A Podcast | Courtney Parks

Pete Neubig: Welcome, everybody to the NARPM radio podcast. I am your host, Pete Neubig, and I have Courtney Parks with us today. Courtney is the principal broker and director of operations at Allegiance Property Management in Northern Virginia, managing just under 300 residential doors. She began her career in HOA management before transitioning to residential real estate in 2009. With nearly two decades of experience, Courtney has been instrumental in shaping her company's operational strategy and client service model. Throughout her career, she's witnessed firsthand the industry's evolution from traditional property management to strategic asset management. Courtney is actively involved in NARPM. Thank you for that. Both the local and national levels, and serves on her state and local realtor associations. Courtney, that's a mouthful. Thank you so much for being here.

Courtney Parks: Yeah. Thank you. It's almost like I wrote that myself. So thanks for reading it.

Pete Neubig: It's ChatGPT at its finest, I guess.

Courtney Parks: Yeah. Amen.

Pete Neubig: Just kidding. So, the most fascinating thing about that. And we've talked in the green room about this, but there is a, I don't know if it's a groundswell what you want to call it a pivot from property manager to asset management. So when you put that in your bio, that really triggered me to say, we're talking about this because, when I owned Empire, I personally hated the word property manager. Property manager was derogatory. It's kind of like tenant versus resident VA versus remote team member.  and I wanted to I mean, I see here on the video you have that level up sign. I wanted my property manager to level up to be asset managers. And it was a it was a challenge. So tell me in your words, what do you what is the difference for you. Because everybody has a little bit different definition of property manager versus asset manager.

Courtney Parks: Yeah great question. Thanks for that. And I'm with you on, like, property managers is definitely not a great word. And a part of my kind of career and, trajectory was, like, not being embarrassed by my profession, you know? And I kind of grew up. At least in my state, you know, property management isn't fully recognized at the real estate level. And so it kind of was like it felt like an ick for a long time that that's what I did. So I love that it's now this, kind of high level profession. And we're, you know, moving towards the asset management. And I love the reframing and getting our clients to treat their property like an asset, like a business. That was always a big part of my conversation when I would onboard clients is like, you have to make decisions and treat your house like a business. And in my market, we deal with a lot of accidental landlords. So they're not used to thinking of their home like a business. But once you put that landlord hat on and you stop, you know you're not living there anymore. Thisn't your home. You can't treat the decision making process the same. So in my mind, asset management is big picture. And it's not just treating the property like a property. It's not just filling a tenant in there. It's treating your residents like the asset. It's treating the landlord as an asset, the door as it. So it's kind of looking at it, big picture and really looking at the return on investment, but also the balancing of how do I protect my asset and how do I treat that from a conservative approach? Am I going to be more aggressive because I think my husband does finance, and I find that a lot of the finance world and the property management or asset management world, there's a lot of similarity there. Right? And it's because your home is an asset, especially once you convert it from a primary residence to an investment property. So and the more that we can get our clients thinking that way, the more they're going to see value in our industry. And they're going to look at us as the expert and they're going to want to hire us. Because everybody, you know, wants to hire the expert, because they don't want to do it and they shouldn't do it themselves.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. You triggered a few things there. One is you're absolutely right. When whether you're an investor or an accidental landlord, you own a business. The IRS thinks you own a business. The government own a business. Right? So you need to be a business owner and treat it like a business. And the other thing is, you're talking about your husband who's in finance. And for a lot of these people, not all, but for a lot of them, this their largest asset.

Courtney Parks: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: This the most. This it. Like I'm giving you this asset that's worth, you know, three, $400,000, dollars, $500,000, and we need to take care of that asset.

Courtney Parks: And it's balancing the physical asset, the financial asset and then the emotional asset. Right. That could be tied up in that investment. Most people, they don't invest money in the stock market and they're not emotionally attached to that money. Right. I mean, they like it. They want us not mess it up for them. But it's not the same as this where I brought my kids home. This not the home I grew up in or this my parents home. We're dealing with a lot of, second generation that are coming to us, and maybe their parents passed away, and now they're inheriting it, and they're finally looking at it like, okay, I don't just immediately need to sell this property and offload it. I'm going to start building generational wealth. And I can, you know, look at this like an asset. And there I feel like my generation or the younger generation is even more open to hiring a property manager because they're treating it like a business.

