Unlocking Efficiency in Property Management

Transcript

Peter Fletcher

Peter Fletcher: [00:00:00] Welcome to the WA Property Q& A, the podcast where I explore the ins and outs of buying property in Western Australia. I’m your host Peter Fletcher and each week I interview local property experts to help you to develop a deep understanding of the nuances of buying property in WA. From markup trends to legal considerations, no topic is off limits.

But before we dive in, a friendly reminder, while we provide valuable information, it’s important to note that nothing discussed in this podcast should be construed as personal investment advice. Always remember to seek the appropriate professional advice for your specific circumstances. Now, let’s get started and unlock the secrets to successful property buying in WA.

Welcome to another episode of the WA Property Q& A podcast and I’m Peter Fletcher and today I’m joined Once again, by Michelle Rigg. Michelle is the general manager

[00:01:00] of Rentwest Rentwest Property Solutions. Rentwest Solutions. Rentwest Solutions. Yes. They are a property management firm, primarily a property management firm managing what, two and a half?

Michelle Rigg: Just over 2,

Peter Fletcher: 000. 2, 000? Yep. Yeah, it’s 2, 000 today Michelle, tomorrow it’ll be about 2, 500. You’re just growing pretty fast.

Michelle Rigg: We have grown very fast over the last probably eight to ten months actually. The most amount of growth that we ever had because of the influx of the new builds.

So, but that’s sort of tapering off now, we’re getting back to that normal market, so still exciting times.

Peter Fletcher: So that’s new builds. Investors buying new property, renting them out.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, and a lot of them have been those jilky homes, which is quite good, you get two for one. So, they’ve always got, also got their interesting aspects to them as well as, you know, those different types of houses and dwellings have.

But no, they’ve [00:02:00] they’ve certainly been the most growth up in the high northern suburbs, Yantjipji Rocks and down Edoresville, Mandurahway.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah, right. Well, that’s that’s a fair way away.

Michelle Rigg: Well, as you know, Peter, we cover the whole, I think it’s 175 kilometres now of Perth Metro.

Peter Fletcher: A hundred and seventy five k’s.

Yeah. So from north to south.

Michelle Rigg: From Two Rocks down to Dawesville, I think we’re the, either the longest or the second longest city in the world.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah I think geographically we’re about the same size as Los Angeles, aren’t we?

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it?

Peter Fletcher: With about a tenth of the

Michelle Rigg: Yes, we do like our, Space, don’t we?

Yeah.

Peter Fletcher: So, Michelle, today, and I’d be interested in talking to you at another, on another time about your growth and, you know, what you do for growth but what I want to talk about today is a topic that is of interest to real estate principals and property managers, and that is the choice of software.

And I know that you’ve, we’ve spoken about this prior [00:03:00] you’ve gone through some fun with trialing of some different software. And I do, I want to talk about your, the decision making process that you went through to end up where you are and where you might go from here. And I’m just going to preface this by saying this is not in any way an endorsement of any one software package nor is it any sort of critique or beat up on, on any packages that you’ve.

Previously used or have chosen not to use. So, you are currently with what software package?

Michelle Rigg: PropertyMe.

Peter Fletcher: PropertyMe. Okay. And prior to that you were with?

Michelle Rigg: Colmio. Colmio.

Peter Fletcher: And then before that you were with?

Michelle Rigg: Volt RE.

Peter Fletcher: Volt RE. If you want to

Michelle Rigg: really start from the beginning, then we were with Rest.

Peter Fletcher: Rest, yes.

Well, that’s what I was using back in the, in 2006. I sold my business. Yeah. So let’s start with [00:04:00] Volt RE. You were with Volt RE. And how did you find it?

Michelle Rigg: Look, the journey with Vault was actually a really good one for our team because we were fortunate enough to be in there right at the beginning and be the first large business in there.

Now there’s always pros and cons of being the first, you know, major users of a product, but what it gave us was the ability for our team to actually be involved in the development of the program. And it ended up giving some really cool features of it. It was certainly lacking in the reporting side and Things like that.

So we had to develop other spreadsheets to track our figures, you know, our stats and things like that and portfolio numbers. But generally speaking, look, it was a property management system. I think when I look at all of them, they’re all very similar. Some do this, some do that, you know, but I think they’re all pretty much on the same level, you know, but Volt did have some really good features.

But the important journey of that part was the involvement our team were able to have in. Seeing how a program develops [00:05:00] from the influences and the suggestions that they’ve had.

So that was, it was a, look, it was certainly rocky in the first 18 months and we had challenges as you do with any program.

But overall it was a good journey.

Peter Fletcher: So were you one of VaultRE’s original customers?

