Rental property maintenance is no small issue and is typically a challenging aspect for property owners, property management companies, or tenants. Bob’s guest on this episode wants to help drive the world towards the new and believes that "maintenance shouldn't be so hard". On today’s episode, coâfounder and CEO of Property Meld, Ray Hespen joins Bob for a conversation about the importance of well-managed and effective property maintenance.
It is important to understand that the people who rent properties are doing so in part because they don’t want the headaches that come with owning a home. They rent so that someone else, such as the property management company, takes care of issues when they arise. Because this, speed and precision are of the utmost importance when handling maintenance issues. If they aren’t addressed quickly and effectively, renters choose not to renew their lease for that property. Statistics back it up. On this episode, learn how automated systems can help you keep renters happy in spite of the maintenance issues that arise in their units.
Two of the trouble-spots when it comes to the vendor’s side of rental property maintenance are scheduling a time with the renter for the repair to be done and communication with the owner or property manager about the status of the issue. Automation makes both sides of that equation easy and automatic. In the Property Meld system, vendors can easily communicate with the tenant, update the status of repair issues, and mark the job as “done” when they are finished.
Listen to learn about this amazing service - and hear how it could increase your bottom-line as a property owner or property manager.
A time-stamped transcript of this episode is below.
Outline of This Episode
- [2:05] Ray’s experience and the origin of Property Meld
- [8:01] The “consistently inconsistent” property maintenance story
- [10:25] The Property Meld way of rental property maintenance VS the old way
- [19:01] Confirming that a repair was done is harder than it sounds
- [22:30] How an automated maintenance system nurtures relationships with vendors
- [30:05] The best advice for those dealing with property maintenance
Connect with Ray Hespen
- Property Meld - Ray’s company and one of our partners
- Info (at) PropertyMeld.com
Connect With Bob Preston
This episode is always available for listening, sharing, or download at Property Management Brainstorm.
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Bob Preston: 01:13 Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Property Management Brainstorm podcast. I'm Bob Preston, your host, broadcasting from our studio at North County Property Group in Del Mar, California. On today's episode, we're going to discuss one of the most important aspects of being a landlord and that's keeping your property well maintained, with the proper set of ongoing repairs. We manage properties all over San Diego County and that includes downtown areas such as North Park, Golden Hill, Bankers Hill as well as other communities considered mid-city San Diego such as Kearny Mesa, Clairemont Mesa, Mira Mesa, Sorrento Mesa and Sorrento Valley. There's nothing worse if you're a tenant then living in a rental property, which accumulates a long list of deferred maintenance items. And our guest on the show today is the cofounder and CEO of one of our partners here at North County Property Group. Ray Hespen of Property Meld and thank you Ray for being on the show today.
Ray Hespen: 01:48 Hey, thanks Bob. Appreciate it.
Bob Preston: 01:50 Yes, and we've never actually met, but we're connected on LinkedIn and as I mentioned, we're one of your customers. So, uh, we've been with you now for about six months. I love the product and, and kind of preparing for this podcast, I was looking at your company information and your LinkedIn profile and I love that tagline you guys use, right? It's like Coordinating maintenance shouldn't be so hard and, and I love that because sometimes it can be. So for starters, maybe you could just tell us about yourself, your company, what you're trying to do to make maybe maintenance easier and blaze new trails.
Ray Hespen: 02:23 I'll give it a little bit of background about myself. I actually, my background is in operations and manufacturing. Um, I'm a degreed mining engineer, which usually gets people a little thrown up the trail. You, where are you calling in from today, by the way? You know, you have remote stop today headquartered in South Dakota, so, oh, okay. Around, we've got a great office here in the area, but yes, South Dakota is starting to get a little colder right now than where you're at Bob. Are you in that cold streak we're having right now or you know, I keep saying that it's like some weird thing, but no, it just happens. It happens when you live here. It's just part of life. But anyways, so yeah, my background's in operations and uh, have, you can imagine being in the construction materials industry in between 2009 and 2014 it wasn't a lot of fun. You're not printing cash. You're figuring out how to run leaner, smarter and more intelligently deliver the same quality, same environmental constraints, same, same safety, and do it with less. And so that's how my mind has always been wired. So joined company and started the company in 2014 and what we do is we automate the maintenance coordination process. So we kind of took that opportunity and found some real process optimization stuff and, and went after it.
