Challenges and Solutions for the Property Management Industry

hey everybody on today's podcast we're talking with the folks from steadily to learn all about landlord insurance

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listen in welcome to the property management mastermind show with your host brad larson brad owns one of the fastest

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growing property management companies in san antonio texas this podcast is for property managers by property managers

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you'll hear from industry leading professionals on best practices new ideas success stories and lessons

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[Music] welcome everybody to another edition of the property management mastermind

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podcast i'm your host rod larson and today's two guests are coming at you

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from steadily and this is an interesting uh company i want to talk to you about

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gang because bringing these two guests on is going to give us an opportunity to really understand who they are what they

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do and is filling a significant need in our property management industry and so i

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have adam and datha from steadily now adam in a former life was with real page who was very familiar with a lot of the

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software's a lot of the property management world and he's been around the circuit for a while

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and so when when he uh retired out of real page and took another career with steadily it was good to see him at the

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booth uh there at the narping brokerage we started a conversation and really started getting rig about steadily and

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had a good conversation a couple times over so far and i thought you know what gang this would be an awesome podcast

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because people are going to know who you are what you do and so let's consider this almost like a secret shopper where i'm interviewing

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you guys to find out who you are what you do and then data you're going to have to explain who you are in this one

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because you know you could be the big lady or you could be you know the the middle person but you got to give us a quick intro so i'm going to let adam go

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first alphabetically so adam give us a few minutes your time tell us who you are yeah thanks brad and uh thanks for

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having me on and great to great to see you and everybody else for the industry again right so as you said i was with

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real paige for for many years um loved the industry uh took a took an

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opportunity to to go into a different role and i'm back right i just missed the property management industry that

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much and my role with steadily is a head of partnerships and growth

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and so uh you know the opportunity i was drawn to with steadily was you know it seemed like something that

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was missing from the industry right and you know high level who we are and

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we'll talk a lot more about this today is we're a tech first company providing landlord

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insurance so insurance for investors of rental properties and

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so you know i'm excited to talk a little bit more about that uh but i was really drawn to the team

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and the company because of the team the a bunch of rock stars you'll get to meet data here today but just everybody that

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i met with it's just you know this seems like something that is going to be big so i want to be a part of it and here i am so

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to clarify that's code because when adam says he misses the industry he really missed the free drinks at the

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conferences right i just want to be clear on that one so data please give us a few minutes to your time introduce

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yourself yeah absolutely um and we are so glad to have adam on board uh he was

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a phenomenal addition to our senior leadership team um i'm data santa miri i

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am one of three co-founders at steadily so my domain is the insurance

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my other co-founders come from heavy tech backgrounds and my whole career has been

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an insurance building programs building out operations doing the rates and all that stuff that kind of goes

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into insurance and we we partnered up to create steadily because on the side we were also

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investors ourselves i've done several flips my co-founder darren bought 15

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properties around the country and just kind of experienced firsthand the pain

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that comes along with trying to get insurance for your rental properties through the traditional market and it just didn't make any sense where when

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you can go online now and you can get a homeowner's quote within a few minutes and it's seamless and it's easy that you

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can't do the same thing for landlords and so we pondered it for a while three years actually we pondered it and

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no one had entered the space to solve the problem so that's when we created steadily

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with the intent of addressing this to make it easy and seamless remove the friction use the technology to make it

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fast fast access to those policies and still affordable so it's not

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you know extraordinarily more than you're paying currently and so that's what we've been up to for the last

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couple of years cool stuff so let me let me go backwards a little bit and give us a very long monologue because

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she's talking about the solution but i wanted to illustrate the problem at length because here we are gang let's

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face it when we sign up a new owner to work with us as property managers third-party property managers we have an

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owner or if you're an individual landlord that owns properties or hundreds of properties the problem is

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getting the proper level of insurance for that home owner and so us as

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property managers are several techniques you know you sit down with them at the at the kitchen table and say okay by the way

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when you sign up with us you're going to need to get this level of homeowners insurance that names my company

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as additionally insured and so these insurance companies they have different terms for that they call it additional

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interest they call it additional other stuff i mean it's just they had different terms and so you never quite

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know if you're correctly covered and so that's part of the problem so even at rent works what we have been doing and

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then and it's really kind of a workaround is we were charging a surcharge so automatically we would put this

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surcharge on top of an owner at the signing of the property management agreement and we tell them face-to-face

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and it's in writing and say look we don't want to charge you this you go out you find the proper level of insurance

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you name rentworks additionally insured and we will remove this surcharge for ever and ever and ever

