On this weekâs podcast episode, we brought back a guest weâve had on the #DoorGrowShow before, Joe Edgar from Tenant Cloud.
Property management growth expert, Jason Hull sits down with Joe Edgar to talk about the many new features that have been added to Tenant Cloud to benefit property managers and what is next to come for property management and real estate technology in 2023.
You’ll Learn…
[01:35] An Introduction to Tenant Cloud
[06:44] The Different Systems PMs Need
[14:11] Integrating Different Property Management Tools
[17:36] Tenant Management and Roommates
[27:43] Accessing and Transferring your Data
[31:55] Are Completely Remote Showings the Future?
Tweetables
“Listings are important because of course, as soon as you have a rental, what do you need? You need a tenant. Nothing worse than vacant property.”
“So there’s a relationship in all of those that you really have to harbor and that’s where making sure you’re connected to your tenants and you’re connected to managing service for them is important because then they will reach out to you to buy one where if it’s a bad experience, they won’t.”
“You’re busy doing all this work, but then actually going back and making sure you’re making money at what you’re doing is often the last thing they look at.”
“You have two choices in life… You can be reactive or you can be proactive. ”
Resources
Transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: Because thatâs one of the hard parts is youâre busy doing all this work, but then actually going back and making sure youâre making money at what youâre doing is often the last thing they look at. They worry about because theyâre trying to provide to customers, their owners. Yeah. And the tenants, good quality customer support. And so thatâs where itâs the hard challenge and making sure theyâre all connected in a nice, easy way.
[00:00:20] Jason: All right, we are live. Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and youâre interested in growing in business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think youâre crazy for doing it. You think theyâre crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bs, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Iâm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now letâs get into the show.
[00:01:25] All right, so my guest today is Joe Edgar. And Joe, itâs been a while since weâve had you on the show here, so.
[00:01:33] Joe: Yeah, definitely has. Glad to be here.
[00:01:35] Jason: So Joe started a company called Tenant Cloud. And today youâre going to be talking about property management and real estate technology in 2023. So, Bring us up to date, man.
[00:01:47] Joe: Yeah, it has been a while since we first launched, I think back in 2016 was a real focus on the DIY landlord and trying to support that general group. And as it really has grown intoâ our biggest following is now really property managers focused in the single family rental space. So, that distinction has come down to really the difference in logistics. And so, as many know in property management, if youâre managing multi-family, then you usually have somebody on site, but if youâre managing single family rentals, thereâs just too many properties. And so Yeah. Ends up being a logistical nightmare. And so thatâs really where we end up fine tuning our solution is all around the logistics, managing those single family rentals and helping you grow your business.
[00:02:30] Jason: Cool. So what have you been up to since then? Iâm sure youâve made some updates to Tenant Cloud.
[00:02:36] Joe: Yeah, there have been a lot of updates especially since then. I think some of the best things that really help a property management company really get going is the fact that you can sign up for Tenant Cloud and in just a couple of minutes for free. There are some paid solutions, but just on the basis of free, you can set up your own company website. From your company website, you can have its own listing portal. So all of your listings that youâre going to manage, it can have applications and so tenants can find you. They can apply for a rental. You can manage that application, you can send it back for more information. You can charge a management fee or not. Lots of customization inside of there. You could have multiple bank accounts. If you have different owners, you can, send an agreement to an owner have them sign it. They have their own portal so they can own their own reports. And then of course, the more traditional stuff on top of that, which is, just managing the property itself. Everything from maintenance to just general communication with your tenants. And so all those things kind of fit in there. I think the most fun thing that we have that really brings a lot of value worth mentioning is if you follow the industry, weâre starting to see these silos and vertical step up. I think the biggest mover now is co-star who is looking to buy move.com, which is realtor.com. And so theyâre really trying to have that niche. And then Zillow of course, exists. And then you have Redfin whoâs putting together a lot of other sites. And those are all around listings. And so listings are important because of course, as soon as you have a rental, what do you need? You need a tenant. Nothing worse than vacant property. So, we built this thing. We have so many tenants that come to us. Our affiliate sites, College Pads, and Rentler, are all really bringing us lots and lots of leads.
