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PROPTECH PANEL: The Valuation Tech Revolution, Data-driven Innovation Disrupting Real Estate

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PROPTECH PANEL: The Valuation Tech Revolution, Data-driven Innovation Disrupting Real Estate

In our recent panel, our panelists shared their expertise on the latest advancements in proptech and discussed their implications for investors, valuers, and the broader real estate industry.

Our panellists include: 

Here are the 3 key takeaways from the panel: 

  1. Data Disruption and Innovation

      2. Balancing Speed and Regulation

     3. Sustainability and Climate Risk

 

Transcript:

00:00:44.920

Carolyn Trickett: Welcome everybody to today’s proptech panel. I’m Carolyn Trickett. I’m a growth principal at JLL Spark Global Ventures. I’m also a board member at the Proptech Association of Australia. We’re a not-for-profit Trade Association. That’s championing the real estate technology industry and leading the proptech conversation.

 

00:01:09.940

Carolyn Trickett: In the spirit of reconciliation, Proptech Association Australia acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples joining us today.

 

00:01:34.190 

Carolyn Trickett: I’d also like to thank the fabulous support of Stone and Chalk who make our panels possible. For those of you who don’t know, Stone and Chalk was founded as a not for profit in Sydney in 2015 to help Fintech startups, commercialise and grow from 40 startups in 2015. It now has hundreds of startups in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide covering all areas of emerging technology, including proptech.

 

00:02:03.360 

Carolyn Trickett: So welcome again, today, we’re going to delve into the intriguing and constantly evolving world of property data, insights and valuations and the technology that’s now enabling and supercharging the space of the property valuations market. Several key technology players have emerged leveraging advancements in data, analytics, artificial intelligence and automation.

These players are transforming the way valuations are conducted and they’re enhancing accuracy, efficiency, and transparency. We’ve got a very interesting lineup of panellists for you today. Anyone joining us in Australia will know that they’re big players in the space. And we’re fortunate to have senior leaders from those companies joining us today. We’ve got Mark Wallace from Proptrack of the REA group, and we’ve got Andreas Marmaris from Domain insights.

Then to mix it up a bit. We’ve also invited Tyrone Hodge from JLL. He’s head of the Risk advisory business line, and Allys Todd from ValAi, a much younger protech focusing on electrification of homes and how valuations data can be used to track and inform insights. So valuations is an interesting topic for technology. 

It’s not the type of subject matter where anyone can go and pull together a data set, create a new model and come up with a valuation and decide that that’s the truth. It’s far more complex than that. Today we’ll delve into what it means to do evaluation. 

In fact, there are a few different interpretations of that and we’ll talk about the massive amount of data that’s collated and aggregated and crunched in different ways to inform industry experts about the market overall and the specific property or properties that are being valued. So first, I’m gonna hand over to our panellists to introduce themselves and give a little background on who they are, where they work and what their inputs are gonna be today. 

So Mark, let’s start with you first. 

 

00:04:20.800 

Mark Wallis: Thanks so much, Carolyn, and really glad to be here. So I’m Mark. I’m a senior product manager here at prop track. Part of the REA group. I specialise in all things valuations in terms of products. So I like to separate our products into 2 camps. One is instant valuations so one where a human isn’t involved think models. Think curation of data. 

Think of all the great things that happen in the background of the real estate com app in terms of audience and insights. And then there’s the digital evaluations, all things that are helping our valuers and professionals do valuations remotely.

So I think about what I’m hoping to bring to this. This group is really trying to bridge the gap between how we can connect all the things that are happening through our audience, through all of our websites, and how we can connect that to our business partners and ultimately use that to create value. 

So there’s a lot of challenging things happening in that space, a lot of opportunities that are really really happening fast. And it’s an important space to watch right now.

00:05:33.280

Carolyn Trickett: Thank you, Mark. Let’s hand it over to you now, Andreas.

 

00:05:39.200

Andreas Marmaras: Thank you. Hey? Everyone is very excited to be here. So I’m addressing Maras and the general manager of technology and product for domain insight. Domain. Insight is essentially the division that processes, leverages and commercialises all the data ecosystem. All the sets we have are within the domain group.

Essentially, I lead product management, engineering and data, science and whatnot. And we are commercialising and selling to an array of governments, B2b and other customers. I have a background and a history of leading startups and scale ups, but also working within corporations in the past both in protic and other industries banking per se. 

I’ve built a lot of systems around credit bureaus in Australia. So hopefully, my perspective will be of value to the group.

