The Why and When to Hire a Handyman | Robert Dell'Osso

A Podcast | Robert Dell'Osso

Pete Neubig: Welcome everybody to the NARPM radio podcast. I'm your host Pete Neubig and today we have Robert Dell'Osso the founder of Masterkey Property Management If you don't know Robert, he's been around. He's big active in NARPM, which we greatly appreciate He's come from the investment side so he was involved in real estate and property management for most of his life grew up in the industry and he's successfully grown his company while stabbing self as a knowledgeable resource on investment properties in the triangle I'm guessing that's a North Carolina thing the triangle we call it the H town at the triangle and Robert is actually involved in NARPM. So he holds the RMP designation and then all right now He's got a lot of hats here. He is currently serving as the president chapter President chapter for the triangle NARPM chapter. He's also the NARPM National Government Affairs Committee chair and is the vice chair for NARPM Capitol Summit in 2026 Robert thanks so much for giving back to NARPM. But thanks so much for being here on the NARPM podcast.

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, no, thanks for having me. I just flew in last night from the 26th NARPM Capitol Summit in DC So it was great. Everybody should try to attend that conference at least once Really great masterminds. It's a small conference about 125-150 attendees They do a Day on the Hill they set up appointments to go, you know talk to legislative staff Get the issues across of that are important to NARPM such as things around the cares act lead based paint, you know reforming HUD We had some speakers come in from HUD. We had an assistant secretary from HUD come in He was very well received because the current HUD Administration strongly believes in enforcing fair housing laws as written not based on You know political ideology Like they interpret. Yeah crazy interpretations It's not an adversarial relationship. That's always kind of the vibe we got in the past They're very outgoing. I had some hallway conversations with them outside of the speaking Engagement and they're just super friendly and outgoing and you know, one of the big things they teased was We should be getting new HUD guidance later this spring on around assistance animals ESA's, you know previously club withdrew that guidance. I think it was last fall. So Excited to hear what that'll be.

Pete Neubig: So do you find that we have people like in the government that's actually on our side now Where is like, you know, because we have so many resident or tenant advocacy groups But we only have one like probably we only have one like landlord advocacy group that I know of which is which is NARPM

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, I think so In the past and this is my third year going to the capital summit and I think you know before that it was kind of just a Day on the Hill. So it's evolved as a conference and as NARPM has evolved, right? So I talked to some of the longtime folks like Keith Becker who was the chair this year He remembers when it was just kind of a get-together Day on the Hill and you'd go up for a day and try to leave some information with your representatives and senators offices and now it's much more structured because NARPM as an organization has evolved Right. We've got full-time Government affairs staff right Tyler Craddick. We had Troy. He's now the NARPM CEO and there's really every year it grows from an advocacy standpoint and it formalizes more and more and it's important right because like Tyler says if you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu You know, we've got to look out for the industry and it's not adversarial lookout It's we know how to manage houses better than anyone else right NARPM members do I'll argue so let's not do let's not put in place regulations that hinder our ability to properly manage homes to make it still to make it so it's still a viable investment for owners, right? Because if you if you make it too hard, they'll just get out of it and then he drives up the cost of housing. There was somebody mentioned up from the northeast when I was there this week that they read there's 50,000 housing units sitting unused in New York state because There's so much regulation. It would cost them enormous amounts of money In losses, so they'd rather just let them sit empty and take the right off loss. That's crazy to me, right?

Pete Neubig: That's nuts. Yeah as an investor, I can't even think about that. Like I would I'm like get my houses leased.

Robert Dell’Osso: I would have heartburn, but if you can't lease it for what a true market rent is, right?

Pete Neubig: He's gonna call and then you gotta and then you have to take care of all the uh maintenance or whatever, you know I mean.

Robert Dell’Osso: Right and it's not that the people want to slumlord it so to speak It's I can't afford to do what maintenance costs if I can't pull in rent to even to pay this.

Pete Neubig: I can't believe that. Yeah, and I know in New York now, uh, what is it 9.5 percent increase in property taxes?

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah are 10 something crazy. Like what do you what do you do?

