JWB Real Estate has used long-term leases to minimize vacancy for its investors. Melissa Gillispie joins the show to speak on the strategy behind it, why it’s worked for them, and how property managers can approach a shift toward longer lease terms.
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Season 4 Episode 19 features Melissa Gillispie
The Triple Win Property Management podcast is produced and distributed by Second Nature
Melissa Gillispie
I think one thing that stands out to me as something that we're relatively good at, though, is inspecting what we expect and what we focus on improves.
Andrew Smallwood
Hello professional property managers, Andrew Smallwood here, host of the Triple-Win podcast. And I'm joined today by an industry expert, somebody I've really come to appreciate as a strong operator, in our industry. And a friend I’ve really gotten to know her, over the last couple of years, through events and other things that we're doing. We've regularly tapped Melissa, actually, as a part of our Triple-Win leadership council, providing advice and perspective to the Second Nature team. And I gave it away already. It's Melissa, right from JWB. Melissa Gillispie who's joining us here today. Melissa, there may be some folks who have seen you featured on our blog or other places like that, but I'm also guessing there's gonna be some listeners who are probably meeting you or and kind of for the first time here. And what do you think they should know about JWB and you?
Melissa Gillispie
Yeah. Thanks so much, Andrew. I think that's great. So JWB is a vertically integrated company, which basically means that kind of from start to finish, we're handling all of the different components of the real estate journey for investors. So we buy property here in Jacksonville. We're in Jacksonville Florida. And typically we're buying vacant land and we're building new construction. So I know build to rent used to be kind of this like fresh hot topic. More people are doing it now. But that's kind of where we started. And we've continued to kind of grow our property management business through those efforts. We actually manage right now about 5800 doors. Those are a blend of single family and some multifamily. It's about 1500 clients that we serve. And we're located in one single market. So I think that's a bit of a uniqueness as well, where we've been able to really grow and scale in a single market, which seems like most people in that type of growth journey end up spreading out a little bit more. That's one of the beautiful things about Jacksonville is we got lots and lots of land. It's a pretty big city footprint. So my I've worked at JWB for just over ten years and I run our property management company. I love working with Second Nature. It's been amazing. So super excited to be here.
Andrew Smallwood
And your official title is Queen of Property Management is that right? That's right.
Melissa Gillispie
Something like that.
Andrew Smallwood
Awesome! You know, when you think about the number of companies that are over a thousand units in a single market, the number starts to get appreciably smaller when you get to, 2000 or 3000, it's, you know, you can start to count them on fingers and toes. Yeah, so to speak. And I think JWB uniquely stands alone. I'm not aware of a company that does third party management that has north of 5000 units in a single market, or maybe just 1 or 2, that I can think of that are around that. And so I'm excited to get into that and how you guys have grown in scale and, and there's lessons I'm sure, all along the way and things that are applicable, that people can take away here. But I want to talk about one topic in particular first, and it's a unique policy and practice that JWB has around leasing, and particularly around the terms of your lease, and the length of the lease. And I'm wondering if you could set up for folks here. Hey, here's how we think about leasing the leasing term and what kind of informs your policy and your process there.
Melissa Gillispie
Yeah. So I think one of the key things that really informs all of our decisions is we don't make money unless our clients are making money, and we're always going to pay our clients first, and we have an obligation to their return. So because we're selling these new construction properties largely as investment homes, we are saying on the front end we're committing to a level of and a return on your investment. And in order to do that, you have to minimize certain moments in time that are pain points. Right. So vacancy, moment in time that no one likes. And that is probably one of the most significant financial impacts to a client who owns an investment property. And so for us, the way that we think about everything is how do we maximize returns, minimize expenses, minimize vacancy. And so one of the ways that we've kind of come to do that on the leasing side is by signing long term leases, which we can get into why we do that, how that makes sense. I know most people are like, we got to get tenant placement every month, every year. No, no, no, that's not always necessarily the only way that you can earn income. And so that's a piece of it right. Is just locking in a long term lease allows for stability, consistency. We build-in rent growth. So kind of can you check that concern off take it off the table for people. But it's really about client returns and making sure that we're performing for our clients. And we're putting them first. Right. It's not about necessarily us first, it's them first.