 

00:06:33.380

Carolyn Trickett: Cool. Thank you, Andreas. Tyrone, can you introduce yourself?

 

00:06:37.870

Tyrone Hodge: Thanks. Carolyn. Yes. So, Tyron Hodge, I’m the global head of Risk Advisory at Jll. It’s a new business line. We only set it up about a year ago. I’ve got a background in valuation, but also product management and product development. I’m going right back to showing my age here now. But back into the like nineties when the Internet was starting, so been around the spaces of real estate and technology and also valuation for longer than I can probably remember. 

My role is, I lead a global team that’s focused on using JLL, developing technology and we wrap that up with services. So we’re not necessarily selling direct data solutions to clients. It’s a little bit of a niche in terms of how we see our operation is that we can match our people with our proprietary technology and that technology focuses on not just the sort of alternate methods of valuation like Ivms. But we’re also looking at other indicators like market risk, liquidity, physical and transition risks from an Esg perspective.

And we look to use that technology from a client perspective. But we also enable our people with a similar set of tools so that they can be more efficient in their delivery of their valuations. And their sort of consulting advice that they provide to clients. That’s a lot.

 

00:08:15.280

Carolyn Trickett: Oh, thank you! And Allys.

 

00:08:19.070

Allys Todd: Hi Carolyn.

 

00:08:19.520

Carolyn Trickett: Something similar to your world.

 

00:08:21.990

Allys Todd: Yeah. So I’m Allys Todd, co-founder of ValAi. I come and approach this topic from a completely different lens. So my background is in climate impact and sustainability. So you know how there is a lack of data for valuers in the energy performance and emissions rating of Australian homes. What Valai did is we built some energy assessment platforms and a whole portfolio emissions rating tool.

So we deliver insights across the property and financial services sector. As a matter of fact, our solutions. They’re used by property valuers, real estate agents, financial services, companies, insurers, but also homeowners themselves, so that we can collect the important data sets, but also use them to trigger actions, to support increasing home efficiency, comfort, and then, also, importantly, the market value of those homes.

 

00:09:13.180

Carolyn Trickett: Cool. Thank you. As I said, we’ve mixed it up a bit with this panel with quite a few different points going to come through. Alright. So let’s delve into some detail Valuations and data side of our industry is full of opportunities and challenges. And it’s important to understand these to give some context around the type of technology solutions that are being created.

So Tyrone, can we start with you? Can you set the scene for our audience around the valuation space? Some of the challenges that exist in creating and leveraging technology. Yeah, sure. I think it’s worth just setting some context about the different audiences for valuation related technology. And the way we look at it in our business. 

In fact, it’s very similar to what Mark said at the beginning. So we think about the audience who consumes valuation services. So that would be lenders or institutional investors, and so on. And we also think about the audience that uses valuation. So these are the valuation professionals. So if you think about it, there’s a profession. Who are the people that are traditionally tasked with providing an opinion of value, and they are regulated in most markets throughout the world. 

And they’re regulated by international valuation standards and also local regulation which could be government based licensing, or in the case of Australia. It’s the Australian Property Institute.So that’s the professional audience. And then there are the users who are also in some cases regulated. So, for example, in Australia, Apra set the standards around how you can use various valuation products. 

And by that I mean ways of calculating an opinion of value. And you also have international accounting standards that regulate how institutional clients are obliged to report on value so that’s quite its own challenges, particularly from how do you make sure that you cross the sort of bridge I guess, in terms of as a professional. Am I providing an opinion? And how do I do that? And what do the regulations tell me, I must do versus how do I become more efficient? 

And also as a professional, how can I innovate to start merging into new areas that deliver alternate solutions to the clients. Interestingly, the tech companies in most spaces are not regulated because they’re not sort of trying to bridge the gap between being a professional versus providing a product and and and that that’s why, we’ve seen so much innovation from technology companies all around the world that are building some really great tools to help assist both the users of valuation services, but also those that are the professionals.

So I think just one other thing on top of that that creates

An emerging challenge is that in the residential world, you know, we’ve been using technology for a long time. So I remember. We had automated valuation models back in 2001 and we were able to do that for residential properties. Not a Jl. But a prior employer.

The world of nonresidential is evolving really rapidly at the moment. So I think that’s a huge opportunity. For anybody that’s a pro tech player to think about how they can actually look to innovate in that space.

