What Should You Really Ask About Communication? A Must-Ask Question for Indy Rental Investors

When Indianapolis investors vet a property management company, one of the most common questions is: “How often will I get updates on my property?”

It’s a great question—but not quite the right one.

In this episode of the Red Door Property Management Podcast, our team reframes this question to help rental owners get the information they actually need. The better question to ask is:

“How do you proactively communicate so I’m not left chasing updates or in the dark?”

This shifts the focus from passive updates to intentional transparency, and it reveals much more about how a property management company truly operates.

Where Communication Matters Most in Property Management

Investors should expect clear, proactive communication in these areas:

• Marketing updates – Real-time data on showing feedback, pricing suggestions, and listing performance (including Loom video reports weekly from Red Door)
• Maintenance requests – Instant updates with context so owners can make timely decisions
• Non-payment alerts – Notifications when tenants miss rent, helping you prepare financially
• Lease renewals – Proactive tenant contact and owner notification for renewal strategy
• General tenant requests – From wall painting to satellite dishes, you deserve to know what's happening

And let’s not forget the critical onboarding stage. At Red Door Property Management, we start with a detailed market readiness assessment—sending consistent updates on vendor quotes, prep work, and marketing timelines. If your property manager isn’t delivering clarity here, it’s unlikely to improve later.

Communication Styles That Fit You

Not all investors want the same level of contact. Some prefer weekly touchpoints; others own 10+ properties and trust us to handle everything under a $1,000 maintenance cap. Our systems adapt to your preferences—while still keeping critical decisions in your hands.

Why Overcommunication is the Right Default

We admit it—our update frequency might feel like overkill. But we believe that overcommunication beats silence every time. When a $300,000 asset is on the line, there’s no room for guessing games.

If you're comparing property managers, ask them to walk you through their communication process across the full rental lifecycle: onboarding, marketing, leasing, maintenance, renewals, and accounting. If they can’t give you clarity at each step, they’re not ready for your investment.

Red Door's commitment to Indianapolis rental properties is backed by communication systems built over 15+ years. We’ve invested heavily in both technology and people to give you the transparency that leads to performance.

Final Takeaway

Ask better questions, get better answers. “How often do I get updates?” becomes powerful when reframed as: “How do you keep me informed without me having to ask?”

Want to see Red Door’s approach in action? Explore our full-service property management services and how we help rental investors make smarter, more informed decisions from day one.

Follow us for more investor-focused insights—and don’t miss our next episode where we dive into the latest Indianapolis rental market data!

• Transcript Here

  
   
  
  Introduction and Overview
  
  Next, we're gonna get into the segment. Probably one of my favorites because it's one of the ones I'm most passionate about. It's taking questions from owners every single day and highlighting some of those that for whatever reason have inspired me or made me passionate. The previous month.
  
  So we are going to get into this month's question of the week. Alright? Now, as we dive into this, I have to tell you, this was so hard for me to choose from. I had a couple owners. That highlighted a couple questions and I almost brought 'em both here, but I was like, you know what, I'm gonna table one.
  
  There's plenty of months to come. Plenty of discussion to happen. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring up this one.
  
  Question of the Week: Communication and Transparency
  
  Because it also highlights, and I probably say this with every question that comes up because I hear so many different questions coming from owners almost equally, but without a doubt, one of the biggest concerns from most owners looking for a new property management company or their.
  
  First property management company higher is the communication and the transparency along with it. So the question I got, here we go. And I never wanna mess any of these up here, so I write 'em all down before I, I start reporting this. Here's the question I got. How often will I get updates on my property?
  
  That's a really good question. Because again it relates directly to the communication and transparency of what's going on with your property. Now, let me rephrase that. And how should you be asking that question to get a more detailed response? That's going to relate to the communication and transparency?
  
  Here's how I would ask that question. How do you proactively communicate? So I'm not chasing updates or left in the dark on my property. Now the reason I would ask that question, because you're not just looking for updates in regards to any one area, but the com communication and transparency is so important through so many different aspects.
  
  And Mike, I'm gonna give you a chance to chime in here, but I'm gonna highlight these.
  
  Key Areas for Property Updates
  
  These are areas that you want to discuss with your property management company because. This is where you want updates on your property. Updates from the marketing process, of course, right? You wanna know what's going on during the marketing of your property.
  
  You want consistent updates so that you can make changes to whatever your marketing strategy might be in order to attract the highest quality tenant in the least amount of time that vacancy is expensive. And Mike, chime in. I'm gonna go through a couple of these real quick. In fact, let me just hit these and then I'll let you speak.
  
  Marketing maintenance requests, right? God, how important is it to make sure that you're informed quickly on the maintenance requests so that you can react quickly? God, the number one. Factor in tenant retention is maintenance handling nonpayment of rent. Huge, right? Anytime a tenant doesn't pay on time and you don't inform that owner every single time, that owner's going to be a little bit more upset.
  
  They wanna know if they should expect not getting their rent on time for that month not renewing a lease agreement, of course, right? You need to be able to. Reach out to that tenant in a timely manner, discuss the lease renewal options, and then inform the owner. So those are updates going on along the way.
  
  Consistent updates even when it becomes annoying. And then of course the most obvious one is just simple requests that are coming from the tenant. Can I paint this wall? Can I hang this on the wall? Things like that. And transparency and communication. Alright, Mike, what are your thoughts?
  
  Importance of Timely Communication
  
  How often will I get updates on my property?
  
  How important is that question? And make sure that you're asking it the right way.
  