Michelle Rigg: On the property management side, yes.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah, right. Okay. So they built a, and that was a trust accounting module. Plus all the property management features on top.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, well it started off as a CRM and then of course it went sales and then they added on the property management.

And the reason why we chose VoltRE from, you know, transitioning from the server based REST to the cloud based was because of that package deal of the CRM, a true CRM
program and the property management module all in one. And it is actually a really good CRM program so that, that was what we liked about that.

It was WA owners at the time, you know, I would go into their office, we’d do workshops on things, they’d come out to our office and workshop with our team on the
development of the program. It was, [00:06:00] overall, take aside, you know, the bumps you get with being, you The real first ones on a program. It was a good experience.

Peter Fletcher: And so you enjoyed having that hands on, going to their office, that sort of stuff?

Michelle Rigg: Absolutely. I mean, my vision of what a property management program should do I don’t think it’s it’s expecting too much. I think it’s really about how a property management program should work practically in an office.

And I’m happy to talk to any of the programmers about that. And Put time into it, agree, but I find there a lot of them, you know, fair enough. They’ve all got their own journeys and their own priorities to do it. I think the problem is that they’re all going to you know, like it, you know, the more likes that sort of development gets the hierarchy.

Whereas the problem is that they’re targeting property managers who absolutely use the program, but a lot of property managers don’t have the time to step outside of that space and actually think, how could this system [00:07:00] actually be working better? And I think my mind, as crazy as it is, and you don’t need to add anything to that, Peter.

My mind works in a different way, and it can see how things fit, and very much on the brain friendly way, and making it very streamlined and efficient for property managers. And automation and the workflows and all that is really important and I don’t think any of them have ticked that box really well yet.

Peter Fletcher: So, so you’re saying that they, it’s just not user friendly? Is that?

Michelle Rigg: Oh, it, it does its core job, like it manages the, they manage the money, they manage the transaction and all that, but there is such an easier, you know, the workflow basis is. It’s an easy way to do it. We use Airtable for our workflows because the programs don’t provide a workflow properly.

They’re all working on them.

And in some ways, you know, some of the programs need to get some of the base automatic basic automation going first, like automatically send your routine inspections, you know, and notices, your rent arrears stuff and things like that going first, and then work on that, or [00:08:00] they tend to work on their inspection program or things like that.

Well, I think I said this last time, there’s good inspection programs out there. There’s good application programs out there. What we’re lacking is a real day to day property management program. That really just tells the property managers what they have to do today without having to filter, search, you know, change a whole lot of settings to, to see their lease renewals and all that.

The way our Airtable platform is set up and it’s the one developed by StaffLink, property managers open up a dashboard. They say they’ve got 10 rent lease renewals to work on. They say they might have 15 vacates to work on at various stages. And then you go in and it tells them what those stages are.

So very easy for them to prioritize and work in blocks, you know, chunks. So you can get in that flow rather than you going, Oh, I’ve got to do a lease renewal, Oh, I’ve got to do maintenance. And that’s the default setting of the property management programs. It just brings everything up and says, but they can filter.

When you’ve got a lot going on. You know, you’ve got, I really, and I had the, we’re busy. So [00:09:00] let’s say active day, people just don’t have that extra brain power to, to remember I’ve got a filter. They’re just looking at this massive, Oh my God, look at everything I’ve got to do. So that’s that’s the way we try to work our office where we, you know, we’re at a reset.

Now because of what, you know, the changes that we went through last year, but that’s what our aim is to get back to that and just make it really brain friendly. So they don’t have to, in addition to everything else they have to think about is what do I have to look at today? You know.

Peter Fletcher: So you’re still after Vault, Colmeo and now Property Me.

I always get confused between Property Tree and Property Me. You’re still using something on top of that, which is Airtable. That strikes me as being both inefficient and unnecessary.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, but unfortunately, I mean, Property Me is working on the task flows and all that, but until it has the Automation and doesn’t rely on the [00:10:00] human to move something or to change a date, then that’s not going to work for us.

So the Airtable platform, we can put in automated triggers, and if something hasn’t changed a status by a certain time, a flag will raise. You know, that automation is critical because we were on Trello previously and that was very much reliant on the humans to move things and move them to the next person and that takes too much monitoring and that’s where things fall down when you’re relying on humans and that’s where most of these task flows are in you know, the property management programs at the moment.

I know PropertyMe is working on their task flows and all that, but until it gets to that dashboard where the property managers can just look at and see. What they have to do that day. We won’t move away from Airtable. We want to, absolutely, because Airtable is not a cheap program and we want to cut down the number of platforms the property managers are working on.