However, there are no standards in terms of what you call, you know, is net little area versus gross little area. It changes from country to country. That’s just around measurement. So what do we call a multifamily property? Is it a block of flats, or is it residential? Is it an office? Is it cold storage? So there’s lots of little definition related things that we need to think about that make it difficult to collaborate across different products.

But I think that in its own right creates some opportunity.

 

Carolyn Trickett: Oh, thank you. It’s interesting what you say about the tech companies not being regulated. I think that’s probably one of the dichotomies that we face is that the people that are using the product are regulated. But the people that are actually innovating.

 

00:13:51.950

Tyrone Hodge: And I actually think that’s a good thing. By the way, I mean, I’d hate to see everybody regulated, because that just is the greatest way to stymie innovation is to put regulation around it. And and you know, that would just squash everybody. And we’d all give up. 

So I think that there are some opportunities from the professional side to work, you know, closely with those that are the tech companies that have a bit more flexibility to innovate and maybe change the rules, you know, or think about the way we’ve traditionally operated in. In a different way.

So, Andres, can you add to what Tyrone’s just introduced in terms of the context of the industry? Can you tell us a little bit about the data ecosystem?

 

00:14:40.930

Carolyn Trickett: and how that works in our industry, how it developed and and how it’s changed, especially in recent times.

 

00:14:48.470

Andreas Marmaras: Yes, for sure, I mean tyrant did an excellent job outlining some of the challenges. Now take all this and try to overlay with what has happened in the past 5, 6 years? Right? So we went through Covid went through lockdowns, and then we’re going through the fastest spike in inflation rates and interest rates in our country and globally. 

So if you put this into perspective, if you think about modelling right the the data, science and modelling world. Everything operates fairly well with stability and the depth of history. So if you know, situations are stable for a long period of time, models continue to learn data regression or hit the regression different techniques that they’re using.

But now, what we face is a very disruptive situation, both in terms of property prices, but also consumer behaviour. So when everything is stable, it becomes a challenge of doing similar things, but better improving. You know, in how you leverage the data, how you build the models and whatnot when disruption happens. 

And suddenly all your modelling and history is out the window. Then you really need to look around and assess? What other sources can I bring into the mix? What is the breadth of data? How can I combine traditional sources? With, you know, different data says, or different techniques, techniques of processing this data.

So I think this necessity drove innovation and breadth in the sets that we’re using. Apart from the traditional factual attributes of a property. We’re looking at a lot more around the suburbs, the ecosystem, the consumer, the demographics of an area, and sustainability data. And I’m sure Alison and the rest will talk a little bit more about this. 

And mark that essentially we can’t rely on the traditional methods that brought us here just because behaviour and prices are unexpected. The other thing I will mention is not to model separate, equal rights if we talk about valuations. So, for instance, in our world, we provide evaluations to banks, insurance companies, or whatnot, but also we work with governments. 

So on the one hand, you look at the speed to yes, how can I quickly and confidently have an answer that validates the price of a property. On the other hand, if you look at governments and councils they care more about fairness, right? How do they distribute the rates in an equitable and fair way across a very, very large area instead of properties. 

So depending on the used case and depending on how we’re trying to apply. These models are valuations that drive different kinds of techniques that need to be used. And, as I mentioned before. The history has been disrupted. So recency and freshness of alternative data is of the essence.

 

00:17:43.970 

Carolyn Trickett: When you’re talking about the impact of these types of changes, Andreas is, is that why you need a lot of people working on the models in the background like, can you explain? You say we we, you know, when things are stable, you can do similar things, but better. So what do you do? What do the people working on? These tools need to then change up when the assumptions are changing.

 

00:18:12.160 

Andreas Marmaras: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I always use the metaphor. The analogy of a car right? A car is as good as the fuel you’re putting and the tuning and the engine you know that you have in the car. Right? So I think the way modelling has shifted over the years is that becoming a little bit more templatized when it comes to the algorithms and how you drive regression. But then the fuel, the actual data, the freshness, the quality and the breadth is what drives a lot of difference in what you do.

Don’t get me wrong, I think how you tune the engine and the data science capability, the talent you bring, and how you leverage and process and interpret all these different signals and features is imperative.

but it has really pushed us to feed into the engine, whatever else we can get our hands on. Right. That drives meaningful results. Don’t forget that when you talk to the banks, for example, you can’t experiment too quickly, too drastically, because there’s a history of expectation and behaviour that they need to work with. So there’s very rigorous back testing of the models.

So you need to drip feed innovation in a way that is easily consumed by the banks in a sustainable way, for instance.

