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Scott Bateman on the future of Property Management

37m 36s

Scott Bateman on the future of Property Management

In this podcast episode, Scott Beatman, CEO of Colmeo, discusses the evolving landscape of property management, emphasizing the impact of AI and changing consumer expectations. He notes that both renters and landlords are becoming more demanding and informed, partly due to accessible AI tools like ChatGPT, which shape their interactions with property managers. To address this, the industry must leverage automation and AI to reduce operational costs, as management fees are predicted to decline over time due to market competition. Scott advocates for a tiered approach to problem-solving: prioritizing self-service, then automation, followed by AI, and only using human intervention as a last resort for tasks, but as the first choice for building relationships. He highlights that property managers will transition from handling routine tasks to focusing on emotional, high-value interactions, which are irreplaceable. To sustain revenue, agencies should diversify into ancillary services, using technology to facilitate offerings like maintenance or home services. Despite concerns, Scott argues that job losses are unlikely due to industry growth from immigration and a expanding rental market, with AI enabling property managers to handle more properties effectively while enhancing their roles.

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Welcome to Allfront Stones Podcast, all things property management. Where David Wolf will sit down and chat with industry insiders about all things property management. Sit back, relax and enjoy this episode of all things property management. Welcome to another episode of the Allfront Stones, all things property management podcast. Today, we've got Scott Beatman, the CEO of Colmeo, back with us for a second go as being a podcast guest. Those of you that have listened before, you would have heard Scott maybe a year or two years ago on our podcast. And we spoke about his story and where he's come from. Just to give you some background on Scott, he's got a background in banking and insurance in exactly roles through little real estate. And now he's heading up Colmeo, which is one of our, if not the preeminent tech company in the real estate space. So Scott, we've got him on the podcast, they're not so much to go over his story again because we've already done that. You may recall, I think we headed that one up from Homeless to CEO, but this time we've got Scott here in his role at the forefront of tech in our industry. And to, as someone that's at the forefront of understanding and utilising AI to its fullest to benefit our industry, I've probably said to a couple of people, there's AI and there's AI. You know, you've got a very basic format of AI running out there and then you've got what Scott and his team are looking at, which is making really good use of it. Scott, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for having me. It is wonderful to be with you once again. Excellent. So Scott, I'm really going to, I'll probably prompt you with a few questions and interrupt here and there, but you're the industry guru on understanding where properly management's going and the changes we've got to the service model of properly management coming through. Can you run through some of your thoughts and some of the things that you're working on to change that service model for the better? Yeah, sure. I mean, we could spend like hours talking about this. I think one of the things that we focus on is trying to make sense of where do we think the industry is headed in terms of how it makes money. Where do we think the industry is headed in terms of the costs that businesses have to do the things that help you make that money and what can we see outside of our industry in terms of change in consumer behavior and change in consumer expectation that we think has a reasonable likelihood of affecting how the people we serve and show up and expect things from us as well. One of the things that we sort of keep coming back to is that we are increasingly moving into a world in which people are getting very different levels of experience and service from other organizations and industries, which will shift what they come to expect from us. We think in many ways that is going to be an increasingly unrealistic level of expectation because they are so used to things being almost instant in most cases and increasingly thanks to things like AI, we're moving into a world in a time in which things are actually kind of predictive. So businesses go from not just being instant but being anticipatory and knowing what it is that a person wants before they even a clue that they want that thing we expect a similar thing will happen in PM one of the questions that I sort of put to PM teams when I work with them is you know look at your last couple of years. How many of you think your customers have become more demanding and more difficult to please and without fail every single person tang goes up and says 100% it is so much harder now and it's only getting harder and and reply that really is across the board Scott because we asked the same question what's changing what are your challenges and and it is that people from both sides of the transaction renters and the rental providers are becoming far more demanding. And also thinking they're better educated yeah well the interesting thing is they they're definitely getting more demanding they weren't better educated historically they're definitely getting more demanding increasingly though because of things like chat GPT before they call us they are on chat GPT saying look at legislation what are my rights or what should I expect or how should this work or whatever so they're coming into that transaction they're coming into that experience armed with whatever. The GPT can discern from legislation or whatever it might be so the the demanding side has got much worse and will only get worse the you know how informed are they well unfortunately that's also getting much much more difficult because increasingly you know they have got access to the information in the past only we really had an understanding of and they're using that to shape the email they send you or the letter they send you or the question that they ask and so on so it is it is becoming much more difficult because increasingly they have got access to the information in the past only we really had an understanding of and they're using that to shape the email they send you or the letter they