But at the moment we can’t.

Peter Fletcher: You are on [00:11:00] right now the three main ones, which is Airtable, Outlook and PropertyMe and then you’ve got all your other Platforms that you would be using, such as your inspections platform and your applications. Yeah, that’s, there’s a lot of moving parts there that,

Michelle Rigg: yep and we’re adding more devices too.

I mean, you know, you’ve got a 360 camera now, you’ve got your iPhone, you’ve got your computer slash laptop. You know, it’s. It’s and you know, new people coming to the industry can really struggle with there’s so many devices and programs that they need to understand and know which one is for what.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So stepping back to back to Vault, it sounded like it was getting there wasn’t perfect. But it was moving in the right direction. Why did you leave?

Michelle Rigg: Because [00:12:00] MRI bought it. And were, and stopped supporting it because MRI obviously have own property tree. I believe MRI bought it for the CRM side, the sales side.

But they were no longer going to support the property management side. And they told us that, they gave us, you know, plenty of notice to make our decision. So we our hand was forced. We had to move programs.

Peter Fletcher: Okay. And so, right, so in front of you, you had you had Property Tree, you had Property Me, and you had Colmeo.

Any others that you looked at?

Michelle Rigg: Console.

Peter Fletcher: Console? I

Michelle Rigg: think that’s the suite of it now.

Peter Fletcher: Console is cloud based now?

Michelle Rigg: It is. Or is

Peter Fletcher: it still?

Michelle Rigg: No, it’s cloud based. Cloud based. So

Peter Fletcher: they’re all of them was cloud based. What were the things that you were kind of, that you considered before moving to Colmio?

Michelle Rigg: Well, we looked at all the programs and as I said, you know, none of them were, Oh my God, this is really exciting. I love this program. [00:13:00] So it came down to what are we looking for? So, part of it is the people that we’re working with and the people in Colmeo were fantastic. Their culture aligned with us.

The way the money flowed certainly did interest us and that, Let’s probably move on to the next conversation, it’s probably something we’ll talk about. You know, that, that ease of moving, supposed ease of moving the money what they had said, how the program worked and where they were going, that, that interest.

Interested us. The look and feel of the program was good. You know, our team, you know, were in the meetings as well, and they they liked what they heard. So, and we were, we’re not afraid from trying something different so that it was no, really not . And because it is like you, you know, the other three programs were very much the normal, you know, moving from the server based program.

They’ve just sort of done the same thing, so they . You know, so Communo was certainly the. the Left of Centre program. And what we saw sort of matched where we wanted to go and how we wanted to streamline, line things.

Peter Fletcher: What was it about the movement of [00:14:00] money that, that caught your attention?

Michelle Rigg: Well, it was the, and I won’t say it’s trustless because it’s certainly not trustless. And I know that probably more so now after using the program, but the.
Peter Fletcher: From, to interrupt from afar. That was the promise of Colmeo, and I’m not saying that they made that promise, I’m just saying what I heard around the industry, that this was a trustless program, or, you know, so So

Michelle Rigg: most of the money does run through without touching your trust account, but you cannot have it without a trust account, because if any of the payments fail They have to go back to somewhere, so they have to go back to the trust.

The way the bonds are done in WA, you have to have a trust account. We had some tenants who are overseas based. They can’t use BPAY or any of those transactions. They need to have the SWIFT code and everything like that. So you very much do need a trust account. Probably and the clearing days was probably a big concern of ours once we went on to [00:15:00] the program.

But, the reason why we went on there, that, that thought of the money just moving smoothly through, we wouldn’t have to physically you know, nominate which accounts to pay and all that. It would just, you know, it would just automatically go through and do things. You can monitor it and you can certainly prioritize.

So you have management over it. The money just ran through the program which, which in theory reduced when it did reduce the number of transactions going through your trust and in theory. the reduction in risk of, you know, any scams and things like that. So the concept is good. What we weren’t, what we didn’t fully understand was just how long the, it took for the money to go from one to the other.

And I guess, you know, from our owners coming from a world where we would pay them today at end of month, they would either have the money in their account today or tomorrow. It was essentially because it was a direct debit system from the tenant. So it takes, take the money today. It takes three to four days for that, for those funds to clear.

Then it would pay them on to either the suppliers that were [00:16:00] outstanding or the owner. But that would take another three or four days to get clear into their accounts.

Peter Fletcher: That’s forever. So

Michelle Rigg: it was a week and you know, money’s a pretty important topic to investors. And so try to explain to them. Your funds are on their way was one of the biggest challenges that we that we had.

