Kylie Davis: (00:00)
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Kylie Davis: (00:29)
Welcome to the PropTech Podcast. It's Kylie Davis here, and I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide. I passionately believe we need to create and grow a sense of community between the innovators and real estate agents, and property people, and sharing our stories is a great way to do that. The aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a PropTech innovator who is pushing the boundaries of what's possible and to explore the issues and challenges raised by the tech and how they can create amazing property experiences.
Kylie Davis: (01:01)
My guest in this episode is Dean Katz, Founder of Third-Place.org, a startup born during COVID as an alternative to working from either home or the office. It helps you find a third place, a local cafe, a hotel, or other venues happy to help you pull out your laptop and sit for a few hours, or host a meeting. Now, Dean started Third Place with family members who work across hospitality and tech, and his own background is a corporate lawyer specialising in mergers and acquisitions. So, here to tell us all about it, Dean Katz. Welcome to the PropTech Podcast.
Kylie Davis: (01:43)
Yeah, thank you. Look, tell us the elevator pitch for Third Place, because I'm fascinated by your tech.
Dean Katz: (01:49)
Yeah, look, sure. I guess the longer elevator pitch, if we were going up a few floors, Third Place is a work from anywhere marketplace for people to find inspiring, productive, and collaborative places to work remotely. We say it's a balance between working from the home, which is the first place, and working from the office, which is the second place. Our mission really is to drive the millions of people that are now working from home remotely, both within Australia and ultimately globally, into third places.
Dean Katz: (02:21)
Typically these are hospitality venues such as cafes, restaurants, hotels and other public spaces like gyms and play centres and libraries and parks, helping these industries to thrive once again once the pandemic moves through and ultimately ends. And at the same time, improving the employee experience for staff at the corporate space, the mental health and wellbeing of the workforce, and saving companies significant cost.
Kylie Davis: (02:51)
Okay, awesome. What's the problem that Third Place is solving for? Because I mean, COVID's put all this new emphasis, hasn't it? On working from home, and then how we miss coming into work, but only a bit. We want to be social, we don't necessarily want to go [crosstalk 00:03:12]-
Dean Katz: (03:13)
I mean, we're a marketplace, right? We look at both the problem and the solutions from two sides. The demand side and the supply side. If we look at the demand side, which is really they're our users, we're talking about employees, we're talking about entrepreneurs, freelancers, and corporates, large companies. What we've seen, as you've said, it's one of the greatest experiments in social history. Millions of people have been forced to work at home remotely.
Dean Katz: (03:41)
What's happened, again, as a lot of your listeners will know, is that they've actually found it fairly productive. Initially there was a lot of hesitation to allowing people to work remotely, because we didn't think anyone was capable of doing any work. Well, that's proven to be not the case. And there's so many other benefits from being able to work remotely. The biggest one for staff is no commute. It's less costly for employees, you're not having to get public transport, car parking, of course for companies lower rental costs, lower overheads. That increased flexibility and happiness and ability to improve work/life balance.
Dean Katz: (04:22)
And then a big one for companies is being able to hire from a far more diverse talent pool. So, not just having to hire people who live near and close to you within Melbourne, for example, but being able to hire really the best talent from anywhere. So, some of the stats that have come out, using some figures, 95% of employees have experienced the same or better productivity working remotely, and they wish to continue to do this, at least two or three times per week.
Dean Katz: (04:55)
That's clearly showing the employees' desire to continue doing it that way. But the problem is that as the pandemic has lingered, there are some real issues with working from home, too. And particularly if we're going to solely work from home, and those are ... Some of these are obvious. It's super isolating, it's very lonely to continue to work from home. We are humans, we crave social interactions and face-to-face conversations, and while Zoom and Teams and all these other platforms have been great at facilitating remote work, there's a desire to be more connected as well, to colleagues, to our community, culture, company culture is a huge one, and companies are trying to work out how to continue to build company culture in a remote environment.
Dean Katz: (05:43)
Less opportunity to collaborate and to be creative. There are barriers between your work life and your social life, because it's all happening from home, so there's no break between those two things. And again, something that we've focused heavily on is mental health and wellbeing at home, is a particular problem. And again, so just to flow that statistic through with you there, while 95% of employees loved the productivity of working from home, now as the pandemic has evolved, 70% of them are experiencing burnout due to working from home.
