00:05
multifamily matters a weekly radio show that discusses the current topics and trends in the multifamily industry stay tuned and listen to the movers and shakers in multifamily share their opinions and thoughts about what’s old what’s new and where the multifamily industry is heading in the future you are listening to multifamily matters because multifamily matters

00:29
Welcome and thank you for tuning in to Multifamily Matters, now powered by the Multifamily Media Network and the only broadcast radio show in the nation that is solely dedicated to multifamily industry operations. I’m your host, Paul Marks, coming to you exclusively from the Smart Apartment Data Studio. And we have a great show with two special guests who are extremely knowledgeable and right in the middle of today’s topic. I mean, literally right in the middle of today’s topic.

00:54
And today we’re going to discuss something that is important and timely to the multifamily industry. Our topic is resilience and recovery, navigating disruption in multifamily management. Joining me by phone is a longtime multifamily industry veteran, the awesome Eric Friedman, the CFO and partner at Coastline Real Estate Advisors. And also with us is a fabulous supplier partner to the multifamily industry, Mo Hussain, the CEO of Balanced Asset Solutions. Welcome, gentlemen.

01:24
Hey, Paul. Pleasure to be here. You know, I alluded in the introduction that you guys are right in the middle of today’s topic, and let’s talk a little bit about what the topic is. Obviously, disruption, but specifically in your area of the country. Let’s talk about that. Eric, you want to introduce that? Sure. So, we are Coastline Real Estate Advisors as our management side. We have a family of businesses, but we are Southern California based. So, we deal with

01:53
Everything you can imagine through COVID in the country, but now we’re dealing with the ramifications of the Palisades fire, which I lived in the Palisades, as well as the Eaton fires. You know, you need to be nimble and you need to know how to move and change quickly to not just protect your assets, but really, you know, your housing people and how do you work with your residents? How do you work with new residents? How do you work with things that, you know, our lives changed in 24 hours? And so how quickly can your industry

02:24
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02:54
You know, when the fires kind of first initially broke out, it was very, I was awestruck and very alarmed, you know, looking outside my balcony and seeing just the massive fire and the mountains just completely ablaze. Especially with like things like these or crises like these that kind of pop up, there’s very high emotional toll to the actual folks that are witnessing and seeing.

03:17
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03:45
But, yeah, it was very, very unfortunate and went on for a lot longer than we would have all hoped for. Eric, I know you guys manage a lot of properties out here in the area as well. Were you personally impacted or was it just the properties that you guys were managing? So I was personally impacted. But, yeah, and then the assets we manage have been affected because, you know, you’ve had, I think in the past days alone, 20,000, 25,000 people that have to find a new place to live.

04:15
So we saw an immediate adjustment, an immediate moral compass that had to take hold of what was the right thing to do and how do we help those that need help, right? So I think immediately what I saw was humanity come through on that matter. I was speaking at the Goizeta Business School out at Emory University a couple weeks ago with a friend of mine who’s a behavioral scientist. And he uses, because I don’t want to take credit for this metaphor, but he said, you know,

04:43
When things happen, it’s like being a downhill skier. And when people catch their edge, do people fall or do they double down on what they do and they hold that edge and stay on their skis to finish the race? And what I think we’ve seen, at least in the private sector, are people doubling down on their abilities and holding that edge. And so it’s been a very positive result from what we’ve seen in the private sector, the multifamily sector, the industrial sector.

05:12
And people helping other people out. I think that’s the best metaphor I could come up with for the last six weeks of our lives. Hanging on to that edge, yeah. Eric, I’m curious and I’m sorry to hear that you were kind of personally impacted. I don’t know how I would be able to manage the business and our staff while dealing with my own kind of personal crisis also at the same time. How was that experience and how are you kind of managing that?

05:41
Dealing with the personal implications and impact that you experience in your family experience in the midst of also, you know, needing to run the business at the same time and keep a level head. Yeah, no, I think it’s, you have to compartmentalize things and I’m able to do that, which is tricky to do and tricky to hold on to. I said, I think our saving grace was, and one of the things we had talked about, and Mo, you deal with this, HR. Like, who’s doing the work? Who’s handling the accounting? Who’s handling the operations? What are their roles? And

06:11
My role at the company is to oversee the reporting side. And I built a great team. And my team has basically said to me, hey, you’ve trained us. We know what we need to do. Take care of your family. And so that was kind of the first week, 10 days of what we were dealing with. And since then, it’s sort of taken out. What’s been really granular about that is I’ve been able to push more responsibility onto the guys. It was sort of that moment in time when I said, the team can handle more.

