How and why Belong introduced a company wide policy of two days meeting-free and how to structure all necessary meetings to boost productivity and reduce costs.

Belong Meetings Manifesto | Working at Belong

A manager’s day is, as a rule, sliced up into tiny slots, each with a specific purpose decided in advance. Many of those slots are used for meetings, calls, or emails. The manager’s schedule may be planned for them by a secretary or assistant. 

Managers spend a lot of time, “putting out fires” and doing reactive work. An important call or email comes in, so it gets answered. A team members makes a mistake or needs advice, so the manager races to sort it out. To focus on one task for a substantial block of time, managers need to make an effort to prevent other people from distracting them. 

Managers don’t necessarily need the capacity for deep focus — they primarily need the ability to make fast, smart decisions. In a three-minute meeting, they have the potential to generate (or destroy) enormous value through their decisions and expertise. 

A maker’s schedule is different. It is made up of long blocks of time reserved for focusing on particular tasks, or the entire day might be devoted to one activity. Breaking their day up into slots of a few minutes each would be the equivalent of doing nothing. 

A maker could be the stereotypical reclusive novelist, locked away in a cabin in the woods with a typewriter, no internet, and a bottle of whiskey to hand. Or they could be a Red Bull–drinking Silicon Valley software developer working in an open-plan office with their headphones on. Although interdisciplinary knowledge is valuable, makers do not always need a wide circle of competence. They need to do one thing well and can leave the rest to the managers. 

Meetings are pricey for makers, restricting the time available for their real work, so they avoid them, batch them together, or schedule them at times of day when their energy levels are low. As Paul Graham writes:

When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it. 

It makes sense. The two work styles could not be more different. 

A manager’s job is to, well, manage other people and systems. The point is that their job revolves around organizing other people and making decisions. As Andrew Grove writes in High Output Management: 

…a big part of a middle manager’s work is to supply information and know-how, and to impart a sense of the preferred method of handling things to the groups under his control and influence. A manager also makes and helps to make decisions. Both kinds of basic managerial tasks can only occur during face-to-face 

encounters, and therefore only during meetings. Thus, I will assert again that a meeting is nothing less than the medium through which managerial work is performed. That means we should not be fighting their very existence, but rather using the time spent in them as efficiently as possible. 

A maker’s job is to create some form of tangible value. Makers work alone or under a manager, although they might have people working with them. “Maker” is a very broad category. A maker could be a writer, artist, software developer, carpenter, chef, biohacker, web designer, or anyone else who designs, creates, serves, and thinks. 

Making anything significant requires time — lots of it — and having the right kind of schedule can help. Take a look at the quintessential maker schedule of the prolific (to say the least) writer Isaac Asimov, as described in his memoir:

I wake at five in the morning. I get to work as early as I can. I work as long as I can. I do this every day of the week, including holidays. I don’t take vacations voluntarily and I try to do my work even when I’m on vacation. (And even when I’m in the hospital.) 

In other words, I am still and forever in the candy store [where he worked as a child]. Of course, I’m not waiting on customers; I’m not taking money and making change; I’m not forced to be polite to everyone who comes in (in actual fact, I was never good at that). I am, instead, doing things I very much want to do — but the schedule is there; the schedule that was ground into me; the schedule you would think I would have rebelled against once I had the chance. 

Belong is suffering from stage 3 meeting disease. Meetings have become widespread across the entire company's body, and it is starting to hurt productivity for every team member truly. It's my responsibility to create an environment where people can do their life's best work for the world's benefit. I take that responsibility seriously, and that's what prompted this memo. 

We are going to try a completely new framework for meetings. For starters, we are going to declare a company-wide two NO MEETING DAYS. That's right, starting this following Monday, April 26th, please block your calendar completely on Tuesday and Thursday. Those days, all meetings that aren't the morning check-in / urgent working meetings will be discouraged. This is the time you can block to do deep thinking, whiteboard, or take time to plow through your Jira / Zendesk tickets. Hurray! 

For meetings to be effective, they need to be structured.

These are the seven different types of meetings. If you are initiating a meeting, please make sure to label the session accordingly. 