Bob Preston: 03:37 How would you describe your offering? Is it up software as a service? Is it a property management platform? I mean people have their own like ways they like to describe their product. Tell us what yours is.
Ray Hespen: 03:49 So we are a software as a service, so, so we're, it's a software platform that actually is a tool that property management firms use to ensure consistent and reliable troubleshooting with some ease. And then ensure that follow up automatically happens. The renter and the, and the repair person's getting things scheduled that it gets done in a time effective way that the renter's happy. And so we automate a lot of those steps for property management firms. That's what the software does.
Bob Preston: 04:15 By the way, to our audience. I know some of the answers to these, but with Ray as a guest, I mean, I like to hear it from him. And so I'm gonna ask some at times softball questions. But that's cool because then he can answer them the way he wants to for his company and the way they should be answered. So look, when you started property meld, I'm certain you spoke to a lot of landlords, a lot of property managers to understand the ways, and I know you talked about your own experiences, right? And, uh, management of facilities and warehouses and things. But I mean, what were the old ways people were doing this? What did you hear when you started talking to property managers? I mean, I'm sure it was like this. Oh my God, I can't believe they're still doing it this way, kind of reaction. Right?
Ray Hespen: 04:53 So there was definitely that. But I'll even tell you, it actually starts with the genesis of, of our company. So my co-founder, David Kingman, he actually was a renter at a unit. And, uh, he got an email from the landlord, basically said, got to request and looped in the person doing the maintenance and the renter and it was like the most terrible experience of the renter. Like, hey, maintenance person, um, you're the coordinate with the renter directly. You need to respond in X amount of time if you don't like your, like it's this giant rule thing and an email. And as the renter it was, this was similar where it was like contact this person directly if you don't hear from them in 12 hours. It felt like, like this logic leap that you had to follow to, to get maintenance done in any ways. Uh, not only was the email like terrible, the process followed and he became super frustrated as a renter trying to just get a repair done. And that's the big reason why people become renters. They don't deal with that.
Bob Preston: 05:51 No, that's true. Because when you're renting, you have a Mission Valley property management company or landlord or somebody you can turn to, don't have to unclog the toilet or fix the garbage disposal. You should be able to just kind of make a call, send a text or an email and it should get handled, right.
Ray Hespen: 06:05 You're right. Yeah. Like budget toilets. Yeah. We hear people that get those and it's like, how do you adequately like, Hey, you're kind of like, you still have to be an adult, but yeah, they want you rent so you don't have to be a homeowner. Home ownership's great. You get to fix all this stuff that breaks, you know, it used to be renters were people who couldn't get houses. Like that's not the case anymore. Renters are people who don't want to manage a home. And so if you take away one of the biggest fundamental benefits of renting, you leave that particular landlord or property manager and uh, the data backs that up too.
Bob Preston: 06:41 I've heard a stat on that and I don't know where it came from. 30+ % of lease renewals or leases don't renew because of their maintenance experience.
Ray Hespen: 06:51 Man, you've already got my talk.
Bob Preston: 06:53 Oh no. I'm asking you. Talk to me about that.
Ray Hespen: 06:57 I am a firm believer in fundamental maintenance being great for the bottom line. I mean the reason I'm taught this is not just there's a process, but you know the, the stat that you had mentioned behind rent price, the number one reason that you'll get a churn renter is because of poor maintenance experience. And it's almost a third of all lease churn is because of bad maintenance. And you think about it as whether you're a Mission Valley landlord or a property manager, there's tons of work that when a renter leaves, right, you've got to go do a move out inspection, you've got to fight the deposit fight, you've got to rehab it to where it's ready to go, clean it, paint, get it rent ready, and that costs money and coordination time. Then you've got to market it, show it, and then you have to redraft up a lease, place them and then do a movement inspection.
Bob Preston: 07:44 And every day you're going through that. That's time and money that is out of the pocket of both the owner and the property management company.