[00:04:25] So having all of these leads, we decided to go the extra mile. We said, what if we offered all of them the ability to basically say what it is theyâre looking for. And by telling us what theyâre looking for, we can then match them with all of the inventory of vacancies. And so we take users who are already, they came to us for the purpose of trying to find a home. And we have all these property managers who are trying to find tenants into their rentals. So we built this thing called premium leads, and really you could think of it as like Tinder for tenants. Okay. And so what happens is the tenant will put on what theyâre looking for. Theyâre like, âI want Southwest Austin. Iâm looking for, $2,500 a month, a two bedroom, one bath, a yard, a fence.â Say the general things theyâre looking for. And the second you turn on premium leads as a landlord, it will take all of your properties, even if theyâre not listed, itâll have them already matched, but they wonât see it. The tenant wonât see it until you actually make it live by listing it. And immediately all of those show up for the property manager. So the second you turn on premium leads, you have potentially, like, I love turning it on because itâs such a nice feeling to like list a property, immediately you have like 15 leads, youâre like, âThatâs great,â and you invite them to apply. So you just invite them to apply and that sends real invites to those tenants. So those tenants now got a personal invite from you and you can go through, the tenant goes through it. If they like the property, they can swipe left and ask more questions. They can fill out a rental application, maybe schedule a showing, anything like that. Or if they donât like it, they swipe left and they move on their way.
[00:06:03] Jason: So theyâll swipe right if they like it. Yep. And left if they donât, and then itâs swipe left if they donât. Got it.
[00:06:08] Joe: Yeah. So itâs a very non-abrasive way to approach all of these different tenants looking for leads. And so it now is the largest lead generator inside of our solution. So we integrate with Zillow, we integrate with realtor.com, many of the Redfin solutions, but it now outperforms all of them. It produced about 60% of the leads on Tenant Cloud. Wow. So itâs a really nice way to go and find and fill your tenants. So again, everything, itâs really about bringing all of those things that you have to property management into one easy solution at a low cost, help you save time, grow your business.
[00:06:44] Jason: So if somebody already is like knee deep in another property management software, can they still use the premium leads?
[00:06:50] Joe: Oh yeah, for sure. Itâs easy. I mean, thatâs whatâs nice is itâs segmented off. We have a lot of property managers who do multi-family and multi-family is a different beast. We have a lot who hack us and use us for like multi-family, but as I said, the single family rentals has a logistics problem and I can explain why weâre so different in that space. Sure. But when you get into multi-family we know where the space and we know the industry. And so if youâre in multi-family more traditionally after one of those larger property management solutions, and most of that is in part because multi-family is 95% owned by institutional investors. And institutional investors need data. These large rates. And so weâre not designed for that big stuff. Weâre really out to help smaller property managers kind of, grow their business and not answer to large rates. So the way the data flows separates us pretty substantially. And so thatâs what would make a unique thing. So on the logistics problem you have, maybe you have one maintenance person, but a lot donât. And so the key feature is if you were a property manager, you already know, itâs like how many property managers can manage how many units? You have the math and itâs generally around a hundred units per person.
[00:08:04] And you can get some that are starting to get more efficient. Theyâre getting into like duplexes and triplexes where they get down to, maybe the 85 to one. But normally about a hundred. And a hundredâs a good number because if youâre also a broker, then you also know Iâm managing these properties because I know about 5% of them will bring me additional business annually. Either my clients are selling or my clients are buying, or my tenants are looking to buy. Right. So thereâs a relationship in all of those that you really have to harbor and thatâs where making sure youâre connected to your tenants and youâre connected to managing service for them is important because then they will reach out to you to buy one where if itâs a bad experience, they wonât.
[00:08:43] And so having a nice solution on their phone that they can easily sign a lease, they filled out their application, they can pay their rent, they can view everything thatâs in their power, is great. Then in addition, if anything happens, they can go to their phone. And thereâs four simple questions that breaks 1500 problems with a home down into four simple questions that are icon based. And so they select them and they can take a picture and a video and it goes direct to the property manager. And the property manager now has the choice because we canât say, not all tenants are accurate. Not all tenants know how to fix anything. And so, whatever they say the problem is, it could be something different. And so Iâve had this on my own experience where itâs like, I find out the roof keeps leaking, but Iâm like, you realize it hasnât rained in weeks. And you find out itâs the air conditioner. Itâs like catching condensation. And so you know what they say the problem is and what it actually is is not always the case. And so itâs nice. You get the maintenance request, you have a picture, you have a video, you have a small explanation if they wanted to add it to it. And if you have a service professional that you work with, you can send it to them or you can change the category. You can schedule it from there.
