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Show Summary
In this conversation, Allan Dion discusses the nuances of property management, emphasizing the importance of communication and trust in building relationships with both investors and residents. He highlights the challenges faced in the current real estate market and the need for genuine interactions in business. Allan also shares insights on how to navigate these challenges while maintaining a focus on property stewardship rather than just management.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Allan Dion (00:00)
So what I was able to do is start up a property management company focused on property management and we do real estate on the side. Right. So we’re working with investors, private owners even, who are brand new in the investment community who just, hey, I’ve just bought a second home. I want to make a little money off of it. Can you help me out? And so we are focused on property management. And we do real estate on the side. So if they want to sell or buy other properties, we work with buyers. We work with sellers, mainly in the residential arena.Quentin Edmonds (02:04)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And y’all know what I’m gonna say. I’m excited to be here today. I’m excited, always excited about my guests. know, I’ve always get a chance to talk to them a little bit before we come on. this, the start of our process together, me and this man process together was rough. But I’m so glad that this gentleman, is, he has a way of calming people.down, right? He has a way of taking maybe some kind of chaotic kind of experience and neutralizing it and making sure that people are calm and people come back to the moment. And maybe it’s the consultant in, you know, maybe just him being a people person, really wanting to communicate with people. And I think all of those things that he embodied really helps him be successful in business. And so I’m going to let him tell you what you do, but I just want to take the moment.
to just introduce you guys to Mr. Allan Dion How you doing today, sir?
Allan Dion (03:06)
doing great Q. How are you?Quentin Edmonds (03:08)
I’m doing good, man. Doing good, man. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad our listeners are getting a chance to look at things through your perspective, through your view, for you to talk about what you do within your business, within this space we call real estate. so, you know, Tom has been well-spent. They don’t know, but you and I know Tom has been well-spent. So I just want to dive in, and let you have the floor. So if you don’t mind, Mr. Allen, take us into your world, right?Tell us the different things that you’re focused on. Tell us what markets you’re in and just tell us a little bit about you and the passion and what it is behind what you do.
Allan Dion (03:46)
Absolutely. Thank you, Q. You know, as we were just discussing market focus, you know, I have been in other companies where, you know, I’ve seen executives lose focus. And one of my last experiences was with a real estate company that did real estate and they happened to do property management on the side. And it didn’t go well. There’s a lot of good property management companies out there, but there’s a lot of room for improvement.So what I was able to do is start up a property management company focused on property management and we do real estate on the side. Right. So we’re working with investors, private owners even, who are brand new in the investment community who just, hey, I’ve just bought a second home. I want to make a little money off of it. Can you help me out? And so we are focused on property management.
And we do real estate on the side. So if they want to sell or buy other properties, we work with buyers. We work with sellers, mainly in the residential arena.
I do do some light commercial on the side as well. I’ve helped several people with retail spaces, warehouses, stuff like that. So ⁓ that’s but our focus is in long term property management. And one of the things that we really are our focus is we’re as we’re building this business is, as I mentioned to you earlier, Q.
⁓ Because there’s so many different property management companies out there, we’ve identified a lot of the weaknesses. Being in the real estate industry as long as I have been and talking to so many different people, we see where the lacking is. We’re building a property management company and if I had my druthers, if people would really clearly understand it, I’d be more calling it property stewardship. Right? It’s that.
Stewardship is kind of like a higher level of caring for what is in your possession. Somebody has entrusted you to care for their widget. In this case, it’s a quarter of a million, half a million dollar investment. This is large sums of money invested in a property and they want to get income off of that. How are they going to do that? And how are they going to sleep at night?
You know, other people invest money, they put it into a CD, stocks, bonds, whatever. They got a fund manager and they just take their proceeds and watch their investment increase. That’s our goal. We want the investor to be able to go to sleep at night, not worry. They get their check next month and they know that their house is being kept up, that things break, they’re being fixed, and the value of their property is being held. And that’s huge. Also, the residents in those properties
need to be able to feel like that’s their home. They need to feel comfortable there. They need to know that if something goes wrong, they can call and it’s taken care of. So it’s a tremendous balancing act. ⁓ And I think we do it quite well. We do it. One of the key things for us is communication. You you call a lot of companies, you get into a computer and it’s dial one for this and two for that and three. And next thing you know, you’re five minutes in and you haven’t even got to talk to a person yet.
We pride ourselves on being able to pick up the phone. Hey, I got a problem. Yeah, you know what? They put it in the work order. But, you know, here’s a perfect example. We had a tenant, rent her, call. It was 10 o’clock at night. She says, I’m hearing a hissing from inside the wall. And the paint was bubbling and she’s showing us pictures and video. So we’re on the phone with our plumber guy.