Ray Hespen: 07:50 Exactly. And back to your original question. So I, I was in manufacturing before. I didn't one day like have the magic experience behind like what would make a positive maintenance experience before we started the company. I went and I went and listened to the process of maintenance and I can tell you it was almost always consistently inconsistent by listened and it was well how the troubleshooting happening. Like what's the consistent like, Oh we do it. Sometimes we get busy, we don't do it, you know? All right, so you're doing that now. How do you make sure that the renter is getting taken care of? How are you following up with the repair to make sure it's happening? Well, sometimes we do. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes somebody is supposed to let me know, well how do you know that's happening a hundred percent time? Long story short, we just delve into the process of maintenance and said, number one, super inconsistent and we can see where quality issues that my co-founder experience are not unique. And number two, there's a ton of opportunities to automate a lot of these steps. And so that was the foundation of our company.
Bob Preston: 08:51 When I found you guys, uh, this is a true, uh, I was sitting in my office one day and I could hear the phone ringing off the hook, you know, kind of out in our bullpen area. And it was for the most part, renter's calling in to coordinate a maintenance activity. And I don't even know what they were, but I could just hear it going on. Our property manager is out of the office at the moment, but let me see if I can get ahold of them and then we'll call you back. Right? So there's one lost, you know, opportunity and time delay. And then it was like, well, yeah, okay, the property manager says we can go ahead with this, but let me get ahold of the, let me get ahold of the plumber or the electrician or what have you. Right. And so here's another time delay and another phone call made and by another, you know, so I was like watching this go on and how inefficient it was and I, and I was kinda like, you, there's gotta be a better way. And then I ran into you guys, I think it was at NARPM or one of the conferences. And I'm like, okay, I gotta figure out a way to get this into our company. So that's a true story.
Ray Hespen: 09:47 I love stories like that, you know? And I'll tell you, so when I used to do demonstrations and stuff to property management firms, there was literally nothing better than being on the call back. Hold on, I've got to answer this. All right. And it was a maintenance and like they were, and I'm like, well, what did they want? And they'd be like, well, they came, the vendor, the plumber can't get ahold of the renter. And it's like, Hey, let me show you this next cool functional mapping.
Bob Preston: 10:11 Hey, this is a good segue because I mean, I, we're kind of hopping around here and this is really fun. But you had talked about the kind of efficiencies and I described, I wouldn't say our way was old school because we manage a lot of properties and of course our phone rings all the time anyway. But tell us your way versus kind of this old school way that maybe before you started the company you've heard about from, I don't know, maybe individual landlords or even property managers who are doing it. We're kind of managing maintenance, the old school way, email calls, you know, lots of texts, whatever. Tell us your way through Property Meld.
Ray Hespen: 10:43 Well I'll tell you and even just to start on the old way, that's what you, that's what it was. It was conventional emails, phone calls, text messages, looping a variety of people in and trying to do that in a, in a systematic way when repairs don't go systematically. Right. I mean it's, if you chart out a, a how repair goes, whether you automated it or not, it can be a rat's nest. You know? Cause sometimes you got to go out there and it's not who needs to do the job. Or sometimes you go out there and there needs to be approval for something. And how do you manage that in a consistent and effective way. And it was phone calls, emails using accounting systems to basically manage work orders. And it's just not a very robust way to handle it. And so what we basically said was, you know, even though as a, it is a complicated process, maintenance can be a complicated process. It follows very common paths. And so our philosophy is how do we create a conveyor belt and using technology. We just want to connect the dots for you. And in the instances that things aren't going correctly, we raise it up to the property manager and say somebody needs to take a look at this. So instead of like a maintenance coordinator or a property manager managing every single service issue that comes through the door, they do their thing. They initially troubleshoot it using some of the tools that we have. And then they kick it out. And if everything's going according to plan, they don't hear about it. If things aren't going according to plan, we raise the flag and say, Hey, you need to check into this and we've got automation that you know follows up. It'll actually schedule between the provider and the renter automatically verifies completion and ensures the renter is happy.
Bob Preston: 12:14 Your service, your product provides a platform to kind of get that process started. Then what happens like, okay, so the fee the maintenance facilitator does, what, is it a text? It's an email. Is it to the vendor? Is it to the tenant? Is it to the owner? How does that, there's kind of a triangulation here, right?