06:40
The team hasn’t still set. So it’s really been an opportunity for me to test my team and how much more they can handle. Separately than that, you sort of just have to sort of say, okay, the kids are back in school. The dog is being fed. You know, I need to now focus in the next three hours on just work, on just keeping things moving forward. So it’s really been a case study in efficiency and operations. Yeah, we’ve got about four minutes left. I wanted to ask you a little bit because

07:10
I know your company, you work with clients all over the United States. Right. And it’s not just what you experienced in Southern California with the fires. I mean, there’s North Carolina with the hurricanes and the hurricane that happened. There’s all kinds of disruption that we see. What are you seeing how your clients in the multifamily space react with these disruptions?

07:34
Yeah, no, great question. We’ve definitely had our own fair share of crises. You know, even me personally, being an immigrant and first generation American and immigrating here, went through my own set of challenges and crisis events, if you will. And we have, you know, clients all over the country and we’ve, you know, our clients have been impacted by things like the power outages that happened in Houston years back and hurricanes that happen almost every year. And then of course these fires,

08:02
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08:32
If your leaders are also showing a level of panic, it just further exacerbates and just creates a bigger issue versus showing that confidence that, yes, you know, we’re being tested, but we can definitely kind of get through this. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And other disruptions other than the fire, Eric, I mean, some of your properties, are they located all in Southern California or do you have properties in other parts of the country where some of these other things have happened?

08:58
We’ve owned and managed across the country, but we’ve always come back to Southern California, and the idea there is if you can get to and from, you know, the assets to do the best are the assets that you can get to and from in a day, and the assets you can show up to unannounced. So we have sort of geographically hunkered ourselves down to Southern California, to San Diego, through LA County. We’ve owned and managed up in Ventura as well, and we have an offshoot property up in

09:27
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09:55
Okay, I tell you what, we’re coming up against a break. We’re going to break it here. We’re going to be right back after these messages. You’re listening to Multifamily Matters because multifamily matters.

10:18
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14:22
Well, we are back and you are listening to Multifamily Matters powered by the Multifamily Media Network and coming to you exclusively from the Smart Apartment Data Studio. And we’re discussing the topic of resilience and recovery, navigating disruption in multifamily management. I’m Paul Marks. Joining me by phone is a longtime multifamily history veteran, the awesome Eric Friedman, the CFO and partner at Coastline Real Estate Advisors.

14:47
Also with us is a fabulous supplier partner to the multifamily industry, Mo Hussain, the CEO of Balanced Asset Solutions. I do want to remind our listeners, if you would like to provide show topics, guest ideas, suggestions, or just listen to any archived episode of Multifamily Matters, please go to our website at multifamilyradio.com. So we kind of talked in the first segment about the fact that both of you are located in Southern California and the impact of those

15:15
Fires that were out there and how it affected your businesses and even you personally. Let’s talk a little bit about how you adapt to strategies to maintain continuity and amid any kind of disruption. And I’ll start with you, Eric. That’s a really good question because real estate is one of those speed up to slow down industries. And it takes time. You don’t see the change right away in anything we do.

15:43
But I think the importance is, and across our companies, whether it’s our material side, construction side, debt side, or management side, we have to make fast changes. So the changes we make on the ground is going to be what the reporting and what, you know, balanced asset solutions deals with on the reporting side in the 10, 15 days later. So I think it’s important to know the assets, to be there day to day. One of the benefits of us having our own management company is we

16:13
We see change right away. We see issues right away. And the team, we’ve given it the entrepreneurial spirit to make those changes quickly, to affect those changes so that the properties can succeed, I guess, would be kind of the answer to that. What’s the new fire of the day? And how do we solve that? And that’s what we focus on from the top-down leadership perspective at the business, is hitting those hot points first thing in the morning every day. Okay.