Kylie Davis: (06:19)
And sometimes the coffee's terrible.
Dean Katz: (06:24)
Exactly.
Kylie Davis: (06:25)
If you're always working from home.
Dean Katz: (06:27)
[crosstalk 00:06:27] right. And so what's happening is when a company is now all looking at how do they return to office? What does that make up look like? How do you get the best benefit from working from home while still working on those problems? And so we believe, and a lot of other companies have now announced what's called a hybrid model for the workplace, which is really a balance between working from the office, working from home, potentially coworking spaces, and third places.
Dean Katz: (07:01)
This has developed the workplace ecosystem. We don't think the office is dead, it's just going to serve a different purpose. But what is happening is that companies are looking at this hub and spoke model. Again, some of your listeners have probably heard about that. Which is great. Again, that's a sort of satellite office in the CBD and then coworking spaces and hubs in our areas, which is great, but not if you don't live near or close to the hub.
Dean Katz: (07:32)
So, again, we're engaging hospitality spaces with a much larger geographically dispersed footprint, so we can provide true flexibility and equality to staff in that going forward remote model.
Kylie Davis: (07:46)
Okay. Third Place is a marketplace, so from ... You've just spoken and told us all about from the employee point of view, or employer point of view. From the supplier of space point of view, how does it work? How does that work?
Dean Katz: (08:03)
Yep, exactly. Okay, so of course on the supply side, cafes, restaurants, hotels, we know have suffered tremendously during COVID. One of our founders in fact works for the Marriott International, and their occupancy has dropped as low as 10%. Especially during the week. At weekends, as restrictions have eased, it's picked up as domestic travel has picked up, but huge losses there. They've lost the corporate client, because there's no more global international travel.
Dean Katz: (08:39)
We know 30% of cafes and restaurants are likely to simply vanish, because they've just lost out on that revenue. So, what we've managed to do is because the reality is that these third places, cafes, restaurants, and hotels, they do offer incredible places to work. Free WiFi, power access, food and beverage. They're inspiring environments with privacy in some senses, and bustling in others which is maybe what you want. We have developed this marketplace to connect the millions of people working remotely back into these spaces.
Kylie Davis: (09:19)
Does that mean, Dean, that anyone who's on the Third Place platform, if I'm ... Because what I love about it is I'm often, when I do go interstate, I often have time between appointments or you're trying to get around town in a new town, and you often want to prop somewhere for maybe an hour, sometimes even two hours, and it's feel a little bit rude to sit there just with a cup of coffee and do your work, and steal people's WiFi, but is that what you're saying? That if there's a business inside the Third Place platform, then basically you're welcome to come and base yourself and work out of there?
Dean Katz: (09:54)
Yep, exactly. There's a few different case scenarios where it can work. One is exactly as you mentioned, I might be moving from client to client, or between the office and client, and have a two hour gap. I can simply jump onto the Third Place marketplace platform, there's a search feature, I can type in where I'm currently located, and instantly it'll pull up all of the cafes, hotels, libraries, every other third place that's listed on our platform, and either in some cases I can reserve, and that's predominately our model, is that there'll be a specified price to be able to book that space.
Dean Katz: (10:34)
I click through, I can read about the space, I can see a live Google video, images of the exact location I'm going to be in, and I push book. That sends a notification to the venue. They secure the space, I pay my fee, and they can offer me special discounts or any other specials that they'd like to draw me in.
Kylie Davis: (10:58)
I don't have to feel guilty. I don't have to feel guilty about sitting there on a cup of coffee.
Dean Katz: (11:03)
Yes, exactly right. A lot of the conversations we're having with the hospitality venues is some of them will say to us, "But I don't want people coming in, sitting in and having just one coffee." The others, and these tend to be the ones who are really keen to improve their revenue and that, they'll say to us, "Well, I would rather have someone sitting in my coffee shop, with their laptop open, having a coffee, because if my staff can't sell them at breakfast if they've been sitting there 7:00 in the morning, or a lunch if they've been sitting there the whole day, I would rather them sitting in my coffee than in Starbucks, or in some other place."
