Mynd, the tech-powered property management company with the industry’s first real-time data management and mobile app, announced today that it has acquired San Diego-based Pacific Shore Management’s 595 unit portfolio. The deal makes Mynd one of the fastest growing mid-cap property management companies in the US and will more than double their unit count to nearly 1,100 in just 10 months of operations. The expansion into Southern California, one of the nation’s largest rental markets, further demonstrates the company’s commitment to overhaul the rental management industry.“The acquisition of Pacific Shore Management is an exciting opportunity for Mynd to continue our expansion into the massive Southern California market and to enable more property owners and residents to experience the benefits of our tech-powered property management service,” said Doug Brien, CEO and Co-Founder of Mynd. “We are proud to partner with the outstanding team at Pacific Shore Management and look forward to expanding further into the San Diego market.”Launched in 2016 by real estate veterans Colin Wiel and Doug Brien, Mynd marries homegrown software with industry-leading operations to offer owners a simpler, more profitable solution to manage their rental properties.“We have been in the real estate business for 15+ years and have always felt like technology was underutilized. When we met the Mynd team and saw how they had leveraged technology to make their management platform more efficient we were extremely impressed. We think Mynd’s approach to management will be game-changing for investors in San Diego,” said Krystle Moore with Pacific Shore Management.“Acquiring property management firms around the country provides a compelling way for Mynd to seed new markets so they can leverage their 21st century approach to management,” said Rich Boyle, General Partner with Canaan Partners.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMedia Contact: Stacey Corsostacey.corso@mynd.coPhone: () 672-6460
Mynd Property Management, a property management firm serving the small residential sector with a combination of on-the-ground experts and innovative technology, has merged with RentVest, a property management company operating in major metro areas nationwide.Combined, the new entity forms one of the largest small residential property management firms in the U.S. The small residential sector includes all single-family rental () homes and multifamily properties with 50 units or less, where the majority of U.S. residents reside.Mynd expands its footprint to 16 markets nationwide, including existing markets of the Bay Area, San Diego, Sacramento and Seattle. The bulk of the 4,000-plus RentVest portfolio is located in Phoenix, Reno and Las Vegas. Additional markets include Dallas, Atlanta, Portland, Vancouver, Tucson, Denver, San Antonio, Houston and Tampa. In all, Mynd oversees more than 8,000 units on behalf of its property owner clients.“The RentVest team shares similar values to ours, and we believe they are a perfect fit culturally,” says Doug Brien, CEO and co-founder of Mynd. “We’re excited to collaborate on best practices and create a best-in-class nationwide service.”Colin Wiel, chairman, CTO and co-founder of Mynd, says, “This merger is a huge step forward in our goal to become the first company to scale property management for the small residential industry. By leveraging technology, we hope to transform the industry and scale to over 100,000 units under management within a few years.”Mynd’s vision is to offer investors easy access to high-caliber investments and property management nationwide. The partnership between Mynd and RentVest moves the company closer to that goal by providing investors access to strong rental markets, such as Phoenix, Las Vegas and Dallas.Under the leadership of Vincent Deorio, Mynd’s director of M&A, the company continues to target property management partners whose core values align with its own.Pursuant to the merger, RentVest co-founders and principals, Jacob Ash and Benton Cotter, join Mynd’s leadership team. Ash and Cotter bring decades of experience in the property management and real estate investment sectors to Mynd.“We were very impressed with Mynd once we started learning more about what they were doing, and how they were doing it,” explains Ash. “The company’s business operation is built for scale, which will further enhance our offering to property owners,” he adds.“Teaming with Mynd means that we gain additional resources that will further streamline our operations and improve our service,” adds Cotter.###About Mynd Property Management Mynd Property Management serves the small residential sector with on-the-ground experts in all of the regions it serves. Headquarters in Oakland, Calif., Mynd’s team of property management professionals and technology combine to boost efficiencies for property owners, and improve the rental living experience for residents. Currently, Mynd manages over 8,000 units in major metros nationwide. The firm plans to expand into additional markets in 2019 to provide real estate investors with access to fully managed, income-generating properties in markets with strong employment and rental growth.About RentVest RentVest in a national property management company based in Mesa, Ariz., offering high-quality and affordable property management services nationwide. RentVest manages income-producing properties in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Denver, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Portland, Atlanta, Vancouver, Reno, Las Vegas and Seattle.
