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PM Collective - The ART of property management
The ART of property management with Ashleigh Goodchild is a leading platform supporting collaboration not competition through an online community and events throughout the year with one purpose: to create happier property managers. She creates connections for property managers looking to create momentum in their careers and personal life. Join Ashleigh and her guests as they discuss challenges, struggles, mental health, mindset and give advice to property managers and anyone in the industry. To get the support in your property management career, join our PM Collective Facebook and Instagram community.
PM Collective - The ART of property management
Hidden Risks in Property Maintenance
Jason from TAPI joins us to discuss how modern maintenance systems are transforming property management and helping property managers fall back in love with maintenance processes. We explore the inefficiencies of traditional maintenance workflows and how technology can eliminate the frustrating guesswork and communication breakdowns that plague property managers.
• Traditional maintenance processes involve multiple communication points that waste valuable time
• Documentation is critical – the number one reason insurance claims get rejected is lack of maintenance notes
• Visibility of maintenance jobs helps both property managers and tenants track progress and resolution
• System automation creates consistency regardless of property manager experience levels
• Detailed maintenance records provide accountability for all parties when mistakes happen
• The Property Maintenance Index provides quarterly data on common maintenance issues and costs by state
• Offshore team members can effectively manage maintenance when given proper responsibility and tools
• Implementing new technology requires full team commitment rather than partial adoption
• The goal is to help property managers feel in control of maintenance rather than overwhelmed by it
Think maintenance, think TAPI. Contact us for a demo to see how our system can transform your maintenance processes and give your property managers valuable time back in their day.
PM COLLECTIVE - GUIDE AND SHAPE AN ENJOYABLE FUTURE
We believe in making industry-leading education and support accessible to everyone. Our community is packed with free resources, expert insights, and innovative training designed to help business owners, property managers, and BDMs thrive.
This podcast is sponsored by PropertyMe.
Australia's #1 Property Management Software. www.propertyme.com.au
This podcast is kindly sponsored by The Associates Co.
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This morning's guest is how would I describe him? Someone that everyone knows, and I don't know whether we've done a podcast, so it's a first for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we haven't.
Speaker 1:I don't think we have, but it's the lovely Jason from TAPI. Welcome Jason.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks for having us. I feel like this is a long time coming. Like you said, I feel like this is something that was meant to happen a little while ago and hasn't, so now we're finally together doing this. Get excited, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And it's perfect timing because you know that we've been doing the education series with regards to maintenance and it makes sense that if we're talking about maintenance we talk about tarpie. It just is like two peas in a pod 100%, absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's what we want. When you think maintenance, think tarpie, don't get upset. We want everybody to fall back in love with the maintenance process, and that's our goal. So think maintenance, think tarpie.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. We've done the previous recordings with Westall's Trades that do air con. We've done the previous um recordings with um a with west australia that do aircon, we've done it with the plumbing and we're just sort of working our free um, our way through the trades and it's been really, really great, because I find that maintenance is something that property managers don't necessarily get trained on formally and it's like it's such a big part of our role and we need to act with confidence. We need to know when to troubleshoot with a tenant so that we're saving the rents money. We need to also have confidence when we go to the owners with maintenance and maybe suggested price. You know suggested price points and budgets and things like that. So that's the purpose behind it and I mean, of course, it makes it a lot easier when we have got a maintenance system in place.
Speaker 1:Now, while today is not necessarily to talk about the benefits of TARP, because we actually all know the benefits of TARP, I want to talk a little bit about a traditional property manager's process with house maintenance. If they didn't have tarpe to start off with, we'll talk about that. So what positions do you have? Are you still going out to all the offices. To talk about tarpe. Tell me a bit about what you do on a day-to-day as your role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I mean I'm based in Melbourne, the business or head office is based in Brisbane. You know we've got BDMs in New South Wales and in Queensland as well, so you know when we can head out to an office we will. A lot of people right now are really kind of gravitating towards the Zoom call as well, and it's because you know they'll have PMs that are working remotely, depending on where it is to. You know you and I spoke about like regional offices. It's amazing how many regional offices I've signed up where you know you'll have two or three PMs sitting in the office, one sitting at home, one's working somewhere else remotely for this other area over here, and so you know the Zoom seems to be the best way to go because everybody can jump on, no matter where they are, and the whole idea for really showing everybody Tarpy is yes, we've got this amazing platform that can help you out.
Speaker 2:But we really do need to understand, like you said, we need to understand our new run maintenance now. We need to understand what your current process is like and we need to make sure that when we do come in, I mean there's always going to be the benefits to using tarpy and we're always going to come in and blow everybody's mind with automation and streamlining the process and all the rest of that. But it's great to get an understanding as to how they do it so you can relate back to it as you're going through, so it's not so much of a culture shock. I guess you can say when they are looking at it to say, wow, well, I'm doing it on this end of the spectrum. You guys are coming in on this end of the spectrum.