16:43
Mo, what about your thoughts? Yeah, just to add to that, like one thing I want to double down on Eric’s comment is the word that kind of comes to my mind is kind of empowerment. And I think that’s very important from just an organizational philosophy perspective, that the folks that are closest to the problem or closest to the context of real estate engaging with the tenants and the owners, that they are fully enabled and have the resources to effectively do their job.

17:09
In the instance of like, you know, a crisis kind of rearing its head, I think it’s important for any organization and business in general to have some type of like a crisis management team and a process.

17:21
There should be some type of a management plan that’s put together in the instance where a crisis occurs. There should be kind of a dedicated team, if you will. There should be some training and even preparation and even kind of potentially testing that versus having to be tested when a crisis kind of rears its head. And then during that crisis event, that team should be activated. There should be some type of a response strategy. There should be delegation and ownership of communication effectively. Now, one of the things that

17:49
In real estate, a house kind of burning down, the folks that are being impacted are the homeowners themselves, the tenants that are renting the unit, the vendors that are doing work on the property, and the management company as well. And so everybody’s kind of interconnected. Somebody needs to communicate with the owner because maybe the owner may not even be in town or in the country and is aware of what’s going on.

18:10
There needs to be tactical empathy that gets deployed with communicating with the tenants and giving them a ramp from where they can potentially get their life together and move into another unit and trying to get their security deposit back as quickly as possible. One situation that we had dealt with working with one of our clients in LA is that they didn’t have the contact information of all their tenants. And so some of the properties got burned down and they effectively were having a very difficult time trying to figure out a way to communicate with the tenants and even

18:39
They didn’t have some contact information associated with the owners. And then additionally, further exacerbated that issue is that they weren’t properly handling security deposits correctly. And in that moment in time when these tenants need to relocate and get their security deposit back to put a deposit down in another place, that became a further issue. And a lot of that is wrapped up into just not properly using the products and having a very kind of clear-cut accounting process.

19:04
Like a compliance process and ensuring that they have all contact information and their accounting and everything is accurate. This is very important and is very, very apparent in situations like this. And then, you know, coming out of that experience, you know, evaluating the actual response, figuring out what the learned experiences were from that.

19:24
And doing whatever tweaks and changes that need to be made in kind of your crisis response team and management process. And slowly, you know, it’s going to take time to also kind of rebuild that process with your owners. And specifically as it pertains to Southern California, California in general, insurance has been a very, very hot topic in situations like this where, you know, some policies cover, some policies don’t. There’s just a wide degree of variability and just challenges that even the owners are potentially going to be dealing with and

19:54
Effective, proactive communication is super important to all parties that are kind of involved. Eric, I know it doesn’t sound like the properties you guys are managing are really impacted, but is this something or a philosophy that you guys kind of have internally as a business in terms of crisis management and just kind of preparation associated with that? It is, but I’ll simplify it even more to just call it duplicity. I find it very important that

20:23
If someone even just as simply as goes on vacation, that nothing stops. Right. That everyone has enough. And one thing we talk about, and one of the reasons Mo and I got in touch with each other through Balthasar Solutions is having not just the duplicity, but the bandwidth. And at what point does your team not have enough bandwidth? Does it make more sense to, you know, how do you operate in that moment? So it’s something we always talk about, even weekly, and we talk about with my guys and my team is, you know, what is your bandwidth right now, guys?

20:52
Are you stressed too much? Do you need more time? Can you take on more? And I want everyone at the company to have enough bandwidth that when new deals come on board, when new management comes on board, it’s just business as usual. Nothing changes. Everyone’s life rolls and does the same. So when these extraneous situations of fires, California earthquakes, and just family issues come up,

21:17
Everyone can handle and take on to allow that person to be comfortable in their life and be able to move forward in their life. I think that duplicity was proved with the fires last week and my needing my team to take on roles that I had prepped them for, but they don’t normally have to do. I think that’s a key piece of the pie. Outside of the standard operating procedures that you have in place with disaster events, I think it just comes down to

21:45
You know, people willing to work together and having that duplicity in the system to take on when things get rough. We’ve got about three minutes left. One thing that I wanted to add to Eric’s statement on top of duplicity and of the same theme is kind of cross-functional training, right? It’s important if there is kind of like standard operating procedures within an organization to also have a level of cross-functional kind of training so that in the instance where

