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Show Summary
In this conversation, Corey Bohner, founder of Maxx Property Management, shares his insights into the property management industry, discussing his journey from maintenance to management, the importance of education in the field, and the challenges faced by property managers. He emphasizes the growing trend of build-to-rent communities as a solution to the housing crisis and highlights the need for effective property management to ensure long-term success for investors and residents alike.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Corey Bohner (00:00)
It is probably the biggest problem solving hub. So what you do all day long is taking problems and solving them in a fast, efficient way to ultimately get to the end goal, whatever that is. Was it resident satisfaction? Is it, it’s just communication to make sure that people understand.Dylan Silver (01:51)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Corey Bohner, is the founder of Maxx Property Management, which manages over 3,200 doors and one billion plus in assets across Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and beyond. Corey, welcome to the show.Corey Bohner (02:10)
Thank you for having me on. It’s a pleasure to meet you.Dylan Silver (02:14)
It’s great to meet you as well. And when we talk about the property management space, and I was mentioning this to you before hopping on here, you know, it’s a difficult space because you’re dealing with ⁓ tenants and toilets is the old adage, but it’s also in very many cases ⁓ driven by how well you’re managing sometimes tricky situations. Right. And so I want to talk today really about what makes a successfulproperty management company. And I’d like to start that by asking you how you got started in the property management space.
Corey Bohner (02:51)
Yeah. Well, it’s a great intro here. So I’ll give you a little bit of my background where it started and property management. It never actually is something that typically people like, Hey, I’m going to go become into property management. A lot of times it finds you and no matter any operator that I’ve ever spoken to and been with it found well, it found me as well. So, you know, early in, ⁓ think it was over 10 years ago, I was working with a management group and team.And I started at the bottom of maintenance, right? What are the biggest issues that we have in property management? Well, things break. So I started in the division under a property management group and I needed a job. I moved to Utah out of Nevada. I was a firefighter medic before and I was like, I just need to get to Utah. And so traveled here, found a group, started at the bottom and found all the inefficiencies with running a property management company. So.
But I was able to take a maintenance division and make it more efficient and more operable. So we were able to operate, make it more efficient, get more action out of it. From there, happened to find investment groups that were using this property management company. And they hired me as their more marketing side to help build their brokerage. And then from there, it’s stemmed into a development group and team where they were building investment properties for investors. Fourplexes, duplexes, triplexes, build to rent product.
And so that’s where it really started to begin is partnering with the development group and building good product type that had a good return of, you you own your own assets of four plexes in communities. And so we started to manage in communities. needed to manage these things. The management group that we sent it to was not great. And so we needed to build a company. was like, all right, I’m going to, I’m going to shoot for it. So spent.
you know, good three years developing, educating, you know, going to anything I could to educate myself on property management. I didn’t know a lot, I knew a little bit. Obviously, I was in a property management company before, but there are so many aspects. If you can run a management company,
you can do anything else. You can start… No, no, it’s, you know, everything kind of runs down. I mean, you’re the center of a lot of people, you know, and…
Dylan Silver (05:52)
It’s not an easy business.Corey Bohner (06:01)
You think about you’ve got your owner and your best or you’ve got your resident on this side. You’ve got vendors, maintenance, you’ve got all these communication pieces and it all needs to flow through and get to the right end goal. And so when, yeah, go ahead.Dylan Silver (06:19)
whenWhen we talk about the this idea, it’s almost like you’re a human shield as a frontline worker. You you talk about being like a first responder, right? I feel like property management is almost like the first responders of real estate, because whatever complaint, whatever issue, whatever, you know, utilities down, or, you know, people feel like they’re getting charged too much, or, hey, someone’s missing payments here, whatever it is, I lived in a community in San Antonio.
apartment complex. And one of the frequent issues would be like the gate isn’t working. So then you’re dealing with well, okay, now we have like a structural issue on the site. And are we going to get this fixed? Are the investors going to pay for this? It’s a lot of spinning plates in the air.
Corey Bohner (07:08)
It is probably the biggest problem solving hub. So what you do all day long is taking problems and solving them in a fast, efficient way to ultimately get to the end goal, whatever that is. Was it resident satisfaction? Is it, it’s just communication to make sure that people understand.a lot of it still comes back to how do you educate those that don’t understand?
There’s a lot of people that don’t know these days on how to live inside of these units. mean, they may be first time renters, right? And they don’t know. Even our investors sometimes can be first time investors. They don’t understand that, hey, things cost money, you know? And you’ve got to explain. And that’s what we try to do. We try to educate and explain, not only to the investor, to the resident, people that we have. The more we can educate and understand the systems and why we do what we do, the better the outcome.
So when we educate, we explain our process, we understand and people understand this cycle from leasing to marketing all the way through until you move out at the end of the day. You know, making sure that people understand the cycle and understand and you’re educating them the better they can live in their property. They’re, they’re satisfied for, for the response that they get, because guess what? wasn’t the lease. It was my understanding. I actually should have read the rules.
