Property Management Trends That Will Define the Next Decade With Yoni Schmidt

In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, Chad Franzen of Rise25 chats with Yonatan (Yoni) Schmidt, Regional VP of Sales and Marketing at Keyrenter Property Management, about the trends shaping property management’s next decade. Yoni explores AI adoption, stronger compliance practices, and preventive maintenance. He also touches on tenant screening, retention, and conservative budgeting.

Property Management Trends That Will Define the Next Decade With Yoni Schmidt

Yonatan (Yoni) Schmidt is the Regional Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Keyrenter Property Management, which has offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Arkansas. After working as a financial analyst at a private equity firm, he founded Tulsa Property Lad to offer clients a better way to buy, sell, manage, and invest in real estate. Yoni provides comprehensive Oklahoma real estate services and listings, supported by first-class customer service.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [1:28] Yoni Schmidt’s three pillars of same-day property management
• [5:33] How rigorous tenant screening drives timely rent collection and low eviction rates
• [8:32] Yoni’s approach to balancing AI-powered efficiency with human oversight, privacy, and fraud prevention
• [13:12] Why legal compliance matters more than ever for property owners
• [17:39] Rising maintenance costs, conservative budgeting, and Yoni’s focus on tenant retention
• [20:34] What first-time landlords misunderstand about building long-term wealth
• [25:29] Yoni’s predictions for the future of property management

In this episode…

Technology, rising costs, and changing regulations are reshaping property management. What practices will help operators stay competitive over the next decade?

Yonatan (Yoni) Schmidt, a property management leader and real estate investor, believes the strongest operators will combine technology with disciplined, people-focused service. His approach emphasizes rigorous tenant screening, human oversight of AI-driven processes, preventive maintenance, and careful compliance management. Yoni also recommends prioritizing tenant retention over small rent increases and maintaining conservative reserves for rising repair costs. Together, these strategies help protect owners, improve resident experiences, and create more resilient property management businesses.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Yonatan Schmidt on LinkedIn
• Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
• Keyrenter Property Management
• Keyrenter Property Management in Tulsa | Oklahoma City | Arkansas
• Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
• Chad Franzen on LinkedIn
• Rise25
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
• AppFolio
• Tenant Turner
• Daysaver
• ChatGPT
• Genspark
• Claude

Quotable Moments

• “Everything starts and ends with the right tenant placement in the right tenant selection.”
• “It’s just eliminating the inefficient property managers and making certain repeatable tasks a little more streamlined.”
• “Usually tenants don’t leave over… 30, 40, 50 dollar increase in rents.”
• “You’re not going to get rich quickly. There is no such thing unless you win the lottery.”
• “So if you can’t run your business from a dashboard, you’re probably already behind… another projection.”

Action Steps

1. Adopt a same-day communication standard: Responding quickly to owners, residents, and vendors builds trust and prevents small issues from escalating.
2. Strengthen your tenant screening process: Verifying income, references, credit, criminal history, and identity helps reduce evictions, fraud, and late payments.
3. Combine AI tools with human oversight: Automation can streamline repetitive tasks, but human review remains essential for accuracy, fairness, and data security.
4. Make preventive maintenance a core service: Addressing problems early can lower repair costs, protect property value, and improve the resident experience.
5. Prioritize tenant retention and conservative budgeting: Longer leases and adequate maintenance reserves can create steadier returns despite rising operating costs.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.

Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.

The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.

That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need. 

To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].

Powered by Rise25 Podcast Production Company

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:04

Welcome to The Same Day Podcast, where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management, and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.

Yonatan Schmidt 00:20

Hi there. Yoni Schmidt here, hosting today’s episode of The Same Day Podcast where we connect with top business leaders and entrepreneur. Today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management. At Keyrenter Property Management, we are a full service property management company helping our clients buy, renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.

Today I have Chad Franzen here of Rise25, who has done thousands of interviews with successful entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, and many more. And we have flipped the script a little bit. And he will be interviewing me today. Chad, welcome to the show.