Mynd Property Management, a modern property management company powered by on-the-ground experts and technology, has acquired HomeUnion, a company that enables investing in small residential properties in 20 U.S. markets. The acquisition comes on the heels of Mynd’s recent merger with RentVest, which doubled Mynd’s property management footprint to more than 8,000 small residential rental units in a total of 16 markets.One of HomeUnion’s major accomplishments was the development of INVESTimate, an online home valuation tool that allows users to determine the investment potential of any home in the U.S. INVESTimate takes into account a variety of factors, including supply and demand trends, metro-level employment and neighborhood quality using AI and machine learning.“Adding HomeUnion’s capabilities to the Mynd platform solidifies our position as a leader in the small residential real estate investment business,” says Doug Brien, CEO and Co-Founder of Mynd Property Management. “Property management is a fundamental aspect of executing a successful investment. However, picking the right property in the right market for the right price at the right time – is also crucial. We saw this very clearly at our last company, Waypoint Homes. We look forward to leveraging our investment experience and HomeUnion’s data and tools to help our investors grow their portfolios,” he notes. HomeUnion’s ability to identify small residential properties that meet the financial strategies of a variety of investors is appealing to Colin Wiel, Mynd’s Co-Founder, Chairman and CTO. “We are excited to be able to serve our base of over 2,000 customers by leveraging HomeUnion's AI-driven approach of scouring hundreds of thousands of for-sale homes to find the ones that will perform as the best rental properties,” says Wiel. The acquisition aligns with Mynd’s long-term goals of becoming a full-service real estate investment solution in the top 50 most investable markets in the U.S., and managing 1 million units. Real estate investors will have the ability to purchase off-market and MLS rental properties in metro areas with strong employment growth, without the traditional geographic barriers that come with real estate investing.“We are pleased to be part of the Mynd team,” says Don Ganguly, President of HomeUnion. “Investors who purchase SFR homes through the new Mynd platform also gain access to the company’s high-caliber property management services and proprietary local operating data, thereby making investing accessible to a greater number of investors.”
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Mynd Property Management is a modern property management firm serving the small residential sector. Based in Oakland, Calif., the company’s team of on-the-ground property management professionals and technology boost net operating income () for property owners, while improving the rental experience for residents. Currently, Mynd has over 8,000 units under management in 16 markets nationwide. The firm plans to expand its platform in 2019 to provide real estate investors with access to income-generating properties in markets with strong employment and rental growth. For original article click here.
AUSTIN — Investors purchased a record share of Dallas-area homes last year.And these for-profit homebuyers are expected to continue to gobble up thousands of houses in North Texas and nationwide.Home investors are having the biggest impact in the lower price ranges of the Dallas home market — the same sector first-time buyers are shopping.More than 14% of low-priced houses in the Dallas area sold to investors in 2018, according to new data by CoreLogic. Overall, more than 8% of Dallas homes of all prices were snapped up by investors.“Investor buying activity in the U.S. is at record highs,” CoreLogic’s Ralph McLaughlin said. “It’s not the big institutional guys that are leading the increase in home buying — it’s the smaller guys.“They are buying homes that are in the lower third of prices — they are essentially buying starter homes,” McLaughin said at a meeting of the National Association of Real Estate Editors in Austin.Small investors accounted for more than 60% of these home buys last year.CoreLogic found that by the end of 2018, the investment rate in the U.S. housing market reached 11.3%, the highest rate since 1999, when the researchers started keeping this data.The share of investor home buys in the U.S. and the Dallas area is even higher than during the Great Recession, when thousands of distressed homes hit the market and were sold to owners who converted them to rental properties.That’s still what’s happening with most of the houses sold to these buyers.“Most investors are investing east of the Mississippi,” McLaughlin said. “Places investors are not buying homes at such high rates are in the West.