Pete Neubig: So what are some of the things that, you know, going from that mindset as a property manager to an asset manager? I'm looking on the other side now right from the property manager's perspective. What are some of the things that they have to do? Like it's a mindset shift, you know, in a way. So what are some of the things that you guys are doing over there to help your property managers become asset managers?

Courtney Parks: Yeah. I think the big thing is education, right? Educating your client on what are what's expected of them and what's an expected expense. Right. So, how much money realistically do you need to save and put aside for recurring maintenance in your home on an annual basis? and kind of treat them like, you know, you go to the doctor and you have your wellness checkup and you, you know, pay money for your prescription. So if I do that for myself, I need to do that for my home as well. And I think it's also just leaning on the expertise and making sure that they know that we know more than them and that they need to trust us. So they're not second guessing what we're advising them or telling them to do. That's the biggest shift is that, confidence. And that's been a big shift in my team in making sure we are on top of what maintenance is required and what does something cost? How much does it cost to put a water heater in?  that way when the client comes back and freaks out, we can confidently tell them that this a fair price and this how long it should last. And this a reasonable expense that you should be incurring right now.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I know. You know, when I got into investing back in the early 2000s. You know, the Rich dad, poor dad book was really big. And it put cash flow on the map. And so when you're talking about these generational things, I'm like the old generation guy where I'm like, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. Right. And  and when you're just a cash flow person, then you are missing other things like keeping the property up and building as a business because it's, you know, and you have to maintain it. And I find it pretty amazing. And I did this at one point where you have these investors that they buy the property, they think they should never put a dime into it, and they should own it for 30 years, and they should be able to retire off that property.

Courtney Parks: Yeah, yeah. It's not always a numbers game. I mean, it is and it isn't. And, a conversation that I have when I'm meeting with a prospective client is what are your goals? Are they short term? Are they long term? You know, you might not be cash flow positive in the beginning, but if you break it out over ten, 20 years, and you've got this resident who's paying down your mortgage and you're keeping up with property values. And we're historically seeing that property values are increasing. You know, I guess you would have the other argument, like, you know, you you put that money in the market and you could see a similar return, but it's not quite the same as just having your property really cared for and hanging on to it. And again, everybody wants to talk about generational wealth. I feel like that's one of the newer terms that we're hearing. and that's a great way to get to it. Right. Hold on to real estate. We've seen that real estate will appreciate if you hold on to it. But you have to put maintenance into it. You have to care for it. You can't just you know, it's not just a set it and forget it type of asset. And you have to be wary of those landlord clients, right? They're not going to be the right client in my opinion.

Pete Neubig: So what do you think? Like you mentioned a little bit of data. Like you should know what the water heater is and how long it's going to last and all that stuff. I know, there's kind of some new vendors out there, like Blanket talking about like, you know, properties and how to evaluate the property. Do you feel like that's where the property manager can grow and become the asset manager? Because there's a lot of property managers out there that are in the weeds. They're in the weeds. They're the ones talking to the owner about a $12 bill, you know, yet they're not talking about the owner, about their 14 properties that they own that have millions of dollars in an asset. So, you know, where is the line drawn and then who does the property management? Are you having automation and virtual assistants do that. Like kind of tell me like where the break would be with this new asset manager classification.