Andrew Smallwood
So let's start to break this down from like a Triple-Win lens, so to speak. And I think, you know what I hear clear from you in the culture at JWB is there is a very much like, thinking primarily like let's look first at the investor experience. Right. And you, you started there of like, here's what's important to the client, not at the expense of others necessarily. But hey, let's focus on that first. And how are we driving a great value proposition for them. And one of the keys to winning in the SFR game is reducing, vacancy costs. Because, you know, it's not just the time that you're not collecting rent revenue, it's also the cost of the term and placing the new tenant and everything else that goes into that. And it's one of those like, valley moments. Yeah. Yeah. You can get emotional and hard to stay in the game for a full market cycle in a moment like that. And so how can you push that further and further out and spread those costs across a longer period of time? And I guess, you know, just for context, what is the average length of tenancy at JWB?
Melissa Gillispie
We are sitting at about four and a half years, and so we track it both from initial lease term averages to renewal lease term averages. Because we're taking a similar approach with renewal as well, with trying to kind of get a long-term renewal as well. But we're at about four and a half years.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah. And I think people listening this would say four and a half years is great. That is certainly well above the industry average. And I feel like adding the context of Jacksonville has, you know, a military dynamic to that town. And it you know, there can be kind of a more transient group of folks there than necessarily some other markets. And so to be achieving that kind of result in a market like Jacksonville is certainly exceptional. You know, here is my question on that following up. Okay. When you say we go for a long term lease, it's like, what is the average lease length that you sign? And can you give us a little you know, I'm hearing like you guys do built a rate which I know is a big part of your business, but you also manage a number of scattered site properties, and ones that you're acquiring other ways, and clients, you know, 1500 clients. It's not like this is like two big hedge funds that you're managing for, right? You know, as a part of that. So, as we kind of understand that portfolio dynamic, can you speak to what's the average length of the lease and not just in your bill to rent product, but, you know, are you seeing similar results across for scattered site housing products?
Melissa Gillispie
Great great questions. So there's so much here. I feel like we could talk all day. So we signed 24 and 36 month lease terms. Our average lease term on the front end right now is about 27 months. So we're right in that range. It's been interesting as the market has shifted and changed over the past couple of years post Covid, the numbers have actually gone down a little bit. We we were closer to a 30 month average term prior to Covid. And then as rent rates skyrocketed for that period of time, clients got a little bit more iffy. Residents were a little more iffy. And so there was some hesitation for the longer term leases. I think one thing that you mentioned a minute ago about Triple-Win that I didn't really say in the outset is, you know, it's a really great piece of mind for a resident to lock in a long term lease and know that my rent's not going to go up on me more than what was already built-in to that lease. And so it is a way for us, honestly, I feel is a selling point to the resident when we're trying to say, hey, let's sign a three year renewal for them to say, oh, I can make sure that my rent only increases 3% over the next two years when there's been so much volatility in the market. What a, no one wants to move and no one wants to have uncertainty in their finances. And so I think the residents have really been able to see the benefit of the longer term lease. And then I think for us as you talk about our size and you talk about scale, you know, if we only signed one year leases, think about the volume of renewals for the property management team on an annual basis. It's already, we're renewing 40, 50, 60 leases a week.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah.
Melissa Gillispie
And so I can't even imagine if it was all 12 month terms. So I do think there's been some unique challenges related to, you know, managing for others and managing for clients who are bringing those properties to us and have maybe had different experiences prior to working with us. So there is a level of expectation setting and buying and explaining why we do what we do and why we feel there's a benefit to the client. But ultimately, outside of some of the multifamily that we do, our clients are fully bought into the concept of trusting us to be able to sign the long term leases. I think one thing that gives them that ability to trust is that we do build in some level of a rent increase, so it really is a win for the client and a win for the resident from that lense, if that makes sense.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah a couple quick questions. So one is are your PMAs your management agreements one year or are they also on a longer term.
