Today’s Guest is Mike Branam.
Mike is Director of Multifamily Sales at PointCentral and has nearly 20 years of experience in real estate technology, Mike has been a part of several successful prop-tech start ups serving the multifamily industry. Join Sam and Mike in today’s episode.
————————————————————–
Intro [00:00:00]
Mike Branum’s Background and Experience [00:01:02]
Evolution of Smart Home Technology [00:02:52]
The benefits of smart property technology [00:09:24]
Future-proofing smart property technology [00:10:19]
User experience and customization of smart property technology [00:12:08]
Saving on insurance with technology [00:18:52]
Benefits of smart thermostats [00:19:51]
Closing [00:20:39]
————————————————————–
Connect with Mike:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikebranam/
Web: https://www.pointcentral.com/
Connect with Sam:
I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/
Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f
————————————————————–
Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
Speaker 1 ([00:00:00]) – I spent a little bit of time in Arizona. So, you know, if it’s 115 degrees outside and the outgoing resident has their air conditioning, it’s 62 degrees and they’re not in that unit for another 90 days. The property is on the hook for, you know, pretty decent chunk of change utility wise. You extract that over a portfolio of 10,000 units. You’re talking about significant costs. Yeah, smart property technology solves that, right? So when we start to integrate with property management softwares, so when a resident moves out and the thermostat automatically gets reset, the door automatically locks. Now, maintenance can better serve other aspects of the building to fix that dishwasher that broke yesterday. Right. And and increase service levels and customer or resident service satisfaction. Welcome to the how to scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we’ll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big. Mike Branum is the director of multifamily sales at Point Central, and he has nearly 20 years of experience in real estate technology.
Speaker 1 ([00:01:02]) – He’s also been a part of several successful prop tech startups serving the multifamily industry. Mike, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Sam. Good to be on. Absolutely. Mike There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there? Where did I start? I started about 20 years ago in real estate technology at the time, really working on startups and had partnered up with a couple folks that had been on the ground floor at Google and they served as mentors for me in understanding property marketing and the rental space and search technology and pioneered that into a company called Rent Pits, which grew into a company called Remotely, which from my perspective, I believe it was the first smart apartment solution to offer smart home technology to the multifamily space. So I’ve spent the better part of the last dozen years specifically in that space and now leading the central sales and strategy team that does smart property technology.
Speaker 1 ([00:01:59]) – So still coming from where I came from and to what I’m doing now and have done so for the past five years. What what is different about what you’re doing now than what you’ve previously done? You know, the technology has come a long way. You know, when I sort of look at Smart Home and put it in a similar bucket is like the flat screen television. 15 years ago, it was like only your wealthy friends down the street had a flat screen, right? Now everyone has one, right? So the cost came down, production ramped up. And of course, you know, it’s just sort of like the standard models now. Now there’s different types of models, but sort of everyone has one. Smart home is very similar. It’s kind of been on that path where, you know, first the technology needed to prove itself. Once it did that, the cost to to sort of enter Smart Home, whether it was your house in my house, was getting the thermostat or getting a smart lock that’s really grown into smart home is defined much differently now.
Speaker 1 ([00:02:52]) – And in fact, I look at it as smart properties specifically for rentals, that it’s not just the the end user is the benefactor of that. When I say end user, it’s not just the person holding the phone controlling the thermostat. Now it’s the it’s the building that benefits from that. It’s the it’s the owner operator of the asset. It’s the people who work in the building and live in the building. They all benefit from smart property technology because it’s it’s mitigating risk. It’s making life more customized. It’s it’s automating certain tasks so staff can do different things, more impactful things. So it’s come a long way and it’s come a long way fast over the last several years. It really has. I’m thinking back, gosh, to like in the late 90s, early 2000, they started talking about the smart home, you know, and they would send these drawings, these graphics of like, you know, you see all these wires running everywhere and where we’re going to take smart homes. And it was just like, okay, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 1 ([00:03:46]) – Like, you know, they were they were designing whole neighborhoods that were going to be smart neighborhoods. Do you recall that? I do. I do. I go back to like The Jetsons. Right? Like we’re all supposed to be flying to work at this point, aren’t we? Right. So I think that was like the vision of like everything is sort of automated and everything is super high tech and future proofed. And I think the reality or the evolution of the technology has been, hey, how does it make my life better, easier, more comfortable, more secure? And I think that’s where that adoption is coming. I remember years ago people would say, well, if I can’t get up and turn off a light switch, then this isn’t, you know, I’m not that lazy. It’s not turning off light switches. You know, really what it is, is making sure my door’s locked when I leave for a trip. It’s making sure that if if there’s a flood in my space, that that water is turned off automatically.
