3 Blue Ocean Strategies for Growing Property Management Companies with Scott Brady



Scott Brady from Progressive Property Management, a successful property management company in southern California, is back on The Property Management Show, talking to us about an updated Blue Ocean Strategy that a property management company can use for the current market.

You might remember that he joined us in 2015, when he introduced the Blue Ocean Strategy and how it pertains to property managers. It’s the theory that property managers don’t actually have to compete with each other; their own property management company can access a local market that’s wide open because of the overwhelming number of self-managing investment property owners (SMIPOs). 

Not much has changed, he tells us today, except instead of targeting only the SMIPOs, there are three pools of potential business that can help you grow your property management business. 

A Refresher on Scott Brady

Scott’s journey to property management began in 2015. He was a top Realtor in the city of Placentia, California, which had a population of about 50,000 people. He ran for city council and won. He served as mayor for a term. 

When the recession hit the real estate industry in 2007, like many real estate investors and professionals, he was caught flat-footed. He had been busy buying and selling real estate and building a real estate brokerage.  He left the city council in 2008, and spent a couple of years regrouping. He knew that recessions happen every seven to 10 years, and he wanted to be prepared for the next one. 

So, he decided to start a property management company. 

He wanted to build right away, so in 2012, he launched Progressive Property Management. 

Scott started with zero doors and now he and his team manage 1,200 doors. 

Association management was added to his company during COVID. There was a good month where every property manager was sure all their tenants would stop paying rent. So, association management seemed like the logical next step to diversify a property management business that may have suffered during the pandemic. He began taking on association clients in 2020, and now serves 85 associations and 5,000 owners. 

The lesson he learned is this: You have to think ahead. Get prepared before the other shoe drops.

One of Scott’s favorite quotes is from Jeff Bezos. When he was running Amazon, Bezos said that during quarterly earnings calls, analysts would get excited about a particularly good quarter. They’d try to figure out what they did so differently that quarter. But, if they had a good quarter, it was likely because of something they had done three or four years ago. Nothing happens overnight. 

What you’re doing today will benefit you in two or three years, not two or three days.

Residential Property Managers and New Business

In 2015, Scott told us that 75 percent of rental property owners in the country were self-managing investors. Given everything that’s happened since then, what do you think that percentage is now, in 2023? 

Scott believes it’s about the same. 

Real estate investors self-manage their own investment properties because they think they have the time. 

Property managers need to tell these self-managing property owners that they’re costing themselves money. Because if you can describe a person’s pain points better than they can, you’re going to earn their business. 

By managing on their own,