And also, I mean, you would have

Peter Fletcher: been fielding a lot of calls. You would have had people going. Why, what’s the benefit to me? Like, it’s, it sounds like all the benefits to you, none of it’s to me,

Michelle Rigg: we we, look I can say from that experience, people can be pretty cruel. You know, we’ve probably, we’ve been in property management a long time, but it was, Interesting.

Yes. Yes. Again, out of our whole rent role, it was still sort of around that 15 to 20%, but that 15 to 20 percent wasn’t getting any quieter. I will give our team 110 percent for their resilience during. [00:17:00] That time, and it was six months of, you know, from the 1st of July, really, we just punched through to the end of the year with those changes and that.

And the team with everything that was going on did really well. You know, we certainly weren’t at our best during that time. There’s no, no way you could be but they did really well. The money, you know, trying to explain to owners because they could see on the portal that funds were paid, but they still hadn’t got it.

It was those sort of challenges where what was showing on the portal wasn’t reflecting in their bank accounts. To be honest, I think by the time we made the decision to change, the property managers were probably settling down into getting used to using the program.

Peter Fletcher: It does take a while.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah. And, but we still, when we look to the future.

We couldn’t see the things that are really important to us and really important to our relationship with the owners changing soon enough for us.

Peter Fletcher: Money being, the money flow [00:18:00] being the main one?

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, the money flow being the main one and just managing things like rent arrears and seeing what were tenant invoices to owner invoices.

You know, that clarity to make the property manager’s job really easy. And look. We looked at the program. Absolutely. We did all the training beforehand. Absolutely. But until you were using these programs day to day, you don’t get the real feel of it. So I don’t care what anybody says. Didn’t you do your due diligence?

Nobody does their due diligence by dumping their whole rent roll in and running it on a day to day basis, you know? So, yeah, and the requests in Colmeo were really good, but there were certainly. Faults with those and just that one of the biggest things was the rent arrears, if you didn’t close that request down, it would never start another rent arrears request.

So for me, like if a property manager for whatever mine missed closing a rent arrears down because the tenant now paid the rent, we’ve lost total side over when they’re in arrears again. [00:19:00] So, and look, there were ways around that and things like that, but it was just, yeah. And now. Processes, our efficiencies just went out the wall because the way the program worked, it actually added about additional three to five tasks on to our admin team, which just made their job really more challenging.

So, you know, it’s just those things. I think when people are developing the program, I think You know, to find information, where do you have to go? And we’ve got some challenges with PropertyMe with that as well. So as I said, none of them are perfect, but there was a combination of things that Suzanne and I were in a meeting and she opened, she said those words, Peter.

Peter Fletcher: She said those words. She said

Michelle Rigg: those words. We think she thinks we need to change. Yeah, and it was like well If we’re going to change we need to do it now because the longer you’re in the harder it is to extract. So yes

Peter Fletcher: Okay, so Just a bit of [00:20:00] idle speculation Colmio was, and probably still is, seen as a bit of a Shall I say, maverick in a good way, as in, very entrepreneurial, very innovative willing to make some mistakes, but in a good way.

Where do you see them in the next three to five years? And will you wish that you had have stayed with them?

Michelle Rigg: Well, I agree with you. They’re very entrepreneurial and everything. What probably was one of the things that, you know, was the tipping point was when we heard that they were about to put quite a lot of money into a platform where tenants could You know, higher maintenance, higher removal trucks and all those services.

And we could get a, you know, an offset of that. Whereas for us, we’re like saying to them, put the money into making the payments quicker. Yeah. You know, so for us, and then we were very clear on that. We’re saying the owners are our clients, the experience for the owners. [00:21:00] Is far more important to us than getting an extra dollar from tenants signing up to a removal truck or anything like that.

I said that for us is not it. So, yeah, look, it is interesting. I think, look, I think there has to be a better way to do the payments. Absolutely. I think we touched the transactions too many times in the programs. You know, there needs to be an easier way to manage the money flow that we’re doing.

Which is why we sort of went down that road in the first place. It’ll be interesting to see with that space. I think what I know, what I’m learning is that things don’t move very fast in the software space.

Peter Fletcher: Mm, yeah, well, it can move fast, but It’s also a political thing. They’ve got you in their ear and they’ve got their investors in their ear and they’ve got their board in their ear.

And it’s it’s where their priorities are. Is a [00:22:00] complex

Michelle Rigg: thing. Yeah. And certainly that tenant platform for them would be a good income generator. And they wanna, at a

Peter Fletcher: theoretical level at least.

Michelle Rigg: Yes. Yes. And they wanna share that income, but for us it’s like, well, that’s fine.

