As a father of three young daughters, my wife and I often find ourselves saying “It’s OK! Mistakes happen!” to calm the tears when a scoop of ice cream falls off the cone or when a dress ends up with paint splatters. I recently found myself applying this statement after a mistake of my own. Mistakes happen….we’re only human, right? The trick is to avoid making BIG ones that are hard to fix. And of course, when mistakes inevitably happen, you have to acknowledge them and fix them….and then hopefully move on!
At Westland, we are in a business that involves making hundreds of decisions a week. A typical week might have our team thinking about everything from whether or not to bid on a property to how much to bid for it to what renovations to make to how to service the needs of residents at our properties. We recently made a decision that turned out to be an unequivocal mistake. At our Vose property in Beaverton, we selected a color blue for the exterior that looked fabulous in the shade where we painted the sample, but then looked TERRIBLE in the sunshine once an entire building was painted. We knew it as soon as we saw it and it was clear that it had to be fixed. So, we went to the expense and effort of selecting a subtler shade of blue and repainting the entire building.
It was not ideal, but it was important to correct. And now that it’s done and the building is a pleasing new shade, we will have happier residents and neighbors and we will attract more people to the refreshed building. As we mostly rebuilt the systems in this building (new plumbing, and a new roof), we want the exterior to match the quality of the interiors. This allows us to move on to the next set of decisions we need to make rather than worrying about the wrong color blue.
Thankfully, this was an easy mistake to fix. At Westland, we pride ourselves on getting the big things right – that is, making smart, strategic investments and managing our investments with care. This means caring enough to correct mistakes when we make them! Above is the "before" photo, and now you can see the "after"!
Part of the reason that we care enough to acknowledge and correct our mistakes is that we invest for the long term. That paint job will last for years, and it could make the difference of as much as $150 per unit in rents. Over 12 months that is $1,800 and if we capitalize the revenue, it is a difference of $30,000 per unit. When we look at the world through this lens, it is a no brainer to pay for the additional paint and labor.