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and even then we're only getting i don't know 60 percent compliance 70

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compliance i mean it's a silly number of the owners that either one have apathy

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against it and just don't comply or two they don't want to change carriers like they don't want to change and shop from

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usaa to state farm to farmers so you name it they just don't want to go out and get you the proper level of insurance all

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right so backing up a bit on that who cares right however what happens is

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let's say there's a claim a tenant gets hurt a vendor gets hurt the mailman gets hurt on the property and there's a claim

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well if they come out and find that there's not the proper level of adequate insurance from the homeowner guess who

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the next big target is it's the property manager which means the property manager is at a lot of risk being you know being

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the guy you know the the two finger rigmarole or two two chair rigmarole and

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one chair left and they're gonna point the fingers at us now the other side of that is

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uh just liability i mean let's say there is a lawsuit and the homeowners is defending

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themselves and the property manager is defending themselves but they're not working together so you each have to go

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out and find separate representation in some sort of crazy lawsuit now i know i'm really getting into the

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weeds of this stuff but gang i gotta explain it further because it's been a problem in our industry for a long long

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time and like data mentioned in her intro well what's the solve to this what's the

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solution to this and so this is what we're gonna talk about more so bear with me on that long explanation but i got to

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get it out there because you need to understand that this has been a problem for a long time even the work around that we have where

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we charge a surcharge is not working because we're still only getting a minimal amount of compliance and it's

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just all we want the end of the day is for the owners to name us additionally insured so

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this is the solution or one of a solutions out there and so adam i want you to talk about this as

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like the master level insurance concept and that's kind of what you're bringing to the table and this is very similar

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gang so backing up again a bit very similar to our resident benefits package where we make the tenants

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additionally insured under the master policy for the property manager this is

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very close and similar to that on the owner's side so adam please take it from there

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yeah thanks brad so you know the i'd say the industry over the past

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couple years has really gotten to a place where you understand how to administer master policies particularly

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on the renter's side so very similar a master policy is going to give

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you the property manager the opportunity to have complete visibility and control

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to ensure that everybody is compliant that you're protected against everything that you just mentioned

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and so a master policy is going to work just just in that that example of

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setting up one policy under the property management company and then adding in everybody that opts into the program

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right and so how that's administered obviously you know flexibility across the board

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from each property manager and how they really want to implement that but what we've seen as best practice is

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you say hey i need i need to be listed as additional insured failure to do so

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uh you're going to need to opt into our program so that we can fully administer and know that we're covered and listed

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as digitally insured and everything is um you know meeting the criteria that we

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need to protect ourselves the property manager so you know it's a way to uh kind of say either

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prove that we're listed additional insured or get on our master policy and the

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benefits of being on our master policy for you the investor the owner is that you're going to get great coverage

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you're going to work with a company that we've selected and partnered with that is going to ensure that you know your

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your investment is taken care of your investment is protected and your rates

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are extremely competitive and we know this because they're the best in the industry

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at pulling together and pulling data and using technology to know that it is the most competitive rate

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so in a nutshell that's that's how it operates is that uh does that help brad is there anything else you want me to

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dive into there well yeah let's see if data can identify anything you missed there to hear her comments go ahead

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yeah i think that for uh for the landlord in particular like when we're talking about our master policy it has a

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million dollars of liability coverage which is going sorry hopefully we'll edit that

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oh no we're going to keep running we're going to we're going to make you all embarrassed because you're all worried about getting edited i'm like nah we're

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not going to edit anything um because you know we all have these these blurps and and hiccups when we

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when we speak to each other anyway so let's just roll with it and when you get back online let's go after you drink a cup of water there and we'll rock what

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do you think sorry about that that came out of nowhere um i was saying with our master policy

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there's a million dollars of liability coverage which most of the standard policies that we see

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are usually a hundred to three hundred thousand so when we're talking about maximizing protection

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having that higher level of liability coverage certainly makes a difference and from the landlord's perspective

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again what's in it for them is they've got they've got somebody who's kind of overseeing things you as

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the property manager making sure that things are handled smoothly and seamlessly so they don't

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have to call out to 15 different agents trying to find coverage they can just come to you you can present them the

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quote or the premium that we're providing and they can take it or leave it from the property manager's perspective i

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would say as adam mentioned just that visibility into what's going on you know whether or

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not you're listed as an additional insured on these certificates because you are the master policyholder so you

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can see every property that's covered under that policy you have the option you can either have

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it still billed directly to the insured to the landlord or you can just collect the funds from them and you can pay it

