Peter Lohmann's Newsletter - Issue #201

If You're Not Vibe Coding, Don't Worry

Editor’s Note: This article is a guest post by Jan Leasure, owner of Monterey Bay Property Management. Originally posted in Crane and reproduced here with her permission. -Peter

There's lots of coding going on by non-coders — and it's all pretty exciting! The possibilities are endless! But the quiet message underneath it all is that if you're not building something, you're falling behind — that the future is being handed out to the people typing prompts, and you'd better grab yours before it's gone.

If you're feeling that pressure — like the ground shifted and nobody sent you the memo — I want to tell you something from the far side of a long career.

You are going to be just fine.

I know this because I've been here before.

I remember when the computers showed up.

When I started my PM biz, there wasn't a computer in the office. We had a typewriter, a phone with a cord on it, and file cabinets that took up a whole wall. Leases were typed. Owner statements and the math on them were done by a hand-held calculator. If you wanted to know something, you got up and went and looked it up.

Then the computers came — though computer is a generous word for what showed up first. Ours were glorified typewriters. If you remember WordPerfect — the blue screen, the little function-key template you laid across the top of the keyboard — then you remember exactly what I mean. WordPerfect typed our leases and printed our owner statements, and for a good while that was very nearly the whole of it.

And I watched good, capable people talk themselves into a genuine panic. They were certain that if they didn't master the whole machine overnight — every key, every command — they'd be left in the dust and shown the door. On the other side, I watched an equally stubborn bunch decide the whole thing was a passing fad and refuse to touch it at all.

Both groups were wrong. And, funny enough, they were wrong in the same direction. They both thought the computer was asking them to become something they weren't.

I'll admit something a little embarrassing here: I did try to learn some of the technical stuff. I taught myself a bit of DOS — the typed-out commands that were the only way to make those early machines do much of anything — and I even built a database of every property we managed, every feature keyed in by hand, so I could pull up a unit and see exactly what features it had.

I was proud of that database. I also didn't need very long. Before long, people who understood this work far better than I ever would had brought real software to market — products that did the same job ten times over. My technical knowledge turned out to be incidental, not a requirement.

So here's the part nobody warned us about, because it turned out to be reassuring rather than dramatic.

The property managers who did well were not the ones who learned the most about the machines. My little bit of programming know-how turned out to be the least valuable thing I picked up in those years, and most of the PMs who thrived never wrote a line of code in their lives. What we learned instead was something simpler and a great deal more durable: how to make the machine do the work we cared about. How it could get an owner statement out faster. How it could keep the books from wandering off. How it could save an afternoon so we could spend it with our families instead of a filing cabinet.

We didn't have to understand how it worked under the hood. We had to understand what it was for. And we picked that up at a perfectly human pace — a little at a time, one useful thing after another, usually because a coworker leaned over and said, "Here, let me show you the shortcut I found."

That's the whole secret. It was never a race. It just felt like one to the people who were scared.

If you are not vibe coding right now, don't worry.

Vibe coding is one lane. It happens to be the flashy one, the one that gets written up and marveled at, and that's fine — some people are going to build wonderful things that way, and that is going to be good for our industry. But most of us can get enormous value out of these AI tools without ever building an app, launching a product, or typing a single line of anything that looks like code.

And I want to say this part plainly, because it matters: the property managers who are out there vibe coding right now are paving the way for the rest of us. Every tool they build, every rough experiment they share, sends a signal to the software companies, to the whole industry, that we need more than the one-size-fits-all products we've been handed. We need real customization, tools that bend to the way we actually work. The pioneers are the ones carrying that message, and every one of us will reap the benefit when the market answers it — the same way it answered for me all those years ago, when Windows showed up and retired my DOS database. So to the builders in this group: thank you. We see what you're doing, and we're grateful for it.

But if you are not one of them, that is perfectly okay.

I use AI tools every day now, and I have even built an executive assistant to triage my email. But mostly I use them to think out loud. To untangle a tricky letter to an owner before I send it. To take the first messy draft of something and turn it into the second, better one. To look at data extracted from my PMS and draw logical conclusions. That's not building software. That's just doing my job with a very patient assistant who happens to be made of electricity.

None of that requires you to become a programmer. It requires you to be curious, and willing to try, and honest about the work in front of you. Same three things it always took.

Now I'll give you the other half, because I'd be doing you a disservice if I only handed you the comfortable part.

"I don't necessarily need to vibe code" is true. "I don't need to pay attention" is not. The folks back then who wrote the computer off as a fad didn't get to sit still — the world moved anyway, and they eventually had to catch up from behind. So poke at these tools. Ask one a real question you actually have this week. Let it draft the email you've been dreading. Let it explain something you never quite understood. You don't owe anyone a masterpiece and you certainly don't owe them an app. You just owe it to yourself to stay curious a little longer than feels comfortable.

I may have the dubious honor of being the oldest member of this group — is anyone else over 70? If you are, you watched business owners get scared of a machine and then quietly fall in love with it once the fear wore off. I suspect this time is going to be no different.

You're not behind. You're right on time. Come on in — the water's fine, and you don't have to know how to swim to enjoy it.

[End of Guest Post]

How NorthPoint manages 5,000+ doors without a dedicated maintenance platform.

Steven Rea runs innovation for NorthPoint (5,000+ doors), and he just ripped a dedicated maintenance platform out to bring everything back into AppFolio. Everyone else is bolting on point solutions. He's ripping them out.

We got into a real disagreement here too. Steven's optimizing tech routes and pre-ordering from Home Depot to shave a few bucks off every work order. My take: owners aren't entitled to below-market pricing just because they hired a property manager. His take: those small wins build trust that compounds. We also cover NOI-based management fees, why leasing fees might be the industry's worst incentive, and when it's actually right to fire a client.

Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

Property Management Companies For Sale This Week

• Turnkey property management company in Arizona (asking $525k, $1.01M annual revenue)

• 40-year property management company in Los Angeles County, CA (asking $160k, $140k annual revenue)

• Established STR management business in Osceola County, FL (asking $225k,

  $450k annual revenue)

• PM company specializing in mid-term furnished housing in Tulare County, CA (asking $745k, $565k annual revenue)

If you plan to buy one of the property management companies above, I recommend using Live Oak Bank’s Property Management Lending Team to finance the deal.

Industry News & Events

• Submit your PM Company for the 2026 Top-50 Largest PM Companies List. Deadline is July 30, 2026.

• The 2026 PM Trends Report crossed the newswire on Wednesday and was picked up by Rental Housing Journal. (It also got a new website)

• RealPage renters just landed a $359.93M settlement.

• New Jersey just signed a law restricting rent-setting algorithms - joining the crackdown on algorithmic pricing.

• New Virginia law gives tenants more time and protection before eviction.

Closing Thought

Did you miss it? 3 highlights from Tuesday’s Newsletter:

1. My hot take on The Dew Point.

2. Poll responses on hiring global talent/RTMs.

3. A new pricing model to test at your property management company.

Software I’m using to scale my 700+ door property management company:

Note: These are affiliate links, but I’ve been recommending all these companies long before any financial arrangements came into place.

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.