Today, Inhabit IQ announced to its LiveRez customers that founder and CEO Tracy Lotz and CFO Rich Cook are leaving the company. The email stated, “After more than 20 years of shaping the face of the vacation rental industry, LiveRez CEO, Tracy Lotz, has decided it’s time to step away from his role at LiveRez. Rich Cook has also decided to step out of the VP of Finance role and will be working with Inhabit IQ to transition his finance and accounting responsibilities by the end of the year.”
In May 2019, LiveRez joined the Vacation Brands portfolio, a rollup of short-term rental technology companies led by Knoxville-based private equity firm, Greater Sum Ventures.
In early September, GSV combined Vacation Brands with its multifamily proptech portfolio Property Brands under a new umbrella named Inhabit IQ.
On September 10, LiveRez announced to its clients that it was doubling the cost of its software from .5% to 1% of reservations. Two weeks later, the announcement was followed by a mandatory change to the Terms and Conditions saying that if customers did not accept the company’s changes, LiveRez could turn off access to their software with short notice.
According to one user, “On September 24, 2019, they locked many LiveRez users out of our systems and forced us to agree to a 9-paged Terms and Conditions document before we could continue operating. The document recommended us to review it with an attorney, but did not allow ANY time to even read or review, we were locked out of our system . . . what kind of company behaves this way? And this was after announcing a 100% increase in our rates, with a 30-day notice.”
On September 30, LiveRez walked back that policy changing the time period to 120 days.
Related: Inside Inhabit IQ: Interview with CRO Chad Scott and EVP Scott Butler
In a recent VRM Intel interview with Chad Scott and Scott Butler, we asked about working with company founders. Scott said that Inhabit IQ retains the leadership teams in its investments: “Our operating thesis has been to buy these companies and make sure that the entire leadership team stays—which is why we don’t do full acquisitions. These are investments because we want to be aligned going forward with the CEOs and management teams within these companies, all striving for the same thing, which is continuing to drive growth—just more quickly with access to more resources.”
We also asked, is there a point that Inhabit IQ would remove a CEO? According to Chad, yes. “I can speak from experience that this happened twice on the multi-family side when we did do that. They were making decisions for their business that were disruptive to—not only to their business—but to closing down integrations, not wanting to partner. You can’t do that.”
He added, “We are looking to grow and expand these companies, and if the leadership discontinues doing that and is not aligned in that effort, then we will make a change.”
The annual LiveRez Partner Conference begins on Monday, October 28, in Memphis, Tennessee.
I can only imagine, that after the recent behavior of the company, and the press following that behavior, new clients will be difficult to obtain and keeping the old clients will be quite a challenge since many feel betrayed. Disruptive behavior creates disruption.
Who was really behind the decisions to increase the rates by 100% and lock partners out of their systems to force a signature on a document that no one had the opportunity to review with their attorney? We will probably never know, however, it seems to be logical that the new disruptive behavior co-insides from the new change in ownership
Cook and Lotz can take the blame and exit with their payouts. The new guys can claim they are only here to help.
Funny spin comments from Carlos Corzo CEO of Streamline in “comments” in Inside look at Inhabit IQ article on VRMINTEL from a few days ago. For more laughs, read the comments on all the GSV articles. Not so funny comments about Streamline from actual property managers at VRMA and at the Software Roundtable where Streamline was bashed and bashed again for accounting issues and horrible client support. Or from some who attended Streamline Summit and reported property managers freely talking at the open bar about leaving. Or, from email threads that were cc instead of bcc to dozens of property managers of wide spread, endemic Streamline accounting and support issues. Or, from comments forwarded from Streamline user support group about horrendous issues of accounting and customer support at Streamline. And, it super great that Carlos still trusts GSV/Inhabit IQ. But, many property managers have zero trust in GSV/Inhabit IQ after they purchased Itrip which is a property manager franchise model designed to compete with everyone. And, then GSV/Inhabit IQ lied and said they bought Itrip for their technology which is the biggest laugh out loud joke ever. They paid the high multiple for Itrip because it is a franchise model and can compete with every Property Manager in the world. And, most likely whatever foolish Private Equity Firm buys the dumpster fire that is GSV/Inhabit IQ will replatform Itrip using technology from a company like Streamline to compete more efficiently with property managers. And, it took VRMA all of a few days to sever ties with LSI on the VRMA Insight program once GSV/Inhabit IQ bought LSI. Why? Because the VRMA board was freaked out about GSV/Inhabit IQ owning Itrip and having access to member data and using it against property managers to compete. What a complete shit show this is. The lying from GSV/Inhabit IQ executives only makes it easier to tell property managers to run, run, run away from GSV/Inhabit IQ as fast as they can. Run,Run,Run!!!