How Roots Management Attains a More Personal Experience for Managers and Residents
Roots Management Group holds itself up as an example of a “best-in-class” offering, but it is not a reputation earned without a significant amount of introspection and institutional change.
“Community managers are the cornerstone of our vision,” Roots Management Group President Tom Stapley said. “We believe that a people-first ethos is a proven path that can help pave the way for a revitalized industry.”
In 2006, the predecessor to Roots, Treehouse Group, was established by Tom Stapley, Marcus Ridgway, and Dallas Tanner.
The business plan was to acquire older manufactured home communities in key locations, initially settling in on 20 properties in the Phoenix area. It was a time of enormous change, transformation, and opportunity across the industry and throughout housing.
By 2008, Stapley, Tanner, and Ridgway had expanded into the single-family rental business, founding Invitation Homes. But Stapley maintained his passion for manufactured housing at Treehouse, and the business continued to grow. In 2020, as the company continued to expand, Stapley recognized that community managers, many of whom were responsible for nearly every aspect of the business in the field, were becoming overwhelmed.
“We really wanted to see what it was like in the field from a fresh perspective. I started managing punch list items from when the company had just started, from when we had just a handful of properties. Still, we wanted to know what the landscape currently looked like from a community manager’s point of view,” Roots Management Group Chief Operating Officer Tauvaga Iii said.
Boots on the Ground
Treehouse sent a new operations intern, McKay Lyman, a grad school student just dipping his toe in the industry, to Brookhaven Estates in Apache Junction, Ariz., where there had been a significant amount of staff turnover.
“I had a lot of work to do, I knew I had to gain the resident’s trust,” Lyman said.
Stapley asked that he go out several times a day on a golf cart to clean up some litter and to “break the ice” with community residents.
“The idea resonated with me, and before long, I felt like I had gained a great deal of trust and appreciation from the residents, and it also allowed me to meet several of them much quicker,” Lyman said. “I encouraged residents to speak freely with me and let me know what was on their minds. Soon I started receiving a lot of baked goods as gifts, and the residents invited me to their community potlucks.”
Most importantly, Lyman said, the experience helped him and senior management understand what needed to be done in the community, and it ultimately provided great leadership insight that could translate across the company’s portfolio.
“When we looked at McKay’s time logs and noticed that he was being bombarded by corporate requests and getting the same routine questions asked by the residents about where to pay rent and how much they owed, we knew something needed to be done,” Iii said.
Introspective Change, Staff Enablement
The company implemented electronic communications for residents and taught residents how to check balances and make payments. All corporate staff members were asked to prioritize a community manager’s time, to first seek answers from other sources, for instance, to keep time in the field free for managers to work with residents, contractors, and other staff members.
In 2021, the company decided to enhance its portfolio by bringing in additional properties owned and operated by Vineyards Management Group. Two years later, Treehouse Communities and Vineyards Management Group rebranded to Roots Management Group. With the additional staff and merging the two companies, Roots launched a learning and development department that created what is now called Roots University. The team provides educational content for the community managers, and develops the curriculum for Roots University, which is a 30-hour manager certification course covering Roots procedures, financial handling, reporting, and community-focused materials.
Stapley said the company also revamped its shared services department to further help relieve managers of non-resident-centric work. Shared services now has more than 30 people handling the home ordering, logistics and installation, marketing, and listing of homes for sale or rent.
He said the department has a full-time community success manager.
“Our shared services teams and every employee at Roots Management Group is here to support our front lines, our community managers,” Iii said.
The commitment translates into satisfaction for the community managers. Brooke McAlister is the community manager at Countryside Estates in Hays, Kansas.
“I really value the education and the trust put in us to run the communities as if we are the owners,” McAlister said.
McAlister also participated in a company-wide manager summit, a three-day immersive experience for managers and support staff.
“The Community Manager Summit really helped me learn to take the ownership role, feel secure taking the reins, learn how to maximize the impact of the online tools available to me and participate in peer-to-peer mentor groups,” McAlister said.
The company not only took tasks away from community managers to give them more time to focus on the residents, but they provided the opportunity to rate the staff members who are tasked with supporting community managers.
“We have each manager fill out a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey each month that rates our company using a score based on how well we are responding to their needs and supporting them as a central services team,” Iii said. “We’ve come a long way since the first round of scoring, which had the corporate team rated by community managers at a negative-14. Today, they are reporting at 66, which is considered ‘Great’, according to the NPS rating system.”
Lyman says although he is no longer working at Brookhaven, he enjoys supporting all the Roots Management Group properties and the community managers.
“My time spent as a community manager was certainly a favorite for me in this company and is foundational to my appreciation for manufactured housing,” he said. “The industry is still growing and evolving, while Roots continues to push forward and transform the industry as a people-first company.”
