Inside Imagine Homes: Single Family Rentals in the Midwest

At Imagine Homes Management, our growth with single family rentals has always been driven by excellence, passion, technology—and the amazing people who make up our team. We got in touch with Adam Pry, Co-Founder and VP of Acquisitions, to talk about the challenges that Imagine Homes Management is striving to solve in the residential real estate market.

I was a part of the founding of Imagine Homes towards the end of 2016.

In my first four years, I was primarily focused on being the regional acquisition manager for the Cleveland market. This last year, I’ve moved into the role of Vice President of Acquisitions, which means I oversee all of our acquisitions in all six of our markets.

I’m originally from Central Ohio. I moved back to the Cleveland area in 2010 from North Carolina and in 2012, my brother and I started buying single family rental houses on nights and weekends. Between 2012 until 2016, we built up a small portfolio of houses that I managed in terms of renovations, leasing, and then as rentals. In 2015, we bought our first house in Hudson, Ohio and purchased a second one about a year later. Those two houses were really the impetus—our light bulb moment—for thinking about whether this could be a full-time business.

We saw so much demand for a nice, fixed-up single family rental in that neighborhood. It really piqued our interest on whether that would work in additional neighborhoods and what the market demand really was like for a renovated single family house in the suburbs.

Given that insight, Imagine Homes was founded on the idea that we would solve two challenges: become a buyer that could offer a fair market rate on houses; and provide rentals for people who don’t necessarily want to buy, but want a nice house.

This is mentioned in a previous blog, but we consider ourselves a professional homebuyer. We understand what we’re looking at, what inspections we need, and what renovations cost. Because of that, when we make an offer to a seller, they know we’re not gonna be nitpicky over the inspections. We’re also able to make the home sale process clean and simple, because we do this every day.

The houses we purchase usually need roughly forty to fifty thousand dollars in renovations. These homes are dated enough inside or worn down enough that oftentimes, there aren’t a lot of people who will want to buy it and move into it right away.

For a seller that knows their home needs some repairs, but who doesn’t want to have to make any of those repairs while also getting a fair price, I believe we’re a good option. If they are looking for or may need flexible terms, we can also provide that.

Some sellers are looking for a quick closing. In these cases, I think that what we offer is certainly appealing and to some extent worth pursuing. Rather than listing on a multiple listing service (MLS), going through showings and financed offers, they can talk to us and we can make an offer that may be higher than other cash buyers.

On the other hand, other sellers may need a long closing. They may need to rent back the house for a period of time while they secure and move into their next home. For somebody that needs those types of terms or conditions to sell their house, we’re a really good buyer.

We’re well-financed, so we have cash ready to make offers. This means we can move much quicker and there are fewer contingencies or red tape when putting a deal together. Those are the types of houses and situations we’re looking for, because we have the processes in place to generally solve these problems for the seller.

I think the experience that people have when they sell Imagine Homes a house is that we’re very low stress and convenient.

There are a couple of different scenarios that a seller may need if they’re living in the house. Or in some cases, if they’re a landlord and want to sell.

If the house is vacant, it’s inherited or they’ve already moved, sellers want to sell it quickly and be done with it. If it’s not vacant, and the sellers are still living in the home, they often have the challenge of selling the house and lining up their next one.

Maybe it’s because they need the financing, or they just need the timing flexibility to not have to move to an interim house until they move. That flexibility is a big plus.

We can do what we call delayed possession, where we will buy somebody’s house and give them a couple of weeks to remain in the house free of charge. What that solves is the short-term dilemma of needing a week or two to move. We can offer options for a seller that makes their transition to their next house very smooth and a lot easier; they don’t have to move in with family for a week or two, until they close on the next house or whatever it might be.

The other option is to rent back. What happens in these cases is a seller needs a longer time period – roughly 2-4 months – because they don’t exactly know where they’re going to move yet or they’re still looking, but they already know they want to sell their house and not own it anymore.

Maybe they want to cash their equity out, so they can make a stronger offer in the next house. Maybe they know they only want to stay there for another six months until their kids are out of school and then they’re going to move out of town.

Whatever the scenario might be, we can buy the house and then offer the seller a lease to rent their house back to us for a period of time. Once they move out, then we conduct renovations and re-rent the home. In that scenario, the seller actually becomes a legal resident of ours, just like any other house we rent.

The third option is when a landlord that owns an occupied rental just doesn’t want to be a landlord anymore. Selling an occupied rental is a tricky process, because you’re really only going to sell it to other landlords because you have a tenant in there that’s renting. Sometimes those working through those scenarios with the current tenants can be a bit tricky, and we try to be sensitive to the fact that that’s a tricky sale to make.

That said, we have bought a lot of properties from landlords that maybe own one or two or a small group of houses, and who just want to sell them so they can retire or wherever their reason might be. We’re a pretty good buyer in these cases because we can again, make a pretty fair offer on those houses. And we can inherit those tenants and they just become residents of Imagine Homes, just like they were renting from their previous landlord.

I think there are more people out there that may prefer to rent, if they can find a professionally managed, newly updated house.

I mentioned earlier that the other challenge we’re looking to solve for people in the marketplace is that if your preference is to rent and you don’t want to buy for whatever reason, we are a great option.

Not everybody wants to own a house, but most people want a nice house. And with Imagine Homes, whatever your circumstances are, you can get a quality house that is professionally managed.

A story that resonated with me in the first year and a half that we were in business is the one where we had a Coast Guard family relocate from another state to Cleveland. They knew they were only going to be in Cleveland for roughly three to four years, so they didn’t really want to buy.

This family found one of our houses and they ended up renting from us. But when they were relocating, they didn’t come out to see the house in person. Instead, they had a friend who was from the Cleveland Coast Guard come and do a FaceTime tour of the house.

Afterwards, that friend told us that their family had moved to Cleveland a couple of years earlier, and that they wished Imagine Homes had houses available when they initially moved. They had wanted to rent, but they just couldn’t find a rental house that was in the condition that ours are in. So they ended up buying even if it wouldn’t be that great of a financial decision.

We care about the houses and about the quality of our renovations. We want to not only deliver a good experience for our residents, we also want our homes to be a positive reflection of the neighborhoods we’re in.

Neighbors can be skeptical when they see somebody buy a house and they know it’s going to become a rental. But I think when they see us really invest in the quality of the renovation, that helps to change the perspective of the neighbors in the neighborhood of what we’re doing.

Again, a lot of the houses we buy, were maybe the worst house in the street; homes that have been neglected for a number of years. And one of the things we have seen in all of our markets is that when we do a high-quality renovation which results in a really nice product for people to rent, that attracts quality residents. They are positive members of the community and they bring something good into the neighborhood.

People have a lot of options for selling their house these days. We just want to be an option for them to consider.

If a seller is looking for a fast, fair, flexible offer, I’d like people to know that we are an option and a really good solution.

I’m most proud of the team that we have, because they are smart, hardworking, and caring and that comes out in the work we do. From how our acquisitions team approaches and puts a deal together with a realtor or with a seller directly to our renovations team and how they renovate the house; or our leasing management team and how they lease and manage the properties. Overall, the team at Imagine Holmes really cares about what we’re doing and I think that comes out in the quality of our homes and the experience that, hopefully, sellers and residents have.

Interested in working with us? Let’s talk.

Everyone at Imagine Homes Management answers to the same calling: excellence. We love investing in neighborhoods and we are out to raise the bar in the real estate universe. Talk to our team—we’d love to know how we can help.

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