Anne Hartnett
Hi, I’m Anne Hartnett and we’re here today with Cory Brewer from Lori Gill & Associates, one of the most established and trusted property management firms in the Puget Sound region, overseeing thousands of rental homes and investment properties across Seattle’s fast-changing market. In this Brokerage Culture feature, we sit down to explore how property management intersects with brokerage, what agents must understand about advising investor clients, and why operational excellence is the true differentiator in today’s rental economy.

Cory, how would you describe the health of the Seattle rental market right now, and what should real estate professionals be paying close attention to?

Cory Brewer
Yeah, hi Anne. Thank you. So, ran some numbers recently, through November 2025. Single-family rents throughout King and Snohomish County are up about 2.7% across the board compared to last year. So we do continue to see strong demand for, primarily single-family homes in suburban-type neighborhoods. That’s primarily what we represent. That’s where we continue to see demand.

On the other hand, the condo market in Seattle, mostly kind of the downtown, core Seattle — that is particularly slow, and I think it has been for a couple of years. A lot of that has to do with competition, not just other condo units that are available, but a lot of new apartment construction. Renters have quite a few options to choose from in that particular kind of submarket. So if I were advising an investor client in this market right now, today, I would guide them toward residential neighborhoods rather than kind of high-density urban centers, due mainly to supply and demand. And, of course, you know, a condo unit is not going to cost nearly as much as a four-bedroom house in Bellevue. So if your budget does not allow for that, I would advise people to look a little bit further on the outskirts, like Lynnwood, Kent area. Maybe consider like a duplex type of property as opposed to a condo in one of our downtown kind of core, high-density centers, at least at the moment.

Hartnett
What major shift in owner or tenant expectations has changed the way property management works today?

Brewer
Well, in today’s world, everybody wants answers, you know, immediately. They want answers yesterday. I think we do a good job balancing quick response times as well as with setting boundaries. It’s important that we don’t kind of make knee jerk reactions to people. This is a business where people’s emotions can get involved. You know, we’re managing the property where people live. That’s important. And so we want to get people the right answer. I think it’s really important to acknowledge requests and questions, but it’s okay to tell people that, “I’ll go research that answer and get back to you.”

The other thing that we are making a big push for as an industry is electronic communication. We’re working very closely with some key state lawmakers at the moment to modernize landlord-tenant communication. And I can go way down the rabbit hole on this one, if you like, but to keep it very brief, there are some particular facets of landlord-tenant communication that require hand-delivered paper for landlord and tenant. We have to hire a process server. We have to send things via certified mail. In our research, most tenants would prefer to have those things just delivered to them via email, or they can go get it on their online tenant portal, that kind of thing. And so we’re working on changing the law to allow for that for tenants who would like to opt in to electronic communications. That’s the big thing just kind of operationally, at least lately.

Hartnett
What do agents most often misunderstand about investment properties, and what do you wish every agent knew before advising investor clients?

Brewer
Yeah. You really got to run this like a business. Even if it’s just one small, single-family home. Once you become an investor, once you become a landlord, I think one of the key reasons to have a property manager involved is because we can create kind of this buffer of communication between the landlord and the tenant, and it’s probably best for everyone if that relationship doesn’t get too personal between the parties. And really, you set yourself up for success by treating it like a business.

Hartnett
When an agent refers a client to Lori Gill & Associates, what does a successful partnership look like on your side?

Brewer
Yeah. I mean, to put it simply, we want to do a great job representing that client both, for their needs with us and whatever transaction they’re having with the agent that referred them to us. And ultimately, what success looks like is when our management life cycle comes to an end — because it will someday, whether it’s three years down the road, 13 years down the road — if we are able to hand that client back to the agent who originally referred them to us. Because the likely scenario there is that they’re going to be selling that property, and it comes full circle that way, and that’s really one of the things that we — it’s kind of one of the hallmarks of our business.

Hartnett
Property management is complex. What operational philosophies allow Lori Gill & Associates to deliver consistent, high-quality service across such a large portfolio?