If you received an invitation to a meeting, please make sure to check for what kind of meeting you are attending. If the meeting isn't specified, your responsibility is to request that specification from the meeting organizer. 

The vast majority of meetings are longer than they should be. This benefits people that love to chat but have more difficulty producing deep work. To restore balance, we are going to add some structure to the meeting's time. 

Here is the structure we are going to try starting Monday, April 26th 2021. 

Meetings should ALWAYS be scheduled to start precisely at the hour or half an hour. It's essential that we are all ON TIME and READY for the meeting. 

Meetings should always be scheduled to finish 10 minutes before the hour or half an hour to allow for all participants to take a break and prepare physically and psychologically for the next meeting. 

Meeting's default length should be 20 minutes. There has to be a genuine reason for regular meetings to be more than 20 minutes long. 


Type A meeting (1:1): Requires that both attendees interchange topics ahead of time. 


Type B meeting (Morning Staff Meeting): Requires a clear lead specified in the meeting invitation. This lead is in charge of the meeting and determining the next steps discussed in the meeting.


Type C meeting (Decision Meeting): Requires a clear lead of the meeting. Requires precise specification of who's the decision-maker in that meeting. Requires a document/paragraph/slide prepared in advance of the meeting. Requires communication to all stakeholders on what decisions have been made and by whom. All of this should be included in the calendar invite. 


Type D meeting (Operational Reviews): Requires a clear lead of the meeting. Requires material shared in advance of the session (at least 12 hours). Requires company-wide participation. 


Type E meetings (Leadership Meetings). Requires a lead of the meeting. Requires a clear agenda in advance of the meeting with documentation on topics that will be discussed. Requires note-taking and follow-up. Requires sharing those notes with all participants and company-wide in the new leadership meetings channel in slack. 


Type F meetings (All Hands Meetings): Requires a lead of the meeting. Requires a clear agenda in advance of the meeting. 


Type G meetings (Working meetings): Requires a lead of the meeting. Requires a description of the topic that'll be discussed in advance. Requires notes to be shared with participants. 


If you are in a meeting, you are in all likelihood not taking care of one million other pressing topics on your agenda. It happens to all of us. When you encounter yourself in a meeting and thinking or working on different issues, this is a bad sign. 

Leave the meeting. We encourage everyone that feels they aren't adding or deriving value from a meeting to leave without saying goodbye. Just leave. You are free to go. 


Pay close attention: If you decide to stay in a meeting, please make sure to attend to it with all of your senses. Please refrain from answering slack, text messages, or browsing your favorite clothing brand while in a meeting. It's a waste of time, it's distracting, and it's disrespectful.


Cell phone/computer use: When in a meeting, the use of cell phones/computers is discouraged. We understand life happens, and you may be taking care of a non-work emergency. Absent that, touching or looking at your cell phone or computer during a meeting sends your co-workers the message that the meeting is unimportant and that there are many more crucial things you should be attending to. If that's the case, please go to point one above 


Start and end time: These need to be respected strictly. Starting late, is disrespectful to everyone that’s waiting for us in the meeting. Finishing late, is disrespectful to all the meeting attendees that are coming right after the meeting that’s ending. We must start and end strictly on time. 


I see this new meeting operating rhythm as crucial for Belong's culture. High performers expect a high level of organization and output. To attract and retain them, we must start holding ourselves to a higher standard of operation. 

So let's have fun, work hard, change the world. And meet the right way. Thank you.

https://belonghome.com/blog/working-for-a-startup

https://belonghome.com/blog/property-management-services

https://belonghome.com/blog/how-to-deal-with-a-bad-property-management-company

https://belonghome.com/blog/property-management-fees-how-much-do-property-managers-charge

https://belonghome.com/blog/becoming-a-landlord-how-to-become-a-landlord

Belong Meetings Manifesto

Landlords have been painted as money hungry monsters keeping people from homeownership. Here's why we don't accept this crushing stereotype: people like you.

5 Invaluable Rules for Being a Landlord But Not a Jerk

A consistent theme that has reverberated throughout history is that landlords are some of the worst people roaming the planet. We don’t accept that crushing stereotype of landlords, for one good reason: You.