Ray Hespen: 12:31 So the first thing I'll say is a phone call is a heavy form of how your, you operate. In 2019 this is the first year that spam calls out number, real phone calls. And so that's why renters are getting harder and harder to get ahold of on the phone. So we utilize, utilize a variety of tools, email and text messaging to communicate. That's the first part. So using the troubleshooting, being able to get them videos on how to solve their own problems. Some of the simple ones to save money is really important to make the renter happy cause they just got to fix right then. But in the event that that doesn't happen, um, the system, you, you can choose which vendor that you want to use for that particular thing. And it will actually schedule in incredibly fast time. The providers, the plumber, the electrician with the renter, automatically it'll ensure that both parties are there sending reminders to ensure there's no missed appointments and then it will automatically go out and ensure that that vendor electrician has done and the renter agrees that this was done to their satisfaction. Using a variety of tools, but heavy, heavy text messaging needs.
Bob Preston: 13:34 I love it. So I mean efficiency is the name of the game, is that right? Is that a good way of looking at this?
Ray Hespen: 13:39 Yeah, I mean, you know, especially property management firms, there's powers of numbers at scale, right? So when you do the same job, when you're processing hundreds of service issues a month, that's where you can really start to provide efficiency and make a consistent high quality experience that that is significantly lower cost than somebody operating just a few units.
Bob Preston: 13:58 Very true. Well that's an interesting point. I mean, this is not a system really for the do it yourself landlord who has one or two rental properties, right? I mean this is intended for professional property managers with large portfolios for the most part.
Ray Hespen: 14:11 That is correct. I mean, it's a, it's a system, right? It's a very tough to uh, implement an entire system if you're only going use it a few times a month or a few times a quarter. And so, um, yeah, so we don't, uh, we, we highly discourage really small portfolios.
Bob Preston: 14:27 Sure. I mean, I like having people like Property Meld on the program. This is sort of a, a statement to our listeners because you might be evaluating whether you're going to manage your properties yourself or whether you're going to hire a company like North County Property Group to professionally property manage your Mission Valley property. And you just need to know that we have these tools that are available to us, like the one Ray’s company property meld that allow us to do this process so more efficiently than maybe you might as an individual investor. So I would encourage you just to consider that kind of in your evaluation process if you're trying to decide what to do with your particular investment property.
Ray Hespen: 15:04 Can I throw some extra stuff in there, Bob? Go for it. I'm a data driven guy. Me personally, like when we sit there and we evaluate like we as a company monitor the entire platform renters satisfaction. We know how happy renters are in the month of July for nearly every state in the United States in terms of their renter satisfaction. So we measure that. And one of the things that we've started to measure too is when property management firms even allow investors to do some of their own repairs. And certainly I understand like some people do that, but the thing that we realized is through that those ratings are usually about half. And the reason that I, I'm a huge advocate of providing this sort of data and information to investors is at the end of the day, you want to make the most possible money that you can out of your investment. And if you sit there and think that, you know, saving 40 bucks cause you can find somebody a little bit cheaper or maybe not licensed and bonded, we're seeing pretty consistent results that it's really low. And those statistics I gave you earlier, 31% on the flip side, a really positive maintenance experience, yields a renewal 46% by that I mean out of all the renewals, 46% of them listed that the quality of maintenance was the reason they renewed.
Bob Preston: 16:19 Yeah. All really good points because I mean we do have some owners who like to get involved and oftentimes that causes delays in getting things resolved too because then the owner gets there, they need a fitting because they're there, they consider themselves handy. They gotta go, go, go to Home Depot, whatever, you know, whatever the scenario might be. Whereas if they just let us handle it because we know how to do this and we've got the processes to be able to do it quickly and correctly.
Ray Hespen: 16:44 Well, and you even think, I mean if you save 50 bucks on a repair, is it worth the $2,500 turnover process? You know, and that's the big thing. How do you ensure consistent and reliable renter satisfaction because that's going to give you your highest chance of renewal and the the highest yield in return for an investor.
