A Field Notes Report · 2026

The MoveZen Operations Story

A relentless search for efficient win-wins and commonly missed opportunities.

Our field services and operations division rollout has been quite the saga. We envisioned these services 20 years ago, but never saw the demand needed to prioritize them. Then 2020 arrived and everything changed overnight. It wasn’t clear to everyone — but it was clear to us. In 2023 we wrote a 50-page update and outlined a few crucial priorities. View More

The 2023 priorities

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Our strategy could not be summed up better than a relentless search for efficient win-wins. We saw the K-shaped economy taking shape and built a plan to ensure our properties always appealed to the upper leg of that K. But overspending at today’s prices is a real concern. So we focused with laser precision on the issues that are hard to justify on the surface — yet that 20+ years of experience tells us have asymmetric effects on the long-term bottom line.

One thing you’ll instantly note: this isn’t a price list from a company chasing big margins. We deliberately focused on items with margins so thin we genuinely can’t get them done without paying staff we control.

When the forecast became the headline

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Note the striking similarity between the strategy we outlined through the chaos of 2023 and the 2026 Renter Survey Report by Appfolio — the world leader in single-family rental software. It’s built on thousands of renter surveys across the US, and this is exactly the kind of information that drives our most important strategies.

We outlined high-value, low-cost service options — weed and feed, pest spraying, sealing access points with spray foam — and never expected those concepts to lead renter surveys two years later. We thought it’d take ten years.

The future of rentals will be solving the housing-logistics problem for the best renters available — and reaping strong returns for doing it. We’re just getting started.

The win-wins, in detail

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Each of these preserves the home and raises the resident’s enjoyment of it. Tap to expand.

▶Move-out & move-in bug sprayingPreservation

We charge for pre-move-in sprays but still spray move-outs in season at no charge. Spray once at move-out and again at move-in and you dramatically reduce the bugs that shut down an AC unit and damage both the home and the resident’s enjoyment of it.

▶HVAC grate restorationDesirability

Dust-, mildew-, and rust-covered HVAC grates turn tenants off badly and are surprisingly common even in nicer homes. Replacements cost a fortune now, so we “buy time” whenever it makes sense — lower-quality work, but far lower prices.

▶In-person filter deliveryRelationship

Delivering filters to the doorstep teaches us a lot about our tenants and our business — and it never fails to make residents surprisingly happy. Pull up to a house or townhome and you almost instantly know whether it’s being cared for.

▶Long-term mountable lockboxesLogistics

Nearly 5% of tenants keep a lockbox on year-round, and lockouts now cost $300+. A durable mounted box lets residents hand off keys without a hectic drive to our office, backs up a dead digital-lock battery, and enables after-hours move-ins — a tiny bill with a huge payoff at crucial moments.

We don’t buy cheap lockboxes either — we buy the famously durable Master Locks. Why? Because the cost of one failure, like someone unable to move in on a Sunday evening, is so high it makes no sense to skimp. As you’ll see throughout this outline, we do cut corners all the time. We just cut the right corners.

Profit through resident satisfaction

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We talk often about how our success — and the strong rental returns our owners enjoy — is built, counterintuitively for some, on profit through resident satisfaction. Take great care of great people, and they will pay you well with almost no fuss. On average, that’s what we’ve witnessed across our 20+ year history. Much of what we offer adds fast value to the showing and listing process, then delivers an industry-leading experience once we choose a high-quality resident.

Volume, pre-approvals & a 30% discount

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A hallmark of low-margin work is that you must find ways to increase volume. So while we’ll push for estimate approvals, that’s part of a strategy to keep investing in operations and adding more high-ROI services. If you line-item our estimates to shave small amounts off, you put us in a bind where we can’t reach the tipping point these services need to move the needle. The goal is to target many small issues that, taken together, measurably detract from a home’s desirability.

So we’re offering a 30% discount on any pre-approved estimate. You pre-approve work up to a maximum we won’t exceed — and may not even reach. We provide before-and-after photos that clearly show the value. If we can’t, we don’t charge.

Why the discount? It’s the best way to increase volume, reduce complexity, and — most of all — save a trip to the property. The trip cost to any property, for any reason, is significant these days. To put it in perspective: we’d pay a gig worker $40 an hour to go remove a $40 lockbox, if we’re lucky.

Where this is going

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You’ll struggle to find a company with more in-the-trenches experience around renter satisfaction, what counts as high ROI, and what owners feel is fair. There’s a lot of noise and misinformation now — it makes even five years ago look like child’s play. It’s imperative to limit your housing information to trusted sources you’ve taken the time to research, then keep scrutinizing.

Appfolio highlights the staggering cost of turnover in 2026, and how it’s shifted the economics of rentals to a point where tenant quality and duration are often the only major wins landlords see in this market. For us, that’s been priority one by a mile.