We live in a culture of convenience. When people can get lunch delivered in an hour, your groceries delivered this afternoon, and almost anything you could possibly want delivered within two days, they start to expect the same level of service everywhere. On this episode of the podcast, Dana Dunford, CEO of Hemlane, explains how residents are coming to expect more and more from their property managers, and how you can evolve your company to meet—and exceed—those expectations.
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Season 5 Episode 1 features Deb Newell, CEO of Hemlane.
The Triple Win Property Management Podcast is produced and distributed by Second Nature.
Andrew Smallwood
Hello, professional property managers. Andrew Smallwood here from Second Nature, and I'm joined by Dana Dunford today, CEO of Hemlane.
Dana, welcome to the Triple Win podcast.
Dana Dunford
Great. Thanks so much for having me, Andrew.
Andrew Smallwood
Absolutely. And I'm sure we've got folks who are listening to this that know you, are familiar with you, are familiar with Hemlane.
And I'm also confident we have people listening to this who are hearing your name and Hemlane’s name for the first time.
So just as a way of kind of introducing yourself to the audience, could you give people a little bit of background on you and and on Hemlane?
Dana Dunford
Yeah, thanks. So my name is Dana. I am a real estate investor. I'm here in San Francisco, but I actually invest out of state and so, through that and kind of going through what all of these property managers have gone through with their own experience with tenants and managing the day to day of their rentals, we started a platform, Hemlane, which is both software but tech-enabled services, to help you succeed with your rental properties.
Andrew Smallwood
Awesome. And Dana, you know, I'm curious, kind of from the position you sit, you know, you have this kind of unique spot of, you work with property managers on your platform, a lot of real estate investors using your platform.
And it's not just tech. Right? There's services involved and kind of a network there. It's a unique approach, and it seems like it's actually been taking hold and some great momentum. I think you guys eclipsed twenty-five thousand units on the platform. Am I remembering that right?
Dana Dunford
Yeah. We have a lot more than twenty five-thousand that use our software.
As far as our services, we have twenty-eight thousand using our services. And how I define services are rental assistance, showing coordinators, or repair coordinators. So something that is twenty-four seven immediate instant gratification for you or your tenants because as you know, when you are a property manager, or a real estate investor, it is around the clock. It's not a nine to five job because emergencies do come up, showings–most tenants wanna see the properties on Saturdays and Sundays. And so we give you a little bit more of a back seat, from that perspective, with your properties.
Andrew Smallwood
Cool. Yeah. Thanks for the clarification there. And so, you know, you've got this kind of unique seat and you're immersed in this industry.
I'm curious. What is top of mind for you as far as what trends are you noticing kind of in the market right now? What's got your attention and what are you guys paying attention to at Hemlane?
Dana Dunford
Yeah. This is why I love other platforms like Second Nature that are kinda tapping into this as well. It's really the convenience culture. And I don't think it's spoken about enough, although people have signaled like, hey, social media is probably not that great. You know, something about it with mental health and what we've seen with, like, mental health trends.
But it becomes much more than just that.
When you look at consumer behavior today, everyone is expecting this kind of immediate, instant gratification.
And what kind of started that and how did that come up and how does it change?
One, I don't think it's going away.
But two, and I think most importantly, when you look at the companies that are here, and here to stay, and growing the fastest, they all provide that immediacy to tenants—or just to consumers in general, but tenants are a large portion of the consumers, right, with forty-four million renter households. So some examples of that, I mean, it goes back all the way to Uber where before Uber, you'd call a taxi. They'd be like, yeah, I'll be there in, like, twenty minutes.
And, like, you'd call them and say, do you have an update of when you're gonna be here? Now, obviously, it's on your app, immediate. You don't like the time, you cancel, you rebook with Lyft.
There's almost this anxiety, and I think that is why there's a lot to do with people getting upset, and more negativity out there is because when things go wrong, you're expecting it to be right all the time, and that makes it even more challenging to be a property manager now, than historically.
And, other examples of that more recently are DoorDash, right, of, hey, I want something delivered immediately. Instacart, I need my groceries delivered to my door. And then Amazon, I used to obviously think of someone's birthday, like, Andrew, your birthday.
