Peter Lohmann's Newsletter - Issue #130

Recommendations for PM Business Operators

We’re close to hitting 700 doors under management. These are the basics for anyone looking to scale up their property management company, in no particular order:

• Join NARPM, your professional trade organization.

• Attend at least 2 industry conferences per year. Make broker/owner one of them.

• Get your trust account bookkeeping 100% perfect. I don’t recommend hiring someone in-house unless you are 1k+ units. It’s a very niche skill. Use a vendor who specializes in PM Trust accounting.

• Get your corporate books onto the NARPM Accounting Standard (NAS) so you understand where you’re actually making money and where it’s going, relative to the industry benchmarks.

• Start reading long-form written content by industry peers and experts

• Join one of the free Facebook groups where your peers are talking shop.

• Read Traction and implement EOS, either DIY or using a professional implementer.

• Befriend your local competitors and make it known that you’d be interested in buying their book of business if/when they are ready to move on.

• Create a company wiki/knowledgebase on Notion.

• Pick an industry podcast or two and subscribe. Don’t overlook the back-catalogs.

• Link up with industry peers. The outcome you’re looking for is 3+ folks that you can text with random industry questions/problems for a quick solve or outside opinion. If you’re over 100 doors, consider Crane. In any case, don’t be afraid to create your own small mastermind.

• Use a property management sales CRM to track all your incoming owner leads, so you can follow up effectively and understand your closing rate. We use LeadSimple.

• Pick a self-showing lockbox solution provider and turn on self-showings for your rental listings.

• If you’re not already, organize your company into either Pods or a Departmental structure (or a hybrid).

• Read the 2024 PM Trends Report to understand what your property owner client wants in their PM company.

• Get your core business process (eg Lease Renewal, Move-Out) fully documented and into some type of workflow software. Here’s a video of me demonstrating how to do this.

• Start getting strategic about marketing. Here are a few things to start with.

• If you’re not on AppFolio, Buildium or Rentvine, switch to one of them. The longer you wait the harder it will be.

• Read Who, the best book ever written on hiring. Precisely follow what it prescribes. Consider using a recruiter for leadership team hires. Consider using Predictive Index or Culture Index during the hiring process.

• Start an in-house maintenance division. My business partner created a course that explains how we did it.

• Get onto some type of modern, streamlined payroll service. We use Gusto.

I don’t claim to be the world’s foremost expert on scaling a PM company. Just this week I spent the day at a management company that is 10x our size. But below is what’s worked for us and the advice I would give to anyone trying to break through 600+ doors.

A Systems Engineer Builds a Rent Delinquency Process

Last week I created a brand new rent collection / delinquency process for a volunteer, in real-time live on a webinar. My goal was to share how I think about property management systems & process and the info should be useful for anyone who runs a property management business. Here’s the replay:

I want everyone to feel confident in designing the core systems that allow a PM business to thrive. That’s my goal with this series.

New Property Management Companies For Sale This Week

Generously sponsored by Live Oak Bank’s property management lending team! Join their NARPM webinar on 3/13/25: Financing Your Growth: SBA Loans & Creative Deal Structuring. Register Now! 

• Here is an association management company for sale in Collier County, FL (asking $120k)

• Here is an STR management company for sale in San Bernardino County, CA (asking $550k)

• Here is a property management company for sale in Olympia, WA (asking $250k)

• Here is a vacation home management company for sale in Charleston County, SC (asking $439k)

Note from Peter: If you purchased or sold a PM company in the last 3 years, please submit your data below. I will be publishing an industry M&A report with aggregated (and anonymized) data, so we can bring some transparency and context to property management company sale multiples and other valuable details. If you submit your deal, you’ll get a copy of the final report for free.

Deadline: February 25th.

Industry News & Events

• RentScale / Strategic PM have announced several of the speakers for the Strategic PM Summit coming up in May. Those guys don’t do anything halfway; expect an awesome event.

• Crane applications open up in 41 days. Enter your email here to be notified.

• It was a very slow news week!

Closing Thought

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The content of this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. I may have consulting agreements with, or financial interests in, companies mentioned in this newsletter. Additionally, some of the links included in this newsletter are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a commission if you make a purchase through these links. Always perform your own due diligence before making any financial or business decisions.