Melissa Gillispie
They're one year they auto renew. And so that is an area where, you know, let's say a client is wanting to leave services or sell for any reason, something, you know, it's in their best interest to stay through the lease term, right? Because you can either leave at the end of your term, or you can leave at the end of a lease term and there's no penalties. And so thinking that through, we try to encourage clients to let's see the lease through before you're making a decision to terminate services and things like that. But yes, it's a one year PMA that auto renews.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay, cool. So one year PMAs. But you know, on average a little over a two year lease. And do you have the same lease terms for your single family as your multifamily? Like I can see in single family where somebody would, would see a lot of benefit. And like also just kind of at the stage of life perhaps maybe they've got kids and pets and things of that nature that have moved them owning a yard and into single family products that would say, okay, I'm actually ready for a longer term commitment, you know, for the multifamily that you guys have started to take on, is there an appreciable difference in the average lease length?
Melissa Gillispie
There is. It's about 14 months average lease length relatively. So it's I mean it's drastic. Some of that's driven by the client saying I want to be able to control and push rents further and harder. I know that I need to manage my vacancy differently. And then some of it is the demand of a resident to say, I'm looking at this rental opportunity as more of a short term kind of jump from one space to the next, right? It's a launching point that maybe they want to rent a single family home next, or whatever it is that their long term goals are. So I think it has to do with both of those things. But yes, it's drastically different.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay. That's helpful. And then let's talk about, you alluded to a couple times that there's a built in rent increase. Yeah. Into into early. So if I sign a two year lease or a three year lease with JWB, one like how do you guys go about calculating what that what that increase is and yeah. Can you can you explain your process around that.
Melissa Gillispie
Yeah. So typically for the first year of the lease it's going to be market rate. So whatever it is at that moment in time we do set somewhat of a floor by property, but it's market rate. And then we look at overall price appreciation in Jacksonville and typically has historically we've seen about it for 4.5% price appreciation in our market. And so for us it's really important that we I guess show the benefit to our residents, renting with us and being able to have that stability. And so we actually build in the future year increases at 3%. And we do that because obviously we want to still try to keep up with the changing demands for the owner, right? Taxes, insurance, all those, those other costs. But we want it to be a benefit to the resident to stay. And so we've decided that while, you know, we would see a certain appreciation in the market, we're going to taper that down for a resident who has been with us through their first lease term, to incentivize them to stay.
Andrew Smallwood
And so, yeah, you're kind of striking a balance there, right? It sounds like and that's where you guys have landed on that. And just a question like has that varied at all over time. Like if you're seeing the market get more volatile, you know, do you potentially adjust that up or down. Or is it, hey, just over the longest period of time, it's always going to be, you know, this. How do you guys think about that?
Melissa Gillispie
It has been a ever-changing journey. We look, we have committed as a company to look at this annually and say, what is the moment in time we are in? What is the market saying? What is the market doing? What are the demands on rent price? Are we able to keep up with the changing costs for our clients at this current rate? We've got we've I mean, we've been all over the map. We've done flat fees on an annual basis. We've done it based off the initial rent price, and whatever buckets you might be in, maybe sub a thousand, 1000 to 1500, so on and so forth. So we tinker with this a little bit, and we have the ability to tinker with it because it's relatively easy to change kind of the back end structure of how we generate our leases. But it is something that is kind of, how do we look under the hood on a annual semi-regular basis and say, hey, is what we said we were going to do last year still what's best to do right now? And really, we started that routine with Covid. It was like we hadn't changed our structure in quite a long time, and then all of a sudden we're like, we're not keeping up with what it's happening right now. And so we made some big shifts to make that a commitment to ourselves, to our clients, for the long haul. So.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay, that's very helpful. And then, do you still, on some occasions, sign one year leases, you know, in your, in your SFR product or is it kind of like, man, we really or or is there some like mid term like a 16 month or an 18 month or are how do you guys handle that?
Melissa Gillispie
I would say on the front end with leasing it is more uncommon to sign a shorter term lease on 24 or 36 months. However, I say that with a lot of thoughts swirling in my head. Because I think because our market has softened quite a bit, rent prices are much softer. Just leasing days on market. All of those things have become a little bit of a challenge. That's a lever we can pull to say, hey, here's an additional option to offer a potential resident. So sometimes the client is saying, hey, I'd like to offer 12 months, so maybe we move my property a little more quickly. Or maybe we suggest that because we think it might help. So that's become a little bit more fluid. Yeah. As we face certain leasing challenges okay.