[00:09:50] And once you assign it to them, they can now communicate directly with the tenant, but you are privy to all the messages. And now they can schedule this outside of it. Or you can plan for them, but they can schedule outside of you having to do it constantly. Now, thatâs one method. It can also be if youâre in a property management office thereâs one here in Austin I just talked to. They have 50 rentals, so theyâre growing theirs. Theyâre managing on behalf of about 10 owners. And so thatâs not big enough on their level to have a maintenance person on staff. And so they contract everything. And so whatâs nice is inside of theirs, they can actually use it inside the maintenance request. They can get a quote and that quote goes out to all service professionals in the local area that can then send in bids on behalf of that. And you can run it in two different flows. You can say, âokay, well Iâll make the decision,â depending on what you have with the owner. Or you can send the different quotes to the owner to pick one of them.
[00:10:44] And so thereâs lots of different ways to manage that. But now once you connect them, you can then do the same thing. Youâre like, okay, I like your bid. You do it, Iâll schedule you. Youâre in. And then you have privy. And then thereâs a way the tenant can say, well, itâs not done exactly. And they say it is done. So you kind of do a lot before you actually have to go on site. I mean, when I was doing property management, the worst thing was most of the site visits are not what they said. And theyâre things like, âthe lights are out,â and itâs because the light bulb is burned up. Itâs like, well, thatâs not, you just wasted a lot of time for me to drive across town. Thereâs two hours of wasted time to do this. And so having those logistics are great. Thatâs the heart of Tenant Cloud. But then on top of that, itâs like, okay, well the logistic problem and getting on the phone and scheduling is tough. Then I got to account for all this.
[00:11:30] And accounting is the next piece. So when the tenant goes in and enters that, we have those categories of which theyâre selecting by icon based for maintenance requests. Theyâre matched with both revenue and expenditure and capital expenditure categories inside the accounting automatically. And then in addition, you can keep track of any assets. And by that I mean if you have a refrigerator or an oven, you can store all those in. So if a maintenance request comes, you can actually look up any piece of equipment like a fridge and it can tell you, show you all the maintenance requests itâs had. Itâll find correlations like things. Youâre replacing this motor every year so you can make those decisions on like, we probably should just get a new fridge. But then inside of that, all of those are matched with the IRS 1040 Schedule E categories. And so what is great is you as a property manager who is going to be doing your 1099s at the end of the year. Your contractors, if you were to bid it inside the system, you can pay them and they can invoice you. So if itâs someone you donât know, then of course theyâll create an invoice for you after the work. But itâs someone you do know and they just, youâre figuring out what the bill is on the side. You can message them on the side or directly in the ticket, and then you can pay them directly. Whatâs nice is when it comes to accounting time, your owners have a very clean, simple 1040 Schedule E already done for them that has all their costs laid out, that you didnât have to go back and do anything extra, has all the receipts matched to it. Each one goes all the way down. And each property manager, as a refer to, are these âadditional opportunities.â Thereâs lots of ways, depending on how you have a relationship with your owner to set up those additional opportunities.
[00:13:06] For example, you could just charge like, I have a 10% fee on top of any cost for maintenance I do. And so that would be added into maintenance requests. So thatâs already being done. Or you could have it, we have a flat rate that we charge for tenants. I mean thereâs lots of ways to set it up for your property management company to make sure theyâre accounting for their revenue as well. Because thatâs one of the hard parts is youâre busy doing all this work, but then actually going back and making sure youâre making money at what youâre doing is often the last thing they look at. They worry about because theyâre trying to provide to customers, their owners. Yeah. And the tenants, good quality customer support. And so thatâs where itâs the hard challenge and making sure theyâre all connected in a nice, easy way. And everything kind of flows in a simple recurring way that is predictable and you know for sure how itâs going to work is an important part of growing your business. And so then that passes through to the owners can fully see their reports. You have your reports for your 1099s and all of it happened behind the scenes without you really looking at it. So the heart of it is to be kind of a logistics and accountant, a back office person to help you, a small property management company kind of grow.
[00:14:10] Jason: Cool. Cool. So the maintenance coordination piece, solving that logistics challenge, can that be used by companies that are also using another property management software already?
