Peter Lohmann's Newsletter - Issue #97

Preparing for AI to Stomp SEO

My smart friend Adam Willis (owner of Nestwell Property Management) sent this text last week:

Wow.

If this type of consumer behavior catches on, property management firms will need to adapt quickly.

The majority of our new business comes from google searches for “Columbus property management”, and I’m guessing most PMs are in the same boat.

Does your firm come up in an AI/GPT search for “top 5 property managers in yourcity”? Give it a try and let me know.

THIS ISSUE IS PRESENTED BY SHOWDIGS

Ready to conquer the leasing season and still have time to expand your portfolio?

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What does all that mean for you though?

You know I love data — Check this out. Seattle PM company Verra Terra increased the capacity of their property managers from 60 doors each to over 100 doors, using agents on-demand and secure self-showings from Showdigs. That is a complete game-changer.

Those are the types of results that Showdigs customers are seeing.

Interested? Click the button to book a demo:

Owner Leads per Month (What’s Your Metric?)

I love data.

Data + Context is information, and information is power. A difficult part about operating a residential property management business is that relevant data is very difficult to come by, because there is so little information sharing (let alone standard terminology & definitions).

That’s why I’m quick to throw my weight behind industry efforts to collect, standardize, benchmark, and publish data about ANYTHING. I’m desperate to place my company’s performance into context (so I know what to work on next!)

Examples:

1. NARPM & ProfitCoach have done this for PM corporate accounting.

2. Property Meld shares tons of excellent data on maintenance.

3. ProfitCoach is working on defining operational milestones.

4. RentScale publishes a monthly BDM Scoreboard (BDM = business development manager, aka the salesperson responsible for closing new owner leads).

In case you haven’t seen it yet, below is an example of RentScale’s monthly Scoreboard (this one is for May):

Look at how valuable this information is:

• Average lead volume in May was 19 per BDM. Now you know if your lead volume was significantly below that, this is the area to focus on.

• Lead volume was down 43% compared to April. Now you know if your lead volume was down, it wasn’t just you.

• Average doors added in April was 9. The top 50% of all BDMs added 15. This puts your own door growth into context!

New Property Management Companies For Sale This Week

• Here is a property & HOA management company for sale in Salt Lake City, Utah (77 properties and 24 HOAs, asking $650k)

• Here is a property & HOA management company for sale in Austin, Texas (asking $120k, 48 properties)

• Here is a property management company for sale in South Carolina (asking $620k)

• Here is an association management company for sale in Florida (15 associations, asking $750k)

• Here is a property management company for sale in Maine (asking $455k)

Industry News and Events

• The FBI raided a property management office in Atlanta this week. Has that ever happened before? It’s related to the DOJ investigation into rent price-fixing and collusion via software.

• There’s a new industry newsletter called “prop.text”. Last week they published a long issue with some interesting context regarding Mynd-Roofstock merger.

• John Blatchford is hosting summer camp for “real estate founders, principals, GPs, and operators” at a beach house on the Outer Banks in South Carolina. Looks like a great time.

• I’m mostly off the grid for June; what other news did I miss?!?!

Closing Thought

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Stats from last week’s issue:

Valid Recipients: 9,688

Open Rate: 56.0%

Clickthrough Rate: 11.7%

Most Popular Link (451 clicks): New Tenant Screening Guidance from HUD (PDF)

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That’s all for this week! Have a great weekend. -Peter