Andrew Smallwood
And then I've got a marketing question around this. If I'm your resident okay. And I'm applying, you know, I see the listing, on Zillow or the MLS wherever I'm finding it. And I'm coming into, like the screening process, at what point would I start to learn that Qube offers a two year or three year, lease? Like, am I? Am I learning about that when I'm getting the lease sent to me and the lease offer is presented to me? Am I learning upstream of that? Like, how would I hear about this or know about this?
Melissa Gillispie
Yep, we put it in our listings. So if you come across a property, you'll be able to see your lease term options. So if we are offering a 12 month term on a certain property, that would be in the listing. And then through our application process, it's highlighted again that we do long term leases. And then when you're speaking with our team, it's highlighted again as an area that we like to talk about with prospective residents to make sure that once they're comfortable with that and to do they understand why that's actually a good thing for them, as long as they're looking for stability in their life.
Andrew Smallwood
Yep. Yeah. And it makes me think, you know, does this also start to attract some of the residents that are more likely to be longer term residents and again, in a compliant way, right. Repel some who may be more transient. Right. You know, and less attractive, right. To have, as a customer. One other question I have is around flexibility of the lease terms. You know, what would you characterize JWB’s kind of like lease cancellation or early termination policy or an early move? Our policy as pretty consistent with the market. Is it more flexible in what you're seeing in market, less flexible than what you're seeing in market? Where do you guys kind of lay it on that kind of key term of the lease?
Melissa Gillispie
Yeah, I think we are probably I would consider us pretty flexible. Because the goal is to work with people, to help people, to support people. So I think when it comes to you, I guess there's a couple differences to for us where we aren't, we sign a lease. After all, funds are paid and we're actually executing the lease later than most people do this. So I know for some people you're signing a lease and then maybe that person doesn't move forward. We don't typically have that happen a whole lot on the front end, because we're actually waiting to actually exit that document until all funds are collected. And we're like handing keys and doing the lease at that same moment, I think early terminations and related to like how we handle early terms, how we handle people breaking their lease once they are in the property. I think our our standards are similar. I mean, there's a lot of limitations based off of your state, right where you live and the laws surrounding landlord tenant in your state. So we follow that. But I would think that there's kind of these two schools of thought is if somebody is breaking their lease, sock it to them and like make it hurt. And there's another school of thought that is be reasonable. And everybody has life that they're going through. Right. And you don't know I mean, you're dealing with people and that's messy. And people have things happen. So we try to tread on the side of flexibility while still sticking to having a penalty, because obviously we don't want everybody just peace out with no.
Andrew Smallwood
Sure, sure. Okay. So I do want to double click on what you were mentioning a moment ago, which is a unique thing to JWB as I understand it, that you have like a deposit agreement or something that people are signing and there's funds to kind of secure. Yeah, secure that take it off of Marquette. But then your lease is actually not being signed until like move in day or like within 24 hours of Move-In day, right before something like that. Can you talk through, like, what was the philosophy kind of behind setting things up that way since it is pretty nontraditional?
Melissa Gillispie
Yeah. I think it's just trying to limit barriers of entry. Right. So I think for us allowing somebody to place a partial or full deposit to reserve a home, they got to put skin in the game. There's some money where your mouth is. But to come up with a full move and balance on and one moment of, you know, three $5,000, you think about first month, last month are all the things you have to pay a pet fee. Who the heck knows you got an application fee? All these things that can be really hard for people to come up with. And so I think the original mindset behind that was to structure this in such a way that someone could reserve a property and still have some time to get their ducks in a row. We don't let that go on forever. There's a 30 day timeline, so it's not like it can go on indefinitely. But I think the the mentality is, how do we help soften the blow of those moving costs to residents? Because that's just not I mean, I look back on those times in my life, in the past and I'm like, man, that was hard. That's hard. It's expensive to move.