Courtney Parks: Yeah I, I think Blanket is a fantastic. I think we have Blanket to thank for this big shift in asset management. And it's providing more value to the client than just rent collection. Right. That's I think previously that was what property managers were, oh you collect the rent. That's really all you do. and now it's turning into, no we can actually advise you on this, you know, large asset, maybe the biggest one you own. And how can you maximize it? Or if it's not working for you, how do I do a 1031? How do I figure out if there's something that would work better for me? It's interesting. In my market, I deal with a ton of accidental landlords. We have a lot of State Department military. So I'm fortunate in that a lot of my clients are they just want their house cared for. Right. Because the goal is they're going to come back and return to it. so for us, it's more important to I think one thing that Blanket does fantastic is they have that, kind of, you know, how much are you spending on your property? What is the average maintenance and is it higher or lower? and that gives the landlord perspective, which is something we have that they don't, which makes it a lot easier for us to swallow that pill when we get the, you know, $10,000 HVAC repair that they're not used to. But in terms of I think now that we are revolutionizing the idea of international talent and we're able to offload different tasks to employees that are, you know, not local, it frees up whoever you want in that BDM role or that property manager. We don't really in my company, we don't have a quote unquote property manager. We're very departmental, but I do BDM for my company. And so it would free me up to have those high level conversations with the clients that I wouldn't have had time to do five years ago, or even three years ago when I was still in the weeds dealing with a turnover. Now I can offload the turnover, work to my maintenance coordinator, and I have a client success manager who also runs all my systems. They're both completely international. They're doing all of that stuff so that I can sit down and have time with my client and have that conversation and show them how much more value we're giving them.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, we had a similar structure where were departmental, but we had our property managers. We brought them into a room and said, you know, we're going to be asset managers. You guys are asset managers now. And, what we did is, you know, all of our,  investor owners or, you know, owners, property property owners, if they, if they wanted to call inbound, they would call the asset manager. The asset manager would utilize the team to answer any questions that that person had or do. People can reach out directly to the owner, so that's a whole other owner communication. That's a whole other podcast. But we had to re train our property managers into stop doing and they had to manage by, you know, reporting they had to manage the team. It was different and it didn't work for everybody. We actually had to let some people go and replace them because they could not do that level. I didn't want my, you know, $80,000 a year property manager, asset manager, dealing with $12, you know, $10 an hour job. And so, there was some challenges there. One was just, you know, hey, I'm always I'm used to doing this all the time. Now. I got a new I got a new job. And the second one was fear of, these investors know more than me. And by the way, most of them don't, right? The investors don't. They think they do, but they typically don't.  and so,  you know, my BDMs did a little bit of that, but my property, my asset managers became the ones who reviewed. And this before Blanket and all that stuff. And they were actually reviewing the properties and they were helping guide them with their investment strategy moving forward. And believe it or not, our churn rate went down and our owners were happier because we had the team to handle the, you know, the maintenance requests and the lease renewals and stuff like that.

Courtney Parks: Mhm.

Pete Neubig: Did you have any any challenges like that or is it you that dealing mostly. So you just had to do your education yourself?

Courtney Parks: No. So I have five employees. And over the past two years we've seen a big shift in how we, how to layout because originally we had a property manager and an assistant property manager, a bookkeeper, and me, and it just became too much on the property manager. We were also doing our own inspections. It was just... And then Covid hit and that kind of really forced us. It was a it was a necessary change. But we decided, okay, what can we outsource? What can we pay a professional to do? So we looked at, you know, having someone do our inspections. and then I was doing too much as director of ops. I was basically doing everything, aside from maintenance. So I brought in a leasing coordinator. I'm like, how do I streamline my application and listing process? then that person quickly I saw was fantastic with LeadSimple and systems promoted him into more of a client success manager brought on a new leasing coordinator and then made my property manager a director of maintenance because that was really what her strong suit was and because maintenance and turnovers are the biggest pain point, and that's what most of our clients care about the most, right? It affects the pocket because you're either looking at a vacancy or some sort of renovation cost. Turn cost. So I put her solely dedicated on that, gave her a full time maintenance coordinator, and then I was able to really have two departments, basically, that I was overseeing leasing and maintenance, where all I had to worry about was new clients and really seeing that org chart and making sure that each person knew our mission vision, core values, and were bringing on the right clients. Because the problem was, when you don't have time to focus on BDM, you tend to just take what you get and you say yes to people that you shouldn't say yes to, and that's a trickle down effect. And no one's happy when you have a client that doesn't align with with your policies.

Pete Neubig: Are you finding, since you're the BDM as well, are you finding now that you've kind of embraced this asset management piece. Has your sales pitch changed? And are you are you getting different types of investors being attracted to your company now?

