Closing the Operational Visibility Gap in HOA and Property Management

Speaker A: Welcome back to the Peak Property Performance Podcast. I am your co-host, Drew Hall, and today's theme is going to be closing the operational visibility gap in HOA and property management through vendor accountability, risk workflows, and asset lifecycle data. So before we introduce our guest and before I introduce Bill as well, let me just remind you real quick, really quickly, like, subscribe, share, all the things, of course. And just remember, this is how we're spreading the word on the PPP movement and changing an industry. Hopefully that's what we're doing is changing an industry that really, really, really needs to be changed for the better. If you know someone who would provide value as a guest here, we, we welcome commercial real estate thought leaders from all stages of ownership and operation. Just please reach out to us. The best way to do that honestly is just straight up at the website peakpropertyperformance.com.

Speaker A: is the absolute best way to do it. You can find us on LinkedIn as well. It's really all there at peakpropertyperformance.com. So welcome, Bill Douglas.

Bill Douglas: Drew, it's always a pleasure. And everybody say hello to Sally. Not that you can say hello, but Sally, say hello to everybody.

Sally Hamidi: Hello everybody.

Bill Douglas: All right. I'm gonna read your intro now, but I always like it when you actually have a voice rather than me and Drew talking for 5 minutes. So Sally Hamidi is the CEO of On Property Technologies and spent 15 years in HOA and property management before founding the company. I found that what makes Sally's perspective useful for this conversation is that she has seen the problem from several seats. That's manager, board member, board president, and technology founder. So there's all kinds of angles we're going to talk about here today. She understands how work orders, insurance compliance, vendor performance, asset lifecycle, and planning can fall apart when the data lives in inboxes, spreadsheets, or reports. And we call all those silos, by the way, especially the ones that nobody uses.

Bill Douglas: So Sally, again, welcome to Peak Property Performance. We've been looking forward to this conversation.

Sally Hamidi: Thank you so much for having me, Bill, Drew. Lovely being here.

Bill Douglas: Where are you sitting today? I should have asked.

Sally Hamidi: I am in our nation's capital.

Speaker A: Okay. Right on.

Sally Hamidi: A lot of work supposedly gets done. This will not be a political show.

Speaker A: That's fair. That is fair.

Bill Douglas: That was funny, but good.

Speaker A: All those fingers hovering over the disconnect button, they just left like, oh, it's not a political show. I'm staying around.

Sally Hamidi: There's a lot of potholes that we can complain about in this town, but yeah.

Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Douglas: Yeah.

Speaker A: All right. Let's, let's kick it off with a little bit of like what you've seen from your various seats and specifically starting with that HOA, the visibility that you had from the HOA side and property management, and then moving into overseeing maintenance and construction. What new visibilities and insights did you discover in those transitions?

Sally Hamidi: You know, I started my journey in property management as a board president, as if I didn't have enough to do, I decided to volunteer for our beloved 16-unit HOA in DC. And being on the board, I realized we had to go to our management company for a lot of questions. You know, we are in the dark about, say, the roof. What's the condition? Why is unit 402 continuously having leaks? Just seemed to be really reactive. And so, you know, it was challenging. It was, you know, very stimulating position to be in because I don't know, I guess for better or for worse, I'm kind of a control freak and want to know what's going on. And, you know, this is people's biggest investments. And so you want to see what's, what's happening.

Sally Hamidi: And then from that experience, I just realized I love property management and I want to start my own company. And that was in 2008. And I started, you know, from ground up and held on to it for 15 years. And throughout my experience as a property management company owner and, you know, overseeing a portfolio of properties here in the District and Maryland and a few in Virginia, you know, it was just kind of the same thing. You know, we're just so reactive and I can't figure out what's priority and what's not. Data-driven decisions because we didn't have data that could easily, you know, populate in front of you. So just made it really cumbersome. And then as my role, after selling my company, the company that bought mine hired me as an executive to run their maintenance operations that supported their HOAs.