I'd think about a couple of months in advance. I'd get the gift, you know, two to three weeks out or plan the weekend to get it. Now it's like, great. It's their birthday today? I forgot? I'll go on Instacart and get something from Sephora, or more likely two days out, great. Amazon two day delivery. What can I send to Andrew?
And so I think with that and that immediacy that is brought into the everyday life, and to everyone's everyday life, and that immediacy is like, oh, I'm bored. Let me go on Instagram.
I'm, you know, on my commute. I don't wanna read a book. I'll just listen to a book right away.
I think that immediacy, what you see with it is that tenants expect that same thing with their home experience.
And so one of the things for property managers to really keep in mind is how do I balance that? How do I set expectations?
But, also, how do I just tap into that and make my reviews better and make the experience better by being able to service tenants in this immediate way? And I think that's the important conversation, Andrew, that I wanna have with you today to talk about that and how we can make that happen.
Yeah. Like you said, this topic is definitely near and dear to Second Nature's heart. I’m reflecting on what you were sharing, it's like there's all these consumer experiences outside of the home that have brought speed and convenience to the consumer. It's really conditioned consumers to expect that things can be happening quickly and reliably, and of a high quality.
I oftentimes hear that, like, triangle they talk about. It's like you can choose speed or quality, right, or price. You know, like, you could pick two, so to speak. But I think some of the companies you just mentioned kind of challenge that assumption.
Right? And they're saying, hey, actually, there's a customer need. We can be here, in a different way and innovate and ultimately, you know, bring all three.
And so how are you thinking about some of the opportunities that are ripe in property management, to do that? To bring convenience to the consumer, to bring speed, and do so in a way that's adding value. It's not just a trade off somewhere else or not too big of a trade off where it's actually, you know, net less value for the consumer.
Dana Dunford
Yeah. I have four examples, to bring up in the entire real estate journey or, I guess, the property management journey.
It starts with tenant inquiries and showings. I was, for so long, anti and against self-guided tours. And part of the reason I was against it was I was like, oh, there's gonna be squatter problems and everything else, that goes hand in hand with, like, someone physically not being there. I've actually found you can still meet the tenant in person before they move in or before you sign the lease, but getting them into the property today or tomorrow is way more important than anything else, and it actually reduces the chances of having a squatter.
And so I think the first thing is like, hey, you need an automatic text message out to the tenant—it can be personalized, it can look personalized—telling them what your requirements are as well as where to schedule a showing. And those showings should be as soon as four hours from now because another property manager may have a showing in four hours.
And if yours isn't until Saturday and today is Thursday, you might have already lost that tenant. They may have already signed, gone through the application process, been approved within twenty-four hours, and you've lost that tenant, especially if your property looks very similar, maybe twenty dollars less, but then the other property manager negotiates that twenty dollar difference when they're talking to the tenant on the phone.
So I think self-guided tours is one of them, having showings all the time so that you can really get up to the expectations of the tenants. And with that, you want to have the best security process. So you obviously want driver's licenses, do it against their face so that you can use biometrics to make sure they are who they say they are, the ID matches the person, and then go ahead and have someone on call, virtually, who, when they get to the property, gives them a call, talks to them on the phone, asks if they have any questions, make sure they lock up afterwards.
If there's any photos to send of things that they would potentially think need to be changed or look damaged, they can send those over to you. So self-guided tours is the first one, because I think that just helps you reduce your days on market for you and your clients and advertise out. You can show the property seven days of the week.
The second, Andrew, is actually, what Second Nature does, which I think is make that move-in and application process really smooth.
So the whole concept of online applications and background and credit checks, making those instant, has been around for four to five years. But I think the resident experience from the move in and making that easier is the next big one. And so when a tenant signs a lease, if you tell them, great, it requires renter's insurance and they have to go search for who's the best renter's insurance company out there, what should I do from a utilities setup perspective? Who are the utility partners? You're suddenly not providing them with that experience they expect of, like, I click a button on Amazon, and it's gonna get to me and always be at my front door within two days, and I can track it. But I really think with second nature, you're able to provide that really instant gratification of saying, hey, to the tenant. No excuses. We'll just click through these buttons and get to what you need and make that move in process really simple. And I know I'm probably oversimplifying it because there's so much more that is provided with recurring services, but I think that online experience, here's what you get, here's how much it costs, pricing is fair.