Chad Franzen 01:01

Hey, thanks so much. It’s great to talk to you. I’ve talked to you before, but it’s nice to check in with you again. I just want to talk about kind of the latest things going on with Keyrenter, maybe the latest in the rental property management industry, things like that. So let’s get started with kind of listeners who are unfamiliar with Keyrenter, how would you maybe describe what you guys do differently from a typical local property management shop? And what does same-day really mean?

Yonatan Schmidt 01:28

Yeah, that’s a great question. Thanks. We live by the same-day motto. So our same-day property management motto is basically, you know, we are hyper communicative and overly responsive to our clients, to our vendors, to our residents. And our aim is to always respond to owners and clients and vendors and tenants within the same-day, if not within 24 business hours, unless it’s, of course, an emergency.

Some of the things that we do differently are, you know, there are three things that I think are unique about Keyrenter Property Management and rental PMC, specifically the franchises that we operate. The first is, like I said, we’re hyper responsive and overly communicative. People hear back from us the same-day. We are ROI focused and investor friendly. We understand what it takes to invest in real estate. 

 We own real estate ourselves. We understand the pains of having to replace a condenser or, you know, having to put a new roof on your home, a hot water heater, whatever it is. We’ve been there, we’ve done that. And, you know, we have a great network of vendors and contractors that we’ve spent years and years and years building relationships with to, you know, bring the best quality and the best pricing to our clients. The third thing is that, like I said, we are overly communicative and hyper responsive. 

 So those are the three uniques is we leverage technology, we’re ROI focused and we’re communicative. I generally believe those are really the three main pillars of. Q enter property management and what we do really well.

Chad Franzen 03:06

Okay. Very nice. Yeah. I was going to ask you why this is called The Same Day Podcast, but you just answered it. So Keyrenter operates across a lot of mid-size kind of metro areas Tulsa, OKC, Wichita, Indianapolis, Kansas City.

And you guys are not in big, bigger coastal markets. Why has that market strategy worked? And what do those markets that you guys operate in have in common?

Yonatan Schmidt 03:30

Yeah. So I’ll start by saying like, again, is a franchise property management model, business, business model. You know, there are over, I think now 80, 90 like offices across the nation. Some of them are in bigger coastal markets. Us specifically, we manage about 3600 doors in seven markets, as you mentioned.

All of them are, you know, mainly in the Midwest where with our eyes set for expansion on some East coast, you know, also tertiary markets that are a little smaller, investor friendly places where people can still buy properties and also, you know, make them cash flow. So why has that worked? You know, generally speaking, these are very landlord friendly states, places where, you know, it’s, it’s a little, it’s a little easier to be a landlord rather than it being a little easier to be a tenant. So it may not be a popular opinion and people may not find this very popular, but ultimately, this is our business. We help investors buy and operate real estate assets. 

 And we are also, of course, we see ourselves as stewards of their investments, who are hopefully helping solve housing problems, improving neighborhoods, you know, increasing housing inventory and all the markets that we are operating in. And overall, you know, the markets that we’re in like Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Northwest Arkansas, Wichita, Kansas, Saint Louis, Missouri, Indianapolis, these are, you know, tertiary markets that are, you know, very friendly to, to landlords.

Chad Franzen 05:15

You guys, your numbers show a 0.2% annual eviction rate and 96% on time rent payments. What do you think you can attribute that to? What’s specifically in your screening and communication process drives results that are far above maybe the industry norms.

Yonatan Schmidt 05:33

Yeah. So again, making the tenant placement decision and the tenant placement process is probably one of the most important things that you can do as if you’re doing it yourself as a landlord, if you’re hiring a property management company, digging deep into what the landlord’s screening criteria looks like and what their whole process for leasing a home looks like is extremely important. We at rancher have a 14 point screening check that we do on each and every single one of the adult applicants who is financially responsible for the lease agreement, right? So we reach out to their current and former employers. We reach out to their current and former landlords.