send you or the question that they ask and so on. So it is it is becoming much much more complex and we expect that to accelerate across this year the other side of this is the economics of doing property management so what does it cost you to do a thing that a person needs you to do be at the landlord or the tenant and we expect that that cost is going to drop considerably over the course of the next two years because of things like automation and AI and so on. So in large part the advice we're giving to our customers and to the industry at large at the moment is to think about how you solve a problem using for theoretical kind of tears. The first is can the tenant or the owner self serve because in 99% of cases I don't even want to talk to someone I just want to be able to log on and think about your internet banking or log on most things I can do through the app and I'm really pleased with that because I don't want to call someone I don't want to email I don't want to go into a branch whatever. And most people are pretty happy if they can do it for themselves there and then if we can't do it through some kind of self serve can we automate some bit of software or whatever so that you're not using AI but people are getting a solution really quickly and it costs for a little to do. If we can't solve it through automation let's solve it with AI and we can get into what's kind of happening in AI at the moment that's making that more and more powerful and only after all those three things do we then stand back and say well if you can't do it through these three can and should we use a person remembering that the person is about to become orders of magnitude more expensive to complete the task than the person self serving then basic automation or then AI. So if we just focus on you know getting things done as an overall heading we say people over the course of the next 12 months using a human be it onshore offshore should be the last resort because it is orders of magnitude more expensive. Now this is deliberately kept separate so you know getting things done is kept separate from shaping how people feel in which case we reverse that whole process. I was just going to say Scott you probably I'm touching on an area that you've got PMs listening to this podcast and you probably just upset a few by saying we don't need you. That's not the case because you just about to say you swing things around so you got two areas that we're dealing with one is doing a task. I think that's where you're talking about you know the automations the AI all that stuff can do the task but then we've still got the relationship side of things which I think is where you're going next because we've since we've seen a number of disruptors I suppose they call them coming to the industry all tech forget the relationship and they haven't lasted long. Now and that's that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone at the end of the day like it if your business is tech then great go off and just build tech if that's not your business though which for the overwhelming majority of real estate businesses that's not the business that they're in. Then this this impact that people can have with people is you can't replace that like that interpersonal connection is still incredibly valuable and this is why we say the businesses just be be deliberate so when you think about getting a task done the most expensive way to solve that now is with the human. But if you think about impacting has someone feels the best way to do that is with a human and the worst way to do that is to yourself serve automation a I etc. So we've just got to start to separate these two things because if you're asking the same PM to do both one it's very expensive to it's not optimal and three you're going to keep coming back to this issue that was seen across the industry which is simply there are not enough property managers and that data is getting worse. So post-COVID you know if you hop on seek.com.au right now you'll find there are 4,500 vacant property manager roles even though property manager wages have gone up circa 30% post-COVID. So no matter how much money you throw at it it's not solving the problem of can we get people in the into the industry to do the work. So if you've got too few people you then got to stand back and say well do we keep fighting to try and find 4,500 more of these folks that the data tells us we're not finding or do we become smarter about what we have people do so that we leverage technology to get tasks done and free up these brilliant people to be more impactful with with customers in the moments that matter most. Yeah for sure because I think that's something that history's shown we can't live without is that human interaction and I often tell people you know we're in a highly emotional industry because you've got on one side you've got the renters who are living in the house where they're they're building their dreams they've got their memories and everything tied up in that property and you've got the rental provider on the other side that's got all this money invested in it and unlike shares. Where it's just a line on their computer program that they own some shares they can drive past this and see exactly how it's being looked after which brings that emotion into it which is why we're always going to need to keep that human involvement in there. So Scott things like we've got the increase in consumer demands lower management fees seem to be an issue in property management. Do you see that being addressed in any way through what your work is involved in? No to be honest and people won't like my answer here there is no industry in the world that has that has similar kind of conditions where what you earn goes up over time in a market like ours. The simple fact hates saying it because I'm at this is not good news management fees will only get lower over time that is absolutely certain now the positive is through some of what's going on with AI and automation and so on. Your costs should be falling proportionately so profit margin won't change too much but to the business owners we say you need to be really careful because top line revenue will drop and if your business's valuation is tied to a multiple of that revenue line the value of your business could drop. So our focus with Carmio really in our first few years was how do we do things that help reduce the cost to run your business increasingly we're sort of saying this and we think that that's going to reach its peak over the next 12 months. And now we've got to pivot the focus of the tech and the platform to how do we help