Tenants have a huge willingness to pay because they expect that and they expect that in those experiences.
Andrew Smallwood
If I can pause before we go to three and four, I want to go back actually to the self-guided tours for a second. I'm just curious what you all have seen across your properties and data set of, you know, can can you share any insights as it relates to here's the percentage of people that are doing this on Saturday and Sunday or after typical hours or for people who are still thinking, man, I've been doing in-person showings. It's like, it's still working for me kind of, but what they might be missing out on or how you kind of got increasingly, you know, comfortable with saying this is the direction we should go.
Dana Dunford
Yeah. That's such a great question, Andrew. The first one is on times for showings.
This was really interesting. I just assumed that Saturdays and Sundays would be the busiest days. And so when we staffed the team here at Hemlane to help provide, you know, showings or self-guided tours and someone on the call, we provided overstaffed on Saturday and Sundays and understaffed during the week.
And you know what? Maybe there's a point to be made pre-COVID that that strategy would have worked because I think more people were in the office Monday through Friday. But now with a lot more remote work and I think just more flexible work after COVID, It's really interesting. Guess, Andrew, what day and time block is the most popular for tenants to view the property.
And this is all just based on our data and the thousands of showings we do every month.
Andrew Smallwood
I'll take a stab here just to keep it going, but I'll probably reveal my ignorance. I'm gonna guess, like, Tuesday from 5:00 to 7:00 PM.
Dana Dunford
It's Friday mornings.
Andrew Smallwood
Wow.
Dana Dunford
And what's interesting about that is it's right before the weekend. And so we know for our customers that we need to get that application out before Saturday morning with the background in credit check too, because we know we may be competing against another place on the weekend, and we want to get them closed and prove out that, hey, tenant, this was a fantastic experience. There's no need for you to look at another place on Saturday afternoon. We've already gotten you verified, reference checks, etcetera, out the door, and this is moving forward. So, yeah, it's Friday morning, but it's actually, Andrew, you're semi-right, where during the week—there's a difference, but I think it's only, like, five to ten percent—every day consistently has those showings, and what impacts the showings is actually the day that they inquire. So once we launch self-guided tours, and before that, it was predominantly weekends and then, like, a Tuesday night, maybe some in person showings.
Before we launched self-guided tours, you know, it's hard to say, when do they wanna see the place because you were restricted by the times and the days of the agent.
Now what we found is that tenants will book a showing within twenty-four to forty eight-hours. So I think it's about 67% of those showings are booked within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. And so what that signals is like, hey, they actually really don't wanna wait until the weekend, and you're losing out if you do.
And so that data, it kinda goes to that point of this instant gratification and tenants wanting things now, and they're expecting Amazon delivery times with everything. And, of course, tenants get younger and younger as we get older.
And, so it will become even more prominent.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. I'm just thinking about this triple win outcome of it's a good thing for everybody if qualified applicants are getting to application more quickly. Right?
And it's like that's obviously good for the resident who's trying to find their next home. Right? It's good for the investor that's reducing the vacancy time. Right?
And the cost between them and revenue coming in, and and for the property manager. Right? In addition to that, I also like that you spoke to, hey, you do want to be thoughtful about if you're doing taking this kind of approach, you know, you want to have the right, checks in place to ensure you're not letting unqualified or fraudulent applicants through, you know, whether it's biometrics or other things to control for that so that, hey, this is a truly a lift and accretive and not not a trade off. I thought that was great how you walked through that.
Okay. You talked about the move-in experience, which is definitely close to Second Nature. Some of our products are right there at that point, and we do think about how do we make this as easy as possible for people to get the insurance coverage that they need or get utilities connected or whatever it might be.
Is there anything else? I guess you mentioned three and four. What are the other things you think are great tactical, kind of practical things property managers can be thinking about to bring more convenience to the experience they're offering your customers?