[00:14:20] Joe: Yeah. Sorry, I kind of went on aâ I digress. That was your question before. You can kind of go on and use whatever piece you want. So we have lots of larger ones who are doing multi-family and they have found that they get all our leads at Tenant Cloud. So they still use their traditional property management software to answer to the beast above them for accounting. Yeah. But they get all their leads and manage all their rental applications through Tenant Cloud. And for their business, they get to keep the application fee. And so itâs nice because they can set all that up and so they run everything there. So all the applications you can do a background check, you can do a full one, you can do a partial one. So thereâs lots of different variations you can do in there. And so itâs nice for them because they manage everything on there. Once they actually do a lease, then they actually put them in their other property management software and do it on there. And then some are slowly kind of converting into Tenant Cloud as it does more for them. As they see, theyâre like, well, why donât we just move here? But in a lot of the wreaths they donât. But on slower ones, yeah, you can manage just leads.
[00:15:15] We have a really nice CRM tool built in. And so because we give you a free website and then we distribute your listing to so many different places, we set you up on a unique text number. You donât know what it is, it doesnât matter to you, but whatâs great is it does matter to someone looking at your rental. And so to find your listing on any site, and then, if I have a rental application, thatâs an easy one. Iâll fill out the application that goes through the system and you get a nice, clean application. You can request more information, whatever you want to do. But when itâs just a lead, which is how most of them come in. Theyâll send you a message and they can do it via text straight from the listing. They hit a number, they send you a text, and you can respond to them via text, right in your Tenant Cloud account. And so thatâs where you can take all the different messengers, have it in one place, nice and simple track notes, maybe itâs, maybe the one theyâre looking for is not available now and you want to use it for later, so you just tag it.
[00:16:08] But yeah, thereâs different parts of Tenant Cloud that you can use for just different parts of your business, depending on what youâre doing.
[00:16:13] Jason: So what youâre saying is on the tenant side, thereâs basically CRM for tenant leads and that you can manage that communication and you can do it through text message because the listings have that number on it. Exactly. And then on the maintenance coordination thing, which also sounded really cool that piece can be used standalone as well, is what youâre saying?
[00:16:31] Joe: Yep. Correct. Okay. Each one is really segmented Now if you use them altogether, of course, they just make life easier, but sure. But yeah, you really can use each little function separately. Now, if you wanted to come from another software, you can easily upload your data. So we have tools for that. And if you ever wanted to take Tenant Cloud data, this is one of the things, it has been our companyâs motto from the beginning, that we are not making business on holding your data randsom. And so you can easily take your data at any time you want and use it and flow it anywhere. And so some of those have been good. We have a QuickBooks integration, so that makes it seamless. But we have others who use some other unique accounting software, and so weâve made that so you can just pull your data and put it in anything else that you want as well. So thereâs lots of reasons to have that, but thatâs an important thing before you use one, youâre like, I want to know that I can get all my data out of it. because youâre uploading images. Yeah, youâre uploading tenant information. I mean, it ends up becoming your record retention for a lot of stuff that youâre doing on a legal basis. And so itâs important to have all that, but to also have access to where you can get rid of it on a digital form, but store it somewhere still.
[00:17:36] Jason: So if we were to look at the Tenant Cloud ecosystem or, system as a whole, weâve got, the tenant lead sort of CRM in communication for taking care of the vacancy situation. Weâve got the maintenance coordination piece, weâve got the accounting piece youâve mentioned. What other major?
[00:17:53] Joe: So thereâs tenant management. Tenant management is just one where you want to have all your information about each tenant. It may flow from the application but then once you have it, you want to message them. And so you could have tenants all on one street and you need to message them and say, âHey, street clean, street sweeping on this date. So you can message a part of them. Or you may have all your tenants at large, you have a policy change youâre going to do, or you may have two cities and you say, okay, in this city this is changing. And so just helping manage all of those tenants and having a place to keep both private and information that you share with the tenant is really important.
[00:18:29] So there are things like, for instance, if you enter an accounting or you send us something, itâs nice to know that itâs live. And itâs also nice to know that they have seen it. And so when you have a message, you can see for sure that you see, as we all know a hard part, but a reality of property management is that you will end up in a court, every so often with a tenant. And so making sure you have an easy place to account for all your timing and what you did with a maintenance request. And all of your messages in regards to just your relationship in general in one place is really important. And so to be able to pull it out and show dates and to be able to show what was seen and what wasnât seen is really important. A nice, easy process to kind of print it out and, bring it to court. As you will know, itâs a huge part. And unfortunately thatâs part of the business, but it is one that you really, if youâre going to grow your business, itâs an important part to have, early. So thereâs tenant management.