you drive revenue through diversification or whatever so that in aggregate your business is generating as much but it's probably not going to come from management fees. The simple reality is in any business where it is easy to enter a market what you will see is that revenue falls over time in our industry you get a license you get a mobile phone you can start a business and we see this all the time so. I think I hate to say because it's not a good thing but the more that we bang the drum about try and push your fee up the more you are creating space for someone else to drive it down instead you've got to think about how you plan that space very differently because it's not going to change. >> Let's take a quick break. >> Comeo have built a smarter more secure property management platform designed for large and fast growing agencies with deep configurability automation and enterprise grade security. >> Comeo streamlines operations reduces risk and gives you total control all in one seamless system. Their award winning software is perfect for property managers offering workflows checklists payments and more. head to colmeo dot com that's k o l m e o dot com to book a demo and see colmeo in action. >> And with some of the work you're doing through colmeo you're you're really addressing those lower fees as well and providing some opportunities and options and and you see a way that you can help. >> Keep the revenue up higher I guess without without having to worry so much about lower fees. >> Yeah I think so this is where so today we kind of think about it and say 10 years ago 15 years ago let's say for argument say you could make two grand managing a property and it cost you $1,500 to do the things that allowed you to make that two grand. >> That time going that far you basically just did PM to earn that money for those costs what we're saying is that in this new world there is an abundance of opportunity. >> But don't expect to make that same kind of delta between cost and revenue just from PM instead start thinking about your business a bit more naturally so are you you know connecting into a bunch of the other different services that people use in and around the home. >> So I'm not I don't want to pop on your podcast and give an ad for colmeo but we have a product called colmeo plus which is designed essentially to solve this problem we argue there's a whole bunch of things that go on during the course of a tenancy. >> We believe there's an opportunity to do that really well for both the landlord and the tenant to earn money from the businesses that provide those services and then to share that money back with the real estate agency. >> So that whatever you're losing through competition and so on over time we can offset it by giving you access to all of these other opportunities that we see show up. >> We built a similar thing for Paul Little's business when I was there had varying levels of success ultimately what we concluded through that though. >> Is that you can't ask the property managers to do it you've got to do it through the technology the PM's have got a million things to worry about they're in high demand as we just spoke about a moment ago. >> If you're asking them to then go off and try and you know identify the opportunity and and pitch it and so on it just doesn't work so ultimately we think this needs to be a technology driven solution so that the agencies can reap those rewards. >> Going back to talking about probably how you've got the AI and the automations and all that stuff coming through and we've got the lower fees and everything so that the thing that gets in everyone's mind is that means that we either need less property managers which we don't really or. >> Property managers are going to need to be managing more properties which I think is a fair assumption and that going puts a lot a bit of fear into property managers that they're going to go from managing 150 properties to 250 or whatever the figures are for their business. >> But it's it shouldn't really give them that much fear because the the functions that they'll be performing as property managers will be totally different it's really going to be more that relationship aspect. >> Which will give them more time on the phones to talk to clients and so forth because things like maintenance for example which can be a big time consuming factor in particularly older demographics. >> That can be looked after pretty much through the automations and the AI totally without a property manager involvement. >> Yeah definitely I think and you know that job like that's a different job to what people do today in many regards so for some people that may not be an exciting future which I can understand. >> But certainly as we sort of see where the world is headed and we're our industry is headed. >> There are capabilities within AI now that are very different to what was around 12 months ago they are very different to what most people are familiar with because I think most people's exposure to AI is largely something like chat GPT. >> We're increasingly these technologies are basically like a digital version of a human and that you just give them an objective you give them some scope. >> We will connect them into things like your processes and procedures guides legislation and so on and then it can take action of its own volition to complete something like a maintenance job literally start to finish end to end. >> So in large part what we're seeing and what we're sort of forecasting is that properties per PM will go up considerably over the course the next couple of years but that doesn't mean the volume of work that you're managing is going up considerably. >> It's saying imagine having a team of five or six people and those five or six people go and do 90% of the things you do today. >> But every now and again that that one of your team members going to come to you and say Dave I'm kind of stuck at this point can you help me understand the next step I need to take. >> Or Dave I've got this customer that I'm solving a problem for it's probably a little bit delicate would you mind getting involved because we think there's so many human interaction that could be really valuable. >> That is effectively the way the work will work so the AI will do most of the menial things and then it will come to you the PM and say I've gone as far as I can go could you help me out just to do a B.C. >> Or I think this is a bit of a sensitive issue it's an eviction or something like that I think it's probably best that a human picks it up and works with it so it's a very different future. >> Most of the PMs that