a few people outside. We are arguably very archaic still, believe it or not, in 2010. There was one computer in that office and essentially one bookkeeper doing all the work. They were still handwriting leases. We were still using whiteboards. I had the privilege and opportunity to get my hands dirty and start growing and developing that organization.

I served there for ten years and vacated my post as CEO in August 2020. At the point in which I vacated, I felt that as a company, we were so much more technologically advanced than we were when I joined the team. Fortunately for us, we are even ahead of ushering in a technology post-COVID. COVID pushed everybody into having to find solutions. Fortunately for us, we were already ahead of the game.

I left the organization in August of 2020 and was thinking I was going to take a long sabbatical from property management. I had a client who said, "I want you to manage my portfolio." It's a very distressed portfolio. I knew it well. I opened up one of my property management companies in December of 2020 with 850 doors on day 1 and then partnered with my business partner. We opened up Onward. That's my property management journey to this point.

It feels like you were born to do this.

I have attempted to leave Lubbock and move into different parts of the United States. My roots are firmly planted here. I can't seem to not make this my hometown. It's similar to property management. I've attempted to leave but it's in my blood. I'm here for the long haul.

You need to make sure that the property management software company that you partner with has your best interest in mind.

You get a lot of clients, mainly owners and investors, who come to you because they are frustrated working with other firms. What are some of the reasons people come to you? What do you see other firms do wrong?

I don't want to talk disparagingly about any other firms. All of us potentially don't set appropriate expectations. I'm not looking to sell you. I want to shoot straight. I want to tell you like it is. I'm not going to sell you a bill of goods that I can't cash. When you are focused on getting the deal, that expectation and transparency go away. When you close the deal and get into the day-to-day grind, you are like, "I'm disappointed because what they said doesn't match what they are able to do because they were focused on gaining you as a client."

That's probably what sets me apart. I know how this thing works. I can tell you everything you want to hear but at the end of the day, when the rubber meets the road, the reality of the situation is I've got to be able to be honest with you as a client. This is what your asset is. These are the challenges that I see from my vantage point. I'm willing to tell you the things that you don't want to hear.

What advice do you have for prospective property managers trying to enter the field? In the beginning, they are desperate to get their first client and grow their doors. It's like a chicken and the egg problem. You need doors before you have references. That eventually turns into a great network effect. The more doors you have, the more doors you seem to get. You are turning down business eventually. For someone new breaking in, how do they balance trying to get more doors under management versus how do they make sure they set expectations appropriately with their landlords and investors?

The planning stages of opening up your doors are vital. You've got to have a good foundation. If you go, "This is a brilliant idea. Let me open my doors tomorrow," and you think it's all going to be a bed of roses, you are kidding yourself. Understand what is truly needed to run a successful company, whether it's property management or any other business that's out there. Do your research. Don't be so quick to open your doors.

I feel that you need to have a very solid understanding of what technology is available to you so that you can be successful because, without technology, your leverage points are people. People, of those three leverage points, are the most expensive. They are the most expensive things that you can acquire to do or operate a business. We need the people. The people are the face of the organization but your true leverage potential is in the technology.

Make sure that you are out there researching the best property management software. You need to make sure that the property management software company that you partner with has your best interest in mind and that they are robust as you need them to be because when you have to work across multiple platforms, it sets you up for failure.

If you can get something that's a one-stop-shop, make sure you are investing in the right technology, that you know what your plan is, and that you understand that when you enter into property management, there is a difference between managing single-family homes and multifamily homes. The difference between single-family and multifamily is pretty bad. Know what you are good at, do that, and focus on that. Don't try to do it all. Get good at your one thing. When you profess that, then you can start to expand. Don't try to do it all at once because they are two different animals altogether.

A typical route for people into property management is they may have bought 1 or 2 rental properties that they self-manage and decide, "I'm doing this. I've got a friend who also has a rental, and they just bought one. Let me do that too." Before you know it, they start to build up their network of single-family rentals and managing it.

At what point do you need to start professionalizing what you do? At what point is it no longer a part-time job? At what level of units or is it the geographic distance between units? How do you decide, "I need to make this a full-time thing, bring on team, and turn this into an official firm," rather than something you can do remotely?

People are the most expensive that you can acquire to operate a business. We need people. The people are the face of the organization, but your true leverage potential is in technology.

Depending upon the individual's motivation, the answer may vary. One person may say, "I want to do it all myself because I want more money in my pocket," versus someone like, "I'm willing to make a little less money if I don't have to do all the work. I like leverage. I'm good with this." It depends on the individual's motivation. Our rule of thumb in this industry is for every 100 units, you need a manager and a maintenance tech. That's for multifamily.

That's pretty transferable, to be honest, to the single-family realm as well. With multifamily, I can have one client with 100 units. That means I only have to produce a monthly basis one set of reports. If I have 100 single-family homes with 100, 50 or 30 different clients, I'm still producing 100 reports for those clients based on those individual houses. Additionally, I've got geographical challenges to overcome.

Even if you are in a place like Lubbock, Texas, arguably, you can get anywhere within 10 to 15 minutes but you still have to drive between these locations. That's the leverage you need, whether it's a person who's going to be showing or you decide to get wise and use self-showing technology like CodeBox at Texas so they can have self-guided tours or use QR codes that they can snap and do a virtual tour or whatever the case may be.

The rule of thumb is when you get to 100 units, you are going to have to hire somebody if you want any quality of life because not only do you have the back office or admin portion of the job. You have to coordinate contractors. You have the emergency line calls. I can't imagine. I personally don't have any interest in answering emergency line calls for 100 single-family homes. For me, 100 would be the point at which I would hire some talent.

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About Zain Jaffer:

Zain Jaffer is an accomplished executive, investor, and entrepreneur. He started his first company at the age of 14 and later moved to the US as an immigrant to found Vungle, after securing $25M from tech giants including Google & AOL in 2011. Vungle recently sold for $780m.

His achievements have garnered international recognition and acclaim; he is the recipient of prestigious awards such as “Forbes 30 Under 30”, “Inc. Magazine’s 35 Under 35,” and the “SF Business Times Tech & Innovation Award.” He is regularly featured in major business & tech publications such as The Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, and TechCrunch.