Courtney Parks: Yes, it definitely has shifted. we still have the same type of client, but I think people,  or clients are receptive to the confidence that we bring and treating it like a business and giving them those expectations and those costs upfront of what realistically, this going to cost you to maintain this investment property. So I think it's beneficial because for the clients or the prospective clients that aren't aligned with that, they're leaving and I'm not wasting my time on them. And the ones that are, we're having that conversation upfront and they're even more open to a full service, you know, property management company  versus before you're dealing with the ones that kind of like have one foot in, like they kind of want to do it. You can do that. But I want to do this. And that was just a disaster as well. So it's definitely given me the ability to turn down the correct business and attract the right business.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. Oh, you mean you don't want owners that want to make the final decision on on renters that you put in or?

Courtney Parks: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Or go and do their own own repairs?

Courtney Parks: Absolutely. Yeah. Exactly. And we unfortunately we had a lot of those because again, you don't know until you know. And if you're so used to operating business and I think in the sales world you're so afraid to turn away a door, right. everybody that asks like, how many doors do you have? and what I also like is now that's shifting to what's your revenue per door. Right. So it's not necessarily how many doors are you managing, but how profitable are you. Because that's the more important question. You could have a thousand doors under management and not be making any money.

Pete Neubig: I did have $1,000 under management. Not made any money. I was that guy.

Courtney Parks: So I think we have this shift to help to, you know, that's helping us as well that shift and saying we can we also deserve to be profitable. Right. Property management is a standalone business and it's high level. And we deserve to be profitable. And how can we make it profitable? And that's I think that's contributing to this shift as well.

Pete Neubig: Yeah I know in NARPM the whole door count thing people get upset about like oh you know doesn't matter. Revenue per door, profit per door. But door count does matter when you're talking about operations.

Courtney Parks: Mhm.

Pete Neubig: Because if you have 300 units and I have 984 units, and I'm in three different markets, my operations are completely different than your operations.

Courtney Parks: For sure.

Pete Neubig: So for that, that's the only reason why I personally. Because I'm an operator. I like door count, so I know, okay, who am I talking to as far as operations? Now, you mentioned automation. You mentioned that a little bit a couple of times. So talk to me about how automation and what are some of the things that you're automating. How are you using it.  and how has it been helpful,  for your team to be able to maintain and grow your business?

Courtney Parks: Yeah. Automation has been, pretty key. I mean, we signed on with LeadSimple, I think, almost three years ago. And that was a big shift for us. I, I was very lucky. I'm fortunate. Two of my employees I've had with me almost ten years. But what that did was that kind of made me lazy as a boss and everyone kind of knew what they were doing, and nothing was really, you know, built out. We didn't have workflows and so there was no ability to scale and grow. and not that growth for me is necessarily the end all be all for me. You know,  I heard, someone say, you know, you're either going to have a scalable company or you're going to have a lifestyle company. And for me, I think I'm more of a lifestyle operator. I like the size of my company and I like having the ability to take on doors that I want to take on.

Pete Neubig: The ability to take a vacation every once in a while?

Courtney Parks: Yes. You know, I've got little kids, and I still like making money, and I still I'm super passionate about what I do. And I feel like, you know, 16 years in, the knowledge would be such a waste to walk away. So if I can, you know, that was about five years ago. The shift for me was I'm really not happy. How do I change this? And NARPM had a big, you know. NARPM  helped with that, you know, opened my eyes to how I could shift my business and make it work for me versus the other way around.

Pete Neubig: So you hit on a bunch of points here, right? So the first thing is, you know, people grow just to grow. Sometimes they grow themselves into non profitability. I was one of those guys grew, grew, grew and then we exited. Didn't even expect to exit. We exited and it ended up working out for me. But for years I was I was living on like you know very very slim margins. Whereas you said, okay, I've, I have 300 units. I'm happy with that. I'm happy with growing just a little bit more to outpace, you know, churn.

Courtney Parks: Mhm.

Pete Neubig: Doesn't stress the team. Right. And your team you're, I can tell just by talking to you you're not stressed which means your team is probably not stressed which means you get to keep your team longer.

Courtney Parks: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Which is churn. Right. You just told me you had two people ten years with you?

Courtney Parks: Yes.

Pete Neubig: Unheard of in property management. I know managers burnt out after three years, right?

