KAGE / Urban Phenix
Owner-operator In conversation Copy linkA small Denver and Glendale operator: six apartment buildings within six miles, plus a single-family rental side business. Nick Lazzara owns and runs it. KAGE Partners is Katie Abrams' investment company — she opened the door and handed over.
Their biggest building is half the portfolio and it is not full. They bought it in December 2024, renamed it, and it is showing 21 empty units.
What that is based on
197 units of the verified 391 — the Denver assessor record confirms the count and the December 2024 sale to the new owner entity. Their own listing page still says “under new ownership and now professionally managed by Urban Phenix”, and shows 21 vacancies.
They run two property-management systems at once, deliberately, and anything we sell has to span both.
What that is based on
RealPage runs the three larger buildings — leasing widgets on their own apply pages, Knock for leads, ActiveBuilding for residents. AppFolio runs the three historic walk-ups and the houses. Their own management page names the RealPage stack in prose, so the split is known internally rather than accidental.
October is a date we owe them, not one we have to chase. We put it in writing ourselves and promised to have more to show.
What that is based on
On the evening of the 6 August call we wrote that we would reconnect in October when things slow down, and keep building in the meantime. Nick had already said there is no capacity to pilot now, with revenue down about 20%, and named October or November as the window.
He owns the management company as well as running it, so the money and the operating decision sit in the same person. On the call he set the agenda himself: risk and exception alerting for regional managers.
Katie Abrams (KAGE Partners) made the introduction and named Nick as the decision-maker in her first message. She has not spoken in the thread since — treat her as the sponsor, not the buyer.
Still unknown — six open questions
- Where the roughly 209 units between our verified 391 and the master list's “about 600” sit — most likely the house-rental program, whose count is not public.
- What the Katie–Nick partnership is legally. She calls him her partner; no public record connects the two companies. It decides who else should hear the pitch, not who signs.
- Whether the AppFolio half has to be covered by the same pilot, or the RealPage side can lead on its own.
- Whether the outside-owner management business actually wins outside clients, or the whole book belongs to one sponsor group. This is the difference between one account and a channel.
- Whether they still manage anything in Colorado Springs — a building sold in 2021 is still on their website.
- Whether the sponsor's development pipeline adds buildings they will manage, and when.
The house-rental program is not in this bar: it runs out of the same AppFolio account and nothing public says how many homes are in it.
The six buildings we have counted, and the two we have not
| Building | Units | Where | Software |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Rambler (was The Atrii) | 197 | Denver, CO | RealPage |
| 4 Mile Apartments | 60 | Glendale, CO | RealPage |
| Infinity Park Apartments | 60 | Glendale, CO | RealPage |
| The Tiffany Apartments | 31 | Denver, CO | AppFolio |
| Kelsey Hill Apartments | 26 | Denver, CO | AppFolio |
| Adamson Apartments | 17 | Denver, CO | AppFolio |
| Single-family homes | — | Denver, CO | AppFolio |
| The Gardens at Hidden Creek (sold 2021) | — | Colorado Springs, CO | RealPage |
- 3 AugKyle Perlmutter introduced Katie Abrams to Sean after meeting her at the pool. Katie replied the same afternoon: eager to learn more, named Nick Lazzara as her partner who owns and runs the management company, offered four meeting times and added Nick to the thread herself.
- 4 AugNick's only words so far, and they were warm: “we are excited to see what you have cooking.” The meeting was set for Thursday morning.
- 6 AugIntro call — Nick, Katie and Sean. We asked what hurts. Nick's answer was owner visibility, not on-site staffing: he wants to be told when an eviction filing is missed, when a tenant has been ignored, when a payment plan breaks. He builds his own reports by hand out of six-plus RealPage pulls. He runs LiaPro alongside Knock today and called it sufficient, not great. He said there is no capacity to pilot now — revenue is down about 20% — and named October or November, when leasing volume drops, as the window for replacing Knock.
- 6 AugWe closed the loop that evening and set the terms of the pause ourselves: thanked them, singled out the risk-and-exception discussion as the most useful part, acknowledged Nick's bandwidth, and committed to reconnect in October with more of the product to show. No reply since — which is the plan, not a stall.
Preview the prompt
Help me prepare for the October call with KAGE / Urban Phenix of Glendale, CO.
WHAT WE KNOW
- 391 units verified across six apartment buildings, all within about six miles of the Glendale office, plus a scattered single-family rental program of unknown size.
- Two property-management systems at once, on purpose: RealPage on the three larger buildings, AppFolio on the three historic walk-ups and the houses.
- Their biggest building, 197 units, was bought in December 2024, renamed, and is showing 21 vacancies.
- Nick Lazzara owns and runs the management company and is the person who decides.
- On the 6 August call he asked for risk and exception alerting for regional managers, not on-site labour savings, and named October or November as the window.
WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW
- How many single-family homes they run.
- Whether the AppFolio side has to be in the same pilot.
- Whether they manage for any owner outside their own sponsor group.
WHO I AM
I am Sean Perlmutter, co-founder of PropFlow, an agentic AI platform for multifamily
property operations. I also run acquisitions and development at a family real estate
company, so I am an operator writing to other operators — not a salesperson working a list.
WHAT I WANT FROM YOU
1. Five questions for Nick Lazzara that only make sense for this company.
2. The three objections most likely to come back, and a one-line answer to each.
3. The best public sources to check anything above that we are unsure of.
4. What a company like this usually gets wrong as it grows.
One page. No filler, no flattery.The full research brief
The written brief behind the three lines above: what the two companies are, who each named person is and how we verified them, the building-by-building count, the software split, and the questions to ask in October.