Speaker 1 ([00:04:32]) – So don’t come back to a $50,000 bill and clear out my basement. Right. So the technology is really just benefiting the real estate space in that way. Now, maybe we’ll fly to work one of these days, but not yet. Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, hey, they’re working on those vertical takeoff and landing quadcopters and all that stuff. You seen those. Those electric vtol things that. I don’t know. I read a lot of flying magazines, and it’s always the. It’s. It’s still in the future. I mean, they keep talking about it, but it’s not here yet. But I think that’s interesting how how that kind of has played out where you’re right. It’s not it’s not that we’re too lazy to get up and turn off a light switch. It’s that we maybe want lights to come on at various times when we’re out, when we’re out of town or we’re on vacation or things like that. But then also just the health of the building, even even just from technology.
Speaker 1 ([00:05:18]) – One of those thought that came to me is my pickup truck. My truck notifies me if I leave it unlocked, Right? I walk to my office and all of a sudden just, you know, get a notification on my phone like, hey, hey, you left your truck unlocked like nobody’s in it. You’re like, Oh, right, I’m an idiot. I can lock it from my phone, which is kind of wild how some of those things. And oftentimes I live in Memphis, which I always want my truck locked. So those are helpful things. But let’s talk then, how this really ties in, though, to multifamily. I mean, a lot of this adoption, a lot of this technology, there’s there’s a lot of different moving pieces in this space, like aggregating that into a central platform that is meaningful both to the tenant and the landlord is a task. How have you guys done that? You know, several ways. It’s a really good question. There’s a couple base components to it that that had had and have impact.
Speaker 1 ([00:06:10]) – Every building has some form of access control solution. Every resident unit has a lock in a thermostat. So taking that and sort of leveling up to the to to the new modern world of, okay, the residents shouldn’t have to have a separate access control solution versus a separate app for their smart lock for the door and then a separate app to control the thermostat. Nor should the building and the staff have to sort of figure out all these different technologies that are sort of weaving around the building, which now now what you have is it’s harder for them, right? So technology, which is supposed to be easy, is would make life harder. So we’ve unified that into a single solution. And what that’s doing is really interesting, right? So, you know, when a property turns over, you know, what maintenance typically has to do is go up and lock the door, make sure the thermostat is set to a set point that’s more energy efficient. I spent a little bit of time in Arizona, so, you know, if it’s 115 degrees outside and the outgoing resident has their air conditioning at 62 degrees and they’re not in that unit for another 90 days, the property is on the hook for, you know, pretty decent chunk of change utility wise.
Speaker 1 ([00:07:21]) – So you extract that over a portfolio of 10,000 units. You’re talking about significant costs. Yeah, Smart property technology solves that, right? So when we start to integrate with property management softwares, so when a resident moves out and the thermostat automatically gets reset, the door automatically locks. Now maintenance can better serve other aspects of the building to fix that dishwasher that broke yesterday. Right. And and increase service levels and customer or resident service satisfaction. So that has impact on the entire building because it increases renewal rates, improves resident satisfaction and reduces costs. And what’s happening right now is we’re in this sort of uncertain time economically where the last seven, eight years in multifamily has been pretty good. So rent growth has been steady and even sort of outpaced forecast. That’s really not the case right now. So operators of buildings are looking for ways to, hey, let’s improve customer satisfaction with our residents and increase renewals. But how do we also improve our bottom line? And it’s really becoming, you know, centralization, task automation and operational efficiencies.