We cross-reference their names with a national database for sex offenders, a terrorist watch list that we use. And of course, we look at all of their accounts that are open, whether they’re paying them on time and as agreed. We do a full criminal background check, a full credit check. We have qualifying conversations with the tenants and with the references to understand who they are, where they’re coming from, what the story is and why they’re moving. And based on that and all the factors that go into the application, we can make an educated decision as to, you know, the likelihood of a tenant, you know, being evicted, the likelihood of a tenant making on time payments, the likelihood of a tenant, you know, being a good tenant and of course, fulfilling their lease obligation from start to finish. 

 So I’d say this is probably one of the biggest and most important pieces of owning a rental property, because everything starts and ends with the right tenant placement in the right tenant selection.

Chad Franzen 07:09

Can you estimate the percentage of applicants that get denied?

Yonatan Schmidt 07:15

I’m not in the weeds, so I don’t know exactly what those numbers look like. I know, you know, certain applications get denied. And, you know, we do everything that we can to try and approve an applicant. And, you know, I’ll give an example from Northwest Arkansas. Just two days ago, we received two applications on a house.

The, you know, these prospective residents had great income. Everything looked great. Unfortunately, there was one factor that actually was working against them and their application got denied. And what they did was they said, okay, well, you know, my father can actually co-sign for us. And if that if my father Co-signs. 

 Is that something that we can, you know, work through? And, you know, the father did apply and the application actually got approved after the one of the one of the tenants father ended up just submitting their application.

Chad Franzen 08:08

Let’s talk a little bit about kind of the incorporation of AI and technology in the property rental industry. I see that AI powered tenant screening is spreading, spreading fast across the industry, but it’s also drawing criticism over bias and lack of transparency for renters who get rejected. Where does Keyrenter draw the line on how much AI should decide versus a human property manager?

Yonatan Schmidt 08:32

Yeah, there’s typically there typically has to be some sort of human, you know, human interjection or human coming into the application to review it and ensure that everything, you know, looks, looks, well, AI adoption, I mean, if it’s here, it’s already here. It’s in full force and effect. It’s not necessarily, you know, eliminating property managers. It’s just eliminating the inefficient property managers and making certain repeatable tasks a little more streamlined. So there’s definitely a huge adoption of AI in our industry as it relates to applications.

I’m sure we’re going to see more and more of this becoming incorporated into the decision making, incorporated into the screening process. But we also have to be, you know, careful and vigilant because we can’t just upload someone’s application into ChatGPT or Genspark or Claude or any other system because we’re dealing with sensitive information. We’re dealing with people’s Social Security numbers, their credit scores, their employers, their addresses, all these things that are sensitive information that we don’t want to share with the world. And, you know, if a system like ChatGPT gets hacked, right, then people’s sensitive information is out there. The incorporation of AI into the decision making of, of like applicants is, I think, still in its infancy. 

 It will be more incorporated into the systems themselves that we’re leveraging, such as, you know, AppFolio or, you know, some companies are using Tenant Turner or Daysaver. The biggest issue today in the industry, and I see this with not necessarily AI, but with like the advancement of technology. And just like the advancement of self showings is a lot of fraud. A lot of people are, you know, committing fraud in the industry, moving people into houses and signing fake leases. And, you know, then you as the property manager or the landlord, you come to a property that you own, someone moved in and they say, you know, I signed a lease, but the lease was fake. 

 So that’s going to be one of the biggest challenges to overcome. It’s one of the things that I think most property managers don’t want to talk about, but it is the elephant in the room in our industry at the moment.

Chad Franzen 11:08

So how, how maybe has technology genuinely changed your day to day operations beyond just the screening process?

Yonatan Schmidt 11:15

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is related to the, to the back end, to the systems, to things that are running, you know, in, in the background, for example, a tenant puts together or a tenant submits a maintenance request. It comes to us, right, that immediately and automatically. And this has been, you know, something that Kiran has done forever. We send that work order to the owner. So if you’re the homeowner, you’ll receive an email saying, Chad, the following work order has been submitted on your property at 123 Main Street.