Dana Dunford
Yeah. So I think one of the big mistakes that property managers make is they either over automate it where they have, like, these automated tone deaf responses where they don't have someone there when the tenant needs it. An example is actually self-guided tours, where they will have a tenant at the property and the lockbox or the keypad is not working, and they don't have anyone on the phone with them. And that actually hurts the reputation of property managers, and we've heard that before from tenants when they're on the phone with our showing coordinators being like, oh, if it's a self-guided tour, how do I know? I went to this one and it was a bad experience.
It's like, no. We're there with you the full time. We can even get on a FaceTime if you need to. You just let us know.
We will be there a hundred percent. You're not gonna go and try to open this lockbox and it's not gonna work. So I think the same thing transpires into management.
And so my third one is repair coordination.
With repair coordination, this is one that really ticks tenants off because a lot of property managers will, one, not do proper troubleshooting upfront to really understand what the problem is. The vendor goes on-site, the vendor doesn't have the parts, the tenant has to reschedule, it's another week before they get out there. It's really troubleshooting and understanding right off the bat immediately, like, right when the request comes in. What can the tenant do to reduce damage?
How can they deescalate this? How can they try certain things so we know what the problem is? Or even better, how can they fix it on their own? And so, like, for example, our troubleshooting process, seven percent of requests are closed before getting out of the troubleshooting step, and that's while the tenant is putting it in.
So that's the first one. And then the second one is having a repair coordinator who's really strong on project management, able to do that. And that's where I think a lot of folks get it wrong because they use virtual coordinators. These virtual coordinators know nothing about repairs.
They're not a repair coordinator. They're just like a VA online, and their project management skills aren't there. For every tenant, it's like, okay. We understand what the problem is.
Here is the standard turnaround time, and here's what we've done to drive this forward. Like, they're not gonna go out of that request until they've sent out the job request. Also to large property managers, a work order, but I find work order to be a very, enterprise term. So I like the word job request instead. But sending that out, having the tenant schedule in advance, everything to drive everything forward and then letting the tenant know, great, you'll hear from us in twenty-four hours when the service professional has booked a time with you.
And so I think that helps ease a tenant's anxiety because it's very similar to the Amazon experience. When you go through Amazon, you go through and fill it out and then it says, like you've got a little bar at the top, and it tells you how long until the next step. Very similarly, I think property managers need to set up their systems that way or have someone who is doing that for them, and we do it twenty-four seven.
So if a request comes in at two AM in the morning, we're doing the troubleshooting with them instantly.
And so I think that's another really important part of how you can work with your tenants.
A fun fact just about how instant things are, Amazon did a survey, and they predicted that if their website loaded one second slower, they would lose $1.6 billion dollars in revenue a year. And that's just how much people expect things now. And I think a lot of property managers say, I cannot work that much, and trying to get the headcount to work twenty-four seven doesn't make sense. And so I think tapping into those who can do that for you is really helpful. So I think the second one is really on repair coordination when tenants have requested.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting, the theme of this, Dana. I had a family member over the holidays who rents, and they were talking about having a furnace effectively, you know, going out and how they were talking to me about their experience with their property manager. And they're like, yeah, I was calling them every two hours, you know, to see what was going on.
And I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm like, you're that resident. You're that resident who's always calling, etcetera, over and over again. But it made me realize, hey. Bringing that transparency, that Domino's pizza tracker type of experience, right, answers those kind of questions, you know, for residents as opposed to feeling like they have to constantly call back and check-in and see if things are moving, as fast as they want to, how important that is, in addition to everything you can do to to coordinate quickly and move things through the process quickly. I thought that's a great point.
Yeah. And, Andrew, another thing about this family member of yours is when they called in, it's probably an after hours repair line. And those are what's sold to property managers, and it's the biggest waste of money, and it's the silliest thing. Because you know what those call centers do? They pick up the phone and they say, “Hi, tenant. Thanks so much. What's your question?”
They write it down, and they're like, “Great. The property manager will get back to you at nine AM tomorrow morning.” And suddenly, all they are doing is putting the work back on the property manager. And to the tenant, it's like, well, you haven't told me the ETA.
You haven't solved my problem. And it increases their anxiety because they are so used to every app telling them exactly on what day, at what second that package or that delivery for food is gonna be dropped off at their house. And so if they don't have the same thing, that's a problem for them. And so another thing, like, another example on that is, like, if they're out of heat and it's like, yeah, this is an emergency.
