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Show Summary
In this conversation, Riley Holt, a property manager and founder of Property Lens, discusses his journey into property management and the development of a rental inspection software designed to streamline the inspection process for landlords and tenants. He highlights the challenges of traditional inspection methods and how his app addresses these issues by providing a user-friendly platform for documenting property conditions. The discussion also touches on the future of real estate technology, the integration of AI, and advice for aspiring property managers.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Riley Holt (00:00)
I was chasing down papers. You know, you’d, you’d give your tenant a document to fill out on their own and they would either not give it back or they give it back with justall checks, which you knew they didn’t check anything at all, or they’d get it and it was written in the margins and, you know, extra supplementary pages of, of every scratch that you can imagine. And I was like, I mean, we can just take some pictures, some comments, surely we can put this together and make it simpler.
Dylan Silver (02:00)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest Riley Holt is a property manager and founder of Property Lenz, Riley, welcome to the show.Riley Holt (02:01)
Dylan, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.Dylan Silver (02:13)
It’s great to have you on here Riley and I always like to start off at the top of the show by asking folks how they got into the real estate space in your case in property management.Riley Holt (02:26)
had a really good friend. I had worked with him on the tree. He has a tree service, but he’d been in business for 30 plus years and accumulated lots of rentals. And I had my own, I had a couple of rentals before I came to work for him. So I had a little bit of sweat equity knowledge, you know, kind of managing my own. And he had mentioned to me one day that he was kind of fed up with, he’d been through like three or four property management companies. And I was like, well, I mean,I’ve managed some properties before. mean, how hard can it be, you know, managing, you know, going from managing like two or three to like 45. And, and so I kind of jumped head first into that. And it’s been fun. You know, I helped, helped them with some acquisitions of some new properties. did some flips. We did a lot of remodels cause he had a lot of deferred maintenance. So, um,
That was a lot of my time was spent kind of getting those up to snuff, getting the market rent back up to where it needed to be. ⁓ so that’s kind of how I got into the doing this full time. Yeah. So I’m kind of a unicorn in the space, I guess, cause you know, I, I would, I had several wholesalers I’ve worked with and, they would, ⁓ you know, bring me some deals and I’d bring them to him and say like, well,
Dylan Silver (03:31)
So you were active as a property manager, then also looking at acquisitions as well.Riley Holt (03:50)
know, we can probably make this work. And so ⁓ we actually closed on a flip yesterday. I think he netted almost, I think maybe 90,000 on that flip, which was a really good deal. ⁓ But usually it’s the majority of them aren’t that good, obviously. But typically it was just getting the rentals he had, you know, back up to a quality condition where you could get a quality tenant in there with, with better rents than what he was currently getting for sure.Dylan Silver (04:02)
That’s a good deal.My background is in the single family distressed seller space. So working in many cases with flippers. you ⁓ looking at single family right now as far as acquisitions? Are you looking at multifamily as well? So I’m thinking property management. I’m multifamily for the most part, but it sounds like you’re active in single family as well.
Riley Holt (04:18)
Yeah, the majority. So the breakdown of what I manage right now, the majority is single family rentals. ⁓ But he also has some warehouse spaces.⁓ he’s got about 13, 13 or so of those, that I manage and those are, if we did more, it would be the commercial warehouse space. Cause it’s usually guys who want to extra space to tinker on cars or maybe someone to run a small business out of.
but, ⁓ you can command a pretty good rent for the space. It’s very little to no upkeep. ⁓
Dylan Silver (05:58)
Yeah.Riley Holt (05:59)
And people are knocking down your door to get a space because they’re tired of trying to work on their car in their driveway and the neighbors are yelling at them.Dylan Silver (06:07)
That’s exactly right. was actually talking with multiple people just this week about the growth in industrial real estate. And I would put that in the same category. But I do want to pivot here and talk about rental inspection software. We were talking before the show rally about just how sorely this is needed, because typically, you know, when a tenantmoves out or moves in, there’s this long, like two page checklist that we’re relying on in order to see what is or isn’t where it should be.
