Dwell Management » forge: a business expedition

defending tenants to owners

rebecca — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 04:28:44 +0000

i’ve recently been working on a code of ethics to add to our property management contract with rental owners.

years ago, a business mentor told me:

contracts grow by the difficulties we face and how we learn to more clearly define how and what we do

it’s time to add more definition.

i recently ended a relationship with a rental owner who wanted me to overcharge on a tenant’s security deposit settlement, an unfortunately common bully method in our industry.

i refused.

their response?

the tenants don’t have the resources to sue me anyway, but i’m willing to take that risk.

well, i’m not.

the price we paid came in the form of threats and hang ups and nastiness all around. we were told:

you will do what i tell you because you work for me

and this concerned me, so i called the oregon real estate agency and i dealt with a lovely woman who reassured me that our values we’ve lived by as we’ve run our little property management firm were in fact, spot on. she said:

your rental owner is wrong. state law requires you as a licensed property manager to not only work for your owner but also abide by the oregon landlord and tenant act which means, you work for the tenant too. you represent an owner to the tenant and the tenant to the owner and your owner doesn’t have a leg to stand on with their demands or their threats.

a wave of relief came over me.

yet, much of the relief left the next day when another call, another demand, another threat came.

after months of dealing with this owner, we are done.

and in the wake, i’m working on saying what shouldn’t need to be said.

we will abide by the oregon landlord and tenant act. in spite of it being law and if we are going to continue to be property managers we must follow it; i actually believe in it. i believe in its purpose to clarify the roles and responsibilities of landlords and tenants and while there are individuals on each side which abuse the areas that are slanted a little one way, overall its place in our profession is a great one. further, we will not be threatened into behaving in a way that goes against our values which we are extremely transparent about. the bottom line – we are friendly people who believe in our ability to enforce the rules all the while, doing it nicely.

please don’t ask us to be any different.

the snafus of social media

rebecca — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:07:31 +0000

sigh.

once again, i don’t know the rules to the dance.

it’s this tug-a-war of our times.

you see, i’m a small-town girl.

my grandparents didn’t live in an age of social media; yet they had a beautifully full life.

they are the people i model my life after.

they put people first:

my grandmother made cookies and put our names on them.

my grandfather would run his wrinkled and shaking hand around your shoulders every time you met, even if he was in the middle of a football game.

i’m a dreamer.

i spent months dreaming about how i wanted to begin this people-first business. peering into each little detail; refining, hoping, imagining.

i thought of all the ways i’d seen and experienced bad property management. i knew my friend’s stories inside out too. i knew i would walk into a storm of bad reputation and be fighting against the current. even fighting against myself some days when i want to lash out.

today is one of those days.

we attempt social media and get our hands slapped.

“pardon me,” i say and shyly slide away. baffled.

but this short-lived dable returns me to my values.

people first.

and i can hear him say “let sleeping dogs lie.”

because i’d actually much rather greet your new baby or hear about your failed tomato garden or encourage you that things will get better when you are short on rent, than deal with the rules of social media.

and i’ll keep believing that i’m not the only weirdo who gives as much weight (or more) to someone taking an extra minute with me to answer all my questions than a plethora of social media accounts.

after all, it’s the one-to-one that makes my job not just bearable, but enjoyable. and i truly enjoy each of you as you let me in to your life and undoubtably share in mine.

from the depths,
rebecca

less

rebecca — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:13:14 +0000

less is becoming a really important message for me.

in this journey we are on as business owners, running both businesses out of our home – we are being schooled on our attachment to more.

the office across the hall calls. the left over things from the day weigh on the mind. the “if i could just wrap this up i’d be ahead of tomorrow.”

why not wait until tomorrow?

why does it bother us to leave an unfinished task?

why do we think it all has to be done now?

our society demands the now. we want, we get. now.

we are learning that the balance we struggle with in business is also the same balance we struggle with in life. i am certain that it’s better to not have everything i ever wanted at the tip of my fingers.

i am also certain that there is only so much i can do in a day and to require more, really does mean less.

less production.

less patience.

less quality.

thus, more is less.

and…

less is more.

as we let go of our attachment to do and have more, we are learning to live and do business by falling in love with less.

getting off the hampster wheel

rebecca — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:50:34 +0000

in business, the message is always – grow.

there are different methods for this, there are differing opinions about this – but the message stays the same. this summer though, we are learning, once again, how to go against the grain.

we have decided to get off the hamster wheel. we have decided that we are unwilling to accept the standard of business owners running themselves into the ground.

i have, at times this past year worked weeks on end where my hours were 4:00am to 9:00pm. as you can imagine, this is extremely difficult, unhealthy and not sustainable.

there must be a change.

and change is scary at times, especially when it has to do with your very welfare. but the breaking point has been hit and we are ready to step out and decide afresh how we will do business.

it’s a great desire of mine that we do business well. that we struggle through the difficult in order to be set apart from the norm. i have worked for too many years where i saw the field of property management as abusive and unfriendly. that’s not who i am. it must be better.

but better is very difficult to sustain when you are working 17 hour days!

it’s now gone from unsustainable to impossible for us.