Sally Hamidi: And this is a big, big operation across multiple states. And from there, it was like even more glaring, you know, these managers just You know, forget about access instructions or where the shutoff valves are. You know, just everything is still so reactive in this industry. Like, just something needs to happen. And I think, you know, technology's here to not make us take our finger off the pulse. It's supposed to get us to make better decisions. So it's,

Bill Douglas: Ali, we had a, we had a very good customer who had a very good building engineer. Drew knows who I'm talking about. He described what you said as playing whack-a-mole, the reaction, reactive mode, like wham, wham. I only have 2 hammers, right? How many moles do I have coming up today? That's exactly the way Scott would explain it. I'm playing whack-a-mole today, guys. I have to bail.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah.

Bill Douglas: Well, I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's what you explained is such a common problem.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. It's almost like you pre-read this next question because you used almost all the words that I was going to use in this question about, as you think about the misunderstandings between boards, managers, vendors, I know there's got to be so much in there, but like, how does that, when I just represent, when I pose that question, like, is there some common or most often experienced misunderstanding between all of these entities in those transactions, like what you're talking about?

Sally Hamidi: Yeah, I mean, there's so many competing interests, right? If I'm a roofer and I'm coming to you saying, you know, your roof needs to be replaced now, does it really need to be replaced now? Or are you trying to sell me something? There's a lot of competing interests and mistrust of the stakeholders. You know, nobody really relies on the human recommendation, if you will. It's kind of going away and everybody kind of skeptical or they think they know better than the manager, which is always the case with the board members. It's frustrating. It's a frustrating seat to be in as a manager because you've got board members. And I know because I was a tough board member. And you have questions, and if you can't answer it quickly and you don't have the data to tell me exactly why we're making this decision or why we have to have $100,000 special assessment for the community, we're not gonna, we're not buying it. So it's really important who delivers it, how it's delivered based on what information.

Speaker A: So. Well, it's, it's funny because I feel like in part that's describing something that we get into all the time as well, which is trust. So it takes time to build trust with all of these entities that you're working in and through and around and teaming with, relying on. I mean, it's, it, you know, word of mouth is big, but you have to build that trust for yourself and your team with those teams. So, and there's just really no substitute for positive experience and consistent delivery. And data. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah. The data will reveal how consistent any particular one of those entities is with delivering on the thing they were supposed to deliver on, or, you know, to your point, Sally, like the roof needs replacing. Ah, the hail has hardly melted from that storm that just passed through 15 minutes ago. and say, hey, you got 6 trucks rolling up saying, hey, your roof needs to be replaced.

Bill Douglas: Probably don't have that problem in DC, but we do in Denver.

Speaker A: That is true. That reveals my bias about the Rocky Mountains. That's very true.

Sally Hamidi: Don't roofers call these diamonds from the sky or something like that?

Speaker A: That would be amazing because then you could pay for your roof replacement during every storm. I mean, last question on this one. Can you think of an example of a small issue that has become or that became bigger Because the communication was missing? Hmm.

Sally Hamidi: I mean, there's just so many, you know, and the expectation is that, you know, as a manager, you really need to be a property expert and know about the mechanics of buildings and the components and systems and how these things tie in together. One example of that was, you know, we kept having this mysterious leak from who knows where. It was skipping floors 6 and 5, and it was only leaking into floor 4. And, you know, we thought it was a mechanical issue. You know, people were coming in telling us it was, you know, you got to open up the ceiling and it surely it's this guy's flange on the toilet. And, you know, we did all of that. It still leaked. Lo and behold, there was a piece of flashing on the roof on the 8th floor, which is like Right above the 8th floor.