Pete Neubig: I mean, what exactly is Day on the Hill mean like, uh, so do you actually just go from office to office of different? Uh, is it senators? Is it just congressmen like who are you actually both?

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, it's both So and you and you don't typically meet with the elected officials, right? and some people don't realize that Yeah, those are good photo ops But you really want to meet with their staffers. You want to meet with the staffers that are responsible for housing because they're the subject matter experts that the elected officials rely on for policy and voting, you know, they're going to go to You know John or Jane Doe their housing staffer and say what's what do I need to know about housing? Oh, well, we've met we've had these groups these property managers from NARPM coming in. They're the industry association They gave us all this great information on housing and like what need we need help. They need help with getting in front of them goes Exponentially farther than just sending a foreign email Yeah, uh, it's voice of the customer so to speak.

Pete Neubig: So what were what were some of the points that that NARPM was trying to bring up to some of these staffers?

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, so the big ones are still working on the Cares Act 30-day notice which Um, you know technically it's still 30-day notice to vacate out there because that did not sunset. It was very ambiguous language. Some state supreme courts have ruled that It went away when the Cares Act went away, but you know, if you ask an attorney like Monica Gilroy She'll tell you it's still there technically So you want to get rid of that and then of course the lead-based paint rule which requires property managers to be certified, and lead-based paint renovation and rEPAir, which was not always the case up until a few years ago when they changed like two or three words in an FAQ, right so and then there's property managers in every state getting audited and fined by the EPA In a lot of cases, they didn't even know they had to be certified. You know, we use the argument of That's like saying I as a property manager need to have an HVAC license to go hire an HVAC firm, right I previously had the responsibility We had to hire Lead-based paint certified firms to do rEPAirs on pre-1978 houses and there's some other requirements in there, but we didn't have to be certified So now they changed that FAQ Kind of on the sly really and it all of a sudden exposed property managers all over the country and I know Monica has been great about going around to NARPM events NARPM chapters and preaching Like hey, you've got to get certified to protect yourself I mean they'll start out with she was up on stage saying, you know they're going to start out and try to fine you five six seven eight hundred thousand dollars Right. That's like they can give you a heart attack as a business owner. She literally had an experience of somebody called her because they sent over this audit thing and the guy started having chest pains and went to the hospital because it freaked him out so much. Like it shouldn't be about trying to scare people to death literally, right? Yeah we're not trying to do anything shady, but if you've got to do things that make sense and she likes to use the term disparate like it's not fair, right? You shouldn't be trying to find a property manager out of business. Like it should be about like hey, let's we need to educate you to make sure you do the right thing based on the regulations and then if you don't comply Maybe there's a problem right if you ignore it I get it, but most property managers I would argue don't even have a clue that they have to be certified in lead-based paint renovation rEPAir.

Pete Neubig: Especially if you're not part of NARPM Right.

Robert Dell’Osso: Absolutely.

Pete Neubig: I mean, you go to any state conference, they have a lead-based paint course typically attached to that conference.

Robert Dell’Osso: We taught it at the capital summit last year He brought in a guy and he taught it to half a dozen people or so.

Pete Neubig: I feel like it's everything that the government touches is the money grab you know, whether it's whether you have to register your rentals in some small town USA and it's just a money grab and They have to then inspect it.

Robert Dell’Osso: Or creates a bureaucracy. Yeah they had one in Raleigh for a few years and you had to pay like 25 bucks a door or something like that and You know if you if you if you got one or two property, it's not a big deal But if you're an apartment company, it's pretty hefty and what they did with that funds was they went and then hired people to go around and try to catch people Right.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, it feels like it's like an HOA Deal, you know just at the city level now.

Robert Dell’Osso: And eventually the state changed the state law and said well you can have these registries, but you can't charge people So what they do they immediately dropped them all because they're like well, it's not if we can't make money off of it We're not going to do it anymore.

Pete Neubig: That's right Yeah So now you said you thought you guys talked about a fair housing person One of the one of the things that um, I was always worried about for housing was that disparate impact? where it's like, um you know, it's like well, we don't really you can't we we're not like we can't really define what um, what it looks like when you're not, you know, when you are you know negatively impacting somebody race color creed one of the one of the protected classes uh, is that something you guys discussed at all while in there or with the fair housing person or was it more just on the assistance animals that he's going that they're touching on right now?