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yourself but either way you also know if that bill isn't getting paid and the coverage is collapsing which

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unfortunately is very common let's hone in on that because that's a couple of the key points that i really

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want to stress is the first one is you're going to be named the proper term

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and that has some legal ramifications to it because if you're not named the proper

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term uh and i'm butchering this data so pardon me if you're not named initially insured or if you're named additionally

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interested they may be different because the policies are written differently and if there is a claim they're going to run

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straight to what's written in their policy and say well you were only named additional interest so we're going to give you five cents of coverage versus

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five million in coverage whatever the you know the landlord opted into so being named the correct term is

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important so i didn't want to skip over that because uh you know the correct term is almost up in the air because the

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carrier themselves that write that policy they may dictate that term to being

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something different in this regard you know for sure that you guys are trying to look out for one

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the landlord and to the property manager so that is going to be written correctly in the policy to where it's there's not

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going to be any oh you know we're going to wiggle out of this and wiggle out of that type stuff i would assume so and i'm assuming you're going to back me up

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on that so before we go that way i also want to say you know skipping past the

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how you pay is a really neat opportunity for property managers so when you get all

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this set up and you add somebody to your master policy you can build them monthly you can build

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them quarterly you can build them annually correct me if i'm wrong on this one guys but there's an opportunity for

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you to offer a really nice service to your landlords to say look we're going to tie in your homeowner's insurance

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into your monthly payment so you're going to pay x for manager fees you know you're going to pay uh y for your

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maintenance that month and z you're going to pay for your monthly homeowner's ex your landlord insurance

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right your homeowner's policy you're going to pay monthly for that and so i see that as a really neat thing for all

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kinds of different reasons but anyone want to comment first on that part

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yeah you know i'd say um it's something where you're bringing value

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right and i know that's everything that's uh that brad you've been talking about is you know these aren't

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these packages and these offerings are there's a reason why you're offering i mean it's because you're you're adding

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value and providing a service that's going to be beneficial for your owners

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or on the resident side for your for your attendance right for the owners

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as we talked about you know in in the beginning shopping for insurance is a pain right you have to call around talk

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to a bunch of different people they're gonna ask you a million questions uh it's a very archaic way of doing

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business and that's what we've that's what we brought to the table steadily is it's a frictionless process to show a

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great point let's let's really hammer in on that because uh this is in my opinion from understanding

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this whole thing this is the easy button right and so i've always talked about this as like okay we want to be able to

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help the owners the landlords landlord's attendants whomever the vendors press the easy button and if this is that

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because i'm envisioning you know this being implemented where you present this at the kitchen table you're talking to

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an owner uh they're interested in your services and they want to sign up with you and they say what are you doing for

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homeowners insurance they're like i don't know you know they give you that shoulder shrug and you say well tell you

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what here's a flyer or here's a web page landing page that you can go to to get a

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quote nearly instantly so please tell me about the quoting process because this ties right into the easy button go from

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there yeah so i think uh there's you know the great opportunity with the master policy

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is that there is there is no shopping that that your owners will have to do right there

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the policy is set up by you the management company it's been selected and

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the the levels of coverage has been determined and so it's it's quite simply

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uh here's the rate and uh this is the policy uh the interaction

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with our team we have the best insurance guys in the business i mean uh you know our our

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sales agents have on average uh five over five years of experience and so we

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only hire folks that are the best the best um and most of the interaction with them which was very eye-opening for me

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coming into the space again i was you know in the property management software space not the insurance space

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but coming into the insurance business it was really cool to see what they were doing of being

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the geico of landlord insurance where you can get an insurance policy without ever talking to anybody if you wish

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obviously they're there to have phone calls and consult and advise you on coverages

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but you could literally bind and get a policy in place just by

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sms texting right and so it's it's very much a tech forward

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different way of of doing business that a lot of our customers are just loving

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so and i'll jump in there too and kind of share the the benefit of a master policy is that

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it's not it doesn't have the same underwriting approach that a traditional policy does where you're going to have

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you know 101 questions that you need to answer to make sure that it fits and you're getting the right rate with a

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master policy the approach is really more of bulk rating so we're saying we're taking you know

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we're taking what we expect to be this large portfolio and we're looking across the board and so because of that we

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don't have to we don't have to ask 101 questions you know you pretty much put in the address we provide the parameters

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you know it needs to be a one to four family dwelling it needs to be a long term rental you could be doing a fix and flip that's totally fine too

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what's the value that you need on it do you need any contents how much loss of rent are we adding and you've got your