Dean Katz: (11:46)
And then not just between moving, between clients and that. It's also if I'm sitting working from home, I can find all the locations that are near me. If I wanted to have a collaboration meeting between myself and my five person team or my 10 person team, I could find a location. Might be outside of the CBD, but that's convenient for all of us in the Southeast, or in the North, to get to, and to be able to work. Whether it's for a few hours or for a full day.
Kylie Davis: (12:16)
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Kylie Davis: (13:28)
How did you come up with the idea? Was it born out of COVID, or how long have you been working on it for?
Dean Katz: (13:34)
Yeah. We are a COVID born business, a COVID baby.
Kylie Davis: (13:41)
Very new.
Dean Katz: (13:41)
We started in March of last year. What happened as I think a lot of your listeners would know, as soon as we were all forced to work from home, as I mentioned, I'm a partner of a law firm in Melbourne, so I was no different to a lot of others. Myself and my team of lawyers grabbed our laptops and keyboards and all scurried on home. And traditionally, and I think a lot of your listeners probably too, at some point or another have worked from a coffee shop and had a coffee pot to open a laptop and done a bit of work. I used to do that a fair bit.
Dean Katz: (14:19)
Now, because the monotony of working from home was really starting to kick in, and it was becoming quite lonely and isolating, for me I would often take a walk down to my local coffee shop. Of course, I know the owners, so we started chatting as we usually do, and it became clear then as the restrictions started hitting in, how badly they were being impacted by COVID. That was really then the light bulb moment, literally sitting there at the cafe, looking out into the suburbs and thinking, "Well, there are now thousands of people who are working in and around this one cafe," whereas during the week they would have been often in the CBD. How can we get those thousands of people back into this cafe?
Dean Katz: (15:02)
And then if you take it more globally, how do we get the millions of people back into these industries that need it? That's really how it started. I spoke to my brothers, probably that day, who are my co-founders. In fact, two of my brothers. One lives in Canberra, and the others in the Gold Coast. We said to ourselves, "All right, let's build it" and we gave ourselves 30 days to build the marketplace, and we managed to get that happening, we started validating the concept, we were speaking to cafes, we were speaking to restaurants. As I said, my brother, who's the co-founder, works for Marriott International.
Dean Katz: (15:43)
He started speaking to hotels and other hotel operators, and we validated the concept. People love it, it really resonates with our venues and then also with companies. I started speaking to my staff, I started speaking with other leaders and seeing if this is something that would work well for them, and certainly it did.
Kylie Davis: (16:04)
Awesome. What's your business model? You mentioned briefly before, but do I have to pay for everything booked through Third Place? Or, are there different levels?
Dean Katz: (16:19)
Our business model, essentially there are different types of listings that can apply. Some are paid listings, so for example, a cafe or restaurant might list ... They can list various spaces within their venue. So they might list a two-seater, a three-seater, a four, a five, or a collaboration table for 10. They set the features that they have, whether it's free WiFi, power access, pet friendly, privacy space or whatever the case is.
Dean Katz: (16:47)
They can do this all custom themselves, just like a host could do on Airbnb. They set their price, and so again, full flexibility for the venues to decide how much they want to charge. They could charge say for a two-seater space, $2 an hour. For a 10-seater collaboration space, $10 an hour, or they could charge by the day. They could have $10 for the day or $20 for the day for a two-seater space, and $100 a day for a space for six or seven, or up to 10.
Dean Katz: (17:24)
Then users can jump on and search and find these places and book them. Typically what would happen is the expenditure that you spent on the booking fees goes towards food and beverage within the store. You're technically not paying more to get the space. But at the same time, a number of the venues that are on our platform are looking at how they can potentially monetize their space, as well. If these are places that people really want and it's a great place to work, someone might very well pay an extra $2 or $3 to make sure that they've got it booked and secured for the day, in addition to spending money on food and bev while they're in there.
Dean Katz: (18:04)
Of course, the hotels are doing exactly that. A number of the hotels that are on our platform, they'll say for a day pass is $100, or $80, or $120, and if you want to then stay overnight it's extra. If you want to order food from the minibar, then it's more. There's certainly the opportunity to monetize the space, as well.
