Inside Imagine Homes: Delivering Quality at Every Step

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 spoke to Stephanie White, Director of Resident Services in Cleveland about her work at Imagine Homes.

My name is Stephanie White and this July, it will be two years since I started work with Imagine Holmes Management.

Outside of work, I’ve been married to my husband for 10 years now. We have one son together (he’s 10 years old) and I have two step-daughters. One is 19 and currently finishing up her last year of high school, and the other is 22 and she’s finishing up her last year of college. My family and I live in Chagrin Falls, and we have a nice little community that we live within.

I got started in the real estate industry right out of high school, which was a little over 20 years ago. At the time, I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I “grew up”. With the help of my mom, I found a receptionist position at a local property management company in my hometown of Cleveland Heights. Since then, I’ve never left the industry.

Resident Services is kind of like a catch-all, but the main part of our job is just helping people.

We do just about everything when it comes to our homes. We handle the process of getting the properties onto our website and listing them for rent. We handle the marketing, we oversee leasing and the moving process. And even after all that, we also provide support once residents are in the home, making sure that they’re settled and happy.

We kind of handle the whole kit and caboodle when it comes to our residents after they move into Imagine Homes properties. If anything comes up while they’re in the home, whether it’s a maintenance request, or if they have to move, or if they’re in the process of switching roommates—we help out.

There are two things that I really enjoy about my work.

The first one is getting to work with people that just want to live in one of our homes. It’s a great feeling when an applicant finally gets paired with a home that’s going to work well for them. It’s a great feeling—calling them and letting them know that they’ve been approved, that the house is theirs, and they’re ready to move forward with making their moving plans.

My second favorite thing is something that we haven’t been able to do for almost a year. And that is moving people into their homes, when I go to meet them at their property.

Some of these residents have seen the homes before; some of them are seeing it for the first time because they are coming from different parts of the country. But being able to just meet them at the home and walk through the house with them; showing them all the ins-and-outs of everything—and just seeing the look on their face. To see that they’re just so happy that they’re finally in a home and they’re going to be moving soon and knowing that the stress and worry from the moving process is almost done.

In fact, I had one resident who I worked with for about a month. We finally got [a home] that was going to work for her and when I called her, it turned out that she and her family were coming back from vacation. When we spoke, she told me that hearing from me was the best way to end their vacation. Usually, people never want a vacation to end—but she was so happy to come home, because she knew that they had a place to move to.

I think that people choose Imagine Homes because the quality of our homes stand out.

As I mentioned earlier, some of these people don’t even see the house before they move in. But they have seen other homes of ours that we’ve done in the past, and they know the kind of standard that we hold ourselves to.

At every step of the way, we care about delivering quality. Our Acquisitions Team finds homes that fit well with what we are looking to do. Our Renovations Team does a killer job with making sure that the properties last for years to come.

So it’s always nice when residents leave us some great comments and feedback. It lets us know what we can either do better or what we’ve done well. That they take the time to post about their experience with us—whether it’s on our Google reviews or another type of online platform—it goes to show how much everybody cares about the product that we’re offering.

The thing that I’m most proud of is the way that everybody’s worked together over this last year.

The circumstances of 2020 aside, our company is already spread across different markets. So it’s been nice to be able to go in and help, whether it’s answering questions or training people up so that they can be better at their job.

The amount of communication that we have is just phenomenal. It can feel a little overwhelming at first, but it all makes sense and it all just flows so nicely. I attribute that to Allison, who I feel has one of the hardest jobs because she makes sure that the different teams work well together and without hiccups. She just does a bang-up job of making sure that all the processes are in place so that my day-to-day keeps going without any bumps in the road.

The biggest thing that I would like people to know about Imagine Homes is that the people that I work with, who are behind the scenes, are some of the smartest people I’ve ever met.

The people that we hire are just the right fit. They’re smart, they know what they’re doing, and as a company, Imagine Homes has never been one to pull something over on anybody. They will always explain our process in detail—whether you’re selling us your home, or you’re a resident that’s moving in. Sometimes, people will apologize preemptively that they have five or six questions. To that I say: don’t apologize. Ask me anything that you need.

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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