The reputational catastrophe of the Landlord goes back to the Code of Hammurabi, around 1700 B.C:

“If a free person signs a contract to rent a field for cultivation but fails to raise a crop in the field, that person must pay the landlord an amount equivalent to the harvests of the adjoining fields.”

WTF?  That’s rough. If you agree to grow a crop, but choose not to, your landlord is owed whatever might be grown in all the adjacent farms. That stereotype of a punishing, merciless landlord  has continued on for centuries.

Adam Smith – the father of capitalism, believed landlords were parasites, that they reaped what they never sowed.  Karl Marx, the father of communism, actually referenced Smith, writing that landlords have their “origin in robbery.”

Flash forward to today, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the Congresswoman from Queens who has catapulted into Democratic Party stardom and has become a powerful voice on the left. Pausing to speak to a homeless man she said: "I really, really envy you … seriously, like, you don't have to deal with evil landlords and pay rent to them.”

We don’t accept that crushing stereotype of landlords, for one good reason: You.

You’re a nice person. Someone who cares about people and property and the neighborhood. You may have inherited a house or decided to rent yours rather than sell it: That’s called an “accidental landlord.”  Or you may have invested in a house with an intention to rent.

How to Deal with a Bad Property Management Company

Property Management Fees: How Much Do Property Managers Charge?

So how do you unwind what is no less than centuries of bad blood? Stand by. Your friends at Belong have a foolproof recipe, a set of non-jerk rules that can almost instantly bring homeowners and residents together based on two factors: Some fundamental truths of human nature, and a shared love of house, and love of neighborhood.

Non-Jerk Rule #1: You are your tenant. Your tenant is you.

You need to free yourself of traditional frameworks. In today’s fluid economy, you may become a resident tomorrow, and your current resident may become a homeowner. That property egalitarianism is unprecedented in our real estate history, and the blurring of the lines happily breaks down the ancient feudal hierarchy.   

So as the golden rule goes, treat your resident as yourself, because the only difference between you is a point in time. Think of your relationship with your resident as a mutual commitment first, and a legal contract second.

Non-Jerk Rule #2: Don’t think the worst of people.

Probably the single phrase that has most poisoned the dynamic between residents and homeowners is “Nobody ever washed a rented car.”  Translation:  Whomever is living in your house has no motivation take good care of it.”  

The reality is that conventional wisdom –  which maintains that people are only motivated by self-interest – has been disproved by “overwhelming evidence” which shows that “concerns for altruism, fairness, and reciprocity strongly motivate many people.”

The same research paper cites “neuroeconomic evidence that is consistent with the view that many people have a taste for mutual cooperation…”   So our advice is to start your resident relationship with positive efforts to tap into the urge for fairness; more likely than not, it will be reciprocated.  And unlike the cynical rented car aphorism, you might actually find your home in better shape than you left it.

Non-Jerk Rule #3: Cutting corners cuts against you.

Can you let things slide? Can save some money on that roof repair or paint job? Can you get away with a few dead shrubs in front of your house, even if it is un-Instagrammable? Yes and yes and yes continued; there is no shortage of short-cuts.  

But when you show a lack of commitment, you are sending signals to your resident that you don’t care about your property, which leads to the inexorable question:  Why should they? By contrast, when you demonstrate you love your home – by quickly and responsibly investing in its maintenance – you are encouraging “love it back” behavior.

What’s more, something wonderful happens when everyone in a community works together to maintain houses and property: property values increase. And there’s a great deal of data which shows the tragic opposite is true: neighborhoods decline in value when people stop caring.

Non-Jerk Rule #4: Don’t hide behind anonymity.

We believe that it’s a positive force when a homeowner allows their resident to get to them a bit, rather than cloak themselves in anonymity. Of course, everyone has their own standards of privacy. But when a resident can put a human face on a house – the face of someone who loves and cherishes it – it’s going to encourage be behavior we talk about in our Non-Jerk Rule #2 – an obligation of reciprocity.