Robert Dell’Osso: They touched on it some and I know really like with There's all but the big theme from the NARPM side is like we're arguing There's disparate impact against property managers touching back on the lead-based paint thing, right? like you know the Fair Housing the HUD people even said because we made it clear like hey, we want to be your Industry experts because we are the industry experts. So you know troy CEO of NARPM told the assistant secretary when we met as a you know, he we met outside the conference room with or the big conference ballroom with the board and the government affairs committee was there and he said please lean on us as an organization when you need to gather facts around You know fair housing in terms of rental properties and property management We are the industry organization around it. Like we are the most knowledgeable. We're the experts We'd be happy to provide you information that you need So you can better understand the industry in terms of you know governing the industry Don't just go to the tenant rights groups, right? Because they're only going to get one side.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, I think if you listen to this and you are a member of NARPM I think one of the one of the you know benefits of NARPM is that we do have these folks here and so if you are getting Sued by somebody like you can call NARPM and they can give you kind of an opinion, right? We know Monica is basically Uh, what is she she's counsel for I know she has her own company, but she's like literally a counsel for NARPM, right? She can help.

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, so she's new. This is new like she's basically like The NARPM legal hotline, right? You get a letter from EPA or something or from PUD like Pick up the phone and call her. She's gonna have a conversation with you She's you know from what I understand she's gonna she's working on setting up a legal hotline like a lot of state realtor associations have but like you can just call her and she'll tell you right like give you some advice as a member in the right direction at least that's right.

Pete Neubig: And that's the main thing because you know, you get you get sued and uh, you haven't you don't even know where to go, right? It's like, uh, you know, I mean we all have like, you know I think a lot of us have like eviction attorneys or real estate attorneys but then it's like do you have a business attorney like you have a government affairs attorney, you know, I mean, uh, you know you’re gonna get sued at some point. It's just not it's a matter of if it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when you get sued and so being a member of NARPM gives you a little bit of at least guidance on where to go and how to fight this thing.

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, I mean most people know like hey, you could call your business attorney or real estate attorney like hey, I've got a HUD Complain or the EPA has come after me. Who do I call? There's a good chance. They don't even know who to refer you to right because who practices in that niche legal representation space at the federal level So that's why it's great to have that resource through NARPM like Monica, right whether you hire her firm or not. She can probably Refer you to somebody if you want to not use her and use someone else. She knows colleagues in the industry, right where you can hire her I mean, she's great She comes around to chapters. She speaks you know, I'm trying to get her to our chapter here in the next few months and She's not out there like trying to make money off of traveling to educate people Yeah, she's a great resource.

Pete Neubig: She's going to be speaking at the NARPM North Carolina, uh reference in uh end of end of February early March which I think how you know, uh, we're recording this right before that but this will come out after that So she's doing that.

Robert Dell’Osso: Looking forward to seeing both you and her there.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, and she's speaking at broker owner. So like if you are a member of NARPM and all you're doing is going to local chapters, that's great If as long as you're doing that, that's great But there's also the national stuff is really where you start seeing value with your membership and then they also have those the you know I think was a weekly they sent out the NARPM advocacy points and The legislative teams is kind of keeping you up on to date on stuff. So I think there's a lot more That NARPM has for the membership, especially on you know fighting for us for the for investors slash landlords so I think you want to make sure as you join NARPM take advantage of all these, you know benefits that the organization has for us for us members.

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, it's been phenomenal for me.

Pete Neubig: Alright Robert. So thank you for giving us the uh update on Day on the Hill and I need to get there I have not been and I need I need to get there Politics just scares me.

Robert Dell’Osso: Next year. I'm committing you to go.