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million dollar liability here's your deductible there's your price and it really is as simple as that

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that's good stuff because you know we've got a couple ways of thinking about implementing this uh one you know

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obviously in the kitchen table presentation up front with the new property management agreements but two also going back to your current existing

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landlord base your current customers uh with this opportunity and say if you're interested you can sign up here uh you

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know here's the cool thing that we got to answer as well because every property manager is going to ask you this and we'll get into this next but

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i'm going to do the robert gill strap impression uh aka yosemite sam okay you ready for this how am i going to make

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money how am i going to make money on this how many yo you got to shoot air pistols in the air

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that's you sami sam aka robert gilstrap now robert's right though okay he is right

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how are we going to make money on this question mark please give me a few comments on that

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yeah you know i'll i'll jump in there right so uh first and foremost we pay the best uh referral fees in the

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business hands down um and so what uh you guys as a property management company are

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uh we don't expect for anybody to be licensed and be uh insurance uh licensed

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specialists right that's what we're here for so what you're doing is you're referring folks to us to come and talk to us and

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ask us all the hard questions because we're licensed to do so so that's super important right to

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kind of lay that groundwork and so from there there are referral fees that we would pay to a property management company for

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driving uh referrals to us uh and then additionally um

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and brad you know this is your area expertise you know we're obviously not uh not gonna tell property managers how

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to administer and how to how to uh set their fees but there is opportunity to do administrative fees or you know uh

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the the different fees that uh that you can do for the monthly service of these plans

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to to your owners right so there's there's there's two opportunities there uh if if you so wish to pursue that yeah

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i thought the monthly opportunity for monthly billing was really good because it makes you landlords your owners your

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clients a little bit more sticky because they're getting really good insurance and working with you and then you're paying that bill for them on a

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monthly basis now the accounting side i don't envision to be too hard because you have your own you know your payment

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portals and it can be done you know electronically but here's the opportunity for property managers is you

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can charge an admin fee every month to collect in that money turn around and

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pay out that money and then reconcile everything in the back side and a reasonable admin fee you know three five

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seven bucks something like that could be administered or you could wrap it into one of your bigger plans so if you have

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a three-tier pricing model for example uh you might be able to wrap it into that as a feature uh one of the things

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we talked about is you know we have a maintenance service package at rent works and it includes an annual hvc

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inspection it includes inspections for you know the uh the home assessment before renewal that includes discounts

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on re-keying the home between tenancies and it's a really good you know monthly type package well i'm considering

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looking at that as well now is the opportunity to potentially rename that to an owner service package or an

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owner's benefits package or something along those lines you can wordsmith in however you want but essentially saying you know as part

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of this package you get master level insurance or or an opportunity for master level insurance

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you have to opt into it of course uh but that's that's kind of above and beyond what other property managers are doing

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uh especially on the normal so i think that would be a real good opportunity to market that and keep those clients come

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to you it's like wow you really are the the lead in the market you're the resource that we want you know you're doing things about beyond what other

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potential property managers doing or that i could do myself i want to hire you that's how we continually grow this

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industry and do better is add the services that solve the problem right the whole shark tank thing solved the

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problem and we identify the problem just being uninsured or underinsured homeowners that we work with as

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third-party property managers data did i miss anything in that

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i don't think so that's right i never miss anything of course she's gotten to know me pretty well just in a few phone calls and she's

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shaking her head like nope you just keep talking and we'll just keep sitting here and shaking her head yes in a proper

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fashion no there's got to be something i missed now the quarterly thing are you able to

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charge quarterly for example and do a billing that way is that kind of a outside of what you like

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um i think the pro the problem that you would run into with quarterly is the

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the program is going to expect to be paid um monthly so if you end up charging the

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landlord quarterly essentially you or someone else is going to have to front those three months or just collect those

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first three months up front and so then you're paid for at least three months so you could do it that way

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that would be fine and then maybe just to tie into what you said about the administrative fees you know the key is

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to understand that the insurance policy itself cannot be changed so you would not be

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able to come in onto that insurance policy and manuscript on administrative fees but whatever you do

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outside tying it back to the policy itself so that's where you want to be careful because since most

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pms are not going to be insurance licensed you're not allowed to receive commission you're not allowed to be an

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advisor from an insurance perspective that's where we're here so if they want to talk about coverage get us on the

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phone we'll answer any questions send us an email text us you know we're responding that way

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but if you just tie it to this benefits package or these services that you're providing from an administrative