so this january, we begin our new chapter. one where we place the values of our minds and hearts alongside the values of how we want to do business. we can no longer compartmentalize our needs to live our own full and rewarding lives apart from doing business well.

so we get off the hamster wheel.

we make vows to live a whole and balanced life. we will no longer live to work, but work to live.

how will we do this?

we will reduce our workload. we have already made preparations to reduce the number of units we are managing by two thirds. this sounds scary to a lot of business guru’s as the sign of troublesome times ahead. we see it as returning to where we should have been.

we will value our work and work in valuable ways. we have undersold our service this past year and are learning the value of those clients who truly appreciate the extra touches we offer. after all, we aren’t and never intended to be the big impersonal firm or the mom and pop. we are still venturing to figure out what it means to be something completely different.

we will be selective of who we work with. just as owners and tenants alike, interview us, we are learning to interview those we do business with. a good fit is one of the most valuable aspects for us. we have chosen to do property management the way we want; honoring all the people we work with and taking the time to get to know and hear the stories each of us live. this takes time and it means that the people we work with will need to understand this. instant response may not come as we deal with people as humans not cattle to herd through our processes.

we will simplify. we are moving our business to our home and have said our fond goodbyes to the great staff we’ve had this past year. jomo and i will now run the business solo and what a wave of fresh air that brings. the simple really is better sometimes.

and all in all, we’ll see where this takes us.

but this i know is true…

…we’re on the right track now.

diving a little deeper

rebecca — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 04:11:20 +0000

welcome back to forge. as i read back over my previous posts to forge, i see how they are both introductions of a sort. i’m recognizing that i’m inclined to keep things light…yet i’m dying to dive in to what’s deep. i love to get below the surface…talk about what really drives a person; find the roots which each of us (and our businesses) grew from.

one word that keeps coming up time and time again for me is also one that causes our skin to crawl. we argue over it and demand it and yet each of us struggle with it.

integrity.

it’s worth talking about. after all, each of us have had a conversation or more about how the businesses we trade with are lacking it. we are furious at AIG and ENRON and yet the fact is, they are doing exactly what we do, only on a much larger scale.

there are more than a few ways that integrity affects our industry (property management), but i want to talk about a couple of them.

on an everyday level; our culture demands immediate response and there is a lack of grace when an honest mistake is made. i know one struggle we have is admitting those mistakes to our tenants. let me set this up. we get a call for maintenance request. we write it down and let the tenant know they will hear from someone shortly. if we are anything like most of you, our desks don’t have just a file or two and a neat pad of paper for these kind of notes. no, our desks are trashed; the equivalent of a paper tornado hits each of us at least daily and that little piece of paper with the maintenance request and honest intentions is long gone almost before the ink dries.

a few days later, we get a call from an irate tenant wondering why they haven’t heard from anyone about their request. this is a legitimate question. but here’s where the trap lies. when we go to our computer and see that no request has been processed, the temptation is to lie or at the very least, be defensive. we want to be able to tell our tenant that we aren’t sure what has happened but that we will get someone on it right away. but the fact is that these are just the times to tell the tenant that we’ve made a mistake; their request hasn’t been entered and we will do so and make it right.

as i write this story i can think back to countless times i have been in this exact predicament and with the stomach-bunching feeling of not wanting to be wrong. sometimes this is legitimate because the tenant has escalated the issue far beyond what it necessitated and i fear getting chewed out and other times it is just because i don’t want to admit a mistake. but either way…it becomes an integrity issue. am i going to be honest and say what’s really happening or wiggle myself out of it?

on an organizational level, we are battling the integrity issue as we turn our backs to the industry standards of compensation. this is naturally hard because it means we make a far smaller profit margin than the norm. let me give you an example:

one of our clients knew a friend in the property management business a few years ago and came to me with some very specific questions; how do you handle contracting maintenance? i informed him that we have long time relationships with subs that offer excellent prices and quality work. he asked me if we would make a commission on the repairs we have done on his properties? no we won’t, we work on a flat fee system, meaning there are no extra charges. he then asked if we ever pick subs out of the yellow pages? at this point, i was getting very curious about his line of questioning so i talked to him about how we rarely go to the yellow pages and we typically find new subs by referral from our other trusted subs or professionals we respect. i then asked him about his concern.

he told me about a friend in the property management business who was bragging that they were making great money by a “cost plus 10%” aspect of their management agreement as it pertained to maintenance. this simply means that they made an additional 10% cut of any contracted maintenance in addition to the base management fee. but here’s where it gets sour. they routinely selected the largest ad out of the yellow pages knowing prices are usually higher from companies who pay for large ads. if they had to get bids for a larger job, they would encourage the owner to select the highest bid to make sure they got the highest quality of work.

i winced and immediately understood his concerns with this obvious conflict of interest. how can a property manager fulfill his responsibilities to an owner all the while drive up costs so his commission is higher? why is this behavior tolerated? i was asking one of our commercial realtors we do business with about this. his response? there hasn’t been an alternative. my response? we will be the alternative. after all, i can’t look at five different faces in the morning and i’ve got to live with the one i’m looking at.