We're trying to get someone dispatched. It's like, that's not the right answer. The right answer is, okay, it's eleven PM. We are getting someone dispatched, but most likely they're not gonna be able to fix it tonight, like, if you've done the troubleshooting.
Go get a portable heater. We will go ahead and make sure this gets reimbursed. Put it in the bedrooms. Have a good night's sleep, and in the morning, someone will be out, if not before then.
That is a way better answer to a tenant than, like, “Great, I've just taken your call, and I'll let you know what the property manager says.” And so I think a lot of times how things have been structured for property managers is completely incorrect because they missed the whole point of you need empowerment and you need to have professionals who can actually handle the situation end to end. And the best companies, like, when you look at the Amazons and DoorDashes of the world and really how we built our product, too is, like, they can solve it end to end.
Everything from the payment to the beginning, and they have the property manager-specific requirements in place. And Second Nature does that too, where you guys have specific requirements where you know this property does require renters insurance. It does have a yard. And all of that really helps reduce that anxiety where you can solve the problem end to end.
And I think the best companies and best property managers will win when they have that structure in place.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. Dana, I love this example and just bringing it to life with that. You know, a question. Sometimes I hear debate in the industry about smaller companies and larger companies.
And one of the arguments I often hear for the smaller operators is, a lot of times, hey, for this sense of urgency and everything else that they kind of bring to things, in many cases, they're doing that. And as you're growing a larger company, it can be challenging to kind of create a culture where that kind of sense of urgency and the right information empowered or the right decision authority, everything else, right, is being executed consistently. But I imagine the scale you guys are at and the passion you have for this, that that's something you've brought a lot of attention to.
And so I'm just curious how have you guys kinda worked on scaling out that kind of great interaction and experience?
Dana Dunford
Yeah. That's such a great question, Andrew. So, yeah, with twenty-eight thousand rentals where we're doing repair coordination, the real question is, like, how do you do that at scale and how do you have 4.7-star reviews?
And, you know, when we get one star reviews, sometimes it's because we're like, tenant, pest control, like, per your lease that's your responsibility.
And so how do you get such high reviews? I actually think when you get larger, it gets better, but you have to have the mentality of only A-plus players on your team. And what I mean by that is we're very big on data. And so even as a property manager, you should be as well.
For every single repair coordinator that we have, or showing coordinator, whatever the job is, we actually have both activity metrics and SLAs they have to meet. Very similar to Amazon. Like, you have no idea how Amazon gets, on Christmas Eve, packages within two days to your house when everyone else and their mother has ordered Amazon packages for two day delivery, but they do.
And they show up on time. And so, with that, it's very similar of you can vary as you grow and scale, you can use benchmarks and say, here are our top performers. Everyone has to be at that level. And so you can see, did they miss their SLAs?
Are they not making as many calls as others to the service professionals to really push things out? You can tell the call quality when the calls are recorded. You can tell if the person on the other line is getting upset. So the second that you have all the data, you don't have to look at all the data.
You only have to look at what's in red. And so if something is taking too long to dispatch, that's in red and gets escalated up. If the tone of someone in a message is negative, that's escalated in red. And so I think the bigger you get, the more you're able to put those types of tools in place, and then you're able to structure it where you just train the team on that customer service, how to do it well.
They obviously have to have a background in repairs where they can troubleshoot anything in a house, and they're almost a handyman general contractor themselves where they can call BS when a service professional's on-site and something sounds off.
Once you have all of that, then it's just a matter of the system working for you. And I think that is really important and the best property managers win through having that.
Andrew Smallwood
You know, two two questions about that. I'm curious if you might walk through, hey, these are three, four, five of the KPIs that we think are just kind of, like, critical to delivering a great experience, and what benchmark or standard do you recommend holding for that? I'd love to hear. And then second, maybe we'll start with this.
You were talking about, a lot of people think about how you can objectively measure first call resolution. You can objectively measure here's the kind of, traditional stats that way. But I think you were talking about also raising hay through, like, a sentiment analysis or something like that. Some of what would be considered more qualitative. Could you speak to that first and then address the KPI question?
