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Ben White, The Future of property management is online


Ben White

He might have been brought up in real estate royalty, but it took Ben White spending time away from the industry to realise he wanted to be involved in the family business – and where he could improve it.

In a bid to reinvigorate property management and make it more attractive to a younger generation, Mr White launched online platform apmasphere. This system redefines property management by providing a hub for software, professional development, management tools, communication via forums and much more. There is even an iPhone app. "The apmasphere community started about two years ago and is a movement for people to re-think the property management industry,” Mr White said.

The community currently has more than 2500 members, which provides for active forum discussions. While apmasphere today is community based and driven it will soon transform into an online platform for the industry.

Changing property management forever

The platform’s About page asks why property management systems and processes haven’t really changed since “the days when collecting rent over the counter was our number one task?” and has set about addressing the answer through providing better service with the apmasphere model. While the system is used by Ray White agencies, apmasphere is a stand-alone platform and has been embraced by agencies outside the Ray White network. The platform is something Mr White is developing to benefit the entire industry after conversations with other family members about where property management was headed. “It’s such a big industry. Landlords want more service - it’s going to have to evolve. We knew that we wanted to play a role in doing that,” he said.

And when he sat down to think about that role, Mr White saw he had the solution, starting with defining a job description. “One of the worst things about property management is that it’s called property management and my view is it’s not. You manage a property, sure, but you’re really managing relationships. You’re managing landlords, you’re managing tenants,” he said, adding that the day he realised what the problem was, was the day he got involved in redefining property management.

“I remember it distinctly; it was one of those life-changing moments. I went home that night, couldn’t sleep, stayed up, went down and started writing on butcher’s paper and apmasphere was born on a piece of paper about five years ago.”

Creating solutions from the outside

Looking at property management with a fresh set of eyes, Mr White said he rejected the idea that property management should be corporatised. Instead he looked at the balance between the thriving business it should be and having the right people running it. A good property management department has the potential to make a lot of money for the agency, but also provides the all-important pipeline of future sales.

Many principals have a sales, not property management background making property management the poorer cousin in the mix. “You walk into most real estate businesses and you can pick the property managers and the sales guys because the property managers are out somewhere between the toilet and the kitchen and they’re just put in a corner and left to fend for themselves,” Mr White lamented, saying many thought property management wasn’t a career, when it could be a great opportunity. “Property managers are ambitious and are as excited about the industry as any sales person. They want to be trained, they want to be led and, in many cases, they want to be leaders,’ he added.

To help make the decision about how to build the apmasphere platform, Mr White said he and his team spoke with many landlords about their needs and discovered it wasn’t all about fees like many thought; it was about service. He said many landlords didn’t even know the fees they were currently paying, so it was not about going with the cheapest option. “Imagine going on holidays and walking down the street with restaurants saying, we’re cheap, we’re really cheap for hotels - come to us, we’re the cheapest. One of the greatest misconceptions in this industry is that landlords are actually looking for something cheap. It’s just not true. [Their property is] the most important asset they own; it’s more money than their superannuation fund,” Mr White said.

Building for the future

Knowing up and coming property managers will come from Generation Y, the apmasphere platform has been built on a Google platform to make it recognisable and easy to engage with. Those familiar with Google’s suite of services, such as email, chat, documents, calendar and video, will take to it intuitively. As apmasphere is a cloud-based platform, property managers can log in from anywhere and chat, find out industry news and use the Field Agent application for routine inspections. They can even play the community site’s property management game in their down time! “I’d love to have all the property managers in the industry on the site debating and being fiercely argumentative about what’s the best way to do something,” Mr White laughed.

Information stored in the apmasphere platform is shared across the services so, for example, when a property manager creates a receipt, the platform produces a document, puts it in a document queue and then stores it. Once stored, the documents can be shared with the property management team, the landlord, tenant and tradespeople so everyone is up to speed.

Personalised Portals

Using the technology available to build an open platform, apmasphere enables property managers to keep up to date within their own team, but also has capabilities for landlords to log in and check up on their property themselves via their own portal. They will be able to view inspections, correspondence, property photos, maintenance updates and rent payments, as well as set up an SMS when the tenant pays rent – or doesn’t, which is something that might be useful to know when the mortgage payment is due to come out. Imagine the confidence this would instil in clients.

“They want to know what’s happening to their property, they want to trust the person and have some visibility into it,” Mr White said, adding the concept behind the platform was about, “being confident enough as an industry to say we’re happy to be viewed; we’re happy to be open because we believe we’re offering a valuable service”.

“If you go to a landlord and say look, we’re going to charge 10 per cent management fees but this is the value you’re going to get: you’re going to be able to see what’s going on; we are so confident, you can log in and see it whenever you want to; I guarantee you will get photographs of every routine inspection; you can be communicated with according to your profile.

“I believe a ten per cent fee card is achievable. When you start putting 10 per cent through your profit and loss, it radically transforms the profitability of a business from being something marginal into something that actually generates some cash,” Mr White said.

The default system has been based on the concept of cleared and available funds, like online banking, and set up so the landlord decides when they receive their money. It was done this way to eliminate the headaches associated with end of month activity. apmasphere factors in upcoming bills, like water and ongoing repairs, so everything is scheduled in advance and available funds can be projected. “We'll be able to say to the landlord there’s $227 available for disbursement, do you want it? And I’ve never met someone who’s said no,” he said.

“The idea of it being "live" is something a lot of other industries do. You go online and pay a bill and you see it being paid instantly. It comes out of your money straight away. There’s no reason why we can’t do this as an industry at all,” Mr White explained.

Tenants will also be able to log on to their own portal and initiate a repair request, upload photos and see whether the repair has been accepted or rejected. All of this can be done quickly, without the to-ing and fro-ing of phone calls and messages.

Automation Frees up communication

The key to what apmasphere can do is all in the automation of regular tasks through systems. The platform is loaded with tenancy legislation for each state and territory and will prompt users on when to issue lease terminations, for instance. This will free up property managers to do the person-to-person work like communicating with their clients and problem solving.

“I believe that the future of a property manager is not going to be 'do you know what a certain notice is'; the future is going to be can you actually solve a problem? Can you pick up a phone? Are you the type of person that can diagnose an issue, triage it and deal with the person who’s emotional when there’s a conflict?”

This will lead to happier clients because they can see the paperwork is done, but they also know any problems have been solved in a professional way. It is not about which property manager knows the Act inside out, but who can communicate with the parties and create a solution. Instead of being driven by legislation, the culture of property management will change and attract more leaders, Mr White predicts.

“We’re going to open up the industry to a different group of people. They’re going to work in a place where there’s a career, where they progress, where they get to interact with people they enjoy,” he said, adding the culture change started with apmasphere’s technology-driven platform.

“You need the technology in place to solve the technical. Then we need to think of a way to develop the right leadership to develop the right culture.”

New starters in property management can join the apmasphere community for essential training before they even start in the role. They can learn about the industry and its requirements, as well as practical topics like the difference between a routine and an outgoing inspection, how to do both, collecting and receipting money, and how bonds work, with the platform’s video and iPhone training modules.

“What I’d love to see in future is someone who wants to be in property management and hears about a job so they get on to the apmasphere community site, learn a bit about the industry, watch the videos, play with the application and learn all about it. On day one when they walk into a business, they know the industry, they know what they’re going to do; they’re up and running,” Mr White said.

For more information about the online platform or to join the community visit www.apmasphere.com

 


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Ben White