Bob Preston: 17:05 Earlier you called the maintenance process or it can be, it's not always, but it can be a rat's nest. I call it whack-a-mole. All right. Kind of the same concept because the reason we call them whack-a-mole is that you don't always know what you're dealing with when you go in a tenant may report that there is a problem and we try to triage it the best we can to diagnose it in advance and then send the right kind of vendor. But sometimes what you think might be a plumbing issue turns out to be more of an issue related to something else. And then you've got to send a different type of a vendor and then you know, you've got to whack that mole and then it's over here pop. And then it turns out the leak that you thought was in the family room was really coming from a pipe that's in the living room and now we've got to get it, you know, so you just really never quite when you're going in. Right. So I guess how does property meld help us in those scenarios where you were, you just really kind of don't know.
Ray Hespen: 17:57 A repair. And this is something when we onboard new employees, we talk about how many people can be involved in a repair. You got the renter or renters, multiple renters at that unit. You've got the property managers, manager, maybe a maintenance coordinator, maybe you've got a technician in combination with the vendor. Um, that is doing some work to combat this. Sometimes you have to get a, the broker of the company involved, um, working with the investor to figure out the best way, like, and so you're sitting there going like, hold on a second. There's five, six, seven people involved on this and by the way, it's a ticking time clock. You've got three and a half days to get this resolved or you're going to have a Torx tenant. So it's how do you manage these sorts of things in an expedited fashion and that's where systems and processes to catch these sorts of things and figure out when it needs to move along to the next person is so critical.
Bob Preston: 18:49 Yeah, no I get it. Cause you have multiple people and you're going back and forth and to have the, the plot platform and the ease of communication between all those parties so they can all communicate to each other on the same platform as super helpful. One of the significant challenges we had before implementing your system, and this sounds like it should be easy and basic, but it wasn't was the confirmation that a repair was completed and done correctly. I don't know if you ever hear this, but unless we would finally go, Oh, I wonder if that job got done. And you'd have to almost like set yourself a reminder or an alarm to call the vendor back. And oftentimes we wouldn't know that either until we called back and got confirmation, asked them to send photos or until we got an invoice in the mail. How is that different with your system?
Ray Hespen: 19:35 Or let's throw in a third option, Bob, which of the renter called you and told you?
Bob Preston: 19:39 Right? Yes. That happens too. Sometimes we would have to call the tenant.
Ray Hespen: 19:42 So that's one of the big things that, you know, when we do process evaluations, because that's how we decide who's a good potential fit for Property Meld. One of the questions we ask is how do you know it's done and when do you know it's done? And so if somebody tells us we wait until the invoice, that's a great confirmation. Well how do you know it didn't?
Bob Preston: 20:01 Well, and sometimes we don't get the invoice for two, three weeks. Right. So what's happened? What's been going on since then?
Ray Hespen: 20:07 Exactly. And then what happens if it doesn't ever show up? That never got done, never, never done it. And then that's when your true alarms going to go off. And that's the renter who's irate. And now you're going to be spending emergency money to ensure that you get effects in and emergency money costs significantly more than planned money. You know, plumbers charge more after six o'clock at night or you know, I mean, and so the big thing there is, is you have to confirm same day or day after it's a must. And so with Property Meld, because we schedule the system schedules between the provider and the renter, our system is sending out reminders to ensure that that repair's going down as planned. And then it will even follow up with that plumber, electrician, text messaging, email and ask, is this done yet? Is it done yet? And what the software cares about is, is this work done? Because as soon as we verify that, we're gonna make sure that the story is the same size on the renter. Cause the last thing you want to get is a bill from somebody. And, uh, the work never got done. So it's going to ensure that on both ends that get resolved.
Bob Preston: 21:08 Yeah. And for the listeners, the vernacular that you guys use in your system of what you kinda just described, it's called a meld. Right? So the mill, it actually gets closed upon the vendor confirming that the job's done. We require photos by the way. They can, um, upload their photos, upload their invoice into the meld system, send it to us, and upon confirmation receiving that, then our property manager or our facilitator can close it out. So it's kind of a, I consider it to be a much more closed loop system than what we had before, which is incredibly helpful. I can't even tell you.
Ray Hespen: 21:42 Well, I love hearing this story of Bob and then it goes back to that conveyor part where it's like, raise the flag if this isn't going according to plan. If you know that it was schedule, the system knows that it's scheduled and it passed and it never got closed. That's that flag. Because again, it's about protecting that renter experience to ensure that they stay. And so, you know, at least if you can catch it in a couple of few days, you can have an opportunity to fix it and keep that renter still happy. But if you're talking weeks, you're so far behind the eight ball that no matter the money and resources you spend, they're already torqued and uh, it's just only going to add to the statistics of the nonsense.