Sally Hamidi: As soon as that was done, leak stopped. So you just never know. And I feel like the communication that we got was a bit misleading. It delayed things for the resident. I mean, obviously, you know, you've got issues that can compound over time, and if you don't catch them, God forbid, something like Florida will happen again. You know, I think theirs was also a similar situation with the pool that was leaking and the membranes, and, you know, it just... water is The enemy. So it becomes frustrating when you get conflicting information and then lo and behold, some random general contractor goes on the roof and it's like, oh, look at that. It's like, come on.

Speaker A: Yep. That's a good example.

Bill Douglas: Sally, in our intro call, you and I zeroed in on certificate of insurance tracking. As a concrete pain point for both property management and HOAs. So why do COI and compliance workflows create so much friction?

Sally Hamidi: That is a pretty big liability exposure for associations. I mean, and it's such a beast to track in real time unless you've got systems. And, you know, thankfully there are companies that do this kind of automation for you now. But back in the day when I was doing it, oh my gosh, there were moments where it's like, I don't know if this vendor who's doing this work and has a contract to do work in this building, are they still insured? And you know, you've got competing things happening throughout the day. You know, like you said, whack-a-mole, you know, administrative checkups like that that could make or break a legal case for the association end up falling way, way low on that list of priorities. So, you know, exposure to risk is pretty, pretty significant if you're not tracking your vendors who are setting foot in your properties. We thankfully never had any issues like that, but I think I was very, very lucky all those years, you know, working with really good people who, you know, didn't want to cause problems, but you're really taking a risk. You really are.

Bill Douglas: When compliance information is out of date, you're taking a risk is what you're saying.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.

Bill Douglas: I can remember getting... this is an analogy. I can remember getting hit by a car, somebody handing me their insurance card. Now policeman's there saying it's okay. I think I'm covered. Turns out that they hadn't paid their insurance premium that month and their card, they didn't have insurance. So all of a sudden I had to almost go to bat with my own insurance company to get uninsured motorist insurance. So it's, is it a similar thing in the old school model? Like I know that we have to provide the COI, but it's annual and it's in a lot of property management or building management systems, right? We have to put it up there once a year. But if we pay, then they would have a COI that's current dated through next June, but we didn't make our payment.

Bill Douglas: So nowadays that should not happen. Is that correct?

Sally Hamidi: It should not. I mean, there are a lot of different platforms that automate that cycle for vendors. And it's a pretty big part of vendor management. I mean, these are people's homes. Again, the biggest single asset you can own. And so letting things like that fall to the wayside is really putting your clients at risk. The other thing was that was really, really cumbersome was the insurance for the actual homeowners. You know, they just expected the association to pay everything inside the unit if something happened.

Speaker A: Well, guess what?

Sally Hamidi: It doesn't include your fancy, you know, countertops that you put in or your crazy expensive chandelier that got damaged. You know, they're only handling things that are just the basic framework of your unit, not betterments and improvements.

Bill Douglas: So. Well, the same thing goes in rental spaces. Like a tenant can't expect, you know, their waterbed or their, you know, their automated bed that has a water platform on it. 'Cause I have one of these mattresses too that cools or heats. If that leaks, it's going to cause a problem that is not the owner's problem. Right? So it's a, it's definitely an exposure issue, but it's a matter of figuring out who's responsible for it. In this new system where it's current, right? Data from COI is current almost to the minute. How do vendors feel the friction in these workflows? How does it change their life? Does it make it easier? Does it make it harder? Is it more expensive? Who bears this brunt, the change?

Sally Hamidi: I think any company that is looking at this as, as a hindrance for their business shouldn't be in business. You can't run an operation when you're touching people's property without insurance. And if you think you should be exempt from that, please find another job or trade category that doesn't require insurance. Um, I think if you, you know, the nail salons have to have insurance, you know, so it's just really interesting when I've had friction with vendors who are like, you know, you know, I sent it to you last year. I was like, well, it's expired. I need another one. It's like, well, it's expensive. Well, that's cost of doing business.