It’s like, hey, we got him out there one o’clock in the morning. We’re on the phone with the tech. He had to cut a hole. He had to do all that. But we’re on the phone with him so that we know that it’s being taken care of. It’s been addressed. It’s been found. No problems. Everybody goes to bed asleep. And the owner doesn’t even know they’re sleeping. Well, you know, we inform them, hey, this is what happened. It was an emergency call. We got taken care of. Right. So that’s that’s key. And owners need to know that we’re we’re being smart with their money.
Right. Most owners don’t like to spend money without permission. ⁓ We’ve built trust with our owners so that they know the key things. What are the key things? Well, a in the roof, the AC dying in the middle of summer, hot water heater blowing and leaking all over the place. Right. Those are the big key things. And ⁓ we we we manage those quite well.
Quentin Edmonds (09:07)
Man, I absolutely love it. This is the first podcast I think I’ve done when I’ve heard the word stewardship. And I love that, that property stewardship. And you actually write that word stewardship when you understand that it takes on a whole connotation in itself. It’s a whole personification in itself and it really causes you to embody being a good steward, right? And so I love that. And that’s such a great word.not a commonly used word. And so because I know you know what that means. I know it’s not always especially easy in this climate. So what is the key to keeping that stewardship, the main focus, like keeping your machine running smoothly when it comes to the proper stewardship?
Allan Dion (09:56)
Well, know, honestly, the simplest piece of it, and I say the simplest, but the simple thing is not always the easy thing, right? It could be simple, but it’s not easy. Communication. found that at the top of the list of all the things you could do for your residents or for your owners, communicate.Nobody likes surprises. Nobody likes to be kept in the dark. And people need to know that if they’re going to call, they’re going to get in touch with somebody and not just some guy, you know, off the face of fees and now with with AI agents and all that. You don’t know what you’re getting. And you want to you want to be able to pick up the phone. I have a concern with my with my property. I’m sorry. I have a concern because this just broke down. It’s not working anymore.
and they get to talk to a real person and we’re on it. handle it. Scalability, it is scalable because we have good people. So it does not matter how big we get. Our goal, part of our mission in that stewardship is making sure that people feel comfortable living in their home and the others feel comfortable knowing that their investment portfolio is being well handled, taken care of, it’s growing in value.
And we’re always looking at ways to increase their proceeds. How can we work more efficiently? What can we do to save money here and cost there? Things of that sort. we make deals with local vendors who give us price breaks, things of that sort, so that we can diminish those costs and increase the return on investment for our investors.
Quentin Edmonds (12:10)
Mr. Allen, I have heard you double, maybe even triple down on the word communication. It’s like, I asked you a question, you come in that communication. I asked you another question, they come back to communication. And I love it. know, Brene Brown has a saying where she said, clear is kind, unclear is unkind. The clearest thing, the kindest thing that I can do is be clear with my communication to you. That lets me know that I care about you. That lets you know that we are staying like that’s the click, the click, the click.The kindest thing I could do is to be clear.
Allan Dion (12:40)
Well, and let’s face it, right? Communication’s two way. So it’s not just a matter of getting, hey, this happened, here’s the visibility, but it’s listening, right? So when you’re talking to a property owner and they’re telling you their concerns, you’re writing them down. You’re making a mental note. You’re making sure that their concerns are addressed. And it’s not always just getting, you know, the rent comes in, I get paid on time. Although that’s a big concern for a lot of people. It’s their cashflow.So we respect that. We actually try to get it done early. So we take those things into consideration, but communication is two way. We’re hearing you ⁓ and then we’re making sure that we’re giving you what you need. Clearly you understand your, and this works with landowners and residents, right? So you got to make sure that residents understand that it’s their home. It’s not their house.
Quentin Edmonds (13:17)
Yeah.Allan Dion (13:35)
There’s a difference. This is my home and the home is the people in it and how warm you can make it and make sure that your home isn’t leaking in the middle of your dining room table on Thanksgiving Day. Or your home isn’t turning into an oven in the middle of summer because the ACs could put, you need to know somebody’s right on it. And so it’s that balance and ⁓ I think we do it quite well.Quentin Edmonds (14:02)
Yeah, yeah. And listen, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re doing quite well, especially if you’re involved in. Now, I’m going ask you this question. I love hearing this perspective from people that’s in property management. I love hearing this because y’all give us stories that I never would even imagine. And so, you know, there’s moments, there’s times when things get real, right? When things go sideways, times maybe when you had to pivot fast, you know, you said a client called you like, listen,It’s bubbling like, what is going on? And so is there any more stories that you can share of a time when you got involved in something and kind of had to pivot fast based on the situation that was in front of you?