By contrast, when a homeowner works hard to mask themselves, it makes it easier for the resident to shove the owner into the faceless “evil landlord” category. So our advice is to let your resident or residents get to know you to the extent you feel comfortable; let them into your life and they will love your home even more.

Non-Jerk Rule #5:  Hire a property manager who reflects your values.

We’re not saying everyone should have a property manager. But understand that if you take on that responsibility on your own, it’s much easier to become a landlord who is, in fact, a jerk. It’s massively time-consulting and emotionally draining to be sufficiently available, and have sufficient resources at your disposal, to bring residents what they deserve.

If the furnace stops working at two AM, and there’s a new baby in the house, anything less than an impeccable response will rapidly turn into you an evil figure, living up to what united Adam Smith and Karl Marx in landlord rage.

We created Belong to take on this responsibility for you – and for your residents – with a fresh combination of technology and humanity. There’s a thread in Quora that asks: “Is it inherently even to be a landlord.”

The answer to that is what gets us out of bed in the morning. Even when the morning is two AM.

5 Invaluable Rules for Being a Landlord (But Not a Jerk)

When thinking about choosing your post-grad path, here's some advice on why you should consider working for a startup and why it may suit more than you think.

You ARE the startup type: Thoughts about choosing your post-grad path

You ARE the startup type. Here's what you should consider when choosing your post-grad path.

A few weeks ago, I was hosting a Q&A with future entrepreneurs from MIT Sloan, my alma mater. Their last question left me thinking about the limitations that we create for ourselves or allow others to define for us. This is the question that led me to write this article:

“We were told that there are different types of people who join specific types of organizations: those who work at big companies, startup types, and those who go on to create their own enterprise. Can you help us understand what type we are?”

I am a strong believer in the unlimited potential of human beings. Our brains, powerful and underused machines, have infinite potential to translate most of our dreams into reality through hard work, relentless dedication, and a bit of luck.

For these reasons, limiting one’s opportunity to just one path seems unfair and unrealistic, though more manageable for the brain to understand, rationalize and grapple with. The tiny genie in our head, most likely motivated by fear or a distorted sense of self, tells us what we can and cannot do. When the genie is lost or overwhelmed, we go and look for other people’s opinions because it is easier to believe that others have all the answers. We hope they do. We  pray they will tell us exactly what to do. Believe me, I have been there many days of my life! 

While I am a big advocate for seeking people’s advice and perspective to understand better something I don’t know, the path for us to take is not created by what others tell us or what they believe is right or wrong for us. The journey is created and defined by us based on where we are in life and what is important to us.

I run my life with one primary mission: understanding myself. Sounds easy, right? Nope. 

Understanding and accepting one's self is a lifelong journey - one which I am still grappling with today. This is what has worked for me.

This is the question that I use to start my inner dialogue: “What challenge am I ready to face?”

To help me with this answer, I ask myself hard questions on where I am in life, what matters to me the most in the moment, what I am willing to invest in, and what I am ready to give up. Here is an example of how I started my career in the People/HR/Talent space right after MIT Sloan:

At that time, I didn’t even know what working at a Silicon Valley startup was like. The more I researched, the more I realized that I probably needed to build some further expertise to join at such an early stage.

Was it the time in my life to join a large company? 

No. After graduation, I needed to become a generalist - someone who understood the People function broadly and could operate autonomously - as quickly as possible. I also wanted to accelerate my learnings and be exposed to as many parts of the HR function as possible. At a large company, I would have learned the ropes and acquired one specific expertise, which would not have led me to be a generalist. A fancy brand on my resume sounded great, but it was not what I needed.

I had started a non-profit in the past and wasn't ready to go back in it again. I also wanted more operational exposure before becoming a founder again.

I needed to join a company that was past the stress of the early stage, with a team of amazing people onboard who would teach me the craft while leveraging my previous experience not directly in HR. This is the short story of how I met Melissa Yeh, who changed my career – I’ll leave that for another time. 

I believe that we are each in charge of our destiny and meant to do more than one thing. You are not “meant to” start a company, join a startup, or go to a large company, but you also might do all those things or just one and in no particular order. One option doesn’t exclude the other, and, based on where you are in life, one might even lead to the next.

