Real estate industry technology has evolved substantially in recent years, but the issues agencies face have not, according to tech and outsourcing expert Tiffany Bowtell.
In 27 years in the business Ms Bowtell has seen the focus change from the bricks-and-mortar main street office to property professionals working on mobile phones and in the cloud.
“The problems are still the same,” Ms Bowtell said.
“The biggest one is always not enough time for the team members to deliver customer service.
“Clients these days have a Netflix response, everyone wants what they want now and they demand service.
“Staff are bogged down trying to handle office admin and not getting back to people quickly enough.”
These time pressures lead to inconsistent service delivery, Ms Bowtell said.
The demand for help with low-cost real estate office solutions is clear from the success of Ms Bowtell’s company, Property Management Virtual Assistant, which launched in 2016 with two clients and has just signed its 100th client.
Ms Bowtell ran a real estate technology training consultancy before launching PMVA to streamline office processes.
She is an industry leader in developing the model of outsourcing administration tasks to virtual assistants working in her premises overseas.
PMVA owns and operates an office in the Philippines to deliver services to Australian real estate companies and agents.
An efficient, best-practice office is even more essential as the property cycle drops off its peak, Ms Bowtell said.
“When you do get that sale or listing you still need someone to do the admin. Outsourcing is about redistributing the workforce to ensure you are maximising every resource.”
Turnover in property management is at an all-time high because of the demands on staff, Ms Bowtell said.
“It became very hard to do the job during Covid,” she said.
“People were locked down at home in rental properties and hard to deal with, rents went up and people did not want to pay more, owners might not have been able to inspect properties.
“The people managing offices are thinking, ‘If I only have five people left in my office I need a solution that doesn’t require those five people doing work that someone in the Philippines can do.”
The VAs in the Philippines handle backroom office tasks such as lease renewals, preparing sales contracts and advertising properties for lease or sale.
PMVA’s 100th client is Matthews Real Estate, a real estate institution on Brisbane’s southside since it was founded by father-and-son team Robert and Leslie Matthews in 1933.
Leslie’s son Trevor joined the business in 1962 at 21. He is still the principal today, joined by three of his children and a nephew.
“Trevor Matthews has been running the show for 60 years,” Ms Bowtell said.
“They are an old-school real estate agency and now look at them, outsourcing, gone full cloud and they are such a pleasure to deal with.”
While there was resistance to outsourcing from some sectors of the industry, that is changing as agencies understand the benefits, Ms Bowtell said.
“In most cases a property manager working in the traditional model will manage around 100 to 150 properties in a portfolio and they are paid about $80,000 a year.
“With one virtual assistant that portfolio can increase to 250 properties and can actually be easier to manage overall with the right kind of support.
“You know this is working when agencies are into their fourth year in outsourcing with four or five VAs.
“They reduce their operating costs and the staff on the ground here feel more valued. So many times I have heard clients say things like, ‘I didn’t even have time to have my wedding and a honeymoon before I put you on board. And now I can do that’.”