Kylie Davis: (18:23)
I mean, that's what I love about it, because often you're in ... If you're trying to find a working space, I think when I've been overseas, and you just want a spot to go for the day, just to hide and get some work done that's not necessarily your hotel room. And you don't mind paying something, but just the difficulty of having to look through a million different sites to find something that's local or nearby. I think that's an awesome feature that you've got there.
Dean Katz: (18:56)
Exactly. It's all there in the one place. I used to do the same. I'd jump on Time Out and I'd try and find the best places to ... They call them coffices, you know? Cafe offices, you know? Then I'd jump on Urban List, and bunch of the others. But yeah, this is a one-stop shop to find these types of places to work remotely. And just covering off I guess on the business model from a venues perspective, we will move to a commission model, something fairly reasonable, something in the order of 10-15% charged to the venues for the fees or the transaction fees that goes through our platform. But at the moment, to help the industry, we're free.
Dean Katz: (19:39)
We're keen to get as many onboard and help, so long as COVID is around we'll continue to offer that for free. There's no listing fees, there's no other subscription fees for companies, and so it's really just about getting people on the platform using it, enjoying the experience.
Kylie Davis: (20:00)
How many businesses have you got on the site now? What kind of traffic are you doing?
Dean Katz: (20:06)
Yeah, so we were going to launch in Melbourne, but again, this was heart of the restrictions in Melbourne, so we then moved to the Gold Coast.
Kylie Davis: (20:17)
I noticed that you did have a lot of Gold Coast, Canberra, and Melbourne properties on it.
Dean Katz: (20:23)
Now we really are growing quite well. We're in Melbourne, we're in Sydney, we're in Brisbane, including the Gold Coast, and in Canberra. We've probably got about 60 venues in total in Melbourne, about 60 in Brisbane, including the Gold Coast, maybe about 20 in Canberra, and about 20 in Sydney. We've got some really beautiful boutique hotels like the Emporium in Brisbane, The Ridges has just come onboard in Sydney, from a hotel perspective, offering their work from hotel products.
Dean Katz: (20:58)
We've got a bunch of organic users that come on and we can see are searching through the platform and looking to make bookings. But at the same time, a key focus of ours at the moment is on partnering with corporates, so we're in really advanced discussions with a number of companies, typically with 500-1000 staff, some more and some a few less, about getting access to our platform, to their staff. In this first quarter of this year, we're looking to run a beta test to really test out the platform and we know there's some functionality we want to add, but we want to get that feedback from users.
Dean Katz: (21:38)
We should have about 10-20 companies this quarter, with about 500-1000 staff. We're looking at about 5-10,000 users in the next couple of months running through the platform, which will give us great intel into what people like and don't like and really inform the next move to Third Place.
Kylie Davis: (21:57)
That's great. Well done. You're a very young business, so that's a really great adoption and take up.
Kylie Davis: (22:04)
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Kylie Davis: (23:12)
What does the future of commercial, like working in an office look like do you think?
Dean Katz: (23:18)
Yeah.
Kylie Davis: (23:18)
As we go through this.
Dean Katz: (23:20)
Yeah, well look, I mean, it's a difficult one to predict. I think the reality is that with remote working, flexible working arrangements are here to stay. That is the-
Kylie Davis: (23:33)
I hope so.
Dean Katz: (23:34)
Yeah. Of our model. And so I think what will happen within CBDs is we will see as leases come up for renewal or expire, there will be a shrinking down of office presence within the CBDs. I think commercial property owners, landlords, are going to have to start looking at how they repurpose their facilities. I don't think the office is dead. I think people will still need to come into the office for a particular purpose, but again, the purpose will change. There'll be far more collaborative, far more open spaces, and just a bit of a different environment.
Dean Katz: (24:11)
And certainly again, I think over the next five years, people are going to move further and further out, urbanisation and geographically dispersed workforces will prevail. And so there's a huge opportunity in those outer areas for coworking spaces, and of course for Third Place.
Kylie Davis: (24:32)
Fantastic. Is there a way that existing real estate agents or developers or even commercial landlords at the moment could use your tech?
Dean Katz: (24:44)
Yeah. Well, it's interesting you mention that. Again, since starting up and I'm fairly active on LinkedIn, I've been following a lot of the large commercial real estate agents and workplace consultants have been saying about the future of work. There's a lot out there. JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, Collier, Savills, a bunch of them have put out papers and podcasts and other guidelines, and a lot of them are talking about the hub and spoke, and the hybrid models and the work from anywhere revolution.