Brewer
Yeah. We have recently centralized a lot of different software tools that we’ve been using into one platform. So having a consistent, dedicated system is really important. That system reminds us of our important deadlines, for example. So, we look at when our lease expiration dates and then we back, we backtrack everything from there six to seven months in advance in some cases. And so we’re making sure that we hit our deadlines. Anything that one of our property managers turns in goes through multiple rounds of review. We’ve got an excellent staff between our admin team and accounting team. And then management review every file, because we get audited regularly. And so we do, I think we do an excellent job of making sure that all of our paperwork is clean and that we keep our eye on the ball at all times, not just from a Department of Licensing perspective, but we’re a pretty heavily regulated industry when it comes to landlord-tenant law. So, like I said, we got to keep our eye on the ball.

Hartnett
Communication is a pain point in this industry. How have you engineered predictable, transparent communication for both owners and tenants?

Brewer
Yeah. I mean, just like the last one, the software system that we use that sets us up for reminders and regular communication, that helps our property managers stay on task. That same system develops and sends reports to both our clients and our residents on a regular basis as well. So if it was, if we’re talking about one of our owner clients, that could be something as simple as their monthly report, right? That income is collected, whatever expenses come out, that month, and they get their monthly transaction report. For tenants, or for anyone, really, they can see what’s happening with their account in real time. So in addition to structured, scheduled, regular reporting, they can access their portal. They can see charges. They can see maintenance requests. They can see vendor communication about coming to perform those maintenance requests. And of course, they can get in touch with the property manager that way.

Hartnett
What’s the number one mistake self-managing landlords make, and how do you prevent it?

Brewer
Yeah, probably the number one mistake is that they’re not paying attention to changes in the industry. And maybe not so much industry-led changes, but more legal changes, really. I mean, that’s the big one. We are subject to state law changing once per year. The state legislature meets in January, February, every year, and housing has been on the priority list for them for the last handful of years. But if you look around the region, if you look around the Seattle area, the different city and county councils meet regularly throughout the year, and they are constantly looking at local ordinances that govern rental housing. And so if an individual housing provider isn’t paying attention to what’s going on in their city or their county, or especially if they own two or three properties in different cities or counties, they are suddenly working off of two or three different playbooks, and if they aren’t paying attention to that, that will probably could come back to bite them.

So how do they prevent that? Certainly joining one of our professional organizations, one of our trade organizations throughout the state, or of course, hiring a property manager. And that’s where we come in, and we don’t just sit back and collect rent for our clients. That would be very easy. We are a liability shield for them, in addition to a buffer between the landlord-tenant communication, which I think is important, and in addition to our access to great vendors across all the various trades. Setting our clients up, you know, to not make legal mistakes is one of the huge benefits that we provide as a property manager.

Hartnett
Lori Gill & Associates has been operating for decades. What cultural values have allowed you to maintain longevity and trust in the market?

Brewer
Yeah. Having been a former sales broker myself, which is, you know, that’s who we partner with. That is the number one source of referral business for us, and we wouldn’t be here without it. Having been in that space prior to my career here — very, very competitive. It’s a difficult industry to break into, and they have a very large transaction with each client, kind of a large, one-time transaction. In our business, it’s much more portfolio based, and it’s about building a book of business over the years, and it’s about consistent client relationships. It’s not just a one-time transaction. It’s a years-long relationship with most clients.

And if I’m comparing the two real estate brokerage models, I think the key to our success at this company is that our agents, our property managers, are very collaborative with one another. I don’t see a whole lot of — I see friendly competition between our property managers, but I don’t see them truly competing with one another for any given client. They have established relationships with their referral partners and they’re not often pitted up against one another for any given client, and so that has led to a really fantastic culture of collaboration here, and I can’t tell you how often I see that people are just helping each other out because they want their colleague to succeed, and that could be as simple as, you know, we’ve had some really challenging weather lately. Wind and rain — and I mean, historic rain. And some of our property managers are encountering problems that they’ve never seen before. And so they will ask the team like, hey, which plumber do you use for this? Which leak detection? Which groundwater intrusion vendor, can you help me with this basement here that flooded? And they will quickly get a handful of answers from their colleagues within, like, ten minutes, who are interested in just helping the whole group succeed and taking care of our clients collectively. And so I think that is what has helped us maintain kind of a leading position in our marketplace, is that everybody just — they kind of help each other out, and they don’t have to. It’s not required. We’ve just kind of built a really great culture here, and I really, really appreciate it, having been able to see both sides of the real estate market.

Hartnett
Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Corey. I enjoyed learning more about property management and Lori Gill & Associates.

Brewer
Thank you for having me.