Allan Dion (14:45)
sure. We had we had one landowner. He called us and we had he had trouble getting his house rented. It was just kind of in one of those obscure locations where there weren’t anything nearby. know, you can’t get there from here, as we say up in Maine. And he he he called us and he said, you know what? I’d like to do Section eight. We’re like, OK, next thing you know.We’re learning and we’re on the phone. We’re talking to people where we got through the process and you know, we are adaptable. Yeah, section eight. We’ll give you section eight. And now now we have experience with section eight. And by the way, this house is rented. Right. So so there you go. thing I am seeing, though, and maybe this is a good sign. I’m seeing landowners liquidate assets.
Quentin Edmonds (15:38)
Hmm.Allan Dion (16:20)
Right. I got a call the other day. It’s like, think I want to sell my home. Well, there’s a renter in it to getting positive cash flow. So we’re communicating. What’s going on with your thought process? Well, I want to take that. want to diversify. I want to take this and buy two. Right. OK. Yeah, we can help you with that. You know, one of the things I run into, we actually helped. got a brand new client doing this and turned out this is a niche. Right.Quentin Edmonds (16:39)
problem.Allan Dion (16:50)
⁓ When do you call for help when you need it the most? Right. We had we had one gentleman call us up. Somebody had referred to us and hey, somebody told me you could help me. I’ve got a bad tenant and pay for months and I don’t know what to do. And, know, they weren’t familiar with the laws. And ⁓ we had to we took them on as a client and went right into the eviction proceedings and ended up ⁓ walking through all of that.Quentin Edmonds (16:55)
Yeah.Allan Dion (17:19)
And the gentleman was actually ⁓ squatting at that point, couldn’t get him out. But the poor guy that the owner was out of state. So, but we were able to help him out. Not only did we get that gentleman out successfully without further incident, but we got new renters in there and he was, he was a very happy man. gave us two more of his properties. Like, thank you very much for.Quentin Edmonds (17:43)
There you go. Listen, listen, I don’t even want to even ask how you got him out because Mr. Allen, I don’t know. You seem like a guy that don’t take no stuff. I don’t know.Allan Dion (17:54)
Look, I am 6’2″, 240 pounds, but I talk softly.Quentin Edmonds (18:03)
Yeah. Yeah.Allan Dion (18:05)
But my wife is Colombian and she’s my business partner and she’s the one you don’t want to mess with. So I just stand there quietly and look, all you have to do is look big and strong. All the work. And I will tell you to my wife, she’s the communicator. She’s the one on the phone constantly texting, taking phone calls. She is so dedicated. ⁓ It’s amazing. she’s, she’s done, she’s done a lot in building up the.Quentin Edmonds (18:16)
Yeah!Allan Dion (18:34)
relationships that we have with our tenants and our landowners. Absolutely.Quentin Edmonds (18:38)
Absolutely, no, I love him and I knew he was gonna give me a great story I just I really just I just love your spirit your perspective the way you can take control of a situation So I knew tell it actually that question about pivoting I knew he was gonna give us a nugget that people really could put you on and so Mr. Allen, let me ask you this like what are you most focused on? Solving or scaling next like what’s the next real goal?Allan Dion (19:04)
Well, so D &D Property Management Solutions is a relatively new company. ⁓ We’ve only been in business officially for the last four five months. What we were is my wife and I worked for another brokerage and what I told you about earlier. Yeah. They the owner of that brokerage decided he needed an exit plan and wanted to merge with with another real estate company.And I was kind of like, you know what, this is, this is a good place, right? Good place to shake hands and we stay in contact. We still work together on a lot of deals. So don’t get me wrong. But there was no room for property management. so at one point last year, we had some issues with some managers that we had hired. And so the company had gotten down to like 20 doors. When Teresa, brought Teresa and she took it over.
Quentin Edmonds (19:42)
youAllan Dion (20:01)
And between her and I, her working with the customer facing and dealing with that and me working with pulling the financials together, we turned it around. We’ve got it up to 32 doors now. So what we were able to do was we did an asset sale. So back in the spring, we put all the work together, we formed the company and we got 100 % of the clients to move over with us. 100%. Nobody I’ve never heard, right?That’s 100 % of the people who said, yeah, I like what you’ve been doing. I want to keep working with you people. And the company has nothing to do with it. And it’s funny too, because I’ve trained agents. A lot of years I’ve trained agents. And you can join, can join Keller Williams or LPT or Real. You can join whatever mom and pop store you want to join. Because it doesn’t matter. People don’t do business with companies.