“California markets have a realtively low share of homes being purchased by investors.”U.S. markets with the highest home investment purchase rates last year include Detroit (), Philadelphia () and Memphis (), according to CoreLogic.“Homebuyers today are more likely to cross paths with investors during an open house than at any other time in the past two decades,” McLaughlin said.David Hicks, who heads Dallas-based HomeVestors of America, said his company, which mostly represents small investors, is seeing record business.He said HomeVestors buyers are on track to purchase 16,000 to 17,000 homes across the U.S. in 2019. “We are buying the lower end — small houses,” Hicks said.The houses that HomeVestors’ members purchase through franchises around the country are mostly under 1,400 square feet and were built in 1985 or earlier. “Our average age is 1960,” Hicks said.Most of the properties need repairs and updating. “People don’t call HomeVestors if they have a nice house,” he said. The buyers spend an average of $20,000 a rooftop before reselling the homes or offering them as rentals.The average North Texas property-flipper made a profit of $30,588 in the first quarter of this year, according to the latest estimate from Attom Data Solutions.While the home investment business is booming, Hicks said he worries about some of the deals he sees in markets where home costs have risen.“A lot of investors are getting in buying houses who don’t understand the economics,” he said. “We see the prices they are paying and the numbers don’t work.“It’s not a get-rich scheme — they work hard.”Hicks said if there is a housing slowdown and prices decline, some small investors who bought a few properties and paid too much could be hurt.“Right now there is a lot of money for properties,” he said. “There is more money than there has been in years.”Colin Wiel, cofounder of California-based home management firm Mynd Property Management, said the increase in rental homes is meeting a need in the market.“For many people, owning a home is the albatross around their neck that holds them down in life,” Wiel said. “I think there is fundamental change for the long term in homeownership.“Today a young person is going to have 10 to 15 jobs throughout an entire career, and job mobility is very important,” he said. “The millennial generation is very much aware of this. Homeownership is a burden as much as a benefit.”Wiel said that the U.S. home rental market is a huge, behind-the-scenes business.“It’s twice as big as the hotel industry by revenue — about $460 billion a year,” he said. “About $29 billion is collected by third-party property management companies in fees.”
Investor buying of homes in the U.S. is at record highs, and Dallas is one of the hottest markets in the country, the chief executive of HomeVestors of America Inc. told the Dallas Business Journal at a conference in Austin on Wednesday."Dallas is one of the most competitive markets in the country,” said David Hicks,president and CEO of the Dallas-based company known for it’s “We buy ugly houses” ad campaign. “It’s an unusual market right now. There are more investors right now that are looking for properties and buying properties, and the values in Dallas are going up and up.”Nationwide, business is booming as well, Hicks said during a panel discussion called “New Landlords and Cutting-Edge Investors” at the National Association of Real Estate Editors conference.“Last month was the best month ever in our history,” Hicks said, “and it looks like we’re going to beat last month this month.”Colin Wiel, co-founder of three-year-old property management company Mynd Property Management, said today it’s difficult for individuals to invest in rental properties, but his company’s technology is trying to change that.Mynd provides property management technology for “small residential,” including single-family rentals and apartment buildings up to 49 units in size. Small residential constitutes 87 percent of all the rental units in America, Wiel said during the panel discussion.“There’s this whole invisible industry of small residential that needs to be transformed with technology and made more professional and mature,” Wiel said. “When that happens, it will make it easier for everybody to invest in rental properties.”CoreLogic economist Ralph McLaughlin said the tax breaks involved in Opportunity Zones will be a game-changer for the home investment market.“It’s going to direct a lot of money that’s never been in real estate into real estate,” he said. “That’s going to lead to an increase in small investors who haven’t really worked in real estate before.”Back to Dallas-Fort Worth, demand for housing is far outstripping supply, Hicks said.“It’s a real tight supply right now,” Hicks said. “There are a lot of investors looking for properties and a lot of people moving into Dallas. There’s just a lot of demand right now.”