Andrew Smallwood
So yeah, no, I mean, you mentioned that you're, many renters, right, that are cash strapped. They're waiting on a deposit to come back from their last place. They may not get everything that they expected out of that. And, you know, their income flow. They've got the moving expenses and everything else related to that. And it can be, a tricky, tricky month or two right there to navigate.
Melissa Gillispie
I mean, I think the reality is you a lot of people that live paycheck to paycheck and that is coming up with a couple thousand dollars is a significant lift. And so trying to be as helpful as we can and understanding of people's circumstances aren't all the same. And, what's a little bit to someone is actually a whole heck of a lot of money to someone else.
Andrew Smallwood
Totally. Okay, great. Well, yes, I would. I do want to cover a couple other things. I really appreciate you kind of going deep with us and doing a, breakdown, you know, from the 111 perspective on, on long term leases. I want to talk about scaling growth in particularly Lee, you know, you've been at JWB for ten years, so you've seen multiple stages, right, of this. And as you guys have continued to grow and expand, there's there's this natural tension of how do I grow our customer count and our unit count. Right. And the size of the business, the number of people that we're serving impacting with the operation and the strength of the experience on the units that you have. And, you know, a lot of people would say, I'm trying to at least maintain this while I grow this. But certainly there's people listening as podcasts are especially ambitious that say I want to improve and strengthen the experience over time, while also, you know, adding more customers and growing the business to have the biggest possible impact my business can have. And so I'm just curious, like your guys journey, you know, ten years doing this, what have been some of those challenges that you guys have really faced? What are some of the things that you've figured out, you know, along the way that you'd pass along his advice to others?
Melissa Gillispie
So many things. It's hard. It's really hard, right? I don't think there's a perfect answer. I know we have not done it perfectly along the way. I think one thing that stands out to me as something that we're relatively good at, though, is inspecting what we expect and what we focus on improves. So, you know, when you grow, you have to be able to one set great expectations with your internal team on how we're going to show up. So I'll use an example. You know, we acquired a business last year and it was about $350. And that is absorbed all at once. And that's a really hard thing when you are I mean, we're a team of 100. We're not this huge outfit that has unlimited resources right? Everybody is working really hard every single day. And so when you just infuse the business with 350 new properties on November, September 4th, that causes some immediate friction and so setting really clear expectations on what are the bite size ways we're going to kind of chunk this out. And we're going to focus on communication first. And we have to make sure that our client and resident communication is the one thing that never suffers. So even if there's mistakes in the background and even if there's things internally that are hiccups and we're learning and it's bumps along the road, client communication rather than communication cannot ever be the thing that suffers. And so if you set that as the expectation and you clearly say, this is what we we are expecting, you usually are going to get that. And then you have a way to kind of audit yourself, check and balance. Are we doing the things that we said we were going to do? Are we doing them well? So everything in our office is a inspect what you expect, you set the expectation, and then you look under the hood and determine whether or not we're meeting it. And you coach and teach through that. It's like anything, right? If there's an area of our business that isn't going well, we are going to laser focus in on that and it's going to improve. And that's just like this. It's just naturally it happens right where you give your energy. Where you give your attention is what's going to get better. And so I think if you choose your spots, like these are the things that will consistently always be improving and we'll always be focused on. That's really important. I think something else that's helpful is feedback, like being willing to solicit feedback who likes to be told like you're not doing a great job. Wow, you have not met my ass. No one likes. That's not fun. It can be painful, especially when we take our businesses very personally and it feels like a direct reflection of us. But that is a way that we have continually been able to do a pretty good job by saying, hey, resident, we want to know how we're doing. Here's an NPS that we send to you every six months. And like, that's it was so uncomfortable when we first started that because we were like, oh my gosh, who asks for feedback from their residents? You know, but it's been one of the most powerful tools that we have to measure the customer experience as we have grown. And so now I look at it with fondness. I'm like, this is nice. I love seeing the progression and also hearing what's still maybe a rub for people. So you kind of have to be brave. I don't know, I feel like you just got to be brave and accept the potential criticism to allow yourself to see blind spots and in a phase of reality when things are or aren't going good. I don't know if that answers your question. I feel like I went all over the place with that and I now know. Hopefully that was helpful.