Speaker 2:It's really just educating them to say, hey, maintenance is always going to be there, but it no longer has to be this process that is jump in, spend hours every week doing it, you know, and part of that time is just looking for things, and it doesn't have to be that anymore. So it's always good to get an understanding as to how they're doing it, because there's really no standard way to do it. I don't think I've spoken to officers who all come out and say, yeah, it's what we always do, it's what all of us always do. It's this, this, this, this and this. It's always different and it's always good to get that understanding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean traditionally, like I mean, I don't know, tell me if this is still what some people do. Do they call for maintenance from a client tenant? They say, yep, thanks for calling about that blocked toilet, I'll get that sorted. Hang up, Call the owner or email the owner. Hey, you've got a blocked toilet. Yep, go ahead and then send a work order. I mean, is that sort of like the basics of what some people would still be doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So what I've found is like a standard process now is you know, we'll get a call, an email, a text, whatever it be saying, hey, I've got a leaking tap. Standard process is then a PM has to spend their time chasing up the tenant for however long it takes to say, oh, which tap is it? How much water is leaking? Is it leaking into the cupboard or into the basin? So doing all that troubleshooting and just actually gathering that information initially, that back and forth is a huge time waster, but it's important. You need to have all the information. Now. Once you've got that information general, next step is you're going to call the owner and ask the owner for approval. The owner's going to ask you the same 50 questions you just asked that tenant. So you're going to have to spend your time on the phone saying, yes, it is this. Yes, they did check this. Yes, it is coming out under here. No, they didn't do this. Oh, I didn't ask them. If they did that, I'll get back to them and I'll come back to you.
Speaker 2:So, again, burning into more time before you even start the process of sending out a trade, then you send out your work order to your trade, if you are in fact just using a trade without getting quotes. If you are getting quotes, that's another step to the process where you send out two or three emails and have to monitor and kind of see how long it takes for those to come in, and if they don't, you have to set yourself tasks and reminders to follow up the ones that haven't sent it in, and so again chewing more into that process. Then the trade is successful. You send out the successful trade, go about your process of letting the other trades know they've been unsuccessful, and a lot of the time we find one or two trades might get missed in that process, which is unfortunate. And then the trade starts the process.
Speaker 2:And then it is that back and forth hey, we've called the tenant, tenant didn't answer. When was that? It was a week ago, okay, so I've sat on it for a week and I didn't know that you'd called the tenant and not booked it in. It's kind of just that, not guessing, but I'm waiting for somebody to call me so I can react to what the next step is. And a really big benefit of TAPI is kind of turning that reactiveness into proactiveness and not having to go through that, because even the step on, and you would understand this. This is probably one of the biggest complaints we get in a standard maintenance process is, yeah, the work gets done and everything's great, but I then have to wait six months for an invoice to come in. And then, the minute the invoice comes in, I want to be paid in two days and it's like oh, it just sounds frustrating, like the 980 steps you just spoke through in your standard maintenance process.
Speaker 1:Shouldn't be the case no, I and I'm going to share some, lots of stories today because, as you were going through that process, I was like, oh my god, yes yes yes, um, and and it reminded me of um last week and I had this conversation with someone and it wasn't actually a maintenance issue, but it was playing charades.
Speaker 1:It was playing charades with a client, and that's how sometimes maintenance feels. And so this lady had called up this neighbour and she said I'm calling about your tenant. There's an odour coming from the property, and I haven't heard the word odor for a long time. So in my mind I'm thinking what sort of animal is that? And then it's like odor. And she goes you know a smell. I was like, oh, okay, I said, what sort of smell is it? She goes well, I don't know. That's why I'm calling, why I'm calling. I was like, okay, is it a gas smell? Is it a drug smell? Is it a? Um, is it a smoke smell? Is it a? You know, I'll start going through all the different types of smells you can have. And then she goes to me and I'm not bullshitting you with this story she goes number two. And then I was like what was number two?
Speaker 2:what was number?
Speaker 1:two, I rattled off 38 of them.
Speaker 1:What are you talking about? That's all right. And she was referring to the drug smell. So then, okay, so then we went through that and I'm someone who doesn't take drugs so I actually don't really know all the drug smells that you can have, so I'm in like unknocked territory. So we're trying to. It literally was like charades trying to play this game game of what the smell was.
Speaker 1:Um, and sometimes that happens with maintenance and I did have it. I remember actually last week it was a shitty week last week there's another tenant caught up to say about a some mold in a ceiling, and it was the same thing I. He called so he hadn't put it through the system. Um, first up I said to him have you put this through? And then he goes no, I haven't put it through the maintenance system because my NBNs were not working. And I was like what's that got to do with logging it? Don't you have like a phone that has connection, absolutely? And then he was like, well, yeah, but then he came up with another excuse, but it was about mold, and then it was going down the lines of okay, is that?
Speaker 1:I need to sort of see a photo. I need to understand it because I need to know if it's ventilation, could it be a roof leak? You know what? What's your observation with it? Did it start off as a small circle? And then he's like yes, it started off with small circle, beautiful, okay. So that means I need to arrange this first and it was just a whole thing. You know, going through so like I a bit of charades, and that's where we absorb so much time.