22:13
One person is impacted, you know, the business doesn’t come to a standstill or creates a disruption or a bottleneck and a significant dependency on that individual. One of our clients that was in LA, for example, that was impacted by these fires, their CFO was directly impacted and had to go out of pocket to work with his family and deal with the situation at hand. And he was kind of the power user for Appfolio, which is the software that they were using. And so the organization kind of was at a standstill

22:43
Because he had to go out of pocket and they were having a hard time trying to put together templates and email campaigns and whatnot to reach out to each of the owners and the tenants and to finish the move out accounting for those tenants who were impacted and whatnot. And it showed a very glaring kind of hole or limitation in the organization. And it kind of reminded me also, prior to starting this practice, I used to work in big tech. And one thing that really stood out to me, I used to work with a couple of companies that were in China and would fly out there regularly.

23:12
When I would go to do these demos for technology, and I would usually be working with engineering teams, they would request and bring in folks across the org, even folks that are doing facilities management, even janitorial services, to just get exposure and seeing what the engineers are working on so they have some level of context and also exposure to that. I just thought that was very interesting, that philosophy of having everybody in the organization having some high-level knowledge of what everybody is doing to ensure that there’s always business continuity.

23:43
That is interesting. That makes a lot of sense. But I’ll tell you what, we’re going to break it here. We’re coming up against the break. We’ll be right back after these messages. You are listening to Multifamily Matters because multifamily matters.

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27:52
Well, we are back and you are listening to Multifamily Matters powered by the Multifamily Media Network. Coming to you exclusively from the Smart Apartment Data Studio, we’re discussing the topic of resilience and recovery, navigating disruption in multifamily management.

28:07
I’m Paul Marks, and joining me by phone is a longtime Multifamily History veteran, the awesome Eric Friedman, the CFO and partner at Coastline Real Estate Advisors. Also with us is a fabulous supplier partner to the Multifamily History, Mo Hussain, the CEO of Balanced Asset Solutions. I do want to take a moment and thank some of our exclusive sponsors that make Multifamily Matters possible. Econserve, providing multifamily water conservation solutions for properties across the U.S. REV, the leasing management company. REV is revolutionizing multifamily

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29:07
The critical role of the supporting team members that they have during challenging times, whether it’s fires, hurricanes, whatever it might be. Eric, do you want to take that? That’s a deep question. I don’t think we can answer it fully in this segment. I would equate it to kind of when Mo and I talk about working, my team is very good at having knowledge of the computer systems, you know, an inch thick and a mile wide, where the outside knows these things a mile deep.

29:38
So I think in understanding that, it’s sort of when do you know, when are you humble enough to reach out for help? When do you have those disaster systems in place? But more than that, it’s building trust within your organization. Giving enough balance to your team or to the players on your team, to your senior accountants, to your property supervisors, that they know that they can trust you

30:07
To handle what they need to be handled, but know that they’re safe in their role at the company. And so a lot of what you’re asking is not just so much of an SOP in place, a procedure in place, but more of building that emotional, and Mo touched on it earlier, that emotional intelligence, building that emotional trust with your team that you’re all trying to accomplish the same goal. And you all have an important role in that goal, and you’re all needed for that goal. Mo, are you kind of building on that? Do you agree with that?

30:37
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that one word that sticks out to my mind is the concept of emotional safety and security. And Google, some years ago, before I started this organization, I worked at Google. And one of the research think tanks within Google that they distribute a report each year on is what makes effective teams do really well compared to other ineffective teams. And the constant theme that comes up is emotional safety and emotional psychology.

31:05
And this is the concept of your team feeling emotionally that they are being taken care of and that the organization that they work for has their back, especially in instances of crises. Very important that the HR leaders and the organization is deploying tactical empathy to ensure that the employees feel that they can take care of their family, take care of what they’re going through personally, and that the organization is there to kind of support them

31:35
Include commas, periods, questions, and apostrophes as needed. Include commas, periods, questions, and apostrophes as needed.