No action is required on your part, but we want to make sure that you’re aware. It allows you to do one of two things. Either prepare yourself for some sort of financial expenditure, because you know that hot water tank is 20 years old or run interference, you know, and say, okay, Keyrenter, tell me a little bit more. I need a little bit more context. Help me gain some understanding and clarity as to what’s happening here. 

 What we’ve added is another layer of triage, maintenance, triage to this entire process, right? And so now you’ll receive that email. And in that email, there will be another box that shows you what exactly we are doing and how we’re trying to, you know, address the situation with the tenant, triage, the triage the problem without spending your money, you know, right away. And of course, being ROI focused and investor friendly. So AI is doing all of this behind the scenes, and it’s communicating with the tenant, asking them to take steps to help, you know, identify the problem and solve it without us having to, you know, dispatch a plumber or someone else, another vendor or service provider out to your property just every time a work order comes in.

Chad Franzen 12:59

So I know a lot of states have recently changed notice periods and notice rules and disclosure requirements. How much of your value to owners now comes from compliance risk management rather than just leasing and maintenance?

Yonatan Schmidt 13:12

Yeah, I that’s a great question. I mean, a ton of a ton of our value is created by, by, you know, that specifically we not entirely, but we remove the responsibility from the owners and we definitely reduce the reliability because, you know, an owner who’s trying to evict a tenant may not know that you have to put a five day notice to pay or quit or a three day notice to pay or quit before you actually, you know, start the eviction process. Or they don’t know that you have to send certified mail, you know, that notice as well as post it posted to the door. So. And then, you know, it’s wasted time.

It’s wasted money. It’s wasted resources because they try to, you know, file the eviction, they go to court, the judge throws it out and they say, start over. Now a month has gone by. You’re two months into it. You’ve lost, you know, two months of rent. 

 Now, the third month of rent. It just continues to snowball. So knowing local ordinances, knowing the, you know, tenant landlord act of, you know, every state, every city, every county that we’re in, it’s imperative to, to owners because again, we reduce the responsibility and, or we remove the responsibility and reduce the liability to owners when it comes to, when it comes to compliance and following the law.

Chad Franzen 14:36

Another question kind of involving the regulatory and legal landscape, there’s a growing political push in some states toward restricting or even banning institutional investor ownership of single family homes. I know KY renter mostly serves individual owners. How does that debate affecting the broader single family rental industry and your client’s confidence?

Yonatan Schmidt 14:59

You know, I mean, we serve a wide variety of clients. So, you know, we serve institutional investors, we serve major investors, we serve accidental landlords, right? Those are, you know, I’d call it the three main broad categories of the owners that we serve. My general sense is restricting institutional investors from buying single family residential homes or other properties is it’s it’s a lot of hot air. It’s trendy when you know, you put it on your, on, on your website, if you’re running for, you know, public office.

But at the end of the day, it’s, it’s, it goes against everything that we know about capitalism, right? And at the end of the day, the main thing that’s looming and hovering, you know, around all over all of us is massive, massive shortage in housing, especially rental dwelling units all across the nation. So if you have, you know, in a city like New York, right? You’re banning institutional investors from coming in, buying buildings or buying rental dwelling units and then fixing them up, then, you know, those those units will ultimately stay vacant. And that’s a real problem in New York, for example, right now. 

 You know, institutional investors, you know, they buy houses, they fix them up. They make the neighborhoods nicer and better. Sure. For the pure sake of making a profit. But also it’s offering value and it’s adding a, it’s basically a service and it’s a, it’s a benefit to the community. 

 So, you know, I would say a lot of hot air. And in our markets, you know, we are seeing a slowdown of institutional investors, but not necessarily because of, you know, the regulations that are being introduced, more so because of, you know, constraints to the economy, interest rates being high, you know, prices are being prices are high, things don’t cash flow as well. So that’s really the constraint that’s causing institutional investors to maybe pull out a little bit or they’re coming in and they’re making very aggressive offers, trying to buy properties at a steep, steep discount.