They do business with people. They do business with people. as long as I know you, Q, ⁓ that you’re going to treat me right and we’re going to do an interview and you’re going to leave me hanging out dry, you have my trust and I will continue to do business with you and talk to you and have these conversations. It’s the same way. It’s the same way in any relationship, business or otherwise. You build somebody’s trust, they’re going to do business with you. Call your company whatever you want. ⁓
you ultimately are the one that they deal with.
Quentin Edmonds (21:33)
I mean that’s so well said and that literally transitions me into my next question that I wanted to ask you specifically coming from your lens because I can tell you communication is your, it seems like your hanging point, right? And so you just talked about relationships. And so, you we have people that’s listening, you know, they’re either early in their journey or they’re looking to level up. And I know it would benefit, they heard this from you.When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?
Allan Dion (22:07)
Be genuine. Simple, be genuine. Well, how do I be genuine? You know what? You have a conversation with somebody you want to help them out and has nothing to do with putting money in your pocket. The money will come. And it’s something that I have discovered over a lifetime of effort in different things. But this this as well. If you put your passion and your effort into something, you will get a reward.What’s interesting, what I found is that the reward doesn’t always come from where you think it might come from, right? You get your passion, you’re building your business, you’re building your relationships. All of a sudden, you get a phone call out of left field and an opportunity you never saw come. And that’s the way it works. That’s the way it works. Be genuine. When you’re having a conversation with somebody and they got a problem or they’re trying to solve a problem, make a decision.
Can you help them with that and not worry about how much money it’s going to put in your back pocket? Don’t act desperate.
You’re not doing it out of desperation. And I know people who are just launching, who are brand new in businesses, a lot of times they really get, you get that nervousness. I see it in brand new real estate agents, right? They got to make that first sale. And so they come across a little, know, whoo, we to do this. Let’s make this contract. Let’s write this offer. And the buyer’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I haven’t even seen the house yet. Right? Calm down. We got this, right? The strongest people I
Quentin Edmonds (23:35)
Yes,Allan Dion (23:40)
This is really cool in my observations the strongest people I’ve seen you look at somebody and you go up You know, they can’t figure out the tech they can’t write a contract they can’t whatever it is all these little things They can’t do you know what they’re out doing they’re buying and selling houses Because they got something in the relationships that they build They always find somebody else to help them with the small stuff They focus on the big stuffSo the biggest successes I’ve seen in real estate, they don’t get the tech. Some of them don’t understand half the contracts that they’re writing because they train us to fill in blanks, right? As realtors, filling the blanks. You get a Florida far bar contract, fill in the blanks. I learned that in kindergarten. So it doesn’t take much. You get somebody who can build a relationship and have a conversation and gain somebody’s trust. That’s it.
So don’t worry about the tech, newbies. Don’t worry about all the new tools and AI and all that stuff out there. Go out and meet people and be genuine. That’s it.
Quentin Edmonds (24:47)
⁓ man, you know, I you know, I thank you I think you are the advice that you’re giving is that you are absolutely Living it, you know people don’t know exactly how our conversation started today But I do and I could just see the through line with you communication being genuine Cracking a joke to put the pit the conference to put the tension at ease, you know, it’s just to me like, you know, you area master connector, like they’re just not talking it, but you’re actually doing it. And that’s why I know the business is successful. And that’s why I know you’re going to continue to be successful. And so I thank you so much, Ms. Allen. Listen, before we wrap, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate, or maybe learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to get in contact with you,
Allan Dion (25:38)
Well, they can call me and they get all my contact information on our website, ⁓ ddpmsol.com.Quentin Edmonds (25:46)
Say that for meone more time a little slower. One more time. Give me that website one more time.
Allan Dion (25:51)
DDPMSOL.comQuentin Edmonds (25:56)
is there it is Mr. Allen thank you sir I want to thank you for your stories thank you for your time thank you for your perspective we definitely need more people in this space that’s knowing it the right way so Mr. Allen thank you again so much for being here thank you for all you’ve done just this morning to help me out I appreciate you so much sirAllan Dion (26:16)
Well, Q, I appreciate the invite. I really enjoyed this. Thank you very much.Quentin Edmonds (26:21)
Absolutely. All right, there he is, y’all, Mr. Dion. And listen, I know you got value from this, so please make sure you are subscribed. We’re going to continue. Come on, see? He’s telling. We’re going to continue to churn out these great conversations, and you do not want to miss them. And so, Mr. Alan, thank you again. And to everyone else, we will see you on the next time.Allan Dion (26:44)
Thank you.