Pete Neubig: Next year All right, sounds like yeah All right. So let's talk a little bit about You know, um, you and I had talked a few weeks ago and we're like, hey, man let's get you on the pie like man I would love to talk about like what structure looks like Org structure looks like for a startup and then how it how you morph that structure as as you grow So let's talk a little bit about company org structure like when you're starting up versus like how many doors before you kind of morph into a different structure and uh, let's talk about org chart org charts

Robert Dell’Osso: Okay

Pete Neubig: So yeah, tell me where you start

Robert Dell’Osso: So when I started 10 years ago, this is our 10th year with master from when I started master key. I started with the doors that I owned three or four doors personal rentals. Got set up on AppFolio you know Hired a firm to do some Google AdWords for me to get some properties got my first property was like super excited But it was literally just me I was doing everything and yeah, that's probably pretty easy if you got you know, just a handful of properties but Maintenance Chris would come in. I went out and fixed it myself. I thought this is gonna be easy, right? Well, then you start adding more properties and you realize Wait a minute. I can't fix this. I've gotta I've got to find a handyman I've got to find I've got to build a relationship with you know, the handyman the plumber the HVAC the electrician You know and it's hard to do like you call them up. They probably get calls all the time. Hey, you know, I I'm building a property management company and I'm trying to build a list of my good vendors and You know at first you haven't given them any business. So they've got a lot of paying customers. So how do they prioritize that that? You know, I went through some handyman and some plumbers and some HVAC companies and stuff like that and Kind of trial and error, right?

Pete Neubig: Oh, man. I had a handyman once and he was on his way to do it for me and he never got there and I'm like, holy crap did he got did he die in a car accident? Oh, no, he got a call for a tile job, which paid more so he diverted it went to that job instead.

Robert Dell’Osso: I eventually hired my handyman and he's been with me for five years.

Pete Neubig: Interesting.

Robert Dell’Osso: So I joined, you know a year or two in I joined a BNI group trying to build my business and I met a lot of good vendors in that space too, right? So um, I had a handyman that I was using and he did work for me and he did work for others Well, eventually he retired he announced to the group after a couple years saying hey I'm retiring. I'm like, that sounds awesome But who am I going to call now? I got a sailboat You know, my dream is to sail six months out of the year. Dave? His name is Dave and he said call my brother Pete. He does this too So I called Pete and I Pete You know, I introduced who I was and blah blah. He said yeah, I do handyman stuff, too You know a lot of my brother's clients have been calling me and so he worked with me for a few years but I found that You know, he had other customers right? So it was always chasing the schedule so to speak and I finally went to him and I said hey man I'm getting big enough. I need the control the schedule, how about if I hire you and put you on full time I'll pay you a salary I'm not even gonna pay you hourly I'll pay you a salary You don't have to chase jobs. You don't have to worry about like, you know putting in hours to make a certain amount whatever and you know you work for me and he's thought about it for like two or three days came back. He's like that sounds great. let's do it So he shut down his company and went to work for me and he's been with me for you know, five or six years.

Pete Neubig: So, all right, let's talk a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about that, right? so how many Units were you at that? Created so I'm asking how many units because we know how many how many tickets were created Right because you have to have the volume and then how much revenue did you were you making so that you can afford?

Robert Dell’Osso: This person Yeah, I was probably in the mid-100s went upper 100s and doors Um, okay, so I would have thought more I would have thought around 300.

Pete Neubig: So 150 to 200 around there?

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, probably close to 200. But yeah when we started that and it first It was a little a bit of a stretch right like keeping him busy. But I knew because we had to be we've had a BDM That role filled for you know, five plus years so I knew we were going to be continuing to add doors, right? So I tell everyone now hire proactively not reactively because it's so much easier to do it, right? So I said, you know what I'm gonna hire the handyman even if it's a break-even thing You know, I hate to lose any money, but let's just shoot for at least a break-even thing But I'll have him in working for me. I'll control the schedule the quality and it's it'll be good and um You know now I'm at a little over 500 doors and My handyman we have we send overflow work to a couple other handyman I haven't pulled the trigger to hire a second one yet, but we've got a couple of really good local guys that we can send overflow work to and and that works for them because I think they don't want like for whatever reason They maybe have some other customers some other PMs they work for um But I could see us eventually hiring

Pete Neubig: What is your handyman doing though, is he just doing the maintenance tickets and then you have a you have a crew Like a company a third-party company that does the turns is he doing a turns is he AC certified? Give me a little bit more uh information.