Bob Preston: 22:16 Well, the owner might be torques too, because in the meantime there might be some ongoing problem that's creating additional property damage if it doesn't get fixed.
Rey Hespen: 22:24 Very true. Hey, I don't mind though the water in the basement, but it's only been four days.
Bob Preston: 22:29 Yeah, I know, right? Or I don't even want to project different scenarios. We won't go there. So, okay. We tend to focus on our tenants and our owners primarily in this business, but the vendors are important too. Sometimes we have to stop and remember that, that the vendors are kind of like our lifeline, if you will. They're the people we call when we need people to go whack that mole or to get something fixed. So I've heard you talk about your feedback system or your surveys. I'm not sure exactly how you phrased it, but it sounds like you have mechanisms in place where you can kind of poll the field if you will, and get feedback. Tell us what vendors are saying.
Rey Hespen: 23:05 So we'll just start with the initial problem. Like you know, it's always important to understand the why anybody would use it. If you just dictate and mandate and say, Hey, you need to use this because this property management firm told you to like you're in for an uphill battle. So one of the things that we really work on is is they've got two large challenges. One is getting a hold of the renter to schedule a repair is the biggest problem that the vendors will say. Um, number two is just general communication, whether it be with you, whether it be with the renter or after the fact they need to get an approval for repair. Those are all things that are a huge challenge for them. So we make sure up front that we monitor and manage that. Overwhelmingly the vendor adoption is really good because we do solve the problems. And the thing we always say is, you know, change is always difficult trying a new thing, but we incorporate a lot of text messages and email as well for vendors. So it's as easy as clicking a link in a text and it pulls up on your phone. Um, you don't even have to install an application. So we went through big hurdles to make sure that the adoption for that lifeblood worked really well. And the great thing is we have vendors actually referring us to property management firms. We've got vendors servicing national clients with Property Meld because it does solve that.
Bob Preston: 24:16 We've had some vendors that have, they've liked the system so much, they've recommended it to there. So hopefully you're getting some indirect references. Yeah, we view our vendors as an extension of our company because if we send somebody out and they're a poor quality vendor or they don't do a good job, that's a reflection on, on our company. So we've put all of our vendors through a vetting process before we'll even send them out on a job. And some people might call it an approved vendors list. We call it a preferred vendor program. And in that program we have to get the obvious things. We have to get all their licenses, we have to get them to submit an application. They send us our name as additional insured on their proof of insurance declaration. We have a subcontractor agreement, and finally they have to register and set up an account and property melt. And if they're not willing to do that, then they can't be a vendor. I mean, that's just how we run the program.
Ray Hespen: 25:10 Well, and I'll even say to Bob, one of the tools we didn't talk about is Property Meld. You know, those surveys that go out to renters, we get, it's almost nearly on a third of all services. You know, every meld completed. Um, we get feedback from the renter. We actually provide that information back to the property manager and let you know who your high performing vendors are and who your low are because they are an extension of your company. If somebody doesn't renew a lease, they're not going to say, well it was because Acme plumbing, it was like, no, who's ever in charge of my house maintenance is the reason I'm not renewing. You know, whoever's in charge of this, I'm not renewing. So actually just making sure that not only from a legal side and protection side, but also from a quality of service side. I'm making sure that you've got quality vendors running out. And I can give an anecdotal example or not an anecdote. Well this is a real life example. It's sort of anecdotally, but we had a, a property manager that uh, that was sitting there running. We'll track time to how long it takes and then a handyman taking six days. And that's what they would do. They would submit it out and they would get an invoice. Well you don't know how long it's actually taken them to do the work.
Bob Preston: 26:15 Oh my goodness. Yeah.
Ray Hespen: 26:17 This handyman is taking six days to do the job and they had no clue prior to implementing Property Meld, like six days for handyman work. No way. You're killing us. We didn't know it. But you were killing us showing, you know, the investors, the renters, like let's just get you out. And those feedback tools are super important.