Speaker 1:But it's not also about the time taken to do it, it's about the experience of a property manager who is handling that one, to know what questions to ask, what to do next, and that's sort of where I think programs you know programs like Tapio are very good because they allow someone with no experience or minimal experience to still look like an expert while they're training.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Exactly. And on top of that too, you know the amount of times we've had clients say you know those chats that come through. So from the chat box, those chats that come through, will actually highlight to somebody with not an awful lot of experience oh, that's actually a really great question to ask. I wonder why they asked that question. Oh, but it doesn't matter, because we've got all the information we need. So you know, it's in no way shape or form is typing training property managers, but it's good for a new property manager to read through that and say, oh, wow, that's really. Oh, that's a lot of information, oh, that's great. And then it gets ingrained where it's like okay.
Speaker 2:So I'm not just asking which tap it is. I need to get as much information as possible so you don't run the risk of sending out the wrong trade or approving work that might not be needing to be done. At the end of the day, the last thing we want to do when it comes to running maintenance, and probably the biggest thing that owners are going to complain about, is the fact that they have to spend any money, and God forbid they spend any more than they needed to. And that's where that comes from, and that's what I love about it is the fact that they can read through the workflow and go oh, that was actually a really good question. Yeah, I should ask that next time somebody calls me. So that's what it's about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we, oh, I've got so many stories to share. I'm just trying to bring them into it because I just feel like the reason I want to share them is because I know there's people out there that have had the same problems.
Speaker 1:And one reason why we originally came over you know, a while ago now to you guys was a situation where we had regular pool maintenance happening on a property and what happened was it was just a monthly pool clean and probably about three or four months later we got a call to say the pool was green.
Speaker 1:And I was like that's weird, because there was regular pool maintenance happening on this and then when I went back through the records, there were no pool invoices that came through. Now, as a property manager, you might have regular services happening on some of your properties, but you're not going to know or remember each time. Oh, did I receive invoices for the pool clean? And I know this sounds really silly, but when we had then the price to get the pool clean, which was like 450 in my mind, I was like, okay, well, the owner hasn't paid for the last three months, so it's about the same. When, interesting enough, the owner was not happy because we had not been proactive in monitoring that it wasn't about the money, even though I said, yeah, I'm still costing you the same, they were like, well, no, that's not the issue. I've had a pool that hasn't had a monthly service and blah blah. Three months.
Speaker 1:That is my issue, and it was a really good reality check because I was like, well, if we had a system like TAPI, where that was a recurring thing, we would notice when that bill hadn't been received.
Speaker 2:It would have solved the problem Exactly right. And you've kind of hit the nail on the head there which is probably one of, I would say, the biggest issues that I would find in a standard maintenance process, and that's the fact that that visibility can be incredibly murky at times, like you know exactly what you've just said there. With the pool cleaning, you know, they know that every month it goes out and every month you would assume that the invoice would come in and it would be approved and it would just be paid and all the rest of that and the fact that you can't just see whether it's been done or see that it hasn't, or see that the invoice has come in but hasn't been paid, and get that reassurance that it was in fact done. Having to go looking for it is a really hard part of the day because we all know property managers, a million things come in every five minutes and of that, 90% of them are urgent and need to be done right now.
Speaker 2:So something like a reoccurring pool maintenance clean might fall to the bottom of that list, because there's 10 other really important things that have come in that you need to action and you're human. You're going to forget things Okay, and at no point are you going to stop. You know house is burning down. You're not going to stop in the middle of that and go. Let me just make that note for that pool cleaning job, to make sure I follow up on that tomorrow. It just doesn't happen and it's human error and it happens in every part of life, but it is that visibility piece. You're going to miss things and that's the unfortunate thing and, like you said, not a big deal, but the owner wasn't too happy at the fact that I trusted you to do this and you dropped the ball and you didn't do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and I'm glad you mentioned the visibility, because that's another thing that was incredibly important to me is to be able to see exactly where everyone's at. And so when I had the call, like this one with that moldy ceiling, what I had said to him was that you haven't used our system that you've been told to use. What I had said to him was that you haven't used our system that you've been told to use and therefore it's really hard for me to actually help you because there's no trail. And so when the and it's the same thing with you know the team, obviously my team just they use it. They would not use it.
Speaker 1:But for me it's about I say to my team for me to be able to help you in situations, I need to have that visibility and I need to see that absolutely. And if you're not using the system this goes for any systems that you use if you're not using the system correctly, I can't do the best to have your back. So we had spot on. We had one where I'm. Actually it definitely worked to um the owner's advantage in a situation where we had two tree quotes come through for pruning. One was about $1,800 and one was for $800. So big difference.
Speaker 2:Wow, huge difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when we sent through the quotes to the owner, the owner had it was funny he had actually approved the expensive one, but in the notes he had sort of referred to that cheaper one and as an office we had accidentally gone and not done correctly. We have gone and sent the work order and accrued approval to the expensive option that's got done. Owner's got the bill what the hell. The expensive option that's got done. Owner's got the bill what the hell? Um, and while it was something that we were responsible for and we fixed the problem and we we got it sorted. We reimbursed in the difference, um, which was the right thing for us to do.
