Peter Lohmann's Newsletter - Issue #158

Early Takeaways from MX Summit 2025

I’m writing this from Rapid City, SD as Property Meld’s Maintenance MX Summit 2025 wraps up. It’s been a great week of education, networking and events—including a rodeo (yes, a real rodeo, and I almost ended up riding a bucking bronco).

I’m still gathering my thoughts, but here are a few quick takeaways:

• The larger and more sophisticated operators are moving more and more toward in-house maintenance (either fully in-house or an external sister maintenance company with shared ownership). They believe they can profitably capture some of the work order revenue flowing through their books while delivering better outcomes for residents and keeping repair & turnover bills affordable for owners.

• Expectations (and software capabilities) have moved way behind “maintenance coordination” and touch every single point of both a work order lifecycle (intake to billing) and a lease lifecycle (move-in to move-out).

• On that later point, Ray Hespen’s opening keynote introduced a new whitepaper from Property Meld, based on data from over 100,000 first-year leases, showing conclusively that a resident’s experience with maintenance is directly correlated with their likelihood of signing a lease renewal. In other words, tightening up maintenance operations is quickly moving from a “nice-to-have” cost center to a direct driver of revenue for both the PM and property owners. Increasing your lease renewal rate by even just a couple percentage points has huge downstream effects (including the reduction of owner churn)!

  

  The Maintenance-Renewal Connection Vol. 1, Property Meld 2025

• Vibes = optimistic and forward-looking. Lots of smiles and healthy discussion about maintenance operators, profitability, technology, AI, and collaborations. Meld really knocked it out of the park and is proving that traditional conference locations aren’t required for a great show.

• Dom Beveridge (great follow) delivered a facinating keynote breaking down the state of automation, centralization (big MF buzzword), and AI in property management. His deep experience in multifamily brought a fresh perspective to our own scattered-site operations. I find that SFR and MF adopt technologies and ways of doing business in very different ways and at very different rates, which means at any given time we each have a lot to learn from the other. I’ll share this fascinating slide as we wrap up my early takeaways:

  

  Dom Beveridge presenting at MX Summit 2025

Behind the Scenes of Rentvine’s $74M Raise

As property managers, we’re usually on the receiving end of software. We don’t always think about where these platforms come from, or why investors put tens of millions into them.

Talking with Tollie Brown from Mainsail Partners (and a board member at Rentvine) opened my eyes to how growth equity works, why PropTech attracts so much capital, and what it means for us as end users. (Spoiler: not all “outside money” plays out the way we fear.)

We also dug into why Mainsail backed Rentvine, what sets them apart in a crowded software market, and the bigger trends shaping PropTech - from AI to integration to why PMs actually switch systems.

If you’ve ever wondered what’s happening behind the scenes of your tech stack, this one’s worth a listen:

(You can also listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify)

New Property Management Companies For Sale This Week

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• This property management company for sale in Central Washington is asking $545k.

• Here is a property management portfolio for sale in Sacramento County, CA - asking $250k.

• Another California PM company for sale: Fontana, CA (asking $350k)

• Here’s a property management company for sale in Macomb County, MI - asking ($225k)

This section is sponsored by Revela. Interested in sponsoring this section? Get in touch to partner with Peter.

Industry News & Events

• Yardi announces an integration with Claude

• Rent payment reporting to TransUnion jumps 2 percentage points YoY.

• Registration for Crane’s Access Granted event is open (All current and prospective members should register).

Closing Thought

A few quick things before you go…

• Last week’s issue went to 20,262 readers (56.8% opened, 4.6% clicked)

• The most popular link was How Val Runs a Nationwide Appliance Repair Company  (91 clicks)

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Software I currently use to run my property management company:

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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. *Affiliate link.