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perspective as a pm that's fine because that's not actually related to the policy itself if that makes sense yeah

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it does and i think there's a real good opportunity for property managers to uh bury it in the gumbo right you you mix

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it in you bake it in as they say to where if you did have some sort of owner services package or whatever you want to

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name it i mean you could wordsmith that to death but essentially you're burying that little admin fee cost that you incur like there

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is cost to this i and you know totally on board with the monthly type scenario but i'm just

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trying to answer the question because other property managers go well you know if i can reduce the the burden of us having to pay that bill to instead of 12

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times a year down to four times a year i'm interested in that and i get it the quarterly is kind of cumbersome uh

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they'd have to front the money so really the best solution would be the monthly type scenario and again if you did that

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that byline charge like you're talking about data it would be the policy charges for example 77 and 14 cents

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whatever it could be i'm just using rough you know crazy math below that two rent works would be a admin fee of x

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insert you know normal reasonable admin fee charging you know a 50 admin fee on top of that is probably

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going to get you in trouble but you know something within reason i don't think you're going to have any problem with that and they make it makes

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a lot of sense because there's a cost to do that on the accounting side right so i see that as a huge

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opportunity another again you guys got to talk more about the referral fees and how that works and set up the pages i

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mean this is really where okay you got to ask or answer the question if i ask you how

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do we do this take it from there adam go yeah so you know we

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we provide all the tools that you need to drive um interested owners to us right so when i

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say tech savvy and tech first that you know the tools that we've built it's we have everything from no code um

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float workflows to full apis that you can that you can leverage and use

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um so you know as far as the tools that we offer we can offer a landing page and you can be up and running and have a

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page on your website that uh is is driving interested folks to us to to get

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some information we can have that up and running in a matter of minutes uh with your

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co-branded with your logo and then once they get engaged with us we can provide the quote when you're set

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up a master policy it's very straightforward uh you know the getting in touch with us and and getting

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up and going as david mentioned earlier uh very quick and easy but we provide all the tools would be right on your

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website with a button a click and it's a seamless process [Music]

28:02

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28:42

[Music] i was just going to say one other thing that may be of interest to property

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managers is the property manager dashboard that we can provide so if they want a central place that they can log in and

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they can see all of the properties that are currently certificate holders under that master policy there's a section

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where they can notify us to remove a property or add an additional property that's been added see the bills that are

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due that sort of thing just so that everything's in one place that's available as well

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yeah the dashboard is a big deal because obviously you're going to add and lose properties almost on a monthly basis

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most property managers are dealing with that where somebody sells or they move back in or they change property

29:24

management companies or whatever and then of course you should be adding properties to backfill those so you're

29:30

adding and subtracting on a regular basis making that easy on your team and or you you yourself

29:36

that's a big key because i mean the benefits are starting to stack up here as we have this conversation

29:41

it's easy to implement you're getting paid a marketing referral fee uh and then it's easy to work with

29:48

on the how basis of a monthly type scenario where you're adding and subtracting properties and then making that payment so question on that how it

29:55

works let's say you bring in i don't know for fun uh a dollar you charge the owners a

30:00

dollar of revenue okay to cover the policy are you billing us the the 50 cents or

30:07

whatever it's going to be the the dollar is going to be basically i'm trying to get out on bushing and that the question

30:13

is are you billing us directly or is the owner being billed in a certain scenario i mean i'm trying to understand the

30:19

billing process a bit better because that's where that's where people are going to have questions i'm sure go ahead

30:24

sure you can you can go either approach so if it's a property manager's preference that your landlords come in

30:32

they get insured under your master policy and we just bill them directly then that's what will happen so we reach

30:38

out to the customer we get them enrolled in recurring eft so that the bill just gets paid for their properties every

30:44

single month if you want to go a step further and say i'm i'm going to collect the funds from the landlord

30:50

as the master policyholder i'm just going to come in once a month and i'm going to pay all of the properties that

30:56

are currently insured under my master policy you can take that approach as well i would think from a landlord's

31:01

perspective there might be some ease of use to be able to hand over that burden and not worry about those

31:08

extra fees come you know those payments coming out every month making sure they're on top of things and just being able to hand it over to the property

31:15

manager and say take it out of what i owe you and make sure this gets paid every month and so

31:20

then you just cut one check for the entire master policy yeah because it does make for a nice pretty monthly

31:25

invoice and then a very nice pretty annual compilation invoice to show

31:32

exactly what's being paid for in the insurance uh that all those tax benefits right

31:37

because they got to go to their accountants and say this is the cost of running this home i paid this for insurance and here's the monthly fee