Riley Holt (06:28)
Right yeah so I kind of fell into this you know there’s a there’s a saying I heard and it’s you know people don’t do hard things because they know they’re going to be hard they do them thinking it’s going to be easy and it turns out to be hard. That’s a little bit what happened with the software thing but yeah soyou know, jumping into rental management, getting software set up, ⁓ lots of great softwares out there for property management, you know, your CRMs, your rent collection, your notifications, things like that. But I just really struggled to find a rental inspection software that was user friendly out of the box. I want to put in the property. I want to put in the tenant. I want to do the inspection and go. ⁓ and I tried everything that I could find. I
And everything just didn’t scratch that itch that I was looking for. So I was like, well, I’ll just build my own. How hard can it be? ⁓ and I have learned more in the last year and a half than I ever thought I would on software and pricing and, you know, coding and all the things. ⁓ so it’s been an adventure for sure, but, I, it has become a passion for at the moment. I can say that.
Dylan Silver (07:47)
we talk about this process, we were laughingreally before the show about how antiquated the process has been really until now. Like right now, I’m sure there’s folks across the country who are doing the same thing, like relying on pencil and paper for people to note what’s wrong, which ultimately lends itself to disputes when people move out.
Riley Holt (07:52)
That’s exactly right. So yeah, II was chasing down papers. You know, you’d, you’d give your tenant a document to fill out on their own and they would either not give it back or they give it back with just
all checks, which you knew they didn’t check anything at all, or they’d get it and it was written in the margins and, you know, extra supplementary pages of, of every scratch that you can imagine. And I was like, I mean, we can just take some pictures, some comments, surely we can put this together and make it simpler.
so that’s what I did whenever I created Property Lenz, that’s the name of my app with a Z by the way. ⁓ And,
And so I did that and I’ve been very pleased with it and I’m glad I did it because again, there’s definitely a need. I’ve talked to many landlords, property managers, and they’re all like, man, this is what I’ve needed for sure.
Dylan Silver (09:06)
Now, when we talk about the exact process, if we can get a little bit granular for folks who are not on their phone right now and they’re trying to envision how this works, is it ⁓ a matter of thetenant being able to document or the landlord being able to document the before and after, if you will, before moving in versus when they’re after, and then they have this record in the app so that there is no like discrepancy. I’ll you, here’s a photo that we took in the app beforehand versus after.
Riley Holt (09:17)
That’s exactly right. So, so the, the thought is this app is tied to the security deposit, pet deposit, whatever deposits you, you hold and you have apre-condition, you know, they take this over sometimes ⁓ with a rental, you know, you’ll fix, you know, obvious playing things, but you know, you might not fix a scratch on the wall or a few little nail holes here or there. ⁓ And so
when the new person comes in, it’s good to have a record of what is existing damage so that when they move out, that person is not held responsible for something that happened maybe with a previous tenant. And so the…
The inspection is tied to the deposit. You have your move in, you compare it to the move out. ⁓ We also have an online portal where you’re able to go in. You can run a comparison report, you know, to note discrepancies. You can run a deposit withholding report from the online portal as well. you, you document what, what has changed, what you’re deducting from that. And then you’re able to run that report, send it to the parties that be and, ⁓
They get a clear, there’s no disputes. know, there’s no, well, hey, that wasn’t like that for us. Like, yeah, it was. Cause here’s the picture. Here’s a picture that I took time stamped, geo fence that this took place at this location at this time. Here’s your signature that you signed off on this report. And then here’s my report that I did afterwards. And you moved out this day. This is when this was done. No, no funny business happening here. It’s iron clad.
Dylan Silver (11:44)
Yeah, book it. There’s no discrepancy. Here’sa photo. Here’s a photo. Let’s compare the two. You know, what I think about when I think of the typical process here is there’s so much, you know, of, well, I didn’t see this here or this wasn’t there when I when I moved in or was there when I moved in. And so when you’re dealing with that, it can make the whole process the whole process. And I’m sure you’re familiar with this of move.