Dana Dunford
Yeah. So, the qualitative stuff is just essentially software that you can build into your back end that alerts you on these things. This call doesn't sound like it's going so well. This response from a tenant sounds angry. Just jump into there and see what's going on.
And through that, you can really understand, how can you very quickly deescalate this before anything gets escalated?
So that software you can have, but, again, you need enough properties or working with solutions that can do that for you.
Does that answer that question, Andrew?
Andrew Smallwood
It does. I'm curious, is there a provider you recommend or use?
Dana Dunford
There are a couple but I'm not sure which one. We've tried four or five on our back end, so I actually have to talk to our engineering team which one they went with fully, because they went with a couple of them, tested them, and I know they implemented one of the four. But there's plenty out there, but I know our product team had tested four of them.
Then on the side of KPIs, that's interesting because there's certain KPIs, like number of messages logged, which is actually a terrible one for whether the person is performing well. You want them to have a minimum number of messages to make sure they're communicating, but almost too many messages means these messages are really tone deaf or not really driving things forward. And so what I mean by that is, like, Andrew, if you put in a repair request and, you know, your sink is clogged, if I'm like, “Thanks, Andrew. I'll get someone out shortly,” and that's one message, that's one comment logged.
Then, you know, three hours later, I'm like, “Hey, Andrew. I've got ABC plumbing that confirmed that they're scheduled for a time with you at whatever time.” Like, that just keeps logging them. But the question is how do you shorten that and have the response to Andrew be like, “Great.
We've just dispatched this to ABC Plumbing,” you know, and give them more upfront. And so I don't think the quantity of messages is what it is.
For us, it's time to dispatch. So how quickly can you get a service professional scheduled in the calendar? Now the tenant's schedule may prevent you from scheduling it this week because the tenant is on vacation, but how can you get someone actually scheduled from a time that the tenant has specified? So that's number one.
The second is on reviews/ratings. So we ask the owner and manager as well as the tenant for reviews, and we say this isn't shared with the service professional and the repair coordinator, but how are they doing? How is the service professional doing? If a repair coordinator has under 4.3-star reviews, they have to look for a new job. They are not doing their job and overdelivering to tenants.
So it's the reviews and ratings. And then the third one that we have is number of closed requests every single month. Because someone who can dispatch quickly, get strong reviews, and get through requests because they're so efficient and, reducing that time is a huge win for us. So while there's, like, five thousand metrics I think we track across the company, and each management and division is looking at their own individually, those are ones that I personally think the operators, so the directors and managers of each department should be looking at.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. No. Thanks for walking through that. I think that's great.
Dana, here's where I want to go next is, I wanna ask a couple of rapid fire questions before we kind of wrap up here. And the first one I'd love to ask is, what do you think is the biggest problem or biggest opportunity in the industry right now for property managers that nobody's really talking about or not enough people are talking about?
Dana Dunford
Gosh. There's a lot of them.
The first one I would talk about is regulations and getting everyone together, to talk about legislation and what's happening. I think that the job of a property manager has gotten a lot more challenging because there's so many more laws. You almost need a law degree just to keep up with some cities’ and counties’ regulations.
How do you get everyone together and very objectively go and help get the word out there? I know a lot of the apartment associations do that. I know NARPM helps with that. But how do you really band property managers together to make it where the industry does not– it's almost simplified, not as complex.
And, I actually think that will help property managers because then tenants are much more aligned because it's much more simple to know exactly what's right and what's wrong.
Andrew Smallwood
Mhmm. Yeah, regulation.
Alright. Next question. Keep it rapid fire here. What’s your favorite book to recommend to somebody in the property management industry?
Dana Dunford
Well, because of what we were just talking about, I would say it's Four Thousand Weeks. Do you know what four thousand weeks is, Andrew?
Andrew Smallwood
No. It's the first time I'm hearing this.
Dana Dunford
It's the average number of days someone lives. And so it's all about this balance of getting things fast and then also thinking about your life over those four thousand weeks and what you want to accomplish and how to do it right and time management.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay. So the title of the book is Four Thousand Weeks?
Dana Dunford
Four Thousand Weeks. That's correct.
Andrew Smallwood
Awesome. I'm sure we'll find a link to that and put it in the show notes.
