September 20, 2022
At Imagine Homes Management, it takes a village to get our homes to the best-in-class level that we aim to deliver to our residents. This is possible because of great partnerships with vendors and contractors, but more importantly, because we have amazing Renovations Teams working in each of our markets.
We caught up with Dan Eichler, Market Renovation Manager for Pittsburgh, to get more insight into the processes we employ, the relationships we build, and the culture we embrace here at Imagine Homes Management.
I joined the United States Air Force when I was 18 years old. For the first six years of my service, I was an active duty airman in the military and when I got out of that, I came home to Pittsburgh and tried to find myself outside my life as a serviceman.
I bounced around a couple of jobs trying to discover what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but I have always felt at home in the fields of carpentry and construction. I’ve been involved in those industries my whole life with many members of my family owning rental properties and flipping homes even before I was born. With that kind of family background, it was almost inevitable that I would grow up fascinated with construction and carpentry.
I eventually started my own painting business that I grew into a general contracting company. It was a very rewarding experience working for myself in my own company alongside a crew of 10 people for 12 years. However, burnout started to set in after years of working seven days a week and taking no vacations.
I had also started a family, and the business started to take up too much of my personal time to the extent that it was affecting the quality time I wanted to spend with my family.
As luck would have it, a building materials supply company reached out to me to be their project manager. I oversaw various projects for them including the construction of new homes and multi-unit buildings. That led me into the single-family rental industry, which I love working in. I can’t foresee myself working in any other field of construction. In the SFR space, I feel like I’ve found my niche—where I am comfortable and confident about the process of handling various aspects of my job.
I had moved from that building materials supply company to working for an SFR competitor as a project manager in Pittsburgh. I made a good name for myself in that company, being one of their top performers in terms of producing and turning over quality homes.
When I heard that the Vice President of Construction for Second Avenue—one of my clients—moved over to Imagine Homes as their VP of Construction, he wanted to bring me over to Imagine Homes as well. He knew and understood the value I could bring to Imagine Homes based on my experience and my knowledge of what was needed to get the Pittsburgh market up and running.
Naturally, I did my own research on Imagine Homes and I found that they presented themselves well. They are very detail-oriented and they offer high-quality homes. And their mission of turning over houses and presenting residents with great homes was something I found inspiring.
Since joining Imagine Homes, I have helped establish new processes including one that we currently use with pricing and cost catalogs. I also helped implement scoping procedures and a bunch of different facets of the game that we’ve refined throughout the years.
Everyone here loves having fun but each of us also takes our job seriously. We all have the same mission and core values. I find that to be a vivid reminder of what it was like in the military. There are many different people, personalities, and ideas that are able to come together under one group because we have core values that we all follow. It works and everybody’s bought into it so that’s why I’ve made my decision to make Imagine Homes my home for as long as they’ll have me.
When I first joined Imagine Homes, there were no processes set up. We had these group homes that served as the minimum functional standard of what our homes should look like. Throughout that period, there were only a few of us on the team who had to establish new procedures.
From there, I got promoted to Market Renovation Manager for Pittsburgh and our team has grown, making Pittsburgh the only fully staffed market in the company. But even with a fully staffed market, I still manage properties while ensuring that our processes are being followed.
It’s also my responsibility to make sure our contractors are being paid. I work hard to keep every process efficient and ensure tasks are completed. On top of that, I keep up with training and make sure people are staying compliant with their requirements.
We’re trying to make Pittsburgh the staple market—that’s my goal. And something I feel I need to share is that in every company that does SFR, Pittsburgh is usually one of the top three markets in the country. If you can make it work in Pittsburgh, you can take those processes and make it work elsewhere.
Everyone on the executive team—including Dan Andresen, Jordan Wilson, Jon Frank, Ken Hennes, Nicole Beach, and Jake Holzman—has helped us grow our markets. In particular, CEO Jon Frank has been a vital part of my success.
He has a unique approach to solving issues by asking what’s needed and not telling us what we need to succeed. The executive team is full of approachable and down-to-earth people. They are always there to make sure that what we need happens.
Our leadership team makes sure that the right people and the right processes are in place and everyone else in the company makes sure that those processes are being implemented across all markets. That’s why Imagine Homes has tripled its growth since I started working with them.
Today, we have an acquisitions team that finds houses for us. We find prospective properties that are acquired under a contingency. We enter a contract with the seller that spans 7 to 10 days, giving us enough time to do our due diligence. We inspect the home and our renovations team establishes a scope of work. After gathering information about the home, we evaluate whether it would be worth our time to pursue renovations and close the sale.
Some of the houses here were built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, and we can turn them into amazing homes through renovation. So when we do end up buying the prospective home, we take our scope of work and do a budget review to make sure we didn’t miss anything. We conduct a day-one walk with one of the contractors and vendors responsible for home renovations. They identify everything that needs to be done for the house.
Throughout the home renovation process, we do weekly progress checks with the contractors, making sure everything is up-to-code. We make sure everything is done safely and the right materials are being used, and once the job is done, we do a final walk for a quality check. Everything needs to meet Imagine Homes’ best-in-class standards. If we identify any issues, we create a detailed list for our contractors to let them know what needs to be fixed.
When the renovation is done, we have the house cleaned, take photos, and list it for rent. Our meticulous process has helped Pittsburgh become the highest-graded market of Imagine Homes.