Speaker 1:What was actually more helpful was that I could actually see exactly what had happened and taken proper accountability for that, because I could see, see the issue, as opposed to another situation where you know you might have phoned the owner and there's nothing trackable to be able to help, and then it's one person's word against another. So, even though it was our fault, at least I was confident saying yep, absolutely, solve the problem quickly. I can see exactly what's happened here. That's exactly and it could work. The yep, absolutely solve the problem quickly. I can see exactly what's happened here Exactly, and it could work the other way where it's the owner's fault as well, but this one was absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:That's important.
Speaker 2:But that is one of the. So I say I was lucky enough to. I onboarded an office and they wanted me to go in. I spent a whole day with this office because they wanted to run me through everything they did in their maintenance process, free TAPI, and then they wanted me to come in and show them how TAPI would solve their three biggest issues and I had assigned I think it was seven hours, like the whole day. She wanted me there for the whole day, so I put aside the whole day, went down and it took six hours for them to run through how they run through their maintenance process and at no point did they mention taking thorough notes on anything, and that terrifies me.
Speaker 2:I was lucky enough to be at an REIV event where they had an insurance company speaking and the insurance company openly said that the number one reason why agency insurance claims get knocked back is lack of notes, in particular to maintenance, and that's terrifying.
Speaker 2:So that's the reason why we have that activity tracker which is what you're talking about that automatically logs everything, because, again, it's like doing admin at the end of the day, isn't it like? You get to the end of the day and you're like, oh, I have 15 conversations today and I've got handwritten notes here and I now have to backtrack and go into other jobs and type in the time and whatever and all the rest of the stuff that I've done and things will get missed and a lot of the time that won't be overly thorough. So in that situation luckily like for the owner too know, the owner has approved one but made very clear notes that they wanted the $800 one. In doing that, like that is a safeguard for the owner and that's something that you can quickly refer to in the job as opposed to having to go hunting for it Because again, that visibility piece comes into it, doesn't it? So as long as everything is there, so it's easy to find everybody's covered in those moments of the pinch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know going through we were just talking about. You know the process and the phones and this and that. So not only is that taking time, can you imagine if that property manager is going on holidays or sick, and then can you even imagine what a nightmare that would be Like? What are people doing? What's wrong with you?
Speaker 2:Well, you would lose your mind. I remember I mean I was a property manager a very long time ago, like a long we're talking free tarp the carbon paper and the photos with the SD card and stuff and I remember that. I remember inheriting a it was a portfolio and you know, notes were great. But then that one thing comes up at some point when you might have to go to tribunal and you end up spending an entire day looking for something, whether it's an email, whatever it was, and it is such just a horrible use of time when I mean, don't get me wrong, I can find everything. You can still keep all of your notes in certain areas and be quite thorough with them, but it's. Where are the notes being kept? Are they here? Are they here? Is it in an email? Was it kept in a note? Was the note downloaded and added here? And blah, blah, blah. We don't need that confusion in property management with everything that PMs have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, like maintenance should be nice and clean. That's what it should be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Some feedback for you. We have a temp person at the moment covering for some annual leave and she sold her business years and years ago, before you know any great fabulous programs were out, and so she consults at a lot, lot of offices, but she's in ours at the moment. It's the first time she's actually used Huffington and she's like my god and her um, yeah, her master, by just walking in day one property manager leave for four weeks. She comes in and she's like this is so much easier, like she's enjoyed it so much and it's really nice to hear that we've made a temp's life easier as well.
Speaker 2:But the thing is, though, temps are a real factor in most jobs at some point. So for somebody to be able to come in and what's funny is they're there temporarily right, so they're going to be there for a month, two months, three months, six months, whatever it is. It was going to take them a month to catch up on everything and get used to something and find things and find a rhythm, and then they're out in three days. Well then, that wasn't a great use of their productivity. It could have been handled so much better. So I love that feedback, because that's something we love. We love the idea of essentially plug and play, which is, once you're live and you're running your maintenance through TARP, the fact that you can have a temp jump in, or if you're off sick for two days and I have to jump into your portfolio, things can just run nice and regularly Without that stress of where is everything at, what do I have to do, what the hell does this mean? All the rest of that. So it's always good to hear that feedback.
Speaker 1:I love that yeah, now I'm going to um, use the opportunity to have a bit of a consult with you, um and ask you, because I'm not at this stage yet. But I would love to get to the stage where I have my offshore team managing the maintenance coming through um and I'm a little bit scared to introduce that right now just because maintenance does form such an important part. But then I'm sort of of the thought that sometimes, like with simple plumbing or electrical, that maybe it's something that an offshore team member could just start the process by sending it to the owner for approval. Is that happening in the industry? We've got offices doing that at the moment.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yes. So when it comes to what we do, so, when it comes to the way the workflow is run through Tarpy, everything is branded email communication. So tenants lodge their maintenance, you send it out to the owner for approval. It's branded email. They approve everything, send it through to the trade branded email. So everything is through email communication and we're seeing a huge jump in the number of people that are bringing in those offshore team members as part of their maintenance team. So, because everything is that branded email communication and the chatbot handles the request, an offshore team member could essentially run the entire process from start to finish. If it is just a clean maintenance request which is a tenant's requested, it great. Click a button, send it through to the owner for approval. Owner approves. Click a button, send it through to the trade. Offshore team members definitely can do that and we're seeing a huge jump in people bringing in those team members to help run maintenance.