Oakland, CA, June 18, 2019
By Joe Bousquin
The complaint that came into Holly McQueen’s office seemed odd at first. Someone was calling to gripe about a concierge at one of her communities not being able to find a key left at the front desk for the caller.“When I asked who they were, that’s when I realized it wasn’t even a resident of our building,” says McQueen, Vice President and Regional Property Manager in Jacksonville, Fla. for GMH Capital Partners. “They weren’t happy with the service, and I had to tell them it was an apartment building, not a hotel.”A little more investigation revealed the caller was staying in the building under a short-term sublet through Airbnb. GMH operates 6,000 student and conventional units.“We do provide some corporate housing, but we don’t do subleases,” says McQueen, who noted the resident in question eventually moved out when his lease was mutually terminated.On the other side of the country, Oakland-based Mynd Property Management, which operates 8,000 units, is taking the opposite approach. With some residents clamoring to rent their apartments by right under the auspices of today’s “sharing” economy, the firm allows residents to do so at properties where owners consent, with processes in place to make sure short-term occupants are screened, while taking a percentage of the additional income.“We figured if residents are going to do it, we want to know about it and be involved in the process,” says Stacy Winship, Regional Director at Mynd. “The alternative is we don’t know about it, and we’re losing out on that income opportunity.”The two strategies represent a bifurcated approach when it comes to the complicated and mushrooming trend of short-term homestays in the apartment industry. The first illustrates the traditional tack operators have taken to subleases for years, which is namely, not allowing them at all. Concerns range from liability, insurance issues, violating local ordinances, increased wear and tear at a community, complaints from long-term residents and the prospect of letting unscreened individuals beyond an apartment building’s front door.The second approach signifies an embrace by some apartment operators – but not all – for short-term subleases as not only a source of ancillary income, but as an amenity for today’s residents who increasingly want the option of renting out their apartments while they’re away.Both rely on technology to be executed successfully.
After the experiences with its rogue resident, GMH Capital set up a program to monitor Airbnb and Craigslist in its markets to see if residents are engaged in unsanctioned subleases at its buildings. Now, it’s part of an employee’s workflow to monitor those sites and check for listings. When a potential issue arises, the firm uses its Butterfly MX smart video access system to check and see if the person who’s renting the apartment is the one coming and going from the building’s main entrance under that apartment’s access code.“We only go back and look at the key logs if there’s a problem,” McQueen says. “The first time it happens, we’ll give them a warning, and ask them not to do it again. We let them know if they do, we will start the eviction process.”
Services such as SubletAlert.com and SubletScan.com scrape Airbnb, Craigslist and similar sites for a fee, and notify operators if a listing pops up for one of their properties.“Most operators still fall into the group where they have done their homework, and they have just made the decision that across their portfolios, it doesn’t make sense to allow any kind of short-term rentals,” says Maksim Ioffe, founder of SubletAlert. “But the outlook is still evolving on an almost a day-to-day basis. In general, the consensus seems to be that unregulated subletting without any kind of compliance infrastructure around it is just a disaster. None of our clients wants that.”At Atlanta-based Audubon, which owns and manages 5,800 units at 24 properties across the Southeast, managing partner Chris Edwards says his company spends significant time and resources getting to know its prospective residents prior to lease signing, and Airbnb undermines that process.“As such, subleasing is illegal in all of our leases,” he says. “It’s grounds for immediate termination of the lease, with penalties.”
At Mynd, Winship says the firm used to work with Pillow, a short-term rental management solution that screens guests as part of Airbnb’s Friendly Buildings Program — which is designed to help owners and managers embrace sanctioned resident hosting in their buildings — and claims to extend $1 million in property and $1 million in liability insurance to building owners. ()Along with ApartmentJet, Pillow was acquired in October by Expedia, which, like Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, Trip Advisor, Booking.com and even Marriot, has aggressively entered the short-term rental market.“They will do all the marketing for you,” Winship says about working with Pillow. “After we send residents an initial letter letting them know short-term rentals are approved if they use Pillow, Pillow will reach out to residents and have them sign an addendum to their lease acknowledging all of the waivers and what happens for abusing it.”Pillow hosted demos at Mynd’s communities, showed residents how to sign up with its app, and reviewed rates for how much money residents can make. “We monitored that activity online through the portal, and then they cut us a check for a portion of the proceeds that the resident gets,” says Winship. Property owners reportedly receive 10 percent of what residents earn through the program, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.Today, Mynd works directly with Airbnb to help manage their short-term rentals, which are primarily corporate rentals.That 10 percent cut should be the minimum, says Garrick Revels, a builder and owner of apartments in Tampa Bay, Fla., for the risk short-term rentals present. “Subleasing is rampant nowadays because of Airbnb and other platforms,” Revels says. “But because it’s becoming unavoidable, you might as well share in the profit.”Owners and managers can also engage with home-sharing sites directly to rent out furnished units on a short-term basis themselves. Winship says taking that route in one of Mynd’s units netted an additional $18,000 in annual revenue, and $10,000 in annual profits, compared to a long-term rental in the same building in Oakland.