Andrew Smallwood
You covered some great ground there. And one thing I'd like, to follow up on is, you know, you talked about inspecting what you expect, and here what you focus on, it grows and I'm just curious, how do you measure your customer experience at JWB? Like what are some of the kind of key or core KPIs that you would say, you know what, as we've added these 350 units all at once, we're starting to see X and Y and Z suffer. Right. And we've got a problem here that we need to address like what are some of those KPIs that you guys are paying close attention to to know, we are meeting our standard. Right. And we are building the kind of reputation we want to be building.
Melissa Gillispie
So NPS is the big one. And so any time in the example of acquiring a new company last year, after 30 days, the first NPS goes out to those people. So you get a very quick picture of this going, well or not, you know, oh, I felt like it was going fine. Maybe it's not. So I think NPS is key. And then tracking and benchmarking that over time. When we first started doing mass with residents, I want to say our score was like, I don't know, 6%. And when you think about that, you're like, that's terrible. That's so bad. If you look at the actual property management space, it's not terrible. But to me, I was like, I cannot see I'm behind this, right? But and so that was scary. So we said, you know what, we're just going to benchmark this over time. Let's give ourselves a year to see where this actually lands. So I think NPS is a big one. We're at 30% NPS on the air with our residents, which is I'm so proud of. So anyway, so I now and.
Andrew Smallwood
Just I want to get some context for people, Melissa, who may be less familiar with I know some people listening to this.
Melissa Gillispie
Yeah.
Andrew Smallwood
They also track in sales for those who aren't. NPS stands for Net Promoter Score. And the measurement goes from -100 up to 100. Right. So it's like a 200 point scale, so to speak. And you're asking the question that residents or clients are answering is on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend that, like qubit, right to somebody else refers to somebody else? And, and the way the scores work, if I'm recalling correctly, I think it's like 8 to 10 means you're getting a point.
Melissa Gillispie
Nine or ten. You're getting promoters.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay, that's the promoter. And then it's like 7 or 8 or somewhere around there. It's kind of neutral. Yeah. And then if it's below that it's actually to track eight points. So that's why you can end up all the way at -100 potentially. And potentially as high as, you know, positive 100. And for benchmarking like some of the most, admirable companies in the world, Amazon etc., like their NPS might sit at a place like seven eight. And I think the average NPS score for property management last time I looked was like -12. Yeah. Right. And so, so yeah. So you having a positive NPS is good that you can prove it from 6 to 30, you know. So that's something you guys have been focused on. And it sounds like you're tracking it not just like, hey, it at day 30, like, here's what's the move in experience like and how they went through leasing and their initial move in, but also trying to get over time resonance and looking at those trends is something you guys focus on.
Melissa Gillispie
Yeah. And we're I mean I could go on and on. We literally track any and everything. We love data. So NPS is one of the resident experience pieces of the puzzle. I think we look at how many positive reviews we're generating on a monthly basis, and that is something that we look at as a company and a team, and it's also something we look at as an individual basis for our property management teammates, where we have short term goals to generate so many per quarter by team. And so that says a lot. If someone's going to stop and take time out of their day to click a button and write kind words, very easy for people to click a button and write mean things. But to write kind words and mention people by name, that to me speaks volumes for the experience that they're having when they're interacting with us. So that's another way we measure that. And then I think we try our best to look at communication audits. So we have certain expectations for right communication and how often we'd be reaching out to somebody who hasn't paid. And then we have an audit the supervisors are doing to say, did we do that? Did we do those communications? If we didn't, let's talk that through. And so it's communication's a hard thing to audit and track and measure, especially across thousands of people. But I think to the best of your ability, finding ways to look at what that communication really is, is important. I'm trying to think what else we would use, I guess to me were renewals is, yep, a pretty good indicator of how well people are liking working with you. Because if they're willing to stay and pay more money to stay, that typically tells me that we're doing a pretty good job. And then on the client side, churn, I think is a big one, right? How many clients are leaving and for what reasons? And tracking those reasons to try to bucket into trends. Is it selling it because it's reached it's like the investments reach, it's life cycle. Is it a really bad personal life thing that the clients going through and they need the cash now? You know, we've had situations where, you know, somebody has cancer or some things are outside of our control or is it, hey, I'm leaving management to go to a different company because you have not met my needs. Those ones looking at that, taking a lot of time to look and say, where did we go wrong? What can be fixed? How can we be better? And you know, you just learn as you go.
