Every home produces a stream of questions nobody wrote a rule for. Is this repair the owner's cost or the resident's? Does this city allow a short-term rental at that address? What did the last technician actually find behind that panel? The difference between a good operator and an average one is what they do in the ten minutes after the question arrives.
The average one guesses, or asks the nearest senior person, who also guesses. The good one looks: the lease, the county record, the maintenance history, the photo from the last visit, the ordinance. Then they decide, and they write down what they found so the next person does not have to look again.
Research is how a company of people spread across the world can run homes in Atlanta to one standard. The knowledge lives in the records, not in someone's head, and the habit of consulting the records is what makes that true.
- The Academy has more than three thousand lessons. Before you ask a coach, you search them. The coach's first question will be what you found.
- Every maintenance ticket links to the home's history. A technician who dispatches without reading it is treated the same as one who forgot the part.
- Rent recommendations cite comps. A number without three comparable homes behind it is an opinion, and we do not send owners opinions.
- When two people disagree about a policy, the first move is to find the written policy, not to escalate.
- Every answer you dig up that was not written down gets written down. The next person's ten minutes is your gift to them.
- It is not endless investigation. Ten focused minutes, then a decision. Research that delays a resident's repair is a cost, not a virtue.
- It is not deferring to whoever sounds most confident. Confidence is not evidence.
- It is not hoarding. A finding that stays in your notes is only half done.
We hire for it, coach to it, and measure it.
How we hire for it
The assessment includes a question whose answer is findable on our own website. We are not testing whether you know it. We are testing whether you look.
How we coach to it
Socratic coaching is research in dialogue form. The coach does not give the answer; they ask what you checked, and then what you would check next. After a few months people arrive having already interrogated themselves.
How we know
How often a question that has a written answer gets asked anyway, and how many decisions in the record cite the evidence they were made on.
Read more: Go and See →