we talk to when we go through how we're sort of saying this take shape come away actually really excited because a lot of the things that used to irritate them and frustrate them and you kind of get that groundhog day experience of doing PM disappears and instead they're free to do what they're really good at which is just have great conversations add value and build really strong long lasting relationships. >> And I guess you know that leads to another question that that property managers might think of and sorry I'm throwing at you things here which occurs. >> But I want the PMs out there to understand that you don't need to be fearful of this stuff it's it's a change but it's going to be a change of benefits. >> But I can imagine property managers are sitting out there saying we've got limited rental properties. >> It's going to mean industry losses job losses in the industry because we've only got this many rental properties yet you were saying we're going to increase what we manage per property. >> But in Australia now with the way the property markets going rentals are just going to become a bigger and bigger thing there will be more and more people renting we've got immigration levels that don't seem to be slowing down so that's going to require more property and most of those will become once in a rental market so that's going to. >> That's going to increase the properties there so it's not going result in those job losses that a lot of people might be sitting back thinking about. >> No I agree I think it's actually quite the opposite so when we when we look at what we think will happen and you know we're crystal balling so take up the grain of salt the way that I would describe it to people is this. >> If we look at where our industry is right now and say we have X amount of properties that need to be managed and we have you know why amount of property managers. >> As we go forward your right population is increasing the percentage of people who can only ever rent is increasing household composition so how many people on average per house is shrinking. >> So we're going to find literally hundreds of thousands of more rentals are needed every single year and you'll see the government's plans around building homes is to try and deliver on that whether they get there are not separate conversation but that's what they're focused on. >> So you have this market that is adding hundreds of thousands more rentals that need to be managed and you've got an industry which is not bringing in new property managers. >> At anywhere near the rate that we need to hence the current four and a half thousand vacant roles on the seek so that is about a third of the industry is not not currently managed by a PM that we would like to see a PM managing that property so it's a huge deficit. >> Increasingly what we think will happen is a graded degree of professionalization the really elite PMs who want to make a career at a PM are the people that will stay within what we're doing. >> And what you'll find starts to happen is that as people leave the industry we probably just won't need to replace them at anywhere near the rate that we've needed to in the past and we're not going to be scrounging trying to convince people to come and do the job because we also won't need them at the volumes that we've needed in the past. >> Now for any one of the people that's listening to this podcast I know firsthand great PMs the fastest way to drive them nuts is to have high turnover and make it their problem to train all the new PMs like it just drives the bonkers so increasingly we see that disappearing because instead of needing to train new people and convince them to stay around and all of that sort of stuff. >> You will have technologies that you work with instead and they will operate like your team you will turn up they will talk to about what it is that we need to focus on to achieve you will give them instruction and direction and they'll go and complete the work for you so it is a. >> We expect the number of PMs in the industry over time to shrink but we don't expect that you're just going to turn up tomorrow and start sacking people because quite the opposite we still have a huge shortage of the numbers that we would need over the next few years. >> Although the one area I think that this does really affect as well and this might sound like a shock to some property managers but I'm thinking with the automations and the AI and that kind of stuff and European might be different so I'm keen to hear that but VAs will die off. >> I think some some will like if we again if we think about that hierarchy can the person self serve automation AI human the question when we get to the human part is should this be on sure human or offshore human. >> Now if it needs a human touch or human oversight but you still want to do that at a really low cost because that's a proper business decision you may well decide to use an RP to complete that rather than an on sure resource if for whatever reason you've decided no we think this is important but an on sure resource does it an on sure resource will. >> But we don't see a difference necessarily between those two things in that hierarchy we think there'll be some cases where it makes sense to use the RP and some not but a lot of what we're outsourcing to RPs today I agree you will have AI doing those things like that will just be it won't make sense to send that to an offshore person. >> Yeah sure Scott I'm I'm just an old bloke so I'm not tech as tech savvy as others might be in certainly yourself I think you're selling yourself shortly mate. >> So what I'm what I'm reading into it by saying that is that I've I've asked you the questions that my brain understands the tech and and where things are going and all that kind of stuff. >> I just want to give you free rein for all to without interruption from me talk about things that you think are important to get across the property managers with the work that you do and what you're seeing within the industry. >> So I think if I was to say anything so that the towards the end of last year when we were meeting with business leaders and talking about where we sort of think this year will go the one thing that I was focused on with them in those conversations is this notion of what we call organizational agility and I'll just explain that as best as I can for both the business owners that are listening to this but also the property managers. >> Organizational agility is the degree to which a group of people that we call a business can adapt to a change in their environment. >> And what we mean by this is if