To Maitri Johnson, a long-time apartment industry veteran who’s held positions at Trammel Crow, Riverstone Residential and Waypoint Homes, the rise of short-term rentals in apartment buildings is simply a reflection of what today’s residents want.“Our renters today are people who hail Uber and Lyft without even thinking twice about it and who have an expectation that apartment companies need to start being a part of the sharing economy,” says Johnson, currently Vice President of Rental Screening at Transunion, which provides screening services for Pillow and ApartmentJet users. “You can only add so many bells and whistles to the physical structure of your building. But this particular service is truly an amenity that can be offered across any property type.”More and more apartment operators are seemingly taking that approach. Airbnb said in 2017 that 13,000 units were listed through Friendly Buildings, and updated that number to “tens of thousands” of units last year.At SubletAlert.com, Maksim says an increasing number of his clients are trying out different mixes of both long-term and short-term rentals in their buildings, with the explicit aim of offering the ability to sublease as an amenity.“There is a lot of experimentation going on,” says Maksim. “You can imagine, if you have two similar buildings across the street from each other, and one allows sanctioned subleasing, and the other doesn’t, that could be perceived as a competitive advantage. That’s an amenity today’s renters want.”As demand for short-term sublets grows in the apartment industry, operators will quickly need to choose which side of the debate they’re on.
Ali has spent his career helping high growth startups scale by applying technology and process excellence to power great people to do great things.He started his career as a staff engineer and then product manager at Digital Island, a pioneering company during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s that built one of the most robust data networks in the world. He went on to co-found a real estate startup named SalesTeamLive in 2003, building a CRM application from scratch to support the pipeline development efforts of thousands of real estate investors around the United States. One of his clients was Doug Brien, and eventually Ali joined Doug and Colin as the Chief Technology Officer of Waypoint Homes, where he was the architect of Waypoint’s industry leading technology platform that powered the purchase and management of over 17,000 homes across the U.S.Ali is passionate about business being an engine for positive social change, and fully embraces Mynd’s mission to make a positive impact in the communities where we work. Besides working at Mynd, Ali is also an author, radio DJ, husband, and father of 3 kids in Berkeley, CA.Listen to Ali's podcast in its entirety here.
Connect with Ali Nazar:Website: mynd.coLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mynd-management/Twitter: https://twitter.com/myndpmFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/myndpm/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMedia Contact: Stacey Corsostacey.corso@mynd.coPhone: () 672-6460Mynd, Inc., the tech-enabled property management company with an industry first real-time data and mobile app, announced today that it has begun full operations in the San Diego market, and that it has signed a partnership deal with Canter Brokerage, the pre-eminent broker/investment firm in the region. Mynd has also announced that it acquired leading real estate brokerage and rental firm, Advani Property Management, marking their second major acquisition after Pacific Shore Management."Our partnership with Canter Brokerage is an exciting opportunity for Mynd to leverage our talented local team and grow our San Diego portfolio," said CEO and Co-Founder of Mynd, Doug Brien. "This relationship along with our partnership with Advani Property Management puts us in a good position to begin delivering great service to our new owners and residents in the San Diego market."Canter prides itself on innovation and leadership in the industry in order to bring greater value to our customers. Mynd is just the kind of tech-forward innovator we look for in a partner," said Andrew Canter of Canter Brokerage. "We are excited to bring Mynd's real-time mobile data to our portfolio of properties and to help boost the ROI for our owners while delivering impactful, day to day value for residents."Mynd's acquisition of Advani Property Management, one of San Diego's top performing real estate brokerage and rental firms, marks a significant stake in the company's growth in Southern California. Advani comprises about 200 units in highly desirable markets including North Park, Little Italy, Bankers Hills and Mission Hills, and has put an emphasis on technology solutions to make renting and owning property more seamless and for giving owners more control. The members of Advani remain sales partners with Canter Brokerage."Advani is thrilled to be working with Mynd, as we pride ourselves on leveraging the best people, processes and technology to optimize rental property returns for clients," said Prem Advani, CEO and founder of Advani Real Estate Group. "Mynd's approach to managing residential real estate with these shared values brings critical insights into every decision and will ultimately bring huge value to our customers."