31:42

here's the annual compilation of it so i can see that being from one perspective that's really good stuff by the way

31:49

because at the end of the day we want to make it easy for the landlords and that's what we do we provide good service and this

31:54

is part of how this ties into it what are the other things that i'm forgetting to ask you about at this

32:01

point you know the old question of like you give somebody a sly smile and you say what else like you know what they're

32:06

supposed to be saying right i remember brian hughes he used to work for me guys you got this story

32:12

brian hughes right he runs a biz dev mastermind he was working for us as a biz dev mastermind all right so biz dev

32:18

uh uh manager right so he's doing all the business development kind of like what adam what you're doing for steadily and we had a phone call one afternoon

32:25

and i was you know barbecuing outside and it was like five o'clock and i'm like what else brian

32:30

and i must have said it six times and he kept giving me new answers and i could just hear his voice tremble and he's

32:35

like thinking that he forgot something and after six iterations of what else

32:41

mike brian i'm just messing with you man you're doing a great job keep going so all right adam with a sly smile what

32:46

else question mark yeah so i think um we you know probably the very opening we

32:52

should have led with this but uh one of the biggest questions that came uh two weeks ago i think it was when we

32:58

were at narpham broker owner was what is landlord insurance and so there's obviously some still some

33:05

awareness and education happening in the industry of what exactly landlord insurance is because a lot of pms

33:11

haven't been involved at all on the insurance side for their owners and so

33:17

you know i think it's important just kind of set the you know set the groundwork of there's

33:24

homeowners insurance policies which protect the dwelling and liability

33:29

that's for owners of a home that are living in the home a landlord insurance policy is very

33:36

similar to homeowners that it's protecting the dwelling and liability and uh you know some coverages that you

33:42

can have in there but that's specifically for if you own the home but not living in it and renting it to

33:47

someone else right so two distinct differences there that is important for everybody to know

33:54

and then on the renter's side obviously i think most of the industry is aware but there's renters insurance and then

33:59

there's tenant league liability and renters insurance covers accidental damage calls to the property

34:06

but then it importantly covers the resident's belongings whereas the tenant uh legal liability is just accidental

34:13

damage to the property doesn't cover belongings and uh so those are kind of

34:19

the four general policies that everybody is you know aware of um and so i just kind

34:26

of want to give that little that that foundation for everybody that is maybe sitting there thinking what is landlord

34:31

insurance uh let's take that let's take it up a step deeper real quick too because on the landlord insurance it's not

34:38

necessarily 100 required if they own the home outright with no lien against the

34:44

home with no lender tying into that home they don't have to get insurance unless

34:49

there's certain state provisions that are you know beyond our control they don't have to have that however

34:54

if they have any sort of lien or lender involved with that home they're going to 100 percent have to have that and

35:00

there's typically some minimum coverages in there and you guys are well versed in those and so you're providing the the

35:06

adequate minimum coverages to that particular landlord let that own the homeowner to meet the basic requirements

35:13

of what lenders are going to want to require so maybe talk a little bit about that just to kind of throw us out there some

35:19

numbers of aggregates and minimums and all this other stuff that make me want to cry go ahead

35:25

i can jump here and share a little bit about it and just kind of to double down on what what adam said about the difference between landlord and

35:32

homeowners insurance the biggest problem that you're gonna find is that

35:37

you if you go into it if you could potentially purchase the homeowners policy

35:43

and it doesn't mean that they won't sell you one what it means is that at time of the

35:48

claim when they find out that there's somebody living in the property and that it's not you

35:54

either one most likely the policy is going to get canceled um or non-renewed and they may have grounds to deny the

36:01

claim if there's an exclusion within that policy that says you couldn't rent it out to people so just because you

36:07

were able to find somebody to sell you a homeowner's policy doesn't mean that that was actually the insurance that you

36:12

need um the other thing i would say is about about that liability piece because we do

36:17

talk to landlords who say i self-insure this property i don't need you know i don't plan to rebuild it if

36:24

it burns down i've got x amount invested in it and i really just want i want what i've invested in and i'll go i'll go

36:30

find something else and so the approach we take with that is okay if you if you

36:35

don't care to ensure the dwelling then we can select a very low limit on

36:40

that property where you understand that you know if it takes 250 000 to rebuild

36:46

this property you're insuring it for much less than that so what you get if that property burns down is not going to

36:52

be enough to build that you're fine with it and so of course that's going to come with a much lower premium but we're

36:57

going to get you that liability because i guarantee most landlords don't want to find