Robert Dell’Osso: So yeah, so our handyman Just I don't have him doing work on the turns because I can't really have him locked up on a project for two or three days I have him handling the existing tenants submit a maintenance request Um, you know running toilet running faucet, whatever the light's not working. I changed the bulb It's still not working. The door lock isn't working handyman stuff, right? Change an outlet change a switch. No problem He's not doing really heavy electrical, you know change a fan stuff like that There's no problem light plumbing clogged drain sink drains, you know leak in or something like that. He'll fix that um he's pretty good at figuring stuff out too, but he also knows that like He knows when to call in the expert like hey He'll go look at it and do a quick look and he won't kind of trial and error which can make things worse. He's really good that He will say go back to the maintenance coordinator and say hey I think you need to send an electrician out for this one right or send a plumber out It's a little bit bigger of a job. I can kind of Triage and mitigate right now, but we should get a plumber out to really dig into this like that.

Pete Neubig: So that means you know, one of the mistakes I make so I tried this and it didn't work and the reason why it didn't work now that I'm now that I'm hearing you talk is I always have my guys do the turns and they're on salary. So turns would take six days. Once I let them to have their own company that same turn would take a day and a half.

Robert Dell’Osso: Right. I use two turnover companies two separate ones because I kind of also and they know that too, right? like hey, I got two companies so like I feel that their performance and their speed to turn is When they know there's competition out there that they're going against improves a lot.

Pete Neubig: Now just because now because just because you have a maintenance guy I know you still need your AC people and your plumbers and all that stuff, but you're sending him first He double checks it. Can he change out something real quick fix it? Or does he have to go ahead and get the Get the AC company out there a lot of times you're doing that.

Robert Dell’Osso: I mean if they submit a request like my AC is not working. We usually just go straight to the AC company, right? Like that.

Pete Neubig: Um, do you brand you are you rebranding all of your invoices to your company to uh, Master key wasn't, that yeah Master Key Property Management or are you just taking that if it's an AC company? You're just you're just sending that invoice over to the uh to the investor?

Robert Dell’Osso: Sending an AC invoice company that AC invoice directly over we don't we don't do any of the markups on that now You know, honestly from a business structure standpoint I've thought about because I kept my maintenance company separate. It's a separate LLC separate, you know, EIN all that and it just has the handyman in it and myself as an employee technically. One thing I've thought about doing is why don't I run all the turns through there, right? Make a little money on that because I'm getting such great. Honestly, I feel in my market I'm getting really good pricing for my turnover crews because I give them a lot of volume, right? Right, you know 500 plus doors. They're getting a lot of good work. So our pricing is extremely competitive especially around things like paint I can I can get painting like full paint walls and trim for you know Roughly two bucks a square foot whereas in our market if you call if a homeowner calls a painting company They have no relationship with it's probably going to be between six to eight dollars a square foot.

Pete Neubig: Oh, yeah you know something some property managers in their agreement have where if they have to oversee a turn that there's a 15 or 10 or something like that.

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, like a cost plus.

Pete Neubig: Yep Now, okay So one of the challenges I did is is I had my maintenance guys under Empire under my property management firm and so I actually lost clients because like They get upset about the invoice that we sent especially on the turns, right? So you're doing good by having a good turn team third party, but you know, um, Or we would eat a lot of cost right because you know, they would be upset, you know I mean everybody's upset over everything by the way as soon as they have to throw money into any property It's like well, I don't want to pay you for this or I'm going to fire you because of x y and z So we saw we saw that as a challenge. So having a separate entity That doesn't have that did that didn't have Empire in the name would probably be a much better Solution for us. So that's pretty smart, but I'm hoping you're not calling it master key maintenance

