Property managers level up at Connect

Property management was not forgotten at this year’s Ray White Connect conference which attracted close to 3,000 attendees from the network.

The Connect 2022 conference marked the 120-year anniversary of the Ray White Group with record numbers descending on the Gold Coast for the two day function.

Property managers from across Australia and New Zealand attended dedicated property management sessions during the day to improve their skills, keep up to date with the latest technology and grow their own networks.

Ray White Property Management CEO Emily Sim (pictured above) kicked off the first breakout session looking at renting as the future. In the age of customer engagement where retention is the new growth and loyalty delivers a lifetime of value, what are the success metrics to break the property management mould? The industry is seeking answers for high demand, affordability and properties of the future. Ms Sim said today, property management is in phase two of its evolution and heading into phase three.

“Consumer priorities have changed. Home ownership is on the decline and the market hangover of the last two years is impacting our everyday life,” Ms Sim said.

“First let's take a look at housing in Australia. I think having a view on occupancy and how Australians are occupying homes is really relevant to what I wanted to talk to you about.

“I think if you take occupancy of homes and you combine it with consumer priorities, it offers a really interesting opportunity and that's pretty much the discoveries of phase three.”

She noted that home ownership is declining across the world which is mirrored in Australia. Only 63 per cent of Australians owning their own home today versus 71 per cent in the 1970’s.

“Homeownership is on a decline. It's becoming less easy to own a home and that's a worldwide problem,” she said.

“There's a declining trend for people owning their homes without a mortgage. Our data is starting to show you that something’s changing with people in homeownership.”

She asked what that means for property management. One new feature of the property management space was the idea of build-to-rent.

“Build-to-rent is a residential development in which all apartments are owned by the developer, often a managed investment trust which are permanently leased to tenants,” she said.

“This is coming to Australia, it already has planning approval. Brisbane and Melbourne are earmarked to go first and there is certainly demand.

“It’s just another way tenants will be renting in Australia in the future.”

In the second breakout session Ben White (pictured above), founder of property management platform Ailo, which has the largest property management dataset in Australia, took a deep dive into the lessons of the past two years from property managers.

He looked at where tenants and investors see value and explained what they don't understand about the property management industry. And how new data can give property managers a vision for how a property management business can become more efficient in their service delivery and in turn achieve superior outcomes for themselves and their clients.

“A big thing for us is growth, it’s been fun using new language and ideas to continue growing,” Mr White said.

“Our communication has been a big part of how we help people know what’s going on. One of the things we found exciting with these changes was that people who spent all their time doing trust accounting were more focused on helping the business improve.

“It creates a happy and thriving team. You need to think about how you can meet customers' needs and deliver on that.

“My message is that to get to phase three, it requires true innovation and true innovation is where everyone wins.”

Ray White's Connect 2022 Conference was held at the Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre from August 8 to the 9th.