Speaker 1:Okay, amazing I might.
Speaker 1:yeah, I'll send you an email to remind you, but I wouldn't mind just getting in touch with someone that's done that, just to sort of get a bit more, probably more absolutely doing it, but I would love to see how they do it, because I just think that that's really, um, really where we're heading and whether, like, we want to accept it or not to accept it, it's just the way the world is working and you're just going to have to suck it up sometimes and just take the risk I say that in inverted commas the risk and just trial it and see and you know, tweak things as you go along, but by not giving it a go in the first place is where you're Absolutely. Yeah, the problem is.
Speaker 2:And I get the hesitation because, you know, a lot of the times people will use VAs for admin. It's amazing how many officers I'll speak to and they'll say, hey, they are literally just there for admin. They handle kind of data entry and super basic stuff. And I get I won't say fear, but it is a fear of getting them to jump into maintenance because something goes wrong in maintenance and you don't know where things are at and it can cost your money and things might not get fixed and got a bit of house burned down, all the rest of that. I completely understand those risks.
Speaker 2:But the benefits and again we're going to hop back to the word visibility the benefits of using a maintenance software like Tarpi with offshore, is the fact that everything that happens in that job, every bit of information, is there for the property manager to see. So in TAPI we've got two types of agents that we list in our platform. There's property agents and job agents and the way most people are using their offshore is the property agent is always the PM. The job agent is who gets to sign that job. So if you're sick and I jump in, I'll become the job agent for a small period of time. So anything that happens on that job gets marked against me. So if I send out an email, it shows that I did it. All the rest of that, same deal for the VAs if that were the case.
Speaker 2:But what's great about that visibility piece is it takes away that fear of oh, I don't know if they've done it, I don't know if the owner's gotten back to them. You can literally, as the PM, log into Tarpy, see your own portfolio and see where everything's at at the click of a button, nice and easy. And we're not saying that you need to micromanage your VAs. I cannot stress that enough. I have one and she is phenomenal and I love everything she does in the background. It is next level. But I get that. You know everybody has that hesitation. I did too, which is I'm a little bit scared to handball this off to the side because I need to make sure it gets done.
Speaker 1:So I get it you know, I read a really great quote the other day about delegating an offshore and it was so true. And it said the people that just delegate tasks will continually have an issue, but they need to delegate responsibility. And I was like that is so true, like if you were just delegating the task but not giving that person on the other end of responsibility, you're just getting another job for yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what you're doing is you're handballing it off to somebody else that you then have to monitor, track, correct. You know, it's just yeah, and that's where that whole mentality of I can just do it myself, it's just faster if I do it myself, yeah, and that's right. That's where that responsibility and task kind of comes into play.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's where I just have to. Yeah, delegating the task doesn't scare me, but delegating responsibility does, and I guess, yeah, that's where my mind, but then I also have the brains to know that that is absolutely where we're going to get to, absolutely, it's like the confidence thing.
Speaker 2:Oh, it is, it is and you've got to take that leap, don't you? And don't get me wrong, I mean you might take that leap with an offshore staff member who's just not the right person for your kind of organization or the way you run your processes, and then you'll take a leap with another one and they will be an absolute godsend. That is just a miracle to your business. So it's taking that step and I mean, don't take your foot completely off the accelerator. Ease into no, no, ease into it, ash, like you're very similar to me. Just ease into it, like slowly watch and then comfortably feel safe, not watching anymore. Yes, that's right, that's exactly right Now.
Speaker 1:can you talk to us? And oh my gosh, I know you gave me the name of the report because I don't want to say it wrong. Can you please talk to us about the report that you bring out?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. It was funny too, because it was only 14 minutes ago, ash, but I'll have to tell the guys that we have to change the name because clearly it's not memorable enough.
Speaker 2:Hold on, I know it's got the word index in it. That's all I remember and that's all you need to know. Ash, that's right. No, so we do do. Yes.
Speaker 2:So we have a property maintenance index that we release every quarter. I say it like we've been doing it for years and years and years. We're up to our second edition that's come out, and what I love about the property maintenance index is we've got all this amazing data on jobs that have been done across the 400,000 plus properties that we manage done across the 400,000 plus properties that we manage. And what I mean by that is we know that in Q2, most years, the most common plumbing issues are this the average cost to repair those issues are this. So we've got this information to say hang on, we've got all this information where we can actually go back and do a bit of trend analysis to tell you that, hey, here's the Q2 property management index and we know that in your state over this quarter the most likely or the most common plumbing issues are these the average cost to repair or replace over the last 12 months. Is this Just that information that you need, or information PMs find really useful, kind of, again, to help you be proactive.
