Poplar Homes welcomed Travis Buchanan in March 2021 as its new Chief Operating Officer. Before joining us, Travis had numerous high level roles and experiences across financial services, commercial lending, manufacturing and real estate.
He most recently was the Senior Vice President for Business Initiatives at American Homes 4 Rent, a publicly traded real estate investment trust with over 50,000 single-family homes across 22 states. There he built the Home Services Team, managed the Texas portfolio as an interim Regional VP, redesigned and automated much of the HOA business and leasing model, and tested new initiatives and partnerships including 3rd party management.
“Poplar Homes is a great fit for me. I’ve spent a handful of years in the institutional property management industry in a variety of capacities and think 3rd party management is ripe for disruption. I’m excited to work with executives that are innovative, hungry, and aren’t afraid to go after big opportunities,’’ he said.
The timing of Travis joining us is great, with the recent company rebrand in July, signifying a milestone and goal of becoming a lifetime real estate partner for homeowners and renters. Poplar is excited to take on this new challenge with Travis’s expertise and leadership, banking on his high-level skills and depth of experience in the real estate industry.
Even with stellar credentials, Travis is the first to admit that he didn’t have experience in the roles he was asked to take on. Yet he took on each one with a fresh mindset and openness to any given situation that helped him discern unique opportunities as they come and help the business succeed.
Travis attributes his positive mentality and working to maintain clear expectations as keys to being successful in his previous positions. He now applies this principle with the Poplar Team and encourages the employees to be open, to speak up, and challenge his views. He believes healthy team collaboration is essential to finding the best possible solutions to challenges in the business.
“If expectations or end results are not clear, it becomes easy to get distracted and harder to make good decisions.”
Poplar Homes’ Open Technology Will Keep the Company on Top of its Game
Besides his in-depth knowledge and excitement for the industry, Travis’ decision to join Poplar was largely because of the exciting open technology platform Poplar has created to disrupt the space. He considers 3rd party management “one of the biggest opportunities since Amazon took on retail.’’
‘’What makes Poplar stand out in the industry is its open technology platform. Whether small property management companies or the large institutions, the standard industry software has limited flexibility which lessens innovative capabilities. Poplar has the unlimited ability to change and create automation as it grows its business, which allows us to layer in products and services across the lifetime of a persons’ real estate needs,’’ he remarked.
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Travis’ mission as COO is to make the Poplar brand stand out as a truly customer-centric company. As he leads the operations and drives strategies to build better management systems using technology, the Poplar brand is set to create more unique experiences in any of the customer touchpoints. He believes that “the true measure of success is how many touchpoints the customer chooses to have you involved with.
“If you can make saying yes easy along multiple customer touch points you’ll create an amazing experience and earn customer loyalty.”
Poplar Homes is Set for the Challenges of the Future
Travis is confident in Poplar’s proptech positioning, knowing that technology is the company’s significant market advantage
“With the company’s phenomenal seed funders, open-minded executive team, and a lot of good technology, we’re set to become a dominant player in the property management industry,” he asserted.
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