The best advice I have for any of you who are about to graduate is to ask yourself the right, hard questions about where you are in life, the support system you have in place, and what you want to achieve at this stage of your career. Then follow your gut, because if you have a good understanding of your own self, it will not lead you astray. After all, even if you want to be a founder, the timing might not be right. As Wharton’s Daniel Kim’s research has shown, the most successful entrepreneurs’ average age is somewhere in their 40s.

At Belong, we surround ourselves with hungry, entrepreneurial, and kind people who will go above and beyond to fulfill our important mission to create authentic belonging experiences. It’s a place where you will learn and grow at a very fast pace, and be tremendously challenged every day. It will be exhausting and frustrating at times, but quickly, you will look back at all that we have built together, the lives you impacted along the way, and feel proud.

At Belong, you’ll learn to be a true operator and if that’s what you are looking for, shoot me a  note or reach out to our incredible Talent Team today.

I’ll leave you with this: regardless of whatever your life looked like before today, know that others should not define what you are or are not capable of achieving. Their advice is just a singular data point in your discovery path. Be honest with yourself. Don’t sell yourself short. And trust your instinct. Do not be afraid of making the wrong decision - you’ve got this.

Find out how Belong is using the hospitality experiences of restaurants, hotels, and even Ferrari to transform traditional property management for everyone.

Rejecting The Unfriendly Norms of Property Management

You absorb – and become - your influences.

It’s true for individuals, and it’s true for companies.

It’s safe to say that at Belong, we have not been influenced by the “property management industry” – other than by learning what not to do! That’s because this $96 billion dollar category is built on friction, that frustrates those who own houses, and those who rent them.

The core of the problem is that property managers treat houses as commodities. House A and House B and House C might as well be the same. Read more about how to deal with a bad property manager here.

For Belong, a house is precious and much-loved dwelling that unites the homeowner and the resident. By the way, that’s how we described the two sides we bring together. We try and avoid using the ugly, medieval words “landlord” and “tenant.”

The other fundamentally broken piece of property management is that they view the world as zero-sum game. In other words, if they let a leaky pipe leak, they’re saving the owner the cost of repair. The lack of transparency in property management fees is alarming.

In reality, a run-down house benefits no one, and a well-run house benefits everyone.

If we reject the unfriendly norms of property management, what are we replacing them with? That’s where the headline of our article wanders into the story.  We have studied and absorbed the best from those who are brilliant at serving both sides of the service equation – from restaurants, and hotels, and the elevated values of Ferrari.

What we seek to create at Belong is a welcoming experience that is a completely new manifestation of hospitality in our industry.  Indeed, the very use of that word when it comes to property management feels odd and unexpected, which precisely captures how seismically different we are.

One of the leading and most profound voices in hospitality today is the restauranter Danny Meyer, who is probably best known for the Union Square Cafe in New York. Danny’s book “Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business”  inspired us in many ways. We seek to create a “Belong experience” for homeowners restaurants that lives up to this definition:

“Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions - for and to - express it all.”

We built Belong to make things happen “for” those in our community, which involves removing friction, anticipating problems, and solving them in ways that bring  instant joy. So, if a homeowner in our community is moving out, we handle the logistics for them, and we do it painlessly.   We also make any necessary repairs, and make their home Instagrammable. Then we show it and find someone to love it.

That’s how we bring hospitality to what has been the dreary and delight-free world of property management.  After all, the word “hospitality” is derived from the  Latin word “hospitalitis” – which refers to the special relationship between guest and host. 

Our homeowners are hosts, are residents are guests, and we elevate the relationship!

Or, as Danny Meyer puts it “Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side.” That’s exactly what we strive to create at Belong; our concierges are on the side of both our homeowners and residents. We believe, as we said, that when you are are focused on creating a home that is is gracious, inviting and brilliantly run, everyone wins.

Our influences also extend to hotels, and specifically, the Four Seasons, who have raised hospitality to an art form,  We think about them accomplishments every day.  Service sits at the core of what they do, which they define as “a repeated set of behaviors…a promise of a great quality of life that only dedicated staff can deliver, without any script.”

