On The Urgent Need For PMs To Be Recognized For Their Worth

A post by Peter Lohmann got about as much engagement on LinkedIn as property management posts can get (IYKYK 😉):

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And it’s simple to understand why:

Property managers take pride in making the hard job of owning rental properties easy for investors.  Property management is designed to be invisible. 

But if we’re only reaching out to our owners when there is a problem (as most of us do) we’re worse than invisible.  

We are the bearers of bad news.

At Vendoroo we call this conundrum, the invisibility trap, we identified it as the number 1 problem we want to solve, and we have a 3 prong plan to break you out of it:

Prong 1 

• Create a solution that takes the work of 80-85% of maintenance off your plate. 

• This allows PMs to focus on the things that move the needle on day 1 (like building relationships, creating and delivering NOI analyses, and the 15-20% of work orders that need real serious hand holding.)

Prong 2 

• Highlight property managers that are truly pushing the envelope of what they are capable of through an avalanche of content meant to both, promote the PMs themselves to their owners, and show other PMs what the best innovators in the industry are doing. 

• This is, specifically, what I'm in charge of.  I will be announcing a new podcast about it, plus visiting clients to help them create content about themselves throughout the year!

Prong 3

• Build AI agents that can do everything from triage/diagnosis to vendor selection, to maintenance coordination so well that you'll never have to hire more people for that again.

• Just imagine having ONLY A players on your team and having them working on things they love to do.  No one has to do mundane work! This would mean your best people will be spending time in front of the most important people (your owners, residents, and vendors), showcasing your value constantly.  

This is what agentic AI will do for property managers that embrace it. 

But…

Here's what I've learned about these agents:

• They are not ready for prime time yet

• No one has figured out exactly when they'll be able to replace people completely

• Anyone claiming they know when that'll be, is full of it

That's why we believe having a solution that completely eliminates 80-85% of maintenance work also needs to:

 #1 Create the megaphone to convey your value in the meantime

#2 Have the best AI minds in the world, in the trenches with maintenance coordinators, making daily decisions on what to do and who to call to do it in order to build separate agents for separate tasks.

Because it's not just about the data when it comes to agentic AI, it's about how you structure the decisions to be made.

The Analogy That Helped Me Understand It-

All US schools have similar curriculum, but get varied results out of the people coming out of the schools.  The schools that produce the best talent have the best faculty.

When you are building an AI agent that will perform like a person, the curriculum is the data, and the company building it is the faculty.

We believe anyone can acquire the curriculum, but having the best teachers and administration is what will ACTUALLY build tech that can replace a B player, but-

1 thing is for sure:

A human must be able to set expectations and own the outcome to succeed in PM.

If it can't pass for a human, it’s not truly agentic. 

If it’s not agentic, it won’t break you out of the invisibility trap.

If you want to enroll your maintenance data into the A.I. school with the best faculty in the industry, book a demo with us.

The sooner you enroll, the quicker you will break out of the invisibility trap.