So yeah, the game is shifting, and we’re trying to innovate at a pace that doesn’t disrupt. You know how the workflows of main institutions and governments, for instance, operate.

 

00:19:33.430 

Carolyn Trickett: Interesting that you mentioned the banks as well, because the banks seem to be a big part of this overall ecosystem as well. Right. One of your big clients.

 

00:19:46.600 

Tyrone Hodge: Can I? I know I’m going off script, count, but I just wanted to pick something up, because I think it’s really interesting.

 

00:19:53.730 

Carolyn Trickett: Please, do.

 

00:19:54.350 

Tyrone Hodge: The ability, the ability to innovate is, and the example you just gave is also looking at how you know the way we’ve always behaved sort of limits the way we might behave. So if you threw off all of your shackles around. How you might approach analytics to solve a valuation problem.

You would probably think about it in a very different way, and run even more radical experiments like, what’s the value in 5 years time, and so on. So I think that it’s quite interesting to use the last few years as well. And I actually think there’s been some great innovation come out over the last 2 or 3 years with a lack of sales, or whether it be a, you know, a rapidly changing markets where we start to think about other ways as to how we might think about what those inputs could be, you know. 

So it doesn’t. Traditionally, we just look backwards and say what we’re all the sales that inform our next decision. That’s how you know we behave as a valuer. That’s how our models behave. So this concept of rapid change and experimentation. It is something that’s really important.

 

00:21:03.360

Carolyn Trickett: Oh, thanks for going off script! I like that.

 

00:21:07.275

Tyrone Hodge: It’s a very small Group.

 

00:21:12.520

Carolyn Trickett: Yeah. So Mark, we’ve been talking about change. We’ve talked about how the real world has changed and the difference that’s making to the data that’s swelling around in the ecosystem. Can you build on that and shed some light about the impact of recent developments in artificial intelligence? What has that done to the products that you’re building?

 

00:21:38.350 

Mark Wallis: Yeah, absolutely. I really liked Andreas’s analogy of the car. And the data is the fuel that feeds the car. But imagine you had AI fueled new fuel going into your car. And what does that do to the engine? Imagine that? But I think I can answer your initial question. I’m holding a bit of cognitive dissonance in my brain where I’m struggling to be both an optimist and a pessimist. With what AI means for this industry. I think, from one hand, I’m heavily optimistic in terms of what AI and all the future tools will do for consumers.

Just as a recent example something that we were experimenting with was a tool to help you restyle your property right? Trying to make renovating less daunting and more applicable and relevant to the property that you own. And so for anyone on this call you can play with it on your app. But essentially the premises. It takes your listing images, and you can overlay some generative AI images to see what it looks like with a rustic theme or a modern theme or a new carpet, and unfortunately, my favourite theme remained internal and didn’t go to the external facing world. 

The Spongebob Squarepants theme, but don’t know how many people would have liked that. But the premise is we think it’s providing a lot of value to consume, as all it’s just fun to play with but if we take a step back to the valuation space, in terms of how easy it is to distort information and change what was typically pretty hard to collect and relatively reliable piece of data, which was photos. Even that’s coming into question now. So I know. Coming back to Banks, who is probably the most highly regulated player in this industry.

They’re demanding faster, probably more digital evaluations. And also pushing the boundaries in terms of when do we actually need to inspect a property? Can we do this faster and more efficiently, else wise?

And I think with that tension, and also this introducing of information or disinformation. Rather, I think that’s really putting into question, or a bit of tension in terms of, how do we validate data better? How do we collaborate more as an ecosystem to make sure that the data that we’re using or the fuel that’s going into our car is reliable, and it’s going to be used to create a good outcome. 

So to circle back. I’m pretty optimistic for our consumers. I’m concerned about what challenges it may face for our valuations industry. But I’m optimistic in terms of how we can collaborate and come together to solve them.

 

00:24:24.420 

Carolyn Trickett: Sorry. Enough about the challenges. Then am I still muted? Excuse me. all good. Thank you. Allys, let’s talk more about some opportunities. Now, ValAI is one of the companies that’s really seizing some new opportunities. Can you talk about the recent changes in the global and local focus on sustainability and how that’s creating new opportunities in the market.

