Inside Imagine Homes: Redefining Best-in-Class Experiences

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. In a previous blog, we spoke with Jordan Wilson, Director of Operations on how we approach pets in our homes. Today, we focus more on his role at Imagine Homes and how we define best-in-class experiences.

From the get go, I knew I wanted to be in real estate.

From a young age, it always fascinated me. We all need shelter; it’s one of our primary needs. So eventually, I went to college at Indiana University, where I majored in legal studies and finance with a focus on real estate.

After graduating, I started as a real estate agent for a boutique firm in Chicago and quickly transitioned into Operations. I was there for 10 years as Director of Operations before we were acquired by Coldwell Banker. After a year there, I joined a start-up technology company that was launching a real estate brokerage in Chicago. I did that for a couple years until the pandemic hit and affected real estate markets altogether, leaving me looking for a new home.

I had spent a couple of months trying to find the right company and Imagine Homes caught my eye because it’s a bit different from what I’ve been used to doing in the past. I joined the company in November, so I’ve been here for nine months now and I have been loving every minute of it.

Imagine Homes is a bit of a unique model in that we are focused on single family rentals in markets across the Midwest. We also purchase, renovate, and rent our own homes rather than managing properties owned by other people.

Single family rentals have been a popular trend, even before the pandemic, but that demand has grown significantly in the last year with more people valuing work/life balance and wanting more space to enjoy their time at home.

There is also the fact that more and more people are staying at home for work, so they often need space for an office or even a yard if they have pets.

As Director of Operations, I wear a lot of different hats. At its core, what this means is that I’m in charge of all of our internal operations. That covers everything from acquisitions, renovations, leasing, and how we hire and train.

Given the growing demand in the market, our biggest challenge as a company right now is scaling. We’re still a small company, with about 40 employees. But we’re also growing quickly.

Tying this back to my job, I’m here to make sure that everything runs smoothly. As a company, we strive to create best-in-class experiences for everyone who interacts with us. We want them to walk away and say, “Wow, that company is amazing. I’ve never had an experience like that.”

To make that happen, my role is to make sure that everyone on the team gets the tools and resources they need so they can do their jobs really well. As of this time, that need is making sure that we have enough people to match our rate of growth as a company.

We’re currently buying 10 to 12 homes per month in every market that we’re in. That brings us up to over 750 doors and we’re adding more every day. Because we are growing, it becomes more and more of a challenge to maintain a level of customer service and that best-in-class type of quality and experience that we expect for not only our renters, but also sellers, vendors, contractors, suppliers.

So my current focus is hiring. We’ve hired a number of people in the last several months since I’ve joined the company. I’ve hired at least 10 people, and I also have another six positions still open that I’m hiring. Basically, for us to scale effectively, we need more people to help support that growth.

Helping is a big part of the Imagine Homes culture.

I know that may be a little cliche to hear that in small companies, it feels like a family—but at Imagine Homes, it really does feel that way.

Everyone is willing to help. People will step in and help regardless of the situation and regardless of whether it has anything to do with their job.

To share an example, we had some maintenance issues recently in our Cincinnati market. When that happened, everyone stepped up.

Our Director of Resident Services for Cincinnati, Vita, was on vacation at the time, so we tried not to involve her. Everyone stepped up and helped handle the situation because we wanted to make sure that Vita could enjoy her time off—even though we were in the middle of an emergency in her market.

That kind of culture and mindset is something that is very important for us as a company, and it goes back to what I said earlier about best-in-class experiences.

We want our employees to be happy. We want for them to be able to take time off, because it’s critically important. Most of the people here work way more than 40 hours a week. They’re very dedicated, and we believe it’s important for them to take some time to relax and recharge and be away from work. Otherwise, it’s very easy to just get burnt out and that’s when quality starts to suffer.

Overall, I think that the teamwork and camaraderie at Imagine Homes is unique. It’s not something you see often, especially in larger companies.

I think the reason that people choose us comes back to delivering best-in-class experiences. That’s obviously a term that can be interpreted in a lot of different ways.

In the case of sellers, it’s that we’re able to offer cash for their home and they don’t have to do any repairs, because we can waive contingencies.

That’s because when a seller is distressed and they just need to get cash and get out of their home, it’s a daunting proposition to dump thousands of dollars into a home just to be able to sell it.

Because our model allows us to move things very quickly, we can give them a cash offer and close in two weeks. We can offer very attractive terms and we will always offer a fair price, because that’s the right thing to do.

From the renter side of things, it’s the same. People choose Imagine Homes because we offer a high quality product. We have a higher standard than most single-family-renter focused companies. We pride ourselves on that quality and I think that’s a big part of why renters end up choosing our homes.

Overall, we really want to provide exceptional customer experience at all times. I think that we do a good job of that, but I will also say that we’re still evolving in that respect and we’re constantly figuring out how we can make that experience better.

Experience all of the benefits and advantages of homeownership—in a rental.

Our residents deserve to feel truly at home. Beyond fully-renovated homes, our locations are also second to none. We make it so easy, all you have to do is come home.

Talk to our team—we’d love to know how we can help.

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