You know, and so the more we can educate, the more we can provide that to people. And at the end of the day, we are dealing in property management, wherever it is. You’re dealing with someone’s livelihood. The majority of their life is centered around their housing. And so if you think about it, maybe someone is coming to you upset and frustrated. Well, did they lose someone that day? Did they get pulled over?
You gotta think about it as that you’re dealing with everyone’s daily lives in a cycle. And so it’s trying to understand where people are at, educating where they’re at and being, you know, having some empathy, but then ultimately explaining to them, no matter the results of, okay, this is what happened. This is why it happened and explain it through the process. Most of the time people can then it clicks and it understands. So property management at home, problem solving.
That’s all we do, we promise all.
Dylan Silver (09:34)
Now, when we’re talking about where things break down and where some property managers may experience difficulty and maybe why people say, okay, they didn’t have a good experience with property management or why investors say, we had to go through multiple property managers. Are there any common issues or is it so specific to that property, that investor that it’s tough to say?Corey Bohner (10:37)
gonna bring it back to educating everyone. Okay, so our investors, biggest issue that I would say come up in property management is that if you look at across the US, the majority of management companies are your mom and pop shops. It is the agent that may have had four or five investors with them and then they manage it for them, right? So if you look at across the US, it’s not your big behemoths that are out.If you think about your behemoths as management companies, they are a very small sliver of the entire pie here. So your everyday, like yourself, your everyday, maybe it’s their internal investor. Hey, I’m gonna just take this on and do it myself, right? I can save money. And that’s what we get a lot of the time. Well, I can save money by doing it, but what are you sacrificing on the other end? So looking at it in scale.
Right? You have a lot of mom and pop shops. Well, when someone chooses a mom and pop shop, they’re choosing the relationship and hoping that they’re going to respond when you ask instead of actually having a professional that is in the space that is educated in the laws, the reasons behind it, the education, the systems, the processes. So the breakdown that we see just and this is just across everywhere. It’s like, well, I can do property management and I can save money by ultimately doing myself.
So anytime you do a deal and you break down a deal, you should always factor in property management. You need to have someone into any kind of deal you’re underwriting. Who is going to manage this property and you have to make it in? Because if you put your time into there, you’ve already lost the deal. Your goal and focus on investing, this is an investing show, right? And you can start.
by doing it yourself to educate, learn and understand that it’s not fun and I don’t want to take the 2 a.m. phone calls, right? You can go into that or just know that you need to build it in and you need to find that relationship. So finding a relationship and asking the right questions. How long have you been in business? How many doors do you have under management? I mean, we’ve built from, you know, the past 10 years, we’re over a billion in assets and we’re growing exponentially thereafter. And so but it’s by learning those mistakes, fixing them.
making it more efficient, communication, education. So when you’re talking and you’re interviewing or you’re even doing a deal, put in professional in there because your mom and pop shops, they’re there to, hey, I want to make a little bit on the side or I could do it myself. They’re not professionals in it because that’s not what they do well at. I hire a tax professional to do my taxes. I hire a plumber to do our plumbing. I hire a property management company to do property management.
And so you kind of look at it in a little bit of that scope. Anytime I underwrite a deal, I’m not doing it to throw it. I’m going to do it just because I’m a property management team. I’m actually building it in with the exact price structure that it should be built in because that is how a deal should be done.
Dylan Silver (13:24)
And it’s.I want to pivot back to something you said earlier in the conversation about working with developers who were needing property management, which is the genesis of how you got into the business. I’ve noticed that there are more developers, whether it’s subdivisions or multifamily, who are looking at not doing, I would say, the typical thing, specifically in retail new home sales, which is
build the subdivision and sell the homes, but build and hold. you know, rental communities, which requires massive capital, right? But being able to do that also creates a whole host of other, you know, obstacles to overcome. And one of those being property, property management. Have you seen someone in the space that the demand for property management is
is increasing both as we’re trying to like addressing country wide housing crisis, if you will, but also because investors are maybe more keen on instead of doing a fix and flip a fix and hold or instead of doing, you know, building out a subdivision and selling everything off, build out a subdivision and hold on to those homes.