[00:19:20] We have a whole calendar scheduling piece, and thatâs really important because itâs the next piece that Iâll talk about is as you grow your property management business, in the beginning itâs usually just you. And thatâs fantastic because that is definitely where youâre like, I need to grow this. And then you bring out, and sometimes itâs a significant other. Thatâs fantastic if you can pull that off. Right. And so thereâs two of you, right? And often theyâll use the same logins, right? Because theyâre like, thereâs two of us. So weâre talk, we see each other enough that weâll do stuff. But once you have that first real hire, itâs a different business. Because now you really donât have the same, itâs a professional relationship and you donât have that same thing where youâre like, we do need to, like whoâs doing what. Yeah. And so even though I say itâs this calendar function, we have a team feature. You can go in and add team members and you can change all the settings for each team member.
[00:20:10] And so it could be like it, you can assign them specific properties and so theyâre only able to see stuff on properties. You could limit them from accounting, you could limit them from certain settings. And so thereâs lots of ways, depending on what the team member is. For instance, you could have accountant, you could have a property manager just doing marketing, and you could have someone who, does maintenance. So just depending on what it is. But whatâs great about your team function is now you have a way to communicate with them. So very easily in a chat you can press a hash sign and find any of your properties in a message, and it will pull that up and then have a link to it. And then at sign you can find any one of your team members. And from a message, you can make that a task. And so all of a sudden tasks are running for everybody. And as the master account, you can see all the tasks going through on the calendar, and then you can message, each other about different tenants or any type of messaging that goes on there. And so youâll find, and then the system itself will self-generate tasks for you. For example, ones you should, theyâre obvious, that is like, all right, I have a lease. I want to know two months in advance before this lease expires.
[00:21:12] Tell me, cause I need to renew it. It could be, I talked to this tenant and theyâre going to schedule something, they send a message and from that message, theyâre going to pay rent two days late. But I get it. And so boom, you have a task, youâre going to have those reminders come up. And so thatâs really that angle from trying to get the system knows a lot of the things that you automatically need to do. So theyâre already in there. For instance, every six months you need to check smoke detectors you need to do servicing before winter. Thereâs cleanup. So all those things can be automatic inside of that calendar, but then really running inside the team function really brings it to work because now you mix that with your maintenance team or whether theyâre outside or not, but itâs assigning them and it really becomes a magic. So we built this kanban board where you can manage a lot of those tasks, especially when you get more than a hundred properties and youâre trying to grow your business. Youâll know exactly what Iâm talking about. Youâre just like, âah, I forgot.â So you have two choices in life. When it gets that big, you can be reactive. Or you can be proactive. So we have tried to build a system to help you be proactive. And thatâs, itâs telling you before you think about it. So then youâre like, âoh yeah, I totally forgot about it.â I do need to schedule you that. You move it into the next kanban board, you assign it to this person, run it there. And so itâs really a great way for a team to come together and trying to do property management. And so thatâs one of the features. Thereâs quite a few features, but another one Iâll mention thatâs worth noting, that makes us different than other solutions as well is when you go down to single family rentals, a lot donât knowâ many in this area will knowâ but universities are very unique in that universities have a higher density of smaller property managers managing around the university than non universities. And so if you get out away from the universities, youâre into these big apartment developments and so theyâre slightly different. And you get into universities and thereâs quite a few property managers that just service around that area.
[00:23:01] And so one of the struggles for the property managers is always how do they deal with roommates? And you have so many different ways to deal with a roommate. You could take one rental and I could rent out every room individually, or I could rent out the whole house and just say, okay, well Iâm going to, Iâll rent out the house to all of you, but each one of you are going to pay a specific amount. Or I can rent out the whole house, and Iâm going to say, all right, I donât know. I donât care. Youâre all on the lease. However you pay, just get me the money. And so those are all very different structurally in how you set something up and it all the way down from receiving an application, vetting them, moving them in to sign a lease, and moving them out, holding deposits and the ongoing relationship.