Speaker 1 ([00:08:26]) – And so technology enables all of those things. One more example, and it’s probably sort of a tired one, but but Covid sort of forced a lot of different things on all of us. And one of the the early signals in multifamily was, hey, my staff may not be able to actually go to work, but we still have people that whose leases are up and they have to move somewhere. How do we show the model and self-guided tours is is really sort of kicked down the door, no pun intended, and forced a new way of showing properties upon the multifamily space that the single family space had figured out several years ago. And this was more by force. But now that everyone sort of back on site, they said, you know what, like this model kind of works, right? Like, let’s let’s expand the hours of operation of the model, let people go see it. You know, usually they want to see it at 7:30 a.m. before they go to work. At least the engine isn’t there yet.
Speaker 1 ([00:09:24]) – So it’s getting more eyeballs inside the building and on the property, which improves the number of leases that actually come to the building while the staff goes to work on something else. Right. So those are been sort of great enablers for this type of technology. Yeah, absolutely. And it goes back to I mean, every everybody’s goal, which is the highest and best use of my time, like what is the highest and best? And it gets a question we’re always asking, you know, as business owners like what what’s what’s the best thing right now for the business for me to be doing? Not necessarily, you know, should I be doing that? Should I be doing at no, I should be working on growth strategy and other things that are really meaningful to what we’re doing. So it’s kind of the same idea just when it comes to staff on hand. And that, of course then improves. The bottom line is there would have been maybe some challenges in I know you mentioned integrating with property management software would have been some challenge maybe you guys have found in getting this deployed.
Speaker 1 ([00:10:19]) – And then on top of that, is there any fear once you go through investing in all of this, of obsolescence in the near future? Good question. You know, we get a lot of those questions about future proofing. How do I know that this won’t be obsolete tomorrow? The good news about the smart property technology is a lot of the updates are OTA updates. You know what we’re not looking to to build a different lock. We’re not looking to change the way thermostats actually work. At the end of the day, the thermostat is to, you know, control a set point at a certain time and a door is to lock and unlock. So from a future proofing standpoint, there might be some aesthetic changes to the way. From the stats look in locks, but the function is the same. How do you make those functions smarter, more customizable, more programmable, and to ensure that it’s secure. So. So those are things that help with future proof. All the software updates are done at two in the morning when everyone’s asleep.
Speaker 1 ([00:11:15]) – Right? So, so that’s the way we get we get through the future proofing component to this. What’s good is that everyone sort of recognizes, okay, I’ve got to get rid of my, for lack of a better term, dumb lock and dumb thermostat. It’s now picking the provider. And because there’s been so much movement in tech over the last several years, what we’ve seen is groups are looking to find providers that are future proofed and that will be around tomorrow because there’s been a lot of of capital that’s gone into startups that may not have had success in profitability. So now they’re looking for more stability in their partners right now that that makes a lot of sense. Let’s let’s rewind here for one one quick second. You mentioned an OTA update. I don’t know the acronym. What is that over-the-air? So it’s all done over the air. Got it. Got it. Okay, cool. Learned something new here today. Let’s talk then about the difference between what you what the landlord sees and maybe then what the tenants see.