something is going wrong how quickly and how successfully can you implement change to address it or if you find that there is a new opportunity how quickly can you reshape what it is that you do to go and pursue it. >> My experience with property management is that because it is so kind of regimented like the best business is it's also almost like military precision they work to a process they work to a procedure a checklist and they stick to it. >> As a consequence we are not a great industry at adapting to change and you'll find people become very set in their ways people become very dogmatic about this is the absolute way that it must be done. >> And we kind of start to put the blinkers on and so well I've done it this way for 10 years I'm going to do it this way for the next 10. >> 10 years ago that was probably fine because the pace of change was very slow when the risk of getting it wrong was probably very low. >> I would argue in what's coming and sort of seeing what we're building and what others are building and so on that will be you know organizational suicide. >> We've got to get to a point where businesses can change a lot and change quickly and we've also got to get to a point where business cultures become more experimental. >> So in the past we had planning businesses you know we could reasonably predict where we thought we'd be in 12 months we built really regimented plans. >> Most of the people that I'm connected to from my studies and someone sort of focus on strategy is saying if you think you can predict where the world will be in six months you are sadly mistaken. >> So if you can't make that prediction how do you plan like how do you build a plan. >> So increasingly we've got to move from planning businesses to experimenting businesses and an experimenting business essentially what we're saying is every time we see an opportunity or a problem. >> We form a hypothesis so we stand back and we say if I did ABLC I think this is kind of roughly what would happen. >> So then we build an experiment to test it and if it works amazing and we implement that new thing if it doesn't work we're not disappointed because the whole the whole kind of. >> The whole kind of value of an experimental culture is learning so we stand back and say well it didn't work that's cool. >> What if we learned now that we've understood why it didn't work and so on and let's fine tune and have another crack at a slightly different variation of the experiment. >> So that approach is not something that I see pop up across the industry very often I think we've become very kind of structured in our view. >> So urging the industry to start to make that shift because your competition over the course of the next couple of years doesn't look anything like your competition over the previous years. >> What we are expecting is the rise of director consumer technology products. >> And I know some people will hear that and say you know we've seen disruptors come and go not like this I promise you not like this. >> We didn't have the technologies that exist now two years ago so the disruptors that you knew two years ago weren't really disruptors. >> They were basically a software kind of brand on what it is that everyone else is already doing which means they've got all the same costs they've got all the same limitations. >> And if you're just going to go at some stupid rate good luck you probably won't survive and that's what we saw happen. >> These technologies are director consumer products that will use AI that is capable operating just as well as a fully qualified human. >> And they will go director consumer and say listen we don't need to be as good as the local real estate agent will be 90% as good. >> But instead of charging you to grant you property will charge you $20 a month. >> And now your problem is in industries that we are trying to justify a price point that's 10 times theirs and they can do that and operate profitably forever. >> Whereas doing it with a software branded property management team of course is the same human costs and limitations and so on they run out of money. >> So what is coming is very different to what we've been competing with and if you are trying to continue to prosecute to the consumer you know we're 10 times as expensive but we're 10% different or better. >> That's not a winning formula. So whatever you thought has got to start to change. >> So Scott I know I said I wasn't going to interrupt you I was going to let you go. >> No I just want to pick up on one area which we didn't really touch on before but we're now getting into an area where I think this becomes relevant. >> And that's the knowledge of property managers compared to these disruptors you're talking about that will do it for 20 bucks a month or whatever. >> What about things like we've got the legislation and changes in legislation and keeping on top of that is that's something you see the technology taking over from and being able to deal with. >> Is that going to stay with the property manager. >> No sadly there's so let me share and I'm just full of bad news this morning I'm sorry I'll give you the bad news and then I'll give you the good news. >> There is you'll hear this term which is a bit of a wordy term that I'll explain it it's called the democratization of expertise. >> And essentially what that means is that expertise is about to be worth nothing. >> The AI is so good and it is basically flawless if you know how to build it properly and I can explain that as well. >> So you are competing with a tool that every time it gives a response we can tell it before you give that response. >> I want you to read an interpret legislation and I want you to assess every single time we've ever interacted with the customer across a million different instances of this event. >> So no human can do that like no human can compete with that it is 99.9% accurate no property manager is and it will do it for one cent in terms of the cost. >> To go and learn that and then present that information. >> So I know in the past that's been some of the advice pms have been given sadly I'm sorry to say the tech is already way past all of us. >> And the problem again is that the landlord all the tenant don't need us to answer because these tools are on the internet now they're free. >> You can go and use them and you can ask it to read the legislation and so on. >> So it's not the knowledge of legislation that matters anymore it is if I am the consumer what is going on that I'm referring to legislation. >> There is probably some event where there's something that's contentious I'm nervous am I about to