Robert Dell’Osso: We do actually but it's always just been the handyman and that's the only thing that it bills you know our own I have had no pushback on that because the owners know You know if we're onboarding a new owner when we started it up five or six years ago It was you know, here's the hourly rate and here's why we charge what we charge, you know this we're sending in a handyman who Is you know ensure the company has insurance we have workman's comp on them, you know, we have strong liability policies They're really good insurance companies. This is to protect you because you know, anybody can become a handyman right in our state There's no handyman license. There's no You know, it's 640 the job has to be over forty thousand dollars before it requires a general contractor's license in North Carolina Nice, that's most things to me is the same thing as us getting a lead-based paint license So right so I mean, you know and your HVAC guys have to have a license, right? So and your plumbers do so that's covered under that but it's more about the liability You like if my handyman goes into a house and he hurts himself It's insured and it's not it's insured. I think pretty strongly because I'm a big believer in Insuring for proper coverage versus just like buying a cheap policy to say you have it, right? So it's more about owner protection and liability protection.

Pete Neubig: So All right, so you got to about 200 units you decide to hire the maintenance guy I'm curious on your maintenance do you like some of some companies charge a percent some companies charge a flat fee override like hey, we're going to charge your you Mr. Investor to you know to run this maintenance, uh, this maintenance request is that kind of big in North Carolina or is most people not charge any kind of maintenance fee?

Robert Dell’Osso: I would say most are not I mean of the other PMs I talked to my pm colleagues in our local chapters Most are not charging a maintenance coordination fee. I know a lot of people do and they strongly push it um But we found...

Pete Neubig: Because it costs us a lot of money to run maintenance.

Robert Dell’Osso: It does right? Yeah, so we have had a lot of pushback in the new client process when you're trying to sell your company to onboard a new client right in the BDM role on markup because most are not and they're even advertising on their website. Hey, we're not marking up maintenance, right? So it's a hard sell in our area to be honest with you.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, do you guys do a vendor rebate program then? So like, you know, you're a 600 units. You're giving the AC guy a million dollars a year in business Is uh is do you have like any kind of rebate like at Empire? We had like a 10% like we called it a marketing fee like There's a rebate because I'm doing all the marketing for you getting you business So I got you know, I'll get like a 10% rebate. It's kind of where you ran it.

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, I haven't. And here's why. Because I've had relationships with these vendors since before I knew that rebate existed. So just personally, I would have a hard time going back to them now and say, Hey, I know you've been working with me for seven or eight years, but now you need to start rebating me back.

Pete Neubig: Right.

Robert Dell’Osso: You know, I like the idea of it. I'm not gonna lie and say I don't. I think there's some really good revenue to be made there. I just, you know, I've got some personal relationships with some of these vendors. I would just have a hard time doing it. Some of them become really good friends of mine.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, that makes sense. I think that also it's tough on the accounting side. You know, like we had trouble with our bookkeeping side of things to keep that. And then you also have that 10% creep. So, oh, yeah, we'll give you 10%. And next thing you know, their cost goes up 10%.

Robert Dell’Osso: Right. Their diagnostic fee went up 10%.

Pete Neubig: Exactly. Everything goes up. So it's the best solution I've seen is a couple like one is, I'm not a big fan of charging the client X percent or, you know, a percentage of work order, because not every work order is the same. Like, you know, like, I have a management company that runs my properties right now, because I don't, because I don't, you know, own a PM firm in anymore. And they charge, they charge 15% for any kind of maintenance charge. Right? Well, for something that's 100 bucks, not a big deal, but something that's four grand, like changing out like a roof, we know that the chance that it's the same phone call, right? You're not like, you're not going there and doing anything different on a roof than you are like when a like a, you know, a capacitor being changed out for 200 bucks, whatever. So I'm not a big fan of the percentage. I'm a big fan of a flat fee, like a flat fee of X dollars, it's small enough where it just covers the your cost of having the people run the maintenance thing all the way through, especially with the technology that we have now. So I'm a big fan of having a small fee versus a big percentage or even the deal, the vendor rebate. One solution that I had, and Melissa Prandy came up with this one. I really like this is when you get big enough, right, you have a bunch of vendors, you're given a bunch of a bunch of money to instead of charging a rebate. What she did is said at the beginning of the year, she had like you could be a silver, gold or platinum, I think she had three levels. And the vendors who paid the highest would get the first hit at the tickets. And so like she had like this vendor program. What I liked about it, it was just it was just it was yearly, it got paid in January. And so there was no cost creep because the guys are just paying one time. And the booking is super easy. Because you only have to have one bill one time. So I thought that was pretty unique, as it is. But I think the best solution is what you're doing having a separate, separate company, that the now probably wouldn't have made it the same thing. But having your handyman just do the handyman stuff is great. And then you could, what you could have what you could do, whether you want whether you whether you can with the financials or not, is you could run everything through that company, put a small markup on there, and then you know, rebrand the invoice. The challenge with that is if something's not working, it comes back to you and your company, not the third party company. Right?