Mynd's proprietary technology introduces efficiencies to the market and empowers smarter investing decision that result in seamless property owner and resident experiences. Mynd's technology gives owners real-time data to all their properties and equips the operations team to deliver better and fast service with more data to push performance and enable better decisions.About Mynd
Mynd is headquartered in Oakland, CA and was co-founded by Doug Brien and Colin Wiel, both of whom are experts in the real estate and technology industries, and pioneered the single-family rental industry by founding Waypoint Homes, the first property management company to deploy technology at scale. At the peak at Waypoint they managed and owned 17,000 + single family rentals in 13 markets around the US. Mynd is backed by Cannan Partners, Jackson Square Ventures and Lightspeed Partners. To learn more, please visit: https://mynd.cohttps://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mynd-inks-partnership-with-canter-brokerage-announces-acquisition-of-advani-property-management-300606590.html
Mynd Property Management, a modern property management company powered by on-the-ground experts and technology, has appointed Alex Osenenko to the position of Chief Growth Officer. Osenenko is charged with growing all aspects of Mynd’s business, including all aspects of marketing and sales.Osenenko brings nearly a decade of experience in growing property management companies to his position at Mynd. Throughout his career, Osenenko has worked with thousands of property management companies, founders and entrepreneurs. Most recently, he was President and CEO of Fourandhalf.com, a property management-focused marketing agency he founded in 2012. “We are pleased to welcome Alex to Mynd as we continue to expand our property management capabilities nationwide,” explains Doug Brien, CEO and Co-Founder of Mynd Property Management. “Alex brings a wealth of knowledge in growing property management companies through his content-driven approach to thought leadership, sales and marketing. Alex is another example of the industry’s best talent joining Mynd to help us re-invent property management.” Osenenko served on the board of directors for the California State Chapter of the Association of Residential Property Managers () for five years. In addition, he founded “The Property Management Show Podcast,” a bi-weekly podcast that he previously hosted. “I am joining Mynd because the company has pioneered a new frontier in the property management and real estate investment sectors, which has disrupted proptech in a meaningful new way,” says Osenenko. “I am passionate about this industry because we play a critical role in society in that we are a housing provider and have a duty to take care of both our residents and property owners.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMedia Contact: Stacey Corso stacey.corso@mynd.coPhone: () 671-0025 OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 24, 2019 — Mynd Property Management, a modern property management company powered by on-the-ground experts and innovative technology, has raised $1,055 for the East Bay Division of Habitat for Humanity and donated another $6,000 to the organization. The fundraising efforts were organized by the Alameda-Contra Costa County Division of the National Association of Residential Property Managers ().In August, Mynd volunteered to build three playhouses for school-aged children who would use them in hospitals, parks and/or playgrounds across the East Bay. A total of 25 Mynd employees spent an entire day building the playhouses that will be donated locally. Mynd’s Habitat for Humanity Day aligns with its core value as a company: “Always be Myndful.” The five tenets of this core value are:
“As a property management company, Mynd provides housing to thousands of residents in the Bay Area,” explains Vincent Deorio, Director of M&A for Mynd Property Management, and President Elect of the Alameda-Contra Costa County Division of .“Since our residents contribute significantly to their local communities, we believe helping Habitat for Humanity is a great way to fulfill our core value as a company, and give back to those we serve: our residents, owners and their communities.”
Mynd Property Management serves the small residential real estate sector with a combination of on-the-ground experts and innovative technology that empowers investing in any market in the U.S. Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., Mynd manages over 8,000 units in 16 markets and offers small residential rental properties for sale in 20 metro areas.