Andrew Smallwood
So you know what? I love what you said about the last one is I think a lot of people would say, okay, your least retention, you know, is a key business metric, right? To track, in addition to, you know, how it connects to the kind of customer experience you're delivering. But, you know, we got to acknowledge that there's factors outside of just how we're performing as a team that would influence a metric like that. And the same thing, true on the owner side, but that you're asking for the reasons why somebody would be moving out. And, hey, if the answer is job relocation and you know these other factors, well, okay, like what what percentage, you know, is reflected in that versus I'm having a terrible maintenance experience. And I believe if I moved to another property or to a different manager company, then I'm going to have a better experience somewhere else, right? That there may be more opportunity and an answer like that, than something else or what the feedback on pricing is, or other things of that nature. And what's within your control versus what's within your influence versus just things. You need to be aware of what's happening generally already in the market, so you can respond appropriately to each. I love that you guys are doing that. Yeah. Melissa, here's how I want to wrap. I'd love to ask you, as you look forward to kind of like the years ahead, what excites you most? Not just at JWB and not just personally, but for the industry as a whole, professional property management companies. What gets you most excited as you look forward?
Melissa Gillispie
I think the thing that's most exciting to me is really the continued focus on the resident, and that this is not just a service to an investor or an owner, that there are real human beings in our community is that we are impacting. And I think about housing like to me, that is just such a innate need we all have. We all need a roof over our heads. We all want our families to feel safe, to feel proud of where we live and we get to do that like we have direct control and influence in how we go about impacting people's lives. So I think for me, the most exciting thing is how do we all get better at what we're doing as professional property managers, and how do we all keep that as a focus that this isn't just about the numbers, it's not just about how profitable we are. Of course, all those things matter. You got to stay in business. But this is real lives where your impacting people in a very tangible way every single day. It's just like the responsibility to me is huge, and it's exciting that we get to have a hand in people's lives. I don't know, I just, I love it, it gets me really fired up.
Andrew Smallwood
Well, you know, it's clear that, the responsibility and ownership that you guys take at JWB for providing a great experience for residents and turning that flier, we all have how that great experience can create a great investor experience. And one for the team that you're building. And really the employer brand that you guys are building in Jacksonville is it's really fun to see you guys keep turning that. We all over and over, over again. And yes, there's more opportunity for us in the future. So Melissa, thanks so much for being with us today. Sharing your stories, examples, you guys thinking and what informs the kind of unique practices that you guys have there. And just sharing so generously with us today really appreciate that.
Melissa Gillispie
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks for having me. This is great.
Laura Mac & Carol Housel
And that wraps up another episode of the Triple-Win Property Management podcast. Thank you for pressing play. We hope you've gained valuable insights and inspiration.
The Triple-Win Property Management Podcast is proudly produced and distributed by Second Nature, where we believe in a Triple-Win, building winning experiences for your residents, investors and your teams with the only fully managed resident benefits package. Visit SecondNature.com to learn more and talk to an RBP expert in your area. If you have any questions or comments or want to weigh in on the conversation, we'd love to hear from you. Email TripleWin@SecondNature.com. That's TripleWin@SecondNature.com. Stay connected with us beyond the podcast. Visit our website at SecondNature.com to stay updated with upcoming property management events and articles. And don't forget, you can keep the conversation going in the Triple-Win Property Management Facebook group. It's exclusively for property managers. To receive even more valuable insights and updates, subscribe to our newsletter. You can find the link to that and much more in the show notes. On behalf of the Triple-Win community, this is Laura Mac, thanking you for tuning in. And on behalf of Second Nature, this is Carol Housel. Check back soon for another exciting episode. Until then, keep striving for that Triple-Win.