[00:23:42] Theyâre all different. And so whatâs nice is we really have thought through a lot of those, and theyâre not just on roommates. So weâre starting to see this happen now in older care centers. And so, assisted living of sorts, they are now doing a lot of roommate features. And so these are older care centers that are using us for property management software. However, they usually the tenants are self-sustaining, so they donât need a nurse. Theyâre just living inside of a center. And so the same kind of features. And so a lot of this roommate functionality is taken off and then really during 2020, like, when Covid kind of happened, it wasnât as popular. It was a feature that we had built in and we we thought it was really aimed for the college universities as college pads, one of our partners. And so we had built that in, but really starting last year. And my own take is that real estate went so expensive that youâre seeing a lot of roommates pop in. And so a lot of people are procrastinating moving into their own place. Rentals are taking off and people are moving in together. So now you see this over pouring. So the last report realtor.com did it. However it follows what Wall Street Journal did. That theirs was, there are 2 million households formed again last year, which means we are missing 6.5 million homes in the marketplace based on them. And if we are missing 6.5 million and things are so expensive, you are saying we have no choice that roommates are just over pouring into everyoneâs lives. So what they didnât think was is now a single family home, an apartment, everyone is now dealing with roommates and itâs created software problems everywhere.
[00:25:24] One that we have already solved and thought through. Thatâs a great feature because how you rent them matters. Itâs, it changes the entire relationship from being a customer support frustration. Like if theyâre each paying a separate amount and youâre doing rooms, but youâre treating it as a solution where theyâre all in the same one, youâll just mess up all, for everyone. And so being able to manage those on so many different levels is really nice because you can have separate leases. One lease that they all sign and they all share their invoice, where as soon as one pays all the rest of them see it and they can figure out how to pay. Or you can just say each one of youâre paying and then somebodyâs else is out and theyâre done. Or you going to move one in and move mountains, move the deposit. So it becomes such a problem that itâs one to be noted. But now in todayâs industry, were roommate renting is just a commonplace, so thatâs a feature worth talking about.
[00:26:11] Jason: Very cool. Yeah. Cool. All right, so weâve got the maintenance coordination, the accounting, the CRM for tenant leads, tenant management and communication, youâve got the calendar scheduling, which sounds like kind of team communication, and then youâve got the Roommates functionality, so,
[00:26:29] Joe: so we have a whole document. So anything you can manage all your, so we have both PDF and from scratch. So if you want to build an agreement yourself, you can drop in, easy pop in auto fills on the template, or you can just add a PDF and build the template. We also have them available for every state and county if theyâre divided. So lots of stuff to do E-signature and create your own lease agreements and manage kind of all that in-house as well. And then notices, So you can build a template notice, send it to a tenant when you know, rentâs due or something like that.
[00:26:58] Jason: Nice. Very cool. Yeah. Well, sounds like you guys have been busy so.
[00:27:03] Joe: Very busy. Yeah, itâs been fun. Yeah.
[00:27:06] Jason: Very cool. Well, yeah, I can see how this would stand out from some of the property management software. Now you had mentioned that people can migrate from their existing software. So how difficult, because this is usually really painful for people, Yeah, to transition. Iâve seen people go from AppFolio to Buildium or AppFolio to Rent Manager or switching to Propertyware or Propertyware to AppFolio. Like, so how difficult or easy is it to switch from one of these to Tenant cloud and are there some that are easier than others?
[00:27:42] Joe: No. So weâve tried to make it as easy as possible. So what we do is we give you a template. So if you go into upload, you can find the upload and then you download a template Excel file. And basically youâll take whatever data you can get. Thatâs the hardest part really isnât so much setting it up in Tenant Cloud. Itâs more other companies arenât so willing to just give you data. And thatâs the hardest part is that if you can get the data from them, we give you a template thatâs really easy added in and once itâs in, youâre done. Your tenants are set up, all their information is set up. The lease is set up. If you have late fees that are in there, theyâll be set up. All of it will be done. Your property will be set up and youâll be live and itâll be working. But itâs all, itâs really more a problem of like, which software relationship are you trying to get out of? Thatâs a hard one because for us, and we have many that call and like, â well I just want all this!!â And weâre like, fortunately Buildium wonât give us that data. We canât call them on behalf of you. Yeah. So the only thing we can do is like they can give it to us. Yeah, exactly. So thatâs the hardest part in getting in, helping people migrate. Is just being able to pull all the information. They spent so much time, putting in another software but on our end, itâs really easy to kind of set it up.