integrity. it’s become a vow for us here at dwell. so much so that it’s one of the sieves we move everything we do through and what’s great about that is only the fine quality parts get through…everything else gets left behind…and i’m thinking that’s the way it should be.

contest: dwelling richly

rebecca — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:07:53 +0000

i recently had a conversation with a prospective tenant who used to run her own marketing company. she loved our take on property management but she expressed that the word dwell has negative connotations for most people. i was confused until she reminded me of the saying “to dwell on something” which certainly sends most of in a downward spiral as we certainly have much to dwell on in these volatile days…but here’s what we mean by dwell…

if you’ve been around us for any length of time you’ve heard the slogan “don’t just live…dwell.” we say it all the time. the meanings of the word dwell we like to lean in to are:

to live and make home in: to reside, inhabit, lodge in
to originate in: to belong, consist, be

i have very positive connotations around the word dwell. when i’m dwelling in my home it means it’s a place of rest, rejuvenation and peace. when i’m dwelling in my relationships it means i belong, am free to be myself and experience harmony. but most of all when i’m dwelling in my life it means i’m enjoying my life as it is right now and i’m choosing to inhabit my life to the fullest possible extent. it means i find love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness in the small things and enjoy all these things with a sense of self control, knowing and acknowledging that i’m blessed.

so the question we ask ourselves often is “are we dwelling richly in our lives?” this question is the reason our staff blogs in our “enjoylife” posts. we are capturing the moments of dwelling richly in our lives. for me, it’s about nature and seeing beauty in the world around us; for camille, it’s being with people and experiencing life together and so on. so we thought we’d open this question up to you and launch a little contest.

here’s how it works. we are asking you to share with us how you are dwelling richly in your life with a picture. we will gather all entries and place the top 10 pictures on our site for a vote. the winner will get a $50 cash prize. what we hope for is a pictorial dissertation on what it means to dwell richly in our lives.

here’s the details:

send us your pic with less than 50 word explanation. include your contact information.
email entries to winstuff@dwellmanagement.com
deadline for entry is june 30, 2009
the dwell team will pick our 10 favorites and display them online for a vote by july 10, 2009
winner will be announced july 31, 2009

good luck to all you dwellers out there!

(disclaimer: by sending your photo to us, you are giving us permission to use the photo for the purposes of this contest which would include posting your photo on our website and in our office. photos will not be used for any other purpose.)

let’s shake things up

rebecca — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:07:15 +0000

let’s go back to small town chemistry 101. we were each given a beaker containing an unknown substance. our job was to heat it, centrifuge it, shake it, and sometimes even blow it up…all with a keen eye watching for clues of how our substance responded. was there a change in texture, color, smell, feel? those changes were clues to discovering our mystery substance.

my experiments these days are about developing the core of dwell management in such a way that would honor our profession, value the people involved in what we do and would influence our community at large for the better.

i’m not sure what i’ll find with each experiment but i’m willing to try and willing to give myself permission to fail. luckily, i have a very supportive team that has known from day one that our first and foremost goal was to be the best. this not only means that we aim to be the best property management business in the city of portland, but also means that we are seeking our personal best.

i want to talk about things that i read that make me think. like the book five dysfunctions of a team or the magazine fast company.

i want to talk about things that inspire me. like some of the TED talks i’ve been watching recently. you really should check them out…folks like ken robinson, majora carter, dave eggers and cameron sinclair.

i want to question our current system of business down to the very basics like:

• what would it look like to have an al a carte benefits package geared toward the individual?
• how can business come along side of the community in new ways?
• what would it look like to show grace to those we do business with?
• how do we honor employee contribution better than a card and a bonus at the end of the year?

so let me wrap this up. i have no answers and i’m not here to light the way except to join my flashlight with yours and together seek to discover ways we can shape our world for the better. business has the position to make a significant contribution to our world and to influence more than just our own bottom line, but to leave a legacy that will change times beyond our own.

remember…this is a conversation…so tell me what are the elements you want to discover and experiment with? what are the essential areas business is not making the grade? and then…what in the world do we do about it?

chemistry 101

rebecca — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 06:28:44 +0000

imagine the scene. high school chemistry class in a small town. the teacher had already retired but was so good the school didn’t want to lose him, so they contracted him back for another year. i’m not sure if all those years of chemistry experiments had gone to his head but our experiments that year were crazy. we blew things up, we stunk up the halls just before they flooded with students, we made taffy from chemicals and when we’d ask him “won’t you get in trouble for this?” he always responded “what can they do, fire me?”

i’m new to running my own business but when i look back on that year in chemistry class the word that keeps coming to mind is free. free to forge the way, no matter what it looks like. free to succeed. but more important, free to fail and get up and keep trying.

so i welcome you to forge. this is my chemistry lab. the place where i gather as many elements together and experiment freely in order to invent and shape the culture of dwell management. it’s also a place where you can come to dialogue about how to influence your own business world, wherever and however that may happen for you. let’s work together to forge our own path and give business a much needed new image.

i’m one of the lucky ones. you see, while there is great pressure and weight for those of us who are responsible for making our own ship float, there is also freedom. after all, what can they do, fire me?