Speaker 2:So this is the second iteration. We released it from memory I think it was last week, last Wednesday, I think it was, was the Q2. And it has been met with wonderful like it has just been met with such wonderful feedback from the industry. So we're just going to keep doing this every quarter. It's amazing and it's a free download. You literally jump in. You can download it for your state or you can do nationwide and it's available for Australia and New Zealand. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw that it was state-specific, which was really good. I don't know whether you've got this stat in. If you do, great. If you don't, um, please try and do it. Um for the next quarter, but um is a stat which I talk about. Um for the annual investor audit training that I do, which is the average number of times a plumber, for example, would go out to a property oh, I don't think we have those numbers.
Speaker 2:I can. I can check with our team putting it together to see if we can include that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Can you check and see how easy it would be? I feel like it'd be relatively easy, because it's just really the plumbing visits, like on your portfolio, divided by the number of properties you manage, like something like that.
Speaker 2:Yes, look, I mean, when we take all these jobs into account for each state we're essentially using I guess you can say maintenance that's been lodged through TAPI, right? So we're saying, okay, so we know that in WA we have X many clients and there were 10,000 plumbing jobs and of the 10,000 plumbing jobs, the most common plumbing jobs were broken tap, blah, blah, blah. Now that does take into account the whole state. So we're talking Perth to Kalgoorlie to, you know, the Margaret River, all the rest of that. So it's all around those numbers. I mean we could probably get like a national average for those numbers, but I don't think we include them yet. But I can definitely follow that up and see if there's something we could include. Yeah, I reckon you could because I reckon it's just.
Speaker 1:I mean I say that with a simple brain, like just tell your tech people to do that.
Speaker 2:I'm the same. I'm the same. I work for a tech company. It's like sure. It's not too hard to add this feature. Come on, guys.
Speaker 1:Our devs get so upset with us. I know they get so upset I'm, and it is state specific as well. But so my plumber told me that, on average, plumbers go out to properties 1.2 times per year. And the reason why I like to talk about the number of visits is because in our annual investor audits, when I'm looking at a client's transaction history and I see that they've had a plumber go out three times already for the year, I'm generally having a conversation with them about how that, on average, that is a little bit high.
Speaker 1:We definitely don't want to see another plumbing visit in this 12-month period because to me that would be considered high in comparison to what an average would be. And so then the conversation I'm having with the client is that, hey, because you've already had a plumber go out three times, if your property manager calls and says that you need to send out a plumber again, I want you to consider getting this, this and this done at the same time because you're paying too much in call-out fees. Now, there's going to be times where what we're identifying first of all is that it's not a tenant that's spanning with maintenance. Sometimes people be annoying and send through minor maintenance.
Speaker 2:Oh, everything, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:But then sometimes it's genuine stuff and so it will be like oh my gosh, you've had three visits, you've pretty much done every single tap in the house and toilet. You might as well, with the next visit, get the rest of them done, and then it's done, hopefully. So that's sort of the conversation we're having. Or sometimes we look at situations where owners have had no maintenance and then we would say listen, because you've had no maintenance and your house does need a little bit. Now's a really great time for us to be sending out some tradies. So the conversations we have, or I have, are more around the number of visits to try and reduce the call out, and so I think that like, yeah, and I guess that's, every property manager will have their own opinion on it. My thoughts are that two visits for a plumber or an electrician or any type of trades is average and plenty for each property. And when you go over that, let's work out a bit of a proactive plan of how we're going to manage that moving forward.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you know it's great. We might not have the numbers in the index, but we do have the ability in TAPI to proactively plan that maintenance for that reason. So you know the ability to say hey, like you said. Hey, owner, you haven't done any maintenance this year. We've noted down that the tenant has raised that they have concerns with this PowerPoint, this light fitting, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:You can actually map that out and say to the owner hey, what we're going to do is in three months' time we know that we have to get, or we know that we have to get, or we know that we've replaced one of the PowerPoints because they fizzled out, or whatever it is In six months' time we're going to put together a note and maybe send somebody out to do all of the PowerPoints. Let's just get ahead of it, just because we know that if one goes, another one's going to go and another one's going to go. Let's do that so you can proactively plan it and map it out in TAPI. And in six months' time, if the owner says, hey, can we wait another two months just in case we've had something else come up? Don't have the funds, no dramas, kick it two months down the road. Again. Remind you, in two months' time, pick up that conversation, start the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And I mean this is so naughty and I'm nearly saying it with a whisper, but sometimes, like when a property manager's on holidays, and a maintenance comes through that I just don't want to deal with and it's not urgent, sometimes I just plan it for later, when they get back from holiday Is that really that?
Speaker 2:That's not the idea for the plan for later button.
Speaker 1:Just between you and I I don't do it a lot. I've done it maybe twice before and I stress, it wasn't urgent, but it was just like and I pushed it out.
Speaker 2:But yeah, no that like don't practice what I preach I'll be honest with you, when I was in property management like there would be if I knew somebody was away sick and a maintenance request came in and it was for an owner who may be difficult with me but may be amazing with the property manager I would make a note and delay it for it and, granted, it wasn't urgent, if it was just something very basic, purely because that person might have a better relationship with the owner. If I call them and say hey, we've got to do this, they'll shoot me down immediately, whereas if they called the next day and said we have to do it, they'll approve it with a heartbeat. So you know, I completely understand doing that, but yes, general rule of thumb guys, the general thumb guys.
