Inside Imagine Homes: Setting the Standard in Rentals & Renovations

At Imagine Homes, we’re all about transforming houses that need a little love into best-in-class homes that people want to move into. To accomplish this, we approach each of our rentals and renovations with a mindset of setting a higher standard in everything we do.

We caught up with Michael Mack, our new Regional Director of Renovations, to get more insight into how we consistently deliver homes that exceed the standard of our residents.

My name is Michael Mack and I live in Milwaukee, WI.

I moved to Wisconsin in 2005 for an opportunity to teach martial arts. At the time, I needed to find a way to supplement my income while I started a new business. As luck would have it, I met a property manager at a networking event through the Chamber of Commerce.

After that, I became very interested in real estate rentals and renovations. I learned as much as possible about the whole industry and how it works. So, I became a general contractor and got my broker’s license as well as a home inspector license. I started buying rental properties and worked on a lot of homes myself, fixing them up and enjoying the process of rental property renovations.

Experiencing the satisfaction of fixing up homes spurred me to go to real estate school and earn my broker’s license. I continued learning everything about the single-family rental industry until I was hired by a firm in 2010. They gave me the opportunity to work in renovations, starting in Milwaukee and then onto a national level in multiple states. I ended up working with that company for almost 13 years.

I wasn’t looking to leave my previous company, but a great opportunity came knocking at my door.

I received a call from an Imagine Homes recruiter and I started talking to her about the company. Over the span of the two-month recruitment process, I really started to believe in the company’s core values and I was really impressed by the leadership team.

During my interview with the executives of Imagine Homes, they really struck me as people I want to work with. I wasn’t looking to join a new company at that time, but the opportunity found me and I am so happy I decided to grab it.

My former employer was great, but Imagine Homes set a new standard for me.

There are many great real estate companies out there. But the way Imagine Homes looks at renovating a property and bringing it up to standard and the level of respect they have for their resident base is really what struck me and something I wanted to contribute to. They have a higher standard of renovations, and they have a lot of respect for their people.

I know the word “culture” is thrown around a lot at Imagine Homes, but they really live by that and they stand by it. It’s not just a buzzword when you hear us say we have a great culture here. Imagine really does take company culture seriously and works hard to develop and maintain it.

As Imagine Homes’ new Regional Director of Renovations, my responsibility is to oversee our Kansas City and Minneapolis markets.

I work with project managers in each market to ensure that we deliver best-in-class experiences across the board in each of our rentals and renovations. We review budgets and scopes of work, and we empower project managers to deliver homes to the standard that Imagine Homes expects. We’re here to assist the project managers and get these projects done on time and on budget.

Imagine Homes wants to provide as much support to the local operators—the local employees in each market—so that they can be as successful as possible. The nature of our business is so spread out that you need somebody to bring it all together from a corporate standpoint and to assist those local folks so that they don’t feel like they’re alone or just doing this by themselves.

My role was designed to create a successful environment for each person in each state. So I’ll visit my markets at least once per month, and sit down with the project managers, coordinator, and regional acquisitions folks to offer support, encouragement, technical assistance, and general renovation know-how. This is especially important because they’re bringing in talent from other parts of the industry that have done this at scale.

Overseeing multiple markets, I have to be familiar with varying requirements to better support my team.

Each state has its own set of criteria from rental licensing inspections, permitting requirements, and labor as well as the availability and pricing of materials. Each market has its own quirks or special requirements.

To address the varying needs of each market, Imagine Homes sets a process by relying on the scoping standards—also known as minimum functional standards or MFs for short. As a regional manager, my job is to help make sure that the local project managers are renovating to that standard and following any local guidelines with their general contractors.

For example, Minneapolis has pretty strict rental licensing requirements, so I assist the local team in getting projects done, inspected, and passed. On the other hand, Kansas City’s requirements are not as strict and pricing is a bit lower than in Minneapolis.

Before every renovation, we pay utmost attention to detail to make sure we deliver best-in-class homes.

Our team always runs a pre-renovation checklist to ensure best-in-class experiences for our residents. We check for any utilities that need to be updated. We also check if the landscaping needs to be tuned up because no one wants to be in the house on the block that the neighbors all think of as an eyesore.

We always make sure that our scope of work and budget are approved and solidified. We go through everything on our checklist and double-check to make sure we haven’t missed anything, so we don’t have any surprises or big expenses later. We also have to be sure that our permits are filed. Once those are done, you line up your trades and general contractors to complete the project. Finally, to close out the project strong, we have to do everything to ensure that the house is ready for residents to move in.

Our mission is to always deliver a finished product that is beautiful and that it is a home that you would want to move into yourself. Each home we work on goes through a series of inspections and checks internally and then, it’s approved by the regional manager or a local market manager. After that, it is turned over to resident services to be marketed as ready for viewing and ready to rent.