Chad Franzen 17:22

I know maybe compared to 4 or 5 years ago, rent growth has cooled a little bit. And at the same time, maintenance costs have risen 15 to 25% since then. How is that affecting what you tell owners to expect in net for net returns at least?

Yonatan Schmidt 17:39

Yeah. I mean Yeah. I mean, it’s a real problem. I mean, we’re experiencing it. Everything, you know, the cost of living has gone up tremendously over the last call it 12 to 24 months.

Everyone is feeling it. You know, you feel it when you go to the store. You feel it when you’re, you know, putting gas in your tank. And the, the, the only real thing that we can tell owners is you have to budget a little bit more conservatively, right? And, and have those maintenance reserves on hand. 

 Don’t run yourself so thin to the point where if something goes wrong, you can’t afford it or you have to finance it at, you know, very, very high interest rates, you know, focus on the tenant retention rather than actually trying to replace the tenants and, you know, squeeze, you know, 50 to 100 more dollars. Usually tenants don’t leave over, you know, a 30, 20, 30, 40, $50 increase in rents. So that’s really my, my, my main advice is, you know, focus on retention. If you can get a tenant to stay for another two years, another year, sign that longer lease and, and, you know, budget, budget, well, rents, rents were coming down the tail end of 2025. And yeah, as you mentioned, maintenance costs have gone up because you know, someone who has to go swing a hammer or a wrench, right? 

 They’re probably not going to get out of bed, you know, for anything less than 3 to $500. And it’s just they may think, okay, this isn’t worth it for me.

Chad Franzen 19:14

Sure.

Yonatan Schmidt 19:14

If they’re an independent contractor.

Chad Franzen 19:16

Yeah, yeah. So is that kind of affordability pressure causing your tenant profile to shift or for lease length expectations to shift?

Yonatan Schmidt 19:28

Not necessarily tenant profiles, but definitely lease length expectations. So I mean, just for a story about myself, I recently bought my, my new primary home. And when I was when I put my former primary home on the market for rent, you know, I favored those who wanted to sign a longer lease. I, I even, you know, I ended up signing a two year lease and I even came down. It was, you know, my, the house was, I don’t know, listed at like 26, 95, almost $2,700 a month.

And I ended up accepting 2500 because the tenant agreed to sign a two year lease.

Chad Franzen 20:12

Okay. So in terms of maybe hesitancies on the part of property owners, what would you say is maybe the biggest misconception that a first time rental property owner might have about working with a property management company as opposed to just, I want to save money and take care of everything myself?

Yonatan Schmidt 20:34

Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest misconception that a property owner, a first time property owner or could have is, you know, thinking that this is a get rich quick scheme, right? That you’re going to buy your first rental and all of a sudden you’re going to become a millionaire. Let me tell you something. That’s not how that works, right?

And in many cases, a lot of owners who are, you know, new to the, let’s call it like the game of rental properties and becoming a landlord, you know, don’t necessarily understand that a lot of people’s wealth is tied up on paper and in equity. And it’s not necessarily like they’re sitting on, you know, piles of cash and, you know, gold and, and, you know, you know, precious gems. That’s not the case. You know, those who come into the industry, the biggest misconception again, is that you’re going to get rich quickly. You’re not going to get rich quickly. 

 There is no such thing unless you win the lottery. It’s slow and steady, you know, wealth accumulation over the years. And, you know, the other biggest misconception is that, you know, you can buy one rental property and then you’ll become rich. That’s also not how that works. This is an expansive industry. 

 If you’re not growing, then you know, you’re, you’re actually, you know, you’re not going to build wealth. You’re not going to get rich. You know, the things that people don’t really think about are, you know, the vacancy times, the utilities that you have to pay legal fees and legal expenses, you know, the, that, that finding a tenant, a good tenant, a really, really good tenant who’s going to stay for many, many years and pay the rent on time and never, you know, in, in, you know, kind of be like someone who you don’t have to worry about. But they will report issues when they arise is, you know, is easy. It’s like a walk in the, it’s like a walk in the park, right? 

