Futurescaping the Property Management Industry with Chris Lister of Buildium

Futurescaping and tracking where the property management industry is going has been interesting over the last few years. A lot of things are coming to a head, and on The Property Management Show podcast, we think it’s important to invite guests who are running big businesses. When our small business partners engage with our big business partners, we can all learn a lot and figure out where our industry is going. It helps us to plan strategically for the future. Today’s guest is one of those big business guys. He’s Chris Lister, who is currently the CEO of Buildium, and previously worked with Constant Contact. That company recently sold for a mere billion dollars. Chris knows how to grow a company, and he’s joining us to talk about the future of the property management industry, and how personal relationships and technology are learning to play nice with one another. What We Know About Chris Lister For 10 years, Chris helped grow Constant Contact from $25 million in revenue to about $450 million in revenue as the Chief Revenue Officer. After those 10 years, he took some time off to be with his family, and then joined Buildium as their Chief Customer Officer. In case you don’t know, Buildium is a property management platform for small businesses who are managing between 10 and 5,000 units. The platform helps with property management accounting and provides other tools to help with leases, tenants, and units. The company has 16,000 customers and they’ve been around for 14 years. After managing the sales, marketing, and customer success departments, Chris transitioned into the CEO role about six months ago.  To successfully run a big business, it’s critical to understand your market. At Buildium, Chris and his team know they have a market to reach, and they know they have a product that’s moving from good to great. They’re helping their customers get closer to their goals. Self-Management and Industry Disruptions Why are more than half of the landlords and property owners still self-managing? Chris believes it’s because property management is often something that happens to people accidentally. They might inherit a property or move out of the home they’ve lived in for years. Or, perhaps they’re in the military and always moving. Whatever the reason, they’re called accidental landlords. That constituency is a third of the market. They fell into the management of a rental property, and they’re still trying to understand what’s happening. Sometimes, these accidental landlords will realize that they like the rental income that’s coming in, and they’ll start investing in additional properties. Usually, though, they’re not thinking of professional management as a necessity until they get to 10 or 20 properties. That’s when they need to think about efficiencies and systems. Lately, a lot of property management companies have been arriving in competitive markets with a lot of venture capital and private equity money. These are shops financed by tier-one Silicon Valley venture capitalists. There are probably more than a dozen of these companies around the country, and more are coming. Property technology is hot right now. According to Chris, this should not surprise anyone. More money is coming into this space because it’s an industry that has not been quick to adopt technology. So, they see an opportunity. What has not been established is whether they can create a repeatable model that brings value to the customers. If they understand the face that relationships are essential in this business space, they might have a shot at succeeding. The companies who win, however, aren’t necessarily the ones with all the money behind them. The companies that win understand that the property management business is relationship-driven.