About Gutschmidt Properties

“Anyone can rent you a roof over your head but we want to do more than that for people who want more than that. We want to rent you an eco-friendly roof over your head, we want to rent you a socially conscious roof over your head.” – Eric

Our Values

Community

We are part of a community and our properties exist in their own neighborhoods. We want our properties and our tenants to be positive parts of community.

Human dignity

We believe in respect and human dignity. It's not just illegal to discriminate based on race, age, sex and sexual orientation, it’s downright shitty.

Environment

We try and reuse and reclaim materials when possible. We believe in using energy efficient appliances and fixtures. Insulating the properties to make them as environmentally friendly as possible. Our business may be creating homes, but we don’t ever want to lose sight of the one home that matters.

Karma

We believe that if we endeavor to do right by our tenants, neighbors, employees, and contractors then they will do right by us. If we respect the people making our houses homes then they will respect us too.

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Our Team

Eric, Owner

Raised in Mount Vernon. Been remodeling homes since 2009. Went to Iowa, can still play Mary Had a Little Lamb on my recorder from middle school.

Sandy, Property Manager

Cedar Rapids transplant. ¾-time Mom. Grew up with a family in the trades. Waitressing since the dawn of time has made her a little bit sweet, a little bit sarcastic, and a lotta bit efficient.

Tammy, Operations Manager

Born and raised in Cedar Rapids. 25 years of painting and management experience. Went as wonder woman for halloween, never took the costume off.

Tim, Lead Maintenance

Born and raised in Fairfax. One of the Clark Brothers. If he won the lotto he'd hit the road and follow Phish on tour.

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Our Properties are Eco-Friendly

“It would be awesome to convert all of our properties to being 100% off the grid, but unfortunately that is still to expensive. But we do believe that it is worthwhile to try and make things better. Make our properties better. Make the world better.” – Tim

Lower Utilities

There are a lot of reasons to make homes more eco friendly. It’s better for the environment, it’s better for the resale value of the house and it lowers utility bills for the tenants.

Added Insulation

We are constantly looking for win win situations like this. In 2015 we started using blown in insulation in all unfinished attics.

LED Lights

We use 100% LED light bulbs in all of our properties. LED bulbs are cheaper to operate and last longer than conventional bulbs. This lowers energy consumption and electric bills and LED light bulbs also last considerably longer than incandescents and CFLs so it’s less likely that they’ll need to be changed between tenants.

Spray Foam Insulation

The next big improvement is closed cell spray foam insulation for our new remodel basements. This eliminates all drafts in the band joists of the basements and helps the limestone walls lost considerably less heat in the winters.

Solar

In 2019-2020 I would love love LOVE to start putting solar panels on the roofs. *Fingers crossed that I can convince the bank to finance this!

Nest Thermostats

We have installed Nest thermostats in all of our properties. Nest thermostats are programmable, link to wifi so that they can be controlled from your phone or desktop and have a motion sensor so that they can go into Eco Mode when they sense that you are away. Sandy, Tim and I installed them in our homes and have been saving an average of $50/month on our utilities. Plus, new high efficient furnaces are cheaper to operate and require less maintenance than older less efficient models.