  Yeah, for sure. Lemme just add to that, Chris to complete the lifecycle though, is lease renewal is, how are you contacted during lease renewal? When are you contacted at Lease renewal? How involved are you?
  
  That kind of stuff. So just one more maybe contact point. It's the number one thing that we hear from all owners is communication is the most important part. Yes. And you know here that we have invested so much. Time, effort, and money over the last, what year, two years to improve the communication to the owners.
  
  It's something we do every day, every week we talk about it, and we analyze it. If we miss something how can we tweak it, make it better? So gosh, I could go on for days about how we communicate. I know I, I, like I said we try really hard. I think one of the. Best things that we do is during the marketing stage.
  
  'cause it's such a crucial stage stealing.
  
  I knew I shouldn't have let you talk yet. I knew it. I
  
  I can do something else. You wanna
  
  take
  
  that one? No. I'm kidding. No. Keep
  
  going. Keep going.
  
  During the marketing stage, it's, and talk about transparency. So we send a loom video to our owners and we just go over the the marketing report that we have.
  
  So it's our internal marketing report that shows how many. Showings we've had, how many requests we've had, any feedback that we have, and we just go over that with the owners and say, Hey, here's what we're getting here. Here's what we're getting, here's what we're seeing this week. And we do it on a weekly basis because we're diligent.
  
  We want to have that home leased up as quickly as possible. Definitely under 30 days. And so if we're not looking at this at least on a weekly basis, then it's. It's too much. It's, sorry. It's too much. Time has elapsed in between. So we need to react. We want our owners to react quickly make some price reductions quickly, or condition adjustments if needed.
  
  Anyway, we need to be looking at this on a weekly basis and making adjustments on a weekly basis. Talk about transparency and communication. You really have to ramp up the communication during the vacancy period because it's so important. Like you said, it is so expensive. And so we really try to ramp that up during that period in order to drive that vacancy down.
  
  Exactly. Yes. And you're right, we could go on for days because and that's actually one of the reasons I chose this question is, and this. Part of the podcast is not designed to just highlight what Red Door does, although of course we speak on that because we work with Red Door and we want to inform you on what Red Door does in relation to these questions.
  
  But I. But even more importantly for this podcast purpose is that you can inquire with new property management companies and be informed and see how their process might relate to what we're doing and where we are personally finding success. Now back to what Red Door does. Yes. Even prior to the marketing process and back to, the reason I chose this question is because I know how much of a financial investment we've made into this recently over the ca past couple years.
  
  And not only financial, but also time, which also obviously equates to financial in the long run. But but the time investment that in the processes that we've built regarding so many more processes than the ones I highlighted here at the beginning there are so many processes that your individual owner would not even be aware of in order to effectively manage their property and maximize their ROI how to get into those very.
  
  Min minute details of every individual process now. Back to even before even just the onboarding of your property and the updates and transparency and the communication and that we have beat to death, how we go through a market readiness assessment with your property and the updates required. And this is just developing the relationship with you.
  
  So if you can't have. Consistent updates regarding the market readiness of your property. I can guarantee you that down the line it's not going, it's very unlikely, rather to improve the communication process. And that's identifying anything that the property needs any vendor relationship quotes and updates all along the way as those are being completed.
  
  And as we get closer to the marketing process Mike already mentioned the marketing updates that we. Provide our owners, which is absolutely essential in reducing your vacancy timeframe and making quick decisions so that you can place a tenant quickly. And then again I have to re-highlight the maintenance request portion because, and it's a lot like the early on market readiness assessment updates but it's informing owners quickly when there is a maintenance request because.
  
  If there's any important aspect, aside from the market readiness portion in order to maximize your ROI, it's tenant retention. And the number one thing that's going to result in tenant retention is responding to maintenance quick requests, rather in a timely manner. And ensuring that maintenance requests are handled properly.
  
  So all of these updates all along the way, and in fact our process is built out, so elaborate that it probably annoys. Some of our owners that they get so many updates, along the onboarding process because the details is what matters in, in giving you the updates along the way. It can be a little bit annoying at times, but I assure you that is the side that you want to default on is over communicating rather than under communicating.
  
  I think I've said all I can say I'm so passionate about this portion. Yeah. We all are. And we've worked, there's so many different aspects to the property management world that narrowing down these details has been, God, a 15 year process since I've been with Red Door, that's for sure.
  
  And there's still work to be done. Of course. Yeah, of course. But yeah, there's so much we
  
  could, we could do a podcast on just like communication with owners and the what, like what to expect, when to expect or go through the whole life cycle. We could talk about it for an hour, I swear.
  
  Yeah.
  
  Yeah. And there's some owners that wanna be kept up on every detail that happens on the property. And then there's of course, the owners that own 10 15 properties. And as long as they're with a trusted property management company and you haven't you haven't defaulted on that trust factor, then they're like, a thousand dollars maintenance limit.
  
  Do whatever you can to maximize my tenant retention. And they just are hands off. And they will just. Mark that communication as red and move on with life. So that is what you should be doing. You need to get into the nitty gritty details on how you're gonna be updated, not just from the onboarding and marketing process, but for every process along the way so that you can maximize your ROI when you're reaching out to your property management company or your new property management company.
  
  Of course, all of these questions are going to be uploaded in detail on all of our social media channels, which those will be neatly outlined here at the bottom of our graphics.
  
  Indie Market Report: May 2025
  
  Which leads us to our next segment, which is going to be your indie market report. Updates for, let's see, this is going to be for May of 2025, so we're now in June.
  
  We are going to report on May numbers. Are you ready to move on, Mike?