31:47
Selfish, if you will, to an extent, or at least just dealing with our own personal issues and then make louder judgment and being able to lend a supporting hand or even taking into consideration what other people in the organization are also dealing with. Something that the HR needs to be kind of keeping in mind, but it’s important that each individual employee feels like that they have the organization is behind their back and that

32:08
You give them the space to be able to collaborate and give feedback to the organization where they feel safe enough to be able to do so. What I like to kind of comment on in our organization is kind of the concept of kind of failing forward, giving employees the ability to be able to fail and feel safe that they can try new things and that the organization is there to support them and for all of us to hit our kind of mutual goal. I think that falls back to, I think it was, I don’t know, it was Eisenhower who

32:36
I’m not sure who said it, but tell a man what to do but not how to do it and let him surprise you with his ingenuity. I kind of quietly like to give people at the company tasks, but how I do something might not be how someone else will accomplish the same goal or get the same answer. I like to teach and grow the people at the business as that happens, business grows, is how to solve problems in their way and how to be able to explain that to other people and how to time manage themselves and give people goals they can achieve.

33:05
And success, you know, ability to succeed. And then work with them, right? To see the world through their eyes. Because then when things happen and they have to take time off or just, you know, clients call and they need something now and that person might be working on another project, you can see their work through their eyes. And you can see their work through how they accomplish their goals. And therefore, you can solve for them when they might not be able to solve for themselves at that time.

33:34
We’ve got about five minutes left in this segment. I wanted to ask you, Mo, I mean, a lot of what you do with your clients is help them with HR. Talk a little bit about some of the best practices when you’re dealing with disruptions to help teams stay effective during crisis. What do you recommend to the HR departments?

33:55
Yeah, great question. I’ve been very lucky and fortunate in that one of my younger siblings actually works for one of the largest employment law firms in the US, Littler, and they’ve helped us kind of put together our own kind of crisis management and HR kind of best practices, but kind of feeding off of that same team of kind of psychological safety.

34:15
One thing that we do regularly is, you know, our HR individual or leader, she does regular kind of check-ins with each of our employees, at least 15 minutes a month for each of our employees. We have things like employee wellness programs where, you know, employees can take off on any given Friday, one Friday a month, where they can use that as kind of a personal or kind of mental day without necessarily dinging against their crew PTO or time off.

34:43
During this particular crisis itself for the folks and the staff that we did have that were in LA, we did give about three days off paid leave to just handle whatever personal situation and impact that they had, whether it’s their direct family or themselves. And then providing, you know, like ongoing resources to allow and empower employees to deal with just the everyday stresses of work and

35:07
And just even in terms of like crises and like one thing that we did for that was, you know, getting a subscription to a meditation app, Calm, that allows for folks to be able to, you know, meditate and use, you know, kind of an app to be able to help with, you know, kind of crises or kind of mental management, if you will. I think mental health is extremely very important. You know, unfortunately, I’ve had personal family and friends that have hurt themselves because of

35:33
You know, whatever mental kind of health situation or scenario that they were dealing with. And so it is very important and, you know, it has a direct impact in the person’s productivity, especially as it pertains to work. I always like to say that, you know, your health and your family is number one. You know, work always comes second and there’s never a shortage of work. I think having that philosophy and especially hearing that from the leader of the organization gives a lot of confidence to our employees that they are supported. Eric, I’m curious if there’s any kind of

36:01
Wellness type of programs or any type of like kind of HR practices that you guys kind of follow or adhere to? We don’t necessarily have anything structural like you do, but what we do is, you know, we check in with our, we check with our teams every week. And also little things, you know, guys on the accounting side that are on soccer leagues, you know, and they say, hey, I have a game tonight. I say, go to that game, right? We as owners kind of

36:25
It’s one of those old jokes, you know, adages, you start a company, you work, you know, 100 hours a week type arguments. I think we do, you know, what we tell people is do what you need to get done. And then if you’re done, go do what you need to do. Don’t sit around staring at a computer if you’ve done everything you need to do. And I think we make sure that our clients understand if they say, oh, where is this person today or what happened? They said, oh, they’re doing X, Y, Z, right? We’re not hiding anything. And I think everyone really appreciates that. I think what really I’ve learned

36:54
And I’m one of those guys that sits down at a desk and I just sort of put the headphones on and go. And I can skip lunch. I can work through things. I think what I’ve learned during this period is how important it is to not do that. To really put work aside and spend time with family and kids. Not that I wasn’t doing it. I don’t want to put myself out on that. But last night my wife was with our daughter staying at a hotel because of traffic and cars and she needed to be at an event.