be sued can I get my money back is my damage going to get fixed. >> And this is why I keep saying to people that the value of the role is not going to be do you know legislation because the tech not better than you. >> It's can you empathize with the human being put their mind at ease give them reassurance give them comfort help them feel like you've got this you are in control. >> That human feeling stuff the AI doesn't do won't do that is absolutely where you will add value. >> But again I would say you know look at the way some of these tools work when you give them a challenge or a test around legislation and I promise you I can show you tech that will do it better than any of us can do. >> Because it is taught to read every single page instantly and discern what the answer needs to be before it gives a response. >> Yeah, and Scott I'm not he pushing our services either like you said you weren't here for coming over for we're here for podcasts but we've got an awful and stone app and one of the things we've been playing with recently is AI we did have a what we call frequently asked question section. >> And that was just bits and pieces of legislation and stuff that was put there that they could pull out and writing pets and get the actual legislation. >> Now we've put that into a closed source AI. >> Which we've got in there it refers to the residential tenancies act the regulations. >> The ATO tax guide things that are real law and then some vcat cases and and Supreme Court cases so it's getting the real information. >> And the responses you get back when you just key in pets for example are phenomenal and correct it's it's been directed the AI has been directed to the right sources. >> Yeah, and I think that's where people need to be careful as well is the AI getting it from the right sources or are you using an open source AI like chat GPT that might be getting it from what Bob Smith said. >> Funds upon a time who knows nothing about propping. Very very possible good advice. >> Scott we can probably talk for for days and days and days about what you're doing with with technology and so forth but I think we probably should cut it off here for today because we like to try and keep these podcasts to a car trip or something so people can hear more once. >> Otherwise if we keep going we're going to have him sitting there garages for five hours listening to the rest of the podcast before they go into their family. >> I did want to highlight to people you know if you've listen to this I should have said this at the start so you know where all this information that Scott Scott is coming from Scott is in my opinion one of the most intellectually capable people in the tech space in our industry. >> And just to give some proof of that Scott I hope you don't mind me blunt pumping up your ties but Scott's done an MBA I think it was from the Harvard Business School which is probably the preeminent business school in the world and he was the top score in his class year I think is if I've heard rightly. >> I find this stuff very I'm sorry yeah I was very fortunate to do a whole bunch of study which has served me really well but to be brutally honest you know with all the things that I did everything I thought would work when I first got to property management didn't work and being in the industry for the last sort of decade or so has been just as valuable because you really do understand not just the theoretical stuff and so on. >> But on the ground how does this stuff actually work in reality and I think that's where a lot of very academically brilliant people get it wrong because they haven't been in a P and business or run a P and business or whatever to see the disconnect between the theoretical and the actual practical application. >> I think your change is probably you've noticed that as well because your background being in banking insurance and you know banking industry is my first job as well they're different beasts they are big huge businesses that probably there's no emotion involved from a bank's point of view. >> That everyone's just a number but our business is very much an emotional business so you do see a big difference in the big change in it Scott thank you so much for joining us again and I think you're someone that will probably be a guest regularly because there is so much changing and technology is you've indicated in this podcast has changed rather quickly. >> The further we get into it the quicker it's changing and the more we do need to be able to adapt and be a job because you will just die as a business if you don't keep up with what's going on and if you don't become a leader in the industry but thank you so much for your time again today Scott if anyone wants to have a chat with Scott I'm sure he's happy for you to look up the call me phone number and give them a call and say I want to speak to that Scott guy about what's going on. >> But guys got given us some things that have made us and making us think about what our job roles are yes there's big changes overall though don't be stressed you're not going to lose your jobs job numbers aren't going to decrease that's just the way we do our work is going to change and there's a lot of opportunity there for you to improve yourselves and so thank you so much Scott and to everyone else will have another podcast for you shortly. >> Thank you thank you for listening to this episode of all things property management will have another one for you in the near future we hope you've enjoyed this one and got a lot out of it. In the meantime all property managers out there please remember if you need help please feel free to call our PM help line one three hundred six four one three five five thank you.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. The property management industry is facing increased consumer demands and expectations, driven by experiences in other sectors and access to information via tools like AI.
  2. Automation and AI are expected to significantly reduce operational costs, but management fees are likely to decline due to market competition.
  3. The future role of property managers will shift from task execution to relationship management, with AI handling routine work, allowing PMs to focus on high-value human interactions.
  4. To maintain revenue, agencies should diversify services beyond traditional management fees, leveraging technology to offer additional value-added services.
  5. Despite fears, the industry is expected to grow due to factors like immigration and a expanding rental market, potentially increasing properties per PM without proportional job losses.