Courtney Parks: Yeah. Yes. Yep. And so basically, I've taken those two employees and then I've, given us cushion with remote team members. And so now I'm able to, I was able to, actually one of my Virginia girls, she's part time now. She's my accounts manager. She's like, I only want to do the books. And were constantly trying to figure out other things that we could fill her time with, because my other employee had no capacity and I didn't either. So being able to bring on three remote team members and kind of create positions that were never I never even had before was a game changer. And it improved. And it improved the quality that I was giving to clients. And it made my residents were staying longer. My clients were happier. I was getting more referrals. I'm getting referrals from existing clients. It was just this like domino effect of positive outcomes for a company that I had been, you know, burning the candle at both ends for way too long.

Pete Neubig: I'm going to tie this all back in to asset management. If you want your property managers or you yourself, the business owner wants to be an asset manager. If you want to move your property management asset manager okay, you you have to be a proactive company. And if you are a reactive company and then things are just falling off the plate, you never have the you never have the ability to actually be the asset manager. And by by hiring your remote team, in your case, you hired three remote team members. By the way, it probably was three team members for one person in the US as far as how much you could pay them, right?

Courtney Parks: Absolutely.

Pete Neubig: It's around two and a half, 3 to 1.

Courtney Parks: Not even, but yeah.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, it's about two and a half to 3 to 1. Here in Houston. It's probably 3 to 3 and a half to one, you know, in Northern Virginia.

Courtney Parks: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: And so think about that. You could not afford like if at 300 units, you probably wouldn't have been able to afford three more people in Northern Virginia. But you can handle three more remote team members. They can do all the work. And now you can I'm going to go back to you. Level up. You can level up from property manager to asset manager. Is that kind of what happened?

Courtney Parks: It's absolutely what happened. Yeah. And the reason why we got... It took a lot of failures to get to that. Right. Like we hired we had fail after fail for new hires in that time because I've got my people coming to me saying, like, I'm drowning and I'm like, I am too. I know we need to hire someone. We'd hire someone, they'd be awful, we'd hire someone, they'd be awful. And so finally, we even had a fail in the remote team world when it was more of like a VA. went with a, you know, flat fee, flat based company where they just kind of give you someone because I was scared to hire direct and that was a fail. But it was a win because we had to do that in order to really know, you know, you get what you pay for. And so we had I kind of had to have that mistake happen. Going back to answer your question...

Pete Neubig: Now, you know, you just go to VPMsolutions.com.

Courtney Parks: Right? Right. Going back to your question about automation. Automation helps us be proactive. We automate, you know, my lease renewal process that was solely on me for years and years. And I'm like pulling AppFolio reports and I'm creating my own spreadsheet and I'm like, taking notes by hand. Like, who have I talked to? Now it's run on autopilot. I've got it going 90 days out and the lease renewal runs right into so many other processes. So everything, we're able to have those proactive conversations with clients before we even know the tenant's renewing. And then if it's hitting the market, are we able to pre lease or pre-list are we going that route. Do we know a move outs coming. Do we know the owners moving back. And we need to start having those expectation conversations. Because Mr. Landlord hasn't been in his house for ten years and he's expecting it to be, you know, perfect.

Pete Neubig: Like he left it.

Courtney Parks: So that automation definitely helps us be more proactive than reactive. And it keeps things moving in a way that has been a game changer for me.

Pete Neubig: I love automation because one, it reduces so many mistakes. And two, you're literally giving every client the same level of customer service. It's a beautiful thing. And you can hire less people to do more.

Courtney Parks: Even something as simple as, you know, being able to automate that first email, like the touch point, if a client goes on my website and they want to connect with me. They fill out the form. They're immediately sent information. They're immediately sent my Calendly link. They can book an appointment with me right there on the spot. That then integrates with LeadSimple. And, you know, then they get the prompt it's just like it's amazing. You know, your mind is blown once you start figuring out different ways that you can automate those mundane tasks that you were doing every day.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, I have a saying that chaos doesn't make any money. You know, when you're in chaos, whether it's personal life or your business life, it's hard to make and keep money and automation with remote team members and leveling up your team, your staff, by training them. We send them to NARPM events, training them, teaching them, train them and just teach them about investments that speak to that, to speak to to those, you know, to give them that confidence to speak to these investors or these owners. All of a sudden now you're running a really tight ship, profitable ship, and then you can grow should you desire to.