37:21
And I picked the boys up. They said, well, Dad, do you have any work to do tonight? And I said, you know what, guys? No, I don’t. Let’s do something together. And like, Mo, what you just said, the work doesn’t stop. So whatever I was going to do last night, I just did this morning. It wasn’t that big of a deal. So I think it’s important that these travesties kind of get you to slow down a little bit and to really appreciate and take care of what’s really important, and that’s family. Because at the end of the day, the work’s going to be work.

37:46
But you got to make sure your family’s there, you know, you’re with your family and spending those times because the kids grow fast. I mean, I was thinking last night, my 10th grader, I remember him as a kindergartner. So what happened in those times? All right. Well, I’ll tell you what, we’re going to break it here for the, we’re going to be back with our final segment of this episode. Right after these messages, you are listening to Multifamily Matters because multifamily matters.

38:21
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We are back with our final segment of this episode of Multifamily Matters powered by the Multifamily Media Network and coming to you exclusively from the Smart Apartment Data Studio. We’re discussing the topic of resilience and recovery, navigating disruption in multifamily management.

42:38
I’m Paul Marks and joining me by phone is a longtime multifamily industry veteran, the awesome Eric Friedman, the CFO and partner at Coastline Real Estate Advisors. Also joining us is a fabulous supplier partner to the multifamily industry, Mo Hussain, the CEO of Balanced Asset Solutions. I do want to take a moment and thank some of our other sponsors that make multifamily matters possible.

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43:24
Making managed IT an easy business decision for multifamily. So let’s talk in this segment a little bit about technology. Technology is such a major thing in multifamily right now. So let’s talk about leveraging technology and communication when you’re dealing with crisis management. Mo, you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, definitely. And this is particularly a topic that’s near and dear to my heart and kind of what

43:53
What we offer to clients. And so, you know, we always use the analogy of kind of technology being kind of a tool like a hammer, right? And the effectiveness of that hammer, you know, relies on how that tool is being utilized. You know, technology alone and in itself is not going to solve any and all problems, right? And so when we talk about looking at a business, any business in general, there’s kind of three different aspects to it. You have your people, your process, and your product.

44:22
The process is where the technology is wrapped up into. There’s two components that’s important. One is to have things like standardized operating procedures, whether it’s a crisis or just your regular day-to-day and monthly accounting and operational cycles.

44:38
Having the right technology in place that has been implemented, tested, and thoroughly vetted to have the right kind of processes in place. Especially in situations and scenarios where there is some type of a crisis, people not in the office, or how well software was implemented, to be able to be utilized as a tool to effectively navigate through that crisis really shines a light.

45:04
A lot of the different property management and accounting systems that are out there have kind of robust communication functionality and tooling to be able to allow you to be able to communicate with tenants, with owners, with vendors. You need to make sure you have the staff properly kind of trained on how to use that tooling and have things like templates already teamed up in scenarios where they need to be used. And also ensuring that those databases are robust with folks’ contact information and so forth.

45:29
This is very key and critical, especially when an instance where a crisis kind of rears its head and folks need to utilize that tool to be able to mass communicate or do changes across the entire database. And so, Eric, is that kind of in line with how you guys kind of see tooling and technology and how you guys are using it during this time? 100%. We use the reality as junk in, junk out.

45:54
right so base accounting right if the invoice is wrong it’s going to flow through all the way whether it’s capitalized on the balance sheet or whether you’re expensing on the income statement the numbers are going to be wrong so i think a lot of that is the technology is there across all the systems and all the multi-family systems and it’s just are the people trained and how is the information being sent out and then once it’s sent out then it’s you know people have to read it have to be able to want to read it so i think it suits enough i think it’s

46:22
That hammer analogy is fantastic because then the question is who’s using the hammer and then who’s receiving that information and are they aware of it? Are they reading it? Are they seeing it? So it just has to be something that’s user-friendly top to bottom so that when things happen, when information goes out, and we dealt with it I’d say most recently with the palisades in my life and Eaton as well because it was across LA. Even in Hollywood there were fires. Up the canyons there were fires. If the information we’re receiving

46:49
The correct information. And do you trust in that information? So do you trust in the property managers, the accountants, the supervisors, and where that data is coming from? Yeah, we’ve got about six minutes left, but I want to, before we transition, I want to ask you, Mo, talk a little bit about, for about a minute or so, about integrating advanced property management technologies for crisis management. But what are some of the advantages of doing that just for long-term operational efficiency? Well, I can answer that.