Dylan Silver (12:11)
moving in, moving out seem overwhelming for both the tenants and the property managers to thepoint where like people even delay it to the last possible minute in order to get things sorted because they just know it’s going to be chaotic.
Riley Holt (12:17)
That’s exactly right. Yeah. And that’s, that’s the deal. You know, you’re able to show up on the property by the time you’re done, you know, say it’s a two bed, one bath, you’re done with the inspection in 20 minutes. You’ve already got all your notes and stuff. They’re PDF ready. You can send it to an owner. You can send it to a maintenance guy to say, Hey, these are some things I found that need to get fixed.You can send it to the tenant and say, these are the issues that we found. You can run your report. just, it streamlines everything. makes everything, you know, 80 % faster than the original process.
Dylan Silver (12:57)
And if we can, I’d like to get a little bit granular about the process of building an app. So it sounds like this was a new endeavor for you and maybe not coming from the engineering background, but having to do a lot ofengineering related work or managing engineers. What was that process like and what were the major obstacles in building an app?
Riley Holt (13:12)
Yeah. It was eye, as an eye-opening experience for sure. ⁓ I started out, I kind of tried to source some app builders, you know, just kind of Google, you know, who can build an app for me, you know? So I kind of started there, ultimately settled with a local company ⁓ who oversaw that.⁓ They got me to kind of an MVP, which is a most viable product ⁓ where it did the things, but it just wasn’t quite like what I wanted. And to be honest, this all started with ⁓ a little sketch sheet with a couple of little squares and kind of wanted this to look like this. And if you take a photo, this is the workflow. So I just kind of built out kind of what I wanted this to act, and do.
And so the first company kind of got me to that MVP stage. And then I kind of took over development and said, hey, look, this is fine, but it needs to be top level. ⁓ And so I sourced my own developer. There’s several websites, Uplaunch, Freelancer. And ⁓ so I said, hey, I’m looking for someone to help me polish this app that we’ve got. Found this ⁓ lady and ⁓ she has been a rock star.
And we’ve got version 2.0 coming out in the next two weeks or so. So I’m excited about that. But it is a slog. It is a lot of back and forth. It is a, hey, you said this, do you want it to do this? And you have to think through things you wouldn’t think you would have to think through. Because the computer just does what you tell it to do. It is not able to infer.
what you’re kind of wanting to do. So ⁓ we, you talk about granular, you have to get very granular when it comes to ⁓ talking with a developer and making sure things are ⁓ working like they’re supposed
Dylan Silver (15:51)
I know it, Riley, I know it. Outside of being a realtor, I’m also in a software engineering bootcamp. And part of me is thinking like, this is a totally unrelated skillset here. nowwith, especially with AI, I’m seeing more and more adoption in the real estate space. Some of these really cutting edge tools, I’d say even more so than most people are aware of. People think of real estate and you kind of think, you know, old guard, very traditional, slow growth, but.
Riley Holt (16:02)
That’s exactly right. And you you mentioned AI, like we’ve got some, some cool AI features coming out soon where you’re just able to walk the room.Dylan Silver (16:17)
it does seem to me that there’s this huge influx of real estate tech happening like right now.Riley Holt (16:31)
talk and describe what you’re seeing and just take pictures on your phone. When you’re done, all that information goes directly into the report and the exact spot it needs to go to. The pictures are categorized because it’s able to determine, hey, that’s a floor he took a picture of, that’s a baseboard, that’s a wall, that, know. So all those things. So, and that’s gonna make it even faster than it already is. So, you know, you can walk a four bed, two bath home and maybe 10 minutes and be done, which, you know, normally you have your drive time.You have your paper form you’d fill out and then you’ve got to take pictures and then you got to go back to the office and you got to upload those pictures and you got to associate them with that document and you got to email the appropriate people. So, you know, original timeframe, you’re looking at two hours, two and a half hours from start to finish and dropping that down to maybe 10 minutes.
Dylan Silver (17:20)
It’s a big deal. Two hours, two and a half hours, people can cut into that. say, okay, well, don’t have timefor this. That’s how these corners get cut. I’ve seen it happen to the point where on both sides, I’ve seen property managers maybe accept damage that they should not accept.