Our partnerships with local vendors build the backbone of our whole operation.

Our business relies almost exclusively on local labor. We build relationships with local carpenters, painters, plumbers, electricians, and HVAC professionals. We also partner with local suppliers for countertops, carpets, and other finishings.

At Imagine Homes, we don’t just work in our market, we live here too. So, it’s a great source of pride for us that we rely on local small-to-medium-sized businesses, providing them with a constant stream of work. These partnerships are all made possible by the efforts of our vendor procurement manager, Peter Struble, who is always hunting for local trade partners to work with.

We are all about breathing new life into neighborhoods that need a little love.

Imagine Homes is all about investing in our communities. We buy and renovate a large number of houses that need a little love and renovate them into beautiful homes for our residents.

We help homeowners that need to sell their homes fairly quickly or those that don’t want to go through the process of getting renovation before listing their property for sale. We make the process easy by paying cash and closing the sale as fast as possible; and in the process, we help sellers move along to the next step in their journey. After buying a property, we work hard to make it beautiful again. I think that’s really an important component for sellers who just want to get their homes sold.

Sometimes, we work with an estate where somebody has passed away and the children need to sell the house. We are right there to be able to help them transition. we then turn around the property into a gem. It goes from maybe an eyesore on the street to one of the best-looking properties on the street.

By repeating this process, eventually, you’re left with a community that has a better housing stock and an available rental property for somebody who wants to live in that community but may not be ready to purchase or is hindered by rising interest rates. They may not be able to afford to buy a property at the moment, but luckily, we offer the option for them to rent. We provide sellers and residents with options within that community.

The best part of what I do is seeing the positive impact we leave in our communities.

When we get a project done and we’re able to look at the finished product, it’s an extremely satisfying feeling knowing that we’ve created a beautiful home for our residents. For me, renovating a house that needs a little love and seeing a resident walk into the beautifully renovated space it turned into is its own reward.

Aside from that, I really enjoy developing and improving processes. I enjoy tinkering with our systems and making things better for our project managers and making it easier for them to do their jobs. If there is any way I can make somebody’s job easier, more fun, and more enjoyable, that’s what I like to do.

Imagine Homes cares about employee wellness and gives me a healthy work-life balance.

Our leadership team really puts a strong emphasis on wellness. They understand that there are days when stress can get to you and you have to deal with childcare issues, illness, or whatever else. They understand those types of hiccups and they work with you in stride. You don’t feel like you’re ever shamed or attacked for them—life happens and those are never held against you.

It’s nice to know that your employer has your back when times are hard. I haven’t faced any big issues yet but we do have a baby on the way. I’ve seen other people within the network of Imagine Homes who were given a lot of support when their babies were born. So, I feel confident knowing that I will receive the same treatment when the time comes.

For my part, it’s really nice to be in the comfort of your own home while getting work done, and Imagine Homes empowers me to work from home, only reporting to the Chicago office about twice a week.

Imagine Homes gives you a sense of genuineness that is hard to find anywhere else in the industry.

I think people choose to work with Imagine Homes because they get a sense of genuineness. People have an intuition or a gut feeling about somebody they’re interacting with. From the moment you talk with us, you already get a sense that we genuinely want to help you. I think that’s because you’re not dealing with somebody sitting in an office building in downtown New York who’s just there making 500 calls a day trying to close as many sales as possible. Imagine Homes just has more of an organic approach.

I think that’s why sellers choose to work with Imagine Homes. We are not a huge corporation that just wants to gobble up real estate. No matter what, we just want to achieve our mission of delivering best-in-class experiences across the board for our residents and sellers.

The leadership in Imagine Homes is one-of-a-kind.

Imagine Homes’ leadership is different than in any other organization that I’ve encountered. I have worked with institutional real estate entities for the better part of 13 years but Imagine Homes stands out—the questions they ask and the approach they take are radically different in a good way.

The people behind the management team at Imagine Homes really care. They do everything in their power to put people first. Unlike other companies that only care about numbers and business matters, Imagine Homes takes time to get to know their people and support them by giving them a healthy work-life balance.

In a post-pandemic era, people started to prefer a different labor environment. They started prioritizing all of the core values that Imagine Homes has.

They no longer want to just work for a check. They really want to know that the company that they work for is contributing to the greater good, empowering them to be a part of something bigger than themselves. They want to be sure that the people they work for care about them. With this type of approach, Imagine Homes attracts great people and keeps them happy.

Interested in working with us? Let’s talk.

We’re looking for passionate individuals to join our Renovations team and help us deliver best-in-class homes and overall experience. If you think you fit the bill, let us know! We’d love to have you on board.

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