Courtney Parks: Yep. Yeah. I brought, my client success manager. He lives in El Salvador. He came to the systems conference with me in January, and he was about a year into working with me, but I could see such a shift after he went to that conference with me. It opened up his. I mean, it was just like night and day. And it almost was like it clicked. Everything clicked. And he understood how the whole process worked. And I'm we're going to do it again this year. And I'm already thinking, who else can I, you know, give this opportunity to that's going to strengthen them as an employee and then strengthen the company at the end of the day. And who's worth investing in?

Pete Neubig: Well, if you have good systems, you should have a good hiring system as well. And if you hire correctly, you should have high performers. And that means that everybody is worth investing in. If you have the high performers.

Courtney Parks: Yes.

Pete Neubig: And those high performers. Now of course, some may leave you and that's okay. It's, you know, no one's going to. I'm not trying to I'm not trying to steal your soul and hire you and you'll be with me forever. Right? But those high performers, they're going to document the systems and they're going to run it, and they're going to train other people, and they're going to make it better than when they got it right. They leave it better than when they when they got it in most cases.

Courtney Parks: And if you have someone that does that, you give them the world, like just let them run with it. Right? Because possibilities are endless.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I think one of the challenges, one of the mistakes we made early on is when we hired people, we'd only train them on their little piece of the business. And we saw, like, once we started train them on all the pieces of the business, just like your people from El Salvador, Your person from El Salvador. When their eyes kind of lit up, I'm like, oh, now I understand the whole thing. Because they don't know. If you just know your piece. You don't understand how it affects other pieces. If you're maintenance, you don't know how it affects the tenant relations people, the owner communications, the reporting. Right. You don't know how the financials you don't know any of that stuff, you just know your piece. And what happened to us is everybody had their little fiefdom and there would always be like, little arguments until we finally got everybody in a room, and went through every process and trained them all. So we'll make a plug here for systems conference in January. Highly recommend. Been there myself once or twice. Highly recommend that as well. All right. So let's do a parting thought here. So just give us a parting thought. If somebody's listening to this, you know, what's kind of 1 or 2 things that you would tell them, hey, this what you really should look into this. This has really helped you.

Courtney Parks: Yeah. I think, the first thing is, it's never too late to change the way you're doing something. It's never too late to level up if you want to say. And the easiest way to do that is to get in the room with people who are smarter than you or who have more experience than you. And that usually means going to NARPM event. Go to the systems conference, join a Mastermind. I basically just started listening to people that I thought, I like how they run their business, I want to be as good as them. And I started making friends and listening and asking questions and that was just the start.

Pete Neubig: Amazing how giving people are. All you have to do is ask.

Courtney Parks: So giving people will tell you their secrets and you're like, really?

Pete Neubig: Yeah.

Courtney Parks: Okay. and so, I want to do the same. I'm heavily involved in my NARPM local chapter, I wish more people in my area were involved in NARPM and would come to the events. Because when you're better, it's going to make the industry better. It's going to elevate the rest of us. And, you know, there's enough to go around where nobody is really your your competition at this point. You want your competition to be good because it's going to make you better.

Pete Neubig: If the whole industry becomes better, it's going to attract more clients, more people to the industry. So what is it? What is it? High tide rises. All boats.

Courtney Parks: Yes. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: If somebody wanted to reach out to you and pick your brain on something, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

Courtney Parks: Yeah, find me on LinkedIn. That's the best way.

Pete Neubig: It's Courtney Parks with Allegiance Property management.

Courtney Parks: Yes, Courtney Parks. Allegiance Property Management. You can find me on Facebook as well. or just Courtney@AllegiancePM.com.

Pete Neubig: Say that email one more time.

Courtney Parks: Courtney@allegiancepm.com.

Pete Neubig: And if you are looking for direct hire contractors or direct hire remote team members, go ahead and go to VPMsolutions.com. We are, I think now over 42,000 candidates or people looking for work. We have over 45 property management related courses where they can obtain certifications. You can find them, hire them and pay them and train them all through our our platform. Go to vpmsolutions.com. Or you can email me Pete@VPMsolutions.com. And if you're listening to this and you're not a NARPM member, shame on you. Go to narpm.org or call them at (800) 782-3452 and join NARPM. Courtney, thanks so much for being here.