Robert Dell’Osso: So right, it depends on what you want to run through it. And you know, I've thought like, okay, well, maybe the terms, right? Because that's, that's easier in a sense of, hey, my turnover careers are going in, they're doing paint flooring, you know, miscellaneous repairs, blinds or whatever. That's pretty, you know, easy, so to speak, right? Versus you run an HVAC replacement through and something goes wrong with the HVAC. And you know, it gets a little convoluted, but there's not really a lot of warranty follow up, so to speak on terms with what the turnover crews are doing, especially in this cosmetic stuff.

Pete Neubig: And there's not a lot of chance of getting sued either.

Robert Dell’Osso: Right, because you're putting in your painting, you're doing flooring, even if you might be finishing cabinets, counters, granite, something like that. So right, the liability is minimized in that scenario.

Pete Neubig: Okay, so all right, so we got, we're running out of time, we got completely, we fully took a left turn here, but it was good. So in your experience, you're saying around 200 units, you could have basically a handyman work for you. Is that?

Robert Dell’Osso: Yeah, and it depends on the class of properties you have, right? Like, are you bringing in stuff that's all less than 10 years old, you may not even need it, right? Or not a new construction stuff. Sure. But in our area, I wouldn't say our stuff is old, but there's a lot of stuff built in the 90s and early 2000s. So they're at the point where you get quite a bit of handyman work. And I think it can make sense, right? It could even be less stores, depending on your market. If you're in a market that has a lot of old and older stuff, like up in the Northeast or Chicago or some right, and they're in there all the time fixing stuff and you may only need a hundred doors.

Pete Neubig: How many tickets are you averaging a month per unit? Do you track those numbers at all?

Robert Dell’Osso: I haven't, I was looking at it, but before we hired our current maintenance coordinator, at any given point, I was probably having around 140, 150 open tickets. Now some amount of those are things like HVAC preventative maintenance that we open twice a year, right? And we probably have 24 to 30 recurring landscaping in houses where the owner covers it, the landscaping. And that's from the growing season for us, right? So it's a March through October or something like that. So it kind of fluctuates that. We're pretty good now where it's under, down around a hundred or even a little less open tickets at any given point, which I'm happy to see because, I don't know, it stresses me out if I see like 150, 180 open tickets in there. I'm like, gosh, what's going on with these properties? Like is stuff not getting fixed? But that's where a maintenance coordinator helps, right? So we use that folio and we use their new maintenance performer option. So it auto-assigns stuff based on criteria, but I still firmly believe you need that human intervention. You need people looking at the stuff, right? So somebody submits a maintenance request for a dishwasher. Well, go look at the history. Did we do something on that dishwasher recently? We sent people out there two or three times in the last year. Let's not send another person out. Let's go to the owner and say, hey, dishwasher broke again. We worked on it a couple of times this year. We don't want to spend another diagnostic fee for you. Let's just replace it. So I think a good maintenance coordinator who looks at that stuff is important to have. And then even with like your pre-1978 houses, you're supposed to send out a renovate right brochure like between seven and 30 days or something before, or no more than 30 days out for maintenance requests. Monica's got the details, but her advice is if you get a maintenance request on a pre-1978 house, just have a letter set up and you can shoot it over to the tenant. It's a no action letter. It's the EPA requires us to give you this brochure for your awareness, basically. They don't even need to sign it. You just need to prove that you sent it and you can send it right through for us through AppFolio or whatever your PM software is and track it. So I still think a good maintenance coordinator is important. I wish I had hired a maintenance coordinator sooner. I hired my first one last fall. I should have done it years ago.