Bill Douglas: It's actually not expensive. I mean, we can log into our insurers and get it. It's, it's, it is an expense in time, but it does not change your premium at all. To pull a COI, no expense. The insurer wants to give you a COI.

Sally Hamidi: Yeah, I think the process needs to get a little bit more streamlined and more integrated into a platform that they go to every day. I think where you fall into traps of things not getting done or falling through the cracks is when the workflow is way too far from the normal day-to-day workflows. If you're creating too many siloed apps, too many other logins that I got to go to as a vendor, it just creates more friction for me. And then they also have their whack-a-mole game that they're playing every day. So this falls sort of lower on the priority unless you have systems in place that say, hey, no more work orders, no more project opportunities until you put this on our platform. But the closer you get these requirements to the actual workflows of vendors, the better your chances of success are to get them to be compliant. And that's, that's what we're figuring out with various technologies that we've interacted with.

Speaker A: All right. So, Sally, let's, let's think about some vendor performance stuff. I mean, visibility and metrics and things like that. So you, you've described you guys as like a 2-sided marketplace that tracks vendor compliance and performance. What does vendor performance look like when it's measured? This is that data thing that we touched on a second ago. When that vendor performance is measured instead of just managed through, you know, a Yeah, that's such a great question.

Sally Hamidi: And this, this system of tracking has to be designed based on a very fine-tuned set of records that are the expectations of the, of the client and the client being the property managers. What do they expect? They expect you to be on time. They expect you to respond in a reasonable amount of time. They expect you to be able to They expect you to not commit the biggest offense, which is a recall. And for listeners who might not know the terminology, recall is a really bad thing that happens when you have to call a vendor more than once to come and fix the job that should have been done right the first time. And so if there are a lot of recalls, you know, we need to track that. You know, what was the overall experience? You know, are they giving good prices for their work? Are they reasonable? How much experience do they have within this trade category? What are the other professionals' experience and their rating of this vendor doing this type of work? So those are some of the really meaningful metrics that, you know, that the vendors need to be held accountable to. Otherwise, it's a free-for-all and it's just anecdotal.

Sally Hamidi: Why think, you know, Billy the plumber, you know, is great because every time I text him, he shows up. But aside from that, I have no idea how to even compare him to others who may even be better.

Speaker A: So. Yeah, absolutely. That's good. That's very good. I mean, that's some really practical data. Overall then, what would you say, what does it look like? Like this better supply chain of property services, how does that end up looking? For managers and boards, it sounds to me like it would be much, you know, not without fault for sure. There's a lot of work that goes into it, but it sounds like it would be a lot clearer.

Sally Hamidi: You know, again, I think if you're going to have a successful outcome and you want the results to be less things falling through the cracks, you really have to bring things closer to each other to close the gaps as much as possible. That means workflows have to coincide very closely. The system of record needs to contain everything. We shouldn't have to go outside of one system to obtain information about anything or any stakeholder in my maintenance ecosystem, if you will. And the minute you do that is when things start kind of falling apart. And then you've got this duct tape effect, if you will, of these systems just being held together and stitched together just kind of haphazardly, and information may be somewhere else in someone's spreadsheet that then goes missing, or they sell their home and all of that data's gone and all sorts of things. But to have this system work effectively, the technology has to bring people closer to these workflows.

Bill Douglas: We talk a lot on the show about asset lifecycle. So, and I, and you have said before, many managers are operating, and I love this phrase because we use it too, In the dark, operating in the dark when it comes to asset lifecycle information. So what would it take, in your opinion, to move from static studies, spreadsheets, you know, looking at how much I've already spent, you know, historical spend, etc., into real operational visibility?

Sally Hamidi: I mean, right now with the technology that's out there, there is no excuse not to have visibility on the most integral parts of your community. Yes, you absolutely have to have an engineer, a licensed engineer, to come and routinely inspect your community. You know, that's the gold standard. And I don't think AI or anything like that is ever really going to change that. Maybe. I hope not because we love our engineers. But, you know, with that information, AI can do a lot. To keep us on track.