But if our owners are continually not happy and our property managers continually having to. Try and balance ledgers and explain payments to them because it would pay even if there was a cent left over and there was a bill outstanding, it would send a cent off. Now unfortunately in the world of BPAY, Watercorp has a 10 minimum limit.

So then you’re getting one cent back into your trust account. So there was those things that I guess I would have expected that they would have flushed out by now because they have been on the program for a while. And so for us, those are the important things.

Peter Fletcher: The devil is in the detail.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah. You know, for you, for your clients who were their clients rather than going down the line of adding more products on and things like that.
So, yeah.

Peter Fletcher: So we’ve come to the meeting [00:23:00] where Sue says,

Michelle Rigg: I know

Peter Fletcher: we need to change and Sue is very quietly spoken. And but what she says is pretty considered. And I think if that came out of her mouth, you’d.

Michelle Rigg: It’s one of the biggest decisions that we’ve ever made. I mean, you know, changing once is hard enough changing twice in that short length of time.

But we actually went out to the whole team and I mean the whole team. So we had a meeting 16th of October, 2024. 12 p. m.

Peter Fletcher: You remember it well, clearly. I do.

Michelle Rigg: We had our, we’ve got a wonderful team in the Philippines. We had all them online as well. We had our entire office in. And again, I’m really proud of our team, because they were very considerate about it. That meeting took an hour and a half. To talk through, like, because they knew themselves, what that meant, changing programs, [00:24:00] you know, for them as for the clients and everything and as I said, they were probably getting to the sink of, okay, we’re getting used to it now and everything and it was really considered and they raised some good points and bad points but in the end, it came down to, can we see the program changing?

Any time soon to make things easier and the answer was no.

Peter Fletcher: Did they have input into where you went next?

Michelle Rigg: Yes, and they had input into Colmio. I mean, at the end of the day, you can’t have everybody’s, you know, somebody’s got to make a decision. We bring them into the demos and the discussions and things like that.

We did go around and speak to Property Tree, Property, it was probably down to between Property Tree and Property Me by that stage. And so we chose Property Me. A lot of our girls

Peter Fletcher: Why did Property Me get the nod over Tree?

Michelle Rigg: We had, probably because of the people in our team were very strong about it, who’d used it [00:25:00] previously.

And

Peter Fletcher: Who? Sorry, who is PropertyMe? Who makes that?

Michelle Rigg: Oh. I don’t actually know the people behind it. That one Peter. Yeah, it’s an Australian company.

Peter Fletcher: Eastern States

Michelle Rigg: based. Eastern States based. Yes It’s but it’s Australian company. You got Sarah Dawson. Who’s the customer service? They’ve got it.

You know, they’ve an offshoot of the Property tree rockin days few of the people from theirs from that time, but is it is an Australian owned company You know, but you’ve got property Tree, who was Australian born, sold out to, you know, MRI. So I don’t hold any, you know, Oh my God, it’s an Australian company, it’s always going to be an Australian company.

You know, so it basically came down to what the program did, and it doesn’t do everything that I would expect. And then what our team thought about it. And we came to the decision that it was property, me and even our [00:26:00] admin offshore team had used it and sort of favoured that. So, there were no big, Oh my God, why didn’t we do this before?

Or, you know, anything there to say that I still believe they’re all pretty much. Like, like the biggest one for Colmere is obviously the money side of things.

Peter Fletcher: Yes. Okay, so you you chose Property Me because your team sounded pretty supportive of that move?

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, but we did, we still had our conversations and went through how the program would work and things like that.

Peter Fletcher: Were Property Tree genuinely in the hunt?

Michelle Rigg: Yes, they were.

Yep.

Peter Fletcher: Okay.

Michelle Rigg: But

Peter Fletcher: Was it a toss of the coin?

Michelle Rigg: Oh,

Peter Fletcher: look, I think, What caused you to say yes to Property Me and no to Property Tree? What was the defining point?

Michelle Rigg: Probably that more of our staff were, more favoring PropertyMe,

Peter Fletcher: And because they’d used it before.

Yeah,

Michelle Rigg: they’d used it before. And there was nothing jumping out from us from PropertyTree. And I think one of the things with [00:27:00] PropertyTree is the layering, you know, if you want the insights, you’ve got to pay more, you know, if you want that, probably may have that a little bit. I mean, if you want their AI billing, you’ve got to pay extra, but just that, you know, that.

Paying for different modules with, and that was, it’s always been the property tree sort of thing is, just a little bit, but there wasn’t there’s, I can’t say there’s There was, you know, resounding differences.

Peter Fletcher: Yes. Yeah. Okay. So, it came down to pretty much, not a flip of the coin, but just.

