Australian proptech scaleup :Different has launched an all-in-one property management solution covering every aspect of managing a rent roll.
Designed to help office owners grow their roll, :Different for Agencies is currently being piloted with five agency partners in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.
:Different co-founder Mina Radhakrishnan said Agencies was about being able to own a rent roll without having to deal with the hassle of managing it.
“Our goal since inception has always been to combine technology and property management expertise to deliver an exceptional experience to owners and tenants,” Mina said.
The technology was developed in-house by a team of more than 200 property and tech experts who “live and breathe building a positive customer experience”.
Mina said Agencies would free teams from day-to-day rent roll management tasks and allow them to focus on sales strengths and customer relationships.
eXp Australia real estate agent Warren Tate said the property management industry was ripe for disruption.
“There’s currently over 3,000 vacant property manager roles in Australia, and shockingly, almost a quarter of property managers already in jobs intend to change their career path in the next 12 months,” Warren said.
“Employee retention rates within the property management industry are notoriously low because of the stress and workload property managers face on a daily basis.
“Not to mention the pressure agency principals carry to run a profitable business.
“It’s a vicious and costly cycle.”
Warren said agency principals were desperate for a solution and that “a little creativity and innovation” was the answer.
Mina said her team was incredibly excited to launch :Different for Agencies.
Speaking at Proptech Association Australia’s Proptech Forum in Sydney, Mina (pictured on stage) said :Different had spent five years building the technology and testing the system on a control rent roll.
“We’ve thought about this for a long time … we want to be sure that we are really good at doing this … running property management effectively, managing a rental effectively, and in a way that creates a good experience for owners and tenants while still being able to do it sustainably, in a way that ultimately nets profit – because we’re a business at the end of the day,” she said.
“Let people do what people do best. Let technology do all the rest: collecting the rent on time, sending the documents, sending the emails, sending whatever needs to be done at that specific time at that specific date without fail – that’s the sort of stuff that technology should do.
“It is hard, and we know it; we’ve done it for a long time.”
:Different for Agencies was launched in early October and Mina said that in addition to the five pilot partners, more businesses were set to take up the technology.
“We’ve got a bunch more coming down the pipeline this year,” she said.
“Anybody who is interested, we are ready. Over the past five years we have built and planned to scale. We know how to do this with thousands of properties, thousands of owners, thousands of tenants – and how to do it well.”