[00:28:52] And thatâs the heart of it is because everything is connected. Itâs helping you do each phase of your life. Because if you ask a property manager, like, whatâs the hardest part of your job? Well it really depends like one on the season, on the time of the month, and what stage of the property is in. Because if itâs vacant, of course itâs like, I need a rental, I need leads. I got to find this. But if itâs, if theyâre all rented, well now youâre like, oh, I got fridges breaking everywhere. So it just depends on the job. So the softwareâs always set up to help you in all of those sanctions of your life. And so uploading it is really easy because it connects to all of them automatically and youâre kind of done. But yeah, again, the hardest part is getting the information. So, yeah, I wish I could say that was really easy, but thatâs a part we donât usually get to touch. So. Cool.
[00:29:35] Jason: Well, Tenant Cloud sounds pretty cool. I have not heard of too many people using it yet, and so Iâm really interested in getting some feedback. Thatâll be really interesting to see. So it sounds like you guys have really been innovating in the space, so.
[00:29:49] Joe: Yeah, weâve been trying to keep it as affordable as possible and get it going. We now have over a hundred thousand active property managers and landlords. Using it and over a million tenants. So itâs been fun, but youâll look at how big the market is and thereâs 15 million DIY landlords and something like 18,000 property managers. And, itâs a small slice.
[00:30:11] There are many out there still using, Excel or, a back of the notebook to keep track of stuff. So it is more about getting the word out there and let them know that there is a nice, easy solution to use.
[00:30:21] Jason: Yeah. Very cool. So, now if they have a website, like say from us third party website or their own site or whatever are they able to get the rental listings?
[00:30:31] Oh, I love that you said that. Yes.
[00:30:32] An embed code to put into their site.
[00:30:34] Joe: Yep. So if they just give us, they can tell us now, I will give you a quick hack so thereâs a quick hack, but then we can also help them do it. And so the quick hack is we give you a free site and if you have a listing link, so if you just relink that listing of yours and use Tenant Cloud, itâll automatically go there because itâs the relink. Right? However we can help you customize it. So the free one we give you is going to be an extension of Tenant Cloud, right? Yeah, itâs our free version. But if you want us to host it, we do have to be given the credentials, but we can host it and then youâll have an active live site, and then there are parts of it you can turn off or turn on. So you could use, if youâve already built one, you say, I want to host this, but I still want the listings on my native site. We can do that for you. We have quite a few that do that. So, and the listing functions nice. It gives you a map, itâll show all your rentals. So you have a sub thing that you can click and, see a preview and then you go to the full listing. And then on there is really where the CRM powers because it says, âdo you have a question?â Or itâll be like, âschedule a tourâ or âfill out an application.â And so each one of those, so if they schedule a tour or have a question that goes right to your CRM. And so thatâs where you can respond to them how whatever format they want to respond. If they give you email, you can do email. If itâs text, you can do text. Or if they create an account, they can talk actually through the Tenant Cloud app. But then of course theyâve got an application, it forces them to put that behind some closed information just so theyâre not
[00:31:55] Jason: Iâm seeing someâ put it outâ Smart property managers switching from doing one-off showings for every vacancy constantly to doing open house dial. And is that possible using Tenant Cloud?
[00:32:08] Joe: You can schedule them as open house, but what we donât have and that what we want to do, and this really came about from Covid, is weâve been working with a company, so itâs coming out here in the future, but itâs not there. And that is to be able to do remote showings. So the remote showings are slightly different than open house. What it is soon youâll be able to have where you set up, itâs a door lock, it gives a specific code to a phone, and then there are two cameras set up in it, wifi, and then so you have control of all the doors and you have a camera view. And so someone can go in and quickly get a text number thatâs going to be live for 10 minutes and you can literally watch them. And give them a short tour before they go out and you can secure the place back up and know whether any new windows were left open or any doors. And so you like, do those. So thatâs been more of the answer weâve done just because it is, if you do the open house it there, thereâs a lot of things that require onsite. So itâs like, how can we help property managers again, with the logistics problem. Yeah. And logistics problemâs the hard one because you go, you list the property. And half the problem is like only 50% of the people show up showings and you drove a long way to get there and youâre like, Ugh. And so yes, to get as many people at a specific time is great. And so you can kind of set that up with your calendar. Thatâs easy. But the real heart of it is like, how can I show this and actually just be right here on my computer? So I could do five showings at the exact same time from my laptop. And thatâs really the heart of what weâre trying to get to, is that you should be able to do that during business hours, know that itâs locked up and know who it is that went into the rental. And so thatâs part of it. They have to get verified in order to get a code. And so theyâre using their phone as part of that process. Thereâs a picture and an id check as well. And so theyâre verifying themselves, which just helps keep honest people honest when theyâre setting up and doing a rental. So youâre kind of doing a bit of vetting as you set some different things up. So, so thatâs more of where weâre trying to go, is trying to get more remote.