 

00:24:54.240

Allys Todd: Yeah, certainly. So, vale. Secret source really is our team. So we do have an interesting combination of both property, valuation, professionals, sustainability experts, but also machine learning engineers. We’ve come together, like many early stage companies, in that. There was a friction or a problem in the market that we’re really, really interested in solving and that is to drive impact and ensure that no Australian households are left behind in our transition economy. And what that really means is, there are large requirements for a lot of these large corporations to start looking at, tasking and being aware of the data, insights on the risk of their portfolios and residential properties is one of those risks that many banks, insurers, and others are carrying, and the word for property values is very important in driving that data.

For ValAi, we’re not just here to collect information on the actuals that exist now within residential properties, and perhaps some of the sustainability or esg. Or risk implications.

But, more importantly, to look at scenario forecasting of what our institutional customers could do to intervene and for existing residential properties in Australia. And there’s over 9,000 of them. Most that are already built today will not meet the sustainability of energy efficiency requirements that we have for future policy in this country. So there’s a large proportion of properties that from a valuation perspective will have a lower data score or sustainability score in the future. 

So for ourselves, as a company, we, with our scenario forecasting, allow our institutional companies as part of their disclosure frameworks which Tyrone discussed earlier. We allow them to take their baseline data. But then, look at if they were to intervene or uplift a property or many properties across your portfolio. 

What would drive the most impact and what the return on investment for themselves is that’s been really important for us to start demonstrating as a proof point in Australia, because it allows some of our institutional clients to start talking to their mum and dad clients about why energy efficiency, sustainability, and, of course, with the cost of living pressures that we have at the moment. 

Why maintaining and being responsible for your residential asset is changing in the current one.

 

00:27:20.280

Carolyn Trickett: It’s an interesting view, because I know that the commercial asset owners have been thinking about that for a lot longer than residential. Tyrone. Can I just throw in an extra question for you to bounce off what Allys has just been talking about in terms of the types of data that’s being used. How is climate data now being brought into the mix in the commercial space?

 

00:27:49.802 

Tyrone Hodge: Yeah, there’s probably 2 2 parts to that question, I guess just one from a regulatory perspective. Esg, reporting evaluations will be mandatory under the special valuation standards from January of next year. So that means that any evaluation that’s done is done. Will have to consider certain factors. It’s pretty vague at the moment about what those requirements are. 

But I know there’s people from the Api on the meeting. And so we’re working at the Api on a committee to actually help give some guidance again. I think that will open up some opportunities from a tech perspective as well. The commercial world has really been a bit like residential, I guess, in the terms of this there’s many different standards all around the world. And no 2 standards are the same. 

And what we’re saying that’s interesting at the moment is the Europeans have driven the change, particularly in terms of energy performance and pathways to net 0. Those international lenders and international investors are starting to look at how they apply similar sorts of requirements to buildings in other jurisdictions. 

And that’s creating its own challenges because there’s no direct fit, for example, to energy performance certificates that are used in Europe, in the Uk, so that’s again, it’s creating lots of different opportunities from a technology perspective. To figure out how to solve that problem. And in terms of all the climate related risks there are many different providers of climate related data. 

I think the commercial operators are overwhelmed with all the different options that they have at their fingertips from, you know, even you know who opens the door, or how many jackets are on a site, and whether lots come on it on and off because of the Internet.

But the link to the business cases Allys was sort of talking about. If you just think about your house, do I? Put in Solar, and do I put in a battery. The battery probably doesn’t stack up right now, and if you multiply that across, you know billions of dollars worth of commercial real estate it it I think it’s been overwhelming. In terms of way to focus. 

So the the change in in commercial real estate will be really about how to apply business cases off the back of whether it be climate, related risk or transition, or even just cash flow from demand, because obviously the tenants are driving the demand for commercial real estate, and they are working to their stated climate, related objectives.

 

00:30:40.280 

Carolyn Trickett: Oh, thank you.So that’s a nice segue into my next set of questions. cause you’re talking about how many different providers there are. And even on this panel, you know, we’ve got 4 different providers of different types of data, different types of insights that they’ve drawn from that data. 

And this a lot of collaboration that happens in this space mark, can you open up for this topic and talk to us about collaboration? Why do you think collaboration is necessary across the industry?

 

00:31:19.080

Mark Wallis: Yeah, sure. I like to think about this problem in probably 3 spaces, I think. Firstly, collaboration is necessary every single day to maintain the system that exists right now, right? The second component is collaboration to address all the future challenges that we’ve just been talking about. And then 3rd is probably to improve and innovate moving forward. But if we just start with the 1st point. 