We love the idea of consistency and no script; it sounds counter-intuitive but really isn’t, because that’s what is possible when your people are “embedded” into the culture of an enterprise.

That’s what Four Season’s is relentlessly focused on, and it represents the same principles by which we are building our service culture.  By giving our residents and homeowners Four-Seasons-like service, we will redefine property management for the future, and forever.

Another important dimension of Four Seasons that is at the very core of our belief system is that role that  “connection” plays in their mission.  As Heather Jacobs, their Senior Vice President of People & Culture elegantly states: 

“Whether you work with us, stay with us, live with us or discover with us, we believe our purpose is to create impressions that will stay with you for a lifetime. It comes from our belief that life is richer when we truly connect to the people and the world around us.”

We can say the same – whether a resident stays with us for 10 years or one year, we seek to create memorable impressions through the connections we make:   between residents and their homes; residents and homeowners; and between residents and the community. 

The last profound influence on us that we want to share is Ferrari.  Everyone knows them for their impeccable engineering and craftsmanship – which creates vehicles of monumental affection, and enduring value. 

Yet when they describe themselves, they don’t mention their cars, but celebrate their people:  

“Our individual people are our strongest asset and can reach excellency only when working together as a team, with strong communication, sharing and improving together for best results.  We live our company with enthusiasm, with a strong sense of pride and with emotion: Ferrari is lived with the heart.”

That language could describe what gets us up in the morning.    They also say, in perfect symmetry to our company, “We all have a strong sense of belonging…”

Wow, we got goosebumps when we read that.  

So now you know our influences, who we admire, and who we measure ourselves against.  That doesn’t mean we get it right all the time.  On the contrary.  But we are a learning culture and, to reference the endlessly quotable Danny Meyer one more time, “A great restaurant doesn’t distinguish itself by how few mistakes it makes, but how it handles those mistakes.”

Houses are complicated machines to run, there is always something about to go wrong, and you’re not going to get an email from your roof when it decides to leak.  (Although sensors are not far away, and we will be the first to property management company to install them.)

But when we hold fast to the principles of hospitality and commitment, even when things go wrong, we intend to be measured by our homeowners and residents saying “Belong did right by me.”

Not all landlords are money-hungry monsters, pushing up house prices. Here are 6 tips on how to become an ethical landlord when renting out your home.

How to Be an Ethical Landlord

Putting your home on the rental market can be a great way to generate income and optimize your taxes while offering a place for someone to live. But more than that, it's also a way to preserve your home if you need to move but could see yourself returning one day. Despite these benefits for homeowners, many worry about becoming the dreaded “L” word. 

Landlords are often accused of being money-hungry monsters that gobble up all available property and push homeownership out of reach for others. But that's not always the case. We argue that making high-quality rental homes available plays a vital and important role in our communities. Not everyone is ready for homeownership, but everyone needs a place to call home. That is why the rental market exists.

How can you be a landlord in an ethical way that makes renting a win-win for homeowners and residents alike? 

1. Ensure your home is safe and comfortable

Your number one responsibility when making your home available on the rental market is to ensure it is habitable. Homeowners have a legal obligation to ensure their rental property:

Is structurally sound and intact (including floors, stairs, walls, roof)

All electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and elevators are operating safely

No known hazards are posing any danger to tenants (such as lead paint, asbestos, radon)

Reasonable measures are in place to prevent foreseeable criminal intrusions

Especially if you have previously occupied the home, there may be some things you could overlook. But before you put it on the rental market (or consider making a purchase on an investment property), make sure all the items are addressed.

An ethical landlord will want their residents to feel at home and not have to wait months for repairs to take place. If you rent your home through a property manager, they can generally log maintenance and repairs via an online portal, but that isn't an indication of how long you will need to wait for them to find a contractor to get to you.

If you choose to partner with Belong, we employ our own in-house vetted tradespeople that are available via our 24/7 concierge service.