What your team felt comfortable with.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah. Yep. Yep, especially considering what they’d been through and considering that there were no major differences between the programs. And look, some of the things some things on property me but does things differently than property tree.

Absolutely. So, you know, yeah.

Peter Fletcher: Step me through the process of moving from Colmeo to PropertyMe. Oh,

Michelle Rigg: he’s going to trigger [00:28:00] all these things, Peter. I’m

Peter Fletcher: not

Michelle Rigg: a

Peter Fletcher: counsellor.

Michelle Rigg: Oh, I know. Look, getting off a program like Colmeo is not like getting off a program. Like, going from property meter, property tree. And I will say the Conweo team were absolutely fantastic during this time.

And even when we were talking to them about what we were thinking of moving. And they were very open in saying, it’s not an easy program to get off. And they absolutely did everything possible to make that as easy for us. So, no, there’s no issues with the Conweo team whatsoever. But of course, when you’ve got money just automatically flowing through.

You’ve got to stop it.

Peter Fletcher: So imagine a

Michelle Rigg: 24th of October, Peter, where all payments stop through Colmio and everything gets diverted to the trust account.

So you have to manually receipt into a trust account. So with Colmio, there was the program Colmio and the trust account was run through a program called Guardian.

[00:29:00] Very manual. Program because obviously in theory not a lot of money would follow through. So for a week we had to manually transact and manually pay out.

So it was a interesting time.

Peter Fletcher: Sorry. You had to manually, so you had to manually receipt. You had to manually receipt

Michelle Rigg: and calculate management fees

Peter Fletcher: and calculate management fees for approximately 2000 tenants.

Michelle Rigg: Yep.

Peter Fletcher: And that was for the week, the last week of October.

Michelle Rigg: Yep.

Peter Fletcher: I’m thinking there was some overtime worked.

Michelle Rigg: Yes, our, and then our admin team, as I said, have been fantastic throughout this because the changes the program impacted on them the most because of the work that they do. They were pretty, yeah. It’s probably good I didn’t go on my holiday really, you know, and my partner Fee has been wonderful.

[00:30:00] The whole team has been wonderful along the way, so, you know, but yeah, that was a, that was an interesting week.

Peter Fletcher: Michelle, for the few non property management listeners that it, what you’ve just described is an unbelievably big. Task, it is massive to, to receipt manually, 2000 tenants. So in that time, you would’ve had approximately a thousand,

Michelle Rigg: Most pay fortnightly. So, yeah, about

Peter Fletcher: a thousand receipts.

Mm. And each owner would be on, you’d have to check the management fee for each owner because not everyone would be the same. Yeah, so we did, yeah, we brought

Michelle Rigg: in a couple of extra bodies and everything. We didn’t get to pay all our owners out and we were very open with the owners. We had emails going out with them because we had to stop transacting in order to, for all the funds to go through.

The trust account, so as it was clear to move [00:31:00] over the balances to PropertyMe and PropertyMe were also fantastic in the transition and help because that was a very different transition for them as well. So I can’t the, both software companies were fantastic during that time.

Peter Fletcher: So you would have got to the end of October, the last working day of October, and then Before you do any payouts, you would have had to do your bank reconciliation, and

Michelle Rigg: We had to stop, basically, transacting.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah, you would have had to do your bank reconciliation, make sure everything was ready to go, before you push the trigger on the

Michelle Rigg: Yep, and then payout

Peter Fletcher: button.

Michelle Rigg: Christina from PropertyMe worked all that weekend, because obviously, the owners and that didn’t match exactly. So she had a nice trial balance to work through and match and she did, she worked pretty much all that weekend so that we could be up and running for the Monday.

That is amazing.

Peter Fletcher: It reminds me of when I moved from retest. Do you [00:32:00] remember RETAS? Oh my God, yes I do. It’s going back to, you know, 1923. So we moved from RETAS to REST and back in the day the choice was either GD or REST. And REST was the the big, you know, greedy company from the New South Wales.

Yes. But I thought that it was the. The software that was, had the better trajectory in terms of of development. And so on the we were doing all of our swap overs from RETAS into REST. And I could not for the life of me. Get the the trust account the bank rec balanced, couldn’t I was just could not get it balanced and I had Jenny Dennis

Michelle Rigg: in there and she was

Peter Fletcher: going and she gave up.

She just goes, I don’t know. Sorry, I’ve got to go home and feed the kids or something. So she disappeared and I’m sitting there. They’re trying to work out, you know,

[00:33:00] what do I do and, you know, like, where is it? And so I called Kylie Downs, as she was then, and Kylie Atkinson now, and KJA came in, and she just sat there, and she, and it was like, oh my God.