Sally Hamidi: You know, there are systems now where all you got to do is upload your reserve study and it just pings you. It comes up with predictive analytics, recommendations of which vendors to get quotes from, you know, smart bidding features, you know, alerts. If, you know, say your 32-year-old water heater keeps going out, it will say perhaps it's time to get a Quote, you know, there's literally technology out there for that. And so designing the technology around these real use cases becomes really, really critical because HOAs are a different beast. I mean, well, I guess they're really not.

Bill Douglas: No, it's the same problem. It's just a different organization and a different money flow, a different approval flow. I mean, I was on the phone with an asset manager 2 weeks ago, admitted he was, he said, I'm flying blind. I'm in the dark, whatever phrase he used. He didn't have a reserve study. He wanted to engage us to go do a field inspection on the digital infrastructure. And to him, there was value in photos and videos and not just spreadsheets because he was trying to do asset management or capital planning. And he did not have a reserve study.

Bill Douglas: So the problem is still the same. It's just 2 different approaches and 2 different approvals and 2 different funds to pay for it. I think most of the listeners that have rental properties would love it if they could afford a reserve study or that capital assessment or the engineer's review. Vertically integrated firms have their own engineers. engineer and do that and then go out to a PE when they need to be certified. So the problem is the same. The building is aging. How do I know it's not aging horrifically? Like you mentioned Florida, right? And regardless of the market, the problem's there.

Bill Douglas: So what lessons do you think a commercial owner, like with a rental property, could take from HOA environments that are often operating with limited technology adoption?

Sally Hamidi: I think getting your properties inspected by a building engineer is The gold standard. I mean, you really have to spend and invest in obtaining that knowledge. Otherwise, you're really gambling on some serious infrastructure issues that could compound and create much, much bigger problems. So I think it's a it's a very small investment to make for your own you know peace of mind even and planning purposes. I mean, why be in the dark? Why be proactive? Why not be?

Bill Douglas: For the audience, infrastructure in our, for our conversation is any asset class. It could be the water, it could be the power, it could be the structure, it could be the grounds, it could be the digital infrastructure. There it go on and on and on. It could be the communication infrastructure. It could be a lot. So one engineer's not gonna solve it, but we, when we talk about infrastructure, it's anything that is providing a return to the rental community and an HOA, anything that's a potential expense, especially catastrophic.

Sally Hamidi: Yeah, absolutely. There have been many moments where people have been stuck in a garage because this garage door just kept, you know, breaking down over and over. And instead of just having a system that said, you know what, it's way past its useful life, time to get quotes to replace it. I mean, that is the responsible thing to do. And much like the harsh harsh kind of words I had with vendors who don't have insurance. If you're not going to be proactive about maintaining your asset or you're skeptical about making decisions to protect your asset for, on behalf of the community, I mean, you signed up as a board member. It's your fiduciary duty to perform these tasks and execute on these decisions. If you're not willing to invest in a system that keeps You and the community informed, you're maybe not in the right seat for that community.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny. I can't help but give this example, like that very Digital Infrastructure Review or Reserve Survey, whatever we want to call it, that Bill's describing here and Sally revealed technological equivalent of what you described as the 8th floor flashing problem, because there were, it was literally a As luck would have it, a water heater that had been retrofitted directly above all of the tech for that entire complex with a tiny, tiny little drain pan, you know, a $5 plastic drain pan under it. And so it would take everything down with it, everything technologically, digitally. Imagine the things that are connected, whether it be tenants' things, managements, ownerships, everything would be impacted by that. So that was a red, that was the 8th floor flashing digital equivalent.

Sally Hamidi: There's always those. There's always those. But you know, nowadays with these leak detectors that you can get, I mean, it's like $10. Just put it wherever thing is, you know, exposed to water and you know it'll shut it down. I can't tell you how many disasters and insurance claims could have been averted had all of the HOAs that I used to manage installed these leak detection devices that are out now. We didn't have them. them back then, but now they're here. It's crazy.