Speaker 1:The plantelator button is not for that. Don't listen to ash. I probably should have thought before I said that, but I had good intentions no, I love it.
Speaker 2:Oh, you wouldn't be the first one yeah, no, it's good.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think that the last thing I just also want to mention is the way that we have brought it into our office, and this is probably generic. With any new software or change that you're making in your team, we obviously people and businesses get concerned. You've got like people that have been in their job role for 30 years, others that have only got you know 30 days experience, and bringing in systems can always be daunting. When you've got a team, how are you going to make it exciting for everyone? I mean, you guys bring the excitement anyway, but I remember so back in the day it was Taylor that did ours and I did what we called a shit sandwich. So basically, my team just eye roll or they used to eye roll every time I'd bring something new, new change, new process, new product into the business. I was like I didn't want them to do it with this one because I was like no, this is like game changer.
Speaker 1:So I set up an event for half a day outside of the office and we went to a place called mind body studio and they've got like a conference room and so I brought in a speaker which was a money mindset speaker, which was just on budgeting and personal finance and getting you know a healthy money mindset. And then I put in Taylor to do. You know it wasn't the shit. When I say the shit, I mean bringing technology where there's gonna be eye rolls. I brought him in and he did his little session and then we finished it off with, like massage, cryotherapy, you know all of that good stuff. So they quickly sort of forgot what just happened, you know. And then the next day Taylor was in our office for the whole day and he just sat there because that was when we were launching and something I'm very grateful for. I said to Taylor when we were first talking, and I said do you reckon that we can just start off with just two portfolios or, you know, something like with half the portfolios?
Speaker 1:Because I was worried about my senior who'd been in the industry for a while and I didn't want to upset her and we'd already previously bought in offshore.
Speaker 1:She doesn't use offshore, she just wants to do it all herself. Yeah, I was worried and I said, taylor, can we just do it on this many portfolios? And he said no. And he said no, you need to all bring it in.
Speaker 1:It's a process, it's for the office and I'm so thankful that he had that confidence and I don't want to say pressure, but I'm just glad he had that confidence to make me confident, because she actually won our TAPI Award last year. In all of the jobs I think she had the highest percentage of jobs that were put through and she is obviously obsessed with it and I think it was a balance of number one creating the new process in a better environment than what I'd done in the past, but also trusting you guys and trusting Taylor that this was the best business decision to make and not allowing me to be too soft with the approach. So very thankful for that and I guess it's really just it's important to share that, because there are so many offices out there who are scared of bringing on any technology, no matter what it is, or any changes because of one person, and that's oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it's common across every office. What I found is, if it's a smaller boutique office where you might have the 1pm and an assistant or whatever it be, they're generally super receptive to new softwares and change, because anything that can really take time away from doing one thing so they can focus on the next thing is a big win. Every other office will have that one person and Taylor myself, whoever else heads out and does the demo will be made well aware of it before, because whoever it is that organizes the demo, who might be the director or head of or whatever it will be, will say hey, the person you need to convince is X. Yeah, and it's because of that reason and you know what A lot of people don't like change. But a lot of that fear comes from previous experience, doesn't it so? Like you might have rolled out a software in the past, that software is burnt. You're like, oh, this is just another software and it's going to do the same thing, and that person especially those who have been around for so long will say, no, I've been doing it this way for this long, for so long, and it's worked beautifully. We brought in this software once in my entire tenure and it went beautifully. We brought in this software once in my entire tenure and it went horribly. We went back to doing what I wanted to do and I told you so. I don't even know how I did that. There you go, and I told you so, and that's why they're hesitant. So I'll tell you a story.
Speaker 2:I onboarded an office in Melbourne's and I sat down with the director and the two heads of and comboing through everything and they said to me openly they're like look, there is one person it's this guy, he's going to struggle. Like, if anybody is going to give you a hard time, like it's going to be him, because he's very much set in his ways, so he might require a bit of extra help. And I said look, I'm not far. Like I can come down if he's struggling. I'll even sit with him if need be. He doesn't need me to because it's so easy to use, but if I do have to sit next to him, I will. We'll just do what we can. And it never got to that point.
Speaker 2:I think it was a week later I got an email saying hey, we're all loving it and we hope you love the video, and I had no idea what she was talking about. It wasn't a video in this email. So I wrote back. I'm like, what video she goes. Well, I'll send it through to you again. So she sent it through. It was this property manager. And it was the funniest video too, because the director had like run up to him. So he's made his comment. She run back to her phone, grabbed her phone, run up and gone up to him and just gone say it again. Just say it exactly what you just said to me. And yeah, the feedback was amazing. The feedback was yes, I was incredibly hesitant.