It was such a relief moment when it finally, it was balanced, and then we could pay out. And we were like you we sent out an email to all of our clients saying, oh, you know, like, same thing we’ve, Swapped over, you know, there’s a bit of a delay and I think we, we had to delay end of month by a day or two before we could could pay them out, but, oh, that was incredibly stressful.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, it’s yeah. You know, moving from a program at Colmeo to The Property Me, I mean, because they, the way Colmeo works, they just had to close everything down. So we had to work off spreadsheets to enter in the invoices that were outstanding and things like that. And of course, some were part paid because of the way the money flowed through.[00:34:00]

So it was a big And that, so property me, we transitioned over on the 4th of November being the Monday.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah.

Michelle Rigg: So it’s been a full on right to the end of last year. It’s been pretty full on. We were really glad for 2024 to go .

Peter Fletcher: How long did it take you to get back into the groove of things a after you’d finally switched over property to property manager?

Oh,

Michelle Rigg: look I wouldn’t say that we are into the groove of things yet, so we’ve we just, we got through. Okay, so

Peter Fletcher: you’re three months down the track. And you’re still not 100 percent comfortable.

Michelle Rigg: No, well, we had to do a lot of data checks and we still probably got another layer of that to do and just where our team were.

I mean, they were pretty exhausted by that time, you know, so, getting them, you know, they’d already done a whole lot of checks for the Commio transition then to say again, and we were at one of the busiest times as well. So all through that six months is our biggest gross that we’ve had and a lot of them being new builds.

So, you know, we. We’ve come back [00:35:00] with the year our theme for this year is attitude 100 percent and our, as far as our team go, it’s focusing on coaching, communication, and wellbeing. So coaching, because we’re getting retraining, refreshing, saying, remember, this is how we used to do things because we actually did lose a lot of that through that time.

You inefficiencies and just keeping up because of the. I guess the calls and the complaints and the questions that they had to answer and were struggling to answer to understand how the program worked and learning a new program. A lot of the focus went off other stuff. And we did, we, we certainly had unhappy customers and we certainly didn’t perform at our best during those times.

But under the conditions, the team did absolutely brilliant, brilliantly. So we’ve come back. We’ve also We’ve got some new staff, you know, we, you’ve always got people leaving you know, and we’re lucky that the people that are leaving, it was been difficult decision that, you know, it’s just not for them.

So we’ve had those [00:36:00] who brought on new people. So you’ve got all that going in a normal environment. Let alone with what the team have been going through. So it really, this year is about getting back to the basics and getting our efficiencies back, starting to look more at what, how Property Me does work and how we can use their tasks, you know, to start progressing that transition away from Airtable, that’s where we’re starting now, but January’s, you know, January, that first month back is always pretty, wow, it’s gone already.

It’s finished after today, Peter,

Peter Fletcher: that’s it. It’s Christmas tomorrow.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, I know. I know. But you know, it is really exciting. The team come back with a really good mindset. Some of them at the end of it were they were really at that stage of, can they keep doing this? So it was good that we were able to have a break for the first time in my life.

I had shut my computer down for two weeks and didn’t touch it.

Peter Fletcher: No.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Fletcher: And through, through all of this, you [00:37:00] had Sue become president of Rewa.

Michelle Rigg: Yes. Yeah. We did remember to celebrate that.

Peter Fletcher: Yeah. That would have been a, that would have been a tough gig. I know I would have been questioning. Can I do all of that you’ve just described even with your support and with a great team behind you? Can I do all of that and be the face of the real estate industry in WA?

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, but as you’ve said previously, like, like, Sue is conscious about, very conscious about the industry, you know, and the well being of the industry, and very much about property management.

And her focus has been, you know, there’s been big changes on the property management front with legislation and things like that, and just where the industry is in general. I could probably, wouldn’t be out of turn in saying that it was never her plan to be president. , but I think we’re all very lucky that she did step up and [00:38:00] take that role.

And because I think she can have a very positive impact on the industry and also, you know, the upcoming changes. ’cause there’s still more changes on the property management front. Her personality is very levelheaded, very caring and she takes a very considered approach to everything. So, so.

Peter Fletcher: Michelle, where do you want property management software to go from here? What would you like to see? What’s on your kind of wish, your main things on your wish list?

Michelle Rigg: It, they need to be focusing on the automation. They need to be able to allow AI into the programs to help. You know that automation, the basic automation of sending emails out and notifications, you know, just simple prompts like your rent’s going to increase and things like that.

But very much so in developing that dashboard of the workflows that the property managers do. Everything runs out of those programs. That should be the program where all the work, the checklists and everything work, [00:39:00] and they’re all working on them, but they need, really need to understand that it’s got to be done in a way that a property manager can just open up the program.