Okay. Next one.
Best advice you haven't ever been given as a leader in this industry?
Dana Dunford
This one, I think a lot of property managers can relate to. It’s don't run out of cash.
I think, the biggest thing when you're a business owner and entrepreneur getting started is really being able to balance the p] and l and, make sure that the one thing not holding you back is cash, and that you can continue to move forward and have the right systems in place because you have the right unit economics and bottom line.
Andrew Smallwood
Mhmm. Yeah. Great. Okay. Last couple.
Next one is, what do you think is the biggest mistake that property managers are making today?
Dana Dunford
I think the biggest mistake is on the team and hiring side. I think a lot of them, there's two different points of it. One, they don't think that they can hire, so they try to do everything, and then they forget. They're usually, if you're the broker or owner, you should just be looking to get more doors, network, really make a name for yourself out there. So I think that's a first.
And then hand in hand with that, it's like when you hire, I think a lot of times, they hire the wrong people or they don't take it very seriously. And an example of that—or let me just kinda, tell you how I think about it—is when I talk to a lot of property managers and I say, great. You hired this person. How many people did you interview?
So, like, I kinda, like, put a job post on Craigslist or LinkedIn or whatever. And I got, like, twelve people, and I interviewed them and, you know, accepted one. It's like, for our job positions, we are literally talking to a hundred and twenty people. We have over a thousand resumes that come in our door, and we're picking the best.
And I think that if you have a better mentality like that and you divide and unbundle to say what is better for it to be local versus what could be done virtually, I think that they can open up their pool and get a lot stronger in their operations.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay. And last one here. You know, as you look to the future, what excites you most or what are you most optimistic about, for the industry of property management?
Dana Dunford
There's a lot I'm optimistic about.
I think tech and, obviously, I'd be remiss if I didn't say AI.
But I think there's actually a different one.
I actually think that self-driving cars will change the industry because real estate and where people live and where they manage and all of that will change where they live versus where they work. So I'm kind of excited to see how that changes the game and makes property managers more efficient as well.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay. I gotta ask a follow-up on that. So would you say the thesis is if they're self driving cars, hey, maybe the the way we've heard all these statistics for years about how much people hate their commutes and everything else that, hey, maybe if they're not driving so much and this is that, is it, people are willing to tolerate longer commutes and they're living further away from cities? What's your kind of thought on how self driving might shape, shape things differently and how and where people are investing in real estate?
Dana Dunford
Yeah. I think the big thing for a property manager is most are overworked and underpaid, and that's just the nature of property management.
And, I think for them, a lot of times they're, like, driving all over the place. Driving all over to meet a tenant for a move out and get the keys. Driving all over to, if they've done the showings via self-guided tours, to meet the tenants in person or having the tenants come meet them. And, it's very much a localized game. And so I think for them, they'll be able to go to more places, optimize their commutes, etcetera, and be able to even manage properties farther away. Because imagine if I live in Nashville and can manage—what's a good suburb that's, like, forty minutes away?
Andrew Smallwood
You could say Spring Hill.
Dana Dunford
Spring Hill. And I want to manage properties in Spring Hill. I would probably say no to those properties if there weren't self driving cars. But the second you have self driving cars, I could go over there and get all my admin work done on my computer as I'm driving in my commute over, meet with an owner, sell them on it, and then literally get back in, go back or do twelve other properties there. And then, on top of that, do self-guided tours and everything else and have a local handyman and be able to remotely manage these a lot better. And then when I need to be there, it's not so much of, gosh, I've got a two hour commute.
You can actually, on that commute, be very productive.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay. So, hey, we've heard of work from office. We've heard of work from home. Now it's like work from car.
Dana Dunford
Work from your car now. Yeah. Get a latte while you're at it, Andrew.
Andrew Smallwood
I'll tell you, that's a unique insight that I don't think a lot of people are talking about. That's a great one to end on. Dana, thank you so much for just generously sharing your thoughts, your insights, your experience here, what you guys are up to at Hemalen, the great growth you guys are having over there. We really appreciate you joining us today.
Dana Dunford
Thanks, Andrew. I had a lot of fun today.
Andrew Smallwood
Awesome. Take care.
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