Dylan Silver (17:38)
because they’re just trying to move on with the process and then, know, tenants maybe have to pay for something that they didn’t do, but because they didn’t document it properly. I do want to pivot a bit here though, Riley, and ask you about being aDylan Silver (17:52)
property manager in general and what the business is like, especially getting started as a property manager. Any advice you would have for folks who maybe want to get into property management?Riley Holt (18:04)
Yeah, so I would say that it’s easier managing 40 plus properties than four. ⁓ When you first start out, there’s just so much you don’t know. You don’t really have processes in place. You don’t really have contractors lined out.You know, every time someone calls you with a problem, you’re kind of in panic mode like crud. Well, I find somebody and I don’t want them to get mad. And I want to make sure I get this, you know, who am I going to call? Are they trustworthy? Are they going to show up on time? And then once you kind of get your systems established, you have your kind of contractor list that you know, you vetted them and I mean, we all got burned. You know, you, you, get somebody, you use them, you think they’re going to be great. then next they just can’t get hold of them anymore. ⁓ and so you kind of weed those out. so.
you know, after managing 40 plus units, just, you someone calls with a toilet problem. say, give me a second, call my plumber. He’s already lined up. We have a good relationship. He always kind of bumps me up ⁓ to the front of the line, gets it addressed. And, ⁓ you know, it’s, the systems get easier, which makes the job easier. ⁓ Again, having the warehouses is nice because again, there’s very little to no things that can go wrong. It’s…
four walls and a roll up door. you know, besides the roll up door coming off a chain every now and then I rarely get calls out there. Um, and, uh, and so, yeah, it’s, it is one of those things. It, it is, it has its challenges. Every job does, you know, it’s kind of, you have to choose your heart, you know, uh, managing four is hard managing 40, 100, 200 is hard. Um, but if you have your systems in place, you just realize you just kind of manage roll with the punches and
you know, everything’s going to work out at end of the day.
Dylan Silver (19:49)
I think when we talk about property management specifically, most of the time people are thinking, well, it takes a lot to be able to manage hundreds of tenants specifically in some of these larger multifamily. Because everyone might have their own complaints. Even if the property is perfect, running seamlessly, tenants are going to have issues. And you’re just constantly dealing with that. You’re like thethe complaint
line, if you will, for the property. So I understand how difficult that could be.
Riley Holt (20:16)
Yeah. And you know, my, my favorite phrase is what does the lease say? You know, if the lease says you’re responsible for this maintenance or we’re responsible for that maintenance, you live and die by the lease. And so as long as you are, you kind of have to train your tenants, say, look, this is the lease. I’m going to walk you through this lease. This is what we will and won’t do. This is what you can and cannot do.you know, as long as you kind of live and die by that, you kind of eliminate some of that gray area and just say, Hey, what if the lease says this, you know, get, get a nice addendum list after you’ve been doing this for a while, you know, and you know, if someone clogs up a toilet because they shoved a bunch of baby wipes down there, you’re like, that’s on you. You’re the one who did that. I have, pointed out to you and you initialed by this clause that said any, you know, any issues related to toilets that you cause you’re responsible for that bill.
I have zero pushback when that happens because I just point that out and they’re like, you’re right.
Dylan Silver (21:18)
I gotta fix it. I gotta fix it. We are coming up on time here though, Riley. Where can folks go if they’re interested in learning more about property loans?Riley Holt (21:43)
Yeah. So my website is property lenz with the Z app.com and, you can learn more about us. You can sign up there. We’ve got, ⁓ three tiers. We’ve got a free tier. So if you’re just starting out, you have three properties.
You can manage three properties on our app for free. then every 10 properties you add, it’s five bucks a month. So I wanted to make it ⁓ cost effective, but also user friendly and something people are really going to want to adopt. Dylan, I appreciate it. Anytime.Dylan Silver (21:59)
Riley, Thank you so much for coming on the show here tonight.