As I mentioned, some of these houses are old; they’re the kind of homes that are passed down through families who eventually decide to sell because the kids have moved somewhere else. In Pittsburgh, everything’s built on mountainsides, there are water problems everywhere, and houses are just so old here. But for some reason, this has always been one of the hottest markets to invest in. And it’s always one of the top-tier markets that produces homes, for any company that I’ve dealt with.
Oftentimes, we find properties that have foundational issues. Those houses are built on huge mountainsides next to rivers, making them susceptible to water intrusion. On the other hand, there are a lot of houses down in the city that were built on sandstone and rubble foundations which are incredibly porous. So if the homes we work on are in the middle or the bottom of that hillside, they take on a lot of water in the basement.
To avoid acquiring those kinds of homes, I personally get involved with the acquisitions team and we perform main drain inspections before committing to buying a home. Aside from that, we implement the buy-box method for acquisitions to eliminate certain homes from our list of prospects.
I think Imagine Homes is one of the only companies in the single-family rental space that buy in the city limits of Pittsburgh. Other companies avoid doing so due to how long it takes for inspections from the city to be completed.
When pricing properties out, we consider how much the renovations will cost. Within our cost catalog, we take all that into consideration with what the final price of a renovation and what we’re going to pay up to a contractor. We base our prices on various aspects including the landscape of the house, the condition of its foundation, where the house is located.
We have a great vendor base here in Pittsburgh. Working with vendors in the local area is one of the best experiences I’ve had in this industry. One of my goals is to maintain great relationships with high-quality contractors because at the end of the day, they are the ones who keep Imagine Homes moving.
At Imagine Homes, we are all about keeping our contractors happy. In fact, we’re one of the only companies in the SFR space that pay weekly to contractors. Other companies subject their contractors to what is known as “bundles”, where contractors have to get a certain amount of tasks done before they can get paid—we don’t do that.
As a company, making the move to pay contractors weekly really puts us on a different level as far as how contractors feel about working for us and we pay very fairly.
We believe in maintaining good relationships with our vendors and contractors and we even have a senior vendor manager, Peter Struble, who ensures that these relationships stay and that we’re able to onboard vetted contractors. Peter handles their paperwork, making sure they’re compliant with insurance and licenses throughout their time working for us.
If there’s ever an issue we encounter, Peter will step in to make sure the quality of work our contractors deliver stays up to our standards. He makes sure that the vendors and contractors we work with are who and what we need.
In a lot of the neighborhoods we buy in, there are many houses that are owned by people who no longer live there. As mentioned earlier, there are some cases where the homeowners have unfortunately passed away and their children no longer live in the same town or people move because they’ve changed jobs.
So when I get into these neighborhoods and start renovating houses, I take on the responsibility to put the neighbors at ease. In a lot of these neighborhoods, people have heard horror stories about companies coming in and buying houses for investment properties just to make a quick buck. And I want to make sure that they understand that we’re here to do right by the community.
We’re not going to put people in these houses, and in their neighborhoods that are going to be a nuisance and be a problem. We’re here to revitalize this neighborhood and make it better.
The houses that we buy are beautiful homes. It’s just that some of them, while they’re in very good shape, a lot of them are very outdated and can look like they’re stuck in 1975. So we turn them into 2022 homes and we bring them back to life.
Part of what we do equates a bit to community outreach and Maury [Makay, Pittsburgh Property Manager] does a great job putting the right people in these properties. These communities deserve to feel that we’re not invading their neighborhoods and that we’re here for and with the right intentions.
I love working with the people here in Imagine Homes and how diverse personalities manage to harmonize and create a great work environment. I enjoy working to improve the lives of the people who live in the homes we renovate. And I love helping anyone I come in contact with.
I truly enjoy fixing issues while establishing processes and procedures that help that along the way. I just thoroughly enjoy the challenge of turning Imagine Homes vision and mission into reality.
The biggest challenge I have ever had to face—including the military—is turning our renovations team into a well-oiled machine. My greatest hope is to make sure that even if I were gone from Imagine Home for any reason, Pittsburgh can still run as if I’m still there.
The growth we experienced in Pittsburgh was made possible because everyone’s ideas are considered and heard. I’ve been with a lot of companies prior to Imagine Homes. I’ve seen most of them change their work culture and get less personal as they grow, because that’s what you typically expect when a company gets bigger and bigger. That hasn’t happened to Imagine Homes even to this date.
When something goes awry in Pittsburgh, I get a personal phone call from the leadership team asking me if they can do anything to help. They schedule brainstorming sessions so that we can figure things out together. That level of support is unheard of in our industry.
I’ve been a part of management structures that were absolutely terrible. Some companies operate on a “me first” attitude, and I don’t feel one ounce of that here. The leadership at Imagine Homes are here to support those of us who are down in the field on the market levels, and they make sure we have what we need—our needs come first to them and that that makes all the difference in the world.
At Imagine Homes, I have a support system and people are always ready to help. We handle issues with such grace and speed that it never has time to fester into anything major. Because of that, I feel inspired to work that much harder and to stay one step ahead to make sure that they don’t have to get involved as much in problem solving.
Aside from the support system, I love working for this company because of constant effort to make this company better. We have a habit of always looking down the road and identifying ways of providing support to each other and giving everyone what they need to make their job better, faster, and more efficient.
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.
Say hello, ask questions, tell us about your situation—if there is any way at all that we can help you, we’ll go out of our way to do it.