Bob Preston: 26:35 I mean, yeah, obviously you have to make sure the job is quality job and gets done correctly, but it's also speed and precision. Right? I mean that, and that's, I goes back to your one of your opening statements about efficiency. It's this gotta be done efficiently and quickly. Otherwise it just, I always tell my team I can't stand when things are lingering or I just draw, first of all, it just drives me crazy. I'm a big list guy and so I'm constantly constantly trying to check things off my list. That's just the way I've always run my businesses, you know? So it drives me crazy if things don't get done quickly. Now what about the benefits to the tenants? I know we've talked about tenant satisfaction and lease renewal and all this kind of stuff, but we live today and kind of a self service world. Right? And it seems to me that what you're talking about is kind of putting that self service capability with this, with your Property Meld system in the hands of the tenant so that they can quickly and easily request a service or what we call in this business a work order.
Ray Hespen: 27:30 I'll tell you a really funny story. So first of all, you're a hundred percent correct and you see like all the consumer great experiences, like they're all self-service. Like now most pizza providers tell you who is making your pizza when it's made, when it's out the door, where like sometimes even where it's at on a map and when it's about to arrive, ride sharing services, um, UPS, FedEx, Amazon services, live tracking on the app. Like there's no more of this call here to find out what's going on. And so you think about this consumer great experience that everybody's having elsewhere. We just basically said, this makes a ton of sense to do it here. And I'll, I'll tell you this great, great story because one, something we'll hear some times is, well, I love to create that personal experience. I'm going to give a newsflash to people. Renters just want their crap fixed. Like they don't care if it's a nice person with a great Southern accent on the phone, like they don't care. Fix my AC unit. And one of the things we even asked, I was on a panel, in Mission Valley I believe, and these property man, you know, I was in panel, a property managers and one of them said, well how about you know, the detriment to the user, you know, the people experienced. And I said, out of all the people that have all of the systems, we use some of them out of the ones that give us phone support, which one of us prefer not to call and we want to email it or submit a ticket or a tech, like a digital form of communication. It was almost unanimous. Nobody wants to call anymore. And I think last year, 90% of pizza orders pizza, which is universal. That's probably like the best demographic for a renter pizza orders. 90% of them were done via a web based device, smartphone, tablet, computer. They're not calling them in anymore.
Bob Preston: 29:17 Yeah. So yeah, it's gotten to the point. I mean we, we really like it too because when our renters or tenants use your system, then it also officially logs it with us as a work order. Right. Versus these other disparate communication sources. It could be a text, it could be an email, it could be a phone call to a cell phone that, you know, somebody is out in the field. It could be come into our office to our receptionist and then that requires that person to remember first of all and then to swivel their chair and then enter it again. So, you know, it just is like so much more efficient, you know, to just get it directly into the system. And so that's why we love it too. Hey listen, I could go on talking to you about this kind of stuff forever. This has been a great conversation, but we do need to wrap up in the interest of time, do you have any last comments or tips or pointers for our listeners that they should take away from this?
Ray Hespen: 30:09 So I think the big one that we really nailed down as is maintenance is important. It'll cost you money if you do it poorly and rely on people that have high quality systems because that's the expectation of the renters.
Bob Preston: 30:18 To hear that people, that's your local friendly property management company like North County Property Group.
Ray Hespen: 30:25 That's the key. It impacts bottom line stuff and even property managers, I mean in order to stay competitive, this is an age where you've got to find out which touch points you can eliminate, stay lean and competitive and provide a consistent service. But if anybody's ever curious on here, they can reach out to us at info@propertymeld.com and Bob, I think you've got a link somewhere on your site as well.
Bob Preston: 30:48 Yeah, we'll put a link up in our episode notes where if you're, we mostly have investors but we do get a lot of property management companies and a lot of real estate brokers listening into the podcast, so we'll have the link up in our show notes when this goes live and Hey, thank you so much for joining the show today. This is a great episode, very much appreciated. I would just like to make a quick blog to post a positive review for Property Management Brainstorm. It will make our day always excites our team and it would also pay it forward because we love great guests like Ray on the show and if you give us good reviews and encourages other people to come on the show as well. So that concludes today's show. Thank you so much to our listeners for joining today's Property Management Brainstorm episode. Until next time, we will be in the field working hard for our clients to maximize their property value and rental income and maintain top tenant relations. And we will see you next time.
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