Today we’d like to introduce you to Brent Straitiff.
Brent, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
From a pretty young age, I felt the drive to be an entrepreneur. I got my start in the real estate business, which was an easy choice for me because I had already been exposed to it through family members. After a few years in the industry, I started to see what was working and what wasn’t and began to feel the desire to build my own business to “do it my way.” So, when I met Nathan Brown (TriView’s principal and co-founder) who was also in the business and shared my views on it, we quickly decided to start a company together. That’s how TriView began, back in 2005. In the beginning, we kept the focus solely on real estate. Then, when the recession hit hard in 2008, we realized we had to evolve our business model to not be so dependent on market fluctuations, so we started expanding into property management and building maintenance.
That’s when the entrepreneurial vision finally became clear. We saw that the property management industry was old-fashioned, fragmented and technologically outdated and therefore ill-equipped to meet the needs of homeowners, associations, property investors, and renters. We also realized that by bringing realty services, property management, and building maintenance together in one company, we would be able to have complementary divisions that could give us a 360⁰ view and help us serve our clients better. So, we set out to break the industry mold and create a more dynamic, proactive and forward-thinking company focused on the client. In 2016, we merged with Transproperties, another Chicago-based property management company whose owner, Brawley Reishman (who is now a principal at TriView) shared our same vision. Brawley’s tech savviness has really helped us implement crucial operational changes to be more responsive to our clients’ needs.
Has it been a smooth road?
There have definitely been struggles along the way, just like in any business. What I am proud of is the fact that we have always been able to turn them into opportunities to grow and get better at serving our clients.
The 2008-2011 recession helped us expand our sphere of operation and find our true “calling” – the space where we could really make a difference. It taught us adaptability and perseverance.
In the quest to use technology to provide better service, we realized that no existing technology or software was really going to help us do what we wanted to be able to meet all our clients’ needs and fulfill our vision, so we took on the challenge to build our own proprietary system. It helped us take an even deeper look at our operations and how we could improve.
Property management as a whole is a really hard business. People take their homes very personally – as they should – and expect perfection pretty much 100% of the times. Property managers are called upon to be many things at once – accountant, problem-solver, building engineer, project coordinator…. even psychologist! They are required to serve different constituents, who often have conflicting interests. You are basically on call 24/7 and everything is an emergency. Employee burnout and turnover are high. The everyday challenges have taught us the importance of valuing our people and giving them a work environment in which they can thrive, which ultimately benefits our clients. As a result, our turnover is lower than the industry average.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with TriView – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Today, TriView is a company that employs 88 people across 3 divisions:
1. Property Management, which includes management of condo and townhome associations between 30 and 300 units as well as rental management for single-unit condos, multi-family homes and apartment buildings with up to 100 units.
2. Building Maintenance, providing regular and emergency maintenance services for community associations and rental properties.
3. Realty, with agents specialized in homebuying, selling and apartment leasing.
The 3 divisions work very closely together, sharing information all the time and helping each other. The realtors keep property managers in the know about what buyers and renters really want, so we can help associations and property investors raise the value of the properties and increase their buyer/renter pool. The property management work allows us to truly understand the building maintenance needs of each property. Our building maintenance division, in turn, gives us the experience to be better advocates for the long-term life of each property. Realtors, on their end, can learn from the other two divisions so they can evaluate each property not just in term of the single unit but the whole building.
The reason we can do all this is twofold:
— Teamwork. We have created a team culture that we foster in the office and outside of it. We have a flat management structure that keeps us nimble and helps every single employee be more involved and engaged in the operations and performance of the entire company.
— Technology. We have created a proprietary technology system integrating different best-in-class apps and software. The system keeps us hyper-connected and organized, allows us to be proactive, feeds us a constant flow of information and feedback to assess our performance and find ways to improve it, puts service tickets and issues in front of multiple people, and helps everyone in the company stay in constant touch with everybody else and be able to access every document very, very quickly – even when on the go (which is a must for property managers, building maintenance staff and realtors). It is a system that makes us more efficient, freeing up time for our property managers to focus on the things that are most important to their buildings.
I am really proud of the growth we have achieved andseeg how far the company has come from just that vision in my head.
I am proud of the culture we have created, providing an environment that people want to work in, especially in an industry where retaining employees is notoriously difficult. We focus a lot on work/life balance. We don’t look at how many hours people clock in, as long as things get done and we get results. We put trust in our employees, give them responsibilities but also the resources they need to thrive.
Finally, I am proud of how we have been able to stay focused on our mission – finding new, better ways to serve our clients – even through the twists and turns. Believe me, it’s still hard for me to find out a client is not happy with our service. I take it very personally but I use it as fuel to look for new solutions. We don’t claim to be perfect but we truly care and work really hard to keep getting better and providing more value to our clients.
What are your plans for the future?
We want to continue to raise the bar, creating innovative systems that allow us to perform better and give our clients an ever-improving experience.
We will be moving to new offices in West Lincoln Park by 2019.
Contact Info:
- Phone: 773-572-0880
- Email: info@triviewproperty.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/triviewproperty/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TriviewProperty
- Other: www.triviewproperty.com
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