THE WORD - How do you justify your property management commission levels?

HOW DO YOU JUSTIFY YOUR PROPERTY MANAGEMENT COMMISSION LEVELS?

“We have a service guarantee with a list of 12 criteria that we must meet, and I sign off on that on behalf of our team, promising that we will attend to all of those things. If we don’t, then we will refund the last three months’ worth of our management fee. A couple of points would be that we return emails from tenants or landlords within 48 hours; we return phone calls within 24 hours; that we we do background checks on particular tenants; and we do regular rent reviews.”

TAMMY HUTCHINSON
Senior asset manager, PRDnationwide Port Macquarie, NSW

“It is really about looking at what our clients want. At the end of the day, all of our investor clients have three things they really are after: they want the highest rent, the best possible tenant – and in the smallest amount of time. So keeping that in mind, when we are pitching to win their business we have to look at how we can meet those needs. One of the big things we consider at LJ Hooker is the vacancy rate. For example, we lease a property every 35 seconds, which is a really big bonus when we go in and talk about how quickly we will find somebody a tenant. We’ve got proof there.”

AMY SANDERSON
Head of property management, LJ Hooker, NSW

“All businesses are looking to differentiate themselves. We find that it is a whole package – if we start off on the right foot it helps the whole process. We have a highly professional prospectus that we give to prospective owners and we outline the steps we take to maintain their asset, which is their home. One of those steps is the tenancy application. We make sure we go through the application thoroughly – it is really important we find the right tenant for the property. We check everything and make sure the owner knows the great detail we go through to get it right.”

ANDREW KENMAN
Principal, Elders Real Estate Ipswich and Fernvale, QLD

“We make it easy for our landlords. People are just so busy in their day-to-day life and they just want to know that their property is being well looked after. We show our clients that we have access to leading edge technology. We have been the drivers in our area for iPad inspections, which means that we can basically email off the inspection to the landlord from the property. They’ve got the photos geo-coded and geo-teched, which is great if you are ever taken to the tribunal. It is a record of inspections.”

ANDREA ELLIOT
Managing director, Click Property Management, NZ

“The reality is that commission levels will seriously be under pressure and agents will have to justify them more and more as time goes by. Agents and property managers have skills that are not available to their clients.The skill that they do have is turning data into information. Data is one thing but it doesn’t mean much unless you can get really meaningful information from that data. Also, their negotiation skills are another reason to justify commission levels – most people are unable to negotiate effectively on their own behalf.”

ANDREA ELLIOT
Managing director, Click Property Management, NZ