I think what we’re observing over the last few years is, there’s a lot of complex components in servicing valuations in whatever format, shape or form. And I think the markets are becoming much more specialised like you. You’re seeing specialists around sustainability and particular types of risks. And you’re also seeing components of evaluation. 

Ecosystems like what valuation type I order when that’s becoming a component, that you can pretty modularly slot in and out for different providers and different customers. And so what we’re seeing is, although they all exist in one ecosystem, they’re quite modular in their components. And who’s doing it? And whilst they might all be competing for different customers, they all have to work and collaborate together to make sure that the system functions. 

Almost no one wins. If the whole system falls down right, and no one can really benefit from it. So I think you’ll you’ll continue to see collaboration in that aspect, to maintain and improve an existing system, to try and drive out better outcomes for our clients.and then, I think, to address the challenges of the future, just talking about AI as a challenge amongst many, many different challenges that we’re facing. 

I think you’ll see collaboration with valuers and data collectors and professionals who have to assess the information. I think there’ll be a bigger onus on the quality of data that’s provided. I think there’ll be more expected from professionals who are doing driving assessments. 

I think there’ll be even higher standards from regulators in terms of what needs to be done to come to an assessment, and I think they all need to come together, one to maintain the hugely valuable ecosystem that exists today, but also meets the needs of our customers, which are never, never, never ending essentially for those on this call. 

And then, lastly, I think to improve and innovate. I think Andreas talked to the fact that we have to invest a lot in terms of improving our models. But I would say, we’re also investing a lot in terms of how we prove out those models and justify that we have the right controls on those models, and that they’re performing better in every single way. 

That’s important to our customers or not. And so innovating in that aspect, and also making sure that we’re meeting the needs of our regulators and our customers. And we’re singing the same song, I think, will become really really important. moving forward.

 

00:34:20.989 

Carolyn Trickett: Talking about customers, Andreas, can you also add to that? I know that there’s a lot of collaboration that goes on in terms of who’s working with which customers and who’s also working with other providers.

 

00:34:36.760 

Andreas Marmaras: Yeah, for sure. I like how Mark put it, if the system falls apart, everyone loses right. And that’s the reality. So in our day to day, week to week reality. We have to provide or provision our models, our events, for instance, through core logics platform or through proxy platform to fulfil the needs of the customer. 

And yeah, okay, sometimes it’s a little bit of, you know, pride involved. But at the end of the day. We’re here to solve real problems for our customers and their customers. Because think about it. If you solve a big problem for the bank, you’re impacting millions of Australians, a big portion of the country. So th, the industry is very small. We’ll know each other. We move around from company to company. 

I don’t think there’s any animosity, and to be honest with you, that the size of the prize is big enough for everybody to be happy if they continue to solve real problems.

I go back to one of the reasons why I came to Australia back. It’s like 11 years now. That, I remember comprehensive credit reporting was coming as a transformation in Australia, and the banks were like, all right. We can solve this, you know, by ourselves, we need to get together there in a joint venture fashion and create, you know, a new credit bureau or a new way of, you know. 

Facing this daunting task of millions of new data points hitting us every day. So I think you think about it. Between us, you know. I’m sure we like and love each other, but we compete with each other to win customers and the share of the pie. But when something bigger happens that is Australian wide or industry wide. 

I think we get together to ideate and solve for the greater good of the end consumer but also for the country as Australians. I think we’ve been a bit risk averse in the past few decades. I think we look at a lot of what happens in us. So England, Uk, and then we kind of absorb and learn kind of put it in action.

Andreas Marmaras: But it would be fascinating to see how we can get our, you know, brain power together and start innovating in a global economy to drive some more innovation.

The last thing I will mention is something that’s, you know, close to my heart and a bit yours as well. Some of the issues we’re facing in Australia right now have to deal with push fires and flooding and areas that are essentially uninsurable right?

That is a very big problem for the banks and our valuation models and insurance models as well, because, we’re just trying to make sure that these Australians can have a fair fair go with ensuring that their houses or the prices, are not catastrophic for them. So these are some of the challenges that are being faced by the nation, and I think there’s no space for pettiness or competition. I think we just need to get together to solve it. 

And honestly, for these big developments. In the country with the industry of the time, the addressable market will be big enough for everybody to have a go at it. So that’s how I say we compete for customer size. We’re for customer slices. But when it comes to something bigger than us, I think we need to get together and innovate.

 

00:37:46.790

Carolyn Trickett: Thanks, Andreas and Tyrone. There’s plenty of collaboration that’s going on also with Jll and the other players. Can you shed some light on that.