Speaker 1 ([00:12:08]) – How easy is that? I’m going to call it digital keys Assigning. Okay. Mike, you moved into unit ten. Like, here’s your access to your thermostat. Here’s your access to your I mean, I’m assuming you guys are even doing door locks on the units where it’s like, hey, this is, you know, you can open the door with your smartphone. I’m guessing that’s that’s the capabilities you’re working with now. But tell me if I’m wrong. How are you guys managing that between the tenants, between the landlord software, all those integrations? Like, what does that look like from a user perspective? Yeah, a great question, Sam. So when a resident moves in because you know the technology is tied in with property management software, think, think Yardi, think RealPage and Trotta, you know, those types of sort of primary, the foundational property management software solutions when that resident moves in property staff is is very well trained to just enter that capture that resident data moving them in on the appropriate date.
Speaker 1 ([00:13:01]) – When that happens, they automatically receive email and or text that just says welcome to your smart home and it drops them off to the application. And once the app is downloaded in 30s, they have a smart apartment. So all of those controls are on their phone. Of course, they can still use them physically at the door, at the device should they so choose. But now they have that customization option of I think I forgot to lock the door, I’m at the airport. Let me make sure that happened or I’m in Colorado now. So we have very drastic weather changes. It’s not uncommon for it to go from 85 to 25, right? So thermostat controls are really important when you’re away so you don’t have a catastrophic, catastrophic event. So all that can be done for the resident within 30 to 60s and it’s done automatically once the property staff moves them into the property management software. So that’s great. The on site staff for them. It’s really interesting, right? Because, you know, depending on where where they’re working, what building they’re working in, there might be a lot of technology or a little technology.
Speaker 1 ([00:14:01]) – So sometimes there’s sort of this fear component. There could be this wall that says, okay, well, what are you putting in my building here? You know, what is this going to do? And it’s just going to take my job away. No, it’s not. It’s actually going to be a job aid for you. So, you know, I went back to that maintenance reference before. You know, maintenance used to be a very reactive role where something breaks and we go fix it. Right now, it’s it’s not only proactive, it’s even preventative. We can provide notifications when an Hvac system starts to operate inefficiently. So it’s a nice it’s a nice heads up, right when maintenance starts to learn about those types of things that come to their building, we almost see their shoulders go down like, Wait a minute, so I’m not going to get like somebody calling and yelling because the thermostat broke. Like I can actually get a heads up and say, Hey, let me just take a preventative measure here.
Speaker 1 ([00:14:48]) – Something’s not operating efficiently and this could save you a few dollars on your energy bill. Otherwise what happens? It breaks down and they run that bill down to the front office and say, hey, I’m not paying this because your thing broke. Right. So the adoption, I think, is where you might have been going with that. Like the adoption for residents and staff is phenomenal just because it’s it’s a low barrier technology and it’s customized technology, but it’s very convenient for the operator or or the staff member or the resident. Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m thinking about some commercial spaces we have, and it’s intriguing just to get those notifications again, going back to my truck, that tells me I’m a truck’s unlocked, I get notifications. It’s like, Hey, your AC, I got one. The other day it said, Hey, your AC’s, you know, it’s such and such locations have been running for, you know, four hours and the temperature has risen by three degrees. And you’re like, Well, that is something wrong? Like, why? Why is that happening? And so I think that’s that’s really, really cool just to see how how that works.
Speaker 1 ([00:15:44]) – Well, let me ask you this, Mike. Just from a cost benefit analysis standpoint, what can you can you give us some, you know, just high level case studies on how this works out? And then maybe on the back side of that, tell us the types of properties inside a multi. Like what the ideal candidate is. Candidate is for what you guys do. Sure. So from from a return standpoint, you know. There’s a lot of different sort of pockets to this where the the the operator sees return. One is rent growth and retention. There’s that element to it. Vacant unit savings, there’s that benefit to it, unifying technology. So they’re not paying different providers for 3 or 4 different services when it can all be bundled into one, so to speak. You know, a big one that’s kind of obvious is water. You know, I haven’t met a property manager yet that doesn’t have sort of this nightmarish story about water. You know, it leaks from the 15th floor and then everything from the 14th on down, you know, tends to get ruined.