Speaker 2:I've been doing property management for 32 years. I hate software. I do my job well, but this is a game changer, thank you, maintenance takes me an hour a week or whatever. It was Just something along those lines. And I called him back and I was like, firstly, did she pressure you into doing that video? And he said no. And I said back and I was like, firstly, did she pressure you into doing that video? And he said no. And I said, mate, I'm just, I'm so happy that it hasn't taken this much time, like it's taken a very short amount of time for you to say, hey, I've noticed the differences. Like that means the world to me and I'm going to go straight to our team and tell them so. But I get it Like it's kind of the mentality of everybody, isn't it, where it's just like can I just do this?
Speaker 2:And you know Taylor's right. Firstly, I can't stress this enough. That was incredibly smart of you to, you know, give everybody you know a speaker who talks about mindfulness, you know calmness and you know the right mentality and then hit them with maintenance, like that's exactly what you want to do with PMs, and then bring them into a massage afterwards Like that was a job well done there. But no, we hear it all the time and people do say to us you know, oh, we're just going to dip our toe in the water and it's like no, you've just got to jump straight in. Like go live with everybody, jump straight in, they'll love it. It's as simple as that and the feedback we get is amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, as a business owner, you are doing a disservice to your team by not keeping up to date with. This is in regards to all technology. You're doing a disservice to yourself and your business by not being able to easily have a quick glance if someone was sick, if someone's out on the road all day to do that.
Speaker 1:And then you're doing a disservice to your clients by not having a trackable system to be able to help them when there is a problem as well and for exactly person to take the correct accountability of it as well, whether it's the owner or yourself, and I think, as a for the property managers that are listening as well, you quite often we can talk about. You know we're we're too busy stupid word to use but busy, busy, um. I always try to get people to not blanket busy themselves. If you are busy, you need to tell me exactly what you're busy with. Are you busy with maintenance? Yes, your inbox. Are you busy with phone calls? Because when we know what we're busy doing, then we can start looking at that separately and say, okay, like with maintenance. Are we busy with maintenance because we are number one too slow, or is it because we don't have the process Same with all the different types of things and then you can just work on one task of things and then you can just work on one task? So, as an office who is looking to bring themselves up to date with technology, I think that if you could find out where people are the most busiest and then concentrate on that for the moment, so you might have, you guys might be absolutely fine with maintenance, hypothetically. So that might not be a pain point right now, but maybe you've got the phone is just not calling. But then do you know what, now that I say that it probably comes down to maintenance? Because if your problem is the phone calling and you're out in the road, why is your phone calling? Are they calling up for home opens? Are they calling up for maintenance? That could be the issue. And if they're calling up for home opens, for example, then you need to get a better software to handle 24-7 bookings. If you're getting calls for maintenance, that's your issue. You've got to focus on that Really as a property manager, if you can be mindful of where your busyness is taking you so that the correct systems are in place.
Speaker 1:Um, and I had a call from one of my pms last week and she goes to me ash, she goes. I'm so up to date with everything she goes, my emails are done, my inbox done, my company's done, everything's done and she was feeling a little bit anxious. She said to me I've spoken to the bdm to see if there's any more. You know properties now, keeping in mind that my team already managed maybe what another property manager would consider, you know like it's higher than the average person would manage. And I said to her I said you have worked incredibly hard to get yourself to this point. You've activated all the systems, the processes that we use.
Speaker 1:You need to just enjoy it. Go, take your dogs for a walk. It's not going to last forever. You're always going to have your days and if you're quiet now, don't feel the need to fill up your days or your portfolio with anything, because you're already managing what I consider a high portfolio and you're up to date. And what is it to have a happy property manager that feels in control of everything, because we've provided them with the right software and processes for everything, and to be able to call up and have that discussion with me. For me to then say enjoy it, like what's wonderful that you're up today. Isn't that like what we're all aiming for as business?
Speaker 2:oh, it's, I'll tell you now it's. It is like, especially in this space, like how great would it be to you know I say this to PMs all the time where it's like, guys, I'm not here to make your job. Five days, down to two days, and you have nothing to do for three days. But here's an idea Lunchtime is at midday. Maybe take it today, or you know what? It's a lovely day. We're going to go outside for a half an hour walk before we have to start making rent review calls or whatever they be Like. If you can get that bit of normalcy in your day. So it's not all rush, rush, rush, stress, stress, stress, like that's what it's about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. It's been so lovely chatting with you. I know I'm going to probably see you in a few days anyway, so it'd be good to catch up. But I appreciate your time, um, and the stories and and I hope that some of that has resonated with those listening, um, and I mean to be honest, we haven't really even touched the surface of the other features, like assets and the whole lot, um, but that's like a whole, it's like part two, which maybe we'll have to do, yes, but I also think that part two can maybe be the demo that you're going to book in for, so I will include the links for that, plus the don't tell me the Property Maintenance Index.
Speaker 1:Oh, she's done it Fantastic. I mean, obviously it's called the Property Maintenance Index, it's not like you've gone for a tricky name or anything, but I'll include the links there. So yeah, so if you want part two, contact Jase and he'll put you in touch with someone who can do a demo.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for having me on. I've loved having this chat. It was great.
Speaker 1:My pleasure. I'll see you soon and yeah, great, I'm having your time, so thank you Anytime.