Summary:

In this podcast episode, Scott Beatman, CEO of Colmeo, discusses the evolving landscape of property management, emphasizing the impact of AI and changing consumer expectations. He notes that both renters and landlords are becoming more demanding and informed, partly due to accessible AI tools like ChatGPT, which shape their interactions with property managers. To address this, the industry must leverage automation and AI to reduce operational costs, as management fees are predicted to decline over time due to market competition.

Scott advocates for a tiered approach to problem-solving: prioritizing self-service, then automation, followed by AI, and only using human intervention as a last resort for tasks, but as the first choice for building relationships. He highlights that property managers will transition from handling routine tasks to focusing on emotional, high-value interactions, which are irreplaceable. To sustain revenue, agencies should diversify into ancillary services, using technology to facilitate offerings like maintenance or home services.

Despite concerns, Scott argues that job losses are unlikely due to industry growth from immigration and a expanding rental market, with AI enabling property managers to handle more properties effectively while enhancing their roles.

FAQs

AI is shifting property management from reactive to predictive, automating tasks to reduce costs and improve efficiency. This allows property managers to focus more on relationship-building and handling complex, sensitive issues.

Customers are more demanding due to increased access to information, such as using AI tools like ChatGPT to understand their rights and expectations. This leads to higher service expectations and more informed interactions.

Management fees are expected to decrease over time due to market competition and ease of entry into the industry. However, costs may also drop through automation and AI, helping maintain profit margins.

Property managers should leverage technology for task automation and self-service options, freeing up time for high-value human interactions. Diversifying revenue streams beyond management fees can also help offset income changes.

AI is unlikely to cause job losses but will change roles, shifting focus from administrative tasks to relationship management. As the rental market grows, demand for property managers may increase, with AI enabling them to handle more properties effectively.

Human interaction remains crucial for building relationships and handling emotional or sensitive issues, such as evictions or complex disputes. AI handles routine tasks, allowing property managers to focus on impactful customer moments.

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