[00:34:04] Jason: Cool. Cool stuff. So, well, I think everybody should go check it out. How can people get in touch with you or learn more about Tenant Cloud?
[00:34:13] Joe: Yeah, Iâm always easiest on Twitter, so, @Joe_Edgar_ , always accessible there. Tenant Cloudâs the sites, t e n a n t c l o u d TenantCloud.com. And you can find us on all the social media. But yeah, definitely hope to check it out. Itâs, like I said, we have a base version thatâs free and then, other features that come on top of that. You can set up your bank account. Receive applications, list your property, move in a tenant, and collect rent online, and thatâs all free.
[00:34:42] Jason: So, Cool. Very cool. Yeah, I think that was the first episode we did with you. You, we were talking about how I think software for property managers will be free someday. So.
[00:34:51] Joe: Yes. I honestly think itâs going to go that more and more features are coming to where itâs like, the more of your business isnât there. Like some of the stuff I hope we get to, and Iâll mention this just because more of the viewers are property managers, but if you remember that I talked about the maintenance request function and getting a bid. Well, Iâm no stranger to property management. I own a couple of property management companies. And built the software off of that. And I know in our, one of them is fairly large, and so we have a maintenance crew, we have a turning crew, we have a painting crew. We now even have a a cabinet crew. We go through so many cabinets. Weâre like, we just need to build these ourselves. And so we have all these different crews and theyâre just doing us. But one of the biggest costs is the downtime. And so for them itâs like each one of them is a side business. And so itâs like weâve been trying to like think of ways there, like how can we grow this? And I know Iâm not alone. And so what weâre hoping to get to is that all the property managers who use us are. Theyâll soon have a little flip that comes up that they can turn on to now get leads. And so they will be part of the ones like saying, Hey, we have a service that does carpet cleaning. And so inside of my normal property management, now I can actually go and service people outside of the properties I manage if I want to look to expand some of the businesses that Iâve now created.
[00:36:10] And so, and itâs unique because property management is different. Like if I go and if I say to a property manager, Hey I have a property I need to do a turn on. They know exactly what that means. And thereâs not just one contractor outside of property management that could do that. And so property managers are in a unique space where theyâre like, well, I know exactly what you need. I need to go do an inspection. I need to check the carpets, I need to check the walls. Thereâs probably going to be some painting. I got to do a little plumbing. I may even have to do some hvac, Iâm going to have to do a little landscaping. And all of thatâs tied into it and owning a property manager has built out some of the functions to be able to service that. Itâs not all the property management companies, but quite a few of them will do it as they grow, just because theyâre like, well, weâre now in-house. Weâre doing enough of them. Iâve got one lawn mowing guy thatâs running or something. So, so itâs a nice feature that we hope to really bring out to embrace our own customers, helping them now find and grow their business in other unique ways they never thought about. So.
[00:37:05] Jason: Awesome. Very cool. Well, Joe, thanks for being on the show. Appreciate you being here.
[00:37:10] Joe: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks.
[00:37:11] Jason: All right, so check out tenantcloud.com. Sounds like itâs really cool software. Iâm really curious to get your feedback on how it compares to whatever else youâve been using or what youâre using for those that are doing research lately. So, let us know in our Facebook group. So join our free community thatâs available to property management entrepreneurs on Facebook. It is DoorGrow Club. The DoorGrow Club. You can get to that by going to DoorGrowclub.com and it will redirect you to our Facebook group. Answer the questions and join the group and we will give you some free gifts as well and that can benefit your property management business. And, check us out at DoorGrow.com. We are the worldâs leading property management coaching mastermind. We are helping grow and scale property management companies rapidly. We would love to help you grow and scale your business, figure out operations, make your day-to-day easier, and take some vacations, people.
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