 A piece of cake. You can just, you know, put your house on the market and find the right tenant. That’s a huge misconception. That’s not true because ultimately, when it comes down to it, residents, you know, they also have standards. And so I often ask myself when I’m buying property, would I live here? 

 And if the answer is no, it’s probably not the right property for me to buy. And I need to go back and, you know, look at this, as you know, with a fresh set of eyes, as, you know, something that in my, in my, in my where am I missing the point here? So tenant placement isn’t necessarily that easy. And, and I would highly recommend working with a professional, even if you’re doing it yourself, don’t place your own tenants.

Chad Franzen 23:13

Would you say that assumptions about tenants, you know, a tenant just being good is the biggest mistake that self-managing landlords make that cost them the most money? Or or could it be something else?

Yonatan Schmidt 23:25

Yeah. I mean, that could also land them in a, you know, discrimination lawsuit, you know, and they could be up against, you know, HUD, for example, if they’re just making assumptions and they’re saying, you know, I’m assuming this thing about this tenant. So assumptions are definitely, you know, the wrong approach. Don’t just trust your gut, right? It’s so prevalent right now in the industry to see fake pay stubs.

And they’re really good. They’re, they’re almost unnoticeable. It’s like if you’re, if you’re not trained to look at these pay stubs, then you know, you’re, you’re going to make a mistake, right? It could be one tiny little thing like a date or a comma or, or, you know, something that doesn’t add up. The hours don’t add up to the net, to the gross income and or, you know, taxes or whatever it is on that pay stubs that could look wrong. 

 And then, you know, if someone submits that pay stub and it looks, you know, to the untrained eye, it looks fine. It looks good, right? They’re calling the, you know, that person’s employer, they’re doing the employment verification, right? And it all lines up and checks up, but they’re actually talking to the prospective residents, cousin, you know, or brother or whatnot, because you know, you’re calling this person. Have you googled the number? 

 Have you? Do you have systems where you can put that phone number into the system to see who actually owns that phone number and where they live? You know, these are important. These are important pieces of the puzzle to, you know, see the bigger picture and never trust just your gut. Trust the data. 

 Trust the information that you can see in front of you and, and the facts.

Chad Franzen 25:13

Last question for you, Yoni. If you can kind of look out maybe over the next couple of years, what is there one shift in the industry, whether it’s regulatory, technological, economic that you think will separate the property managers who thrive from the ones who struggle?

Yonatan Schmidt 25:29

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I was writing down some projections for the industry. You know, one of them was preventative maintenance becoming a standard service offering, right. It’s not an upsell anymore. So, you know, companies who build it into their core value proposition right now will ultimately look like geniuses in, call it, 2 to 3 years, right?

So that’s one projection that I think, you know, looking into 2020, call it, you know, eight, nine, 2030. That’s one of my projections. Another one is that, you know, property management companies, survivors, you know, basically will look less like real estate operators and more like tech enabled service businesses. So if you can’t run your business from a dashboard, you’re probably already behind, you know, another projection. And then AI being, you know, artificial intelligence being one of the greatest equalizers and, and maybe also the greatest dividers with small tech enabled shops now being able to, to compete with, you know, other operators that are ten times the size that don’t leverage AI efficiently enough and they’re resistant to adopting AI. 

 So those are my three, you know, call it bold, bold calls for 2030.

Chad Franzen 27:04

Yeah, yeah. I think that AI adaptation is probably common with just about everybody. Hey, it’s always great to talk to you, Yoni. Really good stuff. Great information.

Thanks so much for having me today.

Yonatan Schmidt 27:15

Of course. Thanks so much, Chad. Appreciate it.

Chad Franzen 27:17

So long everybody.

Outro 27:22

Thanks for listening to The Same Day Podcast. Tune in to a new show each week and be sure to subscribe to get future episodes.