Dean Katz: (25:22)
In fact, I recently had a great conversation with someone from Cushman & Wakefield. She's their human geographer and workplace strategy manager, and she's advising corporate clients on what that return to work and what that mix and that ecosystem of office, home, third places, which she absolutely loved.
Kylie Davis: (25:44)
Who was that?
Dean Katz: (25:45)
Tica Hessing.
Kylie Davis: (25:45)
Oh, Tica. Yes, hello. Hey, shout out to Tica. I thought it must have been.
Dean Katz: (25:51)
Yeah. And that was just great. At the end of that conversation, we spoke about well, how can we cross-refer to each other and keeping that conversation going? And so I really think yeah, there's certainly a lot of opportunity for the advisors and real estate agents to advise in that space, if they jump onboard.
Kylie Davis: (26:13)
The collaborations that you're doing with some of the commercial businesses that you're working with, how does that work? Just give me a little bit more detail on that. If I'm a law firm with 500 lawyers working for me, how do I work with Third Place?
Dean Katz: (26:30)
Yeah, sure. Okay, a law firm would ... I'll start that one again.
Kylie Davis: (26:36)
It's okay.
Dean Katz: (26:39)
So yeah, a collaboration with one of our corporate clients, typically they'll find us out or we'll seek them out. We have an initial discussion about what the platform is and we'll do a demo. There's a bit of an onboarding process, so we'll send an email which will go out to all their staff, explaining about what Third Place is and how they go about booking spaces. What's been beautiful in the last little while, based on some of the discussions that we're having with them, is the fact that they now want to offer stipends or allowances to their staff, to spend on Third Place.
Dean Katz: (27:19)
We're working with them on effectively a digital credit card that can be used to book spaces on our platform, and then even to buy food and beverage while in-store. Again, in partnership, and in collaboration, with online ordering platforms. Again, we're working with them on the side to integrate with our platform.
Kylie Davis: (27:42)
It's kind of like a Google Food.
Dean Katz: (27:44)
Yeah. Exactly. In-store, working remotely. That's basically the process. They would then jump on, they would find a space that they want to work. They would book it. If it's on the corporate digital credit card, within their allowance, they would just simply pay for it using the card. They turn up and they work and hopefully they have a great experience, and then they do it again.
Kylie Davis: (28:07)
Fantastic. Dean, this has been really fascinating. Tell me, what do you think the next five years holds? Get your crystal ball out, for the real estate industry, and especially for flexible working.
Dean Katz: (28:18)
Look, I really very much do believe in this hybrid model. There's a lot of articles out there about the office is dead, and everyone moving towards that full remote strategy. I mean, Twitter's recently came out saying ... They came out early in the pandemic saying that 100% of their workforce was going to work remotely. I don't think that's the case. I think there will very much be this workplace ecosystem. Home, office, coworking space potentially, and the hubs, and third places.
Dean Katz: (28:52)
I think there's no question that flexible work is going to remain. As workforces become more and more geographically dispersed, as technology continues to evolve, as leaders become more proficient in managing remote teams, and as companies start realising the cost savings, and the productivity benefits to be gained from it, it's just going to happen. It's going to happen more and more.
Kylie Davis: (29:17)
What does the future look like? What's your roadmap look like? You're a very young startup and you've obviously made some great traction so far, so what does the next couple of years look like for you guys?
Dean Katz: (29:28)
Yeah. I mean, the future's very exciting for us. As you said, being a-
Kylie Davis: (29:32)
Have you given up your day job? Are you still a lawyer?
Dean Katz: (29:38)
This is still my side hustle.
Kylie Davis: (29:38)
That's all right. We love a side hustle.
Dean Katz: (29:39)
I was about to announce my resignation [inaudible 00:29:43] on this podcast.
Kylie Davis: (29:45)
Oh, damn.
Dean Katz: (29:46)
Yeah. No, look, it's very exciting for us. There's no question that 2021 is going to be an interesting year for everyone. The pandemic is not over, and so it's going to continue to throw plenty of challenges at the industry that we're looking to help. It'll place some roadblocks for us, various lockdowns and other things, but the beauty that we've always had and we've still got now, is actually we've used this pandemic period to validate our idea, to onboard venues, to have discussions with companies, and to see which way it starts going. We can just pivot and manoeuvre as that happens.
