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Agent Profile: Homesmart Property Management Group by Charlotte Norman


by Charlotte Norman, Communications Coordinator - Rockend

interviewing Jamie Hyndman & Peta Warrior Homesmart Property Management Group

Putting together the right team of professionals to look after your business and properties can be extremely challenging. But that isn’t a big deal if you can identify and apply the right form of technology.

This is the reality that dawned on Jamie Hyndman, the co-founder of the Yellow Brick Road Wealth Management in Rosanna, a few kilometres north-east of Melbourne's Central Business District.

Hyndman and his business partner co-founded Homesmart Property Management in 2009 to work alongside their wealth management business. A lot of work went on at the backend of their office and they needed professionals to help them out. But as he puts it, “That wasn’t happening so we figured, let’s do it ourselves.”

The growth of a business comes with its share of challenges. Jamie Hyndman’s property management business has kept increasing in size and complexity. He, alongside his associates and top staff, find themselves always on the go.

Peta Warrior, the Group’s business manager describes the business model as “…based within the office and on the road - throughout Victoria.”

That means spending quite a substantial amount of time away from the office. And to keep the business running. “We use iPads and phones…mostly iPads to operate remotely on the road for every inspection, reports and contact details,” explains Peta Warrior.

Not to say that the office remains closed during their time on the road. There are two property managers and reception staff who ensure the office remains open and operational at all times.

The team has however found that cloud based property management technology aided their business goals.

Jamie Hyndman says they previously had to be in the office to be able to pull down the data they wanted to save.

“PropertyTree was probably the missing link in the property management business that we started,” he observes, adding that the software enables them to pull out whatever data they need.

Peta Warrior says that they had used a different solution from a different company in the past. She also adds that they have used other Rockend products but she finds “PropertyTree probably the most easy and effective one I’ve ever used.”

Why did they chose a cloud based solution? Mobility and accessibility of information go hand in hand when it comes to the property business.

We could perhaps say no one understands better than Jamie Hyndman. He explains his reason behind choosing PropertyTree by saying he needed to be able to pull out the data on the business from wherever he was.

“Cloud computing is where the world is headed so we needed to jump on that,” he says. “Rockend already being in the industry…made the decision pretty easy.”

The cloud based software is proving increasingly handy to both the business and its customers.

“It has made many of our processes much more streamlined,” says Peta Warrior. She adds that being able to access the service remotely makes it “… just much more time effective.”

Hyndman on his part is particularly happy with the reporting component of the software. “Our business has benefitted from the reporting side of things,” he says, adding that, “There’s also the reliability side of it…which makes a difference.”

The business can run on a 24/7 basis. The team is glad that they are able to have management tasks completed right there and then instead of having to travel back into the office.

Peta Warrior finds the software’s best feature to be its cloud-based nature. “We can work from home, work from the road."

She also echoes Hyndman’s satisfaction with PropertyTree’s reliability by saying the solution is not only quick, rather, the response from its support team “…is usually within a number of hours at the most.”

Jamie Hyndman points out the support factor as a major problem they had with the previous provider - “…having to wait for 24 hours for a response - uh, it kills business.”

Peta Warrior has offered us her own precise way of describing PropertyTree in three words: “Efficient, simple and time– effective.”

 


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