Peter Lohmann's Newsletter - Issue #139

A Brand New Q1 Leasing Report, Data on Owner Leads, Stuff I Was Wrong About

Author

Peter Lohmann
April 25, 2025

A no-fluff weekly publication for the property management industry.

Old Blog Posts I’ve Changed My Mind About

I’ve been writing blog posts for 7+ years now, and once in a while I revisit the archive to see how my thinking has evolved (or just to remind myself what I’ve written about before).

I thought it might be interesting to revisit some of my old blog posts where I've completely changed my mind about them, and now strongly disagree with what I originally wrote.

Here’s one from 2019 about the value of relationships in business. I’ll just reproduce the entire thing since it’s so short:

Every day I hear some salesperson or business owner talking about how “relationships” are so important to their business. They want to have relationships with their customers. They repeat ad nauseam that they are relationship-based, not transaction-based.

It’s so overused and cliched. I also just don’t think that’s what people want from businesses in 2019. Maybe in 1995 or 2005.

My opinion is that customer experience is the new “relationships.” Today and tomorrow’s customers want to work with companies that care about their experience as a customer. Easy to work with, easy to communicate with, intuitive and user-friendly websites/apps etc. That’s way more important than if they feel a connection/relationship with someone at the company (who may or may not be there in 6 months).

Peter’s Blog: Customer Experience is the new “Relationships” (2019)

My opinion on this has shifted almost 180 degrees. It's true that this phrase is overused, but that's not because it's wrong.

The reality is relationships do actually matter in business, and people do want to have a relationship with their property manager. Not just a great “experience”. The catchphrase I've been using recently is that people don't want to call their property management company (think—main office phone number); they want to call their property manager (think—cell phone). It's a subtle difference, but the experience as a PM customer is worlds apart, and it’s totally upending how I think about operations at my property management business.

OK, let’s do one more. Here’s a post from just two years ago that I’ve already changed my mind about. The gist of it:

I believe we need to completely separate customer service from operations in residential property management…

Here is how I envision building out a customer service department at my company in 2023.

1. Funnel all customer (tenant & client) communications into a few shared inboxes with ticketing functionality (we’ve landed on LeadSimple Inbox). (This is already done at our company).

2. Carve off customer service activities from operations, and create a new job function to handle them.

3. Hire (or promote) dedicated Customer Service Reps (CSRs):

4. Create (public) customer knowledgebases and fill them with frequently-asked questions, links, videos and resources.

Peter’s Blog: Disentangling Operations from Customer Service (2023)

Again, my thinking is in a completely different place now, related to what I talked about above. Our customers want to talk to somebody who knows everything that's going on with their property and can actually go and take care of things. They don't want to talk to a Level 1 customer service person, no matter how efficient they may be for our business. We need to find ways to reduce the points of contact that our property owners deal with, and the people they do deal with need to be highly knowledgeable.

Furthermore, the ticketing metaphor is just not appropriate for the business that we're in. I'm sure it's great for software companies, but I believe property management companies need to operate more like an advanced call center than IT tech support. Our findings from the PM Trends report late last year started to change my thinking here, and a visit to OnQ Property Management early this year solidified it.

For our property owner clients, it’s all about the phone.

Diving into the data again recently, this finding held true for all generations/ages, too—not just older Americans.

THIS ISSUE IS PRESENTED BY UTILITY PROFIT

What If Utility Setup Just... Handled Itself?

Move-ins are hectic. Utility setup shouldn’t be your problem or your team’s.

That’s why I keep bringing up Utility Profit. It just works.

Tenants get a simple link that shows what electric, water, gas and internet is available at their address. Your team gets a dashboard showing when they’ve set up their utilities. And because it’s white-labeled, it looks like you handled it all.

No follow-ups. No back-and-forth. Tenants love it and you barely touch the tool.

If you want to simplify tenant move-ins and look like a hero, this is worth checking out:

RentEngine’s Q1 Leasing Report

This is a fascinating report compiled by leasing platform RentEngine. With such a great-looking cover, you know it has to be good:

I’ll give you a little teaser below, but go download the full report.

Already looking forward to the next one so we can look at quarter-over-quarter trends!

New Property Management Companies For Sale This Week

Would you like to sponsor this portion of the newsletter? Get in touch with Peter.

  • Here are property management accounts for sale in Bay Area, CA (asking $1.1M, 100+ accounts)

  • Here is an association management company for sale in Collier County, FL (asking $130k)

  • Here is a commercial management company for sale in Houston, TX (asking $1.1M)

  • Here is an HOA management company for sale in San Antonio, TX (Bexar County) (asking $50k)

Two Actual Ways I Used AI In The Past Week

  • Fed a favorite podcast episode of mine about high-performance mindsets into NotebookLM so I could ask how to apply the principles to a specific situation in my life where I’m looking to improve my performance. Really great results.

  • Used ChatGPT “Deep Research” to work up a detailed competitive analysis on a few Crane competitors from outside the PM industry (Hampton and Nexstar). Got some amazing insights and ideas that we can incorporate back into Crane.

Closing Thought

How was your owner lead flow in Q1? Ours was noticeably down.

Industry averages, as collected by RentScale:

  • January: 18 leads

  • February: 16 leads

  • March: 15 leads

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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.