#48- When You Have to Scrap the Old Plan with Jerry Winograd, Judwin Properties
We are in good hands today, friends. I am joined by another mentor for our interview series. You’re gonna love this one!
Jerry Winograd, the President at Judwin Properties, a past TAA President, and heavily involved in NAA. He's even been inducted into the Houston Apartment Association Hall of Fame.
They own and operate 3,500 units in Houston, TX and surrounding suburbs (read: HUGE responsibilities).
The highlights from this conversation that will benefit YOU:
A Judwin Pillar: It's about people treating people fairly, working with people. What is important is contact with people and understanding their needs.
Learn how Judwin adapted to COVID regulations quickly, while still being able to serve their employees and residents.
One thing they do way differently than everyone else. It’s one thing they DON’T do that contributes to long-term success.
How did your team deal with COVID-19 at the onset?
Always put connection with people, first.
Our management book from 1974 is a little bitty binder, 50 pages, and the one from the eighties is probably 400 pages. But when you read through them both, the basics are still the basics and they still are the basics today. It's about people treating people fairly, working with people. It's the contact with people and understanding their needs and our needs.
This is their home.
Shutdowns were being announced and within 24 hours, we had laid out a plan, locked our office doors, and put protocols in place for operating all the staff safely going forward. And it was quite a change. We modified it on an ongoing basis, and luckily being involved with TAA and NAA, we got to sit in on several phone calls and I got to hear what other people were doing. A lot of us are doing very similar things that we all did on our own, but then I think we all started tweaking from hearing things that worked for one another.
I was really nervous about April collections.
We decided we were going to reach out to every single resident at every property. So we came up with four basic questions. Call and ask them how they're doing, is everyone healthy, just a little conversation, and then at the end, talk about rent.
We were a little nervous about even doing that, but we said, "You know what? Let's do a test of 10 people." The 10 phone calls went extremely well. We expanded that to 50 people and those calls went well. Then we went ahead and just went across the board and called every single resident. The people really appreciated the communication at that point, because I think everyone was a little scared about what was going on.
We were letting them know if they had a problem, we wanted to work with them, and we weren't going to charge late fees the next month - which we still haven't done today, which is a whole other story. If we keep the line of communication open, all is good. The people who've had issues have communicated with us, and we've bent over backward to help in whatever way we can.
How did your actual onsite teams, adapt to this new way of leasing?
There was a little bit of a learning curve. And this was the interesting thing.
Our leasing superstar… they weren't necessarily our leasing superstar going forward.
For some, the one-on-one interaction is tougher for them, but they were really good at just talking to people on the phone. Their communication skills really elevated, and they became the leasing superstar. We relied on them a lot to train other properties, we would have our own little Zoom meetings and talk about what was working for them about how they were leasing, how they were communicating with this new way of leasing.
It’s their time to shine!
That's exactly what happened. And we were pretty happy that happened that way.
What qualities did you see come out of your team?
It was just the dedication of our teams in general.
We just felt that they were putting out 110%. They knew that we were facing a crisis mode. And while we wanted them to be safe and to do what they needed to do, they just took the attitude to take it to 110%, and we couldn't be happier.
We encouraged employees to use up their pto
We were looking at the information, and a lot of employees had not used their PTO this year. We went back and asked, "Why haven't y'all used your PTO?" They basically all said, "We're afraid if we get COVID, we want to be able to have access to the PTO time."
Our response was "Use your PTO. If something happens, we'll be flexible, but between now and the end of the year, use your PTO." I like the way they were thinking ahead about it, but it's going to cause a burden if they don't use it up.
Let's focus on still taking care of the property, the residents, and doing what we can this year.
Do you ever rebel against standards we see in multifamily?
they say we are crazy, but we do not do budgets.
Lenders require budgets, so we create a budget, and turn it into the lender. We handle capital expenses on our side of the office so our managers don’t deal with that. We do not use budgets onsite.
I know it's supposed to be a guide, but I don’t want managers to sit there and think, "Well, I can't spend that money." You say, "Well, just ask for approval." Then they get the attitude, "I don't want to ask for approval."
our manager’s FOCUS:
Take care of the residents.
Keep everyone happy.
Fix things that are broken.
Make every unit ready. Never put off getting a unit ready.
Our philosophy: If you say, "Gee, I shouldn't spend that extra 1,000 dollars on carpet this month, so I can stay within my budget." What if someone walks in next week that needs to move in tomorrow, and that apartment isn't ready because you didn't put in that carpet? How are you going to rent the apartment?
This is a long-term business and I'm not looking at it quarter by quarter, meeting this penny of revenue. I'm looking at it over the next 20 years. We're long-term holders. If we spend 1,000 dollars this month as opposed to the next month, it doesn't matter.
Not in the big picture, and to some extent, it might help us collect another month's rent.
ONe word you want to be remembered by?
I would say fairness.
It's our goal. We want to be fair with all of our team members. We want to be fair with all of our residents. And we bend over backward to be fair. Sometimes, we get the short end of the stick by doing so, but at the end of the day, I know we did the right thing, and I want people to just feel like we've tried to do the right thing for them.