Corey Bohner (15:41)
Well, you’re speaking my language because that’s who we are. We’re Build to Rent, I would say, one of the original Build to Rent specialists in this kind of idea of what BTR really is. And so our focus is actually developing and designing communities around the ownership for that renter. So ultimately we are living in a day and age where it’s getting almost impossible to own your own home. I mean, we’re seeing it right now.Dylan Silver (16:07)
Amen.Corey Bohner (16:10)
You know, a lot of our thesis and, you know, I, you know, around this is how do we find or develop if you can’t own it yourself? And we’re gonna, we’re creating long-term renters and that’s unfortunately where we’re headed. And I don’t know where that correction’s ever gonna happen. There might be obviously affordability and it kind of trickles here and there, but you’re finding either institution, family offices, fun, you know,They’re all going into this design of build to rent, like you said, communities of rentals. And that then presents another thing. How are you going to manage this in a way that people are going to want to stay long-term? Are you designing it in a way where it is their home? They’re going to raise their families here. They’re going to, they might be able to graduate, right? Maybe they are renting a home, but it is a home. It’s less of an apartment. I truly believe, and this is where I want to see more of our
housing come from is well if you really want home ownership well let’s start actually by creating a home for you and then maybe these institutions the thought is the institutions give a place where they can buy back that home so kind of taking a long-term renter but then getting to the point where they can maybe own that asset so educating people but it’s their home I’ve got a backyard I’ve got a front
Dylan Silver (17:32)
Yeah.Corey Bohner (17:36)
I’m responsible for this home and making it so it’s not just, well, I’m going to stack as many units as I can on top of each other to get the, you know, the max amount of NOI I can. Well, how about we do this? Let’s partner with cities, develop our communities and actually build affordable options. One, still investors, but ultimately finding something that is maybe more obtainable on the rents. Maybe it’s a safe home, a spot where they actually feel like it’s their home. They can raise their family there. So.Build to rent is coming more and more. We’re seeing more and more build to rent options out there. And that’s what we specialize in is that build to rent. What’s the community look like? How does it operate? How do people feel when they come home every day? What is the resident experience while they’re there? Are they creating a community where they’re at? Not just a garden style, hey, I see my neighbors, hey, creating an actual environment where people have a sense of community.
They play the same basketball teams. They join together in a community environment. And so that’s where Build to Rent really that specialty starts to come in. And that’s what we’ve started to develop over the last 10 years. so we’re getting more into that space and we help developers, operators, or people that want to be in that space, educate them on what works best, what best works for those communities, and then ultimately help them manage it long-term. These are long-term assets going forward. So.
know, build direct is what we do, is what I like to see. And I’m seeing more of the trend move to that. People just don’t want to be stacked anymore on multifamily garden style apartments. And so, you know, even in Texas where you’re from, right? I’ve been there. It just, there can be buildings after buildings like we were in Houston for a long time. It’s just apartment buildings everywhere. And so I just see that more and more people are not going to want to be on top of each other. They’re going to want to
Dylan Silver (19:23)
Yeah.Corey Bohner (19:30)
actually have a home if they’re going to have to rent. And so that’s what Build to Rent solves.Dylan Silver (19:39)
It’s definitely needed. you know, in places like Texas, I that you’re active in Arizona, right? As these are areas where there’s ample development opportunity. And so people are looking at, OK, well, how how do we meet the needs of, you know, a housing shortage while also being able to make have an underwrite? Right. And so there is so much that comes into play here. You know, having an unsuccessful⁓ property management team is going to torpedo the business if you’re in the the built-to-rent space.
Corey Bohner (20:15)
Youroperator is key. you want, if you’re looking at the end of the day, the investor still has to make it, right? Because they’re the ones putting up the risk in the capital. So no matter how anyone looks at it, a renter is going to rent because they have to rent. But at the flip side, there’s an investor at the other end that still has the risk. So what’s the risk? And the risk is finding an operator.
that is going to actually see that in a wire that that development be successful. So when we when we talk to these developers and these groups, it’s what’s your vision? We need to understand the vision so that we can help get to the end goal of that vision. And so that’s that’s where it comes in. A good operator helps and starts from the beginning, helps you design something that’s going to last not just five years. This is we’re talking I want to see something 20, 30 years down the line and still operating like it should.
Instead of just, hey, I’m going to live through a cycle. We’ve to start design things to what is it going to look like in 20, 30 years? Is someone going to really want to live here in the next 20 to 30 years? And is it going to be up kept in that? So long term is what we look at, what we try to help these developers and institutions and groups look at. And we want to be that operator for them. And ultimately, at end of the day, I want what’s best for all sides. It’s not just one side winning.
Dylan Silver (21:24)
Yeah.Corey Bohner (21:39)
We all have to win because again, if you don’t have a rent to renting, you’re not going to get the NOI at the end of the day. So everyone has to be able to work with each other. And so that’s where we try to find that fine line in between there is like, okay, a good operator sees both sides and helps move it down that direction of ultimately everyone’s winning at the end ofDylan Silver (22:00)
We are coming up on time here, Corey. Where can our audience go if they’re interested in reaching out to you or your team?Corey Bohner (22:07)
So I, again, I try to do some of these to get out there. We help operators. So the Corey Bohner, you can find me at a lot of places. TheCoreyBohner.com talks about what we do, what we help with others. Maxx Property Management, we’re in three states and we’re growing into other states. But ultimately, that’s where you can find me. You can find me on all the social platforms. I’m on LinkedIn. It’s a great place to connect and I try to educate. I try to educate in the space, try to educate in investment.Try to help people understand what we’ve learned over the years. And then ultimately I want people to invest, just like we’re talking about here, right? We want people to invest for their futures, whatever it is. Educate yourself, invest, and then build something great.
Dylan Silver (22:52)
Corey, thank you so much for coming on the show today.Corey Bohner (22:55)
It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. It was fun.