47:18
I think it’s tantamount. I think if any synonym you want is paramount, you have to do it. Technology has taken over. When we started up our management company back in 08, people were still using pencil and paper to record graphs. So it’s a function top-down from efficiency for the tenants to track their ledgers to even recording on our side, reporting to ownership. Technology is taking over. And so the team that can embrace that

47:47
Not only saves on overhead costs, but also the information is there immediately. You know, we’re working with a group from overseas right now, and we’ve given them read-only access to our systems, and it’s great. They pull rent rolls when they need. They pull P&L. They don’t have to wait for us to get the data they need. They can pull it immediately. And so I think that’s really kind of where is technology and multifamily going to go? I think we’re only just seeing the beginning of it right now.

48:14
And that person that solves that next problem that we don’t know will be the next real page, the next yardie, the next MRI out there. Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right. And we don’t know exactly who that’s going to be. But when we go to conferences, we sure see the people that are their startups that have got their solutions they want to talk about. So, Mo, do you have anything you’d like to add?

48:38
Yeah, I mean, we’re seeing, you know, conversational AI and bots kind of being utilized more. And I think over time, we’re going to see that definitely proliferate and integrate with the newer technologies that we’re seeing as far as specifically as it pertains to kind of the property management industry kind of as a whole. You know, I think there’s still…

48:56
You know, I came from the big tech world in the past, and so the adoption of technology and what that curve kind of looks like is much more different in the property management industry than we see in kind of big tech. But we are seeing, you know, more and more processes that are being done kind of manually and things being done bespoke and outside of kind of technology being kind of roped into and leveraging kind of these newer pieces of technology.

49:20
Time will only tell. We’re also seeing concepts of things like chat agents, if you will, that simulate a user interaction and a bot that’s able to converse with a potential tenant or an owner. I’m excited to see how that technology gets adopted in the industry.

49:39
All right. Well, I tell you what, I want to transition us out of the topic, and I want to ask you, we’ll start with you, Eric. Tell us a little bit more about Coastline Real Estate Advisors, and if someone wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way to do it? No, thank you very much. I appreciate the time today. Yeah, we actually have a family of businesses. Coastline is our property management side. We also have a materials business where anything you need to complete your apartment unit from

50:04
Cabinets to poles, to faucets, to tub enclosures, to tubs or toilets. We sell. We’re solving that problem for a one-stop solution for apartment renovation and apartment upgrades. And then we have our construction side. And all of this is sort of our story as a company of needs we saw from a physical standpoint over the years. If anyone needs to reach out to me, the best way is always through my email. It’s probably the safest, easiest way. I’m on my computer usually all day.

50:32
I can be reached at ejf at coastlinerea.com. But yeah, we are the family of businesses. And mind you, the work we do across these businesses, our property management company is a very small piece of that business. So we’re open nationwide with regards to materials, construction, as well as advisory on management. Perfect.

50:58
So, Mo, talk a little bit about Balanced Access Solutions and what you’re looking to do and how people can reach you. Yeah, definitely. Very unique business model, Eric. You guys are kind of vertically integrated. You guys do building, you’re GC.

51:11
Include commas, periods, questions marks, exclamation points, and apostrophes as needed.

51:31
IRS and taxes, cost segregation services, and then we also offer a lot of consulting services around operational management, building out SOPs, implementing new software, training staff, and other services that include kind of automating manual processes using bots. You can reach us at www.balancedassetsolutions.com.

51:53
Perfect. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for being here today. It was great to have you. Great. I’m sorry that you had to go through what you’ve been through, but thank you for sharing with our audience some of the things that you did and you put in place to make sure that your teams were safe and your residents were safe. So we’re going to be back next week with another great topic in Power Panel of Industry Experts. You’ve been listening to Multifamily Matters because multifamily matters.

52:21
Thank you for listening to Multifamily Matters, a weekly radio show that discusses current topics and trends in the multifamily industry. To find out more about the show or make suggestions for topics or interesting guests, go to multifamilyradio.com. You have been listening to Multifamily Matters because multifamily matters.