Property Management Inc. CEO Steve Hart Sees a Bright Future for the Rental Industry

Steven Hart founded Property Management Inc., a franchise brand with comprehensive property management services and 295-plus locations across the country, with the vision of creating a company with stable income across thousands of rental properties.

2020, however, was anything but stable. With the housing market in a precarious position, renters fleeing big cities, and travel and vacations all but shutting down entirely, the market had a strange year, to say the least. 

But for Hart and his team at Property Management Inc., the shakeup of the great pandemic of 2020 represents a major opportunity going forward. Here are a few of Hart’s predictions for the future of the industry and what they mean for PMI.

How PMI Thrived During COVID-19

According to Hart, the rental market wobbled in 2020, but it did not fall. When all the dust settled around the pandemic, people everywhere still needed homes to rent and came together to make deals with landlords.

“We are part of an industry that is just a really solid and steady industry,” said Hart. “There are more rentals available in our country than there ever have been before.”

As one of the government’s first major responses to the pandemic, many municipalities instituted a moratorium on evictions. Instead of creating a nightmare situation for his renters and franchisees, Americans actually worked things out. 

“We were very, very fortunate through COVID,” said Danessa Itaya, the brand’s president. “We saw rent collection stay very high. Normally, we see it at about 97%, and it went maybe as low as 95%. But it’s really nice to see that tenants and landlords worked together to figure out a way to make sure they were able to still pay rent. And so, as we come out of this, we know there's probably better relationships built between tenants and landlords because they've been creative with how to keep tenants and able to provide them assistance.”

Not only did PMI’s renters and landlords fare well, franchisees did, too, as a red-hot housing market drove up real estate prices and brought in a fresh batch of would-be property managers. 

“Real estate is hot these days,” said Itaya. “We're seeing investors looking at buying big. They are investing in many properties, but they don’t want to manage them themselves. And so that's been a great opportunity for PMI.”

According to Itaya, when the pandemic rocked the travel industry, Americans got smart. Instead of booking hotels, they turned to Airbnns, where PMI saw a bump in revenue. In many ways, the pandemic simply shifted the industry sweet spots from one sector to another. After all, people have to live somewhere.

“Since July of last year, we’ve seen a huge uptick in people getting back out there and doing road trips and long-term rentals,” she said. “People are going to the mountains, and instead of going for a long weekend, or for a week, they're going for one to three months because their kids can school remotely and families can work remotely. And all they need is high-speed internet.”

PMI’s 2021 Predictions: The Future of Travel

PMI says travel is back, but it’s more local and regional than international these days. Expect to see 2021 become the year of the rental car and the rental property as people explore their own or neighboring cities.

“It looks like this year will be the year of the road trip,” said Hart. “People are driving within 24 hours of where they live because they want to stay close enough to home; they're not traveling internationally.”

PMI’s 2021 Predictions: Work From Home Becomes Permanent

The genie is out of the bottle on how much more convenient it is for everyone to work from home. Nobody wants to return to commutes, and productivity has stayed just as high, if not higher, than before. 

“I've seen quite a few people saying, ‘You know, my company realized I can do my job just as well from home, so I decided to leave my $5,000 a month apartment in the Bay Area to move to a lake in Montana for less money,’” said Hart. “They're doing that through short-term rentals. And now you're seeing people say, ‘Hey, I'm going to rent this short-term rental for 30 to 60 days and see how I like living in Big Sky, Montana, and maybe buy it or stay there’”

With rentals across the country, PMI franchisees are perfectly equipped to pick up the business of high-net-worth individuals fleeing big cities. Additionally, allowing people to work from anywhere has driven up rental prices in certain markets, meaning asset values for property holders like PMI’s franchisees have spiked. 

PMI’s 2021 Predictions: Snail Mail and Face-to-Face Are Things of The Past

Not only do people work from home now, they pay rent from home. Gone are the days of mailing a check. Gone are the days of meeting your landlord or having them knock on your door. Today’s tenets, according to Hart, demand more flexible payment options.

In this area, PMI shines particularly bright. With a whole suite of automation and technology enabling every part of the rental process, PMI’s franchisees can offer tech-savvy young tenets an easy way to pay online every month. 

“Technology is flooding into the property management world right now,” said Itaya. “No longer can a property manager just collect a rent check. These owners and tenants want automation. They want to be able to pay their rent without writing a check. Owners want to be able to review their financials in real-time, and be able to see repairs the property managers are doing to protect their assets.”

That’s where PMI comes in. People who own big buildings don’t have time to chase down every rent check and every shot lightbulb. It’s savvy franchisees with PMI that can provide that service start to finish for the asset holders. The result is happy tenets, happy owners and one of the fastest-growing franchise brands in the country. 

“Property managers really have to be skilled, they have to be tech-savvy,” said Hart. “That's what's made our franchise, in my opinion, really desirable and one of the fastest-growing franchises in the country right now. People need what we have, they need these resources. They need systems, and PMI has the best systems.”