Dean Katz: (30:23)
But the next five years, I think we're going to see extraordinary growth. I think we'll be very well positioned at that point for it. I think once domestic travel opens up without restriction, once the vaccine has been effectively rolled out, and once global and international travel resumes, that takes our company again, to a whole new level. Because now you're not just looking about being able to work within your area. If you're travelling interstate, you can find somewhere to work remotely in Sydney or in Adelaide, or over in Perth. If you're of course going overseas, and our plans are fairly aspirational to make this global, you can do the same. You can find a third place anywhere within the world.
Kylie Davis: (31:09)
Fantastic. And I think it's going to be so interesting to see, because in Sydney where we are, the local high street in our suburb didn't take a backwards step, really. So while everyone was not going into town any longer, the local shops, once the shock of ... And local cafes, once the shock of COVID abated, people started to ... And new cleaning regimes and new changing, people did start to go back to their local cafes and support their local restaurants quite as much as they could. What's I guess going to happen in the next five years in our cities is going to be our CBDs, the mix of how we work, live, and play in the cities is going to change and a lot of those current commercial office spaces are going to be converted into things that we can't even imagine quite yet, I imagine.
Dean Katz: (32:05)
Yeah, exactly right. That's the interesting flip side. While CBD offices are going to have to look for how they repurpose, whether they convert office space more to residential, or into hotels, or other-
Kylie Davis: (32:19)
Rent by the hour.
Dean Katz: (32:24)
Yeah. And that's how we look at it. We're almost doing the opposite. We're taking hospitality venues and saying, "Well, how do we turn these a bit more into mixed use workspaces?" Of course, on the flip side, yeah, that's what will need to happen. It may very well be that 15 minutes cities is what happens within here, like they're looking to do in Paris and various other European countries.
Kylie Davis: (32:52)
Fantastic. Dean, it's been absolutely awesome talking to you. Congratulations on the launch of Third Place.
Dean Katz: (32:59)
Thank you so much, Kylie. I've really appreciated meeting with you and it's been great. Thanks for the discussion.
Kylie Davis: (33:05)
Great to have you on the PropTech Podcast. That was Dean Katz, Founder of Third-Place.org, a new website that helps you find venues to work without the guilt of using your local cafe on a single cup of coffee. And it's the first PropTech that we've profiled that has been a true child of COVID. Now, I think this is a clever idea. As someone who used to travel a lot for business before COVID, I've often looked for places to sit quietly for a couple of hours between appointments, where I could just get some work done.
Kylie Davis: (33:35)
Because there is something really comforting, isn't there? About being around people, but not having to engage unless you really want to. The coffee is usually better than home, you know that you're not going to get interrupted by some co-worker that you can't stand, but having the bustle and noise around helps you feel connected, and it can help you focus. As COVID drags on, and social isolation is becoming a bigger issue, and it's really changing our workplaces, it means that finding a third option that's not home and not the office is becoming increasingly common. Having a central place like Third-Place.org where you can go and check out the different options that are happy to take your business, it makes a lot of sense. So well done Dean and the team. I know I'm going to be a regular user of Third Place.
Kylie Davis: (34:23)
Now, if you have enjoyed this episode of the PropTech Podcast, I'd love you to tell all your friends or drop me a line, either via email, LinkedIn, or on our Facebook page which you can now find, @KylieDavisPropTech. You can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple iTunes and Anchor, and where all good podcasts are heard. I'd really love it if you could subscribe or leave us a review. I'd like to thank my audio support team, Charlie Hollins and Sam Hollins, and the fabulous Jill [Espeedero 00:34:52], and our wonderful sponsors, Direct Connect, making moving easy, Smidge, official wines of the PropTech community, and HomePrezzo, now part of ActivePipe, and making marketing automation easier than ever before.
Kylie Davis: (35:06)
If you are a PropTech, make sure you join the PropTech Association of Australia, and join like-minded tech people who are passionate about the prop industry and committed to improving experiences in how we buy, sell, rent, manage, and build and finance property. Go to PropTechAssociation.com.au. Until next week, everyone, thanks so much, keep on PropTeching.