Speaker 1 ([00:16:44]) – And one that was near and dear to me that was crushing, you know, having been an old baseball card collector as a $3 million baseball card collection was destroyed in a water event in a multifamily property. And you can’t get those back, right? So that becomes the I think the average water event was 50, $60,000. Well, this was this was $1 million plus, you know, a water event. And they’re absolutely preventable. So, you know, when you look at the return on things like that, every property manager will say, if I can solve water, you know, then, yeah, it’ll save us money. But it also really impact our resident experience because the person whose card collection was ruined isn’t renewing, right? So, you know, those are the types of things that we’ll see on the renewal standpoint. We’ve got a wonderful ROI calculator that we put in front of our prospects just to point to all the different return points that exist with this type of technology. Um, second part of that question is what types of buildings does this make the most sense in? What’s kind of funny is, you know, the initial thought is, oh, this makes a lot of sense for maybe a class or luxury class only.
Speaker 1 ([00:17:50]) – But we’ve had incredible adoption on class, you know, you know, not trying to go from a B to an A, but saying, look, we’re going to be the best B on the block, and that will help our rent and that’ll help attract more residents. And that, you know, that capital investment for technology is significantly less than some of the cosmetic improvements that might have to come with ripping out flooring and countertops and appliances and things of that nature. You’d be even surprised. You’d be surprised, like even workforce housing that operates on really thin margins, you know, some might say, well, that’s a candidate they probably wouldn’t want to adopt. And they’re coming to us saying, actually, we do because we operate on thinner margins. For us, 15% savings on vacant units is much more meaningful, right, than it might be for an A-class property. Um, so those are a couple examples. They’re built to rent, which is emerging vertical right now is all over this. Just because the single family home environment has adopted this technology very quickly and build to rent is still a single family home.
Speaker 1 ([00:18:52]) – But we look at it as like a multifamily that’s just not horizontal, right? Um, so there really isn’t a property type that’s totally off the table because there’s different types of benefit for every asset class. Got it. That’s really, really cool. Are there? Are there ways of saving on insurance when you employ this technology? I mean, our underwriters giving discounts because, hey, look, you know, we’ve got an entire point central system set up at our property. You see anything like that? You know, we’re hearing about that. We don’t have the relationships with the providers. And ultimately it’s the operator that’s paying the premiums. But we’re starting to hear that, hey, I can I can save X percent if I have this system in place. We’re even hearing that, hey, my local utility will actually give us a credit or a rebate on the thermostats by by purchasing the hardware because they know that that that can help on the utility, you know, in saving with the grid and sort of dialing certain set points at certain hours.
Speaker 1 ([00:19:51]) – So there are incentives out there on hardware. There’s certainly the insurance market is emerging with this type of technology, right? No, that’s really, really cool. Yeah. I’m even thinking about the thermostats in our own in our own house that I mean, it’s just amazing how far this has come where they will program based upon peak usage timing in the rest of the city and say okay, well if peak usage is at 7 a.m., we’re going to set yours to start at 530 and get the house cool by 630. And then, you know, we’re off peak usage. So, I mean, it’s just it’s amazing all the different ways. And I think it’ll be fun just to see how this industry continues to to evolve in what what comes out next. This has been absolutely fantastic. Mike, thank you for taking the time to come on the show today and really tell us about Central, what you guys bring to the market and how it benefits both not just the tenants, but also the landlords and property owners.
Speaker 1 ([00:20:39]) – There’s certainly been fascinating if our listeners want to get in touch with you and learn more about you, what is the best way to do that in Central? So yeah, feel free to contact me. Mike Branham at Point Central, go to our website that can that can point us point you toward me as well. But thank you for the time and and for the platform just to have a good conversation. Sam I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you, Mike. And we’ll make sure we include that there in the show notes Point Central. Mike, thank you again. Have a great rest of your day. My pleasure. You, too. Hey, thanks for listening to the How to scale commercial Real Estate podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories.
Speaker 1 ([00:21:29]) – So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.