Sally Hamidi: It's pretty cool.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's very true. Data, right? More data. It's very, very powerful, very helpful. It takes away a lot of the formerly hidden creatures in those environments.

Sally Hamidi: There's always those lurking.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. All right, Sally, so everything we talked about so far is business. So now what we like to do with all of our guests at the end is just, we call it the extra floor. In the spirit of commercial real estate, we call it the extra floor because we're shifting here from talking about business to just, you know, so our listeners can, can get to know you, the actual human side of, of you. So it's just, we got 3 questions here. There's obviously no right or wrong answer, just gut level, whatever comes to your mind. So first question, what is a great piece of career or life advice that you've received?

Sally Hamidi: Do something that you love. And believe it. And my own added sprinkle to that is make sure it helps people and make sure it's something that will be valued and helps people down the line.

Speaker A: So.

Sally Hamidi: Cool.

Bill Douglas: Yeah. All right. Next up is what's one habit or practice that consistently makes you more effective?

Sally Hamidi: Uh, being a workaholic. Uh, I'm just kidding. Whoops. You know, resisting the temptation to wear multiple hats. I think to be effective, you really do need good people around you that you can delegate to and empower them to take your seat. So that's kind of my motto. Just as much as I can resist the temptation to be a control freak and wear way too many hats and try to do it all myself.

Speaker A: It's just Yeah. Yep. If there's any type A's in your life as well, you know, it's, it's sort of that the power of no, there really is a power in no, because it not only does it enable you to focus, but it also enables those around you that you just described that are part of that team. And I'm violating the terms of the extra floor by talking. Sorry.

Sally Hamidi: Yeah, no, no, no is a powerful move you can make. You know, I've said no to, to clients, you know, like you haven't taken care of this property. You probably won't. You're going to be a nightmare to work with. work with. I can already tell. And, you know, you just get your gut instinct about, about certain things and it's okay not to say yes to every single dollar opportunity that, that comes to you. You know, I think being choosy is, is a, is a power move.

Speaker A: No, that's good. That's good. That could, that could be a title actually. Being choosy is a power move. All right. So last question here. Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Sally Hamidi: I am a night owl, always and probably forever.

Speaker A: Is that right? It's been consistent?

Sally Hamidi: It has been. You know, I come up with my best ideas at night. I also do music, so I try to switch off my brain and, you know, play the piano or write music in my little mini, mini music studio I have at home. And it's a nice way to just unwind. But yeah, people have their, you know, morning people. God bless you. I am not a morning person.

Bill Douglas: Well, I'm not a night owl, so there. Touché. Nice. It takes a village.

Sally Hamidi: You're up at 4:00 AM. I just, you know, I went to bed 2 hours before that.

Bill Douglas: You were writing music till 2:00 AM.

Sally Hamidi: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. There you go. Yep.

Bill Douglas: No, I was not up at 4. 6, yes. 4, nah, I need my sleep.

Sally Hamidi: It's crazy. Some of these,

Bill Douglas: How can our listeners contact you? This will be on the page for the, for the episode too, but, you know, tell us the best way. Yeah.

Sally Hamidi: If you would like to learn more information about On Property Technologies and the technologies that we offer in this space, uh, you can go online. weareon.com. And, um, I can be reached at sally@weareon.io.

Bill Douglas: I love it. weareon.io. That's a cool URL.

Speaker A: That's cool.

Bill Douglas: Yeah. Well, thank you, Sally, and thanks to all our listeners. Uh, as Drew said at the beginning of the show, be sure to like, follow, subscribe, suggest to a friend, email this episode to them, tell 'em they should listen, but tell 'em they should be on the show as well. And if you have any ideas about what you want to talk about, be sure and send us a note as well. We appreciate your time and we look forward to the next episode of Peak Property Performance.