2. Price your rental at a fair market rate 

There’s a lot of discussion around today’s housing crisis. Many cities face affordable housing shortages, and landlords across the country seem to be taking advantage of this by raising rent at a shocking rate. Determining “fair market rate” can be daunting for a first-time landlord, but keep these principles in mind as you get ready to list your home on the rental market:

Set reasonable expectations. Though you may have seen Reddit threads and investor podcasts claim rental returns 2-3x the property’s mortgage, this isn’t realistic or ethical. 

Price based on market data. Not only is this fairer to potential renters, but pricing your rental based on real market data will help you rent your home much faster. 

Accept Section 8 and other housing vouchers. Some new landlords worry about accepting housing vouchers, but these programs level the playing field for residents and help alleviate some of the impacts of our housing crisis in an immediate, tangible way.

Working with a partner like Belong will take the guesswork out of pricing your rental. We leverage thousands of real-time data points to help you price your rental competitively, and we market your rental for you so that qualified residents are easy and fast to find.

3. Create a reasonable, easy-to-understand lease agreement

Leases are binding legal contracts, and as such can be daunting for homeowners and residents alike. Helping your residents understand the terms of their lease is not just a courtesy, it also helps avoid common issues that renters and landlords face. Make sure the following gray areas are explicitly documented and discussed before anyone signs on the dotted line:

Pet policy: will you allow pets? Which kinds? Will there be a deposit to cover potential pet damage? Will this deposit be refundable? 

Marijuana policy: will you allow marijuana on your property? What are the potential consequences of violating this policy (losing a security deposit, etc)? 

Exterior maintenance: who is responsible for lawn maintenance, snow removal, etc?

4. Address resident concerns immediately 

Being a renter can be incredibly frustrating when something needs maintenance and you are unable to fix it yourself. If you own your home and the furnace breaks, you will liaise with the repair person directly, and although still stressful, this can feel easier. When your residents have a maintenance issue, from a broken appliance to a severe leak, it’s your responsibility to communicate clearly and fix it as soon as possible. 

This is where many landlords can get a poor reputation. Common renter complaints revolve around maintenance disputes. This is one reason you may want to consider working with a partner like Belong. Instead of being directly responsible for being available and responsive to residents, Belong’s local, in-house team of maintenance professionals are on-call for you 24/7. This alleviates stress for residents and homeowners alike and ensures your residents will have a good experience while living in your home.

This isn’t just an ethical consideration, in almost all cases, it’s the law. While it can be tempting to swing by and see how your property looks on a whim, homeowners are required to give residents 24 hour notice before entering the occupied property in almost all cases. Aside from the legal requirements, it is important to remember that although you own the property, while it is occupied by a resident, that property is their home. 

Belong helps ensure homes are well taken care of by scheduling regular inspections and check-ins that respect resident privacy and also reassure homeowners. 

Find the right partner (or be prepared for a lot of work)

Self-management of a rental property is a lot of work. There is a lot more to it than simply marketing the home and vetting tenants. To creating legally-binding lease agreements, avoiding discrimination in advertising descriptions and staying on top of all legalities and repair requests, it gets a lot easier with help.

But do the property management companies in your area share your values and align to your vision of being an ethical landlord? If not, it's time to look at an alternative solution, like Belong.

Belong is not a property management company. While we do handle everything to do with rental homes, by taking a human approach and treating both landlords and tenants with respect and care, what we offer is closer to a hospitality experience for the rental market. We select the right tenants who are in for the long-haul, offer both you and your residents access to a concierge service 24/7, and offer fast repair and maintenance work that is guaranteed. We also guarantee your rent will always be paid and can even cover your cash-flow during vacancies. You can learn more about our unique services here.

No more landlords or tenants. Belong is making renting magical for homeowners and residents, creating the world's first residential network. We partner with homeowners to achieve financial freedom, but we do it ethically, and without you having to lift a finger. Learn more and find out if your home is eligible at belonghome.com/homeowners

Property management services make it easier for rental property owners to make a passive income - Belong takes that to a whole new level

What are Property Management Services? How is Belong Different?

Many homeowners choose to put their property on the rental market to earn a passive income. The truth is, passive income takes a lot of active work behind the scenes to achieve. This is why many opt to use property management services, outsourcing a huge range of tasks and tenant communication to professionals. 