Pete Neubig: So in your opinion though, you need to have obviously a pretty decent unit count. You have to have a lot of tickets coming in. So for us at Empire, I think it was a little over half of our portfolio would put a ticket in every month. It was like 0.54 or 0.56. It's like ridiculous.

Robert Dell’Osso: And it's always right after you renew their lease, right? They send in like three.

Pete Neubig: Or new move-ins. We had a challenge with make readies, especially like new move-ins. It was just terrible. They put like 30 tickets in. But we had a lot of tickets in. So I love what you're saying. Look at your ticket count, look at the age of the houses and just make that determination. I would say the other thing too is if you're running a chaotic PM firm, would you consider hiring maintenance tech at that point? Or would you say, hey, let's make sure the maintenance firm is kind of working, the management firm is working fine before we spin that out? Or what's your thoughts on that?

Robert Dell’Osso: No, I think you can go ahead and do it because it should be one less thing you have to worry about. If you want to sub it out, you're still fighting things like scheduling control, right? Because you don't know how many other customers they have, right? So they got to kind of be as a business, as a vendor, they want to be equitable, right? So they're like, well, I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket with one firm because if they go away, then that can impact me. So I would rather spin that maintenance company up sooner rather than later and not have to worry about it, right? So if you get a good maintenance coordinator, good handyman, and they work hand in hand, that kind of takes some of the chaos away and lets you focus on improving your processes and how you do things in the PM side.

Pete Neubig: Did you have your handyman do like move out inspections and anything like that? Or did you have like a field technician or a realtor do all that?

Robert Dell’Osso: So we have, we call them assistant property managers. Reality is they're more of a project manager because they're managing the make readies. They do the move out inspections and the quality checks and making sure that the work got completed, that's scoped out. That's what we use. And we've used that since we're about 125 doors is when I hired, actually about 7,500 doors and I hired my first person to help with that. And it was part-time when they became full-time. And now we have a pod structure really. So there's two pods. The pod is an assistant property manager that's out in the field locally and their pod teammate is a remote team member. It's because they're behind the computer all day long, their remote team member is. So they can work hand in hand while they're there doing a move out inspection and start queuing up stuff and firing off requests for estimates, for vendor turnovers or whatever, or they could just say, yeah, they moved out. This house is perfect. Let's get it clean, clean the carpet and get it listed. And they can get all that stuff rolling. Because what we were finding was the assistant property manager, they'd be out in the field all day doing stuff. And then their day's over and either they're doing it at night or they have to do it the next day and you lose a day or two. And every day loss is a day of lost potential rent. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: All right, man. Well, we're up against it. I think we need to have you come back on. So we can actually talk about the org structure and how we grow. But we appreciate you sharing. We went on a left turn here, but I think it was actually, we got a little bit deeper on when or why you should hire a maintenance handyman, if you will. So, Robert, if somebody listens to this and they want to reach out to you and pick your brain on if they should hire their own personal handyman, or they want to talk a little bit more about the NARPM Day on the Hill, what's the best way to contact you?

Robert Dell’Osso: Shoot me an email. It's my first name, Robert@masterkeypm.com. I've always loved talking NARPM stuff with NARPM people. I mean, you know, when I see you next week in Charlotte, I'm going to corner you, right? So we're going to talk, we're probably going to talk maintenance coordination because that's one of my hot topics right now. So I know you're an expert in that. So I'm going to, I'm going to get some of your time next week.

Pete Neubig: Over a cigar, for sure.

Robert Dell’Osso: 100%.

Pete Neubig: And then if you need a maintenance coordinator, then look at VPM Solutions. We actually have a maintenance coordinator course that people can take before you hire them, pass them, get a certification, go to vpsolutions.com or email me pete@vpsolutions.com. And if you want to get the benefits of NARPM, you need to join, go to narpm.org, or give them a call at 800-782-3452. Thanks, Robert, for being here. See you everybody.