37:03

themselves in a situation where they're being sued for a million dollars over some tragic event that occurred on their

37:09

property and they they don't want to pay that out of pocket it's one thing to cover a hundred thousand dollar property

37:15

out of pocket it's quite another to have to foot a million dollar liability bill um so we can accommodate that when we

37:21

have those customers who do take that approach to their investment to get them a liability heavy policy instead of

37:28

paying for dwelling coverage that they may not want or need yeah that's great stuff because you're helping us set up our owners and our

37:35

landlords for success and you're doing that by providing them the correct coverage to one cover the property management company in case there is a

37:42

major claim and two to provide them a really good service in their insurance needs and those may differ of course

37:48

but the policies and levels and aggregates and all that stuff kind of talk me through that because that's going to be you know

37:54

where the property manager is going to get some pushback you know you're going to come in and say you have this amount of coverage and they're going to say

38:01

well my state farmer over there says they have this amount of coverage or usaa or farmers or you know whatever

38:07

geico or whomever they do this type of coverage you know that's how insurance folks they sell

38:12

their products is they say that they have different levels of that different levels of this it's confusing as heck

38:18

gang i'll be really honest with you maybe you can shed some light on this to help me out

38:23

yeah so since this is insurance specific i'll answer this one too um you're right and the

38:30

the problem is across the insurance industry that you never really know what the value of something is until there's

38:37

a loss and you have to rebuild it so everything with any insurance company master policy

38:43

standard policy state farm farmers anybody it's it's a guessing game you're giving it your best estimate to try to

38:49

determine what you believe is going to be the total cost to rebuild this property

38:55

at time of loss um with the master policy we have quite a bit of flexibility because

39:01

we can really assign any value that on the on the dwelling for the valuation

39:06

that the customer wants as long as they're making an informed purchasing decision so what that conversation would

39:11

probably look like if somebody came in and they said okay how much do you want to insure this for well i don't know how

39:17

much well state farm has it for you know 250 000 okay

39:22

we can set it for 250 000 to match what state farm has or we can just run an

39:28

independent valuation on it which we have the tools to do and we'll see what it says and so we can present that side

39:34

side by side and say hey the independent valuation actually values this property at 275 that's what it's estimating it

39:40

will cost to rebuild this from the ground up if there's a total loss so a lot of it is just kind of talking

39:46

through figuring out what what the landlord is comfortable with or they might say no you know i have my

39:52

own contractors if this house burns down you know 250 000 is gonna be plenty to

39:57

rebuild this okay let's take that approach um the the policy does have what's called an

40:04

insurance to value provision so hopefully people's eyes aren't glazing over with these insurance terms but basically what it means is at time of

40:11

loss we want to make sure that that property is insured at at least 80 of its value in order to be able to

40:18

collect on it so if if you're making a choice to like in the example i was talking about where the landlord is

40:26

saying i don't care if this property burns down i'm not going to build it i have 75 000 invested that's what i want back out

40:33

then we could ensure a much lower value it would just mean if half of the building burns down

40:40

there's going to be a decrease in what they get because it wasn't insured to value so hopefully that wasn't too insurancey

40:48

that was me snoring and waking up okay no i'm just kidding it's very important stuff and i don't mean to make fun of it

40:53

uh because it's hugely important and as property managers one thing you got to understand

40:58

is they're not going to be asking you to explain all this they're not going to be asking anybody to sell insurance all

41:04

they're doing is you're putting a resource in front of your landlord's existing and or new landlords and saying

41:12

this is a good idea and then leave it at that because you're driving them to a

41:17

web page you're referring them to this company steadily and they're going to handle the sales portion of it you're

41:24

just basically putting in front of landlords you know existing and or new and that's all you have to understand is

41:29

like hey it's a pretty good deal you should check it out and make your own decision we'd love to have you just jump

41:35

onto our master policy and that could be a real real simple way to paraphrase it so explain to me you guys are talking about

41:42

before uh you have a landing page right so you can add this to your website and so when

41:48

we direct landlords to that landing page what are they seeing what are their next steps i mean kind of how does that work

41:53

out so we kind of understand that yeah you know the

41:58

the benefit of working with us steadily is that we're flexible to partner with you the property manager on whatever

42:05

workflow is best for you right meaning if you want to just sign them up and add

42:12

them in you know minimal questions uh about the policy and coverage from your owners and

42:19

you know provide a a one-pager that we can help build for you that get that

42:25

answers all the frequently asked questions we can do that if you want to have somewhere a web page that you direct