Having help makes it easier for rental property owners to make a passive income, while also meeting the needs of their tenants. 

This article will dive into exactly what property management services entail — and how Belong’s services differ to traditional property management.  

A good property management company will help care for and maintain your rental home, dealing with everything that pops up while allowing you to relax and continue to collect a passive income. This means anything from collecting rent to scheduling repairs to leaky faucets. 

Standard property management services include:

A property evaluation to determine pricing

Home inspections and tours for prospective tenants

Reviewing applications and tenant screening

Managing tenant communication — including collecting rent and logging any issues or repair needs

Managing contractors for home maintenance

Belong offers all of the above services, but in a completely different way — and with many more benefits and innovations at no additional cost. Belong is making renting lovable for everyone — both homeowners and their residents. We are ditching the broken, outdated property management model in favor of a more human, hospitality experience. 

Here is a look at what you’ll get by engaging property management services vs having your home and residents taken care of by Belong. 

Property management services vs Belong services:

Before listing your property on the rental market, a common property management service is to perform an inspection and suggest what they think the rental rate should be based on the local area. Property management companies generally use local comps, so this number is based on other properties for rent of a similar size and neighborhood location. 

Belong helps homeowners to achieve financial freedom. That means when we evaluate a home, it’s not just to assess your immediate returns, but also to maximize the income you can generate long-term to support your financial goals. 

We review your home and prepare it for renters. Some homes won’t need anything done, but if they do, our in-house team of expert tradespeople will boost your ROI, making repairs and even renovations based on maximizing the income you can achieve in the local market. Once listed, we use a clever combination of expertise and technology to optimize your rental price — even accounting for real-time demand for your home. 

If you still live in the home, we can even move you out and your new residents in with our relocation services. 

A primary service of property management companies is to handle the marketing of your property, taking professional photos and uploading them to top listing sites. Some basics such as photos and descriptions will typically be included in property management fees, however many charge for additional upgrades such as virtual or 3D tours and video. 

As a tech-forward company, we don’t believe that video is optional in this day and age. 3D and virtual tours of homes help expand your market to anyone looking to relocate from outside of your local area, so we include this service in our fees. 

Belong also integrates directly with major rental listing sites such as Zillow, Hotpads and Zumper. When you list with Belong, you’ll automatically be featured on all the top sites. This is important because it means you’ll get 30-50% more views for your home as well as a direct feed of applicants from these sites into the Belong system. This lets us contact potential residents quickly and find the best applicant faster than a traditional property manager could. 

It’s another way that Belong reduces vacancy times and costs for homeowners, with 66% less vacancy than competitors and an average of 29 qualified applications for every home listed.

Property management services generally include tours of the home for prospective tenants to see — however some low-cost companies bill each physical inspection as an extra cost. 

We host tours of your home the way people want to see it. In person, online, via 3D video in their own time — it’s a new world and we’re part of it. 

Tenant screening is one of the biggest reasons homeowners hire property management services. Effective screening helps to protect your home and financial security by finding reliable and trustworthy people to reside in your home. 

Property management companies should thoroughly screen every applicant by obtaining their rental history, credit check, background check, referrals, and employment verification. 

Belong screens every applicant and goes the extra mile to find the perfect, long-term resident for your home — such as conducting interviews with prospective tenants for the right fit. 

Managing rent collection and tenant communication

Property management services include getting your tenant approved, a legal lease agreement signed, collecting a security deposit, and scheduling a move-in date. Your property manager will also be responsible for collecting rent and ongoing communication, ensuring any issues are resolved quickly and efficiently. 

A recent US Census pulse survey revealed that 9 million Americans were behind in their rent. To avoid being a statistic, you should ask your property manager about their policies for late rent. The company should have a strict policy in place, like enforcing late fees, administering warnings, or at last resort, distributing eviction notices. 

The biggest difference that Belong offers is that we guarantee rent every month — regardless of when your resident pays. There’s even the option to collect your entire 12 months rent upfront, while letting Belong manage payments from the resident. 

Property management services make it easier for rental property owners to make a passive income. Learn more about these services and how Belong is different.

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