 

00:37:56.530

Tyrone Hodge: Yup, yeah. So we, I mean as an organisation. Specifically, in this sort of analytics space, we collaborate with many different parties, many on this call. Whether that be as suppliers or we were often talking about. 

We’ll always have a conversation to see how we can help an organisation that gets going and and you know, whether it be through testing or working on new ideas with some of our suppliers. Who are also our partners? If we’re sharing information backwards and forward.

I think that the concept of collaboration in commercial real estate. It’s pretty well established. Because if you look at the big global tech companies, many of them actually came into existence off the back of collaboration around commercial real estate, and whether that’d be the owners or the agencies. So the global benchmarks. You know, Ms, Ci is a good example. Real capital analytics in the past. 

Most owners and agencies or brokers around the world have collaborated to build.you know, indicators that are shared across the industry. So I think there’s some really good examples of how. whether it be the value of professionals, the real estate agents. Long history of collaboration with many of those guys on the team on the call today. And that goes back a long time. 

I think the future of collaboration is probably more about sharing data. So the fuel into the car, you know.just to throw another metaphor out here, you know, if I gave, if I gave everyone an egg and some flour and some water or milk. You know you can build many different things out of that, that those ingredients, and you know some are better at building a really nice cake or and others might just do a pancake. 

So you know, I think that collaboration around inputs, because whilst they’re important, they’re not unique. In most cases, data is just data. So you know, there’s definitely an opportunity for very specific or unique bits of information to add value to the customer. As Andrea said. 

I think the industry has a role.The profession. So again, you know, I’ve had a lot of association with the Api and certainly at the Api. There’s a lot of collaboration going on, and also forward thinking about, how do we modernise as professionals to make our job easier as valuers? 

But also to deliver on some of those needs like speed, you know, how do we? How do we go faster? How do we deliver a more relevant up to date, contemporary solution, and a lot of that can only come through collaboration.

00:40:52.450

Carolyn Trickett: Thank you. And Allys. Can you talk to us? What does it mean for an early stage startup having this collaboration mindset? How does that work in your world?

 

00:41:06.897 

Allys Todd: Yeah, it’s been pivotal for ValAi growth trajectory over the last 3 years. Collaboration. We take an approach of what’s the customer centric approach for us that we will never build anything until we’ve spoken to our customers. They’ve tried it. They’ve collaborated with us on giving user feedback to make sure that it’s in the best interest of us serving our customers and clients.

As Tyrone said. We’ve all collaborated on this call on various parts of Lai’s journey, either a feedback or user testing or participating in various research rounds. We’ve done some great examples we’ve had, and going back to the insurability of Australian properties. Because I think that’s really, we’re at a really important time in Australia when it comes to insurability in the financial services sector that underpins it. 

We collaborated recently with a global reinsurer who had their own models for risk and analysis of properties in Australia, and they were looking to make sure that all of the data they received right down their supply chain could be comparable, and at a level of accuracy gave us the opportunity to be exposed to their models, to test them, and effectively to find fault or holes in the models that they had to be able to assist them to do better, but also allowed us to with our own internal models, then collaborate on making sure they’re much more robust, and also served a purpose. 

So that’s led to an opportunity for us now to be able to work strategically with them in Australia.Looking at ways in which we can ensure their entire supply chain is using the models that will impact decision making and for insurability of houses. That’s really important. 

Because to Tyrone’s point, we aren’t just talking about policy in Australia. We’re talking globally. Those are insurers who are underpinning the financial services that we have here and ensuring that we’re working at a global scale as well.

My other last example is, there is a real opportunity in Australia for us to start providing novel, interesting data to consumers at the time of rent and sale of properties and making sure that informs really good and robust decision making. 

So ValAi are now working to collaborate further with the groups on the pool, and others to make sure that there is a methodology to the way in which this data is given to consumers, and ensuring that this information on the performance of a home, and also from the rental market perspective, how much it costs to actually live within that home. 

Once you are settled there supports the affordability of Australian households.

00:43:37.480

Carolyn Trickett: Excellent.

Thank you. And I think there’s also good news in here in terms of Proptech Association and what we’re trying to achieve bringing all these organisations together and creating a forum for ongoing collaboration and support.

So thank you all for participating in that come to the end of our official question time. I’m wondering if there’s any questions that have come up from the audience. I haven’t seen anything come through from our moderator chat. Is there anything in the Q and A. That anyone has put in there can’t see anything at this stage.