42:32

them to that's again co-branded on your website right there within your ecosystem that

42:38

click of a button puts them in touch with us so that they can ask all the questions and then we can present

42:45

the master policy program that we have built with you in partnership we can do that so it can be where you're

42:52

driving them to us it can be where you're taking uh you know all the steps to just sign them up with minimal

42:57

questions it's really you know however you'd like to set it up is is what we can support

43:06

excellent so data do you have anything to add to that um i think if the the only thing i would

43:13

add is if you if you want to have on that widget so you ask what what does it look like when

43:19

you sign up you've got that widget we're asking for the property address we're asking for we're asking them to validate

43:25

certain limits as far as the valuation they they get to see a premium we say okay this is going to be you know 1200

43:32

bucks for the year um how does that sound to do you like it they will have the option if they want

43:38

to just go ahead and purchase it they can do so or if they say hey i have

43:44

questions i want to talk to somebody then we can get in touch with them but we we try to make it low touch if

43:49

they're someone like us who doesn't want to talk on the phone i'm saying like us personally i don't want to talk on the

43:54

phone just send me what i need to know we we can facilitate that approach as well

44:00

yeah it is amazing nowadays how people don't want to talk over the phone it's almost baffling especially

44:07

you know for example if you're trying to buy a car at this point uh it's so imperative that you get on the phone or

44:12

actually show up to a dealership to see if the actual if they have the actual product but for anyone's looking to do

44:19

that it's like i don't want to i just want to know if the stuff i'm looking at online or if a text message is easy to

44:24

find out if it's there uh the chat feature is a big phenomenon everyone has a chat feature a lot of times people

44:30

just don't want to talk to anybody over the phone any longer we think of all the things you can do without ever communicating over the phone you can you

44:37

can book a vrbo or an airbnb without ever from your phone without ever talking anybody you can order food

44:42

without ever talking to anybody i mean it's just that's the phenomena we're in and it's interesting and hopeful that

44:48

this is going to be along those same lines and again the easy button for property managers is going to be a key because that's where i

44:54

envision the huge benefit for us and for the landlords that come in under this policy are going to be

44:59

so i thought this has been a really cool conversation between the three of us about this new offering and i want you

45:05

to explain to people what's the next step or how's the best way to reach you and talk more about it

45:12

yeah and thanks again for having us this has been this has been very uh

45:17

as expected very great conversation with you brad always enjoy catching up um so to

45:23

find out more about the program we do have a website set up where you can go and learn all the important details it's

45:31

dot steadily.com forward slash partners forward slash pmm

45:36

so we've set up that page to answer all your questions um and it has the opportunity to reach

45:41

out and find out more and in closing one thing i'd say about steadily right we talked about insurance

45:48

how confusing it can be uh the important thing is is knowing that it's steadily our function our core

45:55

focus is landlord insurance that's what we do uh when you work with a lot of other insurance carriers they may do home auto

46:03

all kinds of different stuff life uh we do landlord insurance and we we're gonna do it better than anybody else

46:10

right so when it comes to having questions as folks in property management in real estate and investing

46:17

uh you're going to want to talk to people that get it and understand it and that's who we are right and and like

46:24

i said we're going to make sure that you get the most competitive rates that meet your risk

46:30

tolerance and what you're looking for and that's that's what we do and a paraphrase too you have two ways to make

46:36

money as a property manager in this regard you have potentially small admin fees per month and you have a pretty

46:42

good referral fee program if i recall i don't i don't know how to explain all the specifics of that you can go over

46:47

that with each one of the prospective uh property management companies that you might work with but there's your opportunity right there providing a good

46:54

service and getting paid to do that with a little bit more revenue generation i think it's a win and everybody should

47:00

look more further into it data any closing comments we appreciate it um like adam said we

47:05

were we were built by landlords for landlords we're a tech company but we also have heavy heavy insurance

47:11

backgrounds and we're we're solving what we felt like was a gap we didn't just come up with a good idea um because we

47:18

thought it would sell it was because we had a personal pain point we saw a gap in the marketplace and we jumped in to fill it

47:24

great conversation gang i really hope to see you guys at the property manager mastermind conference coming up in may of 2022 at the red rock resort there in

47:31

las vegas there's plenty of time to still get in there and go sign up and see you there so be sure to uh get a

47:37

booth and set up for that event thanks again for coming on the show today gang i appreciate it and we will stay in

47:43

touch and see you soon thanks guys [Music]

47:50

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from good things from those guys take care this has been a podcast episode by

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