And see what they need to work on, you know, and be able to easily find it this clicking here, you know, why can’t I just see what the where the bond is at, you know, where the, how much the tenants paid in bond, where the rent’s paid to just simple information on one screen. And get all their phone numbers on one screen, you know, just, yeah, it seems that they’ve all gone down that track of click here, click there, and then you’ll get there now, click back again to get back to the other thing.

Yeah, and we, and it’s possibly a bit harsh cause I’m still learning property me, you know, as well, but I just find they, it. They’re not that user friendly for the practical property manager really just to get on and do their job and know what they need to do. And even to work with an assistant, you know, being able to tag people together and split what they can see.

[00:40:00] So like in our air table, we can have a view for the assistant that the assistant gets flags for the things that they’re tasked to do, but the property manager on theirs still has an overview of it.

Peter Fletcher: You

Michelle Rigg: know? So it’s just. It’s, I don’t know, it’s not rocket science to me, but it seems, and look, I don’t know.

I reckon it’s easy just to do the, you know, the git bit in the back end of the programs and recode them. But clearly it’s not. So, you know.
Peter Fletcher: It does take a little bit of effort, yes.

Michelle Rigg: I remember in one of the sessions involved, I saw saw him writing on the screen, said, I can do that. But look and, you know, getting developers is hard and things like that.

But I just think it, yeah, I think sometimes with their user groups, they’re not probably targeting the people that really have that overview on how the office should run because property managers only know what. They want to know. Yeah. They don’t have time to sort of step back and say, how could I actually work better?

Peter Fletcher: Yeah. What [00:41:00] might be, it would be a good question to ask is, like, rather than, you know, how could we make incremental improvements to what we have? Well, how could we imagine this instead of, Imagining it as a, let’s say a folder with a bunch of documents inside of it you know, as in the old property management, you know, files that we used to have how could you imagine it as a, well, what if our trust accounting software was like Facebook or what if it was like you know, some other metaphor and then And build from there.

Michelle Rigg: Yeah, I think one of the best courses I did was the neuroscience for, Diploma in Neuroscience for Leadership. And that really gave me the insight of how our brains work. And that, that from there has been the basis of how I focus on setting up all the workflows and how we do things. How we structure, you know, change around our meetings and just do quirky things and [00:42:00] things like that, but really in how we set up our day to work so that you can get in those flows and concentrate.
You’re not, we’re switching in, switching out too many times. And us women can’t even multitask properly, Peter. But, oh, was that recorded? Imagine

Peter Fletcher: what it’d be like if it was a

Michelle Rigg: plug. No chance. So that’s probably my biggest frustration with the systems, is that they’re not really working to make it easy for property managers to do their job.

I think

Peter Fletcher: you’ve just hit the nail on the head, Michelle. They should build it for blokes.

Michelle Rigg: I’m not getting into that debate.

Peter Fletcher: And then it’d be perfect because it’d be so easy to use that it’d be just like, oh my god.

Michelle Rigg: I’m not going down there. That’s just, that’s your talk.

Peter Fletcher: Michelle, this has been fantastic. Now almost certainly you, we’re going to have property man, a property manager or two want to reach out to you and would you be open to that? Yeah, of course. How would they get a hold of you? Just,

Michelle Rigg: They can search me on our website, rent [00:43:00] West Solutions.

Peter Fletcher: Rent West Solutions.

Michelle Rigg: Yes. I’m there. My email address is [email protected] au. There you go. And my mobile’s on the website as well. It’s all there. Ready for access?

Peter Fletcher: There you go. Alright, so if anyone wants to reach out and pick Michelle’s brain, be respectful of the time, I’m sure, but yeah.

It’s been incredibly generous of you to come along and share this part of your journey. Because some people, let’s face it you know, they’d be, they wouldn’t want to share that, that, that multi step process to get to where you are. But I just love that you, the way that you guys keep experimenting and and have a crack at things.

So.

Michelle Rigg: Thank you, Peter.

Peter Fletcher: Thank you so much.

Michelle Rigg: Thanks Peter.

Peter Fletcher: And that wraps up another episode of the WA Property Q& A. We hope you found our discussion valuable and gained some valuable insights into the World of property buying in Western Australia. Remember, while we strive to provide useful information, it’s crucial to consult with the [00:44:00] appropriate professionals before making any investment decisions.

Don’t forget to tune in next week for another exciting episode where we continue to unravel the mysteries of the WA property market. If you have any questions or topic suggestions, feel free to reach out to us. Until then, happy property hunting and remember to seek the right advice for your personal circumstances.

Thank you for listening.