 

00:44:26.740

Tyrone Hodge: I can throw out another concept. I want to speak about, you know, global thinking globally, and and and I think Andreas was talking about Australia being a great opportunity and having a large addressable market. One of the great things I’ve got to do over the last couple of years is to travel around and look at what’s going on in other geographies. 

And you know particularly the US, Canada and Europe and I have to say that we are miles ahead in Australia in terms of our thinking in terms of the ability to innovate because we’re, you know, we’re small and nimble. I and I think our market is open to thinking about change. 

If I compare the discussions we can have with customers and and with each other in Australia to what happens in the Us. Or Europe. There is almost no comparison, because there’s not a willingness to change in those markets from the or it’s a difficulty, you know, in terms of the thinking about changing

And there are some really negative sort of vibes from that collaboration point of view where you know, this is anyone that does anything else to each other and challenges each other. So you know, I think we’re in a really good position with Australia enabled in terms of being able to innovate. 

And we are also pretty flexible. And we have good data which many other countries do, not even though I’ve said this challenges around getting information, we actually have a pretty good foundation in Australia, which puts us in a much better place than many other countries.

 

00:46:14.800

Carolyn Trickett: I think we’re all nodding in agreement with that one.

 

00:46:18.410 

Tyrone Hodge: I was just saying, if I could encourage a question by opening my mouth again.

 

00:46:22.450

Andreas Marmaras: Yeah, just just to add a little bit I’m very passionate about what Tyrone is talking about, and I don’t know what Allys has seen in the market. But I would love to see venture capital firms and just the capital ecosystem. Take a bigger star. But Australian startups. I think we’re great at innovation. 

We have an amazing melting pot of brains and backgrounds and come from different kinds of experiences. I just feel sometimes we’re a little bit too conservative on allocating capital in Australia, and you know we’ll just take a more, I don’t know, conservative approach waiting for someone to be profitable or wait for, you know. 

Series A, BI just wanna see you know the ecosystem. Take more risk with our beautiful brains, and build startups and scale ups in the country.

 

00:47:12.000

Tyrone Hodge: I think the challenge is the market size, you know, even though it’s big like we’ve got. Just take lenders. We’ve got 4 lenders, really major lenders in Australia. I made a short list in the US. Where I got 500 banks on my short list.

So yeah, that’s the challenge. I think so. And I don’t wanna speak for you, Allys, but I know that. You know investors want to look at it. How do you build? And Carolyn, you’re in this place every day that you know that you want to build something, but scale it to those big markets like the United States in Europe. Because that’s a real challenge.

 

00:47:49.140 

Carolyn Trickett: Yeah, that is always a challenge from an investment point of view. Anyway, Allys Todd. Any closing thoughts I’d like to throw into the mix.

 

00:48:03.110 

Allys Todd: Carolyn, I’m happy to add, in support of the Proptech Association and those early stage companies that are scaling similar to Valai. We are a risk taker for the wider industry. We’re the ones that can be invested in in order to fast track failure. 

And what I mean by that is, if you’re a large institutional firm, it takes a lot of time and effort and runway in order to get new projects initiated, whereas investing in or partnering with, or collaborating with a startup.

It gives you the ability to de- risk any testing or trialling that you do, and allows us to really grow and learn quickly in the ecosystem. And we can do research and development in a way that testing and trialling can happen much more quickly and iteratively than trying to do it sometimes impede in house. 

So I encourage the large institutional clients that are on the phone. If you do have things wickedly wanting to test and trial.

Start off the ecosystem. And those early stage technology companies do have the capability and the talent to be able to fast track some of your decision making to do it your right way.

 

00:49:08.120 

Carolyn Trickett: Thanks. That’s a great point.

Well, I think if we’ve not got any questions coming through from the audience. We’ll wrap it up.

And thank you very much to our panellists today. It’s been a very thoughtful and insightful discussion and it’s great to see some of these clear messages about technology as an enabler, not replacing our expertise, but adding to it and continuing to fuel innovation. And the collaboration aspect. 

I think that’s been a great outcome of today’s discussion is understanding how collaboration is essential in terms of achieving a higher purpose and elevating our industry into the future.

 

00:49:54.850 

Carolyn Trickett: So thank you, everybody. Thanks to the audience for joining, and I hope you have a great day.

Tyrone Hodge: Thank you.

Carolyn Trickett: Bye, bye.

Mark Wallis: Bye.

 

 

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